Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Page 22

  Gator looked at Raven. “Babygirl, we need to talk. Beau, will you please excuse us?”

  Beau frowned. “Are you all right with that, Raven?”

  She wasn’t, but she’d be damned if she’d let a soul alive know how not all right she was.

  Gator smiled his flat line smile as Beau made himself scarce. “Look, the past is the past. Can’t we just set aside our differences and talk?”

  She found her voice. “I don’t see why you keep bothering me. I don’t see why you’re here, in this bar and in this park or this state, even.”

  His face betrayed nothing. “It isn’t you I’m bothering with, trust me. I’m done with you. But I still want that guitar.”

  Raven thought about that old black National with the case like a coffin. She thought about how her father had tried to play it and pronounced it impossible. Tender could play anything at all, but the strings wouldn’t stay in tune for him. “That guitar ain’t mine.”

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He took off his glasses and polished them up with a hanky he had in his back pocket, one that some doting woman had stitched with his initials. “Listen. Those Bone Pile boys backed out, and I have a lot riding on that talent show. I need the opportunity. I hear that guitar has a special sound, one that could make a man stand out.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  He looked at her with his bare eyes, looking for a point of entry. “I tell you what. You get me that guitar and you’ll never see me again. Never hear my voice on the radio. Never pass my truck on the highway. Never again, as long as you live. If you just get me that guitar.”

  Of its own accord, her hand moved.

  “Put your knife away, Babygirl. You can just say no. You don’t have to stab me.” He turned away from her. Showed her his back. Because he had no fear of her. He had never had the slightest bit of fear where she was concerned. Other men gave her a respectful distance. Not Gator. He’d assessed the chances of retaliation at zero. Nothing about her frightened him in the least, and this was what frightened her most.

  Raven looked over his shoulder into a pair of wise, placid eyes, one green, one brown. Fossetta glowed like a haystack in the sunset. Her smile was a soft breeze through barbed wire. This is how she looks to men, Raven knew. This is what she is to them. All promise and comfort and love.

  Melveena stood beside Fossetta. She shifted on her long legs and gave him a challenging smirk. She looked like a horse that would kick when you smacked its tight flank, step sideways and buck you off. But she would be the ride of your life. And this is how she looks to men, Raven knew. She’s something wild to slap and master and tame.

  One is safety. One is danger. And they were offering this to Gator Rollins.

  He looked them over. Choosing. Raven should have said it, then. She should have spoken up and warned them both away. Told them what he was, what he did for sport, his hunting and hurting of young women. But she was as stone silent as she’d always been.

  As silent as the woman Gator took with him when he left the bar.

  MELVEENA PACED A path in the darkest corner of the Cactus Arms Motor Hotel parking lot. “Let’s give her one more minute.”

  “We need to get in there.” Raven kept pulling the cigarette out of her hatband, fondling it, smelling it, then putting it back.

  “Would you just SMOKE that thing?” Melveena went back to her pacing. The gravel crunched under her feet like bones grinding in that old fairy tale, fee fie foe fum.

  Raven took her knife out of her hiding place and began to flip it. “We need to go get her. Now.”

  The knife flashed in the outdoor light, giving Melveena some small measure of comfort, though her grandmother’s gun was in her pocketbook, as usual. “All I asked her to do was use the bathroom, hide those rings, and get out. She knows we’re out here. What’s taking this long?”

  Raven’s voice was all wrong. It was hoarse and scared and weak. “How do you even know she understands a word you say? She never says one word back. She could be stone deaf for all you know.” Raven flipped her knife, ashen-faced and shaking, so pale that her scar looked dark, like a fissure in her face.

  Melveena spoke firmly, as if trying to convince herself of what she said. “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. She’s been around.”

  “She’s never been around a thing like Gator Rollins.” Raven’s knife sailed through the air and landed neatly at Melveena’s feet, scuffing the suede of her pump.

  “Nice work, Raven. Why don’t you just slice off my toe while you’re at it.” She knelt and snatched it up. The metal was hot, like the metal pens held by her Bone Pile girls. Like Bonnie MacIver’s lipstick case. Like those cursed rings, all metal, all burning with association. She held Raven’s knife for a moment and closed her eyes. She opened her eyes and looked at her friend, understanding Raven for the first time.

  She handed the knife back. “We’d better go in.”

  Raven put a hand on her arm.

  The door they’d been watching finally opened to release Gator, not Fossetta. They watched him as he walked out, climbed into his idling rig, pulled out of the parking lot.

  Alone.

  EVERY SINGLE MAN around wanted this harlot with the crazy eyes. That sheriff would curl up and blow away when he found out. Even the Bone Pile men, with their strange, skinny, wild-eyed women that he personally would have loved to have a crack at, wanted a shot at this cow.

  Who could figure that out?

  He figured he’d play her a few songs, let her watch some TV, send her home soon. He had no intention of taking her. Just let her stay long enough to fool all those Bone Pile scavenger rats into thinking he’d had her. She was too big, too soft, too much. And she limped when she walked, like she was walking on gravel or had something in her shoe.

  She sure took a long time in the bathroom, though.

  He sat in the blue light of the motel TV, his hands on the neck of his guitar. And she came out, her face white as milk. She stood so close he could smell her stink. God, he hated the smell of women this age. This one had it all mixed up with the smell of something else, what was it, cookies, that’s what it was. What was it she wanted, standing there looking at him with those witch eyes? She just stood there. “No wonder men like you. Because you’re quiet. God should make more women like you, women without tongues.”

  She stared at him.

  He hated her. “Don’t you ever say a word, woman?” He reached out and ripped her dress down the front. She had on nothing underneath. And she didn’t startle in the slightest. “Lord girl, I had no idea you were so fat. I mean it. I had no idea.” He watched for a wince. She didn’t. It was almost like she was studying him, like she could see. “If you think I’ll have a sow like you, think again. The sight of you is enough to make me projectile vomit the length of a football field.” He wanted her to stand there and tremble in her naked shame. But she didn’t.

  There was nothing in her eyes. Because she was looking at nothing.

  He wanted to be clear of those witch eyes, one green, one brown, hanging in the air behind him, he knew those eyes were hanging just over his shoulder and if he looked in his rearview, he would see them, those calm eyes, watching him and knowing him and owning him forever, he’d closed those eyes with his fists and slammed that pink-lipped mouth as hard as he could with the back of his hand and knocked the spit out of her, literally, he’d knocked a drop of spittle from her mouth that shone like a trip wire as it snaked its way down her chin, her long, bare throat, he had his hands around that throat, and that drop of spit slid over those white teats with the pale pink nipples and falling into the white fat of her belly into the snatch of hair that hid it like leaves over a trap, but it was there, you could smell it, spreading out like a deep rut in a red mud road, a soft place where you spin and get stuck, you can’t get free of it, you’re like tires cutting into a mushy road, he fought his way out of it with all he had and left her there.

  Broken on the floor.
r />   He belonged to the road. The road.

  It was time to pull out in that rig of midnight blue. Time to leave it all behind, like he always did. Time to pick up a load and hit the open road and get the away from that crazy place full of all those crazy women who were just as crazy as the crazy woman they named that place for.

  The highway called, like the highway always called. On the highway, he could get away from the women. At home, his whole life was the accumulation. Enchanted by the parts he was allowed to see, their slim ankles, delicate wrists, the beautiful hollows of their thin necks. But these women were no more than vampires, clinging to him for all they were worth. His life was nothing more than all those women feeding on him.

  It had inspired him to retaliation. He’d spent years on the highway, finding and feeding on the young, the weak, the confused and rejected. He’d worshipped them with violence. To have and to crush. The joy had gone out of that sport when he’d torn the wings off a blackbird. He didn’t want any women. Women were a ladder he climbed to claim his reward, and in return he would pull them all along behind him. But he didn’t want a one of them.

  The one thing he still wanted wouldn’t be all that difficult to get.

  MELVEENA PUSHED OPEN the motel room door. “Sweet Jesus.” She knelt like a supplicant beside that soft arrangement of white and gold lying shattered on the floor. She knew it was a time for decisive action but if she touched that white skin her hand might burn up with radiance. She reached out, anyway, as carefully as a fire-hypnotized child reaching toward a flame, and found the peach skin of Fossetta’s wrist. There was a pulse. “She’s alive.”

  “Of course she’s alive.”

  “Well how do you know that?”

  “He ain’t stupid enough to kill somebody and then leave the body in his motel room.” Raven stepped over the woman on the floor with hardly a glance and went into the bathroom. “Stupid!” she called back over her shoulder.

  “You hush.” Fossetta’s eyes opened, swam, fixed. “Fossetta? Honey, are you there?” Raven came out with a dry towel, vigorously polishing every smooth surface she could find. “Don’t forget the bathroom, all right?”

  Such an angry, flat look. “Already done it. Of course.”

  Melveena looked down. She watched for a nod, a word, anything, but Fossetta just stared. “Honey, your nose is broken.”

  Raven knelt down. “I can fix that.”

  “You most certainly will not fix it.”

  “Just get out of my way.”

  “No! That’s why God made plastic surgeons.”

  Raven ignored her. “This won’t hurt as much as whatever he did to you.” Fossetta barely winced as Raven snapped it back in place. “There. Probably won’t even get a bump on it.” She looked up at Melveena. “STUPID.”

  “I get your point.”

  Melveena went into the bathroom. She returned with a cool towel wrapped around her hands. “I put the rest of the rings in there.”

  “She didn’t even have all of ’em?”

  “She had four, I had three. We didn’t know which one of us he’d take home.” Melveena knelt again. “Well, Fossetta,” she said as softly as she could, “It’s time to get you up.” It was a gentle, awkward dance, the clothed woman and the naked goddess, rising. “Why,” said Melveena, “you barely weigh a thing. Like lifting feathers. We’ll use this to keep the front of you covered.” She helped her put her arms through what was left of the slip. “You know, I’ve always loved the way you dress, Fossetta. You have some beautiful things.” Melveena patted and smoothed those disarranged curls. She dabbed away at the blood covering Fossetta’s bruised mouth with one of her balled-up white gloves. “You look fine.” Her voice was less calming when she spoke to Raven. “Did you get everything you might have touched?”

  “I did. Let’s go.” She buffed both doorknobs on her way out.

  They made their way across the parking lot to the Caddy, Raven holding the back of the torn slip closed like a hospital gown. They settled Fossetta in the front seat. Like arranging a feather bed, thought Melveena. Fossetta’s head leaned against the seat and a small sigh escaped her bruised lips.

  “She’s probably going into shock.”

  “I think she’s fine.” Melveena’s eyes glowed like headlights in the rearview. “Look at that moon. What a treat, a moon like that.” All through Ochre Water she kept up her steady stream of social conversation. “It’s just so lovely here at night this time of year. I should really make a point of taking more night drives. The dust is less intense, too.”

  “Melveena. Please stop chatting her up. She ain’t never gonna answer you and it’s making me want to hit something and it might be you.” Raven lay her head back on the seat. Cold air flowed over her chin, up her nose, into her eyes.

  Was she ready?

  She’d spent years planning how to hurt men after it happened. Every man who came near, she sized him up, rehearsed it, planning in case it went south. She went looking for trouble. She’d found plenty. She’d broken teeth, that was like stomping on old dice. She’d dislocated an arm, with a pop like the sound of an old stick breaking across a thigh. She’d taken her revenge on an assortment of noses, noses that crunched under her fist like cardboard. But killing a man, that was a different thing. She still didn’t know if she could do it.

  But maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe there was another way to get rid of him.

  She didn’t believe in God anymore, if she ever had, but she sure as hell believed in the Devil. And she knew in her gut if she gave him what he wanted, it would get him away from her daughter. They passed through the lions at the gate, parked across the street from Fossetta’s.

  Raven hopped deftly from the back of the moving car.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to get something.”

  “Thanks for all your help,” Melveena hissed at her friend’s retreating back.

  FOSSETTA LEANED JUST a little heavier as Melveena walked her in the door and back to the bedroom, bumping the particleboard walls of the narrow hallway. Melveena removed the damaged slip and lay Fossetta down and settled the duvet, feathers over feathers. She looked around. “I’ll just tidy up a bit.” She tried to create some order, but to move one thing displaced another, a chain reaction, a Rube Goldberg anti-housekeeping contraption.

  The open window let in the usual Trailer Park night noise; radios and televisions turned up too loud, alarmed dogs, mating cats, the squealing of truck tires, the harping undertone of domestic disputes. Next door, there was thumping, crashing. “WHERE IS SHE!” Raven’s cry was one of pure motherly anguish. Melveena could hear Rhondalee’s tired, shrieky voice making replies, making excuses. “Where’s my DAUGHTER! WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER!”

  There were limits as to what a woman could take. Melveena had officially reached hers. She reached over and shut the window. The Park would awaken and go out looking for the lost one. Melveena would keep watch beside Fossetta, stroking those blonde curls, watching those closed eyes. Touching her. Touching a person was such a relief, such a rare pleasure. Such an exquisite risk. It wasn’t memory that flowed from the sweetness of warm, living flesh, not action or smell or image. It was the essence.

  She traced the battered cheeks, trailed her fingertips against those sweet, swollen lips. Such a placid sacrifice. “You’re so beautiful. So very beautiful.” She said it like a prayer. “You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.” Fossetta opened her eyes, then. One green, one brown. Melveena studied the fundamental depletion in those eyes. It might have been a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the scarves that lay across the shade of the bedside lamp. But as two tears welled up and fell from those bruised sockets, she swore she saw it.

  One tear was green as emerald, the other gold as topaz.

  HE WAS GLAD to be leaving the two lane, hitting the freeway. He would open it up and hit it hard, then. Slam this rig home for all it was worth. All he had to do was get past the rest stop where the Patrol hid o
ut, the rest stop that would always smell like coffee and piss, the rest stop that haunted him with disappointed silver eyes.

  Her little brat of a daughter had those same eyes.

  She’d been walking out alone in bare feet, trying to find a private place to practice her guitar. Just like she was almost every night when he followed her, learning her ways, biding his time. He’d watched her every night. Her nightgown showed her to him as clearly as if he were scoping her in infrared.

  He’d followed her as she headed up Sweetly Dreaming Lane for the highway. She’d stopped to pat an old dog and talked to it like it could talk back. That gave him a chance to grab the guitar, which was what he wanted, not this skinny little girl. She hadn’t made a sound. She just twisted around that guitar case like a kudzu vine.

  Lights were starting to come on in the trailers, and it was only a matter of time until someone stepped outside to see what the racket was. “This guitar is mine, little girl, and I’m not leaving without it.” She’d bared her teeth in an animal growl, and he hadn’t been able to pry her loose of it. It wasn’t her strength so much as her damn slipperiness, dodging the grip that would give him the necessary purchase to peel her away from the case. “I’ll peel you off, little girl. I’ll peel you just like a banana.” He’d fought her all the way to the truck with blows and his obviously superior strength. He’d made a science of overpowering women, so why couldn’t he separate this skinny little imp from the guitar?

  He hadn’t been able to pry her loose of it. So he took her, too.

  Which left him in a position he hadn’t quite anticipated. The brat sat beside him, holding that guitar case. Oh, he knew what was in there, and he wanted it. “That guitar is mine, little girl, and I’m taking it with me.”

  She wrapped herself even tighter around it. “It won’t let you play it.” She had a strange voice for a girl. Dark and husky, but with fiddle notes singing out behind it. A strange voice for a strange girl.

  “I have history with that guitar.” He’d heard that guitar once in his life. He’d picked up an old man by the side of the road, a sorry ass bum who had nothing but a paper bag and that guitar case. That old man had the bleached transparency of a shed snakeskin, and much of the same papery delicacy. Gator had looked him over, not sure just what it was he had in his cab. Are you some kinda Chinaman?