A Swollen Red Sun (18 page)

Summer Atwood dreamed of devils and demons. Tearing and cutting and raping her. Gouging her with their blunt horns, as the walls burned with blistering flames that licked the tongue-and-groove ceiling and burst windows and melted glass.

She cried and shook.

It was dark in the basement and the storm brought things to life. Critters that lived in the dark would move. A mouse scurried over her foot, but she did not flinch. Long ago, she’d grown accustomed to the feeling of quick feet. She watched a shadow on the far wall. Something long and slow crawled across a rank of wood.

There was a door to the right she could not see. It opened, and a wall of light flooded the room. Junior stepped in and walked to the stove. Opened the door and threw in some pig’s feet and tossed in a few small logs.

He turned and walked toward the girl and looked at her. Rubbed himself on the outside of his jeans and looked embarrassed.

She wanted to talk to him. Beg him to turn her loose. Tried to yell, but the ball gag kept her quiet. She begged with her eyes, and Junior bent down. Stroked her head.

A mouse darted by and surprised Junior, who stood and turned and left the basement.

Summer leaned back against the wall and watched flames burn the inside of the stovepipe as it glowed red-hot. She closed her mind and went to the only place that could save her. She was home again. Sixteen. Most popular. Before she was a wife and a slave.

Summer Atwood had been a girl once. Had a life other girls envied. Was the girl other girls wanted to be. Her long brown hair fell below her shoulders in loose tangles, impossible to confine or restrain.

She was a cheerleader, and she wasn’t perfect, though she tried, but she liked to drink and have sex with boys, and sometimes she would kiss girls, but only sometimes, and only after many cold beers and several minutes of prodding from the others in her group, all of them spoiled unpleasant children who absorbed lives of promise.

The Reverend sought to reform her. He would teach her in the ways of the Word.

He’d seen her name in the paper.
Happy Sweet 16 to Summer Atwood!
And the Reverend got that feeling in his lower gut like a wound that would not heal.

He cut her picture from the paper and held it to the fridge with a magnet and watched her while he ate. Junior watched her, too.

The Reverend knew she’d be the perfect addition to his family. He would take her from the life she lived now. Offer her a new life,
without sin
—and he would have her, day after day, until her belly grew fat with seed and the Pogue family prospered.

When he brought the girl home, Mama knew better than to put up a fight. Said she’d take care of the girl herself. Treat her like a pet. They would keep her down below, in a room under the coal chute. It was small, but it was plenty. And, as fall became winter, and it came time for frost, they would warm her with a rusty vent that pumped in heat from the woodstove.

But the heat drew up the spiders.

The sky had begun to turn orange in the east when Jerry Dean found the house. He was spent from a night of climbing and falling. He made his way to the coal chute and hid behind a group of cedars and caught his breath.

He was close to the house, and it was menacing in all the ways a haunted house was. Thunder blasted off the bluff, and Jerry Dean made a fast trot to the chute. Took cover at the base of a cottonwood.

There was a window behind the tree. Half open. The Reverend in his chair.

Jerry Dean hoped he was sleeping. He waited until thunder crashed, then walked to the window and squatted and opened the coal chute.

Summer Atwood remembered the first time she kissed a boy. At the movies with her parents. She sat in back. With Skip Lundy. They held hands and kissed in the dark. On Monday, he told his friends there’d been more. Fingers and hands were involved.

Summer hated him for that. She’d have done anything he wanted if only he’d have asked. But he hadn’t. He was scared. The first of many lessons she would learn about boys.

In the dark, except for the now-dim flicker of the woodstove, there was no light of any kind in the room. And then the door of the coal chute opened and the rain blew in.

In a flash of lightning, she saw there was a man. Two boots dangling. Legs wiggling.

She shrieked into the ball gag as Jerry Dean squeezed through the hole and dropped to the floor. He hit hard and fell to the ground. When he stood, he stumbled. Called out, “Hey, girl, where you at? Come on, girl, best make this quick.”

Summer jerked her hands and dragged the chain across the concrete, and the man jumped. He walked toward her and tripped over the rank of wood.

Jerry Dean cussed, said, “Listen, girl, I’m here to help.
The cops sent me.
Keep shakin’ that chain so I can find you.”

She rattled the chain as Jerry Dean’s eyes adjusted to the room. He turned and saw the woodstove. Walked toward it and opened the door. Saw flames bright and hot, growing strong with newfound oxygen.

Jerry Dean watched the flames mature into a dominant fire. He turned and walked to the girl. She was chained to the floor in a narrow passage.

As he approached her, she could see from the light of the stove that the police had not dispatched him. He was the mad man from the day before. She shook her head from side to side and screamed into the ball gag.

Jerry Dean raised his hands and shook them. Raised his finger to his lips to shush her. “Calm down,” he said. “OK, so I ain’t no cop. I just wanted to set your mind at ease, girl.”

The girl went to a place in her head that Jerry Dean could not find.

“Listen, I’m here to rescue you. Yeah, I know you seen me kill that pig—but you seen that son of a bitch. You know he’s crazy. I had to kill that thing. Ain’t like I wanted to.” She looked at him, but she did not see him.

“Oh, don’t disappear on me, darlin’.” He reached out to touch her, and she jumped back and hit her head on the concrete wall.

“Dammit, girl, now calm down.” He pulled out his pocketknife and showed it to her. Told her hush. “I’m gonna cut that gag off you, but you
got
to be quiet now, ya hear? You gotta be quiet.” She nodded her head.

He tried to cut the strap, but it was made of leather and it was tight against her head and there was no way to cut the strap without cutting her head. There was a small padlock on back.

“No,” Jerry Dean said. “Cain’t believe that sick bastard has a lock on this thing.”

He shrugged and told her he was sorry. Looked her in the eyes and she cried. He wiped the water away with his dirty thumbs. “Listen here, baby doll, I’m here to save you, OK? Gonna get you outta this creepy-ass basement, OK? We’re goin’ right back out that coal chute in a hot minute, all right?”

She tried to speak but couldn’t. She shook her chains and looked down at them.

“Shit,” he said. She motioned for him and spoke with her head.

“What’re you tryin’ to tell me, darlin’?”

She mumbled and raised her hands and threw her head to the left.

“The key?” he said.

She was excited.

He smiled. Asked where it was.

She threw her head to the left.

“Hang on here a minute. I’ll ask you a question, OK? You nod your little head up ’n’ down for yes. Side to side for no. Got it?”

She nodded her head up and down.

“You know where the key is?”

She nodded yes.

“Is it close by?”

She nodded yes.

Jerry Dean thought for a minute.

“OK, is it … five feet away? Yes or no?”

She nodded no.

“OK, so, it’s more than five feet away?”

She was getting frustrated and shaking. She screamed into the gag.

“Hey!” Jerry Dean yelled. “Calm down, now. You ain’t exactly makin’ this rescue easy. Damn, girl,
y’know what I been through?
Now, I’m gonna start walkin’ ’round the room. You just yell into your gag there when I’m close.”

But she was already yelling, and Jerry Dean threw his hands up. For a brief moment, he thought about saying fuck it and calling the whole thing off.

He walked to the stove and picked up a log and set it gently inside. Laid another one in and stepped back and watched the flames grow. Then he turned, and in that moment she was beautiful. He watched her wet eyes and she blinked once and a tear rolled down her cheek and she looked up. Jerry Dean looked up, too. Saw a golden key hanging from a rusty nail captured in a glint of firelight.

Jerry Dean reached up and snatched the key from the nail, and she cried and turned and gave him her hands. He hoped this was the right key. He slid the key in the hole and opened the lock and her hands were free.

Jerry Dean reached to help her and she grabbed him and squeezed him. Clung to him. It was a perfect moment. He returned her hold. Felt her tears in his chest hair. He promised it would be OK. Jerry Dean was there. He would take her and love her and give her the best life he could give.

Upstairs, the house shook with heavy footsteps. She jumped and stomped her feet and screamed into the gag.

“OK,” he said. “I’m goin’ up first. When I get up there, I’ll reach down ’n’ grab you ’n’ pull you up.”

She shook her head from side to side.

“Listen, darlin’, we gotta get outta here
pronto
! I didn’t come all this way just to get caught.” He turned a log over and climbed on it and heaved himself up through the hole, careful not to lose the Eagle.

Butch Pogue woke up in the chair when the rain started blowing in and wetting his arm. He sat up and focused his eyes and yawned and stretched. Went to close the window shut and saw flames coming from the basement.

The Reverend jumped up and screamed for the boy. “Junior! House is on fire, you idiot. Get up, you stupid child.”

Mama started down the hall. Half dressed, gown open. One of her mammoth tits hanging out. “What is it?” she said.

“That idiot boy o’ yours caught the basement on fire. Get down there, boy.”

He collided with Junior in the kitchen and followed him down the steps. Junior opened the basement door and stepped inside, and the Reverend shoved him out of the way.

In the glow of the basement, thick with smoke and flame, the Reverend saw his wife’s slender legs dangling from the coal chute and then they were gone.

Rain fell hard in dominant sweeping gusts and saturated a knot of branches sheathed in rough patches of bark. Jerry Dean sat against the foot of a dying elm.

Clouds began to split on distant peaks as cold blustery wind pushed down. Drove the rain into his face. It was cold. They waited for the sun to warm them.

Rolling bolts of fire tore loose from the soaring mountaintops and twisted and chewed at the marrow of the cotton ball cloud until the cloud broke in two and drifted apart. Lightning blistered the dull gray sky as he drew shallow breath and the lean air choked his throat with unyielding constriction.

He tried to catch his breath. She was beside him. Knees pulled to her chest. Hair plastered tight against her neck.

Jerry Dean told her he loved her without words. Held her tight while she traced the scar on his collarbone with a finger. His scars were a road map of bad choices that he wore like a badge of honor and polished with pride and shame.

“If we stay here, they’ll kill us,” he yelled over the downpour.

She nodded like she knew but was tired of running.

Thunder made a low vibrating rumble and they felt the ground quiver and the sky explode and the tree above them shook its branches and soaked them with a potent burst of spray.

He stood, kept his back against the tree and turned to face her. “We gotta go
now
.”

She shook her head from side to side like she wasn’t strong enough.

He grabbed her by the arm, jerked her to her feet. “Well, I cain’t leave you.”

She tried to sit down, but he would not let her. He wrenched her into the open, and they ran toward a broad point of cedars and did their best not to lose footing to slick mud.

The Reverend held the deer rifle across his lap and wiped spit from his chin as Junior bounced through an ancient pothole with cavernous depth.

The tires on the rusted-out truck bounced against the fender wells and the front end heaved. “You done lost her, boy.”

Junior turned his head slowly, almost mechanically. Looked at his pa. “Ain’t my fault, at all. Wasn’t me let the chute open.”

“
Goddammit, boy.
Done told you a hun’ert times close that door or she’s gonna get out. Now look what we got.”

He spit a brown stream of tobacco juice into a plastic cup that overflowed with cigarette butts. The truck came to a crawl as they met the swollen creek—ripe with thoughts of flash flood.

Junior let the front tires drop into the rushing water of the ford, and it felt like the old truck could go.

“Hey, now.” The Reverend snarled. “Don’t try ’n’ cross this mess. She couldn’t’ve made it if we cain’t.”

Junior found reverse, but the rear tires dug into the thick muck that washed across the road, muddying the rushing deluge that overflowed the creek.

The antique Goodyears spun freely with inadequate traction and the ass end of the truck sank lower—the front axle submerged—as water pounded and milled Junior’s door with a forceful cadence.

“We gettin’ stuck, boy.”

Junior let the truck roll forward, and the engine died. His daddy yelled and dropped his ashtray.

“Sorry, Pa.”

They felt the floorboards push up into their boot heels as the water rushed beneath. The front end of the truck shifted hard, but the brake held.

“Get us outta here, boy.”

Junior’s nervous hand found the key and the engine cranked slow but returned to life—just long enough to offer one final round of sputters before it drowned.

The thin metal floorboards were eaten with cancerous rust and surrendered with little fight. Water broke through and filled the cab.

The Reverend opened his door to escape and more water poured out than came in. He yelled for Junior, but the water pushed against his door with more force than he could match.