Bloodroot (36 page)

When we got to the store, John was leaning on the counter talking to a man whose bottom lip was fat with snuff. “What say, Grady?” Hollis said to the man, who touched the brim of his hat in greeting. Then Hollis looked at John. “Hey, brother,” he said. John glanced up and whatever he had meant to reply died on his tongue when he saw the shape I was in. “Let’s step in the back for a minute,” Hollis said. John hesitated and then called for Lonnie, who appeared from among the aisles to take John’s place behind the counter. I walked between them through the store to the back where there was a stagnant bathroom and one high window lighting shafts of dust like swarming bugs, cobwebs waving in dirty trails from the ceiling tiles. Hollis steered me around the empty boxes on the floor and backed me against a paint-splattered table under the window, knocking off another box spilling styrofoam peanuts. I looked at John but he made no move to stop him. “Why don’t you take a guess where I found your wife this morning?” Hollis said.

John stared at me. “Where have you been, Myra?”

“I found her down yonder at the pool hall. I hope nobody else seen her.”

John folded his arms. “I told you not to go down there,” he said with false patience. I recognized the calm look on his face. “I told you it would embarrass me.”

“I know,” I rasped, stomach still aching from Hollis’s blow.

“Is that all you’re going to say about it?”

“I can’t live the way I have been, John.”

He cocked his head, feigning interest. “How’s that?”

“Cooped up in the house.”

“You married me, Myra, not somebody else,” he said in his condescending way. “You know I expect a woman to keep her ass at home. I done told you that. And I ain’t the only one that believes that way. There’s a lot of men around here that would laugh at me if they seen my wife at the pool hall. Is that what you want?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be hanging around. I was just in and out.” Even as I spoke the words, I knew I was wasting what little breath I had.

“Now, Myra. You’re not understanding what I’m trying to say.” John and Hollis exchanged a glance that made me cold all over. Then John began undoing his belt. I watched his long fingers working, light glinting off the buckle.

“Hold her still, there,” he said to Hollis. I couldn’t bear the thought of Hollis’s hands on me again. I lurched forward, a guttural sound wrenching out of my throat. John intercepted me before I reached the door. He turned me around and clapped his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite but his fingers were too tight. “Dammit, Myra,” he said against my ear, “there’s customers out yonder.” I screamed around his hand. They carried me together back to the table. “You better shut her up or somebody’s going to call the law,” Hollis panted. As soon as John’s hand was gone I screamed again but it came out more like a croak. “Hold her still,” John ordered. I heard his belt slithering free of its loops over their grunting and puffing. Hollis yanked my arms up so far behind my back I thought they would tear loose. My hoarse cries changed from anger to pain, bright flares shooting up behind my eyes. John forced me over the table and Hollis shoved my dress up over my hips. I began to cry hard, snot dangling from my nose. Knowing that Hollis was watching hurt more than the belt licks. When it was over, I fell silent and still, trying to stifle my sobs. Then Lonnie opened the door and poked his head in. “What in the world’s going on back here?” he said. “I thought Grady was fixing to call the sheriff.”

I summoned the last of my strength and tried to run again but John caught me easily. He held me against his chest and laughed. In that moment, I had no love for him left. “Good Lord, Myra,” he said.

“You’re wild as a buck. I hate I had to do you that way, but I can’t let you run around on me. You ought to have more respect for me than that.”

From that day forward, my marriage to John was like a fever dream from a time before I could talk. He didn’t allow me to leave the house for anything, not even to cook and clean for his father. Sometimes I see the twins building something out of sticks and mud and remember walls I was trapped between. I look down at my fingers once slammed in doors and can’t go back inside a house. I have to sit on rocks and climb into trees and stretch out under the arms of flowering bushes. I have to forget Thanksgiving Day of that other life, when I stood at the window wearing the same dress and shoes I got married in, trying to see Bloodroot Mountain through the fog. The sky was steel-colored, the ground frozen hard. John was sitting on the couch. “You’ll have to cook something,” he said. “We can’t go without a dish.” He had already been drinking for hours. Lately he didn’t go anywhere, even to work, without being drunk on whiskey. He thought I would eat Thanksgiving dinner in that awful house with his mean people, but I had other plans.

“Make some of that banana pudding,” he said.

“It’s already made,” I lied. “I wanted to take a sweet potato casserole like your daddy asked for, but this morning I saw we don’t have any pecans.”

John rolled his eyes. “You should have put it on the grocery list and I would have got it for you. I swear, Myra, sometimes I think your mind ain’t right.”

“I could still make it,” I said. “It just takes about fifteen minutes for the top to get bubbly. Why don’t you let me run to the store?”

He paused, maybe suspicious. “Daddy don’t need no sweet potato casserole.”

“I don’t know, John,” I said, not taking my eyes away from the distant outline of the mountain. “Don’t you think we ought to stay on his good side? You know Hollis is the pet. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Frankie didn’t leave him everything.”

John thought it over. “Daddy ain’t got the smarts to make a will.”

“Well,” I said, turning to look at him. “You’re probably right.”

John was quiet for a minute. Then he sighed. “Aw, hell. I reckon I
can run and get some for you. What is it, pecans? But you better have it ready to stick in the oven as soon as I get back. I don’t want them waiting on us to eat. I’d never live it down.”

“It’s already put together in the refrigerator,” I lied again without a pang of remorse. “All I have to do is sprinkle the nuts on top. Be sure to get the chopped ones.”

As soon as John walked out, I grabbed my purse and put on my coat. Since he was taking the car, I would have to go back to the neighbor’s and call Mr. Barnett to pick me up. I hated to do it on Thanksgiving, but a cab to Bloodroot Mountain would cost more than I had. Besides that, I missed Granny too much to be polite. I went to the door, meaning to peek out and see if John had gone. When I opened it, he was standing on the stoop about to reach for the knob. “Myra—” he was saying. He froze, face falling. “I left my keys.” He looked at the purse on my arm. “Where you headed?” I hesitated. The thought of a whipping didn’t scare me much anymore. “Home,” I said. He stared at me for a few seconds. Then his features transformed into something so ugly I’ll never forget.

He grabbed me by the hair and yanked me out the door, pulling me into a headlock. “Don’t tell me where you’re going,” he said against my ear, whiskey breath blasting into my face. “Daddy’s expecting you to eat over yonder and that’s what you’re going to do.” My purse fell and one shoe came off as he dragged me backward across the ground. If he hadn’t been drunk there would have been no chance, but he stumbled over a rock on the way to the car. I twisted out of his loosened grip and took off running. I couldn’t head for the road because he was blocking the way. I swerved around the house, thinking dimly of cutting through the backyard and making it to the neighbor’s. But I wasn’t fast enough limping on one shoe. John caught me at the woodpile, snagging the end of my hair and pulling me as if by a rope back under his arm. This time, I knew, he wouldn’t make a mistake. He forced me to my knees in front of the door in the house’s foundation. I shut my eyes, expecting him to undo his belt, but he held me still instead. I could feel him looking around, chest rising and falling behind me, seeming to think over what to do next. “All right then,” he said at last. “You don’t want to go with me, you don’t have to.” I glanced over at the door and it dawned on me slowly what he meant
to do. I began to beg but it was like trying to reason with a demon. He dragged me closer and unlocked the hasp with one hand. He opened the door and shoved my head down with almost superhuman strength. I resisted but it didn’t take long for my body to fold in half. He skidded backward on the seat of his pants and shoved me under the house with his boots. I banged my head hard on the pipes, my hand grating on a shard of Mason jar.

He slammed the door shut behind me with a bang. I flipped over on my back, breathing in ragged shrieks, and beat at the boards of the door with my shoe. He must have been leaning with all his weight against it. Within seconds I heard him locking the hasp and wedging something through its ring, maybe a scrap of wood from the pile. Then there was silence. I called John’s name, voice shrill with panic, but he didn’t answer. I listened for any hint of his presence outside the door. I pounded at the boards again with my feet and screamed until my throat felt bloody. Then I heard the car start up and roar out of the lot. I went rigid, staring up in disbelief. That’s when I saw by the light falling through twin holes in one of the foundation’s cinder blocks how close the house was to my face. A yellowed blouse tied to a pipe hung inches from my nose. There was a stench of decaying earth and mildew and moth balls. I turned my head and saw the skin and bones of the blacksnake I had killed. I struggled to calm myself but it was hard to think.

The house was too low for me to sit up. When I tried to raise on all fours my back bumped against the pipes. I inched through the gloom on my belly and hammered at the door with my fist. Then I searched the dirt and found a chunk of block that crumbled to pieces as I pounded with it. Straining to see, I made out the shape of a rake handle near a stack of dishes. I dragged it back to the door and battered until my hands were raw and full of splinters but it wouldn’t budge. I dropped the handle and crawled over to press my face against one of the cinder block’s holes. I looked out and saw only frozen ground. I fell on my side and huddled in a shivering heap under my coat, unable to stop the tears from pouring out. I wept for a long time, until my eyes hurt and my voice was gone.

Afterward, minutes or hours passed in tomblike silence. My teeth chattered and my bare foot ached from the cold. I dozed and
memories came to me of other winters. Once I followed bird tracks to a tree on its side, roots in the air. As I climbed among the branches it began to snow, white drifts piling. For a long time I hid looking up through the branches, watching the flakes sway down. Then I dreamed of another day on the way home from church, sitting between Granny and Granddaddy in the truck. Granddaddy slowed to a stop on the curving road and said, “Looky here, Myra Jean.” I peered over the dashboard and saw a red fox crossing, its coat shouting against the whiteness, bushy tail disappearing up the bank and into the roadside woods. Soon it became less like a memory and more like something that was happening. I smelled the exhaust of the puttering truck and felt the seat bouncing under me, snow scurrying over the hood like something alive.

The slam of John’s car door snapped me awake. I couldn’t tell how long I had been sleeping. I pressed my face to one of the holes again and called to him, begging him to let me out. After a moment I stopped, thinking I heard the approach of his footsteps. I scuttled on stiff elbows and knees for the door, hoping for his fingers to unlock the hasp. Instead I heard the front door slam shut like a gunshot behind him. I could almost follow his progress through the house by the creak of his boots on the floorboards. I scrabbled in the dirt for the rake handle and beat on the moldy wood overhead. Then I heard the muffled groan of mattress springs directly above me, where the bedroom was. My heart sank. I knew he had passed out. He might as well not even be there. But I pounded with the rake handle anyway, until I couldn’t feel my arms and shoulders. Finally I collapsed on my side and pulled my knees up under my dress tail against the cold. After a while, I began to drift off again. I wanted to be with Granny so much it was like searching for her inside myself and floating outward at the same time, over bare trees and brown water splitting the fields in two, fencerows like twigs strung together with thread. For a long time I circled Bloodroot Mountain, watching Granny pluck a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner as the Barnetts came up the hill bringing pumpkin pies for her.

I don’t remember anything else about being under the house. I think I was there for one day but it might have been more. When John opened the door in the morning I didn’t move. I only blinked at
him. He knelt there sleepy-headed and rumpled, still half drunk. “Hell, Myra,” he said. “I didn’t mean to leave you out here so long.” When I still didn’t come he pulled me out by the ankles, dress rucking up and glass slicing my back. I barely felt it for the numbness. He hauled my body full length into the wintry sun and bent over me as I stared up blankly, like some creature born to live underground.

Back inside, I couldn’t get warm. John put his wooly socks on my feet and piled blankets on top of me. He sat on the edge of the bed waiting for me to speak. “What can I do to make you mind?” he asked at last. “I don’t understand it. I thought you wanted to be with me. Now you’re all the time trying to run home to your Granny. I ain’t letting you do me this way, Myra. I never took shit off of any woman and I don’t mean to start now.” He took a breath and blew it out. “Am I going to have to go up yonder and burn that place to the ground? If that’s what it takes to keep you from running off every time I turn around, by God I’ll do it.” I looked at his face in the light through the curtains, still sinister and beautiful. I didn’t know if I believed him. But I thought if he ever followed me there, he might hurt me and Granny both. I felt more trapped then in my bed with John than I had been under the house alone. At least there I had been away from him.

For days I shivered coughing under the blankets, burning up with fever. Once I woke from a nightmare and saw Hollis and John like goblins at the foot of my bed. John pulled the covers back from my feet and said, “Reckon I should take her to the hospital?”