Devin-2 (19 page)

enjoyment at Christmas. Now, the pots were a broken mess and the lights long since forgotten hung like broken fingers from the eaves in a tangled mess.

“What the fuck do you want?” He jerked around when she asked, even though she had thought he was staring right at her. “Where’s Devin? I want you to let him go and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“So you comed, did you? That boy? Dead, or he soon will be. Can’t leave any one around to interrupt us now, could I? You and I, we’re gonna have us some fun. Come here.” He stood up and she stood her ground.

“No. I’m not a child anymore and you don’t frighten me. You’ve made a major mistake thinking that I would cooperate with you.” She started to back up.

She wasn’t sure where she would go, but she would run until she couldn’t anymore, with Devin on her back if need be.

“Now ain’t that a shame. Oh well, we’ll have to do this the hard way then.

Get her!”

Before she could react, she was grabbed from behind. Foul breath and old sweat assaulted her senses. Both her arms were pinned behind her by the arm around her waist, and a gun was pointed at her head. She tried to struggle, but whoever had her was incredibly strong.

“Meet your brother, Samuel. Well, I guess he’s also your nephew, beings how he’s mine and Margo’s brat. Wanted a girl child, but them daughters couldn’t hold one in their belly long enough for it to be borned. Shame, really.

Finally, the strain of it kilt your sister Holly. Margo had this one first after she got her monthlies, then nothing more lived from her body. She musta been cursed or something. Can’t rightly figure out how, though. Might be her mother’s doing; she always did hate me from what I doned to her. Course Samuel ain’t right in the head, but he’s a good grunt and he’s strong as an ox. Put her out, Samuel. I gots me stuff to do.”

Ronnie relaxed her stance and went limp in the man’s arms. It had the effect she had hoped and he loosened his grip enough that she jerked from him, rolled on her back away from him, and freed herself. She pulled her gun and fired just as he raised his to fire at her. He dropped to the ground with a short howl.

The next bullet whizzed over her head and she would swear that she felt the heat of it going by her face. She dropped back down, rolled to her stomach, and fired at her father. He leapt out of the way and dove in the bushes, his gun going the opposite direction having been knocked from his hand by her shot. Ronnie thought that she had hit him; his body had jerked like she had.

She started to rise and realized that she had turned her ankle in a hole and it hurt. Crawling on her belly toward the trees, watching out for her father, she tried to get to safety. She never saw him come up behind her with the branch.

Sudden pain flared in her head and she was out like a light.

~CHAPTER 17~

When Ronnie woke, her arms were tied above her head to a bed. She didn’t know where she was at first. There was no light from anything but the windows and it was dimmer in here than it had been outside. She could make out large pieces of furniture, but not what it was. Then it hit her; she was in her sisters’ old bedroom in the house where she had been born. The bed was damp and there seemed to be odors of something dead close by.

Moving her legs slightly, she could feel the small hand gun Mrs. Parker had worked into the back of her sock. He must have found the gun she used on Samuel because she could no longer feel it in her waistband. That scared her more than anything because he now had her gun. Terror ran though her at the thought of what they would do with her gun.

Devin wasn’t dead. Her mind had to wrap around that thought. The only man who had treated her with...well, love, she thought. No one other than Austin and Ben had ever loved her. And when she and Devin had made love, he not only hadn’t forced her, but made her feel special and cared for. She couldn’t believe he was dead. It would destroy her if he was.

Crying, she looked around again, harder this time, trying to see if she was alone and, if not, would it be someone she could get to help her? If nothing else, Ronnie thought if she could piss her father off enough, he would make a mistake and she could get this over with. Now that her eyes had had time to adjust, she could make out more of the room, a room she had had to keep clean and straight more than any other room in the house.

Her sisters’ room. It had been the envy of everyone who had ever been allowed to cross the threshold. Ronnie hated it and them. All the pins and ruffles had made her think someone had puked that pink belly medicine everywhere, then filled it with fluffy pillows and lace of the same color.

The dolls had to be just perfect, the beds made with all the pretty, soft pillows. Even the books that they never read had to be put in order and always back in the same direction.

Toys, all expensive, had their own place as well. And their toy boxes, each of them had their own, had been filled to overflowing with their treasures.

Their shoes and clothes needed to be put in the closet in a certain way and there had been covers for the tops of the clothes hanging there so there would be no dust on the sleeves. Ronnie never lingered in this room; it would get her beaten, especially if she touched something or looked at it too long.

Ronnie longed for the books to read, of course, something to treasure and to dream with. She had gone to the library a few times, but as no one would sign the permission slip giving her the rights to take out books, she had never taken any home. It was probably just as well. Her father would have destroyed them then punished her for it. But she did love to read.

Her own room was vastly different, which was funny since she had never had one. Ronnie mostly slept in the living room or kitchen in the winter as the room off the porch was too cold and her father didn’t like paying for the doctor bills when she got sick. One year she had caught pneumonia and had nearly died. After that, she was allowed to come inside when it was below zero outside.

And if he wanted to make her suffer, he would make her sleep in the twins’

room so that when he and her sisters had sex, she would have to listen. He did this more and more as they got older. She hated her father for that too.

But Ronnie had liked the room on the porch. It was bright and airy and if she was very still for long periods of time at night, animals would come right out into the open and eat the grass. One time, she remembered a mother deer and her fawn had stayed for nearly twenty minutes before her family had scared them off banging around in the house, shouting for her.

Ronnie heard the scraping noise, and then a flash of light appeared to her left, bringing her back to the present with a hard thrust. The candle being lit was a soft light at first, but as the flame caught, the brilliance grew stronger and she was able to make out more of the room. Yes, she was right. This was her sisters’

room. The books were gone, as were the toys, and the pretty curtains were tattered, but it was their room all right.

“Well, well, the ugly duckling has finally been found. He said he’d find you after that pitcher came out in that fancy paper. Said you were all dressed up in a purty dress that was made just for you. I ain’t never had no purty dress like that for me. How’d you rate one?” Margo Frey stood over Ronnie, staring down at her.

The years had not been kind to Margo. In fact, she looked as if they had been darn right mean to her. Ronnie started to giggle at her own joke, but knew it was fear that made her think that thought. Her sister’s hair was chopped off as if it had been cut by her own hand or someone else’s. Her face looked haggard and used, her cheeks plump and loose. Ronnie had always thought her sisters were plump, but Margo had gotten fat, looking like she might have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Her clothes, once the pride of both girls, were now dirty and ill-fitting, holes in places and filthy too. If Ronnie had had to pick her out of a crowd, she would not have recognized her but for her blue eyes that were their father’s. Everything else about her was masked in fat and poor living.

“He said you looked too much like your daddy for you to be anything but his kid. I never met him, so I just agreed like a good daughter. I’ve always been a good daughter, unlike you.” Margo slapped Ronnie’s sore ankle. “You know you might have been ugly, but there weren’t no reason for you to be mean to my daddy. He provided for you and tooked care of you. No reason to be mean.” Margo huffed at her.

“Margo, let me go, please? I want to go home. I don’t want anything to do with him. You can have him all you want.” Ronnie pulled against the ropes at her wrists and begged her sister.

“Shut up! He wants you now, not me. He’ll have you too, ‘cause you ain’t his blood. He thinks you can give him them babies he wants and they’ll turn out all right. My boy is stupid, ain’t no good for nothing. He can’t even get it up to satisfy me no matter what I do to try and help him. And he’s got no sense. I done tried to show him how so many times, I ‘bout gived up. Daddy thinks you’re gonna give him his due, you hear me?” Margo paced as she ranted.

“Let me go, please? I swear I don’t want him, or anything at all from him,” Ronnie begged.

“I can’t disobey my daddy. He says you stay, then I’m a’thinking you gotta stay. I think maybe I’ma gonna try and get me a baby from that man daddy doned bringed home. He’s a looker. And he’s gots himself a nice cock too.” Ronnie struggled with the ropes at her wrists. When she remembered what Margo had said, Ronnie paused in her need to get free and looked at her.

“What? What did you just say? What do you mean I’m not of his blood? I don’t understand.” Devin was alive and she knew he was close. Thank goodness, now all she had to...not of his blood? She must have had it wrong.

“You didn’t know? Oh, that’s great! He thought you runned away ‘cause you found out. Said you’d found it when you was snooping around and found his pappy’s gun. Well, is seems, sister dear, your daddy was the reason why Momma drank all the time. See, Daddy—my daddy wanted her to breed for him, give him girls ‘cause she was so pretty and all. And you know what Daddy wants, Daddy gets. Anyway, Momma was engaged to his here guy and they was getting married soon. Daddy just stole her away the night before the big old fancy wedding.” Margo sat on the narrow bed as she continued. “He had to kill your daddy, he told me, ‘cause you can’t leave no witnesses. But that weren’t no big deal, ‘cause Daddy got a two-fer. He got him a breeder and he got him you.

Only thing was, you was born so ugly that he didn’t want you none. He told me that he didn’t like have sex with her, our momma. She wasn’t tight no more like me and Holly. But he needed to keep her breeding.

“Momma only wanted her Arnold, though. Ain’t that the mostest stupidest name you ever heard? Arnold Parkway. Now Daddy’s got you again and once he gets a baby born outta you, he said I could kill you. Ain’t that real nice of him?

Only thing is, now that I sees you, I don’t think he’ll be wanting to stop with just one baby. He’ll be wanting to fuck you all the time ‘cause you look like you’d stay tight for a long time. So I done figured to kill you now.” Margo had told her this as if it were nothing at all. And to her, it probably wasn’t. Ronnie’s entire life had been a lie. And her mother? What kind of mother was so selfish that she would completely ignore everything and everyone around her because her heart had been broken? Ronnie decided that when she and Devin had a child, she would devote her life to making sure he or she knew that they were loved and wanted above everything else.

The knife slid out from behind Margo in slow motion. She walked up to the side of the bed and slid the knife along Ronnie’s leg. She didn’t just break the skin at first, but once she made the knife slide up Ronnie’s thigh, then she stabbed it in deep and twisted and gouged at the wound. The cut was deep and painful and Ronnie’s scream rent the cold air. Pain tore at Ronnie, making her dizzy with it.

“Yeah, while Daddy is off getting rid of that fancy car, I’m gonna chop you up into little pieces and then toss you to the hogs out back. I keeps’em hungry just in case I need to get rid of some nosy person. The mail man, the old woman at the store—she said I was too large for to be shopping in the petite section anymore.” Margo twisted the knife again. “I fixed her, didn’t I? Won’t be telling me that I’m too fat, the stupid bitch. You can keep Holly company. Maybe tell each other how clever I am.”

“He’ll hurt you when he returns and finds that you’ve killed me. Margo, let me go and I won’t say a word. I have money...and what I don’t have on me, I can get for you,” Ronnie told her thought her clenched teeth. “You can let me go and I’ll just leave. Please, Margo, let me go, please?” She didn’t know how she was going to get very far, but she had to get to Devin before it was too late.

“You know, Holly begged me too. I liked how that made me feel. Somebody beggin’ me for their lives. I couldn’t have her taking up anymore of Daddy’s seed. I wanted to be the one to give him his little girl, not her, but when she birthed another girl child and this one seemed okay, I had to do it. That baby would have been the end of my fun with Daddy. So I kilted Holly first, then smothered that little girl child. Daddy thinks it died in birth. Holly just went in the pen, but the baby? It got a nice proper grave. Even had to go sell one of my necklaces to give her a pretty box to put her in. But it’s dead, just like you’re gonna be in a few more minutes.”

The knife slid along Ronnie’s belly, just slicing open the skin, not as deep like the one in her thigh, but no less painful. The pain nearly made her lose conciseness, but she managed to hang on; she needed to hang on. She could feel the blood leaving her leg, the wetness of it pooling under her in a warm, sticky mess.

“And now, here you are, all back and pretty to boot. I never liked you, Catalina, never. You were always too good to join Holly and me in our fun in pleasing Daddy. Why? Why didn’t you want Daddy to fuck you? It feels so good. And he always gave us such pretty things afterwards.” The knife left her body and Margo began playing with it in her hand. “Then when we go older, he started to show us how to please each other and we could take pleasure from him too. It was wonderful. Why didn’t you want it?”