Scowler (3 page)

“I know,” Ry said.

“I’m worried it’s infected somehow. She’s all snotty.”

“You don’t want me to stay up!” Sarah accused. “You want me to miss the Jaekel Belt!”

But Ry heard it too, the nasal buzz that presaged a sore throat and cough. It seemed that for every two weeks Sarah spent bursting with energy she spent another throwing up into a bowl.

“She’s going to have perfect teeth,” Jo Beth said. This slide into dreamy prognostication announced a temporary cease-fire. She pressed Sarah’s head into her side and began waddling back around the corner of the house. Ry felt snubbed. He swung himself back toward the window and regarded his misshapen reflection in the aged glass.

Swiftly he withdrew several nails from his pocket and transferred them to his lips. He made sure the sash was lodged solid against the frame and centered the first nail over the weatherboard. He raised the hammer, aimed, and with one mean blow sunk the nail. No matter how many times the bedroom window jammed, his mother insisted on trying to open it. Well, no more. He drove another nail and sad flakes of paint scattered. She would have to be more creative in her assignments of busywork. A third nail, a fourth, each like the sealing of a coffin.

The detestable job done, he lifted the inside of his elbow to wipe at eyes so sweaty they felt full of tears. That was as far as he got. There between the brooder house and calf shed was Sniggety, winding his way around abandoned machine parts and the tractor wheel that had once housed a miniature
rose garden. The dog moved with his trademark limp, but with hackles raised. It was the birds. Ry had forgotten them again, but there they were, still screaming.

It was only because he was facing the doghouse that his gaze swept the front yard. He paused, blinked, and looked again. The long shadows thrown by the trees made it difficult to see, and the driveway itself was a quarter of a mile long. After a time, though, Ry became convinced. Standing on the road, next to their mailbox, was a man.

A
t first Ry was sure that it was Phinny Rochester. The man ran a shop out of his garage about twelve miles west. Phinny got a good price for his salvage and a fair commission from his special orders—at least, that was Ry’s impression. He had visited Phinny’s plenty of times with Marvin. The men loathed each other, and when Marvin loathed a man he visited him as often as possible, displaying his shaved scalp, flashing the gap in his teeth, talking uninterrupted for staggering amounts of time—thirty, sixty, ninety minutes. Phinny, to his credit, never backed down, and would nod as many times as was necessary. Most of these encounters would be scored a draw.

The first time Ry visited the shop after Marvin’s incarceration, Phinny Rochester looked as if he had exhaled a long-held breath. He beckoned Ry with oil-stained fingers, grinning behind kaleidoscopic whiskers. He cut Ry no better deals than he had cut Marvin, which made Ry trust him; in fact, he had quickly become Ry’s only real confidant. Ry had plenty of secrets—the severity of the farm’s debt, his
regretful sexual encounter with Esther Crowley, the untold lengths of his father’s depravity, the Unnamed Three—and if he were ever to tell anyone about them, he figured it would be Phinny.

Ry had put in the order for two packs of spark plugs six days ago. Over the past two years Ry had grown increasingly embarrassed of the family car, a school-bus-yellow 1973 Volkswagen Beetle. Jo Beth was defensive of it; once the fate of the farm had calcified, she had wasted no time selling off the F-150 that exhaled Marvin’s odor each time you sat down in it. Ry’s long legs barely fit in the Beetle. He had to admit, though, that the vehicle would be right at home battling for parking spots in town.

Ry jumped off the ladder, still four rungs from the bottom. He took a few steps toward the driveway, felt strangely vulnerable, and slapped his thigh to engage Sniggety. The dog scratched his muzzle but otherwise made no move. At least there was the weight of the hammer at his side. Ry wiped his palms on his shirt and began the walk around the eastern side of the house. The man waiting at the road did not move. Ry risked a wave. Still nothing. You did not live this far out in the country and not wave at others. Even Marvin Burke had done it.

Twenty feet away features began to distinguish themselves. Ry slowed. The man was old, maybe in his seventies, and had gray hair crisscrossing his skull, thistles and bits of leaves caught within the wisps. His thin legs wore what looked like pajama pants, the shins fuzzy with burrs and striped with dried mud. His shoes were flimsy and had been all but cut to ribbons. The only pristine item on him was a black overcoat far too big for his skinny frame, zipped to the neck
despite the heat. The man stood with his hands behind his back.

Ry stopped ten feet away. He put on a smile. The man met his eyes only for a moment. His chest beat up and down and he breathed through an open mouth only half-stocked with teeth.

“Howdy,” Ry said.

The man nodded. He paused and nodded again.

“Nice time for a walk.” Ry weighed this pleasantry and judged it sufficient. “What can I help you with?”

The man parted his lips. They were trembling. Ry leaned away. There were red scratches on the man’s neck and face.

Ry heard his sister’s cry far behind. “Mom! Ry’s talking to a man!”

Ry’s chest tingled. They had been spotted. Sarah would be on her way. He heard a screen door slam.

“Everything all right, sir?” Ry asked.

“Obliged,” the man said. “Your family.”

Ry heard feet crunching through the gravel behind him. He took a half step forward to urge the conversation along. “Say again? Something about my family?”

The man raised his face. His stubble was pure white and sprinkled his haggard cheeks like snow.

“I been watching you,” he said.

Sarah arrived panting at Ry’s side and on instinct he threw an arm around her. She slingshotted forward, then back.

“Sarah, go inside—”

“Hello,” she said. The man’s watery eyes lowered to Sarah’s level and his mouth hung agape. He leaned toward her, too close, within grabbing range, biting distance. His hands, though, remained clasped behind his back.

“I’m Sarah.” She sounded stuffy.

Back at the house the screen door slammed again. Jo Beth was coming.

“Mister,” Ry said. “Maybe you better keep on.”

“Are you here to see the meteors?” Sarah asked. “They’re easier to see in the country.”

“I …”

“Where were you hiding?” Sarah searched the road, the nearby trees, the ditch.

“In plain sight,” the man said.

“Mister,” Ry repeated.

“You’re missing teeth,” Sarah continued. “I lost a tooth today. A front one. Well, sort of near the front. It got lost in the field but I got money anyway.”

The man cocked his head as if mystified by this creature. He turned his attention back to Ry. “I saw you had a pretty little miss, a young sir like yourself, a lady, and a dog. It reminded me of kindness. I mean that it reminded me of my home. The home of myself. Where I’m from.” He winced and looked at the ground.

There was the sudden disruption of gravel. The man’s eyes shifted upward.

Jo Beth had arrived. She inserted a shoulder in front of Ry and wiped her hands on the apron she still wore. There were pockets in the apron; Ry wondered if they were big enough to conceal a knife.

“How do you do? I’m Jo.”

“Obliged,” the man said. “I am Jeremiah. I’m troubling you for water and food. I know I’m troubling you. But I’ve come some way and desire water and food. This is my request.”

Jo Beth took in the entirety of Jeremiah’s appearance with a slowness that did not disguise itself. The man tipped his knees together like a child who needed to urinate. Ry, meanwhile, felt the shame of youth. He had danced around this man to no avail, while it had taken his mother six words to establish control.

“I can give you water,” Jo Beth said at last. “Sarah, why don’t you go fill that red thermos on top of the fridge.”

Sarah coughed but did not move.

“And a bit of food?” Jeremiah’s eyes twinkled hopefully. “If it’s not too much trouble? To sit down to some food would be … It would be something I could not ever repay.”

“Where are you from?” Jo Beth asked.

Jeremiah looked pained and turned his head to gaze down the dusty road. “I come from Wisconsin way.”

“That’s very far.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You came directly from there?”

“No.” His eyes became dejected. “No, ma’am.”

“Where did you come from, then? Today.”

Jeremiah’s shoulders were shaking. “If I’ve bothered you, ma’am, I am sorry. I will be on my way—”

“You haven’t bothered me.” There was a command to his mother’s voice that Ry hadn’t heard in a long time, as well as an undertone of sympathy. “But you’re on my property. I have a little girl.”

“Eleven,” Sarah said. “That is my age.”

“So.” Jo Beth stopped kneading the apron and let it drop. “Where did you come from today?”

“The woods,” Jeremiah said.

“Black Glade?” Her voice betrayed her surprise.

The man looked confused.

“That’s the forest over yonder,” Jo Beth said. “At the end of the property there. Goes for miles and miles. Was that the woods you were in?”

“No, ma’am.”

She considered this. “Where else were you?”

“Fields.”

“Fields,” she repeated. “And where did you sleep?”

“I did not.” Jeremiah was shaking his head in a miserable figure-eight pattern. “You are kind, ma’am, very kind.”

Jo Beth laughed lightly. “Because I’m asking you questions?”

“Yes.” Jeremiah’s voice was phlegmy. “No one’s asked me anything for the longest time.”

“Well.” Jo Beth nodded as if this was what she had been waiting to hear. “How are you with cars?”

“Mom,” Ry said. “It’s not me; it’s the part.”

“Right,” she said. “I keep forgetting.”

“I’m no help with engines,” Jeremiah said. “I never was a farmer.”

“You’re in the wrong part of the country then,” Jo Beth said.

Jeremiah nodded at the ground. “I expect I am.”

“Bluefeather?” Jo Beth ducked her face to try to find the truth in his eyes. “That’s where you lived before now, isn’t it?”

Jeremiah nodded. His shoulders shook so violently that Ry wondered if the old bones might jar loose from their whittled sockets.
Bluefeather
—the word was familiar, though Ry couldn’t remember why.

“And they didn’t give you a set of civilian clothes when they released you? That doesn’t seem very kind.”

The man looked bewildered. He angled his head but held his tongue.

“My husband’s in Pennington,” Jo Beth said. “There’s a man who doesn’t deserve to be released. But that is simply not the case with everyone. That’s probably hard for you to believe after so many years, but you have to try.” She gave him a small smile. “Why didn’t you wait until we were asleep and just take what you wanted?”

“I thought it,” Jeremiah said. “Lord forgive me, I thought it.” He raised his woeful face to blink at each of them in turn. “You look like such fine folk. I couldn’t do it. I swear to you I couldn’t do it. I’ll sit—” With his spittle-covered chin he indicated the drainage ditch. “I’ll sit beneath the telephone pole. Anyone drives by, I’ll hide. You can bring out whatever you want and I’ll be grateful.”

A breeze sent the hair on his head flying. The hand Jeremiah brought out to pat it down was not a hand at all. It was a pincer. Sarah gasped and Ry dug his nails into her shoulders. A few seconds later Ry realized it was not a deformity; rather, the man’s index, middle, and ring fingers were gone, and in their absence the surviving pinkie and thumb seemed abnormally long. Loosed from its clasp, Jeremiah’s other hand now hung free at his side and it was just as troubled, though in different formation: Only the index and thumb remained, giving the hand the look of fleshy tweezers.

Silence fell across the group and it took the man a moment to realize the cause. He looked down at his insectile appendages and turned them over in the fading light. “Cell doors, that’s what done it,” he said. “Would I have clung so hard if I were guilty?”

Bluefeather—Ry finally remembered. It was the prison in
nearby Lomax County. When Marvin Burke had been sent far across the state to a facility known as Pennington nine years ago, Ry had become aware, for a brief period, of the state’s penal system. Bluefeather, if Ry’s memory was accurate, was high security. This man’s striped pajama bottoms and slippers were state-issued prison garb; that nice new overcoat was stolen; and those missing fingers had been sacrificed by a man desperate not to hear the cold finality of a door locking into place. It was the worst thing Ry could imagine—a wandering ex-convict happening upon their defenseless farm—yet he saw the tension escape from his mother’s bearings.

“I was just about to get started on supper,” she said. Ry knew it was the man’s hands that had clinched it. Jeremiah was old and weak and those were points in his favor. But hands like that could not wield a weapon. This man was at their mercy, not the other way around.

“There’s chicken,” Jo Beth said. “Dumplings, green beans, milk. Come along and we’ll fix you a plate. Then you can be on your way.”

I
t was a strange hour filled with the rattle and thuds of Jo Beth’s food preparation, the wheeze of the old fan on top of the fridge, and the incessant stream of chatter and coughing coming from Sarah. While Jeremiah sat hunched at the table with his hands in his lap, the girl crawled like a monkey over the rest of the furniture. Jeremiah tried to answer her first couple questions—
What is your middle and last name?
and
Do you like our dog
?—but before he could arrange the correct
order of syllables, Sarah hurried on to topics of even greater import. Within minutes a pattern was set that both of them could live with: She would ask questions and he would sit there too shell-shocked to respond.

There must have been at least a few boys of Ry’s age in Bluefeather, because Jeremiah found him the easiest to behold. Dozens of odd moments passed between them; it was as if the man could sense the convict blood that beat just beneath Ry’s skin. While Sarah badgered their guest with more rhetoricals—
If you could be shorter, how much shorter would you be?
—Ry wondered what this man had looked like before prison had stolen his fingers, bent his back, sucked the color from his flesh and the life from his eyes.