Shine (25 page)

I thought about Wally’s cooking, and then I thought about peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches, and my brain put them together in that way brains sometimes do: pairing ideas that shouldn’t be paired, yet nonetheless were.

Don’t you take no peanut butter and mayonnaise sammiches, even if someone gives ’em to you free
.

We get all sorts of crazy orders. Peanut butter and mayonnaise, turkey with fried pickles, tongue with spicy mustard
.

Shut up, Dupree. She doesn’t care
.

Ridings’s brow cleared. “Oh. You want to know did I
see
something. Something suspicious.”

“Yeah, did you?”

“Naw. I packed up my stand, then went home and watched the stars some. Saw Beef pass by in his girlfriend’s truck a few times, driving folks around. I guess I watched the stars some more and called it a night.” He made a sound that for him might have been a laugh. “’Course the sun was coming up all red and
teary by then. You ever notice how swollen the sun is so early in the morning? Like it got no sleep, either?”

Beef driving everyone home. That was all he’d seen.

Ridings yawned, his eyes closing. He opened them again and looked at me, his eyes glazed. “Hey. You ever meet my little girl? You want to see her picture?”

It was time for me to go, because just as sure as God made plump, juicy peaches, Ridings had left already. And just as sure as God made peaches, I knew he wasn’t coming back.

I SCREAMED WHEN I SAW IT: A SEVERED TONGUE on my pillow. It was jagged at the end, like it had been sawed off with a knife. There were bumps on the surface, like on a human tongue, but it was too big to be human. It was a cow’s tongue, flaccid and damp and
on my pillow
.

I screamed, and Aunt Tildy came running, Christian right behind her.

“What? What is it?” Christian demanded.

I tried to speak, and he grabbed my shoulders, because maybe I wasn’t making words come out so well, or maybe I’d gone pale. I was shaking so hard that he had to hold me up.

“Good Lord in heaven,” Aunt Tildy said when she saw. She peered closer, then drew back as if she’d been stung. “Why do
you have a cow tongue on your pillow? Is that a
note
under there? Cat, what have you done?”

What have I done
? I thought.
What have
I
done!
?

Christian eased me to the floor, my back against the end of my bed for support. He looked into my eyes and said, “You’re okay. You hear?” He stood and strode to my bed. “Aunt Tildy, move.”

I heard rather than saw what happened next. Footsteps as he strode to the front of my bed. The rustle of the paper as he grabbed the note. Then a whole stream of cussing before he came back into view. His face was stormy as he crumpled the piece of paper. “Who did this, Cat?”

“What does it say?” I said. I tried to rise, but I was lightheaded, and my balance was no good.

Christian was at my side in a flash. He squatted and pushed down my shoulders. “Sit down. Good Lord.”

“Give it to me,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Aunt Tildy said, her voice high. “Whatever it is, it’s no good, and just . . . give it to
me
. I’ll burn it.”

“Give me the note, goddammit,” I said to Christian.

Aunt Tildy gasped. “Cat!
Language
!”

I dug at Christian’s closed fist, and at last he relented, because that was the code of siblings, even when the relationship was fractured. We might keep secrets from our daddy or our aunt, but not from each other.

Stop flapping your tongue, or I’ll cut yours out, too
, the note said. The block letters were as dark as congealed blood.

Christian grabbed it back and shook it. “Was it Tommy? When he was here, he said he wanted to talk to you, but then he claimed it was nothing important. Was he the one who fucking wrote this?”

I blinked.

Christian was furious. “I didn’t see him go into your room, but I guess the piece of shit could have slipped in when I wasn’t watching. So did he, or did some other piece of shit climb through your window and leave this trash on your pillow?”

I flinched and cried, “How am I supposed to know?”

Aunt Tildy shifted into efficiency mode. She disappeared into the hall, came back with one of the rags she uses for cleaning, and scooped the tongue up. Then she fast-walked to the front door and stepped out into the yard. I guess she flung that piece of meat as far as she could, because I heard it land, a faint
plump
in the woods.

“Thanks,” I said weakly when she came back to my room.

“It has to do with Patrick, doesn’t it?” Christian said. “I told you to leave it alone. But did you?
No
.”

“It’s late,” Aunt Tildy said. “You children ought to be in bed.”

“Should we call the police?” I said. “Get Deputy Doyle out here?”

“Why on earth would we do that?” Aunt Tildy said.

“To tell him what happened. About the note. About . . .” I swallowed, unnaturally aware of my own mouth’s inner workings. A wet thick muscle, that’s what it was. “About the tongue.”

“What tongue?” Aunt Tildy said. “It’s gone, et up by a fox.”

“But, Aunt Tildy, we all saw it.”

“Et up by a fox,” Aunt Tildy repeated stubbornly.

“There ain’t no point in calling anyone,” Christian said angrily. “Deputy Doyle’s either passed out at the hospital doing guard duty, or else he’s at the snack machine, stuffing his gut with those damn cheese crackers he loves. He ain’t gonna drive out here, not for a high school prank.”

“You think it was a
prank
?” I said.

“Hell no,” Christian said. “But that’s how he’d see it, or that’s how he’ll
say
he saw it. Deputy Doyle ain’t gonna do nothing.” He slowed the pace of his words. “So if you know who did it, if you even
think
you know, then fucking tell me so I can take care of it.”

My eyes went to Aunt Tildy. She wouldn’t meet my gaze, but instead fixed her stare on floating, invisible dust motes.

Christian, on the other hand, did look at me. His eyes burned so fiercely into mine that I felt a physical jolt, and the sheer force of it seared me and threw backward into the past. Time shifted invisibly and deeply, dropping me three years back to when Tommy got me alone on our living room sofa. The dead tongue spoke to me from the woods, insisting in the horror of the moment that ugly things couldn’t be thrown away so easily. They had to be dragged into the light, or they’d keep growing.

The ugly thing—
the bad thing
—happened when I was thirteen. It was a week before my eighth grade graduation,
and Christian was outside burning the old smokehouse that had been next to our house since before I was born. Nobody’d smoked meat in it since my granddaddy was young, and we no longer had hogs to slaughter even if we’d wanted to. We once used the smokehouse as a shed, but that was when Daddy still kept the place up and needed somewhere to store the lawn mower and other tools.

By my thirteenth summer, the smokehouse was beyond repair, listing to the side like a carnival fun house. A feather drifting lazily from the sky could land on it wrong and make the whole thing collapse. So Christian decided to burn it to make room for a new shed. His Yamaha was old, and it would last a little longer if he could keep it out of the elements. Plus, a covered shed would give him a place to coax it to life on rainy days.

Beef was out there with him, both of them sitting in lawn chairs and sipping moonshine from mason jars. Aunt Tildy thought they were too young to be drinking, but Daddy let them, so Aunt Tildy couldn’t do a thing about it.

I was out there, too, sipping lemonade. I tried to make a case that I deserved a glass of shine, too, since I’d be turning fourteen in two months. I wasn’t a kid.

“The hell you ain’t,” Christian said. “And quit asking, ‘cause the answer’s no.”

I didn’t care. I just liked being with them. We were shooting the breeze and watching the fire, Beef telling me jokes that
made lemonade come out my nose, when Tommy roared into our drive on his blue BMW R1200C, the make and model of which I knew because he bragged about it so much. Not a ding on it, and no doubt worth more than our house.

He did a power slide into the dirt yard and stopped a few yards from our chairs, his rear tire pointing our way. Then he clamped the front brake and cranked the throttle, spraying a rooster tail of dirt and grit on the flames. Some got on us, too, with Beef getting the worst of it.

“What the hell?” he cried, grabbing the metal arms of his chair and scrambling out of Tommy’s range.

Tommy laughed and cut the engine. The smell of motor oil hung in the humid air.

As Tommy toed down the kickstand, Christian said, “Hey, bro. You might want to park your Beemer somewhere else.”

He was offering friendly advice. He didn’t want Tommy’s fancy motorcycle that close to the burning shed.

But Tommy didn’t like being told what to do. “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” he said. “How long you think I’m gonna be here?”

It was a put-down, but Christian didn’t take the bait.

“Well, pull up a chair, man,” he said, and Tommy did. He grabbed a lawn chair and slung it down between me and Christian, and I giggled, because I thought Tommy was cute.

Christian poured Tommy a jelly jar full of moonshine, which Tommy accepted, drained, and held out straight away for a
refill. I held my lemonade out and asked for a splash, too. Christian didn’t bother to respond.

The guys talked, and I listened. I felt shy around Tommy, that was why I clammed up.

After a while, Aunt Tildy came outside and said hey to the boys. She turned to me and told me to go put on my graduation dress, which she’d bought months earlier because it was on sale.

“Why?” I said.

“To make sure it still fits.”

“But why now?” I didn’t want to leave.

“’Cause I’m fixin’ to make jam, and once I get the berries boiling, I’ll have to stand watch over them.”

“But—“

“Don’t you backtalk me,” she snapped. “Your ceremony is next weekend. If the dress needs altering, I gotta know.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, wishing she hadn’t shamed me in front of Tommy.

I went inside to change. When I came back out, Beef whistled. I smacked him on the head. I liked the attention, though. Of course, I did.

Then Aunt Tildy said, “Oh, Cat,” like I’d done something bad. She was looking pointedly at my chest, so I looked too. There were buttons down the front of the dress, and the cloth gaped open between them. My breasts had grown, that’s why. I could see the dark of my nipples, and how the fabric strained over them. I supposed this was bad in terms of having to let the dress out, but I didn’t yet know to be ashamed.

“What?” I said.

“You had to go and grow you some bubbies, didn’t you?” she scolded, and all the boys laughed, including Christian.

Then I knew. I blushed, though I don’t think Aunt Tildy meant to embarrass me. I realized
Tommy
was staring at my chest, and it made me feel tingly in a strange and particular way. I crossed my arms over myself, pulling my shoulder blades in to make a C-curve out of my spine.

Aunt Tildy remained clueless. In her mind I was still a little girl, and Christian’s friends were playful, rowdy boys who shot at street signs, tussled like pups, and drank a gallon of milk a day.

She clucked impatiently. “Now, Cat, put down your arms so I can see how much letting out I gotta do,” she said. “Come on over here so I can do a measure.”

I took an uncertain step forward, just as Tommy said, “Or you could come over here. I’d be more than happy to measure those
bubbies
.”

And just as clear as a bell, Aunt Tildy realized what she’d done. She’d asked me to stick my breasts out, and me with no bra on. I was a tomboy. I wore Christian’s hand-me-downs and ran around with Patrick, catching crawdads in the creek, so what’d I need a bra for?

Yet Aunt Tildy had stood me up in front of three hormone-addled boys slouched in lawn chairs by a burning shed. One of them was my brother, but the other two weren’t. There was liquor. There was the reek of gas and oil from Tommy’s
motorcycle. And there was me in my too-small dress, my nipples poking tents in the fabric without my having any say over it.

I’d been to livestock auctions, the calves mewling as farmers pried open their mouths. Right then, I was that dumb calf.

“Cat, go inside,” Aunt Tildy said sharply.

As I scurried toward the house, I heard Tommy say something real low. And then Christian was on him—I heard a chair tip, and scuffling, and angry words from my brother—and then Tommy saying, “Get off me, man! Beef—a little help?”

“No way,” I heard Beef say. “That’s Christian’s sister you’re talking about. You’re outta line.”

“Jesus,” Tommy said. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, all right? Just that she’s hot.”

And then Beef and Christian
both
went after him, and Aunt Tildy was shooing me in the house and closing the door.

“Ain’t nothing good ever come from trash talk,” she said. “You go get changed. Put the dress on my bed—I’ll take care of it before your ceremony. Right now, I got other work to do.” She disappeared into the kitchen, muttering under her breath.