When she reached the Igloo, she hesitated and made sure he was watching, then she straddled the handle, slowly lifting it up until it disappeared beneath her skirt. Jimbo wasn’t sure whether to keep watching. She locked eyes and stared squarely at him, like she was lining up invisible crosshairs. It was impossible, at that moment, to tell who had whom in their sights. That her panties dropped to the floor without being touched or tugged didn’t strike Jimbo as anything other than good fortune.
“Maybe I need to cool off,” she said, and tossed her panties into the ice chest.
Her grin beat all he’d ever seen. And he’d seen his share of women. Having to raise his brother took certain sacrifices but it hadn’t turned him into a monk. Rather than wasting a whole evening on the rigamarole of dating, he preferred to buy off a menu, always glad they charged by the hour and not by the pound.
Cassie gave her hips a slow, final swivel, before she rolled the chest over to Jimbo. As she opened the lid, she bent over farther than Jimbo thought humanly possible and spread her legs. At that moment, it was Jimbo who was in danger of fainting. If Cassie’d asked him to reconsider making sausage for DeBardelaiwin Steel right then, he might have said yes.
The Jackal still lay beside the entrails. Not only did he neglect to put it up, he also didn’t wash his hands before he handled the ice. Contamination was the last thing on his mind, fear having vanished from his regular radar. In one seemingly fluid motion, Jimbo crammed the cavity full of ice and was done. It was the fastest he’d ever packed a deer, and probably the only time in the history of West Jefferson County that lingerie and ice had been thusly juxtaposed.
Jimbo hadn’t expected to see Cassie again. The DeBardelaiwins lived over the mountain. They did not associate with the likes of the Sutts. So when she kept coming back, he chalked it up to one of several flukes in a fluke-filled season: the albino doe with horns that Jimbo spotted on the way back from Medical West, where his brother Darrell took his regular treatments; the two-headed fawn found behind the sheriff’s woodpile; and Darrell graduating to the group home.
Cassie came around for about a month and a half and then without a word stopped. Jimbo wondered what he’d done but he hadn’t asked any questions while she was there, so he left it at that. He’d been half expecting not to see her again, every time she’d left, which he told himself was fine, for the best really, because Sutts didn’t do commitment. He’d heard the tales of his grandfather and bore the scars from his own father. He knew most men didn’t like playing house anyway. They just did it because.
The following autumn arrived like a bobcat in heat — hot and bothered, foretelling storms that would level a high school and suck up the steeple from Mud Creek Baptist, spitting it out over at the Black Diamond, right on top of the tipple. Cassie, Jimbo’d heard, had gone off up north, where the DeBardelaiwins were from. To discourage thinking about her, he kept a piece of bamboo in his pocket that he rammed under a fingernail when his thoughts got out of hand.
One evening, Darrell was in the shop listening to something he called music, while Jimbo sharpened his favorite blades. Having Darrell move back in might offer more distraction.
Even over the boom box, the long whine of a car horn out front was loud. It was Cassie. Her windows were down, and her eyes looked wild. A smear of blood on her cheek made visible by her dashboard light.
“I didn’t see it. Suddenly it was just there, right in front of the car. And then it was staring right at me. It didn’t move. Oh God, it was awful. Just awful.” Her voice broke but she didn’t slow down. “What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know what to do. What else could I do? I put it in my trunk.” She lowered her head but raised her eyes. “I couldn’t think.”
The trunk was up.
A doe. Probably a yearling. What a pity. It looked like it’d been healthy, but now it was mostly dead, its legs nothing but a tangled mess. Clearly, the doe was suffering.
Jimbo tried to feel sorry for it, but all he could think about was Cassie. It’d been how many months — six or seven? He’d lost count on purpose and still, his first reflex was to snatch her out of the car and bend her over the hood. He wanted to bury himself inside her so she could never leave again. He wanted to tell her everything he’d imagined doing to her during those long nights he spent waiting, wondering if he’d ever see her again.
But Darrell was there.
Probably best anyway.
“How long ago?” he asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact, trying to hide his real question: Where were you when you hit it?
Cassie belonged in a different world and could never stay in his. He knew it, but he didn’t have to like it.
Jimbo looked from the doe to Darrell and mouthed, Let’s get it inside. He grabbed the front legs, motioned for Darrell to get the back legs, and whispered, “On three.” As they lifted, Jimbo called from behind the car, “Happens all the time.”
Too wounded to struggle, the doe’s eyes rolled back in fear. How far did Cassie drive to bring me this deer? Was she already out this way? How long has she been back in Birmingham? Did she come to see me? The doe felt more awkward than heavy, and though nothing about Cassie should’ve surprised him, Jimbo couldn’t help being impressed that she’d wrangled the wounded doe into the trunk all by herself. Everything in Jimbo strained toward the driver’s side of the car. What harm could one whiff do? But he pushed Darrell and the doe in the opposite direction. “We’ve got it from here,” he said, adding, “It’s on the house,” so she wouldn’t come inside and try to pay.
If he was lucky, Cassie would drive off, out of his life for good. But luck wasn’t what he craved.
Too weak to put up much of a struggle, the doe merely twitched her ears when placed on the slab; Darrell, Jimbo noticed, had begun trembling.
“Why don’t you go close the trunk?” Jimbo said. “Tell her she can leave.”
Despite all Darrell’s medical treatment, he was still at risk of going berserk if he got upset. Their father had called him an idiot. The doctors couldn’t seem to decide what to call him and had created what Jimbo called the Darrell Alphabet inside a folder more than two inches thick, starting with autism and ending with a syndrome that sounded like zucchini. But Jimbo had always just thought of Darrell as different, as he always would.
It occurred to him that something about the doe was different too. When he sliced into the jugular, the fat layer felt thick. She’s pregnant. He wondered where Cassie had touched the doe. Maybe it still smelled like her. Does she still even use green apple shampoo? As he leaned down to sniff, he heard a car door close. If Cassie came in now, Darrell would follow her in and see the doe’s throat. He wouldn’t understand why Jimbo had cut it. Better take Darrell on back to the group home now. Let the doe bleed in the meantime.
But Darrell was not outside, and Cassie’s car was gone. Damn electric cars. Their silence gave Jimbo the creeps. Maybe Darrell went on into the house after Cassie left, but he checked and it was empty. Darrell wouldn’t have gone with Cassie, would he? He steered clear of strangers. Even ones with long blond hair. Maybe she’d won him over with Juicy Fruit, the only gum Jimbo had been able to get Darrell to chew.
Jimbo walked back to the shop. Ordinarily, he hung yearlings so their narrow bellies stretched before dressing, but on the off chance that this one was pregnant, he decided not to move it from the slab. As soon as he inserted the knife, there was a tiny burst of fluid and then a hoof popped out. Another followed. Of all the deer he’d processed, not a single one had ever been pregnant. Maybe he’d cut her throat too quickly. Too late now. He sliced through the skin and, for the first time in all the years, felt like he was trespassing. Half of him was appalled at what he was doing, but the other half was too curious to stop.