He was probing, it seemed to Hank, testing for a reaction, but some of his jitteriness seemed directed at Haze, whose hair seemed longer now, hanging down into his eyes, parted like curtains to reveal shriveled eyes that had trouble focusing, drifting slightly. Whatever had happened on this run had taken some toll on the young kid, sapped whatever little strength he had before, and there was a new scar up in his scalp, a patch of missing hair as white as chalk. Rake was saying that it would be easy to imagine the Corps seeing the heads on sticks and knowing it was him for sure, and then he pounded his fists on the table — the silverware jumped, MomMom jumped, Haze blinked, Meg stayed perfectly still, staring straight ahead. MomMom came over with a pan and served him cabbage. He took a bite and spat it out and was at the stove before Hank could get up. She fell to the floor and began to kick her feet. Lord, Lord, she said. Rake kicked her and she began to speak in a crazed tongue, her words half-formed, and she began quoting fragments of the Bible at random, senselessly drawing from the book, saying, Go forth and blow the trumpets into the fortified cities! A lion has come from his thicket to waste your land!
Get her up and out of here. Put her in the yard, do whatever you do to shut her up. If she’s going to speak in tongues, let her do it tied up out there, Rake said. He picked a pot from the stove and held it over MomMom’s head and said, Get up, old lady. Get up or you’ll get some of this slop you call food in the face.
I’ll take care of her, Hank said. He spoke calmly, with deliberation. There was a sudden tense silence in the kitchen — the drip of the faucet, the sound of birds far off in the trees. MomMom grew still, hardly breathing, her big gray eyes staring straight up.
You do that, Rake said. You be a good son and tend to your loving mother. But before you do that you look me in the eye and say you’re not on her side. You show me that in your eyes so I can see, he said, and they looked at each other and to keep his focus Hank thought of a man chopping into a thousand-year-old sequoia. Then he envisioned two men and a long saw working back and forth while the tree cried and sprayed phonemes that would catch the breeze and ride across the Great Plains, touching the goldenrod and the quack grass until it reached Wisconsin, where the other trees, tasting it, gave out their own anguished cry and released a blast of pollen that, on the same breeze, rode to the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. He put into his eyes his hatred of the men who cut that particular tree. It allowed him to forget his mother.
Out in the yard MomMom was babbling about the mercy of the Lord, about Jesus on the cross, about the wounds and the blood and the pain of the crown; something about a cave, about pissing in the wind, about King David, and then she was crying in the chair, her hands bound lightly, rocking slightly from side to side.
* * *
When they put me in that chamber — we’re talking down in New Mexico, in some big aerodrome-type thing that they used to use for war blimps or whatever — this was in that scrubby desert, must’ve been somewhere near Santa Fe. They put me in chains, really tight because they knew I could pull a Houdini, and they took me on a train from there through the desert, up toward the mountains, and then they put me in with all kinds of half-assed props and such, guns and mortar rounds, but with blanks, Rake said a few nights later. They were in the yard. He stopped speaking and lit his cigar, rolling it in the flame, and Hank watched his face, a primitive death mask in the darkness.
Anyway, they put me in a fake firefight and a double dose of Tripizoid — the guard told me that much — and I just laughed and popped off rounds from the blank gun, and then they tried a tie-and-torture routine, using a Phantom Blooper type, an American over to the other side, who spoke perfect Yankee English but was in NVA gear — and the torture thing wasn’t faked; they must’ve seen in the test they ran — when we took breaks they kept me handcuffed — that they would have to go the extra mile on me to get me properly enfolded. Man, they doubled down, and when I laughed that off they stuck me in a cell and the next day they put me back in the combat reenactment and I began to fake it, made a full-blown art of it. You see, I did all that to earn their trust.
He turned to Hank in the dark and spoke in a low voice, as if sharing a secret.
You’d know about earning trust, wouldn’t you, Hank?
Hank stared at the faint outline of trees and brush in the moonless dark.
I’d know about what it’s like to make damn sure I look like I give a shit, he said. If that’s what you’re saying.
I feel like killing something, Rake said. He got up and crossed the yard to the shed, the coal of his cigar an orange point, and when he came back he had the ax.
You feel like killing something?
Sure, I feel like killing, Hank said, resisting the urge to wrest the ax from Rake’s hand and put it into his head, to unfold and feel the old primeval rage retroactively. To kill and then locate the impulse to kill in the act itself.
You’re thinking this is some kind of test, Rake said.
No. I don’t think you’re the type to test, Hank said, rubbing his sweaty palms on his pants. I think you’re the type to go ahead and make a move. He stood up in front of Rake and waited. He knew that one wrong move and Rake would be upstairs in the house, raising the ax over Meg.
I think you’re the kind of man who strikes first and takes a look at the ramifications later. And I’m the same kind of man, Rake. So if what you’re saying is you think I’m a different man, or that I betrayed you somehow with Meg, out there on my run, then we might as well kill each other right here, he said. Then Rake had his arm on his shoulder and they were hugging, saying fuck fuck, and Rake was still saying, I want to kill something. He took the ax and went back to the shed, with Hank following beside him, and killed the new dog with one swift chop, a jangle of chain and a single, soft yelp, and then he stepped away and Hank, who felt sorrow akin to a tree sorrow, followed him back to the chair and had another drink. In the false camaraderie, Hank imagined winning an acting award, hoisting the trophy into the air as he thanked his beloved Meg for being with him when he needed it, and MomMom for all her demented wisdom, and the stars in the sky and then, finally, above all, the trees for being such good role models over the years, strong and stable and outside of the human realm, and when he laughed he did it from his belly and Rake joined in.
RUMORS AFLOAT
Summer had begun to push north through tense days. The days seemed long, with the sun coming up early and setting late, but they weren’t that deep into the summer. What was it? Late June? Early July? Nights were still cool, but in the middle of the day, in the seething tension and silence, the sun baked the grass in the yard and curled the leaves in the trees. A stench of decay wafted in from the shore, because things were dying in the sun, rotting all around the state. On the beach blackflies were rising into the sky in swarms from the crags along the shore, spinning outward and coming back together like migrating birds. There was the smell of the dog, too.
He was watching her bury a dog again, out by the shed. He leaned down and looked at the hole. It was deep and wide — deep enough for the dog. He needed more time so he told her to keep going. When she took another break he looked into the hole again and spoke softly. Look, Rake’s wound up more than usual, and his suspicions are high. I think we can take advantage of his state, channel it back at him somehow.