“I don’t need this right now,” Tom says, the phone tucked under his chin as he types on the keyboard, closing out files, getting ready to go home to his empty house while his family enjoys the movies without him.
“Besides, just so you know,Bentonquit the Bureau a long time ago, doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
“Well, he should be grateful. That’s all. It’s the first time we got a hit in NIBIN on a shotgun shell.”
“Grateful? Are you fucking kidding me? Grateful for what? That the shell from this dead lady’s ass matches up with a dead man’s gun that’s supposed to be in the custody of the fuckingHollywoodpolice or sold as scrap metal by now?” Thrush says loudly, and he tends to say fuck a lot when he’s been drinking. “Let me tell you, he ain’t fucking grateful. Like me, all he probably wants to do right now is get shit-faced drunk.”
41
It is hot inside the ruined house, and the air is heavy and doesn’t move. It smells like mildew, mold and rancid food, and stinks like a latrine.
Hog moves with self-assuredness through the dark, from room to room, knowing by feel and smell exactly where he is. He can pick his way nimbly from one corner to the next, and when the moon is bright as it is tonight, his eyes hold the moonlight and he can see as clearly as if it ismidday. He can see beyond the shadows, so far beyond them they may as well not exist. He can see the red welts on the woman’s neck and face, see the sweat shining on her dirty, white skin, see the fear in her eyes, see her cut hair all over the mattress and the floor, and she can’t see him.
He walks toward her, toward the stinking stained mattress on the rotting wooden floor where she sits up, leaning against the wall, her shiny, green-draped legs straight out in front of her. What is left of her hair stands straight up, as if she’s got her finger in a wall socket, as if she’s seen a ghost. She was wise enough to leave the scissors on the mattress. He picks them up and with the toe of his boot rearranges the bright-green robe, hears her breathing, feels her eyes on him, like damp spots on him.
He took the beautiful green robe that was draped over the sofa. She had just carried it into the house from the car, from the church, where she’d had it on hours earlier. He took the robe because it pleased him. Now it is wilted and wrinkled and reminds him of a slain dragon in a crumpled heap. He captured the dragon. It is his, and his disappointment in what has become of it makes him edgy and violent. The dragon has failed him. It has betrayed him. When the brilliant green dragon moved freely and beautifully through the air and people listened to it and could not take their eyes off it, he coveted it. He wanted it. He almost loved it. Now look at it.
He drifts closer to her and kicks her green-draped wire-bound ankles. She barely moves. She was more alert a while ago, but the spider seems to have worn her out. She hasn’t preached the usual lowbrow drivel to him. She has said nothing. She has pissed since he was in here not even an hour ago. The ammonia smell is sharp in his nostrils.
“Why are you so disgusting?” Hog says, looking down at her.
“Are the boys asleep? I don’t hear them.” She sounds delirious.
“Shut up about them.”
“I know you don’t want to hurt them. I know you’re a nice person.”
“It won’t do any good,” he says. “You can just shut up about it. You don’t know a damn thing and never will. You’re so stupid and ugly. You’re disgusting. No one would believe you. Say you’re sorry. This is all your fault.”
He kicks her ankles again, this time harder, and she cries out in pain.
“What a joke. Look at you. Who’s my little pretty now? You’re filth. Spoiled little brat, ungrateful little smart aleck. I’ll teach you humility. Say you’re sorry.”
He kicks her ankles harder, and she screams and tears fill her eyes and they shine like glass in the moonlight.
“You’re not so high and mighty now, are you. Think you’re so much better, so much smarter than everybody else? Look at you now. Obviously, I’m going to have to find some more effective way to punish you. Put your shoes back on.”
Confusion touches her eyes.
“We’re going back outside. It’s the only thing you listen to. Say you’re sorry!”
Her glassy, wide eyes stare at him.
“You want the snorkel again? Say you’re sorry!”
He pokes her with the shotgun and her legs jerk.
“You’re going to tell me how much you want it, aren’t you. Thank me because you’re so ugly no one would ever touch you. You’re honored, aren’t you.” He lowers his voice, knows how to make it scarier.
He pokes her again, pokes her breasts.
“Stupid and ugly. Let’s get your shoes. You’ve left me no choice.”
She doesn’t say anything. He kicks her ankles, kicks them hard, and tears roll down her blood-caked face. Her nose is probably broken.
She broke Hog’s nose, slapped him so hard his nose bled for hours and he knew it was broken. He can feel the bump in the bridge of his nose. She slapped him when he did the bad thing, when she struggled at first, the bad thing that happened in the room behind the paint-peeled door. Then his mother took him to that place where the buildings are old and it snows. He had never seen snow before, he had never been so cold. She took him there because he lied.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he says. “Hurts like hell when you’ve got coat hangers biting into your anklebones and someone kicks them. That’s what you get for disobeying me. For lying. Let’s see, where’s the snorkel.”
He kicks her again and she moans. Her legs shake beneath the wilted green robe, beneath the dead green dragon draped over her.
“I don’t hear the boys,” she says, and her voice is getting weaker, her fire going out.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I forgive you,” she says with wide, shiny eyes.
He raises the shotgun and points it at her head. She stares straight at the barrel, stares as if she doesn’t care anymore, and he seethes.
“You can say forgive all you want, but God is on my side,” he says. “You deserve His punishment. That’s why you’re here. Do you understand? It’s your fault. You have heaped these burning coals on top of your own head. Do what I say! Tell me you’re sorry!”
His big boots creak very little as he moves through the thick, hot air and stands in the doorway, staring back into the room. The slain green dragon stirs and warm air moves through the broken window. The room faces west, and in the late afternoon the low sun seeps in through the gaping broken window, and light touches the shiny green dragon and it shimmers and glows like emerald-green fire. But it doesn’t move. It is nothing now. It is broken and ugly and it is her fault.
He looks at her pale flesh, her doughy, sour flesh covered with insect bites and rashes. He can smell her stench halfway down the hallway. The dead green dragon stirs when she stirs, and it incenses him when he thinks of capturing the dragon and discovering what was under it. She was under it. He was tricked. It’s her fault. She wanted this to happen, tricked him. It’s her fault.
“Say you’re sorry!”
“I forgive you.” Her wide, shiny eyes stare at him.
“I guess you know what happens now,” he says.
She barely moves her mouth and no sound emerges.
“I guess you don’t know.”
He stares at her, ruined and disgusting in her foulness on the filthy mattress, and feels coldness in his chest, and the coldness feels quiet and indifferent like death, as if anything he has ever felt is as dead as the dragon.
“I guess you really don’t know.”
The shotgun’s pump slides back with a loud crack in the empty house.
“Run,” he says.
“I forgive you,” she mouths, her wide, watery eyes fixed on him.
He steps out in the hallway, surprised by the sound of the front door shutting.
“Are you here?” he calls out.
He lowers the gun and walks toward the front of the house, his pulse picking up. He wasn’t expecting her, not yet.
“I told you not to do that,” God’s voice greets him, but he can’t see her, not yet. “You do only what I say.”