This was the same Donna he'd sized up as a hardboiled, invulnerable toughie that it was hard to feel any sympathy for. This was the same Donna whose book he'd judged by its cover, so to speak, without the slightest regard for the content. And this is the Donna who has enough compassion to forgive a copper in whom she couldn't have less interest or for whom she couldn't feel less attracted.
But that I can work on, he thought. And he wondered how some pretty flowers would do for openers. Would she be a flower lady, with a home full of plants and ferny things and a garden and stuff growing everywhere? Would Donna be a flower child?
The Ozarks
The tar-paper shanty stands on an unfarmable piece of ground called Deadman's Cut. Inside two little boys, eyes tearing, noses running, filthy, hear Mah-maw scream again and one reaches out to take the other's hand and they wait behind the feed sacks. They know he will come soon. It is only a matter of time.
The woman, their biological mother, is at the end of her third trimester. It is bad this time.
“CLETUS,” she shrieks again.
The two children shudder and wait. They are just little boys. Extraordinary, to be sure. But nevertheless little boys like any other. Yet in this brutal and depraved environment, in this primitive and evil world of horror, they are treated as freaks.
Because they are identical. Eyes, nose, mouth, even ears. Perfectly formed from the convexities to the concavities, twins so startlingly, shockingly alike their appearance staggers the viewer. But they are just little children. Molested. Tortured. Abused. Their twin lives an unending nightmare of depravity. They wait silently, waiting for the next pain or degradation or moment of terror.
In a world like this, where endogamy is the norm, these twin children are a trick played by the dark forces of nature, a unique gift with endless possibilities for the cruel and perverted mind to explore.
The little boys jump as they hear the familiar slam of the door. It is the sound that means the man has shut the door of his mud-encrusted pickup and soon he will come in the shanty.
The screen door bangs like a gunshot as he stomps in bellowing “Sister—"
“Eh?” A young, heavyset woman sits sprawled on a rump-sprung, worn sofa.
“Git over here, you-uns,” he says, roughly pulling his sister by the hair, and she yelps in pain, making him bark out a laugh as he pushes the shoulder straps of his filthy overalls off, letting it drop around his ankles as he pulls her mouth on to him.
The woman begins to suck on the huge penis that her brother has jammed into her mouth but a paroxysm of pain stabs her swollen belly and she jerks away with a scream of anguish.
“What ‘n Hades wrong with ya now, ya’ bitch sow?"
“UUUhhhhh,” she moans, “it's a comin', Cletus. Do sump'n. AAAAAHHHHHHH!"
“Ah'll do somp’ by dog-swallers,” he says and kicks her viciously in the abdomen. She screams and he laughs raucously, yanking her back on him and ejaculating into her screaming mouth and across her face.
The sister/wife writhes on the floor. It is a size-14 Ozark Workboot abortion. The fetus will be fed to the dogs outside as the twins watch. They will be nurtured in this hellish caldron of incest, madness, and murder.
South Oak Cliff
Eichord had a yellow legal pad in the seat beside him as he drove toward Donna's residence, and he popped the cap off a felt-tipped pen with his teeth, driving with one hand and trying to print with the other.
When he got to a stop sign he looked to see if he could read what he'd been writing on the pad and he saw:
1. Judge?
2. Court order?
3. Interior?
4. Houtcheson?
5. Exterior teams? Other?
6. Ukie/danger?
7. Noel/danger?
8. Joe H./APB?
9. Hosp. records?
10. Demon
But it was printed De Mon, and a DEMON was a DEtection MONitor device, one of the few pieces of sophisticated “wizardry” that he was willing to put much trust in. It was night eyes.
He uncapped the pen again and printed:
11. Randy Vincent?
12. New drug?
This was something Mandel had alluded to. A possibility he didn't want to overlook.
And then he folded the piece of paper, tucked it away, and put the iffy, murky, and entirely bloody mess out of his mind for the next few hours.
She liked his flowers, she said, and he thought she looked very pretty and told her so, and without a trace of malice she suggested they have something cold to drink before they go, and he said fine, and the idea was to pick a movie from the listings in the paper, and she brought each of them a glass of very fresh and very chilled orange juice, which was wonderful, and she told him she liked to squeeze some fresh juice every day and he said whatever it was he said and they just sort of relaxed and sat side by side looking at the newspaper listings and talking softly and sipping their juice and then they put their juice down and he leaned over as if to kiss her and you know how it is sometimes when you start to kiss a stranger and the noses aren't quite right it's something you don't think about but that first time the faces have never been that close and the other person's nose and mouth feels funny at first but this felt very natural except that when he kissed her she appeared very demure and it was just a gentle and exploratory kiss but she opened her mouth so wide when she kissed him it kind of surprised him and he responded and the soul kiss was deep and long and then another and then the papers fell to the floor along in there somewhere Clint and Charlie and Sally and James and Goldie and Michael and Kathleen all sliding to the floor in a wrinkled pile and his hands were touching her and she didn't stop him and oh my well now this woman was so soft and cushiony and sexy and warm and time passes as it has a way of always doing and she is over him, and the clothes are down there with Michael and Kathleen and all of them and straddling him with her long hair falling loose around her face and down on the porcelain skin and then the hair is swinging loose all over them and it feels like corn silk against him when it touches and her large full breasts with big erect nipples hard as fingertips jiggling as she moves back and forth astride him, his hands holding her gently at first by the waist and then dropping down on her hips and moving her back and forth in a soft but strong and steady rhythm of new lovemaking a sliding and persistent heat of bodies moving together against a background of such quiet noises the sound of their flesh and a faint click as a refrigerator makes some ice in another room and a faraway traffic sound and the faster breathing and a sheen of perspiration and it feels so good and she says
“I'm"—and a whimpering noise—"I'm almost there."
“Yes,” he said, giving the word three syllables.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh. Ah.” A lover's conversation. Almost.
Almost. Oh. OHHhhh. OHHHHHHHHHH.... OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I'M COMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG,” she tells him.
“Yeah. Come on. Cum,” he tells her.
“UUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM."
“AHHHH."
And she laughs out loud at him as about five cubic centimeters containing around a billion spermatozoa go making a night deposit in the hot, wet vaginal vault.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA,” she tells him, “not bad,” laughing, leaning over and kissing him on the mouth like she means it. And she holds him tight, locked in her arms and covered in her sweet-smelling silky hair and soon there was a soft rocking again as he grew inside her and stiffened in the hardening liquid fires and she rode him across the finish line in a screaming, whimpering wild wet slippery climax and a big kissy finish and then for a while there was just gentleness. And it appeared that both of them had slaked their thirst and it was a soft and easy time of contented cuddling and he whispered to her that she was his high-school hayride fantasy and she asked him if that was because she reminded him of wet straw and dripping eggs and they both agreed that this beat any movie they could have gone to and they agreed that each preferred sweet romances to hot glances and that they preferred cuddly hellos to mean good-byes and they had a long and intimate discussion about such things and then much later they both decided they would further explore the nature of desire.