I took the stick and poked and made a sweeping motion, but couldn’t reach it, and leaned farther out and suddenly lost my footing so that I stepped down into the water and filled both shoes. “Jesus,” I said. “Christ, that’s cold.” The boys giggled and pointed at my feet. I was standing in the water with my good shoes on. “You bums,” I said. “You lousy bums.” I poked the stick again and dislodged the pinecone and it floated away. Then I stepped back onto the bank and, suddenly making a grab, took both boys around the head, wrestling with them against my chest.
“So. You think that’s funny, do you? Making a man get his feet wet? You think that’s funny?”
“Yes. We do.” They were still giggling.
I squeezed them a little bit. “You think so?”
“Yes.”
“Still?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” I said. I squeezed them one more time. “Now what do you think?”
“We still think it’s funny.”
“Okay,” I said, “I guess it is, then.” I hugged them both. Then we walked back to the picnic table. I made a play of taking giant steps and sloshing.
“Mom,” TJ shouted when we approached the table. “He fell in the creek.”
“Who did?”
“Pat.”
“Oh my.”
“And he got his shoes wet.”
“And he cussed too,” Bobby said.
“Did you?” Jessie said.
“Hell, no.”
“Yes, he did, Mom.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But they made me.”
“What a mess,” Jessie said. “Look at you.”
“I know it,” I said.
“But you should have seen him, Mom,” TJ said. They started laughing again and took turns telling her about it while we sat down to eat.
It was cold and almost dark by the time we finished supper. Still it seemed pleasant there, the four of us, sitting at the same table, with the sound of the creek nearby and the smell of pine and blue spruce all around us. Finally we left. The boys had to go to school the next day and Jessie and I had to go back to work.
We drove home out of the mountains in the dark on Highway 34, down through Loveland and Greeley and on through Fort Morgan and Brush onto the High Plains, past Akron and then into Holt County and finally Holt, with its blue streetlights showing from a distance and then closer, and then the streets all quiet and empty when we drove into town. We walked up the steps into their apartment on the edge of town. We put the boys to bed and went to bed ourselves. We were all exhausted. Jessie and I talked very briefly and went to sleep.
Sometime after midnight I woke again, thinking I’d heard a noise. I lay listening for a minute in the dark. Then I heard it again in the front room. I sat up. Now slowly the doorway filled and it was Jack Burdette. In the faint light from the street corner I could see him standing in the door, massive and dark; he smelled of alcohol and there was something across his arm. I started to get up. Then he found the bedroom switch on the wall and turned the light on. Jessie was suddenly awake too. She sat up.
“Hell,” he said. “Don’t you two never wear clothes? Jesus Christ, look at you.”
Jessie pulled the sheet around her. I started to swing out of bed.
“Wait now,” Burdette said. “I’m not ready for you to move yet. Just sit there for a minute.”
“What do you want?” I said.
“What do you think I want?”
“There’s nothing here for you. You know that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, there is something.”
He was leaning against the wall, looking at us. He had cleaned up since Friday night, since he had been released. His eyes were bloodshot, but he was clean-shaven now and he was wearing a maroon shirt and a pair of new-looking tan slacks. The shirt was stretched tight over his gut, and lying across his arm was a shotgun. He motioned with it, pointing it at me.
“I told you I had family here. But you never believed me, did you?”
“That’s over,” I said.
“No, it isn’t, goddamn it.” He was talking very angrily. “Nothing’s over. Is it, Jessie?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m through, Jack. Leave me alone now. Please. I want you to leave me alone.”
“Maybe you just think you’re through,” he said.
“No. I am.”
“I’m not, though. You’re what I got left. I’m not through.”
“But I want you to leave me alone. Can’t you just leave? You’re good at that.”
“I’m taking you with me this time. All three of you.”
“No,” Jessie said. “No, you’re not!” She began to cry, looking fiercely at him. She wrapped the sheet tighter around her.
I stood up. “Goddamn you. Get the hell out of here.”
“Shut up,” he said. “Shut your mouth.”
He stepped away from the wall toward me, leveling the gun at my face.
“And you get up,” he said to Jessie. “You get dressed now.” He reached down and jerked the sheet away from her; she was kneeling on the bed with her arms across her breasts. He was still pointing the shotgun at me. “Do what I say. Get dressed and don’t say anything.”
“Jessie.”
“I told you,” Burdette said.
“Jessie,” I said, “don’t.”
She was still crying. She looked at me and slowly got out of bed and went over to the closet. She began to get dressed. Burdette stood watching her. And I hated him now; I hated him. While he was watching her I made a sudden grab for the shotgun but he jerked it away and slammed it against my head. Then I was lying on the wood floor beside the bed, naked, sick to my stomach. There was blood running from my ear. I stood up wobbily, bracing myself against the headboard.
“Try that again,” he said.
“You son of a bitch. Leave her alone.”
“Next time I’ll kill you.”
Jessie had finished dressing now. She was wearing jeans and a blouse and a warm sweater. He told her to pack some extra things to take with her.
“Where’s your suitcase?”
“It’s under the bed.”
“Get it.”
“Jack. Don’t do this. Please, don’t.” Her eyes were red and her hair was tangled. “Please.”
“Get your suitcase.”
She was still standing in front of the closet. She didn’t move. Then he shoved the end of the shotgun barrel against my chest, pushing me against the wall.
“Did you hear me?” he said to her. “Start packing.”
She knelt beside the bed and pulled the suitcase out, then she stood and walked around the bed to the dresser and removed some clothes, putting them into the suitcase and closing it.
“Now get me some nylons,” Burdette said.
“What?”
“Nylons. Stockings.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
She pulled several pairs of nylons out of the drawer and tossed them to him. One of them fell on the floor and he told her to pick it up and hand it to him. “Now back up,” he said. “And face that wall.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You’ll know in a minute.”
“Jack. Don’t. Please.”
“Shut up. Do what I tell you.”
Jessie looked at me once more and then turned, moving to the far wall, and stood facing the wallpaper.
“Okay, lover boy,” Burdette said. “It’s your turn. Make a slipknot in this.” He handed me one of the nylons.
“Go to hell.”
He raised the shotgun so that it was against my neck. “Don’t you think I’d kill you?”