Winter's Bone

23

REE PUSHED a mulish shopping cart in the Bawbee Store, with Ned in the basket and Gail beside her. Ned slept and slobbered bubbly while she and Gail shopped as a pair. The wheels were splayed like walleyes, so the cart would not easily go where it looked to be aimed but screeched off-line in half-moon spins toward one side of the aisle, then the other. Ree hunched forward and rode the cart like she was plowing a crooked row, holding hard and muscling the thing more or less where she wanted to go. She put noodles, rice and dried beans into the cart. She had already dropped in cans of soup, tomato sauce and tuna, a full chub of bologna, three loaves of bread, two boxes each of oatmeal and grits, plus three family packs of ground beef. She paused to stare at her load, finger at her lips, then put the rice back on the shelf and grabbed more noodles. She said, “I don’t know what he done was wrong. Not for sure.”

Gail said, “With all them noodles you’ll want sprinkle cheese, won’t you?”

“It costs too much for what you get. So we always skip it.”

“Either he stole or he told. Those are the things they kill you for.”

“I can’t see Dad squealin’. Dad didn’t have no dog in him.”

“This generic here don’t cost much.”

“Naw, skip it.”

“It tastes just about the same.”

“Nope. Once the boys start likin’ it they’ll want it all the time. It’s too expensive. It costs even more’n meat does.”

“Oh, man,” Gail said, “it just hit me—I must’ve been raised up rich—we always had sprinkle cheese.”

Ree laughed and draped an arm across Gail’s shoulders. “But you turned out okay, anyhow, Sweet Pea. The sugar-tit life ain’t spoiled you none. None that I can see.”

Gail tossed two canisters of sprinkle cheese into the cart, saying, “I’ll buy those on my nickel.” She reached to the opposite shelf and grabbed a can. “Plus these tamales.”

The morning sun polished the hard road to a blinding sheen and both girls squinted on the way to the house. Mud holes were growing brown spots in the blanket of snow. The holes held water and birds pecked in the mud. A couple of saplings had roots spring loose in the wet and had fallen partway onto the road, and the thin ends of branches crunched under the truck tires.

While on the rut road to the house Ree looked across the creek. Blond Milton and Catfish Milton were standing by the bridge with a stranger. There was a parked white car that had a long antenna raised from the trunk. Both Miltons and the stranger watched the truck come along the rut. The stranger pointed, shrugged, started walking across the bridge.

Ree said, “Who the fuck is he?”

Gail said, “Somebody from town—look at the pretty shoes he’s got on!”

Ree hefted groceries while Gail hefted Ned. Both of them stopped on the porch and turned to the stranger. Ree set her sacks down, said, “That’ll do, mister. Right there. What is it you want?”

The man stood tall inside his thick coat, a hide and wool sheep coat with wide fuzzy lapels. He might’ve been thirty years old and wore mirror sunglasses and a leg holster. His Adam’s apple was big and jumpy in his throat, brown hair fell thick to his shoulders. Two inches of whiskers drooped from the point of his chin. He looked like he meant no harm but could do plenty if pushed, and said, “I’m Mike Satterfield, from Three X Bail Bonds. We hold the bond on Jessup Dolly, and he’s now a runner, it looks like.”

“Dad ain’t a runner.”

“He didn’t show for court—that makes him a runner.”

“Dad’s dead. He didn’t show in court ’cause he’s out layin’ dead somewhere.”

Satterfield stopped at the bottom of the steps, removed his sunglasses. His eyes were hazel and calm but interested. He leaned sideways against the handrail while looking at Ree.

“That ain’t what I want to hear. It surely ain’t. That’s no good for nobody, none of us. You understand I’ve got the legal right to search anywhere I want in this place huntin’ the man? I mean, I can go on in there if I want, check the closets’n attic, poke under beds’n stuff. You know that, kid?”

“I know you’d be wastin’ your time if you did. Wastin’ your time’n pissin’ me off is all you’d be doin’.” Gail stepped inside with Ned, and Ree came down the steps. “How long do I got? How long before we get thrown out?”

“Well, that depends on if I can find him and drag him back.”

“Look, man, listen to me, it’s like this—Jessup Dolly is dead. He is in a crappy little grave or become piles of shit in a hog pen or has busted to bits tossed down a deep cave hole. Maybe he was left out plain in the open and is rottin’ away in a snow pile nobody has looked under yet, but, wherever, he’s dead, man.”

Satterfield shook a cigarette from a pack, lit up and exhaled. He had the habit of swatting his long hair from his face with the back of a hand. He said, “And you know this how?”

“You must’ve heard about what Dollys are, ain’t you, mister?”

“Only all my life. I mean, I always have heard what some are, anyway. I imagine most everybody for a hundred miles round here has.”

“Well, I’m a Dolly, bred’n buttered, and that’s how I know Dad’s dead.”

He looked across the creek at the watchful Miltons, nodded.

“Those fellas’re kin, of course, right? They wouldn’t say boo to me, neither one, even though my dad has written bonds on the both of them, too, over the years. The idea I got from them was they didn’t know no Jessup Dolly, or anybody that matched that description.” He smoked while looking closely at Ree. “This thing has felt a little funny from the giddy-up. Smelled just a tad bit off. This house’n stuff of you-all’s didn’t cover the man’s bond, not nearly—you know that?”

“Nobody told me nothin’. I found out everything after.”

“Well, he was short on the bond, but a fella come into the office one evening, had a plastic sack of crinkled money and put it down to cover the rest. When I went over there to the jail, your dad didn’t seem a hundred percent sure he even wanted out of lockup, neither, which ain’t usually how they act, but he was sprung by breakfast. It seemed like somebody needed him sprung in a hurry.”

“He was a good crank cook.”

“So I’ve heard. Maybe that was it, they needed some batches run and wanted him for it.”

Ree said, “This fella with the money have a name?”

“Nope. He must’ve left it in his other pants.”

“What’d he look like?”

Satterfield glanced around the yard, up at the house, up the hill to the timber, said, “The plastic sack of cash is all I recall, kid.” He dropped his cigarette to the snow, rubbed it with the sharp glossy toes of his pretty town shoes. “You probly got this place about another thirty days, kid. That’s my guess.”

There was a sound in Ree’s head like a world of zippers zipping shut, and a sudden tilt factor engaged every place she looked. The creek shifted heights in her eyes and swayed overhead floppy as snapped string, the houses beyond warped skinny as ribs and knotted together in bows, the sky spun upright like a blue plate set on edge to dry. She had a feeling within of tipping over, tipping over somehow to dribble down and away, down and away bleakly to a place beyond reach.

She lunged at Satterfield, grasped the fuzzy lapels on his sheep coat, tugged.

“That’s it? That’s it? There ain’t nothin’ I can do?”

He pried her fingers loose, stepped backwards.

“No. No, I don’t think there’s nothin’ left to do.” He swatted his hair a couple of times, then began walking slowly toward the bridge, carefully placing his steps between snow and mud. He stopped at the bridge and stared at the clear water below running south, then turned back to her. “Nothin’ unless you can prove he’s dead. That’d sure ’nough turn things around. Dead men can’t be expected to show in court.”

Ree stood there wobbling in her soul until Satterfield reached his car. She turned to go up the porch steps with her thoughts twirling and saw Gail standing in the open doorway with her arms crossed. From inside came clanging voices as the boys excitedly examined the rich plunder of groceries, slamming cans into the cupboard, loudly staking claim to favored foods. Gail’s face pinched with concern so the freckles seemed to gather in a blot, and her eyes were narrowed. She said, “I heard that last thing he said, Sweet Pea, and don’t you do it. I know the way you are, how you go about things, and I’m sayin’, don’t you go back there.”

Across the creek the white car began to move, pulled onto a mudflat between houses and circled about in a hurry to leave. Mud sprayed from the rut to daub the front porches.

Ree fell as much as sat to the top step, knees wide, chin down, and said, “How else is it goin’ to happen?”