Winter's Bone

34

THEY CAME with the dark and knocked with three fists. The door shook as the clamor of beating knuckles filled the house. Ree glanced from a window and saw three like women, chesty and jowly, wearing long cloth coats of differing colors and barnyard galoshes. She fetched her pretty shotgun before opening the door. She jabbed the twin barrels toward the belly of Mrs. Thump, Merab, but did not speak. The shotgun felt like an unspent lightning bolt in her hands and trembled. None of the sisters flinched or stepped back or changed expression.

Merab said, “Come along, child—we’re goin’ to fix your problem for you.” Her hands were in her coat pockets. Her hair was swept away from her face in a towering white wave that barely budged in the breeze. “Put that thing down. Show some smarts, child.”

“Right now I feel like I want to blow me a big sloppy hole clean through your stinkin’ guts.”

“I know you do. You’re a Dolly. But you won’t. You’ll put that scattergun down and come along with me’n my sisters.”

“You think I’m crazy? I’d have to be crazy!”

“We’ll carry you to your daddy’s bones, child. We know the place.”

The sisters were less stern versions of Merab. One had a shorter gray wave swept away from her face, standing stiff on top, and her cheeks powdered the pink of a faded rose. The other had a loosened wave of bottle-blond hair that shivered in the wind, and her fingers carried several knotty rings. They had faces like oaten loaves and flanked their sister with hunched shoulders, ready boots.

It was the blonde who said, “We ain’t goin’ to come back’n offer this again.”

“You kicked me.”

“Not in the face.”

“Somebody did.”

“Things got wild there for a bit.”

Merab clapped her hands together, saying, “Come on! Come on along, now—it’s cold. We need to put a stop to all this upset talk about us we’ve been havin’ to hear.”

“I ain’t said a thing about you.”

“We know. Everybody else has.”

Ree moved the shotgun up and down. Her tongue licked over clotted vacancies between teeth. She heard the boys come to the door and stand behind her. “Get back in the house. Keep out of sight.” She poked the shotgun forward, said, “I’m bringin’ this.”

“No, you won’t either bring that. You want his bones, you’ll set that down’n come along.”

There was that scrape of unbidden music in her head, the beginning of a tilt, but she hushed the fiddle with a sharp thought and spread her boots for balance. She stood the shotgun in the corner behind the door, grabbed Mamaw’s coat from the hook and led the way down the porch steps. The sisters walked behind her like guards. The car was a four-door sedan with dulled paint and plenty of heft and iced snow on the roof. The quietest sister reached into her pocket for a burlap tote sack she shook open, then handed to Ree. “You can’t know where we’re takin’ you to. You’ll have to wear this over your head. It’s clean. Don’t try’n look out from under, neither.”

“You fixin’ to shoot me?”

“If you think a minute, you’ll know we could’ve did that already if we wanted.”

Merab said, “Sit in back with Tilly.”

Tilly was the blonde. Ree slid onto the seat and pulled the tote sack down. Tilly reached over to adjust the burlap, make sure no scrap of sight remained. The sack smelled of old oats and sunshine and scratched against her skin as the car hit bumps. The car had a big engine and leapt across some potholes and punished others with its pounding weight. The sack worked loose and she could breathe better, see a crack of light. She inhaled the scent of the sisters, a domineering reek of udder balm and brown gravy, straw and wet feathers. The car fishtailed in spots and skidded when turning.

Merab said, “Dammit—don’t slam the brakes—tap ’em.”

“I don’t want to tap ’em. I don’t tap.”

“You ain’t s’posed to slam ’em on snow.”

“When it’s your car, you can tap ’em. I drive my car just exactly this way.”

“These roads’re slicker’n you seem to think.”

“Look, when I wreck, you can tell me all about why. ’Til then, change the subject.”

Ree tried to guess where they were. It all depended on that first turn from the hard road—was that by the school? Or was it closer than that? One way meant Bawbee, the other should mean Gullett Lake. Unless the turn was past the school. The turns began to come too quickly to divine, and Ree became altogether lost among the crossroad possibilities and confusing maybes.

Tilly said, “Speed up, huh? I’d like to be home for my program.”

Inside the hood, Ree came to know the flavors of her own wind. The sound of her own bellows at work. The whistling breaths and smells that were her. She was loudly alive in her own ears and okay to smell.

“That funny one?”

“I never find it all that funny.”

“Then which one do you mean?”

“The one you call the funny one. I just don’t find it to be all that funny. What I like is the puppet that lives in the basement.”

“You remember to bring gas for the chain saw?”

“It’s got gas. I looked at home.”

The bounces became higher. Tires grunted across some uneven surface, a field, a cow path, the rippled earth of a river bottom. During the higher bounces Ree and Tilly bumped together.

The car eased to a stop, and Merab said, “Get the gate.”

“Should I latch it back? Or wait ’til we leave?”

“We’ll latch it leavin’.”

Beyond the gate, the car was driven more slowly, meaning there must not be much of a road beneath the tires. There came a stretch of jolting, rhythmic jolting, the jolts all alike, and Ree guessed they were driving sideways over a cornfield. There was an extra noise that could be the dry crack of corn stalks breaking.

“Where’s the path?”

“Over under them trees.”

“Park there.”

Tilly maneuvered Ree out of the car, holding on to an arm and pushing. The air was cold and had a little slap to it and the sack ruffled. The snow was crusty underfoot, an iced layer of crunch thin on top. Somewhere distant a train neared a crossroad and hooted a warning. The trunk popped open; things were lifted out. Ree stood straight and proud in case the very worst was about to happen and she would soon be presented to the Fist of Gods, and no god craves weaklings.

Merab said, “When I take this sack off your head, you might know where you are. I don’t really think you could, but if you do know where you are, you forget you know it. Get me? Don’t try’n guess where this is, or ever come back here if you know. That won’t be allowed.” The sack was removed with a yank and tossed onto the backseat. Tilly shouldered an ax, the other sister hefted a small chain saw. Merab held a heavy flashlight that threw a long beam. “There’s still a little walkin’ to get there. Follow me.”

A field, a line of trees, a small path with a few paw prints wending deeper into the woods. A plump waxing moon and silvered landscape. Merab followed the beam and led them on a slow wamble across a rankled field, then a slight curving path rose to a balled mound with a knuckled ridge and down again into a vale. It was a coggly path to an iced pond, with a hedge of blowdown barring the way. The logs and branches caused slipping and barked shins, oaths and mutters, but were soon put behind, and the women gathered into a puffing rank, staring down at the stiffened pond.

Merab said, “There he is, child. See that tallest little willow? Your dad’s sunk under it, tied to an engine block.”

The pond in silver light, with the slouched willows and surface of dull ice, instantly became a wrenching vista. Cattails and small nibbling fish in low water, a living grave for Dad. An urge to kneel on the snow waterside passed in a sniff, and Ree moved around the bank toward the tallest little willow. She slipped on the snow, stood, stepped, slipped again. The sisters followed her around the pond to the spot nearest the willow.

Merab said, “I’ll shine the light. You’ll need that ax to open the ice.”

“Then what?”

“He ain’t deep. This water don’t get deep.”

Ree stomped the ice and it creaked but did not crack wide. She took another step, and another, then came back for the ax. She stood on the ice near the willow, raised the ax and put all her feelings into the whacks she delivered unto that pond. It sounded like grievous hammering, hammering met with slushy grunts as the ice shattered and black water splashed. The light shined where the ice had been and freed water heaved.

“He’s right there, child. Underfoot, almost.”

“I don’t see him.”

“You’ve got to reach down’n tug him up for seein’. He ain’t floatin’ no more, but he won’t seem heavy.”

Ree removed Mamaw’s coat and flung it toward Tilly. She dropped to her knees and edged over the ice to the open place. She plunged her arm into the pond and screamed, screamed at the cold, but moved her hand all around. Her hand quickly felt thickened, insensitive and balky, so she pulled it out and stuck in the other.

“Go straight down, not over to the side like that.”

She felt something, something cloth, pulled hard. The light was partial but the main spot was bright. She knew that shirt. A green plaid flannel with the sleeves hacked off at the shoulders. Long johns underneath, with long white sleeves. The long johns felt like mud or moss or both in her hand. She tugged until she saw an ear, then turned her head and puked at the willow. She did not let go as she spewed.

“Here’s the chain saw.”

“What?”

“How else you goin’ to get his hands? They’ll know it’s him by his hands.”

“Oh, no, shit. No.”

“Take the saw—here.”

“No, no.”

The quiet sister held the light. Merab sighed big and loud, then came onto the ice lugging the chain saw and crouched beside Ree. “Don’t think of him as your daddy—just some guy. He’s just some guy.”

Tilly said, “Look away from his face.”

Merab said, “Jesus, shit, we’ll be here all night the way you’re doin’.” She jerked the saw started and leaned toward the shirt. “Hold his arm out straight, child, and I’ll make the cut.”

The saw pissed smoke and rattled and the smoke made dread wisps over the ice and the rattles filled the night. Flecks of meat and wet bone hit Ree in the face and she closed her eyes and felt patters on her eyelids. When the blade cut through, Dad’s body sank away from her grasp but she had his hand from the wrist. She spun and tossed it onto the bank near the sisters.

Merab said, “Why’d you let go? You’ll need both hands or sure as shit they’ll say he cut one off to keep from goin’ to prison. They know that trick. Reach back down there, now —quick. And be careful of his skin—that’s your fingerprints. Your proof.”

The ice gave as she stretched, and she fell into the pond. She felt Dad with her legs, bent into the water and raised him by pulling on his head. His skin felt like pickled eggs. She found the good hand and pulled it toward the chain saw. Her body was gone, she could not feel it below the neck, and a glow spread in her mind. She was on a distant tranquil shore where rainbow-colored birds sang and coconuts dropped bountifully to warm sand. The smoke and rattle, his other hand coming free, the return walk to the car a blur. The sisters peeled her soggy clothes from her frame and shoved her into Mamaw’s coat.