Hell's Half Acre

thirty-two.

IT TAKES ME OVER AN HOUR TO LIMP BACK TO THE HOUSE. I am torn to pieces. There is blood on my hands and my left ankle is fucked up. The cops are cruising, slow and watchful, the sky splashed with search lights. I skulk through back yards, avoiding dogs. I breathe through my nose and maybe I’ve cooked my noodle with poison and drink over the past week, but I’ve never felt better.

The house of Miller is dark.

The Range Rover is parked crazily, on top of a bush. I smile, thinking of Hitchcock with one ruined eye. He must have been cursing at the sky like a mad sailor. I rest on my haunches, out of sight, watching the house. There is no sign of life and suddenly I have this horrible idea that Miller came home and slaughtered everyone.

I limp through the living room, the kitchen. No one is about. I look in on Molly and she’s sleeping peacefully. I pick up a bottle of whiskey and head for the library. Jude is downstairs with a magazine, watching over the boy. She wears cowboy boots and a thin, sleeveless white dress. Her hair is loose and she’s not wearing the hockey mask. The bite mark has begun to fade.

What do you think? she says. I borrowed some of Molly’s clothes.

You look like a nice college girl.

Don’t be nasty.

I’m sorry. Your face looks much better.

The mask seemed pointless, at this point. And it frightened him.

How is he? I say.

She frowns. He’s not good.

I go to the bed and touch his face. Sam is feverish, breathing too fast.

His lips, I say. They feel like sandpaper.

He’s dehydrated, she says. I gave him some Gatorade earlier but he couldn’t keep it down. I gave him milk and crackers, more Benadryl. I gave him children’s Tylenol. But his fever won’t break.

Miller is doing something to him, I say.

What?

I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.

Jude looks at her watch, worried. I don’t know what he needs.

He needs a doctor.

Yes, she says. He won’t get one tonight.

Where is Miller?

I’m not sure. He’s somewhere in the house, watching.

Jeremy is dead, I say.

I know. He told me.

How is the bastard’s eye?

Jude smiles. It’s fucked. I’m afraid John doesn’t like you anymore.

That’s too bad, I say.

What happened out there? she says.

I am seething. Nothing. We jacked a convenience store.

How many dead, besides Jeremy?

The clerk. Miller shot him in the head.

Jude sighs. He’s cracking. This will be over soon.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

What? she says.

Are we on camera now, I say.

What do you take me for?

He’s playing you, Jude. He’s never gonna serve up Cody, okay. This whole thing is just a game of chicken designed to make you his bitch.

Jude stares past me, blank. I can see she’s already arrived at this conclusion.

I’m nobody’s bitch, she says.

You have to deal with him, Jude. Deal with him, or I will.

I will, she says softly. I will.

I want to ask her again if it’s true, if she is truly married to the man. But her face is so ashen, her hands so unsure of themselves. It must be true and it must not be and either way I feel like it would be rude to ask her. Miller is her nightmare and Jude will talk about it if she wants to.

Jude, I say. I’m going to take Molly and the boy and get out of here.

No, she says. You don’t know where John is. And he’s got a lot of firepower.

What do you suggest?

Tomorrow, she says. I will take care of it tomorrow.

Jude wants her voice to be cold, detached. She sighs and glances at her watch as if we are discussing the time and place for a lunch date tomorrow. But her voice is tinged with rust and her hand trembles.

Are you sure?

The art of hunger. Jude kisses me, a long penetrating kiss that pushes me to the edge of hunger and leaves me dizzy.

I’m going to kill him, she says.

Are you sure? I say.

I will find a way to get him alone, she says. To distract him. And when I give you a look, you’ll know it’s time to get Molly and the boy and run.

What kind of look? I say.

I don’t know, she says. A look that passes between us that only you can recognize.

The boy sleeps, barely. He is breathing so fast that he seems to rest on a fragile plane between unconsciousness and death. He sleeps in the velvet. My headache is soaring like a high-pitched sonic whistle that only dogs can hear. Blackbirds crash at the edge of my vision. Jude says that she wants to stay with him for the night and I agree.

I resolve not to sleep this night. I want to watch the house and I would sorely hate to be surprised by Miller. I am bitterly tired, though. I need something to keep me awake and I slip into Molly’s room, remembering that she has a stash of pot and coke in her underwear drawer. I touch her lightly on the shoulder and she moans, dreaming. I open the underwear drawer and search it silently, stopping once to press something fine and silky to my face. The smell of rain, of a storm coming. I find a short plastic straw and a little yellow envelope of coke, a gram or so. I glide through the silver wings and merrily chop out four fat lines on the back of the toilet. I am in a dangerously good mood, for some reason. It was that kiss, maybe. Jude can tear my head off with a kiss, sometimes. I pause, considering. Four lines is too many, perhaps. Perhaps perhaps. I hoover two of them, then wash my face with cold water. I bend over the toilet with the straw and snort the third line.

Phineas?

Molly’s voice. It sounds like she’s talking in her sleep.

Phineas. I’m bleeding.

I push through the silver wings, my head a rage of white noise. I go to the bed and touch her. She’s wet, the bed is wet. This can’t be blood. There’s too much of it. I fumble madly for the lights and they snap on with a yellow hum. Molly sits up in bed, her face pale. I don’t believe what I’m seeing. Her nightgown is bloody from the waist down and the sheets are soaked red, almost black. The mattress is a river of blood. I bend over her but she is not wounded and soon I have blood up to my elbows.

Where, I say. Where is it coming from?

From me, she says. It’s coming from me.

I fly downstairs to get Jude. I don’t know what else to do. The blood is too much for me. It takes me back to the amputees in Mexico City. The swinging shadows, the raw white light. The bloody plastic under my feet. The sponge in my hand, the bucket of blood. Jude in a white raincoat, wiping blood from her goggles.

I hover behind the silver wings with a glass of whiskey while Jude checks Molly out. I am tempted to smash the mirror but I don’t want to make things worse. After what seems like an hour, Jude pokes her head into the bathroom.

I need your help, she says.

Molly lies naked on the terrible bed, bloody and unconscious. Her short yellow hair is like a ring of pale fire around her face and she looks like Ophelia, dead and floating on her back. There are several towels on the floor, red with blood. Jude’s hands are bloody.

Don’t tell me she’s dead.

Not yet.

What happened? I say.

I need to get her cleaned up, says Jude. And I’m afraid if we put her in the bathtub, she’ll start bleeding again.

Who did this to her?

Jude frowns. I think she’s done it to herself.

What the fuck do you mean?

It may have been a miscarriage, she says. But there’s so much blood. It’s unlikely she would hemorrhage like this, with an early miscarriage. I think she might have given herself some sort of coat-hanger abortion.

You’re saying that Molly was pregnant.

Apparently.

It was John, croaks Molly.

She can’t open her eyes or lift her head but twice she whispers that it was Miller who did this to her, no mistake. My skull is ringing, ringing. Peripheral vision all but gone and I feel like my spine is twitching. I can’t wait to kill the motherfucker, and it makes me happy to think of it. But I have a feeling I may have to defer to Jude on that particular job. She calmly reaches for the whiskey and I go to the bathroom to soak washcloths. Together, we wipe the blood from Molly’s arms and legs and belly and wrap her in a clean sheet. I carry her out to the living room and stand there in the dark, holding her while Jude arranges a bed of pillows in the bay window. I lay Molly down and she looks ghostly in the moonlight.

Okay, says Jude. I’m going downstairs.

Her voice is weary. I reach for her and she lets me hold her for a moment and I don’t need her to tell me this might be the last time we will touch each other like lovers.