Monstrous Affections

Night of the Tar Baby

A nasty breeze caught the fumes off the still-bubbling tar pot and brought them along the shortest route it could find into Shelly’s nostrils. It was the foulest thing that Shelly had ever smelled; tar fumes stank like distilled pain, a kick in the gut or a smack across the ear, and they made her cough when they reached down into her lungs. At the sound she made, her brother Blaine punched her hard in the side.

“Shut up!” he hissed. “We’re gonna get caught!”

“You shut up!” said Shelly. It was a struggle to keep her voice from quavering — Blaine was thirteen, three years older than her, and he was starting to get his man-arm. He’d hit her harder than he knew, maybe, and her ribs ached from it.

“Quiet, both of you.” Their dad crouched beside them, behind the highway sign that announced a new Petro-Canada service centre was coming here by October. His arms were crossed on the washbasin he’d brought with them. The trowel dangling in his hand cut through the air to emphasize what he said. “This is just what I was talking about back at the house. This is why we’re here tonight. Time to stop all the fighting.”

“Whatever,” said Blaine. “This won’t land you back in jail, will it?”

“This,” said Dad, “will keep all of us from jail, for the rest of our lives.”

“Then why are you stealing tar, not paying for it down at the hardware?”

“Got to be filched,” said Dad. “That’s part of the magic.”

“Whatever.” Blaine rolled his eyes.

It was pretty clear that Blaine didn’t buy any of this — and Shelly knew she should probably defer to her brother’s judgement. After all, the last time their dad had been home for any length of time, Shelly was just five years old; Blaine, at eight, had known their father that much longer — lived through five more years of Dad’s promises and schemes, aftermaths of his barroom fights and late-night visits from angry OPP patrolmen; Lord knew how many three-day benders with his former buddy Mark Hollins; and maybe one or two more solemn pledges to improve himself, and turn all their lives around.

Maybe Mom was right, and Dad was just full of shit.

Dad started down from the sign, and into the midst of the construction site. The workers had laid foundations for the garage in a huge cinderblock rectangle; there were more bricks stacked over by the trees, along with some lumber, and there was a yellow digging machine that Dad figured was to hollow out a place for the big tanks underneath the pumps.

But Dad didn’t care about the digging machine, or where the tanks would go or anything else. He was after the tar pot, which had been left simmering through the night. Dad figured they had about half an hour from the time the work crew left, to the time the night watchman arrived — and that would be plenty of time to do what they needed to do.

Dad set the basin down beside the tar pot, making the bent-up twigs and wire rattle.

“Get the turpentine ready,” he said. “Blaine, you listening?”

“I’m listening.” Blaine reached into his pack, and pulled out the shoebox-sized tin of turpentine they’d brought along. “It’s here,” he said.

“All right.” Dad set the trowel down a moment and rubbed his hands together. He reached into the breast pocket of his jean jacket, and pulled out a little brown plastic bottle Shelly recognized as one of Mom’s old painkiller prescriptions. He pushed on the safety lid, twisted it open, and held it over the pot. After a couple of seconds, something thick and white like condensed milk dripped out, made a long, snotty line between bottle and pot. Dad held it there until the last was poured out, then threw the empty bottle behind him.

“Shelly,” he said, “hand me the skeleton.”

“Don’t call it that,” said Shelly quietly.

“That’s what it is,” said Dad, sounding puzzled. “But I won’t call it that. Just give it to me careful.”

Shelly reached down and lifted the thing from the basin. It wasn’t more than two feet long — bigger than a newborn, to be sure; but not so big she should be scared of it. She shouldn’t be scared; but when a still-green twig bent like an arm flopped against Shelly’s knee as she lifted it, she nearly dropped the thing. Dad was right — this was a skeleton, and it was crazy to call it anything else. When she handed the skeleton off to Dad, she was trembling.

“I hate this,” she said.

“I know.” Dad smiled down at her with what seemed like real love — but it didn’t make her feel better. He cradled the little wooden skeleton with nearly as much affection as he lowered it to the stinking tar.

“This is going to help us all,” he said, as he dipped it head-first into the boiling tar. “Everything’s better from now on.”

“Dad?” said Shelly as they worked. “What do we need a tar baby for anyway?”

Dad was watching the tar. “You remember what I told you about Mr. Baldwin, don’t you, honey?”

Shelly remembered the story, all right; Dad had told it his first night back, while everyone sat around the kitchen table not looking at each other and picking at their food.

Mr. Baldwin was Dad’s prison buddy — his cell-mate for years. And Mr. Baldwin swore by his tar baby; a little man he kept under his bunk.

Mr. Baldwin’s tar baby was made from a pot on the roof of the pen’s south wing when it was under construction back in the 1970s and Mr. Baldwin had drawn work duty there. According to Dad, Mr. Baldwin was a puny fellow, more like a boy than a man in those days, and although Dad wouldn’t say why, small size and smooth skin was always a problem in a jail house. “Particularly when you’re like Mr. Baldwin, and won’t stand for nothing,” he said.

Mr. Baldwin had explained how he’d made the tar baby when he and Dad were cell-mates for a few months before Dad’s release, and Dad had paid close attention. After all, Dad explained — Mr. Baldwin was still alive after all these years, and although he wasn’t any bigger, and his skin wasn’t smooth anymore, it wasn’t scarred much either. Mr. Baldwin said he’d never been forced to do anything he didn’t care for, and over time since that day on the roof when the tar baby got born, everyone got to calling him Mister.

“It was a good time, when I was in with Mr. Baldwin,” Dad said, eyes focused far away and voice gone wistful. “No threats, no fights — nothing bad, nothing harmful. Men were respectful. The tar baby taught everyone a lesson.”

“Sounds boring,” said Blaine, watching the tar boil and bubble, the brambly skeleton now vanished beneath its surface.

“Hush,” said Dad. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy.” He leaned forward, peering through the thick fumes into the pot. “We need a tar baby, little girl, because your brother thinks peacefulness and respect are boring.”

Shelly still didn’t understand why Dad wanted a tar baby now that he was outside of jail, but she figured it was better not to press the point. Dad was concentrating.

“Is it done?” she asked instead.

“I think so. Lord, I wish Mr. Baldwin were here now. He’d know for sure.”

“Maybe we should wait,” said Shelly.

Dad thought about this, and shook his head. “No. It’s time now. Blaine?” Without looking up, Dad held his hand out. Blaine rolled his eyes at Shelly, and hefted the can of turpentine. Dad took it, unscrewed the top and held it over the pot.

“Hold your nose,” said Dad. He mumbled a verse about hair and salt and lizards, and began to pour. The turpentine in the hot tar made an awful dark vapour where it etched out the tar baby from the rest of it, and even though Shelly’s nose was held tight, she could taste it on her tongue and feel it in her eyes as it rose up around them and blotted out the dim light of the evening. She shut her eyes against it, sealed her lips, but it was still around her; she felt it sticking to her like the tar it’d come from, and the substance of it stayed on her even when the smoke cleared and Dad, arms tar-black to the elbow and grinning like a little boy, pronounced them done for the night.

“Come on,” said Blaine. “Get up off the ground, stupid, and let’s go.”

Shelly flinched back — expecting another punch maybe. But Blaine stood against the darkening sky with Dad, his hands tucked safely into his armpits.

“Before the cops come,” said Blaine.

Mom was watching an old episode of Frasier on TV when they got back, and when Dad came through the door after Shelly and Blaine, she glared at him like he was trespassing. In a way, he was. This was, strictly speaking, Mom’s house; she’d inherited it from her own mother, free and clear back before Shelly’d been born. The house was miles outside town, on an ugly flat scratch of land where the grass grew too high and you saw the neighbours by the smoke from their woodstoves in the winter. But it was theirs, free and clear.

Mom called it their haven; for without the security of a paid-off house in a jurisdiction where the taxes were low, who knew where their awful circumstances would take them? She couldn’t work anymore, not since the accident at the restaurant three years back where she’d bunged her knee; a mortgage or even regular rent on a place like this would ruin them. She couldn’t carry it on worker’s comp alone.

“Keep that thing in the shed,” she said, as Dad brought the basin inside. Mom probably wouldn’t have sounded angry to anyone but Shelly, and maybe Blaine.

If Dad understood her tone, he didn’t let on. “Won’t do in the shed,” he said. “Got to be here, or there wasn’t any point.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “There wasn’t any point. You got that right.” She picked up the remote from the side of the couch and pointed at the TV. Frasier’s dad and the little dog vanished, and the room darkened a bit. With a grunt, Mom shifted her feet from the couch to the floor, and lifted herself on her cane. It was no mean feat; Mom had gotten heavy since she’d taken off work. “You going to catch a rabbit with that?” she asked.

Dad didn’t get it, and Mom laughed unkindly.

“Mom’s talking about Bre’r Rabbit,” said Shelly, trying to help. “From Song of the South.” She’d seen the movie over at her friend’s house at Thanksgiving, and there was a tar baby in it. Bre’r Fox had used it to catch Bre’r Rabbit — and it’d nearly worked.

“Jail didn’t teach you much, did it now?” she said.

Dad sucked in his breath, like he was about to say something — and he looked down at the basin in his arms.

“Oh no,” he said. “We’re not starting this again. Not now.” He looked up, and his eyes had a calm about them.

“I’m putting this in the basement,” he said. “You won’t have to smell it, or even look at it if you don’t want to. So it won’t be any trouble for you — all right?”

“Whatever you say, dear,” said Mom, then turned to address Shelly. “Lord, now, isn’t it good to have a man around here? See, I wouldn’t have any idea how to put a bucket of tar in the basement and not stink up my house with it. Stupid little me wouldn’t know how to keep those fumes out of the vents, and before you know it, all the sheets’d start stinking like a blacktop highway in July!”

She was looking at Shelly, but she was moving towards Dad, stumping sideways on her cane like some kind of crab. Shelly tried not to glare at her: it seemed like Mom just couldn’t give Dad a chance.

“And why, I’d never think to take my two children out to steal tar from a construction site! On a night just two days I’d been out of jail!”

Dad was grinning now. He held out the basin in front of him as Mom came nearer. The metal of it made a bonging sound as he lifted it an inch or so.

“Good thing,” she said, raising her free hand and touching the rim of the basin, “my husband’s come home to set things right!”

“Careful, Dornie,” Dad said. “Don’t want to get yourself into a state.”

Mom still wasn’t looking at Dad — she didn’t stop looking at Shelly, and Shelly could see by her narrow eyes that Mom was working herself into quite a state indeed. If that state had been directed at Shelly, she would have been frightened for herself — but tonight, Shelly was just a channel, a way for five years and a day of bottled-up rage to get to Dad.

So Shelly just watched as events unfolded.

Mom’s fist tightened around the edge of the basin, and she shifted her weight so she didn’t need the cane under her and could lift it into the air so as to swing it. “I’ll give you a fuckin’ state,” she said in a low and terrible voice, finally turning her angry eyes to focus right on Dad. The basin began to tip toward her under her weight. Dad smiled, and the metal bonged again.

There was a third bong, and it seemed as though Mom’s already-unsteady footing slipped, and the basin overturned. Mom yelped, and tried to yank her hand away. Dad’s grin opened up into a toothy smile, and he let the basin fall to the floor. Shelly shut her eyes as it hit — thinking about all the tar inside it, and how it’d be to clean up tar, how long it would take and what kinds of solvents she’d need to do the job to Mom’s standards.

But when she opened her eyes again, she saw there’d be no need — the old shag carpet didn’t have a drop of tar on it, because the tar baby was all over Mom.

It had taken hold of her hand first — two twig-boned fists grasped her fingers, and it must have used her fingers to swing on because all of a sudden its skinny tar-black legs were wrapped around her elbow. Mom was wearing a bright yellow tank-top, no sleeves, so it hadn’t gotten on her clothes right at first. But as Mom reached over with her free hand to try and yank the tar baby off, she pushed the thing’s back against her chest, and that did it. She was a mess.

Mom looked like a big bat as she lifted both arms away from her, strands of tar making a web between them and her chest — where the tar baby seemed to have fixed itself. “Get it off!” she hollered. “Get this fuckin’ thing off me!”

Dad was laughing so you could hear it now. He bent over and slapped his blue-jeaned knee, and fell down to his knees and laughed some more, shaking his head.

“Look at that,” he said. “Damn me if it’s not suckling off you, Mama!” And he howled.

Sure enough, thought Shelly, it did look like the tar baby was suckling. Somehow, it had managed to get turned around and now its face — or at least the front of its head; the tar baby didn’t really have a face — mashed into Mom’s left breast, like it was taking milk.

With nothing there to hold it up, the tar baby started to peel away from Mom’s tank-top; and for a second, as it turned first to face the ceiling and then forward, Shelly thought she could make out a little grinning face on the thing — mouth open, thin snot-strands of tar between upper and lower jaw, and tiny little button-eyes, staring up at Mom’s tit. But the face went away as the tar baby turned, and it was just a mound of hardening tar again. Mom’d stopped hollering, and she’d started to sob. Dad picked up the basin from where it’d fallen on the floor, and held it under the tar baby. It fell into it with a bong.

Everyone stood silent. Mom was covered in tar — somehow, it’d gotten on her face and into her hair; it smeared down her shoulders and onto her hands like lines of thick, black finger-paint. Mom looked up at Blaine, and cleared her throat.

“Blaine honey,” she said, voice calm and reasonable. “Fetch your Mom her cane.”

Blaine did as he was told, but when it came time to hand the cane over, he didn’t get too close to Mom. Shelly didn’t blame him. Mom took the cane, propped it against the floor and pushed herself to her feet.

“I’ll just put the baby in the basement then,” said Dad, to no one in particular. He whistled as he carried the basin into the kitchen and down the stairs.

“You mean the tar baby,” said Shelly, but Dad was beyond hearing.

Dad drank beer from a bottle at the kitchen table, and Shelly sat with him, sipping her Coke from the can. They didn’t speak at all while the shower ran; Dad had just stared out the window into the dark yard, drank his beer, and occasionally reached over to pat Shelly on the hand.

For her part, Shelly just watched him. She hadn’t seen Dad since she was just five — not properly anyway, not outside of a prison visitation — and he was for all practical purposes a complete mystery to her. He had last gone to jail for armed robbery — he’d used a hunting rifle to rob a grocery store in Huntsville with his buddy Mark Hollins, who’d gotten off as an accomplice and did hardly any time in jail at all. Shelly tried to imagine her father doing such a thing, and found again that she couldn’t. When she’d gone to see him with Mom and Blaine, he was always laughing and gentle — even when Mom egged him on. It wasn’t that there was any doubt he’d done the robbery; Dad had confessed to it and pleaded guilty when it came time to go to court. It was just that Shelly couldn’t see how he’d done it, pulling out a gun and telling someone to hand over their money or they’d get it. Dad just seemed… too nice. Compared to the rest of the family, that was.

Finally, the shower shut off, and Dad squinted at the ceiling, like he was gauging something there.

“Out of hot water,” he said.

“Maybe she’s clean now,” said Shelly.

Dad just shook his head. “Soap and water won’t do a thing to tar. Your mother should know better.”

Shelly nodded as though she understood, and swallowed the last of her Coke.

“She’ll know better now,” said Dad, staring back out the window.

They sat quiet again, as Mom stomped wet-footed on the floor upstairs and the vestiges of water drained from the bathtub through the old pipes under her feet, over their heads. Shelly squeezed her Coke can as if to crush it, but she didn’t have the strength and the side just popped. Dad started at the sound, then smiled, and reached over to put his big hand over Shelly’s. “Let’s both squeeze,” he said. Dad’s thick fingers pushed on Shelly’s, and for a minute she felt like he was crushing her against the can. But the metal crumpled easily under their combined grip, and Shelly laughed when Dad let go of her.

“Teamwork,” said Dad. “That’s what this family’s going to be about, from now on, little girl.”

“Teamwork?”

Dad nodded sagely. “Most families do it, you know — ours is just peculiar that way. Or it has been. We’ve been like a bad cell block in a bad jail; we’re always fighting and squabbling and hurting each other. Won’t be the case any more.”

Shelly looked up at her father, who was staring back out the window. It was true what he said; they were like a bad cell block in a bad jail, or at least they were always hurting each other. Dad had a point.

“Mom’s wrong about you,” she whispered.

Dad blinked, and smiled down into the dregs of his beer. He gave Shelly a squeeze around the shoulders.

“You better go to bed, little girl,” said Dad. “It’s late.”

The bathroom door opened upstairs, and Mom made her way noisily to her own bedroom. A minute later, the mist of her shower wafted down — carrying with it the combined scent of perfumed soaps, old angry sweat, and tar-fume.

It was, Shelly realized, the first time she’d smelled tar since Dad had shut the basement door and Mom had gotten in the shower. For whatever reason, the tar baby’s smell had just stayed put. Shelly laughed to herself: Mom had been wrong on that score too.

Dad stood up, and patted Shelly on the back. “Come on, little girl,” he said. “Daddy’s going out for a walk — you get on up to bed.” Blaine was already in the top bunk when she came into the bedroom. He had his reading light on, and was propped up on an elbow over some kind of magazine — Shelly couldn’t see what because of the angle, but she suspected it was one of his mountain biking magazines.

“I’m not turning out the light,” said Blaine.

“Who said I want you to?”

“You always want to go to sleep early.”

“I’m not the one in bed already.”

Blaine glared at her, picked up his magazine, and rolled over so he was facing the wall. Paper rustled angrily as he positioned the magazine out of his own shadow.

“You’re lucky,” he muttered.

Shelly supposed he was right. Normally, after a little exchange like that one, Blaine would swing down from the bunk, grab Shelly in a headlock and take the last word in the argument by sheer might. Shelly would have to apologize — no, she would have to beg, and if she were lucky, that would be all it took.

Tonight, Shelly guessed she was really lucky.

She sat down on the bottom bunk and pulled off her T-shirt. The springs over her head creaked as Blaine shifted his weight.

“Lucky,” he said again, his voice low and kind of scary. “I could come down and pound you right now. You know I’d do it.”

Shelly unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them off and slid under the covers.

“You know that — don’t you, shitty Shelly?”

“Stop it, Blaine.”

“Shitty Shelly,” said Blaine, and he started to sing it: “Shitty Shelly shitty Shelly.”

“Stop it,” she repeated, but of course he wouldn’t.

“Shitty Shelly shitty Shelly. What are you gonna do, shitty Shelly? Get mad like Mom did?”

“This is stupid,” she said. “This is what Dad was talking about.”

She rolled back on her haunches, and lifted her feet to the mattress of the top bunk. Part of her screamed a warning: Suicide! Don’t even try it! But the taunt was getting under her skin — Blaine knew how to get under her skin better than almost anyone — and she couldn’t help herself. She bucked back on her shoulders, and pushed hard against the mattress with her feet — not too hard, just enough to send him a message.

She felt Blaine’s weight roll to one side, and heard a crack! sound like snapping wood, and she felt the bed-frame tremble even as Blaine shouted. If she’d been even a little angry a second ago, it was all gone now; Shelly was just scared.

“You dumb bitch!” Blaine sounded an inch from tears. “You dumb goddamn bitch! That was my head!”

Before she could even answer, Blaine was half-way down the ladder from the top bunk. His head. She guessed she’d rolled him against one of the bed-posts, given him a good bang on the skull. Blaine was going to pound her all right. Shelly screwed her eyes shut and curled herself into a ball — waiting for the rain of fists that would follow, and hoping they’d just fall on her back and shoulders. She knew from bitter experience that if she let Blaine get to her stomach and face, there’d be no end to the pain…

But the punching didn’t come.

Blaine made a strangling sound, and she heard the sound of his bare feet moving across the floor — and then she heard the door open and close.

“You’re dead!” He yelled it from the hall, like he was chasing her, then repeated it from the bottom of the stairs:

“You’re dead!”

Cautiously, Shelly opened her eyes.

“B-Blaine?” she whispered.

But of course he didn’t answer: she was alone in the bedroom. Distantly, she heard the sound of a door downstairs opening and closing again. Shelly wasn’t sure, but it might have been the basement door in the kitchen. She curled more tightly around herself, and shut her eyes again.

Shelly didn’t sleep. Part of it was the Coke she’d had with Dad, but mostly she stayed awake thinking about the tar baby, and what it’d done to Mom. This, she guessed, was how it was when Mr. Baldwin got in trouble with the other men in prison back in the early days. She tried to imagine how it would have been — Mr. Baldwin’s first night with the tar baby. Maybe the guy who had the top bunk there was looking for some trouble like Blaine had been, holding it and stoking it and building his meanness through the evening until it was something he could use, in the small hours of the night.

Behind her closed eyes, she could almost see the two of them, skinny little Mr. Baldwin lying still like a rabbit underneath his blanket, and the other prisoner — probably he was a lot bigger, and had been in a lot of fights, just like Blaine — him jumping down like he wants a piece, saying “Shitty Baldwin, shitty Baldwin, shitty Baldwin” over and over again. And because Mr. Baldwin wouldn’t answer him, and wouldn’t do what he said, and maybe earlier that day lipped off to him like Shelly had lipped off to Blaine, that other prisoner reached down to grab onto his shoulder, and give him a beating.

Only it wasn’t Mr. Baldwin’s shoulder he grabbed. He reached down to the bucket by his bunk, and that prisoner had his hand stuck deep in the tar baby’s shoulder. Before he could think, he hit that tar baby again, and one more time, and that was it — he was stuck. Just like Bre’r Rabbit in the movie. Just like Mom tonight.

Shelly wondered if Mr. Baldwin laughed that first time, the way Dad had laughed when Mom had gotten herself tangled up in their tar baby.

Or, she thought with a shiver, maybe Mr. Baldwin just lay in his bunk, all curled up trying to go to sleep, while his cell mate choked on tar on the floor beside him.

Blaine had been downstairs a long time. And Dad was still out walking, and Mom hadn’t budged from her bedroom.

And hadn’t Dad said something about teamwork?

Shelly got out of bed and pulled on her T-shirt. “Mom!” she shouted, pushing her feet through the legs of her jeans. “Hey, Mom!”

She walked barefoot across the floor of the bedroom and opened the door to the hallway. She took a breath to yell—

— and coughed.

The air in the hallway was sticky with the stink of tar, and she had a lungful of it. Shelly reeled back, covering her face with her hand, but of course her fingers were no filter and the damage had already been done. She coughed again, and gasped, and managed, finally, to yell — “Mom!”

Shelly stumbled forward, holding onto the banister around the stairwell as she did. The air seemed to get worse the further she went, and by the time she pushed Mom’s bedroom door open, she was barely taking half-breaths. The door swung open, and Shelly ran past the bed — not even looking to see if Mom was there — and fell against the windowsill. Her lungs had hitched a final time, and now she couldn’t breathe at all. With the last of her strength, she grabbed onto the base of the window and hefted it up.

Shelly pressed her face against the screen, coughed one more time, and sucked deep of the clean summer night air, looked at the empty driveway, the dark land around the house. In the distance, over the low treetops, she could see the lights from the highway.

“Mom,” she said, not turning back, “we got to go downstairs and help out Blaine. I think he got messed up with the tar baby. He — he was picking on me, and he turned around and went downstairs, and I think he’s in the basement…”

Shelly paused. In the distance, she could hear a car engine straining up a hill; crickets rubbed their legs together in the long grass of their front yard, and the thin breeze made the leaves of the birch-tree around the side rustle like paper. From inside the house, she heard a sound that must have been the refrigerator, a rattling whine as the compressors got going.

From Mom, she didn’t hear a thing.

Shelly took another breath, turned around to face the bed and made her way slowly to the still, dark form laying atop the sheets. Shelly swallowed hard. The tar smell was pretty awful as she got closer, but she was expecting it now and she knew better than to breathe too deep.

Shelly stopped by her bedside, and looked down at her mother, Mom lay flat on her back, buck-naked, on top of the bedspread still wet with shower-water. Her feet were apart, and her hands were spread from her torso so no limb touched another. The tar had tinted her flesh from head to foot; it matted her hair, and gathered in globs around her shoulders and across her wide breasts, like tiny birthmarks. Mom’s eyes were open, and they looked at Shelly steadily. Her chest swelled as she drew a breath to speak.

“Mom’s not—” she paused, shut her eyes, and continued, her voice rough and deep, like she had a cold “—not feeling good now, honey. You go to bed.”

Shelly shook her head. “No, Mom, I was telling you: Blaine’s gone to the basement, I think.” She stomped her foot, and heard her voice go whiny. “You got to come!”

“No good,” said Mom. “Knee’s acting up again.”

“I think Blaine’s in trouble, Mom. You got to come help him.”

Mom licked her lips, then made a face like she’d bit a lemon.

“Tar’s everywhere,” she said. “Even on m’ mouth.”

“Mom—”

“Hey!” Mom’s voice took some energy. “Don’t you take that tone with me! This is my house, Missy!”

Mom lifted her hand up, as if to cuff Shelly, but she didn’t get far: whether it took strength or will to pull away from her bed, Mom didn’t seem to have enough of either.

“Your Daddy,” she said, “is a very bad man.”

Shelly opened her mouth to argue some more — to point out that Dad wasn’t the one who wouldn’t get out of bed to help his son; that Dad had paid for his crimes, if he’d even done them in the first place; that Mom wasn’t always the nicest lady in town either. But she remembered why she was here: Blaine, she feared, had gotten himself into some pretty immediate trouble; and Mom was in some kind of trouble too. She didn’t like to move around much as a rule since her knee had gotten hurt, but tonight, it seemed like she was drained. It was like when that tar baby had latched onto her breast, it had sucked something vital out of her.

“Don’t know why I married him,” said Mom, shutting her eyes.

“Maybe,” said Shelly, “Dad would be better if you didn’t keep being so mean.”

Mom’s brow crinkled.

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Shelly,” she said.

“I know what I see.” Shelly stepped away from the bed. “Dad trying to fix things, and you lying in that bed.”

Mom’s eyes opened now, and Shelly could see they were wet with tears. Now she did lift her hand, and brushed the air near Shelly’s arm. Shelly flinched away — she didn’t want those sticky-black fingers anywhere near her.

“You don’t know him,” said Mom, her voice nearly a whisper.

“He’s my Dad,” said Shelly. “Never mind about Blaine. I’ll just help him myself.”

Shelly stepped back into the hallway. A taste of salt came into her mouth as she closed the door on her Mom, but she swallowed it and made her way downstairs.

Dad had left the light on in the kitchen, and he’d left his empty beer out and Shelly’s empty Coke-can out too. The smell was better down here, because he’d also left the kitchen door open, and a breeze washed through the screen door and through all the rooms on the first floor.

And of course the door to the basement was shut tight.

Shelly knocked on the door. “Blaine?” she called. “You all right?”

“Shelly!” Blaine sounded like he was muffled by something, talking through the hood of his snowsuit. “Shelly! I’m sorry I called you names!”

Shelly stepped back from the door. Now it was her turn to be speechless; in all her life, Blaine had never once apologized for anything.

“Shelly? You still there, Shelly?”

“I’m here,” she said, cautiously.

“I’m sorry, Shelly!”

Shelly took a breath. “You’re forgiven.”

“Great,” said Blaine, and his voice returned nearer to normal.

“Give me a hand down here, will you? Bring down a towel, and—”

“—some turpentine?” Shelly finished for him.

Blaine laughed nervously.

“Yeah,” he said.

Shelly laughed as well. It was like a weight had been lifted from her. All the way down the stairs, she was sure whatever happened with Mom had also happened with Blaine; the tar baby would suck the life out of him like it did from Mom. But he sounded okay, even improved by the experience.

Shelly went over to the counter, where Dad had put the can of turpentine, and lifted it down. She grabbed a tea-towel from the handle to the stove. “I’m—”

She was about to say coming, but she stopped, as a set of headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, and the sound of a truck engine broke the quiet. Bright headlights washed across the kitchen, shuffling shadows from one end of the room to another.

The truck rolled to a stop beside the kitchen — it was a big pickup truck, painted bright red, and Dad sat in the driver’s seat. In the passenger seat, Shelly saw, was a long-haired, bearded man she hadn’t seen in a couple of years: since when she was really small, and Dad hadn’t been to prison for his second time.

It was Mark Hollins.

The man Dad had robbed the grocery store with — the one who’d gotten off with hardly any time in jail at all. He was laughing at something Dad was saying, and then he stopped and looked in through the window — straight at Shelly. He was still smiling, at least with his mouth — but his eyes had a different kind of look to them. If Shelly had been thinking of enlisting Dad’s help in cleaning up her brother, pulling him out of whatever he’d tangled himself up in downstairs, the look in Mark Hollins’ eyes dissuaded her.

“Shelly!” Blaine’s voice was plaintive. “Come on!”

Shelly looked away from Hollins, and opened the basement door.

“I’m coming,” she said. By the time Dad and Mark Hollins were out of the new truck, Shelly had closed the door behind her and was making her way down to where Blaine had gotten himself stuck.

The air had been okay on the first floor, but it was bad again in the basement. Shelly wasn’t caught by surprise by it this time, though; even before she turned on the light, she expected the tar baby’s stink would be the worst where it lived.

When she turned on the light, Shelly thought she might never breathe right again.

The basement was filled with tar.

It looked like two pages of a book, with a wad of black chewing gum squished between and stretched out as the book came open. Jump-rope-thick strands of tar stretched from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, casting shadows as black as itself. The strands twitched now and then, and before long, Shelly’s eye was drawn to the likely cause of that twitching — two shapes suspended in the middle.

Her brother Blaine and the tar baby were locked together there, hanging about five feet off the cement floor, directly over the floor drain, and the now-empty washbasin the tar baby had come in.

The tar baby had come in the washbasin, but Shelly figured it would never leave in it. The tar baby had stretched and fattened to the point where it was almost as big as Blaine; bigger, she realized with a chill, than she was. Its legs were wrapped around Blaine’s waist, and its arms, long and spindly, hugged Blaine around the chest. Its head — once the size of a softball, now about as big as the Nerf football Blaine kept on his desk upstairs — pressed against Blaine’s cheek.

Blaine struggled to look up the stairs at her. His face was blackened with tar, and as he moved, one of the tar baby’s hands slithered up his neck, to the back of his scalp. His eyes screwed shut and he sobbed, as the hand fell away again, pulling a small clump of tarry hair out with it.

“Oh, Blaine.”

Shelly whispered it — she was pretty sure Blaine couldn’t hear her she was talking so quiet, but it seemed as though the tar baby could. Its head fell back from Blaine, like it had from Mom earlier in the night, and it cricked back on its skinny neck, so it was looking straight at Shelly. Last time she’d seen it, the tar baby seemed to open its mouth. Now, there was no doubt about it: the cut in the tar of its chin was fully formed, into a jagged grin like a jack-o-lantern.

“I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly.” Blaine’s eyes were still closed, and his voice was strangled with tears now as he repeated the apology again and again. It was like he was apologizing for every shitty Shelly he’d said upstairs. As Shelly thought about it, she started to feel the heat of anger come up in her again.

“Do you mean it?” she said, her voice low.

“I’m sorry, Shelly.”

One of the tar baby’s arms unfastened itself from Blaine, and the creature started to dangle. There was a sucking sound, as a strand of tar snapped away from Blaine’s ankle, and he kicked his foot free of the other two still there.

“Do you really mean it? Or are you just saying nice to get in my good books? So I’ll help you down?”

“Dad was right,” said Blaine. The tears had stopped, and he was able to look at Shelly with a directness that made her want to cringe. There was a twang, and a couple of strands came loose of his shoulder, even as the tar baby’s legs started to unwrap from around his waist. “We got to be better to each other.”

Dad was right. Shelly felt her own anger melt away at that. Mom may not have understood, but at least Blaine did.

“Dad was right,” she said. “That’s right — teamwork.”

“What?”

“Something Dad said,” said Shelly.

Gingerly, avoiding the strings of tar along the way, Shelly made her way down the rest of the stairs to where Blaine still dangled. She held the tea-towel under her arm, and unscrewed the top of the turpentine, and soaked a corner of the towel with it. The tar baby’s free arm dangled gnarly fingers near her cheek, but Shelly pulled away and the tar baby didn’t follow. She handed the towel up to Blaine, making herself think kind thoughts.

“I hope you learned your lesson,” she said, as Blaine touched the turpentine to the tar baby’s other hand. Shelly stepped back as that arm came free. The tar baby was completely disentangled from Blaine, but it didn’t fall to the ground — as it came free it swung up among the tar strands nearer the ceiling — like a big, sticky spider, in a web spun of its own substance.

Blaine fell to the floor as he came loose of that web — and it seemed as though he landed all right. But he winced as he stood, and his legs trembled under him.

“Dad was right,” he said. “I wanted to hit you upstairs, and when I went to, I took a swing — and then I was down here! Hitting the tar baby, getting all stuck up like Mom.”

Shelly nodded. “That’s how it worked for Mr. Baldwin at prison, I bet,” she said. “The tar baby smells the mad, and it doesn’t matter who it’s directed at; it draws the mad to itself.”

“So why didn’t you wind up down here? When you kicked the bed?”

Shelly thought about that. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said. “I just wanted you to quit it — I didn’t think you’d hit your head.”

Blaine looked down. He really was a sad mess, Shelly thought — hair all black and sticky, and his pyjamas just as bad. And he looked weaker, too — the tar baby had taken it out of him, like it had from Mom. The only reason he was standing, Shelly thought, was because maybe Blaine had had more in him to begin with. “I guess it was because I wanted to hurt you then.”

“I guess that’s how it works,” said Shelly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Stop apologizing.”

“Okay.” Blaine started scrubbing at himself, but it was clear even with the turpentine, it was going to be a harder job than he had the strength for right now.

“Come on,” said Shelly — and she took his arm, sticky as it was. They started up the stairs together.

“What in fuck you get into, kid?”

Mark Hollins was sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon open and half empty in front of him, when they came out of the door. The sleeves of his denim jacket were rolled up, and Shelly could see a dark green shape that had been tattooed underneath the thick black hair on his forearm. There was no telling what it represented. Dad sat across the table from Mark Hollins, and there was a paper bag on the table between them.

Dad didn’t even look back.

“Don’t curse in front of the children,” said Dad.

“Ah, fuck you,” said Mark Hollins. “Gonna learn it somewhere.”

Now Dad did turn around, and he looked Blaine up and down. He nodded slowly.

“Learn your lesson, son?” Dad was smiling ever so slightly.

“Yes, sir,” said Blaine.

“Good. Take that turpentine upstairs to the bathroom, and start washing yourself. I’ll be up to help in a minute.”

Mark Hollins finished a long pull from his bottle, and slammed it down again onto the tabletop. He spoke directly to Blaine.

“You take your time, son. Your daddy and me got some business.”

As Mark Hollins spoke, Shelly saw Dad reach up and put his hand on the paper bag. Mark Hollins saw it too, because his eyes darted immediately to Dad’s hands. They had that same discouraging look to them they had when he’d smiled at Shelly, and now even the smile was gone.

“Ah, shit, Scott — don’t try this crap on me. We’re splitting it like always.”

“No,” said Dad, his voice as level and calm as could be, “not like always. Not like when I did time for you. I’m keeping all the cash. And the truck. You owe me.”

Shelly felt Blaine’s hand on her shoulder — he was squeezing too tight, but she could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was just scared — like she was starting to get. She was piecing things together, or maybe just admitting things to herself: like, where did that truck come from? Dad didn’t even have a valid driver’s license anymore, and the family hadn’t owned a car for years. And cash? She wondered if the cash was in that bag on the table; and if so, just how they’d managed to get it.

“I owe you shit,” said Mark Hollins.

“That’s your opinion.”

She and Blaine backed out of the kitchen and into the living room. Blaine’s hand was trembling, and she could hear him sniffling as he pulled her further into the living room, around behind Mom’s television chair. He crouched down, and Shelly crouched beside him, her arm over his filthy shoulders.

In the kitchen, the conversation escalated — at least on Mark Hollins’ side. He slammed his bottle down on the table, not hard enough to shatter, but enough to send a gout of booze up through the neck and splash on his white-knuckled fist.

“Give me the Goddamn money!” Hollins stood up, and put his arms under the table. Dad lifted his beer and the bag, and swung back as the table fell over onto its side, empty beer bottles and Shelly’s old pop can scattering across the linoleum floor. “I risked my fuckin’ neck tonight!”

Dad got up from his chair and stood with his arms crossed — beer in one fist, bag in the other — and he chuckled, shaking his head.

Shelly pinched her nose as the smell of tar grew stronger — it seemed like she could actually see the fumes, coming out of the half-open door to the basement in a thin grey cloud. Blaine didn’t cover his nose — he probably smelled enough tar his nose wouldn’t even tell it — but his hands were up over his ears, and his eyes were shut.

In the kitchen, Hollins reached around to his hip pocket, and he pulled something out that flashed metal in the kitchen light. Dad stopped chuckling as Mark Hollins held it in front of him, and even Shelly could see what it was: an X-Acto knife.

“That’s it, you fucker,” said Mark Hollins. “You’re right we’re not splitting this money. You’re going to give it all to me — isn’t that right?”

Dad looked straight at his old buddy Mark Hollins, and shook his head. “Get out of here,” he said, “if you know what’s good for you.”

And that set him off. Hollins shouted something Shelly couldn’t hear properly, and he lunged with the X-Acto blade—

—straight at Dad, he must have thought—

—but in fact, straight through the door to the basement.

Mark Hollins made a painful-sounding clatter as he tumbled over the first few steps, but the falling-down sounds ended quickly. There was nothing afterwards but a series of shouts — first surprised, then angry and finally just frightened. Dad walked over to the doorway and leaned over, both arms outstretched against the door frame. He laughed like he laughed when Mom got it earlier on. “What were you saying, Mark?” Dad stopped to cough — the tar-fumes were pretty thick — and went on: “You want all the money? Truck too? You want this house, Mark?”

Mark shouted something back, and now Shelly was sure it wasn’t just bad hearing on her part — he was making no sound anyone could understand.

“I’ll leave you to figure your way out of that one,” said Dad. “Then we can talk about how to divide things up, from now on.”

He pushed himself off the door, and swung it shut, then looked to the living room.

“Blaine?” he said.

“Y-yes, sir?” Blaine stuck his head up from behind the chair.

“Get on upstairs like I told you to. I’ll be along in a minute.”

“Yes, sir,” said Blaine. He got up and went to the stairs. Shelly followed, but Dad told her to wait behind a minute. He had some things, he said, to say to her.

Shelly went to her Dad. He picked up the table and set it right, and pulled the chairs back in place.

“You’re in pretty good shape tonight, little girl,” he said. “Didn’t feel the need to hit the tar baby?”

“No,” she said.

Dad nodded. “That’s good. Not everyone needs to learn from their own mistakes. What did you learn tonight?”

Shelly opened her mouth, and closed it again. There was a noise from behind the basement door — like a big cushion hitting against the stairs. She had been about to say team work, but that sound stopped her.

“Little girl?”

“It’s…” She looked down at her relatively clean hands. “… it’s gotten bigger,” she said. “There’s tar everywhere now.”

Dad nodded. “That’s what Mr. Baldwin said might happen. His tar baby got pretty big in its time, although it didn’t stay that way forever. Just while it soaked it up… all that anger… aggression…” Dad’s face went sour “… misplaced authority.”

“What does misplaced authority mean?” asked Shelly.

Dad patted her back. “Something you’ll never have to find out about,” he said. “Let’s just say, the other prisoners aren’t the only ones a fellow has to fear in jail. There’s also the damn guards…”

The thumping from below stopped — but there was another sound now: distant sirens, wafting across the scrub from the direction of the highway. Shelly looked out the window at the red truck Dad had driven home from his walk, and at the brown paper bag Mark Hollins had wanted so badly he’d pulled out a knife and knocked over a table.

“Go upstairs now,” Dad said. “Tell your brother I’ll just be another minute.”

Shelly did as she was told — but she stopped on the stairs, and peered over the banister to the kitchen.

Dad sat slouched back a bit in the chair, as peaceful and quiet as ever, as the sirens grew louder, and Shelly marvelled: she still couldn’t imagine her Dad taking a gun and pointing it at a grocery store man, and saying he’d kill him if he didn’t give over some cash. Any more than she could imagine him breaking the window of a shiny red pickup truck that belonged to someone else, and taking it for himself.

Mom was wrong, so wrong: Dad wasn’t a bad man at all. In spite of what everyone thought about him. As Shelly continued up the stairs, she hoped the police who were running that siren could see the goodness in Dad too; she hoped they wouldn’t be too mad about everything that had happened tonight.

The basement, after all, was only so big.