Side by Side

59

Lucy Dockery heard Dixie close the bathroom door and sit heavily on the toilet. Through the uninsulated wall with cheap paneling nailed to both sides, Lucy could hear Dixie mumbling to herself just as clearly as if she were in the bathroom with her. Despite her father’s admonition, the woman sounded intoxicated. Lucy had read that the death camp guards during World War II stayed drunk or doped to the gills to better cope with the unpleasantness of their work.

Lucy went to the kitchen and lifted a ten-inch skillet from beneath the island made of two-by-fours topped with a slab of granite. In the TV’s uncertain light, she could see Elijah sprawled on his back in the playpen, motionless.

She slipped back into the bedroom and picked up the blanket she had vomited the chemical martini into. She lumped it on the bed and put the flashlight under the blanket so that the beam shone out and illuminated the wall. Then she picked up the skillet and moved to put her back against the wall beside the door. The iron utensil felt like the heaviest thing she had ever lifted, and she was sure it would crush Dixie’s skull like a bubble. How hard should she hit her? Too hard and it would kill her, too soft a blow and the musclewoman would take it away and beat her to death with it.

The toilet paper roll spun, the toilet flushed, and Lucy heard Dixie opening the door.

Lucy had never struck any living thing before, except a swipe on Walter’s arm when he beat her at Trivial Pursuit, a playful pat on his naked butt when her husband passed by on his way into the shower.

Raising the skillet over her head as far as the low ceiling allowed, Lucy moaned loudly and called out, “Come here, bitch!”

Dixie flung open the door. “Jeezuscryast,” she snarled, and stepped into the room, her gaze going from the lumpy blanket to the open window.

Lucy brought the frying pan down on the blond bouffant in an effort to drive the hairdo into Dixie’s neck. The large woman hit the mattress and lay there shivering like she’d chewed through a lamp cord. Then she stopped moving and was still. Lucy knew that she had killed her, but she couldn’t think about that until she was far away from this place.

Lucy ran into the den, grabbed up her unconscious child, clutched him to her to make sure he was breathing, then grabbed the thin blanket he had been lying on and ran. She passed the containers of gasoline as she made her way across the warehouse. Tenderly, she laid Elijah down on the blanket and tucked it around his tiny body. It was a sin to have drugged her baby, but she thanked God he was asleep. That way she could do this without worrying that he would make a racket.

Lucy ran back to the gasoline stash and realized that she had forgotten the matches. She picked up the jar and, holding it in both hands, carried it inside. Since Dixie was dead, she decided that she’d douse the living room. The trailer on fire would be a more effective lure than some flames in the dirt.

Lucy went to the shot glass filled with matches and dropped a dozen or so in the pocket of her T-shirt. She bent and started pouring the golden liquid from the pickle jar onto the floor, being careful not to get it on her bare feet. She sloshed it on the couch, then went into the bunkroom and poured the remainder on the floor there. She saw a camouflage poncho on the top bunk and she grabbed it and put it on, pulling her head up through into the hood. It would protect them outside, and hopefully make seeing her harder for the men coming in to fight the fire.

Lucy rushed from the room, feeling the cool fuel on the soles of her bare feet. She was at the door when a powerful blow caught her on the side of her head and knocked her reeling out through the door. She landed on her back on the steel porch. The hood partially obscured her vision, but she could see Dixie crawling on all fours toward her, blood covering her face like a wet curtain.

Dixie grabbed Lucy’s ankle and squeezed it so hard Lucy was sure the bone would snap.

“Geahbackinhere!” Dixie was dragging her back inside.

Lucy kicked out, striking Dixie’s collarbone, then the woman’s mouth with her heel. Dixie sat heavily, letting go of Lucy’s ankle and looking at the skinny woman who had tried to kill her with raw rage in her eyes.

“Youdead,” Dixie said. Her jeans were soaked with the gasoline she was sitting in. Lucy scrambled to her feet, her ears ringing from the blow to her head.

“Whereyougoingarunto? Killyouandyourdamkid.” Dixie stood and raised her hand slowly. There was a snap and a thick blade shot out from her hand.

Lucy brought her hand out from under the poncho.

Dixie raised the knife higher and smiled insanely.

Lucy struck the match in her hand on the steel railing and, while the phosphorus blossomed to life, she tossed it on the floor beneath Dixie.

Flames raced along the floor, consuming the fuel.

Lucy leaped over the porch railing, slamming painfully into the dirt.

Dixie stood on the porch beating at her flaming jeans with her hands. “YOULITTLEBITCH!” she roared.

Lucy grabbed the bucket at her feet and hurled its contents at the horrid woman.

When the wave of cool fuel hit Dixie, she froze, probably thinking Lucy was trying to put out the fire on her legs.

There was a fraction of a second before the flame reacted to being fed. Then the air, filled with vapor, went bright white as the liquid caught.

Dixie’s hair vanished. Her false teeth flew out of her flaming mouth, which had been open when the gasoline hit her. And she screamed.

Lucy had never heard such a howl. Lucy turned her back to the horror on the porch, ran to the gasoline drums, lifted the pickax she had placed there. Feeling like Superwoman, Lucy swung the pick like a baseball bat over and over, puncturing the drums. She stopped when she was sure there were enough holes to empty the drums.

Lucy didn’t look at Dixie until streams of gasoline were arcing out of the drums. Aflame, and bellowing, a whirling Dixie fell off the porch, landing on her back. It appeared that she was attempting to roll the flames out.

Lucy ran back to Eli.

Dixie’s screams echoed in Lucy’s ears, the fire a roaring monster trapped for the moment in the trailer. Dixie tried to get up on her hands and knees.

Lucy watched the dark stain growing from the gas drums-flowing toward Dixie.

God, there was so much gasoline.

And it was moving too fast.