The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

Melissa VanBeck Given Her History

From Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine

The night my family burnt up I came to in a ditch. I was real little, and don’t recollect if it was the yelling or the smell of smoke and gasoline that brought me to. The smoke came from my house, which looked pretty near done in. The smell of gasoline came off me. Billy’s dog, Jake, was hunkered up next to me, and had that flat-eared look he got when Billy told him to do something or other. Billy was my oldest brother and it wasn’t usual for Jake to be someplace without him, but he made being in the ditch tolerable and I leaned in close to him and shut my eyes. Jake stayed by me although he whined a bit and trembled some.

When I go to sorting things out about that night, what happened and when, it still gets mixed up and I feel like I’m gonna puke, which Mama said little girls don’t do. But sorted or not, Mama and Daddy and Johnny were still burnt up. And all that talk about who set the fire and why, makes me want to do that thing Mama said little girls don’t do, but what with me not being so little anymore, maybe doesn’t matter so much.

It didn’t take me long to reason out that Billy wasn’t burnt up with Mama and Daddy and Johnny. Who else would have left me in a ditch with Jake? Billy always treated me bad, and at the time it seemed funny he didn’t leave me in the house with everybody else. Also, it seemed peculiar he didn’t take Jake with him. Unless it was too hard getting Jake to hop a moving train. And I was pretty sure that was how Billy got out of town. When I say Billy got out of town, I don’t mean a real town, but I can’t think of what else to call where we lived. There was the railroad station, where Daddy worked, the school, the post office and the little store, where you could get bread and canned pork and beans and Vienna sausages. Most folks lived out of town, on farms. And there was a school bus that went out and got their kids and dropped off their mail.

Daddy had sugar diabetes and when he peed he said his pee was honey. I tended to believe him. Because when I went to the outhouse after he’d peed, the boards were all sticky where he missed the hole. The diabetes made him shaky so he missed it a lot. Billy thought it was funny to catch me in the outhouse and stick my head in the hole. Then he’d laugh and tell me if I squealed on him he’d drop me down in there. I never did squeal. Billy was just mean enough to do what he said. That’s why I couldn’t figure him putting me in the ditch with Jake.

Nobody knew about Billy not being dead. I was pretty sure he’d come back for Jake — and maybe me. I kept an eye out for him, so when he did come we could take off real fast.

People put Jake and me with one of the schoolteachers. There were only three of them and they picked my third-grade teacher because she didn’t have kids. Even at that, they had to do some talking to get Mrs. Clarke to agree to both me and Jake. She just kept staring at me, like she didn’t know me, which wasn’t true, since I had her most of a year already. Mr. Clarke seemed nice. He was pretty old and had only one eye. Mrs. Clarke was a lot younger and you could tell he liked her a lot. He kept telling her he’d make sure to keep Jake and me from bothering. At first she said she wouldn’t take Jake, but Mr. Clarke looked at me real kind and said Jake seemed well behaved. He’d take that back later, if he could — but I’d made up my mind Jake and me was a package deal.

If they’d asked my opinion, I’d told them I’d rather live with the man that got Jake to calm down enough to get us out of the ditch. He was big and smelled like dirt and motors, and his hands were giant and all beat-up-looking. But when he picked me up and petted my hair, saying everything was going to be all right, over and over, they were as gentle as Mama’s. Jake only growled a little, then followed us out of the ditch.

Folks were standing around, asking the big man all kind of questions. They called him Juris, which I thought was a peculiar name, but who am I to talk. With a name like April-May I’ve got no room to cast stones. Juris sort of waved them off with his eyebrows, like you’d do with a bunch of pesky flies. You could tell people had him held up in regard the way they quieted down right away. No one ever treated Daddy the way they treated Juris. We were railroad folks. Mama said all she ever wanted in life was to live in a house that wasn’t railroad brown and stay in one place long enough to have a garden and make some friends.

Mr. Clarke let Jake sleep with me. Mrs. Clarke glared every time she looked at Jake until she finally said what was on her mind. If that dog, she called Jake, that dog, was gonna live in her house, he’d better have a bath. I’d never heard of giving a dog, especially Jake, a bath. But that’s what me and Mr. Clarke did. I had to admit, Jake smelled a lot better. Being with the Clarkes I was getting used to being clean and having clean things around. Not that Mama was dirty. But we didn’t have a real inside bathroom and if we needed bathing, Mama had to heat water on the stove and put it in a tub in the kitchen. Daddy got to use the water first, then Billy and Johnny. Mama made a fresh tub for me and her.

Mama was real skinny and wore bright red lipstick all the time. Daddy made fun of her, saying who did she think was gonna look at her anyway. I wondered that too, but not in the mean way Daddy said it. Once I asked Mama if she would put lipstick on me. She sat me down in front of her and I made my mouth the way she showed me, and right then, she started to cry, leaving me with only my lop lip done. Mama was like that. She cried at little things. Then something worth crying about, from how I saw it, like when Daddy hit her, on accident he said, and she’d just act like nothing happened. The Clarkes were real different. He never hollered at her, and I’m pretty sure she never got hit on accident.

About a week or so after the fire, the big man. Juris, stopped by to see how I was doing at the Clarkes, and give me a sack of clothes he said his kids were too big for. They were near new as far as I could tell, and a lot nicer than Billy and Johnny’s hand-me-downs. I said, “Appreciate the thought,” and he pulled a piece of bubble gum out of his pocket and put one of his big hands on my head, which didn’t feel bad, more like a warm hat.

On Sundays Mania got on her knees in front of Daddy to pray and he put his thing in her mouth. After a while he put his hands on her head and said he forgave her.

Then Juris asked if Jake and me liked living with the Clarkes. I tried blowing a bubble so he’d stop asking questions. But he kept on, like giving me a crummy sack of clothes, I owed him. Daddy always said people won’t give you nothing unless they want something. I could see how he might be right, so I watched real close to see what he wanted for those clothes and the bubble gum I’d already chewed. He was saying something about Mama and Daddy, and them being in heaven with God. And Johnny, being God’s innocent child, was in heaven too. I didn’t say anything, not knowing very much about heaven and God’s ideas, but I noticed right away he didn’t say Billy was in heaven.

Then he outright asked what he’d been leading up to.

“Do you know where Billy is?”

I took the bubble gum out of my mouth and put it on Jake’s nose, thinking to get Juris off Billy. But he just kept staring at me, not even giving Jake a glance, so I stuck the gum behind my ear for later.

“Do you?” he said again, like he was trying to scare me into saying something.

Some folks just don’t have the knack of scaring little kids. I waited a bit, then fell down on my knees and folded my hands under my chin and stared up at the ceiling, like the Jesus picture Mrs. Clarke had hanging in the kitchen.

“I expect he’s burnt up with Mama and Daddy and Johnny.” I said it real quiet. Then to top it off I said, “Amen,” just the way Mrs. Clarke said it after she prayed over me at night.

It was the “Amen” that did the trick, because he stood up real fast and when he left he didn’t tell me goodbye, just stomped out. Then I heard him and Mr. Clarke in the yard talking and I snuck up to the living room window to listen.

Juris was leaning up against his pickup, the way of most all the farmers, smoking a cigarette.

Mama let me comb her hair, and it smelled like vinegar and cigarettes.

Mr. Clarke was standing in front of him with his thumbs in his belt, one foot dragging around in the dirt making circles. Juris was saying, “Keep your eyes peeled. That damn loco kid might just come back to finish off what he started.” Then Mr. Clarke said something I couldn’t make out, but it made Juris snort. And he said, “Don’t be fooled. She knows more than she’s saving. Wouldn’t put it past that crazy Billy to come back for her. And if he does, stay out of his way.”

A couple things made me glad. That I wasn’t the only one that thought Billy was coming back to get me, and that Juris saw me as somebody that didn’t go blabbing everything. And I hoped Billy knew I wasn’t the one that told about him not being burnt up.

Juris didn’t stop by again, and more and more I could tell Mrs. Clarke was wishing somebody else would take me and Jake. But like I said, it was a pretty small town and everybody else already had kids. It wasn’t that she was mean, but if me and Jake walked into the kitchen and she and Mr. Clarke were visiting, she’d quit talking and leave the room saying she had things to do. Mr. Clarke would look all kind and sad at the same time and ask me something that had nothing to do with anything, just to cover up Mrs. Clarke leaving the room. I could have told him it didn’t much matter to me if Mrs. Clarke left the room or not. When Billy came back, we’d be out of her hair.

One day when Mrs. Clarke was shopping and Mr. Clarke was taking a nap, Jake and me went out back to sit in the shade and get out of the heat. There was a cement pond back there. Mr. Clarke built it in his spare time, which he had a lot of, him being old and having only one eye. He was real proud of that pond and had it fixed up so water ran into it all the time and then out to the garden. For a pond, it wasn’t very deep and I’d waded in it a couple times, although I wasn’t supposed to. Mr. Clarke said it would scare the fish to have me sloshing around. I was dubious about fish feeling scared, but I agreed anyhow. Some of the fish were real special and cost a lot. They were big enough to fry, but all different colors of orange and white.

Daddy once got a goldfish someone left on the train and brought it home in a glass jar. We didn’t know what to feed it, so it died and Billy cut it open to see its guts.

Mr. Clarke said these weren’t goldfish, they were koi, and came from Japan. Daddy said Japs ate dogs. He could have been lying but just in case he wasn’t, I hated all Japs. So when Jake jumped in the pond and started biting fish, I didn’t think too much about it. The more he did it the more I saw what a good time he was having, sticking his head under the water and grabbing those goldfish and tossing them out on the grass. There was plenty of splashing around, which is probably what woke Mr. Clarke up. I’d planned on throwing them all back after Jake was through playing with them, and if some of them didn’t make it, I’d just play dumb. I wasn’t expecting Mr. Clarke to wake up and come storming out of the house, hollering like somebody was poking him with a fork or something. Jake froze he was so dumbstruck, like I was, at the noise coming out of Mr. Clarke. I wanted to laugh at how funny Jake looked, standing like a statue, up to his belly in water, with an orange and white goldfish in his mouth. It was a big one, and its head hung out one side of his mouth and its tail out the other.

By the time Mr. Clarke got to us, he was spitting slobber in all directions. Jake dropped the fish and we took off, and Mr. Clarke, yelling all sorts of things, chased after us. Then he sort of coughed and fell down. Jake and me stopped and waited to see what he’d do next, but he was still as a rock. I thought he might be trying to fool us into coming close so he could grab us, but he was too twisted up to be fooling. Jake trotted over and gave him a sniff, then kind of growled. It wasn’t a real growl, more like a grumble. Mr. Clarke didn’t even twitch. I figured he pretty much kilt himself with all that yelling.

Mama made a cake and strawberry ice cream for Daddy’s birthday. And Daddy fell down from eating too much and Mama hit him in the face over and over.

The grass around the pool was wet from so many fish flopping. Some of them were dead from being out of the water too long, and from being bit. Getting them all throwed back before Mrs. Clarke came home didn’t take long. Then we ran back to the house, stopping to see if Mr. Clarke had maybe started to breathe again. But he could have been one of those special fish, the way his one eye stared open, not blinking or nothing.

Daddy gave me a doll somebody left on the train. One of its arms was torn off and its eyes were made of glass.

When Mrs. Clarke got home, me and Jake was in the kitchen eating a jam sandwich, so as to look offhand and get rid of the fish smell on Jake’s breath. Not that she would get that close to him, but I wasn’t thinking all that clear. She asked me where was Mr. Clarke. I said I hadn’t seen him. And then I said Jake and me had just got up from a nap, which was why we were eating a sandwich. She studied me a bit, like she was gonna ask me something else. I stuffed the rest of the sandwich in my mouth. Mrs. Clarke was real strict about talking with your mouth full. She quit looking at me and headed to the bedroom, calling to Mr. Clarke. She didn’t call him Mr. Clarke. She called him Poppy. Which, again, and it isn’t for me to say, seemed a funny thing to call the man you’re married to. Mama didn’t call Daddy, Daddy, she called him Bill. Billy was named for him. People should be more careful what they name their kids because a lot of meanness came with that name.

Pretty quick Mrs. Clarke started hollering, “Oh, my God! Oh, no! No! No!” and I figured she’d found Mr. Clarke. So Jake and me ran pell-mell outside, me yelling, “Oh, my God! Oh, no! No! No!” just like Mrs. Clarke. If I’d been thinking more clear, I’d been saying. “What’s wrong,” like I didn’t know he was dead.

She was sitting there on the grass, bawling up a storm, holding Mr. Clarke’s head in her lap. He looked pretty bad, with his mouth open, staring at me and Jake with his one fish eye. Also, he’d pooped and peed, and smelled even worse than he looked. I decided right then to make sure and use the toilet before I passed on. None of that seemed to make a difference to Mrs. Clarke, and she kept rocking his head until I was worried it might break off, like when you bend a piece of wire back and forth in one spot. When I thought of Mr. Clarke’s head bent off his neck, I giggled. Mrs. Clarke must have thought I’d gone hysteric, because she told me to go back to the house and call Juris.

Nobody ever showed me how to use the phone. I guess because anyone I might have called was burnt up. And I didn’t think it was a good time to ask Mrs. Clarke for any kind of instruction. So me and Jake lit out down the street, which was more like a road, me still not thinking clear. But moving was better than just sitting in the house looking at the phone, hoping it would ring Juris by its own self.

Once I got going, I got to thinking. I truly believe people’s brains work better when their legs are moving. Anyhow, I never did think in a sensible way when I was sitting down or laying in bed at night. Those times I’d spin a tale in my head, and sometimes make myself scared, or even cry, but nothing of any practical use ever came about.

The Little Store, that’s what folks called it, though I don’t think that was the real name, was the closest place to the Clarkes. I started running right away, so I’d be out a breath when I got there. Then I’d yell, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! No! No!” and they’d ask me what’s wrong and I’d fall down on the floor and start bawling and say, “Mr. Clarke. Mr. Clarke. Oh, my God! Something’s wrong with Mr. Clarke.” And then someone would go see.

Everything went just like that, except I got to giggling, which was all right. They thought I was hysteric and gave me a bottle of Coca-Cola to settle me down. Then they took off and left me sitting there. At first I thought we were all alone so I went behind the counter where the candy was.

Jake got to tail-wagging and staring at something in the back of the store, which was where a bunch of folks played cribbage most of the time. Sitting there, still as could be, was an old woman. I’d seen her around. She lived by herself, cross from the Clarkes, and rode a bicycle with a basket on the handlebars. She was treated with regard, not like Juris, but you could tell she had a place in folks’ eyes. Near as I could tell, she’d been in town forever. Anyone hadn’t been born close by, never got to matter. Not that people were mean, they just didn’t ask you over for coffee, and if you asked them, they’d be real polite about having something else they had to do. That used to make Mama cry.

The old woman gave me the shivers, the way she sat, all calm, watching me. I was glad Jake saw her before I took any candy. I got the feeling she could see inside my head, so I made like I was picking stickers out of Jake’s feet. After a while she still hadn’t moved or said anything and Jake was nosing my fingers away, telling me he’d had enough of my digging. When I looked up she was smiling, if you could call it that. Her head cocked to the side and one eyebrow jacked up. And her hair was all flyaway, like a dandelion flower that’s gone to seed.

“So, you’re April-May,” she said. I nodded, thinking the less I talked the better. She wasn’t a big talker either and it seemed like an hour before she said, “My name’s Vivian.”

I nodded again, remembering Daddy saying some old woman named Vivian owned half the town. Herited it, was what he said, and never had to work a spit. Then she stood up and I saw she wasn’t much taller than a midget.

“You and your dog better come home with me. No one is coming back for you.” I started to butt in, wanting to call her a liar, but she kept on, like she read my mind. “Folks are busy tending to the Clarkes. They won’t think of you until later, and given your history, they won’t know what to do with you.”

“Well, Ma’am,” I said, trying to sound snooty, like Daddy when he made fun of the women in first class, which had beds and toilets. “You have me stumped, since I don’t know what history you’re talking about.”

That must have showed her because she sort of sucked her lips into her mouth and squinted her eyes at me for what seemed like a long time.

“You’re flotsam,” she said. Her voice was real soft. “You’re a stray. People will put their leftovers out for you, thinking they’re being kind. But they won’t want you.”

There was hardly anything in Vivian’s house, just stacks of books. I’d never seen so many books in one place. Even school didn’t have so many. Some of them were opened like she’d just been reading. There was a rocking chair right by the window and a pair of old lady glasses sitting on top of an empty apple crate that’d been turned bottom side up to make a table. Everything was real clean, like she must have scrubbed it every day, which if she read all those books, didn’t seem like she’d have the time. Soon as we walked in the door, Jake started lifting his leg on the walls, squirting out yellow pee. Vivian followed him with her eyes, and when he finished all she said was, “So, Dog, are you home now?”

Waiting for Billy got to be more and more on my mind. Not that I especially enjoyed his company. But I did wonder what he had up his sleeve, not leaving me to burn up with the rest of them. When I thought about Mama and Daddy and Johnny, I could sort of understand how Billy got sick of them. The way they were, they really didn’t amount to much. I couldn’t even recollect what Johnny looked like, except he always had green snot coming out of his nose no matter what time of year it was. That, and he smelled bad, from some brown cream that came in a white jar. Mama said it was Resinal, but Billy called it monkey puke and made like he was gonna throw up whenever Johnny got within smelling range. Johnny wasn’t much younger than Billy but when you stood them side by side, Johnny looked like a plate of leftovers that needed throwed away.

When Vivian wanted to tell me something hard she didn’t put any polish on it. She’d say it straight out — to Jake, like going through him first would soften up whatever it was she had to say. “Dog,” she’d say. She never did call him by his real name, and after a while he’d answer to Dog, same as to Jake.

“Dog,” she said one day after we’d been there most of a month, “Mrs. Clarke doesn’t want you living with her. I said you may as well stay with me.”

I put my hands over my face and made like I was trying not to bawl. “She never wanted me and Jake. We were just a cross to her.”

That made Vivian laugh, which she probably hadn’t done more than a couple of times in her whole life.

We lived with Vivian near two years before we heard from Billy. That first year I didn’t go to school. Truth is, I never did go to school after the fire, but I don’t tell folks that, so they won’t think I’m some kind of retard. How I happened not to go to school was, one morning Juris came to see Vivian, and after he left she sat me down and started talking to Jake.

“Dog,” she said. “Mrs. Clarke says she’ll quit teaching if they let you back in school.”

“Mrs. Clarke says. Mrs. Clarke wants.” I said this real mean, sort of under my breath. “I guess if Mrs. Clarke wanted all of you to jump off a cliff you’d do that too.”

Right away I could see Vivian wasn’t finished talking to Jake.

“I told you in the beginning, folks wouldn’t know what to do with you. The less they see of you the easier they are with themselves.”

I knew she was meaning me, not Jake.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t much care one way or the other.”

All year long we ran around in the sage and scab rock that was behind Vivian’s house. Sometimes we’d go down to the willows that grew thick beside the river and catch tadpoles. We’d bring them back in a jar and put them in a pail until they turned into frogs. I never got tired of watching how something that looked like a fish could end up being a frog.

There was an old rabbit hutch in her backyard that had been burnt some. “You may as well use it for a playhouse,” Vivian said. “The rabbits aren’t coming back.”

Mama tried to leave once and Daddy put her head in the slop bucket and said she better never pull a stunt like that again.

“What happened to the rabbits?” I said.

She just shook her head and walked, sort of stiff like, back to the house. One thing we learned about Vivian. Once she made her mind up not to answer a question, no amount of asking would get a good result. And it wasn’t until later we found out what happened to those rabbits.

It took me and Jake most of two days to clean and fix up the rabbit house. Vivian watched a bit then came out dragging a board she had stuck under her porch for some reason or other. After that she hauled out a saw and a hammer and a can of nails. We sawed and hammered until we had most of the burnt-out places covered up, which made Vivian smile and me and Jake took some enjoyment from that.

We went pretty near all over, which Vivian let us do. She said, “As long as you’re back at a decent hour.”

We got a kick out of her saving that. Since she never said what hour she was talking about, we were never late. And when we showed up looking like we’d rolled around in some fire pit — which was all that was left of my family’s house — she never made a fuss.

Me and Jake went there and poked around. I never did find anything I remembered. Then one day we were partway there and got sidetracked by a bird, looked like a robin or something, flying around and squawking to beat the band. Jake got to nosing around in the weeds and turned up its baby. It was big enough to have some feathers, which was why it wasn’t already dead. I figured it must have jumped out of the nest thinking it could fly. I spotted the nest way up in one of the elm trees that were all over town. The mama bird just kept on screeching and flying around. Me and Jake could see no good result — birds having no hands or arms — was gonna come of all her hollering. Seemed like she should have been watching closer in the first place, which not knowing about the way of birds, it’s not my place to cast stones. I picked up the little bird, mindful not to squash it, and looked it square in the face. Its mouth was too big for its head, and it was opened real wide, which looked like it was yelling or hungry. The mama was still flying around, just not making so much noise. Jake was sitting in the dirt, waiting for me to make up my mind what to do with it. Being so little, it didn’t amount to much. I could have throwed it away. Jake was pushing at my arm to pet him, which I did. Then real gentle we carried the bird back to Vivian. By the time we got there it was still warm but not moving.

Vivian looked real sad and said it was dead. That made Jake and me feel bad, not so much about the stupid bird but about making Vivian sad. She wrapped the bird in a piece of old shirt I’d outgrown, and we buried it, which made us feel some better. Jake did a couple of tricks, like roll over and shake hands, so Vivian would stop being sad. And I quit thinking so much about poking around the old house.

Vivian knew the names of all the stars, and at night we sat on the porch with her big star book, the one with all the pictures, and we’d look at them in the book and then find them in the sky. Some nights they seemed so close I figured if I was on a mountain, I could touch them. Vivian said it didn’t matter how tall a mountain you climbed, the only way you could touch a star was in your mind. She talked like that. Mostly, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of these conversations, but me and Jake liked the quiet way of her.

At the end of summer that second year we were with Vivian, it was hot as a pistol. Folks said that instead of hello. Jake and me stayed inside, and I was down to my underwear. We laid out on the kitchen linoleum, which was cool, and ate ice cubes Vivian made out of orange Kool-Aid. And that’s where we were when somebody knocked at the front door, which wasn’t usual. Most folks just stood on the porch and hollered out a couple of times to see if Vivian was home or not. Sometimes, if she didn’t want company, she’d just not answer and no one thought much about it. But whoever was out there knocked again. Me and Jake could tell Vivian was thinking. We were used to her ways so it wasn’t a surprise to see her get all red in the face when, whoever it was, started to pound with something heavy, like a rock. That seemed to settle it for her and she sort of stomped to the door, which tickled me and Jake, on account of her being no bigger than a dwarf. And then, right before she grabbed the knob she stopped, like she just thought of something. Then cool as a cucumber she opened the door.

There stood Billy. He’d gotten big, like Juris. Just seeing him made me near too scared to breathe. Jake went crazy, barking and growling.

“Where have you been?” was all Vivian said. Like she knew all along he wasn’t dead, though I never told her, and she never asked.

I had hold of Jake. He kept growling and the hackles went up all along his back. The last time I saw him do that was when we’d cornered a rattlesnake and I was throwing rocks at it. Vivian motioned at Jake.

“Hush, Dog.” She said it quiet and level-like.

Billy kind of leaned against the doorway, looking over top of Vivian. “Well, hello there, April-May. Ain’t you glad to see me?”

“What do you want here, Billy?” Vivian was still talking quiet.

“I jus’ come back to see April-May.”

“Now you’ve seen her. Get off my porch.”

Billy grinned and I could tell he was missing some teeth. “No, I think I’ll jus’ come in. Get myself out a the sun.”

“You think you can waltz in here? After all you’ve done?”

He was starting to sidle closer, like he was gonna push Vivian out of the way, and her being not even half his size, she sure couldn’t do much to stop him.

“Well, now, old woman, I don’t know what you’re talkin ’bout.”

“I know what you did.”

Billy made a sound in his throat, I think was supposed to be a laugh, though his eyes didn’t look like they should if something was funny.

“Everyone knows you set the fires. You better get out of here.”

Vivian was still sounding calm but I could see Billy’s mouth go all slack and his eyes stopped blinking like a snake that’s getting ready to do something.

“You burned my rabbits.”

“Them was your rabbits? You should a been there. Yeh, I knowed them was your rabbits.” Billy was starting to push past Vivian. “They sure did scream. Jumpin around. All lit up.”

Mama called me funny bunny when she lucked me in at night. She was warm and soft and her hands smelled like Ivory soap.

Jake was getting hard to hold. He was near pulling me cross the floor, trying to get at Billy. Then I heard myself hollering, “You mean-eyed sumbitch! You tried to burn me up!”

And I remembered that night like I was still in it. The smoke, hanging on to Jake’s neck, him pulling me outside, running with him to hide in the ditch.

“I should turn him loose on you! He’d rip your sumbitch throat out!” I was yelling so loud I wanted to cover my own ears.

“April-May! Hold Dog!” Vivian was shouting at me.

It brought me up short, and Jake too. Next thing I knew, quick as a cat, she had the shotgun she kept behind the door and was pointing it at Billy. Billy’s jaw dropped, like he never expected the trouble he was into, and started backing away fast.

“You’re trash, Billy,” was all Vivian said, and pulled the trigger. It caught Billy in the neck, and face, and blew him clean off the porch.

I’d peed all over myself and Jake was licking my face. Vivian stuck the shotgun back behind the door.

“Well, there’s an end to it then,” she said so quiet I could barely hear.

I started to cry a bit, not being sorry about Billy, but thinking about those rabbits set on fire and not being able to run away.