Winter's Bone

30

ALL MORNING it seemed fiddlers hidden from sight played slow, deep songs and everybody in the house heard them and absorbed the mood of their music. The boys were broody, alert but broody and wordless as they ate the scrambled eggs and baloney Gail whirled together in the black skillet. Mom kept to her room and Sonny carried a plate to her. Ned gurgled in his carrier across the tabletop. The hidden fiddlers’ music thickened the air with a lulling fog of low notes but now and then screeched rogue higher notes that raised eyes to the ceiling. Ree used her fork to chop her food to small bits, then gently chewed the bits on her unbroken side. Coffee made her broken side lunge with pain.

Sonny asked, “Will you see good again out of that swole eye?”

“They say.”

“Is it still all the way blind now?”

She spoke mushmouth sentences through bloused lips. “I can tell the sun is up. Catch a shadow movin’.”

Harold said, “There’s two Miltons from over towards Hawkfall in my grade—want I should fight the both of ’em?”

“No, Harold.”

“I’m friends with one, but I’ll still fight him anyhow if you say.”

“No. None of that. Don’t do that. Not now.”

Sonny said, “When, then?”

“If there comes a when, I’ll tell you.”

The boys split to catch their bus. Morning sun shined everything wooden to gold and made a garish molten puddle across the tabletop. Ree felt a dash of wooziness staring into the puddle and pushed back from the table, rose, and sat in Mom’s comfy rocker. She swallowed the last white hysterectomy pills and hummed along with the fiddlers. The music belonged to a ballad that the words to had been lost but was still easy to hum. Gail stood in Ree’s spot at the sink and washed dishes slump-shouldered while staring out the window at the steepness of limestone and mud. Ree watched Gail’s strong back and scrubbing hands, then snapped to a vision of herself idled by morning pills, beside the potbelly, humming along with unseen fiddlers, and instantly began to shake in Mom’s rocker, shake and feel weak in her every part. Weakened parts of her were crumbling away inside like mud banks along a flood stream, collapsing inward and splashing big flopping feelings she couldn’t stand. She gripped fiercely on the rocker arms and pushed and pushed until she gained her feet, moved to a chair at the table, laid her head flat in the molten puddle.

I ain’t never goin’ to be crazy!

Gail draped the dishrag over the faucet, turned around and said, “Done.”

“You’re awful good to pitch in.”

Gail stood over Ned, adjusted his blankie, pulled his skull cap snug. “I’ve got someplace I want to take you, Sweet Pea. Someplace they say’ll make you feel better in your bruises’n all.”

“I don’t know. I feel so stiff.”

“Here. Take this.” Gail reached into a near corner for a broom, an old grimy broom, the straw bristles trimmed short and made dull by long use. “You can lean on this ol’ broom like a crutch, kind of. We’ll be drivin’, but there’s some walkin’.”

The broom helped. Ree put the straw end under her armpit and leaned. She tapped the broomstick to the floor and walked with a peg-leg sound to Mom’s doorway. She rested against the jamb and squinted into the shadows.

“Mom, you might as well come out of your room. This is how I look now. I know it troubles you to see, but you might as well come out of your room’n get some sun. Your rocker’s all warmed up for you. I’ll only be lookin’ this way for a while, then I’ll be just almost like I was again.”

Gail said, “You about ready?”

There was no response from the shadowed bed, no words or movement, and Ree turned away and thrust the broomstick down hard and creaked toward the front door. She took Mamaw’s coat off the wall hook, slipped into the sleeves.

“Reckon I should bring my shotgun?”

“I would. If it happens you do need it, there ain’t gonna be no time to send home for it.”

“I about wouldn’t mind needin’ it today. I got me some targets picked out.”

“Well, I hope to hell it don’t come to that while Ned’s along, that’s all I can say.”

“Aw, don’t worry, they’re probly done with me.”

Ree carried the shotgun, Gail carried the baby. Ree limped on her broom down the porch steps to the old truck and noted a flurry of women watching from across the creek. Sonya, Betsy, and Permelia standing with two Tankersly wives from Haslam Springs and two women Ree didn’t exactly recognize. Gail started the truck and eased down the rut road. She waved when level with the women across the creek.

Ree said, “What’s up with them over there?”

“You, I bet. That’s Jerrilyn Tankersly and, I think, Pam’s her name.”

“I know them two some—who’s the other two?”

“One’s a Boshell. I’m purty sure that’s a Boshell. And one’s a Pinckney girl who married a Milton. The tall gal’s the Boshell. Both of ’em’re from around Hawkfall.”

“Think they’re askin’ shit about me?”

“Looks more like Sonya’s tellin’ ’em shit, from here. Their lips ain’t movin’ much.”

Ree laughed, then winced when her hurt lips spread, and said, “Heck, none of the ones I’d like to shoot is standin’ in the open over there. I could pot ’em from here if they was.”

Gail twisted her neck to see the gathered women.

“Looks to me like Sonya’s took up for you, Sweet Pea.”

“Huh. She’s got a soft spot for Sonny. Can’t help herself.”

At the hard road Gail continued south, straight across the blacktop to regain the dirt rut. Barbed wire nailed to tilting timber posts made a slack fenceline along the western side of the rut. A roadkill armadillo had been tossed at the fence and snagged on a barb, tail up and eaten down to an eyeless husk that wiggled in the breeze. Gail said, “Does he know? Sonny?”

“Not from us. If he knows, it’s from somebody else blabbin’, ’cause we never.” The eastern side of the rut belonged to the government and a wall of trees grew near the road. Branches overhead rent the sunlight into jigsaw pieces that fell to ground as a jumble of bright shards and deckled crescents. Beer cans and whiskey bottles and bread bags uglied the gully between the rut and the woods. Ree said, “The army’ll still take you even without the full amount of teeth, won’t they?”

“I don’t know. I imagine they would. Why wouldn’t they?”

Ned stretched and mewed, opened his eyes and puckered his lips, then was instantly asleep again. He smelled sweet and the trees stood tall and the truck jostled across furrows in the rut. Heavy clouds rimmed the northwestern distance, a warning border of bustling gray creeping into the plain sky.

“Blond Milton said him’n Sonya’d take Sonny. I tell you that? Raise him on up from here for me.”

“He did? That might help some.”

“But he’ll make Sonny what I hoped he wouldn’t be.”

“Of course he will. That’s why he wants him. That’s why they all want sons. What about Harold?”

“Harold don’t shine for him. Mom neither.”

“Well, what else can you do? You thought about that?”

Pills shunted the pain aside from her body but did nothing for her pained thoughts but slow them to a yawning pace, make them linger. The shotgun was upright between her knees and she choked the double barrels with both hands. She said, “Carry Mom to the booby hatch’n leave her on the steps, I guess. Beg Victoria’n Teardrop to take Harold in.”

Gail shook her head slowly, touched two fingers to Ned’s chest.

“Oh, god, I hope that ain’t the way it goes, Sweet Pea. I hope to hell it ain’t. I don’t believe Harold’ll be the type can hack prison.”

Ree stared ahead down the loose dirt rut while low dust dogs appeared alongside and chased the truck tires. The road was mostly straight and fairly smooth through the government trees. The truck crested a ridge and rolled downhill into a stark valley that narrowed to a springwater creek. Bluffs of dour stone shrugged above the bottoms, streaked black by ages of drip, with like boulders knocked low to the water’s edge. The bluffs kept the creek shadowed but for two hours on either side of noon. Turkey buzzards spanned their wings and wafted in patient tightening circles high above the creek bed.

“Is this where you’re takin’ me?”

“Yup. Bucket Spring. Remember Bucket Spring? The water here’s good for you.”

“That water’s colder’n hell!”

“That’s what makes it good. That’s what makes it help all your bruises’n bumps’n stuff.”

“It’s colder’n a goddam witch’s tit in there!”

“Trust me.”

Above the springhead there was a space to park, and logs pounded into the slope lengthwise made steps leading down to the clean, clean water. Where the spring boiled from the earth the water was a cool holy blue and rose to make jouncy plashes across the surface. As the water spread downstream the blue dimmed to crystal clarity and watercress grew in swaths of brilliant green along the bed. Boulders had fallen into haphazard stacks near the springhead and a few reached the pool of blue water and made angled sitting spots.

Gail helped Ree from the truck. Ree poked her way down the few dirt steps with their timber edges, leaning on the broomstick, while Gail carried Ned by the swinging handle of his carrier. They stopped on a gravel spit beside the pool.

“I’ll make us a little fire, first. For when we come back out wet. You just rest ’til I get some heat raised, hear, Sweet Pea? Then we’ll doctor you up good.”

“Okey-doke.”

“I’ll set Ned here.”

“Okey-doke.”

The water was a color Ree’d pick for the jewel in a meaningful finger ring. She leaned on her broomstick, the end sinking into gravel, zoned still by pills and staring into the pool of jewel-colored water. Where the stream ran from the pool the water was so clear she could appreciate individual rocks on the bottom, clumps of green that swayed, skittish tiny fish facing upstream.

She sat on the spit next to Ned and stared. There was a metal ladle on a rope hanging from a sapling by the springhead, a ladle the old ones still came and dipped and raised to drink from the freshest of water. At school teachers said don’t do that anymore, stuff has leaked to the heart of the earth and maybe soured even the deepest deep springs, but plenty of old ones crouched and sipped from the ladle yet. The pool of water loosed a scent, a blessed flavorful scent that folks couldn’t often resist, something in the bones and meat made them bend, drink, step out and drop into the flow.

The fire was slow in starting, but Gail fed twigs to the first tiny flicker and calmly raised a fine strapping circle of flame. The smoke bent with the breeze and trailed away downstream, low above the creek. The fire flung heat as wide as two spread arms and Ned was set where the farthest hand would be. Gail said, “On your feet, Sweet Pea. Time to get naked.”

“Other people could come here today, too, you know.”

“Oh, goodness, I sure hope not—they’ll see us both naked if they do.”

Ree stood and dropped Mamaw’s coat to the gravel spit, began to unbutton, and said, “I ain’t swam naked since I don’t know when.”

“I bet the last time was in that pond over the ridge behind Mr. Seiberling’s place. That was a purt-near perfect swimmin’ hole, back before he started runnin’ cattle and they filled it with flops.”

“Yup. That was when.”

Gail stripped to the buff quickly, then crouched to undo the laces of Ree’s boots, tugged them off and set them near the fire. Ree stood bare to the wind, looking up at the tall dour bluffs. Her many bruises were changing colors by the hour, nearly, all of them hurtful to see. Gail took her hand and they stepped into Bucket Spring, waded straddle-deep into the chill water, and shivered and clattered, looking at each other with eyes popped wide until both began to laugh. Gail led on, pulling Ree toward the deeper blue center, feet shifting in the gravel underfoot, cold numbing legs to the hips. She dropped her haunches, water rose to her neck, and she said, “Sit.”

“I already about can’t feel my legs.”

“Sit. Sit all at once’n get the shock over fast.”

Ree let herself drop into the spring, sat cross-legged on the stone bottom. She lowered her face to the water and held her breath, letting the cold embrace her knotted features and sore spots. The cold went through her like wind. When she looked up she said, “Man! It blasts the hurt right out of you!”

“Don’t it, though. Now get out’n get warm awhile. Then we do it again.”

They stepped from the spring, hands rubbing at their skin. The pink on their bodies had become red and the white become pink and ringlets of splashed hair clung to their necks. They squatted near the fire, wore coats like cloaks draped around their shoulders, leaned toward the heat and watched the flames ripple.

Gail said, “I’m gonna go home.”

“Home?”

“The trailer. Back to the trailer.”

“You are? Back? Why?”

“Ned’s gonna need more than me in this life, Ree. You had ought to know that real well yourself. Plus, you got all these troubles, and I sure shouldn’t be in the middle of ’em, not with my baby along.”

“I think most likely they’re done with me.”

“You can’t know what’s gonna happen. Me’n Ned need to get home.”

Ree threw Mamaw’s coat off, flung it at her piled clothes. She walked hunched over into the spring and fell in completely. She held her breath underwater and opened her eye and gained a clean misty view of rocks polished slick by ages and heard the murmur of a living spring in her ears, the mumbles and plops of water from forever rushing past. When she stood up, the breeze instantly made her soaked head too cold and she jumped from the spring toward the fire.

Gail said, “You’re movin’ better already.”

“I forgot where I hurt.”

“Might as well get dressed.”

“Do you really love him or somethin’?”

“I don’t know. My heart don’t exactly bust out the trumpets every time I hear his name or nothin’. Nothin’ like that—but I love Ned. I way, way love Ned.”

Once dressed, Ree raised her broomstick but hardly needed to lean on it. She pegged to the truck, sat on the bench seat and swallowed a yellow pill and a blue pill. Gail drove in silence to the crest of the hill and over, out of the valley, back to the flat road through government trees. Buzzards had massed to peck something fluffy crushed on the road ahead but took off in gawky flapping alarm as the truck neared.

Ree said, “You didn’t like it? You gonna tell me you didn’t like it?”

“I liked it. I liked it, but not enough.”

The glum front from the northwest had seeped gray over much of the sky. Huffing wind made the forest sway, and a brastle of limbs knocking was joined to the soughing. The road seemed three times as long going this way. A grunting timber truck passing slowly forced Gail to wait where the dirt met the blacktop. Red flags were tied to the log ends and foul smoke roiled from the tailpipe.

Ree said, “Think Floyd’n his daddy’d like to buy our timber from me? Huh? ’Cause if we got to sell, I’d rather it to be to you-all.”

“Really? You mean that?”

They crossed the blacktop onto the rut road to home and Ree made herself look out the window the other way. “If I’ve got to sell these woods, Sweet Pea, I’d want it to be to you’n yours.”