Part 21 (1/2)

This woman belongs to the man. She has stood by him as he hurt her with hot water and then with cold. She has. .h.i.t her, held a gun to her head.

She takes the stairs three at a time and when she rams her shoulder into the woman's midsection, lifts her up and slams her down into the dirt she howls in pain. The Woman kneels and straddles her. She waves her arms trying to hit her or push her away and she bats them off like pests, like insects, like flies.

She is shaking her head and shouting. Her eyes are wide. The Woman digs her thumb and forefinger into those eyes and they pop like pits from ripe fruit and roll across her cheeks. She leans down and quickly bolts first one and then the other. Then her teeth find the soft flesh of her cheek.

The man's woman is no longer shouting now. She is making choking sounds as though it were she and not the Woman doing the eating.

The Woman chews, swallows, leans down and drinks from the sweet seep and spurt of blood. She turns the head beneath her hand, which offers no resistance - she has seen this many times before with the grievously wounded, it is almost like a kind of sleep - and bites deep into the other cheek.

She glances up as she chews and sees a thresher machine leaning against the side of the house, one of its blades propped upright beside it. She finishes chewing and sucks the blood from this cheek too. Then she hoists the woman up onto her shoulder and walks to the house.

She tosses her high up onto the steps. Hears her backbone crack against them and sees her head thump down like a log on a woodpile and loll off to one side.

She picks up the blade and runs her finger up and down.

It lacks a proper edge but it will do.

Peg hears her mother's shouts Chris!Peg!please!help!help! Chris!Peg!please!help!help! and then hears no more and even the dogs have abruptly stopped but it is as though she were tranced there standing in the cellar, she knows she should try to help her mother but she cannot, she's rooted there - and what she feels most strongly is a sense of and then hears no more and even the dogs have abruptly stopped but it is as though she were tranced there standing in the cellar, she knows she should try to help her mother but she cannot, she's rooted there - and what she feels most strongly is a sense of safety safety though that makes no sense to her at all. though that makes no sense to her at all.

Safety. And calm. Though there's a wild woman loose. Safety.

Strange.

And then she thinks G.o.d! Darleen! G.o.d! Darleen! and realizes her little sister's utter and realizes her little sister's utter lack lack of safety - her vulnerability to everybody concerned dashes the calm, fills her with terror suddenly and breaks the spell. of safety - her vulnerability to everybody concerned dashes the calm, fills her with terror suddenly and breaks the spell.

She runs up the stairs and sees that the sun is setting, her house bathed in a warm yellow-orange light, sees her mother's broken body on the stairs in that same soft glow, steps over and around it and hurries inside, calling her sister's name.

THIRTY FOUR.

Cleek is rapt.

He has seen the dogs ravage a racc.o.o.n felled from a tree at night under the beams of his and his buddies' flashlights but never anything like this. Nor has he ever seen his daughter at work. If anything she's the most vicious of the four. She's digging teeth and b.l.o.o.d.y hands into the remains of the teacher's right breast all the way down to the exposed ribs. Agnes is at her side tearing into the woman's haunch while George and Lily have an arm and leg respectively chewed to the bone.

They're working as a team.

The teacher's face is gone. Her ears are gone. Her c.u.n.t and most of her a.s.s are gone.

The dogs are sloppy eaters. There are bits of her scattered everywhere.

”Doesn't even look real anymore,” Brian says, ”does it, dad.”

He's every bit as engaged as Cleek is.

”Does to me,” he says.

He doesn't know particularly what he means by that but it has the ring of truth so he says it again.

”Does to me.”

The barn door slams open and at first he doesn't believe what he's seeing. His mind is playing tricks on him. She's standing in the waning sunlight. There's blood smeared all along her face and neck and hands and staining Belle's baby-blue dress. She's holding something a foot and a half long, wide and flat.

”Jesus wept,” he says.

Peg glances out the window. Sees the woman striding across the yard toward the barn, taking her time, in no rush at all. Moving away from the house, which is very good. Moving away from the house, which is very good. The woman's back is straight. There's an almost sensuous sway to her hips. Peg thinks of cats. Big golden cats. The woman's back is straight. There's an almost sensuous sway to her hips. Peg thinks of cats. Big golden cats.

She holds Darleen by the hand while with the other hand she's searching through the open drawer for a spare set of keys to the Escalade but all she finds are the spares to her mother's Toyota which are no good to her at all. The Toyota's at the shop. Her father's got the keys to the f.u.c.king Escalade in his pocket of course and there are no f.u.c.king spares in the drawer.

”Momma!” says Darleen. ”I want Momma!”

No you don't, she thinks. Not anymore.

You want me.

The Woman watches the man take an involuntary step back and go down stumbling in a shower of rakes and shovels. But the boy is frozen. Holding on to a dripping hose with his mouth open, staring at her. He looks like the stupid pig boy that he is.

The man is fallen so first it's the boy.

She crosses to him in three long strides and brings the weapon down into the soft flesh of his lower belly just above the hip and just beneath the rib. It's a practiced move. The boy shouts and drops the hose and leans instinctive into the b.l.o.o.d.y wound, grasping for it to stop the pain and the flow of blood and she tosses the blade into her other hand and brings it down on the corresponding side. The boy leans into that one too.

She tosses it again and strikes. Tosses a fourth time. Strikes again.

She is chopping him like a tree.

This tree is screeching now.

The man is trying to get to his feet so she rises up on one foot and kicks him back down amid the rakes and shovels.

Inside the cage the dogs are wild. Blood in the air. She can smell it too. Both inside the cage and out. It is the smell of conquest, of food, of life.

Twice more she tosses and strikes and on the second strike severs the spine.

The tree is felled - into two parts which drop away from each other.

And neither part knows that it is yet dead. The legs kick and tremble. The mouth and eyes open and close. The hands grapple with empty air.

Later perhaps she will eat of him. His p.e.n.i.s perhaps. His nose. Perhaps the eyes that have watched her. But for now there is the man. Who is on his knees and reaching for something above.