Part 23 (1/2)

By the time he had them all off, his hand was covered with red whelps and the fingers had already started to swell slightly.

Holding his wrist, he looked at his father, his expression asking why, why did every lesson have to hurt so badly.

”Go wash that off,” his father said. ”Then feed the goats. And I want the barn cleaned up before you go to bed tonight, you hear?”

”Yes sir,” Paul managed to say.

He turned and headed for the water trough on the side of the barn, still holding his wrist. The pain was getting worse, and tears were coming freely down his face. He dunked his hand into the water that filled the trough and the coolness of it felt good. His breathing began to slow back down to normal, but the fingers were so stiff and swollen that he could barely flex them. He tried, and nearly screamed from the pain.

Then, glancing up towards the house, he saw his mother watching him from the shadows of the kitchen doorway. Her face was stern, almost like she was accusing Paul of doing something nasty. She looked away and retreated back into the darkness.

Paul went into the barn and took down the feed buckets from the wall, where they hung from a pair of old railroad spikes that his grandfather had driven into one of the wall studs. The swelling in his right hand had gone from bad to worse. It was an unnatural, angry shade of red now, and the pain was intense. He couldn't even close his fingers over the feed bucket's handle. When he tried, a pain shot through the injured hand and up the length of his arm. He let out a gasp and dropped the empty bucket onto the dirt floor.

”How's your hand?” his mother said from the doorway.

”It hurts,” he said. He didn't want her to see him crying, but there was no helping that. His eyes were welling up, and he could feel a few runners going down his cheeks.

”Here, let me see it.”

She came closer, and he held out his hand for her to look at. She grabbed it and turned it over, looking at it front and back.

He let out another gasp at the rough handling. ”Momma, that hurts.”

If she heard him, she made no sign of it.

”Momma, stop.”

He tried to pull his hand back.

She tightened her grip and pulled his hand back to where she could look at it. Her strength was surprising for such a small, frail woman.

”Stop, Momma. Please.”

”Hurts, don't it?”

”Yes, ma'am.”

”Well, it serves you right for being so stupid.”

”But, Momma, I didn't do it on purpose. I was just doing what-”

”Stop whining,” she snapped.

She let his hand drop, then looked out into the yard. It was getting late, and sunlight was settling down through the oak trees. The goats were moving around restlessly on the dirt road that led down to the horse pasture, bleating for their dinner.

”Go into the kitchen,” she said. ”I'm gonna put some meat tenderizer on that. Works on scorpion and wasp stings, should work fine on whatever you got yourself into.”

”It was fleas, Momma.”

She stared at him, and for just a moment, there was a change. The hard sh.e.l.l seemed to fall away from her, and Paul saw the woman he had always known. But that's not right, he thought, because the woman he saw just then wasn't the same woman he had always known. Not quite. This woman was alert, her eyes clear and focused, yet kind.

”Go on,” she said. ”Get inside. I'll be there directly.”

He ran for the house.

Paul waited for her inside the screen door of the kitchen. Her thin, crudely cut brown hair was down, and a sluggish breeze caught it and lifted it off her shoulders. Her body was thin, ill-looking, though she was moving with a purpose now. Her head was down, watching the ground in front of her, her shoulders set forward like a person walking into a strong wind. He glanced at her hands. The fingers curled into fists. Opened again. Curled again.

Paul's smile fell away. The bright glowing segment of kindness he had seen in her was gone, a cold blue-steel hardness in its place. When she entered the kitchen she walked right past him to the pantry. She pulled down a gla.s.s bottle of meat tenderizer and poured it into a small bowl. She added some water and made a muddy red paste of the spices.

”Come here,” she said, and nodded at the counter. ”Put your hand there.”

Paul came forward. He put his injured hand on the counter where she told him to and watched her.

”Momma?”

She ignored him. She scooped out a small handful of the paste with her fingers and spread it over his swollen hand.

It hurt, but Paul bit his lip and didn't cry out. He watched her working.

”Momma?”

She kept working on his hand, working the meat tenderizer into the folds between his fingers and over the humps of his knuckles. She was using the ball of her thumb to really press the paste into him, digging into the skin. Paul's tears came again, though he refused to make a sound.

”My G.o.d,” she said under her breath, almost hissing it as she dug still deeper into the back of his hand, ”what is wrong with you, you stupid boy?”

”Momma?”

”Don't you know that man is a mean, evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d?”

She was talking about his father, of course. Paul grew very scared, both for her and because of her. If the old man heard her talking like that, he'd like as not beat the c.r.a.p out of her. He had seen him do it once, a few years earlier when she refused to do something he asked. He didn't know now what it was they had fought over. He only remembered his father knocking her down with a backhanded slap to the face, kicking her in the hips and thighs as she tried, at first, to claw at him, and then merely tried to bat away the boot that kept coming at her.

But he was also scared of her now. She was looking at him with wide-eyed fury, white spittle on her lips. This was a creature that wasn't supposed to be capable of this kind of rage. Where was it coming from? Was she testing him?

That must be it, he thought. Hadn't his father said he would be called upon to take on certain responsibilities, that he best not fail when the time came? He said, ”Daddy told me he's gonna teach me what he knows about the world. He said I got a lot to learn. Momma, I want to learn it.” Paul said this earnestly, both because he believed it was what she wanted to here, and, on some level at least, because it was true. But what happened afterwards caught him by complete surprise, for he knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he had badly misjudged his mother's fury.

Her mouth fell open.

Then she closed it and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the gasp forming there. Her eyes shone with an emotion that even Paul at twelve recognized as betrayal. He started to speak, but never got a chance to get it all out. Her hand went to the counter, to the rolling pin there. ”You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” she said. ”You want to be like him? Do you?” She scooped up the rolling pin and brought it back. Paul somehow managed to duck out of the way before she brought it down on the spot where he had just been. The rolling pin hit the counter and sent up a cloud of flour dust. Plates clanked in the cabinets. A Mason jar turned on its side and rolled off the counter and onto the floor, where it shattered at Paul's feet. His mother swung the rolling pin again. She was screaming now. ”You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You f.u.c.king little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Burn in h.e.l.l, you stupid, you stupid, you stupid little b.a.s.t.a.r.d!” She swung again. Paul managed to spin past her, reached the screen door, and tumbled outside. He fell on the cement steps and landed face first into the gra.s.s. Carol Henninger emerged from the doorway behind him. She still had a death grip on the rolling pin and there was a crazed look on her face that chilled Paul more than anything else he'd ever seen. ”You little...” she said, trailing off in her rage, her lips trembling.

Paul got to his feet and ran. He ran as hard as he had ever run in his life, going full tilt for the oak covered hills out beyond the barn. He ran until he could no longer breathe, and there he stopped. Looking behind him, towards the house, he waited and listened. Nothing. He was alone.

He rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes and cried.