Part 16 (1/2)

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-You a fine-looking thing, she said. Bet you draw the women like dog hair draws lightning.

One of the sisters gazed at Inman and said, I wish he'd hug me till I grunt.

Lila said, This is mine. All that's left for you is just to look at him and then to go to wis.h.i.+ng in one hand and s.h.i.+tting in the other and see which one gets full first.

Inman felt a kind of weary numbness. He was still sawing on the joint but his arms felt heavy. The burning wick of the lantern seemed to be casting out strange rays into the dim of the room. Inman thought back on the jug and wondered what fas.h.i.+on of drunk he was.

Lila took his greasy left hand from its grip on the bone and ran it up under her skirt and rested it high on her thigh so that he could feel that she had on no drawers.

-Get on out, she said to the sisters, and they walked to the hall. One of them turned at the door and said, You just like the preacher says. You church founded on peter.

Lila shoved the meat platter to the high end of the table with a thumb, knocking it off the spoon and slopping out grey gravy, which ran downhill and dripped from the table end. Lila s.h.i.+fted and rolled until she was sitting on the table before Inman, her legs astraddle him, her bare feet resting on the arms of his chair. She pulled her skirt back to a bunch at her waist and leaned back on her elbows and said, How about that? What does that favor?

Not a thing other than itself, Inman thought. But his mind would not shape words, for he felt as inert as one behexed. His glossy handprint remained on her pale thigh, and beyond that, the gaping aperture. It seemed extraordinarily fascinating though it was but a mere slot in flesh.

-Get you some, she said, and she shrugged her shoulders out of the dress top and b.r.e.a.s.t.s came spilling out, pale nipples as big around as the mouth of a pint jar. Lila leaned forward and pulled Inman's head into the rift between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

At that moment the door burst open and Junior stood with a smoking lantern in one hand and the ten-gauge in the other.

-The h.e.l.l's going on? he said.

Inman sat back in his chair and watched as Junior leveled the shotgun at him and c.o.c.ked the pointy hammer that looked as long as a mule's ear. The raw hole at the end of the short barrel was black and enormous. It would throw a shot pattern covering most of the wall. Lila rolled off the table and began yanking in various directions at her dress until she was largely covered again.

This would be one sorry s.h.i.+thole to die in, Inman thought.

There was a long pause and Junior stood sucking on an eyetooth and studying deep on something, and then he said, What you about to learn is they ain't no balm in Gilead.

Inman sat at the table looking at the bore to Junior's shotgun and thought, There would be a thing to do here. A right action to take. But he could not arrive at it. He felt fixed as stone. His hands lay in front of him on the tablecloth and he stared at them and thought uselessly, They're starting to look like my father's, though not long ago they didn't.

Junior said, The only way I can reason this out to my satisfaction is that we've got a marrying coming. That or a killing, one.

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Lila said, Goody.

-Wait, Inman said.

-Wait? Junior said. It's too late to wait.

He looked over to where Veasey lay asleep in the chimney corner. Go wake him up, he said to Lila.

-Wait, Inman said again, but he could not formulate a sentence beyond that point. His thoughts would not serve his purpose. They refused to achieve order or proportion, and he wondered again what had been in the jug by the yard fire.

Lila went and bent over Veasey and shook him. He woke with b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his face, grinning as if he had pa.s.sed on to a new world. Until he saw the shotgun bore.

-Now you go get them other ones, Junior said to Lila. He walked over to her and slapped her hard across the face. She put a hand to the rising red mark and left the room.

-They's one other thing, Junior said to Inman. Get up.

Inman stood but he felt that he frabbled on his feet. Junior moved around, keeping Inman covered, and took Veasey by the coat collar and stood him up and walked him slowly across the room.

Veasey was yanked up onto the b.a.l.l.s of his feet so he walked like a man sneaking up on something.

When he had them paired, Junior prodded Inman in the a.s.s with the jagged shotgun barrel.

-Take a look out yonder at what I fetched, Junior said.

Inman moved as one would under water, effortfully and slow, out to the front porch. Up at the road he could see faint movement in the dark, shapes and ma.s.ses only. He heard the expelled breath of a horse. A man's cough. The tick of a hoof on stone. A light was struck and a lantern flared. Then another, and yet one more, until in the glaring yellowy light Inman could make out a band of Home Guard. Behind them, afoot, a tangle of men, shackled and downcast, shading off into the murk.

-You're not the first one I've snared in here, Junior said to Inman. I get five dollars a head for every outlier I turn over.

One of the hors.e.m.e.n called out, We going or what?

But an hour later they had still not gone. They had tied Inman and Veasey onto a string of prisoners and shoved them all against the wall of the smokehouse. None of the tied men had said a word. They moved to the wall with barely more animation than a parade of cadavers. All shuffle-footed and vague, blank-eyed, so tired from the manner of their recent living-as soldier, fugitive, captive-that they leaned back and immediately fell into openmouthed sleep without twitch or snort. Inman and Veasey, though, sat wakeful as the night progressed. At intervals they wrenched against the windings of rope at their hands, hoping for any sign of give.

The Guard built up the fire until it stood as high as the eaves of the house and threw glare and shade against the walls of the buildings. The light of it blanked out the true stars and sparks flew up in a column and then disappeared into the dark, a vision which suggested to Inman that the stars had drawn together in congress and agreed to flee, to shed light on some more cordial world. Off on the hillside, the beacon of the ghost dog shone orange as a pumpkin and skittered about among the trees.

Inman turned and stared at the fire. Dark figures pa.s.sed back and forth before it, and after a time one of the Guards brought out a fiddle and plinked at the strings to quiz the instrument for tune. Satisfied, he pulled on the bow and struck up a simple droning figure of notes, which soon revealed itself to be 2004-3-6.

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circular in logic. The pattern came around again and again at close intervals and seemed equally suited to dancing or-if repeated long enough-to throwing a man into a daze. The guardsmen, silhouetted against the fire, pitched back from the hips and pulled at the contents of various jugs and stoups. Then they danced about the fire, and sometimes they could be seen paired up with Lila or one of the sisters, rubbing in various shadowy tableaus of rut.

-There is not great variance between this place and a d.a.m.n jenny barn, Veasey said. Other than they've not charged anybody anything yet.

Those men not immediately occupied with Lila or the sisters danced alone. They went round and round, jerking in a buck-and-wing, bent at the waist, stepping with high knees, their faces alternately staring down at their feet on the ground and bending back to speculate on the blanked heavens. Now and again, possessed by the music, one would squeal out as if wounded.

They danced until they all had to stop and blow and then Junior, apparently far gone in drink, tried to organize a wedding between Inman and Lila.

-I went in the house, and that tall one was just getting into the shortrows with Lila, Junior said. We ought to wed them.

-You're not no preacher, the Guard captain said.

-That little shaved-off one is, Junior said, looking at Veasey.

-G.o.dd.a.m.n, the captain said. He don't much look like it.

-Will you witness? Junior said.

-If that will get us on the road, the man said.

They got Inman and Veasey from the smokehouse and untied them and walked them at gunpoint to the fire. The three girls stood waiting, the pair of dark-headed boys with them. The Guard off to the side spectating, their shadows jittery and huge against the walls of the house.