50
She dreamed.
She was in a tobacco barn. Leroy and DeeWee were there, hanging like tobacco leaves from the rafters, laughing and swinging and pointing at Tony. Tony lay in the straw, unable to move from the tormenting prickles on her naked body. She tipped her chin up; Mam was holding her arms over her head. She looked down; Burton was holding her legs apart. Something wet and hot was leaking from her privates, trickling along the flesh of her inner thighs like hideous slugs.
“What is happening?” she tried to cry out, but it was a baby’s voice that she heard, a babbling garble issuing from her throat.
Mam said, “We’ll have this done, don’t you worry, Angela.”
Burton, who now had a ten-gallon hat perched jauntily atop his dark hair, said, “Got an elm branch for digging. Knife handle just won’t grab good. Gonna get those bastards out, hold still.”
A searing pain. Tony screamed. Above, in the rafters, Leroy and DeeWee, and now Little Joe and Whitey, flicked dried bird poop at each other and said, “Eat this! Dare, dare!”
Tony tried to sit up, to pull her legs together, but Burton said, “No, don’t be such a cow. Hold still.”
Mam said, “Honey, I need a beer. When we’re done here, would you please get me a beer? My throat’s so dry.”
Burton tugged at Tony’s insides. Tony tried to move with the tug, trying to keep her guts from coming out with the dreadful, powerful suction.
“Hold still!” said Burton. Something in Tony popped and gave way. Burton clucked, and smiled, and held up two wet, writhing earthworms the size of pythons. “Look at this,” he said. “Don’t take after you at all. Must be their daddy.”
She bolted awake.
Fuck!
Breaths. Huh, huh, huh, huh.
Blurry eyes. She wiped them with the heel of her hand. Fucking dream. Who invented fucking dreams?
Who the hell thought us such a damn thing?
And she saw the teacher, standing before her with the ax raised above her head, her teeth barred, her lips peeled back, the eyes of Satan himself staring out from the sockets.'
51
Mistie heard something, someone, scream, and she tried to open her eyes but they were glued shut. It sounded a little like Mama screaming.
“Valerie!” Mama had screamed and Daddy had said, “Shut your face, you wanna be thrown in prison?”
“Valerie!” Mama had screamed, and Mistie had cried, a higher sound that blended with Mama’s into something like a song. But the screams and the cries were all Mistie recalled, the wailing voices in the kitchen in the apartment in Kentucky.
Daddy had said, “It was a bad liver. We can’t help she had a bad liver.” And he had buried her somewhere where no one could find out it wasn’t a bad liver.
That was all Mistie knew. It was too far away, Kentucky. It was too long ago, Valerie.
The scream came again. Mistie scratched the glue from one eye and looked out in the fire-lit barn where the teacher was standing over the girl, and it was the girl who was screaming.