“What are you doing in here? Where’s Boone?”
“Gone bye-bye,” she said, and her mouth twisted again as she smiled. “Gone to that club of his to play poker till all fuckin’ hours.”
Rix looked at his wristwatch on the bedside table. A quarter of three. He rubbed his eyes. “What happened? You two have a fight?”
She shrugged. “Me and Boone have fights sometimes.” She spoke with a thick backhills whang. “He left around midnight. They let him sleep at that club after he’s lost his money and he’s too drunk to drive home.”
“Do you make a habit of sneaking into people’s rooms? You scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t sneak. Sneakin’ is when a door’s locked.” There were no locks on the doors to Rix’s, Boone’s, or Katt’s bedrooms. Puddin’ frowned at him. “You’re lookin’ kinda puny. You been sick or somethin’?”
“Or something. Why don’t you pour yourself into your room and go to sleep?”
“I want to talk. Please. I’ve got to talk to somebody, or I’ll go right fuckin’ out of my bird!”
Same old Puddin’, Rix thought. When she was drunk, she could swear a truck driver’s face blue. “What about?” he asked, against his better judgment.
“If you was a gentleman, you’d ask me to sit down.”
He motioned reluctantly toward a chair. Puddin’ chose to sit on the edge of the bed. Her gown hiked up over her thighs. There was a heart-shaped birthmark on her left knee. Damn, Rix thought; his body was responding, and he raised his knees under the sheet to make a tent. Puddin’ picked at a long, copper-painted fingernail for a moment. “I cain’t talk to nobody ’round here,” she whined. “They don’t like me.”
“I thought you and Katt were friends.”
“Katt’s too busy for friends. Either she’s out ridin’ on the estate, or she’s on that telephone. One time she talked to a guy in Venice for two whole fuckin’ hours! Now who in hell can talk on a phone that long?”
“Do you also listen in on people’s phone conversations?”
She tossed her head impudently. “I get bored. There ain’t a whole hell of a lot to do, y’ understand? Boone pays more attention to those goddamned horses than he does to me.” She giggled. “Maybe if I put a saddle on my back, he’d get a hard-on, right?”
“Puddin’,” Rix said wearily, “what’s this all about?”
“You’ve…always kinda liked me, ain’t you?”
“We hardly know each other.”
“But what you know, you like. Don’t you?” She touched his hand.
“I guess so.” Though he knew he should, he didn’t move his hand. His groin stirred.
Puddin’ smiled. “I thought so. A woman can tell. You know, the gleam in a man’s eye and all. You should’ve seen those men judges in Atlantic City sit tall when I come out on stage. You could almost hear their cocks thump against the bottom of that desk. Old stuck-up bitches was the ones voted against me.”
“I think you’d better go back to your room.” He wrinkled his nose. “When was the last time you had a bath?”
“Soap causes cancer,” she replied. “I heard it on the news. There’s something in soap that gives you cancer. Know what’s best for your skin? Gelatin. Know what that is? It’s Jell-O, I put Jell-O in the bathtub and let it sit until it gets real firm. Then I get in and wiggle around. Orange is best, ’cause it’s got vitamin C in it too.”
He wanted to ask her if she was losing her mind, but didn’t. Maybe she was losing her mind. Living in this house would certainly do it.
“I know you like me,” Puddin’ said. “I like you, too. Really. I always thought you were cute and smart and all. You’re not like Boone. You’re…well, a gentleman.” She leaned closer to him, the valley between her breasts opening. Bourbon fumes rolled into his face. She whispered, “Take me with you when you leave here. Okay?”
When Rix paused, taken off guard, Puddin’ plowed on: “Everybody hates me ’round here! Especially the dragon lady! That mother of yours has got eyes in the back of her head! She just looooves to tell lies about me! Katt’s all hung up on bein’ a model and a celebrity and all. Edwin and Cass watch me all the time. I cain’t even drive alone to Asheville to go shoppin’!”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true, damn it! They won’t let me out the front gate! See, I tried to run off in August. Had a gutful of this fuckin’ place, and took off in the Maserati. They sent the cops after me, Rix! State trooper pulled me over right outside Asheville, hauled me to the jailhouse on a charge of car theft! Had to sit there all night till Boone came for me!” She scowled bitterly. “He lied to me to get me to marry him. Said he was a world traveler, and a billionaire to boot. I didn’t know I’d be a prisoner here, and that he didn’t have one cent of his own to spend!”
“Boone’s got his talent agency.”
“Yeah. That.” Puddin’ laughed sharply. “It was paid for with old Walen’s money. Boone’s still payin’ him back, with interest. Boone ain’t got a pot to pee in!”
“He will be rich,” Rix said. “After our father dies”—the realization sank in as he said it—“the family business will belong to Boone.”
“Oh no. You’re wrong. Boone wants it, but so does Katt. And Boone’s scared shitless the old man’s gonna hand everything over to her, lock, stock, and fuckin’ barrel!”
Rix pondered that for a moment. All the Usher children had attended the Harvard School of Business, with a stipulation that they return to Usherland every weekend. Boone had flunked out after a year, Rix had quit to study English Lit at the University of North Carolina, but Kattrina had graduated with honors. She’d always been interested in fashion and modeling, and had opened her own agency in New York when she was twenty-two. After a couple of years, she’d sold the agency for a profit of almost three million dollars; then she’d decided to free-lance for herself, at the rate of two thousand dollars an hour. Her golden, healthy look was enormously popular in Europe, where her face sold everything from fur coats to Ferraris.
“Katt’s happy,” Rix said. “She’s not interested in the business.”
“Boone knows she wants it. He says your daddy’s been talkin’ to her in secret. That’s why old Walen’s never let Boone handle any of the decisions.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He’s never let any of us handle decisions.” He smiled. “So Boone’s champing at the bit, is he?”
“Sure. Just like you are.”
“Sorry. I don’t want a damned thing to do with it.”
“That ain’t what Boone says. He says you’re pretendin’ not to be interested. He says you’re waitin’ for the old man to die, just like everybody else. Know what Boone told me when we got married?” She blinked her heavy lids. “He said the business was worth about ten billion dollars, and that every time somebody even thinks there’s gonna be a war, the millions come rollin’ into those factories by the truckload. He says that’s because nobody in the world, not even the Germans, makes weapons better than the Ushers. Now you look me straight in the eye and say you don’t want a piece!”
“I don’t,” he said firmly, “want a piece.”
“Bullshit.” Her breasts were about to spill from her gown, the nipples peeking over like brown, crosseyed eyeballs. “Only a goddamn idjit wouldn’t want a cut of ten billion bucks! That’s all the money in the world! Look, I know you protested V’etnam when you was in college, but you ain’t a hippie no more. You’re a grown man.” Her voice trailed off, and for a moment she appeared to be about to keel over. Then she clutched his arm. “I cain’t stand this place no more, Rix. It’s creepy around here, ’specially at night. The wind blows so hard when it gets dark. Boone goes off and leaves me alone. Now, with the old man in that room right over my head… I cain’t stand the smell of him, Rix! I want to be with people who like me!”
“Have you tried talking to Boone about—”
“Yes, I’ve tried,” Puddin’ snapped, her face reddeni
ng. “He don’t listen! He just laughs! Boone…don’t want to be around me no more.” Tears came to her eyes, but Rix couldn’t tell whether she was forcing them or not. “He says he…cain’t go to bed with me. Me! Head majorette at Daniel Webster High School! A beauty contest winner! Hell, I used to have football players wantin’ to just sniff my panties! Boone’s got a cock like a wet noodle!”
It took a moment for that to sink in. “Boone’s…impotent?” Rix asked. The last time he’d been home, Boone had taken him to a club called the Rooster Strut, where topless dancers gyrated in the harsh, hot lights and the beer tasted like dishwater. Boone had made a big show of calling all the girls by their first names, of bragging about how many he’d laid. He remembered the way Boone had grinned, his teeth flashing in the strobe lights.
“You like me, don’t you?” She wiped one eye and left a trail of mascara. “I could go to Atlanta with you. They’d let you take me, they wouldn’t try to stop you. Boone’s scared of you. He told me so. I’d be real good for you, Rix. You need a woman, and I wouldn’t be like that last one you had. I wouldn’t get crazy and cut my—”
“Go back to your room,” he said. He’d been jolted by the memory of Sandra in the bathtub, and all that blood. The razor on the scarlet tiles. Blood on the walls. Her curly, ash-blond hair floating.
Puddin’ popped her breasts out of the gown. They hung inches away from his face. “Take ’em,” she whispered huskily. “You can, if you want to.” She tried to guide his hands.
He made a fist. “No,” he said, and knew he was the biggest fool who’d ever lived.
“Just touch one. Just one.”
“No.”
In an instant her face crumbled like wet cardboard. Her lower lip swelled. “I…thought you liked me.”
“I do, but you’re my brother’s wife.”
“Are you queer?” There was a nasty hint in her voice.
“I’m not gay, no. But you and Boone have a problem. I’m not getting in the middle of it.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. Her mask of perfection fell off, and the real Puddin’ was hiding behind it. “You’re just like the rest of ’em! You don’t care ’bout nobody but your own damn self!” She stood up, tugging drunkenly at her gown. “Oh, you play so high and mighty, but you’re just another goddamned Usher, through and through!”
“Keep your voice down.” Walen might sure as hell be getting a kick out of this!
“I’ll shout if I want to!” Still, she wasn’t drunk enough to want to rouse Margaret Usher. She marched to the door, then turned back. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Usher! I sure do appreciate it!” She left the room in a proud fury, but the door closed with a bump instead of a slam.
Rix lay back in the bed and grinned. So all of Boone’s sexual crowing was just hot air! What a laugh! Boone’s afraid of me? he thought. No way!
But he will be, before I’m through with him.
Ten billion dollars, he mused, as sleep began to pull at him again. With that much money, a man could do anything he pleased. He could have undreamed-of power. There’d be no more struggling at the typewriter, alternately playing God and Satan over paper characters.
—no more hassles no more books no more agents’ dirty looks—
The strange singsong had come unbidden, a soft, seductive voice from the deepest recess of his mind. For an instant he was lulled by it, and he pictured himself stepping out of the limousine and striding toward the open doors of the armaments plant. Inside, military men, beautiful secretaries, and smiling sycophants were waiting to welcome him.
No, he thought—and the image faded. No. Every cent of that money was tainted with blood. He would make his own way in the world, on his own strengths. He didn’t need any blood money.
But when he switched off the lamp and settled back to sleep, his last conscious thought was
—ten billion dollars—
An hour or so later, Puddin’ was awakened from an uneasy sleep by the noise of rushing wind around the Gatehouse. She looked toward the door—and saw a shape interrupt the light that crept in from the corridor. She held her breath, waiting. The shape paused, then went on. Puddin’ clutched her silk sheet; for some reason, she dared not open that door to see who walked the Gatehouse at this dead hour. She could smell Walen’s stink in the room.
Puddin’ squeezed her eyes shut, and, as she drifted toward darkness, she called in a hoarse whisper for her momma.
7
THE SUN WAS RISING, tinting the sky scarlet. New Tharpe had ceased his struggling.
Every time he’d tried to fight free during the long night, the thorny coils had clasped him tighter. They dug into his flesh in a dozen places. He’d cried a couple of times, but when he realized that crying sapped his strength—and he was going to need that strength, or he was as good as dead—he stopped sobbing as if he’d been slapped in the face.
Red light was beginning to tumble into the hollow. The wind, so violent during the night, had died to a furtive whisper. He could still see his breath, but his bones were thawing. He’d never been so cold in his life.
Twice during the night he thought he’d heard his name called, far in the distance. He’d tried to shout for help, but his voice was weak and raspy, and his head rang with pain. Then, when the moon started sinking, he’d heard something moving up at the edge of the pit. He’d looked up as high as possible, though there was a band of thorns around his throat, but seen nothing. Whatever it was, judging from the sound of crackling brush, it was very big. New had thought he’d heard rumbling breathing. The forest had fallen silent. In the next rush of wind. New had smelled the musky scent of an animal—a cat on the prowl.
Greediguts, New had thought as he kept perfectly still. Greediguts was up on the lip of the hollow. Greediguts was smelling him, and wanting him, but even the monstrous black panther itself wouldn’t come down into those thorns.
After a while, the rumbling had faded away. The beast was gone, to find easier prey.
Every time he’d closed his eyes, New had seen that black figure standing up there with the limp sack under its arm. He could tell nothing about the figure—man or woman? young or old? human or not?—but he’d known who it was. His heart had stuttered, his flesh crawling. It was the thing his ma had warned him about all his life, the thing that had taken the Parnell girl the third week in September, and little Vernon Simmons last harvest season.
Sometimes he thought it was only a tale the mothers and fathers of Briartop Mountain had made up to scare their children, to keep them from getting lost in the woods.
But now he knew different. The moonlight had told him so.
Got to get out of here! New screamed inwardly. He fought again, trying to pull his left arm and right leg loose. The thorns dug into his throat, drawing pinpricks of blood. They clutched his chest like little claws.
Settle down. Easy, easy. Thorns’ll choke you. Got to think your way out.
He carefully turned his head. The hunter’s skeleton beside him was on fire with early light. He saw that it still wore a rotting leather powder horn. The dead man had been here for a long, long time.
His gaze followed the kudzu vines that trailed along the skeleton’s broken right arm. The green finger bones were pointed like an arrow into the bleached leaves that gathered around the cadaver’s legs.
New stared at the empty knife sheath.
Where was the knife?
Had it been lost in the hunter’s fall? New looked again at the grasping finger bones. Then toward the mound of leaves.
He swung his left leg out, digging the toe of his boot into leaves, shoveling them aside. Black beetles scurried away. The odor of a damp grave drifted up. Barbs plunged into him as he tried to strain farther to the left. He moved his foot, tried again in a different place, and uncovered white leaves, worms, and bugs.
Hissing with pain as the thorns gouged his throat, New dug his toe down into the leaves just beneath the skeleton’s hand. He shoveled his foot back and forth. A nest o
f brown spiders fled in all directions.
One of them scrabbled along the staghorn handle of a bowie knife, sunk to its hilt in the damp earth.
The hunter had been straining for his knife as he died.
A crow cawed from above the hollow. It sounded like cruel laughter. The knife might as well be a mile away; with only one arm and leg free, New couldn’t possibly retrieve it.
“Help!” he tried to shout in desperation. His voice came out in a rattle. His mother would be looking for him by now, he knew. So would other people. They’d find him, eventually. Sure, he thought grimly. Just like somebody had found the hunter.
New caught back a sob. He stared fixedly at the knife. Have to get it, he told himself. Somehow. Or I might die right here.
You’re the man of the house now, he thought. It was what his ma always told him. His pa had died in February, at the garage where he’d worked in Foxton. A freak accident, Sheriff Kemp had said. Bobby Tharpe was repairing a pickup truck’s tire. It blew up in his face. Didn’t feel no pain, Kemp had said. He went right on the spot.
You get yourself in trouble, his ma told him, you get yourself out of it, too.
New had loved his father very much. Bobby Tharpe had married Myra Satterwhite late, when he was in his mid-thirties; he’d been fifty-two when he died. New’s father had had eyes the color of emeralds, just like New’s own. He’d been a quiet, peaceful man—but sometimes New could tell that he was troubled, and New didn’t know why. New’s father had stayed to himself a lot.