"So I asked, `Miss Ella, is my dad the devil?' She shook her head. `No, no, your father is not the devil. But the devil is inside him. Especially when he's drinking.'
"I didn't like that answer, so I asked her, `How do we get him out?' Without skipping a beat, she put her hand on that padding and her head against the railing. `We've got to spend a lot of time right here.' She rubbed the railing and looked around the room. `Child, I may be weak, may not weigh much, may have arthritis just eating me up, but right here'-she touched the railing with her gnarled hand-I'm undefeated."'
I smiled because I liked the idea of her being unbeaten. I sat down next to Katie and propped my feet up on the pew in front of me. We sat in the quiet a few minutes while the pigeons flew in and out of the hole in the roof.
"Shortly after your family left, we had a bit of a drought. Hadn't had rain in what seemed like a whole year, and dust was everywhere. Miss Ella was walking around with a rag and spray bottle strapped to her apron. Mutt and I got this wild hair up our butts and thought we'd try snuff. I don't remember whose idea it was, but one of us convinced the other that it would help with the taste in our mouths."
Katie smiled and leaned back against the railing. "This sounds like one of those lessons of experience."
"Don't laugh. Your day is coming, and he's in there sleeping."
"Tell me about it."
"Anyway, we ran down to the corner grocery and stole some Copenhagen." I put my hand over my eyes and tilted my head back. "I can still taste it. I never wanted death so badly." Katie laughed and pulled her knees more tightly up into her chest. "Anyway, Ave got out of the store, pulled open the can, and split it." I smiled and held out my hand like it was full of peanuts. "Not a pinch, mind you, a handful, in our mouths. We probably swallowed about half right then. By the time we got home, we had swallowed the other half. I hit the front door and the world was spinning backwards, upwards, every which way but right. There were two Mutts and three front doors, so I just pushed the doorbell on the one in the middle. Then came the sweat, and I knew it wouldn't be long. I also knew that this was going to end badly. Miss Ella opened the door, and I heaved from my toes up. Mutt, apparently a sympathetic vomiter, did likewise. We covered that woman in peanut butter, jelly, white Wonder Bread, and Copenhagen.
"Miss Ella thought we had some wild stomach virus, so she threw us in the car and drove ninety miles an hour all the way to Mose's office. We were moaning, holding our stomachs, and caked in vomit. He carried us in, they set up his office like an emergency room, and he went to work cutting off our clothes. When his scissors hit the Copenhagen can, he stopped and investigated. We, in the meantime, were praying that God would just go ahead and kill us, because if he didn't, she would. And as soon as her brother walked out into his waiting room and gave her the can, she did."
Katie laughed and threw her head back. I continued. "She stood up, grabbed us both by the ear, and dragged us to the car, the vomit just drooling down our chests. We were crying and, between dry heaves, apologizing, saying, `We're sorry. We won't ever do it again.' She started waving her finger in the air. `You're right, you won't, 'cause when I get finished with you, you won't ever touch that stuff again.' We got home, spilled out the car doors, and just spread our corpses across the driveway. She walked in the house and came back out with a long switch. Sick or not, she lit into us."
Katie covered her eyes and laughed.
"Yeah"-I smiled-"it's funny now, but back then, I was ready for a portal to open in the earth and just close me up in it. She really whipped us. When she was finished, she said, `Tucker Mason, you ever scare me like that again and I won't use just one switch. Next time, I'll use the whole tree.' I was too dizzy to stand up, but I wiped the drool off my face, or at least smeared it in, and said, `Yes ma'am."'
"How long did it take you two to try it again?"
I laughed. It was a good memory. One I had forgotten. "About six months." I stood up and walked behind the altar. "Every time I walk back into this church, I hear the echo of her laughter." I ran my hand across the worn and polished wood and remembered how she used to polish it with furniture wax. "And every time I walk into Waverly Hall, I hear my father's screaming." I looked out the window toward Waverly, rising up out of the earth like a gravestone. "If Miss Ella hadn't loved that house, I'd have set a match to it a long time ago."
I reached up and straightened Jesus, who was tilted sideways. I took a white handkerchief out of my back pocket and polished the wooden head like I was polishing a bowling ball. Some of the dried droppings flaked off and fluttered to the ground while the more recent stuff just smeared in like bug guts on a windshield.
Chapter 13
THE TIME PASSED AS THE SUN FELL THROUGH THE STAINED glass in the back. Katie looked at her watch and whispered, `lase is going to wake up hungry. I need to think about dinner."
"We're going to have a difficult time finding anything around here. I haven't cooked a meal in that house in several months. At least not a meal that you two would eat. And I haven't been to the store in longer than that."
"You really don't come here much, do you?"
"As little as possible. Work keeps me busy."
We walked out and I fought the vines pulling against the door. Katie waited while I jimmied the door shut with a piece of chipped brick. We walked along the pasture, keeping a few feet between us.
We reached Miss Ella's cottage, and Katie leaned in against the window, listening for Jase. Her steps were light and purposeful.
"If you like Southern food," I whispered, "there's the Banquet Cafe."
"Okay, but it's my treat. And no argument from you."
"Fifteen minutes?"
She nodded and I walked to the house. The light was off in the barn, which meant Glue was finished working and Mose was gone for the day. I hopped up the back steps and saw my reflection in the window of the back door. The unusual aspect of that picture was the half-smile across my face. I headed downstairs and hopped in the shower, turned on the water, and remembered at the same time that I had forgotten to turn on the hot water heater.
Ten minutes later, Katie and Jase walked in the back door. I was sitting in the kitchen, in front of the fire, watching the flames and holding a Sprite.
For lots of reasons, I steer clear of beer, but Mose likes one every now and then, so I keep it in the fridge. When I opened the fridge to offer them a Sprite, Jase saw the beer.
He jumped, grabbed Katie's pants, and buried his face, his hands shaking. It didn't take me long to put two and two together. I looked down at the beer and then up at Katie. Her face explained the rest.
I walked over to Jase and knelt down. "Hey, little buddy," I pointed toward the refrigerator door some ten feet away. "Does that scare you?" He peered between Katie's legs, sniffled, and nodded.
I patted him on the back. "Scares me too." I stood up, opened the fridge, pulled the entire case out from the bottom shelf, and placed it on the granite countertop. "But," I said with a smile, "you know the best thing about beer?" Jase's eyes narrowed, a confused look replaced fear, and he peered around Katie's legs rather than through them. The firelight lit up the streaks on his face, he shook his head, and his expression mirrored that of the kid I met at Bessie's.
Tucker this boy is hanging in the balance. "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
Miss Ella, would you just give me a minute before you send me overboard? Hang around a few minutes. You might even have some fun.
I grabbed the entire case with one hand and reached for his with the other. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "It's okay. I'm going to show you what beer was really made for." He reached up and grabbed my hand, and I saw his eyes.
You see those eyes?
Yes ma am.
They remind you of anybody?
Katie looked at use suspiciously but opened the back door anyway
. I led him onto the back porch, down a few steps, and sat down next to the statue of Rex. I tore open the cardboard case and laid twenty-two beers on the ground next to me. I picked up two beers and put one in each of his hands. His face took on a dumb look as Katie torqued her head and asked me, "Tucker, just what do you think you're doing?" I handed her two beers and then grabbed two myself. The three of us sat holding a six-pack while I gave the instructions. "Okay, here's the deal. It is very important that you follow these instructions to the letter."
Jase interrupted me. "What's that mean?"
"It means, do like I do." I turned his baseball cap around backwards, making his bangs stick out through the hole in the front. "Rally caps required." He smiled and held the beer, awaiting instructions. "You got to take those things and shake them until your arms can't shake anymore. Then you pick up two more and shake them. Then you pick up two more until all the beer is shaken. You have got to shake like a one-armed paper hanger until all this is one shake short of busting." Jase nodded, and a wide smile cracked from ear to ear. "But you got to really shake. The secret to this whole thing is in the shaking."
Katie leaned in and whispered through a half-smirk, "Did Miss Ella take the switch to you for this too, or did she miss this?"
I raised my eyebrows. "What makes you think she didn't teach us how?" Jase stood poised, ready at the drop of a hat. "On your mark." The smile grew wider. "Get set." His teeth showed, as did the insides of his cheeks. "Go!"
Jase's arms started shaking like two pistons in a motorcycle engine, bringing his heels off the ground. He gritted his teeth, gripped the cans hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and moved his arms in short, fast, flailing strokes.
Katie was only half-shaking. "Oh no. That will not do," I said, moving my arms as fast as I could. "You have got to get into it. Like this." I shook the cans above my head, below my head, and then I started dancing around the cardboard box, whooping like an Indian. Then I started singing, "What makes the Red Man red?" Jase picked up on it and followed the second line in a high-pitched giggly voice that reverberated with the shaking of his arms. "What makes the Red Man red?" I danced around Rex's statue again, still shaking, and dropped my voice an octave lower. "What makes the Red Man red?" Katie, dancing in a line behind Jase and me, chimed in. "What makes the Red Man red?" I grabbed Jase's beers, handed him two more, did the same with Katie and myself, and we kept dancing around Rex. Pretty soon, we started spinning, whooping, waving, and were singing a full-fledged Indian war chant right there on the back porch. Jase got dizzy and sat down but kept his arms moving.
"Unca Tuck?"
"Yeah, buddy," I said over the rapid shaking noise of our arms.
"My arms hurt."
"Oh no, you can't stop now." I shook the cans above my head. "You got to keep shaking. Come on." I shooed him back in line and handed him two more beers. "You too," I said to Katie, who was looking like she wanted to quit. "This is the ninth inning. You can't quit now. It's five to two, we're down by three, and you're up with the bases loaded. This is your chance. Come on." They jumped back in line and we shook every can until each was taut with pressure. Breathing heavily and with sweat peeling off my face, I stopped them. "Okay, you ready?" Jase nodded while I gently placed his fingernail under the tab. "No, you're not. I mean, ARE YOU READY?"
"YES!"
All at once, we popped the tops and a fountain of beer foam spewed skyward. Before the first bubble had hit the ground, I had popped three more tabs and handed cans to each of them. They stuffed them in their arms and jumped up and down like NASCAR drivers in the winner's circle. Beer showered the sky, and I aimed at Katie first and covered her in frothy foam. She grabbed two more cans, popped the tops, and handed one tojase, and they doused me in about eighteen ounces of foam. The empty cans piled up and clinked around us on the marbled porch. I was down to my last few, so I popped three tops, held all three like a triple-barreled shotgun, and chased them around the horse one more time. Jase picked up the last can and held it up to me. I shook my head, breathing heavily, and said, "Go ahead, partner. It's all yours." He held it at arm's length, shook it one time for good measure, then popped the top. Beer shot straight up and showered us, Rex, and his horse in an umbrella of beer mist and laughter.
Dizzy and breathing heavily, with empty and spent cans lying all around us, we collapsed, rolling in a puddle of beer and drunk with delirium.
I sat up, flung the beer off my fingers, and said, All right, who's ready for dinner?"
Jase jumped across Katie and pounced on me. He wrapped a death hug around my neck, squeezed me as tight as his two arms could squeeze, and said, "I like drinking beer with you. Can we do it again?"
I didn't know whether to hug him or not. I lifted my arms and then looked at Katie. She mouthed the words, "Thank you," and I wasn't sure if those were tears or beer cascading off her face. I wrapped my arms around Jase and for a brief instant remembered Miss Ella and the night she pulled me through her window when my people place was aching.
I wrapped my arms snugly around his waist and felt his smile spread from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
Feels good, doesn't it?
Chapter 14
THE SUN ROSE OVER THE CYPRESS TREES AND GLISTENED off the crystal water lapping over Mutt's toes. His nails were dirty and needed cutting. The water was a murky blue, soapy with bubbles, and Mutt's hands were spotless. Mud, leaves, and bug bites covered the rest of him. He had spent the night listening, watching, and thinking-if you can call it that. The sirens had died a few hours ago. He had heard boat motors, but they never came this far up the creek. Throughout the night he had worked to occupy his hands and mind. He had tied flies, played chess, tied more flies, and so on. At daybreak, the leaves around his head were covered in live flies, but he didn't mind because the buzzing was better than listening to the alternative. Inside, his mind was racing, the voices were screaming eight different conversations at once, and his arms and face had begun to twist and contort under their control. His eyes looked at everything and nothing, and yet one thought confined the entirety of his mind.
Chapter 15
KATIE CARRIED JASE BENEATH THE COVERED WALK TO Miss Ella's for another shower while I went back downstairs. After yet another cold shower, I climbed the stairs and found the two of them waiting expectantly in the kitchen next to the fire.
Something was wrong. I couldn't quite place it, but the skin crawling up my back told me I should know something that I didn't. I looked around, but nothing seemed wrong. They were warm, both smiling, and seemed oblivious to whatever was bugging me. Then I took a deep breath. The smell. The air smelled of lavender. I sniffed again, following the trail, and it carried me to Katie.
"Hope you don't mind," she said, waving her hand across the air around her neck. "Truck stops don't really carry much variety, and it was in the bathroom. Sorry if I assumed. . .
I held up my hand and shook my head, "No, no. And I don't think she would either. It's just something I haven't smelled in a long time."
"You like it?"
Unlike most girls, she showered quickly. That surprised me. I hadn't hurried, but I hadn't dallied either, and she beat me to the top of the steps. "It reminds me of a hug she once gave me." I fished the keys from my pocket, pointed to her clean clothes, and toweled my hair. "You're quick."
"Didn't used to be. It comes with motherhood."
I threw the towel down the spiral staircase. "Well, let's eat. All that shaking made me hungry." I dangled my keys and opened the door, and the phone rang. I dismissed it. "It's probably for Glue. The machine will get it." After four rings, the machine picked up and we were halfway out the door. The dialer hung up and immediately dialed a second time. Katie looked at it with that same nervous, swivelperch look. I shrugged and she picked up the phone. Her voice trembled when she spoke. "Tucker Rain residence."
While the caller spoke, Katie's shoulders and face slowly relaxed. She leaned against the door frame and listened. After
a minute, she said, "Hold on just one minute." She held the phone to her chest. "Somebody named Wagemaker."
I took the phone. "Hello?"
"Tucker, this is Gilbert Wagemaker."
"Gibby?"
"Tucker, Mutt's gone. Twenty-four hours ago."
"What happened?"
"Slipped out his bedroom window. We have no idea where he is." Gibby's tone sounded like the beginning of a very bad story. "A waiter at Clark's identified him with a picture and told us Mutt ate a big dinner, enough for three people, but there's no trace of him from there. We have no idea where he is."
I closed my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair. Katie stepped closer and put her hand on my arm. "I'll be there in the morning."
"Tuck?"
"Yeah?"
"His medication will wear off in about twenty-four hours."
"Meaning?" I already knew the answer.
"He's a ticking time bomb and I'm not sure what he'll do when he goes off."
Chapter 16
WHEN MUTT AND I WERE TEN, WE HAD TWO FAVORITE games-other than baseball. To its, baseball was the game, still is, but when we weren't playing that, we liked to do two rather sinister little things. The first was playing the shock game. That's where you slide across a hardwood floor with your socks on, building up the static electricity, and then touch the first person you see. We must have shocked each other ten thousand times. Miss Ella wouldn't let its do it to her, so we were pretty much limited to each other.