She complained endlessly, spoke to herself day and night, sometimes sang little songs in a voice barely above a whisper, and was quiet only when they brought her food.
Waves of stink rolled from the crooked sagging bed. He had long ago stopped suggesting that they let some air into the room. He didn’t even know if the windows would still open. Some kind of putrid brown grease had started climbing the foggy panes, like corrupted spirits risen from the heaps of dead flies, and had gathered in the cracks like glue.
But God, how he loved her, despite the fear she instilled in him, and despite all she had done to make him sorry for his sins. He loved her more than life itself, quietly believed that he loved her most of all, more than his brothers did, though he would never say so. He believed himself the favorite, even when she challenged that belief by hurting him.
“You hear me boy?” she said, and he licked his lips, felt his tongue rasp against the lack of moisture there, and when he drew it back in, he tasted something foul, something he had tugged from the air into his mouth.
“I hear you Momma,” he said, and took a few steps closer to the bed. Beneath his boots, the floorboards creaked and breathed miniature puffs of dust into the air. Shouldn’t be no dust, he thought, staring down at the dissipating clouds. Floor’s well traveled. And it was, but like the intricate but drooping black cobwebs that hung like dreamcatchers from every corner of the room, he knew this room held onto every particle of skin that fell or rose from his Momma’s body, then waited until dark to begin fashioning them into elaborate constructs to convince the world that time was passing faster than it really was, hastening his Momma toward her death. Trying to make her believe she’d been forgotten. Which of course was Momma’s only true fear. That they would abandon her. That one day she’d wake and find herself calling out to an empty house, listening to the echoes of her voice coming back to her with nothing to obstruct it. Listening to her frantic cries slithering out into the woods to get lost among the trees, to be heard by the deer, the squirrels, the jays, and ultimately, the coyotes, who would sense her panic and follow it to the source. Then, as she had told her sons a thousand times, the coyotes would eat her, and scatter her bones across the land so her spirit would never find peace.
“Sit,” she commanded, and he squinted down at the bed to be sure when he obeyed he didn’t end up pinning a flap of flesh from her arm beneath him. He sat and the bed hardly moved, but the stench from the damp mattress and the body upon it was strong enough to make his eyes water. Whenever Aaron and the others came to see Momma-In-Bed, they wore bandannas tied across their lower faces, but Luke refused to show such disrespect, and wondered why she let them get away with it.
In the gloom, Luke could only make out her eyes, small dark circles in a doughy face almost indistinguishable from the pillow.
“Girl got away, Momma. She tricked Matt’n kilt him. Then she got loose. Didn’t think she’d get far, not the way we had her cut up, but she did. Got to the road and someone picked her up.”
There was silence so deep that Luke, perched precariously on the hard metal edge of the bed, feared he might fall headlong into it and be devoured. Then Momma began to sing, a low growl that was not in the least bit melodic, and chilled him to the core of his being. The song had only a few notes as far as he could tell, but the way she sang them reminded him of the sound a fire truck made when it flew by, the way the song changed, grew lower and lower as it got farther away. He swallowed and his throat clicked. As if it had been a signal, Momma stopped singing.
“Someone picked her up,” she repeated. Then, “You ’member what happ’ned to yer pizzle, son?”
He felt his face redden and was glad she couldn’t see it, but couldn’t prevent his head from lowering, his shoulders from tightening at the mention of that horrible day he had tried so hard to forget but never would, not as long as he had to see the mangled thing that emerged from his pants every time he had to make water.
“I ’member.”
“You ’member why it happ’ned?”
Again, he nodded, but felt his throat constrict.
“Tell me.” He flinched as her hand, almost the size of his Papa’s hat, but white as fresh snow, found his knee. After a moment, he felt the damp from her moist skin seeping through his jeans. “Tell your poor Mama what happ’ned.”
“It—” he began, then tensed as her clammy fingers tightened on his knee. “It were my thirteenth birthday. You threw us a big party, with cake’n balloons’n streamers. You got the place lookin’ real nice, and Papa were home. I ’member he even took off his hat for a spell.”
“That’s right,” whispered Momma, lost in a memory she clearly enjoyed. “Go on now.”
“Me’n Aaron rode the horses through the woods that evenin’. Susanna were on the back of my colt, hangin’ on to me fer dear life. We kept goin’ faster’n faster, and ’fore we knew it, we was racing, Aaron and me. Racin’ like the wind, and Susanna screamin’, but a good kinda screamin’ like she was enjoyin’ herself.”
“She liked the horses, and loved you boys, didn’t she Luke?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Tell me how much she loved you, Luke.”
The memory to this point was a good one. It had been, as far as Luke could recall, the most beautiful day of his life. The sun had been shining through the leaves, cooking the red clay so it was spongy under the horses’ hooves and flew in their wake. The air was warm, the sweat cooling on their faces as they flew through the woods, laughin’ and screamin’ at the top of their lungs, mimicking loons as bugs smacked into their faces and leaves caught in their hair. He remembered Susanna’s grip, her skin warm and slippery against his belly, her breasts soft against his back as he angled the colt toward the creek, then down the embankment. The horse, more machine than animal, like a series of cogs, pistons and hydraulics beneath a black tarp, muscles rolling fluidly, didn’t pause as the soft earth changed to rock and water. Instead it plowed straight through, head low, snorting as the cold spray soaked the children. Luke had never had such fun in his life, and he delighted in the look on Aaron’s face as he rode his mare a few paces behind. His brother was red from the exertion of trying to keep up, eyes wide from a mixture of fear at the breakneck pace and excitement that they dared go so fast.
“We came to a clearin’,” Luke said, his voice low. The stench of death and sickness abruptly filled his nose and tickled his throat, making him want to gag, but he resisted, and turned away, discreetly sucking in air that was not much cleaner. If he vomited, he knew he’d be no better than his brothers with their insulting bandannas. So he took small short breaths, cleared his throat, spat a sour wad of phlegm on the floor and continued. “The Lowell Creek clearin’ where Papa used to hunt rabbits, ’fore they was all gone.”
“Beautiful place in the summertime,” his mother said.
“Sure was.”
“Was?” she asked with mock surprise. “Ain’t no more?”
“We rested there for a spell,” he said, joining his hands and secretly chiding himself for the uncharitable thought that had just come over him. He had wished, just for a second, that his mother would take her hand off his knee. The weight of it was cold, and unpleasant, as if while dampening his flesh with hers, she was, at the same time, leaching something vital from him. He could almost feel it leaving.