She must be gone deep down the well of her brain, because she is not even aware of the man until he sits down beside her—a massive bearded figure who makes the chair groan metallic when he leans back on it. Moses, Abraham’s brother.
I was just looking is all, she says, glancing around and finding that the two of them are alone. I wasn’t doin anything.
The big man shrugs. He takes a cigar from the pocket of his jacket and bites off the end of it and spits it out the hole and strikes a match with his thumbnail and puffs the cigar into life. When he’s done with the match he flicks it out the window, and she watches the pale red ember disappear down into the dark.
She watches him, not knowing if she should make a run for it. But he pays her no attention at all, just puffs on his cigar and stares out into the night.
Finally she says, What you want anyway?
This is the first time he turns to look at her, like she’s a ladybug landed on his knuckle or something.
I want lots of things, he says. But nothin you got the power to deliver.
She squints at him a little while longer but determines the threat is not an immediate one, so she sits back.
That’s just fine, she says.
And for a while their gazes over the city are a perfect parallel.
He takes a puff of his cigar and then asks her a question.
You ever seen a slug with no legs?
She can’t figure out the direction of the question, but it seems safe to answer it.
I did a few times, she says. Walkin all arms and elbows like a katydid.
Uh-huh. He puffs the cigar again and goes on. You know, I heard of one commune over in Jacksonville decided to make a perimeter of gaspipe fire to keep the slugs scared off. What you think of that?
I think that commune’s dead reckoned by now.
How come?
Because meatskins ain’t scared of fire. Too stupid. March right through it. Then all you got is a bunch of walkin torches trying to eat your guts.
He nods slowly, and she sees that he already knew that about fire and meatskins. He was just testing her.
Sarah Mary Williams, he says, pronouncing each name as though reading it on a billboard in the distance. My brother Abraham doesn’t believe you come up from the south. He’s suspicious-minded like that. Me, I believe you.
Go ahead and both of you believe whatever you like. It’s a free country.
They are quiet for a while. She inhales the smoke from Moses’s cigar, and it tastes sweet in her lungs. When it seems like he has nothing more to say, she gets up from the chair and turns to leave. That’s when he speaks again, without looking at her, with no recognition of her going or coming.
This hole here, he says, gesturing to the dark space of night sky in the maw of the broken-out pane. It was here when they first came. Somebody must of jumped. When they took up residence, they just widened it and made it into a scenic lookout.
Who’s they? Ain’t you one of them?
I’m a traveler by nature. I been lots of places. The provender of the earth’s good enough for my kind. Abraham, he likes this place. I ain’t so sure though.
How come?
Right at this moment, this place is a fortress. But if a man was inclined to do so, he could open up one of those loading bay doors in the middle of the night, and suddenly we’re in a death house.
That’s when he looks up at her, his eyes level with hers even though he’s sitting and she’s standing, squinting at her through the smoke of his cigar, his fingers picking flakes of fallen tobacco from his beard.
You know what I think? she says.
What do you think?
She points through the hole into the dark throat of the diseased landscape.
I think you’re more dangerous than what’s out there.
Well, little girl, he says, that’s a funny thing you just uttered. Because I was just now thinkin the same thing about you.
She leaves him sitting there, glancing back just once before she goes through the stairwell door and observing how the cloud of smoke from his cigar gets pulled in wisps out the dark gaping hole in the glass wall—as though it is his soul, too large for his massive frame and seeping out the pores of his skin and wandering circuitous back into the wilderness where it knows itself true among the violent and the dead.
BACK IN her small room she takes a Nembutal and falls asleep almost immediately. It’s probably the pill that makes her slow to comprehend what’s happening an hour later when the key is slotted into the door. She is so deep down inside herself that it’s difficult to climb that ladder to the top where things are actually happening. The key in the door, the rattle, the turning of the knob, and the airy squeak as the door swings inward once and then back shut. She scrambles to the surface of her consciousness, arriving there and shaking herself awake just as the light in her room is turned on.
Abraham, she says.
I came to kiss you good night.
She squints and rubs her eyes against the sudden light. He’s standing, hunched over and swaying a bit, drunk. His leer makes her take stock of what she has on—just a T-shirt and underpants.
Get outta here, Abraham.Hey, he says, looking around, is this your blade? Pretty nifty.
He picks up the gurkha from the table and unsheathes it. Then he swings it through the air a few times making swishing sounds with his mouth like a boy playing swords.
Put it down.
He sets it back down on the table, but not because she asked him to.
You played some good cards tonight. You’re one of those tough girls, aren’t you? One of those rough-and-tumble girls. You like to play with the boys.
She pulls herself up on the mattress, her back against the wall, her head still cloudy and muddled.
You better get, she says.
But you’re still a girl where it counts.
He comes around the table and steps up on the foot of her mattress and stands over her. She draws her knees up under her but can’t quite fold herself into a crouch. Then he unzips his pants and pulls out his flaccid genitals. It looks like a bouquet of deflated birthday balloons.
Put it in your mouth, he says. Make it big.
You best stow that. I ain’t kiddin with you, Abraham. Put it away now.
Come on, Sarah Mary. Everyone around here’s the family type. All the girls want to nest. Sometimes a man’s just gotta get his nut and go back to killing creepers. What do you want and I’ll give it to you. Pills? Liquor? Just do me this one favor. Just put it in your mouth for a little while.
I said stow that business. I don’t go in for silliness with the likes of you. I ain’t playin now.
The fog around her head begins to lift, and she can see him take two steps toward her, his crotch getting so close to her that she can smell the thick mustiness of it.
But you’re so pretty, he says. I just want to cum on you a little bit.
That’s it, she says.
She curls her hand into a fist and drives it forward hard into his crotch. It feels like punching a sack of warm giblets. It makes a smacking sound and sends him collapsing backward, his pants falling down around his knees while he writhes on the floor at the foot of the mattress.
But his groans evolve into something like growls, and he picks himself back up, his face tomato red, his eyes wet, and his teeth clenched.
I didn’t wanna have to do it, she says. Come on, Abraham, I’m just tryin to get along round here. Don’t muck it up for me.
He doesn’t listen. With one hand he cups his genitals and with the other he reaches and grabs her gurkha knife.
You little cunt. I’m gonna split you in half.
He lunges forward and she ducks and puts her hand out to divert the blow and the blade goes over her head, but she feels a quick iciness on her left hand and when she looks down she sees that the knife has taken off half of her pinky finger. The blood spills down her wrist and makes her hand feel slippery.
There’s no pain yet, just cold—but she knows to expect it later, so whatever she’s going to do, it better get done now.
She’s got her back to the window and he’s coming at her again, but when he raises the knife over his head to strike, her hands dart up and grab the wrist and twist it backward so his whole body falls forward facedown and then, still holding the arm up at an angle, she brings her foot down on it at the elbow and hears it splinter-snap like a wet tree branch.
Except now he’s wailing loud and guttural, all the blood driven up into his face and the tendons of his neck standing out hard and long.
Shush up, she says, trying to quiet him. Shush up now, people are gonna hear you.
But he keeps screeching, and she turns him over and slaps his face like you do with hysterics, but she supposes it’s not so much hysteria as it is excruciating pain that’s his current problem. So she looks for something to stuff in his mouth and finds the bra that Ruby got for her, which is padded and has some bulk to it, and she jams it between his teeth with her fingers.
Hush that noise, she says. Come on, hush it.
She puts her left hand over his mouth to hold the bra in place, and the blood from her finger streams over his cheek and into his eye and down into his ear. She kneels on his chest to keep him quiet and presses down on his mouth trying to leave his nose free—but something is wrong because in a minute he begins turning purple and convulsing and then he stops moving altogether.
She takes her hand away from his mouth and looks into his heavy-lidded eyes, which are already beginning to cloud over.
Doggone it, she says. Why do livin and dyin always have to be just half an inch apart?
She goes to the desk and takes a ballpoint pen from the drawer and puts the tip of it in his nostril and drives it upward sharp and hard with the heel of her hand to keep him from coming back.
Then she takes the elastic band from her hair and winds it tight around her pinky finger to hold the blood in and sits back against the window to take a breath.
She shakes her head.
I liked this place too.
4.
It’s almost four o’clock in the morning when she knocks on Ruby’s door.
What’s wrong, Ruby says with a mother’s instinct and immediate wakefulness.
You gonna have to sew me up.
Temple steps into the room, carrying a heavy green duffel that clatters noisily when she sets it down. Then she shuts the door behind her and lifts up her hand for Ruby to see.