Pray To Stay Dead (38 page)

“
Want to light them up?” Misty asked. She was tired of seeing their faces, such as they were.

“
Not until Moby Dick is ready,” he said, and laughed. Misty didn’t care much for the sound of it. “Goddammit. It’s going to be a fucking grease fire.”

A car raced by. Crate held the rifle across his lap, ready to spring into action like Jimmy Stewart in one of the old Westerns they played on Sunday afternoons.
Winchester ’73
maybe.

“
First one in over three hours,” he said, as if this suggested something. Maybe it did.

“
Maybe they have the right idea.”

“
Now, we’re going to sit tight. Wait and see what happens.” He shrugged. “What else can we do? We’re going to protect what’s ours. You should learn to use a gun. We got that Ruger now, that cop’s gun?”

That cop’s gun.
As if he’d forgotten Eric Tasgal’s name.

“
We’ll see,” she said, and Crate’s eyes widened.

“
Cornwell has a chainsaw,” he said. Thomas Cornwell lived nearby, and came in every Sunday for sliced turkey and to talk about his wife, who’d been dead for seven years now. He and Crate got on well, once they got to drinking.

“
He also has a shotgun,” Crate added, shaking his head. “He’s the shoot first type. Hell, I’m surprised we haven’t seen him yet. What about your knives?”

“
What?”

“
Your deli knives? Any of them up to butchering that hog back there?”

“
God, Crate,” she said, shaking her head.

“
Eh? Need
something.
”

“
I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “Maybe so, but who’s going to do it? You? I sure as hell won’t.”

“
Eh,” Crate said, dismissive. His tired old arms weren’t up to the job, and he knew it. “I’ll be back then.”

Carrying his rifle, he got up and walked to the dead black man’s car. He whistled once, and his dog followed him.

“
Where are you going?”

“
To borrow Cornwell’s chainsaw,” he said, sliding behind the wheel of the old Ford. Bilbo Baggins hopped across his lap and into the passenger seat. “Go inside and lock that door.”

He started the engine, backed out of the parking lot, and was gone.

After a few minutes sitting alone, she went inside and locked up.

“
Can I use the Lysol on the shelf? It would help.” Stacy asked, holding the mop handle. The floor looked significantly better.

Misty shrugged and flapped her hands. “Sure. Don’t finish up yet, though. The mess is about to get messier.”

“
Huh?”

“
Crate’s gone off to borrow someone’s chainsaw.” Misty said, and when she saw the confused look on Stacy’s face, she nodded to Haggarty’s massive form lying by the candy rack.

“
Oh,” Stacy said, and Misty wasn’t sure it had really sunk in. Then Stacy’s eyes widened, and her mouth twisted into a sour knot. “
Oh.
”

“
Yeah,” Misty said. She left Stacy, walked into the back, into her bedroom, where she stood looking down at Tasgal’s gun. It lay on the bedside table, where Crate had left it. She picked it up. Not liking the feel of it, she put it down.

She got halfway to the bedroom door before she stopped, walked back to the bedside table, and picked up the gun once more.

Misty didn’t like the feel of it at all, not one damned bit, but she liked the idea of getting into trouble without it even less.

Twenty-Eight

Colleen sat up, instantly awake, heart racing; clutching the gun, her finger on the trigger. She stood up, and her brain spun behind her eyes.

The curtains were drawn, and the light coming in through them wasn’t very bright, though she felt as if she’d slept for hours.

Embeth lay on her back. Her bound hands rested upon her stomach, and there was a pillow beneath her head. There was no sign of Sally, who’d fallen asleep beside Colleen some six hours ago.

Gun raised, Colleen was halfway to the kitchen when the sound of laughter fluttered within the nursery. The door opened and Mathilda stepped out.

“
Whoa,” she said, raising her hands, motioning for Colleen to lower her weapon.

“
I’m sorry,” Colleen said, pointing her gun at the floor. “What’s going on? What time is it?”

“
It’s a little after noon.”

Colleen looked at the curtains again.

“
It’s cloudy,” Mathilda said. “Been raining off and on all morning.”

“
Oh,” Colleen said, suddenly eager to get rid of the gun growing sweaty in her hand. She set it on the kitchen counter and dried her hand on her shirt.

“
Sally is in labor.”

“
Oh.” It was no real surprise—the woman was immense, clearly ready to pop—but the reality of it nearly stung: there would soon be another baby in this house, in this world. “Is there anything I can do?”

“
For Sally? Not at the moment,” Mathilda said. “I’ll need you soon enough. For now, you can go say hi to the kids. Lissa is taking good care of them all. She’s a good girl.”

“
What are we going to do?”

“
One thing at a time.”

“
She waking up soon?” Colleen asked, looking at Embeth, who hadn’t moved since Colleen had risen from the couch.

“
Any time now, I think,” Mathilda said, eying the unconscious woman. “I hope she doesn’t give us trouble.”

From somewhere in the back, Sally spoke, though Colleen could not make out her words.

“
Go see her,” Mathilda said.

Sally lay propped up on pillows in what must have been the bedroom that Mathilda had shared with Evie, a bedroom much like the one meant for Colleen and Sally—two beds, a simple dresser, and a single window. A few books on the dresser, no rhyme or reason: A Bible, a book on advanced trig, a dog-eared paperback of something seedy titled
Lust Slum.

“
Hey,” Sally said, smiling. An open book lay on the swell of her massive stomach. Her gun—Huff’s gun—was within reach.

“
Hey,” Colleen said. She glanced at the book on Sally’s stomach. “What are you reading?” It was a perfectly normal question, the kind you asked when everything in the world was as it should be.

Sally held up the book so that Colleen could see the title on the cover:
Lolita.

“
I’ve never read it,” Colleen said.

“
It’s my fourth time,” the pregnant woman said, closing the book. “I think it might be my favorite book. I asked Huff to get this for me on one of his trips to San Francisco.” She smiled and shook her head, handed the book to Colleen. “Look at the title page.

Colleen opened the book. A hand written note was scrawled beneath
Lolita
in blunt, graceless letters:

“
He was a sick bastard,” Sally said.

“
Yeah,” Colleen said.

“
How are you?”

“
I’ll live,” Colleen said, looking down. She could still feel the knife in her hand.

“
You did good.”

Colleen’s voice dropped. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”

She frowned, fell silent.

Sally looked down at the book in her hands.

“
Kimberly hated it.”

“
What?” Sally asked, and then a look of realization flashed across her face. “Oh, this. Yeah.” She nodded, and the look in her eyes went a little distant. Colleen could tell that she was thinking about the book, not about everything else.

“
Yeah. Some people do, but I think there’s something beautiful about it. And the language. You’ve never heard a blow job described like
that.
”

Colleen smiled. “My high school lit teacher said that the main guy—”

“
Humbert Humbert. Crazy name.”

“
Yeah—she said that Humbert was Europe, and that Lolita was America, that the whole thing was a metaphor.”

“
For old Europe fucking young America?”

“
I don’t know,” Colleen said, and it was true. She wasn’t sure what her teacher had meant, based on her limited knowledge of the novel.

“
It makes sense, I guess,” Sally said, looking genuinely surprised. “Never thought of that.”

“
How are you feeling?”

Sally shrugged. “I feel fine, I guess.” The look on her face changed. Before, there’d been a touch of hope, perhaps something like good cheer, but now there was nothing. “I’m a little worried.”

“
About?”

“
Everything. He was pretty messed up, wasn’t he?”

“
Who?”

“
Samson.”

“
Oh,” Colleen said. “Yeah.”

“
Huff put a hurting on him?”

“
He did. A serious hurting.”

“
Maybe he won’t be back,” Sally said, her eyes downcast. She picked at the spine of her book for a second, looked up, and attempted a smile.

“
Maybe,” Colleen said, but like the smile on Sally’s face, Colleen held little hope.

“
Ooo,” Sally said, letting go of the book and gripping her stomach.

“
Should I get her?” Colleen asked, meaning Mathilda.

“
It’ll pass,” Sally said, her face scrunched into a pained knot. As Colleen watched, Sally relaxed, smiled. “See?”

“
I’m still worried.”

“
I’ve done this before,” Sally said. “Now get out and let me read a bit. America and Europe, huh?”

“
Tell me if you need anything.”

“
Huh.”

“
I mean it.” Colleen left. She locked herself in the bathroom for a little while. She cried, pressing her face into a towel to muffle the sound of her weeping.

The kids were happy to see her. Little Huff stomped over to where she stood, demanded to be held, his small hands opening and closing at the ends of his outstretched arms. She scooped him up, and he rested his head upon her shoulder and sighed.

“
Hey, Mama Colleen.” Lissa said, flashing an awkward but endearing smile—a mix of baby teeth, grownup teeth, and missing teeth.

“
Hello.”

One of the twins—Colleen could not tell Jack from David—sat quietly pushing wooden blocks back and forth upon the rug while the other tossed an orange foam basketball to Lissa. Laughing, she encouraged the boy, told him how much of a good job he’d done.

The little blond laughed. Lissa rolled the ball toward him, and after much fumbling he seized it and threw it at his brother. It struck the other child’s face and bounced to the floor, vanishing beneath the bed. Both boys laughed, and the one who’d thrown the ball ran to the bed and tossed himself to the floor, wriggled the upper half of his body beneath the bed in search of his lost ball.

“
I’m scared,” Lissa said.

“
I know. I am too.”

“
Mama Thilda said something bad happened.”

“
Yes,” Colleen said. “A lot of bad things have happened.”

“
What?”

Damn this kid. The look in her eyes, the tone of her voice—there was nothing childish about either. She was a child, but speaking to her now was like speaking to a woman, someone who knew and understood the gravity of adult life. For a second, Colleen considered telling the girl just what was what, but then she remembered Daniel when he was nine or ten. A natural mimic, like all kids, he could do a fairly mean grownup imitation, despite the fact that he was a child who cried when he skinned his knee and sometimes wet the bed.

“
It’s nothing for you to worry about,” Colleen said, and the girl stared at her, blinking, her face now entirely unreadable.

“
You promise?”

Colleen tried not to miss a beat: “You betcha.”

“
Okay,” Lissa said, and she was just a little girl again, no imitative mask of maturity, just a small girl of seven who still believed what the grownups in her life told her.

Little Huff gurgled nonsense into Colleen’s ear, writhing to be set free. She eased him to the floor, and he wobbled away, dropping to all fours and vanishing beneath the crib in which the nameless boy slept. She was happy to be rid of him—an irrational feeling, she knew, but no less real. They were all Huff’s children, as far as she knew or could tell, but he was the only one to bear the man’s name.

The twin who’d taken the ball to the face had gone back to playing with blocks, and his far more adventurous brother scooted out from under the bed with smears of dust on his shirt and the ball in his hand.