Raveled (28 page)

“I’ll be in my room for a little while
,” I said.

“
Okay, honey,” she said. “Come back down for pancakes.”

When I closed the door to my room, I
shook off the veil of sadness shrouding me. Between Missy’s description of my dad’s despair and the discovery of my mom’s unexpressed torment, I needed to concentrate on something solid. I retrieved the metal box and found rubber gloves and a medicine dropper in the bathroom. With no idea how to attack the magnesium strips on the edges of the box, I just dove in. It was far easier than I thought. Aside from a rancid odor that resulted from the magnesium chloride being produced, the first strip dissolved away, leaving a powdery substance in its place. The end of the box popped off after I eliminated the four strips on the short end, and before I could truly appreciate the consequences of what was happening, the box lay open before me.

My heart
sped up so fast, it became a blur of noise throbbing in my ears. Currents of blood whooshed through my body as my brain fought to keep pace with this new panicked rate of circulation. I rebelled against the dizziness that accompanied this arrhythmia and, with closed eyes, dumped the contents of the box onto my bed.
Please let them be meaningful
.

I opened my eyes. On my bed lay
a folded, typed letter, several pages long… and an old, disposable camera. Could it be
the
disposable camera, the one Bobby had stolen from the general store? I shook it and something jiggled inside. Film? Would it be any good? My hand trembled as I placed it gently back on my bed like a fragile artifact.

In t
he moment of hesitation before I opened the letter, my resolve wavered. Would I be able to handle the contents?

Screw it.
I sat back and read.

Chapter
41

Bobby… sixteen years ago

“Yo, Bob-bay!” The unexpected shout from below nearly startled Shelby into letting go of the rope.

Bobby laughed.
“Smitty! Up here, man!”

“Bobby, no,” Shelby said
in a loud whisper, getting tangled up in frantic efforts to put her bra back on. Not easy to do with Bobby carelessly tying the rope to the pole and not paying attention to its swaying effect on her. Besides, keeping one hand on the rope and trying to put on a flimsy, sweaty bra with the other proved almost impossible.

Music blared
suddenly from below.

“Party time!” Jasper’s voice
echoed through the barn this time. It rang out in a lower timbre than Smitty’s despite Jasper’s wispier frame. He had brought his boom box and turned it on full volume so they’d be able to hear it up on the highest loft.

“Hey, a camera,” Jasper said, but his voice got lost in the music.

“What?” Bobby shouted.

“Nothing
!” Jasper yelled. Pointing the camera down, he clicked the shutter to see if it worked. The flash went off. “Cool,” he said, then glanced up for the first time. Despite accounting for the vodka he’d drunk and the joint he and Smitty had shared at his trailer, Jasper still couldn’t blink away the image of a half-naked girl hanging in limbo above him. Then he saw Bobby extend his head over the edge of the high loft.

“Smitty
! Jasper! You guys coming up?”

“I brought vodka!” Smitty yelled, his voice indicating he was
already halfway up and three-quarters sloshed. “The good stuff.”

“
Awesome!” Bobby shouted, almost hyperventilating from excitement. “Hey Jasper! Get your skinny ass up here.”

Jasper
rattled his head, trying to make the entire scene more realistic, but failed. He held the camera up high, aimed it at the nude hallucination, and snapped a photo. He may or may not have heard a female voice utter a protest over the music. After shoving the camera into his pocket, he made his way to the first ladder, still awed and confused by the exposed angel hovering in the air.

“Bobby, pull me in,” Shelby said in a cross between a whisper and a shout. “I don’t want them seeing me like this.”

“Hey,” Smitty said, “who you got up there and what is it she don’t want me to see?”

“Bobby! Pull me in right now!”

Bobby felt elated at the thought of his best friends not only seeing the awesome swing he’d built but what he’d been able to accomplish with it already. Smitty had a huge weakness for a good rack. He’d fuckin’ flip at the sight of those big, brown nipples.

It was this characteristic of Bobby’s, this immutable
excitability, that had driven his parents to near madness, and lately, to a permanent state of denial. They’d tried medications on him when he was younger, even homemade herbal remedies, but they’d stopped when the side effects diminished his energy for football. At times, Bobby would get so carried away that the little self-control he did possess went out the window, or rather, smashed through the window—in the form of rocks and baseballs. His unleashed, unrestrained energy had resulted in him burning down a shed when he was seven, almost killing his younger neighbor with a dirt bike, and putting himself and others in constant danger down by the creek where games of truth or dare were all dare and no common sense. And when Bobby got into fights in elementary school, the other kids, even those with the best of intentions, knew to stay out of the way until he finished pummeling his opponent. The sight of copious blood usually calmed him down eventually, or at least sated his thirst, and he’d often walk away in a daze, wondering who the hell had beat up the other kid. Bobby was like a sharp piece of metal caught in a tornado: out of control, at the mercy of the dominating frenzy within him, and capable of inflicting a lot of damage.

His mother had finally settled for medicating herself.

The frenzy began to stir in him now. Shelby’s whining didn’t help. It only made him feel more charged. He ignored the nausea that always came with it. If he could drink his way through that part, he’d reach that stage he loved. Ecstasy. Power. Madness.

Thump!
Bang!

Shelby shouted when she heard the crash, loud enough that it reverberated above
the music. For a moment, she even stopped fiddling with the straps of her bra and clutched the rope with both hands.

“What was that?” Bobby
and Shelby both shouted.

“
Fell from the top fuckin’ rung,” Smitty shouted. “Smashed the bejeezus out of my elbow and head!” He cackled like a maniacal clown facing his executioner. “Nothing a little more cannabis won’t cure, though.”

Bobby laughed so hard, his muscles shook. He rolled onto his back, pounding his fists. “I can’t believe you fell off the ladder, you fuckin’ spaz!”

Smitty’s head appeared at loft level a minute later. He took the awkward step onto the landing and held up the vodka triumphantly with his uninjured arm.

When Bobby finally stopped laughing, he said,
“Don’t worry, Smitty, I got something’ll make you forget all about that little knot on your head.”

Smitty caught sight of Shelby. “Is tha
t… holy shit on a stick… is she naked?”

“I know, right?” Bobby said. “
Can you believe it? You give me one afternoon alone and look what I can produce!”

Shelby curled into herself, holding her arms
in close to hide her breasts. She lowered her head, trying to make her hair cover her face, but the shame shined through.

“Who is that?” Smitty said.
“Is that the chick who went down on Kyle Thompson last year?”

Shelby, unsure if she heard correctly, shouted, “What? What’d he say? That’s a damn lie. What’d he say?

“That,” Bobby said, gesturing to Shelby like a zoo animal, “is your birthday present.”

“
Ain’t my birthday for three months,” Smitty said, downing a celebratory gulp of vodka anyway.

“Well this is good enough that it’s gonna count. Shelby, show him what you’re hiding there.”

Shelby looked up, her face a mask of horror and disappointment. “You’re a monster, Bobby Kettrick. There’s something wrong with you. I’m reporting you for rape.”

“I ain’t raped you. Besides, you came here willingly. You took off your own shirt
—”

“You made me!”

“Oh bullshit, girl! You got nothing on me. You’re floating around out there with your bra undone and I ain’t even touched you.”

Shelby started to cry.
She used her shirt to wipe her dripping nose and eyes.

Jasper appeared then, ready to join in what he figured was
fun, drunken revelry. He pulled the camera from his pocket and took two candid shots of Smitty and Bobby, the latter gulping down the vodka. Then he caught sight of Shelby.

“Shelby, what are you doing out there?” he said. Shelby and Jasper lived pretty near each other
, even borrowed tools and sugar from each other’s families.

“Jasper, thank God. Will you please pull me in?”

“’Course I will. Christ, Bobby, what are you thinking?” He shoved the camera back in his pocket and untied the anchor rope. He reeled Shelby in until Bobby came over and smacked the rope from his hands.

“What are you doing, Shifflett? Did I say you could rescue her?”

Bobby’s eyes lit up with a mad rage, blood vessels threatening near the surface, his mouth twitching in anticipation of this needed outlet for his energy. The rope, untethered from the pole and unsecured by human hands, wriggled towards the edge of the loft like a snake eager to escape. It was pulled farther by Shelby’s weight as she swung back into the abyss of the barn. As it slithered to the end of the loft, Bobby scooped it up in the nick of time, jerking Shelby. But he hadn’t begun to exhaust his anger. It was like jet fuel in search of an igniter. He reeled the rope in some, yanked out his pocketknife and sliced through Shelby’s lifeline, raising his arms in triumph after he did so, the light of the lantern glinting off the knife and piercing Jasper’s worried eyes. Shelby screamed at the lurching motion as the swing careened backwards, half the rope now dangling beneath the tractor seat like a desperate worm on a hook. The other half lay clutched in Bobby’s tight grip, a surprise to him when he finally lowered his arms and wrenched his eyes from Jasper’s. He glared at his hands.

“
Well, shit,” he muttered as he threw down the rope.

Then
all attention suddenly focused on the rafter securing the swing, as it groaned with weary effort. The swing shifted along the thick piece of wood as Shelby reached the farthest point away from the loft.

Shelby gasped and then shouted, “Great, Bobby!
You didn’t even secure this thing! Now what? How am I supposed to get back?”

“I guess we’re in a pickle,” Smitty said, his
eyes glazed and his expression hungry as he stared openly at Shelby’s young body from his roost on the crate.

“
Here,” Shelby said, sounding like the most sober person in the room, “I’ll grab hold of the rope and toss it back to y’all while I swing. Then you can pull me in.”

“No way,” Bobby said, “not until you show my birthday boy here what I promised him.”

“Happy birthday to me,” murmured Smitty.

“Fuck you, Bobby,” Shelby said, shocking herself with her candor.

Jasper walked to the edge of the loft, extending his hands to see if there was any hope of catching the rope. “Go ahead, Shelby. Toss it.”

Before Shelby could get enough momentum to make her first attempt,
Bobby shoved Jasper hard, nearly pitching him from the loft. But years of soccer had made Jasper quick on his feet. He stayed upright and pulled himself back after getting an eyeful of the long journey down. “Jesus, Bobby. You nearly killed me.”

“
Can’t you just be normal, Jasper?” Bobby shouted in his face, smacking his right fist into his left. “You come in here with your do-gooder bullshit, barely looking at what I done here today—without your help—and now you ruined it all to hell. Where’s your fuckin’ sack?”

“She’s gotta show me her tits,” Smitty mumbled
more to himself than anyone else.

“See that, Jasper?” Bobby said. “Smitty appreciates what I done.”

It was then that Jasper looked Bobby right in the eye and saw the cold expression from the old days. Jasper had never been a victim of its accompanying violence, but he’d seen enough of Bobby’s football opponents carted off to the hospital to know he’d have to play this just right. He regretted smoking that joint now. It would keep him from being at the top of his game.

“Okay,” Jasper said, forcing a laugh, “I gotta admit, this is pretty cool.”
He sat down and popped open a beer so Bobby wouldn’t feel threatened. “Can’t believe you rigged all this up, man. I mean, you even got it so it could swivel.”

Bobby nodded
. “That’s right.”

“Bobby!” shouted Shelby.
“Get me down!”

“Thing is,” Jasper said, reading Bobby
like one of his well-worn philosophy tomes, “I hate when girls whine. Grates on my nerves, you know. Not even fun to look at ‘em naked if they’re bitchin’ and complainin’.”

“You got that right,” Bobby said, choking
down more vodka.

“I mean, think about it. There’s no audio accompaniment to Playboy. That’s why it’s so damn good.”

“Imagine if there was!” Bobby said. “That’d suck so bad.”

“Now
, here’s the thing. I wanna see what’s going on out there as much as the next guy.” Jasper gestured to his young neighbor.

“Shit, yeah
,” added a mellow Smitty from his distant perch where he sat like a monk on opium.

“But it looks like
Shelby’s getting tired,” Jasper said. “Let’s get her in here and maybe have her put on a private show. She looks wasted enough.” He glanced at Shelby, who had detached her waist rope from the main vertical line and was busy unfastening the wrist rope. “Shelby,” he said, trying to seem unconcerned, “you’d better leave that on. It’s like your only harness.”

“Screw all
y’all,” she said. “I’ll get myself out of this.”

“How?” Jasper said
, keeping an eye on Bobby to make sure things were still cool.

“Gonna
climb down this rope underneath and drop myself the rest of the way down.”

Jasper kept his voice calm, free of judgment. “That
’ll still leave you a good twenty feet above the ground.” He glanced at Bobby and faked a look of exasperation so they could bond over the girl’s implied stupidity.

Bobby grinned on cue.

“I’ll break a leg, then,” Shelby said. “I don’t care.”

Jasper turned to
Bobby. “You got any more rope up here?”

“You
sure you ain’t a faggot, Jasper?” Smitty said. “’Cuz you barely even looked at the goods.”