Water and Stone (26 page)

He could tell by the detached way they talked that they didn’t know who he was.

Why should they? He was no longer sure himself... was he really Billy Ford the boy or was he in actuality Billy Ford the old man? It was pretty apparent he wasn’t a boy... not from the reflection that he saw of himself... not from the way Evalena treated him.

It hurt too badly to talk... the best he could do was breathe and even that sent screaming pains through his body. Yani appeared first... she must have been the one doing the shooting. The first bullet had hit him in the shoulder knocking him out of the bed and onto the floor where his low profile probably saved his life.

"Oh my god... I'm so sorry! I'll get help for you right away, sir!"

A second later his father appeared in the doorway... or someone who reminded him of his father. This man looked like a walking corpse... the skin was stretched so tightly over his face that if he smiled Billy was sure his cheeks would split in two.

It was his father, though. As the man moved closer to him Billy was sure of it... the light in his eyes was the same as he remembered and though his visage had changed his voice had not... but he didn’t seem to recognize his own son. Then again, how could he expect him to?

"We need to call a doctor, Yani. This man is seriously hurt... he won't survive the trip to a hospital... and besides, what will we tell them?"

"The bullet went clean through his shoulder, Rancher. If we can stop the bleeding, he'll be okay until we can get him to your friend the horse doctor."

Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing... were they honestly going to take him to the veterinarian who de-balled the horses, the bulls, and the pigs on the Triple Six ranch? It made sense though, in a weird sort of way. He knew from his television watching that hospitals were required to report gunshot wounds and his would be hard to explain... especially when they found out it was from an AK-47... he could see the weapon still smoking as it hung on a strap from Yani's shoulder.

"It doesn’t look like you hit any major arteries, Yani... if you had he'd be bleeding out by now. Here... take this sheet and wrap the wound tightly."

His father was staring at him as if he was about to have a sudden revelation. Though Billy wanted to warn them about Evalena the best he could do was make gaping sounds with his mouth while flailing around on the floor as if he was a fish drowning in air.

"Who does this guy remind you of, Yani?"

"He looks a lot like Billy... but he's too old, unless..."

"Unless what? What are you getting at, Yani?"

"Unless Evalena has done something to him... remember that time we were hoeing beans and a rat ran across the row in front of Billy... how he chased after it and ran right under Church's hoe and how he was cut on the arm? We had to take him to get stitches... look at that scar... Rancher... this is Billy."

He had just enough strength to blink his eyes. The room was growing darker or was it only the periphery of his vision? He couldn’t be sure. He was no longer inside the shack where he lived with Evalena... he was in a cave... that's where he was.

"When the shooting starts... and it will... you have to crawl up onto the bed, Billy."

"But why, mother? Wouldn’t it be safer on the floor?"

"For the moment, Billy... but only for the moment... listen to me, son. You're going to die either way. If you can crawl up onto that bed, your death will be sweet."

"I don’t want to die, mother."

"I know... no one does, Billy. But just think... we'll be together again. Now promise me... when you hear the sound of gunfire, crawl up onto the bed."

"I promise... will it hurt to die, mother?"

"No, my son... it only hurts to live."

There was light at the end of the tunnel but he was sequestered in the dark, sentenced there for crimes yet to be committed. He hadn’t lived long enough to do the harm a man was capable of perpetrating upon the world. If he'd the opportunity he might yet manage a misdemeanor or two but he sensed time was fast running out.

Lately he'd been dreaming of that cave all the time. His mother was there. Since he knew she was dead he assumed the cave was an allegory of heaven though being underground seemed to indicate it was more like hell.

Billy had never been big on religion. Though his mother had taken him to an old Catholic church numerous times when he was younger his father always begged off by saying he didn’t like the way the priest said the mass in Latin... that he didn’t understand what was going on. In point of fact he knew his father didn't believe in any god.

While Billy listened Rancher had talked many times and at length with one of the farm hands named Michael who sought to convert his boss to the ways of the Lord. The man belonged to the Jehovah Witness church over in McLean and spent his time working all the nearby ranches to spread the word of god.

Billy had to admit most of the gospel that Michael was so fond quoting didn't make much sense. He had done a little research on the bible—the King James version that Michael swore by—and discovered it was written back in the 1600s by a group of forty seven scholars all of whom belonged to the Church of England.

Though Michael seemed adamant that the text was the word of god so far as Billy could see it was written by a bunch of old men who believed in that god. Other religions also professed to being the personification of different gods and each creed declared their god as the one and only.

He'd listened as his father argued what he thought was rather eloquently with Michael about how, if man was common and god divine, it would be impossible to know the word of god... that the whole aura of taboo had grown up around just that eventuality. Michael for his part always seemed unfazed by Rancher's words.

As he grew older his mother seemed to lose her affinity for religion too. He wondered if it had to do with his father's propensity towards atheism or if she'd simply given up hope of ever instilling the faith in Rancher.

Billy felt like a wraith, weightless and invisible. When he looked at the cave walls he saw that he cast no shadow though a fire burned throwing silhouettes of his mother on the rocks and dirt.

"I'm not really here."

Though he spoke the words they didn't sound in his ears. It was then he knew he was dreaming... until that moment he thought he was awake and with his dead mother no matter how incongruous it seemed. Still, he listened.

She started telling a tale about a rock... a special stone that belonged to Church, or perhaps rightfully to Evalena. Apparently the stone possessed certain properties that rendered onto those around it long life and excellent health. On the darker side, the stone slowly subjugated its users to a life of thralldom and servitude whereby they only thought of it to the exclusion of all else.

The rock had fallen from the sky, or so the legend went. When the first woman found it she hadn't been a woman at all... she was a monkey. When she picked up the stone it had instantly transformed her into a woman. Being different from the other monkeys the girl had taken the stone and gone off to a far off land where she used it to transform a male monkey into a man and between the two of them began to begat a new lineage of the human race.

Since there were now two of them she named him Ado while she called herself Eva. Heretofore it had never occurred to her that she needed a name but once the word lodged in her mind others followed and language came into being.

Eva and her man Ado had two sons as different in temperament as night and day, cold and hot, wet and dry. The boys seemed to mirror the stone which Ado kept wrapped in a cloth and would sometimes take out to show it off to his burgeoning family. Being naïve Eva had given the stone into her man's keeping at his insistence.

Trouble soon ensued.

As the boys grew Ado noted how his two sons got into heated arguments over the stone, each of them claiming it as their birthright. One day the younger man came upon the older while out hunting game and hiding in the weeds waylaid him and slew him with an arrow through the heart, running back home and telling his father that it was all an accident, that he'd mistaken his brother for an animal.

Ado realized the truth. In order that the stone could do no further harm he said nothing to anyone, wrapped the rock up in many layers of fur, and took it to the faraway mountains. He climbed the highest peak and finding a cave at the summit buried it deep under the ground.

On his way back home Ado spotted his remaining son lurking in the undergrowth at the base of the mountain. It was clear the boy had followed him and that he knew where the stone had been buried. All his subterfuge had been useless. He knew that his son would dig up the stone, claim it for his own, and the cycle would repeat.

As he notched an arrow in his bow to slay his remaining son Eva came upon him from behind with a cudgel knocking Ado to the ground before he could free the arrow to fly on its appointed journey. As he lay stunned Eva bashed his head until brains leaked out his ears. She then picked up the bow, notched an arrow, and shot her son in the back as he ran away from the scene of the crime.

Having dispatched her rivals for the stone, Eva went to its burial spot, dug it up, and carried it away with her to parts unknown. All mention of the stone faded away for hundreds of thousands of years though the rumors of its existence swirled around the black arts

Now, it had been found again.

A searing pain in his shoulder brought Billy up to the brink of consciousness... he was floating across the room. No... he was being carried in a sort of stretcher.

"Be careful, Yani... I think we're hurting him."

"He'll die if we don’t get him some help... don’t drop him, Rancher... do you need to stop for a minute?"

Looking up Billy saw an old man on one end of the stretcher and Yani on the other. The man looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t quite place who he was or what he might be doing here. It seemed odd that Yani was calling him Rancher... he had never known another man besides his father with that name.

Sleep was stalking him again... his eyes were so heavy he couldn’t keep them open. Just as he slipped beneath the surface he heard his mother calling to him.

She wallowed deep within a love dream.

Seeing Church walk into the greasy spoon where she spent her days and nights waiting on inappreciative customers and tolerating the sexual innuendos of her boss was like feeling the epiphany of an unexpected miracle blossoming before her eyes. Somehow, she knew her days as a waitress had come to an end.

Waking next to him that morning sent her heart leaping and her spirits soaring as she remembered their night together... the tentative exploration... the longing of the flesh she tried without success to stifle finally giving over to the mad desires racing through her mind.

Church was a man this morning, no longer the boy she once knew... something about him had changed though Tree couldn’t put her finger upon exactly what it was. A sort of confidence radiated from his face even as he slept.

It had been her first time... Church's too, judging from the reticent way he acted, though of course she doubted he would ever admit it. Her mother made a habit of reminding her about how her sister turned into the school slut and how she had to move away from Guthrie in order to live down her reputation.

"Boys only want one thing, Teresa... and once they get it, they'll move on. Don't be like Janine... save your virginity for a man who deserves it. Don't go giving it away in the back seat of a Chevy like your sister did."

Beth had been the smart and pretty sister while Janine was the dumb and pretty one... the girl all the boys were after, at least while she was in school. Once she graduated, however, she went to work at the local Wal-Mart, gained a hundred pounds, and married Jake, the one-time star quarterback of the Guthrie football team. The union lasted all of six weeks before Janine arrived back home with a mouth full of broken teeth and two blackened eyes.

Tree overheard father and mother discussing her oldest sister's predicament and the next day Janine had vanished like early morning dew. When she asked where her sister had gone no one would tell her.

"She decided to make a clean break of things, Teresa. Be happy for Janine... she's going to be fine."

A month later came word that Jake had learned of Janine's whereabouts, stalked her, and shot her dead late one night after breaking into the grubby little apartment mother had rented for her on the seedy side of Dallas. Tree had been thirteen years old and the tales of Janine and her iniquities haunted her the rest of the time she spent in high school.

She had vowed never to fall in love. It seemed far better to suffer the pangs of loneliness than to take a chance on giving over her heart to one of the local boys who'd only run roughshod over it and leave it bruised and bleeding in the dirty Texas dust.

She hated Guthrie. When the wind blew out of the south the whole town stank of the sewage leaching into the dry creek bed upon which one of the town's genius's thought it'd be a good idea to build the waste treatment plant. Of course that was before the decade-long drought that took hold of the land but the townspeople should have seen it coming... the whole area had a long history of a dearth of rain.

She hated the people of Guthrie who looked down their noses at her... the prom queen's homely little sister now relegated to serving up slop at the local diner. She despised the pretext of putting on a happy smiling face each morning to greet the cantankerous crowds of customers who frequented Guthrie's only diner but she told herself she had to do it... she had to earn enough money to set herself free of the life into which she'd become entrapped.

Most of all she hated her parents for taking out the guilt they felt over losing their first two daughters on their youngest one. Mother was the worst... she constantly harped at Tree every time the girl tried to make herself pretty by dabbing on a bit of makeup or buying a new dress to wear.

Beth, the middle sister, was rarely mentioned any longer in that house... not since she up and vanished after making it known that she preferred girls to boys. Of course Tree knew that but it came as a hard shock to her parents, especially mother, who seemed to almost enjoy all the shame she must have harbored for having given birth to a lesbian.

"For the life of me, Teresa, I don't know why you bother with such niceties. You were never a beauty like your sister was... you know that. You're just plain and no amount of fussing over yourself will change that fact."

Father simply sat and listened as mother ranted and raved... Tree hated his meekness though at the same time she loved his tender side despite herself. She understood how beaten down the man was after thirty five years of marriage to a shrew who never forgave his failures as a husband and as a businessman.

She heard the tirade in their bedroom through the paper mâché walls... night after night her mother's voice rose and fell like bestial tidal waves inundating the shores of her husband's ego as she harangued the man over his lack of willpower, the disappointment he had foisted upon her, and the hardships she endured all on account of his not being a success despite the ample opportunities afforded him.

"My father—God bless his soul—actually thought you'd be someone. He handed you half the company he spent a lifetime building, and what did you do? You ran it right into the ground. My mother cautioned me against marrying you... Lord knows why I didn’t listen. She always knew you were no good. Look at you now... a fat tub of lard who can't even make love to his own wife."

Father never said a word... or if he did, Tree couldn’t hear it. She wondered why he didn’t fight back, or at least leave. How much could one man take? By the time she was fourteen Tree began saving her pennies for the day when she could move out of that horrible house.

Nobody seemed surprised when father was diagnosed with cancer. She watched as the man dutifully followed the prescribed regiment of drugs, waited in the hospital while he endured more surgeries than any person ought to, and prayed at his funeral with other family and friends.

"I'm so sorry to do this to you, Teresa."

It would be some of his final words. Mother did her best to keep her daughter away from father during his dying days as they were called but sometimes when the woman left to do the shopping or to renew father's prescription medications Tree would creep into the death room, take father by the hand, and whisper nothings at his sleeping form.

Late one afternoon when she reached out to touch him he opened his eyes and looked at her. There was a kind of a wild glow burning like headlights in his face as if he'd been dreaming of the hell that awaited him. His face was stubbly with beard, what hair he had left askew, and for a second she wondered if he even knew who she was.

"You're not doing anything to me, father."

"I'm dying, Teresa. Now that I'm finished she'll come after you. Run if you can... get away from here."

His skin felt hot and dry as he grasped her hand in his, as if she was a life preserver someone had thrown to him. The light within his eyes was fading out like a candle burning low, flickering and catching again yet always less than before. She had a sudden urge to take him in her arms, to carry him far away to a place where he'd regain his strength. He wasn’t dying. He couldn’t be dying.

She knew who he was talking about and she knew he was right. Mother had driven Janine to her death, Beth into exile, and now she was doing her best to defile father. Tree was sixteen years old, a shy and a lonely girl, and she had no idea of how to make it in the world all on her own. Still, she did as father advised... after he died she ran. She only made it three blocks before the sheriff caught her and brought her back to mother.

"You have way too much of your father in you, Teresa. I pity the man you'll marry... if you can find anyone to take you, that is."

Mother had said it while shaking her head, the same way she always talked to her... as if her only remaining daughter was her biggest regret in the world... as if she would rather Tree had never been born.

Within days Tree was wishing the same thing... though life with mother had never been easy, now it became a perpetual waking nightmare. She was taken out of school and remanded to her bedroom. To make sure Tree didn’t get any more ideas about wandering away, mother shackled her leg to the floor using a padlock and a chain meant for a dog and just long enough she could reach the bathroom.

The metal chafed her ankle. Though she tried tying cloth underneath it to make wearing the chain at least tolerable it did no good... the rubbing caused blisters at first and then blood coagulated around her ankle like a macabre scarf.

"What are you doing with my clothes, mother?"

"Oh, don't you worry, Teresa... you won't need them any longer. Remove the clothes you have on and give them to me. I'm going to take everything and burn it in the back yard. That way if you get any more ideas about running off, you'll have to do it naked."

The woman had gone mad. Tree could see it in her eyes. She did as she was told, took off her clothes, and stood there naked with them in a pile at her feet. When mother bent over to gather them up Tree looped the chain around the woman's neck—the same neck where she wore a necklace with the key to the padlock on her leg—pulled it taut, and waited until the struggle ceased.

She didn’t like looking into mother's dead eyes. They seemed full of recrimination... as if the woman had expected no more of Tree. When she tried to close them they opened again as if the woman still lived. After she wrapped a sheet around mother's head she felt less guilty for doing what she told herself had to be done.

Or did it?

It was easy enough to cut up the body... mother had always been a tiny woman so her arms and legs fit nicely into one trash bag, her head in another, and the carcass in a third. Tree worked in the nude mindful of forensic technology which could detect even minute blood splatters on clothing.

"You just wait until they find out what you've done to your own mother... I always knew you'd come to no good, Teresa."

"Shut up, mother... you're dead."

The voice kept on harping on her... even after she had cut off the head, stuffed the mouth full of crumpled up newspaper, and put it into one of the contractor garbage bags she bought at the Dollar General special for the job.

She could hear it even now, well after the time she took the remains of mother out into the hardpan where she dropped the bags separately into deep yawning cracks in the dried out earth afterwards spreading liberal doses of caustic lye to help facilitate the decay process.

"He'll turn on you too, Teresa... you'll see. That boy is a heartache waiting to happen. Just look at him... do you really think he loves you? He'll have his fill soon enough... now that you've given him what he wants I doubt he'll be around another day."

"Shut up, mother... I know you're not really here."

She got up from the bed, walked to the window, and pulled the draperies back just enough to reveal the beginnings of the day. It seemed odd how it rained so much in Louisiana. She shivered staring at the early morning drizzle.

"Did you say something, Tree?'

"Church... you're awake! I was just talking to myself... it's raining again."

Skipping barefoot and naked back to the bed she snuggled next to the boy's warm body as she fought off the rages of her mother's screams deafening her ears.