Read Young God: A Novel Online
Authors: Katherine Faw Morris
Young God: A Novel (10 page)
There is nothing in here, either. Nikki puts her hands on her hips and cries for a while.
“WHERE’S THE MONEY?”
“What money?”
Coy Hawkins looks at her.
“What are you doing with that shovel?” he says.
“The money you buried up the deer cut,” Nikki says.
Coy Hawkins looks confused.
“What?”
“Mama said.”
“She said what?”
“She said it was supposed to be mine.”
Coy Hawkins stares at her.
“And you believed her?” he says.
He lights a cigarette. He turns his head and blows his smoke to the side.
“I thought you were smarter than that.”
Nikki is sweating. She’s exhausted.
“There’s nothing up there,” he says.
She is close to his chair. She lowers her hand to the footrest and sits down.
SHE STANDS JUST INSIDE THE BEDROOM.
She looks at him. He’s lying on the bed. She lies down beside him. She puts her head on his chest.
He circles an arm around her, then the other one. He hugs her for a long time. She has her hand on his stomach.
She moves it to his belt. She moves it to his thigh and he tenses up. She slides it between his legs.
“Nikki,” Coy Hawkins says.
He sits up.
She goes after him into the living room.
“Who are you calling?” she says.
“DSS.”
“What?”
She is delirious like she has a fever. He looks at her and his whole face is winced up. He tosses his phone on the coffee table.
“There’s no service,” he says.
He walks into the kitchen.
FUCKING COY HAWKINS.
Fuck him.
SHE WAITS FOR HIM
to take a shower. He leaves his boots by his chair and his gun in one of them.
He comes out fully dressed with his hair slick at the tips. He walks by her on the couch. He goes by her again with a coffee cup. She follows him down the hall.
In the bedroom he doesn’t look at her.
“What?” he says.
She shoots him in the back until the clip runs out and the gun’s just clicking.
FIVE
COY HAWKINS
offers his hand.
“Do you wanna dance?”
She stands from the trailer’s steps. The pickup’s doors are open and the stereo’s blaring. She walks into the yard and he pulls her close to him. She lays her cheek on him. She can feel his breathing and his heart beating. As they sway slower and slower his beer slides from her side to his fingertips.
And then that goes away and there is nothing again, which is her favorite dream. Except it is not nothing. It is charged white space.
Nikki sits up straight on the couch. She gags and spits the lollipop out.
IT’S HOTTER THAN FORTY HELLS OUTSIDE.
Wesley’s in the yard. He’s with Bubba and Lee Church, who both have shotguns. A car’s growling behind them. Nikki lets her foot off the door of the trailer.
She comes down the steps. She stops just before she gets to them. She puts her hands on her hips and stares at him.
“Your investors?” she says.
Wesley says nothing. His mouth is slack. His forehead is wrapped in gauze.
“Hold on,” Nikki says.
She walks past them. She goes behind the big house to the woodpile. She braces her foot against the log and pulls out the ax.
“You hear them gunshots?”
Nikki turns around. When she looks at Levi his foot skids off the pedal.
“Yeah,” she says.
She walks by them again, with the ax this time.
Inside she remembers her red eye. She finds her white sunglasses before she goes back out with the grocery bag.
She stands in front of them. She nods at Wesley’s head.
“Stitches?” she says.
“What the hell happened?” he says.
“She’s got blood all over her dress,” Bubba says.
Nikki looks at him. She looks at all of them.
“Coy Hawkins is dead,” she says.
“Holy shit,” Wesley says.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bubba says.
He lets his shotgun swing to his side.
Slowly Lee Church bends to the ground and puts his shotgun down. Nikki drops the ki at his feet.
“Let me know when y’all run out.”
They just stand there while she walks back to the trailer. On the top step she sets the ax down. She looks at the door. At this moment she expected to feel something else.
She looks over her shoulder. She makes a face.
“Come on, Levi,” she says.
His bike falls in the grass.
THE CARPET’S STAINED WITH BLOOD
and coffee. She’ll have to rip it out. But she’s always hated it. Already there are flies. Nikki looks at him.
He’s standing in the doorway to the bedroom. His eyes are huge. He cuts them to her. He drops the T-shirt tented over his face and nods.
“He would’ve ratted you out, too,” Levi says.
Nikki snaps her fingers.
“Trash bag,” she says.
He pulls one out of the box in his hands. He tries to give it to her but she is no longer turned to him.
“Nikki, here.”
She looks at herself in the mirrored closet. She pushes the sunglasses to the top of her head. She stares at herself. She tries to be pleased by what she sees. She has to be.
“Nikki.”
She steps on the body of Coy Hawkins.
“Nikki.”
This is the future.
NIKKI HAWKINS
raises the ax over her head.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you Chris Parris-Lamb, Sean McDonald, Emily Bell, my family, and, most of all, Don.
A Note About the Author
Katherine Faw Morris was born in northwest North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two pit bulls.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2014 by Katherine Faw Morris
All rights reserved
First edition, 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Katherine Faw, 1983–
Young God: a novel / Katherine Faw Morris.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-53423-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71088-0 (ebook)
1. Teenage girls—Appalachian Mountains—Fiction. 2. Drug traffic—Appalachian Mountains—Fiction. 3. Outlaws—Appalachian Mountains—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.O7733 Y68 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013041336