The Cabin on Souder Hill Read online

  “What about Ruther? He’ll want to know where the baby is?”

  “Ruther doesn’t want that baby.” She stumbled as she tried to steady herself on the floor. “He won’t come home till it’s gone.”

  “You’re getting up too soon!” Mattie placed the baby in the bassinet and rushed back over to Ida, grabbing her arm and helping her back onto the bed. “You stay put.” When Ida closed her eyes, it had looked to Mattie as if Ida was leaving the planet, going off to start a new life somewhere else. Mattie had taken the baby into the bedroom and placed the bassinet next to her bed. When Mattie woke the next morning, she found Ida gone without a note, all the birthing sheets and towels cleaned and folded neatly on the bed. Mattie had gone back to the bedroom and picked up the baby. “Pink is love,” she said, kissing him on the nose. “That’ll be your name.”

  One moment like any other, Mattie thought. She’d had no idea at the time how many lives would change because of that one moment, including hers and Buck’s. Buck had been in Texas, handling legal work for the US Army Corps of Engineers on a dam project. He’d call almost every night, excited about the progress. “Should bring some new life to this depressed area.” Mattie listened, wanting to tell him about the baby but thinking it best to wait until he came home. It would only be two weeks. Of course, by then there was no way she’d give up Pink, no matter what Buck said.

  Mattie never told Pink who his real parents were, and as tangled as things had become over the years, she never could without hurting too many folks, especially Pink. It would destroy him.

  “So can you help, Mama?” Pink asked again. “Just a little magic to get me through?”

  Mattie went over to the chair and picked up the besom she was working on for her neighbor’s daughter’s wedding. She gathered birch twigs into a bunch, cutting them with her bolline so they were the same length then attached them to the ash staff with willow binding. She layered another bunch of twigs, securing them with more willow twine.

  “Mama,” Pink said, strolling over to her side. “Now don’t start ignoring me. It wouldn’t take you no time at all to throw something together.”

  “Pink, it’s not about time!” she snapped, glaring up at him. At moments like this it was hard for her to believe he was a grown man. When he wanted something, his voice took on the carefree timbre of youth, his blue eyes sparkling in the same incorruptible way they had when the owner of the pet store accused him of stealing a turtle. Unlike most folks, Pink became more charming when he was desperate.

  “I hope that’s not for Isabelle,” Pink said, sitting on the edge of the couch, nodding toward the besom in Mattie’s hands. “She nearly killed me with that last one you made her.”

  “Did you put it above her door like I told you?” Mattie asked, saddened that Isabelle had become so resistant to magic; she had been one of Mattie’s best students. Mattie couldn’t help but blame herself for Isabelle’s illness. She had a reasonably good idea why Isabelle was so sick and not getting better, but there was no way to tell her or Pink.

  “Well, sure, of course I did,” Pink said. “Just like you told me.” He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and thumbed his lighter.

  “Don’t smoke that in here. You know better.”

  “You burn all sorts of stuff in here smells a whole lot worse than this White Owl.”

  “Did you put the besom on the outside of the bedroom so she couldn’t see it?” Mattie said, growing agitated with him.

  Pink sat up, hands on knees, the fat cigar wedged between his stumpy fingers. “Well, no. I put it on the inside. You make them so pretty-looking I thought I should hang it where she could see it. Boy, did it rile her up! ‘Get that goddamn witchcraft shit out of my house!’ she screamed. Then she flew out of that deathbed of hers like her butt was on fire and tossed a slipper like a damn baseball to knock the broom off the wall. Then she hit me with it. Hurt like hell.”

  Pink got up and ambled across the room, picking up a small ceramic gnome sitting on the table. “If you don’t have time to conjure a spell,” he said. “Maybe you could carve me some kind of rune that’ll do the trick, something I can carry in my pocket or hang from my rearview mirror.”

  “Pink, it doesn’t work like that.” Mattie dropped the besom in the basket at her feet. “It’s not about me doing anything. It’s about you, your attitude, your entire approach to things.”

  “Mama, you know I tried to learn all that stuff. I ain’t much for reading, and I couldn’t remember all those chants and gods and goddesses. I gave it my best shot.”

  She wasn’t sure he’d finished even one book she’d given him, even though he’d said he’d read them all. None of it made any sense to him, he’d told her, “I’m too simple for the spirit world,” he’d said. She assured him he wasn’t and urged him to try harder.

  “Well, what about that love spell thing you did for Isabelle and me?” Pink said, sitting down across from her again. “I didn’t have to change my ‘approach to things’ for that.”

  Magic held no power over love. Mattie knew that, but Pink didn’t and he was suggestable. Her little deception had worked for a while, at least on Pink, though Isabelle seemed to have seen through it. “That was different. You were already married, and it was to help you both through the rough times after Isabelle’s mother . . .” Mattie said, remembering Isabelle’s father that day, his palms covered in blood.

  “Well, I could use a little love spell for that damn sister of Isabelle’s,” Pink said, jumping to his feet, strolling to Mattie’s refrigerator. “That girl is always giving me trouble.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Mattie said, following Pink into the kitchen.

  “Is there anymore of that pudding, Mama?” Pink bent over, his hand shifting past the vegetables and bowls in the fridge.

  “What’s this talk about Claire?” Mattie asked.

  “She’s always cracking how fat I am. Do you think I’m fat, Mama?”

  “I mean the part about the love spell? You and her aren’t up to anything, are you?”

  Pink found a fried chicken breast wrapped in tin foil. He threw the foil in the trash and bit a chunk from the side, leaving a glowing white patch of exposed meat.

  “Pink, you answer me.”

  “Mama, now, don’t get yourself all worked up.” Pink poured himself a glass of milk. “There ain’t nothing going on between me and Claire. Hell, that skinny little girl is just a child.”

  Mattie eased down into the kitchen chair, rolling her fingers into a ball on her lap. It made her feel unfit as a mother that she couldn’t tell if Pink was lying. She often wondered if he had grown in her own belly, if they’d shared a contract of blood, maybe then she would be capable of knowing him completely the way she imagined a natural mother would know her own offspring. She had hoped that time alone would bond them in such a way that she could tell what he was thinking before he knew his own thoughts. She conjured numerous fantasies about a real mother’s connection to her child, how a real mother could peer into his soul, protect him from himself. She had tried to protect Pink, but it was all falling apart again. She looked into his eyes and prayed he was telling the truth.

  *****

  On Friday, Pink stayed home from the office. Friday was when Claire came to clean Pink and Isabelle’s house. Pink watched from the couch as Claire elbowed open the front door, her skinny white arms hugging a mop and broom. A scrub bucket full of supplies—Mr. Clean, 409, Windex, an assortment of brushes and other things Pink didn’t recognize—dangled from her hand. Her nails were painted red and shiny as plastic. She wore a skintight exercise outfit with a white tank top pulled over it. She asked how he was doing then went back to the front porch for the sweeper. The attachments rattled as she dragged the vacuum inside by the hose and shut the front door.

  Claire asked Pink if he’d been fishing lately, told him that her Kenny was out the other day
catching walleye down where the Little Pigeon River flowed into Lake Burtran.

  “Under the bridge, there,” she said. “Where everybody fishes. He’s there now. At least that’s where he said he was going. Him and Curly.”

  Like a magician, Claire pulled all kinds of cleaning supplies out of the bucket, including a long wand with a rainbow-feathered head she used to knock cobwebs from the fan blades. Pink watched the cheeks of her ass work like pistons, up and down, as she moved around the living room. Her hair was a bundle of curls piled on top of her head, and Pink figured the only thing holding them in place was the yellow plastic flower tucked behind her ear. He couldn’t understand the mechanics of it.

  “How’s Isabelle feeling today, Pink?” she asked, dusting the ceramic wizards and unicorns on the mantel. With her back to him, she dusted the pewter figurines on the top shelf of the curio cabinet, working her way down to the bottom, bending over to wipe the porcelain swans and pigs. Pink pulled himself off the couch and clamped his hands to her hips, pressing up against her from behind. Still bent over, she looked up at him past her shoulder then motioned her head toward the sweeper. He stretched his toe out and clicked it on. The vacuum drowned out the noise of the television as Claire turned toward him and unzipped his pants. She guided him backward toward the couch and pushed on his chest to make him sit. She knelt on the floor between his legs and stuck her hand into his trousers. With her other hand, she grabbed the handle on the sweeper and pushed it back and forth, making it sound as if she were vacuuming. The television mixed with the roar of the vacuum as Pink closed his eyes and buried his fingers in Claire’s bouncy curls.

  When Claire finished, she stood, turned off the vacuum, and went to the kitchen. Each time the refrigerator door opened and closed, Pink could hear the bottles and jars in the door clink together. He zipped up his pants and thought about taking a nap. But listening to Claire rummaging through the cabinets and refrigerator made him hungry. Claire came out of the kitchen carrying a glass of milk in one hand and a plate of sliced sandwich sections, vegetable strips, and potato chips in the other.

  “Is that for me, cuddle cakes?” Pink said.

  Claire smirked and rolled her eyes, walking past him toward the back bedroom.

  “Good,” he said. “Because I hate them little carrot and celery sticks. It’s like eating bamboo.” Pink went over to the coffee table and grabbed the remote off the stack of Glamour magazines. He pushed the button, grimacing each time another program popped onto the screen. Men in suits, a woman wearing a necklace, a girl reading a diary, a preacher behind the pulpit, police cars racing down a country road after a blue car, a woman crying, a boy laughing at a frog, everybody talking, everybody caught inside that little box. He hoped to find a program on antelope hunting in Wyoming or peacock bass fishing in Mexico.

  He thought maybe he should go fishing, call Clarence and head down to that bridge and sit with Kenny and jerk walleye out of the river and drink all of Kenny’s beer and tell him what fine blowjobs Claire gave. No woman did it like Claire, Pink thought, especially not Isabelle. Isabelle gave him neurotic little blowjobs, gagging and choking the entire time, like she was being forced to swallow a lamp. That was before she got sick. Pink half-figured that’s why she wasn’t getting well, so she wouldn’t have to perform orally anymore, or any other way.

  Claire came out of the bedroom empty-handed and went to the kitchen. Pink walked out to see what she was doing.

  “What are you going to do all day, Pink?” Claire asked, wiping down the countertops. “Sit around getting fatter?”

  Pink sidled up beside her, wrapping his hands around her waist. “I thought I might go down there walleye fishing under the bridge with Kenny,” Pink said, a grin pushing his plump cheeks apart.

  “Kenny would like that, Pink. You should go.” She pried his fingers from her waist. “Just don’t forget about that .357 Magnum he’s got stashed in the bottom of his tackle box.”

  Pink spun away from her and went to the fridge. He pulled the door open, scratching his head as he surveyed the shelves. After finding a couple of leftover pork chops from Fat Jack’s Barbecue, he went out on the back porch and sat in the rocker. Before too long, Claire came out and draped a rug over the rail and proceeded to beat it with a broom. Lint, dust balls, and hair floated across the porch and stuck to Pink’s pork chop.

  “Goddamn it, Claire!” he said. “You’re ruining my damn lunch.”

  “How many is that for you today, Pink?”

  “Pork chops?”

  “No, lunches,” she said, folding the rug and taking it back inside.

  “Why do you always have to make fun of how fat I am?” he shouted at the screen door behind her then looked down at his belly bulging over his pants. “Goddamn women,” he said, throwing the pork chop bone at a sycamore tree in the backyard like he was throwing a hatchet, half expecting it to stick.

  Pink was napping in the rocker when Claire stepped out and told him she was leaving. “Isabelle wants to see you,” she said.

  Pink rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. The afternoon was turning cool, the sky an empty, gray slate. “What’s your sister want now?”

  “She’s sick, Pink. Can’t you find any compassion?”

  “I used it all up over the past few years. I’m plumb wore down to the rim.”

  “Don’t make her wait,” Claire said. “I’ve got to go.”

  Pink heard Claire start her Pacer as he walked to the back bedroom. He dreaded going in, hated the smell of sweat-soaked linen and vomit, the stench of disease. He grabbed a few cigars off the dresser in the spare bedroom—the bedroom he’d occupied since Isabelle had taken sick—then walked down the hall. He opened the door slowly, as if stealth could fool the germs, keep them from leaping into his lungs. He wasn’t certain if she was contagious, no one was. Even the doctors couldn’t accurately diagnose the ailment, her condition changing with the frequency of a storm front. Everything from fibromyalgia to Crohn’s disease, they’d said, but Pink knew they were guessing. Pink believed that doctors were like weathermen; they got paid whether they were right or wrong, so it didn’t matter what they said.

  “Hey, Sweet Potato, how are we feeling today?” Pink asked, poking his head through the door.

  “I don’t have the energy, Pink. So don’t bring that sweet-talk crap in here.” Isabelle pushed herself up under the blankets, coughing.

  “You always loved it when I called you Sweet Potato, Sweet Potato,” he said, stepping into the room, still holding the doorknob behind his back.

  “That’s when I was seventeen, Pink. I didn’t have a brain yet.”

  “But don’t you remember? I’d say, ‘Are you my little sweet potato?’ and you’d say, ‘I yam, I yam!’ ” Pink could hardly believe how terrible she looked, her eye sockets and parched mouth like deep craters on the surface of some forsaken planet. She seemed paler than putty and painfully swollen. Pink smiled and tried to look past her, envisioning the nest of curls on the top of Claire’s head, the vanilla and citrus freshness of Claire’s skin. “Claire said you wanted to see me.”

  “Could you get my book of crossword puzzles?” Isabelle said. “And a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey?”

  “Sure, Sweet Potato,” Pink said, about to leave.

  “And, Pink,” Isabelle said.

  “Yes?”

  “You can wipe that stupid grin off your face now,” she said, adjusting the blankets.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you think I know Claire gives you blowjobs when she comes over to clean? God only knows what twisted thrill she gets from sucking that fat little peter of yours.” Isabelle collapsed back on the pillow, her mouth a square hole in her face. “You can get me that tea now, Sweet Potato. And don’t break the bag.”

  Chapter 9

  Isabelle ran her hand across the magazine page, over the photo of the white dress, tr
acing her finger along the lace sleeve. Her own wedding dress hadn’t been that pretty. She and Pink had been married in the church, even though her parents had ordered the minister not to do it. The day before the wedding, Isabelle had been going over the last of the details with the minister—where the photographer would stand, how the bridesmaids would approach the altar—when her parents came into the church. Her father had stayed in the vestibule, his body looking like a shadow caught in the light of the opened doors. Her mother marched down the aisle and demanded that “this nonsense” be stopped immediately.

  “Why, Ida?” the minister had said. “Pink and Isabelle love each other.”

  Isabelle’s mother had protested to the minister, explaining that Pink and Isabelle were second cousins. “It isn’t right,” she’d told the minister. “They have the same blood flowing through their veins.”

  “Second cousins are hardly blood relatives at all,” the minister had told her. “Don’t worry. The Lord will bless this union.”

  Isabelle could still see the fire in her mother’s eyes, glaring up at the minister, her hands balled to fists. “You’ll burn in hell eternal if you go through with this,” she said to the minister, then stormed out of the church. Isabelle shrugged at the minister, savoring every second of her mother’s anguish. Her father stood a moment in the doorway. Isabelle could see his head bowed, shaking back and forth, his hat in his hands like an out-of-work salesman. The day Isabelle told her parents she was marrying Pink, her mother had put down her needlepoint and folded her hands in her lap, her eyes flat as mud. “You will not,” she said, and then got up to leave.

  “Yes I will,” Isabelle said. “Next month. You’re both invited.”

  Her mother walked across the room and slapped Isabelle across the face. Before Isabelle could say anything, she slapped her again and left the room.