Heart-shaped box (21 page)

J
ude pivoted toward Georgia and Bammy.
Georgia stood across the kitchen from him, in the doorway. Her eyes were just her eyes, no death marks over them. Bammy touched her granddaughter on the hip to nudge her aside, then eased into the kitchen around her and approached Jude.

“You know Ruth’s story? Did M.B. tell you?”

“She told me your sister got taken when you were little. She said sometimes people see her out in the yard, getting grabbed all over again. It isn’t the same as seeing it yourself. I heard her sing. I saw her taken away.”

Bammy put her hand on his wrist. “Do you want to set?”

He shook his head.

“You know why she keeps coming back? Why people see her? The worst moments of Ruth’s life happened out in that yard, while we all sat in here eating our lunch. She was alone and scared, and no one saw when she was taken away. No one heard when she stopped singing. It must’ve been the most awful thing. I’ve always thought that when something really bad happens to a person, other people just have to know about it. You can’t be a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear you crash. Can I at least get you something else to drink?”

He nodded. She got the pitcher of lemonade, almost drained now, and sloshed the last of it into his glass.

While she poured, Bammy said, “I always thought if someone could speak to her, it might take a weight off her. I always thought if someone could make her feel not so alone in those last minutes, it might set her free.” Bammy tipped her head to the side—a curious, interrogatory gesture Jude had seen Georgia perform a million times. “You might’ve done her some good and not even know it. Just by saying her name.”

“What did I do? She still got taken.” Downing the glass in a swallow and then setting it in the sink.

“I never thought for a moment anyone could change what happened to her. That’s done. The past is gone. Stay the night, Jude.”

Her last statement was so completely unrelated to the one that had preceded it, Jude needed a moment to understand she had just made a request of him.

“Can’t,” Jude said.

“Why?”

Because anyone who offered them aid would be infected with the death on them, and who knew how much they had risked Bammy’s life just by stopping a few hours? Because he and Georgia were dead already, and the dead drag the living down. “Because it isn’t safe,” he said at last. That was honest, at least.

Bammy’s brow knotted, screwing up in thought. He saw her struggling for the right words to crack him open, to force him to talk about the situation they were in.

While she was still thinking, Georgia crept into the room, almost tiptoeing, as if afraid to make any sound. Bon was at her heels, gazing up with a look of idiot anxiety.

Georgia said, “Not every ghost is like your sister, Bammy. There’s some that are real bad. We’re having all kinds of trouble with dead people. Don’t ask either one of us to explain. It would just sound crazy.”

“Try me anyway. Let me help.”

“Mrs. Fordham,” Jude said, “you were good to have us. Thank you for dinner.”

Georgia reached Bammy’s side and tugged on her shirtsleeve, and when her grandmother turned toward her, Georgia put her pale and skinny arms around her and clasped her tight. “You are a good woman, and I love you.”

Bammy still had her head turned to look at Jude. “If I can do something…”

“But you can’t,” Jude said. “It’s like with your sister there in the backyard. You can shout all you want, but it won’t change how things play out.”

“I don’t believe that. My sister is dead. No one paid any attention when she quit singing, and someone took her away and killed her. But you are not dead. You and my granddaughter are alive and here with me in my house. Don’t give up on yourself. The dead win when you quit singing and let them take you on down the road with them.”

Something about this last gave Jude a nervous jolt, as if he’d touched metal and caught a sudden stinging zap of static electricity. Something about giving up on yourself. Something about singing. There was an idea there, but not one he could make sense of yet. The knowledge that he and Georgia had about played out their string—the feeling that they were both as dead as the girl he’d just seen in the backyard—was an obstacle no other thought could get around.

Georgia kissed Bammy’s face, once, and again: kissing tears. And at last Bammy turned to look at her. She put her hands on her granddaughter’s cheeks.

“Stay,” Bammy said. “Make him stay. And if he won’t, then let him go on without you.”

“I can’t do that,” Georgia said. “And he’s right. We can’t bring you into this any more than we already have. One man who was a friend to us is dead because he didn’t get clear of us fast enough.”

Bammy pressed her forehead to Georgia’s breast. Her breath hitched and caught. Her hands rose and went into Georgia’s hair, and for a moment both women swayed together, as if they were dancing very slowly.

When her composure returned—it wasn’t long—Bammy looked up into Georgia’s face again. Bammy was red and damp-cheeked, and her chin was trembling, but she seemed to be done with her crying.

“I will pray, Marybeth. I will pray for you.”

“Thank you,” Georgia said.

“I am countin’ on you coming back. I am countin’ on seeing you again, when you’ve figured out how to make things right. And I know you will. Because you’re clever and you’re good and you’re my girl.” Bammy inhaled sharply, gave Jude a watery, sidelong look. “I hope he’s worth it.”

Georgia laughed, a soft, convulsive sound almost like a sob, and squeezed Bammy once more.

“Go, then,” Bammy said. “Go if you got to.”

“We’re already gone,” Georgia said.

H
e drove.
His palms were hot and slick on the wheel, his stomach churning. He wanted to slam his fist into something. He wanted to drive too fast, and he did, shooting yellow lights just as they turned red. And when he didn’t make a light in time and had to sit in traffic, he pumped the pedal, revving the engine impatiently. What he had felt in the house, watching the little dead girl get dragged away, that sensation of helplessness, had thickened and curdled into rage and a sour-milk taste in his mouth.

Georgia watched him for a few miles, then put a hand on his forearm. He twitched, startled by the clammy, chilled feel of her skin on his. He wanted to take a deep breath and recover his composure, not so much for himself as for her. If one of them was going to be this way, it seemed to him it ought to be Georgia, that she had more right to rage than he did, after what Anna had shown her in the mirror. After she had seen herself dead. He did not understand her quiet, her steadiness, her concern for him, and he could not find it in him to take deep breaths. When a truck in front of him was slow to get moving after the light turned green, he laid on the horn.

“Head out of your ass!” Jude yelled through the open window as he tore by, crossing the double yellow line to go past.

Georgia removed her hand from his arm, set it in her lap. She turned her head to stare out the passenger-side window. They drove a block, stopped at another intersection.

When she spoke again, it was in a low, amused mumble. She didn’t mean for him to hear, was talking to herself, and maybe not even completely aware she’d spoken aloud.

“Oh, look. My least favorite used-car lot in the whole wide world. Where’s a hand grenade when you need one?”

“What?” he asked, but as he said it, he already knew and was yanking at the steering wheel, pulling the car to the curb, and jamming on the brake.

To the right of the Mustang was the vast sprawl of a car lot, brightly illuminated by sodium-vapor lights on thirty-foot-tall steel posts. They towered over the asphalt, like ranks of alien tripods, a silent invading army from another world. Lines had been strung between them, and a thousand blue and red pennants snapped in the wind, adding a carnival touch to the place. It was after 8
P.M.
, but they were still doing business. Couples moved among the cars, leaning toward windows to peer at price stickers pasted against the glass.

Georgia’s brow furrowed, and her mouth opened in a way that suggested she was about to ask him what in the hell he thought he was doing.

“Is this his place?” Jude asked.

“What place?”

“Don’t act stupid. The guy who molested you and treated you like a hooker.”

“He didn’t…It wasn’t…I wouldn’t exactly say he—”

“I would. Is this it?”

She looked at his hands clenched on the wheel, his white knuckles.

“He’s probably not even here,” she said.

Jude flung open the car door and heaved himself out. Cars blasted
past, and the hot, exhaust-smelling slipstream snatched at his clothes. Georgia scrambled out on the other side and stared across the hood of the Mustang at him.

“Where are you goin’?”

“To look for the guy. What’s his name again?”

“Get in the car.”

“Who am I looking for? Don’t make me go around slugging used-car salesmen at random.”

“You’re not goin’ in there alone to beat the shit out of some guy you don’t even know.”

“No. I wouldn’t go alone. I’d take Angus.” He glanced into the Mustang. Angus’s head was already sticking into the gap between the two front seats, and he was staring out at Jude expectantly. “C’mon, Angus.”

The giant black dog leaped onto the driver’s seat and then into the road. Jude slammed the door, started around the front of the car, the dense, sleek weight of Angus’s torso pressed against his side.

“I’m not gonna tell you who,” she said.

“All right. I’ll ask around.”

She grabbed his arm. “What do you mean, you’ll ask around? What are you going to do? Start askin’ salesmen if they used to fuck thirteen-year-olds?”

Then it came back to him, popped into his head without any forewarning. He was thinking he’d like to stick a gun in the son of a bitch’s face, and he remembered. “Ruger. His name was Ruger. Like the gun.”

“You’re going to get arrested. You’re not goin’ in there.”

“This is why guys like him get away with it. Because people like you go on protecting them, even when they ought to know better.”

“I’m not protectin’
him,
you asshole. I’m protectin’
you
.”

He yanked his arm out of her grip and started to turn back, ready to give up and already seething about it—and that was when he noticed Angus was gone.

He cast a swift look around and spotted him an instant later, deep in
the used-car lot, trotting between a row of pickups and then turning and disappearing behind one of them.

“Angus!” he shouted, but an eighteen-wheeler boomed past, and Jude’s voice was lost in the diesel roar.

Jude went after him. He glanced back and saw Georgia right behind him, her own face white, eyes wide with alarm. They were on a major highway, in a busy lot, and it would be a bad place to lose one of the dogs.

He reached the row of pickups where he’d last seen Angus and turned, and there he was—ten feet away, sitting on his haunches, allowing a skinny, bald man in a blue blazer to scratch him behind the ears. The bald man was one of the dealers. The tag on his breast pocket said
RUGER
. Ruger stood with a rotund family in promotional T-shirts, their ample bellies doing double duty as billboards. The father’s gut was selling Coors Silver Bullet; the mother’s breast made an unpersuasive pitch for Curves fitness; the son, about ten, had on a Hooters shirt, and probably could’ve fit into a C cup himself. Standing next to them, Ruger seemed almost elflike, an impression enhanced by his delicate, arched eyebrows and pointy ears with their fuzzy earlobes. His loafers had tassels on them. Jude despised loafers with tassels.

“There’s a good boy,” Ruger said. “Look at this good boy.”

Jude slowed, allowing Georgia to catch up. She was about to go past Jude but then saw Ruger and shrank back.

Ruger looked up, beaming politely. “Your dog, ma’am?” His eyes narrowed. Then a puzzled recognition passed across his face. “It’s little Marybeth Kimball, all grown up. Look at you! Are you down visiting? I heard you were in New York City these days.”

Georgia didn’t speak. She glanced sidelong at Jude, her eyes bright and stricken. Angus had led them right to him, as if he’d known just who they were looking for. Maybe Angus
did
know somehow. Maybe the dog of black smoke who lived inside Angus had known. Georgia began shaking
her head at Jude—
No, don’t
—but he paid her no mind, stepped around her, closing in on Angus and Ruger.

Ruger shifted his gaze to Jude. His face came alive with amazement and pleasure. “Oh, my God! You’re Judas Coyne, the famous rock-and-roll fellow. My teenage son has every single one of your albums. I can’t say I quite care for the volume he plays them at”—digging a pinkie in one ear, as if his eardrums were still ringing from just such a recent encounter with Jude’s music—“but I’ll tell you what, you’ve made quite a mark on him.”

“I’m about to make quite a mark on you, asshole,” Jude said, and drove his right fist into Ruger’s face, heard his nose snap.

Ruger staggered, half doubled over, one hand cupping his nose. The roly-poly couple behind him parted to let him stumble past. Their son grinned and stood on his toes to watch the fight from around his father’s shoulder.

Jude sank a left into Ruger’s breadbasket, ignoring the burst of pain that shot through the gouge in his palm. He grabbed the car dealer as he started to drop to his knees, and threw him onto the hood of a Pontiac with a sign stuck inside the windshield:
IT’S YOURS IF YOU WANT IT!!! CHEAP!!!

Ruger tried to sit up, and Jude grabbed him by the crotch, found his scrotum, and squeezed, felt the stiff jelly of Ruger’s balls crunch in his fist. Ruger sat bolt upright and shrieked, dark arterial blood gouting from his nostrils. His trousers were hiked up, and Angus jumped, snarling, and clamped his jaws on Ruger’s foot, then yanked, tearing off one of his loafers.

The fat woman covered her eyes but kept two fingers apart to peek between them.

Jude only had time to get a couple more licks in before Georgia had him by the elbow and was hauling him off. Halfway to the car she began to laugh, and as soon as they were packed back into the Mustang, she
was all over him, chewing his earlobe, kissing him above his beard, shivering against his side.

Angus still had Ruger’s loafer, and once they were on the interstate, Georgia traded him a Slim Jim for it, then tied it from the rearview mirror by the tassels.

“Like it?” she asked.

“Better than fuzzy dice,” Jude said.