I sense a longing in his look, and I want to say the right thing to capture it and hold it. He turns from me and drags a wood stool into the middle of the room.
‘Sit,’ he says peacefully.
I move over to the chair and climb up onto it. I let my hands fall into my lap, concealing myself. Le Loup gently takes my hands, picks them up, and drops them to my sides.
I watch him reach down into his boot. He takes out something, which he fumbles with in his hands.
‘It has to be this way,’ he says and opens a long switchblade.
And with a cold inert awareness, I realize what I took mistook for longing was really the look of mourning on Le Loup’s face.
I suddenly can’t breathe and begin to pant. I shake my head no. And I recognize his face. It was a face he never had for me, but for the lizards he would drag into his room to discipline. And now I realize his face usually contained a yielding affection when he dealt with me. The clenched rage set of his face is directed completely at me now, and it feels like staring into the pit of death. I try to say something, anything, but the words are stuck well beneath my larynx. He moves so he is standing between my parted legs.
‘Good-bye, Sarah,’ he says and raises the blade above me. I see a whirl of it flash by, feel a sharp cut, followed by a vague awareness of some part of me falling to the ground.
I am lying on the floor. Afternoon light is hitting my face in long bright bars. I feel an ache, a fierce piercing ache somewhere. My hand feels damp. I raise it to my eyes and see blood. Everything dissolves to black.
‘Get up.’ I feel a sharp poking at my side. ‘Wake up.’ I open my eyes to see Le Loup standing in a haze above me. I’m aware of voices coming from outside. I tilt my head to see the tempered evening light streaming in.
‘Am I almost dead?’ I whisper.
‘Get up!’ Le Loup’s foot bangs into my side harder.
I am amazed that I am able to push myself up onto my elbows and, after more prods from Le Loup’s boot, to sit up. I avoid looking down, between my legs. I am vaguely aware of crimson streaks on my body. My head throbs and aches like a million paper cuts.
I feel beyond tears.
The thought passes through my mind to grasp on to his legs and beg for, for something. Just to latch on and not let go no matter how hard he kicks.
‘Get up!’ Le Loup reaches down, grabs me by my arm and hauls me to my feet.
I am further astonished I can stand, let alone walk, as he half drags me toward the bathroom.
He kicks open the door and pulls me in with him. This is where he will finish me off. I am probably bleeding too much, so the tub would work better for…
‘Look!’ he says.
I twist my head from the tub to look at him.
‘Look!’ He’s staring straight ahead and he jabs me to do the same.
I turn my head to look at him looking at me in the mirror. It’s a window-frame mirror, lit by a border of round lightbulbs, the kind of mirror you would find in a star’s dressing room. I’ve stood in front of this mirror many times attempting the effortless fluid motions with which Sarah could wink an eye, throw a kiss, and toss her hair, all at the same time.
‘Look!’ Le Loup prods me hard.
I turn my head and, in the mirror’s reflection, I see someone standing next to Le Loup. Someone I don’t recognize. The person’s hair has been sliced off. Lacerations and blood streaks mar the virginal whiteness of the scalp. There is one long gold curly lock left, hanging in the front like a unicorn’s limp horn. Le Loup, staring in the mirror, reaches for it. He unfurls it like he’s straightening a spring coil. His switchblade raises in the air and rains down in a fast vicious swoop. Like a bird piercing a water’s surface to snatch up its prey, the blade scraps into the scalp to cut loose the remaining tassel of hair. Le Loup clenches the lock in his fist above his head.
A trickle of blood runs over the bare scalp, dribbles down the forehead, spreading at the eyebrows, to finally gather into one fine ruby droplet. I watch the droplet, like a diamond-shaped tear, loosen and fall with a tiny splash into an eye.
My eye.
I blink at the droplet and it seeps around my socket turning the white into a runny pink.
I hear a laugh, low and guttural at first. Then I realize it’s a war whoop. I turn to see Le Loup pumping his fist in the air over my head, his mouth protracted into a victory cry. He suddenly grabs me with his other arm and pulls me out of the bathroom. The voices outside are louder, extending into a tenacious grumble.
We move past the stool I had been sitting on, and I see scattered around it, like tinsel fallen off a Christmas tree, the rest of my hair.
He pulls me to the barn’s door and unlocks it. Before he opens it, he steps behind me, pulls my arms in back of me and binds my wrists together.
‘You stay here,’ he says, moving me to lean against a wall next to the closed door. The fact that he doesn’t even bother to remind me to not even think about escaping makes me feel all the more forfeited and discarded.
Le Loup throws open the barn door. I hear his boots clicking onto the wood deck and stopping there. The voices of what sounds like a modest crowd quickly hush.
I lean back against the wall and let my body sink to the floor.
There is only silence from outside. Finally, through the partially open door, I hear Le Loup striking a match against the wood porch rail. It’s so silent I can even make out his first inhalation and exhalation. I smell smoke wafting in. It’s not the warm tobacco puffs from a cigarette, but a sooty-wood petroleum burn from lit torches. I picture the stack of wood they have piled around a wood stake. Like Joan of Arc, I will go up in a blaze of flames. I imagine Sarah hearing the news that I died a lot-lizard martyr and know that besides being insanely heartbroken at my loss, she’ll be impressed if not more than a little jealous.
After what must be a half-dozen slow leisurely drags, Le Loup clears his throat.
‘I want to thank all you for coming out on such a pleasant autumn evening.’ Le Loup’s voice is serene, but there is clearly a malevolent layer within his tone.
‘Been a lot of excitement around here lately, from what I understand.’ For the first time since Le Loup appeared, the crowd breaks its silence with a low murmur of agreement.
‘I’ve heard there’s been talk of black magic.’ Again the throng assents enthusiastically.
‘Accusations of metamorphosis, charges of chicanery, and’—Le Loup’s boots stop pacing—‘crimes against nature.’ Before the crowd can respond, Le Loup continues, ‘I also know that when the money was rolling in, there was a whole mess of talk about miracles, saints, and a host of testifying on the glories and revelations of Jesus.’ His voice takes on the melodious character of a call-and-response tent-show preacher, though nobody calls a thing in response.
‘Mmmm, the money was rolling and rolling in and I don’t believe I overheard any discussions of fire and its possible use on
my
home or
my
property, back then. But perhaps I’m wrong.’ I hear the crowd shift uncomfortably. ‘Is there anyone here that would like to enlighten me on the benefits of fire and its many uses?’ Again I hear more nervous shuffling. ‘Are y’all sure? ’Cause I am here willing to benefit from your wisdom and knowledge!’ I hear him start to move again. ‘Now, I’m very concerned about this black snake within our midst. I’m burdened with worry over how severely damaged you all have been, by this black snake.’ I hear Le Loup drag one of the porch chairs over. ‘So I’m just going to sit here and I want you to feel free to come on up here and tell me how you personally suffered. C’mon, y’all! I know you ain’t shy. Stella?’ I recognize Stella’s dry cough in response to Le Loup’s calling upon her. ‘Petunia? Now I know the fleecin’ you gave to all them visiting Yanks, and various others that made themselves a pilgrimage here could not compare to the loss y’all incurred on those smart little makeup compacts and those television-friendly supplementary wardrobes. I must agree, it does sound like the plain work of The Archfiend to me.’ Stella’s cough sounds more like a plea for invisibility than an actual cough. ‘So, c’mon up, Stella! Petunia! C’mon! Aww, don’t tell me you’re gettin’ demure on me. And what about you, Mary Grace?’ Le Loup’s chair gives a turning scrape. ‘Now, I heard rumors, and I never put much faith in rumors, that you and all the crew at the diner sold potato crèches to a fair number of our recent visitors. Now, I understand you have a number of sacks left that’re growing eyes faster then a blind man in a strip joint. Well, that is quite a financial hit for you and no doubt the work of a monarch of hell!’ I hear Mary Grace whispering something. ‘Ya know I won’t take no for an answer!’ Le Loup says with sardonic hospitality. ‘C’mon up! I’m tellin’ y’all that the black snake is in there now!’ He stomps his foot. ‘Bring ya torches and toss them in! C’mon! Won’t none of you?’ My heart picks up some after his invitation to incinerate me, and I strain to hear any movements toward him being taken up on his offer. Le Loup rises to his feet. ‘Lymon!’ he says as if Lymon were a long-lost relation. ‘Lymon! Take one of those blazes and burn this evil thing out my house, will ya?’ Le Loup moves toward the barn door. ‘That li’l girl…’ He says the last word with proficient sarcasm. ‘She gave ya quite a scare there, didn’t she?’ Le Loup slaps the barn door. ‘You were just trying to molest a sweet little thing while her daddy was away and things just didn’t work out, is what I heard. That’s awful, just awful, and I am truly sorry.’ I can see Le Loup’s shadow head shaking back and forth. ‘What say ya, Lymon? Hmm?’
There’s a long pause of absolute silence.
‘Any of ya?’ Only crickets and a far-off wolf howling answer.
‘Well, I got something to tell you.’ Before I can blink, Le Loup comes bursting through the door and grabs me up. He hauls me to the door and out onto the porch.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd. I stare at my bare feet that strike me as looking like some bizarre manifestation against the ordinary gray of the wood beneath them.
‘I’d like you all to meet…’ Le Loup pauses, then pushes my chin up with his hand. ‘Sam.’ It’s so quiet you can here the crackle of the torches. I look over the heads and flames to focus on the surrounding hills.
‘Now, since I take it none of you have decided to burn this’—he jerks my arm and I take an unbalanced step forward—‘black snake … then I take it we can all just finish going about our business.’ Lit by a sliver of moon, the wind’s aimless stirrings make it seem as if invisible creatures were romping through the grassy plateaux.
‘Now, if any if y’all wanna visit with Sam here, he’ll be workin’ over at Stacey’s lot. You can make your appointments with Stacey or me if you want to book some time. You got that, Lymon?’ There’s a subdued current of forced laughter, which is quickly swallowed into an awful silence of night-time bog noises.
From the corner of my eye, I see Le Loup scanning the group. ‘All right, then … you all have a nice night.’
With that, Le Loup turns and walks us back inside. The warmth of inside almost hurts, as I defrost the cold and terror that I must’ve been feeling, because it is quite some time before I stop shaking.
‘Put those on.’ Le Loup points to some folded-up jeans, a shirt, and a worn pair of sneakers. ‘Pooh’s old things ought to fit,’ he says and goes to the kitchen, sits with a dark sigh, and pours himself a drink into one of Pooh’s jam-jelly jars.
It’s been a long time since I’ve worn jeans and I slide my feet into the legs slowly, as if there might be a hidden danger lurking inside. As I pull up the jeans, I’m surprised by my mouth being pulled down, by some unseen force, into a trembling half moon. As I pull up the fly it sticks, no matter how hard I tug. And suddenly the inability to take in air begins. It’s as if all the oxygen were sucked out of the room and only the stuck cry in my chest could release it.
‘Get those clothes on,’ Le Loup calls from behind the kitchen counter.
From a draft, a little dust tumbleweed comes rolling toward me. As it crosses my foot I realize it is a clump of my shorn golden hair. And it’s as if I were suddenly injected with a poison. It takes hold in my fingers. I watch them spread apart and stiffen. Then my legs lose their connective tissue and the ability to hold me standing. I crumble over onto my knees. As they hit the floor, it’s as if something is knocked loose and a long loud sob escapes me.
‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ Le Loup yells and moves to his feet.
Another sob racks my body, and I can only bow over under its crushing weight.
‘Get those damn clothes on!’ Le Loup stomps next to me. ‘Now!’
I gasp for air before the next wave hits me.
‘Goddamn you!’ Le Loup shouts. I manage to turn my head toward him as he pulls back his arm holding the glass. ‘Goddamn you!’ he screams and pulls back even farther, like it’s a football aimed for my head. He wails as he releases the jar and it flies in an arc till it smashes a good five feet from my person. ‘Goddamn you!’ he howls and stalks out of the barn, slamming the door behind him.
I work the lot behind the old outhouses, hidden by a tangle of laurel breaks, and reached by a dusty dirt road. In connected broken-down trailers waiting for a good storm to finish them off, six other lizards live here too. All males. Stacey, a bald, obese, and, as rumor has it, former truck driver, with overtweezed eyebrows, is the house daddy. He sits in a La-Z-Boy recliner that’s the indistinct color of fingernail dirt all day and half the night, booking his boys dates over the CB, watching satellite feeds of soap operas from every country in the world, even though he speaks only English, but by conditioning knows just when to laugh, cry, or bite his nails in worry. Lately he had been admiring of one of the villainesses on a soap from Portugal and had ordered a Portuguese home-language course so he could learn to become verbally as caustic yet quick-witted as her facial expressions implied she was.
All his boys sleep in logger-camp-style bunkbeds in back. I’m the youngest, but nobody either hassles me or takes me under their wing. I am tolerated with a vaguely benign indifference.