yard and enjoyed feeding it all this Bromont trash. A circle of melt grew outward from the rusty barrel. Birds sat in black ranks on cozy branches above the gush of heated air. Ash crumbs wafted past the window and sprinkled gray dots across the snow. She said, “Hold your arms out’n I’ll fill ’em with this junk.”
She took a break and stood by the side window to watch the boys feed old family stuff to the fire. Across the creek, Sonya had come into her yard wearing a hooded overcoat and sat on the rock bench under her leafless walnut tree. It was very cold outside and the boys dodged about near the flames. Sonya waved and Harold saw her and waved back. Smoke boiled from the trash barrel, spilling a streaking mess into the valley. The boys held dresses above the barrel until they caught fire near the hem and the flames began to climb the cloth to the waist, the bodice, the neck, then dropped them at the last second before their fingertips blistered. Sonya waved and waved until Sonny finally saw her and waved back. Tiny bits of cloth rode the heat from the trash barrel up into the air, the edges briefly glowing as the last threads burned red, then became ash that matched the sky and disappeared downwind.
34
THEY CAME with the dark and knocked with three fists. The door shook as the clamor of beating knuckles filled the house. Ree glanced from a window and saw three like women, chesty and jowly, wearing long cloth coats of differing colors and barnyard galoshes. She fetched her pretty shotgun before opening the door. She jabbed the twin barrels toward the belly of Mrs. Thump, Merab, but did not speak. The shotgun felt like an unspent lightning bolt in her hands and trembled. None of the sisters flinched or stepped back or changed expression.
Merab said, “Come along, child—we’re goin’ to fix your problem for you.” Her hands were in her coat pockets. Her hair was swept away from her face in a towering white wave that barely budged in the breeze. “Put that thing down. Show some smarts, child.”
“Right now I feel like I want to blow me a
“I know you do. You’re a Dolly. But you won’t. You’ll put that scattergun down and come along with me’n my sisters.”
“You think I’m crazy? I’d have to be crazy!”
“We’ll carry you to your daddy’s bones, child. We know the place.”
The sisters were less stern versions of Merab. One had a shorter gray wave swept away from her face, standing stiff on top, and her cheeks powdered the pink of a faded rose. The other had a loosened wave of bottle- blond hair that shivered in the wind, and her fingers carried several knotty rings. They had faces like oaten loaves and flanked their sister with hunched shoulders, ready boots.
It was the blonde who said, “We ain’t goin’ to come back’n offer this again.”
“You kicked me.”
“Not in the face.”
“Somebody did.”
“Things got wild there for a bit.”
Merab clapped her hands together, saying, “Come on! Come on along, now—it’s cold. We need to put a stop to all this upset talk about us we’ve been havin’ to hear.”
“I ain’t said a thing about you.”
“We know. Everybody else has.”
Ree moved the shotgun up and down. Her tongue licked over clotted vacancies between teeth. She heard the boys come to the door and stand behind her. “Get back in the house. Keep out of sight.” She poked the shotgun forward, said, “I’m bringin’ this.”
“No, you won’t either bring that. You want his bones, you’ll set that down’n come along.”
There was that scrape of unbidden music in her head, the beginning of a tilt, but she hushed the fiddle with a sharp thought and spread her boots for balance. She stood the shotgun in the corner behind the door, grabbed Mamaw’s coat from the hook and led the way down the porch steps. The sisters walked behind her like guards. The car was a four-door sedan with dulled paint and plenty of heft and iced snow on the roof. The quietest sister reached into her pocket for a burlap tote sack she shook open, then handed to Ree. “You can’t know where we’re takin’ you to. You’ll have to wear this over your head. It’s clean. Don’t try’n look out from under, neither.”
“You fixin’ to shoot me?”
“If you think a minute, you’ll know we could’ve did that already if we wanted.”
Merab said, “Sit in back with Tilly.”
Tilly was the blonde. Ree slid onto the seat and pulled the tote sack down. Tilly reached over to adjust the burlap, make sure no scrap of sight remained. The sack smelled of old oats and sunshine and scratched against her skin as the car hit bumps. The car had a big engine and leapt across some potholes and punished others with its pounding weight. The sack worked loose and she could breathe better, see a crack of light. She inhaled the scent of the sisters, a domineering reek of udder balm and brown gravy, straw and wet feathers. The car fishtailed in spots and skidded when turning.
Merab said, “Dammit—don’t slam the brakes—tap ’em.”
“I don’t want to tap ’em. I don’t tap.”
“You ain’t s’posed to slam ’em on snow.”
“When it’s your car, you can tap ’em. I drive
“These roads’re slicker’n you seem to think.”
“Look, when I wreck, you can tell me all about why. ’Til then, change the subject.”
Ree tried to guess where they were. It all depended on that first turn from the hard road—was that by the school? Or was it closer than that? One way meant Bawbee, the other should mean Gullett Lake. Unless the turn was
Tilly said, “Speed up, huh? I’d like to be home for my program.”
Inside the hood, Ree came to know the flavors of her own wind. The sound of her own bellows at work. The whistling breaths and smells that were her. She was loudly alive in her own ears and okay to smell.
“That funny one?”
“I never find it all that funny.”
“Then which one do you mean?”
“The one you call the funny one. I just don’t find it to be all that funny. What I like is the puppet that lives in the basement.”
“You remember to bring gas for the chain saw?”
“It’s got gas. I looked at home.”
The bounces became higher. Tires grunted across some uneven surface, a field, a cow path, the rippled earth of a river bottom. During the higher bounces Ree and Tilly bumped together.
The car eased to a stop, and Merab said, “Get the gate.”
“Should I latch it back? Or wait ’til we leave?”
“We’ll latch it leavin’.”
Beyond the gate, the car was driven more slowly, meaning there must not be much of a road beneath the tires. There came a stretch of jolting, rhythmic jolting, the jolts all alike, and Ree guessed they were driving sideways over a cornfield. There was an extra noise that could be the dry crack of corn stalks breaking.
“Where’s the path?”
“Over under them trees.”
“Park there.”
Tilly maneuvered Ree out of the car, holding on to an arm and pushing. The air was cold and had a little slap to it and the sack ruffled. The snow was crusty underfoot, an iced layer of crunch thin on top. Somewhere distant a train neared a crossroad and hooted a warning. The trunk popped open; things were lifted out. Ree stood straight
