said that the Landons— and the Landreaus before them—split into two types: gomers and bad-gunky. Bad-gunky was better, because you could let it out by cutting. You had to cut, if you didn't want to spend your life in the bughouse or the jailhouse. He said it was the only way.'
'Are you talking about self-mutilation, Scott?'
He shrugs, as if unsure. She is unsure, as well. She has seen him naked, after all. He has a few scars, but only a few.
'Blood-bools?' she asks.
This time he's more positive. 'Blood-bools, yeah.'
'That night when you stuck your hand through the greenhouse glass, were you letting out the bad- gunky?'
'I suppose. Sure. In a way.' He stubs his cigarette in the grass. He takes a long time, and doesn't look at her while he does it. 'It's complicated. You have to remember how terrible I felt that night, a lot of things had been piling up—'
'I should never have—'
'No,' he says, 'let me finish. I can only say this once.'
She stills.
'I was drunk, I was feeling terrible, and I hadn't let it out— it—in a long time. I hadn't had to. Mostly because of you, Lisey.'
Lisey has a sister who went through an alarming bout of selfmutilation in her early twenties. Amanda's past all that now— thank God—but she bears the scars, mostly high on her inner arms and thighs. 'Scott, if you've been cutting yourself, shouldn't you have scars—'
It's as if he hasn't heard her. 'Then last spring, long after I thought he'd shut up for good, I be good-goddam if he didn't start up talking to me again. 'It runs in you, Scoot,' I'd hear him say. 'It runs in your blood just like a sweetmother. Don't it?''
'Who, Scott? Who started talking to you?' Knowing it's either Paul or his father, and probably not Paul.
'Daddy. He says, 'Scooter, if you want to be righteous, you better let that bad-gunky out. Get after it, now, don't smuckin wait.' So I did. Little…little…' He makes small cutting gestures—one on his cheek, one on his arm—to illustrate. 'Then that night, when you were mad…' He shrugs. 'I got after the rest. Over and done with. Over and out. And we 'us fine. We 'us fine. Tell you one thing, I'd bleed myself dry like a hog on a chain before I'd hurt you. Before I'd ever hurt you.' His face draws down in an expression of contempt she has never seen before. 'I ain't never yet been like him. My Daddy.' And then, almost spitting it: 'Fuckin Mister Sparky.'
She doesn't speak. She doesn't dare. Isn't sure she could, anyway. For the first time in months she wonders how he could cut his hand so badly and have so little scarring. Surely it isn't possible. She thinks: His hand wasn't just cut; his hand was mangled.
Scott, meanwhile, has lit another Herbert Tareyton with hands that are shaking just the smallest bit. 'I'll tell you a story,' he says. 'Just one story, and let it stand for all the stories of a certain man's childhood. Because stories are what I do.' He looks at the rising cigarette smoke. 'I net them from the pool. I've told you about the pool, right?'
'Yes, Scott. Where we all go down to drink.'
'Yep. And cast our nets. Sometimes the really brave fisherfolk—the Austens, the Dostoevskys, the Faulkners— even launch boats and go out to where the big ones swim, but that pool is tricky. It's bigger than it looks, it's deeper than any man can tell, and it changes its aspect, especially after dark.'
She says nothing to this. His hand slips around her neck. At some point it steals inside her unzipped parka to cup her breast. Not out of lust, she's quite sure; for comfort.
'All right,' he says. 'Story-time. Close your eyes, little Lisey.'
She closes them. For a moment all is dark as well as silent under the yum-yum tree, but she isn't afraid; there's the smell of him and the bulk of him beside her; there's the feel of his hand, currently resting on the rod of her collarbone. He could choke her easily with that hand, but she doesn't need him to tell her he'd never hurt her, at least not physically; this is just a thing Lisey knows. He will cause her pain, yes, but mostly with his mouth. His everlasting mouth.
'All right,' says the man she will marry in less than a month. 'This story might have four parts. Part One is called 'Scooter on the Bench.'
'Once upon a time there was a boy, a skinny little frightened boy named Scott, only when his Daddy got in the bad-gunky and cutting himself wasn't enough to let it out, his Daddy called him Scooter. And one day—one bad, mad day—the little boy stood up on a high place, looking down at a polished wooden plain far below, and watching as his brother's blood
8
runs slowly along the crack between two boards.
—Jump, his father tells him. Not for the first time, either.— Jump, you little bastard, you sweetmother chickenkike, jump right now!
—Daddy, I'm afraid! It's too high!
—It's not and I don't give a shit if you're afraid or not, you smucking jump or I'll make you sorry and your buddy sorrier, now paratroops over the side!
Daddy pauses a moment, looking around, eyeballs shifting the way they do when he gets in the bad-gunky, almost ticking from side to side, then he looks back at the three-year-old who stands trembling on the long bench in the front hall of the big old dilapidated farmhouse with its million puffing drafts. Stands there with his back pressed against the stenciled leaves on the pink wall of this farmhouse far out in the country where people mind their own business.
—You can say Geronimo if you want to, Scoot. They say sometimes that helps. If you scream it real loud when you jump out of the plane.
So Scott does, he will take any help he can get, he screams GEROMINO!—which isn't quite right and doesn't help anyway because he still can't jump off the bench to the polished wooden floor-plain so far below.
—Ahhhh, sweet-smockin chicken-kikin Christ.
Daddy yanks Paul forward. Paul is six now, six going on seven, he is tall and his hair is a darkish blond, long in front and on the sides, he needs a haircut, needs to go see Mr. Baumer at the barbershop in Martensburg, Mr. Baumer with the elk's head on his wall and the faded decal in his window that shows a Merican flag and says I SERVED, but it will be awhile before they go near Martensburg and Scott knows it. They don't go to town when Daddy is in the bad-gunky and Daddy won't even go to work for awhile because this is his vacation from U.S. Gyppum.
Paul has blue eyes and Scott loves him more than anyone, more than he loves himself. This morning Paul's arms are covered with blood, crisscrossed with cuts, and now Daddy goes to his pocketknife again, the hateful pocketknife that has drunk so much of their blood, and raises it up to catch the morning sun. Daddy came downstairs yelling for them, yelling—Bool! Bool! Get in here, you two! If the bool's on Paul he cuts Scott and if the bool's on Scott he cuts Paul. Even in the bad-gunky Daddy understands love.
—You gonna jump you coward or am I gonna have to cut him again?
—Don't, Daddy! Scott shrieks.—Please don't cut 'im no more, I'll jump!
—Then do so! Daddy's top lip rolls back to show his teeth. His eyes roll in their sockets, they roll roll roll like he's looking for folks in the corners, and maybe he is, prolly he is, because sometimes they hear him talking to folks who ain't there. Sometimes Scott and his brother call them the Bad-Gunky Folks and sometimes the Bloody Bool People.
—You do it, Scooter! You do it, you ole Scoot! Yell Geronimo and then paratroops over the side! No cowardy kikes in this family! Right now!
—GEROMINO! he yells, and although his feet tremble and his legs jerk, he still can't make himself jump. Cowardy legs, cowardy kike legs. Daddy doesn't give him another chance. Daddy cuts deep into Paul's arm and the blood falls down in a sheet. Some goes on Paul's shorts and some goes on his sneaks and most goes on the floor. Paul
