Curtains

business.

And what were a few calluses? Skin turned to dust just as surely as brain and bone did. And your heart probably crumbled faster than any of it. The meat didn't matter. What mattered was how you walked off the stage. That's what they remembered. And Larry McMasters was going to go out in style.

He dipped his brush into the shellac and lifted it to the lamplight. The thick, golden material hung from the brush like honey. If he sealed the wood, it would keep underground for a few months longer, maybe even a year. Would that be honest, though? Wouldn't that be putting just another layer between him and his return to the dirt?

Larry wiped the brush clean on the edge of the bucket and set it to soak in turpentine. Best to go with plain, bare wood. Like what surrounded him here in the barn. The barn itself was like a coffin, except it was filled to busting with life, chickens and pigs and old Zaint the horse. Zaint was so far faded he was about half glue, but he kept heading to the pasture of a morning and turning up again every night.

Larry's pastures had seen more drought than plenty. His days in the world hadn't added up to much. Fourteen years loading produce on trucks paid him with a bad back and a smoking habit. Oh, he'd had about eighteen good years before that, when his parents were still around to pay the bills, but those were so long ago and far away that they might as well have been in a book, or somebody else's memory.

Once in a while over the years, he'd had stretches where getting out of bed wasn't such a lost cause. This last year had shown some promise, which made it the cruelest and slowest of them all. And the blame belonged squarely on Betty Ann Armfield. Betty Ann. Betty Ann.

Larry gritted his teeth and laid the crown molding along the edge of the coffin to test for length. When you mitered the joints, you had to allow for that little bit of extra distance. There would be no putty or wood filler used on this job. No crack could be wider than a spider's leg. Larry's coffin had to be as airtight as possible so the rotting would be proper, from the inside out.

The phone rang in the house. That would be her.

Larry slammed his hammer against the work bench, causing his tools to jump and raising a ruckus among the hens. He looked at the angled box before him, six sides, planks straight, the knots aligned in something approaching art. Not that Larry had much use for art, besides the art of dying. But you did things right while you were on this earth, and let things take care of themselves after you were under it.

The phone bleated again, as insistent as a pregnant ewe. Larry wiped the hammer handle and hung the tool from its pegs. The handsaw gave a dull grin, hungry for another meal of hardwood. Or maybe that was only his blurred reflection. He'd have to polish the saw later. But right now he had to answer the phone.

He stepped out of the barn into sunshine and tasted the mountain air. Rocks, water, grass, and trees, he had plenty of those. He owned seven acres of dirt, some bottom land and a ridgeline. He couldn't own any woman, though, and he couldn't make any of them love his land.

The walk to the house took thirteen seconds, another seven to get through the kitchen, and two more to get the phone to his ear. Betty Ann knew the distance, probably had an egg timer running at her end, and if Larry was ever more than five seconds late 'Hello?'

Usually he just said, 'Hello, Betty Ann,' but once in a while he got a call from work and those damned telemarketers had been trying to give him credit cards lately. He didn't believe in borrowing. You pay as you go, and when you had a chance, you paid a little bit ahead.

'Larry.'

'Hey, Betty Ann.'

“Where you been?”

“Working in the barn.”

“You and your damned wood. You ready?'

'We ought not talk about this kind of thing on the phone.'

Her laughter sounded electronic, as if she were one of those pull-string dolls. 'You've always been paranoid, ain't you, Larry?'

'Just cautious, is all.'

'Cautious, my ass. Chickenshit, you mean. If it wasn't for me, you think you'd ever have a woman? Think anybody else could stand you? Any other woman let you play smoochie and run your hand down her skirt and-'

'That's not proper talk for a lady.'

'I ain't a lady no more. Not after tonight.'

Larry looked out the window, at the long dirt drive that led to the highway. 'You sure you want to go through with this?'

'You ain’t thinking of backing out on me now, are you? You better grow some balls and fast.'

Larry expected the blue lights to come down the drive any minute, because cops could probably read minds. And if not, they knew how to tap into phone lines, and Betty Ann never could keep her damned mouth shut. 'I–I'm with you, honey. I promised, didn't I?'

'A promise from a man. Hah, that's worth about as much as an egg from a mule. You only promised because I was giving you my yummy sweet sugar at the time. Remember?'

Larry clenched his hand around the phone. He nearly flung it at the Franklin stove, but the Franklin had been in the family for four generations. Maybe he'd start a fire with his coffin scraps and melt down the phone later. 'Of course I remember, darling.'

'And after, that part about snuggling in the dark. Bet you never heard pillow talk like that before.'

He had to admit he hadn't. But he didn't want to admit it out loud. Not when they might hear. It was bad enough, him knowing. And Betty Ann knowing. And whoever Betty Ann blabbed to, at the hairdresser's or the Baptist Church or the Stateline Tavern.

'You know that kind of thing gets me all worked up,' Larry said. 'That's stuff's for in the dark, not out here in the daylight where God and everybody can see.'

Betty Ann laughed. 'You must have forgot about that time in the hayloft.'

'Don't do this, Betty Ann. It's hard enough as it is.'

'You know all about hard, don't you?'

Larry looked out the window at the far slopes of granite, the worn edges of the Blue Ridge. When you got mad, you just had to look way off in the distance, his Daddy always said. Daddy wasn't born a fool, just ended up that way. 'That's enough of that. I made a promise, and I'll keep it. Are you going to keep yours?'

'But you ain't said what you wanted yet.' She lowered her voice into the husky whisper that sounded like the result of a lot of practice. 'But I got a good idea.'

'I'll pick you up at seven. Like we planned.'

'Like we planned.'

'Bye, now.'

'Bye. I love you.'

The click of the phone rattled around inside his skull, bouncing against that word 'love.' He'd heard that word a time or two before. And then push always comes to shove, and you find out it doesn't mean a thing. It's just a word.

He went back to the barn. He spread the velvet lining in the coffin and stapled it into place. Most people went with black velvet, but Larry believed in Royal blue. There was something churchy and sacred about it. When you went under the dirt, you wanted all the comfort you could get.

Glue had leaked from one of the corners where the angled wood met. Larry took a chisel from the workbench and scraped the clot free. He felt along the joint. Not a stray splinter, tight as a mouse's ear. He was getting better with practice.

He finished up just as the sun set on the hills. He tested the fit of the lid one last time. The lid wasn't so heavy, and he'd drilled holes where the nails would go. This would work just fine.

At least, the part you could count on. Wood was straight up and honest, you could shape it and trim it and make something that would last. You could build your own coffin with no problem. But you had to have somebody to drive the nails, because you damned sure couldn't do it from the inside.

He set the lid aside, wiped his tools, and saw that everything was laid out on the workbench. He blew out the lamp and hung it by the barn door. It was time to pick up Betty Ann.

Larry sat in his Ford and looked around the trailer park. Betty Ann could do better than this place. She was