A series of clunks is followed by a scream as Horace and his chair descend another flight of steps.
Maxine giggles. 'That Luther—he’s so funny.'
'That boy thought you were the biggest fraud he’d ever seen. Called you a gentle spirit in his treatise.'
'Oh, no,' Andy says. 'I’m very mean. I killed a guy once in the desert. Put a hole—BANG!—right through his head. And I shot your son! Ha! Ha! Did you know that? I tried to kill Luther, but he didn’t die.'
Rufus smiles. 'You’re a hoot, Andy.'
'I’m a hoot, too,' Vi says. 'Hoot. Hoot.'
'Yes, you are. You know a strapping young man named Max dropped by about a week ago.'
Vi takes a sip of sweet tea, gurgles it, and spits it back out onto her plate.
'He came with your former sergeant, Barry something. A big bear of a man. Apparently, the whole police community of North Carolina is searching for you, young lady. They think Andrew Thomas, the Heart Surgeon,' Rufus winks at Andy, 'kidnapped you and buried you somewhere on Portsmouth.'
'That is a
'Your husband looked absolutely heartbroken. He sat down in the living room, in the very chair you parked your caboose in when you stopped by in early November. He misses you terribly.'
'He’ll get over it.'
Beth wakes up suddenly from her nap, yams clinging to the side of her face.
'Feel rested, Miss Lancing?' Rufus asks.
'Lancing?' Andy says. 'I knew a Lancing once. I killed a Lancing once. BANG!'
Andy slams his fist down on the table. Maxine chuckles.
'We were sitting in a car together. Then BANG! Blood everywhere.'
Beth looks at Andy. She grabs the back of his neck, pulls him in close, and plants a sloppy kiss across his mouth.
'Hey, I knew your husband,' Andy says. 'What was his name?'
'Walter,' Beth says dreamily.
'You know, he was an all right kind of guy.'
Beth giggles. 'He’s dead now.'
'Oh, sorry to hear that.'
'Well, it was for the best.'
'Honey, do you have any kids?' Maxine asks as Horace’s chair thumps down the final flight of steps.
'Um, yeah.'
'Where are they?'
'Who gives a flying fuck? I abandoned them.'
'Why’d you go and do that?'
'Cause I didn’t want to be a mother anymore. Anything else, Miss Nosy?'
Rufus raises his wineglass of sweet tea.
'I’d like to propose a toast,' he says. 'To Andy, Elizabeth, and Violet. May our time together not end in your death.'
A scream resounds from the lower recesses of the house, but Rufus continues, unfazed.
'May you break your tablets. May you find your way into the darkness and out again. And may you learn true freedom. Freedom from values. Drink with me.'
The threesome clumsily locate their glasses and the party drinks.
Then Rufus and Maxine help their guests to a room on the third floor and shoot them all full of Ativan.
Leaving the supper dishes until morning, they walk hand in hand downstairs to the first floor. Rufus unlocks the small door under the staircase and holds it open for his wife.
As they progress together down this last rickety flight of steps to join their son in the basement festivities, Maxine inquires, 'What’s that smell, Sweet-Sweet?'
They reach the bottom of the staircase and stand on the dirt floor amid the dim labyrinth of stone rooms.
Rufus chuckles.
'That’s gasoline, Beautiful. Old Horace is gonna get his wish after all. It’s a Christmas miracle!'
# # #
Winter on Ocracoke Island is a season of desert beauty—the lonely beaches ravishing and ravaged by the cold belligerent sea. The village streets are empty, the tourists having long since fled, wanting no part of a truly wild place. Nor’easters blow through, one after another. There is only wind and rain and skies of slate and the ongoing defiance of these eroding ribbons of land called the Outer Banks, daring the great Atlantic to consume them.
In February, two men walk up the beach north of Ramp 72, amid driving rain and spindrift and the deafening crush of surf. No other soul has ventured out into this raw gray madness, and on such a morning this barrier island feels like more than just the fringe of eastern America.
The slower of the two men stops walking, stoops down, and pries an enormous conch shell out of the sand. He turns it over several times, finding it perfectly intact.
'Here.' Rufus hands the shell to Luther. 'We’ll take it back to Mom.'
They continue on up the beach, the wind to their backs, whipping the sea oats, the old man musing on what it will be like after the Great Regression. Luther has heard it a thousand times, and what he once suspected, he now wholeheartedly yet secretly believes: his father is full of shit.
But Luther dutifully listens.
The wind reverses, now howling out of the north, spitting rain into their faces. They turn and walk back toward the access road.
'I love it like this,' Rufus says. 'Look at the chaos.'
He points out into the rabid sea, pulverizing the beach.
'How’s your treatise coming?'
'It’s good, Pop,' Luther lies.
'Can’t wait to read it. See what four years in those Manhattan libraries taught you.'
Rufus playfully bumps shoulders with his son. Luther musters a dead smile.
They walk awhile without speaking, over kelp and driftwood and the footprints of sandpipers and myriad shells and all that the waves have flung ashore. Rufus puts his arm around Luther and grins against the knowledge that he’s losing his son.
# # #
They’ll have no linear memory of the winter they are spending in the belly of the house. Only slivers to haunt the people they become. Slivers of darkness and silence and faceless voices and hilarious violence. They won’t remember the space between injections and gas, when the fogginess lifted just enough to let the inhuman horror of it all sink in.
# # #
'Breath deep, young lady.' Vi inhales the gas. The world floats down and sinks through her and woooooooooooow.
'Now I want you to watch this tape.'
'Okey doke.'
As Vi fixates on the home video, the television screen begins to pulsate. It’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen. The star hangs upside down by his feet, and he keeps screaming and screaming.
From the other side of the room, Andy yells, 'How meaningless!'
Another shot of NO2 and now Vi laughs hysterically.
That quiet man with the long black hair is in the movie, too, and he’s the one making the star scream. When the screaming stops, the movie ends.
Vi tries to give a standing ovation but keels over on the dirt floor.
'I see you enjoyed that.'
'Oh, so much. Can I watch another one?'
'Of course you may. We have many. But first…'
Here comes the mask of joy.
