our time about it, sweating in front of the fire. It would have tasted better with some sugar or honey.
Finally I got up, stirred the fire around, broke it down until it wasn’t blazing and wasn’t so hot.
“I’ve been thinking, Sue Ellen,” Mama said, “and I don’t see any other way for it. You and Jinx have to take the boat and go to Gladewater, find some way to come back for Terry and myself.”
“Yeah, well,” I said. “That plan’s good enough if we had a boat.”
“What?”
I told her what we had seen. She let out her breath, leaned out of the rocker, and put the cup on the floor. “He can’t still be after us,” she said.
“You’ve heard all the stories we have,” I said. “Someone darn sure wrecked the boat and left boot prints down by the river.”
“It could have been anyone,” Mama said. “Mischievous kids.”
“Kids don’t have feet big as that,” Jinx said.
We sat tight after that, sat there until the room was full of shadow and we heard the wind pick up, followed by rain.
Why couldn’t the damn weather make up its mind? Why couldn’t Skunk just come on and try and get us? This was my thinking, and it just went around and around in a circle. The rain kept building, and pretty soon we could hear lightning crackling and thunder banging around like a drunk in a store full of pots and pans. The storm raged like it did that night on the river, except inside the house we was high and dry. Or was until the roof started to leak. It wasn’t much of a leak, and was near a window, but it made me feel all the more dreary.
Terry woke up a few times in pain, and we gave him some more of the home brew that was there. I hadn’t never wanted to drink, but right then I was thinking of a snort. I didn’t do it, though, if for no other reason than it might give Mama liberty to do the same. Besides, Terry needed it more than any of us.
When Terry finally got back to sleep, I sat by his bed and looked through the open door at Mama rocking slowly in her chair. Rain was coming down the chimney. I could hear what was left of the fire in the fireplace hissing, and there was a bit of smoke. The wind was howling and carrying on and there was sizzling lightning and clattering thunder.
The roof banged loudly. I looked up. It was like a tree limb had fallen on it, but there wasn’t no trees near the house. Maybe one had blown out of the woods and onto the roof.
The sound came again, a heavy sound, along with a creaking, and I knew then what it was.
I glanced through the open doorway at Mama and Jinx. They was looking up, too. That’s because they figured what I had figured.
Someone was on the roof.
25
There’s no describing how I felt then, because I knew not only that someone was on the roof but that-of course-it was Skunk. I couldn’t figure why he would choose to do that, out there in the rain, and in such a way we could all hear him and know where he was, but then it come to me. He knew how fearful we would be, and he was someone who sucked off misery.
I got up and wandered into the big room. Mama glanced at me. I couldn’t see her face there in the dark, but I knew she was scared, like me. Jinx was walking around the room, following the sound of Skunk on the roof. She held the pistol and looked at the ceiling. The board roof heaved a bit in one spot. Jinx snapped up the gun and fired. It was loud as the crack of doom, and my ears rang. Sawdust drifted down from the ceiling. I heard footsteps moving quickly across the roof, and then they ceased.
“I think he jumped off,” Jinx said.
“You think you hit him?” Mama asked.
“If I did, he was mighty spry afterwards,” Jinx said.
We stayed right where we was, waiting to hear him climbing back on the roof, but that didn’t happen. Instead I heard a creaking sound in the bedroom. Grabbing Jinx by the elbow, I led her in there. The creaking was coming from a window that was to one side of Terry’s bed. He was up now, the shot having awakened him. His head was turned toward the window. There was a big blade stuck between the edge of the window and the shutter, and there was broken glass on the floor; the blade was prying the shutter, causing it to creak, and then crack. Skunk’s stink was easing through that crack along with the blade.
Jinx lifted the pistol, holding it tight with both hands, and fired. It was such a big pistol, the shot made her take a step back. The shot hit the shutter and cracked it, went through, slammed into some glass, and broke it. The big blade was jerked away.
“You might have got him,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jinx said, “but I don’t want to go open that shutter and look out and see.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“That means me, too,” Mama said. She was standing behind us, holding the shotgun.
“I haven’t any plans for an examination, either,” Terry said, sitting up in bed, his good hand holding his arm above the amputation. I could feel Jinx shaking where her shoulder was pushed up to me, or maybe it was me shaking.
“We’re safe enough in here,” I said. “With all that rain, he can’t burn us out. We’re all right if we don’t startle like quail. That’s what he wants, for us to startle and make a break for it so he can pick us off. We just got to stay alert.”
“If he’s out there,” Terry said, “and we’re in here, he has the advantage. Not us. He can just wait us out. That bastard can live off the land. We can’t even go out now to pick berries.”
Me and Jinx pushed an old dresser with a tall, cracked mirror in front of the busted window to make it safer, and then we all sat up that night, listening. Now and again one of us would drift off, but there was always someone awake. Jinx stayed in the bedroom with Terry. Me and Mama sat in the big room. During the night, at least a couple times, I heard Skunk try the doorknob, rattling it so as to shatter our nerves.
Rattling the door, breaking the glass out of the windows, bits of it falling down between the window frames and shutters in little clinks, went on for most of the night; then a couple hours before dawn it quit.
When light come, I was scared and starving. It was still raining, though less savage than before. We dug the fish guts and that blackened head out of the fireplace and wiped it off, and the four of us had pieces of it. It wasn’t much to eat and it tasted nasty. My stomach acted at first like it might not manage to wrap around it, but it did.
Mama found a tin with a little coffee in it, and she heated the water and made us some. It tasted like dirty water, but it was something to put in the belly to make you think you’d eaten.
About two hours after we was up, I ventured, against Mama and Jinx’s will-Terry had fallen back into a wounded sleep-to open a shutter and look out. From that window I could see the woods. They was shadowy in the rising light. I checked as good as I could, but didn’t see Skunk. I didn’t see nothing but those dark trees and rain falling.
I locked up, went from shutter to shutter, checking to see if I could see anything. I opened one on the other side of the big room, and there was a face staring in at me, the nose poking through a broken pane of glass, the eyes dry and stiff. I jumped back and screamed. It was the old woman. She was still wrapped in the rug, but it had been peeled back so her face was free of it. Her white hair was wet as a fresh-born calf, and she was propped against the window by having her arms pulled up and bent at the elbow, pressed to the window frame. In her arms was the saw box. It was open, and everything that had been in it was gone except Terry’s arm-the hand that went with the arm was gone, though. And the old woman’s arms that held the box in front of her was stumps; her hands had been chopped off, too.
“He dug her up,” I said.
“Hell,” Jinx said, standing near me with the pistol. “We can see that.”
“He’s a monster,” Mama said, easing over to take a look.
“You just now figuring that?” Jinx said.
“Jinx,” Mama said, “you should be careful. I might knock the shit out of you.”
