Dead Man's Song

(4)

“If you don’t stop that goddamned crying, Connie, so help me God, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?

Mark stiffened and turned sharply. Val stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her dark hair tousled from the wind, her eyes narrow and cold. “You’ll what?” she asked again. Her voice was as cold as her flat and level stare.

Mark stabbed a finger toward her. “You stay the hell out of this, Val. This is between Connie and me. It doesn’t concern you. So butt out!”

Sprawled on the bed, Connie Guthrie lay with her face buried in her hands, her shoulders quietly trembling, her sobs faint against the louder rasp of Mark’s agitated breathing.

Ignoring Mark, Val said, “Connie? Connie, are you all right?”

“No, she’s not all right!” Mark spat. “She’s on that crying kick again.”

“Why don’t you just leave her alone?”

“Leave her alone? That’s all I’ve had to do since that night. She won’t let me do anything but leave her alone! Christ! It’s worse than living with a nun!”

Contempt showed in Val’s eyes and the twist of her lips. “My God, you are a complete asshole, Mark,” she sneered.

“Oh, kiss my ass! Besides,” he snapped, “who are you to lecture me? At least you’re getting laid. Oh, no! Don’t try to deny it! Don’t you think I know why Crow talked us into going out last night? He just wanted to get in your pants. Hey, I’m not criticizing, Val, don’t get me wrong. I just think I’d like to know what it feels like. Shit, a married man and you’d think I can at least get a frigging kiss from my wife. Hah! Not with the Crying Game over here. I even look at her and she’s all tears and hysterics and all that bullshit. Shit. The way she acts, you’d think it was me who attacked her.”

“Isn’t that what you were about to do when I came in?” Val said coldly, and saw the point strike deep, but Mark’s anger was too big to let a little shame deflate it.

“No, Miss Know-it-all! I was not about to attack her. I’m just trying to get things back to the way they were. I mean, hell, there was a time—and it wasn’t all that long ago—when I could actually touch my wife without her going to pieces.”

“Poor baby,” Val said. “Did you stop to think how she feels?”

Mark looked down at Connie, who still had her face buried in her hands, refusing, or unable, to look up. He slowly raised his head to face his sister and there were hot tears in his eyes. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean? I was there, Val. I saw what he did. I went through it, too, you know. It wasn’t just her. Ruger kicked my ass and tried to screw her right in front of me. Another couple of minutes and I’d have had to watch my wife have sex with another man. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

Val shook her head in disbelief. “Listen to you. Do you even know what you’re saying? You said you would have had to watch Connie have sex with another man. Is that how you see it? That she was going to have sex with him?”

“Well, just what the hell do you think rape is?”

Val’s voice dropped lower in both tone and temperature. “Rape isn’t sex, dumbass. He was going to hurt her, not make love to her, not screw her, not have sex with her. He was going to hurt her, inside and out. If you think what he was going to do was have sex with her, then you are a total jackass!”

“Oh, please, let’s leave feminist propaganda out of this, shall we?”

“Do you really equate rape with sex? Are you actually that stupid? God!”

“You don’t understand—” he began, faltering just a little, but she cut him off with a swift chop of words.

“I don’t understand? Kiss my ass! I’m a woman, and I know what it feels like to be afraid of men just because they’re bigger and stronger. You just can’t imagine it, Mark, to be afraid of walking outside in the dark, of being alone with a man in a parking lot or an elevator or anywhere. To always have to be on your guard! To always realize that your body—your actual body—can be invaded by a man, just because he has the physical power to do it! That’s something every woman lives with all her life. You think women have nightmares of monsters and ghosts? We don’t. We have dreams of being raped and abused because some nasty trick of genetics decided we’d be the smaller, weaker ones, that we were the ones to have vaginas that could be so easily invaded. That’s what almost happened to Connie. Another couple of minutes and he would have invaded her with all his rage and ugliness. Yeah, you would have had to watch, but that would have hurt your male pride more than your heart. You actually have the balls to tell me it would hurt you to have seen your wife have sex with another man. How about imagining what it would have been like to have Ruger’s hands all over your skin, his mouth on you, his cock inside of you, his sweat on your skin, and his semen inside of you. Do you call that having sex? Christ, you are a pathetic excuse for a human being, Mark!”

Mark Guthrie stood there, trembling with rage, fists balled at his sides, glaring at her, his mouth drawn into tight lines that showed a double row of clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” he snarled in a deadly whisper. “This is none of your goddamn business! Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that? Who the hell do you—”

Val’s hard left hand slapped the rest of the words into silence. It was a hard blow and so fast he never saw it, and it spun him halfway around. For a moment he stood there, eyes wide with shock, a hand pressed to his cheek, head ringing from the blow. He straightened and both of his hands became fists.

“What are you going to do, Mark?” Val asked harshly. “Are you going to hit me back?”

“If you ever do that again,” he said in a fierce whisper, “I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Val snapped. “Will you do to me what you were threatening to do to Connie if she didn’t stop crying? Is that your only answer? To hurt women instead of being a real man and trying to help?”

He raised one fist, wanting with every fiber of his being to smash her into silence, to shut her mouth, to stop the flow of words. Val stood there and looked at him, ignoring the heavy fist poised above her, just looking at him.

She said, “If it will make you feel like a man, Mark, go on and hit me. You’re bigger than me. Go ahead and do it. Be a man.”

The fist trembled, shaking visibly as every muscle in his body strove one against another, warring with rage and confusion and a mindless compulsion to smash. Then, with a growl of inarticulate rage, he spun away and slammed out of the room. Val heard him stomp down the stairs, heard the sound of the hallway closet door opening and then banging shut, heard the front door slam open, then heard only the silence of the house and the soft sounds of Connie’s sobs.

“Shit,” Val said softly to herself as she sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked Connie’s hair, listening to her tears. After a while, she, too, wept.

(5)

The storm clouds encircling the sun closed ranks and blotted out the sky. They were thick clouds, swollen with cold rain and drooping low over the town. In just minutes day turned to an early twilight so thick that streetlamp sensors triggered and the sodium vapor lights flickered on. Drivers turned on their headlights. None of this stopped the celebrations. Little Halloween rolled through the town thicker and heavier than the clouds overhead.

Deep in the cellar of the house, down in the darkness below old floorboards, the white things in their nest stirred, knowing that the sunlight had faded. Sleep, for now, was ended. Night had come early to Pine Deep.