Family Thang

driving away.

Ida’s car was gone when he arrived at the house. He assumed she’d gone to the store. He called Robert Earl’s number. No one answered. Then he called Shirley’s friend’s number and no one answered there. The house was dead silent and there was a smell he couldn’t quite place.

During the drive back, he decided the best thing to do was call a family meeting. Bring everyone together and have them lay their grievances on the table. He would set the tone by apologizing to Ruth Ann and Robert Earl, and, he hoped, Shirley and Ruth Ann would do likewise.

No blood spilled, no bones broken, no fratricide; and then everything would return to normal: dismal and depressing, though normal.

Sooner than the dust settled, he would get the hell out of Bucktussle and return to Chicago. Once there he would seek Victor and tell him he still love him, tell him the lure of money had gone to his head, made him talk foolish.

Leonard got up and headed toward the kitchen. He stopped, one foot on the diamond-white linoleum in the kitchen, the other on the red tile in the living room.

A scream rose to his throat… The kitchen was devastated, as if a typhoon had hit it. The refrigerator door was wide open, all its contents—eggs, milk, butter, Arm and Hammer baking soda, soda pops, ice cubes, orange juice, water jugs, pork chops, lettuce, chicken, and half a watermelon—scattered in a heap in front of it.

His mother’s microwave hung by the cord in front of a cabinet. The dinette table was flipped on its side and two of the four matching chairs were missing. His mother’s china set in a million pieces near the back door.

All the cabinet doors were open, the shelves bare. Broken bottles, dented canned goods and crushed boxes littered the floor.

Leonard saw a busted Heinz vinegar bottle and realized it was what he smelled in the living room. On the stove was a burnt piece of paper. Leonard, thinking the worst—an aborted suicide note —stepped closer, noodles crunching under his shoes. Though the paper was burned to ash, he could still make out the heading.

Again he almost screamed.

He ran from room to room calling his mother. “Mother!… Mother!… Mother!” Running to the bathroom he remembered his mother’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

Mother had seen the will he’d absentmindedly left on the kitchen table and she’d gone berserk. Feeling faint, Leonard sat on the floor inside the bathroom. Mother poisoned Daddy!

The realization made his head hurt. “No!” he shouted. “Lord, no!” Yes, she did. You know she did.

The gopher poison in the closet, her repeated confessions, the wrecked kitchen, all pointed to one person.

Mother!

“Ruth Ann!” and jumped to his feet. He would have to warn her.

He sped down the highway, dangerously passing other vehicles, so focused on preventing another family tragedy he didn’t realize the Lumina clocked eighty-miles-per-hour. His mind raced faster than that.

Ruth Ann could be a bitch at times, a greedy, selfish bitch. Still she didn’t deserve to die. His mother— God, she’s an old woman! Her husband just died. She killed him! Could you really blame her? Daddy wasn’t exactly a loving husband. His shit-talking, someone was bound to knock him off sooner or later. Mother, she just hurried things along. A mercy killing, all it was. A mercy killing. Any judge with common sense would understand that.

She’ll probably have to do some jail time.

He envisioned his mother in a cell, hunkered on the floor under a bunk, while a hirsute dyke shouted salacious obscenities at her. He stomped the accelerator to the floor; the speedometer maxed out at a hundred and twenty.

Find Ruth Ann, take her to a motel out of town, and then find his mother, bring her home and put her to bed. Then what? Figure it out when you get there, he thought as he slowed down on the curved road leading into the park.

Seconds later he slammed on the brakes, almost slid into a tree, jumped out and ran up the trail, not noticing Robert Earl’s rusty Datsun parked nearby.

Nearing the cabin, he shouted, “Ruth Ann?” No answer. He started yelling for Shane when Ruth Ann appeared in the doorway. “Ruth Ann, thank God I found you!” She said nothing, only stared at him, looking frightened. “What’s the matter? Have you seen Mother?”

“No, I haven’t seen her.”

“Good. Get your shoes, I’m taking you away from here. Go on, get your shoes. You’re coming with me. I’m taking you someplace no one will find you. Hurry up!”

“You need to do something, Shirley!” said someone inside the cabin. The voice sounded like an adult trying to imitate a child.

Shirley appeared in the doorway, pointed a gun at him and shouted, “Freeze, sugar britches!”

“What are you doing?” Leonard said.

“Get those hands up where I can see them!”

“Shirley, what—” She cocked the trigger. His hands shot up. “Why are you pointing a gun at me?”

Shirley stepped out onto the porch. “Hey, you behind the door, get out here and tie this young man up.”

“I don’t think so!”

“Who is that?” Leonard asked. “Robert Earl?”

“No, it isn’t!”

Ruth Ann stepped out and stared at him over Shirley’s shoulder. “Why, Leonard? Why did you do it?”

“Why did I do what? Ruth Ann, what the hell is going on?”

Ruth Ann gave him a nasty look. “You killed Daddy.”

“What! Shirley, talk to me, please! What the hell is going on here?”

“Where were you planning to take Ruth Ann?” Shirley asked.

“To a psychiatrist. Next to a mall where she can get out of that dirty T-shirt. I’m here to save her life. For my troubles I’m rewarded with you sticking a gun in my face.”

“What did you mean telling Ruth Ann someplace no one will find you?”

“Good question,” from inside the cabin.

“Shirley,” Leonard started softly, then shouted, “will you please stop pointing that goddamn gun at me!”

Shirley lowered the gun. “He didn’t do it. He’s not the one.”

“How do you know?” Ruth Ann asked.

“Excellent question!”

“His eyes,” Shirley said.

Ruth Ann stared into his eyes, looking to see what Shirley had seen that she’d missed.

“Has this entire family gone crazy?” Leonard said. “Ruth Ann, would you please stop looking at me like that!” She looked away. “Thank you!”

“What you come up here for?” Shirley said.

“I didn’t come here to have a damn gun pointed at me, for damn sure!”

“Sorry ’bout that.”

“Shirley, that makes me feel so much better. I came here to get Ruth Ann. I think Mother might be looking to do her harm.”

Ruth Ann groaned.

Shirley said, “Why you think Momma would harm Ruth Ann?”

Leonard told them about the gopher poison in the closet, the upheaval in the kitchen and the burnt will on the stove.

“Momma!” Ruth Ann said, shaking her head. “It’s hard to believe!”

“It’s hard to believe,” Shirley said, “because it isn’t true. Momma didn’t do it. I know my momma, she didn’t do it.”

“Lord knows I would like to believe Mother wouldn’t hurt anyone. I hate to say it, everything points to her.”