Jenna didn’t want to tell me, but once I said I knew anyway, she kind of gave in.
“I just didn’t know what to do.”
“Yeah” was all I could think to say. I nodded and looked down at the floor. I didn’t want her to see my face, probably not any more than she wanted me to see hers.
“It hurt and I was scared and I’m still scared.”
“Does he ~”
“That was the only time.”
“Maybe just the first time.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. It was probably true. It seemed like it would be, but she didn’t need me telling her that. She didn’t say anything. I don’t think she even breathed.
I knew at least that she wasn’t going to want me to give her a hug and pretend everything was going to be alright. About the best I could do was look sad and upset with her. Not “upset with her” but stand there and be upset like her.
“Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Nothin’.”
“What?”
“Don’t do anything that will get you in trouble or hurt.”
It was my turn to be quiet. Then I nodded my head without ever actually lifting it.
“I need to go check on something. Do you mind if I go, Jenna?”
She shook her head. She reached out her hand and let one of her fingers loop around my thumb for just a moment as I straightened up to go.
“I’ll come check on you later.”
“He’ll want me to come out and get busy.”
“I’m going to help him clear some stuff in the barn. We’re going to be busy for a while.”
I walked out. She didn’t ask anything further, and I didn’t have anything further to say.
He saw me coming from across the yard, his sweaty brow glinting at me in the sun. He was clearing the small crib on the north end of the barn, and I knew he also wanted to get the old disks and harnesses out of the barn and toss them somewhere out of the way.
“You see your sister in the house?”
“Yeah, I mean yessir.”
“Tell her to get out here and help?”
“Nossir. She said something about a belly ache and she’d be out in a little while.”
He studied my face, but I just shielded my eyes and squinted at him. Good God, his face was shining with sweat.
He broke off and went back to what he was doing. Granddad had used that crib to keep his old tools and do a little bit of repair work right up to the day he moved into the old folks home in town. It had been a month, and daddy had decided to clear everything out, tossing the junk and adding the good tools and such to his own collection in the barn.
Saws, rakes, the business end of three or four spades, a table vice that looked like it had melted in the sun, it was so old and worn.
“Where’s that cart, the one with the big iron wheels. Get it from the barn and toss all this old shit onto it. When we’re done, you can roll it down to the thicket by the creek. We’ll do the same with the rusted out junk in the barn.
I said “Yes, daddy” but didn’t move yet. I watched him.
“What are you waiting on, son?”
“Nothin’, sir.”
I started toward the big barn doors, then changed my mind and my path. I knew.
I was on the far end of the barn, right by the workshop door before he even noticed.
“Will! Goddamn it, Will, get on in the barn and bring that cart in or I’ll by God run you down with it and then whip the daylights out of you."
I took hold of the workshop door and pulled slowly until it was a quarter open. I could hear the soft buzzing and all the pieces came together in my head.
I yelled at him. “Jenna told me what you did, you sick son of a bitch! She told me you molested her and took her virtue!” He finished dragging out part of a linkage and tossed it onto the pile before tugging his gloves off one at a time. He eyeballed me.
“You aren’t going to treat her that way, daddy. That won’t happen again.”
He just watched me some more, waiting for me to start quivering or blubbering or any number of things that showed I was all bluff, like I’d been before.
“And who are you to tell me what to do, boy? Think a twelve year old weed in my garden is going to lay down the law to John Thacker on his own Goddamn farm? If your mother was alive today ~”
“All the same, you leave her alone, you disgusting pervert.”
He got a tight smirk on his face that I could recognize from forty feet away. He squinted down on me like I was a little speck he couldn’t quite make out against the sun.
“You’re a sick son of a bitch.”
He looked around as if to say to an invisible audience, “Do y’all see what I have to put up with?” then turned his burning eyes back to me.
Still, though, he just stood there, watching me, not giving any indication he was going to give chase. My best option was to keep talking, keep poking and prodding.
“If mamma was alive today, she’d hate you like we all hate you, me and Jenna!”
He still had the gloves in his hand and dropped them down into the dust. They clapped together once like they were saying “Oh, it’s starting.”
He looked down, then all of a sudden burst toward me, and I could tell my judgment day was coming fast. He passed the barn doors and I stood still. He flashed by the barn window and I could smell the dust he was raising up, but I still waited half a beat.
When he was ten feet from the door, I slipped around the back edge and was inside the dark work space. I dropped down to the dirt floor and rolled about ten feet back, scooping up gravel and dirt in my hands as I rolled.
A big silent fireball erupted in front of me as he yanked the door the rest of the way open and plunged in after me, towering six feet above my head as he crossed the threshold.
I let loose with two sprays of gravel and dust. He choked on the dust and didn’t much notice the gravel, but it did its job anyway. While he was clearing his throat and eyes and feeling around for me, the yellow jackets on their nest, that buzzing mass that I listened for as I’d opened the door, lifted up like a little thundercloud and wrapped his head in their frantic anger.
I didn’t entirely escape their anger, and hadn’t expected to, but I was low and seemed less of a threat. His head couldn’t have been more than two feet from the nest when he burst in.
He stumbled and flailed and tried to yell and scream, but I could already hear he was wheezing. His little sprint tired him a little, and the venom or whatever from those fifty wasps were doing the rest of the job. He was always real sensitive to bees and wasps and such and usually had a quick eye for them, but when he was riled, there wasn’t a lot he watched out for.
He stepped on me as I belly crawled to the half-open door, but he only caught a little of my overall leg, which I yanked out pretty easy.
I was out the door with maybe only six or eight stings, and kicked the door shut as I rolled.
I wedged my foot against the corner of the door and pushed my hands up to brace myself against the top of the water well. He crashed against the door once, then again, and then again a little softer, then I heard his big body slide down to the ground. There were some gasps, some deep gravelly gasps, but not as many as I thought before he was silent.
I stayed there for several minutes, though. If he was still stirring, there’d be hell to pay, not just by me but by Jenna, too, once he got up on his hind feet.
After what must’ve been five minutes (I counted almost three hundred Mississippis), I sat myself up. I wasn’t feeling all that good myself, but then I wasn’t the one who was allergic.
I thought for a bit about how long to wait to call into town, then decided I’d do it once the wasps seemed calm. I wanted to check him before I called anyone – make sure there wasn’t anything more to be done, and I didn’t want to get the wasps riled up any more than need be.
They did their job, and deserved to relax, I figured.
Ten minutes and all was quiet, so I got up, dusted myself a little, but not too much, then went to tell Jenna the good news, then call the sheriff or someone. It still might be a while. Sometimes the operator’s away at on break or sometimes she can’t track the sheriff down for a time.
As I walked away, I said “I told you that you weren’t gonna do that no more, you old dead son of a bitch, and I meant it.”
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