This Bitter Earth Part 29

Her body was golden and thick and her belly jiggled as she did a slow lopsided spin for him.

"You want some of this, daddy?" She cooed at him as she rubbed her hands across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then down between her legs.

Lappy couldn't help but smile.

"Lay down," he said as he fumbled with his belt.

Angel settled herself down on the bed and opened her legs so wide that her feet dangled off either side of the bed. "See what I'm gonna give you, baby." Her voice had dropped to a low groan and Lappy could feel the heat pus.h.i.+ng up behind his neck.

He had to look, she had invited him to do so, and when he did he saw Jane Anne Clementine's p.u.s.s.y and thought about the five long years he'd spent on the chain gang, the beatings he'd suffered and the night he woke up and found Elijah down between his legs sucking happily on his d.i.c.k.

He had killed him for that. He could remember, even now, how easily Elijah's neck had snapped and how it sounded so much like the pop-crack sound of fresh green beans being readied to cook.

Lappy killing Elijah had been all of him too.

There had been one other, besides the girl Jude, Sugar and Elijah. There had been Grace Ann. That was a mystery to him too. He could remember the sick feeling coming over him whenever she was with him.

Lappy had liked Grace Ann, thought about her in a way he'd never thought about a woman. He supposed he had come to care for her in some way. That feeling, that affection, so foreign to him, had moved Lappy to push her away, so that she could be saved.

But she didn't understand that and had cussed him in the street in front of all of Rose and then had come to him late in the night begging for him to take her back. They'd ended up at the banks of Miracle where he'd f.u.c.ked her for the last time and then killed her.

He'd been beating on Angel for a good five minutes before her boy Harry came through the window with a stick to beat him off of her.

Yeah, that was all Lappy Clayton and had nothing to do with what Shonuff had done so many years earlier.

He cut the light off in his room and walked out into the living room. The guys, the men from the band, were milling about, smoking dope and talking s.h.i.+t, gearing themselves up for their performance that night.

He had hooked up with the band when they were playing in Sun Flower County, supplying them with any type of drug they requested, and so they didn't mind when he asked if he could come along with them to Bigelow.

Lappy didn't know why he wanted to go back to Bigelow. He had left nothing there. But the mention of the town had excited him.

"Sure you can come along, just as long as you bring along your little friends," Luther had said.

They'd stopped in five other towns in Arkansas before finally coming to Bigelow and the small rented house on the outskirts of town.

"You be down the club tonight?" Luther asked as he rolled his second joint for the night.

"Yeah, later on," Lappy said before stepping from the house.

Seeing Sugar at the club the other night had been a surprise. He'd thought that he was seeing wrong, but there was no mistaking that velvet black skin and silky soft voice.

As soon as he saw her he understood why he had come back to Bigelow. The young woman she had with her had stirred something in him too, but he couldn't quite place exactly what it was about her that further fueled him. And then there was JJ. Lappy remembered him well, especially the look he'd given him just before he'd run off after Grace Ann.

Angel s.n.a.t.c.hed at his arm but was only able to catch a piece of the green material of his s.h.i.+rt, and even that slipped from her reach. "Joe, please," she said, and then after Harry had wrapped his arms around her waist, she added, "Don't."

JJ didn't know what it was about what Harry had done that suddenly jarred his memory of who Lappy was. Maybe it was a combination of the slow movement of Harry's finger across his teeth and the despicable act of attempted murder that Joe had unfolded to them down by Hodges Lake. Maybe it was all of those things.

Whatever it was had sent all of the memories flooding back to him and reopened the place in him where he'd stored his pain away.

Grace Ann. She was the first and only person to smile at him when he walked into Rose with his filthy clothing and gruff beard. Seeing her smile was like watching the sun rise.

She was the reason he'd stayed in Rose for as long as he did. He'd stumbled on work slopping pigs and stringing bales of hay for s.h.i.+pping. At the end of two weeks, he'd earned enough to get a new set of clothes, a shave and a bed over the barn on the land owned by the man he worked for.

They never exchanged words, Grace Ann and JJ, but she always smiled at him when their paths happened to cross in town, even if she was walking hand in hand with Lappy Clayton.

He'd heard her name mentioned in conversation, heard her aunt complaining about Grace Ann to a neighbor as they stood examining tomatoes at the market and had utilized that name like a prayer, saying it in the morning when he rose, over all of his meals and at night before he closed his eyes and slept.

Yes, Grace Ann was the reason why he stayed in Rose for as long as he did and she was also the reason why he left.

JJ was there when the men pulled her body from Miracle's muddy bottom. Her beautiful lips were gray and drawn after three days and her skin was blue and hung loose from her bones.

JJ walked away from Rose with wet eyes and a heavy heart.

The sun had set for him that day, and hadn't risen since.

Now he was going to make it right for Grace Ann as well as Sugar.

JJ s.n.a.t.c.hed up his gun and ripped open the door to his truck. He gunned the engine twice as he tried to decide whether or not to take the dogs, before throwing the gears into reverse and doing sixty out the driveway, spinning the truck south and gunning it toward Grove.

Sugar was wide awake. It must have been close to midnight, but she wasn't sure and wouldn't dare break her even breathing or the once-every-third-breath snore she'd been doing for Mercy's sake, to go and check the time.

Mercy was awake. Sugar could tell by the way she kept rubbing her feet together and moving her hands up and down her arms. She'd made some type of sound with her mouth a few times, before she finally couldn't take it anymore and eased out of the bed.

Mercy crept across the floor toward the window and peeked out. Whatever or whoever she was looking for wasn't there, because Mercy cussed and sucked her teeth in disgust before throwing her hands over her mouth and giving Sugar a cautious look.

Sugar, she just kept pretending to be asleep.

Pearl sat straight up in bed. She blinked at the darkness and then moved her hand over the empty s.p.a.ce beside her.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she uttered as she stepped from the bed. "Where did I put it." She spoke low and to herself as she moved to her dresser and then thought again and moved to the closet.

She checked in four pockets before she found what she was looking for.

Pearl had dreamed of Jude, a dancing, happy, so-alive Jude. Jude was dancing in a brightly lit field of flowers, her long braids bouncing off her shoulders as she laughed and swayed to music Pearl could not hear.

Pearl's heart swelled and she took dream steps toward her daughter, but Jude never seemed to be close enough to touch and then the light faded and Jude's face was replaced with Sugar's and then Mercy's.

Pearl could hear herself call out her daughter's name over and over again until an answer boomed back from somewhere deep in the darkness, startling Pearl back into the waking world.

She looked down at the bleeding blue letters and suddenly understood.

Joe had heard a car come up the road but not past the house, and so he knew the sound that had clouded his dreams for three nights straight would soon follow.

Seth heard the creak of the stairs before he saw the glowing white of her gown and almost jumped to his feet, but Joe laid a firm hand on his arm, ceasing his movements.

Mercy lingered on the bottom step for a moment as if she sensed that something was wrong. Joe and Seth held their breaths and hoped that the sound of their banging hearts would not give them away.

Joe heard the earth break apart beneath Lappy's feet and then the light tapping sound against the living room window.

Joe could feel the muscles in Seth's arm strain against his palm. He gripped the knife in his hand tighter.

Mercy did not move to the living room, but went straight to the front door, turned the lock and swung it slowly open.

Sugar felt the air in the hall change. It reminded her of when she sat in the kitchen and Pearl opened the refrigerator door; the air would go cool around her ankles, not enough for her to notice right away, but later on she would think of it when the day hit two o*clock and the heat became unbearable.

Sugar was about to tiptoe past Pearl's bedroom when the door swung open and both women jumped back in surprise.

Neither of them spoke. They just stood staring at each other until Pearl eased a slow hand out toward her.

Sugar looked down at the piece of paper that was pressed between Pearl's forefinger and thumb. It was limp and barely comprehensible, but it was her secret just the same.

Lappy stepped into the hallway. It was his first time in the house, and being there made his stomach ache. Mercy s.h.i.+fted her weight from foot to foot. The need in her felt like electricity moving through her. Every nerve in her body was on alert, making the late-night breeze feel like a bl.u.s.tery cold wind.

Her body swayed as she extended her open hand toward Lappy.

JJ's truck ran off the road and collided with a looming white ash. He'd taken a turn too quickly and the hot tears that filled his eyes blurred his vision, a.s.sisting in his miscalculation of the bend.

"s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t!" he screamed into the glow that came off the dashboard.

The engine stalled and refused to turn over.

The moon above him smiled and JJ saw the silhouette of a blackbird pa.s.s across its grinning face.

Unable to control himself any longer, Lappy stepped forward and grabbed Mercy by her neck. It was a quick and fluid movement that no one antic.i.p.ated.

Mercy was down on her knees, the air she needed to breathe and the scream she wanted to release locked away in Lappy's firm grip.

Seth and Joe were taken completely off-guard. Their bodies jerked, but they did not totally react until Mercy's eyes rolled up into her head and Lappy had started to drag her out the door.

Both Sugar and Pearl heard the dull thud Mercy's knees made when she crumpled to the floor. In a mad rush to see what caused the noise, the two women got caught at the top of the stairs, their large hips pressed against each other and between the close walls, holding them hostage until Sugar turned sideways and jumped three stairs toward the bottom.

Seth had seen movies that reminded him of this scene, and long into his old age Hollywood would continue to churn out pictures that would make sure he never forgot it.

Lappy, his eyes wide with astonishment, his gold teeth gleaming beneath the moonlight; a glimmer of silver, a ripping sound, a howl of pain and then the blood, so much blood, spraying everywhere.

Joe had plunged the knife right into the center of Lappy's chest.

When his daughter was old enough, and Joe was long dead, Seth would tell her about that night and the look he saw in his father's eyes when he laid the blade into Lappy Clayton's flesh. "The cold deep gaze that chills me still to this day," he would say.

Joe would have lunged again, but he'd tripped over Mercy's body and Lappy had stumbled away.

Chapter 28.

Lappy thought about how still the night was. He looked at the blood that was smeared across his hands and marveled at how dark it looked against his skin.

He laughed out loud as he took the bend and noticed too late the skid marks that JJ's truck had left in the middle of the road.

Lappy's car spun around and then careened off the road, plowing into the same white ash JJ had slammed into moments earlier.

The tree shuddered at the impact and dropped a heavy limb down and onto the winds.h.i.+eld of Lappy's car.

"This is not good," Lappy mumbled to himself as he slipped from the car and started down the road.

He was losing blood fast and he felt as if he were walking on water rather than road. The trees around him swayed and the moon let out a laugh that sounded like the flutter of a thousand wings.

He lurched along, swinging between the road and its gra.s.sy border. He tripped three times before he reached the white post that marked the beginning of the Hale land.

Lappy grabbed hold of the post to balance himself.

He felt tired, so tired.

There were black dots swirling in front of his eyes and he was sure that those dots would turn into circles and then finally walls. He looked at the blood that still pumped from his wound.

When the walls came he would be able to sleep; it would be a sleep so deep that they could nail him in a coffin and place him six feet under and it wouldn't bother him at all.

He coughed up blood just as the rumbling sounds of the approaching northbound #2276 wrecked the perfect stillness of the night.

He would hop the train, that's what he would do, Lappy told himself as he moved into the field. He would hop the train and be done with Bigelow for good.

The sick hot feeling was ebbing out of him and being replaced with thoughts of his mother. He hadn't thought of her in years, but now he wanted her desperately.

He would go to her when he got back to Short Junction. He would go to her and fall into her arms and let her rock him the way she used to when he was a boy. They would not talk about his father or the things Lappy had done in his time away from her. They would just hold each other and he would promise not to misbehave ever again, just as long as she rocked him the way she used to when he was a boy.

That thought in mind, Lappy smiled and moved into the field, bound for the railroad tracks.

They would follow him on foot, roaming through the streets of Bigelow like pack dogs, stopping every so often to check behind a tree or inspect a noise coming from behind a house.

Sugar dragged Mercy by her hand. She'd fought the first hundred feet, yanked back on Sugar's grip so hard that they both tumbled to the ground. Sugar had slapped her and raised her hand to do it again, but Seth caught her by the arm and shook his head no.

They moved through the night, sometimes together but most times apart. Pearl's short legs worked hard at keeping up with the long strides of the others, while Mercy hobbled along on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet to keep the sharp stones on the road from cutting into their soft middles.

Joe was at the lead, butcher knife clutched tightly in his hand as he paused every now and again to listen to any change in the timbre of the night.

At one point he'd knelt down on one knee and dipped his finger in a small red puddle. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed it and Sugar thought for one horrible moment that Joe would taste it too.

But he didn't. He wiped his finger into the dust of the road, and then brushed his hands in disgust against his pants before moving on.

JJ took the back road that turned onto the bottom of Grove Street. The door to #9 was wide open and there was a puddle of blood as large as a doormat just over the threshold.

JJ turned and followed the trail the blood and footprints had left for him.