Light to the Hills: A Novel (48)

Bile rose in Amanda’s throat. Gripp had been there, she thought, watching. Cold sweat dripped between her breasts, and her chest tightened. Her blue eyes welled and stung with the salt. The red-eye gravy was way past done, beginning to scorch and smoke in the skillet.

“You gonna get that?” Gripp nodded to the stove, and Amanda took hold of the skillet handle with a folded rag. She moved it off the heat and felt him behind her. He put a hand over hers and squeezed hard. “I ain’t about to let you clock me with a hot skillet,” he said, twisting her arm behind her and pinning her wrist there with his body. “That dog won’t hunt.”

Gripp nuzzled Amanda’s neck where loose strands of damp hair stuck to it. She could no longer choke back her tears as he walked her across the room to the narrow bed covered with the tidily folded bear paw quilt she’d stitched with Mama, just after she and Frank had married.

“The baby,” Amanda croaked. “Please.”

“Way I figger, that young’un’s as much mine as Frank’s. I was kinda in on the making of it, y’see. Likely I was there for the blessed event, setting behind a big ol’ chestnut tree with a prime view. And it wadn’t no immaculate conception like your daddy preaches about, not by a long shot.” He laughed again, his hands rough on her breasts now as he pushed her down onto the quilt. She lay on her side near the edge of the bed, one arm protecting her belly and the other bent at the elbow and hanging over the side.

Amanda’s fingers brushed the top of the box under the ropes strung across the bed frame to hold the ticking. Outside the window, the evening sky blushed a rosy pink that quickly faded to plum and deep purple as the sun sank. Soon, the mine shift would change and the tavern would fill. If she yelled, folks would count it as just another squall between married folks if they heard it at all.

Gripp fumbled with the buttons on his overalls, his fingers whiskey-clumsy. Amanda stole a glance up at him where he knelt above her. She drew her knees up to her belly and rabbit-kicked at his legs, knocking him off-balance on the lumpy ticking and scooting her a few more inches to the bed’s edge. A few seconds’ pause before he righted himself would be all she needed. Amanda heaved the rest of herself off the bed and hit the floor hard with her right hip. Gripp lunged after her. He’d grasped her left ankle and jerked, sliding her closer to the bed frame and causing her dress to ride up to the top of her thighs. His eyes darkened, and he leered at her on the floor.

“You’re a regular wildcat, ain’t ya? That’s what I heard about preachers’ daughters.”

Amanda flipped the wooden lid off the box and her right hand closed around the butt of the pistol. She rolled onto her back and aimed the barrel at Gripp’s chest. Faced with the business end of a firearm, Gripp let go of Amanda’s ankle and sat back on his knees on the bed, his hands palm-out. Amanda scrambled backward and yanked her dress down with one hand, never taking her eyes off him.

“C’mon now, Amanda,” Gripp said, his voice a soft purr. “I was just fooling. Like you said, I’m a little drunk.” He actually smiled at her, and something in that mirthless smile made the hair rise up on the back of her neck. It was how she imagined a swamp gator might appear; she’d heard stories of how they’d float idly in the bayou with their lids half-closed, jaws split by that crooked smile while they waited for a soft-shelled turtle. Amanda got to her feet. Her hip throbbed where she’d landed on it, and her right elbow stung where she’d skinned it on the rough floor.

“Get on outta here,” she growled. An unfamiliar sound just then—thunder. The cotton curtains hanging at the window fluttered as the wind stirred, and she caught a whiff of damp in the air. Amanda’s chest heaved. Her throat rasped raw.

The door banged open and Frank stumbled in, his hair damp from the first heavy drops of rain they’d seen in months. “Looks like it’s gonna come a flood.”

He stopped short at the scene, Gripp kneeling in his bed with his overalls half-off and Amanda on the floor, barefoot and trembling, with her hair a shambles and a gun aimed down Gripp’s gullet.

Frank held his hands out like he was steadying a spooked horse. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “Gripp?” He turned his eyes on Amanda. “What’s got into you, Mandy?”

Amanda stared at her husband in disbelief. Wasn’t it spelled out plain? If Frank Rye had ever had any sort of a backbone, he had just traded it in for a chicken heart.

“Out!” Amanda barked the word again. “The both of you.”

“It’s raining,” said Frank, like the weather would interest her.

“I don’t care if hellfire itself is flaming down outta the sky. Get. Out.” Gripp climbed slowly off the bed and edged to the door. He put a hand on Frank’s shoulder and jerked his chin. Amanda wondered what kind of a story he’d feed Frank about the hysterical pregnant woman, a story Frank would no doubt swallow hook, line, and sinker because what was most important, what took highest priority, was that money kept coming in, fuel for the cockamamie adventures Frank imagined were still in his future. Amanda had had enough adventure.

That night rang in Amanda’s memory like a copper dinner bell, not because of Gripp or even because that was the last time she’d seen Frank, but because that was the night Miles chose to arrive. As soon as she’d heard them stumble off into the night, she’d lowered the door latch with trembling hands and heaved the table in front of the door for good measure. She’d sit up all night if she had to, the Colt aimed at the ready. Tomorrow, she believed, she would go back up the mountain to her parents’ home, but even as she’d thought it, she’d known the long-awaited rain had come too soon. Lightning flashed blue through the window, and thunder shook the shanty walls as all the water that the sky had withheld for months came pouring forth all at once. Water ran off the dusty tin roof, cascading from the edges into the thirsty ground. The creeks would rise, and there’d be no crossing the rushing current.