Near the Bone(32)

He dropped the load of firewood by the door. “Better get the fire going, Mattie. It’s a cold one out there. Going to have to keep the fire on all day.”

He shut the door again. Mattie knew he was going out to the storehouse to get the eggs for breakfast. She heard him whistling as he did, and she froze in shock.

Whistling? William whistling?

He must have had a very good day in town. Mattie couldn’t recall the last time she heard him whistle, even though he was good at it. He could whistle a tune and it actually sounded like a song, not just a random series of notes.

He stopped whistling a long time ago, when he decided that music tempted the devil close.

She decided not to say anything about it. If she drew attention to it then it would be her fault that he made music and attracted evil to them.

There were still large hot embers in the fireplace. William must have put wood in when he returned home the night before. Mattie stoked up the fire again so it would be ready for cooking. In the meantime, William returned with the eggs, removing his boots at the door.

“Going to catch that demon today, Mattie my girl,” he said as she made the coffee. “It doesn’t stand a chance.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, going about her usual breakfast chores.

“First thing is to set up that trap on the trail between here and the stream. If it comes down for water and decides to head up this way again, the demon will walk right into it.”

I don’t think so, Mattie thought. The creature seemed too smart to step into a trap, but she didn’t tell William this.

“Then I’m going to take some of those grenades up to the caves and toss ’em inside,” William continued. “If it’s in there when I do, all well and good. If it isn’t, then I’ll have blown up its home base. It won’t have anywhere to hide, and if it doesn’t have anywhere to hide, it will be easier for me to shoot.”

He gestured toward the rifle leaning against the wall. “And that gun, Mattie my girl, is strong enough to take down an elephant. It will take down that demon for sure.”

“What’s the knife for?” Mattie asked, as she placed his food in front of him.

William shrugged. It was such an uncharacteristic gesture that Mattie had to stop herself from staring at him. He really was not acting like himself today.

He’s lighter, freer than he has been in years. He’s more like the old William, the one who used to laugh and play board games with me and Heather.

For what felt like the millionth time her brain came to a halt, caught on a memory that had just surfaced. William used to play board games with her and Heather. She could almost see his hand holding a red gingerbread man, moving it over colored squares on a board and stopping when he reached a candy cane.

This recollection in addition to the one she’d had of her mother standing behind William in the kitchen made her wonder. She wondered just who William was to her, because she had a feeling that he wasn’t just her husband. Something roiled in her stomach, something that burned and bubbled like acid. She stared at the man she’d lived with for more than a decade as he picked up the knife on the table, weighed it in his hand.

Who are you?

“The knife is a last resort, you might say,” William said.

Mattie started. She’d completely forgotten she’d asked him about the knife. She’d even forgotten for a moment where she was—no, when she was. These memories that surfaced piecemeal were dangerous. They stopped her clock, made her drift away. When she drifted, she made mistakes. When she made mistakes, William got angry. Mattie was determined not to let him get angry at her again, especially not when he was in such a strangely cheerful mood.

“A last resort?” she asked, giving all of her attention to him. She couldn’t afford to think about anything else right now.

“In case it gets close,” William said.

William would never be able to kill the creature that way. Never. She hadn’t been able to see its body clearly in the darkness but she knew it was enormous. The chances of William, say, slashing its throat were practically zero. He wouldn’t even be able to reach the creature’s throat. And then it would rip him up with its claws and that would be the end of William.

The end of William. Her heart leapt when she thought of it. The end of pain. She almost couldn’t imagine it, a life without pain.

But should you be thinking thoughts like that? Should you be thinking about William dying?

(Yes)

William placed the knife back on the table and frowned at her. “That eye looks bad, Mattie girl. Does it hurt?”

This was sometimes a trick question. Sometimes he wanted to know for certain that he’d hurt her because she deserved it. And sometimes he wanted her to say her wounds didn’t hurt because it was insulting that her own husband would harm her. She studied his face for a minute, tried to divine the correct answer in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, pretty sure this was what he wanted to hear, and it was also true. Her eye hurt so bad it was getting difficult for her to move around. It throbbed constantly, and the fluid under the lid seemed hard now, like it had taken on a new form.

He grasped her chin with his fingers, turned her bad eye toward the light. Her stomach muscles tensed, braced for a sudden change in mood. Occasionally the sight of his handiwork would increase William’s fury.