Where You Once Belonged(51)

“No, it isn’t, goddamn it.” He was talking very angrily. “Nothing’s over. Is it, Jessie?”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m through, Jack. Leave me alone now. Please. I want you to leave me alone.”

“Maybe you just think you’re through,” he said.

“No. I am.”

“I’m not, though. You’re what I got left. I’m not through.”

“But I want you to leave me alone. Can’t you just leave? You’re good at that.”

“I’m taking you with me this time. All three of you.”

“No,” Jessie said. “No, you’re not!” She began to cry, looking fiercely at him. She wrapped the sheet tighter around her.

I stood up. “Goddamn you. Get the hell out of here.”

“Shut up,” he said. “Shut your mouth.”

He stepped away from the wall toward me, leveling the gun at my face.

“And you get up,” he said to Jessie. “You get dressed now.” He reached down and jerked the sheet away from her; she was kneeling on the bed with her arms across her breasts. He was still pointing the shotgun at me. “Do what I say. Get dressed and don’t say anything.”

“Jessie.”

“I told you,” Burdette said.

“Jessie,” I said, “don’t.”

She was still crying. She looked at me and slowly got out of bed and went over to the closet. She began to get dressed. Burdette stood watching her. And I hated him now; I hated him. While he was watching her I made a sudden grab for the shotgun but he jerked it away and slammed it against my head. Then I was lying on the wood floor beside the bed, naked, sick to my stomach. There was blood running from my ear. I stood up wobbily, bracing myself against the headboard.

“Try that again,” he said.

“You son of a bitch. Leave her alone.”

“Next time I’ll kill you.”

Jessie had finished dressing now. She was wearing jeans and a blouse and a warm sweater. He told her to pack some extra things to take with her.

“Where’s your suitcase?”

“It’s under the bed.”

“Get it.”

“Jack. Don’t do this. Please, don’t.” Her eyes were red and her hair was tangled. “Please.”

“Get your suitcase.”

She was still standing in front of the closet. She didn’t move. Then he shoved the end of the shotgun barrel against my chest, pushing me against the wall.

“Did you hear me?” he said to her. “Start packing.”

She knelt beside the bed and pulled the suitcase out, then she stood and walked around the bed to the dresser and removed some clothes, putting them into the suitcase and closing it.

“Now get me some nylons,” Burdette said.

“What?”

“Nylons. Stockings.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

She pulled several pairs of nylons out of the drawer and tossed them to him. One of them fell on the floor and he told her to pick it up and hand it to him. “Now back up,” he said. “And face that wall.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You’ll know in a minute.”

“Jack. Don’t. Please.”

“Shut up. Do what I tell you.”

Jessie looked at me once more and then turned, moving to the far wall, and stood facing the wallpaper.

“Okay, lover boy,” Burdette said. “It’s your turn. Make a slipknot in this.” He handed me one of the nylons.

“Go to hell.”

He raised the shotgun so that it was against my neck. “Don’t you think I’d kill you?”

“Yes. I think you would.”

“Then make a knot.”

I made a slipknot in the legs of Jessie’s nylons and gave it back to him.

He tested it, pulling it tighter. “Now turn around.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Say good-bye.”

The shotgun was still against my neck and I turned around. He pulled my arms behind me and slipped the knot over my wrists, making them burn, and then laid the shotgun on the bed and pulled me down so that I was kneeling and tied my feet and knotted the two ends, stretching me backward on my knees. He wrapped another stocking around my head, across my mouth, gagging me, and then made a loop around the leg of the bedstead. Then he pushed me over. I lay on the floor looking up at him, at his tan pants and maroon-shirted stomach. Against the far wall, Jessie had turned around, facing me. She was crying again.

“All right,” Burdette said. “We’re done here.”

He picked up the shotgun from the bed and lifted her suitcase; he took Jessie by the arm and led her out of the bedroom. That was the last I saw of her. She was wearing a warm sweater and she was crying and her brown hair was tangled.

I didn’t see any of the rest of it. I could hear only the frightened sounds coming from the boys’ bedroom down the hall. TJ and Bobby were awakened and being forced to dress and I could hear the muffled sound of Jessie’s voice trying to reassure them, but the boys were both crying, and then there was the harsh deeper sound of Burdette’s voice. When they were finished in the bedroom they walked out through the kitchen toward the back door. The door banged shut and in a moment there was the sound of a car starting up on Hawthorne Street; then there was the sound of it driving away. After that there wasn’t anything.