The Savage(14)

Once the Widow’s traps had been set in a location where she’d watched such critters trespass, Horace and Van Dorn followed her back through the woods, trampling over limbs that cracked and popped, noticing the sound of a river was nearby; each thought of running toward it, jumping in to feel a relief from the mossy film that covered their hides.

Van Dorn was spent but knew the night was not coming to an end as the Widow spoke. “Dark’ll only last so long. We need to get back on the road, dump the GTO.”

Van Dorn replied before his father. “We can then call it a night?”

And Horace said, “We may never know day nor night again. At least not in the normal sense.”

To Van Dorn, the Widow replied, “Yes, we may call it a night after the car has been dumped far from everyone’s eyes.” She stopped, held the lantern to Horace’s damp and salty face. “All things will come to pass with time, trust me. Was nothing so hard as losing my provider.”

Van Dorn and Horace followed the Widow out to Tucker’s Lake in the GTO, where they wiped the car clean of any prints, left the GTO with the keys in the ignition, returned to the Widow’s home with the gray of morning cast upon them. Offering Horace and Van Dorn shelter. A place to bathe, eat, and lay their heads. They stripped themselves of garment. Saturated cotton and denim with fuel. Ignited their clothing within a burn barrel. Showered and dressed in fresh garments.

In the kitchen, the Widow prepared breakfast while the two men sat at the kitchen table that was covered by a white cloth. Glass salt and pepper shakers sat in the table’s center, each the size and shape of a large goose egg with a lime-green lid. Horace was fidgeting, his nerves needing to be numbed from all that had taken place.

The Widow stood over the pearl-tinted stove, blue and orange flame heated the bottom of a black cast-iron skillet where she spooned a ceramic-colored mixture of bacon and beef fat from a used mayonnaise jar. A dozen eggs lay in a pink carton about the counter where she picked up the oval shapes, one at a time, cracked them open, and dropped the clear goo with yolk into the skillet, where it popped and sizzled.

“What brought you and your boy to English?”

“Wanted a look at what we’d not seen in some time.”

“Not seen?”

“We been on the road. Far from here. Was salvaging for a living. Kinda lost my reasons, being rooted in the county when the wife skipped out on me and my boy, then the economy went to snuff.” Horace looked to Van Dorn with deranged bloodshot eyes and finished with “We’d been gone long enough, decided to come back.”

“Seems many a folk has lost they way in these times. Can remember when one could always find work. It ain’t that way no more. Between jobs drying up, meth, heroin, and opiate addiction, people’s dead ’fore they even know it.” The Widow went silent, then said, “Never said what your names was?”

“I’m Horace Riesing. My boy’s named Van Dorn.”

“Well, Horace and Van Dorn, how you two like your eggs?”

The Widow asked this as though nothing had occurred. “Soft in the center,” Van Dorn said.

Horace balled his hand into a mallet. Unable to take the unacknowledged weight of what the past forty-eight hours had seized his conscience with, he brought the fist down on the table’s center. Rattled the shakers. Van Dorn sat as though time had quit. Wanted to reach out. Clasp his father into a hug. Let him know things were as okay as they could be. That they had each other.

“A man has been murdered by my hands,” Horace shouted. “Buried by me and my boy. And you ask how we want our eggs?”

The Widow swallowed hard, ignored Horace’s words. “How many you two want?”

Van Dorn’s eyes bugged to the size of cue balls. Starved and knowing his father would not answer until he was free of what they’d been accomplices to, Van Dorn spoke for them each.

“Let’s start with the dozen.”

Angered, Horace said, “Don’t be a pig, boy.”

“He’s fine. Just me out here and I got a mess of hens. Mess of milk from my few cows and pounds of meat in the freezer. Two of you’s safe here. After breakfast you can get some shut-eye. Decide what you wanna do when you wake.”

“Dammit, Widow, what’s your angle in this taking of another’s existence?”

The Widow turned to Horace and said, “No angle. I take kindly for what you done. My brothers-in-law have belittled me since my husband’s passing. And even before with their snide ways. Though it’s wrong, I feel no qualms nor pity for what happened to Gutt. Don’t know how many times I wished his and the others’ deaths. Only thing I’m sorry for is that it was you and your son who had to do it. But what’s done is done.” She paused, turned back to the cast iron, flipped the eggs onto a plate covered by towel paper to absorb the discoloration of grease, cracked several more eggs into the skillet. And she finished with, “In these woods the rules can be shaped how I see fit, not how they see fit.”

And then it came, the one thing Horace needed to find his calm. “Got any sauce?”

“Kind of sauce?”

“Only kind they is, that which is rendered from mash and rye or wheat, corn, and barley.”

The Widow flipped the eggs as they crisped brown and whited on one side and she told Horace, “They’s a half gallon of Maker’s below the sink. Glasses is above. Help yourself.”