Lisey's Story(100)
Scott swallows. The click in his throat is as loud as a turning light-switch.
"When I came down the cellar stairs with his food - meat and vegetables on a pie-plate, the way you'd bring food to a big dog like a Great Dane or a German Shepherd - he'd rush to the end of the chains that held him to the post, one around his neck and one around his waist, with drool flying from the corners of his mouth and then the whole works would snub up and he'd go flying, still howling and barking like a booldevil, only sort of strangled until he got his breath back, you know?"
"Yes," she says faintly.
"You had to put the plate on the floor - I still remember the smell of that sour dirt when I bent over, I'll never forget it - and then push it to where he could get it. We had a bust' rake handle for that. It didn't do to get too close. He'd claw you, maybe pull you in. I didn't need Daddy to tell me that if he caught me, he'd eat as much of me as he could, alive and screaming. And this was the brother who made the bools. The one who loved me. Without him I never would have made it.
Without him Daddy would have killed me before I made five, not because he meant to but because he was in his own bad-gunky.
Me and Paul made it together. Buddy system. You know?" Lisey nods. She knows.
"Only that January my buddy was cross-chained in the cellar - to the post and to the table with the printing-press on it - and you could measure the boundary of his world by this arc...this arc of turds...where he went to the end of his chains...and squatted...and shat."
For a moment he puts the heels of his hands to his eyes. The cords stand out on his neck. He breathes through his mouth - long harsh shaking breaths. She doesn't think she has to ask him where he learned the trick of keeping his grief silent; that she now knows. When he's still again, she asks: "How did your father get the chains on him in the first place? Do you remember?"
"I remember everything, Lisey, but that doesn't mean I know everything. Half a dozen times he put stuff in Paul's food, of that I'm positive. I think it was some kind of animal tranquilizer, but how he got it I have no idea. Paul gobbled down everything we gave him except for greens, and usually food energized him. He'd yowl and bark and leap around; he'd run to the end of his chains - trying to break them, I guess - or jump up and pound his fists on the ceiling until his knuckles bled. Maybe he was trying to break through, or maybe it was just for the joy of it. Sometimes he'd lie down in the dirt and masturbate.
"But once in awhile he'd only be active for ten or fifteen minutes and then stop. Those were the times Daddy must have give him the stuff. He'd squat down, muttering, then fall over on his side and put his hands between his legs and go to sleep. The first time he did that, Daddy put on these two leather belts he made, except I guess you'd call the one that went around Paul's neck a choker, right? They had big metal claps at the back. He loop the chains through em, the tractorchain through the waist-belt clap, the lighter chain through the choker-belt clap at the nape of his neck. Then he used a little hand-torch to weld them claps shut. And that was how Paul was trussed. When he woke up he was wild to find himself that way. Like to shook the house down." The flattened, nasal accents of rural Pennsylvania have crept so far into his voice that house becomes almost Germanic, almost haus. "We stood at the top of the stairs watchin 'im, and I beg Daddy to let 'im out before he broke 'is neck or choke 'imself, but Daddy, he said he wun't choke and Daddy was right. What happen after three weeks was he started to pull table and even center-pos' - the steel center-pos' that held up the kitchen floor - but he never broke his neck and he never choke 'imself.
"The other times Daddy knock him out was to see if I could take him to Boo'ya Moon - did I tell you that's what me n Paul called it, the other place?"
"Yes, Scott." Crying herself now. Letting the tears flow, not wanting him to see her wiping her eyes, not wanting to let him see her pitying that boy in that farmhouse.
"Daddy want to see if I could take him and make him better like the times when Daddy cut him, or like that one time Daddy poke his eye with the pliers and make it come a little way out and Paul crite and crite because he couldn't hardly see good, or once Daddy yell at me and say 'Scoot, you little whoredog, you mother-killing mother!' for trackin in the spring muddy and push me down and crack my tailbone so I couldn't walk so well. Only after I went and had a bool...you know, a prize...my tailbone was okay again." He nods against her. "And Daddy, he see and give me a kiss and say, 'Scott, you're one in a million. I love you, you little motherf*cker.' And I kiss him and say 'Daddy, you one in a million. I love you, you big motherf*cker.' And he laughed." Scott pulls back from her and even in the gloom she can see that his face has almost become a child's face. And she can see the goonybird wonder there. "He laughed so hard he almos' fell out of his chair - I made my father laugh!"
She has a thousand questions and doesn't dare ask a single one. Isn't sure she could ask a single one.
Scott puts a hand to his face, rubs it, looks at her again. And he's back. Just like that. "Christ, Lisey," he says. "I've never talked about this stuff, never, not to anyone. Are you okay with this?"
"Yes, Scott."
"You're one hell of a brave woman, then. Have you started telling yourself it's all bullshit yet?" He's even grinning a little. It's an uncertain grin, but it's genuine enough, and she finds it dear enough to kiss: first one corner, then the other, just for balance.