The Hollow

Part Five: With The Knife

Buddy lay on the trailer's carpet, a little boll of rayon batting against his nostril as he breathed, and tried to remember how he got there, but Sally's smile in his mind jumbled him. He remembered Estep driving him back, and he remembered falling down in the parking lot and hitting Fred Johnson, but he did not know why.

He stood up, shook himself, and supported himself down the hall to the bathroom. The blood flow from his head and the shock of the light turned the room purple for a moment, and he ran water from the shower on his head to clear the veil. Looking into the mirror, he saw the imprints of the carpet pattern on his cheek, the poison hanging beneath his eyes. He wanted to throw up, but could not.

"Ol' dead stuff," he muttered and heaved dryly.

Atop the commode sat a half-finished bourbon and coke. He tossed it down and waited for it to settle or come up again. Leaning against the wall, he remembered the dog and called to her, but she did not come. He looked at his watch: it was five-thirty.

He went into the living room and opened the door—the wet snow was collecting in patches. He called Lindy, and she came to him from behind the trailer with a hound close behind her. He shut the door between the dogs and sat on the couch. Lindy hopped up beside him. "Poor ol' girl," he said, patting her wet side. "Yer in fer the works now." His knuckles were split, and blood flaked from his fingers, but he could not feel them.

"Sal's gone, yes, she is. Yes, she is. A couple of months, an' we'll show her, yes we will." He saw himself in Charleston, in the Club, then taking Sally home in his new car.

"Hungry, ol' girl? C'mon, I'll fix ya up."

In the kitchen, he looked for fresh meat to treat her, and, finding none, opened a can of sardines. Watching her lap them up, he poured himself a bourbon and leaned back against the counter. Sally's plate lay skinned with bean-soup in the sink, and for a moment he missed her. He laughed to himself: he would show her.

Lindy walked under the table and coughed up her sardines.

"Don't blame ya a damn bit," he said, but in the roil of sardines and saliva, he saw himself cleaning it up, knew the smell would always be there. There was no reason he should have to clean up, no reason he could not have meat or anything he wanted. He took up his rifle, which was leaning where he had left it, and Lindy barked around his heels. "No," he shouted, hanging her by the collar with his forefinger until he could shut the door.

Outside the snow fell harder and in thick, wet lumps, making patterns in the darkness. The climb up the hill to the ridge behind the trailer stirred his lungs to bleed, and he stopped to spit and breathe. Rested, he walked again in quiet rhythm with the rustle of snow on the dead leaves.

In the brush by the trail, a bobcat crouched and waited for the man to clump by, its muscles tight in the snow and mist. Claws unsheathed, it moved only slightly with the sounds of his steps until he was far up the trail, out of sight and hearing. The cat moved down the trail and stopped to sniff the blood-spit the man had left behind.

By the time he crested the ridge, Buddy could feel the pain of trailer heat leave his head, and he stopped short of the salt blocks he had laid out last fall. He held in a breath to slow the wheezing, and when it stopped, sat on his old stump while the first mild light of the sky glowed brown. He loaded his gun, and watched a low trail in the brush, a trail he saw through outlines of snow in the ghost-light. From the hollow, dog yelps carried to the ridge. The trail was empty.

Behind him, something rattled in the leaves, and he turned his head slowly, hearing the bones in his neck click. In the brown light, he made out the rotted ribs of an old log barn he had played in before they sold the land and moved to the hollow. Something scurried past the barn and ran away from him and up the ridge. From the baying of the dogs below, he was sure it was a fox.

Between the clouds and the hills hung the sun, moving fast enough to track, making the snow glisten on the branches. When he looked away from the sun, his eyes were drawn to the cool shadow of a deer standing against the yellow ribbon of sunlight.

He moved slowly, lifting the gun to his face, aiming into the shadow, and before the noise splintered into the hollow, he saw a flash of movement. He ran to the place where the deer had stood, but there was no blood. He tracked the animal only ten yards to the spot where it had fallen. It was a doe with a pink bloodless lip of wound near her shoulder.

Working quickly, he split her hind tendons, threaded them with a stringer, and hoisted her from a low limb. He cut across the throat, and blood dripped into the snow, but as he ran the knife up the belly, something inside the carcass jolted, moved against the knifepoint. He kept cutting, and when the guts sagged out, a squirming lump fell at his feet.

He kicked the unborn fawn aside, disconnected the doe's guts, sliced off the hindquarters, and let the rest of the carcass fall for the scavengers to find. He laid three small slices of liver aside in the snow to cool.

Warm doe blood burned his split knuckles, and he washed them with snow, remembering now that the feeling had returned, why he had hit Fred Johnson—for spiking Old Man Cox's coal. He began to laugh. He could see Old Man Cox screaming his head off. "Shit," he said, laughing and shaking his head.

He bit off a piece of the cool, raw liver and, as it juiced between his teeth, watched the final throes of the fawn in the steamy snow. He could not wait to dump the water at the mine tomorrow and laughed as he imagined the look on Curtis's face. "Strike," he muttered over and over.

On a knoll in the ridge, run there by the dogs, the bobcat watched, waiting for the man to leave.

****

To Be Continued.......