And eventually everything, the sight of raw meat, the sounds, the smells, everything, faded away into a fine red mist.

CHAPTER 13

I rode in the back of the truck again, braced up near the cab, wedged in between two large coolers that held the meat, because Junior was worried that I might get the cab dirty. My clothes were still wet, and my arms were covered in dried, sticky blood up to my elbows.

I grabbed my tacky elbows and held my arms close, ignoring the blood. I didn’t want to think about the meat in those coolers. Not tonight, not tomorrow night, not ever. I wasn’t paying attention to where we were, and wasn’t prepared when the truck slid to a stop on the rain-slicked pavement. The coolers slammed into the cab.

Junior started pounding on the back window. “Let’s go, dickhead. This ain’t a goddamn taxi.”

I pushed myself awkwardly to my feet, using the coolers for support and gingerly inched toward the back of the truck, joints stiff and aching from the cool night wind. Suddenly, the truck lurched forward a couple of feet and I stumbled forward, almost going to my knees. The engine sounded like a pit bull strangling itself on a fraying leash. I could hear Bert cackle and Junior pounded on the back window again. I grabbed the steel bar and jumped out.

The truck pulled away immediately. Bert stuck his upper body out of the passenger window, waving his cast wildly. “See ya tomorrow, Archie!” I hope not, I thought. As the night swallowed the red taillights, I headed up the driveway.

The clouds had rolled on and the rain had finally died, leaving lakes of shallow, wide puddles that filled the long driveway. I walked out across a sea of stars, heading for Grandma’s trailer, each footstep shattering the sky and sending expanding ripples of rolling stars into the darkness.

And before I realized it, I was home.

A faint blue light flickered in the windows. Grandma must be still up, watching television. I hoped she wasn’t waiting on me. I didn’t know what time it was, only that it was late, real late.

I crouched at the end of the driveway, near a corner of the garden, and plunged my arms into one of the puddles. I scraped most of the blood off my arms, but I wondered how I was going to get cleaned up enough to even go inside so I could take a shower.

When I got closer to the trailer, a match flared in the darkness near the back door. The orange flicker illuminated Grandma’s face, sending tiny brown shadows dancing across her wrinkles. She was sitting on the top step, lighting her pipe.

“Howdy, pilgrim.” She smiled, gray smoke curling out of the upraised corners of her mouth. It was an old joke. The Duke had been Grandpa’s favorite.

“Hey, Grandma.” I sat heavily on the bottom step, rested my arms across my knees and let my head fall on my forearms. The exhaustion suddenly caught up with me, making my muscles feel like they were filled with the little steel pellets that Grandma loaded into her shotgun shells, and I seriously considered sleeping out on the wooden stairs.

Grandma spoke, her voice low and solid behind me. “I’ve been wondering about you. Sounded like them Sawyers.”

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly through my nose. I didn’t know what to say. Where could I start? I felt ashamed, for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on.

I could smell the pipe smoke before she spoke again. “I’m just gonna say this once. That family, them Sawyers, they’re about the worst bunch of inbred mistakes this town’s ever seen.”

Grandma was silent for a moment, then said almost too quietly for me to hear, “I used to know the mother. Pearl Sawyer. We went to high school together. We, ah … Well, see, your granddad, he was quite the ladies’ man back then. He saw a lot of girls, including me and Pearl. She fell for him just as hard as I did. And she was awful good-looking back in them days and wasn’t shy about getting to know a boy up close and personal, if you know what I mean.”

I twisted around and sat sideways on the steps, watching Grandma. She stared out above my head at the dark patch of garden, a midnight sentinel standing guard over her beloved tomatoes. “Never held it against him, though. I guess he had his fling with Pearl before he started coming around to see me. But when he broke it off with her to get serious with me, Pearl took it kind of hard. She was downright pissed, you could say. But she left us alone for the most part, and I thought that was that. But not too long after me and your grandfather got married, he found a dead hog on our front lawn one morning. Some sort of message had been written on the front door in the hog’s blood. I never could understand what it said, but your grandfather just laughed, said Pearl was trying to scare him with some kind of a curse. Said she was just jealous, nothing to worry about. It worked kind of, I guess, scared me a little, but he told me not to worry, and as the years went by, I had other things to worry about, like the Depression and him going off to war, and eventually I just forgot about the whole thing.”

Grandma struck another match and relit her pipe. Then she shook out the match and carefully placed it on the splintered step beside her. “Never thought about it again until he died. I never told you the truth, Arch, about how your grandfather died. You were just too young, and I didn’t think it would do any good.”

I waited, afraid that if I said anything, Grandma might stop talking.

She sniffed once and wiped at her nose quickly, saying, “You know how we used to have around twenty pigs back then, along with the goats, right?” I nodded. Grandma looked up at the brilliant stars. “Well, your grandfather, ah, he had a heart attack. That part was true. The thing I didn’t tell you was that it hit him when he was feeding the hogs one day. He collapsed, and … well, the hogs ate most of him before I found him.” She swallowed, and when she continued her voice was thick.

“And the strangest thing was, was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw what was left of him, lying in the mud, all tore up like that, was that dead hog and the blood on the front door all those years ago.”

Grandma coughed a little, a dry, rasping sound that sent a small cloud of sweet-smelling smoke into the still night air. I sat perfectly still, still trying to process the story somehow. It didn’t seem real. The man I had thought was my father for a long time, the man who had taught me everything about guns and shooting, the man I had thought was the toughest man in the world, that man, dead in the mud, ripped open by pigs. It was too much to take in. I couldn’t get my head around it, couldn’t even begin to accept it.

Grandma spoke again, her voice dry as smoke. “So I don’t know if it was her or not, and I don’t know if I ever want to know. But I don’t want you getting anywhere near that family. They’re dangerous. And that Pearl, she’s the most … most evil human being I’ve ever come across. I don’t even know if I’d call her human. I ain’t ashamed to admit that she scares the hell out of me.”

I wanted to say, You’re goddamn right. She scares the hell out of me too. I saw her kill a kitten tonight and stare right at me in total darkness, and she scared me bad enough I almost pissed my pants, but instead I just mumbled, “Okay, Grandma, okay. I’ll stay far away from them, I promise.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, watching the stars. I had heard on the news at the bar that another storm front was rolling up the valley, and I wasn’t sure when we might get to see clear skies again.

Finally Grandma spoke up, softer, more gentle this time. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Arch, it smells like you got sidetracked on your way home.”

I shrugged. The last thing I wanted to tell her was about the pit and that I had been at the Sawyer place. “It’s … it’s been a long day,” I said finally.