Уинстон Грум - Alabama Noir

Despite knowing just about everything there was to know about killing and processing deer, he knew nothing about their birthing. With Darrell and the Sutt track record, the last thing Jimbo needed was to become a father. Nothing about Darrell had ever been normal. He hadn’t even come with a birthday. Jimbo’d made that up too.

Images flashed through his mind: Darrell screaming in that makeshift pen. Darrell covered in red bumps. Darrell slamming his head on the floor. Darrell turning blue. Darrell falling into the fire. Darrell’s chest not moving for such a long time. But he was about to turn nineteen; they’d both survived.

Beginning with the nose, Jimbo worked at the spider weblike covering, and was making his way toward the tail when he sensed someone watching. He hadn’t heard anyone drive up. Damn electric cars. In his peripheral vision stood a woman who looked like Cassie except she was too round.

“Darrell asked me to take him back, so I did. It was the least I could do.” Her voice sounded flat and sleepy, but it was the most beautiful music in the world.

He couldn’t take his eyes away from her swollen belly. It looked liked she’d swallowed a basketball. Cassie was staring at the fawn. “It was pregnant too?”

Pregnant.

“Here, let me help.” She kneeled down and took a towel. “Your brother is sweet. I’ve always heard he was crazy but he seems nothing but nice.” She wiped at the fawn’s eyes and nose.

Realizing she was pregnant had paused Jimbo’s brain. He couldn’t think. There were things he needed to say, but breathing was about all he could manage. The noise inside his ears grew into a roar. Talking hadn’t exactly been their thing, yet over the weeks they’d spent together, he’d confided a couple things about Darrell and their father. She hadn’t said much about her own father but Jimbo gathered that Josiah DeBardelaiwin kept Cassie in a gilded cage.

Jimbo grabbed her by the wrist.

“Let me go,” she said, pulling away and trying to stand, but he squeezed until she gave up. She dropped the towel.

“Is it mine?” He wasn’t sure which answer he wanted — for it to be his or someone else’s.

Instead of getting up, she lifted the fawn’s head between her hands. “It’s none of your business.”

“You saying it ain’t mine?” He suddenly knew which answer he wanted.

She blew into the fawn’s nose. “I’m saying it’s none of your business.” She took a deep breath and blew again. The fawn’s face twitched. “Did you see that? It moved. Now what do we do?”

“Then whose is it?” he said. “Tell me.”

She slipped off her sweater and wrapped it around the fawn. “Is there milk in the mother?”

“Who else’d you fuck?” Jimbo spat, and palmed her belly like he might steal it, might take the ball and run down the court. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

Cassie sat back on her heels and pulled the fawn to her, as if that was her answer.

“I sensed it. Some things you just know in your bones.”

“I didn’t say it was a girl.”

“You didn’t have to. Your face said it.”

“You had a 50/50 chance.”

“I knew it, same as I know it’s mine.”

Cassie kept stroking the fawn. It blinked but didn’t move. “Aren’t they born walking?” she asked. “Maybe I should put it down.”

He wanted to hear Cassie say it was his. Even if he had to make her, he wanted her to say it. It was beginning to dawn on him that their two worlds were no longer separate. We have something in common, something that’s ours.

Cassie swallowed hard. “Here,” she said, guiding his hand. “Feel that?”

How could he not? Her belly heaved beneath her shirt. He could see it and feel it. But he wanted to see more. He lifted her shirt and with his eyes traced the veins that spread beneath the translucence. A fragrance rose to his nose — not fruity, not apple — just clean. Soap. He expected to be sorry, to be angry that he hadn’t used condoms with her. But the only thing he felt was aroused.

“Look. The fawn’s trying to walk,” Cassie said. “We’ve got to do something.”

“When’s it due?”

“Next week.”

“What day? Darrell’s birthday’s the first.”

“The second.”

The fawn struggled to steady itself.

Her belly button stuck out like a turtle. Jimbo kissed it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her belly heaved again. “They’re called Braxton Hicks contractions. They’re not the real ones,” she said, after slowly exhaling. “My father wouldn’t let me.”

Josiah DeBardelaiwin was a rich prick who thought he owned the entire state. He probably hated the idea that his blood had mixed with a Sutt.

“Say it. I want to hear it. Say it’s mine.”

“Look! It’s up.” The fawn was standing, each stick-thin leg quivering. As it wobbled, Cassie’s smile spread like a brush fire. Jimbo could drown in that smile; he’d die happy. That wild tongue. Those sharp teeth. Those pink lips. He wanted to put his tongue between her lips so badly that he grabbed her and pressed his mouth on hers so hard that her teeth cut his lip. When he tasted blood, he thought his heart had exploded.

“I love you,” he said. He opened his eyes.

She was still looking at the fawn.

“I’ll take care of the baby, I promise. I’ll be a good father. You’ll be surprised. Are you listening?” He’d do anything for his baby. He reached out and pulled the fawn to them. It weighed nothing, felt like grabbing air.

“How do hunters shoot anything with such wondrous eyes?” she said.

It was true about the eyes. Jimbo had learned not to look into them.

“I hope our daughter has your eyes,” he said, pressing lightly on the fawn’s back until it folded onto Cassie’s outstretched legs. It rested its nose on her belly. Jimbo stood and with a boot pushed the doe toward the drain. As he did, the incision tore, and he saw several ribs; one was covered with the telltale white bubbles of TB. If the doe was infected, so was her fawn.

So that Cassie could lean back, he rolled his work cart behind her and locked the wheels.

“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you? Do you have any idea? Don’t sit there and pretend like you didn’t think about me. You enjoyed it as much as I did.”

He remembered those weeks like they were yesterday. He could picture her coming through the overhead door, half-dressed, and wanting to play, like a little kid. One time she was buck naked. Several times she wore layers and, using antlers like a pole, she’d remove each layer in a striptease. If he was too busy to play, she’d pull up a stool and watch, the sound and smell of her breath driving him so crazy that he could hardly stand it. Most of what they did was her idea. Instead of hide-and-seek, she insisted they play hide-and-hunt, using an unloaded gun and a bow with sponge-tipped arrows. “Even vegetarians have to eat what they kill,” she’d said. Until Cassie, Jimbo had thought vegetarians, like zombies, were made up.

Cassie rubbed the fawn’s neck and cradled it in her arms. She closed her eyes.

“Damnit, Cassie. Do you hear what I’m saying? Look at me, goddamnit. I’ll marry you.” There. He’d said it. The first Sutt in no telling how many generations.

“Are you nuts?” Cassie kept her eyes closed and lowered her voice to a half squeak, half whisper. “My father would disown me.”

“He’ll come around. You’ll see. What does he know anyway? What did you tell him about us?”

“He thinks you raped me... said he would kill you. The sheriff talked him out of it.”

“Talked him out of it? What’d Turner say?” For years Jimbo and Sheriff Turner’d had an unspoken agreement about jurisdiction. Fish and Wildlife were from Washington and didn’t understand the way things worked around here.