Уинстон Грум - Alabama Noir

I don’t know you , she would say. I don’t care a thing about you at all. You can just shift for yourself .

She said these things, whispered them, to her image in the mirror in the bathroom, practiced the tough-looking sneer on her face when she said them.

She straightened one of the embroidered silk pillows Aunt Sip claimed she’d gotten in Shanghai. Said she’d been there buying whores, in the good old days, before the barrier island casinos in Mississippi closed down. Well, she guessed that could be something close to the truth, if you figure Aunt Sip was the head whore. The pillow’s material was smooth and almost slippery between her fingers. The pillow itself was very light, as if filled with the finest of down. She balanced it on one palm at arm’s length.

“What in the name of holy hell are you doing?”

The voice had gargled up from the covers.

“Nothing but fluffing your Chinese pillow, Aunt Sip.”

Aunt Sip’s face was a doughy gray, her eyes like old, dry, blackened wounds, punctured slits that somehow imparted derision. Hands atop the covers like large bloated frogs at the ends of her arms atop the tattered comforter.

“Well, would you kindly,” Aunt Sip started in, gathering her breath like someone trying to yank a stubborn lawnmower to life, “just light me — a cigarette — and get me a — cup of coffee? And I’m hungry, for god’s sake, don’t we even eat breakfast in this godforsaken shithole anymore? You might want to starve yourself to death, I wouldn’t blame you, but I don’t.”

Betty stood there, a bit lost in her thoughts, until Aunt Sip noticed and shouted, “DID YOU EVEN HEAR WHAT I SAID?”

Betty flinched. She couldn’t help it. But now Aunt Sip lay there purply and gasping. Betty gathered the silk pillow to her chest and walked over beside the bed. The blackened eyes followed her.

“You’re up to something.” Aunt Sip’s cracked lips worked at forming some other cruelty. Betty’s fingers tightened on the pillow’s silken fringe that brushed the backs of her hands like water.

She knew that, even with her bent-up body, and maybe because of compensating for it, she had the physical strength to do it. She tried to will it into her mind. She pictured herself pressing the silken pillow down hard on the face and holding it there, her knees on the covers on either side of Aunt Sip’s arms, pinning them. Aunt Sip like a little dog wriggling under her, playing a game. Then like her rocking horse, bucking, she could just barely remember that, from when she was about three, before her mama brought herself and Betty down here in the first place. She remembered how she loved to hold on tight to the handles beside the horse’s head and buck away, the way she wanted to hold on to the pillows and grip Aunt Sip’s big flappy ears too, and hold on.

“You always were a strange child,” Aunt Sip muttered. But there was something different in her eyes, and for the first time Betty thought there might be a little of the something there that Aunt Sip had always made her feel, in this house. She thought Aunt Sip might be just a little bit afraid.

She went into the kitchen and fried up some chopped onions until they were good and soft. She broke three eggs into a bowl and dashed in a little milk, sprinkled in some salt and pepper, and beat it all with a fork. She had a little thought that paused her, and without really carrying the thought to the front of her mind, she opened the cabinet beneath the range and peered into it. There was an old, crumbling box of rat poison back behind the pots and pans, some of it spilled out. She took the box out and sniffed at it. It didn’t smell like anything much. She sprinkled a little into the pan with the eggs and onions, stirred it in. Then shook in a good bit more. She put the box back into the cabinet, straightened up, and stirred it all together. The color was a little funny. She poured Worcestershire on them as sometimes Aunt Sip liked her eggs Western style and the sauce would stain the eggs dark brown. She cooked them harder than the way Aunt Sip liked, then took the plate in to her, saying, “Here, Aunt Sip, maybe you can eat these eggs while I try to find your dentures. I thought you might be wanting some onions in there too, so I chopped them good.”

Aunt Sip looked up at her from her silk pillow with eyes that reminded her of nothing so much as when Russell’s eyes would shift just so slightly up to her and make her blood chill in her veins. Aunt Sip took the plate, set it on her big stomach, and took a little bite, still looking at her.

“I made them Western style, how you like,” Betty said.

Aunt Sip sniffed at the plate and stared at Betty a long moment.

“Get your evil little witch’s tit out of my bedroom while I eat.”

Betty backed her way out of the room, never once taking her eyes from Aunt Sip’s, bobbing her head like a bobble toy, her mouth cocked just slightly open in the only way she could hold it to keep herself from smiling, just a little.

The sounds when they came were a little disturbing, so Betty put her hands over her ears and hummed a tuneless song to fill up her head between her blocked-off ears and let her eyes roam swiftly around the museum to distract herself from any one thought, and when that didn’t work she hurried out the front door barefoot and ran in a ragged circle around the shell parking lot above which darkening clouds scudded fast to the north, blindly following the bend of her frame, shouting out as loud as she could, “A, B, C, D, E, F, G! H, I, J, K, LMNOP! Q-R-S! T-U-V! DOUBLE-U! EX! WHY AND Z!”

Aunt Sip was heavy, but Betty had been lugging her around for a couple of years now. Lugging her to the bathroom for a bath, lugging her to the jeep to drive her to the doctor. Aunt Sip was too cheap to buy a wheelchair, and her arms had gotten weak from not using her walker, and she’d got heavier from not moving around, so Betty would lug her around with her heels dragging on the floor and through the bleached, crushed shell in the parking lot, where she would lay her down until she could get their old army jeep’s door open, hoist her again, and pull her up into the passenger seat. Aunt Sip cussing the whole time.

Now she pulled a pillowcase over Aunt Sip’s head, hiding the stricken face, and lugged her, arms hooked under her armpits, down the narrow hallway of the apartment. Out back, the property was enclosed behind a seven-foot wooden privacy fence. The museum’s visitors, when there had been any, would wander through the “garden” looking at the wildlife, which in the old days included swamp rabbits, a great blue heron, two bald eagles, an osprey, a spoonbill, six different kinds of poisonous snakes, a sting ray in a big aquarium, a mangy coyote in a chicken cage, Russell, and some parrots imported from the Virgin Islands. There weren’t any parrots native to this area, but people liked to think there were. Out of all that, the only thing left now was Russell, who’d gotten so old and fat he could hardly move except to raise his head to snatch, with surprising vigor, his two-week-old yellow pimply chickens or hunks of gray and sheeny beef.

Russell’s hide was so dark as to almost be black, and he was broad as a barrel. She could hardly see his clawlike feet poking out from his fat sides. He lived in a few inches of water in the bottom of his too-small pit, the walls of which were just four feet high and slippery on the inside, though Russell was far too fat to climb out now even if he’d had the opportunity or the inclination. Which he might have had during the past few days, since Betty had avoided feeding him, and the last couple of nights his call had woken her up, a loud bellow and a hissing moan. She hoped Russell would be able to handle Aunt Sip, and that she wouldn’t have to cut her up into pieces for him. She didn’t think she could do that.