Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Marlene, that is such total bullshit! I can't stand that whenever you're pissed at me, you trot out this absurd feminist cant. How long have we been married? In all that time, have I ever once-"

"Innumerable times. You really do want me to do embroidery."

"It would be a strange choice if I did," Karp snarled. "As far as I know, the only thing you've ever embroidered is the truth."

They went back and forth like this for a couple of more increasingly nasty rounds until Marlene hung up, leaving both parties feeling stupid, guilty, and irritable. Every long-married couple has a tape like this-some have whole racks of them-and they are wise who avoid pushing the Play button. Marlene knew she was a sneak who cut corners, when not actually committing crimes, but she wanted her husband to treat her like a model of legal prudence. Karp had spent nearly twenty years waiting for a call from some police agency telling him that his wife was either dead or under arrest for a violent felony. Most of the time he suppressed the anguish this caused him but occasionally it popped out, as now. The root of the pain was that each deeply loved the other, but wished the other different in this small way: why the divorce courts hum as they do.

"Bad news?" said Poole. He had heard the yelling from the porch. She glared at him and slammed a wedge of chopped chuck into a bowl hard enough to stun it.

"I see you've found the bourbon," she said, eyeing his highball.

"Yeah, I'm good at that. Trouble at home?"

"No. My husband has informed me that your governor is appointing a special prosecutor on the Heeney case and he's it."

A half smile appeared on Poole's face. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not."

"He's a prosecutor?"

"Yes. A big-time labor lawyer named Sterner arranged the whole thing."

Poole took a long swallow. "Well, I'll be damned! This'll be something to see. A hotshot New York prosecutor come to straighten out the hicks. He any good?"

"A lot of people think he's the best."

"I hope he's bulletproof, too."

"Don't be stupid, Poole. Nobody's going to do any more shooting. There's no way this arrangement you've got down here is going to stand up to serious public scrutiny. He'll find the idiots who did the crime, try them, convict them, and put them in jail for life. End of story."

"Maybe. But I'll tell you one thing, city girl. They brought the United States Army up here in '21. Fought them a little guerilla war up in the hollers, and it was a toss-up who won it. The folks up in Mingo and Logan laid down their arms when the troops showed up, but not here. Lot of people around here aren't too happy with the U.S. government."

"You mean like militias?"

"No, I mean families. They don't like people in fancy suits telling them what to do. They don't like the liquor laws, or the tax laws, or the drug laws. A lot of them got their own religion, too. They've been that way since 1790 or thereabouts. They'll take money from the coal company when it pleases them, and from the union, too, but mainly they do what they like. You'll see."

"Yes, we will," snapped Marlene. "Now, unless you want to help, scram out of here while I fix this goddamn cookout."

She fixed, Poole drank. It was not a fun affair. Marlene was grumpy, Poole drank and talked. Of the two sorts of drunk, he was the garrulous kind. Dan sulked. Emmett made sarcastic comments about Poole's stories. Emmett's girlfriend, Kathy, a small blond who might have been cloned from Rose Heeney, started using let's-split body language fairly early in the evening. Around nine, Emmett said they were going to go back to Kathy's to watch Gladiator on satellite, and they left.

"Young squirts don't know how to party," said Poole after they had gone, and launched into a rambling story about a memorable spree. He kept stopping and asking Marlene if she remembered old Joe Whitman and what he'd done with the cake some woman had made for some church supper, as if she were one of the old McCullensburg gang of his youth. She gave short answers, or none, but the odd thing was that she didn't think he was drinking that much, not enough for this kind of behavior. It was as if he was trying to live up to his reputation as a hopeless, drunken bore, while not really believing in it. He avoided her eye.

After several increasingly broader hints, Marlene decided to ignore him and tried not to think about what she was like when drunk, and whether she was even now on the first steps of the slope that led to this sort of display. She was clearing the picnic table using the kind of hyper-efficient and semiviolent motions women apply to household tasks when they are angry. Crash, clang. Dan hung around dutifully, trying to help, getting in the way. She was short with him, too, and finally he vanished into his room. She felt a pang of guilt and ruthlessly suppressed it. What was she feeling guilty about? She was doing them a favor! She had abandoned her family, and her business, and come here to this shitty little town, to get a half-wit out of trouble and hand the bad guys their lumps, only now it was her husband who was going to do that, so she was not only stupid but useless as well. Poole was still out in the yard talking away to the crescent moon. And nursemaiding a pathetic drunk, too, another thing she really enjoyed doing. She eyed the bottle of jug wine she had bought earlier, grabbed it, poured a juice glass full, stared at it, felt a tumult of revulsion in her gut, threw it splashing into the sink. No, coffee was the thing now, sober the both of them up and drag Poole back to his house; yes, cut off his booze and fill him with black coffee, a little sadism-stuffed virtue here, and why not? She loaded the coffeemaker, then the dishwasher, the latter with such enthusiasm that she smashed a large majolica serving dish.

Cursing, she swept up the pieces of bright pottery. You didn't get plates like this at the Bi-Lo in town, or at Wal-Mart, she could not help noticing. It was, or had been, a lovely moss green with flowers painted on it in shades of rust, tan, and yellow. Rose Heeney had selected it in some New York boutique, a bit of her native heath brought into exile. Marlene found herself sitting on a hard chair, crying bitterly into a dishtowel, and not just for Rose Heeney, either.

Then the dog growled. Marlene wiped her face and sprang to her feet, for it was that kind of growl.

Gog had been hanging around the kitchen, hoping she would allow him to preclean the dishes. Now he was standing stiffly, nosing the back door, the hair on his back bristling, making his bad-muffler noise. Marlene snapped the kitchen light off and looked through the back-door window. The floodlights illuminated a rough oval twenty yards out from the house; beyond that, the rural night hung like black drapes.

Marlene tapped on the door of Dan's bedroom and went in. He was lying on his bed with a set of headphones on, reading. He took the phones off and looked at her inquiringly.

"Turn off your light. Gog thinks we have company."

He sat up instantly and snapped off the lamp. "What should we do?"

"I need a big flashlight, if you have one, and your pistol."

He stalled for a moment, his eyes confused, but then leaped from the bed. A moment later she had Red Heeney's.38 Smith and a boxy camping flashlight in hand. She switched it on briefly to check the beam, then led him to the back door. They could hear Poole mumbling to no one by the picnic table.

"Stay by the light switch, watch me, and flick it off when I signal. I'll be outside in the shadow of the stairs."

"Shouldn't we call the police?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea," she said carelessly, "but watch my hand and stay by the switch." As he dialed the kitchen cordless, she went outside with the dog and crouched on the storm door lying by the stairs. The dog was whining and panting eagerly.