Scott Nicholson - Curtains

"I could get the tractor fixed with that."

"You and your tractor."

"All you think about is getting out of here. You know how many gas stations you'd have to rob to even make it to the Mississippi?"

"It's a start."

"No. You're born to this mountain dirt. You belong to it."

"Don't start getting weird on me again, Larry."

"You're the one that keeps talking about love. And promises."

Betty Ann shut up for the second time that night. Larry would have to remember that for the future. If they had a future.

"I kept my promise, what about yours?" he said.

She came to him and hugged him, pressed those curves against him. The bills in her hand scratched his cheek. Her lips were soft. The red dress was thin.

"Want to go inside?" she whispered.

"The barn."

"Ooh. The hayloft again."

Larry took her hand and led her down the path that he knew so well. The barn was still, the animals mostly asleep. Old Zaint had put himself up in the stall, and the chickens had their heads tucked under their wings. Nobody would see.

Except maybe the cops. One day they’d get around to digging behind the barn. But maybe Larry wouldn’t be here when that happened. Betty Ann might be, or might not be, depending.

He lit the lamp and took her to the workbench. The coffin glowed in the lamplight. It was his best ever. He couldn't keep down the pride that warmed his chest.

"What do you think?" he said.

"Damn, Larry. It's a…"

"What do you think?"

"What's going on?"

"Your part of the promise. I need to know if I can trust you."

Betty Ann backed away. She looked scared, but she didn't let go of the money.

"Do you love me?" Larry said. He picked up the hammer. And the most important part, the nails.

Betty Ann made it to the door, but Larry knew about how they tried to run. The first one had almost made it to the creek. Almost. But Larry had fixed the door after that.

She pressed against the wood, her eyes rolling around, looking for a place to hide. There was no hiding from promises. Larry approached her, holding out the hammer and nails.

"You promised," he said.

This time her whisper wasn't the husky, practiced kind. "Don't hurt me."

"I would never hurt you. I love you, remember?"

"What do you want?"

"I did for you, now you do for me." He pointed to the coffin, hoping she'd be impressed by the craft he'd put into it. "I want you to seal me up."

She didn't understand. They never understood. "Bury you? But you ain’t dead yet.”

"I’m just trying it out beforehand. Dying’s too important a business to put off till the last minute. Need to check for size and comfort, and I can't do it alone. It takes two."

"You're crazy."

Larry stared at the lamp until his eyes burned. "You love me. At least, that's what you said. I risk life and jail and reputation for you, and you won't do one little thing for me."

He turned away. She was like the others. You ought to know better than to hope. You ought to know by now that love is just a word, a selfish, lying, hurting word.

Then her hand was on his shoulder. Something had changed between them. Maybe, seeing that Larry was willing to kill for her if necessary, Betty Ann had found a strange respect. "I always knew you was weird."

He smiled. Money didn't matter, not next to the other thing. "It won't take but a minute. And I ain't got nobody else. Nobody I can trust, that is."

He gave her a look like the one from that time in the hayloft, the one she seemed to get all swoony over. "You'll have to put the lid on. Do you think you can drive the nails?"

Betty Ann nodded. He kissed her. She took the hammer and nails. He climbed into the coffin and inhaled the cherry. She looked so good in her red dress.

The lid fit perfectly. The first nail was awkward, she missed and busted her thumb. Her blood was likely soaking into the wood. He was glad he’d passed on the shellac.

Love was built on blood and nails. You had to have both, or it didn't mean a thing.

By the third nail, she was in the rhythm, and drove it home with four blows. Sixteen nails total, while Larry's heart pounded in time to the hammer.

Her voice was muffled, but he could understand her. "Are you all right in there?"

He said nothing. The air was stale. The coffin was the perfect size. He could be buried in this, when the time came. It would be a proud way to meet the dirt.

"Larry?" she hollered.

He waited.

“Can you breathe?”

She wouldn’t hear him if he answered.

“I been thinking,” she said. “If I don’t let you out, I get the money all to myself.”

God damn. She was a keeper. Not like those others, the ones who folded when they hit a knot or caught a splinter. This might be the one he could trust sharing his land with, his life with, his death with. Two holes and two tombstones, side by side, forever.

They could get to that part later. First, he needed to see how good she was with a shovel.

He pulled the hammer and crowbar from the secret fold in the velvet and began loosening the lid from the inside, too excited to concentrate. Hope pulsed through his flesh.

This one might work out. She was the real thing, better than the others. A killer. Tight nails, warm blood, a wooden soul. And cold, cold dirt in her heart

A woman who could nail your coffin was worth keeping around.

One way or another.

When Vincent awoke, he felt as if he'd been dropped headfirst from the Statue of Liberty's torch.

He moaned and rolled over into a stack of moldy cardboard and newspapers. The avenue tasted of Queens, smog stung to the ground by the long rains of the week before. A car horn bleated, amplified by the brick canyons so that the noise rattled Vincent’s eardrums. He tried to peel back his eyelids so that the brilliant green in his vision could be scrubbed away by the orange crash of daylight.

Damn this city, he thought, each word a hammer blow. And since he was bothering to think, he figured he might as well try to remember. That was a little harder. He was on his knees, supporting himself against the slick skin of a Dumpster, by the time he got past the previous two seconds and on into the last few hours.

It was morning. The aroma of bagels and coffee drifted from some back door along the alley, fighting with the stench of gutter garbage before mingling into a deeper smell of rot. And if this was morning, then Vincent was Late.

He was supposed to catch a pre-dawn flight, to be out of town before another sorry New York sun rose. No, he wasn’t supposed to catch the flight. He remembered harder, and more painfully. Robert Wells was supposed to catch that flight.

Robert Daniel Wells, his new identity, a boring tourism official from Muncie. The Feds had set it up that way. A tourism official could go places, sleep in a few motels, get lost in America’s excess. Los Angeles for a convention to pitch movie locations, then Oregon for a meeting of the Christmas Tree Growers Association, zippp down to, where was it? Oh, yeah, Flagstaff, Arizona, to sell Muncie to wealthy retirees. Good old Indiana, that scenic destination, that mecca of the masses.

Dumb damned Feds. Like Joey Scattione couldn’t figure that one out. With Joey’s resources, Vincent was meat no matter what identity they gave him. What he needed was a new face, new bones, a new brain, because his brain was halfway down the back of his neck. He touched the welt on his head.

Ouch.

He struggled to his feet, took a step, and nearly tripped over a pile of rags. The pile stirred, a bottle rolled to the asphalt, and a bleary eye opened amid a dark crack of cloth.

“Suh-sorry,” Vincent said. He waited a moment for the bum to acknowledge him, but the eye closed, extinguished like an ember dropped in mud.