Stephen King - The Plant

Floyd stepped up. His eyes were deadly flat. He held up a clenched fist. “You say another word like that, Riddie, and I'm going to break your nose.”

There was a moment of tense silence, and then from down below Aunt Olympia called up, her voice high and jolly and nervous. “Boys and girls? Everything all right up there?”

“Fine, Aunt Olly,” Evelyn called back. Her voice was light and carefree; her eyes, which never left mine, were murderous. “Talking over the old times. We'll be down in a wink. Y'all stay close, all right?”

“You're sure everything is okay?”

And I, God help me, felt an insane urge to scream: No! It's not okay! Get up here! You and Uncle Michael both get up here! Get up here and rescue me! Save me from the pecking of the carrion birds!

But I kept my mouth shut, and Evvie shut the door.

Sophie said, “Mama wrote you all the time, we knew that, Rid. You were always her favorite, she spoiled you rotten, especially after Pop died and there was no more holding her back. You got plenty of how she saw it.”

“That's not true,” I said.

“But it is,” Maddy said. “And do you know what? The way Mama saw things was pretty selective. She told you about all the money Floyd made last year, I've no doubt of it, but I doubt if she told you about how Floyd's partner stole everything he could get his hands on. Hi-ho, it's Oren Anderson, off to the Bahamas with his chippy of the month.”

I felt as if I'd been sucker-punched. I looked at Floyd. “Is that true?”

Floyd took another little nip at the silver flask that had been Pop's before it was his and grinned at me. It was a ghastly grin. His eyes were redder than ever and there was spit on his lips. He looked like a man at the end of a month-long binge. Or at the beginning of one.

“True as can be, little brother,” he said. “I was rooked like an amateur. I think I'm going to be able to sail through without getting in the papers, but it's still not a sure thing. I came to her for help and she told me how she was broke. Never got over putting you through Cornell is what she said. How broke does that on the bed look to you, little brother? Eight thousand in cash... at least... and twice that in jewelry. Thirty thousand in stocks, maybe. And she wanted to give it to the library.” A glare of contempt closed his face like a cramp. “Jesus please us.”

I looked to Evvie. “Your husband Jack... the construction business...”

“Jack's had a hard two years,” she said. “He's in trouble. Every bank within fifty miles is carrying his paper. How much he owes is all that's propping him up.” She laughed, but her eyes were frightened. “Just something else you didn't know. Sophie's Randall is a little better off—”

“We keep even, but get ahead?” Sophie also laughed. “Not likely. Floyd helped all of us along when he could, but since Oren double-crossed him...”

“That snake,” Maddy said. “That fucking snake.”

I turned to Floyd, and nodded at the little flask. “Maybe you've been taking a little too much of that. Maybe that's why you didn't mind your business a little better when you had a little more business to mind.”

Floyd's fist came slowly up again. This time I stuck out my chin. You get to a point when you just don't care anymore. I know that now.

“Go ahead, Floyd. If it'll make you feel better, go on ahead. And if you think twenty or even forty thousand dollars is going to bail y'all out, then go ahead with that, too. More fools you be.”

Floyd drew his fist back. He would have hit me, too, but Maddy stepped between us. She looked at me, and I looked away. I couldn't bear what I saw in her eyes.

“You with the quotes,” she said softly. “Always with the quotable quotes. Well, here's one for you, Mr. Uppity: 'He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune. ' Francis Bacon said that almost three hundred years ago, and it was folks like us he was talking about, not folks like you. Not folks that take twenty or thirty thousand dollars to get educated, then have to do research in floor-polishing. How much have you given back to your family? I'll tell you how much! Nothing! And nothing! And nothing!”

She was standing so close and spat each nothing so hard that spit flew from her lips to mine.

“Maddy, I—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I'm talking now.”

“Tell it!” Sophie said happily. It was a nightmare, I tell you. A nightmare.

“I'm getting out of here,” I said, and started to turn away.

They wouldn't let me. That's like nightmares, too; they won't let you get away. Evelyn grabbed me on one side, Floyd on the other.

“No,” Evvie said, and I could smell booze on her breath, too. The wine they were drinking downstairs. “You listen. For once in your stuck-up life, you just listen.”

“You weren't here when she got funny, but we were,” Maddy said. “The strokes she had affected her mind. Sometimes she went wandering, and we had to go find her and bring her back. Once she did it at night and we had half the town out looking for her with flashlights. So far as I could tell, you weren't there when we finally found her at two in the morning, curled up on the riverbank fast asleep with half a dozen fat copperheads down there not four yards from her bare feet. So far as I know, you were up there in your New York apartment when that happened, fast asleep yourself.”

“Tell it,” Floyd said grimly. All of them acting as though I live in the Dakota, in a penthouse, instead of my little place in Dobbs Ferry... and yet my little place is nice enough, isn't it? Perfectly affordable, even on a janitor's salary, for a man with no vices and no hostages to fortune.

“Sometimes she messed herself,” Maddy said. “Sometimes she talked crazy in church. She'd go to her book-circle and rave half an hour about some book she'd read twenty years ago. She'd be all right for awhile... she had plenty of good days until the last few months... but sooner or later the nutty stuff would start in again, each time a little worse, a little longer. And you didn't know about any of it, did you?”

“How could I?” I asked. “How could I, when none of you wrote and told me? Not so much as a word?”

That was the one shot of mine that went home. Maddy flushed. Sophie and Evvie looked away, saw the treasure scattered on the bed, and then looked away from that, too.

“Would you have come?” Floyd asked quietly. “If we'd written you, Riddie, would you have come?”

“Of course,” I said, and heard the terrible stiff falsity in my voice. So, of course, did they... and the moral advantage passed away from me. For tonight, most likely for good, as far as they are concerned. That their own moral stance was at least partly an excuse for reprehensible behavior I do not doubt. But their anger at me was genuine, and at least partly justified—I don't doubt that, either.

“Of course,” he said, nodding and grinning his red-eyed grin. “Of course.”

“We took care of her,” Maddy said. “We banded together and we took care of her. There was no hospital and no nursing home, even after she started to wander. After the riverbank adventure I slept here some nights; so did Sophie; so did Evelyn and Floyd. Everyone but you, Rid. And how did she thank us? By leaving us a worthless house and a worthless barn and four acres of nearly worthless land. The things that were worth something—money that could pay off the credit cards Floyd uses for his business and give Jack a little more breathing-space—those she denied us. So we took them. And you come in, Mr. Smart Northern Nigger comes in, and tells us we're ghouls stealing the pennies off a dead woman's eyes.”

“But Maddy... don't you see that if what you take isn't what she wanted to give, no matter how much of a tight place you're in or how bad you need it, that's stealing? Stealing from your own mother?”