Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone

Harold said, “Some suds got missed.”

“We’ll get ’em with the next rinse.”

Sonny called forth a shallow cough and said, “Got’ny more of that syrup?”

“Huh-uh. You two like it too much.”

“It sure gets rid of that scratchy feelin’ good, though.”

Ice hung from the roof eaves, catching dribbles of melt to become longer and stouter pickets of jagged freeze stretched across the window above the sink. The sun was weak in the west, a faint smudge behind middling clouds, and low. Soup stock from deer bones simmered on the stove and steamed a comforting scent.

“Might could mix you some later—but now you watch this. Watch how to do her hair.”

Harold said, “Got suds in her ear still.”

“Forget them goddam suds—watch what I’m showin’ you. So, now, once the soap is good’n washed out you’re s’posed to dump conditioner on, but alls we got handy is vinegar. So we’ll use vinegar. Watch close how I measure this out.”

The television competed for the boys’ attention. This deep in the valley reception was poor and they only received two channels, but the public channel from Arkansas came in best and the late-afternoon shows the boys loved were about to commence. The smiley dog that jumped around among time periods chasing adventure and historical insight came on the screen wearing a suit of shining armor. As the vinegar smell spread and Ree bent over Mom yet again, both boys quietly slid from the counter and made for the front room and the worldly dog.

Ree watched them go.

“You’re about to look peachy, Mom.”

“Could I?”

“Yup. So peachy you’ll be feelin’ all strutty, probly start dancin’, kick your toes to the ceilin’.”

“Could I?”

“You used to.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? I did used to.”

“Was special to see when you did, too.”

Ree gripped Mom’s hind hair like a rope and squeezed, squeezed and twisted. The last free drops twisted loose to run down Ree’s hand and wrist and she dried on a towel. She then spread the towel over the pile of wet hair.

“Sit by the stove so I can comb you out and get you dry.”

There was a perimeter of warmth around the potbelly and Mom sat with her head held straight. Ree took a wide-tooth comb to the hair, raked it back into a jumbo sleekness, patted it with the towel, then slicked it again. When Dad was in the pen Mom’d dolled up a lot, every weekend night, dressed herself sparkly hot and let herself be taken places. Her eyes would shine and she’d act girlish while she waited, then a horn would honk and she’d say, “I’ll be back, babe. Have fun.”

She’d be back for breakfast looking worn, jaded and uneasy. Shaking the ache of loneliness is what she slipped away into those smoky nights hoping to do, but she never could shake it from her trail. It was always back in her eyes by breakfast. Sometimes marks showed and Ree’d ask who did that and she’d answer, “A beau did, sayin’ good-bye.”

“You smell nice, Mom.”

“Like flowers?”

“Some kind probly.”

Came a time when Mom told Ree details about those nights out in roadhouse joints, or parties at the East Main Trailer Court, or how things got out of hand at the River Bluff Motel. The time of telling came when Mom sensed the smoky nights were done for her and she’d taken to fingering the memories of them from her rocking chair. She’d absorbed a few beatings for love in life and gotten over them, but it was those terrible ass-whippings she’d taken during one-night stands, motel quickies with fellas from the Bar Circle Z Ranch or handsome tramps in town that hung with her. Those times just hung in the mind swaying, swaying, casting shadows behind her eyes forever. Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they’d get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist.

“I think I’ll root around and find your makeup, too. Get you painted up special today.”

“Like before was.”

“A lot of the time.”

But there’d been hot buttered parts of those nights she’d liked so and missed. The sweet beginnings that held the promise of who knows what, the scent, the music, the shouted names in a loud place, names you might never get straight. The spark of fun when two men quickened at the sight of her, stepped forward on the same snap and tried to woo her, one in this ear, the other in that. Lust slaking to dance tunes, standing hip bone to hip bone, the new hands moving over her rumples and furls and tender knobs, hands good as tongues in the dark corners of those whiskey moments. Words were the hungered-for need, and the necessary words would be spoken low, sometimes sounding so truly true she could believe them with all her heart until the naked gasp happened and the man started looking for his boots on the floor. That moment always drained her of belief in the words and the man, or any words and any man.

“Don’t fidget—you’re near about dry.”

While Dad was in prison the rule had been to never see the same stud three nights. One night is forgot like a fart, two like a pang, but after three nights lain together there is a hurt, and to soothe the hurt there will be night four, and five, and nights unnumbered. The heart’s in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

Ree went into Mom’s room and flicked on the light. The walls were papered pink from Mamaw’s day. There was a nice curly maple dresser with a mirror that had been Aunt Bernadette’s before the flash flood caught her dawdling strangely on the low bridge and never even gave her body back. Hard not to see glimpses of her face in the creek or the mirror since. Above the bed there was a dusty, cockeyed picture of Uncle Jack, who’d lived through Khe Sanh and four marriages, then died at a roller-skating rink from something he’d snorted. The bed had brass parts, fat brass tubes at the head and the foot, and the bedspread was red and kicked aside. Ree’d been made in that bed, and she’d caught Mom and Blond Milton making Sonny there on a slow sweaty morning. Mom’d already begun to crack in her senses a little and flung an ashtray at Ree, shouting, “You’re lyin’! You’re lyin’! This could never happen!”

“Can’t find your makeup kit, Mom. I’ll paint your face pretty another time.”

Mom rocked in warmth beside the potbelly, touching her hands to her hair, and did not seem to have heard. She stared across the kitchen toward the television, squinted past her two sons and cocked her head sideways.

“Wonder where’d he get that armor from?”

COYOTES HOWLED past dawn, howled from far crags and ridges and down the valley to the end of the rut road where the school bus stopped. Ree, Sonny, and Harold stood next to the county blacktop that led everywhere, beside white levees the plows had built with scraped-aside snow. The morning was clear but bone-cracking cold, and maybe the weather had kept those coyotes from doing what had to be done in the night so they carried on into the day. Wild crooning yips and moans beneath a sun that warmed nothing. Ree kept the boys huddled close together, watched the breath spewing from their mouths like those little clouds that carried words of thought in cartoons. Harold’s cloud might say, “Hope they don’t eat people much.” And Sonny’s, “Got’ny more of that syrup?”

The Junction School sat six miles distant, next to the main road that led to West Table. The bus was like a big bus but cut short, not half the size. It was yellow with black warnings painted front and back and carried maybe a dozen or a few more kids each day. It stopped at rut roads, skinny rock lanes, certain open spaces between trees. A lot of the kids were cousins to some vague degree, but that didn’t keep them from roughhousing, name-calling, and all the rest. A couple times a week it seemed the bus ride got out of control and Mr. Egan would pull over and swat somebody.