John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

At the top of the hill Betsy found Jimmy squinting at her from beneath the Daytona. His shirt was drenched in oil. “Know what you did to Alpha,” he said.

Betsy froze. “That dog had cancer,” she said, vibrating with fear as Jimmy scooted out from under the car.

“I could send you to prison.”

“I’ll find you a new dog.”

“No, Betsy, take a load off. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

To call her by her name worked like a voodoo spell. She took a seat on the swing. “I don’t like black hair,” Jimmy said.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right. We’ve missed each other.”

He sat down next to her and leaned in. The scent of his deodorant, along with the pattern of the electric lines, sent Betsy to the brink of breakthrough after breakthrough. The timing increased along with Jimmy’s little kisses. It was her first spell of what the prison nurse would call a form of epilepsy. The déjà vu was the prodrome; the seizure was when her memories vanished entirely. Afterward she awoke in Jimmy’s arms as if the Satanists had been a colossal dream. In some valley there’d been a fire, but when; why?

Jimmy was hugging her. “Tired of Pop-Tarts. Fix me breakfast.”

At the window, frying sausage, Betsy found no eyes meeting hers from the windows of other trailers. No one was out there. “If I betray my oath,” she murmured, “bury me in ocean sand in an eternity of oblivion,” but this already felt like oblivion. The trailer court was called Daniel Boone because its residents had died in the 1800s and the remains were a fool’s daydream. She shook off that uncanny fear and thought, Jimmy calls me pretty, wants me near. Was it selfish not to love him back? Had she confused him with something else? I’ll flee tomorrow, but not today, and not today, and not today, until day thirty, when a judge released the Satanists from detention. Betsy was frying the morning meat again when she saw them climbing the drive to fetch her: Austin, Wendy, Helen, Zacky, the neighbors’ pit bulls roaring at them as they took in the squalor.

Before they could knock, she opened the door. “We’re going to Florida,” said Wendy, skinnier than ever. Helen had gained ten pounds.

“We’re in trouble and so are you,” Helen added, crowding onto the little porch beside Wendy and holding her hand.

“How’s your ma?” said Austin, as Betsy backed inside, ashamed of her home.

“Ma lives in Frankfort.”

“With Jimmy?” asked Wendy, following her in.

“You remember Jimmy’s name?”

“Those cops read us our list a thousand times.”

“That could be any Jimmy,” Betsy said, suddenly afraid. The heading had read MEN WE WILL KILL SOON .

“Is that him?” said Zacky, pointing to the woods, where Jimmy was emerging holding a rabbit by its ears. A bullseye of blood stained its puffy cottontail.

“We don’t want any,” he told the Satanists, pushing past them into the trailer.

“Betsy’s leaving with us,” said Wendy, as Jimmy kissed Betsy on the mouth.

“Oh, you’re the ones burned your house down.”

“Sheriff burned it in case we turned him in,” said Helen.

“I know you by your hair. Turn him in why?”

“For touching me, for starters.”

“Wouldn’t touch you for all the gold in Fort Knox.”

“Your bunny pooped,” said Zacky.

They all glanced to see turd pellets dripping out of the rabbit. “What gun you shoot it with?” said Wendy, as she drew a revolver out of her jeans pocket.

She aimed the weapon at Jimmy’s chest. He stepped closer. “Look, shithead, I pay for her ma’s hospital,” he said, as if Irene didn’t belong to the indigents’ ward. As if Betsy should care one way or the other. She should feel no fonder of her ma than of Jimmy; still, she listened to the oil boiling and pictured a blind man clawing at his eyes. The notion grew into a scene: oil on fire, trailers on fire, her friends falling to their knees in admiration. With heat in her heart, she crossed to the stove, singing, Good-bye, Pike County, farewell for a while. We’ll come back again when we’ve panned out our pile .

“Your voice is lovely,” Austin said.

Startled out of her will, she backed away from the skillet. The song had seemed a proper thing for Jimmy to ponder in his last moments of sight, but a glimpse of Austin’s naïve face reminded her there were others casting their lot with her. Let sleeping dogs lie.

“Breakfast done yet? I’m starved.”

Betsy extinguished the flame. “Have at it,” she told Jimmy, heading for the door.

“You do construction?” Wendy asked.

“Disability,” she heard Jimmy reply as she walked outside.

“But you worked the Beefhide crew?”

“Wasn’t gonna say in front of your friends.”

“So you know me by my hair.”

“Be calm,” said Jimmy, just before the shot rang out.

There was a ghostly echo as Betsy spun around. From the porch she could see only a toppling silhouette, but she knew Jimmy was dead before he thumped to the carpet. What if he really had been paying for the hospital? What if they shoved Irene into an alley?

Make it okay , Betsy prayed, choking on a scream, because what if Jimmy had been her soul mate?

“We vowed to kill or tear our hearts out,” Wendy said, as if to explain it.

“You told us that was just words,” Austin said.

“Everything’s just words. What was that song?”

“Jimmy wrote it about me,” she managed to reply. “It’s called ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike.’”

“I like it,” Wendy said, leading the way outside. “It’s got a nice melody. Maybe you can teach it to me on our way to Florida.”

•

In the Daytona they coasted downhill into Letcher County, Helen at the wheel. She braked in every curve. No one spoke. They siphoned gas near the old train depot. It didn’t feel to Betsy like Austin was sitting next to her. She felt prohibited from asking how the group had found her, or how they’d gotten to Pike County. The Satanists weren’t people you asked questions of — which was why, when she’d seen them coming, she’d planned to join them only as far as the state line. How to admit, now that they were passing Cumberland High, that she’d decided to return to school? She wanted curious friends. Pull over, she thought. Let me out on the left. It had happened before. She tried to recall how it had turned out then, or was it several times, speeding into the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, blinking, wishing, clasping Austin’s hand, wishing again, holding her breath through the tunnel so the wish would come true.

Did they take 25E? Did she sing again? Had Wendy meant her praise of the song? Where had they found the gun? Who else did they admit to killing? She would be asked and asked, but the drive through Tennessee was one long blank spell; her only memory was of a memory, along with the church marquee that jogged it. Submission to God is your softest pillow . In the induction ceremony, that first night, she’d lowered herself onto dewy grass while the Satanists held their lighters high. To lie under those flames had felt like floating in space. She’d flinched for pain that never came. Peace as she thanked her new god by all his names. “Finally, I swear to kill,” she’d said at the oath’s end, noticing a shift in diction, as if Wendy had penned that last line but copied the rest from a book.

Hours must have passed. When she awoke, she stood at a rest area studying a map of Tennessee’s scenic highways. It was dark, her head ached, and Austin stood behind her, hands round her waist.

“I spaced out a minute,” she said, smelling sausage again, while Jimmy’s shadow fell and the body crashed.

“You was saying about the difference between Tennessee and Kentucky.”