Joe Lansdale - Leather Maiden

“She’s one hell of a looker now,” I said.

“What say I go get us something to eat, some burgers or something?”

“Sure, but bring some yogurt, or ice cream. Belinda may not be up to chewing.”

“Got you, bro,” and Booger was gone.

I went in the bathroom and took off my cut-up shirt and looked at my wounds. A couple of them were pretty bad rips, but nothing had caught too deep except for the back wound, and I had a lot of muscle across my shoulders, so I was going to be all right there. I did need some stitches, and I had the stuff to do that and Booger knew how. It would hurt like hell, but we could make it without seeing a doctor. Main thing was to keep out infection. I took a quick hot shower, and when I got out there was blood running down the drain.

I patted myself dry, threw the bloody towel away and did some awkward work with peroxide, alcohol and bandages. The one in the small of my back was hell. I couldn’t get it just right. I finally managed to get a square bandage to stick back there. It quickly soaked up blood.

I took it off and started over, and this time there was less blood. I got an old dark shirt out of the closet and put it on. That way blood wouldn’t show so bad, and in a way, it would help serve as a second bandage.

When I was dressed, I went back into the living room. All of a sudden Belinda sat up on the couch. She looked at me. Her eyes were big as headlights.

She said something that didn’t sound like any word I knew.

I sat by her on the couch. I took her hand, said, “Take it easy. It’s over with.”

Belinda shook her head. She tapped her left hand with her right, her fingers set like they were holding a pen. I got her a pen and some paper.

She wrote: “Caroline had a little girl. I think she did something to her.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I know she had a child. We both know that.”

Belinda shook her head, wrote furiously: “A little girl. She was at the house with us. Caroline said to me you had to know how to destroy the things you love if you want to be strong.”

“The child was with her?”

Belinda nodded. She tore a page off the pad and wrote anew: “They drugged the little girl. They drugged me. I woke up in the clock tower, the rope around my neck.”

“Where is the little girl?”

She wrote in very large letters: “IT’S JAZZY, CASON.”

Belinda pulled on one of my T-shirts and a baggy pair of my pants, wore some of my house shoes. I made sure I had the .38, and we took the motorcycle, Belinda clinging tightly to me as I rode as fast as common sense and a fear of arrest for speeding allowed. As we rode it came together for me. Caroline had moved in right next to my parents. Probably saw the listing in the paper, and as everyone thought she was dead, she decided, wouldn’t it be funny to rent a place next to Jimmy’s parents. Hell, maybe it was just coincidence, but thinking about Caroline and Stitch, and their love for games, I doubted it.

Gregore, he was Daddy Greg. The one my dad had knocked the shit out of. And Stitch. He was the new daddy. Somehow, perhaps for no other reason than to bond with Jazzy for a while, before making that ultimate sacrifice Caroline thought made her strong, she took the little girl in, like fattening a calf for the slaughter.

When we got to Jazzy’s house, we pulled into my parents’ drive. I parked the bike in the carport. Belinda was getting along better now, and her voice, though metallic-sounding, was coming back. I climbed up in the tree first, but the platform was empty except for a cloth doll that had been faded by rain and sun.

Next we went to Jazzy’s house and I touched the front door with my shoulder and it moved; it hadn’t been locked or completely closed. I pulled the .38 and went inside, Belinda behind me.

The living room was void of furniture except for a couch, a foldout chair, and a television, a DVD player and a stack of DVDs. There were all manner of pizza cartons and papers lying about. There were stacks of books.

We went into the kitchen. The stove was six inches deep in grease and there were flies in the grease, some of them dead and stuck there. The sink was full of dishes and the place smelled. The trash can was overrun with paper plates and paper cups and boiling with roaches.

On the table was a manila envelope. I picked it up and looked inside. A DVD.

I didn’t look at the note or touch the DVD. I was certain without looking and putting my fingerprints all over everything what it was. Caroline and Dinkins. Caroline figured after Belinda was done in, she’d come back here with Stitch and forge my brother’s name to a note and mail it off to whoever she thought was a good idea, make sure my brother would be discovered as the source. That would give Dinkins his pig sticking and Jimmy his too.

I went out of there carrying the envelope.

The bathroom was a nightmare.

The place was empty. I was looking in a bedroom that had nothing but a mattress on the floor and a pile of sour-smelling clothes nearby when I heard Belinda try to yell to me. It was more of a squeak.

She was in another bedroom, a smaller one, and when I went in there I saw that there was a little blow-up mattress and a blanket on the floor, and there were a few toys, mostly junk from fast-food places. On the floor under a curtained window was a square line of dust where something like a trunk had sat.

“Oh, shit,” Belinda said, her voice still a rasp. “Caroline kept me in here with Jazzy.”

I had to lean close to understand her. She held her throat with her hand as she talked.

“They kept pills in me and Jazzy,” she said. “Sometimes Caroline came in to talk. Gloating.”

Belinda cleared her throat, strained out some more information. “She told me about all their plans. It was horrible, Cason. Just a game to them. She said it took courage to do things that hurt people you love. But she didn’t love anyone, Cason, not really. Maybe Stitch.”

Belinda swallowed, took a deep breath. “She said she had the strength to destroy anyone, even blood of her blood, bone of her bone…So, where is Jazzy?”

I shook my head. Belinda’s little speech had almost taken her voice away again.

“When did you see her last?” I said.

“This morning. They came in and gave me pills, and they gave Jazzy something to drink. By the time they had me tied up and we left, Jazzy was asleep, here on the air mattress. A minute later and I was nearly out of it. I didn’t come awake until we got to the clock tower and I was tied up. They wanted me awake. They knew their drugs.”

I glanced at the square of dust, pointed at it. “Was something here?”

“A toy box,” Belinda said. “But there was hardly anything in it. I think it came with the house. That little girl, they wouldn’t let her leave the room after they grabbed me. Made her stay in here. She comforted me, Cason. She didn’t know what was going on, not really, but she tried to make me feel better. Shit, my throat hurts.”

“We have to go next door, right now. Get a shovel from the carport.”

“What?” Belinda said.

“Come on,” I said. “No time to explain.”

From my parents’ house we walked swiftly to the graveyard amongst the trees, by the creek. I was carrying a shovel, and Belinda had my mother’s trowel. I had put the envelope in the car.

I said, “Poe’s ‘Premature Burial.’ Caroline’s favorite story. The box missing. Jazzy gone. And Jazzy told me she and her mom used to come here and lie down on the graves.”

“Oh, no, Cason,” Belinda said.

We came to a line of thick oaks and hickories, and just below them were the graves. Some of them had old markers, some markers had recently been replaced. A few graves were nothing more than rough spots on the ground. Along the creek there were some willow trees growing, and there were more graves closer to the creek. An explosion of thrushes broke from the willows and fluttered against the leaves of the nearby oaks and hickories and took to the sky.