Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

“You shut up about him,” Jessica said, her voice spiking, high-pitched and harsh. “That last night was awful. The things she said and did to him were awful. She spat on him. She tried to kill him, tried to shove him down the stairs, a weak old man. She threatened us, all of us. She said she was going to take Reese away from us. She said she’d use you and your money and your lawyers and send him to jail.”

“He was only doing what he had to, huh?” Jude said. “It was practically self-defense.”

An expression flickered across Jessica’s features, there and gone so quickly Jude half thought he’d imagined it. But for an instant the corners of her mouth seemed to twitch, in a dirty, knowing, appalling sort of smile. She sat up a little straighter. When she spoke again, her tone both lectured and crooned. “My sister was sick. She was confused. She’d been suicidal for a long time. Anna cut her wrists in the bath like everyone always knew she was going to, and there isn’t anyone who can say different.”

“Anna says different,” Jude said, and when he saw the confusion on Jessica’s face, he added, “I been hearing from all kinds of dead folks lately. You know, it never did make sense. If you wanted to send a ghost to haunt me, why not her? If her death was my fault, why send Craddock? But your stepfather isn’t after me because of what I did. It’s because of what he did.”

“Who do you think you are, anyway, calling him a child molester? How many years you got on that whore behind you? Thirty? Forty?”

“Take care,” Jude said, hand tightening on the tire iron.

“My stepfather deserved anything he asked of us,” Jessica went on, couldn’t shut up now. “I always understood that. My daughter understood it, too. But Anna made everything dirty and horrible and treated him like a rapist, when he didn’t do anything to Reese she didn’t like. She would’ve spoiled Craddock’s last days on this earth, just to win favor with you, to make you care about her again. And now you see where it gets you, turning people against their families. Sticking your nose in.”

“Oh, my God,” Marybeth said. “If she’s sayin’ what I think she’s sayin’, this is about the most wrong fuckin’ conversation I ever heard.”

Jude put his knee between Jessica’s legs and forced her back against the floor with his bad left hand. “That’s enough. I hear any more about what your stepdaddy deserved and how much he loved all of you, I’m going to puke. How do I get rid of him? Tell me how to make him go away, and we’ll walk out of here, and that’ll be the end of it.” Saying it without knowing if it was really true.

“What happened to the suit?” Jessica asked.

“What the fuck does it matter?”

“It’s gone, isn’t it? You bought the dead man’s suit, and now it’s gone, and there’s no getting rid of him. All sales are final. No returns, especially not after the merchandise has been damaged. It’s over. You’re dead. You and that whore with you. He won’t stop until you’re both in the ground.”

Jude leaned forward, set the tire iron across her neck, and applied some weight. She began to choke. Jude said, “No. I do not accept that. There better be another fucking way, or—Get the fuck off me.” Her hands were tugging at his belt buckle. He recoiled from her touch, drawing the tire iron off her throat, and she began to laugh.

“Come on. You already got my shirt pulled off. Haven’t you ever wanted to say you fucked sisters?” she asked. “I bet your girlfriend would like to watch.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Listen to you. Big tough man. Big rock star. You’re afraid of me, you’re afraid of my father, you’re afraid of yourself. Good. You ought to be. You’re going to die. By your own hand. I can see the death marks on your eyes.” She flicked her glance at Marybeth. “They’re on you, too, honey. Your boyfriend is going to kill you before he kills himself, you know. I wish I could be there to see it happen. I’d like to see how he does it. I hope he cuts you, I hope he cuts your little hooker face—”

Then the tire iron was back across Jessica’s throat and he was squeezing as hard as he could. Jessica’s eyes popped open wide, and her tongue poked out of her mouth. She tried to sit up on her elbows. He slammed her back down, banging her skull on the floor.

“Jude,” Marybeth said. “Don’t, Jude.”

He relaxed the pressure on the tire iron, allowed her to take a breath—and Jessica screamed. It was the first time she’d screamed. He pushed down again, cutting off the sound.

“The garage,” Jude said.

“Jude.”

“Close the door to the garage. The whole fucking street is going to hear.”

Jessica raked at his face. His reach was longer than hers, and he leaned back from her hands, which were bent into claws. He rapped her skull against the floor a second time.

“You scream again, I’ll beat you to death right here. I’m going to ease this thing off your throat, and you better start talking, and you better be telling me how to make him go away. What about if you communicate with him directly? With a Ouija board or something? Can you call him off yourself?”

He relaxed the pressure again, and she screamed a second time—a long, piercing note, that dissolved into a cackle of laughter. He drove a fist into her solar plexus and knocked the air out of her, shut her up.

“Jude,” Marybeth said again, from behind him. She had gone to shut the garage door but was back now.

“Later.”

“Jude.”

“What?” he said, twisting at the waist to glare at her.

In one hand Marybeth held Jessica Price’s shiny, squarish, brightly colored purse, holding it up for him to look at. Only it wasn’t a purse at all. It was a lunch box, with a glossy photo of Hilary Duff on the side.

He was still staring at Marybeth and the lunch box in confusion—didn’t understand why she wanted him to see it, why it mattered—when Bon began to bark, a full, booming bark that came from the deepest part of her chest. As Jude turned his head to see what she was barking at, he heard another noise, a sharp, steely click, the unmistakable sound of someone snapping back the hammer of a pistol.

The girl, Jessica Price’s daughter, had entered through the sliding glass door of the porch. Where the revolver had come from, Jude didn’t know. It was an enormous Colt .45, with ivory inlays and a long barrel, so heavy she could barely hold it up. She peered intently out from beneath her bangs. A dew of sweat brightened her upper lip. When she spoke, it was in Anna’s voice, although the really shocking thing was how calm she sounded.

“Get away from my mother,” she said.

38

The man on the radio said,“What’s Florida’s number one export? You might say oranges—but if you did, you’d be mistaken.”

For a moment his was the only voice in the room. Marybeth had Angus by the collar again and was holding him back, no easy task. He strained forward with all his considerable will and muscle, and Marybeth had to keep both heels planted to prevent him going anywhere. Angus began to growl, a low, choked rumble, a wordless yet perfectly articulate message of threat. The sound of him got Bon barking again, one explosive yawp after another.

Marybeth was the first to speak. “You don’t need to use that. We’ll go. Come on, Jude. Let’s get out of here. Let’s get the dogs and go.”

“Watch ’em, Reese!” Jessica cried. “They came here to kill us!”

Jude met Marybeth’s gaze, tossed his head in the direction of the garage door. “Get out of here.” He rose, one knee popping—old joints—put a hand on the counter to steady himself. Then he looked at the girl, making good eye contact, staring right over the .45 pointed into his face.