Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

It was a moment before this statement seemed to register with Jessica. She turned a startled, confused glance upon her stepfather.

“Everyone knows about Anna,” he went on. “How unhappy she’s always been. Everyone’s always known how she was going to wind up. That she was going to slit her wrists one of these days in the bath.”

Jessica began to shake her head. She made to rise to her feet, but Craddock caught her wrists, pulled her back to her knees.

“The gin and the drugs make sense. Lots of ’em knock back a couple drinks and some pills before they do it. Before they kill themselves. It’s how they quiet their fears and deaden the pain,” he said.

Jessica was still shaking her head, a little frantically, her eyes bright and terrified and blind, not seeing her stepfather anymore. Her breath came in short bursts—she was close to hyperventilating.

When Craddock spoke again, his voice was steady, calm. “You stop it, now. You want Anna to take Reese away? You want to spend ten years in a county home?” He tightened his hold on her wrists and drew her closer, so he was speaking directly into her face. And at last her eyes refocused on his and her head stopped wagging back and forth. Craddock said, “This isn’t our fault. It’s Coyne’s. He’s the one backed us into this corner, you hear? He’s the one sent us this stranger who wants to tear us down. I don’t know what happened to our Anna. I haven’t seen the real Anna since I can’t remember when. The Anna you grew up with is dead. Coyne saw to that. Far as I’m concerned, he finished her off. He might as well have cut her wrists himself. And he’s going to answer for it. Believe it. I’ll teach him to meddle with a man’s family. Shh, now. Catch your breath. Listen to my voice. We’ll get through this. I’m going to get you through this, same as I’ve got you through every other bad thing in your life. You trust in me now. Take one deep breath. Now take another. Better?”

Her blue-gray eyes were wide and avid: entranced. Her breath whistled, one long, slow exhalation, then another.

“You can do this,” Craddock said. “I know you can. For Reese, you can do whatever has to be done.”

Jessica said, “I’ll try. But you have to tell me. You have to say what to do. I can’t think.”

“That’s all right. I’ll think for both of us,” Craddock said. “And you don’t need to do anything except pick yourself up and go draw a warm bath.”

“Yes. Okay.”

Jessica started to rise again, but Craddock tugged at her wrists, held her beside him a moment longer.

“And when you’re done,” Craddock said, “run downstairs and get my old pendulum. I’ll need something for Anna’s wrists.”

At that he let her go. Jessica rose to her feet so quickly she stumbled and put a hand against the wall to steady herself. She stared at him for a moment, then turned in a kind of trance and opened a door just to her left, let herself into a white-tiled bathroom.

Craddock remained on the floor until there came the sound of water rushing into the tub. Then he helped himself to his feet and stood shoulder to shoulder with Jude.

“You old cocksucker,” Jude said. The soap-bubble world flexed and wobbled. Jude clenched his teeth together, pulled it back into shape.

Craddock’s lips were thin and pale, stretched back across his teeth in a bitter, ugly grimace. The old flesh on the backs of his arms wobbled. He made his slow way down to Anna’s room, reeling a little—getting shoved down had taken something out of him. He pushed the door in. Jude followed at his heels.

There were two windows in Anna’s room, but they both faced the back of the house, away from where the sun had gone down. It was already night in there, the room sunk into blue shadows. Anna sat at the very end of the bed, an empty tumbler on the floor between her sneakers. Her duffel bag was on the mattress behind her, some laundry hastily thrown into it, the sleeve of a red sweater hanging out. Anna’s face was a pleasant blank, her forearms resting on her knees, her eyes glassy and fixed on a point in the impossible distance. The cream-colored envelope with the Polaroid of Reese in it—her evidence—was in one hand, forgotten. The sight of her that way made Jude ill.

Judas sank onto the bed beside her. The mattress creaked beneath him, but no one—not Anna, not Craddock—seemed to notice. He put his left hand over Anna’s right. His left hand was bleeding again from the puncture wound, the bandages stained and loose. When had that started? He couldn’t even lift the right hand, which was too heavy now and too painful. The thought of moving it made him dizzy.

Craddock paused before his stepdaughter, bent to peer speculatively into her face.

“Anna? Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

She went on smiling, did not reply at first. Then she blinked and said, “What? Did you say something, Craddock? I was listening to Jude. On the radio. This is my favorite song.”

His lips tightened until there was no color in them. “That man,” he said again, almost spitting it. He took one corner of the envelope and jerked it out of her hands.

Craddock straightened up, turned toward one of the windows to pull down the shade.

“I love you, Florida,” Jude said. The bedroom around him bulged when he spoke, the soap bubble swelling so that it threatened to explode, then shrank again.

“Love you, Jude,” Anna said softly.

At this, Craddock’s shoulders jumped in a startled shrug. He looked back, wondering. Then the old man said, “You and him are going to be back together soon. That’s what you wanted, and that’s what you’ll get. I’m going to see to it. I’m going to put you two together just as soon as I can.”

“Goddam you,” Jude said, and this time when the room bloated and stretched itself out of shape, he couldn’t, no matter how hard he concentrated on thum-thum-thum, make it go back the way it was supposed to be. The walls swelled and then sank inward, like bed linens hanging on a line and moving in a breeze.

The air in the room was warm and close and smelled of exhaust and dog. Jude heard a soft whining sound behind him and looked back at Angus, who lay on the bed where Anna’s duffel bag had been only a moment before. His breathing was labored, and his eyes were gummy and yellow. A sharp-tipped red bone stuck through one bent leg.

Jude looked back toward Anna, only to find that it was Marybeth sitting next to him on the bed now, face dirty, expression hard.

Craddock pulled down one of the shades, and the room darkened some more. Jude glanced out the other window and saw the greenery at the side of the interstate, palms, rubbish in the weeds, and then a green sign that said EXIT 9. His hands went thum-thum-thum. The air conditioner hummed, buzzed, hummed. Jude wondered for the first time how he could still be hearing Craddock’s air conditioner. The old man’s room was all the way down the hall. Something began to click, a sound as repetitive as a metronome: the turn signal.

Craddock moved to the other window, blocking Jude’s view of the highway, and he ran down that shade as well, plunging Anna’s room into darkness. Nightfall at last.

Jude looked back at Marybeth, her jaw set, one hand on the wheel. The blinker signal flashed repetitively on the dash, and he opened his mouth, to say something, he didn’t know what, something like…

41

What are you doin’?”His voice an unfamiliar croak. Marybeth was aiming the Mustang at an exit ramp, had almost reached it. “This ain’t it.”

“I was shakin’ you for about five minutes, and you wouldn’t wake up. I thought you were in a coma or somethin’. There’s a hospital here.”