Devil's Den
fiction by Lynn Pruett
Harmon was washing up in the men's room in a truck stop in South Hill, Virginia, when a woman came out of a stall. Her long dark hair draped one shoulder and brushed a nice-sized breast. Tall and lean in a pair of washed-out jeans, she wore a purple halter that left an inch of tanned belly exposed. He put her about forty, due to the crinkly lines around her eyes.
Harmon dried his hands on his jeans and stood aside as two men at the urinals cussed and hastily jerked their flies shut.
"Hey, this is a men's room." The bearded man snarled as he snapped his top button.
She stepped around him and washed her hands in the sink.
The other guy, grimy and toothless, crowded next to the first, cornering her. "Which one of us you think is the prettiest?"
Glancing around for the paper towels which hung on the wall beside the men and then resting her cool violet eyes on Harmon, she said, "Y’all are both pretty."
Harmon held out his hand.
In a sudden swish of denim, she raised a foot to the sink then hove herself up onto the porcelain lip for a second and leaped over their heads into his arms. Harmon staggered a moment for he had not exactly been prepared for the basket of soft flesh warming his chest.
"So, where you from?" he asked as he pushed against the door.
"Virginia," she said in a softly reverent way.
Harmon released her in the parking lot. "What part?"
She pressed her fingers to his lips and shook her head. "I have no history." The fingers shifted up his jaw, brushing that tender excitable place below the ear lobe.
"Neither do I,” he lied. They walked out to his rig.
She opened the door to the cab. "Air-cushion suspension seats on the passenger's side. An Aero-Star. That's class." She settled in.
No one had ever thanked Harmon for the nice ride in that seat. He’d bought it with the hope that Miriam, his ex-wife, would ride with him. The day after the purchase, he got the divorce notice in the mail. He'd plunked down two thousand dollars to cushion her ass and she opted for bucket seats and automatic windows.
He climbed in and kissed the woman in the front seat of the cab, in broad daylight, with the windows down, kissed her shoulders and her warm belly. She kissed him where he kissed her, playing mirror on the air-cushioned seat. Soon they sweated off clothes. She was almost over the edge when she pulled a handgun from her pile of garments on the floorboard and squeezed off a shot out the open window.
"Whoa, you are a horse," she said. "A real fire and brimstone horse." Breathing heavy, she punched her sharp chin into his chest, used it for leverage, and then sashayed to the bunk in the sleeper as if it was hers.
Harmon was wide awake, the reverberations of the gunshot etched in his skin. Good thing the window was down or he'd have been spitting glass. He dressed, took all his money with him, and went back into the truck stop.
Two old geezers nodded as he straddled a seat at the counter. "You done all right with Smoky," one said.
Harmon frowned and drank the sweet tea a waitress placed in front of him.
"Some guys don't, and then she shoots out their tires," said the other.
"When's she likely to wake up?" Harmon said.
"Ah ha," said the first one.
"Looks like she's fixing on taking a ride," said the second.
"I don't carry outlaws." Harmon paid and went back, prepared to haul her out if he had to, but he didn't have to. She was kneeling on the hood, washing the windshield with vinegar and a wad of newspaper. The halter bobbed like a lavender sail on the supple muscles of her tanned back.
Harmon stood on the blacktop for a while. He was free, of course, but the feelings hovering in his mid-section had the bilious tinge of disloyalty. Miriam had rejected his latest attempt at reconciliation that morning. Over the phone, her voice had crackled with indignation as she recounted the protest she had just participated in. She and her professor friend had carried signs against the siting of a waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina. It was unjust to put a dump in the midst of poor, powerless people, she said. Harmon had hung up.
He’d known the marriage was a bust the day she asked him to quit hauling hazardous waste. It was their livelihood. He had eighteen years with Haul It All Trucking, union, pension, everything. Harmon had stared at her as if she was someone from the mayor's office, talking about nothing she knew anything about. He said, "Justice is a luxury we can’t afford. We have to eat.”
When had she changed? She’d always been a bear about the money. Harmon realized, standing in the lot watching the lean woman clean his windshield, that if he had done as Miriam wanted and quit his job, he could have made his life mean something heroic as she was determined to do with hers. But what could he do, a trucker who picked up a load of contaminated dirt one place and took it to be buried in another? Wasn’t he keeping the planet safe, too?
The bile turned on him and he spit. It was those college courses she took. A whiny creepy beard from Chapel Hill came to do a three-day talk and he hit it off with Miriam. Like any outsider, the professor had mined the Appalachians of the best ore.
He was on his way to Pratt-Whitney in Connecticut to pick up dry bulk toxic waste, PCBs mixed into soil, which he’d take back to the Super Fund site in Newark. He was responsible for the load once he had it and if it was rejected at the receiving facility, it was on him to find a creative way to dump it, a fact he’d never shared with Miriam.
Smoky slept all the way north to New Jersey. She was pleased to see swimming pools along the Jersey Turnpike and rows of suburban houses painted in different colors. "There's a yellow one, green, yellow, brown, red, red, brick," she called out as if we were passing markers on a cross-country race.
Harmon squeezed her knee and she gave him a look he learned to recognize. Her blue-violet eyes crinkled. Beneath the surface squint, a tiger swam. He stopped at a gun and pawn shop in Cherry Hill. Inside, the salesmen were clean-shaven and wore light colored plaid shirts. They looked like they sold cars or hardware.
Harmon asked the older gent for a silencer.
"For what?" he asked.
"For my old lady," Harmon said.
"Here's a whole smorgasboard of lady silencers. Pick your style," he said, indicating the hundred or so guns mounted on the wall behind him.
He ha-haed and Harmon ha-haed and the other salesman ha-haed and it looked like they weren't going to do anything but chuckle. Harmon said, "To give her, not use on her."
"You must be a saint," said the old guy.
"Right." Harmon took the sack to the cab, but Smoky had gone back to sleep, in the raw. He couldn't find the gun among her clothes but he discovered a bottle of tequila sewn inside the left cuff of the jeans. On her ass there was a peculiar tattoo, a bronze wreath surrounding the Stars and Bars, and a mishmash of blue lines that looked like a wishbone entwined with a D and a C, and the numbers 61 and 65 at the knot in the wreath.
When Smoky woke up, she was hungry for love, and Harmon, with the silencer fitted on, was more comfortable and quite able. They fit so well that it took them way too long to drive to New Jersey. They did Freehold and Rahway, Paramus, Teaneck, Hackensack, and Oradell. They took the first load from Pratt-Whitney in Stamford to the site in Newark. Smoky was cool about dumping waste. After he’d backed up to the receiving container, Smoky got out of the cab.
Too late, Harmon saw in the sideview mirror her standing in the stuff when the truck bed raised. Up to her knees in toxic dirt, she balanced against the slope, leaning back and back until the wall of dirt rose up to her shoulders. The whole time her face flamed with glee, anticipating the huge rush of dirt that could pommel her into the ground. At the precise moment when the load moved, Smoky leapt clear to the truck wall and swung over it, laughing as if this was the biggest thrill of her life. That devil-may-care attitude was contagious and Harmon caught a raging case of it.
Over the next ten days, they hauled loads for Pratt-Whitney. Harmon called Miriam from a phone booth near White Plains and found out she was engaged to her professor. It was hard to hear what she said over the construction going on in the lot adjacent to the booth. Concrete was churning in a mixing truck. He cupped the phone to his ear and watched the slow gray river ooze across a bed of gravel. Miriam talked on about her newly built house, as if she was narrating the process he was seeing.
“Still hauling poison?” she asked.
“Still earning my living.” He hung up. Instead of dumping the waste at the edge of a poor neighborhood in Newark, why not dump it where rich people lived? Certainly Miriam would go for that. For practice Smoky and Harmon hit spots along the Jersey Turnpike, which was easy since it was under construction, and they dumped once in the Hudson River at midnight. Harmon debated that one to himself because New York City was already so messed up but recently the authorities from the Big Apple had floated a bargeful of medical waste to the Port of Mobile and disclaimed responsibility for it. In Darien, Connecticut, they found what they wanted. A new development called Royal Quail. Houses big as castles set out on brand-new flat lawns, not a decent tree for two miles. Lucky they got in before the chains went across the pillars of the gatehouse. Smoky sat on his lap as they spilled contaminated dirt on the construction site.
Harmon had never known a woman like her. She slept a lot but was a ball of fire when awake. And she always, always went to the men's room. Harmon took to making roadside stops near hedges, which she didn't mind, though she turned some of them into games of hide and seek. An incident at a restaurant in Willingboro, just off the Jersey Turnpike, should have tipped him off, but he was a little bit in love and wasn’t reading signs clearly.
They'd just finished a decent meal at a regular rip-off price when Smoky had her first run-in with the law. She'd opened a bottle of tequila, filled a small glass of ice, and added the lemon from Harmon’s ice tea when a slump-shouldered security guard announced, "Can't drink alcohol in here."
"Drink? What drink?" Smoky said as she tipped the cup down the front of her shorts.
"The one you just dumped," the cop said.
"Oh that." She stood up and regarded the wet trails striping her legs. "I'm incontinent. It runs in the family. But I keep an extra pair of panties in the truck just in case." By now her accent was thick and bumpy as apple butter.
Harmon was taken aback. He never liked encountering the police on the road and didn’t know what Smoky was liable to do. He crunched his ice.
"Ma'am, I'm going to have to cite you for public drunkenness," the cop said.
She put her hands on her hips and her tone turned patronizing. "Oh, I see. You aren't used to seeing ladies. Honey, I'm not drunk, I'm Southern."
He took out his citation notebook.
"I'll blow," she said. "Go get it and I'll blow."
He clicked his pen as the drawl washed over him. She shifted her weight to her other long leg.
She shrugged. "Come on, Harmon. We don't have all day."
Harmon followed her out the door, expecting to feel his shoulder grabbed from behind, expecting the cop to make them halt.
"Stupid-ass Yankees," she said. "Act like a stereotype and you got it made. Now put some distance between us and them.”
Smoky wouldn't talk about herself, so Harmon filled the driving hours with the story of his life. He needed a listening woman. Smoky listened and turned him on so he was well on the way to love. He needed someone to take care of, someone who needed him for a change. He wondered what it was about him that made him both want to protect and screw a vulnerable woman.
How she felt about Harmon wasn't love. It was amusement. Sometimes he woke to her intent stare five inches from his face, yet focused on something distant. She'd laugh and say, "Snore again. It's like a bullfrog courting in a canyon."
Yet one day she said, "Harmon, I want you to meet my mother." Her brows almost touched, as if she was figuring out the answer to a riddle.
His throat closed a bit. Maybe this woman was his fate. Maybe he needed a new lease on life, a second wife, one who'd ride with him. He swallowed. "How do we get there?"
The place was in Botetourt County, Virginia, the rocky edge of the Shenandoah Valley, a beautiful if unfarmable section of the state.
Smoky woke a mile from her exit and directed him to an old brick farmhouse with patchy white paint. Smoke lifted from the chimneys and floated out over a yard of purple weeds. Across the brick path lay a dead oak, home to rabbits and squirrels and blackbirds, each of which put Harmon in mind of a fresh-made pie. "Robinwood" was painted in curly red script on a creaky sign the oak had missed when it fell.
Posted beside the front door was another sign, Mont Folle.
"Here's Montfall.” Smoky held out her hands before dropping to the ground and kissing the earth. "I am home, home!"
Harmon laughed and tickled her to her feet. Above the door was a sign that made him stop. It was the same picture that was tattooed on Smoky's butt. She stood in the doorway and he had a pleasant vision of comparing the two.
He crossed the threshold.
The house was done up like none he'd ever seen. The wood floors were painted black, the door frames stained brown, and red, white, and blue bunting hung from the winding staircase, old, musty yellowed bunting whose smell was masked by the impossible odor of fresh flowers.
He hadn’t known what flower smelled like his grandfather's funeral, but that scent of death came back as he stepped into Smoky's house. She led him to the room, the Red Room they called it, where the flowers were. A long table was piled with funeral wreaths. At either end sat a woman, sorting and plucking through the petals. Smoky stood back and whispered their names to Harmon.
Maybelle, hip-looking, arranged daffodils in a green vase. She wore her black hair short and her lips bright red. She had on a yellow knit sweater, yellow cigarette pants, a pair of sunglasses, even though they were inside. It made Harmon want a cigarette, looking at her.
The other, Naida, had on a red wig too rich for her chalky skin. The contrast was ghastly. She pored over a pile of plastic flowers, while decrying the use of synthetics.
"Here's another one for ring toss.” Maybelle rolled a bare Styrofoam circle into the back corner where it fell among a pyramid of others.
"Y’all must be the ring toss champions of the world,” Harmon said, hoping Smoky'd catch the irony in his voice. She didn't. "Where do you get this stuff?" he asked, knowing perfectly well.
"Why, the cemetery." Naida pointed out the back window where gravestones marched up over a hill and beyond.
"Here," Maybelle said, "a boutonniere for the gentleman." She approached with a red carnation and a hat pin in her hand.
"Thanks." Harmon grunted as the hat pin scraped his chest. "Goes great with my white t-shirt."
"Exactly. That's why I gave you red. Looks like you've been shot through the heart." She giggled.
Smoky blushed. "Come on, Harmon. Let's find Mother."
They passed through a blue room and a yellow room and came upon the doorless bathroom. It was occupied by a white-haired woman whose shiny black dress spread around her like a hen's feathers. She was humming a marching tune. Harmon turned his head and followed Smoky to a green room.
The least dusty seat was an ancient horsehair couch whose erratic threads curled like broken fiddle strings. The ceiling was cracked and stained and there was a single picture frame hammered to it, outlining a green square of chipped plaster. Another empty wooden frame hung behind the couch, and Harmon spotted a third bridging the corner of the ceiling and the wall. He peered hard at the one on the ceiling. Queer.
"Ah, you're admiring our history," said the old woman dressed in black. Up close, she looked like she'd walked off an exhibit at a wax museum.
"Yes, ma'am.” He hoped this specimen was not Smoky's mother.
"What do you think?" She approached the frame over the couch, held out her shaking hand but didn't touch it, tucked her head and sighed.
Harmon bent forward. There was an oily stain inside the frame and a dark hole. "Something's missing."
"Yes," said the old woman. "But hope springs eternal." She raised her head and became defiant. "These are holes made by Yankee bullets, the murdering, raping sodomites."
She offered her papery, black-trimmed arm and he obliged, escorting
her to the table. Harmon had met all manner of peculiar people in
the years on the road before but this woman really took the cake.
Her eyes hooked into Harmon and he felt horribly guilty and blurted, "Ma'am, you think this is awful, you ought to seen what they did to Alabama."
"Alabama," she smiled. "So lovely of them to give up the capitol. But, of course, Richmond was ever so more appropriate than Montgomery. Are you from Alabama?"
"Roll Tide." He smiled.
"I said, are you from Alabama? I must know." Her voice was shrill.
Harmon was beginning to understand Smoky's occasional squalls. "Yes, ma'am."
"Fine," she said. "Lovely. Let us go to dinner." She offered her papery, black-trimmed arm and he obliged, escorting her to the table. Harmon had met all manner of peculiar people in the years on the road before but this woman really took the cake.
Dinner was incredible.
The whole family was there but they weren't related. The old lady introduced him around, saying, "He's from Alabama," and they all nodded with respect except the old man at the end of the table. He looked pretty normal, with bright pink cheeks, round frameless glasses, and a dab of slick white hair at the back of his bald head. But his right hand kept gesturing out of control. No one sat beside him.
"Alabama," he said, looking keenly at Harmon. "Alabama. The Yankees buttfucked Alabama."
"That was Atlanta, Tommy." Smoky smiled. "Tommy doesn't hear well."
Harmon squeezed her hand. In the candlelight, her freshly washed hair gleamed and her skin was a delicious shade of almond cream. Add a pair of dangling diamond earrings and a black dress and she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever been paired with. He would take her away from all this, make her his wife. Soon, as soon as dinner was over. He leaned until his lips grazed her fine hair. "Let's get married. After dessert, we'll find a Justice of the Peace."
She smiled back, her teeth dazzling as the diamonds he imagined in her ears.
Maybelle and Naida sat across from them, holding hands. They recited a prayer. Another aunt came in, breathless. She must have been sixty, was thin, and had a huge protuberance that made her look pregnant.
Smoky's mother whispered, "She was raped and look what happened. But don't say anything about it. She's very sensitive."
Smoky said, "Stare all you like. Thelma’s been pregnant for years."
"I heard that, Smoky," said the pregnant woman. "It's not been that long. Only since 1975."
Tommy shouted. "It might be a colored baby. That's why it won't come out. 'Cause we'll kill it."
"It is not a colored baby," shouted the deformed aunt and she began to cry then turned and ran from the room.
"Tommy," said the old lady. "Please remember we have a guest. No apple pie for you tonight."
Tommy sulked and his arm whirred like a windmill.
Two men came in smelling of garbage. They insisted on hugging Smoky and Harmon. They were brothers who worked for the county maintenance department. Smoky's mother said she was proud that all her boarders had jobs, not many houses in Virginia could claim that distinction.
After supper Smoky told her mother the happy news. The mother asked for another private conference with Harmon. He followed her into the Lemon Room.
"You must know some things about Smoky," the old woman said. "She brings in about $227 a month. I would hope you could continue to supply that amount."
"I intend to marry her," Harmon said. "I can support her. You won't have to." He spoke slowly since there were more than a few bolts loose here.
Her eyes raked over him a long time in silence, gauging how much he had on the ball, he suspected.
"How long have you known about Mont Folle?" she said.
"Since I walked in the door this afternoon."
"You don't know its history? Its purpose?"
Harmon shook his head, resigned to a laborious evening learning the history of the great house, which dated to 1791.
She must have clued in to his boredom because she said, "Do you know how Smoky got her name?"
"No." He tried to perk up as this was personal history.
"Good," she said. "Please wait while I do some calculations." She heaved open a round top desk and clacked away at an adding machine.
Smoky burst into the room, her eyes their crazy-horny deep blue. "Mother, are you trying to take Harmon away from me? You always do this. Every time I bring a man home you say something and make him go away and then I'm stuck here until I can get away again."
"Come on, sugar," Harmon said. "Get your clothes."
Her suitcase was in the hall.
"Don't leave in haste." The old woman held out her hands and Smoky ran to her. They kissed. Then Smoky rushed into Harmon’s arms.
The old woman smiled pleasantly. "She'll be back."
"Like hell." Harmon picked up the suitcase. "You never have to come back here again."
He slung the suitcase into the cab of the truck. Maybelle came out with an overnight bag and Harmon thought he was going to have a real fight because he was not rescuing every sane member of this household, but she held the bag out to Smoky and said, "Don't forget. Take one pill every night."
Which Harmon thought was pretty sweet and savvy. At forty, he was too old to be wanting children.
In the cab Smoky was hot to make love but Harmon was hot to escape so they put off their celebration for a few hours. It was Friday night. They'd have to wait a few days to make things official. They stopped for gas in Buchanan.
The cashier apparently knew Smoky. His eyes bugged out when she said they were engaged. Inside the store he asked Harmon privately if he'd met her family.
"Bunch of nuts," Harmon said.
He nodded. "You serious about marriage?"
"Yeah. You could say we're on our honeymoon," he said, hoping for some free diesel fuel.
"You already married her?"
"No, not until Monday when we find an open courthouse."
"Brother, dump that woman."
"I can't do that. She needs me."
"She needs a lobotomy. They all do at Mont Folle."
This made partial sense. "What do you mean?"
"Mont Folle is an outpatient home for the loonies the state can't keep anymore. They're not nuts enough to stay in the hospital but they're too nuts to live alone."
It all made too much sense, way damn too much sense.
"He's lying, Harmon.” Smoky stood in the doorway, her face breaking. "Mother took the others in because she's on a fixed income. They are from the state, but I'm not." Tears ran down her face and she began to shake. "How could I be normal growing up with those crazies in the house?" She shrieked. "Thelma running around pregnant since 1975? How could I?"
The cashier said, "That woman's got a tumor. Why the hell hasn't your mother done something about it? That old woman is carrying around a thirty pound ball of cancer and your mother does nothing but make her think she got raped by freed slaves. You tell me that's not nuts. Only thing that keeps that old woman out of the loony bin herself is that she's willing to take in other crazies."
Smoky leapt at the man and knocked over the rack of breath mints.
Harmon grabbed her from behind. "It's all right, darling." He hugged her, felt her heart beating against his arms.
"We're okay." He nodded over her head at the man who spun his finger around his ear, crazy.
"Grave robbers," the cashier added as Harmon and Smoky, still hugging, hobbled to the cab.
Smoky yammered on for an hour before Harmon told her he couldn't take any more noise. The residents of Mont Folle had been shipped to the hinterlands; they were like ticking time bombs no one wanted to deal with, shells of humanity. They were treated like toxic waste.
Smoky kept her eyes on Harmon so fiercely he felt twin holes burning in his cheek. He needed to be alone, totally alone, but when he suggested she go into a Howard Johnson’s for some milk while he waited in the lot, she shook her head with such a frenzy he worried nerves were being severed in her brain. She was afraid he was going to ditch her. Harmon prayed that her frenzy would exhaust her before it did him and that she'd sleep so he could clear his head. But she stayed up for 22 straight hours and so did Harmon, courtesy of some bennies he scored at a truck stop in Hagerstown.
They meandered up into Pennsylvania and took the road to Gettysburg, where he'd never been before. It turned out to be a beautiful place for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon. They spread the blanket, all she'd packed in her suitcase, on the ground and gazed up at Little Roundtop. Harmon didn't dare bring up the history of this place, just said it was a nice park. Besides they could see a mall under construction beyond the fields and that was a calming site to him because it proved they were in the 20th century.
The sky was blue and the air warm but not humid. Smoky slept, finally, she slept. Tourists came and went around them. Harmon snoozed for a while then woke and read a brochure. In it, there was Smoky's tattoo, the badge for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Things began to make a little sense. When he figured an answer, a deep sadness settled on him. Smoky had no history. Instead, like all the people at Mont Folle, she had an adopted history, the history of the Southern invasion as told by the old woman in charge.
Smoky was so pretty in the shadows when she slept. Harmon moved her bangs away from her mouth and pulled her short skirt down to cover her thighs. He pitied her and all the people at Mont Folle. No doubt the trouble they caused the locals was unimportant to the legislators in Richmond. Miriam had been right about how the government dealt with problems: dump them on the doorsteps of the disenfranchised. He touched Smoky's cheek. She was deep asleep.
"Alabama," she smiled. "So lovely of them to give up the capitol. But, of course, Richmond was ever so more appropriate than Montgomery. Are you from Alabama?"
"Roll Tide." He smiled.
"I said, are you from Alabama? I must know." Her voice was shrill.
Harmon was beginning to understand Smoky's occasional squalls. "Yes, ma'am."
"Fine," she said. "Lovely. Let us go to dinner." She offered her papery, black-trimmed arm and he obliged, escorting her to the table. Harmon had met all manner of peculiar people in the years on the road before but this woman really took the cake.
Dinner was incredible.
The whole family was there but they weren't related. The old lady introduced him around, saying, "He's from Alabama," and they all nodded with respect except the old man at the end of the table. He looked pretty normal, with bright pink cheeks, round frameless glasses, and a dab of slick white hair at the back of his bald head. But his right hand kept gesturing out of control. No one sat beside him.
"Alabama," he said, looking keenly at Harmon. "Alabama. The Yankees buttfucked Alabama."
"That was Atlanta, Tommy." Smoky smiled. "Tommy doesn't hear well."
Harmon squeezed her hand. In the candlelight, her freshly washed hair gleamed and her skin was a delicious shade of almond cream. Add a pair of dangling diamond earrings and a black dress and she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever been paired with. He would take her away from all this, make her his wife. Soon, as soon as dinner was over. He leaned until his lips grazed her fine hair. "Let's get married. After dessert, we'll find a Justice of the Peace."
She smiled back, her teeth dazzling as the diamonds he imagined in her ears.
Maybelle and Naida sat across from them, holding hands. They recited a prayer. Another aunt came in, breathless. She must have been sixty, was thin, and had a huge protuberance that made her look pregnant.
Smoky's mother whispered, "She was raped and look what happened. But don't say anything about it. She's very sensitive."
Smoky said, "Stare all you like. Thelma’s been pregnant for years."
"I heard that, Smoky," said the pregnant woman. "It's not been that long. Only since 1975."
Tommy shouted. "It might be a colored baby. That's why it won't come out. 'Cause we'll kill it."
"It is not a colored baby," shouted the deformed aunt and she began to cry then turned and ran from the room.
"Tommy," said the old lady. "Please remember we have a guest. No apple pie for you tonight."
Tommy sulked and his arm whirred like a windmill.
Two men came in smelling of garbage. They insisted on hugging Smoky and Harmon. They were brothers who worked for the county maintenance department. Smoky's mother said she was proud that all her boarders had jobs, not many houses in Virginia could claim that distinction.
After supper Smoky told her mother the happy news. The mother asked for another private conference with Harmon. He followed her into the Lemon Room.
"You must know some things about Smoky," the old woman said. "She brings in about $227 a month. I would hope you could continue to supply that amount."
"I intend to marry her," Harmon said. "I can support her. You won't have to." He spoke slowly since there were more than a few bolts loose here.
Her eyes raked over him a long time in silence, gauging how much he had on the ball, he suspected.
"How long have you known about Mont Folle?" she said.
"Since I walked in the door this afternoon."
"You don't know its history? Its purpose?"
Harmon shook his head, resigned to a laborious evening learning the history of the great house, which dated to 1791.
She must have clued in to his boredom because she said, "Do you know how Smoky got her name?"
"No." He tried to perk up as this was personal history.
"Good," she said. "Please wait while I do some calculations." She heaved open a round top desk and clacked away at an adding machine.
Smoky burst into the room, her eyes their crazy-horny deep blue. "Mother, are you trying to take Harmon away from me? You always do this. Every time I bring a man home you say something and make him go away and then I'm stuck here until I can get away again."
"Come on, sugar," Harmon said. "Get your clothes."
Her suitcase was in the hall.
"Don't leave in haste." The old woman held out her hands and Smoky ran to her. They kissed. Then Smoky rushed into Harmon’s arms.
The old woman smiled pleasantly. "She'll be back."
"Like hell." Harmon picked up the suitcase. "You never have to come back here again."
He slung the suitcase into the cab of the truck. Maybelle came out with an overnight bag and Harmon thought he was going to have a real fight because he was not rescuing every sane member of this household, but she held the bag out to Smoky and said, "Don't forget. Take one pill every night."
Which Harmon thought was pretty sweet and savvy. At forty, he was too old to be wanting children.
In the cab Smoky was hot to make love but Harmon was hot to escape so they put off their celebration for a few hours. It was Friday night. They'd have to wait a few days to make things official. They stopped for gas in Buchanan.
The cashier apparently knew Smoky. His eyes bugged out when she said they were engaged. Inside the store he asked Harmon privately if he'd met her family.
"Bunch of nuts," Harmon said.
He nodded. "You serious about marriage?"
"Yeah. You could say we're on our honeymoon," he said, hoping for some free diesel fuel.
"You already married her?"
"No, not until Monday when we find an open courthouse."
"Brother, dump that woman."
"I can't do that. She needs me."
"She needs a lobotomy. They all do at Mont Folle."
This made partial sense. "What do you mean?"
"Mont Folle is an outpatient home for the loonies the state can't keep anymore. They're not nuts enough to stay in the hospital but they're too nuts to live alone."
It all made too much sense, way damn too much sense.
"He's lying, Harmon.” Smoky stood in the doorway, her face breaking. "Mother took the others in because she's on a fixed income. They are from the state, but I'm not." Tears ran down her face and she began to shake. "How could I be normal growing up with those crazies in the house?" She shrieked. "Thelma running around pregnant since 1975? How could I?"
The cashier said, "That woman's got a tumor. Why the hell hasn't your mother done something about it? That old woman is carrying around a thirty pound ball of cancer and your mother does nothing but make her think she got raped by freed slaves. You tell me that's not nuts. Only thing that keeps that old woman out of the loony bin herself is that she's willing to take in other crazies."
Smoky leapt at the man and knocked over the rack of breath mints.
Harmon grabbed her from behind. "It's all right, darling." He hugged her, felt her heart beating against his arms.
"We're okay." He nodded over her head at the man who spun his finger around his ear, crazy.
"Grave robbers," the cashier added as Harmon and Smoky, still hugging, hobbled to the cab.
Smoky yammered on for an hour before Harmon told her he couldn't take any more noise. The residents of Mont Folle had been shipped to the hinterlands; they were like ticking time bombs no one wanted to deal with, shells of humanity. They were treated like toxic waste.
Smoky kept her eyes on Harmon so fiercely he felt twin holes burning in his cheek. He needed to be alone, totally alone, but when he suggested she go into a Howard Johnson’s for some milk while he waited in the lot, she shook her head with such a frenzy he worried nerves were being severed in her brain. She was afraid he was going to ditch her. Harmon prayed that her frenzy would exhaust her before it did him and that she'd sleep so he could clear his head. But she stayed up for 22 straight hours and so did Harmon, courtesy of some bennies he scored at a truck stop in Hagerstown.
They meandered up into Pennsylvania and took the road to Gettysburg, where he'd never been before. It turned out to be a beautiful place for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon. They spread the blanket, all she'd packed in her suitcase, on the ground and gazed up at Little Roundtop. Harmon didn't dare bring up the history of this place, just said it was a nice park. Besides they could see a mall under construction beyond the fields and that was a calming site to him because it proved they were in the 20th century.
The sky was blue and the air warm but not humid. Smoky slept, finally, she slept. Tourists came and went around them. Harmon snoozed for a while then woke and read a brochure. In it, there was Smoky's tattoo, the badge for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Things began to make a little sense. When he figured an answer, a deep sadness settled on him. Smoky had no history. Instead, like all the people at Mont Folle, she had an adopted history, the history of the Southern invasion as told by the old woman in charge.
Smoky was so pretty in the shadows when she slept. Harmon moved her bangs away from her mouth and pulled her short skirt down to cover her thighs. He pitied her and all the people at Mont Folle. No doubt the trouble they caused the locals was unimportant to the legislators in Richmond. Miriam had been right about how the government dealt with problems: dump them on the doorsteps of the disenfranchised. He touched Smoky's cheek. She was deep asleep.
He risked going to McDonald’s and got his order in just before a high school band bus arrived. He ate a huge, peaceful lunch while Smoky slept on the battlefield. He gathered his trash, disposed of it in a metal basket, and went into the men’s room. Harmon was in a stall when a bunch of the band kids came in. How easy their lives seemed; who spilled his coke, who drained his spit valve on the majorette.
One was still at the urinal when Harmon heard him shout, "This is the men's room."
Tcht/smack/crack. The boy slumped against Harmon’s door. His blue trousers buckled and then his torso toppled to the floor. Harmon pushed his way out. Smoky stood over the boy with her gun, the silencer adding sinister length to the barrel.
"Yankee. I smoked a Yankee." She giggled.
"Put it away," Harmon said. The kid's band uniform was royal blue with a gold stripe down the leg and gold buttons on the jacket. His yellow-plumed hat lay in the red trickle spreading toward the toilet.
She bolted and Harmon followed in a foot race to the truck. He jerked the rig into gear and took the wrong turn and ended up going through the battlefield, speed limit 15.
"Harmon," she said, her hand caressing her thigh. "I'm so glad I found you. I thought you were gone."
"No, darling, I had to take a leak. I guess I should have left a note but you were sound asleep. So peaceful looking and beautiful. I didn't want to disturb you."
They headed into the woods. Whatever had happened in her true life had left her irreparably damaged but damn, that silencer was probably meant for him. I smoked a Yankee. Do you know how Smoky got her name?
"Do you know where we are?" Harmon said.
"Heaven?" She snuggled into his lap and they rode like nesting cups for a mile.
Sweat dampened every part of his body. His heart hammered overtime. Yet he forced his manner to be calm, his voice as steady as the lines on a highway. "It's that pretty, isn't it?"
The view was gorgeous, rolling green hills cut by split-rail fences. Yet there was nothing that distracted his eye from the white markers, nothing. His eye kept going back and back. Forty-five thousand men in three days. "Steady yourself, Smoky. This is Gettysburg."
"Oh," she said, air going out of her like she was being crushed. "We're in hell then."
"Yes, and here's Devil's Den." Harmon read the marker fronting a peculiar rock formation.
She laughed. "I've been called that before."
"No doubt.” Harmon braked. He wracked his brain. Wasn't there something about getting stuck in Devil's Den, some way in but no way out? Already a siren was wailing. Faintly from the McDonald’s’ area "Taps" was being played. Oh God, he prayed. Please deliver me. From her. "You know, I have a fantasy about Devil's Den." Harmon touched her between the legs. "Let's go see what's in there."
"Okay." She tucked the gun inside her blouse.
"You're bringing that?"
"Oh, Harmon, I always do."
How far could he get on a flat tire, he wondered. One spare might not be enough.
The rocks were smooth, the passages narrow. The stones formed a maze, a perfect fort for soldiers, but a trap if the enemy overran you. That's what it was. The Alabama 44th. Yes, Harmon remembered something from sixth grade after all. Between a rock and a hard place those soldiers were. What it must have been to realize as you ducked the minie balls and faced the rock wall of Devil's Den that you had come too far, that your two choices were to retreat across the open field or charge the well-protected army behind the rock wall. Goddamn if the Bama men didn't charge, and goddamn if they didn't rout the men from Maine. Or maybe, Harmon thought, maybe he had it all ass backwards.
One was still at the urinal when Harmon heard him shout, "This is the men's room."
Tcht/smack/crack. The boy slumped against Harmon’s door. His blue trousers buckled and then his torso toppled to the floor. Harmon pushed his way out. Smoky stood over the boy with her gun, the silencer adding sinister length to the barrel.
"Yankee. I smoked a Yankee." She giggled.
"Put it away," Harmon said. The kid's band uniform was royal blue with a gold stripe down the leg and gold buttons on the jacket. His yellow-plumed hat lay in the red trickle spreading toward the toilet.
She bolted and Harmon followed in a foot race to the truck. He jerked the rig into gear and took the wrong turn and ended up going through the battlefield, speed limit 15.
"Harmon," she said, her hand caressing her thigh. "I'm so glad I found you. I thought you were gone."
"No, darling, I had to take a leak. I guess I should have left a note but you were sound asleep. So peaceful looking and beautiful. I didn't want to disturb you."
They headed into the woods. Whatever had happened in her true life had left her irreparably damaged but damn, that silencer was probably meant for him. I smoked a Yankee. Do you know how Smoky got her name?
"Do you know where we are?" Harmon said.
"Heaven?" She snuggled into his lap and they rode like nesting cups for a mile.
Sweat dampened every part of his body. His heart hammered overtime. Yet he forced his manner to be calm, his voice as steady as the lines on a highway. "It's that pretty, isn't it?"
The view was gorgeous, rolling green hills cut by split-rail fences. Yet there was nothing that distracted his eye from the white markers, nothing. His eye kept going back and back. Forty-five thousand men in three days. "Steady yourself, Smoky. This is Gettysburg."
"Oh," she said, air going out of her like she was being crushed. "We're in hell then."
"Yes, and here's Devil's Den." Harmon read the marker fronting a peculiar rock formation.
She laughed. "I've been called that before."
"No doubt.” Harmon braked. He wracked his brain. Wasn't there something about getting stuck in Devil's Den, some way in but no way out? Already a siren was wailing. Faintly from the McDonald’s’ area "Taps" was being played. Oh God, he prayed. Please deliver me. From her. "You know, I have a fantasy about Devil's Den." Harmon touched her between the legs. "Let's go see what's in there."
"Okay." She tucked the gun inside her blouse.
"You're bringing that?"
"Oh, Harmon, I always do."
How far could he get on a flat tire, he wondered. One spare might not be enough.
The rocks were smooth, the passages narrow. The stones formed a maze, a perfect fort for soldiers, but a trap if the enemy overran you. That's what it was. The Alabama 44th. Yes, Harmon remembered something from sixth grade after all. Between a rock and a hard place those soldiers were. What it must have been to realize as you ducked the minie balls and faced the rock wall of Devil's Den that you had come too far, that your two choices were to retreat across the open field or charge the well-protected army behind the rock wall. Goddamn if the Bama men didn't charge, and goddamn if they didn't rout the men from Maine. Or maybe, Harmon thought, maybe he had it all ass backwards.
Smoky went first up the rocks and stripped off her panties, that damned United Daughters of the Confederacy tattoo moving sensuously at eye-level as the breeze played with her skirt. She stopped suddenly. "Here," she said.
"No," Harmon choked, gently pushed her ass away. "Let's go all the way in."
"It's pretty rocky. Think you can make it?" She swung back, hair in her eyes, all truth and innocence.
Harmon shook as he kissed the hand she offered. "Go on ahead. Surprise me."
More sirens sounded in the distance but one pulsed as it came closer, whoop whoop whoop like a rotor. Harmon broke a sweat. The next move would take him six feet straight up, a nigh impossible wall to come down easily. Smoky leaned back, beckoning, the outline of the gun clear across her left breast.
Harmon reached up and locked his fingers on the ledge. Below him car doors slammed and the loud crunch of heavy boots brought two cops into his sight.
"Sir!" One policeman, who looked young enough to be a band kid, called.
Harmon slipped down, scraping elbows and chin.
"Sorry, sir," the cop said. His hair was wiry red and he had freckles and a tendency to flab. "There's been an incident and we'd like to ask you some questions."
"Yes, sir," Harmon looked up. Smoky was gone over the rocks.
"That your rig?"
"Yes."
"Do you mind if we look through it?"
"What for?" Harmon asked, climbing down.
"Been at this spot long?" asked the other cop. He was slight and dark-haired and was also sprayed with freckles.
"Thirty minutes or so. I had a great-great-great-grandfather died in that spot. I was looking at it, you know."
"Yeah. That’s a common story. So many men died here."
Harmon tried to remember if Smoky left anything in the truck. He prayed she wouldn't go apeshit and try to protect him from the cops. He could imagine her killing everybody but him. Lucky him.
"There's been a shooting and we're looking for a suspect. He may be hiding in your truck. We'd like to look,” the redhead said.
"Jesus," Harmon said. "He could be in there? Please check it out." He walked around the rig, putting it between him and Devil's Den. Then he remembered the bennies.
The cops approached the rig with caution. They inched up to look in the empty bed, threw open the sleeper door, nosed around in there pretty well, asked about secret compartments. The dark-haired cop palmed the whites and put them in his pocket. They radioed in they'd found nothing. They suggested Harmon give up sightseeing for the day as the park was being closed down.
He climbed into the cab, rolled down the windows to relieve the smell of his sweat, turned the key and fell in behind the cruiser, which stopped at a crossroads, leaving him eye to eye with a certain lady laying on a rock ledge. She didn't aim for his tires. She shot for the jugular.
The bullet came in the open window, hit the dash then ricocheted off the windshield into his right collarbone. For a few slow-reckoning seconds, he was too shocked to duck below the window. The rocks, creamy and stroked by shadows, appeared soft and comforting, like giant undulating pillows. He gritted his teeth and willed his eyes to focus. He touched the wound. It stung. His eyes swept the rocks.
The cop car screeched in a one-eighty and stopped at his grill, blocking his escape. The men flung open their doors and emerged with guns drawn. Harmon saw Smoky scrabbling over the rocks toward them. Maybe now she'd get proper care.
She stood at the six foot ledge and smiled down at the cops. Tall and slim in a breeze that lifted her skirt and hair, she seemed the essence of spring. She spread her arms and jumped—hoping perhaps to fly? Harmon wondered. Her skirt flew up as she floated for an eternity, exposing her naked thighs and pelvis. The trim muscles of her thighs were graceful in landing as they collected then stretched to stand.
She smiled in her innocent way, calm and complaisant. They'd take her without a fight. Sweat broke out again on Harmon’s body in relief. He was free. She tossed her hair and brushed off her skirt as a peculiar, squinty expression crossed her face, one he knew but hadn't seen for what it was. It was addled, off-center, not the call of the wild. As if the bullet had purged him of hot blinding blood, he saw coldly that Smoky was crazy and he'd been crazy to love her.
Watching her gaze at the cops, he grew uneasy. What if they couldn't pin the murder on her? He, the witness, was fleeing as soon as he could. What if she told them Harmon had bought the silencer? What if she told how they’d illegally dumped toxic waste in people’s yards? He reached for the gear shaft. Excruciating pain jerked his arm back to his side, where it dangled, tingling. He swallowed. What if she said he shot the kid? He had told the cops a lie already. Suddenly his future was hanging on the whim of a mad woman.
The cops holstered their guns. The redhead swaggered forward and offered his arm. Smoky dipped beneath his shoulder and snuggled against his armpit. Laughter spilled like silver from her mouth as she flipped her hair free of the blue elbow clamping it to her shoulder. The cop paused. Harmon could only see the face of the dark-haired man, and recognized the look that passed between them. Hombre a hombre, smelling passion in the air. Two men and one vulnerable, bare-assed, certifiable woman. The redhead guided Smoky toward Devil's Den, and let his hand play down her rump. She'd probably consented. What had Harmon known but a constant Yes? The dark-haired officer squirmed sideways to enter the crevice. Smoky slid in with ease, Smoky disappearing with men in uniform, authorities whose mission was to protect and serve. But as Harmon saw the redhead suck in his gut and still tear his blue shirt on the rock, he knew Smoky would never consent with men in blue uniforms.
They could abuse her, then arrest her. Her only defense was insanity and who would believe her crazy accusations? If they had sex with her, she'd get away with the kid's murder. Or they could use her, turn her loose, maybe not even know what she'd done. On the loose she'd abuse and be abused. His shoulder throbbed and numbed.
The trio appeared further up the narrow passage of Devil's Den. The cop in the rear was helping Smoky climb, his hand boosting her skirt.
Harmon cranked the rig, let it rumble, then groan to be put in gear. It seared his neck to look backwards where there was the blind curve to negotiation. He ground the gears, the high-pitched scream like an arrow in his gut, shutting down his own escape. He slid out into the peaceful sunshine. Every step he took was occasioned by a drip of blood from his wound.
He walked, controlling the wheezing by counting to three, inhale-two-three, exhale-two-three. He squeezed between the rock and inched forward, guided by the sounds of panting. The passage curved one way then doubled back. He could hear them but he had to go slow over the uneven rock floor. He didn't want to see what was ahead. The noises were too obvious, but there were no screams, no woman sounds. He leaned against a slice of granite glittering with quartz and listened to the rutting, steady, unhurried, and the pitches of pleasures, like two woodcutters working one saw.
Slowly he looked around the bend. The redhead's shockingly pink rump thrust and clenched between Smoky's hard kneecaps whitened like the surrounding rock. The other cop, straddling her head, rubbed his cock along her face, tracing the bones, murmuring something. Her mouth and eyes were squeezed tight. A trickle of tears ran into her ear.
"No," Harmon choked, gently pushed her ass away. "Let's go all the way in."
"It's pretty rocky. Think you can make it?" She swung back, hair in her eyes, all truth and innocence.
Harmon shook as he kissed the hand she offered. "Go on ahead. Surprise me."
More sirens sounded in the distance but one pulsed as it came closer, whoop whoop whoop like a rotor. Harmon broke a sweat. The next move would take him six feet straight up, a nigh impossible wall to come down easily. Smoky leaned back, beckoning, the outline of the gun clear across her left breast.
Harmon reached up and locked his fingers on the ledge. Below him car doors slammed and the loud crunch of heavy boots brought two cops into his sight.
"Sir!" One policeman, who looked young enough to be a band kid, called.
Harmon slipped down, scraping elbows and chin.
"Sorry, sir," the cop said. His hair was wiry red and he had freckles and a tendency to flab. "There's been an incident and we'd like to ask you some questions."
"Yes, sir," Harmon looked up. Smoky was gone over the rocks.
"That your rig?"
"Yes."
"Do you mind if we look through it?"
"What for?" Harmon asked, climbing down.
"Been at this spot long?" asked the other cop. He was slight and dark-haired and was also sprayed with freckles.
"Thirty minutes or so. I had a great-great-great-grandfather died in that spot. I was looking at it, you know."
"Yeah. That’s a common story. So many men died here."
Harmon tried to remember if Smoky left anything in the truck. He prayed she wouldn't go apeshit and try to protect him from the cops. He could imagine her killing everybody but him. Lucky him.
"There's been a shooting and we're looking for a suspect. He may be hiding in your truck. We'd like to look,” the redhead said.
"Jesus," Harmon said. "He could be in there? Please check it out." He walked around the rig, putting it between him and Devil's Den. Then he remembered the bennies.
The cops approached the rig with caution. They inched up to look in the empty bed, threw open the sleeper door, nosed around in there pretty well, asked about secret compartments. The dark-haired cop palmed the whites and put them in his pocket. They radioed in they'd found nothing. They suggested Harmon give up sightseeing for the day as the park was being closed down.
He climbed into the cab, rolled down the windows to relieve the smell of his sweat, turned the key and fell in behind the cruiser, which stopped at a crossroads, leaving him eye to eye with a certain lady laying on a rock ledge. She didn't aim for his tires. She shot for the jugular.
The bullet came in the open window, hit the dash then ricocheted off the windshield into his right collarbone. For a few slow-reckoning seconds, he was too shocked to duck below the window. The rocks, creamy and stroked by shadows, appeared soft and comforting, like giant undulating pillows. He gritted his teeth and willed his eyes to focus. He touched the wound. It stung. His eyes swept the rocks.
The cop car screeched in a one-eighty and stopped at his grill, blocking his escape. The men flung open their doors and emerged with guns drawn. Harmon saw Smoky scrabbling over the rocks toward them. Maybe now she'd get proper care.
She stood at the six foot ledge and smiled down at the cops. Tall and slim in a breeze that lifted her skirt and hair, she seemed the essence of spring. She spread her arms and jumped—hoping perhaps to fly? Harmon wondered. Her skirt flew up as she floated for an eternity, exposing her naked thighs and pelvis. The trim muscles of her thighs were graceful in landing as they collected then stretched to stand.
She smiled in her innocent way, calm and complaisant. They'd take her without a fight. Sweat broke out again on Harmon’s body in relief. He was free. She tossed her hair and brushed off her skirt as a peculiar, squinty expression crossed her face, one he knew but hadn't seen for what it was. It was addled, off-center, not the call of the wild. As if the bullet had purged him of hot blinding blood, he saw coldly that Smoky was crazy and he'd been crazy to love her.
Watching her gaze at the cops, he grew uneasy. What if they couldn't pin the murder on her? He, the witness, was fleeing as soon as he could. What if she told them Harmon had bought the silencer? What if she told how they’d illegally dumped toxic waste in people’s yards? He reached for the gear shaft. Excruciating pain jerked his arm back to his side, where it dangled, tingling. He swallowed. What if she said he shot the kid? He had told the cops a lie already. Suddenly his future was hanging on the whim of a mad woman.
The cops holstered their guns. The redhead swaggered forward and offered his arm. Smoky dipped beneath his shoulder and snuggled against his armpit. Laughter spilled like silver from her mouth as she flipped her hair free of the blue elbow clamping it to her shoulder. The cop paused. Harmon could only see the face of the dark-haired man, and recognized the look that passed between them. Hombre a hombre, smelling passion in the air. Two men and one vulnerable, bare-assed, certifiable woman. The redhead guided Smoky toward Devil's Den, and let his hand play down her rump. She'd probably consented. What had Harmon known but a constant Yes? The dark-haired officer squirmed sideways to enter the crevice. Smoky slid in with ease, Smoky disappearing with men in uniform, authorities whose mission was to protect and serve. But as Harmon saw the redhead suck in his gut and still tear his blue shirt on the rock, he knew Smoky would never consent with men in blue uniforms.
They could abuse her, then arrest her. Her only defense was insanity and who would believe her crazy accusations? If they had sex with her, she'd get away with the kid's murder. Or they could use her, turn her loose, maybe not even know what she'd done. On the loose she'd abuse and be abused. His shoulder throbbed and numbed.
The trio appeared further up the narrow passage of Devil's Den. The cop in the rear was helping Smoky climb, his hand boosting her skirt.
Harmon cranked the rig, let it rumble, then groan to be put in gear. It seared his neck to look backwards where there was the blind curve to negotiation. He ground the gears, the high-pitched scream like an arrow in his gut, shutting down his own escape. He slid out into the peaceful sunshine. Every step he took was occasioned by a drip of blood from his wound.
He walked, controlling the wheezing by counting to three, inhale-two-three, exhale-two-three. He squeezed between the rock and inched forward, guided by the sounds of panting. The passage curved one way then doubled back. He could hear them but he had to go slow over the uneven rock floor. He didn't want to see what was ahead. The noises were too obvious, but there were no screams, no woman sounds. He leaned against a slice of granite glittering with quartz and listened to the rutting, steady, unhurried, and the pitches of pleasures, like two woodcutters working one saw.
Slowly he looked around the bend. The redhead's shockingly pink rump thrust and clenched between Smoky's hard kneecaps whitened like the surrounding rock. The other cop, straddling her head, rubbed his cock along her face, tracing the bones, murmuring something. Her mouth and eyes were squeezed tight. A trickle of tears ran into her ear.
Their blue uniforms marked with silver, stars, and badges. She was being raped by Yankees. Her history. Being raped by men in blue.
"Let her go." The words came out with a strength Harmon didn't recognize and in a thick Alabama drawl he hadn't used since he married Miriam.
The cop gave one more little hop, tightening his freckled butt to finish, the son of a bitch, and the dark-haired one gazed at Harmon steadily, unashamed. He made no move to recover himself.
"Leave her be," Harmon gasped. Every syllable sent a splinter through his chest.
The dark-haired cop slid his hands under her armpits, cupped Smoky's breasts, and drew her to her feet. She smoothed the skirt and stumbled towards Harmon. Her eyes were violet and blank.
She held out her hand and said in a first-class belle voice, "I'm Gretchen."
Harmon was already a shard in her shattered pile of experience.
He took her hand. It was fragile with bones but run through with a strong cord. She'd survive until somebody killed her.
She touched his collar bone. "You're shot."
"Yes, darling," Harmon said. "I'm taking you home."
They stumbled off together into another time, where soldiers fought their way across the southeastern states and women were the spoils of war, where the enemies wore blue or gray and were never themselves. This was a story he’d never tell Miriam even though it might have been the one to win her back.
"Let her go." The words came out with a strength Harmon didn't recognize and in a thick Alabama drawl he hadn't used since he married Miriam.
The cop gave one more little hop, tightening his freckled butt to finish, the son of a bitch, and the dark-haired one gazed at Harmon steadily, unashamed. He made no move to recover himself.
"Leave her be," Harmon gasped. Every syllable sent a splinter through his chest.
The dark-haired cop slid his hands under her armpits, cupped Smoky's breasts, and drew her to her feet. She smoothed the skirt and stumbled towards Harmon. Her eyes were violet and blank.
She held out her hand and said in a first-class belle voice, "I'm Gretchen."
Harmon was already a shard in her shattered pile of experience.
He took her hand. It was fragile with bones but run through with a strong cord. She'd survive until somebody killed her.
She touched his collar bone. "You're shot."
"Yes, darling," Harmon said. "I'm taking you home."
They stumbled off together into another time, where soldiers fought their way across the southeastern states and women were the spoils of war, where the enemies wore blue or gray and were never themselves. This was a story he’d never tell Miriam even though it might have been the one to win her back.
Lynn Pruett has published a novel, Ruby River, numerous stories and essays, and worked as an ag journalist in Kentucky. This is the fourth Joab Harmon story to be published. Others appeared in War, Literature & the Arts, Tobacco: An Anthology, and Southern Exposure. She's received fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Community of Writers, and Yaddo. Her grandmother Jessie Wilder was born near Jellico Creek in Whitley County, Kentucky on the family farm. From her, she gets both her fierceness and creative spirit. Pruett raises sheep on a farm in Woodford County, Kentucky.