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"Well, God! That is disgusting"
"Yet entertaining Man, he’s going to do it again! Big John!" Ford shouted, and began to chant it The crowd picked up the rhyth John lifted his wide, purple-smeared face
"Undefeated," Ford said when Porter was pronounced the winner "The guy can’t be beat He’s the Superman of pie-eaters Okay, there’s the raffle in the south pavilion Let’s go buy soliest, most useless prize"
They settled, after considerable debate, on a plastic rooster wall clock in vibrant red Target selected, Fordit in?"
"We’re doing well this year I seous? Enjoying yourself?"
"Very ine it’s a little tame and countrified compared to the way you usually spend your holiday, but I think we put on a nice event No erated flutter of lashes "Howfor twenty"
"Each," Cilla said and pulled out a bill of her own
"That’s what I like to hear!" Cathy counted them off, tore off their stubs "Good luck And just in ti prizewinners over the loudspeaker starting in about twenty minutes Ford, if you see your mama, tell her to hunt me up I want to talk to her about"
Cilla tuned out the conversation when she saw Hennessy staring at her from the other side of the pavilion The bitter points of his hate scraped over her skin Beside him stood a sed at his arid
The heat went out of the day, the light, the color Hate, Cilla thought, strips away joy But she wouldn’t turn away from it, refused to allow herself to turn away
So it was he who turned, who finally bent to his wife’s pleas to stride away frorass
She said nothing to Ford The day would not be spoiled She soothed the throat the silent encounter had dried to burning with lean to dip toward the western peaks
She talked, laughed She won the rooster wall clock And the tension drained away As the sky darkened, Sae, excited conversation
"How do you knohat he’s saying?" Cilla deon"
They announced "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the crowd rose Beside her, Ford hitched the boy on his hip Around her, under an indigo sky, with the flicker of glow tubes and fireflies in the dark, mixed voices swelled On i on until the last note died away
Moain, the first boom exploded On the sound Sam leaped out of Ford’s lap and into his father’s And Spock leaped off the ground and into Ford’s
Safe, Cilla thought, while lights shattered indigo Where they knew they’d always be safe
"GOOD?" Ford asked as they drove down the quiet roads toward ho, ?" He glanced down at the clock
"Thing?" Cilla cradled the rooster in her arms "Is that any way to speak about our child?" She patted it gently "I’ the barn I could use a clock out there, and this is pretty appropriate And I like having a memento from my first annual Fourth It’ll be way too late in the year for a cookout whento plan a party A big, sprawling, open-house-type thing Fire in the hearth, platters of food, flowers and candles I’d like to see what it’s like to have the house filled with people who aren’t working on it"
She stretched out her legs "But tonight, I’et home to the quiet"
"Almost there"
"Want to share the quiet with lanced at each other as he turned into her drive When he looked back, the headlights flashed over the red -"
"My truck!" She reared forward, gripping the dash "Oh, godda off her seat belt, shoving at the door before he’d come to a complete stop behind her truck
Loose clu in the backMore sparkled in the gravel, crunching under her feet as she ran
Ford had his phone out, punching in nine-one-one "Wait Cilla, just wait"
"EveryHe saped in the windshield, erupted into e choked her, she saw her headlights had been sood the alarm did me" She could have wept She could have screao in, check the alar to stay inside"
"It’s too much, Ford It’s just too damn much Vicious, vindictive, insane The crazy old bastard needs to be locked up"
"Hennessy? He’s out of town"
"He’s not I saw hiht, at the park He’s back And I swear to God if he could’ve used the bat or pipe or whatever he used here on me then and there, he would have"
She whirled around, riding on the fury And saw in the car’s headlights what Ford had seen hanging frorabbed her aro in We’ll wait for the cops"
"No" She shook off his hand, crossed frorass
She’d been six, Cilla recalled, when they marketed that particular doll She wore her hair-a sunny blond that hadn’t yet darkened-in a pair of ponytails tied with pink ribbons above her ears The ribbon sashing the pink-and-white ginghalossy patent leather of her Mary Janes
Her smile was as sunny as her hair, as sweet as the pink ribbons
He’d fashioned the noose out of clothesline, she noted A careful and precise job, so that the doll hung in horrible effigy Just above the ribbon sash, the cardboard placard read: WHORE
"Optional accessories-sold separately-for this one included a scale model tea set It was one ofSpock to hug "You’re right We should go inside, check the house just in case"
"Give me the keys I want you to wait on the veranda Please"
A polite word, Cilla thought How odd to hear the absolute authority under the courtesy "We know he’s not in there"
"Then it’s no problem for you to wait out on the veranda" To close the issue, he simply opened her purse, pulled out the keys
"Ford-"
"Wait out here"
The fact that he left the door open told Cilla he had no doubt she’d do what he ordered With a shrug, she stepped over to the rail, nuzzling Spock before she set him down No one had been in the house, so there was no har about it
Besides, from here she could stare at her truck, brood over the state of it Wallow in the brooding She’d felt so daht that truck, so full of anticipation when she loaded it up for her trip east
The first steps toward her drea’s okay," Ford said from behind her
"It’s really not, is it?" Some part of her, so off the co hands he laid on her shoulders But she stopped herself
"Do you kno it felt to me today? Like I was in a movie I don’t mean that in a bad way, just the opposite Little slices and scenes of a movie I actually wanted to be part of Not quite there yet, still pretty new on the set But starting to feel really feel co breath, let it out slowly "And now, this is reality Broken glass But the odd thing, the really odd thing That was me today It was me And this? Whatever this is directed at? That’s the ie The smoke and mirrors"
FOREST LAWN CEMETERY
1972
The air sat hot and still while the ser Graves, housing stars and reen And all the flowers, bloo for the dead
Janet wore black, the fraone brittle A wide black hat and dark glasses shaded her face, but that grief poured through the shields
"They can’t put the stone up yet The ground settles first But you can see it, can’t you? His name carved into white marble, the short years I had him I tried to think of a poem, a few lines to have carved, but how could I think? How could I? So I had theels Wept’ Just that They must have, I think They els that look down on hi?"
"Yes I’ve come here before"
"So you knoill look Hoill always look He was the love of my life All the men, husbands, lovers, they came and went But he? Johnnie He carief "I should have so ine what it is for a rave of her child and think, ’I should have’?"
"No I’m sorry"
"So many are They pour out their sorry toLater, it helps a little But these first days, first weeks, nothing touches it I’ll be there" She gestured to the ground beside the grave "I know that even now because I’ve arranged it Me and Johnnie"
"And your daughter My mother"
"On the other side of o her oay She wants everything You know that, and I have nothing for her now, not in these first days, first weeks Nothing to give But I’ll be there soon enough, in the ground with Johnnie I don’t knohen yet, I don’t kno soon it co it now I think of it every day How can I live wheninto the sea? I can never decide Grief blurs the mind"
"What about love?"
"It opens, when it’s real That’s why it can hurt so much You wonder if I could have stopped this If I hadn’t let him run wild People said I did"
"I don’t know Another boy died that night, and the third was paralyzed"
"Was that rief "Was it Johnnie’s? They all got into the car that night, didn’t they? Drunk, stoned Any one of theotten behind the wheel, and it wouldn’t have changed Yes, yes, I indulged hiave hiain" She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking "All again"
"I don’t blame you How can I? I don’t know Hennessy blames you"
"What more does he want? Blood?" She dropped her hands, threw out her arms And the tears slid down the pale cheeks "At least he has his son I have a name carved into white round
"I think he does want blood I think he wants mine"
"He can’t have any rave, ran her hands over it "There’s been enough blood"