"This one?"
"No."
A dinosaur next. "This one?"
"No."
Then a bird. "How about this one?"
"Noooooooo!"
And finally the one she wanted all along. The gingerbread man. Even if they were vanilla cookies.
"Yes!"
Darlin' fished the last of the cookie batter off the beater with the tip of her pinky.
"Do you think that animal lady will eat a little man?"
"I don't know. I don't know if she's ever had a cookie before."
"Why's the lady here?"
"Papa's helping her. You heard him."
"Can I have the other one now?"
"Sure, honey."
She tapped the second beater free of loose batter and handed it to her daughter. Conversation closed. She thought, well, that was easy.
In the morning the man has removed the broken bowl and what little the mice have left behind and hauled her upright again. There is very little slack but some. She works her wrists back and forth trying to loosen the bolts but they have remained solid and unyielding and she has been at this all day, so that her wrists are raw. She has tried steady pressure. She has tried sudden jerks. All she has attained are bleeding wrists. She accepts the pain and tries again.
She senses something and stops, listens. There is someone at the door. The sliver of afternoon sunlight at the bottom of the door flickers with movement. She scents the air.
It is not the man. The man wears a scent of flowers and musk. She stands silent and a moment passes. No one enters. Then she hears voices, the woman's voice far away and angry - and then the boy's voice, defensive, just outside the door.
She thinks she knows why he has been here.
"Brian! Young man? What do you think you're doing!"
He turned to face his mom all hot and bothered standing on the porch with his sister.
"I was just trying to see if she was okay."
"That what you want me to tell your father? Get over here. Right now."
Hell, it was a disappointment anyhow. He'd gotten off the bus and made record time up the driveway to the fruit cellar but once he got there he found that the door was hung too true against its frame to provide a spot to see through. What he needed was a knothole or something. There wasn't one.
He stood up and snagged his shoulder-bag and trudged to the house.
His sister bit an arm off a headless cookie.
"Want a little man?"
She offered him one. His mother was still glowering at him with her arms folded across her chest like some guy in the military but his sister seemed pretty much oblivious to that. He took the cookie, placed it flat in the palm of his hand and gave it a karate chop with the other.
"Hey," said Darlin', "you're supposed to eat the head first!"
"Not me. I chop 'em. Thanks, sis."
He walked past them through the screen door his mom held open for him and headed upstairs to his room.
Not a bad cookie. He bit off a leg and chewed.
They were headed home in the Escalade and as usual her father was on the cell phone.
"Hell, Dean, I hated to have to write a check that cost me a good neighbor but if someone had to, glad to be of service. Sure. Sure. Think nothing of it. I'd be happy to help you through one of those bottles but I've got a family thing at home tonight. 'Nother time, right? Good man. Okay, I'll be talking to you. See ya, Dean."
He snapped the phone shut.
Her father looked very pleased with himself, she thought. She didn't need to know why.
He reached into his coat pocket and took out a pack of Winstons and his lighter. Shook one free and lit up. Smoke drifted her way.
"Dad? Could you not? I mean, I don't think it's good..."
He shot her a look. But then hit the console button and rolled down the window and flicked the damn thing out. She'd won that one at least.
"Better?" he said.
"Better."
When Brian saw them pull in he was off the porch before they got the car doors open, wearing his most ingratiating smile. Peg would see through it. Dad wouldn't. And it was Dad he needed to please just in case his mother mentioned that fruit cellar shit.
As ever the past few years since he turned thirteen, Dad offered his hand. He looked to be in a real good mood. Excellent. Excellent. They shook hands. They shook hands.
"Don't forget the dogs," he said to Peg. They were already barking.
"It's Brian's turn."
She moved past them toward the porch. She didn't didn't look to be in a real good mood. Tough shit. look to be in a real good mood. Tough shit.
"Brian?"
"On it!" he said.
What he thought was, fucking dogs. fucking dogs.
He walked to the barn and slid open the door and the dogs set to barking like he was some fucking ax murderer come to chop the shit out of them. The dogs didn't like Brian any more than he liked them - they weren't so nuts about his father either as a matter of fact. Particularly Agnes, the mother, who would get so worked up she'd take a nip out of George and Lily, born of her own litter. The other two dogs gave her plenty of personal space. Just like they were doing now. They just stood off together to one side of the cage, her on the other, in front of the doghouse, making one hell of a racket, barking and growling.
"Oh shut up, assholes!"
But they weren't about to.
He was supposed to hose down the food bowls and the water bowls outside the cage but nobody was going to notice if he didn't. So instead what he did was he grabbed the hose off its hook. They were afraid of that. They backed off a little when he opened the cage door. He pointed the nozzle at them like he was going to use it on them and they backed off further. He squirted some water into each of the water dishes and then picked up the food dishes and shut the cage door and filled them with kibble and brought them back inside.
He set down the dish in front of the doghouse and Agnes growled and then had the balls to actually snap at him. Once. Once. He pointed the hose at her. For a moment they were eye to eye. He pointed the hose at her. For a moment they were eye to eye.
"You better cut that out, bitch," he said. "You want the hose? You want the fuckin' hose?"
She didn't. The dog blinked and the fight went out of her eyes. The moment passed. He'd won again, he thought. He always won. Agnes went back to her own dish and started slobbering away. Brian bent down low and peered inside the doghouse. This This one he hardly ever saw. Probably scared of Agnes too. one he hardly ever saw. Probably scared of Agnes too.
"Where's the baby?" he said. "Where's the baby? She sleepin'?"
It was dark in there but he could just see the outline of her and saw the old checkered blanket move a bit. He could hear her panting.
He figured she'd either come out when he left to get her food or else she wouldn't. Didn't matter to him either way. He'd give it one last try though. He liked watching her eat.
"C'mon, girl. You gonna have some food, baby?"
He thought later that the low growl should have warned him off but it didn't. So that when the lunge came and the teeth snapped just inches from his goddamn face he fell back onto his ass and scraped his hands against rough concrete and something else - something hard at first and then crumbling soft against his left palm.
Dogshit. Jeezus. Jeezus.
"You little son of a bitch!" he said.
He'd like to have beat the shit out of her. But he was pretty damn quick to get out of there instead.
Belle watched him get out of his dress shirt and slacks and handed him some cutoffs and a work shirt.
"Signed and sealed," he said. "Not another resident within three miles now."
"Well, you finally have your own little country, don't you?"
She was remembering that slap last night. Still the sarcasm wasn't like her. Not with him. But he didn't seem to notice.
"My question is, can we really afford it, Chris?"
"Of course we can. Everything quiet around here today?
"I haven't heard a thing."
"You look in on her?"
"No. Why would I?"
He ignored that too. Slipped into his work shirt.
"Go down and boil some water for those buckets, Belle, okay? Let's get to it."
By the time Cleek got his shoes on and came downstairs she was already at the gas stove firing up two big chili-pots full of water. Darlin' was at the kitchen table, a plate of cookies shaped like little men in front of her. She was messing with two of them - walking them around, making them jump, flip, zoom across the table. He considered telling her not to play with her food but decided to hell with it, let it go. Peg sat across from her reading a magazine. He could hear something tinny from her iPod. Which meant it was turned up loud.
Brian walked in looking kind of flustered.
"You feed the dogs?"
"Yeah."
"I need you to go out there again. Get the pooper-scooper off the beam and bring it in here. Brian? I smell something."
Brian looked down at his hand.
"I thought I had it hosed all off of me. I slipped and fell into some dog turds."
"Well, go wash your hands for godsakes. Then get me that scooper."
Darlin' made believe that she was the animal woman. She was the animal woman and the men were all running away from her but she was bigger and faster and rawr! rawr! she said and grabbed one up and the little man looked at her and said she said and grabbed one up and the little man looked at her and said noooooo! Noooooo! Don't eat meeeeeee! noooooo! Noooooo! Don't eat meeeeeee!
She bit his head off anyway.
He pulled the scoop off the beam and noticed on the shelf beside it his father's old hand-crank drill. His father had an electric drill now of course but it was his habit to save everything whether it was going to be used again or not.
Brian thought he might have a very good use for it indeed.
He popped a stick of Wrigley's in his mouth.
He worked fast and hard too because it was more difficult than he might have guessed to get the thing through three-quarters of an inch of weathered wood and he was nervous as hell because if somebody glanced out the window and saw him out here doing this there was going to be big trouble. But in a while that seemed like a long while he had a hole drilled at the bottom left-hand corner of the door about two feet above the base. He brushed off the shavings and got down and had a look.
At first all he saw were her legs, dim in the darkness of the cellar. Then he adjusted his position. He saw her thighs, her belly streaked with grime, her breasts. He blinked and looked up again and saw her face and rolled away onto his back as though struck by sudden lightening.
She was staring straight at him.