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by
Dee Wolfe
2006 by Dee Wolfe
1.
Roy Stinsen's wedded wife, out of the picture at
last,
Reminded him that he was bored with books and magazines, and wandering
the yellow hills around Box Canyon,
The poplars growing out of Stinsen Springs providing
shade above his trailer,
all the shade there was to have,
Surrounding ground a parched and thirsty lot of weeds and pebbles,
Or the hamster run he called his trailer, the bleak and dim-lit tunnel
he had come to hate.
So with the sunset of a Saturday, he fired the pistons of his pickup truck
and went on west to Wendover, to the
of his tightly puckered theocracy, the constipation of its culture,
toward a weekend's liberation in a state of sin, a pot of gold
at the end of an asphalt rainbow.
The glitz of the place cast shadows far across the barren desolation,
to a gravel heap, an isolated weed, near to the echoing honky tonk,
The nasal twang of a cowpoke's clone with a gee-tar and a backup band all
shouting
Over the doddering heads of drunken sots fumbling for their wallets at the
tables,
While dumpling waitresses wandered face to face dispensing beer and bloody marys with a dourness distinct and sour.
Roy liked the mood; he liked the food, the booze, the racket and the anonymity
of crowds,
He loved to watch them roll the dice--seven out--line the way--and studied the
temperature of the tables;
Hot and cold they cycled with the dice and blessed and cursed the low-rollers
and the high, and the dice went hand to hand.
And some played only the pass line, some the field and others drunk or restless
bet the horn;
But Roy knew the smart ones bet their odds and never played the sucker bets.
Craps, and that was
He knew they rigged the sonsofbitches, aimed them at
the door for all the dolts to see and try,
The dolts who never knew to calculate the odds, who dreamed of miracles and
rainbows, gold forever tinkling in their pockets,
Out of the bowels of those rigged machines, the sonsofbitches.
And all the while he meditated, flying down a ribbon of pavement, all the
while, the Salt Flats loomed as white as doom.
All the while the pickup pushing 65 in the right lane, all the while the cross
winds pummeled from the south,
All the while he thought of his wife and the one daughter, and doom was on his
mind.
Oh, memories, like a hoard of begging bastard children all in tow behind him,
empty bowls waiting for him to fill them with his thoughts.
The wife, given to any belief that stopped an evening's copulation with her
husband like a knotted rag in a drain,
That was her belief.
The daughter changed her, the birthing ritual made of her a dedicated celibate,
And that was that, the gate stood barred.
And though he did desire her all the more she simply told him never.
So he watched his daughter grow, her pre-pubescent flirting, the touch of her
tender fingers on his arm,
Her innocent and willing smile.
In time she came to full adulthood and left them both behind her, a bitter
scowl that could not be erased, and her distended belly.
As Debra she had been her father's daily bread, but Debre,
now and with the lummox she had married she commenced to breed,
As much against her mother as her father, producing mewling offspring like a
factory.
He said--I'll put this all behind me--as he raced it to the border, the truck
an over-whelming hum and rush of wind,
Wendover dead ahead with all its glare and glitz and
yowling, stark against the desert night,
The Hidey Hole Casino looming like a grand cathedral to the tawdry tastes of
minor players,
The Salt Lake crowd with lowered tastes and lower expectations in their
sleeveless white-trash shirts and ponytails,
Tattoos, neanderthal vocabularies, bitchy wives gone
fat and stupid,
Bawling kids exhausted by the ride across a hundred miles of lunar desolation,
And here moved Roy into town and slowly through the the
rundown Utah side,
Onward, on into the promised light.
2.
At that moment as he took the second exit into town, he saw a pair of drifters
lugging it over the over pass,
A lurching viking of a man coming up from behind
toting sleeping bags and a
rucksack stuffed with God knew what.
While way ahead of him a girl not more than twelve she seemed, dressed like a
hippie, moved along at a faster clip,
Making their way into town, hoping he figured to catch a ride to gentler
climates on the coast.
Not until he'd passed her,
Who moved with a roll of tightest denim hips that caught his eye and made him
wince,
Yes, and the sudden lunge of desire in his dry age, indeed...
He pulled ahead and idled on the overpass and let her come up to the passenger
side,
To peer inside with questions on that face of innocence reminding him of
someone else he knew;
And then he knew that she looked like his daughter, and he leaned to open the
door for her,
And asked her in his good-old-Roy voice--would you like a ride?
And she said sure, she said--I'm awfully tired. I been walkin'
quite a piece, me'an my brother, Lem.
--Oh, you bet.
The straw blonde shags of hair convinced him as the viking
stumbled up to the bed of
Dumping the gear with a big wet grin, and moving to climb into the cab behind
his sister.
He felt the sweat of her in the heat of desert evening, yet to dissipate, the
smell of it through her clothes,
The tired tiny form of her, the great blue eyes that swam like oceans on her
oval face as she peered up with a smile.
--You don't have to do this, Mister.
And
Later,
--That's awful nice of you, Mister--
--Call me Roy--
--That's awful nice of you, Roy, but I hope you understand my brother and me we
ain't got no way to oblige you for your kindness.
Her brother said--we been on this freeway for a long long
spell.
--Schoolin's free in California, so we heard, she
said,
As Roy put the key in the lock and led them into a darkly curtained room, its
atmosphere of must and cleanser,
Tidy, clean and neat, the beds well made, the fixtures polished; a lamp clicked
on and filled the room with a deep upholstered glow,
As Roy moved to part the curtains staring down onto the lighted roof of the
Hidey Hole Casino,
Heard the toilet flush and out she came zipping up her denims with a bright and
innocent cheeriness.
--You mind if me and my brother shower off?
--Feel free, said
An hour later, bathed and dressed in cleaner clothes, the new friends ate like
starvelings, buffet fare stuffed into mashing teeth,
That Roy wondered when the last time was the sorry drifters had themselves a
dinner,
Learned they came from Arkansas, her brother's name was Lemuel,
and she was Deborah--from the Bible, as she put it.
Their folks were dead as they had--got themselves done kilt on the highway late
one night like a coupla skunks, she said through a
rubber steak.
--And we thinkin' well we're alone now, and Arkansas
don't have too much for us but bad old memories, so Lem
and I we hit the road about a month ago.
--Nobody else?
--Nobody else worth botherin' with, either crazy,
poor or that old pervert uncle lived in town.
She smiled again and met his eyes and brightened all the more as she gazed up
as if he were a kindly and beneficent deity,
Glanced sideways at her brother and then back at Roy as if to tell him
something he could not quite understand.
The night moved on and
And Roy smiled and nodded, feeling good to be so generous with a man who seemed
so grateful,
Moved through crowds of people to the table where the pit boss and his stick
men ruled a kingdom of felt,
The dice in tumbling play, the chips scattered, paper money sliding down a slot
to vanish in the very guts of the Hidey Hole,
The pit boss yowling--we're out on 9. Mark the 9. Place your bets, while stick
men shuffled chips and dice across the board,
And pushed a pair to the hot shooter flinging them out to the far end of the
table--8! Mark the 8,
While Roy watched with a boy's fascination, the dice kept playing on the 9, and
he beside the shooter,
Who'd bet his odds on the 9, the six, eight and the five, and rolled and
rolled, and took his chips with every winning roll.
--I do this all the time, he said to
Twenty seven rolls of the dice and never a seven showed to mar the game.
The point made at last and a happy man went off to the window to cash his
winnings in.
He looked over and down to see her pretty as a dandelion--Hi there, little one.
--You ain't so big yourself, you know. But you look
awful tough and wiry to me.
--You think?
--I think yer one of these little guys who can take
on a big guy when he has to.
He had taken a hundred dollars out and nearly handed it over to the nearest
stickman when a better thought arrived,
And turned back to her--Where's your brother?
--I knew you'd be askin'. He's off someplace spendin' your money.
--Want to go for a walk?
--Back to the room?
--Would that be your idea?
--Sure it would be my idea, she said and found his hand.
Not long afterward, too soon as dire events roll over the land like devils
dancing in trembling anticipation
Roy pressed to the willing body of the diminutive Deborah, kissing her salty
eye-lids, fumbling for the snap of her well-worn denims,
Sliding them down the naked thighs, the musky center of things behind her
underwear,
And she, like a veteran of the wars removed him from his clothing, and he
mounted between her widespread thighs,
And worked her like the little muscular pony she was, and felt a gratitude for
love he had not known in several years,
And she kissed him, and kept on kissing every part of him and said--I loved you
from the moment I laid eyes on you. I want to live with you and I don't want no
one else.
They lay together mingling sweat upon the bed despite the air conditioner, and
And she returned a whisper saying she--would not want nuthin'
better.
It was then a knock came at the door, and it was Lem
asking--anybody in there? Sis, you in there? Let me in if you're in there.
A whispered--nuthin'. Let him go away on his own.
We'll find him later. Where's he got to go but here?
After a moment then the knocking ceased, and Lem was
heard to shuffle off back down the hallway,
As shallow breathing in the room then mingled with the constant rush of the air
conditioner, the parted curtains and a roof light stabbing through the darkened
room.
3.
Come morning, Lem leered at them with an accusing eye
across the breakfast table.
--Didn't I give you a place to sleep, last night? And didn't I buy you dinner
and give you money? And isn't this your breakfast I'm paying for this morning?
--Well, yeah, said Lem.
--Then can it with the suspicions.
--You don't know my sister like I do.
--Whut about me, Lem?
--I know your ways you little schemin' cunt.
--Keep it down.
--Okay, we slept together, and we was in the room when you came knockin.
--I found me a man and I'm gonna live with him in his
home, Lem, and I suggest you find yourself a gal and
come and see us once in awhile,
The tears upon the face of the abandoned Lem welled
in a swelter of anger and sadness mingled,
Staring at his sister, knowing but disbelieving, down to his empty plate and
upward toward an open window of the cafe facing north into bleakness.
--Whut'm I gonna do? Where'm I gonna go?
With a ragged sigh
Time had come to leave the Hidey Hole, and Roy and his new companions headed
east back to the Desert of the Saints,
Through rising heat of mid-morning, devils all of dust arising to a sudden
dance of victory to the south.
Past Knolls, Aragonite and Delle, on toward the
Rowley turn-off, south then toward Johnston's Pass through Goshute
territory,
Dust accumulating in the pockets of the roaring pickup down a long dirt road,
an exit from the turn off to Box Canyon,
Hills of yellow grass and sagebrush, cactus, juniper pine and canyon whistlers,
meadowlarks alighting broken fences.
Farther up the road between two mountains sat a trailer half under shade, a
bright reflective white,
A single cloud passed over, sudden dimming of the brilliance, ominous and
scorching,
Sunlight came again, the trailer shown like snow beneath the waving poplar
trees that drank the ooze from Stinsen Springs.
And
--No doubt about it, Deborah said and flashed her hate at Lem,
Lem, who'd taken on a pall of sadness, and the heavy
understanding he was odd-man out and should have seen it coming.
--It's beautiful!
Deborah slid across the seat behind her brother and whirled around in the calm
desert air and buzzing of a distant cicada.
--It's home to me, said
4.
The long, slow bake of August moved into September cool, and green leaves stark
upon the whitened fields gone dry,
And every day anticipated night, and night came with a revelation of fulfilled
and unfulfilled desire,
Surreptitious in the sweating darkness and confinement where the walls
themselves seemed capable of hearing softest breathing.
Lem was right there in the room adjacent, never quite
asleep, resentful anger a slow smolder,
Silent as lightning flashing on the far horizon, sullen as a cloud of sunset
entrails moving overhead,
He kept a his silence, said nearly nothing with the passing of the day, sat to
an evening meal, polite but saying only thank you,
Now and then a study on his sister, trying to read her thoughts.
The trio toured the property far into the hill above the trailer, moving along
a trail between short junipers, and over stones,
And Lem reached down to fetch a horned toad sluggish
on the trail, geometric in its colors or Apache sunset so depicted on a blanket
he had seen, and said so.
--Careful of snakes, said
A brown vole waddled across the open area like a wind-up toy, all three watched
it disappear behind a milk-weed.
--Something you both need to see, Said Roy.
He took them to an open space and to a small, gaping square hole framed in
timbers,
Blackness and the scent of minerals arose from its cool depths.
--That hole drops a hundred feet, and there's a wooden ladder but I wouldn't
count on it to save you.
--Then it's best we stay away from here, said Deborah--don't come here at all.
Lem in fascination gazed into the construct of the
hole as if it were a hungry mouth and indiscriminate.
Lem and Deborah were not speaking through the next
few days.
--That's what you think. You don't know my sister.
--You keep telling me this but I think I have come to know her some.
--Just you give it time. She shows her colors by and by. First, she starts to
brood.
That may be but Roy knew all about those brooding women, moody and sullen and
never a spoken reason why,
Until he found himself embroiled in tantrums, hurt looks and objects thrown,
the injured party through a slamming door in sudden exit,
Dangling quiet all too quiet in a room where he surveyed the wake, and
questioned, ever questioned, answers never there.
--Whatever she is, he spoke to the hillside, Deborah ain't
the wife nor daughter.
Yes, and Deborah glanced up smiling when he came back to the trailer, where she
sat cross-legged in the dirt and dug with a stick.
--What're you up to?
--Thinkin', she said in her childlike way.
--And what would that be in particular?
--Nuthin', she arched her head and drew the likeness
of a face and mussed it back to nothing.
She turned to
--I told him not to worry.
--Worry? What's he got to worry over?
--You, actually.
--He don't care about me. All he wants is food and a free ride and that's Lem all over the canyon.
Lem came off the hill, a long and skinny hippie in
his beard and viking blonde hair, his grubby clothes
and work-boots,
Kicking along as he came, a big wet grin of accusation on his face,
And knelt to get a pebble and fling it to the far south west,
Grabbed another lobbed it just as far, and another and then another.
--What in hell you think yer doin',
Lem?
--Scarin' up rattlesnakes.
--He supposed to do that,
--Free country.
--Hah! You're damn lucky it's a free country, Lem.
--So'er you, Sis.
Lem kept going back to the open hole of the mine and
staring down into it, though
--It's not a good place and the ground slopes down to it, and you could slide
in and fall to your death.
--I smell something down there like a rottin' animal
that must have slipped and fallen.
--You smell nothing, Lem.
--I swear, and it's gettin' worse every day.
--I don't like to go there. It's too risky. Wish you'd stop. Plenty other
places to visit in this desert.
--How bad does it smell? asked Deborah out of the blue.
--Worse than it was, you could drop a few more bodies in it at this point and
it wouldn't make no difference.
Women were all just like each other down to their little bare feet, make a
stencil and stamp a hundred thousand of them;
And the same guiding principle must govern all, the guiding of the missile that
they wanted and they hated,
Daughters, mothers, sisters, wives and lovers, all insisted on the one thing
Daddy couldn't give them,
Though he broke and bent the rules for one and all.
But they were cats they were, and just like cats they wanted two conflicting
things both simultaneously,
They wanted it and they wanted away from it, and ultimately the power of the
male decided for them.
Here was an ancient law that lay beyond mere rules and regulations of
prescriptive belief in Santa Claus, or Marx or feminism,
An elemental force it was and present at creation, a brooding demon, a looming
presence vast, eternal;
So it was that people never altered generation after generation, because the
one thing dangled before them and they wanted it,
The same forbidden fruit it always was, so did Roy Stinsen
brood beneath the rumble of his swamp cooler.
The days clocked by and so September softened up the unforgiving desert, sunrise
silver on a colder world,
And Roy said to Lem--someday I'll plough this land
and see if I can make it grow a few good crops.
--This land is alkalai and barren, muttered Lem. Just like certain women I am too familiar with--
And stopped to see that Deborah stood there having joined them.
Knelt she to the ever running spigot of the spring and filled a metal cup and
drank the cold delicious water, filled and drank again,
The icy water spilling past her lips and chin and down her neck, and cupped her
hands and slapped her face with a little gasp of pleasure.
--Anything'll grow in this good land, said Deborah.
--No it damn well won't, Lem spat. This land it kills
and it kills and kills and it thrives on killing.
--Whuddo you know about it?
And she walked away, her fine hips rolling in a way that brought a tremble to
the likes of
He wanted her and he wanted her happy and he didn't want Lem
anywhere but out of the picture.
5.
The act of sin awakens evil like a sleeping beast to rise beyond some golden
mean and blot the scene of one's tranquility,
And fills the soul with trembling dread that only hurry and scurry can quell,
Which in the deepest dreaming hurtles back with nightmare and with prophecy,
and dire consequences.
Little sins arouse the little beasts of tawdriness, embarrassment, and small
regret,
And yet the cup remains unbroken, the little sins that one can live with, one
can fix.
Commit the big sin, then, and see the cup is shattered, and it is broken ever
more and can't be un-broke,
No matter what some glib young egg-head tells you in his smugness, that
mathematics in the age of elastic universe,
Proving travel back and forth through time, one can never un-break one's
particular cup.
The deed done lies forever as a monument to monumental folly.
--I can save myself, said
The rest of one's life is spent in a house of tunnels and mirrors.
For the grave sinner the night allows no rest but fitful visions in a
half-sleep,
and with the full moon comes a lunacy of dreaming,
The moon, a great round stone exuding vapors in a sky of palpable depth, that
you could reach into it and lose yourself in the vertigo,
Expressionless, a cool and gray cadaver to its own ephemeral grave in a long
slow ride to the far horizon, the ominous poise of moonlight,
Forcing from the desert floor the sour musk of decay, the sickening fragrance
of wilting vegetation,
Grasses strangely lit in phosphors, the distant hills gone ghostly in their
glow.
Lem would rise then and waken Roy and Deborah, and
they could hear him shuffling into his boots,
And hear him striding down the hall of the trailer, out to the side-door,
letting the screen bang shut behind him,
The rhythmic pounding of his march over the hard ground off into some distance
they could only guess at.
Only then did
It was Deborah who woke him again, moving around in bed, and he was startled.
--Where you going?
--Nowheres.
Her small hand found his heaving chest and patted for assurance.
--Everything's gonna' be okay. I know it is.
--And
Her silence acquiesced, and so he drew his breath and told the darkness There's
a reason why that stench arises from the mineshaft, love.
--My wife located me, somehow and drove the distance just to badger and berate
me to my face, and brought along her dog,
--Her yapping, stupid poodle I could never stand; and day and night that
creature out of hell crouched before me growling and yapping,
--So that I began to think I'd gone insane, and took the mutt and dropped it
down the mineshaft 'til the yapping stopped abruptly with a thud.
--That old gal always loved her poodle more than me and stepped to fetch the
damned beast, and lost her footing at the goddamned hole,
--And went right in as if she'd bet against the house and knew the rules of
gravity and lost and paid the dealer.
--Down she went with a funny shriek, and more surprise than fear, and hit the
bottom with a satisfying slap that sounded like a symphony to me.
--Then, said Deborah, I will tell you my secret, too, and know I love you
--Me and Lem off every exit of a dozen interstates,
we told them people we was siblings so's they'd pity
us and feed us,
Never bothered with the truth because we figured then no one would help us, but
the truth is me and Lem are man and wife.
As if she'd bruised him
Then
-I have done some sinning in my life and rolled the dice against my better
judgment, but never have I tried to take another man's property. He's right.
You are a schemin' cunt. I
can't imagine you've done less than spread your legs a hundred times since
Come the morning
Proclaiming dry bones in the valley! The universe, she is a spinning wheel of
stars and we're all with her spinning on our graves and in them.
--Chance is all the meaning we can garner for ourselves. Gambling is my gospel
and the dice they are my book of scripture! My catechism! My call to prayer!
--They say the corpse of Christ, Himself was nailed above a dice game played to
divvy up His robe among the Roman guard.
--And so, my friends, we roll to see who gets the bride, the loser takes her
and the winner takes a hike one way or another.
--We'll roll to see who shoots, Lem, I as I assume
you know this game, and Lem said with a nod I just
don't want her anymore.
--You're gonna' get her if you seven out, old son. As
you may know I do not sleep with married women if I know it;
--You, of course, you never bothered telling me because your stomach filled
meant more to you than she does, ever did, or will.
--Ain't entirely true, said Lem.
She once upon a time meant more to me than you or she combined could ever
dream, however fabulous. I still do feel a tiny crumble of affection there
although I do confess I'm weary of her damn confounded strategizin'!
Roy picked up the pair of bones and shook them like the talisman of his
devouring belief, and tossed them tumbling 'til they stopped, and studied them,
and said
-Now that is what they call Big Dick, my little dears, a hard ten, and it's a
difficult point to make,
Although a soft ten serves just fine in craps. However, Lem,
the law of diminishing returns demands that I will roll a seven.
They tumbled again and now a six came up, and then a nine, a five, a four, and
then another six came clattering into line.
-Oh, said
The gape of one seduced and dissipated, ran with a sickly rouge the whole
joyous countenance as he was in his element, and threw.
-Seven's comin'!
--What about me, then? Deborah screamed to be heard. I have a say in this!
--Shut up, said
He studied her and rolled the dice once more and looked and saw that he had won
and smiled at Lem and said you get the booby prize,
my boy.
--Guess that means we hit the road.
--I guess it does but tell you what I'll do. I'll drive you both to the coast
since that's your destination, I believe.
--Do, said Lem, his face all glum, got up and slammed
the door behind him, heading out, as Roy met the eyes of Deborah, glistening
with tears,
Who watched him as he pocketed the dice and pat the pocket with a smile.
6.
The day wound by and Roy whistled a silly tune he knew, a song his wife had
liked and played incessantly,
And he had never liked it and now he did and wondered at the ironies like
oceans under the human crust,
And wondered that a simple tune could anchor its feeble notes upon the neurons
and stay attached and in the mind
When other memories went by like water through a sieve.
And
And goodbye
Roll the bones in every town
And roll a whore in a gossamer gown
And pay the lady what she's earned
And never complain that you were burned.
Such were the rules and ways of Washoe like a bagel peppered in poppy seeds
beneath the brilliance of the cloudless desert sky,
And that long highway a blue ribbon winner cruising along on a comforting sway
of wind and tires humming,
And money to burn and feasts to devour and drinks for all, and the merriment of
gamblers parting with their pay in joyous abandon.
Give it up to the king of gamblers, folks: good old Roy Stinsen,
King of Stinsen springs,
Lord of all Box Canyon, who would wager his wife and her stupid dog and risk
his daughter's loyalty and loving,
All for the damnable thrill of moving men and women like the chips on an
artificial turf of deep and smoky felt.
It was then he saw through the kitchen window while he washed the dishes, Lem and Deborah off together whispering.
She whispered, and Lem gazed back upon the kitchen
window and Roy's face in shadow, whistling through an open screen,
And Lem turned and whispered to Deborah, and Roy saw
her shrug and wondered what they'd planned;
But certainly he must never pause his whistling as they must never know he
suspected them.
Plans, plans and schemes and strategies, conniving women in their disadvantage,
And some pathetic dope of a dangling male to go along in hope that a prize will
come his way, and men were slobbering dogs.
In the chill late hour of early October, that very night, Roy found them at the
mine shaft with his flashlight,
Trying to see into the depths of it, perhaps after evidence like amateur
detectives, and it was too funny.
--That's a long drop down there, kids, he said, and startled them both that Lem nearly lost his footing and fell in.
--Funny, said Roy. That's exactly what I had in mind, and pointed the barrel of
his shotgun at them.
--I keep this tool under my bed. Comes in awfully handy out here where nobody
ever goes.
And there was real fear in those young faces, terror he reveled in because they
must have sensed they were in their final moments.
--You will jump, Lem or I will shoot you where you
stand and you fall the same.
But Lem didn't move, and Roy aimed and squeezed and
sent a round of buckshot over the way,
The scatter drove a ball through Deborah's wrist and sent her to her knees with
a shriek.
Lem fell back on the soil and lost his foothold,
sliding slowly toward the hole, inexorably,
And too weak to hold himself out of it he was like a man being swallowed by the
open mouth of the earth,
And a moment later there was no one in the mouth of the hole, and so far gone
he could not object enough to be heard.
As for Deborah, she was on her knees, holding her wrist and sobbing for her
life, and Roy told her
--Beg for it, Slut.
--Please, Roy. Please don't kill me.
--Truth is, Deb, I don't like women, and I really don't like women who nag,
connive, cheat on their men, screw anything that moves unless they are licensed
whores.
--Roy, I love you!
--Ploy won't work, my little one. Now, I want you to jump right in and see if
you survive the drop. One in four chances you will.
--God help me!
--The god of chance saves no one, Deborah. He does let them play the game.
Goodbye.
--No!
--Yes, just let me nudge you along.
And then he saw how she trembled and cried and pissed herself in fright, and it
was all so very satisfying,
And he nudged and nudged until she was in the hole and hanging by her fingers,
her sobs an echo in the depths of the mine.
Then, with a little ironic laugh, he stepped on her fingers.
7.
Roy slept the sleep of the blessed until jostled awake, and the muzzle of a
pistol in his face,
And started up but they pinned him back against the bed where the Deborah's
fragrance lingered,
Her backpack still against the wall, and Lem's
backpack in the other room now being gone through by others.
And Roy recognized his daughter, Debra--excuse me, Debre--and
her current husband and her spineless ex, a soft man with a masturbator's chin
and moustache,
And sons and daughters like a tribe of Israel milling about in the room, arms
crossed, and some were practically adult,
That Roy wondered how many years had it been, then?
--Where's my mother, Roy? Debre demanded from the
foot of the bed.
--I think you refer to me as father.
--I think, she nearly screamed, and then her voice diminished. I think you lost
that franchise long ago.
--Why would your mother be here?
--Because she called and told me she was coming here, and she was bringing her
dog.
--Look around you, Debre. There is no dog.
Debre stared upon the obscenity of her father a long long time before she spoke again,
Her face a mask of rage and tears bleeding through on years of torment and a
father she hated.
--You threw them down the mine shaft, just like you told me you would do with
mother years and years ago just after a fight you had.
--Remember? And you walked me to the mine shaft, and you told me it went down a
thousand feet and you could drop her down,
--And not a soul would ever know or care than she had fallen forever and ever
down that hole and never to be seen again.
--And that was the night you came into this very room and touched me, and about
to molest your own damned daughter
--But she caught you in the act of it...
--Ungrateful little bitch! And who do you think you are to assume I'd ever get
on with my own daughter,
--Let alone a homely thing like you all fat and pimply and smelling of gum and
sweat and flow and fluid and glands--
A sudden fist came into his face and loosened the teeth and cut the inside
cheek, smarting his eyes to tears,
And he glanced up to see the oldest son in fury,
--But I'm your grandpa, boy.
Mattered not. They hoisted him to his feet and dragged him out into the
sunlight, and the sweet October cool.
Husband number one, in wagging hat of straw and wiggling thighs went on ahead
up hill to find the mine-shaft,
Saying he thought he heard a woman crying in the distance, but Roy called him a
stupid ass for saying so, and called it an eagle he had heard,
While husband number two fetched rope from his pickup, and Roy wondered if they
were going to hang him without evidence.
They all trooped up to the mine shaft where beheld to one and all was spattered
blood drops dried but visible as only blood can be,
And someone's son had found the shotgun, smelled the barrel and told them this
is fresh.
--Tell us the meaning of all this, Roy.
--That's too easy. Someone cut himself shaving and fell down there. I don't
know how many have made that mistake.
Husband number two with sledge had driven a stake deep into the hard ground and
wrapped the rope around it tight,
And was about to lower himself into the hole when Debre
stopped him.
--Whatever it is down there, you don't want your fingerprints on top of it.
Best to lower Roy in that hole until the cops arrive.
--You can't call the cops from here.
--Pay phone's down the road, Roy.
She stared into the blackness of the hole that dropped however far she could
not say, that tunneled off in two directions.
--Come clean, now, Dad. You know you tossed her down that hole.
--I didn't toss her. Honest, kid. She fell as she was trying to retrieve the
goddamned dog I dropped.
--You killed her poodle?
--Who wouldn't?
--How many others in there, Roy?
He arched an eyebrow in his sullenness and sudden silence, glancing off into
the hills he might escape to,
But for the guns trained on him, and rope there at his feet, the implication
clear.
--We don't want to keep our eyes on you and so the plan is we are going to put
you in the hole and drop you down,
--And you can stay there 'til the cops come calling but we don't know what else
to do with you.
And then they tied the rope around his waist and eased him in, unpeeled his
stubborn fingers from the frame
Where Deborah's fingers dug and tore the wood before she fell,
And lowered him the length of the wooden ladder long since rotted loose and
useless,
Down into the dimming light and mineral smell and rot of flesh decayed, the
aperture above him smaller and smaller,
Until he'd found the floor and looked back up in surprise to see a drop of only
fifty feet, how quickly one forgets.
But it wasn't until he'd let the rope back up he knew he could have played
them,
Dragged the rope off down a tunnel and tied it firmly, but the sudden jar of
his foot against a corpse unnerved him
And rope went up too quickly, so he figured they had ascertained his tricks.
--We won't abandon you, Dad. When the police arrive we'll all be back to let
you out again.
Debre's voice echoed in the darkness.
8.
Stench of death-meat overpowered as Roy moved among the corpses in a litter on
the floor.
He found a stack of timbers down one tunnel and managed to get a small fire
going with a hideous gleam
That lit the grinning face of Lem, the glassy eyes
alive with fire, dance of shuddering murder;
Blood slow dripping still, and Roy marveled at it. Dragged the corpse beyond
the light and left it.
And he began to meditate upon a patch of yellow light and saw a possiblity.
He dug the dice from a pocket and held them with a benevolent smile,
And sat cross-legged by the fire he had made, and rattled them upon the stone
floor,
A six, and that was hopeful for an easy point, and easy win, and how he loved
an easy win--what else could draw him
To mystery personified, the game of the bones, deceptive in its simpleness,
A universe without a god to meddle in it, perfect enough without one if the
rules were absolute?
Amid the festering swell of the dead he rolled and rolled awaiting the seven
yet to appear.
He never saw it coming being as he was the King of Stinsen
Springs and Lord of all he surveyed throughout Box Canyon,
The iron bar crashing down upon his skull, the lights blinked out, the world
gone from him in an instant,
And did not know that it was Deborah who had survived the fall of fifty little
feet by falling on her husband,
Who had suffered nothing worse than a sprained ankle and a slug-hole in her
wrist,
Who had heard them overhead and tried to call but she was weak, too weak to
yell,
And thought, they plan to lower him down and I will hide and then I'll get
revenge and,
And limped around in the tunneled darkness feeling for anything, a tool, a
weapon,
Who watched as Roy descended on a rope and waited in the darkness never
breathing.
She watched him build a fire, heard him whistle a tune, observed him in a
corner urinating like the king of apes;
And when the dice began to tumble over the earth her chance had arrived for he
would be preoccupied.
Now she sat and stared into the fire, surrounded by corpses, awaiting the
arrival of the law to save her,
While the open eyes of Roy dead to the world, looked on in mock surprise as if
he'd won a fortune,
The bleeding wound of his skull cracked open like a coconut, brain and bone
reflected in fire light,
And then she knew at that same instant why it was the dice were known as bones.
Her small shoes caked with the blood of her own dead husband, she would wear
that blood to the end of her days.