Читать книгу My Absolute Darling: The Sunday Times bestseller - Gabriel Tallent, Gabriel Tallent - Страница 8

IT IS MID-APRIL, ALMOST TWO WEEKS SINCE THE MEETING with Anna. Blackberries have clambered into the old apple trees and are knitted into a wildly blooming canopy. Quail mince in nervous coteries, topknots bobbing, while sparrows and finches go wheeling and banking among the trunks. She comes out of the orchard and through the staked raspberry field to Grandpa’s trailer. Streaks of mold have run down the panels. The aluminum coping around the windows is caulked with moss. Pockets of leaf litter grow cypress shoots. She hears Rosy, Grandpa’s old dachshund/beagle mutt, heave herself up and come to the door, shaking herself and setting her collar to tinkling. Then the door is thrown open, and Grandpa stands in the doorway and says, “Hey there, sweetpea.”

She climbs up the steps and leans the AR-10 against the doorjamb. It is her gun, a Lewis Machine & Tool rifle with a U.S. Optics 5-25x44 scope. She loves it, but it’s too damn heavy. Rosy hops up and down, flopping her ears.

“Who’s a good dog?” Turtle asks Rosy.

Rosy shakes herself excitedly, wagging her tail.

Grandpa settles at the foldout table, pours himself two fingers of Jack. Turtle sits down opposite him, takes her Sig Sauer from a concealment holster in her jeans, drops the magazine, and leaves the gun on the table, locked open, because Grandpa says that when a man plays cribbage with his granddaughter, the two of them should be unarmed.

He says, “Have you come to play some cribbage with your grandpa?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“You know why you like cribbage, sweetpea?”

“Why, Grandpa?”

“Because cribbage, sweetpea, is a game of low animal cunning.”

She looks up at him, smiling a little, because she does not at all know what he means.

“Ah, sweetpea,” he says, “I’m joking with you.”

“Oh,” she says, and allows her smile to overtake her whole face, turning a little away from him, touching her thumb to her teeth shyly. It feels so good to have Grandpa teasing with her, even if she doesn’t understand.

He is looking at her Sig Sauer. He reaches across the table, sets a hand on it, lifts it up. The slide is locked back, the barrel is exposed, and he inspects it for fouling and touches it with a finger pad for grease, turning it this way and that way in the light. “Your daddy takes care of this gun for you?” he says.

She shakes her head.

“You take care of this gun for yourself?” he says.

“Yeah.”

He swings the takedown lever and drops the slide catch. Carefully he removes the slide from the frame, sits inspecting the rails.

“But you never fire this thing,” he says.

Turtle picks up a deck of cards, shucks it out of the case, splits the deck, shuffles and bridges them. The cards slither with satin-finish friction. She racks the deck sharply against the tabletop.

“You do fire it,” he says.

“Why is it a game of low animal cunning?” she says, breaking the deck and examining the halves in either hand.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “That’s just what they say.”

Every night she disassembles the gun and cleans it with a brass-bristled brush and with cotton patches. Grandpa sits looking into the clean, well-worn rails, and then he returns the slide to the frame. His fingers shake, holding the slide in place against the recoil spring. He seems to have forgotten how to engage the takedown lever, sits looking at the catches and levers as if hesitating, as if for a moment he has lost his bearings on the gun. Turtle does not know what to do. She sits with the halves of the deck still in her hands. Then he finds the takedown lever and tries it twice before he manages to get the tight-fit steel tab to rotate, and then he pushes it into place, his hands shaking, and lets the slide relax forward. He sets the gun aside and looks at her. Turtle shuffles, bridges, slaps the deck down in front of him.

“Well,” he says. “You’re not your old man, that’s for sure.”

“What?” Turtle says, curious.

“Oh,” Grandpa says, “never mind, never mind.”

He extends a shaking hand and cuts the deck. Turtle picks it back up and deals them each six cards. Grandpa fans the cards before him, and sighs, making slight adjustments with thumb and forefinger. Turtle discards her crib. Grandpa sighs again and encircles his whiskey in one big hand and sits, turning it slowly in the ring of its condensation, the soapstones sounding softly against the glass.

He tosses back the drink, sucks air through his teeth, pours himself another. Turtle waits, silent. He tosses this back, and pours himself a third. He sits rotating it slowly. Finally, he picks two cards and tosses them into the crib. Then he cuts the deck and Turtle draws off the start card, the queen of hearts, and lays it faceup. He seems about to remark on how the start card has determined the fate of his hand, as if—on the verge of this observation—he is struck mute by the complexity of it.

“The rails on that gun,” he says after a minute, “look pretty good.”

“Yeah,” Turtle says.

“Well, they look pretty good,” Grandpa says again, doubtfully.

“I keep them oiled,” she says.

Grandpa looks around the trailer, suddenly, wonderingly. His eyes run across the ceiling, across the ersatz wood paneling peeling away in places, over the dingy little kitchen. There is laundry on the floor in the hallway and Grandpa frowns severely, looking at it all.

“It’s your play,” Turtle says.

Grandpa teases one card from the others, throws it down. “Ten,” he says.

Turtle throws down a five, pegs two for fifteen.

“Grandpa?” she says.

“Twenty,” he says, pegging two for the pair.

“Thirty,” Turtle says, throwing down a jack.

“Go.”

Turtle pegs one for the go, throws a queen. Grandpa lays down a seven in seeming exhaustion. Turtle throws a three, for twenty. Grandpa throws a six, says, “Here, sweetpea,” and unbuckles his belt and draws off it the old bowie knife. The belt leather is worn shiny black from the sheath, and he holds it out to her in his open hand, hefting it. “I don’t use it anymore,” he says.

Turtle says, “Put that down, Grandpa. We still need to score the hand.”

“Sweetpea,” Grandpa says, holding out the knife.

“Let’s see what’s in your hand,” Turtle says.

Grandpa puts the knife down on the table in front of her. The leather handle is old and black with grease, the steel pummel dark gray. Turtle reaches across the table, collects Grandpa’s hand, and pulls it forward to her. She gathers the four cards together and looks at them: the five of spades, the six of spades, seven of spades, ten of spades, and the start card, the queen of diamonds. “Well,” Turtle says, “well.” Grandpa doesn’t look at his cards, he just looks at her. Turtle’s mouth moves with her counting. “Fifteen for two, fifteen for four, the run for seven, and the flush for eleven points. Did I miss anything?” She pegs him eleven points.

Grandpa says, “Pick that up, sweetpea.”

She says, “I don’t understand, Grandpa.”

He says, “You’re entitled to a thing or two of mine.”

She cracks one knuckle, then another.

He says, “You’ll take good care of it. It’s a good one. You ever stick a son of a bitch with this, he’ll sit up and take notice. This knife comes from me to you.”

She draws it from the sheath. The steel is smoky black with age. Oxidized in the way of very old carbon steel. She turns the blade to face her and it shows a single unbroken, unglinting line without nicks or flaws, a shining, polished edge. She passes the blade gently up her arm and golden hairs accumulate in a tide line.

He says, “Go get the whetstones, too, sweetpea.”

She goes to the kitchen and opens a drawer and pulls out the old leather bundle with the three whetstones and carries it back to the table.

He says, “You take good care of that.”

She sits looking at the blade, mute. She loves taking care of things.

Rosy, sitting on the floor between them, perks up, her collar tinkling. She looks toward the door, and then there is a loud knocking. Turtle flinches.

“That’ll be your father,” Grandpa says.

Martin swings the door open and steps inside. The floor complains beneath him. He stands spanning the hallway.

“Oh Christ, Dad,” Martin says, “I wish you wouldn’t drink in front of her.”

“She doesn’t mind me taking a drink,” Grandpa says. “Do you, sweetpea?”

“Christ, Daniel,” Martin says. “Of course she doesn’t mind. She’s fourteen. It’s not her job to mind, it’s mine; it’s my job to mind, and I do. It should be your job, too, but you don’t make it your job, I guess.”

“Well, I don’t see the harm.”

“I don’t mind it,” Martin says, “if you have a beer. I don’t mind that. I don’t mind it if you’re gonna pour yourself a finger or two of Jack. But I don’t like it when you’ve had more than a few. That’s not all right.”

“I’m fine,” Grandpa says with a wave of his hand.

“All right,” Martin says thinly, “all right. Come on back home, kibble.”

Turtle picks up the pistol, drops the slide, slaps in the magazine, holsters it. Then she rises, holding the knife and the bundle of whetstones, and walks toward the door, where Martin puts an arm around her shoulder. She slings the AR-10 and turns to look back at Grandpa. Martin hesitates there in the doorway, holding Turtle.

He says, “You all right, Dad?”

Grandpa says, “I’m fine.”

Martin says, “I don’t guess you’d want to come over for dinner?”

“Oh,” he says, “I have a pizza in the freezer.”

“You’re welcome to dinner. We’d like to have you over, Dad. Wouldn’t we, kibble?”

Turtle is silent, she does not want to be in this, does not want Grandpa to come over.

Martin says, “Well, have it your way. If you change your mind, you just call, and I’ll drive the truck up here and pick you up.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” Grandpa says.

“And, Dad,” Martin says, “take it easy. This girl deserves a grandfather. All right?”

“All right,” Grandpa says, frowning.

Martin continues to hesitate in the doorway. Grandpa watches him, his head trembling a little bit, and Martin stands as if expecting Grandpa to say something, but Grandpa doesn’t and Martin tightens his grip on Turtle’s shoulder and they walk down together, following the old gravel road through the orchard. He is a big, silent presence beside her. They go through the evening woods, past where Grandpa parks his truck. Blackberry runners have knit over the median. Wild chamomile sprawls in the gravel. “Don’t take this the wrong way, kibble,” Martin says, “but your grandpa is a real son of a bitch.”

Father and daughter climb the porch steps together and go in through the living room. Turtle vaults onto the counter and sets the knife down beside her. Martin strikes a match on his Levi’s to light the burner, takes down a frying pan, and begins to prepare dinner. Turtle sits at the counter’s edge. She unholsters the gun, racks the slide, and sinks four shots into a single mark. Martin looks up from cutting a squash and watches her empty the magazine. The slide locks back, smoking, and he returns his attention to the butcher block, smiling tiredly and lopsidedly, smiling so that she can see it.

“Is that your grandfather’s knife?” He dusts off his hands, holds one out.

Turtle hesitates.

“What?” he says, and she picks up the knife and hands it to him. He draws it from the sheath and walks around the counter to stand beside her, turning it to the light. He says, “When I was a kid, I can remember your grandfather sitting in his chair—he’d get in a mood and he’d drink bourbon and throw this knife at the door. Then he’d stand up and get it and sit down again, and he’d look at the door and then he’d throw the knife. It’d stick in the door and he’d walk over and get it. For hours, he’d do that.”

Turtle looks at Martin.

“Watch this,” he says.

“No,” she says, “wait.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

He walks to the hallway door beside the fireplace and closes it. He walks back and squares against the door. He says, “Watch this.”

She says, “It’s not a throwing knife.”

“The hell it isn’t,” he says.

She grabs on to his shirt. “Wait,” she says.

“Watch this,” he says, seeming to gauge the distance. He tosses the knife in the air and catches it by the spine. Turtle watches silently, putting her fingers in her mouth. Martin winds up and throws the knife and it ricochets off the door and strikes the hearthstones. Turtle lurches after it, but Martin is faster, shoving her aside and picking it off the river stone hearth and bending over it, putting his back between Turtle and the knife, saying, “Nah, it’s fine.”

“Give it back,” Turtle says.

Martin turns away from her, bent over the knife, saying, “It’s fine, kibble, it’s fine.”

“Give it back,” Turtle says.

“Just a moment,” he says. Turtle, hearing some dangerous note in his voice, steps back. “Just hold on just one goddamn moment,” he says, holding the knife to the light while Turtle waits, her jaw flexing in annoyance. “Well, fuck,” he says at last.

“What?”

“It’s this fucking carbon steel, kibble, it’s like glass.”

“Give it back to me,” she says, and he hands it back. The blade is chipped.

“It doesn’t matter,” Martin says.

“Fuck!” Turtle says.

“That high-carbon steel is worthless,” Martin says. “Like I told you, it’s like glass. That’s why they make knives out of stainless steel. That carbon steel, you just can’t trust it. Holds an edge like a motherfucker, but it shatters and it rusts. I don’t know how the man kept it like that, all through the war. Grease, I guess.”

“Fuck,” Turtle says, flushed with anger.

“Well, here, I’ll make it good.”

“Forget it,” Turtle says, “it doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. You’re mad about it, my love. I’ll make it good.”

“No, I don’t care,” she says.

“Kibble,” he says, “give me the knife, I’m not going to have you pissed at me because that knife is as fragile as a fucking toy. I made a mistake, and I can set that knife up just like you want it, good as new.”

Turtle says, “It’s something you have to care for.”

“Well, that’s fucked, because,” Martin says, laughing at her anger, “I thought a knife was supposed to take care of you. I thought that was the point.”

Turtle stands, looking down at the floorboards, feeling that she has flushed red to the roots of her hair.

“Give me the knife, kibble. A pass on the sharpener and that mark won’t even be there.”

“No,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I can see on your face that it does matter, so give it to me, and let me make it right.”

Turtle gives him the knife and Martin opens the door and goes down the hall, past the bathroom, the foyer, and into the pantry, where there is a long wooden workbench along one wall, with clamps and vises and above that a wall of pegboard covered with mounted tools. The opposite walls are lined with gun safes, stainless-steel cabinets of reloading materials, stacked thousand-round boxes of 5.56 and .308. A spiral stairwell leads into a cellar, which is a room of damp, moldy earth filled with five-gallon buckets of dehydrated food. They have enough food stored down there to keep three people alive for three years.

Martin goes to a grinder bolted to the workbench and turns it on.

“No, wait,” Turtle says over the roar of the grinder.

Martin stands gauging the angle of the bevel by eye. “Fine,” he says, “it will be fine.” He passes the blade across the grindstone. It screams. He plunges it, hissing, into a coffee can of mineral oil, returns it to the wheel, holds it steady, his whole face intent, runs it across the grindstone, throwing a brilliant rooster tail of orange and white sparks, the edge feathering white, heat markings spreading across the steel. He lifts the blade away, plunges it again into oil, turns it over in his hand, and returns it to the grinder. He inspects it again, and stands testing it against his thumb, nodding and smiling to himself. He turns off the grinder and the grindstone begins to coast, some hitch in the mechanism so that the sound of the slowing grindstone has a faint irregularity, a whump-whump, whump-whump. He passes her the knife. The mirror polish of the razor edge is gone, the cutting edge scored and uneven. Turtle turns the knife to the light and the blade throws a thousand glinting sparks from chips and spurs in the edge.

“You’ve ruined it,” she says.

“Ruined it?” he says, hurt. “No, that’s just because— No, kibble, this is a hell of a lot better than whatever edge Grandpa put on there. That grindstone, it’ll put a perfect edge on that blade, a hundred microscopic serrations, that’s what really gives the blade a cutting edge. The razor edge you had on that before, that’s just the vanity of patient men—that’s no good for the real activity of cutting, kibble, which is to saw through things. A mirror polish like that—that’s only good for a push cut, you know what that is, kibble?”

Turtle knows what a push cut is, but Martin can’t resist.

He says, “A push cut, kibble, is the simplest kind of cut, when you lay the knife down on a steak and press without drawing the blade across it. But, kibble, you don’t just push the knife into a steak, you draw the knife across it. That, what you had before, was a glorified straight razor. In life, you drag a blade across something. That’s the business of cutting, kibble, a rough edge. That mirror polish is meant to distract from the knife’s purpose with its beauty. Do you see— Do you see—? That razor edge, it is a beautiful thing, but a knife is not meant to be a beautiful thing. This knife is for slitting throats, and for that you want the microscopic serrations you get from a rough grindstone. You’ll see. With that cutting edge on there, that thing will open flesh like it was butter. Are you sad that I took your illusion away? That edge was a shadow on the wall, kibble. You have to stop being distracted by the shadows.”

Turtle tests the edge against her thumb, looking at her father.

“That’s a goddamn lesson in life, right there,” he says.

She turns the knife in her hands, uncertain.

He says, “You just don’t trust me, do you?”

“I trust you,” she says, and she thinks, you are hard on me, but you are good for me, too, and I need that hardness in you. I need you to be hard on me, because I am no good for myself, and you make me do what I want to do but cannot do for myself; but still, but still—you are sometimes not careful; there is something in you, something less than careful, something almost— I don’t know, I am not sure, but I know it’s there.

“Here,” he says, taking the knife from her and shoving her down the hallway, leading her to the living room. They go back through the door and he points to a chair. “Step up on that,” he says. Turtle looks at him, steps onto the chair. Martin points to the table, and she steps up onto it, stands among the beer bottles and old plates and steak bones.

“That rafter,” he says.

She looks up at the rafter.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

“What?” she says.

“Jump up to the rafter, kibble.”

“What are you going to show me?”

“Goddamn it,” he says.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“Goddamn it,” he says.

“I know the knife is sharp,” she says.

“You don’t seem to know that.”

“No,” she says, “I trust you, I do. The knife is sharp.”

“God fucking damn it, kibble.”

“No, Daddy, it’s just that it was Grandpa’s knife, and he’ll be disappointed.”

“It isn’t his anymore, is it? Now grab on to that rafter.”

“I wanted to try taking care of that mirror polish,” she says, “just try and take care of it, that’s all.”

“It doesn’t matter. That steel, it’s gonna rust away into pits by the end of the year.”

“No,” she says, “no it won’t.”

“You haven’t had to take care of a thing like that yet, you’ll see. Now jump up on the rafter.”

“Why?”

“God fucking damn it, kibble. God fucking damn it.”

She jumps and captures the rafter.

Martin overturns the table from beneath her, spilling the deck of cards, the plates, candles, beer bottles. He puts his shoulder against it and shoves it out from beneath her, carrying all of its detritus along like a bulldozer, leaving Turtle hanging from the rafter above the floor.

She racks and reracks her fingers so they lie comfortably against the grain. Martin watches her from below with a grimace gathering almost to anger. He walks to her and stands between her feet, turning the knife this way and that.

“Can I come down?” she says.

He stands looking up at her, his face growing stiffer, his mouth setting. Turtle, looking down at him, can almost believe that looking at her like this makes him angry.

“Don’t say it like that,” he says. Then he raises the knife and lays the blade up between her legs, stands scowling up at her. He says, “Just hang in there.”

Turtle is silent and unamused, looking down at him. He presses up with the knife and says, “Upsy-daisy.”

Turtle does a pull-up, places her chin on the splintery beam and hangs while Martin stands below her, his face stripped of all warmth and kindness, seeming fixed in some reverie of hatred. The knife bites into the blue denim of her jeans and Turtle feels the cold steel through her panties.

She looks across to the next rafter, and the one after that, all the way to the far wall, each rafter felted with dust and showing wandering rat tracks. Her legs quiver. She begins to lower herself, but Martin says, “Uh—” abruptly and warningly, the knife resting against her crotch. She trembles, not able to fully raise herself back to the rafter and so puts her face against its splintery side, holding her cheek there. She strains, thinking, please, please, please.

Then he lowers the blade and she comes down with it, unable to do otherwise, trembling and shaking with the effort of lowering herself as slowly as he lowers the knife. She hangs at the full extension of her arms and says, “Daddy?”

He says, “See, this is what I’m goddamn talking about.”

Then he begins to raise the blade again, clucking his tongue warningly. She goes up into a full pull-up and hooks her chin on the rafter and hangs there, quivering. She starts to lower herself and Martin says, “Uh—” to stop her, grimacing as if it’s sad the way things are, and he would even change it if he could, but can’t.

Turtle thinks to herself, you bastard, you fucking bastard.

“That’s two,” he says. He lowers the blade and she lowers herself with it, and then he raises it, saying, “With a little incentive, you can really rack up those pull-ups, huh?”

He makes her lower herself with agonizing slowness. She does first twelve, and then thirteen. She hangs trembling from her exhausted arms, and Martin, raising the blade with a slow and menacing pressure, says, “You all done? Tapped out? Dig deep, kibble. You better find something. Let’s go for fifteen.” Her fingers ache, the grain cuts into her flesh. Her forearms feel numb. She doesn’t know if she can do another.

“Come on,” he says. “Two more.”

“I can’t,” she says, almost crying with fear.

“You think the knife’s sharp now, don’t you?” he says. “You believe it now, don’t you?” He saws the blade forward and she hears the denim whisper apart. She digs deep for any last ounce of strength, trying desperately to hold on, and Martin says, “You might want to hold on, kibble. You might not want to let go, little girl,” and then her fingertips peel off the rafter and she comes down onto the blade.

Martin jerks the knife out from under her at the last possible moment and it saws through her thigh and buttock. She lands on her heels and stands there splay-legged and astonished, looking down at her crotch, where there is no sign except a cut in the denim. Martin holds the bowie knife bloodless and unmarked, his eyebrows going up in astonishment, his mouth opening into a grin.

Turtle sits on her butt and Martin begins to laugh. She stoops forward to look through the parted cloth and says, “You cut me, you cut me,” though she cannot feel or see any cut.

“You should’ve,” Martin says and stops and bends double with laughter. He waves the bowie knife through the air to try and get her to stop so he can get his breath.

“You should’ve—” he gasps.

She lies back and unbuttons her jeans. Martin sets the bowie knife on the counter and grabs the bottoms and upends her out of them. She spills across the floor, recovers herself, and then stoops over her thighs, trying to see the cut.

“You should’ve—” he says. “You should’ve—” And his eyes clench with laughter.

Turtle finds the cut and a whisker of blood.

Martin says, “You should have seen—your face.” He screws his own face up in a mimicry of adolescent betrayal, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, and then, waving one hand through the air as if to brush all teasing aside, he says, “You’ll be okay, kiddo, you’ll be fine. Just, next time—don’t let go!” At this, he begins to laugh again, shaking his head, his eyes slitting closed and leaking tears, and he inquires of the room, “Jesus! Am I right? Am I right? Jesus! Don’t let go! Isn’t that right? Fuck!”

He kneels down and takes her naked thigh in his hands and, seeming to see her distress for the first time, he says, “I don’t know why you’re so afraid, baby, you’re hardly even nicked. See, I wasn’t going to cut you. I took it out from under you, didn’t I? And if you’re so afraid, goddamn, next time, don’t let go.”

“It’s not that easy,” she says from behind her hands.

“It is, you just—don’t let go,” he says.

Turtle lies flat on the floor. She wants to smash to pieces.

He rises and walks down the hall and into the bathroom. He returns with a first aid kit and kneels between her legs. He tears open a green disposable wound sponge and begins to dab at the cut. He says, “This? You’re worried about this? There, I’ll take care of it, there.” He unscrews the cap on the Neosporin and begins to dab it into the wound. His every touch sends ripples of sensation through her body. He opens a Band-Aid and lays it flush against her skin and smooths it to ensure the contact is good. “All better, kibble, look at that, it’s all right.”

She raises her head and ropes of muscle stand out from her mons pubis to her sternum like a bread loaf. She watches him and then she lays her head back down and she closes her eyes and she feels her soul to be a stalk of pig mint growing in the dark foundation, slithering toward a keyhole of light between the floorboards, greedy and sun-starved.