Bitter Sun. Beth Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ can you be hungry after that?’ she asked but I shrugged.

      Jenny squinted at me, like she did when I said something stupid. Momma did it too. Where Momma might yell at me, Jenny just turned away, sighed through her teeth, and stalked across the field. The path home was well trodden, we made shortcuts of the fields, they were our highways and backways, free of grown-ups and rules.

      ‘Shouldn’t we go straight to the police?’ she asked. ‘Feels wrong to just leave her down there.’

      ‘I know but we agreed. We’ll go tomorrow. I guess we just try to forget about it for tonight.’

      We walked together, silent, until we came to Three Points, a triangle of land made by three crisscrossing irrigation streams. Momma said it’d been there since they split up the land between us, Briggs, and Morton down the track. She said that idiot Briggs couldn’t count right and ended up short on one side. Caused a rift between the families for years and the swatch of land remained unclaimed. It was twenty strides end-to-end and covered in grass green as a lime candy straight out the jar. No matter the weather, no matter the heat, Three Points stayed alive. It was a rule, one of those known somehow by everyone in town, that you could say or do anything on the Points. It didn’t belong to anyone so no one was watching, no one was listening.

      Jenny slowed and stopped in the middle of the island.

      ‘Do you think someone in Larson killed her?’ she asked.

      I’d thought about it while we were walking but pushed away the idea almost as quickly as it came.

      ‘I don’t want to think about what that would mean.’

      ‘What about the Fort? Could the person who wrecked it have killed her?’ she said; her voice had an edge of fear to it, a tremor I recognised. Her eyes darted left, right, into the trees, over the fields. ‘Could … could they still be around?’

      I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘No. Whoever did it is long gone. And even if they aren’t, you’ve got me and Momma and we won’t let anything happen to you.’

      The tension in her eased, her shoulders dropped. ‘I know you won’t, but her? She’d probably offer me up to the killer for a bottle of bourbon.’

      It needled at me when she spoke of Momma like that. I’d tried for years to be peacekeeper between them, but the barbs kept flying, the hate kept growing and resurfacing no matter what. Now my days were all about maintaining the uneasy calm.

      ‘Let’s go home,’ I said, straightened up and took Jenny’s hand. ‘Momma won’t be there anyway.’

      Twenty minutes and two more fields brought us to the edge of our yard. We both stopped and Jenny’s grip on my hand tightened, turned my knuckles white and sore. Faded red truck parked skewed against the side of the house with two deep tyre scars in the dirt. Fresh dent in the door. The frayed rope on the oak branch swayed but not by the breeze. Momma always flicked the rope with her finger when she got home. Her mindless habit.

      The sound of footsteps throbbed from inside the house. One-two, one-two, a stumble, a crash, the picture frame in the hall, dropped and broken twice this month already. A low moan, something monstrous in it, thick and slurred. A clatter of metal on enamel, the pan that cooked yesterday’s chicken, pushed into the kitchen sink.

      Jenny sighed. ‘Looks like you were wrong, Johnny.’

       3

      There weren’t many reasons Momma would leave Gum’s before midnight on a Friday. It likely wasn’t to give us a new pa this time, as I couldn’t hear anyone else in the house. A Pigeon Pa, Jenny called them. They fly in, shit all over the place then fly out again, none the wiser. Momma alone in the house meant Ben Gum, owner of Gum’s and one of our years-ago Pigeon Pas, had cut her off. When that thought hit us both, Jenny’s grip on my hand turned iron.

      ‘I don’t want to go in there,’ she said.

      ‘It won’t be so bad. She’s just drunk. You know what she’s like when she’s drunk. You go straight upstairs and I’ll bring you dinner.’

      Jenny kicked at the dirt. ‘Like that’ll help.’

      I tried to stifle my sigh. ‘Just try not to sass her.’

      We could turn around, run back to the Fort or go to the west field and sleep between the corn while Momma slept off hers. That would be better than seeing the anger and snarl on Jenny’s face a moment longer. But we stood by that rope swing too long. The crashing inside stopped for a sickening moment. Then the slam of the back door flung wide, the screen’s rusted spring whining. Then the slapping steps of her shoes on the dirt. Then the voice.

      ‘There you are, my babies,’ Momma said, slurred and breathy. ‘Look at you both, skin and bone. You hungry, my babies?’

      Momma’s hair, thin curls turned white-blonde instead of gold like Jenny’s, flared wild on her head, like a storm brewed on her skull. And it did. On it. In it. She was a tornado, my momma.

      ‘Hi, Momma,’ I said and nudged at Jenny to say hello but she wouldn’t.

      ‘Come inside now.’ Momma swayed on her spindle heels and spindle legs wrapped up in tight blue jeans, her red camisole cut a half-inch too low.

      She caught herself on the side of the house. ‘I’ll fix you both a plate. Get in, get in.’

      She pounded her fist on the whitewashed boards with every word, then hurled up her arm, half sick of us for being there, half gesturing which way to go.

      I felt my sister’s heartbeat thrumming through her hand. I took a step toward the house, tried to pull Jenny with me but she wouldn’t move. Her face set in a dark frown. A prickle went up my back, I knew what was coming.

      ‘Please, Jenny,’ I whispered but she shook her head.

      ‘Not when she’s like this,’ she said.

      Momma saw Jenny’s expression and matched it. All her slur and swagger disappeared and she turned pin-sharp. Momma stood tall and straight, her back like rebar, and set toward us. Careful steps turned ragged fast. Red whiskey heat rose in her cheeks and filled up her throat, turned the sweet words sour.

      ‘Look at you,’ she sneered down at Jenny. ‘That dress. Showing off those legs. You’re so dirty. Get in this fuhking house. I made you dinner and you’ll damn well eat it.’

      Then she was in front of us, her hand on Jenny’s arm, pulling her toward the porch. Her eyes, blue and bloodshot, flared up bright despite the dark, red lips pulled back, lipstick on her teeth, smeared on her chin.

      ‘Let me go!’ Jenny tried to pry Momma’s fingers but her grip was iron.

      ‘I am your mother and you will mind me.’

      Jenny’s shoes cut furrows in the dirt, her nails dug into Momma’s wrist. ‘I wish you weren’t. I hate you! Let me go!’

      Momma recoiled like those words were a slap across the cheek. I put myself between them, one hand on Momma’s hand, the other СКАЧАТЬ