Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 36

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(Though he didn’t think of them as crimes. Not by their strictest definition. If it was about survival, it wasn’t criminal.)

Jasmine, who had ripened that year with the crops, sat with her coltish legs crossed on a small blue blanket she’d brought with her. It was with great reluctance that she’d agreed to meet Jordan this evening. She was still heartbroken over the death of her pet goat, Sadie. Yet still she felt the magnetism of Jordan when he was near her. Like tonight.

“I just don’t understand why you did that to Sadie,” Jasmine said. Just thinking about it made her choke up so she could hardly breathe. But it was something she didn’t understand. She truly wanted to understand.

Jordan moved closer to her. The toe of his shoe was on a corner of the blue blanket, as if it were a magic carpet and with one foot he could hold it down so she couldn’t fly away. “I made sure she didn’t feel anything,” he lied. “I was humane. And you know your dad was going to sell the goat before winter. I saved her from a less humane death. Sometimes you have to be firm to be kind. Anybody grew up on a farm oughta know that.”

“But still . . .”

“Also, I needed to see how Sadie differed.”

“From what?”

“The other goats. I mean, inside. The bone and muscle, how it moved.”

She stared at him with unblinking blue eyes. He could see she was not even beginning to understand.

“I don’t see what the big deal is, if you think about it,” he said. “I mean, we eat goats. Parts of them, anyway. They’re even killed sometimes as part of religious ceremonies.”

“Says who?”

“Says the Bible, Jasmine. You’ve heard of blood sacrifices?”

“Usually it’s lambs that get sacrificed.”

“Well, a goat is a kind of lamb.”

“Not really.”

“Read your Bible,” Jordan said. “There are plenty of pictures of goats being sacrificed.” He wasn’t actually sure of that.

She had to admit that she’d seen such pictures, though she couldn’t recollect when or where. Sunday school, probably, during those services she’d been forced to attend. And he was right, people did eat lambs and goats.

“But not Sadie,” she said with brave certainty.

“It wouldn’t matter to the goat,” Jordan said. “Except in goat heaven, maybe.”

Jasmine suspected he was putting her on, but that didn’t make what he said untrue. Jordan liked to joke sometimes, and not take things serious that were serious. He was just like that, and when you came right down to it, she didn’t mind all that much. He knew more of the world than she did, though he wasn’t always as wise as he thought. He seemed kind of dangerous, even if he wasn’t all that large a man. You didn’t always see it, but it was there. She kind of liked that, too, in a way she didn’t quite understand.

Jordan squatted down on the blanket’s edge, producing a knife from somewhere. It wasn’t a switchblade or any other kind of pocketknife; it had a broad, flat blade that came to a honed point. Like a bowie knife.

He smiled at her, and began tossing the knife in front of him so that it penetrated the blanket and stuck in the soil.

“That’s the blanket I used for my dolls,” she said. Not warning him or asking him to stop. Simply giving him a nugget of partial understanding. A glimpse of her early childhood.

He continued to flip the knife expertly, so it made one revolution in the air and then stuck with the same solid chuk! in the ground beneath the blanket. The rhythmic, brutal sound, over and over, was hypnotic. Like something killing her childhood.

Jordan gazed deep into Jasmine’s eyes, holding her gaze so she couldn’t turn away.

Through an understanding smile he said, “The Bible tells us there comes a time to put away childish things.”

She knew that was true. She would have to face it someday. She fought back tears.

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Jordan said. “I’ll earn my final pay, then come evening I’ll be gone. If you’re here, we’ll leave together. A new life will be ours.”

He wiped the knife blade clean with two swipes on the side of his thigh, then slid it into a leather scabbard. She saw that it had a yellowed bone handle as he sat down on the blanket and leaned toward her, kissing her, using his tongue, teaching her how to use hers.

Still kissing her, he bent her backward and placed her gently on the blanket. He began to unbutton her blouse, her shorts. Her clothes seemed to melt from her. She gazed off to the side, like billions of women before her, and for a second or two became as much observer as participant.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not so soon. But now that it was happening, she didn’t mind. Time kept rushing toward her, past her.

She lay back, her elbows supporting her at first, then all the way back, and spread her legs, welcoming him.

Afterward, Jasmine couldn’t stop trembling. She knew what her father would think. Knew what he would tell her. It wouldn’t be about Jesus and the blood of the sacrificed. It would be about commerce. The food chain.

Every living thing required a reason to exist.

A usefulness.

“Even people?” she would ask.

“Especially people.”

“Why should that be?” she would ask.

She hadn’t yet heard a convincing answer.

40

Jordan worked hard on the farm the next day, standing near Jasmine’s father as the two of them shucked corn. Jasmine’s father, Luther, was a gangly, powerful man. He wasn’t intimidated, but he didn’t like meeting Jordan’s unconcerned gaze. Luther was smart in a direct, instinctive kind of way, and what he sensed in Jordan was a kind of darkness of the soul. An emptiness that in one way or another would have to be filled.

Luther had talked to his daughter earlier that day, and though she had told him nothing, he knew by looking at her that something had ended, and something had begun.

She could no more hide her feelings than could Luther. And Luther believed in God and demons and the reality of hell.

Side by side in the bright sunlight, the heat and humidity building, the two men shucking corn sometimes chanced to look at each other, and it was always Luther who turned away.

Jordan had a plan. Railroad dicks these days were mostly an invention of fiction. The expense of hiring so many of them just to keep freeloaders from traveling without tickets didn’t make good economic sense.

The boxcars were going north again, most of them emptied of coal and produce, jingling and jangling along the rails with their sliding doors open wide. More than half the boxcars were empty, the train’s engines so far ahead of them they were out of sight except where the rails curved.

After supper Jordan went out onto the porch, carrying a cold can of Budweiser. He was scheduled to meet Luther again in the morning and finish the bin of corn cobs. Both Luther and Jordan knew they probably wouldn’t see each other again.

The screen door slammed and reverberated in the quiet sinking light. Luther came out, carrying a can of chilled Bud like Jordan’s.

“Hot night,” he said to Jordan.

“That time of year,” Jordan said.

Luther glanced around. It was an obvious act. “Jasmine around?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Seen her go upstairs after supper,” Luther said. “Guess she’s still up there.” There was a high tension emanating from him, a crippling regret. The past was over. The future was going to change in a way that made Luther sick and afraid.

He’d known this day would come. When the cancer had gotten his wife, Jasmine’s mother, Luther was left with Jasmine and her memories. He lived with his regrets. The silent truths that both knew were left unsaid. Nothing could stop them from working their dreaded damage.

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