Back to the Dirt by Frank Bill

Author:Frank Bill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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In the bedroom, rumbling through the closet, throwing blankets, sheets, and quilts to the floor, Wylie was rummaging the shelves. Last he recalled, he was arguing with himself, with Shelby; he needed a nail and a hammer to tack the zinc through the snapper’s rod-iron-hooked head. Secure his ass into a tree to cut the reptile skin from around its shell, just as Whitey had learned Shelby and he when they would go gigging for the bullfrogs at night, slogging through the warm slop and stink of farm ponds around the county, stepping on the hard-shelled backs. Reaching into the muck for the tail. Lifting it up, careful not to be bitten by the curved snout that would mulch through tendon and bone, not letting go. He’d found Miles’s push mower and placed it on top of the turtle to weight it down, keep it from trailing off.

Now, stepping from the closet, coming from the bedroom, he was losing his mind, glancing to the rock floor, then the hearth wall of ivory and flint where the fireplace held orange coals that shadowed the room. He was an outline short. Didn’t see Shelby, only Katz.

“Shelby?” he yelled.

There was the drop of his pulse. The ramming of blood-pumped muscle behind the marrow of Wylie’s chest. Looking for the light switch on the wall to his left. Flipping it on. Katz twitched and moaned: “My head, my damn head.”

“Shut your hole before I stomp you into stupid,” Wylie threatened.

This how it’s gonna be? I get you outta my head and you think you can come back?

Wylie pulled the .38 from his waist, from behind him, boots came in heavy footfalls. The hard-hitting bony-fisted knuckles to the rear of his head knocked him into the room’s center. Wylie turned around to Shelby’s painted-on jeans. Her torso bent and contorted. She came at Wylie once more, swatted at the weighted revolver with her open hand like a cat.

From the floor, Katz shouted, “What kind of crazy is going on with you?”

“You dumb bitch. Knew I couldn’t trust you!” Wylie’s voice shouted.

Wylie came at Shelby, reaching and clenched her outgrowth. Flung her across the room to the rectangular entrance. Before she could gain her bearings, Wylie punched her senseless. She swayed backward down the hall. Her digits patted the walls for balance. Turning toward the light of the front room she took in the open door to the outside.

Katz had worked his way up from lying flat on the floor, sat upright, hair matted by fluid, his face disheveled and pocked with confusion as he eyed Shelby like a confused pup.

Then she felt Wylie’s hand prod her scalp. Twisted her into his facade, heated and mollusk. She raked her fingers downward. Skin gave and balled beneath her nails. Eyes metered wide and burned.

Wylie yelled, “Cunt! You fucking cunt!”

Get out of my head! Shelby screamed, and hammered his forehead with her fists. Their pain was breached and shared like two halves making a whole. Wylie drove her backward over a wooden pew that’d been cushioned with pillows for sitting.

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