Seven Strange Stories by Rebecca Lloyd

Author:Rebecca Lloyd [Lloyd, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tartarus Press
Published: 2017-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

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On the morning Earl vanished, I was up at dawn because I had blankets to wash and chickenfeed to get. I was putting the first dirty blanket into the big tub in the yard with the fire going well under it, when I knew by some strange knowing I’d never see Earl again, and as the thought filled my mind, my very bones seemed to cry out in shock—they rang, more like—as if they had a song they were struggling to sing and not being able to find the way of singing, fell back weary and clumsy in their heaviness.

No one came downstairs until after ten. Daddy had been kind to me the night before, he’d put his arm around me, and meant nothing demanding by it, and I’d fallen asleep that way. He could be kind as long as he thought the rest of the world wasn’t watching him, but of course the rest of the world didn’t even know Daddy Hinds existed—and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me who told him so.

These days, he and I live in different parts of the house. I don’t speak to him often, but from time to time I glimpse him lingering outside where the wood begins, or when I go past his resting room as he calls it. The tattoos all over his arms and legs that he used to be so proud of have got him looking more like a grey rag than a living man now; since he’s shrunk and gone flabby like the violent men all do down this way.

Of my four boys, two have gone to the penitentiary where they can learn about what sorry men call honour and respect, and the other two are out of the state and no word back for a long time since.

Dulcie’s done what so many women round here are inclined to do, and that is to pass from one man to another over the years, each of them as dangerous and stupid as the next. If only she’d looked inside her own head she could’ve found the sanctuary she was after. But for some women the idea that there’s a ‘right’ man sticks to them all their lives as they sit around wasting it with yet another one exactly the same as the one before. Not that that makes me any better than her, because I’m seventy-six now, my bones are still weary with the bone sickness, and I stayed all this time with Daddy Hinds, the meanest of the lot of them. At least that’s what it must look like from the outside, but it’s the house itself that keeps me here—keeps me close to Earl, who’s forty-eight this year.

Dulcie started coming round again lately. She can’t figure out why I’m so content. She keeps glancing around the kitchen to see if the answer is in here since this is where I spend most of my time. I prefer it when she’s quiet, so The Fort

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