The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

Author:Daniel Woodrell [Woodrell, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2013-08-14T18:15:00+00:00

The second crucial event that urged Charles Lathrop to ruin was sparked on the seventh day of June, 1933, when he came awake in his home down Bois D’Arc Street and smelled betrayal wafting from his wife’s pillow. This scent of betrayal took the form of barbershop pomade, a richly scented, thickly poured pomade, pomade that had been transferred to his wife, surely while writhing in an illicit embrace, from her to her pillow, then, during the bright hours of that morning, into Lathrop’s mind.

His wife, July, who had been born a Powell and was as pretty as all local Powell girls seemed to be, said something to him, but afterwards she was never sure what. Good morning, honey. Eggs sound okay? Sure is sunny out.

Whatever she said received no response from Lathrop. He pulled on a sloppy set of clothes, clothes for doing messy chores, then dragged a white rocking chair out back of the house. He used the old ladle at the old well, pumped himself a dipper of water, then positioned the rocker among the grapevines his father had cultivated in what was by then Lathrop’s backyard. He placed the chair so that the vines closed in to render him invisible. He drank a bucket of well water that morning from the well his people had been drinking from since the War Between the States quieted. Lathrop had just turned thirty-one, and remained childless after nearly six years of marriage. His job was secure. He owned the house outright. But on that date in June he sat strangely in that white rocker behind the vines, drank well water from an old ladle, and howled. At several points he let loose with howls of anguish that neighbors recalled for years to come.

Just as the factory whistle announced the noon hour, Lathrop rose from the rocker, walked into the house he’d been born in, on back to the master bedroom and a chestnut dresser that stood against the south wall between the windows. He bent to the bottom drawer, pulled it open and removed a ball of chamois cloth. From the cloth he extracted a large pistol of obscure make and placed it inside a pocket of his trousers. He then selected a black rain slicker from his closet. The slicker fell low enough to hide the pistol butt hanging from his pocket.

He said several things to July, who never forgot them or disputed them and repeated them but twice, then walked out the front door and onto the sidewalk, taking stiff deliberate strides toward the town square. He turned west on Main Street where tall, wide trees shaded his passing. At the mouth of an alley that joined Main he passed the lean-to made of ill-fitted lumber known as the Clubhouse, where hardscrabble men drank and gambled at dice and cards or checkers while waiting to be hired for day work. Several of those men said they noted Lathrop, and that he exhibited “a strange wander to his

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