The Amulet by Michael McDowell

Author:Michael McDowell [McDowell, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2014-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 38

Later that night, after Sara Howell had washed up the supper dishes and turned off the lights in the kitchen, she peered through the door into the living room. The only light there was from the television set, and it flickered ghastly illumination on the bandages around her hus­band’s neck and head. Dean lay on the couch with his head thrown back, sinking down between the tattered sofa arm and the tattered cushion, his feet lying heavily in his mother’s lap. Jo Howell, who sat at the other end of the couch, was slowly massaging her son’s ankles.

Sarah had refrained from mentioning to her mother-in-law her visit with Mary Shirley and Gussie. She was not yet sure that it was best to let Jo know what she was up to. Jo Howell was a secretive woman and Sarah felt that until she got some straight answers about the amulet, it was probably best to say as little as possible about her own suspicions. It would not do to put Jo Howell on her guard.

Sarah sat in a chair apart from her husband and Jo and tried to interest herself in the television program, but could not for thinking of the amulet. She cast sideways glances at her mother-in-law and began to think she had gone absolutely insane to imagine that such a great fat woman, who wouldn’t move out of her chair if the vice-president of the United States were choking on a fishbone at the other end of the room, would be able to engineer the horror that Sarah was tempted to credit her with. She was fat and she was mean and it was very unpleasant to spend an evening with her, but was she any more than that, an obese country woman who hadn’t taken to farm­ing, who hadn’t taken to marriage, who had never even really taken to mothering until her son came home from the army a scarred vegetable?

“What you staring at?” Jo demanded, at the onset of a long commercial break.

“Nothing,” replied Sarah quickly. She was used to Jo’s quick interrogatories and was rarely caught up by them anymore. “I was just looking at Dean, trying to see if he was reacting to anything, trying to see if he had improved, or anything.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jo. “I think he’s a lot better today. A lot better.”

“How can you tell?” said Sarah.

“You can tell, that’s all. He’s taking more interest in things, you know what I mean?”

“No,” said Sarah, “I don’t know what you mean at all.”

“Well,” said Jo, “I mean that like this afternoon, I was telling him everything about the Simses getting killed up on Burnt Corn Creek. You know, I used to live up that way. I know right where that car went in the creek. I used to have to go pick blackberries near there every summer. I hate picking blackberries. Cut your fingers to pieces on them thorns.”

“It was real bad, what happened up there. I don’t know why she did it,” said Sarah, but there was an edge in her voice.

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