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  “So I thought,” Maddy started, still trying to figure how to change the subject.

  That instant of lapsed attention was all Vic needed. He grabbed her by the chin and twisted her face around to meet his gaze.

  “Thought what, Maddy? What’d you think? What have you ever thought in your godforsaken life?”

  He pushed his face close to her, looming over her. He really didn’t need to. Vic was large all over, a totem of a man, all forehead and chin framed in a thicket of dark tangled hair. It made Maddy small, just standing next to him. It was a kind of slow erosion working away deep in her soul. Every year Vic made her feel smaller, like he was whittling her down until she was nothing but a shadow.

  Some days she felt like she was nothing more than a puppet, dancing on his strings.

  “If you learned how to think, then I sure want to know about it.”

  The thing got bigger inside her. Every breath cut like a fish knife, her heart banged like a crazy drummer. It’s a heart attack, she thought. I’m having a heart attack.

  “Maddy? Are you listening to me?”

  Oh God, I’m glad it’s over. He can bury me where ever he wants to.

  I don’t care.

  Zigger bayed and skittered across the tile floor.

  “Shut up, hound,” Vic snarled. “It’s bad enough you ate my goddamn supper.”

  Maddy squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a burst of blue light open like fireworks going off inside her skull.

  Oh God.

  It’s a stroke, she thought. A stroke or a heart attack or maybe some sort of aneurysm.

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any worse than life with Vic.

  Just then Vic snapped his fingers a half-inch from Maddy’s eyes, calling her back from the brink of her imagined death.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  Maddy opened her eyes, startled to attention.

  “Are you listening?”

  She stared. It wasn’t a heart attack, but it sure was something. A blue dot of light popped open in front of Vic’s chest. Maddy knew that the blue light had to have come from somewhere inside her. It wasn’t anything she thought. It was more something that she just felt.

  The dot hovered over Vic’s heart, flickering like a blue firefly.

  “Well?”

  She saw her chance and she took it.

  “It went cold, Vic. Your supper went cold and the pork chops were greasy and I figured you were out at Benson’s and it’s a restaurant so you must have had some supper, now didn’t you?”

  The cavalry rode in just that quickly. She shifted the blame to him. She put him on the defensive. It would work. She had trapped him in his lie and made him feel like he had to hide the whole thing.

  She’d beaten him again.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t even notice, not really.

  She was too busy staring at that blue light, wondering just what it was. Maybe the light wasn’t from her. Maybe it was something else, like one of those laser gun sights you saw in movies. What if there was a sniper out in the darkness of the field, taking aim on the kitchen? Getting ready to fire? Would it bother her, watching Vic get shot to pieces?

  She decided to wait and see.

  “Are you listening to me, girl?”

  She nodded vaguely, entranced by the blue dot.

  Vic rolled his eyes in disgust. “Wake up, haybrain! Jesus Christ, you look like some kind of sleepwalker. Hey, are you listening?”

  “I’m listening, Vic.”

  Only she wasn’t listening at all. She hadn’t been for years. Vic just had nothing new to say. As far as their marriage went, he had stopped growing a long time ago.

  The blue light widened. It was like staring at her Daddy’s old television set, turning off in reverse.

  “You ain’t listening. Christ. For the life of me I don’t know why I ever married you. Your Daddy was right, you know. You’re stupid and ugly.”

  That hurt.

  “I ain’t ugly, Vic. Maybe I’m stupid, but I sure ain’t ugly.”

  It was true. Maddy was always pretty. No movie star, mind you. She was a tough sort of pretty like a country weed in full bloom. Straw-blonde hair, straight as a beggar could spit – with eyes that her Daddy used to call cornflower blue. A little gopher bump on the bridge of her nose, hooked down like a river running around a bend. Thin in the flanks from work and worry, but living with Vic would do that to any woman.

  “You’re skinnier than a bean pole, and if them tits get any closer to the ground they’ll leave skid marks where you walk.”

  That was a cruel truth. Maddy’s knockers crept closer to her stomach every year. They nearly hid the row of five tiny circular scars Vic called her rib holes. But what could she do about that?

  Nail them up?

  “It’s the law of gravity, Vic.” she explained. “Sooner or later we all fall down. I can’t help that. Nothing but trouble ever comes back up.”

  She stared at the blue dot, watching it grow. Vic didn’t seem to notice the blue light at all, no matter how large it got. The dot started changing like it was taking shape.

  “There you go again,” Vic complained. “If you did some work around here instead of daydreaming, I might come home in a whole lot nicer mood.”

  That was a bold lie. Vic didn’t know how to be in a good mood unless he was drunk and even that wasn’t any kind of a guarantee.

  The blue shape grew into a form. It looked like some kind of rag doll, getting bigger all the time. Vic thumped the pine table for emphasis. The salt and pepper shakers shivered in their wooden box.

  Maddy didn’t notice.

  She was too busy staring at the hovering blue image directly between her and Vic.

  The hovering blue image of her long dead father.

  “How long are you going to let this skid mark with legs get away with that kind of crap?” Maddy’s dead father asked.

  * 2 *

  Helliard Jolleen drove a Mercury, just the same as his Daddy did. Two shades of red sprayed across a patchy rusted skin of red brown primer. Duane called it Martian camouflage. Helliard liked to think of it as something more like flames or blood.

  Today it was both flames and blood.

  Helliard was certain of one thing.

  Something his Daddy had told him a long time ago.

  “Death is all around you boy. It’s just waiting around the next corner to jump you when you least expect it. Believe in that, and you’ll grow strong. The first thing you got to do is learn not to fear death.”

  Helliard’s daddy, who had once picked steel guitar with Hank Snow and could shoot the pussy out of a pregnant flea, taught Helliard rhythm and how to kill.

  “So long as you are alive, Helliard, you got to fight, eh? Now most folk, they say fight, they mean hit. I don’t mean hit. Hitting is for playground sisters. When I say fight, I mean kill. The man who goes into a fight ready to kill, he cannot be beat. So you got to learn to kill. And killing is just like a country song. It’s got a rhythm, easy as breathing, easy as dancing, whether you shoot them, knife them, or just beat them to flathead hell.”

  It was daddy’s truth and a goddamn lie.

  Helliard knew that now, for sure.

  Damn it!

  He swerved the red Mercury, tumbling half of Duane Telford’s potato chips down his beard.

  “Goddamn it, Helliard!” Duane swore, while trying to stuff the rest of the chips into his mouth. “Are you trying to kill a man?”

  Duane was a fat, useless fuck. Ordinarily Helliard wouldn’t have paid him any mind. Only today, after visiting that hospital, Helliard felt a long way west of ordinary.

  “Shut the fuck up, Duane. You eat too much anyway. That stomach is going to be the death of you yet, I swear.”

  Helliard shoved a lock of red hair from out of his eye. The hair was another gift from Daddy. He claimed it was the Joleen temper bleeding out.

  “Goddamn it, Helliard. Ever since you come from that hospital you been acting meaner t
han a rusty meat axe. What the hell’s got into you anyway?”

  Helliard thought about the hospital. He thought about his Daddy. He thought about what he’d been afraid to do.

  He couldn’t deal with any of it.

  “Shut the fuck up before I kick your ass through your teeth, Duane.”

  “Well goddamn it, Helly, you made me spill most of my potato chippies,” Duane complained, picking and nibbling the larger crumbs from his beard.

  “Chips, Duane. Not chippies. They’re called chips. Besides, you eat too fucking much.”

  “I’m growing,” Duane said.

  “You’re growing on my fucking nerves is what you’re doing. Now shut the goddamn fuck up, eh?”

  Duane shut up. People always shut up when Helliard said to, because Helliard was a tough fucker.

  Yeah, right.

  He slid an Export-A cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket. He snapped open his Zippo lighter and sparked flame without missing a beat. That’s the way Helliard liked to do things – smooth and tough, without thinking at all.

  Only right now he didn’t feel so tough. Not after seeing his Daddy in the hospital bed with no more meat on his bones than a stick of kindling. Not after the way Daddy had stared at him, begging with his eyes for Helliard to find the guts to take Big Fuck and....

  “Fucking cancer.”

  A growth, his Daddy had called it. Like it was some kind of fucking weed.

  “Jesus.”

  Daddy gave him the lighter on his twelfth birthday. It was supposed to be right from World War II. The lighter had some writing on it. The writing said SO SHALL YOU REAP in big fancy letters, all hooks and knobs that reminded him of meat hooks hanging in a slaughter house. Antique or not, the lighter worked damn good.

  It lit first time, every time.

  None of that plastic butane shit for Helliard.

  He puffed in a long, hot drag and sparked up a couple of coughs to clear the air track. He knew he ought to give the shit up. It was smoke that killed his Daddy. Sooner or later old man tobacco-weed would let Helliard know his bill was long past due.

  Fuck it.

  He puffed again. He blew the smoke at Duane for the hell of it.

  “Horseshit, Helly!”

  The doctor gave Daddy three months to live. He said Helliard ought to stick around to sort of keep an eye on things.

  Like hell.

  Sticking around, watching a man die, that was too much like sticking around to watch your house burn down after the oil tank lit off kiddle-tee-boom.

  Helliard tucked the lighter back in his pocket. He touched the gun, jammed in his black leather belt. It was a big old Ruger Blackhawk. "Way too much gun" is what his Daddy called it, but Helliard called the gun Big Fuck, because it made a big fucking mess of whatever it shot. It could put a hole through a man large enough to reach your fist clear through.

  He knew that for an honest fact.

  It wasn’t legal in Canada, but God bless the U-S-A-holes. Helliard’s Daddy drove it up over the border, tucked in the bottom of a welded-over gas tank. He gave it to Helliard as a thirteenth birthday present. Since then Helliard had shot more men dead than he had fingers and toes to count on. And that was counting his extra little toe.

  Mind you, Helliard didn’t shoot nobody he knew. That’d leave way too much motive hanging out there in the wind for some lawman to catch hold, like the tail of a kite. No sir, the only people Helliard shot were strangers he met on the road. He buried them deep in the woods a mile out past the town.

  Yes sir, Helliard was a real bad fucker.

  “Yeah right, goddamn it,” he muttered. “A real bad, gutless fucker.”

  Helliard felt Duane eyeing him like he wanted something.

  “We need some pop, Helly. Some Pepsi.”

  Helliard glared at him.

  Duane shook the Pepsi can meaningfully.

  “Yeah, damn it. I’m dry to,” Helliard admitted. “There’s a Night Owl up the road. We’ll pick up some Coke there. Pepsi is nothing but piss water.”

  “I ain’t got any money,” Duane said.

  Helliard rubbed the butt of his pistol like it was a woman’s tit.

  “Don’t need any,” he said

  And he didn’t.

  * 3 *

  Maddy didn’t get it. There was Daddy, just as big as television. Skinny as a starved rake with that goatish half beard he grew because he’d always been too lazy to shave.

  Only he was blue.

  He was blue, and he was talking to her.

  “I raised you better than this, girl.”

  She’d gone crazy.

  That was it.

  She’d gone absolutely nuts. Daddy was dead and buried. She ought to know. Yet there he was. Was, and wasn’t. He wasn’t more than a tattery blue silhouette, like the light that tatters about a dead stick in a fireplace, just before it bursts into flame. He was Bluedaddy – that’s what he was – glowing like a dime store glow-in-the-dark dashboard Jesus.

  “What are you staring at?” Vic asked. “Have your eyes gone buggy?”

  Bluedaddy just stood there straight in front of Vic, grinning like a bastard at the tit. She could hear his grinning somewhere deep inside the plates of her skull, humming like the twanging of a guitar string.

  Only Vic couldn’t see a thing.

  “I asked you a question, girl,” Vic said.

  Bluedaddy jerked a crackling blue thumb in Vic’s direction.

  “He asked you a question, girl.”

  “You’re dead,” Maddy whispered.

  “You ought to know,” Bluedaddy replied. “You’re the one who buried me.”

  Vic looked confused. It suited him.

  “Don’t you be threatening me now,” he warned her. “You’re the only one who’s going to be doing the dying around here, Maddy. The only dead I am is dead tired. Dead hungry too. Fry me some eggs, damn it.”

  Bluedaddy’s grin danced in the air in front of his mouth like fairy light in a haunted swamp. She could hear the old bastard’s grin buzzing just behind her left ear, like a hive full of crazy bees.

  “Are you listening?” Vic asked.

  He got tired of waiting. As quick as you could say stick, he backed his right hand hard against her cheek.

  “Wake up,” he said. “And fry me them eggs.”

  He plunked himself down at the big kitchen table. He faced away from Maddy, like she wasn’t worth worrying about.

  “Why don’t you kill him?” Bluedaddy asked. “You sure as hell know how to.”

  “Why?” Maddy asked.

  “Because I’m hungry!” Vic shouted. “Because I fucking told you, that’s why.”

  Bluedaddy grinned even harder.

  “Because I told you to,” Bluedaddy repeated.

  Maddy grabbed her fry pan. She gave it a half twirl to spill any dust that might have grown overnight. She hadn’t stood griddle at a half-dozen Halifax greasy spoons for nothing. In a minute she’d have the pan on the burner, the eggs cracked and sizzling.

  “Get to them eggs, girl,” Bluedaddy commanded. “Your man has spoke.”

  That stopped her.

  Those last four words told her that this was her Daddy and not just some figment of her imagination. Your man has spoke. The same four words he’d said to Maddy’s mother more times than Maddy could count. The last four words he ever said.

  Your man has spoke.

  Maddy opened her mouth and three more words fell out.

  “Make them yourself.”

  The hell of it was she wasn’t even sure who she was speaking to. Vic knew though. At least he figured he did.

  “Are you looking for a pair of homemade sunglasses, Maddy my girl?” he asked, without even bothering to turn around.

  He’d do it.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d blacked her eyes.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Maddy stared at the homespun wall of Vic’s back.

  “I’m waiting,” he said.
/>
  She swung the pan over her head like a kindling hatchet and brought it down into Vic’s skull.

  He hit the table face first. His hands pancaked out to break his fall but that was only reflexes talking. He was deader than Jesus’ dog, long before he hit the table. The impact launched the salt shaker into flight. It landed with a clatter, spilling salt on the floor. Hell, she thought, spilled salt’s bad luck. I had better throw some over my shoulder.

  She stood there trying to remember which shoulder she was supposed to throw it over.

  Vic’s brains began to spread like spilled porridge.

  Maddy forgot about the salt.

  She grabbed for a napkin to blot the mess.

  Then realization hit.

  She stared at what she’d done.

  Then she smiled.

  “How do you like those eggs, Vic?” she softly asked.

  Bluedaddy smiled too.

  For some reason he was holding a gray willow broom – kind of like her granny used to use. He passed the teeth of the broom through Vic’s skull. As the broom touched the skull the air crackled like a hairbrush on a dry winter morning.

  “Time to clean up, Maddy,” Bluedaddy told her. “It’s time to clean up all of the old messes.”

  Maddy nodded.

  She let out a long, slow sigh.

  She thought it was over.

  It wasn’t.

  Because a few days later, just like Jesus, Vic rose up.

  CHAPTER 2

  An Energizer Bunny of Destruction

  * 1 *

  Maddy dragged Vic through the back yard, wrapped in an bargain store Indian blanket she’d have to burn to forget.

  Bluedaddy followed behind, sort of hovering, sort of drifting.

  It was hard going.

  The yard was muddy with the afterbirth of spring. There were tufts of scotch broom and marestale; witch grass and scattered snarls of patchy alder.

  “Christly damn you, Vic,” Maddy complained.”I’ve been after you for years to lose some weight.”

  Nobody knows how heavy a couple of hundred pounds of meat and bone is until they’ve dragged their guts out hauling someone else’s guts across an untended spring field. There was absolutely nothing to grab hold of on a corpse. Most of the handles were very poorly built.