Drawn Into Darkness(91)

I didn’t like his returning health. And I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Forget shutting up; I had to distract him. It was time to try that oldest of advice-column canards: Get Him Talking About Himself.

I cleared my throat and smiled as if I were on a first date. “Stoat,” I ventured, “I know you’re from around here. Do you have brothers or sisters close by?”

He gave me a flinty squint-eyed stare. “Why? You planning to leave them something in your will?”

“Just asking.”

He relented. “Sure, I had sisters and brothers. Three of each.”

“That’s a big family. Were you poor?”

“We was sharecroppers. Course we was poor.”

“But you had a good mother and father?” I asked with faked innocence, figuring otherwise.

“Of course.” Shifting from one foot to the other, he sounded no more impatient than usual. “Ma and Pa were good, God-fearing people.”

God-fearing. Interesting. “Was your mother the one who taught you how to keep everything so neat and tidy?”

Scowling, Stoat looked perplexed in his goatlike way. “I don’t recall that in particular. Ma just kept me fed reasonable and clothes on my butt and she whupped me when I needed it.” He grinned, apparently delighted by memories of parental violence. “Course Dad whupped harder.”

“Were you scared of him?”

“Course I was! What the hell you getting at?”

Reminding myself that I was trying to prolong my life didn’t keep my big mouth from doing its worst. I said earnestly, “Well, I was wondering if your God-fearing mother and father would want you around if they knew you were a faggot.”

Stoat lurched toward me. “What the hell you talking about?”

“Why, what you did with Justin.”

“Now, that’s just sick, not knowing the difference between me and Justin and a pair of faggots!” Ranting, Stoat stood over me, bent to get in my face. “I’m a pedophile and Justin is just—just—innocent. Hey, Justin’s a virgin, didja ever think of it that way?” Stoat spoke with such fervor that his spittle flew into my face. “Justin ain’t fucked nothing. He just got fucked and fucked, but he never fucked me, so I ain’t no faggot and if anybody thinks I am, they’re crazier than you are, bitch.”

Okay, I had succeeded in sticking it to Stoat before he killed me, but I didn’t enjoy it much, watching his body language while I tensed to run if he raised the knife.

Nodding solemnly, I asked, “But would your mother think—”

“She wouldn’t think nothing!” Stoat’s voice shot up to a screech. “Why would she want to think! Her and Pa sent us to church when we was kids, but it wasn’t their fault whatever we done once we was grown. They visited my brothers in prison, didn’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, ultrasoothing. “You never told me.”

Stoat glowered at me uncertainly.

I went on. “But you did tell me you made it a point to remain celibate until your parents had passed away.”

“That was just to spare their feelings! I wouldn’t want to know all about what they did for sex, would I? Like, I think my father bruised my mother up some, and I know he used a whip, but that ain’t sick, just embarrassing. I would never let them know I knew. Sex things ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, but they should ought to be kept private.”

“Of course. I absolutely agree.” Then the imp of the perverse got into me again. Dying no longer looked so bad if I could put the screws to Stoat first. “So, are your brothers in prison for sex crimes?”

Saying that was like providing a spark to gas fumes; Stoat’s explosion seemed to fill the room. Rearing to stand ramrod straight, he shouted a stream of obscenities and curses too dizzying to remember and too foul to repeat. “You stupid bitch!” was the mildest of it. “You think I got to be what I am because of my brothers? Screw that! Whatever I done in my life was on my own, with nobody’s damn help, you dumb cow. . . .”

I think throughout the entire rant I did a pretty good job of sitting still and looking vaguely sympathetic, although I kind of curled my arms around myself to protect my tender underbelly in case of attack.

A valid instinct. Way too suddenly, in midobscenity, Stoat fell silent with his lips still moving. Mouth open, he hunched over like a giant fishhook to glare down at me. Then he closed his thin lips while his narrow flinty eyes remained open to stare at me. Eyes with no humanity in them, they might as well have belonged to an anaconda.

Very quietly he said, “Tricky bitch, what the fuck you up to, fucking with me?”