The Silver Star(72)

“Please stop it,” I said.

“I can’t.”


The day seemed to have gone on forever, but it was only midafternoon by the time we got back to the house. While the morning had been clear, the sky had clouded over, and a cold, foggy drizzle had started up. Liz said she was going up to the bird wing to spend a little time by herself and maybe take a nap. Uncle Tinsley decided to build a fire in the living room and sent me out to fetch kindling from the woodshed. I couldn’t find any good kindling, so I chopped some from a couple of small logs, using the little hatchet that hung on the wall.

After the trial, it felt good to be doing something simple and physical. You set up the wood on the chopping block, brought the hatchet down hard, and the wood split cleanly into two pieces. Then you stacked it and set up another piece of wood. Everything went the way it was supposed to. No tricks, no surprises.

When I had enough kindling, I laid it in the canvas tote, added some twigs from the old tack box Uncle Tinsley stored them in while they dried out, then carried it all back to the house, covering the tote with my arm so the wood wouldn’t get rained on.

Uncle Tinsley was on his knees in front of the fireplace, wadding up newspaper and tearing cardboard into strips. Mom was sitting in a brocade wing chair next to the hearth. She and Uncle Tinsley seemed to have decided that they were tired of fighting. Instead, Uncle Tinsley was going on about the importance, in getting a good blaze going, of the right amount of starting material—paper, cardboard, twigs, kindling, small seasoned pieces—and not until that was burning in a lively way did you add your logs. Otherwise, all it did was smoke.

“Bean, why don’t you go see if Liz wants to come down,” Mom said. “She could probably use a little primal heat.”

I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Uncle Tinsley always kept the radiators off except when the temperature fell below freezing, and the hall was chilly. The rain had gotten heavier, and you could hear it drumming on the metal roof. When I opened the door to our room, I saw Liz lying on the bed with her clothes still on. I was going to turn around and let her sleep, but she suddenly made this groggy, gurgling noise that scared me.

“Liz?” I said. “Liz, are you okay?”

I sat down next to her, shaking her arm and calling her name, and when she looked up, her eyes were blurry and unfocused. She said a few words in a slurred voice, but I couldn’t understand them. I ran back downstairs. “Something’s wrong with Liz!” I screamed.

Mom jumped out of her chair, and Uncle Tinsley dropped the log he was holding. We all ran up the stairs. Uncle Tinsley shook Liz hard, and she responded with the same sort of slurry and incomprehensible noises.

“Did you take anything?” Uncle Tinsley shouted at her.

“Pills,” she mumbled.

“Pills? What pills?”

“Mom’s pills.”

Uncle Tinsley looked over at Mom. “What kind of pills is she talking about?”

“She must mean the sleeping pills,” Mom said.

“You’ve got sleeping pills?”

“So?”

“Jesus, Charlotte. Go check the bottle.”

Uncle Tinsley started slapping Liz’s face and dragged her off the bed. Liz stumbled and fell to the floor. Uncle Tinsley said that we needed to get Liz woken up.

Mom came back and said the bottle was empty but there had been only a few pills left, maybe six or eight at the most. Uncle Tinsley half-carried Liz into the bathroom while Mom followed, explaining that as the trial got nearer, she’d given Liz a pill from time to time to help with her nerves. At the sink, Uncle Tinsley forced Liz to drink several glasses of water and then kneel over the toilet while he stuck his fingers down her throat. She vomited all over his hand, but Uncle Tinsley kept at it until all he got from her was dry heaves. Then he pulled her into the bathtub and turned the shower on cold and they stood there in their clothes, getting soaked. Liz started coughing and flailing around, hitting Uncle Tinsley and asking Mom to make him stop, please stop.

“He’s getting the poison out, honey,” Mom said.

“It’s not supposed to be fun,” Uncle Tinsley said.

“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” I asked.

Mom and Uncle Tinsley said no at exactly the same time. Tripping over each other’s words, Uncle Tinsley said, “We’ve got it under control,” and Mom said, “She’ll be all right.” After a moment, Mom added, “We’ve had enough dealings with people in uniform for one day.”


Once it seemed like the drugs were out of Liz’s system, Uncle Tinsley brought her one of his big flannel shirts. Mom and I helped her into it, then wrapped her in a blanket and took her down to sit by the fire while Uncle Tinsley changed into dry clothes. Mom made Liz hot coffee, and I toweled and combed her hair.