TRAGEDY OF BLOOD

a novel by Gary Canup

Chapter 4

"Myron, yeh awake?"

"Yeah."

"Yeh ready to go?"

"Yeah."

"Then come on, let's git goin."

There was a dual crunching of feather mattresses, the sound of a fumbling on the nightstand between the beds, the scratch and feeble flare of a match that illuminated Dimmy's shadowy face as he pressed the match to the wick of the coal-oil lantern and turned up the flame until the shadows across his face all but disappeared. He carefully replaced the glass chimney on the lantern. The resultant circle of light now encompassed Myron's sleepy features but still left the extremities of their room sunken in shadow.

"If Ma ketches us, she'll cut off our nuts," Myron predicted with a yawn.

"She ain't gonna ketch us; she's sound asleep."

They sat on their beds tugging on their boots and lacing them up. Their hair was unkempt and they got to their feet in their soiled and wrinkled long johns.

"How we gittin out?" Myron inquired.

"Through the winder, like we planned, remember?"

"I reckon. I don't know, I ain't awake yet."

"Then git awake. Here, hold the lantern."

Dimmy quietly opened the shutters, which nonetheless seemed to creak with disquieting loudness in the night. They held their breath and listened, but no sound came from their mother's room. Dimmy silently climbed out the window and took the lantern and Myron, not so silently, rather clumsily, in fact, as was his wont, followed his brother out of the window and, glancing at their mother's closed shutters, they hurried off with the lantern and hid behind the woodshed where, breathing heavily, they stared at their mother's window for nearly a minute. When nothing happened, Dimmy said:

"See there? No problem a tall. I reckon yeh can hold on to yer precious nuts a while longer."

"I reckon so," said Myron, much relieved. "Ready to go to the barn?"

"Not jist yet. Let's have us some fun fust." Dimmy rapped on the barred door of the woodshed. "Yeh awake in there?" he grinned in the lamplight, scratching his rump with lazy pleasure.

"Huh?" said a groggy voice from within.

"I said yeh awake in there?"

The prisoner inside seemed to be emerging grudgingly from a deep slumber. "Dimmy? That you?"

"How yeh like it in there, sis?"

"What time is it?"

"Time fer us to go," Myron said. "Come on, Dimmy." He did not enjoy taunting their sister as much as Dimmy did.

"Myron out there too?" said the voice in the shed.

"Yeah," Myron replied.

"Dimmy? Myron?" — the pathetically pleading voice was just inside the door now — "Will yeh let me out a here? Please?"

"Cain't do it, sis," Dimmy replied.

"Please?"

"Yeh want us to git in trouble with Ma, too?"

"I cain't stand it in here no more, Dimmy. It stinks and there's all kinds a bugs."

"Yeh shoulda thought bout that afore yeh defied Ma," Dimmy told her.

The voice inside the shed suddenly hardened. "If yeh don't let me out a here, I'll tell Ma what yer up to next time she feeds me."

"Oh?" Dimmy said. "And what're we up to, sis?"

The prisoner said nothing.

"No idee?" Dimmy taunted.

"I know yer up to somethin," their sister said. "Yeh always are. If yeh don't let me out I'll jist tell Ma the two a yeh was out sneakin round in the night."

"How yeh know it's night?" Dimmy asked.

"Cause it's dark out."

"No it ain't. It's bright daylight. We're goin out to do our chores."

"It ain't bright daylight nohow."

"Sounds like yeh done gone blind in there, sis."

"I ain't gone blind none." The girl sounded worried though.

"I don't know. I hear tell some folks locked up in the dark too long go blind like bats in a cave."

"I ain't gone blind none, I can see yer lamp light neath the door."

"Come on, Dimmy," Myron complained. "Let's go. This here's borin."

Tiring of the sport, Dimmy agreed and they simply stole away and left the prisoner muttering at the woodshed door. "Yes, I can see moonlight now, too, so I know it's night and yeh boys ain't out doin no chores, that's fer shore. I know yer up to somethin rascally agin and if yeh don't let me out a here I'm a-gonna tell Ma what I know and . . . " her voice trailed off as they neared the barn.

Dimmy and Myron entered the barn and closed the door behind them so that the lamplight would not be visible from the house. Dimmy held the lantern aloft as they went down the broad central aisle. The barn was redolent of hay and manure.

"Shore glad that damn nigger ain't in here no more."

"Me, too," Myron agreed. "I hope he's gone fer good."

The lantern illuminated the stalls of dully blinking mules and nervously stirring cows. Dimmy and Myron stopped before a stall that quartered a cow and her recently born calf. Dimmy held up the lantern and peeked over the door of the stall to find the calf nursing at her mother's udder.

"Good, she's in a suckin mood. I got dibs on her fust."

"Yeh always git dibs on her fust," Myron griped.

Dimmy unlatched and opened the stall and grabbed the rope around the calf's neck and yanked the whimpering creature away from her mother and dragged her out of the stall and closed and latched the door again, the mother lowing in protest.

"Aw, shut up, yeh stupid bitch," Dimmy said. "Yeh got plenty a this here when yeh was young. Now it's yer daughter's turn."

Myron was petting the calf's head seductively. "Nice Lavinia," he cooed. "Sweet Lavinia." They had named the calf Lavinia because she had long skinny legs just like the Nici girl whom they watched from the wilderness every day with increasing lust.

"Come on, Lavinia," Dimmy cajoled, hauling the resisting calf away from its mournfully mooing ma. "The party's at the udder end a the barn."

Myron chuckled obscenely over his brother's pun.