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Gene stirred the boiling chili in the saucepan on the
stove. He watched as red bubbles bulged
then popped, spitting tiny mists of steam and tomato sauce. He pulled the pepper shaker from the spice
rack, dabbed a few sprinkles in, then set it back while he stirred a bit
more. The hearty, homestyle smell
drifted up and he closed his eyes to enjoy it.
He scooped up a ladle full and leaned in
close for a taste test. It was hot, too
hot. He burned his tongue, in fact, but
the flavor was there all right. Hoo-boy,
was it.
Just
like Deanne makes it, he
thought to himself. He looked up at the
ceiling. Their bedroom was directly
above him where she was struggling to live, her breathing sounding more like a
coal-powered train chugging along than anything else. He lowered his gaze back to the chili,
feeling helpless and not at all like the man he should have been, the man he
promised her he would be thirty years ago, when they both said ‘I do’. In sickness and in health was surely getting
its money’s worth.
Gene took the saucepan off the burner and
set it on an oven mitt to cool. He
brought the ladle to the sink and ran cold water over it. As the water ran he looked out through the
window above the faucet, peeking through the two-by-fours that barred those things from getting in. Through the small slivers, he could see the
barn across the farm, standing tall next to the tool shed beside it, both a
bright crimson-blood color. He’d spent
the whole week after their honeymoon painting those pains in the ass. The temperature had been in the hundreds, and
true, he’d been sweating out water faster than he could drink it, but he did it
by himself, and without so much as a jammed thumb or a red streak on his
Levi’s. When he used to look at them,
those two horribly humble structures, early in the morning when he’d get up
before the sun, before the roosters, to feed his animals, he’d felt pride. Now, he felt a fear so powerful, so potent,
it brought tears to his eyes.
It’d been a few days since he or anyone
else had seen them, and to him, that
felt all right. Maybe they’d gone
elsewhere. Maybe they realized they didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of
getting in here, and they had an even smaller chance of getting him, or Deanne
again. But, as the lyric goes, sometimes
you get what you want, sometimes you get what you don’t, and sometimes you get
nothin’ at all.
He realized he’d begun to shake, his
spine going cold with fright, and turned off the faucet. He dried his hands on his overalls then
grabbed a small bowl from the cabinet above the sink. He scooped a generous helping into the bowl
then walked into the living room where Scott and Lily Hayburn sat, cuddling in
his recliner. Scott held his quiet wife
in his arms while she stared out into space.
Streaks of running mascara had traced lines down her cheeks, like some
ridiculous gothic clown. Her hair was
greasy and hung in clumps down to her shoulders. Scott’s face was caked with dried mud and
blood, though Gene didn’t see any open cuts.
Scott kissed his wife’s head and rested his chin on her shoulder. He squeezed her tight, but there was no
reaction from her.
“Chili’s ready. You two can go ahead and help yourselves if
you like, just clean up any messes you make and mind the noise,” Gene said,
hobbling past them toward the staircase by the front door. He couldn’t get around too well anymore, and
mostly he tried not to mind it. His legs
ached a good deal of the time and he supposed he pocketed that from fifteen
years of being a farm hand, then adding in another thirty years of running a
farm of his own. “Bowls are above the
sink,” he added as he grabbed hold of the banister with one hand, trying not to
spill the chili with the other.
The couple didn’t move and Gene wasn’t sure, but
he thought they might have flinched when he spoke. The pair hadn’t said a word since he’d taken them in the morning before. He hadn’t a clue what they’d been through, but if it was anything like what he’d seen, what had happened to him and Deanne, he imagined they didn’t much care to talk about it, and that, he figured, was all right.
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