Gunther got one word out before those teeth tore into him.
He said, “Doc—”
And then the world was red and black and, ultimately, empty of all color and sense.
CHAPTER FORTY
CONROY’S ACRES
Selma sat with Homer on the dining room floor. His head was buried in her lap, his arms around her waist, Mildred Potts’s blood soaking through the fabric of Selma’s bathrobe. She stroked his hair and hummed disjointed fragments of nursery rhymes to him as he wept.
“It’s okay,” she said every once in a while. “It’s okay. ”
Except that it wasn’t. She knew it. The truth screamed in her mind. He knew it, too. How could he not?
It took a long time for his body to stop trembling. For a long time his sobs were so deep that they threatened to break apart the shadows of the room. They were terrible sobs, torn from some deep place that Selma was sure Homer had not accessed in years. They were the broken sobs of a tortured child, magnified by the mass and muscle of a grown man.
She used the flap of her robe to wipe the blood off his face. His lips were pale, his skin was like wax except for small bursts of red around his eyes.
“Selma,” he whispered, looking up at her the way a confused toddler might.
“Yes, honey, what is it?”
“Did I … die?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying not to wince at the question even though it dug under her skin like a fish hook.
“Please…” he begged.
She stroked his cheek. “What do you remember?”
He closed his eyes, too. “I remember the prison. I remember being there. I was there for a long time, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. ”
“I remember them coming for me. They gave me some food and I ate everything on my plate. ”
“Like a good boy,” she purred.
“I wasn’t even hungry. I was sick to my stomach … but I wanted to eat it all. To make it last. ”
“I know. ”
“But they still came for me. Four of them. In the movies there’s a preacher, but he didn’t come to my cell. ” He sniffed. His nose sounded dry, almost dusty. “They took me to the place. Like a doctor’s office, but it wasn’t Dr. Volker’s office. It wasn’t the infirmary. It was the other place. ”
“Yes. ”
“They made me lie down. I … almost didn’t. I thought about it. I wanted to fight. I wanted to make them force me down, y’know … make a stand? Show them that I was tougher than them, that they hadn’t beaten me, not in the end. But … I was afraid they’d think I was a coward—yknow, trying to pussy out at the end. I think they must have put something in my food. I wanted to fight … but I couldn’t. I was so out of it. When they pushed me down on the gurney … I just let them. It was weird … I could feel myself wanting to fight. That Black Eye was opening inside my head like it always does. I could feel my hands ready to go. My whole body was ready
to go. I was going to tear into them. Take at least one or two of them with me and ugly up some of the others. That’d be an exit, wouldn’t it? Rip off some faces and pop some eyes. The eye was open but the Red Mouth didn’t whisper to me. It didn’t … give me permission. ”
Selma squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to sob. Or scream. She knew all about the Black Eye and the Red Mouth. It was on page after page of the trial testimony. There were photos of a black eye from thirty crime scenes. Photos of red mouths cut into the chests of so many people. Men, women. Children.
In court, Homer had never spoken those words. He had never admitted that they were part of his … Selma fought for the word. Method? His style? And yet here he was telling her about them.
God, she thought, oh God, oh God, oh God …
Not that Selma ever doubted that Homer had done these things. But hearing him say it was somehow more real. She could turn off the TV, refuse to read the newspapers. But these were words spoken to her. She owned them now, and there was no way to turn away from them.