Blood Victory

Even though she was afraid it might silence them, Marjorie looked in the direction of her parents, saw her mother try to grip her father’s shoulders. He tried to step back, and the attempt caused wince-inducing pain.

“Gosh dang it, Beatty, your rib’s broke!”

“Nothing’s broke. I’m just scratched up is all. Now get in the car and let’s go.”

Her mother gave her a look, and Marjorie saw disappointment in it. Like she wished she had an ally in this moment, someone else who recognized the strangeness of her husband’s behavior, but she knew she’d never find one in her daughter.

“We should get him home so he can rest,” Marjorie said.

“Should we?” Like so many of the questions her mother asked her of late, it was both rhetorical and sarcastic.

When Marjorie reached the passenger-side door, her father managed to pop the passenger seat forward with twice the usual effort so she could squeeze into the back seat.

“Hey, baby girl.”

“Pronghorn get you, Daddy?”

“Sure did. No sense in trying to do right by a wild creature.”

“Guess a hug’ll hurt, then?”

“It will, baby girl. But maybe later after I’ve had a beer.”

“Deal.”

He made a kissing sound, gently pinched her cheek.

It was so dark out and the leather in the back seat so black, it felt like she was settling into a void until she heard the familiar creaking underneath her as she readjusted.

Now they’re charging through the dark toward Lubbock’s halo on the horizon. The Plymouth’s powerful V-8 engine feels familiar, comfortable. And finally, her mother’s stopped with all the damn questions.

But she’s driving like a bat out of hell, which isn’t like her. Does she think the Plains Rapist has wings?

“Oh, no.” It sounds like a groan her mother hastily attached two words to at the last possible second.

Maybe they have a flat, or the car’s banged up worse than her daddy thought and some warning light’s gone on in the dash.

“What, Danielle?” her father asks.

Her mother points to a dark smear on the windshield close to the passenger side. It’s backlit by the glow of the four headlights, and it’s dark. If it’s making her mother queasy, it can only be one thing. Her father already told them he struck the pronghorn so hard, it flipped up onto the windshield and then over the roof of the car. It must have left some blood smears along the way. And if there’s one thing her mother hates more than the dark, it’s blood.

“Can you reach it?” she asks.

“No, I can’t reach it. You crazy?”

“You can’t just wipe it off?”

“Woman, just drive the damn car and don’t look at it.”

“I can’t, Beatty. I can’t with it like that. You know how I am.”

Amazing, Marjorie thinks, that one fear can overpower another so quickly. Her mother’s so determined to get rid of that bloodstain, she’s pulling over in the middle of nowhere despite her fear of the endless night. Her father’s letting out a stream of curses, but in no time, she’s rounding the hood, standing next to the passenger side, leaning in to see how big the bloodstain is, when her father says, “Well, don’t ruin your dress over it, Danielle!”

“I’m not.”

Marjorie studies her father, the way he’s rocking back and forth, still gripping his stomach. He’s hurt bad. There’s no denying it. He’s not a man to avoid doctors when he’s got the flu or even a sore arm that won’t go away. And right now, he’s badly injured—bleeding, even—and all he wants to do is go straight home. There’s got to be some good explanation. He’ll share it in time.

With her, at least. And that’s just the way she likes it.

She’s been watching him so closely she’s got no idea what prompted his suddenly wild jostling in his seat. She’s worried he’s having some sort of seizure; then she realizes that in his weakened state his wrestling efforts to get the seat belt off are so ungainly they look like an epileptic fit. He’s also trying to kick the door open with one foot, but it’s too heavy and he’s in too much pain to accomplish both things at once. When Marjorie hears the familiar creak of the trunk opening, she realizes it’s her mother’s actions that have freaked him out. She’s rooting around inside the trunk, and that’s caused her father to convulse with sudden panic.

The seat belt off, the door half-open, her father’s managed to turn in his seat. He’s looking past Marjorie to where the rear window’s blocked by the open trunk. His eyes meet hers. There’s a blend of pain—physical and emotional—and resignation in them that she knows she will remember for the rest of her life. A sense that something he’s slowly built with his only daughter over time is about to be either irreparably damaged or forever lost.

Then the trunk pops shut, and her mother’s striding around to the front of the car and the expression on her father’s face seems like it was all for nothing, even though it’s left Marjorie with a single, clear thought that keeps repeating itself.

There’s something in that trunk Daddy doesn’t want anybody to see.

But if there is, then her mother’s missed it somehow. She’s found some kind of rag, and she’s using it to wipe the antelope’s blood off the windshield.

But Daddy’s frozen solid, staring dead ahead again, watching her mother’s every move.

Marjorie sees it before her mother does.

The thing she’s using to wipe the windshield isn’t just a rag. It’s black. The material’s thick and not absorbent enough to wipe the blood away. And on the side she’s pressed to the windshield, Marjorie can see a familiar starburst design. When her mother retracts it slightly from the glass to ball more of it inside her hand, light winks through the center of the star, and she realizes it’s an eyehole.

For Marjorie, there’s only one way to make sense of what she’s seeing.

If her father’s a monster, then it means monsters aren’t what the world thinks they are.

Her mother’s wiping slower now, as if she’s realizing the thing she’s found in the trunk won’t get the job done. She pulls it away from the windshield, holding it in two fingers like you might a dead rodent by its tail. Uplit by the headlights at her waist, her face looks ghostly, her expression unreadable.

For a moment that slows Marjorie’s heart, she’s convinced her mother is quietly experiencing the same revelation she just came to. Yes, the stocking cap can only mean one thing. It means her father has done terrible things. But his reasons for them must be complicated. They know who Beatty Payne is. They know who he is at dinner and while he watches television and when he comes through the front door calling out to them as if just saying their names aloud soothes him. And so together, quietly, the three of them will discuss what this discovery really means.

Just the three of them. As a family.

Thank God they’re out here alone, free from others’ eyes, judgments, and definitions. Maybe her mother will finally see what vast open plains can bring you—the space needed for essential secrecy, the kind of secrecy that can help a family survive anything.