She Walks in Beauty Read online

  Sam shied at the smell, then smiled her No, thanks, Skeeter, trotting out her most polite party manners as if he’d offered her petit fours on a silver tray at a debutante tea.

  He smashed the bottle into her teeth. Her blood tasted of salt and rust. She ran her tongue gingerly across her front teeth.

  “Drink!” he screamed.

  She screamed back: “I don’t drink!”

  She didn’t. Not for almost thirteen years. Before that, she’d drunk for a bad long time. Oh, she was a juicer, all right. The kind who threw her shoes out of the car while it was weaving from side to side on the freeway. Who thought she was having a high old time stripping down to her skivvies in the middle of dinner, dancing nude on the tabletops for dessert. Who was all too familiar with the snout of the pig who rooted her awake at four in the morning when her blood sugar dropped, the porker who wore a name tag that read Remorse, who dug out all her transgressions, every last disgusting one, and spread them before her like truffles to be gorged, regurgitated, and scarfed up again.

  Skeeter laughed his nasty old laugh. “I know you don’t, baby. I learned a lot about you, what with all the spare time I had down in Reidsville. Talking to a couple other guys you helped put away. We used to make up stories about what we’d like to do if we got hold of you.” Three beats passed while she thought about that. “Now, ain’t life funny?” he crooned.

  Sure, sure. She was about to counter with something chatty about what a small world it is, when he peeled away an inch-wide strip of the soft white flesh of her throat just like he was peeling an onion.

  It burned like hell. But she didn’t scream. He was far too close to the jugular. She didn’t know how much time she had before the smell of her fear shoved him over the edge into something she didn’t even want to imagine.

  “Now.” He tapped her mouth with the pint again. “You wanta drink?”

  She drank. Again, he insisted. Again. Again. Again. Until the bottle was almost empty. Then he was pushing pills into her mouth. Chew, he screamed. The last of the bourbon seared her empty gut along with the ’ludes. Then they all joined hands and do-si-doed around her brain, where a drumbeat of secret longing for sweet release had been poised a dozen dry years.

  Sock it to me, Devil Daddy. Give it to me, Mr. Booze. Ooooooh, Daddy. I been pining for you. Waiting to run to you. Hide with you. Shuck the straight life, give it up to you. I want to lap you up, suck you up, savor you.

  The car lurched. Skeeter slapped her so hard her head snapped. “Open your eyes, you lush. You’re gonna kill us.”

  So why didn’t he think of that before? But she wouldn’t do that, would she? Naaawh. It was too much fun drunk-driving this cute little car that handled just like a roller coaster.

  They passed a few blocks east of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, then close by Oakland Cemetery. Confederate General Hood had followed the Battle of Atlanta from the old graveyard’s promontory. Margaret Mitchell rested there, as did Bobby Jones, the golfer. Sam’s mother and father lay near them in a marble tomb. She would too, sooner or later.

  Today it looked like sooner.

  At that, her parents’ faces zoomed into close focus, pretty people dead all too young, falling out of the sky when their airplane did bad rollovers near Paris. Tears tracked down her cheeks, almost thirty years later.

  The pills and the booze had pushed her over into easy sentimentality, teetering on the edge of maudlin. She hated that.

  “You like cemeteries?” Skeeter asked as if he were talking about the weather. “I can’t stand ’em. Daddy made us go weed Mama’s grave every Sunday. It was creepy.”

  Sam snuffled. Poor Skeeter. She knew just how he felt, losing his mama. She and Skeeter Bosarge, the rapist/murderer, had something in common. They could talk.

  And, in fact, she knew just what to say to him. “Why don’t you let me go, Skeeter? I’ll make sure they cut you a deal.”

  The choice of words was unfortunate.

  “Cut me nothing!” the madman screamed. “Cut you, bitch!” The silvery knife skittered against her neck.

  OK, it was time to get the hell out of there. Cars zipped by them on the interstate. What was with these people? Were they so snug in their air-cooled wraparound sound they couldn’t see a woman with a knife at her throat?

  “Take the Panthersville Road exit and don’t try anything cute.”

  They were there already? It hadn’t taken long, fifteen minutes from the time he’d grabbed her. Now everywhere she looked there were thick stands of trees, remnants of the forests that had once covered these rolling hills. Dark, deep woods, where nobody could find her.

  Houses grew few and far between. They drove through stands of oak, pine, sweet gum, sprinkled with wild dogwood and azalea. Would they find her corpse just about the time they crowned the new Miss Dogwood next spring?

  Left, Skeeter barked. Left, then left again. The blade snicked her throat with each word. How much blood had she lost? The street sign at the last turn read Hanging Tree Lane.

  “’D’jew see that?” he giggled.

  Cute. Skeeter was always cute. One of his trademarks had been the little poems he’d left at the crime scenes. They had always rhymed, and they were always obscene. Moon, June, bloody bazooms. Nice, twice, tit slice. Yep, Skeeter had a way with words all right.

  “Out of the car,” he barked, loosening his hold.

  A commotion of motion. Her Big Chance. She lurched for the glove compartment and the .38, didn’t even get close. He smashed her seat forward, bashing her head—already pounding with the booze and the ‘ludes.’ Now he was out of the car, dragging her with him through gravel and grass. Skeeter was huge, and two years of weight lifting in Reidsville had made him even more formidable.

  The woods were lovely, dark and deep on the way to Grandmother’s house, and the Big Bad Wolf had very big teeth. He bared them at her now, then slugged her with his fist. Stars twinkled, and her nose scrinched. She’d never known anything could hurt like this.

  And she rather liked her delicate, arrow-straight nose. Vanity, vanity. Where does it get you?

  To Grandmother’s house? Before them stood a little cabin in the woods. Was this a fairy tale? A figment of her drunken imagining?

  If not, maybe Grandma was home. Maybe she had a telephone. Maybe she’d call for help.

  No such luck. They danced around to the back of the tarpaper shanty, this peculiar couple. Her fanny to his crotch, his arm crooked in a chokehold, his legs kicking her along like a recalcitrant partner who just couldn’t keep the beat.

  “Ain’t nobody here,” he grunted, shoving her toward a stand of pines that grew right up to the back door. “Belongs to my old man, still down at Reidsville. You know what an old man is, sweetheart?”

  She did. His sugar daddy, his boyfriend—undoubtedly even bigger and meaner and uglier than Skeeter—who’d faced off other inmates, hit ’em with the dead eyes, said Back off! This ‘un’s mine.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman, Miss Adams.”

  She’d seen the last woman he’d had. Or what was left of her. The little pieces. The broken places.

  Now her nose was killing her. The whittled place on her neck burned. She felt weak in the knees. Saliva pooled in her mouth. It tasted bright yellow. She was going to throw up.

  “Don’t you dare!” He shook her, and something in her nose crunched. She retched again.

  Skeeter screamed, “I said no! You bitch! Don’t!” Then he got in close, his breath hot and nasty, and crooned, “I want your kisses sweet.”

  Then he jerked her up, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and slammed her against a tree. A thick rough rope materialized from nowhere. A magician, that Skeeter Bosarge. And he could do rope tricks. Loop-de-loop-de-loop-de-loop. The rope twirled, and she was neatly trussed.

  Her mind stepped off. This was not looking good. How was she going to manage this thing now? How had she, the control freak, let it get so far away from her?r />
  Then hopelessness and helplessness stepped up and joined hands in her mind, ready to do a little minuet. She was reeling, so sick and dizzy she couldn’t even focus. Skeeter was fading in and out of her private picture show. Or was he just dancing forward and back, back and forward, practicing a little routine?

  Nope. He was just trying to find the right distance for his real magic act.

  You know the one, Sam. The one where the man throws knives at the pretty lady.

  “They were having a sale at the store where I stopped in Macon.” Skeeter grinned and held up a whole brace of blades. Two dozen. Three, maybe. Enough to make plenty of holes in her. Blood would flow like booze spilled on a bar by a drunk couldn’t hold her liquor. Remember her?

  “They’re gonna think you got drunk, fell down on a porky-pine, there’s enough of you left to ID.” Then he stepped back once more, took aim, and grinned.

  God, Skeeter had bad teeth—and a weak chin. Probably the result of years of inbreeding. Here she was, a lifetime member of the Piedmont Driving Club (though she never attended, a point of pride—not to mention reverse snobbism) about to be skewered by South Georgia white trash. My Lord, the ignominy, as the Atlanta ladies would say.

  The first knife flew and ka-chuncked into the pine a half inch from her waist. She could hear the blade quiver. She could smell the fresh resin filling the tree’s wound.

  And then she shut down.

  The world, very small and very contained, held only herself, Skeeter, and those knives. One, Sam. Two, Skeeter. Three, knives. Like fog through the Golden Gate, a calm drifted over her. She was soft green hills rolling beneath cool gray clouds.

  “Whoops.” Skeeter pursed his mouth. “Damn! Well, practice makes perfect. We’ve got a lot of time for practice, don’t we, sugar? And after while, we’ll take us a little break. See how else you can pleasure old Skeeter.”

  Somewhere deep inside the drunken maelstrom that, at present, passed for her brain, she knew she ought to be trembling. But there was a gift she had—which came in very handy if you hung around the likes of Skeeter Bosarge. When the going got very, very rough, Sam hung tough and absolutely calm. She was placid and still as a high mountain lake that had a steady date with the bluebird of happiness.

  The still place came from years of reciting the Serenity Prayer—a plea for the ability to accept the things she couldn’t change, the courage to change the things she could. And this, this right in front of her was one of the former. She wasn’t about to change Skeeter Bosarge. Not now. Not unless she turned into Superwoman, flung off these ropes, and whupped his ass. So she’d just have to turn it over. Put it on the shelf.

  Whop! The second knife didn’t miss. And it hurt like hell, it really did, when a knife pierced her arm just below the elbow.

  Somewhere, someone was screaming.

  Zingggg! That one found the fleshy part of her right thigh. The screaming was growing louder, keener.

  Ka-whap! Wailing, that baby was blowing. She sounded like Billie Holiday on speed.

  Or Sam Adams on Old Crow and ’ludes, which is who it was.

  Sam was screaming her head off. And pleading—or as close to pleading as she ever got. The kind of pleading Margaret Thatcher would do if you got her really pissed.

  “Stop it, Skeeter! Stop it this very instant!”

  “Who you think you are, my second-grade teacher?” He flung another knife and missed, which really burned him.

  “Stop it, you bastard!”

  He liked that. He grinned, then clucked. “Sunday School teacher talking like that? Oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

  Then he grabbed up six knives at once. He drew back, one in his right hand, the other five sinisterly poised. He’d let fly a barrage like the mojo Watusis chucking their spears. He’d show the bitch who’d put him away. She’d snaked two of his most precious years—years he could have been doing good, sending sluts like her to burn in hell.

  Suddenly another sound, a roaring of hallelujahs filled the sky. It sounded like glory.

  And Skeeter was diving for cover, flying high and wide.

  “That’s right!” shouted an old voice, rich and magnificent. It had to be the voice of God. Sam was sure of it. “Get away from her, you bastard!” Now she wasn’t quite so sure, but still, she liked it.

  Then from behind a pine tree arose the face of her savior. He was robed in khaki—pants, shirt, a long-billed hat.

  Malachy Champion, who was pushing eighty, had been a hunter all his life. Once he’d started collecting Social Security, he figured he could get by with pretending to forget the dates of hunting season—about which he’d always been pretty casual anyway. Malachy was out stalking his supper, mourning dove or bobtail quail, whichever flushed first. He liked little birds. You cooked ’em up, made yourself some pan gravy with the scrapings left in the bottom of the skillet, that and a mess of greens, some leftover corn bread in a glass of buttermilk. Hell, eating like that, a man could live to be a hundred—in the little house his children bought him right over there on the edge of South River.

  Except for the bastards. There were all brands and sizes of bastards, and they did various and sundry things to drive men crazy. There were bastards in the government. Bastards on the TV. Bastards throwing garbage in the Chattahoochee. And then there was this kind of bastard crouching over there behind that rusting jalopy.

  All the while, his shotgun at the ready, Malachy was steadily sliding forward. Suzie, the redbone hound bitch he’d bought in Louisiana where those old boys knew something about hunting, hung close by his left side.

  “Stay, girl,” he commanded. He didn’t want her getting too close to danger, especially since he didn’t need her to flush this varmint.

  Suzie whimpered. Whatever it was, she hadn’t come this far to be left out.

  “Stay,” he repeated gruffly.

  She stayed, and Malachy stepped closer to the old rusted-out Ford the bastard had jumped behind.

  Then, zing, a knife flew past Malachy’s right ear.

  He’s going to die, thought Sam. My hero’s going to die. And then I’m going to die. She kept waiting for the picture show of her life to start flashing, the way people said it did. Well, look on the bright side. She’d never know serious illness. And it would be nice to see her mama and daddy again.

  Zing. A second knife darted and missed, and still the old man kept advancing. Then a third flew.

  “Keep back!” Skeeter screamed. You could almost see the panic, electric in his voice.

  “Why?” the old man asked evenly, as if that were the most natural question in the world. “I ain’t afraid of dying. I’m old. How ’bout you?”

  A fourth knife soared past and thudded among pine needles. The old man stepped closer and closer, now turning his back toward Sam.

  Then a fifth knife lifted off, and a sixth, and it was that last one that found a target in Suzie’s leg. She screamed, and Skeeter’s head popped up wearing a grin of triumph, and then flew off, or most of it did.

  For a shotgun—which spreads its tiny BB-like shot and will pierce and kill but leave a little bird intact at 30 yards—will turn a man’s face to hamburger when fired at five. It might also tear his head off.

  When Malachy fired, he was three yards from his target.

  The old man turned to Sam, and said, “Don’t look.” But she already had. Her eyes rolled up, and she sagged against the rope.

  Then Malachy Champion laid a so-sweet hand upon her cheek, took out his own knife to cut her bindings. “There now. Now, now.” He gentled her like a frightened filly. “That oughta fix his wagon. Can’t stand a man picks on a woman. ’Specially a pretty woman.”

  Sam managed a weak smile before her lights went out. She tried but couldn’t manage the words, trying to say, “Thank you, sir, for the compliment.”

  *

  The way Malachy told it later, for the 200th time it seemed to him—to the police, the GBI, the TV people, then finally to Sam herself when she was si
tting up again in bed in the house she shared with her Uncle George. He’d been tracking, see. About to flush some quail when he heard this woman screaming. Got her in his sights, thought, My God, look at that girl, pretty enough to be Miss America. What’s that crazy fool doing to her? It didn’t seem to him you had to think about that more than half a second, the time it took to swing the barrels of his shotgun over toward the perpetrator of the screaming.

  “Miss America, huh?” laughed Uncle George, who was sitting right there with old Malachy in her boudoir, the three of them having tea like it was an ordinary occasion, like the man hadn’t saved her life. “Sam was going to cover the pageant for the paper this year. Of course, now—”

  Sam pointed to her taped nose. “Guess this got me out of that. Now, listen, Mr. Champion—”

  “You don’t say?” said Malachy. “Lord, Lord, I’ve watched that show since they started showing it on TV. 1955. That’s the year Lee Meriwether took it. Pretty girl. Brunette. Looks a lot like you, young’un.”

  Your flattery, old man, won’t get me to Atlantic City, she thought, and then thanked him.

  “You’re a fan of the pageant? I’ve always been, too,” said George.

  Since when? Sam wondered. Since when had her elegant uncle been interested in beauty queens?

  “Oh, yes,” Malachy continued. “One of my hobbies. Remember ’em all. All the way back to the beginning, 1921. Margaret Gorman. Girl had a thirty-one-inch chest. Pretty as a picture, though. Guess I’m glad times have changed.” He rolled his watery blue eyes down the front of Sam’s pj’s. “Myself, I like girls a little more developed in that category. If you know what I mean.”

  Sam, who’d been fairly well developed in that category since she was twelve, did indeed. But what she wanted to know was—

  “All-time favorite was Yolande Betbeze, from a good family down in Mobile, Miss Alabama, Miss America 1951. Gorgeous creature, told ’em all to go to hell later, they wanted to mess in her business. Worked with CORE when the integration started.” Malachy nodded. “She picketed, sat in at lunch counters at Woolworth’s. I always liked girls with some backbone, some spunk.”