Page 32 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“What’s worth havin’ is never easy.”

He takes six crackers and slides the open sleeve across the table to her.

“I’m not a rude guest. If my hostess wants to serve me nothin’ but sour lemons, I’ll eat them, rind and all.”

He spreads butter on two crackers and makes a sandwich of them.

He eats it in two bites.

“Good butter. So what about you?” he asks.

“What about me?”

“Are you angry?”

“Hell yes.”

Buttering two more crackers, he says, “As angry as when I first came through the door?”

That is a question to which the answer must be calculated if she’s to lead him where she wants him to go. After a hesitation, she lies. “I guess not. I should be even angrier, but then I ...”

“Then you what, darlin’?”

“Then I think—what’s the point?”

“Is that bitter resignation or just practical adjustment to changed circumstances?”

She dwells on the question in silence. Then: “Both.”

“So maybe this will be easier for me than you first thought.”

“No.”

“No?”

She says nothing.

After consuming the second pair of crackers, he takes a little wine and says, “Eat somethin’, darlin’.”

Because a man like him believes that women are always driven by emotion rather than reason and that under stress they will always prove weak, he expects her response to be puerile. What she says must support his perception that she’s sliding into submission whether she realizes it or not. She says, “This is stupid. Why’re you doing this? I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Don’t be childish, darlin’. Poutin’ doesn’t become you. You had your reason for layin’ out this feast, and I have my reason to enjoy it. You need to finish what you started and eat your dinner like a good girl.”

He butters two more crackers, presses them together, reaches across the table, and puts them on her plate.

As Deacon fishes more saltines from the sleeve and makes a third sandwich for himself, Vida says, “Belden Bead has been under my meadow for eight months. Why are you just now after me about it?”

“Like I do when I’m off duty in my Trans Am, Belden drove a car made before GPS, a ’70 Plymouth Superbird Hemi, so no authorities could ever track where he went. When he disappeared, car and all, some thought he got wind of a Drug Enforcement Agency operation comin’ down on him, so he skipped to Mexico, left the Superbird there, and flew out to where he kept his offshore money. It didn’t make good sense he’d do that, but then no other explanation made any sense at all. Eat your buttered crackers, darlin’.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat them anyway.”

He devours his third pair of saltines before continuing.

“Three weeks before Belden visited you, you went to see Morgan Slyke, callin’ yourself Ceecee Cooper, but the boy didn’t realize who you really were. The kid is totally wasted that day, passes out, and when he wakes up, he can’t remember what he might have told you, though he recalls talkin’ about Belden. The kid is worried sick. He right away goes lookin’ for Connie Cooper, these new neighbors, but seems they don’t exist. Now he’s panicked. Takes him more than two weeks before he dares tell his buddy, Damon Orbach. The description of this Cooper girl doesn’t ring any bell with Damon, who never met you. Without tellin’ Morgan, Damon goes straight to Belden, who supplies him with spiced dabs and other shit. Damon means to get special treatment by sellin’ out Morgan. The description of this Connie is so vivid, down to your dimples, that Belden, who thought you were the hottest thing he’d ever seen, realizes you could pass for eighteen. He doesn’t tell Damon that Ceecee is you. Belden’s alarmed you’re pokin’ into what happened to Nochelobo. Apparently, without tellin’ anyone, he came to see you eight months ago—and he’s been missin’ ever since.”

As Deacon talks, he butters two more saltines and drops this second sandwich on her plate beside the first.

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