Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,56

west again toward Grandfather Mountain and studied the sky before glancing down the valley at the toll road.

Okay,” he finally said, and nodded toward the front door. “Let’s you and me go inside.”

“Not in the cabin,” Lily answered. “My young one’s in there.”

For a moment she thought Vaughn would insist, but he didn’t.

“Where then?”

“The root cellar. It’s got a pallet we can lay on.”

Vaughn’s chin lifted, his eyes seeming to focus on something behind Lily and the chair.

“I reckon we’ll know where to look for your man next time, won’t we?” When Lily didn’t respond, Vaughn offered a smile that looked almost friendly. “Lead on,” he said.

Vaughn followed her around the cabin, past the bee box and chopping block and the old root cellar, the one they’d used before the war. They followed the faintest path through a thicket of rhododendron until it ended abruptly on a hillside. Lily cleared away the green-leaved rhododendron branches she replaced each week and unlatched a square wooden door. The hinges creaked as the entrance yawned open, the root cellar’s damp earthy odor mingling with the smell of the dogwood blossoms. The afternoon sun revealed an earthen floor lined with jars of vegetables and honey, at the center a pallet and quilt. There were no steps, just a three-foot drop.

“And you think me stupid enough to go in there first?” Vaughn said.

“I’ll go in first,” Lily answered, and sat down in the entrance, dangling one foot until it touched the packed earth. She held to the door frame and eased herself inside, crouching low, trying not to think how she might be stepping into her own grave. The corn shucks rasped beneath her as she settled on the pallet.

“We could do it as easy up here,” Vaughn said, peering at her from the entrance. “It’s good as some old spider hole.”

“I ain’t going to dirty myself rooting around on the ground,” Lily said.

She thought he’d leave the musket outside, but instead Vaughn buckled his knees and leaned, set his left hand on a beam. As he shifted his body to enter, Lily took the metal needles from her dress pocket and laid them behind her.

Vaughn set his rifle against the earthen wall and hunched to take off his coat and unknot the strip of cowhide around his pants. The sunlight made his face appear dark and featureless as if in silhouette. As he moved closer, Lily shifted to the left side of the mattress to make room for him. Lily smelled tobacco on his breath as he pulled his shirt up to his chest and lay down on his back, fingers already fumbling to free his trouser buttons. His sunken belly was so white compared to his face and drab clothing it seemed to glow in the strained light. Lily took one of the needles into her hand. She thought of the hog she’d slaughtered last January, remembering how the liver wrapped itself around the stomach, like a saddle. Not so much difference in a hog’s guts and a man’s, she’d heard one time.

“Shuck off that dress or raise it,” Vaughn said, his fingers on the last button. “I ain’t got time to dawdle.”

“All right,” Lily said, hiking up her hem before kneeling beside him.

She reached behind and grasped the needle. When Vaughn placed his thumbs between cloth and hips to pull down his trousers, Lily raised her right arm and fell forward, her left palm set against the needle’s rounded stem so the steel wouldn’t slip through her fingers. She plunged the steel as deep as she could. When the needle stalled a moment on the backbone, Lily pushed harder and the needle point scraped past bone and went the rest of the way through. She felt the smooth skin of Vaughn’s belly and flattened both palms over the needle’s stem. Pin him to the floor if you can, she told herself, pushing out the air in Vaughn’s stomach as the needle point pierced the root cellar’s packed dirt.

Vaughn’s hands stayed on his trousers a moment longer, as though not yet registering what had happened. Lily scrambled to the entrance while Vaughn shifted his forearms and slowly raised his head. He stared at the needle’s rounded stem that pressed into his flesh like a misplaced button. His legs pulled inward toward his hips, but he seemed unable to move his midsection, as if the needle had indeed pinned him to the floor. Lily took the rifle and set it outside, then pulled herself