out. He’d be over wanting to kick some white man’s butt.
I went out and offered my tobacco and found a tuft of rat fur up on the windowsill. I braided it in my hair. I picked the herbs. I drank the tea. I smudged the house. I put the red blanket on the bed.
It was Sunday the next day, and I knew John’d be out drinking with his buddies late that night. It could go either way. Maybe he’d just come home and pass out. Maybe he’d come home mean. I slept with one eye open, tucked up under the protection blanket. I didn’t see no rats, but didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad. Rats abandon a sinking ship, or a house where there’s a fire coming
I heard the truck skid through the gravel around 3:00 a.m. He was drunk as a cowboy after a long dry cattle drive. He came in the kitchen, slamming stuff around and stumbling and cursing as he barked his shins and banged his elbows. I heard him pissing in the bathroom, then heard him coming down the hall. He stood in the doorway a few minutes, swaying. I knew he couldn’t see my open eyes, dark as the room was, and I sure wasn’t going to close them, not knowing what was coming. He took a couple of wide-legged steps toward the bed, trying to keep his balance, and finally toppled like a cut pine across my body. I heaved him over and left him snoring on top of the red blanket. Man, he smelled bad. Whiskey and smoke and beer and, although it broke my heart to admit it, some woman other than me.
I got up and went to the living room and cried myself to sleep, dreaming about rats on river rafts and rats in sewer drains and rats caught in traps.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of John puking. I went to fix him some coffee and orange juice, figuring that’d be about all his stomach could handle. I reached into the cupboard to get his favourite mug, the big one with the bucking bronco on the side of it. Sitting in it, with his little pink paws hooked over the top was the rat.
“Morning, little buddy.” I said. The rat jumped out and stood next to the coffee-pot. I opened the ‘fridge to get the orange juice. A rat sat on the stack of cheese slices. He didn’t budge when I reached in. I wondered if he’d learned how to turn the light on in there when the door was closed.
I heard John behind me and turned. He was still in his boots, his jeans, only his shirt was gone, and I guess he’d puked on it. Even mad at him as I was there was a twinge down in my belly at the sight of his naked chest, all hard muscle and sinew, his stomach flat, with pale golden hair running down into the top of his jeans. There was a rat sitting on the top of his head, yanking up his hair between its long pointy teeth.
“Oh man. My head’s killing me.” His eyes were bloodshot and yellowish, like two ketchup-covered eggs with runny yolks.
“Serves you right.” I wanted him to be hurting. I handed him his coffee. The rat on his head jumped off and disappeared into the living room.
“I ain’t in the mood Nell.”
“But I guess you were in the mood last night.” I stood with my hands on my hips. I could feel the hurt starting to switch around to righteous anger. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but I was too mad, too hurt.
“Leave it alone.” His voice was ragged and dangerous.
“I don’t want to leave it alone. You smelled like a goddamn whorehouse when you came in last night, you bastard. I want to know who you been with!” Out of the corner of my eye I could see a flurries of rat fur, diving under counters, through the window, skittering around door jams and out of the room.
He slammed the cup down on the table, sloshing the coffee over the rim. His hands balled up into fists. He leaned towards me.
“Well you can bet your fat ass it was somebody under 200 lbs.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and my face went red.
“Look at yourself, you think any man’d want you?” He ran his eyes up and down my body and sneered. “You used to be a good looking woman, but now you ain’t nothing but a sack of lard.”
“I am a good wife to you John McBride. I can’t help it if I gained weight.”
“What the hell do you mean, you can’t help it? I ain’t the one stuffing food down your throat! If you’d get off your floppy ass and do some work around this place, maybe you’d lose some of it, maybe I’d want you again!”
“I do all the work around this place! You don’t spend long enough here to do no work.”
“You saying I’m to blame for how disgusting you got? You blaming me, bitch?”
He took two steps toward me and I backed up until I found my self up against the counter.
“I ain’t blaming you, but Goddamn John, it ain’t me who’s the problem here - it’s you!” I couldn’t stop myself. “Out whoring around, mean drunk all the time - I ain’t gonna take it no more, you understand?”
I didn’t even see the blow coming.
Even with the rat fur charm braided in my hair, I couldn’t duck the first punch or the second, or the one after that. I lost count then. He went for my face, I guess, because it would be the place where the hurt would show the most. Proof that there was some small spot in the world where he could have an effect. My nose. My lips. My cheeks.
I went down, and, a gal my size... well, I went down hard and stayed down. I could see his boots in flashes of motion, misted in red.
I think it was all this flesh that saved me from getting worse than I got, and that was bad enough. But I was bundled way down deep inside the womb of myself and even though his hands left bruises, they didn’t break no bones. It didn’t hurt. I kept thinking it should hurt more, but it just felt like numbness everywhere, great stains of frozen places bursting out from under his icy fists and feet.
“John, John,....” I just kept repeating in a whisper. My heart speaking to his, willing him to hear me, see me, to stop...you’re breaking me, I thought, you’re breaking me apart. Then everything went quiet.
I could hear ragged breathing, great gulps of wet sobbing air. I thought it was me, but my moans were underneath that lung-punctured sound. I took my hands away from my face and as I did I heard my Auntie’s voice, steel strong and even.
“You step back John McBride. Step back now.”
I looked up at my husband. He stood over me, his face a twisted, crooked thing. Tears poured down his cheeks. His stomach heaved. He looked down at me as though he had no idea of how I’d fallen. He brought his bloody fists up in front of his own eyes and began to howl like a wild dog. He pounded his own face, first with his right hand, then his left, sparing no force.
“Bastard!” he cried, “Bastard!”
“Stop this! Stop this now! You hear me!” Auntie Betty stood in the doorway behind John. She filled the space with her square bulk. Her long grey braid was decorated with megis shells. She was dressed for serious ceremony work. Ribbons in her spirit colours on her skirt and blouse. Medicine pouch. In her left hand she carried the hawk wing fan, in her right the sweetgrass basket containing her pipe, tobacco, other things known only to her.
John hit himself square in the face with both fists.
Auntie Betty put her basket down and walked up behind him. She reached up and smacked him on the back of the head.
“Don’t be any more of a jackass than you already are. There’s been enough hitting for one day, eh?” She glared at him as he spun around. She raised the hawk wing fan and fluttered a circle in the air around his head. John let out a strangled noise, clamped his hand to his mouth and pushed past her out the door. I heard retching noises.
“Good. Puke up all that bad stuff,” said Auntie Betty, coming toward me. “Come on little one; let’s see what kind of shape you’re in.” She bent down and helped haul me to my feet. I was shaky. There was blood on my dress, dripping down from my nose.
“Looks like I got here just in time. You’ll live. Could hear it in the wind this morning. Time to come visit. Had