“There was a flood,” she said. “And it killed the wicked. It didn’t kill me.”
“You aren’t special, Tamara. I told you that. You can die like everybody else. Don’t even think about it.”
“We all die,” Tamara said. “So what’s there to be afraid of?”
“That fucking snake, for starters.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I am. Now do what you’re told.” The snake had stopped two feet from Tamara. From Tamara’s bare feet, her naked legs. Levi had on jeans, which wasn’t much protection, but nothing stood between her and the copperhead.
“Shoot it if you want to shoot it,” Levi ordered. “But don’t you dare—”
Tamara took a step forward and reached down. It happened fast, but Levi saw it all like a movie slowed to a single frame a second. She grabbed the snake at the neck, right behind its head, and she ran with it, bare feet on bare floors. Then she tossed it on the ground outside the house and turned her head away.
Bang, bang, bang.
She got off three shots.
Levi ran after her and lifted her in his arms out of reach of the snake’s bite, if it had any bite left. He swooped her up onto the porch and dropped her on her feet.
“Are you bitten?” Levi asked, running his hands all over her arms and hands looking for puncture wounds. Tamara didn’t speak. Her eyes were wide, her pupils fixed. He slapped her lightly on the cheek, snapped his fingers in her face. “Tamara Shelby, did it bite you?”
She shook her head slowly, still in a daze.
“Is it dead?” she whispered.
Levi looked back. Nothing but the snake’s tail was left twitching. The head had been blown clean off at the neck.
“It’s dead.”
Tamara nodded.
“Good.” She stood up straight. “That’s good.”
She didn’t look like a child or a girl right then. No, she looked like some sort of angel, some sort of goddess, with the porch light glowing behind her, turning her hair to flames. She’d picked up a copperhead with her bare hands, then blown him away with three perfect shots. Who was this girl?
His wife, that was who. He saw she was shaking, shivering, not a demon or angel or goddess, but a girl again. A girl who’d looked death in the face and held it in her hands. Levi picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. He set her down on the sofa, kissed the top of her head, then went back out to bury the beast. In the shed he found a rusted shovel and used it to dig a hole in the soft earth at the edge of the woods. He used the shovel to toss the head into the hole. Its maw was open, its fangs exposed, its eyes open, staring, accusing. Levi covered it with pile after pile of dirt. Then he scooped up the lanky body and tossed it deep into the trees. Some animal would have a nice midnight snack, probably another snake.
When the snake was dead and buried, Levi leaned on the shovel and breathed and breathed.
What was wrong with him? How could he have thought for one moment that Tamara was going to kill him? This was Bowen’s doing with his ghost stories and his talk of curses and graves and warning him to never love a Maddox. She had saved his life and there he’d been, worrying she’d destroy him. Levi felt like the worst fool on earth to think that little girl had plotted some sinister scheme behind his back. He ought to grovel at her precious feet and kiss her purple toes for saving him. And then he would wring her neck for picking up a poisonous snake with her bare hands.
He marched back into the house, slamming the door behind him.
“Tamara!” he called out ten times louder than he needed to. “Where the hell are you?”
“Bathroom,” came the small scared voice in response. He didn’t care what she was doing in there. He threw the bathroom door open and found her at the sink, scrubbing her hands with lava soap.
“Tamara?” he asked, quieter.
“I thought it’d be slimy,” she said, her voice rattling like dice in a cup. “But it wasn’t slimy. It was real smooth and slick. Like a muscle. It was so strong. I could feel how strong it was in my hand.”
“Tamara...” Levi stepped to the sink and took the bar of soap from her hand. Tears covered her cheeks and her hair was plastered on her forehead. He turned on the cold water and rinsed the soap off her hands. “Tamara, you shouldn’t have picked that snake up.”
“I know,” she said in a hollow whisper. “I thought if I missed, I’d shoot you by mistake. And if I missed, the snake might get scared and bite you. And if I missed, it might bite me and then I wouldn’t have another chance. I didn’t know what else to do. And I thought...” Levi brushed her hair off her forehead and kissed it.
“What did you think?” Levi whispered. “Tell me.”
“I love you,” Tamara said, looking up into his eyes. “I mean, I have to love you. There’s no reason for me to pick up a snake if I didn’t love you, is there? I’d have to be crazy or in love. I’d rather be in love.”
Her eyes looked crazy—wide-open with her pupils fixed on him like a blind man trying to remember how to see.
“You were scared, that’s all. Being scared makes us do crazy things. Andre drove a truck for a long time. Big rig. Some drunk girl ran a stop sign and hit him and her car caught on fire. Andre ripped the door off her car and pulled her out. He can’t do that. A man can’t rip a door off a car, but he did. Fear gives us powers we didn’t know we had. And love. They’re the same thing sometimes.”
“I loved you before the flood. And I loved you after. You’re the only thing I still love from before. You’re the only thing I love that I’ve always loved.” She raised a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”
“You can say that to me.” Levi took her face in his hands. “You can say whatever you want to me. God knows you always did.” He grinned at her, trying to connect to the Tamara he used to know. She was in there somewhere.
“When you made love to me, I felt like I did before the flood. I didn’t feel like this.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I have to do things I don’t want to do. Like I’m meant to.”
“Meant to do what, baby? Meant to do what?”
Levi had his arms around her, and her head rested on his chest.
“There’s things God wants me to do and I don’t want to do them sometimes. And sometimes I want to do them.”
“What is it? What do you want to do?”
“I want to kill my mother.” Her voice was steely and low. She meant it. This wasn’t teenage hyperbole married to teenage hormones. She wanted to kill her mother. She wanted to do it herself.
Levi kissed the top of her head. If he could make her laugh, it would be like lighting a search fire inside her and he could follow it to the real Tamara.
“If you were trying to piss off your mother by marrying a black guy, you should have found one a little darker than me.”
Tamara’s shoulders shook. There it was, a little laugh. And there she was, way back in there. He could see her.
“I didn’t tell you what she did to me,” Tamara whispered. “I didn’t tell you.”
“What? Tell me what she did to you.”
“She...said I needed taken down a peg. She told Granddaddy that. She...”
“Did your mother beat you, Tamara? Tell me the truth now.”
Levi searched her face, but Tamara couldn’t look at him. It was all the answer he needed.
“I had bruises the next day,” she said. “All over me. I could barely move. Even my feet had bruises.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“That night was the most scared I’ve been. The snake was nothing, Levi. Nothing.”
Tamara met his eyes again.
“You won’t leave me alone?” she asked, her voice more scared than it had been when the snake sat at his feet.
“No, baby girl, I will never leave you alone.”
“Please be inside me. I’m not so crazy when you’re inside me.”
She kissed him and Levi kissed he
r back. He felt as crazy as she did right then and there, mad and wild from fear and relief, mad and wild from the fury at knowing her mother had beaten Tamara for the crime of kissing him. Well, they would show her, wouldn’t they?
Levi yanked her panties down her legs and pulled her gown off her arms and pushed his jeans to his ankles. He lifted her up in his arms and impaled her right there in the bathroom. She cried out as he entered her deeply. As light as she was, it was easy to lift her and bring her back down onto him, and he did it again and again, frantic with need, crazy with it. Her back was against the sink and it was a miracle they didn’t rip it out of the wall. She was so hot and wet around him, squeezing his cock like a hand, tight and open all at once. He drove into her, grasping her by her thighs, pounding into her so hard it hurt him. He couldn’t imagine how much it hurt her. But she wanted it and wanted more of it. Her arms wound around his neck and she arched into him, hips moving madly, rutting like animals in heat. She came with a moan and with her fingernails digging into his back hard enough to break the skin. He lowered her feet to the floor and turned her, bending her over the sink. Once again he sank into her warm wet depth and fucked her, jerking her onto him and pumping into her at the same time. It was brutal and she loved it. It was brutal and he loved it. The frenzy seemed to last forever. She came again with a gasp that sounded like pain. And when he couldn’t hold back anymore, he clamped both hands on her shoulders and rode her, slamming into her, using her for his own pleasure, oblivious to anything but his orgasm, and when he came, it was endless, and he emptied himself into her heedless of the danger and the consequences and the promises he’d made to himself. This was no time for sanity. He could have died tonight. She could have died tonight. Nothing mattered except they hadn’t.
When finished, he didn’t pull out of her. He rested his head between her shoulder blades and breathed out. Slowly he slid out of her.
“I feel dirty,” she said. “I want a hot bath.”
“We’ll take one together. Not yet, though. Stay right where you are.”
Levi gripped her by the waist and entered her again. He didn’t even want to come. That was not what he needed. He only wanted to be inside her for a moment longer. Tamara must have felt the same because she leaned back against him, and when he wrapped his arms around her waist, she placed her hands over his hands. If he got lost inside her, he wouldn’t worry about finding his way back out again.
“You saved me,” Levi said between slow heated kisses. Everything was slow and sultry in the airless room that smelled of sex and the sweat of terror.
“I don’t have anyone but you. Not anymore. And you were always nice to me.”
“I was mean to you.”
“Even when you were mean to me, you were nice to me. You gave Kermit extra carrots and you kept his mane and tail trimmed. Remember the day I fell off and sprained my ankle? You rode out to find me and brought me back on your saddle. I felt like a little princess and you were my knight. You told me dirty jokes to keep me from thinking about how much my ankle hurt.”
Levi’s heart broke for her. Poor little rich girl, he might have teased her once. But not tonight. Instead, Levi ran a bath and they both got in the tub. Levi washed her long hair and she soaped up his chest and shoulders. They didn’t talk about the snake, about her picking it up with her bare hands, didn’t talk about Bowen or Bride Island or her mother beating her. They didn’t talk about anything at all. They didn’t have to, and words wouldn’t have made it any better or any worse.
Once they were clean and calm, they went up to bed, careful of their steps. Tonight he’d leave the lantern on the floor and the wick lit to scare off any other intruder animals. Tomorrow and every day after, they’d make sure to keep the screen doors closed even at night. They lay down in the soft glow of the firelight and Levi made love to her again and it was the first time it felt like that instead of the fucking they’d done before. Afterward, she nestled in close, her head on his chest and her arm and leg draped over his body.
All was peaceful, all was right. He kissed the top of Tamara’s head, told her she was a good wife, which made her grin with her eyes closed.
As Levi fell asleep, he felt such peace he forgot to ask Tamara why she’d packed a gun with her and where she’d learned to shoot like that.
23
“Fire it up.”
“Seems like a damn shame to go to all this trouble just to set it on fire,” Levi said, staring down into the bottom of the barrel.
“You have to char the fucking thing,” Bowen said. Levi was used to the musical island accent by now, so when Bowen said, “dah fuckin’ ting,” Levi heard “the fucking thing” like he was supposed to. “That’s the fucking point.”
“Well, if you say so, boss,” Levi said with a grin. He pushed the barrel over the firepot and dropped in a match. The tinder lit easy and flames rose to the very top. The charring was light, lighter than most whiskeys, just enough to open the wood up and wake up the tannins and sugars in the grain so the bourbon would absorb the flavors. Levi had to admit it was fun turning the pristine white oak solid black. And there was enough teenage boy left in his thirty-year-old soul to enjoy playing with fire.
For the past month he’d been Bowen’s apprentice at the cooperage. He’d told Bowen not to tell the other men there that Levi owned Bride Island, that he owned the trees they were using. It wasn’t so much he wanted them treating him like the boss, but it was a little unmanly to admit he’d inherited the whole place by doing nothing more than marrying the boss man’s daughter. They were good guys, rough and taciturn, and Levi smiled at the thought of them finding Red Thread’s soon-to-be new owner was a seventeen-year-old girl. He hoped he was around when they heard that news.
Building barrels was elemental work. The oak trees grew in earth and wind and the boards were aged in the open air until they were thoroughly cured. And when cured, the barrels were charred with fire and sealed up watertight. It took woodworking skills, metalsmith skills, brute strength and precision finesse to make one perfect bourbon barrel, and Bowen was so good at it Levi had to tip his hat to the man. Bowen could whistle while he worked, even as he ran the staves through the saw, making the cuts by hand and by eye, so good at it he could shave a stave with his eyes closed and so strong he could toss a barrel around like a wicker basket.
When the barrel was properly charred, Levi took off the helmet and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“This is work,” he said.
“What did you think we did in here? Make toys for Santa?”
Levi laughed. “You have my respect. I used to frame houses on weekends and it’s got nothing on this.”
“Tomorrow we’ll go cut down trees. That’s easier.”
Levi winced. “Do we have to?”
“Damn hippie,” Bowen said, grinning. “Where’d you think your house came from? Is it made of candy, Hansel? We replant the trees. We always replant the trees. No trees, no wood, no barrels, no job. We replant the trees.”
“I know, I know. But they’re my trees,” Levi said, touching his chest.
“They God’s trees and you’re a damn fool to think He’s doing anything but letting us borrow them.”
“God loves bourbon, does he?”
“Who doesn’t?” Bowen asked.
They might be making bourbon barrels, but nobody drank on the job. Even if they wanted to, Bowen wouldn’t let them. He ran a tight ship. One wrong move and a thousand-dollar barrel would be nothing but firewood. Levi had screwed one up himself his first week by forgetting to steam the wood. When he went to put the hoop on the top, he’d cracked the staves instead of bending them. Bowen had put an ax in Levi’s hand and set him out back to chop it up. While he did it, Levi felt like a dog whose owner had rubbed his nose in his own shit to punish him. July in South Carolina. Who the hell needed firewood?
Since then Levi had been careful to make no terminal errors. Nearly any hole could be plugged, any flaw could be fixed, if a m
an knew what he was doing, and Bowen certainly did. The ten men at the cooperage made ten barrels a day and the cooperage operated six days a week. Over three thousand barrels a year, which wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it supplied every single barrel to make Red Thread’s top-shelf bourbon and sold the rest for a pretty profit to a winemaker in France. Red Thread got their barrels for their mass-market stuff from Missouri. But these barrels were special and Levi did his best not to ruin them. After watching the magic Bowen did putting the barrels together, Levi never wanted to have to ax another one of them again. He’d piss on a Picasso first.
Levi was halfway through sanding a barrel when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Special delivery,” Bowen said. He pointed out the window, where a truck was parked.
“Finally,” Levi said, smiling.
“What you got out there?”
“Present for Tamara.”
“A big damn present by the looks of it. You buy her a truck?”