CHAPTER 14 NORMAN HEATON

14

Norman Heaton

EISA STIFFENED AS NORMAN pressed up against her from behind. For once in forty-seven years of marriage, she finally stopped talking. At least for the handful of seconds it took for her to realize what he was doing.

The butter knife still in his hand, Norman reached around her to the window, gave it a good tap with the back of his fist in all four corners, then lifted. It fought, then rose with a thin squeal.

Eisa plucked the butter knife from his hand and dropped it into the soapy water with the other dirty dishes. Then she did something Norman didn't expect; she backed up slightly and ground her butt against him. When he didn't move, she let out a soft gasp and pressed harder.

Norman couldn't remember the last time she'd done something like that and didn't much care. Her breath smelled like denture paste and orange juice, and if he was happy about any part of this, it was the silence. Her not saying a single word. If he had to take one for the team to keep her quiet, so be it.

"Don't speak," he said softly. He whispered it right into her ear, like he used to do back in the days when their intimacy was as common as breathing, and heaven help him, he pressed into her the way he did back in the day, too. Her body responded to him as effortlessly as it did that very first time in the bed of his '62 Ford pickup parked out at Hollows Bluff overlooking the valley—Norman knew that's where her mind was—those two kids fumbling over each other's bodies under the crisp night sky with nothing but a ratty old flannel quilt swiped from the Carmacks' barn to keep them modest, knowing they had maybe an hour before someone came looking for them. Ray Charles had been on the radio, but for the life of him, Norman couldn't remember the name of the song. "Don't speak," he had said back then, and he said it again now. "We don't need no words."

Norman eased his left arm around her waist and brought his other up around her neck, reached around until he was able to grip her left shoulder. He gave her a tender squeeze. This brought on another one of those gasps, and with that came the smell and Norman held his breath before too much of it found its way into his lungs. He looked down at the soapy water, thought of the butter knife somewhere in there. He didn't really need it, did he? There were so many ways to keep her quiet, to keep her from ending the blessed silence.

Norman tightened his left arm, pulled her waist tight against him. Eisa seemed to like that. Before she could let more stink out into the air with another one of those wretched gasps, he tightened his right arm, brought the crook of his elbow up under her chin, against her throat, and began to squeeze. He did this slowly at first, just a little pressure. It had been years since he put someone in a choke hold, and while some things never really left you, machinery tends to get rusty when you leave it in the barn.

Either in discomfort or because Eisa thought this was something it wasn't, she ground against him again, and that was when Norman tightened his right arm. He did it with enough force to jerk her head back. Eisa stopped grinding. She didn't get a chance to gasp. What choked out of her mouth was a wet cough. Spittle sprayed the window glass and the screen below.

Norman pulled back hard enough to lift her from the ground. He had no idea where the strength was coming from, but it felt good. It brought him back to the man he once was, to the boy of his youth who feared nothing. He caught the reflection of his eyes again, this time in the window glass, and he saw Eisa's, too. While his were confident, hungry, full of life, her eyes were wide and looked like balloons pumped up with fear. They bulged from her skull, threatened to pop.

"Stop …" The word came out of her like a hiss between clenched teeth, stretched out as long as a sentence, and with the sound of her voice, every annoying thing she'd said to him in the sixty years since that night in his truck came into Norman's head all at once. Yap, yap, yap. Jagged nails down a chalkboard. Ice picks jabbed into his ears.

"I said … don't …" Norman yanked back, brought his elbow up, and used the leverage of his fingers wrapped around Eisa's shoulder to tighten his arm like a ratchet sizing down.

Her legs flailed, kicked at him. She caught him good in the left knee with the heel of her foot. Norman's grip loosened, but only for a second. Long enough for the pain to register, but it was just a blip. Whatever gave him his newfound strength also seemed to keep the hurt away. He liked that. He liked that a lot. Damn if he wasn't laughing.

Norman yanked up on his arm again. He put his back into it and pulled Eisa nearly two feet off the ground. Her legs slammed into the cabinet doors below the sink, and her arms waved about, but he knew this was almost over—she smacked him in the head, and it was barely a tap. He found her reflection again in the glass. Her eyes were up in her head somewhere, nothing but white. It was his own reflection that grabbed him—he looked twenty, maybe younger. Not a line on his face. His hair was thick and black, slicked back with Cornwell's Tonic, that greasy shit he used to steal from his dad that made his scalp itch. His reflection wore that brown leather bomber jacket, the one he'd picked up at the thrift store in Portsmouth because he thought it made him look like James Dean. Oh man, he loved that jacket, always had. Where the hell had it gone? He hadn't seen it in maybe—

Norman caught a flash of silver from the corner of his vision an instant before Eisa struck him in the side of the head with the meat tenderizing mallet. It was more of a wild swing than a coordinated attack, but somehow she clocked him square in the temple with enough force that the spikes embedded in his flesh and the hammer hung there for half a second when her hand dropped away before falling to the ground. Norman's head jerked to the side with a resounding deep boom! echoing through his skull. He stutter-stepped and lost his grip on Eisa, and she fell from his arm, puddled at his feet.

Norman waited for the pain (that type of hurt always came on a slight delay), but there was none. The echo in his head dulled and vanished. He reached up, tentatively touched the side of his temple. His fingers came away wet and sticky, but he felt nothing. His reflection in the window glass gave him a quick wink.

It took her a couple of tries, but Eisa managed to get to her feet and scramble from the kitchen down the hall, spitting up God-knows-what as she went. Norman let her; she wouldn't get far. He reached down and scooped up the mallet, felt the heft of it. Much better than the butter knife.

The Ray Charles song popped back into his head, and this time he did remember the name, even the words. A few days after their tussle in the back of his Ford, Eisa had bought the record and played it over and over. He started down the hallway after her, whistling softly, the lyrics singing in his head: I can't stop loving you, I've made up my mind …