Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Read online

  Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

  Clayton Lindemuth

  Hardgrave Enterprises

  Chesterfield, Missouri

  Copyright © 2013 by Clayton Lindemuth.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected].

  Clayton Lindemuth asserts his moral rights as author of Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover design by Clayton Lindemuth, crediting Randen Pederson for the photo, obtained through Creative Commons (license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode) and modified on a handful of programs like Picasa and Gimp 2.

  Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  NOTHING SAVE THE BONES INSIDE HER/Clayton Lindemuth -- 1st ed.

  For Georgena, the kindest, most generous, supporting, and best cooking mother a son could want.

  I took her wrist and got my hand on her neck and I couldn’t think of nothing save the bones inside her.

  ―ANGUS HARDGRAVE

  Maul Prologue

  Maul shouldered aside five brothers and sisters for a place at Tobacca’s nipple, which he chewed like a discarded strap of leather. She nipped his nose and he sank sharp puppy teeth into her clipped ears. Maul wore a battleship gray coat, bullied his normal-sized siblings, failed to learn fear, and seemed oblivious to pain.

  The alpha of their small pack, Mighty George, had died in the ring shortly after pairing with Tobacca. A gruesome forty-eight minute grinder had removed most of his face and proven his stamina, determination, and intelligence. Trusting years of warrior conditioning, with both front legs broken, he wriggled across a syrup of shit and blood to meet his opponent. Mighty George died game ten minutes later, choking for breath, his jaws clamped on his opponent’s breast.

  Mighty George’s valiant death proved the bloodline, but set back his owner’s dream. “Ticky” Bilger was a short man with a tick that pulled his right cheek toward his left eye. His voice trilled an octave higher than other men’s and his belly flopped over his belt like a giant breast with an inverted nipple. Had he been born in a litter of pit bulls, his master would have used him as a bait dog. Born to the human world, he considered his flaws evidence of exceptionality and cultivated them.

  A day came in Maul’s life when Ticky pulled him from ferocious play and wrapped a grimy bicycle drive-chain around his neck, making several circuits, and fastened the end to the beginning with a twisted piece of coat hanger. Ticky spun Maul with a hard smack to his rump and got down on his elbows to jeer in the dog’s face.

  Ticky’s son Pete watched with bottle cap eyes.

  “These sons a bitches don’t fight ‘less they’re good and mad,” Ticky said. “You got to humiliate em from the time they can walk to the time they can’t.”

  “Why the chain?”

  “Fighting dog needs a good neck. Lookit him. He loves this shit.”

  Maul growled with small-toothed rage and Ticky’s hand flashed from his side to Maul’s head, knocked him end over end.

  “You got to be careful when you discipline a dog,” Ticky said. “Too much, and he’ll just piss puddles.”

  Pete smiled.

  Maul added pounds quickly and Ticky rewrapped the chain every few days to keep his airways unimpeded. He suspected Maul had a bit of Mastiff blood. To kill parasites, Ticky fed him cow or hog liver, busted a pair of eggs on top, and razzed him with a stick to hearten his appetite. If Ticky had no liver, he fed Maul extract from a brown bottle. When Maul carried his head as high as his littermates, Ticky replaced the bicycle chain with a rusty length of torus links from the garage.

  Maul promised to be Ticky’s contribution to blood sport, his ticket to the ranks of professional dog men, but legendary breeder Mason Smith stood in Ticky’s path. The man had no sense of humor and had never forgiven Ticky for knocking up his youngest daughter; had never forgotten a midnight drive to a doctor in Philly to get the baby cut out. He had a memory like a woman and, unfortunately for Ticky, was the only local fight organizer of renown.

  It would take something special to gain his approval, or some trick to avoid his attention. The answer would come. Meantime, Ticky assigned the daily chore of exercising Maul to Pete, usually in the back yard on a device that resembled a mule-driven grain mill, called a catmill. Pete would harness Maul to the beam, which jutted fifteen horizontal feet from a central, rotating post. A counterbalance of cement blocks hung on the other side. Almost within reach of Maul, a neighborhood cat dangled in leather straps, hissing and powerless to flee.

  Pete’s first time running the catmill, he held the screeching cat in leather gloves and strapped it in, then wrapped him in a rag. He brought out Maul and the rag was on the ground. Maul dragged him toward the tomcat and it was an act of seeming divine providence that Pete was able to secure the dog in the harness. He’d planned to remove the rag in a semi-official ceremony, stepping aside and letting Maul run. Instead he lost his balance and the dog was off.

  Maul lunged. The mill jerked the cat away and Maul gnashed inches behind; the faster he ran the more fleet became his adversary. Pete cursed encouragement. The frenzied cat hissed. Maul redoubled his effort. The chains about his neck jangled. Slobber dripped from his jaws. He circled round and round, each lap slowing, but the cat remained just shy of his bite, screeching and waving tiny talons. When Maul stopped, the cat swung away; he charged and it rocked closer. Maul heaved. The cat neared. His jaws smashed shut and missed. He skidded. The cat screeched. He sprang. Another miss. Over and over until he could lunge and snap no more, and collapsed, each panting breath lifting a cloud of dust.

  “Damn you!”

  Pete prodded him. Nudged him. Kicked him. Donned leather gloves again and held the cat before him. The tom clawed Maul’s nose and Pete tossed the cat in a cage until the next day.

  Another of Pete’s favorite calisthenics pitted Maul against his feline tormenter in an all-wire birdcage, suspended from a backyard tree with a rope running through the center of the cage, the excess hanging below. Maul leapt, caught the rope in his jaws and swung free of the ground until his strength waned.

  The cat enticed him with breathy hisses, and Maul snarled back with maturing rage. Age ripened his wrath, until at five months his fury was so acute and his strength so developed he ratcheted up the rope by whipping his body and adjusting his jaws to lock each half inch gain, until his paws beat the cage.

  Maul’s training progressed to his sixth month. Ticky ran from the house to a squabble of a fervor he’d never before heard. Wrapped in heavy chains, Maul stood over the mangled corpse of a male sibling. Ticky clubbed Maul with a baseball bat, careful not to break bones, and segregated him. Bait dogs weren’t easy to come by—from this day onward he would expect Pete to keep Maul crated except while training.

  A day came when, after running around the catmill for a hot hour in the sun, Maul’s ambition flagged. The chains were heavy that morning and to the degree a sport dog could be attributed a variability
in mood, Maul’s had darkened. The relentless training exhausted him and his natural intelligence flagged, but even through the fog of endless toil a dim realization emerged: he would never destroy the cat.

  The tom shared this knowledge, and lulled to a sense of security, urinated onto Maul’s circuitous path. Maul stopped, as if his warrior spirit was unable to bear the humiliation. His neck bore the weight of a fifteen-foot chain; he panted in the late morning heat. Pete rushed to kick him and Maul bared his fangs.

  Pete crossed the yard to the shed, slipped his hands into leather gloves. Trod across the dirt to the suspended cat and loosed it from the harness. He tied it at the base of the bird-cage tree. The cat mewed and as Pete walked away from him and toward Maul, hissed.

  Maul, nine months old and sixty-eight sinewy pounds, watched with rapt eyes and trembled in a pointer-like pose. Endless jumping exercises had converted his rear legs to ropes of electric muscle. His neck was meaty like a buffalo; his jaws could crush bone. Maul strained forward so hard Pete had to knee him in the chest to break the tension on his collar enough to unclip him. Maul crossed the lawn in two twelve-foot bounds and beheaded the cat in a single biting rip.

  Ticky grumbled, but took heart from Pete’s description of Maul’s instant and unbridled brutality. As the dog’s training advanced, Ticky would need more bait animals, and he fed Maul’s siblings every day for that purpose, though he gave none liver and eggs. Meantime he’d have to drive to Dubois and find another stray cat—or with luck, a poodle. Ticky hated poodles.

  The lunge test came two months later. Two dogs, each tied short of the other, were released from their masters’ restraining arms in a test of mettle. A young dog eager to close with a senior male could be trusted to enter the pit aggressively and avoid embarrassing his owner. Maul launched like a rocket and when the rope jerked him shy of his quarry, raged.

  Maul dispatched two siblings in backyard rumbles over the next month. He flew into fury at the sight of another animal, and the untrained puppies were defenseless. Ticky stopped wasting them.

  For Maul’s first birthday, Ticky arranged an unsanctioned, private match with a local two-year-old, untested pit named Sonny. His breeder, Abe Conry, had given Sonny the usual training, beatings, and bait cats, but the dog had never conquered the lunge test. Sonny outweighed Maul by eight pounds, and Conry hoped a taste of Maul’s blood might stir Sonny’s ambition.

  Rules called for a simultaneous release. After that, the referee deemed the contest over by death, cowardice, or in a rare exception, a dog’s owner could forfeit the match and spare his defeated dog.

  An animal demonstrated cowardice by fleeing the fight circle or, given the opportunity to attack, by turning away. Some localities permitted three turns; Ticky and Conry agreed to no limit, provided when the dogs were separated to their corners, the turning dog proved his pluck by aggressively closing with his enemy.

  A cur that fled the pit earned a death sentence, delivered immediately with requisite cruelty to staunch the breeder’s embarrassment. Shame among dog men lingered, for they derived great satisfaction from creating, as products of their own intelligence, sweat, and determination, a class of animals uniquely suited to destroying other animals. The dog measured the man. Both the coward and the champion reflected upon their owner.

  Conry and Ticky met inside an unused barn on Conry’s property. Pete and Conry’s boy sat on a rail, out of the way.

  The refereeing was consensual. They were, after all, gentlemen.

  A pair of sixty-watt bulbs lit the small barn; dust filaments drifted through the light. Maul walked unsteadily from the pickup truck, the first time in his memory without neck chains. His head floated high and his energy swelled; he sniffed friskily and picked up the scent of another dog. Maul froze; his throat vibrated. His back hair lifted and he pulled the lead.

  Ticky guided him to the far side of the enclosed room; one hand looped through the leash with the excess coiled around his arm. His other hand clasped Maul’s collar.

  Metal tinkled outside and a moment later, man and dog entered. Maul bristled; adrenaline shot through him. He sensed this moment consummated a year’s training, strength struggles, leaping, hanging from a tire, running, weights chained to his neck, rending cats and puppies. His instincts were tuned to destruction.

  He smelled the other dog’s fear.

  His adversary dropped his muzzle and growled. The other man slid the barn door closed while the dog slunk to and fro, his nose inches from the floor, as if the deception hid his superior size and weight.

  The noise and posturing, Maul sensed, were dissembling. He understood the width of the dog’s shoulders and smelled his age. Instinct calculated his opponent’s height and strength, but Maul’s direct cogency was limited to the other dog’s fear. It was palpable.

  The dogs knew each other’s minds.

  Maul’s felt his master squatting behind him, arms interlocked around him. His collar had vanished while he’d mused about his foe. The other man squatted beside his dog, restraining him with a single arm across his chest. Both men stank an acrid odor of anticipation.

  The last time, Maul had been stopped short of his adversary. But in this novel setting with an unknown rival, he sensed deliverance. This time he would not be restrained. Maul glanced back; his master’s right cheek twitched. Maul strained forward.

  “Git ‘im!” his master’s boy cried.

  Maul lunged, dragging Ticky center ring.

  “You dumb sumbitch!”

  Maul struggled to close the four-foot gap.

  Ticky shouted and released him. The other man rolled away from his dog. Maul reared on hind legs and descended upon his foe. His rival lifted his anvil head, but Maul feinted and clashed shoulders; they collapsed into a whirl of tangled legs and gnashing teeth until seconds later Maul sank his fangs into the other’s throat.

  The fur was dry. When the first delicate taste of blood touched Maul’s tongue—teasingly faint, like a wisp of buck scent carried a thousand yards—he clamped deeper and jerked. His rival’s muzzle aimed skyward. The man-child on the beam yelled “Gitim!” like when Maul killed a bait dog, and Maul squeezed his jaws tighter. Blood spurted in his mouth and he gagged, wheezed, and added pressure. His opponent quickly ceased his struggle.

  The other dog’s master stroked his throat, his eyes shifting from Maul to Ticky, then Maul. “Forfeit.”

  Ticky stepped to Maul with a pry stick. “That’s it you crazy son of a bitch.”

  Maul sensed him from the sides of his vision. His mind was on blood and a feeling of joy that came from his master.

  One June 1957

  The Lord had answered and His words portended suffering. Emeline Margulies bent at her waist and knocked dirt and crinkled grass from her stockinged knees. She had been deep in prayer, kneeling in the field because the Lord was always closer outside, on the hill behind the house.

  She held a bloodied finger before her. Bending, she studied a splotch of red on her stockings and pressed the center, where some unknown wound had occurred. She felt it now.

  On the ground where her knee had pressed lay the white stone that had lacerated her. A narrow streak of blood crossed the face of the rock. She recalled a scripture from Revelation about a white rock with a name written under it—the name the Lord would give her, known to her alone.

  She stared down the field. “Should I look at it now, Lord?”

  She observed the clouds, one after another, then turned and beheld the row of trees beside the field. She listened to the deepest recesses of her mind. Nothing. Just moments ago the Lord had spoken with clarity she’d never before experienced, and now He was silent.

  “I’ll come back later.”

  Emeline’s thoughts returned to the reason she had prayed. Angus Hardgrave had asked her to marry him. Angus Hardgrave.

  She hadn’t known him until recently.

  Immediately before her father’s death she’d decided that if she was to be alone in a fallen world a
t eighteen years of age, she would have to depend heavily upon the Lord. But because the Lord and she had different ways—she being rebellious—she had little hope of seeing the footsteps He prepared for her to walk in. Without the Lord’s help, she wouldn’t know where to put her feet. She resolved not only never to cease seeking the Lord’s will, but to remain open to suggestions from places that might ordinarily cause trepidation. The Lord could communicate through any number of channels, other believers, nonbelievers, even dreams, apparitions and visions. And although the most convincing exchanges with the Almighty usually took the form of a simple, nagging voice in her mind, Emeline determined to pay attention to everything and hope the Lord would not give up on overcoming her stubbornness.

  Thus, when Angus Hardgrave accosted her, she fought her natural revulsion and listened with divinely attuned ears.

  As a girl she’d heard stories about the Hardgrave clan and their war with a brood of McClellans. The stories carried a note of long past lore, told when the moon was full and family and neighbors would sit on the front porch smoking pipes, sipping iced tea, and speaking in special haunted tones for the children.

  In high school she’d heard a story about Angus, something to do with his wife running away—but the memory was faint and she couldn’t recollect if it was him or some other poor man.

  Marry Angus Hardgrave? Lord? I want to be obedient, but I don’t know what you want.

  So she’d walked in the fields behind the house, along the wood line, where the Lord had sometimes been willing to converse with her. She’d felt the Lord’s presence so acutely that she’d dropped to her knees, closed her eyes and bowed her head. She told Him everything He already knew, and His answers came in waves of awareness, each insight building upon the previous, culminating in an understanding that existed beyond her capacity to articulate.