Unseaming Read Free Page B

grit.
Do you know where Denise is?
He laughs. It’s a bark tinged with hysteria. Yes. Yes. Lenahan has her. He put us both deep under but he only kept what he wanted from me. Denise, he kept all of her. He planned to all along.
Who’s Lenahan?
Maybe, maybe–and now he’s struggling to speak, as though someone just told him an incredible joke and he’s still gasping for breath–maybe if you ask nice he’ll bring her back. He wanted me to tell you if you asked. He told me to.
Who is he?
And Willett tells you.
He tells you Lenahan lives four counties away, runs the craft store in the schoolhouse, took it over from the Confederate daughter used to own it, made it into something spectacular. The place is well known but you’ve never heard of it, had no reason to know about it.
But the man has a reputation in a far different circle, one where Willett scuffed at the edge. In that circle, Lenahan has a different name, and only a few know who he really is. But most of the meth makers and meth pushers call him Mr. Buttons.
Willett giggles. Funny, isn’t it. Like some little pink bunny.
His puckered scar eyes crinkle with mirth.
He’s the one with the money, who keeps his people in good supply. He doesn’t use, doesn’t sell, just expects returns on what he puts down. And you don’t dare snitch on him if you get caught. The narcs don’t have a thing on him, won’t find a thing on him, and as soon as no one’s watching, you’re gone and no one will find you again.
Billy Willet tells you how eager Denise was to try crystal meth when they first got together. How he encouraged her by saying it wouldn’t wreck her mind and body like the heroin did. He leers as he says it, like he wants you to shoot him, hopes you will. But you don’t. You just tell him to keep talking.
And he details how he and Denise went to one of Mr. Buttons’ top men, the one with the barrels of chemicals in the storage shed behind his barn, and what Denise did to pay because they had no money.
And how the next time they went, word was Mr. Buttons wanted to meet them both, and this time their fixes would be free of charge.
Willett tells you where Mr. Buttons’ place was and who he turned out to be. He tells you he doesn’t know how Lenahan took his eyes and legs. He says he didn’t see what happened to Denise but he knows she can never come back unless Lenahan sets her free.
Maybe good ol’ Uncle Shaun can just ask real sweet, he says. Maybe you ask him just the right way, he’ll let you see her.
* * *
     
It took weeks of brooding, planning, stalking to reach the place you now sit.
He leans toward the button bin, the muzzle of your gun almost kissing the meaty curve of his ear.
His arm disappears to the elbow and he shudders like he’s plunged it in ice. You don’t hear the noise you expect, the clattering hiss of beads displaced. Instead a quiet wind-chime jostle, a patter of hourglass sand, a release of air like a lover’s soft exhalation.
Lenahan pauses. I’m not going to try anything, he says. Could you please pull that out of my ear?
Move slow, you say, but you back off a little.
His arm comes out slowly as if he’s having to extract it from tar and in fact the buttons seem to stick to it. There’s a squelching noise as his hand comes free.
Whatever you’re doing, stop it.
Just be calm, son.
He holds his hand up in front of his face, looks at his knuckles, looks at you between his fingers. Some of the buttons have adhered to his skin. There’s a cat’s-eye centered in the palm of his hand, gold suns in the crooks of his knuckles, blood drops around his wrist, black diamonds tracking in rows down his forearm, alternating with bone circlets. You realize the buttons have arranged themselves in deliberate patterns–it’s as if they lined up along invisible seams in his skin. Your heart is a madman pounding at the walls.
You aim at one of his bright green eyes, just like yours, like Denise’s.
You’ll never know the answer if you