Free Innuendo by R.D. Zimmerman Page B

burst out of her, and she dropped her entire mug, its handle cracking off as it hit the floor, the hot tea streaming onto the beige carpeting. Stumbling to her feet, she burst into a run and charged into the kitchen. She hated what had become of her son, she was disgusted by the very thought of it, but now she was beginning to hate her husband too. Would they never, she thought, dropping herself on a chair at the Formica breakfast table by the back window, get past this?
    “Jesus Christ,” cursed John, tromping into the kitchen after her and throwing the mug into the garbage beneath the sink, “you went and broke my favorite mug. Plus you got tea all over everything, and that shit stains, you know. It stains real bad.”
    One hand over her mouth, she stared out the window at the old silo and the two white metal pole barns they'd put up some years back. In the pale farmyard light, she saw his blue Ford pickup, her old Chevy.
    And that night came whirling back.
    They'd dropped the younger ones at her mother's for the night, left Andy at home with a friend, Jordy Weaver, and gone to town to see a movie. It was the first time they'd been out in months, but rather than stopping for a drink after the show they'd come straight home. John was exhausted, and they'd come home over an hour earlier than they'd told Andy. She'd gone to the barn to see how that litter of new kittens was doing, and John had come in, gone straight to their own bedroom, and what did he find in their queen-sized bed but the two of them, Andy and that Weaver kid from the other high school, both of them buck naked. John had knocked out two of Weaver's teeth, then dragged Andy naked and kicking and screaming into the barn, where he threw him up against a wall, stripped off his own belt, and screamed, “You little shit, I'm gonna kill you!”
    Oh, God. She'd thought she'd known her husband. She thought she'd seen every one of his dark corners. But she hadn't. Not until that night. He would've killed Andy, too, would've beat him to death, unless she'd come out there with the twelve-gauge.
    “Stop it!” she'd screamed, firing a shot straight through the metal roof.
    “Do you know what ungodly things they were doing? And in
our
bed for Christ's sake!” John had countered, his face flush with disgust.
“In our very own bed!”
    “Just stop it!”
    Then, while she'd held the shotgun on her husband, she told her oldest child to run. And run he had, charging into the house for some clothes, next down the dark road and into the night. He'd never returned, and the only thing they'd heard from him since was a phone call three days later, apologizing and saying he wouldn't be back.
    So whose fault was it? Hers? His? Theirs? Was it something they'd done? Something they didn't do?
    Starting to cry all over again just when she thought it wasn't possible to shed another tear, she bent her head forward. And that's when it happened.
    The phone rang.
    Martha spun around on the first ring, stared right into her husband's eyes, her husband who still stood at the sink. And they both silently thought it: Who in the world would be calling this late?
    Clutching her stomach with her left hand, clasping her mouth with her right, she knew in her heart that this was it, the one call she'd been fearing all these months.
    And the tears started sliding from her eyes even as her husband picked up the phone and in a weak voice said, “Hello?”

8
     
    In the City of Lakes water was never far away.
    Clutching the dark green plastic bag, the bald man stood on the edge of Lake Harriet, the cool fall water nipping at the soles of his heavy black leather boots. Like the other lakes in the city, this one wasn't so large, just an oval body of water some three miles around. And like the others, it, too, was surrounded by a parkway of road and paths, both bicycle and pedestrian, as well as huge old homes in a riot of styles, from French Normandy to Prairie School and Italianate. There was a