Free House of Skin by Jonathan Janz Page A

always thought he was too pretty, like a mannequin. But the women around here, they couldn’t get enough of him. Samantha Hargrove was only the first in a long line of them.”
    Paul looked up at Barlow, but the sheriff was gazing down the trail, lost in his thoughts. The bunched shadows that hovered over the trail reminded Paul of a dead man’s gaping eye socket, the eye itself having long ago been ravaged by worms and microbes. He shivered, made himself focus on the sheriff’s tale.
    “It started with her helping Myles with his studies. As smart as he was, he couldn’t do bookwork to save his life. Or he feigned ignorance because he was lazy. Either way, he got himself a tutor, and that tutor was Samantha, the preacher’s daughter.
    “According to Trask, Samantha was a real looker. A raven-haired beauty. Before long she was disappearing from her house for hours at a time. Your uncle was, too, but according to Doc Trask, that was normal. It seems his parents—your great-grandparents—didn’t like having Myles in or even near the house most of the time. Trask told me stories about why, but I’ll save those for another time.
    “Anyway, you can probably guess what’s coming. Within a few months of their meeting, Samantha shows up at school in tears. She cries every day but won’t say why. Then she starts to get sick, misses school. Even misses church. Finally, her mother gets wise to what’s happening and confronts Samantha with it. The two were in the kitchen at the time.
    “The next part of this story is third-hand, but I still believe it. Doc Trask was best friends with Samantha Hargrove’s little brother Billy, and Billy heard the argument from where he sat on the back porch.”
    The sheriff halted and reached into his coat pocket. He produced a bag of chewing tobacco, scooped some out and stuffed it in his cheek. In the gloom of the forest, the wad looked to Paul like a leafy turd. Despite its foul appearance, the tobacco scent reminded Paul of harvest apples and hayrides.
    Chewing a little, Barlow went on, “According to Trask, Mrs. Hargrove—Samantha and Billy’s mother—was a fierce woman. She wore the pants in the family despite her husband’s position as the only Methodist minister in town. She must have suspected it for a while because when she did bring it up, she really let her daughter have it. Samantha was already distraught, and having her mom screaming at her probably didn’t do much to calm her down. The more Mrs. Hargrove yelled, the more Samantha cried. Doc Trask said that Billy wanted to help his sister except he was afraid of their mother too.
    “Billy Hargrove said he heard the faucet turn on and then he heard Samantha screaming. Afraid his mom was killing his sister, he got up to look through the window.
    “She wasn’t killing her daughter, but she was dragging her by the hair toward the sink. The water was splashing up out of the basin, and in trying to get her under the pouring water—to cleanse her of sin, I guess—Mrs. Hargrove kept ramming Samantha’s head into the steel faucet. Billy could see that his sister was bleeding a little from the cuts she’d gotten from the faucet, but she was otherwise okay. Mrs. Hargrove had at least left the drain open so the water that wasn’t splashing out onto the floor was pouring down the drain.”  
    The sheriff regarded him. “She wasn’t trying to drown Samantha anyway.”  
    He waited, watching Barlow work the tobacco around his mouth. The sheriff spat, a trifle too close to Paul’s sneakers, he thought.
    Barlow went on, “Mrs. Hargrove was a big, robust woman, and she finally got Samantha’s head under the running water. Her daughter’s hair got caught in the drain and clogged it so the water level was rising. Through his sister’s screaming, Billy could hear his mother asking Samantha who the father was. At first, the girl could only cry. Then she could only choke and splutter because the cold water was splashing all