High Machiavelli | Fargo

ii. salt of the earth

[ ii . i ]

Misery was plastered on her face as she drifted out of the car. Her eyes stung hot red and she sniveled, the cold air exacerbating her runny nose. She swallowed. With each step onto the porch her stomach grew tighter for fear of seeing her mother's agony.

If Loretta could loathe herself so immensely for not seeing it, she could not feign imagining how Mother felt.

Her twisted reflection appeared in the doorknob. The swollen eyes and puffy lip that stared back filled her with disgust. She tore the door open aggressively and right away was hit with a smell so pungent she halted in her tracks. Her blood ran cold. The gas traveled through her spine and exited as a hopeless tremble:

"Mommy?"

Letty took a weary step forward. The echo of her shoe soles against the ground permeated throughout the silent house. Down the hall she wandered, following the light of any one lamp coming from the kitchen.

"Mommy?" This time she whispered, wringing her hands anxiously. The skin felt cool, hardly alive. She crept past the corner into the kitchen and wished she hadn't.

"Ma."

The distant call of a man's voice roused her from the slumber. As her eyes drifted open there appeared Floyd at the edge of the mattress, holding a small plate of two breakfast sausages and a brittle slice of toasted bread. Letty glanced out of the open bedroom door for the source of the voice, but the older woman's warm hand pressed to her cheek then distracted her. She quickly moved her palm to the young woman's forehead unconsciously, as if to check for a fever.

She took her hand away. "You sleep alright, darlin'?"

Letty nodded as she propped herself up on her arms and leaned her back against the headboard. The other side of the bed was cold. She promptly pointed to it with her thumb.

"Where's--?"

"She's driving Charlie to school," Floyd assured, insisting the girl accept her plate. "She'll be back in a few minutes."

Letty brought her knees up under the teal duvet and balanced her breakfast on this makeshift table. Floyd looked at the panels of hardwood beneath them and crossed her legs.

"I know it's still fresh, but we need to go over the will." A sausage wiggled around the plate as Letty sawed off a small piece of it with the side of her fork. She glanced up. "I'll have one of my boys go to city hall and talk to the judge. Maybe we can--"

"--Ma."

Both women turned their heads to the doorway. A man stood occupying the entry, burly and powerful, and Letty knew forthwith he was the same man who had struck her with the front door the previous night.

"Been lookin' all over this damn place. Some fella on the phone wants to talk to you."

Floyd exhaled deeply as she pivoted back around to finish speaking to the girl, whom he had never laid eyes on until this moment:

"--Maybe we can arrange to have your things sent here, that way we can work this out...away from it all."

To say he was mesmerized would be a shocking understatement. That face--it had been so long since he'd remembered it. As his mother's voice drifted to the underside of his mind, he felt the innocence of the child that had been; it was a fracture in the ego.

"Now," Floyd turned to face her son once more. "Did they give a name?"

Sweeping over him, a chaste recollection of being ten years old--to the first moment a woman had ever drawn a rush of blood to his cheeks. His introspection hastily turned to something tremendously dirty as she observed his blatant gawking and shot him a glance of awareness with her catty eyes.