Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah

anymore except to sleep naked.
    They left the lake now and then, driving a Saab, again at the speed of elderly people in bad weather. The woman could not stand the voices that came in the window if they went any faster. They went to a cash machine in Vicksburg and withdrew thousands of dollars. The money was piled or scattered all over the house and they paid no attention to it. Apparently it was intended as
getaway
money, but they never left. They continued to fish and leave the fish about. Big catfish too, from the lantern fishing. They were pros. They answered neither the phone in the house nor the one in the boat. The phones kept ringing.
    In the second week they bought tools in Vicksburg. Every movement was very slow now. If they heard the hammering from the restaurant across the meadow, the denizens might have wondered why anybody would put such effort into rental property. The husband began nailing everything he owned to the walls. Pants, belts, underwear and his fishing tackle, plug by plug. Nailed right through the breast of Lucky Thirteen, Dive-bomber, plastic worms.
    Then he nailed up the fish, what grip he could find on what had rotted from the first week. He nailed up her clothing, panties and even Tampax. Then he slept, with the unnailed piles of tackle and money around him. He had begun nailing the money, but there was a lot. Pictures of hisreal estate office, photos of desirable lots. Big red Seconals and other pills scattered across the throw rugs.
    The swamp got louder. The crane flew and brought a great shadow past the windows. The limb stayed where it was in their chair in the kitchen.
    He was asleep on the bathroom tiles when she stabbed him again, this time in the thigh, just missing his testicles. He had never healed properly from the first assault, and this wound was deep. He heard her in the kitchen talking to the limb. The knife still hung in his thigh while he hit her across the back of the head with the flat of a shovel. Then he nailed her foot to the wall in the living room while she was unconscious, and then one of her hands.
    He hammered a six-inch rafter spike through the meat of his left heel and was trying to do the same for his left hand when he either passed out or went to sleep. Both of them were full of Dilaudid, a narcotic used in recovery from lung and heart surgeries and sold at huge prices on the streets.
    The phone kept ringing deep into the night. The sullen restaurateur was not stirred by their screams, but they brought Sidney Farté, Pete Wren and Dr. Harvard to the house. Then the odor, when they got in the viney yard. Under the hollering, the singer Aaron Neville crooned from the jambox, “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight,” heaving out his grace notes to soprano. But way over that the hollers, now husky female and then croaking male. They were out of drugs, drink, mobility. The old men almost did not go in. An aggressive mirage when they opened the front door. But soon Harvard knelt and did what he could, and somebody telephoned.
    Along with the ambulance came the new sheriff of the county. It was their first look at him. He was young forthe job and had a master’s in criminology from a school in Mexico. He seemed to be borrowing a southern accent for the benefit of the locals, and they thought him a bit too confident, not as impressed by this event as he should be. When the awe wore off, Sidney Farté felt all warm and lucky to have chanced on this crucifixion.
    Months later but unrecovered, mildly brain-damaged, Penny preferred charges and sued her husband. He counter-charged. They limped into court eighteen months later in Jackson. So much was revealed that each side retired and the gallery went away in disgust, horror and pity. Sated. In the middle of the litigation, the Ten Hoors fell back in love.
    Or, at any rate, in their wreckage they had found the uncontrollable pity that calls itself love. They wept and fell together. Their new vows did not stop