Bad Blood

made Edna suck on him and he serviced her, and then he made both of us suck on him, and then he went into me the dirty way.”
    Alma asked, “Tell Mr. Flowers how often he did that.”
    “Almost every day. He’d hit me, slap me, really hard....” The girl’s voice was rising, as though she were reliving it.
    Virgil jumped in and said, “Miz Flood, maybe you shouldn’t be putting the girls through this. They need treatment.”
    “I think they do, and I’m sure they’ll get it, that you’ll see to it if I can’t,” Alma said. “But that’s not the question here. The question is Rooney. Now, I’m an old crow, and these men don’t like me as much as they used to, and I won’t tell you what Rooney did to me, but I’ll tell you that he had to work harder to get himself excited than he did with the fresh ones. Didn’t you, Wally?”
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry if you didn’t like it. I thought you liked it,” Rooney said.
    Alma got angry. “Don’t you go saying that. Don’t you go saying that I liked it. I told you I didn’t like it, I screamed at you that I didn’t like it, and the last time, there was blood, and how in the hell can somebody be bleeding like that, how can you think they’re having a good time?”
    “Jake used to do it; I seen him,” Rooney said.
    “That’s all you got to say? Jake used to do it? I’ll tell you, Wally, if Jake was here, he’d be sitting right next to you, all three of you like birds on a wire.”
    “Don’t shoot me, Alma. Please don’t shoot me. I never meant you any harm,” Rooney said.
    The muzzle of the gun never moved, but Alma said to her father, “What do you have to say for him?”
    Emmett Einstadt said, “Women are supposed to serve men. That’s why God put them on earth. Rooney might not be the best we got, but he tries hard enough. You’da got used to him if you’d gave him some time.”
    She shook her head and said, “I don’t believe I would have. I started out liking Jake, and ended up hating him; I started out hating Rooney. How you could ever give us to him, I’ll never understand. How many times did we say no?”
    “I didn’t even know that you said no,” Rooney said. “I’m sorry for what you think I’ve done, I didn’t mean any harm by it. But that’s just nature taking its way.”
    Virgil said, “Miz Flood, from what they’ve said, we can take both of them in, and I think I can promise you that they’ll be sent to the state prison forever. When word of this gets out, when a judge and jury hears about this, I mean, they’ll be out of your life. Just as clean as if you killed them; but at least you won’t have to pay for killing them.”
    “I’m not exactly getting an eye for an eye, though, am I?” she asked.
     
     
    VIRGIL’S CELL PHONE RANG. They all jumped, and a smile might have flickered over Alma Flood’s face. She said, “Well, answer it. Or the ringing will drive us crazy.”
    Virgil fished the cell phone out of his pocket with his free hand, and said, “Yeah?”
    “This is Gene. We can hear you. Jenkins is in that tree in the front yard, looking through the front window. He says he’s got a shot at her, but there’s two panes of glass between them and he can’t guarantee that nobody else would get hurt. He said you and the two girls are in his background. He thinks he can probably miss them, but maybe not. He wants you to say yes or no.”
    Virgil said, “No, not yet. Definitely no. I really don’t think that would be appropriate at all. I could probably get that done myself; but, I’m really busy here, so I’ll talk to you later. Okay? Yeah, she’s fine, they’re all fine. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
    He clicked off and put the phone back in his pocket.
    “That was ridiculous,” Alma Flood said.
    “Yes, it was,” Virgil said. “Miz Flood, I’ll tell you what...”
    She shook her head and said, “Let me finish something here. Girls. What do you think about Wally? Guilty, or not guilty?”
    “Don’t do that to the girls,” Virgil said.
    Alma asked, “You know what they say about girls out here, Mr. Flowers? They say, ‘Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.’ And that’s what they do.” She turned to her older daughter and said, “Edna, what do you say?”
    “Guilty,” the girl said.
    Helen nodded, her face solemn, and she said, “Me, too. Guilty.”
    “Alma...” Rooney said.
    Alma said, “I vote guilty as charged,” and she pulled the