Down By the River
Virginia A. K. Moran
Got him right there," Mrs. Bates said, pointing to the side of her own neck where the skin always looked to me like dough, loosely hung, between chin and collarbone. She was explaining how Jud Powell knifed Tony Tate a couple of years ago, right before I moved down here. "Right in the jug'lar. I don't know why Tony wasn't watching for Jud. Jud'd just told him at the skate rink that he'd cut his throat if he caught him sniffing around his wife again." She slurped from the harvest gold Melamine cup I'd served her coffee in and shook her head. "Died in two minutes. Sheila Powell had blood all over her, trying to stop it."
Tony Tate had been the son of Mrs. Bates' best friend, and, to people who haven't lived here long, her tone in telling that story might have seemed strange. But by then I understood what her satisfaction in the story was. In the suburbs it's called "swinging." At the college it's called "fulfilling your needs." Here it's called cheating, and punishment is swift and personally meted out.
I know Mrs. Bates was trying to warn me when she told me that story yesterday. She'd told it to me a year ago, too, but then it was just indoctrination into the neighborhood. Then, it had made me hold onto Warren all night in my sleep. What it did this time was to stop the drifting a little. I've been drifting all through this year: drifting into marriage, into motherhood, and now drifting toward cheating.
