“Yes, ma’am,” Maryellen said, coming in from the bedroom.

Maryellen held James Harris’s forearm in both hands and twisted it back and forth while Mrs. Greene held his shoulder and cut anything that looked like it was still connected. With a cartilage-tearing crunch and a series of small, fast pops, his forearm came free. A few strings of meat and gristle connected it to his body but Mrs. Greene cut the ones Maryellen couldn’t pull apart. Maryellen dropped the forearm into a black plastic garbage bag and carefully tied a knot in the top. Immediately, the bag began to writhe as the arm tried to get out.

“I can feel my spine healing.” James Harris grinned at Mrs. Greene. “You’d better hope you can cut faster than I can heal.”

Mrs. Greene worked fast, with Maryellen assisting. They took off the rest of his left arm at the shoulder, then his right foot, his right leg at the knee, then at the hip. The black plastic bags piled up in the corner of the bathroom in a squirming heap. As his muscle and bone dulled each hunting knife, Mrs. Greene dropped it into a plastic bag and picked up a new one. Maryellen cleaned the chain-mail gloves when they became too clotted with gore to keep a firm grip on his flesh anymore.

“Where are your boys living?” James Harris said to Mrs. Greene. “Irmo, isn’t it? Jesse and Aaron. When I get out of here I’m going to pay them a visit.”

Even when she turned him onto his stomach to work on his left arm and leg, James Harris kept up a running monologue that became less and less coherent as they cut more and more of him away.

“I never went where I wasn’t invited,” he rambled. “The farm, the widow’s house, Russia, I only went where they wanted me. Lup asked me to use him, he asked me with his eyes, he knew I could keep him alive, but he had to keep me alive first. I’ll always remember that beautiful boy. That soldier wanted it, his face was so burned, and I did him a favor. I only did what people asked for. Even Ann wanted what I had to offer.”

They took a break. Mrs. Greene’s arms throbbed and ached. The threat of James Harris’s spinal column knitting itself back together loomed over her. They didn’t have much time, but all she wanted to do was take a hot bath and go to sleep. The night felt endless.

“How’s Patricia?” she asked Kitty.

“Asleep,” Kitty said, still pressing the towel to Patricia’s thigh.

Maryellen looked at the stiff way Kitty held her neck. A purple shiner circled her left eye.

“What’ll you tell Horse?” Maryellen asked.

Kitty’s face fell.

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” she said.

“We’ll figure it out when we’re through here,” Mrs. Greene said. Her confidence calmed Kitty. “Put some ice on your eye for now.”

Back in the bathroom, James Harris’s torso greeted her again. It was time for his head. She dreaded this moment although she also hoped it would finally shut him up. One thing she’d learned about men: they liked to talk.

As she worked her knife through the tough tendons and what remained of his spinal column, James Harris kept talking.

“The Wide Smiles Club will come looking for me,” he said, eyes trying to find hers. “That’s what we do. They’ll come looking for me and when they find out what you’ve done, there will be hell to pay for you and your children and your families. This is your last chance. You can stop now and I’ll tell them to leave you alone.”

“No one is going to come looking for you,” Mrs. Greene said, unable to resist. “You are all alone. You have no one in the world, and when you die no one will notice. No one will care. You leave nothing behind.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and gave a bloody grin. “I’m leaving you all a present. Just wait until your friend Slick gets ripe.”

He started to giggle and Mrs. Greene crunched her knife through his windpipe and she and Maryellen gripped him by the hair and pulled off his head with a loud pop.

Then they did what Miss Mary had told Patricia to do all those years ago at the supper table the night she spat at James Harris. Maryellen held his head and Mrs. Greene took a hammer and drove two thick twenty-penny nails into each of his eyes. His mouth finally stopped moving. Then they dropped his head into a bag and tied it shut.

They gutted him and packed his organs and entrails into different bags. She was too tired to saw through his rib cage, so they simply removed as much meat from it as they could and wrapped pound after pound of flesh and muscle in different plastic bags. They double-and triple-bagged them, reducing James Harris to a pile of tightly sealed trash bags that could fit into an ordinary sized garbage can.

When they were finished, the bathroom looked like an abattoir. Mrs. Greene and Maryellen went into the bedroom.

“Finished?” Kitty asked.

“We are,” Mrs. Greene said.

“I need to get the car,” Maryellen said, then sat down heavily on the floor, making sure she stayed off the throw rug. “I just need to sit for a minute.”

They all ached, right down to the bone, but they weren’t even close to finished. Mrs. Greene looked around the bathroom and the bedroom, and Maryellen followed her gaze. Kitty did, too.

“Jesus, Mary, Mother of God,” Kitty said softly.

Blood was everywhere. Despite the tarp, the bathroom was painted red. The countertops, the walls, the door frame, the toilet. There was blood on the dark oak planks in the bedroom, blood on the duvet cover where Patricia lay, bloody handprints on the doors and walls. Seeing how much they had to clean drained them of their spirits, hammered them down to nothing. It was almost ten. The Clemson-Carolina game would be over in less than an hour.

“We don’t have enough time,” Maryellen said.

Something whispered in the bathroom. They looked at each other, then pushed themselves up off the floor and stood in the bathroom door. The pile of black plastic packages containing pieces of James Harris’s body twisted like snakes. Their motion was muscular and angry.

“We put the nails through his eyes,” Mrs. Greene said.

“He’s not stopping,” Kitty wailed. “It didn’t work. He’s still alive.”

The doorbell rang.

CHAPTER 40

“They’ll go away,” Maryellen whispered.

It rang again, twice in a row.

Mrs. Greene’s hands and feet went cold. Maryellen felt a headache start at the base of her skull. Kitty whimpered.

“Please go away,” she whispered. “Please go away…please go away…please go away…”

The black plastic packages crackled in the bathroom. One of them rolled off the pile and hit the floor with a THUMP. It began to squirm towards the door.

“The lights are on,” Maryellen said. “We forgot to turn out the lights. You can see them through the shutters. They’ll know he’s home.”

The doorbell rang, three times in a row.

“Who’s the least of a mess?” Maryellen asked. They looked at each other. She and Mrs. Greene were encrusted in blood. Kitty only had some bruises.

“Oh, merciful Jesus,” Kitty moaned.

“It’s probably one of the Johnsons,” Maryellen said. “They must’ve run out of beer.”

Kitty took three deep breaths, on the verge of hyperventilating, then walked out into the hall, down the stairs, and over to the front door. Everything was silent. Maybe they’d gone away.

The doorbell rang, so loudly that she squeaked. She grabbed the handle, flipped the deadbolt, and opened it a crack.

“Am I too late?” Grace asked.

“Grace!” Kitty shouted, dragging her inside by the arm.

They heard her all the way up in the bedroom and came running downstairs. Grace’s face went slack when a blood-splattered Maryellen and Mrs. Greene appeared. She looked at them in horror.

“That’s a white carpet,” she said.

They froze and looked back at the stairs. Their bloody footprints came right down the middle of the carpet. They turned back around and saw Grace stepping back from them, taking in everything.

“You didn’t…” she began, but couldn’t finish.

“Go see for yourself,” Maryellen said.

“I’d prefer not to,” Grace said.

“No,” Mrs. Greene said. “If you have doubts, you need to see. He’s in the upstairs toilet.”

Grace went reluctantly, fastidiously avoiding the bloodstains on the stairs. They heard her footsteps cross the bedroom and stop in the bathroom doorway. There was a long silence. When she came back down, her steps were shaky and she had one hand on the wall. She looked at the three women, covered in blood.

“What’s wrong with Patricia?” she asked.

They filled her in on what had happened. As they talked, her face got firm, her shoulders squared, she stood straighter. When they finished, she said, “I see. And what’s the plan to dispose of him?”

“Stuhr’s has a contract with Roper and East Cooper Hospital,” Maryellen said. “To burn their medical waste in the crematorium early in the morning and late at night. I put a big box of biohazard burn bags in my car, but…they’re moving. We can’t take them in like this.”