Condescension

Dad said he didn't have a choice, but he was smiling behind his lips. It would be pointless to argue, so I didn’t. I just stood there for a few seconds, getting used to the ringing in my ears and trying to see if there was any movement. There wasn’t. He stood still as I slowly approached the body near the woods that surround the barn.

"Hello?"

But there was no answer. I didn’t thing there would be, from the way that she fell. I hadn't seen him clearly, but I knew it was her from his smile. As the barn lamp outlined my shadow on the barren dirt, I thought that maybe I could have prevented this, but I don’t know how.

Our house was a few yards from the barn, and I was about to reach the body when the door opened and hit the wall producing a dry noise like a belt on hardened skin. Liz ran towards her so fast that her feet barely seemed to touch the ground, her face and hair and white gown lending her the appearance of a wraith. I reached my arms for her and shook my head but she pushed me aside and kneeled beside the body. Even though Sue was using a man’s clothes and her body was facing down, Liz knew as well as I did that it was her before Liz turned her body face up; she had known before opening the door.

Sue’s hair was a mess. The hat she'd been using to hide her hair fell a few feet away and her face was covered in dust and bruised — which means her heart hadn’t stopped at the time she hit the ground. You could see a dark spot on her clothes from the blood, but the clothes themselves were dark so it was hard to tell how much, and some had been absorbed by the dirt below. Liz used her gown to clean up Sue’s face, but seemed too shocked to cry, her own face frozen in a contorted expression, mouth slightly opened. She touched Sue’s face and brought her lips close to hers, and our father tensed up and pressed the gun in his hand as she did, but Liz didn’t actually kiss her. She didn't need to close Sue’s eyes, but she softly brushed her hands over them, as though they were open.

Then she looked up. Our father hadn't moved or said anything. The grin he tried to hide earlier had been replaced by a proud expression, almost boastful, as that of a man who won a fierce battle.

"I didn't have a choice", he repeated. "She was holding a gun."

Sue's phone was beside the body, near her hand. Liz grabbed it.

"This is a gun?"

"If you enter my property at night and I didn't invite you, it's the same as holding a gun."

As I said: it's pointless to argue with him, and aggravating. Liz knows this better than I do. She always tried harder than I did, though I guess she had a stronger reason to do so, and was young enough to believe something could change the son of a bitch. Whenever we disagreed, he would get this amused expression in his face, as if he found it funny you would think to disobey or try and have the last word. His smile was always on the sarcastic side of condescension, and even if we convinced him that he was wrong, it wouldn’t matter: he’d still do what he had said as a matter of principle, as a way to show he had power over us. On occasion he would pretend to agree, only to do whatever he wanted in the first place. That’s what drained our hope.

Liz had more or less given up on disagreeing with him, until he forbid her from visiting Sue, not a year after our mother passed away. He said he wanted her to be where he could see, but she wouldn’t accept it, and she screamed and cried and reasoned, but in the end he got his way; it was too far for her to go alone, and she settled for having Sue visit us instead. That wouldn’t last either, and after a couple of months he forbid Sue from coming. He said the lack of manners of the city girl were rubbing off on Liz and that he didn’t like the noises they were making in that room and the things they were doing in his house. Liz argued with him for over an hour, so much so that even his smile was beginning to fade, and when she said he was the reason our mother did what she did he slapped her so hard she fell to the ground and I told her to get to her room while I held him back.

After that, of course, there would be no coming back. He locked Liz in her room for a few days. When he was away I would open her door and give her food and water but she wouldn’t get out or eat the food out of pride or whatever it was; the water, after a while, she had to drink. I was worried that she would do something stupid so I told her that if I called and she didn’t give the door a little knock I would come in and force her to eat, so at least she did that and I could tell she was alive.

That was about a month ago. The way I see it, they must have met each other near the house a couple times, and that’s why Sue was here. That’s why he knew she would be. And now, she laid there motionless, while my sister in frantic motion started raising the dead woman's too-large flannel shirt, and turning her face back to the ground a little too easily, as if suddenly the body was lighter or moving on its own. Dad got closer, trying to see what she was doing, but she was on the outskirts of the light of the barn and his shadow made it impossible to see clearly, so I only understood what she was doing when I heard the shot.