Sticks and stones may break your bones ... but words will batter your heart like a bullet.

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"Mom's Cousin Lenna" (Part 6) ended like this:

The narrow road to the Runyan place was about as desolate as ever. The little trailer house was no uglier than before. She hadn't seen Rory since 1985. There was no telling what he might look like now. She pulled up to a stop outside the door to the rusty old trailer house. A window cracked open, a rifle barrel jutted out, and a man's voice said,

"Get the hell out."

---

"I'll take that as an invitation,"

DeLorean said after stepping out of the minivan and facing the rifle muzzle at the window.

That Rory. He was all bark most of the time, and he hardly dared bite again, or he'd be back in the nut house. Or in jail.

"I'm holding a Sharps Old Reliable 1874 forty-five Rifle, and I ain't afraid to pull the trigger," the voice behind the window warned.

"Waste of expensive ammo," she said. "I'm DeLorean, your distant cousin, and death doesn't scare me. What your mama Lenna might do to you if you kill your own kin, that might scare you."

Dead silence.

A lizard skittered over the sand, some thirty feet off, and disappeared under a rock. A hawk sailed in the cloudless blue overhead. The smell of pine and horses drifted over DeLorean, and she had a peculiar sense of being home. She'd never lived outside the muggy emerald-green Midwest in all sixty years of her life.

"Rory, just put down your Sharps and open the damn door for your cousin. Otherwise I might have to go pee behind the nearest rock. I've been on the road a long, long time."

"Go find a rock, then."

Damn that weasely little Rory.

DeLorean walked off, squatted behind a boulder, dusted off a rock to use as toilet paper, hoping it wouldn't lead to another UTI, and walked back to the door. She didn't even knock, just tried the handle, and let herself right in.

A skinny, hardened little man sat on a stool facing the door, a mountain of dirty dishes on the counter behind him. The linoleum floor was gray with dirt, its original color anyone's guess. A dog of indeterminate origins crouched ast his side, showing his teeth. No doubt the dog's sharp, white teeth would put his master's to shame.

Rory's long, wiry gray beard looked bigger than his entire torso. His eyes were as fiercely blue as ever, his features fine and possibly even handsome, his skin bronzed and leathery. Above the sink, a poster hung:

"Batter my heart, three person'd God"

source

---

DeLorean knew that one by heart. It was on a greeting card cousin Lenna had mailed her mom, way back when they were newly minted penpals in the early years of their unfortunate marriages. Lenna had given up Catholicism for Rex, and Catholics never do the giving up when two who are unequally yoked get yoked.

Mom was weirdly secretive about her letters to and from Lenna, but cleaning house after Mom died, DeLorean got an eyeful. Sticks and stones may break your bones ... but words will batter your heart like a bullet. That's what Lenna said. With a husband like Dwayne, DeLorean knew just what she meant.

"The hell you want?" Rory said.

"I'm here to win your heart, screw you over, steal your money, and leave your scrawny flesh for the vultures. What do you think?"

"I ain't got any money."

"Said every hermit in the desert living in a tin can." DeLorean snorted but not with too much derision. "Seriously, I got my own money, Rory, and I'm here to made a deal on a minivan. You can have it in exchange for anything that runs reliably. I know you can get something quick if you don't have any extra wheels on hand right now."

"Well, hell, who did you kill?"

"Nobody yet. I got out of Dodge before giving into that temptation."

"I got nothing for you."

DeLorean glanced around the trailer. From the kitchen with a table folded up against the wall under the window, the dirty floor led to a "living" room, which held more guns than furniture, and an open door led to what must be a bathroom. The faint but distinctive stink of old house was the only odor worth noting.

"Where's your mama?"

"None of your business. You want a car, let's talk cars and get it over with."

Pursing her lips, stifling a sigh, DeLorean planted her feet and crossed her arms. "Actually, I want something bigger than a car. Tell me what ya got."

Batter my heart, three person'd God (Holy Sonnet 14)

John Donne - 1571-1631

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Day 598 :5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: Batter