Bare Bones (32 page)

“Your father is there now?”

Two head shakes.

“Daddy’s went over to his sister in Sumter. She drove up and got him, but she won’t have nothin’ to do with us. Say we the devil’s own offspring, and we gonna burn in hel .”

“Why have you come to see me?”

Neither sister would raise her eyes to mine.

“Geneva?”

Geneva kept her gaze on the fingers curled around her Coke.

“We gonna tel her,” she said, her voice flat.

Tamela gave a suit-yourself shrug.

“This mornin’ my cousin is poundin’ on the door, yel in’ her man looking at my sister too much, yel in’ at us to get out. Daddy’s mad at us, our own kin’s mad at us, and Darryl’s wantin’ to kil us.”

Geneva’s head was down so I couldn’t see her face, but the trembling in her ponytail revealed her desperation.

“We gotta leave where we was, we can’t go home, case Darryl get out and come looking for us.” Her voice trailed off. “We run out of places.”

“I ain’t—” Tamela started, but couldn’t finish.

I reached over and placed one hand on each of theirs. This time she didn’t pul away.

“You wil stay with me until it’s safe to go home.”

“We won’t take nothin’.” Tamela’s words were hushed. The voice of a frightened child.

I took Boyd for a five-minute walk. Then we spent half an hour digging out towels and bedding for the sleeper sofa. By the time the Banks sisters were settled, Boyd having been granted a place in the den over Geneva’s objection, it was wel past eleven.

Too agitated to sleep, I took my laptop to my bedroom, logged on, and resumed my Klinefelter’s research. I’d been at it ten minutes when my cel phone rang.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan sounded alarmed at the tenor of my voice.

I told him about Geneva and Tamela.

“You sure it’s legit?”

“I think so.”

“Wel , be careful. They could be fronting for this mope Tyree.”

“I’m always careful.” No need to mention that moment of uncertainty concerning the lock. Or the unset alarm.

“You must be relieved that the Bankses are safe.”

“Yes. And I think I’ve discovered something else.”

“Does it have to do with fractals?”

“Ever heard of Klinefelter’s syndrome?”

“No.”

“How are you fixed for chromosomes?”

“Twenty-three pairs. Should hold me.”

“That would suggest that something about you is normal.”

“I have a feeling I’m about to learn about chromosomes.”

I let him listen to the sound of me saying nothing.

“OK.” I heard a match strike, then a deep inhalation. “Please?”

“As you so astutely point out, genetical y normal individuals have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, one per set coming from each parent. Twenty-two pairs are cal ed autosomes, the other pair is made up of the sex chromosomes.”

“XX gets you the pink booties, XY gets you the blue.”

“You’re a whiz, Ryan. Occasional y, something goes awry in the formation of an egg or sperm, and an individual is born with one chromosome too many or one chromosome too few.”

“Down’s syndrome.”

“Exactly. People with mongolism, or Down’s syndrome, have an extra chromosome in the twenty-first pair of autosomes. The condition is also cal ed trisomy 21.”

“I think we’re getting to Mr. Klinefelter.”

“Sometimes the abnormality involves a missing or an extra sex chromosome. XO women have a condition cal ed Turner’s syndrome. XXY men have Klinefelter’s syndrome.”

“What about YO men?”

“Not possible. No X, no survival.”

“Tel me about Klinefelter’s.”

“Since there’s a Y chromosome in the genome, XXY, Klinefelter’s syndrome individuals are male. But they have smal testes, and suffer from testosterone deficiency and infertility.”

“Are they physical y distinct?”

“KS men tend to be tal , with disproportionately long legs and little body or facial hair. Some are pear-shaped. Some exhibit breast development.”

“How common is the condition?”

“I’ve read figures ranging from one in five hundred to one in eight hundred male conceptions. That makes KS the most common of the sex chromosome abnormalities.”

“Any behavioral implications?”

“KS individuals have a high incidence of learning disabilities, sometimes decreased verbal IQ, but usual y normal intel igence. Some studies report increased levels of aggression or antisocial behavior.”

“I don’t imagine these kids feel real y good about themselves growing up.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Why are we interested in Klinefelter’s syndrome?”

I told him about Brian Aiker, and recounted my conversations with Springer and Zamzow. Then I shared my boxless idea.

“So you think the privy skul goes with the Lancaster skeleton, and that the person could be Charlotte Grant Cobb.”

“Yes.” I told him why. “It’s a long shot.”

“Zamzow told you Cobb wasn’t that tal ,” Ryan said.

“He said she wasn’t an Amazon; if the leg bones were disproportionately long, that would have skewed the height estimate.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Track down Cobb’s family, ask a few questions.”

“Can’t hurt,” Ryan said.

I updated him on what I’d learned from Slidel and Woolsey.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Ryan liked saying that.

I hesitated.

What the hel .

“See you soon?” I asked.

“Sooner than you think,” he said.

Yes!

After checking a map on Yahoo! I crawled into bed.

Can’t hurt, I thought, echoing Ryan.

How wrong we both were.

NEXT MORNING, IWAS UP AT SEVEN-THIRTY. SILENCE IN THE DENsuggested Geneva and Tamela were stil dead to the world. After spinning Boyd around the block, I fil ed pet bowls, set cornflakes and raisin bran on the kitchen table, jotted a note, and hopped into the car.

Clover lies just beyond the North Carolina–South Carolina border, halfway between a dammed-up stretch of the Catawba River, cal ed Lake Wylie, and the Kings Mountain National Park, site of Ryan and Boyd’s Revolutionary War excursion. My friend Anne cal s the town Clo-vay, giving the name a je ne sais quoi panache.

During off-peak traffic hours the trip to Clo-vay takes less than thirty minutes. Unfortunately, every driver registered in either the Palmetto or the Old North State was on the road that morning. Others had joined them from Tennessee and Georgia. And Oklahoma. And Guam. I crept down I-77, alternately sipping my Starbucks and drumming the wheel.

Clover was incorporated in 1887 as a railway stopover, then boomed as a textile center in the early nineteen hundreds. Water seepage from the railroad tanks kept the place damp and carpeted with clover, earning it the name Cloverpatch. Aspiring to a more imposing image, or perhaps wanting to dissociate from the Yokums and the Scraggs, some citizens’ committee later shortened the name to Clover.

The image polishing didn’t help. Though Clover is stil home to a few mil s, and things like brake parts and surgical supplies are cranked out nearby, nothing much happens there. A perusal of chamber of commerce literature suggests that good times are had elsewhere: Lake Wylie, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Carolina beaches, Charlotte Knights basebal games, Carolina Panthers footbal games.

There are a few antebel um homes hiding in the hil s around Clover, but it’s not a place for French country hand towels and stripy umbrel as. Though very Norman Rockwel , the town is strictly blue-col ar, or, more correctly, no-col ar.

By nine-forty I was at the point where US 321 crosses SC 55, the beating heart of downtown Clover. Two-and three-story redbrick buildings lined both blacktops forming the intersection. Predictably, Route 321 was cal ed Main Street along this stretch.

Remembering the Yahoo! map, I went south on 321, then made a left onto Flat Rock Road. Three more rights and I found myself on a dead-end street lined with longleaf pines and scrub oaks. The address Zamzow had given me led to a double-wide on a cement slab eighty yards down at the far end.

A front stoop held two metal lawn chairs, one bare, the other with green floral cushions in place. To the right of the trailer I could see a vegetable garden.

The front yard was fil ed with whirligigs.

A carport hung by suction cups to the trailer’s left end, its interior fil ed with oddly shaped stacks covered with blue plastic sheeting. A stand of shagbark hickories threw shadows across a rusted swing set to the left of the carport.

I pul ed onto the gravel drive, kil ed the engine, and crossed the yard to the front door. Among the whirligigs I recognized Little Bo Peep. Sleepy and Dopey. A mother duck leading four miniature versions of herself.

A skeletal woman with eyes that seemed too large for her face answered the bel . She wore a saggy, pil -covered cardigan over a faded polyester housedress. The garments draped her fleshless form like clothes hanging on a hanger.

The woman spoke to me through an aluminum and glass outer door.

“Got nothing this week.” She stepped back to close the inner door.

“Mrs. Cobb?”

“You with the kidney people?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not. I’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”

“Got no daughter.”

Again the woman moved to close the door, then hesitated, vertical lines creasing the bone-tight flesh on her forehead.

“Who are you?”

I dug a card from my purse and held it to the glass. She read the card then looked up, eyes fil ed with thoughts that had nothing to do with me.

“Medical examiner?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” Keep it simple.

The aluminum gril work rattled when she pushed open the door. Cold seeped outward, like air from a recently unlocked tomb.

Wordlessly the woman led me to the kitchen and gestured toward a smal table with antique green legs and a simulated wood top. The trailer’s interior smel ed of mothbal s, pine disinfectant, and old cigarette smoke.

“Coffee?” she asked as I seated myself.

“Yes, please.” The thermostat must have been set at fifty-eight. Goose bumps were forming on my neck and arms.

The woman took two mugs from an overhead cabinet and fil ed them from a coffeemaker on the counter.

“It is Mrs. Cobb, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Mrs. Cobb set the mugs on the simulated wood. “Milk?”

“No, thank you.”

Sliding a pack of Kools from the top of the refrigerator, Mrs. Cobb took the chair opposite mine. Her skin looked waxy and gray. A growth protruded from a comma below her left eyelid, looking like a barnacle on the side of a pier.

“Got a light?”

I dug matches from my purse, struck one, and held it to her cigarette.

“Can’t ever find the darned things when I need them.”

She inhaled deeply, exhaled, flicked a finger at the matches.

“Put those away. I don’t want to be smoking too many.” She snorted a laugh. “Bad for my health.” I shoved the matches into my jeans pocket.

“You want to talk about my child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Cobb fished a Kleenex from a sweater pocket, blew her nose, then took another drag.

“My husband’s dead two years come November.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“He was a good, Christian man. Headstrong, but a good man.”

“I’m sure you miss him.”

“Lord knows I do.”

A cuckoo popped from its clock above the sink and sounded the hour. We both listened. Ten chirps.

“He gave me that clock for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

“It must be very dear to you.”

“Fool thing’s kept working al these years.”

Mrs. Cobb drew on her Kool, eyes fixed on a point midway between us. On a point years past. Then her chin cocked up as a sudden thought struck her.

Her gaze shifted to me.

“You find my child?”

“We might have.”

Smoke curled from her cigarette and floated across her face.

“Dead?”

“It’s a possibility, Mrs. Cobb. The ID is complicated.”

She brought the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, exhaled through her nose. Then she flicked the ash and rotated the burning tip on a smal metal saucer until the fire went out.

“I’l be joining Charlie Senior shortly. I believe it’s time to set a few things right.” She rose from her chair and shuffled toward the back of the trailer, slippers swishing on the indoor-outdoor carpet. I heard rustling, what sounded like a door.

Minutes cuckooed by. Hours. A decade.

Final y, Mrs. Cobb returned with a bulky green album bound with black cording.

“I think the old goat wil forgive me.”

She laid the album in front of me and opened it to the first page. Her breathing sounded wheezy as she leaned over my shoulder to jab at a snapshot of a baby on a plaid blanket.

The finger moved to a baby in an old-fashioned bassinet. A baby in a strol er.

She flipped ahead several pages.

A toddler holding a plastic hammer. A toddler in blue denim coveral s and bicycle cap.

Two more pages.

A towheaded boy of about seven in cowboy hat and twin holsters. The same boy suited up for basebal , bat on one shoulder.

Three pages.

A teen with palm extended in protest, face twisted away from the lens. The teen was about sixteen, and wore an enormous golf shirt over baggy cutoffs.

It was the hammer-basebal -buckaroo boy, though his hair was darker now. The visible cheek was smooth and pink and dotted with acne. The boy’s hips were wide, his body softly feminine, with a marked lack of muscle definition.

I looked up at Mrs. Cobb.

“My child. Charles Grant Cobb.”

Circling the table, she sat and wrapped her fingers around her mug.

For sixty ticks we both listened to the cuckoo. I broke the silence.

“Your son must have had a difficult time during his teenage years.”

“Charlie Junior just never went through the right changes. He never grew a beard. His voice never changed, and his—” Five ticks. “You know.” XXY. A Klinefelter’s syndrome boy.

“I do know, Mrs. Cobb.”

“Kids can be so cruel.”