Full dark,no stars (17 page)

Until now, that is.

Theyre here with me, a lot more than twelve, lined up along the baseboard all the way around the room, watching me with their oily eyes. If a maid came in with fresh sheets and saw those furry jurors, she would run, shrieking, but no maid will come; I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door two days ago, and its been there ever since. I havent been out. I could order food sent up from the restaurant down the street, I suppose, but I suspect food would set them off. Im not hungry, anyway, so its no great sacrifice. They have been patient so far, my jurors, but I suspect they wont be for much longer. Like any jury, theyre anxious for the testimony to be done so they can render a verdict, receive their token fee (in this case to be paid in flesh), and go home to their families. So I must finish. It wont take long. The hard work is done.

What Sheriff Jones said when he sat down beside my hospital bed was, You saw it in my eyes, I guess. Isnt that right?

I was still a very sick man, but enough recovered to be cautious. Saw what, Sheriff?

What Id come to tell you. You dont remember, do you? Well, Im not surprised. You were one sick American, Wilf. I was pretty sure you were going to die, and I thought you might do it before I got you back to town. I guess Gods not done with you yet, is he?

Something wasnt done with me, but I doubted if it was God.

Was it Henry? Did you come out to tell me something about Henry?

No, he said, it was Arlette I came about. Its bad news, the worst, but you cant blame yourself. Its not like you beat her out of the house with a stick. He leaned forward. You might have got the idea that I dont like you, Wilf, but thats not true. Theres some in these parts who dont-and we know who they are, dont we?-but dont put me in with them just because I have to take their interests into account. Youve irritated me a time or two, and I believe that youd still be friends with Harl Cotterie if youd kept your boy on a tighter rein, but Ive always respected you.

I doubted it, but kept my lip buttoned.

As for what happened to Arlette, Ill say it again, because it bears repeating: you cant blame yourself.

I couldnt? I thought that was an odd conclusion to draw even for a lawman who would never be confused with Sherlock Holmes.

Henrys in trouble, if some of the reports Im getting are true, he said heavily, and hes dragged Shan Cotterie into the hot water with him. Theyll likely boil in it. Thats enough for you to handle without claiming responsibility for your wifes death, as well. You dont have to-

Just tell me, I said.

Two days previous to his visit-perhaps the day the rat bit me, perhaps not, but around that time-a farmer headed into Lyme Biska with the last of his produce had spied a trio of coydogs fighting over something about twenty yards north of the road. He might have gone on if he hadnt also spied a scuffed ladies patent leather shoe and a pair of pink step-ins lying in the ditch. He stopped, fired his rifle to scare off the coys, and advanced into the field to inspect their prize. What he found was a womans skeleton with the rags of a dress and a few bits of flesh still hanging from it. What remained of her hair was a listless brown, the color to which Arlettes rich auburn might have gone after months out in the elements.

Two of the back teeth were gone, Jones said. Was Arlette missing a couple of back teeth?

Yes, I lied. Lost them from a gum infection.

When I came out that day just after she ran off, your boy said she took her good jewelry.

Yes. The jewelry that was now in the well.

When I asked if she could have laid her hands on any money, you mentioned 200 dollars. Isnt that right?

Ah yes. The fictional money Arlette had supposedly taken from my dresser. Thats right.

He was nodding. Well, there you go, there you go. Some jewelry and some money. That explains everything, wouldnt you say?

I dont see-

Because youre not looking at it from a lawmans point of view. She was robbed on the road, thats all. Some bad egg spied a woman hitch-hiking between Hemingford and Lyme Biska, picked her up, killed her, robbed her of her money and her jewelry, then carried her body far enough into the nearest field so it couldnt be seen from the road. From his long face I could see he was thinking she had probably been raped as well as robbed, and that it was probably a good thing that there wasnt enough of her left to tell for sure.

Thats probably it, then, I said, and somehow I was able to keep a straight face until he was gone. Then I turned over, and although I thumped my stump in doing so, I began to laugh. I buried my face in my pillow, but not even that would stifle the sound. When the nurse-an ugly old battle-axe-came in and saw the tears streaking my face, she assumed (which makes an ass out of you and me) that I had been crying. She softened, a thing I would have thought impossible, and gave me an extra morphine pill. I was, after all, the grieving husband and bereft father. I deserved comfort.

And do you know why I was laughing? Was it Joness well-meaning stupidity? The fortuitous appearance of a dead female hobo who might have been killed by her male traveling companion while they were drunk? It was both of those things, but mostly it was the shoe. The farmer had only stopped to investigate what the coydogs were fighting over because hed seen a ladies patent leather shoe in the ditch. But when Sheriff Jones had asked about footwear that day at the house the previous summer, Id told him Arlettes canvas shoes were the ones that were gone. The idiot had forgotten.

And he never remembered.

When I got back to the farm, almost all my livestock was dead. The only survivor was Achelois, who looked at me with reproachful, starveling eyes and lowed plaintively. I fed her as lovingly as you might feed a pet, and really, that was all she was. What else would you call an animal that can no longer contribute to a familys livelihood?

There was a time when Harlan, assisted by his wife, would have taken care of my place while I was in the hospital; its how we neighbored out in the middle. But even after the mournful blat of my dying cows started drifting across the fields to him while he sat down to his supper, he stayed away. If Id been in his place, I might have done the same. In Harl Cotteries view (and the worlds), my son hadnt been content just to ruin his daughter; hed followed her to what should have been a place of refuge, stolen her away, and forced her into a life of crime. How that Sweetheart Bandits stuff must have eaten into her father! Like acid! Ha!

The following week-around the time the Christmas decorations were going up in farmhouses and along Main Street in Hemingford Home-Sheriff Jones came out to the farm again. One look at his face told me what his news was, and I began to shake my head. No. No more. I wont have it. I cant have it. Go away.

I went back in the house and tried to bar the door against him, but I was both weak and one-handed, and he forced his way in easily enough. Take hold, Wilf, he said. Youll get through this. As if he knew what he was talking about.

He looked in the cabinet with the decorative ceramic beer stein on top of it, found my sadly depleted bottle of whiskey, poured the last finger into the stein, and handed it to me. Doctor wouldnt approve, he said, but hes not here and youre going to need it.

The Sweetheart Bandits had been discovered in their final hideout, Shannon dead of the countermans bullet, Henry of one he had put into his own brain. The bodies had been taken to the Elko mortuary, pending instructions. Harlan Cotterie would see to his daughter, but would have nothing to do with my son. Of course not. I did that myself. Henry arrived in Hemingford by train on the eighteenth of December, and I was at the depot, along with a black funeral hack from Castings Brothers. My picture was taken repeatedly. I was asked questions which I didnt even try to answer. The headlines in both the World-Herald and the much humbler Hemingford Weekly featured the phrase GRIEVING FATHER.

If the reporters had seen me at the funeral home, however, when the cheap pine box was opened, they would have seen real grief; they could have featured the phrase SCREAMING FATHER. The bullet my son fired into his temple as he sat with Shannons head on his lap had mushroomed as it crossed his brain and taken out a large chunk of his skull on the left side. But that wasnt the worst. His eyes were gone. His lower lip was chewed away so that his teeth jutted in a grim grin. All that remained of his nose was a red stub. Before some cop or sheriffs deputy had discovered the bodies, the rats had made a merry meal of my son and his dear love.

Fix him up, I told Herbert Castings when I could talk rationally again.

Mr. James sir the damage is

I see what the damage is. Fix him up. And get him out of that shitting box. Put him in the finest coffin you have. I dont care what it costs. I have money. I bent and kissed his torn cheek. No father should have to kiss his son for the last time, but if any father ever deserved such a fate, it was I.

Shannon and Henry were both buried out of the Hemingford Glory of God Methodist Church, Shannon on the twenty-second and Henry on Christmas Eve. The church was full for Shannon, and the weeping was almost loud enough to raise the roof. I know, because I was there, at least for a little while. I stood in the back, unnoticed, then slunk out halfway through Reverend Thursbys eulogy. Rev. Thursby also presided at Henrys funeral, but I hardly need tell you that the attendance was much smaller. Thursby saw only one, but there was another. Arlette was there, too, sitting next to me, unseen and smiling. Whispering in my ear.

Do you like how things have turned out, Wilf? Was it worth it?

Adding in the funeral cost, the burial expenses, the mortuary expenses, and the cost of shipping the body home, the disposal of my sons earthly remains cost just over $300. I paid out of the mortgage money. What else did I have? When the funeral was finished, I went home to an empty house. But first I bought a fresh bottle of whiskey.

1922 had one more trick left in its bag. The day after Christmas, a huge blizzard roared out of the Rockies, socking us with a foot of snow and gale-force winds. As dark came down, the snow turned first to sleet and then to driving rain. Around midnight, as I sat in the darkened parlor, doctoring my bellowing stump with little sips of whiskey, a grinding, rending sound came from the back of the house. It was the roof coming down on that side-the part Id taken out the mortgage, at least in part, to fix. I toasted it with my glass, then had another sip. When the cold wind began to blow in around my shoulders, I took my coat from its hook in the mudroom, put it on, then sat back down and drank a little more whiskey. At some point I dozed. Another of those grinding crashes woke me around three oclock. This time it was the front half of the barn that had collapsed. Achelois survived yet again, and the next night I took her into the house with me. Why? you might ask me, and my answer would be, Why not? Just why the hell not? We were the survivors. We were the survivors.

On Christmas morning (which I spent sipping whiskey in my cold sitting room, with my surviving cow for company), I counted what was left of the mortgage money, and realized it would not begin to cover the damage done by the storm. I didnt much care, because I had lost my taste for the farming life, but the thought of the Farrington Company putting up a hog butchery and polluting the stream still made me grind my teeth in rage. Especially after the high cost I had paid for keeping those triple-goddamned 100 acres out of the companys hands.

It suddenly struck home to me that, with Arlette officially dead instead of missing, those acres were mine. So two days later I swallowed my pride and went to see Harlan Cotterie.

The man who answered my knock had fared better than I, but that years shocks had taken their toll, just the same. He had lost weight, he had lost hair, and his shirt was wrinkled-although not as wrinkled as his face, and the shirt, at least, would iron out. He looked sixty-five instead of forty-five.

Dont hit me, I said when I saw him ball his fists. Hear me out.

I wouldnt hit a man with only one hand, he said, but Ill thank you to keep it short. And well have to talk out here on the stoop, because you are never going to set foot inside my house again.

Thats fine, I said. I had lost weight myself-plenty-and I was shivering, but the cold air felt good on my stump, and on the invisible hand that still seemed to exist below it. I want to sell you 100 acres of good land, Harl. The hundred Arlette was so determined to sell to the Farrington Company.

He smiled at that, and his eyes sparkled in their new deep hollows. Fallen on hard times, havent you? Half your house and half your barn caved in. Hermie Gordon says youve got a cow living in there with you. Hermie Gordon was the rural route mailman, and a notorious gossip.

I named a price so low that Harls mouth fell open and his eyebrows shot up. It was then that I noticed a smell wafting out of the neat and well-appointed Cotterie farmhouse that seemed entirely alien to that place: burnt fried food. Sallie Cotterie was apparently not doing the cooking. Once I might have been interested in such a thing, but that time had passed. All I cared about right then was getting shed of the 100 acres. It only seemed right to sell them cheap, since they had cost me so dear.

Thats pennies on the dollar, he said. Then, with evident satisfaction: Arlette would roll in her grave.

Shes done more than just roll in it, I thought.

What are you smiling about, Wilf?

Nothing. Except for one thing, I dont care about that land anymore. The one thing I do care about is keeping that god damned Farrington slaughter-mill off it.

Even if you lose your own place? He nodded as if Id asked a question. I know about the mortgage you took out. No secrets in a small town.

Even if I do, I agreed. Take the offer, Harl. Youd be crazy not to. That stream theyll be filling up with blood and hair and hog intestines-thats your stream, too.