Horace Afoot (31 page)

As if reading my thoughts Mohr suddenly asks, “Is it possible that you are a little jealous, Horace?”

“Stop calling me Horace. I’m Lucian.”

“I’m sorry. Lucian.” Mohr looks at me from the corner of his eye and then resumes following the movements of Dr. Middleton, who with her ball of twine is still pacing out the rows of the grid.

I don’t answer him. Jealous? Is it possible? What is there for me to be jealous of? I have never desired Sylvia. How then could I be jealous? Mohr’s question riddles my brain with uncertainty, and now I must consider the possibility. If jealousy is what I am feeling, then it must be the most primitive, primordial kind—sexual envy. Entangled instincts. Competition. The desire to substitute one’s self for all other possible selves, the desire to be the one singular being occupying and reproducing the universe.

Mohr’s enthusiasm for the dig is greater than his stamina, and by late
afternoon I am porting him and his empty picnic basket down the side of the hill. The archaeologists interrupted their work long enough to share the cornucopia—fruits and cupcakes and cheeses and a second bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. Dr. Norris, crumbs in his beard, estimated that it would be a few days before they began to uncover anything and recommended waiting a few days before resuming the watch.

At the car Mohr confesses that he has overextended himself. “It will take me a few days to recover from this,” he says from behind the wheel. The sun is dropping toward the horizon. My shadow stretches along the ground beside the car. Schroeder’s motorcycle is still parked underneath the tree. A bright orange tag dangles from the handlebar. It reads
Tow
. I lean on the window while Mohr fusses with keys and straps and adjusts the mirror. He is saying something about an opera he was taken to as a child. I ask if he is alert enough to drive, and he reassures me that he is and pulls away slowly, pausing to honk his horn and wave before driving away.

Ambling back to town, still lightheaded from the wine, I find myself following the shortcut that Ed Maver took to the hospital that hot summer day.

An ambulance is parked at the emergency entrance, and a stretcher is being tugged out the rear doors. I stand aside as the stretcher is wheeled through the glass doors. A plastic bladder drips fluid into an arm. A blue-green oxygen mask covers a face.

Tom Schroeder Sr. is in the emergency room. He is sitting alone, one leg crossed over his knee, a magazine open on his lap. It looks as if he has come directly from the golf course. After a short wait at the information desk I walk over.

“How is he?” I ask.

Schroeder glances up from the magazine with a puzzled expression, trying to place me. “They’re waiting for him to come out of it.” He flips the page of the magazine. “Do I know you?” he asks.

I sit down, leaving an empty seat between us. “We met last winter. You were pulling out of your driveway.”

The elder Schroeder searches his memory, flipping the pages of his magazine. He has one of those domesticated faces that abound in
advertisements for hardware and lawn products, flabby and plain with wide-open features that do not lend themselves easily to preoccupation or very deep thought. It is not a face that seems acquainted with sorrow or tragedy either, and I wonder at what depth beneath the regular-guy features the grief over his wife’s suicide is submerged. Or if it has simply been jettisoned.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“Lucian.”

“Right.” He nods his head. “Now I remember.” The passing untruth of his statement turns with the last page of the magazine in his lap. He flips it into the empty chair between us. “You’ve come for the girl, I guess.”

I nod.

“You a relative?”

I shake my head. “Only an acquaintance.”

Schroeder glares at me for a moment, then shakes his head. “Word sure gets out fast around here.”

Rather than explain the circumstances, I simply agree and leave it at that. But Schroeder wants to know more. “Mind telling me how you heard?” He uncrosses his legs, leans forward, and plants his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, preparing to hear me out.

“I was out at the mound when they took them away.”

“Big party, huh?”

The sarcasm in his voice is irritating. “I was with the archaeologists,” I answer with more defensiveness than intended.

Schroeder’s head bobs slightly. He purses his lips.

“What did the doctor tell you?”

“Not much. Only that it was alcohol poisoning and they want to keep him on an IV until he wakes up.” He leans back in the chair and shakes his head. “Idiots drank near to half a gallon of whiskey. Of all the goddamn stupid things. And that damn girl he’s been hanging around. She’s a regular piece of business.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Schroeder glances at me as if to size up the exact nature of my professed acquaintance. “Only what I know and what the sheriff told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“She’s no goddamn good.”

“Did the sheriff tell you she was raped and beaten last summer?”

“Yeah, he told me that too.” He shakes his head. “The boy sure knows how to pick ’em, don’t he?”

Schroeder’s words set off a flash of anger. I feel the blood rushing to my temples. “You talk as if she were some whore he picked up.”

Schroeder turns his puffy face to me. “Yup. That’s exactly what she is. A fucking whore.”

Our eyes meet, and a clarity descends on me that propels everything into sharp black perspective. Blood is pounding in my temples. My mouth feels dry. When I open it words spill out, measured and even. “No more than your son is, you stupid son of a bitch.” I am shaking with something I can’t name, stand, start for the exit. Before I’ve gone three paces I feel Schroeder’s hand on my shoulder. I spin. A hot shudder of adrenaline. Schroeder’s fist mashes into the side of my face. A crack. A ringing in my ears. I am wildly conscious, yet I sink to the floor on one knee. Two orderlies pull Schroeder away. “You piece of shit,” he yells. I manage to remain balanced on one knee, holding the side of my face, a pointillist cascade of light trimming the edges of my vision. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Schroeder is shouting. The orderlies shove him into a chair and stand over him. I rise to my feet just as a nurse appears at my side, takes me by the arm. A warm viscosity smears the side of my face. A ringing in my ears. The electricity fails. Everything swells shut.

A crow has landed in the backyard and is cawing loudly. I stand in the open doorway on the kitchen stoop watching it flutter and flap in the grass while inside a pot of beans boils on the stove. It is the first day of hot weather, and the air in the house is stifling.

The bird is distressed. It caws and caws, dancing a circle around a wing extended in the grass. I make my way slowly across the yard, moving toward it one step at a time. The bird stops its dance and hunkers down in fear. Its jet-black feathers are matted and wet and the grass around speckled and smeared with blood. It breaks into a loud, pitiful cawing, then falls silent and surrenders.

The bird puts up a feeble struggle as I pick it out of the grass and wrap it in a towel. I carry it around to the front porch and put it into an empty kindling basket. It cocks its head from side to side, black eyes appraising.

I call a vet. No luck with the first two listings in the telephone book. The first caters only to house pets, the second to farm animals. Both suggest calling an animal rescue league. I decide to try a different ploy and call the third number listed. A woman’s voice answers.

“My dog was shot.”

“How long ago?”

“Half an hour.”

“Where?”

“Behind my house.”

“I mean where is the wound?”

“The wing.”

“What?”

“It winged him.”

“Where?”

“In the leg.”

“Fore or rear?”

“Rear.”

“Have you been able to stop the bleeding?”

“Not really.”

“Is the dog conscious?”

“Yes.”

“Is there an exit wound?”

“I don’t know. You’d better come see for yourself.”

“Can you bring him to the clinic?”

“I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have to call you back.”

Ten minutes later she calls back to say she’ll make the trip over. I go out onto the porch to wait. The bird is calm now. In shock, I suppose. Yet it’s coal eyes seem vigilant and alert.

“What’s in the box?”

I start. Tom Schroeder is standing at the edge of the porch, a supercilious grin plashed across his face.

“Goddamn! The old man really popped you good.”

I stand up, trying not to startle the bird.

“How many stitches you get?”

I touch my cheekbone. The stitches at the corner of my eye are hard and feel like needlepoints protruding from numb skin. “Four.”

“I came by to apologize, man. I’d sue if I were you. I hate the fucker. Hate his guts.” Schroeder sits on the porch step with a creak and a jangle.

“What for? Spoiling you?”

“I hate him for being a fucking pig.”

“Is that what you came over to tell me?”

Schroeder reaches into his scraped and stained and thoroughly filthy-looking
leather jacket. “Nah. I came by to give you this.” He pulls my notebook out with a casual flourish and hands it to me. I take the pad and fan through the tattered pages. It almost seems foreign to me.

Schroeder jams his hands back into the recesses of his jacket. “I took it to find out what you wrote about Sylvia.”

“What made you think I’d written anything about her?”

Schroeder shrugs. “I don’t know. Just thought maybe you had. I was looking for clues.”

“Clues?”

“Proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That you raped her.”

“You thought
I
raped her?”

Schroeder flaps his elbows, shrugs.

“How did you know I kept a notebook?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why did you break in and steal it?”

“I didn’t come here to steal it, dude. I came here to kill you.”

His macho gravity makes me want to laugh. I bend down to look at the crow. The bird tries to pull its head into the towel like a turtle retracting into its shell. But the towel is wrapped too tightly. I try to loosen it, but my efforts only agitate the bird. Schroeder is watching, waiting for my reaction. I go to the rocking chair and sit down. “You thought I raped her?”

“Yup.”

Now I return his stare, rocking. “What made you change your mind?”

Schroeder leans against a corner post, looks down at his feet. “The notebook. I saw it lying on the kitchen table, so I started reading it. Then you came home and I figured I’d see if I could find written proof first.”

“Then what?”

“
Then
I’d come back and kill you.”

The floorboards of the porch creak under the rocker. Schroeder’s melodrama makes me want to laugh.

Schroeder shrugs. “Anyway, I decided you didn’t do it.”

“How did you conclude that?”

“Because you didn’t write anything down.”

“So?”

“So what’s the point of writing and keeping a notebook if you don’t use it to confess something?”

His comment surprises me. It’s the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth.

Schroeder continues, “I read everything and couldn’t even find a hint. Just stuff like—
Suppose a painter chose to place a human head upon a horse’s neck
.”

“That’s the beginning of theory
Poetica
.”

“Whatever. I read it enough times. Anyway, I figured if you were weird enough to write poems, I figured you’d have written
something
about Sylvia.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Nope.”

“So you decided not to kill me.”

“Yup. I thought maybe it was, like, code and I tried cracking it. The part about putting a human head on a horse’s body?”

“What about it?”

“Sounded like, maybe, you were talking about a kind of code.”

I fan the pages of the notebook.

Schroeder shoves away from the corner post, grins at me. “Besides, I know it wasn’t you.” He stoops down to look at the bird in the basket. “What’s wrong with the bird?”

“How? Did Sylvia tell you?”

“Maybe.”

“Who was it?”

Schroeder shrugs. “Never mind. What’s with the bird?” He bends down for a closer look.

“How were you planning to kill me?”

“What happened to the bird?”

“First tell me how you planned to kill me.”

“You really want to know?” Schroeder tries to touch the bird, but it pecks at him and he pulls his hand back.

“Yes.”

Without looking up from the bird he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a gun. He holds it out for me to see. “Saturday night special, dude. Clean. No numbers.” As he speaks a car pulls in front of the house. He slips the gun back into his pocket.

“What are you carrying that around for?”

“My security blanket.”

“You walk around with it in your pocket?”

“Yup.”

“Loaded?”

“Fucking right.”

“You didn’t have it with you the day you passed out at the mound.”

“I left it behind. Sylvia wanted to play roulette.”