A Summer with the Dead Page 21

  “Home, James.” Coty said. “Or maybe, home Jane.” He chuckled at his silly joke.

  Maya headed out of town, the moonlight glowing through the back window. “I’m sorry about your nephew,” she said.

  “He wasn’t a bad kid, ya know, just in trouble all the time. He did a short stay in Juvie.”

  Maya had no idea what to say or how to console Coty. Just let him talk, I guess.

  “Looks like I fell off the wagon,” Coty said. “Damn. After seven years sober too.”

  “You’re a recovering alcoholic?”

  “Wuz recoverin’ more’r less.” Coty slapped his knee and chuckled again. “Right now it feels like less.” He leaned close to the open window and inhaled. “It’s nice out, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a very nice evening.”

  “How was your date at the bakery? Yummy?”

  “What?”

  “Is it a good bakery? I saw you there … with that guy.”

  “His name is Hal Neil. He’s a local writer.”

  “Oh, a real smarty-hearty pants, huh? All educated and stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he is. He said he’s working on his second book.”

  “Did’ja kiss him?”

  “What? No. He writes history … about Graceville. I had questions for him about Elly’s farm. We talked about how Graceville used to be an old fort with a hospital and a cemetery. Hey! Why would you ask me something like that anyway?”

  “Cuz’ I saw how you were looking at him, smilin’ like women do when they’re flirtin’.”

  “I was not flirting.”

  “Well, maybe not. You sure haven’t flirted with me.”

  Maya pulled to the shoulder of the road. “What’s wrong, Coty? Are you accusing me of something? If so, be specific.”

  “It’s Wayne C. Matheson … member?”

  “I have a hard time remembering because you’ve been ‘Coty’ all this time–”

  “And yet,” Coty waved a scolding finger in the air. “You ‘spect every’n to call you Maya Pederson instead of Maya Hammond. Dubble standard, dubble standard.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How is it different?”

  “All right,” Maya said. “I’ll try to remember to call you Wayne from now on.”

  “Let’s hear it, den.”

  “Your name?”

  “Yeah. Say it.”

  “Wayne C. Matheson.”

  “Again.”

  “Wayne C. Matheson.”

  “I like the way you say it. Sounds nice.”

  Maya sighed. “Let’s go home before you pass out and I have to carry you inside.”

  “Wait.” Coty leaned across the console, grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. “Gotta do dis now, or it’ll never happen.” He held her face with both hands and kissed her.

  Maya almost pushed him away, but Coty’s lips were warm and gentle and his eyes were closed. He was hurting and vulnerable. His nephew was dead. He fell off the wagon. Right now he was convinced he was a failure. She knew that feeling.

  Coty settled back into the passenger seat. “What I’m ‘bout to do, has absolutely nuthin’ to do with you, so doon’t take it personal.” He released his seatbelt, opened the passenger door and dropped to his knees on the shoulder of the road. Holding the door with one hand, he vomited, twice. “Oh hell,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Maya smiled. “Better now than two minutes ago. Are you done?”

  “I think so.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and climbed back into the Edge. “I hope so anyway.”

  “Let’s get you home.” She fastened Coty’s seatbelt again, checked the rearview mirror and pulled out on the road. Five minutes later the Edge idled in front of the bunkhouse door. Coty rolled out again, but managed to stand on his own.

  “I owe ya,” he said. He leaned against the front door of the bunkhouse, fumbling with the doorknob.

  “Wayne?”

  “Yeah?” He glanced back toward the Edge.

  “It was a nice kiss.”

  “Jeez,” he said. “I wuz wonderin’.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  “WHY ARE YOU SITTING here in the dark, Aunt Elly?” “Just remembering stuff—doing some thinking.” “About what?”

  “I’m thinking about when my father died and Uncle Felix ran the warehouse.”

  It had been over a week since Elly had talked about the early years with Harlan and Felix and the Mexican workers.

  “Need to talk?”

  “Yes, but would you mind making me a cup of chamomile tea first, Maya, while I go upstairs and get into my robe and slippers?”

  Maya nodded and headed for the kitchen. She heard Elly climbing the stairs. Maya checked the lock on the basement door. Locked. She tested it, tested it again, and then again. She filled the kettle and waited, gazing through the kitchen window above the sink. Outside, the fir branches above the bunkhouse were black-green lace in front of a deep purple sky. The window was open and the curtains hung straight down. It had been a hazy day, clearing as the sun set behind the hill. A frog called from the forest and another answered from under the porch. She checked the wall clock. 9:00 PM.

  Earlier that day, Maya had answered the phone when it rang. She heard a man say, “This is Milo’s truck driver. What’s the biggest truck we can get up your driveway?”

  “It’s the antiques dealer.” Maya handed the receiver to Elly.

  “Yeah?” Elly said, and a few seconds later, “The bridge will hold a ten ton with tail lift. Nothin’ heavier or you’ll break through and end up in the river.” Elly hung up with a frown. “They’re on their way.”

  An hour later a moving truck pulled up to the back door and three burly men wearing gray overalls with blue oval patches that read, Milo’s Resurrection climbed out and tromped inside.

  The shortest man halted at the bottom of the stairs. He eyed the living room and then turned around and frowned at the dining room. “What about all this stuff in here?” He pointed to the big table, the china cabinet and buffet while flipping through papers on a clipboard.

  “Nothing there,” Elly said. “Leave all that.”

  “You’re sure, lady? Milo said all the furniture except the kitchen and a couple bedrooms upstairs.”

  “I’m quite sure.” Elly sounded irritated, her words clipped short. “As you can see, the cabinet is still full of my china and crystal. Don’t touch it. Don’t touch anything in there because I’m taking it with me when I leave.”

  “Fine,” he said and entered the living room. “But this stuff goes, right?”

  “Yes. Sofa, chairs, tables, bookshelves. Take it all,” Elly reached down and claimed her stack of Retirement Living magazines from the coffee table. “You can empty the bedrooms upstairs, except for the two rooms with their doors closed. Don’t even open those doors.”

  Two hours later, the truck rumbled away and Elly lowered herself into a chair beside the kitchen table with a sigh. “Let’s sit here and talk, Maya. All those bad memories I shared with you before has made the living room a depressing place for me. And there’s no place to sit in there anyway unless it’s on the floor, and I’m too stove-up to do that.”

  Elly flipped on the kitchen light and sat down with her back to the dining room. Maya faced the dark bay window. A three-quarter moon had risen high enough to peek through the upper branches of the evergreens where the fields sloped down toward the stream. There were no clues, no hint that the field has once been a graveyard. It was covered with willowy field grass. The grass waved like pale feathers in the breeze and glowed like pale hair in moonlight.

  Maya pulled her gaze away from the field and glanced toward the big barn. With a tight feeling in her throat she lowered her eyes to her steaming tea cup. She and Elly sipped without talking for a few more minutes. Finally, Elly spoke.

  “Have you seen Coty since you hauled his drunk ass home?”

  Maya smiled. “I saw him late yesterday afternoon, sit
ting on the chopping block by the shed, sipping bottled water and looking kind of green around the gills.”

  “I got drunk once. It wasn’t worth the hangover, and besides, Harlan doesn’t approve of spirits.” Elly grinned. “No pun intended.”

  “Have you seen Uncle Harlan again?”

  “Not since the day you drove me into town, and that’s been, what, a week? I think Harlan is peeved with me about talking to the lawyer. He won’t stay mad, though. He never does.”

  Maya rubbed the warm bottom of her mug with the palm of her hand. She wanted to make small talk, to discuss the weather or the grocery list on the counter. Or they could list the things left to do around the house before phoning a realtor. Maya wanted to postpone hearing another of Elly’s secrets, but she hesitated too long and Elly dove straight into the story.

  *

  “Angel Sonosa gave Harlan a wide berth around the Chicago warehouse, but then, everybody did. Uncle Felix used to say, ‘Harlan is a short fuse with explosives at the other end.’ Felix gave me an odd, cautious look when he said that, like he expected me to react.

  “Nobody gave Harlan guff twice. He didn’t chat with the other drivers or brown-nose management. He did his job, took his pay and came home to me. I’m the only person Harlan ever really talked to. I’m the only person he trusted.

  “There was this one time, Harlan was sick with some kind of—despair or melancholy—something to do with his childhood. I think it was something that happened when he was five years old, about his shoulder getting scalded, but he never wanted to talk about it, so I showed up at the warehouse to drive his route for him. I remember clocking in two minutes late, and I remember the way everyone stared at me and how they all stopped talking as I walked by, and the way they grabbed their coats and scattered like I carried the plague or something. They were gone in seconds.”

  “Hey Elly, is that you?” Angel asked. “I’m never sure if it’s you or Harlan from behind.”

  “Harlan’s sick,” I said. “He’s not coming in, so I thought I’d drive his route for him.”

  “Well, Harlan’s truck is already gone, Elly. I gave it to Henry ‘cuz Henry was here and Harlan wasn’t. Them’s the rules. But, I got Harlan’s paycheck. It’s in the office if you want it.”

  “Sure, I said, but I should’a known something was wrong. I should’a known something was fermenting in Angel’s sour brain. He opened the office door for me and I stepped inside. He closed it and locked it and turned off the light. He grabbed me around the neck with one big hand, and shoved me down on the floor behind the desk. I hit my head on the foot of the chair and I landed so hard on that floor it knocked the wind outta me. The bastard fell on me like a collapsing wall and he didn’t let me up until he was finished. I’ve never told anyone before … not even Harlan.” Elly set her mug down. “I didn’t want Harlan trying to fix that. There was no way to fix Angel raping me. I just needed to get away, far away, before he thought about hurting me again.

  “It wasn’t really Harlan who wanted to leave Chicago, it was me, but Harlan agreed. He’d had that close call with the bloody truck and the cops, remember? So when I said I wanted to leave, he said, let’s go right now, Elly. That night we packed up our old forty-two Ford and early the next morning we headed west. We didn’t stop for anything except gasoline and restrooms until we reached the Montana state line. We ate and slept in the car and took off again the next morning—made it all the way to Bremerton Washington in two days. We slept in the car again, near the beach outside a little town called Tracyton and we bought a newspaper that listed cheap acreage. We drove up here to Graceville and found this place and we’ve never left. I phoned Felix and told him where I was and he promised he’d keep that news to himself.

  “We had four years of peaceful farm life before Felix talked Harlan into doing some more work for him. Sweet Harlan would never have agreed to the new contract if he’d known what Angel did to me. When Harlan told me we were going back into the business, I got terrible sick and even ran a fever. I swallowed nothin’ but water for three days but then I finally snapped out of it. One day Harlan said he had to drive to Seattle to see where the new warehouse was and to get a delivery truck. I stayed here to take care of the chickens, and Bossy the cow, and Morris the horse. That’s where I was, out there milking Bossy when Angel drove up. ‘Well if it isn’t my little Elly,’ he said. He was driving a new blue Cadillac with lots of chrome. ‘Want to go for a ride, Elly? This baby has automatic everything, even the windows. Look at this.’ He raised and lowered his driver’s window twice, showing off. I can’t, Angel, I said. I got animals to care for. “What animals?” and he snorted like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. ‘Where?’ he said. A cow and a horse, I said, and forty chickens. I pointed to the coop and the shed and Angel pulled his gun from his back holster and he walked straight toward the shed, dragging me because I was hanging on his sleeve. What are you going to do, Angel? Wait, I said. Stop! But he threw open the shed door and he shot Bossy and Morris, right through their ears. Shot ‘em dead, right there in front of me, and while I stood there crying, he went back and got a gas can out of his trunk and he doused the chicken coopand set it on fire. Oh, Maya, you’ve never heard such a terrible sound as those chickens going up in flames. Poor things. There were chicks in that coop too. That’s what Angel was like though. He enjoyed hurting people and animals alike. I remember him describing one time, how he almost drove off the road trying to run down a neighbor’s dog, and he was pissed because it got away, and he was planning to go back and hunt for that dog.

  I stood there in the driveway and screamed at Angel. Harlan won’t like what you’ve done, I said. Harlan’s going to be angry.

  Angel grinned. ‘Well, Crazy Harlan knows where to find me, Elly. Felix had me move out here from Chicago to manage the new warehouse in Seattle. I’m your boss again, Elly, and you know what I think is so funny? You and Crazy Harlan both work for me, but I only have to pay one of you.” He laughed so hard I thought he would choke.

  So, I walked around the front of his car, through rolling smoke that smelled of scorched feathers and burned chicken, and I opened the passenger door and slid inside. I remember the ashtray was full of butts and ashes. It didn’t smell like a new car. It stunk. There was an empty cigarette pack on the floor and an empty beer can and a Charleston Chew candy wrapper. Isn’t it odd how I remember those things? I can still see them plain as day. He opened the driver’s door and dropped in behind the wheel with a smile and said, ‘You’ve missed me, haven’t you Elly? That’s why I made this first delivery myself. It’s in the trunk.’’ I said, it smells like it’s been there a bit too long. And you know what, Angel? I haven’t missed you at all. I was just hoping you’d show up here someday. I leaned against him and stroked his neck with my left hand for a second while I slid my ankle stiletto out with my right hand and drove it straight and deep into his ear. I pulled it out and sliced his throat wide open with it. Didn’t take more’n three seconds to do all that.”

  Elly dragged her gaze away from the dark bay window and stared straight at Maya. There was an odd, familiar light in Elly’s eyes. Probably, Maya thought, the same light Angel Sonosa saw as his life pulsed into his lap.

  “I couldn’t believe Angel Sonosa just sat there in my driveway, dying like any mortal dies. I could tell he was shocked at what I’d done. He couldn’t believe he was dying. His eyes were bulging, and his tongue slid out through the gash in his throat. I leaned back and watched him choke and sputter. Blood went everywhere. It spattered the windshield and all over the dashboard … even some on me. He grabbed his throat—they always do—and blood throbbed out between his fingers and down his arms and shirtfront. After a few seconds his lap was shiny with blood and his pants and the upholstery were soaked red. I leaned closer, looked him in the eye and I said, ‘thanks for making the first delivery in person, Angel. And don’t you worry … no one will discover it for a very l
ong time. I’ll take care of everything, like I always do.’

  “I realized afterward, that I could have saved Bossy and Morris and the chickens if I’da acted sooner, but Angel took me by surprise. So then, doesn’t it seem right for me to have taken him by surprise too? I think so. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look more surprised than Angel Sonosa did that day, right out there in the driveway.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  HEART POUNDING, MAYA RAN from the skylight room into the pantry hall. She halted in front of the utility closet. She heard a loud thump from inside and opened the door. The closet was empty. It smelled sour and moldy inside, even though it gleamed with fresh, white paint. No mop or broom leaned in the corner, no bucket sat on the floor. Again, thump. The closet ceiling vibrated with the sound. The dumbwaiter cords shook. Maya reached up and pulled the nail and the dumbwaiter slid downward. She saw brown, bare feet, nicked, bloody shins and frayed cut-off jeans. A stocky man squatted on the floor of the dumbwaiter. His eyes were dull. He stared straight ahead. His calloused hands lay in his lap like two raw steaks. His mouth hung open, drool trailing from the corners of his mouth to his tattooed chest. The tattoo was that of a phoenix.

  Maya jumped back as the dumbwaiter landed hard in the bottom of the utility closet. The man tilted forward, rolling out at her feet. The back of his head was gone. A patch of black hair, white skull and pink brains lay in the bottom of the dumbwaiter.

  “Elly! Elly!” Maya ran into the kitchen and halted by the sink as the back door opened and Harlan stepped inside. His brows were cinched together over the bridge of his nose and he wore his usual scowl. His long gray hair was braided and the braid hung down over his collar and across the front of his red plaid shirt.

  “Found him, huh?” Harlan said. “Finders-keepers—you found him—you bury him. The shovel’s in the basement, girl.”

  The yellow basement door stood wide open and on the threshold squirmed a mismatched, collection of body parts. A man’s profile bulged outward from between a portion of abdomen and armpit. The jaw clenched and the teeth snapped. Maya dove through the open window above the sink and landed on the driveway. Coty and Elly turned from where they stood arm-and-arm at the bunkhouse door. They frowned at her and from the shed came the sound of an engine’s growl. Coty’s Dodge truck coasted forward and down the driveway toward her with no one at the wheel. Maya leaped toward the bunkhouse but the wheels turned and the truck followed her. When she backed up, the tires turned again. She ran back to the kitchen door, but Harlan slammed it shut. She heard him turn the key and heard the door lock. She heard him test the lock. He grinned at her through the window. Behind him squirmed Angel’s writhing collection of fleshy chunks, his teeth grinding, his eyes pearly gray, like those of a long-dead fish.