Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  Turning from the foyer into the living room, Rachel saw that the grand piano was no longer visible through the massive opening articulated by columns. She held her breath and stepped across the threshold. The piano was now tucked into the north corner of the room, and the grandfather clock was standing on top of it, chiming.

  Dave and Lev led the way out of the darkened woods carrying the salesman’s case between them by the handles on each end. Dave wondered if the little treasure trove would lead to anything. Perhaps. He felt foolish, like a character out of one of those paranormal thrillers Leo liked to watch because there was never any kissing. Dave’s boots left tracks in the spongy, wet earth that seemed to be sucking his boots down, hesitant to let go. He glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that Wise and Creed were still close.

  In the spitting rain, the sheriff resembled an Indian pachyderm trudging through the mire, and Creed, tiny and sneaky, the proverbial mouse. Wise’s handgun was still in its holster. The rain-spotted rifle rested in the crook of Creed’s arm. Just then, with teeth clenched, Creed whipped around as if he were being followed, as if he’d felt a ghost on his heels. Dave stumbled over a rut that stretched across the field of orchard grass like a trench dug by enemy soldiers. The dampness was making an old wound ache. In Desert Storm he’d commanded a platoon until a bullet had come whistling through his shoulder, earning him a Purple Heart. He wondered where it was. Still in the safe behind the door in the water closet under the stairs? He wanted to hold it. To feel the cool metal in his hand.

  In the woods, rain dribbled on their heads from cuplike leaves. In the pasture west of Ewell’s abandoned house, the large, cold drops fell hard—straight from the sky, stippling puddles and small ponds that stirred with hopping frogs. The men’s shirts were soaked. Dave groaned.

  Frogs. Again. It was almost dark, though only mid-afternoon, and the frogs were already beginning their nightly chorus. Clouds of mating gnats swarmed en masse like black ghosts, drifting between the men and the sun. Dave brushed flies from his face and remembered an oasis filled with dead men and mosquitoes in Iraq, near the Kuwaiti border, where blood swirled in the water. Maybe Lev had been right about the dead frogs in the red-stained pond. Maybe it was blood. Maybe we are caught in a string of plagues.

  “Ridiculous,” he mumbled.

  “What?” said Lev.

  “Nothing. Just spooked.” Dave tripped again on a clump of grass. It seemed the earth was sending up green blades to attack him. “Wish I knew what was going on.”

  They marched stride for stride to keep the box level.

  “There’s an explanation.” Lev rubbed the scar on his cheek with a thumb. “We just have to find it.”

  Dave scraped rain from his eyebrows and shoved back his sodden hair. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Lev muttered, plodding through the high, wet grass sown with darting midges. “Just trying to put two and two together.” He stopped and glanced at Dave. “To make four.”

  “Come on, Sheriff,” Creed called from behind.

  “Damn this mess,” shouted Wise, dragging his heavy legs to step over the maggot-ridden carcass of a decapitated deer. “I just shined these boots. Took a good forty-five minutes.”

  Lev stopped. “Let’s put the box down for just a minute.” He paused, then hooked Dave’s arm. “Mr. Ewell was a first-born son. An only son.” Rain rolled into the young man’s eyes and he wiped it away. “Mr. Ewell fixed my BMX race bike every spring. He liked to talk about the time he raced in the Tour de France.”

  A ray of sun slipped through a tear in the heavy nimbus blanket and shimmered on the surface of a puddle.

  “I know where you’re going with this,” said Dave, impatient, waiting for Lev to say his piece so they could move on. “But it’s nonsense. Who knows if Mr. Petty was a first-born son? The Harper boys, maybe. But one was born before the other, twins or not. Besides, none of the victims was killed on Passover.”

  Lev’s eyes widened. His fingers reached for the handle of the case.

  Dave smiled. He was always amused when someone underestimated his intelligence. He’d gone to bed knowing that today was Passover and had pondered the fact all morning. He’d already tried to find a connection between the holiday and the murders and had long since noted that all the victims had been male. It’d almost been enough, but not quite. In the end, not even Beatricia’s séance or finding clippings about the Holocaust had been sufficient to persuade him. Dave’s left arm was tingling. He thought they should trade sides. As if reading his mind, Lev moved over to Dave’s position.

  “Twins are twins,” said Lev, reaching for the handle. “That’s too fine a distinction.”

  “Don’t mention your idea to the sheriff or Creed,” said Dave. He wondered if Lev was right.

  “But we do know that someone who lived in that burned-down house decades ago assembled these papers.”

  “I’m a first-born son,” said Lev.

  “Me too.”

  Creed fired a shot into the woods behind them.

  “Holy Jesus. What’d you do that for?” hollered Wise from across the glebe.

  “For the holy hell of it,” Creed said.

  • • • •

  The day was growing darker. Lightning lit up acres of green pasture as if the field were the surface of an enormous billiard table. Thunder echoed east and west like musket-fire closing in. The men hurried across Ewell’s lea of perfect orchard grass and Petty’s acres of land that had been allowed to lie fallow and become currycombed by weeds and patches of dirt. The Sheltons’ newly painted barn loomed in sight. From across the horses’ paddocks came the sound of a tractor, motor roaring.

  “What the hell,” said Dave, not wanting to take another step, but instead, he leaned into the rain. There was something unnatural about the light. The atmosphere had thickened to retard the movements of all who labored under it. Dave felt he was swimming, and if he stopped he’d have to tread water or sink. But if he went forward, he would enter a place where down might be up and forward might be back.

  The barn and tractor were lit by a greenish glow that cascaded from the clouds and hung over the houses like an emerald umbrella. A tornado sky. But there were no swirling winds, only heavy rain that made little sound despite the deluge. Dave heard the throaty snarl of a tractor, then inhaled its diesel cough.

  “Hey! There’s a body over there! By the barn!” Creed shouted, breaking into a run.

  “I’ll carry the case,” said Lev. “Go!”

  As if slapped awake, they ran toward what looked like a person stretched out behind the unmanned, idling tractor. By the time the sheriff came huffing to the spot, Creed was down on his knees. He had turned the body over and stretched it out in anatomical position, legs together, palms up.

  Deputy Francois Leveaux was a bloody pulp.

  “What’s he doing here? Sheriff, I thought you had the deputies all posted in the house,” said Creed.

  “He must have come looking for us,” said Wise.

  Leveaux’s groin and chest had been crushed. His head had burst, his face flattened from chin to forehead. Gray brain matter spilled into the mud like chipped beef.

  “Sheriff Wise squatted to examine the body. “Someone ran over him with the tractor. Creed, you and Dave check the stable. Lev, take the box to the deputies, then check the house. If everything’s all right there, get your butts back here.”

  Dave found himself close to weeping, kneeling. He wondered if Leveaux was a first-born son. Wet clay saturated the knees of his jeans as his fingers touched the crushed blue glass of Leveaux’s Santeria beads. Someone should climb on the tractor and turn it off.

  ‘Holy God damn it!” Creed said angrily.

  “Dave. Get up, go,” shouted the sheriff. “Forget the tractor, Dave! Check out the barn!” Creed raced into the barn, his gun barrel ahead of him.

  Dave followed through a bloody haze, not feeling the slippery stock of his rifle, his heart beats distant but terrify
ingly distinct, like Indian drums echoing behind mountains.

  “I’m going to kill something.” Dave thought. “I’m going to do it.”

  Creed raced down the center aisle, then backtracked, stall-by-stall, each time poking his rifle over the Dutch doors before moving on to the next.

  Dave stood and watched as Rhode Island reds clucked behind him, ruffling their feathers. The horses snorted in their stalls, dripping with spring rain and musky sweat and pressed toward the center aisle, as if they expected to be rubbed down with towels, or fed. They neighed and kicked at the walls: Magistrate, St. Francis, Queen Mary, Le Pouf and Slivovitz. Their brass nameplates were smeared with cinders. The horses were sneezing, noses running.

  There was no one but the spy and Dave in the barn. There were worse people to be stuck with, but better places to be stuck. Creed swept some of the ash from the plate on Slivovitz’s stall and sniffed his finger. Creed’s coat was open. Dave reached inside, touched his sticky, wet shirt, and withdrew a bloody hand. Creed’s stitches had opened.

  • • • •

  Dave pushed Leveaux’s mutilated body from his thoughts and ran into the house. His mind painted images of Rachel and his boys sprawled on the floor, blood soaking into the naps of rugs, seeping through wool into oak planks.

  He cupped his hands and hollered. “Leo! Zack!” Coming from the backyard, Lev bolted into the kitchen, slamming the kitchen door shut behind him. His frantic elbow inadvertently sent the pots and pans on the stove hurling to the floor, where they bounced like living things.

  “Where are the kids?” Dave shouted over his shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” yelled Lev, scrambling for the pots, picking up and dropping them in his panic, kicking them into corners. “I was throwing up outside.”

  “Jesus Christ,” shrieked Dave, unable to believe that Lev had taken the time to vomit before checking the house.

  Cheeks burning, he left Lev and ran into the empty dining room and found it haunting him, mocking him. Damn this house! His eyes darted between the white columns that formed the gateway to the living room.

  Rachel was sitting on a velvet Ottoman in the foyer, her unblinking eyes focused on something past the white columns, her finger pointing. Dave couldn’t see what she was pointing at.

  She’s losing it, he thought.

  “The kids are upstairs with Mom and the deputies,” she said, her finger still extended. Rachel’s usual strategy in someone else’s crisis was rational and calm, but this time she was staring and diaphoretic, her defense mechanisms having taken on a startling new shape. Dave wanted to shake her.

  “On the piano,” she said, finally. She didn’t yell, in spite of the metallic din that sounded as if all the pots and pans in the house were slam-dancing. He had to strain his ear to hear her. Rachel often whispered, a tactic she used to make him listen. Especially to things he didn’t want to hear. It was maddening now.

  Deputies Crockett and Ruiz charged down the creaking stairs, followed by Leo, then Beatricia, hobbling on her canes. Lastly, Zack, glassy-eyed, came floating down with a serene, shocked look, as if he’d seen the Holy Mother herself.

  Dave rushed into the living room. In quick obedience to Rachel’s pointing finger, he stood, opened-mouthed, sweating, the rest of the crowd behind him.

  The grandfather clock towered over him, perched atop the piano. It chimed like something gone mad.

  Zack’s smile had disappeared. He stood, rigid as stone between the square columns, face blank.

  The syncopated rhythm of Beatricia’s canes clunked its way across the oak floor, then slowed. She struggled to stand, slumped, leaning heavily on the refectory table. Sheriff Wise slid a leather armchair beneath her to catch her fall.

  Dave yanked open the clock’s door. Gripping its pendulums, he stilled them, then felt as though he’d stuck his hand into a chest wall and stopped a heart.

  “Mother of God,” said Deputy Ruiz, collapsing into a chair next to the old lady. Ruiz’s brown eyes were misting. She rolled up her sleeves exposing a boil, the size of a penny, heaped like an anthill.

  Dave looked away. Signs of plague. He’d had enough. Boils, gnats, flies, water to blood, death of the first born. Frogs. He’d gotten it. Rejected it. Maybe too soon.

  Crockett marched up to the clock and ran a finger down its face, coming away with ashes.

  He held the finger to his nose. “Not just dust, but soot, too.”

  “Fear is not the natural state of people,” mumbled Crockett, quoting the Dalai Lama.

  Dave wished he had some spiritual hook from which to hang his troubles and transmute them. The Saint Christopher medal Rachel had given him before they’d gone on a medical mission to Haiti was nothing more than a good-luck charm, like Leveaux’s crushed Santeria beads he’d slipped into his pocket. He needed a real system, like a supernatural twelve-step program. What he really needed was a deity in his corner.

  Rachel wailed and gasped for breath, cupping her wet face in her hands. Beatricia bit a knuckle. Leo looked at Zack and shrugged.

  “Help me with the clock,” Dave said to Crockett.

  They lowered it to the floor, sweating under its weight, foreheads beading with salty bubbles. Dave licked a corner of his mouth. The sweat tasted too much like tears.

  “Everyone sit down,” said Beatricia. “Please.”

  She leaned back like an empress and drummed her canes on the floor until Rachel ceased her sobbing and Deputy Ruiz said an uncharacteristic, “Fuck this bullshit.”

  Dave looked over at Crockett, hoping for leadership.

  Beatricia was too old; the sheriff too inclined to keep his own council; Creed too impulsive; Lev too shaken, both by the probable murder of Leveaux and the sudden intrusion of the supernatural.

  Lucky Crockett. He seemed to have absorbed the Dalai Lama’s philosophy and the buffalo cultures of the plains Indians, which spoke reams for him. And he’d always been vocal about his experiences. He was a waterman by birth, and had taught marksmanship to kids in 4-H, as well as to men on the force. Zack had always said Crockett was a badass medicine man. Dave knew that painting and horsemanship did not a badass make. After all, unlike himself, Crockett fed his family venison in the winter, ducks in the fall, and fish all summer. A superior man. But then, suddenly, as Dave studied him, understood him, Crockett looked more like a baby ready to sleep. The deputy had collapsed into a chair and had crossed his gangly legs. Dave watched his eyes move rapidly under their lids.

  Deputy Ruiz, her hair more unruly than a deputy’s should be and her lashes wet, moved to an armchair by the fireplace, which seemed to gobble her up, making her look like she was shrinking. Her skin was shiny and pale. She was falling apart.

  What Dave wanted was someone to come up with a brilliant idea to make this spirit or beast or gang of aliens peacefully melt away. Or maybe just someone to keep watch while he concocted a fool-proof plan. And a calm wife, one whose soothing words would rid his heart of fear. But Rachel was in no kind of shape to comfort anyone, not even her children.

  Everyone but Zack and Leo seemed in the grip of an ADD panic or catatonia. Or both. Out of breath, Dave put an arm around Rachel and led her to the couch.

  “Two minutes of quiet.” Beatricia sunk, closing her eyes, deeper into the wool-flocked chair. Its back was as tall as she was.

  For the moment, at least, everyone was safe. Dave noticed his wet clothes were stuck to his skin, making a mess of the sofa cushion into which he had dropped. Leo got up from the piano bench, where Zack was rocking himself, his face composed with what passed for peace. Leo climbed into Rachel’s lap. Her face was still moist, but she’d wrapped her arms around him and had stopped weeping. Dave leaned forward, hands on his muddy knees. After the séance and the incident with the clock, how in the world could he tell the women and children about the tractor?

  He was responsible for Leveaux’s death. For his own insistence that his family stay in Zebulon.

  “There’s been a death,�
� he began.

  A roll of thunder rattled the gray sky. The streetlights on Burnt Chestnut hadn’t come on yet. Smoke drifted over rooftops and settled over the Sheltons’ farm. Rachel could smell it, but not much else. She glanced up at the hole where the chandelier had been, wires spilling out like entrails, tied in a sloppy knot. Stepping back, she reached behind her to flick the switch for the pendant lights in the kitchen. Red, violet, and blue light fell out of each inverted Venetian torch and flowed into the dining room. She sat across from Sheriff Wise at the maple dining room table and fiddled with her wedding band, taking it off one hand and slipping it onto the other, then back again, noting on which finger it felt tighter.

  “I want to report Deputy Leveaux’s death to the authorities,” she said, taking mental notes on how ruined the house felt, the plaster cracking in flakes from above, the skid marks on the hardwood floors, the wall-paint stained by finger prints.

  “What authorities?” called Dave from the living room.

  “I am the authorities, damn it!” said Wise, cocking his head. “Calm down and listen, Rachel. Crockett and Ruiz have put up the tape and the body’s been covered by a tarp. When the rain lets up, we’ll investigate the crime scene.”

  “You’re taking this personally,” said Rachel.

  “That’s because it’s personal,” said the sheriff, flattening his boxy palms on the table.