After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  Another constable arrived. Ellen Crosby was the only woman with the Prince William Falls detachment and consequently she was nearly as recognizable as Officer Dick. She went to Maggie, helped her to her feet and led her back to the still idling cruiser.

  Constable Sumner watched them drive away before his eyes fell to the curb between his glistening boots. He glanced over at us. The crowd was fifty strong now and still growing. I knew what he was thinking and I could empathize. Inside the house they were done with all they could do. John’s body had been removed. It was now time to bring out Carrie.

  Still he held out as long as he could. He was likely hoping the crowd would grow restless and begin to disperse. It was near suppertime. Some did leave but others arrived to take their place. The crime unit was packing up. The shadows were growing long down Cornwall Road. Freddy and the lady in the suit were still in the back of the cruiser. Even hidden in the crowd I could feel his eyes on me.

  I knew he would get away with it even before they brought Carrie out. They all wanted to see his reaction as the body bag rolled by. I wanted to see his reaction too. It would be an act worthy of a Shakespearian tragedy.

  The twenty-something had wandered close to the tape line. He was trying to talk to the police but was being pointedly ignored. The media arrived – at least three different networks with their vans and reporters in crisp suits and crisper hair. Dick Sumner came and answered a few questions but not the ones everyone was waiting to hear.

  “A statement will be released as soon as our preliminary investigation is complete,” Constable Sumner was heard to repeat several times. “I can offer no further comment at this time.”

  They all knew about the one body. Nothing had happened since Maggie was led away, but still they waited. The desire for more was palpable. At last, like a child called in from play, Dick Sumner turned and plodded up the Cartwright’s front walk. He spoke briefly to his young partner who stood on the porch. The man eyed the crowd nervously and licked his lips and nodded. Dick motioned to the paramedics standing wearily near the back of their van. In moments they were trundling a second gurney into the house.

  The significance of these actions was not lost on the crowd. Again, the babble rose but it was strangled off as the second body bag came onto the porch. Carrie was not exactly petite but she was significantly smaller than John. Her reduced bulk hidden beneath the black plastic was obvious. A few gasps and a few prayers flitted through the crowd before silence returned.

  I watched Freddy. He had been speaking but as Carrie was brought out into the gloaming night his jaw snapped shut. A shudder seemed to work through him. He shook his head and his face contorted into a near perfect imitation of his mother’s. He leaned forward, his forehead striking the Lexan barrier behind the front seats with enough force to make the inch-thick acrylic sheet shiver under the impact. He struck it again and again.

  The lady in the suit took his head in her hands and drew him to her. She held him in arms that barely spanned the width of his shoulders. I could see her rocking him like an infant.

  My vision doubled. What happened next, I don’t know. I could not watch any longer. The crowd melted before me as I stumbled away. My own tears like the blood flowing from Freddy’s forehead pattered on the still warm concrete like autumn rain.

  -

  Nearly a week passed before I saw Freddy again. He was taken to the hospital to be examined and then remanded for a psychiatric assessment. Maggie was never far from her son but Freddy said very little during that time. No one was surprised, including me. I suppose the best way to reinforce so heinous a lie was to do nothing and say less.

  He let himself come out of his shocked stupor bit by bit and when Maggie woke up on the fifth day, her back stiff and sore from sleeping at his bedside, Freddy met her hopeful gaze with a smile.

  “Hi, mom.”

  “Hi, Honey,” she grasped his hand, fully awake in an instant.

  “I wanna go home.” He said mildly but sounded so much like a little boy that Maggie was reduced to tears.

  Around Prince William Falls news spreads like wildfire in August. The official story was told on the evening news and written in the papers. It glossed over most of the details but people read between the lines. Everyone knew the truth – Freddy’s truth – within two days. Maggie and her son were inundated with an outpouring of support. A bank account was opened in her name and nearly everyone pitched in something. Within the first week the balance had grown to five digits.

  Tom Anders, whose pale and pretty wife Freddy had often fantasized about taking to bed, got a crew together and gutted Freddy’s bedroom once the police were finished in it. They took it down to the bare studs and sub floor. New drywall, paint, new carpet and even new furniture were in place before Freddy came home. Even Dick Sumner took a personal day to help out.

  An obscene romance grew up around the tragedy. Freddy became a hero, one sadly unable to save his love. But his valiant struggle to save her was the stuff of legends. His true role in the events of that day never came to light. At no point was his story even suspect.

  The one burr in his tale – the scratches on his cheek. Carrie’s fingernails made them. Freddy nodded and admitted she had scratched him. His voice caught a little as he spoke. He said she probably didn’t know what she was doing. Her autopsy showed clear indications of rape. At the crime scene it was noted that John’s pants were undone. Freddy snorted when questioned about it. He told them John’s modesty was likely the only thing that saved his life.

  At one point or another he made a point of referring to Carrie in the present tense. He let himself break up a little as though realizing his mistake. He told me later he had watched on television where the cops had suspected someone because they had referred to the victim in the past tense. “The guilty do that,” he told me smugly, “the innocent don’t.”

  Not once did he express any remorse. Not once did he lose sleep over her death. He did express regret but that was only for not being able to have sex with her before she died. His heart was a cold, black thing in his chest. Its function was only the most literal, a pump to circulate his blood through veins of ice.

  Freddy looked at me once about ten days after Carrie died. He stared right through me until I began to squirm like an impaled beetle. “Are we cool?” he asked. One eyebrow rose. He knew I could rat him out. He knew I could ruin the façade he was building. I could puncture the illusion as easily as a party balloon.

  If I so much as blinked, I knew my life would be forfeit. I forced myself to return his gaze without wavering. Finally, I nodded once. Just a slow dip of my head. I wanted to convey to him that he was safe, that I would keep my silence. More importantly I wanted him to believe I was not afraid of him. I think it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done.

  He never killed me of course. More to the point, he never tried to kill me. I shudder to think how often my life hung on a razor’s edge but he never chose to kill me. He needed me, I think. I was his anchor. He knew without me he would have been swept away.

  -

  Nancy held a memorial for her daughter on the following Tuesday. None of the town’s three churches would have been large enough. Besides, Nancy was something of an agnostic. The service was held in the high school gymnasium and over half the town attended. I recall it was very nice.

  Maggie made a point of having John’s funeral on the same day, two hours earlier and on the other side of town. Although he was raised a Protestant, the closest John had come to prayer in the last twenty years was taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m sure some were surprised to see his body not catch on fire the moment it settled on holy ground. Only a dozen people attended John’s funeral including Maggie and Freddy. These few who came were John’s drinking buddies or his working buddies. They came but they weren’t comfortable being there.

  John Cartwright was buried quickly and forgettably. I’m sure most folks just wanted to get him in the ground so their sense of oblig
ation would come to an end. A few discrete, white envelopes were given to Maggie at the end. Some clasped her hands. A few shook Freddy’s hand. Only one man offered Maggie a quick, awkward hug and no one tried to hit on her. Thank God.

  Carrie’s service lasted three hours as students, teachers and friends took turns saying a few words about her. Maggie sat beside Nancy and held her hand. Freddy sat on the other side of his mother. No one expected him to say anything and he was happy to oblige. Around him the gymnasium was filled with the sounds of quiet mourning. Many of the mourners were young and they felt awkward offering their condolences. But a few did.

  Freddy received countless hugs from his classmates. He took them in stride. The boys regarded him warily, almost fearfully but the response from the girls nearly turned my stomach. Freddy received better than a dozen offers to be ‘privately consoled’. They shed their tears. Their eyes were moist and their mascara all but ruined but their expressions were wanton. I knew Freddy would not be lonely in Carrie’s absence.

  -

  Freddy told me what happened that evening in an awe-struck voice. Nancy called at quarter to seven. She asked him to come over to the house. She wanted to talk. She needed someone who could listen, someone who could genuinely share her grief. Twenty minutes later Freddy was let into her house to find Nancy had shed her dress of mourning black. In its place she wore a more practical pair of faded blue jeans and a light sweater.

  “Thanks for coming, Freddy,” she smiled warmly and led him into the kitchen.

  The musky scent of her like roses and fresh loam, like the shade beneath a lilac tree caught in his nostrils. That was her smell. It had always been her smell but now it was Carrie’s smell too. Freddy seated himself at the kitchen table. Already he was feeling a return of the old longing.

  “I’ve got coffee,” Nancy told him, “or I could make some tea. I suppose I can’t really offer you anything stronger.” She shrugged apologetically.

  “That’s okay Mrs. Hicks. I’m not much of a drinker. I’ve never really had much of an interest in it.”

  Nancy smiled whimsically. “I guess I knew that. Carrie told me you weren’t.”

  “I’ll have a Pepsi if you got one.”

  She nodded and looked at him in a way that made his cheeks grow warm.

  “Are you, you know, doing okay, Mrs. Hicks?” Freddy asked her.

  The whimsical smile returned. “Yeah,” she sighed and went to the refrigerator, “I think so.” The can of Pepsi in her hands, she returned to the table. A look that was deeply serious, deeply cryptic replaced her smile. “From now on, Freddy, can you just call me Nancy? I think I would prefer that.”

  He smiled what was possibly a mirror of her whimsy as he accepted his drink. “Okay … Nancy.” He liked the sound of it. “It sounds kinda weird but somehow more appropriate. I don’t know why.”

  Her eyes softened. “It’s because we’re close now – about as close as two people can be.”

  Freddy smelled her smell and thought of white lace. He said nothing – only met her gaze without flinching.

  “I knew you and Carrie would be boyfriend and girlfriend almost from the start,” Nancy said pleasantly. She laughed. “I knew it as soon as I saw the two of you together in the back seat the morning that I bumped you with my car.”

  Freddy cocked an eyebrow. “Bumped me?”

  Nancy grinned. “You didn’t break anything and the car was fine. It was sort of a bump.”

  “Felt like more at the time.”

  “Did I ever say I was sorry?”

  These were hollow things, their feelings as they reminisced. They were genuine and real but the life was absent from them. Such is the way of those who mourn. Like shouting into a canyon and hearing no echo.

  Freddy looked at her intently for a moment. It was Nancy’s turn to blush. “You didn’t need to. When you put me in that back seat with Carrie you gave her to me with your blessing.”

  “I knew it as soon as I saw her holding your hand,” Nancy agreed seriously. “I want you to know I’ve always approved of you.” She looked down at her coffee cup, a glimmer of her grief moistening her eyes. They were dry when she looked up at him again. “You would have made the perfect son-in-law. I want you to know that.”

  “Thanks Mrs.-” He stopped himself, smiling. “Thanks … Nancy. I appreciate you saying it.”

  “Carrie told me about how you punched that boy, Jeff, the night before … the night before school started.”

  Freddy was startled. He allowed it to show.

  “We talked about most things,” Nancy nodded. “She said you did it for me. Thank you. I don’t think anyone has ever done anything like that for me before.”

  An awkward grin crossed Freddy’s face; one he could not suppress. “I didn’t even think about it,” he admitted. “I just hit him. It bugs me when people say bad stuff about you.”

  The warm glow in her eyes faltered. “Do they still?” She asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I remember the talk when Carrie was younger. Because I was single, they called me a prostitute or they thought I was a lesbian.” Nancy stood and refilled her coffee cup with trembling hands. “I know how it must have looked. I was never out on a date so I must have been ‘working’.” She made quotes with one hand and snorted a little laugh. “Did Carrie ever tell you about her father?” Nancy asked suddenly, her back to the table.

  Freddy could not see her face but her voice had grown flat and emotionless. “She never did say much about him. I never asked. I guess I thought he was dead or something.”

  “I met Patrick Hicks when I was fifteen. He was twenty at the time and there was no way my mother approved. It didn’t stop me. Not a year later I was pregnant with Carrie. I left school and married Patrick a week after my sixteenth birthday – that way I didn’t need parental consent to be with him. I didn’t speak to my mother for nearly five years. Carrie was four and we were on our own again.”

  “What happened …” Freddy tried. His voice trailed off. He was not acting. He was not hunting for the right emotions that would give him the right tone and expression. The emotions came unbidden.

  “What happened to Patrick?” Nancy supplied. Her voice had taken a fine edge of anger so alien to her it caused gooseflesh to rise on his arms. “I came home from work one day a little early and found him with her. They were both naked. Patrick had a camera.”

  “She never said anything,” Freddy tried. It made sense then. All of it made sense.

  Nancy shook her head. “She doesn’t … she never remembered any of it. She barely even remembers what her father looked like.” Nancy’s head lowered a moment. “Remembered,” she amended. She cleared her throat before continuing. “At first I told her he was dead. After a while she stopped asking. The rest she forgot on her own – just blocked it out I guess.”

  “What did you do about it – about her dad I mean?”

  “I left him,” she said easily. Nancy turned around and casually sat back down at the table.

  “Did you call the cops?”

  She shook her head. “I took my daughter and the stack of Polaroids he had in an old cigar box. I told him not to look for us – ever. I told him to forget he had a daughter and to go about his life.” Nancy sipped her coffee and grimaced. She rose quickly and grabbed the cream from the counter.

  Freddy watched in silence as she stirred a healthy dose into her coffee.

  Nancy put the cream in the refrigerator before returning to the table once more. She sipped her coffee. “Better.” A moment later she continued. “I told Patrick if he ever even so much as tried to call us, I would take those pictures to the police. If that didn’t work, I told him I would hire someone to kill him.”

  “Has he ever tried?”

  Nancy shook her head. “I don’t even know where he is right now. He could actually be dead for all I know.”

  Silence. Slow minutes of her scent, her eyes.

  After a while Freddy smiled
wanly. “This is one of those moments when all we want to do is talk your ear off but we’d be idiots to say anything.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m an idiot.”

  Nancy looked at him for a span of about five seconds with shock widening her eyes into glistening ‘O’s. Suddenly she burst out laughing. She couldn’t stop. She rocked in her chair, spilled coffee and gasped for air. “I’m sorry,” she managed finally, hiccupping once. “Wildly inappropriate I know but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I aim to please,” Freddy tried but the moment was passed. Something occurred to him then. “You kept your married name. Why?”

  Nancy sighed. She wiped her eyes and at the puddle of spilled coffee with a paper napkin. Once more she grew serious. “I’ve never forgotten what he did. Carrie might have – but not me. I kept his name because I never wanted to forget. I didn’t want him to forget either. We’re still married – technically – and he can’t remarry without talking to me – at least in California. I guess he’s never gonna.” Her lip trembled but she held back the tears. “I suppose now it doesn’t matter.”

  Silence again filled the kitchen for long minutes. Freddy toyed with his Pepsi can, unable to take his eyes off it. He waited for her. This time he would not break the silence. There was a rage in him, a thing buried deeply. It would take some time to free it. When it was freed, once he held it in the open air, only then would he know what to do with it.

  “I’m thirty-two years old,” Nancy began suddenly, “and I haven’t been with a man in the last dozen of them. Since the day I left my husband I’ve devoted my whole life to my little girl. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her again.” She laughed humorlessly. “I guess I kinda fucked up.”

  Hearing Nancy swear was like getting kicked low and hard. Freddy blinked. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, I guess not,” she breathed, “but it still hurts. I give up on men and thusly men think I am a lesbian.”

  “Ego?” Freddy suggested.

  “Probably,” Nancy agreed with a chuckle. She gave him a sharp look. “Did you ever think I was a lesbian? Be honest.”