The Crymost

by Dean H Wild

  Judy’s voice leaked toward him, heavy with wariness as she stepped close to him. “Mick.”

  “I saw it,” he said.

  “What was that?” Judy asked, transfixed on the now dark and starry sky. “It seemed like it was close by.”

  “It did,” he said. His lips felt cold.

  Close by, in the southeast. The direction of the wind, and The Crymost.

  PART TWO:

  DARK HANDSHAKES

  CHAPTER ONE

  TWO THINGS CROSSED Mick Logan’s mind as he went through his morning routine. One of them was a lingering concern over Harley. The other was more pertinent and therefore more demanding: Judy’s suggestion about getting some help with the village work. Like most of her ideas, it was logical and solid, and it definitely bore further consideration. When he left the house, the goodbye kiss he gave her was long and came with a deep hug, which brought on one of her baffled yet amused smiles. He loved those smiles.

  He arrived at the garage feeling energized and a bit challenged, but in a good way. Judy said it best: they’d turned some sort of corner. What waited around the bend was still unknown, but he felt equipped to handle it. His mood changed when he walked into the garage.

  Light streamed through the glass block window in a soft shaft. In that shaft, Harley was at his desk, his face in his hands. Mick stepped inside and cleared his throat. “Did we keep you up too late last night?”

  Harley jerked to attention, a massive totem rocking on the bearings of the old wooden chair. “Hey, Mick. No, I stayed up only a little while after you left. Just long enough. You know.”

  “You told Beth Ann?”

  “She didn’t take it well, but I made it clear my mind is set on this. That was that. But for some reason I’m so damned tired today.”

  “Should have slept in. Can I trouble you for some coffee?”

  Harley reached over and poured a cup. “I’m trying to keep it normal. I talked to Cy and he said if I need some half-days I can take as many as I want. Without pay, of course.”

  “He’s a real prince. You knock off whenever you’re ready today,” Mick said and walked around to snag some garbage bags from the storage locker. “I’m going to get started next door. Rap on the door when you go so I know you’re leaving.”

  “If I knock on the door over there, it will be to tell you it’s time to break for lunch. Shit.” Harley’s face compressed, and his hands grasped at his right side. Mick set his bags down and rushed over, uncertain, but Harley was already coming out of it, relaxing.

  “I’m good,” Harley said at last. There were dark hollows under his eyes. Lack of sleep, maybe. Or the rolling machinery of hurt and worry doing its dark work. “Pain just grabbed me for a second. It’s done it before.”

  Mick gave Harley’s shoulder one of those age-old nudges and once again his friend’s eyes passed a message of heartbreak.

  “I mean it. Leave whenever you’re ready today,” he said and gathered up his bags and his coffee cup for the road. “Things will get done around here.”

  He hurried to the truck, his decision to make a side trip now firm. The F&F Feed Mill opened early, and he wanted to find Cy in residence.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was no one in the front loading bays of the F&F so Mick went around to the back and climbed the metal stairs to the upper office. Axel was kicked back in the padded desk chair with a bag of chips in his lap and a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Or something akin to a cigarette, judging from the smell.

  When Axel saw him, he jumped to his feet and stubbed the smoke out in a nearby open drawer. “Fuck, man.”

  “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said, reminded of the days when he’d catch a student up to their tricks. The feeling was one part authority and about four parts amusement. “Sorry.”

  Axel indignantly slammed the drawer. Corn chips were scattered around his feet like flakes of yellow paint. “Nobody comes up here but Unky—uh, my uncle.”

  “That’s who I came to see. Both of you, actually. Is he here?”

  “Over at Copeland’s, settling up the gas bill, and then wherever else he goes most days. Cat napping, maybe. What do you want?”

  “I have a job for you, if Cy gives the okay.”

  “I already got a job.”

  Mick’s expression changed a little, to an even more teacher-like is that so? look. He couldn’t help it. “This would be just a few hours. Village work. Easy stuff.”

  Axel’s eyes flashed with acrimony in return. “Uncle Cy tells me about you lazy-ass caretakers. Fucking janitors is about it. Scooping up elephant shit after a parade is all you do around here, and you can’t even get that done right. If you want somebody to work their nuts off while you and that dumb shit Kroener sneak around and blow each other all day, look someplace else.”

  “For your information, Harley Kroener is sick and it’s going to be just me doing village work as of next week. I thought, with your family’s interest in the town, you’d be happy to help out. Keep the town clean and tidy, because there’s a thousand different kinds of elephant shit in a place like this, Axel. And it all needs shoveling.”

  Heavy feet sounded on the outside stairs accompanied by a jangle of keys, lots of keys. A Cy Vandergalien amount of keys if ever there was one. Mick smiled, and felt more like a teacher than he had in years. “You might want to start by cleaning up the mess under your chair.”

  Cy stopped just inside the door. “Logan. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Just having a chat with your nephew about working for the village while Harley deals with his health issues.” He pointed. “It seems Axel has a drawer full of reasons not to help out, however.”

  Cy stalked over to the drawer and yanked it open, then glared up at Axel whose face was a few shades paler, his lips pressed thin. “Toking up on the job again. Goddamn it. You, boy, have just bought yourself some extra duties. Some big ones.”

  “I do enough for this shit hole.”

  “You going to do a little more or you’ll be wearing my size ten-and-a-half in your ass. The in-floor corn grinder down by the loading bays needs to be cleaned up, and I think you’re just the man for the job.”

  Axel’s eyes went wide. “That thing’s out-of-date, illegal, and dangerous. You need a certified technician or some such shit to clean it. I know you do. Jesus.”

  “Let’s just say your certification came in written on Zig-Zag papers.” He plucked out the partial joint and shook it under Axel’s nose. “And if you want to keep this job and the shit hole in my basement you call an apartment, you’ll jump right on it. Get me?”

  Axel’s eyes lowered down to slits.

  Cy dealt Mick a brief acknowledgement before going on. “And I think it’s good if you do some village work, too. Something we can measure, make sure you’re getting the job done. Like cutting grass, maybe. Appropriate, since grass is your favorite pastime anyway. Don’t you think?”

  “You gonna let that jerk have his way?”

  “This is my way, boy. Nobody else’s.”

  He shot Mick a conspiratorial look. Mick returned it with a nod. “It would be a big help if you could trim up the roadsides and ditches, the strip in front of the old mercantile, and the lawn at the Borth house. You can use the Swisher. It’s a rider with a 60-inch deck. It’s old but it gets the job done. Starting tomorrow. Mornings are best.”

  Axel put up his hands as if showing off the black stars tattooed on his knuckles. “No go. I’ve got to work here tomorrow morning.”

  “Not no more. Not after this horseshit,” Cy said with another peek inside the drawer. “You put your goddamned doobie out on my copy of the quarterly report, you numbnuts. You’re a village employee, mornings, as of tomorrow. And you can spend your afternoons downstairs in that grinder pit figuring out how to scrape ten years’ worth of corn dust out of the blades. Clear?”

  Axel collapsed a little all over. “Fucking ridiculous.”

  “Clear? Or do yo
u go to my place right now and start packing your miserable possessions for easy transport to points unknown, pot papers and all?”

  “Yeah. Clear,” Axel said. “I need some air. Jesus.”

  He dealt both of them a glower on the way out. After he was gone, Mick made his way to the door. “Thanks, Cy. I didn’t mean to cause a family dispute or anything.”

  Cy grimaced and took out his quarterly report, brushed fussily at the burned hole in the center of the top page. “To deal with an asshole, you gotta be an asshole sometimes. And don’t think I did any of it to help you out, Logan. I made a promise to straighten that boy out and I mean to keep it, that’s all. Now get back to work. Jesus, what’s with all the damn corn chips on the floor?”

  Mick turned away and slipped out of the door.

  ***

  Axel pushed the Passat up to seventy just outside the town limits, only half aware of the needle on his gas gauge ticking over the E mark like an admonishing finger. Best if he went back into town for some gas at Copeland’s, but he’d have to go easy at the pump. His entire claim to financial liquidity at the moment consisted of three crumpled dollars. Rip-assing away from the F&F was a dumbass move, childish, like a tantrum. But he thought his Unky Cy expected it, in a way. Hell, even that Logan dickhead didn’t seem all too surprised by his exit.

  Oh, but they’d all get something they didn’t expect real soon. All he needed to figure out was where to get enough gasoline to do the job—three dollars wasn’t going to cut it. But like Ichabod/Thekan had said, the details were up to him. He’d find a way. There was always a way.

  At last he turned the car around, leaving heavy black streaks in the middle of County L.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chastity Mellar Borth trudged from the car to the house, her arms loaded with groceries. The pain was like an anvil and hammer today; it clanged away inside her bones and brought with it something new, a mordant thump in the back of her head. The only promise of relief was the company of her cool, dark rooms and her pills. But soon, the changes would rain down.

  She stopped just before mounting the porch steps. Changes? A silly thought, a random particle covered with its own nasty jags, probably related to her headache which was bad enough to affect her vision on the way home. Affect it to the point of hallucination. Perhaps a call to Dr. Zugge was in order, as long as she was ready for a confrontation on the matter. He would tell her in his drawling, long-suffering tone how blurry patches and blind spots were common with severe headaches. That part she’d heard before. But what does it mean, dear doctor, when road signs changed before your eyes? Yes, during her drive not five minutes ago the green sign board at the north end of The Plank changed, clearly, and in a rather entertaining way. One second it read KNOLL above the tiny designation of UNINCORPORATED, just as regular as clouds at dawn. Then, with a sort of flicker/switch, it read MELLAR’S KNOLL in stark bright white letters.

  As she drove up on it, hands locked on the wheel of the Lincoln, the only words she was able to find were Whose idea . . . ?

  Then the letters shifted again. Her dear old family name turned dark, each character withering and dropping away, like leaves from a long-dead tree.

  Hallucination, she could hear Dr. Zugge’s drawl as she struggled now to take out her keys without spilling groceries into the dirt, is a common result from overt mixtures of pain medication, you know.

  Well, an overt mixture waited for her inside and she could barely wait to administer it.

  She poked the key toward the door lock and thought something was not right. Her noisome Mellar’s In poster was not visible in the window immediately to her left. That was because someone was standing in front—

  “Allow me,” the man said and stepped out.

  She made a stifled cry, unable to move.

  “Who . . . ?” She assessed the man’s intense but neutral face. There was something soothing about it, unlined and framed out by a mane of gray hair the way it was. Such heavy clothes, she thought on a deeper level, and not a drop of sweat despite the warm day. “Who . . . ?” she asked again.

  “My name is Roderick Thekan,” he said with a slight smile as he reached for the grocery bags. She surrendered them without thought. “I am a judge by trade, with some very old connections to this town. And I’ve come for a visit.”

  “I don’t know you,” she said and the truth of it allowed her to come back to herself a bit. She jabbed the key into the lock. “And this is private property, which means you’re trespassing.”

  “But I hope to change that, since I would very much like us to spend the next days together.”

  “Together?”

  It came out much less harsh than she’d intended. The lock tripped, but she made no effort to open the door.

  “It was once your family’s duty to play host to the politicians and businessmen and clergy who visited Mellar’s Knoll—forgive me, Knoll.”

  In her mind, the word Mellar’s fell away again, corroded scraps carried by the breeze. “Why would you call the town by such an old name?”

  “As I said, my connections here are old ones. I am a bit of a historian, you will find. And I am called to be, in the case of your town, a witness to change.”

  “Is this about the mercantile?”

  He smiled over the top of her groceries. “All things have a cycle. Beginnings, endings, recurrences. It’s the guts and glory of history. Continuation despite grim and sometimes terminal outcomes. But your doorstep is not the place for such conversations. We shall have plenty of time for discussions at your dining table or in your lovely parlor over the next few nights. If you will have me as your guest, that is.”

  His long fingers tightened on the bags. A Styrofoam carton complained inside. So helpful, this man. And he had come so very far. She was uncertain how she knew, but in her mind, it was undeniable.

  “None of the rooms are prepared for guests.”

  His smile broadened, thin and sharp above her bread and celery. “Tonight, I have much business which will keep me out late anyway. But tomorrow evening I hope to lay my head here. I think we will make complimentary companions.”

  One of his pale hands swept out and brushed her wrist. His eyes captured pinpoints of light from the morning sun. Green-white light. It startled her, and yet surprise was washed away by another sensation—or rather lack of sensation. The arm he touched was devoid of pain, leaving only a blank, healthy, liberated sensation from shoulder to fingertips. He pulled away and the sweet relief faded. Aches leaked back in, instantly, heavily.

  She’d heard of such things: Reiki, touch therapy, other such outlandish practices, but perhaps there was something to it. And perhaps this judge, who was sworn and bound to serve people in the fairest of ways, was sent by divine guidance to relieve some of her agony. Sent as mysteriously as Daddy’s rosary. Perhaps not all the Mellar family’s good fortune had been exhausted as she once believed. Changes may, indeed, be raining down.

  She pushed the door open and nodded for him to go in.

  “Tomorrow,” he said and handed the groceries off. “We will spend more time. If I’m welcome, of course.”

  He waved his hand as he stepped off her porch, his lovely, healing hand.

  “As you say,” she called after him, “it’s my family duty.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The village truck was nearly loaded to capacity and Mick was glad for it. The gloom of the village hall’s back room was unpleasant, and the musty smells of old record books, invoices and newspapers—something he’d hoped to get used to as the hours wore on but did not—were cloying. One thing was for sure, the fresh air during the drive to the Baylor Disposal Facility would be a blessing.

  He entered the back room for one last armload, his sights set on a shoulder-high stack of newspapers in a far corner. They were ancient copies of the Drury Daily Courier, yellowed with age. He fed them into a trash bag a few at a time, barely glancing until an extra bold headline caught his eye.

  TUBERCULOS
IS IN MELLAR’S KNOLL?

  The accompanying photo was of The Plank and Forest Street intersection. The village hall and village garage were in plain view along with a familiar brick building, the signage of which declared it a parlor of optometry and watch repair, which would one day house a branch of the Bank of Dunnsport. The facing corner building, most recently a failed and shuttered attempt at an ice cream parlor called Ice Dreams, was plainly some type of hat and dress shop for ladies. Like its modern day counterpart, it was out of business judging from the soaped windows and unreadable but somehow mournful banner across the door. A dray horse pulled a wagon away from the camera on the way to the F&F. No cars traveled the streets, but if there were they would have been of the Coupe or Packard variety. No pedestrians wandered the sidewalks.

  He glanced at the first few sentences of the article, momentarily fascinated.

  May 16, 1939—Mellar’s Knoll, WI

  County Desk

  The recently voted decision to pull up the remaining wood underlayment on rural areas of County Highway L should have little impact on traffic in and out of Mellar’s Knoll, even though the road serves as the town’s main street. There is virtually no travel here. The fair town, which is nestled on the northern bank of the Wistweaw River, has taken numerous visits from Doctors P. Jessup and M. Sherman of Drury and Dr. C. Clairville of Baylor in attempts to treat various illnesses spreading throughout the town and laying low its citizens. Little activity can be seen as one rides down the main street, passing shuttered windows, barred doors and shops left still and empty. According to physicians Jessup and Sherman, lethargy and melancholy are the primary symptoms which, in most cases, result in forfeiture of fortitude, and death. A strain or collective strains of tuberculosis and consumption are suspected. Visits to the neighborly town should be done with high caution . . .

  “Hey.” Harley’s voice gave him a start. “Ready for lunch?”

  There was pain near Mick’s mouth. He was biting his lip. Hard. “I am.” He dropped the paper into the trash bag and fumbled it closed. “I’m right behind you.”