by Aaron Saylor
From there, she went into the expansive hallway and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her. The hardwood was cold here, maybe colder than it had been in the bedroom. She hustled towards the bathroom, but found the tile there even colder.
A morning shiver rolled up her legs. The house stayed cold, no matter the setting on the thermostat, and she couldn’t get used to that cold, no matter how many years she spent here. Cold in the spring, cold in the summer, colder than cold in the fall, colder than all hell in the wintertime. She was thirty now, and still she thought she would never get used to that damn cold.
As a child she believed the house was too big, that she might get lost in it and never found. It felt even bigger, more vast and empty and echo–filled, when her mother died, and still more vast and more empty after Karen moved back in there with Boone, as a way of keeping an eye on her father. Just in case. Just because you never know. But even with the three of them, and then later with Samantha, the house was too big, and eventually they’d moved back to their own house on the edge of town. But they still stayed here at least once a week. Boone didn’t care for that arrangement, she knew, not that what Boone thought really mattered.
Too big. Thirty–two rooms sprawled about the loose floor plan. Too big. Even though she’d spent nearly all her life here, she was certain she’d never done more than walk through most of those rooms. Her mind barely registered the contents of the home around her – antique chairs, expensive fabrics, ten thousand dollar imported rugs, heavy furniture, art on the walls, her father’s Civil War collection, stuff. None of it meant much to Karen. Not as a child and not now. Stuff. Just stuff.
She had her comfortable corners: her bedroom, her living room, her kitchen, her bathroom, and she knew those and that was enough. The rest was just too much. Too big and too quiet, incapable of bringing comfort. She always felt a constant wind skirling through the house, rustling curtains and whispering old names. The family that raised her and the family she herself now raised echoed together in the same deep spaces, haunting this great Xanadu of the eastern Kentucky hills.
Karen flipped on the bathroom light, looked at herself, thought about Boone. The truth was, she’d heard him come in that morning, after all. But he hadn’t stayed long. That was why she lied to Samantha. She felt guilty for it, but lying was just so much easier. How could she explain to a little girl that her Daddy came to the house but didn’t come up to see his only daughter?
One day there would be explanations and truths, but for now there were lies, and lies did the job. Lies got everybody through the empty mornings.
Daddy’s still at work. Those were the words Karen knew by heart, the words to which she usually turned when she needed a bandage for Samantha’s wounded soul. They were a lie; they weren’t a lie; they both were and were not a lie. For them, Boone often existed in a liminal space, neither here nor there, somewhere in between. And sometimes his wife wondered if he would exist there for the rest of their time together.
All Karen knew for sure was that whether they were a lie or not, the words worked. Daddy’s still at work. She understood this from her own experience as a mother and more importantly, as a daughter. They were the words her own mother had said, so many mornings like this when Daddy came to the front door but didn’t come up the stairs, didn’t come to see his little girl. They were the words she knew by heart, those empty comforts for little girls who wondered why their fathers spent so much time away from home.
But she didn’t really want to think about such murky topics now. Later. There was always later. Maybe even today she would talk to Boone a little bit.
She opened the glass shower door, reached in for the expensive handle, and started the water. It heated quickly; she tested with her hand until the temperature got to the perfect degree, which for her meant just barely less than scalding. Steam quickly surrounded her; she took off her nightshirt and stepped into the cascade, gratified, warm at last.
FAMILY
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Walt poured his morning coffee. He leaned against the black granite counter and turned on the HDTV that hung from a brushed–chrome arm underneath the dish cabinet. The morning news out of Lexington came on and quickly faded into background noise. A weather report. A drug arrest. Somebody overdosed on Lortabs. A car drove off a bridge. Somebody overdosed on Oxycontin. A University of Kentucky basketball game went into overtime. More rain for the weekend.
Walt picked up his coffee, and just as he turned around was surprised to find Karen standing there, looking at him. Her hair was still wet, and she was wide awake.
“I told you, if you don’t dry your hair you’ll get sick. House this big always has a draft,” Walt said.
“I’m used to it,” she said, even though she wasn’t.
“Suit yourself,” he smiled, and drank from his steaming cup.
Karen went to the cabinet above the dishwasher and pulled down a ceramic mug of her own, one that was adorned with a picture of four playing cards, the Ace and the Eight of spades on one side, the Ace and the Eight of clubs on the other. While she filled it with coffee, she asked, “You had Boone out workin’ late again?”
Walt shrugged. “Nah, he came in.”
“I know he came in. I heard him this morning,” she said. “But he didn’t come up. Samantha’s not real happy about that, you know.”
“I needed him to move the quarter machines down at the Bears Den.”
“Why?”
“The TV people will be there sooner or later,” said Walt. “You know they will, after everything that happened last night.”
“I don’t think they care about the quarter machine. Why would the TV people be at the Bears Den, anyway?”
“They like to stir shit up. You know how that is, honey.”
Karen leaned against the counter, waited a moment then pressed on. “So do you know where Boone is now? It’s been a couple of hours since he left here. It doesn’t take that long to move a quarter machine.”
Walt sighed. He looked askance at his daughter. “Yeah, I know where Boone is,” he said with a shrug, holding the coffee against his chest. “He’s workin’.”
“Workin’?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he doing?”
Walt shrugged again. “He’s workin’, that’s all,” he said. “You know how that is.”
She did – she knew how that was. It was not to be discussed any further that morning, not between Karen and her father, anyway. She knew the old man’s business, knew it well, ran all the books and understood the numbers and what went behind the numbers. She also knew that if he wanted to talk about it, he talked about it. If he didn’t, he didn’t, and clearly this morning he didn’t. Instead, he went to the little breakfast table beside the window and sat down.
And so. The world was still and there they were, just the two of them, father and daughter.
The empty drone of local news drifted through the room and then went away without consequence, a weather report, a basketball game, murder, suicide, fog, basketball, rain, something, nothing.
But then one story caught Karen’s attention.
“We have a reporter en route to Seward County, where Sheriff John Slone has been hospitalized following a shooting last night that left one of his deputies dead and the gunman on the loose.”
“Oh my God,” she put her hand to her mouth, and spoke into her fingertips.
“Yeah,” said Walt.
“Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Walt shrugged, drank his coffee. “I didn’t think nothin’ about it.”
Suddenly Karen felt like she might vomit. “John got shot last night and you didn’t think that was something I needed to know?”
“He ain’t in too bad a way,” said Walt. “I’d have told you if the doctors said he was in any serious trouble. We can go see him later, if you want.”
“If I want?”
“Yeah. If you want.”
She put her hand over her mouth, proces
sed a thousand ugly thoughts at once. How could you not tell me? When were you going to tell me? Who do you think I am, not to wake me up in the middle of the night when my own brother’s been shot?
“Don’t worry about it. He’s gonna pull through just fine,” said her father, in the same easy tone he might employ if he were talking about some random victim from the local news. “He’s a tough bastard. He’s one of us, idn’t he?” He took his coffee cup and headed out of the kitchen.
“Who do they think did it?” Karen yelled after him.
“They don’t think nothin’,” Walt answered as he left the room. “They know damn well who did it. Jimmy Sumner. Lorna came out of the parking lot and saw him runnin’ off into the woods. He can’t run forever, though. You know how that is.”
Now, everything made sense to Karen.
Now, she knew Boone’s whereabouts. Working, indeed.
No more questions were necessary. Her brother would pull through, that was what mattered – if it looked that bad, they would already be at the side of John Slone’s hospital bed – and as for his assailant, Lorna saw Jimmy Sumner running away and Boone had work to do. Things would get straight.
She said, “We should go to the hospital.”
Walt shook his head. “Not now. We’ll go later.”
“Later? Are you serious?”
“Doc has him. He’ll be all right. There ain’t anything we can do to make it better or worse. You know how that is. What do you want to do, go down to the hospital, go see your brother, and sit there to watch the ventilator work?”
She didn’t answer.
Karen followed her father into the living room. He sat down in the middle of his ten thousand dollar, chocolate leather couch and she sat on the end.
He grabbed the remote and turned on the sixty inch LED screen. The morning news on WTVL On Your Side took their attention for the moment. Iraq, Afghanistan, scary people with big guns, the weather. Politics as usual, grown men hurling schoolyard insults. What this is about is freedom and liberty, your unfettered right to kill yourself in the manner of your choosing. This is the greatest country on Earth. Mumble mumble. Walt watched and shook his head at the same old back and forth. Nobody added much of anything new to the argument these days. It was all just so much background noise. He didn’t really give a damn.
Karen sat down on the other end of the couch and watched her father watching the news. A couple of minutes passed between them.
Finally, she said, “So where’s Boone now?”
“I already told you where he is,” said Walt. He shrugged, lifted his coffee, held it in mid–air. “He’s workin’.”
“Working?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he doing?”
Walt brought the coffee back down and sipped from the cup. “He’s workin’, that’s all, Karen,” he said. “I told you. You know how that is.”
The news show morphed into a chirpy commercial for laundry detergent.
“Look. Don’t worry about it,” Walt said, hoping to wrap up the conversation. “Boone’s been out working but he’s fine. John’ll be up and walkin’ around soon enough. We’ll get back to normal.”
Karen stood back up, wandered over towards the window. She looked out towards the edge of the yard, at the chest high wrought–iron fence that had been erected where the lawn ran up against the tree line. Forty clean black spikes ran in an elegant square, fifteen feet on a side. It was pretty, like something from a 1950’s television show.
It was also a grave.
Ellen Slone, wife of Walt, mother of Karen, mother–in–law of Boone, slept her forever sleep beneath a black granite tombstone at the edge of her family’s lawn, the most expensive tombstone that could be bought in the state of Kentucky, with a nice portrait of the deceased etched on the side facing the house and a simple name sprawled across the back side, etched in pretty, looping letters meant to look like the lady’s signature, reminding the woods just who lay at their edge. Under the signature were the dates of necessity, 1944 – 1999, and under those dates the only other writing on the tombstone, in two–inch classic Roman lettering:
ELLEN SLONE
WIFE. MOTHER. FRIEND.
WE WILL SEE YOU SOON.
Two short marble vases held flowers on each side of the stone, usually orchids in one variety or another. Karen’s mother loved orchids. Yellow orchids, blue orchids, and especially white orchids. White orchids were her favorite. And also Mountain orchids, any color, thought not because Mountain orchids were especially pretty, but more because they grew only on the hills around Sewardville.
Three distinct species of flower grew no other place on Earth but the hillsides and creek beds of Seward County, Kentucky, and as far as anyone could tell, those three flowers had never grown anywhere else. Rosa vanglorious, and cannabis exultae, and Orchistradae Mountain – the Mountain orchid, whose long white petals drooped downward and came together at the ends like tiny hands clasped in prayer.
Karen noticed that some of the flowers had blown off in the night, and lay strewn around the base of the headstone. Daddy would want those replaced that day. She made a note to drop by the florist shop when she was in town later that morning. And while she was there, she would get something for her brother.
“We should go to the hospital,” she said again.
“Later,” Walt reaffirmed. “He ain’t going anywhere, not in the meantime.”
She found her father’s stance on the issue ridiculous. Did he really not want to go see his son in the hospital? His son, the sheriff, who’d been shot in the line of duty just a few short hours ago? What sort of tough–old–bastard horse shit was this?
But ridiculous as that seemed, it was clear that they were not going to the hospital any time soon. Not together, anyway.
Karen moved away from the window, back towards the couch, but this time didn’t sit down. Instead she stood behind her father, with her hand on his shoulder. The world was still and there they were, just the two of them, the father and the daughter.
The empty drone of world news drifted through the room and then went away without consequence. Free elections in Afghanistan, a test for democracy. The elderly will face two choices: government–mandated euthanasia, or higher income taxes, whichever seems more economically feasible at the time. America is the light of the free world. Crazy people roam free in rural areas with machine guns in their hands and tree branches in their hair. Thirty–seven percent of Republicans in North Carolina believe that Hawaii is not part of the United States. Eighty percent of Democrats believe Ronald Reagan started the downfall of America. Tomorrow, sun. Day after tomorrow, rain.
Walt sipped his coffee and kept his eyes on the television. He listened, he watched, and he waited, hypnotized by the background noise that emanated from the rest of the world. Karen watched along with her father until she had her fill of world events, and went upstairs to get Samantha out of bed.
SEWERVILLE
An hour and a half later, Karen was headed for the hospital without her father. She drove Walt’s black Cadillac Escalade down the main drag of Sewardville, with Samantha riding shotgun.
Rain fell once more, big heavy drops. Through the windshield of the Escalade, Karen saw nothing new. The town existed as a still photograph in her mind, unchanged from her teenage years. The street retained a certain ramshackle quaintness, lined with run down gas stations and consignment shops, the very same old buildings that had been there since the days when she’d been in high school cruising their parking lots, looking for boys who might give her a cheap beer and maybe a little more if she played them the right way. Some of the occupants may have changed, but the blighted view never really felt that different. Once a gas station, now a Dairy Freeze, once a used–clothing store, now a HUD–backed apartment building – but the blighted view never really felt that different.
Up ahead, just past the Kwik Mart, she could see foreign shapes blocking the pavement. Probably a wreck. Karen strained to see what
was going on, and as she got closer she made out more of the picture. It was not an accident. Something big lay in the road, the size of at least two people, under a heavy tarp. No wait, there was no tarp, just something… big. There were hooves. An animal. A deer. No, wait. A cow.
A cow?
There was a dead cow in the road, lying on its side with its eyes closed and its thick tongue laid limp from its half–open mouth.
Right there, in the middle of Sewardville.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said to nobody in particular.
“It looks like a cow,” said Samantha.
“I see that.”
“Is that a cow, Mommy?”
“Yes. It’s a cow.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, Samantha. Something.”
Karen rolled the Escalade to a stop a few yards from the carcass. In her rearview mirror, she saw a police cruiser come up behind, but it cut into the other lane and went around the scene without much more than a look sideways. Where was he going? Was he just leaving this dead thing here? Who knew.
Then again, she did not know if there was any sort of protocol for dead–bovine removal. She had seen many odd small–town things in her life, but this was the first time she had seen a deceased cow laid down across one full lane of Church Street.
She wondered how it got there. Maybe it fell off a truck and the driver didn’t notice. Maybe it wandered in from one of the farms outside of town and got hit by a car. Maybe it had a heart attack. Who knew. How long had this dead cow laid there in the middle of the main road through town?
Karen’s vehicle idled close enough that she could see a small pool of rainwater built up on the side of the animal. She could also see a number of tracks in the wet road, where others had gone around just like the sheriff’s deputy. One of the front legs had been torn off, whether by impact or scavenger, she didn’t know.