by William Gay
Misconduct, she said. Her mouth twisted with the taste of the word. She had leant forward, elbows on knees. She smiled slightly. From the street the faint sound of a car door closing, an engine starting up. The bluehaired lady drove away. Breece was staring past the girl’s shoulder through the window to the street.
Dangerous ground indeed, he murmured. A matter to be taken up with my counsel. But for the sake of discussion, just speaking hypothetically, suppose that such things were true. How would you come to know of it?
We dug him up, she said.
You what?
We dug him up. We had reason to suspect something was wrong about his burial, and we were proved right. Then just to be sure we dug up several more. I forget how many. I don’t even want to think about the things we found. No one wouldexpect to find the things we did, not in a thousand years.
Graverobbers. Vandals digging up graves and committing atrocities. Desecrating the corpses. I’ve often heard of such things but I never expected to find it in the town I live in.
I’ve heard of them myself. But none where these vandals took pictures of you and a bunch of naked dead women and then hid them in the trunk of your car. Why do you reckon they did that?
His eyes darted away. They were a hard glassy blue, slick as wet marbles. The open-shut eyes of a doll. The hands were pale, fleshy spiders, the fingers meshing endlessly. One hand trembled violently, and he stayed it with the other. She thought he might weep.
My car was vandalized. So it was you that did that.
I bet you ran straight to the law, too. I bet there’s an all-points bulletin out about those pictures.
What do you want?
You’re finished. You don’t begin to suspect how finished you are. When all these people hear about what you’ve done to their folks, they’re just going to mob you. They’d hang you, but you won’t last that long. They’ll tear you apart like a pack of dogs.
What do you want?
I want the things you done to my daddy made right. I want him buried with the decency you expect your folks to be put away with. I want that waterproof vault we paid for around his casket.
Breece was nodding. Head bobbing metronomically. Of course, he said. If you aren’t satisfied, I’ll do anything I can to satisfy you.
I’m a hell of a way from satisfied. Of course, I’ll refund your money. No question about that. I could even give you a liberal sum for what they call, ah, punitive damages.
And what would you expect in return for that?
He was silent for a long moment. The pictures, of course, he finally said. I’d have to have them back. They’re subject to misunderstanding, a delicate subject, part of an experiment you wouldn’t understand.
I expect you’re right about that. I was wondering about the panties. Are they part of the experiment, too?
He flushed a deep crimson. I’d want your agreement to remain silent. I’d have to have that in writing; I trust you have been circumspect so far. Again, I’m trying to avoid misunderstanding. I have a position in the community, a reputation to maintain.
I want fifteen thousand dollars. That’s nothing to you, pocket change. I could ask for a lot more, and you’d have to pay it, but I’m not going to be greedy. All I want is the money you cheated us out of and a fair amount for the grief you’ve caused us.
Whatever you call it, it’s extortion. Blackmail. Both of them are against the law.
She shrugged. All right. We both go before the grand jury and tell our stories. We’ll see how it all comes out when they dig up a grave or two.
I don’t keep that kind of cash around. I’d have to make a withdrawal.
Then make it. You’re getting a bargain and you know it.
I can have it for you in a day or two. I may have to convert some bonds into cash.
Then you’d best be converting. You don’t get the picturesor the panties, until I’ve got the money in my hand. We’ll be waiting on you.
She rose. She was halfway to the door when he made some curious strangled noise. She turned. He was watching her. He shrugged helplessly. You must think me terrible, he said.
She didn’t have an answer for that. She went out and pulled the door to behind her. She went down the hall and through the office and so into the street. She stood for a moment letting the rain wash over her. A cold wind smelling of trees, the wet streets, woodsmoke. She looked up and let the rain course down her cheeks. The rain felt cold. Clean.
He sat unmoving while the day drew on, and still he sat with dusk gathering at the windows, and ultimate dark fell unnoticed with the rain fading to just a persistent murmur at the glass, and he didn’t turn on a light. The dark suited him very well and soothed the seething turmoil of his mind.
What to do. Options presented themselves only to be discarded and alternates sought. Nothing seemed feasible. The dread thought of the retribution she’d spoken of left him weak and clammy with cold sweat. He closed his eyes. Tried to clear his mind, to force order onto the chaos of his thoughts. He imagined his mind a slate, an eraser moving methodically across it. Then what had been at the bottom of his mind all along surfaced, like a rotten log in a swamp brought up by its own putrescent gases. A headline from last summer’s newspaper: local man indicted for murder. A measure of peace returned to him. A feeling of self-confidence, of being in good hands.
Granville Sutter, he thought.
Early in June of that year Lorene Conkle came out of the drugstore and Sutter was there the way she had known he would be. He was leant against a brick wall with a toothpick cocked up out of the corner of his mouth. When she walked past him, he unleant himself, elaborately casual, and followed her as if he’d been going that way all along and was just waiting for the notion to strike him.
The drygoods store then. She’d look up from whatever garment she was fingering and glance covertly through the glass and there he’d be, this time leant against the column that supported the striped awning. A tall, gangling man with the false appearance of sleepy indolence. Warped and twisted by the bad glass as if this glass had the property of character analysis and showed the world what you were like inside your skin. He caught her looking and just looked levelly back, and she dropped her eyes.
Was it something I could help you with? the clerk asked. He had approached silently behind her and startled her. A prissy little man with an oldmaidish air about him.
She seemed to make up her mind about something. She laid the gown carefully atop the pile. I reckon not right now, she said. I may be back later.
Sutter wasn’t watching her now. When she stopped in front of him he was looking off toward the railroad track where the train was uncoupling boxcars. He seemed finally to notice her and turned toward her. High cheekbones with the leathery brown skin pulled taut over them. A blade of a nose broken once and healed slightly askew so that the face looked different from side angles, a face with two different profiles. The eyes were brown and flecked in their depths with gold so they looked almost amber.
I want you to stop watchin me.
Then don’t stand in front of me. Folks don’t always get what they want. It’s people in Hell cryin pitiful for Eskimo Pies, but they ain’t handin none out. It’s a free country and I can watch who I want to.
You been followin me, too. And this is not the first time you done it. I seen you parked across the street from my house a few days ago.
I was just visitin a feller lives down there. Besides, you don’t even know I’m followin you. You in a drygoods store. That’s a public place. I might have had in mind to buy me a set of drawers or a pair of socks or somethin.
I want you to let me be. And my husband Clyde, too. I hadn’t said anything to Clyde, and I don’t want to go to the law. It’s been too much about trials and lawyers already. I don’t want no part of it. If I ever mention it to Clyde, he’d have to talk to you, and you don’t want Clyde ahold of you.
You know who I am, don’t you?
Yes.
Why don’t y
ou just mention it to Clyde? He might not even want ahold of me.
You just let it be. Clyde couldn’t help bein on that jury, and he couldn’t help votin what he knew was right. What does it matter anyway? You got out of it, didn’t you?
It took a year out of my life. Two trials. I’d of been acquitted the first time if your old man hadn’t been bound and determined to send me to Brushy Mountain. Eleven votin not guilty and he had to hang the jury.
Yeah. Eleven people afraid you’d burn them out like youdid old Mrs. Todd. Clyde wasn’t afraid of you.
You think I burnt that old woman’s house?
I know good and well you did. And so does everbody else. What you can’t buy off you scare to death with threats.
You come down mighty hard on me, Sutter said. You believe too much of what you hear. I’m just like everbody else. I had a old daddy and a old mama, and I come up hard the way everbody else did around here. You think you’re better’n me, don’t you?
He had leant his face to hers, and she backed away. Her expression was a mixture of anger and contempt.
Cause your old man works in a drugstore, he went on. Wears a little white apron and mixes up pills and nerve tonic and shit all day behind a counter. Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am. I reckon you think your shit don’t stink.
You watch your nasty mouth with me or I will go to the law. I swear I will. Such law as there is in this town. And yes, I do think I’m better than you. Not because of my husband but because I mind my own business. I don’t burn people’s houses in the middle of the night or steal from them or poison their livestock.
Aww, you just got me all wrong. You was to get to know me better you wouldn’t be so down on me. Hell, catch me right and I’m a likeable sort of feller. You right nice lookin. A little long in the tooth maybe, but you’re holdin up all right. Me and you just might get together sometime.
She just stared at him utterly aghast, as if such a bizarre circumstance was beyond her powers of comprehension.
Sutter was fumbling in the bib pocket of his overalls. He withdrew a worn leather wallet secured by a clasp chain. He opened it and for a surreal moment she thought he was tryingto give her money, for what she couldn’t say.
Here, he was saying. I keep tryin to tell you I’m like everbody else. I was a innocent babe the same as you. Now this here’s my first-grade picture.
He was pressing upon her a photograph, and in a moment of confusion she took it from his hand and stared at it.
A fairhaired child of five or so stood facing the camera. Perhaps it was even Sutter. His arms were upraised, and each hand was clasped by a disembodied adult hand, one large and one more diminutive. The woods he stood in were sundrenched, and the child was squinting into the sun or the eye of the camera. He was naked and superimposed over his genitals was an enormous drooping penis that reached nigh to his ankles. A great bull’s scrotum. His stomach was covered with a thicket of dark pubic hair.
She dropped the picture as though it had seared her hand and whirled away, her face gone pale with embarrassment and anger. She walked blindly away.
Course it’s growed a inch or two since then, he called after her. Sutter was retrieving the picture where it had fluttered to the sidewalk. Can’t lose this, he mused to himself. My old mama toted this in her pocketbook till the day she died.
So long, widow Conkle, he called to her departing back.
She didn’t even halt. I’m not a widow, she said.
Not yet, Sutter said.
That stopped her. She turned and raised a hand to shade her eyes and just stared at him.
Granville Sutter lived in a tiny house he’d built himself. Twominiature rooms, a kitchen and the front room he slept in. Most nights. Other nights he slept wherever he might be when night fell on him. The house was painted white with green shutters and trim, and it looked like a little fairytale cottage or a house in a fabled wood where a gnome might live. It had a neat cobblestone walk curving toward the blacktop and a great walnut tree on the south side in whose shade he could be found on warm days taking his leisure, sitting on one Coke crate with his feet propped on another and his back leant against the trunk, watching the infrequent traffic with heavylidded eyes, the cars dropping off the grade toward the river and the Lick Creek community and ultimately the edge of the Harrikin. Sometimes a wagon creaking along behind plodding horses until the man would snap the lines and say, Come up there, and the horses would step out smartly, their shoes ringing on the macadam until they passed the house. If there were children, they would turn and stare back at this figure of nightmare dread who’d been used to scare them into behaving, but the adults would generally keep their eyes straight ahead as if something of enormous interest were about to appear around a curve in the road. Figuring perhaps it was best not to attract his attention, wary mouse easing past a drowsing cat. If you don’t look, he’s not real.
This particular gnome had estimated the time of Conkle’s arrival to within fifteen minutes. He thought: She told him at work, but he ain’t about to leave work. He’ll work on till five so as not to piss off old man Wipp or jeopardize his cushy job, and then he’ll jump in the car and head out here.
Sutter was sitting on a Coke crate with a rifle across his lap, and he had a polishing rag in his hand, and when a car passed he’d take a swipe or two at the stock, but it didn’t need it.
Conkle was driving that year a dark green ’47 Studebaker, the model that looked almost the same front or back, and when the car hove into view Sutter smiled a tight little smile to himself; it had looked for a moment as if Conkle were coming at him sixty miles an hour in reverse.
The Studebaker was still fairly rocking on its springs when Conkle leapt out and slammed the door and came striding around the car. Conkle had been in a bad fire once and his face was scarred slick and plasticlooking over his cheek and forehead and these scars were white as dead flesh against his livid face. You son of a bitch, he was saying. You’ve finally done it this time. He was already coming up the walk, he still had his druggist’s apron on and he looked slightly ridiculous.
There was a robin singing somewhere in the top branches of the walnut. Sutter was listening to it instead of Conkle when he drew the rifle to his shoulder and took aim.
Conkle saw the rifle and Sutter’s intent simultaneously and he threw up his hands as if to bat away lead with bare flesh.
Sutter shot him in the left temple and the right side of his head exploded in a pink mist of blood and bonemeal and he was flung backward and fell limp and ragged as if he’d been stuffed with sawdust. The robin hushed. It had grown very still. The echo of the rifleshot came waving back across the river bottom.
Sutter approached and with the rifle at a loose present arms bent over and stared into Conkle’s face. The eyes were open, and Sutter leant further to study these eyes as if he might see the soul fleeing out them in ectoplasmic spiral or death rise up in them like a face at a window but he didn’t seeanything at all.
He went into the house and put the rifle away. He came back out with a tow sack. He grasped Conkle’s hair and raised the head and onehanded spread the sack beneath it and released the head and it hit the cobblestones with a soft plop. The scar on Conkle’s forehead angled up into the hairline, and the hair that grew there was fine and thin.
Sutter grasped him by one leg and pulled but the other leg splayed out and kept hanging, and, breathing hard and cursing Sutter leant and took up the other foot. Conkle’s ankles were thin and he wore winecolored socks with clocks on them, they didn’t say what time, Sutter guessed they’d run down. He had to keep replacing the sack under Conkle’s head.
To get him into the front room he had to prop the screendoor wide and drag him through. He left him by the door. Conkle was studying the ceiling with a look of bemused whimsy.
He went back out with a bucket of water and a broom and dumped the water on the bloody stones and scoured hard with the bristles of the broom and threw rinsewater. He repeated it a time or two unt
il he was satisfied.
He went back in and sat across the room on an old carseat that served him as davenport and studied the body critically as if it were some new piece of furniture he’d come by and wasn’t sure where to place. After a while he got up and took the heavy iron firepoker from behind the wood heater and laid it in Conkle’s right hand. He studied the effect. He smiled onecornered to himself and leant and moved the firepoker right hand to left.
There was a long zigzag crack in the plastered courthouse ceiling, and Sutter spent a lot of time staring at it as if somehow he were above these dull proceedings. The hard back of the oak chair against the base of his skull. Smoking wasn’t permitted, and he worried a small slice of tobacco in his jaw and swallowed the juice while the prosecution went on around him. All this ceremony. All these legalities. He paid it little mind.
The crack in the ceiling became a canyon grown with hemlock and cedar, and he was scrambling down its stony sides toward an ultimate abyss. He came out on a rocky outcropping and lay flat on his stomach on the warm stone and looked down and past the tops of trees so far away they looked like mockups of trees. A river crept like a winding silver thread drawn amongst the rocks.
Then the crack was Flint Creek, where he’d grown up long ago, and he was wandering down it in the warm June sun of youth with a rolled fishline in his pocket just looking for the right cane to cut. A world incredibly green and saturated with sun and scented with the riotous spring growth.
Sutter’s lawyer was named Wiggins. He wasn’t very good, but he was cheap, and Sutter didn’t figure he needed one anyway and had hired him simply as a matter of form. Wiggins wore plaid sportcoats of an almost audible hue, neckties with pictures of mallards flying south on them, and he had the soft indefinable manner of a professional drunk. He always seemed slightly harried, as if he’d like to get all this over with and retire somewhere behind closed doors with a bottle.