by Karen Brown
Del would be there, I said. “She can stand in for the two of us.” I laughed, thinking of Del’s pregnancy, and my mother’s reaction to it, but when my mother asked me what was so funny I said, “Oh, nothing.” I wondered if she could hear my sullenness. I didn’t know for sure if Del and William had been together, if I’d killed an innocent man—loyal to me and unconnected to Mary Rae’s death—or a man who’d slept with my sister and killed a girl who by all accounts was devoted to him. Until I knew more, I decided to believe my sister.
Geoff began his quiet pacing at night again, perhaps in his grief over Anne. The breeze rubbed the elm’s branches, bright with leaves, against my window. Geoff’s footsteps shuffled across the wood floor, followed by Suzie’s clicking. Once in a while I’d hear something suppressed—a moan or a cough. And then the pacing. A few times I considered going to his door but lost my nerve. We had come full circle, back to a place from which I had believed we’d been freed.
Sleepless in bed, I listened for William’s footsteps on the stairs. Lover? Predator? Startled by a noise, I caught sight of myself in the little mirror by the door—my hair disheveled, my eyes blank, the awful mark from the accident branding my forehead. I went to classes but ignored the boys who seemed to surround me like bright coins. Back in my apartment, I burrowed into my bedclothes and read through Mary Rae’s last journal—sifting through the pages, obsessed and searching for clues; her handwriting, girlish and rounded, its own sad reminder of a future she’d once planned. With William. The baby. He’d been the last to see her. Had she told him she hadn’t kept her appointment for the abortion? How would he have reacted? Had they met at the trailer? Wouldn’t there be traces of William there? Del and I had scrubbed the concrete floor of my grandfather’s barn with the borax, erasing the blood, tossing the hay over the spot.
Though the Miltons hadn’t told me where the Peterson field was, I had my own sources. I called Jimmy at the Agway. It seemed the field could be accessed by an old railroad line that ran near the store, a line that had only recently been turned into a nature path. I met Jimmy at the Agway one Sunday afternoon. He wore a red ball cap pulled low, a T-shirt, and jeans. It was his day off, and he took my hand as if I were his girlfriend.
“The path’s through here. The field’s a ways down,” he said. “It’s a hike.”
“The weather is nice enough,” I said.
Jimmy was hesitant. But I assured him I only wanted to look from afar.
“That’s probably all you’ll get,” he said. “A look.”
The place was a crime scene—I understood that. We started down the path. The old ties had been taken up, and loose gravel marked the way through the woods. Every so often the sun broke through the canopy of trees. We passed families out walking, the little girls picking violets. The air was crisp, and snow lay beneath the low-hanging pine boughs. We crossed a trestle over a swift-running brook, and small birds darted about. Soon there were no more people. I felt as if I were in the middle of nowhere. Jimmy walked quietly by my side, nervous, shy. He wasn’t sure what to make of me or my interest in Mary Rae, and I almost wished I could tell him that she’d appeared to me and asked me to do this, but even that wasn’t exactly true.
Soon we emerged at a place where the path opened and fields stretched for miles on both sides. The sun was high and bright, and Jimmy stopped walking and pointed.
“Up there,” he said.
I could see the rise of the field, the grass waving, the bluets and buttercups, and then along the line of the woods batches of day lilies. If he hadn’t pointed it out to me, if the sun hadn’t hit the Silver Streak’s metal body, I would never have been able to spot it. I slipped my hand from his, and I stepped off the path and ducked beneath the farmer’s barbed-wire fence. Jimmy shook his head at me—a caution not to go, maybe a little angry that I’d lied to him. It didn’t take long to cross the field. A path led beside the trees that rimmed it. Every so often I looked back at Jimmy, and he waved his arm—whether in greeting or to call me back, I wasn’t sure.
In winter, when Mary Rae came here in her down coat, the snow would have been high, though along the tree line where I walked now there might have been less. Even so, she would have had to break off through the field to reach the trailer, as I did. The Silver Streak stood beneath an oak, below the field’s rise, and hidden from view from the path. I’d thought there’d be yellow crime scene tape cordoning the trailer off, but there was nothing—only a trailer’s rusted hull, and the concrete blocks that formed steps up to the door. The detectives must have gotten everything they needed. I took a step up to the door, turned the knob, and pushed the door open. The inside was nearly the same as I’d seen it—though the mattress on the narrow bed was gone, and the interior was empty of its contents—the tattered drapes, the clothes that once hung on the rod. The kerosene lantern was gone, the clothespins. The shelf above the bed was empty, and the little window was broken. I guessed kids came up here, too, and, afraid to approach the trailer, threw rocks.
Despite the changes, this was the place. This was where Mary Rae had died. During the spring and summer months her body had decomposed. Now the pollen and new grass smells filled the trailer. Hornets had begun to build a nest in a corner. The floor was soft with rot. Soon the whole thing would slump into the soil. There would be nothing I could find that the investigators didn’t, yet I closed my eyes, listening. Why would she come here in the dead of winter? Had she made the trek, heartsick, and shut herself in the trailer to let the cold consume her? Somewhere I’d read that hypothermia often caused confusion, that people experiencing it shed their clothing. Maybe she’d given in and let William take his photographs, then found that wasn’t enough to win him back. If so, William played only a small part in her death—he’d confessed to not loving her—and she’d done the rest.
As I stood there someone called. It was Jimmy. My name echoed over the fields, bouncing off the line of trees. I left the trailer and went to the rise of the field where I could see his red cap, and I waved, and he waved back—this time clearly signaling for me to return. I stood at the peak, and I turned to take in the view behind me. The field led down to another large crop of woods, but I was high enough to see beyond them to a house—the yellow siding of Anne’s Windy Hill farmhouse, miles away, but visible. Mary Rae had been here above us that October evening of the All Hallows’ Eve party. I’d imagined her in the line of trees, waiting to emerge, and I’d been partly right.
Jimmy met me in the middle of the lower field. He said one of the local officers had approached him on the trail and asked him questions, and he’d told the truth—that one of Mary Rae’s friends wanted to see the place where she died. The officer had seen me walking along the tree line and told Jimmy it wasn’t safe for me to be there.
When I asked Jimmy what he meant, he shrugged. “I guess he means there’s a murderer loose.”
The sun dipped behind a bank of clouds, and I felt a chill as we started back along the trail.
“I had to give your name,” he said. “I hope that’s all right.”
“That’s fine,” I said, although I’d lied about being Mary Rae’s friend, and the officer would probably find out.
Jimmy escorted me back to Geoff’s car. He tried to talk me into a movie, or dinner, but I told him I couldn’t. He leaned on the car and crossed his arms. “You’re a cagey one,” he said. “But I’m a good sport.”
I kissed him on the cheek and drove the long way back to Ithaca, thinking about his blue eyes below the brim of his cap, the lovely curve of his arms in his T-shirt.
* * *
THAT NIGHT I awoke to footsteps on the stairs, the sound like the clomping of William’s heavy boots. They paused outside my door, and I waited, breathless. The knob turned, but I’d locked the door, and the footsteps retreated down the stairs. I lay in bed, holding my breath, straining to hear the front door open and close, and then rigid with fear, unable to sleep for a long time after. Was this what it was like to be
haunted, to have someone return from the dead for you? The next morning Del was at my door, frantically knocking. I opened it, half-asleep, and she pushed past me into the room and slammed the door behind her.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“I saw him,” she whispered. She wore a pair of leggings and a misbuttoned work shirt, Randy’s name embroidered on the pocket.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
She went to the window and peered around the frame. “I saw him,” she said, her voice strained. “He’s out there.”
I joined her by the window, and she pulled me back.
“Nothing’s there,” I said. It was true, William wasn’t in his usual place.
“He was there,” Del said. “He was.”
Del’s face was drained of color, the shade of her platinum hair. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never confessed to seeing the dead to anyone, not even to Del. I led her back downstairs, and she pointed to the hat stand.
“He had it on,” she said.
William’s beaver-skin hat was missing from the vestibule. I had never packed it. I’d left it there, almost afraid to touch it, tangible evidence of William’s existence, almost more than I could bear. Geoff must have tired of seeing it and thrown it out. It had been months since William’s disappearance. To wonder now if he was alive was irrational.
The spring sunlight lit the vestibule’s fading wallpaper, including the edges where it had begun to peel. Del had left her apartment door open, and she followed me inside. I pulled the door closed and locked it behind us.
“What did you see?” I asked, firmly.
“I saw him standing across the street,” Del said. She went over to the small table by the window where she’d abandoned her breakfast—an English muffin, a cup of tea—and she slid into her chair.
“No,” I said, angrily. “That night.”
Del picked up the muffin and set it back on her plate.
“His eyes were closed.”
“Did you feel for a pulse?”
“Of course I wouldn’t touch him! There was blood, around his head. What are you saying?” Del stood. She pulled Randy’s shirt tight around her.
Perhaps I had lost the plot. Alive? Dead? I could no longer tell the difference.
Del moved over to one of the wing chairs and fell into it. “He couldn’t have gotten out of there. We had his phone,” she said.
“It might not even be him,” I said. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Lots of people have odd hats. Even you.” I laughed, and reminded her of the day she’d been trying on the hats. I sat down in the chair across from her. “Why don’t you finish your breakfast.”
“It was him,” Del said. She picked at the tapestried upholstery, pulling threads loose.
I waited for her to insist she wasn’t crazy, but she did not. She decided we should visit Sybil Townsend in the encampment. Partly to appease her, and partly because I felt in need of guidance and lacked anyone else to offer it, I agreed. I warned Del she couldn’t tell Sybil the truth. “We can’t really trust her,” I said.
We walked the same route we’d taken the night of the snowstorm with William. Now, window boxes of pansies decorated the houses’ front porches.
“What do we ask her?” Del kept so close beside me, she bumped my shoulder.
“Let me talk.” I had no idea what I would say. Could Del see William as I did? I had considered that possibility when she’d gotten sick as a teenager. Could she have been following the dead around town? Conversing with them? This seemed unbelievable, and I told myself it was wishful thinking—but maybe she couldn’t accept the voices she heard and the people she saw who asked her to follow. Maybe her breakdown had been a result.
The encampment path was muddy. The brook had swelled its banks, and the rank mud smell was almost overpowering. Under the pine shade patches of snow remained, the tarps stained and faded in comparison. Daylight revealed the camp for what it was—harsh, dirty. Without the cover of darkness and the enchantment of the strung twinkling lights, the place lost any aspect of magic. No one glanced up to spot us or wave hello. The people moved between tents, or traversed the narrow paths, bundled in grubby winter clothes. I hesitated, but Del tugged on my arm and we set off farther down the path, farther into the smoke from the fires, the odor of rotting garbage. Some of the inhabitants, wrapped in blankets, came out of their tents. They stood in front of the entrance flaps, stern and protective. A man approached us and shouted at us, demanding to know what we wanted.
“We’re looking for Sybil Townsend,” Del said.
The man, older, wearing mismatched gloves, marched in place in the mud, the mud squelching around his shoes.
“What do you want with her?” he asked, like a sentinel. His breath was foul, tainted by whiskey and coffee and bad teeth.
“I want to talk with her,” Del said.
The old man gave us a strange look with his head to the side. He was blind in one eye, the color a vague and milky blue. With the good eye he was looking us up and down. I didn’t know why Del believed she would be recognized.
“She knows me,” Del said.
I smelled something cooking, a heavy scent of fatty broth.
“She’s not here,” the man said, roughly. He turned from us and walked away down the path, his shoes sinking into the mud. Del began to follow him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted into the air ahead of him. He seemed astounded.
People put their heads out from under the tarps. Tent flaps opened, and I glimpsed the insides, the piles of bedding, the low-lit lamps. From one tent came the spicy scent of Constant Comment tea. “You’re insufferably persistent,” the man said, continuing to tromp away from us.
Once, he may have lectured children this way as a severe parent or a schoolteacher.
“Can you tell us where she’s gone, then?” Del begged.
The man stopped. He was waiting for us to go. Neither of us moved. And then his shoulders seemed to relax, and Sybil Townsend approached, picking her way along the path toward us, chuckling.
“Oh, I can’t hide from you two,” she said.
Del hugged Sybil. In the daylight she was younger than I’d thought. She was missing a tooth. I regretted agreeing to come. What could she possibly relay? Still, I let her lead us down the path to a tarp stretched over wooden posts, and we sat beneath it at a small table, the legs of the chairs sinking into the earth, Sybil in her layer of brightly colored shawls.
“I had a shop once,” she told me. “I sold books, and incense, and that sort of thing.” The breeze buffeted the tarp like a parachute. A distant radio played jazz. “I was chased out by the townspeople,” she said, her laugh deep and rheumy.
Del fidgeted, waiting for me to fulfill my end of our pact.
“Del has seen someone,” I said. I didn’t say she thought she’d seen someone. I didn’t want her to doubt herself.
“Why are you really here?” Sybil Townsend said. “Don’t you have other means of discovering the truth?”
I wanted to say I’d tried everything I could. I was confused. The dead had secrets, but no dead were offering them up to me. Around us a small group had gathered. They began to make a queue outside the tarp’s posts. Sybil smiled a mysterious smile that might have served her well in her little shop. I wanted to slap her. My last conversation with Reverend Earline, I’d wanted to know why my mother visited the spirit circles, who she wanted to hear from, and Reverend Earline had said a man was trying to reach her. He was a suicide—a special case—someone who hadn’t been able to abandon the lower astral plane. Mr. Parmenter. My mother was the woman he’d been in love with, the woman who’d never shown up at the Stardust Motel. I was the one to put this together, but Reverend Earline saw the recognition, the shock, on my face.
“We don’t always hear the things we want to hear from the dead,” Reverend Earline had said.
“Especially when they have to speak through people like you,” I’d said.
Like the old game of telephone—a message passing from one person to the next becoming distorted and muddled, the dead pretending to be someone they were not, the messengers unable to tell the difference. In my great-grandfather’s manuals “A Student” made it clear that the practice of contacting spirits through mediums was prone to error.
“What are these people doing?” Del said.
Beneath the tarp we could see the boots of people lining up in the slush.
“They’re here for your sister,” Sybil Townsend said. She stood, her large bosom heaving under her shawls. She led Del out from under the tarp just as a woman in a fleece jacket, her hair dirty and her face lined, ducked under and sat down across from me. She took my hand and gave me an imploring look across the table. Her hand was chapped, the palms calloused.
“I want to know about my father,” she said. “He was living in California.”
The light wavered around me. Water dripped from the fringe of the tarp, overbright and shimmering. I pushed back from the table and reeled with anger out from under the tarp and through the encampment.
Del was in Sybil Townsend’s tent seated in a camp chair. I pulled Del out of the tent, down the mud path to the creek. My anger receded as we climbed toward the road, and I breathed, deeply, once we’d left the place behind altogether. You couldn’t expect the dead to provide answers. Those lingering behind, trapped on the lower astral plane, were filled with desire. They only wanted what they’d always wanted. William had stood at the curb multiple times. I’d told myself that he always appeared the same, his outfit the last he’d worn in life, like Mary Rae, but that wasn’t true. Sometimes he wore his corduroy coat, his green sweater, his faded jeans. Sometimes a gray sweater, khaki pants I’d never seen him wear before.
34
Del was quiet on the walk home. The sidewalk was bright with tree pollen, and the warmth of the sun was like a balm. As we approached the house, she slowed and seemed apprehensive.