by Clint Smith
Instead, this is where we find Luther Hume: it’s midmorning, July, and our young man is nursing a lukewarm hangover, occasionally squinting against the brutal blue sky as he skims debris, dead insects, and a discarded condom from an in-ground pool in the back yard of an opulent, Craftsman-style bungalow located just a few blocks off Main Street. The surrounding tree-lush streets are lined with affluently similar homes—aesthetically arresting exteriors, meticulously manicured lawns, and fussy landscaping. Again: you know the script.
After taking another lethargic swipe with the long-handled skimmer, Luther paused, running his fingers through his disheveled hair. He looked as if he belonged skulking around a skate park, except Deacon’s Creek had nothing that resembled a skate park and Luther loathed skaters and all species of hipsters. His hair was crewcut petulant—high and tight on the sides but topped by bladed bangs, sort of a malignant but ultimately reluctant Mohawk. And to accent the air of anti-community militance, Luther wore a pair of his dad’s old dog tags (which his father had long ago allowed, although he had also long ago acknowledged that the adornment was far from sincere) that evoked a quiet sort of hostility, honoring an anti-authority irony.
Though the home’s resident was not currently occupying the upscale dwelling, the house was owned by a widow named Irene Crawley. The condom, for a brief period the night before, had been owned by Luther.
Misty. He might call her later, see if she wants to play house again later tonight.
Was he a criminal? Not really, just your average, small-town parasite.
Luther was in mid-movement, taking another pass at the debris with the skimmer, when he glanced up at the house, involuntarily cocking his head as he gauged the certainty of what he was seeing. Through the kitchen window, in that area where the kitchen sink would be, a dark form materialized, graying into a substantial figure as it moved closer to the sun-glinted glass. And now as Luther focused on the figure, faint definition emerged—pale skin, a nimbus of white hair . . . the flash of spectacles reflecting sunlight. An old woman. Mrs. Crawley (only recognizing her from photos and in-town encounters over the past two decades). She was not smiling.
Luther swiftly arranged the scenarios, skimming through a potentially problematic script. But the fact of the matter was that he was currently doing the job he’d been asked to do. Even so, he was ready to deliver as many ad-lib lies as possible to get on this old woman’s good side.
As Luther registered the presence he was instantly vigilant about appearing outwardly innocent—he produced a wide smile, raised his hand in a cheery wave—just your friendly neighborhood Boy Scout, ma’am. An awkward span of seconds passed before the woman responded by raising her own hand—what was certainly her hand but, because of the misty reflection, appeared nothing more than a gray branch of arthritic talons, and those talons beckoned Luther toward the house.
Luther set down the pool skimmer on the concrete walkway and began sauntering toward the house, accidentally catching his sneaker on the stack of cleaning equipment and chemicals, cursing under his breath when he remembered—too late—the condom.
Even as familiar as he’d become with the house in the past few weeks, he still marveled at it with covetous contempt. Luther’s grandmother used to call this mannered part of town “Ersatz Evanston.” Luther had once asked what she’d meant by that, and Gladys Moira Hume, his dad’s mom, had explained that the neighborhood resembled some of the housing pockets on the northside of Chicago, in the hamlet of Evanston.
Luther, in his twenty-three years of existence, had never been to Chicago, and had only occasionally traveled to the nearest big city. Caught in the Midwest murk between Cincinnati, Louisville, and Indianapolis—in a vague spot a more creative tongue might have termed the Bemused Triangle—he’d passed through large cities before, but Chicago was out of his depth. He did not go on to ask what “Ersatz” meant, but had the sense that his grandmother laced it with a large dose of good-natured sarcasm.
And impressive as all this was, Luther had often suspected that some underlying self-consciousness impelled this immaculate profusion, as if something fundamentally necrotic existed in the collective core of Deacon’s Creek, and this architecture was all merely an anaesthetically manifested antidote. For Luther, the problem was very simple: everyone here was afraid. Everyone clung to a pastoral codependence on a mediocre status quo. Again—not Luther’s words. Inebriation fostered an atrophy of articulation. Luther, in the best way he could privately convey, thought of the town’s backwardness as an illness, but lacked the lexicon to directly call it a bucolic cabal.
And Irene Crawley was one of the predominant elders in Deacon’s Creek. He knew that solely because of his own grandmother, Gladys Hume, who had also been one of the community’s influential matriarchs and who was now flanked by other bygone townsfolk out at Evensong Cemetery.
Luther’s father was co-owner of one of the town’s more established real estate agencies. Last spring Luther had begun overhearing snatches of conversation about the Crawley house—the old widow woman, Mrs. Crawley, was going to live with her son and his family down in Alabama. The short version: the old woman moved out and the house was put up for sale. Luther’s dad got the gig as listing agent to show the home to potential buyers.
So far, no bites, just a few nibbles. “You’d think somebody could convert it into a bed-and-breakfast or something,” Curt Hume commented, standing at his desk in the den.
One afternoon a few days later, Curt stopped Luther as his son was walking out of the house. “Got a second?”
Luther shrugged but kept shuffling toward the door. They hadn’t spoken in a few days, not since their last nasty verbal tussle. “Sure, but I got to split.”
Curt was a craftsman when it came to engaging potential buyers and sellers throughout town and in the outlying communities, but he regressed to a boot-camp awkwardness when interacting with Luther. “Yeah, well, I won’t keep you. I just—well, I’ve been so bogged-down about showing this Crawley house. I was wondering if you’d like to make a few extra bucks.”
Being several states and hundreds of miles away, Mrs. Crawley’s son had proposed that the agent (Curt) arrange for someone to act as a temporary caretaker for the property. Crawley’s son had made it clear that there would be no compensation, but Curt would secure his position as the listing agent.
Here was the offer: someone stops in a few times a week and cleans the pool and details the yard at the Crawley house—roll the push-mower over the lawn, pull weeds from the flagstone sidewalk, that sort of thing.
Again: the Crawley son was not offering money. Curt was the one providing the stipend, and Luther instantly registered pity braided in his father’s proposition. Nevertheless, Luther twitched the bangs off his brow—“Sure”—and proceeded out of the house.
And so it went that Luther would occasionally retrieve the ancient push mower from the small shed out back and mill around the yard. He’d skim and clean the pool, making sure the chemicals were in proper proportion. He had no clue what the hell he was doing. pH levels?
It didn’t take long for Luther to flirt with the idea of actually getting into the locked home. Not long after this novel notion, Luther, one morning while his old man was in the shower, helped himself to his father’s cell phone and discovered the three-digit code to the bulky lockbox on the front door: H . . . A . . . G.
Luther had cased the house for an electronic alarm system and found none upon his first unofficial break-in. Initially it was just Luther. He’d wait until dark, until after the lights began winking out in the elderly-affluent neighborhood, before parking the car down the street, taking a stroll along the sidewalk, keying in the code on the lockbox, and blending into the black house like a resident wraith. Of course, Luther always left the lights off, using only a small flashlight or the illuminated screen from his cell phone to navigate the dark home. There were quite a few rooms in the belly of the house with no windows, and Luther discovered a study with a leather rec
liner and a television.
Luther would toke up (beforehand, of course, on the drive over or something) and get comfortable in the study, sometimes bringing along a slim bottle or a flask and getting dreamy drunk in the dark, windowless room, his face silvered by coruscating light from the TV.
One night, Luther—sitting in the leather recliner, eyes slit-lidded—was aimlessly flipping through the late-night channels when he stalled on a public-access channel airing a program called Mother Mary Angelica and the Nuns of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery. The elderly nun—or mother or sister or whatever you called her—was wearing the full outfit, her wrinkled, plumply jowled face framed by a headpiece and black veil. Luther momentarily pursued and gave up on recalling the word “habit” for the costume nuns wore. And in addition to the cloaked uniform, the old nun was wearing a black eye-patch, which fascinated Luther as he floated on a cloud of inebriation. The nun was seated in a chair on a studio set profusely with pastels, directly addressing the camera. Luther thumbed up the volume and listened. She was doing a monologue about something, that one glassy eye blinking at the camera with soft-spoken sincerity. From time to time a tremor of gaspy, almost mournful agreement—“Amen . . . Glory to God”— came from the studio audience. “Most of us live in the worst moment of our lives over and over again,” said the eye-patched nun. “At this moment, here I am talking to you . . . don’t weigh yourself down with yesterday or tomorrow . . . be like Jesus today . . . Jesus showed me the way (Amen). Remember, my dear friends and family, be a child of light . . . do not tolerate darkness. Stand tall, not in disobedience but in truth—truth is truth, and we must teach truth (Amen). And truth is light and truth is joy and the truth is happiness. If you want to be filled with the joy Jesus promised, we must speak the truth from our hearts and live the truth . . . be generous . . .”
Whatever. Luther had numbly moved his thumb to change the channel when, with absolutely no transition, the nun leaned forward and scowled directly into the camera. Directly toward Luther. The old lady’s expression contorted, and her wrinkle-pinched face, hooked nose, and bony chin appeared almost liquidly to penetrate the screen as she said, “How would you like it if a stranger was desecrating your house without permission?”
Fumbling with the remote control, Luther lurched upright, but as he did so he noticed a strange, fabric resistance over his forearms and swept a startled gaze over his body to discover a black material draped over his chest and legs. A nun’s robe. Something chaffed his forehead. With a shiver of nausea, Luther slapped his palm to his brow—the movement impeded slightly by those heavy sleeves—feeling the constrictive hood and the hem of the white coif and hanging veil. And then something on his sternum caught the blue light from the TV: a silver-beaded rosary attached to an ornate crucifix resting cock-eyed on his chest.
Luther gasped and spilled out of the chair and onto the floor, clawing at the costume and the rosary. He rolled and squirmed and stopped, bringing stillness back to the small room. He was on all fours, gazing at a gray blanket that he now remembered had been thrown over the back of the recliner. His heart was beginning to slow to a mad but manageable rate, and he took a shuddered breath, his hand shakily going to the silver device looped around his neck, dangling in front of his face. In the soft light Luther hesitantly inspected his father’s dog tags, chromed in the blue glow from the television, making sure they were precisely the hostile accessory he’d intended them to be and nothing more. He ran his thumb over the aluminum, over the indented name there. Curt T. Hume.
For the next few days Luther abstained from partaking in any herb.
He let Misty Chambers in on his little house-sitting secret a few days later. And together, in the dark, they had found more entertaining ways to play house. Luther and Misty—an unambitious Bonnie and Clyde. But that sort of symbiotic indolence infused their entire relationship, and it was as though one was waiting for the other merely to shift a degree one way or the other so that moving on—in one way or the other—would be made less arduous.
Misty, in her current social incarnation, was not the type of girl you invited to a sit-down dinner in your house—at least not in this town. Misty, by all accounts, was indeed considered a slut in high school, and the appellation—earned or otherwise—remained with her long after. She had done nothing to repair her reputation and didn’t appear to be in any hurry.
But let’s get back to now—to the backyard pool—to the face in the window.
As Luther approached the back porch he mentally rifled through the inventory of last night’s trespassing: The house was spotless, he was certain—in fact, his meticulous assessment of the place was the thing that kept his recent intimate intrusions with Misty Chambers in a threadbare balance. It had occurred to him that if he’d been this thorough with the rest of life he might actually be building something that could enable him to get out of town.
In the backyard pool area, a few wood-planked steps led up to the screened-in porch. Inside, a short corridor that gave into a laundry room and then a few paces later into the kitchen was separated from the porch by a pair of French doors, which slowly opened with a genteel squeal. The feeble-gaited woman emerged.
“Hi there,” said Luther—a simple greeting made salesman-saccharine by its intonation. “I hope I didn’t startle you.” The woman said nothing as she continued to hobble forward. “My name’s Luther Hume, my dad—”
“I know your father,” Mrs. Crawley said, her warbled voice sounding frail and phlegmy. She stopped moving a few feet from the screen door, appraising Luther.
“Cool.” The sound of a lawnmower buzzed to life in one of the adjacent yards. “So I was just cleaning the pool, making sure it looked nice for the agents showing the house. I think your son and my dad had discussed—”
“I’m aware of the arrangement.”
Luther nodded and cleared his throat. “All right.” He involuntarily looked over his shoulder at the pool, squinting against the sun before turning to peer again at the small old woman on the other side of the screen, the mesh of dark material making her features and body language difficult to gauge. They stood this way for some time; the lingering silence and steadfast staring nearly coerced Luther to drop the altar-boy act entirely. He held fast, jabbing a thumb at the pool. “I don’t know what it is, but even with the plastic cover that pool collects a lot of bugs.”
Mrs. Crawley said, “Must be the heat. I’ve seen it like this before.”
It’s about time you chimed in, chatterbox. “Is that right? Well, I’m new at this whole pool-boy thing, so I hope you’ll not judge me too harshly.”
“Putting in a pool was my son’s idea.” Luther wasn’t sure but thought he’d seen the porcelain flash of teeth in what might have been a smile. “In my opinion it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
Luther bobbed his head and rubbed his chin. “Yeah . . . I can see your point.” He glanced around, but the tall wooden privacy fence prevented him from seeing the street or neighboring yards. “Well, I’ll just be wrapping up here.”
“Is he paying you?”
Luther had started edging away but stopped. “Pardon me?”
“Your father.” She shuffled closer to the screen door, and now Luther could see that her expression was not as severe as he’d initially thought; in fact, she was wearing a pleasant, lopsided grin. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’re slaving away in the sun for free.”
Luther rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, no, ma’am. He’s giving me a small allowance.”
She nodded slowly at that. “Would you like to add a few more dollars to that allowance?”
Luther bowed his lower lip. “Sure—what can I do?”
Mrs. Crawley smiled, “Backbreaking work, I’m afraid.” She chuckle-sighed at that—“Oh, I’m only fooling you”—and made a hobbling retreat away from the screen door. “It won’t take long. Please”—she summoned with that thin hand—“come inside.”
Now that’s brilliant, thought Luther.
Invite some hood into your house to do a few odd jobs. Jesus—don’t you watch the news, lady? I’m going to con you out of your life savings . . . I’m going lock you in the basement and strip all the copper wire from the house . . . I’m going to bind and gag and torture you and make off with all that jewelry in that coffin-size armoire in your bedroom . . .
This town, simple as it was, had never been much in the way of secular street-smarts. Luther gave a last glance at the pool area before mounting the concrete steps and opening the flimsy screen door, stepping into the porch—a large, cool box filled with russet shadows. Of course, he already knew the French doors gave into a narrow hallway that led into the kitchen, but he followed tentatively, as if unaware of the house’s layout. The key is to act like everything’s new and remarkable—you can’t even hint that you know your way around this place.
She walked ahead without waiting for him. Luther moved slowly into the corridor. “Hello?”
“In here.”
When Luther emerged he saw Mrs. Crawley standing at the far end of the kitchen, near the wide threshold that opened into the body of the house. A shaft of mote-swirled sunlight angled through a window above the kitchen sink, glowing on the hardwood floor and tingeing the space with a sepia staleness.
Luther made a show of appraising the immaculate kitchen. “Wow, I wish my kitchen looked like this.”
“Oh?” In the dimness it was still tricky for Luther to assess her attitude toward him. Mrs. Crawley smiled, her small teeth catching some of the light. Though she was on the other side of the kitchen, Luther noted the details of her appearance: the top of her prim nimbus of white hair came about to his sternum, her head supported by the wrinkled stalk of a neck, her back hunched slightly. A typical old lady. Now all he had to do was get out of here and break the news to Misty that they would not be enjoying a session of aquatic sex this evening. The old woman said, “What does your kitchen look like?”