Dead to the World

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘You’ll come home with us,’ Bess said with some authority. ‘Right, girls?’

  ‘Sure!’ Alicia said with a big smile.

  ‘Whatever,’ Megan said, sniffing the air. ‘God, can you smell that porterhouse? I might die before we ever get home!’

  She didn’t. Bess pulled into the driveway and up to the back door, hoping Elena Luna, their cop neighbor, wasn’t looking in their direction. She hustled Logan into the great room while her sisters brought in the sacks of food. There was even a little one marked ‘Logan,’ that his friend Cam had packed just for him.

  ‘What do you think that is?’ Bess asked as she helped unload the food.

  ‘My nightly hamburger,’ he said. ‘I got burned out on steaks the second week I worked there. Now I alternate between fried chicken and a hamburger.’

  Megan had unloaded her own food and was already sitting on a stool at the bar cutting into her oversized porterhouse. ‘God, who could ever get tired of steak? You’re obviously not a Texan!’ she said.

  ‘Am too,’ Logan said. ‘Born in Houston, moved here when I was two.’

  Megan was no longer paying attention to anyone or anything other than her plate.

  ‘So,’ Bess started, her head bent to the task of removing food from bags – anything not to look directly at Logan. ‘What was that all about tonight? Who was that guy?’

  She glanced up at that point, only to see Logan looking anywhere but at her. ‘Nobody,’ he finally said.

  Unfortunately Megan heard that. ‘What nobody? Nobody comes along and beats the crap out of you?’

  Logan shrugged, and Bess said, ‘Megs, pay attention to your food or someone else might take a bite.’

  ‘Not on my watch,’ Megan said, and hunched over her plate to better shovel food into her face.

  ‘I’m just glad you’re OK,’ Alicia said. ‘Well, sort of OK.’

  ‘Why don’t we eat?’ Logan suggested, a big, maybe phony, smile on his face. ‘The food Cam makes is really good. But you don’t want to eat it cold.’

  So Bess and Alicia set the food at certain places, Alicia painstakingly placing Logan’s hamburger at the far end of the bar, and Bess’s sirloin right next to him. Her own fillet she placed next to Megan’s spot. She couldn’t help noticing the major size difference in Megan’s porterhouse and her own fillet. She leaned toward Megan and speared an already cut piece of Megan’s steak.

  ‘Hey!’ Megan cried, aiming her own fork at Alicia’s hand. Alicia moved the hand with the fork and meat quickly to her mouth, outmaneuvering her foster sister.

  ‘How many times has Mom told you that Miss Manners said you only cut up more than one piece of meat for children? It’s your own fault.’

  ‘I’m still a child – officially,’ Megan said.

  ‘Damn. This porterhouse is good. Can I have an—’

  ‘Only if you want to lose a hand!’

  Ignoring her sisters, Bess asked Logan, ‘Are you in trouble? I mean, that guy seemed really mad. Did you do something, you know, that you shouldn’t have?’

  What was left of Logan’s face that wasn’t already a different color turned red.

  ‘Like what?’ he asked, not looking at her.

  Bess sighed. ‘I don’t know. Like maybe took some weed or something on consignment and didn’t pay him?’

  Logan snorted and finally looked at Bess. ‘You watch too much TV,’ he said.

  It was Bess’s turn to blush. ‘Then what?’ she said, finally making full eye contact. And what eyes! The blue of the sky on a summer’s day, the blue of a becalmed Caribbean, the blue of a sleeping smurf …

  Breaking eye contact, Logan looked down the line of the bar at Bess’s sisters. They were busy sniping at each other, paying no attention to Logan and Bess. He sighed, then said, ‘Remember Harper Benton?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Although I haven’t seen her since winter break.’

  ‘She dropped out,’ Logan said.

  ‘You’re kidding! That’s so … so …’

  ‘Trashy?’ Logan supplied.

  ‘Well, certainly ill-advised,’ Bess countered. ‘But what has that got to do with that guy tonight?’

  ‘That was her brother, Tucker.’

  Bess shook her head. ‘I still don’t see the connection. What do you have to do with Harper dropping out of school?’

  ‘He thinks it’s my fault,’ Logan said, again looking down at his plate.

  ‘Why?’

  Logan sighed and looked up. ‘Because she’s pregnant.’

  I went to awaken Miss Hutchins while Willis dialed 911. The old lady’s room was warmer than the rest of the house – almost stifling. I saw a red light shining on her dressing table and, getting closer to it, realized it was emitting hot air. From what I could see through the open doorway, the room was well – if not old fashionably – furnished, with a huge sleigh bed, the ornately carved dressing table and a matching chest of drawers, and everything was covered with tatted and crocheted doilies. Unfortunately the room smelled of rose scent and Ben-Gay. Not a pleasant mixture.

  I touched Miss Hutchins lightly on the arm and she awoke instantly, not the least disoriented. ‘E.J.,’ she said. She glanced at the digital clock on her bedside table. It read four a.m. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ I said.

  ‘Move,’ she said, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The bed was possibly two feet off the ground, and her bare feet didn’t touch the floor. ‘My stool,’ she said, indicating a small tapestry-covered stool that I’d inadvertently shoved to the side. I moved it under her feet. She lowered her toes then stood up. ‘My slippers,’ she said. I found them where I’d shoved them under the bed. I wasn’t going to win any prizes for grace tonight.

  I helped her step down from the stool and into her slippers.

  Squaring her shoulders, she looked up at me and said, ‘Now. What is it?’

  ‘Humphrey Hammerschultz appears to be dead,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, bother,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like him much, but this is just uncalled for. You said accident. Was it? Or was it foul play?’

  Remembering the sight of his head’s unnatural bent, I would put my first bet on a broken neck. I didn’t see how one could break one’s neck by falling off a sofa that was less than a foot off the floor. But it wasn’t my place to say. ‘We’ll leave that to the police,’ I told her. ‘Willis is calling them now.’

  ‘Have you awakened his partner?’ Miss Hutchins asked as she headed for the door.

  ‘I thought we should let her sleep it off,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Good. She’d just muck things up anyway.’ With her hand on the knob of her bedroom door, she turned and looked at me. ‘You know Daddy had something to do with this, don’t you? Or are you still trying to deny what you don’t understand?’

  I just shrugged my shoulders, not able to get the sound of the grrrrrrrrrr-plopping that had led to our discovery out of my head.

  BACK HOME

  Bess realized she hadn’t taken a breath since Logan’s announcement. She sucked in air and looked at anything other than the boy sitting next to her, while avoiding her sisters’ eyes. ‘I didn’t know y’all were dating,’ she finally said. She felt the weight of the world on her shoulders and knew it would be a long while before she could look at another boy with affection. Maybe a really long while – like forever. At that moment, she vowed to be a terrific aunt to her nieces and nephews, and to find herself a fulfilling career. She was glad she was a good student; there could be a scholarship in her future. To a campus as far away from Black Cat Ridge as she could get. She could feel tears gathering behind her eyes and willed them to go away.

  ‘We had two dates,’ Logan said. ‘And her brother met me. But I swear to God, Bess, I never touched her. Never even kissed her!’

  Bess took her first long look at Logan. Those blue eyes, so honest, so trustworthy – or were he and his eyes just very good liars? ‘Then why would he think …�
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  ‘Because Harper must have told him so. God only knows who the real father is. On our last date, way before Christmas, she left me in the theater to go to the bathroom and never came back. I’ll bet she left with whoever the real father is that night.’

  ‘Did she say anything to you at school?’ Bess asked.

  ‘Yeah, on the Monday – the date was on Friday night – on the Monday she acted like everything was cool. Even asked where we were going the next weekend!’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told her there wasn’t going to be a next weekend. That I didn’t like the way she ditched me at the movies.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Bess asked, beginning to buy his story.

  ‘She goes, “Oh, I’m so sorry! I got sick and had to leave!”’ Logan rolled his eyes. ‘As if,’ he said.

  ‘And now she says she’s having your baby?’

  ‘First I heard about it was tonight when her brother made me go outside with him. He goes, “You’re gonna marry her right now!” Like that. And I go, “Huh?” ’cause I’ve got no idea what the hell – sorry, heck – he’s talking about!’

  Bess rubbed Logan’s arm. ‘There are paternity tests,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t have that done until after the baby’s born,’ Alicia said.

  Bess and Logan quickly turned toward the sound of Alicia’s voice. Somehow, they’d forgotten they weren’t alone.

  ‘I know that because one of the girls at one of the foster homes I was at got pregnant and said it was the father of the house who’d done it. But nothing could be done and the social worker didn’t believe her. She moved her anyway, and about six months later we all were moved out of that house. Pretty sure the paternity test was done – as was the father of the house. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Everyone knows what you mean,’ Megan said from her end of the bar. ‘So, Logan, who’d you knock up?’

  NOVEMBER, 1941–DECEMBER, 1941

  On Thursday, November 27, 1941, Edgar and the rest of the first element of the 4th Marines left Shanghai on a gray and gloomy morning. Edgar was not happy to be boarding yet another boat to be taken to yet another ship for yet another sea voyage – albeit a short one, although he had no way of knowing that at the time. Only high-ranking officers knew where the ship was headed.

  The ship, the SS President Madison, docked at Subic Bay, Philippines, three days later. Edgar did not make many friends aboard ship – actually, he made a few enemies. Poker was the game of choice aboard the President Madison, and Edgar had honed his poker-playing skills (and learned a few not so kosher tricks) after four mostly leisurely years in Shanghai. No one knew how short their trip was going to be, so it was with some shock that the other participants watched Edgar Hutchins leave the ship with over a thousand dollars of their hard-earned money.

  Edgar’s accommodation once he reached the Philippines wasn’t exactly the mansion he’d shared in Shanghai. No, this time his billet was a tent he shared with several other Marines on the rifle range of the Olongapo Navy Yard. Unfortunately, some of those in his tent were the same men he’d beaten at poker on the ship. Since Marines believed wholeheartedly that one good beating deserved another, Edgar emerged from his tent the second day in the Philippines with two black eyes, a busted lip and bruises in places his uniform artfully hid. Luckily for Edgar, he was moved to the First Separate Marine Battalion that was based on Cavite Navy Yard. He was one of seven hundred who were organized both as a defense and an infantry battalion, and were armed with three-inch dual purpose guns, three-inch anti-aircraft guns and fifty-caliber machine guns. Although Edgar had never done well at the gun range back on Parris Island, he found an affinity for the fifty-caliber machine gun.

  Training went on for several days, but on December 8, 1941, while Edgar was walking to the mess hall, a major rode by in the side car of a motorcycle, shouting, ‘War is declared! War is declared!’

  Edgar couldn’t help thinking now would be a good time to try to make it home, but the First Battalion was ordered to move to Mariveles, where Edgar was too busy to even think of a way to get out of what he assumed was going to become a hellish situation. He was ordered to prepare positions in the surrounding jungle, and ended up working ten to twelve hours a day unloading the many barges bringing in rations, ammunition and equipment. The next day, one of the brass ordered that the regiment be fed only twice a day, which made Edgar consider his idea of going AWOL more seriously.

  Although the Japanese were bombing U.S. airfields and the capital of Manila, the Marine positions at Mariveles were not immediately attacked. Unfortunately an average of six air-raid alarms a day tended to shake up the Marines, whose commander ordered them to scatter at the sound of an air-raid siren. This order had to be rescinded as no work could be done. So Edgar and his fellows continued to work.

  On the tenth of December, unbeknownst to the Marines in Cavite, two Japanese combat teams came ashore in northern Luzon, not far from the base at Cavite. They seized airfields for their army to support more landings of troops. But civilian workers continued to come into the Navy yard. The only sign of war at that time was an air-raid trench in the yard of the admiral’s headquarters. Only the anti-aircraft weapons had been revetted. There were now four three-inch anti-aircraft guns mounted at the ammunition depot in the yard, as well as numerous fifty-caliber machine guns mounted around the yard – one of which was to be manned by Edgar Hutchins.

  At a little past noon on the tenth, Edgar and his company heard the droning of numerous aircraft engines, followed by the air-raid siren. They all ran outside to look into the sky and watched as fifty-four aircraft in three large ‘V’ formations approached the camp. There was some confusion – first all Marines assumed the planes were Army Air Corps, but when they started dropping what was at first believed to be leaflets it wasn’t long before the company realized the planes were Japanese and what they were in fact dropping were bombs. Since there were no completed trenches or any formal shelters available, the Marines, sailors and civilian personnel crouched under the nearest cover.

  The Marines ran to their stations at the anti-aircraft positions and the fifty-caliber machine-gun stations. The anti-aircraft guns did no damage as the planes were too high, and the fifty-caliber machine guns were of little use. But even so, people were too keyed up to notice that one fifty-caliber gun was not manned. Edgar Hutchins was cowering under the veranda of the mess hall, where he remained huddled.

  The barrage of bombs continued, starting fires all over the base. The Marines not on duty, still in their billets, were called to draw ammunition and to get outside to fire on the enemy aircraft. This unfortunately happened just as Edgar was attempting to sneak into the billet, so he too was back on duty. He stood in line at the quartermaster’s office to receive ammunition. As the bombs continued to fall, the Marines dove for cover, then returned to the line, a procedure that continued through the afternoon. As the bombs struck close to them, Edgar could hear them coming down and hunched his shoulders, as if to keep one from going down the back of his neck. But the small arms efforts proved fruitless as the buildings restricted the fields of fire. By the time the Japanese planes left, over one thousand civilians were dead and over five hundred injured. As the hospital had received a direct hit, a makeshift aid station was set up in the base library to treat the injured.

  The Marines were evacuated out of the Navy yard and taken by truck to a site on the road leading to Manila, where the battalion set up camp. Edgar was one of the Marines sent back to the Navy yard the next day to bury the civilian dead. A bulldozer was used to dig a trench and Edgar was one of a working party on burial duty. Over two hundred and fifty corpses were buried in a mass grave. The only thing that bothered Edgar about this assignment – other than the hard work, which he was definitely opposed to – was the smell.

  The Cavite area was hit again on the nineteenth of December. The bombers hit the radio towers and the fuel depot. Fuel drums stored in the hospital compound w
ere hit, forcing an evacuation of the wounded.

  On Christmas Eve, the Japanese again struck with a major force, their Sixteenth Division, and landed just sixty miles from Manila. It was at this point that General Douglas MacArthur knew the situation was hopeless. He withdrew all American and Philippine forces to the peninsula of Bataan, where they would make a final stand.

  FIVE

  The police chief of Peaceful, Texas, a small man named Rigsby Cotton whose cowboy hat was too big for his head, was the first to show up, along with his one police officer, a very young woman introduced as Mary Mays. There didn’t seem to be a lot going on in Peaceful that night. Or maybe ever. Second to show up was the sheriff of Toledo County, Omar Gonzales, a much larger man than his townie counterpart, who wore his beige uniform and beige Stetson well. He had two deputies with him, neither of whom were introduced. They stayed stationed at the front door, as if on sentry duty.

  ‘Miz Hutchins,’ the sheriff said, elbowing past the police chief. ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘As I was telling Rigsby, Sheriff,’ she said, with a sort of sarcastic emphasis on the ‘sheriff,’ ‘we have a dead body in the living room. He’s a guest by the name of Humphrey Hammerschultz. If you two will behave, I’ll lead you in there.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Rigsby Cotton said, just a split second before Omar Gonzales said the same thing.

  I went with her as she led the authorities into the living room. Humphrey Hammerschultz was still in the same position, his head and arms aiming for the floor, his oversized abdomen and large ass anchoring his body on the sofa.

  ‘Who moved the body?’ Gonzales asked.

  ‘My husband and I found him,’ I said, speaking up for the first time.

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ Gonzales said, not the least unkindly, although the words were not particularly kind.