by David Bishop
Linda got out and went up to the porch and looked through the windows. The house appeared the same as while she was growing. The couch a bit more tired, more slouched. Some of the paint had begun to peel off the ceiling, hanging as if paint tore like fabric. The traffic patterns in the wooden floor worn lower than the floor around those paths. Footpaths she had contributed to creating.
She almost saw her mother standing in the kitchen, the bleached wooden spoon in her hand busily bouncing through the air to orchestrate her negative tirades on the subject of men or her positive tirades on the subject of religion. She attended church twice a week regularly, didn’t practice it much, but, in her mind, that attendance established her as a solid Christian. To Linda’s way of thinking, attending church no more made people Christian than standing in water made them fish.
The house looked smaller than she remembered as a youngster, a thousand square feet at most.
She walked around the outside of the house. The lawn had been mowed no more than two days ago, the weeds were minimal, the flower beds damp. The grass was still sparse under the canopy of the tree. The hedge alongside the gravel drive was trimmed. The porch was swept with a few new boards added to the landing, and one new board added to the step up onto it. The front corner of the porch roof had a new support beam. Next to the carport, a green hose lay quietly coiled. She raised the head of the hose, tilted it, and got a little residual water dripping out of the end. Someone had watered things fairly recently.
This looks like the job Dix spoke of finishing. Why would he be working on my dead mother’s home?
She considered trying the door lock, but didn’t. She could always get in. She knew ways, but realized she didn’t need to get in. After backing out of the gravel driveway, she drove back to Cranston without stopping, without pausing to look at anything else along the way.
Chapter Thirteen
Do women’s pubic hairs straighten with age?
The sun was riding the western sky when Vera Cunningham was startled away from her sewing. Someone was knocking hard on the side door at the top of the stairs above Second Street. She went to the door, listened, but didn’t open it.
“Vera,” a man whispered, “open up, it’s Billy.” His name in a hard whisper forced through the door jamb.
She opened it less than halfway, leaning the side of her face against the edge of the door, her hand squeezing the knob as if it were an intimate object. She wrapped one leg around the outside of the door, her skirt riding high on her thigh.
“What do you want, Mr. Cranston?” She quickly looked past Billy to be sure no one stood below where they could hear and that no passersby were looking up at them. No one was in view.
He didn’t move, but kept Vera from closing the door.
Vera looked around again to reassure herself they were not being observed. “Get inside.” She put her hand on his forearm and pulled him in. She closed the door and put her hands on her hips. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Got any beer?”
“In the fridge, cold mugs are in there too. Salt shaker’s on the counter next to the stovetop.”
“You know me pretty well, don’t you?” Billy asked while twisting the cap off the brew and filling the chilled mug, tilted slightly. He turned to face Vera who stood near the table. Her hands busy pulling hair through a scrunchie into a ponytail.
“I should by now, wouldn’t you say? Then again, we rarely meet here and never in broad daylight. What’s this about?”
“Strictly business my love, tell me what you know about this Carol Benson woman.” Billy picked up the shaker and salted his beer. “Who is she? Why is she here? I want it all.”
“Christ almighty. I just met her yesterday when she came in my shop. She’s coming by here for coffee and a croissant, she could show up anytime. I just put the dough for the croissants in the oven. She’s a nice lady. Why are you so worked up? She’s just passing through.”
“No. There’s more.” He took a long gulp from the mug. “I know her. I’m sure I do. I just can’t place her.” He pressed the cold mug against his forehead. “You gotta know more than I do.”
“I don’t know what you know, but I met Carol in my shop yesterday. We talked about clothes, fabrics, purses and shoes. If you want to hear her views on heels with pedal pushers, or which tops look best with a strapless bra, stuff like that, I’m your girl. Otherwise, I got nothing.”
“Damn it. I’ve seen that woman before, somewhere. You owe me.”
“Maybe you need to have her strip down. You’re used to seeing women naked. You might recognize her that way.”
“Cute, Vera. I always liked your smart mouth, that and your big tits. Let’s have a look right now.”
Vera slapped him on the shoulder, and grinned. “We got no time, Billy. Carol will be here soon.”
“You said you got the biscuit batter in the ov—”
“Croissants, Mr. Cranston, not biscuits, and its dough not batter. You’re too educated a man to sound ignorant when you can avoid it.”
“Skip the la-de-da talk. How about a quickie? I wanna put my batter in your oven too.”
“No. Damn it. Tonight, like we do every week. I’m telling you, Carol Benson is coming any minute!”
“Just a look. Come on. Give.” Billy sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. “You love to show ‘em off. Time’s a wasting.”
“Go home, Billy. Your wife’s got big tattas. You don’t need mine.”
“Martha, ha,” he said before shaking his head and scoffing. “That woman has big everything. Her tits look like two water bags hanging on the front of my jeep. She got huge after we got married.”
“Come on. That’s not kind. She was never small, Billy.”
“You said Carol Benson’s coming. You’re wasting time.”
Vera unbuttoned her top and slid it off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Next, she pushed her bra straps off her shoulders. First one, then the other, cupping her hands over her breasts while she released the front hook. She threw the bra at Billy and walked toward him. Close enough for him to bury his face in her breasts. While doing this, he reached behind and grabbed a handful of her ponytail pulling her head back as far as it would go. “So,” Billy said, pulling down on her hair, “what’s the doc have to say about why you aren’t pregnant?”
“He said that I’m fine, fully capable of becoming pregnant. It just hasn’t happened. Maybe you’ve got weak swimmers?”
Billy gave her hair an extra hard jerk, making Vera yelp. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “I pay for results. When you’re pregnant, you’ll receive twenty-five thousand in cash. When you give me a healthy son you’ll get one-hundred-twenty-five thousand more.”
“I know that. It’s all spelled out in our surrogate agreement. I’m as eager as you are, maybe more. If all it took was for us to want me pregnant, I’d already be.”
Five minutes later Billy put his hand on the knob of the back door toward the alley. He turned, as if an afterthought. “Do you own a cigarette lighter?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No. I do not own a cigarette lighter. Why did you ask me that?”
“Just something the sheriff’s working on. I don’t know all the details. Don’t be concerned. Leave it to me.”
“Okay.”
“Tonight, at the Frontier.” He said more in the form of a statement than a question.
Vera stood naked from the waist up. “Yes, tonight, the Frontier. Now scat, you scoundrel.” Her breasts jiggled when she used her hand for emphasis.
Chapter Fourteen
Since biblical times there have always been women of negotiable virtue
Not long after Billy Cranston left, Vera heard another knock on her door. She finished straightening the fresh blouse she had just slipped on, and opened her door. Carol Benson walked in. “Hi, Carol. Come in. You know it’s really hard to keep calling you Carol. How much
longer do we have to keep this up?”
“Probably until the reading of mother’s will. I can’t practically keep the name Carol Benson alive after that. Hmmm, something smells wonderful.”
“I’ve made cinnamon-apple tea, some croissants, and a pan of cranberry-orange muffins. It’s a little breakfastsy for this time of day, but what the heck. You haven’t eaten, have you?”
“No. I’m famished.”
“You remember we used to share muffins and hot tea with my mother.”
“Your mother was a good woman. I envied you growing up. The relationship you had with your mom. There were a lot more good things in those days than I recognized at the time. Like many teens I kept myself preoccupied with my own petulance.”
The two women walked into the kitchen where Vera slipped a mitt onto her hand and pulled open the oven. “If you want milk or sugar for your tea, milk’s in the fridge, sugar’s on the counter next to the salt and pepper.”
“I take a splash of milk in tea. I’ll get it.” Linda pulled open Vera’s refrigerator and noticed some beer and cold mugs. “I didn’t remember you drank beer. There’s probably a lot I don’t know about you, given the passing years. It’s interesting getting reacquainted.”
“Sometimes I have a cold beer late at night. I had one last evening, just before going to bed. I do that sometimes when I haven’t eaten too late or too much.”
Linda saw a beer mug in the sink.
Vera put the freshly baked muffins and croissants on the table, then added a butter dish and some homemade orange marmalade. Napkins were already on the table.
Linda inhaled slowly, “The baking smells scrumptious, the tea too.” While buttering a muffin Linda asked, “What’s this I hear about Cranston having a whorehouse?”
“You are getting around, aren’t you?” Vera laughed. “Yeah, true enough. Little old Cranston, Kansas, has its own house of pleasure. Always has, since I was old enough to know about such things. Are you shocked, Linda? Oops. Sorry, Carol.”
“Not shocked. Since biblical times there have always been women of negotiable virtue. Men too, for that matter. You ever go in the place?”
“No reason. I have no desire for women and from what I’ve heard they don’t offer the company of men, so I have to forage on my own.” She laughed again. “Why, do you wanna go?”
“Might be interesting. You wanna come along?”
“I don’t think so,” Vera said. “I figure you’ll be leaving Cranston soon, while I’ll be staying. I shouldn’t risk the ladies who buy my custom stuff thinking of me as a woman who would visit Cranston’s house of pleasure.”
“Fair enough, so, let’s talk about what was always our favorite subject: men. You told me you hated Billy and you have a hands-off policy toward Dixon Wardley. We both know you always liked the boys. You’ve never married, right?”
Vera sipped her tea. “Marriage seems to have become outmoded. A man no longer needs a wife.”
“Really. And on what do you base that view?”
“Okay,” Vera said. “You may prefer wine for this conversation.” She brought over two stem glasses and a bottle Riesling, handing the bottle to Linda along with a corkscrew. While she opened, Vera talked.
“Traditionally wives tended to the home and children. Nowadays, with many married women working out of the home they look to their men for help with these things. Even public men’s rooms have baby changing stations. As for sex, well, most women no longer need to be courted so long and promised so much to get them in the sack. Generally speaking, women are as sexually liberated as men—almost anyway. We have more one-parent homes, and soon I expect the courts will grant gay couples the right to adopt. For better or for worse, traditional family structure is going the way of buggy whips and bustles.”
After taking a first sip of her wine, Vera went on. “Why does a woman need a husband or a man a wife? Companionship? I get more comradery from friends like you than from men. It’s the same for the guys. Watch couples when they get together. The guys talk among themselves as do the women. Relationships are about sex, pure and simple, and a ring and ceremony are no longer prerequisite.”
Linda, who had continued to drink her tea, saw it a bit differently. “The men and ladies talk among themselves because social gatherings give them the opportunity. At home they get to talk with their spouses. That being said, what about children?”
“To some extent, social taboos still hold to husbands and wives having children, but if they don’t have kids or after the kids are grown, marriage is a useless yoke around both their necks.”
“Well, aren’t you a wild thing, Ms. Vera Cunningham.”
“I didn’t make America this way. I’m just reflecting on how it is. Live and let live is the new standard, apparently.”
“I’m friends with a modern, small town woman,” Linda said. They both laughed, instantly at ease together, like they’d been through their childhood and teen years.
Linda touched her tongue and used the moist finger to pick up a few croissant crumbs from her plate. “Look at us, two women sitting on the fence near the middle of our lives, neither married, and neither of us with a child.”
“Looks like, at this point in your life, you agree with me about men and marriage,” Vera said.
“To some extent, maybe . . . a little anyway. However, I’m not ready to view marriage as useless and not something I desire. There is a closeness, a sharing, that can’t be found with other women. Well, not without changing one’s sexual orientation, which I won’t knock for others, but isn’t right for me.”
“My God, Linda Darby, oops Carol Benson, you’ve grown into a romantic.” They shared a nervous laugh before Vera refilled her wine. She pointed the bottle toward Linda who nodded. Vera smiled and poured more for Linda.
“Okay, Vera, you’ve changed the subject long enough. You said no about Billy and Dix. Who is your lover? Don’t tell me you don’t have one, for you that’s not possible. Is it anyone I know? Anyone I would remember?”
“Give me a minute to put the closed sign on my shop. My customers know I do that now and then so I’m not interrupted while sewing.” Vera left the table and headed toward her shop in the front.
While she was gone, Linda cleaned up a little. She put their plates into the dishwasher and the soiled napkins into the trash below the sink. When she did, she pushed the trash deeper into the receptacle, using an empty beer bottle for leverage. She also moved the salt shaker from the front of the stovetop next to the pepper on the back edge of the stove.
That beer wasn’t drunk last night like Vera said. The label’s still damp and the bottle cool on the outside. Billy salts his beer. . . . No, that’s not possible.
Vera came back into the kitchen asking, “I hear you’ve been seeing Dix. How’s that going?”
“Dixon Wardley is a fascinating man, a real hunk, yet there seems to be something he’s not telling me.”
“Like what?”
“He’s handsome, smart and confident. Yet for no reason he returns and stays put in Cranston, Kansas, a town run by a man he openly challenges and clearly dislikes.”
“That’s all about you. I told you that the other day.”
“That’s flattering, but it doesn’t seem to be enough of a reason. Has he ever come to you and asked where I am? How he can get hold of me? He would know that, if anyone knew, it would be you. Well, my mom, but if he asked mom, she’d probably lift up her shotgun and run him off. Did he ever ask?”
“Come to think of it, no, he didn’t. Maybe he was just shy.”
“Dix walked up to my table in the Frontier Hotel coffee shop while I was sitting with Billy and asked to join us. Dix isn’t shy. So, he never asked the one person who might know, you. Instead he just stays in a town he’s got no other reason to stay in and waits for me to return?”
“He might have figured you’d be back after your mother died. You have come back, you know.”
“All that’s true, but he would have bee
n more assertive. There’s a piece of the explanation of why Dixon Wardley is here that we don’t know. Could he be working for King Billy?”
“No way,” Vera said emphatically. “Dix has hated Billy Cranston ever since Billy cut in and took you while we were in high school. You left town in large part because of Billy. Dix and Billy are cut from different cloth.”
“All that could be a great cover. Dix is strong and confident and everyone figures he hates Billy. Anyone interested in fermenting a rebellion against Billy would find their way to Dix, at least for moral support if not for active help.”
“That sounds right as far as it goes, but I don’t buy it. Dixon Wardley is not the snitch in the woodpile type.”
Part way into a second bottle of wine, Linda got Vera around to talking about the men in her life. She had a couple regulars and several irregulars who together, allowed her to engage in sex at least twice a week and often as many as four times. Linda felt a little envy. She knew only one of Vera’s regular lovers. More accurately, she recognized one of the names, Jimmy Willis. Vera had also been seeing Carlos Molina two or three times a month. They’d have dinner and he’d spend the night at her place. She knew about him working at Cranston’s Casino, not the feedlot. So Dix had been right about that. Vera had no inkling of why anyone would kill Carlos other than a general statement about his supposedly being engaged in some questionable activities.
On the surface, the town of Cranston was calm water. Beneath it ran a strong undertow that had sucked Carlos Molina into something that got him killed. Cranston was a cesspool with a dust crust.
With a third bottle of wine, the conversation took on an even more earthy quality. Vera asked Linda if, as she’d gotten older, her pubic hairs had started to straighten.
“I don’t know who else I can ask,” she said. “We always talked about everything. One of my men, a traveling salesman I’ve had this thing with for years, told me mine had definitely gotten straighter. He asked if I used to curl them and had stopped.”