Aaron would talk to Sadie about what he read—the history, philosophy, and social fiction that he had from Chihani—but also about growing up in Aurelius, delivering papers with his dog, and his own visits to the quarry when he was even younger than Sadie.
He mentioned leaving Aurelius. “Not right away. But I’ve been thinking I’d like to get a motorcycle and ride through southern Mexico—Chiapas and the Yucatán—where they’ve been trying to start that revolution.”
“What revolution?” asked Sadie. They had unpacked their lunch and were eating the sandwiches. Aaron had taken off his shirt and wore a pair of black swimming trunks that came halfway down his skinny thighs. He sat on the ground leaning against a boulder. Sadie sat on a log. She wore cutoff jeans over a green tank suit. She had long legs, much longer than her torso. On her knees were the traces of roller-skating scars from years before.
“Revolutions are about a redistribution of power,” said Aaron. “A guy has a stick and he uses it to whack the people around him, till someone takes it away. Then someone else has the stick for a while. And he whacks at the people around him. In southern Mexico it’s the Indians against the landowners.”
“Does there always have to be a revolution?”
“Not necessarily. You want to get the stick from the guy who’s whacking you—revolution’s the last thing you try.”
“Could you do your work down there?”
“Wherever there’s a phone line.”
“What do you do as an analyst? Do people tell you their problems?”
Aaron laughed. “I only analyze data. Dead things. Right now I’m analyzing the database of a hospital in New York to help them determine whether it would pay to expand their department of obstetrics and gynecology.”
Sadie wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound exciting.”
“You’d be surprised at how peaceful it is. Every bit of information finds its little home.”
“And what do you plan to do after the revolution?”
“Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary. At least that’s what Marx said.” Aaron took a can of Pepsi from the cooler, opened it, and handed it to Sadie. “If a guy has a stick, he’ll use it to whack people around him unless there are laws to stop him. He did it when people lived in caves and he’ll do it when people travel in rockets.”
“He’s a bully,” said Sadie.
“Everybody’s got a bully in him someplace.” Aaron paused to wonder if that was true. “At least that’s what I think.” He poked at his bare feet. They were big feet with long toes. He could pick up pebbles with them.
“Do I have a bully in me?” Sadie asked, teasing a little.
“Maybe. You have to get a stick first.”
“Did you bite Hark Powers because he was a bully?”
“I bit him because I was sick.”
“What about Sheila Murphy?”
“I was angry with her but I was sick then, too.”
“Were you angry with her because she wouldn’t . . . you know?”
“I was angry because she wouldn’t answer my questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Just questions.”
“Are you still sick?”
Aaron scratched the top of his head. “I’m not sure.”
Sadie started to ask something else, stopped, then asked, “What did his ear taste like?”
Aaron took a mouthful of Pepsi and rolled it around in his mouth. “Waxy,” he said, “like a waxy piece of salami. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“What does it mean to be sick?”
“It means doing something and knowing you shouldn’t do it but doing it anyway.”
“Did you come back to Aurelius because you’re sick?”
“No, I had clear reasons for coming back here.”
“To learn about revolution, to join the IIR?”
“I’d decided to come back before that.”
“Did you come back because of your mother?”
“Partly. I want to find out who killed her.”
Sadie lowered her voice. “Do you have any ideas?”
“It was one of her boyfriends and it’s someone who’s good at staying hidden. Maybe a priest, maybe a doctor, maybe a cop.”
“So you have people in mind?”
“Sure.” Aaron stood up. “Hey, aren’t we going swimming?”
“What about Harriet?” asked Sadie, not quite finished with her questions.
Aaron stood ankle-deep in the water. “What about her?”
“Do you love her?”
“She’s a friend,” he said. “And she’s my soldier.”
“Do you have other girlfriends?”
“Lots.”
“Do you have sex with all of them?”
Aaron grinned, then his face grew serious. “Just about.” He dove in the water and swam out about twenty-five feet, then he turned and dog-paddled as he called to her, “Are you coming in?” He flicked his head to get his hair out of his eyes.
“Are there snakes?”
“You think they’ll mess with you?”
Sadie dove in as well. Aaron swam with his head out of the water. Sadie swam as she had been taught on the swim team. Aaron tried to catch her but she was faster. He rolled over on his back and kicked his way back to shore. His body was very white, as if he hadn’t taken off his shirt all summer. He was thin and his ribs stuck out. Sadie swam after him.
Aaron scrambled out of the water and began climbing the dirt path to the top of the bluff.
“Are you going to jump from there?” called Sadie.
“Why not?”
The bluff wasn’t a perfect ninety degrees so Aaron had to run to clear the shore. His long hair fanned out behind him. He pulled up his knees as he fell and hit the water about ten feet out. A spray of water rose around him. Aaron swam to shore. When he got to the bluff again, Sadie was looking over the edge.
“It’s scary,” she said. The drop seemed as high as a small house and there was the danger of not jumping out far enough.
“Only if you think about it.”
“Is it deep?”
“Deep enough.” Aaron moved back about twenty feet and ran. When he jumped, he spread out his arms and yelled. He hit the water and for about thirty seconds he didn’t reappear. Then he popped up a few yards from where he had gone under the surface.
“Don’t do it if you don’t want to,” he called. He swam back to shore. Sadie was again looking down from the edge.
“It’s a long way,” she said.
“That’s what makes it fun,” said Aaron. “Just make sure you jump out far enough.” He climbed onto a boulder to watch.
She disappeared from sight and Aaron waited. Then she suddenly reappeared and flew into the air, white and slender. She shrieked and kept her body straight, descending feet first. She hit the water about eight feet from the shore.
When Sadie broke the surface again, Aaron saw from her face that something was wrong.
“I hit something,” she cried. “It hurts.”
Aaron jumped off the boulder, then waded into the water to get her. He lost his balance and went under, then spluttered to the surface. Sadie swam to shore. He grabbed her arm and they both scrambled up onto the bank. Sadie’s left leg was bleeding.
“Something was down there,” she said. “I scraped it.” Her teeth were clenched.
Aaron bent down by her leg, trying to wipe away the blood to see the size of the cut. It kept bleeding. He cupped his hands into the water and washed her leg. The cut was a deep scrape from her knee up along her thigh.
“Can you stand up?”
“It hurts.”
Aaron took his towel, soaked it in the water, then wrapped it around Sadie’s thigh. “I’ll get you to a docto
r.” He began putting on his shoes.
Half supporting her, he got Sadie across the fields to his car. She was light enough that he could have easily carried her.
Sadie didn’t say anything. She was trying to concentrate on not crying. She kept pursing her lips. Aaron didn’t say anything either. If he felt responsible, he didn’t mention it.
Aaron meant to take her to the emergency room at the hospital, but by the time they got to town the bleeding had stopped. “I don’t need to go to the hospital,” said Sadie.
They discussed it. At last they decided to stop by the drugstore and take care of the leg themselves.
There were two drugstores in Aurelius: Fays Drugs in the strip mall and Malloy’s Pharmacy on Main Street. Donald Malloy had moved to Aurelius from Buffalo some years before, following his brother, Allen, a doctor and the father of Sadie’s friend Sharon. Donald Malloy was a heavy man in his midforties with sandy red hair and a red face. He wore a white coat with his name across the breast pocket in red lettering. He was alone in the pharmacy. A woman by the name of Mildred Porter also worked with him but she was on her lunch break.
Malloy urged Aaron to take Sadie to a doctor.
“It’s stopped bleeding,” said Aaron. “We can take care of it ourselves.”
“Let me see it,” said Malloy. He had a high, reedy voice. Sadie said his breath smelled sweet, as if he had been eating mints.
Sadie sat up on the counter by the old-fashioned chrome cash register. Malloy took the towel off her leg. The scrape was about twelve inches long.
“Nasty,” he said. “You should have a tetanus shot.” He cleaned the cut with alcohol, which caused Sadie to squeeze Aaron’s hand. “You’re a brave girl. What’s your name?”
“Sadie Moore.”
Malloy mentioned that he knew her father, then he nodded to Aaron. “And I’m sure I know you but I don’t recall . . .”
“Aaron McNeal.”
“Ahh,” said Malloy. He returned to cleaning the rest of Sadie’s thigh with a piece of cotton.
“Is my reputation that bad?” asked Aaron, intending a joke. “You probably knew my parents too.”
“Yes,” said Malloy, “I remember them both.” He seemed on the brink of saying more but then changed his mind. He had large pink hands and the fingernails were perfectly manicured. Taking a tube of ointment, he dabbed it on and around the cut. Then, very precisely, he set a square of gauze on top. He paused and gestured to a ring on the middle finger of Sadie’s left hand, a cheap silver ring, engraved with a dove, that Aaron had given her.
“Why do you wear that ring?” asked Donald.
“It’s pretty. A friend gave it to me.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Does it have to mean something?”
“All creatures have meanings. For instance, a lion might mean courage or it might mean the great beast in the Book of Revelation.”
“I suppose a dove means peace and friendship,” said Sadie. “Even love.” Her cheeks reddened a little.
“Those are some of its meanings,” said Donald. He began to put tape around the gauze.
“What else does it mean?” asked Aaron. He stood beside Sadie, resting a hand on her shoulder.
“It could signify the divine victim, or even hope.”
“What do dogs mean?” asked Sadie, with more interest.
“It depends on the breed. Most simply they signify fidelity.” When Donald had finished with the tape, he patted Sadie’s knee. “Don’t forget the tetanus shot. My brother can do it or his nurse. Go over there right now and I’ll call him.”
Sadie touched the bandage, which was precisely aligned on her leg with the white tape running vertically and horizontally like a professionally drawn game of tic-tac-toe. “This is great,” said Sadie. “You should have been a doctor.”
“My brother got there first,” said Donald. Then he smiled.
“How much do I owe you?” asked Aaron.
Malloy shook his head. “It’s my good deed for the day.”
The pharmacy was cluttered with displays of greeting cards, magazines, coolers with soft drinks and ice cream. Near the door was a large basket of volleyballs and basketballs. Next to it were boxes of badminton sets.
“You want anything?” Aaron asked Sadie. He felt they should buy something after Malloy’s kindness.
“We were going to get a volleyball,” said Sadie.
“Good idea,” said Aaron. He chose one and tossed it to Sadie. Then he paid for the ball.
As Malloy handed Aaron his change, he asked, “Didn’t your father move to Utica?”
“He’s teaching high school there.” Aaron’s tone suggested that he was speaking of a distant acquaintance.
“And you have a sister, if I’m not mistaken?”
Aaron laughed. “She’s Sadie’s father’s girlfriend. You see how incestuous it gets?”
He put his arm around Sadie’s waist and helped her out of the store. Malloy watched them go.
Aaron took Sadie to the doctor’s for her tetanus shot, then drove her home. That night when Franklin saw her bandaged leg, he asked what had happened. In telling him the story, Sadie didn’t think to hold anything back. After all, it had been an adventure.
Thirteen
Ryan Tavich lived alone in a brick bungalow on Jackson Street, where he had been since first moving to Aurelius in the late 1970s. It had two maples in the front yard and no backyard to speak of. I knew one of his neighbors, Whitey Sherman, and Whitey said it often seemed that no one lived in Ryan’s house, that the house appeared vacant. I might have suspected something bizarre, but Franklin had been in Ryan’s house and he said that nothing could be plainer. The only peculiarity was that Ryan’s two living room chairs had been scratched to ribbons by his cat, a large black and white animal with extremely fluffy fur named Chief.
Ryan had a collection of jazz records and in the basement he had his weights. There was nothing on the walls except over the fireplace, where he had hung a picture showing a pheasant skimming the tops of yellow cornstalks. And there was a small bookcase, though Ryan got most of his books from the library and wasn’t much of a reader anyway. On top of the bookcase was a stereo and an electronic chess game. In the corner was a locked wooden cabinet where Ryan kept his hunting rifles and shotguns. He had had several dogs, setters mostly, but he didn’t have one now because he didn’t want to upset the cat.
When Ryan left in the morning, he’d shout, “Guard the house, Chief.” And when he came home at night, he’d call out, “What’s new, Chief?” In the interim Chief would tear up the furniture.
Ryan Tavich was originally from Oneonta, but he left when he was eighteen and joined the army. Although the Vietnam War was going on, he was sent to Korea, where, as he told Franklin, “I froze my ass off.”
Franklin had done an interview with Ryan several years earlier. It wasn’t one of his better ones, either because Ryan gave nothing away or because he had little to say about himself. After the service, he worked for a security company in Albany as a guard, went to the police academy, then worked as a patrolman in Cohoes before taking a job in Aurelius. Police are poorly paid in small towns and the jobs attract men who either can’t do better or want to be in the town for a specific reason. Ryan fit neither category. He was good at his job and could work anywhere in the country. Instead, he settled in Aurelius, which was our gain, but I sympathized with how he was gossiped about, as if he had a secret in his past.
He had few friends other than Franklin, and Ralph Belmont, the undertaker, and Charlie Kirby at the YMCA, but he had great loyalty to them. Consider, for instance, the hours he spent with Sadie, taking her fishing and even hunting. I assumed he used these occasions to praise Paula McNeal or to convince Sadie that she was harmless, but Sadie said that he never mentioned Paula.
Though Ryan dated a num
ber of women, he never dated one for long. Sometimes he broke it off and sometimes the woman broke it off, but if the woman broke it off it was because she knew there was no future in the relationship, that Ryan wouldn’t settle down on someone else’s terms. The exception was Janice McNeal. It was Franklin’s opinion that what made Janice different was her sexuality. She was the kind of woman who completely controlled whatever man she was with and perhaps Ryan liked that.
Franklin said that Ryan still talked about her and talked about her sexuality.
“She would describe how each man’s come tasted different,” he had told Franklin. “How some was sweet and some tasteless and some tasted bitter. I asked about mine and she said it ranked between sweet and tasteless.”
And who did Ryan think had killed her?
“I’m sure it was someone in town. Someone who came to her house on foot and left on foot.”
Could it have been a woman?
“A woman wouldn’t have strangled her.”
Sometimes Ryan struck me as dense. I would think that he lacked all imagination, that he was someone who hadn’t married or found a companion because he was perfectly happy in his own company. But I was also jealous of his relationship with Sadie and must not criticize him unjustly. At times he seemed no more than a dark block of wood, but maybe that was because he wasn’t very tall and because his weight training had made him so rectangular. I should say he was someone with whom I rarely spoke.
But he gave the impression of loss, of secrets, and it was easy to imagine something’s having happened in his childhood or even in the service in Korea. Franklin said that Ryan’s parents were dead but he had a sister in Corning. I believe she was married to a man who worked for the glass company. More likely Ryan was like a plant that never develops. He lacked the final something that makes a person link with life, become part of the flow of life. And perhaps I wasn’t entirely comfortable with him because the same thing could be said of me.
I often wish that people had little screens in their chests, small television monitors, that you could flick on and see the interior lives within. I don’t mean blood pumping and lungs flexing, but what they think and worry about and love. Because otherwise it is all speculation and observing their actions, then coming up with a few possibilities that one tries to shift into the realm of probabilities.
The Church of Dead Girls Page 11