Divining Rod

by Michael Knight

  For Sam Holladay’s sake, he didn’t run the siren.

  Nightingale had known the man a long time, had been a student in his history class seventeen years before. When he arrived at the house, emergency personnel were milling around in the yard, an ambulance and two patrol cars parked along the curb. Sam Holladay was sitting in the grass about ten yards from the body, wearing a tie and suspenders, no jacket. He had his knees drawn up, his eyes focused on the horizon above the golf course. Nightingale made certain that someone was keeping an eye on the wife, then walked over, touched two fingers to Bell’s neck and felt nothing. His skin was already growing cold, rubbery.

  “Shit, Mr. Holladay,” he said.

  Nightingale rubbed his fingertips together, trying to shake the chill left by the dead man’s skin. He wiped them on his pants, held them against his lips and blew warm air across his nails. He didn’t look at the body.

  “What happened?”

  Holladay didn’t answer. Nightingale felt strange. He’d seen dead bodies before but not enough, he guessed, to have grown accustomed to the sight. He was slow and slightly nauseous, like the one and only time he’d gotten stoned in the army. He could feel the sun on his forearms but was chilled all the same. Nightingale looked at Sam Holladay, his chin tilted upward, the skin at his neck loose. He was an old man, not a killer.

  He said, “I’ve gotta arrest you, Mr. Holladay. If you don’t tell me what happened, I’ll ask your wife.”

  “No sense in that. He’s dead. I killed him,” he said. “You can call me Sam if you want. You’re old enough now.”

  “Shit, Mr. Holladay,” he said again.

  He called a deputy over to take Sam Holladay to the station. At the time, it seemed like the proper thing to question Mrs. Holladay himself. He stood with the old man until the car arrived, instructed the deputy to let Mr. Holladay ride in the front seat, if that’s what he wanted, then made the rounds of the neighbors, Betty Fowler and Bob Robinson, who was at work, putting off for as long as he could the grim and painful trip up the driveway to ask this woman what reason her husband might have to ruin all these lives.

  Nightingale was beguiled by crime. He had boxes of mob movies and old newsreels of famous criminals, and he’d slip a tape into the VCR when he was going to bed with the idea that the background noise—all the gunshots and tough talk and high speed chases—might influence his dreams. He conjured visions of bank jobs and gang violence and hostage situations, the way a child called pleasant thoughts to mind to ward away nightmares. Nothing like the movies ever happened in Sherwood, but he wanted to be able to handle himself properly when and if the time ever came.

  Now something had happened and Nightingale was botching the job. Simon Bell was dead and Sam Holladay was in jail and Nightingale had been too nervous to question Delia. He’d gone over, as planned, found her sitting in her living room with a deputy. She had an almost empty drink in her hand. When she looked up at him, her eyes flat and lovely as water, her lips parted at the rim of the glass, he said, “Hey,” his voice going high, his legs twitchy. He told himself that he’d been around too long to be shaken by the sight of a beautiful woman, but the evidence, in this case, was clear.

  When he returned the next day, she was drunk. She led him to the back of the house, the bedroom, where she’d been going though an old steamer trunk, the floor littered with papers and old photographs. She was wearing a white robe, blemished here and there with recent-looking stains, and when she crossed her legs, Indian-style, her thighs came exposed, the trim of cream-colored panties just visible at the fold. He looked at her feet.

  “You all right?” he said.

  “I’m drunk,” she said, pointing at a glass on the floor. The ice had all melted, the liquor looked diluted. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “You should get some sleep.”

  “This is Sam in college,” she said, holding up a black and white of three men in old-fashioned suits. “He’s in the middle. I’d never seen this picture before last night. He was a funny-looking kid. Look at those ears.”

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. Nightingale stood and put his hands in his pockets, came out with a silver dollar and rolled it absently over his knuckles. He walked over to the window and looked out at the yard.

  “Is that a silver dollar?” Delia said. “You don’t see those much anymore.”

  “Oh,” he said, realizing what was in his hand for the first time. It must have been the coin the old lady had made disappear. He wondered how she’d managed to get it into his pocket without him noticing, then remembered what she’d told him about two people being in love. He said, “I need to ask you if you have any idea why Sam might have . . . done what he did.”

  She was quiet long enough that he thought she might have snuck out of the room, but when he turned from the window, she was standing with one hand pushed up into her hair. The robe had come loose, and he could see the curve of her breasts, the slope and smooth skin of her stomach. Her other hand was resting limply against her thigh, palm out, fingers curled up.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a moment, and he knew immediately that she was lying. “You seem like a nice man, Sheriff. You tell me. What could make a man want to do a thing like that?”

  Then she was crying. Her shoulders started to tremble slightly. Her mouth was open but no sound was coming out. Nightingale wanted to go to her, wanted to take her in his arms and assure her that everything was going to come out all right for her in the end, but he didn’t. He thought he could forgive her anything if she would tell him the truth. He told himself that it was just because she was beautiful. A beautiful woman could always make you feel helpless.

  Delia dropped to the edge of the bed, one hand falling into her lap, her hair hanging over her face like a curtain. He made himself think of the dead man, stretched out at the morgue on a stainless steel slab, and of Sam Holladay, the worn orange prison-issue jumpsuit hanging loosely on his bones. Delia cried hard enough that she couldn’t get her breath. When he couldn’t bear it anymore, Nightingale walked over and held her shoulders at arm’s length and said, “Listen, I don’t know what happened. I don’t care what happened,” but that didn’t sound like the right thing to say. He was the sheriff. He patted her arms ridiculously, not wanting to get too close. The next thing he said was out of his mouth before he knew it was coming. He said, “I want to show you something. I want to take you somewhere and show you something.”

  When she had settled down and gotten dressed, he drove her out to the greyhound farm. He regretted having mentioned it, but it was too late to take the invitation back now. It wasn’t time for the dogs to be running, but he flashed his badge and the kennel-keeper was obliging, letting the dogs out of their cages a few at a time. They stood at the fence and watched the dogs racing circles, arching their backs to gather strength, then uncoiling, stretching full length with the effort of running faster. The wind moved Delia’s hair.

  “I wonder what they think they’re chasing,” she said. She was calmer now, beginning to sober a little. Her skin was pale as moonlight. “I always thought greyhounds had to be chasing something, like the mechanical rabbit at the track.”

  “They’re chasing something,” he said. “Look at them. It’s the one thing they know how to do.”

  Nightingale didn’t ask her any more questions. He understood what had happened. It was the oldest story in the world. This is something that could happen in a movie, he thought, the two of us standing here, the dogs tearing through the grass. He drove her home after a little while and turned his attention to other cases, the small misunderstandings that occupied his time in Sherwood. But he didn’t stop thinking about her, not entirely. He could go whole days without envisioning her face, but when he closed his eyes to sleep she was there in the place of his criminal dreams, as vivid as a photograph, as real as an actress on a screen, ten times larger than life. The day she left town, a mont
h after her husband was transferred to the federal prison over in Atmore, Nightingale paid Sam Holladay a visit. He found the old man in his cell, lying on the cot with his eyes closed. He swung his legs to the floor when the sheriff entered, made room for him on the cot and the two of them sat there for a few minutes looking at the floor between their shoes. After a while Nightingale said, “She’s gone, Sam.”

  “I know,” Holladay said. “I told her I wouldn’t see her. She’d waste her life on me. I told the guards not to let her in the visiting room anymore.”

  Nightingale nodded and linked his fingers together, his forearms across his knees. He said, “I heard she was moving back to her mother in Mississippi.”

  “I’m glad,” Holladay said.

  They sat there for a while longer without speaking, the ward quiet because the rest of the inmates were in the yard. Against the far wall of the cell was a stack of books, history texts mostly. Nightingale guessed that Delia had brought them to keep her husband company. He didn’t know, then, that Sam Holladay would be dead in two days, his heart slowing while he slept, coming to a stop sometime around dawn, the coroner said. If he had understood, at that moment, that it was possible for a man to die of a broken heart, he would have thought of something else to say, some way to dispel the quiet between them. But after a few more minutes, he stood and shook Sam Holladay’s hand, wished him good luck at a trial that he would never see and called for the guard to lead him back out into the faint, almost breatheable evening.

  On his way home, Nightingale drove by the greyhound farm and had the man let Bill out by himself. It was night by then and the dog bolted into the field, then flopped over on his back and wiggled in the grass. Nightingale thought that greyhounds looked funny just acting like dogs, their bodies too lean, almost skeletal, not bred for simple pleasures. He called his name a few times and, to Nightingale’s surprise, Bill rolled to his feet, padded over to the fence and sniffed his fingers, his nose cool and damp.

  “You’re a good dog,” he said.

  The dog turned and trotted away a few steps then stopped, one forepaw lifted to his chest, and sniffed the heavy air, as if only then realizing that something was out of the ordinary. That it was dark and he was running alone. Nightingale said his name again, softer this time. The dog hesitated, looked in his direction, then started running again, a ghostly blur, sensing that because a man was present, everything must be all right.

  Her Divining Rod

  Betty Fowler claimed the body. A week had passed since Simon’s death with no word about a service, so she called the police and wondered about the status of things. The sheriff asked her a few questions over the phone—Was she aware of a possible relationship between Delia Holladay and the deceased? She told him no. Did she know of any family Simon Bell might have outside of Sherwood? She did not—then he confessed that after all this time, the cadaver was still stretched on a slab in the county morgue. They couldn’t find a soul in the world to come down and take it off their hands.

  She had surprised herself by lying to the police. Simon, she felt certain, had been sleeping with Delia Holladay. She had watched the two of them coming and going together for more than a month now and why else would Sam Holladay have done such a terrible thing? But what surprised her most was how she felt at the sight of Simon Bell, first on the metal examining table and then in the dark wood coffin and then as they were lowering him into the grave. It was as if she herself had been betrayed.

  Besides the minister, Bob Robinson was the only other person at the funeral. In the distance, down the hill, there was another service in progress, with a tent and folding chairs and women in black dresses. Someone was singing. Her chest ached at the thought that Simon could have been in love with another woman. She found it hard to breathe and Robinson noticed her trouble and put an arm around her and asked if she was all right. She waved her handkerchief at him and nodded her okay. She wanted to ask how it was possible for a man to live his life in such a way that the only people to mourn his passing were an old woman and a Yankee from Indiana. When her husband died, she consoled herself with the knowledge that she would never have to feel that sort of pain again. She was too old to be in love. How ridiculous, she thought, to feel this way about a man who could not possibly have shared her sentiment. How foolish to give herself with the expectation of nothing in return. She shook with anger at Simon for making her feel the way she did, though she knew he hadn’t done anything to encourage her. She was too old for heartbreak and disappointment, too wise to give her heart, even the smallest part of it, a second time.

  In her car after the service, waiting for the air conditioner to cool the interior, she said, “You goddam motherfucker. You pansy-ass dickhead,” and then she was laughing. She could see his brow wrinkling in surprise, his eyes widening at her progress in the field of profanity.

  Bob Robinson leaned against her door.

  He said, “Did you just say what I think you said?”

  “Fuck you, Bob Robinson,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”

  He smiled and patted the doorframe. “Fuck you, too, Mrs. Fowler. I know he would appreciate what you did for him today.” He rapped the window with his knuckle and walked off toward his car.

  At home, she made a pitcher of iced tea and took a glass out to the sleeping porch. She could see the house, just across the curve in the road. The door closed, the curtains drawn. To keep herself from getting too gloomy, Betty Fowler went inside and retrieved her divining rod from the umbrella stand in the entry hall. She made her way across the street to look for the gold her husband had left behind. For a long time, she stood in the dead center of the sixteenth fairway with her eyes closed. Insects chattered resolutely in the grass, sunlight pressed on her clothes. Once she heard a golf cart passing on the path, the murmur of voices, but for the most part the course was empty. After a while, she heard a muffled thump and opened her eyes to see a golf ball rolling toward her across the grass, but she didn’t see anyone at the tee. The ball rolled to a stop at her feet, and she stooped to pick it up. It was grass-stained and chipped, the twine showing through in places. She heard a little girl’s voice yell, “You crazy old bitch.”

  It had been a week, at least, since she’d been accosted by the girl. She paused a moment, considering her reply. She had been waiting for this. At that instant, as though visited by a revelation, the identity of the girl came to her. She let the end of the divining rod touch the ground and rested her weight on it like a cane.

  “Is that you Maddie Robinson?” she said. “You’ve got about ten seconds to show yourself. Or I’m calling your father at work.”

  No answer. She said, “I just saw your daddy this morning, so don’t think for a minute that I’m bluffing. I’m gonna start counting now.” But before she could begin, Maddie came out from behind the trees, her eyes on the ground, her hands clasped at her middle. She was barefoot, her toes curled sheepishly into the grass. Betty Fowler said, “Come over here. I wanna know who taught you to talk to me like that.”

  Maddie crept over and said, “My brother taught me. I heard my Dad say some of those things, too.”

  “Un-hunh,” Betty Fowler said.

  She couldn’t help liking the girl. The way her cheeks blossomed red with embarrassment, her hair making a cowlick at the crown of her head. Her knees dotted with scabs, her nails chewed to the quick.

  “You’re not the only one with a nasty mouth,” she said, drawing a breath. “Goddam motherfucking bitch ass queer. See there. Simon Bell taught me.”

  Maddie looked at her, amazed. In a quiet voice, she said, “He’s dead.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Her chest went tight. Maddie’s eyes were a mix of fear and expectation. The girl was so young. She thought she should tell her something about life and death, about the persistent way of the world. The way lives could reflect one another, forward and backward through time, like sunlight on broken glass. But she stopped herself. Instead, she said, “Know what I do out here
all day, Maddie?”

  “My brother told me you were a witch.”

  Betty Fowler laughed, softly. “I’m not a witch. I’m divining for gold. You know what that means? It’s a kind of magic, I guess. Would you like to learn?”

  Maddie nodded, her mouth open with surprise. Betty Fowler handed her the divining rod, showed her how to hold it properly, told her what it might feel like when she found the gold. She reached around the girl and covered her hands with her own. She could smell the summer in her hair, could feel the warmth of summers past in her skin. They walked together for a few steps, then Betty Fowler opened her arms and let Maddie move away. The girl kept her eyes closed tight. She said, “Mrs. Fowler, are you still there? Am I doing right?”

  “I’m here, baby,” she said. “You’re doing fine.”

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The typeface used in this book is a version of Palatino, originally designed in 1950 by Hermann Zapf (b. 1918), one of the most prolific contemporary type designers, who has also created Melior and Optima. Palatino was first used to set the introduction of a book of Zapf’s hand lettering, in an edition of eighty copies on Japan paper handbound by his wife, Gudrun von Hesse; the book sold out quickly and Zapf’s name was made. (Remarkably, the lettering had actually been done when the self-taught calligrapher was only twenty-one.) Intended mainly for “display” (title pages, headings), Palatino owes its appearance both to calligraphy and the requirements of the cheap German paper at the time—perhaps why it is also one of the best-looking fonts on low-end computer printers. It was soon used to set text, however, causing Zapf to redraw its more elaborate letters.