Peculiar Country

by Stuart R. West

  I put him far behind me. Then decided the buffoon should be held accountable for his actions, brought to trial inside my courtroom. And so help me, if he dared play big-eyed and innocent, I’d smite him down with the righteous zeal of ol’ Judge Wilbur himself.

  My bike swerved into a U-turn. Gravel and dust spat up.

  “Dibby…talk to me…what’s wrong?” Winded, he caught up. Hands on his knees, he looked ready to toss up into the drive.

  Calm as blue skies, I swung my leg over my bike, and toed the kick-stand down. As I approached him, he smiled—actually dared smile at me! This changed my tactics. My fist bunched. As I broke into a trot, my fist tightened.

  He stood still, an easy target. “Are you okay? I was wor—”

  Tumph.

  Over the last couple days, I’d fairly well learned that when you sock someone upside the face, it doesn’t sound anything like the movies. No firecracker smack of fulfillment. But it surely put the spring back in my step as I watched his head turn, his body twist, his arms flail about like a grounded bird. One foot came up and he went down, flat on his back.

  He didn’t look so cute on the ground, just kinda’ pathetic.

  “What…what’d you do that for?” He rubbed his cheek.

  “Don’t you dare act like you don’t know what you did, James Mackleby!” I stood over him, arms akimbo, not beyond kicking some sense into him.

  “I don’t! I swear to God, I don’t know what I did!”

  I looked up to the sky on my right, glanced likewise to the left. “You’d better hope God didn’t hear you. I imagine he’ll be hurling down a lightning bolt any second now.”

  “Dibby, just tell me what I did.” He struggled to get up.

  I wouldn’t have it. “You just stay right down there where you belong, you bottom-dwelling, trash-eating, lying catfish! Don’t make me sock you again! Although, truth be told, I sorely wouldn’t mind having another crack at it.”

  He stayed put, but didn’t know when to keep his pie-hole shut. “I didn’t do anything! I swear I didn’t, Dibby!”

  Sure enough, he aimed on playing the wide-eyed innocent to the very end. Shame on him for making me have to say it. “You liar! No-good cheat! You asked Suzette to the movies!”

  “What?” With one hand out (more for protection, I imagined, than balance), he made it to his legs. “Dibby, I only asked her because I thought you couldn’t go. I didn’t think your old man would let you. Then I got to thinking…maybe you hadn’t asked him yet ‘cause you didn’t really want to go with me.”

  He reached out, grabbed my shoulder, his other hand looking to make them a bookend set. I shrugged free, stepped back.

  “Damn you, James. Just…damn you.” And damn me for falling back on tears. My hands flew to my face, covered my shame, my humiliation. My naiveté for falling for an absolute cad.

  “I’m sorry, Dibby. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “No one ever does! But they keep doing it!” I uncovered my face, drew a shirt sleeve across my eyes. “After my mom left…I didn’t trust anyone again. Ever! And just when I was ready to take a big leap of faith on you, James… Well, you betrayed me. Betrayed me just like everyone else…”

  “That’s…not what I wanted, Dibby. Not at all.”

  “What about what I want? How come I never get what I want?”

  “I still want to go to the movies with you, Dibs. Um…if that’s what you want.” He tipped his head, tried to raise a smile. His sense of timing needed a tune-up. “ I like you… No one else. Honest injun. I only asked Suzette out as a buddy. If that makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t.” I pulled back and walloped the other side of his face. “But that surely did.”

  I hauled myself out of there fast as my Raleigh could fly, leaving James dazed in a cloud of granite dust.

  * * *

  My studies had been suffering from neglect lately and I didn’t give two-hoots-and-a-holler. Frankly, the school should make allowances for affairs of the heart that plummet south. I don’t know how folks cope with the aftermath, hardly worth the effort.

  I walked my bike up the drive, my mind set on an early to bed evening, when I heard a voice holler out.

  “Hey there, Dibby.”

  Devin Meyers stood behind his battered picket fence, looking for all the world like an over-stuffed scarecrow. He lived up to the title, too, nearly scaring the daylights outta me.

  I gathered myself, and returned a greeting. “Hey there, Mr. Meyers. Didn’t see you standing there.”

  “Sorry if I spooked you, Dibby. I’ve been needing to speak to you, but didn’t want to bother your daddy at work.” He gestured toward Dad’s hearse in the drive. “Not when he’s doing the good Lord’s work.”

  I didn’t think Dad would appreciate Mr. Saunder’s heavenly assessment of his particular vocation, but I didn’t possess the fire to argue the point. “That’s mighty thoughtful of you.”

  “Anyhoo… Seems you’re a bit late getting home from school today, Dibby.” He leaned his forearms over the fence, clasped dirty hands together. Smiled out of one corner of his mouth, while the other nibbled on a piece of hay. He balanced his cap, tipped it ever so to the other side of his head. Getting serious minded.

  “Truth be told, I’ve been staying after class a bit, helping Mrs. Hopkins.”

  “Uh oh. I surely hope you’re not in too much trouble.”

  I shook my head.

  As if he’d bitten into a sour walnut, he grimaced. “First, let me just doff my hat to you, young miss, for your bringing the mail to my sister yesterday.” True to his word, he swept off his cap, bowed over a bit. A question mark of lonely hair fell from the top of his nearly naked scalp. He swooped it back into place, locked it in tight with his cap. “But…as you mighta figured, Evelyn…Mrs. Saunders…ain’t quite right. Seems your visit set her back a spell.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear that. I hope she hasn’t taken to bed or—”

  “No, nothing of the sort. It’s just…Evelyn doesn’t handle stressful situations very well. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to not come ‘round no more.”

  “Oh... Would you tell her I hope she gets to feeling better real soon?”

  He smirked, gave a put-on nod. He had no intention of telling his sister hear any such thing. “I’ll do that, Dibby, I surely will. You take care now.” He trawled off through his cornfield, humming that same strange tune I’d heard the first time I’d met him.

  On top of everything else, Mr. Meyers’ out-of-the-blue request hardly seemed shocking or hurtful. Just another odd adult encounter. I was used to them.

  Maybe Devin Meyers did indeed have his sister’s welfare in mind by making decisions for her. Or maybe he was keeping her prisoner. Come to think of it, I’d never seen another visitor over there, ‘cept of course for Odie delivering the mail. And he tended not to linger long.

  Something stuck in my craw about our chat, though. When the realization finally smacked me, it set the Willies loose: Devin Meyers knew of my comings and goings, right down to my school hours. An unsettling notion if I’d ever had one.

  I’d just walked through the door, when an engine, one starving for maintenance, rumbled out in our drive. A familiar one, too. I pulled back the curtain. Sure enough, Sheriff Grigsby’s ol’ green monster of a pickup rolled to a persnickety stop, the tail-pipe back-talking with a loud pop. In the truck-bed, ropes pulled taught over an object wrapped in canvas and potato sacks. A fairly familiar sight at our home, and a macabre one to boot.

  Hettie Williquette had made her first and last house-call to our abode.

  Whenever the Sheriff brought around bodies, Dad didn’t care for my eavesdropping, but I wasn’t about to miss this conversation. Like it or not, I was involved up to my back teeth in Hettie’s passing.

  I raced upstairs to the landing and tucked in neatly behind the modesty panel of the desk that sat there, my usual spying nook.

  Clearly, Sheriff Grigsby did
n’t know how to move quietly, everything about him a three-ring event. He clomped up the steps to the porch, knocked loudly on the door, then banged away on the bell.

  So as not to miss a customer, Dad had rigged the doorbell so a buzzer went off down in his workshop. Bad for business, he’d explained with a wry grin, to keep death waiting.

  Determined, the Sheriff kept on stubbing at the doorbell. From down in the depths of Dad’s workshop, swinging doors squeaked like mice. Dad’s footsteps clomped up the ramp and down the hallway. The sound carried far, echoing through the ducts and whispering through the vents. I peeked around the desk, saw Dad hurrying toward the front door. In the mirror, he straightened his lab coat, which appeared to be shrinking with age. Nice and tidy now, he opened the door.

  “Afternoon, Bill,” Dad said as he looked over the Sheriff’s shoulder. “I assume this isn’t a social call.”

  “You’d be right in your assumption,” said the Sheriff. “Look here, Oscar, I don’t know how much you’ve heard or what Dibby might’ve told you—”

  “Dibby? What’s she got to do with this?” Dad’s voice raised, one octave below panic.

  “She’s fine, just fine. Level-headed little gal, that one of yours.”

  “What’s this about, Bill? Who’s in the truck bed?”

  The Sheriff swept off his wide-brimmed hat, fanned his face. “It’s ol’ Hettie Williquette. Off to meet her maker.”

  A pause. I could practically hear Dad’s logic grinding away, working to fill the gaps the Sheriff wasn’t in any hurry to plug. “I’m sorry to hear that… But what’s this about Dibby?”

  “Well…she found Hettie. At her home up in the woods.”

  “What? That can’t be. She—”

  “Fraid it’s true. She discovered the body, reported it to us just this afternoon.”

  Like an ill-prepared student called upon in class, Dad sputtered. “I don’t… This is… Sorry, sorry, Bill. I’m afraid I didn’t know anything about this. Dibby doesn’t talk to me like she used to. She’s…hiding things from me.”

  Fine talk coming from Dad, seeing as how he’d kept hushed about Mom for most of my life.

  “Aw, you know kids, Oscar,” said the Sheriff, “it’s just part of growing up. Stretching their sea legs and all.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “It surely doesn’t.” How in the world the Sheriff knew anything about kids struck me as plum odd. Far as I knew he’d never had any children himself, a lifelong bachelor. “But we were the same way as kids. Just hard to remember back then.” He laughed, slapped his belly.

  “But what was Dibby doing… Never mind. I’ll talk to her later.” Dad took a breath, put on professional manners. “I assume since you brought Hettie here in your truck, she’s one of the sad cases.”

  “That’s about the size of it. Far as I know, ol’ Hettie had no living relatives. There ain’t no records and no one in town knows diddley ‘bout her either. So…there’s no one to pay for a funeral service. If you wouldn’t mind…”

  “I’ll be glad to settle affairs.” Dad never said it, but I suspected it pained his wallet a bit to take care of the town freebies. The send-offs weren’t elaborate by any means: a nice, simple cremation, ashes spread over the graveyard. Still, time was involved, and Dad always said, “Time is money.”

  “Me and the rest of the town thank you muchly, Oscar. Now, don’t go wasting any more of your resources than necessary. Hettie’s death was a plain and simple case of old age.”

  Dad stiffened. His coat threatened to split at his back. “I understand. I’ll see to it.”

  Even though I had no interest in the family business, I knew Dad’s number one rule of death by heart: Dying from old age is a bunch of hooey, nothing more than a pretty metaphor to cover up what really happened to the body.

  “I can always count on you,” said Sheriff Grigsby. “Speaking of which…care to give me a hand?”

  “Surely. Let me go get the gurney.”

  As Dad went back downstairs to retrieve his wheeled stretcher, the Sheriff clumped off outside. I heard Dad throw back the cellar doors—a direct shortcut to outside—and together, they wheeled Hettie down into the workshop.

  I waited ‘till I heard the truck grumble away before I came up for air. Faster than usual, Dad met me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Um…hey, Dad.”

  “Hey there, yourself.”

  Miles of tension stretched between us. I just wanted it done, ready to swallow my newest dose of medicine and move along. “That’s a real shame about Miss Williquette, huh?”

  “What’s a shame is you didn’t feel the need to tell me you’d found her body, Dibby.”

  “I think there’s a lotta shame regarding things kept between us, Dad.” Without consideration, the words blurted out. Intended to wound. Still very angry, very muchly hurt.

  Dad pulled off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Dad… I’m sorry I said that. I think…there’re things I still need to say. To understand. But is it okay if we do it some other time?”

  “Absolutely.” He looked as relieved as I felt. He pulled me into an awkward hug. Like a rag doll, I just went along for the ride, my arms stubbornly at my sides. “Dibby, I know you’ve been through a lot today. Are you okay?”

  “Hettie wasn’t the first dead body I’ve ever seen, you know.”

  “That’s my girl.” He chuckled. Living in a funeral home, you learn to look for humor in the darkest of corners. “But if you need to talk about it, you know you can always come to me, right?”

  “Sure.” But I didn’t really know if that was the case. Not anymore. I used to think Dad was beyond reproach, incapable of lying. But he was all too fallible, just like every adult. I didn’t know if I could trust him any longer. I scooted out of his embrace.

  “What were you doing way out there, Dibby? At Hettie’s place?”

  “I was gonna help her clear out some brush and stuff.” I’d already set fire to this lie. I figured fanning the flames a bit wouldn’t singe anybody’s eyebrows. “She was gonna pay me.”

  “Why? I always give you money for what you need. And, to be honest, Hettie Williquette wasn’t known as the friendliest woman in town. I don’t want to…falsely accuse you of anything, but I suspect you’re not telling the truth.”

  “Now you know how it feels to be in my shoes.”

  My second arrow fired. The cumulative effect of today had tightened my bow string and I had to release it.

  “Dibby...” His voice cracked, just a hair. I truly couldn’t unleash any more waterworks, not today. Besides, we had more pressing matters at hand. Matters that didn’t directly involve cutting open our hearts and letting them bleed out.

  I did the best thing I could, something very adult like. I changed the topic.

  “Dad, there’s something you oughta know about Miss Williquette’s death.”

  Taken aback, his eyebrows flew sky-high. “What would that be?”

  “Someone killed her. There wasn’t anything natural about it.”

  My third arrow dropped Dad to the bottom step. I sat beside him.

  “Tell me what you know, Dibby.”

  I told him about how Hettie’d been dressed, how the bed was made. He appeared doubtful, but when I told him about how Hettie’s lamp had traveled across the room and smashed against the wall, he changed his tune.

  “So…you think Hettie threw her lamp at someone? Someone she was trying to fend off?”

  “I surely do.”

  Dad tugged at his lower lip, let it fly back with a plip. “Tell you what, Dibby. I respect your intuition. And I trust your instincts. I’ll look into it and let you know what I find out.”

  He coaxed the first, honest to gosh smile outta me for hours. “Thanks, Dad.” Sometimes it’s the little things that matter.

  * * *

  While Dad was banging, sawing, drilling, Lord only knows what down in his wo
rkshop, a ruckus of another sort arose outside. The loud caterwauling set the kitchen windowpanes to jiggling, loud enough to get even ol’ Hy Thurgood out of bed before noon.

  At the front door, a visitor scratched away at the wood. When I swung the door open, irritation gave way to melancholy. Hettie’s cats had gathered on the stoop, come to pay their last respects.

  At least thirty felines crowded our porch. They rubbed against the posts and columns, sought comfort by brushing into one another. Furry heads turned up when I walked out onto the porch. Animal town criers, they meowed, chattered and chirruped. Tails slashed back and forth, swept the floorboards. A funeral parade wove between my legs.

  Out in the bushes, leaves rustled. And I swear I glimpsed a large black mass: the giant, otherworldly cat from last night. Heard him yowl, too, all brass and brumble.

  I knelt, gave a good rub-down to those nearest. They flocked to me, the new Pied Piper of cats. Now that Hettie had passed, I wondered if they’d adopted me. Their glowing, haunted eyes seemed to answer in mystical affirmation. Sadness formed their vocalizations, sorrow rounded their eyes. I sat, let them crowd me, felt an affinity with them, all of us aching for devotion.

  If the townsfolk of Hangwell had all disliked Hettie Williquette, she sure had nurtured a loving following of a different sort.

  Through a narrow slip of the door, I escaped inside and returned with a couple large bowls of milk. The platters were licked clean in no time.

  Dad opened the door behind me. “What in the world?”

  Sweat darkened his underarms. Other stains soiled his usually pristine lab-coat, gruesome blotches I’m fairly certain had originated from within Miss Williquette.

  “Say howdy to Miss Williquette’s cats,” I said. “Holding their very own funeral procession.”

  “Well, I’ll be…” Clearly befuddled, Dad struggled to accept the proof on the porch. Finally, he just shook his head and sighed. “Never let it be said I don’t try and comfort all of my mourners. C’mon, Dibs, let’s get ‘em some more milk.”

  In the kitchen, Dad said, “You were right. About Hettie.”