Death of the Extremophile

by Stuart Parker

The woman was tipping vegetable scraps out of her metal pail, the New Hampshire chickens clucking hungrily around her feet. The woman’s straw blonde hair flowed out from under a white, wide brimmed punting hat. Her complexion was creamy, her eyes a light blue and her expression had a gentle, calming quality to it. She was wearing a pink cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up at the wrists and hanging loosely over her faded black denim trousers. Hope rapped a knuckle on the front gate; to be heard above the chooks required a firm hand, and left him rubbing knuckles as eye contact was finally made.

  ‘Hello.’ The woman put down her pail and walked across the large front yard.

  Hope supposed he resembled an insurance salesman or perhaps an FBI special agent on assignment, for there wouldn’t have been many other types decked out in shiny new black suits in these parts. The suit and the suitcase full of clothes accompanying his third piece of luggage, a gun laden cargo bag, had been derived from the same shopping spree in Chicago. Having studied the police logbook he had come to realise that Sacksville was not as quiet as he first thought. So, he would stay awhile.

  He put down his luggage and wrapped a tired shoulder. ‘Are you Katrina Hawkshaw? I’ve been led to believe you may be looking for a border. I’m looking for a room.’

  Hawkshaw carefully looked him over. ‘How did you hear about the vacancy? I don’t believe anyone in this town would have recommended you to me. Not unless they thought you were of a mind to hurt me.’

  Hope proffered a look of surprise and consternation. ‘I would take it personally if they did.’ He did not intend to let on, however, that it was in fact the police logbook that had recommended him here, her arrest for the murder of her husband having caught his eye.

  He looked around the cedar trees that crowded into forest just beyond the property limits. ‘I was looking for somewhere on the outskirt of town. Somewhere with solitude. I am a recent widower, you see.’ He removed his iron grey Fedora so as to show his face. ‘I would like to stay a few weeks. Stroll in the hills. Get my thoughts together. As you can imagine, it’s a difficult time.’

  ‘Being a widow myself I can imagine.’ She spoke with a slight huskiness. She wiped her hands on her trousers. ‘My name is Katrina Hawkshaw.’

  ‘I’m Tom Colin.’

  ‘May I call you Cole? I’ve met both Toms and Colins that have turned me off those names.’

  ‘That would not be an imposition,’ replied Hope.

  ‘Good.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘It’s my husband’s room you would be staying in,’ said Hawkshaw. ‘It is the biggest room in the house but I have not wanted to take it over. In fact, I would have moved out of this house altogether if I could afford to take a loss on the sale.’

  Hope put his hat back on and scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘A house of sorrow might not be what I need right now.’

  She shook her head. ‘My loss was some time ago and I do not feel much anymore. Probably not as much as I should.’

  Hope smirked on the inside as he recalled the description in the log book of how she had stabbed him in the chest and stoved his head in with a brick. With the limited amount of enquiry he was willing to make for fear of drawing attention to himself, he had found that her father, a hotshot lawyer from Chicago, had pulled off a remarkable win in the trial, gaining the sympathy of the jury in her plea of self-defense. The details of the case had been buried away in the records, but Hope figured it was on the surface here, for such brutal actions seemed inconceivable from someone so quiet of nature and so unassumingly pretty.

  ‘Well, if the secret to forgetting is in the waters here,’ he said, ‘I’d happily partake despite myself.’

  ‘It’s not the water by itself, but you can mix some in if that’s the way you take it.’ Katrina Hawkshaw smirked, revealing an endearing dimpled chin. ‘Why don’t you come and look at the room and I’ll show you a map of the local woods over a coffee and freshly baked cookies and you can decide then.’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  Hawkshaw had to work the front gate to shift the stubborn latch. ‘We had best move straight to the house. There’s a precocious goose lurking about somewhere who will not take kindly to being challenged as the man about the house. I should have put it in the pot a long time ago, I suppose. I never found the right recipe for precociousness.’

  The gate scraped open and Hope stepped through. He followed Hawkshaw into the house, as much with his eyes as with his legs. She moved her narrow hips in a manner he found beguiling.

  The wire door squeaked open. A clean white linoleum floor greeted Hope. It struck him that for someone living the life of a recluse, the house was remarkably well prepared for a visitor. The kitchen, dining room composite was the first room; it smelt of baking and there was a fruit bowl on the unclothed teak table, neatly arranged with apples, pears oranges and berries. The cleanliness and order continued to impress as he was shown to the bedroom. It greeted him warmly. There was not the mustiness of a room banished but rather smelled of lavender. The room featured a neatly made bed, a round table with cabriole legs hosting silver candle holders and a ceramic vase and a walnut wardrobe. The afternoon sun shone through the windows at which the dark cream curtains were drawn.

  ‘Is it to your liking?’ queried Hawkshaw, slipping out a handkerchief as though in readiness to wipe away any new deposits of dust. ‘The door is lockable from the inside.’

  ‘You don’t scare me that much.’ Hope put down his baggage. ‘I’ll pay ten dollars a week.’

  Hawkshaw caught her breath. ‘I don’t know what city you come from but things don’t cost that much in this part of the world.’

  ‘I’m from New York. And what I’m paying for is a small extra to go with the room.’

  ‘If you’re talking about meals, they don’t cost so much either. In fact, a lot comes right out of the garden - something I doubt occurs in New York at all often.’

  ‘You’re right about that. And it sounds very appetising. However, that is not what I am talking about.’ Hope stepped over to the window. There was a crow sitting atop the fence outside. And the goose Hawkshaw had been referring to was standing proudly in the centre of the yard, going in one direction and then another. ‘Long walks during the day may clear my head, and I already feel this is the right place for that,’ he continued. ‘At night, you must understand, the pain is altogether more intense and the required distraction therefore needs to be of a comparable intensity.’

  Hawkshaw frowned. ‘Are you talking about whiskey?’

  Hope knew the word meant different things to different people like few others and he got the feeling in this case it was something altogether acerbic.

  ‘No,’ he said, holding back his own personal enthusiasm for the subject. ‘Another vice. Playing cards. Poker mainly.’

  ‘Gambling?’ This did not quite seem a dirty word.

  ‘Not for vast sums. But it is a numbers game. And the flow of numbers through my head is very pacifying.’

  ‘I see. Are you sure such card games are played in Sacksville? A New Yorker might be aghast at how sleepy a town such as this can get.’

  ‘There are card games in every town. And where there is money on the table, the atmosphere is never sleepy, never provincial. The best players have superior memories and sometimes very long memories and so I would appreciate it if as few people as possible know that I was staying under this roof.’

  ‘In other words, you are paying for silence?’

  ‘For discretion. And an understanding that my comings and goings would be irregular.’

  ‘A man who will come and go in the dead of night and who refuses to be discussed, I’ve had previous experience with such a situation,’ she snapped. ‘In my case it was called marriage.’ She marched out of the bedroom and her voice came back through the passageway. ‘I’ll prepare our tea so we can drink to the deal.’

  25. ‘The real madman’s Olympics are just
around the corner and I’m going to be there representing America.’

  The Eternal Pigmy Tavern’s gravel courtyard had a clutch of Dodge pickup trucks parked in a row and a gutted Cleveland tractor gathering weeds to the side. A rusted, decrepit water trough stood just outside the front door: it obviously belonged to an era when there were more four-legged arrivals than four-wheeled; the outer structure of the tavern itself also seemed to have received little maintenance since its heyday: its corrugated iron roof was buckled and rusted, its splintering timber walls streaked with the rust and dirty rain water that spilled out of its gutters, and its windows were curtained with dust to the point that any other kind of curtain would have been made redundant. Hope walked into the tavern unarmed and with his hands buried in his pockets.

  There were mostly farmers and drifters at the tables and they were talking more than they drank: not because they wanted to but because they liked seeing something in their glasses. A harmonica player was belting out a lively rendition of Chased Old Satan Through the Door in one corner and it was filling every other corner as well. The old man playing it, whose long beard seemed knitted from the same shaggy wool as his pullover, did not have enough fingers to hold his instrument straight and only one foot to tap to the beat. Hope wondered if he had any medals to go with his disabilities and he supposed it was a Remembrance Day treat that such things were revealed: it seemed unfair to him that the wealthiest and most vain could accessorise themselves with jewelry all year round and receive nothing but praise and envying glances while on the other hand the nation’s bravest were only expected to pin on their pieces of tin once a year and rarely receive more than a passing respectful glance for the deed. Hope would have tossed a coin into the player’s hat if only the hat had not still been on his head. That would have been the best way to end this train of thought; instead, he went for that other sure fire option and headed for the bar.

  The bartender was in a state. He had sunken eyes and teeth that looked like he had forgotten to swallow his corn. He might have been hooked on something. He had been waiting for a customer edgily and almost jumped against the bar.

  ‘What’ll it be, mister?’

  ‘Beer,’ said Hope, putting his foot up on the skirting board, ‘and I’ll pay you more than its worth if you point me in the direction of a certain old friend.’

  The bartender went for a glass and for a time concentrated only on the pouring. But after a while he muttered out the corner of his mouth, ‘An old friend, did you say?’

  ‘Haggerty Smith. I hear he has been known to frequent this establishment.’

  The bartender did not show any immediate reaction, though as he rounded up the pouring, he said, ‘You’re right about one thing at least. That will cost more than the beer.’

  Hope gave him a couple of dollars and a couple more. ‘Give me the run around and what I take back won’t be a refund.’

  ‘You talk like Haggerty. I won’t give him a name or tell him what you look like, I’ll just tell him your quality of threat. He might recognise you as a friend, after all.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Your information is only half good. He doesn’t drink in the bar, he owns it. He pays better for not telling than you do for telling but sometimes it’s not what you pay but how you pay that counts.’ He wiped his hands on a towel that was hanging down behind the bar. ‘Wait here.’

  Hope watched him disappear through a doorway at the back. He had his beer to mark time with, although it was not the most reliable of clocks. Today it was running fast and by the time of the bartender’s return it well and truly needed winding up again.

  ‘Are you packing?’ asked the bartender pensively.

  ‘No,’ Hope muttered. ‘And with hands as big and ugly as yours you’re going to have to take my word for it.’

  ‘Sounding like a friend of Haggerty’s again, though he did just assure me he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He said he’d meet you all the same. What I’d recommend you consider carefully beforehand is whether that’s what you really want.’

  ‘If I was packing I’d probably be giving you the same kind of limp as your harmonica player over there. You think I’d come all this way and be so overcharged for a lukewarm beer without having considered what I really want?’

  ‘What is your name? Just in case they ask me to put something on the headstone.’

  Hope shrugged. ‘A man who has never read any kind of bible better not be worrying about who wants to read his headstone. Now let’s get on with it while it’s still only my headstone we’re talking about.’

  The bartender nodded his head, satisfied, as though Hope had just come up with the secret password.

  ‘This way, if you will.’

  He was ushering him to the doorway behind the bar. Hope walked around to meet him there and then followed a step behind. The passageway was jammed up with barrels of beer and crates full of empty whiskey bottles and Hope was having to plant one foot carefully in front of the other. The bartender then took a right turn, knocking on the door and looking at Hope without opening it.

  ‘You’re on your own. I’ve got to get back to the bar.’

  Hope noticed that he did have a limp after all. Not so serious but it didn’t make the years lived appear any the more kinder.

  The door was dark grey and the handle a slippery metal knob - Hope had it open and was stepping through without checking whether or not the consistency of his palms had anything to do with the slipperiness. He found himself not so much entering a room as entering a fist. It struck him from the side, square on the temple and he dropped like there was a hole in the floor.

  The voice was as calm as the punch was brutal.

  ‘Pardon my manners but when a friend drops by unannounced there are certain ground rules. The first is just that. You stay on the ground. That way I’ll be sure I can see you. The other rule is you do the talking. I assume you have something to say. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, my name is Haggerty Smith. Evening to you.’

  The man might have been watching him, but for Hope himself the room was nothing more than an aching, pulsating blur.

  He talked back up into it. ‘Yeah, I’ve got something to say. I hate rules. But I’d rather say that on my feet.’

  It was a blur without handholds and he only managed to get upright with time and the absence of another blow. He was just starting to focus on the man when another punch got in the way. As he again tumbled a hard boot caught him in the ribs.

  ‘It will hurt less if you do what I say,’ said Haggerty Smith.

  Hope got back onto his elbows, took a breath and replied, ‘That depends on what you call pain.’ He started the rest of the way up.

  This time he found a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m coming to like you. You can take it. Let’s compromise. If you sit, it’s okay with me. So, I’ll get you a chair. Don’t move.’

  With the shot he had taken to the ribs, Hope wasn’t going to straighten out much past his current stupor anyhow. A chair was slid across and he was helped up into it. The chair was solid wood with a wide square base and did not flinch or slide.

  Smith seemed to achieve the same effect with two legs.

  ‘The second rule still applies,’ he said. ‘You do the talking.’

  Hope rubbed his head. ‘That would have been a lot easier without the welcoming.’

  ‘What can I say, hospitality is my business.’

  Hope rubbed his head some more and was starting to see him. The man’s eyes were black and drunk. His hair and beard were brown and trimmed. His nose had been bent out of shape and there was a mole awkwardly clinging to the edge of a flared nostril. A scar slunk down into his beard from high on his cheekbone. He was wearing a bright red shirt and grey trousers, shiny and tacky.

  ‘You’ve got the longest felony file in town,’ said Hope.

  Smith frowned. ‘You’re not going to go become a cop on me, I trust.’

  ‘W
hat do you think?’

  ‘I think cops can’t take a punch. But it wouldn’t matter if you were one. I’m keeping my nose clean. And paying what is asked. When you’re bad, business is always good. That’s the way of it. Only now there are the fascists, and bad is going to a whole other level. The 36’ Olympics was just a warm up. The real madman’s Olympics are just around the corner and I’m going to be there representing America.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘So, as I look to the future, I use this place to shield me from the past. I have been quite naughty over the years and I have accrued my share of enemies. Some are not of the type to forget or forgive. You, I have to say, don’t ring a bell.’

  Hope found that the eyes upon him had warmed up, but he shook his head. ‘You aren’t what I’m looking for.’

  ‘Should I be offended?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Yet how will I know unless you tell me what it is you’re after.’

  ‘I’m looking for nasty bad.’

  Haggerty’s face lit up some more. ‘You mean evil?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘Well, why Sacksville for God’s sake? Why not Germany and Hitler? Or Mussolini?’

  Hope shrugged.

  ‘Anyway, it’s clearly not me. I’ve lived a life with a respectable amount of danger and that’s the way it should be because that’s what makes us real. Everything else is merely a suppression of the need for it. Including what gets poured in this bar. Now danger is bad because we’re living in a civilised time. And all the laws of the land are designed to guard against danger, and those who continue to partake are labelled outlaw and likely to be locked away, as has happened to me from time to time. And Hitler also, as I’m led to believe. But what Hitler has done so brilliantly and I could never do is use politics to rise beyond the laws. It takes an army to stop a man who reaches those heights. Then the good folks get an education in how bad is bad.’ Smith laughed boisterously. ‘It seems rule two went out the windows as well, didn’t it. But you’ve touched upon my pet subject. Anyway it’s back to you. You didn’t explain why you’re looking for your so called nasty bad in Sacksville.’

  ‘Because I’ve got a pet subject same as you.’ The way Hope closed his mouth there was no indication it was going to open again anytime soon.

  Haggerty nodded. ‘I suppose I could try asking again, but we’ve already established you can take a punch. So I’ll tell you what we can do. There’s a card game underway in my office. Invitation only. That’s what I’ve been taken away from. Why don’t you join us? Play a few hands. That will let me take a good look at you. If things go well and I like what I see, I’ll confide in you who I think is the rottenest snake in town. And as you might gather, I’m an authority on the subject. An unprecedented offer wouldn’t you agree? And don’t go worrying about those blows to the head. I didn’t hit you so hard that you can’t be playing cards for money.’

  ‘Alright,’ returned Hope, holding out a hand. ‘Help me out of this chair and we’ll go play a few hands.’

  Smith did so with a firm wrist and a strong pull from his elbow. With his other hand he patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘So what’s your name?’

  ‘Jesse De Luca,’ said Hope.

  ‘It probably isn’t. I mean, why tell the truth when you can lie. And that’s what makes poker a worthwhile past-time. Sure it’s merely risk dressed up as danger. But it’s the way it spotlights the queer relationship between luck and lying that has me entertained.’ He smirked until his yellow teeth were again showing. ‘If luck is a lady then lying is a gentleman. And they make an attractive couple.’ He opened the door which had been closed to muffle any groans or screams. ‘Which must make poker the debutants’ ball. This way, Mr De Luca.’

  26. ‘Is there something about the grieving process you disapprove of?’

  The next morning Hope awoke to the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen; the sweet smells emanating with them immediately dissipated any irritation he might have felt. He swung out of bed with relative ease until it was his head’s turn - it started spinning and throbbing and felt so strange he was drawn to the dressing mirror at the foot of his bed; he gazed into his reflection, mostly interested in the subtle remnants of the strain of the night’s poker game, but they were lost to the bruises that had preceded them. The bruises had not rated a mention during the game, for the half dozen other players had their own fair share of marks and scars and seemed to consider them as uneventful as birthmarks.

  Hope did not need to dress, the better the cotton in the suit the easier it was to wake up in. His mouth was dry and his tongue needed to be peeled off his teeth. He stepped out of the bedroom and the way his feet stuck to the linoleum there must have been holes in his socks.

  ‘Good morning,’ he muttered with vocals chords as stiff and dry as boot leather.

  Hawkshaw was wearing a floral summer dress and smelt of freshly washed hair.

  ‘Morning,’ she said, scooping batter out of the mixing bowl into the frypan. ‘Hope you like pancakes. Never met anyone who didn’t.’ Some of the batter was on her arms.

  ‘Pancakes would be perfect.’

  ‘Bacon topping to start with. With baby tomatoes picked out of the garden. And mint garnish. That will be followed by berries and cream.’ With the pancake batter cooking, she gave him a more complete look. Although her expression remained placid, her voice certainly hardened. ‘Your face looks different from yesterday. Is that the results of the gambling you were talking about?’

  ‘You could say that,’ said Hope. ‘A tough game to break into. A table of cutthroat insomniacs. And a very ill-timed Jack of Clubs almost cleared me out for the night.’

  Hawkshaw left her stove to pour a glass of lemonade looking liquid and handed it to him. ‘A family tonic. A recipe from a great grandmother. There were members of my family that needed a lot of waking and a lot of reviving and it was used as a last resort.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But I like it more than that.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Hope drank to the bottom and winced with the formidable recoil. He wiped his mouth with his wrist. ‘Bitter,’ he gasped and put the glass down. ‘A ginger bomb.’

  ‘Yes, it hits the notes and tries to make it a symphony.’ Hawkshaw prodded the pancakes with her spatula. ‘So, who was the friend with the Jack of Clubs?’

  ‘Haggerty Smith. Know him?’

  Hawkshaw’s expression turned cold. ‘Yes, but do you?’

  ‘Enough to beat him at poker.’

  ‘And you were locked away with him and his cronies all night in some back room of the Pigmy Tavern?’

  ‘The door wasn’t locked.’

  Hawkshaw shook her head. ‘Have you gone completely mad?’

  ‘Is there something about the grieving process you disapprove of?’

  ‘Yes, the way it appears set to spread. That’s assuming there’s someone who’ll grieve over you.’ Hawkshaw turned her anger on the pancakes, almost hitting the roof as she flipped them.

  Hope sat down at the dining table. ‘Yeah, that is quite an assumption.’

  Hawkshaw’s voice softened a notch. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right part of town. Here it gets thrown in with the room.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Hope, ‘I didn’t realise.’

  There was a newspaper on the table that he sensed had been placed there for his benefit. Although it was a week old, it did not appear to have been read. And whatever Hope may have been doing a week ago, it certainly didn’t include finding out about the news of the day. So he opened the paper up and began to read, or at least to go through the motions - he was not in much of a state to take anything in, but it was a welcome respite from the conversation, which had been starting to feel like the kind of hand in poker in which there was nothing left to do but bluff.

  When Hawkshaw came to the table with her steaming pancakes on large porcelain plates
, it was apparent she had more on her mind than the pepper and salt. The gravity with which she spoke, however, caught Hope off guard all the same.

  ‘It is absolutely me who should apologise,’ she said as she sat down.

  Hope clumsily folded away the newspaper. ‘Come again?’

  Hawkshaw hurriedly said grace and then she said, ‘It was arrogant of me to judge the road upon which you grieve. It would be deceitful of me to pretend my marriage was a successful one. In fact, the gap between my husband and myself had already grown so vast that death, when it eventuated, barely seemed to make it any wider. I locked myself away in this house for many months in a kind of daze. I read often and one Browning poem haunted me terribly: “As restless as a nest-deserted bird, Grown chill through something being away, though what it knows not”.’

  With the smell of bacon under his nose, Hope was suddenly famished and he collected up his knife and fork. ‘Pancakes perhaps?’ The pancake cut easily.

  Hawkshaw smirked. ‘If you like I could take the day off work. Show you around the area. There are pleasant places you cannot get to on foot. Not even with the distances you travel.’

  ‘Thank you for the offer but I think I would enjoy walking a little more. I would like to wander one of those forest tracks. Experience the wilds of nature.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure it will be safer for you than the wilds of town. Should I prepare a lunch hamper?’

  Hope took his first mouthful and shook his head. ‘There will be enough miles in this breakfast to see me through.’

  ‘Very well, but I will not permit you to refuse seconds.’

  ‘That is the kind of disciplining I could get used to.’

  Hawker put onto her fork a much more modest first bite. She ate it distractedly and said, ‘When I was tending your room yesterday I noticed that one of your bags was not yet unpacked, your black cargo bag. Forgive my intrusion, I just want you to know that regardless of any history that might be in this house, you can feel at home here.’

  Hope had taken a large bite and it made for a slow reply.

  ‘I appreciate the sentiment,’ he said levelly. ‘I have every intention of unpacking that bag. When the time is right.’

  Hawkshaw searched into his eyes and nodded.