by Doug Allyn
I took a last look at the trench where Jimmy Calderon and the other had come to rest. The drape lay just beyond them, tangled in some debris. Stable for now. The water was still too roiled to see much. I could search it more carefully when we came back to recover the bodies. It was time to go. But I didn’t.
I’d done all I could do for now, and God knows it was a terrible place to be. And yet I found myself oddly reluctant to depart. I think I just hated the idea of leaving Jimmy down here in this reeking pit under the earth.
I’d met him only once, briefly, and hadn’t liked him much. But God, he didn’t deserve to end like this. No one does. I’ll be back, I said to no one. I’ll get you out. And then I squared myself off with the current and began to work my way upstream.
Moving against the river was harder than I expected. River current is deceptive. You quickly adapt to the constant pressure and get on with what you’re doing. And you forget that every moment is a struggle. You unconsciously fight for balance and to maintain your position as the seemingly gentle current leaches away your strength and body heat. It happens so subtly that you don’t realize how much energy you’ve spent until you try to do something simple like swim upstream. It was all I could do to tug myself forward on the line a foot at a time.
It took me roughly ten minutes to make my way back to the mouth of the cave, and seeing the shimmer of diffused sunlight filtering into the milky water ahead was as fine as waking to a sunrise after a nightmare. I broke the surface and swam to the bank, clutched a trailing root, spat out my mouthpiece, and just hung on, head down, panting like a dog.
And when I looked up, Megan Lundy was there. Looking down at me. Her gaze as lifeless as one of her sculptures. She was dressed for running in her faded gray sweat suit and Nike headband. And she was holding an ugly, palm-sized automatic casually at her side. Not pointed at me. Just there.
“Come on,” she said. “You can’t stay there.”
I heaved myself up on the bank. She took a wary step back, but she needn’t have worried. I was physically drained and I was wearing nearly a hundred pounds of gear. I unsnapped my tank pack and eased it to the ground. She tossed a pair of handcuffs to me.
“Put these on.”
“A womyn in chains?” I said.
“Just do it.”
And I did. No alternative. She motioned me up the path with the gun.
“What about my gear?”
“Leave it. You can come back for it later. Let’s go.”
She followed me up the long earthen ramp to the rim of the hole, keeping a watchful distance between us. “Charlie will never buy another accident,” I said. “If something happens—”
“Shut up,” she said coolly. “I’m trying to think.”
“All I’m saying is—”
“If you don’t shut your mouth, I swear I’ll kill you, Mitch. I’ve got nothing to lose at this point.”
I couldn’t argue with that. But I decided that if she tried to push me over the edge of the hole, I wasn’t going down alone, gun or no gun.
But she didn’t. At the top she just motioned me toward the old pickup. “You drive,” she said. She waited for me to get behind the wheel, then eased onto the seat beside me. I couldn’t see the gun anymore. Nor did I have to.
“Where to?” I said, firing up the truck.
“My place, I think,” she said. She sounded distant, lost in thought. I dropped the pickup into gear and started down the hill.
We rode in silence for several miles. I tried to catch sight of the gun, but she must have been holding it next to her thigh. With my hands in cuffs I had no chance even to try for it.
“Did you find what you were looking for down there?” she said abruptly. Her voice had changed. It was forceful now. More at ease. As though she’d made a decision. About me? God only knew.
“Yes,” I said warily, “I did. More than I was looking for, in fact.”
“You mean Walter? He’s still there?”
“Sort of.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “I thought by now... Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. He was a pig, you know, as sorry a bastard as ever walked the earth.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He found us together,” she said quietly. “Audrey and me. In bed. I was just a kid, really, twenty or so. In college. Unsure of my sexuality. And then I met her at a fund-raiser, and all my questions were answered. She was the first person I ever truly loved. She was married, and pregnant, and it didn’t matter. It was an incredibly sweet awakening, for both of us.
“Then Walter burst in on us in the middle of the night. He was on the run, half drunk, terrified. When he found us he went berserk. Attacked Audrey. She tried to get away, fell down the stairs. And I... killed him. Stabbed him with a pair of shears. Half a dozen times, probably, I don’t know.
“Audrey was badly hurt, bleeding. But she wouldn’t let me call an ambulance. She knew what would happen to me if I did. A gay woman, killing her lover’s husband? In those days I wouldn’t have had a chance. Or now either, for that matter. Not in this part of the country.
“I couldn’t drive, so she had to. Up into these hills. To a place she knew. And then all the way back to the house. And only then did she call an ambulance. She told them she’d fallen. And then she made me leave her.”
“My God,” I said softly.
“She did it for me,” she continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “She lost her baby, nearly lost her life, to protect me. She sent me off to school in New York. And I went on to have a career, and she... stayed behind in her chair.”
“A woman in chains,” I said.
“Very perceptive,” she said. “I know when you look at her now, the chair is what you see. A frail old woman who’s getting drifty, can barely turn her head. But to me, she was everything, is everything, my love, my art, everything. So when she called last week, half out of her mind, and said Walter was back—”
“Walter?”
“She was distraught, not making sense. But I heard shouting in the background. I didn’t know what to think. I grabbed a golf club, the first thing that came to hand. And I ran down the beach to the McClain house. I could hear him roaring as I ran up the porch steps. God, he even sounded like Walter. He was yelling at her, only an inch from her face. And she was in tears. I hit him from behind with everything I had...”
“And killed him?”
“I’m not sure I meant to — I mean, I didn’t even know who he was. But seeing him screaming at Audrey like that — I hit him. Hard. And I’d do it again. And then I loaded him into his car, drove him up into the hills, and pushed him over. And I ran his damned car into the river afterward. And to hell with him.”
“And his brother? To hell with him too?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I regret what happened to him. I gave him those sketches hoping he’d either get discouraged or stir up the locals enough that someone would drive him off. But he wouldn’t quit. I’ve been running in the hills, keeping track of him from a distance. And when he found the pit I waited for him on the road out of the hills and waved him down.”
“And he stopped, because he thought you were a friend. And you shot him,” I said. “Just like that.”
“No, not just like that!” she snapped. “My God, do you think I wanted any of this! I have a life, my art is valued by a great many people. I couldn’t just throw it all away over a pig like Walter, or some sniveling little convict. So I did what I had to. To defend myself. And Audrey.”
“I guess I follow your logic, as far as it goes,” I said evenly. “I’m not sure Ray will find it much comfort. If he lives.”
“I said I regret that, and I do. The odd thing is, I think if I’d killed him outright, it wouldn’t trouble me as much as what happened.”
“Blinding him, you mean?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “To lose your sight. I swear to God, Mitch, I don’t see how men do it.”
“Do what?”
; “Slaughter each other over nothing: politics or territory or religion. Bomb cities, maim children. How can they possibly live with themselves afterwards?”
“You seem to be doing all right.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I suppose I am. Pull in here.”
We’d arrived at her home. I parked beside the house. “We’re going to walk around back up to the studio,” she said. “You first. Please don’t do anything stupid.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I need to think.”
She was lying. She’d decided my fate back on the road. I’d heard it in her voice. But she still had the gun. And obviously wasn’t afraid to use it. And I was still so exhausted it was all I could manage to climb the spiral staircase up to the deck.
She unlocked the studio, motioned me inside, then moved quickly around the room drawing the drapes. There was a portable phone on a table by the window. She picked it up.
“I’m going to lock you in,” she said quietly. “But I’ll be where I can see you. Just sit tight. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She backed out and closed the door. I heard the lock click shut. Heard her footsteps cross the deck. Then nothing.
Moving as quietly as I could, I frantically searched the studio, first for a weapon, then for the keys to my handcuffs. The weapon was easy, such as it was. I found a bag of golf clubs in a closet and grabbed a putter out of it. No match for a pistol, but better than nothing. But I couldn’t find the damned keys. There were chains and manacles everywhere, but no keys.
And then I saw the statue. Ashtoreth? Was that what she called it? But it wasn’t. This time I recognized it. It was Audrey. Young and beautiful and pregnant. And suddenly, everything that Megan had told me, and the things she hadn’t, crystallized. And I realized what would happen now.
I carefully lifted the comer of the blind and scanned the deck. It was empty. No one in sight. I used the club to smash open the French door and let myself out. I dropped to all fours, crawled to the railing, then carefully peered over the edge.
But there was no need for caution. Her sweat suit was folded neatly on the beach. The gun was lying on it. And Megan was nearly two hundred yards offshore, swimming steadily out toward... nothing. The nearest land was the Canadian shore, a hundred and fifty miles away.
“Megan!” I shouted.
She heard me and turned and faced me for a moment, treading water. Then she raised both hands in the air, her fists clenched. A salute? A goodbye? She turned and swam on.
I sprinted down the steps, smashed in her front door, and used the phone to call 911. Then I charged back to the beach, but...
There was nothing to see. Thunderclouds were rolling down from the north, roughing up a chop that was already a foot or so high. I didn’t need binoculars to know she was gone. There wasn’t even a ripple to show where she’d been. The bay stretched away, dark and empty. Black water, all the way to the horizon.
A helicopter picked up Ray Calderon the next day and flew him down to the U of M hospital. He was in surgery for nearly six hours. He’s going to live, and he may recover most of the vision in his right eye. I’ll go down to visit him in a few days. I hope he’ll be able to see me.
Megan left a letter behind which restated, more or less, what she’d told me, and Charlie accepted it at face value and closed the investigation. But we both know it wasn’t true. At least not all of it. Megan couldn’t have taken Jimmy’s body up into the hills in his rental car. She didn’t drive.
She may have been able to manage the short trip to the river, a child could do that much. But even if she’d been able to handle the difficult drive into the hills, the little Escort could never have made it over those trails.
Someone else took the body up there. And only one person could have. Audrey. In the van modified for her wheelchair that only she could drive.
Perhaps if Charlie’d checked her van, he would have found bloodstains in it. But he didn’t. Because it doesn’t matter now.
The night Megan disappeared Audrey had a stroke. Hannah says she’s just fading away, drifting into the murky depths of Alzheimer’s disease. Soon she’ll be in black water. Unable to find her way back.
I still have the Ashtoreth carving I took from Megan’s house. I meant to give it to Audrey. It’s hers by right. But in her present condition, I’m not sure how she’d react.
No. That’s only partly true.
The truth is, there’s something about this rude clay figure that haunts me. She’s rising from primordial waters, her belly is swollen and her breasts are full. Her eyes seem to meet mine, but they’re more implied than real. Her hands are upraised, fists clenched. In a victory salute of ultimate triumph. It was the gesture Megan Lundy made to me from the lake. A goodbye. And a final plea for understanding. Before she turned and swam away into forever.
The carving is deceptively crude, perhaps in homage to the countless Ashtoreth earth goddesses found in tombs all over the world. Or perhaps it’s simply unfinished. And now always will be.
The figure isn’t physically recognizable as Audrey, but I know it’s her. Free of her chair. And her body, and her years. Somehow Megan captured the image of her soul. A woman unchained.
And the truth is, I’m not sure now that I would give it to Audrey or anyone, even if I knew beyond a doubt that it was the right thing to do.
Because aside from my son, newborn, with afterbirth still matted in his hair, the goddess is simply the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Sunset on the Padang
by Neil Jillett
© 1994 by Neil Jillett
A new short story by Neil Jillett
Originally from New Zealand, Neil Jillett has worked for the Melbourne, Australia newspaper The Age for most of his long career as a journalist. A wide range of assignments for the paper have taken him to many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union during the early days of Gorbachev’s regime, Mexico, and the Philippines. Mr. Jillett is currently the film and dance critic for The Age, and when time permits, he writes not only short stories but film scripts and novels. His 1989 novel Copycat was published by Collins, Australia...
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“The Chinese adore children,” Mrs. Clayton said as they sat on the padang at sunset.
Helen, who had heard this many times in the past three months, silently amended the old woman’s generalisation: some Chinese, some children.
“Absolutely adore them,” Mrs. Clayton insisted. Without turning, she spoke to the man behind her. “Don’t you, Cookie?”
“Beg yours, mem?”
“You heard very well what I said, Cookie.” There was, Mrs. Clayton felt, just the right note of good-humoured exasperation in her voice. She was proud of her repertoire of laughs and other vocal inflections. “He likes to pretend he never listens to conversations,” she said to Helen. “That’s a legacy from Alec Preston. He was always accusing poor Cookie of eavesdropping. Wasn’t he, Cookie?”
“Beg yours, mem?”
Mrs. Clayton’s laughter this time was merely exasperated. “Alec would clip him over the ear often as not, call him a ‘bloody Chink spy.’ I can’t say I completely blame him.” Mrs. Clayton’s smile reflected satisfaction, or an affectionate malice, as she imagined the effort the man behind them was making to keep his face expressionless. She and Cookie had been playing this game for years. She lifted the lid of the ice bucket on the folding table. “I think we could do with a refill, Cookie.”
“Yes, mem.”
As Cookie took the bucket back to the flat, Helen was not tempted to protest at the way Mrs. Clayton ordered him about, even though he was not her servant. As a newcomer to Singapore, Helen was not ready to challenge Mrs. Clayton’s belief that only the English knew how to cope with the problems of living in what, several years after national independence, the old woman still called “this colony.” And Mrs. Clayton was in many ways a friendly, helpful neighbour. For one thing, she had arranged for Cookie a
nd Amah to stay on with the flat.
Cookie looked about forty, but Helen was sure he was considerably older, though perhaps not so old as his wife, who must be nearly sixty. She was skinny and ugly and quiet. Cookie’s face was smooth and chubby and rarely without a smile. His short, sturdy body, with the white cotton trousers flapping around the bare ankles of his bandy legs, seemed to vibrate with eagerness to please as he prepared meals and bossed his wife over the cleaning jobs.
Helen felt it was wrong to address the couple by their occupations rather than their names (which she had difficulty remembering, anyway), but Mrs. Clayton assured her that they had always been known as Cookie and Amah; a change, no matter how well intended, would only upset them.
Now, sipping her gin and tonic, Mrs. Clayton said, “You really couldn’t ask for a better servant than Cookie, though he does need to be kept up to the mark in matters of detail. Like making sure we have enough ice.”
“I suppose so.” Helen was careful not to show the slight irritation she felt. “But most of the time things seem to run smoothly enough, if I leave him to his own devices.”
“Oh, he’s a treasure in many ways, there’s no denying that.” Mrs. Clayton signalled the end of the discussion by doing up the top button of her cardigan and saying, “Quite a nip in the air this evening.” She looked at the dull glow of barely suppressed sweat on her young neighbour’s face. For all her generous nature, it delighted her that she, a seventy-year-old Englishwoman, endured without complaint a climate that reduced to damp lethargy this young Australian, who had presumably been reared on blistering beaches.
Besides the cardigan over her dress, Mrs. Clayton was wearing sunglasses and a broad-brimmed straw hat, as she did, even indoors, during all daylight hours. They were, she often said, touching the brown spots on her face, “protection against the dreadful ravages of this climate.”