Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel

by Tom Bouman

  There were small windows set into the ranch house’s foundation. Somewhere in the basement a light was on, and I squatted to check the room out; it was well appointed and clean. A sheet and a hook blanket lay unmade on a sofa, and there was a small television, and a door that could have led to a half bathroom. But if he’d been locked down there all alone, wondering why he couldn’t go home . . . I became aware of Carly Dunigan standing on her front stoop, watching me. I stood.

  “They’re all there,” she said. “We didn’t ask for this, you know.”

  “I know.” I turned and walked toward my vehicle. “How much of a head start has he got?”

  She shrugged. “A couple hours?”

  As I scoured the nearby roadsides and knocked on neighbors’ doors, I reviewed what I did know about Aub Dunigan. He was an old man, but one accustomed to using his two feet, and presumably to finding his own way around without a car. Fieldsparrow Road was miles away. But it was where he’d turn.

  On a dirt road, I took a curve too fast in the gathering dark, and wound up face-to-face with a caravan of trucks hauling water tanks. We stood idling for a moment, then crawled past each other.

  There was no sign of Aub on Fieldsparrow. As I broke the yellow tape and turned onto his property, my headlights caught the wine jugs in the tree line; in the driveway, the snow had melted, leaving only white footprints where our steps of the last couple days had compressed the snow. His house was dark. I parked in the yard and checked the corncrib, calling out to Aub as loudly as I could manage, hoping not to surprise him. He wasn’t in the outhouse either. On the doorway leading into his kitchen, the police seal between the door and frame was no longer intact. I flipped open the holster on my hip. On the floor beyond my feet were a few small puddles of meltwater. Someone was here now, or had been not long ago. I stepped inside.

  It says somewhere in the Bible that you shouldn’t talk about the old days and how much better everything used to be, but I find I often do, because when I was a kid I could buy a car from a junkyard for a hundred dollars. And I did. But anybody looking around in Aub’s home would be cured of that kind of nostalgia pretty quick; it was next to abandoned, and smelled like creosote and bat piss. In the kitchen stood a table with a plastic cloth on it, scattered with bags of cheap bread and tubs of butter the size of my head. The refrigerator was ancient and unplugged. A cast-iron stove was there to provide what heat there was, though the pile of firewood next to it looked too scant for the weather. Old shopping circulars and cracker boxes stuffed into an ash bucket, for starting fires. Nothing in the pantry, and somehow there were still mouse droppings. It just didn’t smell like a house in there. It didn’t smell like normal life. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see a sign of anyone other than Aub.

  I took care not to touch anything. Kerosene lamps were screwed into the walls, their founts drained to slicks of yellow oil. Some bare lightbulbs in ceiling fixtures, some empty fixtures. His TV set was at least twenty years old, and might have worked had his electricity been connected. A rotary phone of black Bakelite hung on the wall. Using a handkerchief, I picked it up and checked for a dial tone. Nope.

  I found the cellar door, opened the old-fashioned latch, and ducked in, twisting on my Maglite. The cellar had a dirt floor uneven enough to form mud puddles. I shone my light into one and dislodged a salamander about six inches long, black with yellow spots. It fled to the next puddle and stayed there.

  The cellar wasn’t tall enough to stand up straight in. Aub had old wooden doors stacked up, two rocking chairs with the caning blown out, a bunch of wine jugs, a roll of rotten pink insulation. The foundation was of blue shale stacked tight, much like the walls in the woods. As I cast my light about, the beam caught little glimmers in between the stones. I stepped closer and found more turquoise insulators, maybe two dozen. A few glass bottles of different colors here and there, real old, real small, all on the south-facing wall. Some of the pieces of turquoise glass that had been nestled into the foundation were now scattered on the floor, some of them broken. Police wouldn’t have done it. On the floor I found a cigar box and opened the lid: one chain of cheap gold that had been pulled in half. I headed upstairs.

  A set of narrow stairs led up to a corridor connecting three bedrooms, two empty, one containing a yellowed mattress, the smell of old man, and clothes scattered on the floor. Wallpaper had peeled away in every room, revealing crumbling plaster and rough beams coated black. Everywhere you went you could hear the snowmelt dripping off the eaves.

  The upstairs hall was shadowy and the dark green wallpaper further darkened the space. Above where the kerosene lamps were fixed to the walls, soot stains had spread on the ceilings, black toward the middle, yellow at the edges. Before stepping into Aub’s room I took a mental picture of where everything was so I could leave it that way. As I sifted through the crumpled plaid shirts, work pants, and long johns with one hand, keeping the other hand over my nose and mouth, really what I was looking for was anything new; new would be out of place. Nothing under the mattress. Again I was struck by the lack of anything to read.

  The other bedrooms were bare down to the shelf paper in the closets. Given Aub’s presumed age and the traces of brogue in his speech, I figured he was second generation. I had to imagine that the further back in generations you went to the first folks off the boat, the closer you kept your valuables, not in a safe-deposit box and certainly not out in the open. I looked down at the floorboards squeaking gently beneath my feet, and remembered seeing an iron grate in the top stair, where it made no sense to have one. I shone my flashlight in, stuck the blade of my jackknife between the metal and wood, and the grate popped free. That opened a compartment in the stair, and in that compartment, a crumbling cowhide portfolio.

  Carefully I unwound the ribbon that held it closed, and slipped out a folded document. Printed in that old-timey way of all different letterings and sizes, it was a certificate of U.S. citizenship for William Dunigan dated 1858; he’d signed it in tall right-leaning loops. That had to have been Aub’s grandfather.

  There were also photographs. I sat on the landing and examined them by flashlight. The first was a hazy portrait of a narrow-eyed patriarch and straight-backed matriarch, surrounded by offspring ranging from infancy to teenaged. The men and boys out of short pants wore high collars and frock coats; the women and girls were held in place by their dark, buttoned-up dresses. In one of the girls’ laps was a baby swimming in a white gown—impossible to tell whether boy or girl.

  Next was a somewhat less stern photograph of a couple on their wedding day. A note on the reverse named William Dunigan, Jr., and Jennifer, 1896. I assumed these were Aub’s parents. They were each more striking than handsome, in that way that reminded you how different everyone looked back then.

  From that I was able to follow William, Jr., and Jennifer into a later photograph surrounded by six children, and I wondered which kid was Aub. Probably the youngest.

  The last of the bunch was a studio portrait of a young woman with dark hair, holding a bouquet of lilacs—a glamour shot that approached our modern age in a way that the others didn’t, even as it was unmistakably from another era. Something about her eyes—it was in black-and-white, so no telling whether they were blue or green—caught the light, and caught you. They were so pale and alive that they kind of spoke to you across time. I found no name anywhere, and no resemblance to anyone in the other pictures. I put them back where I’d found them and knocked the grate into place.

  Downstairs I reattached the broken door seal as best I could, and drove to a high point a couple miles away where I sometimes got cell reception. I dialed my station’s answering service number to see if I had any messages; there were several hang-ups of increasing length. Tim Ellis left a message saying he’d arranged a small service for George the weekend after next. George was going to have his ashes poured into the Susquehanna River. In conclusion, Tim said, “So . . . two weeks.” This both simplified some things for me and made me d
owncast; as township police, we didn’t have anything like dress uniforms to get buried in. Still, I would have liked to see George all cleaned and pressed in a coffin. I admit making his face look good would have been tough, but still—it would have been nice to know his work meant more.

  I also got a message from Robert Loinsigh, husband to Mary, whom I had fined for snooping around the crime scene. He requested an appointment with me, and I thumped my hand on the dashboard.

  The final message, after one more hang-up, was from a man’s voice rasped by cigarettes. There was bar noise in the background. “Henry,” the man said. “This is Peter Spivey down at the Loyal Sons. You missing anybody been in the news lately? I’ll keep him here as long as I can.” The Loyal Sons of Hibernia was a half-legal bar of long standing outside of Midhollow. I say half legal because since their inception they had made a practice of skirting the liquor board, claiming they were a private club dedicated to the furtherance of Irish-Americans, and that one had to be a member to enter. The implication was that you also had to be of Irish extraction to get in, but they sold membership cards at the door, to almost anyone, at different levels of monetary commitment. You kept the card in front of you on the bar until your commitment was gone, and then you went and got another. Sometimes, when the county needed money, the sheriff would set up a sobriety checkpoint nearby and always get a couple hundred bucks out of the guys leaving that place drunk. It wasn’t anybody’s first choice of bars except a dedicated few. George had passed time there on occasion, and I’d met the usual bartender, Spivey, at a cookout the year before.

  It took about twenty minutes to get there; the workday was just over for most people and the route was busy, plus it was happy hour, and the curse of the patrol truck is to follow drivers white-knuckling it at the exact speed limit. In a gully, surrounded by pines, the Loyal Sons’ outdoor light cast the green-painted cinder-block building in a dirty glow. The exterior paint was flaking away, exposing white primer beneath. There were three cars and two motorcycles in the lot. A hand-lettered wooden sign hung above the front door, and the club’s one window displayed a neon sign in the shape of a shamrock.

  I pulled open the metal door. Near the entrance, a fat man on a barstool waved me inside. Smoke hung in the air. A laugh track erupted from a mounted television behind the bar, which was playing a syndicated sitcom. Whether my arrival discouraged conversation, or there hadn’t been any before, I couldn’t tell. Two bikers hunched over shots-and-beers at the bar, and a middle-aged man in muddy work clothes winged darts at a board from his barstool across the narrow room, a cigarette clamped in his lips. When the TV quieted I heard an indistinct muttering coming from the end of the bar, where Aub Dunigan sat, a small mound of coins in front of him.

  Spivey stepped out from behind the bar and pulled me aside. He was bald on top, with a copper beard and a nose full of veins. “Sorry, Henry,” he said. “He looked like just another old-timer to me. Doesn’t talk much. Certainly didn’t grasp the membership concept here. Justin recognized him.” He indicated the man at the entrance. “I might have served him a few before we caught on.”

  “It’s okay; I appreciate you calling.” I moved as if to go past him to the bar.

  “Crazy, what you boys found out there. Hey, you got a line on whatever son of a bitch did George Ellis? I can’t even believe it. Here in this county.”

  “We’re taking care of it.”

  “Let me know if we can be any help.”

  I sidled up to Aub and took a seat on the barstool two away. I watched as he counted his silver, then lost count and began again, quietly warbling all the while, not making words or tunes.

  “Aubrey,” I said to him, gently. “Are you sure this is where you want to be?” He looked at me and I caught a glimmer of recognition before he turned away. “Come on,” I said. “You got your cousins worried.” I stood and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Ah. I was just starting to have a good time.” He shook me off.

  “Let’s go. It’s about dinnertime; you’re expected at Carly’s.”

  The old man made a face. “I won’t go back there. You taking me home?”

  “Afraid I can’t take you home. But you can’t stay here.”

  “I won’t go back.”

  I looked at Spivey, who shrugged. “All right,” I said. “I’m going to go home and get something to eat. You want to come with me?”

  He appeared to think for a moment, then gathered his pile of change with shaking hands and put half in each hip pocket. He stumbled getting off his stool, and Spivey caught him, saying, “Whoa, who moved the floor?”

  Outside, Aub balked at getting in my truck, but agreed when I held the front passenger door open for him. I told him twice to put on his seat belt before giving up. We set off. Though it was a small county, Midhollow was not within walking distance of Fitzmorris. I asked him how he managed to get from Kevin and Carly’s house all the way there.

  “Fellow stopped and picked me on up.” He hummed aimlessly, his hands on his knees.

  “You must be tired,” I said. “I’m tired.”

  He didn’t speak the rest of the way. Back home, I led the old man to an easy chair in the living room, then pulled a container of venison barley soup from my freezer. I zapped it for a few seconds until the frozen block of soup could slide out of the Tupperware, and then I put it in a pot over low heat. I called to the other room. “I’m going to make coffee, you want some?”

  “Got a drink?”

  Ignoring that for the moment, I put some English muffins in the toaster oven and joined Aub in the living room. We sat in silence, each looking at the other and away. Then he gestured to the shelf near my head. “Bring the fiddle on down.”

  “Man, you don’t want to hear that noise.”

  “Bring it on down. Haven’t heard fiddle in many year.”

  I figured okay. I was in G and I gave him a quick “Shove That Pig’s Foot Further in the Fire.” He nodded matter-of-factly when I was done. When I started to put the instrument away, he objected, so I tuned up quick and gave him “Red Haired Boy” in A. He smiled and called out something that sounded like “Beggar Boy.” Staying in that jaunty, half-Celtic-sounding vein, I moved into “Billy in the Lowground,” and his foot began to tap. Soon I had to put the fiddle aside and check on our dinner.

  From the kitchen, I listened with mounting alarm as Aub wangled my fiddle into some offshoot of A with the bottom two strings skewed down. But then he began to play, slowly and in mixolydian. If you don’t know mixolydian, then maybe you’ve heard a tune that seemed to move between major and minor without settling on either one, a tune that maybe made your hair stand up. That could have been in the mixolydian mode. Aub had the fiddle tucked low into his abdomen, and at first I thought it had to be “Hail on the Barn Door” or “Squirrel Hunters,” basically the same tune with different emphases. But coming to the end of the B part, he tumbled down into a lower, much darker figure than I’d expected. It was a melody I felt I’d always known, though I hadn’t heard it whole before. He finished the tune and I asked him what his name for it was.

  “‘The Still Hunter,’” says Aub.

  “‘The Still Hunter.’ Huh. Any words to it?”

  “Don’t recall. You got a drink?”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s eat something.”

  We sat at the table and I let him finish his soup in peace. Since he didn’t have all his teeth, I figured he’d appreciate eating something soft. He spackled his English muffin with butter and then dropped it whole in his soup bowl to soak. He ate efficiently, looking around every now and again.

  I stood and pulled my bottle of scotch down, poured a small glass for my guest and one for myself. “Been a long day,” I said. We drank in small sips. Aub, probably used to sweeter spirits, coughed a bit. He finished quickly, and pushed his glass toward me across the table, in a clear request for more. I obliged. “That’s all, though,” I said. “We got to get you back to your cousins’.”<
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  “Ah. Take me home. I don’t want to go down there.”

  “I would. Except we don’t like the idea of you up on that farm all by yourself.”

  “But I ain’t.”

  “Ain’t what?”

  “Helen been coming on up the ridge sometime.”

  “Helen.”

  “Seen her hanging frocks down by the water.” Aub brought the glass shaking to his lips. “She leaves me jug wine.”

  “Helen. You talk to her? Talk to Helen?”

  He nodded. A long moment passed, and he spoke. “I see her voice, like lightning in the sky. I try to keep her. She goes where she will.”

  I couldn’t follow. “Aubrey, where does Helen live?”

  This seemed to confound him. He didn’t answer. He drank.

  “I was up on your land today,” I said. “On the southeast corner, there’s a wild rosebush. You know it?” This seemed to bring him back, but then he turned away from me, like a child. I pressed him. “There’s a rosebush and a headstone.”

  “Never mind about it,” he said. He refused to meet my eyes.

  “You’ve got to tell me, Aub. Something so we don’t have to go back there. Otherwise we’re going to have to go see for ourselves. To dig.”

  The old man’s eyes widened. He stared into his glass a moment, then swept it off the table and raised his voice. “Never mind, that’s all! Never mind! Let her rest!”

  “Who, Aub?”

  “My love,” he said, and began to cry. He heaved awhile, eyes and nose dripping. I asked him questions that he didn’t answer. He had wrapped himself in some ancient grief, and was gone.

  THE RIDE TO Kevin and Carly’s was dark and silent, with the old man’s gaze fixed in blackness. I had time to think. But I was stuck. The thought that kept my mind spinning was, the water had risen. Over so many years, the swamp had crept up the bank, likely not noticeably at first. But steadily. And then one day Aubrey Dunigan, dressed in his finest shabby clothes, would have paced through the woods to tend this hidden grave. He would have moved carefully down the trail he’d worn into the slope, past the rocks where they rose out of the earth, and he’d have found that the path to that grave had been drowned. I thought about the very first time he would have put a foot in that cold blue-brown water to get to the love he had buried there. Had he taken off his boots and socks, and rolled up his trousers like a boy? How long before he found the secret way through the stone, and crawled like an animal?