by Laird Barron
They rumbled inland. Rusty light gradually exposed counterchange shelves of empty fields and canted telephone poles strung together with thick, dipping old-fashioned cables. Ducks pelted from a hollow in the road. The ducks spread themselves in a wavering pattern against the sky.
“Been shooting?” Partridge indicated the .20 gauge softly clattering in the rack behind their heads.
“When T isn’t looking. Yeah, I roam the marshes a bit. You?”
“No.”
“Yah?”
“Not in ages. Things get in the way. Life, you know?”
“Oh, well, we’ll go out one day this week. Bag a mallard or two. Raise the dust.”
Partridge stared at the moving scenery. Toshi was disinterested in hunting and thought it generally a waste of energy. Nadine detested the sport without reserve. He tasted brackish water, metallic from the canteen. The odor of gun oil and cigarette smoke was strong in the cab. The smell reminded him of hip waders, muddy clay banks and gnats in their biting millions among the reeds. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Forget it, man.”
They drove in silence until Beasley hooked left onto a dirt road that followed a ridge of brambles and oak trees. On the passenger side overgrown pastures dwindled into moiling vapors. The road was secured by a heavy iron gate with the usual complement of grimy warning signs. Beasley climbed out and unlocked the gate and swung it aside. Partridge realized that somehow this was the same ruggedly charismatic Beasley, plus a streak of gray in the beard and minus the spring-loaded tension and the whiskey musk. Beasley at peace was an enigma. Maybe he had quit the bottle for good this time around. The thought was not as comforting as it should have been. If this elemental truth—Beasley the chronic drunk, the lovable, but damaged brute—had ceased to hold, then what else lurked in the wings?
When they had begun to jounce along the washboard lane, Partridge said, “Did T get sick? Somebody—I think Frank Ledbetter—told me T had some heart problems. Angina.”
“Frankie… I haven’t seen him since forever. He still working for Boeing?”
“Lockheed-Martin.”
“Yah? Good ol’ L&M. Well, no business like war business,” Beasley said. “The old boy’s fine. Sure, things were in the shitter for a bit after New Guinea, but we all got over it. Water down the sluice.” Again, the knowing, sidelong glance. “Don’t worry so much. He misses you. Everybody does, man.”
Toshi’s farm was more of a compound lumped in the torso of a great, irregular field. The road terminated in a hard pack lot bordered by a sprawl of sheds and shacks, gutted chicken coops and labyrinthine hog pens fallen to ruin. The main house, a Queen Anne, dominated. The house was a full three stories of spires, gables, spinning iron weathercocks and acres of slate tiles. A monster of a house, yet somehow hunched upon itself. It was brooding and squat and low as a brick and timber mausoleum. The detached garage seemed new. So too the tarp and plastic-sheeted nurseries, the electric fence that partitioned the back forty into quadrants and the military drab shortwave antenna array crowning the A-frame barn. No private security forces were in evidence, no British mercenaries with submachine guns on shoulder slings, nor packs of sleek, bullet-headed attack dogs cruising the property. The golden age had obviously passed into twilight.
“Behold the Moorehead Estate,” Beasley said as he parked by slamming the brakes so the truck skidded sideways and its tires sent up a geyser of dirt. “Howard and Toshi bought it from the county about fifteen years ago—guess the original family died out, changed their names, whatever. Been here in one form or another since 1762. The original burned to the foundation in 1886, which is roughly when the town—Orren Towne, ’bout two miles west of here—dried up and blew away. As you can see, they made some progress fixing this place since then.”
Partridge whistled as he eyed the setup. “Really, ah, cozy.”
There were other cars scattered in the lot: a Bentley; a Nixon-era Cadillac; an archaic Land Rover that might have done a tour in the Sahara; a couple of battered pickup trucks and an Army surplus jeep. These told Partridge a thing or two, but not enough to surmise the number of guests or the nature of Toshi’s interest in them. He had spotted the tail rotor of a helicopter poking from behind the barn.
Partridge did not recognize any of the half-a-dozen grizzled men loitering near the bunkhouse. Those would be the roustabouts and the techs. The men passed around steaming thermoses of coffee. They pretended not to watch him and Beasley unload the luggage.
“For God’s sake, boy, why didn’t you catch a plane?” Toshi called down from a perilously decrepit veranda. He was wiry and sallow and vitally ancient. He dressed in a bland short sleeve button-up shirt a couple of neck sizes too large and his ever present gypsy kerchief. He leaned way over the precarious railing and smoked a cigarette. His cigarettes were invariably Russian and came in tin boxes blazoned with hyperbolic full-color logos and garbled English mottos and blurbs such as “Prince of Peace! and “Yankee Flavor!”
“The Lear’s in the shop.” Partridge waved and headed for the porch.
“You don’t drive, either, eh?” Toshi flicked his hand impatiently. “Come on, then. Beasley—the Garden Room, please.”
Beasley escorted Partridge through the gloomy maze of cramped halls and groaning stairs. Everything was dark: from the cryptic hangings and oil paintings of Mooreheads long returned to dust, to the shiny walnut planks that squeaked and shifted everywhere underfoot.
Partridge was presented a key by the new housekeeper, Mrs. Grant. She was a brusque woman of formidable brawn and comport; perhaps Beasley’s mother in another life. Beasley informed him that “new” was a relative term as she had been in Campbell’s employ for the better portion of a decade. She had made the voyage from Orange County and brought along three maids and a gardener/handyman who was also her current lover.
The Garden Room was on the second floor of the east wing and carefully isolated from the more heavily trafficked byways. It was a modest, L-shaped room with a low, harshly textured ceiling, a coffin wardrobe carved from the heart of some extinct tree, a matching dresser and a diminutive brass bed that sagged ominously. The portrait of a solemn girl in a garden hat was centered amidst otherwise negative space across from the bed. Vases of fresh cut flowers were arranged on the windowsills. Someone had plugged in a rose-scented air freshener to subdue the abiding taint of wet plaster and rotting wood; mostly in vain. French doors let out to a balcony overlooking tumbledown stone walls of a lost garden and then a plain of waist-high grass gone the shade of wicker. The grass flowed into foothills. The foothills formed an indistinct line in the blue mist.
“Home away from home, eh?” Beasley said. He wrung his hands, out of place as a bear in the confined quarters. “Let’s see if those bastards left us any crumbs.”
Howard Campbell and Toshi were standing around the bottom of the stairs with a couple of other elder statesmen types—one, a bluff, aristocratic fellow with handlebar mustaches and fat hands, reclined in a hydraulic wheelchair. The second man was also a specimen of genteel extract, but clean-shaven and decked in a linen suit that had doubtless been the height of ballroom fashion during Truman’s watch. This fellow leaned heavily upon an ornate blackthorn cane. He occasionally pressed an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and snuffled deeply. Both men stank of medicinal alcohol and shoe polish. A pair of bodyguards hovered nearby. The guards were physically powerful men in tight suit-jackets. Their nicked-up faces wore the perpetual scowls of peasant trustees.
Toshi lectured about a so-called supercolony of ants that stretched six thousand kilometers from the mountains of Northern Italy down along the coasts of France and into Spain. According to the reports, this was the largest ant colony on record; a piece of entomological history in the making. He halted his oration to lackadaisically introduce the Eastern gentlemen as Mr. Jackson Phillips and Mr. Carrey Montague and then jabbed Campbell in the ribs, saying, “What’d I tell you? Rich is as suave as an Italian prince. Thank God I don’t h
ave a daughter for him to knock up.” To Partridge he said, “Now go eat before cook throws it to the pigs. Go, go!” Campbell, the tallest and gravest of the congregation, gave Partridge a subtle wink. Meanwhile, the man in the wheelchair raised his voice to demand an explanation for why his valuable time was being wasted on an ant seminar. He had not come to listen to a dissertation and Toshi damned-well knew better…Partridge did not catch the rest because Beasley ushered him into the kitchen whilst surreptitiously flicking Mr. Jackson Phillips the bird.
The cook was an impeccable Hungarian named Gertz, whom Campbell had lured, or possibly blackmailed, away from a popular restaurant in Santa Monica. In any event, Gertz knew his business.
Partridge slumped on a wooden stool at the kitchen counter. He worked his way through what Gertz apologetically called “leftovers.” These included sourdough waffles and strawberries, whipped eggs, biscuits, sliced apples, honey dew melon and chilled milk. The coffee was a hand-ground Columbian blend strong enough to peel paint. Beasley slapped him on the shoulder and said something about chores.
Partridge was sipping his second mug of coffee, liberally dosed with cream and sugar, when Nadine sat down close to him. Nadine shone darkly and smelled of fresh cut hayricks and sweet, highly polished leather. She leaned in tight and plucked the teaspoon from his abruptly nerveless fingers. She licked the teaspoon and dropped it on the saucer and she did not smile at all. She looked at him with metallic eyes that held nothing but a prediction of snow.
“And…action,” Nadine said in a soft, yet resonant voice that could have placed her center stage on Broadway had she ever desired to dwell in the Apple and ride her soap and water sex appeal to the bank and back. She spoke without a trace of humor, which was a worthless gauge to ascertain her mood anyhow, she being a classical Stoic. Her mouth was full and lovely and inches from Partridge’s own. She did not wear lipstick.
“You’re pissed,” Partridge said. He felt slightly dizzy. He was conscious of his sticky fingers and the seeds in his teeth.
“Lucky guess.”
“I’m a Scientologist, Grade Two. We get ESP at G-2. No luck involved.”
“Oh, they got you, too. Pity. Inevitable, but still a pity.”
“I’m kidding.”
“What… even the cultists don’t want you?”
“I’m sure they want my money.”
Nadine tilted her head slightly. “I owe the Beez twenty bucks, speaking of. Know why?”
“No,” Partridge said. “Wait. You said I wouldn’t show—”
“—because you’re a busy man—”
“That’s the absolute truth. I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”
“I’m sure. Anyway, I said you’d duck us once again. A big movie deal, fucking a B-list starlet in the South of France. It’d be something.”
“—and then Beasley said something on the order of—”
“Hell yeah, my boy will be here!—”
“—come hell or high water!”
“Pretty much, yeah. He believes in you.”
Partridge tried not to squirm even as her pitiless gaze bore into him. “Well, it was close. I cancelled some things. Broke an engagement or two.”
“Mmm. It’s okay, Rich. You’ve been promising yourself a vacation, haven’t you? This makes a handy excuse; do a little R&R, get some you time in for a change. It’s for your mental health. Bet you can write it off.”
“Since this is going so well… How’s Coop?” He had noticed she was not wearing the ring. Handsome hubby Dan Cooper was doubtless a sore subject, he being the hapless CEO of an obscure defense contractor that got caught up in a Federal dragnet. He would not be racing his classic Jaguar along hairpin coastal highways for the next five to seven years, even assuming time off for good behavior. Poor Coop was another victim of Nadine’s gothic curse. “Condolences, naturally. If I didn’t send a card…”
“He loves Federal prison. It’s a country club, really. How’s that bitch you introduced me to? I forget her name.”
“Rachel.”
“Yep, that’s it. The makeup lady. She pancaked Thurman like a corpse on that flick you shot for Coppola.”
“Ha, yeah. She’s around. We’re friends.”
“Always nice to have friends.”
Partridge forced a smile. “I’m seeing someone else.”
“Kyla Sherwood—the Peroxide Puppet. Tabloids know all, my dear.”
“But it’s not serious.”
“News to her, hey?”
He was boiling alive in his Aspen-chic sweater and charcoal slacks. Sweat trickled down his neck and the hairs on his thighs prickled and chorused their disquiet. He wondered if that was a massive pimple pinching the flesh between his eyes. That was where he had always gotten the worst of them in high school. His face swelled so majestically people thought he had broken his nose playing softball. What could he say with this unbearable pressure building in his lungs? Their history had grown to epic dimensions. The kitchen was too small to contain such a thing. He said, “Toshi said it was important. That I come to this…what? Party? Reunion? Whatever it is. God knows I love a mystery.”
Nadine stared the stare that gave away nothing. She finally glanced at her watch and stood. She leaned over him so that her hot breath brushed his ear. “Mmm. Look at the time. Lovely seeing you, Rich. Maybe later we can do lunch.”
He watched her walk away. As his pulse slowed and his breathing loosened, he waited for his erection to subside and tried to pinpoint what it was that nagged him, what it was that tripped the machinery beneath the liquid surface of his guilt-crazed, testosterone-glutted brain. Nadine had always reminded him of a duskier, more ferocious Bettie Page. She was thinner now; her prominent cheekbones, the fragile symmetry of her scapulae through the open-back blouse, registered with him as he sat recovering his wits with the numb intensity of a soldier who had just clambered from a trench following a mortar barrage.
Gertz slunk out of hiding and poured more coffee into Partridge’s cup. He dumped in some Schnapps from a hip flask. “Hang in there, my friend,” he said drolly.
“I just got my head beaten in,” Partridge said.
“Round one,” Gertz said. He took a hefty pull from the flask. “Pace yourself, champ.”
Partridge wandered the grounds until he found Toshi in D-Lab. Toshi was surveying a breeding colony of cockroaches: Pariplenata americana, he proclaimed them with a mixture of pride and annoyance. The lab was actually a big tool shed with the windows painted over. Industrial-sized aquariums occupied most of the floor space. The air had acquired a peculiar, spicy odor reminiscent of hazelnuts and fermented bananas. The chamber was illuminated by infrared lamps. Partridge could not observe much activity within the aquariums unless he stood next to the glass. That was not going to happen. He contented himself to lurk at Toshi’s elbow while a pair of men in coveralls and rubber gloves performed maintenance on an empty pen. The men scraped substrate into garbage bags and hosed the container and applied copious swathes of petroleum jelly to the rim where the mesh lid attached. Cockroaches were escape artists extraordinaire, according to Toshi.
“Most folks are trying to figure the best pesticide to squirt on these little fellas. Here you are a cockroach rancher,” Partridge said.
“Cockroaches…I care nothing for cockroaches. This is scarcely more than a side effect, the obligatory nod to cladistics, if you will. Cockroaches…beetles…there are superficial similarities. These animals crawl and burrow, they predate us humans by hundreds of millions of years. But…beetles are infinitely more interesting. The naturalist’s best friend. Museums and taxidermists love them, you see. Great for cleaning skeletal structures, antlers and the like.”
“Nature’s efficiency experts. What’s the latest venture?”
“A-Lab—I will show you.” Toshi became slightly animated. He straightened his crunched shoulders to gesticulate. His hand glimmered like a glow tube at a rock concert. “I keep a dozen colonies of dermestid beetles i
n operation. Have to house them in glass or stainless steel—they nibble through anything.”
This house of creepy-crawlies was not good for Partridge’s nerves. He thought of the chair and the woman and her tarantula. He was sickly aware that if he closed his eyes at that very moment the stranger would remove the mask and reveal Nadine’s face. Thinking of Nadine’s face and its feverish luminescence, he said, “She’s dying.”
Toshi shrugged. “Johns Hopkins…my friends at Fred Hutch…nobody can do anything. This is the very bad stuff; very quick.”
“How long has she got.” The floor threatened to slide from under Partridge’s feet. Cockroaches milled in their shavings and hidey holes; their tick-tack impacts burrowed under his skin.
“Not long. Probably three or four months.”
“Okay.” Partridge tasted breakfast returned as acid in his mouth.
The technicians finished their task and began sweeping. Toshi gave some orders. He said to Partridge, “Let’s go see the beetles.”
A-Lab was identical to D-Lab except for the wave of charnel rot that met Partridge as he entered. The dermestid colonies were housed in corrugated metal canisters. Toshi raised the lid to show Partridge how industriously a particular group of larvae were stripping the greasy flesh of a small mixed-breed dog. Clean white bone peeked through coagulated muscle fibers and patches of coarse, blond fur.
Partridge managed to stagger the fifteen or so feet and vomit into a plastic sink. Toshi shut the lid and nodded wisely. “Some fresh air, then.”
Toshi conducted a perfunctory tour, complete with a wheezing narrative regarding matters coleopteran and teuthological, the latter being one of his comrade Howard Campbell’s manifold specialties. Campbell had held since the early ’70s that One Day Soon the snail cone or some species of jellyfish was going to revolutionize neurology. Partridge nodded politely and dwelt on his erupting misery. His stomach felt as if a brawler had used it for a speed bag. He trembled and dripped with cold sweats.