The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1)

by Moreau, Iza

  Ginette picked up my saddle and I struggled to a sitting position.

  “Um, thanks,” I said miserably and forced myself to look her in the face. “You want me to do your homework or somethin?”

  Ginette dropped the saddle at my feet. Then she lifted her head, turned and walked away without a word. After a few steps I saw her waver, stop, and turn again. The expression on her face was almost impossible to describe, but it was a mixture of sadness and hauteur, pride and hurt. But what she said was clear enough.

  “Mebbe you should rahd more and do homework less,” she said, and walked toward the stables, her head as high as it had ever been.

  I remembered that look as clearly as a reflection in a still pool; it was the same one I had seen in the last chapter when Ginette had stood up in my archery room with the intention of leaving me alone with my misery.

  Back in the present I worked on making my house livable again. It was less difficult than I thought because Gina—it was now impossible for me to think of her as Ginette—had not only picked up all my dirty laundry, but had carefully put away the things that had been pulled out of my dresser. The computer desk had been straightened and dusted and the wads of crumpled paper—false starts for several articles—were in the trash can under the desk. But the strangest thing, and the thing that moved me more than all the others, was that she had carefully wiped the lipstick letters off the blades of the fan above my bed.

  She had told me she admired me; had typed up stories about me for the paper. She had said . . . but my mind stopped there; I was stoned; all my sensations were altered, heightened and I couldn’t trust them.

  My high wore off slowly, and by the time I finished making my bedroom and living room presentable, I was conscious of a growing fatigue. I was also very hungry, so I picked my way through the debris of the kitchen and made myself a tuna sandwich. It made me nauseous but I ate it anyway, then gave the rest of the tuna to the cat. I drank half a glass of water and decided to retrieve the arrows I shot earlier before they got exposed to the elements.

  Passing the stalls always brought up vivid images of the horses that had been such fixtures on my trips home over the years. Although they generally lived in the fenced-off pasture beyond the dressage ring, they always trotted in for their scoop of feed morning and evening. And Cindy McKeown had always brought them in during thundershowers.

  It feels odd to refer to my mother as Cindy. It seems like the name of a younger person, and it is certainly one I never called her by. It was always Mom or Mother. Yet it’s likely that I’ll have to mention her many times in these pages and I want to portray her as more than just somebody’s mother. Cindy. I kinda lahk it.

  The stables were constructed of sturdy two-by-six pressure-treated boards nailed to tall six-by-six poles and protected with a corrugated red tin roof. The floors were dirt, but had been bedded occasionally with shavings or straw so that they seemed clean and inviting. There were four stalls, although Cindy only had three horses. The fourth was for friends who sometimes trailered out to the farm to ride for a day or a weekend.

  Each horse had its own stall. The stall nearest the house belonged to Facilitator, a black Hanoverian gelding just past his prime. The next was where Trifecta stayed. She had been Cindy’s top riding horse—a mare that had been trained and competed at the highest level by one of the top riders in the U. S. But I knew that her pedigree and training came with a high price tag. Cindy had bred Trifecta to a top Hessen stallion and the result had been Alikki. That third stall had been hers. Cindy had doted on Alikki and had insisted on training the filly herself. Alikki, at three years old, had only been under saddle a couple of months when the accident happened.

  Alikki’s stall door was halfway open; the ground inside held scattered shavings and the dusty patch of what was once a small pile of manure. Her blue water bucket was dry and dusty.

  Now all three horses were gone, scattered around the south—or around the world for all I knew. I had never asked my father where they had gone, and I should have. Cindy’s death affected me deeply; my time in Baghdad and my ensuing illness made it impossible to concentrate on anything that was not right before my eyes. Although I had only ridden Trifecta once and Facilitator a dozen or so times, I always loved to be around them, to press my face into their necks and smell the fresh clean horse scent that is far more exciting than any perfume, any flower or breeze. I badly wished I could have seen them all again, to say goodbye. I wished I could have said goodbye to Cindy, too.

  I pushed myself away from the stalls and walked toward the target shed. The first arrow I shot had almost managed to bury itself completely in the tall grass in front of the shed. But not quite—the white nock was still peeking out. I bent down and carefully pulled the end toward me, succeeding in getting it out without bending the aluminum and with a minimum of damage to the feathers. I smoothed them out. Good as new. I extracted the three that were in the target without much difficulty, then looked at the one that had stuck in the woody edge of the shed. I grasped it firmly near the point and was surprised when it came loose at once. The shot had been weaker than I thought. I had been weaker. In back of the shed the grass was so high I knew that finding the last arrow was futile, but I dutifully searched anyway. When I bent down to see the ground better, my nausea returned and I sagged to my knees, vomiting tuna, water, and bile. The stench was repulsive and I spat several times to rid my mouth of the taste. I felt better, but there would be no finding the last arrow. It wasn’t the first arrow I’ve lost and won’t be the last.

  But I was glad that I had hit the mark when Gina was watching.

  Back in the house I faced the problem of what to do about the other rooms. The living room and my bedroom were almost back to normal and I found that Gina had done a quick pick up of the bathroom. The kitchen was very messy, but the guest rooms wouldn’t be too bad—the furniture had been moved around some but there were fewer small items for anyone to scatter about. Cindy’s room would be the hardest; I decided to put that off until I was stronger. I also thought I would leave my father’s room as it was so that when he came home he would be able to tell if anything was missing.

  It was only then that I remembered his letter from Italy that I had put aside without reading. It must have been scattered along with all the rest of the stuff in the living room. I sat down on the couch and picked up the pile of letters and circulars Gina had stacked on the coffee table.

  The letter was near the bottom. I opened it.

  Susie:

  I’ve been staying in the Villa della Trattoria here in Florence for a few weeks now. I’ve been doing a lot of sketching—here in my room, down in the square with pigeons flocking around the fountain, in the museums, wherever I can. I suppose I’m just reliving my college days but those were happy times for me. I had good friends here, all lost to me now. I wonder how I could have let those friendships lapse.

  I have made a few new friends, though. One is helping me to improve my Italian. She works as a guard in the Uffizi Gallery and has aspirations of becoming a painter. I have seen a few of her attempts and I think I may be able to give her some advice. I was a teacher for 25 years after all!

  I’m thinking of setting up an easel down in the square and doing pencil portraits of tourists for a few lira. I have purchased a porkpie hat and have grown a goatee.

  I hope your job is working out and that you are happy back in Pine Oak. As for myself, I can’t imagine it any more. Luckily, I have enough money to stay here; maybe buy a small house in the city and renovate it. It will be a place where I can be alive again and a place that you can visit if you ever get the time.

  I hope you were able to sort out all that paperwork I left you. Cindy’s will made my work easier, but she had a lot of interests and I did the best I could with whatever she had not already put in your name—bank accounts, taxes, the files in her room. You might sort through those files for the breeding papers on the horses. I seem to remember that I promised to send them t
o the new owners.

  Write me when you can.

  M.M.

  I put the letter back in the envelope, got up from the couch, and stretched. It was the kind of note I expected from my father, heavy on his own doings and making it tacitly understood that he was uninterested in mine. It didn’t sound as if he planned to ever come back. I remembered now that while he had been a student at Florida State University, he had spent a year in Italy—or was it two?—on their Florence program. He had, when I was much younger, often reminisced about the places he had seen and the four or five close friends he had made there. It seemed strange to me now that I had never met any of them.

  A goatee? Sketching tourists? I wish you well, Daddy.

  The files he mentioned were now probably strewn around Cindy’s room like big confetti. And his letter had not mentioned who the new owners of the horses were so what was the point of looking for the papers?

  Instead, I went into the kitchen to survey the damage. Most of the dishes in the cupboards had been left untouched—as it was pretty obvious that nothing could have been hidden behind or in them. But most of the food in the pantry had been pulled from the shelves, cans had tumbled out, loose cereal and flour were mixed on the floor. Boxes of rice-a-roni and packets of sweetener had been trampled under someone’s feet. I sighed, wishing Gina hadn’t had to leave, and began salvaging what I could. I dumped the rest in two plastic garbage bags and swept most of the cereal and flour outside. I was busy washing the dishes in the sink when I realized I was about to collapse. I walked unsteadily to the bedroom and saw that the red light was blinking on the telephone. It must have rung when I was outside picking up arrows. Without checking the number on the Caller ID, I pressed the replay button.

  “Sue-Ann? This is Jack. Listen, Sue-Ann, I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know whose fault it was but I’d like to talk about it. I thought that I was okay with it but I’m not. I’m . . . look, I’m driving to Miami for a meeting in a few days and I’d like to stop by and see you. You’ve got my phone number. Please call me back.” The message ended.

  I collapsed on to the bed, then stood up again. The call was exactly what I didn’t need. Jack Stafford—my boyfriend in Richmond—was a photographer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Thirty-six, black wavy hair, blue eyes, rugged good looks, and gentle manner. His only flaw—and a flaw that I think I am the only one ever to see—was that his camera understood more than he did. In some impossible-to-explain way, his use of light, angle, focus, you name it—all of which came as naturally to him as bowhunting came to Fred Bear—gave his photographs unique personalities, allowed them to tell tales like the best storytellers, and conveyed marvelous aspects of life that only a very few people ever get to witness. His worst photos were good enough for most magazines; his best were like diamond rings given with love to young maidens. The problem was, he almost never understood why he took a particular photo until he developed it. Although he had unbelievable people skills, he had trouble imagining why they acted the way they did. Had trouble imagining why I acted the way I did. He was high on the list of people I never wanted to see again. I had no idea what to do about him and thinking made me tired.

  I turned on the radio and began to undress.

  The pirate station was playing a recording of William S. Burroughs reading something dreadful. I leaned over to turn it off when one of the deejays, male this time, interrupted, “Thanks, Bill. That was great. Really. Yeah. No, we’ll call you, okay?

  “This is Smokestack here on W-A-K-O, your wacko radio station broadcasting from the wilds of tree country. I’m gonna play a few songs by The Carpenters now. Betcha thought now that Karen was dead, people would have thrown all their Carpenters stuff away, and you might be right but they would be wrong. She was way cool; I even wrote a story about her once, but I won’t go into that. Instead, I’ll play a song about her by Sonic Youth that kind of captures in three minutes what I tried to get over in 20 pages. It’s called “Tunic.’”

  The song that he played was both raucous and touching—a paean to the anorexic singer with the soft and beautiful voice. I had heard the song once before—a soldier in Baghdad had played it for me. It was about creation and death.

  I lay down on the bed Gina had made, and put my eye-pillow carefully over my closed eyes. It was cool and put a soothing pressure on my eyelids. The aroma of eucalyptus and peppermint was indeed therapy and I loved how everything was suddenly so dark that I felt like I was floating in an isolation tank. Not only was the light blacked out, but most of my sensations were, too. I felt like I was drifting on a cloud and could no longer feel my arms or legs. I was aware only of the sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice fading in and out as song after song began and ended. I must have nodded off because the next thing I was aware of was Smokestack’s voice on the radio. He was speaking in the pseudo-professional disk jockey voice he sometimes assumed when he was being facetious, which was usually.

  “Let me remind you that this program is brought to you by—. Oh, wait, this is a pirate station. In that case, let me tell you about one of my new favorite things. It’s called an eye-pillow. Why is it called that? Because it’s a pillow that you put over your eyes. For a cool refreshing sleep, try an eye-pillow.”

  I sat up with a start. The coincidence was way too much! There were a few seconds of dead air, then another voice came over the waves, no longer the voice of Smokestack, but the whiny, raspy, singsong voice of the man called The Creeper. I listened intently; The Creeper was a mysterious commentator who was sometimes mentioned by the deejays, but who rarely came on the air. I had heard him only once before, but I hadn’t forgotten his disquieting, almost annoying up and down timber with just the hint of a not-of-this-earth accent and a style of speaking that used correct pronunciation but odd grammar. I had heard only the very end of the tale he told, but it was enough for me to gather that he spoke in parables as portentous as they were baffling.

  “Here’s a story for you little kiddies out there,” he began in his sarcastic whine. “Once upon a time, at this very moment in fact, there was a very old man they call Papa Gede. Maybe he’s white and maybe he’s black. Some say he was born in Africa, others say Haiti or other islands in the Caribbean. Some even say New Orleans. Papa Gede can do magic, yas; can heal the sick, can make one rich. All the people who see Papa Gede try to get him to give them favors or eternal life, try to get him on their side in softball games. But Papa Gede is tired. Papa wants to rest. So Papa comes here to the timberland and to the swamp to get out of doing miracles all the time. He wants to be alone, hear?

  “But somehow, little boys and girls hear that Papa Gede comes and want him to give them candy and teach them to rustle cattle. They want to find Papa Gede, but how do they do this? They can’t find him in phone books, no, so they look in other books, books written by people who have seen Papa Gede in Africa or in Haiti or New Orleans.

  “So little children learn how to dance, they learn secret signs that only the dead supposed to know and they find out how to call Papa Gede to them. They make an altar, yas, they make a sacrifice; they draw on the ground secret symbols that only the dead supposed to know and they wait for Papa Gede to come. And they draw a circle around where they sit and they call Papa Gede to come and they will be safe in the circle. But oho, Papa Gede do come and he be a frightening old guy and little children shake and little children toss their cookies and little children cry and weep. But Papa Gede point at them in their white circle and say ‘Boo!’ and the white circle becomes a black hole that kiddies fall down through. They fall down and fall down and fall down and maybe they never come back up. And Papa Gede say, ‘Let me be!’

  “Moral of story: Leave shit alone.”

  Almost before the last tones of The Creeper’s voice had faded came the first notes of what sounded like primitive African drumming.

  I was sweating. It was impossible not to be frightened. First the commercial about the eye-pillow when I had the only one—outside of Meekins’ M
arket—that I had ever seen. Then The Creeper’s story, which was so unsettling that I fired up my computer to do a Google search for Papa Gede. I quickly scanned the first article I clicked on. A voodoo god of some kind, very powerful. Life and death, creation and conclusion. Healing. With mounting concern I looked over a list of characteristics and symbols, appropriate offerings. I pushed the off button on the computer without even shutting down and sat still and quiet for several moments.

  One of the offerings to Gede was a black goat.

  In the background, Smokestack was back on the radio. “We’re back, Jack, and here with some Siouxsie, some Bauhaus, some Robert Smith and The Cure, and then, maybe, some really dark stuff like Crüxshadows. Oh, boy! This is W-D-E-D, all goth all the time.”

  I turned off the radio, flicked off the light, and got back into bed. Almost at once I fell into a deep but restless sleep rife with animals, knives, and vomit. I slept almost until morning, and when I woke up I knew what I had to do.

  Chapter 5

  It was 4:30 a.m. when I stepped out of the shower. I put on jeans, a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and walking boots. It took only a few minutes to make coffee and cinnamon toast, and only a few minutes more to choke them down. I walked out to the barn, taking up the bow I’d used the day before and attaching a clip-on quiver with three arrows. A shoulder quiver was nice, but it added too much weight and was too noisy. I filled a fannypack with a shooting glove, a wrist guard, extra string, a bow stringer, some razor-sharp broadhead arrow points, and a small pair of binoculars. At 5:30 I parked behind Meekins’ Market and stole into the woods, taking the same direction in which I’d seen the shadows moving two mornings before. It was early enough so that Clarence wouldn’t see me and ask what I was doing with a bow and arrows in his woods. Despite his skepticism, I knew I had seen someone running from the dumpster, and I wanted to find out who it was. I knew I wouldn’t be lucky enough to encounter them a second time, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t follow the path and find out where they had gone and what they had been doing.