by Ron Rash
“SO YOU WERE at the office too when Uncle Hiram showed up?” Ligeia said after we’d made love the following Sunday.
“I was there.”
“Bill acts like he didn’t sweat it, but I bet you guys almost flipped out.”
I smiled, feeling the buzz of three beers, thinking Buzz Buzz Buzz, if this feeling were a sound it would be that: bees hovering.
“I didn’t.”
“But Bill did?”
“He did until he saw your uncle’s hand.”
“Uncle Hiram was showing off those stitches like they were made out of gold. It sounds like everyone in Sylva thinks Bill is the second coming of Christ. I bet that gets old, hearing it all the time.”
“It does get old, but you seem to be the only person who realizes it.”
“Hey, but you’re the one who wasn’t too chicken to get my head candy,” Ligeia said, nodding at the empty packet. “Even Uncle Hiram says your grandfather is a real hardass. Yeah, you’ve got your brother beat in the balls department, no doubt about that, Eugene. Bill wouldn’t dare wear those beads you have on either, would he?”
“No way,” I answered. “He keeps saying Grandfather’s going to wring my neck if he sees them on me.”
Ligeia ran a fingertip over my beads, her sharp nail lightly raking my skin.
“They look great on you, Eugene.”
I smiled because I’d checked in the bathroom mirror before Bill and I left the house and for once I’d liked what I’d seen.
“I’ve got a present for you,” I said, and reached into my pants pocket.
“They’re the same colors as yours,” Ligeia said, smiling as she placed the beads over the ones already on her neck. “Where’d you get them? Don’t tell me there’s a head shop here in Hicksville?”
“In Waynesville,” I answered. “I drove over there Monday night.”
“There’s a head shop there?”
“I guess that’s what it is,” I answered. “It’s real new. They have incense, beads, Day-Glo posters, and some really good albums, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, almost every group you told me about. If I had something to play them on, I would have bought a couple.”
“Why don’t you buy a stereo?” Ligeia asked. “Grandpa pays you for working, doesn’t he?”
“He puts the money in our bank accounts. Until I’m eighteen he has to co-sign, and he won’t let me take out more than twenty-five a week.”
“How much do you have in there?”
“Right at two thousand.”
“Damn, sweetheart. You can buy an out-of-sight stereo for three hundred. He won’t let you spend your own dough?”
“There’s no way,” I said. “Not for that sort of thing. Of course Bill can, and he’s got more money than me, but he’s not into music enough to buy a stereo.”
“That’s a bummer,” Ligeia said, “but a head shop being around here is pretty cool. I talked to my sis last night. She’s coming up and is bringing some pot with her. I bet they’ve got pipes and wrapping papers there. You ever smoked pot?”
“No, a beer buzz works fine for me.”
“Pot’s okay, but what you got me is waaaay better. When I get some pot, I’ll bring it. What about the Valium? You didn’t get some for yourself?”
“I have to be careful not to get too much,” I answered. “I want you to have it.”
“You’re so sweet,” she said, and reached behind her for a dollar bill. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to give you this, for the cigarettes. Next time I’ll help with the wine too. Bill said you made a big deal about paying for it.”
“I don’t want the money,” I said, and paused. “This could be kind of a date, couldn’t it? I mean, if that’s okay.”
“A date,” Ligeia said. “You still do that up here?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, then gave a soft laugh.
“All right,” she said, smiling as she laid the money beside the quilt, “but you’ve missed out on the necking and slipping your hands under my bra and panties and all that other ‘date’ stuff. You skipped first, second, and third base and scored right away.”
A pleasant prickling spread over my face and scalp.
“I’m not complaining a bit,” I said.
“Do I have to date your brother too?”
“Do you mean William Gaylord Matney the Third?” I answered, and grinned. “No, just me.”
“Oh, God,” Ligeia giggled. “Is that really his full name?”
“Really.”
“He doesn’t ever call himself that, does he?”
“He does when he’s at school,” I lied. “I laugh at him any time he uses it around me.”
“Good for you,” she said, and began giggling again. “I knew he was uptight but he’s always been nice enough, and he does get us the beer and wine, but God it’s going to be hard to ever look him in the face again without laughing.”
“One time he signed a check with William Matney the Third on it,” I said, lying again, “and I changed it to where it read William Matney the Turd.”
Ligeia’s giggle turned into a harsh laugh, almost a barking sound.
“You’re really funny,” she said when she stopped. “I like that.”
“So we can call it a date?” I said.
“Okay then,” Ligeia said. “We can ‘date.’ Just remember that flowers and boxes of chocolates aren’t what turn this chick on, right?”
“Right,” I answered.
For the rest of June, we rendezvoused with Ligeia on Sunday afternoons. When Bill was doing a procedure with Grandfather, I went to the closet and stole Valium or Quaalude samples. On Sundays Bill stopped at the convenience store. He paid for the beer but I paid for the Strawberry Hill wine. Bill got the condoms from a machine in the restroom, but I put the coins in the cigarette machine and pulled the knob for Virginia Slims. Each week I hoped Ligeia might not let Bill join her in the woods. It’s only because Bill’s buying us the alcohol, isn’t it, I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. It wasn’t until Leslie visited in July that things began to change.
CHAPTER TEN
The day after visiting Bill in Asheville, I awake to a knocking at my front door. I go to the window and see Sheriff Loudermilk’s squad car. A coincidence, I try to tell myself, just another complaint about uncut grass or empty garbage cans. But I know it’s not that, and I realize something else—a part of me has been awaiting this visit.
Cotton mouthed and half stumbling, I grab a dingy bathrobe and move toward the door. I walk into the front room where late-morning sun slants through the blinds, awakening a headache I’d hoped to sleep through. Dust motes drift in the yellow light, bringing back a moment of childhood, more sensation than memory, of a tall shadow thickening over me and then a weightless rising. The knocking becomes more insistent.
“I need to talk to you,” Robbie Loudermilk says when I open the door.
“If it’s about the grass,” I answer, my hand on the doorknob, “I’ll get it cut.”
“It’s not about that. Mind if I come in?”
“As you can see, Sheriff, I haven’t gotten dressed.”
“I don’t mind waiting until you do.”
My hand’s still on the knob. The brass is cold and dense, suddenly real in a way nothing else quite is.
“So can I come in or not, Mr. Matney?”
I open the door wider. Loudermilk stoops as he enters, a tall drink of water, as older folks used to say. His hair is suspiciously black for a man well over sixty and he wears it roached back like a TV preacher. All of it, including the poorly reset nose and clenched smile, seem part of his uniform.
“I played on that ball team with your brother,” Loudermilk says, stepping closer to the mantel. “I was pretty good, but Bill was on a way other level. And now he’s a big-time surgeon. A lot of people aren’t very good at even one thing. Matter of fact, some are just world-class fuck-ups,” he adds, still looking at the photograph. “They can’t keep a job, or a family. Hell, th
ey can’t even drive sober with their own child in the car.”
He turns and bares a set of teeth white as porcelain. It seems incongruous, even a liability when dealing with the rough sorts who’d consider artificially whitened teeth effete.
“I counted Bill a friend in high school, even came here to visit a few times. Your mother always had milk and cookies for us. Of course, this house was kept up better then. Doesn’t seem to be a priority for you. Yeah, Bill was my buddy, until he hired his hotshot lawyer to get you off. That changed things.”
“I need to get dressed, Sheriff, so if you don’t mind . . .”
“Go ahead,” Loudermilk says. “I’m in no hurry.”
I go upstairs and put on a sweatshirt and jeans. When I return, he’s gazing at the photos, which gives me a moment to scan the room. A plastic cup, an empty wine bottle, and a dwindling fifth of Jack Daniel’s crowd the lamp table. On the floor by the couch, a dusty scatter of books and magazines. And on the couch itself, something I quickly look away from.
“Your mother was an attractive woman,” Loudermilk says as he turns. “It’s surprising she never remarried. I used to see her when I took my grandkids to the library. She always took time with them, suggesting books, that kind of thing.”
I step closer to the front door, hoping his eyes if not his feet will follow.
“What is it you wanted to see me about, Sheriff?”
“Ligeia Mosely. You knew her in high school, right?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, she wasn’t a friend or anything. I just knew who she was.”
“Who she was,” Loudermilk says. “So you know they found her body over at Panther Creek?”
“I read about it in the paper.”
“I noticed,” he tells me, and nods at the folded newspaper. Remains Identified is at the top in bold black. “So she wasn’t a friend?”
“Like I told you, Sheriff, I knew who she was.”
“But not someone you ever hung out with?”
“That’s right,” I answer.
“Angie Wellbeck says otherwise.”
“Angie Wellbeck?”
“She was a high school friend of Ligeia’s until they had a falling-out. After we asked for information, Angie came to see me. According to her, you and Ligeia were up to something that involved you giving her money. Angie didn’t know exactly how much, but she did say it was a wad of bills, and the one on the outside was a twenty.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Loudermilk raises a hand.
“Angie admitted that Ligeia was selling drugs, but using more than she sold. That’s why they had a falling-out, Ligeia borrowing money she wouldn’t pay back. Or couldn’t pay back, because she owed money to other people.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You need a drink?” Loudermilk asks. “You seem a little shaky.”
“Why are you here, Sheriff?”
“Just curious about why you’d give Ligeia Mosely money.”
“I didn’t give her any money.”
“Why would Angie Wellbeck lie about that?”
“I don’t know,” I answer, speaking slowly to steady my voice. “It was forty-six years ago. She must be confusing me with someone else.”
“No, Angie was certain it was you. She said you had zits and blond hair and were skinny as a scarecrow. The pimples are gone, by there’s yet some blond in that gray hair of yours. And you’re still not exactly Mr. Universe, are you?”
“She’s mistaken, Sheriff. I’m sorry Ligeia Mosely’s dead but it’s got nothing to do with me.”
Loudermilk rubs the back of his neck. He looks above me, then resettles his eyes on mine.
“I almost sent one of my deputies to talk to you, but I came out of respect for your mother. Now I’m glad I came. We know Ligeia was arrested for possessing prescription drugs in Daytona Beach, right before she came up here, and after what Angie Wellbeck told me, I figured this was about a dealer she owed money to, a dealer from Daytona, because she kept telling Angie that she was going to Miami, not Daytona. I hoped as a customer you might lead me to someone who might know someone. That kind of thing. But now . . .”
I start to speak but Loudermilk doesn’t let me.
“Here’s the thing, Matney. Ever since I got here you’ve been nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. And your newspaper turned to a story about her, that’s a tad curious, don’t you think? Look, I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything, but I owe it to the Mosely family to get the truth of what happened.”
“I said I knew who she was.”
“You sure you don’t need a drink?” Loudermilk says. “It might loosen you up to remember some things. I’m not a drinking man myself, but I understand lots of times a man drinks to forget. I mean, look at you, your brother and grandfather both doctors and here you are, holed up drinking away your life. Maybe there’s something you want to forget involving Ligeia Mosely.”
“You’ve been reading too many pop psychology books, Sheriff.”
“No, this is my own thinking, but you’re probably right. Any man driving drunk with his own daughter in the car can’t be troubled too much about hurting people.”
“Is that what all of this is about, Sheriff, my DUI charge? Charge, not conviction.”
“I didn’t like you getting off,” he answers, “but I’ve learned a slick enough lawyer can always find a technicality. I bet it was a pretty penny your brother paid him though. But no, it’s not about DUIs. It’s about why someone cut the throat of a seventeen-year-old girl.”
Loudermilk stops and stares at me intently.
“You’re surprised,” he says softly.
Surprised, yes, but even more the sudden sense of weightlessness when a trapdoor’s sprung. For a few moments neither of us speaks.
“I’m surprised because all I know about any of this is what the newspaper said.”
“And what was that?” Loudermilk asks.
“That the cause of death hadn’t been confirmed.”
“That was before forensics in Raleigh had a look. A sharp-bladed instrument, maybe a knife, maybe not, cut into her upper spine so deep it damn near cut her head off. Anyway, let’s get back to the money you gave her. It was for drugs, right?”
“I didn’t give her any money,” I answer, “for drugs or anything else.”
“Be careful, Matney, you’re acting guilty again, and right when I thought you might not know anything after all. Look, you know I can’t charge you for buying drugs that long ago. But the statute of limitations doesn’t apply to murder. So a name or names, even if you think they had nothing to do with this. That’s all I want from you.”
“I don’t know anything about any of this, Sheriff.”
“Then why did you give her money?”
“I didn’t give her money. Her friend is wrong.”
Loudermilk tilts his head ever so slightly. He’s not a stupid man, but nowhere as clever as he thinks. The lawyer had made that clear at my DUI trial. By the time he’d finished, Loudermilk had contradicted himself a dozen times. He nods at the Jack Daniel’s bottle.
“Okay, you’ve probably wiped out enough brain cells not to remember,” he says. “You been drinking this morning?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I wish you’d empty that bottle and get in your car, because if I catch you again, even the damn governor won’t be able to help you. I’ll make sure every newspaper in the state knows about it, and about what happened the last time. And I won’t spare Bill. He was wrong to get your worthless ass off, even if you are his brother.”
Loudermilk lifts his right hand and flexes an open palm sideways, the way people once hit typewriter return bars. It’s an odd gesture, perhaps one of dismissiveness, like moving on to a new paragraph, a new topic. He lowers the hand.
“There are a couple of other folks Angie Wellbeck suggested I contact,” he says, “guys Ligeia knew, roug
h sorts. Sylva’s a small town, and small towns have a way of eventually giving up their secrets. I may find out from someone else that you’re tied to this, and that may lead to an obstruction of justice charge, so if there’s something you ‘forgot’ to tell me, or you want to get off your chest, call me.”
Loudermilk walks out the door and drives off. Sweat trickles down my spine. My forehead glistens, which Loudermilk surely noticed. I stare at the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. One drink and by law I’m still sober, so I splash a shot glass’s worth of whiskey into the plastic cup. My hand trembles as I raise the cup to my mouth but I do not swallow yet. Instead, I close my eyes and let the liquor’s soft burn flood over my tongue. I level my chin and inhale through my nose, savor the peaty aftertaste on the back of my mouth and upper throat as I slowly swallow.
Leonardo’s disembodied hand comes to me with an almost hallucinatory intensity, beckons me back to a childhood afternoon when Bill pressed a blade into my flesh and cut. He was twelve and I seven. A long-abandoned house, supposedly haunted, lay behind the county rec center. One afternoon after Bill and I had gone swimming, Bill wanted to explore it. I didn’t want to go but Bill coerced me with the promise of a milk shake at Pike’s Drugstore. I was following him up the porch steps when a shard of rotten wood lodged in my foot.
“You knew better than to be in that old house,” Grandfather said when Bill helped me into the office. “You’re damn lucky a board didn’t give and break some bones.”
“I’m sorry,” Bill said.
“That’s not good enough, son,” Grandfather answered as I waited on the examination table, injured foot flexed, watching with dread as Grandfather set the tray of bright, sinister instruments on the counter. After he called Shirley back to prepare the lidocaine shot, Grandfather handed Bill gauze and a bottle of Betadine. “Clean around that wound,” he told him.