by Ashna Graves
“I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I meant the markers, you know, they’re so different from the usual headstones, just the flat plaque in the ground, no crosses or angels or anything.”
“The markers? You’re asking about the markers?” He scrutinized the area around them with a quizzical air, as though he’d never noticed the absence of upright headstones and monuments.
“I was just thinking of some of the famous cemeteries, like in New Orleans and Paris, that are like little cities of the dead. If you’ll pardon me for saying so, this is more like a golf course for the dead.”
Darrell’s sudden snort of laughter was so unexpected that Neva didn’t realize for a moment that he was laughing. Alarmed by the choking sound of it, she studied him with concern, saw that his eyes were amused rather than angry, and smiled.
“Everyone uses those now,” he said, turning serious again. “You’ll hardly find a headstone, a real headstone, in a cemetery today. It’s far too costly. We do everything we can to keep the burden on our customers light at this time of grieving—” He stopped and cocked his head as though listening to his own words, then said in an entirely different voice, matter-of-fact and a little impatient, “It’s better for mowing, nothing to go around. I suppose you could play golf on it.”
“If the plaques were holes.”
This time he didn’t laugh though his mouth twitched and he undid his collar button. “I’m not used to people joking about it.”
“Thank you for taking it in good spirit. I really didn’t mean to insult your cemetery. It’s very well kept and attractive. I guess I’m surprised that people, some people at least, don’t want something more than a name and dates.”
Darrell replied with the earnest manner of a boy. “Most people don’t know what they want, you see. We have to tell them. And not so many even come to the graveside anymore. They just watch the video.”
“Video?”
“The video tribute to the deceased. They give the grieving families a memento worth a thousand headstones. They’re professionally done, a movie that brings the dead back to life onscreen. And it’s there forever. Any time family or friends wish to view it they can use the big screen in the chapel or simply put it into the DVD player at home. Most people prefer the chapel, where the formal setting”—Again he stopped and appeared to be listening to himself, and again changed gears. “The funeral business has changed. I guess that sums it up. Anyway, your old-fashioned graveside service is too depressing for most people. They don’t want to see their loved ones go into the ground. Are you finished walking the dog?”
Glad for an excuse to end the exchange, Neva gathered Juju’s rope up more snugly. “I think she’s had enough. Nice talking with you.”
She moved away but instead of saying goodbye, Darrell fell into step beside her. When they were just halfway to the sidewalk and he still had not said a word, she asked, “Is entomology a hobby?”
“I used to collect butterflies and beetles. That was before this.” He waved around at the wide lawn. “I don’t have time now. And I never did like to pin them.”
She left him standing with his hands in his trouser pockets and a studious look on his face, as though they had enjoyed a philosophical discussion that required additional thought. Next time, should there be one, she would find the city park that was certain to be somewhere not too far away and walk Juju without strolling through that minimalist suburb of the dead where living guests, it seemed, were not particularly welcome.
***
Sheriff McCarty greeted her affably outside his office in the law enforcement building, but the instant she said she had come to visit Reese the jovial manner switched off. “I thought you only met him once.”
“I’d like to reassure him about his dog.”
“You’d be the first.”
“To visit?”
“That’s correct. Folks who’ve known him all his life haven’t even bothered.” There was silence for a moment, and then his manner relaxed somewhat. “Don’t expect him to appreciate it.”
Having never set foot in a jail before, Neva was prepared for a movie-style guarded visiting room with a long table divided by glass. Instead, she waited for Reese alone in an airy room furnished with upholstered chairs and a coffee table. There was nothing to read, and the longer she waited the more uncertain she felt. Just what was she doing here? What kind of arrogance had led her to be so sure of his innocence? There was at least a possibility that she was about to get cozy with a killer, and to confide in him that she had hidden his gold in her woodshed.
The door crashed open. She stood as Reese approached, walking tough and unfazed in stained jail pajamas that were too short for his arms and legs. The guard remained near the door with arms folded, looking at the ceiling.
“Well,” growled Reese.
“Well, hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
She sat back down but Reese remained defiantly on his feet. She said, “I would have brought your dog in but they don’t allow them.”
“You have Angie?” There was suspicion in his voice but he did settle in the chair opposite her.
“I call her Juju because she arrived late one night and scared me stiff banging around on the porch. She’s pretty good company.”
“She’s a dumb shit. Won’t even go after a stick.”
“Does being nasty come naturally or do you have to work at it?”
He blinked, and then laughed with his head thrown back. “Shit, you should be a lawyer. They gave me a candyass kid right out of school. I might as well sign a confession and ask for the electric chair tomorrow. Or do they use injections now, the civilized way, I forget?”
“Maybe it would be better to talk about how to prove you didn’t do it.”
“You think I did it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And how come is that?”
“Partly instinct and partly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
“Who? Sounds like a prick to me—a long one!”
“Reese, could you drop it? You didn’t talk like this when we were looking for Lance.”
“First tell me about this guy Henry Whatsis, then I have something to say.” He glanced at the guard and edged his chair closer.
“Longfellow wrote the poem you quoted when you threw the whiskey bottle off the ridge.”
For a moment he looked blank, then recited, “The day is done, and the darkness, Falls from the wings of night, As a feather is wafted downward, From an eagle in his flight. That one? That’s Longfellow, is it? I wouldn’t know. I just had to write it a hundred times for swearing at my English teacher. I liked it okay. I also had to do, A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only, As the mist resembles rain. I can tell you one thing, sadness and longing can go fuck themselves. This is pain.” Again he looked at the guard, then lowered his voice. “I think I figured out where Lance went and it’s driving me crazy. If he finds out about this he’ll try to come here and I don’t want him to. He needs to keep away or they might get some crazy idea to throw him in the clink too.”
“Could I get a message to him?”
Reese sat back in the chair with his arms folded and a hard, gauging look on his face.
Leaning forward, she murmured, “I took the cigar box out of the cabin and put it somewhere safe until you get out.” Expressions flitted over his mobile face faster than she could read them. Finding the sight oddly painful, she kept talking as a distraction for them both. “Gene told me, not where the nuggets were, but that you had some. I thought you might worry about it. The box is at the very back of my woodshed covered with firewood, easy to find if you know it’s there. I wanted you to be able to get it even if I’m not around.”
“Well, damn me. Just damn me. I don’t know what to say except excuse me for being such a butt hole. I just keep wondering what you’re up to. Even my own mother hasn’t set foot in here. Not that I’d expect her but you get the point. I am
not a nice guy, really, I told you I’ve been a bastard to Lance every day of his life.” Again he leaned toward her, this time with his hands shielding his face at the sides like blinders, and spoke through them in a whisper. “Lance is hiding. He ran away because he was scared, I’m sure of it, and for good reason with what happened to Roy. I don’t have an idea in hell what’s up, but I don’t want Lance in it.”
At that moment the door opened and Sheriff McCarty looked in. Clearly surprised by the scene, he barked, “Wrap it up, time’s about over.”
“Almost done, thank you, Sheriff,” Neva said as sweetly as though he had invited her to tea.
“Five minutes then.”
When the sheriff was gone, Reese spoke fast. “It’s going to be hard to find, but don’t write this down because they might take it away from you. Just listen.” There followed whispered directions for finding an old cowboy line cabin in the hills between Elkhorn and Billie Mountain, which she could approach to within half a mile by car. She tried to memorize the series of turns. Take the highway past the Dry River Valley turnoff to Angel Creek Road, then on to Little Spring Road, then Forest Service Road 3580, turn right on the 150 spur and go to a fork, take the left to a small quarry, leave the car there, take the path from the west side of the quarry up to a small meadow. The cabin was in the meadow.
“Take him some food and tell him not to come down until I’m out of here. Tell him that’s an order. The dumb shit will just get into trouble.”
The door opened and he stood up and walked away, but turned before he reached the sheriff and said, “Angie likes pancakes with syrup. Lots of syrup.”
***
Pork and beans, barbecued beans, frijoles—was she right or wrong to assume that young bachelor miners eat mainly beans from a can? Her hand hovered, moved down the shelf, selected, put back, and moved again. At this rate she wouldn’t get to the line cabin until sundown. She knew better than to try to find such a place in the dark, but it seemed important to get the right supplies, food that would keep if she had to leave it on a porch.
It was midafternoon when she headed out of town. The sight of the big white federal building reminded her of the letter to Ethan she’d brought along to mail. She pulled into the parking lot, circled around to the front of the building, dropped the letter in the box and was approaching her car again when she noticed a blue Blazer with smoked windows parked at the end of the small lot. Surely, the same car, notable for its unusual star-pattern hubcaps, had been parked at the jail? McCarty, it seemed, was a determined man.
Slowing her step, she stretched before she got into her car, waited for an extra long break in the traffic to pull out, drove three blocks, turned right on a residential street and headed back toward the center of town, watching the rearview mirror. The blue car was behind her.
Back in the center again, she stopped at the bookstore and bought a slim paperback on techniques for gold panning that she had passed up the first time she was here. When she left the store the Blazer was pulled over at the end of the block. Again she started out of town, again turned off the main street, again returned downtown, and again went into Blue Mountain Books.
This time she bought a New York Times Book Review even though she had vowed to read nothing of the kind for the entire summer. When she came out the blue car was not in sight, but as she started out of town for a third time, she saw it three vehicles back. Again she turned off the main street, again headed back to town, but this time she returned to the law enforcement building, jumped out of the car, waved at the Blazer as it cruised past the parking lot, and went in for a word with Sheriff McCarty.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up both hands. “You can’t blame me for trying. I don’t know what you and Reese Cotter are plotting, but whatever it is you’d better watch yourself. You two were thick as thieves in there. He hasn’t said two words to anybody, lawyer included, so what’s he got so much to tell you? Why don’t you just tell me what you were chatting about and then we won’t have to play these little games. It might even prove helpful to Reese.”
“We talked about the dog, about where Lance might have got himself to, about the fact that Reese’s mother hasn’t visited, and I believe that’s about it.”
“There’s what I mean. His mother died when he was a kid. You can’t even believe him about his own mother. Now what do you have to say?”
“Maybe he meant stepmother, or maybe it was wishful thinking. I don’t really care, but I would like your buddy to stop following me. It will be a long, boring trip for him out to the mine.”
McCarty chuckled. “You’re something else, aren’t you? Do you promise you’re not up to any harebrained scheme of Reese’s?”
“I promise nothing other than that I will conduct myself like the free and guiltless citizen I am.”
“Well, that’s laying it on a bit thick, but I’ll see what I can do.”
***
If anyone tailed her this time, they did it from the air. Five miles out of town she pulled into a brushy side road and waited, but only a cattle truck and two minivans full of kids and camping gear passed going her direction. Nonetheless she continued to check the mirror every few minutes while she drove up the highway searching for Angel Creek Road, now and again checking the instructions she had scrawled as soon as she left the jail. The road wasn’t where she had expected it to be. Hawley Road, Big Bend Road, Mountain View, Jorgerson, Slide Creek, and then she was heading up into the Elkhorn Mountains, which was all wrong. The sun was going down when she turned around, and retraced her course, but still she failed to see Angel Creek Road.
It was too late to continue the search today. More relieved than disappointed, she headed for the pass that would take her back to the mine. Her thoughts were confused, and for once instinct seemed to have abandoned her. She had misled an officer of the law in the cause of helping a rude miner who had lied about his mother. Her idea that Reese was a secret lover of poetry had proven absurd. No one seemed to have a good word to say about the Cotters apart from Reese’s skill as a miner. What did she think she was up to?
Chapter Twenty
Neva woke up the next morning knowing that she would not carry out her promise to Reese. She would not look for the line shack, would not deliver food to Lance, would not entangle herself further in business she knew nothing about. This was the kind of situation she got herself into in town. Too often, needy subjects and sources confused her journalistic interest in them with something more personal, as though she were a priest or counselor, and they continued to seek her out long after the official purpose was served, the interview done, the column written. Her interest was genuine but most problems were beyond her ability to help, apart from lending a sympathetic ear. If she could not protect herself from such frustrating and wearing involvements in the simple world of an idle gold mine, there was no hope for her at all. She had been warned away from the Cotters by both the sheriff and Skipper, men who were not easily alarmed.
Relieved to have escaped entanglement, Neva split wood with particular pleasure, enjoying the hollow “pock” of the echo that came back across the creek. She used the stove only briefly in the mornings and evenings now, for cooking and heating water. This required very little wood but she kept up her morning routine for the fun of it, and stacked the split wood in the shed as though preparing for winter.
Her departure from the cabin was right on time this morning, and it was not yet noon when she reached the ridge top and wandered happily through bright rock gardens, where green and orange lichens were as colorful as flowers. The air was especially clear today, the shapes and colors of the land crisp, the smells rich. With her senses acutely alive, she managed to be mostly a feeling creature rather than a thinking creature until late afternoon, when she headed back down into the canyon. She was hungry, more so than usual during the day, and as she considered what she would eat when she arrived back at the cabin she thought of Lance. The sack of food she had chosen with care still sat in the car.
Was the young man entirely without supplies?
“It’s not my business,” she said aloud.
Juju let out a yip at this sudden sound of a voice.
“Was that a yes or no?” Neva paused on the trail to look down at the dog, which remained Juju to her rather than Angie. She had come to enjoy this quiet company, this shadow at her feet that seemed to take in everything without asking for more than food, water, and an occasional pat. Her rare comments, as Neva thought of the subtle whines, yips and tail thumps, never seemed random. “You think I should stick to my promise? Do you want to see Lance?”
Juju looked up impassively, her impulse to communicate apparently satisfied for the moment by that single yip. Walking on again, uncertain and lost in thought, Neva arrived at the cabin, and as soon as she cleared the woodshed and started across the dooryard, she saw the note on the porch. Since the day of Andy Sylvester’s eviction notice, she had developed a habit of bracing for further unwelcome communications each time she returned to the house, but this note was not from the mining technician. It was from Tony Briggs. Terse and to the point, it included no greeting.
“By rights this belongs to you. I don’t want it anyhow. It works okay, like I said. T. Briggs.”
A rifle stood propped against the porch post, and next to it sat a box of bullets. Neva took an elegantly tapered bullet into her hand. It was heavy and cool on her palm. She lifted the rifle, held it to her shoulder, sighted down the barrel. Was it really as simple as slipping a shell into the chamber, closing it, aiming and pulling the trigger? She should fire it at least once, for the experience, but she would wait for Skipper to show her how. She was so ignorant she didn’t know what kind of rifle it was.
Had it been Briggs’ idea to return the gun, or had his mother insisted? Whatever had prompted the restoration, Neva felt suddenly glad to own something significant that had been her uncle’s. She carried it into the kitchen, and paused to consider where he might have kept the rifle. On the wall? In the pantry? No obvious spot struck her, so she leaned it in a kitchen corner where she would be able to see it as she went about her simple chores and dinner preparation.