Death Pans Out

by Ashna Graves

  “No, Burtie didn’t like fuss, but he didn’t like rudeness either. Going away without telling anyone would be a great rudeness. I don’t know why the sheriff isn’t looking harder for information. He was just about as bad as Orson when I talked to him. He acted like I was being hysterical. Hysterical! I know some people think I’m the crazy old lady of Billie Mountain, but I never was hysterical in my life, maybe even when I should have been. Something terrible has happened to Burtie, I just know it, and I can hardly sleep for thinking he might need help.”

  Though many pages remained in the notebook, only a few half-hearted entries followed. They offered no answers or hints of answers.

  ***

  The sun was not yet above the ridge when Neva left the cabin. Soon arrived at the road that followed Jump Creek Canyon, she paused to listen from the shelter of the trees. She was unlikely to meet a vehicle here, where only Darla drove, as far as she knew, but she meant to be cautious even so. The sandy road curved out of sight in both directions. The highway lay to the left, though how many miles distant she didn’t know. She did know that Jump Creek meandered more than Billie Creek, and flowed about fifteen miles from the upper spring to the river. Given that she was less than halfway down the canyon, she faced a walk of at least eight miles by road, more if she stuck to the creek.

  Clearly, she must take the road. In the unlikely event of there being a vehicle in the canyon, she would hear it in plenty of time to hide. She stepped out into the open and soon settled into the familiar trail rhythm that had carried her over so many miles in the past weeks. It was good to be walking again despite the bruised leg, and she felt calmer and more confident with each hour that passed. When the sun was overhead she sat on a log a little way from the road, ate half the jerky stick and two squares of chocolate, and sipped water from the jam jar.

  Neva was tying up the jar in her sweater again when she heard a distant hum. It sounded at first like an airplane, but the sound swelled rapidly into the rumble of a truck. She pushed the sweater and jar behind the log and stretched out on the ground beside them, her heart beating against matted pine needles. The truck soon passed by, heading downstream. In the next moment she was on her feet and running toward the road, furious with herself for being a fool. It had to be Darla checking cows. Right now she could be sitting in safety and comfort on the way to the ranch house instead of facing hours of walking in the heat with a bruised shin and head.

  The truck was out of sight by the time she reached the road. She hurried after it, thinking Darla might stop to check salt licks or fences, and sure enough the engine sound changed. She stood still to listen, and with a rush of joy realized that the vehicle had turned and was heading back up the canyon. This time, she waited in plain sight.

  The truck that soon appeared was not yellow, and it was not Darla who leaned from the open side window to gape at her. It was Lance.

  “Your head’s bloody,” he blurted.

  She lifted a hand to the cut, which felt sticky. She must have scraped it again when she dropped down behind the log, though she was not aware of pain. “I had a bit of an accident, but it’s nothing serious. Do you know if anyone’s been looking for me?”

  “What?”

  “Have you noticed anyone looking for me? No, never mind. It’s complicated. Have you been to the cabin? My cabin, I mean.”

  He nodded, shook his head, and shrugged like a small boy unsure of the meaning of the question. He smelled like sweat and wood smoke, and his gaze roved nervously, resting on her for a moment, sliding away, dropping to the ground, fixing on her again.

  “Where’s Reese?” she said, trying a different tack. Is he back at the mine?”

  Lance nodded, this time without hesitation.

  “Good.” If she could get to her cabin with Lance for protection she could change her clothes, pack a few things, head out in her own car, and if necessary enlist Reese’s assistance on the way. “I need some help, Lance. Could you give me a ride home and then follow me down Billie Creek Road?” At his blank look she added, “My car’s acting funny. I’m not sure it will make it. I need to pick up a few things at the cabin, then take the car to be fixed.”

  Car trouble was clearly within his realm of experience. He nodded and leaned to open the passenger’s side door. She climbed in with a grateful smile, though marveling at how different he was from his brother. Had Reese met her on the road like this, he would have rushed up shouting, “Where the hell have you been anyway? You look like you tried to die and gave it up for a bad job.” Then he would have whooped with laughter. But it wasn’t important, nothing was important aside from the fact that she was in a truck in the company of a strong young man who owed her at least a small debt for the food and dog care.

  “How’s the pup?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  Lance navigated through the rocks and pits with skill equal to Darla’s, and with far more patience than his brother had shown. Though he gripped the wheel hard, his young profile appeared focused rather than tense. Maybe, if he could get out from under Reese’s shadow, he would turn out to be interesting in his own right, with unsuspected skills and opinions about the world. Rather than attempt more conversation with him at the moment, however, Neva sank back against the warm upholstery with her eyes shut, and must have slept because in no time they were pulling into her dooryard. The sight of the familiar cabin brought such relief and delight that she said without forethought, “Thanks, Lance. But I’ve changed my mind. There’s no need for you to wait. It’s going to take me a while to get ready to leave and I’m sure the car will make it out to the highway. It is downhill all the way.”

  “I can wait. Nothing better to do.”

  “No, really. I need to eat something, and to wash properly, and then pack a few things. It could take hours. The ride was a great help.”

  He turned then to look at her directly. “Are you leaving? For good?”

  “I don’t know about for good.” Had she said she was leaving the creek? She thought she’d said only that she needed to get the car fixed, but she was too tired to recall clearly. “I should probably get my cut head looked at in town, too, so I may spend the night.”

  “Why did you want to come out here for? What are you looking for all the time?”

  “I’m not looking for anything, Lance. I just like to walk. It’s been very good for my health. It must sound funny since you grew up around here, but the dry desert air and exercise are great for healing when you’re sick. I was quite sick when I got here and now I’m not. It’s kind of a miracle, really. Thanks again for the ride.” She closed the door with a smile and waved to get him moving. He continued to look at her for a long moment before hunching forward, shoving the truck into gear, and speeding up the lane.

  Neva raised a hand to touch the sticky cut on her forehead as she watched the truck vanish over the rise in a tornado of dust, and then she turned to examine her car. It appeared to be just as she’d left it, including the usual sprinkling of pine needles on the roof and hood. She fetched her keys from the bag that was hanging on the kitchen wall, started the car, and pulled up to within a few feet of the kitchen porch for easier loading. As she was passing the washbowl on the porch shelf, she glanced at the small mirror she’d hung above it and stopped in surprise. Her forehead was a worse color than her shin, bright purple right around the cut and then yellow farther out, with new blood trickling toward her eye again. No wonder Lance had looked at her strangely. She dabbed at the blood with the towel, but proper cleaning and dressing would have to wait.

  Inside the cabin, she discovered nothing out of order. The comfort and familiarity of it all was deeply soothing, and as she arranged her books and papers in a duffel bag she felt more regret than urgency. How lovely it would be to build a fire, stir fry whatever vegetables remained in the cooler along with heaps of ginger and garlic, and settle in for an afternoon of writing, mainly notes about Gran and Uncle Matthew. But there was no time, and the cabin was not the sanctu
ary she had believed it to be.

  Working fast, she wrapped the portrait in a towel and set it with Frances’ ashes on the backseat of the car, then packed enough clothing for a week. She got out the one-burner camp stove, barely heated a can of curry, and ate it from the pot. Her clean clothing was laid out on the bed and she was about to pull the old dress off over her head when the screen door in the kitchen scraped open and slammed shut.

  “Hello? Lance, is that you?”

  The only reply was the sound of footsteps crossing the kitchen. A man appeared, a stranger—no, not a stranger. It was Darrell Guptill from the funeral home.

  Her astonishment was no greater than his, and for a long moment they stared at each other without making a sound.

  “You—” she said.

  “What—” he said.

  Again they were silent. Darrell was dressed exactly as he had been the other day when they met at the cemetery, his shirt buttoned to the collar and wrists, his chino slacks as smooth as though just pressed. His expression, however, was unrecognizable. Rather than bland, remote interest, he now registered extreme shock, far more so than she felt despite her genuine surprise.

  “Darrell, hello,” she said. “Now we meet on my territory. If you’re collecting butterflies, the best ones are up on top, but I’m sure you know that already.”

  Rather than reply, he put out a hand to steady himself against the doorframe, looked at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but at Neva, and blew out a long breath through such narrowly parted lips that the sound was just short of a whistle.

  “Are you all right?” It was hot out, and he might have walked a long way looking for butterflies. “Would you like a drink of water? I guess you couldn’t know this, but I’ve been staying here all summer. This was my uncle’s cabin years ago.”

  He undid the top two buttons of his shirt, took out a large white handkerchief, wiped his face, and said, “I didn’t know it was you. What happened to your head?”

  “I had a little accident, nothing serious.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Been?”

  “Since you hit your head?”

  Apart from extreme thinness, Darrell Guptill was of average size for a man. Thinking about the implications of his question, Neva pictured a dark silhouette against the light inside a truck box. Narrow shoulders, a stoop, and then later, a hoarse shout. A funeral home, a lumpy canvas roll, a mining tunnel—and a cemetery standing on solid rock. She sat down on the edge of the bed, clasped her hands in her lap, and said, “You chased me.”

  He nodded.

  “Would you like to sit down?” She gestured toward the platform rocker.

  He crossed to the chair and seated himself on the edge with his knees together, both feet on the floor, his head bowed.

  She shifted on the bed to face him squarely. “Could we talk about it?”

  He did not look up or reply.

  “Would you like some coffee? I could really use a cup.”

  “It hurts my stomach.” A slight pause, and then, raising his head to observe her with distressed eyes, he said, “Thanks anyway. What are you doing out here? People die from sun. You should wear a hat.”

  “I do wear a hat, sometimes at least. I came out here partly because I craved sunlight. But please explain why you chased me.”

  “I didn’t know it was you,” he said again, but this time the words came out in a mournful wail.

  “It’s all right. I didn’t know it was you either, or I wouldn’t have run. It really doesn’t matter. I’m fine, and I want you to know that my time here at the mine is finished. I’m leaving for the Willamette Valley today and I won’t be back. Truly. I have no particular interest in anything out here apart from the land itself, which I find very beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Very. It’s one of the few places that’s not an actual desert where you can see the bones of the earth.”

  “Bones!”

  Neva looked away, aghast, saw no way to fix the blunder, and said with at least an appearance of calm, “Rocks, you know. Ridgelines against the sky, wonderful light. Now I really do have to get going as it’s a very long drive back to Willamette.”

  She stood up and instantly he was on his feet as well. “You can’t go.”

  “Ah, I see.” She sat again just as before, and observed him in silence until he, too, resumed his seat. She said, “Well, here we are. You may as well tell me about the funeral business. It must be difficult in Elkhorn, with that stony ground.”

  He nodded.

  “Is that how it all started?”

  Another nod.

  Neva studied Darrell’s face but found little she could read there. He hadn’t shaved lately, but the pale stubble was nearly invisible against his white skin. He couldn’t be fifty yet, and probably not much over forty, but he had the stooped, discouraged bearing of an older man suffering hard luck. He didn’t look strong enough to carry a body across a room, let alone up a rocky hill to a mine tunnel. She said with a musing air, “Is that why you started making videos, so people would be less interested in going to the cemetery and seeing the coffin go into the ground? They’d wonder why there was no actual hole.”

  “People don’t like to see a hole,” he said with sudden interest. “They used to faint sometimes. This is better for everybody. I didn’t see you in a dress before.”

  “It’s not mine, it, well, someone left it behind. The sweater, too.”

  “I like blue,” he said as though testing a new thought.

  “So do I, especially blue flowers.” Wondering at her own calm, she added, “The campanula around here is the bluest I’ve ever seen in a flower. You must know Billie Creek pretty well, coming out here for so many years. Darrell, what happened to my uncle, Matthew Burt? You must know.”

  “It wasn’t me that did it. I never did want to do any of it, but there wasn’t anybody else to help out. You have to help your family.”

  “Did my uncle surprise your father the way I surprised you the other night?”

  “He didn’t know who it was. He never took anything off him. He left him just like he was. The others are dead already so it doesn’t make any difference.”

  Mystified, Neva didn’t know what to say. They sat in silence for some time, Darrell casting anxious glances her way in between studying the floor, while she tried to make sense of his words. An idea formed—but surely Darrell and his father didn’t go that far with their appalling business?

  “We’re finished here,” he said almost dreamily. “We’re moving the operation. It’s a real long drive over the pass. I’ve been working on it, getting ready.”

  “It must be hard work. Lots of heavy carrying.”

  “Not so heavy. We have a dryer, and sometimes it’s only parts. It’s been a secret my whole life, you know. I never could tell anybody. I couldn’t even get married.”

  “That’s really too bad. Secrets are rarely worth the trouble they cause, in my experience.”

  “I’m good at keeping secrets. I didn’t tell Dad, not a word. He doesn’t have to know everything.”

  “Didn’t tell him what?”

  “About you. Being out here and all over the place all the time. It would have been all right if you didn’t see the truck. That’s a problem.”

  “I didn’t know it was your truck. Not until today. And I could easily forget it. I came to Billie Creek to get well and I got well and that’s the whole story, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Darrell shook his head with a regretful air as he gazed around the room. “You made it nice here. Nobody lived here for a long time.”

  “Not since my uncle.”

  “Not since your uncle.”

  Again they sat in silence. It was late afternoon, and soon it would be the golden hour when the canyon was suffused with apricot light. She should be preparing dinner, writing in her journal, moving around the cabin barefoot and at ease after the day’s walking.

  “Are you hungry? I
just ate some canned curry but it wasn’t much of a dinner. I have the ingredients for a vegetable stir fry, if the vegetables haven’t gone bad by now.”

  Darrell shook his head.

  “Something to drink then? Mint tea? Hot chocolate? I really do need coffee. I’ll put on water to heat while you think about what you want.”

  He had sat back in the chair and was rocking slightly, and this time he did not get up when she went into the kitchen. She clattered pots and talked aloud, speculating about where she might have put the sugar. There was no reaction from the other room. The rocking continued. She felt for her keys, which were still in the sweater pocket where she had dropped them after moving the car. A glance out the kitchen window told her that Darrell had parked somewhere other than the dooryard, giving her a clear shot at least as far as the rise above the house. Beyond that she could most likely drive around any vehicle parked on the lane.

  Humming wordlessly, she assembled filter, drip cone, and large mug, and dropped a tea bag into a second mug. The camp stove sat on the kitchen table. She placed the pot of water on the single burner and struck a match, but did not light the gas. “I want to ride through the West where there ain’t no fences,” she sang. “Gaze at the moon till I lose my senses…”

  She opened the screen door with one hard pull, jerking it past the sticking spot, then dashed across the porch and yanked the car door open. He was right behind her. His hand landed on her shoulder. She slipped out from under it and ran but he caught her before she was halfway to the woodshed. Struggling to break away, she felt the sweater slide down her arms. He spun her around to face him, ripping the thin dress, which split down the front.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he cried, dropping both hands and staring at her exposed chest with its two horizontal scars like closed eyes.

  She backed away, allowing the top of her dress to gape open. Watching him, she miscalculated the distance to the chopping block, rammed her heel into it, and lost her balance. He caught her before she fell, cradling her almost gently, then pressed a cloth over her face, a nasty, acrid cloth that made her gag. She clawed at his hand, got hold of the cloth, pulled with all her strength, straining for air, for air, for air…