Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  “I didn’t kill them, but you’re taking me anyhow?”

  “I have to, Jacob,” Ben said. “I have to take you. You know that.”

  “It isn’t Christian to say it, but I’m glad they dead. Those men were trash, and they killed my boy. I wish it was me did it.”

  “Put your hands behind you.”

  When the handcuffs were tight, the sheriff straightened and looked Jacob in the eyes. “I’m a father, too. I might have done the same, but that don’t change things.”

  “I know, suh,” Jacob said. “I told you I don’t mind.”

  “Where’s the gun at?”

  “I don’t have any gun, suh.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I guess,” the sheriff said. “Let’s go.”

  Jacob was glad that his wife Dottie, and surviving son Roy, were not at home to see him bound and taken. Once he was in the jail, they were not permitted visitation, and he never saw them again. His thirtieth birthday came and went during his trial and brief imprisonment.

  Sixty-two days after his arrest, he stood quietly and waited. He was surrounded by uniformed men. He considered praying, but decided that it was unnecessary. He thought instead of his wife and his two boys as the waxed rope was drawn over his head and snugged tight behind his left ear. A rough hood was pulled down, and the world left his sight. It was hot underneath the cloth, and it smelled musty and old.

  A constant pounding noise began, and Jacob supposed that people were stamping their feet. The rhythm became louder and louder and began to hurt his ears. He had still not realized that it was his own pulse that he heard booming in his head when the trap door opened and he fell straight down.

  He felt a sharp crack through his whole body as the rope caught and his neck broke, and then he tumbled onto soft grass. It was an astonishing green, and he saw that it had been raining, although the cloud cover had that luminous quality that preceded the sun. He picked himself up and started running.

  He knew he had to head uphill to get where he was going. He had been here before, although he couldn’t have said when. He ran up the hillside effortlessly. When he crested it, the grass had thinned out and it was sandy underfoot. He stood at the top and was confused. What should have been there was not.

  A stunning vista of green hills stretched before him, but it was empty of what he had expected. Then he glanced to his left, and there it was. The rooftops were exactly as he remembered, although he had never seen them before.

  Jacob turned his steps downhill toward home.

  ***

  Present Day:

  The day passed in a blur.

  The Simcoe County coroner, dressed for golf and mildly irritated, straightened from beside the deck chair my father still sat in, nodded his head, and got back in his boat. The police, with their flashing lights and noise of their radios, got ready to leave the island.

  They put my father’s body onto a stretcher and loaded him awkwardly for the trip down the lake to the marina. I followed in my own boat. A silver hearse waited on shore, backed onto the dock by the gas pump. Like an insane guest at a party, it spoiled the summer mood at the marina, and people passing on boats either avoided looking at it or else stared at it, open-mouthed.

  From her living room window a mile across the water, Molly had seen the first strange boats landing at my dock and intuited the trouble. She met me at the marina and stayed, often with a hand resting on my arm or my back. Her touch was a profound comfort.

  Eventually, I was able to call Angela from the marina office. I sat at Diane’s desk and looked at a calendar that showed native turtles while I talked.

  “Dead? What do you mean, he died? How could he just die? It happened this morning and you’re just calling me now?”

  “He was sitting on the dock. I went to check on him, and he was gone. I’d just been talking to him--he slipped away. It was fast. I don’t think he felt anything.”

  Angela burst into tears. “Why didn’t you call me?” she sobbed.

  “It’s been non-stop crazy,” I said. “I’m sorry. It took a long time to get people out to the island. The police wouldn’t move him until the coroner said it was a natural death. I haven’t had even a minute to think since it happened. I feel numb.”

  “Where is he now?” she asked.

  “He’s on his way to a funeral home in Huntsville. I’m just heading over there now.”

  “You’re burying him up there?” I could hear her tears dry--her practical side was stronger than her sentiment.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to take him home to Atlanta. He was never even here before. This is a foreign country to him. No one should get buried in a strange place.”

  “Atlanta’s the one place he shouldn’t go, Mike. He was running from there. He ran away and now you’re dragging him back. Don’t take him to Atlanta.” Her voice was rising. “He was scared and he came to you for some kind of help, or shelter, and look what happened. Look what it got him, and now you’re--”

  “Enough!” I snapped. I felt like she had punched me in the stomach. “Let me start over,” I went on, my teeth clenched. “I have to go to Atlanta to sell his house and pay his bills, to close it and wrap up all the things he was running away from. He also left behind a body. Out of respect, I’m taking it down to put it with his wife’s body. That’s all.”

  “You don’t even know where his wife is. Your own mother--and you don’t know where she’s buried. You told me that, years ago.”

  The worst part of divorce was that the person who liked you least in the whole world was the one who knew the most about you, knew all of your hidden corners and cracks and vulnerabilities.

  “I’ll find out where my mother is,” I said. “There’s a record somewhere.”

  “I’m booking a flight down there,” she said. “I’ll meet you, assuming you can get this much done without my help.”

  I was genuinely surprised. “You’re going to Atlanta?”

  “I loved him,” she said. “He’d expect me to be at his funeral.”

  “Why don’t you fly down with me? I’ll--”

  She hung up on me. I closed the phone and walked across the parking lot to where Molly waited in her pickup. I got in and related some of my conversation with Angela to her. I had no idea how to start looking for my mother’s remains, but it was starting to feel important.

  “It is kind of weird,” Molly said. She started the truck and put it in gear.

  “What’s weird?”

  “That you don’t know where your mother is. I don’t even remember my mother, but I know where she’s buried. I still bring flowers on Mother’s Day.”

  “I guess we weren’t much into all that, my dad and I. I remember her funeral. I don’t know what arrangements he made with her body afterward. We never talked about it.”

  She kept her foot on the brake and leaned her head on the steering wheel, looking sideways at me. Her eyes were luminous. Incongruously, I thought about kissing her. It wasn’t the right time, and I shook it off.

  “I’ll find out where she is,” I went on. “It shouldn’t be hard. I’ll put him with her.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  “No. Angela’s going to be there. She can be...unpleasant. I’d rather you weren’t exposed to that.”

  She straightened in her seat and looked out the window on her side.

  “Who cares about the funeral? It’s just a body, Molly. It’s words over a body. You and I see ghosts. Of all people, you and I know it’s meaningless.”

  She shook her head. Without replying, she took her foot off of the brake and wheeled the truck toward the road.

  “Of all people,” I repeated, “we know that the cemeteries and graveyards and funeral homes are all empty. You don’t need to go to Atlanta with me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Sam Latta,

  Marietta, Georgia, Thursday, May 20, 1948:

  “Is she going to go to hell, Daddy?”

  Nathan Latta sat on the edg
e of his son’s bed. He was home from work early, because it was the boy’s birthday. There had been news, more bad news. It was nearly summer again, and the window was wide open, letting in the sound of insects drowsing in the afternoon heat. The day was green and gold and flooded with sunshine, but the room felt dark.

  “No, son. She was a sad woman. She suffered more than she should for a thing that wasn’t her doing. God doesn’t punish that. He doesn’t lay on more weight than someone can bear and then send them to hell because they can’t do it.”

  “How do people hang themselves?” the boy asked. “She was way up high in the rafters in the store. How did she get up there?”

  The father looked up at his son, annoyed and alarmed by degrees. “Who told you that? Who you been talking to?”

  “I seen Wanda--that’s her girl. She told me she woke up this morning and her ma wasn’t in the house, so she crossed over to the store and found her hanging from a rope up by the roof. She said the face was black. She said the eyes and tongue were sticking out and it was wearing her mama’s dress. She didn’t know it was her mama until it started talking.”

  The man stared at the boy. “What do you mean, talking?”

  “Her mouth was all swole up, Daddy,” the boy said, “but she was still talking. She told Wanda it was her own fault that her daddy was dead, and Wanda should come up there and hang, too. She said Wanda was bad. Just really a bad girl. Wanda ran away.”

  “Hogwash, son. Hogwash. She didn’t talk. I promise you that. I don’t want to hear another word about this, y’hear?”

  “She was dead but she could talk, and that’s why I thought she was going to hell.”

  “Dead people don’t talk,” the man said. “That poor girl’s in shock, is all. I feel bad for her, seeing a thing like that, her own mama that way, but I don’t want you with her anymore.”

  The boy sat beside his father on the small bed and thought about it for a minute, looking at the floor. There was a rag rug on the wood, multicolored, and he liked looking at it, seeing the different designs and patterns in it. He looked sideways, up at his father’s face. “She’s glad her mother’s dead. She says it was her mama’s doing that boy got killed, that her mama made her daddy do it. Killing the boy was her mama’s idea.”

  “Son, you haven’t seen my hand on you much, but if I find you’ve been talking with that girl again, you’ll feel my belt on your behind and that’s a promise.” The man stood up and went to the door. “Stay away from her, son. That’s final. I don’t like to talk to you this way on your birthday, but those people have poisoned my house enough, and I’m done with it. Listen to me, now. Your mother has a cake for you, and there might be a package beside your plate. Come downstairs.”

  ***

  Present Day:

  I sat in the window seat and looked out, into the night. Atop the white fuselage of the plane parked next to ours a strobe pulsed, drowning the area in red. The windows of that jet were lit, and I could see people moving around inside, a mirror of what was happening in our own cabin. Yellow lights on the fuel trucks and baggage carts spun madly in the darkness as they hurried around the apron.

  I had looked for my father’s casket being loaded in beneath me, but hadn’t seen it. I supposed they camouflaged them. People on board might see an occupied coffin as an albatross if they spotted it being put aboard their flight. I pictured a stampede for the exit and smiled wearily. If it happened, I’d have first-class to myself.

  Almost all the people on my flight were busy with cell phones. They sent final texts before the order to turn them off. A nervous few checked the seat pockets in front of them, searching for reassurance in the routine presence of flight magazines and sick bags that had ventured into the sky and returned safely. Stragglers onto the plane smiled vaguely at the head of the aisle, as if in apology, while attendants slammed overhead bin doors with nearly excessive force.

  It was ten o’ clock, and the day weighed heavily on me. The coach seat was thinly padded but comfortable, and I closed my eyes and listened to the murmuring of the aircraft readying itself. I felt the gentle thump of large outside cargo doors being closed and latched. The round vent over my head puffed air softly into my face. There was a tiny bump and then we were pushed back. Jet engines began to whistle almost imperceptibly.

  Now that I was on board, I realized how much I dreaded this trip. I didn’t want to return to Georgia, I didn’t want to face this funeral, and I wished I were on the island getting ready for bed. My thoughts drifted.

  “Sir,” the woman’s voice said. “Sir! Excuse me.”

  I opened my eyes. With one hand on the seat backs in front of us, the flight attendant leaned across the two women who were my seatmates to address me. Older, she was probably senior on the flight crew. Her blue eyes were slightly puffy, and she appeared harried even before the flight was underway. Her front tooth showed a fleck of lipstick.

  “You shouldn’t be on this flight,” she said. “You should get off now.”

  I sat upright, fully awake. “Isn’t this for Atlanta?” I asked, alarmed. “The doors are already closed.”

  “You should get off,” she repeated. She straightened and looked toward the front of the aircraft, her hand still resting on the seat back in front of us. She cocked her head and looked at me. “There’s something not right,” she said. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Another stewardess came down the aisle to us, and I waited for what would develop, but she continued past us toward the rear without pausing. The attendant was increasingly agitated as she looked up the aisle. She squeezed the headrest in front of me, and I saw that her hand was dirty. Three of her fingernails were broken off at the quick.

  “I have to go. I can’t do this again,” she said and moved forward, shaking her head.

  I twisted around to face my seatmate, an overweight woman in glasses. “Is this not going to Atlanta?”

  “Yes. Where do you think?” she drawled. “A little late to be asking now.”

  I sat back and buckled myself in.

  “He wants to know where we’re going,” she smirked to the woman on the other side of her.

  A voice came over the speakers overhead.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Pam and I’m your chief flight attendant. On behalf of Captain Richardson and the entire crew, welcome aboard Canadian flight 1306, non-stop service from Toronto to Atlanta.”

  I sat forward, ready to stand up. The plane began to roll forward in its slow and clumsy search for the runway, an old fat dog following a scent. I unlatched my lap belt and turned in the seat, looking for direction, and realized that it was too late. I was going wherever the plane was going.

  “At this time, make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Also make sure your seat belt is correctly fastened. Also, we advise you that as of this moment, any electronic equipment must be turned off. Thank you.”

  The cabin went dark, and the plane left the commotion of the terminal behind and began to wander through the blackness of the airfield. We drifted past occasional blue lights that sat lonely in the grass beside the cement.

  “Cabin crew; prepare for take-off.”

  The jet collected itself. The wing gleamed dully outside my window. The whistle of engines spooled up and up, into a shriek, and we began to roll. After the first hesitation, the jetliner gained momentum and I was pressed into my seat back. Lights on the runway went by faster and faster, and the wheels thudded a staccato beat on seams in the cement. The lighted terminal building came back into view far off to the right. As we passed it, the ranks of white aircraft on its flanks reminded me of nursing puppies.

  The aircraft hunkered down and began to lift its nose. Unexpectedly, my window lit up from the outside. A huge flash of light was accompanied by a bang that shook the cabin. We skidded sideways into the air. My seat dipped and I threw out a hand to brace myself as the aircraft seemed to roll and yaw, threatening to turn its belly to the sky. The shuddering no
ise was deafening. We seemed to be aboard a freight train that was off the rails, its wheels rolling at speed across gravel and railway ties.

  In unison, a hundred voices began to scream, a choir singing its complete terror, barely heard above the airplane’s thrashing agony. The seat under me dropped hard. I was forced up against the belt and then back down, smashing my elbows on the armrests. Seat belt lights above our heads flickered and flashed, a rank of warnings stretching all the way to the front of the compartment. I focused on them. If they went dark, I knew we would lose our grip on the sky and fall.

  Another explosion thudded against my window and the plane lurched. I looked out and back and saw flames expelled from the engine. The screams rose. The woman next to me gripped the top of my hand so hard that the bones ground together, and I struggled to free myself from her.

  We passed strangely low and slow over a freeway, and I wondered if we would roll and drop into the river of headlights and orange sodium below us. I envied the people below. They were nearly close enough to touch, but worlds away from us, on their way home from dinner and headed to parties and factory night shifts. All the lost chances from my life gathered in the chaos, and I was nearly overwhelmed with sadness. I was going to die with a group of strangers.

  By degrees, the plane steadied itself, and although the vibration continued, it was somewhat lessened. We soared low over the lights of the city, and I imagined people in houses and apartments below looking up at the unaccustomed harsh sound of a jet engine laboring over their neighborhoods. Voices in the cabin dropped off, with only an occasional loud sob or raised voice audible over the general throbbing of the distressed plane.

  We stayed low, the wounded airplane struggling to maintain altitude. Beneath me, the city lights disappeared and it was completely black. I knew that the pilot had taken us out over Lake Ontario. I looked at the tops of heads above the seat backs in front of me. Three hundred people were packed into this small space. We were sitting close together, yet most were rigidly alone with what was happening.