Cochan broke the silence. “I have to see him. Once more.”
“Mr. Cochan—” He sighed. “If I can say? I wouldn’t.”
“I know you wouldn’t. And it’s good advice, Hank.”
“There’s no telling what he’ll look like. I’ve seen a few, sir, and, well, they all— None are— You don’t want to see them.”
John squeezed his eyes shut. Five seconds, fifteen.
The Sheriff wondered if maybe John Cochan was praying.
John knelt, grasped the coffin lid. Yanked. It didn’t move.
“Wrong side, Mr. Cochan.” His beam played light on the other side.
John nodded, lifted. The lid loosened. With a sharp yank he threw it open. He stared.
Empty.
The Sheriff squatted, searched with his flash, ran his hand along the yellow silk lining. No decomposition. Stained at the foot where water had leaked in. He looked up at John.
John’s head was shaking, the tiniest of lateral motions left and right and again, again, a dozen times, twenty. The bugs.
“Mr. Cochan, I’ve heard of such things. But I’ve never—”
“No, no.” It had to be the bugs. Nothing left. No clothes.
“I’ll make a report, we’ll find out.”
John reached over, lowered the lid, closed the coffin. “Hank, you’ve done me a big favor. I’m in your debt.” Not a trace. “Someone in debt shouldn’t ask for more. But I need another favor. Don’t make a report. Forget what you’ve just seen.”
“But don’t you—”
“Yes. But it has to be something—else. Please.” The bugs have taken Benjie.
Sheriff Henry Nottingham considered the request. He nodded. They shook soiled hands. He caught John’s eye, then looked away. This was messy, very messy.
Putting the coffin back, covering it again, planting the bush, took forever.
Eleven
GRAVE COMPLICATIONS
1.
Priscilla remained in the guest room, locked in from her side. A silent breakfast for Johnnie. He walked to the office. He had not slept. His gut churned with bile. What does one do with an adulterous wife? Where was Benjie? The world was deeply flawed this morning.
At least he’d set one element in place. Oh, he would aright the others too. Leonora Magnussen was due at nine. A nice irony, his ally of old the one to accept his offer formally.
The morning was again hot, his shirt already moist. And Ms. Magnussen already there when he arrived. Tall, so tall, skinny as a line but spread out by the full white skirt, shoulder pads the caricature of an older fashion, for cripesake, two-inch heels. Women who allow vogue to dictate judgement— Thinks she’s real successful, independent, one more who can’t tell hope from glory. “My office is at the back, Leonora, old friend. After you.” He followed, watched her stride, her shoulders. Boasting her pride by her stance.
She felt his eyes on her spine, his stare of dominance. She walked up the steps. Over two years since she’d first dealt with him, ten days since he’d handed her the deed to a small piece of Terramac. In the office on the left Aristide Boce, stout in a three-piece suit, smiled at her. Did he know what she’d done, years ago, last week? She waited. John Cochan opened the door to the office on the right. She stepped in, and he followed, pointed to a large padded chair and closed the door. She sat.
“Coffee?”
“You plan to use this kind of plexiglass for the domes?”
He took a moment. “No. The material for the domes is much lighter. Far stronger. Our own patent. Would you prefer tea?”
“No, thanks. Shall we talk?”
“I’m delighted to see you again.” He smiled. “Your parents have studied our offer.”
“My mother’s ill. The land belongs to my father.”
“Of course. And I was sorry to hear about Theresa.”
“Do you truly care one way or the other?”
“Oh, I assure you, yes. I think she’s an admirable antagonist, you know that. As I expect her family are responsible negotiators.”
“As in selling my father’s land?”
“Right.”
“I’m sorry, no.”
John Cochan drew his lips tight. “You find the offer inadequate?”
“We simply don’t want to sell.”
“Hmmm.” Not good. “You once thought Terramac an important project.”
“I still do.”
“I assure you, it’s a generous offer.”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why not accept?”
“It’s our land. It’s been ours for two hundred years.”
“And you expect its value will increase as Terramac grows, is that it?”
“It’ll be ours for another two hundred.”
“For your children?”
“For ourselves. And our children.”
“Who? A girl running a third-rate carpentry shop?”
“Old enough for her responsibilities.” A dry smile.
“And two bastards?”
“Born out of wedlock? Even bastards are human, Johnnie.” So Cochan had done some more snoopy homework. But why expect different. “With legal rights.”
“Bastard kids of a man who lives only to eat and fornicate? They’re the inheritors?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Come on, Leonora, a piece of scrub land? Those kids’ lives would be improved immeasurably from the interest alone. Their entire futures.” He smiled. “Your own as well.”
“Don’t concern yourself about my future. We’re keeping the Grange and the land.”
“For all to enjoy?”
“I’ve got to get back.” She stood.
“Posted? No hunting, fishing, trespassing? No breathing the air? Generous, Ms. Leonora.”
“What happens with it, we’ll decide.”
“You? Or that spy Carney you’ve hired?”
“Give me a break, John.”
“Watch him, he’ll ruin you, all of you. You’ll lose out on $12 million, account of him.”
She waited, then spoke slowly. “We make our own decisions.”
A nerve found? “He’s got his hold over you, yes?” Leonora Magnussen, smitten by Carney? “You know and I know.” She was standing, turning. “You think it’ll stay the same? With a center of wonders on your doorstep? Your pathetic little piece of despoiled nature?”
“There can be development and there can be preservation. Side by side.”
Cochan folded his arms. “No, Leonora. People, coming and going. Many thousands of people every day. Soon, an airport. You don’t own the airspace. You can’t hide.”
“We’ll see.”
“Very well, keep the land. I’m still in the market. As of right now my price drops by half. You have seven days to accept. So if you’ll excuse me.” He stood.
She decided, and sat. She opened her purse, took out a cigarette packet. “May I smoke?”
“Please don’t.”
She replaced the pack.
“I can still be generous. Back to my first offer of the day.”
“I’m not finished.” She heard herself sound hard. Inside she trembled. Here came the break—from all she had thought she believed, from the compromise she had hoped to achieve.
Cochan too sat. “Okay, go on. I’ve got a lot to get done.”
“In two days we’ll be in court seeking an order to restrain you from developing any lands beneath the Grange acreage.”
No! No! Afterward John guessed he wasn’t frozen in place for more than a second or two. It felt like that many minutes. “Anything else?”
She stood. “Enough for now.” She opened the door and walked out, no nod of acknowledgment to chubby-suit next door.
John stared after her, stick-figure with tiny breasts.
Leonora sat in her car. She shouldn’t have told him. Nor met with him. He’d try to stop the restraining order. But he’d have done that anyway, soon as they filed. So? Worth it, seeing him turn to
stone. She felt cleaner. She drove through Richmond and north, to the border. Well-versed about the family was Mr. Cochan. Informants everywhere. She shivered.
2.
Friday morning Carney got back the test results on the pH in Gambade Brook. The water was too acidic for trout to breed. All those big rainbows, the last of their kind. He’d have to tell Ti-Jean and Feasie. A fist of sadness held him tight. He’d been looking forward, in a mild way, to his evening with Sarah. Tell her about the creek? He played his cello, a mournful tune.
At five-thirty he shaved and turned on the water for a bath. He heard a car stop in his drive. The doorbell rang. He grabbed for his dressing gown, opened the door a slit. “Just a second.” He stepped back to pull his pants on.
Sarah eased the door open. “Don’t worry about me, you don’t have to be formal.” She plopped her red backpack on a chair.
“I thought we’d agreed on meeting at the Inn.”
“I was driving around. I wanted to see where you lived.”
“How’d you get my address?”
She studied his face again. “Milton, of course.”
“I was getting cleaned up.”
“Clean away. I’ll follow.”
In her jeans and plaid shirt she didn’t look ready for a dinner date. Carney’s long bath became a quick shower. Into slacks, a shirt. Why had she come here?
She grabbed her bag and went into the bathroom. Her ablutions took longer. She came out elegant: green silk dress, hair glowing, a slim necklace gold against tan skin, shawl in hand, heels, bit of makeup, a smile. “Shall we head out?”
“We’re”—he checked his watch—“an hour and a half ahead of schedule. The reservation.”
“Okay. How hard is it get a drink around here?”
In silence he made a pitcher of Scotch sours. An attractive woman, he conceded. He filled two glasses and set the pitcher on the coffee table. He sat on the couch, she in a chair.
She sipped. “Tell me about Carney.”
“In exchange for hearing about Sarah Magnussen Bonneherbe Yaeger.”
“I’ve dropped the Yaeger.”
“Oh?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why?”
“To travel a bit lighter.” Her glance flicked across his face. “Like, Carney?”
“Something like that.”
“The name you were born with?”
“I had a first name. Never wanted it.”
She raised her glass. “To brevity.”
They drank, and talked. He heard versions of stories he’d had from Feasie and Milton, family stories. He got more of a sense about her lab job: blood, urine, and fecal analysis.
“The shit and piss of life,” she said.
They talked about Theresa, her strengths and limits. “The twins and I bought her a kitten once. She gave it to a neighbor.” She wished her mother well, admired her, after her stroke saw her more often. But didn’t know her, wasn’t sure if she wanted to, wasn’t sentimental about her own childhood. Over fifteen years out of her parents’ house. Too much had happened.
He told her about his cleanups. “I’ve taken some time off, till the end of summer.”
“The work isn’t—what? Exciting enough?”
“It demands complete commitment.”
She raised the right eyebrow. “And yours isn’t.”
“In the old days I’d start a project and suddenly, ping, I’d be inside it. It would feel like my own long-time neighborhood, I knew it so well.”
“Absorbed.” She nodded. “At the cabin I can get like that, like there’s a bigger context and I’m right in it, inside somebody else’s world.”
“Yes.” He sipped. A long while since he’d talked like this. Scotch loosening the tongue.
“Last week,” she said, stopped as if deciding whether to go on, then did, “a couple of barn swallows, they were building a nest, feeding. I watched them. For hours. Till I was late for work. They brought back mud and dry grass, it was like I knew where they’d head next, how long till they came back. I couldn’t pull away. As if, if I stopped looking there’d be no more reason for them to build the thing. And then I realized I was part of it, they were part of it, but the mud and grass and the insects they were eating were part of it too?”
He nodded. “I get like that when I’m fishing.”
She smiled. “I believe you. Shame.”
“It can be the best of times. Like in the middle of fire and smoke. Only prettier.”
She nodded. “Those dragonflies we watched, I could have stayed with them till they disappeared.”
If he’d not been there, did she mean? “You left.”
“We had to go.”
His right hand rubbed the other wrist: we had to go. “Sometimes, in my work, there’s a strange thing that happens.” He found himself telling her about his friend Mot, the warner, the doubt-refuser, who sometimes alerted Carney to instant or impending dangers. He did not tell her whose gift Mot had been. He did say, “Recently Mot’s not been around much.”
“Ah.”
Now why did he tell her about Mot at all? “Instead there’s something else.”
She waited, watching.
He filled their glasses, sat, leaned back. “Sometimes in a simple action I’d feel clumsy. I mean, in the middle of a cleanup, say. Out of control, right there.” And suddenly he felt out of control now. He’d told no one about any of this, except bits to Bobbie. He tried to stop by taking a sip but his mouth had developed a mind of its own. “If I started to tell somebody what to do next, that was easy. But committing some simple act, I was suddenly awkward.”
“I don’t understand. What?”
“Like, say, trying to speak a language with only a couple of tourist phrases.”
“Mmmm.”
“But I’ll tell you the opposite. Fishing.” He shook his head, felt a touch of awe. “When I’m out on the water I’m”—he shrugged, and said with no embarrassment—“graceful. It’s an elegant thing, the curve of a fly-line, dropping a tiny bit of hair and feather just where I want it.”
“And steel. Don’t forget the hook.”
“Ah, but without a barb.”
She smiled.
“It’s beautiful, the line floating for a long moment between heaven and water, it creates its own elegance. Like there’s a kind of fluency in my muscles and I’m part of the air. You know?” He felt a witless grin but it didn’t bother him.
“Is that what A Ton of Cure sounds like?”
“Like what?”
“Like how you’re talking now.”
Blather brought on by booze. “A little less corny.”
“Why’d you go on the lecture circuit?”
He hesitated. What the hell. “It was a kind of cure for a condition I’d developed.”
“Yeah? What?”
“It’s called cricopharyngial dysphasia.”
“I didn’t hear right. Better pour me more sour stuff.”
He did. And for himself, the last of it.
“Crico-what?”
“I have to go back. About eight years. Something was wrong but I couldn’t figure what. I’d be in the middle of a job, everything going right. Suddenly I’d glance up and see myself. It was like I told you before. I looked ridiculous.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“At least strange. Me wearing what looked like a spacesuit in water and muck up to my waist at some river edge, explaining to a dozen people how to scrub oil off a heron’s feathers. What the hell could have brought me there?”
“What did?”
“Among other things, twenty years without thinking about why, what for.”
“Maybe you wanted the heron to live.”
“Sure, but it was a lot more complicated. I’d been with a good woman, Lynn, and we broke up. She was deeply hurt. Recriminations by the ton. We were carving flesh from each other’s bones. I was drinking too much and eating too much. And one morning I woke up with, I was sure, a b
one stuck in my throat. I figured a fish bone, I’d had swordfish the night before.”
Sarah smiled. “Revenge from the deep.”
“No, something else. Be quiet if you want me to go on.”
“Sorry sorry, go on.”
“Well, by the end of the day it was a chicken bone. I could hardly speak and I was worrying about breathing. Alcohol helped.” Carney sipped his whisky sour. “Next day, X-rays, nothing there. I went to a throat man. He nodded wisely and gave it a name, cricopharyngial dysphasia. He said my cricoid, that’s a kind of ring-shaped cartilage at the lower part of the larynx, from there to the pharynx, was all out of whack. Under stress the cricoid can tighten up. I’d feel like I was choking, something stuck there. Yes, I said, that was it, that he’d described it dead-on. He told me it used to be called globus, a kind of folk name, these days throat people were seeing a lot of it. And the cure? I shouldn’t be so tense. Thanks a lot, I said. He prescribed some little pills, take two when the throat tightens and don’t use them while driving.”
Sarah’s right eyebrow went up again. Top half of a question mark.
“I took two and fell asleep for fourteen hours. I cut down to a half and used them as little as possible. Then one evening I had a date, somebody new, second date since my break-up. I liked the woman well enough and told her about my cricoid. It used to be called globus, I said. She burst out laughing, funniest thing she’d heard in a long time. The joke? ‘There is some shit you will not eat,’ she said to me.”
“She sounds wise.”
Carney nodded. “Globus, she told me, is short for globus hystericus, well known in the nineteenth century. Common ’specially among middle-class women, the children grow up, leave home, the woman finds herself tense to the gills because there’s no more purpose to her life. Except these women did have to swallow whatever was dished out. And here it was in my throat, end of the twentieth century, one big globus of stress and no purpose.”
“Stress in macho damage control? I thought stress hit the likes of senior ad men and lady associate directors.”
“And me. And the end of the story is, I began to lessen my time with the Co. and went out lecturing about damage control. That was her idea, my friend’s. A way of transforming what I knew, making it useful.”
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