The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb

by David Handler

  “Des is a big healthy girl. I want you to be able to keep up with her.”

  “Thank you, Bitsy. I think. But I don’t know how to make sauerkraut.”

  “Not a problem, I can teach you. Believe me, by this fall you’ll be pickling like a master.”

  Bitsy was always happy to share her garden wisdom. Also her insider’s knowledge of Dorset. There wasn’t anyone or anything she didn’t know about. It was the Pecks who’d first settled Dorset way back in the mid-1600s. Bitsy lived alone in her mammoth, natural-shingled house with its turrets and sleeping porches and amazing water views in every direction. Her husband, Redfield, was no longer around. And her daughter, Becca, a recovering heroin addict, had moved out to San Francisco. Mostly, the lady gardened. Hundreds of species of flowers, herbs and vegetables grew in her terraced beds. Gardening kept her sane. Or at least sane by Dorset standards.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” Mitch said, steering her toward the muddy clearing where he had his picnic table and Adirondack chairs. The soil underneath them had gotten so compacted that grass would no longer grow there. “What would you think about me putting in a patio here?”

  “Why, I think it would be wonderful,” she exclaimed. “And I have all sorts of bluestone left over from the last walkway I put in. It’s just taking up space in my barn. I’ll bet we can fashion something that’ll be just right for you. I’ll stop by later this afternoon and we can conversate about it.”

  “We can what?”

  “Conversate.”

  “Bitsy, that’s not a real word.”

  “It mostly certainly is. Becca uses it in her e-mails to me all of the time.”

  “That doesn’t make it a real word. We converse. We don’t conversate.”

  Bitsy heaved her chest at him impatiently. “Mitch, we don’t have time for this right now. Not if we’re going to be there before ten.”

  He glanced at his watch. “You’re right. If I don’t pick up my prize package by 9:30, she’ll blow a gasket. I’d better scoot.”

  “Me, too. I’ve got at least five very anxious people waiting for me at the senior center.” She grinned at him conspiratorially. “Why do I feel like we’re plotting to overthrow the government?”

  Mitch grinned right back at her. “Because we are.”

  * * *

  His prize package, a ninety-four-year-old retired high school English teacher named Sheila Enman, lived in the lush farm country north of the village, in an old red mill house that was built right out over the Eight Mile River at the base of a twenty-foot waterfall. Sheila had lived there since she was a little girl. Back in those days they generated their own electricity, she’d once told him. And Sheila had attended an actual one-room schoolhouse.

  The morning fog was starting to burn off as Mitch piloted his bulbous kidney-colored 1956 Studebaker pickup up Route 156, two hands on the wheel and one of his new toothpicks parked snugly in the corner of his mouth. Hawks circled lazily overhead. Depending on where his gaze fell it was either winter or spring. The magnolias, weeping cherries and Korean azaleas were already in full bloom while the oaks and birches remained bare and iron gray. The wild blackberry, lilac and forsythia that grew in a tangle alongside of the road had just begun to green up.

  When he arrived at the red mill house Mitch found the old white-haired schoolteacher standing in the driveway waiting for him, her knobby, arthritic hands clutching her walker for dear life.

  “It’s about time you got here,” she barked at him fiercely. “I was afraid you weren’t going to show up.”

  “I told you I’d be here, Sheila.”

  “Mitch, men have been disappointing me for more than eighty years. Forgive me if I got dubious.”

  He helped her into his truck, depositing her walker and shoulder bag in back. The shoulder bag was extremely heavy. It also clanked when he set it down. He jumped back in and started his way back down Route 156, Sheila riding next to him in her ratty yellow cardigan, dark blue slacks and bone-colored orthopedic shoes.

  Sheila was a classic cranky Yankee—feisty, opinionated and stubborn beyond belief. But once Mitch got to know her he discovered that she was a sweetie. And sharp as can be. Age hadn’t slowed her mind one bit, just her big-boned body. She’d had a bad hip for years but refused hip replacement surgery. Also refused to abandon her house for an assisted-living facility. Mitch brought her groceries three times a week, picked up her mail at the post office, shoveled her driveway and did odd jobs around the house for her. She paid him with tubs of her homemade tapioca pudding. As far as he was concerned, he was getting the best of the deal.

  “I made some calls,” he informed her as they drove along. “Channels Three, Four, Eight and Nine.”

  She looked at him hopefully. “Do you think they’ll send someone?”

  “I know they will. Local news broadcasts are all about visuals. We’re giving them a visual. It’s tailor-made for them.”

  “Good. Because I will not be shoved aside.”

  “Not to worry, Sheila. You won’t be.”

  She continued to look at him. Or, more specifically, at his new toothpick.

  “Something the matter?”

  “Why, no,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  Bitsy beat him there. When Mitch pulled up she and her minivan load of five angry, sign-wielding old ladies were already gathered outside of the Congregational Church holding their SAVE OUR TREES signs. He fetched Sheila’s walker and shoulder bag for her and dutifully helped her do what she’d come to do—which was chain and padlock herself to one of the three gnarly old maples out front like a nonagenarian eco-freak, her walker positioned before her for support.

  Their timing was excellent. Less than a minute after Mitch had snapped the padlock shut for her, a big bucket truck from Shoreline Tree Service came rolling up, along with a truck towing a wood chipper. Two more vehicles trailed close behind them. One was a town-owned Toyota driven by Dorset’s first selectwoman, the other a Crown Vic cruiser piloted by Mitch’s ladylove.

  “Good morning, Master Sergeant,” he said, beaming at her as she strode across the lawn toward him, squaring her big Smokey hat on her head. “Would you slap me down if I mentioned how pert you look today?”

  Des narrowed her pale green eyes at him. “Did you just say pert? I don’t do pert. Fluffy little princesses named Amber do.…” She trailed off, frowning at his new toothpick.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Why, no,” she replied as the Channel Three news van pulled up. The Channel Eight van was right behind it. “What are they doing here?”

  “Someone sort of called them.”

  “Someone sort of media savvy?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of like yourself?”

  “Well, yes, now that you mention it.”

  “Mitch, please tell me why you did this.”

  “Because Sheila asked me to. What was I going to tell her—no?”

  The vans from Channel Four and Channel 9 arrived now. As the news crews got set up, a tall young guy with a camera came out of the offices of The Gazette, just down the street, and started taking photographs. What with the half-dozen protestors, Mitch, Bitsy and the guys from the tree crew it was turning into a full-fledged crowd by Dorset standards.

  Glynis was not pleased. In fact, the first selectwoman was downright steamed. She marched right over to Sheila and declared, “This won’t accomplish a thing, Miss Enman. These trees are diseased and dying. They have to make way.”

  “I’m diseased and dying, too,” Sheila roared in response as the TV cameras rolled. “Are you going to haul me away, too? And don’t you dare lecture me, Glynis. I can still remember you running around at the Memorial Day parade with your diaper full of poop.”

  “Oh, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Glynis fumed.

  “Perhaps you’d like to take a look at this,” Mitch said, offering Glynis the framed black-and-white photograph that could usually be found on Sheila’s living room
mantel. It was an old photograph of a gawky young girl standing in front of this very Congregational Church with a shovel in her hands and a proud expression on her face.

  “Okay, what am I looking at?” Glynis demanded.

  “This was taken on Arbor Day, 1931,” Mitch explained. “That was the day Sheila personally planted these three trees. It was her prize for winning the Center School essay contest on ‘Why I Love Trees.’”

  “Sheila planted them?” Glynis gasped in disbelief. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She didn’t feel she had to. She thought it was up to you to do your homework. A bit perverse on her part, I’ll grant you. But Sheila’s getting to be kind of stubborn.”

  “Sheila’s always been stubborn.”

  “Can’t you accommodate her?”

  “How, Mitch? Tell me how.”

  Mitch told her how. Glynis looked at him in astonishment, then gave him a wink and started her way back over to Sheila, who remained padlocked to one of her beloved trees. The news cameras moved in closer.

  “Sheila, how would you like to plant the new trees?” Glynis offered.

  “What new trees?” Sheila demanded, scowling at her.

  “The three new trees we’ll put in as substitutes for these when we finish the project. You could plant them if you’d like to. Just as you planted these.”

  “Don’t you talk down to me, Glynis.”

  “You’ve known me my whole life. Have I ever talked down to you?”

  Sheila preferred not to answer that. “What kind of trees?”

  “I can’t speak for the tree commission,” Glynis replied. “But it seems to me we should be able to plant whatever kind you want.”

  “I want copper beeches,” Sheila stated firmly. “No itty-bitty saplings either. Good-sized ones.”

  “Then I’ll propose that we install good-sized copper beeches. Would you like that, Sheila?”

  Sheila Enman stuck out her chin and responded, “I’ll think it over.”

  * * *

  “Boyfriend, have you ever thought about going into politics?”

  They were lolling in his bathtub sipping Chianti while the pancetta and onion caramelized on low heat in his cast iron skillet and Workingman’s Dead played on the stereo. The master sergeant’s slender right ankle was hoisted up on his left shoulder so that he could massage her hamstring, which had been troubling her lately.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because you handled that situation with Sheila Enman this morning like a pro. First you invented a crisis for the news cameras…”

  “I thought you looked mighty delectable on Channel Three, by the way.”

  “All you could see of me on Channel Three was my booty.”

  “Like I said, I thought you looked extremely delectable.”

  “Then you helped solve the crisis. Face it, you’re a natural politician.”

  “Am not. I was just trying to mollify the old girl. She’s deeply invested in this place emotionally. Glynis doesn’t seem to get that.”

  “She’s a bit focused,” Des acknowledged. “You could help her out.”

  “How?”

  “By serving on a commission. She’s desperate for young voices. Did you know that the average age of Dorset’s commissioners is seventy-three?”

  “Des, I’m a journalist. We don’t do things like serve on commissions.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Sit back and criticize the people who do. Besides, I already work at the food pantry. I deliver groceries. I drive folks to their doctor appointments. And those town government meetings are excruciatingly slow. If I want to be that bored for that many hours I’ll sit through a Terrence Malick film.” He set down his wine glass and reached for a fresh toothpick, popping it into the corner of his mouth.

  She peered at him critically. “Okay, what’s with this toothpick deal?”

  “Actually, it’s not a ‘toothpick’ at all. That’s the beauty of it. It’s a Stim-U-Dent plaque remover. Cleans between my teeth and gently invigorates my gums while also giving me a certain Cagney-esque jauntiness. It’s a win-win, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is that you’re going to swallow it and I’ll have to rush you to Shoreline Clinic. What brought this on?”

  “I went to the dentist when I was in the city last week, remember? When he got done examining me I asked him if I had any cavities. Know what he said? He said, ‘At your age cavities are no longer your biggest concern.’ Then he told me my gums are receding and if I don’t start taking better care of them all of my teeth will fall out. I mean, God, what’s up with that?”

  “We’re becoming middle-aged, wow man. Get used to it.”

  “I don’t want to get used to it. Do you know that rather powerful, goaty scent that a lot of the old men in Dorset give off?”

  She nodded. “Only too well.”

  “If I ever start to smell like that will you kindly shoot me?”

  “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind.” He went back to work on her hamstring, kneading the taut tendon, flexing her foot to stretch it out. “Feel any better?”

  “A bit,” she acknowledged. “But I’m still not looking forward to tomorrow. Eating road dust from dawn until dusk is not what I want to be doing at this stage of my life.”

  “What do you want to be doing?”

  She lay there in silence for a moment. “I don’t know the answer to that. I used to, but now I don’t.”

  Mitch studied her, frowning. Something had been eating at her for a while. He had a pretty good idea what, but he also knew that she’d only open up about it when she was good and ready to. That was her way. So he didn’t press her. Instead, he ditched his toothpick, leaned over and planted a kiss on her mouth.

  Her eyes gleamed at him. “What was that for?”

  “I was just remembering how lucky I am to have you in my life.”

  “Right back at you, boyfriend.”

  “Hmm … I think my onions are overheating.”

  Now she was looking at him through her eyelashes. “Is that some kind of Jewish-boy dirty talk?”

  “No, it’s our dinner starting to scorch,” he said, sniffing at the air. “I’d better check on it.”

  “Be with you in a sec. I’m going to wash my hair.”

  He dried off, put on a pair of sweatpants and his New York Giants hoodie and padded into the kitchen to take a spatula to the onions and pancetta before they burned. He hadn’t known for sure if Des would be joining him for dinner. But he was totally cool with their arrangement, which was loose, spontaneous and cautious. Even though they were deliriously happy together they were taking it a day at a time as their wounds slowly healed. Des was still getting over her brutal divorce from that cheating louse Brandon. And Mitch had barely survived losing his wife, Maisie, a Harvard-trained landscape architect, to ovarian cancer at the age of thirty. Both of them needed their own living spaces so they could do what they did in private to cope. Des got up before dawn and drew haunting, viscerally horrifying portraits of murder victims. Mitch? He often sat up all night long watching old movies, sometimes four or five of them at a stretch, losing himself in his comforting alternate universe where good was good, bad was bad and everything turned out like it was supposed to in the end. He and Des enjoyed the time they spent together and enjoyed the time they spent apart. They didn’t dwell on how unlikely a couple they were. And they for damned sure didn’t sweat small stuff like dinner. Mitch kept a few key ingredients on hand so he could put together a tasty meal at a moment’s notice. Tonight he would throw linguine into the skillet with the onions and pancetta, break a couple of farm-fresh organic eggs over it and toss it with a ton of grated aged Parmesan, chopped Italian parsley and fresh ground pepper. There was crusty bread, a bottle of Chianti Classico. What more did they need?

  He set the table in the living room while Des showered. It was a drop-leaf table that he’d found discarded in one of his neighb
or’s barns along with two moth-eaten overstuffed chairs and a loveseat. Clemmie was parked in one of the overstuffed chairs. Quirt was outside looking to bite the head off something small and furry.

  Mitch was putting another log on the fire when there was a tap at his front door. “Come on in!” he called out.

  It was Bitsy—and she wasn’t alone. Standing there in the doorway with her was a tall, lanky woman in her seventies named Helen Weidler. Helen was a highly efficient legal secretary who’d gone to work for the first selectwoman’s father, Chase Fairchild, way back when she was in her twenties. Worked for him until he retired, then stayed on when Glynis took over the practice. Helen was still at Fairchild & Fairchild, making sure things ran smoothly.

  “How nice to see you again, Helen.” Mitch knew her because Glynis had handled the closing on his house, same as she’d handled Des’s. “Won’t you ladies come in?”

  Bitsy made her way straight for the seed trays in Mitch’s bay window, the better to inspect his tiny green shoots. Helen hovered close to the door, wringing her hands and looking exceedingly tense. Her attire suggested she’d come straight from the office. She wore a matching dark gray sweater and slacks, a white blouse and polished black pumps. Helen’s hair was white and she wore it cropped in that severe light-bulb shaped cut that, for reasons beyond Mitch’s comprehension, was favored by many women of her age in Dorset. Helen had a long narrow face and a mouthful of rather prominent teeth. She’d never married, as far as Mitch knew.

  Des joined them now, wearing the dove gray four-ply cashmere robe Mitch had bought her in Paris.

  “Oh, dear, we’re interrupting your evening,” Bitsy said fretfully.

  “Not at all,” Mitch assured them.

  “As long as you don’t mind seeing me out of uniform,” Des agreed as she settled into an overstuffed chair, curling her long legs beneath her

  Helen remained anchored by the doorway, glancing around the room. Mitch’s desk was an old mahogany door he’d scored at the dump and set atop a pair of sawhorses. His coffee table was an old rowboat with a storm window over it. There were books and DVDs heaped everywhere. Clutter was a constant presence in his life. “So this is where you live,” she observed. “It’s very cozy and charming. Mind you, I’ve always believed that the ambiance of a home is a reflection of the people who live in it, as opposed to the furniture or the artwork.” She cleared her throat. “I apologize for barging in this way.”