by Kim Powers
His book would be safe.
The spirit of Nancy would protect them both.
He’d finally figured it out, watching Johnny Carson. The world thought Bernadette Peters was singing “Thank You for Being a Friend,” but only Truman knew what she was really saying, when she looked directly at the camera and spoke to him, in a cleverly disguised melody: “The Assassins are coming. Get out now, friend.”
The assassins had broken into the Clutter house, they’d cut their telephone wires, but he wouldn’t let them break into his house. He didn’t want them hurting Myrtle; this was his fault, not hers. He had to lead them into the desert, away from the house. If he could just get a call in to Liz Smith and tell her, then they’d disappear. Assassins couldn’t handle bad publicity any more than he could; if she published their names, they’d leave him alone once and for all.
He had to get to a safe house with a phone to call her, somewhere through the desert.
He hadn’t planned the trip well: he’d run out of the house without a jacket, or a map, or his lucky shorts.
Just the pages of his book the wind hadn’t blown away.
He had to keep it safe.
It was all he had left.
They’d taken everything else, but they couldn’t take this.
He shivered; the night sky was a dark, hot color, but it wasn’t keeping him warm.
Heliotrope: it was the color of the dark flower his beautiful swan, Babe Paley, had loved so much; she was a thing of beauty, just like the flower, before she’d turned ugly on him.
Face it, before he’d turned ugly on her, on all of them, and spilled their secrets to the world in some short stories.
He shivered again and saw the cold truth for just a moment.
He deserved what he got.
He had no more to give.
All he wanted was to be remembered.
Cold truths, for so late at night.
He’d left some writing that would be remembered, but the book he’d been working on for years . . . in the years to come, nobody would even remember who his beautiful ladies, his swans, were, or that there was a time when they ruled the world.
The only thing people would remember is that he never finished it.
He never even wrote it, most of it.
That was the coldest truth of all.
He’d been planning a party for nothing.
Page after page of nothing, literally. After the stories that had been published in Esquire, there was nothing. Just blank pages, after the first few on which he’d written the word heliotrope over and over, trying to find his way into the story. But there was nothing else there; it was a Missouri bankroll, a few real pages on the outside, nothing but fakes in the middle.
It was a truth that was too hard to hold for long.
Truman shivered again, and the comforting fog of illusion settled back over him. It started in his toes and went all the way up to the crown of his head and out to his fingertips: a shiver, a release, an orgasm as his whole body shook and the rest of the pages of the book flew into the sky, released to the enveloping silence of the night.
Now, nobody would get it. Rather that, than it get into the assassins’ hands. He’d been planning to send it to Nelle for safe-keeping—all his boxes and clues had been building up to that—but even that he couldn’t be sure about. He hadn’t left things good with her; she might not guard it like he wanted her to. Oh, well; he was glad he had tried to make things right with her by sending her the other thing instead; it should be there by now.
He held his hands high for a moment of blessing, no longer holding onto anything.
He was free, rid of it all.
He fell to his knees, and that’s when he saw it.
Another sign.
“And I shall send signs and wonders,” the Good Book said.
He hadn’t read a good book in ages.
It must have been trapped behind, when they flew their kites for Nancy. Now, it was so clear, so obvious, that it had been waiting for him, whipping in the breeze. He could send it off, to the place where it would do the most good; it would be the final part of the message he had been planning for so long, once he’d started his long good-bye.
Now, he just had to make his way through the desert, to the post office and a phone that worked, and hope the assassins didn’t get him first.
Far behind, Myrtle and Danny saw the pages in the sky, dazzling white against dark blood red.They snatched them out of the air and followed them like a trail of bread crumbs.
Nelle made her way to the Snake Man’s grave, her eyes growing narrow and silver like those of a wolf that could see and smell its prey in the dark.
But someone else had gotten there first.
Nelle had seen the figure before, but she couldn’t remember where.
She got the gun ready.
She couldn’t wait for memory to come.
The black-covered figure was so intent on its job—saying a silent prayer at the grave, holding out a brown-paper-covered box like an offering at Delphi—it didn’t hear her approach. It didn’t hear tennis shoes in the dewy grass or the rusty hammer of a pistol click into place.
But Nelle had to see who it was before she shot it, even if it was about to desecrate another grave by burying the parcel it held. It had struck once at her brother Ed’s grave; she couldn’t let it do its evil work again. Defending the grave, or attacking the creature, Nelle didn’t know and didn’t care; she just wanted the person gone.
She reached forward just as the creature bent down and stuck a small hand shovel in the ground, making the first cut in the Snake Man’s grave.
Nelle grabbed, and the person whipped around in shock.
Nelle stared face to face at herself.
Or at least, a woman very much like herself.
Old before her time.
Lost.
Her hair gray, the kind of gray that only comes from grief you carry for decades.
Nelle was looking in the face of Sally Boular.
Son’s sister.
Boo Radley’s sister, whose scream that the Klan had grabbed her brother had put a stop to Truman’s Halloween party all those years ago.
Now, two old women stared at each other, their weapons frozen in midair: a rusty garden trowel and a gun that probably wouldn’t even fire anymore.
Nelle would have laughed, if it hadn’t been the saddest thing she had ever seen. “Oh, my God! Sally. You.”
Nelle couldn’t laugh; she could barely breathe.
“Why?”
“Why not? Truman called to find out if I was still alive, to do his bidding. Barely, I said, after what you did to us . . . You made my brother a laughingstock! A bogeyman! You dug up his grave for all the world to see . . . now I’m digging up yours. Boo Radley . . .”
Sally spit it out, like acid in Nelle’s face, acid Nelle had been bracing for for years. Boo Radley, Son Boular, Sally’s brother, whom Nelle had turned into a character for the ages to fear, to pity, to know.
Sally hadn’t wanted anybody to know him.
People poking, and prying, and trying to figure out the truth.
“What did he ever do to you? He was my brother.You had one too. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember what it was like, hanging onto his every word, wanting him to love you, to be his best friend. And then, doing everything you could to protect him, to save him, to shield him, no matter what anybody said? What YOU said?”
Nelle didn’t have an answer, on this sacred spot—except that she had been there, he was part of her childhood, too.
She thought she had honored him.
Just what Truman had done to Nancy Clutter.
“You, of all people,” Sally continued. “With that sister of yours. You’d kill anyone who said anything against her, yet it was just fine for you to ruin my brother. Poor boy who never hurt a fly. Now I’M the one left to clean up all the mess.”
“Sally, I made him famous.”
“You made him a g
rotesque. Just like you’ve become. You deserve this heartache from Truman. Wish I’d thought of it first. He set it all in motion, with one phone call: follow her, take her picture, deliver the boxes he sent, come here, to your most secret place . . .”
Sally thrust the box she’d been about to bury at Nelle.
“But the funny thing is: Truman said he was doing it . . . to make up to you. He wouldn’t tell me for what. I told him you could never make up for what you did to me . . . I’ve done my job now, it’s yours. Let the dead bury the dead. I can stop.”
Sally walked away, but she didn’t seem any lighter, relieved of something. She looked even more weighted down, as if the pain would never leave.
Nelle’s knees wouldn’t hold up as she watched Sally Boular disappear. She buckled and fell, almost a dead weight, on top of the Snake Man’s grave, like the handfuls of earth she and Truman had tossed on top of his coffin so many years ago.
She’d reached the end, whatever it was. Sally would never forgive her; that was clear. Had she done wrong, using Son’s life? Had Truman done wrong, using the Clutters, and all his swans? Did all the people who came to Monroeville, wanting to know Nelle, wanting to know her and even own her after the story she’d shared with them—had they all done wrong?
They were all grave robbers, herself included, taking what didn’t belong to them.
But were they grave givers, too—was there such a word? There was now, Nelle decided, in that very place; they gave back, made honor of lives that would have been forgotten.
They hadn’t meant to hurt anybody.
They’d just become fascinated.
All she had to do now was open the package Sally had left with her, and her hurt would be over.
But she couldn’t open it, not yet.
She didn’t know if she wanted it to be over, or to keep going.
It had brought her back alive, this game Truman had played, and almost killed her at the same time.
For some reason, for all the reasons in the world, she couldn’t stop crying, as she propped herself up on top of the Snake Man’s grave.
Truman called it “doing a geographic”: traveling someplace he wanted to go without ever leaving home. It might be somewhere new, or somewhere he’d spent years; it didn’t matter. He’d pull together art books about the place (say, China or Paris), prepare an appropriate menu—fresh-brewed coffee and piping hot croissants and the best marmalade, put on an Edith Piaf record, and there he’d be.
Voilà.
Now, he could do it by merely closing his eyes; he didn’t even need the props anymore.
Now, as he crossed the Palm Springs desert on this cold night, he did a geographic of his own death.
It was the only way to get warm.
Step by step, clutching the final sign he’d been given, he imagined his body in a coffin, on fire. That’s how he wanted to go, by cremation, and he imagined the flames licking their way over his body and to the top of his head, setting free all the words and memories that were trapped there.
He thought it was a geographic of his death, but it was really a geographic of his life.
The flames started on his feet.
They were closest to earth, the coldest.
He was three, in a hotel room in New Orleans with the mother he barely knew. She’d taken him from his cousins and promised to be a good mother, but she was already being bad, the way she scolded him all the time. She was dressing to go out, powdering her body after stepping out of the bath. Her skin was silky and smooth, because she put bubbles of oil in the water. If he stayed in the water too long, his skin got all wrinkly, but hers got even smoother, and she made it smoother still by dusting powder all over it. He used her like a giant slide, careening down the hills of her silky smooth legs and suffocating himself in her, pressing his little-boy nose to her skin and inhaling, because he didn’t know how much longer she would be his and he wanted to breathe in everything he could. When her skin wasn’t enough, he drowned himself in the pink chiffon dress she had picked out for the night, rolling himself up in it like he’d roll in the bedcovers, and she got mad at him again. She said he had to stay behind and be a good boy while she went to see his daddy, but he knew it wasn’t his daddy she was going to see in the hot New Orleans night. She sprayed a whiff of Evening in Paris perfume into the air and walked through it, like a model on a runway walking through a cloud, and he imitated her, running instead of walking through the mist, arms out like a plane, and they both laughed, even though she was mad at him, and he wanted to be just like her, beautiful in pearls and going out for the night, and she shimmered into the dress, put a magic spell on it so it flew into the air and stayed there until she said “Abracadabra,” and only then did it fall gently onto her body. He positioned himself so that the soft folds of the skirt enveloped him as well, and it was his dress, too, they’d share it, but she was leaving him, his mommy was leaving him, and he didn’t know where she was going, so he scooted his little legs to the door and ran smack into it as it closed in front of him, and he couldn’t hide under her pretty pink skirt anymore, and all he could touch was wood, but it wasn’t soft, and he heard a key turning in a lock and he knew that was the sound of him being left alone. It was the sound of his terror and his mother saying “I don’t love you and I never did,” and he made a sound of his own, which, because he knew no words, or knew them only in his head but couldn’t make them come out right on his tongue and lips, was a scream, and he made it as loud and high as anything that had ever been heard in the history of the world, and suddenly there were bangs on the wall, and he thought there’s Mother, she knows she did wrong, she knows she has to come back and get me, but she’s lost her key, and she can’t get back in. But it wasn’t his mother, she was long gone to some stranger outside, and the night and the moon and the stars disappeared and there had never been a room as dark as this before, and he grabbed her bottle of Evening in Paris perfume and crawled under the bed with it, where it was even darker, but at least nothing could find him when he hid under the bed, and he drank and drank and drank from the bottle so he could have his mother inside him forever . . .
. . . and now the flames were at his groin . . .
. . . and that’s when he saw Perry, hiding under the bed, too, watching his own mother who didn’t even bother to go out for her men, but brought them back to the room, so drunk she didn’t even mind that her little boy could watch, she barely even knew he was there, and Perry could look out from under the bed and see two pairs of feet on the floor, but his mother’s shoes weren’t pretty, they were all broken down, and the man wore boots that had mud all over them . . .
. . . and the flames were melting Truman’s hips and licking at his stomach now . . .
. . . and he was under the bed with Perry, and they were looking at the feet together—Perry looking at the flat feet of his mother, and Truman looking at his mother’s beautiful arched feet in sharp, pointy shoes—and Truman hugged Perry because he needed a man to take care of him and wrap his strong tattooed arms around him, that would keep him from being scared as long as he could wrap his arms around him . . .
. . . and it hurt for just a minute because the fire was at his heart . . .
. . . and now Nelle would take care of him, that’s where she lived, in his heart, better than any man, and they went to a funeral together, the funeral of the Snake Man, and Nelle said she was afraid of being buried alive, and he told her they would drill a hole in the coffin and tie a string to her big toe, so that if she ever woke up inside and it was all dark, all she had to do was pull at the string and he would come running. It was special magic string and nothing could break it; he’d tie it to a bell in his room and it would ring any time of the day or night if it got pulled . . .
. . . and the fire was at his neck now, tickling his throat, and releasing all the sounds he’d held onto for so long . . .
. . . and now Truman was nearly sixty and he was the one in the coffin, but they’d forgotten to drill t
he hole or tie the string and he could feel the fire but he felt good, better than he had in years, because it was melting the fat off his body and he was getting lighter and freer and now he could fly, just like the butterflies he loved, the butterflies whose pictures he’d paste on kites, and he could see Sook holding the kite string on the other side, and he had to get to her so he started running faster to keep the kite aloft and keep ahead of the flames as they got to his brain, and he panicked because he thought they’d burn up all the words he had stored there, all the words for stories he had left to write, but as the fire released the words into the sky, he realized he had only a few words left, as he ran to Babe and Nina and Sook waiting for him on the other side . . .
Beautiful Babe . . .
Mama, it’s me . . .
It’s Buddy . . .
I’m cold . . .
Weeks later, they would be the last words he ever said, at Joanne Carson’s house in Los Angeles, where he would crawl to die, like an animal who knew its time had come, but for now . . .
. . . Myrtle and Danny found him, inside the door of the post office, the part that was open all night long, huddled by the outgoing slot like he was waiting to be shipped out with the morning’s post.
He’d found it, after all, Myrtle’s secret sanctuary.
As she held him and rocked him and called him Precious Baby and wrapped him in Sook’s scrap quilt, she knew he would go before her.
Her prayer had been answered.
She knew he wouldn’t be alone, as he kept whispering those names, Babe and Mama and Sook . . .
He wouldn’t be alone, with those people to guide the way.
Myrtle hoped she wouldn’t be, when her time came. She even wondered—and hoped—Truman would come back for her.
She and Danny wrapped him up, and took him home, to wait.
Nelle had a match ready, a whole box of them, to burn whatever was inside the Snake Man’s last box.