Death Puppet

by Jim Nisbet

Chapter Eighteen

  LIZE BIT HER TONGUE. GODDAMN MOTOR-MOUTH. SHE CONCENTRATED on her driving.

  But it didn’t occur to Mattie to ask Lize how, since she’d never crossed the threshold of Jed’s house, how she knew that one wall of the living room was lined with shelves of cheap western novels. Or that a woodstove faced them.

  It was conceivable, in the two years or so that she’d been seeing Jed, that Mattie had mentioned the books to Lize. And, if asked, Lize would try that bluff first.

  The first time Lize had ever set foot in Jed’s house was after she had dragged that killer robot’s dead carcass into the kitchen. At least it had looked like a robot until she’d taken hold of it. Then it felt like a dead man, well enough.

  The house was already burning—that was how come she’d dragged the body into the kitchen, to give nature a little nudge as it took its course. So there was light enough by which to notice the books. She had stared right at them while she tried for a pulse on Eddie, next to the woodstove. Awful shot up, the books. And the rest of the room. Eddie too. Dead, in fact.

  It had been an exaggeration to say the woodstove would be melted. It was cast iron. But no way those letters survived. If they’d been in the house, they were gone.

  Anyway, she’d never given the letters a thought.

  Lize waited for Mattie to say something, to catch her slip-up. But, after a long silence between them, she realized Mattie must have missed it.

  Unable to think about anything but the letters, Mattie didn’t give Lize’s knowledge of the cheap novels a second thought. Instead Mattie retreated, back into shock. For the rest of the ride into Dip she said nothing, looked only straight ahead. If Lize had turned the jeep over Mattie would have just sat there, waiting to be pulled from the wreckage, waiting for the next disaster, waiting for nothing, waiting for the authorities to come tell her she was dead. She would have accepted it. The loss of Jed Dowd was one thing; he turned out to be little more than an illusion. The loss of the lover she’d known only by virtue of a one-night stand, who’d turned out to be a death-dealing maniac, meant even less; in fact, it was a relief. The loss of two friendly strangers, who’d turned out to have been undercover cops, might be construed as unfortunate, at most, but in no way could be perceived as personal. She could learn, it seemed, to categorize these things, if she was to survive. But the loss of Maureen Dowd’s lifetime of letters had the scope of a major tragedy. Only now did Mattie admit to herself how much those letters had meant to her. They’d come to symbolize the resurrection of her own life, the means by which, subconsciously or otherwise, she had fully intended to bootstrap her way out of a demeaning, dusty, aimless existence in Dip, Washington.

  She’d come to consider herself the custodian of Maureen Dowd’s literary works. Ignored in her own lifetime, even by the fortunate few who were the recipients of their delicacy, Mrs. Dowd’s letters might have found, through Mattie’s tireless advocacy, a recognition, a prestige, and a respect their author would never have thought necessary or possible. Not to mention a more obscure motive, the ambition of which Mattie only now realized she’d harbored, to achieve for her remote piece of American geography the envy of the literary world, to see that such a desolate, industrial inferno as the Grand Coulee Dam site could have produced a different sort of construction, a work of ephemeral beauty.

  Now the letters were gone, vanished without a trace, incinerated in a different inferno, that of Maureen Dowd’s son’s pecuniary ambitions, modest or extravagant as they may have been. Wasted, in any case. Reduced to ash. And with them, her own hope of modest achievement.

  It all seemed impossibly doomed. A chaos of thwarting, evil forces seemed to snipe at every thought that dared test the boundaries of the normal course of things, to bring to their knees anyone who dared pretend to the extraordinary, virtually within sight of their starting place.

  As if to confirm these queasy thoughts, they now rolled through the brief purlieus of Dip, Washington. Mattie stared straight ahead, as if sightless, but she could see. There was the weathered, peeling sign at Dip’s outer limit, declaring the countywide superiority of the girl’s basketball team five years before, unmatched since. Beyond was the boarded-up tavern, across the road the Grange was closed for the evening, its diesel and low-octane and kerosene pumps standing as if silent sentries over the years of engine parts, feed bags, fertilizers, shovels, shotgun shells, and fence pliers that had dribbled fitfully out its double doors. Then the implement dealer that, this time of the year, had its smallest inventory waiting in the dust out front; in this case a White diesel tractor that looked like a moon vehicle and would cost some big farmer—or the government—at least $50,000, and a couple of the simplest hay rakes, worthy of a mule, worth no more than a thousand dollars apiece. Then the huge gray grain elevator that loomed over the town, the tireless wind tugging minutely at its rough unpainted surface, half-full maybe, perhaps not even so, and the one wheat truck parked, empty, under it.

  And across the street, the Dip Cafe. Only when they drove past this did Mattie’s eyes move to light briefly on the facade of the cafe. The lights were on. Mordecai would still be there. There was an unpainted sheet of plywood in place of the window blasted out by the shotgun. A couple of pickups were parked out front. One had two bales of hay in it, the bed framed by an angle-iron rack with two or three ropes hanked over it. The other had a grimy, dust-caked diesel tank mounted in the front of the bed, with a hand pump and a length of choked-looking hose sticking up out of it. A tumbleweed had lodged itself under the back bumper.

  The clinic was beyond the far limit of the little town. It was a one-story cinder-block building with two windows and a door in the front. Two windows and a door in the back overlooked a dry wash full of rusted-out cars, trucks, and farm implements. There were two mothers inside, one expecting, the other with a feverish child who wouldn’t stop bawling. There was a very old man with the shakes, patiently staring straight ahead. A pimply teenaged girl receptionist, behind a little counter heaped with papers, folders, flyers, sample packets of medicine, a lot of junk mail, and a can of Pepsi, spent nearly forty-five minutes on the telephone, trying to track down a urine sample the old man had left with the clinic two weeks before. The wind pressed at the windows. A gas stove creaked in a corner. Mattie knew them all, even the crying child’s name, and they gazed at her with frank curiosity, but she spoke to none of them. Still, she had to wait. Lize waited with her, similarly taciturn. Her grim presence forestalled any interrogative probes. Gradually the women trickled through the doctor’s attention, then the old man. After an hour and fifteen minutes, he called Mattie. He took her to a back room and “took a pitcher” of her wrist, from two different angles. Since Lize hovered over them like a suspicious bulldog, the doctor didn’t insist that Mattie take her shirt off for X-rays of her wrist. He wanted to. But he knew Lize. Mattie knew him. Since she’d been sixteen, she’d made a point of never needing a doctor.

  Then he put her on a stool next to a big sink and made her a cast. The water was cold, the process was long. By the time he was through the codeine had worn off, and she’d left the bottle at home. The arm ached. She didn’t want to ask Dr. Tumely for anything. The arm ached awhile longer. Finally, she broke down and asked him for a painkiller. He smiled thinly and said that she had a prescription. Lize said she’d filled it. Where was it? Back at the ranch. He shrugged. What could he do? It was a prescription drug, and he couldn’t keep prescription drugs in the clinic. If he did, the Indians would break in and steal them. They broke in anyway. He showed them a hole punched through the back door. It was a hollow-core door. He found her two aspirin. He’d send Mattie a bill. Lize snarled that he could send it to Lize. They left.

  Mattie elevated the arm so it seemed to hurt less.

  “Let’s skeedaddle back to my place,” Lize growled. “Or do you want to go home?”

  Mattie shrugged, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Home, she thought. What the hell am I going to do at home? It was tw
ilight and Lize turned on her lights. They immediately passed the grain elevator and the Dip Cafe.

  Strangely, she heard the music again. A huge choir, distantly. Then a voice. Hold it, said the voice.

  Hold it? “Hold it,” she said aloud.

  Lize pulled off the road.

  There’s the cafe, said the voice.

  Mattie looked at the cafe. What about it?

  The voice was disappointed. You forgot your promise.

  What promise?

  There was a click. A deep, interior, mechanical click. A hiss as of cheap cassette tape.… let me in… God, God, if you get me out of this, I swear, I’ll wait on tables like a good little girl for the rest of my natural life—just like you always intended for me to do—forgive my pride in thinking I could sin and intellectualize my way into something better than Your Plan—

  Enough!

  All is forgiven, the voice said, placid in its magnanimity. Your pride, your intellectualism, your fornication.

  What the—She stole a sideways glance at Lize. Lize stared straight ahead.

  Indeed, the voice remarked as if aside, smugly, it’s a tidy Plan.

  Plan? There’s no pl—

  Want to hear more? asked the voice. Each time she heard the voice it was louder, fuller, less like a telephone connection and more like… like…

  Yes. I mean No. I—

  You remember your promise?

  No. I mean Yes. Of course. I mean I remember thinking it but—

  Time to make an adjustment.

  She sat thoughtless. Empty. Exhausted. There’s nothing to adjust.

  On the contrary.

  Nothing. Just think of Nothing.

  Taoistic twaddle, the voice announced pleasantly.

  Well? Well, what? “Who is this?” she said abruptly.

  “What?” Lize said, distantly, slowly.

  “Ahm,” Mattie said, half-smiling, “I guess now I’m talking to myself.”

  Lize still stared straight ahead. “You think you’re the only one who talks to herself?”

  Mattie’s smile got false and faded.

  See? said the voice.

  No. See what?

  The Hand of God intervened for you, through His humble instrument.

  She blinked at Lize. The Hand of… She couldn’t say it. Lize slowly rotated her head and showed a lot of teeth.… God…

  Bingo, said the voice.

  You can’t be…

  God?

  No. Or serious either.

  Ah, said the voice, serious. Well… That depends. After all, how serious is life? The voice heaved a big sigh. As for the other, well. It’s kind of awkward, isn’t it? Like if I were to go to a party, and somebody who didn’t know Me was to ask, what do You do?

  Jesus, I—

  Him too, him too. Although for Him the answer would be a little easier. Just have to show His hands—

  “Lize?” she said aloud.

  “Yes?” Lize answered, all too peacefully.

  Yes, said the voice reassuringly. Lize too.

  She… Mattie was having trouble thinking her way around all of this. Her arm ached. She hadn’t been able to get warm in several hours. Suddenly she wanted to capitulate, give in, surrender.… She was tired. Everything hurt. Instrument. You sent her as… an Instrument?

  The truth is, young lady, said the voice, until you asked for help, Lize was on the way home to can tomatoes. The choral music swelled briefly.

  Then she wasn’t… worried… about…

  About you? Who, Lize? Oho, the voice chuckled. Come, come, Mattie. You know Lize. She likes to mind her own business.

  But… but…

  And, consider. It was three hundred yards from the top of that butte to the back of that Harris boy’s head—in the dark. Don’t you think that bullet’s trajectory might have had a little… Divine Guidance?

  Mattie shifted her eyes to the jeep’s steering wheel. Lize patiently tapped her calloused and work-worn trigger finger on the rim.

  Pretty good shootin’, eh daughter? smiled the voice.

  Mattie stared at the finger for a long moment. Then she turned to look at the cafe. There it stood, in the windy darkness.

  Pride is a sin, my child, the voice counseled. Not unlike fornication.…

  That’s enough. “Hold it,” Mattie said aloud.

  “I already held it,” Lize said gruffly. “Now what?”

  “I… I want… I have to talk to Mordecai,” Mattie said.

  Lize frowned. She didn’t like Mordecai. There weren’t a hell of a lot of people Lize did like. But the Lord works in mysterious ways.

  “Pull in. It’ll just take a minute.”

  Lize pulled in. “I’ll wait.”

  “I won’t be a minute,” Mattie mumbled, getting out of the jeep.

  Inside the diner, Rabbit was jockeying his mop and bucket out the door of the kitchen and into the bathrooms. Mordecai was on the other side of the pass-through.

  Mattie hadn’t noticed Jake Macbee’s rig outside, but it must have been there somewhere, because there he sat at the counter, hunched over a cup of coffee.

  Everything stopped when she came in. The lights seemed brighter than usual. Lize’s big sheepskin coat was draped over Mattie’s shoulders, and she was holding the cast up with her free hand. The cast was still wet. Her cheek had a fresh bandage on it, and above the wound her left eye had begun to discolor into a terrific shiner.

  Rabbit bobbed his gray head in greeting, but the bobbing slowed as the cast arrested his attention. His head and his hair looked a lot like a mirror image of the dirty mop on the floor at his feet. Then, embarrassed, he noisily backed himself and his bucket through the door of the women’s room. Perhaps he’d recently heard some words about her. Jake turned on his stool and jumped when he saw her. He resettled the Peterbilt hat on his head twice before he managed to sputter, “I’ll be gawdamned, Mattie. What in hell happened to you?”

  Exactly, said the voice, from far away. See, it added, fading, everything is a message, when you’ve learned how to read. Speak, my daughter. There is atonement… here.…

  “Mordecai?” she said.

  Mordecai was slinging dishes back and forth behind the pass-through, and evidently hadn’t heard her.

  “Mordecai!”

  He glanced up, did a double take. His mouth opened, shut again.

  “I want my job back.”

  Silence filled the cafe. Water hissed loudly in the kitchen. After a long moment, the muffled sound of a flushing toilet came from beyond the women’s room door.

  “Mordecai?” Mattie repeated, her voice shaking, “May I have my job back?”

  Mordecai stared at her through the pass-through window. Clouds of white steam rose up between the window and his grizzled face, framed by the stained apron tied high on his chest and the white chef’s hat that drooped over his head.

  “Please, Mordecai,” she said, fighting back a lump in her throat. “Please, may I have my job back…?”

  Mordecai turned off the spigots over the sink below him and dried his hands on his apron. Then he scrubbed the two or three day’s growth on his face and threw a glance at Jake.

  Mattie sighed, her breath coming out ragged. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jake,” she said grimly, turning to Jake. “I’m sorry I threw those… that cup and saucer at you, and said what I said.”

  Jake stared at her. His lips moved, but he said nothing.

  “Mordecai,” she said, having trouble raising her eyes to look at him, but finally doing it. The cast was a kind of a shield, she noticed. “I threw a coffeepot at you yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or last week, and I’m here to apologize for it. And… and while I’m here, I’d like… I need…” Her voice became very small. And, finally, the tears came. “Please don’t make me beg for it,” she managed to say, her voice racked with sobs. “Please don’t make me…”

  Mordecai Sturm kept staring at her through the pass-through. The light was bright in the cafe, they could all hear
the hum of the fluorescent light over the counter, and the wind, sneaking in over the threshold beneath the door, and the drip of a spigot behind the counter, and the distant idle of Lize’s jeep, waiting in the parking lot. Rabbit was silent, hidden, waiting. He’d always liked Mattie.

  Mordecai nodded, slowly, his mouth slightly open.

  “O.K., Mattie,” he said at last. “You can have your job back.” Mattie stood as if she hadn’t heard him, tears trailing silently down her cheeks. The pulping of her ego had opened the floodgates of heavenly bliss. Mordecai reached for a stack of dirty plates heaped with flatware. “Come on in when you’re ready, when you think you can work.” He turned and let the dishes sink out of sight in the greasy water in the steel sink behind him. Then he turned back and, spreading his arms so he could lean his hands on the shelf of the pass-through, he winked at Jake. “Course,” Mordecai added, “business being a little slack and all, we’ll have to start you off with a cut in pay.”

  A little smile pulled at the corners of Jake’s mouth, and he turned to have a sip of coffee.

  Mattie didn’t notice. She leaned to dab the tears off her unbandaged cheek on the fleece of Lize’s coat.

  “Thanks, Mordecai,” she sniffled, “thanks. You won’t…” She looked up at them.

  They stared at her.

  “You won’t regret it,” she said in a barely audible voice, turning toward the door, her voice catching in her throat. “I’ll be back in about a week.”

  She went out.

  The cast came off in five weeks, but she’d been working for four of them, just as she’d said. At the end of the second week Mordecai relented and gave her a raise back to her previous rate. So that, once again, she was earning $3.55 an hour. Plus tips. There was only one change in her schedule. She didn’t work Sunday mornings, now, or Wednesday evenings. The rest of the time, fine, she worked. But Sunday morning and Wednesday evening she was in church.

  It wasn’t so long until everybody had noticed how subdued she’d become, since she’d been thrown by that horse. They said it had dragged her quite a little ways before Lize was able to catch it. Maybe, they speculated, she’d hit her head on a rock. Maybe a few rocks. You’d think that tight Lize would loosen up now and spring for a set of those break-away stirrups.