by David Downie
Too heavyset to easily pass the threshold, they each peered into the chiaroscuro interior and tipped their Stetson and helmet, respectively, like a pair of stand-up comics. Did Harvey Murphy really wear a central casting cowboy hat? The acrid stench of chewing tobacco and ingrained nicotine wafted in.
“Nice to see you, Bev,” said Harvey in his strangulated nasal tenor, his voice unchanged from high school days. Looking past her at me, he squinted the way he always had and wrinkled his nose. Then raising his bentwood cane for emphasis, he added, “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s great,” she said, beaming. Only her heavy wheezing gave her anxiety away. “Meet Mr. James, my guest,” she added, “I guess I could fry up some extra bacon and beat a couple more egg yolks and we could all have dinner together.” She got to her feet. “Oh, how could I be forgetting the parmesan? Lots of that in the carbonara mix, and none of that sheep stuff, pecorino, it’s called. The White Rhino loved it, but I don’t. James is almost finished with the rebuild, right?”
“Right,” I said, wiping my hands and standing, then joining in the act. “Is that Harvey?” I asked, extending my right hand, full of astonishment, “Harvey Murphy?”
“One and the same,” said the sheriff, peering at me with his brown, bulging, slightly walleyes. He had not aged well and, like Beverley, seemed the proverbial candidate for a heart attack, the road map of burst capillaries on his cheeks and his bulbous nose a purplish red. I could see his greasy scalp through his thinning hair. It was dyed jet-black. Cocking his head in the style of his nephew, he took a step forward to get a better look at me. I saw genuine, honest-to-god astonishment transform his fat, sulky face into a fleshy-lipped smile button.
Pumping my hand and turning to Beverley and Tom he barked, “It’s JP, I can’t believe it, what in the heck are you doing here? You’re not the guest I was expecting.” He let go of my hand and swiveled, growling at Tom, “This is the guy you saw?”
Tom made a face and looked me up and down as if he had real doubts. “Yeah, I guess so, but he’s looking different now, he’s shaved off his beard and cut his hair, that’s it.”
“That’s me,” I said, “good to see you again, Deputy, that was very kind of you to come out and make sure my vehicle wasn’t damaged by the tree.” I paused and laid it on thick. “I’ve been traveling cross-country for months, Harvey, and I guess the time had come to shed all that hair. Now that I’m home and can shave regularly with warm water, I think I’ll keep the beard off.”
“Well I’ll be darned,” Harvey said, the reality setting in, “who could’ve believed it? So, you are the mystery man, the eccentric urban individual with the RV. I didn’t know you were a gardener, JP. Old man Egmont did that, I guess, I’ll be darned.” He glowered at his nephew again and said, “Why didn’t you tell me it was JP Adams, I would’ve come right down?” But Harvey wasn’t expecting an answer and rolled on, his cane raised higher now. “What say you go on up to the house with Tom?” he suggested to Beverley with false bonhomie, “and maybe make us some coffee. You’ll be more comfortable up there while me and JP have a little heart to heart. It’s been a long time and this is a hell of a surprise, isn’t it, JP?”
“It sure is, for both of us,” I lied.
“Make that three,” Beverley tossed in. “Now I can call him JP instead of James—”
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you, Harvey,” I said before she could add anything.
Grinning, he winked and quipped, “No, I can’t imagine it, but the feeling’s mutual, I’m sure.”
“Come on,” Beverley said to Tom, leaning on his muscular forearm and navigating through the straights of the doorjamb. “I guess it’s not dinnertime yet, so maybe I’ll brew up some java and we can have a little snack before deciding on the carbonara. You like cobbler, if I remember,” she added, hobbling alongside him out of view, “and I was going to make a banana cream pie . . .”
When Harvey and I were alone we paddled each other on the shoulder like seals at the zoo and I confirmed I was indeed the stranger with the bushy beard, on vacation, a retiree and refugee from the city, I said, got tired of the politics and wanted some fresh air. Pretending not to have known Harvey was the sheriff, I took his badge in my fingers with more feigned feeling, then clapped him on the shoulder even harder and shook his hand again, giving him my heartfelt congratulations and saying it was terrific, had he been elected a long time ago, or was it a recent honor?
I may have overdone it and wound up sounding like a character out of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Swinging his massive head like the turret on a tank, Harvey said no, no election, he’d been appointed almost three years ago, it had been a real challenge, but the county was doing fine now and had come out of the troubled times stronger than ever, thank god.
Harvey perched on the edge of the crate where Beverley had been sitting and leaned on his cane. He looked up at me and rotated his head back and forth, back and forth, as if it were stiff and sore, while saying, “I can’t believe it, I just can’t credit it, JP, back in Carverville. So, what’s the story, my friend? Why did you come back? I know you went to law school and became a lawyer and a judge somewhere, noticed that some years ago, and I heard you’d caught flak for something, but I don’t know what.” The tone of his voice was already changing. I saw him glance at the chainsaw, his expression morphing from curiosity to mild annoyance. “Don’t tell me that’s Egmont’s old McCulloch!” he exclaimed, standing up and shuffling over to the bench. “Did you know it was here?”
I told him I was as surprised as he was to find it, and find the Beachcomber Motel still standing, though changed in appearance and atmosphere.
“Haven’t we all changed?” he asked, looking me up and down, a scowl coming over his features. I recognized it from way back. It was that face he’d made when I beat him at tennis or in the chainsaw races, the scowl he’d made, probably without realizing it, whenever he’d seen me and Maggie together.
Harvey may have aged badly, but he had clearly prospered in his own way. His western-style boots looked handmade from caiman skin, I guessed. His tan-colored military-type sheriff’s outfit was expensively tailored. The heavy gold and large diamond rings on his fingers were not meant to replace brass knuckles. I doubted he’d bloodied them of late. He caught my glance and I could tell he knew I was sizing him up in return.
“Maybe I should take that back,” he said, “you don’t look much different, just older, but you’re not fat and crippled and half bald, so I guess you’ve had a pretty good life. Married?” Nodding, I told him I was a fairly recent widower and he commiserated, though it sounded hollow. He jerked his forefinger at the engine. “Go on and finish putting it together if you want,” he said, trying to sound indulgent, “I’ll be curious to see if it works.”
“Oh, it’ll work,” I said, then regretted it. “I used it to cut up that fallen cypress,” I added.
Harvey thrust his thick lips out and smacked them. “I heard all about it and watched on the video,” he said, “Mr. Macrocarpa, I’ll be damned if I knew it was you.”
“Well, likewise, I had no idea you were still here,” I said.
Harvey smiled wryly before answering, still rotating his head. “Where else would I be, JP? I’ll bet you had no idea I was here, why would you care about folks in a place like Carverville when you’d gone off to the city all those years ago and become so successful and famous? We heard about you every once in a while, and I even saw you on the TV news a couple times.” He paused and I could hear it coming. “Some of us stayed,” he added, “some of us love this place and are struggling every day to keep it great. We’ve got the lowest crime rate in the state, the lowest opioid addiction rate, the lowest number of growers and dealers, and the lowest percentage of illegals.” The way he pronounced “struggling” made it sound like the word had an “h” in it, “shtruggling,” reminding me that he, too, had come to Carverville from outside, dragged here by his father from a rust-belt
town in the Alleghenies in the early 1970s.
Telling Harvey how marvelous it was that he had stayed and become sheriff and made good, and how appreciative everyone in town must be, I said it was true, I’d left a long time ago and had never come back. He knew I had nothing to come back to, I added, but my heart had always been here.
“Your heart,” he said and let out a bitter, snorting laugh. “Yeah, I think you’re speaking true now,” he added, “your heart and your privates. I guess you’ve seen Maddie, you knew she was here?”
Swinging my head in imitation of his own body language, and smiling my dumbest golly-gosh smile, I said, “I swear I had no idea until this morning that Maggie Simpson was here.” It sounded convincing because it was true. “Believe me, this is a day of revelations.”
“I’ll say it is,” Harvey scoffed. “She goes by the name Hansen, must’ve been her first or second husband,” he added, “or maybe the third one. I heard he was a buck or at least half and half, and probably Islamic.” Harvey grinned maliciously. “They all dropped dead on her I heard, her children, too. She’s been around the block a few times she has, old Maddie. Remember that Elvis song? Walks like an angel, talks like an angel? But she really is the devil in disguise.” He paused to let it sink in. “So, you came on vacation and bingo, here you are, you found Maddie the Baddie, and now you’re going to stay and keep your beard off, do some fishing? That’s the story?”
Before being drawn into his adolescent web of envy, I said, “Actually without knowing it, I think I came back to start up the old salmon hatchery. It sounds crazy, but I’ve always wanted to do that, and now I realize I came out here for that reason, so, you’re right, I’m going to do some fishing—fish raising.”
Harvey was temporarily disarmed. “Nothing to do with old Kitten Caboodle, then? I can hardly believe it.” Snorting and revolving his head, he added, “If only I’d known, I’d have arranged a welcome committee.”
“I’ll bet you would have,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. “What about you, did you marry?”
Nodding with apparent difficulty, he said, “Peggy Bryson. Remember Pegs?”
“Peggy,” I repeated, trying to remember, “I’m not sure . . .”
“Why, of course you aren’t, she wasn’t as pretty or smart or as fast as Maddie.” He let the phrase hang. “You never screwed her, JP, she must’ve been the only girl you didn’t.” He let out a braying tenor laugh and clapped me on the shoulder, as if we were still best buddies. “Come on, Your Honor, it’s just locker-room talk, we still like locker-room talk around here, don’t you?”
I didn’t rise to the bait and asked instead, “Any children?”
Grunting, Harvey said, “Two, both girls, got married, left town, hardly see them or the grandkids. Lousy deal, I’ll tell you, parenthood isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
Who could blame them, I felt like saying, but held my tongue. “Not much work in town still, I guess, youngsters have to move elsewhere?” I realized as the words came out that I’d put my foot in it again.
“Well it ain’t the big city,” he said, swiveling his head and jabbing his stubby, nicotine-stained forefinger at the chainsaw engine. “But it has its advantages, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper here for one thing, and we like the monotonous cool weather and the monotone, monochrome, if you get what I mean.” Letting out a guffaw now, he waggled his fingers like a magician and said, “Go on and finish the rebuild, JP, then we can go out and cut some trees the way we used to. I see you even bought a new chain, it’ll be nice and sharp.” He brayed again like a horse’s ass and rearranged his broad backside on the edge of the crate. I was starting to feel jangled as I turned back to the bench.
Putting on my reading glasses and taking up the dismantled carburetor, I heard Harvey sigh with an exaggerated, theatrical flourish. “Yeah, I am very glad the mystery man turned out to be you,” he began, “and I’ll tell you why. Just think if it’d been some honest-to-God hairy tramp who’d roped Maddie’s jackass grandson and his green hair into perpetuating that hoax, figuring out how to open an old trap and put those bones in from the graveyard.” Pausing to gauge the effect his words were having, he watched my fingers, waiting for me to fumble. “With the current legislation, that kind of thing is punishable by imprisonment, for distracting law enforcement and deputized Coast Guard crews from their urgent duties, and for spreading panic in the general population. And, you know, incarceration these days isn’t much fun, JP, you meet the strangest customers in jail, people who do things to you that you wish they hadn’t done. I hate to think what might happen in the county jail to that cappuccino kid, with his curly green hair and stud in the tongue and all those tattoos. No transgender bathrooms in our nice new jail. You ought to come down and see it, see my new office—”
“I need more light,” I said, interrupting, but did not falter. “It’s too late to work by natural light. I’ll finish this tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh,” Harvey said, rocking backward and forward, leaning on his cane. “Yeah, I get what you mean, too dark to see your private parts, though maybe not for you.” He slapped his thigh. “See, what we can’t figure is, why anyone would want to drag an old hog cage out from under those tarps and stick some old bones in it dug up from the old graveyard on the property, or stolen from somewhere, and that rusty saw blade, too. It doesn’t figure, does it? It’s some kind of hazing thing, maybe, a prank. We figured we’d ask the mystery man, but since he’s you, I know you wouldn’t have done such a thing, and you wouldn’t have known about those skeletons stolen by some jackass kids about fifteen, eighteen years ago from the JC science lab, I think it was, to be confirmed, and all this is absolutely off the record, JP, we’re just having a friendly conversation.”
“Interesting,” I said, buying time. Pondering whether I should argue that clearly the cage hadn’t been dragged from Beverley’s property, that the old traps under the tarps were coiled in Japanese honeysuckle, and there were no traces of the creeper being cut back or of the traps being moved, and no readily available skeletons on the property, either, as far as I could tell, I decided to play along instead. “It certainly does seem like some kind of silly thing college kids would do,” I agreed as amiably as I could. “But it must have been a long time ago, judging by the barnacles I saw on that cage. It was rusted shut and impossible to open.” I paused long enough to see Harvey squint and run his fingers through his thatch of thinning hair. It looked like a bad toupee. “I sure wouldn’t want to try to haul those traps around, either,” I added for good measure. “Remember how heavy they were? Remember when we helped my dad move them that summer?”
Screwing up his face and puckering his lips, Harvey said, “Oh man, do I, who could forget. That was when we sawed all those logs up on Big Mountain and drug them down to the warehouse at Yono Harbor. Your dad still alive?” I shook my head but he hardly noticed. “All of mine are gone too,” he said, “parents, aunts, uncles, even my older brother, Jack. Remember Jack?”
I nodded. Who could forget Jack? He’d fought in Vietnam and had been taken prisoner. God only knew what they’d done to him—worse than the Germans or Japanese did to my father. Something about a bamboo cage in a river in the Mekong Delta, with water up to Jack’s chin, and fish biting him for days on end.
“I learned a lot from Jack,” Harvey added wistfully, shaking his head. He got to his feet and, before I could give my condolences, said, “Let’s go on up to the motel and get some of that pie Bev was talking about. On the way up, you can tell me why the mystery man behaved like he did at the hospital, throwing dirty tissues around and bleeding all over the place, when those first responders and orderlies were dealing with a major road accident. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious behavior?”
“Suspicious?” I asked, and laughed. “That’s not the word I’d choose. Taz was bleeding like a stuck pig,” I said, instantly angry with myself for lapsing into Carverville-speak and mentioning hogs. “I couldn’t just let him bleed to dea
th, his artery was severed.”
“Uh-huh,” Harvey said, creeping uphill on the uneven path covered with wood chips, his head revolving as he hunted out a cigarette in a nearly empty pack. “I’ve got to have my knees and my hips replaced,” he said and added a memorable non sequitur, asking if I still went to church and believed in the Lord. I told him I hadn’t in decades, that I’d lost my faith way back, when we were in high school. He lit up and grunted a few times, said I’d be welcome at their services, then said Beverley’s property was an overgrown firetrap. All it would take is a butt to set things alight, and she ought to get that lazy jackass mulatto kid to pull down the dried-up infesting vines, or maybe she could have those ragbag hippies down the coast herd the goats in, goats will eat anything and turn it into cheese . . .
Then he swerved back and picked up his earlier thought. “That scene in the emergency room, it seems like real strange behavior for a distinguished circuit court judge, doesn’t it?” He exhaled and coughed, sounding like Beverley. “But let’s let it go, JP, we reviewed the hospital tapes this morning, and I got hold of the ones from Dr. Dewey’s office, and that’s where we confirmed what we already knew, that you and the cappuccino kid went out and wrestled that trap and that’s where you got cut up.”
“Correct,” I said. “We saw it from the top of the staircase, Taz, Beverley, and I, when we were waiting for the drone.”
“The drone that delivered the rebuild kit,” he said, “I know, I heard it all, JP. It sounds just, what’s the word? Outlandish? Doesn’t it? Like some fake news story that a blogger would invent for some damnable reason, to discredit the authorities, for instance. Good thing a blogger didn’t get hold of it, can you imagine? ‘Bones and Skull on Graveyard Beach’ . . . a great title. But there’s so much speculation out there, online and on the street, we couldn’t prevent any jackass sitting on his sofa from spinning a whole damnable yarn and tarring Carverville and you and me, too. So, let’s see, you and the cappuccino kid rush down and drag the thing out of the water, God knows why, and you get sliced like salami, and you go in for medical assistance, but the hospital is swamped and it’s as simple as that, right?”