by Strnad, Jan
"Be here when I get home!" Peg yelled after him. She heard him tromp upstairs, heard his bedroom door slam shut.
Tom flopped down on his bed and somehow the motion made him think about Deputy Haws' body flopping into the hole they'd dug. He wished he could trade places with the dead deputy right now. He wished he was dead and buried and didn't have to hassle with all this bullshit.
"Shit," he said as the tears welled in his eyes.
In the kitchen, Peg considered allowing herself a good, hard cry. But she was already late and Ma was waiting for her at the diner, so she put it off, as she always seemed to do.
***
Doc Milford clicked through the Duffy photos one after the other for Brant, a stomach wrenching sequence detailing Madge Duffy's carving skills.
Brant merely glanced at the photos. He had no reason to doubt their authenticity or Doc's analysis of John Duffy's condition. Still, it seemed important to Doc to lay out all the evidence in favor of considering Duffy dead on Friday night. Maybe he was thinking of a malpractice suit. Or maybe he was doubting his sanity.
"The coroner showed up this morning and verified my diagnosis," Doc said. "He could tell from looking that these were pictures of a dead man, and he's seen his share. When I told him that this very same man had walked out of the hospital under his own power not eight hours later, he wouldn't believe me. And I don't blame him. It's the fruitiest goddamn story I've ever heard in my life. But it happened, I saw it, and all I have to prove it are these pictures."
"You aren't suggesting that I run these photos in the Times!"
"No, no, nothing like that. But you see why I had to show them to you. This wasn't some borderline case. Duffy showed all the normal symptoms of death—lack of respiration, no pulse—but for gosh sakes, look at the man!
"Normally I'd feel for a carotid pulse. In Duffy's case, with his neck laid open like that, I could see the carotid—plainly severed! The blood is not circulating in his body. Look how it's settled in the lower body area—they call it "postmortem stain." Livor mortis.
"And...there were the flies."
"Flies?" Brant asked.
"They smell death. Long before you or I would notice the smell of a dead body, the insects pick it up. We still don't know what produces the odor, but flies can smell a fresh corpse from a mile away. Madge Duffy left a window open. When the Sheriff got there, he said the body was swarming with flies."
Brant was silent. He didn't want to seem skeptical, but he hadn't seen the body himself. Could this all be a prank? Big city cynicism dies hard.
Doc Milford began to pace. He had a bad hip that wanted surgery but he kept putting it off, his own worst patient.
"I could've run an EEG," he said, "looked for brain death, but really, who would've thought it necessary?
"And even if I was wrong about the death...even if Duffy was just seriously wounded, where's the wound now? Where's the scar? It'd take hours of surgery to reattach those veins and arteries, and the stitches...he'd look like a damned Frankenstein."
His limping stride took him over to the goldfish bowl he kept in his office for its tranquilizing effect. He tapped some food into the bowl and the lone fish gobbled it up eagerly.
"People talk," Doc said as he fed the fish. "The news of the murder was all over town like a plague wind. Duffy's rise is already making the rounds. And you can bet that most people are saying what an incompetent old coot Doc Milford is and how he should have retired years ago before the liquor robbed him of his senses. Well I don't want to retire, especially not over something like this."
Brant's sympathy went out to the man. Doc Milford had devoted most of his adult life to the births and traumas of his small community and now he stood a good chance of being hooted out in disgrace. They wouldn't run him out of town, of course, but one great wave of gossip would wash out his sterling past and reduce him to another town character, like Clyde Dunwiddey the drunk. It was a fate worse than death for a proud man like Doc.
"I'll do what I can, Doc," Brant offered. "I'll point out that the coroner agreed with you, based on the photos. If Sheriff Clark and Jed Grimm will back you up...."
"You see," Doc interrupted. "If. You don't believe me. You think I'm off my rocker."
"I didn't say...."
"Oh, I don't blame you. Yes, please, talk to the Sheriff. Talk to Jed Grimm. The night nurse, Claudia White, saw the body. Talk to her, too. But wait 'til she's off the sedatives. She got quite a shock last night."
"I imagine so."
Both men were silent for a time. Brant glanced at the photo on Doc's computer. John Duffy sure looked dead to him. He'd be interested to hear what the Duffys had to say about all this.
As much as he wanted to believe Doc and to believe that something incredible had occurred in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, as much as he wanted to think that he'd somehow, magically been at exactly the right place at the right time to stumble onto the story of the decade, Brant knew better than to get his hopes up. There was probably a simple explanation. It was a hoax or a misunderstanding of some sort. He couldn't figure it out now but it would come to him or the right piece of the puzzle would fall into place and solve everything in a mundane, logical and very ho-hum manner.
If nothing happened to explain it, it would remain an anomaly. A tabloid item, MURDERED MAN RETURNS TO LIFE, photos on page twelve. Something to read in line at the supermarket, being sure to snort derisively in case anyone was watching, commenting as you put the newspaper back in the rack, "Can you believe the trash they print? Does anybody really believe this stuff?"
"Can you send me those pictures?" Brant asked.
"Sure, sure," Doc replied.
"I'll do what I can," Brant said again.
"I know you will," said Doc, but he wondered to himself if anybody could do anything at this point, or if events weren't already spinning wildly out of control.
***
Deputy Haws had been pissed as a bluejay that night to find himself more than six miles from his consarned vehicle. He'd walked along the highway without encountering a single car. These days anybody who was anxious to get anywhere took the interstate, leaving the old county highway to service the dying little towns that had sprung up along its path so many years ago. It saw some traffic in the morning and evening as the hardhats building the nuke plant drove to work or home, and you'd see combines working its length at harvest time, the migrant harvesters following the season from south to north. But much of the time, especially late at night, the road was just a black snake of asphalt running between Not Much and Used To Be.
Being dead didn't appear to have impaired Haws in any way. The bullet wound had healed completely, though he did wonder what became of the slug inside his gut. Had it been spit out like a cherry pit, or was it still rattling around his innards somewhere? Either way, it wasn't bothering him now.
He seemed to have more energy, which he appreciated as he hoofed it along the highway. He still carried about a hundred extra pounds of bulk, but that old feeling of weariness at the slightest exertion was absent. He breathed easier and had more get up and go. Maybe there'd been something wrong with his lungs or his arteries had been getting clogged or something, and now he was experiencing that unfamiliar phenomenon called "health."
He did cough up some dirt now and again and his mouth tasted like he'd been sucking on a toad turd, but that and a sort of roughness in his eyes, like the dirt had scratched his corneas, maybe, were about it for physical side effects.
His mind, however, had changed profoundly.
He preferred to view the world as black or white. Good was good and bad was bad and that was that. He liked it when a new subject of thought bounced down through his brain like a ball bearing in a pachinko machine until it settled into one slot or the other. Then he didn't have to think about it anymore.
But people liked to confuse him with subtleties, and that made him mad. Why, when a person had everything figured out, did they have to pull the rug
out from under him? Just because they couldn't make up their own minds about a thing, that didn't give them the right to confuse everybody else.
Certain people always seemed to be laughing at him, like they knew something he didn't. And occasionally, that got to him. Late at night, lying in bed, trying to make shapes out of the shadows of the leaves crawling on the wall, sometimes he'd get to wondering if the world wasn't such a big, complicated work that it was foolish for an average sort of guy like himself to think he could make sense of it.
Maybe he was blind to something that only smart people could see, the way they say dogs can't see color. How could you explain color to a dog? Maybe he was just too thickheaded to understand what smarter people tried to tell him.
Well, if that was the case then there was nothing he could do about it, so it was stupid to even think about it. He got along okay, better than some of the so-called geniuses he'd known who ended up working in bookstores, selling books to other smart people for minimum wage. Or killing themselves because the world didn't fit their idea of how the world ought to be. They'd doubted themselves to death, some of those smart people had.
Deputy Haws wasn't going to lose any sleep thinking about how maybe everything he knew was wrong.
But still....
Still....
The uncertainty was always there, lurking in his nerves like a cold sore, ready to pop out under stress. It made him lash out over ridiculous things and get into fights when the conversation drifted to particular topics, like whether somebody who repeated third grade should be allowed to carry a handgun.
That night, though, trudging along the blacktop, he had no more doubts. Everything was crystal clear. Everything. And he was absolutely dead sure certain about it all. No crack weakened the armor of his certitude.
Seth had made everything clear.
Seth had spoken to him while he was dead. Seth had peered into Haws' brain on those lie-awake nights when the shadows crept along the wall, and Seth had examined the questions that haunted Haws' dreams, and Seth had provided the answer that Haws sought.
Seth was the answer.
No matter the question. All questions were one, really. All answers, one.
Seth.
All Haws had to do was believe in Seth and everything would be all right. All would be right. All...right.
There was an example right there of Haws' new clarity of thought.
It was Haws' mission to bring this enlightenment to the rest of the world, starting with those who needed Seth's wisdom the most.
Starting with Galen Ganger.
***
Haws retrieved his vehicle and drove home well before dawn. He laundered his clothes and sewed a patch over the bullet hole, doing both jobs much better than anyone in town would've expected him to.
He'd treated the bloodstains with pre-wash and liquid detergent and let them soak and then ran everything through the washer three times. Then he'd cut a circle of material from his shirt tail where it wouldn't be missed and used it to patch the bullet hole.
In truth, Haws was not half bad with a needle and thread. He'd all but raised his little sister, Lucille, his alcoholic mother not being of much use in that regard and his father being a "guest of the federal government" in Leavenworth, Kansas. With no money to waste on luxuries, Haws had grown up learning how to make do.
He hadn't anticipated needing more than one official police shirt and one pair of official police pants, so tonight he had to salvage his sole uniform so he could be seen around town later that morning. He wanted to mess with the heads of the punk kids who surely figured him for dead. Nothing heavy. He wouldn't run them in. He just wanted to be seen and let their own guilty consciences and fear of payback do the rest. For now.
Haws still lived with Lucy, who cleaned houses to bring in her share of the rent. Like her mother, she was a heavy sleeper, but for a different reason. Lucy slept because she was depressed. She was not an attractive woman by most standards and had given up on herself early in life. She rose from the bed only long enough to make her meager living, to watch a little TV, or to open a can and heat contents to boiling. Unlike her brother, Lucy was cadaverously thin. Her depression had been with her so long that she couldn't imagine life without it. She was not like other people, certainly not like the happy, buoyant souls she saw on the television screen, and she did not expect anything to change. She tried not to inconvenience her brother, whom she loved and relied upon, and that meant staying out of the way, in her bedroom, in her bed, the covers pulled up tight over her bony shoulders. It was as good a place as any to be, for her, and if that's how she wanted to live, it was okay by her brother.
Haws finished his washing and mending and pressing and draped his uniform on a wire hanger that he hung in a doorway. No point putting it in the closet when he was just going to put it back on in a few hours anyway.
He showered and put on clean underwear and went to bed, not really tired but figuring that he should try to get some rest. He fell asleep in moments and slept like a baby until late Saturday morning. He woke feeling like a million bucks. With a bit of luck, this could turn out to be the best day of his life.
Eight
Ma's Diner was already in pandemonium when Deputy Haws walked in.
Claudia White, the night nurse at Cooves County Hospital, was in a screaming match with the Ganger boy who gripped a teaspoon in his hand as if it was a switchblade and looked ready to spoon her to death. Jedediah Grimm, the undertaker, had hold of Ganger by both arms but that didn't stop Ganger's elbow from shooting back where it caught Peg Culler and made her drop two armloads of breakfast specials. Nurse White's mother seemed on the verge of a heart attack and Reverend Small was urging everybody to calm down and Merle Tippert, owner of the Rialto Theatre, pounded the table and screamed for boysenberry syrup. Ma screamed at Tippert from the service window but Haws had no idea what he was saying because he'd lapsed into Mandarin or something...it might have been Tongues for all Haws knew. Tom Culler sat at the counter looking sick and Brant Kettering sat next to him scribbling furiously in his notebook. Everybody else either observed nervously or wolfed their food like they planned to sneak out on their check during the hullabaloo.
Haws' arrival calmed the place down, but it wasn't because of the sudden appearance of the law. It was because, when he saw him, Galen Ganger's jaw dropped to the floor and he forgot all about Nurse White and the room spun and he fainted dead away. As a bonus, Tom Culler turned as green as a cartoon character and heaved his breakfast onto the countertop. It was everything Haws could have wished for, and more.
***
Brant knew that the article ran long and was too raw for publication, but he wanted to write it out like it happened first and save it for his book. He could water it down and objectify it later for the Cooves County Times. He wrote:
John Duffy's alleged rise from the dead would be old news by the time the story made it to the Times. What I couldn't provide in terms of timeliness I determined to make up for with depth, or, failing that, width. I wanted to see what the town was thinking, and for that there was no better observation post on a Saturday morning than Ma's Diner.
For many of the citizens of Anderson, Saturday morning breakfast at Ma's was the social event of the week. Ma's had its regulars, like Merle Tippert who lived alone and ate most of his meals out and who reserved Saturday morning for his weekly treat of waffles and boysenberry syrup, the hell with what Doc Milford said about his cholesterol. But anyone was likely to show up, if not for breakfast then for a donut and a cup of coffee, just to hear the current buzz. Any news worth telling would have made the rounds by telephone, but for a quick overview of public opinion about the co-op manager's new hairpiece or Carl Tompkins' decision to carry a line of Japanese power tools down at the hardware store, Ma's was the place to be.
So I hied myself thither to get the lowdown on Duffy.
An angel got its wings as I entered. I presume an angel got its wings because a bell tinkled over
head.
I've often wondered exactly how that works—not the bell because I know how a bell works, but the angel business. How does it all stay in balance? What happens if there are more bells ringing than angels needing wings—do all the bells on Earth fall silent until the wingless angel population recovers? Or do the bells keep ringing and a lot of undeserving angels suddenly sprout wings and quickly and guiltily flutter off for a round of golf on the nearest par-seventy cloud bank? Did Frank Capra know what he was talking about or is it possible that he just made the whole thing up?
I was clearly in the proper frame of mind to debate life after death as I took my favorite stool at the counter, the one near the cash register where I'd receive maximum exposure to la femme Culler. I don't know why I can't get this woman out of my mind. For some reason I find her delectable. The fact that she's encased in her own world of troubles as rigidly as if sealed in lucite and is therefore unattainable only makes the attraction stronger.
Anyhow, I sat down and it was several minutes before Peg was able to take my order. The joint was jumpin', and the topic on everybody's lips was John Duffy. I tried to tune my hearing to a single conversation at a time, aurally table hopping the way I do with the television and the remote control. Eventually, though, the debate took on a more diner-wide scope with people shouting from one table to the next as the issue got deeper and murkier and closer to deeply held, heartfelt beliefs.
The brouhaha seemed to start with Claudia White. Claudia is the night nurse at the hospital and was on duty that night when Duffy appeared from the stairwell in pursuit of Curtis Waxler, the janitor. Doc Milford had prescribed sedatives for the shock Claudia had received to her psyche and ibuprofen for the pain from the bump on her head she took when she fainted at the sight of a man she knew for a fact to be dead throwing open the stairwell door and calling out, "You there!" Maybe she'd stopped taking the sedatives or never took them or they weren't strong enough or she was one of those people on whom drugs have the opposite effect, but for whatever reason Claudia was clearly not sedate. Her voice was up an octave and her hands were waving in the air as she told the story to her mother, sitting across the table from her ignoring a bowl of oatmeal.