Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem

by Karen G. Berry

  She gave up and sat down to listen. Maybe, just maybe, if she closed her eyes and cleared out her head, she’d hear him the way he heard things that no one else could. He was her kin, after all, maybe she had that in her, waiting to come out like her periods would someday.

  The puppies in the kennel began to whine and worry.

  “Are you supposed to be up there, little girl?” His voice had a funny whistle in it. She shrugged. It was that man with the dead eyes. Standing down below her, silent, staring up at her. Annie Leigh wasn’t afraid. But she pulled her boots up tight, under her, out of reach. “Where’s your guitar, little girl?”

  Her chin thrust a little forward. “I don’t have no guitar.”

  “Oh yes you do. You have a big black National in a big black case. And it’s not tuned.”

  “It’s tuned.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. Maybe he wouldn’t have heard.

  He had. “It’s not tuned right. You should care about tuning. Tuning is an art.”

  Again, she shrugged. “Are you spying on me for any particular reason?”

  He didn’t let on that he’d heard her. “I bet you aren’t pressing hard enough on that neck, either. It’s another art, hands on a neck. You have to put just the right amount of pressure on the neck, you see, and you have to have good hands to do it.” He held his hands out in front of him. “I have good hands, see.”

  “You have girl hands.”

  “Aren’t you the brat.” He smiled, but it was a flat line, that smile. “I could show you things with these hands, little girl.”

  “I don’t want to see nothing you can show me, Mister.”

  And he looked up at her, and in the moon, his eyes shone red. “You’re a bad girl.”

  “That’s what my gramma says.” She smiled back, safe and out of reach. The dim red moon made her teeth shine with blood. They studied each other for a moment.

  “Babygirl, evil is in you like a pinworm.” He was gone.

  Wednesday

  ASA WOKE TO a quiet dawn. “Lord? Did thine own heavenly ears get sick of all the racket?” God didn’t answer, but Asa’s mind was full with a verse that he’d always disliked for the quiet truth in it. “Lord, make a joyful noise, not a quiet truth,” he grumbled. Standing, stretching, scratching. His life’s rhythms resumed, as the sky outside lightened.

  He paged through his Bible’s pages. The paper had absorbed enough oils from his hands that it was translucent, as if the black type floated on incredibly thin leaves of waxed paper. Asa was searching for a context, a way to redeem this verse, to make it carry more threat.

  Proverbs was short on threats, long on scolding, he decided. He went outside and went to work.

  Asa stood back and admired his art.

  As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

  —Proverbs 26:11

  No tearing of flesh, no flames devouring the multitudes. But at least it would turn a stomach or two.

  Asa smiled, his teeth like ivory piano keys gone black around the edges. He was ready for his Postum and his day.

  He knew he had God on his side.

  MELVEENA STOOD UP from her bed and threw off a bad dream like a swimmer shakes water from her skin. Her dreams got worse and worse, and she didn’t even have the sun to comfort her, as it was still dark. She went out into the living room to derive what comfort she could from the presence of her greatest mistake. He snored on the couch. Some comfort.

  Melveena studied the man to whom she was married. Clyde Groth used to be handsome in the way of Viking men with reddish-blonde hair and ruddy complexions. But in the last few years, thanks to the beer and the desert sun, he’d come to look a little sand-blasted. He was tall, she reminded herself. He was very tall. At just under seven feet, Clyde was the tallest man she had ever met. Unfortunately, he was not tall all over.

  “Clyde,” she purred. “Clyyyyyde. In the morning, you’re going to leave.”

  He mumbled something. She hoped it was an assent.

  “You’ve had enough of me, Clyde. I’m uppity and I haven’t had sex with you in almost a decade. You’ve had it and you’re leaving.”

  He let out a string of babble and rolled over, his bony shoulders poking up beneath his uniform shirt. Even in sleep, Clyde’s grip on the remote never relaxed.

  IT WAS TOO early for work, but she got ready and made her way to the park in Grandma’s Caddy. Some scrappy little songbirds sang a dawn song, like second stringers running notes, the chorus pretending they could take on the main role if only given a chance. What mangy little songs the birds sang here, compared to the south.

  She pulled into the park to have a look around at points of interest. She cruised past Fossetta’s to see if any lucky man was parked there. No. She checked the clubhouse. No light on there, so Rhondalee must be sleeping in past her usual 5 AM wakeup. Finally she came to Raven, sitting in a lawn chair outside her rig, polishing her boots. She had on jeans and a man’s sleeveless undershirt, and what showed out of the oversized armholes would have greatly pleased a man to see. Melveena got out of her car and sat on its hood. “Good morning, early bird.”

  “I already had my worm.”

  “Stop bragging. And go put on a decent shirt.”

  “What’re you, my mother?”

  “Perish the thought.”

  Raven hooted, spat on a boot, rubbed it with a rag. “Why’re you up? I got beaten awake with a big stick, but I don’t think Clyde carries one of those anymore.”

  Melveena sighed. “I couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.”

  “Me too.”

  “I wish we had some coffee.”

  “If wishes were fishes…” Raven frowned. “How does it go? If wishes were fishes, we’d all walk up to the bar and get some damn coffee.”

  Melveena laughed, low and throaty. “Have you heard from your father?”

  “Nope. And my mother,” said Raven between strong swipes of the rag, “is madder than a rabid dog out in a boat.” She was upset, Melveena could tell. Worried.

  Melveena examined her nails. “At least he’s not over there with Fossetta Sweet.”

  “Fossetta Sweet won’t hook up with married men.”

  “Well, your father’s so sweet I wish she’d have made an exception. And then Tender could have had his memory of it to take out on his birthday every year, like in that horrible book.”

  “What horrible book?”

  “You know, that book that nearly every woman in this Park has learned by heart? Where that Italian woman has the affair with the photographer?”

  “You know I don’t read.”

  “Well, in the case of this book, it’s just as well. This poor woman has one wicked sexy week in her whole dreary Midwestern life. One WEEK, I tell you.”

  Raven shrugged. “At least she had that one week.”

  Melveena looked at the hard woman next to her, polishing her boots as if it were a religious rite. “You exasperate me, Raven LaCour. You exasperate me by being right, and by having a name like Raven LaCour when I have one like Melveena Strange Groth.”

  “That is one of the ugliest names I ever heard. But don’t forget,” and she spat again, “my stage name was Rowena Gail.”

  “Sweet Jesus, girl.”

  With a crunch of gavel and a spray of yellow dust, the Sheriff’s car arrived. The women traded blank looks. Memphis rolled down his window with a haunted expression. “Morning, Miz Melveena.”

  “Well hello, Memphis. What brings you out so early?”

  “I came to see my niece.”

  “I’m busy.”

  His face was carefully pleasant. “Raven? Let’s take a ride.”

  She looked down at her boot. “I said I’m busy.”

  And he made himself say it. “This is official.”

  The air changed with that word. Melveena looked away into the distance. Raven hardened. And Memphis comported himself with the dignity and manners befitting a man of the law.

  So she pulled on her boots ov
er filthy socks, and settled her restless bones in the cruiser. He cranked up the cool air. They headed out on the highway towards Ochre Water.

  He’d always though it would have been nice to have a little girl. Someone to take on Sunday drives, buy her an ice cream, show her that prairie dog village east of here, let her steer a little. A daughter would have been a fine, fine thing.

  He looked at the woman in the seat next to him. She reminded him of a rattlesnake held at the jaw, whipping around, pale and deadly, possessed with a frustrated need to strike and strike hard. He thought, that’s a daughter, right there.

  “Is your father back home?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is your mother all right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Annie Leigh doing fine?”

  “Yup.”

  “Any more trouble from him?”

  “Nope.”

  He knew she wouldn’t offer him a thing more than that. “Raven, I have some more questions about the Reverend.”

  “Am I under arrest? Because if I’m not, I’m done.”

  “I can probably put you under arrest if you’d like.” He let that sit there for a minute. She honestly looked as if she might jump out. He kept the speed high and steady so she wouldn’t. “You say you were up to the bar for about a half hour. And you left about ten-thirty. You called in right after midnight. What did you do between ten-thirty and when you found the body?”

  He watched for her knee to bounce, her hand to tap. Nothing. She was as immobile as Tender had been when asked to repent some imaginary sin at the Indian school. Like rocks, they were.

  “Now, I know you told me you were wandering around feeling sick and drunk, and hearing this sound, and feeling poorly. You also told me you got sick on the side of Quentin’s truck, and then you sat down and had a little rest in the street. You were out for over an hour?” He thought about his niece staggering around in the street, getting sick, passing out. He’d never known her to do anything like that. “An hour’s a long time, Raven.” He looked over to her feet on the floor of his cruiser. “Those are new boots? Where’s your old ones?”

  “Why would I kill that old scarecrow?”

  “I am just asking…”

  “Do you think I killed him?”

  “Raven…”

  “Do you? Do you think I got drunk and wrestled the Reverend into my rig and drove him off somewhere and wrestled him out of the cab because you know I wouldn’t get blood all over my interior for love or money, and he held still while I kicked him to death with my new boots, mind you, I had these made for me, Memphis, these are good boots, and I put him back in the cab and drove back to the Park and dumped his body and then parked my rig and cleaned my boots and radioed you and went back and puked on that truck and baby-sat the body of the man I just murdered until you got there? Is that what you think?”

  “You worked it all out beautifully.”

  “Except for one thing. It’s pure crap. I have no reason to kill that old son-of-a-bitch. Arrest me or take me back to my rig.”

  She flew out the door before he came to a full stop, climbing up the side of her truck, flinging the door open and climbing in. He parked, got out, waited by the driver’s door. It seemed to take her only seconds to come back with her old boots. She held them out. They were light brown and dusty, polish-thirsty, and unspotted. She hadn’t done a thing but drive in these boots. He could tell it with a glance. “You can keep those. I need the new ones, Raven. I need your new boots.”

  Her face was that same pale yellow.

  “You can let me have them voluntarily, and I’ll get them back to you in a day, or I can seize them as possible evidence and do everything by the book. That can take weeks, or you might never get them back. I’ll take your rig, too. I can tell you, if I do it that way, you’ll have a heck of a time getting anything back. Ever.”

  “You son of a bastard.”

  He braced for when she threw them. Her father, he reminded himself, thinking of Tender pitching at the school’s ballgames, watching her wind up. Her pitch was ferocious and true. The boots landed in his hand and stretched his arm back so far that Memphis was left with a distinct sensation of something having been snapped.

  A TRIP TO the emergency room confirmed his suspicions.

  While catching Raven’s boots, he’d retroflexed his arm and thrown his shoulder all out of whack. It all meant painkillers and two days off. “I have a murder to solve,” he said to no one and nothing. But what good was a sheriff who couldn’t draw his gun? He felt useless. Also, he was hungry. Once, just once, he thought, I’d like to wake up to the smell of a woman cooking something for me.

  He closed his eyes and thought of his mother’s fry bread. He could smell it, after all these years he could still smell it. Memphis thought about her funeral, old-style, when he was twenty. His mother had refused Christ. Her funeral made no mention of any white man’s god.

  The phone rang and he reached, winced, reached again, and answered. “Memphis here.”

  “Memphis, this is Rhondalee. Have you seen your brother today?” She spoke in a voice that sounded oddly subdued. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “Thank you, Memphis.” And she hung up. No screaming, no accusations. Just a quiet humility and an undertone of worry. It was most unlike Rhondalee to make a phone call like that.

  He didn’t spend a huge amount of time feeling sorry for himself. But it would be nice, Memphis thought, to have a family of your own, people who worried about where you were, what you were up to. Or at least to have a niece less likely to heave things at you hard enough to cause damage, now, wouldn’t it. It would be nice to have someone miss you when you were gone.

  He put his hand to his chest, thought of just surrendering to the exhaustion of it, of giving up. He would never give up. He did need to call the office, to get the report on his niece’s boots. And he needed to water the rock farm.

  He struggled to his feet. “John Lee?” he said aloud, waiting for the thump of the tail in answer. “John Lee?”

  He heard nothing.

  MELVEENA STRANGE SAT at the abandoned quarry in her car with the top down and her head back, letting the sun soak into her skin. Angus MacIver, that dangerously handsome Bone Pile manchild, sat beside her, his body coiled in the sun like a warming snake ready to strike.

  She’d arrived at school on time, waited once more for a bus empty of any girls, headed over to the store where Angus always seemed to be working, and then for reasons she didn’t want to investigate, let alone articulate, she’d driven them here to this quarry rather than up to the hills again. She was too tired to face the hills and the mothers and the suspicion. She wasn’t sleeping, and she wasn’t eating, and even if she’d had her girls that day, she probably wouldn’t have done right by them due to her overwhelming preoccupation with matters important. “I don’t understand why I don’t just drive the bus, too, Angus. Then at least I could pick them all up on time.”

  “Everybody has to settle on down.”

  “Well, I just don’t know how many times I’m going to drive up there and get them. If the mothers don’t trust me by now…”

  “It ain’t you they don’t trust.”

  She decided explaining double negatives could wait just this once. “How is she?”

  He shook his head, spat over the side of the car. “Big as a melon. She wonders do you still have that lipstick.”

  Melveena sighed. “Tell her I still have it.”

  “Good. I’ll tell her.”

  Angus shifted, unable to settle. And she felt herself shifting in return. There were three feet between them, but the air in the car sang a sweet, dark, dangerous song she dared not listen to. She knew what he was. He was a hundred and sixty pounds of sinew and bone and oily black hair. He was keen eyes and angry desire. He was trouble, and he was so horribly beautiful.

  She felt his hand hovering over hers. She opened her green eyes. “Young man, le
t’s get you back to work. And on the way, let’s talk about finishing high school.”

  He groaned, and kept his hands to himself.

  HE ACHED TOO much to handle a shovel. But he was trying, he was out in his backyard near the biggest of the boulders, hoping the shade it cast would let the ground be just a little softer for the digging.

  She pulled up in her mauve Caddy, Angus MacPherson by her side. “Well hello, Memphis. What are you doing out here?” Memphis didn’t know how it came to pass, what luck sent her to his farm. But there she was, and there was the boy, hale and ready to work, and he had never been so happy to see anyone in his life.

  The boy dug the hole. Melveena wound the old dog in a sheet that Memphis located for the purpose. Business-like and deft, she politely ignored the gassy wind that escaped the old Shepherd’s corpse. Angus carried John Lee to the grave and lowered him in with an amount of respect that it pleased Memphis to see. He knew they skinned dead dogs in Bone Pile.

  They stood there, silent, unsure of what to say in times like these.

  If Memphis had cried, it would have been in relief that he had some help to give the old dog what he deserved. After all, the dog was a police veteran. He had given eight years of faithful service to the force. And Lord knows, he had sniffed a few of the more unsavory characters that Memphis had the displeasure to encounter.

  Poor old John Lee, thought Memphis. Will anyone really miss you?

  He looked at the grave, the rocks, the stony landscape around him.

  “Lord Bless him.”

  It was all he had left to say.

  MEMPHIS WATCHED HER move around his kitchen, her heels clicking on the old rose-patterned linoleum. “I can’t believe you just showed up like that. Talk about Providence. I was getting set to call Garth.”

  “Angus stopped by to talk, and I said we should take a drive because, well, to be honest I am not sure I trust that boy in a closed room. We ended up here.”