The Drifter's Wheel

by Phillip DePoy

  “That’s it!” Mrs. Jackson howled.

  “But what—” Andrews began, baffled.

  “Simple!” Mrs. Jackson shrieked, getting to her feet. “Show these gentlemen the door. I won’t stand for another second of this!”

  Simple shot up and began making frantic gestures toward the front door.

  “What is it that all these people think they’re inheriting?” Andrews stammered, finishing his thought.

  “Yes,” I answered, rising to follow Simple. “That’s the very next thing we have to find out.”

  “I’m warning you to stay out of my family’s affairs,” Mrs. Jackson shouted, already halfway out of the room and not looking back at us. “I’ll have lawyers to see that you do! No more questions. No more answers. Simple!”

  Simple jumped as if she’d been shocked by an alternating current, and flew to the doorway.

  “I love these letters,” she whispered to me, fluttering the yellow piece of paper in her hand. “I wouldn’t trade them for all the gold … ”

  She could not manage any more words after that, but short bursts of incomprehensible sound bubbled from her mouth.

  Andrews and I, for her sake, hurried past the threshold and into the sun washing the front yard. It was as if we’d passed through a portal between two worlds. The daylight seemed to have divided reality into portions—one was the inside of the Jackson house, the other was the rest of the world.

  Thirteen

  “Well, I mean, Jesus Christ,” Andrews said as he climbed into my truck. “That was chaos.”

  “Every encounter I’ve ever had in that house has ended with my being tossed out.” I threw myself in behind the wheel.

  “All right, but I mean,” Andrews stammered, “that house is loaded to the brim with both heebies and jeebies.”

  He stared at the house as if it were some sort of huge animal that might leap up at any moment and devour the truck. I started the engine and backed away slowly—just in case.

  “Mrs. Jackson certainly does drag around a certain aura, doesn’t she?” I stared at the house for a moment. A curtain in the parlor parted ever so slightly, and I thought I caught a glimpse of Simple’s odd dress.

  “And that daughter,” Andrews said, sensing her presence in the window as well. “What a spook.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard her voice, except for singing. I’ve never known her to speak before today.”

  “Can you blame her?” Andrews rubbed the backs of his arms as if he were cold, though he certainly wasn’t.

  The truck complained as I shifted gears and headed down the road. It was a bit cold. A sudden blast of wind drove blood-red and mud-brown maple leaves across the road, the perfect imitation of a huge flock of male and female cardinals all migrating to a warmer clime. Sunlight failed to pierce those wings, and for a moment we were in the dark.

  “I didn’t get to ask half my questions,” I said haplessly.

  “At least you found out that the old bat didn’t look at the dead body.”

  “Right. But I really wanted to know what inheritance the Jackson family could possibly boast that would merit murder. Aside from the part of the mountain they own, I can’t see anything of value at all.”

  “It is a bit … eerie that several sets of brothers have fought over it. And that someone has died each time. It’s like the family are all stuck in a loop, longing for this swag, killing for it, regretting it, dying; then the whole cycle starts again.”

  “Brother against brother.”

  “You don’t just mean the Jacksons—you don’t even mean just your Civil War.” Andrews nodded. “I understand that.”

  The sun finally penetrated leaves and limbs and hammered the hood of my truck with golden mallets.

  “Look,” I said to Andrews, glancing up at the sun, “we’re running out of time. I feel a certain pressure to help Hovis Daniels. He didn’t kill anyone, and I’m afraid no one but me will help him.”

  “Aside from your noble nature,” Andrews asked softly, “what would prompt you to feel that kind of responsibility?”

  “No idea.” I pressed the accelerator a bit. “But it’s there, and I’ll analyze it later, if you like. For the moment, I’d like to discover why the stranger, the false Truck Jackson, visited the exact three people that he visited on Monday night.”

  “Why?” Andrews turned my way.

  “I’m coming to the conclusion that, despite clear evidence to the contrary, the man had a purpose. He was looking for something. Looking for information. I have it in my head now that his stories might not be wild ramblings but some sort of internal code, or metaphorical language. The story of one brother killing another seems clear enough: The visitor killed his own brother, or was about to.

  And what if all this talk all about war is actually about family dynamics?”

  “This is exactly the trouble with your so-called academic discipline,” Andrews complained. “Too many folklorists have in their minds a Freudian or even, God forbid, a Jungian interpretation of simple human behaviors. Sometimes a war story is just a war story.”

  “But you just said that the surreal recurrence of the same story over and over again is too much to ignore.”

  “No,” he objected, “I said it was eerie. I was going for the autumnal spooky feeling. You’re going for some sort of publishable journal article.”

  “Pa-tay-toe,” I pronounced in as perfect and derisive an imitation of Andrews as I could manage, “pa-tah-toe.”

  “You’re an idiot,” he told me, unable to keep from laughing.

  “Here’s what I have in mind,” I breezed on. “I’ll drop you off at the jailhouse. You can flirt with Deputy Melissa Mathews—”

  “Now you’re talking,” Andrews oozed. “She’s so cute in that crisp uniform, and she has her own handcuffs.”

  “And I will go speak with Nurse Lucinda Foxe,” I continued, doing my best to ignore Andrews altogether.

  “Who is also cute in her nurse’s—”

  “Stop,” I demanded. “Listen. You’re going to talk to Hovis Daniels; see if you can get him to go over his recollection of the conversation with the visitor. See if you can figure out what the visitor was really after. I didn’t know to ask about that before—I didn’t think to look for it. I’m going to ask Lucinda the same thing. And in the meantime, I’m going to try to figure out what he wanted from me. You can help in that regard by asking Melissa if she’s listened to my tape recording enough to find anything significant in his strange rambling monologues. Then we’ll piece it all together.”

  “Brilliant.” He settled back. “The game is afoot.”

  “Shut very much up, would you mind?”

  My truck sped down the ruts and stones of the road, bouncing us like a cheap ride at a traveling carnival, until we hit the blacktop into town. Fifteen minutes later, we were in front of the sheriff’s office.

  I got out to make certain Melissa knew what we were doing, and to assure her that Andrews wasn’t there just to bother her. She was sitting at her desk in the front room of the suite with headphones on, shaking her head. She took them off when she saw us come in.

  “This guy was a real nut, wasn’t he?” she asked, turning off the tape recorder.

  “Dr. Devilin believes there is method in his madness.” Andrews sat on the front edge of her desk.

  “There may be,” she answered, clearly in doubt of the concept, “but I can’t find any. He thinks he’s from another time, and he’s talking about the Tango. It’s kind of scary.”

  “We could listen together,” Andrews suggested.

  “Would you mind letting Dr. Andrews speak with Hovis?” I asked her. “I have some questions in mind. I’m going to speak with Lucinda on the same subject, to wit: Why exactly did that man visit the three of us? What’s the pattern? What was he looking for?”

  “You don’t think it was just a random, wandering thing?” She squinted up at me. “Surely does sound like it on this tape.”

&nbs
p; “There’s always a pattern, ma’am,” Andrews told her, clearly mocking me—and the entire genre of investigative detection.

  “I hope to find some sort of thread,” I assured Melissa. “Is Skidmore … ”

  “No. He’s over at the county lab in Pine City.” She leaned forward. “He’s trying to do a DNA analysis, see can he find out who the dead man is that way. Isn’t that exciting? This surely is the age of miracles.”

  It was clear to me that Deputy Mathews was deliberately exaggerating the more Hee Haw aspect of her speech and character in an effort to confound Andrews—or to put him off.

  Alas, Andrews seemed to find it charming.

  “It is exciting,” I said, catching Melissa’s eye. “But, as I was saying, would you mind if a leering Englishman saw Hovis?”

  I tapped on the desk to make Andrews stand up. He did not.

  “I’ll have to lock you in with him,” she said to Andrews, all business. She stood quickly, reaching for keys on her desk. That made him get to his feet.

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.” I patted Andrews once on his shoulder and beat, as they say, a hasty retreat.

  Fourteen

  The morning sun was rising quickly to meet the top of the sky. It was God’s scourge, warning me to move quickly, or feel the sting of its coming down. Sunset seemed all too close.

  I made it to the hospital cursing the fact that I hadn’t worn my watch. I wasn’t certain when I’d taken it off or where I’d put it, but I suddenly felt I was an idiot for not having it with me. No idea what time it was, I barged into the admitting area and stormed up to the nurses’ station.

  The luscious and redoubtable Nurse Chambers was on the phone and managed to continue her conversation about cholesterol medication while offering me the most significantly suggestive eyebrow raising in the history of Western culture. When she hung up the phone she deliberately leaned over in order to present cleavage the way Jayne Mansefield used to in the B movies.

  As luck would have it, Lucinda rounded the corner just in time.

  “My, my,” she sang, “two days in one week. People will talk.”

  “People in this town,” I reminded her, “can talk for a week about the shape of a toothpick. They’re certainly already talking about us. And I like to help matters along every so often by using the word ‘fiancée’ in a sentence.”

  “Able to say it without stuttering yet?” she drawled.

  “He just did,” Nurse Chambers offered.

  “Quiet, you,” Lucinda teased, “I saw the way you were leaning over just now.”

  “Me?” She blinked.

  “Oh, please.” Lucinda shook her head. “I could see far enough down your dress to tell what toenail polish you’re wearing.”

  “Look,” I interrupted, “I really need to talk to you about something for a second, okay?”

  Lucinda turned to me ready to continue playing, but when she saw the expression on my face, I suppose, she dropped her smile.

  “There’s a consult room right here.” She started for it without another word.

  I followed.

  “Hurry back,” Nurse Chambers whispered behind me.

  I made it to the consultation room without looking back, thus avoiding being turned into a pillar of salt. Lucinda closed the door behind me.

  The room was tiny; smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol. There was only space for an examination table, a rolling chair, a counter topped with several containers, and the low buzzing of fluorescent lights.

  We both stood.

  “What is it?” Her face was perfection.

  “Sorry to barge in at your work,” I began, “but if I don’t figure something out by tonight, that Millroy person is probably going to come to one of two erroneous conclusions. One would be that the dead man killed himself, the other would be that Hovis killed him.”

  “But doesn’t he know about the man who came to visit us?”

  “I guess he does, but it isn’t evidence. Skidmore arrested Hovis to keep him … to keep Millroy from filing the victim’s death as a suicide. But now Hovis stands to be charged with murder.”

  “Hovis is pretty far gone,” Lucinda said softly, “but he wouldn’t kill anything that he wasn’t going to eat.”

  Despite my tension—or perhaps because of it—I was able to laugh.

  “True enough.” I nodded. “But what I’ve got in my head now is that our mutual visitor came to the three of us—Hovis, you, then me—looking for something. He wasn’t rambling; he chose us for a reason.”

  She looked at her shoes for a moment and took in a deep breath.

  “Sweetheart,” she sighed, “you always think … you often want there to be a reason for something when, for the most part, things just happen. I feel I have to say that you might be looking for a pattern where there isn’t one.”

  “Where’s God’s plan in that kind of thinking?” I asked her, a smile nearly imperceptibly creasing my lips. “What the hell kind of mountain-girl Christian are you?”

  “The kind that’s worked in a hospital most of her life,” she answered back more seriously than I might have liked.

  “Right. Right. But could you humor me, at least for Hovis?”

  “Well, I mean, we know he didn’t do it. The man who visited us killed that other man.”

  “Clear to you and me,” I agreed, “but invisible to Millroy and insubstantial for Skidmore.”

  “All right,” she acquiesced. “Ask me what you want. But I really can’t take all morning—”

  “Besides talking about the Civil War,” I began immediately, “I’m wondering if our visitor asked you any questions at all.”

  “Let me see.” She sat absently in the rolling chair. “There was a lots of talk about that Hutchinson Family—”

  “Right,” I prompted, “I’ve looked into that.”

  “And there was all that about Gettysburg,” she continued, concentrating. “I don’t think—”

  “You told me that he said his name was Jacob,” I pressed. “And then you said something about how much he loved his family and ran off. You used some pretty specific phrases that stand out in my mind. You said … I think your exact words were ‘before the older women could stop it, fire had seized them both.’”

  “How do you do that?” she marveled. “How do you remember things like that? It really is a talent.”

  “Don’t you think that’s what you said?”

  “I do.” She sat back in the chair. “I think it’s pretty much a quote from my visitor. Doesn’t sound like something I’d say, really.”

  “Right.”

  “Why did you—”

  “Because,” I answered, leaning on the examination table, a bit drained of color, “Simple Jackson just read me those words in a letter from the Civil War not half an hour ago.”

  “You heard Simple talk?” That was what amazed her most.

  “And she has a lovely voice, but the point is—”

  “I see the point.” She folded her hands. “Now I really have to think harder about what the man might have said, I guess.”

  “If you would.”

  She rocked a little bit, staring at the wall. After a moment, her shoulders slumped.

  “It did seem like he was trying to get around to something,” she told me at last, “but I think Stacy’s phone call—you remember I told you she called about a prescription? I think that stopped him. He was gone after that.”

  “I remember.”

  “You heard Simple talk.” She couldn’t get over it. “What did she say?”

  “She read a letter from the Civil War,” I repeated. “Oh. Right.”

  “Sweet voice. Very melodic.”

  “Like her father,” she said softly. “Did you ever meet Mr. Jackson—Edna’s husband? What was his name?”

  “I think his first name was Mister,” I answered. “I don’t think I ever heard anyone call him anything else, including Mrs. Jackson—whom I can’t call Edna.”

  “He was a
sweet old guy.” Lucinda sighed. “I looked after him during his last days. I was just out of nursing school. It’s probably because I hadn’t figured out how to put some distance between me and the patients at that point, but I really got to liking him. He was always joking, even though he was in pretty bad pain.”

  “He died of—”

  “Lung cancer. Smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and lived into his eighties. Give me those genes.”

  “Hard to imagine a smoking, drinking, joking man married to Edna Jackson.”

  “You said ‘Edna.’”

  “I know, but—”

  “I think Edna’s the reforming kind,” Lucinda offered, “the sort of person who thinks her job is to take a sinner and kick him till he repents. Mr. Jackson, dying in the hospital, told me he was happier than he’d been in years.”

  “I did meet him, to answer your question. I made a couple of tapes of him when I was still in graduate school. He was part of my dissertation, in fact. He could sing about forty verses of ‘Barbara Allen’—some that I’d never heard before. I think he enjoyed singing for me—he told me he never sang in his house.”

  “Where did you tape him?”

  “Down in that little shack where Hovis stays now. I think Mr. Jackson might have kept his stash down there somewhere. He was always pretty loaded when I met him—ready to sing.”

  “He sang in the hospital, too,” she said softly. “One of the last things he did was sing.”

  “You were with him—”

  “Literally in his last moments of life,” she told me sweetly. “I said I’d gotten a little too close to him. I was there when he died. We’d called Edna, but she didn’t make it in time to see him—it was just me. He sang, he asked me for a cigarette—don’t remember what all he talked about, but, you know, he eventually winked at me. Really. And then closed his eyes and went to sleep. Gone like that. Very peaceful.”

  “Give me those genes,” I said softly. “That’s how I want to go, falling asleep close to a beautiful woman. In a nurse’s uniform.”

  “You?” she laughed, rousing herself from her reverie. “You’ll go falling off a cliff close to a dangerous maniac, the way things have panned out for you since you’ve come back home.”