by Ed Gorman
The problem was he’d never bothered to get to know anybody here. He mostly played golf in the warm months and went to movies in the cooler ones.
He’d found a way of retiring without retiring.
Since there were only two priests, he had to take his share of funerals and his words on the deceased were always masterpieces of ham-bone rhetoric.
In Father Fitzgerald’s Generic Speech for the Recently Departed, everybody had led an exemplary life, had been universally beloved and was certainly, even as we sat squirming in our pews, sitting next to God and enjoying a Western on the celestial Tv set, Father Fitzpatrick being partial to Westerns.
Of David Egan, he said: “People always knew they could come to David Egan if they had problems of a spiritual nature. And with them he shared his knowledge of right and wrong, and how to survive these troubled times with hope and humility.”
Sounded just like the David I knew.
I couldn’t listen to the rest. I’d heard this same sermon applied to a wife-beating drunk, a twenty-year-old girl of saintly soul and beauty who had died of a brain aneurysm, a crooked and vicious cop, a kind and gentle man who ran a flower shop and was the subject of much rumor because he was unmarried at age fifty, and a decent old bullshitter from County Cork who’d lost both legs on Guam in the worst
days of World War Ii.
Hell, Father Fitzpatrick would’ve repeated those same words—?he shared his knowledge of right and wrong”
and taught “them how to survive these troubled times with hope and humility”—if he’d been burying Heinrich Himmler.
The back rows of the church were packed with young people who were angling for a role in Danger Dolls!
about hot-rodding girl gangs. David’s friends.
The ones he’d taught about right and wrong.
The front rows were crowded with the more reputable friends he’d made in his high school days. The girls cried, the boys looked bored, though there was one boy who managed to cry and look bored at the same time, no easy feat, believe me.
But the people I spent the most time watching were the Kelly sisters, sitting in the front pew on the right side of the aisle, and the two girls sitting a mere row apart on the left side of the aisle, Molly Blessing and Rita Scully. They both wore dark suits and looked quite pretty and young and forlorn. The Kelly sisters used Kleenex to daub their eyes; the girls used delicate handkerchiefs.
Father Fitzpatrick droned through his sermon, dragged through the rest of the mass, and then walked down to the communion rail to commence escorting the coffin out to the waiting hearse. The rows emptied from front to back. I was near the middle so I didn’t get out in time to actually see it. But I heard about it, of course.
Sunny day. Cars whipping by, the drivers indifferent—or frightened by—th death in their midst.
Small clutches of mourners on the sidewalk, talking, a smile dared here and there, and then the shout.
I had just reached the center of the front steps when Rita slapped Molly or Molly slapped Rita and the fight ensued. I’ve heard the story told both ways. Personally, I’d put my money on Rita as the instigator, but then you can’t automatically dismiss the quiet ones like Molly, because sometimes they have tempers worthy of Charles Starkweather.
I did get to see the last few seconds of it, the part when Rita reached over and grabbed the shoulder of Molly’s suit and started ripping away. Which was when about 673 guys jumped in between them and the bell sounded, officially ending the fight.
Talk about your town legends. This would
be talked about for generations. And it was just the sort of thing Egan would have loved, two very attractive girls battling over him this way.
They were both red-faced, sweaty, and thoroughly disheveled by the time I got over there. I didn’t get to talk to either of them. They were both dragged away by their friends.
I’m happy to report that there were no fisticuffs at the burial site, though Father Fitzpatrick did get confused once and talked about “David’s courage in fighting in Korea.” David would’ve been about eight back then. Well, at least he hadn’t put him back in World War I.
I’d hoped to see Andrea Prescott. At the moment the person I was most curious about was Jack Coyle. I’d wasted our little confrontation because I hadn’t pushed any specifics at him.
I wanted to know where he and Sara met when they got together.
Andrea Prescott was in Iowa City, in class all day, her mother told me. The mom was much nicer than the daughter. I told her I’d try her later.
I spent two hours in the office trying to make some real money. I was finishing up with a probated will when I thought I might learn something from Kenny Chesmore.
“How’s it going, Kenny?”
“Two more chapters, man. Lesbians are a lot easier to write about than three-ways.”
“Those damned three-ways. They can wear a guy out.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry here, McCain.
What’s up?”
“If you wanted to take an eighteen-year-old girl to a motel within driving distance of town here, where would you take her?”
“Eighteen? She’s legal, anyway.”
“Barely,” I said.
“That’s a pun but I’ll let it pass.”
Kenny knew how much I hated puns.
“What you’re really saying is where could you take her where nobody at the motel would talk, right?”
“Right.”
“Nowhere.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means they all blab. All the owners, all the night clerks. When I get
stuck for ideas sometimes, I call them up and they tell me about some of the kinky stuff their customers d.”
“So you can’t think of any place?”
“I’d go private. If it were a steady thing, I’d have a little apartment stuck away somewhere.
Something like that. Or I’d take her along with me on business trips. But no way would I start jumping her anywhere around here. Somebody’d spot you for sure.”
“Well, thanks, Kenny.”
“Sure. This thing you’re working on, McCain.
It wouldn’t involve a three-way, would it?”
“May all your future books involve
lesbians, my son.”
“Thank you, padre.”
I tried working again but couldn’t concentrate, especially after Jamie came in with one of her girlfriends, whom she insisted was going to help her make some serious headway on all the filing she’d neglected for the past month. The friend was a ponytailed girl with earnest eyeglasses and a sweet serious face. Under her left arm were two books, Tender Is the Night by F.
Scott Fitzgerald and Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. And she was hanging out with Jamie?
“This is my cousin Carrie, Mr. C. She gets straight A’s.”
I reached out and we shook hands. She glanced at Jamie and said, “I just realized something, Jamie.”
Jamie was pushing a ball of pink bub7um into her erotic mouth. “Realized what, Carrie?”
“If Mr. McCain’s name starts with
“M” why do you call him “Mr. C.”?”
Jamie looked half offended that anybody could possibly be daft enough to ask such a question. “Because they call Perry Como Mr. C.” My
God, Carrie, what are you, an idiot?
Carrie rolled her eyes and said, “Boy, I can see what you meant about the filing. It’s kind of a mess.” She walked over to the window and dragged a long finger through a quarter inch of dust.
“Could stand a little cleaning, too.”
“I promised Mr. C I’d sort of
clean things up after my hands heal.” Jamie dangled her hands in front of us. “I was using this Rexall lotion my mom bought me. I wanted to throw it away—I mean, Rexall
makes beauty products?—but I used it because she’s always talking about how I waste money and I get real sick of hearing that speec
h. But look at my hands now.”
I looked at her hands. Her cousin Carrie looked at her hands. I looked at Carrie and Carrie looked at me and then we both looked back at Jamie and Carrie said, “Your hands look fine.”
“To you, maybe, they look fine. But I have to wear them everyday. And believe me, they look terrible after using that Rexall junk. So I have to wait till they’re healed again before I can do any, you know, like cleaning or anything. Typing, no problem. Answering the phone, no problem.
Getting Mr. C some coffee from down the street, no problem. But cleaning—not for a while.”
Two-hour lunches with Turk, no problem.
Tying up the office phone gossiping with her girlfriends, no problem. Misspelling every other word in business letters, no problem. But cleaning- “Well,” I said, “I appreciate you coming in, Carrie. Is forty cents an hour all right?”
“Oh, I don’t want any pay, Mr.
McCain. I get class credit for doing this.
I’m taking business courses.”
“I’m going to teach her how to type,” Jamie said.
Carrie winked at me. “Yes, I’ve seen Jamie type. It’s really something.”
I liked this girl already.
“Well,” Carrie said. “Time to get to work.”
“Yes,” Jamie sighed. “That’s about all we do around here, isn’t it, Mr. C? Work, work, work.”
The poor dear girl.
She sat with her tan suede desert boots up on the edge of the desk, some kind of black stuff staining a quarter inch of them above the sole.
Donny Hughes would be glad to know she was wearing them. I assumed these were the ones he’d gifted her with.
She had an ancient stand-up phone in one hand while the other hand held the receiver to her ear. She said, “Mrs. Russell, Calamity’s getting old. None of us wants to face that but we have to.
I know your boys don’t think he’s
“exciting” anymore, but if you want
“something to happen to him,” you’ll have to do it yourself.
I couldn’t do that. I see Calamity every day. I love him. So you think about it and if you want your boys to get a new horse, fine, I’ll help you get one, but I sure won’t help
Calamity have an “accident.” Good-bye, Mrs. Russell.” Rita Scully replaced receiver on hook, phone on desk, set her feet on the floor and said, “She wants me to kill her horse. It’s been in the family for ten years, ever since her twins were four years old. Now the boys want something younger and faster but she doesn’t want to pay for two stalls, so she wants me to stage an accident so Calamity won’t be a financial drain anymore. Nice folks out there. Say, McCain, you got a smoke? I’m plumb out.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m not plumb out.”
I pitched her my pack and my lighter. She grinned. “I pick up words from cowboys at the rodeo. Hence, plumb.”
“So which word did you pick up from the rodeo, “hence” or “plumb”?”
She slid the pack and lighter back across the desk. She took a big gulp of cancer and exhaled it right at where I sat on the customer side of the desk. “Did little Molly send you out here to make me apologize?”
“Haven’t seen Molly since the funeral.”
She wore a black Western shirt with white piping and some lovingly fitted jeans. “I used to beat the crap out of my older brother. My mom said that when boys found that out they’d never take me to dances.”
“They’d be afraid you’d beat them up, too?”
“No, they wouldn’t want to be seen in public with anybody so unladylike is what my mom had in mind. But then I got finished with my braces and lost the fat in my cheeks and this body came along out of nowhere. Boys begged me to go to dances.”
“And they say this isn’t a great country.”
The humor in her eyes vanished so completely it was hard to believe it was ever there. “Molly killed David, you know.”
“And how would that be?”
“The pressure she put him under. Constant pressure to marry her.”
“She thought she could help him.”
She shrugged. “Everybody thought they
could help him.” She looked around the office.
Framed black-and-white photos of various horses covered the walls as did numerous, and dusty, framed awards. There was another cluttered, battered desk like hers in the corner with another old-fashioned phone and two filing cabinets that looked even older than mine. Hay from the stables covered the floor. The two windows were almost dirty enough to pass as walls. The rest was the usual tack room stuff competing for space with the office—brass hooks with bridles and reins and bits hanging from them; and saddle racks made from reinforced sawhorses that would support the heavy saddles. Along the floor on the east wall were several pairs of Western boots. What I was most curious about were the chaps. I wondered if she ever wore them.
She said, “We make a nice living here. I hope to raise my kids here. When David was sober and thinking straight, he wanted to live here, too.” She took a bitter drag of her smoke. “But Molly and Sara—they made him feel like somebody important. That’s the one thing I couldn’t give him. I know who I am and what I am. I’m nobody important according to our little burg here. And I also know that you can’t force a guy into marrying you.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “Got another one?”
I pushed the pack to her. “How’d you end up with David on Saturday night?”
“I saw him cruising around. He looked pretty bombed. I told him he’d better let me drive or Cliffie’d get him for sure.”
“What time did you see him?”
“Eight or so. Why?”
“I’m just trying to reconstruct his day and his night.”
“Can his aunts help you?”
“That’s where I’m headed after this.” Then, “You think Donny Hughes could’ve killed him?” I hadn’t told her about Brenda Carlyle.
She lighted her second cigarette. “He hated David, that’s for sure. There’s just one thing wrong.” She smiled coldly. “You really think he’d have the nerve to do something like that? Little Donny Hughes?”
It was one of those moments when you realize that somewhere, sometime, a woman smiled like that
about you. And that you, in turn, sometime, somewhere, smiled that way about a woman.
“He’s in love with you.”
“Yes, and he never lets me forget it, either.
I shouldn’t have talked about him that way. He’s nice but it’ll be a long time before—” She shrugged. “He’ll make somebody a nice husband.”
“I take it that’s not a quality you’re especially interested in at the moment.”
“I told you, I want kids and a family life. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to settle for some timid little guy who lets me walk all over him.”
I stood up and walked back to the door. She watched me, her dark gaze impossible to read.
She was a formidable young woman.
I said, “You happen to remember where you were Friday night?”
“Are you asking me if I killed Sara, McCain?”
“Something like that, I guess.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I thought about it enough. I thought about each and every one of the girls he threw me over for. He almost always came back, though. Even with Molly, he came back. Even with Princess Sara, he came back.” This time the cold smile was for herself. “The trouble was that the bastard never stayed long.” Then, “Just a sec, I’ll walk out with you. I need to change boots. These ones Donny gave me are a half size too small. Isn’t that just like him?”
Sweet Emma and sweet Amy were sitting out on their porch glider. Emma was reading the paper and Amy was darning socks. One of their cats sat on the porch railing watching me. The day was starting the long stretch into dusk, the shadows deep and somehow lonely, a certain melancholy creeping into the laughter of kids playing in a nearby front yard. All too soon moms
in aprons would be on front porches calling them in for supper, wash-^th-hands-first, as the first stars came out and the night grew chill. A clunker Plymouth packed with teenagers raced by, Elvis way up high.
You could see Amy had been crying. David would never leave this house. Not except in body.
“Good afternoon, ladies.”
“Good afternoon, Sam.” They both spoke as one and then smiled at each other about it.
Emma said, “We got his room all ready for you yesterday, but with all the excitement about Brenda. …”
“Well, you had time to hide all the evidence, that’s for sure.”
Amy said, “We didn’t throw anything away.
We really didn’t, Sam.”
“But you do have a secret, right?”
“How did you know?” Amy said.
Emma scolded her sister with a hard blue glance. “Now he knows we have a secret, Amy. Thanks to you.”
“He already knew we had a secret, didn’t you, Sam?”
“Well, the way you made such a fuss about cleaning it up, I figured something was going on.”
“It’s nothing we’re proud of, believe me, Sam,” Emma said.
“Well, I didn’t notice you turning any of it down last night, if you’re so ashamed of it, sister.”
Nice to know that even saintly women got into the occasional blood feud.
“Do I get to know what you’re talking about?”
“Would you like some lemonade, Sam? I made it from fresh lemons about an hour ago.”
“No thanks, Emma. But I would like to know what you two are talking about.”
The sisters looked at each other and then back at me.
“Why don’t you go up to his room and look through things,” Emma said, “and give us a little more time to talk through this stuff.”
“So I don’t get to know what all this is about?” I kept my tone light but I really was curious.
“You go up and look through his room,” Amy said, “and we’ll decide if we’re going to tell you or not. It’s—nothing we’re proud of, Sam.”
I smiled. Sitting on their glider. Darning socks. Sweet as a sentimental magazine illustration. What kind of secret could they have?