by McNay, Dan
UNDER THE COLD STONES
DAN McNAY
Polite note from the publisher
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons alive or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
About the author
Other titles of interest
Chapter one
The sky was a brilliant blue over the rows of new corn behind the telephone poles and old fence posts they were passing. The interior of the bus was dim and quiet in comparison. One could be young here. With the folded-up cuffs of your jeans and a ponytail. Daydee had been young here once a long time ago. Somewhere there she played hayseed with a straw in her mouth and one of those round ragged straw hats you got at the county fair. Somewhere there. She looked away. There were only a few others on the bus with her. The lady across the aisle looked about her age, but in a flannel shirt and jeans. No make-up and stringy hair. Daydee felt overdressed. She was being met by her mother’s friend, and maybe the lawyer later. She had worn her best skirt and jacket, but now it felt a bit tight for this part of the country. Too much make-up maybe. Were false eyelashes even done in Paris these days?
“Excuse me, darling,” she asked the lady. “What kind of crop is that?”
“The soybeans?”
“Oh, well, aren’t I stupid.”
The lady shrugged.
“Are you going to Paris?” Daydee asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yes, my mother just died.”
“Really? What is her name?”
“Mary McIntire.”
“I knew her. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I wasn’t very close to her.”
The woman nodded. She had a kind manner. Daydee imagined her atop a tractor. Measuring herself up to her was silly.
“Are you a farmer?” Daydee asked.
“My husband is. He is your mother’s sharecropper on the farm, actually.”
“Well, it’s a small world.”
“Paris, Illinois, is a small place. Do you know where you’re staying?”
“I have the address in my purse somewhere.”
“I can give you directions if you want.”
“I’m being met. A Winston somebody.”
“Oh, he’ll take care of you.”
Daydee thought that Winston might have been the name of the football coach at the high school. It had stuck because of the cigarettes her mother smoked. And there she was. Sitting in that overstuffed chair beside the full ashtray. Some stupid thing on the television.
“That looks like shit! Go change!”
And Daydee having stopped, mad, and flipped her the bird. She couldn’t help herself. Her mother was a bitch.
“What the fuck!”
Then she would rush out the front door as her mother struggled to get out of the chair.
Thank God she was dead.
There was the yardstick that finally broke on her back the last time her mother tried using it. Daydee had laughed at her despite the stinging welts.
At sixteen, Daydee had snitched three hundred dollars from the coffee can her mother kept in the refrigerator. And carrying a suitcase, she stood on the highway with her thumb out. It was just dumb luck a cop hadn’t seen her. The guy who drove the bread truck that delivered to the restaurant where she was a waitress stopped for her. The only question he asked was, where was she off to? Daydee told him New Orleans. He wished her luck when he dropped her at the next little town. No one ever came looking for her.
That was twenty-three years ago.
Two years ago, after drinking too much, she bought a Christmas card at a drugstore and mailed it at the next corner. A couple of cards came. Phone numbers were exchanged but never called. Then Winston called to tell her the bitch had died. There was a will. Life hadn’t been easy lately. John was in jail. No one called. She didn’t have the heart to start strolling around the hotels at night again.
The lady had said something, but it didn’t register. Then she offered her hand.
“My name is Hanna.”
Daydee hadn’t shaken hands with anyone in God knows how long. John had said she was beginning to touch him like his grandmother used to. She reached over and tried not to be too dainty. Hanna needed some hand lotion.
Outside the fields became scattered farms with long gravel drives, then the yards appeared. Frame houses with brick porches lined the block behind shade trees and sidewalks. No one out and about on a spring morning. Hadn’t there been a ‘Welcome to Paris’ sign? None of it looked familiar. None of it. It could be any little town.
The bus rolled down Main Street and pulled over to stop in front of The Beacon-News building. This she recognized. A green two-story stone building with ‘The Beacon-News’ in black lettering across the front and forties-looking windows on the second floor. Both women got up. Hanna motioned for her to go first. Was she going to hold the door for her as well? It was a bus, no door to hold. The town smelled like popcorn because of the big cereal factory north of town. She had forgotten. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk. It was so quiet here. There was a little man in overalls waiting beside the bus baggage storage. He had a cotton candy white beard that hid his face. Hanna pecked him on the cheek.
“This is my husband, Sean.”
Another handshake. He looked embarrassed.
“I didn’t learn your name,” Hanna said.
“Deidre,” her husband said.
Their bags were pulled out and set on the sidewalk in front of them. Sean picked up his wife’s, nodded and walked off to an old pickup truck. Hanna waved and followed him.
The bus left her there. She glanced at her reflection in the window of the newspaper office. Fluffing out her hair, she hoped no one inside noticed her being vain. Her hair was ‘to die for’. Thick auburn masses down to the middle of her back and it would take any curl she wanted to give it. The guys would always start by burying their face in it. No sign of Winston. If he was the coach, he had to be in his eighties now. She couldn’t picture him. She looked at herself again. The reflection didn’t show age, which was nice. The suit was too tight for this little town. She would stop worrying about how she looked. It didn’t matter here. She stood there for a long time. It was hot in the sun and she was growing moist under her blouse. A truck came down the street and slowed to take a look at her. She didn’t know the driver. She lit a cigarette. Let him gawk, she thought, some excitement in corn country. Well, she couldn’t just stand here and melt in the sun. She tossed the cigarette, she was trying to quit anyway, and carried her bag into the newspaper office.
It was dark inside. There was a long counter across the front. And desks. The open door in the back led to the press machinery sitting silently. Everything was wooden and old, unchanged from sixty years ago when it was new. She fished in her purse for the slip with her mother’s address on it.
A man came out of the back. He was tall with wire rim glasses and a boy’s haircut of gray hair. Stooped shoulders and a little pot belly made him a little town newspaper guy. You’d know him anywhere.
“Hey, good-looking.”
He smiled, taken off guard.
“I was sup
posed to be picked up, but he hasn’t shown up. Can you tell me how to get to this address?”
“It’s not too far, down Main for three blocks and then a left. Maybe just a couple blocks after that.”
“You mind if I leave my bag with you and come back? It’s too heavy to lug that far.”
“Not at all.” He opened the little gate and brought it behind the counter. “Who was meeting you? I could give them a call.”
“All I have is my mother’s number, and she just passed on.”
“You’re Deidre.”
“Yes.”
“I was a couple of years ahead of you in high school. Everyone thought you were probably dead.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone here even noticed that I left.”
“Are you kidding?” he asked.
She had to get out of here. She patted his cheek.
“You’re sweet. I’ll come back in a bit to get it. Thanks.”
She lit up another cigarette outside. Was this the way it was going to be? With every man in town knowing her by name? She thought she could just sneak in here and get the money from her mother’s estate and leave without getting caught up in anything. She didn’t want to be some kind of weird celebrity. With people talking. Men had been looking all of her life, but she was used to being an object with a make-believe name. Tongues didn’t wag in New Orleans.
A block further and her feet began to ache and a tiny drip of sweat ran down her neck. She stopped in the shade of a large maple. A cat inching forward on its belly caught her eye. There was a baby bird flapping about in the grass between them. She walked over, shooing the cat away, and took a look. It was a fat little house wren with its mouth open. Above her within reach was a nest with four more gulping air as well. She needed something to scoop it up and put it back without touching it. The mother wouldn’t feed it if it didn’t smell right, or at least that’s what she understood. She just couldn’t leave it for the cat’s lunch. A car stopped behind her as she looked around for something she could use.
A little old man got out. This had to be Winston.
“Sorry, I’m late. I lost track of the time. Boy, have you turned into a looker.”
He shook her hand and his square face and bald head flushed red.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“No worries, hon. I like being complimented. You have a piece of cardboard?”
She pointed out the baby bird. He went to his car and came back with a brown paper bag. Folding it into a scoop, she managed to pick up the bird, but her jacket wasn’t going to let her stretch her arms up high enough. She put it down and took off the jacket to hand it to Winston.
“That’s all I’m taking off, hon,” she replied to his look.
The bird got home this time. She slipped the jacket back on as they walked to the car. He held the door for her and then climbed behind the wheel, more flushed than before. She touched his arm.
“Take a deep breath, hon.”
He obliged her. She told him about her suitcase and he drove back to the newspaper office to retrieve it. Not letting her budge, he ran in and loaded it into the trunk and climbed back in. Then they drove to her mother’s apartment building. Sighing, she waited for him to run around and open her door for her as she knew he would.
There were about ten apartments to the building. It was all decked out with phony shutters and white columns. It didn’t look very run down at all. Not what she expected. There was a brown ‘Manager’ sign on the door. The whiff of Chanel #5 inside made her gag.
“Leave the door open, honey. It’s stuffy in here.”
He dropped the suitcase by the door to the bedroom and handed her the keys.
“Are you alright?” she asked. Why was he still flustered?
“She was an old and dear friend.”
“I never heard anyone say anything like that about her.”
“You’ve been gone a long, long time, Deidra.”
She started to correct him about the name she was used to, but held her tongue. She didn’t want to explain anything right now.
“The lawyer couldn’t meet today. He said tomorrow afternoon would fine. How long before you have to go back to New Orleans?”
“I’m not. I closed up shop.”
“This town will seem real boring after where you’ve been.”
“Oh, I remember a few wild things about Paris,” she smiled.
He looked like a deer about to be run over.
“I got to go. About eight tomorrow morning? I’ll pick you up.”
“Sure, thanks.”
He rushed off. He didn’t wave from the car, but he quickly glanced back at her in the doorway, before driving off.
She was glad she didn’t tell him her nickname. It would be too hard to explain. Deidra, Deidra, she repeated to herself as if that was going to help. She doubted she would respond in the right way when people here called her by name. And it seemed that a lot of them remembered her. She kicked off her shoes. It was good to be out of them, but the carpet didn’t look very clean. It all looked like a grandma apartment: bric-a-brac about, worn furniture with permanently indented seat cushions and that grandma smell. She went around and opened all the windows that would open. At least she died clean. No big blood stains anywhere. The bed was made. Her mother never made her bed.
There were no pictures anywhere. The walls were bare. Had there been any when she was little? The only thing she recalled was a Beatles poster she had on the back of her bedroom door. Well, that was one thing they had in common, sort of. Her mother didn’t give a damn. Daydee didn’t want her johns to know personal details of what she thought of as her life. There were some framed photos in her Magazine Street apartment, but they were pictures of her or exotic views from some of the trips. And that Gauguin print of him leering at the two native girls. She had left that one behind.
There was some food in the fridge. And whiskey and rum. She started rifling all the drawers and cabinets, looking for any accounting papers and legal documents, and carried everything to the kitchen table. At the bottom of a box, she found a photo album. She stopped to make herself a sandwich and rum and diet coke and sat down to look at it. How long had it been since she had tasted bologna and ketchup on white bread? There she was. As well as her crazy father who had disappeared. Her bike and birthday cake. The cast on her arm at eleven. She wondered if her father ever turned up again. Maybe Winston would know. He had decided to mow the front lawn with no clothes on. Daydee was eight. She tried pleading with him to come inside, she remembered the tears. The neighbors watched, but no one helped. A cop came and handcuffed him and took him away. And that was it. He never came back. Her mother refused to talk about him.
She had put the album aside and was looking through the papers when there was a knock at the door. It was Hanna and her husband.
“Well, hello again.” Daydee wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Come on in.”
They were acting shy.
“Have a seat. Would you like a cool drink? I have some diet soda. Or something stronger?”
They could probably smell the rum. They didn’t sit.
“We came with a purpose, Deidre,” Hanna said. “I don’t know how much you know about your mother’s life.”
Daydee laughed. “I can imagine.”
“You know she married my father a few years ago?”
“No.”
“He died about three years ago. He lived here with your mother. When he moved in he brought some things with him that he and my mother had, and I’m interested in maybe getting them from you if you are willing to part with them.”
“Ok,” Daydee said. She looked around. It all looked like junk. She probably would have given it all to the Goodwill.
“If this isn’t a good time, we can come back.”
Daydee shook her head, trying not to smile.
“What are you looking for?”
“These lamps were my mother’s and the little eleph
ants. And there was a big serving platter that was hand carved.”
“Why don’t you go through the apartment and gather up what you want.”
“You’re being too generous,” Hanna said.
“Not at all. I would have probably gotten rid of everything. I didn’t love my mother. Go for it.”
Hanna went into the bedroom with husband in tow. Daydee refilled her drink while they gathered things in the living room. There would be no lamps left and no mirror in the bedroom.
“There’s an old mantle clock that belonged to my grandfather, but I didn’t see it anywhere. I’d be interested in that too if it turns up.”
“Sure.”
“So, what do you think?” Sean asked her.
“About what?”
“How about a hundred?”
She hadn’t even thought of charging them, but that was about the amount that she had to her name. The extra money would be a big help.
“Sold.”
“I can write you a check,” Hanna offered.
“Cash would be better.”
They checked wallets and came up with sixty.
“I can come back with the rest tomorrow,” Sean said.
“Winston is bringing me around to see everything, so I’ll see you in the morning I think.”
“Shall we leave it here, until it’s paid in full?” Hanna asked.
“Don’t be silly.”
They were quick to start walking it all out to their pickup. Daydee offered towels to wrap the breakables, but Hanna said they were fine. Sean thanked her with another handshake on his last trip out. They waved as they drove off.
“You can’t have too many friends,” Daydee said out loud at the screen. She had none at all, except John, right now.
She returned to the pile of paper on the table, but her heart wasn’t in it. Another drink would do her in. She made it and left it on the coffee table. Going to the bedroom, she rifled the closet for more bed linen and carried it out to make up the couch. She undressed, leaving a pile on the chair. It was cool, but she couldn’t tolerate her mother’s smell. Arsenio Hall was on. Swinging his fist. She awoke much later, in the middle of the night, with an old grainy black and white movie. She thought she heard something. Getting up with the blanket around her, she peeked at the kitchen. Nothing. She went on to the bedroom. Leaving the windows open was probably stupid.