by McNay, Dan
The silliness got worse. They then tried holding a cucumber between their knees and passing it to the next person without dropping it. The women were turning red and laughing hysterically. The only one capable of doing it successfully was Diane, the minister’s wife. The women collapsed in their chairs, exhausted and flushed. Daydee hadn’t ever rubbed up against so many women in her whole life. She was ready to call it a day now. Over cakes and more drinks, they began to get sentimental and each had their own stories to tell about childbirth and raising children and the early times before the children entered school. She was feeling her age. They had all had their children in the twenties and thirties. By the time she could trade stories like these she would be fifty. They were all younger than she was right now. She wondered if she’d be able to play the cucumber game at fifty. Luckily, the game was easily fumbled. You couldn’t fumble the real thing. It turned out this was as risqué as they got.
Then came the opening of the presents. There was an abundance of things. Clothes and a diaper bag and a bathing tub and bottles and diapers and more clothes. Diane made a list of who gave what. Daydee whispered to her to write ‘red hair’ next to Nancy’s gift. She knew she would never remember all of their names. She was overwhelmed by their generosity. She tried to ooh and ah like she thought was expected of her, but started choking up. She tried saying thank you to one women she didn’t know at all, but nothing would come out of her mouth. Her hand on her heart. Tears began. This incited hugs from all of them. She wasn’t sure she would come out of this. Sarah’s eyes were the only reality check in the whole room. There had been a time in her life – most of it actually – when she would have had to get up and leave and not come back. She had hated and mistrusted women that much. How dare anybody give her anything? Only the johns were allowed because that was a transaction, her business. A friend was someone who might give you an aspirin from her purse after a long night. Or distract a barfly for a minute so you could escape. That was it. You didn’t ask for anything. They didn’t either. There was no one.
Except for an old drunk printer with ink-stained fingers who made you laugh harder than you could ever remember laughing and paid you even though he hardly ever got it up.
They wanted to know if it was going to be a boy or a girl. And she was embarrassed. She hadn’t even been to the doctor yet. She lied and said she didn’t want to know.
Finally, it began to end. Several of the women had to leave. The lady with the baby had just disappeared at some point. A handful stayed to help clean up. One of the ladies who had introduced herself at the grocery was helping her do the dishes. What was her name?
“I heard all about your husband and I’m so sorry. I hope it works out. My little brother had to spend time in Stateville and it was horrible, but they let him out early. When is your husband eligible for parole?”
Daydee looked at Diane who was taking down her decorations. She hadn’t wasted any time at all.
“In about a year I think.”
So, they all probably had the low down. Well, that had been the plan.
Sarah smiled at her.
* * *
A letter came. She couldn’t quite remember mailing the one she wrote, but she must have. Her memory seemed to be going. Or she was just perpetually distracted. She brought the mail back to the bedroom where she had spent the morning organizing her shower gifts on her mother’s striped mattress. It looked like she had everything she could ever need. But she wanted to start a list. The lady with the new baby could tell her if she had a complete list, or at least what she was missing. She was trying to remember her name from the gift list, but wasn’t having any luck. She would have to ask Sarah or Diane.
She left the project and came out to the sofa to read John’s letter:
Daydee,
Wow. That’s quite some news to get here. I’m ‘grandpa’ to a lot of these punks. Well, if you want to have it and keep it, great! I’d love to come and see it when I get out. If it’s as gorgeous or as handsome as you, it’ll be something to see. I’ll help with money. It shouldn’t be too hard to get another job on the outside.
Keep me posted. Sorry I’m going to miss seeing you pregnant. I always thought that made women as sexy as they ever would be, the thought of you that way is an instant turn on. I hope you don’t mind a freebie in my dreams here.
Well, I’ve gone cold turkey. The shit you can buy here or earn by doing crap, will make you blind, rob you of all sense and probably seriously injure you if you use. So I sweated and sweated and stank for a month and I no longer shake now.
They have a 12-step program here so I joined for help. It’s a whole lot of crock mostly, but they are other guys like me. I suppose I got to come and get down in front of you on one knee and apologize for all my abuses at one point. Make amends and mend fences. I never harmed you at all, did I?
That’s 12 step for you, a bunch of drunks that are still so fucking self-centered, that they think they were actually important to somebody and were capable of hurting people. I was never very good at being important to people.
I got a job as a kind of librarian here. It beats being a cook or making license plates or doing laundry. It’s fun. I had forgotten that I used to like to read books. Can you imagine me with a book in my hand? I pass them out and collect them and get guys things they want. I’m reading Travis Magee right now, a detective that lives on a houseboat in Florida. It seems like paradise compared to this.
Got a bunkmate who is a serious lifer. We don’t talk much, but he likes a good silly joke now and then, so we’re friends.
Write more, tell me about what is going on. You making friends there? You making a living? God, I wish I could help.
John
She would have to write back. John sober could be a good thing. Or a bad one if he has a temper now.
Chapter seven
She brought her father’s lunch out to the cemetery and found Jack’s truck parked by the shed. He was hammering on something behind the building. Was there trouble with the mower? He was sitting beside the cemetery’s back hoe, hammering away at the bolts that looked like they held the shovel bucket on the end of the arm. This wasn’t anything they had discussed. And she knew it wasn’t right.
“Hey!” she yelled.
He jumped and then stood to face her. Caught in the act. Whatever the act was.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Well, I thought I could borrow this bucket for my backhoe. It’s the right size for grave opening.”
“You weren’t going to ask me?”
“It’s not like you know how to operate it,” Jack said.
“It’s my fucking back hoe!” she yelled. “How can it be used if it has no shovel?”
“It doesn’t matter. The bolts are rusted permanent.”
“It looks like you were trying to break it.”
“Calm down. I wasn’t trying to break it. I should have asked you.” He frowned. “I was just trying to make my job a little easier.”
“I heard your discussion behind the diner with Winston and Edward the other day. None of you saw me.”
“What did you think you heard?”
“You know what bullshit that question is?” Daydee wanted to grab the hammer away from him and beat him with it.
“I guess I’m out of line.” He was looking away now. Down the hill. “You should probably find somebody else to take care of the grounds. I can stay until you find a replacement.”
“You should clear out.” Daydee put her hand out for the hammer. He gave it to her. “If I ask Diane about the conversation, is she going to tell me?”
“Leave her out of it. She doesn’t know anything about it. What you heard didn’t happen.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Deidre.”
“For what?”
He started for his truck. Opening the driver’s door, he looked back at her.
“You…”
“You what?” she y
elled.
He climbed in and drove away like he was some kind of zombie. Shit! This was how ministers acted? What was she going to do now? She could cut the grass herself if she had to. How hard would it be to ride a mower around? The backhoe was the problem. She would have to find another backhoe expert, someone who could teach her how to use it.
Her father’s lunch was still in her truck! She walked it out to his spot, but he wasn’t around. She left it on his shopping cart. Her share, the three orders of fries that she had ordered for herself, smelled wonderful and she managed to eat them all before she had got to the office. This was bad. A sack full of salty fries – not even with any ketchup.
There had to be a manual for the backhoe someplace. She found it in a bottom drawer and she sat at the desk and went over it. It told you what all the parts were and what the levers did, but nothing about the sequence to run through so you didn’t destroy something. She took the book and went out to the hoe. The key was in the ignition. It was coming with her when she was done checking it out. She didn’t have friends among the men here. Her tagger might just decide to drive it away.
The women she knew from the baby shower didn’t seem to have a clue about Winston and his goddamn aging football team. They wouldn’t have thrown her the shower, if they were trying to get rid of her. God, was it all of the rest of the team of guys that played for him? Someone probably had a yearbook from the school for that year, but she didn’t know for sure what year they had won state. She could see who the rest of them were if she could find the right one. That was scary, there were at least twenty guys on that team. Then she realized that her ladies would know which guys were on that team and still around. There was nothing like a guy to brag and tell the story twenty years afterward. Was it the year she ran away?
The book said to let the machine warm up. She turned it on and gave it gas. It purred. Now would be a good time for a cigarette, but she was quitting for the baby’s sake. Or at least was trying to. She lit one. It was the first of the day. It was easier not to smoke in the mornings because she was so sick. She rubbed it out on the side of her tennis shoe and stuck the butt in her shirt pocket. That was another reason to quit. It was getting hard to bend over like that. She’s couldn’t just flick it out on the grounds. She was afraid to start playing with the levers here, she would probably wreck the lawn, so she drove it down the lane to the back of the property. She rolled off into a patch of undeveloped ground. A hole back there wouldn’t hurt anything.
She played with the two big levers and figured out how to lift the bucket and stretch it out in front. When she started it down the entire cab leaned forward dangerously. She stopped. The sweat was dripping from her forehead. Jesus Christ! Now what! She studied the book, hoping the whole thing didn’t pitch forward before she figured it out. The stabilizers! She worked the little levers and the stabilizer legs went down and straightened the cab up again. Trying again with the bucket, she made a motion like she was going to scrape a hole out of the ground, but she missed the ground, so it was a whole lot of motion for nothing. She spent another hour playing with it and trying to make it work. She’d have to come out every day to practice. There would be another grave opening eventually.
By the time she got it to work correctly and she was scooping dirt out and laying it beside the trench, she was exhausted and wet with sweat. She took a break and climbed down to stretch her legs. Her back and arms were aching. This was hard work. She reached for another cigarette, but talked herself out of it and put it back in her pocket. There was something in the dirt she had dug up. She held her arm up against the sun to see better. It was a human skeleton. The skull and ribs and backbone were all uncovered. Another scoop and she might have broken it apart. A few yards away in the trench was another skull. She lit her cigarette now. What was her mother doing? Emptying out the plots and selling them a second time? Murdering people? Was this what Winston and his boys were afraid that she’d find? She walked back to the office and called the sheriff.
* * *
He showed up alone. He seemed so nonchalant that she wondered if he considered this a social call. His uniform was well worn today, wrinkled and stained with dots of coffee. There was no trace of a woman about him. His fringe of hair did look freshly clipped. But the barber hadn’t noticed the sheriff’s nose hair. Maybe it wasn’t spoken of in polite barber company. If they were old, it was a sure sign there was no wife around.
“You are looking rather becoming today, ma’am.”
She almost laughed.
“Thank you, I guess.”
“You have that glow. It’s a lovely thing.”
“You have a marvelous imagination.”
“What were you doing?”
“I’ll show you. I was practicing operating my backhoe.”
They walked down to where she had left it parked.
“Where’s Jack?”
“He no longer works for me.”
“What happened?”
“Maybe you can ask him. It looked like he was trying to rip me off.”
“That’s hard to believe, ma’am. I thought you were going to his church. His wife gave you a baby shower or something, didn’t she?”
“You know there are folks around here that want me gone.”
“I don’t. Any more trouble with your tagger?”
She shook her head. God, did she not want his favors.
“You shouldn’t be doing this in your condition.”
“Is there somebody that can teach me how to use the backhoe correctly?”
“Well, Jack. And that sharecropper of yours. Hell, I can see him.”
“Sean?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He and Jack are who people call.”
He stepped into the open trench for a closer look at the skeleton. It looked like it was as hard for him to bend over with that belly. She knew what that was like now.
“You need a heavy equipment license to drive the backhoe out on a public street. Just so you know. Most people load it on a flatbed to transport it.” He scratched his bald head. “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you not to touch it. We need to take a good look at all of this. I’ll have the forensic guy out tomorrow. We need to rope off the whole area and probably do some digging ourselves. You don’t have a funeral coming up, do you?”
“No.”
“You know anything to do with your mother’s businesses that you are not telling me about?”
“No. We hadn’t talked in twenty years. She only knew where I was because I sent her a Christmas card for the first time last year. She wrote me a letter saying hi. That was it.”
“You involved in anything here you want to tell me about?”
“What?”
“You seem all right to me. Maybe I’m prejudiced. But we will need to come make a statement and we might want to ask some questions. You can bring a lawyer with you if you want.”
“Ok.”
“Nothing you want to say about anything?”
She shook her head. What was this?
“Nothing about that accountant of yours?”
“Mat?”
“He’s left town. With a bunch of gossip behind him.”
“What kind of gossip?”
“I’ll leave that to you women. It doesn’t appear that any laws were broken.”
“He was married. What did his wife have to say?”
“I’ve not talked to her yet. If I do, it becomes an official inquiry. I just thought I’d give you first chance, if you wanted to tell me anything.”
“I don’t know anything.”
He nodded at her.
“I trust you not to touch any of this?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. She thought of her father out in the thicket. What if they found him tomorrow? “I’m going to walk around a little more for exercise. You can call me at home, if you need me.”
He nodded and went back up to his patrol car. In the city, that police tape would be out immediately. Maybe he di
dn’t want to draw attention to the site. When the sheriff drove out the front gate, Daydee went back down to look for her father. She needed to figure out some way to keep him out of sight. And Mat! She hoped it wasn’t about what she knew it was about.
There was still no trace of her father. The lunch she had left earlier was still untouched. She pushed the cart down into the trees and pulled some fallen branches over in front of it. It was getting harder and harder to do anything now. She was out of breath and flushed. God, did she need a shower. She hadn’t any idea it would be like this. Where is the comfort in this? Why would a woman want this? She brought his lunch with her as she walked further to find him.
Her mother never talked about having her.
There are those women who just pop them out one after another. Her neighbor across the hall on Louisiana Avenue. Pretty girl. Three boys in Mississippi with their father. As soon as her divorce was final, she immediately got married again and had another one. All boys. How she loved those boys. And she seemed overjoyed with the last pregnancy.
We’ll get through this, she told her belly.
What was she going to do with him if she did find him? She doubted she could make him understand the danger about the cops appearing tomorrow. It occurred to her to make a trail of fries back to her truck. She knew she might get him there, but she wasn’t going to be able to get him to climb in. If they found him, they would hassle him and arrest him. Then he would be out in the alley the next morning with nothing. They all had their fucking routines. She could remember coming out in the morning, dirty and smelly and without bus fare home. Only a notice to appear. What kind of person would pick that for a livelihood? If you were young and cute, you could panhandle bus fare, but what if you are seventy and crazy? He probably wouldn’t even know where he wanted to go. She had seen a couple of little buses around town, but those were probably church buses.