Under the cold Stones

by McNay, Dan

  She sat down on a log. This was pointless. It was turning into the biggest frigging mess. Now the cemetery was going to be investigated. And the sheriff would book her for whoring even though it was a little make believe tea party. And she still hadn’t gone to the doctor. It might not even be a baby. She knew what a molar pregnancy was. She knew the worst. She began to cry. She thought she could do this. She thought she could handle anything. So why was she sitting here, lost? She drew her knees in and rocked herself. She was trembling.

  “Deedee making babies,” he said from behind her. “Hard, hard.”

  She jumped and then laughed without looking back at him.

  “You’re damn right!”

  He patted her head. She was afraid to turn, afraid she might spook him.

  “Did you see the sheriff?” she asked.

  “Sheriff invibable. He saw ghosts and not ghosts. Lot of nots. Not and nots. He don’t like.”

  “So you stay away?”

  “I stay home. Warm.”

  “Sure,” she said smiling. She dried her eyes with her knuckles. “It’s too bad you are crazy.”

  “Deedee stay home.”

  “Sure.”

  He withdrew his hand. She already missed it. She stood and turned. He wasn’t running off. She offered her arms. He stepped up to hug ever so gently as if she was made of brittle twigs which might snap if squeezed. Then he backed away. She picked up the bag and handed it him.

  “Thank you,” she said. God!

  He nodded his head as he walked away, and started stuffing French fries in his mouth like a hungry little kid.

  * * *

  The sheriff’s four people were out there all day. They were already there when she came. They removed five bodies, or at least there were five body bags with something in them. Daydee stayed in the office and didn’t go over to watch. She could see some of it from the window. The Chief of the Paris Police showed up in his police car, but didn’t come over to see her. The chief was a small guy, with muscles and a goatee. When he looked over at the office window, she pretended to be busy. She didn’t want to look like she was interested in the proceedings. She was innocent. This was a good excuse to start going through her mother’s papers. The desk just had advertisements and catalogs. She could buy caskets it seemed, but immediately realized the funeral homes were doing that. The undertakers weren’t going to allow their customers to supply their own caskets. She tackled the customer files next. It was all a mess. There were no standard forms completed. Some of the files had contracts. Other had café napkins with unreadable notes on them. Were these supposed to be receipts? After a few hours, she was exhausted. She had thought that the cops might want to talk to her some more, but it was clear she wasn’t needed. She locked up and drove by to tell them that she was leaving for the day. She got a nod.

  She had hesitated until now. Driving to Mat’s office, she parked and got out. The office was dark. The ‘Closed’ sign was up. There was a sheet of paper taped to the window that said to contact Samuel Craig, CPA, if there was an urgent matter. She took out her checkbook and wrote the name and number down. She might need it. Craig might be willing to tell her what happened.

  Sarah’s office was open. Daydee parked around the corner, in case anybody spotted the pickup. She already knew the worst. She just needed the details. What she would have to deal with. Sarah’s face said it all.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” Daydee said. “I guess I’ve ruined lives, or something. The sheriff came out to see me at the cemetery about something else and hinted around some gossip.”

  “I don’t like repeating stories that I don’t know are true or not.”

  “You tell me and I’ll tell you if it’s true.”

  “Your accountant was driving around with you dressed up like a drag queen?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Well, there you go. His wife is crazed. He has left town.”

  “Shit.”

  “Why would you do that?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s a long story. Mat spotted me in New Orleans when he attended a conference there. We had dated as teenagers.”

  “Have a seat,” Sarah said.

  “You not concerned about somebody seeing me in here?”

  “Naw.” She drew a couple of shot glasses out of her desk drawer along with a bottle of whisky. Daydee nodded to the offer.

  “I guess I’ve blown it for trying to fit here,” Daydee told her.

  “A few of those ladies at the shower won’t be coming to see the baby. And Jack’s wife isn’t going to give you the time of day, but that’s because you fired Jack.” Sarah took a second shot. “This may be none of my business, but I get the idea that this wasn’t for love.”

  “Strictly business,” Daydee told her. “But I really liked the guy.”

  “I’m a friend. You out all your friends?”

  “God, no. He wanted to do it. I was just being helpful.”

  “I could use some help,” Sarah said.

  Daydee looked at her.

  “I’ve never done it,” she told her.

  “Well, think it over,” Sarah said. “I’m not really interested in a business relationship. We already have that going.”

  “You do push a couple of buttons.”

  “That’s probably the best lie I’ve heard in a long time,” Sarah said. “My friends who don’t belong to Jack’s church aren’t going to give a fuck what you have done with whom. This is a little tiny town. Something is always happening. God only knows what goes on with these old bachelor farmers late at night.”

  “I should probably go,” Daydee said, getting up.

  She wanted to hug her, but the motion wasn’t quite fulfilled. It was a polite pretend hug. They were both embarrassed. And now she was blushing. These hormones!

  “Thanks,” Daydee told her and escaped.

  * * *

  Winston was just leaving the diner when Daydee drove by. She wasn’t looking for him, but there he was. Turning into the alley, she circled back to meet him in the parking lot behind the restaurant. A toothpick was in his mouth. No one else in the lot. She cut him off and jumped out of the truck.

  “You goddamn son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed and shoved him.

  He fell on the pavement. He was shielding his head with his arms.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded.

  “He didn’t do a damn thing to you!”

  “It wasn’t about him. I think I’m bleeding.”

  “You were my friend!”

  She was sorry now. His elbow was bleeding. He was just a little old man sitting on the pavement. Just another john that had screwed her. He had tears in his eyes.

  “Deidra, forgive me.”

  She recoiled.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I need help to get up.”

  “You got down there on your own just fine, you motherfucker.” She got back into her pickup. “You say a word to anyone and I’ll put you in the hospital!”

  “Deidra, I’ll tell you the truth.”

  She waited.

  “The truth about what?”

  “Help me up.”

  “Screw you.”

  She wanted to kick herself as she drove away. You could have found out. You could have killed him if you stayed. She wanted to scream.

  Chapter eight

  She sat down at the kitchen table that evening to write back to John:

  John, Honey,

  Being preggo is a whole other thing. You have no idea of the hormones that are dripping on my brain. Probably good that you are not around. I just knocked down an old man today and made his elbow bleed. It’s a long story and he deserved it, but I feel bad just the same. I’ve always been capable of hurting people. It was my lovely upbringing. I want you to know who I am, what I can do if I have to. If you are coming up after you get out, I want you to know what you are getting into. My first pimp – ‘Ringer’:

  He was ok at first. That was what th
ey did, right? Sweet talk, gentle stuff and sweets and flowers and hugs in public. I was 16. Right off the bus. I think I knew it was a game. It was too hard out there on the street by yourself. You got beat up. I went along, but the whole thing was to get you back out there, but under his control. When I got scared at some of the requests, his thumb came down. And criticism. All of us knew criticism, we grew up with it. That was why we were there. It was something you knew and understood. You would never be good enough. I wasn’t good enough at the sex. I needed to make more money, I was eating too much. I didn’t know how to dress. This was some kind of attention, better than no attention. I was with him almost two years with a couple of other girls in his stable.

  As time went on, his drug habit grew. He couldn’t say Deidre after seven o’clock at night, so I became Daydee. One of the other girls got restless. He beat the shit out of her. He’d time it so I and the third girl would never see it, but we knew it was going on. She never said a word, but she would wince when he would touch her. I was waiting to see what would happen. Nothing. She started shooting and did what he said.

  So when it came time for me to go, I knew what I had to do to get out. I knew Ringer was disappearing when he was supposed to be out taking care of us. He had started going back to the apartment for a beer and a toke once we were all off with a john. So I decided to meet him at home. All I had to do was grab some wanna-be john by the arm and walk him around the corner and lose him by telling him I had lice. So I beat Ringer back and was standing behind the door with a baseball bat. I butchered him. I left him on the floor with a broken arm and probably a broken ankle. His nose was bloodied and he was black and blue. I told him if he came near me again, I would kill him. And I left. He had never even bruised me, but I knew he would if things dragged out.

  I worked the other end of the quarter. I didn’t see him for almost another year. Then one night there he was down the street. He saw me and turned and disappeared. I was fucking lucky. Another guy would have probably killed me.

  I’m my mother’s daughter after all, I guess. Write me back. Tell me horrible stories. But if you don’t, I’ll understand.

  Daydee

  The bodies made the newspaper. It turned out it was the State Police that had been there for the investigation. They had dug a half acre around the trench. There were five bodies in all. All male, all in their thirties. There was no identification found with them. The forensic people decided the men had been buried there about fifteen years ago. One of them had gold fillings, but no dental records could be turned up. A reporter from the paper came out to interview her at the cemetery office. He was young and serious at first, but had an odd kind of mock seriousness as the interview went on. She just ignored it. Daydee swore that she had done a record check of the last ten years and there were absolutely no irregularities. That sounded official, didn’t it? She wanted to reassure her customers that there was nothing questionable about the cemetery. The grounds were only two thirds sold, with about one hundred available plots left. There would be no need to relocate anyone’s remains. Daydee speculated that the bodies found might be illegal farmworkers. No one cared about them. She had spotted a few around out on the farms. When the interview was printed, she was happy with it. She must have won him over because she sounded reasonable and calm and professional.

  The sheriff came back for an interview as well. He asked twenty questions about the cemetery, asked to see her records going back fifteen years. She had found a logbook that was started about twelve years ago, but she knew from cross-referencing it with the files, it was all incorrect. It really looked like it was a fake record that her mother had created to cook her financial records. She handed it over to him as if was the Holy Bible and entreated him to guard it well. She knew she would get it back without a word. No one in their right mind would want to examine cemetery records.

  He asked her to go to church with him. She accepted. It would be good public relations to be seen hanging out with him. He lit up like a Christmas tree. He would pick her up.

  Was there any news about Mat? The sheriff hadn’t heard anything. The office was still closed. No one knew anything. He asked her what she thought of the whole affair. It was clear that he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to blow his date over some weird gossip he didn’t want to believe anyway. Daydee told him that what she had heard was incredibly absurd and didn’t know how it had gotten started. Whoever made it up was sick. He went away a happy man.

  After he left, she began to feel really lonesome. She had no friends except maybe Sarah and that was a case of the hots anyway. God. She had no expectations coming here, other than getting some money. Life wasn’t going to be any different. But suddenly it was. So she shouldn’t have played with Mat. It had seemed so harmless. If they were all like him, it would have been easy street. It was the rest of them that she was hoping to get free of. The ones that would hold you down and jam you like a pork loin. Or the slobbering little boys that needed you to do it all for them and then they would lie there latched on your nipple like they were starving. Or the studs that would just go on and on like it was a measure of their manhood and their stupid belief that all women wanted marathons. And you would be sore for days. The old men that took forever to get off. And the Romeos that thought they should romance you, bring you flowers and a gentle touch and music and candles and wanted you to come.

  Hookers don’t come. She had wanted that sign up in every hotel room. She wanted it framed and hanging above the bed. “Hookers don’t come, Assholes!” But they were all men, almost all with no sense of a reality check in their lives, that’s why they were paying money. They were stupid. Quick was always the best. You looked for their buttons. Quick was always best. Sometimes it was only one little word.

  The reality was she was getting too old. They didn’t want her anymore. Except here.

  * * *

  A letter came back almost immediately. He must have read hers and sat down and wrote back a minute after reading it:

  Daydee,

  You are the toughest and the sweetest woman I know. We lived in the biggest easy of them all, New Orleans. More damaged goods per square inch than anywhere else in the world. We all washed up down there as pieces carried by that river from every flooded house and garbage dump from the Midwest to the gulf. I saw a news story once about a flooded cemetery where the caskets were floating down river for miles.

  I killed my brother. We had this tree in the back yard that had this bark that furled and curled off the trunk in these thin paper-like pieces that I swear looked like parchment. I wanted to make a treasure map out of a piece. The best ones were way up in the tree. He was a better climber than me, so I talked him into climbing up and getting a piece. I was twelve, he was nine. He would do anything I asked him to. He fell and I wasn’t quick enough to get under him. He died instantly. His body was all twisted and broken. And I was afraid he was still alive and in horrible pain. But he wasn’t. I ran to get my mother. But there was nothing anyone could do.

  If I could take it all back, I would. If I could go back and think and tell him don’t do it, it isn’t safe, I would. If there was a God in the heaven, I’d pray to make it right. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I can’t even forgive myself for being young and stupid. There’s other stuff too. Don’t worry. I think I love you. I’ve only said that to one other person in my life. I won’t be surprised or horrified. Tell me everything you want to tell me.

  I ain’t going anywhere.

  John

  Daydee decided to bite the bullet and drive out to Hanna and Sean’s house the next day. She had brought the clock that had belonged to Hanna’s family home from the cemetery office to make it a legit visit. She was nervous about calling ahead, afraid they would make some excuse. So she looked up their address in the phone book and looked at the map of Edgar County she had bought at the drugstore until she finally found them out off of Lower Terre Haute Road. She didn’t need anyone’s help.

  The farm lo
oked small, but was planted with the same crops that he had planted on her Uncle’s farm, soy and corn. Sean’s truck was out front. Daydee carried the clock up to the front screen. Hanna must have been sitting right inside.

  “Hello,” came her voice from behind the dark screen.

  “Hi,” Daydee said. “I brought the clock. It was out at the cemetery office.”

  “I see.” The screen opened. “Why don’t you come in?”

  She stepped in and handed the clock to Hanna.

  “I didn’t touch it. I hope it’s in working order.”

  “You take your chances. How much do we owe you?”

  “Nothing. I wanted to thank you for the baby shower. It was a blast.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “I hope…”

  “Deidre,” Hanna cut her off. “I don’t listen to gossip. You’ve been all right by me. I don’t care about anyone else’s husband. There been stuff going on around here for years. But I’m fond of mine.”

  “Sean doesn’t like me.”

  “I know, but you could probably change a man’s mind if you wanted.”

  Daydee could hear his feet in the kitchen.

  “I don’t much like him either,” she whispered.

  Hanna smiled.

  “I came to ask him something too.”

  “Sean!” Hanna called.

  He came out, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

  What’s up?”

  “The sheriff said you know how to run a backhoe.”

  “Yes. I’ve been reading about your bodies.”

  “How much would you charge me for lessons?”

  “Twenty an hour.”

  “You are hired. Can you come the cemetery at three tomorrow? Hanna can come too, if she wants.” He nodded. “Would you be available for grave openings too?”

  “Sure. Same price. But I think a woman might have problems with using it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks. See you tomorrow?”

  He nodded and she let herself out.

  * * *

  What would you see if you watched her lesson with Sean? Across the way, down the hill, sitting on a blanket you might watch the two of them in the cab. He, the one with the white beard, was angry. She would move a lever and the arm out front would move slightly. He would huff and puff next to her. Show her again. She was sweating, tense, and anxious. She was woman, mother. She was little girl. He was little gnome of a man, a white-haired midget. He was bad, bad papa. No love there, only tense anger, tense acceptance. Even mad men understood hate and love, kindness and cruelty. Like a dog. Dogs understand the same things. And they can’t even talk. Better. No confusion, no levels, no fog to get through. Put your head up and hope somebody pat you, stroke you. He needed to pet her. He was ready to run up the hill, pull the little creature by the beard out and beat him until he was dead. But she had asked him to stay away. She was kin, daughter. You remembered. We all remember, even in the dreams we live in. She would be ten, trying to pull him in from the front yard. Don’t know why, but it was important to her. Crying. He would do it yet. Make it right, once, like he was supposed to. She was smart, so smart. He wandered, couldn’t seem to find his way out. They had come all of them and dug and dug and carried away things and he hid because she had asked. He didn’t know. The whole thing and he didn’t know. They were so far away. He dreamed and walked in these dreams like a lost soul and he didn’t know how to reach back and be with them like he was once so long ago. What were they? Why didn’t they see what he saw, or talk to those he talked to? He couldn’t understand any of it, but he saw a little. Her. How long had he waited to find her again? It was years and years and there was no hope. No hope, no hope and still he hoped. There had to be. Please. And there she was. One more minute and he would kill the little white beard. She came out and smoked. She saw him. She waved. Ok.