by Lawton Paul
“Well, you know,” Angela says, slow and quiet like she’s explaining something. Here comes the good part, don’t miss it: “I don’t smell anything.”
“She didn’t have anything on the stove,” says Bo. Then she stops. “Oh.” She smooths out the table cloth, her wrinkled hands needing something to do. “Let’s call Sheriff Numbnuts.”
“I think we owe it to Mrs. Kaufman to check things out.”
“That old bitch never spoke to either of us since—.”
“I know. But Walt had a connection with her and she’s probably off at some relative’s house and forgot to turn the lights off.”
“Okay,” says Bo. “You go in if you want. And if it ain’t Mrs. Kaufman in there you have my permission to shoot his ass.”
The door is a solid piece of wood painted white just like the doors in the big house and the cottage. Angela reaches for the glass doorknob—little brush strokes of white paint where the metal part meets the door. One tiny smear of light green poking through: the original color from years back. She opens the door a few inches and a triangle of light breaks through. The grout between each blue floor tile white like toothpaste. She must have scrubbed the floor once a week.
And then she stops. She remembers standing on top of the diving platform at Gatorbone Lake when she was a kid. Staring down into the water 15 feet below, heart beating fast and her whole body shaky, and then deciding to bail but about twenty kids lining the stairs are blocking her path. There was no way out. Jump or nothing. The kids behind her start to get rowdy and then her father’s voice breaks through. He’s standing down on the dock looking up at her. “Angie! JUMP!” It was a command and she always did what Daddy said. But she doesn’t jump. “ANGIE, JUMP OR I’M COMING UP THERE!” Her toes are hanging off the edge. “JUMP NOW!” he says.
And she jumps. And then the sickening wonderful weightless falling and then she can’t hear anything but gurgling bubbly water and her feet touch the silty bottom and for a second its all quiet and peaceful down under the surface. She pushes back up for a breath of air, hair slick on her back. Her father smiling. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said. “Sometimes you just need a little push, is all.”
Her hand is still on the door. Do it. Do it now. But she doesn’t. Then Bo rescues her but she doesn’t know it. “Well?” Bo says.
“I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Well open the damn door already!”
She swings the door open, rifle pointing straight ahead and finger on the trigger. There’s a leg hanging out of the tub and she knows instantly. The slightly odd angle and color of the foot, the stillness of the water. And a scream like a little bark pops out of Angie. A short burst and then her hands go to her mouth. She drops the rifle and it hits the tile and goes off, putting a hole in the wall about an inch from the floor. Her heart is pounding and she stands there in the middle of the tiny bathroom with her eyes closed.
Images of Walt come in and she tries to block them. But they surface anyway. Walt, there, on the floor of the big house, in a glossy pool of red. She opens her eyes and concentrates on the window. It’s dark outside, but she imagines the river and the dock beyond.
“Angie!” yells Bo.
“I’m okay. She’s gone.”
“Gone like not here?” Bo says through the door.
“No. Gone gone.”
Angela closes the door all the way so Bo doesn’t have to see, leans the rifle against the wall, then sits on the edge of the big white tub. It’s an old-style footed ceramic. Like a little boat, Angela thinks. I’ve got to say a few words, here. She takes a few seconds to compose herself, then says a prayer: Dear Lord, please take Mrs. Kaufman— No. Better to say it out loud, she thinks. “Dear Lord, please take—.”
“Who ya talkin’ to, Honey?” says Bo through the door.
“Uh, God.”
“God?”
“Yes, Bo. God. I think I should say a little prayer. Please go check on the dog and call the sheriff.”
“You know how to do it?”
“Do what?”
“Talk to God.”
“What? You just—. Bo, go check on the god—dog. The dog. And call the sheriff.”
“Okay. You okay, Honey?”
“Yep.”
Angela hears the back door closing and then the dog barking so she starts again, wondering if there’s something special she needs to do that only Bo knows. She stands up, starts to go ask Bo, then sits down again. “Dear God, please take Mrs. Kaufman. She didn’t say much but I think she loved Walt like I did so please take care of her. And Walt.” I hope that was okay. Now I’m supposed to be thankful. “And thank you for. For, uh. For all the blessings you have bestowed upon—. No.”
She opens her eyes for a moment: shiny white sink with knobs marked HOT and COLD. The hanging foot. She closes them again. “Thank you for Mrs. Kaufman. I’m pretty sure she hated Bo. Maybe me, too. But she loved Walt. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her better.” Angela takes a few deep breaths and then a calmness comes. I can do this, she thinks. I need to be aware. I need to see everything. The sheriff didn’t see everything last time. She stands up, turns around to take a good look.
Mrs. Kaufman’s under water, the big white tub mostly full. Her white hair sticking out in all directions, held in place by the still water, blue eyes staring straight up, mouth half-open like she was surprised about something, like she’d heard a loud noise. Both arms straight down at her sides, hands clenched into fists. She is thin and pretty, youthful for her age, but there’s a plastic, wax museum quality to it all—like she’s here, but not really. This is what she looked like, but this isn’t her. She is not here anymore.
Angela turns around to survey the tiny bathroom and catches herself in the mirror: dark around the eyes. Skinny as a rail, her Momma would have said. Bo says. She looks down to the sink: yellow bar of soap, a box of baking soda, an empty jewelry dish shaped like a shell. She runs a finger on top of the cabinet and it comes back clean. Then back to Mrs Kaufman. So quiet and still.
Just then Bo comes back. “Angela, sheriff’s on his way.” Angela comes out of the bathroom, closes the door behind her. “You don’t have to do that. I seen dead people before,” says Bo. “Blood?”
“No,” says Angela.
“Then she wasn’t—. Like Walt?”
“No. It looks like she drowned, but I don’t know how. Something’s not right.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but her hands are at her sides like they were held down and everything’s too damn clean. Even for her. I just need time to see everything. To think.”
“Well, hustle up. ‘Cause dumbass is on his way.”
“We should have waited.”
“Okay. You keep looking, I’ll make some noise when the sheriff comes.”
Angela pulls out her phone and starts taking a video. It’s the only way to preserve this moment in time. She starts in the kitchen and tries to get everything, panning slowly around the room. The battery on her phone is at about 50% so there should be enough juice, she thinks. She works her way through each room, then stops at the bathroom. Is it okay to take a video of a dead woman? I can’t really ask her. This feels wrong, but I’ve got to get all the data I can. Something doesn’t feel right. She steps back into the bathroom.
“Mrs. Kaufman,” Angela says, “I’m very sorry but I’m going to take a video. I know you can’t respond, but I hope you understand.” She does a slow 360 degree turn, trying to get everything. She pans across Mrs. Kaufman and notices something shiny sticking out of her right hand. It’s pointy like a knife, but when she takes a closer look its conical, not flat. Then she remembers. Mrs. Kaufman always wore a shiny metal pendant. The chain is missing.
She checks the jewelry dish again. Nothing there.
The front door opens and she can hear Bo’s loud voice. “She’s in there saying a prayer, Sheriff, so give her a moment.” Angela’s still eyeing the pendant in Mrs. Kaufman’s hands. N
ow or never. This is probably wrong. Angela reaches into the cold water with a shaky hand. Mrs. Kaufman’s fingers are frozen and Angela has to work each one open before the pendant comes loose. She closes her hand back into a fist.
Angela slides the pendant into her pocket, picks up the rifle and heads out the back door. She sits down in the grass on her side of the chain link fence next to the dog and pretty soon Bo comes, says the idiots want to investigate. She does air quotes when she says investigate.
Ten minutes later Sheriff Jackson meets Angela and Bo outside near the gate, the sky turning purple above the treeline across the river as the sun starts to rise. The sheriff arches his back, grimaces, his belt buckle visible for a brief second, then hidden again by his gut when he settles back down, the black leather making little creaking noises.
“When’s the last time you saw the deceased?” he says.
“Why don’t you just say ‘Mrs. Kaufman’?” says Bo.
“Protocol, Mrs. Bo.”
“I ain’t seen her in days,” says Bo. “She don’t come out. Just a shadow at the window sometimes.”
“I saw her yesterday morning,” says Angela. The sheriff pulls out a leather bound notepad, licks his thumb and rifles through page after page of old notes. The edges of each page curled and wrinkled. Some pages in blue ink, the occasional red, a few pencil drawings that flash by too quick for Angela to make out. Most sheriffs have actual computers with databases of information and crime scene investigators, but we’ve got a redneck with a notepad and a ballpoint. Are the details of Walt’s death written there on a dirty page? Two lines? Three?
“Can you provide some details, Mrs. Fleetwood,” he says to Angela, pen ready to go on a fresh page.
“I used to see her most mornings when Carl makes a shrimp and fish delivery—you know Carl? Carl the shrimper.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’d be Carl Richmond, 68, lives in a trailer in Yulee, drives a red ‘73 Chevy pickup,” he says. “Now can you give some details on when you last saw the—I mean, Mrs. Kaufman?”
“It was yesterday,” says Angela. “Carl came up in his boat with a few flounder.” She remembers Carl’s old white boat with the green nets hanging off either side, just like Walt had.
Let’s buy this place, Walt said. When you get well you can be a teacher at the elementary school. An excitement in his voice I hadn’t heard since we were kids in college. What are you gonna do? I asked him. I’m gonna be a shrimper, he said. And I couldn’t stop laughing. But a few weeks later we owned the place and there was a dirty, old shrimp boat tied to the end of the dock.
“Mrs. Fleetwood. Mrs. Fleetwood,” says the sheriff.
“Oh, sorry. Then Mrs. Kaufman would let the dog out. She wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t even come into the back yard. Just a wave from the behind the door.”
“Anything out of the ordinary yesterday morning?”
“No. Just a wave and the dog as usual,” Angela says.
“Why did you feel it necessary to bring a firearm on the premises? Did you feel threatened, hear screaming, or something of that nature?”
“No, but it was 4:00am and the lights were on and the back door was wide open. Something was wrong. Bo and I both felt it.”
“I got what looks like a .22 caliber hole about an inch off the floor straight through the north facing bathroom wall. You know anything about that?” the sheriff says to Angela, then looks over at the Winchester leaning against the fence.
“It’s a .243. Sorry. I dropped it.”
“So you didn’t see anyone else in the room, correct?”
“Right.”
At this point Sheriff Jackson’s young deputy comes up. He’s clean shaven and fresh faced. He turns his back to Angela and Bo to whisper something to the sheriff. Jackson brushes him off, “Yeah, I saw the hole. And it’s not a .22.”
“Mrs. Fleetwood, for home protection, you might want to consider a shotgun,” says the deputy.
Angela starts to feel nauseous, then a little heavy. She reaches out for Bo. The deputy is still going on about home security. “…lower recoil but still packs a punch. I’d go with #4 buckshot ‘cause it won’t go through walls like your—” And then everything goes black and Angela is on the ground, Bo still holding her arm.
She comes to a moment later and Bo is in her face. Why is Bo in my room again? She tries to get out of bed and touches the grass and looks around. The sheriff and a young deputy are squatting down next to her. And then she looks up, nothing but three faces staring down at her. Bo starts picking brown leaves out of her hair, and it all comes back.
“You fainted,” says the deputy.
“Down like a sack o’ potatoes,” says the sheriff.
“Give her some space!” says Bo.
“Bo, she don’t look good. She’s still in remission, right?” says the sheriff.
Bo stares hard at the big man. “She’s fine, just tired is all.” Then she says to the deputy, “How about helping me get her back to the house?”
“I can walk!” says Angela, but starts wobbling the moment she tries to stand.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Fleetwood?” says the sheriff.
“Will everyone stop asking if I’m okay! But, really, no. I’m not okay,” says Angela. “My neighbor just got killed in her bathtub.”
“The medical examiner’s gonna take a look, but this looks like she fell and drowned,” says the sheriff. “So don’t go jumping to conclusions, Mrs. Fleetwood.”
The deputy carries Angela back to the kitchen in the big house. Bo tells him to take her to an empty room upstairs but Angela says no, put me down. So she stands by herself, shuffles towards a tiny table in the back of the kitchen behind a large commercial grade fridge with a view of the river, reaching for handholds all along the way. She used to sit in the dining area but too many “Sorry to hear about Walt” comments from guests who somehow knew him through a University connection when he taught economics at Florida forced her out.
“Need anything else?” says the deputy.
“Can you get my rifle?” says Angela. He comes back a minute later and leans the rifle in the corner, puts two bullets and the empty shell on the table.
“Chamber’s empty. Shoot safe,” he says, and heads back to Mrs. Kaufman’s house.
“I think I like that boy,” says Bo. “What’s his name?”
“Deputy DoRight?” says Angela. Bo sits a glass of water, a cup of black coffee, and a danish in front of her.
“I got to feed the guests, and Johnny Boy’s coming soon so you’ll have to break it to him. And please eat. Even the sheriff could see it, Angela. And if that dumbass can see it.” She sighs. “Eat, okay.”
“He ain’t that stupid,” says Angela.
“Listen to you! Ain’t’n it up like a redneck. You must’ve hit your head when you fainted.”
“Naw. Just blendin’”
“Yeah, right.”
Johnny runs in. He’s just out of high school and works part time at Bo’s B&B. “What’s going on?” he says. He’s young and cute and has his whole life in front of him. “There’s an ambulance out there and no one really seems to be in a rush.” Angela tells him what happened and they just sit there for awhile in silence. He’s not getting the ‘Are you okay?’ bullshit treatment from me. Angela downs half the eggs and most of the danish and decides to stand up. Puts her hand on the table and takes a few breaths. She brings Johnny a cup of coffee and refills hers.
“You working for Bo this morning?” says Angela.
“Yeah, I gotta clean the flounder Carl brought and cut the grass. You think I should do Mrs. Kaufman’s, too?”
“That’d be nice. I’ll pay you for that.”
“She always complained that I’d missed spots near the fence. But she was good to me. Paid me $30 a week to mow, even in early Spring and late Fall when it really didn’t need it. That’s about double the going rate. I told her no but she said take it.”
“I think she knew you were saving for college.
She liked you, you know,” she says.
“Yeah. Dogs and men.”
“What?”
“She said she liked dogs and men. Said they were easy. Women were always thinking. Always planning. Just feed the dog, pat him on the head, show him you love him. Same with men. But I don’t think she meant it in a bad way.” He stared down at his cup. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Bo comes again and Johnny heads for the garage and the old push mower.
“So what do you think?” says Bo.
“I think I’m tired. You know, that old lady never even spoke to me, but somehow I think I’m gonna miss her.” The dog comes to them, looks up at Angela with sad, soft eyes. “I’m sorry, Dog. I just don’t like dogs.” The dog doesn’t move. Angela gives in and pets him on the head. He licks her hand and she wipes it on paper towel. “See and that’s why I don’t like dogs.”
“He looks at you funny,” says Bo. “Like he’s thinkin’ about something.”
They sat for a few minutes, just sipping coffee. It was going to be a beautiful day. The sky was clear and blue and they could hear Bo’s guests in the dining room talking and laughing. Laughing like bankers.
But Mrs. Kaufman’s death was there thick and new and even though the old lady never said much to Angela, she knew she was going to miss her. Mrs. Kaufman helped her carry the weight of Walt’s death. She helped her miss him, quietly, in her little brick house.
“It’s a shame. Gotta just be an old people accident, right?” said Bo.
“No. I don’t think so. I look at her and I can see the last few moments of her life. She was frightened and someone was grabbing at her. She ripped her pendant off without taking the time to unclasp it. Like someone was trying to take it. If you just fall in the tub with the shower on then you reach out. Her hands were at her sides. Down in the water. But you know Sheriff Jackson’ll be happy to say it was a fall and case closed. Just like when he glanced around the room and declared Walt’s death a robbery gone bad when nothing was taken.”
“So what are you saying?”