“Were you the first of the Handle settlers?”
“The first of the new folks. The old timers lived in their summer cottages around the lake but we were the first folks in the Handle, which always feels like a suburb type of place to me. We were the first of the year-rounders. We couldn’t have afforded to move here now, or even a few years after we did. The place really took off. The house values began to climb and the old timers began to vanish. When we came here it seemed like the best kind of luck at the time.”
“Not now?”
“No,” she said. “Definitely not now.”
“You listen real well,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“No. I mean it. You do.”
“Well. Thank you again.”
She asked suddenly, “Are you married?”
She caught me by surprise. “Yes I am. At the moment.”
“Things going badly for you there?”
“I’m inching ever closer to a divorce.”
“A man who listens real well should be more appreciated.”
“I’ll certainly pass on your opinions.”
“I don’t believe I’ll ever divorce George,” she said.
“Perhaps you should consider it.”
She smiled. “Oh there’s no question that I’d be happier.”
“But you’re scared?”
“I’d have nothing then. Pathetic, isn’t it? The kids and me. All alone. We’d be homeless. I’ve never worked outside the house. None of what they call the marketable skills. Never even used a computer. It scares me to think about it sometimes. I’m just a total housewife. A nearly worthless thing in the modern world.”
“You could learn,” I said weakly.
She shook her head. “It’s too late for that. George has won, you see? Beaten us all down. We’re left with nothing. I’m more scared of living without him, than I am of living with him. And that’s sad.”
“What do you do with your time?” I asked her.
She tried to smile. “I try to make it pass a little faster. I like to drink, and I find that that makes the hours fade to nothing. George is even nastier after he drinks. I’ve no idea what I’m like, but I know it makes the time go fast and I’m real grateful for that.” She paused then spoke coyly. “I also like some company when I can get it.”
She caught me by surprise. “Company?” I asked stupidly.
She smiled. “I’m still pretty. Don’t you think?”
Once again she caught me unawares. “Yes,” I said. “I think you are.”
“Other men think so too. I try not to talk them out of that impression.”
“Did Keith think so?”
Her smile turned nasty then.
“You’ve been patient. So maybe you deserve to hear what happened. You ask if your friend liked me? Well I was certainly working hard at it. You see. I had his dick in my mouth when Tammi and Beth came wandering out of the bushes and caught us that damned night.”
I must have looked strange.
“That shook you up,” she said.
“George was out someplace and the boys were, too, and Tammi was God knows where, and the air conditioner just wasn’t cutting it so I had a couple of gin and tonics and then I walked across the beach in my bare feet and let the water cool me down at the end of the day. But it wasn’t doing it.”
She stared straight ahead as she spoke, her eyes locked on the events of that day, which were tied fast in her memory. I held my breath. She spoke again. “Your friend came out of the water as I stood there. Like I had wished him. So slow. The water was still and the sun was setting fast right behind him. His skin was wet and real pale. Some kind of male mermaid. I saw he was very tired because he almost tripped and fell down. He had swum all the way from the island to the beach so he should have been tired. I can swim pretty well and that would be beyond me. He wore just an old pair of raggedy swim shorts that looked like they might almost fall down. He must have weighed less than me. Thin as a stick. All skin and bones. Like a teenage boy. He must have been pretty once. Was he very pretty?” She asked.
I nodded.
“He could never have been a powerful man. Now he was just ragged. And ghostly white, whiter than anyone should be in the heat of the summer we get here. I watched him walk out of the water and stand dripping on the sand. I told him I could get him a towel if he wanted, but he smiled and shook his head. His breathing was hard and forced. I don’t think he could even manage to speak yet. His eyes were red and watery and his thin shoulders shook a little. I asked him why he didn’t just row the old boat in from the island. I knew he was living there. Everyone did. He shrugged for an answer and then just smiled that boy’s smile again. His hair was a mess and it fell into his eyes. I just wanted to push it away for him and before I could think about it I had. He didn’t even look real surprised. Then I just kissed him as hard as I could. He kissed me back at first, not as hard as me, then he started to draw away from me. He said he was tired, that this wasn’t a good idea, that this was wrong, that he was very sorry, that I was pretty, that I might have been a little bit drunk.” She smiled then. “He thought I was pretty. At least he said he did.”
“You are pretty,” I told her again in reply.
“He said I didn’t know what I was doing. But I sure did. I was right in the middle of a fantasy that was a hell of a lot of fun. It did cross my mind that we might be seen, but I didn’t care by then. I put my hand inside his shorts. He tried to pull it away gently. He was a little hard down there by then. I did notice that. So I got down on my knees, pulled his shorts down and started to suck him off right there on the beach.”
And then Sylvie Tait laughed loud and laughed dangerously.
“His face was all lit up by the last of the sun as he stood there. I liked looking up at his face. And then there was something, a movement in the bushes. He really pulled away from me then, and his pretty face got even whiter and the two kids were suddenly right there beside us. Jesus Christ, I got a hell of a fright. Of course my little darling Tammi was smirking like the know-it-all she is, and poor Beth was looking at both of us with the strangest look on her face, like she didn’t have a clue what it was she was seeing, which was probably about right, because her parents protect her to death, and sex is something that she’s likely never even heard about, which is pretty weird because her father and I have certainly had our moments. But my Tammi is a gutter-mouthed little punk from way back, with two degenerate older brothers, who will probably get her first sexual experience long before I did. And I wasn’t exactly a wilting flower when I was a teenage kid.”
“What did Keith do then?” I asked.
She smiled. “He ran like all hell back into the water. Then he swam back to the island and all that tiredness had magically gone by then because he was going faster than Mark Spitz.”
“And you?”
“Got myself sober in a real hurry. And now I was kind off scared, wondering what George would say if the kids told him what they’d just seem. So I told Tammi to lie. That wasn’t a hard thing for her. An extra big allowance for a week or so would do it. Then we worked on Beth who was still standing there with her eyes bugging out of her little head. That was easy too. We could have told her the Loch Ness monster was kissing me on the ass and she’d have believed us. Naturally Tammi couldn’t wait to tell her dad about the bad man who had done a very bad thing to her. She’s watched a bunch of talk shows where kids wreck grownups’ lives by telling all kind of lies about sexual stuff. She thought it was a lot of fun and she’s a real clever little liar. That’s my little girl.”
“Beth must have told her father what really happened.”
“She swore blind that she wouldn’t. Tammi told her father. George went to Will and together they went out to the island and chased your friend away.”
“You got Keith into a lot of trou
ble.”
“Don’t be stupid. His dick got him into trouble.”
“You started it.”
“So what? He could have stopped it. He was having his fun. Just like I was.”
“Your husband beat him up. Maybe he did much worse.”
“He’s a big boy. Anyway, you took George easy enough. He’s not that tough.”
I stared hard at her.
“What?” She nearly screamed at me.
I stared some more.
“You want me to be sorry! Is that it? I’m very sorry then. I did get him into trouble. Then I got my daughter to lie to save myself. But . . .”
“But what?”
“George would have killed me.”
“What? He thinks you’re so pure?”
She laughed. “Hardly. No. He sure doesn’t. But he knows and then he doesn’t know. He doesn’t ever want to know for sure. But, you see, this happened here. On his beloved beach. In front of his daughter. In plain view of the other folks, the ones he sucks up to, the same ones who think he’s the lowest kind of white trash, behind his back. That would have been too much for George to deal with. He would have killed me for sure. I had to do something. So I did that.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You must hate me,” she said.
“No.”
“You must think I’m a coward?”
“You are a coward.”
“I just wanted to stay alive. Even if my life is pretty much shit by any standards, I still want to have it.”
“I could tell George now.”
“You could. I doubt he’d believe you. And I doubt if you really would tell him. You’re an honorable man.”
But I wondered if I was.
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“Look what you’re doing for your friend,” she replied.
There was no answer to that.
Keith had let Sylvie Tait seduce him to his death in this alien place that night. She had been understandably scared, after being discovered by her daughter, and she had lied her way to safety. Lots of people would have done the same. Perhaps not with the same lie. But with some other lie. I would have done the same. I wasn’t even close to being honorable.
I asked her. “Where’s George now?”
“The tournament’s probably over. For Greg anyway. Could be in a bar. Still pissed off about you I’d guess.”
“Do you know which one?”
“It’s probably only one out of a possible three. He isn’t real adventurous by nature.”
I handed her the phone.
“You want me to call him now?” She asked in alarm.
“Later,” I said. “I want you to call Will Sanders first. Have him meet me at the beach now. Tell him it’s very important. Tell him he helped kill a man for the wrong reason.”
Without a word she took the phone in her shaking hand and began to dial a number as I started the car.
SEVENTEEN
It was early in the afternoon, and we were back on the beach.
Overhead, two lost seagulls dipped and shrieked, their sound catapulting me back to my childhood vacations, usually spent all alone, running barefoot and fearless across seaweed-slick rocks to the deep saltwater pools left by the retreating tide, small frantic crabs exposed between home shells, jelly-like anemones waving their blazing colors, and always the tide waiting to turn, a menacing presence behind the last still-wet rocks.
Sylvie Tait dragged a stick listlessly across the wet sand in a curving pattern that resembled the movements of sine waves. I stood apart from her, watching her for a while, then turning away, choosing instead to throw a succession of small flat stones across the surface of the water. Counting the bounces. A solitary child once again.
Our backs were to each other. She faced the houses that stretched in a line along the beach road, while I looked out across the lake, toward the island. As I had requested, she had issued the urgent summons, and now we waited for Will Sanders to show up.
When he walked across the sand, his face was drawn taut and the skin-shrouded bone that remained was working at a study in determined expressionlessness. It was a would-be poker face, or else a good lawyer’s demeanor, prior to the onset of earnest bargaining.
But up close he looked instead to be simply fearful. When he forgot to grip his jawbone tight shut, his chin broke loose and shook uncontrollably.
He said nothing at first. He looked at Sylvie, then pointed a finger at me. When he spoke he sounded flustered.
“God. I can’t believe I’m here. I just can’t believe all this.” His head shook from side to side. “This is about him? Isn’t it? The homeless guy who was here? Jesus. This is all getting so tiresome.”
Sylvie didn’t speak. I didn’t either.
“It is about him. That guy.” He looked at me and sneered. “Your deadbeat sleaze of a buddy. The one who’s taking a fucking powder and no one gives much of a fuck about and shouldn’t anyway.”
“You don’t usually swear like that, Will,” Sylvie said.
“Have you quite finished?” I asked him coldly.
He looked at me defiantly. “I’m just getting started. You were lucky before. This time you won’t get to sneak up on me.”
“I don’t want to fight you.” I said.
Then Sylvie spoke.
“He knows, Will.”
He looked bewildered. “Huh? About us? About you and me? What does that have to do with anything?”
Did she smile then for a second? “Nothing, Will. It meant nothing. It means nothing, except maybe to your trusting better half. And even then . . .” her voice trailed off.
She spoke to me. “Will and I had ourselves a fling once.”
I spoke to Will. “I want to know about you and George and Keith Pringle. After your children lied about what Keith did.”
“My daughter doesn’t tell lies, Mister.”
“She does if enough people tell her to,” I said.
Will Sanders’ petulant notion of bravado was wilting fast in the afternoon heat. He turned again to Sylvie. “Why did you ask me to come here? What’s so important? I really don’t want to talk to him.”
“He knows all about us,” she tried again. “And he knows about me and his friend. About me and Keith. Not the story George told you.”
“His buddy exposed himself to Tammi and Beth, didn’t he? He needed to be taught a lesson for that.”
“By you and George?” I asked.
He hesitated. “That’s damn right. By me and George. Because of what he did to the girls.”
Could this really be an expert legal mind in full flight? It seemed unlikely. Will Sanders sounded more like a blustering fool hell-bent on holding fast to the flimsiest of self delusions.
“He knows, Will,” Sylvie said.
“About what? For God’s sake.”
She sighed. “About me,” she whispered in a tired voice. “Because . . . me and Keith. When the two girls saw us. That night . . .”
He looked bewildered. “What! What are you saying to me?”
And then Sylvie was almost shouting at him. “I was with him. His friend, Keith. That day. That night. On the beach that night. It wasn’t the girls seeing him there. It wasn’t Tammi. It was just me and him. We were caught in the act. The girls came along. And they saw some things that they shouldn’t have. And, oh God, don’t you just see? I had to lie then. I had to.”
“My Beth doesn’t lie.” He was almost speaking a mantra to himself.
“No,” Sylvie said, her voice soft again, almost kindly. “She doesn’t. But she did then. Because she didn’t really know what was happening. And we told her what to say. And she said it.”
“This can’t be true,” Will said quietly.
“It is,” Sylvie sa
id in a whisper.
He looked at me. I nodded. There was a silence then.
Her words had punched a series of little holes in Will Sanders, bleeding him of everything, and leaving him empty. His eyes were cast down toward the sand, staring deep inside a sad void.
Then the screaming began. A wordless cacophony of sound. He ran at me in a senseless assault, waving his fists, and striking wildly at my face.
His first blow, guided by sheer luck, landed lightly on my forehead. I grabbed him by the forearms then, while he howled and tried to pull his arms away. But I held on tight. His face was dirt-streaked by his tears, his wet eyes soaking up pain like a dry sponge. The fight left him as quickly as it began, and as I let him go he sank to his knees in the sand, throwing his face to the ground, rocking and keening, the silent sobbing shaking his body, as I looked on, in a mixture of pity and embarrassment.
Minutes passed and then he began to talk. I sat down beside him. I was very tired. The sun was hot. The sand was every bit as soft and inviting as Tom Younger, the blustering real estate salesman, had told me it was, in a conversation that seemed to have taken place about a million years in the past.
The story was drawing to a close now. My search. My noble quest. My idiotic folly. All I would find out from here on in would be sad and ugly, but I was determined to miss none of it, to back off from nothing.
Will talked softly at first, his face downturned, his eyes focused but unseeing.
“George battered on my door that night very late, howling about the son of a bitch, the fucking psycho, was how he put it, and what he would do to him for showing his fucking cock to our kids. We should take care of this ourselves. This was our goddamn place wasn’t it? This was our turf. He kept on talking that way.”
“You knew what he was talking about by then?”
“Not really. Beth had been quiet and upset at bedtime as I read to her but I didn’t know why.”
Permafrost Page 21