The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  But Raford was stupid—he wanted to join the air force and fly planes, even when Ramona told him, Ray-ray, they’re not going to let you fly planes, they keep those slots open for white boys who look good on recruiting posters and they’ll tell you, Yeah, sure you can fly the F-24 Mega-Raptor or whatever you call the damn things, and then when they have you all legal and proper they’ll say, Oh, sorry, you didn’t meet our height requirement or our aptitude thingamajig or our pigment goals, and they’ll have you loading the bombs under the wings and waiting on the deck of the aircraft carrier as the white boy who got your slot goofs the landing and brings the plane crashing down on the hot tarmac and the whole kit and caboodle goes up in a fireball and you die in the middle of the ocean, like someone with no sense.

  But Raford had gone to the recruiter on his eighteenth birthday anyway, his dumb face set into a man’s scowl, and now she was alone. Ramona had always been close to Raford, and she cursed him now because he was strong and decisive, even when he was wrong, and more than anything, he believed her, and she wanted to sit on his bed back home in Roosevelt, Long Island, and tell him what had gone down at Wartham and have him believe her about that, too. What she’d seen back there on the common at eight o’clock in the evening on a perfectly nice Sunday evening.

  But Raford was gone. Only her aunt Zuela would be home. And Zuela . . .

  Ramona looked through the little porthole of her hood. The Altima was angled into a parking space not four feet away, the gray sunlight gleaming dully on its blue hood. The next car was two spaces over, a Jeep Cherokee with blackened windows that she didn’t remember from when she pulled in. Ramona stepped six inches out of the shadow of the building, and her eyes went to the people milling in front of the convenience store. She pretended to be searching in her pocket for change, but all that was there was a nickel and a quarter and her phone, still buzzing—Damn that detective, couldn’t he just go and do what needed to be done?—but really she was going over each person in the little forecourt with her eyes. There was a Latino man in a black sport coat pumping gas into his Lexus, all spiffed up and shiny—No one in the backseat, I don’t think, but the left corner is all shadowy and who knows. A white woman in skinny jeans and a brocaded jacket was walking out of the convenience store, her heels making sharp distinct clacking noises on the concrete as she shook a Snapple iced tea bottle in her left hand. Ramona got no vibes from her other than thinking the brocaded jacket was kind of cute on her. Then there was a white man on a motorcycle, just idling and staring at her through a pair of BluBlockers or whatever you called those corny sunglasses. He could be waiting for someone inside, she thought, and even though his BluBlockers were following the woman shaking her Snapple—the cords standing out in his neck as he turned his head—Ramona suddenly felt the eyes behind the glasses were watching her.

  The fear rose up her throat like bile, and she stepped back around the corner.

  Come on, you chicken. You’ve got to leave now. How far are you gonna get if every man with sunglasses gets you flustered?

  Ramona took half a breath and put her head down and walked quickly to the side of the Altima. She reached for the door handle and she pulled it up and it clicked, but the door didn’t open. Ramona realized with a freezing horror that of course she’d locked the car. A sheet of ice seemed to slide down her back as she rooted in her bag for the keys. She couldn’t help but turn and look over her shoulder at the man on the motorcycle as her hand frantically touched gum, coin, lip balm . . .

  He was watching her now, full on. The two black circles of the sunglasses were pointed directly at her.

  Ramona’s hand closed over the keys, and she had them in the door and pulled it open and nearly threw herself into the front seat. She pulled the door in after her, and when it shut with a solid metal sound and she locked it up, Ramona felt as if it had completed a seal of the vacuum inside the car. It was quiet except for the sound of her heart racing along in her ears.

  She started the car and put it into reverse. Soon she was on the highway, the hum of the road under her feet—there was a rust hole about the size of a quarter that let sounds into the car and which she didn’t have the money to fix, not unless she didn’t want to eat for a while.

  Ramona’s eyes slid uneasily to the rearview mirror. She watched the cars behind her and then caught herself.

  Ramona, please. Please get a hold of yourself now. That Detective Bailey had probably already put out an APB or whatever they call them on her. Emotionally disturbed person, a filer of false and outlandish reports. Please detain if spotted.

  Well, I didn’t want to see Margaret, she thought.

  She leaned over and began tapping the radio tune button. The radio would make that garbled sound you used to get when you fast-forwarded a cassette tape. She remembered home again, taping those Prince concerts on the Maxell 90-minutes and swapping them with her friends Natasha and Girl—they’d just called her Girl at Roosevelt High because she started every sentence with the word. As in, Girl, those shoes are . . . So ghetto. But she missed Girl now, missed them all.

  She was tapping the down button on the radio tuner when the image of Margaret Post swept into her mind. Ramona’s hand hovered over the button and Jesus music flooded into the car. Ramona Best hated Jesus music, but her whole body seemed to be frozen in place, one hand on the wheel.

  Oh, Margaret, why didn’t you stay in the morgue? Why didn’t you just stay in your room and make it to graduation?

  She tried to erase Margaret’s face from her mind by picturing her old bedroom back home, wondering if Zuela had done anything to it, and how exactly she would get revenge if her aunt had touched one single jar of Ramona’s lotion. But Margaret’s face didn’t fade, and Ramona got a strange metallic taste in her mouth—like copper, like a copper penny—and soon she felt herself traveling to the night before. The scenes from the common were flooding back to her, unwanted, spilling into her vision as if they would blot out the road and the yellow line . . .

  Ramona wrenched the wheel left, and the Altima veered toward the shoulder, a BMW blaring as it swerved past her on the right. Ramona hit the brakes, and the Altima slid on the gravel, the back of the car veering toward the highway before the wheels gripped and the car rocked to a stop.

  Ramona sat there, breathing, her eyes wide with terror. Goddamn you, Margaret Post. You’re gonna drag me down with you.

  The pictures in her head would not stop coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ramona Best sat in her Altima, cars rocking the vehicle on its wheels as they whipped by on the right. Her eyes were glassy, her mouth open. Her breaths were quick and shallow.

  She’d been at the snack bar in the Keegan Memorial Building when it happened. This was her sanctum, her last-resort study nook. After getting her first B-minus in biology, she’d found a little corner table that was shielded from the register and most of the other tables by a frond-leafed plant that stood six or seven feet tall. When Ramona had to get her real work done, she came to this dark corner, where she could hear the frozen-yogurt machine churn at its twelve-minute intervals—she’d timed it. Next to the table was a tall window that faced out on the main common. That window was her TV. Excellent for people watching.

  That night, she’d gone to the Keegan with one textbook: Psychology by David G. Myers, her latest bugaboo. Dr. David G. Myers was not a very clear writer; sometimes Ramona thought he intentionally muddled things up so as to make her life miserable. She’d worked on the chapter “Neuroscience and Behavior,” hiding behind the big leaves of the plant. Just her and the round little table, her English breakfast tea in a stylishly colorful paper cup (medium), two sugars, no milk, and the window out onto the quad, which was brightly lit by modern poles fashioned to look like ancient brass fixtures.

  There’d been a full moon that came slanting over the spires of the chapel and shone onto the tangled boxwoods lining the pathways cut betwee
n the two-foot snowbanks. When Ramona was tired of Dr. David G. Myers, she would look up at the girls crossing back and forth and absorb a little gossip about who’d become new besties and what freshman, scandal, was holding hands with which senior. Lesbianism was au courant at Wartham. Ramona had resisted, but she kept tally of who was smushing who like a baseball box score.

  The machine had kicked in four times since she arrived. Forty-eight minutes. Which meant it was about 6:48 p.m. when she looked up and saw the girl under the boxwood in the northwest corner of the quad. She was wearing a shiny black anorak and jeans and black shoes, and she had the hood pulled up over her head and the drawstring pulled so that only her nose and maybe her eyes would have been visible if you’d been standing three feet from her.

  But it was Margaret. On her mother’s grave, she’d swear it was Margaret Post.

  Ramona had felt her vision waver, and terror seemed to expand her heart so that she found it difficult to breathe.

  “I know,” she said to herself. “I know this cannot—”

  And then the voice, soft in her ear.

  Ramona.

  Just like Margaret asking for help on her trig exam. Just like poor friendless Margaret with no aptitude for buckling down.

  The taste of copper in her mouth. Ramona reached for the paper cup and took a gulp of the steaming tea and felt it slide down her throat. Then she looked back.

  Margaret had moved closer. She was standing only thirty feet away now, just to the left of the statue of one of the school’s founders. Ramona could feel her eyes burn into her own.

  Help . . .

  Ramona wanted to run, but the figure held her gaze, the moonlight creasing the black folds in the jacket.

  And then something rushed through Ramona like a gust of wind. Margaret doesn’t know what’s happened to her, she thought.

  . . . me.

  Ramona’s skin puckered with chill bumps. She wanted to scream.

  How could Margaret be alive? Her throat had been sliced nearly to the spinal cord. She’d identified the body at the morgue at three in the morning on that awful night.

  And then, as she stared out the window with fear spreading through her veins, Ramona saw Margaret’s right hand begin to rise slowly, the cuff of the black jacket falling back, and the hand emerging and turning slowly, as if it were being pulled up. Even from the window, she could see the moonlight shine on the deathly white pallor of the skin. The hand was so drained of blood, it almost seemed to glow.

  Ramona began to keen softly.

  The hand came up and reached into the space under the hood, and Ramona saw the wrist turn and she realized that the thing, this body of her friend, was feeling at its face. Feeling along its face to see what it looked like, like a blind person.

  Maybe Margaret doesn’t know she’s dead.

  Ramona tried to answer the voice in her head with her own, but as soon as she formed the thought, a painful buzzing static—always for her the first sign of a migraine—throbbed in her head.

  Clouds of dead sound sucking her thoughts away.

  Now Margaret’s voice coming through the static.

  Please help me, Ramona.

  Ramona’s teeth began to chatter. She brought her hand to her mouth to stop it.

  You’re not Margaret, she thought. You’re some sorority asshole playing a stupid trick . . .

  Where . . .

  Where what, Margaret?

  Where am I?

  The buzzing cloud descended, and Ramona twisted down in her chair. Then popping sounds and a moan that droned in the background.

  Ramona closed her eyes. The coppery taste seemed to coat her teeth and tongue.

  Panting like a dog, Ramona then sat with her head just above her knees. She didn’t want to look. She’d just stared at the tiles of the floor and tried to listen for the frozen-yogurt machine. She willed it to kick in, to restart time.

  Finally, the machine rattled to life with a jolt that Ramona felt in her chest, and she slowly inched her head up above the level of the window ledge.

  Margaret was gone.

  Remembering now, Ramona felt her body go cold. She closed her eyes, trying to banish the image of the hooded figure from her mind. After a moment, she opened her eyes, cupped her hands, and blew a warm breath onto her fingers, twice. Then she reached for the ignition and turned the key.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ever since he’d thrown that cursed rope over the bridge, Chuck’s life had seemed to brighten. The Volvo had started right up when he’d turned the ignition. A small miracle. He’d called Stephanie on his cell and told her he’d had a minor accident and would be home after he dropped the Volvo at the mechanic’s. Her voice had edged up an octave, and she’d wanted to know the full details right there on the phone—was he hurt, were the police there, how badly was the car damaged?—but he told her he’d explain everything when he got home. Chuck had driven the Volvo to his mechanic’s and taken a taxi home, where he found Stephanie waiting at the door, tense with worry. He’d explained the whole incident as the result of slippery roads, and said that the damage was sure to be below their $1,000 deductible, so he hadn’t called Allstate. Nobody had been hurt, so he hadn’t notified the police, either. After twenty minutes of questions, the tension in her voice had finally dissipated and he’d gone to bed, pleading a headache.

  Best of all, the voices hadn’t returned. His own voice had taken their place. “It’s okay, Chuck,” he’d told himself. You’re a good person. Why shouldn’t there be one Chuck Godwin in this lousy goddamned world?

  The mechanic had called early this morning and told him his car would take only an hour or two to fix, but it would be a day or two before he could do the repairs. Chuck had rented a car, a red Toyota, driven to Mary Reddington’s house, and parked just down the street. Then he’d marched up to her door—her front door—and knocked and gone inside and sat on her couch, done up in a bright floral pattern, and told her he’d never stopped wanting her. And, miracle of miracles, she hadn’t thrown him out into the cold January afternoon. No, she’d placed her hand on his cheek and then kissed him full on the lips.

  They’d restarted their affair—or, to be more precise, re-ignited it—because he’d never known sexual desire like this. Twenty years ago, he’d had a couple rolls in the hay with the redheaded Mary, their midlife crises seeming to hit emergency levels on the very same crisp fall weekend. Back then, they’d snuck off from the committee at St. Adolphus that they’d been cochairing and gone to the Lucky Clover Motel for hours of debauchery. What was the committee? The lawn council or some ridiculous thing. Deciding which kind of shrubbery to plant beneath the pastor’s window. He’d sat there during the endless discussions about rosemary bushes versus rhododendrons and stared at Mary’s flame-red hair, her gem-like green eyes. They’d slept together four times, but then she’d stopped answering his calls. He’d confronted her at the church, and she’d confessed that his bouts of depression were the cause. Her mother had suffered from melancholia and it had nearly torn her family apart. She was very much afraid of his black moods.

  But now all that was behind them. Chuck laughed to himself. His father had farmed three acres of good soil when he was alive, fancying himself some kind of homesteader, and he would have said that his son had lain fallow for forty years. Four decades of depression and bad sex with Stephanie. Well, no longer. He was roaring back to life.

  Chuck felt charged up, almost superhuman. The pads of his fingers, the tiny ridges of his fingerprints, seemed to be alive with electricity at the memory of touching Mary’s skin. She was still so beautiful and, thank God, just as horny as he was. It felt good, yes, sir. He sat in the Volvo, looking at the long line of Willow Street cut between the banks of hard white snow, the light on the whiteness soft and benevolent, the shaggy pines in the front yards and the tops of the mailboxes gleaming, and it was as if he
were seeing these things for the first time.

  Chuck didn’t feel guilty about Stephanie. What his wife wanted was his mind, his conversation, his comforting presence. She’d been chronically undersexed her whole life. She sure didn’t know what she was missing. So his liaison with Mary was a guiltless affair, the best kind.

  He was headed back to her house now in his little rented Toyota. They’d agreed that they couldn’t wait another day to see each other again. Who had time for patience when you were in your midsixties?

  Yes, it had done him a world of good, tossing that rope over the bridge. He’d get up tomorrow morning, call in sick to his assistant, and spend the entire day cleaning out the basement of all the accumulated trash that Stephanie had stuffed down there. He was going to put a nice Rockler table saw in the corner, get back to woodworking. The high whine of a quality table saw was something he’d always loved. Just thinking about it seemed to boost his testosterone levels.

  Chuck Godwin began to sing as he sat in the car. The only song he could think of was “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” The double entendre didn’t register with him. It was just a beautiful, beautiful song.

  “Joyful and triumphant,” he sang in a passable voice. Chuck felt alive, alive and grateful.

  * * *

  At 6:40 on Tuesday evening, Elizabeth Dyer was sitting at her desk at the Northam morgue, slowly drinking a Diet Dr Pepper and reading Us magazine. The morgue was in the basement of the county administration building, and the place suited her. It was cold, and she liked that. The corpses, too, were cold and silent, and after ten years of working here, she felt as much kinship with them as with anyone walking above.