‘Mean what?’ I asked.
I wished this was one of the nights when clouds covered the moon and stars. On those nights I would get so lost I could stumble off the road and into the grass. One night I tripped and fell. When I was lying on the ground an animal could have stood an inch from my face and I never would have seen it. The fear I’d felt had taken me out of the life I lived on the island. It had made me forget Walter and Mom and axes.
I wished this was one of those nights.
I had walked less than a quarter-mile back up the road when I saw Edgar Allan coming. He was talking on a cell phone. Or trying to find a signal. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He slipped his phone into a pocket.
‘We’re both out at the secret hour,’ he said.
‘Is that what you call this?’ I said.
‘Don’t your mother and stepfather think you’re home in bed?’ he asked.
‘I figure they aren’t thinking about me one way or another,’ I said.
He looked up at the moon. ‘Some nights I can’t sleep,’ he said.
‘And some nights you want to talk on the phone,’ I said.
He lowered his eyes to mine. ‘I check in from time to time,’ he said. ‘You know. The body business.’
‘People keep dying?’ I said.
‘Always.’
‘And someone needs to pick up the corpses?’ I said.
‘My competitors would if I didn’t,’ he said.
‘You usually work at midnight?’ I asked.
‘You would be surprised,’ he said. ‘City morgues are open twenty-four hours and some of my best contacts are late-shift managers. They get lonely and need someone to talk to.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said. And started walking home again.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Your being here is making my mom happy,’ I said. ‘She also likes having someone to talk to.’
He caught up with me. Fell in beside me. He asked, ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘Talking? No,’ I said. ‘But flirting?’
He took my arm in his hand. Gently mostly. ‘If there’s one thing I’m not doing it’s flirting.’
I didn’t mind him holding my arm. ‘Your phone will work better if you go the other way,’ I said. He said nothing to that. So I asked, ‘You like working with dead people?’
‘Most of the time I’m on my computer,’ he said. ‘When I’m not on the computer I’m on the phone. People who need something call me and I call other people who have it. I’m a middleman.’
‘You keep your hands clean?’ I said.
‘You’re being sarcastic but I don’t know why,’ he said.
I said, ‘She’s flirting with you.’
‘Is she?’
‘You take her seriously,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t get that from us. She likes it. She likes you.’
‘The owner of the Atlanta gallery where I saw her paintings takes her seriously,’ he said. ‘The magazines do.’
He loosened his grip on my arm so I slid my hand into his. And asked, ‘Do you ever touch them? The bodies?’
‘Others do that part,’ he said.
I said, ‘I would. Touch them. I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Some people don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Others do but then they get used to it.’
‘You can get used to anything,’ I said.
‘Sarcasm again? But it’s not true,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty that you can never get used to.’
‘I don’t think I would need to get used to touching bodies,’ I said. ‘Not after living in our house. Mom and Walter treat Cristofer and me like we’re already dead. I touch myself sometimes and expect my skin to be cold.’
He pulled his hand from mine.
I wanted him to touch me. ‘Do you like her more than me?’ I asked.
‘What? Your mother? No,’ he said. ‘It’s not about liking.’
And I wanted him to laugh with me the way I’d heard him laugh with her. But we walked quietly in the blue-shadowed moonlight. Our hands sometimes brushing. When we got to the gate I said, ‘You can kiss me if you want.’
FIFTEEN
Oren
I took her hand again and said, ‘Kissing would be a bad idea.’
She moved close to me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Very.’
‘Why?’
First: because she was my sister. Second: because I planned to kill our mother and stepfather. Third: because if she sided with them, I would need to kill her too. I said, ‘Because I have a girlfriend.’ And that was fourth: a girlfriend who was sitting by her phone at the Red Roof Inn, waiting for my call.
‘I don’t care,’ Lexi said, and she tried to kiss me.
I pulled away and started walking back the way we’d come. ‘I need to make my call,’ I said.
She said, ‘I figured you wouldn’t kiss me.’
I asked, ‘Why did you figure that?’
She said, ‘Because you aren’t who you seem to be.’
I felt a shiver of fear. ‘Who am I then?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’
‘If I was who I seemed to be, I would kiss you?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You’re smarter than your mother,’ I said. Our mother – who thought I was dead and couldn’t see in me the ghost of the child I’d been.
She said, ‘So now we’ve established that I’m smart and you won’t kiss me.’
‘Smart can be dangerous,’ I said.
‘To me or to you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Now who’s being sarcastic?’ she said. ‘Tell me who you really are.’
‘Tell you my story?’ I asked.
‘Unless you want to kiss me,’ she said.
‘It might be more than you can handle,’ I said.
‘The story or the kiss?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
She said, ‘I’ll risk the story.’
I said, ‘Once upon a time—’
‘Cut it out,’ she said.
I said, ‘It’s my story.’
‘Fine. Tell it.’
‘Once upon a time—’
A flashlight beam shined from the top of the hill between the gate and the house, and a man’s voice called out, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Damn it,’ Lexi said.
The flashlight beam swung toward us. ‘Who’s there?’ the man asked again. It was Tilson.
Lexi stepped toward the gate and said, ‘It’s me.’
Tilson came down the hill toward the road, the flashlight shining on the driveway. ‘What you do there, Miss Lexi?’ he asked. ‘Who you with?’
I said to her, ‘I need to make my phone call.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘Get close to the bridge.’
Tilson opened the gate and shined his light at her face, then mine. ‘Who that you with, Miss Lexi?’ He held the light on me.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lexi asked him.
‘Watching the poultry pen,’ he said.
‘For what?’ Lexi asked. ‘All the chickens are dead.’
‘Wouldn’t a been if I been watching right,’ he said. ‘Don’t want that spreading.’ He kept the beam on me until I turned away and walked down the road.
SIXTEEN
Lexi
Up in my bedroom I kicked off my flip-flops. Unbuttoned my dress and let it fall to the floor. Pulled a chair to the window and sat in the dark with my feet sticking out into the hot night. The sweat on my skin clung to the wooden seat. I wanted to see Edgar Allan when he came back. I wanted to watch him come over the hill and cross the yard and come into the house.
But the night and the heat and the humid air and Cristofer’s violence weighed on me and after a while I slept. And dreamed of hot white sand on a hot white beach. Under a hot white sun. The white points on the ocean waves were as bright and hot as pins.
Until voices woke me.
Edgar Allan was talking with Tilson outside my window in the yard by the porch. The moon hung overhead. Tilson had gotten Walter’s .22 and held it across his chest. He said, ‘I caught you pissing when you was just this high. You come to make trouble you surely do. But I tell Miss Kay—’
Edgar Allan grabbed Tilson’s shirt. Threw him against the house. ‘You’ll tell no one. You’ll forget anything you think you know.’
‘Take you hands off of me. Goddamn it. I save you life boy. You treat me right. I got stones.’
Edgar Allan threw Tilson down on the ground. And said, ‘You’ve got what?’
‘Stones,’ Tilson said.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Edgar Allan said.
‘Talking about you treating me right,’ Tilson said. ‘I got stones. In the belly. In the heart.’
‘What are you—’
‘You put me in water and watch me sink,’ Tilson said.
Edgar Allan turned away from him. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said.
‘If I crazy it because a long time ago I take a boy that look like you but he ain’t got no fancy clothes and he can barely sleep the night without wetting his blanket. I break all the rules with that boy.’
‘Shh,’ said Edgar Allan. But now he was soft. As if Tilson’s words had crushed a bone inside him.
‘Yeah?’ Tilson asked. Now his voice got quiet too. ‘You know about that?’
‘Shh,’ Edgar Allan said.
‘Yeah I do believe you know that boy,’ Tilson said.
Then Edgar Allan helped Tilson to his feet. ‘Shh,’ he said.
‘I believe you do,’ Tilson said. He sounded happy. ‘You don’t let us sink. Right? These reasonably good people now. You don’t got to hurt nobody. You see what you want to see and then you go away.’
‘Shh,’ said Edgar Allan. ‘Shh.’
Then Tilson pulled Edgar Allan into his arms. And they held each other like that. If they weren’t crying I don’t know what they were doing. In the moonlight. Holding each other. Then Tilson seemed to force Edgar Allan to his knees. And he put his mouth on Edgar Allan’s forehead. His lips touching his skin. For the longest time. Then he said, ‘You a good child. I always know it. You a good child.’
I could have yelled.
But I climbed into bed. And was awake. For the longest time.
Why did Tilson and Edgar Allan hold each other like that? How did they know each other? How did Tilson save Edgar Allan’s life? Why did he call us good people? Cristofer was good if you didn’t mind the keening and the violence. I was good some of the time or tried to be. But Mom was seriously questionable. And there was nothing good in Walter except his love for Mom. The rest of him was nasty from his boots to his beard. Why did Edgar Allan throw Tilson against the porch when Tilson said he was bringing trouble? Why did Tilson kiss him?
When I slept I found no answers and dreamed no dreams. No white hot beaches. No touching a stranger’s hand or axe blood either.
I opened my eyes again when it was still dark. A dry breathing woke me. A dry heaving. A long breathing and a gasp. I thought my friend Martin had followed me home from the bridge. Climbed into bed with me. Was breathing out a mouthful of smoke. Then I smelled real smoke. Wood smoke. Burning-hair smoke. Smoke from cardboard and old rags and oil. It hung in the air over my bed and bit my throat. I left off the lamp as if the dark would make it a dream. Outside, the moon shined on curling blankets of gray and black. Then the sound of breathing turned into the cracking and hushing of a fire. As if the breathing animal had burst into flames.
I ran to the window. Mom’s studio was burning. It looked like the balls of flame that swelled out of the tar kiln when Walter poured in kerosene. The fire spread into the Spanish moss on the branches of the oak. Sparking and flaring. Lighting the living wood of the tree.
I yelled. Like I also was on fire. Like the burning stars of the night were falling into our yard.
Walter and Mom and Paul the driver ran through the hall and down the stairs. Mom went into the yard and ran to the burning shed. Turned away. Ran to it again and away. As if pulled and pushed by the heat. She wore underpants and a bra. Walter caught her and locked her in his arms. She hit and scratched him. Paul the driver went to the bin by the poultry pen. Dumped the medicine from the bucket. Took the bucket inside to the kitchen sink. Carried it to the studio and threw the water on to the fire. The fire drank the water and spat steam back at him. He threw the empty bucket on to it.
In the middle of the fire. Inside the black skeleton of the burning shed. The frames of Mom’s paintings crumbled.
Edgar Allan walked downstairs from his room. His footsteps were easy. When he came into the yard his suit looked like he had cleaned and ironed it. The flames danced and gleamed on the toes of his polished shoes. He watched the studio burn and then turned and raised his eyes to me up at my window.
SEVENTEEN
Oren
Kay raked her fingernails down her cheeks as if the blood underneath needed airing. She tried to do it again, but Walter grabbed her hands. ‘No’ – his voice was hoarse – ‘no.’ They stood in the yard, their faces grimy and their eyes red from the smoke, because what good would come from going inside the house? What good would come from going anywhere? Right now they were lost. They were nowhere – which was where they belonged.
They wouldn’t recognize me now. I knew that. Not until I pulled off my death mask. Smoke in their eyes. Fire in their eyes. Grief. They would see only themselves – lost.
The studio fire had burned inward as if seeking a pure point of light, and now, as the sun rose over the hill, dazzling on the damp haze of the night that had just passed, only a black scar remained on the ground, with a curl of smoke and then a hiss from an ember. The oak branches over the studio had flared, and the charred and blackened wooden stubs looked like deformities.
At the height of the fire, Lane Charles had run across the yard as if he could do anything. ‘I called the fire department,’ he said, as if they could do anything. When the two fire trucks came, all that was left of the studio was a pile of flames, nothing worth putting out. The firemen stood with the rest of us, watching the flames lick at the night, and then they climbed back into their trucks and drove away.
Then Lane Charles pulled me aside. Behind his glasses, his eyes were small and damp. ‘This is a hell of a thing,’ he said. ‘A hell of a way to come home.’
‘I read your book,’ I said.
‘I wrote that when I was a young man,’ he said. ‘I had sex in my blood.’
‘It made sense to me,’ I said.
‘I see that,’ he said. ‘But you just burned a lifetime of work.’
I wasn’t getting on that ride. I asked, ‘Have you seen Walter with my dad’s guns?’ Before walking downstairs and into the yard, I had gone into Kay’s bedroom. I had looked in the closet and checked under the bed. I had opened the dresser drawers, Walter’s and Kay’s. I should have been happy when I found nothing, but a wave of fear had passed through me. Why hadn’t Walter pulled out a big weapon? Unless he’d put the guns in the attic or hidden them in the pine woods, I didn’t know where they could be.
‘No guns except that pea shooter,’ Lane Charles said. He stared at me with those damp eyes. ‘I’ve come to wonder if there’s any honor in vengeance. Maybe you should lance the wound and let it heal.’
I said, ‘You would do that after all they’ve done?’
‘Me personally?’ he said. ‘I’m talking about you.’
He left then, promising to return later, and Paul came to me. ‘Looks like a heavy wind blew through last night,’ he said.
I was sweating, though the morning was cool. ‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Looks like it tore your mother out by the roots,’ he said.
‘It’s progress,’ I said. I felt light-headed.
‘No telling what a woman will do when she gets ripped out like that,’ Paul said. ‘No telling what Walter might do either.’
‘I wouldn’t m
ind having Jimmy and Robert and Carol here right now,’ I said.
‘Soon enough,’ he said.
‘Get Cristofer out of here for a while, will you?’ I said.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘And Lexi?’
‘She stays,’ I said. ‘She’s still undecided.’
Now, in the early sun, Walter put an arm around Kay and led her toward the porch. With tears in her eyes, she told me, ‘I don’t know about you.’
‘What’s to know?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Walter said to me, ‘You can leave.’
I said, ‘I’ll help clean up.’
‘Unnecessary,’ he said.
‘As you wish,’ I said, as if his wishes counted. I went upstairs and came back down with my overnight bag. But Paul was already gone with Cristofer. When I told Walter that my ride was missing, he went into the house, came out again, and called for Paul and Cristofer toward the pine woods. He looked at me as if he knew I had made them disappear. So I said, ‘You could drive me to the airport.’
He looked at Kay. She had raked her fingernails down her face again. He said, ‘I’ve got my hands full.’
‘Fine,’ I said, and took my bag back upstairs.
When I settled on the porch swing, Lexi sat down next to me with her Bible. ‘What did you do?’ she whispered.
I took the Bible from her and fingered the locked strap. ‘Too many secrets, right?’ I said. ‘Is it time to reveal everything?’ I put a finger between the Bible and the strap and tugged.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
But I tugged again and the strap broke. ‘Now I know everything,’ I said.
She tried to grab the Bible.
‘Is it time to pull off the scabs?’ I asked. ‘Your mother likes to do that. At least she can’t help doing it. Is it time to let the skin bleed?’
Lexi said, ‘Give me the—’
I held the Bible away from her.
So she hit me in the mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Give it back.’
I opened the cover. ‘Ahh,’ I said.
‘It’s mine.’ She looked like she would cry.
I opened the book – Great American Stories – and read, ‘As the last crimson tint of the birthmark – that sole token of human imperfection – faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.’ I felt light-headed, from the smoke, from sleeplessness, from the wildness of the past night. I slapped the book shut and threw it off the porch.
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