Black Hammock

by Michael Wiley

‘Go.’ Mom stepped toward him.

  ‘It was a soft knock,’ Oren said. ‘Not like all those years ago when Walter came to kill Amon.’

  Another tapping on the door.

  ‘Should we let our visitor in?’ he asked. ‘If it were my friends I think they would come in on their own. Don’t you? They’ve made themselves sufficiently at home. So who can it be arriving in the middle of the night?’ He turned to the door and shouted, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Go,’ Mom shouted. But she had lost her strength.

  Another tapping. As soft as before.

  ‘I think we had best find out,’ Oren said. He went to the door and opened it.

  Tilson was standing on the porch. His hands and face were grimed with soot and sweat and oil. He held a tar-caked wood chisel. He gave it to Oren.

  ‘Come in. Come in,’ Oren said. ‘You’re as dirty as a newborn baby. But this house has seen worse. Much worse. Take a seat at the table. Have dinner. A meal before you go. Or stay the rest of the night if you like. We have plenty of beds upstairs and we’ve just changed the sheets.’

  Tilson went to Mom’s chair and sat. Without a word. And filled her plate with food.

  ‘And what’s this?’ Oren said. He held up the dirty wood chisel. ‘A house-warming gift for an old house and an old family? No house should be without one. You never know when you might need it. Let’s say you wake up at three in the morning and find yourself in need of kindling. Let’s say you have a husband who needs killing. It’s just the tool for the job.’ He started to circle the table again. ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked Tilson.

  ‘In the tar box,’ Tilson said. Chewing a bite of turkey.

  ‘The tar box,’ Oren said. ‘What a place to keep a chisel. I can imagine a toolbox. Or a workbench. Even a kitchen drawer if you kept tools there.’

  ‘Nope,’ Tilson said. ‘Was the tar box.’

  ‘What a place,’ Oren said. He ruffled Cristofer’s hair as he walked behind his chair. ‘Was it hard to get it out? It must have been covered with a lot of old tar.’

  ‘About eighteen years’ worth, no more,’ Tilson said.

  ‘Well you’ve done a good job,’ Oren said. He put a hand on my shoulder as he passed. My thighs itched. I put my hands between them.

  Tilson said. ‘Hate to waste a good tool.’

  Oren stopped behind Walter’s chair.

  ‘I got a suggestion,’ Tilson said. ‘Now on you keep that chisel in a place you can find it. A place you can get it easy.’

  ‘An excellent suggestion,’ Oren said. ‘Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘All out of ideas,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  Oren looked at me. He looked at Cristofer. He even looked at Mom. ‘How about here?’ he said. He raised the chisel above his head. And drove it down through Walter’s neck.

  Walter hardly moved as he died.

  He slid low in his chair.

  His eyes lost their fear.

  Tears of blood ran down on to his shoulders.

  Mom screamed.

  For him.

  For herself.

  If she had run for the door she might have gotten to the front porch. Or the yard. But she started toward Walter. As if she could do anything for him. And Oren wrenched the chisel free from the bone. Then Mom did turn toward the door. Oren was waiting for her. She came anyway. As if she was running into his arms. And he drove the chisel through the flesh of her belly. And up under the ribcage toward her heart. She fell on to him as she slid to the floor. Holding him. Her face and mouth pressing against his neck. As if she would kiss or suck it.

  FORTY-ONE

  Oren

  Kay’s lips touched my neck.

  Her teeth touched my neck.

  Her tongue touched my neck.

  She seemed to lick the salt from me.

  I twisted the chisel.

  FORTY-TWO

  Lexi

  Three days later Daniel Turner came to check on us. Oren was out at the road fixing the gate and they drove in together in the detective’s car. Cristofer was bouncing on his trampoline. Oren’s girlfriend Carol and I sat together on the porch swing.

  Earlier that morning Paul and the other men had taken their guns from the truck lock boxes. They had carried them inside and passed them through the hatch into the attic. They had driven out over the hill and come back with the lock boxes steaming in the heat. Packed with ice. Oren had showed them how to wrap and prepare Mom and Walter so that the ice wouldn’t burn their skin or wreck their eyes in the hours between Black Hammock Island and Mercer School of Medicine. He had slapped the tailgate on the yellow truck like it was the rump of a horse. And the trucks had bolted over the hill. Out of sight.

  Oren’s friends had raked the yard before leaving and now if I squinted I could imagine I was looking through ocean water at a furrowed sand bottom. And Carol and I were swaying and floating far from shore. Away from the breaking waves. Tilson had rebuilt the kiln and was loading it with strips of pinewood. The air smelled of bitter weeds and peat from the pine woods and ocean salt. ‘Smells good,’ Carol had said when she’d sat down by me on the swing. And she’d put her hand on mine.

  I’d pulled my hand away. I’m not that easy. Not after everything else.

  Now Oren and Daniel Turner got out of the car. The detective looked around as if he was seeing the yard for the first time. As if it had twisted on its axis. But he couldn’t name how.

  The place had changed. Oren and Tilson and the other men had patched the damage to the house and porch and tarred and painted over their work. They had fixed the poultry pen and bought a dozen new hens. They had shoveled the remains of Mom’s studio into the wheelbarrow and dumped them in the woods. They had leveled the ground so that aside from a darkness it looked the same as the rest of the yard.

  ‘Look who’s come for a visit,’ Oren said now. His face and hands were dirty. Sunburn had blistered the skin on his nose and cheeks. For the first time I could see my family in him.

  Daniel Turner looked at Carol and me and said, ‘Good morning.’

  I nodded good morning to him.

  ‘Your mom and Walter here?’ he asked.

  ‘No sir,’ I said.

  He looked at the yard again. Asked, ‘When might they be back?’

  ‘No time soon,’ I said.

  The sun was glinting off the roof of his car. ‘They’re out for a while then?’ he said.

  ‘They went traveling,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ Oren said. ‘But he wanted to hear it from you.’

  Daniel Turner stepped on to the porch and into the shade. ‘Your mother doesn’t travel,’ he said. ‘She’s known for staying on this island. I’ve read the articles about her refusing to go to the openings of her exhibits.’

  ‘Maybe she changed her mind?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe so,’ he said. ‘And maybe one of you can explain this.’ He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘See, I’ve been traveling a bit myself lately – a buddy of mine has a fishing cabin in Tennessee, and if there’s one thing I love, it’s rainbow trout. But when I came back, there was a note on my desk. It seems your neighbor heard noise here the other night and called to tell me about it. He told the person who wrote the message for me that it sounded like quite a commotion. Do you know what that could be about?’

  ‘My family never has gotten along with Lane Charles,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve seen that,’ he said. ‘Any reason why he would report hearing gunshots here in the middle of the night?’

  ‘You would have to ask him,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you see, I tried that,’ he said. ‘I called his house and he didn’t pick up. And then I drove out here and he’s not home.’

  ‘Maybe he went to the city,’ I said.

  ‘That must be right. Can you explain what his tractor is doing out there, wrecked, by your pine grove?’

  ‘No sir,’ I said. ‘I can’t explain that either.’

  Daniel Turner shook his head. W
alked down to the yard. Went to the kiln. He and Tilson talked. Which made him no happier. Then he came back to the porch and said to Carol, ‘Might you tell me who you are?’

  She nodded at Oren. ‘I’m with him.’

  Daniel Turner asked Oren, ‘You’re staying for a while then?’

  ‘I thought I would,’ he said. ‘Good people. A good house.’

  ‘And what’s your claim on this place?’ he asked.

  Oren looked confused. He said, ‘Does a man need to have a claim?’

  Three weeks later Daniel Turner came back. Leading four squad cars and a forensics van. He drove past our yard and turned on to the driveway leading to Lane Charles’s house. All morning they went in and out of the house. Carrying bags. Wearing white shoe covers and gloves. As if life on Black Hammock Island hadn’t already contaminated every surface where people had breathed. We watched from the front porch. When Carol touched her fingers to mine I gripped her hand and held tight.

  A month passed and then another. Then early one afternoon Daniel Turner came back again. Alone. We were mostly keeping the gate open now and he drove over the hill and stopped in front of the house. He left his engine on and stayed in his car. Waiting until Oren and I came out.

  He rolled down his window and told us that the investigators had found traces of blood in Lane Charles’s living room. But the blood didn’t match Lane Charles. He stared at Oren and me. Like he expected us to ask whose it was. We didn’t ask. And I didn’t tell him that Walter’s dog bite was bleeding and leaking when Oren marched us through the house.

  ‘I have a theory,’ Daniel Turner said. ‘More than one theory. But my lieutenant doesn’t like them. He has a theory of his own. Not enough to act on but more than I have. He’s seen the list of calls from Lane Charles to me and the department and he’s got it in his head that Lane Charles became obsessed with your family. He thinks that the blood shows that Lane Charles did something to your mom and Walter. He can’t explain why you’re uncooperative but he thinks that after growing up in this family you probably have your reasons. He thinks someday Lane Charles will turn up because blood always rises no matter how deep you bury it and he’ll have stories to tell about what happened to your mom and Walter though he’ll probably keep them to himself. What do you think of that?’

  ‘It’s a theory,’ I said.

  ‘We both know what it is,’ he said. ‘I agree with the lieutenant on one point though. Blood will rise. When it rises here I’ll be here too. You can count on that.’ Then he rolled up his window. And drove out over the hill.

  Weeds took over Lane Charles’s field. Crept up the steps to his front door. Cristofer spent more and more time on his trampoline. As if with each downward plunge he was trying to disappear into the jumping mat. I brought my dad’s books down and lined the shelves with them. I read the stories that had made him the man he was. A hard man. I wondered if I could love him.

  At night I heard Oren wandering through the rooms of the house. Climbing into the attic to be with the guns. Swinging on the front-porch swing. Sometimes he went into the yard and chopped wood until the sun came up. Then he spent the daytime feeding pine strips into the kiln. Some days he ate nothing. Carol left after six months. If he decided to act sane again he should give her a call she said.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ I asked him. ‘You’re free now. You’ve done that for yourself. You’re free.’

  He stared at me as if freedom was a lie. As dirty a word to him as hope.

  One morning I went into Mom’s bedroom which Oren had taken for himself. The room smelled of sweat and acid and sugar. Rotting meat. I found the wood chisel tucked into the sheets on Walter’s side of the bed. I ran with it from the room. To wash it. To bury it in the yard.

  But Oren was coming up the stairs.

  I held the chisel from him. Tried to keep it away.

  He grabbed me. Wrestled with me. Took it from my hands.

  I thought he would stab me with it.

  But he just raised it above his head. And he screamed. Like a bird dropping toward a fleeing animal. Like the animal itself in its last rush before dying.