Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “Angus—”

  He looked.

  “Slip the chair sideways so I can get in the hutch.”

  He dragged the chair. She opened the lower cabinet doors, pulled four plates and dropped them on the table.

  “Let up on my ears! All right?” Angus said.

  “You might make yourself useful and put those plates out. Jacob—silver’s in the top drawer. Help yourself, you want to eat.”

  Chambers stirred the stew.

  Emeline sat at her place to Angus’s left and folded her arms. Jacob looked to his father. Angus glowered at the stove and Emeline watched them both. Angus clenched his jaw. The basin between his cheek and jaw bones seemed deeper than she recalled. He’d grown gaunt.

  “You’ll find a ladle in the middle drawer, Brad, and a bread knife beside it. Maybe if you’re real sweet Angus’ll help you with the plates.”

  “For chrissake shut up, woman!”

  “For Christ’s sake? For His?”

  “I’m about to bust your skull.”

  “Real close?”

  “Here you go, Emeline,” Chambers said, “I’ll serve you first.” He rested a plate with a heavy slab of bread slathered in butter, and ladled stew in front of her. He went for the next plate, and she scooped stew on top of the bread and ate. “I already said my Grace. You want to know what I prayed, Angus?”

  He looked at the stove.

  “I didn’t expect you did.”

  A breeze carried the sound of men toiling against metal and wood through the open living room window. She moved to it and looked toward the lake. Angus ground-guided Chambers in the Ford through the tall grass down the bank. Jacob trailed. An upside down boat rocked on top of fifty-five gallon barrels. The bed contained other metal objects too small to discern, pipe, maybe, a toolbox—junk.

  Angus resembled the McClellan in the photo, and the items in the truck recalled faintly the shape and intent of the machinery behind him. She thought again of how the two seemed to merge.

  Chambers headed toward Devil’s Elbow and passed the walnut. At an angle so tight the window glass rippled the picture, Emeline watched Chambers park the truck. Together Angus and Chambers caught the edge of the boat, flipped it bottom side down, and pulled it to the lake.

  Chambers rested the first empty barrel inside.

  “Easy, now!” Angus called. He scratched his head and Chambers mounted his hands on his hips, and after discussion, they filled the rest of the boat with smaller items. Chambers boarded, took an oar from Angus, and paddled side over side. Angus pulled a rifle from the truck and trudged along the bank until he passed from Emeline’s sight. She hurried outside, across the porch, every other step jarring her broken leg. Hidden by the spruce, Emeline watched Chambers oar to shore a hundred yards beyond the Devil’s Elbow, at a place where oak and maple leaned over the water and created the shadowy illusion there was no land at all.

  Through a gap in the foliage Emeline saw Angus and Jacob unload the boat and then Chambers returned to the truck. Emeline shifted behind the blue spruce.

  Chambers had drawn Angus to the project he’d drafted on her kitchen table.

  I’m with Chambers and Jacob at the foot of the walnut.

  “Jacob—time you run along to bed.”

  Jacob snickers.

  “Get along.”

  He’s drunk and tired and the sound of his pant legs in the grass trails off.

  “Brad—I want you to try something,” I say. I don’t know if it’s just the McClellans that it works for. “Come here. Put your hands on the tree.”

  Chambers is a few feet away, and stubs his toe to tuft of grass. “What you got in mind, Angus?”

  “Just try it. Here, like this.” I press my palm to the walnut. As if the tree has been waiting, an image shoots through me and I forget Chambers. I don’t recognize the house or the room, but Pitlake trembles with pancake eyes, his face broken by the dark silhouette of a pistol’s front sight post.

  Even as this prophecy fades, another takes shape on top of it, Emeline, pouring whiskey, rubbing my shoulders—

  “What the hell you doing?” Chambers says.

  I move away. A torn-fingernail moon sneaks through leaf cover, the rest is dark. “I’m gonna handle a problem tonight and I need your help,” I say. “I got an opportunity. I need a ride into town.”

  “What’s in town?”

  “Business.”

  Chambers stalks forward, touches the tree with his index finger, then his whole hand. His face is empty. “You’re some kind of queer,” he says.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “See what?” He throws his other arm back in a spastic arc. “Wait! I see it now! You’re gonna be the president!”

  “Fuck you.”

  We walk to the truck, parked at the water’s edge. Chambers says, “I got to know more than you got business in town. You want to buy a cheeseburger, that’s one thing. You talk to trees and, well—a fella wonders what you’re thinking.”

  He motors the truck up the hill. We crest the knoll and turn the corner around the spruce. Jake watches partly hidden by the front door. “Stop here,” I say.

  Chambers waves his hand. “That’s a wily boy you got.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Jacob runs and hides somewhere and I pay him no mind. Inside, I swap the rifle for a box of bullets. Climb back into the truck.

  “Pitlake.” I say.

  “You need another tractor?”

  “No—just to keep the one I got. Pull over by the Fairlane.”

  “Keep talkin’.”

  “Supplies cost money. Yeast. Grain. Pitlake has lotsa dough, probly just laying around. Sheriff said there’s been a spate of robberies. Mercer, Jefferson, Clearfield. All over. It’ll look like the same fellas did this one.”

  “What robberies?”

  “All over. They musta been a dozen of em and the police in every county north of Allegheny’s pullin’ their hair out trying to figure who’s behind it. We’ll give em one more to puzzle. When they catch the other fellas, they charge em with ours.”

  “Just a robbery?” Chambers brakes beside the Fairlane.

  “He’s got my tractor’s serial number in his books. I take what cash is layin’ around and grab the ledger.”

  “You figure to pop him?”

  “Crossed my mind.”

  “Good times is good times, but the State of Pennsylvania don’t have much sense of humor about murder.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself on it.” From the glove box, I withdraw the revolver I took from Charlie. Open the cylinder. Four is plenty.

  Chambers reaches under the seat and his hand comes up with his Luger.

  “Loaded?” I say.

  “No use empty. But this is your gig,” Chambers says. “I drop you off and come back when you tell me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We ride in silence for fifteen minutes. “Kill the lights. Pull over here.”

  Chambers drifts to the curb. It’s a rich man’s street lined with rich man’s trees—maple, likely. Roosevelt runs parallel to Main, one block removed. Rightward, at the rear of Pitlake’s Farmall dealership, stacks of oak pallets rot and old machinery taken on trade rusts. Leftward, Pitlake’s ranch house sits back from the road, fronted by lawn acreage that implies royalty.

  I run my thumb against the side of the pistol and slip from the seat, latch the door with a quiet push. I circle the vehicle and lean at Chamber’s open window.

  “You stay put and I’ll be back in no time.”

  His chin moves up and down. The rest of his face is in shadows. I slink across the street and follow the long driveway close to the hedges. Tires grind gravel and I turn. The Ford creeps down to the bend, out of sight. Brake lights flash a hundred yards away at the corner of the block.

  I glance at Pitlake’s house, then back to the Ford.

  “What the hell you doing, Brad?”

  I rub the revolver hammer with my thumb. Chamber
s is a good kid. Learned tactical thinking in the war. Getting a few yards between him and the house makes sense.

  A dog barks with raspy, tick-tock pace, far enough away no one in the Pitlake house will hear. I step on the porch, roll my boot from heel to toe. It creaks dull like it’s been soaked in water. I tuck the pistol in my pocket, twist the doorknob. Take the gun in hand and push the front door open with the barrel. Breathe warm, fresh-bread air. I look corner to corner, shadow to shadow, measuring grades of gray for movement.

  A man snores in a room down the hallway and in the adjacent living room a clock ticks on the fireplace mantle. I tingle. My stomach growls for some of that damned bread.

  Whiskey would steady my nerves. I might dig a flask out of the bureau back home. Strange thoughts with a killing at hand.

  My nose guides me to the counter and I stoop at a pair of cooling loaves. Tap the crust with the pistol barrel. Place the revolver on the counter. The bread is warm and greasy with butter on the crust. I rip a mouthful, move to the living room where a hutch-like desk seems the locus of family business. I open a drawer and listen. Pitlake snores. A distant dog bays. Mantle clock ticks.

  I find a bankbook with a twenty-spot tucked in the flap, but nothing else save correspondence. Each footstep tempts the groan of a maverick floorboard, but the house is sturdy and I cross to the hallway. Probing the darkness with the .38, I pause at each door and listen for a child’s telltale mumbles. Each room is silent. I arrive at the end of the hall. A sliver of grayness marks where the door gaps from the jamb, and Pitlake sleeps within.

  Hunting deer as a boy, I sat on stump one winter morning and leaned against a hemlock; behind me, a thicket lined the field’s edge. In summer the briars drooped with blackberries. In winter, the thicket and an adjacent seam of ice age rocks funneled deer into a meadow just below where I waited. A savvy old doe knew I was close, but needed proof. So close, her huge eyes reflected snow and trees. She stamped her front legs and swung her head. Turned away and spun back to me, hoping to catch me in motion. She pitted her intelligence against mine. I relaxed my face. Controlled my breath so the frost trickled over my coat. She was beautiful. She convinced herself I didn’t exist, and tiptoed away.

  I shot her.

  Pitlake stops snoring and a woman voices her sleep delusions.

  I exhale like to control the flow of frost over my chest. I touch the barrel to the door. Push.

  Nonstop talk. She giggles, says with a mother’s tone, What are you doing?

  My pulse thuds.

  Honey, put the frog down. You’ll get warts.

  Blood rushes in my ears.

  Pitlake kicks his blankets. “Warts.”

  He probly answers her a thousand times a night, conversations like dead letters.

  My lands, isn’t it though? Up and up. Well bless your heart…

  Pitlake groans. The room smells of sweated-out onions. I point. Thumb the hammer. It clicks.

  Pitlake sits bolt upright. I see him, a shadow against a deeper hue of black. The woman stops mumbling. She’s propped on her elbows.

  “Who are you?” Pitlake whispers. “I’ll show you the safe. Is that why you’re here?” Pitlake shifts.

  I hear fear.

  “Don’t move.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Please, mister,” the woman says. “Take whatever you want.”

  “Matches,” I say.

  “Cupboard over the stove.” Pitlake’s voice is clear, alert. “You want to go out and smoke? Talk?”

  I fire twice into Pitlake’s chest and once into his wife. I have one shot left.

  I tuck the .38 in my pocket and hurry to the kitchen. The barrel is hot at my thigh. I tear another bite from the loaf of bread and open the cupboard above the oven. The matches are in a box up front; I dump a few to the counter, strike one, hold the flare to the curtain at the sink window. Carry the box to the living room and ignite stray papers on the desk.

  Fire splashes the kitchen in yellow light. I freeze. Chambers stands to my left, his Luger nothing but a shiny dot pointed at my head. He’s stark-faced and calm, like I imagine I was a few moments ago.

  I see an orange burst.

  T hirty Nine

  Emeline reclined against pillows. A shaft of moonlight draped across her legs. Angus had returned from the forest only to depart again with Chambers.

  She wiggled lower on the mattress, snugged the blanket at her neck. Timbers ticked and groaned and though she’d had a month to acclimate, the noises struck her as foreign and reminded her she was alien. She lay in an evil bed, in an evil house, about to be consumed.

  She climbed from bed and crept down the hall, cringing each time her leg cast touched the floor. Jacob’s room was silent. The boy’s eyes seemed empty lately. He followed Angus as if making a study of his father’s every characteristic. He’d started spitting, without even chewing tobacco. Tssst! It was too easy to imagine Jacob’s hollow eyes behind a knife.

  Downstairs she clicked a lamp. The rifle Angus had carried into the woods leaned beside the door. She listened. He could be asleep, snoring, anywhere. Or awake, watching her. She looked through the window to the porch, and then from the kitchen toward the barn.

  The truck was gone.

  Emeline lifted the rifle, broke the lever open and checked the chamber. One in the breech and more in the internal magazine. She carried it upstairs, turned on a lamp, and rested the rifle on the bed beside her. She pulled her new diary from between the mattress and box spring. Pen in hand, she wondered what to write.

  She moved the rifle between her legs. The hours passed and nary a word issued from pen to page. Leaves rustled in wind. Branches groaned. She imagined a complementary flurry of noises: a car door, footsteps, fist pounding on door, and the inevitable confrontation. It would surely happen tonight.

  He had life insurance on her.

  Emeline stood at the window. The moon had passed and the lamplight painted her reflection on the pane. She lifted the window and cool outside air carried the sounds of crickets and frogs.

  She needed a hiding place for her diary. Angus had probably already found it. Could he read? How could she not know if her husband was literate? He had volumes of books but never opened one.

  She pulled the string dangling below the closet light bulb. The horsehair plaster flaked at the corners and a crack descended from the ceiling, but the surface was inviolate. She pushed clothes aside. At foot level she saw a gap between plaster and timber, barely wide enough for her diary. She could slip the book along the floor, far enough to be invisible, and fish it out with a toothbrush handle.

  Emeline knelt and shifted her shadow from the gap. Something dim and gray reflected within. She pressed a pinky into the slot and withdrew a leather-bound volume.

  Emeline lifted the cover to the first page.

  Lucy Mae Hardgrave. My Diary.

  She turned a leaf. No dates. Terrible penmanship.

  “I’m so lucky to have a man as clear-headed and farsighted as dear Angus Hardgrave. And sophisticated, for a country man. Already bought me a life insurance policy—and me just a woman!”

  A bullet cracks past my ear. Behind me there’s a thud like a baseball bat hitting meat. Smoke hangs at the ceiling. The walls ripple in flame. Chambers fires again, just missing me a second time. I twist. A boy collapses against the wall and a deer rifle drops from his hands. His eyes waver in firelight.

  “He had a bead on you—and you was chewing bread,” Chambers says.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He tilts his head like I’m a dumb shit.

  We run out the front door. Flames lick the windows and cast light to the lawn. A half-dozen dogs bark across the neighborhood, but fifty yards stand between this house and the next in either direction and darkness covers the farthest territory of the lawn. Neighboring houses flash porch lights and slam doors.

  “Quick,” Chambers says, “around the back.”

  “Why?”

&nbs
p; “That’ where I parked. C’mon, damn you!”

  We navigate to the west side and follow a windrow of trees. My lungs are hot. The exhilaration recalls Normandy. Some neighbor gets nosy, I’ll plunk him.

  A man shouts.

  We reach the truck and Chambers tools along without headlamps. He turns right, goes a short block, and then right again. He turns on the lights.

  “Shit!” I say. “You’re driving right past it!”

  “No one knows this truck.”

  “Course they do.”

  “We got to get back. Or would you rather I take 322 and waste an hour?”

  “Just go faster.”

  “Normal person’d slow down and lend a hand. Maybe we ought to pull over.”

  “That’s about fuckin stupid,” I say.

  “Think on it. Or you want to ask your tree?”

  “What reason we got being out this time of night?”

  “Something in Oil City. Play it cool. Thought you had a backbone, for crissakes.”

  Chambers swerves to Pitlake’s lawn, stamps the brake and the truck slides. He jumps out. I slam the pistol in the glove box and join him at a gathering of men and women in night-clothes.

  “Anyone gone inside?” Chambers says to a man in boxer shorts and boots.

  “You’ll burn alive!” a woman says.

  “Don’t!” another woman shouts. Others join from the flanks. “There’s nothing anybody can do. Didn’t younz hear the gunshots?”

  “Gunshots?” Chambers says. “From here?”

  “Afore the blaze,” a man says. “Say, ain’t you the fella at London Cleaners?”

  “That’s right.” Chambers looks closer. “Joe Bandman—didn’t recognize you in your skivvies. You say there was shootin’ in there?”

  “Uh-huh. Two men come out and followed them trees back to the byway there. Long gone by now.”

  “Is anyone inside? You sure no one’s inside?”

  “I heard four shots. There’s four Pitlakes.” Bandman shrugs.

  “Four Pitlakes?” I say.

  “That’s right.”