by Farris, John
“Good mornin’,” said the man with the mop. He paused to wipe his forehead. He was black, with a raised wrinkled scar darker than the rest of his skin diagonally down his forehead . He wore a wrinkled jail jumper and unlaced docksiders. “Man, it’s too hot already, ain’t it? How you be this mornin’?”
“I don’t know,” Hero said. “I can’t—I wonder if you’d be good enough to tell me—where I am?”
“Whoo-whee! Don’t recollect where you is? That be some toot you was on.”
“Toot? I don’t understand—”
“They got you restrained that a’ way on account of the d.t.’s, I reckon.”
“But I—I don’t drink.” Hero was sweating; he felt queasy. “Am I in jail?”
“It ain’t the Ramada Inn, Jack.”
“Well, I—I need to get out of here.”
“Shittt, don’t we all.”
“What time do you have?”
“Left my Rolex in my other suit, but I reckon it’s going on eight-thirty.”
“I see. And—” He was very much afraid to hear the answer to his next question. “The date?”
“Well, let’s see. Was it the twenty-first today? That’s right. August 21. Now I got to get on with this floor, nice to be talking to you, and I hope you feels better.”
“Wait! Who do I talk to, to get out of here?”
“The judge, I reckon. That’s tomorrow, though, nobody gets out today.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Tuesday.”
Hero nodded, sweat dripping from his forehead. His beard itched on his cheeks, but he couldn’t scratch it. His nose felt sore, inflamed, and there was an ache in his groin. Tomorrow was Tuesday. Today was Monday. Did that matter? For some reason he felt that it mattered very much, although he couldn’t think why. Something to do with the harmonic convergence? Yes, possibly. That called to mind cool pine woods and a shining lake. Where recently he had—or was that in Bolivia? Confusion. His mental processes were in such disarray he was close to tears.
“Help,” he said softly, then yelled it.
“Help!”
Before long a man wearing a badge and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap showed up. He was eating a fried egg sandwich. There was a dog with him, an aging German shepherd watching for crumbs of the sandwich to fall his way. Beauregard.
“Come out of it, huh?” the jailer said. “But you got to stop that yelling, boy.”
“I must know why I’m here and what’s happened to me! Why have I been restrained like this?”
“Doctor’s orders, I reckon. Just came on a little while ago myself. You squawking because you need to use the john?”
“No! What doctor? By whose orders have I been placed in a straitjacket? What am I charged with?”
The jailer chewed a mouthful of sandwich, looking skeptically at Hero.
“Murder. Now I ain’t believing you don’t remember what you did to that girl.”
Stunned, Hero slumped back on the bunk, staring at the jailer and Beauregard the jailhouse dog. The dog’s name had come to him instantly. Associated with it was another name: fear-provoking, a different fear from that he experienced being trussed up like a criminal psychopath in an asylum.
“Stowe.”
“Sheriff Stone? You can’t talk to him, won’t be in until afternoon. The funeral’s this morning at eleven-thirty.”
“But he’s—” Hero couldn’t complete the thought. He was shaken by an emotion too terrifying to verbalize.
Blood.
Blood on his hands, and—
A girl who sat in the back of a bus, wearing a shell-pink dress, doing her nails a slightly darker shade of pink.
Once that first shovelful of dirt hits the coffin, that’s it, I’m gone.
“Where? Where is this funeral?”
The jailer wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Mt. Pisgah cemetery. That’s where all the Sheriffs family is laid to rest. What’s that to you, anyhow?”
“It’s imperative that I—be there.”
The jailer grimaced and put a finger in his mouth to explore a sensitive tooth. “You are one crazy son of a bitch. And I got better things to do than stand here talking to you. Make any more noise, and we’ll put the gag on, that’s a promise.”
Hero didn’t reply. His eyes were wide but vacant as he stared at the patterned sunlight on the floor behind the jailer. Sunlight, but he seemed to hear thunder.
We’ve got a problem, Taryn said, after the sound of thunder.—And you’re in jail.
Hero shook his head.
“But it’s not my fault,” he whispered. “They—”
A different voice. “I understand you’re acquainted with Electro-convulsive therapy?”
“What are you going to do to me?”
EC therapy tends to eradicate memories. But nothing we can’t do without, I’m sure, the doctor had said.
Cemetery. Mt. Pisgah cemetery. But where in the name of God was—
“Hurry, Hero,” Taryn said to him, her voice barely audible behind the thunder. “Reckon I’m as ready ... as I’ll ever be.”
“I can’t!” Hero wept, thrashing helplessly on the bunk. “There’s no way I can get out of here!”
But then his erratic movements slowed to a random twitch or start, and some residual of drug or high-rolling current crisping God-knew-what in the deepest layers of the brain reacted post-operatively. He was drenched in grayness, a non-speculative existence on the dullest levels of perception and sensation.
Until the dog returned.
Thunder rolled across the town; rain silvered the opaque unbreakable window glass in which a thin wire screen was embedded. Beauregard stood shivering expectantly outside the bars of his cell.
No, Hero thought. It’s night already. I’m late, too late.
Beauregard whined and licked his graying chops.
Old dog. Soon you’re going to die. What do you want with me? I can’t help you, any more than I can help myself.
Then Hero sat up slowly, looking into lively amber eyes that reminded him of ... Beauregard threw his head back and barked ecstatically.
“You’re getting it,” Taryn said, coming to him, once more, through the thunder and tumult overhead. “But for Chrissake, Hero, shake it up—move your ass!”
“I don’t know if I—”
“Just do it. Doesn’t depend on memory. It’s all instinct. Affinity. You haven’t forgotten. Do it!”
“Beauregard?”
The dog looked alertly at him.
“I don’t know—how far. Can you—”
But there was no more to be said. He felt himself sliding forward out of grayness, swift as an eel from an undersea cave, powerful as a crossbow arrow, free at last from the confining straitjacket, the close-set bars of his cell.
Beauregard jumped as if the floor had become electrified and landed on his rump with a sharp cry. Yes, it hurt. Hero felt the gritty action of joints inflamed by rheumatism, absorbed all of the shepherd’s reluctance and fear as he scrabbled with worn nails to regain his balance.
Easy—it’s only me. And we’re getting out of here, now!
Through Beau’s eyes he saw the jailer with the Braves’ cap at one end of the corridor.
“That you, Beau? Flea nibble your asshole?”
Beau turned his head for a quick look inside the cell, where the form of Hero lay inert on the bunk.
Come on, Beau, while you’ve got his attention.
Beauregard trotted stiffly down the corridor, whining.
“What’s matter, big boy?”
Beau brushed past him and turned right. There it was, the way out: a steel door, steps, another door, the alley—he went paws up on the door, scratching, deep pain in the old bones, tongue lolling. He looked back at the jailer.
“Okay, okay, it’s raining batshit out there, but when you gotta go—”
Beau let himself down slowly and they waited until the door was opened, then went haltingly up the short flight of s
teps, the jailer trudging along behind.
“Worse than a little kid,” the jailer grumbled. “I can see why the Sheriff don’t want you home no more.” He unlocked the alley door, and Beau squeezed outside into a blast of rain.
Hero had no idea what time it was. Daytime—that was all he could tell, with the sky so dark and a hard rain falling. But how much time had passed, was the funeral over? Beau looked back at the jailer, who was standing in the doorway waiting for him.
“I told you it was plenty wet out. Why don’t you just get back on inside here? Won’t be the first time you peed on the floor.”
Run, Hero commanded.
Beau took off down the alley, going toward West Fourth Street.
“Hey! Get back here, damn you, Beau!”
Beau skidded a little at the mouth of the alley, and looked around. At the courthouse, the bus stop on the corner—
Over there!
The rain was licking down Beau’s black and yellow fur, getting into his ears and eyes. He gave his head a shake, then trotted obediently to the bus stop shelter. A matronly black woman with a shopping bag gave him the fish eye. Beau looked up at the route map on the side of the shelter. Hero studied it disappointedly. He saw nothing to indicate where Mt. Pisgah cemetery was located.
Beauregard shook and sneezed.
Sorry, old fellow. What time is it?
Beau lifted his head in the direction of the courthouse clock.
Ten-twenty A.M.
No way to ascertain if the old clock kept accurate time, but if it was right—
They still had time. But now what?
Beau sneezed again. The black woman raised her rolled-up umbrella menacingly and said, “Shoo!”
Beau turned morosely and started down the street, directionless and already a little lost while Hero pondered their dilemma.
The florist’s delivery van (“A little sunshine on the darkest days”) was almost past them when Hero was seized by inspiration. He brought Beau up short. Beau complained of the pain in his rheumatoid hindquarters.
Follow the truck.
Beau loped across the watery street, slipping once as he dodged an oncoming car. They tracked the van for five blocks, steadily losing ground as Beau’s stamina flagged, but always keeping the van in sight. Beau’s heart was pounding alarmingly. Hero saw the van turn into the driveway of a well-maintained antebellum mansion. There was a discreet lighted sign beside the drive. Daimler Brothers Funeral Home.
Come on, Beau, that’s it!
Beau was limping and out of breath as they started up the drive. The rain hadn’t let up. He cringed at a crackle of lightning almost overhead. His feet were sore.
Behind the hedge.
There was a modern garage at the rear of the mortuary. Near an entrance with a canopy over it four limousines were parked. Farther back, behind the mortuary, a silver-and-black hearse waited with the rear door open. The van was parked and the driver was unloading tributes, perhaps for another funeral later that day.
Beau crept along behind the meticulously clipped privet hedge, came to a stop with his ears pricked forward.
Several employees of the mortuary appeared, trundling a coffin toward the hearse.
That has to be Taryn.
They loaded the coffin into the hearse, added several baskets of flowers, and returned to the mortuary.
Now.
Beau limped up to speed and crossed the gravel drive. He went around to the back of the hearse, hunkered, then leaped with all his remaining strength into the hearse and crawled toward the front, burrowing into a mound of flowers. He lay there shivering beside the coffin.
Hero wondered if Beauregard’s tail was sticking out.
He heard footsteps, voices. Beau kept his head down. The back door was slammed. Three men got into the front seat of the hearse, and it drove away from the mortuary. One of them lit a cigarette. Someone else turned on the radio. Bob Seger. “Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight.” Hero thought that Taryn might have approved of that choice of music, rather than something lugubrious from Handel. One of the men began discussing the sexual proclivities of his girlfriend .
“Smells in here,” another man complained.
“Yeah.”
“Like a wet dog.”
“Yeah.”
Beau’s nose was twitching. The flowers.
“Jesus,” said the man with the perverse girlfriend, “She’s too damn hot to be a minute over seventeen. But she can’t get it on until you paddle her little ass.”
“Does she call you daddy?”
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
Beau sneezed.
“Shit!”
“What was that?”
“It’s a goddamn dog!”
Beau showed his teeth.
“Big fucker! Pull over, Pete. Right now!”
“How did a dog get in here?”
“Just get it out. Don’t look too friendly. Okay, big fella. We’re not going to hurt you, don’t get excited. Make it fast, Pete, before the cortege catches up with us, old man Daimler’ll have our asses.”
The hearse stopped. Beau laid low. When the back door was opened he scrambled up, growling.
“Look out, here he comes!”
Beau jumped from the rear of the hearse and landed in a ditch half-filled with water. Pain shot through his left hind leg, and he howled.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The hearse pulled away. Beauregard, unable to move, stood shivering in the water.
Beau. Please.
Slowly, agonizingly, Beau crept out of the ditch and halfway up the embankment, where he lay down, unable to go any farther. The hearse was not in sight. But across the road there was what looked like an abandoned drive-in theatre.
They lay there for a few minutes while cars drove by in the rain, their tires sizzling on the blacktop. Then Beau lifted his head again.
The cortege was coming toward them, headlights aglow.
Can’t be seen, Beau. He’ll know you.
Beau worked his way back down the embankment and lay there as the four mortuary limos passed, traveling about thirty-five miles an hour.
Now, Beau, follow them.
But Hero wasn’t sure Beau had it in him anymore. His progress was slow getting up to the road, and there he was so hobbled he could no longer run. The limousines were disappearing around a bend in the road.
Keep going, Beau. Don’t quit now.
The old shepherd’s heart was beating wildly. A car slowed, a woman rolled down her window partway. “Poor doggy.” But the car drove on and a van, coming up fast, threw a wave of water over them. Beau shook himself; then, as if the dousing had done him good, he hobbled his way into a steady trot.
There it is!
A wrought-iron gate with an arched sign over the turn-in: Mt. Pisgah Cemetery. But there were no burial plots in sight. The road wound uphill through woods.
Can’t be far. Beau, Beau, we have to get there before—
Beau growled resentfully, but he kept moving.
It seemed to take them a very long time to reach the top of the hill and Hero had his first glimpse of the cemetery, the hearse and limousines, the small group of mourners seated beside Taryn Melwood’s coffin under a canopy. There was a minister in a gray suit and clerical collar. His voice came clearly to Hero through the sound of rain falling in the surrounding woods.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
Beau paused again, panting, his head down. It seemed to Hero that he had driven the dog mercilessly for the last half hour, and that Beauregard was about to collapse. He saw the leonine head of Sheriff John Stone in the front row of mourners and young Edie beside him, her head bowed.
Now that he and Beau had reached the graveyard, Hero had no idea of what to do next.
Don’t let them put me in the ground yet.
“Taryn?”
Come on, Hero. The best part of the service is about to begin.
Beau took a shuddering step toward the gravesite, and fell over.
Get up, Beau! Hero begged him.
I’ll help. And something passed through the dog’s exhausted body, a wave of energy like a caressing hand. Beau perked up; he lurched to his feet and lumbered toward the gravesite, seeming to gain strength as he went. They hadn’t noticed him yet; all heads were bowed as the minister prayed.
Then one of the men from Daimler Brothers, inattentive and bored with funerals, looked around at the charging shepherd.
“Holy shit,” he said under his breath, and backed up against a co-worker as Beau gathered himself at the perimeter of the canopy and leaped atop the flower-covered casket, sprawled there, almost sliding off into the laps of the mourners.
The hand of pure energy that had reached out to him from the gravesite and coaxed him to his feet now kept him from falling off the casket as mourners scrambled from the front row of folding chairs.
Beau looked into the eyes of Sheriff John Stone, and was not chastened. Beside Stone, Edie was transfixed, gloved hands over her mouth.
“Get that dog out of here!”
Beau turned his head. Through a break in the hillside trees the screen of the *Star-Light* Drive-In theatre faced them, shabby but clearly visible despite the rain.
Hero focused on the screen, trying not to let his attention be diverted although quite a lot was going on. Hands reached out for Beau, who snapped and snarled, and Sheriff John Stone was backing Edie away from the casket while he reached for the off-duty revolver on his hip. But he had to reach awkwardly with his left hand; his right arm was around Edie. While he was trying to draw his revolver and shoot the animal he had only belatedly recognized as Beau, Gaynell Bazemore glanced at the drive-in screen.
“Nealy, look! That’s Taryn!”
Taryn, stripped naked, running for her life—no mistaking her, the picture on the screen was bright enough to be Been through the rain, and clearly focused, even though what was happening seemed to be happening at night.
(She had one leg up and was pulling herself over when something like a piece of pipe or a club struck her hard in the ribs)
This they saw in closeup, and Taryn’s contorted face as she reacted ...