Then she pulled over to the side of the road. He could tell she’d finally made up her mind what to do.
“I forgot,” she said. “I have just the thing you need.”
She opened the glove compartment and took out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“It isn’t what you suppose,” she told him.
“I didn’t suppose anything,” he protested.
“Have a sip. You’ll feel better.”
“No, thank you.”
“Do you think it’s poison?” she asked with a weird cheerfulness. “Look!” She opened the bottle, tilted it to her lips, and took a small swallow. Then she handed it to him.
“No, thank you,” he said again, and turned the bottle upside down. It glugged itself empty onto the floor of the Chevy. Then he rolled the window down to get rid of the smell and the bottle.
“Alan! Good Lord! What are you thinking?”
He was thinking that she wanted to kill him but didn’t have the courage. But he didn’t say so, because it wouldn’t have been polite. She was his wife, after all.
57
Jim alit on a branch of an apple tree completely exhausted. And starving. Eating had not been a major focus of his life at New Ravensburg, and he didn’t give much thought to the process. But he had always got his three squares a day, and this crow had not.
This crow needed some food—and something a lot more substantial than stunted August apples and whatever worms might be found in them. He fluttered down to the ground and scouted about, but the few insects he could discover were no more satisfying than cocktail peanuts when what you need is meatballs and spaghetti.
Or, in the present case, some ripe carrion. And he could smell just that, not far off. He didn’t like to let his crow instincts take the driver’s seat, but he was hungry, and he really couldn’t help it. He lifted off the shaggy lawn beneath the apple tree and, gaining some altitude, headed where his crow nature took him.
It proved a fool’s errand, for the savory smell issued from the flue of a smokehouse that was visible beyond a hill at rooftop height on the other side of the house. And that smokehouse, and its very smoke, was the source of the miasma of evil he’d sensed as he’d zeroed in on the farmhouse.
But visible from the same high vantage Jim spied a vegetarian alternative to the curing tissues he smelled. Beyond the same rise of ground that hid the smokehouse was a pigsty, and by the sty a corncrib, and in the crib, much browsed already, cobs and cobs of corn. Unhusking the corn to get at the kernels required skills the crow had learned well. Jim let his crow nature have its way.
The crow had its way more than Jim had quite intended. For the next thing he was aware of, beyond the sheer bingeing satisfaction of scarfing down the corn, was a woman’s shrill voice.
“Kelly! Kelly, you get in here! At once! Do you hear me?”
It was, Jim knew, his enemy’s voice, and he made himself stop pecking at the corn.
“Kelly!” the voice insisted. “I want you in this house!”
Jim’s talons let loose from the wire hexagons they’d been grasping, and he rose, on wings still weary, to where he could see her, standing by an old Chevy, radiant with anger.
But even so, or for that reason, an enticing presence. A fucking babe. Jim did not often have an opportunity, and then only in movies or magazines, to see women of her sort. Women who had made themselves objects of desire. Women to die for.
Unthinkingly he emitted a caw! and she looked up. But the crow she saw circling up from behind the hill did not enlist her attention.
A lucky thing for Jim, perhaps, for he realized, with closer attention (and crows do have wonderfully acute vision), that she was cradling a shotgun at her shoulder. Just the way to say hello to a crow.
She let out one final, defeated summons—“Kelly! God damn you!”—and even as she did, Jim knew that the shotgun was meant for Kelly.
Perhaps Kelly knew that, too, for there was no sign of her.
The woman got into the car and drove off, and not long after, Jim, perched on the chimney of the farmhouse, had his first sight of the girl who’d refused to respond to the woman’s call.
Though he’d seen small children from time to time in the prison’s visiting room, he still felt a shock at seeing a living child. That had been the crudest deprivation of his imprisonment, to live in a world in which there were no children, and so, no future.
He fell in love, at once, and wholly, as a dog might do. Or perhaps it was just the calories that were finally moving from his gut into the rest of his system. Love, hope, or just energy: whatever, he had it back again, and he could think thoughts that weren’t just crow hunger and crow fear.
From his perch on the chimney he watched the child, Kelly. She seemed to be in a state of indecision. She walked to where the house’s driveway connected to the asphalt of the road connecting to County Road B, and then a little way along that.
But then she turned back to the house and, lifting her head toward Jim (though probably, he realized, toward an upstairs window), she called out three times, each time more loudly, “Mommy!”
When there was no response, she circled round the house and began to climb the very apple tree that Jim had first alighted on. After she’d cleared the lower branches, Jim could not see her through the obscuring foliage. Also, he realized, it was getting dark. How much time had he let slip by in his corncrib feeding frenzy? He rose from his perch on the chimney and took a wide flight about the tree that Kelly was mounting.
On his second gyre he caught sight of her, perched, birdlike, on a little platform of timber three quarters of the way up the tree. A tree house. She could not have built it herself, and Jim was amazed to think that a girl, and such a small girl, could have made her way to it. But now that she was there, she was probably safe, if only she had the good sense to remain where she was.
Jim set down soundlessly on a branch, barely more than a twig, scarcely six feet above her. She had wrapped herself in a blanket, as though she meant to go to sleep.
He could feel the fear radiating from her little body. Indeed, he could see it, as you can see, in early autumn, the moisture lifting in distinct feathery shapes from the surface of a lake.
Nothing could have been more pitiable, a child so vulnerable, so helpless, and so brave.
And yet he had to do it. For her own sake, but also to do what must be done: he violated her innocence.
When he knew she was at the edge of sleep and her eyes, with the onset of dreams, had begun to quiver beneath closed eyelids, he took possession.
She yielded utterly, as he’d known she must.
Innocence has no defense against the pure of heart.
The crow, released from its bondage, flew off toward the woods.
58
They reached Navaho House later than she would have liked, because she’d taken a detour around the lake so as to avoid the spot where the police car had pulled her over. Wise criminals avoid the scenes of their crimes. Her mother and three of the residents were on the front porch, all of them bundled in shawls or sweaters, though the temperature must still be somewhere in the upper seventies.
“I’m just going to have a word with Mother,” she told Alan, placing her hand on the filthy denim of his jeans as a token of her tender concern. “Then I’ll check to be sure we can go up the back stairs without causing a flutter among all those old hens. I won’t be away more than a couple minutes. Okay?”
He offered not so much as a sideways glance. He’d been like that the whole time they were in the car. It was infuriating. It had also given her time to frame a course of action.
“Okay?” She squeezed his thigh for emphasis.
He winced, and produced a murmur that might have been “Okay.”
She hesitated as she opened the car door, reluctant to leave him by himself for even a little while. But what could he do, after all? Since his earlier act of symbolic rebellion, throwing the bottle from the car, Alan had lost most of his zip, and there’d never been th
at much. She wondered whether she’d even be able to get him up the back stairway to the bathroom. Perhaps she could get him cleaned up in the kitchen. But Louise was always in the kitchen, and it was Louise’s attention she most wanted to avoid.
Diana took the flagstone path to the front of the house and approached to within hailing distance of the women sitting on the porch. “Mother? It’s me.”
“I figured it was,” said Mrs. Turney. Diana could see the burning tip of her mother’s cigarette trace a slow arc in the darkness. “Is Janet feeling better?”
“Oh, yes. Alan finally showed up. She was worried something had happened to him. We all were.”
“The Johnson boy?” asked one of the ladies. Mrs. Gerhardi, by the sound of her voice. “Is he all right?”
“More or less, yes. But he must have got into some kind of trouble. He’s in the car now. I thought I’d bring him in the back way and help him get cleaned up. Is Louise around?”
“Not tonight.”
“She’s at the hospital!” Mrs. Gerhardi announced portentously. The hospital had a special significance for all the residents, for it was so often the first stop on the way to the funeral home.
“Is she all right?” Diana tried to sound properly concerned.
“She’s all right. It’s her son, Jim: there was some kind of accident at the prison, and an ambulance took him off to Duluth. So she had to go up there and left me here to finish making the dinner.”
“I did most of the cooking,” said Mrs. Gerhardi. “It was tuna casserole.”
“And real good, too,” chipped in another woman. “First rate.”
“There was seconds for everyone who wanted seconds,” added the third woman. “And hot gingerbread for dessert.”
“Yeah, we had ourselves a binge, all right,” Mrs. Turney said. “But we still haven’t washed those dishes.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Diana. “You ladies stay here on the porch and enjoy the breeze. I’ll do the dishes. After I’ve helped Alan up to his room.”
Mrs. Gerhardi chuckled. “He needs help getting up the stairs, does he? I think I know what his problem is.”
The three residents chuckled in concert, and then Mrs. Turney said, “Actually, it’s getting a little chilly out here. Maybe we should just turn in.”
“Nonsense,” said Diana. “It’s the middle of August. But how about I brew up a pot of Mom’s special cocoa and bring it out to you here on the porch? That should warm you up.”
“Oh, don’t go to any trouble over us,” said Mrs. Turney, in a tone of tacit agreement.
“No trouble at all,” said Diana, feeling a surge of new energy, for her plan was working without a hitch.
She remembered fat Mrs. Collier, back in tenth-grade English, declaiming a speech by Lady Macbeth: “Be bloody, bold, and resolute, and you’ll not fail.” Or was it “Screw your courage to the sticking point”? Either way, the moral of the story was that Lady Macbeth had understood the situation and taken charge, while her husband was wimping out.
“Alan,” she said, tapping on the window of the car. “Everything’s okay. We can go in the house and get you cleaned up.”
Alan let her help him out of the car and be his prop as he dragged his feet across the unmown lawn toward the back door of Navaho House. Diana kept trying to get him to move faster, for she felt exposed until they were in the house. The moon was a damned spotlight.
And the fluorescent light in the kitchen was even worse. Before she’d left Merle’s cabin she’d wiped off the worst crud from Alan’s face with a wet towel, but that had only exposed thick constellations of scabs and open sores and swollen insect bites, which now, in the kitchen’s glare, made him look like some kind of leper. A good thing Louise Cottonwood wasn’t here to be a witness.
“I think we should go straight upstairs,” she told him.
But that was easier said than done. He had little strength left in his legs, and even with the weight he’d lost, he was too heavy for Diana to carry. At last, by propping him against the handrail (a mandate for every nursing home in the state and an expense Mrs. Turney bitterly resented) and lifting his legs from one tread to the next, she got him to the top of the stairs. But she almost despaired of getting him into the tub until she simply let him tumble backward into it.
She was relieved to see, once she’d managed to tug his clothes off, that Merle had inflicted no serious damage to his body beyond that done by the insects. She turned on the hot water, which at Navaho House was never more than lukewarm, and then went down to the kitchen to start the cocoa.
The ladies (she checked) were still on the porch, reminiscing about the tragic death of Mrs. Witz earlier that summer. Diana lingered with them only long enough to confer with her mother as to where in the pantry to look for the secret ingredients of her special cocoa. It was just where Diana remembered, at the back of the top shelf, in a jar masquerading as Shop ‘n’ Save marjoram. Does anyone ever use marjoram?
Mrs. Turney had long ago come to an understanding with Dr. Karbenkian that a ready supply of barbiturates was an absolute necessity for the operation of an adult residence such as Navaho House. No home remedy was more efficacious, and these particular pills had the special benefit of being undetectable to all but the most sensitive palate, especially when dissolved in hot cocoa. The slight aftertaste of cinnamon simply registered as that special touch. None of the residents had ever suspected. Anytime there had been a flutter in the hen coop, Mrs. Turney had brewed a pot of her special cocoa, and the flutter stilled.
While the kettle on the stove came to a boil, Diana went back up to the bathroom, where she found that Alan had had the presence of mind to turn off the water before it posed a threat of flooding to the bathroom floor.
She sat on the edge of the tub and spoke, in a soothing way, of how relieved she was, and how happy, to have found him basically safe and sound. How horrified she was at Merle’s behavior. How lucky they were to still have each other.
Alan’s response was no more than a nod, but he seemed content to soak in the tub indefinitely.
Back then to the ladies with the pot of cocoa, three empty mugs, and, for her mother, a fourth already full. “This one,” she confided in a whisper, “isn’t decaf.” Mrs. Turney puckered her lips about her cigarette to show that she’d taken Diana’s meaning: her cocoa hadn’t been doctored.
The four of them chatted awhile, in a desultory way, and then one of the ladies yawned, and Diana yawned herself, and Mrs. Turney suggested that they all turn in. The ladies went up to their rooms with no further persuasion.
“Mother,” said Diana when they were alone in the TV room, “before you go to bed, we have to talk.”
“Sure. Just let me get my cigarettes.”
While Mrs. Turney went out to the porch, Diana poured the last of the cocoa in the pot into her mother’s mug. One for the road, so to speak.
“What’s up? Did you and Alan get into a scrap?” Airs. Turney asked, trailing cigarette smoke.
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s Janet. I think she’s pregnant.”
Mrs. Turney thought about this for two deep inhales. “She can’t be,” she declared at last. “She hasn’t been back from Mankato long enough. Besides, she looked thinner when I was there for that pork dinner of yours.”
“Well, it may be it’s just what she thinks. Anyway she won’t come out of her room.”
“Yeah, Kelly told me that on the phone. So why would she think she’s pregnant if she’s not?”
“Alan.”
“I thought you were married to Alan,” said Mrs. Turney, slurping down the last of the cocoa and then taking a ferocious drag on her cigarette.
“Maybe that’s why he disappeared right after that dinner. He couldn’t go on living with both of us in the same house.”
“Well, it’s your problem,” said Mrs. Turney after some thought. She lit another cigarette from the one she was smoking and then set both of them down in the heaping ashtray on the end tabl
e beside her chair. “And her problem, and Alan’s, too, I guess.” She sighed. “I’m tired, Diana. This has been a hard day all round.”
“Go up to bed then, Mom. I’ll straighten away things down here. But don’t go into the bathroom. Alan’s still up there in the tub.”
When she’d heard her mother trudge to the top of the stairs, Diana went to where she knew her mother kept her secret store of Christian Brothers brandy. She sloshed some on the shag carpet beside the chair her mother had been sitting in, and then some more on the chair’s threadbare armrest.
Now?
No. First she checked to see that Alan was still in the tub. He was, and, even without benefit of the cocoa, snoozing.
Her mother (she checked) was already conked out in her bed, still dressed, except for her shoes.
Then Diana dealt with windows and doors. The bathroom window shut, its door open; the same in her mother’s room. Fumes were the most important consideration. People usually didn’t burn to death in these situations, they were asphyxiated.
She went through the rest of the house, making strategic adjustments and feeling a transcendental assurance that she was acting as an angel of mercy. All these women, even her mother, had simply been living in heaven’s waiting room.
At the last minute she remembered the alarm system and went about the house removing the batteries from the smoke detectors. Their absence would only register as one more of Mrs. Turney’s little economies.
When she was done, she looked up the back stairway, wondering if she should do a last inspection of Alan, slumped in the tub. But what would have been the point?
Their love had been, on the whole, an enriching experience. But it was over now.
Be bloody, bold, and resolute, she reminded herself.
The time had come.
But both the cigarettes her mother had left smoking in the ashtray had gone out, so it was not, finally, that easy. She had to light both cigarettes again. A vile taste, and a vile habit, but she squared her shoulders and did it.
THE SUB A Study In Witchcraft Page 30