Epilogue

Detective Raven Burns and this tall-drink-of-water poop-bird by the name of Willie Lee Speck were standing with their hands stuck deep in their back pockets. They looked kind of useless at the moment. They stared at this white house that had a bunch of thick, dead vines twisting all over the sides and on top of it. It looked like them vines were trying to drag the entire house down into the underworld.

They weren’t talking much. Her red Mustang was parked next to the van he used to take on jobs to clean up after the good citizens of Byrd’s Landing finished beating each other or killing each other or simply having the nerve to die in their sleep so their beds become their cooling boards. There used to be this junkman who took to following the cleaning man around, but you don’t see him much these days, especially since that Speck character don’t work a lot of jobs no more.

Finally, Speck spoke. “We are two truly fucked-up human beans. You know that, Ray Ray?”

He said it just like that: bean, like the lentil. You’ll have to excuse him because he’s as crazy as an unmanned jackhammer.

All she said in return was, “You got that right.”

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe how bad my mind slipped. All those animals,” he said, shaking all over. “Can’t believe I did that.”

“Some say I’ve done worse.”

“What do you say?”

“I haven’t decided that yet.”

They stood not saying a thing for a while, staring at the house as if they were expecting it to talk to them.

Then he said, “Thanks for standing up for me at my hearing. All those nice things you said about me.”

“I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Figured you didn’t. You think by putting this house right all these crazy things will stop happening around town?”

“I don’t think so, Willie Lee. But it’s a beautiful place, and you and I have some making up to do.”

“If we do it by the book like you want, it’s going to cost a lot more.”

“I’m ready for that.”

“And it’s going to be hard scraping what’s left of your friend off the wall.”

Now, it ain’t for us to judge what she says next. It ain’t right thinking or wrong thinking. It was just Raven thinking. What I call that get-along thinking when life has smacked you down so many times that you don’t know how to get up.

“It’s not going to be hard.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because no part of Oral is on those walls. He’s not in some heaven, or even in the graveyard. That’s not where the dead are.”

“Where do you think they are?”

“In our hearts. The ones we want to keep with us, anyway.” Like Jean, Raven thought, her stepmother.

Those words, sure as Monday follows Sunday, came out of her mouth. That fool Speck actually smiled. They walked up the steps ready to put death in a mop bucket like it was an easy thing to do.

But Raven knew that wasn’t right. And it’s hard to believe that even after all she had just gone through that she could look another human in the eye and lie.

Raven knows that the dead don’t waste time setting up quarters in the heart. They like to set up their milk crates and their straight razors and newspaper stories about their killings in your head, so they can keep you company for the rest of your life. And it don’t matter if you want them there or not. It’s not ’til you join them in death that they’ll finally let you alone.