fifteen

“I had a possessed rabbit once.”

“I’m not even surprised.”

On the square in downtown East Bledsoe Ferry, the Heritage Days festival was in full swing. On the northeast corner a Ferris wheel towered majestically over the courthouse. A merry-go-round spun gaily to the south and the air was filled with calliope music and the scent of peanuts and cotton candy. The easy joy around them reminded Death perversely of the Doziers and all that they had lost. The police were at a standstill, waiting for the results of tests on things they’d found at the crime scene, and Death resolved to enjoy the company of his own loved ones and cherish this time with them.

He and Wren were standing in front of a game booth. His Marine Corps marksmanship had won her a stuffed animal and the carny was trying to get him to wager it in another round for a chance to win the largest prize, a giant stuffed teddy bear.

“He was three feet tall and green and his name was Chauncey,” Wren was saying. “I won him in a drawing when I was, like, nine.”

“Someone had a drawing for a possessed rabbit?”

“Oh, I don’t think it was possessed when I won it. I think that happened later, the night of the Ouija board.”

Death grinned. “That sounds like the name of another horror movie. What happened The Night of the Ouija Board?”

Wren leaned one hip against the game booth counter and turned so she could look up at him. “Well, I had this Ouija board. I got it—”

“At an auction?”

“Of course. I was ten or eleven, something like that, and my cousin Jenny was spending the night. We opened it on the floor between us and we both crossed our hearts and swore not to push the pointer. And you know how, in the movies, there’s always flickering lights and curtains that move with no wind and then the pointer slides across the board and says it’s going to kill you and you hear voices and so on and so forth?”

“Yeah. So what happened?”

“Nothing. Neither one of us pushed it, so it didn’t move. It was terribly anti-climactic.”

“This is the most unbelievable ghost story I’ve ever heard.”

“Why? Because nothing happened?”

“Because neither of you cheated and pushed the pointer.”

Wren stuck her tongue out at him.

“So what made you think your rabbit got possessed?” the carny asked.

“Okay, so, the house I grew up in was really old. It’s gone now. But the upstairs was just one room, under the eaves, with slanty walls on two sides and a stairwell in the corner. That was my room. There was a railing by the stairway, but it was the same height as my bed so my dad wouldn’t let me push the bed against it because he didn’t want me to roll out of bed and wake up dead.”

“I approve of his logic.” Death grinned.

Wren smiled up at him and went on with her story. “So I had Chauncey at the foot of the bed, between the bed and the stair rail, facing away from me like he was looking out the window. That night Jenny and I both had the same nightmare that he was possessed, and when we woke up he was at the head of the bed facing me.”

“You don’t think Jenny might have moved him?”

“I think I’d have woke up. Besides, how would she know about my dream?”

“I still don’t see how that necessarily equals a possessed rabbit.”

She considered. “‘Possessed’ might be too strong a word. He was definitely uncanny, though. After that, he moved around a lot on his own. And he seemed to have an extra-beady glint in his little plastic eyes.”

“What ever happened to him?”

“He got stolen. I have a shirttail relative who’s really light-fingered, and he came in my house when I was gone one day and stole Chauncey to give him to a girl he was seeing. She turned out to be a total psycho. I’ve always wondered if she was always that way or if the rabbit was responsible.”

They stood there in silence for a couple of minutes thinking about it.

“Was there a point to this?” the carny asked.

“I think the point is that giant stuffed animals freak her out,” Death explained.

Wren beamed and hugged his left arm, leaning her head against his biceps. “I love it that you understand me.”

“But this bear is totally cool,” the carny argued, “and I guarantee that it is 100 percent not possessed.”

“Thanks,” Death said, “but I think we’ll stick with the smaller one. Which one do you want, honey? The blue one?”

Wren nodded. Death accepted the stuffed animal and handed it to her as they turned away.

The square was jammed with people and it never ceased to amaze Death, who’d grown up in St. Louis, how many of these people he recognized, even with half of them being in eighteenth-century costumes. He remembered how his life had been a year earlier. He had been fresh out of the military and fresh out of a VA hospital, abandoned by his wife and bereft of his supposedly dead brother. He had been broke and homeless, living in his car with pain and depression as his constant companions.

And now he was here, surrounded by friends, with Wren on his arm and his brother somewhere in the crowd.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Wren said.

He smiled down at her. “I was just thinking we should ride the merry-go-round. You want to?”

“Okay! But we have to make it to the stage on the other side of the courthouse in time to get good seats for the talent show. Both of the elder Keystone couples are in it.”

“Can do.”

_____

Robin Keystone was smiling broadly at the girl he’d had a crush on for the past two months. It was a frozen sort of smile, with clenched teeth and a manic gleam in his eye, and the pretty fifteen-year-old in the long dress and poke bonnet looked terrified.

Randy Bogart mentally face-palmed and inserted himself into the encounter before it could get worse. He walked over and dropped an arm over Robin’s shoulder and addressed the girl.

“Hi there! Sarabeth, right?”

She nodded warily.

“Sarabeth, you’re going to have to forgive Robin here. He doesn’t mean to come off all creepy and stalkerish. The thing is, he wants to tell you that he thinks you look very pretty in that costume, but he’s shy.”

Robin turned bright red and for a minute Randy was afraid he was going to faint or throw up. Sarabeth was blushing too, now, and she ran a hand down her skirt hesitantly.

“Do you like it?” she asked. “I made it myself.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s awesome,” Robin stammered. “I saw you earlier, in the parade. That stagecoach you were riding in is really cool. Your uncle builds those, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does! My sisters and I help him do the research so they’re totally authentic. Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah, I’d love to!”

Randy clapped Robin on the shoulder and stepped back to watch them leave. “Yeah, I rock,” he said to himself and went to find his brother.

He met Death and Wren getting off the merry-go-round, and Wren waved a blue teddy bear at him. “Randy! Come with us. We’re going to go see the Keystones in the talent show.”

He fell in beside her and the three of them made their way around the courthouse. They were passing the bandstand, a large white gazebo across from Death’s office that was currently occupied by a barbershop quartet, when Randy’s eye fell on a group huddled around the street sign on the corner. He reached over and smacked the back of his hand against Death’s shoulder.

“I didn’t know there was going to be a freak show here, too.”

“I see them,” Death agreed with a wry grimace.

“See who? What? Where?” Wren stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd.

“Over by the street sign. It’s the CAC. What they’re protesting here, I can’t imagine.”

“Oh yeah,” Wren said. “I’d heard they might. They’ve been saying we’re damned because we let a Muslim be buried in the city cemetery and that we should dig up her body and burn her as a witch to appease an angry god.”

Randy shook his head in disgust. “His own son is murdered and this is how he honors his memory? By being hateful to strangers? The only reason you can even call them human,” he said, “is because there’s no animal that deserves such a vile comparison.”

“I don’t think their protest is having the impact that they were going for,” Death observed.

The CAC protest was made up of half a dozen people holding signs that said things like Jesus hates you and God damns you all. The only festival-goers who were paying them any attention were a trio of drunken young women who were giggling insanely and using the CAC as a backdrop for selfies.

“I wish I was good with photo editing software,” Wren said. “I’d take pictures of them and then change what their signs say.”

“What would you make them say?” Death asked.

“Well, see that tall guy? I’d put one of those aviator caps with the big goggles on him and make his sign say ‘I like the tinman.’”

The Bogart brothers both stopped and stared down at her.

“I don’t get it?” Randy said.

“A Christmas Story? The movie? Remember? The weird little kid in line to see Santa? Never mind … ”

Death laughed and gave her a one-armed hug as they turned away toward the stage on the west lawn. As he looked back, though, Tyler Jones turned as if he sensed Death’s scrutiny and their eyes met over the crowd. Jones glared and shook his sign at Death. It said James 4:9. When they’d reached the stage and found good seats for the talent show, Death took out his phone and looked up the reference.

“‘Be afflicted and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy into heaviness.’”

_____

The stage, set up in the municipal parking lot on the west side of the courthouse, was actually a flatbed trailer donated for the evening by a local transportation company and decked out with bunting and makeshift curtains. The local radio station had set up a sound system, with giant speakers on both sides of the stage and a DJ in front of it playing music. They also had a roving reporter who was providing live commentary on the festival in between songs.

Death and Wren had listened to him in the car on the way over. Now Death was keeping an eye out for him, because if they saw him he’d need to be protected from Wren. His commentary consisted of a lot of “who is that? Is that who I think it is? That over there? It looks like … no, maybe not. Oh! Hey! What’s going on over here? Well! Isn’t this something.”

Wren was planning to find him, smack him, and shout, “We can’t see what you’re looking at! There’s no picture! You’re on the radio, you moron!”

“When do the Keystones appear?” Death asked.

“Probably not for a while,” Wren said. “They usually start with the little kids and work their way up to the grownups.”

“Okay, so level with me. Are we going to be sitting here watching sickeningly cute children in elaborate costumes struggle through ‘I’m A Little Teapot’?”

Wren whistled and looked away.

Death sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Randy made a popcorn run and got back just in time for the opening of the Forty-Fifth Annual Heritage Days Talent Show. “What did I miss?”

“Not a thing.”

“Damn.”

All in all, the children weren’t as bad as Death was expecting. The first one on stage was a toddler in a dinosaur costume. The DJ put on a children’s song, the baby’s mother handed him a microphone, and he marched to the middle of the stage, put the mike up to his mouth, and announced, “I can go pee all by myself.”

Then he proceeded to demonstrate.

By the time the audience settled down again there were a bunch of fifth-grade girls singing Motown and the roving reporter was standing beside Death’s chair saying, into his own microphone, “Now, who is that little girl? The one in the red? I should know who that is. Do you recognize her?”

Death slipped his arm around Wren, pulled her close, and covered her mouth with his own, drawing the kiss out until the reporter had moved away. He released her and she sat up, blushing and gasping for air.

“You can’t save him,” she said when she could speak again. “I know where he lives. But please feel free to keep trying.”

They sat through a surprisingly good clarinetist and a really bad juggler and finally the announcer stepped up and introduced “The Dancing Keystones!”

The crowd (many of them Keystones) roared, Death and Wren and Randy cheering along with them, as Sam and Doris Keystone danced their way onstage. Sam was dressed as a gangster, in a pinstriped suit, a narrow tie, spats, and a fedora. Doris was a flapper, in a bright blue, sleeveless dress that came just to her knees, and flat-heeled, black patent leather shoes. She had her hair done in finger waves and a wealth of long beaded necklaces.

The DJ put on some swing music that Death thought his grandparents would have probably recognized, and Sam and Doris danced and spun across the stage. They’d reached the other side when Roy’s voice, sounding cranky, came from off-stage.

“Wait! Wait! You started too soon! What in tarnation are you doing, starting without us?”

“Well, you shoulda been on time!”

“Well you shoulda waited!”

“Well”—Sam waved his hand—“what in the world were you doing that took so long, anyway?”

“I hadda put my costume on and make myself pretty.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Brother, there ain’t a costume in the world that can make you look pretty.”

“You say that,” Roy retorted, “but don’t forget we’re identical twins!”

He came onstage, finally, leading Leona by the hand, and the crowd went wild. Roy and Leona were dressed for disco.

Leona was wearing short-short blue jean cut-offs and a midriff-baring peasant blouse, and she had her hair done up in a huge cloud around her head. Roy wore a form-fitting polyester jumpsuit. It was brown on the bottom and a pale tangerine on top, with wide bell bottoms and a zipper down the front. He had the zipper open almost to his navel, and a welter of heavy gold chains and medallions nested among his gray chest hairs. He was sporting an honest-to-God afro.

Sam waited for the furor to die down before he turned to his brother and spoke again.

“I thought you were going to wear a costume.”

Roy puffed out his thin chest and thumped his breastbone. “You’re just jealous because you don’t look snazzy like me.”

“I remember when you wore that to prom.”

“At least I got to go to prom.”

“Hey! I coulda gone to prom,” Sam protested. “I just didn’t because I wanted to protect my best girl!” He put one arm around Doris and hugged her.

“Protect her?” Roy demanded “Protect her from what?”

“From having to see you in that getup.”

Roy pushed his sleeves up and strutted up to his brother like he was going to fight him. Sam met him in the middle of the stage, belligerently, and their wives caught at their arms and dragged them apart.

“Now, come on, fellas,” Leona said. “Are we going to fight or are we going to dance?”

“Yeah,” Doris said. “We want to dance.”

Roy pulled himself up, very proper, and sniffed at his brother. “The ladies,” he said, “want to dance.”

“I’ll show you dancing,” Sam retorted. He took Doris in his arms and they resumed their Jitterbug while Roy looked on, pantomiming annoyance.

Roy went to the edge of the stage and engaged in an elaborate, silent argument with the DJ that ended when he pretended to slip him a folded bill. The swing music cut off and was replaced with the Bee Gees. A spotlight came on and found Roy, who strutted and pranced across the stage, pointing at the sky and wiggling his hips.

Leona stepped back and crossed her arms. “Yeah, I’m not gonna do that.”

“Hey!” Sam protested. “Wait a minute! We were here first! What happened to our music?” He shouted and waved his arms at the DJ.

“He can’t hear you,” Roy said. “He’s got a twenty in his ear.”

“That’s not dancing!” Sam ranted.

“This,” Roy said, discoing and wiggling, “is just as much dancing as this”—he mocked a jitterbug—“is!”

“It is not! This”—Sam jitterbugged—“is dancing, and this”—he pretended to disco badly—“is not!”

“It’s all moving in time to the music! It doesn’t make any never mind whether you move like this”—Roy swung his hips side to side—“or this”—he wiggled them back and forth.

Sam disagreed. They danced a carefully choreographed argument around each other, swinging and jiving and bickering in time to the music until they both wound up stooped in awkward positions moaning about their backs.

Doris and Leona dragged a wheelbarrow in from offstage, piled their husbands into it, curtsied to the crowd, and wheeled them away to the sound of laughter and applause.

_____

Wren was still giggling as she and Death made their way through the dwindling crowd, headed back toward where they’d left his Jeep. Randy had excused himself to go check on something and they walked close together with their arms around one another. It was getting late and the food and game stalls were beginning to close down, but the rides were still up and running. Death paused as they came abreast of the Ferris wheel and nodded toward it.

“It’s a nice night. Shall we go for a ride?”

“Okay.” Wren looked around. “We’ll have to see if we can find a ticket booth still open.”

Death held up two cardstock rectangles. “Got it covered.”

“Well, look at you being all prepared!”

“I keep telling you, Boy Scouts got nothing on the Marines.”

The line was practically nonexistent. They wound their way through the cattle rails, handed off their tickets at the entrance to the fenced area below the ride, and in just a couple of minutes were coming up under the wheel. They waited while the couple ahead of them boarded, then that gondola swung up and away, an empty one came down to a gentle stop, and it was their turn.

Death climbed on first and turned back to help her step from the solid deck onto the rocking car. When they were seated he put his arm around her shoulder and she snuggled up against him. The ride attendant latched the bar across in front of them and the wheel turned, gliding them back and up.

Death clenched his hand around her shoulder and took a breath, but waited until they were near the top of the wheel to speak.

“So, I’ve been thinking about us moving in together … ”

“Oh.” Wren turned a bit so she could see his face and steeled herself for disappointment. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No. No, just the opposite, actually.”

The fist-sized yellow bulbs that outlined the wheel cast a faint golden glow across the car without really illuminating anything. The merry-go-round was still playing in the distance, but the bright melody did more to accentuate the silence around them than to break it. Their gondola crested the wheel and a light breeze lifted Wren’s hair from her forehead. The town and the countryside and the entire Earth spread out below them, but here there were only the two of them.

They might have been the only people in the world.

“I love you Wren. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m more sure of that than I ever have been of anything. So I was thinking, instead of just moving in together, maybe we should go all the way.”

Surprised, she made a little noise and gave him a weird look. He caught her eye, read her mind, and laughed.

“Silly! I’m not talking about sex.”

“But then … ?”

He reached his other hand over, took her chin, and turned her face up toward his.

“Wren Morgan, will you marry me?”

“Oh!” Surprise stole her breath away. Tears filled her eyes and her throat. Unable to speak, she simply nodded.

“You will?”

She nodded.

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Are you ever going to be able to talk again?”

“Maybe?” she said. It came out as a squeak. Death laughed and held her close.

“I have a ring for you,” he said, “but I’m afraid to take it out up here. I think my hands are shaking. I’m afraid I might drop it.”

“I know my hands are shaking,” she agreed. “No! Don’t drop the ring! That would be a bad omen. I can put it on when we’re on the ground.”

“And wear it and be mine. Always and forever.”

The wheel had come around while they talked and risen again to the top of the world. It was a light night, with constellations worked in silver sequins against an old-denim sky. A crescent moon pendant dangled in the east. The stars above seemed closer than the lights of the midway below.

Wren put her head on Death’s chest.

She could hear his heart beat.