32
Scent of grass
As the next day wore on, I grew more and more excited, waiting for evening. Maud had called me to find out if I could drive with Sam and her out to White’s Bridge Road, as she had suggested the day before. I was really astonished that the Sheriff would do this; on the other hand, as Maud had said, what did he have to lose? It was the crime scene, after all, and he’d found out precious little about who shot Fern Queen (which is what Maud had said to him, and which I didn’t think was the most diplomatic way of getting him to agree to what she wanted).
Anyway, we were to meet up at the Rainbow that evening at seven o’clock. That was when Maud finished her stint. The Sheriff never seemed to finish his. He could be up until all hours on police business, as he had been when Mr. Butternut called in about the lost girl.
That brought me skidding to a stop in the dining room as I was going to Miss Bertha’s table to put out the butter. If Mr. Butternut showed up when we were there—and didn’t he always?—he’d certainly say something to the Sheriff about me being the girl he’d walked to Brokedown House with, the one who’d “disappeared.” I pondered: could the Sheriff have guessed it was me? His description of the girl it might have been fit me, except for the “stubborn” part.
I found a rock-hard butter patty in the bottom of the bowl of ice and plopped that on Miss Bertha’s bread-and-butter plate. Then I searched the butter on top until I found the softest one and dropped that on Mrs. Fulbright’s.
I had made arrangements with Walter to serve them their dinner that evening and he said he thought he could manage. There was something put-upon in his reply and I figured he was just imitating my mother, who was always pressed for time but who also just “managed” whatever it was she was called upon to do. I said to Walter I was sure he could, as he had been smart enough to make my chicken sandwich out of white meat. Sometimes it’s best to butter people up; in some instances I’ve never known the truth to help.
Maud and the Sheriff were standing on the sidewalk outside the Rainbow Café as the taxi rounded the corner. She was wearing her old brown coat, flared in a feminine fashion and buttoned at the neck with one big tiger-eye button. The Sheriff had one stem of his dark glasses hooked in his shirt pocket and I hoped that meant his mind was off duty. Not off duty in the sense he wouldn’t be as smart as usual, just that he wouldn’t be as suspicious as usual.
I caught this glimpse of Maud and the Sheriff through the window as Delbert slowed the taxi down and before they knew it was me. It jarred me, the way they were turned slightly to each other and how deeply involved they were in their talk. Even if the talk was just their usual banter, and though they stood in the wide, bright main street, the meeting still looked secret.
As I said, it jarred me. I hardly ever saw the Sheriff’s wife; in fact, I had almost forgotten she existed until I saw her a little while ago in the Rainbow, buying pastry. He had been there too, coming in for his regular cup of coffee, and when I remembered that now, I thought it strange. For their meeting had looked accidental, like acquaintances who hadn’t seen each other for some time. Florence was dark and stormy looking, her face shut down as a house would be in a storm, windows closed, doors bolted. But Maud’s face was as clear and placid as lake water, so open you could have slipped right in.
We all piled into the police car, Maud remarking it was the first time she’d ever got a ride in one, and the Sheriff responding by saying it wasn’t a taxi, after all, and me responding to his response that not even Axel’s was a “taxi” as I never saw anybody in it.
“Fern Queen was in it,” said the Sheriff.
Yes, and that made Axel’s movements all the more mysterious. I reflected on this as the countryside flew by, as the same cows near the same fence looked at us curiously. It was rare being with people who didn’t have to talk all the time to feel comfortable with one another. For there were stretches of silence as we drove the highway to the lake. It was rare and I liked being part of that rarity.
I saw the sign of the Silver Pear right after we turned off the highway and felt I’d spent a large part of my life by now at White’s Bridge. Inside of another five minutes we had crossed the bridge and were bumping along past Mirror Pond.
There was no sign of Mr. Butternut. The windows of his house were daubs of gold in the dusk. He liked having the lights on. This road had grown so familiar to me that I felt more than just a visitor; it was as if I’d been away and now was on the road home. No, not home exactly, but I think it’s how much you feel when you’re in a place that puts your personal stamp on it. Why Brokedown House should make me feel this, I honestly don’t know.
The front door was stiffer than I remembered and I wanted to creep back when the Sheriff pushed at it. said we could use the side door and he asked me how often I’d been here; I seemed to know it pretty well. As we three filed in, I saw how unlived-in and run-down it looked, with its possessions strewn about. The light coming through the fly-specked windows now was ashy and gave the walls and floorboard a gloomy look.
The small fireplace mantle had pulled out from the wall. It was some sort of marble, but after years of its bathing in fire and smoke, I couldn’t tell whether the veins in the marble were green or black.
“It’s cold,” said Maud, drawing her coat closer about her. “It’s the kind of cold a furnace wouldn’t warm up.”
I nodded. “I know just what you mean.”
“It’s the kind of cold you hear about that’s on the sills of doors you walk through.”
“The cold ghosts make.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said the Sheriff, sighing. He was running a finger across the spines of a row of books. There were built-in bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace. Looking at one of the dusty books, he said, “The cold’s different because the place hasn’t seeped up any human warmth for a long time; the warmth has leaked out.”
“Oh, sure,” said Maud, disbelievingly.
“It has,” he said. “Probably there isn’t any heating except for space heaters. It used to be a nice summer cottage.”
On the way here, the Sheriff had told us he had the county clerk look up the deeding of the property. The earliest information she had found showed the house had belonged to a Marshall Thring, had passed on to his heirs, then gone through the hands of several owners—Reckard, Bosun, Wheat—bought and sold, sold and bought, the last people being named Calhoun. I was familiar with none of these names, except for Calhoun, which is the name Mr. Butternut had said. The other names were useless to me in the solving of this mystery, would be soon forgotten. I think I wished the house itself had been plunged in mystery, that the Sheriff, for all of his searching through titles and deeds and documents, had found nothing, and that the owners were nowhere. Or that it had never changed hands after the original owner, a tall, black-bearded man named Crow, who, it was reported, had murdered his wife and put a curse on the house ... well, something like that.
The furniture was wicker, similar to our own green wicker on the front porch but here a dirty white. The cushions were covered in cretonne, my mother’s favorite material. The rose and lilac pattern was faded now, and dusty.
There were three bedrooms, one of them the one Dwayne and I had investigated, still with a trace of that green scent in the air from the half-full bottle of cologne. I only noticed it probably because I knew about it. The scent was very faint.
The Sheriff was looking over the letters on the bureau and had picked up one of them when he looked around and asked,
“You wearing perfume, Maud?”
“Me? No, I hardly ever do. I forget to put it on.” She was sitting on a footstool, looking at the stuffed animals and dolls. She was holding one, studying it.
I picked up the bottle of toilet water from the dressing table and waved it under his nose. “This?”
He sniffed. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.” He took the bottle from me, held it out to the quickly fading light of the window.
I said, “It hasn’t been sitting around long. At least not all these years. It would have evaporated.”
“You want to join the force? I could use a crime scene expert.”
I had, as they say, the grace to blush. I wasn’t about to tell him the idea had come from somebody else. So I just shrugged, as if such crime-scene-expert powers of mine were for me an everyday occurrence. If I kept up the way I had been lately, maybe they soon would be.
The room was dimly lit, as if only a vapor of light hung in the air and, like the trace of that grassy scent, evaporated as the minutes passed. Outside the light grew dimmer. Maud said, looking at the window, “I hope we have a flashlight. All I’ve got is this little penlight thing.” She was searching in her canvas shopping bag.
He pulled a flashlight from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up wordlessly. He appeared to be as interested as Dwayne had been in the collection of stuff on top of the bureau. He was looking at the ring with the dark blue stone set among tiny diamonds. “Lapis lazuli.”
“What?” Maud turned from the doll collection.
“This ring. It’s beautiful. Semiprecious, not valuable, still ...”
I said, “Are those diamonds around it?” I could hardly see the ring from across the room, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I doubt it. Pretty, but not diamonds.” He picked up one of the letters.
Do men with guns all go woozy over a few pieces of jewelry and somebody else’s old love letters? If they were love letters. I never got the chance to read them, which was very annoying; I was the one, after all, who’d started investigating this place. “Do you think you should be reading other people’s mail?”
He had rested a forearm on the bureau and angled his flashlight down on the paper. “In the line of duty,” he said, without taking his eyes from the page. It might even be the same letter that had fascinated Dwayne.
“Well? What’s it say?”
“Here—” He held it out. “You want to read it?”
“No. I don’t read other people’s mail.” If I could ever get my hands on the hotel mail before Ree-Jane got it, that would change.
“Someone’s very unhappy about leaving. I don’t know if it’s the leaver or the left.” He had resumed his reading posture.
In spite of the cold, the growing dark, and my irritation that the Sheriff, and maybe Maud, too, were getting so much enjoyment out of this visit when I was gaining next to nothing, despite this, a warmth stole over me, stealthily, as if fearing rejection by my stiffer, glassy-eyed self. I did not know what the reason for this was.
Maybe there was a similar feeling when I was around Dwayne and the Woods and Mr. Root. The thing is, I did not have to bow and scrape to these people. Not that I’m much of a bower-and-scraper anyway, but I know I’m expected to be for Mrs. Davidow, Ree-Jane, the hotel guests, and people in La Porte like Helene Baum and the mayor. I could divide up everyone into the people who expect me to bow and scrape and the ones who don’t. Most adults don’t realize my feelings are just as important to me as theirs are to them. So maybe it’s not so much not being taken to Florida, it’s that no one wanted to listen to my feelings about not being taken—
The dance! The dance! It was to be tonight. But it didn’t start until ten P.M. It couldn’t have been more than eight, so I had plenty of time.
“What dance?” asked Maud.
I had said it aloud. That was so embarrassing. “What? Nothing, nothing. I was only thinking.”
She just looked at me a moment longer and smiled.
Now, that’s another thing about people who aren’t like Maud, the ones you have to bow and scrape to. They don’t really want to know how you’re feeling, they want to know you’re feeling the way they think you should be feeling. That’s what they want to know.
I got annoyed with myself. Here the Sheriff is investigating—well, he’s reading, so I guess it’s investigating—and Maud is helping, in her way, and all I’m doing is going on to myself about myself. Can’t I think of other people sometimes? But that question doesn’t sound like me. What sounds more like me is wishing Shirl would slip on one of her banana cream pie banana peels and land on her butt right in front of everybody in the Rainbow. My wish list is long and murderous and I can only square that with my better self (I guess I have one) by saying, “They deserve it.”
Maud was holding the doll on her lap when I saw her glance stray over my shoulder and heard her draw in a sharp breath. “Sam! ” He turned to her; her finger pointed at the window. “There was a man out there, looking in.”
Dwayne. I bet it was. Was he that stupid to be out there poaching with the Sheriff’s car, clearly marked POLICE sitting right on the road? I positioned myself at Maud’s side (for my sake, not hers).
The Sheriff went to the window and raised it. Now came sounds of a loud thrashing, like an elephant hurtling through the bushes. The Sheriff picked up his flashlight, slid his gun from its holster, and went into the front room. We followed close behind.
As he opened the front door, he said, “Stay here.”
Sure. With only Maud’s penlight between us? It was dark out. We waited until he was out the door and had rounded the side of the house before we followed him.
His arm was crooked, gun pointing at the sky. In the other hand he held the flashlight, fanning out light over the shrubbery, which was dark and dense. The rhododendron and mountain laurel were big enough to conceal a person; the dew-wet grass was tall enough in spots to wet my shins.
Behind him, Maud whispered, “It’s probably just raccoons.”
Or rabbits, I didn’t add.
“Making that much noise? I don’t think so.... Here comes—”
The dark shape coming through the weeds and bushes lightened steadily in the path of the Sheriff’s flashlight and showed up as Dwayne. It didn’t surprise me, of course, and I hadn’t been scared, really. And Dwayne didn’t seem in the least bit abashed at being caught red-handed. Well, he hadn’t been caught, exactly, as there were no rabbits in evidence. Still, there was his rifle, which didn’t look especially innocent.
“Sheriff,” Dwayne said and nodded.
“Dwayne Hayden? What’re you doing out here, Dwayne?” The Sheriff reholstered his gun and, strangely, I felt a rush of sadness. I was beginning to think that nothing in the world could make a person feel safer—not a parent’s arms, not a million dollars, not a lifetime supply of ham pinwheels—than a man with a gun, cocked, ready to fire. Maybe I was entering my violent years.
“Nothin’, really. Just walkin’,” said Dwayne.
“You usually take that Winchester on your walks?”
“This?” As if he’d forgotten he had it. “Yeah, matter of fact, I do. Never can tell who you might meet up with.”
“What was all that noise we heard? Maud here—”
“Maud.” Dwayne dipped his head slightly in a greeting.
“Dwayne.” She smiled. Dwayne had a way of making you smile even when he wasn’t.
“—saw a face at the window,” the Sheriff ended.
“ ’Twasn’t me. Someone’s around though, I know that. That’s what the noise was, to answer your question.” He turned and looked back through the undergrowth. “I was coming along from just through there—there’s a sort of path through the brush that goes along more or less parallel to the road—and someone slipped past me. I don’t mean on the same path; I was a little deeper in.”
The Sheriff said, “Come on.” They went back the way Dwayne had come, disappearing into the trees and thicket. I didn’t like it, the way the woods could just swallow you up, the way the woods around Spirit Lake had swallowed up Ben Queen that night. It was black and thick with undergrowth. I heard them talking and wondered what they had found, but not enough to go into those bushes. Maud was holding my hand and I could tell she was not budging either. Their voices got farther away. Then there was silence. I looked at Maud, alarmed. She was straining to hear, too. Why was I so afraid now, when I hadn’t been as much as ten minutes ago?
They came back. The Sheriff was asking Dwayne, “Did you get any sort of look at him?”
“Not really. And I wouldn’t say it was a ‘him,’ neither. I think it was a woman. Woman or girl.”
The Girl. I hope not. I hope she left this place. But she didn’t strike me as a person who thought much about her own safety. Or anyone’s safety, for that matter. There are some people who have a purpose, one purpose and only one, and disregard anything that’s outside of that purpose. I think hers was getting rid of Fern Queen.
There was a silence as Dwayne lit a cigarette, then, remembering his manners, I guess, offered them around, including to me. At times, I thought everything was pretty much of a joke to Dwayne, probably including being arrested for poaching.
The Sheriff asked Maud, “Could it have been female, that face you saw?”
Maud seemed to be trying to bring the sight back to mind. “I don’t think so, I don’t ... This face was so heavy, so ... Russian.”
Well, we all frowned at that. The Sheriff opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head. “ ‘Russian.’ So you’re saying it was a man?”
After more frowning, she said, “Look, I wouldn’t want to die in a ditch on it, but, yes, I think it was a man’s face.”
He flicked his flashlight on and off, on and off, then said, as he started walking, “I want to have a look at that window. It was this one, right?” He pointed toward the side of the house around the corner.
“That’s right,” said Maud. We all followed him.
The Sheriff handed Dwyane his flashlight and knelt down, looking at the ground beneath the window. He told Dwayne to shine the light on the ground as he held his hand above the faint impression of a footprint. He rose. “I’ll have Donny come tomorrow morning and go over this ground.”
Oh, hell! I thought. Donny. If there’s anyone I didn’t want messing around in my mystery, it was Donny Mooma.
“You should’ve brought your murder bag,” said Maud. She asked Dwayne for a cigarette.
The Sheriff stared at her. So did we. “My what?”
“Your murder bag. They all use them at Scotland Yard.” She thanked Dwayne for the light and blew out a stream of smoke.
The Sheriff reclaimed his flashlight. “Now, just how do you know that?”
“Books, of course. Many books.”
We had started walking now toward the car, Dwayne too. It was wonderful the way he just sort of fell in with whatever the crowd was doing.
“You like William Faulkner?” asked Dwayne, who was playing his own flashlight across the ground.
“Faulkner?” Maud seemed surprised. “Well, I tried reading him, but he’s awful hard.”
I walked with them, not wanting to be left out of the literary discussion.
“Some are,” Dwayne said. “I agree. Sound and the Fury, that’s hell on wheels, ain’t it? But Light in August, that’s not too tough. You should try that next time.”
As if Maud were always picking up and tossing away one Billy Faulkner after another.
The Sheriff offered to give Dwayne a lift home, since he was dropping Maud off.
That meant I’d have him all to myself on the trip back to town. For that I’d read The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and anything else Billy Faulkner ever wrote, hell on wheels or not.