Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Page 18

  Memphis blinked. “Well. Now you can get a cookie jar with chickens on it.” He gazed at her eyebrows. They had been plucked away and exaggerated over the years. They arched across her forehead in a fantastical shape that reminded him of eyeglass stems.

  “Memphis,” she whispered. “I have to talk to you about Tender. Do you know where he is?”

  “Mother?” Raven stood at her mother’s shoulder. She had on her yellow hat, and the cooler under one arm. “Mother? I put her in the tub like you said.”

  “Did she wash her hair?”

  “She’s working on it.”

  “I better go supervise. That child always needs to be supervised, or she only gets half-clean. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

  “Right, Mother, and Godliness is next to dead, around here.”

  “RAVEN LACOUR! You’re mocking the death of a man of GOD! And you get those evil snakes OUT of here, right now!” Rhondalee slammed into the trailer to avenge herself on the skin of her granddaughter. As she entered the carport door, Annie Leigh popped out of the front door and skipped around in her bare feet to join them in the carport. She had on a ruffled gown that looked like it would make her neck itch, and her hair was wet.

  Her mother put a hand on her back. “You get everything clean?”

  The girl shrugged. “I got everything wet.” She looked up and flashed her gappy teeth. “Guess what, Uncle Memphis?”

  “What?”

  “Guess!”

  “Well, let’s see. You went fishing with your mom today.”

  “I DID! And my mom killed some SNAKES!” She wrestled the cooler out her mother’s hands and lifted the lid. “Aren’t they some beauties?”

  Memphis let out a low, admiring whistle, but the thought of his niece in proximity to those snakes made his bowels feel distinctly icy. “These are some of the finest snakes I’ve ever seen, Annie Leigh.”

  Unable to hold back, she thrust the cooler at her mother and flung the bundle of bones that comprised her body at her uncle. Annie clambered onto his shoulders, she disarranged his hat and swiped his sunglasses. Memphis submitted to the climbing of his person with equal parts humiliation and delight. “I want you to be careful,” she said softly by his ear.

  “Careful of what, Annie Leigh?”

  “Somebody’s out here killing skinny old men, Uncle Memphis. They might go after you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Or my grampa.”

  He looked in her grey eyes. “Your grampa’s fine, I promise. If he were gone, I’d feel it in my heart.”

  She nodded.

  Raven slammed the lid of the cooler and put it on the ground. Her face had taken on a grim and ashy aspect. “It’s bedtime, Tadpole.”

  Annie blinked. “Mom, I know you don’t read much but I don’t think you can tell time, either, if you think it’s bedtime already.”

  Memphis followed his niece’s eyes. She seemed to be looking at the plywood-cutout silhouette of a man leaning against the Tyson’s satellite dish. Now, Memphis didn’t understand why that romantic smoking-cowpoke-against-the-sundown silhouette would spook his niece like that. Except, he noticed, this one wasn’t smoking. In fact, it wasn’t a silhouette. It was moving. It had disengaged itself from the satellite dish and was headed their way.

  He put his hands around his grandniece’s waist and set her firmly on the ground. “If it isn’t bedtime, Annie, then I suppose it’s at least dinnertime.”

  “Uncle Memphis. I can’t believe you’re on her side.” Annie Leigh crossed her bony little arms. “Mom, can I sleep in the truck with you?”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Can I sleep with the snakes?” Annie Leigh looked from mother to uncle.

  “Go in now, Tadpole.” When Raven spoke like that, Annie listened. She yanked on the screen door and let it slam shut behind her, leaving Raven and Memphis to stand there, hats on, arms crossed, faces set, spines stiff.

  Gator spoke from the end of the drive. “Well, with the two of you standing there so stiff and still, you look like a couple of cigar store wooden Indians.”

  Raven spat on the cement, and started to clean her fingernails with that illegal knife.

  Gator smiled his flat line smile. “That pretty little girl out here, she belong to anyone I know?”

  The Sheriff made himself speak politely. “Gator, might I help you with something?”

  “Well, yes you can, Sheriff. I’m getting mighty tired of this shirt, and it smells funny since it got back from the lab.”

  “I can tell you the name of a good dry cleaner.”

  Gator pretended to laugh. “I have a suitcase over in the Reverend’s trailer.”

  “Why don’t you get in the cruiser and we’ll head on over there.”

  “I can walk.”

  “No, I’ll drive you.” He sealed Gator in his car, wishing those snakes were alive and he could seal them in there with him.

  LEVI SKINNER STOOD on his front porch with a prairie dog. He smiled at her with his Jack-o-lantern teeth. “Want to join me for dinner, Raven?” She ignored him and opened the door to her rig. She climbed over his big body to sit cross-legged in the corner.

  He leaned against the side of the cab, eating the last of the cookies from the beat-up cracker tin with the too-tight lid. “I’m starving. What’s in the cooler? Dinner?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hey, have you heard about this pastor or whatever being killed here the other night? It’s all anyone ever talks about at the bar. I guess he met with a really violent death, and no one has a clue who did it.”

  She looked up at him, silver eyes flat as a puddle.

  He thought, I’ve learned at least one thing, here in the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park. When a woman looks at you like that, it’s time to take a walk.

  “WELCOME BACK, ISAAC,” said Beau. “How’s the picture man?”

  “Thirsty. Could I please have some ice water?” Beau filled him up a tall glass with ice and water. “Could I have a slice of lemon in there?” Beau dropped it in with a smile. He watched Isaac drain it, then gave him a refill.

  Quentin Romaine sat at the end of the bar, ranting. “That nigger knows nothing about the Bible,” he said with a scoff. “Why, you could put a thousand Asa Strugs in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, and he still wouldn’t be able to write the Bible.”

  Isaac looked at Beau. Beau looked at Isaac. Neither acknowledged Quentin. Beau poured him another glass of water. Isaac drank it off. He’d never been as thirsty in his life as he’d been since coming here. “Any news on that murder?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, and you know I’m a listening man,” said Beau. “Say, you give any more thought to entering the talent show? We could use some more acts, you know. I might even waive the fee.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be around at the end of the week.”

  “Well, Raven can’t leave. So you might as well stay.”

  Isaac frowned. “Why can’t she leave?”

  “Person of interest. Finding the body and all?”

  Isaac sat for a minute, absorbing that.

  Beau filled him up again. “You and Raven coming up for dinner?”

  “Oh, maybe not tonight.” Isaac and Raven had eaten every meal since his arrival at the Blue Moon Tap Room. “Could I borrow your phone book?”

  Beau slapped it on the bar. “Keep it. It’s last year’s.”

  “Thank you.” Next to him, he could hear the purple-faced man going on about the white man’s Biblical entitlement to racial dominion. He turned to him. “Race is a social construct, not a scientific fact.”

  “What do you mean?” Quentin slammed his mug down as hard as he could without breaking it. “There’s red and white and yellow and black.”

  “Those are ethnic differences, not races.” Isaac smiled.

  “God made the races so that the White man could have dominion. Haven’t you read Revelations?”

  “Revelations was some disciple’s bad trip. Race i
s just a pseudo-scientific theory advanced after the Civil War to justify more oppression. Scientifically, there’s really only the human race.” He turned back to Beau, who was polishing a glass in a manner reminiscent of a Wild West bartender. “Thanks for the phone book.”

  “Sure. How about a couple of steak dinners and a six pack to go?”

  He felt a stab of guilt over his forgotten vegetarianism. “Gosh, I don’t think so. Raven’s waiting for me.”

  “Tell her Hey for me.”

  “I’ll do that.” He hesitated a moment.

  Beau frowned. “Everything OK, Isaac?”

  And Isaac looked back, frowning in turn. “I guess I’m just realizing that Raven has some pretty serious issues where men are concerned.” Beau looked at him for a moment. He clamped his jaw shut, but his eyes danced. Then he nodded and turned away.

  As the door to the bar closed behind him, he heard raucous laughter. The thought occurred to Isaac that the men in there saved the telling of their best jokes until after he left.

  SHE WAS STILL against the wall, but she cradled his guitar. She strummed and sang some song about prison and rodeos and cowboys.

  “I’m buying you some dinner.” He opened the phone book and held it out. “Pick a place.”

  She put her finger on a printed reproduction of a sign. “This place is good.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a steak house. We always have steak.”

  “That’s because we both like it.”

  He scanned the pages. “Let’s branch out a little. It’s a drive, but here’s a fondue place.”

  “Fondue? What the hell is that?”

  He ignored the question. “Here’s a Thai place, but of course, that’s out for political reasons.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t eat Thai food. I had a bite of kim chee once, and that was enough.”

  “Kim chee is a Korean condiment. Dismissing Thai food on the basis of kim chee is like dismissing American food on the basis of soy sauce.”

  “You don’t want to go there, anyway, remember? For political reasons.”

  “You’re politically uninformed.”

  “You’re goofy.”

  Oh, it was like falling, the way they came together. He’d never been all that sure of what he was supposed to do to a woman in bed. There were differences and mysteries and endless opportunities to get it wrong. But whatever he did, it was right with Raven. Her eyes closed, her teeth bared. Something in her face looked like fear.

  After, she collapsed. He held her, embarrassed and flattered that he had such an effect. She trembled in his arms like something shaken. He stroked her hair, whispered into her ear, pressed the youth and strength of his body against hers. Without a word, she pushed him away. She found her clothes, put a few on, started to climb out, phone book in hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m taking the phone book back.”

  “Beau said you could keep that.”

  “I don’t keep what I don’t need.”

  Isaac frowned. “Everyone needs a phone book, don’t they?”

  “I can’t hardly read and I don’t have a phone.” She shut the door. He lay there feeling stupid, as usual. She returned with a couple of steak dinners and a six pack to go.

  They listened to a ballgame on the radio. Salt from the fries fell all over his bare belly. She ate with her hat on and wiped her greasy fingers on the sheets. She drained a beer and let go with a resonant belch, then picked up that guitar again.

  More country. He liked the chorus, but the verses were what he expected, “Georgia Pines” and “Way out west,” that kind of stuff, “I’m gonna pack up my two-step shoes.” But he always loved the way she sang. “You need your own guitar. Then we could play together.”

  “Oh, I think we play together real nice.” She set the guitar carefully aside, took off her hat and bent her dark head to lick the grains of salt from his body. But no matter how good this felt, it couldn’t turn off his brain.

  “Hey, have you heard anything about that murder?”

  She pulled up sharp. “The murder?”

  “Yeah. I was wondering when if you heard anything. I only hear the gossip up at the bar.”

  She turned away and turned up the game.

  “I’m sorry. “ He was thinking too much, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. “It’s just that you don’t seem freaked out at all about it, and somebody told me you found the body?”

  She listened to the radio.

  “Hey. I’m sorry. I mean it.” He touched her back. “I know it was probably traumatic for you. But I’m here for you. Come back to me.” He put his arms around her.

  Her arms, brown and hard against the white softness of his stomach, went around him tight. She breathed him in. “You always smell so clean to me.”

  He wasn’t clean. He’d been washing up in the bathroom of the Blue Moon for days, now, and he smelled like expensive cheese. What was he doing with her? She was an unschooled trucker who hated men. What was he doing there at the Park? She hadn’t introduced him to anyone, not her parents or her uncle or Beau, let alone her kid. Did he matter at all?

  Isaac studied her hard face, the scooped shape of her nose, the way her dark hair wreathed his chest. He studied the scar that went from her temple to near the corner of her mouth, tracing a mysterious highway on her cheekbone. He wanted to ask her where that highway led. He wanted to ask her how she got that scar. He wanted to ask her where he fit. He wanted to ask her what all this meant. He wanted to be important enough to meet her family. He wanted to steal her last cigarette.

  “Raven? I know I don’t seem to have a lot of direction in my life. I know that. I mean, I’m only twenty-two. But I feel like I’m supposed to be here. I think about leaving every day. But every time I try to pack, something makes me stay.” He swallowed, afraid but determined to continue. “Raven, I think I… I’m trying to say that I…” He looked down. A tiny trail of drool leaked from the corner of her mouth and onto his belly. She snored.

  He lay in the silence and tried valiantly not to examine his life.

  ANNIE LEIGH SAT at the table in her scratchy nightgown, pushing around the crust of a tunafish sandwich. Rhondalee frowned. “You eat that crust. That’s where all the vitamins are.”

  Annie sighed. “Where’s Gramps?”

  “He’s not here.”

  Annie nodded. “I know, Gramma. That’s why I asked where he was.”

  “Are you getting fresh with me?”

  Annie shook her head and stared down at her plate. “No, Ma’am.”

  “Well, I know there’s someone out there killing old men, and I’d get myself worried over that happening to your grandfather, but the truth is I know he’s wandered off somewhere to drink like a damn Indian, and that’s the truth of it.”

  “He don’t drink. And nobody’s gonna kill Gramps.”

  “If they did, he’d DESERVE it.” Rhondalee’s face burned bright red. I’ve lived my life in an upright way, she had told the Invisible Committee. I don’t deserve to be abandoned like this. The Committee said nothing. Neither did Annie Leigh. She put her plate in the sink without another word. “Get to your ROOM,” barked Rhondalee, but Annie Leigh had already shut the door tight, leaving her grandmother to clean her kitchen and fret.

  She lay out her case to the Invisible Committee. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Hadn’t she done it all, and most of it by herself? “I thought it meant forever, to get married,” she said. Oh, after all these years, after all the patience she’d had with his ways and his woes and his wanderings. For him to go off like this and leave her. For no reason, no reason at all.

  I thought I was doing things right. I really did.

  She could almost hear the Committee laughing at her.

  She walked outside to stand in the darkness on the little porch with the mock gingerbread trim that Tender had constructed for her. What did I do wrong, she asked? What? What? What?

  The I
nvisible Committee remained ever silent, as usual. But Francie June’s voice floated on the air, a low song of love and loss and longing.

  Rhondalee allowed her eyes to graze the front porch of her neighbor’s trailer. A pair of boots stood next to the steps, a familiar pair of large, dark men’s boots. She stood there, too shocked to cry, too stunned to move. Fossetta never asked a man to take off his shoes. The only man who would do that was a man trained to it.

  By his wife.

  It was something like sleepwalking, then, her movement down the steps of her tidy deck, across the white gravel path, over the dusty flagstones and through the metal screen door into the kitchen, through the untidy living room, down the hallway, and into that den of sweat and sin where Fossetta slept. Her perfect rosebud mouth was open, her lovely teeth bared in a smile. The sheet snaked up along the softness of her white hip.

  The room smelled like honey. And Fossetta was the only person in it.

  ANNIE LEIGH HAD never prayed, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to start, but she got down on her knees, clasped her hands, and screwed her face into what she hoped was a prayerful expression. “Dear God.” Okay, that was a start. “Okay, God. Just listen for a minute. I know that there’s someone out there who’s killing skinny old men. And I just want to ask you to please keep Gramps safe. He gets real distracted by all those ghosts and songs he hears in his head, and he don’t always see what’s coming. And he ain’t all that skinny, anyway. Thank you. Amen.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  She opened the closet, drug out the gigantic black case. Hoisting it through her window took some effort. She had no choice but to let it drop. She winced at the jangling complaint of strings, but that old case could take anything. Annie shimmied out behind it.

  It felt too heavy to carry tonight. It was definitely too heavy to take on the first leg of her journey, so she hid it under the aluminum steps of the Tyson’s trailer. Then she climbed to the highest point in the park, the top of the Tyson’s satellite dish. Only her lightness kept her from breaking the wires that stretched across the diameter. She steadied herself at the top, crouching, wishing for a little more of a moon. Then she could maybe see him, wherever he was out there in the barren countryside.