Carolina Moon (23 page)

Now Alicia Jameson is out on the porch, and that officer is still hanging around. They look like children at the end of a date, not at all like a cop who has come to say that her husband was dead and
buried in the muck along the river. Alicia is in his arms now, their bodies intertwined right out there in the yard, and there is a voice (not Myra’s voice, of course!) saying
Kiss her, boy, kiss her. Show her what a man you are
.

“Who is saying that?” she asks the ceiling. “Who?” And Mr. Sharpy perks up his ears and twists his little wrinkled jowls from side to side so that he can hear, too.

Kiss her! I said, Kiss her you fool. Show her what you’ve got
.

Testing . . . Oh God, oh man. Ruthie Crow’s aunt dug up a foot today, a damn
dead
foot that happened to be attached to a body, a damn body that just happened to belong to Alicia’s husband. Everybody in town knew that it was him because he was wearing one loafer, which apparently is his trademark and has been since he was a fraternity man—not one loafer but just loafers, period. He wore Bass Weejuns and always had. Alicia said he bought three pair at a time and then rotated them. One pair always had pennies in them. They were always oxblood or
cordovan
as Ruthie (who is quite insistent on which word you use for what) kept stressing. As soon as people heard Bass Weejun, they knew, but of course the police had to do all kinds of investigating. Myra Carter, Ruthie’s aunt, had told her that the body stunk worse than anything she had ever encountered, worse even than the time all those field mice got into her heating unit and got fried. She said that the body was all bloated and looked somewhat pickled. The loafer didn’t have a scratch on it. Myra had spent ten minutes of telephone time telling Ruthie how this single loafer would make a good poem, how Ruthie should just sit and wonder where the other loafer might be. Ruthie was visibly shaken anyway. She told
Quee that she had always felt a bond with the man because of the way he always looked at her like he was seeing right through her garments. Quee told me later that that’s how the lousy son of a bitch looked at everybody, and it was in that moment I started thinking of all the radio guy had had to say about Jones Jameson as well as Alicia. For the first time since leaving Washington, I was thinking that my bathtub there would have been a nice spot to retire. It’s amazing what you can convince yourself sounds like a nice life sometimes.

Quee said, “Go get Tom Lowe and bring him around here.”

“Why?” I asked, but she didn’t seem to have a real reason.

“Just go get him,” she said, “while I call Alicia and ask her and Taylor to come and spend the night with us.”

And so here I am, following these scratched-out directions into this great big neighborhood where there are great big houses in every direction. I’m hoping my car can make it around these streets without backfiring and/or screaming when I put on brakes. I know I shouldn’t feel ashamed of what my car does, but I do. It’s the exact same feeling I used to get when my ex would go on and on about the sneezers. When I hear a car squeal in public, I try not to look at the owner, who I’m always sure is just hangdog embarrassed. Oh, my Lord. This is looking worse than even Quee said, and there are mad dogs everywhere. I will sit right here in my car, and let Mr. Lowe come right out here. I’m gonna beep the horn twice, and that’s the best I can do. If he doesn’t show, fine, then.

I have brought his old denim jacket and have it right here on the seat. It smells like him. I’m not wanting you to think that I’m some kind of weird chick who is into sniffing out folks’ garments, but at the same time I want to give you a full picture of what’s going on. I am also trying real hard to distract myself because it’s so dark once you get down here on his driveway and because God only knows what’s
out in these woods. I mean there
is
a murderer loose in this town. It reminds me of that story people used to tell in high school about Hookarm and how he hooked himself up to the door handle when a couple was out in the woods parking, and then there’s that other one around here that folks are always talking about,
the Maco Light
, where an engineer lost his head and still searches the tracks looking for it.

Oh God! Oh Jesus! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?

No, but you’re bothering my dogs. Did I hear you talking to yourself?

SPRING
1975

Dear Wayward One,

I have started a new business and nobody has any idea what it is I
do.
You see I have this notion that I can make a difference in the world. I have this idea that just because I failed with you doesn’t mean that I am a failure. No, I’m a winner and deep down inside of me I know it. I hope you will wish me luck if that’s possible, if you’re out there in the universe just blowing around. I have days when I wake up and I think just as clear as a bell: There is nothing beyond this very second. The memory of a life is all that lingers. And then there are other days like today when I think that I see and hear you everywhere. I eavesdrop sometimes in the grocery store, and sometimes it seems that the very words I hear are meant for me. Now don’t get all worked up, I am
not
crazy
, not
hearing voices in some weird psycho way. I do
not
think that I’m communicating with aliens through the fillings of my teeth. But I do think that a human soul is too powerful to simply vanish in a puff of smoke. I believe the energy has to fly somewhere; into the throat of a bird or the limb of a tree. Like whenever a butterfly or fly lights anywhere near me, I say in my head: “Hello there, you old so and so.” I can make a difference
in this world. Either way—if there
is
something beyond this world and if there is not—it’s the best thing that I can do. I can make a difference and I just hope that someday I’m out there with you looking out on it all, or UP on it all, depending what the case may be. For all I know, you have become a lichen on a tree deep in the forest of the Green Swamp; you are a conch shell, tossing and rolling, whistling on the shore. And I am your ear, dear one. Speak to me. Please, speak to me.

Testing . . . testing. I’m having to whisper because Alicia and Quee are still wandering around downstairs. What a night. I don’t even know where to begin with it all. It’s not bad enough that I get sent out in the boonies
to fetch
Mr. Fixit Jesus, but then he goes and scares the ever loving crap out of me. He popped up out of nowhere, asking if I was talking to myself.

“No, it was the radio,” I said, my heart still going double time. I unlocked my door and handed him his jacket so that he wouldn’t think I’d been sitting out there in the dark fondling it while talking to myself.

“Thanks.” He took the jacket and put it on. “Is that why you’re trespassing?”

“Trespassing? Trespassing?” I asked and wanted to close the door but he propped that big workboot of his alongside my seat. “Is that what you call driving up to somebody’s house?”

“So this is just a social visit?” He laughed and his eyes narrowed into slits. He was just as stoned as he could be, his body saturated in the rich sweet smell. “Well, well, well, I’m honored,” he said.

I said, “More like stoned.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged and started walking along a weedy old path to his camper, which, by the way, looks like it’s been through a couple of hundred hurricanes. He got to his door and stopped, slapped his leg so that all those dogs ran forward and practically stood at attention. “Come on in,” he said and lit a cigarette. “Let the visit begin.”

“It’s not social,” I yelled after him. “I can tell you right here from the car.” But instead of turning back he went in and got an oil lantern; he brought it outside and set it on a small wrought-iron garden table off to the side like he might be hosting a campout. Things looked a little better in this light; there was a trellis and some pole beans growing up a bamboo tepee in the distance.

“Aw, come on in,” he said with a fake accent. “My cleaning staff was just here. The place is impeccably spotless.” He started moving toward me. “Come on, now, don’t be shy. You weren’t so shy when you were butting your nose into my business now were you?”

I told him again that I was sorry, that I didn’t even know his coma girl and that I never should have mentioned her. I got out and stood right by the door of the car.

“No, you don’t know her,” he said and by that time he was so close I could have reached out and touched him. “And chances are you never will know her.” He was trying to see in my car. He asked what I was listening to while out there spying on him. When I said nothing, he looked like he might suddenly reach in and steal this tape so I locked and slammed the door.

“So why are we here?” he asked, and put those farmer hands on either side of my face. When I said Quee wanted him, he laughed great big. He said, “At this hour?” and honest to God this is about when I started losing a sense of myself and what I was doing. “She must be thinking of a different kind of service,” he said.

“What? What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Night service,” he said like a vampire and then sauntered back over to his little table and the circle of dogs. I told him that Alicia’s husband is dead and other than that I didn’t know
why
Quee wanted him.

“Dead?” he said. “The son of a bitch is dead?” He lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. He could make anybody want to smoke, he made it look so good. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

I told him all about how Jones Jameson was found in a load of top-soil that got delivered to Ruthie Crow’s old aunt. I told him, all the while walking closer and closer like I might be in a trance. By the time I finished my sentence, I was sitting in the little webbed yard chair across from him. Even right now, repeating the story of that topsoil again gives me the heebie-jeebies. He laughed again and said that he guessed old Mrs. Carter must’ve had a fit; he said he was surprised she hadn’t dropped dead when she found him.

I sat there petting the big head of the dog who was slobbering all over the knee of my jeans. “So are you coming to Quee’s?” I asked like I might be impatient, when really I was thinking that I’d like to stay right where I was for a while.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said.

“Now?” I jingled my keys to let him know that I was about to leave, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

“Soon. After I give you the tour.”

“The tour?” I asked. “I don’t want a tour.”

“No? Come on. Have the tour.” He grabbed me by the hand. “I mean a person who knows so goddamn much about my life should definitely have the tour.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“So prove it,” he said and pulled me up to the little cinder block
stoop and half door. “Come inside.” I followed right behind him, so close that I could breathe in the smells of his jacket, wood smoke, cigarettes, marijuana; I thought that he might suddenly disappear in one big poof of smoke, so I put my hand on his back and held on to his jacket. “This is it!” he said and spread his arms. He clicked on the little battery-powered lamp in his hand. On one side there was his bed, a rumpled mess of pillows and a quilt; the other wing was filled with stacks of books and cassettes. He has a tiny refrigerator, a small flipout table, and a cardboard chest of drawers. It’s all cheap-looking, but kind of cozy.

“It’s nice,” I said, which wasn’t an entire lie. “Really.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Someday I’ll build something, but it’s okay until then.”

“And you could,” I told him. “Build something. I mean you
are
a carpenter after all.”

“Don’t try too hard,” he said, and I was amazed that he could see through my fake nice voice, which has fooled people my whole life. “I said I forgave you,” he said.

“
You
forgave me,” I said and leaned down to look at his books: ships and pirates and ghost stories like what you might find in a child’s room. “But you have yet to say that
you’re
sorry for all the rotten things you’ve said about me.”

“Such as?” he asked.

“You said I was crazy.”

“No, I said someone ELSE said you were crazy.” He took a beer out of the little refrigerator and popped the top. “You want one?” he asked and barely gave me a chance to breathe and answer before he went on spouting all that he knows about me. “Oh yeah, I forgot, reformed.” He took a long drink, making it look real good, too. He could get a job as Satan and I almost said that but thought better. “I
guess you don’t do anything then, do you? Talking is your only vice,” he said, and then without missing a beat he asked me how old I am.

“Thirty-five,” I said and looked up to find him practically standing on top of me. “How about you?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“So where is your bathroom?” I asked. It seemed like a good time to exit.

“Outside. I have three acres of bathroom.” He said this so seriously, of course I believed him. I asked how he ever took a shower, or did he just
not
shower. He said
not
and then laughed and pointed out the little mesh window where there is a small wooden building the size of a single-car garage. He said it’s all plumbed and wired, a lit bathroom, complete with newly installed Jacuzzi. He said not to tell anyone because it would ruin his image. Man oh man, we were standing close enough for the pheromones to return and they did, big time. Without even meaning to, I slipped my hand into his and nuzzled into his neck. What was I thinking? Nuzzling in like a goddamn pony.

“Sorry,” he said, like he might be a priest and leaving me to feel like a complete idiot. “I took a vow of celibacy.”

I said, “Oh, yeah? Well so did I.”

“You?” he asked, like that might be one of the wonders of the world.

“Yes, me. What’s so hard to believe about that?” I said and got myself over near the door so I could get the hell out. I said, “So what are you doing, anyway? Going out for the priesthood? Is your goal in life to be a celibate carpenter? Are you trying to be Jesus or something?”