Everville (15 page)

"I want to know what Grillo told you," Jo-Beth said doggedly.

She would worry more if he didn't tell, he suspected. So he gave a pr6cis of what Grillo had said.

"That's it?" she asked him when he was done.

'That's it," he said. "I told you it was nothing." She nodded, shrugged, and turned away. "It's all going to change, sweetie," he said. "I swear."

He wanted to get up and go to her. Wrap her in his arms and rock her till she melted against him. So many times in the past they'd ended up entwined after hard words. But no longer. Now when she turned from him he kept his distance, afraid she'd refuse him. He didn't know why or where this doubt had originated-was he reading some subtle signal in her eyes that told him to keep his distance?-but it was too strong to be overcome; or else he was too weak.

"So fucked up," he murmured to himself, his hands returning to cover his face.

Grillo's words circled in the darkness.

These are strange times...

Howie had refuted it at the time, but it was true. Whether Fletcher was in Oregon or not, whether TommyRay was alive or not, when a man could no longer put his an,ns around his wife, they were indeed strange times.

Before returning to work on the car he headed upstairs to take a peek at Amy. She'd been sick the last couple of days-her first summer on the planet she'd caught a coldand she lay exhausted in her cot, arms splayed, head to one side. He took a tissue from the box beside the bed and wiped a little gloss of spit from her chin, his touch too gentle to wake her. But somewhere in sleep, she knew her daddy was there, or so he believed. A barely perceptible smile appeared on her bow-lips, and her cheeks dimpled.

He leaned on the railing of the cot and gazed down at her in unalloyed bliss. Fatherhood had been unexpectedthough they'd talked about children many times, they'd decided to wait until their situation had improved-but he didn't regret for a moment the accident that had brought Amy into their lives. She was a gift; a simple sign of the goodness in Creation. All the magic in the world, whether wielded by his father, or the Jaff, or any of the secret powers D'Amour talked about-weren't worth a damn in the face of this simple miracle.

The little time spent with his sleeping beauty thoroughly invigorated him. When he stepped out into the heat again, the problems of a sickly car seemed piffling, and he set to solving them with a will.

After a few minutes of work a light wind started to get up; cooling gusts against his sweaty face. He stood clear of the hood for a moment and drew a deep breath. The wind smelt of the green beyond these gray streets. they would escape there soon, he told himself, and life would be good.

Standing chopping carrots in the kitchen, Jo-Beth paused to watch the wind shaking the unkempt thicket that choked the yard, thought of another yard in another year, and heard Tommy-Ray's voice calling her name out of the past. It had been dark that night in the Grove, but she remembered things having an exquisite luminosity: dirt, trees, reeling stars all filled with meaning.

"Jo-Beth!" Tommy-Ray was yelling, "Something won der.ful!"

"What?" she'd said.

"Outside. Come with me.

She'd resisted him at first. Tommy-Ray was wild sometimes, and the way he was shaking had made her afraid. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you, " he'd said. "You know that. "

And she had. Unpredictable though he was, he had never shown her anything but love. "We feel things together," he'd said to her. That was true; they had shared feelings from the beginning. "So come on, " he'd said, taking hold of her hand.

And she'd gone, down the yard to where the trees churned against a pinwheel sky. And in her head she'd heard a whispering voice, a voice she'd been waiting to hear for seventeen years without realizing it.

Jo-Beth, it had said. I'm the Jaff. Your Father.

He had appeared then, out of the trees, and she remembered him looking like a picture from Mama's Bible. An Old Testament prophet, bearded and absolute. No doubt he had been wise, in his terrible fashion. No doubt if she'd been able to speak with him, and learn from him, she would not now be living in the grave, drawing only the tiniest breaths for fear of depleting what little supply of sanity remained to her.

But she had been parted from him, the way she'd been parted from Tommy-Ray, and she'd fallen into the arms of the enemy. He was a good man, this enemy, this Howie Katz; a good and loving man. And when they'd slept together for the first time, they had each dreamed of Quiddity, which meant that he was the love of her life. There would be none better. But there were affections that went deeper than found love. There were powers that shaped the soul before it was even born into the world, and they could not be gainsaid. However loving the enemy was, and however good, he would always be the enemy.

She hadn't realized this at first. She'd assumed her unease would disappear as the traumas of the Grove receded, and she learned a new normality. But instead it grew. She started to have dreams about Tommy-Ray, light pouring over his golden face like syrup. And sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, when she was at her most weary, she'd seem to hear her father speaking to her, and she'd ask him under her breath the question she'd asked in Mama's backyard.

"Why are you here now? After all this time?"

"Come closer," he would say, "I'll tell you...

But she hadn't known how to get closer, how to cross the abyss of death and time that lay between them.

And then, out of nowhere, hope. Sometimes she remembered how it had come to her very clearly, and on those days she would have to hide herself away from Howie, in case he saw the knowledge on her face. Other times-like nowwhen she knew he was in pain, and her heart opened to him the way it had at the beginning, the memory became confounded. Her thoughts lost focus, and she would spend hours staring out of the window, or at the sky, trying to catch hold of some elusive possibility.

No matter, she told herself. It would come back. Meanwhile, she would chop the carrots and wash the dishes and tend the baby and The wind threw a scrap of litter against the window and pinned it there for a moment, flapping like a one-winged bird. Then a second gust carried it away.

She would go soon, with the same ease. That was part of, the promise. She would be carried off, and away, to a place where the secrets her father had almost told her were waiting to be whispered, and her loving enemy would never find her.

Everville rose early that Thursday morning, even though it had gone to bed later than usual the night before. There were banners to hang and windows to polish, grass to be cut, and streets to be swept. No idle hands today.

At the Chamber of Commerce, Dorothy Bullard fretted about the clouds that had blown in overnight. The weatherman had promised sun, sun, sun, and here it was, eleven twenty-two, and so far she'd not seen a glimmer. Masking her anxiety with a beam of her own, she got about the business of the day, organizing the distribution of the Festival brochures, which had arrived that morning, to the list of sites that always carried them. Dorothy was a great believer in lists. Without them, all was chaos.

Just before noon, at the intersection of Whittier and Main, Frank Carlsen ploughed his station wagon into the back of a stationary truck, the collision bringing traffic on Main Street to a virtual halt for the better part of an hour. Carlsen was taken off to the police station, where he admitted to having started celebrating a little early this year; just a few beers to get into the spirit of things. There was no great damage done to the truck, so Ed Olson, who'd brought him in, sent him out again with a simple reprimand. "I'm bending the law for you, Frank," he told Carisen, "so stay sober and don't make me look like an asshole."

Main Street was running freely again by twelve-fifteen, at which time Dorothy looked out of her office window to see that the clouds had started to thin, and the sun was breaking through.

Erwin had set out for the creek a little after ten, stopping off at Kitty's Diner for some apple pancakes and coffee to fortify himself Bosley was his usual ebullient self, which on some days Erwin found grating but today merely amused him. Appetite satisfied, Erwin set off for the creek, parking his car beside the Masonic Lodge on First Street and walking from there. He was glad he'd put on sturdy boots and an old sweater. The warmth of the late summer days, along with the rains of a week or so ago, had made the thicket lusher than ever, and by the time he reached the creek he had scratches on his neck, face, and hands, and enough twigs in his sweater to fuel a small fire.

Over the centuries the creek had carved itself a deep trench to run in, its shallow, speeding waters overcast with antediluvian ferns. He had not ventured here in six or seven years, and he was surprised afresh at how remote it felt. Though Main Street lay no more than three-quarters of a mile behind him, the whine of gnats around his head was louder than the murmur of traffic, while in front of him, on the other side of the creek, the thickly wooded slope rose up towards the Heights undeveloped and, he supposed, untenanted. He was alone, and that was by no means an unpleasant feeling. He'd take his time looking for the house by the creek, and chew over his future while he did so.

Joe called Phoebe at the doctor's in the middle of the morning and asked her if she'd be available to meet him at lunchtime rather than in the afternoon. She warned him it'd only give them a few minutes together; it was a ten-minute drive in both directions between the office and home.

r, most likely, with the streets so busy. He had anticid this. Come to the apartment, he suggested, it's just a couple of minutes away. She told him she would. Expect me just after twelve-thirty, she told him.

"I'll be waiting," he said, and she got goosebumps from the heat in his voice. She spent the rest of the morning with a twitchy little smile on her face, and at twelve twenty-eight she was gone. She'd visited him at the apartment only twice before, once when Morton had been sick in bed with the flu, and once during his vacation. It was riskier than the house, because there was no way into his building without being seen. Especially today, with so many people out and about. She didn't care.

She parked on the street right outside the building, and defiantly marched up the side steps that led to Joe's front door almost hoping she was being seen.

Her knuckles had barely touched the door when it was opened. He was wearing just his shorts, and was running with sweat.

"The fan's broken," he said, ushering her inside. "But you don't mind sweatin', right?" The place was a mess, as usual, and baking hot. He cleared a place for her on the sofa, but instead of sitting she followed him through to the kitchen, where he poured a glass of ice water for her. There they stayed, with the noise of the street coming in through the open window.

"I've been thinkin'," he said. "The sooner we come clean about this, the better.

"I'm going to see an attorney on Monday."

He grinned. "Good girl." He laid his arms on her shoulders, clasping hands to wrist behind her head. "You want me to come with you?"

"No. I'll do it."

"Then we'll just get out of here. As far away as possible."

"Any place you like."

"Somewhere warm," he said. "I like the heat."

"Suits me," she said. She put her thumb to his cheek and rubbed.

"Paint," she said.

"Kiss," he said back.

"We have to talk."

"We'll talk while we fuck."

"Joe

"Okay, we'll fuck while we talk, how's that?" He drew a little closer to her. "It's too hot to say no." There was sweat trickling down between her breasts; sweat between her buttocks, sweat between her thighs. She was almost dizzy with the heat.

"Yes?" he said.

"Yes," she said, and stood there, head spinning, while button by button, clasp by clasp, he bared her to the air.

Erwin had first followed the creek downstream, thinking that the house was more likely to be situated on the flatter land than on the uneven terrain of the Heights' lower slopes. Either he was wrong in that assumption, he discovered, or else this part of McPherson's confession was a lie. After an hour he gave up trailing the creek's southeasterly course and turned round, following his own tracks back to the place where he'd begun. There he halted for a couple of minutes to smoke a cigarette and plot his next move. Bosley's pancakes would sustain him for another hour and a half at least, but he had quite a thirst after clambering over boulders and thrashing his way through the thicket.

Maybe a respite was in order. A cup of coffee back at Kitty's; then back to the trek refreshed. After a few moments, he decided to forgo the break and continue his search. Once he'd found the house the coffee would taste all the better anyway.

The terrain rapidly became more problematic as he moved upstream, however, and after a quarter of an hour of fighting his way through the dense undergrowth, his hands stained green with moss, his knees skinned from slipping on rocks, he was about ready to retreat. He paused to pull off his sweater-in which he was now cooking-and as it cleared his face he caught sight of a mysterious shape between the trees up ahead.

He started towards it, tugging his arms from the sweater as he went, little sounds of pleasure escaping him the closer he got.

"Oh... oh... that's it! That's it!"

There it was, right in front of him. Fire and rot had med most of the boards, but the framework and the brick mneys were still standing.

He hung his sweater in a branch, then thrust his way through the thicket until he reached the front of the housethough it scarcely deserved the word-shack, more likeand stepped over the threshold.

There were a few pitiful signs of the life that had been lived here underfoot: sticks of charred furniture, a piece of decayed rug, fragments of some plates, a battered pail. The scene was pitiful, of course, but Erwin was elated. There was now no doubt in his mind that McPherson's confession was substantially true. He had evidence enough to make public what he knew without fear of contradiction. All he had to do now was work out how to get maximum mileage out of the announcement.