Only Love Can Break Your Heart (24 page)

“Cinnamon needs a ride,” I said.

He peered out at Cinnamon.

“Where do you live?” Paul asked.

“Holcomb Falls,” she said. “Look, if it’s a problem, I can call my dad.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said. “Is it, Paul?”

“No,” he said. “No problem at all. But I’m taking you home first, Rocky.”

“No way,” I said. “I’ll ride with you.”

“Just do what I say for once, will ya?” he snapped.

“Jesus, Paul,” Cinnamon said. “Fine. Just chill the fuck out already.”

We huddled into the cab. Cinnamon sat between us, her knees tucked over toward mine to make room for Paul to work the stick. I let my palm fall onto her thigh just above the knee. She placed her hand over mine. I breathed in the smell of cigarettes on her breath. All my nerve endings seemed to lead from the small, vibrating spot where the soft swell of her breast rested against my arm.

Paul paid no attention. He smoked nonstop, flicking his ashes out the cracked window. The tape deck played
Music from Big Pink
. Paul turned the knob over to full blast on the creepy organ solo at the beginning of “Chest Fever.”

“Why are you so late?” I shouted.

“I got held up,” he said.

“Where?” I persisted.

“At Rayner’s,” he said. “Catching up on old times.”

“I bet Rayner’s wife was thrilled about that,” I said.

“What?” Paul said.

Cinnamon reached up and turned the volume down sharply on a hard pop of the snare drum, which seemed to echo in the cab when the music was silenced.

“What’s your problem?” Cinnamon said. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” Paul said. “Maybe a little. Rayner kept feeding me booze. I lost track of the time.”

“Maybe I should drive,” Cinnamon said.

“He’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want her to move from where she was, pressed up against me, holding my hand.

“That’s right,” Paul said. “I’m fine.”

We drove on in silence. Cinnamon reached up and turned the knob back over.

When we reached the house, the front porch light was on. I knew my mother would be waiting up for me. As I opened the door to get out, Paul reached across Cinnamon and grabbed my arm.

“Listen, Rocky,” he said. “You’ve got to cover for me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just tell your mom I was there on time,” he said. “Tell her your teacher let you out late. Could you just do that for me?”

“What do you care?” I said. “Mom can’t do anything to you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Rocky!”

“OK, OK,” I said. “Sure. Like, no problem.”

Cinnamon looked at the floor. I felt her hand slip off mine. As I stepped from the cab and pulled my bag from the bed and turned to wave good-bye, she came to her feet outside the door, facing me. She leaned in and placed a damp, tender kiss on my cheek.

“See ya,” she said.

She hopped back into the passenger seat and closed the door. I stood and watched as Paul pulled around and drove away, trying not to grin like an idiot.

I was so caught up in my excitement about breaking through with Cinnamon that I had forgotten about my mother. I found her curled up on the living room couch in her housecoat and slippers, sipping sherry from a small stemmed glass.

“You reek of cigarettes,” she said. “I can smell you from here.”

“You know I don’t smoke, Mom,” I said.

She sipped from her glass and set it on the end table beside her. Her face appeared pale and gaunt in the lamplight.

“Where’s Paul?” she asked.

“Cinnamon needed a ride,” I said. “He brought me home first.”

“How thoughtful of him,” she said.

“We just ran late tonight. Paul was waiting for a long time,” I said.

“I should give Rex a call,” she said. “This is absurd.”

“He just loses track of time,” I said. “He said to tell you hello for him. He told me, ‘Give that pretty mother of yours a kiss for me.’ ”

“How sweet,” she said with apparent sincerity.

“I’m sorry for keeping you up,” I said.

I leaned over and she rose to meet my kiss.

“Good night,” I said.

I turned and started toward the stairs.

“Prentiss Bowman called, about half an hour ago,” she said. “He wanted to speak to Paul.”

I stopped at the landing, my hand on the banister.

“I told him Paul was over at Randolph, picking his brother up from rehearsal for the school play,” my mother continued. “He called me a liar. He said Paul had just dropped Leigh off at the curb. That her hair was all wet and she was wearing strange clothes—men’s clothes. He told me the next time Paul decided to take Leigh skinny-dipping in the middle of the night, he was going to get
his
gun and shoot him, and not in the leg, if you know what I mean.”

Had Paul’s hair been wet? I didn’t notice—he was wearing his watch cap.

“You’d think Paul would have enough decency to leave that girl alone after what he did to her, bless her heart,” my mother said. “If I were her, I wouldn’t want anything to do with him.”

I resisted the urge to defend my brother.

“Then again,” she said, “Leigh’s got no one else now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly.

“Come sit with me,” she said. “Just for a minute.”

I walked back into the living room and sank into the couch next to her.

“I feel like I never see you anymore,” she said. “Like we’ve become strangers.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Her face tipped into the harsh white light of the reading lamp as she reached for her sherry.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

“What is it?” I asked.

For a fleeting moment, I thought she was going to say that the Old Man was dead.

“It’s about the house,” she said.

The next Monday, my mother explained, a real estate agent would be coming over to help her prepare our house for sale.

“We need something smaller anyway,” she said. “Something closer to school and the office.”

I stared at the floor in front of her chair. All the joy I’d walked through the door with after that unexpected peck on the cheek from Cinnamon vaporized, leaving only a faint twinge of disgust with myself for having briefly felt so hopeful.

“I’ll quit the play,” I said. “I’ll get a job after school.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” my mother said. “Rex is depending on you. Besides, honey, a part-time job after school isn’t going to save the house.”

“I can get a job at Kroger,” I said. “Cinnamon works there. She says they’re always hiring.”

“Cinnamon?” my mother asked. “Oh, yes. Well, that’s something to talk about.”

She smiled. Her eyes were heavy lidded; her mouth parted almost grotesquely. I noticed something that looked like a piece of spinach stuck in her teeth. In the white light of the reading lamp, I noticed for the first time that her hair was turning gray.

My mother was too young to be lashed to an invalid, I thought—too young to be so tired. If the Old Man had loved her, he wouldn’t have doomed her to be left either alone or with the responsibility of tending to a helpless old man. Then again, if my mother hadn’t married the Old Man, I would never have been born. What would it mean to believe that my existence was the consequence of a ruinous error in judgment?

“You better go to bed,” she said. “I’ll wait up for your brother.”

I did as she asked, listening for the sound of Paul’s truck as I readied myself for bed. I knew it would be some time before he returned—the drive to Holcomb Falls took at least twenty minutes, not counting the return trip. I brushed my teeth and went to my room to undress and crawl into bed. My thoughts moved restlessly from Cinnamon to Paul and Leigh and the accusing phone call from Prentiss Bowman, to the unfathomable notion of leaving the house the Old Man had built for himself—the only home I’d ever known.

Not long afterward the headlights of Paul’s truck cast a silhouette of skeletal limbs and window frames across the plaster walls of my room. I listened as he entered and my mother called him into the living room. I couldn’t discern what they were saying, but I felt certain that the bitterness I sensed passing between them was real and not just the progeny of my fears. I had heard such conversations before, after all—years before, when their mutual loathing was not tempered by the extremity of the Old Man’s circumstances. I prayed that my mother would not provoke Paul to disappear again, just when things seemed to be at their worst.

At last I heard Paul’s heavy boots on the steps. When he reached the top of the stairs and entered his room, I slid from beneath my covers and went to him. The room seemed extraordinarily dark. There was no moon or stars or any other ambient light. Paul had eased into his seat by the window.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself,” he replied.

I didn’t ask Paul about what my mother had said to him or what she’d told me about Leigh and her father and the skinny-dipping.

“I guess you heard about the house,” Paul said.

I nodded.

“It has to happen, Rocky,” he said. “If she waits any longer, the bank will foreclose and we’ll have to leave anyway, with nothing to show for it.”

“I understand,” I said.

“It should go for a good price,” he said.

“Where will we go?” I asked.

“Your mom will find something,” he said. “It won’t be so bad.”

As Paul lit his first cigarette, I realized why everything had seemed so strangely dark.

“Look,” I said.

“What?” Paul asked.

I pointed out the window at Twin Oaks. The floodlights that normally illuminated the house at night were extinguished.

“It’s not there,” I said.

22

SINCE PATRICIA HAD RELOCATED
to Charlottesville with her horses, it would not be uncommon for a week to pass without the Culvers seeing or speaking to anyone. There was William, but like me before him, he might go for days without seeing either Brad or Jane Culver, visiting the house only to collect his week’s pay. We had noticed the absence of the horses from the field and the darkness of the house in the evening, but they might just have been traveling, off to watch Patricia in some horse show or to visit Charles in his new manse on the coast of Venezuela. Culver usually left the lights on a timer, but he might simply have forgotten before they departed. We paid it little mind. The Culvers weren’t our friends anymore. Neither house was much concerned with the welfare of its neighbors. Who knows how long they might have lingered there if not for the preternatural visions of Miss Anita Holt.

Paul and I were, as usual, upstairs listening to records when we noticed the blue Buick coming up our driveway. I assumed she’d left something behind, like a prayer book or a pair of the kid gloves she still wore everywhere she went.

I don’t recall hearing the doorbell; it might have been lost underneath Robert Plant caterwauling about Valhalla and the western shore. Or Miss Anita might have barged in without ringing. We did, however, hear her announce herself—not even Zeppelin’s howling dogs of doom could have washed out the sound of her shrieking.

“Blood!” she screeched. “Blood,
blood
,
BLOOD
!!!!!”

DRIVING AWAY FROM
a Saturday morning prayer meeting with my mother, Miss Anita had felt an overpowering, extrasensory urge to drop in on the Culvers. She thought “the sense,” as she called it, was leading her there on behalf of Leigh. As she soon discovered, she was on a different kind of errand entirely.

When Miss Anita drove up to Twin Oaks, the Culvers’ matching Mercedes sedans were parked in the driveway. She went to the door and rang the bell, twice. The silence, she said, was unsettling. When no one answered after she rang the bell a third time, she grasped the doorknob and turned it. Discovering that the door was open, she walked in.

She must have screamed, or perhaps she stood silent, mute with shock. There was so much blood, everywhere—on the floor, on the walls, smeared across the dining room table. Laid out next to each other on the floor in front of the fireplace were Brad and Jane Culver. Someone had pulled the coffee table over to the wall to make room for them both. Their hands and legs were spread out, as if they had been frozen in the midst of making snow angels. They were quite obviously dead—eyes open, mouths agape, covered with wounds, blood everywhere. On the wall above the mantel were the words
pig
and
whore
, written in blood.

One look at that horrible scene—well, that was enough for Miss Anita. She ran outside and to her car, whereupon she sped down the hill, back onto Boone’s Ferry, and quickly over to us.

Thus did our little town’s innocence end, replaced in mere hours with panic and paranoia, dread and suspicion, recrimination and lurid fascination. Before the sheriff’s deputies had even finished wrapping the yellow crime scene tape around those two great oak trees and the house that bore their name, phones all across the Boone’s Ferry neighborhood were all but ringing off their hooks, charged as they were with such incendiary astonishment.

For days and weeks afterward, the slightest creak in an old house or the brushing of naked tree limbs against each other in the wind caused people to sit bolt upright in their beds, peering frantically at the darkness until they convinced themselves that there were no knife-wielding murderers lurking in the bushes or beneath the trees or, worse, on the other side of the bedroom door. The pawn shops and the sporting goods stores sold out of almost every form of firearm. Allegedly, even police officers and sheriff’s deputies were sleeping with pistols under their pillows.

Some facts were immediately reported in the newspapers, and others revealed in the weeks and months that followed. Rumors trickled out through the gossip tree. Miss Anita told us everything she saw, but she hadn’t exactly stuck around to study the crime scene.

The police believed that the Culvers had been dead for at least a day when she found them. They must have died quickly: Brad Culver had two distinct slashes on his neck, either of which would have done him in, while the slash across Jane Culver’s throat was so deep that she was almost decapitated. Both had defensive wounds, especially Brad Culver, whose palms and forearms had deep gouges that suggested he had blocked several blows and tried to grab the knife from his attacker.

The bodies had been moved and arranged on their backs, heads pointing north, legs and arms spread, inside circles painted with their own blood. Around each body, five candles had been placed along the line of the circle, positioned at the head, hands, and feet. The candles had been left burning, so that all that was left of them were little puddles of cream-colored wax dotted with the blackened ashes of the wicks. Aside from the words
pig
and
whore
written on the walls in blood, the killer’s other little touch was to paint inverted crucifixes and five-pointed stars enclosed in circles—pentagrams.

There had long been rumors in Spencerville of devil worshippers who lurked around out in the mountains past Holcomb Falls. The name of Squeaky Fromme was still fresh in our minds after her recent prison break in West Virginia. Squeaky’s suspiciously easy escape had already led to quite a bit of talk that there might still be a few deranged longhairs out there, ready to pick up right where Charlie Manson left off. To many, the murder of Brad and Jane Culver confirmed these suspicions. Others suggested that some old enemy had emerged from Brad Culver’s past to settle a score. Between what I had heard from Patricia and the Old Man’s experience, I had no trouble believing there might be a number of people out there who’d like to see Brad Culver dead.

One other detail of the crime, however, would not come to our attention for several more days—one that was more chilling to me than all the buckets of blood and intimations of black magic combined. When the autopsy of Brad Culver’s body was conducted, the county coroner discovered among the host of stab wounds and slashes a single gunshot wound—a slug from a .38 revolver, buried in the flesh of Brad Culver’s thigh.

TH
ERE WAS NO
hiding the news from the Old Man. As poor as his hearing had become, he still heard the screeching yowl of Miss Anita when she came through our door that day, and he was there with us, watching through the windows as the flashing blue and red lights descended on Twin Oaks and the deputies came by to question us all.

“Serves the son of a bitch right,” the Old Man muttered. “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch.”

“Hush, Dick,” my mother said.

“Don’t you hush me, woman,” he said.

“I mean it,” my mother said. “It’s not Christian.”

“Oh, bullshit,” said the Old Man.

Later that evening, we received a visit from an investigator from the sheriff’s office. Bobby Carwile had only recently been promoted from deputy to investigator. All of thirty years old, he was barely a month clear of dealing with boat accidents, DUIs, the occasional burglary, and general redneck nonsense when he was handed the most sensational case the town had ever seen.

“How do you do, ma’am,” Carwile said to my mother when he arrived at our door, dressed in a navy blazer, khaki pants, Weejuns, and a cheap-looking necktie—the same outfit almost every boy in Spencerville wore to church every Sunday. He seemed a little embarrassed to be bothering us.

“I was wondering if I might ask y’all a few questions,” he said.

“Certainly,” my mother replied. “Come have a seat.”

She gestured toward the living room, where we were all already seated around Miss Anita—all of us except for the Old Man, who sat in the armchair nearest the window, peering up and out across the field toward the flashing lights.

“Is there a place I could talk to each of you alone?” Carwile asked.

“Well, Mr. Carwile, except for Miss Anita, we all saw the same things,” my mother said. “And you know what she saw.”

“I understand,” Carwile said. “But it’s just procedure. Just one of those things we have to do.”

My mother led him to the Old Man’s study, on the opposite side of the entrance hall. Bobby Carwile began with Miss Anita. The rest of us sat out in the living room, anxiously waiting our turns.

After Miss Anita came out and joined us in the living room, Bobby Carwile called my mother in. Miss Anita sat down beside me; I put my arm around her.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through all that, Miss Anita,” I said.

“I’ve seen it before, you know,” she said. “Do you remember, young Richard, when Brad Culver came here, to this very room, the day before that dreadful wedding?”

“I remember,” I said.

“I saw it then,” she whispered. “When he touched my hand, I saw him, just as he was when I found him today.”

I looked at Paul, expecting to see his eyes rolling with disdain. Instead he listened intently, without apparent skepticism or contempt.

“Did you see who did this, Miss Anita?” Paul asked.

She stared back at him in thoughtful silence, her mouth slightly agape, as if she were waiting for the spirit to provide her with an answer.

“No,” she said. “There was nothing else.”

When my mother came out, Paul and I helped the Old Man up and across the hall to the study.

“Just so you know, he’s not in his right mind,” Paul said. “Stroke.”

“I understand,” Bobby Carwile said.

“You can’t take anything he says too seriously,” Paul said. “He can’t remember what year it is from one minute to the next. He might even forget who you are.”

“Mrs. Askew explained that to me,” Carwile said.

I left the Old Man in the armchair and joined Paul at the door.

“It’ll be just a minute or two,” Carwile said.

“Mind if I go outside to have a smoke?” Paul asked.

“Go right ahead,” Carwile said. “I’ll join you when I’m done here.”

I followed Paul into the hall and out the front door, down the front stoop, and out to the fence. Paul lit up. Across the field, the lights of the patrol cars illuminated the white columns of Twin Oaks.

“Who do you think did it?” I asked.

Paul took a long drag and blew it out and cocked his head toward me.

“Maybe it was Frank Cherry’s ghost,” he said.

TH
E NEXT DAY,
from Paul’s room, we saw a large brown four-door pickup truck pulling a horse trailer coming up the Culvers’ driveway, escorted by a patrol car. The truck drove up past the house and down toward the stable.

“That must be Patricia,” I said to Paul, who sat by the window, stroking his beard.

She had arrived the night before and was staying with Kiki Baumberger, who had been Jane Culver’s closest friend in Spencerville. Charles would arrive the next day. The Culvers couldn’t be buried until the coroner concluded his investigation, but a memorial service would be held that Wednesday afternoon at Holy Comforter. What would happen to the Culvers after that was still unsettled, perhaps even for Charles and Patricia. Jane Culver had been born here, but the children had no roots in Spencerville. Once the state settled the matter of their parents’ murder, it was likely that neither Charles nor Patricia would ever return again, even for a casual visit.

“Should we go over there?” I asked.

“What for?” Paul said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “To pay our respects or something.”

“You go if you want,” he said.

I didn’t.

Because she expected to be showing the house soon, my mother had asked me and Paul to straighten up the yard. The grass had begun to grow again and was rough and uneven. Patches of weeds were scattered through the lawn, and the boxwoods needed trimming. Paul took the riding mower, working his way out from the house in circles. I took the push mower and trimmed the edges and borders of the flower beds and the fences. I was out front near the pasture pushing the mower when Patricia crested the hill atop Velma, her father’s chestnut mare. Next to her on Oberon, her mother’s sorrel gelding, was a young man I immediately concluded was my replacement.

They broke for the corner of the field and came around to trot along the fence toward me. I cut the motor and stood with my arms along the fence, waiting for the two horses to slow and stop. I looked past Patricia at first, curious as I was to scrutinize her companion.

He was small—less formidable than Patricia in every aspect. He looked down absently. He might merely have been distracted by the discomfort of the situation; nevertheless, I interpreted his blank stare as a deliberate effort to make plain that I was not nearly as significant a personage to him as he was to me. I also noticed that he was young—plainly younger than Patricia, not much older than me.

“I’m so sorry, Patricia,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said.

She looked a bit dazed, as if she hadn’t slept for quite a while; most likely she hadn’t. I remembered how she had appeared not long after I first met her, before we got involved, even as friends—when I first began to think of her not as aloof, but as isolated; lonely and alone; not an ice princess, but a princess in a tower.

“I was planning to come see you when I could,” I said.

“That’s sweet of you,” she said. She tilted her head to the boy beside her. “This is Nelson,” she said.

I mounted the fence and extended my hand. The boy nudged the horse toward me and reached out to meet my grip.

“Nice day for a ride,” I said.

“The horses needed to be looked after,” Nelson said. “It’s not their fault what’s happened, after all. They’ve been cooped up in that stable half-starved for three days.”

“At least,” Patricia added.

Behind me, Paul cut the engine on the riding mower. The sound of the motor was replaced by the slight breeze and the swishing of the horses’ tails. Paul appeared beside me.

“Hello, Paul,” Patricia said.