A Choir of Ill Children (14 page)

When she looks up at me at last Lily says, “She mutters sometimes. In her sleep.”

“What does she say?”

“Who can tell? It’s all just mumbling. Would you like some wine?”

“Sure.”

From the basket she pulls two plastic glasses and a bottle of Chianti that’s been sitting in a container of ice. She pours the wine and we sit sipping it, staring at one another. I think about the flat rock and what might happen if I brought Eve back to where she was found in the swamp. Maybe I should ask her about the dead kid and Herbie Ordell Jonstone’s leg.

Undoing a button on her sweater, Lily presses the cool glass of wine to her cleavage. Her burgeoning overt sexuality is something of a turnoff to me. “Sheriff Burke is completely inept. He hasn’t been able to find out anything about her parents. All those computers and interoffice cooperation and still he’s unable to learn anything. He even had the audacity to take her fingerprints.”

“And there’s no record of her anywhere?”

“No, of course not. Did you expect there might be? Do you think she’s been in jail?”

“Sometimes parents print their kids just in case they’re ever abducted. Has Dr. Jenkins taken another look at her?”

“No. Why?”

“It might be prudent.”

“I think that’s unnecessary, Thomas.”

“All right.”

“Is it costing very much? Paying for Mr. Stiel’s services?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Well, come on, let’s eat.”

Eve doesn’t turn from the window. I decide to try to shake something free. I get out of my chair and step up behind her, putting my hands on her shoulders. I’d hoped for some kind of reaction from the physical contact but there isn’t anything. Perhaps she’s used to men touching her. She completely disregards me, staring down at the factory floor like she owns the mill. I consider licking her all-day sucker but I’m fairly certain that if I did we’d suddenly be locked in a death match, and I’m not quite ready for that.

She raps on the glass in exactly the same way the dead kid tapped on the door.

Lily takes out a glazed ham and puts it on the table.

I
T COSTS A LITTLE OVER TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS TO
bail Dodi out of jail. Sheriff Burke takes the cash and hands me papers to sign but he doesn’t let her free from the cell yet. He’s got one boot up on the desk and is tilting backward in his chair, relishing the moment. His hat is planted tightly on his nugget of a head.

Even though Sarah isn’t pressing charges he considers this to be a big case that’s broken wide open, and he doesn’t want the attention to die down just yet. He’s trying to come up with something that will be hip, street-smart, and witty, with the proper amount of nonchalant jaded attitude, but so far he’s dry. I can see him getting a little worried that he won’t even be able to make the pretense. He wants to be a donut-eating hardass running in homicidal scum every day. He’s watched enough cop shows and read a few true-crime books—
Helter Skelter, Zodiac, Son of Sam
, all the stuff about Gacy and Dahmer—but nothing quite applies now and it’s bugging him.

Burke takes some chaw out of his top desk drawer and bites off too large a piece. The miscalculation costs him as his mouth floods with too much juice. It drips down his chin onto his neat uniform and he winds up having to spit the whole thing out into his metal wastebasket.

Burke finally realizes he isn’t going to utter anything funky and just says, “The Coots tramp coulda killed that girl. The hell’s going on in your house? This never should have happened.”

“It was sort of a territorial thing.”

He leans forward trying to be imposing. “That supposed to be funny?”

“No.”

“Took seven stitches for Doc Jenkins to close her up. That isn’t funny.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Another inch farther in and she would’ve been spilling her guts out all over your fancy rugs.”

Burke’s never been inside the house and doesn’t know if we have fancy rugs or not, but it sounds pretty good in the heat of his rant. Dodi wasn’t trying to disembowel Sarah—the slash across her stomach had another meaning. Sarah is New York high class slumming as Dogpatch Daisy Mae knotting her blouse at midriff, wearing the torn cutoffs. Dodi is the real thing and resents anyone intruding on her action. I find that understandable. She couldn’t abide anybody mimicking what is hers by default. She was going for the pierced belly button, a sign of pop cultural iconoclasm that doesn’t belong in the bayou.

But Burke is right about one thing. It never should have happened.

On the wall behind him are photos and statistics of all the dogs who’ve been kicked, including his own terrier, Binky. There’s a close-up of Binky’s tushy with the size twelve boot print on it. Binky and Burke look as if they may never recover.

“Those two gals can’t stay in the same house any longer.”

“You’re right,” I say.

“So what are you going to do?”

“One of them will be leaving.”

“Which?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He’s getting a little too excited and forgets to talk from his diaphragm. That fifelike piccolo voice eases from him as if he’s been sucking helium out of a balloon. “There isn’t much you do know, now is there?”

“Hm.”

“That the only answer you got?”

His tone is getting to me. A light breeze circles his office and flaps the bills I’ve put on his desk. The chair creaks as he tips back again, stretching as if bored, about to yawn. He wags his boot toward me. There’s an open window directly behind him. One shove against his desk and he’d flip right out of it. “Have you found anything on Eve yet?”

“Who the hell is Eve?”

“The lost girl who’s staying with Lily.”

“Who said her name was Eve?”

“We had to call her something besides ‘Hey, You.’ ”

“She’s none of your concern.”

“Yes, she is.”

“And who do you think you are hiring some shoofly from up North to come all the way down here to snoop into the middle of my investigation? You got so much money you feel like wasting it wherever you can?”

“Learn anything at all about the girl?”

“No,” he says, trying hard to drop an octave and failing. “Let’s stick to the subject at hand.”

“How about the dog kicker?”

“You never mind about him.”

“He’s tearing the town apart, that dog kicker. People don’t feel safe putting their own pets in the yard.”

“Hey—”

“Can’t leave them outside, you never know when the little dears are gonna get trampled upon.”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear that crap.”

“The kids, I think that’s the worst part. It just isn’t right that they should suffer so.”

“That’s enough.”

“What it’s doing to the poor children of Kingdom Come, seeing their beloved pets . . .”

It doesn’t take much to put Burke on the defensive. He hops out of his chair like a boy rushing to watch cartoons and heads off to free Dodi. His bootheels tick against the tile floor making the same sounds as a scuttling rat.

Binky’s photo stares back at me from the wall, full of sorrow and anguish, with no promise of better days ahead.

I
SEE THAT
F
RED
’
S ARM REALLY HAS HEALED UP NICELY
as he reaches out to shake my hand. He’s gained a good deal of weight and all the manic tension has washed out of him, leaving him slow and sedate. He’s apologetic about having stolen from me, but not overly so. He doesn’t hold any hostility toward me and doesn’t offer to pay me back. He probably doesn’t remember much about that last night in the house anyway. Now he’s got a sense of pride about him that he didn’t have before. The rehab guys have done a fine job of whipping him back into shape.

He looks around for Dodi. He might be clean but he’s still got the hots for her, that’s natural enough. She’s in another room, on the third floor, waiting patiently for Sarah to leave before showing herself again, as per my instructions.

It doesn’t take long for Fred to get around to making his big movie pitch to me. Not the porn freaks flick he had all worked out but his new documentary on addiction. He foresees it as an eighteen-part opus he wants to market to PBS. He unfolds a piece of paper covered with figures—costs, estimates, and percentages—most of which I find rather reasonable. I tell him I’ll carefully consider his proposal.

Sarah’s on the phone with her father, whispering, the cord wrapped so tightly around her hands that it’s a garrote. The sweet scent of honeysuckle sweeps through the house. A couple of long-jawed orb weaver spiders creep across the floorboards leaving fine threads of web behind. She says, “Yes, Daddy, I understand. Thank you, Daddy, I love you.”

Staring at the photo of my parents that he’d tried to steal, Fred rubs his arm. He mouths words and I can read his lips. He’s reciting the line I gave him before breaking his ulna, about how it would provide spiritual reassurance, a new hope for all. How he should take heart in that.

Maybe he does. But he remains an addict, and he starts looking around, wondering if I still have the better crystal I was cutting his coke with. His lips are still too wet and his tongue peers through them like a slug.

Sarah’s bags are packed and she stands in the hall crying softly, looking back up the stairwell at the closed door of the bedroom. She’s got her blouse tied at midriff, but the stitches on her belly are protected by a thick white bandage. It crinkles and snaps as she gives the house a last once-over. I think she’ll miss it—us, Jonah, these preoccupations—for a while at least. Potts County can get in the blood. This distraction has been a rather intriguing one. It’s presented her with lots of material to tell the shrink that her parents will have to hire. And the five grand in cash I’ve given her will help soothe some of her fleeting despair.

The tattooed masks of Tragedy and Comedy leer and grin at me as Sarah turns. She says, “Tell him—”

“What?”

“That it’s best this way.” Her voice breaks down the center. “It’s time that I left. We . . . this . . . couldn’t go on indefinitely. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of it. Please tell him that.”

“I don’t have to. He’s listening.”

“Oh my God,” she whimpers.

Fred is quietly opening and closing drawers, searching for the stash. Sarah brushes the tears off her chin and takes my hand. For the first time I feel a bit sad that she’s going. The chemistry is changing once more, and we need to find a new equilibrium. She steps up on tiptoe as if to kiss my cheek but she doesn’t. She glances into my eyes and smiles grimly.

“Take care of yourself, Thomas.”

“And you, Sarah.”

“Please watch over Jonah—all your brothers—as well.”

“Of course.”

“They don’t need that girl, really. They need you.”

She wheels aside and walks out. Fred babbles something about staying in touch, promising to send me some of his screeners, then grabs Sarah’s luggage and follows her out the front door.

The screaming starts.

T
HAT IMMENSE BRAIN IS TWO-THIRDS WRATH NOW
, unbalanced as neurotransmitters slither and slosh and Cole’s love diminishes in the misfiring synapses of heartbreak and rage. Sebastian is bitter and Jonah insane. Their hands are twitching, tongues unfurling, thoughts so distorted and loud that there’s a buzz at the base of my neck and the hair stands on end. I want to see their eyes but every time I come close those gnarled arms and legs whirl and block me. I think about those powerful hands that gripped me in my nightmare, protecting me from the depths of the swamp and what waited to strangle me there. The lungs wheeze and hiss, growls bleeding through. Cole tries to speak reassurances but they won’t let him talk. There’s no real poetry but the mouths mumble angry stanzas of indignation. They shamble and pirouette forward, the stunted distorted bodies quite beautiful and natural in their own way—the fluid angles and flesh of contorted bone, tendon and muscle are aesthetically elegant. The three shriveled forms merge to support the massive head, the unseen eyes, whirling and almost prancing. Sparks leap and pop across the carpeting. I speak Jonah’s name and he withdraws to the corner, dragging the rest of the scuffling bodies with him, where they are all consumed by shadows. Fingers point at the door and I leave.

I
’
M PARKED OUTSIDE OF
D
OOVER
’
S
F
IVE &
D
IME AT
around closing time when Lottie Mae’s brother, Clay, and his buddy Darr pull in on their bikes. Cormorants, loons, and grebes wallow and squawk in the green morass channels behind the store, waddling beneath the rotting docks where the swamp folk tie their poled skiffs when they come in to buy provisions.

Darr still has the butterfly Band-Aid on his forehead. The adhesive has worn off one edge and it flaps freely as he approaches. He hasn’t bathed and the cut is crusted with dirt. He’s a man who likes the world to take care of itself.

I wonder what the play is going to be. Clay stands and watches, arms hanging loosely at his sides, expressionless but alert. He glances at the door searching for his sister, unsure if she’s still inside, or if, possibly, I’ve
done
something with her already.

Like Einstein, Darr doesn’t waste time and valuable mental energy choosing different clothes each day. He’s still got on the tight red sleeveless T-shirt, the jeans, boots, the belt buckle. One difference. He’s tossed the tiny knife, probably in a fit of anger thinking the blade was a traitor after being cut by it, a defector to the enemy camp. It’s the kind of thinking that leads men to call their guitars by women’s names and eventually divorce them. He’s got a new love, an eight-inch switchblade stuffed inside his left boot.

I get out of the truck and wait for him to step up. His belly keeps him pretty far off from me, but he’s got the reach to make the distance. He cocks his head and the Band-Aid flops the other way as he stares over at the loons plodding along through the grass.