Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I sat by the caboose waiting for Lyle, the metal hulk rusted a terra cotta red that absorbed all light. It slept, near dead for years, on sleeper timbers at the front of our driveway. As children, Momma let us crawl around and on and through its weary iron, tin and wood carcass, sharp, blistered edges everywhere. What was Momma thinking? We were crawling a live scorpion! Only the cupola at the top hadn’t been completely savaged, where Papa Karl had thrown a now-tattered tarp expecting, I suppose, he’d start rehabilitation one day. His accident changed all that.

It was just a jungle gym for me and Lyle. A dangerous one, I could see now, and one that was primarily his domain. I’d climb it yelling, “Get on board, train leaving for all points east” or “Join me on the rocket.” But I scared him and he pushed me away in any way he could. Thankful, I could always tell, when I went off to the shed or later, into the woods. That corroded hack caboose; what was Momma thinking?

Anyway, I wasn’t doing much better. Researching Johnny Ray always ended with the fifties ‘Cry Guy’ singer Johnnie Ray, dearly departed and no longer available for appearances. I needed to track the live one down.

Gordon had never heard of him. Momma didn’t have a clue. I even called Victor . . .

“Hello, King residence.”

“Is this Mrs. King, Melissa?”

“No, this is her son, Michael. I’ll get her.”

Before I could explain that I wanted Victor, it was too late.

“Hello, this is Melissa.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. King . . . my name is Eunis, I was a Miss USA judge with Victor.”

“Oh . . . right. I think my husband mentioned you. I guess you went out for drinks after the gown competition and the results. I guess you earned it, but boy, Victor doesn’t usually stay out that late anymore.”

Keep out of it.
“Well, yes . . .”

“Victor’s not at the office.”

“I know.”

“And he’s not home today either. He’s always out and around. Can I leave him a message?”

“No . . . but you wouldn’t happen to know a Johnny Ray in the vicinity, would you?”

“Is he? —no, that’s, that’s someone else. No, no I don’t.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let Victor know you called.”
Oh goodie
.

Yet that simple phone call set so many atoms in motion —attracting, repelling and colliding with one another.

Lyle finally sauntered to the caboose, hands wedged in his jeans.

I looked up at him. “You ever heard of a Johnny Ray around here, not the 1950’s singer?”

Lyle slouched against the timber where the creosote had dried. Another unseasonably warm day. He lifted his head. “You mean like Johnny Ray Bardo?”

“Who?”

“My guitar teacher —well, the first real one.”

“Around here?”

“Last I heard. He wasn’t very mobile.”

“Could you introduce me?”

Lyle’s mouth twisted a bit. “No.”

“Why the heck not?”

“Not a good idea.”

“For me or you?”

“Aw shit.”

“Well?”

Lyle shook his head. “I kinda still owe him for some lessons and an amp.”

“Really?” I sighed. “But you could point me there?”

“I guess, sure, but why?”

“You got me. May be part of the molecular structure.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Come on let’s go for a ride. The old train gives me the creeps.”

“It’s our heritage.” He patted it, then rubbed the red and orange dust off his palms. “But I ain’t goin’ to Johnny Ray’s with you. I’ll show you the trailer park, that’s it.”

***

A few minutes later we were on Route 15.

“You heard Momma’s throwing a Death & Dying party for herself end of the week.”

Lyle stuck his head out the car and let the wind whip at his face. “I heard, invitations an all. ‘Life’s too short. Bring a bottle.’”

I had to laugh. Momma knew what she wanted. “Maybe we should get her a needlepoint with that on it. She’s the cozy type.”

“Maybe embroider a bloody hatchet.” He burped.

We both laughed.

“You’re sure you won’t visit Johnny Ray?”

“Positive.”

“Then is it okay if we go by old Carver’s place?”

“You got some strange habits.”

“Always have.” As we passed by, a magnolia bush, fluorescent purple, caught my attention, and then a forsythia spiked gold.

“I’m not gonna stay around for no party,” said Lyle.

“No need.” I glanced at him, my hand relaxed on the steering wheel. Never thick, Lyle was thinner still. Older. “It’s just going to be Sarah Pooley and the rest of her
banditas
. We don’t have to be there. She’d like it to be a tribute — she even invited Carly. But there’s no dinner and after the first two drinks the coven will close ranks. We’ll be superfluous. I’m still an untouchable, better not seen anyhow.”

“No dinner!” He mocked surprise. “I thought a bottle of schnapps and a six-pack of Keystone
was
dinner.”

“Lunch.”

He stretched his neck and affected a profound professional tone. “You think she’s gettin’ enough key-lated minerals?”

“Peppermint’s a mineral, isn’t it?”

“If taken with yeast.” He drummed on the dashboard.

“There you go.”

He hooted, I snorted. His shoulders relaxed. “Sometimes I don’t know how serious to take her?”

“After all these years? Come on.”

“Always scared the hell out of me.” He sat back. “Even her smell is twisted. You ever smell her scalp?”

“It was all that shit she fed us about
tussers
and
mylings
—”

“
Vardøgers
.”

“Those too,” I laughed.
Vardøgers.

He stopped laughing.

“Oh come on, you’ve gotten over those spook stories of hers.”

“Have you? I fuckin’ hate graveyards.” He put up his hand in defense of unseen phantoms. “I think there’s somethin’ to what she says, things we can’t see. Too many strange, nasty things happenin’. Everywhere.”

“You mean ghosts?”

“You’re always talkin’ to them. Least you used to. I think they follow us. That Harold thing was creepy.” He caught himself and checked to see if he’d tripped my fears again.

“It’s okay.” I waved it away. A trace lingered.

He continued. “Somethin’ was following him. Timmy K’s wife. Same thing. That kid in Rochester, remember he took an ax to his whole family? Somethin’s drivin’ them, somethin’ unseen.”

“Unseen, maybe, but there’s a sound reason for everything, usually scientific.”

“Like Harold offin’ himself.”

I hesitated. “Yes, even that. Something logical, even if it was only logical in Harold’s mind. I’m investigating his death.” I wasn’t going to mention it to anyone.

“Investigatin’? What’s there to investigate? You’re not still thinkin’ you had somethin’ to do with it?”

“I just want to be sure. I want to know why. Why’d he do it? Even in his mind, he rationalized it. That’s what we do, all of us.” Saying it started me simmering.

“Rational? You think life is fuckin’ rational. You’re swimmin’ in deep waters, Sis. I don’t go there. I learned ya can’t be sure —of anythin’.” He waved me off and peered out the window.

I’d pulled an axe handle from the shed and kept it by my bedside, just in case Atara showed up at the farmhouse. And now she and Victor . . . no telling what they’d done the night before. Harold and some woman. A guy named Johnny Ray. Momma and her retinue of darkness, forever ranting.

“Holy shit!” Lyle signaled to my left.

“Shit!”

Carver’s colossal taxidermy sign was gone, and the two massive support timbers that had borne it were whittled into kindling. But there, way down and across the road, against an apparently untouched grove of black spruce, sat the sign, Carver’s eyes staring at us. The tornado had come down that corridor. The shop, sitting alone in the clearing, still sagging a bit, was untouched.

Lyle’s face froze, then he buried it in his hands and broke down crying.

“Oh my god, Lyle. What’s the matter?” I unbuckled my seat belt and reached for him. He let me take him in my arms. “Whoa, whoa. What’s the matter? We can fix it.”

“No,” he said, voice choked and flat. “No.” Carver’s eyes bore down on us. My brother subsided, regrouped. He wiped his nose with his hand and the moisture from his eyes with his sleeve. I handed him the sanitizer from the glove compartment.

He stared at the small bottle and laughed. “I’m a dead man.”

The stillness cracked, a clap so loud we both jumped as if one of Carver’s timbers was splitting on top of us. The sound filled the sky, flapping over the landscape in waves, an invisible flock of white pelicans. A single resounding rifle shot. The car began to buckle, a trophy deer going down. In the distance an engine started and drove off. We looked at each other.

“What the fuck was that?” Lyle asked, sobering and getting out of the car.

“Don’t!” But he was out and I did the same.

“Your tire, somebody shot it out.”

“Another warning,” I said.

“Another?”

“Never mind. What do you mean you’re a dead man?”

“Somebody’s shooting at you?” He wore his disbelief like gravity, his face and shoulders weighed to the ground.

I must have looked the same. “What do you mean you’re a dead man?”

He knelt by the flattened tire, then slumped with it. “Blood. In my urine. You ever see that? Chunks of red and black blood streamin’ out of you? Out of
me
.”

“It could be a lot of things.”

“It could be, but it’s fuckin’ cancer, kidney cancer.”

“Oh Lyle.” I went around to him, crouched down and held him again, the two of us pinned against the fender, a cool draft tussling his thin hair, the smell of his old leather jacket against my cheek.

Who is warnin’ you about what?” Lyle finally got to his feet and ran fingers through his hair.

“Somebody doesn’t want me nosing around.” Or wanted me to deliver a comb.

“About what?”

“Harold . . . or maybe I remind somebody of their past, I don’t know. Anyway, about you, are you sure? Does Momma know?”

“Sure. Doctors agree. Momma don’t know nothin’,” he said with disgust.

“How much time?”

“A month, maybe three.”

I gasped. “You should’ve told me.”

“I’m tellin’ you now, and you’re the only one, and I expect you to keep it to yourself, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Open the trunk. Let’s fix this goddam tire and get outta here.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

It was worse than most trailer parks. Just driving past the wagon wheel gate made me want to take a shower. I considered the glove box then started looking for numbers.

I’d decided to ask forgiveness rather than permission when I surprised Johnny Ray.
Come with me
. I saw Harold by his neck and something more: he reached out to me, hopeful. Then it went blank, that dark frame that followed me everywhere, something I couldn’t or didn’t want to remember. It was a slice more than I’d recovered before but I had to keep my focus.

My car crept through the afternoon shadows, no one in sight but a mangy tabby that frightened at the sight of me and limped behind a stack of plastic piping shrouded in tall grass. Project abandoned.

When I reached #72, it was a trailer home in better repair than most of the others, with a small fenced yard that was free of debris and a custom-made birdbath of small orange and blue tiles. As I passed it I admired the workmanship.
No reason to be nervous
.

The door opened before I made it to the front step. “Can I help you?” asked a sturdy voice, a hint of Creole from the darkness behind the screen door.

I stepped back. “I’m sorry to bother you but someone suggested you might have known Harold Cloonis.”

“Someone?” asked the shadow. A puff of cigarette smoke ballooned through the screen.

“Look, did you know him? Because I’m his —”

“I know who you are.”

That threw me off balance. “Well, can I come in?”

“You mean ‘may’ you come in.”

“Yes.”

“How about you stay out there and I open the door, just for a short time, because I’ve got things to do and you weren’t expected.”

“Sure, that would be fine. Thank you.” I didn’t know whether I should remove my shades. I didn’t want to unsettle him. “How do you know me?”

“I know you, that’s all.”

My twisted history in town had been more on display than I’d realized. “Okay.”

The door opened wider and a neatly cropped white-haired man in his late fifties, wearing a gray and white-striped cardigan, no shirt, and black jeans, managed to effortlessly wedge open the screen door with his wheelchair. He held the cigarette between his teeth and drew more smoke. “You’re on the clock, lady.”

“Okay, okay, then how did you know Harold?”

“Too long a story. Next.”

“Maybe if we could —”

“Next,” he repeated without rancor.

“I’m looking for people who knew him before his death.”

“Hard to know him after.”

I reorganized. “Yes, of course. What I meant was, you’re aware that he killed himself?” Out loud, it hurt. Even then.

“So they say.” Like I was a suspect.

“So, ah, did he seem despondent when you knew him and when was that exactly?”

“I knew him a year or two before his death. We both liked Dickens. I still do. At the time he wasn’t at all despondent. He was very happy.”

“
Very
happy?”

“That was my take.”

“Does the phrase ‘come with me’ have any significance related to Harold?”

“No.”

“Did he have any friends besides you?” I bit hard on it. “I mean, maybe a girlfriend?”

“There was a girlfriend.”

I was a marionette, yanked up and down with every answer.

He pulled the cigarette out of his teeth with his thin lips and sucked in the bonus smoke. “Before my time.” No smoke exhaled.

“Do you remember a name?”

“Connie or Constance. Figueroa, I think.”

“Any idea where she worked or lived?”

“Worked at Itasca.”

“The state park. How long ago?”

“Two years, maybe more. Like I said, before my time.”

“Do you know what she looked like?” And then another question I really didn’t want to ask, and an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. “Was he . . . in love?”

Johnny Ray sniffed. “Don’t know, but he wasn’t in love.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. And we’ve run out of time.”

“Could we talk again?”

“I’ve got a guitar to re-string. But I’ll ask
you
a question.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why don’t you let the dead rest?”

As I searched for a reply, he backed up his wheelchair and slammed the screen door shut.

***

I resolved to give Victor a visit, to gauge his response to me, alone, and to squeeze out any information he might have concerning Johnny Ray. But when I arrived at the mayor’s office, his secretary waved me off. “Not today,” she said pointing to the crowd of people waiting for him, including his wife, the still extravagant Melissa. “He’s even more backed up than usual.” The only available chair was next to her, so I sat. Even after all those years and the encroaching crows feet, she was quite lovely and well toned. I gave her a pained smile.

“He’s a busy man,” I said.

“Yes.” She wasn’t pleased.

“Hi.” I removed my shades, extended my hand; she’d never met me in person outside of The Beaver. “I’m Eunis, Eunis Cloonis.”

She was clearly taken aback; then shook my hand. “You’re Eunis.” She was strong.

“Yes.”

“I guess we all need appointments to see the great man.” Her lips were tight, her perfect teeth hidden.

“Sorry.”

“Yes, well, I guess it comes with the territory. But it would be nice to see him once in awhile. It’s every night now.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You’re done with the Miss USA, right?”

“Yes.”

“Ever find that guy you were looking for? I told Vic you called.”

“I did, thank you.”

She kept studying my face. Then checked the waiting throng; slapped her skirt and stood up. She flashed her perfect teeth. “It was nice meeting you.” She walked out and I did the same a few minutes later.

***

It had been almost four days since Atara confronted me in the parking lot and her subsequent silence was deafening. An hour didn’t go by without me expecting her to show up at the farmhouse, violently. Yet now more than ever, with the threat of a tape, the comb was my best insurance against her attacks, even though her precious comb also brought the peril. A paradox.

I knew no exchange would guarantee my safety. The best I could hope for was a stalemate. Maybe spending time around Roddy had made me more tactical.

She wasn’t the taciturn type. The suspense finally got to me and I found her number on my cell, from the call she’d made to me that final day in the pleasure ship. When I called I was surprised when Levi answered.

“Who’s this?” His honeyed voice instantly recognizable.

“Eunis.”

“How’d you get my number?” Train signal bells jangled behind him.

“You know she’s here in Minnesota.”

“I do.”

“You too?”

“No, and I told her not to, but she’s a women of great beauty and great will.”

Beauty,
absolutely;
will,
more likely malevolence.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t have your comb.”

“Don’t tell me, tell her. It’s not my business.”

“Call her off. Tell her to come home.”

I sensed his amusement across the space. “I’m not home, and she’s got a mind of her own.” More train noise. “The sun could be jealous of the stars. Would you like to meet me for a few days?”

“No.” But part of me missed his body; part of me missed his admiration.

“Then good luck.” He hung up.

I walked back into the house, watching the woods, the shadows, for any movement.

***

“The hell you are,” said Momma when I told her that Lyle and I were planning a drive. “My party,” she growled.

“We’ll be back for the party,” I said. A lie. I expected her face to show the usual apathy, but she seemed genuinely hurt.

“I’ll expect it. This could be my last. Please.”

***

The lodge ceilings were high, the dark logs rustic and grand. Rooms split off in different directions reminding me of the grandeur of Levi and Atara’s palatial ship, although their apartment had become a kind of sinister museum, palatial but sinister. The lodge, however, reeked gravitas. Signs announced that it was built in 1905.

“You’ve never seen the headwaters of the Mississippi?” Lyle stuck his nose against the smell of the old wood.

“No.”

And that’s where the front desk sent us, a rotund formal man with especially small ears saying, “She’ll be out along the trail somewhere. You can’t miss Constance, can’t miss her smile. She’s an institution here.”

So we began the walk, mud and puddles, passing interpretive signs and a few small families returning in the late Saturday afternoon light. Kinglets and vireos —I never could tell the difference— looping from tree to tree, chipmunks waiting for food to drop along the wooded trail.

“I used to dream of floatin’ like Huck Finn down the Mississippi, get as far away as possible,” said Lyle.

“Me too! But I’d start here, not in Missouri. All the way down.”

“Coulda met Johnny Ray early on, maybe played New Orleans.”

The trail opened up and I saw lake water beyond. A squat woman with a brown baseball cap talked to a young couple.

“Here we go.” Lyle pointed at the lake. “All’s we need is a raft.”

“Thank you,” said the young woman, letting her hand drop from the young man’s, and as the squat woman removed her baseball cap to itch her head, I saw hair so thin her crown showed through, like the older woman at the Drink ‘n’ Dive.

“Did you know,” I heard the squat woman say, “that Itasca means ‘truth’ of the ‘head?’ Yes. Walk around. It will be good for you. It will be good.”

“Thank you, Constance,” said the young man shaking her hand again because she’d offered it again, while he tugged his partner away with the other. “You’ve been very informative.”

“No, thank
you
.” Constance turned to bid them farewell and smiled broadly. “Thank you, thank you. Come again. En-joy!”

Lyle and I were no more than twenty feet from Constance, who turned to us as the young couple departed.

“Here you are at the headwaters of the Mississippi,” she said to us, “where the mighty river begins its 2,552 mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico.” Her yellowed teeth and shining blue eyes lit up most of her face, as her head bobbed left and right in pure pleasure at seeing us. “I’m Constance. Is this your first visit to Itasca State Park?”

“No/yes,” Lyle and I responded in unison.

“Well, welcome. I’m Constance. I can tell you a lot.”

She was mid-forties, I’d guess, but it was hard to tell because her face was out of proportion: flattened nose, wide curved eyes, like a child. She had a full or partial extra copy of chromosome 21: Down syndrome. A kind, happy face, despite its dysmorphic structure. Perhaps Johnny Ray had made a mistake.

Lyle made eye contact with me as if to question our purpose.

“I’m Eunis.” I held out
my
hand, a rare initiation for me.

Constance took it with both of hers. “Hi, Eunis, I’m Constance. Welcome.”

“This is my brother, Lyle.”

“Hi, Lyle.” Constance waved. He waved back.

“So this little stream becomes the mighty Mississippi?” I said. “I’ll bet you’ve met a lot of people since you’ve been here at the park.”

“A lot.”

“Do you remember a friend of mine, Harold Cloonis?”

Constance’s face went blank, then shined ever more brightly. “I remember. I remember Harold.”

“You do?” Still, maybe Johnny Ray had been confused about their relationship.

“He was my boyfriend for a while,” she said proudly. “You know him too? Is he your boyfriend now?”

I might as well have had sawdust in my head. I was dumbstruck. “No, not now.” I thought about telling Constance.

“He is a nice man. I love him. I am glad I know him. He is a nice man.”

I swallowed. I collected myself. “Yes, he is. What do you remember about him?”

“He was nice. He took care of me. He made me feel . . . ” Her eyes were mischievous. “. . . well, like a woman. I like that!” She faced Lyle, tilted her head. He smiled at her.

I couldn’t imagine. “Why did it end, you and Harold?”

“He had to go. Okay, it was okay. I knew he wouldn’t be forever. Forever is long. He is a nice man.”

I was on autopilot. “When did you stop seeing him?”

“I don’t know time so well.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Do you want to hear about the headwaters of the Mississippi?” Constance’s little engine was raring to tell.