Cabal (7 page)

The newcomer didn’t do as Lori would have done in such circumstances, and withdraw. Instead, catching Lori’s eye in the mirror, she said:

‘What is it? Men or money?’

Lori wiped the tears away with her fingers.

‘I’m sorry?’ she said.

‘When I cry –’ the girl said, putting a comb through her hennaed hair. ‘– it’s only ever men or money.’

‘Oh.’ The girl’s unabashed curiosity helped hold fresh tears at bay. ‘A man,’ Lori said.

‘Leave you, did he?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Jesus,’ said the girl. ‘Did he come back? That’s even worse.’

The remark earned a tiny smile from Lori.

‘It’s usually the ones you don’t want, right?’ the girl went on. ‘You tell ’em to piss off, they just keep coming back, like dogs –’

Mention of dogs reminded Lori of the scene at the garage, and she felt tears mustering again.

‘Oh shut up, Sheryl,’ the newcomer chided herself, ‘you’re making it worse.’

‘No,’ said Lori. ‘No really. I need to talk.’

Sheryl smiled.

‘As badly as I need coffee?’

Sheryl Margaret Clark was her name, and she could have coaxed gossip from angels. By their second hour of conversation and their fifth coffee, Lori had told her the whole sorry story, from her first meeting with Boone to the moment she and Sheryl had exchanged looks in the mirror. Sheryl herself had a story to tell – more comedy than tragedy – about her lover’s passion for cars and hers for his brother, which had ended in hard words and parting. She was on the road to clear her head.

‘I’ve not done this since I was a kid,’ she said, ‘just going where the fancy takes me. I’ve forgotten how good it feels. Maybe we could go on together. To Shere Neck. I’ve always wanted to see the place.’

‘Is that right?’

Sheryl laughed.

‘No. But it’s as good a destination as any. All directions being equal to the fancy-free.’

S
o they travelled on together, having taken directions from the owner of the diner, who claimed he had a better than vague idea of Midian’s whereabouts. The instructions were good. Their route took them through Shere Neck, which was bigger than Lori had expected, and on down an unmarked road that in theory led to Midian.

‘Why d’you wanna go there?’ the diner owner had wanted to know. ‘Nobody goes there anymore. It’s empty.’

‘I’m writing an article on the gold rush,’ Sheryl had replied, an enthusiastic liar.
‘She’s
sightseeing.’

‘Some sight,’ came the response.

The remark had been made ironically, but it was truer than its speaker had known. It was late afternoon, the light golden on the gravel road, when the town came into view, and until they were in the streets themselves they were certain this could not be the right place, because what ghost town ever looked so welcoming? Once out of the sun, however, that impression changed. There was something forlornly romantic about the deserted houses, but finally the sight was dispiriting and not a little eerie. Seeing the place, Lori’s first thought was:

‘Why would Boone come here?’

Her second:

‘He didn’t come of his own volition. He was chased. It was an accident that he was here at all.’

They parked the car in the middle of the main street, which was, give or take an alleyway, the only street.

‘No need to lock it,’ Sheryl said. ‘Ain’t anybody coming to steal it.’

Now that they were here, Lori was gladder than ever of Sheryl’s company. Her verve and good humour were an affront to this sombre place; they kept whatever haunted it at bay.

Ghosts could be laid with laughter; misery was made of sterner stuff. For the first time since Decker’s telephone call she felt something approximating bereavement. It was so easy to imagine Boone here, alone and confused, knowing his pursuers were closing on him. It was easier still to find the place where they’d shot him down. The holes the stray bullets had made were ringed with chalk marks; smears and splashes of blood had soaked into the planks of the porch. She stood off from the spot for several minutes, unable to approach it yet equally unable to retreat. Sheryl had tactfully taken herself off exploring: there was nobody to break the hypnotic hold the sight of his death-bed had upon her.

She would miss him forever. Yet there were no tears. Perhaps she’d sobbed them out back in the diner washroom. What she felt instead, fuelling her loss, was the mystery of how a man she’d known and loved – or loved and thought she’d known – could have died here for crimes she’d never have suspected him of Perhaps it was the anger she felt towards him that prevented tears, knowing that despite his professions of love he’d hidden so much from her, and was now beyond the reach of her demands for explanation. Could he not at least have left a sign? She found herself staring at the blood stains wondering if eyes more acute than hers might have found some meaning in them. If prophecies could be read from the dregs in a coffee cup surely the last mark Boone had made on the world carried some significance. But she was no interpreter. The signs were just of many unsolved mysteries, chief amongst them the feeling she voiced aloud as she stared at the stairs:

‘I still love you Boone.’

Now
there
was a puzzle, that despite her anger and her bewilderment she’d have traded the life that was left in her just to have him walk out through that door now and embrace her.

But there was no reply to her declaration, however oblique. No wraith breath against her cheek; no sigh against her inner ear. If Boone was still here in some phantom form he was mute, and breathless; not released by death, but its prisoner.

Somebody spoke her name. She looked up.

‘– don’t you think?’ Sheryl was saying.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Time we went,’ Sheryl repeated. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we went?’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t mind me saying, you look like shit.’

‘Thanks.’

Lori put her hand out, in need of steadying. Sheryl grasped it.

‘You’ve seen all you need to, honey,’ she said.

‘Yes …’

‘Let it go.’

‘You know it still doesn’t seem quite
real,’
Lori said. ‘Even standing here. Even seeing the place. I can’t quite believe it. How can he be so …
irretrievable?
There should be some way we could
reach
, don’t you think, some way to reach and touch them.’

‘Who?’

‘The dead. Otherwise it’s all nonsense, isn’t it? It’s all sadistic nonsense.’ She broke her hold with Sheryl; put her hand to her brow and rubbed it with her fingertips.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m not making much sense, am I?’

‘Honestly? No.’

Lori proffered an apologetic look.

‘Listen,’ Sheryl said, ‘the old town’s not what it used to be. I think we should get out of here and leave it to fall apart. Whadda you say?’

‘I’d vote for that.’

‘I keep thinking …’ Sheryl stopped.

‘What?’

‘I just don’t like the company very much,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean you,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Who then?’

‘All these dead folk,’ she said.

‘What dead folk?’

‘Over the hill. There’s a bloody cemetery.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s not ideal viewing in your state of mind,’ Sheryl said hurriedly. But she could tell by the expression on Lori’s face she shouldn’t have volunteered the information.

‘You don’t want to see,’ she said. ‘Really you don’t.’

‘Just a minute or two.’ Lori said.

‘If we stay much longer, we’ll be driving back in the dark.’

‘I’ll never come here again.’

‘Oh sure. You should see the sights. Great sights. Dead people’s houses.’

Lori made a small smile.

‘I’ll be quick,’ she said, starting down the street in the direction of the cemetery. Sheryl hesitated. She’d left her sweater in the car, and was getting chilly. But all the time she’d been here she hadn’t been able to dislodge the suspicion that they were being watched. With dusk close she didn’t want to be alone in the street.

‘Wait for me,’ she said, and caught up with Lori who was already in sight of the graveyard wall.

‘Why’s it so big?’ Lori wondered aloud.

‘Lord knows. Maybe they all died out at once.’

‘So many? It’s just a little town.’

‘True.’

‘And look at the size of the tombs.’

‘I should be impressed?’

‘Did you go in?’

‘No. And I don’t much want to.’

‘Just a little way.’

‘Where have I heard that before?’

There was no reply from Lori. She was at the cemetery gates now, reaching through the ironwork to operate the latch. She succeeded. Pushing one of the gates open far enough to slip through, she entered. Reluctantly, Sheryl followed.

‘Why so many?’ Lori said again. It wasn’t simply curiosity that had her voice the question; it was that this strange spectacle made her wonder again if Boone had simply been cornered here by accident or whether Midian had been his
destination
. Was somebody buried here he’d come hoping to find alive?; or at whose grave he’d wanted to confess his crimes? Though it was all conjecture, the avenues of tombs seemed to offer some faint hope of comprehension the blood he’d shed would not have supplied had she studied it till the sky fell.

‘It’s late,’ Sheryl reminded her.

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m cold.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’d like to
go
, Lori.’

‘Oh … I’m sorry. Yes. Of course. It’s getting too dark to see much anyhow.’

‘You noticed.’

They started back up the hill towards the town, Sheryl making the pace.

What little light remained was almost gone by the time they reached the outskirts of the town. Letting Sheryl march on to the car Lori stopped to take one final look at the cemetery. From this vantage point it resembled a fortress. Perhaps the high walls kept animals out, though it seemed an unnecessary precaution. The dead were surely secure, beneath their memorial stones. More likely the walls were the mourners’ way to keep the dead from having power over them. Within those gates the ground was sacred to the departed, tended in their name. Outside, the world belonged to the living, who had nothing left to learn from those they’d lost.

She was not so arrogant. There was much she wanted to say to the dead tonight; and much to hear. That was the pity of it.

She returned to the car oddly exhilarated. It was only once the doors were locked and the engine running that Sheryl said:

‘There’s been somebody watching us.’

‘You sure?’

‘I swear. I saw him just as I got to the car.’

She was rubbing her breasts vigorously. ‘Jesus, my nipples get numb when I’m cold.’

‘What did he look like?’ Lori said.

Sheryl shrugged. ‘Too dark to see,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter now. Like you said, we won’t be coming back here again.’

True, Lori thought. They could drive away down a straight road and never look back. Maybe the deceased citizens of Midian envied them that, behind their fortress walls.

I
t wasn’t difficult to choose their accommodation in Shere Neck; there were only two places available, and one was already full to brimming with buyers and sellers for a farm machinery sale that had just taken place, some of the spillage occupying the rooms at the other establishment: the Sweetgrass Inn. Had it not been for Sheryl’s way with a smile they might have been turned away from there too; but after some debate a twin-bedded room was found that they could share. It was plain, but comfortable.

‘You know what my mother used to tell me?’ said Sheryl, as she unpacked her toiletries in the bathroom.

‘What?’

‘She used to say: there’s a man out there for you, Sheryl; he’s walking around with your name on. Mind you this is from a woman who’s been looking for her particular man for thirty years and never found him. But she was always stuck on this romantic notion. You know, the man of your dreams is just around the next corner. And she stuck me on it too, damn her.’

‘Still?’

‘Oh yeah. I’m still looking. You’d think I’d know better, after what I’ve been through. You want to shower first?’

‘No. You go ahead.’

A party had started up in the next room, the walls too thin to muffle much of the noise. While Sheryl took her shower Lori lay on the bed and turned the events of the day over in her head. The exercise didn’t last long. The next thing she knew she was being stirred from sleep by Sheryl, who’d showered and was ready for a night on the town.

‘You coming?’ she wanted to know.

‘I’m too tired,’ Lori said. ‘You go have a good time.’

‘If there’s a good time to be had –’ said Sheryl ruefully.