Crows (41 page)

“Does it hurt?”

“A little sting,” Helene said bravely. “Such a racket out there.”

“Men working.”

A cashier in a brown smock called a greeting to Helene, who replied unerringly, “What are they doing out there, Margarine?”

She waved a hand, an instant's hitch in the flow of her work. “Putting up barriers,” she said. “You won't be able to take your groceries to your car anymore.”

“We don't drive,” Helene said.

“It's just a symptom,” Margie said. “The neighborhood is shot.” She smiled innocently at her customer, a petite woman with huge, dewy black eyes and a matching bead in her nose. “They lose carts, so they fence us in,” Margie said.

“My food it will be stealing,” the customer chimed in with shy indignation.

“You've got that right, honey,” Margie said. “You leave your cart to go get your car and someone'll take your groceries before you get back. We're playing into their hands. We're giving them a specific location to prey on us.”

She hit a final button and read the figure that appeared in angular crimson numbers in the register window. “Sixty-six twenty-nine, please.”

While the customer pulled her money from what appeared to be a satin pouch, Margie smiled wearily at the widows.

“So how you doing, Hellion?”

“I'm fine,” Helene said.

“You want a Band-Aid for that? We've got them back in the lounge.”

“She'll be okay,” Ina said.

“Check out with me, when you're done,” Margie said.

They went into the aisles.

“Why did she call you Hellion?” Ina asked.

“Don't get me started,” Helene warned.

“Hellion is the nickname of a woman who kissed one man in her lifetime?”

“I worked here a long time,” Helene said. “Everyone had nicknames. Margie we called Margarine because men went through her like knives.”

Ina's laugh drew the looks of other shoppers.

“And furthermore,” Helene continued, “you say I taught you everything—but I never taught you to be promiscuous.”

“You're awfully touchy today,” Ina said. “And what does it matter now if I was promiscuous and you were chaste?”

Helene's eyes snapped to, as if they worked perfectly. Ina set something she needed in the cart and directed her sister onward. People were listening and she felt exposed.

“It will always matter,” Helene declared.

“Do you think Mama knows about us now?” Ina asked. “Or Daddy? And say they do—do you think they smile more fondly on you than me?”

“I don't care to discuss it,” Helene said. “You're too strange today.”

Ina understood perfectly what her sister meant. She was pent up with something approaching sexual desire. She didn't know if it was the fizz of the beer in her system or the exertion of going to the river, or the memories that journey had tapped, but she was itching for sensation in a way that was nearly adolescent in intensity.

“It was my adventure,” Ina said.

“Pish tosh,” Helene said. She walked with one hand on the cart. They followed the same route through the store every time; Helene had the steps down and could almost put her hand on each item that she needed. She said, “You saw a boy who looked suspicious. He didn't see you. He drove away in a car. What a grand escapade.” She paused. “Do you need salt?”

“I need a block for the water softener,” Ina said. “Although last time, Hector seemed reluctant to carry it downstairs for me.” He had come over, old and skinny in his stained T-shirt and gardening pants, and Po watched so avidly for him to return you would think her husband was God's antidote to widowhood. But he did have a pleasant stink to him; Ina had forgotten how good old men could smell.

“I went to the bottom of the stairs and stole those boys' beer out of the river,” Ina said. “It's in my cellar right now. That's how I discovered the door has been unlocked all this time.”

“Ina Lockwood! Are you an idiot? Or a liar?”

“Neither,” Ina said. She loved to see her sister stew. It was new to Ina, the ability to shock her older sister. Blindness had made Helene innocent all over again.

“What if they come for their beer?” Helene asked in a whisper.

“Why would they come to me?”

“You live across the street from the stairs. Who else is likely to have seen them?”

“Po Strode. Or that young couple on the other side of Po and Hector.”

“They'll go to Po and she'll hold out for half a second—then she will point a finger directly at your house,” Helene said.

“They'll think the line broke, or the knot came undone,” Ina said. “They'll assume their beer is at the bottom of the river. There is nothing to tie the event to me.”

“Except their beer in your cellar—which they will find in the course of tearing your house to shreds,” Helene said. “The things young men do to old ladies these days. It's not a pretty sight.”

“How do you know?”

“Don't be cruel, dear. It gives you wrinkles.” Helene turned the corner at the end of the aisle just as Ina was about to tell her to do so.

“Roxanne Dalrymple, poor soul,” Helene said. “They found her inside her icebox. Nobody to hear her scream. She suffocated.”

“I don't know Roxanne Dalrymple,” Ina said.

“She was a year ahead of me in school? A vivacious little thing,” Helene said. “She was in chorus? And on the paper? And she ends up in her own icebox.”

“How did she get there?”

“She was shoved. Crammed. By a gang of young thugs—perhaps the very young men whose beer you stole. They were never caught. It was convenient to be rid of her. So in she went.”

“And she couldn't even turn on the light,” Ina said.

Helene laughed in spite of herself. “Don't make fun,” she scolded.

 

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CROWS.
Copyright © 1985, 2015 by Charles Dickinson. Excerpt from
The Widows' Adventures
copyright © 1989 by Charles Dickinson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-­American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-­book on-­screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-­engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Harper­Collins e-­books.

A previous edition of this book was published by Avon Books.

EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780062379917

 

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