Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (16 page)

Dreams are made for haunting.

A thudding knock landed on her door. It sounded like the fist of a giant. No one ever disturbed Raven. Even her own daughter knew that if she was asleep, she needed to stay that way. Raven cursed, walked on her knees to the door and flung it open.

“I came for my guitar.”

She launched herself out, buried her face in his neck and wrapped her bare legs around his waist. Isaac climbed into the cab, wearing her more than carrying her, and pulled the door shut behind him.

SHE WAS SNIFFING
his armpit like she was smelling a flower. She twined her fingers in his. He had such big, thick hands, with chubby fingers like a child’s. “How the hell did you get down here so quick?”

“I never left the area. They took me in and when they called Oregon, they found out all the charges had been dropped. I left town the morning of the hearing, so I figured I was in trouble, but all that happened was they dropped the charges. It took a while to get into the computer, I guess. I wasn’t even really a fugitive anymore.”

“Why were the charges dropped?”

“A good lawyer.” He sounded a little embarrassed. “Hey,” he said, his face suddenly preoccupied. “I better call my mom and let her know I made it here. Do you have a cell?”

“If I had a cell, my mother would call me every fifteen minutes on that thing till I pitched it out the window. But there’s a payphone in the bar.”

“Great!” He found his clothes. “I’ll take my camera! Do you have a cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“Could we share that cigarette over there in your hat?”

“Nope. That’s the last one, and I’m not ready to smoke it yet.” She pulled on a t-shirt, opened the door and pointed him in the direction. “Just go out the main gate and cross the highway.” She opened two little windows to air out the sleeper cab, then lay on her back and listened to the Francie June song drifting on the cooled air, wondering just how a jazz singer with a smooth alto had become a country superstar.

Raven felt all right. The events of the preceding night had rattled her, and she would have to do something about Gator Rollins. But somehow, Isaac showing up made everything all right. She wondered how old he was. Hell, she wondered what his last name was. She thought about his small mouth, the beard he probably grew to hide his pudgy cheeks. He had the air of a boy, though he was definitely a man. She stretched, smiled, smelled the breeze. It occurred to her that all she needed in the whole wide world to make this moment perfect was a cigarette. A cigarette, like that one over there in her hatband, a nice long kitchen match tucked right beside it. She was saving her last cigarette for the perfect moment, and it just might have arrived.

Of course, someone had to knock on the side of the truck. “Hullo?” The voice was low, smoky, Southern. “Is anyone home in this den of iniquity? I heard there’s supposed to be a big blonde bear of a man-child over here, and I don’t want to intrude.”

Raven pushed open the door and smiled. “Actually, he’s up at the bar, calling his mother.”

“His mother? He’s calling his mother? Well. Bless his heart. Isn’t that just so precious you could die?” Melveena climbed up and enter the disarranged lair that Raven called home. She kept her arms crossed, her hands tucked away from any accidental contact with the metal walls of this place. She made the most delicate of faces as she looked around at the rucked up sheets, scattered CDs, and what she sincerely hoped was NOT a discarded condom. “It smells appalling in here.”

“We could sit outside. I could get a couple of chairs from Levi’s.”

Melveena smiled. “That’s a plan.”

It was a Peeping Tom’s delight as both women scrambled out, the tops of Melveena’s stockings flashing in the Sunday morning sunlight, something a little more blatant flashing from under Raven’s white cotton t-shirt. She wrangled some old webbing folding chairs into place, and they settled.

There was absolutely no accounting for the friendship between these two women. They did share a Southern heritage. Raven had roots in Tennessee, and Melveena was a former first runner-up for the title of Miss Arkansas. They were as different as two women could be while still being of the same species, but somehow a friendship had sprung up on Raven’s rare visits home.

“We missed you up at Coffee Klatch.”

“I just bet you did.” Raven came very close to laughing out loud. “What’s your greatest mistake up to these days?”

“Well, snoring, mostly.” Melveena brushed her skirt down over her knees. “I have a new strategy. I’ve been trying to implant subliminal suggestions while he sleeps. I stand over him at night telling him how much he wants to move out.”

“How’s that working for you.”

“He’s still on that davenport.”

“You sure married yourself a good one, Mel.”

Mel flashed those eyes. “You’re just eaten up with envy, aren’t you, Raven.”

“Oh you bet. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night over how much I want Clyde.”

Melveena’s smile was a work of art. “Well, enough talk of my wedded bliss. I was going to ask you about Annie Leigh. I’ve been talking to your mother about her coming out to Bone Pile Elementary.”

“
Bone
Pile? Jesus, Melveena.”

“I run a tight classroom, and those girls are marvels. Annie would love it out there.”

“I bet she would. She’d run off, marry her a black-haired boy and commence to spitting out glow-in-the-dark brats when she was about fourteen. No thanks.”

“You’re missing the point entirely. Annie has gifts, and not to insult your father, but…” Her persuasive attempts were interrupted by Jeeter Tyson, who ran down the street bawling like a stuck calf.

“MURDER!” He waved his arms, his cheeks aflame with panic, his legs pumping. “MURDER!” he screamed, “MURDER!” Then he ran on.

“He must be yelling about Hank Heaven.”

“Yes. Jeeter broke the news at Coffee Klatch.” Melveena’s face was icy calm. “You found the Reverend’s body?”

Raven nodded. “I am officially a person of interest in the case.”

“Sweet Jesus. Why would anyone think you killed that man?”

Raven shrugged. “He probably needed killing.”

Melveena studied her friend’s scar, the way it swept down her face like a feather. She didn’t know how Raven had come by that scar. No one did.

Mysteries were rare, Melveena had decided. And she loved a good mystery.

ISAAC HAD HIS
camera as he walked through the land of satellite dishes, pea gravel paths and scalloped wire fencing, tin, aluminum, vinyl and asbestos, bent and dinged and painted and flaking.

He was taking pictures, and he was being inspected.

The women watched him. Eyes behind screen doors. Hard cheekbones. Hard eyes. Painted toenails in dime store sandals, ruined hands braiding hair. Cotton sundresses and cutoffs.

The men watched him, too. Crooked teeth. Run-down heels on boots worn past their prime. Grease-stained hands working on beat-up trucks, Wranglers.

Cats everywhere. They lounged in the sun, sprawled on the hoods of muscle cars, bathed their battered whiskers. The cats reminded him of a summer he spent in Italy as part of an exchange program. The cats had been there, too, begging at restaurants, stretched out on the sunny Roman ruins with an air of absolute entitlement.

This was not Italy, but it was a foreign land.

He wondered if anyone in this trailer park had ever been anywhere. Thirty miles from Mexico, and with the exception of a few men who had visited whorehouses and tattoo parlors in Baja, he would bet that no one had ever been there. The only travelers appeared to be the cats, who moved through the park in a shifting mass.

The only dogs he saw were Rottweilers and pit bulls, and a few that might have been mutts of the two breeds. Then, there were the children. He had some tailing him, a small mob of giggling children with Kool-Aid stains on their faces. It reminded him of his time in Japan, on another exchange summer. His blondeness and his bulk had set him aside. Curious eyes had followed him wherever he went, and he’d felt like a great golden bear of the West set free to roam the streets of Tokyo.

A cat lounging in a planter made of an old tire caught his eye. It gave him one of those cat looks, conspiratorial and disgusted at the same time. “Can you believe this crap?” the cat’s eyes said to him. He took a shot and muttered aloud, “No, as a matter of fact, I can’t believe this crap.”

The children who trailed him exchanged smirks, not sure if he was talking to himself or the cat.

This beats the hell out of doing jail time for carrying too much pot, Isaac reminded himself. Thank god for lawyers. This is almost like being in the Peace Corps. Maybe I’m here to teach these people to fish.

He passed an older woman dragging a miserable-looking child by the arm. The barefoot girl wore a granny dress. Her hair caught his eye, hair so thick and black it looked wet in the sunlight. He wanted to take a picture of that hair, hair like… He was distracted by the glare from all the sparkling trim on the woman’s clothing. Isaac thought she was too old to be that girl’s mother, but how could you be sure of the age of a woman wearing that much makeup? Her clothes and eyes threw sparks. In answer to his smiling “hullo,” she gave him a look of such furious hatred that it made his stomach hurt. He crunched down the street, somewhat troubled. He wondered what he’d done, aside from breathing, that pissed her off that badly. Yes, it was going to be an interesting experience, this trailer park.

He exited the gate, crossed the highway, reached the bar, opened the door and adjusted his settings to the perpetual gloom of the place. No windows. Pool tables in the back, sawdust on the dance floor, a jukebox. A rack full of jerky and pepperoni sticks, a glass jar of pickled eggs. A skinny man with grey hair and a hooked nose pouring coffee behind the bar, his cigarette smoke curling heavenward in the light of a neon Budweiser sign.

“Hullo.” Isaac smiled. His growly voice boomed out cheerfully. “Sir? Do you have a pay phone in here I could use by any chance?”

The bartender nodded toward the even deeper murk of the place beyond the pool tables. Isaac walked cheerfully back, as the snake-faced, Wrangler-wearing, bet-making, pool-playing, Bud-drinking men around him gave him the eye.

He decided he wouldn’t take any pictures just now.

They went back to their games, but Isaac’s big voice was a distraction. “Hi Mom! I got here just fine. I didn’t. I’m fine… Well, see, that’s the problem. I’m staying with a friend, and she lives in her truck, and she doesn’t have a phone… Right… I know, Mom… Yes… Well, I don’t know. I’ll call as soon as I have one… I love you too, Mom… tell Dad I’m fine. Kiss Mittens for me. OK. Bye.”

He strode back out into the main part of the bar, a smile on his face. “Sir? Could I possibly get a couple cups of that coffee, to go?”

The bartender, who during the phone call had covered his eyes with his hand, looked up. He set two empty Styrofoam cups on the bar.

“Uh, I’m sorry, but do you have any paper cups?”

Beau frowned and filled the cups.

“Well.” Isaac nodded. “Just this once. It’s just that Styrofoam lasts so long in the landfills. Do you have any cream?”

Beau filled the cups and set a small jar of Cremora and a spoon on the bar.

“Do you have any real cream?”

Beau put on the lids.

“Well, that’s all right, I guess. I’d like two sugars.”

Beau simply looked at him.

Isaac went for his wallet. Beau waved off Isaac’s money.

“Thanks!” People were friendlier around here than he thought. Isaac walked back out into the high desert sun with his morning offering to Raven. He thought, hearing the belly laughs echoing behind him as the door shut, that somebody in that bar must know how to tell a good joke.