Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (19 page)

News of the murder spread pell-mell and hurly-burly through the gravel streets and paved lanes of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park. It blew through like the wind of the last few nights, gathering the momentum of fictional detail. The story swelled as it passed through pressboard walls that might have kept out the wind, but were permeable to gossip. The Right Reverend Henry Heaven was killed and re-killed. He was stoned, slaughtered, skinned, shot, stabbed, strangled, lynched, decapitated, disemboweled and drowned.

Everywhere they went: the Diner, the Blue Moon, even just walking down the street, her mother was questioned as to the condition of the Reverend’s body.

“You found him where?”

“He was already dead?”

“How bloody WAS he?”

Annie had watched her mother handle it as cool as Clint Eastwood. “I am not allowed to comment, seeing as I’m a ‘person of interest’ in this case.” She had said the same thing to every person who asked.

They had walked back toward home, Annie mimicking her mother’s steps in her new boots. Boots were tricky. They threw you forward just a tiny bit, and made you move your hips when you walked. “Everyone treats you like you’re famous.”

He mother’s face showed the faintest flicker of irritation. “Doesn’t that suck.”

“It don’t suck! I want to be famous.”

“Do you now.”

“Oh sure. On stage? Everybody watching me? I’d love it.”

“You just think you would.” Her mother had put her arm around Annie’s shoulders, and held on just a little tighter than she ever had before. “Hey Tadpole? Anybody at the park ever try anything funny with you?”

“You’re talking about perverts?”

“Yup.”

“I can tell who they are, Mom. I stay away.”

Raven kept her arm tight. “Just, listen, Tadpole. Anyone tries anything, you tell me. If you tell Pop, he’s liable to kill somebody and have to go off to jail. Uncle Memphis, well, he’s the law, and that’s useless. You tell Rhondalee, she’ll make it all your fault, somehow. So you just tell me. I’ll take care of it.”

“I’ll tell you. But the Reverend never tried anything on me, Mom. So you didn’t have to kill him, if you did.”

“Well, I didn’t kill the Reverend, Annie Leigh.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

Annie had felt just a little bit disappointed.

They’d ended up back at the rig. Levi opened his screen door and waved a dead fish at them. Annie Leigh could smell it from where she stood. Her mother waved back. “Hey there, Levi. I’m wondering how bad the fishing’s got round here, if somebody wants that mounted.”

He’d looked down at the fish in his hand and smiled a toothless smile. “This here’s dinner!” He slapped the crappie on his thigh. “Hey Raven, you hear the one about the fella goes to the doctor and says his dick is turning orange?”

“Nope, Levi, and something tells me I don’t want to.” She’d looked down at Annie Leigh. “I’m beat. I need sleep. How about you run on back to your grandmother’s, now, and get you some dinner. I’ll be by in the morning.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“You won’t leave in the night?”

“I’m staying for the Talent Show, Tadpole. Now scoot.”

She’d high-tailed it back to her grandmother’s house, where she’d been given a tunafish sandwich and a good talking-to about roaming the streets in search of gossip. Then she’d been sent to her room. Her grandma had proceeded to do the dishes and cuss out that no-good silver-eyed mongrel who was BACK up at the bar, as USUAL, why, she cursed the day she met him, as well as the day she’d given birth to that alley cat of a silver-eyed daughter, and the day that cat had dumped off her no-good silver-eyed Hell kitten to be raised, why it was like trying to raise a wild thing, what in the world could the world expect of her, not that she was old, but she WAS getting on in years, and the strain on her heart and her patience, not to mention her checkbook, why the least Raven could do was kick in a bit more money for groceries, not that she could get the child to EAT anything, but where did all the SNACKS go, no wonder the child didn’t eat at the table, with all the SNACKS she seemed to go through.

Then she’d taken off her apron and gone on up to the Clubhouse.

Annie Leigh had lay there for a bit, picking her nose and thinking about the week ahead. Her mother, who was rarely around for more than a day, had promised to stay the entire week, up to and including the talent show next Saturday night. She’d dozed off while thinking about that.

But now, she was awake. It was the excitement of seeing her mom wore her out, she decided as she stood on her bed and peered out into the night, deciding which way to head. The moon hung high, just a little thinner than last night’s full. She hauled out the old case and sent it first. When it landed, strings jangled and complained like it had some form of instrumental rheumatism causing it pain.

She slid noiselessly down behind it. “You hush up.”

She stopped at Fossetta’s, first. She stood on the case and peeked in. The window was open, and the steamy hot air smelled of sweetness. Fossetta rarely cooked, but when she did, it was sweet. Baked squash topped with marshmallows, bread pudding spiked with bursting raisins, cups of creamy, thick-skinned custard. If she bothered with meat, it swam under a generous helping of sugar-tangy BBQ sauce. Fossetta moved to the table and set down a chipped ceramic plate with a large helping of creamed corn pudding. She ate with tiny bites, then helped herself to another. Leaving the plate on the table and the pot on the stove, she padded to the back of the house.

The sound of water thrummed through the asbestos walls. The smell of heat and vanilla and honey, mixed with the delicious odor of freshly washed female hair, reached Annie’s nose through the window. She sighed. Annie could have moved to the bathroom window and looked, since the Contac paper that was supposed to screen it had peeled away in key places. But she’d seen Fossetta naked a million times or so, and tonight, these smells were all she wanted.

Annie Leigh admired Fossetta’s collection of honey pots, a multi-colored line of ceramic hives on her kitchen counter. She even had a cookie jar to match—a pale pink hive that glowed, pearly as her bottom, in the kitchen’s soft light. “I bet she’s got good cookies in that.”

The case hummed, sending up vibrations into her feet. “Hush, you old stubborn thing. Here she comes again.”

Fossetta appeared in an ancient kimono, so old that the silk had cracked under the arms. It shone with pink, green, puce, the iridescent colors of a shucked pistachio nut. She had tied it shut with a necktie that featured the hand-painted design of leaping trout. The case made a sound that swelled and shrank. “Oh, I just bet you wish you could see. It’s real pretty, let me tell you.” The case groaned a little more under her feet, and she finally shook her head, stepped down and slung it up by the handle. “I never.”

The park was too busy around her, restless because of the murder. She headed out across the highway because she had to find a place where she and the case could be alone. They had business to attend to.

She walked for at least a mile before she felt far away enough from the clatter and bustle of the park to sit down on a rock. Her hands were small and strong, but the latches gave her trouble. She threw back the lid like raising the lid on a coffin.

The big black National gleamed like oil in the moonlight.

Her left hand ached with the force it took to wrap it around the neck and bring the necessary pressure to bear on the frets. “I wish I had hands like Memphis,” she whispered. The guitar sighed in agreement. “Oh shut up. I’ll grow.” She strummed the strings into a grudging submission.

For the rest of the night, it was her, the big black National, and the gently waning moon.

Monday

AROUND HIM, EVIL
built to a treacherous whine. It jeered him, mocked him. It ruled the sky through noise and motion. Light poles shook and hummed, antennae surged in a vibrato of delight, and the wires by the highway offered up an electrical chorus of gleeful agreement.

Asa rose in darkness and pressed his palms flat against a trailer wall. His eyes went blank, his ropes of hair stood on end. But he could not complete the circuit. He let his arms fall, exhausted and alone, head and eyelids fallen, defeat caving him in.

He was slow in his movements as he went outside in the dark, pulling the battered cardboard box full of letters from under the trailer as if the weight of it would get the best of him, selecting each translucent square with great thought, lifting it with great effort.

“And if not, he will end up mashed in the street, Lord.”

How much more simple could it be? He guarded what he could, he warned when he was able. But warnings and portents, prophecies and admonitions meant nothing to the errant souls of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park.

“Lord, they hear you not.”

Asa sank to his knees, and he prayed.

AS MELVEENA PREPARED
for work with unusual haste, her greatest mistake sat at the kitchen table, staring at a cup. He gestured at another cup on the table. “I poured you a cup, Veena.”

“Why thank you, Clyde.” She had a sip. Vile. What was he doing off the couch? Were her powers of suggestion finally working? No, because if they were, he’d be packing, not drinking this foul instant coffee.

He must be wanting something.

Clyde kept ruffling his red hair as if he could somehow arrange for some blood to reach his brain by massaging his scalp. “Hey Veena, I guess you heard about the Reverend.”

“I did, yesterday up at Coffee Klatch.”

“Well, I guess he won’t be buying your car, now.” For the last year, the Reverend had been mounting a campaign to buy her Caddy. “It’s a shame you never went for it. He was offering good money.”

Melveena blinked. “If you’d sold my grandmother’s car to that preacher, Clyde Groth, I would have impaled your head on something sharp and posted it at the gate to the Park as a warning.”

He smiled, shook his head. “You’re a funny one, Veena. A real funny one.” He kept grinning, chuckling, guarded by a simpleton’s immunity from painful truths. Then he unfolded that lanky frame from the kitchen chair it was overburdening and headed back to the couch.

She watched him, thinking her penance was certainly nearing a end.

SHE LEFT OCHRE
Water behind and drove south on the highway, past the twin cement lions that guarded the gates of the Park, sparing an elegant nod for Minah Bourne, who stood at the community mailboxes surveying her sales fliers. Minah nodded and smiled back, her old eyes sharp behind her bifocals.

That one sees it all, Melveena thought.

She reached a stretch of highway so desolate, so ruler-straight and mercilessly dry that it seemed as if time telescoped there. Her biceps moved under her shantung sleeves as powerfully and invisibly as dolphins, guiding the car despite winds that tried to keep outsiders at bay. She entered Bone Pile, a tiny town of hot winds and financial despair.

“The imperfect is our Paradise.” She pulled into the gravel parking lot of Bone Pile Elementary. It was two rooms, one for girls and one for boys, administrated through the district office in Ochre Water and staffed by two. She taught the girls, and a terrified young man getting his student loans forgiven through Teach For America had charge of all those boys.

She picked her way through the potholes in her crocodile pumps, entered the large door to the small school, unlocked her classroom and took her position behind the teacher’s desk. She watched through the window as the bus arrived, late of course, and disgorged a shoving, surly mob of dark-haired trouble.

She had twelve children in her classroom. Willa, Tierney, Serilda, Paige, Orna, Maeve, Mildred, Lesley, Kyla, Glenna, Edana and Colleen. They were apt and eager students, at least while working in pairs. Left to sit alone at her desk, each child struggled. But the girls of Bone Pile could do anything if they worked together.

However, to work, they had to show up. Where were her ragged girls? When they danced in the door on their bare feet, their long hair smelling of kerosene, when they ringed her desk and looked up with their terrifying eyes, Melveena Strange knew what she was doing in Ochre River County. And today, her classroom was empty.