Ravens (30 page)

“Yeah?”

“You notice any, anything suspicious about him?”

He’d wanted to avoid using the word
suspicious
— it sounded like phony cop-talk. But right away it had slipped out.

She said, “Suspicious? Burris, what’s this about?”

“Well… well, maybe I got a tip that maybe, um, Shaw isn’t really
in
on this jackpot deal.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe he didn’t really give Mitch that twenty dollars to buy lottery tickets with. Maybe he made that part up.”

“Made it up?” she said. “I’m lost.”

“I guess there’s no way to ease into this. Nell, there’s a chance this could be an extortion scheme. A terror scheme.”

She gaped at him.

He said, “I think Shaw is threatening Mitch.”

“What?”

“I got a tip. So think. You haven’t sensed anything odd? Mitch hasn’t shown any fear of Shaw McBride?”

“No.”

“Or has Patsy, or the kids?”

“Uh-uh. They like him. Particularly Tara does. And I know her pretty well. If she were living in terror, it wouldn’t escape
me. Come on, where’d you
get
this tip?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I mean, is somebody making up stories?”

Just at that moment, one of the cats leaped up onto the table. The electric-shock cat. Christ, he hated that one. Nell said
sharply: “Buddy Bailey, get down!” She dipped her fingers into her tea and flicked them, and the cat shrank away.

Meanwhile the other two million cats were skulking around. Mercy. He hated all of them, and hated that she’d given them surnames.
It was just too damn cute. Suddenly he was
glad
she’d treated him so cruelly these forty years. Jesus. What if she’d fallen in love with him? Then he’d have married her.
Then all this cat-stink would be
his
?

He rose. “Nell, I better go. Sorry to have bothered you so late.”

“That’s OK.”

“I mean, I was just trying to protect your family. You know?” Though as soon as he’d said it, he wished he hadn’t. Defensive-sounding.
Like, see what a good Deppity Dawg I am? Nice and dumb. And how automatically and dismissively she came back with, “I appreciate
it, Burris.”

OK. That’s enough. Just get out of here.

But still. He couldn’t go. “If you have any more thoughts, or any more questions, you know where to call me, right?”

“Yes.”

“Call me at home, though, OK? I’d like to keep this completely under wraps.”

What a boneheaded remark! The lady’s not calling you anywhere,
any time
, you fool. Just get out of here!

He went to the door. “See you later, Nell.”

“All right, Burris. Don’t let John Murphy out.”

As he opened the door he used his toe to push John Murphy out of the way. There was something tender and pitying in the way
the cat let Burris forklift it away from the door. This house of Nell’s! How much life there was here! And to think he’d never
entered it once in these forty years, and probably never would again. He turned back to Nell one more time. Her eyes told
him she was as lonely as he was. He was certain of it! He ventured, “Hey you know, there’s a Turkey Shoot at the American
Legion on Saturday. You ever do that? It’s not real turkeys, it’s just targets. It’s fun. You want to come?”

A nervous smile appeared on her face. She walked right up to him, scaring him to death — but then she reached down, took the
cat off his foot, stood up straight and said, “Burris. You gotta understand something. I don’t want to be your girlfriend.”

How uncalled-for! “Nell, I was just asking if you’d like to come to the Turkey Shoot. I wasn’t —”

“The answer is no. I don’t want to go to the Turkey Shoot with you; I don’t want to go to the church picnic with you; I don’t
want to donate blood with you. OK? You keep asking me do I want to do things with you, and you always know the answer. You
asked me, did I want to go to your niece’s baptism? I didn’t. I like your niece —”

“Nell, that was
years
ago —”

“I like her a lot, and I like you too, but will you please get it through your head that I don’t want to be your damn girlfriend!”

A minute ago he’d thought he’d reached the bottom of his life. But not at all. Now came a level of mortification and despair
that he’d never guessed
existed
. Like when a sinkhole opens up and swallows people alive. “OK,” he said. He went and stood by the door. “I get it now. I’m
going. So there’s really no need —”

“But you
don’t
get it. You told me once that you loved me, and you asked me if I could love you back, and I said no I couldn’t. And ever
since then, you keep suggesting that maybe the reason is because you lack something. Like you’re not ambitious enough. Or
you’re not the county sheriff. Or you’re not clever enough, or you’re too bald for me, or you’ve got jowls or something, none
of which is true! Do you understand? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

He said, “Yeah. I guess.”

But then he thought, so long as we’re going down this road, I might as well take it the whole way. “So why
don’t
you love me?”

She stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I really want to know.”

“You’re asking me that? Why I don’t love you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well that’s the silliest goddamn question I ever heard.
In my life
. How should
I
know? I don’t know why I love or don’t love anything! Why do I love my singing trophy head? Why do I love the three little
fishies in my goldfish pond? And my six cats and two parakeets, when one of ’em’s always sick and every time one dies I gotta
spend half a year mourning, which means mourning is how I spend most of my life? I don’t know why I don’t love you, Burris
— I have no idea!”

He said, “You might shout a little louder, so that everyone in Brunswick will know your opinion of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just to make my humiliation complete.”

“I’m
sorry
.”

They stood there a moment, squaring off. Then she sighed. “But I gotta go now, OK? Gotta get these animals to bed.”

“All right. That’s perfectly, that’s a reasonable thing.”

“So good night now.” Then she was shutting the door again.

“Wait,” he said.

Her utter exasperation. “Oh come on. What?”

“One more thing.”

“Burris go home.”

“I mean, something I would’ve said a long time ago, except you broke up with me over the damn
phone
.”

She glowered at him. “Are you talking about
high school
? For God’s sake. I’ve
gotta
go!”

“Twenty seconds! That’s all I need.”

“OK, what?”

“You won’t give me twenty seconds? For the love of God, twenty seconds out of a lifetime —”

“I’m
giving
you your damn twenty seconds.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“Well then. Then it’s very simple. I just wanted to tell you, I mean I never really told you before because —”

“Twenty seconds are up.”

“Oh Jesus Christ! For the love of God, I just want to tell you! What I would have told you forty years ago but you hung up
on me. But, the thing is, I mean forty years, or two hundred years, or forty
thousand
years, I
see
you, Nell. I see you in a way nobody else in this world can. That’s all. You can try to hide from that, but it’s still true
and I wish you’d just open your damn heart!”

But she was hardly listening. She’d been increasingly distracted by the cat in her arms, who wanted to go outside and who
kept struggling to get free. She was trying to hold it tightly so as to allow Burris to finish. But she was clearly relieved
when he was done. She nodded and said, “OK, then.”

“Just wanted to say that.”

“OK.” The cat took a swipe at her neck. She cried, “Ow! You little bastard!” and threw it down and it ran under the table.
She turned back to Burris. “I gotta go.”

“All right,” he said.

He turned and walked away, went back to his Taurus. And he must have gotten in and started it up and driven off, because a
few minutes later he found himself on Rt. 17 heading home.

Well.

There it was.

The moment he’d been waiting for. The moment he’d been climbing toward for forty years. Climb up, your whole damn life, make
an asinine speech which gets interrupted by a squirming cat, then go tumbling down into hell forever and goodnight.

Shaw
was ecstatic. Dancing with the young pilgrims around the campfire, amid the flying sparks, inexhaustible. When he finally
took a breather, a girl approached him and said she’d been here all day, and that she thought he was wonderful. She said her
name was Cheryl. She was blushing. She reminded him, “The clerk? From Chummy’s?”

“Yes!” He looked into her eyes. “Didn’t I hear you were calling me a liar?”

“I was,” she said. “Before.”

“And now?”

“Now I know who you are.”

Her cheek was glistening in the dark. She was crying; she was shivering. He supposed he could have fucked her right then if
he’d wanted, but he didn’t want — he didn’t want anyone but Tara. And he’d soon have her. She was holed up in her room but
Shaw knew that her walls were crumbling and it was only a matter of time. And meanwhile he had his flock to watch over, and
the sick to heal, and a fortune to give away, and the sparks were rising up amid the fireflies and the stars, and the pilgrims
were dancing, and the universe from one end to the other was his.

Nell
went to bed but of course she couldn’t sleep. Wondering what had gotten into her? Burris Jones wasn’t a bad man, wasn’t a
stalker, wasn’t even much of a pest: whatever had possessed her to launch into him with such vicious cruelty?

Trying to be merciful? That’s what I call
mercy
? Holy crap, what a selfish bitch I am.

And the other thing: why had his news upset her so? Maybe because it was true?

Because there
have
been some fishy things about this deal.

Like why hadn’t Mitch told them all right away he was splitting the jackpot with Shaw? And how come he seemed so glum at the
press conference? And also, come to think of it, why hadn’t he come into the water the other day? He loved to seine. So what
the hell was that all about?

How could he win all those millions of dollars and seem so damn
morose
?

Maybe Tara
was
lying. She couldn’t lie at poker but maybe that was because poker meant nothing to her. She just came here, really, to spend
time with her granny. They could have been playing Parcheesi for all Tara cared.

But if she was trying to protect me, Nell thought, that was something altogether different.

But, Lord. That flirty look she’d given Shaw while teasing him about that bobtail straight: could that have been a
lie
?

No! She was Nell’s baby; Nell knew her through and through. And Burris had always been an excitable fool, and this was just
another proof of it. And for scaring her like this she would never speak to him again. Everything was fine with Mitch and
Tara. Although just to be on the safe side, first thing in the morning she would call Chief Andrews, get his opinion. The
Chief was young and always charming to her and seemed to know a lot: she’d let him put her mind at ease.

Burris
loitered a while at Chummy’s — not the jackpot-ticket Chummy’s by I-95, but the one on Gloucester. He went there because
that was the only place still open except the Huddle House, and at the Huddle House someone would have tried to talk to him.
He could have gone home, of course. But home was just a swamp of stagnant time.

He got coffee. He sipped it slowly, while staring at the headlines on the newspapers. He didn’t read them — just stared. The
clerk started to get nervous with this deranged cop just standing around staring at the newspapers. Finally Burris gave the
man a break and left him alone. He went driving. He drove around and around as if on patrol. He saw two colleagues, Buzz and
Lou, parked in the Rt. 17 median near G Street, and he paused and said hello to them.

Said Buzz, “What up, homey?”

“Hey, not much,” said Burris, his voice carrying in the night air.

He drove on knowing they’d be talking about him till daybreak, but so what? Leave me alone. He went down Riverside Road because
he knew he could park at the end of it without anyone bothering him.

On the way, he passed the place where he’d seen Zderko burying the animal. He recalled the odor of putrefaction that had jumped
out from that bag — and how, according to Zderko, the creature had been dead for less than forty-eight hours.

Forty-eight hours
, thought Burris. Man or beast, in heat like this, you’ll start to stink. In forty-eight hours you’ll give it up to your essential
stench. Think you’re good-looking? Or sweet-smelling? Watch what forty-eight hours will do.

Thoughts like this suited his mood, and he’d have gone on thinking them — but there was a little memory that kept tugging
at his attention. Something else that Zderko had said. Burris kept ignoring it, but it kept tugging. Finally he attended to
it.

Hadn’t Zderko said something about
Wednesday
? About running the animal over on Wednesday?

Burris parked in the little sandy place at the end of the road. He looked out at the marsh. Wednesday? He couldn’t have said
Wednesday. Wednesday didn’t work. Burris took his Olympus voice recorder out of his shirt pocket, and switched it on, and
worked back through the recordings till he came to Friday afternoon, to that first encounter with Zderko.

He heard himself asking, “
How long’s it been dead?
”

And Zderko saying, “
About forty-eight hours. What’s today, Friday? Well, Wednesday night, I was coming down through North Carolina? And I hit
this thing and it must have been thrown up into the wheel well somehow, but I didn’t even know it till a little while ago.
”

Now he thought about this.