The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (17 page)

“I’m not married,” she says. “It’s for me.”

This shushes them. They accept their tips and shuffle out with smiles on their faces and perhaps their tongues in their cheeks.

It’s not as easy as you’d think to buy an anvil. The cheap ones she can afford at the big-box stores are made of cast iron, and every one of the ironworker websites warns against them. But buying a new, unblemished one made of steel can easily consume more than half her monthly income. They are just
that
expensive. But she soon learns that most smithies buy their tools at auctions or barter with other collectors or craftsmen. And this is what she does, follows one local lead after another until she finds a retired farm auctioneer who sells antiquated tools out of his barn.

Everyone she meets—everyone—assumes she is taking up smithing, because that’s what so many of the artistic young people of the region seem to be doing these days. They’re returning in droves to the old folkways. Part of her thinks that’s actually a fine cover. Fred would probably be proud of her for exploiting such a misdirection.

But she only wants to hear that sound again. Her confidence is robust for someone so young, but she knows she has a few things going for her. She knows music, she can sight-read, and she has a good ear. Every instructor she’s ever had has told her this, and she has no reason to doubt them.
Of course
she has a good ear. She is a good student. She will work as hard as she can. She will not fail.

But the anvil is tough.

She has no way of knowing if the assortment of hammers she’s bought at the big-box store are appropriate. On the subject of playing the anvil as a musical instrument, the Internet is largely silent. She finds countless videos of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus from
Il Trovatore
, of leather-aproned men or women pounding out that famous melody as the chorus of gypsies sings along. But she longs to conjure a sound that is wholly different.

More delicate, elegant, and purer.

For a long time, the sound emanating from the steel seems flat and dull. There is none of the distinct loveliness she heard that day in the old smithy’s barn.

But she tries. Oh, she tries.

The music store at the mall coughs up some decent sheet music, which she uses as a guide only. And strangely, she discovers that she only wants to play church music. “Amazing Grace,” of course. “Ave Maria.” “How Great Thou Art.” At the tractor store—she cannot believe the day she walks into it—she finds a pair of roomy overalls that sprout loops at her hips and promise to give her thighs the requisite range of movement.

Each night that summer she sucks down her dinner and retires to the garage to squat over the thing and play. The anvil sounds again and again, and each night, after a few hours, her ears ring and her hands hurt and her palms stiffen.

At work, while she files paperwork, she hears it still.

The sound is good. Just not good enough.

Like her.

If the smithy is surprised to see a woman so young dressed in overalls and work boots and so closely quizzing him on this particular sideline of his craft, he doesn’t show it. He listens to her story as he sits at the picnic table behind his shop and tears into a pulled pork sandwich doused with smoky orange sauce. His voice is gravelly, his teeth bad, his glasses distinctly unstylish.

He is plainly ugly.

But the second she thinks this, she begs his silent forgiveness.
Am I such a bad person?
she wonders.
Was the old me really that bad?

“You’re lucky buying an old one,” he tells her. “Most of the anvils made today are just not going to give you that ringing sound. They really don’t make them the way they used to. The rest is just practice.” He cocks his head, crowlike, and asks, “How are you holding the hammers?”

Good question. She holds them as if she is about to drive a nail, but he scoffs when she tells him this. He looks at his scuffed Timex.

“You want it to be like a drumstick. Firm, but loose and gentle-like. You want to cultivate muscle memory. You know what that is?”

“Like I know it but don’t
know
I know it.”

“Yep. Like your hands just know what to do. Look, I don’t have much time, but I can show you a few things. If you were looking to apprentice, I got to say no. I just don’t do that anymore. I’m just putting on a show for the tourists here.”

“I just want to make it sing.”

“Well, okay then. I can show you a few things. But you mind my asking something? Why in the heck would a pretty girl like yourself want to do such a thing?”

She is appalled that she doesn’t have an answer.

It’s only later, when the weather turns and the mall grows ever busier, that she begins to get the first glimmer of an answer. But it is not an answer she can articulate clearly. She can only feel it building within her when she plays. Only then do the faces of the dead recede and seem to bear witness to her concerts.

So much of her life is on autopilot now. In the back of her mind as she works the day job is the thrum of sound, the plink and patter of the hammer. Up, dress, work, lunch, work, back home—and then the steel. On weekends when she can, she prowls the flea markets on Old Highway 6, looking for various types of hammers and chisels she can use to produce different sounds. At night sometimes when she collapses in front of the TV she can feel herself running the notes the way she used to do when she was studying the piano.

Amazing grace . . .

Her closed fist taps out the melody on empty air.

How sweet the sound . . .

And this is why she doesn’t quite know how to respond to the question the smithy asked her a month ago now. If pushed, she will only say that she wants to make music. Beautiful music. She
needs
it to be beautiful. But that alone is not enough. She cannot deny that when she’s beating out a melody against that steel, she derives a pleasure she never felt when she played the piano, or even the bells.

You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along that it was wrong.

Yes, I knew. But damn you for saying so.

Tink.

Damn you, Eddie, for asking me to do it.

Tink, tink, tink.
Smack.

Damn the feds for making her life so banal and lonely.

Oh, really? Poor
you.
People
died.

All she wants to do is strike the hammer. To crush and pound it until it reverberates in her soul. Her life this past year has massed itself into a ball of anguish. Each night, as she makes the journey from the flat to the horn, she imagines she is chasing the pain away, nattering it, worrying it to the edge of the steel until it drops away into space.

She hopes too that the steel is changing her. God help her for saying so, but that smithy is an ugly man. She despises herself for thinking such a thing, but it’s so. And yet, when he bends to the anvil and plays, he becomes something else. She wants that. But she worries sometimes that she has more anger bound up inside her than the hammers will ever be able to chase away. Anger at herself. Her parents. Eddie Timball. The feds. Margaret Bryan. Maybe even dear, kind Fred.

No wonder my music isn’t beautiful.

Around Christmas that year the smithy looks up from his work when the next round of tourists leave. There’s a light snow falling outside. Framed in the doorway is the young woman dressed in a Carhartt jacket. Two hammers hang from the loops at her hips like sidearms.

“So you’re a cowboy now, is that it?” he says.

She smiles, draws, and flawlessly executes the blacksmith’s own gesture: twirls the hammers like six-guns before catching them. She loves doing this now. Loves feeling the heft of the handles as they swing back home to her grasp.

“Can I show you something?” she says.

He nods his assent. As she comes behind the railing, stripping off her jacket, his eyes take in the muscles along her arms. He sips from his flask.

He is taller than she is, so she has to bend lower to reach his anvil. The second her hammers bite steel, she thinks, My God, his is so much clearer, so much purer. Must be the construction.

But she pushes these thoughts from her mind and plays “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time.”

The old man stops sipping at his flask.

She plays a good long while. She remembers Blake’s song from childhood, but back then she never thought about the words. In the last month that’s all she has done.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold . . .

Bring me my Arrows of desire . . .

Today she tortures herself for not paying better attention when she was younger. How could I have been so thoughtless? The dead poet’s words touch her now.

I will not cease from Mental Fight . . .

The words speak to every striving instinct she has for something better. She wants to be good. She craves it.

Her eyes are moist when she looks up. But the old man has a smile on his face.

“That’s a churchly hymn now, isn’t it? Well, I’d say you done the good Lord proud today,” he says.

She hears applause and is stunned to see that another round of tourists have come in from out of the cold. A bunch of them in the barn, clapping. Moms, dads, grandmas, kids.

She smiles and twirls the hammer in her right hand. Then the left. And slings them both in the loops of her overalls.

It’s nice. She feels good. Real good. Maybe not beautiful, but close.

Then she notices that three of the dads have video cameras. All of them pointed at her.

She doesn’t notice the truck until the Friday after Christmas, when it seems as if the whole world has descended on the mall to lob returns or cash in gift cards. The black Chevrolet truck following her as she pulls out of the mall looks a lot like the one she saw on the cul-de-sac this morning. She peels out ahead of it at the turn signal and tries to put the vehicle out of her mind. She figures she’s imagining things.

The truth is, the videos have spooked her. For weeks now, ever since she showed off at the farm, she’s been surfing all the amateur video websites in search of them, without any luck. That’s a good thing. Maybe the tourists who filmed her didn’t feel moved to post their videos. Maybe it’s not what they do. Maybe the footage didn’t turn out that well. Or maybe they’ve been distracted by Christmas.

She needs the steel badly tonight. And as soon as she gets into the garage—the space heater throwing out some BTUs, the hammers and chisels arrayed on the concrete to her right—she is able to finally tap out the notes that will bring her to the “Ave Maria.”

She doesn’t know the original words, and that’s part of the problem. If you don’t know how to pronounce the words, you don’t know how the syllables break. She’s translating from some sheet music for drums that sits on a music stand to the left.

Gratia plena.
Full of grace.

She never had the chance to study Latin, but now the pings against steel bring her to tears.

Ora . . . ora pro nobis . . . peccatoribus.

Pray for us sinners . . .

She pauses. Drops the hammers. Braces her hands against the anvil and lets the tears come. Behind the garage door she can hear the insistent ringing of her phone.
Let it ring.
But then it beeps. Message left.

She dries her eyes and goes to check it in the kitchen.
MB
has called a half-dozen times. Margaret Bryan. Dammit. When she last saw Maggie, Callie hadn’t mentioned the videos to her. No way was she going to give the fed any reason to play the bad cop. The videos were gone. Bullets dodged. End of story.

She listens to the first message.

Anxiety in the woman’s voice: “You have to call me, okay?”

Callie begins to dial, but as she does, Bryan calls again.

“Are you there?” Margaret says. “Where are you?”

Where would I be on a Friday night, Maggie?

“At home, why?”

“I need you to listen to me, okay? You need to get out of there. Get out of the house and get to the police station. Just go inside. Don’t say a
word
to them. You just sit there. I don’t care who comes in asking for you. You just refuse to leave, you hear me?”

“What is this? Am I in trouble?”

“I’m driving up with another agent, okay? But the roads are bad. We’re hitting some snow outside Atlanta.
But I will be there, Callie.
You just need to listen to me.”

“Just level with me, okay? Is this because of the videos?”

“What?”

Dammit—she didn’t know. And you just went ahead and told her.

Callie steps to the window of the townhouse and nudges the curtains. At the top of the cul-de-sac, a large shape. The truck?

“I’m going,” she says into the phone. “I’m going right now.”

She hangs up. She turns to get her car keys when the knock comes at the door. She pads back to the living room to look out the window. The large shape is now parked in her driveway.

The knock now more insistent. The knob turning. “Dammit, Callie,” a voice says. “Open the damn door. I know you’re there.”

Relief floods her. She knows that voice. She opens the door to find Marshal Fred standing there. Fred the fed, dressed in street clothes, not the suit. Sneakers on his feet. Dark sweatshirt. As his eyes slide down her overalls, she senses his confusion. She is not the witless child she was months ago. She is not even a girl anymore. And he has changed too. He looks heavier, stressed, exhausted.

“Why didn’t she tell me you were coming?” Callie says.

“Who?” he says, stepping into the room.

“Margaret.”

“Bryan called you?”

She nods. He swears under his breath. Hangs his head. Then he starts to close the door by feel and produces the weapon. Not his service weapon. Another one. Smaller, stubbier, older.

“What’s this all about?”

“I’m sorry, Callie,” he says, and for a moment she buys the hurt in his eyes and voice. “She’s bleeding me dry. I had to do something. I’m sorry,” he says again. “It was the only thing I could think of. It’s just . . . it’s just a transaction.”