The Unforgiven (22 page)

“Yeah,” Jess agreed. He thought to himself that at least he knew now why the house smelled so bad. For a moment he looked skeptically at Evy. She was normally
so tidy. He wondered if there was a side of her he didn’t know. A side that was dirty and careless.

The girl looked at him helplessly. “Maybe you’d rather not help me.”

Jess sighed. “No. I’ll have a look. But you’ve got to promise me that you’ll get at that basement sometime soon. It’s not healthy to have food rotting down there. For either of you.”

Evy bowed her head in apparent contrition at his scolding. “I will,” she promised in a low voice.

Satisfied, Jess switched on the flashlight, drew in a breath, and started down the stairs. He could hear Evy on the step behind him.

“One more down,” she directed him. “It’s there, on the ceiling to your left.”

Jess beamed the light at the pipe Evy indicated. “I don’t see anything,” he said, peering up at the rusted metal. “They’re not in great shape, but they look dry. Are you sure this is where it was?” He flashed the light on the pipe joints above him, then shook his head. “I don’t see anything,” he repeated.

The clatter of a falling wrench distracted him. He looked up at the girl.

It took him a few seconds to comprehend what he saw. Evy glared down at him, her white, skeletal face distorted by a sneer which bared her teeth. Above one shoulder she held the larger wrench tensely, prepared to strike.

This is a joke,
he thought.
She’s only kidding. This isn’t real.
He tried to speak but his throat was constricted.

“What are you doing?” The furious intensity of her eyes incinerated his frantic hope.

Jess’s heart froze for an instant and then began to thud wildly. “No,” he cried out as he saw her arm start to move, like a scythe, through the air. He raised a clammy hand to shield his face. “Evy, don’t!”

She ignored his plea. The last thing he heard was her guttural cry as she swung the wrench down on him. There was an instant of crushing pain. Then, darkness.

15

Owen hesitated, his hand on the inside handle of the car door. Should he go to the door, or simply honk the horn? he wondered. In the interest of appearing as casual as possible, he finally decided to remain in the car, motor running, and beep.

A few seconds after the second blast the lights went out in the house, and Maggie appeared on the doorstep. The yellow porch light created an aura around her slim figure which gave her a ghostly appearance. She stepped off the threshold and into the darkness. Owen lost sight of her until she opened the car door and sat down beside him.

“I would have come in,” he explained, “but we were running a little late.”

Maggie nodded but did not reply.

“So,” he continued, making conversation as he turned to back out of the driveway, “I hear you’re having a little car trouble. Damned cars. You can’t rely on them.” He straightened his jeep out on the road, then glanced over at Maggie who sat silently, not responding to his remarks.

“Damned nuisance if you ask me,” he went on. “This old Scout of mine here is pretty good, but when
one thing goes, everything else seems to shut down in sympathy. I take it over to Marv there at the Shell station. You know Marv? Great guy. Take your eyeteeth any day and tell you ‘you look better without them.’”

He could sense that she had turned her head to look at him. Owen began to hum an aimless tune.

“Actually,” she said quietly, “my car’s fine.”

Owen ceased his humming and frowned, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead.

“It was me,” she went on. “I didn’t want to go alone. I was afraid to.”

Owen squirmed in his seat and screwed his mouth into an impatient expression. He did not look at her but continued to peer out at the white line in the road. “That’s ridiculous,” he said gruffly.

Maggie did not flinch at his observation. “I suppose so,” she murmured.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Owen cleared his throat but said nothing. A sigh escaped from Maggie. She kept her face, furrowed with anxiety, turned away from him.

Owen began to hum again, then stopped abruptly. They rode the rest of the way to the school without speaking.

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee…”

A chorus of straining, childish voices perforated the closed windows of the school and then dissolved in the night air as Owen and Maggie pulled up into the parking lot. Owen got out and reached back behind the seat where he had placed his camera equipment.

“God shed disgrace on thee,” he boomed out in his basso profundo.

Maggie, grateful for his attempt to relax her, smiled.

“Ready?” Owen asked, slinging one camera around his neck and drawing a leather bag up over his shoulder. “Here,” he said. “Take these.”

Maggie accepted the film containers he held out to her.

“Hold onto them,” he instructed her. “I’ll need them later.”

Owen began trudging toward the door of the auditorium. He looked back after a few steps and saw Maggie standing rooted beside the car. “Will you come on?” he called back, a note of irritation in his voice.

She roused herself to join him, clutching her reporter’s pad tightly in one sweaty hand. “I thought this was a meeting about school business,” she whispered as Owen threw open the door of the auditorium. From inside she could hear the young vocalizers launching into their next tune, a poorly coordinated round of which none of the words were distinguishable.

“Oh, they have a little music recital first. It puts all the proud parents in a mellow mood,” he explained. He poked his head in and then entered the back of the room. Maggie slipped in beside him and stood in the shadows. A few feet to her left Maggie noticed an empty chair pushed back against the wall. She quickly sat down in it and lowered her head to examine the blank first page of her pad.

Owen dropped the leather satchel beside her and strode up the center aisle between the rows of metal
folding chairs peopled by parents and other residents of Heron’s Neck. He planted himself about halfway down the aisle and held a light meter above his head. Curious eyes around the room turned to observe him as he raised the camera to his face and squinted into the viewer. Familiar with the sight of Owen and his camera at local events, most members of the audience quickly turned their attention back to the choir. Owen shifted his weight as he focused and began clicking. After a few shots he squatted down and tilted his camera upward at the crowded risers.

Maggie raised her eyes from the safety of her notebook and looked around the room. A basketball hoop hung above the heads of the singing children in the room which was ordinarily a gymnasium. The maize-colored walls were papered with riotous crayon drawings depicting pilgrims of peculiar proportions and turkeys with brilliant green and purple plumage. The vivid, innocent images made Maggie smile. By contrast, the parents were a drab-looking lot, seated upright in their uncomfortable folding chairs, dressed mostly in dull earth tones. Maggie recognized some of their plain faces, which were upturned in rapt attention toward the children stumbling gamely through their song to the accompaniment of a plunking piano that Maggie could not see from her seat at the rear.

She felt a sad fondness for the nameless children as she watched them singing. They concentrated earnestly on the unseen teacher at the piano who led them, but their exuberance caused each little voice to take a path of its own, poking out of the choral unity like awkward
elbows and knees. And those who sang the loudest, with greatest zeal, would probably be scolded, she thought.

As her eyes swept the room she noticed that Owen appeared to be gesturing in her direction. She lowered her eyes hastily to her notebook and hoped that she was wrong. Then, unmistakably, she heard him call her name in an impatient whisper.

Maggie looked up to see him nodding at her and pointing to his leather bag. A few people seated in Owen’s vicinity swiveled around to stare at her. Reluctantly, she leaned over and picked up the bag. She dreaded the walk down the center aisle and silently cursed Owen for forcing her to leave her seat in the shadows. Slowly she got up and started toward him.

As she reached the passage between the seats, the piano and its player became visible to her. Maggie recognized the frizzy, blond head of the woman at the fair who had screamed at her after the boys’ accident. Maggie stopped short, disinclined to expose herself by getting any closer. She heard Owen whisper her name again and looked up to see him glowering at her, jerking his hand impatiently toward her. She looked dumbly from Owen’s extended hand to the bag, then slowly shook her head. She took a step back.

Owen scowled, then stomped over to where she stood. A few people turned around to shoot them disapproving glances.

Angrily, Owen snatched the bag from her hand and unzipped it. “You’re acting like a fool,” he said curtly, reaching into the bag and rummaging around. The
children’s voices piped on, but the piano behind them began to falter to a halt.

Owen found the lens he was fishing for and pushed the bag back into Maggie’s arms. He turned to resume his place in the center aisle. Past his shoulder Maggie looked directly into the eyes of the music teacher, who had pushed back the bench and stood up, and was facing Maggie with a fearsome glare across the distance of the auditorium. The children sang on in their high, nasal tones, but gradually, one by one, they stopped as they noticed that the music teacher had abandoned them in the midst of their song.

“Did I disturb you? Sorry,” Owen called out, waving a hand to the front of the room. “Please go on. It won’t happen again. Sorry.”

A murmur of annoyance traveled around the room as the audience commented on the interruption. It died down as people settled back into their listening attitudes. However, the music teacher did not resume her seat at the piano. She continued to glare at Maggie, her eyes occasionally darting to Owen. “What are you doing here?” she cried out in a loud but trembling voice.

For a moment Owen was taken aback by the question, but he responded in a conciliatory tone. “I’m here for the
Cove News,
” he said. “I’m taking pictures of this meeting for Tuesday’s paper. As I suspect you know,” he added smoothly.

The music teacher ignored the suggestion of condescension in his tone. “What about her?” she asked shrilly, pointing to Maggie, who stood dumbly in the aisle watching the proceedings as if it were an accident
in the process of happening and she were helpless to avert it.

“Miss Fraser,” Owen retorted, “is likewise here as a reporter, to cover this little event. And we’d like to get on with it so we can get home, if you don’t mind.”

The woman hesitated for a moment, then looked defiantly from Maggie to Owen, her mouth set in a hard line. “No,” she said.

“What do you mean, no? No what?” Owen said, exasperated.

“I mean no, she cannot stay. We want her to go. You can stay and take your pictures, but she has to go.”

“What are you talking about?” Owen cried over the murmur of surprise in the audience and the excited whispers of the children, who had not witnessed the public humiliation of an adult before.

“I mean, that she is not welcome here. Do I have to go into it in front of all these children? What that woman did yesterday? At a public gathering?”

“This is unbelievable,” Owen sputtered. “I have never heard of such a thing.” He turned toward Maggie as if to commiserate with her.

Maggie stood, supporting herself on the chair beside her. Her face was ashen. With a swift motion she hurled the leather bag away from her. Owen rushed to intercept it. Maggie whirled around and stalked out of the room, slamming the double doors behind her.

The music teacher turned back to the children, who were punching and pinching one another, whispering in one another’s ears, their eyes wide at the delicious wickedness of the scene. “Calm down now,” she ordered
shrilly. “We will begin the song again.” She sat down at the piano and grimly pounded out three chords on the keys. Her flushed face was mottled with white blotches. The children reluctantly focused their attention on her. She hit the introductory chord with authority.

Owen anxiously pawed through his bag, checking to see if anything had been broken in its flight. “Unbelievable,” he muttered loudly as he gathered up his equipment and started toward the door where Maggie had made her noisy exit. A few people tried to shush as he stomped out. “Don’t you shush me, lady,” he warned, wagging a finger at a woman who drew back in her seat under his frosty glare. The voices of the children piped his exit march.

As he reached the parking lot he saw Maggie leaning up against the hood of the jeep, her slim frame bent as if from a blow. He stifled an urge to put a hand on her shoulder. Instead, he opened the door to the backseat and laid his camera bag down.

“I don’t know about you,” he said lightly. “You seem bent on destroying all my equipment.”

Maggie turned around and glared at him. “Thanks a lot. That was great.”

“Wait a minute,” he protested. “Surely you don’t blame me for that ugly display.”

“I told you I was worried about it on our way over here,” she cried. “I just wanted to sit quietly in the back. But no, you decided to parade me out in front of them. You had to have your bag. What’s wrong with you? You couldn’t walk back ten feet and pick up your
own goddamned bag? You—you had to humiliate me? Drag me up there—”

“Hold it,” Owen thundered, grabbing her arms which trembled in his grip. “In the first place, I had all my meters adjusted to that spot. Which is why I asked you to bring the bag. And more importantly, you can’t blame me for what happened here tonight. It isn’t my fault.”

“I knew this would happen,” she went on, jerking herself out of Owen’s grasp. “Jess said ‘Go to the meeting. Everything will be fine.’ I could have told him this would happen. I know what people are like. But no, Jess knew better. And you—” she accused him.

“Maggie,” he interrupted her tirade, “no one knew this was going to happen. We’re civilized people. We don’t expect our neighbors to act like Huns. I’m very sorry you had to endure that.”