The Winslow Incident (57 page)

Passing beneath the double-arched
entry, Hazel’s legs begin to quiver like the sick cow at Holloway Ranch before
she buckled to the ground, like Indigo before they dragged him thrashing and
bellowing off the rodeo field and shot him dead behind the corral, and like Gus
Bolinger when he’d tried to flee the horrors of the ballroom on
plague-weakened, old man legs.

Keep going.

There are dead animals on the
porch. Just two, but that’s enough. A pair of tawny goats lay limp across the
wide boards—their throats cleanly slit. Nearby rests a pail their
executioner had used to capture blood as it poured from their wounds.
Some
4-H kid is gonna miss those goats
, is all she can think.

She wishes it weren’t so bright
out, that there were shadows to hide such things.

I’ll go in and get my
grandmother. That’s all I have to do.
Only
she’s backing away, unaware she’s doing so until she bumps against a pedestal
gaslamp—and her first startled thought is that somebody is grabbing for her,
anxious to slit her throat too so they can paint the rest of the hotel red.

Trying to steady her breathing and
slow the pulse that threatens to pop out her eyes, she pushes away from the
lamp pole and softly chants, “Go in. Get her. Leave.”

To reach the front doors, she must
first stretch a long step over one of the goats. Then she reaches for the door,
vaguely aware of her own helpless, terrified mewling over the swell of voices
coming from inside the hotel.

Her hand shakes wildly as she
turns the cold silver doorknob.
Go in, get her—

Hazel snaps her hand away from the
knob.

Not this way.
Foolish to fall for it, like Sean said at Three Fools
Creek.

She steps carefully back over the
goat and descends the steps, then cuts right and crosses the yard toward the
side of the hotel. When she rounds the corner, she’s struck by the stench of
blackberries rotting in the sun. Hand over nose, she rushes past the bushes to
the kitchen door. Locked. She cups her hand against the glass and puts her face
up to peer inside.

As she had hoped, Sean’s mom is
alone in the kitchen. Hazel lightly taps the glass and the woman startles
before hurrying over to open up.

Honey Adair is a portrait in
misery. Covered in sweat and cooking oil and specks of food, she looks as
though she’s lost twenty pounds since Sunday.
What happens if she doesn’t
eat something soon?
Hazel panics.
How long does it take a person to
starve to death?

“Come in, come in,” Honey urges
Hazel inside.

Hazel scoots in and then shuts and
locks the door behind her. Platters and bowls overflowing with food cover the
countertops, the table, the floor.

“Did you find my boys?” Honey’s
eyes are wild with hope. It’s obvious to Hazel that she’s getting worse, that
every time she sees her she’s much worse.

“Yes, I saw them both. They’re
fine.” Hazel pictures Aaron in his cowboy pajamas on the whore’s bed in the
Never Tell, and Sean—sick and furious and barefoot—standing in the
weeds among the grave markers of Matherston Cemetery. But she realizes she
can’t let herself get distracted. “Where’s my grandmother?” she asks.

Honey purses her lips together and
closes her eyes.

“Honey, please tell me.”

She shakes her head back and forth
.

“Dammit, Honey.” Hazel could
strangle her. “Tell me where she is!”

She opens her eyes, looks pained.
“Samuel’s holding her for the trial.”

Hazel’s breath escapes her. “What
trial?”

“The pest house trial.” Honey
lowers her voice, “Ben Mathers made him do it.”

“Do
what
?”

“Hold her for the trial. Mathers
says he’s been waiting a long time to clean Sarah Winslow’s pest house.”

Hazel reels with panic. “Honey,
you need to get out of here.”

“No, I need to stay in case my
sons come home.”

“You’d better hope they
don’t—it’s not safe here.”

“Not safe.” Honey wipes her hands
on a dishtowel, eyeing the closed dining room door with a look of apprehension.
“Not safe inside.”

Hazel pulls away from Honey and
heads toward the dining room. As she rounds the kitchen island, she slips, one
hand latching on to the freezer door handle to keep from falling. She looks
down: two dark smears run parallel along the tile all the way into the dining
room, as if somebody with bloody feet had been dragged, resisting, across the
floor and out of the kitchen.

“Owen Peabody,” Honey explains.
“He was taking inventory when they came for him but he fought hard because he
has
to take the inventory. Only then there were even more men and they removed him
to the ballroom where all the sickos have to go.”

Hazel stares at the bloody
streaks, thinking about the way Owen teases her to at least pretend to be nice
to the customers in the Crock, feeling guilty that she made no attempt to deter
his obsession to count every last thing in town . . . and an urgent, awful
certainty sets in that she cannot let this go on.

“Okay, okay.” Hazel sucks in a
long breath, huffs it back out. “Go out to the garden, Honey. Pick the
blackberries. Stay out of the kitchen for a while.”

Honey cocks her head. “Why?”

“They’re ripe,” she tells the sick
woman. “They need to be picked
right now
or else they’ll die.”

“Yes, okay.” She nods and scurries
for the door. “But come get me if my boys come home.”

“Promise,” Hazel says, thinking,
Not
a chance.
Then she rummages through the drawer next to the stove until
remembering she already has what she needs in her back pocket.

Is there any other way?
she wonders before heading to the dining room door.

From the exterior doorway, Honey
calls, “Why don’t you leave too?”

“I will. Soon.” Hazel doesn’t look
back. “Don’t worry about me.” She rests her hand flat against the swinging
door, imagining the opposite side splashed in Lottie Mathers’ blood, and
realizing that no matter how hard they scrubbed, it would never truly go away.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were
you.” An aching sadness infuses Honey’s voice. “It’s unclean.”

I have to
, Hazel thinks.
I need to find my grandmother. I need to
put a stop to this.

Heart pounding, she eases open the
door and enters the dining room.

Empty. And clean. Except that most
of the chairs lay overturned and away from the table, as if something
unexpected and terrifying had suddenly occurred, upsetting the dinner party and
sending the guests scrambling away. Perhaps the butler had lifted the lid off
the platter to reveal the evening’s entrée: human head surrounded by carrots
and boiled potatoes.

Hazel lets the door swing shut
behind her and the movement of air brings the odor of maple syrup from the
kitchen.

The pocket doors leading from this
room into the lobby are shut tight. It’s the only way. As Hazel picks her way around
the chairs and across the dining room she hears voices and the scuffling sounds
of movement on the other side of the doors. She has a weird taste in her mouth,
she realizes. Acidic like the black ant she once ate, curious how it would
taste. That had been against her better judgment.

So is this. She curls her
fingertips into the pull handle of the door and hesitates long enough to allow
the fear to penetrate her marrow.

She slides open the door. The
wheels moving along the track sound like faraway thunder.

Hazel gasps.

Somebody is hanging by the neck. A
raw, chafed neck encircled by a noose at the end of a rope slung through the
chandelier in the center of the lobby.

The back of the body is to her,
its head bent at an unacceptable angle.

Who is it?

The sickeningly sweet smell of
syrup retakes her. Her stomach pitches and rolls.

Dark curtains have been drawn
against the afternoon sun and the lobby is dusky save for the light of the
chandelier. Hazel stands frozen in the doorway, watching people maneuver around
the body. A woman bumps it and sends the Austrian crystal chandelier swinging, illuminating
secrets in dark corners.

Another woman hisses at Hazel,
“Shut that door! They’ll get in. Don’t you know? They’ll get in and they’ll
butcher us!”

Too late
, Hazel thinks as she rolls the door closed.
They’re
already in.

She starts toward the middle of
the octangular lobby, all sides bordered in black tile, a black star dead
center beneath the chandelier. She cannot stop herself. But her ratty tennis
shoes scuff against the polished floor, resisting forward, the rubber
protesting progress toward the hanging thing.

Who is it?

The chandelier settles back in
place above the black star. Only to be knocked again when Hap Hotchkiss cuts
the body too close and the light show begins anew. “Why didn’t you stay at the miners
camp?” Hazel asks Hap, but he doesn’t hear her over the din in the lobby.
You
were happy there.

Five steps, six, she wishes she
could stop—turn back the way she came and run all the way down Yellow
Jacket Pass until she reaches Stepstone, until she reaches help. Only she has
to know.
Who is it?

She moves with the acceptance that
this has already happened. That she’s already seen the face. Time has flipped,
running sideways and backwards. She’s afraid she’ll pee her pants.

The chandelier eases back into its
gentle sway, the faint shadow of its passenger moving against the portraits of
Evan and Ruby Winslow that hang on the opposite wall.

Hazel swipes at the sweat running down
her cheeks.

When she reaches the body she
grasps it by one khaki pant leg.

She spins it around.

Everything else disappears except
his face stuffed above the rope at that impossible angle.

He did not go lightly
, she sees,
he fought it.

For he is not pale and waxy like
the other dead people she has recently seen. He’s purple and angry looking, his
tongue protrudes black and huge.

And it’s a wonder that she
recognizes him at all.

Fritz Earley.

The distributor from down
mountain. Whose feed and flour have lain waste to Holloway Ranch and Winslow.

Hazel puzzles over the people
simply brushing past, not seeming to care that Fritz Earley hangs dead from the
chandelier. She scans the lobby for an ally, a person of some sanity.

Marlene’s brother Caleb Spainhower
lies curled around his guitar on the sofa. Ivy Hotchkiss is sprawled on the
floor at his feet, propped against the couch like a rag doll, staring blankly
with button eyes. Hazel imagines that if Caleb starts to play his guitar again,
Ivy will reanimate—jerking back to life and dancing puppet-like around
the corpse in the center of the lobby. Others shuffle in and out of the lobby
on the errands of zombies.

Hazel makes her way over to Hap
Hotchkiss who is now parked on the third step of the stairway. When she reaches
him, she gestures at Fritz Earley. “Who did this?”

Hap’s glassy eyes peer past the
body, toward the ballroom. “I guess we all did.”

“Because it’s his fault?”

Hap shrugs. “Guess it’s his
fault.” His eyes widen. “I
hope
it’s his fault.”

Sharp shivers shave her spine.
This
has already happened
, she senses again,
backwards and sideways.
She
looks back at Fritz Earley. “They’re assigning blame now, aren’t they?”

“Don’t know what else to do.”

She cannot peel her eyes off the
rope where it’s digging into the neck. The flesh surrounding the noose is red
and raw and ragged. Quietly, she says, “And they’re doling out punishment.”

“What else is left?” Hap agrees.

Forcing her gaze away from Fritz
Earley, she looks up the staircase toward the tower and thinks,
Another
ghost for The Winslow.

She runs her hand along the smooth,
curved banister, then skips her fingertips across silver stair rods . . . and
feels the hotel cracking open: things that have been simmering for years are
seeping up beneath the hardwood floors, soaking through the hand-blocked wallpaper.

Why have I never seen it
before?
She is stunned by its obviousness.
The stain of every miserable thing that has ever happened here.

Feeling dazed, as though she has
taken one too many blows, Hazel hauls herself away from Hap and out of the lobby,
past Fritz Earley swinging, over Ivy insensate on the floor, across the hallway,
and into the ballroom.

The stench hits her first. She
never knew anything could smell this bad. Sweat, urine, and all the other
revolting odors that ripen on the ill and unbathed.
Bring out your dead . .
.
She places her hand over her nose and mouth and enters, jolting to a stop
again just inside the wide doorway.