Touchstone

by Sharon Sala

  Margaret Andrews was furious. She’d been to confession twice this week alone, said three novenas and performed two acts of contrition, and still the anger within her had not subsided. She kept telling herself she was old, but she wasn’t a fool. She’d been doing laundry for men for most of her life and she knew what those stains on the sheets were all about. Her Beatty was abusing himself, and it was high time it stopped. He was old enough to control his manly urges. But ever since he’d tacked those disgusting pictures of that foreign-looking woman on his bedroom walls, the stains had been constant. To think that was going on right beneath her nose, in her own house . . . it was not to be tolerated. And since it was obvious to her that he wasn’t going to stop, it was up to her, as his mother, to do what must be done.

  Full of righteous indignation, she marched into his room with a garbage bag in her hand and began ripping the pictures from the walls. There were dozens of them now. Covers from Vogue. Ads from Cosmopolitan. From Mademoiselle. Her hands were shaking with rage as she ripped and tore, stuffing the glossy papers into the bag as if they were something foul.

  Bits of the images were burned into her brain as she went about the business of razing his world. She stopped briefly to look at the one in her hand. The woman’s dark skin—all that black, flowing hair. Those knowing, sluttish eyes, that wide, beckoning mouth. Despite the fact that it was only a perfume advertisement, in Margaret’s opinion it was nothing more than public promises of unsanctioned lust.

  Margaret’s spirit soared as the pictures came down. When the walls were bare, she breathed a sigh of relief, certain she’d set her son free. Then her heart skipped a beat as she heard the front door slam.

  Beatty was home!

  A moment of fear came and went before her defenses slid into place. She set her jaw, determined to have her way in this.

  “So!” she muttered, already shifting into a judgmental mode. “You’re finally home. Do I smell liquor on your breath?”

  Beatty stood in the doorway to his room, so stunned he couldn’t speak. He pushed past her, setting the bag he was carrying onto his bed, and then staring at the walls in disbelief.

  Margaret’s satisfaction began to waver. “Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?” she demanded.

  He turned then, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  Standing in the shadow of the doorway, Margaret fought an urge to panic. Suddenly it became important to her that he admit she was right. She lifted the garbage bag, waving it toward him.

  “You were committing a sin and you know it. The signs were there! On your sheets! Always on your sheets!”

  Beatty’s face turned a dull, angry red. He took a single step forward.

  Her son’s silence was unnerving. This wasn’t the way she’d expected him to react. She took an uncertain step back.

  “As your mother, it was my duty to see that you—”

  Beatty hit her with his fist. The impact startled him as much as it did her. Her head snapped as she fell backward. A loud crack split the silence of the room as the back of her head and body hit the edge of the door frame. She groaned once and then expelled a long, single breath as she slid to the floor, the garbage bag still clutched in her hands.

  Beatty stared. His mother had landed sitting up, with her legs sprawled wide, and her head lolling to one side. Her expression seemed shocked, her gaze slightly blank. A single drop of blood was pearling at the corner of her mouth, and his knuckles were stinging. He took a deep breath as the rage within him began to subside.

  “Cover yourself,” he muttered, trying not to stare at her pale, blue-veined thighs.

  She didn’t move.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, a bit louder. “You shouldn’t have interfered with my room.”

  She seemed oblivious to his complaint.

  Beatty started to sweat. “I have rights,” he said loudly. “I’m a grown man. I pay the bills. I buy the food. I have rights.”

  She didn’t blink.

  Beatty leaned forward. When he touched her shoulder, she slid sideways like a sack of flour. Her head bounced against the floor with another thump. But there was no outcry. No sound of dismay. Beatty stared in disbelief.

  “Mother?”

  She didn’t move.

  Beatty pushed at her shoulder with the tip of his finger. For once he would have welcomed a whine.

  “Damn it, Mother, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have come in my room.”

  A fly circled above where Margaret was lying and then landed on the side of her face. Beatty stared at it, watching as it crawled, undeterred, toward her eye.

  “Oh God... oh no... oh shit,” Beatty moaned, and then pinched his lips together to keep from screaming.

  He crawled down beside her and tried to lift her up. But Margaret Andrews was past needing to stand.

  Beatty felt her neck for a pulse. There was none. Then he thumped on her chest a few times trying to start her heart, just as they did on TV. But she didn’t respond, and the sound of his fist pounding her soft flesh made him sick.

  “Mother . . . Mother . . . wake up. It’s me, Beatty. I’m home for supper. What have you cooked?”

  But Margaret’s cares of this world were over. In fact, she would have been shocked to know that she’d given birth to the man who would ultimately end her life.

  When she didn’t answer, Beatty rocked back on his knees, straightened her skirt, and then started to cry.

  The garbage bag was open at Margaret’s feet. Beatty reached inside, taking out one of Rachel’s pictures and smoothing the wrinkles as best as he could. He stared at the beautiful image until it blurred before his eyes. With shaking ringers, he pulled the garbage bag into his lap.

  “It was all your fault,” he muttered, taking the pictures out one by one. “Your fault. It was all your fault.”

  He looked down at his mother. A shudder racked him. He didn’t know what to do. As he sat, bits and pieces of the stories he’d read began coming back to him. The soldiers in those stories killed, too. But under orders, of course. It didn’t count if you killed under orders. And when they killed, sometimes they had to hide the bodies, but only until their mission was complete.

  At that moment an idea began to form. He must hide his mother’s body from the police, at least until he’d dealt with Rachel Austin. They would never understand that it wasn’t his fault she was dead.

  But where? This wasn’t the jungle. There were no caverns, or canyons, or thickets of trees in New York City, only great, towering buildings set along endless miles of concrete. And even though they never had visitors at the apartment, he couldn’t leave her here. Someone would notice the smell.

  So where? He thought of the antique trunk sitting at the foot of his mother’s bed. It was just the right size. And he could store it in the basement of their building. It would be like a crypt. He liked the idea of crypts. Mother wouldn’t want to be put in the ground. And it was still summer. The super wouldn’t be down in the basement in the summer. No furnace to tend. By the time winter came, the smell would be gone. He looked at the bag sitting on his bed, then back at his mother. Now he was convinced his plans were right.

  He crawled to his feet and went into his mother’s room, where he began emptying the trunk of the winter quilts she stored there. When he was done, he dragged the empty trunk down the hall, then stopped, staring at her dead body again. This didn’t seem real. He kept expecting that at any moment he would awaken and start this day over.

  A puddle was forming beneath Margaret’s body, and Beatty suddenly wrinkled his nose at the offensive smell of urine and feces. He sighed. Mother would be furious at him for making her soil herself.

  He opened the trunk and then stepped back, judging Margaret’s size against the vacant interior. It would be a tight fit, but it should work. Then Beatty held his breath and began cramming what was left of Margaret Andrews into her own grandmother ’s trunk. Once the lid was shut and locked, he headed to th
e kitchen for a sponge and pail.

  A short while later he was down on his hands and knees, cleaning up the urine stains with a strong solution of disinfectant. Even though the mixture had been lemon-scented, there was no way to disguise the sharp, astringent odor of chemicals. He sighed. Mother hated this smell. And then he remembered. What Mother hated no longer mattered.

  He rocked back on his heels and stared around the apartment, then dropped the sponge into the pail and stood. Drying his hands on his pants, he began to walk through the apartment.

  Alone. He was alone.

  Fear surged and then ebbed as quickly as it had come. A spurt of nervous excitement shifted through him.

  He’d always wanted a place of his own, and now he had it.

  A hand-crocheted doily lay against the headrest of Beatty’s favorite chair. Fingering it curiously, it occurred to him then that this sort of thing didn’t belong on a man’s chair. He dropped it in the trash as he passed. Then he went through the small, cramped apartment room by room, discarding some things, moving others—making this place more to his liking. When he thought to look up, it was after midnight and Margaret was still in the hall.

  Beatty frowned. Like his mother, the trunk was out of place in his world. It was time to finish what he’d started.

  He sneaked a dolly from the janitor’s room and loaded on the trunk. By three A.M. Margaret Andrews had a new address. North end of the basement, in the midst of a huge jumble of boxes, second stack on the right.

  Except for some tile work yet to be done in the bathrooms, Houston’s new house was finished. The sprawling, single-story ranch house had been built beneath the only stand of trees on his new property. In fact, the trees were part of the reason he’d bought the land. Someone had told him they’d been planted over a hundred years ago, by the first owner. He didn’t know how old they were, and he didn’t much care. Their presence on the flat, windy land gave him a sense of comfort and satisfaction. They represented shelter, both to the body and to the soul.

  He walked through the house, seeing it with fresh eyes and marveling that something so grand was his. The west wing was all bedrooms. Four, to be exact. Kenny had laughed at the size of the rooms and then claimed the one on the end for when he visited. The master bedroom was at the other end of the house, just off the room designated as a library office.

  The west wall of the living room was floor-toceiling windows. It was Houston’s favorite part of the house. The view from where he was standing took his breath away. He imagined how beautiful the sunsets would be from here, and then he shook off the thought. Without Rachel, a sunset was nothing more than the end to another lonely day.

  He frowned as he headed for the front door. His stomach was grumbling, which figured, because he hadn’t eaten since morning. And while he knew there was little to eat at his old house, it was still better than going back into Mirage and eating alone. Not that he couldn’t have driven into Mirage and met up with any number of people who would willingly share his table. An old pain tugged at his heart as he slid behind the wheel of his battered truck. Money could buy a lot of things, but it couldn’t buy happiness. And it couldn’t buy love.

  He drove out of the yard and then headed east. Within the month, this new place would be home and the long drive out to the Bookout ranch would be a thing of the past. In a couple of days an entire houseful of furniture would be delivered to outfit the empty rooms. Moving day wasn’t going to be all that difficult, either. Except for his clothes and a few pictures, there wasn’t anything from the old house worth taking.

  A short while later he pulled up in the yard. Taco looked up from his place on the porch and then dropped his head back on his paws and closed his eyes.

  Houston got out. “What? No welcome-home kiss? No ‘Glad to see you, darling, I missed you so much’?”

  Taco snorted and sighed.

  Houston stopped to scratch his head. “Wonder what you’ll think about moving,” he said, more to himself than to the old dog. Then he unlocked the door and went inside. Taco would adapt, just as Houston had. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it just the same.

  The message light was blinking on his answering machine as he entered the kitchen. “Not now,” he muttered, and hung his hat on a hook by the back door.

  The house smelled musty, even unused. But Houston knew why. Except for eating and sleeping, he couldn’t bear to stay inside. There were too many memories of Rachel in these rooms. Echoes of her laughter haunted him in his sleep. More than once he’d been certain he’d heard the front door open, then heard the sound of her footsteps as she hurried down the hall toward his bedroom. Twice this week he’d been standing at the sink making coffee and could have sworn that he’d heard her call his name. It was getting on his nerves. The sooner he moved into his new house, the better. Everything there was new and fresh, untainted by her presence. Then he could get on with his life. Maybe one day he would find a good woman who wanted a home and a family as much as he did.

  He thought of those four empty bedrooms and pictured them filled with children and the house ringing with laughter. He sighed. It was a good dream. The only problem was, every time he dreamed it, the woman at his side looked like Rachel.

  It was five minutes after three A.M. when Taco came trotting around the corner of the house and flopped down on the porch. He lowered his head to lick his paws and then paused in the act to sniff the air. A grumble sounded low in his throat. It was a reminder, more to himself than to the coyote that wandered beyond the barn, that this was his territory.

  Inside the house, Houston was oblivious to his dog’s vigilance. Although his sleep was deep, he stirred restlessly. Over the past few months he’d been able to cope with Rachel’s absence during the day by focusing on something else. But that worked only when he was awake. Asleep, she invaded him from the inside out. Tonight was no exception. Only this time something was different about his dreams. Something was wrong. Something bad. Something evil. Sweat beaded his skin as he struggled to pull out of this spell. But it wouldn’t let go. He was trapped in the nightmare.

  “Help me, help me. Dear God, someone help me.”

  Houston spun toward the sound, his heart pounding with fear. He recognized the voice, and even though he couldn’t see her through the smoke and the fire, he knew she was in terrible pain.

  “Rachel! Where are you? “

  “Houston? Is that you?” He heard her sob. “I can’t see you. Please tell me where you are.”

  As he ran, the smoke drifted around him, permeating his clothes and filling his nostrils. Death hid in the thick, swirling shadows. He could feel it. Suddenly she screamed, and his heart lurched.

  “Rachel! Rachel! For the love of God, answer me!”

  He spun around in desperation, and as he did, the smoke began to part, as if the great hand of God had drawn a knife through it. He saw her then, covered in blood with her hands outstretched, feeling her way through the smoke and the fire. He lunged toward her just as her image started to fade.

  “Cherokee! Cherokee! Don’t go! I’m here!”

  She turned toward the sound of his voice, her mouth open wide in a soundless scream. He gasped and then froze, unable to move or speak. Her eyes—those beautiful, grass-green eyes—were gone.

  Houston woke himself up screaming her name.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, and rolled out of bed, unwilling to lie one second more in the place where the dream had been born.

  His heart was pounding as he staggered to the bathroom and turned on the water, then stood splashing his sweaty face with shaking hands. On the verge of nausea, he stumbled out of the bathroom, pulling on his Levi’s as he left. The floor was cool under his feet as he headed for the front door. He needed air and space and something in his mind besides the remnants of that hellish nightmare.

  Taco whined as Houston walked out on the porch, but at a word from Houston, he quickly settled back down.

  Houston stepped to the edge of the porch and look
ed up at the sky. Literally thousands upon thousands of stars lined the darkness, from horizon to zenith and down again. He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, absorbing the faint scent of sage in the air, as well as a hint of the ever-present dust. The wind had quieted, but he knew by morning it would be active again, blasting its way across the vast west Texas plains.

  As he stood, the horror of his nightmare began to recede. When he could think without wanting to cry, he sank down on the top step and put his head in his hands.

  His path through life had long been steeped in fact. And although he had the occasional nightmare, it had never been anything this graphic. Never this blatantly evil. And never in his life had he been this afraid.

  He didn’t believe in omens. He didn’t believe in visions. But there was a part of him that knew what he’d seen would come true. He closed his eyes and started to pray.

  “God, I can’t watch over her, but you can. Keep her safe. Keep her well. And whatever you do, in the name of all that’s holy, don’t let her die.”

  Almost a week had passed since Margaret’s untimely exit from Beatty’s life. And in that time Beatty’s attitude had undergone an abrupt change. Yesterday on his way to work he’d caught a glimpse of himself in a plate-glass window and had not recognized his own image. The man in the reflection was swaggering, and there was a tilt to his chin that had never been there before. When he realized it was himself that he saw, he stopped and stared, turning until he was facing his own reflection. The high forehead and receding hairline were still there. His eyes hadn’t gotten any darker, his shoulders no broader, his legs no longer. But there was something about the man in the window that commanded attention.

  Beatty rolled his shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets as he resumed his trek to the subway. The day was warm, but there was a promise of rain in the air. As he continued his journey a twitch began playing at the corner of his mouth, finally pulling his thin lips into a caricature of a smile. He was changing. He could feel it. But to know it was becoming visible as well made him proud. He thought of the day ahead, and of the woman he would most certainly see before it was over. His heart skipped a beat. Everything was ready. His Internet contact had been more than thorough. The man in the park had furnished not only the supplies needed for a bomb, but a diagram of how to assemble it.