Patty Cakes was chewing on all of that as she aimed herself in the direction of the package store. Morty’s Cold Beer. The wind drove the rain at her like needles, opening raw spots on her cheeks and nose. It made her eyes hurt. On nights like this the wind was hungry for blood.
She walked along, listening to the clicking of her heels in the hope that the beat would conjure a song in her head. Music was everything to her. She had an iPad crammed with songs, and if that ever failed her it was linked to Pandora, Amazon Prime, Sirius, and Spotify. There wasn’t enough music in the world for Patty. Music kept the doors locked and shades drawn; it kept the monsters in their closets.
There were plenty of monsters. Always monsters.
Beer helped, too.
The window was crammed with beer signs and they painted the wet pavement in Christmas colors. Corona blue and Budweiser red, Stella orange and Heineken green. Patty paused outside, looking up and down the street. To the left of Morty’s were three clubs in a row. The Bonesman’s Blues, named after a local ghost legend. Hopalong, which was a gay cowboy place. And the lesbian bar, Tank Girl. To the right was a piercing place, a queer bookstore, and the inevitable Starbucks. Nondescript EDM pulsed out through the open club doors and was crushed by thunder and rain.
Closer to this end of the block was a storefront that always seemed to be rented out for some kind of twelve-step. Everyone she could see through the window looked bent over. Like people at a kid’s funeral. She couldn’t tell if they were crying or reading or praying. She turned away. Whatever was going on over there hurt to look at.
“Beer,” she said to the night.
The neon signs glowed with happy colors. It’s safe in here, they seemed to say.
So she went in.
INTERLUDE TWO
THE LORD OF THE FLIES
It was so sad that Theresa Minor died.
Gracie Thompson said it to everyone she knew, because she was the kind of person who said those things. The neighbors on the block, all of whom liked Gracie, nodded and murmured meaningless things. They said they were sorry for her loss. Much less so for Theresa, who few of them liked and no one respected.
Very few of them ever mentioned the Boy.
Owen.
They all knew his name, but they mostly called him “the Boy.”
Did you hear about the Howard’s cat? It went missing, just like the Bucker’s dog. I heard the Boy was hanging around the yard.
Someone said the Boy was looking in Janie Cooper’s window. Stan Simmons saw him all hunkered down on a limb of that old olive tree outside her room, and her not even thirteen.
The fire inspector’s been asking about the old Anderson place. Poor Lyddie burned to death—God bless her soul. She used to have the Boy mow her lawn but fired him when he stole some stuff off the clothesline. Bras and underpants and stuff. Then the house burns down? You can’t tell me there’s no connection.
And on and on.
The Boy.
Now he sat alone in the middle of the front row of the Lensky Funeral Home’s smaller viewing room. Sitting there like a lump. Pale and blotchy. Smelling of things no one wanted to put a name to. Didn’t matter that his clothes were clean and he looked like he’d washed. The smell was always there. An earthy, wormy thing.
No one sat near him. Not for four rows behind him. And no one on the front two rows on the other side of the aisle. They didn’t want to meet his eye, even if they weren’t aware of that need.
He sat there, fists clutching the crotch of his jeans, flexing and clutching his erect penis. That hardness wasn’t obvious, but the minister saw the hand motion. He tried not to look at those hands, but did anyway. Whatever was happening there was easier to see than looking at Owen’s face. At those eyes.
At that knowing little smile.
17
Mike Sweeney sat in his cruiser, staring out the window at the dead cow. The rain was so dense it nearly obscured the animal, but Mike could just make out its shape there in the tall grass. The sight of it bothered him more than it should. It felt ominous in some undefined way. Mike scowled through the windshield at it.
No one could ever accuse him of being overly cheerful. Not at the best of times. The police chief, Malcolm Crow, made a lot of jokes about Mike being an Olympic-level brooder.
“Mike can brood the ass off a thing,” Crow would say.
That was true enough. Life wasn’t a happy bunch of puppies to Mike. Life had started with an abusive and violent stepfather and then slid downward from there. Considering everything that had happened to him over the years, and what was going on inside of him, brooding seemed reasonable. Even imperative.
Looking at the dead cow was not what depressed him. It wasn’t even the cold rainwater that had wormed its way into his boxers and puddled in his shoes.
The story the Duncans had told bothered him.
The tattoo.
Corinne Duncan was so unwaveringly certain that her husband had, for some reason, gotten the ink removed.
The husband, Andrew, was equally sure that he never had a tattoo. Mike was good at reading people, and when that man insisted that his wife never had cancer, and he had certainly never gotten a pink ribbon tattoo … there was no lie in his voice. Or his eyes.
The scar, if it was a scar, looked old. Years old.
“What the hell?” he asked the dead cow.
The cow, being both dead and a cow, said nothing.
His windshield wipers slashed back and forth and the rain fell.
“What the hell,” Mike murmured again.
And again.
18
Patty bought a case of beer and lugged it home. She was tiny but a lot stronger than she looked. Even so, her muscles ached by the time she unlocked the door and staggered out of the storm.
The iPad was singing to her when she came in, though Patty didn’t remember turning it on before she left. Didn’t matter. It was good stuff, and with all those singers it meant that she didn’t have to drink alone. The beer was cold and the first sip was better than any kiss she’d ever had. Adele was singing “Set Fire to the Rain,” which always killed her.
Patty raised her bottle to the storm outside. “You can kiss my ass.”
And sang along with the brokenhearted lyrics.
As she lowered the bottle, Patty saw the tattoo on the back of her left hand. Where he’d touched her. The spot she had rubbed and rubbed and rubbed with her thumb until it was so red the image looked faded. The image—the tattoo—which she’d inked there herself years ago in a conspicuous spot so she could not get through a day, not an hour, without catching a glimpse.
Of her.
Of Tuyet.
Sometimes seeing the sweet little face made her smile.
Sometimes it drove a spike of ice into her heart.
Now…?
She raised the bottle and took a very long pull.
“Mommy loves you,” she said softly.
19
Nobody in Pine Deep knew his name.
He couldn’t really remember it, either. Doug, maybe. Dave? Don? He wasn’t sure. Nor was he sure about the last name. Could be Anderson or was that the last name of the last guy to give him a ride? Was he also the Dave or Doug or Don?
Yeah. Maybe. It was all a gray jumble.
Which meant the man on the Crestville Bridge wasn’t sure of either first or last name.
The car—was the driver Don Anderson?—had dropped him by the entrance to the bridge.
“You’re sure this is where you want to get out?” asked the driver. Don or Dave or maybe Denny. “I can take you into Doylestown. It’s no problem.”
The fellow had a kind face. Lots of lines and creases as if he’d been there and back. The nameless man thought it was the face of someone who might have understood. Only if there were some way to tell him, though. Some way to say it.
“I’m good here,” he said, opening the door.
The driver looked at him for a long three count. “You ne
ed a couple bucks? Get yourself a hot meal?”
“Really, I’m good.”
They looked at each other, and the man thought the driver might have understood what was happening. Like the guy could read the conversation. There was a lot of sadness in his eyes. He kept starting to say something, but didn’t have the words. That made sense to the nameless man. He couldn’t put it into words, either. Not now, and not the dozen times he’d tried to spill it out before. To other drivers. To that old black guy who ran the PTSD circle group who’d bought him a plate of eggs and sausage the other day. Like remembering his own name, there didn’t seem to be enough words left in his head to make sense of it.
So, he got out and stood in the autumn weeds and watched the car go over the bridge and out of sight. Curtains of rain closed over it and the car was gone as if it never really existed. Like so many things.
Like all the memories.
God, the memories.
He walked out onto the bridge. Not too far. Not over the water.
He stepped over the rail and ducked under the supports. The storm was breathing on him. Whispering in a language he had never understood before now.
The nameless man turned and leaned his forehead against the cold metal, feeling the sharp edges where thick paint had peeled back.
“Please,” he murmured. Not to the storm. No. The storm was not his friend.
Please.
All he wanted, all he was, all he had ever been was knotted up in that single word.
Please.
If he could only have one memory back, that would be an anchor that held him to the world. Any memory of something that mattered, something that defined him. Even a small thing.
Anything.
All that was left was the sure and certain knowledge that those memories were gone. Not merely gone … that they had been stolen. He knew that for sure. The truth of it seemed to leer at him from the shadows of his mind. He could see it. A pallid face with empty eyes and a laugh that sounded like the buzzing of insect wings. Polluted and awful.
Stolen.
Gone forever.
Please.
The rain drilled holes in him. The wind laughed at him. The storm drew back its fist. The man cringed, cowered, nearly hugged the strut. Please. Just one memory that mattered.
The wind and the storm and the day and the coming night spoke a single word in response to his.
No.
Tears boiled out, cold on his cheeks because he could no longer stoke the fires of anger, of fury, of outrage. Of loss. When he leaned into his head and looked down into the bottom of the box where everything he ever was and had ever done was stored, there wasn’t even hope left. There was nothing.
“Please,” he said again, meaning something else now as he leaned back.
And back.
Until gravity took him in her arms.
The rocks below were a kindness.
20
It rained for hours and hours. It rained as if the storm owned the world.
“Screw this,” said Monk, and turned the car off except for the hazard lights. Patty still wasn’t answering the phone. She must have called it a night and gone to bed early. Couldn’t be many customers out on a night like this. Patty took the occasional pill, or smoked a lot of weed. Anything to hush the voices in her head. Monk could relate. So, maybe he should just let her sleep. If the storm wasn’t so bad he would just head over to his own new place. Sack out, unpack in the morning after he checked on Patty.
Through the slanting rain he saw the ranks of birds and had to spend some time thinking about that. He was familiar with them, or something like them. There had been a thing back in New York where black birds—nightbirds—played a part. Those fuckers had been evil as shit and Monk felt his heart racing as he struggled to get a read on the ones here. He was pretty good at reading people, always had been. Useful in his trade. If you can’t read people then you’re no damn good as either a PI or a skip-tracer, and he was good at both.
How do you read the black-within-black eyes of birds, though? Especially seeing them through a downpour and at a distance.
And yet …
There was something he could feel. Actually, quite a few things, most of them not so good. He was worried about Patty. He didn’t dig the vibe of this town one little bit—though he had to admit the town’s reputation was probably coloring that. He didn’t like the storm at all. It felt wrong in some unspecific way.
The birds, though. When he looked at them he didn’t get the feeling he usually got when there was maybe someone out in the tall grass, watching him through a sniper scope, adjusting for windage and elevation. An itchy spot between his shoulder blades. None of that.
The birds did not feel like a threat. If anything they felt like they were on his side. But that thought itself was weird, and Monk didn’t have a mental hook to hang it on. So he left it for now. His doors were locked and the windows up.
“I’m so goddamn tired,” he told the storm.
It rumbled in reply, sounding like someone dropping fifty bowling balls. Monk pulled his leather jacket out of the backseat, put it on, zipped it to his chin, stuck his hands in his pockets, and went to sleep. Dreams were waiting and they took him with cold, pale fingers and dragged him under.
The nightbirds stood vigil around him.
INTERLUDE THREE
THE LORD OF THE FLIES
“When you say that you can’t remember your mother, do you mean just her face?”
Owen Minor shook his head, annoyed because this was the fifth or sixth different way the therapist asked the same question. The woman simply could not get the idea straight.
“No,” he said with the kind of false patience foster kids learn for all such sessions. The key was always to walk the line between calm self-assurance and acceptable emotionality. Never too cold, never too enthusiastic. Not too much grief, or love, or anger, or anything. The key was to be, or at least appear to be, balanced. In control. Safe. “No, it’s just that I don’t remember much about her at all.”
The therapist, Mrs. Green, was a goat-faced forty-something with too much nose, not enough chin, and ears that stuck out like open car doors. Her face might have been comical if she had a shred of personality. Mrs. Green glanced at his file.
“She passed away three years ago?”
“Yeah,” he said and then corrected it. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you were nine?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Greene nodded. “Do you have photos of her?”
“Sure,” said Owen. “I have a bunch of them.”
“Then how can you not remember what she looked like?”
Owen clenched his fists in his lap, careful that his crossed leg hid them. He wanted to punch her, to slap her. Instead he took a breath, adjusted his tone, and said, “I know what she looked like. But I can’t remember her.”
“What about her can’t you—?”
“Everything,” said Owen. “I know I had a mother. I know I lived with her until she died. I know there was a funeral and all. I know what I should know, but I don’t remember her. I remember where I grew up—the house, my bedroom, the living room furniture, the color of the kitchen walls. I can remember going to school. I remember my teachers. I can remember the lady who lived next door—Gracie Thompson. But I don’t remember my mother being any part of all that.” He paused, fishing for what he thought she would want to hear. “I want to remember her. Why can’t I?”
Owen was happy with the amount of emotion he put into his voice. He watched her eyes and saw when her professional detachment turned to compassion. That would influence her report for the foster agency.
He was twelve but he understood how the whole thing worked.
He was not particularly upset at the loss of all memories associated with his mother. They had been fading since she died, and from what he read in his diary, she’d been a slut, a drunk, and a shit. It was better not to have to lug around any memories that rela
ted to the stuff in that journal. The beatings. The nights he had to spend in the closet because of something he did that she didn’t like. Or when she made him sit in the cold parked car while she had a guy over. Sometimes she gave him a blanket and a box of Trix to munch on, mostly she forgot to even bother. He remembered sitting in the car, but he didn’t remember her. Not even a moment of her. Nothing.
Owen sat and listened as the therapist explained traumatic memory loss, and variations on the stages of grief, and all of the other stuff she’d been trained to say. He’d read up on what to expect from people like her. He was prepared and had rehearsed what to say and how to inflect it.
She talked.
He sat.
She tried to reach him.
And he let her think she had.
The only hard part was trying not to smile.
21
Orson Hardihey sat in his car and did not even hear the rain.
He should have, because it hammered down furiously on the metal roof above him and the windshield through which he stared. Should have. Did not.
He sat there, hands on the curve of the steering wheel, looking at the fly crawling across his knuckles. It was fat and gleamed with an oily opalescence. Tiny legs picking their way delicately over his calloused knuckles. Multifaceted eyes somehow mirrored, showing hundreds of different miniature versions of Orson’s face. That’s how Orson saw it anyway. Hundreds of reflections, and in each one his own mouth smiled at him. Smiled with his own mouth but not with his own smile.
The smile was oily and sickly and wrong.
The fly crawled, making sure never to turn its eyes and those smiling mouths away.
Orson looked at the house at the end of the driveway. His headlights only reached as far as the porch steps, but that was enough. He could see the house. The locked door. The drawn shades against which shadows moved like images from some antique camera obscura. A woman shape. Children shapes. Cavorting, distorted by angle and distance and the vagaries of flickering light from a fireplace. Goblin shapes. Orson saw them and hated them and loved them and wanted them and despised them.
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