Close to the Bone

by William G. Tapply

  Charlotte’s house sat with its back to the dark pine woods, facing across the meadow to the south. It looked as if it had originally been a hunter’s shack—a simple square, shingled cabin with a door in the middle flanked by two small windows with an aluminum stovepipe sticking out of the roof. Flat-roofed ells had been added onto each end. No electric or telephone wires led into it.

  It was a pretty spot, with a long view across the sloping meadow to the hills in the distance. A stream snaked its way through the valley. A good place for somebody who liked the outdoors and wanted a heavy dose of solitude.

  Charlotte was doing her best to make a home out of it. The door was barn red, recently painted, and a variety of annual flowers—petunias, marigolds, impatiens, and several that I didn’t recognize—were blooming along the field-stone path leading up to it. A mud-spattered mountain bike—the kind with knobby tires and about a hundred gears—leaned against the side of the house next to the door.

  I walked up the path and knocked on the door. I waited a minute, then knocked again and called, “Charlotte? It’s Brady Coyne.”

  A moment later I heard a voice behind me. “Mr. Coyne,” she said softly. “Hello.”

  I turned. She was wearing overalls over a gray T-shirt, work boots, and cotton gloves. Her hair was tucked up under a wide-brimmed straw hat. “I was out back tending my vegetable garden,” she said. She tucked a stray strand of hair up under her hat and started to smile, then stopped herself. “Is it about Jack?”

  I nodded.

  She tugged off her gloves. “He died, didn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  She took off her hat, dropped her gloves into it, and shook out her hair. “He wasn’t even two years old,” she said. “I made sure he had all his shots.”

  “The vet,” I said, “Dr. Spear, she thinks it might’ve been poison.”

  Charlotte looked at me. “Poison,” she said softly. “Oh, dear.” She shook her head, then went to the steps that led up to her front door and sat down. I sat beside her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “You’re very kind to come by, Mr. Coyne,” she whispered. “He was the cutest little dog. Who’d want to poison a sweet little dog like Jack?”

  “He might’ve just gotten into something.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “Antifreeze Rat poison. Mushrooms. Maybe somebody put out something for coyotes.”

  “He liked to wander through the woods,” she said, “but he never went far.” She turned to me and smiled. “Jack had some spaniel in him. He loved to hunt. Chased chipmunks and sparrows. I used to worry about porcupines. The day he got sick, in fact, he went for a long romp, came back all wet and muddy and bedraggled. Trying to catch ducks, probably.” She smiled at the memory, then shook her head. “I don’t keep anything poisonous, Mr. Coyne. I took very good care of him.”

  “Dr. Spear mentioned running some toxicology tests,” I said gently.

  “Why?”

  “Well, to determine exactly what caused it. She said it was very unusual. Not like any poisoning death she’d ever seen.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but I mean, what good would that do?”

  “If someone poisoned Jack—”

  “On purpose, you mean?”

  I shrugged.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You think that swastika…”

  “Yes. That is what I was thinking.”

  “Toxicology tests would require an autopsy, wouldn’t they?”

  I nodded.

  She bowed her head. “I don’t know, Mr. Coyne. He was… I really loved that little dog. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “The idea of—of cutting him open, and…”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said.

  “Dr. Spear will keep him until she hears from you.”

  I continued to sit there with her, and I had the feeling that my presence comforted her a little. After a few minutes she offered me coffee, which I accepted. She went inside, and a few minutes later came back out with a mug in each hand and sat beside me again.

  “You’ve got an awfully pretty spot here,” I said.

  “It is, isn’t it? It’s just too bad…”

  I nodded. “That swastika.”

  “Well, yes. That. And…”

  I turned to her. “And what?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing I can discuss right now, Mr. Coyne.”

  “I’m not sure I’d have the courage to stay,” I said.

  She smiled. “Courage has nothing to do with it. I’ve got to stay until…” She shook her head. “Maybe someday we can talk about it.”

  But not, I understood, just then. Charlotte had something on her mind, and it wasn’t only swastikas or poisoned dogs.

  “You can talk to me anytime,” I said.

  We sat there awhile longer, sipping coffee and gazing across the meadow toward the distant hills. When I’d drained my mug, I stood up. “I’m really sorry to bring you this news.”

  She stood up and took born of my hands in hers. “You’ve been awfully kind, Mr. Coyne,” she said in that delicious Smoky Mountains accent of hers. “I don’t know that many kind people.”

  I squeezed her hands and headed back to my car. When I reached the edge of the meadow, I turned to look back. Charlotte was standing there in front of her little house with her hand shielding her eyes, watching me.

  She waved, and I waved back, then continued on my way.

  CHAPTER 3

  TUESDAY EVENING I TOOK my portable phone and a glass of Rebel Yell sippin’ whiskey and ice cubes out onto my balcony overlooking the harbor and slouched into one of my aluminum lawn chairs. I hadn’t spoken to Alex since I kissed her good-bye and drove back to Boston after supper Sunday night, During our Monday-through-Friday separations, we tried to talk on the phone a couple of times, I from my balcony in the city and she from her deck on the hilltop in Garrison. I’d watch the moon come up over the ocean toward the east, while she gazed off to the west, where daylight was fading from the Maine hills.

  Alex and I had looked for metaphorical significance in the fact that my view looked to the east, where new days began, while hers faced west, where they ended—but so far we had found none. We decided it might make more sense if it were the other way around.

  On this night, the late-August, remarkably smogless sky over the ocean blinked with a million stars, and a half-moon bathed the inner harbor six stories below me in silvery light.

  My friends, at least those who liked me enough that they didn’t worry about hurting my feelings, told me that they couldn’t understand why I didn’t find a more elegant home than my cramped two-bedroom rented condo on the waterfront. I could afford a house in the suburbs or a brownstone in Louisburg Square, they said. So why didn’t I find something more befitting a successful Boston barrister?

  Mostly inertia, I told my friends. I had fallen to earth in this apartment when my marriage to Gloria blew up, and in the decade that followed, I’d found no compelling reason to leave. I wasn’t much of a nest-builder, I admitted. I just needed a place to store my fishing gear and a bed to sleep in and an electrical outlet to plug my coffeepot into.

  Besides, I never tired of my view of the water, even if the water in Boston Harbor had, until recently, been Number One: the dirtiest in the world. Back during the 1988 campaign, George Bush and Mike Dukakis had tried to blame each other for the harbor’s distinguished ranking, which embarrassed both of them. Eventually the feds and the Commonwealth invested millions to clean it up, and the harbor fell out of the Top Ten.

  But I still liked it. I liked the mingled aroma of seaweed and dead fish and brine that wafted up to me, and I didn’t mind the diesel fumes that sometimes complicated the mix. From my little balcony, I liked to watch the gulls and terns wheel on the breezes and the
tankers and sailboats and ferries inch across the chop, and I liked to hear the clang of the bell buoy and the honk of the foghorn on a dark night.

  In recent years, the harbor seals had returned, and there had even been good striped bass fishing out among the harbor’s islands. I liked looking down on the water and knowing that stripers now thrived in it.

  As much as I loved woods, dirt roads, trout streams, and clean air, I wasn’t sure I’d ever conquer the inertia that kept me right where I was.

  Alex had pretty much stopped mentioning it, but I knew she still couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t sell my Boston law practice, clean out my apartment, and move into the rented post-and-beam house in Garrison with her. We could buy it and settle down there. She was a writer. All she needed was a place to plug in her computer and a telephone.

  And they needed lawyers up there, she’d hinted more man once. I could make a living just doing real-estate law. Or I could set up a private practice like the one I’d had in Boston for the past twenty years. There were no lawyers in Garrison. Anybody who wanted to make a will or get divorced had to hire what they called a “city shyster” from Portland, an hour’s drive to the east. If I was there, they’d call me.

  I’d thought about it. I told myself that I couldn’t abandon my clients, most of whom were elderly and dependent and uncomfortable with change. They trusted me. It would be unfair to desert them. I told myself that I didn’t want to move too far from the house in Wellesley, where I’d half-raised my two boys, where Gloria, my ex-wife, still lived, and where Billy and Joey, now pretty much grown and off on their own, crashed whenever they were around. I told myself that if I moved to Maine, I’d miss my view of the harbor at night.

  And when I was being entirely candid with myself, I admitted that I just wasn’t sure I wanted to live with Alex full-time.

  I was sure I loved her, and I knew I missed her when we weren’t together. But I liked missing her. I liked seeing her again after being apart for several days, and I liked almost forgetting—and then rediscovering—the way her eyes looked when she smiled in the dark and the way the skin at the base of her spine felt when I stroked it with my fingertips.

  I hadn’t tried to explain this to Alex. But sometimes I saw the hurt in her eyes, and I knew that she understood.

  I lit a cigarette, took a sip of Rebel Yell, placed the glass down beside me, and poked out her number on the phone.

  It rang four times. Then her recorded voice said, “Hi. It’s Alex. Either I’m not home just now or else I’m working. Leave your name and number and I promise I’ll get back to you.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was a little after nine. Usually Alex was sitting on her deck around nine listening to the night birds and sipping a beer, with her phone beside her, hoping I’d call. If I waited until ten to call her, as often as not I found her already in bed, and her languid, husky voice made it easy to visualize her tousled auburn hair and the man-sized T-shirt she always wore to bed riding up over her hips, and the moonlight spilling over her through the skylight in her bedroom ceiling.

  “It’s me, honey,” I said to her machine. “Calling around nine. I’ll try again.”

  Where the hell was she?

  In the shower, maybe. Or maybe she was in the yard and hadn’t brought her phone with her. Maybe she was at her desk polishing prose and letting her answering machine earn its keep.

  I finished my cigarette, flipped it over the railing, and watched it spark down to what used to be the dirtiest water in the world.

  At nine-thirty I called again, and again her machine answered. This time I left no message.

  I tried again at eleven, and again after my shower, and once more around midnight before turning off the light beside my bed.

  “Hi. It’s Alex. Either I’m not home, or…”

  I lay there staring up at the dark ceiling. I thought of the lecherous men who hung around the potbellied stove at Leon’s store telling dirty stories, with too much time on their hands and perpetually angry wives back in their trailers. I thought of morons who painted swastikas on No Trespassing signs—and maybe poisoned women’s dogs. I thought of Charlotte Gillespie up there in the woods at the end of a long tote road, alone and mourning her dead puppy.

  Okay, I also thought of the handsome young architects and dentists and securities salesmen who were buying and renovating old farmhouses in Garrison. Alex was beautiful and single and living alone.

  Shit.

  It took me a while to fall asleep. I hoped the phone would wake me up. But it didn’t.

  The next day at my office I started to pick up the phone to call Alex several times. But I didn’t. I was afraid I’d get her machine.

  I waited until nine-thirty that evening, and I didn’t bother fixing a glass of Rebel Yell or taking the phone out onto the balcony. I lit a cigarette at my kitchen table, took a deep breath, and poked out her number.

  She answered on the second ring. “Hi, sweetie,” she said.

  “You knew it was me.”

  “Sure. Who else’d call?”

  “I don’t know. There’s David, there, that architect, and what’s-his-name, the new dentist, and—”

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Nothing. I’m just kidding.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re kidding.”

  “Where were you?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Last night. I kept trying to call. I was worried about you. Somebody up there goes around painting swastikas outside ladies’ homes and poisoning their dogs, and—”

  “I was at a fucking dinner party,” she said, and I heard the anger in her voice. “But I do appreciate your checking up on me, and I apologize for not clearing it with you beforehand.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, yes, you did. You want me right here where you can keep tabs on me. It’s all right for you to do what you want, and I don’t ask you to account for your every minute. But if I decide to go to a party, and you’re down there so you can’t go with me, protect me, keep an eye on me, I’m supposed to clear it with you, assure you that there’s not going to be some architect or dentist there hitting on me.”

  “I was worried,” I said.

  “Worried,” she repeated.

  “Well, maybe a little jealous, too. But mostly worried.”

  “I can take care of myself, Brady. I’ve done it all my life. Believe it or not, I managed to survive all those years before I had you to watch over me. I survived rather well, actually.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  “I know everybody up here,” she said. “It’s a helluvalot safer than living on Marlborough Street.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she mumbled.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Charlotte Gillespie,” I said.

  “Me, too,” she said. I heard her blow out a breath. “It is kind of scary. I guess I can see why you’d worry.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I was maybe a little jealous, too.” I took a sip of Rebel Yell. “Tell me about your party.”

  “You remember Noah Hollingsworth?”

  “The apple guy?”

  “Yes. I ran into him at Leon’s on Monday and he said he was having a few people over for a barbecue on Tuesday. So I went. And, okay, David the architect was there, and yes, Brady, the man is sort of an asshole. But Noah is a lovely old man and he’s really into his apples. His orchard has been in his family for several generations. He dragged me into a corner and told me all about Northern Spies and Baldwins and Granny Smiths, and he gave me a recipe for apple butter. I met his daughter, who’s a successful businesswoman in Portland. Susannah’s her name. And Paul something, her boyfriend.” She paused. “Susannah is really nice. Smart. Pretty, too. If you lived up here and I lived down there, I guess maybe I’d be jealous, too.”

  “Did I say I was jealous?”

  “You did. It’s okay. I’m sorta glad you were jealo
us.”

  “It was not pleasant, feeling jealous and worried at the same time.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  “But you’re not jealous when I’m down here all week, with all my beautiful clients coming on to me?”

  She laughed. “Your clients are senior citizens, Brady.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Okay,” she said. “If it’ll make you feel better, I will hereafter make a point of being jealous. Anyway, I really liked Noah. He’s got this Yankee pragmatism, and you feel like he can see right into your brain.”

  “He dragged you into a corner, huh?”

  “Oh, yes. He told me all about grafting apple trees. It was very erotic.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “Did you mention Charlotte Gillespie and her dog and that swastika?”

  “Sure. I told everybody how you had given her and her poor dog a ride to the vet’s and how the dog died and you paid the bill, and how you took it upon yourself to break the news to her. I made you the hero of the whole thing. I wanted everyone to know that I had a hero. They were impressed. Noah and Susannah and Paul want to meet you.”

  “I don’t care about meeting anybody,” I said. “I’m content to be your hero. You can worship me properly when I get there Friday.”

  “Oh, I will,” she said softly.

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “Please don’t worry, Brady.”

  “Someone in that town is painting swastikas and poisoning single women’s dogs,” I said. “I guess I’ll worry.”

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