The Crymost

by Dean H Wild

  At one point during the party, Irma laughed and told him she’d found two dimes in the washer. “Double barrel luck,” she called it, and then winked at him. Just lucid enough to make it cruel. It sent a shiver down his spine and tossed another grain into the remorse that ran and ran like an hourglass in the heart.

  Yessir, a whiz-banger birthday, he thought and flopped into his chair. His nerve endings buzzed; his little pains, which grew in number too fast to count over the last few years, were absent. Fled. If this was the way out of this world, it wasn’t so bad on certain levels. He evaluated his picture window view of Knoll, how she seemed to have her collar turned against the blustery day, and he thought of double barrels. Then he shivered. The air thinned.

  He hoped someone would find the note on his kitchen table because Knoll—Mellar’s Knoll when he was a boy and now just Knoll—was in for a whiz-banger of its own. His last moments lent it all the certainty in the world. “Somebody better figure her out,” he said out loud.

  The strange buzz in his nerves rushed in and ate everything up. The room darkened. He settled back, drawing his breath in gulps, then gasps, then sips. And at last he breathed not at all.

  Knoll hunched against the wind.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chastity Mellar Borth switched off the answering machine’s playback and made furtive glances around her dining room. There was no need for unease. The Logan man dropped by on many occasions, on village business of course, and he was always mindful to step onto the porch softly, and by no means ever try the bell next to the wide-set oak door or peer through her heavy lace curtains. Logan followed the regimen better than some of the people who’d been born in the town. And yet, dread seemed to linger, just out of reach.

  She brushed past the broad mahogany table with its complement of twelve chairs, her movements easy and fluid. Her pain was dull today by regular standards, a mere complaint in her back and legs, and hardly noticeable at all in her scalp which was crowned by dark hair pulled tight, slick and severe and braided in back day after day. In fact, she barely sampled the selection of pills by her kitchen sink today. In her parlor she opened the dark wood secretary, took out the key to the village hall and folded it in her hand.

  She bore no doubt Mick Logan would have the village hall ready. Aside from his respect for protocol, he was a reliable worker. The hall was a last-minute choice but sufficient in light of the odorous disaster befalling the firehouse, but truth be told the venue mattered to her very little. Where the town vote—the initiative was the proper term, she guessed—took place was outweighed in her mind by the very reason there was a vote (initiative) at all. Disgraceful how the fate of the old family store, Mellar’s Mercantile, became a matter of gauche, almost whimsical preference. Green posters tacked up around the town rallied would-be voters to choose the Mellar’s In option so the historic building might remain and be gradually, and expensively, renovated. Her own front window sported one. Opposing posters in red, for the Mellar’s Out camp, demanded the razing of the old general store and fuel depot and the extrusion of its leaking underground tanks. At her last estimation, red posters far outnumbered the green.

  She never dreamt that by her forty-fifth year she would see the old building, an icon of the Mellar family presence and a Knoll landmark, at the risk of being stripped from the town entirely. It seemed almost like betrayal.

  A hot vibration shot up her arm and the key flew from her hand. She stopped and looked down at where it gleamed on the dull Persian patterns of the carpet near her plain, flat shoe. This was a different pain, she thought, and rubbed her arm through the checkered cloth of her sleeve. Almost a dare not pain which seemed brought on by pinching fingers instead of the usual, dastardly flares of fibromyalgia.

  She stooped to retrieve the key, trying, not too successfully, to lock out thoughts of her father clamping her tender child’s flesh between his rough fingers and pinching, telling her she dare not behave like the other girls, dare not listen to their wretched ideas or covet their trampy clothes. She was a Mellar, unique and above such lowbrow practices. Over time his pinches were replaced by scathing challenges to her usefulness and intelligence, and eventually by brutal silence. So many cruelties. And yet, the tears she shed at his funeral five years ago were genuine. Sparse, but genuine. It spoke to her character, she believed.

  She opened the door, key in hand, and stepped onto the broad, shady porch. The house was the only structure on Tier Street. In fact, the street seemed more of a private drive off of County Highway L, also known as Knoll’s main street called Plank Street, or locally, just The Plank. There was nothing inviting or friendly about her family home, no pretty garden flags or flowering shrubs, and the doormat certainly did not say WELCOME. The only splash of color was the poster in her front window. Green, of course. Mellar’s In, of course.

  From the house location there was once a clear view of the edge of town, where Mellar’s Mercantile stood sentinel and The Plank took a sharp uphill turn toward Pitch Road and all that lay beyond it. A stand of oak and ash now blocked the view. She gazed off in that direction anyway as she stepped up to the railing mailbox, dropped the key in, and closed it again.

  “There you go, Mick Logan,” she said under her breath and squinted into the warm, gusty air.

  Then she backed inside and shut the door, once again surrounded with the scents of faded velvet and oil soap. Pain awakened and thumped anew in her back and legs, shimmied down her spine. And was that a second painful pulling—dare we call it a pinch—on the flesh of her arm? She turned toward the kitchen. Perhaps it was time for a pill or two after all.

  Oh, for the happy days when she was a married woman and Gregor Borth would come home to her. The pills and the pain were so few back then, until Gregor lost control of his car in a March ice storm. He slid through a turn onto Backbank Street and deposited the Cadillac in the icy Wistweaw River. The impact snapped his neck. She mourned long and often for her dear Gregor, and yet it was Daddy Mellar who often nudged into her thoughts. As he did now. Still giving those dare not pinches, should she try to forget him.

  A pill was in order, all right. Many of them, if for no other reason than to quell her dear father’s refusal to stay dormant in her thoughts. Ungrateful behavior on his part, considering all she’d done for him. Enduring his speechless grunting and combative nature at the end. Even going out after his burial to The Crymost place off Pitch Road, where the mourners of this crude, ungracious town went to toss away trinkets associated with their grief, as if sorrows could be so easily cast away.

  She stopped in a shaft of sun just before the kitchen sink and scowled. A strand of uniform glassy beads was coiled around the bottles on her pill shelf. She reached toward it, coldness invading her with the same intimate ease as the pain often did. The beads winked at her. It was a rosary, black stones hazed with dried mud, the attached ebony cross swollen from years under the water. She picked it up and stretched it between trembling fingers, a puzzled groan like a high thin note working out of her throat.

  Daddy Mellar’s rosary.

  The one she’d cast away into The Crymost five years ago.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The first two manhole lids were only slightly unseated. Easy work for Mick. He was making good time as he pulled up to the final lid at the right angle junction of Tier Street and Backbank. But as he stood over the last cover, pry bar in hand, he hesitated.

  Look closer, part of him demanded. He worked the tip of the pry bar into the narrow gap between manhole lid and rim. The wind died down. He could hear the gurgle of the Wistweaw not far off of Backbank. The rest of the town was silent. In his teaching days, when his students fell unusually silent, it indicated something was about to happen. In the wind, his father used to say. He was convinced such sensations were a thing of the past, buried along with his other life, but here it was, standing with him ribcage to backbone, an old specter for whom a decade was a blink.

  He pried up the edge of the cover, then, in an
instant of pure impulse, he squatted to lift the lid as if it were an overly heavy hatch. Gobbets of wet mud were stuck to the underside as if flung up against the lid, and not long ago, considering the freshness and looseness of the muck. Not exactly an in the wind kind of strange, but it still struck him as odd. He’d ask Harley if this was common. If ever in the history of—

  “Is waste water your business now?”

  He jumped and looked around at the man standing over him.

  Cyril Vandergalien wasn’t a small man—too many beers and buffet dinners—but he was able to move with considerable stealth. Mick never heard him approach. He must have come from the firehouse across the street. Apparently, the village fire chief, performing his chiefly duties, found the need to switch into his village president mode.

  “Not at all,” Mick said. “But somebody’s got to tend to the lids when they come loose, now don’t they, Cy?”

  “Loose.” A light of suspicion flickered in Cy’s eyes and his charcoal colored brows drew down.

  “Every manhole cover in town,” Mick said and seated the lid, then tapped it with his pry bar. With luck, this would be a case of close the manhole, close the conversation. “Some kind of prank, probably. I’ve got it handled. No problem. Just a quick—”

  “Always digging right in and getting it done, aren’t you, Logan? It’s what folks around here like about you.”

  “I do what’s necessary,” Mick said, his hands tightening on the pry bar. “You know that.”

  “I know what’s necessary and what makes sense can be two different things around here, and folks go with what makes sense in the end. Isn’t that right?”

  Cy shot a glance toward the firehouse. A red Mellar’s Out poster was taped to the inside of the front window. All the properties under Vandergalien’s watch sported one: his home on Forest Street, the feed mill, and, of course, the firehouse. He wanted to put one up at the village garage as well, but Harley told him where he could stick it.

  “Thanks for the tip, Cy,” Mick said at last and turned toward the truck. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You got that village hall cleared out yet?”

  “I’ll get to it,” he said into the wind. “When it makes sense.”

  A dark colored SUV pulled up close to where they stood. The driver leaned out of the open window, his face freckled and inquisitive, his hair a flash of red in the sun. “Either of you gents Mick Logan?”

  Cy aimed a crooked finger. “That’s him.”

  Mick stepped closer.

  The man jutted his hand from the window. “Peter Fyvie. I’m here to take a methane reading at your landfill. I waited at the garage for a few minutes, thought about calling your cell, then decided to try to track you down. Nice day for a tour around your little town.”

  Mick took the hand. It was like shaking a cool green branch covered in thin bark. “Pleased to meet you. Welcome to Knoll.”

  Cy swept up and held out his own tough-as-leather hand for the man to shake. “Cy Vandergalien, village president. Sorry there was nobody at the garage to greet you. We get so busy. Priorities go right out the window some days, I guess.”

  “Actually, I’m half an hour early,” Fyvie said. “I can’t expect anyone to know when I’m ahead of schedule. Doesn’t make sense.”

  A laugh built up in Mick and he hoped it wouldn’t come spilling out. “No, it doesn’t. If you want to follow me in your truck, I can set you to work right away, Mr. Fyvie.”

  “Very good. Thank you, Mr. Logan.”

  “Mick, please.”

  Fyvie glanced at the other man whose expression turned sour as he stood by the car. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Van Grinten.”

  “Vandergal—” Cy began.

  He was cut off by the upward slip of Fyvie’s window.

  Mick climbed into his truck, laughing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Just before the land assumed its steep upward pitch, a stretch of wild fields on the north side of The Plank accommodated Mellar’s Mercantile: a two-story brick and wood hulk seeming to watch the world through a front-facing hole where a show window once resided. Leaning pines surrounded it. They reminded Mick of dark and swaying mourners attending a body in state. The property was village land, sold off to fatten the Mellar Borth bank accounts, which granted each Knoll citizen an equal say in the fate of the building by way of the upcoming vote. Even the village president got to put in his two cents, no more, no less. Right, Mr. Van Grinten?

  He laughed again, but kept his eyes sharp. With the leaves budded out for the season, the Pitch Road turnoff was difficult to see, even if it was nearly at the crest of the hill. Something else drew his attention, however. A figure walked the roadside ahead, traveling downhill into town. Not so unusual; Knoll had its share of cyclists and joggers and habitual stroll-takers. Still, the lean male shape piqued his attention, perhaps because the man was covered neck to shoelaces in black. It seemed to be a suit. Formal, and the wind picked at some sort of draping on his back, sending it aflutter like a single dark wing. A cloak?

  Broke down in his car perhaps. The figure was close enough now for Mick to discern a pallid face and a stout, black derby hat. Long hair fell around the man’s shoulders in a sheaf of silvery gray—

  Pitch Road yawned open to the right, bringing him back to the matter at hand. He cranked the wheel, his teeth gritted, and he wondered if the truck’s back tires might drop into the ditch due to the sharpness of his turn, but they remained true. In his mirror he saw Fyvie’s vehicle make a sudden drastic attempt at the turn and succeed as well. He slowed down and stuck out his arm to give Fyvie a wave—part apology and part congratulations for catching the abrupt change in course. Fyvie waved back, which was all right.

  The road ended atop the first of two gentle rises, and it was there he stopped his truck. To his right was the landfill gate: two metal swing-outs barring the way like robotic arms. To the left stood a tilted sign made of weathered planks like a crude burial cross. Letters hacked into the crosspiece possessed a moldering starkness.

  CRYMOST

  Beyond the sign, a pair of wheel ruts trailed up the second rise and took an evasive, somewhat secretive turn through an opening in the attending tall brush. It was there he was looking as he climbed out of the truck and dug for his key to the gate.

  Fyvie got out as well and made a relieved stretching sound as Mick undid the gate lock.

  “Almost scenic sometimes, these landfill areas.”

  “If you say so,” Mick said as he pushed the gate open. The former dumping ground for three surrounding townships was high land. Its coat of tender spring grass shimmered in the passing winds. “As long as you don’t think too hard about what’s underneath.”

  Fyvie laughed, heartily. “I do and I don’t. Now if you’ll sign off as admitting official, I will begin my appointed duties.”

  He offered Mick an open leather binder. Mick signed the form inside and then checked behind him at the not-too-distant spot where Pitch Road opened up to County L. By his estimate, the figure in black was due to pass by any minute, and he wanted to—suddenly needed to—see it happen.

  There was no figure, however. Only Roger Copeland’s tow truck rolling uphill, out of town.

  “No security issues or anything,” Mick said, pulling his gaze from the road. “Nobody has any business up here anymore. Just close the gates before you leave. Easy as that.”

  “I’ll go along with easy,” Fyvie said on the way back to his vehicle. The wind seemed to snatch at his shirt. “It’s a short day for me. After this it’s home to cut the grass and then pack up for a week at the lake, just me, my fishing gear and a twelve pack of Coors. Real Garrison Keillor stuff, right?”

  “A little Americana is good for the soul,” Mick said.

  Fyvie laughed again. “It is. Thank you, Mick. Have a pleasant day.”

  “You, as well.”

  Mick climbed behind the wheel and sat a moment, his hands held out as if with indecision. It had been years
since his one and only visit to The Crymost. Part of him demanded he ascend the path right now, all the way to the limestone ledge beyond the shrubs, and gaze out from the stark and dizzying height at the marshland stretching on for miles and the Wistweaw threading away from Knoll like a ribbon of silver. He might even get out of the truck and inch his way to the edge of the dropoff and peer uneasily down at the spring fed pool ninety feet below. And he would consider, as he did on his first day here, why the people of Knoll came to this place, sorrows in hand, and dropped their offerings over the edge.

  Instead he waved to Fyvie, put the truck in gear, and got himself back onto the main road.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The landfill vent stack was six feet high with a crook top. It jutted from the landfill slope like the head of a contemplative water bird. Peter Fyvie parked the SUV close to it, hopped out and went around back to gather his equipment with considerable haste. A short day was, after all, a short day, and there was no sense in squandering even a minute. A good ten paces away from the pipe he pulled the telemetry box out and set it up: a suitcase on a tripod, to go with the bird-head vent pipe. Yes, Fyvie thought, we’re working a regular Wonderland today.

  The system came up, and while he waited for the first readings to appear he took out the handheld combustible gas indicator, no more than an oversized stopwatch in appearance, to get some preliminary numbers. The LCD window read XXX. He scowled. Low numbers were common. Negative numbers weren’t unheard of if the ambient air pressure was great enough to affect emissions, but he’d never seen the handheld reading resemble the label on a cartoon jug of moonshine. He moved closer to the vent pipe.