He began to realise how much he had underestimated her fury at discovering his intrusions. He had expected denial, perhaps even anger, but he had been sure Kate’s astonishment at his discoveries would eventually be followed by relief.
Though he hadn’t seen it, they were walking on ice, the two of them, and Kate seemed to think she was out too far to be rescued by him. The ice was cracking, sure enough, and he realised he had better find out just what was at the bottom of this mess if he expected to keep Kate. D-Day was the 10th, which gave him just five days to discover what she was playing at, and to stop it. Otherwise, he felt certain he would only be able to watch as Kate went through the ice alone.
The Yellow Shirt
HE WENT UP and then down, several times, like a ride on a seesaw, and he started to feel sick and disoriented, even more than he felt scared. He had to get free of this iron grip holding the back of his shirt, a grip which held him with the certainty of a mechanical arm. And the next time that his feet touched the ground, and the arm paused momentarily before beginning its inevitable lift into the air, he turned and tried to bite the arm – which was human after all – just above the wrist. He couldn’t reach it with his mouth, however, and he was in any case too slow, and suddenly the other arm came sweeping out of nowhere and BANG! the very end of it, which he realised was a flattened hand, exploded against his cheek, making a sharp crack in the air like a rifle shot.
He was motionless now, standing there, the pain cascading through his cheek up and into the entire side of his head, and the voice above the arm barked out, ‘That’s it, you little bastard,’ and as both arms came down and seized him by his shoulders he felt his fear return and override the swelling pain in his head, and he wanted to cry out when suddenly there was another crack in the air, only flatter this time, and away from him. As he waited for a new pain to commence, the arms grabbing his shoulders released their fierce grip, and he watched as a large sod-sized piece flew out of where the scalp of the man in the yellow shirt should have been, and blood spurted up, and as the figure before him collapsed to its knees the boy stepped back, instinctively, but watched as the man’s eyes struggled to focus on him – the boy – then the eyes rolled as the man’s knees no longer gave support and he fell flat on his face into the dust.
And the boy saw the gun first, watched as it emerged from the wooded trail he had himself run along just minutes – no seconds, actually – before. Watched it dully since something had given way inside him; his capacity to fear had lapsed in the face of so much violence. When Maris came out holding the deer rifle with both hands, he felt no elation, but only mild curiosity, as if thinking, though he was not really thinking at this point, that it was interesting to find her there.
‘Stand over here,’ she told him as she came into the clearing, and for the briefest second he thought that she proposed to shoot him, too. ‘Go on,’ she said and she kneeled down by the bloody figure in the dust, and he reckoned she was shielding him, so he did as he was told and looked away, though when she exclaimed lightly, he turned back and saw that she had turned over the dead man – for he was clearly dead – having laid down her rifle. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ she said more loudly, and looked over at him. ‘He was going to kill you with his bare hands, I guess,’ she said, in a detached and purely observational tone.
She stood up and put her forehead in one hand while she held the rifle with the other. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ she said again, stating each word distinctly. ‘What are we going to do?’ She looked at the boy, not as if she thought he had an answer to this, but as if contemplating him as part of the problem.
‘Why H.?’ he asked for no reason he could understand.
‘What?’
‘Why “H.”? You keep saying “Jesus H. Christ”. Why “H.”?’
She looked at him dully. Then as if she had decided something she said, ‘Holy. H. is for holy.’
He nodded as if this should have been obvious to him. Then she said, ‘We have a problem.’ She took another deep breath. ‘Leastways I do.’
‘What’s that, Maris?’
‘I have shot this man because I thought he was about to kill you.’ She was speaking formally, as if testifying in court. ‘I bet you thought he was too.’ The boy nodded. ‘But you see the thing is,’ she went on, ‘he didn’t have a weapon on him. And I will have a problem with the police if they come out here. He didn’t have a weapon, but I shot him anyway. They’ll argue that I didn’t have to do that. But they didn’t see Will the way I did or what this man was about to do to you. Or the other man he killed.’
What? He looked at Maris and spoke for the first time. ‘Other man?’
She looked at him, at first disinterestedly, then, as something showed in his face, with growing recognition. ‘There’s another dead man back there,’ she said slowly. ‘Did you see him?’
He nodded but wouldn’t look at her. ‘Well,’ she said, about to continue, but then she stopped, and he felt her eyes on him. And then she said, ‘Oh,’ with a small gasp. ‘Was it you . . .’ and before she could finish the sentence he nodded again, keeping his eyes locked downwards.
He started to cry and she came right over to him and hugged him. She let him sob for some time, then stepped back, though she kept her hands on his shoulders. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I have to go back to the barn and get something. I’m going to be a while. But don’t worry: I will come back. Promise. If you hear the tractor you’ll know it’s me. Okay?’ And he nodded. ‘I want you to stay right here. Don’t touch anything. Sit over there’ – she pointed to a clump of azalea bushes; they were flowerless at that time of year, but a dark green. ‘Just keep your eyes closed. Maybe you can sleep a little. I don’t suppose you got much last night.’
‘Can’t I come with you?’ He knew he really didn’t want to stay alone for two seconds just then.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen enough.’
And he started to bite his lip in order to be strong, but then something gave way: he could not face the solitude again, not knowing if terror would again erupt into his life, not sure if the violence was worse than the fear of violence. ‘Please, Maris, don’t leave me here. Let me come with you. Please.’
She eyed him thoughtfully, and he felt that she was listening to him, which was not usually her way once she had made a decision. That much had changed in their new and extraordinary circumstances. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I guess you’ve already seen the worst of it. But you’re going to have to help me.’
And they walked back through the woods until they came to the rocky sandy slope and Maris scooted down it first, with the rifle in a sling over her shoulder, and the boy followed, feeling the sand slide into his sneakers, and they walked past the pond on the house side, and the boy didn’t even look across its still expanse of water towards the greenhouse where his uncle lay dead, and they entered the edge of the woods where he had hidden in such fright, cutting across until they reached the path that took them to the barn.
‘When will the police get here?’
She inhaled deeply. ‘They won’t be getting here.’
‘Why not?’
She looked at him. ‘What good are the police going to do? They’re too late to help your uncle, now aren’t they?’
He nodded his head in agreement, though after a moment he found objections forming in his head, inchoate strings of thought he struggled to put into words. ‘But,’ he began to say.
‘I’ve thought it all out,’ said Maris, talking through the boy. ‘If we call the police, they’d find three dead men lying here, and guess what? We killed two of them. I could go to jail, and I don’t know what they’d want to do with you – maybe put you in some juvenile offenders’ place.’
He felt entirely confused. ‘But they killed Will. And they would have killed me.’
‘I know that. You know that. But what would the police think?’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘Bury them.’ She mistook the look o
n his face for revulsion. ‘I can do it alone if you like.’
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘It’s just . . .’ and he paused.
She looked at him calmly and said, ‘I’m not going to bury Will with them, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
And, almost crazily, he felt relief, really for the first time, and about something which had nothing to do with the real danger he had faced, and the real horror of what he had witnessed. ‘But won’t people wonder what happened to them?’
She shook her head. ‘I doubt it. I checked their wallets and they were both from Portland. Probably small-time dealers there. Frankly, I doubt anybody up there knew where they were going – and if they did, I can’t believe they’ll want to investigate the issue. That’s in the nature of the business. Believe me, no one’s going to come looking for them.’
This seemed unanswerable, and Maris didn’t wait for him to think of more questions. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Can you drive the tractor if you have to?’
‘I think so,’ he said, trying furiously to remember the few lessons he had had from Will.
‘Good, because I want you to bring it out of the barn and around to the house end of the pond – the house end, okay? It’s got the flatbed on the back, so take it slow.’
He was concentrating on her instructions, finding it easy to immerse himself in the detail. ‘Should I unhook the flatbed?’
‘No. We’re going to need it.’
He managed to start the tractor all right and back it slowly out of the barn, then drove it jerkily between the house and Maris’s vegetable garden until he saw her at the near end of the pond. He stopped just short of some rolled-up tarpaulin at her feet, and he was glad that he had, since as he got down out of the cab he saw there was a body rolled up in the tarp.
Maris said, ‘I’m not going to pretend this will be easy. When it gets too much just shut your eyes, okay?’ He nodded, and following her lead reached down with both arms for one end of the canvas tarp. ‘Ready?’ she asked, gripping her end. ‘One, Two, Three,’ and together they lifted the heavy roll and Maris swung round until she was closest to the flatbed, and in a tandem shuffle they moved to it, the boy scuffing his feet to stay in synch with Maris, and as she swung her end up and onto the deck of the flatbed he lost his grip and his end – which was the legs – started to slip down towards the grass, and he fumbled desperately to regain his grip and halt the downwards sliding weight and then Maris’s hands were next to his on the rough canvas, and they both gave a great heave and the whole dreadful human sausage was on the flatbed with a thud.
They stood there, out of breath from their exertion, until Maris said, ‘I thought we’d lost him for a minute,’ and she gave a short, bark-like laugh which conveyed more pain than humour.
‘Sorry,’ said the boy, and Maris put a hand on his shoulder.
This time she drove the tractor, and he stood behind her as he had always done with Will. To his surprise she drove around the house and then down the track towards the mountain road. She drove fast, bouncing them about, and at one point he looked behind at the rolled-up tarp, but it had barely moved. They passed Truebridge’s shack, and to his astonishment Maris kept going, and pulled out onto the hard-packed sand of the mountain road.
She turned her face sideways and he strained to hear her words as she explained, half shouting above the engine noise. ‘We’ve got to get the other one, and this won’t make it through the woods. If a car comes by, just wave.’
But no car came by; there was rarely any car at all on this high road, since anyone going around the mountain would take the quicker, paved road at its base. They drove for what to the boy seemed an endless, infinite time, but was probably no more than sixty seconds, to a point several hundred yards down from the entrance to the farm, near to where the boy had been about to emerge from the woods when he had been grabbed by the man in the yellow shirt.
And suddenly Maris swung the tractor left, off the road, and she cried out ‘Hang on tight!’ and he thought she must have gone mad. But then he saw they had turned onto the fire road cut out of the woods, slightly overgrown, unused, but with the outline of a rough track discernible. Brush had overgrown it, but there were no trees, which with the tractor was all that mattered. And they moved bumpily through the high ferns and grass, but hit no solid obstruction, and suddenly Maris braked hard and they stopped, with the flatbed shuddering to a stop behind them,
When they found the body of the man in the yellow shirt he was on his side, crumpled up like a vast seahorse beached on a shore. There was no tarpaulin this time. Maris picked the corpse up under his shoulders, and waited impatiently until the boy grabbed each of the boots. He looked away – he did not want to see the dead man’s face. He was heavy, heavier than the man in the Stetson, and they had further to walk to the flatbed. When they got to the tractor he had to rest, and told Maris so.
‘Okay,’ she said reluctantly, but when they put the man down on the grass she didn’t let go of his shoulders. The boy looked away again while he caught his breath and waited for the ache in his arms to disappear. ‘Ready?’ asked Maris, and he nodded and grabbed the boots again. Without saying a word, they both seemed to know what to do, and swinging the body once, twice, then three times landed it onto the flatbed. Backing away, the boy discovered that his hands were wet, and looking at them saw that they were streaked with mocha-coloured stains. Then he realised it was blood. He felt his gorge rising and bit down hard on his lip to keep from being sick.
He got up behind Maris on the tractor again, and instead of turning around, Maris drove further down the fire road, into the woods where he had run just an hour before. She stopped after several hundred yards, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, for here the fire road was largely overgrown with ferns, and saplings were starting to move in from either side of the track.
Maris got down without speaking and walked off to one side of the fire road. The boy followed her, a little anxiously, and within twenty yards they came to the edge of the swamp. Maris stopped and nodded to herself, not even acknowledging that the boy was with her, and then she turned and walked back to the flatbed, where he now noticed beside the two bodies a large coil of half-inch rope and a double cinder block.
They unloaded and carried each body right down to the edge of the swamp, which was such back-breaking labour that carrying the cinder block after that seemed child’s play. At the edge of the swamp, with the bodies lying next to the cinder block, she said, ‘Take a breather, Jack.’ He was glad to, and sat down on the ground and watched as Maris set to work.
First she unrolled the tarp, and the boy dully regarded the man in the Stetson as she unfolded the canvas flat around him. Pulling roughly on the legs of the man in the yellow shirt, she started to pull him onto the tarp as well, but his trouser belt caught on its edge, pulling the corner up in a hump. She struggled vainly to smooth the canvas, and finally snapped, ‘Come and help.’ The boy got up, and kneeling down held the canvas corner until she had pulled the corpse onto it without ruckling the end. Then she drew the two long tarpaulin sides over both bodies; there was overlap to spare.
She pointed wordlessly at the flatbed, and he went and retrieved the rope. Together they managed to ease it under the tarp at one end and wrapped it all the way around, and then three times repeated the process sideways along the length of the package, then drew the remaining length of rope back along the top under the loops. It was like stringing a rolled roast, which the boy had seen Maris do before. When Maris tied the rope firmly at one end, they were left with a sealed package of canvas and a length of rope attached to it. This she took, and poked the free end through the opening of the cinder block, drawing it all the way through, then wrapping it twice around the block before tying it tightly in a series of overhand knots.
‘Take that end,’ Maris said, and he grabbed the far end of the tarp. He could feel the legs of a dead man through the canvas. There was no way they could lift the canvas now, with two dead men inside, so
Maris turned sideways, and motioned him to imitate her. ‘One, two, three,’ she called, and though they couldn’t lift the canvas they managed to slide it clear of the brush on the edge of the swamp and into the water. Maris got on both knees and reaching out pushed the near end of the tarp a few feet further out into the swamp until it was in deeper water, where it sank immediately.
He felt immense relief at the disappearance of the two bodies until Maris stood up again and announced, ‘They’ll resurface when the gas inside them bubbles up.’ Before he could ask what they could do about this, she walked over to the cinder block, which was still attached by the rope to the sunken tarp. The rope was taut now, and the boy hazily deduced that this meant the bodies could not be that far down – the cinder block had not been moved anywhere when the bodies had submerged.
Together they slowly lugged the cinder block over to the swamp, taking care not to trip over the loose rope connecting it to the canvas at the bottom of the swamp. Maris counted one, two, three yet again and this time, with a final exhausted heave, they threw the cinder block out just far enough to reach the deeper water, where it joined the rolled-up tarp in what Maris must be hoping would prove an eternal grave.
By now the boy felt incapable of being surprised, and when Maris managed to turn around the tractor in a clearing and pulled back onto the mountain road he thought it entirely natural. Again, they passed no one.
Back at the farm they stopped outside the barn, where Maris collected two shovels, then drove around the house and the pond, to the front of the greenhouse where Will’s body lay in the afternoon sun. Not more than thirty feet away lay Ellie, the silky gold of her flank stained the colour of prunes from the shotgun blast.
‘Poor bitch,’ said Maris, and enough city remained in the boy that he was startled by the word, until he realised she meant Ellie. Maris stabbed her shovel in the earth and crouching down scooped the dog into her arms, then walked down to the pond and lay her on the reeds on its bank.
Keeping Secrets Page 30
