Dead to the World

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘What’s with you?’ she asked. ‘You look like you’re going to a party, for crying out loud!’

  ‘I think it’s good to look your best wherever you go,’ Bess shot back. ‘A T-shirt with “I’m with stupid” on it is not your best look.’

  ‘Maybe not, but it’s funny when I stand to your right and the arrow points at you.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ Bess said.

  ‘Hum,’ Alicia joined in. ‘Are we trying to impress someone?’

  ‘Are we going to eat or just stand here and grill me for a couple of hours?’ Bess asked, then stridently walked out the back door to the waiting minivan that was now their mode of transportation.

  The other two laughed at her expense and headed for the van. ‘My turn!’ Megan shouted.

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Alicia shouted back, running to the driver’s door. ‘I’m on the schedule!’

  ‘Shotgun!’ Megan shouted instead, but was less than pleased to see that Bess was already occupying that location. Griping under her breath, she crawled into the back seat. Leaning forward between the two front seats, she said, ‘Y’all are both bitches, you know that?’

  Alicia smiled and Bess laughed. ‘And proud of it!’ Bess said.

  1934–1935

  Edgar Hutchins hitchhiked three days after Christmas to San Antonio, where he found a Marine recruiter that was more than happy to sign him up. He brought with him the small amount of money he’d saved up since Helen had gone off to college. It had been his hope to spend it on a ring; instead, he used part of it for a good meal in a restaurant and a room for the night in a seedy hotel in a mostly Mexican part of town. The following day he began his journey to Parris Island, South Carolina.

  After World War One, when the boot camp had seen more than thirteen thousand troops training there, the funding for Parris Island had all but dried up due to the severe decrease in the hectic demands of the war. By 1934 when Edgar arrived, there were fewer than three hundred men being trained. But these years before the onset of World War Two saw innovations in training. The new recruits learned how to fire automatic weapons and were among the first military personnel to see a demonstration of a trench mortar out of a combat situation. This should have excited Edgar, like it did most of the recruits then at Parris Island, but it didn’t. He hated the food, hated the uncomfortable cots, hated most of the guys in his barracks, and, most of all, he hated his D.I.

  Gunny Sargent Monroe Lincoln was a career Marine who had served with honors during World War One, and was determined to make sure these peace-time leathernecks were up for anything that would be coming their way. He was fair but hard. Edgar didn’t see the fair, only the hard. He managed to spend the night in the brig twice for infractions and barely made it out of boot camp. But when he did, he was actually pleased to find out that he was being shipped to Shanghai, China.

  THREE

  Willis and I went out to dinner alone that evening. Miss Hutchins recommended a nice place in Bourne, so we drove the few miles to the other town. I’d tried to talk Miss Hutchins into not hiring the, excuse the expression, ‘psychic detectives,’ earlier, but she was adamant.

  ‘I love having my little inn,’ she’d told me. ‘And I just can’t stand that Daddy is doing this! And he did kill my mother! Leaving me all alone for all those years.’ Tears had formed in her eyes, threatening to spill over.

  ‘I’m not convinced this is your daddy’s doing,’ I told her. ‘It seems more likely that there is a live hand involved here.’

  ‘You’re forgetting, E.J. I saw him twice. It was definitely my daddy!’

  ‘When was the last time you saw your father – before he died, I mean?’

  She thought long and hard. ‘I must have been about six. He enlisted right after Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘So it’s possible you don’t really remember exactly what he looks like?’ I asked, keeping my voice as gentle as possible.

  Her mouth stiffened into a straight line. ‘I have pictures of my father! Would you like to see them?’ she said, not happy.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, and smiled, hoping to take the sting out of what I’d said. It didn’t work. She got up stiffly and walked to a bookcase next to the fireplace. She grabbed two very old photo albums and brought them to the sofa. When I offered to help, she pulled the books away from me.

  ‘I’m fine on my own!’ she said with a little heat. ‘I’ve been basically on my own since I was ten years old, you know!’

  ‘I’m sorry—’ I started, but she interrupted.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m fine.’ She sat down next to me, put one book to her other side and one on her lap. ‘Here we go,’ she said, and opened the book to a wedding picture. The bride, the groom, parents, groomsmen, bridesmaids, flower girls – the whole shebang. Except that none of the men had faces. They had all been scratched out – not just marked out with a pen, but with enough force for it to rip through the paper to the black sheet the pictures had been glued to.

  Miss Hutchins’ intake of breath was audible from where I sat. ‘When was the last time you looked at these?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I try not to dwell in the past. It’s too painful. A long time, I’d think. A very long time.’

  She turned the page to reveal pictures of a honeymoon with a bride and a faceless groom. More pages, a mother holding a baby, and a faceless father standing with his arm around the woman. It was that way throughout the album. Miss Hutchins threw the book to the floor and grabbed the one sitting by her side. Again, all the male faces had been defaced. If there were two men, they were both faceless; four men, the same.

  ‘Uncle Herbert has been scratched out, too,’ Miss Hutchins said.

  ‘Uncle Herbert?’ I asked.

  ‘My father’s brother. He was the only family member left when my mother died, and he came to live with me. He died about five years ago.’ She thought for a moment, then said: ‘There were three of them – three brothers. Herbert was 4F so didn’t go to war, but both Daddy and his other brother, who I believe was the youngest one – Edgar, I think his name was – did. Daddy was in Europe, but Edgar died in the Pacific. Mama didn’t tell me what happened to him, so I guess it must have been pretty bad. Mama liked to gossip, and she would have told me if it was something I could hear about.’

  ‘Should we check the other photo albums?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’m almost afraid to,’ she said, dropping the second book on to the floor with the first.

  I went to the bookcase and brought back three more albums. The third had no pictures scratched out, mainly because there were no men depicted. ‘These were taken after Daddy left for the war,’ Miss Hutchins said. ‘This next one,’ she said, ‘should be too.’ And it was. Those two books went to her other side, while she picked up the third. ‘I think this book is after Mama died. There probably aren’t a lot of pictures.’ And there weren’t. But there were some of a man – his face intact. ‘That’s Uncle Herbert,’ she said.

  The pictures of Miss Hutchins were those of a pre-teen to a late teenager, and the man in the picture looked heavy and bloated. Neither he nor Miss Hutchins were smiling in any of the pictures. ‘Uncle Herbert drank a lot,’ Miss Hutchins said. ‘I think I watched over him much more than he ever watched over me. I always had to put out his cigarettes and move his whiskey bottles after he passed out on the sofa. Then I’d cover him up with the afghan my mother knitted so many years before. But then, one year I wasn’t fast enough and he dropped a lit cigarette on the afghan and burned a huge hole in it.’ Her lips were pursed again and you could tell she was still hurt and angry about the loss of this possession made by her mother.

  She began to cry softly. ‘I don’t understand!’ she said. ‘Why would he do that? Scratch out his own face? And his brothers’ faces! Why would Daddy do that?’

  I was pretty sure ‘Daddy’ had nothing to do with the defacing of the pictures. And I told Willis that while we partook of baked brie and white wine in Bourne.

&n
bsp; Willis shook his head. ‘I don’t understand why anyone would do it.’

  I agreed. Something was going on in Peaceful and I was bound and determined to find out what.

  BACK HOME

  It was a fairly typical Texas steakhouse: dead animals adorning the walls (deer heads, boar heads, whole raccoons, a bobcat sitting on a bare branch affixed to the wall), rock walls, a big fireplace going strong, hardwood tables with glossy finishes, and wait staff wearing black pants, white shirts, bolo ties and cowboy boots – both males and females.

  There was a girl at the reception stand they knew from high school. ‘Hey, y’all,’ she said, greeting them with a big smile. ‘How many?’

  ‘Hey, Tiffany. Just the three of us,’ Megan said.

  ‘Come right this way,’ the girl said, and strode out in front of them.

  The place wasn’t all that crowded for a Friday night, which did not bode well for the restaurant’s longevity. The building had been built as a seafood restaurant, which had lasted close to twenty years but changed hands when the chef/owner died. For a brief period it had been Italian – heavy on the pizza, which couldn’t compete with the national pizza chains in town, and was eventually bought by someone who wanted to turn it into a high-class bar. Since the county was dry and he could never get the correct paperwork to open a private club, it was sold before it ever opened. That’s when it became the Eyes of Texas Steakhouse. It had opened strong three years before, but had been on the wane ever since.

  ‘How’s this?’ the receptionist said, offering them a table in the middle of the room.

  Sensing Megan was about to complain, and seeing Logan only one table away, Bess figured this was his section, so quickly said, ‘This is fine!’ with a big smile on her face.

  The receptionist left and the girls sat down. ‘This is not fine!’ Megan said. ‘I’d rather have a booth! There are like a hundred empty ones! And did you notice Tiffany acted like she didn’t even know us?’

  ‘Maybe she got in trouble for being too friendly with the customers or something,’ Alicia suggested. ‘What are you going to get, Bess? The only vegetarian thing I see is a salad.’

  ‘I told you, I’ve decided to give meat a chance,’ Bess said.

  ‘Wasn’t that a Beatles’ song?’ Megan asked absently as she studied the steaks to try to figure out how big a one she could get without bankrupting their weekend allowance.

  ‘It was a John Lennon song, after the Beatles, and it was peace not meat,’ Alicia said with some authority.

  ‘Why do you know so much about the— Oh, wait! Graham the retro-king,’ Megan started.

  But Alicia cut in. ‘I think I’m going to have the fillet,’ she said. ‘With sweet potato fries and a Caesar salad. And maybe we can share the chocolate lava cake for dessert?’

  ‘Share, my ass,’ Megan said. ‘I want a whole dessert and I’m looking at the banana split. If I have room after my sixteen-ounce porterhouse with balsamic vinegar-glazed mushrooms, risotto, and the grilled asparagus.’

  ‘Jeez, Megan, there won’t be any money left over for Alicia and me!’ Bess said.

  ‘You don’t eat much,’ Megan said.

  ‘Well, I’m going to!’ Bess declared. ‘I’m having the six-ounce sirloin, a baked potato and a side salad. And my own dessert – that apple crisp with the Blue Bell ice cream!’

  Alicia brought out her phone and turned on the calculator app. ‘Hum, well, we can have the desserts or we can have the dinners, but we can’t have both. Megan, if you were to get something reasonable, then maybe, but a sixteen-ounce porterhouse? That’s like almost thirty dollars!’

  ‘But that’s what I want!’

  ‘Well, as Daddy would say, want in one hand—’ Bess started.

  ‘Yeah, I know, and poop in the other—’ Megan continued.

  ‘And see which one fills up first!’ Bess finished.

  ‘Gross!’ Alicia said. ‘Can we just make this happen? With dessert? Megan?’

  ‘Oh, fine! I’ll have the fillet. But the big one—’

  ‘Too expensive,’ Alicia said.

  ‘Fine,’ Megan said, teeth clenched. ‘The eight-ounce fillet. But I still want the risotto and asparagus!’

  ‘The asparagus is extra!’ Alicia said.

  ‘Jeez!’ Megan threw herself back in her chair, arms folded across her ample chest. ‘OK, fine! The tossed salad! Do you think I can have a tossed salad?’ she asked sarcastically, a trait learned at her mother’s knee.

  ‘Of course,’ Alicia said with a big smile.

  ‘Good choice, Megs,’ Bess said, also smiling.

  ‘Both of you – bite me!’ Megan said, refusing to look at either of her sisters.

  Turning to Alicia, Bess said, ‘Speaking of Graham the retro-king, why aren’t you out with him tonight? I mean, it is date night!’

  ‘Yeah!’ Megan pounced. ‘Is there trouble in paradise?’

  Alicia didn’t answer, but her lower lip began to tremble. Quickly she got up, almost knocking over her chair, and made a fast exit to the restroom.

  ‘What’d I say?’ Megan asked, staring after her foster sister.

  ‘What didn’t you say?’ Bess said with some disgust.

  ‘You started it!’ Megan said.

  ‘Hi, Bess,’ came a voice from behind her shoulder.

  Bess whirled around, the smile already firmly planted on her lips. ‘Well, hey, Logan!’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you worked here!’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been here like over a year. I’m assistant manager on Sunday nights,’ he said proudly.

  ‘Wow. That’s cool,’ Bess said.

  ‘Can I take y’all’s drink orders?’ he asked, a smile bringing out the dimples in his cheeks and the sparkle in his baby-blue eyes.

  ‘Hey, Logan,’ Megan said. ‘I’m here at the table too, you know.’

  He grinned. ‘Hey, Megan. What do you want to drink?’

  ‘Diet Coke.’

  ‘Bess?’

  ‘Real Coke, and a real Sprite for Alicia.’

  ‘Yeah, I saw she was with y’all,’ Logan said. ‘Is she OK? Someone said they heard a girl crying in the ladies’ room.’

  ‘Ah, shit,’ Megan said, tossing her napkin down on the table. ‘I’ll go. Bess, you know what we want. Just order.’

  ‘Be nice!’ Bess called to her sister’s retreating back.

  ‘When am I not nice?’ Megan shot back, but noticed her sister wasn’t paying a bit of attention to her. Megan sighed and headed to the restroom. Alicia was sitting at a stool by the vanity when Megan came in. ‘Sorry,’ Megan said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  Alicia nodded her head and dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex. ‘I know. It’s just … it’s just that …’ And she burst into tears.

  Megan moved to her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s OK, hon. Just let it out.’

  ‘He’s going back to UT in the fall,’ she said between sobs.

  ‘Graham?’

  ‘Yes! And he thinks we should date other people—’

  Megan sat down on the stool next to Alicia, her body stiff and her face turning red. ‘Has that asshole been pressuring you for sex?’

  ‘No!’ Alicia said. ‘Not really.’ Sob, sob. ‘Maybe a little.’

  ‘You mean all the damn time?’

  Alicia nodded her head.

  ‘I’m calling Mom!’ Megan announced and stood up.

  Alicia stood up too, grabbing Megan’s arm. ‘Oh, God, no, Megs! Don’t do that! I don’t want Mom knowing about this! It would be awful!’

  ‘He has no right—’

  ‘If we’re a couple I guess he does,’ Alicia said, falling back down on the stool. ‘If we were just a “normal” couple, this would surely be going on, right? So why is it weird that he wants to?’

  ‘You are a normal couple!’ Megan said. ‘You are not related! Try to remember that.’

  Alicia shook her head. ‘Not in the eyes of anyone who knows us. Not your parents or Grandma, but everybody a
t school thinks it’s weird. I’ve tried to keep it quiet, but—’

  ‘Yeah, I know – I told one of the twins and now it’s all over school.’

  ‘You didn’t mean to,’ Alicia said graciously. She sighed. ‘But the thing is I think it’s kinda weird, too. I mean I love him, but do I love him love him, or do I love him like a big brother?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Ooo, gross.’

  Alicia sighed again. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘So why are you so upset that he’s going back to Austin for school? And that he wants y’all to date other people? I think that sounds like a good thing under the circumstances. This way you can find out if you love him love him, or just little-sister love him.’

  Alicia swallowed a sob, then got up and went to the sink where she splashed cold water on her face and dabbed it dry with a paper towel.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘But it’s just … sad,’ she said finally. ‘Really, really sad.’

  Megan sighed her own sigh and walked up to Alicia, putting her arms around her and hugging her. ‘Yeah, it is. It’s sad. I’m sorry.’

  Meanwhile, after Megan left the table, Bess began giving Logan their food order. In the middle of it they both heard the front door of the restaurant slam open, and both turned to see what was going on. A young man, a big beefy blond wearing a serious frown, charged into the room. On seeing Logan, he pointed at him and said simply, ‘Outside! Now!’

  Logan looked at Bess. ‘Ah. I’ll be … right back?’ he said, as if not certain if he would or not. He set his order pad down on Bess’s table and headed to the front door. As Logan drew close, the big beefy blond grabbed Logan’s upper arm and pulled him out the door.

  Not liking the look of this turn of events, Bess got up from the table and headed for the door herself.