Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Cherie Priest

Page 35

  "Lu dropped tonight when we were out to eat. She's in the hospital. They don't know what's wrong with her. We were just eating at that Italian place, and she ordered a glass of wine, and I went to the restroom, and when I came back the waiter was trying to bring her around. She just fell over in the booth, and I don't know what's wrong with her. No one will tell me anything—"

  Dave rambled some repetitive combination of the same phrases while I sank against the wall, clutching the slippery phone. Slowly I dropped to my haunches and put my head on my knees while I listened. I concentrated on a worn spot on the carpet. I focused on it hard.

  "Dave, what was it? They must have told you something. " I was talking into my own lap, refusing to look at Harry, who had come to lean against the doorframe beside me.

  "They don't know. They're saying it was just fatigue, or exhaustion, or whatever, and they're running some tests and keeping her overnight. That's just their expensive way of saying they don't know. "

  "Did she come around at all?"

  "For a few minutes. Long enough to argue with the doctors that she was fine, then say something completely nonsensical and pass out again. "

  I stared down at my feet on either side of the worn spot, rubbing and shuffling on the carpet, playing idly with the edge of the rug. "What'd she say?" I whispered.

  "Oh, it started out okay—she wanted me to call you. But it was what she wanted me to say that was all-out confusing. She said to tell you to find the man and save yourself. But that doesn't make any sense at all, does it? Does it?" In the background, all the static noise of a hospital came through. I heard a muffled name gargle across an intercom, and the rolling wheels of gurneys. It made my uncle sound all the more alone.

  Bitter, hot tears welled up in my eyes. My nose filled up and made my voice all soggy. "I've got to go. "

  "Eden?"

  "Dave, I've got to go. I'm going to take care of it. "

  "What are you talking about? Do you know something? Dammit, what was she talking about? What do you mean, you're going to take care of it? What are you going to do down there? And why don't you come home, like she asked you to in the first place?"

  "I've got to go. But I'm going to take care of it. You tell her to hang on, and I'm going to go get him. You tell her when she comes home from the hospital, I'm going to be waiting for her at the door. "

  I pressed the "end" button. It disconnected us with an electronic blip, and the lights behind the numbers went dim. Harry reached out as if he meant to touch me in comfort, but I drew away, holding his phone out to him and lifting my head.

  "Okay. You win. How do we find this goddamned book?"

  IV

  I spent the next hours sick at heart, tearing through Eliza's house in a frantic search. Together, Harry and I turned every room inside out—we emptied cabinets, we broke plates, we dumped silverware onto the floor. We dragged out all the liquor bottles and tapped around in the wet bar, seeking any small hollow place. We went inch by inch along every wall, feeling each crack with the tips of our fingers, hoping to stumble upon some hidden spring or button. We lifted aside all the rugs and pressed the toes of our shoes into the floorboards, seeking some loose part that might come away.

  We found nothing.

  In the end, we returned to Eliza's bedroom and scoured it once more before dropping ourselves to rest on the floor against her bed. By then it was nearing dawn. Both of us were exhausted and despairing, knowing that for once in her century-long life, Eliza had been telling the truth. She didn't have the book.

  "Then where could it possibly be?" I asked, fully aware that Harry didn't have any better idea than I did.

  "Anywhere. Nowhere. " He was fidgeting with the papers he'd removed from between her mattresses. I could now see that they were letters, in envelopes. They made me think of the bundle I'd pulled from the files at Pine Breeze.

  "What are those? Besides the obvious, I mean. "

  "These?" He held them up. "Nothing. They're all empty. Just empty, old stationery. Some of them are postmarked as far back as fifty years ago. Look at this one—July twelve, 1956. "

  I took one from him and examined it for myself. Yes, it was empty, but I had a feeling it wasn't "nothing. " The one I held was made from the same cheap paper as the one I'd found in Leslie's file. The handwriting on the outside was even the same. And so was the postmark: Highlands Hammock, Fla.

  "Harry, what's in Highlands Hammock?"

  "Where?" He looked at the postmark. "In Florida? I don't know. "

  "Is it anywhere near St. Augustine?"

  "No, not really. If it's where I think it is, it's considerably farther south, towards the Everglades. Now that you mention it, I think it might be a state preserve of some kind. Why do you ask?"

  I told him about Pine Breeze, and about what I'd found during my excursions. "Come to think of it, the letters are out in my car," I added. "You wanna see them?"

  "I'll take your word for it. "

  Something about the handwriting intrigued me. I held the envelope up to the light and watched the paper glow. Something about it. Something . . . I'd seen it somewhere else. I climbed to my feet and started towards the bathroom.

  "Where are you . . . ? Oh," Harry said, seeing my destination.

  "No, I'm not going to use it, I want to check something. " I opened the medicine cabinet again and reached for the bottle that'd caught my attention earlier. The brown glass containers were where I'd left them, so I retrieved them again and held the labels up next to the envelopes.

  A perfect match.

  "Hey, Harry, check this out. " I returned to the bedroom with the bottle in one hand and the envelope in the other. "It's the same on both of these. "

  "So?"

  "So whoever prescribed the dosage on this stuff also addressed this envelope. "

  It took a few seconds for the truth to dawn on him. "But that envelope was sealed and mailed in 1956, and I know for a fact that that bottle arrived in the mail last week. " Then he shook his head. "No, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eliza's over a hundred years old—it's reasonable to think she has friends of a comparable age. Especially if they're in Florida. "

  "Possibly," I conceded. "I guess there are a lot of old people in Florida. " But I couldn't help but think my deduction was more significant than coincidence.

  "There's no return name on the envelope—is there any signature on the bottle?" Harry asked.

  "Uh-uh. " I unstopped the cork and took a whiff of the greenish liquid that sloshed inside.

  Damp grass. Slimy bark and moss. A memory receptor fired in the back of my brain, but not hard enough for me to tell what the scent reminded me of. I could only recognize that it was familiar; I couldn't have said what it was or where it came from—except that it had apparently come from Florida, maybe someplace near the Everglades. It certainly smelled like a swamp in a bottle, that much was sure.

  "What is this stuff? You said you know she got it last week; does she get it often?"

  "About twice a month she gets a package, addressed just like these letters. When I asked her about it, she said it was an herbal remedy for her rheumatism that she orders from a doctor down there. "

  "This is no doctor's script. " The letters were heavy and precise, though not refined. Whoever had printed them was working slowly, and laboriously. Perhaps he or she couldn't read very well. I was willing to bet it was a man, for the letters had a masculine quality to their square-edged straightness.

  "No, it isn't. But it's never done any good to argue with the woman, as you can well imagine. " Harry sat on the edge of the bed and shuffled through the letters again, furrowing his brow into deep creases. "Do you really think this is important?"

  "It might be. We could ask her. "

  "She won't tell us anything, not now that she's been tied up in a chair all night. You thought she was uncooperative before . . . I'll be
t we ain't seen nothing yet. "

  I stared down at the bottle, swishing its contents around into a whirlpool. "You're probably right. But she's all we've got. This time, how about you let me do the asking?"

  He shrugged and rose, reaching his hands behind his shoulders and cracking his back. "Be my guest. You can't possibly get any less out of her than I did. "

  Downstairs in the dining room, Eliza had fallen asleep. Her curly white head was tipped forward, her chin resting on her breastbone. Her chest expanded and contracted just enough to lift and lower her face, still blocked by the gag. I was merely inches away from feeling sorry for her until Harry removed her gag and she shot awake and started yelling.

  "You scalawags—both of you dirty goddamned carpetbaggers—I'll see you both dead! I'll see you both gutted and stretched and dead on a rack before I'm gone, do you hear me? I'll kill you myself, with my own two hands! I'll—"

  Harry popped the saliva-soaked rag back into her mouth and let her gnaw on it in muffled rage. "I told you," he said to me. "She's not going to be of any use. We may as well turn her loose and make a run for it. "

  "I'm not going to run away from a little old lady," I said, jaw set firm. "I'll smack some manners into one if I have to, but I'm not going to flee from one. It's undignified. "

  "What do you plan to do, then?" He said it with a hint of warning that implied, all threats aside, he would prefer that no actual manners-smacking took place.

  I positioned myself so that Eliza could stare me down all she liked. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to remember how much she hated me, and my mother before me. There was a chance I could use that fury to my advantage.