“Do this. Go ahead and work it on your own, Salt. See what you can find and get back to us as soon as you know something one way or the other,” White said to her, looking at Huff for confirmation.
Huff stood. “We’re all tired from the long hours. But Salt’s a trooper.” He slapped her on her shoulder.
WILLS AND WONDER
The burning pecan wood popped and crackled, bits of ash rising from the flames of their bonfire. St. Michael glittered between her bare breasts as she lay beside Wills on a pallet of quilts. “The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat,” he recited, then lifted a flask in a toast toward the fire.
“Are you tipsy?” She gently poked a finger into his naked thigh.
“‘Tipsy.’ You use all these old-fashioned words. It’s charming.”
“Let me have a taste of that.” She reached for the flask. “I can’t believe you raked the ground.” They lay beneath the bare limbs of the orchard, the sky above a black-velvet backdrop for brilliant stars and a moon full and bright white, its craters charcoal smudges of the man. Ten feet out, the dogs lounged around them unperturbed and at ease with their loving noises and ways. Their clothes were in a pile on another blanket nearby.
“Can’t have lumpy love now, can we.” He rolled to her side, whispering more lines from Edward Lear’s poem “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.” “They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon.” Wills grabbed up two more quilts at their feet, covered her, and buried his head between her legs.
A sparking flush ran through her body. She opened her eyes to stars that in her altered state appeared to be swirling while she gave herself over to ecstasy. Entering her, Wills threw off the covers in his own euphoria, loudly moaning.
Under the quilts their body heat warmed the aromas of fresh sex that mingled with each of their own scents. Salt inhaled deeply.
“You’re at it again, you.” He lifted her chin so that her face was out from under the cover.
“I love the way we smell,” she said.
“You are a carnal fiend,” he said, rubbing noses with her and laughing. “I’m marrying a fiend!” he yelled at the night. The dogs lifted their heads but didn’t move, just plunked their snouts back on their paws as if to say, “Oh, it’s just their usual people foolishness.”
“Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried . . .” Wills orated.
“They danced by the light of the moon.”
• • •
“Even in winter I spend more time out of the house than inside.” She fingered the scarred split in Wonder’s right ear as he sat beside her chair at the kitchen table. Wills stirred oatmeal on the stove. “I’m either at work, with the sheep and Wonder, out for a run, working around the property, at your place. About the only time I’m in the house is either to sleep or when you or Pepper and the boys are here. I do an hour or so every other day in the dojo but that’s about it.”
“Are you trying to talk yourself out of this house?” He ladled oatmeal into grass-green bowls and drizzled honey over it.
“It’s a big house.”
“Maybe we’ll have children?”
“Are you trying to talk me into keeping this place? If we’re going to get married, we need to decide where we’re going to live—your place or mine.”
“This property has belonged to your family for generations. I don’t want you to have regrets associated with marrying me.”
“Yum.” Wild clover honey had been her father’s favorite.
He’d sat across from her, a tangle of green and lavender between them. He’d taught her how to make this world. Vines of passionflowers spilled out of the brown paper grocery bag. “I’ve got enough maypops here for two families.” She emptied the rest: green leaves, wide lavender and white blooms, green fruit pods, buds of various sizes, some beginning to open, showing lavender-white between the green petals, onto the soft, flattened pine needles. “So you have.” His tan face shone in the summer light slanting through the trees from the west, highlighting the undersides of leaves on the hardwoods.
They sat cross-legged in the center of what she called her fort, a twelve-by-twelve clearing, marked off with bark-covered thin pine logs. She pinched off one of the full blooms and stuck it in a buttonhole on her red shirt, then picked up one of the fruits and broke it in half. “I’ll make the beds.” She scooped seeds and pulp out of the pod halves, finished the first two maypop beds, and reached for another of the green fruits. Then she went back to pulling the corona away from the inner column of a flower, creating a tiny human-like figure with stamens for arms and legs. “Four big ones and four little ones. I’ll make the dresses for the girl ones.” She began carefully peeling the feathery skirt-like flower away from its center. She lined up the May people on the pine needles. “There. I’ve got them all done.”
They worked in silence, and when all the May people were defined, the girls and women with lavender skirts, the men and boys only naked stamens, the little ones in the pod beds, Sarah began to hum a lullaby. Her father lay with his hands behind his head looking up through the trees. She lay on her side, curled around the passionflower families. Her voice drifted up and away to the canopy of dense shimmering green overhead while the May people were safe in their still, small world.
“Honey?”
“Sorry. I was remembering. The clover honey reminded me of my dad. Now he was tied to the property—knew all about every flower, tree, flora and fauna. It was his passion. I wonder if he was also shamed by an inheritance.”
“Shamed?”
“Like me, he didn’t do anything to deserve this.” She looked up at the tall ceiling and out toward the orchard. “Cops see so many people who are born into so much less.”
“This place does haunt you. Maybe with more than just the ghost of your father.”
Wonder got to his feet at her side. She automatically reached for his ear, split when he’d been beaten and clubbed while he’d tried to protect the house. The ridged notch had healed in a Y shape, black as the silky fur surrounding it. It would be hard to see unless you knew it was there.
“Don’t we have a tree to plant?” she asked.
Slapping his hands on his knees, Wills stood. “Yes, yes we do.”
MARSHALL AND SISTER
“Congratulations, by the way, even though for some reason you weren’t going to tell me about your engagement. That’s a pretty big step. ‘Congratulations,’ however, is what one is supposed to say to the guy—Wills?” Dr. Marshall’s brow wrinkled. “With all that’s going on, the cases, the unrest, and this.” He tapped his desk. “Where’s the ring?” He peered over at her hands.
Salt held them up. “If we made it public, it would get complicated. He proposed Christmas Day.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “The birth, a new beginning.” He clasped his hands, smiling behind them, eyebrows arched, pleased with his association. “But with complications, this new beginning? You didn’t discuss it before he got the ring?”
“He’s a romantic—wanted to surprise me.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“A good surprise?”
“Yes. Like I said, there are things we need to work out. Do you have to analyze everything?”
Marshall raised his arms, grinning, gesturing to the books and diplomas on the walls.
She laughed. “Well, there is that.”
“Seriously, I’m interested. What do cops have to consider when they decide to take these big steps?”
“First, for us there’s the shift issue.”
“Oh, you mean how to work the same hours?”
“There are rules that we can’t work the same hours on the same assignment.”
“So you or Wills will have to transfer or work different hours?”
She nodded.
“What els
e?”
“What else what?”
“Complicates your engagement.”
“We each have homes.” Salt stood and went over to the window. “It’s snowing.”
Marshall came over. It happened maybe a couple of times during Atlanta winters, usually no more than a dusting, but the first flakes were always met with excitement. “Always seems like magic,” he said.
“I feel the same way,” she said. “Even though it means longer work hours for us and not much of a chance to play in it.”
“Aspects of police work the public doesn’t think about—that we take for granted.” Marshall went back to his chair.
“Those parts don’t make good TV—long hours, cold, hot, paperwork.”
“Family life, shifts.” Marshall widened his eyes with a question. “You were saying that you and Wills would have to decide which house to live in?”
“His place is closer to work. He’s been renovating it. Put a lot of work into it.”
“And your place?”
“The ghosts of generations.” She slapped the armrests, punctuating her determination. “I’ve given it thought. I realize that it’s a big step, letting go of all that—my father’s death, the legacy. But what’s got me stumped is what to do with it.”
“Really, you’re letting go just like that? Selling it?”
“I don’t want to sell.”
“So you wouldn’t be letting it go. You’d keep it and live in the city?”
“I don’t know. That’s where I’m stuck. What’s best? What will free me and the haints.”
“Haints?”
“What country folks call ghosts.”
“Do you believe in actual ghosts?”
“Of course not. What do you think, I’m crazy? Don’t answer that. Call it karma or bad memories, guilt, shame, the unconscious, whatever.”
“You’re making my job pretty easy here.” He laughed.
“Another stereotype—the psychologically unsophisticated cop. We come to the job with our histories, some of us aware of our moods, our private pressures.”
“I was referring to your personal demons, Salt. What ghosts do you most want to leave behind when you start your new life? What shame?”
“Shame? You said that last time. I meant that my father felt that way—about himself, his illness, his family.”
“Isn’t that at the core of how you feel about his death? I think your risking yourself repeatedly is somehow connected.”
She sat there not responding, asking herself if it was shame that she felt. “I’ll think on that,” she whispered, feeling a familiar brittleness.
• • •
It was late afternoon and the snow had stopped by the time she got home. On her way in, she paused on the porch steps, her eye caught by movement from across the field in Mr. Gooden’s backyard. At first she thought she was seeing double again. It looked as though there were two of him in his garden. Wonder woofed from inside the kitchen. When she turned from unlocking the inside door and letting the dog out, the two figures had separated and gone down different rows, and she recognized that one of him was wearing a dress and was darker—Sister Connelly, who to Salt’s amazement was helping Mr. Gooden cover his winter greens. She waved, but they didn’t seem to notice, or if they did, they weren’t responding. She was reminded of how unsettling Sister could be, how it felt like being pulled into another dimension or alternate reality to be with her sometimes. And here she’d appeared incongruously in Salt’s neighbor’s garden, covering his plants with white sheets. Wonder came out and stood beside her, also watching, alert at the unusual blanketing of the dark green plants.
Before going inside, she called the dog to heel and walked to the paddock, opened the gate, and went in. “Away, away,” she commanded. Within seconds Wonder had disappeared and quickly reappeared with the flock trotting from the back of the orchard. He weaved back and forth, gathering and flanking. “Stand.” She opened the gate for the pen and kept the dog on hold until the sheep were all in the enclosure. Under Wonder’s stare she fed the sheep, freshened the trough water, and laid down fresh hay. “That’ll do,” she told him, leaving the paddock. She picked up her gear bag from the steps. There was no sign of Mr. Gooden or Sister next door. The garden was now square after square covered with white cotton weighted at the corners.
“That field”—he’d pointed across to the Goodens’—“and the ones on the other side of the road in front were once upon a time all planted in cotton. I remember. I couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, but I remember climbing some drawers, a chest of drawers, and looking out the front where some workers, they were called ‘field hands’ back then, were walking home. At that time the road was still dirt. And I remember they were singing. Which was probably what had drawn my attention. Dust clouded around their bare feet. The heat was like the haze of a dream.”
Wonder sat at her feet, watching, waiting. Salt turned and opened the screen door. The dog, shaking off, went ahead of her into the bedroom, where he watched while she changed into sweats and old sneakers, then followed her up the stairs to the second-floor hall. She glanced briefly into the dojo before continuing on down the hall and grabbing hold of the cord for the retractable ladder to the attic. “Stay. You’re not coming,” she said sternly to the dog. He seemed to have a penchant for high places and had had to be rescued several times from the roof dormers.
Climbing into the attic, at the top of the ladder she found the pull for the single bulb light and sat for a minute surveying the bare beams and rafters. If I’m leaving, I need to know what’s in there, she thought. The space was mostly shadows, the lone bulb lending only partial light within its weak glow. Even in the cold air it smelled of dry dust. Under the eaves toward the front of the house were two racks of old, misshapen clothes, several boxes, and an old trunk the same size as the one beside her downstairs bed, the one in which she’d found her father’s coat, bought for him but never worn until Salt became a detective. There wasn’t much else; like the rest of the house, it had been mostly emptied. She walked a beam balancing her way to the trunk. It was too large for her to have gotten down the ladder. There must have been some other access to the attic at some time—Wonder had found some secret passage for himself. She could hear his scratching at the bottom rung of the ladder below.
She propped the flashlight in a triangle of two rafters. The latch of the trunk was locked. She tugged at a cardboard box nearby and the flap tore. Inside the box were palm-size leather-bound books, some in Latin, some slightly larger volumes in English, a frayed book of postcards depicting life in Korea circa 1914, a book of quotations copyright 1942, and a small pocket ledger, the first entry dated 1889. Tiny fragments of the pages fell when she opened the books. The ledger was inscribed with a name she recognized, that of her great-great-grandfather. The other box held a jumble of old, cracked shoes. None of the boxes would hold up to being moved.
The locked trunk—yet another mystery. The books, the inscribed owners, the collection made little sense to her—Korea, Latin, English. Her mother might know a little more. The phone in her pocket buzzed. On hearing her hello, Wonder sent up a whine from below.
“Salt?” Huff asked. “Where are you?”
“In my attic.”
“Your attic? You got a problem?”
“You called, Sarge. What’s up?”
“Be that way, then. They want you in at noon tomorrow to go find out what you can from The Homes, about the truck and the guys who got flexed. The protests are heating up again and the politicians are breathing down the chief’s neck. I can come in early and go with you if you want me to.”
She imagined a conversation between Huff and Man. “I got it, Sarge,” she said.
THE TRAP
Salt parked on the street above the demolition equipment. Below, a huge excavator sat atop a hill of rubble next to a buildi
ng long since abandoned; the windows and doors from which she had frequently concealed herself in order to surveil the “trap,” the drug corner across the street at Sam’s Chicken Shack, were now stripped. She hooked the Handie-Talkie to her belt, took the binoculars, and leaving her coat and fedora on the floor of the backseat, got out of the Taurus and made her way down the rutted hill.
Salt pulled herself up on the excavator, climbing on tracks clotted with packed red clay, to the door of the machine. Apparently the construction crew had learned the high-crime neighborhood lesson of leaving vehicles unlocked rather than paying for the broken-window damage. She swung the door open and lowered herself into the cracked faux-leather operator seat. The view couldn’t have been better—floor-to-roof Plexiglas. The cab was crowded with lever bars, joysticks, dials, and the steering wheel, and smelled of gear grease and spilled coffee. Salt felt giddy putting her feet on the big pedals. Tall as she was, it was still a reach for what she guessed was the claw-bucket control.
She sat back and raised the binoculars and adjusted the focus of the powerful, sensitive lenses. Across the street, in the chilly early afternoon, activity was just beginning to pick up. Without her coat and hat, Salt felt the cold but was not uncomfortable. She didn’t plan on being there long. The day was still and gray, a dreary overcast without wind. Lil D behind the wheel, Man’s SUV pulled into the joint parking lot of Sam’s and the Blue Room. Several people were getting to-go boxes from the order window. A beater with three guys arrived and set the trap; Johnny C sat behind the steering wheel of the car supervising the setup. Although she recognized them from The Homes, Salt had not seen these young kids running dope before. One lounged against the Chicken Shack wall, ready to meet the junkies and take their walk-up and drive-up orders. The other kid stood at the back corner of the Blue Room guarding the stash that was likely concealed and camouflaged in the trash on the ground somewhere close.
Stone came out of God’s World and got in the front seat of the beater with Johnny. The kid on the wall took more orders than Sam did at the to-go window; one car then another was waited on. No lines formed. Service was good.
Old Bones Page 15
