Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

  Jonathan was a problem she would have to act on soon. She had a house, she had sort of a job. She was now going to have to muster her courage and make the trip to Little Jump Off. If she waited much longer, she could well just bump into him in Hartsville, as she might any other old acquaintance. As many things as Jonathan Walkingstick was to her, an old acquaintance was not one of them. She eyed the thick law book that lay like a stone on her lap and thought, Why not go see him right now?

  Because you’ve got to read this book, she told herself sternly. Deke Keener’s coming to see you, first thing tomorrow. You can’t blow your first client.

  She opened the book and started to read, but the impish part of her brain refused to be quiet. You’ve just opened your office. You can put Keener off one more day. Be brave. Go see Walkingstick now. Before he sees you.

  She started the book over again, but after reading the first paragraph six times with no idea about what it said, she got up from the chair. Both her body and her brain were united in their opinion that she could put her reunion with Jonathan off no longer.

  She went into the house, filled every pot and pan in Irene’s kitchen with her store-bought water, and put them on the stove to heat. Keeping a whole bathtub full of water hot was impossible, but she’d learned that if she bathed by the sinkful, she could keep the water tolerably warm. After fetching soap and towels from the linen closet, she transferred the hot stove water to the big kitchen sink, stripped off her clothes, and got to work.

  Half an hour later, after a raft of contortions, one burned finger, and a badly stubbed toe, she stood there clean. With a towel wrapped around her, she hurried to her bedroom, where she dried her hair and pulled on jeans and a clean blouse. Humming as she donned a pair of small, intricately wrought earrings she’d bought in the Piura market, a memory of Gabe came rushing back to her.

  “Is this for me?” he’d asked one day, peering into a paper sack she’d brought from Miraflores.

  “What?”

  “This.” He pulled a big straw jipijapa hat from the sack and put it on his head.

  “Oh, yes,” she’d lied, not having the courage to admit that she hadn’t bought it for him at all, but for Jonathan.

  “Thanks,” he’d said, kissing her. “It’s terrific!”

  Thrilled with his gift, he’d worn it the rest of the evening, strutting around like a vaquero. They’d gone out to Barranco, gotten tipsy on margaritas, and kissed on the Bridge of Sighs. The next morning after he left for work, she’d gone out and bought another hat for Jonathan.

  “Love is such a mean bitch,” she whispered to her reflection in the mirror, ashamed that she’d treated such a good man so duplicitously. Suddenly she wondered if young Ridge had any idea of what he was getting into with Bethany. Probably not, she decided. If he did, he’d flee back into the mountains and resume conversing with bears.

  She turned from the mirror and pulled a cardboard box from beneath her bed. Inside lay the hat for Jonathan, some toys for Lily, two ocarinas, and a rug that had been as skillfully woven as her mother’s tapestry, except that the colors were the vibrant, tropical oranges and reds of Peru, instead of the cool blues of the Carolina mountains.

  She looked at her Peruvian treasures. In Lima, their purchase had served to keep her connected to Jonathan, if only in her own mind. Now they seemed like sad, bright souvenirs of the year she’d spent in the arms of another man. She realized, as she carried the box out to her car, that Jonathan might not want either her or her gifts anymore.

  With a deep breath, she started her little Miata, and headed out to test the waters at Little Jump Off.

  The summer was lush, with tall, dark pines spangled with splotches of yellow light. Halfway up one mountain, she pulled over and put the top down on her car. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face, breathe in the sharp pungent air that had so disrupted her dreams in Peru. Jonathan notwithstanding, these mountains were a part of her. She could not deny their pull, any more than she could alter the color of her eyes or retool her own heart.

  The road coiled down the mountain and began to parallel the Little Tennessee River, a bright ribbon of silver glittering beneath the blue sky. One curve, then a bend in the road, then her pulse quickened as she came to a wide spot in the river where Cherokees had swapped goods for the past five hundred years. Though greenbacks had long since replaced skins and wampum beads as legal tender, the mercantile tradition stretched back to the days when Hernando de Soto had tromped through these mountains seeking gold but winding up instead with a single buffalo skin.

  Lots of history here, she thought, suddenly aware of the thousand silent voices raised at Little Jump Off, her mother’s foremost among them.

  She pulled into the parking lot. In the past year, she had not heard from Jonathan at all. Her postcards and letters had gone unanswered, and though none had been returned marked “addressee unknown,” she did wonder if perhaps he’d married again. Jonathan never seemed to suffer from a lack of female companionship, and she knew Lena Owle had a long-standing case on him. What if she’d driven up here to find him once again involved with someone else? How humiliating would that be? Well, if it happened, it happened, she decided, grabbing her box of Peruvian treasures. She was the one who’d walked away this time. She had nobody to blame but herself.

  Nervously she strode across the dusty parking lot, carrying the box as if it held diamonds. As she climbed up to the old plank porch, she looked around. The only thing that had changed was the mesh playpen that stood in one sunny corner underneath some wind chimes made of river cane. Lily, she thought with a smile. How good it would be to see her. She’d missed her dreadfully, too.

  Finally she could put it off no longer. She took a deep, shaky breath and walked to the screen door. The inside was bathed in shadows, but she heard the sound of music playing, airy Indian flutes chanting a lullaby.

  Softly she knocked on the door. “Jonathan?” she called, realizing that this was the first time in a year she’d called his name with any hope of a reply. “Anybody home?”

  10

  At that same moment, Deke Keener sat at his desk, indigestion glowing like a bright ember in the middle of his chest. It had started the moment he’d stepped out of Mary Crow’s office and with each passing hour it had grown worse. Though he’d swallowed half a bottle of Tums and tried to concentrate on the plans for his new Bear Den development, his mind kept bouncing between Mary Crow and Bethany Daws. Yesterday Bethany had threatened him with tapes; today she’d shown up in Mary Crow’s new office. The odd coincidence wasn’t lost on him—the girl he’d sought to legally protect himself from had sought her own aid from the same attorney. And Mary Crow! As smart as she’d been in high school, Emory Law and being an Atlanta DA had only honed her intelligence further. Yesterday her smoky-quartz eyes had regarded him quite coolly, and it occurred to him, as they chatted, that having Mary Crow as his attorney might be like carrying a pet rattlesnake around in his pocket. With the first false move she’d no doubt sink her fangs into him as fast as she would any felon.

  Trying to bring up a burp, he turned in his chair. Even Houdini, his chameleon, appeared testy. The lizard’s eyes swiveled quickly, and he tested the air with quick darts of his tongue, his skin a splotchy, unsettled green.

  “You in a bad place, too, buddy?” Deke tapped on Houdini’s cage. As the creature scampered to another branch, he realized that the chameleon was mirroring his own mood—tense and edgy, sensing a serious threat yet unsure about how to deal with it. Though he couldn’t imagine what information Houdini’s tongue was sending up to his rather elemental neuron receptors, Deke knew quite well what alarm bells his own brain was ringing. Bethany Daws means to bring you down. Better stop that girl before she stops you!

  Of course, Bethany was not the first to threaten him. There had been many, over the years. Most he’d easily scared into silence, reminding them of how hard their lies would be to prove, and what sorrows accusing a prominent man with well-placed
friends would bring down upon their heads. That usually shut them up pretty fast, but a few had remained stubborn. Those he’d had to deal with differently. It hadn’t been pretty or pleasant, but he’d taken care of them in such a way that they never bothered anybody again.

  Deke shook out a couple of dried flies from a small box of food and dropped them in Houdini’s cage. “So what would you do, buddy? If you were me?”

  Almost faster than Deke could see, Houdini darted forward. He snapped up both flies in two quick gulps, the loose skin beneath his jaw waggling. The act of eating seemed to calm him and a moment later he climbed to a higher branch, and with half-closed eyes, began to ponder life in his oblong glass universe.

  Deke smiled. “That’s just what I thought you’d do.” If Bethany had grown gutsy enough to visit a lawyer, he would have to do whatever it took. She was a beautiful girl and he loved her father like a brother, but she was, ultimately, just another fly in his cage. He would try to reason with her one last time. If that didn’t work, he would take his next cue from Houdini. It was no less a law among humans than reptiles—eat or be eaten; at any cost, survive.

  He turned back to his desk, where Linda had left three new employee files for him to read. He liked to know who was working for him, where and what they had done before. The first was the file of a frame carpenter from Mexico, Manuel Vasquez. The second was a Ukrainian plumber named Bazyli Chornyn. Jesus, Deke thought as he squinted at Chornyn’s flowery, European hand. My crews used to be just hillbilly farmers who’d lost their tobacco allotments. Now they eat tortillas for lunch and knock back shots of vodka at happy hour. Oh well, he decided, as he finished checking Chornyn’s papers. Shit probably runs downhill just as fast in Russia as it does in Pisgah County.

  As he moved on to the next file, a little shiver of electricity shot through him. Earl Martin, Avis’s father. Eagerly he opened the folder and read the questionnaire Martin had filled out. In plain American blackboard printing, Martin had written that he’d graduated high school in Pickens, South Carolina, and thereafter had operated bulldozers and backhoes all over the deep South. He’d never been charged with a felony and though he’d made an erasure when he filled out his Social Security number, he was quite clear about the number of his dependents—three.

  “One for your wife, one for your baby, and one for your pretty little bookworm, Avis.”

  Deke felt a sudden tug of desire in the pit of his stomach. Maybe that’s what he needed. Maybe another encounter with his new Tracy Foster would put his problem with Bethany Daws in a new perspective. Quickly he closed Earl Martin’s file. He went into his private bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and took a scorching hot shower. After toweling himself dry, he donned the adult Keener Kat uniform that hung behind the door. Dressed for his role as coach, he grabbed a smaller, regulation uniform from a closet in his office, and strode toward the lobby, whistling.

  “I’m outta here, Linda,” he told his secretary, who was going through their daily stack of unsolicited employment applications. “I’ll come in early tomorrow, so don’t dock my pay.”

  Linda looked up from her work. “I take it you’ve got a game this afternoon?”

  “At five-thirty. Keener Kats versus Northside Graphics.” He stopped at the door long enough to give her a corny, leering wink. “Be there or be square!”

  He pulled out of the parking lot and headed north. Ten minutes later, he was driving up the recently paved road that led to Tsali Trail test house number one. It stood alone on a freshly sodded acre of red clay bulldozed from a thick pine forest. A modified A-frame with a soaring front window to take advantage of the mountain view, the house was a design of his own making, built to suit his own special needs. If it functioned as well as he hoped, he would put a version of it in all his new developments, and sell them with special consideration to families with young, blond daughters with breasts the size of plums.

  He turned into the drive. Just as he’d figured, the U-Haul was gone. The Martins had labored like beavers for the past several days, solidifying their claim on the sleek new house by filling it with their own battered beds and scratched-up coffee tables. He smiled as he got out of his car. Their behavior was so typical, you could almost set your watch by it. Every family in every test house dumped their crappy shit in as soon as possible, as if doing that might turn the place into their own.

  Holding Avis’s uniform behind him, he walked to the front door and rang the bell. He knew that either she or her mother would answer—work wouldn’t stop on Earl’s job for another hour and the battered old Ford that the Martins had towed up from Greenville sat glowering in the drive. After a moment, the lock turned. He smiled as Darlene Martin opened the door.

  “Mr. Keener.” She blinked, her fingers worrying the stretched-out neck of her orange Clemson sweatshirt. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, no.” He took a step back. God forbid she should think the least little thing was wrong. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just stopped by to see how everything was going. And to give you this.” He held out the Kats uniform.

  “Everything’s fine.” Darlene laughed nervously, embarrassed by her overreaction. “We’ve been working real hard. Avis and Chrissy, too,” she added, as if to assure him that all of the Martins were striving to be good members of the Keener family. She took the uniform and opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”

  Deke entered the house to find that the Martins had crammed a bunch of cheap overstuffed chintz furniture into a living room of sharp angles and soaring lines. A worn green recliner hulked in one corner, pointed at a large-screen TV. He knew that soon toys would be scattered all over the pristine floors, family photographs would mar the spotless walls. The cloying tackiness of it made him want to puke. “This looks great,” he said. “How did the other rooms turn out?”

  Darlene Martin looked at him like a scared rabbit. “We’re still setting up the dining room. We wanted to get the living room and den together first.”

  “Say, would you mind if I took a peek around?” Deke tried to appear as if the idea had just occurred to him. “I always like to see how people use space.”

  “Well, okay,” Darlene Martin said, twisting the wedding ring on her finger. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  She took him on a brief tour of the downstairs. Though the kitchen and den both looked like they’d been furnished from a Sears catalog, circa 1985, Deke made the appropriately approving responses. Family living areas held no interest for him. It was where one particular eleven-year-old would sleep that he wanted to see.

  They returned to the foyer. “How did you sort out the bedrooms?” he asked Darlene, knowing he could ask her anything from the length of her periods to what she and Earl did in bed at night and she would answer in that same slightly quivery voice. He was Earl’s boss. He held their economic well-being in the palm of his hand.

  “Earl and I took the big one, off the kitchen.” She nodded up the staircase. “The kids are on the second floor. Chrissy’s right above us. Avis took the room on the end.”

  “The one with the little balcony?” Deke had hoped that particular architectural detail might have special appeal for little girls.

  Nodding, Darlene gave an apologetic shrug. “She said she was going out there and write mysteries.”

  “Mysteries!” Deke feigned amazement. “Most girls would work on their suntans. That child must have a great imagination!”

  “Oh, she does.” For the first time, Darlene smiled without reservation. “She’s real smart. Reads all the time. I just hope she’ll get out and make a few friends before school starts.”

  He grinned. He had Darlene Martin exactly where he wanted her—scared and eager to please. “It’s funny you should mention that. What I really dropped by for was to remind you about the girls’ softball game this afternoon. If Avis came, she could meet some of the girls on the team.”

  Mrs. Martin’s eyes grew brighter. “What time does the game start?”

 
; “Five-thirty, at Keener sports complex. Avis should get there early, if she wants to meet anybody.”

  Mrs. Martin frowned. Deke knew she was wondering several things—where the Keener sports complex was, if good ol’ Earl was going to make it home in time to take them, and if he didn’t, then if she’d be able to get that clunker of a car to start. God forbid they not show up at a ball game that Mr. Keener had taken the trouble to stop by and invite them to!

  “We—we’ll try to come,” she stammered. “I’m not sure how late Earl will work and I’m afraid I don’t know where anything is yet.”

  This was the opening he’d been angling for. He began barking out rapid-fire directions to the ball field—turn right at Hartsville Highway, go through the four-way stop, then turn down the gravel road just past the Methodist Church. Though they were absolutely correct, when he finished, Darlene Martin looked so confused that he thought she might cry.

  “Does that help?” he asked, knowing with absolute certainty that it did not.

  “I—I guess so.”

  “Look.” He cranked up his most guileless smile. “Since you’re still unpacking boxes, why don’t you let Avis come with me? I don’t usually pick up my players, but heck, y’all haven’t been here but a couple of days. You and Earl can join us after he gets home from work.”

  Darlene Martin twisted her ring again, not knowing what to say. Deke waited, secretly enjoying her squirming on the horns of this most delicate dilemma. He knew everything she’d ever seen, read, or heard told her not to entrust her children to strangers; certainly not to adult men who showed up on her doorstep with neither wife nor child. Yet here he stood, a successful businessman, a pillar of the community, the man who’d plucked her husband from the unemployment line, just wanting to help her little girl make new friends. What to do?