Voices in the Dark

by Andrew Coburn

  Dorothea Farnham, whose husband was a selectman, would have no truck with beggars and threatened him with a bone knitting needle when he failed to move fast enough from the back step. Then she cursed him roundly, which was a mistake. A while later, stepping out the front door, she saw something on the porch that heated her face. It approximated shit and, on closer inspection, was exactly that.

  Sergeant Avery responded to her incensed call and cruised the neighborhood in one of the town’s two marked police cars. The sergeant came up dry, but early that evening, five miles away, a man fitting the description was seen bathing his feet in Paget’s Pond, which was conservation property, no swimming allowed.

  At the selectmen’s meeting, second Monday of the month, Orville Farnham told the board that a person of disreputable ilk, no apparent abode or income, in other words a bum, was infecting the town. A motion was made, seconded, and Farnham brought his gavel down on a unanimous vote for the police chief to handle the matter forthwith. Chief Morgan, not present, got the message in the morning.

  In his investigation, which carried through the week, the chief learned that the fellow had been here, there, and everywhere, including the Heights, where he had been seen plucking flowers. Everett Drinkwater, the funeral director, glimpsed him reading stones in the cemetery, and birders with binoculars spotted him in purple loosestrife behind Wenson’s Ice Cream Stand on Fieldstone Road. Tish Hopkins, an elderly widow with a farm farther up Fieldstone, found him sleeping with her hens, rousted him with a pitchfork, and offered him a meal for an hour’s work, which he declined. She fed him anyway.

  Toward the end of the week the man was sighted several times on rural roads near the West Newbury line, which gave the chief a fair idea where he was taking shelter. “I’d better come with you,” said Sergeant Avery, who was off the clock. It was late afternoon, the heat high, with two fans whirring in the station. The chief said, “He’s not that big a deal.”

  The chief’s old car, unmarked except for the faded town seal on each side, ran rough. He rode it around the green, turned right onto Pleasant Street, and drove with the sun in his eyes until he reached County Road, a long and lonely stretch through pinewood, with only occasional frame houses to break the view. The sky was irreproachably blue.

  A mile from the West Newbury line he slowed at the sight of a weathered post that had once supported a mailbox and angled onto a dirt road that crept into the woods and came abruptly to a clearing. A battered pickup smeared with pine needles squatted on four flat tires. Nearby, the rusted handlebars of a bicycle protruded from weeds like the horns of a slain buck. To the left was a shack of a house with a ruined front step and torn window screens. The persons who had lived in it, Dogpatch types, a father and son, were dead, and another son, who lived in Florida, had forsaken it. The chief slipped out of the car.

  Robins sang, jays made noises. Wild raspberry canes, thick with thorns, sprang at him. He ambled toward the house, his eyes on the windows. The door hung loose. Avoiding the rain-rotted step, he edged directly into a kitchen inundated with the hot and gamey smell of animals. Skunks had long had their way with the rubbish, and raccoons with half-human hands had ransacked the cupboards. Beneath the stained sink was the murk of a rat hole. The chief stood still, breathing soundlessly, aware that someone was in the shadows of the next room. He squared himself.

  “Come out of there,” he said forcefully. “I’m a policeman.”

  He waited, listening to the mad scampering of squirrels on the roof, at least two, maybe three. A dense spiderweb near the ceiling flaunted the remains of moths. From the other room came a silence not of emptiness but of indifference.

  “Come out or I’ll shoot.”

  A voice sounded. “You don’t have a gun.”

  “I’ll get one.”

  “What kind?”

  “Never mind what kind!”

  A floorboard creaked, and a man emerged, his hair matted and his whiskers like needles. The chief drew back from the reek of him, humid like fruit past its time, the juices fermenting.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The man was smiling. “Your prisoner.”

  • • •

  Regina Smith spent the afternoon playing golf at the Bensington Country Club with Phoebe Yarbrough, Anne Lapierre, and Beverly Gunner, but she did not leave with them. She went into the clubhouse to make a phone call, glimpsed Harley Bodine sitting alone, and, with a surge of compassion, joined him at his table. She had not seen him since his son’s funeral.

  “It’s not something you can get over,” he said. He was drinking a martini. A smiling waitress brought her white wine. They were the sole patrons.

  “In time you will,” she said. “Not entirely, but enough to go on.”

  He looked unconvinced, wary, and she, uncharacteristically, reached out to touch his forearm. Actually she had never liked him, too ambiguous, too furtive, but now she was dealing with someone who had lost a child, which changed the rules. He was costumed for golf, but she knew he had not been on the green.

  “Where’s Kate?” she asked.

  He shrugged, ill at ease with her presence. He did not look at her directly. A certain hauteur on her part had always kept him at a distance, but now, for the moment, she wished to draw him closer.

  “How’s she taking it, Harley?”

  “He wasn’t her son.”

  “But she loved him, I’m sure.”

  A seal broke, and his face altered. “Things haven’t been good between us, you probably know that.”

  She had suspected it. Kate Bodine was too vital, too spontaneous for him, perhaps even too young, more in attitudes than in years. “I had no idea,” she said.

  He brought out a cigarette, which surprised her. She had not known it to be one of his vices. “Do you mind?”

  Actually she did. She detested the smoke and the smell. “No, go ahead.”

  He lit up and said, “I think she’s seeing someone.”

  She was somewhat taken aback because people, particularly men, did not confide in her about such matters. Her aloofness, along with her impeccable looks, tended to have a belittling effect on the cares and concerns of others. She tilted the wineglass and sipped.

  “I won’t tell you who,” he said. “It’s too ironic.”

  She wanted to know, though she despised details, for there was decorum to maintain, dignity to uphold. She reasoned that it must be someone unlikely, and for a stunning instant she wondered about her own husband, though that was absurd.

  Bodine flicked an ash. “I think I know where they meet.” His fingers fretted a napkin. “I could be wrong. It may be nothing, but I can’t count on it. Right now I can’t count on anything.”

  He was, poor man, being hit with too much too fast, and she gazed at his lowered head with interest. His brownish hair had a chalk part. His ears were prominent. Something about the shape of the whole head suggested the asceticism and celibacy of a monk from another century.

  “I’m not up to another loss,” he said.

  He needed propping up, as Ira occasionally did, as all men do, though loath to admit it. The wine was not to her liking, and she stopped sipping it. “Everybody’s life,” she said, “has cracks. The strong fill them, the weak fall through.”

  “Now you sound like Gunner.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  His face loosening, he met her stare. “What I told you about Kate, I wouldn’t want that to get around.”

  “I don’t reveal confidences,” she said, her tone chastising him. The smoke bothered her, and she was glad he was finally stubbing out the cigarette, a nasty thing. She and Ira had never had the habit, unlike her first husband.

  “When Glen was killed, it was as if someone had raised a hammer over my head,” Bodine said suddenly, his face opening. “And I feel it’s still there, ready to come down.”

  “The loss of someone we love can do bad things to us,” she said with a clear memory of the boy’s mother, pretty but worn, done in
by the tragedy. She had met the first Mrs. Bodine just that once, at the wake, a funeral home in Brookline. Bodine had stood beside her as if still married to her while Kate had tried to make herself inconspicuous, no easy task for someone of telegenic bearing.

  “I was supposed to see him and didn’t. It was his birthday. That’s a guilt I’ll take to the grave,” he said, and she imagined he would, no way to mitigate the regret, no way to bring back the day. “I’ll never know if he stumbled or was pushed. I don’t want to believe he jumped.”

  “Jumped?” That surprised her. The boy had been a classmate of her stepson’s at Phillips, top of his class, his heart set on Harvard, the medical school. “I don’t think he would have done that, Harley.”

  “So much was going against him,” he replied distractedly.

  “I thought he was in remission.”

  “He was coming out of it.” He sighed. “His mother says he wouldn’t have taken his life, but I can’t be sure.”

  Regina stayed silent, for he seemed to have fallen into a tolerable mood of impassivity he did not want broken. She let her gaze wander over vacant tables. The waitress, who wore her hair high, a take-off of tarnished gold, was joking quietly with the bartender.

  “Good of you to listen to me,” Bodine said abruptly, breaking his own spell. “I usually keep things to myself.”

  With concern, as if somehow she were now responsible for him, she watched him finish off his martini. “You’re not going to have another, are you?”

  “I know when to quit,” he said, and she more or less believed him. Anxiety leaped into his eyes when she glanced at her watch.

  “I really must,” she said and rose with a graceful swing and the certainty that even in sporty clothes she carried an imperious and peremptory air, as if others came alive only when she arrived and faded once she left.

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  She peered down at him. “What is it, Harley?”

  “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.” Tension worked its way across his face, like a wire. “Am I asking too much?”

  “Probably.”

  “There’s no logic to depression. It can eat anything.”

  “Only if you let it.” The dark of her eyes and the sullen force of her smile challenged him. The waitress was heading toward them. “Check, please,” she said, and the waitress turned back. “When’s the last time you’ve been to Burger King, Harley?”

  “I never have.”

  “Then it’ll be a first for each of us,” she said.

  • • •

  Chief Morgan, who did not want the man beside him, stuck him in the back, tilted the rearview to keep an eye on him, and with all the windows open ran the car out onto County Road. The sunlight of early evening tore through the pines. Needles blazed. Docile enough, the man said, “You arresting me?”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” the chief said. “You smell.”

  “You arresting me for that?”

  “The charge is vagrancy.”

  “I have money.” The fellow pulled out a crumpled bill from a pocket in his pants. It looked like a ten, but it might have been a one.

  “There’s another charge,” the chief said, his eyes sweeping from the mirror to the road. “Defecating on private property. A resident’s porch.”

  “I deny it. Categorically. Do you have a witness?”

  The chief pressed on the gas. A few minutes later he rounded the green, cruised past the library and the Blue Bonnet restaurant, and made his way into the lot behind the town hall. He parked in a reserved space a few feet from the police sign that sprang over a side door of the building. Looking into the mirror, he said, “Get out.”

  The man said, “Shouldn’t I be manacled?”

  “If you run, I’ll shoot you.”

  “I haven’t seen the gun yet.”

  The chief took him into the cramped quarters of the station but did not get far. Meg O’Brien, the civilian dispatcher who worked long hours, some unpaid, and exerted authority beyond her duties, leapt up from her desk. Her pony teeth erupted from a narrow face. “You can’t bring him in here!”

  “I have to put him somewhere, Meg.”

  “Then clean him up first, for God’s sake. He reeks.”

  The man smiled through his whiskers. “I’ve already been told that.”

  Swiping at her hair, the color gone from it, she stepped from the desk. “What’s his name?”

  “He says it’s Dudley. Nothing more. Just Dudley.”

  “Does he have a wallet?”

  “No wallet. Meg, let me handle this.”

  “If you keep him here, you’ll have to feed him.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’m hungry,” Dudley said.

  “Clean him up first, Jim. Please!”

  The chief took him out, walked him through the lot, guided him through a gap in the back hedge, and marched him across a narrow street to the fire barn. Chub Tuttle, a volunteer, and Zach Unger, a permanent, looked up from their card game and gawked at Dudley. The chief said, “I wonder if you boys could give me a hand.”

  The two glanced at each other. Chub, whose regular work was roofing and carpentry, had a plump face boiled by the sun. Zach’s was grained like walnut. Zach scratched his head.

  “Don’t let me put you out,” the chief said.

  Chub took off his shoes and put on black rubber boots, in which his feet slopped. Zach unwound the garden hose used to wash down the pumper, which usually got a wash whether it needed it or not. Dudley said, “I’m not going to do this.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” the chief replied, and presently a filthy jacket with crested buttons and split seams fell to the concrete floor. The chief kicked at it, read the label, and muttered, “Brooks Brothers, for Christ’s sake.” The shirt came off like skin and then, reluctantly, everything else. The socks were stiff at the toes and heels.

  “I don’t much care for this,” Dudley protested. “I was molested once at a boys’ camp.”

  “No one’s going to bother you,” the chief assured him and flipped him a bar of Ivory Chub had provided. Zach activated the nozzle of the hose. When the water hit him, he shrieked, for it was cold. Then he began to like it. “Use the soap,” the chief commanded. “Scrub it on!”

  The water ran rich. Chub, swashing through it, said, “Ain’t much of a man, is he?”

  “Hell, he’s got more than you,” Zach said, increasing the spray.

  “How do you know what I got?”

  “Your wife told me.”

  “You shut your mouth!”

  Crouching, the chief picked through the discarded clothes at arm’s length. Nothing in the pockets except the bill Dudley had brandished, a one, not a ten. The shoes, which were English leather, were ruined.

  “He’s pissing!” Chub shouted.

  “Everybody pisses taking a shower,” Zach said.

  Straightening, the chief waited awhile and then said, “That’s enough. Get him a towel.” He looked behind him. “He’ll need something to wear. Anything hanging around?”

  Twenty minutes later, hollow jaws stark from a shave with a disposable razor, Dudley was making himself at home in a flannel shirt too big for him and jeans broken at the knees. His belongings, including his shoes, had been shoveled into a barrel. Zach had hosed away the dirty water into a drain, and Chub, flopping in his boots, was swabbing the remains.

  “I owe you fellas,” the chief said.

  He took his charge out of the firehouse. The air was humid, the heat of the day still plugged into it, though the sun was setting fast. Dudley, barefoot, walked gingerly. “Where’s my dollar?” he asked, and the chief, shortening his stride, gave it to him.

  “That won’t get you far, will it?”

  Cutting through the hedge, Dudley stumbled, recovered, and smiled as if immune to injury. Padding through the lot, his eye out for pebbles, he rolled his sleeves to the elbows and gave a hitch to his pants
. When they entered the station, Meg O’Brien looked up and said, “Is that the same creature?”

  “I’m not decent,” Dudley declared. “I’m not wearing underwear.”

  “You’re not wearing shoes either,” she said, pushing her chair back. She had long feet and, in the bottom drawer of her desk, a pair of old sneakers she sometimes wore for comfort. She hauled them out. “They might fit him.” Her gaze remained critical. “He could use a haircut.”

  “I think I’ve done enough,” the chief said.

  “You lock him up, you’d better consider something. He might hang himself.”

  “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Dudley?”

  Dudley was crouched. He had put on the sneakers, a fair enough fit, and was tying the laces. “I might,” he said. “I might do anything.”

  “Look at that,” Meg said. “He’s got dimples when he smiles.”

  “If he answers a few questions, I might go easy on him,” the chief said. “If he gives me facts instead of fairy tales, I might even let him go.”

  Meg said, “That would save us all a lot of trouble.”

  “I want to eat first,” Dudley said, rising.

  “You want too much,” the chief said and took him by the arm, not to the cell, where cleaning supplies were stored, but into his office, where he activated a ceiling fan. Then he seated Dudley on a hard chair and himself behind his desk, atop which papers were fluttering. He anchored them with a coffee mug and a pencil holder. “All right, what brought you to Bensington?”

  “Breezes,” said Dudley.

  “Give me a straight answer.”

  Dudley pressed his lips in rigid concentration, then said, “I must’ve been on a toot.”

  “Where’d you get those clothes you had on?”

  “Stole them off a line.”

  “That’s a criminal offense. Another charge against you. That ring you’re wearing, did you steal that too?”

  “Better throw the book at me,” Dudley said with a smile that brought back the dimples. “When do I eat?”

  The chief dropped back in his chair, an old leather-cushioned rotary that grated on its wheels. “Dudley your first name or your last?”