All the Dead Lie Down

by Mary Willis Walker

  He pulls the crumpled pack out of his pocket and holds it up to her. “Fair lady, I endow thee with all my worldly goods.”

  “Crap.” She takes a cigarette and leans down for him to light it. He flicks his lighter, and she drags deep, taking that first heavenly hit down to the center of her body. “I might stop drinking someday,” she says, “but I’ll never give up smoking.”

  That’s when they hear the faint meow.

  “Silky,” Lufkin says.

  Sarah Jane looks across the creek in the direction she thinks the meow came from. If that is Silky, then Tin Can’s around; the two are never separated. They must be hiding. She surveys the opposite bank and then she has a sudden jerk of memory. “Oh, Lufkin. The pipe. That drainage pipe where Tin Can keeps her junk. You remember where that is?”

  He points with his cigarette to a place about twenty yards down. “Around where that big tree is yonder, if I recollect right.”

  She studies the bank. She’s been there once with Tin Can, to help her with the huge bags of cans Tin Can always collects. It was when Tin Can was sick with pneumonia. But that was during the winter and the growth was not so thick then. Now the bank is a wild tangle of cedar and weeds and vines, covering everything. But she remembers the pipe as a huge thing, probably three feet across and made of galvanized metal. It shouldn’t be hard to find. “Come on,” she says, starting in that direction.

  “Nah. Knee’s still resting.” Lufkin closes his eyes again. She knows how stubborn he is, and how lazy, so she leaves him and walks along the creek, smoking and studying the bank for signs of the pipe or just a break in the greenery. She gets to the large tree Lufkin has pointed out and stops. It’s got to be right near here.

  She crosses the creek, stretching her long legs from rock to rock. It is only a few inches deep and she makes it without even getting her feet wet. “Silky,” she calls, feeling silly talking to a cat who isn’t there. “You here, Silky?”

  Another tiny meow comes from the bank, so close it makes Sarah Jane jump. She calls again, “Silky?”

  She listens, but the only sound is the trickle of water and the faint whir of traffic in the world above. She looks back to where Lufkin is sitting. She wants to call him, but she’d have to raise her voice and she’s afraid to. She tosses her cigarette down into the water.

  She steps to the place on the bank she thinks the sound came from and pulls at some vines in an effort to see underneath them. Then she remembers: when she came here with Tin Can, the pipe was hard to get to. They had to climb to get there, but just a little.

  She looks up at the steep bank and sets her bag down on a rock. She hates to be separated from it, but she can’t make it up the bank if she has that extra weight. Grabbing hold of a bush, she hoists herself up the bank, one step, and then another. She starts to pull at the dense shrubs and vines. With the heavy rains everything has gone wild. It is slow work: she is sweating and her feet keep slipping. She can use only one hand to pull things aside because she has to hold on with the other.

  “Silky,” she calls in a voice she tries to make sweet, but it comes out like a threat. “Silky!”

  She hears the meow just as she catches a glimpse of galvanized metal. She scrambles closer and pulls the underbrush away to uncover it.

  There it is—the metal pipe, about three feet across just like she remembered it, the whole opening crammed full of bulging green garbage bags. Yes! She can see the shapes of the cans underneath the stretched plastic. This means Tin Can has not left town; she would never go without selling these; it’s how she earns her money.

  She reaches up and tugs at one of the bags. It doesn’t budge; it’s wedged in tight.

  A series of shrill meows comes at her now, louder, desperate-sounding. “Come on, Silky,” Sarah Jane says. “Come on.”

  She is answered by a yowling.

  Silky is trapped inside the pipe, she realizes. Behind the barricade of bags.

  “Jesus,” she says under her breath. “Poor thing. I’ll get you out of there.”

  She scrambles a little higher up the hill and braces a foot against a cedar trunk so she can use both hands to pull at the bags. It is hard to get a good grip because the bags are so full. She grabs what she can and jerks. The bag is wedged in so tight the plastic starts to tear in her hand. She finds another gripping place and pulls with her whole weight. The bag rips open and unleashes a cascade of cans. They tumble down the bank with a clatter. Now the bag is half empty and she can grasp the torn plastic and jerk it out. She drops it down the bank. Another bag remains in the opening, but half the pipe is cleared now.

  From the dark void something shoots out at her. She shrieks and ducks. She knows it’s Silky, but it shakes her up anyway. The cat lands near her feet. Immediately, he butts his head hard against her ankle. But Sarah Jane doesn’t even look down. She is rooted in place. The stench has hit her. It assaults her, sends her into a fit of sneezing, as though black pepper has been pumped up her nose. It is the worst thing she has ever smelled.

  But she does not look away. She cannot. She has come this far, and she will look.

  She holds her breath and drags the remaining bag out of the opening, letting it bump down the bank. She looks into the pipe. It is dark as midnight inside, but in the faint band of light at the edge of the darkness lies another green garbage bag. And reaching out to her from a ragged hole torn in the plastic is a hand. A small, short-fingered hand, with shreds of bloody flesh remaining on two of the fingers. The palm and the other fingers have been stripped bare, right down to the bone. Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle.

  Just visible at the wrist is some black and white fabric that Sarah Jane knows as well as she knows her own body. The cow jumped over the moon. Slowly she sinks down to a squat and leans forward into the bank so she doesn’t fall backward. The little dog laughed to see such a sight. She rests her forehead against the earth.

  Now she will never get her coat back.

  RING AROUND THE ROSEY

  A POCKET FULL OF POSIES.

  ASHES, ASHES.

  WE ALL FALL DOWN.

  —MOTHER GOOSE

  “Franny says Aunt Harriet called you that week. Did she tell you she was trying to get Daddy to see a shrink? I never knew that.” Molly was trying to keep the whine out of her voice.

  Parnell looked up from the notebook computer that sat on his huge mahogany desk—the sole sign of modern technology in an office that otherwise looked the same as Molly remembered it when she had visited it as a child—dark-paneled and dignified, with rich green carpet and heavy old furniture. “Harriet called me a couple of times that week,” he said. “I think she did mention wanting to get Vern to talk to a psychiatrist.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Sure I did, honey,” Parnell said. “After the funeral. You and I talked a lot, as I recall. When they ruled the death a suicide, I said it was possible since he was feeling so blue toward the end. I told you then. But back in those days”—he looked her hard in the eye—“you had some difficulty listening to what you didn’t want to hear. Especially if it didn’t fit in with your theories.”

  It had happened so long ago, and she had been so upset. They probably had discussed it. And he was right: listening to things she didn’t want to hear was not her strong suit and never had been.

  She turned back to the wall of old photographs she’d been studying. The one that kept drawing her back was of a young Parnell, his hair still full and wavy, standing with Vernon Cates and Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird. The photo was signed on the corner, “To my good friend Parnell Morrisey, Lyndon B. Johnson.” Parnell, his face homely, but animated and unlined, was cradling a beagle puppy in his arms. Her daddy, wearing a Stetson and a red shirt, was looking down at Lady Bird, laughing. She was looking up at him with that light in her eyes women tended to have when Vernon Cates was around.

  “When was this taken, Parnell?” Molly asked.

  He glanced up from his chair to see whic
h photo she was looking at. “Oh, that one out at the LBJ Ranch? Let’s see. It was a barbecue out there in Johnson City, must’ve been around 1963, spring, I think, when he was still Vice-President. That was right before your mother died, Molly.” He turned to Rose, who was sitting in the green leather chair with her needlepoint in her lap. “You weren’t there either, Rosie, were you?” He walked over to take a closer look at the photograph. “Oh, yes, I think both you and Josephine were in the hospital at the time and couldn’t come. You ladies missed a good party.”

  Molly remembered spring of 1963 very well; she’d been nine and it had been clear to her for many months, even though no one had told her, that her mother was dying. Her daddy had been away often and Molly and Aunt Harriet had spent lots of time waiting at the hospital for the next installment of bad news.

  “What were you in the hospital for, Rose?” Molly asked.

  Rose looked up at the photo. “In 1963? Pneumonia, I believe. I was only there for a few days.”

  Molly didn’t remember that, but she probably hadn’t been paying attention. Her own world had been collapsing, and the private lives of the adults around her had seemed an impenetrable mystery. It was amazing how you could live through national disasters—assassinations and wars—and the private disasters of people close to you and yet remember from that time nothing but your own fear and loneliness.

  Parnell was still staring at the photograph. “It’s hard to believe we were ever that young,” he said. Looking at him in profile, Molly noticed that he’d cut himself shaving and there was still a tiny shred of tissue stuck to the dried blood on his jawbone.

  But she had only two hours before her flight to Lubbock and she wanted to get Rose and Parnell’s reaction to what Franny had said. “So,” she said, “when Aunt Harriet told you Daddy was going off the deep end that week, what did you think?” She directed the question to Rose, who was looking down at her needlepoint but not working on it. Ever since Molly could remember, Rose always had some handwork with her; in recent years it was needlepoint that she made into pillows and Christmas stockings to give her friends. Molly and Jo Beth both had numerous flowered pillows Rose had given them over the years.

  “I was out in Lubbock with my mother, Molly, so I was out of the loop,” Rose said. “You probably don’t remember, but she was doing poorly then. She passed away about seven months after your father.” She glanced up at the photograph. “It was a year of losses.”

  Molly looked back at Parnell, who was still studying the photograph. “What did you think, Parnell?”

  “I was worried about him, Molly, but when I called, Vern told me in no uncertain terms to leave him be in his misery. I got the idea he and Franny were having a lovers’ quarrel, so I butted out.”

  “Did he say it was a lovers’ quarrel?”

  Parnell looked thoughtful. “Not in so many words. It’s hard to remember back that far exactly what he said, even though I went over it in my mind a lot after it all happened. I think he said there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do, just to let him be.”

  “Did he talk about any old business in Lubbock?”

  “Not that I recall, sweetheart. Why?”

  “Well, Franny says he got this phone call a week before he died, and it changed everything. He told her it was an old business acquaintance from Lubbock, and he had to take care of it. The next day he broke off their engagement. Did you know that?”

  “I reckon I did, Molly. I know I should of done more.” The old man’s gray eyes were misting up, and the bags under them were dark and puffy, dragging the lower lids down in a mournful, hound-dog way. Molly knew it was unkind to make him rehash this painful memory, and she knew she’d gotten him at a bad time when he had lots of pressures. But there was no good time to discuss this, and, anyway, she couldn’t stop herself.

  Parnell said, “I offered to go out there to the lake, or have him come and stay in town with us awhile, but he said no, absolutely not. I should have gone anyway. We were in session and I was real busy at the time, sponsoring a bill, but I should have gone. If I had, I might have stopped it.” He looked at Rose. “We might have stopped it. Hindsight—” He shook his head. “Well, it’s got perfect twenty-twenty vision, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess,” Molly said. “But, until I talked with Franny, I didn’t realize how really bad off Daddy was that last week. She says the last time she saw him, the night before he disappeared, he was drunk on the deck of the houseboat office, and he told her to get off his property. Can you believe that? To get off his property!”

  “He was in a bad way,” Parnell said softly, “not himself.”

  “Yeah. I wish I knew why.”

  “This wasn’t Vern’s first bout with depression, Molly. You know that. And there doesn’t really need to be a reason.”

  “But this was so extreme.”

  “It was that. Maybe the Quinlans’ detective came up with something. What’s his name again?”

  “Palmer. Julian K. Palmer. Palmer Investigations.”

  He looked down at his wife. “Rosie, maybe that was the fella came to see us a few years after Vern died. Said he was working for some oilmen’s association. Asked questions about Vern. Remember that?”

  Rose thought about it for a few seconds. “I believe he was from Lubbock, but I can’t remember if that was the name. I can’t seem to remember anything lately.” She gave a little laugh of apology, as if to acknowledge that she was complaining and that was something she didn’t believe in doing. Like Aunt Harriet, Rose had always subscribed to the Southern-woman credo of putting the best face on everything. She rarely mentioned any of her numerous health problems, especially her arthritis, even though it was clear she had a great deal of pain from it.

  Molly noticed that Rose had a yellowish spot on the front of her white silk blouse. It was the first time she had ever seen her other than meticulously dressed and groomed. Here were these two old people, neither of them in good health, and she was harassing them with painful history, visiting her problems on them just as she had always done. It was probably way past time for a changing of the guard here, for her to start doing the caretaking. But she was so accustomed to the old pattern: she was the willful, obsessed orphan child and they were the responsible adults who always counseled moderation, but forgave her inevitable excesses.

  “I can’t remember either, Rosie.” Parnell looked at Molly and shrugged. “So Frank Quinlan is trying to atone for his father’s sins, I reckon. Frank is one of the better Quinlans. Is he making Franny happy?”

  The question surprised her. “Yes. Yes, I think so. Do you know him pretty well?”

  “No. Back when Vern was ferreting out the white oil affair, old Jasper sent Frank to see me. Tried to get me to call Vern off. Then a couple of times over the years he’s asked for help on oil issues—all reasonable constituent requests. I’ve tried to accommodate him. But I’ve never gotten to know him well.”

  “Of course,” Molly said, raising an eyebrow at him, “Quinlan Oil contributes to your campaigns.”

  “Handsomely,” Parnell said. “If I refused contributions from every company that had ever done something shady, I’d have an empty coffer, Miss Molly.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you think about him, Molly? Why’s he doing this now?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t come up with any motive for what he did yesterday except what he says—that he wants to help me put this to rest because of his son’s suicide.”

  Parnell rubbed his jaw, pulling off the shred of tissue in the process. The cut began to ooze blood again. Parnell used the back of his hand to blot at it. “Molly, may an old man give some advice?”

  “Since when have you asked permission?”

  “Well, this is your touchy area. I don’t want you going all ballistic on me.”

  “You’re going to tell me not to waste time on this.”

  “Ah.” He managed a smile. “I hate being so predictable. But I can’t stand by
and not say this. If I know anything in this world, it’s that Vern would want you to live your life, honey, not dig into this old can of worms again. I sure hope you aren’t getting all het up again.”

  “Het up?” She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see how annoyed she was getting. “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. I thought I discerned the signs of heavy breathing in you. I must have been wrong.”

  “Frank Quinlan offered to let me see the file,” she snapped. “I can’t imagine anyone turning that down.”

  “Now don’t get your feathers all ruffled. Just hear me out. You’re in the middle of a story—two stories. That’s your work and you’re good at it. You have a life here. You’re just going to drop everything and go to Lubbock to bury yourself in ancient history? Let it go. We all have some uncertainties to live with.”

  “Everyone tells me that. Grady and Jo Beth and you. And the other day a naked bag lady in the bathroom told me the same thing.” She looked at Rose, who was running her fingers over the half-finished pansies and stars of her needlepoint design. “You’re being awfully quiet, Rose. Don’t you want to join the chorus?”

  “I know better.” Rose’s large dark eyes took on the misty, faraway look she got when talking about the past. “I remember when you were just a little thing, everybody telling you not to do something ensured that you would go right out and do it. Remember the bull in the east pasture? Old Jocko?”

  Instinctively Molly’s hand found the place on her left thigh and fingered it through the light gabardine of her slacks—a five-inch raised scar where old Jocko had hooked her. It had been a Cates family law that no one ever went into that pasture when Jocko was there. But, as a daredevil eleven-year-old, armored with the invulnerability of youth, Molly had galloped her horse into the pasture with the intention of tapping Jocko with a stick and racing out. She’d just read a story about how the Comanches proved their courage by counting coup on their enemies, and the idea had electrified her. She craved the excitement and was certain her skill and luck would keep them out of trouble. But Jocko had turned and charged like a lightning bolt, nearly disemboweling the horse and goring Molly’s leg to the bone, tossing her over his head like a rag doll.