“Doc.”
Henderson looked up to see Jerry Metger standing over him, his body pressed against the side of the booth.
“Mind if I join you?” the cop asked.
“Goddamnit, I mind. What the hell is this, Jerry? You following me or something?”
Metger slid into the booth, the seat facing Henderson. He had a beer in one hand and an infuriating smile on his face.
“I saw you coming in here. I figured you might want some company, Miles.”
“Company is what I don’t want.” Henderson drank from his glass. He could feel the gin high coming on, like a reliable locomotive that followed its timetable religiously. He could feel it rush along the slick railroad inside his head, transporting him to a pleasing destination.
Metger said, “I went out to that house yesterday.”
“What house would that be, Jerry?”
Metger ignored this question. “The tenants seem like nice people—”
“You want a suggestion? Dig a big hole, Jerry. Drop this thing inside it. Then when you’ve done that, jump in yourself. I went through all this with you yesterday. It’s a dead issue. Finished. I can’t make it any clearer than that.”
Metger sipped his beer. “I’ve been thinking.”
Henderson shut his eyes and sighed. The train was making an unscheduled stop, and he didn’t like that.
“The Ackerleys. I keep thinking about the Ackerleys,” Metger said.
“Ancient history.”
“I was twenty-one years old at the time,” Metger said. “Twenty-one and highly impressionable. It was the first time in my whole life I ever saw a dead body. That particular dead body was a startling introduction to violent death. It stuck in my mind. Over the years, it comes back to me.” Metger paused. “And every now and then I think about it. You know how it is.”
“Leave me alone,” Henderson said.
“There was something very wrong about that corpse. Something very wrong, Miles. And you know what that was, don’t you? You know and I know. The Ackerleys, wherever they are, also know.” Metger’s expression was now one of introspection and doubt. “I keep coming back to that coroner’s inquest, Miles. That’s what bothers me all over again. Your report on the child’s suicide. Nowhere in that report did you mention the child’s … condition. I wonder about that.”
Miles Henderson, in the manner of a man stalked by troublesome ghosts, reached for his drink. “You’re sick. You need a long vacation, boy. If I was still in the business, I’d make you out a prescription for sedatives.”
Metger took out a cigarette but didn’t light it. He surveyed it in the manner of someone trying to kick the habit, rolling it back and forth in the palm of his hand. “I’m not sick, Doc. Just a man who’s puzzled and who finds the puzzle coming back at him more often than he wants it or needs it—”
“Lemme ask you this, Jerry. Why did you go on down to that house yesterday? What exactly are you afraid of?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Damn right you’re not sure! You know what your problem is, boy? You’re one of those guys in love with mysteries. You lie awake nights dreaming about conspiracies. You’re like a kid who can’t help but pick at a scab, Jerry. You worry it until it opens and starts bleeding all over again. You know what the sane thing is to do. Cover the goddamn thing with a Band-Aid and forget it.”
“Forget Anthea Ackerley?”
“Forget what you have to.” Henderson could feel his heart pumping in the center of his chest. “Quit scrounging around looking for old gossip or superstitious nonsense—”
“What’s superstition got to do with it?” Metger asked, leaning across the table.
“Forget, boy. Just forget.” Henderson got up. His head was swirling; his reliable old locomotive had been sidetracked, shunted into some bleak railroad yard where it lay motionless.
“I asked you a question, Miles,” Metger said. There was an edge to his voice all at once. “Why the hell are you avoiding an answer? What’s superstition got to do with it?”
“I answered, goddamnit. You chose not to hear.”
Miles Henderson went toward the door.
Sunlight came through high glass windows and struck his face; for a brief moment he felt he was being exposed beneath a hot spotlight. He went out into the street and the door swung shut behind him.
He didn’t want to go home and sit under the scrutiny of Henrietta’s sharp little eyes. There was another bar nearby where perhaps he could find a little peace. He passed the crowds of tourists who sat on the terraces of restaurants or meandered in and out of the gift boutiques as they searched for some overpriced souvenirs of Carnarvon. What he reached the Hawk—which looked more like an art gallery than a tavern—he went inside.
Metger and his idiotic persistence. Why couldn’t he leave everything alone? Florence Hann and her wild talk. She was insane, of course. Deranged by an old grief.
He pushed toward the bar and laid some crumpled notes on the counter. When his drink came he carried it through the throng of customers to a quiet corner of the room where he stood with his back to the wall.
Bobby Hann.
Anthea Ackerley.
How many others down the years?
16
Denny hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left the house. Louise, who had discovered a fundamental truth of motherhood—survival meant having to tune out your child every now and then—listened to him on a selective basis. She gleaned enough to know that Dennis was anxious for her to like the Summers as much as he did. He couldn’t stop talking about how he and Dick were going to work on the old pickup and get it running, or how Dick knew the ancient secret recipe for a special fishing bait guaranteed to land a whopper every time you cast your line, or how marvelous a cook Charlotte was. What was it? she wondered. What was it that had made Dennis like the old folks so much? Maybe it was something simple, such as that they were surrogate grandparents—God knows, Denny’s real grandparents weren’t very good at the job. They watched the boy as if they just knew he was going to leave indelible fingerprints on their most treasured possessions. They criticized him every opportunity they could get, with the result that Denny was always sullen and defensive around them. Maybe the Summers were diametrically different; maybe they didn’t care about the smudges of childhood. On some other level perhaps they liked Denny because he was company, somebody different for them to fuss over.
“I wish Dad had come,” Denny said suddenly.
Louise paused to remove a burr from inside her sneaker. “He said he wasn’t feeling too good. He didn’t look all that good either, did he?”
Dennis was silent for a moment. “Since we came up here, he’s hardly said a word to me.”
“Aren’t you being a little hard on him, Denny?”
“It’s true, though.”
“Give him a little time,” Louise said. She was surprised at the tone in the boy’s voice. There was a hurt behind the words. “Look, you know he’s pretty tired, he just needs time to get used to having no pressures on him—”
“He’s drinking too much,” Dennis said.
“He isn’t—”
“Why are you defending him, Mom?”
“I am not defending him, Dennis—”
“You are too.”
Louise hesitated. “Be patient with him—”
“You always talk about him like he’s sick. Is he? Is he sick, Mom?”
Louise smiled. “He’s not sick at all, Denny. The thing is, physicians are often under a whole lot of stress. People don’t really realize. Your father … well, he’s like any other physician. The pressures … the important decisions he’s got to make every day that affect people’s lives.” She faltered a moment. She realized the boy was right—she was defending Max. “When you remove a man like your father from all that pressure, Denny, there’s a period of adjustment. He’s got to learn how to relax, and that’s hard for somebody like him. He’ll be all right.”
Dennis,
who thought this was so much bull, didn’t say anything. He had never actually known his father to be quite so withdrawn before. Sometimes he looked so far away, so distant, he was positively ghostly. Just the same, he wished Max had come with them. He kicked at some dry pine needles underfoot. Without his father, the family felt unfinished, incomplete. He took a piece of fudge from his jeans, picked off some lint, popped the candy into his mouth, and chewed.
“He’ll come next time. We’ll make him come,” Louise said. She looked at her son and saw hidden depths and fragile surfaces; you had to be careful how you walked. Was Max conscious of how little time he’d spent with his son since they’d come up here? She supposed not. She’d wait a couple of days and if the situation hadn’t changed, she’d drop some unmistakable hints.
The trees ahead yielded to a sudden clearing. Louise stopped.
The small log house that appeared in front of her was literally besieged by trash; it had the look of a dwelling plopped down in the center of a dump. For a moment she didn’t move. There was no much junk strewn around the clearing that she couldn’t take it all in at once. A whirlwind might have come this way, gathering ruined items from all over the country and simply dropping them in this spot.
“This is it,” Dennis said. “Terrific, huh?”
Louise nodded her head slowly.
“They don’t keep the place too tidy,” the boy remarked.
Too tidy. Louise had seen neater places condemned by health inspectors. “What do they want with all this junk?” she asked.
Dennis said, “It’s only junk to you. It might mean something more to somebody else.”
She gazed beyond the great collection of trash toward the house itself. Flowerpots on a broken porch, dead plants, wilted leaves. The impression she got was of lifelessness, strangulation, things being choked to death amid all the junk. Flowers dying in dry soil and plants choked amid coils of chicken wire and discarded piles of cedar roofing and rolls of fluffy insulation material. Dennis would see all this as a kind of wonderland, she thought. A big playground.
“There’s the pickup,” he said. “See it?”
Louise gazed at a very old Dodge truck, which lay beyond a pile of tires. The windshield was broken and the hood upraised; all four tires were flat. She thought, If that truck were a person, it would be terminally ill. “And you’re going to get it running?”
“Yeah. Dick and me.”
“You’ve got your work cut out, kid.”
“Dick’s a wizard,” Dennis remarked. “He knows about tools and engines. He told me he could’ve repaired it years ago, but he was waiting for a helper to come along.”
Louise shielded her eyes against a sudden stab of pale sunlight and she looked in the direction of the house.
Charlotte and Dick appeared on the porch. At the same time the air was filled with the sweet scent of whatever was baking in Charlotte’s oven. It floated out through the open door, almost tangible in its intensity.
“Welcome,” Dick said, with genuine warmth.
“Glad you dropped over,” Charlotte added, running her thick fingers through the folds of her apron.
Louise went up the steps to the porch.
Charlotte said, “Oh, I couldn’t say how long we’ve had that old thing. Years, I guess. Maybe Dick would know.”
Dick Summer shrugged. “I can’t rightly recall.”
Louise turned the copper chafing dish over in her hands. She knew from a course she’d taken once in antiques that it was a dish by Gustav Stickley dating from the turn of the century, a reasonably valuable item. “It’s very beautiful,” she said. She smiled at the Summers and wiped dust from her fingertips as she set the dish down on a shelf.
“And so is this.” She reached out to touch a pewter candelabra that was probably close to a hundred and fifty years old. A few strands of dried-out spiderweb came away in her fingers.
“Just old things,” Charlotte said, laughing quietly. “Almost as old as us, I daresay.”
“You have so many lovely things,” Louise said. What she wanted to say was, It’s a goddamn shame you’re letting them rot like this, but the whole place was filled with old treasures and each one was covered with dust or rusted or blackened by the passage of time. It was sad to see so many desirable pieces in such a condition.
A yellowing mother-of-pearl pitcher that had to be a hundred years old. A lovely cameo glass vase by Émile Gallé, its surface encrusted with old dust. A tarnished silver Athenic vase, which had been designed—if Louise remembered correctly—by William Codman. There was a Tiffany silver serving dish, more than a hundred years old, that had been allowed to grow dull and lackluster over the years.
But these items reflected the condition of the rest of the house. Gorgeous furniture—a large oak armoire, a beautiful mahogany rolltop desk, a splendid walnut dining table—sat dull and cracked and lifeless. The explanation for the neglect was obvious—the Summers didn’t have the energy to keep the place up.
“There are some wonderful things here,” Louise said.
Charlotte, who wore bright green barrettes in her hair today, smiled. “We’re so familiar with all these doodads, I suppose we don’t really notice them. Do we, Dick?”
Dick Summer shook his head. “Guess we don’t.”
Louise paused at the foot of a stairway. Presumably there was a bedroom up there. She glanced upward at the murky shadows, and then she looked at the Summers again. They were watching her as she examined things, their bright little eyes following her around. Dennis, too, was observing her from the doorway.
“Would you like something? Tea, perhaps?” Charlotte asked.
Louise shook her head, smiled politely, stared through the window across the junk in the clearing. She saw a squirrel vanish over a pile of logs.
“Lemonade,” Charlotte said. “I think we have …” The old woman looked around the kitchen, her expression one of confusion. She started to move toward the refrigerator, then she stopped by the stove, an enormous Acme Royal with ornate carvings.
“It’s okay,” Louise said. “Really. I don’t want anything. I only wanted to see your home, say hello. What are you baking in there, Charlotte?”
“Something for Dennis,” the old woman said.
“Lucky kid. It smells magnificent.”
“Special cookies,” Charlotte said. “Special boy. Special cookies.”
Louise glanced at her son. He was sitting at the table now with a big grin on his face. Dick Summer was standing behind him, one old shiny hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“He’s special all right,” Louise said.
Charlotte nodded her head in agreement, then moved to stand at her husband’s side. All three of them—Dennis and the old couple—might have been taking up positions for a group photograph, a composition of line and shadow, youth and old age, extremes. For an instant Louise felt a strange awkwardness, as if she were being excluded from something. The way the three people faced her—it was like a club to which she didn’t have membership.
Dick said, “Well, young man. What you want to do? Start right in on fixing the truck? Or you want to brew up a batch of that wonder bait I promised you?”
“Let’s make the bait,” Dennis said eagerly.
Louise understood—she was supposed to leave the boy here. He was going to spend the rest of the day with the Summers. Somehow this decision, which had been made without consulting her, took her by surprise. She’d imagined a quick visit, a gesture of politeness, and then she’d go back home with Dennis. But he obviously wanted to stay. New friends, she thought. Unlikely new friends. And he enjoys them.
“Are you sure he’s no problem?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want him to stay if he’s going to get in your way or anything.”
“No problem,” Dick said.
“He’s welcome here,” Charlotte added. “Besides, maybe you want to spend some time alone with your husband.”
Louise looked at the old woman; there was a vaguely conspiratorial smile
on the creased face. One woman to another. Go home, honey, spend a little time with your man. We’ll take the kid off your hands.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Louise said.
“Sure,” Dick said.
Louise moved toward the door, stepped out onto the porch. She turned and stared back inside the shadows of the house. Dennis was smiling at her. She said, “Be back before dark.”
“We’ll see to that,” Charlotte answered.
Louise waved. She went down the porch steps slowly, then paused at the bottom and looked out across the yard.
A black crow watched her from a heap of old tires.
From inside the house she could hear the faint sound of Dick Summer’s voice, interrupted now and again by Dennis asking a question. The old man seemed to be reciting a list of ingredients.
A clove of crushed garlic.
A half cup of moist dough.
Two tablespoons chopped parsley.
A teaspoon of rancid cat food.
Rancid cat food. God.
She moved toward the trees, then stopped and turned to gaze back at the house.
She couldn’t hear Dick Summer’s voice anymore. All around her the landscape was filled with silence.
17
There was no hospital in the town of Carnarvon. Instead, there was a small facility, the Carnarvon Medical Center, which was located on the edge of town, tucked away from view behind a stand of tall pines, as if to keep the place concealed from tourists. The center, staffed by two physicians, one part-time, and three nurses, had four beds but no operating facilities.
Jerry Metger parked his car in the parking lot of the center, opening the passenger door for Nora. She had an appointment for her regular checkup with the part-time man, an Englishman by the name of Dr. Scoursby.
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