A Carnivore's Inquiry

by Sabina Murray

  “Dad, I’m all right. Really I am.”

  “I had my secretary look into the local Portland papers.”

  “Why?”

  “Who is John Nelson?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He died recently, in Maine.”

  “John Nelson? I swear I’ve never met him.”

  “Katherine, don’t lie to me.”

  “John Nelson.”

  “He was from New Mexico.”

  “Oh, you mean Johnny. His last name was Nelson?” I’d always thought it had to be something like Runningdeer or Blackwater. I took the phone to the window and looked out at the deluge. “He drowned face down in a puddle. It was awful, but I’m all right now. I’m living with my boyfriend. He’s a musician. We’re very happy.” I saw Arthur coming out of the woods. He had Kevin with him and was looking up at the house.

  “I think maybe I should come visit.”

  “No.” I said. “Out of the question.”

  “Katherine, we need to talk.”

  “No. Leave me alone. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Be reasonable.”

  “Reasonable? I don’t give a fuck about ‘reasonable.’ I’m all grown up. I don’t need you. I have my own money. I don’t think you’re really concerned about me and I don’t know why you’re calling.”

  “I think you know why I’m calling.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m hanging up now.”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  And I hung up.

  Arthur came in with the dog, who seemed very happy to have been rescued. He ran up to me and put his muddy paws all over my jeans. I patted his head.

  “Katherine,” said Arthur, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fucking fantastic.”

  “Did something happen?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and was about to tell him when the phone rang again. Before I could tell him not to, Arthur answered. I waved an emphatic “no.”

  “Hello? No. She’s not here right now,” he said. “Can you repeat the name? Okay. Hold on a second.” Arthur drew in the air with an invisible pen and I found him a pencil and an unopened bill to write on. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll get this to her as soon as possible. I understand. Some urgency.” Arthur shrugged at me. “Yes. I’m sure she’ll call you right back.” But Arthur did not know that at all. He looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Okay. Bye. Yeah. No problem. Bye.”

  He hung up the phone.

  “That was my father,” I said.

  “No it wasn’t,” said Arthur. “That was,” he looked at the envelope, “Barry Parkinson. Barry Buster Parkinson. Who’s that?”

  “My old professor,” I said. I’d forgotten all about Barry and the bones.

  “There’s his number,” said Arthur.

  “I’ll call him later,” I said.

  Arthur lit a cigarette and then headed for the door. “I’m going out again.”

  “Why?”

  Arthur cocked his head to one side. “The snow’s all melted now at the shoreline and I’m not sure, but I think I saw something out there. The tide’s out.”

  “What was it?”

  “Kevin was freaking out, so I couldn’t get a good look. There was seaweed on it.” Arthur looked at me gravely. “I think it was a typewriter.”

  Half an hour later Arthur had come walking up the point carrying the old Olympia. He set it in the center of the living room and we both had a drink and a smoke while looking at the damned thing. We were silent for some time and then Arthur said,

  “Do you have Travis’s number?”

  “I can’t find it,” I said. “I don’t even know Travis’s last name.”

  “It’s Connor,” said Arthur. “His last name is Connor.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked him. I said, ‘What’s your last name? When you get famous, I’ll buy your book.’ And he said, ‘Connor.’”

  Arthur called directory assistance and after talking to two Connors—one a cousin of Travis—was soon on the phone with Travis’s mother, who was wondering what had happened to her boy. They hadn’t spoken since New York. Where the hell was he? Arthur was polite on the phone. He said he’d make inquiries on this end, dig around a bit. He’d call the Greyhound station, although a month had passed since Travis had hitchhiked his way out of our lives. If he heard anything, Mrs. Connor would be the first to know.

  No one at the Greyhound station remembered him, but even if he’d passed through there, he wouldn’t necessarily be remembered. Travis would have used cash and in addition to that, the turnover of employees was high. Half the people who had worked there the previous month had moved on.

  “He could be anywhere,” I said.

  “Why would he throw his typewriter into the bay? I don’t like it. Maybe we should call the police.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “Tell them that he’s disappeared.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t disappeared. Maybe he’s just gone somewhere else.”

  “Isn’t that what disappeared means? Isn’t the ocean floor somewhere else?”

  “I meant something more along the lines of Key West, or maybe back to New York, wherever it is that writers go.”

  “He threw his typewriter in the bay. That’s an act of desperation.”

  “You think he killed himself?”

  Arthur considered. “He didn’t seem like the type. He had a big ego.”

  “I thought Travis was a cocky guy.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe he did kill himself. He drank a lot.”

  The wind picked up suddenly and the doorway at the end the hall, the doorway to what had been first Johnny’s and then Travis’s room, slammed shut. Arthur was cracking his knuckles looking at the typewriter. Perhaps if we put a piece of paper in it, Travis could type out a message from wherever he was.

  The typewriter sat in the middle of the room for a week until I had enough of it and on a Tuesday, trash day, hauled it to the trash can before Arthur was up.

  The body washed up a few days after that. Hikers—trying to get a good look at some juvenile osprey—found it out on Wolf’s Neck, across the bay. The police contacted us to see if we had any ideas. They said they were calling all the people whose properties lined the shore, but I was suspicious of this. Of course, they were calling us because of Johnny, but didn’t want us to be on the defensive. Arthur immediately volunteered everything he knew about Travis and soon we were driving into Portland to identify the body, which had been lying in the water for quite some time.

  The morgue was cold but not particularly gloomy. The place was brightly lit and clean. All the people rushing back and forth in their white coats, carrying various pruning shears and hack saws, actually seemed the embodiment of industry. I found the place rather cheering. Arthur kept taking his cigarettes out of his pocket, and then putting them back. I grabbed his hand and held it, which made him smile at me in a quick, forced way. I let him have his hand back and he started drumming on his knees with his forefingers, until they were finally ready for us. I walked bravely to the window, but Arthur hung back. Detective Yancy was there, but I didn’t recognize the officer he was with. The two men stood patiently, waiting for some verdict.

  “Arthur, come take a look.” I turned to Detective Yancy. “That’s not Travis.”

  Arthur looked, and turned quickly, sickened. “How can you tell?” The corpse was badly rotted.

  “Arthur, look again.”

  Arthur took a deep breath and came back to the glass. He was thoughtful for a minute, deep in concentration. Then he nodded to me. “I’ve never seen that guy. He’s taller than Travis by half a foot.”

  “And the clothes are all wrong,” I added. “This isn’t Travis at all.”

  No doubt Detective Yancy was deeply disappointed. And he was faced with having to identify the body. Maybe some other luckless soul’s life had quit on his watch. But maybe, glimmer of hope to him, we were lying. However,
after the autopsy was finished, the man was thought to be older than Travis, in his forties. Not only that, but he’d been in the water a long time. The coroner suspected he’d been dead since early November. An expert from the FBI was coming up from Washington to make a final assessment.

  “Key West,” I whispered to Arthur.

  * * *

  Maybe a week after that, on a Thursday, I was walking with Kevin in the woods when I saw a police car out on the road. I wouldn’t have been able to see it, but the leaves had only just started springing out on the branches. Instinctively I knew that the car was headed for the house.

  I called to Kevin, but he didn’t come. I could see the plume of his white tail disappearing into a ditch. I called him again. I figured he’d gone after a rabbit. I’d get him later. I walked up the slope to the house and sure enough, the police car was rounding the gravel drive.

  Detective Yancy and Officer Brown got out of the car. I feared the worst, that soon the property would be crawling with police. Officer Brown and Detective Yancy went straight to the front door but I caught up with them before they could ring the bell.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked.

  “Good morning, Miss Shea. How are you?” asked Detective Yancy.

  “Never been better.”

  “I’ll be needing to have a few words with you and with Mr. Verhoven.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “At ten o’clock in the morning?”

  “He works nights. He’s a musician. What is this about?”

  “You don’t mind if I have a look around, do you?” said Detective Yancy. He had his hand on the doorknob.

  “What is going on?” I turned to Officer Brown, who looked deeply embarrassed.

  “Mrs. Connor, Travis Connor’s mother, has filed a missing persons report,” he said.

  “He’s not here,” I said. I opened the door and the two policemen followed me in. “I’ll wake Arthur up.”

  Detective Yancy had picked up my copy of Typee and was looking at the cover.

  “Is that necessary?” I asked.

  The detective handed the book absentmindedly to Officer Brown, who smiled at me sheepishly.

  “What’s it about?” he asked.

  I took the book from him without answering and set it back down on the counter. “Wait here,” I said.

  Arthur was just waking up when I entered the room. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Our two favorite policemen are back. They’re looking for Travis.”

  “But he’s not here,” said Arthur, still half asleep. “Go tell them that. They want to look around.”

  “Okay,” said Arthur.

  “Oh, and Kevin’s run off again.”

  “Great.”

  I handed Arthur his jeans, which he put on without underwear. “Cigarettes are on the fridge.”

  Back in the kitchen Detective Yancy was helping himself to some burned coffee. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said.

  “Make yourself at home,” I replied. I sat down at the kitchen table. “Arthur will be here as soon as he’s had a chance to use the bathroom.”

  We didn’t have much to say about Travis. Arthur told the police about the typewriter and about how Travis’s clothes had been in the washer and dryer. He asked how Mrs. Connor was doing and told Detective Yancy how he hoped we’d find Travis soon, that if we heard from Travis, we’d let them know right away. Arthur had even written down the date that Travis had left, worried that he might forget. We all went to stand in the room at the end of the hall—once Johnny’s, then Travis’s—where Detective Yancy took note of the pile of bottles. Then Arthur asked if it was okay if he went to look for Kevin and Detective Yancy said that would be fine. He had a sly look on his face and I knew that he wanted to talk to me alone, away from Arthur. Then he would probably talk to Arthur alone, away from me. Then compare our stories. I knew what they were up to.

  When Arthur had located Kevin’s leash and a lighter that worked, he took off for the woods. And I sat down for my chat with Detective Yancy.

  There was a tense, silent few minutes. We all looked at each other, then finally I said, “Did you ever find out whose body that was?”

  “We’re very close,” said Detective Yancy. “We should know in a couple of days. How does that make you feel?”

  “Me feel? I’m curious, but I suppose everyone is.”

  “Did Travis say anything to you, anything at all, the day he left?”

  “He said several things, none of any importance.”

  “What were these things?” Detective Yancy nodded to Officer Brown, who began scribbling in his notepad.

  “Well, when he got up and we ran into each other in the hall, he said ‘Good morning.’ Later, he asked me if we had any half-and-half. I said we’d run out, causing him to respond, ‘Remind me to get some when I go out.’”

  Half an hour later, I was still relating whatever inanities I could think of when the front door popped open and slammed shut. I waited for Arthur to appear, but it was only Kevin, alone and muddy. I figured that Arthur must be taking off his boots outside. Kevin’s front paws were caked with mud. He looked like he was wearing a pair of galoshes.

  “Look’s like you’ve been digging for something,” said Officer Brown, scratching under Kevin’s chin.

  Suddenly I heard the sound of Arthur’s van start up, which, after a moment, I heard taking off down the drive.

  “Where’s your boyfriend going?” asked Detective Yancy.

  I looked over at the door, then back at Yancy. I managed a smile. “Arthur,” I said, “is going to the store.”

  27

  I suppose it’s in the nature of some men to take off without saying why, to romp at their leisure. Women are supposed to accept this—it’s only natural, and has something to do with the need for men to inseminate wildly in order to keep the species going, while the girls stay close to home. But I knew Arthur well enough to understand that he would not take off without telling me why unless it was perfectly justified. He would return, I was sure, and make his explanations. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell me what he’d been up to, and that would be better, as in the Tale of Bisclaveret. My mother always said that that the truth was not for everyone.

  The Tale of Bisclaveret, from the Lays of Marie de France, is possibly, next to the tale of Lycaon, the most widely known tale of a werewolf, although there are many. Werewolves, werejackals, were-foxes, and other werebeasts (if you include American Indian lore, you end up with everything from werecougars to werecrows) crop up in literature reaching far east and far west until they are touching at the far side of the globe. We love anything that weds man to animal, our chest-beating men of the jungle, our paw-shaking dogs on the hearth.

  Our tale begins in Brittany where Bisclaveret, noble baron, and his comely wife live in their imposing castle where, no doubt, the constant drafts shiver the tapestries and blazing torches cast long shadows on the sooted stone and winding stairways. Bisclaveret and his wife retire peacefully—or passionately—to their bed four nights a week. But the other three nights, the baron is at large.

  “Don’t ask me why,” the baron tells his wife.

  But of course she asks and asks and asks. She cries pitifully, plies him with wine. She lures him to their bed and kisses him sweetly until finally he divulges his secret. It is not the bar wench in the next village, which would have been acceptable to the wife—she could have demanded the end of such an affair. Bisclaveret is a werewolf. He spends those three mysterious days roaming in secret, hidden by the eternal night of the forest.

  “How is such a transformation accomplished?” she asks, the horror clear on her face.

  “I have no control over the wolf. It asserts itself and I must follow. I remove my robes and soon become woolly, toothy, close to the ground.”

  “And how do you return?” she asks, her icy fingers knitting at the edge of the blanket, her husband’s naked body warm beside her.

  “At t
he close of the third day I return to where I’ve placed my robes,” the baron, still huffing and puffing, replies. “It is clothes that make the man.”

  If he should not find his clothing, he would be unable to make the transformation back.

  Life in the castle does not return to normal. The hogs still snort in the yard. Young men still practice at swords and jousting. Knights on their way east still clink goblets in drunken toasts. And minstrels still make merry music as deformed jesters leap and juggle. But as the baron feared, his wife no longer wishes to share his bed. Marie de France says, “She no longer dared lie at his side, and turned over in her mind, this way and that, how best she could get her from him.”

  All this time her salvation has been right before her, yes, right across the table from her winking, that knight drunkenly, putting his hot, sweaty foot on her slender leg. Never before has she found this man attractive, but now, now that her husband has revealed himself to be a wolf, he is suddenly handsome. She smiles slyly at him over her grizzled lamb hock and soon the two are behind the velvet curtain in the audience chamber hatching a plan.

  “There’s a hollow rock beside that old chapel. Check the bushes around the side. Bisclaveret says there’s an overgrown path that should act as a marker. Bring the robes to me. Then you can have whatever you want.”

  “Your bed?” says the knight.

  “My castle,” says the wife.

  Some time in the next week we presume that the baron is left sniffing and howling beside the chapel, clawing madly at the bushes by the hollow rock. We presume he is also cursing his wife, and rightly so, for within the next year, the knight is married to the baroness and living in the castle, while Bisclaveret, poor trusting soul, is left dodging arrows, eating raw rabbit, and sleeping on the cold damp ground.

  Shortly after this, the (enter the king) king goes on a hunting party and—with the help of half a dozen courtiers and a pack of borzoi—nearly slaughters Bisclaveret. Bisclaveret is panting wildly. He has managed to outrun the dogs for two miles, but now he fears his life is spent. With his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, he begs for his life by placing his paws upon the king’s stirrup and well-shod foot.