Body Language

by Michael Craft

  “A sane response. Then what happened?”

  “He began to sniff political pay dirt. Miriam’s radical feminists had gone to bed, figuratively, with the conservative Christians, so Harley capitulated and found sudden enthusiasm for so-called family values. He stood by quietly as the ordinance passed by a lopsided margin, then sought to enforce it with a vengeance. Off the record, Mark, the man sold his soul.”

  I stood, shaking my head. “Somehow,” I predicted, “this guy and I just aren’t going to get along.” I stepped around the worktable and walked to the Palladian window, looking out over the town where this political drama had been enacted.

  Pierce’s tone brightened some. “For whatever it’s worth, Harley’s hotdogging hasn’t paid off so far. He’s used my department to collect evidence that these stores are dealing in obscenity—we’ve bought a few videotapes—then he’s hauled them to trial. But he’s had a tough time finding juries who agree on what’s ‘obscene.’ The community is starting to lose patience with this nonsense, and he’s responded, without much savvy, by yapping to the press like some guardian of public morals. Common sense should tell the man that he should distance himself from Miriam now, but, instead, they’ve been closing ranks.”

  “Huh?” Something caught my eye from the window. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Harley’s out there?” asked Pierce, stepping beside me for a look.

  “No,” I said (I’d never set eyes on Harley Kaiser, so I wouldn’t have known him if I’d seen him), “it’s Miriam Westerman, and she’s snooping around my car.” There had been some jockeying of vehicles back near the garage last night, so I’d left my car in the driveway, up front near the street. Miriam’s nose was pressed to the driver’s window. “What the hell is she still doing here?”

  Pierce laughed, explaining, “That’s a magnificent automobile, Mark. We don’t see many like that up here. It’s drawn a lot of interest.”

  Though the sun would not set for another hour, it was already reduced to a dim glow in a gray sky, lolling near the southwest horizon. Damp and bleak, the day had nonetheless warmed some, blanketed by thick clouds that clogged the afternoon.

  Shortly after three, Parker Trent returned to the house from his day of digging in the Register’s morgue. I was in the kitchen, on a coffee break from the den, when Parker clomped across the back porch and swung open the door, whipping off his cap. Neither of us quite expected to encounter the other, and we shared a grin that made me realize we were both happy to have each other’s company.

  We were eager to report on our day’s activities—his research and my meeting with Pierce—but before we could open that exchange, Parker suggested, “Why don’t we go for a run? There’s still some light, it’s not too cold, and we can talk.”

  I hadn’t run in three days, since Sunday with Neil, and I had missed Monday’s run with Parker. “I’ll meet you in the front hall in five minutes,” I told him.

  But it took us only four minutes to change, and we met on the second-floor landing, emerging from our bedrooms. Once again, Parker wore those flattering gray fleece sweatpants. I, too, wore sweatpants that day—everyone seemed more dismayed than impressed by my bravado of wearing shorts in December. I also wore a zippered jacket over my T-shirt, while Parker wore a sweatshirt with a towel tucked around his neck.

  Out on the street, we fell into a comfortable gait together and turned without comment in the direction of the park—I assumed Neil had shown Parker the route when they ran without me on Monday. Curious about Neil’s assessment of Parker as a well-trained runner, I picked up the pace and found that Parker had no difficulty matching it. I could have gone faster still, but there was no point in it. This wasn’t a race, and, besides, if we ran much faster, we wouldn’t be able to talk.

  “How’d it go at the Register today?” I asked him.

  He turned to flash me a self-satisfied smile. “I may be on to something. Yesterday afternoon, I came up dry, but I was still getting the hang of their systems. Today went much better. I’m starting to reconstruct the sequence of materials that Suzanne was researching, but I’ll need more information before I can make sense of it. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Time is the one commodity that may be running out for me,” I told him.

  “Why?” His tone carried genuine concern. “What happened?”

  “The meeting with Sheriff Pierce this morning was less than encouraging. The DA is itching for an arrest, and I’m still his most politically expedient suspect. Fortunately, Pierce and I are armed with some other possibilities.” I reviewed for Parker what we then knew about Miriam, Hazel, Thad, and Thad’s father, Austin Reece. “For whatever it’s worth,” I concluded, “Miriam Westerman is convinced that I’m not the culprit. She’s accused Hazel of the murder, but her story is weak.”

  We were reaching the perimeter of the park, and I slowed to a more leisurely pace, preferring to enjoy the serene surroundings unencumbered by the grind of aerobics. Parker’s instincts matched my own, and he slowed the pace further, walking at my side. A wintry fog hung over the grounds, and distant banks of trees receded into layers of gray, with pines pointing black into the dusk. We both gaped a wordless appreciation of the hushed setting, its quietude broken only by our panting and by the crunch of icy gravel beneath our treaded soles. Watching the movement of Parker’s feet, the scissoring motion of his legs, the general character of his body language, I was again reminded of my cousin Mark. Like my nine-year-old self, I just wanted to… touch him. But of course I wouldn’t. What was I thinking?

  “I was thinking,” Parker’s voice cracked the silence. “As long as Neil is coming back to Dumont this weekend, maybe you could invite Roxanne and Carl back as well—they could share the ride.”

  We were approaching a pavilion near the frozen lagoon. There were some benches arranged in a lit alcove, sort of an open porch, offering a sense of shelter from the falling night. We sat next to each other, huddling leg-to-leg—a natural thing to do, a means of conserving our warmth, but I was well aware that it carried an erotic overtone, and I enjoyed the feel of his calf and thigh muscles against mine, buffered by the soft layers of our sweatpants.

  Regarding his suggestion to invite Roxanne and Carl up for the weekend, I told him, “I’d enjoy having everyone at the house again. We could have a proper New Year’s party. And let’s face it: our big Christmas weekend was a flop, to put it mildly.” We both laughed, grateful to find some shred of humor in the situation.

  Then Parker told me, “A party would be great, but the weekend would also give you and Roxanne some time together to do some serious planning. I mean, logistics—if worse comes to worst.”

  That wiped the smile off my face. Had I been taking the district attorney’s prejudices too lightly? Was it obvious to Parker that I should line up some high-powered legal talent? After all, Roxanne had offered to return and defend me…

  “Hey, gosh, I’m sorry, Mark.” From the tone of Parker’s soothing words, my face must have told him that I was shaken by his suggestion. “Look”—he placed his hand on my knee—“I didn’t mean to upset you. We all know that you’re innocent of this crime, and you’ve got a lot of people on your side working to help you, myself included. Doesn’t it just make sense, though, to recruit someone like Roxanne for your team?”

  I fixed him in my stare. “I loathe sports phraseology,” I told him. Though my tone had the ring of humor, I couldn’t have been more serious. “Don’t ever let it creep onto the editorial page.”

  “No, sir!” he said, grinning. Laughing, he added, “It won’t happen again, coach.” Then he lifted his hand from my knee—I saw it coming, as if in slow motion—and he playfully mussed my hair.

  I felt the warm touch of his fingers on my scalp as my hair parted and clumped. I felt the instant onset of an erection burning the folds of my sweatpants. I felt transported in time, sucked back to the confusion of my boyhood when I first met my handsome older cousin and tried to be clever, tellin
g him brightly, “We’ve got the same name.”

  My cousin smiled and said, “How about that?” Then he mussed my hair with his hand, and I really liked the way his fingers felt on my head. I’m usually fussy about my hair—but I didn’t straighten it out for a while.

  Christmas came and went. Uncle Edwin and I phoned Mom in California to ask about her visit with her sick sister. She said that the weather was like summer (who’d want to spend Christmas there?) and Aunt Edna was worse.

  In the days that followed, my cousins Mark and Suzanne spent lots of time away from the house with their older friends; Joey spent every waking moment with me. I was grateful for his company—to a point—but I missed the private time I always had at home in the late afternoon, when I could think about things, maybe do some writing. So I told Joey that there was a school project due after vacation and that I needed to spend some time working on it alone.

  “You’re going to the library?” he asked as if he’d rather eat glass.

  “Nah. I’ll just work on it upstairs. May I borrow your typewriter?”

  And I did. Each afternoon I climbed the back stairs and claimed that big attic room as my private world. I imagined living there and pretended to make phone calls, inviting unnamed friends over to see the place, asking Mark up for lunch, telling my mother she simply had to drop by the next time she flew in from California. Then I would settle into a chair at the worktable under the curved window and type things—sometimes poems (they didn’t always rhyme), but mostly little stories. They looked sort of strange, with the type both red and black, instead of just black, but they looked much neater than if I had written them by hand. I wrote about my trip. I wrote about my new home, “Upstairs on Prairie Street,” revealing gory secrets of its past. And I wrote about Mark, including the way I felt when he mussed my hair, but I changed his name to Marshall.

  On New Year’s Eve, I stayed upstairs later than usual, as it was the last full day of my visit. When I came down the stairs around five-thirty with Joey’s typewriter and my folder of stories, Uncle Edwin was in the hall outside his bedroom carrying a tuxedo in a cleaner’s bag (big party that night). He said, “Hi there, Mark. Care to keep me company while I get this monkey suit together?”

  “Sure.” I’d always been comfortable with adults and was glad to spend the time with Uncle Edwin. I hadn’t realized that he and Aunt Peggy had their own bedrooms, which was nifty—I’d hate to share my room.

  He showed me all the goofy stuff that went with his tuxedo—shoes like bedroom slippers, jewelry for buttons, and this sash-thing he called a “crumb catcher.” He told me about growing up with Mom and Aunt Edna. And he told me how everyone had enjoyed my visit. “Joey tells me you’ve been working upstairs on a project. Something for school?”

  “That’s right,” I told him (okay, I lied a little). “Some poems and stories.”

  “Really?” Uncle Edwin seemed surprised—and pleased. “Creative writing can be somewhat personal, but is there any of it you’d care to share with me?”

  Happy that he was curious, I said, “You can read it all, if you want,” and handed him my folder. “I won’t need it back till tomorrow.”

  “Not till tomorrow,” said Parker, “but I’d be happy to give her a call for you.”

  “What?” There on the park bench, we were discussing Roxanne, but I’d been absorbed in the memory of my cousin, and I could recall, line for line, parts of the story I had written about him thirty-three years ago. I recalled the exact wording I used to describe what I felt when he mussed my hair—feelings I could not possibly understand. My uncle Edwin, however, was to read that story during the last night of my visit, and he would understand it perfectly.

  “I said,” Parker repeated, “that we won’t be able to reach Roxanne at her office till tomorrow. Shall I call her?”

  “No,” I answered, “I’ll phone Neil first, then her. But thanks.”

  “Good. Settled.” He stood. “It’s getting dark—and cold. Time to head back?”

  I nodded, got up, stretched a bit; then we started our run back to the house. The pace was easy, and we may have chatted along the way, but I was still focused on an uncomfortable mix of memories and emotions. My fantasies of Mark Quatrain were safely buried in the past, I told myself, but I could not allow those fantasies to spill into the present, to color my relationship with Parker Trent, who was very much alive there at my side, returning home with me to sleep under my roof—while Neil caught up with his work, two hundred miles away.

  Shortly past noon on Thursday, I entered the First Avenue Grill with Thad, and we instantly spotted Joey waiting for us at a table. Arranging the simple lunch outing had not been easy. My cousin Joey was eager enough to meet us, but when I proposed it to Thad, he at first refused, citing plans with “friends,” and he wasn’t going to waste one of his last days of Christmas vacation on family.

  “That’s just the point,” I told him. “We are family, and, like it or not, we’d better pull together and get used to each other. You and Joey and I are all that’s left of the Quatrain clan in Dumont.”

  “You’re not a Quatrain,” the kid told me.

  “My mother was,” I reminded him. “Just like yours. We’re equally qualified to claim the name. And we’re going to lunch.”

  Thad’s protests notwithstanding, we did indeed hop into my car at noon and left the house for downtown. While Thad made it clear that he had no interest in sharing a meal with me, I was surprised to note that he seemed to enjoy sharing the ride—my car was high on the list of “guy things” that had irresistible appeal for him, and, in his eyes, the fact that I’d shown sense enough to buy the Bavarian V-8 gave us our first shaky toehold on common ground.

  In truth, my motives for calling the lunch were mixed. Yes, we were family and it seemed the right thing to do. And yes, there was family business that needed discussion, such as the venue for Suzanne’s funeral. But also, I’d heard Hazel stop just short of accusing Thad of killing his own mother—a murder, believed by some to be my own doing—so I wanted to spend some noncombative time with him and try to get into his head.

  Inside the restaurant, already bustling with its lunch crowd, I shook hands with Joey and removed my coat. Thad had refused to wear a coat, insisting that the bulky sweater hanging past his hips was sufficient. He and Joey hugged warmly, and for the first time I saw Thad as the orphaned child he truly was.

  We sat down, and when the waitress asked for drink orders, Joey wanted cocoa, which sounded good, so we all had some. Joey and I exchanged some small talk, and I quickly learned that his interests and world view were severely limited—the weather, the menu, the murder. Remembering that publisher Barret Logan had described Joey’s “twelve-year-old brain in a middle-aged body,” I treated him as an adult and mustered a show of interest in his discussion of snow and bread sticks and the many sympathy cards he was receiving from coworkers at Quatro Press.

  Thad watched our conversation silently, but I did not, for once, interpret this behavior as sulking. It was obvious that he felt genuine affection for his retarded uncle—perhaps he even felt protective of him—and the fact that I treated Joey kindly must have earned me a measure of respect in Thad’s eyes. When I leaned forward, elbows on table, to say, “There’s something important that the three of us have to talk about,” Thad also leaned into the conversation, asking, “What’s that?” His tone was entirely civil.

  “Suzanne’s funeral is scheduled for next Monday,” I told them both, “but there’s still some question as to where the service will be held. It’s up to us.”

  Joey told us, “Father Winter says it ought to be at Saint Cecille’s. He came to work and talked to me about it yesterday.” Joey’s eyes widened as he recounted the meeting. There was a foamy mustache of cocoa on his upper lip. “He said that the Quatrain family goes way back with Saint Cecille’s, and that it’s time for Suzanne to come home, whatever that means. And I told him that I remembered something about people who were murder
ed—I thought that priests weren’t supposed to bury them, and that had me sort of worried. But Father Winter said no, I was thinking about people who killed themselves—that’s a sin, and the church doesn’t like that, but Suzanne’s murder was just fine, and they’d be happy to handle it.”

  Thad and I glanced at each other and shared a silent laugh—another small step, I noted, along the bumpy road toward bonding.

  “But Mom never went to church,” Thad told his uncle.

  Joey answered, “She did when she was little.”

  I said to Joey, but more for Thad’s benefit, “I used to go to church, too, but sometimes people’s ideas change as they grow older.”

  Joey told us, “Father Winter said it was never too late for Suzanne to come back. He called her a ‘prodigal.’”

  “I don’t know,” said Thad with a skeptical shake of his head. “Mom never had very nice things to say about Father Winter. Sorry, Uncle Joey, I know he’s a friend of yours.”

  “There is another option,” I reminded them. They both turned to me with the same puzzled look, apparently unaware of the squabbling reported in the Register. “Miriam Westerman, the Fem-Snach lady, says that she and Suzanne became best of friends again.” Thad and Joey both laughed their disbelief. I continued. “Miriam wants to officiate at Suzanne’s funeral. It would be some sort of New Age ceremony held on the grounds of the Society.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Thad.

  I chuckled. “I’m not exactly sure. Miriam’s Society believes that nature itself is sort of a god, so they have this loosely structured religion geared toward it. Some people call it paganism.”

  Joey turned pale. “That won’t do at all, Mark. That would be sinful, I’m sure. Even if Suzanne didn’t much like Father Winter, we can’t get her into trouble with God. She has to be buried at Saint Cecille’s!” His voice was beginning to rise, and people at adjacent tables were turning to look. I recognized a pattern here—Joey’s boyhood petulance was emerging again, as it had on Christmas Day. Then the old threat. “If Father Winter doesn’t get to do the funeral, I’ll, I’ll… I’ll hold my breath till I turn blue, and this time I’ll die!” And with that, he crossed his arms, puffed his cheeks, and closed his eyes so tight, his brows were nearly swallowed by the wrinkles.