Hog Wild

by Cathy Pickens

  In surveying my disaster zone, for the first time I truly appreciated all those women who’d made labels and kept my life workable. Here I was with only a handful of cases—using the term “case” loosely—and I was in a mess. I’d certainly need a heck of a lot more than a bunch of unpaid cases before I could afford to hire someone to organize me out of my mess.

  I dialed Dot’s number. Another answering machine. Where did these women go this early on Saturday morning?

  I stared at my list, with Maggy’s name at the top. All weekend, every time I’d thought about her, my focus had been how to convince her to accept both a new epitaph and the angel. Staring at my list, seeing her name with all the other names, something started forming in my mind. I tried to push it out, refusing it. But the more I looked at my list, the more shape it took.

  The letter I’d seen on her hall stand, the one with the familiar handwriting. The pudgy guy at the play last night, saying the lady in charge had sent him up the hill. I’d thought he was talking about Dot Downing because it was her land, but Dot had been very low-key that day. Maggy Avinger had been in charge; she had sent him up the hill toward the mine. Toward Len Ruffin’s body.

  Len Ruffin’s letter. Suse Knight’s. Alex Shoal. Valerie Shoal.

  My puzzle was missing plenty of pieces, but the edges were all in place and the central figure was quite clear. Quite sickeningly clear.

  Maggy’s house was a few blocks away. Maybe she was working in her yard and hadn’t heard the phone. To think, I’d considered talking to her about that blasted angel, the toughest conversation on my list.

  I could walk and think at the same time. Any kind of activity, to keep my heart from hurting.

  25

  Late Saturday Morning

  The walk to Maggy Avinger’s house took me by both the best and worst of Dacus proper. One block with stately century-old rambling houses. Turn the corner to another block crowded with small clapboard rental houses shedding chunks of paint, the yards full of weeds. Then Maggy’s block, with more rambling, well-kept houses. I noted each house as I passed to distract myself from the conversation I was about to have.

  Maggy’s neat white bungalow stood in the middle of the block. Her yard, divided by a wide concrete walk, spilled over with azaleas and dogwoods. In just a few weeks, it would explode in color.

  As soon as I set foot on the front steps, I saw the envelope taped to the wooden screen door.

  FOR AVERY ANDREWS: IMPORTANT AND PERSONAL

  No point in knocking. I took the envelope, the air in my chest hot and painful. I sank down on the top step and pulled out the letter, fingering the familiar thick vellum.

  Dearest Avery,

  Who said confession is good for the soul? Someone who believes we have souls. We confess to explain why—or fool ourselves into believing why.

  Why? Because they needed it. Because I saw no other way. I was just going to write a few letters. Things I thought people should hear, things no one was willing to tell them. I hadn’t intended to go any farther.

  Was it my . . . disgust? displeasure? with myself for having tolerated Harden all those years. I never under-stood how a woman could let a man hit her. How could she have so little respect for herself? Then, lo and behold, after he’s dead, after my life becomes peaceful and pleasant, I’m startled one day to reahze that almost every word out of Harden’s mouth had been a slap. How could I not have seen it? How could I blame myself for what he did to me? How could I not fight back? Odd how reality is altered by our own experience.

  The day of my epiphany, Mack MacGregor stopped by to help me trim the azaleas. I offered to toast us some pound cake. I suppose I was a bit flustered, having him sitting in my kitchen, watching me. I had pooh-poohed the notion, but I knew he was interested in me. Whatever the reason, I got clumsy as I reached in the oven, burnt my forearm, and dumped the cake slices all over. I just stared at the mess, shaking, waiting. Waiting for Harden to yell at me. I know Mack thought I was an idiot. He kept saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He patted my shoulder, took the potholders from me, and rescued the cake slices. My entire adult life came together in that one incident. I was so surprised by his gentleness. Surprised because there was no yelling. I’d spent my whole life tensed for the next attack. I’d never stood up for myself. Never. What a waste.

  We had our cake and Mack went home. He would’ve been shocked to know my real thoughts. In a blinding flash, I wished I had killed Harden. Then I could have visited that angel and her ugly epitaph with pride. Lucky for Harden, I was too stupid to see what he’d done, until he was safely out of it.

  I couldn’t say how or when I first decided how to redeem some of what I’d lost, but it was soon after that, while the thin red line I’d burned on my arm still stung. I started writing notes. I can’t apologize to you, Avery. I still doubt that associating with Melvin Bertram will come to any good. In any event, the notes did little good—for me or anyone else.

  One morning, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, I saw an article about the opera workshop. The Mikado. I laughed out loud.

  It had an artistry about it. Closure, you could say. That song your niece was singing, “I’ve got a little fist. . . who never would be missed.” I’ve always loved it. The Mikado comes to town just as I’m, so to speak, leaving town, feeling my life’s been such a waste.

  I pledged to help others. I just needed a fist. Finding blind people who needed saving, who couldn’t see their danger or pain, wasn’t hard. Do people with normal eye-sight see them as clearly? Or is that sight reserved only for their fellow blind travelers?

  I had studied happy couples for years. I even studied your parents. Was it the way she said his name? The way he held the hymnbook for her in church? The way they teased each other? If only I could unlock the secret.

  Now, with my small seared mark, I looked for others living in the worst of my old reality. As if an archangel had delivered her to me, I met Jesse Ruffin. I knew her mother from church. Jesse often checked me out at the grocery store and we chatted. She had that gangly yearling way of adolescents. One day, I saw her leaving the grocery store with her father. I knew as soon as I saw the way he looked at her, that sneer, a way no father should look at his daughter, his words, her flinch. It was as if he’d been delivered up.

  Don’t worry, I didn’t jump to any conclusions. I did my homework. I got to know Jesse and her mom better. I studied him. I knew they needed a new reahty, but I found her mother too brainwashed to help and the court system impotent unless the bruises show. I tried, but threats of court only made matters in their home worse, not better. If something didn’t happen soon, Jesse would have no one to protect her.

  His greed made it easy. I knew him from church, too. He and Harden both were always in church, every Sunday. Amazing, if you really knew them.

  I lured him to that abandoned gold mine with a story about how Harden had left it to me and how I wasn’t sure what to do, that Harden had dug out some gold nuggets and left them in a gunny sack hidden behind a rock I couldn’t move. Not very creative, but he went with me.

  Easy to get him there, but frightfully loud to shoot him. Nerve-racking. That did it for me and my “fist.” Or so I thought. Removing someone permanently gets complicated. Not what they show in movies. When someone is shot, he doesn’t die right away. Sometimes he fingers, wheezing with a frightful death rattle that you hear in your sleep nights later.

  I obviously wasn’t well suited to fife as an avenging angel because I failed to consider the problems that would arise for his family if he just disappeared. I didn’t know his employer had generously insured him and that the insurance company wouldn’t pay unless his body was found.

  The whole endeavor was almost a fiasco, especially when Jesse showed up at the plant rescue. No matter, at least he couldn’t destroy her life anymore.

  I thought it would end there. I just wanted to protect Jesse, after I realized I wouldn’t always be there for her. I arranged for her to ha
ve counseling. Maybe, just maybe, she has a chance now. Without dredging up ancient history (my own), protecting her was important to me.

  I learned from my mistakes, though. I really am a coward. I didn’t like being too close. At the same time, I wanted to do something courageous, something that needed doing, that no one else could do.

  Cleaning out the shed behind the house, I found those old pharmacy bottles Daddy had collected. The bottles were beautiful. Perhaps this would be a gender way to protect those I’d found. Did you know strychnine was once used as a digestive, to keep people regular? The chocolate-coated pills were even given to children.

  Sometimes drugs used to heal aren’t kind to the body. Like the treatments they offered me. I could refuse, and I did. I supposed those whose evil I set about treating could’ve refused, too. But of course they didn’t. They assumed the beautiful box of chocolates came just for them. All good things in life came for them.

  Nobody talks about evil much anymore. We used to believe in it. Maybe that kept it at bay. Or was I just more naive?

  I suppose you’ve figured it out. I made my little fist after the doctor gave me my diagnosis, while Harden was busy making his grand exit. Of course I couldn’t steal his thunder, so I kept quiet. I watched what happened to him and decided not to stay around for more of the same. I had moments of regret, as I discovered what life could have been—should have been. But even with cancer treatments, no guarantee I would’ve enjoyed much of that life. Maybe it’s all an illusion, dancing slightly out of reach of everyone.

  I sent more letters. I needed to feel useful, as if it counted for something. Then Suse Knight asked her yard boy if he minded letting her take a blood sample, she needed to test some new supplies.

  After hearing that, I marched out of the beauty parlor with a renewed sense of purpose. Or rather a renewed pledge not to be such a coward.

  Suse destroyed at least one woman’s life. I won’t tell her name, but she knew who the father of her baby was. She wasn’t a tramp, she was just stupid enough to fall for his promises. She took him to court, only to be publicly humiliated when the paternity test showed he wasn’t the father. Again, the court was no help. The judge refused to order a second test based only on hearsay testimony. The police also refused to investigate without a direct witness. When she ran out of money, her lawyer ran out of fight. Her own family turned its back on her. She considered suicide, while the baby’s father continued his comfortable, self-righteous life.

  If that had been the only blood test Suse Knight had fudged, that’d be one thing. But it wasn’t—and warning her wasn’t the end of it. She was too greedy. How many diamond earrings or swimming pools does one woman need?

  Lionel Shoal certainly won’t be missed, either, except maybe by that tart posing as his wife, and she’ll only miss what she thought he could give her. Come to think of it, he might have met his match in her. I didn’t know about his dear wife—his real wife—until afterward. She certainly didn’t deserve him, and Dot didn’t deserve to lose her family legacy. He told Dot all the right things; then, one by one, he did none of them. Dot said you would look into it, but she said you didn’t look too optimistic. After I saw those bulldozers on top of the wetlands and after he blew up the office—who else would have?—I knew no legal language or threat would contain him. He was Harden—at turns arrogant and hale-fellow, and at no time trustworthy.

  I’m tired now and have said too much. That’s what happens when you’re alone with your thoughts. It all wells up inside you.

  The door’s unlocked, but don’t feel as though you have to come inside. Just call Jackson over at Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home. He knows what to do.

  A panic jolted me. I jumped up from the porch step. I knew what she’d done.

  The wooden screen door swung open easily. The old iron door knob balked but finally turned. The door opened without a sound. The house was dark and cool, the curtains closed in the dining and living rooms.

  I found her in a bedroom at the back of the house. Elaborate drapes covered the windows. The only light seeped around the edges.

  She lay on her back under a quilt, her hands folded, her mouth slightly open. She looked asleep. I touched her, to see if I could wake her. Her mottled brown forearm felt cold. I tried but couldn’t close her mouth.

  I didn’t want to look at her anymore. Panic had jolted me full of adrenaline; fear or reverence had slowed my pace. Now both left me shaking.

  I found the phone—an old rotary dial with a heavy handset—in the hall. On the same table where I’d seen the letter with the blue writing. Who had received that one? Was the last one sent to me?

  For the second time in a week, I sat waiting for the police and whoever else would come like carrion birds to take care of the dead.

  I waited on the porch step. Her house smelled so much like my great-aunts’ house—baked cookies, moth-balls, wool rugs, furniture polish. I had tried to make myself wait with her, but I couldn’t. Not that she cared, but I was embarrassed that I couldn’t do that for her.

  The letter’s scattered pages lay on the front porch where I’d dropped them. I gathered them up, straightening the edges, rubbing the vellum with my fingertips.

  Waiting, I looked down at the last page, her final words, the ones I hadn’t finished.

  “—Jackson at Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home. He knows what to do.”

  I hadn’t called Jackson first. I’d called L.J.’s office, her direct line. It would be simpler, with all that had transpired, to treat this like a crime scene until it was officially ruled otherwise.

  Her sure blue pen strokes went on:

  I wish I could’ve known you earlier, Avery Andrews. I think we would’ve been friends. You remind me of myself—or, rather, who I wanted to be, who I think I was inside. You’re a fighter. I hope you’ll be happy back in Dacus. I just hope you’ll be happy.

  Tears blurred the words. What a sad plea from a woman who’d studied happiness from a distance. Somehow her hope read more like a curse than a blessing.

  Please do me one last favor. By all that’s right and holy, swear you won’t let them plant me beneath that angel. Carlton Bamer told me about your idea, about rewording the epitaph. That’s fine. Write whatever you want on the damned thing. Just keep it away from the church cemetery and away from what remains of me.

  I bequeath the angel to you, Avery. I’ll call Carlton and tell him. Better yet, I’ll write it, sign it, and send it to him, along with a check to pay for any extra expenses in erecting it in front of your office. I reread Harden’s instructions. You were right: He just said carve the epitaph; he didn’t say it had to be visible. He also said “install it.” he didn’t say it had to be over his grave. So place it any-where you’d like. How about right in front of your office? You could use it for a signpost. Some artistic irony, having it in front of the old Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home, don’t you think?

  It is a lovely work of art. I finally went out to Innis Barker’s to see it, full well expecting to hate it. But I didn’t. I loved it. It’s quite beautiful. I just don’t want it over my grave. And Harden certainly doesn’t deserve it over his.

  Please enjoy her, Avery. Maybe she—and you—will pray for me, if you’re sure there’s anybody listening.

  I set out on my mission of redemption. Frankly, I found checking off my list wasn’t as redemptive as I’d hoped. I am tired.

  Good-bye, Avery. Please keep those of my secrets that you can.

  Maggy

  P.S. The contents of the house are to be auctioned, with the proceeds going to the library and to the conservation fund. I told Carlton earlier—he added this to my will—that you are to have first choice of any contents you’d like. There’s quite a nice collection of historical crime accounts my father left me. I’d love for you to have them, though don’t feel obligated to take them.

  The sheriff’s car stopped at the curb. L.J. herself had arrived. What of Maggy’s secrets could I keep?

  26

/>   Midday Saturday

  Is this her handwriting?” L.J. asked, shoving the plastic-encased letter at me.

  Maggy Avinger had thoughtfully written a suicide note and left it on her nightstand.

  I’ve killed myself with an overdose of pills.

  “Would you recognize it?” L.J. said.

  I nodded. “You will, too, if you take a look at those poison-pen letters your guys sent to the state crime lab.”

  I had told L.J. it was suicide as soon as she got out of the car, but she wasn’t inclined to take my word for it. Not because of her sharp investigative mind-set, but just because she hates for me to know something she doesn’t know.

  I rubbed my fingers on the vellum of the letter Maggy had written me, folded deep in my jacket pocket. L.J. wouldn’t need my letter for her investigation. She could find plenty of writing samples in the house to compare with the suicide note, and I could protect a few of Maggy Avinger’s secrets, at least until I had time to think.

  As the number of cop cars grew, it quickly became a circus. The crime scene processing went on forever. Unlike the scene at Lionel Shoal’s, the sight of the ambulance drew a crowd of concerned neighbors. At first, only a few Ghouly Boys were drawn like blowflies to the hint of violent death. They prefer car accidents—more chance for gore. But the rash of unsolved murders in Dacus provided its own irresistible allure. Maybe a serial killer on the loose, they speculated with relish.

  I sat on the porch, out of sight of the street, tucked behind the shade of vines and trellises sheltering the end of the porch.

  Even Carlton Barner showed up. I wasn’t sure if someone had called him or if he’d been out taking his Saturday constitutional, but he was wearing a natty sweater vest that said, “Here’s a man who looks like a stiff even when he’s relaxing.”