Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said

by Bentley Dadmun

  I smiled at the image. “I’ll approach Annie with that suggestion. Perhaps she could hire you to put them on, and about nine times a day you can chase them around the pastures and change them. In fact in sounds like something you’d be eminently qualified for.”

  She smiled and muttered, “Up yours, Old Man.” We entered the clearing and when Priscilla spotted the boat, she stopped short and checked out my mahogany home. “You weren’t kidding, it is a boat.”

  “A little beat up, but its home.” We put the bikes in the leanto, Priscilla undid her panniers, slung them over her shoulder, and like she’d been doing it all her life, climbed the steps and dropped into the cockpit. She stopped and looked over the cabin. “I don’t think I’d wanna do an ocean in this thing.”

  “Those days are long past for this boat, if it ever had any of those days. The only water under its keel now is mouse piss and rain.” I unlocked the hatch and Priscilla ducked and dropped into the main cabin. I followed and closed the hatch. “There’s wine in that refrigerator by the sink,” I said, and put Cat down, squatted by the stove, and began the ritual.

  Moments later Priscilla handed me a mug of wine, saying, “It seems a lot bigger from the inside.”

  “This is the main cabin, up front is a smaller cabin with a double bed and the bathroom is also up front. Under the cockpit is a quarter berth, that’s where you’ll be sleeping.”

  She bent over and peered in the cave like space. “Neat. Listen, where’s your Xbox?”

  “On that little table, under the cover.” I went through the stack of games and pulled out the manual for Fallout 3 and handed it to her. “Read this first, otherwise you won’t know what to do and just get killed all the time. And before we see the Millers tomorrow, I’d like you to call Eva and ask her if she knows them, maybe we can get a hint of what to expect. Also, ask her if Frank appeared frightened prior to his death and did he mention seeing anything unusual or disturbing.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off the manual, just nodded and said, “Eva never mentioned Frank being scared or upset, but then she worries for a hobby and Frank was very good at hiding things from her. As for the Millers? They won’t be a problem, I can handle them, it doesn’t matter what they’re about.”

  She sat down and in seconds was lost in the manual. I settled by the stove with my drink and magazines. Later she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Okay.” I turned on the Xbox and brought up the program, showed her how to run the game, and jacked in the earphones. When she was settled, I went back to the stove, my magazines, and wine.

  At eleven I washed up, played, Wrestle the Hand and Kill the Sock with Cat until she signaled she’d had enough by biting my thumb. Then she hunted around, found her brush and dragged out from under the desk, and I brushed her. I should have also brushed her teeth, but I just wasn’t up to that battle.

  When I went to bed, Priscilla was hunched in the chair, her whole being focused on the screen. Fallout 3, is a vivid, tough, and complex game with amazing graphics. It’s addictive, for once you’ve learned the basics, you’re wandering a nuclear wasteland, trying to complete quests while being relentlessly hunted. Sometime in the night I woke up and realized Cat wasn’t sleeping with me. I assumed she was sleeping with Priscilla and hoped the arrangement was mutually satisfactory.

  I crawled out from under the covers around seven and peered out at the world. Frost covered the ground and coated the brush around the boat. Dozens of birds were on and under the feeders, fueling up for the day. I threw wood on the coals, made coffee and huddled in the settee, waiting for the fire to quell the chill. I had taken my supplements and was lingering over a second coffee when Priscilla crawled out of her cabin with Cat dangling from her hand.

  I looked at her, casually turned away, looked out at the birds and grinned. Priscilla slept in white flannel jammies covered with little pink and blue bunnies. At first glance she looked maybe ten years old, then she looked at me with those hard green eyes, the curves and muscles and lines around her eyes asserted themselves, and the child flew out the window.

  She dropped Cat on the table, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat opposite me. “Listen, can you keep Hairball in your room? I was just dropping off and in she comes, plops down beside my head and licks my face. And she snored in my ear… little cat snores.”

  “It would appear she likes you.”

  “Yeah, well she can like me from a distance, I don’t need a cat blowing in my ear. So, let’s have a quick breakfast and get going.”

  I gave her a look, sighed, and said, “We’re making progress, Priscilla, and today we may make more progress. But I’m not going to devote every waking hour to this thing just because you happen to want to. If you don’t like the way it’s going, go to The Muscle Stop and do an hour or two of weights to ease the stress, show the guys your jammies.”

  She grinned and said, “A little grumpy this morning aren’t we? And don’t give me any shit about my pajamas, I love flannel and those are the only ones I could find in my size.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really, what with the world chunking up it’s getting tough to find stuff my size, so give it a rest.”

  … . .

  THANKS TO PRISCILLA AND HER MOUTH, we were out of the boat by nine thirty. We passed the cows as they headed out for morning rounds and they stopped, more or less in a line, and stared at us. Priscilla laid her bike in the grass, trotted over to them and spent several minutes petting and kneading the neck of Dolly, the big walleyed Guernsey. The beast clearly enjoyed it and when Priscilla stopped, she gently butted her in the side, so Priscilla dug into the back of her ears for a bit, and trotted back to her bike. When we were on our way again she asked, “Hey Harry, could we visit them in the barn sometime?”

  As I kicked open the damn gate I nodded and said, “Sure, but they live in that big shed behind the barn. People live in the barn.”

  “So this place really is a home for geezers?”

  “Uh huh. They live in the barn and those trailers and RVs out in the East Pasture. Three or four of the really old ones live in the house. Annie takes ninety percent of their Social Security for room and board.”

  “That must bite. Work for forty or fifty years and end up living in a barn out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I guess for most of them the so called golden years snuck up and bit them. They retire, or are forced to, and discover that they have maybe ten thousand a year to live on. Or they or a spouse needs major surgery and they don’t have insurance, so the system takes their house, car, and everything else.”

  “But you didn’t go that route. You dropped out early and ended up on that boat.”

  I nodded and said, “That’s right, and if I’m still alive when the boat rots out, I know where I can set up a yurt.”

  We were silent for several miles, then at the top of a hill Priscilla asked, “Who’s Annie?”

  “She owns the farm and runs the place. Sort of a mayor.”

  “You don’t give her your Social Security?”

  “No, I and a couple of others cut wood. Everything on the farm is heated by wood, around forty cords a year.”

  “Forty cords? God, your stones must hang down to your knees, tell Annie about the wonders of heating oil.”

  “To expensive. Especially when the wood is free and all that’s required is a lot of hard labor.”

  “And that’s cheap cheap cheap,” she said.

  … . .

  SEVEN ROCKS ROAD BEGAN ABOUT FIVE miles up the highway on the other side of town. An endless serpentine thing of poorly graded gravel, it wandered ever upward into the hills. I had the bike in low gear, low range, and my heart was clanging away like a bell rung by an intoxicated priest.

  Frank Jankey should have run this one.

  At the summit we stopped, wiped off the sweat, waited a few minutes for me to recover, and headed down the backside of the hill. Priscilla must have touched forty miles an hour on the steep sections. To keep
the trailer from bouncing around and scaring Cat, I went much slower, but still heard a few anxious mews, and by the time the road leveled out I needed new brake pads.

  A mile or so further on we saw a brittle looking two story shack constructed of wide, ancient boards that had never felt paint. Thin wisps of smoke floated out of a stone chimney, and a large shed, half hidden by the trees, was taking its final bow before sinking to earth. Parked next to the house under a lopsided window was a new looking Ford Focus station wagon.

  We laid the bikes in the weeds, I grabbed Cat, Priscilla grabbed a package wrapped in butcher’s paper, and we climbed wobbly cement block steps to an unpainted plywood door. Priscilla scowled at me and whispered, “You should leave Hairball in the trailer, they might have dogs.”

  I patted Cat’s head and whispered back. “In her condition she’s helpless, a predator could happen by and get her.”

  She made a face, turned, and whacked the door several times. She waited ten seconds then whacked it twice more. The door suddenly swung inward and a chunky woman with protruding brown eyes said, “We don’t give money to nothing and we don’t need no charity.”

  Behind those bulging eyes was a gray lumpy face. Her unkempt salt and pepper hair was chopped off just below her ears, and she wore wrinkled tan work pants and a man’s blue dress shirt that had been washed so many times it was translucent. I smiled and said, “We don’t want any of your money and we don’t do charity, Mrs. Miller. My name is Harry Neal and this is my friend, Priscilla Matson. We’d like to come in and talk to you and your husband about Charles Watson.”

  She stood rigid and silent, staring at me the way an old man stares at a campfire. A dry heat, smelling of unwashed clothes and animals drifted out of the house. Cat meowed softly and pulled into the sling. From somewhere inside came the sound of women yelling.

  Finally she blinked several times and said, “What’s in the package?”

  Priscilla held it out to her and said, “It’s a roast. We thought you might like to have it for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “We already got a turkey.” She reached out and grabbed the package from Priscilla’s hand. “What kind of roast?”

  “Pot roast.” Priscilla said.

  “That’s the cheap kind.”

  “Only if you can’t cook worth a shit.”

  “Little girl, I was cooking just fine way before the other half of you dribbled down your mother’s leg.”

  “At least my mother stood up on two legs and didn’t live in a barn.”

  A hint of a smile flickered across her face, and she stepped back, motioned with a thick hand and said, “Come on in.”

  We followed her through an entryway of exposed plywood and two by fours that was cluttered with boots, winter coats, and overalls lined with red plaid, and entered a living room crammed with mismatched furniture. A man sat in a handmade pine chair with his bare feet resting on the back of a huge mongrel dog. The man was small, old, and dressed in faded work clothes. It looked like he was in uniform. The dog looked at us and a low rumble filled the room.

  The man muttered, “Joe,” and the dog thumped its tail and closed its eyes. Cat uttered a barely audible mew and pulled deeper into the sling. The man was staring at a huge flat screen television with a built in DVD player. On the screen two young obese women sitting on chairs on a stage were yelling at each other. Sitting between them with a smile on his face, was a thin, scruffy young man with a two day beard. A line of print at the bottom of the screen proclaimed: ‘Women who have sex with their brothers.’

  Priscilla patted the man on the top of his bald head. “That crap will stunt your growth and cause your teeth to fall out old man.”

  The man looked up and favored her with a toothless grin. Mrs. Miller grabbed a remote, pointed it at the TV and the screen went black. “Kenneth, we got company. Come, let us sit at the table.”

  We trooped into a kitchen that was as cluttered as the living room. Their cooking stove was an antique and burned wood. The kitchen table was a slab on one inch plywood with four by fours for legs. It was stained brown and had two folding chairs on each side of it. Priscilla and I sat opposite the Millers. Mrs. Miller put bottles of Miller High Life in front of everyone, sat down and rested her forearms on the table and bobbed her head. “I’m Ethel, this here’s Kenneth. We’re the Miller’s and you’re welcome into our home. Best keep your cat in that rig on your chest though, or the dog will eat it. Now, what’s this about Mister Watson?”

  I didn’t mention Frank Jankey, just told of visiting Helen Watson and that we were trying to find out what happened to Charles. Kenneth beat a cadence on the table with the flat of his hand and said, “Nice man, nice man, had all the money a body would ever need yet treated us like we was kin. Bought us beer and talked about every sort of thing.”

  Ethel nodded and smiled. “He even bought us lunch on occasion. He liked to talk about gardening, Kenneth grows all our vegetables and knows the world about growing stuff.”

  Kenneth gulped beer and grinned at us. To avoid any rambling talks about gardening, I said, “We understand you saw Charles the day he disappeared. Is there anything you can remember about that time? Anything unusual or strange?”

  Ethel stared up at the ceiling. Kenneth stared down at his beer, then over at the dark television screen. “Seems to me he was as always,” Ethel said. “Smiled a lot, bought us a beer and asked if we were in need of anything. He always asked if we were in need.”

  “And we said same as we always did,” Kenneth said. “We said we don’t take no charity. He bought us lunch on occasion, but that’s cause we was friends, not cause we was in need.”

  “Talked about gardening,” said Ethel. “He usually asked Kenneth about gardening cause Kenneth knows the world about gardening.”

  “He did show us one of his coins that day, Ethel.”

  Ethel frowned and lifted her face to the ceiling. She smiled suddenly and slapped the table. “That’s right, he did show us one of them coins. That’s different, cause he didn’t usually do that, only once before.”

  “Two times I think.” Kenneth said.

  “Coins?” I said. “What kind of coins?”

  Ethel leaned toward us until she was half laying on the table. “Why, from his collection, he collected those coins from Canada.”

  “Canada?” I said. “He collected Canadian coins?”

  “Yes sir,” she said. “Mister Watson had a whole bunch of them Canadian Maple Leafs. Fucking things were pure gold and pretty as can be.”

  Kenneth nodded and hit the table with his palm. “That’s right. And they made a good weight in your hand, I can tell you that. He let me hold it.” He showed us the palm of his hand. “Made a good weight in a man’s hand, not like them tin dollars we got that are just painted gold. He had them in a leather belt with pockets. Had it around his waist with his shirt and sweater over it. A body’d never know they was there. He said they was his hedge against poverty and the goddamn government.”

  He paused and sucked down the rest of his beer. Then he held out the bottle and pointed at the label. “Miller, same as us, that’s why we drink it. The Miller’s drinking Miller beer.” He grinned, wiped his mouth and pointed a dirty finger at me. “Another thing I remember. He said he was gonna make a stop, said he had to see someone after he left Gretchen’s.”

  “See who?” asked Priscilla.

  “I remember that,” said Ethel. “Said he was gonna finally make the stop.” Once again she sought guidance from above. Kenneth looked to the television then picked up the remote and pointed it at the box. Seconds later we were treated to the view of the two fat women screaming and wrestling around on the floor while the man sat in his chair and smiled at the camera. Ethel grabbed the remote and cut the sound. “How’s a body to think with that going on?” But Kenneth was gone, his eyes staring at the screen with a laser like focus.

  Priscilla made a face and said, “I wonder how much they get paid for that crap,”

 
Ethel giggled and waved the remote in the air. “That ain’t nothing. You should see some of the others, you just wouldn’t believe it.” And she giggled again and snorted loudly.

  Priscilla giggled with her and asked, “Do you remember where Mister Watson wanted to visit?”

  Her face clinched in concentration, Ethel stared at the ceiling and sought answers. She lowered her head and started to shake it. In mid shake her face lit up and she said, “Why yes, now I got it. Mister Watson said he was going to check the fares at Satan’s Station.”

  “The fares at Satan’s Station?”

  “Yep. I remember it clear as day now. Said he was gonna finally see about buying a ticket. Then he laughed, said it was just a stop to see what’s what this time, said it always paid to think ahead. Say, you folks want another beer?”

  We shook our heads. Priscilla stood up and said, “We have to get going, got about six other places to go before nightfall. But listen, you’ve been a great help.” As Ethel led us to the door I glanced at the television. Now the women were punching the man, who had his hands up and was grinning at the camera.

  At the door, Ethel shook my hand and gave Priscilla a hug. “You folks ever want to come back, do so anytime. And you can bring that poor little animal with you as long as you keep it in that thing on your chest so the dog don’t eat it. If we’re home your welcome, and thanks for that meat, it’ll do us two, maybe three meals, depending on how much Kenneth gives to the fucking dog.”

  We walked the bikes through the dead grass to the road. I stood in middle of the road, took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Priscilla punched me lightly on the shoulder and said, “Listen, they’re doing the best they can with what they have.”

  … . .

  WITH MILD HYPOTHERMIA AS A COMPANION, we entered Gretchen’s and settled in the back booth. Clara Kosko, dressed in a faded maroon sweatsuit, and wearing her ‘My Other Body Is On Baywatch,’ apron, shuffled up to the booth. With her long face pulled into a magnificent frown, she pulled out her pad and pencil and looked at us. I smiled and said, “Hello, Clara, I’ll have a mug of red wine and a bowl of French onion soup, please.”