Carolina Moon

by Jill McCorkle

  “This is like a school of sorts,” Quee says. “Let’s just say that I’m the teacher. Let’s just say that I am here at the School of Personality to work on you girls. I can teach you some procedures; I can cure your souls.”

  Myra is still flat on her back when a neighbor whose name she doesn’t even know walks up in the yard to ask if she can help. Sharpy doesn’t even bark at the woman or her snotty-faced little girl, and Myra makes a mental note to work on that with him; she will teach him aggressiveness and anger direction like she herself never quite mastered.

  “Are you okay?” the young woman asks and then her face goes pale and she grimaces, shudders, steps back.

  “Stinky dog.” The child reaches her arms for her mother to lift her.

  “I must’ve fainted,” Myra says. “I pulled . . .” she pauses, brushing and wiping muddy dirt from leather. “I found this shoe in my topsoil, and then I guess I fainted.”

  “What is that?” The child points to where Sharpy is now reluctantly sniffing. It seems Sharpy has done a little digging during Myra’s spell, and now there is what looks like a foot, torn and discolored yes, but a foot nonetheless.

  WITHIN MINUTES OF the 911 call, the police come and uncover the rest of the body that goes with the foot. It is naked and muddy. Myra tries not to look but can’t help herself; it is just like when Oprah or Geraldo has something on that is sick and not very Christian and she has to watch it anyway. What she sees looks like a sponge—soggy and bloated. The policeman (the same young one who had come around the other day) has gone inside to vomit. He said, right before covering his mouth in as polite a way as possible and running, that it looked like the fish had had a pretty good time with the deceased.

  “Do you think?” she asks as soon as he returns, pale and slick-looking. “You know.” She nods her head over toward Jones Jameson’s house.

  “Could be,” the man says, and as Myra looks at his sometimes handsome face she is trying to decide if Ruthie would appreciate his needing to wretch from the inside or if it would make her not like him as somebody to go out on a date with. “We got a lot to do.” He holds out his hand to her, and she keeps thinking there’s something she’s supposed to tell him, something about a gremlin. “I will be needing that shoe.”

  NOW THAT ALL the excitement has passed, and Myra has spent the whole afternoon inside with her feet propped up and a cool cloth on her head, she thinks of that naked body with its one shoe. It’s kind of like if Alfred Hitchcock did his own version of Cinderella. Now it all gives her the creeps, and even Sharpy with his warm little wrinkly body isn’t making her feel better. She would call Ruthie, but she’s at the Whorehouse getting cured. Can’t call Howard; he’s dead. So there. The truth is that she has nobody to call. All of her money and refinement and gardening talents, and she has no friends. She almost calls that cop, that Bobbin boy, but then she thinks better of it. What if he was to start thinking she was somehow involved? She did after all tell him all about arsenic the other day. I am the doctor’s wife, she thinks now. Of course I know all about anything like that!

  She is nervous all over, twitching nervous. She goes and gets herself a little cooking sherry with some vanilla extract on the side, which tastes awful but nonetheless soothes her, and then she sits with her robe pulled tight around her and stares at the telephone. Does she dare to do it? She dials and then sits there twisting to the point that Sharpy moves over to another chair. “Hello, Connie?” She makes her voice real slow and sweet; it’s what Howard always called her Sunday school voice. “Connie, the Lord has really tried me today. Uh-huh, yes. The Lord caused a dead man to wash right up into my yard.”

  “Oh, my,” Connie says. “Well, did the Lord speak to you? Did he tell you why he was doing this?”

  “Not directly, like what you might get in a phone call.”

  “Oh, when I get a message from the Lord . . .” Connie pauses so that it will look like she’s a polite person. “Well, never you mind, hon.”

  “Are you telling me, Connie, that the Lord will sometimes just up and speak out to you?” Myra makes herself laugh with a little picture in her mind, a picture of Mr. Sharpy lifting his leg and wee-weeing on Connie’s powder-blue ultrasuede suit that she bought in Southern Pines.

  “Oh, yes,” Connie pauses and Myra can feel that stretched-lipped smile clean through the telephone. “When Mama passed, the Lord came and whispered to me, Fear not. Now what did you get, love?” Connie sounds like a child who might be comparing what Santy Claus brought to her to what the old guy brought another. But then, that’s how Connie lives her whole life, by comparison.

  “Hmmm.” Myra stretches the phone cord and goes over to her window where she can see the light on in Alicia Jameson’s bedroom. While she is watching, a car pulls up and stops. A figure gets out and walks to the door. Maybe Jones is home! She strains to see better.

  “What, dear?” Connie asks. “I can’t hear you. Do you think I need to come and sit a prayer vigil with you?”

  The light on the Jamesons’ front porch goes on and in that instant Myra sees the stark bit of truth that ends the day. “No, dear, I’m fine alone,” she says. “But the Lord did speak to me. I wasn’t going to tell it at first, because I didn’t want anybody thinking that I’m crazy, but since you too on so many occasions have heard the Lord speak so clearly, I can tell you. The Lord said, ‘Myra, you’re a good-looking smart woman and so I have decided to do something that’s going to call a lot of attention to you.”

  “He said all that?”

  “He said, ‘I have put the body of Jones Jameson in your topsoil as a message.”

  “Jones Jameson? He’s dead? Does his mama know?” Connie is going a hundred miles an hour. She wants to know if the family is having a visitation, will there be a service? But Myra says a quick goodbye and hangs up the phone. She stands there in the dark watching the house next door, waiting to see what will happen next. Maybe it was a sign, only she didn’t see God at all; as a matter of fact she saw somebody as far from God as you can get, she saw Howard, and exactly how he looked that day he was whispering with Old Mary Stutts Purday. Maybe all this was meant to happen in some kind of grand scheme. Maybe Mr. Digby will bring her a new load of topsoil to make up for her discomfort. He said he would, didn’t he? He said he would, along with a little cow manure for good measure, manure so good and strong that it would burn some of the more tender plants if she wasn’t careful.

  Now Alicia Jameson is out on the porch, and that officer is still hanging around. They look like children at the end of a date, not at all like a cop who has come to say that her husband was dead and buried in the muck along the river. Alicia is in his arms now, their bodies intertwined right out there in the yard, and there is a voice (not Myra’s voice, of course!) saying Kiss her, boy, kiss her. Show her what a man you are.

  “Who is saying that?” she asks the ceiling. “Who?” And Mr. Sharpy perks up his ears and twists his little wrinkled jowls from side to side so that he can hear, too.

  Kiss her! I said, Kiss her you fool. Show her what you’ve got.

  Testing . . . Oh God, oh man. Ruthie Crow’s aunt dug up a foot today, a damn dead foot that happened to be attached to a body, a damn body that just happened to belong to Alicia’s husband. Everybody in town knew that it was him because he was wearing one loafer, which apparently is his trademark and has been since he was a fraternity man—not one loafer but just loafers, period. He wore Bass Weejuns and always had. Alicia said he bought three pair at a time and then rotated them. One pair always had pennies in them. They were always oxblood or cordovan as Ruthie (who is quite insistent on which word you use for what) kept stressing. As soon as people heard Bass Weejun, they knew, but of course the police had to do all kinds of investigating. Myra Carter, Ruthie’s aunt, had told her that the body stunk worse than anything she had ever encountered, worse even than the time all those field mice got into her heating unit and got fried. She said that the body was all bloated and looked somewhat pic
kled. The loafer didn’t have a scratch on it. Myra had spent ten minutes of telephone time telling Ruthie how this single loafer would make a good poem, how Ruthie should just sit and wonder where the other loafer might be. Ruthie was visibly shaken anyway. She told Quee that she had always felt a bond with the man because of the way he always looked at her like he was seeing right through her garments. Quee told me later that that’s how the lousy son of a bitch looked at everybody, and it was in that moment I started thinking of all the radio guy had had to say about Jones Jameson as well as Alicia. For the first time since leaving Washington, I was thinking that my bathtub there would have been a nice spot to retire. It’s amazing what you can convince yourself sounds like a nice life sometimes.

  Quee said, “Go get Tom Lowe and bring him around here.”

  “Why?” I asked, but she didn’t seem to have a real reason.

  “Just go get him,” she said, “while I call Alicia and ask her and Taylor to come and spend the night with us.”

  And so here I am, following these scratched-out directions into this great big neighborhood where there are great big houses in every direction. I’m hoping my car can make it around these streets without backfiring and/or screaming when I put on brakes. I know I shouldn’t feel ashamed of what my car does, but I do. It’s the exact same feeling I used to get when my ex would go on and on about the sneezers. When I hear a car squeal in public, I try not to look at the owner, who I’m always sure is just hangdog embarrassed. Oh, my Lord. This is looking worse than even Quee said, and there are mad dogs everywhere. I will sit right here in my car, and let Mr. Lowe come right out here. I’m gonna beep the horn twice, and that’s the best I can do. If he doesn’t show, fine, then.

  I have brought his old denim jacket and have it right here on the seat. It smells like him. I’m not wanting you to think that I’m some kind of weird chick who is into sniffing out folks’ garments, but at the same time I want to give you a full picture of what’s going on. I am also trying real hard to distract myself because it’s so dark once you get down here on his driveway and because God only knows what’s out in these woods. I mean there is a murderer loose in this town. It reminds me of that story people used to tell in high school about Hookarm and how he hooked himself up to the door handle when a couple was out in the woods parking, and then there’s that other one around here that folks are always talking about, the Maco Light, where an engineer lost his head and still searches the tracks looking for it.

  Oh God! Oh Jesus! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?

  No, but you’re bothering my dogs. Did I hear you talking to yourself?

  SPRING 1975

  Dear Wayward One,

  I have started a new business and nobody has any idea what it is I do. You see I have this notion that I can make a difference in the world. I have this idea that just because I failed with you doesn’t mean that I am a failure. No, I’m a winner and deep down inside of me I know it. I hope you will wish me luck if that’s possible, if you’re out there in the universe just blowing around. I have days when I wake up and I think just as clear as a bell: There is nothing beyond this very second. The memory of a life is all that lingers. And then there are other days like today when I think that I see and hear you everywhere. I eavesdrop sometimes in the grocery store, and sometimes it seems that the very words I hear are meant for me. Now don’t get all worked up, I am not crazy, not hearing voices in some weird psycho way. I do not think that I’m communicating with aliens through the fillings of my teeth. But I do think that a human soul is too powerful to simply vanish in a puff of smoke. I believe the energy has to fly somewhere; into the throat of a bird or the limb of a tree. Like whenever a butterfly or fly lights anywhere near me, I say in my head: “Hello there, you old so and so.” I can make a difference in this world. Either way—if there is something beyond this world and if there is not—it’s the best thing that I can do. I can make a difference and I just hope that someday I’m out there with you looking out on it all, or UP on it all, depending what the case may be. For all I know, you have become a lichen on a tree deep in the forest of the Green Swamp; you are a conch shell, tossing and rolling, whistling on the shore. And I am your ear, dear one. Speak to me. Please, speak to me.

  Testing . . . testing. I’m having to whisper because Alicia and Quee are still wandering around downstairs. What a night. I don’t even know where to begin with it all. It’s not bad enough that I get sent out in the boonies to fetch Mr. Fixit Jesus, but then he goes and scares the ever loving crap out of me. He popped up out of nowhere, asking if I was talking to myself.

  “No, it was the radio,” I said, my heart still going double time. I unlocked my door and handed him his jacket so that he wouldn’t think I’d been sitting out there in the dark fondling it while talking to myself.

  “Thanks.” He took the jacket and put it on. “Is that why you’re trespassing?”

  “Trespassing? Trespassing?” I asked and wanted to close the door but he propped that big workboot of his alongside my seat. “Is that what you call driving up to somebody’s house?”

  “So this is just a social visit?” He laughed and his eyes narrowed into slits. He was just as stoned as he could be, his body saturated in the rich sweet smell. “Well, well, well, I’m honored,” he said.

  I said, “More like stoned.”

  “Whatever.” He shrugged and started walking along a weedy old path to his camper, which, by the way, looks like it’s been through a couple of hundred hurricanes. He got to his door and stopped, slapped his leg so that all those dogs ran forward and practically stood at attention. “Come on in,” he said and lit a cigarette. “Let the visit begin.”

  “It’s not social,” I yelled after him. “I can tell you right here from the car.” But instead of turning back he went in and got an oil lantern; he brought it outside and set it on a small wrought-iron garden table off to the side like he might be hosting a campout. Things looked a little better in this light; there was a trellis and some pole beans growing up a bamboo tepee in the distance.

  “Aw, come on in,” he said with a fake accent. “My cleaning staff was just here. The place is impeccably spotless.” He started moving toward me. “Come on, now, don’t be shy. You weren’t so shy when you were butting your nose into my business now were you?”

  I told him again that I was sorry, that I didn’t even know his coma girl and that I never should have mentioned her. I got out and stood right by the door of the car.

  “No, you don’t know her,” he said and by that time he was so close I could have reached out and touched him. “And chances are you never will know her.” He was trying to see in my car. He asked what I was listening to while out there spying on him. When I said nothing, he looked like he might suddenly reach in and steal this tape so I locked and slammed the door.

  “So why are we here?” he asked, and put those farmer hands on either side of my face. When I said Quee wanted him, he laughed great big. He said, “At this hour?” and honest to God this is about when I started losing a sense of myself and what I was doing. “She must be thinking of a different kind of service,” he said.

  “What? What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Night service,” he said like a vampire and then sauntered back over to his little table and the circle of dogs. I told him that Alicia’s husband is dead and other than that I didn’t know why Quee wanted him.

  “Dead?” he said. “The son of a bitch is dead?” He lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. He could make anybody want to smoke, he made it look so good. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  I told him all about how Jones Jameson was found in a load of top-soil that got delivered to Ruthie Crow’s old aunt. I told him, all the while walking closer and closer like I might be in a trance. By the time I finished my sentence, I was sitting in the little webbed yard chair across from him. Even right now, repeating the story of that topsoil again gives me the heebie-jeebies. He laughed again and said that he g
uessed old Mrs. Carter must’ve had a fit; he said he was surprised she hadn’t dropped dead when she found him.

  I sat there petting the big head of the dog who was slobbering all over the knee of my jeans. “So are you coming to Quee’s?” I asked like I might be impatient, when really I was thinking that I’d like to stay right where I was for a while.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said.

  “Now?” I jingled my keys to let him know that I was about to leave, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

  “Soon. After I give you the tour.”

  “The tour?” I asked. “I don’t want a tour.”

  “No? Come on. Have the tour.” He grabbed me by the hand. “I mean a person who knows so goddamn much about my life should definitely have the tour.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “So prove it,” he said and pulled me up to the little cinder block stoop and half door. “Come inside.” I followed right behind him, so close that I could breathe in the smells of his jacket, wood smoke, cigarettes, marijuana; I thought that he might suddenly disappear in one big poof of smoke, so I put my hand on his back and held on to his jacket. “This is it!” he said and spread his arms. He clicked on the little battery-powered lamp in his hand. On one side there was his bed, a rumpled mess of pillows and a quilt; the other wing was filled with stacks of books and cassettes. He has a tiny refrigerator, a small flipout table, and a cardboard chest of drawers. It’s all cheap-looking, but kind of cozy.

  “It’s nice,” I said, which wasn’t an entire lie. “Really.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Someday I’ll build something, but it’s okay until then.”

  “And you could,” I told him. “Build something. I mean you are a carpenter after all.”

  “Don’t try too hard,” he said, and I was amazed that he could see through my fake nice voice, which has fooled people my whole life. “I said I forgave you,” he said.