Walking the Bones

by Randall Silvis

  She stepped forward, moved her hand toward the door. A click. He raised his fists to his chest, expecting the dog to attack. She then turned away, clapped her hands one time, said “Come!” and the dog turned and followed, ran ahead of her through the cabin’s open door, which she then entered too, and left the door standing open.

  All was silent but for a bird somewhere outside and the buzz of flies still swarming around the deer’s head. He waited for a couple of minutes, listened, heard the woman’s muted voice from inside the cabin.

  He rolled another quarter turn. Onto his good knee, hands to the ground. Felt around for his crutch. Propped it up, pulled himself erect.

  The cage door swung open with a push.

  ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN

  By the time he reached the two wooden stairs leading to the cabin door, he could smell something cooking, fragrant with the scents of tomato and beef, herbs he could not identify.

  Negotiating even two stairs with a crutch was not easy. With each hop his body wanted to tumble left, but the too-short crutch steadied him long enough that he finally made the threshold, stood there breathing hard.

  The dog, lying now in front of the stone hearth at the far end of the cabin, raised his head, ears stiff and alert. “Stay,” the woman said without looking DeMarco’s way. She was seated on a bentwood rocker beside a man on a mattress atop a simple bedframe. The man, dressed in blue pajama pants, gray socks, and an untucked flannel shirt, lay on his back, eyes closed. Were it not for the skeletal hands emerging from the shirt cuffs, the thin neck, and emaciated face, there seemed to be no body inside the clothes. But his face was freshly shaven, his thin hair neatly combed.

  On a small table to the right of the bed was a glass jar holding dentures, plus a plastic bottle of ibuprofen, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of iodine, a small yellow prescription vial, a washcloth, a jar of Vaseline, rolls of surgical tape and gauze, and a clear plastic glass full of water.

  From inside the cabin came not only the scent of hot soup but an odor of smoke and ashes. Embers glowed within the small wood-burning stove, atop which sat a cast-iron pot. There was also a vague, unpleasant redolence of grease in the air, and something else as well. A nameless fetor DeMarco had experienced before, at the scene of fatal car accidents, in the home of a former colleague dying of cancer, and twice at the scenes of shootings—an odor suggesting that if the man on the bed was still alive, he would not be for long.

  Now the woman turned to DeMarco and nodded toward the only other chair in the room, a worn, green vinyl chair to the right of the little table. “Sit down there,” she said.

  DeMarco hobbled inside, sat, looked at the glass of water, looked to the woman. She was rising from her own chair now. “Go on,” she said. “It’s fresh from the pump.”

  He drank. The water was cool and so delicious it made him dizzy and short of breath. He would drink, take a couple of short breaths, then drink again.

  “There’s Bactrim in the yellow bottle,” she told him.

  He shook two tablets into his palm and swallowed them down with a gulp of water.

  She knelt before him, looked at his leg, looked down at his boot, stained black now from a mix of dirt and dried blood. “I might have to cut off this boot,” she said. “There’s ibuprofen for the pain if you want it.”

  He nodded, reached for the ibuprofen, shook out two small capsules, swallowed them down.

  With the knife from the sheath attached to her belt she sliced through the laces, then laid the knife aside, pulled the sides of the boot apart. The tongue was stuck to his sock with dried blood, and the sock to his swollen skin. Delicately she worked the tongue free, taking pains to not yet tear away the sock, though that would come.

  By laying the tongue the whole way out of the boot and stretching the sides of the boot as far apart as they would go, she could move the boot back and forth along the heel. “I’m gonna pull,” she said. “There’s no other way.”

  “Go ahead,” he told her.

  She pulled with a slow, steady pressure, left hand cupping his calf and holding the leg off the floor, right hand cupping his heel. He focused his gaze on the interior of the cabin. Counterclockwise from the bed was a round table and two chairs, then the fireplace, the wood-burning stove, a single-basin sink in a cabinet with towel racks on both sides. Next a bookcase lined with canned and boxed food, preserved vegetables and fruits and dried herbs in Mason jars. Then a smaller bookcase with a dozen or so books and, on the top shelf, a battery-operated transistor radio. Then wall pegs from which hung various jackets, sweaters, hats, a fishing vest festooned with hooks and flies, tools on leather thongs, lanterns, pots and pans, and other items. On the wall beside the door, two rifles, a shotgun, and two handguns hung from metal brackets. Below them, leaning into the corner, two fishing poles and a wicker creel.

  Between DeMarco’s chair and the door was an old armoire with the doors removed, and on its shelves folded shirts and jeans and other clothing. A footstool pushed against the wall. Two oil hurricane lamps and three Coleman lanterns. A battered black guitar case. The plank floor was dark with age, the ceiling stained here and there with smoke.

  As his eyes moved around the room his chest heaved with every breath, muscles tensed in reaction to the pain seizing his leg as she first worked off the boot and then the sock, the dried blood crackling, bits of dead skin tearing free.

  And then he felt the coolness of the air on his naked foot, then the warmth and roughness of her hand. He took a few more breaths and looked down.

  She had placed the tip of the knife inside the tear in his jeans, and was slicing the pant leg open down through the hem. Now she laid the knife aside and leaned closer, fingers delicately probing despite his winces, working around his ankle, then down over the dorsal and to the toes.

  “I’m sorry my foot’s so dirty,” he said.

  “I don’t feel nothing broken,” she said without looking up. “But that don’t mean it’s not. It’s swolled up with infection pretty good.”

  She reached for the hydrogen peroxide and washcloth. He leaned his head back against the wall. Closed his eyes. How could she be so gentle after keeping him in that cage all morning? Women, he thought.

  And she said, “What about them?”

  He opened his eyes, looked down. She was still washing his foot, cleaning the scratches around and above his swollen ankle. He told her, “I didn’t know I said that out loud.”

  When she offered no reply, he asked, “Was that you who shot at me yesterday morning?”

  “You wouldn’t be setting here if I shot at you,” she said. She poured peroxide over his scabbed leg. He twitched, couldn’t hold back a groan. The pain made him want to urinate, but he gritted his teeth, clenched his pelvic and abdominal muscles, breathed fast and shallow through his nose.

  When the sting of pain subsided and he could see again through watery eyes, he wanted to ask if her comment meant that she hadn’t shot at him, or had shot but not to kill, but then decided it didn’t matter. He watched her a while longer, the back of her head, the clean brown hair, her strong shoulders and hands. She reminded him a little of his mother, of those better days when he was small. But this woman was nearly as tall as DeMarco, at least as wide. Yet her ministrations were tender, with a delicacy that belied the strength of her thick fingers and arms. He wanted to lay his hands atop her head, or place them on her shoulders. He wanted to lay his hands against her cheeks. It was an urge he did not understand, and then told himself to stop trying.

  When he looked up, the man on the bed was awake, head rolled toward the door, his eyes on DeMarco. DeMarco said to the woman, “Is that Emery over there?”

  The figure on the bed did not fit the image of Virgil Helm DeMarco had been carrying inside his head. Virgil had been sick, yes, but only forty, so still, in DeMarco’s mind, retaining at least some of a younger man’s vitality. The
man on the bed appeared twenty years older, wasted by illness, stripped of all strength. Only the eyes retained a semblance of the younger man’s spirit.

  In answer to DeMarco’s question, the woman said nothing. But after a few moments, the man raised the fingers of his left hand off the bed. Held them aloft for five seconds, and let them fall flat again.

  DeMarco bent closer to the woman to ask, “How long has he been like that?”

  At first she said nothing. Then, “Been getting worse ever since he come here.”

  “Has he seen a doctor?”

  She reached for the towel now, patted his foot and leg dry. Then came the iodine, more stinging pain, more clenched muscles. He said, “If you keep doing that, I’m going to pee my pants.”

  “That’s up to you,” she said. She reached for the roll of compression tape and slowly wrapped it around his foot and all the way up to his knee. Then covered the compression tape with the white surgical tape.

  She stood, placed the medical materials back atop the little table. “Thank you,” DeMarco said.

  She stooped to retrieve a bedpan from beneath the bed, turned, and handed it to DeMarco. “Go ahead now.”

  He said, “I think I’ll go outside if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said, dropped the bedpan onto his lap, and walked away.

  She went to the sink, where she washed out the washcloth and her hands while DeMarco relieved himself in the bedpan. Then she folded the wet washcloth, took a towel from the rack, and carried them back to DeMarco. With one hand she lifted the bedpan from his lap, with the other handed him the towel and washcloth. “Clean yourself up and you can have some of that soup,” she said.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY

  The damp washcloth was cold on his face, soothing to his eyes. He worked the cloth between his fingers, tried to force it under his nails. Just to sit in a chair again felt luxurious. And soon there would be soup. He loved soup. His mouth filled with saliva, and a giddiness arose in his chest, an almost drunken relief and happiness.

  But then he looked again at Emery. A skeleton with wide, alert eyes. A small smile on thin, cracked lips.

  “I’m so sorry,” DeMarco said.

  In answer, Emery raised a weak hand to his throat, touched it with two fingertips, moved his head from side to side.

  The woman returned to the cabin then with a fresh bucket of water from the outside pump. She washed her hands at the sink, then filled a heavy bowl with soup and placed it on the table with a spoon and cloth napkin. She retrieved a handmade walking cane from beside the armoire and handed it to DeMarco. “Get some of that soup in you,” she told him. “Then you need to get that leg looked at.”

  He pushed himself up, hobbled to the table. The compression tape stabilized his leg and dulled but did not alleviate the pain. After he sat, but before he took up the spoon, he turned to her and said, “May I ask your name?”

  As always, she took her time answering. “Catherine,” she said. Then, surprising him, “He calls me Cat.”

  “He’s lucky to have you,” DeMarco said. “So am I.”

  She lowered her gaze and drew away. She retrieved his water glass from the small end table, refilled it by dipping it into the bucket of fresh water, and set it before him. He asked, “Is there a trail I can follow back down? I think I took the long way up. Those woods are confusing.”

  She said, “Em said the same thing when he first come here. And I’ll tell you what I told him. These woods aren’t to be fooled with. They can heal you or they can kill you. Sometimes both at the same time.”

  She turned away from him then, said “Come,” and briskly exited the cabin with the dog running after her.

  DeMarco picked up his spoon, turned toward Emery, and said, “She seems nice.”

  The man’s smile broadened, and his thin body quivered with a half-choked laugh.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE

  The soup was full of carrots and onions, chunks of softened potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and bits of meat he thought was probably venison. DeMarco ate quickly, head down, well aware that he was being watched by Emery. The woman, after she returned and took up her seat beside Emery, ignored DeMarco.

  When he finished, after drinking off the last of the broth, he wiped his mouth on the napkin, turned to her, and said, “That was the best bowl of soup I’ve ever had. Thank you.”

  She said nothing, sat there with her chin on her chest as she stared at the floor.

  DeMarco turned in his chair so that he faced Emery more directly. The pain was still there in his leg but the ibuprofen and Bactrim had extinguished much of the heat. “Cat,” he said with a smile. “I like that name. Cat with a dog. Big dog.”

  The man smiled, blinked. He parted his pale lips, wet them with his tongue. His eyes were barely open, glistening. The odor was strong around him; DeMarco tried not to let his face show it.

  “My name is Ryan DeMarco,” he began, but again the man’s fingers lifted. Not a wave this time. A stop. “You don’t want to talk?”

  Cat repositioned herself in the chair, sat more erect, placed her hands atop her knees. “Just ask what it was you come to ask,” she said. The dog’s claws clicked against the floor as it shifted its position, gray eyes focused on the stranger.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

  DeMarco chose his questions carefully, knowing his time and Emery’s energy were limited.

  “About those girls’ remains. Are you the one who put them where they were found?”

  Emery’s lips barely moved, his answer a slip of air. “No.”

  “Did you see it done?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know they were there?”

  Emery said nothing, appeared to be trying to swallow. Cat answered as she stood and went to the sink to dip a fresh glass of water from the bucket. “He knew something was in there. He didn’t know what.”

  “So he must have known,” DeMarco said, thinking out loud, “more or less when it was done. And who did it.”

  She sat, leaned close to Emery, and held the glass to his lips, allowing just a sip of water into his mouth. “He never had the key for that place they were hid,” she said.

  “Somebody did,” DeMarco said, and looked at Emery again. “Do you know who?”

  Emery wet his lips. Then said, a whisper, “Drugs.”

  “Somebody involved in drugs? Was it Royce? He’s already admitted he called to let you know about the inspection in the morning. Told you to be there at 7:00 a.m., right?”

  Emery’s breaths started coming more quickly then, four short inhalations before he held the last one and spoke. “Next call.” Then he breathed rapidly again, eyes opening wider, blinking and frightened.

  Cat heard the change in his breathing, leaned close, and blew softly in his face, a hand to his cheek. After a minute or so, his breath fell into rhythm with hers.

  She waited until his eyes looked heavy again, face calmer. To DeMarco she said, “He can’t ever get enough air into his lungs. Plus it hurts him to breathe.”

  DeMarco said, “Can you answer my questions instead?”

  She remained with her face close to Emery’s, but now cocked her head slightly, a silent question. Emery closed his eyes, a long, slow blink, then looked at her again, and smiled.

  She stayed close a few moments longer. Then drew away and settled back into the chair.

  “He won’t tell no names,” she said. “Not to you, me, or nobody. All I know is somebody called him that night before those girls got found. That’s why he left and come here.”

  “Okay,” said DeMarco, “but he said ‘next call.’ That means he got two calls, the first one from Royce in the afternoon. And the second one from somebody involved in drugs? That has to be McGintey, right?”

>   “I don’t know names. I know it was whoever had the key in the first place. Some short bug-eyed guy is all he told me.”

  “That’s not Royce and it’s not McGintey either,” DeMarco said.

  Emery’s eyes slowly closed. With every exhalation, he released a soft grunt. Cat said, “That’s all he’s got in him. You need to leave him alone now.”

  DeMarco nodded. He said, “Okay if I ask you a couple more questions?”

  “Make it quick,” she said.

  “Obviously he told you about those seven girls. Do you believe he didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  Her eyes flared. “That damn war they sent him to took his health, took his peace of mind. When he heard what was inside that church, it just about made him crazy. Worse than the worst he’d already seen. Come here hoping for a little peace again. You can see how good that’s turned out.”

  “Is that why you shot at me?” DeMarco said. “To scare me away?”

  She turned her gaze on the dog. “He didn’t like me doing that. Said to let you come if you were coming. Always knew somebody would sooner or later.”

  “Did he know I was out there in that cage?”

  “Not right away. He was so mad at me for leaving you there he tried to get out of bed hisself. Almost killed him.”

  She stood then and retrieved the cane on the floor beside DeMarco’s chair. Handed it to him. “That soup’s likely to go through you pretty quick,” she said. “Looks like the swelling’s down some. You can slip your boot back on. There’s a outhouse out behind the pump.”

  She picked up his soup bowl and spoon, the water glass and napkin, and carried them to the sink, where she busied herself with washing them in water dipped from the bucket. DeMarco wanted to ask more questions but knew how tenuous his position was. He also knew that she was right about the soup after his fast of forty-odd hours; his stomach felt increasingly bloated. After pushing his foot into the boot, he placed the tip of the cane against the floor, pushed himself up, and hobbled toward the door.