Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem

by Karen G. Berry

  Then, the wind applied itself.

  The magazines made a sound like the rising into flight of a thousand birds. The pages ruffled, smacked, then churned into a color-glossy maelstrom, rising, tearing, ripping, pulverized.

  His hair lifted and rose. His hands reached out to the narrow walls of his trailer, touching each side, completing the circuit. His laughter lifted like the locks of his hair, swirling around him as all that flesh was masticated by the jaws of a devouring god.

  He laughed at the heavens, then, roaring at the triumph of his own God.

  OUTSIDE THE BAR, the barefoot women of Bone Pile sang their mournful, triumphant song. They had no words, these women, they were moving feet and risen arms. From their writhing, dancing throats came hammer blows and carillons, cracking bones and passion whispers.

  Around them, falling like rain, rising like dust, a confetti of desecrated womanhood reduced to shreds whirled and danced, sifting down like filthy snowflakes on their hard, cruel, beautiful faces.

  They smiled their ruined smiles. They sang their furious song.

  Asa Strug moved past them to the doorway. He watched the crowd moving, smelled the tears and sweat, heard their transport. They joined the song of good and evil incarnate, coming from the stage. The song claimed them, lifted them, carried them to paradise with its glory.

  Asa lifted his arms and looked around him, his prophet’s face lit with fulfillment. He had always known it was coming.

  This musical rapture.

  INSIDE THE BAR, a threatening crush surged toward the stage. Isaac interposed his huge body between the little girl and the crowd that could not get enough of her. Raven, full of pride, stood beside him. Together, they kept her safe.

  Rhondalee immediately hurried to the man in the ostrich skin boots, only to discover he was the manager of a Ford dealership, not a talent agent. She looked around wildly, her hair flattening in the noise.

  She saw a youngish man in rimless specs and Dockers who’d spent the evening with a cell phone pressed to his ear. Rhondalee, seeing him approach Raven, clawed to get near him. “Don’t you sign a thing!” she screeched. “That’s just her mother! I’m her agent!” She went unheard over the roar of the audience. She pitched and heaved like a mechanical bull to get to the talent scout, twisting and kicking out at everything that stood between her and the dotted line. But she felt two strong hands holding her arms, keeping her back.

  She turned to see the sad, grey eyes, but they were not the eyes of her husband. It was Memphis who held her. “Let them be now, Rhondalee.” His voice was soft, but she heard it. She heard it over the cheers, the applause, the stomps, the calls. She heard his voice over all the guilt, the regret, the frustration and disappointment that had fueled her for years. “This has nothing to do with you, Rhondalee. It never has. Let them be, now. Let them be.”

  She understood, then. She understood that she would have no part of this. No part at all.

  Memphis watched her eyes. In them, he saw her dreams, once so huge, so bright, flaring up in a supernova of possibility, then shrinking to the size of a pinpoint. Her eyes held nothing but a collapsed mass of bitterness.

  Of course, he caught her when she fell down in a fit. He held her carefully while the storm raged around them.

  THE CROWD WANTED more, but Annie knew no other songs.

  She stood on the stage, her bony knees knocking, smiling at all the noise. Faces swarmed below her, eyes wild and mouths open, kept at bay by the tall blonde man who looked like a bear. He stood in front of the stage and spread his powerful arms and blocked them from tearing her to bits in their adoration.

  It was wonderful, just like she’d always known it would be. Everyone looking at her, watching her, listening to her. It was wonderful.

  It was also scary.

  Her mother’s hard brown arms went around her shoulders. “I’m here, Tadpole.” She buried her face in her mother’s stomach and held on for all she was worth. To her shame, Annie felt tears prick her eyes. She’d never wanted her mother more in her life. But her mother pulled away from the embrace and dropped to her knees, eye-to-eye with her daughter. “Tadpole?”

  “Yup, Mom?”

  “If we could do anything right now, and I mean, anything in the whole wide world, what would you want to do?”

  Annie thought. “You mean, like go get a Slurpee?”

  “No, honey, I mean, like go make music. This talent scout’s offering you a hell of a development deal. If it was up to me, I’d tell him to shove it. But I think you might want it.”

  Annie frowned. “Will you be with me, Mom?”

  And Raven looked at her, grey eyes to grey eyes, silver facing steel. “I’ll be right there with you from here on out.”

  “Every minute?”

  “Ever single minute.”

  “Well, then, I want to go for it.”

  Raven pulled her daughter to her, inhaled the tangy smell of her hair, pressed her sharp cheekbones to Annie’s soft face. She let her rough hands play down the miracle of the girl’s backbone. “Annie Leigh,” she whispered. “You are a revelation.”

  The crowd would not be stilled. They wanted more of Annie Leigh LaCour. “Mom? Do you know any different songs?”

  Raven smiled. “I guess I know a couple.” She poked Isaac. “Can I borrow your guitar?” He handed it up, and she slung it on as fast as she could, adjusting the strap as she checked the tuning. “Just follow along,” she said to her daughter over the opening bars. “You know this one. Your grandpa plays it in his truck all the time.” She looked over at her father, who waited at the piano. “You ready, Pop?” He nodded. “Memphis?” Memphis raised his bow in reply. She cast a silver glare over her shoulder. “You boys think you can follow?” The admiring sneer of a Dunnery let her know they were ready. She picked, and Annie listened, strumming, getting the chord progression down. It only took her a second. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  They slammed into it, together.

  And Another Sunday

  ASA STRUG WOKE to the sun on his face.

  He’d slept on the floor. The interior of the trailer was cleanly emptied out. It wasn’t just the maze of pornography that had vanished. He had no cot, no boots, no kettle, no spoon, no Postum. Not even a coffee cup.

  He stood and stretched, his hands stretching above the former roof line as he reached for Heaven. “Lord, Thou openeth my life like a can of sardines.”

  Outside, the reader board was gone. “Lord, Thou hath spoken.”

  He helped himself to a can of spray paint from a neighboring shed. The work was hard, but it would be permanent. The letters took up the entire side of what was left of his singlewide.

  You know that I kept back nothing that was for your good: I delivered the message to you: I taught you, in public and in your homes; with Jews and gentiles alike I insisted in repentance before God and trust in our Lord Jesus. And now, you see, I am on my way to Jerusalem, under the constraint of the Spirit.

  —Acts: 20:20

  He surveyed this, his final message. He smiled. He’d always had God on his side, after all.

  He’d always had God on the side of his singlewide.

  ISAAC WOKE WITH a full bladder and a crick in his neck from sleeping in the cab. He stepped out, sorely tempted to relieve himself on Levi Skinner’s front lawn, which is what she did in the morning when she had to go too badly to get up to the Blue Moon. But her father slept under an old wool blanket on Levi’s lawn. Just a perpetual campout, here at the trailer park. He glanced at the sleeper door, knowing she was in there, wondering when she’d wake, and of course he saw it. Right there, below the door. Right where he couldn’t miss it. The small pile of his belongings, his guitar, camera case, backpack, all stacked up tidy in an unmistakable message. He wanted to kick something, to smash something. He was through with being hurt, he was through with trying and hoping and attempting to communicate. Even with all that, he somehow resisted the urge to take a nice long whiz on the tir
e of her rig.

  He gathered his things and what was left of his dignity, and started up Sweetly Dreaming Lane towards the highway.

  MINAH WAS THE only woman in the park who took the time to say good-bye to those nameless women with their thin necks and long dresses. While they loaded all those boys into the backs of the van with hardly a word, Minah handed out bags of sandwiches, bottles of lemonade, travel-sized packages of Kleenex. “You all have a good drive back, all right?”

  The wife nodded. “We will, thank you.”

  “We’re all just so sorry about how this came out,” said Minah. Oh, she knew what a bad piece of business that Gator had been, but she hated the sight of so many women and boys left to fend for themselves. She’d been there with her own son. “We’re all worried about you. You know, we could set you up here in the Park, help you with those boys.”

  “We’ll be fine,” the wife said with dignity and composure, “We believe he’ll be back.” The woman’s eyes glowed. “Yes. And we’ll walk in the gardens, together.”

  Well, that was just a little too creepy for Mynah. There were limits to what a person could hear, and still be polite. How much of this was a person with any common sense whatsoever supposed to listen to? She turned away, and noticed two men approaching.

  First came Quentin Romaine, tugging along one of those rolling suitcases. Minah had no idea what he might have in there, but he sweated with the effort of it, and it bounced behind him like a loaded freight car. Maybe he had his lawn jockey in there. “Hi, Ladies!” he called. “We talked about my coming with you to help with the driving? I’m all set to go! I can’t wait to go somewhere where it’s clean of the mud races, if you know what I mean. Too much of that around here, what with your spics and beaners…” He would have gone on, but no one was paying him any mind. He looked over his shoulder to see the approach of a small, muscular man with a shorn head and dark skin wearing a suit with wide lapels and stitched-in creases in the trousers. With his two-toned shoes and pressboard suitcase, he looked like a Delta Bluesman.

  “Goeth thou to Moab?” He shone in the sun, his natural power around him like a mantle, his Bible under his arm. The women responded to him like still water responds to the touch of a fingertip. They rippled and shimmered and reflected. They straightened their postures, arranged their patchy heads of drab hair. Even the boys settled down a little, looking at this strange man in their midst.

  Finally, one of the seven wives of Gator Rollins spoke up. “Please ride with us.”

  “Why, thy offer pleaseth me verily.” He looked at the vans for a moment, shaking with the thudding bodies of boys who had already gotten too bored to sit still. “This din doth displease the Lord.” Miraculously, the vans stopped their bouncing. Asa bowed. The wives smiled.

  Quentin turned a deeper shade of purple and set off back down the road, his caboose of a suitcase threatening to tip over. Minah went home to think on it.

  The days had a steady pattern since she’d retired as cook for Ochre Water Elementary School’s lunchroom. There were strays to feed and a coffeepot to wash. There were ladies’ magazines, the source of all the clippings for the community bulletin board. And there was yarn, yarn, a never-ending rainbow of acrylic yarn to be knitted and crocheted into baby blankets, potholders, toilet paper cozies, afghan blankets. As Minah worked, she wondered if her grandkids would ever visit her, and what all those bright California children with their lessons and sports and great big ranch house on the cul de sac would think of a place as full of crazy doings as the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park. Well, she thought, there was just no telling, was there. Folks just did what folks did, when you looked at the whole scale of it. Folks just pretty much did what they did, yes, they did.

  She made a pot of coffee and put a coffeecake in the oven, because she was always ready for a visitor.

  “BY GOSH,” MINAH said to Memphis a little later, “Those ladies gave me the heebie-jeebies. I tell you, Memphis, I don’t know what they’ll do now.”

  “Well, maybe Asa can help them out a little.” Memphis was trying to be serious since Minah was so desperately earnest, but the thought of Asa Strug heading to Utah with a caravan of wives was difficult to take too seriously. “Maybe Asa will get a job.”

  “Doing what?” Minah shook her head. “Changing the reader board outside some Utah movie theater? No, I don’t think Asa Strug is the answer to anyone’s money troubles. Especially not the money troubles of seven widows with more little boys than I could count. I suppose it was financial worries over supporting that many women that drove Gator Rollins to steal those rings. He must have been desperate for money.” Minah peered fiercely over her bifocals.

  Her eyes did more than challenge him, thought Memphis with a shiver. Her eyes, he decided, warned him. “I’d like to talk with you about that, Minah.”

  She leaned back, adjusted her wig and crossed her arms across her polyester-clad bosom. “You go ahead and talk, Memphis. I think I’ll just sit right here and do some listening.”

  He sighed, sipped his coffee. “I’ve closed the case on the Right Reverend Henry Heaven. Evidence was found in Gator Rollins’ motel room that made it seem that he might have killed the Reverend. Namely, those rings. And of course he was fleeing the scene after kidnapping my great niece in his vehicle when he died. Gator didn’t comport himself like an innocent man.”

  “Well I doubt very much that man was innocent. I mean, look at those wives of his. Most of them aren’t even twenty. He always struck me as a nasty piece of work.”

  “So you’re saying you think he did it?”

  “I didn’t know Gator Rollins and to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to.” Minah’s voice was oddly guarded. “I’m saying maybe he had the death he deserved, too.”

  Memphis looked at her, his grey eyes full of bafflement. “Who decides that, Minah? Who gets to decide what kind of death a man deserves? The court of public opinion? A pack of vigilantes?” He leaned back, shook his noble head. “We have courts of law for a reason.”

  Minah frowned. “Do you remember Claudette Sprecker? That useless boyfriend of hers? That Fred Rettel?”

  “Of course I do.” These were Ochre Water folks. Rettel had lived with Claudette and her four year-old son, Tyler. He’d never had a job, but Claudette was the night manager at the Denny’s in Ochre Water. Fred had moved in, helped himself to her home, her car, her paycheck, and it turned out, her son. Repeatedly, over the course of a year, until that poor child started kindergarten and told a teacher, because he was afraid to hurt his mother’s feelings. “I arrested Fred Rettel myself.”

  “And you did a good job, Memphis. You got him good, and the charges stuck. And that man got six months in a treatment facility in Modesto and then he was back out on the street, looking for another tired woman who needed help raising her boys. He hurt that little boy for a year, Memphis. What kind of a world is it for a child, when the man does half the time the boy did?”

  He looked at her, infuriated and ashamed. Yes, he knew the justice he represented had limits, he knew that. But what kind of a world would it be if everyone took justice into their own hands? So he said it out loud. “In all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never heard of a Bone Pile girl getting into trouble. And Bonnie MacIver is pregnant. She went to the Church of the Open Arms.” He would never eat the coffeecake, but found himself pinching away bits of the crumble topping. “The Bone Pilers were church people. And the pastor of that church was kicked to death with boots, Minah. Pointy toed leather boots.”

  “Like every man in this Park wears.”

  “Yes. And like the Bone Pilers wear. And all the Bone Pile men just happened to be out of town that night at a fiddling festival in Idaho.”

  “Have you made sure of that?”

  He nodded. “I still have connections to call in that world, and I checked it out. About forty of them drove up there. They paid their entry fees, they participated. Minah, one of them won. The timing is off. They didn’t have time
to do it on the way home.”

  “Then who killed him?”

  “I don’t know.” He took a sip of coffee, even though it had gone cold. “The most likely suspect was my niece, purely based on timing and circumstance. She had no motive to kill him and Raven is not a killer. But her boots checked out clean. And that leaves Bone Pile.” He thought about kicks with boots, and what it would take to pry the Bone Pile men out of theirs. Maybe he could take someone from the lab up there and test the boots, pair by pair, while the owners looked on. He imagined them scattering to the deep hills to protect the sanctity of their footwear. “It seems to me that the only person who would kill over a girl is her father.” He thought for a bit. “Or maybe a mother? I do believe that if a child belongs to you, you’ll do whatever you have to, to keep that child safe.”

  Minah looked sad and old. “A mother makes some dreadful sacrifices to keep a child safe, Memphis. Sometimes she sacrifices the child.”

  He studied her face, so sweet and kind and honest and grieving. Minah knew something. Minah Bourne knew everything. But she was telling nothing. “I believe the Reverend interfered with Bonnie. I think that’s why the Bone Pilers stopped coming to church and stopped letting their girls go to school. Melveena was rounding them up every single day after the murder. Which brings us to Gator Rollins. He had no motive at all, Minah. I don’t think he did it.”

  “You think his motives are clear? What motive did he have for taking Annie Leigh like that? I think that man is lucky he died in that fire. You talk about some vigilante justice. If he hadn’t died, I can’t imagine what folks around here would have done if he’d harmed our Annie Leigh any worse than he did. When a Park only has one child, she belongs to all of us.”

  So the motive came down to who belonged to who. Who a child belongs to. Who did Bonnie MacIver belong to? “Someone framed Gator. The only reason to frame someone is to take the blame off someone else. And to be honest, my main suspect was my niece.”