Dangerous Thing

by Lanyon, Josh

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Melissa said.

  “Do you believe in sabotage?”

  There was a certain glint in her eye. “I don’t practice it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Do you believe The Guardian protects the hollow?”

  She stared at me and said bitterly, “People mock what they don’t understand. What they fear.”

  “I’m not mocking. I’m asking.”

  “I suppose you’re not afraid either?”

  I was saved from answering as Marnie brought the bill. I picked it up.

  “No you don’t,” Melissa said, snatching for it. I held it out of her reach — old habits, I guess.

  “Come on,” I coaxed. “Let me see how it feels to be one of those good old fashioned oppressive landowners. Or maybe just a good old fashioned chauvinist pig.”

  She eyed me narrowly but subsided. I never met a grad student who wasn’t short of cash.

  “Since you like legends so much,” she said, “I’ll tell you another about Abraham Royale.”

  “Yeah?”

  “After his second wife ran off, Royale began to remember how faithful and obedient his first wife had been. He remembered her gentle ways and sweet smiles. He remembered her devotion to him expressed in a hundred loving ways, and he went to San Francisco, to Chinatown, to find her.”

  Melissa paused. Looking up from figuring the tip, I nodded encouragement.

  “Royale searched and searched but the girl’s father had died. There was no other family. No one knew where Li Kei had gone, though Royale questioned all the neighbors. He spent all that day hunting her. At nightfall he came to what seemed to be an abandoned house in the worst part of the city. He went inside, and to his amazement his wife was there, spinning away —”

  “Spinning?”

  “Well, whatever Chinese girls did during the day. Embroidering or working at a loom or something.”

  “Gotcha.” I noticed Marnie was hovering again. Maybe she needed the table.

  “Li Kei seemed to Abraham almost unchanged. As though not a day had passed since he’d left her at her father’s doorstep. He stared and stared without the courage to speak. At last Li Kei looked up from her work and saw her former husband, who fell to his knees. He told her what a fool he had been, and how much he loved her, and how he had been searching for her high and low, and how she had always been in his thoughts, and how each night he dreamed of pillowing his head on the soft black silk of her hair.” Melissa brushed the soft black silk of her own hair over her shoulder.

  “And she said?”

  “Li Kei wept and said she still loved Abraham and had prayed night and day that he would return.” Melissa popped the last bite of dill pickle in her mouth. “So they went to bed —”

  Crunch crunch.

  “And?”

  “And when Royale woke the next morning he found he was holding a skeleton with long black hair wrapped around his hands and throat.

  She stopped as I chuckled.

  “This sounds familiar. Like that Kobayashi movie, Kwaidan. ‘The Black Hair,’ segment I think.”

  Melissa eyed me consideringly and then burst out laughing. “Or Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu. You’re the first person who ever caught that.” She lifted a dismissive shoulder. “Anyway, it makes a good ghost story.”

  * * * * *

  By the time I left Basking, the blue skies had turned gray and April showers were falling. The mountains were wreathed in cirrostratus clouds promising snow.

  I figured Jake would have to cut short his fishing trip. I didn’t know how long it would take him to get back because I didn’t know how far he had traveled in pursuit of man’s other favorite sport.

  Weighing the chances of getting snowed in with Jake, I had to wonder whether that would be a good thing. Not if we ran out of supplies, I concluded with a glance at the paper sacks in the back seat. Lots of red meat, lots of chilled beer — it was like feeding a lion with a drinking problem.

  At the mouth of Stagecoach Road I parked, got out and checked the mailbox.

  The rain was coming down hard now; everything green was somber and glistening. The scent of pine and wet earth filled my nostrils.

  Rain ticked on the mailbox as I opened the door.

  I’m not sure what saved me. I heard something above the rattle of the rain — another rattle, a sizzling sound almost. I had an impression of motion inside the box, a couple of circulars moved. I yanked my hand away and jumped back.

  The snake struck at the empty air.

  As I stood there gaping I recognized the distinct triangular head of a rattler.

  I backed up another foot or two, rubbing my hand, double-checking that I hadn’t been bitten. I was so shocked I didn’t even yell. The surprise was that my heart didn’t give out then and there. In fact, once it started beating again, it was almost steady. Keep thinking those happy thoughts, I told myself, watching the rattler withdraw into the junk mail of the mailbox. From its hiding place it watched me, tongue flicking out.

  I got back into Jake’s car, found my cell and dialed for help.

  In less than half an hour the now familiar black and white truck pulled up, giant tires shelling gravel and mud. Billingsly and the ever-present Dwayne fell out wearing yellow rain slickers.

  “I might have known it was you,” Billingsly said gloomily.

  I explained the situation. As though it was perfectly commonplace, Dwayne reached back in the cab and pulled out a long hook-like rod. In a few minutes they had the snake out of the mailbox and on the road where they promptly dispatched it. So much for the Save the Wildlife Fund.

  Billingsly scratched his skunk-toned beard. “Just a little one,” he reassured me, “though their bites can be the worst. The young ’uns don’t know how to judge. They shoot you the whole damn dose.”

  “Kind of a weird thing, that snake in there,” Dwayne observed to his chief.

  “Yep, that is weird, although I’ve seen weirder. I remember one time —”

  “You’re not telling me you think this is a — a natural phenomenon!” I broke in.

  Billingsly frowned at me. “What do you think it is, English?”

  “I think someone put that snake in the mailbox.”

  He shook his head at my ignorance. “You’d be surprised at the places snakes crawl into. Dwayne had a snake wrapped around the towel bar in his john once.”

  “The upstairs john,” Dwayne told me as though that should settle it.

  I said, incensed, “A snake could not climb up into a mailbox and shut the door after itself.”

  They stared at me. Rain dripped off the brim of Billingsly’s hat. “So what is it you’re suggesting? You think someone deliberately dropped that snake in there? Why? To bite somebody? Maybe the mailman? Or maybe you?”

  I hadn’t thought about the mailman frankly.

  “To bite me. Hell, I don’t know! Maybe to scare me. I only know that snake didn’t get in there by itself. Or by accident.”

  The sheriff said vexedly, “You know, nothing like this ever happened here before you came along.”

  “This is my fault?”

  “I’m just calling ’em like I see ’em.”

  And apparently he couldn’t see further than the end of his gin-blossomed nose.

  I said as calmly as I could, “Thanks for your help. I take it you don’t want to write a report or anything?”

  Dwayne drawled, “Oh, we’ll be writing a report.”

  I was already moving toward the car. Billingsly’s next words froze me mid-step.

  “Not so fast, English. We were coming to see you anyway.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I didn’t like standing here getting wetter and more chilled by the minute. I longed for the comfort and safety of home, my quiet shop, my ordinary boring life where my biggest problem was if I was ever going to find someone to share my ordinary boring life.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’re trying to put a name t
o that dead body you found.”

  “Which one?”

  He let that pass. “Missus Jimson at the general store says you told her Friday morning that you were expecting company that night. Now, I know it wasn’t your buddy the cop because I called him myself Saturday night. So where is this other guest of yours? What happened to him?”

  My mouth dropped. I stood there, letting the rain in while I gaped.

  “There wasn’t one. I made him up.”

  Billingsly and his deputy exchanged a look and moved in — actually I think Billingsly only shifted his weight, but I was rattled.

  “But surely ...” My voice unexpectedly gave out and I had to try again. “The postmortem will tell you how long he’s been dead.”

  “Yep.”

  Yep? What did that mean? Not that I was any expert, but the dead man looked as though he had been there awhile. Longer than a week.

  Good-bye to pride, good-bye to dignity. I babbled, “You’ve got to believe me. There was no one else. I said that because it’s isolated up here. I said it in reflex. I was jumpy. I’m used to living in LA.”

  They stared as stolidly as the white-faced beef cattle by the side of the road. An effect heightened by Dwayne chomping his tobacco cud.

  Billingsly said slowly, grimly, “You’re one of them funny boys, ain’t you?”

  It was hard to speak, what with my heart trying to climb out of my mouth. For every gay man this question comes at some point, in just such a tone, if not in those actual words. I don’t know if real courage lies in storming barricades or simply not denying the truth. I know it took every ounce of strength I had to say, “I’m gay, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Your pal, Riordan. He one too?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Dwayne spat a stream of tobacco juice an inch from my boot.

  They continued to stare at me.

  Why wait for the law? Let’s string him up! Except that they were the law.

  “I’ll tell you flat, I don’t trust you, English,” Billingsly told me flat.

  “Listen,” I said, “Why would I make a point out of the dead man in the barn not being the same man I found Thursday night? Why would I direct your attention to him if I’d killed him? Is that smart? Is that logical?”

  “How the hell do I know how smart and logical you are?”

  Seeing that I didn’t have an answer to that, Billingsly added, “I done some checking. This ain’t the first time you’ve been involved in a homicide.”

  “A homocide,” clarified Dwayne.

  “Someone tried to kill me.”

  “That happens to you a lot.”

  Dwayne laughed as though that were no wonder.

  “Okay, okay. What about the gun he was shot with? I don’t own a gun. You can search the place if you want.”

  I knew this was a mistake as the words left my mouth. My grandmother had a rifle and at least two handguns somewhere in that house — assuming Ted hadn’t pawned or stolen them. But surprisingly the sheriff didn’t jump at this offer. Indeed, he got a suspicious look on his face as though he’d just been dealt his fifth ace.

  “Sure, you’d like that. Then you could sic your ACLU shysters on me.”

  “We could get a search warrant,” Dwayne suggested. His ears and nose were turning red with cold. It felt like snow in the air.

  Maybe the words froze in my throat. Or maybe I honestly couldn’t think of anything to say. It doesn’t happen often. I just stood there as though struck dumb.

  Billingsly jabbed his finger my way for emphasis. “Don’t even think about leaving town, English.”

  * * * * *

  “The only thing worse than opera is someone who hums along with opera.”

  It was nearly five before Jake walked in. He was sunburnt, wet, and smelled faintly of fish. Sexy as hell. Don’t ask me to explain.

  I stopped typing. “Turn it off.”

  Jake reached over my shoulder and turned off the CD player, cutting Bocelli off mid-high note.

  In the silence I could hear rain drumming down on the roof.

  “Get a lot done?”

  “Sort of. Jake —” I started to turn in my chair.

  He folded his muscular arms around me. “God, I’m starving.” He pressed his mouth against my throat and growled from deep down in his own. The bristle on his cold jaw scraped my own.

  My nerves being a tad frayed, I jumped a foot and nearly clipped him under his chin. He let go of me and laughed.

  “How about fish for dinner?” His grin seemed more lopsided than usual.

  Shit shit shit. The timing was all off. I was zigging, he was zagging.

  “Fish is good if I don’t have to clean it.”

  “I’ll clean it,” he said. “Hell, I’ll even cook it if you take K.P.”

  “Deal.”

  He was heading back to the kitchen. I got up and followed him.

  “Jake?”

  On the other side of the kitchen he paused, his hand on the door to the yard.

  “I — uh — there was a rattlesnake in the mailbox today.”

  He took it without blinking.

  I plowed on. “I called the sheriffs and they didn’t take it too seriously, but — well, Billingsly told me not to leave town.”

  “Told you not to leave town?”

  “Right.”

  I was waiting for the nuclear reaction, the meltdown. Jake said very calmly, “That’s bullshit. Unless he’s actually charging you, no cop can order you not to leave town. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Where’s this mailbox?”

  “On the highway.”

  “What were you doing on the highway?”

  I tried to keep it light; offered a smile. “This feels like an interrogation.”

  “Why were you on the highway?” Crisp and clean and no caffeine.

  “I drove into town to pick up some groceries and a copy of Titus.” At his blank look I said, “Titus Andronicus. The play I’m basing —”

  “You were playing detective.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “I did a little research, that’s all. At the library. And Royale House.”

  He stared stonily.

  “I know you think that I’m imagining things —”

  Jake walked out. The screen door swung shut behind him with just a suggestion of a bang.

  * * * * *

  “You’d better tell me what you found out,” Jake said pushing his plate away.

  I had been staring down at the remains of my dinner, studying the fishy eye of the trout lying there. Jake’s voice jarred me out of my none too pleasant thoughts.

  Dinner had been civil but strained. The food was good, but I had no appetite. Jake fried up the fish, cooked rice with garlic, cilantro and green onions. Someday he was going to make some woman a wonderful wife. I tossed together an unimaginative salad of spinach and wild lettuce, and uncorked one of the unexpectedly nice bottles of California wine I’d picked up at the market. I thought the wine would help. Or at least dull my awareness of Jake’s disapproval.

  We moved around each other in the big kitchen, not speaking except when he asked me where something was.

  I got the silent treatment during the meal too. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of the way Mel used to clam up when he was angry. I reacted by drinking too much; it didn’t help as much as I’d hoped.

  I tossed my napkin over the remains of the fish. “Answer me this first. Suppose someone wanted to protect Spaniard’s Hollow?”

  “From?”

  “Exploitation. Desecration? The hollow was considered a sacred place by the Kuksu.”

  “What’s the Kuksu?”

  I think it was Mark Twain who said, “Get your facts straight, and then you can distort them as much as you like.”

  “A secret society of men and women, a religious cult whose members dressed in elaborate costumes rep
resenting ghosts or divinities.”

  “Impersonating the spirits of the dead?” Jake tilted back his chair, drained his glass. He was knocking the booze back himself, but he’d gone straight for the twenty-year-old whisky in the liquor cabinet.

  “Right. The Kuksu is associated with the Miwok, the Miwok being one of the predominate tribes in this area. That story Melissa told us last night is a Miwok creation legend.”

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Melissa is a member of the Miwok.”

  Nothing from Jake.

  I pushed on. “There’s something else. When we were kids Melissa used to talk about going on rattlesnake hunts with her father. I know that’s probably just a little kid bragging. I know it’s circumstantial, but ...”

  Jack said impatiently, “It’s hearsay. It’s jack shit.”

  “Look, I’m not accusing her of anything. You asked what I found out.” I decided to wait until later to tell Jake about my conversation with Mel.

  “You think Melissa put the snake in the mailbox? Do you think she also killed the vagrant in the barn? Why?”

  “I’m not saying that. I don’t want to think Melissa is involved. I’m theorizing. Maybe the two things are not connected. Maybe the snake was only meant to scare. She doesn’t know I’ve got a bad heart. Those stories that she told last night were sure designed to scare. Everything that’s happened at that camp has been designed to scare people off.”

  Jake was silent. He shook the ice in his whisky glass. It made a chilly angry sound. At last he spoke, his comment being, “How did you not get snake bit?”

  “Luck. It was cold inside the metal box. I guess the snake was sluggish.”

  No comment.

  “I’m not sure why you’re pissed about this,” I said.

  He seemed to choose his words. “I’m not.”

  “No?” I couldn’t help the sarcastic note.

  “Let me finish. I think you’re in over your head. And that creates a problem for both of us.”

  “It doesn’t have to. I didn’t ask you to come up here. I’m not asking you to stay.”

  “Yeah. Right. We both know I can’t just walk away.”

  I kept my temper. Barely.

  “Fine, Jake, what do you think I should do? Go home to LA and forget about the fact that two men have been murdered?”

  His eyes narrowed.