Grave Consequences

by Dana Cameron

  I realized that she had worn her rugby socks under her robes when she’d given her service that morning. “Got psyched up for your sermon today, did you?”

  She grinned. “It is a bit like getting tooled up for a match.” Then she resettled herself and looked serious again. “No, I wasn’t badly hurt, aside from a lot of bruises and a broken collarbone. I was very lucky.”

  “And that’s how you knew,” I said.

  “No, not a bit. It wasn’t because I had survived and others hadn’t. It isn’t that simple.” She seemed to struggle for her words. “I had always been religious. Very casual about it, but I believed nonetheless. My true conversion, if you will, the thing that solidified my faith, wasn’t something I noticed right away. It was days after the quake, really. And my calling came even later after that.”

  I was determined to have it from her. I didn’t care how personal it was, I needed to know. “It was the…what can I call it? The power of the earthquake?”

  “No, it wasn’t that either, though let me tell you, I never want to go through that again, believe you me. Even when I figured out what was happening, why the room, everything was shaking so much—even with my training, it took a moment—all I could think, as I tried to reach the door, was: “Bugger, I’m done for.” Not very scientific, not very eloquent last thoughts, as I imagined they might be.”

  “So how did you know?”

  “It wasn’t because I knew something. It was because I stopped needing to know something. It was because I stopped being afraid. Oh, I don’t mean I wasn’t terrified at the time, I was. You can’t know how bad it was. It was weeks after that I noticed, that little background hum of worry was gone. That everyday fear that always seemed to hang over me had vanished. The uncertainty, the anxiety that was always niggling away at me, gone.”

  “Well, I guess something like that put things into perspective for you—”

  She broke in impatiently. “No, Emma, it was more than that. And before you ask, what was it, how do I know, I will tell you, I don’t know. All I can say is that it was the most sure I’ve been of anything, ever. On very good days, in prayer, I am that sure again. It’s called faith.”

  “I see.” I didn’t really.

  Sabine didn’t believe me either. “Let me try this. When you are working on some theory or other, it doesn’t always match the data as soon as you know it’s right, does it? You just really know, it feels right.”

  I shrugged; I had to grant her that.

  “Well, it’s just the same. It is that conviction that while I don’t have all the answers and never will have, I am absolutely right on this one point.” She looked at me. “So what is it that you are so unsure about, that you need to ask someone else how they know what they know?”

  Suddenly, all my resolve leached away. “I feel stupid talking about it.”

  Sabine snorted. “Please don’t let that stop you.”

  “First of all, let me explain: I’m not that religious—”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, I have ethics that I feel pretty strongly about, just nothing, you know, organized.”

  “Emma, it’s okay.”

  “It’s just that…lately…I’ve been feeling like…I’m in the middle of a lot of things. I keep finding myself in the center of…stuff.”

  Sabine gave me a sarcastic look. “Now I know you’re better able to express yourself than that.”

  I took a deep breath. “Death. Lately, I’m finding myself surrounded by a lot of death.”

  “And why does that bother you?”

  I looked at her. “Well, jeez. I mean, that’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “Not really.” She shrugged. “I find myself near a lot of death—”

  She didn’t get it, I thought. “No, I mean violent death—”

  “Yes, that too. So do police officers, fire fighters, ambulance drivers, doctors, lots of people.”

  I spread my hands. “Yeah, but why me?”

  “Ah, the eternal question.”

  “No, you know what I mean. Those others, they get in the middle of things because of their work, because they choose to. It’s part of their jobs.”

  She nodded. “They asked for it.”

  “Well, yeah.” I picked up a leaf from the ground and began pulling the stem from it.

  “Assuming that you don’t believe in a Godly plan, I think it’s because you can.” She carefully stubbed out her cigarette and immediately began rolling another with deft efficiency. “We talked about perspective before—well, rather, I was talking about it. You were ducking it—and I think we’ve come back to that. Death isn’t unusual, we’re just better at hiding it, pretending it doesn’t happen these days. I think you just find yourself ‘in the middle of it,’ as you say, because of how you look at things. It seems a natural progression to me. Your job is, at times, to be a professional outsider. Mine too, really, except I haven’t the luxury of distance, like you do.”

  “It’s no luxury,” I said. “You have to work hard to care about the dead, they’re so removed from you.”

  “Yeah, but you have to work harder to care about the living,” Sabine replied, “because they’re much more likely to piss you off. But I digress. You’ve set yourself apart, you have a certain set of skills, and you have your ‘strongly felt ethics.’ That lets you see things others mightn’t and you find yourself inclined to act upon them—even if you don’t know why—because of those pesky ethics. The question is, you find yourself in a position to use these skills, where perhaps no one else can or would want to—I’ll bet you don’t get any prizes for your interest—”

  I was reminded of Palmer’s words: There is no prize for finding the fox.

  “—So I’m left asking: What are you going to do about it?”

  I stared at the river. Maybe the answer was out there.

  After a minute, Sabine said, “It’s not a rhetorical question, Emma. It’s something you need to think about.”

  I threw the shredded leaf away. “I know. I have been thinking a lot about it lately. And I’ve come to this conclusion: I think part of it is because of something I went through, not too long ago. A very dear friend of mine died. Was murdered. I wanted it solved, for obvious reasons, of course, but also so I could have it settled in my mind, so I would no longer be suspected of it, for the sake of a lot of people. A lot of reasons. Because I felt so much of that, I know what these folks are going through, and I know, somehow, that I can help, especially since I know what it must be like for Jane to be accused…”

  “And what if Jane is guilty?” Sabine pressed on. “Do you think you’ll feel that strongly if you find out she’s guilty? What happens then?”

  Even though I knew the answer, I couldn’t say it right away. “Even if she’s guilty, I have to know. I realized that today when I was sitting in the Grub and Cabbage. Do you know the place?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Mmm. Awful.”

  “Yes, well. I realized when I was sitting there, that I wouldn’t have been there at all, if it hadn’t been for the way I felt about these things. Something about how horrible and fake it was made me wonder about how you knew something, knew it was real, or good, or you had to act on it. The way I’ve been acting on what I know and what I’m trying to find out.”

  Sabine looked amused. “And what do you want from me? Benediction? Absolution?”

  I shook my head. “I just wanted to let you know that I wasn’t trifling with this. With anyone. That’s all.”

  “Okay.” Sabine quashed out her cigarette on the heel of her shoe—just a little flash of dark green nubbly sock there—and picked up the butts carefully. “If I think of anything that might be of help to you, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I buttoned up my coat. “See you.”

  “Bye.”

  I put my hat on and headed back out into the rain.

  “And Emma?”

  I paused, turned.

  “God bless you.”

 
; It was only after I’d walked a couple of blocks away that I recalled my meeting with the young man outside the Fig and Thistle. I ducked back toward the cemetery and looked around, feeling pretty silly. Sabine was nowhere to be seen. Feeling even goofier still, I returned to the oak tree, thinking that I would check for a note and leave a message myself, asking the stranger whether he was Julia’s boyfriend.

  I got there and found the rock he mentioned; it looked like a piece of the tumbling wall that surrounded St. Alban’s churchyard. I took out a piece of paper and scribbled my note, saying I’d let him know if I came up with anything else. But as I lifted up the stone to place the little folded paper under it, I saw another piece of paper already there. As I unfolded it, taking care not to rip the damp and blurred paper, I realized that it contained the answer to my question, as yet unasked.

  It read, “She was seeing a bloke named—”

  Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

  I finished reading it, my heart sank to the bottom of my shoes. It was signed, “Stephen,” possibly as a gesture of trust. So now the stranger had a name. I crumpled up Stephen’s paper, tore up my first note, and wrote another one to leave in its place. “Thanks. I’ll look into it. Emma.”

  It was with a very heavy heart that I headed back to Jane and Greg’s house.

  It didn’t seem as though anyone was home, and I decided that I’d better act on my information before I lost my nerve. Here’s where the rubber meets the road, Emma, I thought. Here’s where you find out just how committed you are to this inclination of yours. Time to put up or shut up—

  I realized I was stalling as I stood outside the bedroom doorway. I tried the doorknob; it turned with a small jerk and a squeak that I imagined echoed through the house. I pushed it open and was greeted by the heavy smell of feral cologne and unwashed clothing. I went in and looked around, trying not to feel like the intruder that I was.

  The room was very similar to mine, with pretty wallpaper and lots of clutter that wouldn’t have looked out of place in my office at home. A pile of dirty clothes lay over in the corner, spilling untidily out of a laundry sack. And there was a heap of fieldwork bags full of tools at home in one corner. Books were stacked in piles next to the bed. The thing that caught my eye, however, was the smaller bag on the bureau, the one that resembled the others but that looked like it was set aside for other reasons, next to a collection of scent bottles and other toiletries.

  Without thinking about what I was doing, I picked up the bag, which was nothing more than an old army surplus satchel with a long shoulder strap. The dry rough canvas was a shock beneath my cold, clammy fingers. It didn’t belong with the others there, and something about its size, its feel, told me that it did, at one point, belong with a twenty-two-year-old girl.

  I don’t think I could have hesitated more than a heartbeat. I undid the buckles on the flap quickly, and without thinking, dumped the contents of the bag onto the bed. I picked through the tangled heap of belongings, deciding that this had been used as more of a backpack than a pocketbook; there was no wallet, no keys, nothing of the immediate necessities that a woman kept near her. Nothing the police would have missed, really; they were more concerned with her missing wallet. They would have been much more interested in where this bag had been found.

  A couple of notebooks, all the A-4 size I’d come to recognize, and a file with photocopies of articles and notes on them, all very carefully organized. With a shock, I realized that the articles were a couple that I’d written: Julia had been reading up on me before I arrived. I sat down to peruse the photocopies. Her margin notes were tiny, meticulously printed, as though a computer had inserted the metatext onto the article. I read a few of the comments. Next to the paragraph describing some of the maps of Fort Providence was: “Typical American-brand post-processualism.” Next to the section I’d written speculating on the demise of the colony, she’d written, “Why must they always resort to fiction? Trespassing on Borges.”

  I grinned humorlessly, and next to Julia’s comments, mentally inserted: “Superior disdain common to untried youth.” But that didn’t mean I didn’t agree with her, and I found myself wondering: if I couldn’t help but respond this way to written comments I’d never been meant to see, what must Jane have felt having this kid in class?

  The other things were far less personal or far more personal, depending on how you looked at them. A small silk purse that contained a couple of tampons. A toothbrush, a clean pair of pink cotton panties, and a pair of blue socks. All very clean and careful, cottony and childish. The things seemed so homely and ordinary that they nearly broke my heart. Where had I been when I was twenty-two? Just finishing undergrad, working with Oscar during the summers, developing my own rather strident opinions—my opinions were still strident, perhaps but at least now they were tempered with a little perspective—but still going home on weekends. A fledgling adult with a safety net; Julia’s had been fatally torn.

  There was a bit of folded paper, which I had to be very careful when unfolding: the creases in the lined paper—torn from one of the notebooks, I guessed—were furry with age and almost ready to fall apart at the worn seams. There were some lines from a poem, “Church Going,” by Philip Larkin, written out in that tiny, meticulous print: “A serious house on serious earth it is,/In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,/Are recognized, and robed as destinies./And that much never can be obsolete,/ Since someone will forever be surprising/A hunger in himself to be more serious,/And gravitating with it to this ground,/Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,/If only that so many dead lie round.” I wasn’t surprised that Julia had been attracted to this poem. If I remembered correctly, the narrator enters an empty church and considers whether, once the church has fallen to ruins and is lost to memory, the place will still seem hallowed by history, hope, and death. Julia had carried this around for a long time; perhaps, like Morag’s file, it was a talisman of belief.

  The last thing was a clear plastic cassette holder, with the tape inside. The label was cheaply printed and said, “Tealeaves and Broomsticks, 341 High Street, Marchester, MX6. Psychic Readings, Tarot, Crystals.”

  I heard a door slam downstairs. Instantly, I jumped up, stuffed the cassette into my pocket, and began shoving the rest of the things back into the bag. The little purse with the tampons went sliding off the duvet and under the bed; with a curse, I reached under and grabbed it, along with a handful of dust kittens. I shoved the little purse, dust kittens and all, into the bag and tried to do the straps as quickly as possible, but my fingers seemed to grow clumsier as I heard the footsteps climb up the stairs. Footsteps heading inevitably, I knew, for me.

  Okay, I can’t dodge out of here now, I thought in a panic, anyone coming up the stairs will see me leaving. How can I minimize what looks so very bad indeed? Still no answer, as I shoved the last strap through its clasp and slammed the bag back onto the bureau. Shit! I realized that the strap was draped over the edge and the bag had most certainly been turned around the other way when I’d come in! I had just turned it around and rearranged the strap and was removing my hand at the instant I saw him step into the doorway.

  Ours was once again mutual shock, and I couldn’t suppress a small yelp of surprise. Andrew wasn’t nearly so ladylike.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “I…I…”

  I watched as Andrew’s eyes traveled from my face to where my hand was frozen in midair, hovering over Julia’s bag. His face, which had been comfortable in his accustomed mask of self-satisfaction and arrogance, suddenly went blank with shock. Surprise seeped in and was quickly followed by a look of such sadness that I, even as I saw my moment, faltered.

  Oh, God. I hate this. Aloud, I said, “This is Julia’s, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t even bother to deny it. “I didn’t even think of it, didn’t even notice it there. It’s just become…a piece of the furniture. A part of my life. She snuck in under the radar before I knew it,
and before I realized that I loved her, she was dead.”

  Orpheus seeing Eurydice vanish from the pine forest might have looked this stricken.

  I shivered. “What’s it doing here?”

  “She left it behind. The week before you arrived, before she went missing. We’d been arguing again. It was close to the end of us being together. I didn’t think she should be going to see her parents again, I didn’t think it was good for her. She wanted to know precisely what say I had in the matter.”

  I waited.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have any right in the world, I knew that. No right in the world, then. But that didn’t stop me from trying to talk her out of it. Anyone could have told her, it wasn’t a smart thing to do.” Andrew leaned his elbow on the dresser, rested his forehead in his hand. He looked defeated.

  “Why not?”

  He looked up, away from me, at the opposite wall, then leaned against the dresser. “There was no way to patch up what had been going on there. Maybe later, but it was still too soon…there was just too much anger there to be mended. It could only make things worse. But she was just so stubborn…” He clenched his fists.

  “So why did you try?”

  “Poor Julia. I owed her that much, I reckoned. We’d broken up, were breaking up, about to break up, whatever. We both knew it was over. I’d…behaved badly throughout the affair. I’d been…someone…I’d been distracted. She was a lovely girl, there was so much to love. Once you got through to her, once I realized how much she had hidden behind her quiet exterior, you couldn’t not. She was so bright—and I’m not just talking about her brains—you just had to look a little more closely and you could see how kind she was, how eager she was to try new things, new ideas…she could see right through me and she loved me anyway. I didn’t deserve her. It took me too long to figure it out. Now it’s too late.”

  “The first night I was here, when you broke in on me—”

  “I gave Julia a key to the house. Sometimes, when they were out, she’d meet me here. I was extremely drunk and for some reason, I thought since the door was shut, she might have come back to find me.”