And he was something.
Mom told Walter to put away his gun and bring drinks. The way he looked at her she could have said to stick his hands into the fired-up kiln. But he went to the kitchen. He might argue and look like she’d twisted his balls but he always did what she asked. On his own he might have shot the stranger as easy as he slapped the backs of my legs with a strip of green pinewood. Which he did whenever Mom wasn’t watching. As easy as he hit Cristofer when Cristofer got on his nerves. Which was always. But if Mom woke in the night and wanted a glass of milk he all but offered to drive to a farm up-island and squeeze a cow’s tit so she could have it fresh. True love Mom called it. It smelled to me something like fear.
Now Mom asked the man in the blue suit, ‘What do you do for work, Mr …?’
‘Edgar,’ the man said. ‘You can call me Edgar.’ Wink without a wink at me.
We sat on the front porch. Mom had put on a dress but hadn’t wiped her face. ‘What do you do for a living, Edgar?’ she asked.
The yard was quiet except for the springs screeching on Cristofer’s trampoline. Tilson had stopped hammering the chicken fence and disappeared. To get drunk. Or to visit the half-brained woman he called his wife. Though she lived in a different house. And he went to her only when her real husband was out. Whenever Walter nagged at him for disappearing Tilson would put on a pained face. He would point at his belly and say, ‘I got stones.’
Edgar Allan looked at me. Looked back at Mom. He said, ‘A hundred years ago people would have called me a Resurrectionist.’
‘Huh?’ I said.
‘That’s what they called it,’ he said. ‘Now I’m a procurement specialist. I find organs for transplants and cadavers for medical study. I work with the dead for a living.’
‘What a strange job for a young man,’ Mom said.
‘No stranger than anything else about him,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s a calling,’ he said to Mom. ‘It’s a paycheck. Most of my business is cadavers. Medical schools have certain times of the year when they need them. The rest of the year I work on my hobbies.’
‘Collecting art?’ Mom said.
‘Sure,’ he said.
I asked, ‘Why did people call it Resurrection?’
‘For a long time no one regulated it,’ he said. ‘Resurrectionists stole bodies from the morgue or dug them out of the ground. So they made people rise from the grave. Now we sit in our offices. I want to do something else though.’ He said it like an afterthought. ‘I want to start a theater.’
FIVE
Oren
I raised the glass of tea and toasted it. ‘To Kay Jakobson.’
She raised her glass and said to Walter, ‘Edgar digs up bodies for pay.’
‘I’m a procurer,’ I said.
Walter slapped a yellow fly that had landed on his neck. ‘Drink your tea, buy your painting, and move along,’ he said.
‘We haven’t even started talking, honey,’ Kay said.
I said, ‘I would like to stay a day or two, if that’s all right.’ Act One, Scene One, Paul called this. I called it Poking Walter and Kay with a stick.
‘No, that’s not all right,’ Walter said.
I said, ‘I’ll pay for room and board. I don’t want to put you out.’
Walter said, ‘You sure as hell—’
I said to Kay, ‘I want to know how you do what you do, and the thoughts that go into your work. For me, it’s all about the method.’
She shook her head. ‘We really have no room—’
‘I’ll sleep on a couch,’ I said. ‘Or here on the porch. I’ll be no trouble.’
Walter moved close. I was taller than he was but I knew what he could do. He said, ‘My wife said no.’
I put my tea on the floor and pulled a roll of bills from my pocket. I counted eight fifties and tried to give them to him. ‘For two nights,’ I said.
He looked at the money. ‘You would pay four hundred dollars to sleep out on a porch?’
‘Or inside on a couch,’ I said.
He looked at Kay. She shook her head, but he snatched the bills from my hand. ‘One night only,’ he said. ‘And then you go out the gate and down the road.’
I counted another three fifties and handed them to him. ‘In case we want more time,’ I said. ‘If we’re done after one night, I’ll go, and you can keep the money.’
Walter stared at me as if he knew that I had tricked him. But he couldn’t see the angle. He said, ‘We’ll give you the couch.’
Kay said, ‘No, we’ll give him Cristofer’s room.’
I said, ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you.’
‘You passed that marker a mile back,’ Walter said.
‘Cristofer can sleep in with us or on the couch,’ Kay said. ‘If we’re putting you up, the least we can do is give you a bed.’
‘The boy’s room is dirty,’ said Walter. ‘Holes in the walls.’
I said, ‘I’m sure I’ll be comfortable.’
‘The room smells,’ Walter said. ‘But the boy can’t help it.’
‘I’ll open a window,’ I said.
Walter shook his head. ‘The window is nailed shut. And we’ve put locks on the door – the outside of the door. For his own good. We won’t lock them while you’re here.’
‘I’ll be no trouble,’ I said, and the time seemed right to cause more trouble. I got my cell phone and started to dial.
‘You won’t get a signal unless you go out by the bridge,’ Lexi said.
So I hung up and put the phone away. I said, ‘Can you open the gate so my driver can bring in our things?’
Walter said, ‘Our things?’
‘His and mine,’ I said, like it was obvious. ‘You didn’t think I walked from Atlanta?’
Kay said, ‘We thought you flew – or drove yourself.’
Walter said, ‘You can spend the night. Only you. One night only.’
‘He’ll sleep on the floor next to the bed,’ I said. ‘No trouble at all.’
‘Send him out by the airport,’ said Walter. ‘There’s motels. You can call him in the morning and he can pick you up.’
‘I want to leave as soon as my business is done,’ I said.
Open the gate, said the plan. Then open it wider.
I said, ‘You won’t even know he’s here.’
‘Let him stay,’ Lexi said.
Walter turned on her. ‘Did we ask you?’
‘You never ask me,’ she said. Her eyes glinted the way they did when she named me Edgar Allan.
‘That’s because your opinion isn’t worth knowing,’ he said.
‘Let him stay,’ Kay said.
Walter looked at her as if she was betraying him.
‘It’s just one night,’ she said. ‘They’ll leave tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Edgar?’
‘If you want us to,’ I said.
Walter said to Kay, ‘Don’t be a fool. You don’t know who this man is.’
She said, ‘He looks like a boy I used to know.’
I felt a shiver. ‘I get that all the time,’ I said.
‘Shall I open the gate?’ Lexi asked.
SIX
Lexi
The driver was a big man in a little green Ford Taurus. He drove through the gate and waited while I closed it. Reached across the passenger seat and opened the door. Hunched to keep his head from rubbing the roof. His knees fat against the steering wheel. His eyes kind.
‘You don’t look like a taxi driver,’ I said.
Only his lips were thin. ‘What do I look like?’ he asked.
A blue-eyed monster. ‘I haven’t decided,’ I said.
‘Well I’m a driver,’ he said.
‘How did Edgar Allan find you?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
I said, ‘The man in the suit.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I run a service.’
‘A car service?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘And odds and ends.’
�
��What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Paul.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘What do you call your company?’
‘You’re a curious one,’ he said. We drove up the rise and over the top of the hill. ‘I call it Paul’s Car Service,’ he said. ‘And the side business is Paul’s Odds and Ends.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘What kinds of odds and ends?’
He leaned toward the windshield as we came down to the house. ‘This and that,’ he said. ‘Mostly light lifting. Sometimes heavy. Comes and goes. Whatever needs doing.’
I said, ‘Have you and Edgar Allan come to hurt us?’
A little laugh came from his big chest. He asked, ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Mom and her husband have been expecting it for a long time,’ I said. ‘They don’t talk about it. But I can tell. Everything they do.’
‘If you think we’ve come to hurt you, why did you open the gate?’ he asked.
‘A closed gate will keep you out?’ I said. ‘Anyway I don’t mind if you’ve come to hurt us.’
‘No one’s going to hurt you,’ he said.
We got out of the car. He took a black overnight bag from the trunk and carried it to the porch.
I said to Mom and Walter, ‘This is Paul. He says he comes in peace.’
He grinned at them and went up the steps.
Walter looked scared. Big men did that to him. Mom said, ‘I’ll show you to the room.’ She took the man into the house and said, ‘I paint only self-portraits but if I painted others I could imagine painting you.’
Walter stared at Edgar Allan. Then rushed inside and up the stairs after Mom and the driver.
Edgar Allan sat on the porch swing. He patted the seat next to him. ‘Join me,’ he said.
But I turned and watched Cristofer on the trampoline. He wore blue jeans and two long-sleeved T-shirts and a gray windbreaker and a black wool cap and boots. Though the thermometer had shot past ninety at noon.
Edgar Allan said, ‘Sit with me.’
I said, ‘Your driver says you won’t hurt us.’
‘Sit with me,’ he said again.
‘Should I be afraid?’ I asked.
‘You? No,’ he said.
‘Liar,’ I said. But I sat with him on the swing. The chains that held it to the roof beam were hard with our weight. I kept my feet on the porch floor to keep from rocking.
‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘It’s a story of a kind—’
But Mom yelled at Walter inside. Something about Cristofer’s bed. Walter ran heavy-footed back down the stairs. He came through the screen door. He charged down the porch steps. He crossed the yard to the tar kiln that my dad built almost thirty years ago. Replacing the one that Mom’s father and his father had used. It was four old General Electric ovens. Two stacked on top of another two. Bolted together and balanced over cinderblocks. In the middle a metal box collected the hot tar that dripped through holes punched in the ovens.
Walter opened the bottom door and shoveled out the mix of ash and soil and resin. Threw it on a waste pile. He picked up an armful of pinewood strips from a stack behind the kiln and put it in. He covered the strips with Spanish moss and shoveled soil on to it. He closed the bottom oven and opened the top and crammed dry brush inside. He poured a quart of kerosene on the brush.
‘That thing will blow up,’ said Edgar Allan.
‘It never did yet,’ I said.
Walter sparked a kitchen match and threw it into one of the upper ovens. The kerosene and fumes roared. A ball of fire shot out and swelled. The fire wrapped around Walter. I never understood how he lived through that. He turned into a shadow that looked more like black smoke or a streak of tar than a man. Then the fire sucked back inside the oven and Walter closed the door. Vents would feed the fire until tar seeped from the pinewood into the box below. The tar would look as sweet as cane syrup but would taste like acid.
I said, ‘Walter does that instead of hitting her.’
‘Your mother?’ Edgar Allan said. ‘He lights fires?’
‘Or else he hits me,’ I said. ‘The backs of my legs. And Cristofer. All over. We could show you. He’s in love with the kiln.’
‘In love?’ he said.
‘Some nights he doesn’t sleep,’ I said. ‘Mom watches him from her bedroom window.’
‘Where’s your real dad?’ he asked.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Never mind,’ he said.
‘He ran off,’ I said. ‘When Cristofer and I were babies. That’s what Mom says.’
‘You don’t believe her?’ he said.
‘I was too young to remember,’ I said.
The kiln smoke hung low in the rain.
‘Later a policeman used to come,’ I said. ‘He brought me candy and I would walk him around the yard. I showed him the chickens and the kiln and the woods and he fed me candy. He asked me about Mom and Walter and where my dad had gone. Then he stopped coming. Walter complained to someone.’
‘What did Walter have to hide?’ Edgar Allan asked. Then he picked up my Bible from the floor under the porch swing. He fingered the locked strap. Wiggled it as if to see whether it would break.
‘Don’t,’ I said.
‘Sooner or later everyone will stop hiding,’ he said.
I tried to take the Bible. He screwed his lips and laid it in my hands.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
As if answering for him a chicken screeched in the poultry pen. I knew that sound. I jumped off the porch and ran across the yard. A gray hen I called Goneril was going after one of the whites. Flesh hung from Goneril’s bloody beak. She jerked her head back and swallowed the meat. Went after the white again. The white screeched. She had blood on her tail feathers.
I scooped mud from the yard and threw it at them. Goneril kept after the white. I threw more mud. Goneril jerked her head up and strutted away. I climbed into the pen and picked up the white. Cradled her in my arms
Edgar Allan came from the porch. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
In a bin by the pen we kept a shovel and a jar of vitamin feed and a pail of medicine. I got a can of tar from the pail. I said, ‘The gray one’s a vent pecker.’ I handed the white to him. ‘Hold her.’
He tried but the white screeched and fell to the ground. Left a streak of blood on his sleeve. I caught her and brought her to him again. ‘Hold her like a baby,’ I said. ‘Tell her she can trust you.’
He tried and after a while she was calm.
I dipped my finger in the tar and lifted the white’s tail feathers. I said, ‘She won’t like this.’ I smeared the tar on her.
She flew up at Edgar Allan’s face. She clawed at him as if he was lighting her on fire.
So I put her back in the pen. I said, ‘The vent is how they lay their eggs. The gray one pecks the others.’
The white had scratched two pin-lines down Edgar Allan’s cheek.
I said, ‘She eats them and makes them bleed.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ he said.
‘Why would I kid about that?’ I said. I touched the tar on my finger to each of his scratches. He took my hand in his own. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘You up for it?’
I looked at the yard. Walter worked at the kiln. Cristofer bounced on his trampoline. Mom watched us from Cristofer’s window. In the poultry pen Goneril chased the white again. ‘Let’s finish this,’ I said.
‘Whatever it takes,’ he said.
I caught Goneril and made him hold her while I got a bottle of reserpine from the pail. I drew some into a glass dropper. ‘Hold tight,’ I said. I took Goneril’s head and craned it back and forced her beak open and squeezed a drop into her gullet. ‘That’ll slow her,’ I said. I set her back in the pen. She shot across the dirt after the white. Then she lost interest. She wobbled on her skinny legs. She sat. She closed her eyes.
When Walter took breaks from the kiln he would ride his ski
ff into the inlets that surround Black Hammock Island. He would drift down Clapboard Creek and out into the Sound. If red fish were biting we ate red fish. If flounder or sea trout were biting we ate flounder or sea trout. The last time he went fishing nothing was biting so he used a cast net to catch mullet which he brought home and smoked in the smoker. On the night that Edgar Allan came we ate the last of the mullet. By the time that he had cleaned his suit jacket and washed his face and come back downstairs Mom had put the plates and bowls on the table.
Paul and Cristofer were already in their chairs waiting. Most of the time Cristofer looked no one in the eyes but as he ate he couldn’t stop watching Edgar Allan.
Mom said, ‘You have a new friend.’
Walter said, ‘With friends like these.’
When Cristofer wasn’t kicking holes in his wall or keening he was gentle enough. But he was hard to know. He smelled. Not like sweat but what comes after it when a person hasn’t bathed for months or years. His body had a stench between soil and a dying animal. Sometimes he did jump fully clothed into the seawater on the other side of the road. Afterward he let his jeans and shirts dry on his body and he smelled worse. When Cristofer was little Walter would strip him and soap him while Mom washed the clothes. Afterward he keened so long and loud that we gave up.
But Edgar Allan didn’t seem to mind. He put an arm on the back of Cristofer’s chair. Which most of the time would have set Cristofer keening. Edgar Allan asked Mom, ‘Why do you paint only self-portraits?’
Walter said through a mouthful of rice, ‘Stupid question.’
Mom said, ‘Painting anyone else would be a lie. Suggesting that I know anyone else well enough to get them right would be.’
‘But you know yourself well enough?’ Edgar Allan asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But at least I’m lying only to myself.’
‘When did you start?’ he asked.
Walter pried a piece of fish from the skin with his fingernail and put it on his tongue. ‘Could we talk about something else?’ he said.
‘What would you have us discuss, dear?’ Mom said.
‘How about silence?’ Walter said.
So we all ate for a while. Paul the driver pulled the platter of fish toward him. He unloaded half of it on to his plate.
Black Hammock Page 4
