by Lynn Cesar
They drove back to central Gravenstein to the drugstore and. in the store’s parking lot, applied their medical purchases. Susan stuck her leg out of the cab and Karen bound it with the Ace bandage as snugly as Susan could stand. “It’ll cut down on the throbbing once you’re used to it. I’ll get some ice for the pack at that liquor store.”
“And… get me more beer. It helps with the pain.”
A slight pause. “Beer it is.”
Their next stop was Fratelli’s Produce Emporium. Near the tracks, in an older-looking district of shiplap-sided houses and wooden power poles, Fratelli’s still thrived. They parked in its back lot. Outdoor produce-stands under broad, pole-propped awnings adjoined the big brick structure of the store itself, from whose back door, as if they’d evoked him, stepped a narrow-shouldered, big-middled man whose jet-black hair and moustache were thirty years younger than his face.
“By God, old Fratelli’s still clockin’ away. No, hey, just stay here with the ice on— ”
“Using it’s the quickest way to heal, how often have you told me that? I wanna meet him.”
The man stood at a kind of ceremonious attention as they approached. Karen glanced at the Ranier can in Susan’s free hand as she caned along, but Fratelli did not. “Karen Fox! Shame about Jack. Whaddya got for me?”
“Mr. Fratelli. It’s so good to see you… after so long.”
“You t’ink I was dead?” Mildly asked, but with no smile.
“Never. This is my friend Susan Kravnik.”
Only then did he look at her, the same calm, formal face. “A pleasure. Whaddya girls got?” The question sounded more searching to Susan the second time. As if he’d heard something about them, was alert for something. Susan smiled charmingly.
“Mr. Fratelli, what would we have?”
“Plums, Mr. Fratelli,” Karen put in. “And I thought— ” it seemed to strike her “— I could bring some apricots and peaches, if you wanted them.”
“Plums I gotta lot of. For good… fi’ bucks a flat. Apricots an’ peaches… from Jack’s brandy trees?”
Susan saw Karen blink. “Yes. The ones in the yard.”
“Those, I don’t gotta lot of. For good, thirty a flat.”
“That’s very generous.” Karen sounded a shade more remote. “So, come take a look at the plums?”
“I trust you. How many flats?”
“Twelve.”
Fratelli dug bills from his pocket, sorted among them. “Take eighty for you plums. B’tween fren’s. My sympat’ies. Sal! Bring the cart!” He turned and walked back into the store.
Susan asked, “Is he always so… businesslike?”
“I remember him more chatty. But I was small then and he was younger.”
“You don’t think it’s two dykes from Frisco that… stiffens him up?”
Karen laughed, but not like before. “I guess I wouldn’t rule it out.”
Sal rattled up with the cart. “Hey, Sal,” said Karen. “You were this high the last time I saw you.” Now bigger than his father, with some brawn on him, and livelier too.
“Hi Karen, who’s your friend? What happened to her?” Big lips in a grin somehow conspiratorial, his eyes drinking them both in greedily.
Susan said, “I was practicing cartwheels and injured my foot against the ceiling.”
He was giving them a goofy smile, just looking at them, not registering the joke. It crossed Susan’s mind he might be a little slow. Karen said, “Hey, Sal, you think we look funny or something? Are you memorizing us?”
“Huh? Hey, I’ll get your flats. Bad bad news about Jack, Karen. Really, really sorry.”
Thoughtful pulling out of the lot, Karen said, “I didn’t even know Sal. He was like six the last time I was here… . Hey, the Koffee Kupp’s still open! If their cheeseburgers haven’t changed, you’ll love ‘em.”
Susan did, in fact. Devoured two of them. Looked fondly, as she sipped her beer afterward, on Karen. “You’ve been so strong. You’re facing so much. We should do something just for fun.”
“We should go camping,” Karen said with a wry smile. “Just to be on a piece of ground that isn’t Jack Fox’s.”
“I say that’s a great idea. Sleeping-bag cuddles! I love camping.”
Karen laughed more freely. “Dear love, you don’t know jack shit about camping, but I think I could make us pretty comfortable. There’s some beautiful places down along the river.”
* * * *
The sun was just an hour from down when they got back. And found a bulky blue pickup— decades old, and not unmarked by ding and rust— parked behind Susan’s rented red rice-rocket. As they got out of their truck, a man stepped into view from the far side of the house. A wide guy in a faded gray flannel shirt, raising a hand in greeting, coming forward… . an older guy with a short, gray-shot beard, becoming wider as he neared, appearing very solid.
“I’m Kyle, Ms. Fox— we talked on the phone? I’m so sorry to drop in— I called but you were out. I had a bid to make out this way and I wanted to grab a look before Saturday.”
“It’s totally okay, Kyle,” shaking hands with him. “This is my friend Susan.”
“Hi, Susan. I’m sorry to intrude.”
“No problem.”
“I also wanted to mention, Ms. Fox, that I just hired a helper… . so I expect we can be out of your hair in well under two days.”
“Hey, whatever it takes, Kyle. Actually, we’ll be gone camping when you do it.”
“Oh.” Susan thought he sounded pleased with the arrangement. “Where should we leave your cords?”
“Just pile them at the edge of the yard back there,” said Karen. “I meant to ask you. How did you come to know my father?”
“I didn’t. He answered my ad in the papers. I just spoke to him on the phone that once. Please do accept my sympathy.” He had shaggy brows on a rawboned face with a lot of complex erosion around the orbits of his deep-set eyes. Somehow the word sympathy, coming out of this seen-it-all face, had an ironic ring to Susan. He offered his hand once more. Again she felt a callused palm and the gentlest of squeezes from an apparatus of hydraulic strength. “It was nice to meet you both.”
IX
They were making dinner— or Karen was, while Susan sampled a Bloody Mary spiced with Louisiana Hot Sauce. She was enjoying the revelation that she was, actually, a person who could hold a surprising amount of liquor and function perfectly. “All I’m trying to say, Kare, is that I just get an uneasy vibe from him. Like he tells me he’s sorry to intrude. Like, hey, I know you’re gay and I’m not trying to muscle in here.”
“Boy, are you over-interpreting. But suppose he was hinting that— isn’t that just being sensitive?”
“More like being calculating. I felt a lot of very conscious self-containment in him. Like the way he always kept just the right respectful distance. And his voice pitched just so, like, I’m totally mild and non-threatening here.”
“Susan. All these things from some slim guy in a suit, you’d like them. This guy looks strong and physical… it’s just your upperclass distrust of the lower orders.” Trying to jolly her a little.
“He does look strong. He looks skinny edge-on and a yard wide frontwards. Why is a guy that age in that kind of shape?”
“I sense that you’re going to tell me.”
“You have the same hunch I do. I think this guy’s been in prison.”
“Well, what of it? Two of the best framers I know have done time and come out smart and kind.”
“See? I knew it. It crossed your mind too, didn’t it?”
“Sure it did, after all my years in the trades? I thought there was a good chance of it and I trusted him anyway.”
“Karen. I’m just trying to be the realist here. Let’s just entertain the worst-case scenario. You hire two guys from Deliverance to come here while we’re gone. They break into the house and discover a fortune in free firearms. They lie in wait for our return. They have some fun with us in the house
for a while. Then they pop us, bury us and leave with the fortune, and there’s no one to identify them. A good time has been had by all.”
Susan was surprised to find Karen looking at her with something like concern. “Hey, Susie-Q. We’ll stay here and camp afterwards, okay? They won’t come into the house and we won’t be worried, because dear old Dad taught me how to use these firearms. But, honey, don’t let this place get to you. Drinking like you’re doing and this place… they don’t go together. The ugly vibes you felt are here, not in that guy.”
After dinner Karen built a fire and got into her book. Susan recognized the tiredness that always overtook Karen on her first day or so of sobriety. Susan herself felt great, considering. She took her cane and started trying out Karen’s theory that sprains healed faster the more you walked on them. From the front door, through the living room, into the kitchen, then back again— she caned. She got into it, found the pain lessening somewhat, the ankle accepting more weight. It could still be excruciating if she hit the wrong angle but, with just the right rhythm, she could move right along.
Back and forth she went, could do this indefinitely, it appeared. She liked, too, how it must break the gloom of the place for Karen, to have a life and motion for company. On her fourth or fifth turn through the kitchen, she noticed the shelf of brandy bottles.
She took one down. The white mailing label said only Apricot Brandy— written with a fountain-pen in handsome copperplate print. “The dead tyrant’s private stock,” she murmured. Smiled. “What was yours is ours now, old boy.”
She found a corkscrew. The brandy poured with a satiny chuckle. Golden— blended with nectar, no doubt. The bouquet made her scalp tingle. One high-octane inch, down the hatch.
Its heat seemed to tendril through her whole body. Damn! She tested her weight on her ankle. It felt one whole notch better already. She left bottle and glass standing ready, then caned her way— with a certain jauntiness now— back towards the front door.
“Kare?”— as she passed the living room—”Would some tunes distract you? I’m getting into this. I need a beat.”
“Don’t overdo. How ‘bout some Emmy Lou Harris?”
“Let ‘er rip.”
Back and forth. Got some upper torso boogie going, some sway in her gait, stopped sometimes on the downbeat to lift both arms and cane in hallelujah flourishes, winning sidelong looks and smiles from Karen. Back and forth. Every few circuits, she slipped some golden inches in the glass and slid those golden inches down her throat.
It became a kind of victory dance, the dead brute’s poison her plunder, its fire tamed to healing heat. She walked a sentry’s rounds. No ghost could pass to do her lover harm, her cane a club to tear its cloudy shape to harmless tatters… .
“Hon, come sleep. You need to rest now.” Karen, she realized, was already nodding off, was waking herself to say this.
Susan shed her clothing on the floor, sitting on the couch to extract, quite smoothly, the hurt foot from its pant leg. “Your clothes, too, Kare… that’s it, come on… just to lie close… just to lie down together as close as we can be… .”
But even nakedly entwined, Susan knew they could be closer yet… be so much closer still… knew that kissing Karen, kisses here and here and here… that these kisses were magical doorways, were entries into Karen’s heart, entries through her tastes, her textures, into the great soft flame her body could become… .
At the same time she knew Karen was not present, was astray in this lovely body of hers, was lost in lonely corridors where outrages peered at her out of the shadows.
Susan could feel Karen in there trying to reach her, trying to bring this body into Susan’s hands, into Susan’s lips, this body full of love, instead of fear. Susan could feel Karen’s failure in there, and her grief, as Susan reached her lonely climax. Karen had only her sad wish to give— and her tender struggle.
But not lonely, no, because now at least Karen was inside the circle of Susan’s arms and nothing could touch her beloved without going through Susan’s body first.
When Karen slept, then Susan allowed herself her anger at that hulking criminal who had haunted and poisoned her lover’s heart for so long. Lay a long time hating this house, hating every plank and beam of it, every wall and doorway. And blamed herself. How could she have tried to take love from Karen here, where Karen’s love had been gutted?
She got up silently and dressed, her ankle now hurting with a vengeance, an agony to work through the pant leg. In her rage at Jack Fox, her memory roamed his acres, seeking some purchase. She had only an image in mind, a weapon still lacking a target: in the big shed, on the ground by the wall where the chainsaws hung, she’d seen a big red gas can… .
She caned into the kitchen— it was agony to manage it quietly— to restore her mobility with some of the ogre’s brew. Three… hell, five golden inches. Her throat seized them down and they worked like a charm. Her pain melted away as she put on her armor of fire against fear.
Oh, lord. Oh, yes. She smiled, was a functional biped again with some help from the cane. As she re-corked the bottle, the amber inch remaining winked at her. Suddenly, like inspiration, it came to her. An object for her anger.
The still-shed. The heart of the place, in a way. A fire, the only sufficient exorcism, would be self-contained there, nothing to spread to but a heap of compost. Then sell this place, pluck its foul roots from their hearts, and walk away.
She caned out the back door from the kitchen, easy down the three porch steps, into the night-black grass, under Dad’s fruit trees… while the night passed through her clothes and took a cool and perfect grip on her nakedness beneath them. Her body felt impossibly distinct and distinct in the darkness around her she felt all the other monstrous shapes of life, a mighty army, that shared the night with her,and whose exhalations mingled with every breath she drew. Terror or exhilaration shimmied down her spine. Fear fell away. Her distinctness was not that of prey. It was that of a conquering flame.
She headed around the house, toward the Big Shed. Her cane’s alternating piston-stroke felt like a cyborg enhancement— machinelike, her righteous anger advanced and she almost laughed aloud at this unsuspected power and competence in herself.
All open studs and joists, the shed was skeletal inside, its cool scent the ghosts of sun-warmed plums. The wide open overhead door let a wedge of weak moonlight in that touched shovel-heads… the downhung bars of chainsaws… and the five-gallon can. Outdoing herself now, Susan caned her way to the car with that dead-heavy counterweight and did it flawlessly. The can was as heavy as fate and she toted it like a carry-on to her flight.
Her rental, almost colorless under the chip of moon. The can on the passenger seat. Herself— cane in, butt in, right leg, left leg— behind the wheel.
She was ready… and how right this was. Like in some old play, murder must out. A heart’s murder. It was too much. It couldn’t be let stand without an answer.
She fired it up, pressed the accelerator tenderly, tenderly. The engine scarcely louder than at idle, she crackled off of the drive, past the sheds to the packed-earth lane and down the lane, into the orchard. Only then did she switch the headlights on.
In the headlights, the bristling trees that flanked her struck postures of stark deformity, like floodlit ghouls discovered at their work. The car sank past their endless battalions and fear scuttled everywhere in their shadows, but fear could not touch her. Her flame torched it to smoke.
She pulled up at a distance from the holocaust-to-be; she stopped and stood, armed with cane and can, facing the shed. The huge black tire-studded larva of the compost heap, all eyes it seemed, nosed up near the shed. Belatedly, she caught the scent of the heap— a big faint breath of plastic, decay chambered within it. Karen said it was hot in there… . Well, Susan had brought some heat of her own.
Setting the can on the ground, she woke the creaky hinges of the screen door. Shouldered the inner door, already ajar. Found the light-switch just
inside the jamb. Bare hundred-watt bulbs came alive and she had the sensation of hitting water from a long fall: with a shock, she was right inside Jack Fox’s blown-out skull.
His books and papers were a dirty snowfall, drifted lopsidedly on every horizontal cleft and nook, the shaggy dunes dripping from the edges of the desk and file cabinets— all this around the axis of that baggy, lived-in leather armchair, like a sagging old rhino that… yes, still gave off the brute’s rank smell. And here was his brandy gun, cut crystal, the one thing of beauty in this lair. Over there the vats, the cookers and coils, the homey Frankenstein’s lab of a country boy cooking up monsters who came lurching out of that door and up through the trees, to seize a young girl, long ago… .
She blocked the screen door wide open and left the inner door likewise, then brought in the can of gas and set it ceremoniously on the floor near the chair. Sitting, perched rather, on the edge of the chair, she looked back over her shoulder, out into the door-framed night. The night welcomed to her now and the door an aperture out of this bubble of madness, this hundred-watt hell.
On the desk was a not-too-dusty glass. She polished it on her shirt tail and unstoppered the cannon— what exquisite carvings in the crystal— and tilted herself some more armor of fire.
Susan was an inveterate scanner of other people’s bookshelves. She was surprised at once by the anthropological tenor of more than a few of Jack Fox’s titles: The Brides of the Cenote, a bulky condensation of Fraser’s Golden Bough, Eliade, McNalley’s On Aboriginal Cults, a work on Meso-American corn gods. National Geographics and Smithsonians abounded in teetering stacks, and biology, botany, and zoology texts were everywhere.
She glimpsed the edges of photos in a tattered manila envelope. The manila, much handled, had that furry suppleness of skin. She tilted the photos out.
Eight-by-tens, old black-and white glossies. The first was of a sandbar in a jungle stream, with a canvas shoe, the toe of it, jutting up from sand. And these dead branches, a little farther along the sand… they were the bones of an arm and the small web-work of a skeletal hand.
