Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  “Yes, sir.” Mrs. Mennick’s brother had a large bold head topped with thinning hair and smelled strongly of processed fertilizer.

  “I don’t suppose it’ll rain.”

  “No, sir.”

  Ben would not have minded some idle conversation but knew that Howard lacked the skill. “Well, I guess I’ll start my walk. I try to go a little farther each day.”

  Howard, surprising him, said, “Don’t overdo it, sir.”

  He trod silently over immaculate grass, all Howard’s work, and could not imagine a dandelion daring to defile it. With lightly swinging arms, he set out to perambulate the rear lawns, which had the look of a golf course but in his grandfather’s day were fields flush with wildflowers. With reverence, he remembered his grandfather’s breakfast of oatmeal and oranges, the peels of the oranges later tossed on the mulch pile. Halfway across the green the sun breathed more heat into the air. He looked back and could make out Howard lifting something out of his pickup truck. When he reached the end of the green he looked back again, but the sun blinded him.

  He followed a path into a woodlot, where the darker smells of summer wrapped around him and moisture dripped from the trees, some so leafy no slivers of sunlight fell through. At one point, where insects shot through the air, the ground threw up a damp smell of a vulgar quality, as if animals used it for a pisshole. Breezes in the high branches of an evergreen funneled down a music he did not appreciate. It was too much like a hymn. When he came upon a crushed cigarette package, he suffered anxiety over the possibility of being challenged on his own land.

  The path took him to the narrow back road that marked his property line. Here the sun burst full upon him again. He tramped along the shoulder and admired roadside lilies of an orange so intense they looked fake, waxed, glued to their stalks. Two cars ghostly in the sun drifted by, one after the other. Neither driver knew him, which mildly disappointed him. He would have welcomed a wave from either. Presently a white car traveling too fast for the road came up behind him in a rush and nearly percussed him off his feet in passing. It was too big and old and not at all clean enough to be Louise’s Porsche, but slowly he convinced himself that it might have been. That was when his heart began to act funny.

  He did not hear the crash. It was too far away and the day too sublime to concede tragedy, but many minutes later when he paused to rest he heard distant sirens. He was hustling along, a quarter of the way up a lazy rise in the road, when the rattle of a pickup truck startled him. At first he thought it was Howard, but Howard’s truck was red, this was not. A door swung open.

  “Get in, Mr. Baker.”

  Who was it? Without really looking, he sensed it was Sam, who raised chickens and whose wife sold the eggs, delivering weekly. He climbed into the cab, hesitantly, like a child warned against accepting rides, and saw claws gripping the steering wheel.

  “I heard the sirens, Mr. Baker, must be an accident.”

  “Not my wife,” Ben said. “Please, not my wife.”

  The pickup was a rattletrap and rode hard, jolting over lumps in the road and forcing Ben to prop an arm against the dash. They passed excited children clustered in front of a house whose original tenants Ben remembered well, an ever-growing family. His mother had dismissed them as low-breeds and half-breeds, nomenclatures that had stuck forever in his head. They passed another house, then a shack where a man was peering out his door.

  “It’s up ahead, Mr. Baker. I can smell the gasoline from here.”

  Ben looked at him. Yes, it was Sam. Then he stared through the windshield, which was sticky with the resin of trees. Sam abruptly aimed a talon over the steering wheel.

  “There it is!”

  They pulled up behind the flashes of the town’s only police cruiser. More lights whirled from an ambulance, which was owned and hired out by the local undertaker, whose great-grandfather had abandoned barbering to start the business. A van and a ranch wagon were backed up in the opposite direction, their owners standing at the roadside.

  Sam climbed out of the cab first, and after a mustering of will Ben followed. The air stood shocked, tingling with phantom echoes. Sam said, “That don’t look like your wife’s automobile.”

  The white car had apparently sideswiped a concrete post before crashing into a stone wall with such force that the motor lay in a drainage ditch like a monster that had fallen from the sky. A woman’s body lay near it.

  “You’re wrong,” Ben said, standing still with tears in his eyes. “It’s her way of going for good.”

  Beyond the cruiser two ambulance attendants were talking with a burly policeman, who was the youngest member of the town’s three-man force. Sam left Ben and joined them. Ben looked at the blue of the sky and wondered whether she was up there yet. He saw three crows winging across a field and imagined they were spreading the news. Then he closed his eyes.

  “Mr. Baker.”

  The voice, which belonged to the young policeman, chilled him. His mind was too jagged for questions, and he hoped he would not be asked many.

  “That’s not your wife, sir. It’s Bonnie Snell.”

  Bonnie Snell, he knew, was the weekend waitress at the Town Grill, a plain young woman with a luckless figure and peroxided hair that gave her a loud look. Not so many weeks ago she had come to the house to help Mrs. Mennick with the spring cleaning. Reluctantly he opened his eyes to the policeman’s smooth face, which seemed as big as a beach ball.

  “Everybody lies to me.”

  “If you don’t believe me, sir, go see for yourself.”

  The invitation seemed monstrous, and he sharply turned away to watch more cars pulling up alongside the road. He saw some faces he knew and called out, “My wife.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take him home.”

  That was Sam’s voice, and it was Sam who touched his shoulder. He recognized the claw. “No, you won’t,” he said, and strode away.

  • • •

  Emma Goss surprised her friend Mildred Murphy with a telephone call. “How wonderful to hear your voice,” Mildred said, warming Emma. “You haven’t written lately. I was beginning to worry.”

  With a flush of pleasure, Emma said, “I’ve been busy, but you’re never far from my thoughts.”

  They chatted at length. Mildred spoke of Lawrence people living in Florida, so many former city officials and workers, retired police officers and businessmen. She was always running into someone she knew, almost like a high school reunion or an endless retirement party. Then with a note of sadness she mentioned the passing of some, in particular Phil DiAdamo, a former police captain and, when Lawrence was under an archaic form of government, commissioner of public safety. “Such a handsome figure of a man. I always had a crush on him, Emma, do you remember?”

  “Yes,” said Emma, remembering that Mildred had clipped pictures of him from the Eagle-Tribune and preserved them in a scrapbook doomed to the flames when her husband, Michael, discovered it by chance the month before his death. Emma said, “I never met him, but I know Harold had great respect for him.”

  “I danced with him once, Emma, that big victory dinner when he first got into office. Michael was jealous. Do you remember?”

  “I never went to those things.”

  “That’s right, Harold never took you. Are you still a stay-at-home?”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Emma said with cheer in her voice.

  “You’re always mentioning in your cards I should come down to see you, and I’ve been thinking I’d like that very much. Just for a little visit, Mildred, if you don’t mind.”

  After a barely perceptible pause, Mildred said, “What a perfectly grand idea, but I don’t think you’d like it at this time of year. It’s awfully hot. Right this minute I’m sitting here sweating bullets. I mean, even with the air conditioner. Can you imagine!”

  “The heat’s never bothered me,” Emma went on happily. “It always made Harold irritable, but I’ve always rather liked it.”

  “It
’s just a little trailer, Emma, nothing much. Did I ever tell you how narrow the bathroom door is? You have to squeeze in sideways.” Mildred laughed. “Picture that, if you will.”

  Emma got the message but preferred to believe she was misreading it. “I’d pay you something, of course.”

  “That’s not the point,” Mildred said with a slight hint of exasperation. “It wouldn’t be comfortable for three.”

  “Three?”

  “I have a gentleman friend, Emma.”

  Emma flushed with embarrassment for having failed to foresee such a circumstance, and she suffered a rush of depression from the collapse of a good idea. She mumbled something apologetic, and Mildred said she should have mentioned her friend long ago, a pleasant Armenian fellow widowed twice, who could not do enough for her. Emma, feeling her head moving with the rise and fall of Mildred’s voice, broke in and said, “Well, I won’t keep you.”

  Mildred said, “You ought to find yourself a man, Emma.”

  Emma hung up the receiver and moved unfeelingly from one room to another. The shades were drawn, and the house was cool, quiet, and untidy. Unwashed dishes cluttered the kitchen sink. The bathroom mirror had scum on it, the floor dried traces of blood from Henry’s hand. In the den some of the drawers from Harold’s desk lay dumped out on the floor. The bedroom smelled stale. On the bed was the open suitcase she had planned to pack a few things in.

  Henry, who had been sitting in the breezeway under torn screens, came into the house looking for her. “Where are you, Mrs. Goss?”

  She moved back into the den, and he came in nursing his mutilated hand, which he had bandaged himself, a bad job. The strips of cloth had fallen off, and only the gauze pad sticking to the wound remained. He appeared pale and frightened.

  “It keeps throbbing, Mrs. Goss. It’s got all swollen too.” He wanted her to look at it, but she would not. He said, “I think I ought to see a doctor. Who’s yours? Will you call him for me?”

  “It’s a woman,” she said flatly.

  “OK, call her.“

  “Call her yourself.”

  He looked at her with dismay. “What’s her name?”

  She was silent.

  He said, “I guess I could go the hospital instead.”

  “You can do anything you want,” she said.

  He went into the living room and lay down on the sofa, his good hand over his brow and the bad one over his heart.

  • • •

  Henry slept for less than an hour, a sick sleep fraught with bad dreams. In one dream, men mauled his mother and abused him. In another, a slender black soldier struck out ahead of him through thick foliage and vanished in a pop of light, leaving behind a shirt laden with gore and a boot empty except for a single chocolate-brown toe with a pink nail in need of a clip.

  He woke feverish and ugly, and for a few seconds he was disoriented. He thought the sofa was the one he had sometimes slept on as a child, and for a terrible moment he thought he was that kid. The pain in his hand had spread into his arm, which he was unable to lift.

  “Where are you, Mrs. Goss?”

  He stumbled into the dining room and gave a start when he thought somebody was staring at him out of the china closet. In the kitchen he ran cold water from the faucet over his aching hand, which he avoided looking at. The gauze pad had become a part of the wound and had taken on its color.

  “Damn it, answer me!”

  The house echoed empty.

  • • •

  Sal Botello lived a few miles outside of Springfield in a lakeside cottage previously the property of an inveterate gambler who had borrowed money from Sal and had hopelessly fallen behind in interest payments. The furniture had also belonged to the gambler. “Nice place you got here, Sal,” Louise Baker said, stepping to the glass slider leading to the deck. “Nice view.”

  “It suits me,” Sal said. “Can I get you a beer, maybe something harder?”

  “Nothing,” she said, surprisingly fresh after her long drive from Lawrence. She stood long-limbed in a beige suit, the skirt stylishly short. Her dark eyes were clear and alert.

  Sal said, “We were worried about you, weren’t we, John?”

  John Rozzi was ensconced in a low cushioned chair, the weight of his face sunk between his shoulders, the skin gathered in pleats under his chins. He had a can of Canadian beer in his hand. “We didn’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “That’s what we did.”

  “I did something,” Sal said. “I checked around, see who might’ve put the hit on you, but I drew a blank.”

  “I did some checking too,” she said easily. “I didn’t do any better.”

  “John and me, we didn’t want you to get any wrong ideas about us.”

  Louise’s smile was gracious. “It crossed my mind, Sal, but I dismissed it.”

  “That’s a relief. We were concerned, weren’t we, John?”

  “I wasn’t concerned,” John said. “You know me good enough, don’t you, Mrs. Baker?”

  “I know you both,” she said, stepping away from the deck door and glancing at a framed photograph of three children on the television set. “Your kids, Sal?”

  “Belongs to the guy used to own the house.” Sal was watching her closely. “The way I see it, Mrs. Baker, somebody in Lawrence must hate you a lot.”

  “That’s more than possible, Sal. The problem is I don’t know who. That’s why I’ve got myself a bodyguard now.”

  “You should’ve asked John. He’d have done it for you, wouldn’t you, John?”

  John said, “I’d do anything for you, Mrs. Baker.”

  “I’m using Chick Ryan,” she said. “You remember him, don’t you, Sal?”

  Sal visibly relaxed. “Sure I do. He was a help to you after Scampy kicked.”

  “You were a help too.”

  Sal grinned. “I knew a winner when I saw one. Your brains, Mrs. Baker, we’ve done well.”

  “I needed someone like you.”

  “I’m glad I fit the bill.” Sal ran a hand over his pitted jawline. “So where’s Ryan now?”

  “I don’t need him everywhere I go,” she said, and smiled down at John. “I’d like to talk to Sal alone for a while, you don’t mind, do you?”

  John was on his feet, and Sal said to him, “Go take a walk around the lake. Listen to the birds.” John deposited his beer can on the top shelf of the room divider and left through the kitchen. Sal called after him, “You see Mrs. Reynolds, say hello for me.”

  Louise dipped her fingers into the half pockets of her jacket. “Who’s Mrs. Reynolds?”

  “Woman lives across the lake. Her husband travels. It’s warm enough, she and I go swimming late at night. She says she never knew a guy like me.”

  “Sounds like you have it nice here.”

  His eyes embraced her. “I’d give my heart and soul it was you I was going swimming with.”

  “I’m a married woman, but thanks just the same.”

  He drew near. “That Polack I got rid of for you, I’m ten of him.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” The heel of her hand pushed him back. “Let’s talk business.”

  “Everything’s on hold.”

  “For now, that’s the best place for it. I’ve got word the government’s interested in me. It doesn’t surprise me. One thing follows another.”

  “What’s it mean to us?” he asked.

  “It means I’m going to fade into the background for a while and you’re going to take a more active role, make a few decisions. Think you’re up to it?”

  His eyes glittered, and his color rose. “Sure I can do it. I can do anything you want. Maybe in time I can call you Louise instead of Mrs. Baker.”

  “First things first, Sal.” She lowered her head for a moment. “You know I’ve made a lot of money.”

  “I got a small idea, Mrs. Baker, but it probably doesn’t come anywhere close. I don’t want to be nosy but if you want to tell me I’ll liste
n.”

  “It’s enough, Sal, so that maybe I might retire, who knows?”

  He shook his head. “I never thought I hear you say that.”

  “Somebody shoots you, it changes your whole way of looking at life. You understand.”

  “Nobody’s ever shot me.”

  “You’re lucky.” She stepped back to the sliding door and peered through the glass. “If I look hard, can I see Mrs. Reynolds’s house?”

  “Naw, it’s hidden.”

  “Maybe I’ll have that beer now.

  He grinned and moved past the room divider into the little kitchen, where he pulled two barroom glasses out of a cabinet and yanked open the refrigerator. Bending, he said, “O’Keefe, Stroh’s Light, or Bud? You got your choice.”

  “Let me think,” she said slowly. Her expectant eye picked up Chick Ryan slipping into the kitchen on the quietest of feet. Glimpsing her, he signaled with his free hand, a gesture that had the intimacy of a whisper laid against her ear. In a strong voice she said to Sal, “I’ll have what John was drinking.”

  Sal reached deep into the refrigerator.

  She turned her head. She did not want to see it happen and tried to occupy herself with a broken nail. It was over in one shot from a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, point-blank, base of the skull. Sal went down as if someone had pulled his feet from under him. Louise waited for the coup de grace, but it did not come. Her head still averted, she forced a quaver out of her voice and said, “Make sure.”

  Chick, looking down, said, “I don’t have to.”

  Staring through the glass, she watched John charge up the rise from the lake as if someone had strong reins on him and were whipping him up a rough road. Minutes later the front door flew open with a bang, and John pushed into the kitchen and pulled up short. For an extended moment the silence was acute and critical. Chick smiled, and Louise, remaining in impeccable profile, said, “What’s it going to be, John?”

  “I’m with you, Mrs. Baker,” he said.