People Live Still in Cashtown Corners

by Burgess, Tony

  There are two phones in this house as far as I can tell. A wall phone in the kitchen and a phone on a black stool before the archway into the ballroom. Probably one that I didn’t see in the office downstairs. And possibly in the apartment upstairs. Telephones. Old ones with cords and cold plastic shapes. I lift the one in the archway. It has buttons, so it’s probably from the seventies. I could just call the police and tell them where I am. I wouldn’t have to say it twice, that’s for sure. Officer, if you look up the road you can probably see the house from where you stand. He might have to step outside to see it. There would be a vast eruption of sirens again, from every corner of the globe it would feel like. Tactical teams in storm trooper getups. Plastic shields and battering teams of two. Snipers maybe, might come in first and position themselves in trees. A perimeter, it’s called. A perimeter would have to be established. And at the base of the driveway, a dozen cruisers parked in the tall grass along the shoulder. They could get me easy. I could leave it to them to shoot me. Come spinning out the front door and just take rounds until I cartwheeled off the front porch. I would be gone then. Or I could come out slowly and offer my hands to them. Be led away past rows of cops lowering their assault weapons, like bridesmaids letting flowers drift from their hands. The groom is led away past the denied party. The bride lies slain at the preacher’s feet. I would never speak after that. No matter what they asked. No matter what. I would sit for the rest of my life on whatever chair they put under me and I would never utter a word. Ever. For decades. Ever. I like this idea. It’s like placing myself in a cocoon that no one can see. I eat in there and when I move to lie down I sleep in there. I decide that I don’t have to wait until they find me to do this. I can start now. I am impatient. I am starting now. I return to the settee and sit. This is the last you will ever see or hear of me.

  13

  Before you start laughing at me, please hear me out. I really was never coming back. I really did sit in an invisible cocoon on the settee. I said nothing and I didn’t move. Okay, I got up twice to go to the bathroom. And I heated up a can of soup. But I was there for hours. How many do you think? Five? Six? Think of sitting in the same spot for six hours. I did. For sixteen hours. The night descended and there was a thunderstorm. By morning the house was beginning to smell. And I stayed sitting well into the afternoon. Until now. Why did I not stay in the cocoon forever? I can’t say exactly, but at some point, bit by bit, it became obvious that no one could do it. In spite of my deep and abiding commitment, a commitment that brought me to the brink of it, I could not do this impossible thing. I was crying at one point and I wanted to say so. But I didn’t. The telephone rang and I almost answered it but I didn’t. Still, a point came, call it the curvature of the earth, call it an itch on my face, call it what you will, but the point came when I was forced to move and given no choice. Only those of us who have sat at the edge of eternity know the name of the force that shoves you back.

  I figured out it was Sunday today and that’s why the school hasn’t called. At least, that’s not who called earlier. It is Sunday though and these people would have gone to church this morning. I decide that if the pastor comes to the door I will give myself up to him. I have also wondered, while sitting on that foul couch for a week, where are the damn police? Where are they in their investigation? I am craving something. Anything.

  I find the television set under a brown cloth at the back of a closet off the hallway. I drag it into the ballroom, leaving black lines on the floor and white lines in the blood. I’m relieved to find that, though ancient, the TV is not black and white. There is no cable or satellite so I have to flip a hooped antenna up and down to find a station. I manage to get an unsteady but watchable feed of the A channel out of Barrie. I have shoved the settee down the stairs and shattered it. It was a source of embarrassment. So I sit on the floor. Where I sit affects the reception and I wind up far to the right of the screen. I inch myself back and closer to the middle with imperceptible little hops I manage by pushing down with my palms. I stop periodically and wait to see if the television has noticed then move again.

  The smell seems less dense down here. If I stand or, worse, if I walk around stirring the air, a poisonous finger gags me with its sick tip and I almost vomit. I have not eaten since the soup and feel no desire to put food in my mouth. I watch an episode of Law & Order that I have seen twice before. It’s based on a real news story about a group of terrorists foiled in the streets of Manhattan, but veers suddenly into a plot by a jealous stepmother to have her daughter killed. Nothing in this episode causes me to reflect on my own situation. Theme music with brassy horns. News. A ticker line scrolls across the bottom before an image appears.

  POLICE SAY PUMP JOCKEY COP KILLER

  It rolls past once and repeats. It’s Jeremy. Jeremy, he’s being led from a van and takes two steps and disappears into a building. There is a scrum, a crush of people, press and photographers. A large policeman steps in front and several others join him. They stand in a grim wall.

  The anchor appears. A thin woman standing in a way that makes her look stressed. She holds pages down against a black skirt.

  “Police say that since detaining Jeremy , the pump jockey found walking away from the scene of Friday’s horrific police slaying at Cashtown Corners, they are getting no co-operation from their suspect. In spite of the fact that he was picked up with twelve thousand dollars cash determined later to have been taken from the gas station safe, police have yet to lay charges and continue interrogating the suspect, prompting his appointed council to request that either their client be charged or released. As well as the slain officer, two other victims were discovered on Friday, one at the scene and another in the Nearby Village of Creemore. The owner of the gas station has not been seen since Friday and police believe he may be a fourth victim.”

  And there I am. From a picture taken of me and Don Cherry seven years ago when he stopped for gas. They’ve cut Don from the picture and blown up my face. I rock forward onto my knees and the reception dissolves. I slap both hands down flat.

  I turn to the room behind me.

  “That was me! That was me!”

  I stand and start pacing. They have Jeremy.

  They think he did it. But how could they? The woman in Creemore. They saw me there. How can they think he did that? And that man with his kids in the van, I talked to him dressed as a cop. Surely he recognized me in the photo? Unless he really didn’t. And he thought I really was a cop. He thinks I was the cop. I want to know. I want to know. I am pacing quickly in circles and don’t see the sleeping bag until my foot hooks under it. I fall flat across three bags and force horrible gases to bellow out. I roll off to the side and cannot breathe. Vomit is slapping the floor all around me as I stand. I collapse against the television and it falls forward and implodes. I seal my mouth with two hands and head downstairs.

  I will be bruised. I sit at the desk and try to think. This is important information. This changes everything. Am I free now? Can this possibly mean that I can just walk away? I’ll never do anything like this again, that goes without saying, but can it be true? There are slippery holes in it. Trip wires all over it. I don’t think it’s safe or lasting. It’s a window though. It’s an opportunity. It occurs to me that something, some power greater than me, wants me to get away. I have confessed. And now that I have, almost by accident, passed through these heavy challenges, I have emerged a changed man, a chosen man. I must come in from the desert. I must go down among them, if not to be found out, at least to lead by example. I promise. I promise. I promise. I go down on my knees and lift my hands to my face. Show me the way. I am yours to lead. Show me the way. I bow my head and close my eyes. I feel my tear ducts quivering, trying to pull fluid out of my dehydrated body. I decide to lie down. I will receive you lying down. Please. Please. Please.

  Thlunk.

  I freeze.

  Thlunk. Thlunk.

  Something is moving upstairs.

  Thlunk. Thlunk.
Thlunk. Thlunk. Thlunk.

  Someone is walking in the ballroom.

  14

  Someone has just walked across the floor above me. There has been no sound for about ten minutes. If that was a cop up there then he’s just discovered a pile of homicide. He’d leave right away, I think. He’d go back to his cruiser and call for backup. That must be where he is. Why did I leave them there? Why didn’t I just bury them in the backyard or something? It might have been a neighbour. Someone from church. The pastor, even. Somebody looking for them. I bet that’s it.

  Thtift. Thtift. Thtift.

  Somebody is definitely up there. Someone in the kitchen. I move noiselessly to the bottom of the stairs. There’s a hammer on a toolbox. This time I have to. This time it’s a chess move. I put my foot carefully on the first step and ease my weight down. I proceed like this, like a cat, until I can see into the hall. I listen. Nothing. I move toward the kitchen with my back to the wall. I hold the hammer up across my chest ready to strike. There’s no one in the kitchen. Backing up I manoeuvre myself so I can see as much of the ballroom as possible without losing sight of the front door and the stairs going up. I stand still. My ears adjust and feel like they’re moving, looking for sound. I think that death syrup in the air that I’ve been inhaling has shut down my sense of smell and improved my hearing. I hear the clock in the upstairs kitchen. If I can hear that then I can hear everything. There is no sound. No movement in this house. After a while I advance, first into the ballroom, then the master bedroom, then upstairs. I come down less guarded. There is no one in this house. I return to the ballroom and stand over the sleeping bags. What had I heard? Did I imagine it? I really don’t think so. Could it have been an animal? That must be it. Somewhere in the walls. A raccoon maybe. And my mind heard it as footsteps. That has to be it. I definitely heard something but I don’t think it was what I thought it was. In any case, it’s time to bury the dead. I set the hammer down softly and lean it against the wall. Keep the handle up and ready. Now we scout locations.

  The ground in the back yard is hard packed. I find a shovel in a shed. A spade with a repurposed broom handle. The ground is just too hard though, and the broom handle breaks and I manage to remove only a teacup full of hard dirt. I have to put several hundred pounds of people under there somehow. I look up to the top floor. There’s a window in the upstairs kitchen that’s taller than wide. If I could get the grandmother through and out onto the roof I could roll her down. But that isn’t going to get her underground, either. I stand, thinking, with my chin on my hands folded over the top of the broom stick when all of a sudden my nose comes back to life. The death molecules sitting up there must have fallen out and now I smell again. Fresh air. I close my eyes and feel the front of my brain prickle to life. That’s what I need. I inhale deeply through my nose. Lilacs. Cedar. Corn. And something sweeter. Something warmer. I open my eyes. Compost. The oxygen shakes each particle of death clear.

  The grandmother’s bloated body has bloated. I can tell just by looking at her. The skin on her face is pulled taut and ballooning. Her gut has turned from doughy flab into something risen. And the smell. Now that days of death have fallen from my nose I have had to protect it. I daub some VapoRub onto a rag and tie it around the lower part of my face. I have made myself ready to move corpses today. There’s a long thin bread knife in a drawer. I make a quick jab in her side just to see what happens. Gases whistle through the pursed lips just below her ribs. I go to the other side and stab a little deeper. It’s a bigger sound. Like a whoopee cushion. And the rushing gases push yellow sacs of fat out that collect and run down her side. I hit a few more times in a circle as the hissing belly slowly flattens. It’s probably a good thing I did this. She may have exploded when she hit the ground. I continue with some other test stabs. The eyes just roll to the side and back of the sockets. The arms and legs don’t bleed. I drive through the bullfrog bloat of her throat and release a torrent of foam and bubbly fluid. I think that’s enough. I tie one end of a rope under her arms and roll the other end through the window, letting it fall down the roof and over the gutter.

  By the time I’ve wedged the body into the window I am wearing a thick suit of the indescribable muck that has fallen out of her. As I stand here in the yard with the rope in my gut-greasy palms there are millions of ecstatic flies burrowing and spinning on the extra layer of body sitting on top of my clothes. I draw the rope taut but can’t keep my grip. I try wrapping the rope around my wrists but it just slithers free the second I yank. Even if I were to clean my hands or wear gloves the rope is now completely infused with heavy yellow subcutaneous paste. I step back to get a better view when I think I see a shadow move behind the body. In the kitchen, a shadow moves across the wall. I’ve been like this ever since hearing those noises. I even thought I heard a voice. While I was coming down the stairs. It’s not hard to explain though. I’m no fool. I am in a frame of mind that conjures conjurations. I have probably been in that frame of mind for longer than I’m aware of. But I am aware now and the way to answer a conjuring mind is to focus and work. The body has to come down and then the sleeping bags must join her. And if I stand around blinking at every little shadow that talks back then nothing will get done.

  A shattering. A bomb has gone off. Shingles and dust and wood spread around me in a cloud. The body has leapt! She leapt! The wind carries the dust away and there she is, not quite all the way to the ground, but close. She has jumped and caved in the roof. The legs stick out from the V in the wall where she’s driven the roof down. I’m suddenly dancing. Suddenly happy. I reach out and grab an ankle. So handy now! I pull and swing the leg free at the knee. I toss it toward the wheelbarrow. The other leg, too. And this is how I get her out of the collapsed rafters. Piecemeal. Her body is shattered and broken and as easy to pull apart as a roasted chicken. The last piece, her head, has fallen into the insulation and I have to get at it through the ceiling above the washing machine, but it’s a minor problem. Soon I have all of her tucked and folded into the compost. There are buckets of dissolved tissue splashed across everything back here and the flies are so thick they have formed a chain mail suit over my entire body. But I have done the hardest part. I look back up to the window where she leapt from. She didn’t leap. Don’t act crazier than you are. Dead bodies don’t leap. I watch the window for a moment. Then how did she get down?

  15

  I am listening a little more than I was before. Moving more carefully. When it’s possible that your mind is broken it’s very important that you get a fix on the nature of that break. You have to develop a second mind to watch the first one. The first one is broken but it’s still possible to cobble together a reliable coalition as long as you can hold what isn’t apart from what is. I don’t believe I have heard voices. In fact, I know I haven’t, other than catching myself talking, but that’s just garden variety crazy, not full blown the dog-is-giving-meinstructions type schizo. I don’t think I’ve hallucinated things either. I have had some wound-up moments where my thinking has broken its pace, but I suspect I may have allowed that. I have not eaten or slept well so there have been some delusions and even some nearly psychotic episodes. But isn’t that all pretty normal given where I’m at? What I’ve been through? Oh, I think my first mind is broken and not reliable, but that is mostly damage I’ve caused it and not from some internal defect. My second mind, which I have more or less moved into for the time being, is clearly rational and, because new, undamaged. I do not know how that woman’s body got through that window and over the roof. That’s the truth and mystery of that. I have to get the rest of these bodies out and into the compost.

  I prop the kitchen door open. The bodies have their own little carry bags. And the route is conveniently marked by a wide red line. I will clean up outside when I’m done. Or not. Let the sun and the flies and the creatures of the night suck the pudding up until they’re full. That’s what I’ll do. I grab the first bag and pull. It’s light. I don’t think of them as the family
any more. They aren’t. They just are not. The second bag is heavy; the third, somewhere in between. I have stopped smelling again and lost my rag, but here and there I feel a gag in my throat. My sinuses must have stalagmites of rotting flesh. Post-nasal death drip. I swing the third up onto the pile. After each bag I pull material from one of the other compost piles and spread it over. The fourth bag I lay to the side. I don’t want the pile to be too tall. There is a compost mound on either side of my bags so I push an entire mound over the fourth bag and sort of feather it up to the top. I’ll do the same on the other side with the final bag. I am beginning to feel lighter now. Clearer. My second mind asks if that’s a damaged or undamaged way to feel. My first mind says, sometimes it’s best to just feel good when you feel good. My second mind sees the benefit.

  The last bag is empty.

  16

  The last sleeping bag is empty.

  17

  There had been a body in there because the entire upper half of the inside is like lasagna. But now, the bag is empty. Someone has snuck in and removed a body. Just one. Not the other bodies. They have taken just this one body. And because I didn’t look—didn’t think I needed to—I don’t even know which body. Why is there a body missing? I can’t even think. I have gone completely ice cold. Who sneaks into a scene like this and steals a corpse? There is no way to know what has happened here. The first mind and the second mind are suddenly on equal footing. The footsteps I heard. Someone had come in. Someone had come in and slid a decomposing body out of a sleeping bag, one of five that lay there, and they snuck away. I don’t believe it. I don’t think so. Maybe one of them wasn’t dead. Maybe they were just unconscious then woke up and . . . no, that didn’t happen. There are bits of skull and brain on the fabric.