People Live Still in Cashtown Corners

by Burgess, Tony

  I don’t say anything. She means her grandmother.

  “The whole floor started to smell the moment she moved in.”

  I take a butter of toast. The death odour is still here but diffused by fresh air blowing through the hole.

  “Better now.”

  A dog snaps at another. A low growl. Patty picks up a sausage. Her fingers are fish-belly white.

  “I’m going to the movies after school with Jesse.”

  I hear scraping on the ground outside. A grackle calls in its cleated voice.

  “Okay. You feel okay to go to school?”

  Patty isn’t going to eat.

  “Yeah. I’m going. It’s okay if I go to the movies with Jesse?”

  I shrug.

  “I don’t think it’d be smart to bring him home though.”

  Patty laughs. It’s a shocking sound. I didn’t expect to hear laughter. Really, I didn’t expect to hear laughter for the rest of my life.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh. That’s what my mom used to say too. For very different reasons.”

  I pour Patty some more coffee.

  “She didn’t like him much. She’d never let me just go off to the movies with him. Or anything.”

  She pours the sugar. She has a wry smile. She’s an intelligent person.

  “Where’s your dad?”

  Patty puts the sugar bowl down hard enough to raise a chorus of barks from outside.

  “That’s a stupid question. Let’s not just get fuckin’ stupid. Okay?”

  That she’s angry is almost too much. I hold the edge of the table and have to concentrate to not cry.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I won’t ask.”

  She looks fiercely into my eyes. She has violence in her.

  “I’m done anyway.”

  I am forced to look down. I can’t speak as she pushes the chair back and leaves. The sound of the chair across the floor triggers a fight between dog and vulture. Patty closes the door to her room. I collect the dishes, slide the food off them and lay them in the sink to clean later. The cackling and snapping subsides and I lean through the hole. Flies are being born. There’s a black haze drifting close to the ground. It is agitating the dogs that snap madly into the infuriating cloud.

  “Okay. I’m going.”

  Patty has a backpack over one shoulder. Her black hair is once again hiding her face.

  “Okay. Look . . . I’m—”

  She interrupts.

  “No. I’m sorry. You just wanted to know. I’m sorry. I can be a bit . . .”

  She rolls her eyes and points to her temple.

  “Sometimes. I’m sorry. He left.”

  I nod. I didn’t really need to know. It was a stupid question.

  “Mom stopped going to church and started drinking. So he said he was going to let her take us all to hell and then . . . he left.”

  I make a sympathetic noise in my throat.

  “Charlie Baker thinks he’s still here.”

  She laughs again. It is a perfect sound.

  “Well, what Charlie Baker doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”

  It’s a strange conspiratorial thing to say. I laugh. This time I laugh.

  22

  Patty left to catch the school bus at a quarter of nine. I found myself wandering through the house feeling excited. I tidied and mopped and swept and cleaned. I straightened pictures, pictures of people I had killed, yes—but now they were just pictures, crooked and made straight as I strolled along each wall. I can’t say I know what is happening to me here or how, but Patty, beautiful, sad and bruise-coloured Patty, has decided all on her own that I am here and that I will help her. And it’s not like I haven’t done the things I’ve done. To her and her family. We both know exactly. We were both here when it happened. And it’s certainly not that I am making it up to her. How can I? It can’t be done. It’s just this: we are magical. She must know this. We are magical. An intensity of experience has transformed us into beings that circle above fear and doubt and pain.

  I break from cleaning to eat lunch. Food is starting get scarce and I don’t know if there’s any money in the house. Patty will help with that. I open a can of beans and heat it in a toobig iron pot. I eat by the window, enjoying the breeze. Even the dogs yelping and snarling are mine today. I lean out the window.

  “Hey! Quiet!”

  They stop and look up. There are fewer vultures and I catch myself thinking I need to fill the bird feeder.

  After lunch I consider calling the school and asking Charlie Baker how our Patty’s faring today. It wouldn’t be totally out of the picture. I may later.

  I find myself with nothing to do in the afternoon and I wander past Patty’s bedroom door. I hover for a moment, wondering if I should.

  It seems a typical teenage girl’s room. A movie poster. Some dark pencil sketches of skinny children. No computer. A small stereo that plays cassettes. Books in a row on the floor against the wall beside her bed. I pull the sheets and covers up, smoothing and tucking them under the mattress. I decide that’s what I’m doing here. I’m making her bed.

  That night she comes home before dinner. She runs through the front door and straight up the stairs. She leaves the door wide open and stomps upstairs with her boots still on. Something bad has happened. I look up the driveway before I close the door. If someone was coming behind her . . . Jesse. Or Charlie. Or the police. Something bad has happened. I realize that this is one of those moments when I should respect her privacy. I should accept that had she wanted to talk to me she would have, but the stakes are too high. She is out there in the world and anything could happen.

  “Patty?”

  She turns her music on loud. She doesn’t want to talk. I am tempted to go up and try but I can’t risk her being angry with me. Patty could do great damage to me. It’s an awful feeling and I am desperate to know but I step back and into the hall to wait. All of the magic I felt today is replaced by anxiety. Dread. I think I should do something. Keep myself occupied, but there isn’t anything left to do. And I’m too upset. I have to talk to Patty. I sit and wait. I sat here once for sixteen hours in far worse condition. It was a holding cell I made for myself to live in instead of dying. Things were simpler then. I watch dusk fall across the windows and my reflection slowly develop like a picture on the black. My hair is sticking straight up and I have a short beard. Charlie Baker mustn’t be a very judgemental person. The music is turned down and then off. I don’t move for a while. She may come down. She may feel like talking now. I’m glad I left her alone. It was the right decision.

  I’m not sure how much time has passed but it seems pretty clear that she isn’t coming. I rise on stiff legs and walk, head bowed, to the bottom of those terrible stairs again.

  I call softly.

  “Patty?”

  I listen and consider climbing up to her.

  “Patty?”

  I hear her door open and seconds later she appears. She descends without a word, without looking at me and she passes me. I don’t move, letting her go where she wants. Waiting for her to be there so I can turn.

  I sit beside her on the settee.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She is sniffling. She’s been crying. I reach up and draw the hair back from her face. She lets me tuck it behind her ear.

  “I get worried.”

  She turns to me. Her eyes are wet and swollen. The bruises looking like heavy makeup running in her tears.

  “Jesse’s an asshole.”

  I feel guilty for being relieved.

  “Why? What did Jesse do?”

  Patty looks squarely at me. Her eyes wander up into my hair. She laughs and wipes her nose.

  “You look like a freak right now.”

  I turn to my reflection and try pulling my hair down.

  “I know. I know. I’ve let myself go.”

  She stops laughing and wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. Her laugh has made me feel selfish.


  “Jesse is an asshole because he ignored me all day and hid with his asshole friends and never once talked to me.”

  I put my arm around her. She leans into me.

  “He acted like I wasn’t even there.” This alarms me.

  “But he’s wrong. You were there. Mr. Baker even said so.”

  She pulls away and gives me a look.

  “Don’t be a weirdo.”

  I return her look with a guilty-as-charged face.

  “Look, boys Jesse’s age are still trying to figure out if they think with the pack or on their own. And that pack is pretty powerful. Some people never leave it.”

  She smiles. She thinks I’m right.

  “And some of us never even figure out where the pack is.”

  Patty nods, grinning. Those lovely conspiracy eyes again. There are bright red patterns at the edges of the dark purple on her cheeks that I never noticed before. She has the most interesting face in the world.

  “Are you trying to give me wisdom now?” I put my hand to my mouth.

  “Wisdom?”

  “Yeah. Your fuckin’ wisdom.”

  I feign for her.

  “I don’t think so. Was that wisdom?” She bumps her shoulder to mine.

  “Not even close.”

  We don’t need Jesse. If Jesse wants to pretend that Patty’s not there then it’s a great loss to his world.

  23

  I didn’t bother making dinner for us tonight. Patty said she wasn’t hungry and I just made a quick sandwich while she read in her room. I went to look for the television but remembered I had thrown it out in pieces earlier today. I thought about going up and borrowing one of Patty’s books but that might just seem like pandering. I have to be aware of doing my own things in this house. I don’t need to climb up into everything she does. I decide to sit at the dining room table and make a list. There are things that have to be sorted out. Mail, for instance. There’s a post office box somewhere, probably in New Lowell, that’s going to get very stuffed if we don’t figure out how to clean it out. I pull drawers, looking for keys. I find an inordinate amount of candles and batteries but no keys. I wander through the house looking for a nail or something where they might hang. I find it at the front door. Several rings, in fact. Car keys. I tuck them in my pants pocket. I have had a vague scenario playing in the back of my mind where Patty and I take a trip up north and never return. It’s a simple, attractive idea, but without money or cover it’s just a live-happily-ever-after kind of fantasy. As much as I want things to continue I know what this will mean depends on the right ending. I find the mailbox key. It doesn’t feel very good in my hand. None of the letters will be meant for me to open. Probably none for Patty, either. It may be a connection we shouldn’t tug at.

  I used to have trouble around people. All of my life I had trouble. I struggled to know what to say. I would get dizzy and my head would shatter to pieces. And that’s what happened to me. It’s not much of an explanation and I have to say that I can’t really remember the feeling any more. That morning in Cashtown Corners seems so unreal to me now. It felt unreal then too, I’m sure, but now that I seem to be looking after things, saying the right things, thinking clearer, those monstrous events must have happened to another person. Is that possible? I am not him any more. I am who I am now. I should try to keep in mind that it wasn’t always this way. It could change again.

  Patty has read herself to sleep and I look in on her. Her large black boots sit in the middle of the floor. I’ll leave them until tomorrow. At least she changed out of her clothes before she went to bed. I move silently forward and turn the bedside light off. A soft blue night light ticks on beside her row of books. This light makes her face glow like a pearl.

  The next morning, after Patty gets on the school bus, I decide it’s time to do something about the beasts on the hill. I need a weapon and it occurs to me that there may be more ammunition for that old pistol. I stop myself though. I don’t think I could bring myself to holding that thing again. Let alone pointing it. Shooting it. I don’t really want anything to do with the iron bar, either. Or the little wooden bat. Especially the little wooden bat. So I search the laundry room for poison and I find a large white jug of pure bleach. I may not kill them with it but if I manage to soak the mound in bleach then maybe they’ll move on. I put my ear to the kitchen door. I don’t hear anything but I’m not going to go through there. They could be crouching on the floor, silent and listening too. I’ll sneak around the side of the house.

  I enter the garage for the first time. There’s a minivan sitting in the dark. A stack of bagged winter tires. A generator. I find a longhandled axe and swing it by my feet. It’s too heavy to bring up easily in one hand. I could throw the bottle of bleach to the mound, then hack my way through the dogs to it. I am going to get hurt, I’m pretty sure of that. Something will get to me along the way. But if I manage to kill even one then maybe the rest will back off. The vultures should just take wing. They won’t fight me. That’s not what they do. Vultures attack with patience. They’ll fly off and wait until I kill the dogs and go back inside. Then they collect in the sky out of nowhere and descend on the mound. And then the bleach will dissolve their hideous faces. It seems to me that I have a plan.

  I test my balance with the two objects before turning the corner. They are about equal weight but I have to be careful not to lose my balance when I launch the bottle. It has to be a clean throw and I have to come out of it with a flying edge. I have to take something out with that first chop, which means I’ll have to be swinging on the run.

  I pump my knees once to feel them spring then turn the corner with a howl. I toss the bleach with a deep underhand throw and it goes high, end over end. Then I spin the butt of the handle into that hand as it comes down and I manage to draw it back far behind me before driving it forward and down, looking for a dog to hit. The axe head slams into the ground and sends a shock wave up my arms that nearly pops my shoulder out. There is no dog. There are no dogs. I look across the yard to the mound. The bleach bottle sits upright near the top. No vultures. No flies. There is a strange supernatural gleam to the entire scene. They have eaten and chewed and licked and sucked every last molecule of human remains. The dogs have even dragged off the bones and probably buried them in the cornfield. The mound has been restored to a clean black oven. But it’s the shine that takes my breath away, white barely there frost that sparkles on everything. This is the dried spit of flies. The light dust left when the sun evaporates maggot saliva. I step around the axe and turn in slow circles. Even the crushed roof has a sparkling finish and the garden wall has been polished, its stones glowing like large misshapen pearls. As I move my eyes across the surfaces, shimmering bolts appear and disappear in the air. I breathe deep and an acrid but pleasing dust lines the inside of my nose. Tonight, Patty, we will sit out here, with the crazy stars above us and the magic stars here, below.

  24

  The downstairs kitchen is sterile and polished in the same way as the yard, but it’s no longer serviceable. There is nothing in the pantry. All of the cords are missing. Anything that simply sat on a counter is gone. It’s not a room any longer. Now it resembles the inside of a bleached skull. I lean into the door to see if I can loosen the planks from in here. I bounce my shoulder into the immovable panel. I secured it very well, it seems. I consider getting the axe and splitting my way through. When you’ve had an axe in your hands and readied yourself to use it, the feeling lingers for a while. Lazy though, and it would be a shame to make a mess of such a pristine room. Even the insides of the cupboards look resurfaced. And then I spot something interesting. Two china white cups sitting on the window sill. The only loose objects left. I pick them up and realize that these aren’t cups. These are parts of skulls. The edges are irregular but smooth and it’s as if they’ve been kiln fired and enamelled. There is something in the spit of maggots and the shit of flies and the drool of mad dogs that, when combined and worked in with rough tongue
s and brushed with scrubbing bodies, becomes a kind of super surface. I set the skull caps down on the counter and marvel at how continuous the effect of this sheen is. From the drawer handles to the weeds at the back door, everything is held in a perfect frost.

  I walk carefully through the garden and around to the front door. I wish I could see more from here. Only the road leading up across the corn field. Beyond that just the endless sea. Somewhere over there, in a hidden crease, sits Cashtown Corners. There must be people not too far from where I’m standing right now who are busy hunting for me. I am a missing person. Not a wanted man, but a victim, unaccounted for, probably lying in a shallow grave with a cleaver in my face. The last missing piece in a crime adventure that has gripped the nation. And that boy, the pump jockey turned angel of death, Jeremy what’s-his-name, is still hanging grimly onto the facts while we ask our questions, all we want, all the people want, is to know, what have you done with the body of Mr. Clark, you greedy, evil little monster?

  I really have nothing to do but am nervous about being bored. I remember those hours and days in Cashtown. That was the ocean that first pulled me away. I will make Patty’s bed. I may even wash her sheets. Maybe there’s other laundry I can do.

  She has made the bed herself and I admit to feeling a bit slighted by this. I don’t mind, Patty. Let me do the things I like to do. But, she may have just thought she was being a good girl. How many teenagers make their beds before going off to school? I poke around looking for clothes I can clean and manage a small pile of socks and tee shirts. I straighten the tie-dyed doily on her bedside table and notice that it isn’t a table at all. It’s a small television set. I turn it to face out and carefully flip the doily up. My heart starts to bang up against my throat. Should I turn it on? I’ve settled the story for myself. Do I need it contradicted? Do I really need to know? I press the power button and a green diamond winks at me from the centre of the screen. A bass beat erupts from the side speakers seconds before an image brightens the screen. A music video channel. A man sits on a yacht being driven by three women. I feel around the folded doily and find the remote. I begin to move up from this channel. 24 is sports. A golf tournament. 25 is CNN. I stop here. Is Cashtown an international story? Could it be? The anchor sits in front of a graph showing foreclosures rising. 27 is a men’s channel. People being knocked into orange water by multicoloured punching gloves. 28 is me.