Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  No dogs. No answering whine of delight. No security lights. A whiff of air touched me. Something dead. . . . I looked into the fog, straining to find the scent. Yes. There it was. I gripped the gun in sweating palms. He was here. The madman with a knife . . .

  My feet slipped. I stopped. My heart was racing, an uneven cadence against my ribcage. I ached, bruised ribs a slow, constricting suffocation. Sticky. My feet were in something . . . sticky.

  I knew before I bent down. . . . Before I touched the sticky stuff with my fingertips. Blood. Tacky. Hours old. "Jasmine?" I whispered. "Jas. . . ?"

  The moon above pierced through, higher up and brighter than before, a sterile ancient brilliance, turning the blood at my feet, on my hand, into a glistening blackness. As if the night itself had dribbled down, puddled and congealed.

  A dog, his fur dark and mottled, slept a foot a way. Slept, eyes open and drying, in dreams from which he’d never awake. Hokey or Herman. Mangled. His back broken. The scent of death, fresh and damp, wafted from him. Similar to the scent of my attacker.

  "Jasmine?" I called, moving in the dark. Bile rose again as my feet slipped in the blood.

  A few feet away was Herman. I was sure this time because Herman’s chest and abdomen were white, and there was enough light to identify him. Herman was belly up, his head twisted to one side. I bent over him. I had seen enough shotgun wounds to recognize this one. It was about three inches in diameter. Close range.

  The clinical part of me had clicked on at the sight of the body, the analytical and unemotional part of every nurse. The part that looks at blood and death and suffering everyday without flinching. The part that seems callous and unfeeling, in part because it is. In an instant I became the medical professional who had pressed her bare hands against a child’s thigh to stop its lifeblood pumping away. Who had covered the naked bodies of infants and grandmothers when they breathed their last. I was icy cold. Shaking. My hands tingled from fear-induced hyperventilation, but my mind was clear and functioning.

  And suddenly I was angry. So angry the trembling in my hands became the shaking of rage, filled with a desire to fire the gun I held. I wanted to aim and fire and— I knew what I ought to do. I ought to wait on the sheriff’s deputy who was undoubtedly on the way. I wouldn’t.

  I no longer considered the possibility that the cat at the drive was put there by kids. I knew that the man had done this long before he visited me in the emergency room. It was a warning, like the letter I had thrown away. Like the telephone messages I had feared. McKelvey? He had claimed to be far worse than McKelvey. How had he known about McKelvey?

  The anger blazed up, a feverish rage. He dared to threaten what was mine!

  I laid my hand on Herman’s chest. He was cold and stiff. No heart beat in his chest cavity. I backtracked and checked Hokey. Also definitely dead. Raising up, I wiped my sweaty, bloody hands on the uniform at my waist and stepped into the fog. Moving toward the house on the stone path, my footsteps were muffled by the blood caked to the bottoms of my shoes. I was glad I hadn’t thought to bring the flashlight in the Jeep or the one in the barn. The one used by the vet when he did minor surgery. If the killer of my dogs was nearby, he couldn’t spot me in the darkness. I no longer called out for Jasmine.

  The deck and screened porch were suddenly before me, sturdy structures in the wispy fog. Moving right, I searched for a car in the drive. Except for my Volvo, unmoved in weeks, it was empty. I bit my lip, keeping in the sound of my relief. Jas wasn’t here. It wasn’t she who had left the lights burning in the barn. It wasn’t Jas.

  Turning back to the house, I watched for an attacker who might be waiting in the white shadows for me to finish in the barn and move noisily for the door. But there was nothing there. No lights. No one I could see. Only silence and stillness. The absence of life.

  Bending in the shrubbery by the back door, I found the spare key beneath an azalea, pushing through the damp soil with quick stabbing motions until I touched the cold brass. Moving bent over to keep my shadow from showing inside, I cleaned the key off and unlocked the door. If I had activated the old alarm system, would the dogs still be alive? I had never turned it on, not in all the years we had lived here. I wasn’t sure I knew how. After all, we were safe, here on Chadwick Farms, at the end of Chadwick Farm Acres. Nothing ever happened out here, so far from the city life Jack and I had fled.

  Slipping out of my shoes, I moved into the house and closed the door behind me. The air was still inside, the way a house feels when no one has been in it for hours. If anyone had been inside, it was long ago. From room to room, upstairs and back down, I moved in my sock-covered feet, the 9mm close in front of me, held steady in both hands. Checking each room, each closet, taking special care in Jasmine’s quarters, even looking into the attic. No one was here. Nothing was missing. Nothing appeared to have been moved. Jasmine hadn’t been here in hours.

  Returning to the back door, I slid my feet into my cold, damp shoes and looked into the darkness. By the back door was a slim pen light, an old one I had brought home from work and lost months ago. It was lying in a shaft of milky light, resting in the corner of the door jamb and the wall. It had collected dust and hair, as if building a web for itself. I’d have to speak to the cleaning crew. Picking it up, I checked the batteries, startled by the thin beam of white light. I could have used the light in my search of the house, but then, fate seldom lets you have what you want when you need it. And then, standing half in and half out of the house, I heard something. A faint whine, tenuous and feeble. A scraping sound, like claws on earth. From beneath my feet.

  A single siren sounded in the distance.

  "Big Dog?" In my fear for Jasmine, I had forgotten about my other dogs. The whine came again, soft, pleading. I ran for the edge of the deck and leapt off. Wrenched my weak ankle when I landed. The breath shot from my lungs. I lost the gun, hearing it skitter across the rocks. Some hero. I groaned when a breath finally forced its way into my chest. I had strained my arm. My ribs, bruised before, made a soft creaking sound.

  I had lived on this farm for nearly twenty years and had hurt myself dozens of times. But always before I had known Jack would be here soon to help me. Tonight, I was on my own. And I still hadn’t found Jas. I lay in the gravel, shaken and bruised, the sound of my breath enveloped by the fog.

  Headlights pulled up by the barn. Doors opened and closed. Jasmine’s voice. Shrill and angry. Jas angry, meant Jas safe.

  "Thank you, God. Thank you," I whispered, the prayer escaping with each tortured breath. I, who had closed my Bible the day Jack died and not opened it since. I, who was angry at God, all right, angry at God, first for taking Jack. Then for what Jack had done. I was praying.

  The whine came again, low and pained from beneath the deck. Rolling back across the gravel, I flicked on the pen light. Two sets of eyes glowed redly back at me. So much for fate having a warped sense of timing. "Big Dog?" He whined, his tail thumping slowly. "Cherry?" Something wriggled and writhed near her, newborn, eyes closed. She panted hard, still in labor.

  "Oh. Puppies!" I choked out. And then I saw the blood. Under and around Big Dig, dark clots and pools of it. And the wound on Big Dog’s side, gaping red and raw. A hair-matted hole in the thin beam of light. "Big Dog" I breathed. And pushed under the deck.

  The wooden deck was low, only eighteen inches or so above the ground. Last year’s leaves, old straw, and cobwebs cluttered the space. I shoved with my elbows, pulled with my fingers in the dirt. My uniform top hung on a nail over my head and ripped as I moved. Footsteps thudded up the path from the barn. I heard my daughter curse as she stumbled over Hokey and Herman. Even more colorful language came from Topaz. I dropped my head and laughed, a relieved sound that echoed in the narrow space. "Jas!" I yelled. "Jaaaasmiiiine!"

  A vehicle turned slowly up the drive, lights flashing.

  "Mom! Mom!" Jas sounded hysterical.

  But Jasmine was safe. Oh, God, Jas is safe! "I’m under here. Under the deck."<
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  Bodies hit the ground, grinding into my trail. A punishing light stabbed at my eyes. The barn flashlight, its flare bright enough to perform surgery by, blinded me. I covered my eyes.

  "No! Wait," I waved Paz and Jas back. "Go inside first, get the blankets out of my closet. Cherry’s had puppies, and Big Dog’s hurt bad. Call the vet. Tell him if he values Davenport business, he’ll climb out of bed and get over here fast. Then set up the surgery in the barn. Now!" I added, when she hesitated after I spoke. Both girls moved.

  The sheriff’s car stopped in the drive. Feet shod in heavy boots crushed on the rocks. A low voice, authority and safety in its tones, asked questions. My girls, near panic, shouted frenzied explanations. Jasmine is safe. Jas is safe. The words beat through me like my lifeblood.

  I reached the animals, petted Cherry just as a bloody puppy popped out. Instinctively, I caught it. Cherry grunted, squirmed around and began cleaning her pup, warm and wet in my palm. I laughed again. And Big Dog licked my face, smiling through his pain.

  "Lordy, Lordy, buckauger whoa."

  I looked up, hearing Aunt Mosetta’s voice roll in from the fog. Buckauger was one of the more colorful not-quite-swear words the old woman used.

  "Hmm. Bet that just jarred her preserves," Nana added thoughtfully. Their voices came up the path from the barn, where Hokey and Herman still lay, mangled and broken.

  "Dantucket, I say. Ain’t seen nothin’ like this since God made dirt." Mosetta’s voice ebbed and flowed as if she shook her head while she spoke, sending her words first one direction and then the other. "Dantucket. Must a happen when we was watching The Price is Right for us not to be hearing these much shotguns," she said. Aunt Mosetta had once spoken like my Nana, gruff and crisp, but as she aged, she slipped back into the patois of her more impoverished youth, using words like dantucket, and the syntax of Dawkins County’s African Americans.

  "I’ll call you in an hour or two, Mrs. Davenport," Doc. Ethridge said, slamming the hatch of his station wagon and cutting off the soft-voiced conversation in the darkness. I turned to him, half visible in the night. "I should know something by then, one way or the other."

  His words were crisp and professional, but he ran his hands through his hair like a child faced with a test he hadn’t really prepared for. Blood marked his cuffs, black in the darkness. He spoke to me but his eyes were on Jas, expression at once compassionate and firm. "We’ve done all we can here, Jas. Big Dog, if he makes it, needs more attention than you can give him. Not to mention a transfusion. You can come and see him in the morning . . ." The sentence trailed off unfinished, Big Dog’s fate unknown. Her face pinched and pale, Jas nodded slowly. Her long hair was damp from the fog and plastered close to her skull, making her look sallow and colorless in the poor illumination. Topaz, standing just behind her, hands in her jeans pockets, shoulders hunched, looked no better.

  And I wouldn’t even contemplate what I must look like. Muddied, bloodied, and bruised, I was walking with a limp, had effective use of only one arm, and was breathing shallowly to guard against muscle spasms. Cramps clamped around my chest with each breath. I hadn’t hurt this badly since losing my last baby, and that was something I didn’t think about. Not ever.

  It was the cold, more than anything, that made me ache. Cold and fear and the man in the Soiled Utility Room. He had been here. He had done this. I knew it.

  "Call you soon, Mrs. Davenport, Jas."

  "Thank you, Doc," I said softly.

  "Anytime, ma’am." The Toyota station wagon rumbled to life and pulled slowly around the parked cars, easing past the deputy’s vehicle and down the tree-lined drive. The headlights lit young saplings and a ’possum that scuttled across the lane, heavy with her young.

  Shivering set in, starting in my shoulders and vibrating southward. Muscle spasms around my ribcage were so sharp that, for a long moment, I couldn’t catch my breath.

  Jasmine met my eyes in the night, a long, bittersweet stare. "You look like shit, Mama."

  "You ain’t mine, child." The words came out of the night, stern and hard as old stone. "But if you was, I’d box you ears, talking to you mama like that." Aunt Mosetta materialized out of the fog, an oak-brown woman with shawl and cane, shuffling about in red bedroom slippers and a pink chenille robe. Nana walked behind her. "They’s ways a talking what’s wrong, plague-on-it, an’ they’s ways what’s right."

  "Sorry, Aunt Mosetta, Mama." Jas shivered in the cool breeze, looking perfectly miserable. "I’m going to check on the horses and find a shovel." Her voice broke, a jagged, painful sound. "I don’t want anything getting to Hokey and Herman."

  "Put them dogs in a shed, chile. I’ll sen’ my Duke to bury ’em in the morning." Duke was one of Aunt Mosetta’s grandchildren, or perhaps great-grandchildren.

  I nodded, careful to move in tandem with my pain. "Do what Aunt Mosetta says Jas."

  "But. . . ." Tears welled in her eyes, glistening in ambient light from the kitchen window.

  "Please, Jas. Not tonight," I managed.

  She sighed, a sound of real anguish, unlike the dramatic sighs of teenaged youth. "Yes ma’am." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. It was shaking and white and I could hear the tears in her voice.

  "I got a tarp in my trunk, Jas," Topaz said. "We can . . ." she took a steadying breath, "roll them on it and pull the tarp to the carriage shed. Come on." She put her hand on Jasmine’s shoulder and left it there, consoling.

  "And, Jas, why don’t you go to bed when you’re finished, my girl. You look all done in," Nana said. "I’ll take care of your mama for you."

  Jas shrugged, dragged her eyes from mine, and followed Topaz through the fog. Mosetta and Nana took their places. "Don’t tell Jas, my girl, but you do look like Big Dog dug you up and dropped you on the steps." I wanted to laugh, but the breath stopped in my throat.

  "Humph. Trouble breathing?" I nodded, forcing movement through the pain. "Come on Moses, let’s put this girl to bed."

  "I’ll make her some soakey. That put her to sleep," Aunt Mosetta nodded wisely.

  "Give her indigestion, you mean. And nightmares. Make it whiskey. Neat. And don’t you argue Moses, it’s too late, too cold, and my girl’s hurting. Come on Ashlee." Nana took my good arm and turned me toward the house. "I’ll put you in a tub while Mosetta pours you some of Jack’s whiskey."

  "Don’t like baths. Shower," I said through teeth clamped with pain.

  "Not this time. You need to soak. And no arguing either." Nana half carried me up the steps and through the kitchen, the motion jarring me into silence. As we eased past Jack’s golf bag, still standing in the hallway, the sheriff’s deputy came out of the office, resettling his weapon in its holster.

  "Mrs. Davenport, I’ve checked the house and it seems—"

  "Sit down, son," Nana interrupted. Only my Nana could call a forty-year-old cop "son" and make him smile about it. "Mrs. Davenport’s not well. I’ll be back to talk to you in a minute. Why don’t you make the officer a cup of soakey or something while he waits." The last sentence was said back over her shoulder as Nana led me up the hallway. I didn’t figure the deputy would argue. Nana in this mode was like a rockslide. You couldn’t stop it or change its direction, you just had to stand back and wait for the earth to settle.

  "No soakey," I whispered, as Nana flipped on the bathroom lights.

  Nana stopped the tub, turned on the hot water all the way and the cold water a quarter turn before she responded. Steam rose above the small pool in the tub bottom. I figured she meant to scald me.

  "Why’s that?’

  "Got no coffee. No biscuits." Soakey was left over biscuits—the harder the better—a little cream and sugar and boiling hot, reheated coffee poured over the top. The mash was stirred and eaten with a spoon. Like Jasmine’s breakfast combo, soakey was something I’d rather not watch being eaten.

  "Humph. You do still have some whiskey?"

  "Yes ma’am."

  "Good." Nana unclasped my nurse’s
watch, removed my turquoise stud earrings, and dropped the pieces of jewelry into the bathroom sink. The watch was filthy, where I had dragged it through the mud and blood beneath the deck.

  I looked down, taking in the rents in the knees and the ground-in mud and gore. The elbows of my scrub top were stained with dried blood. Nana stepped behind me, took the neckline of the scrub top in both hands and gave a quick jerk, separating the old fabric down the back seam. The top fell to the tile floor. My scant supply of skinny uniforms had just been diminished by one. "Your uniform’s ruined," Nana said gruffly.

  "So it is," I murmured as the pants followed suit. It seemed a waste, but at least it kept me from having to stretch or bend. I didn’t think I could, not cramping. Moving efficiently, Nana stripped off the rest of my clothes and pushed me toward the whirlpool tub. I felt about ten years old. Since Nana was still in rockslide mode, I didn’t disagree, just lifted a leg and stepped into the tub. Hot water swirled around my ankles. Nana was trying to scald me. With my good arm, I adjusted the temperature and supported myself as I stirred the water with a toe.

  Nana squirted some perfumed bath gel into the stream. The scent of my favorite perfume bubbled up around me, a woodsy base overlaid with gardenia and a hint of spice. A delectable scent Jack had purchased for me on our honeymoon in Italy and replenished every year. I used the gel in the shower, and hadn’t realized it made such mounds of bubbles in the tub.

  As the water cooled, I sat and again adjusted the temperature, warmer this time. I had hated baths since I was a child, feeling trapped and slightly claustrophobic, entombed in the hot water and porcelain. But as the water reached the whirlpool jets, I sat back, accepted the whiskey neat from Aunt Mosetta and sipped, my eyes half closed. And the tension I had carried like a weight all evening dropped away, melted by the wet warmth that massaged my muscles and burned its way from my mouth to my stomach. Whiskey neat and a whirlpool, a new pleasure I had never tried.