Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  "Jack’s Resurrection." The words were a ghostly echo from above. A second thrill, sharp and cutting, sliced through my chest. "That’s what Mr. Davenport wanted to name it if it was a he," Jimmy Ray said.

  Jas looked up and met my eyes. "That’s what he said, Mom. Jack’s Resurrection. Because he hoped this colt would revive the bloodline we lost to EIA."

  Five years earlier, we lost our entire breeding herd of Friesians, except Mabel, to Equine Infectious Anemia. Ten horses had been put down and buried in a gully at the back of the farm. The loss of so many beautiful animals had nearly killed Jack. But . . . Jack’s Resurrection . . .

  Without a word, I rose from the bed of straw, and slipped through the stall door. Tears blurred my vision. My breath was a painful sob I couldn’t quiet, racking through me, a harsh, heavy sound. I made it to the house. By feel to my bedroom, the bright cheerful room now a mockery. I closed the door with a soft thud, and sucked a shuddering breath into tortured lungs. "Jack’s Resurrection," I whispered, tasting the salt of tears on my upper lip. "Jack’s Resurrection. Yeah. Name a colt full of dreams and then leave me with proof of your lies and problems I can’t handle." My cry was broken, the words fractured by tortured breaths, more groan than speech.

  I sobbed, pain deep in my chest. My whole body ached, my throat a fiery agony. I fell against the wall by the door, blinded by tears and the vision of Jack as I remembered him, vibrant and gentle and loving. The Jack of my dreams, of my memory. But almost instantly the false vision was superimposed by the Jack I had discovered since. The Jack in the photos with Robyn. The Jack of the business world, the money maker. The man who may have conspired to kill someone. I covered my head with my arms, blocking out the light and the truth of the sham he had been. The anger I had been denying myself, the anger that my pastor had once promised I would someday feel, when grief and shock began to wane, surfaced. In that single moment, I hated my husband. Hated him even more than I missed him. Even more than I had loved him. I cried, beating the wall of the bedroom with my balled fist. Cursing the man I had loved and who had left me. Until my strength finally gave out and I fell on the bed exhausted. I cried there, lying on the bed we had shared, until my throat was raw and my sinuses were clogged and Jack’s pillow was wet clean through. I hadn’t let Jas wash his pillowcase and it still smelled like him, earthy, with a hint of spicy-warm.

  A single silver strand of hair, two inches long, rested on my left wrist. Jack’s hair, caught in the pillowcase weave. I lifted the strand and cradled it in my hand. It was all I had left of him. The hair in his brush, the old sweat in the T-shirt he’d worn the afternoon he died. It was still hanging in the closet where I had put it, a memory I had buried my face in for weeks and cried as the scent brought him back to me. I knew that the smells would fade. Soon there would be only this single hair. The thought should have stimulated more tears, but my eyes stayed dry. I smoothed the hair with unsteady fingers. And wondered how I would survive without him. And how I could live with the knowledge of his betrayal.

  The rest of the day loomed before me empty as a sandy, wind-swept desert basin, dry and harsh with far too much empty space to fill. The night beyond beckoned dark and hollow and cold, full of fear. My whole life was a barren wasteland. Climbing from our bed, I wiped my face on a handkerchief, once also Jack’s. Blew my nose. And placed Jack’s hair in an envelope and inserted it like a bookmark in my Bible. The Bible was closed, lying on my bedside table, a light sprinkling of dust on the cover. I hadn’t opened it since the night before Jack died. I didn’t plan on opening it again anytime soon.

  Feeling empty, I went to the bathroom and washed my face, pulled on another T-shirt and retied the flannel one at my waist. Gathering up my keys and purse, I left the house, driving from the farm in the Volvo, not even recognizing where I was going until I was nearly there. The cemetery. The place where Jack was. This new Jack. The liar. The cheat. The man who had died.

  I stared down the row toward Jack’s grave, green grass in irregular patterns, gray marble headstones, silk flowers in plastic urns. The flowers were wired to the urns, which in turn were all wired into concrete anchors beneath the soil. It was a contraption designed to thwart the intentions of modern-day grave robbers, the kind who would drive up to a cemetery, park, and walk among the graves, plucking up the bouquets that honored the dead. The silk flowers ended up in flea markets or yard sales, the profit a bonus to thieves who had no more morals than to steal from the dead. I walked the rows of tombstones as the sun rose high, needing to see the marker with his name on it and the dates of his life cut into the stone. Needing to accept fully that he was really gone, the man I’d thought I had known. Really him, once and for all, buried here. Or needing desperately to find that it was someone else’s life and death and lies. That the last miserable weeks of grief and fear, sleeplessness and utter agony were just a horrid dream and nothing else. Needing to prove that my anger was false and unnecessary.

  But it was Jack beneath the soil. It was my husband. My fingers traced the letters of his name, the years of his short life. The stone was rough and cold in the chiseled shapes, and smooth and cold on the polished surface. And wet with dew that ran down the stone like tears.

  Dew seeped from the grass through the denim of my jeans, chilling my skin where I sat before the stone. Is this the way he felt down there? This damp and cold? But then, he wasn’t down there, was he? Only his body, moldering and withering. I was a nurse. I had seen bodies which had been dead for just as long as Jack. My mind veered quickly from the pictures, like a rat skittering down a frozen hillside.

  "How do I accept your leaving?" I whispered through tears that slid down my face. "How am I supposed to accept the thorough and total finality of your death? The absolute fact that you will never, ever be there for me again. And the fact of your deception. Your infidelity. Your lies. Oh, God. So many lies." Tears fell on my hands and slipped across my skin, joining the cold dew. Making little iridescent puddles in the pale light of the rising sun. "How do I grieve? How do I hang on to my love in the face of all this?" I asked my dead husband. "Or does that have to die too? Does your death destroy both you and my love? My trust? All that was a part of our life together? And if so . . .what will I be then? Who will I be?"

  I cried there, at the grave of my husband. Cried as the sun rose around me and burned off the last of the night-fog. Summer was coming, would be here soon. I could feel it in the rising wet heat that lay like a bath against my skin. I could see it in the mating dance of male cardinals, gathered in red clusters, screaming and fighting in mid-air, five or six of them battling for dominance. I could hear it in the hunting screech of a red tailed hawk. The far off stench of a skunk on the prowl.

  Jack is dead. Jack is really dead. I sighed, the breath painful. Pushing away from his headstone, I went to my car. Stumbled over the gravestone of a child. Losing my way in the early glare, I panicked, hysteria gripping my heart as I looked around at the death. Death everywhere. Until I saw my car, just beyond a row of headstones. Runnelled with dew, windows almost opaque in the damp. Tears shimmering into rainbows at the edges of my vision. I fell into the safety of the Volvo, locking out the stone-hard evidence of mortality. I drove home. Home to my daughter and to whatever life I could make for myself in the reality of Jack’s death.

  Jas and I left the security expert checking the old system, various electrical tools scattered across the kitchen table, others hanging from his belt for immediate use. Macon had wasted no time in satisfying Nana and Aunt Mosetta as to our safety. And, as promised, the expert was a Chadwick, but a Chadwick several generations removed, with very dark chocolate skin and molasses brown eyes and an intensity unexpected in one so young.

  Chadwick T. Owens—known in the family as Wicked Owens, a play on Chadwick that was more than appropriate—had been a troubled youth. In and out of gangs and involved in petty crime, he had been a resident of the juvenile justice system rather than the public school system until the age of fourteen.
When he was accused of killing a man. Aunt Mosetta had hired a detective to clear his name. When the PI was successful, Wicked went to work for him to pay off his debt to the family matriarch. He’d been on the straight and narrow ever since, not that he’d had much choice against Aunt Mosetta’s plans for his life. Though I had never met him, Wicked Owens was a near legend in Chadwick lore. One of the lost ones brought back to the fold.

  He was in business on his own now, running Chadwick T. Owens Securities. He was one of the best in the business. Aunt Mosetta had surely known who the security expert would be. If I had thought it through, I would have known it myself. I took an instant liking to Wicked Owens, though he was too busy to do more than nod when Macon introduced us. He’d be around for a day or two, his little electrical devices probing and analyzing. I was obscurely comforted by the thought of his watching over us. Not that he would be any personal protection at all, Wicked being a small, wiry man, weighing not much more than Jasmine’s new foal.

  When Jas and I left at nine, he followed us to the cars, checked under the hood and beneath the vehicles before he would let us drive away. Cautious to an extreme, was Wicked Owens. As we drove off, he stood, arms akimbo, surveying the yard, the drive at the back of the house, and the house itself. He didn’t seem very happy about it, but that was his problem. I had other worries.

  Big Dog had survived the night. Doc Ethridge had him in the back of the vet clinic, in a little room off the surgery, his body bandaged and IVs running. Because Big Dog was too massive for even the biggest indoor cages, he was stretched out on a pallet in the corner. And although he was still woozy from pain killers, he thumped his tail enthusiastically when we entered. Jas dropped to the floor, running her hands across his body in her semi-professional way, murmuring endearments and scratching under his chin. I wished for a camera, so I could take pictures, just as I had when Jas was a toddler, first discovering a love of dogs.

  She had been three, and Jack was training a spotted hunting dog, using an old shoe wrapped with feathers to teach the stray how to fetch. "Go get it boy," he said, throwing the old shoe as far as he could. And Jasmine, who had claimed the stray’s affection, wailed at the top of her lungs because the dog loped off. Jack laughed that wonderful laugh and tossed Jasmine high in the air, catching her on the way down, turning her wail into laughter that matched his. Jas and Jack. Inseparable since her birth.

  "Mrs. Davenport, the doc is free now."

  I pulled out of my reverie and followed the veterinary tech to a cubbyhole where Doc Ethridge washed his hands at a large stainless steel sink. Water pounded as the vet scrubbed, using the same sterile technique as medical doctors, cleaning under his nails, pushing back his cuticles, rubbing at his wrists. And like medical doctors everywhere, he looked tired. Saving Big Dog had been an all-nighter.

  Doc Ethridge was a medium kind of man. Medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair. But the circles beneath his eyes were dark brown with a faint lavender tint, and his skin was sallow, as if he hadn’t seen the sun recently.

  "Morning Mrs. Davenport. Have you seen Big Dog yet?"

  "Yes. I did," I said. "And I want to thank you so much for saving him. I—"

  "Well, he’s not out of the woods yet," the vet interrupted, "but barring any complications, he should be nearly good as new in a week or so." I nodded again, feeling awkward. "He’ll need some physical therapy on that hind leg, but it’s something you can do at home. One of the shotgun pellets lodged up under his kneecap."

  Doc Ethridge shut off the water and dried his hands in the sudden silence. "There may be some damage to the cartilage, and he may limp, but that’s a fairly minor problem. A bigger one would be if his left kidney shut down. There were two pellets near the kidney’s circulatory system." The vet dried his hands on brown paper towels and pointed to a dusty plastic dog kidney on a shelf. There were other various organs and body parts there, all neatly labeled according to species. His voice was an exhausted monotone, and I realized he was running on nervous energy and caffeine, explaining by rote.

  "One of the pellets was lodged about here, just under the large vein that services the kidney. I removed that one. The other I left, lodged beside the renal artery, that’s the major artery feeding the kidney. It was a judgment call I may live to regret, especially if infection sets in, but at the time, I was balancing between the damage I might do if I tried to remove the pellet and the damage if I left it." Doc rattled on, damp fingers touching his hair, adjusting the surgical mask still hanging around his neck, scratching his chest. "Quite frankly, infection seemed the lesser of the two evils." I wondered how many cups of coffee he’d consumed throughout the night, and how long since he’d had a full night’s sleep. Propped against the doorway, I waited out his monologue. "But if his temperature stays normal, and if it looks like he’s stable, he can go home in a day or two. If blood or pus shows up in his urine, he may need a positive contrast urethragram—that’s an X-ray of his kidneys where we put in dye." Doc was really tired if he thought I needed the explanations. I resisted the urge to smile. "It’s something we can do here; you can just drive Big Dog down, we’ll sedate him, take the picture, then you can drive him home. I’ll study the report and we’ll decide what to do after that. I’d hate to go back in," a polite way of saying he might have to re-open the wound and perform a second surgery, "but that remains a possibility."

  I nodded again while Doc Ethridge scratched under his arm. I wondered if he had a flea. That wasn’t a problem medical doctors had to contend with very often, but a vet’s patients were often creatures of the outdoors, like Big Dog. Then again, perhaps the itch was just a symptom of too much coffee and too little rest.

  "Sheriff Gaskin’s office called about your other animals earlier today. Seems like an animal rights reporter at the State paper picked up the story and ran it this morning. They’ve had enough calls to warrant a close look at the situation. He ordered autopsies and had the bodies brought in."

  I dragged my eyes from Doc’s scratching fingers to his face. I hadn’t known of the sheriff’s interest, hadn’t seen him today. And then it hit me. Wicked Owens was in town. Did Wicked call up a reporter last night and get him to run the story? And did he then make dozens of calls to the sheriff’s department pretending to be irate citizens concerned about dog killings? Or did he simply call up the vet’s office, pretending to be someone from the sheriff’s office, and ask for autopsies, saving time, a phone call or two and lots of red tape? Wicked had a reputation. Impersonating an officer of the law would be in character.

  "He said you’d pay?"

  I nodded after a moment. He was talking about paying for the autopsies. "Sure."

  "On gross physical examination, it looks like both dogs died from shotgun wounds inflicted at close range, although there is some bleeding behind one of the dog’s eyes, which could be indicative of a traumatic head wound. One of the dogs lost an ear. It was a clean cut, and because of the lack of bleeding at the site, I’d have to say it was most likely administered after death, to what purpose I couldn’t say.

  "The cat was probably dead before it was eviscerated. There are what look like tire marks up its back, maybe a crushed skull, broken spine. X-rays are being developed now on all three animals, and I’ll know more this afternoon when I get a chance to open them up."

  I asked, "Who at the sheriff’s department called you about the dogs?"

  Doc Ethridge made a let-me-think gesture with one hand and then shrugged, the motion exaggerated into a stretch by exhaustion. "I don’t remember. Why?"

  "Oh, I just wanted to call and thank them for their, uh, interest." Doc looked up at a sound in the doorway. Quickly, before he got away, I asked, "Did you see who brought the dogs in this morning?"

  "Yes, ma’am, but I didn’t get his name. Black guy, ’bout five-five. Must be new on the force, but with what little we pay them, the turnover's more than I can keep up with."

  Wicked Owens was five-feet-five. And not well known in town. I gr
oaned inwardly, hoping Wicked wasn’t more trouble than he was worth.

  "Doc," a tech said from behind me. "We have an accident victim at the back door. Black Lab, a big one."

  "Get a gurney, I’m coming. Mrs. Davenport, I’ll call tonight and update you on Big Dog and the others." And then he was gone, leaving behind the familiar hospital smells of medicinal soap and antiseptics, the less familiar smell of flea spray. And his itch.

  Watching him scratch was contagious and I pulled at my scalp with sharp, uneven nails as I returned through the convoluted hallways to gather up Jas and drive home. The cat had been road kill, and that seemed significant. An afterthought? A lucky find that finished off a perfect evening? Or the incident that set the stage for the killing spree that followed? The cat could have been a separate incident entirely, carried out by kids who’d had more beer than their livers could metabolize. However, I had a natural aversion to the concept of coincidence. All the dead animals seemed to me the direct result of Jack’s business dealings. Which meant that I needed to talk to Macon and Wicked about the man who’d threatened me. I didn’t exactly look forward to admitting that I had been threatened at knife point and hadn’t told anyone or called the police. It had seemed the only choice open to me at the time, back when I hoped to protect my daughter from the truth about her father. But before the confession session, target practice.