Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  Target practice, for me, was a misnomer. I could point, aim, and fire, but I seldom hit anything I intended. Jack had always stayed well back of me on the rare occasion when he could persuade me to go shooting. But if it kept Macon happy I’d aim and fire.

  Puckey’s Guns ‘n’ Things was a ramshackle former sharecropper’s cabin with rooms added over the years as Puckey’s business and Puckey’s family grew. From outside, the house was a confusion of building styles and materials, poorly constructed with ill fitting joints, warped boards and no particular color scheme.

  Inside, it was much the same with floors slanted one way and then the other, odd changes in foundation levels, with single steps up or down between rooms, and the garish color scheme of demented, colorblind gypsies. Three front rooms were dedicated to the business, to handguns, knives displayed beneath locked glass, and to hunting equipment. The rest of the house was full of kids, cooking smells, dirty diapers, and Puckey’s hunting dogs. It didn’t sound like much, but Puckey had the finest selection of weapons and ammo in three counties.

  Out back, Puckey had a custom-made target range. Puckey had allowed a builder to use his back property as a dump for over ten years until the county put a stop to it. There were four, large, irregular shaped hills behind Puckey’s, composed of beams, carpet, old shingles, the occasional chipped tub, sink, toilets, tires, broken concrete, vinyl flooring, wet drywall, and anything else the builder had wanted to discard. Rumor insisted that bodies were buried in with the rubble, but the one time the sheriff had investigated the rumors, none had been found.

  Over all the accumulated trash, Puckey had dumped dirt. Loads and loads of dirt, until the hills were smooth and compact. Grass, spindly pines, kudzu, and scrub cedar grew on the packed dirt, their roots holding the hills in place. Between the artificial hills and Puckey’s peculiar domicile were rickety tables where practitioner’s of the art of target shooting—or prospective clients—could place their gear as they honed or evaluated skill and equipment.

  Man-shaped targets or round bull’s-eye targets could be purchased from Puckey, along with advice and ammunition, after which it was a simple task to hang the targets on the small tree of your choice, position one of the rickety tables, and proceed to pepper one of the hillsides with bullets. In the damp of midmorning, Jas, Topaz, and I picked a hill, two tables, and placed targets while we waited for Wicked to arrive. I wasn’t happy about our purpose. I still hated guns. But to protect myself and Jas, I might have to do many things I didn’t want to do. Target practice might be only the first.

  Though my ribs were an alarming shade of purple-black, and though I was so stiff I could hardly move, I loaded and emptied clip after clip of ammunition under the watchful eye of Wicked Owens. Taciturn by nature, Wicked quickly lost his reserve in his appreciation of Jasmine’s skill and proficiency. He coached her on a variety of revolvers and semiautomatic weapons, even bringing several from the trunk of his car for her inspection and use.

  When he watched me, he kept silent. His only reaction to my competency level was a tight mouth and obvious self restraint. I had never been a very good shot, and with my body so bruised and tender, I didn’t hit a single target. At the end of our two hour session, Wicked coaxed me through the process of cleaning my 9mm, packed up his trunk and drove off.

  His only and final comment to me about my shooting was delivered through the open window of his old Crown Victoria, the car idling with a powerful thrum. "Cousin Ashlee, it might be a good idea for you to consider using hollowpoints or starburst rounds. That way if you ever do hit anyone, you’ll at least slow him down."

  All in all, it wasn’t a very promising recommendation, and yet, I felt more positive than I had before the practice. Perhaps it was the loud noise, the smell of boiled linseed oil and gunpowder, or the possibility of controlled violence held in the palms of my hands that contributed to my exhilaration. Not that I’d ever admit it, especially after all the years I’d professed my adamant hatred of guns. I was a nurse, dedicated to the preservation of life at all costs. I wasn’t supposed to like guns. Or perhaps my "almost-elation" was the result of the intense, intimate, secret anger that was building within me. Anger boiling viciously under the surface. Anger against Jack. Anger, that he had bequeathed these problems to me. Anger that he had slept with Robyn and left the evidence where I would surely find it. Anger that had slowly encapsulated my grief, rendering it empty and meaningless. Anger that had no outlet. Or perhaps it was simply natural, because my home had been threatened, and God had built into the females of all species a drive to protect. A drive that brought out the primitive and the savage, and made all other emotions and needs impotent and unimportant. Whatever the reason, as we drove away from Puckey’s I was more positive and in control than I had been since Jack died. This unanticipated feeling of almost-serenity left me ready to face Macon and Wicked about the man with the knife. The man who had peridontal disease. I was sure of my diagnosis. The stench was too strong to be anything else.

  The girls and I stopped at Miccah’s for salads on the way home, making great heaped mounds of assorted raw vegetables and meats and cheeses and carting them home to eat. We bought an extra one for Esther, and sandwich plates for Macon and Wicked. An offering on the altar of my guilt, or a cheap attempt to soften their anticipated irritation.

  We paused at the mailbox for the day’s assortment of bills and junk mail, and I was surprised. It was a new box. No sign of the cat’s funeral bier remained. The metal was a shiny, glossy black. Jas didn’t mention the box, so neither did I.

  Nor did I mention the cream-colored, linen envelope that I discovered in among the advertisements. It had no return address. Just like the last threatening letter I had received. I folded the envelope and tucked it into my pocket so the girls couldn’t get a look. Neither noticed.

  Lunch was a noisy affair, with Wicked giving accurate, if unkind, descriptions of my inability to find a target, and me defending my poor marksmanship. I blamed all the missed shots on my bruised ribs, but discovered that excuses weren’t acceptable to the crowd of gun lovers.

  The girls giggled a lot, sounding like typical teenagers, which would have humiliated them had they been aware. Topaz spent the entire meal casting covert glances at Wicked, much to Jasmine’s amusement. Topaz’s fascination with the reformed black sheep of the Chadwick clan had gone unnoticed at Puckey’s, but was clearly obvious over lunch, the girl staring moon-eyed at his every move.

  Wallace and Pearl would have hysterics if they found out. Their daughter was destined for greater things than to be the kissing cousin of Wicked Owens. And they would likely blame me if the infatuation got out of hand. I’d have to mention it to Wicked if I could find the right time, place, words, and courage. Sometimes I hated being a Chadwick. At any rate, there was laughter and life around the circular kitchen table for the first time in weeks. It was good for Jasmine and it was good for me, even with the unopened letter in my pocket.

  The rest of the day was pretty much awful.

  To say that I was lectured by my Chadwick protectors for neglecting to mention the man in the Soiled Utility Room was an understatement. The diatribe didn’t even fall into the same category. A holy rollin’, hell and damnation sermon, delivered at the top of twin pairs of lungs would be more accurate. I was flayed, skinned, and beheaded like a catfish.

  The punishment only grew worse when they opened the envelope I had hidden away. Just as I thought, it was a threatening letter, and like the first one, it had perfect grammar, no typos, and offered a glimpse into the new problems in DavInc.

  Macon read the letter out loud three times, and each time his voice grew more frustrated.

  Ashlee Davenport,

  You have the permits and the file.

  You hold your health and safety in your hands.

  Guard them both well.

  By the end of the third reading, I knew it by heart. Macon held the letter by the edges, and carefully set it aside for a later fingerprint ana
lysis, a request Wicked made even before they opened the envelope. Like so many things in my life at the moment, this was a bigger issue than I could handle alone.

  The confession session would have been amusing, but they called in Nana and Aunt Mosetta to render judgment, and the worry on my Nana’s face was the real punishment. She wanted me to take Jas and move for a few days, until Wicked and Macon could solve this thing. "Head for the hills," was the way she phrased it. I had enough Chadwick genes to be stubborn. I might send Jasmine off for her safety, should she need it, but I was staying right here. Period. No one liked it, but they finally fell silent in the face of my determination.

  We agreed that Jas and Topaz should go to the beach house with Mama Pearl—Wallace’s wife, Topaz’s mother—and stay for several weeks. As the girls had plans to go for seven days next month anyway, Nana thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince them to leave early and stay longer. But she and Aunt Mosetta planned without thought for my daughter’s wishes and her precious horses, and without considering Topaz’s crush on Wicked. However, ensuring my daughter’s safety took the spotlight off me, so I went along with their plans, knowing all along it wouldn’t work. Even when they were younger, I had seldom been able to convince Jas and Paz of anything, not without Jack’s authority to back me up. Now that they were grown, the prospect appeared even more daunting. The early vacation might never happen if the family matriarchs expected me to enforce their wishes.

  Wicked wanted to teach me a few self defense moves, but my body couldn’t take the strain. I was taking painkillers and started icing down my ribcage every few hours to cut the inflammation. I knew I would pay for the target shooting with hours of discomfort tonight. Any additional activity would have to wait at least a week.

  The final result of my confession was much as I had thought it might be. I would stay home, take care, and contact Wicked if I felt threatened. The non-solution to my worries was pretty much what I had concluded on my own. Until Macon pinpointed the dangerous party sending the letters, isolated and disabled any danger presented by McKelvey, and found the foul smelling man in the ER, I would remain a target. I could prepare defensively, but there was little I could do to draw out my attacker and nothing I could do to outguess him. No one was happy with the situation, but I felt safer knowing Macon and Wicked were protecting me.

  That night, my sense of safety slunk away, following the headlights of Wicked’s car. He had repaired one of the security lights so the yard wasn’t totally black, but the pool of darkness once lit by the other light was a black hole in my sense of refuge. The shotgun, which had only taken out the bulb on one creosoted pole, had damaged the socket in the other. Days might pass before it could be repaired. Days and dark nights. And, to make my sense of unease more acute, Wicked had expressed his displeasure with the layout at the back of the house. Although one could hear most vehicles approaching the house, they were visible only sporadically through the young trees lining the fence. If the car was quiet or the TV or radio was on in the house, there might be no warning of the arrival of visitors or enemies. I had known all that, but the fact of our isolation and lack of security had never mattered before. Now it did.

  After the sun set, I wandered the lower part of the house, checking and rechecking the locks on the windows and doors, looking into the night, wandering past the steady red light of the security system. For years, the light had remained a steady green, unarmed in the safety and peace of the country, far from the crime of city life. The new red light was a constant rebuke against Jack. Whatever unethical or illegal activities he had been involved in, whatever lies he had told, now we were paying the price for his indiscretion. With every circuit I walked, my anger was building. How dare he. How dare he die, leaving Jas and me alone, in danger.

  When I did lie down, the long hours passed with little sleep and bad dreams. The next night was no better. It would improve when Big Dog returned home. With Big Dog gone, I had no warning of strangers approaching the house, no real security. And that left us all in danger. Because of Big Dog’s absence, McKelvey and friends had unimpeded access to my home.

  The second morning, Jas found tacked to the barn door, a rancid, withering ear. Herman’s ear. We had gone to the barn together before daybreak, and the dark-skinned ear stood out black and wrinkled against the white paint of the door, held in place with a red tack. There was no note tacked with the ear, but then, whoever left it didn’t really need to leave words. He had accomplished much with very little. He had killed. He could get close to us. We were not safe.

  Silently, Jas pulled it off and buried it over the site of Herman’s and Hokey’s graves to the left of the barn. After we brought the dogs home from the vet’s, one of Aunt Mosetta’s younguns had dug a deep, round hole, and we had curled Hokey and Herman around each other in the bottom, leaving them sleeping in death as they had slept in life. With the ear, they were complete and our job to honor them was done.

  Hours later, after I finished going over the day’s business with Macon and Esther, I returned to the barn. The sun had finally caught up with the season and I felt the return to early summer. It was warm enough to enjoy being outdoors but without breaking a sweat. And in front of the barn I discovered Jasmine, Topaz, and two little Chadwicks, the smallest pair being read the riot act by Topaz.

  "And don’t you act like little street niggers either."

  I jerked at the word. Nigger. In my youth, it was a taboo expressions on Chadwick land. Like the term boy, it was demeaning and racially inflammatory and just. not. used. Ever. Yet Jas hadn’t flinched. And Topaz used the word with the liquid fluidity of long practice.

  "You want a job, you’ll work and work hard and do everything Jas and Mamash say. We Chadwicks don’t shirk our duty, and we give good honest sweat for our pay." Topaz put both fists on her hips and bent over the two youths. "I find you layin’ around or mistreatin’ the horses, dogs, or cats, and I beat you both the first time." She paused a moment, ominously, and dropped her voice. "And I tell Mama Moses the second. You hear?"

  Both kids nodded, faces subdued.

  "What about snakes? Can we kill snakes?" the young man asked.

  "Yeah, I hate snakes. They bite you," the girl said.

  "Green, black, or any with stripes runnin’ down this way," she demonstrated holding an invisible snake by its head and running a finger to its tail, "you leave alone. Any brown ones, you can kill, and any with heads shaped like this." Topaz made a triangle with the index fingers and thumbs of both hands. It roughly resembled the classic spearhead shape of most poisonous snakes. I was impressed. Topaz was a city girl, if you could call DorCity a city. But she knew her poisonous snakes. With few words, she had divided safe from dangerous.

  "What about rats?"

  "Cats eat rats," one said to the other and shoved the offender’s shoulder. A pushing match ensued, brought to a quick halt by Topaz. She grabbed one by his hair and one by an ear and shook hard. "I said you act like niggers and I throw you to Mama Moses." The struggling ceased instantly and I placed a hand over my mouth. I had seen Aunt Mosetta stop a potential fight in a similar manner. Grabbing, shaking, and issuing a threat. They say blood will tell, and Topaz Chadwick was the living proof.

  "They can kill rats, right?" Topaz asked Jas, not quite certain.

  "Yes. And for a good days work you get paid good green money. And all the real homemade lemonade you can drink. Nana said so."

  "Yessss," the young man said. The other echoed his delight.

  I put their ages at about twelve. The young man was bigger, the one with the obvious fear of rats was the girl with her hair in corn rows. Both had the distinctive greenish eyes of Aunt Mosetta’s branch of the family, and both froze when they looked past my girls and saw me.

  It was an uncomfortable moment and I wasn’t quite sure why, until the little girl stepped past Jas and walked the short distance to me. She held out her hand, very formal and proper, and took mine. "Miz Mamash, I’m Demetria Chadwick, but
you can call me Disa, and I’m really sorry about Mr. Jack and him being dead and all."

  I caught my breath, and for one awful moment I thought I might cry, shaming myself and this beautiful, sweet child. And the bad thing was, she knew it. Oh God, why is nothing ever easy? Disa gazed up at me, watching the emotions pass, her face a solemn study, a child’s face with grownup eyes. I returned her gentle grip, and in the doing, felt a degree of calm return.

  "Thank you Disa. We all miss Mr. Jack." She nodded slowly, as if she had been well coached for this moment.

  "I’m Duke, Disa’s brother. And I’m real sorry too, and I’m sorry about the dogs. I dug their graves. I hope it was deep enough."

  I shook his hand, measuring this young Chadwick who was depended on by my Aunt Mosetta for such onerous chores as burying dead dogs. He was sturdy, with a tight-coupled body and compact muscles. He looked as if he would never grow tall, but rather had the solid, meaty body of most horse handlers. There was something in his eyes too that I liked. A directness, a composed and imperturbable strength. A look that said he had come to grips with the world and his place in it, and intended better for himself and his family. It was a look I saw often in Aunt Mosetta’s family. I liked him on sight.

  "I’m pleased to meet you Duke. The grave was prefect, and a kind gesture."

  He nodded, a single quick bob of his head, and released my hand. "Thank you for the job, Miz Mamash."

  "You’re welcome, Duke," I said, finding comfort in the formalities. "But please, just call me Mamash. The Miz isn’t necessary."

  "No, ma’am. My mama, she say to call you Miz Mamash and don’t nobody do different." He stood taller, his square little chin in the air, his eyes determined. "Miz Mamash, I need this job so’s I can go to college, and I’ll be ’spectful and work hard."

  Another prepared speech. I had the feeling I would like the Chadwick who was raising these two children, and wondered when I might have met her. Or him. I’d have to ask, later, when they wouldn’t have a chance to overhear and know that I couldn’t place them on sight. Being a Chadwick held its own special conceit.