From Hell to Breakfast

 

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Chapter 1

 

Just say no.

I should never have succumbed to the temptation to numb the pain of Sam's death by smoking his stash. I should have burned it or flushed it or tossed it away.  I should never have held onto it. I should never have hidden it beneath the ceramic planter that holds the enormous rubber tree in our living room.

I won't lie. Smoking pot is fun. A couple of puffs leave you loose and mellow and happy with the world. Bill "I didn't inhale" Clinton knows this. Nancy Reagan knows this. Everyone knows this, but no politician has the guts to admit it because grandma and grandpa voter don't approve. Pot is déclassé – unlike martinis, wine, and Valium. Unlike alcohol, pot doesn't bring you down, give you cirrhosis of the liver, or make you mean, and there's every reason to believe that smoking marijuana has real, measurable medical benefits. I know it helped my brother Sam with his appetite, his nausea, and most important of all, his mood. He was better for having toked up, and that's the God's honest truth.

But smoking pot will make you stupid. It will make you incredibly dumb. I know I should not have given in and smoked his stash. But I did. And that's how I ended up with the world's stupidest tattoo and a very unhappy girlfriend.

Sylvie and her mother have dinner together at least once a week. I’m always invited to come along, and sometimes I go. Other times, I leave them to it. Sylvie’s an only child, and she and Kate are very close. They need their together space. Me? I’m one of five kids from a loud, boisterous family. I appreciate an evening alone with a good book and some Dinah Washington on the stereo.

My mistake was in believing that there is no such thing as too much of a good thing. As soon as Sylvie left, I opened up the windows, retrieved Sam’s stash from its hiding place, and popped Dinah into the compact disc player. She sang Cry Me a River, I Don’t Hurt Anymore, and Since I Fell for You. By the time I got to Willow Weep for Me, I was wreathed in sickly sweet smoke, crying, and singing along. I wanted my brother to be alive. I wanted my girlfriend to be at home. A few songs – a few puffs – later, and I was tired of wallowing in self-pity. My throat was sore and I wanted . . . what did I want? I thought about it for a moment. I wanted a bag of potato chips and a liter of Pepsi. I wanted a lot of something made out of marshmallow, chocolate, and sugar. I switched off the stereo, tucked my wallet into my back pocket, and made my unsteady way to the Jones Street Market.

I had junk food on the brain. Twinkies, pink coconut Snowballs, chocolate Swiss rolls and Moon Pies. I was still miserable, and I was still lonely. Most of all, though, I was hungry. I had no intention whatsoever of stopping at Cow City Tattoo. I didn’t mean to look at the art on offer, to go inside and ask a few questions about pain and prices, and no one could have been more surprised than I was to find myself lying face down on a table while a man with a dragon on one arm and a tiger on the other buzzed those magic words onto the small of my back:

Property of Sylvie Wood. If found, please return to 521 South Main Street, Cowslip, Idaho.

#

Nothing itches like a fresh tattoo. The artist covered mine in antibiotic ointment and laid a sheet of cling film over it. I’d spent all of my potato chip money and then some. I thanked him for his work and headed back home, stomach growling. Sylvie was still out – a good thing, as the apartment reeked of pot smoke. I set up a box fan in the living room window facing out and turned it on high. I also went a bit wild with the air freshener. By the time I was done, the place smelled like Woodstock if it had been held in my grandmother’s bathroom. It was the best I could do. Because of the itching, I took my T-shirt off. I turned the stereo back on, flopped face down on the sofa, and let Dinah sing me to sleep.

#

It was close to midnight when Sylvie came home. Every light in the apartment was on. Dinah was still singing, and I was still groggy.

“Hello, baby,” I mumbled, not bothering to look up. “Did you have a nice dinner?”

“Yes,” she said. “We went to that new Italian place, Buca di Maggiano. Did you get something to eat?”

“No.”

“Bil, you can’t go on like this. No food, no sleep. You have to . . .”

She stopped just in front of the sofa. I stared at her golden brown legs, so shapely beneath her white linen shorts. In ten seconds flat, I was stone cold sober. I imagined spending the rest of my life never again smoothing those thighs beneath my hands. I imagined moving back in with my parents. I tried to guess what laser tattoo removal might cost. Sylvie reached out and lifted the plastic wrap. It was only a moment or two before she put it back.

“Sylvie,” I began. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m, uh, sorry?”

It was some time before she spoke. She just stood there, hands resting lightly on her hips while I stared forlornly at her knees.

When at last she spoke, she said, “What I want to know is what you’re going to do if we move.”

#

“I want you to see a grief counselor,” Sylvie said.

I politely chewed my sugar-frosted cornflakes and swallowed before answering. “It’s only been two weeks since Sam’s funeral.”

“I know that. I still think you should go.”

“This is about the tattoo, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

I’d expected her to deny it, and I had an answer all ready – I was sorry I’d smoked the pot and I wouldn’t do it again. Now I was obliged to think through my hangover and come up with another excuse. I took a big bite of cereal and then spoke with my mouth full. “I hate counselors.”

“Bil,” Sylvie said reasonably, “you’re studying to be a counselor.”

“I know,” I snapped, “and that’s why I don’t want one. I know what’s the matter with me. My brother is dead. I can’t bring him back. Without pain, Sylvie, there is no living, or at least no living fully. I’m sure it would be easier if I were able to shut down emotionally or put this in a box, but I don’t have an off switch. You know that. I just have to work through this as best I can.”

She recoiled slightly, but after two years together, she was getting as used to my bluff as I was to her quiet calm – a quiet calm that masked an iron will.

“As best you can,” she mused. “With the aid of marijuana and a tattoo artist?  What next? A crack pipe and a couple of piercings?” Before I could plunge the spoon into my cereal again, Sylvie reached across the table and stopped my hand. “Sweetie, I don’t want to come home and find you higher than a kite and covered in chain mail.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” I tried to picture what all I might have pierced. My nose? My eyebrow? My navel? Sylvie would probably cope, but it was hard to imagine what my mother would do. Have a fit and fall in it? It might be worth the pain of the piercing just for that.

“Bil,” Sylvie said, taking my hand and forcing me to look her in the eye. “I love you. Nothing will ever change that. If you want to cover yourself with cubist paintings or get a pair of nipple rings, that’s your business. But I don’t want you doing things that you’ll come to regret, and you can’t smoke away your grief. What are you going to do when Sam’s stash runs out? Call his old dealer and buy more?”

I thought about Sam’s dealer, Jake the Snake. If he’d ever bathed, it was beyond living memory. He lived in a shack in the middle of nowhere, a weird recluse with a high fluting voice and an ethereal giggle. No, once Sam’s stash was gone, it was gone.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I am all pot-smoked out,” I said. “The tattoo has cured me. It itches like hell, you know.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get one myself and find out.”

My eyes snapped open.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sylvie said. “I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. You really need is to talk to someone – a professional someone – about how horrible and sad you feel. I don’t want to push you, Bil, but . . .”

“You’re pushing me.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I am.”

“You have a plan,” I said flatly.

Of course my girlfriend had a plan. I knew this with complete certainty, the way I knew that night followed day, that I’d never win the lottery, and that, when it came right down to the wire, the Seattle Mariners would find some way to fuck it up in the final round. Sylvie planned. She executed. She got things done.

“You have an appointment,” Sylvie said. “Tomorrow at two. Her name is Sally Hernandez, and she’s in practice with my therapist.”

“And she’s gay-friendly?”

To her credit, Sylvie did not roll her eyes or dismiss me as a moron. “Of course,” she said. “Sally’s a lesbian. Her partner is an artist – the one who sells those raku Venus of Willendorf pots at the farmer’s market. Bil, I’m only asking that you go once and give her an honest chance. I think you’ll like her, and I think it will help.”

“Only once?”
“Only once.”

“And if it doesn’t help and I hate her guts?”

“Then I might ask you to try someone else,” Sylvie admitted. “And I’ll tell you something else – if I find where you’ve hidden your brother’s stash, it’s history. Right down the toilet.”

We finished our breakfast in silence. It wasn’t until we were in the living room sipping coffee that we spoke again.

“I really am sorry about the tattoo,” I said.

Sylvie laughed. “I’ll bet you are.  Did it hurt much?”

“I have no idea.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. But I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not entirely sorry about the tattoo. In fact, I think I’m flattered. It’s not my name in a big red heart, but it is kind of sweet.”

“Is it?”

She put her coffee cup down and moved along the sofa until we were side by side. She put her arm around me and held me close.

“Yes,” she said. “I think you must want to be stuck with me. What other woman will want you now that you have my name written on your ass?”

“The small of my back,” I corrected.

“That’s what you think.” She reached behind me, pushing me forward with one hand and tugging at the waistband of my boxer shorts with the other.  “The ‘p’ on Cowslip drops all the way down.”

Chapter 2

I hated the grief counselor on sight.  She had short gray hair and a tanned, healthy, pleasantly wrinkled face, the kind you get by spending your life outdoors skiing, rafting, bicycling and being an all-around sports dyke.  I would have known she was a lesbian even if Sylvie hadn’t told me.  The pink triangle earrings, the peasant skirt, the Birkenstock sandals – she was a lesbian of the Meg Christian era, attractive in a comfortable-with-herself, no-neuroses sort of way that made me want to slap her.

“I’m Sally Hernandez.”  Her voice was deep and pleasant.  I hated her more.

She held out her hand.  Five silver rings on her fingers.  I shook her hand firmly and made eye contact.  “Wilhelmina Hardy, but everyone calls me Bil.”

“Bil,” she said.  “Would you like to have a seat?”

“Not especially but I don’t suppose I can stand for fifty minutes.”

“You don’t want to be here?”

I didn’t answer.  Instead, I looked around the room.  The walls were sponge-painted a pale orange over light tan.  There were weavings hanging everywhere, as well as a couple of Mexican masks, some painted wooden flutes, and a lot of healthy plants hanging from hooks in the ceiling.  On a bookshelf next to the analyst’s couch, Sally Hernandez had the largest African violet I’d ever seen.  I was amazed in spite of myself.

“What do you do feed that thing?” I asked.  “The blood of virgins?”

Sally laughed.  “This is a college town, Bil.  Virgins are pretty thin on the ground.  I just talk to it a lot and give it the occasional pinch of encouragement.”

“A pinch of encouragement?  Does that mean you sprinkle something on it?”

She shook her head.  “No, I mean I pinch it.  Like this.”  She reached out and plucked off a couple of velvet leaves.  “It likes to be pinched.  I think it keeps it wondering, makes it try harder.”

“You have an existential plant,” I said.  “I hope you know that’s weird as fuck.”

She laughed again, and I sat down on her plush sofa.  She took the chair opposite me, a blue twill thing that screamed Ikea.  She held a yellow legal pad in one hand and a fountain pen in the other.

“Are you going to take notes?” I asked.

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t care.”

She shrugged.  “Do you mind if I doodle?”

“Be my guest, but at ninety bucks an hour, I’ll expect you to give me the pictures at the end of our session.  Perhaps it’ll be something I can frame?”

“That depends,” she said, “on whether or not you like abstract art.  Bil, do you think you might be overdoing the whole hostile thing?  I know you don’t want to be here.  This is grief counseling.  Why would you?”

I had no answer for that, or, rather, I did have an answer, but it was one that I didn’t like.  When I said nothing, Sally continued, “I should tell you that I already know quite a bit about you.  I know that you’re getting a Master’s in Clinical Psychology at Cowslip University.  I know that you’re a gifted student.  Don’t be surprised – I have friends in the department.  I’ve heard your name quite a lot.”

“Gifted?”

She smiled.  It was getting harder by the minute to dislike her.  Her eyes were a warm brown and the laugh lines between mouth and nose softened her features.  “Yes, gifted.  But not driven.”

It was my turn to laugh.  “I’m a younger child,” I said.  “The fourth of five.  I leave driven to my older sisters.”

“Tell me about your family,” she said.

I leaned back.  “How much time do we have left?”

She looked at her watch.  “Forty-five minutes.”

“That’s not enough.  Here’s the shorthand version.  I have three older sisters: Ruth, a doctor, Naomi, a lawyer, and Sarah, a librarian.  I’m the fourth.  My brother, Sam, was the youngest, but only by six months.  Sarah, Sam and I were adopted.  Sarah and Sam are black.  I might be white, but then again, I might not.  Does this bother me?  Not really.  I was born in Louisiana, so I think the correct technical term for me is ‘mulatto.’  If that’s what I am, then I’m just pale enough to qualify as ‘passing.’  Is it easy growing up in an interracial family in northern Idaho?  No, of course not.  What’s my father like?  Quiet, reasonable, and often in hiding.  What’s my mother like?  Jumping Jesus, just stop me if you’ve heard it.  Do you know about Emma Hardy?”

Sally Hernandez nodded.

“Everyone does.  My mother is infamous.  She’s a cross between hell on wheels and a barrel of monkeys.  She has more energy than an atomic bomb and she’s capable of doing at least as much damage.  I love her, I hate her, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.  She’s bossy, manipulative, nosey, supportive, politically active, and brilliant.  She’s always up in your face and she’s a complete asshole.  No one ever feels neutral about my mother.  She’s either feared and loathed or adored and admired.  She’s like Eva Peron only without Argentina.  And, just for the record, she’d object to that analogy because she’s not a fascist.  She’s a socialist except at tax time, when she temporarily becomes a libertarian.  This happens every year.  It lasts about two weeks, from the middle of April to the beginning of May, and then we’re back to normal, or what passes for normal in my family.”

“You’re close to your mother,” she said.

“Let me think about the word ‘close,’” I said.  “I don’t know.  Sometimes, it’s more like there’s no getting away from her.”

“Do you want to get away?”

“Yes.  No.  Maybe.”

“Tell me about Sam.”

“My brother died as he’d lived – with criminal charges pending.”

“Is that all you want to say?”

“For the time being.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she said.  “I’m not here to beat information out of you, Bil.”

“Then you really are a therapist and not my mother.”

Sally put down her notepad.  I saw that she’d doodled what looked like a caricature of Groucho Marx – a big nose with a mustache, glasses, and bushy eyebrows.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.  “I mean, what do you hope to accomplish here?”

I thought about this for a moment.  “I want to feel better.”

“Better about what?”

“About everything.  About me, about Sam, about his dying.”

“Do you want to talk about that?”
“No,” I said honestly.  “I want you to guess.”

“Fine,” said Sally.  “I don’t usually do this, but it’s your dime and you know a thing or two about how therapy works – enough for me to treat you as I would a fellow therapist.  What I think is that the subject of your brother’s death is too painful to talk about.  He died young.  You have issues with him that will never be resolved.  You feel guilty and conflicted.  You loved him and you miss him, but you’re angry – angry with him and angry with the world.  How am I doing?”

“So far, so good.”

“Okay,” she continued.  “Here is my analysis.  You’re smart, Bil, and you’re good at deflecting.  You feel things deeply.  Perhaps I might be able to help if you were willing to work with me, but I don’t think you are.  You’re here against your will.  I’m in the business of listening to what people want to tell me, and helping people who want to be helped.  I can’t do anything for you if you don’t want me to.”

We had a staring contest and Sally won.  I blinked, sniffed, and examined my tennis shoes.  She said nothing.  I waited.

“You’re right,” I said at last.  “I don’t want to be here.”

“You’re free to go.”

I shook my head.  “No, I’m not.  I can’t sleep.  I don’t eat properly.  I’ve stopped exercising and I’ve taken up smoking pot.  I’ve got a tattoo on my ass that says something really stupid.  I love my girlfriend more than anything in the world, but I’m afraid she’ll leave me if I don’t sort myself out.  I’m afraid she’ll leave me no matter what.  I’m afraid she’ll die, or I’ll die, or we’ll both die because, in the end, we’re all going to die.”

I looked up.  Sally smiled and patted me on the hand.  “Are Thursday mornings a good time for you?”

“Yes.”

“Next week, then,” she said.  “Nine o’clock.  Our time today is up.”

“Just one more thing,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Can I have that picture of Groucho Marx?”

“Very good,” she laughed.  She tore the page from her notebook.  “Are you a Marx Brothers fan?”

“Yeah.  Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera.  Funny stuff.”

“It is indeed.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said.  “I didn’t want to come here today, and I’m sure I won’t want to be here next week, but I’m glad you don’t think that I’m Chico or Harpo.  I can work with a woman who recognizes my inner Groucho.”

“Ah, Bil, you’re onto me.  You’re going to be a tricky client.”

I quoted Groucho.  “Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.”

“Don’t look now,” Sally quoted back.  “There’s one too many in this room, and I think it’s you.”

Chapter 3

It was July 5^th and Sam and his friends had run out of firecrackers.  They’d set off all of the screamers, fireballs, grenades and bottle rockets they’d bought down at Half-a-Hand Fireworks on the Nez Perce reservation – more than four hundred dollars’ worth, the whole of Sam’s disability check.  They’d tried making Molotov cocktails, but a plastic Mountain Dew bottle doesn’t break when you torch the wick and toss it; it just melts.  At some point, they got the bright idea to mooch around for some dynamite.  In the middle of nowhere, Idaho, explosives are not hard to find.  Farmers, loggers, hunters, and miners – all of them love things that go boom.  Look in the right barn or the right pickup truck, and you’ll find a stash that the Unabomber would envy.

Sam and his friends hit pay dirt at the rock quarry across the road from my parents’ house, where they found – and stole – a pack of blasting caps.  They dropped one or more of these down an open manhole at the corner of Jackson and Third.  The resulting explosion cracked a sewer main and backed up toilets across five city blocks, including the one in my apartment.  It also scared the hell out of a City of Cowslip sewer inspector who had gone down the manhole to check for leaks.  The poor man got his eyebrows singed off but was otherwise uninjured.

The sewer incident was vintage Sam: bad company, bad judgment, bad outcome.  His excuses were vintage as well.  He didn’t deny having done it.  He said that he didn’t know anyone was down the manhole.  In order to believe that, you’d have to believe that Sam had missed all of the day-glow orange cones and the large ‘Man at Work’ sign.  Second, my brother claimed that he didn’t know that sewer gas was explosive.  As Sam was infamous for having once given himself second-degree burns during a fart-lighting competition, no one was buying that, either.  Finally, Sam claimed he hadn’t stolen the blasting caps.  He’d gotten them from “some guy.”  Sam got a lot of things from “some guy,” who appeared at places and times Sam could never seem to remember and who cleverly filed the serial numbers off all those bargains and freebies and once-in-a-lifetime offers that Sam was unable to resist.

At the Lewis County Jail, Sam went into Lee Harvey Oswald mode.  He insisted that he’d acted alone.  No one was with him when he’d acquired the blasting caps, and no one was with him when he’d blown the sewer main.  The cops knew better.  Emma knew better.  Worst of all, I knew better and, if I’d wanted to, I could have named names.  In retrospect, perhaps I should have.  What I thought at the time was that if Sam wasn’t going to snitch, neither was I.  It was none of my business anyway.  I’d spent the last two years doing my damnedest to draw a few clear boundaries between me and my brother, and not getting involved in his petty criminality was my line in the sand.  No matter what, I was not mopping up after him.  My brother had gotten himself into this mess.  He could get himself out.  Except, of course, that he couldn’t.

#

I’d been in the bathtub with my head underwater when I’d felt the boom from Sam’s sewer bomb.  I stood up, wrapped myself in a towel, and climbed out of the tub to make certain that the rest of the apartment was still in one piece.  I’d gotten as far as the hallway when the phone began to ring.  I reached for it just as a two-foot geyser shot up from the toilet.  I stopped and let the answering machine pick up.

It was Emma, wanting to know if I’d seen my brother.  She said he’d gone off with Calvin Knox and some other young tear-aways.  She was sure Sam was up to no good.  She’d been to all of his usual haunts, she’d had no luck finding him, and so could I please . . . .

There was no water shut off behind the toilet.  Our apartment was ancient, and the plumbing dated back to the roaring twenties.  The geyser kept spraying.  I tried to stop it by taking my towel off and shoving it down the bowl, but after a minute or so, it gurgled up, swirled out, and flopped onto the floor.  I backed out and shut the door.  I retrieved another towel from the linen closet and pushed it firmly into the gap between the bathroom tile and the shiny polished wood of the hallway.  While Emma rattled on, filling up the tape on my answering machine, I dressed quickly and went across the hall.  I knocked on Donny and Suzy’s door.  They weren’t home, but I could hear the sound of running water in their apartment, too.

I went downstairs to bang on the door of our apartment manager-in-residence, Mrs. Olafsson.  No answer.  Just the sound of more running water.  My mother was still talking to the answering machine when I trudged back upstairs.  How anyone who smoked two packs a day could expend that much breath boggled the mind.  I collected my car keys and changed the now-soaking bath towel for a larger beach towel.  I used my cell phone to call Suzy at the hospital, Donny at the Sheriff’s Department, and Mrs. Olafsson’s emergency line.  In each case, I got voice mail.  I thought for a moment.  A plunger?  I’d heard the boom, but I didn’t know then that the sewer main had cracked.  Sylvie and I lived on the third floor.  A year or so before, a Russian graduate student on the floor below us had flushed a fish head down the toilet.  It got stuck in the pipes and created a similar geyser effect.  A big plunger had done the trick then, but damned if I could find it now.  I needed to make a quick trip to the hardware store.

I was certain I could still hear Emma talking as I headed back down the stairs to the parking lot.  What a gas-bag.  What an annoyance!  I’d told her repeatedly that I was bowing out of the Sam and Emma Show.  I had a life, a good life, and I wanted to keep it.  Sylvie came first – first, last, and always.  Emma had tried to pull some bullshit about Sylvie having married into the family and thereby assumed the family’s responsibilities, meaning she hoped to co-opt her into Sam’s assorted dramas, but I’d put a stop to that.  The first time Sam had borrowed money from my girlfriend, I’d chased him down at the Jones Street Market and pried it out of his fingers.

He was standing at the cash register, waiting to pay for a case of beer, a carton of cigarettes, and a bag of corn chips.

“I’ll take that,” I said, snatching the fifty-dollar bill from his hand.

“Hey!” he objected.  “How am I going to pay for this stuff?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.  You won’t be paying for it with my girlfriend’s money.  I can’t believe you told her you were collecting for the Cowslip Food Bank, you lying sack.”

“I don’t eat corn chips,” he said.

“Oh, please God, don’t tell me you were buying corn chips for the food bank.  What about the rest of this stuff?  Is that the administrative fee for this charity of yours?”

He stared at me blankly.

“Forget it,” I said.  “Listen to me and listen good – if you ever come around again bumming money from Sylvie, I’ll kick your ass from here to Boise.  Call me and I might give you the cash.  Call one of our sisters.  Call Emma or Hugh or Granny, but do not call my girlfriend.  I won’t have it.  Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he said glumly.  “The whole fucking world hears you.”

The cashier nodded in agreement.  “I heard you.  So who’s paying for this stuff?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.  Take your pick.”

Sam stayed away from our apartment for a month or so, and if he ever asked Sylvie for money again, I didn’t know about it.  My brother didn’t know what the Agatean Wall was but he knew when he’d hit concrete.

A normal woman from a normal family would have been surprised to find Sam in the parking lot, crouching behind her pickup truck.  I am not a normal woman, and I don’t have a normal family.  What I have is a sixth sense for idiocy.  The boom, the water – suddenly it all made sense.

“Oh, hi,” Sam said casually.  “Are you going somewhere?”

“I’m going to buy a plunger,” I replied.  “My toilet’s exploded.”

Sam kept his face expressionless.  Three other boys materialized.  I recognized one of them: Calvin Knox, the son of Preacher George Knox.

“What the fuck have you done?” I asked Sam.

“Nothing,” he lied.

“Mom is looking for you.”

“I know.  Can you give us a lift?”

I shook my head.  “I’ve only got room for two, and I’m only going to the hardware store.  I need a plunger.  No detours.”

“Forget the plunger.  It won’t help.  The city is switching off the water at the main line.  Can you take us as far as Jim’s Burgers?  Steve and Joe can ride in the back.”  Sam gestured at two crabby-looking teenagers, one a short, heavily freckled redhead, the other a tall, skinny kid with a big nose and long, blonde dreadlocks.  The redhead was holding a leash at the end of which was a frightened puppy – so scared he was shaking.

“What the fuck have you done?” I asked again, gesturing at the dog.  “What have you done to him?”

“He’ll be fine,” Sam said.  “He doesn’t like loud noises.”

“Neither do I.”

Sam glanced nervously over his shoulder and the others followed suit.  “Are you going to give us a ride or what?”

I ought to have refused.  I ought to have asked Sam some pointed questions or sent him upstairs to pick up the phone and talk to Emma.  He gave me a shifty grin, his lips sliding up over teeth that were still white despite his bad health and his perpetual pot smoking.  When he tried, my brother could look about ten years old.  Certainly not innocent – Sam had never been that – but not malicious.  He was by any reasonable standards a bad kid, but he wasn’t that bad, or at least that’s how I felt when he smiled in that slippery we-both-know-I’m-shitting-you way.

Against what was left of my better judgment, I said, “Fine.  I’ll give you a ride, but Steve and Joe will have to crawl under the tarp and keep very still.  I don’t want to get a ticket.  As for the dog, I want him up front, sitting in your lap.  The poor thing is a nervous wreck.  You want to tell me how you know the city is switching off the water at the main?”

“No.”

Calvin climbed into the truck first, crossing quickly to the middle.  This allowed Sam, who walked with a cane, to sit by the door.  Steve handed him the puppy, climbed into the back with Joe, and we were off.

I cast a sideways glance at Calvin.  I’d expected him to sit by the door.  I was surprised that he would be considerate of Sam’s disability.  The Knox family was not known for its sensitivity.  Daddy George was a belligerent, sexist, homophobic jackass, and Mama Mary Sue looked as if she were made out of old rubber bands, dried, cracked, and stretched too tight.

The Knoxes – or, as my mother called them, the Knoxious – had come to Idaho from some mud hole in Mississippi as part of a campus Christian group called Green Tree Ministries.  George Knox was a big, bluff man with a beard like a carpet and a violently unnatural, puffed-up brown hair-do.  It might have been a wig.  It might have been a beaver.  Whatever it was, animal, vegetable, or mineral, that fake coif perched on Knox’s head like an enormous Hershey’s kiss.

By Cowslip standards, the Knoxious were newcomers.  They’d only been around for about ten years.  I’d gone to high school with two of the Knox daughters, Rahab and Moira.  There was a younger one too, Fiona, but like Calvin, she’d been home-schooled.  The Knox ministry had grown beyond campus and was spreading through Cowslip like a virus.  Using Green Tree as a springboard, Knox had founded The Church of the True Vine and begun converting the locals as well as importing members from other states.  The man was nothing if not ambitious.  He was an ex-Marine and made a lot of hay about having served in Vietnam.  He sold a pamphlet and a tape called Finding Jesus on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

What I knew of Knox’s military career was largely filtered through Captain Schwartz, my best friend Tipper’s mother.  There were rumors that Knox had left the Marine Corps under some kind of cloud, but no one seemed to know the details.  I might have asked the Captain, who was also a Vietnam veteran, but she rarely spoke about that.  All I knew was that she had no use for George Knox.  When he published his pamphlet, Captain Schwartz went ballistic.

“I’ve never heard such a load of shit,” she said.  “You can bet your bottom dollar that George Knox wasn’t anywhere near the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Sitting on the gear in the rear, more like.  Those are the ones who want to brag about their time in country.”

And that was it.  She said her piece and changed the subject.

Knox had a column in The Cowslip Herald-Examiner called Perfect World.  It had been running in the paper for nearly a year to raves from his flock and hisses and boos from the rest of us.  Knox had aired his views on everything from pre-millennialism to his dreams of a Christian theocracy.  There was no subject on which he was not a self-appointed expert.  Childrearing, the manly joys of swilling brandy and smoking cigars, the proper Christian division of labor – women were not fit to change a flat tire or balance a checkbook, and men should never do the dishes or cook, though they could and should grill steaks on special occasions.

To date, the worst thing Knox had written was a piece about women’s suffrage.  He was in favor of repealing the 19^th Amendment.  God made man the head of woman, and that meant God wanted men to make all of the really important decisions.  He cited a lot of hooey about the gender gap and wept bitter tears over the fact that women must be going into the voting booth and canceling out the decisions of their husbands.

In liberal, hippie, feminist Cowslip, the Suffering Suffrage column had caused a near-riot.  There was a flurry of letters to the editor, and the Coalition of Women Students had marched on the Green Tree Ministries office.  Knox being Knox ate the publicity with a spoon.  His next column was a whining piece about the intolerance of Democrats and other assorted lefties.  The negative reaction to his blathering was proof that Christians were a persecuted minority.  Thanks to Roe vs. Wade, flag-burning, school prayer, and the Gay Agenda, the Jesus-loving white man just couldn’t get a break.  More letters to the editor, more marching, and George Knox got his dream come true: a full five minutes on Fox News.  He was in seventh heaven.

Calvin Knox was superficially handsome.  Like his mother, he was very thin and very blonde but the resemblance ended there. When Mary Sue Knox smiled, her face cracked open like an egg.  Calvin smiled easily, and his laugh seemed genuine.  Many people found him charming.  I couldn’t stand him.  Underneath all of that joviality was an ego as fat and dangerous as his father’s.  Flashes of his inflated sense of self-worth appeared occasionally – a sarcastic twist of the lip, a sour look when someone else cracked a joke.  I wasn’t certain when Calvin had hooked up with Sam, and I didn’t know why.  Preacher’s son gone wild, I suspected.

As I climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, I began to wish that I’d made either Calvin or the dog ride under the tarp with Steve and Joe.  One of them smelled like a pungent mix of urine and chicken soup.  I tried breathing through my mouth.

“Watch your knees,” I told Calvin.  “It’s a stick shift.”

“Oh, right.”  He glanced around at the truck’s interior, which was packed to overflowing with coffee cups, gum wrappers, and books and papers from school.  “Nice truck.”

“The air-conditioning’s broken,” I lied, “so we’ll have to roll the windows down.  Sam, you and that mutt are sitting on my leather jacket.  Just put it on the floor – neatly!”

Calvin giggled, a high-pitched squeak that made him sound even younger than he looked, and he looked about fourteen.

“Calvin,” I asked abruptly, “how old are you?”

“Jesus,” Sam grunted.  “You’re as bad as Emma.”

“Shut up, Sam.  How old?”

“Twenty-one.”  Catching my look of disbelief, Calvin smiled.  “If you like, I’ll show you my driver’s license.  I take after my dad.  He doesn’t show his age either.”

“Your dad . . .” I began, but then I reconsidered.  Best not to go there.  I’d tangled with George Knox a few years back over an anti-gay ballot proposition.  Why should I bother to point out that Calvin’s father wore an awful wig that didn’t make him look younger; it just made it harder to stamp him with an accurate sell-by date.

I changed tack.  “How’re tricks over at the concrete octopus?”

Calvin laughed.  “So that’s what you infidels call it.”

“Among other things.”

“The Church of the True Vine is the fastest-growing church in Cowslip,” he said, “and Green Tree Ministries has more than doubled.”

“That’s a nice sound-bite, Calvin.  I believe it’s the same one your dad used on Fox News.  I heard that Green Tree opened a branch office at Washington State University.  Is that what you mean by doubled?”

“There are lies, damn lies, and statistics,” Calvin replied.

“Very nice again,” I said.  “You know your Churchill.”  I glanced at Sam and then back at Calvin.  “Tell me something.  Do your parents approve of the company you keep?”

“No,” Calvin said easily.  “But like I say, I’m twenty-one.  Do you mind if I turn on the radio?”

“Be my guest.”

He scanned up and down the dial before settling on Cowslip University’s alternative station.  I wanted to ask him a few more questions, but Sam was right – I was acting like my mother.  Why should I care if he hung out with Calvin Knox?

Because I was nosey, that was why.  The Church of the True Vine had recently built an enormous structure on the edge of town.  Long bunker-like wings shot off from an enormous octagonal center that housed the actual church.  The assorted wings held a kindergarten through grade twelve school, a seminary, a dormitory for the seminary students, the off-campus office of Green Tree Ministries, and Knox’s own personal publishing house, The Root of Jesse Press.  The church claimed six hundred members, but that was an exaggeration.  There were about two hundred adult members.  All the rest were children.  The Church of the True Vine opposed all forms of birth control, and it wasn’t uncommon for families to have a dozen kids.

Despite their fecundity, Knox and his crew were small potatoes compared to the Catholics and Mormons.  Since the battle over Proposition One, however, The Church of the True Vine had taken an unappetizing interest in local politics and, as a voting block, they were often able to punch above their weight.  In the last election, they’d managed to get two of their parishioners onto the six-seat city council.  Aided and abetted by a couple of old boy Republicans, Matt Mittendorf and Miller Hartwig, they’d shoved local politics sharply to the right.  The first act of the new city council was to ban any public display of the female breast.  No topless dancing – as if we had any to start with – no running around town in a jogging bra, no low-cut blouses, and no public breast-feeding.  In hippie-dippy Cowslip, the latter was tantamount to a declaration of war.  Sylvie, Sarah, and my mother had helped organize a group called Justice for Us Girls or JUGS.

I had a thesis to write, so all I did was sign their petition.  Just for fun, I’d also offered to organize a topless march down Main Street, but I was roundly and soundly rebuffed.

At Jim’s Burgers, Calvin Knox thanked me politely for the lift.

“Yeah,” Sam added.  “Thanks, Bil.”

Shocked by this display of good manners, I said they were welcome.  My faith in the sullen rudeness of youth wasn’t restored until I held up the edge of the tarp so Steve and Joe could slither out.  They were none the worse for wear but were silent and glum.

“Wait,” I said before Sam could stump off.  “You have to call Emma.”

At last, a return to normality.  “I’ll call her when I feel like it,” he snapped.  “Quit minding my business.”

“When she asks if I’ve seen you, I’m not going to lie.”

He shrugged.  “Whatever.  Can I borrow ten bucks?”

I opened my mouth to ask what for, but then I caught Calvin’s ironic smirk.  Fuck him.  I opened my wallet and handed Sam the money.  He, in turn, handed me a small bag of pot.

“Oh no,” I said.  “I’m not holding this for you.”

“Please,” he said.  “If I get picked up with this on me . . . .”

“You’ll go to prison where you belong,” I finished.  He gave me that stupid slippery grin.  I shoved the bag down deep into my jeans pocket.  Then, to hide my shame, I bent over to pet the dog.  He’d stopped shaking and was taking an interest in something on the ground that smelled even worse than he did.

Without looking up I said, “Whatever you’re up to, Sam, I don’t want to know.  And you can take my jacket off and put it back in the truck.  It was a gift from Sylvie.  I don’t want you walking off with it.”

Sam gave a fake shiver.  “But I’m cold, Sis.  I won’t lose it. I promise.  See you round.”

“Sam . . .”

“I’m going to be out late tonight, and you know I can’t go home and get my own jacket.  Emma will be there.”

“You mean the cops will be there.  You’re a weasel, little brother.  I hope you know that.”

“Yeah, I know.  Thanks, Rat.”

That was a low blow – a casual reference to The Wind in the Willows.  That was our childhood, an old nickname from happier times.  Sam’s friends giggled.  We both ignored them.  I was Rat, Sam was Badger, and our mother was Mr. Toad.

“Just remember, Badger,” I said as firmly as I could.  “You owe me.”  In response to his slight nod, I added, “I know you had something to do with my exploding toilet.  What did you do, drop a stick of dynamite down a sewer main?”

I was pleased to see that Steve, Joe, and even Calvin looked shocked.  Sam, on the other hand, just laughed.  “Close,” he said, “but no cigar.  I’ll call you, Bil.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “And it’ll be collect.  You’ll be asking for bail money.”

It was the last conversation we ever had.

Chapter 4

On the tenth of August, I woke up happy.  Summer school was over and fall classes wouldn’t start for another three weeks.  No teaching, no grading, no office hours.  I might have improved the shining hours by working on my thesis, but there was plenty of time for that.  I had until December 15^th to finish.  No worries.

I was sorry to admit that grief counseling had already helped.  In the weeks since Sam’s funeral, I’d woken up miserable and I’d woken up indifferent, but I hadn’t woken up happy.  Happy was new.  I glanced at the clock on the bedside table.  It was just after ten, and the apartment was warm but not yet hot.  I was in bed alone, which meant that Sylvie, who slept on the side next to the wall, had somehow managed to crawl over me without waking me up.  So, I’d slept soundly for a change as well.  I cupped my hand, breathed into it, and sniffed.  I could smell spearmint

toothpaste working hard to cover the odor of garlic.  Hell’s bells.  I had indeed slipped out sometime after midnight for a bowl of late-night pho.  That wasn’t a dream.

About a year ago, a Vietnamese restaurant had opened only a block from Sylvie’s and my apartment, and I’d been eating there almost every night since Sam’s death.  I was hooked on pho, and Vivian Nguyen-DiRisio, the woman who ran the place, was my unofficial therapist.  When I couldn’t sleep, I slipped out of bed and walked down to Pho From Home, where I ate enormous bowls of noodles with beef flank, brisket, or tendon.  The idea of eating tendon was gross, but in practice, I didn’t care.  It all tasted good.  I listened to Vivian talk, and I relaxed into the food and the patter.  Vivian was Vietnamese, born and raised in a village just outside of Saigon.  She might have been in her late fifties or early sixties.  I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t about to ask.  She looked young but she said that she was ancient – old and wise.  Vivian was married to the new math professor at Cowslip University.  He was a good twenty-five years her junior and looked and talked like Joe Pesci.  His Ph.D. was from Columbia, and they’d moved to Idaho from New York.

Vivian liked having a young husband.  “Men are like dogs,” she laughed.  “If you get them when they’re puppies, you can teach them not to piss on floor.”

I pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and slipped into the bathroom.  I brushed my teeth thoroughly and gargled with mouthwash.  Satisfied that my breath was minty-fresh, I drifted into the living room.  The windows were open and the smells of harvest wafted in.  We grow soft wheat in the Palouse region of northern Idaho, the kind used to make ramen noodles rather than the hard kind used to make bread.  The smell is sweet without being cloying, like freshly mown hay.

I took a deep breath and looked out over the low rooftops.  In the distance, the colors of late summer seemed impossibly vivid.  Smooth hills of yellow-gold rolled on for hundreds of miles beneath an endless blue sky, a landscape as amazing in its way as a tropical paradise.  It was no wonder old hippies like my parents loved the place.  We had all of the advantages of rural living with very few of the detractions.

Cowslip was home to an expensive liberal arts college and, consequently, to all of the socialists, radicals, and liberal Democrats who either taught or attended classes there.  We were an anomaly in conservative Republican Idaho, a progressive island in a sea of right-wing goofiness.  Not that the left can’t also be a little odd – our small population of twenty-five thousand managed to support a witchcraft supply store, three tattoo and piercing parlors, and a shop that sold nothing but clothes made from thick, itchy hemp.

My mother was a Cowslip native.  My dad was born in Oregon.  They met at Cowslip College, recently rechristened Cowslip University.  After they married, they traveled from coast to coast while Hugh collected graduate degrees and Emma collected children.  They adopted me in Louisiana when my dad was at Tulane.  They got Sam in California and Sarah in Virginia.  Ruth and Naomi were conceived, respectively, in my father’s Cowslip College dorm room and a Ford Econoline van.  When Hugh was offered a tenure track position at his old alma mater, my parents jumped at the chance, thinking in their typically blinkered way that Cowslip would be a great place to raise an interracial family.  And, in some ways, it was.  The only problems were the surrounding county and the surrounding state.

I basked in the sunshine.  I didn’t just feel happy. I felt good.  Apart from the trip to Vivian’s, my sleep the night before had been unaided.  No alcohol, no sleeping pills, and no sneaky hit from Sam’s nickel bag – a good thing, too, as I couldn’t afford another tattoo.  The one I had still itched like a mother.

Sylvie was in the kitchen.  I could hear her grinding coffee beans.  I leaned against the windowsill and closed my eyes.  Perhaps I was cured.  I retrieved what was left of the stash from beneath the ceramic planter in the living room and weighed it in my hand.  It was half-empty.  I should flush it down the toilet.  I should do something to restore my moral rectitude.  I put the bag back under the planter.  I knew my pot-smoking was driving Sylvie crazy – how could it not?  It was entirely out of character for me, and besides, nothing whiffed quite like Sam’s cheap bud.  Still, I was seeing a grief counselor.  Maybe soon I’d be ready to let the weed go.

Donny Smith, a Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy, lived across the hall from us.  Every time I lit up, there was a chance that he might catch the smell as it wafted through the two-inch gap beneath our front door.  It was a slim chance.  Donny’s partner, Suzy, said that Donny had adenoid trouble and couldn’t smell a thing.  Lucky me.  Suzy also said that Donny snored like a buzz saw.  Lucky Suzy.

There was nothing wrong with my nose.  I followed its lead down the hall and into the kitchen.  Mingling with the smell of wheat and coffee was the unmistakable aroma of sizzling bacon.

Sylvie stood at the stove with her back to me.  I paused in the doorway for a moment to admire the view.  Long tan legs stretched beneath a loose blue T-shirt, white bikini underwear just visible beneath the hem.  I was a lucky woman.  I slipped up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist.  She smelled like chamomile shampoo and Ivory soap.  I kissed her on the neck.

“Mmm,” she said.  “You slept well last night.”

“I did.”

“You got up and left the apartment, but that was only for pho, right?”
“Right.”

There was a long pause before she said carefully, “So maybe you don’t need the pot anymore.”

“No, I probably don’t need it.  I just . . . .”

I just what?  I just can’t get rid of anything that belonged to Sam, not even his weed?  I wanted to say it, but I felt foolish.  I wasn’t saving his nickel bag. I was smoking it.  It wasn’t like I’d put it in a safe marked  “Sacred Stash: Do Not Touch.”

Sylvie said nothing, just leaned back in my arms.
I decided to change the subject.  “So, what’s the bacon in aid of?”

“It’s in aid of breakfast,” she laughed.

“I don’t suppose . . .”

She pointed at a mixing bowl on the counter.  “Pancake batter, ready for the griddle, and there’s fresh coffee in the pot.  I hope you know how spoiled you are.”

“I do, and I like it.”  I kissed a spot higher up on her neck, and then another just beneath her left ear.  I reached up automatically to brush aside her ponytail, forgetting for a moment that it was no longer there.  She’d had her hair cut into a short bob.  I still wasn’t quite used to it, and I’d made the mistake of looking more shocked than pleasantly surprised when she’d come home from the salon.

Hoping she hadn’t noticed my hesitation, I tickled the nape of her neck with my fingertips.  Her skin was smooth and soft, and her new haircut emphasized the long, graceful line from her ear to her shoulder.  I decided, at last, that I liked it.

“What are you doing?” she said smoothly, turning around in my arms and reaching up to clasp her hands behind my head.

“Admiring your new haircut.”
She lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow.  “You’re a week late.”

“No, I’m not!  I liked it from the start.”

“Oh?  I believe what you said was, ‘Good grief.’”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”  Sylvie’s gaze was piercing.  Her eyes were a bright sparkling green with flecks of gold surrounding the pupils.  Wolf eyes.  I pressed my forehead against hers and looked down, trying to think of something clever – and appeasing – to say.

“You’re not wearing any shoes.”

She laughed.  “That’s a non sequitur.  What does my being barefoot have to do with whether or not you like my new haircut?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with it.  It’s just, well, you know that I have a thing for your shapely feet.”

She wiggled her toes.  “You’re barefoot, too, but go on.  I want to hear more.”

“As I’ve told you before,” I said, covering her feet with my own, “if you wish to remain unmolested by my amorous attentions, you must remember to wear shoes and socks.  In fact, you must wear big thick wooly socks and heavy leather hiking boots.  Even in the bathtub.”

“Sounds uncomfortable.  What about loafers?”

I shook my head.  “You always wear loafers without socks, and my imagination runs wild.”  I reached behind her to turn off the burner.  “I’ve heard that bacon can be reheated in the microwave.”

Sylvie laughed again, a low, full sound that seemed to well up from deep within her.  We looked at each other, and she dropped a light kiss on my lips.  “Okay.”

“You know what I like about you?” I said.

“What?”

“You’re open to suggestion.”

I kissed her slowly and deeply, welcoming the rush of desire that moved like hot liquid from my mouth to my abdomen.  Reaching under her T-shirt, I traced a line up from her stomach to the soft full curves of her breasts.  In response, she buried her hands in my hair and pulled me close.

“Thank God,” I whispered.  “I was beginning to worry.”

“I wasn’t,” she whispered back.  “I knew it was just a matter of time.”

“You’ve been very patient with me.”

“No, I haven’t,” she said seriously.  “I love you.”

Even before Sam’s death, when I could see that his health was failing, I’d lost interest in sex.  I’d lost interest in everything.  I’d taught one session of summer school, treating my freshman composition students to an excellent impersonation of a zombie at the chalkboard.  I’d gotten their papers back to them far too late, and, because I felt guilty for not giving them my full attention, I’d handed out As and Bs like candy.  No one flunked, and no one complained, but I’d cheated them.  I’d been a crappy teacher.

I’d cheated Sylvie, too.  I’d rebuffed her advances.  I’d explained that I was tired, and I was tired, but that wasn’t the whole truth.  I was miserable.  When she asked me if I wanted to talk about it, I always said no.  After a while, she stopped asking.

I knew I needed to trust her.  I needed to believe that she wouldn’t leave me if I showed her how awful I really felt.  Instead, on the really bad nights, I waited until she fell asleep.  Then I’d hit Sam’s stash or pay a visit to Vivian and her big bowls of pho.

Today, I felt different.  I didn’t know why.  No pot, no pho, just a beautiful, desirable woman in my arms for whom I felt not only love but pure, blissful, overwhelming lust.  I really was happy.  I hoped it would last.

I took a deep breath and pulled Sylvie close.  “It’s been three months,” I said.  “I might be a little rusty.  Do you think it’s like riding a bicycle?”

She gave me a look that could have fused glass.  “It’s nothing like riding a bicycle.  Come on,” she took my hand.  “I’ll show you.”

The phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” she said.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I murmured.

We did a quick waltz from the kitchen to the hallway, tripping over one another in our haste.  The phone rang twice more before the answering machine picked it up.  As soon as I heard the voice, I tried to kick the bedroom door shut, but Sylvie pulled me down onto the bed and kissed me.

“Bil,” Emma trilled.  “Are you there?”

“We’ll call her back,” Sylvie said.

We sat up long enough to pull our T-shirts over our heads and toss them onto the floor by the dresser.  Then we fell back together.  Though the voice on the answering machine grew increasingly shrill, I concentrated my attention on the soft hollow at the base of Sylvie’s throat.  She ran her fingers through my hair and pressed her palms against my ears.  It was no good – I could still hear my mother.

“I hope you’re not screening your calls, Bil, because you know what I think of that.”

I tossed a pillow at the door, missing it by a mile.

“I don’t care if everyone else does it.  You are not everyone else.  It’s rude to just sit there, pretending you’re not at home.”

“Christ almighty,” I muttered.  “The black telephone’s off at the root, Ma.  The voices just can’t worm through.”

Sylvie pushed up against my shoulders, forcing me to lift my head.  “What did you just say?”

“The black telephone’s off at the root,” I repeated.  “It’s from a poem by Sylvia Plath.”

My own Sylvia looked bemused.  I kissed her again, slowly working my way down from her mouth to the swell of her breasts.  The voice on the phone grew distant.

“What are you talking about, Hugh?  Of course she’s at home.  She’s probably still in bed.  How do I know?  Because she lives like a fucking vampire, that’s how – awake all night, asleep all day.”

Sylvie tugged at my hair.  “You were quoting from Daddy, weren’t you?”

“I’m not bothering her,” my mother went on.  “I’m worried about her.”

I sat up abruptly.  “How long is that fucking answering machine tape?”

“Too long,” Sylvie agreed.  “Go find out what she wants and then unplug the phone.”  She pushed her underwear down over her hips and tossed them onto the floor next to our T-shirts.  I felt like weeping, but she just smiled and ran a long finger down my arm.  “Go on.  I’ll wait.”

My mother was now singing.  “Bil, you’re a pill, you should answer your phone, if you pick up then I’ll leave you alone.”

I snatched the phone out of its cradle.  “Jesus H. Christ, Emma.  Was all of that really necessary?”

“You were screening your calls,” she accused.

“I was busy.  What do you want?”

“Is that any way to talk to your mother?  I just want to hear your dulcet voice.  When was the last time you came out here for a visit?”

I thought for a moment.  “Four days ago, Tuesday.  We had dinner.  You burned the spaghetti.”

“Ha!  That didn’t slow you down.  You ate two plates.”

“We didn’t eat until nine o’clock.  I was starving.  Now what do you want?”

“I want you to come out for a visit.  And please bring Sylvie.”

I sighed heavily.  “When?”

“Now,” she said.  The ‘of course’ was implied.

“I can’t come right now.  How about this afternoon?”

It was her turn to sigh.  “When?”

I did some quick math.  “How about three o’clock?”

“Three o’clock?  What are you going to be doing for the next five hours?”

I thought about lying.  I thought about saying it was none of her business.  I thought about hanging up.  Instead I said, “I’m going to be having sex, Ma.  Excellent, mind-numbing, house-shaking sex.  What with one thing and another, I haven’t really felt like it lately, but today I intend to make up for lost time.  It might take five hours.  It might take ten.  It might be that I’ll give you a call sometime next week – that is if I’ve got enough energy left to make it all the way down the hallway to the telephone.”

In the silence that followed, I heard the unmistakable creak of bedsprings.  Sylvie was either getting up to put her clothes back on, or she was off to lock herself in the bathroom until the men in the white suits came to get me.

“Well,” said my mother.  “I guess I called you at a bad time.”

“You did.”

“Three o’clock?” she asked.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Listen,” she said.  “Please drive your truck.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she paused for effect, “I hate to think of you trying to ride Sylvie’s motorcycle after the day you’ve planned.  Good-bye!”

Chapter 5

“Do you suppose they had to reconsecrate the church after Sam’s funeral?”  I traced the outline of Sylvie’s ribs with my index finger.

She yawned luxuriously.  “Why?  Because of the music?  You played all of his air guitar favorites.”

“Actually, I was thinking more about my eulogy.”

“Your eulogy was wonderful, Bil.”

I stopped tracing and rolled onto my back.  “I used the phrase, ‘Up shit creek without a paddle.’  How often do you hear that in church?”

“Rarely,” she agreed.  “You also said, ‘Freedom’s just another word for a sister who’s willing to make bail.’  It was a good eulogy.  It was honest.”  She turned onto her side to face me and smoothed her hand over my right breast.  “My turn now.”

“Careful, you know I’m ticklish.”  I put my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling.  “I made reference to his taste for young bimbos, his criminal career, and his pathological loyalty to his pot suppliers.  I talked about the shower of shit that rained down on Third Street as a result of his final escapade.  We played Freebird, Stairway to Heaven, and Piece of My Heart.  Granny nearly choked to death.  I saw her.  She started gasping and Ruth had to slap her on the back.”

Sylvie’s hand moved lower.  I shifted position to accommodate her.  “I can’t think of anything in the hymnal that would have been as appropriate.  You also talked about Sam’s generosity, his kind heart, and his love for his family.  As for your grandmother, she was a little surprised, but she’ll get over it.”  She grinned wickedly.  “Besides, she’s a high church Episcopalian.  You said ‘shit’ in the Unitarian Church.  That might be a point in your favor.”

“I said ‘shit’ twice in the Unitarian Church, but you’re probably right.”  I gave an involuntary groan.  “There, that’s the spot.  Yes.  You know,” I tried to continue my original thought, “the Unitarians are probably used to it.  They probably have a special fucking and blinding service every third Sunday.”

Sylvie paused in her ministrations.  “For someone who doesn’t go to church, you’re a terrible religious snob.”

“Please, don’t stop.  I’ll shut up in a minute, I swear.  Thank you.”  I sighed contentedly.  “Look, I just think that if you’re going to go to church, then why not go to a real church?  The Unitarians take the summers off.  No church.  What’s that about?”

“It’s about you promising to be quiet and concentrate.”

“I’m just saying that it seems too easy.  If you’re going to do the God thing, then why not get a fire and brimstone lecture on sin and eternal damnation?  Why not have some fun?  Tremble with fear at the wrath of the Almighty.  Sing some really great hymns – no, don’t laugh.  Did you check out the Unitarians’ hymnal?  It was awful – a bunch of guitar odes from the Kumbaya sixties about peace, love, and understanding.  I could borrow some of my mother’s Summer of Love albums and get the same effect.”

I ignored Sylvie’s exasperated snort.  “Okay, okay.  I’ll stop talking now, I promise.  Hey, you know why you shouldn’t piss off a Unitarian?”

“No,” she said.

“Because they might burn a question mark in your yard.”

“Ha, ha,” she said.  “Very funny.  Now why don’t you just shut up and kiss me?”

“That’s your solution to everything.  Sex.  I try to have a serious theological conversation with you . . .”

I was happily silenced by the firm press of her lips.  It was well past three, but I didn’t care.  For the first time in months, I felt solid and connected, like a person who had a future.  Sylvie loved me, and I loved her.  Someday, I might be able to think about Sam without feeling guilty and falling to bits.  In the meantime, this was peace of a sort.  Who knew how long it would last?  I might wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, craving Sam’s crappy bud and Vivian’s exotic vermicelli, but right now, at this moment, neither Sylvie nor I had any responsibilities.  The fall semester didn’t begin until the first of September.  Twenty warm, sunny, empty days stretched out before us.

I was caught in the embrace of Sylvie’s warm, knowing hand.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  My mother could wait.

#

I dozed in Sylvie’s arms.  Sam never made it to his arraignment.  He collapsed in jail and died in the hospital three days later.  He was only twenty-four.  We were all gathered at his bedside when it happened – me, Sylvie, my family.  Granny was there, and so was Kate.  There was also a motley assortment of juvenile delinquents and slutty, under-aged bimbos.  Sam’s friends.  I didn’t know if my mother was too distraught to run them off or too tired to care, but in a strange way, I was glad to see them.  They lent the proceedings a certain morbid levity.  The boys all wore dirty T-shirts and stared at their feet, and the girls wept great pools of black mascara.  I found the raccoon-eyed excess of their grief comforting.  They were doing what I wanted and needed to do – weeping uncontrollably and howling at the unfairness of it all.

My brother was no angel.  Jail was his second home, but he’d spent his teens and early twenties staring death in the face.  So he’d chosen to live his short life to its crazy, criminal fullest.  Who was I to judge him?  To some extent, I even understood.  I also thought it was fortunate that, for the most part, Sam had taken out his anger on things and not people.  He was hell to live with but he was never intentionally mean.

Amidst all the weeping, my mother acted the stoic prairie woman.  It was her favorite role and she played it well.  Public displays of anything except anger were unacceptable to her.  Emma stood at the head of the bed, stroking Sam’s hair.  She didn’t cry.  Her face remained hard and expressionless, her jaw set.  In her eyes, Sam was not a petty thief and a small-time troublemaker.  He was a sturdy pioneer, and she intended to behave as if he’d dropped dead on the Oregon Trail.  Not in jail.  Not in a hospital.  Not surrounded by gypsies, tramps, and thieves.

Inside what passed for Emma’s psyche, she was a miserable mess – I was certain of that.  On the surface, however, she showed nothing.  My sisters cried quietly.  My father and Granny bawled out loud.  It was up to me to keep Emma company in her stone-faced misery – not that I was any good at it.  I can’t do stoic.  My face has always been an open book.  Sylvie says I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. I wear it like an opera cape, clasped around my neck and flapping out behind me.

By standing with Emma, I wondered if I was betraying Sam.  There was nothing my brother loved more than a maudlin scene – the death of Old Yeller, the boy shooting his pet deer in The Yearling.  The Indian practice of suttee would not have struck Sam as over the top.  If we’d built a giant bonfire and climbed on it to mourn his passing, he would have considered it his just desserts, a flaming cherries jubilee at the end of his tragic, comic, one-course life.

#

Sylvie bagged out of going with me to see Emma.  I left her reluctantly, curled up on the bed with a bag of pretzels and a cheap paperback.

“Where are the keys to Helen?”

“Front left pocket of my brown jacket,” she said.  “Are you looking for trouble?  You know your mother hates it when you ride the motorcycle.”

“My mother needs to get a grip.”  I leaned down to kiss her good-bye.  “This shouldn’t take long.  Expect me back around eight.  Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn’t bother getting dressed.  It’ll save time.”

“I’ll see you when I see you,” she laughed, waving me out the door.

I climbed onto the Honda and stroked the gas tank affectionately.  Sylvie had often accused me of dating her to get to Helen.  I loved that motorcycle.  Nothing could beat the thrill of riding – the sounds, the smells, and the wind on my face and in my hair.  I looked up at the sky.  Not a cloud in sight.  Smiling happily to myself, I turned the key and pressed the start button.  The engine roared to life and commenced a rhythmic throbbing between my knees.  I’d just turned around with the intention of stuffing my helmet into one of the saddlebags when my girlfriend, wrapped in the bed sheet, stuck her head out of our living room window.  I switched the engine off.

“Put that helmet on,” she shouted, glaring down at me.

An old woman walking a Chihuahua, a teenager on a skateboard, and two men working on the electrical lines in front of our apartment building stopped to stare at me.

“I was planning to.  I was just warming up the engine first.”

“I have three words for you,” Sylvie yelled.  “Persistent vegetative state.”

“Okay, okay.”  I pulled the helmet out of the saddle bag.  “I’m putting it on, see?”

She shook her head and slammed the window shut.  I snapped the chinstrap, waved to the electrical workers, the skateboarder, and the woman with the dog, and slid the bike carefully out of the parking lot, remembering to look both ways and use my turn signal.

It was a quarter past six when I pulled into my parents’ driveway.  Emma was waiting for me on the front steps, a cigarette in her mouth and a pile of butts on the ground by her feet.  Her scowl swept first over me and then over the motorcycle.  Finally, it came to rest on the dial of her watch.  I switched off the engine and went to meet my doom.

She was wearing one of her sweet old lady get-ups, a pair of pale pink stretch pants and a navy blue sweatshirt with a yellow duck embossed on the chest.  It occurred to me, not for the first time, that she ought to be arrested for fraud.  There was nothing sweet about my mother.  She’d started wearing these ridiculous I’m-a-nice-Mormon-grandmother outfits when my brother started getting arrested.  She claimed that they disarmed the cops and gave her an edge in dealing with them.  There was a certain logic to that – she didn’t fare nearly as well when she wore her Angela Davis T-shirt – but what really gave her an edge was her terrifying, irrational temper.  The dough-faced recruits at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department didn’t know what to do with a chubby middle-aged woman whose favorite word was “fuck.”  When the streams of invective began to fly from my mother’s mouth, the cops couldn’t take cover fast enough.

I noticed that the duck running across Emma’s ample chest was chasing through a field of poppies after a wayward red balloon.

“Very cute,” I said, pointing at him.  “He’ll never catch the balloon, but he’s got a good chance at that streak of catsup.  And what’s that yellow stuff?  Mustard?”

My mother glanced down.  For a moment, I was afraid that she might peel off a dried bit and taste it.  “Probably.  I had a hamburger at the Toot and Tell It.”

“When was the last time you did laundry, Ma?”

She shrugged.  “It was clean when I put it on this morning.”  Fixing me once again with her paint-stripper stare, she said, “Never mind my clothes.  Do you know what time it is?”

I glanced at my naked wrist.  I never wore a watch.  “Half past a freckle?”

“I hate it when you ride that motorcycle.  You dawdle.  How long can you stay?”

“I don’t know.  I promised to grout the bathtub tonight.”

“So that’s what you people call it.”  She laughed like a gurgling drain and took a final drag on her cigarette.  When the glowing ember reached the filter, she tossed the butt down to join its friends.

“How long have you been sitting out here?” I asked, gazing pointedly at the pile of butts.

“Half an hour.  Maybe longer,” she lied.

“You’re going to wind up in an iron lung.”

“Yeah, yeah, so enough about me.”  She stood up.  “Where’s Sylvie?”

“She stayed home to watch a documentary on PBS.”

“You lie like a rug.  You humiliated her with all of your naughty sex talk.  I’m sure she’s embarrassed to death.  She’ll never want to come out here again.”

“Right.  Where’s Dad?”

My mother stopped smirking and her face took on a strange expression, something between wounded and chagrined.  “Bil,” she said portentously, “I have something to tell you.”

For just a second, my heart plunged into the icy depths of my stomach.  Had my father actually left her?  Emma was hard to live with, and Sam had been nearly impossible.  Had Hugh finally snapped?  I’d read that the loss of a child sometimes led to divorce.  True, Sam was no longer a child, and they’d had seven years to prepare themselves, but death affected people in unpredictable ways.  For God’s sake, if Hugh divorced Emma, I’d become a weed-smoking insomniac permanently.

These painful meanderings came to an end when I recognized the look on Emma’s face.  It wasn’t chagrined; it was shifty.  In fact, it was nearly identical to Sam’s toothy grin.  The resemblance was a triumph of nurture over nature.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

Emma took a deep breath.  “This,” she began heavily, “is your childhood home.  I know how you feel about it.  Your father and I had hoped that you and Sylvie might move out here someday to raise your own family.  Lots of gay and lesbian couples are having children.  There’s no reason you two can’t . . .”

I held up a hand.  “Stop.  Are you nuts?”

My mother changed gears.  “You know the old Kornmeyer place?” she asked.  I shook my head no.  “Yes, you do.  Two hundred acres, just over the ridge.”  She gestured toward the hillside behind our house.  “It’s been on the market for years.”

“So?”

“Your father and I have bought it.”

I heard the words, but they didn’t make sense.  “You what?  Why?”

“Because we’re tired of living across the road from those anhydrous ammonia tanks.  It was fine when it was just a gravel pit over there.  The dust was terrible, and the stink of diesel fumes from all those rumbling trucks, but it was only in operation for four months out of the year.  Everything changed when they began renting to that fucking Ag Chemical business.  Look at that eyesore, Bil.”

I looked.  The gravel pit across the road had been in operation for twenty years, cutting a deep, dark scar into the basalt flow of the hillside.  Though my father had planted a five-foot hedge in front of our house, it wasn’t tall enough to obscure the blue and white chemical tanks of Robertson’s Agricultural Supply.  They loomed above the lilacs like metal giants.

“Your father and I have had it,” my mother said quietly.  “We went to the title company on Friday and closed the deal with Kornmeyer.  We’re moving.”

I sat down on the ruins of a hanging porch swing.  One of the chain hooks had pulled out of the boards above making the back left corner list sharply.  I tried to remember how long it had been that way.  Five years?  Ten?

“I don’t understand this, Emma.  You’ve lived across from those  tanks for five ages.  You’ve spent so much time and energy petitioning the county, calling the EPA, harassing their delivery trucks . . . are you giving up?”

“I’m tired of losing,” she replied.  “And I need a change.  Not a dramatic change.  I’m not packing up and moving to the Mojave Desert.  I just want some peace and quiet.  I don’t feel like fighting any more.”

“Then it’s time to call the embalmers,” I said without thinking.  “Oh God, Ma.  I’m sorry.”

My mother laughed.  “Don’t look so crushed.  It’s all right.  Ours is not a tactful family.  We can’t stop ourselves from talking about rope in a house where there’s been a hanging.”  She lit another cigarette, and we sat in silence until she’d finished it.

“Thanks for not telling me over the phone,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

“I suppose you want my help telling Sarah and the others.”

The shifty look reappeared.  “Um, no,” she said.

I stood up.  “Damn it!  Did you tell them first?”  She opened her mouth to speak, but I shook a warning finger at her.  “How long?  And if you say, ‘how long what,’ I’ll kill you and make it look like an accident.  How long have I been out of the loop?”

“Naomi was with us at the closing,” she admitted, adding defensively, “She is the family attorney.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And . . . we might have taken Sarah and Ruth out to lunch afterwards.  But we weren’t trying to leave you out.  We just knew that you’d feel this more keenly than the others.  They were older when we moved here.  Ruth was sixteen.  You were only six.”

“Stop,” I said disgustedly.  “I’m going home.”

She shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  I was kind of hoping you’d go with me to check out the new property.”

“Why?” I demanded, towering above her in a way that I hoped was menacing.  “Why would I want to go anywhere with you?”

“There’s an old shack on the Kornmeyer place,” she said.  “No running water, no electricity.  We were planning to knock it down and build something new, but . . .”

“But what?  Martha Stewart won’t give you planning permission?”

“But,” she continued, “this shack is not abandoned.  It’s rented.  Some fool has been paying Dick Kornmeyer eighty dollars a month to live in it.”

“Ha!  And you want me to help you deliver an eviction notice?”

“No,” she answered calmly.  “I want you to help me make sure that our tenant isn’t dead.  Kornmeyer says that the rent’s three months overdue, and there’s a funny smell coming from inside.”

Chapter 6

“Speak of the devil,” Emma said as a long blue Buick pulled into the driveway.  The car was vintage 1970s, as was its driver, a fat bald man in a dirty pair of Carhartt overalls.

“The devil who?” I asked.

“Dick Kornmeyer,” she whispered as he walked towards us.  “He’s the richest man in Lewis County, and one of the most powerful.  County commissioner.”

“He dresses like a fucking bumpkin.”

“Shut up,” she hissed.  “Hello, Dick.  What can I do for you?”

“Not much,” Kornmeyer bellowed.  He had hearing aids in both ears.  [See comment] “I stopped by to talk to you about this year’s CRP payment.”

“The what?” my mother said.

“CRP,” he repeated, even louder.  “Conservation Reserve Program.  I haven’t cropped that land of yours in four years.  Government pays me not to.”

“How much?” Emma asked.

She lit up a cigarette and directed the smoke at Kornmeyer.  He coughed a bit and reached behind his left ear.  The resulting squeal told me that he’d turned on his hearing aid. Too cheap to do that much, I gathered. Didn’t want to run down the batteries on the damn thing. [what do you think about putting this little observation here?]

“Fifteen hundred,” he said.  “I thought we should pro-rate it.  When CRP pays you for the full year, you pay me for January through July.”

“You want seven months’ worth of my CRP money,” my mother said.

Kornmeyer reached behind his right ear and turned his other hearing aid on.

“Only fair,” he said.

“You want me to give you eight-hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“Only fair,” he repeated.

“No,” said my mother.

Kornmeyer adjusted both of his hearing aids.  Now the squeal was horrendous.  I stuck my fingers in my ears and shook my head.

“When will your husband be home?” Kornmeyer asked.

My mother’s eyes narrowed.  She stubbed out her cigarette in the driveway and took a step toward Kornmeyer.  He moved back.  The man was filthy from head to foot.  His overalls were ancient, as was the dirt ground into the waist and knees, and his logger boots had the look of many a re-sole.  This was the richest man in Lewis County?  To judge by the stubble on his jowls, he was saving on razor blades too.

“You can come back when my husband is here,” Emma said, “but don’t think you’ll get a different answer.  We paid you a fair price for that land – more than fair, according to our attorney.  We were stupid.  We were in a hurry.  We should have had the place appraised – by our own appraiser.  You charged us an extra two hundred an acre.”

Kornmeyer ignored this.  He switched off the right hearing aid and asked my mother again when Hugh would be home.
“Tonight,” she said.  “About six.  But don’t bother to come out here.  You can just call.”

“I prefer to deal in person,” Kornmeyer said.

“Fuck off,” my mother replied.

“What?”  Kornmeyer reached behind his ear but my mother’s raised voice stopped him in mid-squealing adjustment.

“Save your batteries, you cheap bastard,” she said.  “Fuck. Off.  Did you catch that?”

Kornmeyer caught that.  He stomped off back to his car, hefted his bulk into the driver’s seat, and drove off.  Visible through the rear window, resting on the package shelf, was a collection of Beanie Babies – all kinds, a horse, a pig, a unicorn.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked my mother.

“A walking, talking agricultural subsidy,” she said.  “And the cheapest man alive.”

#

“Let’s go,” Emma said, pushing past me.  “I’m afraid we’ll have to take that crotch rocket of yours.  The house is at the top of a steep hill, and the driveway is overgrown with weeds.  I don’t think the Queen Mary will make it.”

I glanced at my mother’s old station wagon, which sat rusting in the driveway under a cottonwood tree.  A small pool of oil glistened beneath the engine. The Queen Mary was ready for the boneyard.  My mother shouldn’t be driving it to town, much less up any insane Palouse hills.

“Wait,” I said.  “Why don’t you just call the sheriff’s department?”

Emma shook her head sadly.  “Your brother has been dead for less than a month and already you’ve forgotten.  The cops, Bil Hardy, are not your friends.”

“For God’s sake, Emma.  Donny Smith is my friend.”

She stopped and stared at me.  “We’ll talk about that later.  There are two reasons I don’t want to call the fuzz.  The first is that as of noon on Friday, Kornmeyer no longer owned that shack.  It became the legal responsibility of your father and me.  The second – and this is directly related to the first – is that the tenant is Jake Peterson.”

“Jake Peterson,” I repeated, recognition slowly dawning.  “Not Jake the Snake?  Sam’s dealer?  Oh God, Emma, there’s no telling what he’s got in that shack.  Pot plants, a meth lab . . . .”

“Exactly.”

“But what if he’s in there?  What if he’s not dead?  What if he shoots us?”

Jake was a Vietnam vet, a Marine.  He was also an old Moscow boy.  He’d spent six years in Fort Leavenworth for selling dope.  His brain was pickled, and I’d never seen him in anything but a pot-induced stupor, but Sam said that he had a bad temper.  Jake also had a Swedish sniper rifle, a souvenir from the war.  Sam had seen it and been mightily impressed.  When I’d asked if Jake had let him fire it, he’d looked at me as if he were the Pope and I’d asked if he’d groped the Virgin Mary.

My mother laughed merrily.  “Oh, for God’s sake.  I’m not afraid of Jake the Snake.  I used to babysit the little bastard when I was a teenager.  He was only three or four, a sweet little thing with a face like a flower petal.  Who knew he’d grow up to be so fucking worthless?  If he’s in there – and if he’s still breathing – I’m going to give him thirty days’ notice and a chance to clear out whatever he’s doing.”

“If he’s still breathing,” I repeated.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“And if he’s not?”

“We’ll remove and destroy any illegal substances, and then we’ll call your friend Donny Smith.”

“You don’t need to sound quite so venomous.  Donny’s a good guy.”

“And he’s dating Suzy,” she said.  “Yes, I know.  The fact that he’s openly gay speaks well of him.  However,” she thumped me on the chest with a stubby finger, “he was your brother’s jailer.  He’s also a great big Mormon from a great big Mormon family.  His grandfather owns a massive cattle ranch down south of Riggins.  The Smith  family is richer than Croesus.  Donny Smith is ‘the man,’ and don’t you forget it.”

“ ‘The man’?” I asked, incredulous.  “ ‘The man’?  What are you – a Black Panther?  I don’t care if Donny’s grandfather is First President of the Mormon Church.  Suzy Parker-Smith is the most terrifying drag queen in the known universe, and Donny lives with her out in the great wide open.  He takes her to sheriff’s department picnics.  Suzy went to the last one wearing a red and white polka-dot I Love Lucy dress.”

“And so?”

“And so?”  Now I was hopping mad.  “Listen, you old, white, privileged bat – you’re more ‘the man’ than Donny Smith.  You’re Mrs. I-Own-Two-Hundred-acres.  You’re Mrs. Slum Landlord.  We’re on our way to evict your eighty-dollar-a-month Vietnam vet tenant.  Unless, of course, he’s dead.”

“Hmm,” she said calmly.  “There is that.  God, I hope he’s not dead.  I don’t suppose we could call Donny.  You’d be bound to blab, wouldn’t you?”

My jaw fell open.  “Blab?”

“Still,” she went on.  “As cops go, Donny’s the only one I even remotely trust.  Because of Suzy, of course.”

“You’ve just . . . you can’t . . .” I stammered.  “You’re not human.  Who are you and what have you done with my mother?”

“Don’t be silly,” she carried on.  “You know I like Suzy.  Did you know that I’m teaching him how to sew?”

“Teaching him how to sew what?  G-strings?”

“Quilts, actually.  He’s got quite an eye for color, and he can stitch fourteen to the inch.  Must be his medical training.  He was a Navy corpsman back in the eighties.  Became a nurse when he got out.”

All the wind went out of my sails.  Being angry with my mother was like being angry with a tornado or a volcano or some other force of nature.  It was also like being angry with a mental patient.  My father often said that my mother’s thoughts were like streetcars – there was another one along every five minutes.

“Jesus, Ma.  Tell me – did Kornmeyer know Jake the Snake was a dealer?”

“Kornmeyer,” she scoffed.  “That cheap farmer bastard.  Do you know he tried to get your father to pay him Jake’s overdue rent?  Kornmeyer owns property around here worth millions, and yet he’s willing to charge eighty bucks a month for a shack that ought  to be pushed into the ground.  No, I don’t know if Kornmeyer knew or not.  If he did, I’m sure he didn’t care.  Everyone’s money is green.”

“I don’t like this, Emma.  Hang on a second – what do you think you’re doing?”

My mother had climbed onto the motorcycle and sat down.  In the driver’s seat.

“Here,” she tossed me the helmet.  “Do you have a spare?”

“No, I left the other helmet at home.  You can’t . . .”

“You forget,” she interrupted.  “I grew up riding these things.  I know how they work.  Now, hop on.”

Typical.  She hated me riding a bike, but she was a damned expert.  With a mixture of aggravation and dread, I climbed on the back.  Emma rocked the bike off the kickstand and leaned over, searching in the vicinity of her right leg.

“It has an electric start,” I said, pointing at the button.

“Pussy bike,” she muttered.

Engine noise drowned out my response.  My mother spun the bike around in the driveway, spraying a rooster tail of gravel behind her, and we were off.  Up the road two miles, around a ninety-degree turn – which my mother took at a terrifying clip – we screeched to a halt at the foot of a long slope and pulled onto the shoulder.  I looked up.  At the top of the hill stood a small, crooked house.  A few flecks of white paint clung desperately to the clapboard siding which barely clung to the house.  Several boards near the top had sprung loose and were curling out into the open air.  As for the roof, it was a memory of shingles covered in places with rusty red tin.  NICE! Love that! Yer fan, the peanut gallery.

I tapped my mother on the shoulder.  “I don’t see a driveway,” I yelled.

She pointed to the ditch in front of us where someone had planted a four-foot metal stake with a broken orange reflector on top.  If I looked closely, I could just make out the beginnings of two deep, dry ruts.  The grass that grew around them was at least waist-high.  I tapped her again.

“No way.  We’re not riding up that.”

She revved the engine and plunged forward, bouncing me off the back of the bike and into the grass.  She stopped and switched the engine off.

“Break anything?”

“Only my ass,” I replied tersely.  “It’s got a crack in it.”

Cackling with glee, she climbed off the bike and offered me a hand up.  I waved her away.  “Forget it.  I don’t want your help.”

“Suit yourself.”

My mother on a mission was a sight to behold.  Despite the fact that she was short, fat, and smoked like a chimney, she climbed up the hill like a mountain goat.  I followed along in her wake, stopping halfway to pant for breath.  I’d already twisted my ankle by stepping in a gopher hole, but I got my revenge when Emma fell ass-over-teacup into a patch of Scotch thistle.  She stood up and brushed herself off.

“Stop laughing,” she said.  “Can you feel that?”

“If you mean ticks, yeah.  They’re probably crawling all over us.”

She shook her head.  “No.  Feels like something buzzing or humming.”

There was a noise like the sound made by high-tension power lines, but there were no power lines in sight.  “You’re right,” I said.  “What is that?”

“I don’t know.  Something’s not right here, Bil.  Look at this grass – no one’s driven up here for a while.”  She pointed back down the hill.  “Jake must park at the bottom and walk up.”

“Wouldn’t you?” I asked, rubbing my sore backside.  “This would be hell on your shock absorbers.  I don’t think you could drive it at all in the winter.”

We continued up the hill.  On closer inspection, the house looked even worse than from a distance.  All of the windows were boarded up, and some had pieces of roofing tin nailed over them.  The front window was covered with the gold boomeranged drop leaf from a fifties Formica table.  Though it hadn’t rained since April, the front porch looked waterlogged.  It sagged away from the house as if it were hoping to slide down to the road and hitchhike to Georgia.

Emma and I looked at the porch and then at one another.

I said, “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

My mother laughed.  “Very nice,” she said and continued the quotation.  “It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Then something about spirit possession.”

“I forget,” I said.  “I used to know the whole first paragraph by heart.”

“An excellent book.  I love the movie, too.  I think the woman who played the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, was in your club.”

“Was she?” I asked, still contemplating the rotting porch.  “Dame Judith Anderson.  Given a choice, I think I’d rather have Joan Fontaine.”

“You do have Joan Fontaine,” my mother said severely.  “Sylvie looks quite a lot like her.  You keep your eyes on that prize, Bil Hardy.  You are very, very lucky.  I’d be sorry if you two broke up.  And, of course, I’d miss you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.  “You know, sometimes you’re a little too supportive.  You’re kind of a PFlag Hag.”

“Ungrateful child.  So,” she asked facetiously, “who weighs less, you or me?”

“I’m a hundred and fifty pounds, not counting my boots.”

“Well, unless your boots weigh another thirty, you’re the lightest.  Up you go.”

I reluctantly mounted the rickety steps and stepped across the groaning porch boards.  The front door was padlocked.  I knocked loudly, a couple of times.  I hollered, “Hey, anybody home?”  I felt like an idiot.  Finally, I tried the handle.  It didn’t turn, probably because it was rusted in place.  I examined the padlock.  It was new, or at least it wasn’t as rusty as the hasp it was attached to.  Several pairs of old tennis shoes were lined up next to the door, along with a five-gallon glass carboy, a bicycle frame, and a coffee can full of surprisingly shiny nails.

I pounded on the door again, just in case.  It was in the pause afterward that I heard the music.  I held very still.

“What is it?” Emma whispered.

“It’s Frank Sinatra.”  I sang quietly, “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.”

Emma put her foot on the bottom step.  It screamed in protest.  “See if you can pull a board off one of those windows.”

“With what, my bare hands?”

“Oh, out of my way.”  Though I feared for my life, the porch held us both.  Emma examined the windows on either side of the door and, picking the one covered by the drop leaf, wedged her fingers under the edge and gave it a mighty yank.  It didn’t budge.  “Damn it,” she said.  “Would you look at that?”

She’d driven a long splinter into the pad of her index finger.

“It’ll probably turn septic,” I observed.  “When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

“I’ll soak it in peroxide when I get home.”  She sniffed the air.  “Can you smell that?  Kornmeyer was right.  Something definitely stinks.”

I tried to place the odor.  “A cat?” I suggested.

“Cats,” she corrected.  “Multiple.  Twenty-seven of them, all using the same dirty litter box.”

“Ah, shit,” I said.  “I told you Jake was probably running a meth lab.  This place reeks of ammonia.”  I sniffed again, and after a moment’s consideration, I said reluctantly, “I think there’s something else as well.”

“Sickly sweet and pungent?  Kind of nauseating?”  When I nodded, my mother said, “Put your shoulder to that door, Bil.”

“I can’t, Ma.  It’s illegal.”

“I own this opium den,” she replied.  “We’re going in.”

It was no use arguing.  I did as she asked, giving the door a tentative push.  It moved a little.  I shoved harder and then harder again.  The next thing I knew, the door and the door frame were lying on the floor of the shack, and I was lying on top of them.  A cloud of dust and rotten wood billowed up around me, and a rusty old wheelbarrow dropped onto my back.  I coughed until I was blue in the face.

My mother stepped through the hole, over me, and over the door.  She lifted the wheelbarrow and shoved it aside.

“Who keeps a wheelbarrow in the house?” I demanded.

“A meth-making bum,” said Emma.  “Ups-a-daisy!”

She took my hand and pulled me up hard.

“Wait, I said.  I think I’m caught on the handle of that – ” a loud ripping sound followed by a rush of air told me that I’d lost the ass of my jeans “ – fucking wheelbarrow.  Goddamn it!”

Emma laughed.  “Here, bend over so I can brush the spiders out of your hair.  Don’t panic – I’m just kidding.  Don’t worry about your pants.  Your father will have something you can borrow.”

My father was only a little bit taller than my mother and just as round.  “I’ll take a pair of Sam’s, thanks.”

“Not possible, I’m afraid.  I gave his clothes to the Cowslip Food and Clothing Bank.”  Catching my look, she went on defensively, “And what I couldn’t donate, I sold to Johnson Pawn.  Close your mouth – I gave the money to the food bank as well.  It’s what your brother would have wanted.  He was always volunteering there.”

“Volunteering?  That’s a stretch.  He was sentenced to community service.”

We waited for the dust to settle and peered into the gloom.  For a shack, the small living room was surprisingly homey.  There was a plaid loveseat, a coffee table, and a wooden magazine rack filled with copies of  National Geographic.  An end table sat next to the sofa, and on top of that was a half-filled cup of coffee.  A perfectly round patch of green mold covered the surface like wall-to-wall carpet.  It glowed in the gloom, illuminated by a halogen floor lamp plugged into an orange extension cord.

“I thought this place didn’t have running water or electricity.”

“That’s what Kornmeyer told us.”

I followed the extension cord.  It ran along the left side of the room and through a hole cut into the wall.  “There’s another door here, but it’s padlocked.  This is where the music is coming from.  The urine smell, too.”  I sniffed the air and then had to stifle my gag reflex.

“Something is definitely dead in there,” my mother declared.  “Can you force the door?”

“No,” I said firmly.  “I can’t.  I  bruised my ass, ripped my pants, and did something awful to my shoulder.  You can knock it down yourself if you want to, but I’m not doing it.”

“Christ on a cracker, Bil.  What if he’s hung himself?”

“Come on,” I said.  “Let’s go around  back.  Maybe there’s another way into the house.”

I fought my way through four-feet-tall weeds to a plywood lean-to that had been tacked onto what I assumed was the kitchen.  Piled in front of and around the door were old pots and pans, dirty rags, stacks of newspaper, an old mattress, and about half a cord of firewood.  I pulled the rubbish and loose wood aside, getting a few splinters in the process, and yanked on the warped back door.  I didn’t find the kitchen entrance, but I did find the source of the buzzing noise.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, slamming the door quickly.  “That’s the biggest wasp’s nest I’ve ever seen.  Ouch!”  I slapped a wasp on my arm just as another one stung my right cheek.  “Fucking hell!”

“Get out of there, you idiot,” my mother said.

I scrambled up over the newspapers and mattresses and scratched at a third sting on the back of my hand.  “Goddamn it, Emma!  I cannot wait for the day when I get to pick your nursing home.”

“Ha,” she said.  “You won’t get the chance.  I’ll shoot myself first.”  She swatted at a couple of wasps that were buzzing around my head.  “Come on,” she said.  “You’re attracting the things.  Look around here on the other side.  See?  There’s a nice path, a little covered storage area, and – oh yes, a gas-powered generator.”

“And the fucking back door,” I remarked bitterly.

“I’ll get that, shall I?” asked Emma.

My mother, who was often as lucky as she was dreadful, tried the handle.  The door opened smoothly.  The hinges didn’t even squeak.  “I found the source of the music,” my mother said.  She sailed through the open door as if she were delivering a gift basket.  She soon came back out with her hand over her nose.

“Good God,” she said.  “Dead coyote.”

I lifted the neckband of my T-shirt up over my nose.  This served the dual purpose of hiding my smirk and filtering out the dead animal smell.  I stepped past Emma and into the room.  It was a dead coyote all right.  It had a bullet hole in its head, and someone had nailed it up on the closed door leading into the living room.  I couldn’t tell how long it had been rotting in the August heat.  The skin had pulled away from the jaws, exposing the teeth in a horrible grimace.  As I stepped closer to take a look, the corpse twitched.

“Holy fuck!”

I jumped back, knocking over a Formica table stacked with Mason jars.  A small transistor radio crashed down with the glass and began to hiss.

“What’s the matter?” Emma yelled.  “Are you okay?”

“No!” I yelled back, rubbing my hip where I’d banged it on the table.  “You and your bright ideas.  Remind me never to answer my phone again.”

“Just get on with it,” my mother said.  “The sooner in, the sooner out.”

The Formica table was clearly the source of the drop leaf nailed over the front window.  Carefully, I picked up the radio and gave it a shake.  It crackled back to life.  Frank Sinatra had finished crooning and Peggy Lee was now singing Why Don’t You Do Right?

The coyote was definitely moving.  In fact, it was farting.  Its stomach was hugely distended, and gas was escaping in low, horrible, intermittent rumbles.  I tried breathing through my mouth, but I could still smell it.  The mix of death, gas, and urine was overwhelming.

“It stinks like a meth lab,” I said over my shoulder.  “And a coyote mausoleum, and a public toilet.  I don’t see any evidence that he’s been cooking meth here, though.  No hotplates, no flasks, no empty Sudafed boxes.”

“What about all of that broken glass?”

“Jars,” I said.  “Canning jars.”

“Uh-huh.  And the urine stench?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe he pees in here.  Maybe he pees in jars.”  I shut the door behind me and pulled my T-shirt back into place.  “Man, that was nasty.  Who would do that to a coyote?”

“Jake Peterson,” my mother replied.  “Coyotes are vermin.  It’s always open season on them.  Or perhaps it was a disgruntled customer.”  She lit a cigarette.  “I’m going back out front to look around a bit more.  Are you coming?”

“No, thanks.  I’ve had enough.  I’ll wait for you down the hill.”

In the ten minutes or so it took Emma to complete her snoop, I took stock of my injuries.  The wasp stings had begun to swell.  The ones on my cheek and the back of my hand burned like mad, and I seemed to have acquired one on my scalp.  There was blood on the right sleeve of my T-shirt and I lifted it up to find a three-inch scrape.  My jeans were unsalvageable.  I tucked the torn flap into the waistband of my boxer shorts.  No way it would hold on a motorcycle ride back to town.  Given the state of my backside in general, I’d have to leave the bike at my parents’ house and get Emma to give me a lift home in the Queen Mary.  What had begun as a lovely day – sexual gratification, followed by bacon and pancakes, followed by more sexual gratification – had turned into a wretched afternoon of physical pain and breaking and entering.  It was as if Sam had never left us.

I moved into the shade of a nearby birch tree and gingerly sat down.  Though it was only a few degrees cooler, it felt nice.  A blackbird sang in the branches above my head, and I felt my jaw relax.  Up until that point, I hadn’t realized I was tensing it.

Emma sauntered down the hill, smoking pensively.  “I don’t think Jake pees in a jar.  I think he pees in a bucket,” she said.  “I found a white plastic container in a corner of the living room.  That would account for the urine smell.”

“How rustic.  Was the bucket full?”

“I didn’t look in it,” she said.  “I also don’t look into the tissue when I blow my nose.”

“You’re a real lady.  Listen, Ma, I think I’ll wait here.  You ride the bike home and then come back and pick me up in the car.”

“Sure,” she said.  But instead of getting on the bike, Emma walked right past me and across the road.  She opened Jake Peterson’s mailbox.

“That’s a federal offense, Ma!”

“Technically, it’s my mailbox,” she said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Whatever.  Listen, I’m not going to read his letters.  I just want to check the postmarks.”  She retrieved a handful of envelopes and magazines from the box. 
I waited for her to rifle through them.  “And?” I prompted.

“These are only a couple of days old.  The latest one is postmarked August 8^th.”

“Maybe someone is picking up his mail.”

“Maybe,” she said, stuffing the letters back into the box.  “I wonder where he is.”

“On vacation?” I suggested.  She stared at me.  “Okay,” I agreed.  “That doesn’t seem likely.  No one living in this hovel makes enough on his drug deals to afford a Caribbean cruise.  Maybe he decided to skip town and didn’t tell Kornmeyer.”

“He had a lease.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Oh, please.  What’s Kornmeyer going to do?  Hire a collection agency for a missing eighty bucks?  And forget about that lease.  If you were Jake Peterson, would you give your landlord thirty days’ notice on this dump?”

“I guess not.”  She climbed onto the bike.  I picked up the helmet and buckled it to her head.  “Phew,” she said.  “You smell like that dead coyote.  You’d better have a shower when we get back to the house.  What size jeans do you wear?”

“Thirty-two waist, thirty-four length.”

“Your father’s a thirty-eight, twenty-nine.  You’ll have to tie a piece of rope around your waist and pull your socks up really high.”

“Just go get the Queen Mary,” I replied.  “And if you’re feeling really motherly, you’ll find that inflatable pillow Dad uses when he’s got hemorrhoids.”

“Lucky Sylvie.  Good thing you conducted your . . . business . . . earlier in the day.  That’s a nice tattoo, by the way.  How long have you had ‘Property of Sylvie Wood’ written across your ass?”

“It’s written on the small of my back.”

“It’s written on the large of your butt.”

I ignored that.  “You might bring me a beer,” I said.  “A nice cold one.  I’d also like some duct tape and a staple gun.”

“Gonna try to fix your jeans?”
“No.  I’m going to try to shut your mouth.”

Chapter 7

“Everyone that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand,” said Suzy.

“Go away.  I’m not in the mood.”  It was after eight o’clock.  Emma had dropped me off with a cheery good-bye, and I’d hobbled my way up the stairs wanting nothing more than a few bushels of Sylvie’s sympathetic attention and a good night’s sleep.

“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine.”

“I am not drunk,” I said, rounding on him.  “And you can stop spouting the Bible at me.  What’s gotten into you, anyway?  The holy parakeet?”

“That’s paraclete,” Suzy corrected.  “Oh wait, you were making a joke.  Ha, ha. A learned joke, I must admit.  There’s hope for you yet.  If we could just clean you up and hand you off to The Church of the True Vine, I’m sure they could cure you of your unnatural desires.”

“What do you want, Suzy?  Apart from a pearl necklace to complete your very fetching ensemble.”

Suzy swished obligingly, showing off his neat shirtwaist dress, complete with flouncing skirt and shiny black pumps.  He looked like Donna Reed with an Adam’s apple.

“Thank you for noticing,” he said.  “You, on the other hand, look a little the worse for wear.  And you seem to be wearing Danny DeVito’s pants.  What have you done to yourself?”  He took my chin in his hand and subjected me to an intense nurse’s scrutiny.  “What’s this on your face?  And your arm?  Calamine lotion?”

“They’re wasp stings,” I said.  “So yes, it’s Calamine.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, Sylvie is waiting.”

“No, she isn’t.  She’s gone out with her mother.  She left you a note.”

“How do you . . .”

“Well,” he drawled, “I’m psychic.  Also, I saw Kate come up, and then I heard Sylvie say, ‘I’ll just leave Bil a note.’  Now, why don’t you come over to my place and we’ll wash off this ridiculous Calamine.  It’s for chicken pox, not wasp stings.  I’ll put some Benadryl cream on them, and then you can help me with a little problem.”

I allowed myself to be led into Suzy’s den of iniquity.  It was truly tasteless, from the darkly paneled walls to the tartan plaid sofa.  A flock of wooden geese with brass wings flew above the fireplace, an ornate cuckoo clock chimed the half-hour, and a bearskin rug, complete with head and claws, rested on the floor.

“Sit down,” he said, shoving me onto the sofa, “and let Nurse Parker-Smith do her thing.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and emerged a minute later with an enormous tackle box.  This he opened to reveal three trays of gauze, alcohol swabs, and ointments galore, as well as a wide selection of prescription pill bottles.  I picked one of these up.

“Tetracycline, five hundred milligrams.  Got any Valium?”

“Yes.  Five milligrams.  But don’t ask – you’re not having any.”  He wiped off the Calamine with a wet washcloth and daubed on some white cream.  “Now, let’s have a look at that shoulder.  No, don’t think you can hide from me.  I am an emergency room nurse.”

“Yes, I know.  But you’re off duty.  Ow, that burns!”

“It ought to.  It’s alcohol.  Heavens above, what have you done to yourself?”

“I’ve been visiting my mother.”

He tsked mildly.  “That dreadful Emma.  If you weren’t so old, I’d call Child Protective Services.  There, a little Neosporin and a Band-aid.  Any place else you’d like me to kiss and make better?”

“Yeah, my sore ass.”

It was a joke I soon regretted.  Suzy took hold of the back of my trousers and flipped me over face down on the sofa.  As my pants were only held up by a belt and a prayer, he had them halfway to my knees in five seconds flat.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” I said.

“Oh my Aunt Fanny!” he hollered.  “Property of Sylvie Wood?  When did this happen?  My God, does she know?”

“Of course she knows,” I snapped.  “We don’t get undressed in the dark.”

“Too much information,” he announced.  He swept a practiced hand over my ass, slapped me lightly, and yanked my pants back up.  “You’ll live.  Some nasty scratches, a few ugly contusions, and a ridiculous tattoo.  My diagnosis?  The scratches will heal, and the bruises will fade.  As far as that tattoo is concerned, you’re fucked.  I recommend that you avoid bicycle riding, mini-skirts and mooning.”

I sat down gingerly.  “I want a Valium, Suzy, and I want it now.  Why do you have all those drugs, anyway?  I’ll report you to my sister Ruth.”

“She’ll laugh in your face,” he replied.  “Every nurse on earth has a tackle box just like that one.  Now, don’t you want to know why I dragged you in here?”

“You mean apart from the insults and the vicious first aid?  No.  Can I have a beer?  Hugh only had one left in the fridge and my mother wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Oh please,” Suzy said.  “I live with a Mormon.  Do you think I’m allowed to keep beer in the fridge?  What if the angel Moroni stopped by and went looking for a glass of milk?  I keep a bottle of medicinal vodka under the bathroom sink.  It’s behind the spare rolls of toilet paper.”

“Fine.  I like mine with three cubes of ice and a twist of lemon.”

Suzy glanced at the cuckoo clock.  “Donny’s on night shift,” he said.  “He won’t be home until after three.  I think I’ll join you.”

As he crashed around in the kitchen, banging the ice cube tray on the counter and singing to himself, I conducted an inventory of his drug supply.  Amoxicillin, Etodolac, Lomotil – if I ever had a sinus infection, arthritis, or diarrhea, I knew where to come.

I closed the tackle box.  According to Ruth, Suzy was an excellent nurse.  He had years of experience working trauma in Seattle, so he was a dab hand when it came to car wrecks, kids with the flu, and hunting accidents – the stuff that made up the bulk of Cowslip’s hospital emergencies.  Suzy and I had met two years previously when he’d come to town with a group of political activists to help organize opposition to Proposition One.  It was then that he hooked up with Donny Smith, a closeted Mormon cop.  Suzy fell madly in lust.  Violins played, worlds collided, and he never went back to Seattle.  They seemed very happy together.  Donny was big, beefy, and earnest.  Suzy was so fey he probably had to weight his shoes to keep from floating off the ground.  Theirs was a definite case of opposites attracting.

Under Suzy’s spell, Donny had come roaring out of the closet.  He seemed to be dealing pretty well with his colleagues’ homophobia and his family’s shock.  Two of his four sisters were still speaking to him, and one of his five brothers had just sent him a birthday card.  He still had some trouble with his own internalized homophobia.  He had pretty rigid ideas about gender.  If I asked to borrow a wrench, Donny would instead come over and fix what was broken.  Letting him clear a nasty hair clog out of our bathroom drain seemed to have cured him of that, at least temporarily.

Donny was macho in a soft and squishy sort of way and, strangely enough, I think it helped that Suzy was a drag queen.  Although to be frank, Suzy wasn’t much of a drag queen.  He looked more like a transvestite who didn’t give a damn.  When Suzy got a job in the emergency room at Cowslip Memorial, I was disappointed to discover that he wore green scrubs and tennis shoes.  I’d half expected him to head off to work dressed like Corporal Klinger from M*A*S*H.

Suzy came out of the kitchen bearing two vodka  tonics in Burger King glasses.

“What,” I laughed.  “No silver tray?”

“Shut up and drink,” he said.  “Listen, I want you to look over a little email for me.  Do a bit of editing.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve got a Master’s in English and a tongue like a machete.”  He picked up his drink and led the way to a computer desk in the front bedroom.  While we waited for his modem to connect, he said, “I’ve joined the Slip-Fifty listserv.  You know it, don’t you?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t do chat groups.”

“Honey, you should.  Once you get started, they’re like crack cocaine.  Slip-Fifty is a community chat group, a bunch of local citizens trying to imagine what Cowslip will be like in the year 2050.  That was the original idea, anyway.  Now, it’s just a place for the hippies to argue with the fundamentalists.  It was your mother who got me on to it.  She’s been fighting an online war with Old Man Knox for about three months now, and she’s called upon me for some Biblical reinforcement.  I’ve been lurking for a while, but this is my maiden voyage, so to speak.  My very first post.”

Suzy was the son of a Pentecostal minister.  That my atheist mother would ask him for Bible help didn’t surprise me.  Neither did the fact that she and Suzy had joined forces to fight the predations of religious fundamentalism.  What did surprise me was that my mother was using email.

“Emma can’t set her own alarm clock,” I said.  “She’s practically a Luddite.  How did she get onto the Internet?  Does she actually have an account?  Shit – she’s not using my dad’s university account, is she?”

Suzy laughed.  “No, she’s not using your dad’s account.  Do you think he’d be stupid enough to give Emma his password?”

I relaxed.  “Explain, if you would, how all this got started.  My mother doesn’t know how to use an ATM card.  What the hell is she doing on the computer?”

“I taught her,” Suzy said proudly.  “In exchange for sewing lessons.  About six months ago, when your brother was in the ICU with bacterial pneumonia, I used to stop by and check on Emma.  Just to make sure she was eating, keep her company, that sort of thing.  It was always late at night after the rest of you had gone – those awful hours between three and five in the morning.  One night we were talking and I said that I wished I could sew.  She said she’d teach me.  I asked what I could teach her in return, and she said I could teach her how to use email.  She said your father had just bought a new computer that he claimed was for both of them, but clearly that was bullshit.  She didn’t know how to log on, and she wasn’t about to ask him.  I guess they’d had some sort of fight about word processing back in the dark ages, and she didn’t want to revisit that.  Do you know that she’s been typing all of her college papers on some old Smith-Corona?”

Well, yeah, I did know.  When we were kids, Sam and I asked our parents for a computer.  We wanted to play games – really sophisticated stuff like King’s Quest.  My mother, Sarah, and Naomi all wanted a new typewriter.  Sarah was in high school and Naomi was in college.  Hugh sided with Sam and me while Emma sided with Naomi and Sarah.  Ruth broke the deadlock.  Hugh bought our first computer, and Emma bought a typewriter.  Long past common sense and ordinary reason, the stubborn ox had refused to learn word processing.

I pulled an ice cube out of my glass and ran it over the stings on my arm.  “What I don’t understand, Suzy, is why my mother didn’t ask me?  When I was an undergrad, I worked in the English Department’s computer lab.  It was my job to teach people like Emma how to use email.  I would have taught her anything she wanted to know.”

“Oh,” Suzy lied.  “It’s embarrassing to ask your kids to teach you things.”  When I let this pass, he went on quickly, “I have to say, she took to it like a duck to water.  In no time at all, she was surfing the web, researching things, finding out information.  Then she got hooked up on this Slip-Fifty listserv.  It’s addictive – all of the town gossip appears there first.  Emma told me about it and I logged right on.  Until your mother came along, The Church of the True Vine were holding forth unchallenged on matters of feminism, theology, and politics.  Your mother let ’em have it.”

“Does this list have an archive?”

“Sure.  Do you want to see?”

I held up my empty glass.  “Another one of these first, I think.”

#

My mother wasn’t just a frequent poster to Slip-Fifty.  She was a terrible list hog.  Four, five, six posts a day, most of them sent between ten p.m. and two a.m., and almost all addressing the various goings-on at The Church of the True Vine.  Emma had dug up some astounding dirt.  George Knox had been drummed out of the Army in the early seventies, dishonorably discharged.  Green Tree Ministries was not his first pastoral appointment.  He’d led some evangelical church in Mississippi until he’d been caught with his hand in the collection box.  Finally, he was self-taught and self-ordained.  My mother took great glee in pointing out that the only credential Knox had was an associate’s degree in electronics from some half-assed technical college.

Emma seemed to have read most of The Root of Jesse Press publications, and she quoted from them freely.  George Knox maintained that it took the word of two women to counter the testimony of one man.  He argued that wives and daughters weren’t just subject to their husbands. They belonged to them.  Any woman who didn’t belong to one man belonged to all men.  He compared single women who lived outside the care of their fathers to public toilets – and public toilets were the dirtiest, weren’t they?

It was unbelievable stuff.  Knox argued that slavery was Biblically appropriate and, as it had served to Christianize the African heathens, on the whole it had been a good thing.  George Knox envisioned Cowslip, Idaho as the New Jerusalem.  What was worse was that he pictured himself as the new Solomon and The Church of the True Vine as the third temple.

I read through Emma’s posts and Knox’s responses.  My mother was right – George Knox was insane, and his followers were either lock-step toadies or deeply delusional – but Emma often looked like a loony herself.  She relied heavily on personal attacks:

“Nice photo of you on the church web-site, Georgie-Porgy.  Are you smuggling Bibles under that sweater, or are you just happy to see Jesus?”

She described Knox as a bloated, lard-assed, beached whale.  She didn’t bother to check her spelling or her punctuation, she hopped from non sequitur to non sequitur, and she cracked appalling jokes about the missionary position and Onanism.  She took a story Knox told about being anointed with oil and suggested he take a vat of it, fry up some doughnuts, roll them down Main Street and take a flying fuck at them.

Suzy refilled my glass twice.  By vodka and tonic number three, I felt ready to help him with his post.  George Knox was a complete shit-for-brains.  He’d mistaken his dick for a flagpole, and when he whipped it out, he expected the whole world to salute.  Reading him made me tired and angry, but Knox was not my mother.  He was free to make an ass of himself, and good luck to him.  Reading Emma made me want to edit every typo and correct every misspelling.  I wanted to take the many kernels of good argument and polish them up like a military boot – a boot my mother could shove so far up George Knox’s insidious, pompous ass that he’d taste Shinola for the rest of his life.

I turned reluctantly to the task of editing Suzy’s post.  I’d never read his writing, and I was afraid I might hurt his feelings.  Fortunately, it was a pleasant surprise.  Suzy was measured and thoughtful.  He stuck to his point – that Biblical literalists were either obliged to believe many contradictory things, or that they had to pick and choose what to believe, just as they accused moral relativists of doing – and he cited reams of text from the King James Version in support of his arguments.

The post took no time at all to edit, and when I was finished, Suzy handed me yet another drink.  I said, “This is good work, Suzy, but why do you bother?  People like George Knox never listen.  They were born with their minds already made up.”

Suzy looked thoughtful, or as thoughtful as could be expected of a drunken Donna Reed.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I guess I don’t like them thinking they own the Bible.”  He held up his drink and sloshed it for emphasis.  “I can play sword drill with the best of them.”

I shook my head and blinked in surprise.  I’d become bleary-eyed.  I held very still and waited for Suzy’s face to come back into focus.  “Sword drill?  What’s that?”

“It’s when the Sunday school teacher calls out a chapter and verse, and the first one to find it in the Bible gets a point.  It’s called sword drill because ‘the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.’  It’s easy stuff for the preacher’s kid, but . . . here,” he picked a Bible up off his desk, “I’ll go you one better.  I’ll turn my back.  You pick out a chapter and verse at random, and I’ll tell you what they are.”

“Like what?” I asked.  “In the beginning, God created . . .”

“No!” he shouted over his shoulder.  “Flip through at random, put your finger on a verse, and read it to me.”

“Okay.  Um, how about, ‘And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow, even throughout to all the host.’”

“It’s about Gideon,” he said.  “Judges.  Chapter seven?”

“Wow.”

He laughed.  “Oh, don’t be impressed.  Once upon a time, I could have recited the rest of the verse as well.  Now, I’d have to check.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said.  “You’re amazing.”

Suzy looked pleased.  He sipped his drink.

“Do you ever miss it?” I asked.  “You know, attending church and stuff.”

He nodded.  “All the time.  I don’t miss what my father preached – I don’t miss that at all – but I do miss the fellowship, and I miss the emotion.  A Pentecostal church is a passionate place.  You get a good preacher, and the congregation is on fire.  I miss the music, too.”

If he hadn’t looked so sad, I might not have done what I did next – or rather if he hadn’t looked sad and I hadn’t been so drunk.  I said, “Tell you what, Suzy.  I’m going to perform an old party trick.  Sit down on the bed and close your eyes, okay?”

I waited until he’d done as I asked.  Then I paused, took a deep breath, and began singing.  “Farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why.  Cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine, we’ll understand it all by and by.”

“My God,” he said, his eyes snapping open.  “You’re a soprano!  Spinto or dramatic unless I miss my guess.  What’s your range?  Do you know?”

“Three octaves plus a bit,” I replied.  “I can sing A3 to C6 in full voice.  Once I’m warmed up, I can hit low D.”

“Two below middle C?” he asked excitedly.

“Yes.  Is that what you mean by spinto?”

“Forget spinto.  With that range, you’re a dramatic.  Don’t you know the technical terms?”  I shook my head.  He explained, “A spinto soprano is fine and dandy, but a dramatic gets to sing all the best stuff.  The final aria from Madame Butterfly or the role of Siegelinde in Die Walküre.”

“You’re losing me,” I said.  “I’m a fag hag, not an opera queen.”

“We’ll soon fix that,” Suzy said firmly.  “You know your range.  You must have had some formal training?”

“Not really.  I know what the Cowslip High School music teacher told me and I know my way around a keyboard.  Sam and I had a year’s worth of piano lessons before Mrs. Anderson got frustrated and gave us the boot.  After listening to my hallway rendition of the Bugs Bunny version of Carmen, the music teacher asked me to join the Glee Club.  I thought she’d lost her mind.  Me and glee?”

“Me and thee and glee,” Suzy laughed.  “Do you know any other hymns?”

“Of course.  I’m a closet holy roller.”  I finished my drink and refused a refill.  “Actually, when I was first coming out to myself, I got worried.  My parents don’t believe in God, but my grandmother is religious, and I wondered in a vague sort of way if there really was a hell.  My first girlfriend was kind of a nut.”

“Geraldine Hamish.”  Suzy nodded knowingly.  “Big Presbyterian, big old dyke.”

“Does everyone in this town know my business?”

“Oh, sweetie,” he patted me on the knee.  “That is ancient history.  You survived, and she seems to have gotten over whatever hang-ups she might have had.”

“No shit,” I agreed.  “It would be quicker to list the women in this town Hamish hasn’t slept with than the ones she has.  I think there are only two, unless Sylvie has a secret she hasn’t shared with me.  Anyhow, back when I knew Geraldine, it was grope and then pray.  That got me worried, and so I used to sit up late at night watching Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.  In the end, I decided they were idiots, and I wasn’t damned.  The unfortunate side effect is that I came out with a secret love for gospel music, especially the Appalachian hillbilly kind.”

Suzy clapped his hands with pure glee.  “We used to sing Farther Along.  It’s one of my favorites.  Can you sing something else?”

“Sure.  Make a request.”

“Wait.  Can you read music?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.”  He took my hand and led me back into the living room.  On the wall opposite the fireplace was an upright piano.  Suzy rooted around in the bench and pulled out a book of sheet music called All-Time Greatest Hymns.  “Right,” he said, flipping to a page near the back.  “Can you sing that?”

“No problem.”

Smiling happily, Suzy banged out the chords of How Great Thou Art.

“Then sings my soul, my savior God, to thee, how great thou art . . .”

We played until the cuckoo chimed eleven and Mrs. Olafsson pounded on the ceiling with a broomstick.

“Let her call the cops,” said Suzy.  “My husband’s the law.”

“And Mrs. Olafsson is our landlady.  Best not to piss her off.  Besides, I’m getting hoarse.”

“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly.  “Besides, your honey’s probably home by now.  Although if she were, I would have thought she’d come over.  She’s bound to have heard us.”  Something in my expression must have given me away because he asked, “She does know about your hymn singing, doesn’t she?”

I shrugged.  “Sort of.  I don’t sing very often, and no one knows I sing hymns.  I’ve only ever sung them to myself.”

“That’s a shame,” he said seriously, “because you surely missed your calling.  You could have been a soloist at my father’s church, and that’s not something we take lightly.  You ought to treat Sylvie to an a capella concert.”

“That might be a little difficult,” I demurred.

“The religion thing make her nervous?”

“No, it’s not the religion thing.  It’s the singing.  And it’s not her, it’s me.  Sometimes when I hum along with the radio or just croon quietly to myself, Sylvie sings along, too, and . . .”

“And what?”

“Sylvie is a beautiful woman, Suzy.  I love her to pieces.  There’s not a thing in the world that I wouldn’t do for her.”

“Except listen to her sing?” he guessed.

I nodded.  “She can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

Chapter 8

I crept back to my apartment, trying my best to look sober.  I needn’t have bothered because Sylvie wasn’t home.  She didn’t come back until after midnight.

I’m ashamed to say that when I heard her key in the lock, I sat bolt upright on the sofa, where I’d been lying nearly comatose, and snapped, “Where have you been?  Do you know what time it is?”

“Bil,” she said, as if she were surprised to see me.  “I’ve been out to dinner.”

I blinked at her owlishly.  My contact lenses were sticking to my eyelids, and I was having trouble focusing.  Sylvie had a piece of rope in her hand, and tied to the end of it was what looked like a half-starved coyote.  It sat patiently on the floor next to her and stared back at me.

I closed my eyes a few times, trying to clear my vision.

“What’s that?” I asked stupidly.

“That,” Sylvie said, “is a dog.  I found it tied to the front door knob.”

“When?”

“Just now.  How much have you had to drink?”

“Not much,” I said.  “Three vodka and tonics.”

“Suzy?” she guessed.

“Suzy.”

“Then it’s more like six.  He does a long pour.  Bil, we can’t keep this dog.”
“No,” I agreed.  “But why would we?”

“Because this note was taped to the door.”  She handed me a dirty envelope on which was written:

This is your bother Sam’s dog.  We can’t keep him no more.  He needs some shots.  He eats a lot.  He has tapworms.

“My bother Sam,” I said.  “They got that part right.  What is that thing?  A dingo?”

“No,” Sylvie said.  She sat down next to me on the sofa.  The dog sniffed at my feet and then curled up on the braided rug in front of me.  “He’s a German Shepherd, and he’s four months old.”

“What?  A real German Shepherd?  Not some misbegotten mutt?”

“Open the envelope,” Sylvie said.

“Good gravy.  This is a form for the American Kennel Club.  If I send them,” I looked closely at the paperwork, “a small fortune, I can register this creature.  He’s got a certificate of pedigree.  His sire is Herr Siegfried von Crapenfuss, and his dam is . . . no.”

“Yes,” Sylvie replied.  “His dam is Devouring Fire’s Brunhilde.  This animal,” she patted the pup on the head, “is one of George Knox’s dogs.”

I read aloud.  “Dog was born on March 25th.  Ownership transferred to Samuel Hardy by Calvin Knox on July 5th.”  I looked up.  “Sam was arrested on July 7th, and his funeral was on the 13th.  He couldn’t have had this dog for longer than what?  Two days?”

“Long enough to name him,” Sylvie said.  “Keep reading.”

I read, and then I closed my eyes.  “Jesus Christ.  He named the dog Jesus Christ.  My brother was such an idiot.”

“His sense of humor was not subtle,” Sylvie observed diplomatically.

I reached down and scratched the dog between the ears.  He flinched at the touch of my hand.  “Jesus Christ.  Poor bastard.  Who do you suppose left him here?”

“Calvin?” Sylvie suggested.

“No way.  This dog has been washed.”  I leaned down and sniffed the top of Jesus’ head.  “Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, I think.  He hasn’t had his shots, and he was tied to our doorknob with an old piece of what looks like clothesline.  Besides, Calvin Knox can spell.  Remember, his daddy runs a classical Christian school.  Very snotty.”

“Then I don’t know,” Sylvie said.  “Perhaps it was a choir of angels.”

“Ha, ha.  It was more likely some of Sam’s old friends.  Francie Stokes, maybe, or those two skanks he was hanging around with just before he died, Steve and Joe.  They – wait!  Sylvie, I know this dog!”
“You know Jesus Christ?”

“Yes.  The last day I saw Sam, the day he blew up the sewer main . . .”

“And ruined our bathroom tile and the floorboards in the hallway.”

“That day.  Sam had this dog with him.  He was with Calvin, Steve, and Joe, and I gave them all a lift to the hardware store.  The dog sat on Sam’s lap.  He smelled awful, or Calvin smelled awful – someone or something stank.  I rolled down the windows but it didn’t help.  You wound up having the truck detailed.”

“So,” Sylvie said to the dog.  “You’re the one who cost me two hundred dollars.  No, don’t suck up.  Pay up.”  Jesus had begun washing Sylvie’s fingers with his big sloppy tongue.

“Stop that,” I told him.  “That’s my job.  Good grief, what’s this?  A tick?”  I plucked at a lump behind the dog’s left ear.  “No.  Just some indefinable uck.  Oh, man, it feels like dried liver.”

“Here.”  Sylvie handed me a tissue.  “Wipe it on this and go wash your hands.  And when you come back, would you please bring the air freshener?  Jesus may be freshly washed, but underneath the perfume, he still smells a bit like nasty dead thing.  Probably rolled around on a dead squirrel.”

“Typical Sam,” I said.  “He couldn’t have saddled us with a nice Siamese cat, could he?”

When I came back from the bathroom, Sylvie was serving Jesus a late night snack in the kitchen.  After he’d slurped up two mixing bowls full of water and devoured an entire package of hotdogs, he trotted contentedly into the living room and resumed his place on the rug in front of the sofa.

“Bil . . .” Sylvie said.

“I know.  We can’t keep him.  He has tapworms.”

“No, that’s not it,” she said.  “We’ll worry about Jesus later.”  Her forehead furrowed into a deep frown.  “I had dinner with my mother tonight.  She wanted to tell me that she’s seeing someone, and that it’s serious.”

“Oh?”  I tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but I was thinking about Calvin, my brother, and Jesus Christ, who was licking his front paws as if they were covered in beef gravy.  The sound was disgusting, like a six-year old with a Slurpee.  “Who’s she seeing?”

“Captain Schwartz,” Sylvie said.

I looked up.  “Jesus Christ!  No way!”

The dog barked.

#

We talked for half an hour, or, rather, Sylvie talked and I listened.  I tried to listen sympathetically, but it was late.  I was tired, half-drunk, and wasp-stung.  I was also at a loss.  I knew and loved Captain Schwartz, and I knew and loved Kate, Sylvie’s mother.  Sure, they were an improbable couple, but not impossible – or so I thought.

I said, “Your mom is dating Captain Schwartz, and she says she’s happy.  That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Sylvie’s eyes lost their dazed look.  With an almost audible snap, she focused on my disheveled appearance – the strange clothes, the red welts on my arm, the fact that I’d fallen asleep on the sofa with one shoe on.  Then she spotted the note she’d left for me, the one I’d missed when I’d stumbled in.  It was still taped to the lampshade.  She plucked it off and handed it to me.  I folded it in half without reading it and tucked it between the sofa cushions.

“When I came in, did you ask me where I’d been?”  She spoke in a calm, even tone, but I wasn’t fooled.  Unless I answered very carefully, fur would fly, dishes would break, and shit would hit the fan.

“I know what you think,” I said, affronted, “but I did not come in here falling down drunk.  Yes, I had a couple of drinks with Suzy.  I was injured before that.  My mother bounced me off the back of the motorcycle.  I was attacked by wasps, obliged to knock a door down with my shoulder, and . . . are you laughing at me?”

“No,” she lied, making a poor effort at controlling herself.  She schooled her features into something that vaguely resembled sympathy.  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?  I can see that Suzy has treated your wounds.”

“How can you tell?”

She lifted the sleeve of my T-shirt.  “Your shoulder is clean and bandaged and there’s ointment on your wasp stings.  You were over there hitting the vodka pretty hard though, weren’t you?”

“I told you, I only had three.  When you hear my story, you’ll see that I earned them.”  I gave her a brief summary of events, ending with, “And then Suzy caught me at the front door.  He invited me in to do some editing.  You weren’t home and I lost track of time.  I’m sorry.  I hadn’t planned on drinking the night away.”

“It’s all right,” she said.  “I shouldn’t take it out on you.  It’s just . . . I need to fight with someone, and I can’t fight with my mother.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not like you and Emma, Bil.”

“Of course not,” I agreed, putting my arm around her shoulders.  She leaned against me, and I smoothed her hair.  “You and your mother are sweet, reasonable people who never go around breaking and entering.”

She laughed.  “That’s not what I meant.  I mean my mother and I don’t communicate that way.  We’re not good at clearing the air.  I love her, but we’ve never been very open with each other.  She came and picked me up tonight, we had a lovely dinner, and then she said she had something to tell me and she hoped I’d be happy because she was happy.  That’s when she told me she was seeing Rebecca Schwartz.”

“But you’re not happy.”

“No.”

We sat in silence for several minutes.  I was glad Emma wasn’t a lesbian.  My father would have made a damned ugly woman.  Apart from that, it might have been nice to have some company in the family. Someone who really understood.  Sylvie was a lesbian, and her mother was a lesbian.  That seemed like a good thing to me.

The effects of the vodka were beginning to wear off and I felt tired and sore.  I yawned.  “So.  Your mom and the Captain.  It was kind of inevitable, don’t you think?”

Sylvie sat up and glared at me.  “What do you mean?”

“Nothing!”  I held up my hands in mock surrender.  “It’s just that your mom came out two years ago.  Since then, she’s gone to a few dances, attended a few support groups, but she hasn’t dated anyone.  She’s quite attractive – she looks like an older version of you – and here’s her nearest neighbor, a woman who just happens to run a lesbian separatist women’s collective and is also about the biggest dyke in Cowslip.  The Captain and your mother are nearly the same age.  They see a lot of each other in the ordinary course of events.  Didn’t it ever cross your mind that they might someday get together?”

“No,” she said firmly.  “It didn’t.  Rebecca Schwartz is . . . well, she’s exactly what you said.  She’s the biggest dyke in Cowslip.  More than that, she’s like the poster lesbian for the Pacific Northwest.”  She stood up and began pacing.  “Radical, separatist, promiscuous . . .”

“That’s not fair,” I interrupted.  Unwisely.

“I know you admire her,” she accused.  “What is it you’re always saying – that she’s your role model?”

“When I say that, I don’t mean . . . I’m not suggesting . . .”

“That you’d like to sleep with every woman in the tri-state area?” she continued.  “Change partners as often as you change your socks?”

“No!  No, I don’t want to do that, and Captain Schwartz doesn’t . . . okay, she does, but she’s fundamentally decent.  She hasn’t settled down, so to speak, but it’s not like she’s a nomad or something.  She’s lived in the same place for twenty years.  So she’s had a bit of spice in her life.  Not everyone is cut out for monogamy.”

“Spice?  As in variety?  If she had any more spice, Bil, she’d be a curry.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.  “Sylvie, honey, why is this upsetting you so much?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”  Suddenly, she looked as tired as I felt.  She sat back down.  “Why are you defending Captain Schwartz?”

“Force of habit,” I assured her.  I slid down the sofa and put my arm around her again.  “Not because I want to be a curry, too.  I don’t want anyone but you.  You know that.  I’m a Lutheran potluck tuna noodle casserole – no spice at all.  Just a little pepper.”

Sylvie leaned back.  Jesus got up and put his head in her lap.  She sighed and scratched behind his ears.

“Stupid dog,” she said.  “Those pants are ridiculous, Bil.  Is your dad really that short?”

“His legs are.  Let me ask you something – and this is just a hypothetical question – how would you feel if your mother were dating someone other than Captain Schwartz?”

“Like who?”

I tried to think of the most upstanding lesbian I knew.  No one local seemed to qualify, so I had to go national.  “Susan Sarandon.  I know, she’s not a lesbian, but how would you feel if your mother were dating her?”

Jesus closed his eyes.  One paw had crept up to join his head.  It was only a matter of time before he wormed his way onto Sylvie’s lap.  I shoved him off.

“Come on,” I encouraged her.  “How would you feel?”

“Jealous,” she said at last.  “Susan Sarandon is hot.”

“Off my arm, you hussy.”  We wrestled good-naturedly and Sylvie fell on top of me.  “Careful of my injuries,” I warned.  She wriggled around for a bit, just to be annoying, before settling comfortably against me, her forehead resting on my cheek.

“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed.  “My mother is fifty-one.  She probably knows what she’s doing.”

“Probably.”  I let my hand, which had been resting on the small of her back, wander down to the lovely curve of her buttocks.  “Do you know what I’m doing?”

“Striking out?” she suggested.

“Really?” I asked, aghast.

“No, not really.”  She stood up, pulling me with her.  “Come on.  I’d do anything to get you out of those trousers.”

#

Just after two a.m., Jesus announced that he needed to go out.  He whined and pawed at the bedroom door.  Sylvie shifted in my arms and murmured, “I suppose we should be glad he’s house-trained.”

“It would be better,” I whispered into her hair, “if he were potty-trained.”

More whining and pawing.

“Bil.”

“Hmm?”

“He’s your bother’s dog.”

I gave up and swung my legs out of bed.  “I’m not ready to put my contact lenses back in.  Where are my glasses?”

Sylvie yawned and stretched.  “Top of the bedside table.  Left to your own devices, you’d toss them on the floor or in the laundry basket and never find them.”

I leaned over and kissed her.  “You’re such a tidy soul.”

“I’m a tired soul,” she said.  “Put your pants on, darling, and take Jesus Christ for a whiz.  If he pees on Mrs. Olafsson’s hardwood floors, she’s going to kill us.”

“Ha!” I said.  “They’re already ruined.  Remember?”

With Jesus tied to his rope once again, I found myself walking the familiar path from my apartment to Pho From Home.  The restaurant was officially open from noon until one a.m., but Vivian never knew when to quit.  She was scrubbing the counter when I tapped on the glass of the front door.  She motioned for me to come in, but I pointed at Jesus, who was sniffing the air with more than a passing interest.  Vivian bustled around the counter and opened the door.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the dog.

“What does it look like?”

“Tomorrow’s lunch special,” she replied, cracking herself up.  “Ha!  I got you!  You’re making stupid white face.  You shock too easy, ô-môi.  Come in, come in, and bring lunch special with you.  If cops come by, we tell them you’re blind.  You want some pho?”

I did want some pho, but I shook my head.  “No, thanks.  I’m just taking Jesus Christ here for a walk.”

“You name that dog Jesus Christ?  You are dien cai dau, ô-môi.  What’s his name from the concrete octopus will come and get you for blasphemy.”

Ignoring my half-hearted protests, Vivian put an enormous bowl of pho with sliced beef flank in front of me.  Jesus got a bowl as well, only without the broth.  He ate it like he’d never seen food.

“You starve him?” Vivian asked.

“No,” I said between bites.  “Someone else did.  He’s a stray; just arrived on my doorstep tonight.  And I am not dinky-dow.  That means insane, right?”

Vivian cocked her head to one side.  “Good guess.  It’s more like crazy.”

“Okay, I’m not crazy.  And I should tell you that I looked up ô-môi.  It’s some weird kind of fruit.  You have to break it open and suck out the juice.  Apparently, it’s an acquired taste.  The thing I read said it had a peculiar smell.”

Vivian crossed her legs.  “Oh Bil, I am going to pee laughing,” she said, gasping for breath.  “Ô-môi is fruit – it’s special fruit, just like you.”

I paused with the chopsticks halfway to my mouth.  “Do you mean gay?”

“Yes!  Women are ô-môi.  Men we call bay-day.”

“Is ô-môi insulting?”

Vivian came around the counter and hugged me so hard that I dripped pho down the front of my T-shirt.  “No!  Gay women call themselves ô-môi.  We have lots of women like you in Vietnam.  You think you invent gay?”  She stopped embracing me and slapped me hard on the back.  “White people – you think you invent the wheel.  You think you invent the noodle.  You don’t!  We invent fireworks.  We invent everything.  You steal it and then you forget.  Very convenient.”

Jesus had long since finished his pho and was looking hopeful.  Vivian took his bowl away and shook a finger at him.  “Greedy guts,” she said.  “No more for dogs.  Too much will make you sick.”

I finished my own bowl.  “Do you have any ô-môi?” I asked.

“Apart from you?  No.  It smells awful, like . . . uh . . .”

“If you say crotch, I’m leaving.”

Vivian crossed her legs again.  “I love you,” she said, giggling like mad.  “You make me laugh.  If I didn’t have a sexy young husband, I might take you away from your cute little Blondie.”  She winked outrageously.  “How is she?  Does she know you sneak here to see me every night?”

“It’s not every night,” I argued.

“No,” Vivian agreed.  “I’m closed on Sunday.  Tell me about this dog.  You get him tonight?  Why?”

“He belonged to my brother.  I don’t know where he’s been since Sam died.  Someone left him tied to my front door with this bit of clothesline.”

“What will you do with him?  Keep him?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Sylvie doesn’t want a dog, and we live in a third floor apartment.  I’ll probably try to find him a home.”

Vivian shook her head.  Her hair was short and dark with only a few strands of gray.  Even when she wasn’t hooting with laughter, and that wasn’t often, she still looked amused.  It was her eyes.  They were a rich, dark, dancing brown, and the skin at the corners was perpetually crinkled.  Vivian was short, but she was by no means small.  She was as round and solid as a butterball and as sexy as hell.  She projected complete self-confidence and total awareness.  Vivian had a talent for seeming completely absorbed in whatever it was she was doing, cooking, cleaning, talking, or listening.  She was intense without making you feel uncomfortable.

She looked at me and then down at Jesus.  “No, you won’t find him a home.  He has a home.  He was your brother’s dog.  You will keep him.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I do,” she said.  “You are stubborn, like me.”

Chapter 9

The next morning, Sylvie half-dozed on one end of the sofa while I sat on the other end, reading the Cowslip police log.  Our local rag, the Cowslip Herald-Examiner, printed the police log twice a week.  Reading it was one of the great entertainments offered by our tiny metropolis.

Sylvie yawned.  “Anything exciting?  A stabbing?  A riot?”

“Yeah,” I said, “listen to this.  It’s under the heading ‘Welfare Check.’  560 North Madison, Sunday, 7:35 p.m.  Concerned reporting party requested that officers check on friend who had not been seen for several days.  Officers complied and found subject was fine but suffering from a chest cold.”

Sylvie planted her feet firmly in my lap and wiggled her toes provocatively.

“How much money does Donny make?”

“Thirty-six thousand plus benefits.”  I stopped petting Jesus and began stroking the sole of Sylvie’s left foot.  The dog gave a plaintive sigh and dropped his head onto his paws.  “Six thousand more than he made as a sheriff’s deputy working out in the county.”

Sylvie said, “Clearly being a Cowslip cop is far more dangerous.  Someone with a chest cold might cough on you.  Tickle the other foot?”

“Of course.  Coughing is not the only hazard, my sweet.  Listen to this: we have here one, two . . . a grand total of five animal problem complaints.  And here’s another welfare check, one traffic hazard, and, oh, here’s a good one.  Monday, 11:15 p.m. A moose was reported wandering aimlessly through the Jackson Avenue housing development.  Moose was pursued but eluded authorities.  It was not apprehended. Who would try to apprehend a moose?”

“Boris and Natasha?”

“Very funny.  We also have a report of a headless black cat – its owner seems to have put a black sock over its head and let it outdoors to frighten the neighbors.  Here’s a noise complaint – reporting party claimed it sounded as if upstairs neighbors were tap-dancing in bath-tub.  And then there’s . . . Jesus Christ!  No,” I said to the dog, “not you.  Lie down.  Here’s one across the road from my parents.”

I read aloud.  “Tuesday, 4:00 a.m. Reporting party said vehicle with no headlights on entered gravel pit on Bryce Canyon Road and parked by anhydrous ammonia tanks at Robertson’s Agricultural Supply.  Vehicle was left running.  Reporting party said she suspected vehicle’s occupants were stealing product for manufacture of methamphetamine. She – that’ll be Emma.  What was my mother doing up last night at four o’clock in the morning?”

Sylvie, who’d worked her right foot up under my T-shirt, gave me a poke in the ribs with her toes.  “You were up last night at four o’clock in the morning.”

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.  “So were you, but we weren’t spying on a gravel pit.  I never should have said I thought Jake Peterson might be running a meth lab.  Now my mother’s gone vigilante.”

“Well,” Sylvie yawned again, “since he wasn’t home when you broke into his shack yesterday afternoon, I’m guessing that it wasn’t him in the gravel pit.  How are your various injuries this morning?”

I lifted the newspaper above my head and rotated my shoulder.  “That’s all right, and,” I wiggled back and forth in my seat, “my ass is sore but improving.  How about you – are you feeling any better?”

She stopped laughing and sighed.  “I guess.  I don’t know, Bil.  It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?  My mother and Captain Schwartz are dating, and I’ll just have to get used to it.”

“Maybe not,” I said thoughtlessly.  “It might not last.”

In the pregnant pause that followed, I had time to wonder whether the injury to my ass had caused permanent brain damage.  I didn’t want to try and save myself.  I wanted to fold the police log into a paper airplane and fly myself out the window.

I said, “What I mean is, your mother might decide that Captain Schwartz isn’t her type after all.”

Sylvie drew her feet back and tucked them up neatly beneath her.  A full retreat.  I stood up.

“Why don’t I make some coffee?” I suggested.  “I can either poison my own or turn my back discreetly while you do it.”

“I’m not angry,” she said.  “Not with you, anyway.”  She ran a hand through her hair and looked at me.  “It’s just . . . that’s exactly why I don’t want my mother going out with Captain Schwartz.  It’s not the dating I’m worried about. It’s the after.  If my mother takes the Captain seriously, if she thinks this might be permanent . . .”

“Do you know that she does?”

Sylvie shook her head.  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask.  We had dinner.  She asked how you were doing, I told her, and then she said she’d been seeing Rebecca.  I actually said, ‘Rebecca who?’  My mother laughed and said, ‘Rebecca Schwartz.  The Captain.’  I don’t know what I said after that.  Probably nothing.  I was speechless.  My mother talked about being happy and hoping that I’d be happy for her.  We didn’t talk about their relationship in any detail.  We turned on the television, we watched the end of All About Eve, and she drove me back home.  But Bil, she was positively glowing.  She looked like . . . Bil!  Don’t make that face!”

“What face?”

“That speculative face.  I know what you’re thinking.”

“Well, I . . . um . . . I expect they probably have . . . don’t you?”

“I haven’t given it any thought,” she snapped.

“Okay!” I said.  “It wasn’t like I was giving it a lot of thought.  She’s your mother.  I’m not a complete pervert.  Tell me – are you going to yell at me every time we talk about this?”

“I wasn’t yelling.”

“No,” I agreed.  “You were doing that thing you do instead of yelling.  That thing where your body goes all stiff, you glare at me, and your voice gets really loud.”

The corners of her mouth twitched.  Taking a chance on the hope that it was mild amusement and not an attempt to bare fangs, I stepped over the dog and stood next to her.  “Honey, this is the second day of our summer vacation.  My mother ruined day one.  Is there anything we can do to keep your mother from wrecking day two?”

“There is.”  She took my hand and let me pull her to her feet.  “You can take me to Wawawai.”

“And Jesus?”

“I suppose he’ll have to come, too.  Bil?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think we could change his name?  Call him Fido or something?”

“Are we keeping him then?”

We both looked at the dog, who was gazing up at us expectantly.  He was housebroken.  He didn’t bark.  He was adorable – all legs and head and soulful brown eyes.

Sylvie tugged at my hand.  “You’re smitten with him, aren’t you?”

I nodded.  Silly tears were stinging my eyes and my nose had begun to itch.

“It’s okay,” she said.  “I’ll have a word with Mrs. Olafsson.  She loves dogs.  When I moved in, she had a horrible stinky poodle named Snuggles.  It smelled like a dormitory urinal.  If we put down a pet deposit and change his name, I think we’ll be fine.  Mrs. Olafsson is a liberal Lutheran, but a dog named Jesus Christ . . . she’d have a fit.”

I felt wildly happy.  I held her tight and kissed her thoroughly.

“Are you sure?” I asked.  “He is sort of a child substitute.”

Sylvie looked taken aback.  “Do you want a child?”

I thought for a moment.  “I don’t know.  Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

We both looked at Jesus again.  He was smiling at us, his long tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.  “He looks like Boo Radley,” I observed.

“Well, we can’t call him Boo,” Sylvie said.  “Me and you and a dog named Boo?  I hate that song.  Why don’t we call him JC?”

“JC,” I repeated happily.  “I like that.”

“Good.  Now kiss me again, and I’ll go pack a picnic.  In the meantime, you can take JC down to Animal Fair and buy him a proper collar and leash.  Rolled leather is the best,” she advised.  “That’s what my mother buys for her dogs.”

Sylvie’s mother was a millionaire a few times over, but I refrained from making this less than politic observation.  “Any other commands, your majesty?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “Fifty pounds of good quality puppy food – no junk.  Some dog biscuits, several chew toys, a bed, shampoo, nail clippers, and two large stainless steel bowls, one for food and one for water.  Oh, and ask if they have any pills for ‘tapworms.’  Also roundworms, hookworms, and any other intestinal parasites JC might have acquired during his wandering in the wilderness.  While you’re gone, I’ll make an appointment with the vet my mother uses for her dogs. S-H-O-T-S,” she spelled.

I did a quick mental calculation.  “There goes my half of this month’s rent.”

“I know,” she said.  “Just imagine how much a baby would cost.”

Chapter 10

Wawawai, Washington, is a park on the Snake River about twenty-five miles from Cowslip.  We often went there to climb the rocks, have picnics, and jump off the small cliffs into the ice-cold water.  Along with the isolated top of Hayman’s Butte, the sidewalk table farthest from the door at the Cowslip Café, and a particular tree in an old cedar grove called Traveler’s Rest, Sylvie and I considered Wawawai to be one of “our” spots.

Halfway there, I began singing “Why Wawawai?” to the tune of “Why do fools fall in love?”  This earned me a slap on the arm.

“Ouch,” I said.  “Remember my wasp stings.”

“You’re tough,” she replied.

“And you’re cruel.”  I leaned over and kissed her anyway, though first I had to shove JC out of the way.

“Watch the road,” she advised, kissing me back.

“Tease.”

“Horn dog.”

“Good lord,” I laughed.  “Where did you learn that one?”

“From your best friend, Tipper,” she said.  “He warned me about you.  He said you were insatiable.”

“And?”

She wiggled her eyebrows lasciviously.  “So far, so good.”

The parking lot at Wawawai was mercifully uncrowded.  There were only three other vehicles besides ours.  I didn’t pay any particular attention to them, though in retrospect I should have.  We made our way to one of the more secluded spots only to find my sister, Sarah, sunning herself on a beach towel.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.  The dog barked.

Sylvie laughed.  “All we need is a cat named ‘Fuck’ and you’ll be cured of your swearing.”

I said, “Is there nowhere we can go to escape from my family?”

“I love you, too,” Sarah smiled up at us.  “It’s nice to see you, Sylvie.  How have you been?  I wouldn’t know because Bil never calls me unless she wants something.”

“Ha!”  I pointed an accusing finger at her.  “Don’t talk to me about calling – why didn’t you call me last Friday?”

She looked puzzled.  “What about last Friday?”

“Who did you have lunch with and why?”

“Oh,” Sarah said, realization dawning.  “That.”

“Yes, that.”  I took Sylvie’s hand and gave JC’s leash a yank.  “Come on, honey.  Let’s go somewhere less crowded.”

“Where?” Sylvie asked.

“Anywhere,” I snapped.  “Away from this traitor.”

Sarah laughed ruefully.  “I’m sorry, Bil.  Really.  I didn’t know anything about this property business until Emma called me at work and said that she and dad wanted to take me out to lunch.  As you know, I’ll do anything for free food, so I went.  You should have been there with us.  I told Emma she was being stupid.  She said she wanted to get you on your own to tell you, but you know how she is.  When she gets an idea in her head, she can’t be moved.  I do think it’s a good thing, though, don’t you?  Emma needs a project.  Building herself a new house might be just the ticket.”

“She’s got a house,” I pointed out.  “What’s she planning to do with that?”

This was something I should have asked Emma.  Between the wasps, the attempted break-in, and the dead coyote, I’d somehow forgotten to find out what she and my father planned to do with my childhood home.  The stricken look on Sarah’s face told me all I needed to know.  I was grateful for the feel of Sylvie’s hand in mine.

“Where did you get the dog?” Sarah evaded.

“From our late brother,” I replied.  “A posthumous gift.”
“His name is Jesus Christ,” Sylvie explained.  “We’ve decided to call him JC.”

“Wisely,” Sarah observed.  “Can you keep a dog in your apartment?”

I shrugged.  “We’ll find out.  Tell me, Sarah, what is Emma going to do with the house?”

“Bil, I’m sorry . . .”

Whatever Sarah had been going to say was interrupted by the appearance of a tall, dark man with the thickest mustache I’d ever seen.

“Buck,” Sarah said.  Her voice was soft and honeyed.  She stood up and kissed him lightly on the cheek.  “This is my sister, Bil, and her partner, Sylvie Wood.  Girls, this is Buck DeWitt.”

Buck held out an enormous meaty paw.  “Pleased to meet you, Bil,” he said, smiling and shaking my hand vigorously.  “And you, Sylvie.  And who’s this fine fella?”  He reached down and patted JC so vigorously that the dog’s head bobbed up and down like a car toy.

“This is the Son of God,” I replied.  Sylvie gave me the pointy elbow, but I didn’t care.  She was an only child and didn’t understand the finer points of vetting your sister’s boyfriends.  “Jesus Christ.  We call him JC for short.”

“Good name.  We had a pup called Sweet Jumping Judas.  Must be a western thing.”  Buck squinted up at the sun.  “Could it get much hotter?  I feel like an earthworm on an electric fence.”

My sister, Sarah, was drop-dead gorgeous.  Six feet tall in her stocking feet with dark brown skin, prominent cheekbones, and a rich, expressive mouth, she looked like a runway model.  She might have been advertising lipstick in Vogue, something ridiculously expensive made out of crushed diamonds, mink oil, and the ashes of Grace Kelly.  But she wasn’t a model.  She was a reference librarian at Cowslip University and she dressed like a Guatemalan bag lady.  She was especially fond of the hemp clothing store, embellishing their thick green offerings with shoes, scarves, and enormous handbags in assorted neon colors.

Buck DeWitt was a good four inches taller than Sarah.  It might have been six if his legs hadn’t bowed.  He was dressed like the Marlboro Man.  Everything about him screamed Montana ranch hand.  Despite the fact that it was late summer and he was visiting a swimming hole, he wore a long-sleeved plaid shirt, tight Wrangler jeans, and brown pointy-toed cowboy boots.  I looked at my sister, hoping for some explanation of exactly who and what Buck DeWitt was, but she continued to gaze up stupidly at him.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.  “I had a mare with a prolapsed uterus.  Took forever to get the damned thing back in.”

Sarah brought herself back down to planet earth.  “Buck is a veterinarian,” she explained.  “He specializes in horses.”

“Oh, good,” I said.  “He’s not an amateur gynecologist.”

Buck laughed.  Sarah giggled.  I caught Sylvie’s eye and we enjoyed a psychic moment.  “Whoa, Nelly,” we said telepathically.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Bil,” Buck said politely.  “Sarah talks quite a bit about her family.  So far, you’re the first member of the Hardy clan that I’ve met.”

“She’s saving the best for last,” I assured him.  “You just wait until you meet our mother.  How would you describe her, Sylvie?”

My girlfriend smiled.  “Emma is wonderful.  Smart, funny, politically active . . .”

“Loud, over-bearing, insanely nosey,” I added.  “You know how curiosity killed the cat?  In Emma’s book it doesn’t matter because the cat died satisfied.”

“She sounds like a hoot,” Buck said.

“That’s one way of putting it.  I have to say that it’s really nice to meet you, Buck.  We rarely get to meet any of Sarah’s friends.  She’s very secretive about . . . some things.”

“Bil,” Sarah warned.  “Enough.  I told you she was a joker, Buck.  Still, she does yeoman’s work with our mother, so I suppose I owe her.”

“Speaking of,” I continued, “what were you going to say about the house?  Whatever it is, I’m not going to like it, am I?”

Sarah frowned.  “No, you’re not.  They’ve already sold the house, Bil.  To Robertson’s Chemicals.”

I waited, hoping she might be cracking some kind of cruel joke.  Robertson’s had offered to buy my parents out half a dozen times, usually after Emma had filed yet another petition against them with the county.  Each time they made an offer, my mother would come up with some graphic directive about what they could do with their dirty money.

“Emma sold to the enemy?” I asked, incredulous.  “When?”

“About a week after Sam died,” Sarah said.  “Robertson’s offered them the appraised value of the property plus ten percent.  That was how they could afford to buy the Kornmeyer place.  They paid cash for it.  They’ll use the equity to take out a construction loan to pay for a new house.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” she hesitated.  “Emma should have told you this, Bil – in the meantime, they’re renting our old house from Robertson’s.”

I took a deep breath.  “Let me get this straight.  Our parents are paying those evil, polluting, soul-destroying bastards for the privilege of living in their own house?”

“Not technically, Bil.  The house belongs to Robertson’s now.  I’m sorry.”

I shut my eyes.  If I concentrated on my anger, with any luck, I wouldn’t cry.  “Sarah, how could she?  We grew up there.  Sam grew up . . . that was our home.”

I opened my eyes.  My sister and I looked at each other for a long moment, letting the loss of Sam float in the air between us.  Buck shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.  Sylvie moved her hand to the small of my back.  It was no use.  I was going to cry, and Sarah was, too.  Lucky Sylvie.  Lucky Buck.

The tension was broken by a ringing telephone.  Sarah looked around absently and Buck patted his pockets.

Sylvie said, “I think it’s coming from your handbag, Sarah.”

“Of course.”  My sister reached down, rooted around in a monster of orange straw and pulled out a cell phone.  “Hello?  Hello.  Emma, I should have known.  Your ears must be burning.  What?  Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do happen to know where she is.  Would you like to speak to her?”

Sarah handed me the telephone.

“Hello, mother,” I said sadly.

“Where are you?”

“Wawawai.”

“How quickly do you think you can get here?”

“It depends on when I leave.  Or,” my voice grew harsh, “if I leave.  I don’t want to see you right now.  I don’t know if I’ll want to see you next week.  You’re a sneaky, back-stabbing old . . . ”

“It’s about an hour from Wawaiwai to here,” Emma interrupted.  “Listen, make up some excuse for Sarah.  Tell her I’ve accidentally set fire to the kitchen again, and that I need your help to replace the cupboard doors before your father gets home.”

“As if.  Look, Ma – I am more pissed at you right now than I have ever been.  Sarah told me about you selling Robertson’s our house.  How could you keep that from me?”

“Never mind all that,” my mother said dismissively.  I was about to argue but she cut in, “Your friend Donny Smith just stopped by.  They found Jake Peterson.”

“Where?”

“In the shack.”

“In the shack?  But what . . . ” I stopped, suddenly aware that there were four pairs of ears listening to my conversation.  Even JC had his head tilted to one side, a short, hairy eavesdropper.  “Shit.  What was he doing?”

“Nothing,” Emma said.  “He was dead.”

I put my hand over the phone and spoke to the waiting crowd.  “I have to go home.  A little domestic disaster.”

“Emma’s set fire to the kitchen again,” Sarah explained to Buck.  “It happens about once a month.”

I turned my back to them and asked quietly, “Are you sure he’s . . . you know?”

Emma gave a short unhappy laugh.  “Of course I’m sure.  Donny Smith is in our bathroom right now, barfing his guts out.  Someone has blown Jake Peterson’s brains from hell to breakfast.”

Chapter 11

We were halfway to Cowslip before Sylvie spoke.

“You were lying about the kitchen fire.  What’s really going on?”

I kept my eyes on the road and paid scrupulous attention to the speedometer.  “Jake Peterson is dead.  He seems to have been shot.”

“Oh.”  She adjusted the air conditioning vents, put her foot on the dash to re-tie her shoe, and played with the lever that adjusted the side-view mirror.  Finally, she said, “I’m sorry this man is dead, but why exactly are we rushing off to your mother’s house?  I heard you ask if Donny was there.  Is there some problem I don’t know about?”

The highway was narrow and the shoulder on the right dropped twenty feet down to a small, rocky creek.  The people of eastern Washington don’t believe in guardrails. It’s survival of the fittest.  A semi-truck passed us doing at least twenty miles over the limit, the wind of his wake giving my Toyota a good buffeting.  I gave him the finger.

“Bil?”

“I’m listening,” I said.  “I just don’t know how to answer.  Jake the Snake was found in the shack on my parents’ new property.  He must have come back sometime after Emma and I broke in.  The problem is . . . ”

“Go on.”

“The problem is that he was shot.  Someone blew his brains out.”

“Oh,” she said again.  There was a long pause.  “Could have been suicide.”

“Yes,” I agreed.  “But that’s not what Emma seems to think.”

“Hmm.”

I looked at Sylvie.  She was staring disapprovingly at one of her fingernails.

“This is just a wild guess,” she said, her tone splitting the difference between apprehension and aggravation, “but I’d be willing to bet that the sheriff’s department isn’t happy that you and Emma broke in there yesterday.”

Though I was feeling more than a little apprehensive myself, I couldn’t help laughing.  “Oh, baby, if you think Emma told them about that, then you don’t know my mother.  She’ll have peppered them with God only knows what lies.  Be prepared to think on your feet.”

“Why?”
“Because if we don’t back her up in whatever story she’s concocted, yours truly is going to jail.”

#

I was relieved when we turned into the driveway and there were no patrol cars waiting for us.  Instead, there was just Emma sitting in her usual spot, puffing away like a nicotine dragon.  She sprang off the porch as we drove up and charged the driver’s side door.

“You took long enough,” she huffed.  “Where have you . . . what’s that?”  She poked a chubby finger at JC.

“It’s a toaster,” I said.  “Do you have a problem with it?”

“No,” she said.  “Is it housebroken?”

“Yes, it is.  And it has a name, too.  Jesus Christ.  Want to know where I got him?”

“No,” she said.  “Not at the moment, anyway.  We don’t have time.  Into the house,” she commanded, “before your father gets home.”

We trailed along behind her.  Sylvie moved reluctantly. I followed in habitual obedience.  My mother ushered us into the house and closed the front door behind her.  She leaned against it and, with breathless drama, said, “Who besides the two of you knows that we broke into Jake’s house?”

“No one,” I assured her.  “Wait.  Except for Suzy.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed.  “Get me the phone.”  There ensued a ten-minute conversation in which Emma extracted a solemn promise from Suzy not to mention our perfidy to Donny.  In return, Emma promised to relate all the details to Suzy as soon as she knew them – Suzy knew no greater love than the love of gossip.

“Yes,” Emma went on.  “A favor?”  She listened intently.  “Of course.  Consider it done – signed, sealed, and delivered with my personal guarantee.  What?  Let me think.  If I were you, I’d try the Community Theatre.  They’re bound to have someone there who can do it, or they’ll know someone.  Sure.”  She glanced up at me and laughed.  “Oh, I assure you, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  Thanks, Suzy.  And don’t worry about Donny.  No harm will come to him.  I’ll fill you in just as soon as I can, I promise.”

“What was that about a favor?” I asked.

Emma ignored me.  “Right,” she said.  “Piece of cake.  Quickly, let me fill you in on the details before Hugh gets home.”

“Just a moment.”  Sylvie spoke tentatively, “I don’t know quite how to put this.  I like Suzy a lot, but he’s . . . ”

“A pair of loose lips with hairy legs and a mini-skirt?” Emma suggested.  “I know, and he’s married to Barney Fife.  But we don’t need to worry. He’ll keep his word.  What we have to do is plan our next move.”

This was too much for me.  I’d felt almost torpid since the phone call at Wawawai, but now I awoke with a start.  “Plan our next move?  What’s going on here?  I know you lied to Donny, Emma.  You wouldn’t tell a cop the simple truth if your life depended on it.  My question is what kind of bullshit story did you spin?”

My mother gave me a martyred look.  Speaking as if she were the epitome of truth and sagacity, she said, “I did not spin a story.  I told the truth.  What I didn’t do was offer to do their job for them.”

“Meaning?”
“Meaning what they didn’t ask, I didn’t tell.”

“Oh my God.”  I fell back onto the sofa.  “There is such a thing as lying by omission, you know.”

“I haven’t done that, either,” she said.  “You know that bastard Sid Castle?”
“You mean Detective Sid Castle, Donny’s boss?”

“Yes.  He’s in charge of the investigation.  After Donny found Peterson, he called Castle, and let me tell you, that fucker couldn’t get out here fast enough.  He was wetting his pants at the thrill of investigating an actual murder.”

“Wait,” I said.  “How do you know that it’s murder?”

“I was just getting to that.  Here’s what happened – Donny dropped by here about noon to follow up on a complaint I made last night.”

“The anhydrous ammonia tanks,” Sylvie said.  I was pleased to see that my mother was nonplussed.

“It was in this morning’s police log,” I explained.  “Go on.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Well, I heard those little shitbirds over there.  They thought they were being sneaky, sitting in the car with their headlights off.  Ha!  I got your father’s flashlight out and shone it right on them.”

My father’s “flashlight” was a two million candlepower spotlight.  He also had a pair of night vision binoculars – his latest toys.  For years, Hugh had been convinced that amazing wildlife moved across our hillside in the dark of night, and to prove his point, he’d equipped himself with a load of KGB surplus from some ridiculous military supply catalog.  Unfortunately, he was incapable of staying up past nine o’clock, so Emma was the only one who got any use out of the Wild Kingdom set-up.

“Did you see who it was?”

My mother hesitated.  “Yes and no.  I couldn’t pick them out of a line-up because they were fifty yards away.  There were two of them, and this is just a guess – don’t look at me like that, Bil, I’d bet money on it – I think they were your late brother’s friends, Steve and Joe.  Those worthless, dumb-assed, shit-for-brains . . . ”

I stopped her.  “Did you see the vehicle?”

“Sort of.  It was parked behind the ammonia tank.  I got part of a license number.  Two, two, three something.”

“And you gave that to Donny?”

“Of course!  He’s got enough information to drag their asses in and question them.  It’s not my fault if . . . ”

I waited.

“Fine,” she snapped.  “I dropped the fucking flashlight, didn’t I?  I was trying to call the cops on the cordless phone and keep the light on Steve and Joe at the same time.  The thing just slipped out of my hand, and now there’s a big fat crack in the lens.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said.  The dog barked.  My mother looked down at him.

“Is that a German Shepherd?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’s an Alsatian,” I hedged.

Her eyes narrowed.  “Sophistry.  That is a Nazi police dog. Why, Bil Hardy, do you have a Nazi police dog?”

JC wagged his tail.  I smiled.

“I have an Alsatian because my brother Sam left one to me.  Sylvie found this poor thing tied to our doorknob last night.  Sam got him from young Calvin Knox.  I believe you’re a cyber-pal of his father’s?” I continued, relishing Emma’s open-mouthed stare.“Oh, yeah,Suzy showed me last night what you’ve been getting up to online.  You’re the new flame queen of the Slip-Fifty listserv.  Funny how you have time to send four emails a day to George Knox, but you can’t call or drop me a line to say that you’ve sold my childhood home to those Ag Chemical bastards across the road.”

My mother was at a loss for words.  I savored the moment.  “So, where have you hidden Dad’s flashlight?”

Emma snapped back into focus.  “I have not hidden it.  It’s in your brother’s room.”

“In his closet or under his bed?”

“Shut up,” she said.

“Why don’t you just tell Dad?  He can buy another one.”

“And admit I dropped it?  Never.”

“Please,” Sylvie interrupted.  “I think we’re losing the thread.  You called the sheriff’s department last night.  They came out to investigate.  Did you talk to them?”

“You bet I talked to them,” Emma said.  “It was Donny and some other young punk.  I marched over there and told those bozos that, as usual, they were a day late and a dollar short.  If you want to catch crack-heads stealing anhydrous ammonia, you can’t show up an hour after you’ve been called . . . .”

“Crank-heads,” I corrected.  “Methamphetamine is called crank.”

“No, it isn’t.  That’s heroin.”

“No, heroin is smack.”

“It’s horse,” Sylvie interrupted, giving me a look that could have frozen Niagara Falls.  “About the anhydrous ammonia – you told Donny that you suspected they were a couple of meth heads.  Why?  Was it clear they were stealing chemicals?  Did you smell ammonia?”

My mother put a cigarette in her mouth but didn’t light it.  “No more than usual,” she said.  “Thanks to Robertson’s, this place always reeks of ammonia.  But that makes no never mind.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out why two kids in a car would be over there in the middle of the night with their headlights off.  It’s simple, isn’t it?  Bil put me onto the idea yesterday.”

“I what?”

“Meth,” Emma said.  “You got me thinking about meth.  Robertson’s is supposed to lock their gate.  It’s part of their conditional use permit from the county – they’re required to secure the premises.  But do they?  Do they, hell!  There’s enough unsecured fertilizer and diesel fuel over there to make an atom bomb.”

“I think you’ll find that an atom bomb requires uranium,” I said.  “So, you spoke with Donny.  Did you mention that you thought it was Steve and Joe?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Did he ask why you thought that?”

“No.”

“Right.  So Donny just nodded politely, marked you down as a nosey nut-job, and left.  Then what?”

“And then nothing.  I went to bed.”  She gave me her shifty look.

“This is what I mean when I say lying by omission.  Why were you up so late in the first place, Emma?  You and Hugh go to bed at nine.  And don’t tell me you heard the car because your bedroom is at the back of the house.”

She took the cigarette out of her mouth.  “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Lying by omission!” I shouted.  “You couldn’t sleep.  And therefore?”

“And therefore I got in my car and drove over to the Kornmeyer place.  Are you satisfied?  I took the flashlight and I walked up the hill.  It was just the same as when we left it.  The door was still lying in the middle of the floor, so I propped it back up on its hinges.  Then I came back home.  End of story.  I went outside for a quick smoke, and that’s when I heard the car.  The lights were off, but they’d left the engine running.”

Sylvie sat down on the sofa.  I sighed heavily and joined her.  Might as well make ourselves comfortable while we squeezed the whole truth out of my mother.

“When were you in that shack?  I mean at what time?”

“I don’t know.  Two o’clock, maybe three.  I poked around for few minutes.  I tripped over that fucking wheelbarrow,” she stopped to glare at me, as if this were my fault.  “I saw nothing I hadn’t seen already, and then I left.”

“You didn’t see a corpse?”

“Of course not!”

I tried to think about what this meant.  “When did Donny find Jake Peterson?”

Emma looked at her watch.  Then she shook it.  “This thing is broken,” she said.  “Donny must have found him sometime after noon.  He was back here and barfing in my toilet by a quarter to one.  I know that because the clock chimed.”

“What made him go up there?” Sylvie asked.

“I did.”  Emma snorted in disgust.  “He stopped by to ask me a few more questions about last night.  Instead, I asked him a few questions about Jake the Snake.”

“For mercy’s sake, why?”

She shrugged.  “He was here.  Jake Peterson was missing.  I wondered if Donny knew anything.  Don’t look at me like that, Bil.  Donny is nearly as big a gossip as Suzy.  How was I supposed to know that he’d leave here and go straight to the Kornmeyer place?”

I would have known, and what’s more, my mother knew.  She sent Donny there, I was sure of it.  Emma could never let anything rest.

“Did something at the Kornmeyer place bother you last night?  Why did you go up there?  What was it?”

“Just a feeling,” she said.

“What kind of feeling?  Because unless the ghost of Jake Peterson reached out and felt your ass, I don’t see any reason why you would have been bone-headed enough to send Donny up there.  After our break-in and that mess we made . . .”

“Oh, belt up,” she said.  “I sent Donny up there because of something someone posted to the Slip-Fifty listserv.”

“This is like pulling teeth,” I complained.  “What was it?”
“A message.”  Emma lit a fresh cigarette and took a deep drag.  “Or more like a warning.  I was advised to mind my own business – to quit concerning myself with George Knox and The Church of the True Vine and to confine my nosiness to my own problems out here at Toad Hall.”

When Sam and I were small, The Wind in the Willows was our favorite book.  Emma read it to us over and over again.  We imagined that we were Badger and Rat, and our house was Toad Hall.  Emma, with all of her plans and schemes, was the Amazing Toad, the Glorious Toad.  Later, it was a sick joke when Badger found himself in trouble and in jail while Toad and I sat in Toad Hall, trying to think up ways to bust Badger out.

It took some effort to control the tremor in my voice.  “Who wrote it, Ma?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “He – or she – used a pseudonym.”

“What name?”
“Badger.”

“No,” I said slowly.  “That’s . . . that’s not . . .”

“It was cruel,” Sylvie said.  I was grateful for the comfort of her hand resting on my thigh.  “Cruel and gratuitous.  Someone who knew Sam well?”

“Must have been,” Emma said.  “Or someone who was at his funeral.  Bil called him Badger during the eulogy.  Do you remember?”

I nodded.  “Goodbye, Badger.”

“It’s all right,” Sylvie whispered.  “You’ll see Sally again on Thursday.”

“Who’s Sally?” my mother asked.

“No one,” I said.  “A counselor.  Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.  “I’m sorry I asked.  I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes, you did, but it doesn’t matter.  I’ve been seeing a grief counselor.”

“Is it helping?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Emma said.  Her voice became brisk.  “I have no evidence to back me up, but I think it was George Knox himself who posted it.  Your brother knew Calvin, and that little shit was at the funeral.”

“I thought he was estranged from his father,” Sylvie said.

Emma laughed bitterly.  “Why?  Because he was hanging out with Sam?  No.  He might like a walk on the wild side, but he’s still in the fold.  He’s the old man’s heir apparent.  George Knox talks about that boy like he’s the second coming.  Calvin is so smart.  We see in Calvin the product of a classical Christian education.  Calvin is a chip off the old block.”

“That scrawny little rat?” I objected.  “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Emma said.  “Either his father doesn’t know what Calvin gets up to on his days off, or he doesn’t care.  They believe in predestination at The Church of the True Vine.  The Knox family is among the elect.  They’re going to heaven no matter what they do here on earth.”  Reading my look, she added, “Get Suzy to explain it to you.  I tried to raise you free of that superstitious clap-trap.  You know what I think of religion.”

“Yes, Karl Marx.  I know.  Please spare us the lecture.”

“Jesus went out for a pack of cigarettes two thousand years ago,” she continued, “and he never came back.  Don’t wait up for Daddy!  The idea that we should be governed by George Knox or any other asshole’s interpretation of the Bible . . .”

“Stop!” I insisted.  “You are offensive on this subject, and you always have been.  There are people in this very room – people who are not fools or deluded or idiots – who happen to believe in Jesus.”

“Oh,” my mother stopped short.  “Sylvie?  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean . . .”

“Not just Sylvie,” I interrupted.  “I believe in God, Emma.  I don’t know about Jesus – I think the jury is still out.”

That had her bouncing backwards.  I rarely talked to my mother about my religious beliefs because she never took them seriously.

As long as she was at a disadvantage, I decided to press home another point.  “Right.  Let’s get back on topic here.  Some jerk on your little listserv decided to push your buttons and now, as a consequence, we’ve got a dead body on our hands.  Donny knows that there was a break-in, and he probably thinks that it had something to do with Jake’s murder.  That’s not good.  You’d better hope they don’t fingerprint us, Ma.”

“What would it matter?” my mother asked.  Her tone was annoyingly reasonable.  “My fingerprints ought to be up there.  I own that fucking shack.”

“I don’t own it.  Why are my fingerprints there?”

“Because I took you up to have a look around – as is my right.  You’re my daughter.  That shack was my property.  We’re in the clear.”

“No, we’re not.  You still haven’t explained why you think Jake was murdered.  Couldn’t he have shot himself?”

“Maybe,” she said.  “But he couldn’t have moved himself.  Donny reckoned he’d been dead for about two days.”

“Two days?”  I shook my head.  “I don’t understand.”

“I think I do,” Sylvie said.  She looked at my mother, who motioned for her to continue.  “You and Bil were in the shack yesterday afternoon.  You went back between two and three last night.  Jake Peterson wasn’t there, alive or dead.  But when Donny went up at noon today, there he was.”

“Exactly,” said my mother.  “Sitting on the sofa with his brains splattered all over the wall behind him.  Do you understand now, Bil?”

I understood.  Our sheriff’s department was not high tech.  They couldn’t trace a criminal based on a dropped hair or a footprint in the mud.  During the twenty years I’d lived in Cowslip, we’d had ten homicides and maybe four or five missing persons.  The only crime the sheriff’s department had actually solved was the murder of an old lady, and that was only because they’d pulled her son over for speeding and found her body in the trunk.

“Oh, no,” I said.  “You have to tell them, Emma.  The cops need to know that Jake wasn’t killed in that shack.”

“They already know,” she said.  “I heard them talking.  The shotgun blast was inflicted post mortem.  Jake Peterson’s brains were all over the wall but not his blood.  Well, there was some blood, just not enough.”

Sylvie made a small gulping noise.  I squeezed her hand.

“Without going into gory detail, Ma, did they say anything about why someone might want to shoot a dead body?”

“To obscure his identity, I suppose.  Judging from the damage, they think he took one straight to the face.  They’re over there right now, you know.  We could hop in the car and . . .”

The near-retching at my side, coupled with my own squeamishness, made me say quickly, “I don’t think they’d appreciate that, Emma.  Besides, didn’t you say you were expecting Dad home at any minute?”

“Damn!  Was that a car door?”

“You’d better talk fast,” I advised.  “Why didn’t you tell them we’d been in there?  I know you hate the cops, but that’s no reason to lie to them, especially about something like this.”

“I didn’t tell them because of what else they found.  Yesterday, we assumed that the locked door in the living room led to that back area where the radio was, but we were wrong.  There’s a room in between those two.  That’s where the urine smell was coming from – not from that bucket in the corner.  Jake had quite a meth lab set up in that middle room – ammonia, a cooker, and enough Sudafed to clear King Kong’s sinuses.  I decided that ignorance was our best defense.  If the cops don’t know that we broke in, then we don’t know that Jake was cooking meth.”

I didn’t get a chance to point out the flaws in her logic.  My dad came into the house, effectively ending our conversation.  He looked unruffled and incurious, which was how he always looked.  It didn’t matter what was going on, fire, flood, or plague of locusts, my mother supplied all of the movement in their relationship.  She pitched the fits and felt the outrage.  Hugh’s great purpose was to serve as an anchor – a hopeless task, as the poor man had clearly chosen to moor the Titanic.

“Hello Bil, hello Sylvie.”  Hugh turned to my mother, smiling grimly.  “So, Emma, Donny Smith tells me we need to find ourselves a new tenant.”

Chapter 12

Sylvie decided to ride her motorcycle home.  I handed the keys to her reluctantly.

“We could just leave it here for another day,” I said.

“I’d rather take it home now.”

“Meaning you don’t want to have to make another trip out here anytime soon.”  She nodded.  I leaned in and kissed her.  “That makes two of us.  Here’s your helmet.  Ride carefully, honey.”

“Meet you back at the apartment?” she asked.

“Yeah.  I thought JC and I might stop by the store first.  We’re out of Twinkies and potato chips.”

“Sorry,” she said.  “They weren’t on the grocery list.”

“I’ll forgive you for that oversight.”

She didn’t put her helmet on or make any move to start the bike.

“You look worried,” I said.

“I am worried,” she confessed.  “But not unduly.  What’s the worst that could happen?  You broke in and your mother lied about it.  She owns the place, though, so I don’t see that as being too serious.  Jake was a drug dealer, and someone killed him.  It worries me that the body was moved and that it was maimed.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “If it’s any comfort, my mother doesn’t own a shotgun.  Do you think I’m an accessory to anything?”

“No,” Sylvie assured me.  “Not to anything truly criminal.  I think . . .”

“Go ahead.”

“I think you should spend less time with your mother.  Just for a while.”  She bit her lower lip.  “I’m sorry, Bil.  It’s your family.  It’s not for me to say . . .”

“Stop,” I said quickly.  “It is for you to say, and what’s more, you’re right.  I’ll tell you what I think – I think we should stop thinking about this.  Let’s spend the rest of the day eating junk food and watching Bugs Bunny.  What do you say?”

Sylvie surprised me by putting her hand on the back of my neck, pulling me to her, and kissing me hard.  When she stopped, I had to lean against the bike to catch my breath.

“I say we skip the Bugs Bunny,” she said, “and rent Desert Heartsinstead.  Are you up for that?”

“I am,” I answered quickly.  “I am very up for that.”

She gave me a searing look, put her helmet on and started the bike.  I watched her roar out of the driveway.  JC barely nodded.  He was lying placidly beneath the cottonwood tree, chewing on a stick.

“Nice show,” Emma called from the front porch.  “I hope the guys over at the gravel pit enjoyed it.”

I chanted my favorite mantra: “I am not to blame for my mother.”

#

The best video selection in town was at the Cowslip Foodway.  The store’s owner, Chip Ferguson, had a taste for foreign films and what he called “exotic” titles.  The very exotic he kept in a small room behind the beer cooler.  This had included gay and lesbian movies until Chip’s mother, Hulda, died.  That was when Chip, who was nearing fifty and as camp as a wet tent, had come roaring out of the closet and the gay and lesbian films had come out with him.  They now had their own lavender shelf behind the customer service counter.

Chip was leaning on the counter now and smiling broadly.  I wanted to like Chip.  I felt sorry for him.  After his mother’s death, he’d gone from closet queen to Queer Nation as soon as the casket lid was closed.  All the years of secrecy and silence had unhinged his brain and worse, his tongue.  Now there was nothing he wouldn’t talk about at the top of his lungs.  From tea bagging to butt plugs, if he was thinking about it, he said it.  Try as I might to be broad-minded, I really didn’t want to know.  Chip’s blond wig was nearly the same color as his tobacco-stained teeth.  He wore brightly colored polo shirts – often with an argyle vest – perfectly pressed khaki pants and deck shoes with no socks.  I was happy to make pleasant conversation with Chip about the weather or the Mariners, but I didn’t want to hear about how he was making up for lost time with assorted members of the Rotary Club, the Moose Lodge, the Masons and Kiwanis.

“Hi Bil,” he beamed.  “How’s it hanging?”

I knew from past experience that the answer Chip wanted was “big and hairy and hard to carry.”  What I said was, “I’m fine, Chip.  Sylvie and I were thinking we’d pop some corn and watch a movie tonight.”  I cleared my throat.  “Do you have Desert Hearts?”

Chip winked at me.  “Sorry,” he said.  “You’re five minutes too late.  I just rented it out.  How about The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love?  Or,” he leaned forward conspiratorially, “you might want to pay a visit to the room behind the beer cooler.  There’s a new one in there about two young women and a garden hose.”

I ignored this.  “I’m not really in the mood for teenage angst,” I said, “so I’ll skip the True Adventures.  How about The Hunger?”

“Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve?”  The wink was rapidly becoming a tic.  “That one I have.  Don’t you just love the cello and the gauze?  And that sex scene – it’s nearly enough to turn me.  Magnifique!  We’re running a special – three films, three nights, three dollars.  Is there anything else you’d like to see?”

Yes, I thought.  I’d like to see a film clerk with his own hair, a quiet voice, and a sense of discretion.  What I said was, “How about The Hunger, Aliens, and Personal Best?”

Chip grinned.  “A natural trilogy.  If I were you,” another wink, “I’d watch Aliens first.”

I tossed the videotapes into the cart and quickly headed for the snack food aisle.  Rather than risk leaving JC in the car, even with the windows down, I’d fastened his leash to the bicycle rack under the shade of the front awning.  I could see him through the front windows – he was licking something off the concrete.  I needed to get a move on.  Barbecue-flavored potato chips, Twinkies, cold beer, and a bouquet of roses, and then I’d be on my way.  I’d twirled the cart around and was preparing to make a run for it when another cart rounded the corner and knocked me flat on my ass.

“I’m sorry,” said a booming voice.  “Didn’t see you there . . . Bil!”

Captain Schwartz abandoned her cart and bore down upon me, pulling me up from the floor and wrapping her muscular arms tightly around my shoulders.  Unable to hug her back, and also unable to breath, I choked out a greeting.  “Hi, Captain.  How’ve you been?”

“Good,” she said.  “Very good.  And you?”

“Fine.”

“Glad to hear it.  Heard anything from that worthless son of mine?”

“Not for a couple of weeks,” I said.  “He’s busy with his corporate pimping job.”

“Tell me about it,” she said proudly.  “The money they pay him is obscene.”

Tipper Schwartz, the Captain’s son, had been my best friend since junior high.  Fresh out of college, he’d taken a job in the sales department at Microsoft and risen like a rocket.  With his annual bonus, he was able to put a down payment on a condominium and buy a ridiculous red sports car that he called “The Penile Enhancement.”

“It’s depressing to think that Tipper and I are the same age,” I said.

Captain Schwartz smiled kindly.  She was a big woman, as tall as Sarah but built like a tank.  Though I was fairly muscular and broad-shouldered myself, she made me look like the runt in the before picture in a Charles Atlas ad.

“You’re in graduate school, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah.  I’m getting double masters in English and Psychology.  Sylvie’s working on her Ph.D.”

“You’ll get there, Bil.”

“But I won’t get to Microsoft.  Not unless Bill Gates goes bonkers and needs a shrink with a big vocabulary.”

The Captain laughed, a loud, raucous sound that seemed to bounce off the cans of soda behind us and echo around the store.

“You haven’t been out to Fort Sister lately.”

Theoretically, Fort Sister was a women’s retreat and artists’ colony.  Its real name was Blood Moon Women’s Haven, but no one called it that.  Although women came from around to the country to write, paint, hold conferences, and worship Mother Nature, Fort Sister wasn’t so much a collective as it was a lesbian separatist boot camp.  Captain Schwartz liked guns, and she was planning a left-wing queer response to a right-wing evangelical Armageddon.

“You’re still playing softball, aren’t you?” she asked.

“No.  I’ve been too busy with school.”  I pinched my stomach to demonstrate that I could grab more than an inch.  “I’m afraid I’m getting flabby.  I need to do something – rejoin the team or go back to the gym.”

Or stop eating pho at one o’clock in the morning, I added silently.

The Captain slapped the flat of her hand against my abdomen.  “Nonsense, Bil.  You’re as fit as a fiddle.  But maybe it’s not softball you need at the moment,” she considered sagely.  “Your brother’s death – that was very hard.  Perhaps some Tai Chi?  I’m doing a little yoga myself these days, and it feels pretty good.  I seem to be getting back a bit of my old flexibility.”

“I’ll say,” said a woman’s voice behind me.  “You can bend over to tie your shoes now without your knees making that awful creaking sound.  Hi, Bil.”

The hug Kate gave me wasn’t as exuberant as the one I’d gotten from Captain Schwartz but it was no less warm and sincere.  Sylvie’s mother and I enjoyed a friendly relationship though I was always a little nervous around her, in part because she looked so much like her daughter – the same intense green eyes, the same blond hair.  Kate’s hair had begun to turn gray above her ears.  When I looked at her, I sometimes felt as if I were looking at one of those computer-generated age projections: this will be your girlfriend in twenty-six years.  It was unnerving, especially as Kate was still very attractive.  Although I wasn’t biologically related to Emma, I was terrified by the thought that I might somehow turn into her.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t come to dinner last night,” Kate said.  “Sylvie told me you were visiting your mother.  How is she?”

“Same as ever.  Ornery as hell and in and out of trouble.”  Figuring they’d read about it in the police log anyway, I briefly described the situation with Jake Peterson, leaving out the story of our break in.  “Jake seems to have been running a meth lab up there.  Emma is fit to be tied.  She’s afraid the Feds are going to swoop down and seize her property.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” said Captain Schwartz.  “One of your sisters is an attorney, isn’t she?”

“Naomi.  She’s a public defender.  In the case of Emma, I expect she’d recuse herself.  Even if they weren’t related, she’d have to be a fool to represent our mother.”

The Captain laughed.  “I don’t think it’ll get that far.  I was thinking more along the lines that she might be familiar with the drug laws.”

“Of course.”

In the silence that followed, I tried to think of something to say that would indicate that I knew they were dating.  I also wanted to let them know that if they were happy, I was happy.  At the same time, however, I didn’t want to seem too overjoyed about something that was making Sylvie miserable.  Seeking inspiration, I looked into the Captain’s shopping cart.  She had three cans of whipped cream, a flat of fresh strawberries, and a bottle of champagne.  She also had Desert Hearts.

“So that’s where that movie got to,” I said.  “Sylvie and I are having to make do with potato chips and The Hunger.”

It was a shame that I was, as the Captain had noted, as fit as a fiddle.  There was absolutely no chance that I could feign a heart attack with any degree of conviction.  I couldn’t faint, I couldn’t hide, and I couldn’t fall down dead.  Instead, I had to stand there and tough it out as the two of them looked first at me, then at each other, and then began laughing.

“Goodnight, Bil,” said Kate, leaning forward and kissing me on the cheek.

“Yes, goodnight, Bil,” said the Captain, winking extravagantly.  “I’d put those chips back if I were you.  The strawberries are on sale.”

I watched them as they walked down the aisle, heads close together, shoulders touching, as pleased as punch with each other.  Poor Sylvie.  If Kate and the Captain could get through three cans of whipped cream and six pints of strawberries, they were better women than we were.  Perhaps I’d take that yoga class after all.

#

Sylvie put the remains of her Twinkie down on the coffee table.  “I don’t like this at all, Bil.”

“Here,” I offered.  “Have a Ding Dong.”

“You know what I mean.”  She took the Ding Dong anyway.  “This is . . .”

“Stupid?  Unnecessary?  Illegal?  I know, but I don’t know what to do about it.  Now that my mother’s lied to the police, we’re stuck.  I can’t go into the station and say, ‘Here’s what really happened, please don’t prosecute her.’  Why would they listen to me anyway?  The Hardy family does not have a stellar reputation with law enforcement.”

“But Bil, what about Suzy?”

I nodded.  “The weak link.  I’ll talk to him.”

“He doesn’t go on duty at the hospital for another two hours.”

“Shall I invite him over for tea and Twinkies?”

“Please do.”

#

Suzy perched on the rocking chair in his scrubs and clunky white nurse shoes.  Without his wig and mascara, he looked like Richard Gephardt.  His hair was thin and reddish, and his eyelashes were so pale as to be almost invisible.  He’d eschewed our offer of junk food in favor of a rice cake, which he was now chewing thoughtfully.

“The way I see it,” he said, “it’s none of my business why your mother swore me to secrecy.  I gave her my word, and my word is my bond.”

“You’re a strange bird, Suzy,” I said.  “I don’t like dragging you into this, and I don’t like my mother asking you to keep secrets from Donny.”

“Honey,” he laughed, “you don’t know the half of it.  I have to keep secrets from Donny.  If he knew the complete and unexpurgated story of my life, his little Mormon head would burst wide open.  Drinking, smoking, fornicating . . . I have violated all of the Words of Wisdom and lost every Pearl of Great Price in my necklace.  Now, your mother promised to fill me in – why don’t you do that instead?”

I looked at Sylvie, who nodded her approval.

When I’d finished, Suzy said, “Quite right not to tell that Sid Castle anything.  He’d get it ass backwards and wind up clapping your mother in irons.  Better to just let that hang.”

“But they’ll think the break-in is related to Jake Peterson’s murder,” Sylvie said.

“So what?” said Suzy.  “Bil did someone a favor by knocking that door down.  It stands to reason that whoever fired that shotgun put Jake’s body in the shack.  They might not have knocked the door down – I suppose they could have used his key – but they didn’t have his explicit permission to go in.  He was already dead.”

“Good God,” I said.  “You’re as amoral as my mother.”

“I prefer the term differently moraled,” Suzy said.  “I don’t think the ends justify the means, but the ends do sometimes justify themselves.”

I picked up another Twinkie.  “And on that happy note . . . wait.”  I put the Twinkie down again.  “If Jake was shot in the face to obscure his features, how did the police know it was him?”

“I can answer that,” said Suzy.  “He had a big tattoo on his biceps that said ‘Jake.’  Donny said Sid was mincing around like Miss Marple on crack when he found that.  He had Donny take half a dozen photos of the thing.  Do you know that Sid was fired from the Bozeman Police Department for incompetence?  Imagine.  He wasn’t smart enough for Montana.”

“Good lord.  What does that say for Cowslip, Idaho?”

“That we’re desperate.”

Sylvie looked thoughtful.  “If he wasn’t shot to obscure his features, then why?”

“I’ve been giving that some thought,” Suzy said.  “It reminds me of a patient who came into the ER in Seattle – a woman with a gunshot wound to the head, dead on arrival.  The coroner ruled it a suicide.  It wasn’t until the woman’s brother requested an autopsy that they realized she’d been suffocated.  Her husband’s now serving twenty-five to life in Walla Walla.”

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