Lew pulled a chair close to Melissa’s chair, smiled knowingly, slouched down in it with his knees wide apart in front of her, and said, “Do me.”
She was already picking out a pumpkin, without first examining Lew’s head by sight or feel, but I saw her pluck a perfect shape from her pile: angular, aggressive about the “chin” and “brow.” Without a word to him, and with a hard line to the set of her mouth, Melissa picked up her knife and quietly began to carve, so that soon an amazing likeness of Lew began to appear in mocking orange. She was capturing something besides the lines of his face: a sly narrowing of the eyes she carved in the pumpkin’s face, an arching of the eyebrows that gave Lew’s replica just the ugly contemptuous expression he really did have on his face at that moment. A twisting slice imparted the sensuousness of his mouth, and a gouging in of the “cheeks” produced an eerie likeness of his newly-prominent cheekbones. She even captured something of his muscularity of ego and will.
Melissa turned it in her hands until it faced him.
Lew didn’t even look at it. He just winked at Melissa, took three dollars out of his wallet, and threw the cash in her money box. “Keep it, honey,” he said, clearly enough for anyone to hear. “To remember me by.” Then he pushed himself to his feet, turned cockily on the heel of one of his black running shoes, and strutted away, leaving the pumpkin in her lap. It was a shockingly rude act, seeming to come out of nowhere, directed at a total stranger.
Melissa gently placed the sculpted pumpkin on top of her card table so that the shell was facing her. She raised her knife and brought it down violently into Lew’s “face.”
“Melissa,” I whispered, as bits of pumpkin flew. I stepped out from behind the tall man and started toward her. “Melissa, take it easy.”
She slashed at the pumpkin, holding the knife, not like an artist but like a soldier, her fist wrapped around the handle, with the strength of her entire arm, of her whole body, behind her blows to the helpless vegetable.
Slash. There went Lew’s left eye and part of his cheek.
Slash. There went his nose, sliced in two, and the right side of his sneering mouth.
In the crowd, people were backing away from her. Parents were shielding their children and turning them quickly in the other direction. The boys, Chappie and his friends, were open-mouthed, looking both horrified and fascinated.
I got as close to her as I dared and said her name very clearly and calmly. “Melissa.” I said it again. And then one more time.
Finally, she turned a jack-o’-lantern grin on me.
I suppressed a shudder of real fear—at the grin, at the knife grasped high—and took a chance and held out my right hand to her. “Come take a walk with me.” When she looked stubborn, I said, “Now.” And then, when she did get up from the table, but she still had the weapon clenched tightly in her hand, I added, “Without the knife, please.”
We sat on the ground on the back side of the reconstructed schoolhouse, away from the movement of people on the common.
“What happened back there, Melissa?”
She was still trembling, but now tears were flowing, too, and she dabbed at them with the hem of her T-shirt. I offered her a clean tissue, and she took it, murmuring, “Thanks.”
She said, “It’s what happened a long time ago.” For a moment, she just cried, and when they tapered off, she continued: “When there was the original battle over God’s Highway? Remember I told you that Ben and I got involved with it?”
“Yes, you told me.”
“Lew was a reporter then—”
“Lew! You know him?”
“Know him?” She shuddered, laughed, sobbed. “Oh, yeah, I know him all the ways you can think of. He was the reporter the Times sent to cover all the God’s Highway battles, and we kept running into him. At protests, at meetings. Sometimes Ben was there. But a lot of the time—”
“He wasn’t.”
She nodded, looking miserable.
Once I had recovered from the initial surprise of hearing about her connection to Lew, I wasn’t shocked so much at her behavior as I was at her execrable taste. I wanted to say to her, “And you call yourself an artist?”
“Lew was cute,” she said, “and sexy and he had this vitality and charisma—”
To each her own, I thought, wryly.
“And Ben was quiet and nice and stable and—”
“Boring?”
Again, she nodded. “It sounds so awful to say, I mean, I loved him, I really grew to love him.”
Kiss of death, I thought then, to marry somebody you have to “grow to love.”
“I think I really did it because all my friends were doing it—”
She told a familiar, depressing story that ended in a confession of the year-long affair she had ten years earlier with Lew Riss.
“He was such an ass about it when I told him we had to stop,” she said violently. “He claimed he never cared about me, he only did it for the sex, and the thrill of seeing a married woman, and he said he felt sorry for me, because I’d never be able to forget him.”
Tactlessly, I laughed. It was so Lew.
Melissa looked up, clearly offended by my reaction.
“Lew is memorable,” I conceded, attempting to sound apologetic.
She looked as if she were about to get angry, when she suddenly started to laugh and cry at the same time. “He is, isn’t he? I guess he was right about that, in a way. He’s just so unforgettably awful.”
I thought I understood better now why Melissa’s response to Ben’s death had been to launch a passionate crusade against the trail crossing where he was killed. And then, sitting there in the calming, comforting shade, she herself confirmed my speculations.
“It was so terrible that Ben died on the trail,” she told me, in an emotion-filled voice. “I could hardly believe it. I felt—I feel—like I’ve been slapped in the face by God. The truth is Ben thought the trail was a nice idea, but he didn’t care one way or another about it. We had a good time going to a few protests together, or at least, I did. It was really Lew and I who got behind the trail … together. And when that controversy died down, so did we, I guess.”
She looked like she could drown in self-pity.
“Sometimes I think Lew and I killed Ben. I mean, if we hadn’t used the trail as an excuse to get together, we wouldn’t have fought so hard for it, and maybe it would never have been created, and then Ben wouldn’t have gone hiking that day, and he wouldn’t have died.”
Oh, please, I thought unkindly. If God was going to slap her, I thought this was a good time to do it.
“You and Lew didn’t create the trail, Melissa. Believe me, there were forces much more powerful than the two of you behind the creation of God’s Highway. There’d still be a trail, even if you had never heard of it, or of Lew Riss.”
For just the briefest of moments, she looked disillusioned, disappointed. Then relief began to dawn, and I thought I could almost see her shoulders lift from a lightening of the false load of guilt.
“Melissa, have you talked to Lew any other time since he came back to town?”
She nodded. “In fact, you called, right in the middle of his visit. He had the nerve to knock on my door, supposedly to tell me how sorry he felt about Ben’s death. Guess what he really wanted?”
“Is that why you sounded so angry when I talked to you?”
She confirmed that it was, and now I also knew, without even having to ask her to confirm it, how Lew had gotten the news so fast that we were going to work on changing that trail crossing. He’d been at her place when I called to tell her! And then he’d gathered his troops for today’s protest. Some things, I thought, half-amused, are so easy to understand … when you understand them.
She didn’t go back to carving pumpkins that day. She also never went back to the cause of improving the trail crossing. Melissa Barney left that in our laps, from that day onward. And I left her, there behind the schoolhouse, after giving her an encouraging pa
t on her shoulder.
When I got to her abandoned booth, I found disaster brewing.
Lew Riss and Pete Falwell were squared off and glaring at each other, the little boys were gathered around them like an audience at a prize fight, and David was pacing the perimeter like a young lion who can’t get in for the kill.
26
MY FIRST RESPONSE WAS TO RUN FOR DAVID’S WALKIE-TALKIE, AND when he resisted, I just turned it on and spoke into it at about the level of his hipbone.
“Geof! Bushfield. This is Jenny, come in! Come to the far south end at the pumpkin-carving booth! Do you read, over?”
From the device came an unrecognizable voice. “I’m on my way, Jenny. What’s going on? Over.”
I yelled at David: “Hold still, dammit!”
“I’ll take the damned thing off, if you’ll just stop talking to my dick!” he yelled back at me.
“David!”
Eventually, after he managed to remove the walkie-talkie with one hand and gave it me, I depressed the “talk” button and said in a much quieter tone of voice, “It’s not about Tyler, Geof, it’s a standoff between Lew Riss and Pete Falwell. They’re yelling at each other so loud they can’t even hear me. David is also here, waiting to beat Lew to a pulp, and altogether, I’d say we need help. Over.”
“Tell David to chill. Over.”
I looked at the kid. “Geof says—”
“I heard, I heard.”
From across the common trotted the Mounties in the guise of my husband and two of his off-duty cops, both of them women, and all three of them dressed in the casual clothes we’d agreed upon, to make security less obvious, less threatening to the good folks. What they were equipped with in their backpacks, purses, or fanny packs was another story, however: pepper spray, mace, maybe even a gun or two, for all I knew, or wanted to know. We had anticipated no real problems and certainly no violence, mostly because we weren’t selling beer or any other, inflammatory agents.
Just short of where David and I were, Geof and his all-girl crew slowed to a walk, approaching the two arguing men from an oblique angle. I didn’t even have to listen to Lew and Pete to know what their problem was, but as it happened, when they finally spotted me in the crowd, Pete brought the fight directly to my face.
“Jenny Cain! This meathead says you told him we’re going to put a light rail line through on the nature trail! Where’d you hear such goddamned nonsense as that?”
Pete advanced on me, his face florid, his body stiff with outrage. Lew stalked right behind him. Beside me, David stiffened. And Geof picked up his pace as he tacked in my direction. I felt like the lone hen at a rooster convention.
I stood my ground and decided to enjoy this.
“In the first place,” I said loudly to Pete, “I never mentioned your name, Peter Falwell, in conjunction with light rail on God’s Highway. I can’t imagine why Lew would think of you in the same context as an avaricious, cunning scheme like that. And in the second place, how can I tell you where I heard it? It’s the rumor, Pete, it’s the story that’s going around. Are you denying it?”
“If I deny it, I will give it more power!” he said, which was a clever dodge, if the idea were true. With that single equivocation, Pete went a long way toward convincing me that it was. “This rumor has to stop.”
“Rumor, hell!” Lew said—and then he saw David. But he had to finish his attack on Pete first. “It’s true, Falwell. Everything I know about you tells me it’s perfect logic. And it won’t be hard to find out, either, not for an ex-reporter. I’ll just make some calls to the top light rail experts in the country, and find out what sorts of inquiries they’ve been receiving from around here.”
“All right.” Pete looked as if he’d like to bite somebody. “So it’s true, so it’s a damned fine idea, and you and your eco-nuts are not going to keep it from happening!”
“True?” I said.
“True?” echoed David and Lew.
“True?” murmured many others who were listening. “Light rail? On God’s Highway?”
As usual, Pete had known instantly when he had lost a battle. Now, I could see from Lew’s face that Lew thought the old man had caved in easily; Lew didn’t recognize Pete’s genius for tactical retreat. Somehow, I knew that Pete Falwell would turn this loss of public face into a public relations—and probably monetary—victory for himself.
I hadn’t a single doubt about that.
It was getting harder all the time to continue hating him: He was just so damned interesting an enemy! Superficial and conventional on the outside, but the “fox” of Cleo’s I Ching reading on the inside. It wasn’t always his goals I hated, anyway, but his means for obtaining them. I suddenly realized I would never really “beat” Pete Falwell at anything, but it didn’t really matter anymore. Besides, there was always this: He was old; didn’t he have to die, someday?
I wondered if I would miss him.
Nah.
Geof was nudging David out of the scene of combat, and I decided to follow them.
“But—” David protested.
“Lew didn’t attack you at the crossroads, Dave,” Geof said in a low voice. “They were all down at the Cape picketing a marsh drainage, saving an endangered butterfly.”
“Well, shit,” David said, but he allowed himself to be moved right along. “If they didn’t do it, who did, Geof? Are you sure my uncles—”
“Yes.” Geof put an arm around David, taking care not to put pressure where it would hurt. “I am still sure. Listen. Calm down.” He glanced at me. “Advice for all of us, all right? Calm down. Those two back there—Pete and Lew—deserve each other. They can take care of their own business. I doubt they’ll kill each other, at least not today. So how’s about the three of us going to get corn dogs? Let’s take it easy for a while.”
I smiled at him. “The two of you can. I’m going to see if anybody needs anything I can help with.”
But then I changed my mind and went with them. It was time to be nobody but another masked face at the festival. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an hour than to eat a corn dog and to cruise the common with my guys. David didn’t even seem to be mad at me anymore; most of the steam had gone out of him when Geof imparted the news that Lew was not guilty of the attack on David.
So we walked. At some point, I started to laugh.
“What?” they asked, as one.
“David,” I said, “I was just thinking about how I had to talk to your belt buckle to use the walkie-talkie.”
“Geez,” he said, and actually blushed.
Geof noticed the blush, with amazement, and he turned to look at me, and he asked, “How’d you do that?”
27
THE SECURITY WAS GOING GREAT, GEOF TOLD US, WHEN WE ALL THREE found empty seats at a picnic table. There had been a few minor fender benders in parking lots, a number of outside drunks, one or two cases of shoplifting.
“But overall, it’s a nice crowd,” he said. “The weather’s helping us. It’s not hot enough to fry people’s dispositions. It’s not cold, which would make them cranky, and it’s not rainy, which would complicate traffic.”
Neither Geof nor I felt urgently needed anywhere at that moment, so we sat with David, watching the festival-goers. Many folks spoke to us, and several of them delighted in surprising us from behind their masks. “Guess who?” they’d demand, and when we couldn’t they happily revealed themselves.
“Everybody’s a kid today,” I happily observed. Our kid seemed content again to have his mother’s name adorn the foundation that sponsored the festival. I hoped he felt proud.
“I wish something would happen,” David complained, while I was having those sentimental ideas. “Like somebody would shoot off a gun, or something.”
“Why would you wish for that?” I asked him, appalled.
“So then I could say, ‘Who was that masked man’?”
We all laughed at that memory of the Lone Ranger.
About a half hour i
nto our sojourn, I pointed out Nellie Kennedy in the crowd to Geof. He looked, then did a double take.
“Oh, no,” he said softly.
He stood up, looking unhappy.
When I asked him what was wrong, he looked down sadly at me and said, “You know how I told you that Meryl Tyler hired himself a damn fine attorney? That’s the guy. Talking to Nellie.”
Shocked, I turned to stare.
They weren’t just chatting as strangers might. No, Nellie and the attorney were standing close together, deep in apparently serious conversation. To my dismay, she touched the man’s arm, patting it in a way that looked friendly, even encouraging.
The owner of the burned Dime Store … talking to, encouraging, the defense lawyer for the man suspected of that same act of arson and homicide?
“Oh, my God, Geof.” I looked at up him. “She can’t have had anything to do with it! If she did, surely she wouldn’t be seen talking to the arsonist’s lawyer in public!”
“Jenny.” He looked loath to move. “We couldn’t figure out where the money came from to hire his guy, or to spring Tyler. Meryl hasn’t got that kind of dough, or those kinds of friends. Somebody hired this guy for him.”
I put my head in my hands.
“Well,” Geof sighed. “I guess I’ve got to take Nellie in and ask her some questions.” One more sigh, and he was gone to his nasty duty. David wanted to know—right then, that instant—what the trouble was, but I was feeling too much inner turmoil to tell him.
“Too many people around,” I hedged. “I’ll tell you when I can. David, look, I know you’re supposed to stick with me, but I have to go to the toilet.”
He held up his hands. “You’re on your own.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I meant it, too, but I didn’t count on seeing Cleo Talbot wandering among the cars in a parking lot near the facilities. When I saw her, I felt pulled in her direction and forgot all about my promise to David.
“Cleo?”
She glanced up. Her face wasn’t flushed, like almost everyone else’s was from the sun and the excitement. Hers looked pale, her eyes looked weary. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, like me.