Wilderness

  She paused. He knew she heard it in his quivering sounds. But she paused for a long time. "What's Brady?"

  "Up the way to the Crescent. Hurry."

  III.

  There weren't many policemen in Eureka when compared to Fayetteville, but when something like this happened they made good on showing up in the "force" end of "police force." Cones and a roadblock and a couple of cars and so on.

  But Ebur wasn't in all of that. He was over on the side with Alison.

  "You need any coffee?" she asked.

  He spat.

  "Sorry," she said. "Sorry."

  He stared over at the boy. The kid had done nothing wrong other than not wanting to be an Olympic long jumper in a town that had desperately wanted him to compete and put them on the map for something other than holy water. Brady'd fought his neighbors, his teachers, his parents. He'd wanted to be an easy going businessman, had worked his ass off earning money and saving and sat every Friday night with some of the pillars of the place, playing poker. Or not so much playing poker as just playing and helping them have a good time.

  "You know I've got to ask you," Ali said.

  "I know."

  "Where were you? How'd you find him?"

  He pointed to the balcony up on the ridge. "Heard a cry."

 

  "You saw him from all the way up there, Ebur?"

  "Yes," he said. He looked back up at the balcony. The angle was off.

  "Where'd you go after our poker game? Here?" she asked.

  "Sure," he said.

  "Did you stay the night in... one of the rooms?" she asked.

  "No, Ali. And also no, Ali, I didn't. And also no, Ali, I won't right now -- especially now."

  "Okay!"

  "Just stick to the procedure," he said.

  "Okay."

  He turned his head and looked off at the treetops.

  "Did you have anything against him?"

  "Oh come on."

  "I'm sticking to the procedure," she said.

  "I was pissed about his poker idea because I need that child support money. You know I count on it."

  "But is it so wrong to have a good time?"

  "No," he said. "And that's why I agreed. And it's also why I would never -- ever -- in my life do something like this over something like that. I wasn't even mad when I left and it's as mad as I ever got and will... ever get at that poor boy. I'll tell his parents."

  "We do--"

  "I'll tell them."

  "Did you see anything else?"

  He hesitated. He looked again at the angle of the balcony.

  "You don't think Mark..."

  He eyed her.

  "He's off in the afternoons."

  Ebur watched the people on the balcony. He thought of Mark's hands. Mark could drop something on a man, could crush a spine, but he didn't have the dexterity for that kind of cut on a boy's stomach. So he would either need help or wouldn't be involved at all. Unless he had some sort of scythe or something in that antique store that would help him, but even then, the way it was all scattered and mangled...

  She said, "He's next on my list after all that tough talk last night."

  Ebur nodded.

  She looked over at the body and something like fear, something like that dread he'd felt washed over the creases in her eyelids, something like disgust the way the edges of her nostrils curled as if to block out the smell of poison in the well.

  "Alison?" he asked.

  For the first time ever, she did not acknowledge him when he spoke to her. Instead she walked away and said, "I'll call you soon." She looked over her shoulder and stopped. "I will call you, you know."

  He thought about that and her emotions as he walked her go, then he walked over to the body again and he didn't feel remorse or the dread or the anguish he'd felt hours before. He felt something had been turned loose inside of him again, something unfamiliar, something he'd locked up years ago when he'd married G.G., back when she'd started in with all she started in with. It was the hunt. The thrill of the hunt, of the search for an answer, of solving a puzzle. And he felt a bit guilty too, to go so quickly from grief to curiosity, but there it was: the irreverence of a mind turned loose upon clues.

  He climbed back up the hillside the slow way, eyeing the way up for any sign of anything that might have come to claim the boy. Nothing presented itself except the uncultivated overgrowth quiet between the imposition of city streets that simply laid where they laid and no further. And sometimes not even that, what with the cracks in the road and the first hints of the tall grasses piercing those concretes and asphalts.

  Upstairs again with the gawkers rubbernecking over the railing of the Crescent's balcony, he also looked down at the flashing red and blue, but ignored all of the commotion everyone else around him gossiped about as they ate their pizzas. Sitting there on the chair, he dialed in instead on the angle and began to ignore things -- the cops, the lights, the movement.

  He could still see Brady's boot.

  He could not see the orange vest.

  He moved to the left end of the balcony, to the right, nothing helped or changed the circumstances. Either the body had moved -- which, knowing procedure, it wouldn't unless someone had cause to tamper with it -- or something was missing. He left The Crescent and looked back on it. The Crescent. Like a moon. But was it waxing or was it waning?

  #

  IV.

  Ebur wrote a $200 check to himself from Cornerstone Bank and deposited it in Community First at the teller's box. Terri flirted with him there and he felt tired. Tired of being "easy on the eyes." He then made it down to Arvest and deposited $200 from his Community First checkbook, again at the teller -- this one Reesa, an older lady who talked about her ailing husband. She thanked him. He took a colorless sucker -- good for the flavor, good to keep him from looking like a fool with a colored mouth. That's all he needed: something to suck on that wouldn't make him look foolish to half the town.

 

  He then wrote out a $200 check to Gamgi-Gyotong Woodham, hopped in his truck -- he needed to get that lassoing rope out of the bed before the rain ruined it -- and he drove south until he came to that mud-rock road he'd known so well and arrived, eventually, at a house on the hill that overlooked one of the few valleys unmarred by civilization. He got out, kicked a red rock, and saw his boy in the yard.

  "Hey dad!"

  "Hey son. You want to come to work with me?"

  "Yeah!"

  Ebur walked up to the front door. He ignored the doorbell, opened the storm door, and put fist to wood a few times.

  She was on the other side of it, waiting.

  He could hear her at the peephole. He looked right at it and grimaced.

  The latch slid back. The knob turned. The door cracked and then opened to reveal her standing there in a long dark green dress that flattered her as well as anything she'd ever wore. The bun she wore hid her dark, sleek Korean hair.

  "Hey Geeg," he said. "Can I come in?"

  "Depends," she said.

  He handed over the child support that wasn't really child support since they weren't really divorced.

  She grabbed it up and didn't even look at it before she tossed it carelessly behind her onto the floor. She flattened out her dress as if to cover parts of her she didn't want exposed and pulled up the slip to cover still more of her cleavage -- more than that, even, to cover her collar. "Did you and Alison hook up?"

  "No," he said.

  "Why not?" she asked, crossing her arms high enough to cover the rest and the arms as well.

  "G.G. I don't want nobody else. I just want to live with you and Peter and work the land."

  "Then why won't you do this for me?"

  "Because I want you."

  "Yes, but I'm not... not anymore. That's why Ali and I made the deal we made. She still talks to me, you know. We're good friends."

  He looked off
to the side yard. The hedge needed trimming. "Why are you still asking this of me?"

  "What's wrong with Ali? You said she was pretty. You said you'd go sleep with her to prove a point."

  "I said that in anger, G.G., we've been over this. I actually like your father, too, I was just mad and out of my mind."

  "Well I agree with you anyways. I think you should hook up with her and that's why you can't come in until you do."

  "This doesn't make any sense."

  "Yes it does," she said. "Ali needs a man and thinks you're handsome. Peter needs a father. I need help around the house -- a helpmate and a friend -- and I don't want anyone inside of me anymore. And you're a man who needs the things a man needs. Works out for everybody."

  "Except me," he said. "The father of your son and, I thought, the man you wanted to marry."

  Peter was standing, watching, waiting, listening between them both.

 

  "I did want to marry you."

  "And do you now, Geeg?"

  "I do."

  "What about that whole one flesh thing?"

  "My mother was the religious one."

  "Religion doesn't have anything to do with this."

  "Marriage is a religious thing."

  "Then why worry about divorce at all? Your superstition of divorce shows it. You're trying everything you can to get us practically divorced without signing papers but you never took the time to ask if you were really married. You want eternal faithfulness without having to chain yourself to eternity. You want to be free but never stop to ask if you were free to bind yourself. Or me myself. And I did. I bound myself to you."

  She didn't say anything after that.

  Philosophizing wouldn't do much good. "I'm taking Peter with me."

  "No you're not," she said.

  Peter said, "Please mom?"

  "No."

  Ebur said, "Later in the week, then."

  "Whenever you give Ali what she and I need. I'll keep talking to her. Open marriage is a common thing, now, you know. Why don't you just embrace it like any other man?"

  "Open marriage is an oxymoron. And besides, even if such a thing existed, what you want isn't that. Your idea's still closed, but it ain't marriage."

  "It's a great arrangement! I've worked it all out: everyone who needs sex gets sex. Everyone who needs a friend gets a friend. Everyone who needs commitment gets commitment. It's the perfect love triangle like in the stories."

  He said. "The unconditional love of marriage has but one condition: forsaking all others. Without that, it isn't love."

  "She's ten years younger than me. She's fit. She's powerful as things go in Eureka."

  He shook his head. "You can just turn a man into a pet."

  "Oh but I can," she said.

  He snorted, stallion-like. "Have a good day, sweetheart."

  "Don't call me that."

  "You got it babe."

  "Don't call me that."

  He stopped with the names. He had work to do -- a case, paid or no. He was already in the truck driving away watching her scream at him soundlessly beyond the windshield.

  #

  V.

  On the way, he got a call from her. "Can we hire you out?"

  He did need the money. "Have you just talked to G.G.?"

  "You know you can always ask me for money. Is it me?" she asked.

  "No, it's always me. And her. I'm already working on Brady. Send the first check."

  "I'll hand deliver it tomorrow. Race ya?"

  He said nothing.

  "We just talked to Mark, he--"

  "I thought I was racing you?" he asked.

  "Last one there's a rotten egg!"

  "I'll do Mark's alone."

  "I meant to the finish line," she said.

  "Oh," he said.

  She was silent, then.

  "Okay," he said.

  "Great!"

  He hung up on her.

  #

  VI.

  The barrel that drooped on the pegboard in one of the stalls opened up to reveal row after row of old paints. He moved on to a stack of old parking meters, those traffic tamers.

  "Be with you in a minute," Mark said.

  The customer in front of him pulled out a wad of cash.

  Ebur waved a hand. Who collected license plates anyways? Seemed a stupid thing: collecting various bits of proof of the ways the government had you register in their databases in order to keep you herded in. Did people collect yellow stars from the Holocaust? Jumpsuits from prison time? The store had so many things that you could drop on a man or use to get the drop on a man and break him in two. But no big cutting things, nothing like teeth and jaw extenders for a man.

  Two or three more customers left and judging by the stillness of the antique barn, he figured Mark was free. He circled back around to the front and the old collector sat on his hightop swivel chair, tamping his pipe.

  "You come to question me too?" Mark asked.

  "Who do you think she'll question?"

  "Everyone at the table," Mark said. "And you too. I asked you if you missed it and it looks as if you were right to say you did."

  Ebur grimaced at the irreverence of it.

  "Don't be so pious. A man who enjoys preaching can still enjoy giving a eulogy without incrimination." He puffed to light it. Puffed several times and a steady stream of Pipe Dream wafted into the air. "Course, preachers have also been incriminated for less."

  "You want to question me?" Ebur said.

  "Did she?"

  "She did."

  "Then no," Mark said.

  "You ever use a scythe?"

  "Zero point turner. Really nice."

  Ebur ignored the jealousy within. "Where were you?"

  "Sure," he said. "Looks bad after just telling you all that afternoon's are my time off."

  "Opportunity's the biggest hurdle."

  "Had I not been asleep half the day. Haven't been hungover like that since Frannie Holsapple's graduation party. Good God, I was stoned.

  "You didn't get any junk off the street yesterday?"

  "Well see that's the thing," he said, "we're both paid to clean up the countryside of brambles."

  "Don't talk about the boy that way."

  "Dog gets rabid, you put him down."

  "Brady wasn't rabid."

  "Boy with legs like that doesn't want to do the Olympic trials because he's mad at mom and dad? Come and tell me that's not a crime to all the Spring valley."

  "What, World's Top Ten Tourism Hot Spots isn't good enough for you anymore?"

  "You gotta sow your wild oats a little farther than the noise."

  "I think you mean cast your nets."

  "Wasn't talking about me anymore."

  Ebur stewed. "You know, people would respect you more if--"

  "Don't start in, old man." Mark said. "Only difference is you have no idea what it is to be the runt of the litter. Your momma spoiled you sour. You want respect..." he thumbed his holstered revolver.

  Ebur was glad that separated them now: that he didn't holster anymore.

  Mark's hard face softened to let in a bit of sadness. "I really wish I did. I really wish I hadn't been asleep. Where were you?"

  "On top of the Crescent. I never went home."

  Mark sat up straight and put his hand on his pistol.

  "Mark, I did not kill that boy. And I would not kill that boy. And you know it."

  The old mitten grip slackened. "But you must have seen something."

  "I saw his boot and I saw..."

  "What?"

  "I heard him cry out."

  "Dammit."

  Ebur had a penny so he left a penny.

  "Next Sunday?"

  "I don't even know at this point." The bell rang as he left and he wondered if an angel still got its wings had it died in the jaws of the hydra or at the end of the reaper's scythe.

&nbs
p; #

  VII.

  As he prepared for bed, the doorbell rang. He walked up and opened it to find Ali standing there. "Can I come in?"

  "No," he said.

  "Can you come out?"

  "I can come sit on my porch with you."

  "You have coffee?"

  "I have chamomile tea. Coffee's a morning drink."

  "Coffee's an always drink."

  "Not all of us get pre-morning lunch breaks."

  "Donut breaks," she said.

  He got the tea with difficulty due to the gauze and came out and joined her on the porch. "I thought you were on that weird fitness diet."

  She said, "When I break, I always break with donuts."

  "How often do you break?"

  "It's not called breakfast for nothing," she said and winked.

  He sipped his tea and she hers.

  And she said, "Can you ever see us together?"

  "I'm a married man, Ali."

  "Not really."

  "No, really. I am a married man unless she leaves me."

  "Why can't you do what she asks?"

  "Because that would me cage my real self. I'm not made to live like that."

  "Well I'd be faithful to you," she said and sipped her tea, her arm flexing as she did so.

  "After helping me be unfaithful to her," he said.

  She was quiet.

  "You find anything?"

  She said, "Talked to Mark, like I said. He doesn't know anything. Was really sweet about it."

  "Huh."

  "You?"

  "Same."

  "You're not going to let me in?" she asked.

 

  "No."

  "See you tomorrow."

  "Okay," he said.

  She walked back to her truck, bowie knife still strapped at her side, still carefully handling his mug and the scalding water within.

 

  #

  VIII.

 

  He hated dawn. Not that there was anything wrong with it as a thing, but he was wrong for it. He didn't fit well in it. He was made to rise a bit later, but sometimes his back got him up then anyways and he'd feed the horses and then head out. He drove through town and up to Bean Me Up, as was his custom, dawn or no, and when he pulled around the window was closed. He went to knock on it and order his black Americano and saw instead a piece of paper that read:

  PLEASE FORGIVE US

  OUR BEST EMPLOYEE

  HAS PASSED AWAY

  WE WILL REOPEN

  IN ONE WEEK

  WHEN WE HAVE

  REPLACED HIM

  He didn't have the strength to swear. Of course losing Brady would mean losing his coffee routine. He sat dumbfounded with his truck idling forward at less than a mile an hour, riding the brake. He was almost in the street before he pressed hard enough to come to a complete stop and a truck passed by blaring its warning.