Grave Intent (17 page)

The floors creaked beneath her feet as she
walked down a narrow foyer to the dining room and opened the
windows. On the way to the kitchen, she flipped on the auto switch
for the air conditioner and breathed a sigh of relief when she
heard it start to hum. It was the only modern renovation she’d been
able to talk Michael into and even at that, it was still eight
years old.

She’d just turned on the kitchen faucets to
check for water when Janet heard the screen door slam and the girls
run into the house. They raced through the dining room, past the
kitchen, then rounded the hall, which led to the family room.

“No running up the stairs,” Janet called
after them. “And clean that stuff off your face, Ellie.”

“Okay, Mama,” Ellie called back, her voice
already an echo from the top of the stairs.

Janet shook her head and shut off the water.
Watching two kids instead of one would keep her on her toes for the
next couple of days, but at least Ellie had company. It wasn’t easy
keeping a five-year old entertained when you had a television that
caught only two channels, no VCR, and the nearest Chuck E. Cheese
was a hundred and fifty miles away.

She lifted the hair off the back of her
sweaty neck for a moment, then began to take inventory in cabinets
and drawers. A glint of silver caught Janet’s eye when she passed
the window on her way to the old Frigidaire. She stopped in
mid-stride and watched as the front end of a vehicle entered the
clearing near the house. A second later a horn honked, and Rodney
Theriot’s battered, green pickup truck came into full view. Janet
smiled and waited until he’d parked alongside the van before going
outside to greet him.

“Well I’ll be corn fed and slaughtered,”
Rodney chortled while getting out of the truck. “Little Bit, ain’t
you a sight!” He straightened the bib of his overalls and waddled
toward her.

To Janet, Rodney’s laugh was larger than his
three hundred pounds and brighter than his crystal blue eyes. The
band of hair that surrounded the back of his head seemed whiter
than she remembered, and his puffy, vein-lined cheeks and double
chin, if anything, had grown larger.

“It’s great to see you, too, Rodney,” she
said warmly. They hugged briefly, and she motioned him inside.
“How’ve you been?”

He lumbered up the steps. “Any better they’d
outlaw it.”

“And Sylvia?”

“Even better’n me,” Rodney said, his voice
booming through the foyer. “How ‘bout Michael and the munchkin?
They around?” Before she could answer, he shuffled into the dining
room and peered over the snack bar into the kitchen. “Don’t tell me
you came up here all by yourself.”

“Ellie and Heather came with me. Michael’s
still back in Brusley, but he should be getting here sometime
tomorrow.” She pulled up a chair and offered it to him.

“Naw, I gotta exercise the gimp as much as I
can,” Rodney said, and tapped a hand against his left thigh. He
walked to the entrance of the family room and looked around.
“What’s a Heather?”

Janet laughed and turned toward the kitchen.
“She’s my sister’s daughter. Hey, I’ve got tap water if you’re
thirsty.”

“’Preciate it, but I just finished a bottle
of cream soda back at the Patch.” Rodney followed her to the
kitchen and rubbed the bald dome on his head. “Saw you drive past a
bit ago, and Sylvia wanted me to come by and make sure you come to
supper.”

A clatter followed by shrill laughter
suddenly rang overhead.

Rodney looked up and bellowed, “Is that you,
munchkin?”A wide, expectant grin spread over his face as he cocked
his head to one side and waited. When no response came, he said,
“Okay, then I guess it wasn’t my munchkin. S’pose I gotta give
these peppermints to some other little girl.”

Within seconds, footsteps thundered from the
stairs.

Rodney chuckled, and his barrel chest and
belly did an aquatic roll. He winked at Janet. “Gets ‘em every
time.”

“Mr. Rodney!” Ellie squealed. She whipped
around the corner of the room and flew to his side. “Here I am!
Here I am!”

Heather, who had followed her cousin
downstairs, inched shyly up to Rodney, her eyes bright with
anticipation.

“Well, look at that,” Rodney said, putting a
hand into his pocket. “Here I was thinking that I was going to have
to find me some other little girls.” He pulled out a handful of
peppermint sticks and handed them to Ellie and Heather. “Hmm,
what’s this?" he asked Ellie. "You been playing in your mama’s
makeup?”

Janet stepped around him so she could see her
daughter. The chalky film on Ellie's face looked even thicker than
before. “Back upstairs and wash that stuff off your face like I
told you,” she said.

Ellie shoved the peppermints into the pockets
of her shorts. “I was gonna, Mama, but Heather wanted to see my
room.”

“Fine, but go and get it cleaned off right
now.”

The girls whirled around and scampered out of
sight.

“And what do you tell Mr. Rodney?” Janet
called after them.

Two voices chorused from the next room,
“Thank you, Mr. Rodney!” and the old man smiled.

Janet shook her head. “I don’t know what
Ellie got into, but I’ll bet one of my old compacts found its way
into her fanny pack.”

“That’s just kids for ya.” Rodney pulled a
red bandanna out of his back pocket and blew his nose. “Well, I
gotta head back to the Patch before Sylvia calls out Sheriff
Crocket and starts a search party. I swear that woman worries more
the older she gets.”

“That’s because you’re such a prize catch,”
Janet said. She clapped him gently on the back.

Rodney snorted. “Oh, she thinks I’m a catch
all right. Right out of Black Lake.”

Janet laughed and followed him out the door
and to his truck. “Tell Sylvia I’ll be by later to pick up
groceries and that we'd be glad to come by for supper. What
time?”

Rodney hoisted himself into the truck, then
closed the door and rested his arm across the window track. “Seven
okay?”

“Sure.”

“Good deal. Now if you wind up at the store
earlier’n that, Sylvia may not be there. She said something about
going over to Mae Beth’s so she can get her hair done up . . .” He
twirled a finger against his sparse crop of hair. “. . . in a do
thingy. But I’ll be there. If you need anything before then, just
give me a call.” He wiped the back of his neck with the used
bandana. “The phone’s working, ain’t it?”

The cabin phone was a twenty-pound rotary
that hadn’t been changed since the sixties, but Janet knew that
wasn’t what Rodney referred to. Without warning, any resident of
Carlton could pick up their telephone and experience an earful of
static or dead silence, both of which could hang around for days.
She’d learned some time ago that cell phones didn’t offer a
compromise to the dilemma. You had to go five miles out of town to
get even a faint signal.

“Haven’t tried it yet.” Janet backed away
from the truck as he started the engine.

“Well, if I don’t see you least by seven or
so, I’m coming back, ya hear?”

“I hear.”

He backed up the truck, then after a whine
and grind of gears, the pickup jerked forward toward the road.
Rodney waved at her just before disappearing beyond the
clearing.

Still smiling, Janet rolled her head from
shoulder to shoulder. Gradually, she let it flop back and gazed up
at the fading blue sky. How nice it would be to stretch out
somewhere right now and do nothing. She dreaded the thought of
unloading the van.

With a sigh of resignation, she turned on her
heels, glanced up at the house—and froze. Pressed against the
second story window was Heather, her eyes wide with terror, her
mouth open as though in mid-scream. Behind her, barely visible in
the shadows, stood the figure of a man.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Anna rested her head against the back seat of
the station wagon and stared out the window while Mario Galupane, a
distant cousin to Ephraim, barreled along the highway in the fast
lane. The radio blared as he sped to catch up to the procession of
cars ahead. His wife, Bagusta, her belly full of wine and vodka,
snored next to Anna. Anna dismissed them as one would flies at a
picnic. She counted each throb from the freshly bandaged wounds on
her wrists, matching them to the number of headlights that passed
them on the interstate.

Mario had muttered something about their
going to Houston, some local festival the tribe was sure to take
advantage of. Not that it meant anything to Anna. She knew she’d
only be maintained like an aging family pet.

At Thalia’s graveside service, Ephraim had
not allowed her anywhere near the casket. She’d only been able to
watch from behind a nearby tree as the crowd sang and danced their
final farewell when Thalia was lowered into the ground. After they
dispersed, Anna had snuck to the grave while Bagusta stumbled her
way around the cemetery distributing flowers to other tombs.

A beefy-faced man in a dingy work shirt
buttoned only at his navel drove up on a backhoe. A concrete slab
dangled from the contraption, and the man shouted for Anna to move
aside. She’d ignored him, peering into the darkness that was to be
her daughter’s permanent berth. The eight-foot hole looked
fathomless, and the fading sunlight offered only a glimmer from the
top of the casket, like gold peeking through crevices in a mine.
Anna took the kerchief from her head and tossed it onto the
casket.

The irate man’s machinery clanged and
groaned, working around her until the slab came to rest over the
coffin, sealing it away like a secret. The monolithic cap left a
barren, four-foot hole, which created the illusion that Thalia had
simply disappeared. The depth that remained was intended for a
future casket. Anna knew, however, that the future casket would not
be hers. She’d disgraced Ephraim, which meant he would never grant
permission for her body to rest atop Thalia’s.

Where they placed her physical body made
little difference to Anna. She didn’t need flesh and bone to be
with Thalia.

Unfortunately Anna’s attempt to reach her
daughter had failed. If she’d only cut deeper and vertically
instead of across. Now Ephraim would have her watched constantly,
which meant if and when she got another opportunity, she would have
to make it fast and sure.

Moonlight shown through the car window, and
Anna noticed her shadowy reflection in the glass. Her face seemed
to belong to a stranger. Parenthetical lines ran on either side of
her mouth, her frown so deep it appeared to extend beyond the
confines of her jaw. Bags hung beneath her eyes. Her dark hair,
parted down the center of an unusually long widow’s peak, fell
lackluster to her shoulders. This was the face Ephraim no longer
wanted, the one that had embarrassed him, had not submitted to him
unquestioningly. The corners of Anna’s mouth turned up in a wry
smile.

Bagusta snorted, expelled gas, then turned
her ample body to one side before settling back to sleep. Anna
glanced back at the woman briefly before directing her attention
back to the window. She considered her future and found that it
only consisted of the next mile of highway, the next headlight, the
next whoosh of air from a passing truck.

Anna stuck a hand into her skirt pocket and
pulled out the music box she’d hidden there. She drew herself up
into a ball, knees to her chin, and faced the window. Holding the
box close to her ear, she opened it and hummed the familiar
tune.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s
gonna buy you—

She imagined herself lying alongside Thalia
in the velvet-lined box, her arms wrapped around her, nodding their
bodies to the lullaby.

“Mama?”

Anna looked up at the window and saw Thalia
peering back at her, her daughter’s face pressed close to the
opposite side of the glass. Anna felt no shock at the sight, not
even the slightest hint of surprise.

“I’m right here,” Anna whispered.

“I’m afraid.”

Mario belched out the ending chorus to ‘Hot
Nights, Cold Beer’, then lit a cigar that filled the car with
cherry-scented smoke.

Anna gently ran a finger down the center of
the window. “I won’t leave you.”

“But it’s cold here.”

Anna pulled her legs closer to her body as
though the movement alone would warm her daughter.

Thalia’s face vacillated in time with the
music box’s melody. “It’s dark, Mama.”

Bagusta snorted in her sleep again and kicked
a leg out against the front seat. Mario looked back at her with a
scowl. When his attention went back to the road, Anna closed the
music box and nestled it into her lap.

“I know,” she murmured.

Thalia’s dark eyes widened with fear. “And
I’m so alone.”

“Not for long.” Anna trailed a finger across
the window. Her heart felt ready to burst from her chest. No one
would stop her this time.

“When?”

A pause as a tractor-trailer roared by.

Anna sneezed from the cigar smoke, then said,
“Soon. Very soon.” She counted the headlights as they collected
behind them in the right lane. Two cars zipped by.

“Mama, I don’t know where to go.”

“You will.”

“How?”

A pickup and motorcycle edged by, and several
yards behind them huge headlights, like monstrous white eyes,
bounced along the highway.

“How?” Thalia asked again.

Anna kept one eye on the fast approaching
headlights and took off her shoes. She curled her toes around the
edge of the seat near the door, then looked back at Bagusta. The
woman’s head had flopped to her shoulder and bobbed with every bump
in the road. Mario was preoccupied with his cigar and the latest
song blaring from the radio.

The question sounded again. "How?”