A Fine Dark Line (7 page)

N
EXT MORNING
after breakfast, I pulled Callie aside and we walked out to the drive-in lot.

“Are you going to help me find out more?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Last night you said you would.”

“I didn’t say for certain. It sounded like fun last night. But in the light of day, I’m not so sure. What if it is the same Margret? So what?”

“She was murdered. No one ever found the murderer. That’s a real mystery, Callie. James Stilwind lives over on the hill with the rich folks. He might know something.”

“You’re just going to knock on his door and ask him about his burned-up sister and a murdered girl named Margret, and a boxful of letters he might have owned?”

“I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do. Not really. Are you going to help or what?”

“I’m not allowed to go anywhere. So what can I do?”

“But last night . . .”

“I forgot. I forget about it ten times a day because I didn’t do anything. Then there was that crack about the balloon . . . So, just solve your own stupid mystery.”

Callie crunched across the lot’s gravel, back toward our house, which was an odd way to think about a movie screen thick enough to contain two stories, a roof view, and all the comforts of home.

I got my bicycle out of the storage shed, placed Nub over my thighs, and rode across the highway into the residential area where the rich folks lived.

For the first time I really noticed the houses there.

They were built along different designs, but all were big and fresh-looking, as if someone came daily to wipe them down from roof to porch. Some of the porches were big enough for a family of four to live on. All the other houses were equally as magnificent.

I put Nub down so he could run alongside me. I rode on through the neighborhood until the steep hill got to be too much, then I pushed my bicycle, checking the names on mailboxes. They were all neat mailboxes with black lettering, and not a one was different from the other in size and design. None of them said Stilwind.

I came across a girl playing in her front yard that looked to have not only been mowed, but manicured with nail clippers. She was sitting at a little table with chairs, a tea set, and dolls. She wore a pink dress and had a pink bow in her shiny blond hair. She looked as if she were about to go to church.

I called to her from the street. “Do you know where the Stilwinds live?”

“No. Why are you dressed like a nigger?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re wearing those blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up.”

“All the kids do.”

She took a sip from her teacup, said, “Not around here. Your mama make you that shirt?”

“So what?”

“A feed sack and a Butterick pattern?”

“It’s not a feed sack . . . It’s plaid.”

“I don’t wear homemades, and I don’t wear hand-me-downs.”

“So?”

“That little dog looks like a mutt.”

“You look like a mutt,” I said.

“Well, I never,” she said, standing up from her little chair and placing a hand on her hip.

I rolled my bike on, and when I was away from her, I glanced down at myself. My blue jeans were patched, and the shirt I had on was a little thin and faded in spots, but I looked okay. Surely the folks over here didn’t dress up all the time, just to play or ride bikes.

I passed three teenage boys tossing a football. They were wearing jeans and tennis shoes just like me. But there was a difference. They looked as tidy and confident as bankers, and as the little girl had reported, they didn’t cuff the legs of their jeans.

I was about to get on my bike and start riding again, when one of the boys tossing the ball in the yard called out to me.

“Who are you?”

I turned, looked at him. He was tall and blond. Probably seventeen or eighteen. He repeated himself. I told him who I was.

“You’re kind of in the wrong neighborhood, aren’t you, kid? You know what happened last time a white-trash kid came
over here, bringing some little rat of a dog with him. I tell you what happened. He disappeared. Him and his little dog.”

One of the boys, darker and stockier, walked closer to the edge of the curb. As he neared, I could smell his hair oil. The aroma was sweet and expensive, unlike the Vitalis on my head.

“They found that boy dead alongside the railroad track with his pants down and his little dog stuffed head-first up his ass,” Stocky said. “The dog was still alive, ’cause when they came up on it, it wagged its tail.”

He and the blond boy laughed.

I knew it was a big joke, but it made me uncomfortable just the same.

“I’m no white trash,” I said.

“You aren’t from the hill,” the blond boy said, “so you have to be.”

“I’m from the drive-in. Down there.”

The blond boy grew serious. “Oh. Well, I go to the drive-in now and then. It’s all right. No hard feelings. I take dates to that drive-in. I don’t want to get in bad there. I was just kidding. You know how joking is.”

The third boy, who so far had not spoken, walked over to the curb holding the football. He was tall and thin with brown hair, probably nice-looking. The other boys began walking back into the yard. He turned and tossed them the football. The blond kid caught it.

“Don’t pay them any mind,” he said. “They think they’re funny. But they’re about as funny as a screen door on a submarine. You just have to ignore them. My name’s Drew. Drew Cleves.”

I knew that name. It was the boy Callie had mentioned last night, that she liked. I decided not to mention that.

“You live here?” I asked.

“No. I live the house over.”

“Do you know where the Stilwinds live?”

“Oh yeah. Top of the hill. Around the curve. Dead center where the street ends. But they don’t really live there anymore. No one lives there. They have it for sale. But no one wants that house.”

“Why?”

“They say it’s haunted. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about it growing up.”

“Does it look haunted?”

“Just a little run-down. But there was some kind of murder there. Or maybe it wasn’t a murder. The story is kind of vague.”

“Then the Stilwinds don’t live in Dewmont?”

“Oh, they do, but just not up there. I don’t know exactly where they live. Different places. There’s several of them, you know. But I couldn’t tell you where. Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious. Many years ago they used to have a house out back of our drive-in. Burned down.”

“I’ve heard that,” Drew said. “My father knew them then. I understand they built the one here not long after the fire. I’ve never really been that curious about it. Went up there once with Tatum, that’s him.”

He pointed at the blond kid. “We were maybe twelve. Don’t tell anybody, but we broke out a back window with a rock. It’s a little spooky-looking is all. Hey, I heard you say you’re one of the new people. The drive-in owners?”

I nodded.

“I met your sister, Callie, at the Piggly Wiggly at the beginning of the summer. She’s very pretty.”

“Some think so. She tried to get a part-time job at the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Did she get hired?”

“No. My parents say it’s a good place to shop, though.”

“I just get a candy bar and a Coke there now and then. My parents wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, that’s them. I’d shop there if I shopped. I figure a loaf of bread tastes like a loaf of bread no matter where you get it.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Callie’s seeing Chester White, isn’t she?”

“Not anymore. My dad doesn’t like him. In fact, he beat him up.”

“Your father made a good choice. To beat Chester up, I mean. He’s not the best of people. Why did he beat him up?”

I decided to lie. “I don’t know exactly.”

“I’m sure he had a good reason. Hey, you ought to come over and throw the football around with us sometime.”

“Sure.”

“Now, if you want.”

I thought, here’s a boy who wants to see my sister bad.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m going to see the house and go home. I got things to do later.”

Drew stuck out his hand. I shook it. He said, “Nice meeting you. Give my best to your sister. And don’t pay these mooks any mind. They don’t know dog doo from a hairdo. The house . . . it’s right at the top of the hill.”

I nodded, went up the street pushing my bicycle, Nub trotting beside me, his tongue hanging out, dripping water.

Before me and Nub had gone very far it turned dark and the wind picked up. Glancing at the sky, I saw a huge raincloud had settled over us like a black umbrella. The wind was welcome though. It was cool and smelled of rain and there was a crackle to the air that made the hair on my arms stand up.

When we got to the top of the hill, it curved slightly. I pushed my bike around the turn, and there, dead center, as Drew had described it, stood the Stilwind house. A
FOR SALE
sign with a real estate agent’s name on it poked up in the front yard.

From a distance, it was not too unlike the other houses in the area, but as I grew closer I could see it was in great need of paint and the windows were specked with surprised bugs and water spots and the front door was swollen like a drunkard’s belly. The hedges grew too high, losing design, and the cement walk along front, side, and back of the house was hairline-cracked in many places. The oak trees near the house were moving in the wind and waving their boughs against the roof with a sound like cats scratching in a litterbox. You could see where the wind-pushed limbs had torn loose shingles and tossed them in the yard like an old man peeling dead skin from his feet.

Still, the house was so magnificent on its wooded acreage I actually gasped. I got off my bike and kicked the kick stand out to support it, stood looking at the house.

Nub sat in the street and looked at the house with me, turning his head from side to side.

“What do you think, boy?”

Nub didn’t seem to have an opinion.

I walked up the drive, climbed the steps, and knocked on the bulging door, certain, of course, no one would answer. Nub sat on his haunches, watching me, trying to determine in his little dog brain exactly what I was doing.

No one answered.

Me and Nub walked around the back of the house, saw a massive heart-shaped swimming pool with a tall diving board. As I neared it, there was a burst of crows, like pieces of night exploding from the ground. They beat up to the sky, stalled,
spread out and fled in all directions. They came together in the distance as if it had all been planned, and dissolved into the trees.

A dead armadillo was lying on the bottom of the empty pool. It was almost flat, the crows having helped themselves to the better morsels, picking at it along with weather and time.

Shrubs lined the remains of the tennis court, which had cracked and given way to yellow weeds and grass burrs. Beyond all this was a small pecan orchard and a great expanse of woods.

I walked to the back of the house and touched the back door. It slid open slightly and jammed where it had swollen at the bottom. I pushed harder and made enough room to go inside.

It was dark with patches of dirty light shining through the dusty windows. The place smelled. Beneath it all was that biting stench of rat’s nests and mildew.

I slipped inside and Nub followed, staying close to my leg. My eyes became adjusted to the darkness, but the smell was almost overwhelming.

I noticed there were footprints in the dust. Some of the prints were from animals, like squirrels, maybe a coon, but there were human footprints as well. Little feet in narrow shoes. As we came to a wide staircase, I saw the prints went upstairs.

We stopped at its base and I looked up and considered, but decided against it. The upper floor was crowded with shadows, as if something had squeezed them all into one spot, fastened them there with a wrap of invisible chain.

I had the uneasy feeling that something lay at the top of the stairs, just where the steps curved to the upper landing.

Nub looked up the stairs. I saw the hair on his back stand
up like porcupine quills, then he growled. I strained to see if anything was there, but saw nothing, heard nothing.

Then a shadow, shaped like a crone in a Halloween carnival, fled along the wall and went away.

That was enough for me.

Softly calling Nub, we went away from there very fast. Outside the air was cool and sharp with rain. It flushed the stench of mildew, rat’s nest, and discomfort out of my head. I dismissed the shadow as nothing more than a trick of the light.

I mounted my bike. Beneath that dark cloud, the aroma of rain in my nostrils, I started pedaling down, Nub was running along beside me, his tongue hanging out like a small pink sock.

I zoomed along with the wind in my hair, raindrops striking my face. As I came to the bottom of the hill, my speed picked up, and before I knew it, the highway loomed before me.

I stepped back on the pedal with everything I had, putting the brakes on hard, but that big J.C. Higgins bike wasn’t having any of that. The tires glided over the slightly damp cement and the Higgins turned sideways, fell over, then dropped my leg hard against the concrete.

I skidded right out into the middle of the highway. There was a blaring sound so loud my hair stood on end. I saw the grillework of a Big As Doom Mack Truck bearing down on me, knew right then there was a good chance I was going to miss that planned showing of
Vertigo
with the family, and most anything else that would come up a second later.

In that instant I felt neither fear or regret, just resignation.

As I continued to slide, I glimpsed Nub out of the corner of my eye, running between me and the truck. The horn blared again and something smacked me.

Y
OU WERE LUCKY
,” Richard said.

It was three days after the accident. Richard Chapman was sitting in a chair by my bed writing his name on the cast on my left leg with a pencil stub he kept wetting by poking it into his mouth. His writing was slow and deliberate, so damp it was smeary.