Do Unto Others (3 page)

I couldn’t blame Sister for being mad. If she blamed Mama’s condition for running her life, she thought I was making it worse. She’d wanted money to put Mama in a nursing home over in La Grange. She didn’t have the money, hadn’t had anything except Mark since her rodeo-smitten husband had abandoned her five years ago and headed to parts unknown. I had headed for parts unimaginable (New England), but Sister’d had my phone number.

I stood in the carport, staring at the modest house I’d grown up in. It was built at the turn of the century and had belonged to my father’s uncle who died widowed and childless. Two stories, white, with plenty of blue-shuttered windows across the front to let in light and maybe neighbors’ peering eyes. The porch was wood and held two white wicker chairs that should’ve held Mama and Daddy. Sister and I sat there and moped these days.

We hadn’t kept up the house as Daddy had; it had been his pride and joy, but we took the house for granted. Mark trimmed the yard and tended the flower beds, but the house needed a paint job, especially across the front porch. I knew I should get it taken care of, but I was wary of spending money in front of Sister. Every cent I wasted on other expenses was a cent that could help lift the burden of our mother from our shoulders. If only Daddy had been as thoughtful about insurance as he was about lawn care.

The average yearly cost of nursing home care in this
country is thirty thousand bucks. It tends to be one of those facts you don’t bother with till your mother’s walking in circles, drooling on her chin, and thinking you’re her long dead brother Walter. My investments and savings couldn’t bear that assault.

Part of me didn’t want Mama in a home, and the other part of me didn’t want my savings flying away so quickly. I couldn’t tell Sister my financial woes. She thought my college education resulted in an instantly swollen bank account. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her I didn’t have the money to keep Mama in a home for years of Alzheimer’s. Contrary to popular belief, publishing is not a gold mine.

Mark swaggered up to me like only a thirteen-year-old can. He doesn’t even have the grace to look like a Poteet—not that it’s his fault. He’s tall and rangy like us, but that’s about it. Where Sister and I are fair-haired and green-eyed like both our parents, Mark is dark and just looks like trouble. He’s the spitting image of his daddy, the aforementioned rider from responsibility. Even wearing silvery round glasses, he looks like a rebel. I never managed that in my youth.

“I hate to interrupt your cramped social schedule, but supper’s on,” I said. Usually I tease Mark, but arguing with Sister had soured my mood.

Mark surveyed me with eyes older than the rest of him. “You and Mom have been fighting over Mamaw again.”

“What are you, psychic?” I put my arm around his shoulder and steered him toward the house.

“I don’t know why you two just don’t accept Mamaw for how she is. She ain’t getting better.”

“Isn’t,” I automatically corrected. We walked into the living room, where Mama sat chatting chirpily with shadows.

Mark waved his arms in front of her face. “No one’s here, Mamaw. Nobody but us.”

She looked at him, hurt. Turning her face away, she pressed the back of her hand to her pinched mouth.

I took Mark by the arm and shuffled him into the kitchen. “Must you argue with her?” He’s a good kid, but I wondered if the strain of our difficult domestic situation was wearing on him.

“Nothin’ to argue about with Mamaw. An argument takes two people armed with opinions or facts. Mamaw’s lacking both.”

“Don’t be disrespectful, Mark.”

Mark smacked his chewing gum in a most impertinent teenage fashion. I do wonder where he gets it. “You know, Uncle Jordy, I don’t see disrespect in facing up to Mamaw going out of her head.”

I opened the fridge, got out a pitcher of iced tea, and slammed the door. “You’re too young to understand. Mama’s not exactly going out of her head.” Who was I kidding? I was mad at Mark for saying exactly what I thought.

“I think there’s going to be a vacancy sign hung up real soon,” Mark muttered as Sister came back in. Needless to say, the rest of the meal did not go well. Little family squabbles over the sanity of the clan matriarch do not make for carefree dinner conversation. Mark huffed off to his room to read; as I said, the boy is not entirely without redeeming features. Sister pouted again and left for The Near End and the company of Bubba. And I sat watching TV with Mama. I think the vapid sitcom made as much sense to her as it did to me. I started reading an old copy of Eudora Welty’s short stories, disturbed only by Mama’s occasional giggle-along with the laugh track, as automatic and sad as a last breath.

It was ten o’clock and I was putting on the news
from Channel 36 out of Austin when the phone rang and my life turned left.

“Jordy.” It was Sister. “How’s Mama?”

“Fine,” I answered. Sister thinks she takes better care of Mama than I do.

“Did you give her her Haldol?” Sister asked, and I slapped my forehead. Crap! I’d gotten the prescription filled and my confrontation with Beta Harcher had driven the pills right out of my mind. I glanced over at Mama; she looked wide awake. Our family doctor prescribed Haldol for her restless nights, so common in Alzheimer’s patients.

“Um, yeah, just about to give it to her,” I fibbed. I’d left the pills in my office at the library. Well, Sister didn’t need to know about my slight dereliction of duty. I could run down to the library and be back, with Sister none the wiser.

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning then.” There was the barest hint of reconciliation in her voice.

“Fine. Bye.” I hung up. Mama was watching the television and had turned the volume to a murmur, the way she liked it now. I went to the stairs in the entry way and called up to Mark.

“I’m heading off to the library for a second. I’ll be right back. Come down and sit with Mama, please.”

As I went out the door, I heard the shuffle of his feet as he descended the stairs.

I got in my Blazer and headed down Lee Street, driving past Mirabeau’s little city park. I could have turned onto Bluebonnet then, but a bit of curiosity as to what was going on in town steered me past the park toward Mayne Street (spelled that way because some founding mother didn’t want Mirabeau to copy every other small town in America). It had been the same growing up here—the hope that something fascinating might be going
on if you just went around town to find it. The night had cooled some, but the air felt wet with unfallen spring rain. Distant thunder rumbled faintly, toward Austin and the Hill Country. I scanned the clouded skies for lightning, but the night was dark and still.

There’s no long drive around Mirabeau. If you head north of Mayne, you get the lovely quiet neighborhoods I grew up in. If you head south of Mayne, you go through the small business district. Stores stand in sturdy brick buildings that have survived tornado, flood, and modern architecture—and proudly have their dates of dedication carved in the crests on their highest (usually third) floors. Past the business district is a small railroad yard, and beyond are the mix of trailer parks, ramshackle shacks, and small but tidy homes that make up the poor part of town. The railway also divides Mirabeau by color, an unofficial segregation marked by the nightly whistle of the train. Complete your circle and you run smack dab into a gentle curve of the Colorado River, where Mirabeau and its few thousand souls sit. The Colorado was swollen with spring rain and with my window down, I could smell the faint but pungent odors of muddy river and decay.

Mayne was as dead as a street could be. A scattering of cars squatted at Hubbard’s Grocery and some high-school kids sat on the back of a pickup truck in the Dairy Queen parking lot, watching the world not go by. I sighed and made a left onto Loeber Street, away from the business district. I wasn’t missing anything by not going straight to the library and then straight home. This wasn’t Boston.

The library was at the intersection of Loeber and Bluebonnet and sat dark and solid in the night. We’re lucky in Mirabeau; the library is a handsome building, built only ten years ago, made of solid brick and native granite from the Hill Country, modern materials shaped
into old-style architecture. The words
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
CITY
OF
MIRABEAU
were carved into granite above the front doors, and at night a light shone on the words like a beacon of knowledge. Beautiful, ancient live oaks stood guardian around the building.

I pulled the Blazer up to the entrance. The library doesn’t rate a parking lot. You have to park either on Loeber or Bluebonnet, or in the little lot next to the small softball field, or maybe in the little, tatty apartment complex that’s down Loeber. As we never have a crowd, we never have a parking problem.

I fumbled for my keys, unlocked the door, and threw on the lights. Same old place, I thought. I walked past the dedication plaque, past the new, neon-colored posters my assistant Candace had hung to encourage kids in the summer reading program, past the new-arrivals bin, to the checkout counter. I opened my office door, turned on the light, and found Mama’s pills in my desk drawer. Pocketing them, I turned off my office light and closed the door.

I paused—and to this day I don’t know why. Something was wrong. A prickle ran along my neck like a ghost’s fingernail. I looked across the wide doors and the stacks of books. There was only the gentle hum of automatic air-conditioning, comforting to any modern Texan. I wandered from the checkout counter to the children’s section, glancing around like a determined shopper at the bargain mall. Everything seemed in place.

It felt like someone was watching me. I took a deep shuddering breath. I was being silly; a long day with Beta Harcher and my mother had gotten to me. I looked around again, shrugged off my exhaustion, turned out the lights, and locked up. I got into my car and drove up Bluebonnet, back to my mind-numbed mother and my sarcastic nephew.

And the next morning, all holy hell broke loose.

THERE ARE SO MANY IFS IN THIS WORLD. IF I hadn’t forgotten Mama’s pills, if I hadn’t fought with Beta Harcher the day before, if Beta had never found her own personal Jesus … And the biggest if of all: if Mama had never gotten sick and brought me home to all this rotten lying, deceit, and death. But there’s really no point in articulating your ifs even once. I learned that the hard way.

I got to the library about 9:45
A.M.
, parking per my custom right in front. I always want the city council to know that I’m on the job. They’re functional illiterates but they might wander by the library by mistake.

My assistant Candace Tully arrived as I did, pulling her teal Mercedes up behind my Blazer. Candace is a real piece of work. She’s Mirabeau’s youngest professional volunteer and everyone’s just real worried that she hasn’t gotten married yet. Her daddy owns five banks in central Texas and her mama owns six, so Candace is not one for regular, gainful employment. Aside from her part-time library work, she serves the Mirabeau Historical Society, the various county Daughter associations (of the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the American Revolution), and has actually been sighted escorting elderly ladies across the street. Everyone admires Candace Tully and she’s been a constant
pain in my butt since I got the chief librarian job. Candace was on a husband-hunting safari and I was big game. If she wasn’t so cute, ignoring her would be easy as pie.

Candace sidled up to me as if we were in a smoky bar and I had the last cigarette. Today she was sporting a navy silk blouse, cream-colored pants, and a colorful paisley scarf pinned to her shoulder with a fetching drape. She looked real nice. I wasn’t nearly as appealing in faded jeans, cowboy boots (an old pair I’d hardly ever worn living in Massachusetts), and a blue chambray shirt. I got out of the car, and Candace nearly strained her neck looking up at me; maybe she’s five-foot-three on a hot day. She brushed her brown hair out of her blue eyes and examined me critically.

“I heard about your little encounter with Beta Harcher,” she said severely, “and I can’t believe she’d wallop you.” She patted my bruised cheek.

I shrugged. “Not a big deal, really.”

“I wish I’d been there to punch her lights out.” Candace grimaced, digging in her purse for her library keys.

I peered down into the chaos. “You got Mace in there I can borrow in case she comes back?”

Candace grinned. “I imagine you took care of yourself.”

“Didn’t need to. All the ladies came to my defense.”

Her eyes flashed up at me. She’s a looker, but she tries too hard. And dating a co-worker is a recipe for disaster.

“I’ll bet they did,” Candace retorted.

I couldn’t resist teasing her. “Especially Ruth Wills. She must’ve worked in an asylum once. She manhandled ol’ Beta.”

“Hmmph. I hope her bedside manner’s better than
that,” Candace muttered, then shot me a look to imply I best not know anything about Ruth Wills and beds.

Candace plied me with questions as we opened up the library and went about our usual chores. She checked the after-hours drop for any returned books and I went to the back room to brew some coffee. We can’t drink beverages out on the library floor, so we keep a little fridge with Cokes and a Mr. Coffee in a back storage room. I usually manage to sneak a cup to my office and I’ve seen Candace sip a Diet Dr. Pepper, then hide the can in her file cabinet at the checkout counter. We’re fairly hardened criminals at the library.

I walked in front of the checkout counter, past the children’s section, and past the stairs that went up to the public room that civic groups sometimes used for their meetings. I thought of my feeling of unease last night when I was alone in the stacks and decided I was being silly.

My complacency lasted all of the four seconds it took to reach the storage room. My eyes registered muddy footprints on the carpet near the back door and I frowned, wondering what idiot had tracked in mud. I opened the storage room door and saw Beta Harcher’s body lying across the tile floor.

I wanted to yell, but my throat didn’t work and instead I just leaned soundlessly against the open door. I could hear Candace humming a favorite Garth Brooks tune of hers, and it sounded as small and as distant as a cricket’s hum in a summer night.

I never associated baseball bats with evil. To me, they were just thick sticks of wood, lying in the grass of the backyard. You’d sling a bat over a shoulder and walk down to the weedy field at the elementary school, where for a while you and your friends could forget about schoolwork, parents, and bossy big sisters. Bats
were tokens of boyhood and of a game that I never excelled at, but loved to play. They appeared from my closet early in the spring, usually around March when the rains abated, and retired after another season of service when I went back to school. To me, bats represented happiness, an innocence that I had before I left Mirabeau to venture beyond river and highway.

The bat I’d found yesterday and left in my office was next to Beta Harcher’s body. I could see one huge bruise, about an inch above the imaginary line between left eye and left ear. From what I was told later, she probably didn’t suffer. Her left eye was swollen shut. Her heart must’ve kept pushing blood into her brain and the pressure of that blood inflated her tissues before she breathed her last susurration of air. I saw blood and hair, but not much of either, on the flared end of the bat. Specks of blood dotted the floor by her head.

My voice asserted itself and I screamed, “Candace!” She came running like a jackrabbit on fire. I felt her arm close around mine and her harsh shudder of air. She pulled me away from the door.

“My God!” Candace gasped. “Miss Harcher! How? What happened?”

“She’s dead. I think.” I pulled away from Candace, stepped back into the room, and put my fingertips to Beta’s neck. Her throat was as cool and still as a winter day.

I leaned back. How—and why—was Beta Harcher dead in my library? I stared at her again, as if expecting her to raise her battered head and provide an answer. The only other item to register in my mind was her clothing; she was wearing a black turtleneck, a black skirt, black pantyhose, and black shoes. She’d always dressed frumpy but now she looked like a New York
Bohemian poet. Tar-black mud caked her shoes, and I saw tracks of mud on the floor.

I turned and grabbed Candace’s arm. I pulled her away from the room and headed for the phone at the checkout counter. Dialing 911, I wondered how the hell Beta Harcher had gotten into the library. And that’s when I remembered my creepy sensation of being observed last night.

  Mirabeau isn’t accustomed to murder. Our streets are eerily quiet of violent death. Last year, there’d only been one murder in all of Bonaparte County, and that’d been in the county seat of Bavary. A fight in a pool hall had suddenly turned into a stabbing and a man who didn’t speak much English coughed up his life on the smooth green felt of a billiard table. I couldn’t remember a murder in town at all until Sister reminded me of when Buell Godkin got stinking drunk and blasted his brother to kingdom come. That’d been years ago.

Women don’t die from blows to the head in Mirabeau. They die of seditious disease, of bodies that have weathered years and are simply ready to rest, of the little death that lurks in too many beer bottles, of reckless driving, or maybe of just loneliness when they are left solitary after decades of marriage and their husband lies cold in the ground. Or in my mother’s case, they’ll die because their minds will eventually vanish and nothing will remain to motivate the breath and the heartbeat, not even life’s most secret, sacred memories.

Our chief of police, Junebug Moncrief, arrived quickly with the coroner and an attitude of outrage that such an event had taken place in His Town. Candace was outside directing the ambulance (and moving her Mercedes out of the way) and I was guarding the body. I don’t know why, it just seemed the proper thing to do.
I wished for a blanket to cover Beta; one stony blue eye was open and I hated the way it stared blankly at the ceiling, as though pleading with the powers above for kind judgment and resurrection.

Junebug stormed in with one of his officers, nodded sternly at me, and glanced in at the body. “Jesus bitchin’ Christ,” he said, which I’m sure Miss Harcher would not have appreciated. The other officer, a youngster with cropped red hair, fidgeted sweatily as he loaded film. His eyes darted between the camera and Beta’s corpse while his fingers fumbled with the controls. I wanted to assure him she’d hold her pose, but I thought it’d be ungentlemanly.

Junebug waved me off. “Go outside, Jordy, and just sit. Don’t let anyone else come in here ’cept the paramedics. I know it’s a burden, but don’t open your mouth either. Library’s closed for today, okay? You and I and Miss Tully’ll all talk in a minute.”

I nodded wordlessly and went outside, grateful for the scents of wildflowers and fresh air. The air in the library had taken on a dense quality I didn’t like.

Candace fretted as she watched the paramedics tumble a portable gurney from the ambulance. She opened the door for the two men and they rushed in.

“They don’t have to be in a hurry,” I said, and then thought what a rotten comment that was.

“How, Jordy? How did she get in here? Who killed her? Why?” Candace hissed in a whisper, shaking her head in disbelief.

I took Candace’s hand and sat down with her on the front step. I told her Junebug said for us to wait outside and he’d come talk to us. She nodded, her normally permanent perkiness blanched away.

The wait was awful. I guess they have to take pictures and examine the body some before they move it
and secure the area, whatever that means. I held Candace’s hand and thought about all the energy that had been in Beta Harcher, energy enough to make scenes in libraries, whack grown men, and be so sure of her own lightness. All of that life vanished with one solid blow. I felt my breakfast shift uncertainly in my belly. I stuck my face into the next breeze that blew and felt better. It was sad that, meteorologically, this was shaping up to be a fine day.

Folks wandered over to the ambulance, some from homes and some from the small businesses near Blue-bonnet. In a town that is populated mostly by senior citizens, you get used to seeing ambulances idling in the road. Losing an elder is of course mourned but not unexpected. However, the library isn’t usually where people expire, so there was curiosity.

Old Man Renfro, our most loyal patron, arrived, walking with his cane and dressed as always in a threadbare gray suit. His wrinkled, coffee-colored face frowned as he looked at Candace and me on the steps. We obviously didn’t belong there during library hours.

He and others inquired, and I replied that there’d been an accident and the library was closed for the day. I didn’t know what else to say. This revelation didn’t get anyone to turn on their heels and seek other entertainment. The crowd, about fifteen strong, stood by the ambulance, waiting grimly.

A little Japanese sedan spewed gravel as it screeched to a stop next to Candace’s Mercedes. Her hand tightened on mine at the thought of all those little meteors denting her finish. A dapper, short little fellow I knew to be an utter fool jumped from the car and practically skipped to the library. He obviously couldn’t wait to see the body. His dark eyes glanced at Candace and me. I didn’t raise a hand to stop him. Billy Ray Bummel, the
assistant D.A., wouldn’t have stopped anyhow. He dashed into the library.

Some indeterminate time later, Junebug, the coroner, and Billy Ray Bummel emerged. The paramedics followed, trundling a blanketed form. Gasps and other expressions of surprise and curiosity arose from the crowd. They sounded like a freakshow audience ogling a particularly ugly mutant. Junebug fixed the group with a stern eye.

“Y’all get! Get going about your business and let us do ours.”

A few spectators moved away, but most acted like their feet were mired in mud. “Who is it?” a voice croaked from the crowd.

Junebug leveled his eyes at the offender. “You can read about it in the paper. Now get moving along.” He’d put on his reflective sunglasses for the proper authority image and stuck a Stetson back on his brown crewcut. He was bigger and taller than me, with a solidly broad face. I’m sure he’d already thought it’d look good next year on a sheriff’s poster. He looked much the same as in high school, except for the slightest of beer guts and a few worry lines creasing his brow.

A second warning sufficed and the crowd ambled apart as the ambulance was loaded and roared off toward the hospital. The lights didn’t flare and the siren stayed silent. I felt sick and sad; Beta might’ve been crazy, but she didn’t deserve this.

Junebug took me by the arm. “C’mon, Jordy.” His deep voice was raspy from tobacco. “Let’s talk inside.”

Let me explain about me and Junebug. We’d known each other since first grade. In a small town, when you spend twelve years of school and summers with the same kids, you develop what those TV shrinks call love/hate relationships. It’s inevitable. You play with
these kids day after day and you can’t imagine life without their company. But you’re also guaranteed to get plenty mad at each other.