Eating Memories (35 page)

“Yes.” He must have. His paws are bleeding.” Bobby was sitting on the porch, just like he’d wanted to take the weight off his feet. His blue eyes were bewildered.

“Come a long ways looking for people.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

She grabbed a handful of hair near the dog’s ear and scratched. The dog sniffed her hand and went back to his food. “Seem real glad to see us, that beggar. Been hoping he’d get something to eat without having to chase it any,” she said fondly.

They sat for a while in comfortable silence, just watching the dog eat. It licked the plate and then lay down, its muzzle on its paws. In its moist, brown eyes was an uncomplicated pleasure.

“I’ll keep the dog, robot. You ain’t got nothing to feed him. This dog look like he been a pet. He skinny like he ain’t got the wherewithal to chase them rabbits. Reckon he need me.”

“Yes, ma’m. And what about me?”

“What about you?” she asked.

“Can I stay?”

She scratched the dog on the nappy hair between his eyes. “Dog need me. You don’t.”

Bobby peeled a green stick he held in his hands. “I’m programmed like that dog.”

“Which way is that?”

“To need people.”

“No. It’s me that needs somebody, robot. Been waiting years to hear a human voice. But you, you don’t need nobody. You don’t die, and you don’t really live. Now you go on and find somebody, hear? Ain’t no use your staying round me. I likes to do for myself.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She stared at him hard.

“For taking the dog.”

He was used to leaving by then, she realized. He got up from the porch, dusted his hands off, and ambled back into the woods.

Every day for a month Leticia went out in the yard, Sissy at her heels, and looked toward the blank face of the forest. The woodpile wasn’t touched. The porch got icy.

She wondered if robots could die. She pictured him out in the forest, unmoving, his blue eyes open to the sky, the pink on his cheeks never fading.

* * *

Spring came, and she set out young tomatoes and corn, working the sun-warmed black soil with her hands. She let the eggs go and got a whole new flock of speckled chicks. She kept as busy as she could so she could lose her memories in work—but it only helped a little. Love didn’t die so easy as people.

She caught herself a summer cord and was lazing in bed in the morning. That’s when she noticed the snatches of music. Sitting up with a start, she twisted her hands in the blankets, straining to hear the melody.

Slapping on her slippers, she went out to the porch and found the robot. There was a stereo player in Bobby’s hands. Sissy was at his feet.

He lifted his head to regard her. His eyes were as blue as she had remembered; his face was as gold and as pink. “Hello,” he said.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Atlanta.”

“Jesus God,” she said. “Atlanta? But Atlanta’s so far . . .”

He avoided her direct gaze. “You said you wanted to hear a human voice. Besides, I can walk all day and all night. I found the stereo. That was the easy part. The batteries were harder.”

She sat down heavily on the stoop next to him. “A radio? Where they got a radio station, Bobby?” She gripped the robot’s arm. It looked soft, but felt like steel.

“It’s a tape,” he said. “I got you a bunch of tapes.” He zipped open the bag Leticia had given him and showed her.

“Oh. Tapes. I thought . . .” The silent tears on her cheeks were warm. When they hit her lips they were salty. She shivered, pulling her shawl tighter.

“You’re sick!” he blurted.

“I got a cold, boy. Just a cold.”

He stood quickly, his hands out to help her rise. His words tumbled over themselves in his rush. “I need to get you inside. I need . . .”

She pushed his hands away roughly. “Leave me be. Just got a cold, robot. I ain’t dying.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

“Now you tell me ’bout these tapes.”

“I didn’t know what you liked. Tommy liked tapes. I picked the ones he used to play for me. I hope I did all ‘right. You promise? You cross your heart?” he asked anxiously.

“Cross my heart, what?”

“That you’re all right? I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t all right.”

“Stop hovering at me, boy. You like some vulture or something. People get colds all the time.”

“You promise?” he asked again.

“I promise.” That seemed to satisfy him.

She looked away from his concerned face and back down at the tapes, swallowing her disappointment. It tasted bitter and pungent as mustard. When she could speak, she said, “You done just fine, Bobby. Just fine.”

“I like it when I do things right.”

She got up, cradling the tapes and the stereo in her hands, and walked into the kitchen, letting the screen door bang closed behind her. When she turned, around a while later, Bobby was still there, a bright golden figure on the porch.

“Just . . .” she said, her voice breaking, “I just thought for a while it might be a radio, understand?”

His face fell. “I’m sorry to have let you down. It’s hard. I’m programmed to learn by myself, but I’m so young I’m stupid sometimes.”

“Like a kid.”

“Yes, ma’m. Like a kid.”

“Well, you ain’t done this wrong, Bobby. It’s really fine to hear a voice, even if that voice ain’t really human. Thank you. It’s just so fine.”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said from behind the mist of the screen.

His voice was so quiet and so gentle that it made the flesh of her arms go goose-bumpy. Her eyes filled up again. He was a good boy, Bobby was. A good boy.

Author’s Note:
I’ve always been a sucker for Victorian knock-offs, primarily Anne Perry’s mysteries. I enjoyed writing “Dear Froggy” so much that I wrote this horror short story, the idea for which was sparked by the non-fiction book,
Vampires, Burial and Death
. Read it only if you have a strong stomach; but if you’re as fascinated by the macabre as I am, put this book on your must-read list.

He had feared her day’s imprisonment in the cold earth might leach her beauty, but she had not much changed. She was more wan, of course, and one eye had opened a crack, exposing what looked like stale boiled egg.

The hair was as it should be, though: a tangle of rich gold spilling across the white satin pillow. Before he dared pull the cloth from her jaw, he wiped his hands clean on his shirt. His Charlotte had always been one for neatness.

During the night she had moved. The coin which had weighted the partially-open eye was lost in the graveclothes. He thought it was possible she had readjusted the other, for her hands were folded in a different position than he remembered, and the roses he had placed in them were awry.

Because he was no longer young, and the digging had winded him, he took a moment to get his breath.

The blue light of dusk trickled like water from the opening above his head. The air in the grave was dose and cold, and it smelled of damp loam, like a field during planting. He fondled Charlotte’s heavy silken tresses, perching at the edge of her coffin with the same silent patience he had shown when sitting by her bed during her illness.

When at last he was rested, he closed the coffin and wrestled the first strap under the wedge-shaped shoulders of it. He had worked his way down the grave to the tapered foot and was setting the second strap when he heard above him the quick jingle of his trap’s harness.

Drifting down came Father Drayble’s querulous “Hallo?”

Odd, Morrisy thought, how frightened the man of God sounded, as though the expanse of graveyard had stretched his faith thin.

Morrisy craned his neck upward. In the pewter light above him stood the priest, caught in the hasty act of crossing himself. Drayble had put aside his vestments and was dressed for the chill of the evening in a black frock coat—a sensible sort of coat. A fretful wind fingered the ends of the priest’s muffler as though counting a rosary.

“Oh,” the cleric said, laying a hand on his bosom. “It’s you, Mr. Morrisy.”

“Get out of my way,” Morrisy said. “I mean to bring her up.”

“Oh, dear. It seems you’ve—Yes, I suppose you have. Disinterred her, I mean.”

In the close confines of the grave, Morrisy fought with the coffin. Arms trembling with strain, he worried the leather strap underneath the box until he had cinched the clasp. When he was finished, he glanced up to see that Drayble had left.

In the last of the daylight he fumbled for the end of the heavy gauge chain, and he pulled down until the links rattled on the coffin lid. Carefully, so as not to disturb Charlotte, he boosted himself onto the edge of the ornate oak box, tugged on the chain with his right hand, and reached toward the moist sod with his left.

Too weak to pull himself up, he fell back against the opposite wall of the grave, tumbling from his perch, and falling to a heap onto the coffin.

Above him day failed. The first stars winked on in the purple gloom. With the last of his energy Morrisy uncinched the straps in case she would want to feed, then sat as best he could at her feet, waiting for her to rise.

Dr. Sanders came first, the bobbing glow of his lantern reaching Morrisy the same moment the doctor’s voice did.

Like the priest, he must have been startled beyond civility and sense to spy a horse and trap that late in the cemetery, for the doctor was singing a bargeman’s ditty whose words were altogether too coarse for the surroundings.

The grave filled with ruddy light. The song stopped mid-verse. Morrisy craned his neck and saw the fat, bearded Sanders staring down at him, his lantern held high.

“Dear God,” the doctor said. “For once Father Drayble was right. What have you done to yourself, man?”

Morrisy brushed the black grave dirt from his clothes then studied his blistered hands with absent curiosity. “I must free her from the coffin. The dead are not strong you know. You may go home. I would think that, even with age on me, I should have blood enough to spare for her dinner.”

Sanders put the lantern down, took a seat on the grass, and dangled his legs in the grave. “Foolishness, Morrisy. Charlotte is dead, and there is no bringing her back.”

“She was restless during the night. When I opened her coffin I saw she had put her graveclothes all in disarray.”

“Come up, sir,” Sanders said. “I have some laudanum in my bag.”

“She moved!” Morrisy shouted. “Do you not hear me! She tossed and turned all alone In her coffin last night. How can I leave her?”

“”Oh, Morrisy. The dead move. There is nothing supernatural about that. I saw the phenomenon when there was a fever in Devonshire and too many bodies to bury in a decent interval. Why do you think we put pennies on corpses’ eyes and tie scarfs about their jaws?”

Morrisy picked at a blister on the heel of his hand until it opened with a match-flare of pain.

“This is school-miss stuff, sir,” Sanders chided. “Throwing yourself into her grave. You make yourself as morbid as one of Mr. Keats’ or Mr. Byron’s poems. Come. I’ll give you a hand up.”

“Is he out yet’” Father Drayble appeared at the doctor’s side like a specter from the gloom.

“No, he is not. For there you see him, still astride the coffin lid.”

The cleric’s pallid round face peered down at Morrisy, “Oh. Oh, yes. I see. Well, I’ve brought the men to get him out.”

“In a moment, Father. Morrisy! As you see we are prepared to get you out of there any way we can. Don’t make a scene, man.”

Quickly, for he knew the game was up and that he would have to hurry, Morrisy again unhinged the coffin lid. Pulling his pocketknife from his vest, he opened his vein over her mouth.

Blood splattered over her calm face and the bulge of satin pillow with a sound like sullen rain. Above him, men were shouting.

Strong arms grasped him. “Leave me be!”

He screamed her name as they carried him away.

* * *

A clatter of silver upon china awoke him. Across the shadowed bedroom Morrisy saw that his porridge-faced chambermaid was setting a breakfast tray beside Sanders. Behind the doctor’s chair the curtains had been pulled to, but for a brilliant fissure of light in the gap.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked as the maid quit the room.

Morrisy pulled his stiff, blistered hands from out the covers and studied them with dismay. A bandage was wrapped around his left wrist and a solitary, auburn dot of dried blood was crusted upon it. “Not particularly well,” he replied. His back ached unmercifully and the laudanum had left him with a dulled head.

“Tea?” Sanders asked, pouring himself a cup. When Morrisy failed to answer, the doctor, with a critical eye, peered under the salvers, and said., “The eggs and toast seems passable, but you have a lazy cook, man. She’s not cleaned the kidneys properly and they still stink of piss.”

Morrisy cast his gaze to the slash of light between the damask curtains. “Have they buried Charlotte again?’

The doctor was busy filling two plates. At the question he glanced up sharply. “Marmalade or strawberry jam, Morrisy? Quick now with your decision. I lack the temperament of a servant.”

“I haven’t an appetite.”

“You will eat when I say you will eat. Do not require me, please, to lose another patient so soon after the other.”

Plate filled, the doctor rose and walked across the room to the bed.

“Sit up.”

Morrisy turned on his side, away from Sanders.

“Sit up and take your sustenance. You see I’ve given you both the marmalade and jam since you were so churlish as to refuse to decide.”

Sorrow welled in Morrisy’s heart like blood coming up from a wound. “Charlotte,” he whispered.

Behind him he could hear the doctor’s put-upon sigh. “Such it is, I suppose, for old men to act the fools to their young wives. And it is in your Irish nature to brood. But come now, Morrisy. Free yourself from the ghosts and goblins of your race and gird your loins with good English common sense. See? I’ve adulterated your tea with milk and sugar, just as you like it.”

Tears quivered against his lashes. “She will think I have abandoned her. She never liked to sleep alone, you know. First she slept with her sister and then, when married, she slept with me. She was frightened when there was no one in her bed. Sweet Jesus, I don’t know how she will bear it alone in the coffin.”

The plate rang against the night table: the doctor clapping it churlishly and most heedlessly down. “I’ve buried a wife myself, damn you! I’ve buried two children, one but an infant. Death is never easy; but it is morbid not to let her go.”

Morrisy rolled over to meet the doctor’s irate gaze. “I told you it would happen. She wasted away. You saw. And there was nothing your good, sensible English medicine could do. You may think what you wish, but I know what killed her. She dreamed they were coming, you know. Upon retiring, she always had me peer under the bed and in the closet before snuffing the candle out.”

“Your fault. She was but a child, and still heir to the fears of children. Yet you allowed her to read things which excited her senses. You never objected to her perusing newspapers and such poetry that was not meant for women’s imaginings. No doubt she did fear, her mind overheated as it was.”

“She knew they were coming,” Morrisy said. “And yet I could not stop them, no matter how avidly I peered under the bed or behind the curtains, no matter how much I prayed them away.”

“Bedtime stories from her Slavic grandmother, too, I suppose. Plagues of vampyres, and every bridge with its troll.”

“Leave me,” Morrisy said.

The doctor’s face fell into lines of exhausted consternation. “Will you not eat?”

The tears overbalanced and fell, leaving molten trails down Morrisy’s cheeks. “Leave me.”

* * *

Late that night Morrisy went out to finish the work he had started. The grave dirt was loose, and the dig was not arduous, yet soon enough his hands were stiff and useless claws about the shovel.

Sunrise was threatening when he pulled the coffin free of its prison. The box and its contents were too heavy to lift together to the trap’s boards, so he unthreaded the eight pewter screws, each fashioned in the image of a kneeling angel. Then he took his wife’s body from its box. Charlotte was soft as sponge in his arms.

By the time he had hidden her and the coffin in a stand of woods hard by the house, the sky was turning pink. He put her back in her coffin and laid the coffin screws aside. For the first time that evening he dared study her face. Around her cheeks his blood had dried to a crust and her mouth hung hungrily agape. He pried open his pocketknife, pricked his vein and allowed a cupful or so of blood to flow past her slack jaws and into her throat.

“I have thought a great deal about our predicament,” he said as he rebound his wound. “As you lay dying I made plans for us both. You’ll see.”

It did not seem that she was listening. Her right eye had opened more, exposing an area of marbled white. He wiped the splattered blood from her mouth: both the new and the old. Then he closed her coffin and left her sleeping.

* * *

The doctor’s shouts awoke him. “Fool! This conceit of yours will be your death! And how many then shall have died for a flight of East European fancy?”

Bit by painful, bruised bit, Morrisy turned over in bed. Sanders was livid. His hair was unkempt, his coat unbrushed, and his waistcoat was buttoned awry.

“How terrible you look,” Morrisy said with sleepy wonder.

“Not near as had as yourself.” The doctor noticed his vest and furiously began to set it aright. “Perhaps I need ask myself why I count such a fool as friend. When I heard the grave had been reopened, I came in haste. Had to give a sedative to the boy who nearly fell in the hole. Now,” he said when his waistcoat was secure, “let me see your wrist.”

Morrisy brought his arm out from the covers. Sanders unwrapped and clucked over it. “Shouldn’t be surprised if you get blood poisoning from this. Quick,” he said, turning. “Get me hot water.”

Morrisy peered around Sanders’ bulk and saw that Holbrook, his young butler, was standing near the door wringing his hands. “Yes, sir,” Holbrook said.

“And have cook prepare a broth. Some toast with it and perhaps a coddled egg.”

“Right away, sir. Sorry, sir. No one saw him leave.” Red roses of embarrassment bloomed on the butler’s cheeks. Holbrook, in his haste, had put coat on over nightshirt.

“What o’clock?” Morrisy asked.

“Half past seven.” The doctor seized Morrisy’s wrist between his strong fingers and took a pulse. “The hour when all decent people should be abed.”

“Leave me sleep, then.”

“Where did you hide her, Morrisy?” Sanders asked. “We must get her in the ground. She’s certainly begun to decompose.”