The End of the Pier (8 page)

It was Dodge who'd found her, and who never let anyone forget it, though he soft-pedaled the fact he'd come in for a fair amount
of questioning himself. The Haydens had a small spread a half-mile from the lake, a few acres with a house and a barn and a henhouse. Molly sold free-range eggs, and a number of men you wouldn't expect to be much interested in eggs had been going out there to buy them. Dodge Haines was one. Bub Dubois's kids had been seen coming out of the barn, too. Even the mayor had got to making speeches about factory-laid eggs and started his personal campaign for the Haydens' double-grade-A brown eggs. It was some time before a few people—the mayor's wife, for one—realized it was Eunice who'd been left to see to the selling of the eggs, and that the transactions in the barn might be taking a little longer than was necessary.

Bubby Dubois did not at all appreciate the rumor that his sons, Darryl and Rick, had her front to back.

Dodge Haines found Eunice in the henhouse, trussed like a chicken, blood from her slashed throat and breast in places you would never expect it could fly to—the wooden beams, the manger—as if it meant to cry out for vindication. Eggs were lying crushed all around her, a hen with its neck broken lying beside her, and the stench so bad he didn't even have time to get out of the henhouse before he vomited.

Interference. That was the way he liked to put it. There had been no sexual interference, no rape as such. Might as well have been, according to the doctor who appeared on the scene with the county police, what with the rectal passage a ruin and the vagina cut up that way. It was as if someone had gone at Eunice intending to kill her with sex and, that not succeeding, had used a knife.

It was only Maud Chadwick who'd given voice to his, Sam's, feelings about Eunice Hayden: living with all that uprightness, those pillars of La Porte, what could Eunice do but go a little wild? Even Shirl's Joey had it better. At least, he probably felt a little bit free to tell his mom “Fuck off” once in a while, since Shirl did the same to him, felt no compunction at all about embarrassing him in front of strangers. Molly Hayden had embarrassed her daughter,
too, but in such a way no one could really
call
it that; “good works” was what they
called
it: getting Eunice all dressed up when she was twelve or thirteen and going door-to-door to collect for the church bazaar. That a twelve-year-old would probably rather be strapped to a buzzsaw than have her friends think she was doing
good works
apparently never occurred to Molly Hayden, rattling a collection can down on the corner of First and Tremont streets one Christmas, both of them dressed in rags and shawls with holes in them, letting what rich there were in La Porte know that not everyone would have a turkey on the table if they didn't drop their money in the can. Chad had been going just that one semester to La Porte High School (a year during which he'd let Maud know daily that he'd sooner sleep standing up in an iron maiden than go to school); he said Eunice had been and still was the laughingstock of the school.

And the worst thing Molly had contrived to “humble” (for that's how she put it) her daughter was to take her into the Rainbow Café or Wheeler's Restaurant or even the DoNut DeLite and try to get the waitress or manager to exchange a meal for pot holders Eunice had crocheted or dish towels clumsily edged. Eunice had always had to do the talking. Even Shirl, who was proof against any sob story, would go beet red and just tell Eunice to be quiet and for her and her mother to sit down and order what they wanted from the menu. “Damned old cow,” Shirl would say after they'd gone. “And the Haydens far from poor. There's a mother for you.” And if Joey happened to be down the counter, the comment would be directed at him. Count your blessings.

Suffer little children, Molly was always saying. Well, said Maud, she ought to know. And add to that that Eunice was as plain as a fence post, though broader in the beam, and it wasn't surprising to Maud that she'd do something extravagant. Could Sam imagine, Maud had asked, Eunice giving Wade or Molly Hayden the finger? Wade Hayden even looked a little like Abraham Lincoln—gangly, with dark hair and that long jaw and sad black eyes. Since her
mother was so hell-bent on raising money for good causes, perhaps Eunice had decided on a better way to get it, and not have to go door-to-door standing out in the cold. Lie around in some warm, musty hay.

•  •  •

Sam DeGheyn worried a lot about Maud Chadwick. He hadn't liked leaving her alone, especially after her son had just left, since he knew how much store she set by that boy. Sam had never seen a mother so taken with a child and at the same time so convinced she had done it all wrong.

As he neared Bunny Caruso's cottage, Sam pulled off the road to watch what action there might be there, and let the engine idle as he thought about Murray Chadwick. He didn't like his first name, so he was called Chad. Chad was one of the nicest kids Sam had ever met, and he'd met plenty, and under less-than-ideal circumstances. What he couldn't understand was why Maud thought none of her son's good qualities had come from her, not even his looks, and he looked just like her, or like a lit-up version of her.

Sam was recalling the first time he'd run into Maud Chadwick and smiling over the memory. She'd just got to town and had come into the sheriff's office, stood on one foot, then another, until she'd finally managed to get out that she didn't understand about the parking-ticket envelope. Because the meter had run over, someone (and here she'd reddened, because the man in the uniform she was talking to just might be the someone) had put this envelope under the wiper, and she wasn't sure where to take the envelope. She'd put the fifty cents in it . . .

He wanted (not unkindly) to laugh at the desperation in her voice, at the gap between what she was requesting and the effort it took her to ask for it. Sam had just chewed his gum slowly, sitting there with his hands warmed by his armpits, and thought this new lady was extremely pretty—and thought also that she didn't know it. Perhaps it was Maud's shyness, compared to her son's ability to
talk (sometimes a little glibly, Sam thought), that made her think they couldn't be much alike.

From Bunny Caruso's cottage there came a crash of what could have been glass breaking or a dozen other things. Sam was used to night-rending sounds coming from Bunny Caruso's.

Where, Sam wondered, did Maud think Chad got all of his qualities? She certainly didn't think there'd been much genetic enhancement from the father's side. Sometimes she'd look up at the star-salted sky as if Chad's good qualities had just sifted right down from the heavens.

As he passed the blued panes of windows behind which TV sets glowed, he'd wondered if it would help if Maud got a television; it might keep her inside at night. That was pretty ridiculous. Imagine this woman, who was trying to figure out why in Key West there was some kind of order lacking in La Porte, watching “Wheel of Fortune”! If the phrase came up “Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,” would Vanna White go bananas? He supposed he shouldn't go on at Maud the way he'd just done, because she got so mad; but that was, in a way, why he did it. The anger dragged her out of whatever haunted version of her life she was momentarily entertaining.

•  •  •

Sam's wife, Florence, called her “spooky.”

“The Duboises passed by her on that dock several times. You know, they got that expensive speedboat last year”—

That Dubois talked about as if it was a fucking
yacht.

—“and she just
sits
there in a chair. A
rocking
chair, and with a
lamp.
”

Florence had turned from the microwave—she microwaved everything—and went on: “At night, can you believe it? With a
lamp
dragged down there? How's she get it lit, I wonder?”

Sam was supposed to answer, but he just went on reading the La Porte
Pendant
and said nothing, and again she gave her attention to the microwave, which she had a way of staring at for abnormally
long periods of time, the way people look at their wash going round or their TV screens. Through the kitchen door, Sam could see their own television screen and the faces flickering there, mouths forming silent words. The sound was often off.

“And if
that
isn't spooky, tell me—
tell
me. Ha!” Back to him again, she beat a tattoo on her hips with her fingers. Florence was never long on patience. She hated to microwave anything that required her to push the minute buttons. She was into seconds only. She stared at the black glass at the same time she hated the thing. Florence was trying to make him comment; she knew he liked Maud Chadwick. “Weird, that's what the Duboises said. Bubby calls her ‘one weird lady.' ”

“Bubby should know,” Sam said, turning to the personals, seeing who was advertising a reunion and for everybody to come. Some of these people had folks in the hundreds. They couldn't send out invitations; they advertised.

“And what's
that
supposed to mean, Samuel?” The rising inflection hit the syllables like a musical scale.

Florence thought calling him “Samuel” was a massive irritation to him. He had never told her that Samuel wasn't his given name. His parents believed in simplicity. He did not answer her question, but looked over the top of the paper and said, “Is that toast in there? Are you microwaving the toast again?”

“I
repeat
—what's
that
supposed to mean?”

“That you can't microwave toast, that's what.” Sam took a mouthful of coffee. It was sludge. She made it in the microwave.

“Fuck
the fucking toast!” Florence was low on cuss words. “I'm not talking about the toast. I mean that comment about Bubby Dubois. What did you mean about ‘he should know'? About weird, I mean.”

Florence knew perfectly well or she'd never have remembered Sam's comment all this time. Still, he wished he hadn't brought it up. Avoiding a direct attack on the father, he simply noted the two Dubois sons' behavior. “Darryl and Rick are going to be hauled in
one of these days, bet on it. I caught them dealing crack at the grade school; Donny caught them trying to gang-rape the Childess girl—”

The microwave buzzed and she yanked the door open. “A dirty rumor, that's all that was!”

Sam sighed. No sense getting into a fight about the father, Bubby Dubois. Bubby—what kind of man would still go by his baby-name? The thing was, Florence was sleeping with him, and she was eyeing Sam now with those liquid black Greek-olive eyes of hers and fearing he knew. Perhaps
knowing
Sam knew. Everyone in La Porte probably knew it.

He was pretending not to notice that she was standing there with the ceramic plate with his egg, bacon, toast, and that her large, familiar, still-enticing breasts were heaving—he wondered if with anger or with fear.

He could not look at her, because he no longer loved her, no longer cared much if she had a lover or not. And in some strange way this made him feel the guilty party. He almost pitied Florence that she couldn't be doing better than Bubby Dubois, much like a father would worry over a daughter's throwing herself away on some bum, some fucked-up guitarist who did gigs with a second-rate band.

Keeping his head down, he took the plate from her hands. His eyes smarted. They always did when he thought how he wished they'd had kids. Just one, just one.

So he pitied Florence because she was sleeping with Bubby Dubois, who ran a huge used-car business outside of Hebrides, had a cracked and tanned face like pie crust from all of those days with the hoods of cars stabbing the sun right back at him—the cars or the water; hair like meringue, a wispy white cloud of it with little tides of brown tipping the waves. When he wore that peach lounge suit of his, he looked edible.

“Did you have to microwave the damned toast, Florence?”

Staring down at the plate, she said,
“And
the eggs. And bacon.”
It was accusing, as if his request for bacon and eggs had presented, together with the toast, a tactical maneuver that not even the Japanese could figure out and the Sanyo was lucky not to have short-circuited. The toast slices were limp as washcloths.

“Just because you've got a thing for Mrs. Spooky Chadwick, you don't have to go turning the tables.” There was a glint of triumph in her eyes as she folded into her mouth a limp bacon strip that looked gray as chewing gum. Her face had a morning patina of shine, a slight greasiness that Sam had once thought sexually stimulating—something liquid emanating from the black, shiny hair, from the olive eyes. Florence was a good-looking woman.

When he just sat there blandly drinking his orange juice (the only thing that escaped the Sanyo) and not answering the charge about Mrs. Chadwick, Florence took another shot:

“Or maybe Bunny Caruso? Maybe her?”

He got up and dragged his uniform jacket from the chair, looking at her, shaking his head. What was in her tone and what was in her eyes was fear.

He knew she was scared to death he'd walk out on her one of these days, leave her to her Sanyo and to Dubois, and the very fear of it forced her into these strange tests of how far she could go.

Sam just smiled and said he had to go to work, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and saw the tears spring up in her eyes.

Every woman he knew seemed to have behind her eyes these little stands of water, ready to overflow.

Not just women, either, he thought, remembering his own reaction two minutes ago. Everyone.

•  •  •

Now he lit a cigarette, switched off the engine, and watched the light shifting in Bunny Caruso's cabin, mottling the shabby curtains. If he had walked up the muddy path filled with rain pools that never seemed to dry up to “check on the disturbance”—
“Thought maybe I heard something crash, Bunny”
—Bunny Caruso would just stand there, thin even in that long, loose dress she could
slip over her head in one second flat, and tell him (eyes wide with innocence) that Hubert was “up to things” again.