The Garden of Dead Dreams (26 page)

The house burst with color. Etta could see into every room, all of them painted a different soft shade—lemon, peach, sage, sky blue, and lavender. Her eyes were drawn to the lit fireplace in the living room. A painting hung above it. Reds and oranges. A desertscape. One of Carl’s.

Something made Etta turn her gaze back to the cat. He was still staring at her, cocking his head, his mouth open. Was he meowing? “I can’t hear you,” Etta whispered.

Then terror gripped her. Like breath rippling across her flesh, Etta was sure she’d heard the major’s cackling laugh weaving through the darkness behind her. She grabbed for the screen door, pushed her way inside, and slammed the door shut behind her, fumbling to engage the old brass lock. Her chest heaved as she leaned on the door, alone except for the fat black-and-white cat, who didn’t seem pleased to see her.

It took awhile for the room to come into focus—the hand stitched quilt and floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the easel in the corner lurking like a leggy insect in the shadows. Light crept in under the curtains, the flush of early dawn. Slowly it all came back to Etta: the woman named Violet, with the dewy face and brunette hair streaked with gray. She’d scrawled her name for Etta in swirling cursive, made her chamomile tea, and drawn a hot bath for her. She’d peered inside Etta’s ears with a flashlight and dripped some herbal oil in them, and then rubbed circles on Etta’s temples with her finger tips. Etta was dressed in Violet’s clothes, cotton that smelled as though it had been dried in the sun, even though the sun hadn’t shone for weeks.

She rubbed her eyes, pulled her damp hair into a ponytail then released it, letting her damp curls tumble across her shoulders. She switched the lamp on next to her bed, blinking into the circle of light. She moved her arm and an ache shot through her chest and biceps. Images of the night before flooded to her: Galen’s face seizing up on one side, the major jerking the gun from his lap.

Etta cleared her throat and started at the guttural sound of her vocal cords constricting.

“I can hear,” she said aloud. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes when she heard her voice.

“You’re awake.” A creak echoed through the house. Etta slid down, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Heat swelled into her chest.

“I saw your light.” Carl stepped into the doorway and then crossed the room, a lumbering shadow in the low light, and sat on the edge of the bed. Etta pushed herself up and winced at the soreness in her muscles. Carl pushed a piece of her hair behind one of her ears. “Are you okay?” His voice was a whisper.

Etta looked down.

“Damn it, I should have told you to cover your ears. Airbags are damn loud.” Carl dropped his hand, but Etta could feel him staring at her. Finally she looked up. His shirt was freshly-laundered.
Portland Culinary Academy Open Chef’s Night
. The bandage taped to his cheek was stained with old blood.

“It’s just a cut. Mills looks worse, trust me.” Carl touched the bandage and flinched. “They used to think airbags could replace seat belts, you know, but if you’re in the front seat without a belt on, you’ll just fly right over the damn bag, right through the windshield. When I realized we’d be heading toward Violet’s . . .”

Etta squeezed her eyes shut. “Is he alive?”

“He was bleeding pretty bad.”

Carl adjusted his weight and his hand brushed Etta’s. A prickle raced through Etta’s body. She crossed her arms in front of her, and stared at the light easing its way through the cotton curtains. “What about the gun?”

“It was dark. The undergrowth was thick.”

“What if he followed us . . .”

Carl shook his head. “He didn’t.”

Etta could tell there was something more Carl wanted to say, but they sat there for a long time, both of them staring at the bed. “You still have that poem Galen gave you?”

Etta stiffened.

“All I could think of on that ride last night was that poem.” Carl looked at the door “Member how I told you my girlfriend Brooke wrote her thesis on ‘The Garden of My Summer?’”

Etta nodded.

“She was right, wasn’t she? It’s about grief.”

Etta wasn’t sure what to say. She vaguely remembered reading “The Garden of My Summer” in high school, but remembered nothing about it.

“Guess I didn’t think much of her thesis. Brooke thought everything was about grief. Her aunt and uncle owned a morgue up in the Hill Country. So she spent her summers watching funerals while the rest of us watched
Dukes of Hazards
. Let’s just say, she was more occupied with the dark things in life than most. We’d go out for dinner with friends, and she’d start talking about all the dismal, macabre things people spend their whole lives trying to avoid thinking about. I’d shift in my seat while the other couple’s faces went white. Brooke didn’t even notice. I think she was amused that other people carried around too much baggage about death.

“Her theory was compelling enough. She thought the main character, Payne Morris, wasn’t planting a garden at all, but was building a sepulcher for his lover, that everything in the story, including the name Payne, was a symbol for loss. She thought it was autobiographical, that Buchanan must have lost someone close to him around the time he wrote it. She originally thought it must be about his wife, except the story was published before Winona passed. Brooke wanted to do some biographical research to find out.

“Our advisor Phillip Bullock, or as Brooke called him Full of Bull Shit, was a devotee of New Criticism, studied under John Crowe Ransom himself at Kenyon College. So, of course, he insisted that consideration of a text had to be independent of biographical or historical context. He demanded Brooke revise her theory.”

“You studied literature?” Etta’s voice was sharper than she expected it to be. “You said our advisor. You have a Master’s degree in literature?” Etta cringed at how accusing her voice sounded. It was a graduate degree, not a prison record. But why had Carl never mentioned his knowledge of different literary schools of criticism, not to mention Brooke herself, or Violet, who apparently had piles of Carl’s clean T-shirts in her drawers next to her herbal oils?

Carl lowered his voice. “Not exactly. Brooke could go from polar to red hot in under a minute. She thought Bullock was a world-class idiot, and she refused to stay in his department. Of course, I couldn’t stay either, which was just fine with me. It turns out not too many people pursue a graduate degree in literature because they like to read. Most of ‘em just like to scrutinize the written word to ashes.”

Etta stared at him and tried to make sense of his words. Not about him, not about Brooke. But about what he was really saying, about the story. Grief. Death. Blood started to course through Etta’s neck and face. “He wrote it for Sakura,” she whispered.

Carl didn’t hear her. He kept talking, but all Etta could hear was Galen’s words.
He kept his Jap geisha and her half-wit son down the road dressed in silk and pearls.
She blinked. Sakura Tanaka must have come back to the United States, like in ‘Cherry Blossom.’ But she stayed. Did she and Buchanan have a child together? Etta tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. They smacked against Carl. He jumped up to move out of her way.

Etta stood up and recoiled at the iciness of the air on her arms. She swirled around, searching for her bag and clothes, for the jacket of Carl’s that she’d been wearing. She shuffled into the living room.

Sunlight slanted through the muslin curtains. Carl’s jacket hung on the coat tree next to the door. Etta staggered to it and groped at the pocket. She seized the crumpled paper and stared at the last two lines:
It’s winter in the garden of his summer. And I left truth behind her marking stone.

Carl stood in the middle of the room. His jeans were creased down the middle of each leg, as freshly laundered as his tee-shirt. “You told me Vincent Buchanan was buried in that cemetery.”

Carl stared at her.

“Why’d you say that? He was buried in Portland.”

Carl shrugged. “I don’t honestly remember saying that.”

“Tell me about “The Garden of My Summer.” Etta crouched down, grabbing her shoes from next to the coat tree. “Everything. Everything you remember.”

“What are you doing?”

Her shoes were a little damp, but someone had washed them. Etta pushed them on over the rag wool socks that Violet had lent her the night before and yanked the laces tight, rolling up the cuff of the wide-legged pants. She glanced up at Carl. “This sepulcher Payne Moore was building for his lover, what did it look like?”

Carl cocked his head. “Rhododendrons,” he finally said. “Payne obsessed over the smell of them, had dreams about them. Cinnamon and nutmeg—that was the smell.”

“What else?” Etta stood.

“Where are you going?”

“What do rhododendrons look like?” She’d never paid much attention to plants.

Carl gazed at her. “They’re all over out here, like plumbago in Texas. Listen, what I was going to say is that I’ve got to call the sheriff. Report the accident. You need to explain why Mills might have come after you with a gun.”

Etta grabbed Carl’s coat off the hook and pulled it on, zipping it to her chin. It was still damp. She reached for the brass lock, jerking back when the fat tuxedo cat came out of nowhere, jumped up on the door and stretched its tufty paws up to the doorknob. “Go away, kitty,” Etta said, surprised by how sharp her voice sounded. She reached down and tried to push the cat away.

The floorboards creaked behind her, and she sensed that Carl was standing only inches from her. She pushed herself between the cat and the door, wincing at the yowl the cat let out. She twisted the lock and pulled the door open. A blast of cold air cascaded across her cheeks.

“Jesus Christ, you can’t just leave. I’m coming with you.”

Etta pushed through the screen door and spun around when she was on the other side. The first thing she saw was Carl’s bare feet then the silhouette of Violet standing in the doorway of her bedroom, her long bare legs, the pile of thick hair atop her head. “Carl?” The tall woman strode to Carl and wrapped her arm around him, her hand settling on his hip.

Etta blinked back tears and jogged down the two porch steps. She made her way across the stone pathway to the fence, which was made of stripped willow branches. She focused on the gravel road in front of her. Douglas Firs loomed up on each side of it. A few branches were strewn across the road.

Etta halted where Violet’s road met a wider dirt road and looked both ways. Which way was the lodge? One thing was sure and her certainty of it stole her breath for a minute—it was near enough that Carl could slip away late in the night to knock on Violet’s door.

=

The sun was low in the sky when Etta approached the clearing. Sunlight filtered through the cedar grove, slender beams plunging into the thick rug of moss, ferns, and ivy carpeting the forest floor. Etta dropped to a crouch, rolled up Violet’s wide-legged pants, and tried to catch her breath. Something rustled near her. Her gaze went to a patch of mushrooms sprouting from the bark of a downed cedar. A grey squirrel stared back at her then darted into the brush.

Etta winced against the pangs in her hamstrings and quadriceps. She dragged herself across the clearing, climbed the three steps, and rapped on the door. Her heart thumped against her rib cage.

She knocked again.

Was it Sunday? Etta wasn’t sure of anything. She glanced across the clearing. Then she sensed something behind her—a noise, a motion?—and spun around.

“Poppy,” she called out, unsure how loud the name came out or whether it came out at all. A woodpecker hammered its beak into a tree trunk. The sound echoed across the clearing. Etta’s gaze shot to the doorknob, as the door creaked open a slit. Poppy appeared, blinking, the corners of her eyes heavy with sleep.

“Please get dressed. You’ve got to come with me. I’ll explain on the way.”

Poppy stared at her. Her head fell to one side, and her ponytail flipped from one side of her face to the other. It was all Etta could do not to grab her friend’s shoulders and shake her. She slid past Poppy into the dim cabin, and blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the light, pulling the door shut behind her. “We’ve got to go to the cemetery. Can you identify a rhododendron? Please hurry. Please get dressed.”

“I’m a charlatan.”

Etta jumped. The voice was deep and familiar. “Reed?”

Reed rose from behind Poppy’s bed, clutching Poppy’s pink comforter around his chest and torso. His glasses sat crooked on his face.

“Reed?” Etta whispered again. She stepped backward. “Oh god, were you . . .”

“I’m so sorry.”

Etta gazed at him then raised an eyebrow at Poppy. Poppy stared at the floor.

Reed pushed his glasses up and sat down on the edge of the bed, clutching the comforter at his collar bone. Lines creased his forehead. Etta glimpsed his khaki pants crumpled next to his foot and what might have been boxer shorts. She looked away. “Please tell me you’re not hurt,” Reed whispered.

Etta blinked. “Hurt? No, of course not. Just surprised.”

Poppy’s laugh interrupted Etta. “Did you sleep in the free box at a thrift store?”

Etta glanced down at Carl’s corduroy coat, which came almost to her knees, Violet’s purple pants were rolled up to her shins, and the wool socks were mostly saturated with mud.

“You look . . .” Poppy didn’t finish the sentence, but Etta could tell by her pursed lips that it wasn’t going to be a compliment. Then Poppy’s face changed. “There were two men at your cabin last night.

“We watched them with Reed’s infrared binoculars.” She nodded toward a pair of camouflage binoculars propped on the windowsill.

Reed’s face grew long. “They were plain-clothed FBI.”

Etta gasped. “How do you know that?”

“They weren’t wearing FBI jackets.”

“But how do you know they were FBI?”

“They had forty-caliber Glock semiautomatics. Standard FBI issue firearms.”

Etta’s mouth fell open and then panic convulsed through her. She reached for the wall. “I’ve got to go.”