Threats (24 page)

Out back, the earth looked differently trampled. A gum wrapper fluttered in a spiny bush, silver paper shivering against the red berries. He thought of what Aileen had said about all the people who had died in the history of that place, after the spiny bush had grown there but, more important, before the bush and the stream beside it and the house and the old farmer's fence made of barbed wire and splintered posts that rotted lower every year. David had been meaning to remove the old fence. He had not gotten around to it. Before the fence and the ash trees, or when there were different trees, or perhaps when it was all underwater, when strange and ordinary aquatic creatures floated and consumed one another and left their remains buried under five to ten feet of silt that hardened into stone and was covered with pieces of flint and slate, which his wife mistook for arrowheads but were wholly unremarkable rocks after all.

On the far side of the farmer's fence, he found a frozen pear and beside it a sock trampled into the ground. It was one of David's gym socks, mealy from the earth that had been pushed into it, half hidden under a root. He bent to pick the sock up and found that it was folded around its mate. He used the toe of his shoe to unearth them and found another pair nestled alongside. Crouching down, he found another pair underneath, black dress socks next to a larger pink-striped variety. A sandwich bag stuffed full of hosiery lay underneath and under that, a pair of insulating socks David had been missing for years. He dug away at the top layer of earth, thinking about stopping and going to the garage for a shovel but certain that if he returned, the socks would be gone, hundreds of them, the collected effort of many years. There were his father's trouser socks with their gold-stitched toes. He found a shoebox underneath a stratum of unpaired single socks. Moisture and age had worn away the box's distinguishing marks. There was some difficulty in clearing it from the frozen earth, which hardly yielded against his digging gloved hands. He wedged the tips of his fingers against the side of the box and then got a grip on the side of it and pulled it out. The box had been laid over three pairs of small faded pink lace socks. They looked like mice huddled together. He could hold all three pairs in the palm of his hand.

David put the baby socks in his pocket and laid the shoebox beside the shallow trench. In it he found the pair of woolen socks he had bought Franny for one of their anniversaries, the anniversary when one buys wool. She had bought him a leather-bound desk set for his office at home, with a leather tray for papers and a pencil holder and a protective desk cover and a small file cabinet that also was somehow leather, the stitches so fine he could barely see them. He had put it at the reception desk at work, and the receptionist said she felt like she was less of a receptionist and more of an executive secretary, so fine was the leatherwork. The receptionist's demeanor improved over the phone, and patients seemed more relaxed when they got to the chair. Franny's gift to him had been the best gift he had ever received, and in return he handed her a pair of socks, because he was confused, and he thought it was to be the anniversary when one buys wool. It was a gift he had been ashamed of, but she wore the socks faithfully for years. She washed them carefully in the sink and wore them for anniversaries in the years following, until one year when she did not wear them, and David felt a secret sense of relief and didn't mention it out of fear that she would apologize and bring them out. He had forgotten about them. But there they were, alone in the box. They were a speckled gray and black with points of white. He thought of her burying them. If she had been sitting next to him at that moment, he would say a great many things, but he was alone. There was a page in the sock, but he was tired of knowing how to read, so he opened his mouth and inserted the page. The paper he had packed into his teeth rolled up and allowed for the new intrusion. His jaw popped and widened farther. The page was warm on his teeth and felt natural against his tongue. His lips cracked and bled into it, but he kept opening his mouth wider, pushing it toward the back of his throat, twisting the paper to corkscrew it in farther, breathing hard through his nose as it reached the back of his throat, pushed against his soft palate, caressed his palatine uvula. He gagged and clenched his teeth, and the page compacted and became a part of him, there in his mouth.

 

71.

THE SUGAR CEREAL was not in the break-room cabinet nor under the sink. It was not in the reception desk. It was not in the large lower desk drawer belonging to an officer who hoarded sweets. It was not in Chico's office and it was not in the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom. It was not in his aunt's bag of clothes, folded beside her. The boy had made a detailed list of where the sugar cereal might be and had crossed off possible options. Behind one of the chairs in the reception area, check. Tucked within the fire extinguisher's glass case, check. He checked the break room's refrigerator and freezer, opening all drawers, moving aside forgotten baggies of spoiled sandwiches and frozen-over potpies, looking for the slightest clue. He attached the list to a clipboard, which he carried under his arm.

His aunt was waiting for him in the reception area. She had found a word search among the scattered newspapers and smoothed the sheet of newspaper over her knee, looking up every so often to find the boy.

He stood on the chair beside her, unscrewing the light switch with a small screwdriver. “There's one,” said the boy, leaning down to point at the page.

Shelly circled the word “snow.” “The sugar cereal is not going to be behind the light switch.”

“It's unlikely,” he said, popping the screws out of the switch plate and into his hand. He tried to remove the plate but couldn't catch the width of it in his small hand and dropped the screwdriver to get a better grip. “I'm taking this case past likelihood and moving straight into possibility.” Using his fingernails, he pried the plate off and peered into the darkness around the device.

“Are you sure you didn't eat the sugar cereal?”

He replaced the switch plate, picked a screw out of his palm, and threaded it into place. He picked up the small screwdriver and fit it into its notch and tightened it. The screwdriver had come from Shelly's glasses-repair kit, which she kept in her purse.

“Or probably someone else ate it?”

Her nephew dropped to a kneeling position on the chair and slowly placed one foot on the floor and then the other, with the kind of care a much smaller child would employ. She held her bag of clothes to the side in case he fell toward them. He had always been a careful boy.

“We have a high standard of moral conduct around here,” the boy said. “The ladies and gentlemen of this office are charged with upholding the law, as I'm sure you're aware. Nobody is going to knowingly come into this office and eat sugar cereal that doesn't belong to them.” He had picked up his clipboard again.

Shelly patted the chair next to her and he frowned but clambered up again, grasping the chair's back rail and turning to sit beside her.

She put her arm around his shoulders and hugged him to her. “It doesn't really matter where the sugar cereal is, does it?”

“Sure it does. If someone hid it, finding where it's hidden will help me know who did it. If someone ate it, there will be evidence, and I'll find it, and then something can be done. I should check the wastebins.” He scanned the items on his clipboard list and started to slide off the chair when Shelly tightened the grip on his shoulder.

“But if you think about it,” she said, “it doesn't really matter.”

The boy was silent, staring at his clipboard.

Shelly released his shoulder and circled another word, “fence.” “Remember what we learned about what happens to the cereal, and the candy in the cereal, and all of us?” she asked.

The boy used his careful handwriting to write “leaves” on the page, and then crossed it out just as carefully. “It's out there somewhere,” he said to the page.

“That's right,” Shelly said. “Now it's time to go and have some dinner.”

She stood and hefted him off the chair and onto his feet. He unlocked the receptionist's desk drawer and put the clipboard inside. The key to the desk was on its own ring, which he attached to a lanyard around his neck and tucked under his shirt. The key was cold on his stomach, then it was warm, and then he couldn't feel it at all. He followed his aunt out of the office.

 

72.

THE LAUNDRY BASKET had been too awkward to carry up the hill. Shelly left it at the bus stop and bundled the clothes in a towel to haul on her back. She did not look at the address written on her hand, because she had heard it would be the only house on the street with boarded windows. She walked to the garage and knocked on the open door.

“Knock-knock,” Shelly said.

A woman raised her hand from her desk. “The detective said you'd stop by,” she said. “Let me move my papers.”

“Don't go to any trouble for me,” Shelly said, widening the door with her shoulder. She entered the room and laid her bundle on a chair in front of the desk. Wasps swarmed and dotted the towel.

The woman was gathering folders from where they lay scattered atop an old white-lacquered washing machine. “Don't mind them,” she said.

The wasps were chaining themselves together to form a necklace around Shelly's neck. She resisted the urge to lift her hand. “I thought a change of scenery was in order,” Shelly said.

The other woman lifted folders to her chest and hefted them off the washer. She spread the papers out on the countertop and sifted through them. “I need to organize my life,” she said.

“Thank you for making room,” Shelly said. She waved her hands over the towel, and the wasps took flight. Her living necklace dissipated. One landed on her hand and made a delicate path toward her fingertips. Shelly stood quietly and allowed the movement, which felt like a caress over the tiny hairs along her mid-digits.

The woman was watching. “Wasps don't have hairs on their legs that capture pollen like bees do. They used to eat meat.”

The wasp walked across Shelly's fingertips. She brought her hand closer to her face to see the tiny claws at the ends of the wasp's feet. “There's nothing wrong with you,” she said to the wasp.

“They still have the bodies of predators.”

Shelly moved her hand with the wasp toward the washing machine, reaching into her pocket for a quarter with the other. She placed the quarter next to the insect, holding her wasp hand level. The wasp regarded the quarter and touched it with a quivering mandible, then released Shelly's hand and headed for the roof. Shelly put the quarter down and picked up the laundry. “Thank you for making room for me,” she said to the ceiling. The room's rafters swelled with movement.

“No problem. It's nice to have company,” the woman said, unwrapping a stick of gum. She had stacked her folders and opened a book at her desk, though it was clear she wasn't reading it. She put the gum in her mouth and moved her fingers across the page as if the words were printed on ridges. “Do you know about ‘you'?” she asked.

Shelly thought about it. “About as much as could be expected,” she said. “I wouldn't say I know the whole depth and breadth.”

“More devastation has been linked to ‘you' than anything else. The research is conclusive. I've researched the full canon. Since it was ‘thou.' We're talking over six hundred years of devastation. Heartbreak. Accusation. And worst, worst? False promise.” She leaned back in her chair and tapped a stack of books rising up from the floor, reaching above her elbow. “A lifetime of plans, dissolved. Each of them linked to ‘you.' Tied there in the history of the world.”

Shelly balanced the clothes on her hip. “If it wasn't me, it would be you.”

“It is ‘you.'” The woman worked her gum like a cud. “Can you imagine the history of the world without ‘you'?”

“I appreciate you saying that,” Shelly said, opening the washer lid. She ran her hand around the interior of the machine to pull out the forgotten tissues. At the bottom of the tub, she touched a ribbon, satin against her hand. The ribbon was stuck partially under the lower rim of the agitator. She tugged at it and worked her hand under the plastic rim. It had gone through a cycle or two and was wrapped around the agitator. Leaving it there would immobilize the agitator, leading to a highly imperfect wash. Shelly pushed the agitator to one side and pulled on the ribbon in the opposite direction. She felt the ribbon sliding and tearing against the plastic piece, and then it was free, and her hand came back holding the ribbon looped around two gold wedding bands and knotted tight. She held the rings close to her eye. The ribbon was pale pink and lined with stitched eyelets. It looked like the kind of ribbon that would be woven through a baby's bonnet. She put one of the rings between her teeth and made an impression in the gold.

“What is it?” Marie asked.

Shelly held the rings up. “History of the world,” she said.

 

73.

DAVID'S MOTHER fumbled with the foil crimping over the carton of juice. She tried to pinch it between her thumb and forefinger, but the thin tab of foil and her blindness worked together to elude her. She scratched at the foil-crimped lid, as if to puncture it, but succeeded only in flattening some of the minor perforations of metal, bowing it in. David reached for her hands to help but she pulled them back, protecting the juice with her forearm. The attendant standing at the corner of the room already knew not to go to the trouble of an advance and assist.

“There was a court case in one of the southern states years ago,” she said, “twenty years ago. The only witness to the act in question was a five-year-old child, a boy. Without question he had witnessed the act. His mother's lawyer led him to the stand, and the judge asked the boy what color the lawyer's tie was. The boy said it was blue, and the judge said, no, that tie is red. The boy was confused and said it was blue and the judge said that the tie was red and the boy was very bad if he thought it was blue.”