Casting off, p.17
White Nights, page 17
“Did she see a doctor?” Charles asked.
“No need, boy, no need. She knew nature’s ways of healing—leaves, bark, flowers, handed down to her from her ma. She was strong, and beautiful, and young. She made winter clothes out of plaid wool blankets. She could be six months pregnant and row a boat or turn a pig on a spit. But at night, her pains would come.
“Eight years passed before she set her next child on her breast, breathing and blood-smeared from the womb, and suckling hard. A ten-pound-plus baby, that was, and it took her a year before she was well. The man found a local girl to cook and clean and make bread. The woman wasn’t as strong now, but she loved her two boys, and she was beautiful and happy and felt she had been blessed.”
“I don’t suppose she saw a doctor,” Charles said moodily.
“She took pride in her elder son, and knew the name Bane was well chosen—”
The old man broke off.
“It’s all right,” Charles said. “I already knew who you were.”
“I thought you only knew me as an amateur radio operator.”
“The name Bane is familiar. Your son gave me some fish.”
“Bane will give you more, and you will like his gift less.”
Stick to the story, Charles thought. “Doesn’t ‘Bane’ mean death, despair, poison? Bone?”
“A slayer is not always a bad entity,” the man said. “But the old Slavic meaning is ‘glorious defender.’ Saint George would have slain the Dragon, and if he had achieved that, who knows what our world would be now?”
“Bailey says Bane protected him.”
The man’s lip curled, and he rocked back and forth on his haunches, and some change in his face made Charles flinch.
“Bailey. Would I name a son Bailey? A clownish name. We named him Benjamin, meaning son of my right hand.
“Arditha was pregnant again, but the child she carried slipped away, and I left my wife in our bed to heal and took Bane and Benjamin out to the other graves. They strayed while I was praying, and I prayed long and hard. Maybe an hour passed, maybe more. I knew we would have no more children, and I had to reconcile myself. Then I heard a child crying. Your face says you know what happened.”
“Benjamin got hurt.”
The old man stared ahead. “I ran, I ran, till I overran my feet, and then I crawled, but by the time I got to the brink of the hill, there was Benjamin at the bottom, and Bane, sliding down, feet knocking gravel on his brother.”
He looked up at Charles with a thin, pained smile. “I did not ask,” he said.
“The boy’s mother?”
“She never placed blame, but she did not smile often. Bane married, as you may know, a young woman named Madeline, who cared for my wife, and for Benjamin.”
“Benjamin built the cabin because Bane would inherit.”
“Bane was the eldest. He and Madeline had a girl child, Jessamine, who became, as she grew, Benjamin’s playmate.”
“It’s a beautiful name, from the word jasmine. Jasmine grows here now, but it’s a Persian flower.”
The man lurched upright. “It’s from Jewel Weed, Touch Me Not, a name for a faithful woman! ‘Jasmine.’ A Persian name.” The old man pursed his lips as if to spit, then seemed to think better of it.
Charles was getting fed up with his prating.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Can I have your bed if you don’t want it? Or share it with you? You’ve been sitting on the edge of it all this time.”
“My body is failing! Why do you think I’m this color? I’m gray, chicken-scour-brain. Look at my skin. I’m wizened!” He plucked at loose skin on one wrist. “Do you want my death bed?” He plunked back on the thin mattress and drew the bedspread up to his neck.
Charles curled up on the floor, cold, weary, and hungry, and worried about Claire. When he’d first awakened, he was glad she wasn’t with him. But the nights were cold, and for all he knew, she was swimming forever with the fishes.
“Heh.” Again, the voice from the bed. “Here’s the joke, dolt. I’ll tell you. You’ll not pass it on. Bane won’t inherit. He threatened me! Me! His father. I told him I had thwarted his presumption. He won’t let me go from here, but he can’t abide me dying until he has a chance to put straight what I’ve done.”
“You left your place to Benjamin?” The words came out in italics. “Benjamin is—Bailey is—”
“Benjamin is easy to deceive. Bane, on the other hand, believes himself cunning. Thinking to be free of obligation to his brother, he married Jessamine to Benjamin last year. Then he wanted my money. Wanted it before I died!”
The man sat up in bed, his face contorted with anger.
“I told him I’d guessed the truth of it! My boys were like Cane and Abel, only Bane—even the names are alike—had only maimed Benjamin, and both of them children then. Bane was furious—and he hurt me! Hurt his own father! Hurt me, who gave him the gift of life, spurting him from my loins.”
For the first time, the old man leaned forward, and made a furious chopping gesture with his left hand—a hand that, even in the dim light, Charles could see was mangled. All four of the fingers and the thumb were swollen and distorted, pulled out of shape into a crooked mummy’s claw.
“I left everything I own to Jessamine, who’s stubborn as the donkey that saved the prophet Balaam. She and Benjamin may not have consummated their marriage, but she’s faithful. She won’t desert him. She’ll never let him down.”
Charles had dodged away from the maimed fingers, and slid back on the floor, turning his back, by instinct, on the anger that pulsed in the room.
Maddy, Bane’s wife, in Hessel, with odd jobs, and sewing sundries.
Then—had Bane found her there—hiding from everyone?
Maddy, dead in a truck.
Had Bane tried to make Maddy tell him how to find Jessie?
Had Maddy killed herself to keep from doing that?
Bane had so many resources he could use to locate someone who was running. As a real estate agent, he had an excuse to travel and to look into vacant housing where someone could hide. As a local, he had a good reputation on his side. He was the caring relative who’d bought Jessie insurance. He was an ordained pastor. He was Jessie’s brother-in-law.
The problem with all of this conjecture, Charles decided, was that Arnie had been with Bailey and Jessie when Arnie said a stranger had ordered him killed.
If Arnie was right, and his story wasn’t inspired by poppies, who else was a murderer around here beside Bane? Charles wasn’t long on probability theory, but the thought that the area was filled by villains seemed questionable.
But if the “kill ’m dead” man was Bane and he’d been looking for Jessie, why hadn’t Bane grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her off? Instead, he’d given her a homily on being Bailey’s loving wife. And that, it seemed, had put Jessie off Bailey.
Could Bane have known she would react like that? Or did he simply need, want, Bailey on his side?
What had Bane done with Jessie now? Tied her in the cabin? Locked her in the cellar? Made her disappear?
Silence stretched between him and the man he had sought out to thank.
“Sir,” he said, “I don’t know your given name.”
“Nor need you.”
“Where is your will?”
“Which will?”
“The new will?”
“Heh.” The voice quavered. “Bane has the old will. Think he put it in a bank. Made it out for me and then made me sign it. And I gave him some money, too, and pretended I’d come to see his side, and he and I were fine.
“So I wrote a new will, small, on a small piece of paper. Used to be a hobby of mine, when long winters closed in; I’d practice different ways to sign and I could make the letters small enough to be put in those round glass pendants, you’ve seen them. ‘If you have faith small as a mustard seed’—Matthew 17:20. Stupid things, but women buy them. The seeds in them are rarely mustard seed.”
Charles stared.
“This is what I wrote. ‘I, Benedict Larson, being of sound mind and body, declare all other wills null and void and leave my worldly goods, especially my property, to Jessamine Larson, wife to my son Benjamin.’ I wrote it on thin blue paper we used for airmail. You remember airmail? Are you old enough?
“I rolled the paper small. Jessamine had a miniature football shaped container, that unscrewed in the middle, on her dog’s collar. She’d written a post office box number inside.
“I took the number out, and I slid my will inside and screwed that capsule closed. Bane was hanging a deer. Jessamine’s dog jumped at the carcass, and Bane hit it with the butt of his rifle. She let the dog run loose, and it had never left her, but when it dodged away from Bane and kept heading over the dunes, I made a mistake. I told her what I’d done.
“‘Woman,’ I whispered. ‘My will hangs from your dog’s collar, and it names you.’
“Bane must have heard me, because he picked up his rifle and shot her dog, what did they call it? Golden Eyes. Name for a devil. Only Jessamine bumped Bane’s arm, and he pulled his shot. We saw the dog yelp and roll, but it got up and made the tree line. Bane kicked Jessamine and punched her, but she wouldn’t let him go, and by the time Bane got free of her, my will was in God’s hands.”
“On the dog’s collar,” Charles said. “And you don’t know where the dog is.”
“No, I don’t,” the old man said. “But the dog loves children. Someone will take it in, maybe take it to a shelter. Someone will take apart that capsule. I’ve prayed on it. And Bane won’t be able to do a thing about it, because by the time he hears what’s found, I’ll be gone.”
“How are you getting out?” Charles asked.
“You can’t go my route. Not yet. I’ve been down here since Bane shoved me down to age a bit. Heh. Thinks he’ll find the dog, shoot it, and tear up the new will. I think he didn’t want to hurt me again, have me make another will, just in case someone already had the dog. How would that look, sonny? Me dead, my hand ruined, and two conflicting wills?”
“Heh,” Charles repeated, thinking, is there a tunnel, say, out to an old outhouse? Someway the old boy thinks he can go and I can’t? I’m not that much fatter than he is. My shoulders are bigger. Why am I the one who ends up talking to nutcases?
“I haven’t eaten or had a sip of water since I bounced off the floor.”
“How long ago?” Charles jerked back to reality. He’d brought animals back with glucose and rehydration. But this old fart believed, as Charles believed, that sometimes, free choice goes hand in hand with the world’s will.
“Three nights, three days. I’m not hungry, not thirsty anymore. Can’t swallow. Mouth’s dry.”
“You’re killing yourself.”
“I’ll break my fast with my wife.”
Claire swam halfway back to the cottages she and Charles had seen earlier that day. She didn’t think Bane would try to follow her right now. After all, he had Charles to torment. She walked east back along the edge of the water, her back to the now gibbous moon, and her foreshortened shadow stalking ahead of her.
She chose a cottage that looked a bit ramshackle and looked around for a stone to heave through a window. Here, as at Bane’s home, a stream led down to the water. She supposed, for everyday use, if not for drinking, a lot of cottages would sit by springs or streams. Even the stream water, which she explored with her feet because it was in shadow, yielded nothing besides pebbles and one beer can.
Back to the cottage. Here, spruce roots tugged at her feet. She took off her shirt, wrapped it around her elbow, and whacked a side window. Waited. Heard no alarm.
She pulled back the curtain from a small bedroom window and started to lean back to rest on a wall. It gave and clung, clammy against her skin. Startled, she lunged forward from the waist to catch her balance. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized the inside of the room was lined with wood framing that held insulation. Vinyl, secured by staples, covered each insulated panel. There were no beds in the room, though air mattresses heaped with blankets suggested people sometimes stayed to work on the cottage or walk on the beach.
A chest of drawers that was falling apart held hammers, nails, a staple gun, and duct tape in the first drawer. The second drawer held old clothes. Some light came in from the adjacent roughed-in kitchen. She found women’s underpants, a man’s wife beater undershirt, a gray hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants; then she stripped and wiped herself down. She pulled on the underpants and was just sliding the undershirt over her head when a hard, wiry hand—a man’s, she knew instantly—shot out from a nearby pile of blankets. She tried to pull away. Kicked out. Fell.
The man rose, let go of her ankle, grabbed her wrists and pulled her to her feet. He wasn’t much taller than she was, but he was young and heavily muscled. He was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes. He jerked the undershirt down around her neck to free her face.
“Bane said you’d be here. Said you were casing empty places, ripping off anything you could trade for drugs. Figured you’d pick a cottage with no security system. Said there might be someone else with you. Someone who couldn’t fight, but you could fight.”
Wishing she had shoes on, she tried to stamp on one of his insteps. He shoved her back, still holding her wrists, keeping her hands close to her chest.
“Guess Bane was wrong,” he said. He grinned and threw his head back, tossing dark hair out of his eyes. She jerked forward, trying to headbutt him, but he laughed and moved out of the way. Her mind had come alive, but her physical reactions were sluggish from the long swim and the cold. She was sure if she kicked at his groin, he’d grab her leg and flip her.
“Maybe he was,” she said.
Disappointment flitted across his face. He let go of her wrists, one at a time. She slid her arms into the undershirt.
“Run,” he said. “I put out surprises.”
She dodged to one side of him and leaped toward the kitchen.
Thumb tacks on the floor. She felt the pressure then pain as the point of a thumb tack punctured her calloused heel.
She was getting angry. She didn’t think this was the same man who’d shot at the Bentley. The man who’d shot at the Bentley had seemed calm in comparison. This man had a jittery, hungry tension about him.
She jumped forward again and a slippery piece of vinyl slid under her foot. She nearly fell but used the momentum to avoid the man behind her. She was sure the door that led from the outside into the kitchen was locked or the stairs had wire across them. Weighing her options, she glanced at the closest wooden chair, saw one leg was broken, and leaped for the table, landing on one foot and one knee.
He scrambled up behind her. “That’s better,” he said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
From the adjacent living room, faint moonlight angled through slatted patio door blinds. As the table rocked, vinyl stapled to walls shimmied, cloudy as old mirrors. For a long minute, they both balanced precariously on the table that held nails, screws, a screwdriver, and a carpenter’s apron. He made a feint toward her and snickered when she flinched.
“Boo!” he whispered. “I’m going to get you and wrap you up in vinyl.”
She kicked the carpenter’s apron toward him. He reached to scoop it up.
She jumped again, landing on a kitchen counter. Open shelves held boxes of spaghetti, cans of tomato sauce and tomato paste, a bag of sugar, and a tin of coffee. One stained saucepan sat on a two-burner stove.
She threw the tin of coffee. It connected with his forehead. His white teeth showed briefly.
“I’ll staple the vinyl closed. Use duct tape to keep your mouth closed. Leave you a few days to stew in your own juices. Maybe I won’t tell Bane you’re here.”
She dropped a can of tomatoes toward one foot and kicked it toward him.
“Mother fuck!” he said and took time to rub his shin. He picked up the can from the table and hurled it back at her. She smashed it away with the saucepan. The can of tomatoes caught him on the edge of one ear, and he stumbled back.
“Goddamn bitch!” he said, and picked the screwdriver up, holding it low, like someone who knew how to use a knife.
“Maybe let you see your insides. Taste them.”
A window in the patio door exploded, glass flying. Arnie’s bullet slammed into the floor.
“Put down your weapon,” he said. “Fast. My feet hurt.”
The man, turning toward Arnie, dropped the screwdriver.
“Bane didn’t say nothing about guns!”
“You too, Claire. Drop the tomatoes.”
“Where’s Bailey?” she asked, sliding down to the kitchen floor while avoiding getting slivers of wood in her ass.
“Don’t know. With Bane, I think. What’s that you’ve got in your fist?”
“A can of tomato paste. I thought I could cold cock him. Arnie, Bane is out of control.”
“Not a surprise,” Arnie said.
“What are you going to do to me?” The man’s T-shirt stuck to him and his hair was lank with sweat.
“Duct tape,” Claire said.
“Will Bane come get me?”
“Wait and see,” Claire said.
After Claire dressed, she held Arnie’s Glock while Arnie duct taped the thug’s hands together and duct taped his ankles. Then they duct taped him to the table.
“If I had a can opener,” she said, “I’d pour tomato sauce in your eyes.”
Arnie broke a window at the better-appointed cottage, where a sign proclaimed “This property is equipped with security alarms.” “We’ll get someone out here. Maybe Rob,” Arnie said. “Where’d you get the knife?”
“The kitchen. Where else?” Claire asked him.
“I’ve got a gun,” he reminded her.
