The Witch Tree, page 19
In a sudden, cold sweat, he lifted the shell to his face, panicked. Maybe it couldn’t be done?
He reset the pliers, wrenched the upper one around until his knuckles met the floor and, just when he thought – Christ, was it not possible? – the bullet came free, blue-black gunpowder spilling from the shell casing, and all too visible on the bleached white tile grouting. When he tried to wipe it up, it smudged.
Still, he was elated. He tore sheets of toilet paper from the roll, wadded them in his palms until he had a not-too-tight cylinder the diameter of a bullet. With the screwdriver, he forced it into the casing over the charge. Held the bullet in his palm, regarding what he’d made.
A blank.
Though, even paper, with enough charge behind it, could kill. And he thought to test it, but couldn’t. For the noise it’d make – but more so for the smell. Cordite, and burned gunpowder.
He had three blanks finished, and the barrel of the shot gun sawed off, the slugs for it cross cut – they’d fragment now if they struck something – when he heard someone in the apartment.
His heart in his throat, he pointed the shot gun into the bathroom door and clicked off the safety.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Buck?” Jenny replied.
He rocked back on his heels and caught his breath. There was a light knock, something tentative in it.
“What are you doing?”
“Paintin’ my toenails,” he said. “What’d you think? I’m taking a bubble bath, makin’ myself beautiful.”
He splashed his hand in the water, for effect. It would all be for nothing if she opened the door.
“I talked to Eli,” she replied, a hopeful note in her voice. “Why’n’t you come out, I’ll tell you about it.”
“So, put on some coffee, can you?”
When he heard her clattering around in the kitchen, he tore the foil from the window, dunked his head in the tub, then dodged with the guns and shells to his room – got it all in the duffel.
Coming up the hallway, he ruffled his hair with a towel, for effect, then sat across from her.
Heard, from Jenny, the happy future for her and his brother he’d so badly needed to hear.
Even if it wouldn’t happen.
Later, Jen led Eli by the hand into the apartment. Fresh in from the shop, he had an abashed, silly look on his face. She’d put music on, some cheerfully mournful Cash. How fitting.
“Hey, what’s all this, the Last Supper or something?” Eli joked, taking a chair at the table.
Buck peered up the hallway from his room, where he’d been avoiding Jenny these last few hours, but more so, where he’d been hoping to see Ambrose appear in the apartment across the alley.
Jenny’d put on dinner, and had fixed the light in the kitchen so it looked warmer, and their voices spilled into his room.
“Sit down with us, can you?” she called up the hallway. “I put on enough for all of us.”
He was hungry, but needed to find Ambrose – that, or none of what he had in mind would work.
Shucking on his jacket, he went by them to the door, said, “Don’t wait on me, no telling when I’ll be back.”
42
Sally
The cold had carried into the third week of May and, now, she and Sun made deliveries, Sun, brooding, but they’d gotten faster. Sally’d gotten faster. Better understood Sun, and Sun her.
Only today, it was snowing, one of those spring flurries, and the roads were slick with it. Flakes teetering out of a gray sky.
Something… truly not good was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon.
Outside a dental office on 42nd, she paused, then lifted her head and, for Sun, waiting in the car, caught a snowflake on her tongue. Sun frowned, made a shooing motion with her hands, and Sally, sticking out her tongue, bobbed her head to catch another.
Then grinned, for Sun, who mouthed what she was always mouthing, “You GO NOW, SORRY!”
So, she did, DPA’s cheerful go-to girl. She strode right in, slapped their box of dentures on the counter, then suffered the inevitable, nerve-wracking inspection of their work. “You’d think it was Christmas!” she said, chatting about nothing, until she got the nod, then dashed her John Hancock on the bill of lading, got the check, $ 2,980.00, and went out.
Sun, in the windshield, glowered. Pleased at the opportunity the inclement conditions presented. Here another test, one Sally would have to pass, driving on icy streets.
Sally threw an arm up, as if tossing a hat, hoping for a little levity. But would Sun get it?
In the car, the two of them settled. “Well,” Sally said, “seven deliveries down, and three to go. Where to now, Mr. Grant?”
Now Sun really did laugh, and Sally laughed with her. Oh, yes, weren’t they just having fun?
Reft, light. Rrrr-ight. Rexington, Irreventh. Left, right. Right. Lexington. Eleventh. They drove, now, deep into St. Paul. But where they should have turned, to get to their last client, Sun said, suddenly, “Reft!” and pointed.
They drove into an area of yellow sandstone bluffs, picturesque and sad in the snow.
“Again Reft,” Sun said, and Sally swung into a cul-de-sac, there two sandstone columns, on the nearest a plaque. Calvary Cemetery, it read.
Sally eased into the cemetery, passing an imposing bronze statue of a fireman in 1890s dress, a lantern hanging from one hand and clutching a child to his side with the other. On his head was a cap of snow, and the verdigris’ed bronze speaking of time and lost things.
“Sun?” Sally asked. “Why are we–”
“You go, corner,” Sun directed, and Sally went up a curving, ice-glazed road, on either side dark limbed trees.
“Stop,” Sun commanded, and Sally did that, leaned into the windshield, the snow coming down.
“You forrow,” Sun said, and she slung herself out of the car, marched away into the trees.
Sally rushed to catch up, Sun cutting a path to a remote corner, over which the ribbed dome of St. Paul’s seemed to float. There was a wire fence, and a gate, which Sun went through.
Sally went in now, too, Sun standing with her hands clenched in front of her at a headstone.
Pearl Kuzinoki, it read. And below that. 1941-1978.
Sun got down on one knee to lovingly brush the snow from the top of the stone and the urn there – in it a spray of plastic irises, ones that had long before nearly faded to white.
“Good girl,” Sun said, her hand on the stone, glancing up at Sally. “Smart-smart. Much promise.”
There was none of The Dragon Lady in Sun’s voice now, rather, something so naked, so fraught with pain, Sally felt her eyes glass up, unable to help herself from feeling Sun’s grief.
“Hard on you, Sorry, for reason,” Sun said, and nodded. “You, just like daughter. Much promise. Smart-smart.”
“I can do better–” Sally began, and Sun cut her off. “DPA not for you. You go, don’t come back. Don’t waste life.”
Sun, from where she squatted, glared. “You come back DPA? I say… you… steer from cabinet, have proof.” She grimaced. “Hah? Say, too, you… fuck up–” She shook her head “–dee-lll-ivily.”
“But… Sun,” Sally said, and held up her hands – stunned at the… wrongheaded… impossibility of it all. “Why?”
“No Korean man want, Pearl father Japanese soldier,” Sun said, having misunderstood her. She nodded, to herself. “No future. So cut wrist, kir serf. I creen brood from tub.
“You, Go- Home!” Sun said. “Make patch up, have future. Not waste life with… possi-birrity….”
Sally laughed, uneasily. “Well, maybe sometime,” she said, “but, no, not now, Sun.”
Sally held her hand to her forehead; snowflakes burned the back of her hand, icy cold.
“I’m so sorry, Sun,” she said, finally. She meant about Sun’s daughter, but Sun took it as a refusal.
“You say, ‘No’?” Sun replied, sharply.
“Right. I’m not leaving. Not DPA, and not here. Not you now. Okay? I can’t just leave you here, and–”
Sun sprang at Sally, her fists bunched, and Sally scurried for the car, trying to dodge the blows, Sun pummeling her back. Which hurt. She wasn’t kidding, and she was no lightweight.
She got the door open, then slipped inside, let the driver’s window down an inch or two.
“Sun, you have to calm down,” she said, and Sun’s face only got that much more angry.
“You go now,” she said, and when Sally refused, she marched to her daughter’s grave, hefted the cement urn, flowers and all, and set it, like a lance, on her shoulder. Came at the car.
“Sun!” Sally called to her, “I don’t think that’s a good–”
Sun was all but at the car now, her teeth set, and in her stride something she’d decided long before.
Her hands shaking and a sob in her chest, she sat in the car a block from the cemetery, the engine running, trying to decide what to do. Should she go back and try to talk to Sun? Or leave? Without her job, she couldn’t last long. Not even staying in her car on Dupont.
She craned her head around, looked behind her, and here came Sun, that damn urn on her shoulder.
At her place on Dupont, she was inconsolable. One minute she fought another panic attack, and the next she was all but inert, stared out the windshield into the dark, but her mind racing.
Hours passing, and it had gotten dark, and she hadn’t eaten, and where was Buck when she needed him?
Of course, Sun’d done what she had after giving her her paycheck, which came to the whopping sum of $ 126.95. Would it be enough to get out to Seattle? And, if not, being stranded on the road without money?
And now the cold crept into the car, gas guzzler that it was, damn thing got about ten miles to the gallon.
Something she’d read in a class came to her, and in trying to recall it there was a welcome distraction. Dreaming of heroes. All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home. Their women – something… dying for love, that was it, and their sons grow suicidally beautiful…. Was she suicidal? She could be – on the lawn of the house to her right was a garden hose. She could run it from the exhaust pipe into the car. Easy peasy. People did it all the time.
And then a thought occurred to her. She brightened at it, sat up at the wheel. She could go home, ask for money for tuition, and she’d have enough to make it out to Seattle.
It was a plan, and if she were just a… little bit brave….
She could do it. She’d show them how much better she was. How together. And, anyway, hadn’t Buck told her she had to go back to face what she’d been running from?
Before she left? Or, better, they did?
43
Buck
It was snowing again, and they were all three, Jenny, Eli, and Buck, sitting on the couch avoiding each other, watching television, when the phone rang, and Eli picked up the receiver.
“Yeah?” he said.
Jen poked him. “Who is it?”
“Lester,” he mouthed. “Well, why don’t you talk to him yourself? Here,” Eli said, and handed Buck the phone.
A semi was due down from Toronto. They’d stage the accident at a crossroads, one coming into The Cities. Tomorrow, Lester said, Saturday. They weren’t sure exactly when, but it would be late.
“You and Eli’ll drive Swoop,” Lester said, “and thanks to you, Ambrose’ll have to scare up riders.”
“Meet at Moby’s?” Buck asked. And when Lester hesitated, said, “No, I got another place,” he knew.
“We’ll call when,” Lester said.
“Gotcha,” he replied, and, setting down the phone, felt something in him burst up, hopeful.
Here it was, his chance to make things right – that, or die trying.
Navigating by the moon, he came up the alley to Shorty’s. Checked behind him, then scooted between the two garages, and a car going by, and too fast, and his breath coming ragged.
“I hear ya,” Shorty said. “Uh huh. Out there big as an elephant. So, what are you waiting for?”
Shorty, as before, was busy with something, at his desk that folded out of the bookshelf.
“Well,” Shorty said, eyeing him, “we do want something before it’s all over, don’t we?”
“It’s Ambrose,” he said, “he’s gone off somewhere.”
Shorty threw his arms out to his sides. Then, as if he’d untied a knot, he assumed new proportions, a woman’s.
Said, in a reedy voice, “As directed to.”
It must have been on his face, his surprise – then disapproval. And, finally, his anger.
“I don’t need this,” he said, “all right?”
“Then, why are you here?”
“They’re going to get to it tomorrow tonight,” he said, “come at us with all they’ve got.”
“Good!” She grasped his arm, her fingers digging into his bicep. “Well – the wheel’s come full circle. No surprise. But Trickster is greedy! So greedy he might defeat himself.”
“Dr. Miller, you mean.”
“Trickster isn’t a person. Trickster possesses you. If you let him. And, yes, Old Dr. Miller knows him. But so- do- you.”
She snatched a coin from behind his ear, made a slow, descending arc with it over their heads.
“Here,” she said, and pressed the coin into his palm, “Tibik-gisiss. Night-sun.” She nodded. “It’s coming on full. It’ll be so bright you could read by it. Or take pictures, yes?”
Christ! Yes. The thought struck him as if a revelation. He’d been thinking – someone, a witness to sway Carol. When all the while it had been right there in front of him. Of course! Ambrose, with his camera. He’d be out with Lester as part of the crew, so – why couldn’t Ambrose get it on film? He didn’t need some one – he only needed some thing. Photos. Which he could show Carol, all incontrovertibly damning. A glance at them, and it would be done.
And there was the Moto-Foto at the shopping center going into Miller’s. Open 24 hours. Seven days.
“You do see, don’t you?” Shorty said, but he’d gotten his back up again, Shorty, the midget. “So, call Ambrose.”
Shorty handed him a ticket. Admit One Free, it read. And on the flip side was a phone number.
“I’m going,” he said.
“Well, go then already,” Shorty replied, and waving his hands, he shooed him toward the door, saying, “Remember, you have to cut the head off the body, or it all just comes back.
“Onwas!” he said. Luck! Then all but shouted, “Now, GET OUT!” and thrust him into the alley. “And this time, DON’T- COME- AROUND – UNTIL IT’S DONE AND FINISHED!”
44
Eli
He stood from the couch where he and Jen had been pretending to watch television the last hour, switched off the set, then went to the window and threw it open to get the bird.
“Not now, Eli,” Jen said. She’d been on him since she’d gotten in; something eating at her.
“When is your brother coming back?” she asked, craning her head around, and something shrill in her voice.
“Why?
In three, lunging steps, she got to the window and slammed it shut, then went to the table, where she dug with a kind of – what was it? Fear? Or was it… rage? – in her purse.
“Jen, sweetheart,” he said, “not those pictures again, okay? For Christ’s sake, can you just let it go already?”
But it wasn’t photos she lifted out of her purse now, it was a crumpled bill. She held it up under the light, squinting, as if reading something there, then slapped it on the table and jabbed her finger into it, just as she’d done with the photos, though this was something else.
“Come here,” she said, and from the tone in her voice, he knew not to argue with her.
Across the bill, in a heavy, magic marker scrawl, was: My things, or your girl. Your choice.
“Where’d you get this?” Eli said, shocked, at the… impossibility of it all. He just- couldn’t- get- in front of it.
She’d set a hand on her hip. “At work.”
“Walgreens?”
“No, Eli, at the fucking White House! Yes, Walgreens! I thought he was going to rob us.”
“What’d he look like?”
When she hesitated, then answered, “Which one?” he knew things had truly gone wrong.
“The one in the store, he had… eyes that weren’t the same, one white and the other this…” she shuddered “and when I came home, he’s waiting outside our door, but his eyes weren’t – and that one, that one he says, “Be seein’ you later sexy’, for our hot date.’
“Now you tell me, do you know who he – or they – were? Because, unless you do something, they’re coming for me now.”
Eli gave her a blank, clueless look, and she said in a near hysteria, coming at him and all but weeping–
“You… TELL WHOEVER IT IS, YOU’RE GOING TO GET IT FOR HIM, WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU’VE TAKEN, OR STOLEN, OR WHATEVER IT IS YOU’VE DONE, ELI. YOU’RE GOING TO FIX IT. AND YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT, AND RIGHT NOW.”
“Jen,” he said, “how can I give them something I don’t have? Don’t you get that?”
“Well, you get it, or they’ll – come after me to get to you – and – they’ll kill us both!
“Tell me, Eli, it’s not the same people who killed Ruben.” So, it had gotten back to her.
“Jen….”
“Say it!”
She picked up the phone and brandished it in his face. The cord barely reached. “You call Lester, or whoever it is at the shop you need to, and you make it right. And now.”
“You’re–”
“Call,” she said, “or I’m gone.”
And like that, he took the phone from her and dialed the number he knew all too well.
45
Buck
The coin op outside the Colonel’s smelled of urine, and he held the door open with his foot. Dialed. Over the Northwestern Bank building, the time scrolled 9:43. Cloudy Skies No Change Foreseen.
