The house was much as described, one of those you still find here and there in the Deep South, looming up suddenly like foundered ships from behind banks of black locust, maple, and pecan trees. You could see where Billy'd been at work-sanded patches, raw timber, braces made of two-by-fours-but it was still a mess. When I stepped onto the porch, the boards sagged alarmingly.
No sign of a doorbell. I knocked hard, then, getting no response, sidestepped to one of the tall, narrow windows flanking the door. Sheer curtains obscured the view, reminding me of scenes in old Hollywood movies shot through a lens smeared with Vaseline to soften the focus. But inside I could see objects scattered about the floor, an overturned table, a chair on its side.
The door was unlocked, and Miss Chorley lay breathing, but shallowly, against a back wall, where the baseboard showed remnants of at least three colors and the hash marks of being repeatedly chewed by a dog or other small animal. She'd caught the flocked wallpaper with her fingernails as she went down, ripping a long thin swatch that now curled around her arm like ribbon on a gift.
Her eyes opened when I knelt to take her pulse and speak to her. She wasn't really there, but she was stable. No wounds, as far as I could tell, other than a few bruises, and no blood. I found the phone, dialed the operator, and had her route me to the locals. Explaining what had happened, I asked for an ambulance and a squad. Then I asked for Sergeant Haskell.
He was on duty, I was told, but out on a call. They'd radio and send him right over.
I spent the wait checking the scene and checking back on her in equal parts.
They had come in through the back door, which looked to have been locked since about the time Roosevelt took office, but whose frame was so rotten that a child could have pushed the door in with one finger. Whether they had just started tearing the place up, then been interrupted by her, or whether they'd gone about it as she lay there, was impossible to say, but they'd done a thorough job. Walls had been kicked in, upholstered furniture sliced open, floorboards pried loose. If I read the signs right, they'd started here and, growing progressively frustrated at not finding what they were looking for, moved into the other of the two habitable rooms, which served as her bedroom, then about the house at random. The damage got less focused, more savage, as it went on.
Haskell was there inside of thirty minutes, trailing the ambulance by ten, a small, compact, muscular man dressed in trim-looking khakis and seersucker sport coat and so soft-spoken that listeners instinctively leaned toward him. I told him about Billy and we walked the scene together as the ambulance personnel packed up equipment, paperwork, and Miss Chorley.
"Yeah," Haskell said at the back door. "That's pretty much it. Then they went out the way they came in."
"There have to be tire tracks back there." If not the brunt of the storm, Hazelwood had got its fair share of rain.
Haskell nodded. "We'll get impressions. Most likely this was kids. And most likely the tracks-"
"Will match half the vehicles in the county."
"Not our first rodeo, is it?" He went through to the porch to light a cigarette. Much of the floor had rotted through out here; each step was an act of faith. From beneath, three newborn kittens looked up at the huge bodies crossing their sky. "Woman lives here all these years, no bother to anyone, you'd think she could at least be left alone. Sort of thing seems to be happening more and more."
He shook his head.
"And it's just starting. Towns like ours get closer to the bone, less and less money around, jobs hard to come by-no way it's going to stop."
We stood there as the ambulance pulled out. I looked down at the kittens, hoping their mother was not the cat I had seen dead and swollen doublesize beside the road on my way in.
"You figure they were looking for money?" Haskell said.
"Looking, anyway."
He stepped off the porch to grind his cigarette out on bare ground. "Kids…"
"Maybe not."
I don't know why I said that. There was no reason to believe it was anything other. Just a feeling that came over me. Maybe I had some sense-with Billy's being up that way and coming back to town after so long, with his accident, with my finding the old lady like this-that we had ducks lining up, or as my grandfather would have said, one too many hogs at the trough.
Or maybe it was only that I wanted so badly for the things that happen to us to have meaning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Most of the town, what was left of the town, came to Billy's funeral. Mayor Sims gave a eulogy that had to have set a record for the most cliches delivered in any three-minute period, Brother Davis prayed, preached, and strode about with one or both hands raised, and toward the end Doc Oldham let out a fart that made people jump in the pews; when they turned to look, he himself turned, staring in disapproval at widow Trachtenburg there beside him.
Throughout, Lonnie sat quietly inside his dark brown suit as though it might be holding him upright and in place. June kept looking up, to the ceiling, and down, at the floor-anywhere but into her father's or other eyes.
There had been another hard rain, though this time without the dramatics, and the cemetery outside town had gone to bog, pallbearers slipping on wet grass, mud halfway up shoes and over the top of some, folding chairs sinking leg by leg into the ground.
I spent the afternoon with Lonnie and the family. Greeted visitors, poured gallons of lemonade and iced tea, helped with the cleanup once the last stragglers strayed onto the front porch and away.
Afterward, Lonnie and I sat together on the porch. He'd brought out a bottle of bourbon, but neither of us had much of a taste for it. He was looking at the tongue-and-groove floor we'd spent most of a week putting down the summer before.
"Hell of a mess out here," he said.
"In there, too." So much mud had been tracked from the cemetery, the porch floor could have been of dirt rather than wood. Lonnie was still wearing his suit. It didn't look any fresher than he did.
He asked if I'd heard any more on the old lady, Miss Chorley, who was recovering but, from the look of things, headed for a nursing home.
"Lived on that land, in that house, all her life," he said, "and now she gets shipped off some place where they'll prop her up in front of the TV, dole out crackers or cookies every day at two o'clock, and cluck their tongues when she complains. No family, so the county will end up taking the house."
He looked down again.
"Nothing right about it, Turner. Person gets through even an average life here on this earth, never mind a long one-they deserve better. Sitting in some brightly lit place with powdered egg or applesauce running down your front, can't even decide for yourself when you're going to pee."
I had nothing to say to that. He scuffed at the crust of dried mud there by his chair and after a moment asked, "Staying in town again tonight?"
"Thought I'd head back home, see if it's still there."
"Might want to take food, water, emergency supplies. A native guide."
"Hey, I've got the Jeep. Which, now that I mention it, since you're back on the job, you should reclaim."
"I'm not on the job, Turner. I don't want to be sheriff anymore. I'm not sure I want to be much of anything anymore. Other than left alone."
After a moment I said, "It will pass, Lonnie."
"Will it? Does it?"
We had one quick hit off the bourbon there at the end. As at the accident scene, I didn't make the usual noises-Everything's going to be all right, If there's anything I can do-because it wasn't like that between Lonnie and me. Instead we just said good night. Lonnie stood on the porch, all but motionless, and watched as I drove away. The lights were already off inside the house.