The way Tyler always imagined it God had been sitting before the fireplace with his feet propped up on the hearth. Or maybe just on midair-God could do that. He was reading an old hymnbook or maybe a seed catalog. Listening with one ear and trying to concentrate on his reading. Finally after years and years of this just getting totally fed up and throwing his book against the wall of Heaven and turning and fixing the old man with his fierce eye. God’s eyes flickered with electric blue light and the old man’s heart exploded in a torrent of black blood and corruption and he just dropped like a stone, dead before his body touched the stairs, and God went back to his seed catalog.
For the first week after the briefcase disappeared from the trunk of his Lincoln, Fenton Breece lived on tenterhooks, waiting for the other shoe to fall. Dark visions haunted him waking and sleeping. The faceless burglar in an alley or a stone culvert hurriedly slashing open the briefcase and dumping out its spare contents, expecting money or who knew what but certainly not expecting the neat stack of photographs. Riffling through them an act of sacrilege. A greasy thumbprint perhaps on the pale bloom of a breast. A thin fingernail of ice traced the nape of Breece’s neck and down hispine.
I’ve just got to do something, he thought in his brisk businesslike manner. But there wasn’t anything to do.
Then in a few days a measure of reason returned. No one had called him. Nothing sinister in the mail, the sky had not fallen. At length he began to see the faceless thief glancing at the rubberbanded photographs in disgust and tossing them away in a ditch. Mud, debris, shards of broken glass, and clotted leaves hid them modestly from prying eyes. Yellow water opaque with mud sent them turning dreamily, pale washedout ghosts of themselves, toward the muddy sanctity of the Tennessee River.
The woman behind the desk had an officious manner and carefully coiffed bluelooking hair. She seemed to have appraised the girl by some abstract standard she kept in her head and found her wanting.
Mr. Breece is not in right now, she said.
I reckon I’ll just wait then, the girl said.
It may be a good while, the woman said.
Then I reckon I’ve got a good while to wait, the girl said. She crossed the narrow office and seated herself in a contoured yellow chair. She took up a magazine and sat staring at it though she could have told you no word that it said. She could hear the woman shuffling papers importantly about. After a while the woman cleared her throat.
What was it about?
It was about me seeing Fenton Breece, she said. She went back to her magazine.
He may not be in for a while. Perhaps I could help you. You couldn’t unless you’re Fenton Breece, and I don’t believe you are.
After a while the outer door opened and Breece himself came in. He was wet and coldlooking and beyond him rain fell slantwise in the wind. She hadn’t known it had begun to rain. Breece folded his umbrella and stood it in the wastebasket to drain. Messy out, he said brightly. A pale hand to the smooth bird’s wing of his hair.
A lady to see you, the woman said grudgingly.
Breece turned, and for an instant recognition and something other flickered in his eyes. Then nothing. He glanced back at the woman behind the desk. He looked at his watch.
You can go any time, Mrs. Cothron, he said. My office is back here, he told the girl. He pointed down a narrow hall. She got up and followed him.
She sat primly on the edge of an armchair. Worn purse clutched bothhanded in her lap. Her eyes on Breece’s face were fierce and intent and unwavering, and they made him nervous.
You buried my father, she began.
He nodded unctuously. He couldn’t wonder what this was about. He remembered the girl, and he remembered the old man, but he couldn’t fathom what she wanted unless someone else was dead. He kept glancing at the purse, and he couldn’t remember if it had all been paid or not. Maybe she owed him money.
Mann Tyler, she said. He had an insurance. We paid for an eight-hundred-dollar steel vault to go over his casket, and it’s not there anymore.
The room was very quiet. She could hear rain at the window. Breece got up and crossed the room. He peereddown the hall and closed the door. He went back and sat down. His hands placed together atop the desk formed an arch. He was watching her and she could see sick fear rise up in his eyes.
Just not there, she went on. And that’s not all. He’s buried without all the clothes we bought for him, and he’s been…mutilated.
She just watched him. A tic pulsed at the corner of one bulging eye like something monstrous stirring beneath a thin veneer of flesh.
Absurd on the face of it. I’m a reputable businessman; no one has ever questioned my professional ethics. My work is exemplary, a matter of pride to me, and you are treading on dangerous legal ground if you intend to accuse me of misconduct.
Misconduct, she said. Her mouth twisted with the taste of the word. She had leant forward, elbows on knees. She smiled slightly. From the street the faint sound of a car door closing, an engine starting up. The bluehaired lady drove away. Breece was staring past the girl’s shoulder through the window to the street.
Dangerous ground indeed, he murmured. A matter to be taken up with my counsel. But for the sake of discussion, just speaking hypothetically, suppose that such things were true. How would you come to know of it?
We dug him up, she said.
You what?
We dug him up. We had reason to suspect something was wrong about his burial, and we were proved right. Then just to be sure we dug up several more. I forget how many. I don’t even want to think about the things we found. No one wouldexpect to find the things we did, not in a thousand years.
Graverobbers. Vandals digging up graves and committing atrocities. Desecrating the corpses. I’ve often heard of such things but I never expected to find it in the town I live in.
I’ve heard of them myself. But none where these vandals took pictures of you and a bunch of naked dead women and then hid them in the trunk of your car. Why do you reckon they did that?
His eyes darted away. They were a hard glassy blue, slick as wet marbles. The open-shut eyes of a doll. The hands were pale, fleshy spiders, the fingers meshing endlessly. One hand trembled violently, and he stayed it with the other. She thought he might weep.
My car was vandalized. So it was you that did that.
I bet you ran straight to the law, too. I bet there’s an all-points bulletin out about those pictures.
What do you want?
You’re finished. You don’t begin to suspect how finished you are. When all these people hear about what you’ve done to their folks, they’re just going to mob you. They’d hang you, but you won’t last that long. They’ll tear you apart like a pack of dogs.
What do you want?
I want the things you done to my daddy made right. I want him buried with the decency you expect your folks to be put away with. I want that waterproof vault we paid for around his casket.
Breece was nodding. Head bobbing metronomically. Of course, he said. If you aren’t satisfied, I’ll do anything I can to satisfy you.
I’m a hell of a way from satisfied. Of course, I’ll refund your money. No question about that. I could even give you a liberal sum for what they call, ah, punitive damages.
And what would you expect in return for that?
He was silent for a long moment. The pictures, of course, he finally said. I’d have to have them back. They’re subject to misunderstanding, a delicate subject, part of an experiment you wouldn’t understand.