Bone Dance (28 page)

After Suze had filled him in on the news in the neighbourhood, usually she just sat there, relaxing, enjoying the quiet, leaning against the granite. Sometimes, if it had been a long day, she fell asleep. This time she jerked awake when she heard a soft thud from behind the headstone. She sat up. The wind? A raccoon? Gravediggers?

She smelled him before she saw him.

“Wake up, Little Suzie,” Arvie said.

“I'm not asleep.” Suze tried to keep her own voice calm, because she hadn't planted Mike Jr.'s money yet.

“How come you're playing hard to get?”

Suze thought fast. Arvie sounded drunk. Drunk enough to be mean, but not drunk enough to stumble over his own feet.

“You heard me,” Arvie slithered around to the front of the gravestone. “Are you some kind of tease? There's a name for girls like you.” His eyes glittered in the dark.

“Who's that behind you?” Suze said.

“You little slut, I'm not falling for that again,” Arvie said.

Suze grabbed Mike Jr.'s money and scrambled behind the gravestone. She got to her feet and ran like hell. She zigged and zagged the way the boys did on the football field. Arvie
was breathing hard and swearing. Suze was used to running, and she got as far as the McCurdy's plot, then she jumped over three small crosses of the Clancy babies, hoping Arvie would injure himself on them. But Arvie must have played football, because he seemed to catch on to her tricks. Her lungs were bursting, and she tried to think—if she got to the path and close enough to the tennis court, maybe some of the Protestant kids would hear her if she could scream loud enough. Even a rubbydub would have looked good at that moment. Arvie couldn't do anything with anyone watching. She doubled back and headed towards the fence with the path on the other side of it, coming up close to Pop's grave, when Arvie launched himself. He slammed her behind the knees. She got a mouthful of damp earth from Mrs. Hetherington's freshly dug grave when she hit the ground.

He was heavy and strong. Suze couldn't move out from under him, couldn't breathe. Arvie lifted himself long enough to flip her over.

“You know you've been asking for it,” he said.

You do what you have to, Pops would have said.

It seemed like Suze's arm had a mind of its own, like it belonged to someone else. It seemed like slow motion watching the arm arc and the old Crown Royal bag with Mike Jr.'s paper route money make a perfect half circle before it slammed into Arvie's temple. Slow motion as the bag opened and nickels, dimes and quarters scattered around the open grave, clinking. Suze was floating somewhere else, watching.

She lay still for a long time with him on top of her, twitching. He made a noise like a gurgling drain. It seemed like an hour before she was able to push him off.

Suze crawled a few feet and was sick in the McCurdy's rose bushes. When she finally got her legs to stop shaking and
forced herself to look, Arvie had stopped gurgling. He lay there, the side of his head a new shape. Suze gathered up what she could find of Mike Jr.'s scattered collection of quarters, nickels and dimes and tried to think. What would Pops do?

Miss deLorentis understood about the funeral. She squeezed Suze's hand. Her black eyes shone.

“Of course, you must go. Especially an old family friend. And no, you won't need to make up anything you miss afterwards. You're so far ahead. Your detailed map of the provinces was magnificent. You really have what it takes.”

Suze put on her navy sweater and her Black Watch kilt. She borrowed Mom's little black veil with the bow on it. Mom was passed out on the sofa, so she didn't need to make up a lie.

The funeral went all right. Suze didn't think the Monsignor had nearly as much class as the Bishop. The Hetheringtons didn't seem all that upset. Pops would enjoy hearing about that. He once said that Mrs. Hetherington had the temperament of a wasp and the face of a basset hound and the mind of a cesspool. Suze arrived at the cemetery shortly after the hearse and watched the six pall bearers slowly lower the mahogany coffin with the shiny brass handles into the open hole. When it settled in, each member of the Hetherington family threw a handful of earth onto the coffin. Five grown-up sons, each with the same sloping shoulders and unhappy eyes as the father. None of the Hetheringtons had started to cry at that point, and it didn't look like they were about to. They were not people who looked good in black. No one put a flower on the coffin like Suze and Mike Jr. had with Pops. Suze didn't expect they would engrave “beloved” on Mrs. Heatherington's stone. Suze
shook Mr. Hetherington's small dry hand before she left. “I'm sorry for your loss,” she said.

At the desk, Officer Collins looked up with surprise. “Look what the cat dragged in, will ya, Reg.”

“Here comes trouble,” said the other cop, who had a pockmarked face.

They were both grinning, but Suze managed not to grin back at them.

“Something wrong, Suze?” Officer Collins said.

“My Mom's boyfriend has gone off, and she's real worried about him. I wondered if you can do something to find him.” “You mean that Arvie Penny?”

“A bad penny always turns up,” Officer Collins said.

Suze waited until they stopped laughing. “She's scared something bad might have happened to him.”

The other cop said, “I imagine it did. But I'll tell you, she's better off without Arvie Penny. And so are you kids. Trust me.”

“Can you put out a bulletin? On the radio?”

“Get a load of that, will you, Reg. A bulletin.”

“That's a laugh and a half. Look, that bum is probably stepping off the bus in Toronto now, planning to hole up with some little piece of jailbait.”

“Watch your language, Reg. There's not much we can do about it, Suze. Remember I warned you about him? We don't have him in the cell. Tell her to call us if he comes back.”

“Okay,” said Suze.

“Maybe we can toss him behind bars for her,” Officer Collins said.

“I know he's not the greatest guy but, even so, can you do a search or something?”

“I wish we could help you, Suze, but we're having a busy time of it here. We got a lot of petty theft and vandalism going on. Things disappearing, building materials, flowers, shrubs, lots of crazy things. Someone dumped a load of dirt in the nuns' station wagon over at the convent.”

“Well, whatever you could do to find him would be appreciated,” Suze said.

“Never gives up. God, you're just like the old man. Ain't she, Reg?”

“Your grandfather all over. Same eyes, same attitude. Too bad you're not a boy, you'd make a hell of an officer when you grow up, just like Joe.”

“So listen, Suze,” Officer Collins said. “If he never shows up, your mom's lucky and so are you. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Thanks anyway,” said Suze. You gotta get your ducks in a row, Pops always said.

“Quarter moon tonight, Pops. You can see both the dippers. There's a bit of frost in the air. The Protestant kids finally quit playing tennis. I'm sorry for the inconvenience about your new neighbour. I did what I had to, and I hope it doesn't bother you too much.” Suze was leaning up against the cool front of the gravestone, bringing Pops up to date. “They say eternity's a long time, and it's bad enough you got to put up with Mrs. Hetherington right next door, let alone Arvie buried right underneath her. I was pretty worried they'd find him before they buried her. I did a good job covering him up.
I used the sign from Viger's Variety, it was just the right size and heavy enough in case he stiffened up. I levelled the space around him with some bricks from the Thompson's and put enough dirt on top to hide everything. The hardest part was getting rid of the extra soil so the mound wasn't too high after they covered the coffin. I'm glad I had Mike Jr.'s wagon. You always told me to watch out for the details. Lucky not everyone's good with details like you. No one noticed the hole was only about five feet. I know you wouldn't approve of some of what I did, but remember what you told me about making tough choices when you have to.

“Mom's still drinking too much and crying most of the time. She says she's going to leave us here for a while and go to Toronto looking for him. That might be good. We won't have to worry about fires in the sofa. Mike Jr. got his citizenship badge and his winter jacket. I got a hundred per cent on the Great Lakes and Canada's exports. You would like Miss deLorentis a lot. She says I've got what it takes. I think she's right. I think I'll have what it takes to be a cop like you when I grow up.”

Mary Jane Maffini
is author of the Camilla MacPhee novels:
Speak Ill of the Dead, The Icing on the Corpse
and
Little Boy Blues
with RendezVous Press. She introduced the Fiona Silk series with
Lament for a Lounge Lizard
in 2003. A five-time nominee for Crime Writers of Canada Author Ellis awards, she won “Arthurs” for Best Short Story of 1995 and 2001
.

A tisket, a tasket

A red and purple basket

I sent some poison to my ex

And on the way they lost it

They lost it, they lost it!

They lost it, they lost it,

The postal service lost it.

And if someone should pck it up

I know that they will die.

Joy Hewitt Mann

Wat, who had once been the Schoolmaster Printer, but was now no more than a legless cripple, sat high on the back of Shadow, who was once a magnificent black war horse, but was now no more than an elderly beast of burden. Together they endured gaping stares from the folk of Saint Albans town. While Wat did not care for being an object of public scrutiny, at least he was not alone. At the horse's head walked Gorta, who gathered a few stares of her own, being a woman of great size, as tall as Shadow, and in whose footsteps padded the largest dog most people had ever seen.

It was the year of Our Lord 1488, the twenty-second day of June, the Feast of Saint Alban, and, like everyone else, Wat and Gorta were on their way to the Market Cross. There they would watch the eponymous statue of abbey and town roll his eyes and nod his head when the Abbot called, “Arise, arise, Saint Alban, and get thee home to thy sanctuary.” All around, people were singing a curious song: “From this wicked fall, rose a martyr brave and tall/ Give us back our eyes, Saint Alban, strong and wise/ Then from this wicked fall, you will save us all.” That refrain would continue as the crowd followed the plaster saint back across the square and into his home, the abbey cathedral. For every year on this day, the
huge, unwieldy figure did indeed obey the Abbot's bidding.

It was not exactly a miracle. The statue, on wheels, was pushed by four monks, and its hollow interior was fixed with a set of pulleys so one monk could control both the nodding head and the rolling eyes. Still, no matter how many times the people of Saint Albans had seen the yearly show, it never ceased to fascinate and delight them. Once the saint was back in his chapel behind the high altar, they stayed for Mass, then passed the afternoon celebrating at the fair booths set up around the Market Cross. But this year they were in for a surprise.