Death Rhythm (7 page)

Yes, that’s right, Mae thought, finally getting out of the pick-up. Before she had her drum.

She looked across the road at where Pete’s Five and Dime used to be. It was where they got their weekly sugar fix. Now there was a coffee shop there. Same building, different fix. The word
Pete’s
could still be seen above the coffee shop sign, fading farther into the brick with each passing year.

Mae grabbed a shopping cart and started rolling it down the aisles. She had gotten up early, checked in on Andy and decided to make a trip to the supermarket.

She pushed the cart down the produce aisle. There was a large display of freshly picked apples. As she inhaled the sweet, earthy aroma, she felt a tug on her slacks.

“Hey, lady.”

Mae blinked. It was a little boy, no taller than her waist.

“Yes?”

The boy looked up at her, fascinated. “Are you the crazy lady?”

“Pardon?”

“My mom says you’re the crazy lady.”

Mae bent over, so that her face was inches from his. “Well, then I must be. And you know what else?” she whispered.

The boy’s eyes grew wide.

Mae grinned. “I eat children like you for breakfast.”

The boy turned and fled.

When Andy awoke, he woke completely, all at once, as if a switch had been flicked on inside of him. He felt apprehensive, his senses humming with a super-keen awareness of every noise - every creak and groan of the house, every stretching of its joints. He knew what he had to do.

He had to leave. He had to go back to Cathy. It didn’t matter if his car wasn’t fixed. He’d take a bus if he had to and worry about the car later. He’d walk back to town - he didn’t think it was too long of a walk - and check at the garage. If it still wasn’t ready, he’d get a ticket at the nearest bus station. Or hell, he’d hitchhike if he had to. But he could not let Cathy slip away from him. He loved her. That was all there was to it. He loved her and he was a fool to leave.

He showered and dressed. Noticed Mae’s bedroom door was open and her bed was made.

Downstairs in the kitchen, he found another note.

Went to the supermarket.

His nose turned his body toward the coffee pot sitting on the counter and he poured himself a cup. As he sat drinking the hot black coffee, he couldn’t help but think of what he had seen the night before. The cat swaying in the darkness, the creak of the rope, the groan of the branch holding up its dead weight.

He made up his mind. Before leaving, he would go back into the woods behind Mae’s house and find the cat again. Take a good long look at it, get a picture of it in his mind, in the daylight, listen to the real noises the rope made burdening the tree’s tired limbs. Maybe then his imagination would stop taking the fragmented images and feelings from the night before and make it real. Make his mind stop toying with the sight of it, stop expanding it and making it grow into a monster.

Then he would bury it. As a favor to himself, but most of all, as a secret favor to Mae. He didn’t want her to discover it the way he had. How awful would it be to find something you love in such a degraded, humiliated state?

No. He would bury it. Once and for all. It was the least he could do for her.

He circled around to the backyard and quickly found the trail that led to the cemetery. The best way to find the cat, he decided, was to follow the trail all the way to the graveyard, then find the crude path he'd made the night before. Considering the number of scrapes and bruises on his arms, he figured he must have left some sign of a trail. Broken branches. Trampled leaves. Dirt. Bits of skin, he thought, looking at his arms, forcing himself to laugh.

It was close to nine-thirty in the morning. Sun filtered through the trees in a light mist. Birds chattered among the branches, ignoring Andy as he walked. The morning dew soaked into his tennis shoes and brought out the odor of the fallen leaves. He took in a deep breath. It smelled good.

Soon, the clearing loomed up ahead. Slabs of marble, granite, and cement stuck up through the ground, some grainy and cracked, others smooth and fine.

He stepped into the cemetery. His breath rose in a light fog. It seemed so quaint. Like a picture in a travel brochure.
Come explore the back-roads of Minnesota,
the caption would say.

One of the gravestones in particular caught his eye. Last night the moonlight hadn’t been strong enough to illuminate it. But now, with the rising sun, Andy could make out the writing on the stone clearly.

Camille and Charles Stone.

Andy’s grandparents. He’d never guessed they would be buried here, never knew this place existed until last night. It made sense, of course. Ellingston was where they had spent most of their lives. But to suddenly have this part of his past staring Andy in the face was like plunging his head in ice water.

According to the marker, Camille died in 1967, Charles in 1969.

Funny that Mom never talked about them, he thought. He knew they had died when his mother was young, before Andy was born, but that’s all. He knelt down. Reached out and touched the headstone.

Maybe it was too painful for Mom to talk about, he thought. She hadn’t talked about Mae either, for that matter. She hadn’t even talk about his father. His own
father
.

Andy ran his hand along the rough granite slab. He traced their names with his fingers, whispered their names aloud. He felt his throat tighten. There was so much he didn’t know. Why was Edna so silent about them all?

Next to his grandparents’ stone was a small cement slab, its letters weatherworn and hard to decipher. Andy squinted, trying to read it. Cracks ran through it, mixing with the lettering, making it even harder to read. He reached out and felt the slight indentations, trying to read them by feel, as if they were in Braille.

His eyes strained, and his head began to ache from the effort of concentrating on the worn surface, trying to distinguish letters from the cracks.

Finally, he thought he could read the top of the inscription. It said, Buried In Sorrow With Our Tears.

Then the next line - Our Daughter.

And under that - Evelyn Stone 1936 - 1948.

Twelve years old. And next to my grandparents’ grave.

Our daughter? That would mean she was another aunt. One he had never even heard of before.

He straightened up, his back sore from stooping. The sun gained strength through the bare tree branches. Wisps of clouds dotted the sky like emaciated ghosts. There was a small stone building to Andy’s left. Yellow, crumbling stone, held together with rotting mortar. In front, above a rusting, padlocked door was a hole where a small window had once been. Andy figured it to be a tool shed, maybe a place for shovels and lawn care equipment. A caretaker’s shed. He stared at it. Found himself drawn to it. The buzzing of flies emanated from within.

As he neared, the sound grew. Dozens, maybe hundreds of flies. Andy tried looking up into the window, raising himself on his toes. All he saw was darkness.

He stepped closer, sniffing the air, trying to catch any scent of rotting meat in case some animal had crawled in there and died. All he smelled was dust and wet grass.

He stepped closer. Brought his hands up to the empty window hole. It was only about half a foot above his head. He lifted himself up and peered in, into the darkness, the sound of the flies, hundreds of them, mesmerizing him, drawing him closer. The buzzing intensified as he strained to pull himself forward. He struggled to see into the shadows, to peak at the bowels of the stone shed.

A fly buzzed past his head, making its way into the building. Then another. All he was black, but the blackness urged him forward. The buzzing of flies held him in its grip.

A fly landed on his forehead, but Andy didn’t want to let go of the ledge to swat at it. He blinked, hoping the movement of his brow would irritate it into leaving, but no such luck. Andy held his breath, the muscles in his elbows and wrists straining, but he wouldn’t let go. His head started to go through the empty portal of the small deteriorating building, and his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The pulse in his forehead quickened, the sound of it audible in his ears, playing in time to the lull of the buzzing flies.

And then it spoke.

“Hey, be careful you don’t cut yourself.”

Andy dropped from the window ledge, jumped back and tripped over a headstone.

“Hey!” came the voice again. “Sorry.”

Oh Jesus, Andy thought. It’s someone talking to me. A person, not the building.

A form hovered over him. “Are you okay?” The voice belonged to a woman, robust and earthy. She quickly came into focus, her pleasant curving shape, her long, cascading hair - red cascading hair.

The woman in the window.

“Hi.” Andy squinted. The woman spun slightly. He put his hand to his head. “I think I’m okay.”

The woman offered her hand. Andy grabbed it and was hoisted to a standing position. His legs felt shaky. The world swam, the trees revolving about him as if horses in a carousel, Andy at the center.

The woman’s laugh warbled through the air into Andy’s ears. “Sorry if I scared you.”

“No, that’s all right.” Andy looked at his feet, concentrating on them, trying to calm the spinning world down. He shut his eyes, relaxed, and opened them again. The earth finally fell still and silent.

The woman said, “I just thought I’d warn you about the glass. There’s still some bits of it around the edges.”

Andy’s face flushed.

“Oh, geez - I think you’re bleeding.”

Andy looked at his hands and saw a long red gash in one of them.

“It looks bad.” She grabbed his injured hand and examined it. “I’ve got some bandages I can wrap that up in.”

“No, I – ”

“It’s no problem. Really.” She lightly shook his injured hand in greeting. “My name’s Natalie. Natalie Plant. I live past those trees.” She nodded towards her house.

“I’m Andy.” He couldn’t look too closely at her eyes, feeling guilty about spying on her. What if she'd seen him?

“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

Andy looked up, realizing how ridiculous his thoughts had been.

“No, I'm fine. It’s just that I didn’t notice the cut until you mentioned it.”

“Oh, well - I’m sorry.” She laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

A drop of blood dripped from Andy’s hand and disappeared into the grass at his feet.

Natalie looked toward the shed. “Did you lose something in there?”

A second drop issued from his wound and landed on his shoe, leaving a dime-size splatter stain. He clenched his hand into a fist. “No. Just curious.”

“It’s empty.” Natalie squinted from the climbing sun. “Got any relatives here?”

Two more drops of blood trickled between Andy’s clenched fingers, landing on his pants. He pretended not to notice. “Sure,” he said.

“Me, too.” She held a fistful of daisies and walked over to the granite figure of Apollo, the grave Andy had noticed the night before.

Andy watched another drop of blood fall into the grass. A dull ache spread across his palm.

Natalie placed the daisies in front of the headstone. “My mother died a long time ago. I didn’t even know her. Dad’s in a wheelchair and has trouble maneuvering through the trail. I put most of the flowers here for him. I sometimes drive him over here on the road.” She lifted her chin slightly toward the gateway, with the gravel road leading off to the highway.

Andy walked over to the headstone. The cut in his hand throbbed, as if it had a pulse of its own. He opened his hand to take another look at his wound, and released a thin stream of blood, which fell onto the dull granite of the marker. He pulled his hand away quickly. “Oh, Jesus - I’m sorry.”

Natalie bent down to wipe off the redness with her hand, but a light pink stain remained.

“It’s all right. I should be the one who’s sorry. Why don’t we go get a bandage before you bleed all over everything.”

“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I insist.”

Andy shrugged.

Natalie asked, “By the way - which are your relatives?”

Andy used his good hand to point. “These two are my grandparents.”

“You’re a Stone?”

“My last name’s Byrd, but yeah, these are my grandparents.”

Natalie looked carefully at Andy, studying his face. She turned away and walked towards the trail that led to her house. Without looking back, she said, “Coming?”

“I really don’t want to be - “

“Hush!”

The sun slipped behind a thin white cloud.

Andy followed.

SEVEN

“Mae? Can you help me with this? Please?”

“Not now, Evvy.”

“Mae? Come on. My snare’s broken.”

Sometimes she couldn’t remember her sister Evelyn, and it scared her. She’d try to conjure her up, try to recall the way she talked and laughed before things went so bad, tried to remember the smell of her favorite perfume, remember the way she looked. Many times she couldn’t. Despite the photographs that remained, Mae could sit concentrating for an hour, and nothing would come, as if that part of her memory was lost forever.

But other times, like now, vibrant pieces would come rushing back and almost knock her over with their clarity. They’d come rushing back with the ferocity of a beat from Evelyn’s drum.

“How did you manage to do that?” Mae asks.

Evelyn holds up her drum, a present from her father. One side of the snare on the bottom has flopped off and hangs there like an entrail.

“I think Edna did it.”

“How do you know I didn’t do it?”

“Did you?”

Mae doesn’t answer.

“Did you?”

“Why would I care about your stupid drum?”

Maybe that’s what she was afraid of. With Andy here, the memories had started rolling in like an avalanche.

“Could you help me fix it?”