The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (32 page)

And there was a man, Lafferty had learned, an abusive man by the name of Ray, from Dublin, a criminal of some sort, though the exact nature of his criminality remained a bit of a mystery. What Eena was was on the run from him, which would account for how she'd ended up in godforsaken Kilduff, in the heart of County Nowhere. Ray was in Portlaoise Prison, she'd told him, and Lafferty, aware of the high-security nature of the place, concluded that he was not your garden-variety shoplifter.

 

Destiny struck one day late in the summer when Jelly Roll in the eighth at the Curragh came in at fifty to one. There was no reason on God's green earth he ever should have, and Lafferty never would have given the horse the time of day, but Eena liked the name. She was fond of strawberry jelly. Lafferty's turf accountant, Mickey G, was suspicious and reluctant, his nose bright red with worry, but he forked over the tidy sum, and Lafferty headed off to fetch Eena for a proper celebration. The timing was serendipitous, as Peggy was off on her monthly shopping trip to Dublin with her girlfriend Judy, leaving Lafferty free to borrow her little brown Ford, Peggy being reluctant to lend it. She was fiercely possessive of the thing, owing no doubt to the time Lafferty'd borrowed it, unbeknownst to herself, and the unfortunate incident with the innocent donkey. Eena was reluctant to miss her shift at the Sugarshack, displaying what Lafferty considered an unreasonable degree of loyalty toward the pitiful place. “Tell 'em your granny passed away,” he said. “You won't be lying at all.”

He knew of a place in Naas, not far from Dublin, scarcely more than an hour's drive, a place called the Oyster Tavern, where he'd celebrated a similar stroke of good fortune a number of years before with Peggy. It seemed proper and poetic. Eena wore a pair of high heels and a cocktail dress, the likes of which he'd never seen on her before, the likes of which he was surprised she possessed. She looked like a schoolgirl dressed up for show, and she was giddy as a schoolgirl, forever wanting to peek at the big wad of bills Lafferty had stuck in his pocket, wanting to touch it and smell it, the brown eyes of her filled with the wonder. In possession of a small fortune they were, high on the wings of escape, and her dear old dead granny having played a part—Lafferty allowed the notions to entangle themselves, just as he knew Eena was doing, and sure enough, nearly to Naas, doesn't she come out with it.

“Mister,” said she. “If we could think of a way to get the ring up out of my granny's grave, we could go to the Oyster Tavern anytime we pleased.”

He'd been waiting the months for her to suggest it. “And how might we go about that?”

“Why, we'd have to dig it up, I suppose.”

Lafferty pulled in the reins on his smile, which was chomping quite fierce at the bit. “But wouldn't that be... I don't know... sacrilegious?”

He glanced away from the road to see her eyebrow go up. “Oh, I don't think so, Mister,” said she. “Only a wee desecration is all.”

They laughed. She'd come far since the spring, when she'd been incapable of deciphering his humor at all. The deal was all but sealed. All that remained was for Lafferty to decide how best to accommodate the matter of Peggy. Betrayal was not his currency, but there were degrees of betrayal, and accommodations could often be reached, given the right rationale.

The Oyster Tavern was a splendid old stone edifice with a doorway of dark heavy oak and, inside, a grand dining hall with beams in the ceiling, a magnificent stone fireplace at the far end. Crisp white linens, waiters in black jackets, and the finest steaks within a hundred miles of Dublin. Candles on the tabletops, music in the air. They settled in to study the menu, Eena hanging on his every word and wisdom, just as she always did, full of trust, safe in his hands. Lafferty was up to high living when he had to be, and he ordered a rare Merlot, had it opened by the table to let it breathe. He couldn't escape her eyes in the candlelight. He held her hand on top of the tablecloth, where it squirmed like a tiny bird.

When the soup arrived steaming hot, he asked her what she judged the ring to be worth—had her grandda ever mentioned it in passing? In response her hand darted from beneath his own to hide in the shadows of her lap. “Mister,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“Over there. Is it not herself?”

Back over his shoulder he looked. Herself it was indeed. Peggy across the crowd, Peggy and a man, a man he'd never before set eyes on, leaving the place together, a couple, laughing, tipsy, her arm about his back as she smooched his cheek, his hand on the full of her fine, round rear.

Lafferty listened to the blood clambering in his ear, the sound of a deal being sealed.

 

He parted the coarse green curtain, raising up a cloud of dust. Rattigan's Motor Court, an apt appellation. He was accustomed to cheap rooms, some of the happiest moments of his life had been squandered in cheap rooms, and he could only hope this would prove to be another. The hardest part was the waiting. Keeping the girl on an even keel. Keeping himself on one as well, his heart still smarting at the revelation of his wife's perfidy. But Lafferty, ever the optimist, viewed it as motivation, pure and simple. Opportunity beating his door in. Outside the twilight lingered till he thought it would never come to an end.

The little motorway in front led into Ballybeg, on the outskirts of which lay the church of St. Brigid, behind which lay the moss-covered graveyard, within which lay Mrs. Bernadette Moore, the granny of Roseena Brown. They'd driven by so he could see for himself the lay of the land, exactly as she'd described, the isolation of it, isolation enough at any rate, after midnight. Now the trick was getting midnight here. And Lafferty with his bowels raging perilously.

As great and tempting as the reward might be, the cost was steep. There was, for one thing, the matter of the manual labor necessary to dislodge six feet of good, solid Ballybeg earth; Mrs. Lafferty had not raised her boy to work with his hands, and he'd always found hard labor distasteful. Not to mention the grisly and ghastly nature of communion with a corpse.

“Mister.” Eena curled on her side in the bed, blanket pulled up to her chin. Underneath she was naked, quiet and still and lost in her thoughts, every bit the opposite of himself, pacing the floor in his boxers. “Maybe it isn't such a good idea at that. Maybe we should call the whole thing off.”

Lafferty paused at the window, giving the twilight another dusty glimpse. The first notion that popped into his mind, he was not proud to admit, was of himself carrying on, on his own, without her assistance at all. He knew everything he needed to know, the ring was there waiting like a potato in the ground, and how much assistance could she offer at any rate, wee little thing that she was. He would have to do the heavy lifting. But he overcame his selfish inclination. He was nothing if not a moral man. He looked at her there curled in the bed, the size of an orphan. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” he said, crawling into the bed behind her, gathering her up in his arms.

“I'm scared,” she said, her heart pounding the cage of her ribs.

“Aren't you after telling me your granny would want you to have it? That she'd give it to you herself if she could? After all your troubles, all you been through, all the torment your man Ray has caused you, look at it as your just deserts.”

She was still, a captured kitten.

“Think past today. There's a good girl. Think past the unpleasantness to the rewards that'll follow. Think of us free and easy on our own, living the good life.”

She was quiet for a long while, and he hoped the idea was soothing her, though still he could feel the working of her heart. “And what about Peggy, Mister?”

What about Peggy indeed. His face began to burn. “Her just deserts as well,” he said.

“How did you end up with the likes of her in the first place?”

“Young and ignorant, I suppose. Seemed at the time like the proper thing to do. She was up the pole, so it was the honorable thing.”

“And where's the child then?”

“After all that, she lost it.”

Eena never turned. Her ear sticking up through her hair like a cookie there for him to nibble on. “Lost it,” said she, “or told you she lost it?”

 

In the shadows of the hedgerow Peggy's little brown Ford was invisible from the motorway. He wondered if she'd called the cops to report it stolen. Behind the church of mossy stone, the steeple glimmering in the black of the night with the light of a hidden moon, the graveyard climbed along a sloping hill. Beside it a row of trees all slanted and hunched from the wind through the years, like fingers pointing in from the sea. Lafferty waist-deep in the grave of Mrs. Bernadette Moore, his shirt clinging to his chest with the sweat, stinking of it, his hands on fire from the handle of the spade—Peggy's spade he borrowed from her garden. Eena perched on a neighboring stone, sitting morose and worried, knees clapped together, fiddling with the torch in her hand she never once lit, like the candle on the chest in her room.

“Could you spell me a minute, love?” said Lafferty, wiping the sweat from his face.

She tried, but she was useless as tits on a bull, every other shovelful tipping and falling back into the hole. The spade was lanky in her hands, and she wielded it as though she were uncertain which end to stick into the ground. Reminded Lafferty of her awkward and clumsy way with a tray full of dishes, or how she was in the bed whenever he tried to teach her a new trick, forever shy and clumsy, ill-equipped for the task at hand. But by God earnest and eager. When she was embarrassed, or hard at work, or deep in thought, the tips of her ears became red.

He caught his breath, looked up at the sky, gray notions of clouds scudding across it. Down across the slope past the church the village lay dark and quiet, save for the odd barking of a dog. A spot of light here, another there. Lafferty was soon impatient to take the spade from her hands. So close he could nearly taste it, the gold like icing on a cupcake, the sticky star clusters of emeralds. He considered she might be wrong, that maybe her old grandda was a liar—for wasn't it after all too easy? A blow to his dreams to be sure, but he found, nearly to his surprise, the shattering of her dreams his foremost concern. He could imagine her all hollow and sad, imagine her shrinking, drying up, blowing away. And he found the oddest thing happening to his train of thoughts, found it twisting and heading down the side track. For it was this thing, the shattering of her dream, he was bound to deter, for if the worst were to happen he would take her, hold her, find the joy for her, somewhere, somehow. He was nothing if not an optimistic man, and in all his exhilaration, perched here on the verge of joy, Lafferty felt such a love for the girl struggling in the hole he wanted to pick her up and squeeze her. So there it was. The fortune scarcely in his mind at all, the joy the ring would bring her having surpassed the worth in value, and so he took the spade from her hands, helped her up out of the hole, and set about his business. He'd never felt more noble, and the feeling of it brought a shiver to his skin, a tear to his eye.

By the time he was up to his chin in the dirt, nobility was fading fast. Exhaustion was only the half of it. The unholiness of the whole bloody project, the graveyard, the smell of earth and sweat, the girl on the stone, the half-lit sky, the wind twisting through the trees, wasn't it all beginning to play on his mind. Wasn't he beginning to worry there was no one buried at the bottom of this hole at all, that he could dig all the way to Pakistan and come up empty. Wasn't he beginning to feel the panic of being down in the grave, the prospect grabbing him by the throat and squeezing tight that he might never come up out of it again.
My mam always told me I'd end up digging dirt for a living
, he said. But Eena up above never uttered a word of response, causing Lafferty to wonder if he'd really said it aloud or only thought it, or maybe only dreamt it. And then to wonder if his mam had in truth ever uttered the words, though he was fairly certain she had, as she'd never had a good word to spare him or his da, when indeed his da was home with them at all. For a long time he pictured her there in front of the stove in the dark tenement, the smoke lifting the smell of frying rashers, her back to him, her hand clenched up in a fist on the side of her apron, and the sight of it stayed with him till his shovel knocked on wood.

“Are you there, Mister?”

Lafferty might have grunted. The exhilaration was back, jumbled up with a grand dollop of apprehension, as he cleared off the top of the box. He knelt on the lid, on the lower half, and when he reached up to swing it open, he hesitated. He found he couldn't lift the thing up. There was no physical barrier to him doing so, but he found he couldn't lift the thing up at all.

“Mister?” The whispered word sweet as an onion. Lafferty looked up at the head of her peering down. “What are you waiting for?”

Lafferty stood. “Could you give us a kiss for courage?” She had to lie on the ground to do so, and that was the way they held one another, both perpendicular against the dirt, arms embracing, cheeks touching, tears mingling. He wasn't surprised to find her weeping, too, for now the circuit was joined, the electricity coursing through them, locked there together and for good. “Okay then,” said he. “Okay.”

He looked down at the box beneath his feet. “Will the smell of it be something awful?”

“I shouldn't think so. She's been down there so long.”

“Will she be dreadful? All rotted and the like?”

“I shouldn't think so. All dried up by now, I'd suppose.”

Nevertheless he held his breath and closed his eyes and pulled up the top of the lid. Warm air rose up to his face. It was the bravest thing he ever did. It was an inanimate object in the box, he told himself, and he did what he had to do. Finally he stood, turning his face up again toward Eena, standing up looking down. “I have it.”