Unbury Carol(24)

The words came rippling to Moxie now, folds in the memory of a man who hadn’t taken this path in close to a decade. Oh, the many meanings of the Trail.

“Harrows,” he said.

In Portsoothe he had decided, finally, to turn his back on Carol.

But he was going to her now.

Love, he thought, and the word came with strength but no color. The confusion in his heart was manifold. The guilt was direct.

Moxie and the mare continued. The shape kept pace. And soon the figure slipped into Moxie’s own shadow, vanishing, as the sun broke through again, rose even higher, as the day commenced and the light played tricks with the Trail.





Dwight stood in the parlor and peered through the drapes of its biggest window. The last of the grievers were walking toward their carriages, farther, toward their homes. The sky was gray though it was still very early in the day. It might rain. Or possibly, it was an illusion, an afterimage created by the black and gray dress of the men and women who departed, holding hands, arms over shoulders, having experienced the closeness to death that shatters most social walls.

Couples climbed the steps to their respective coaches and Dwight heard their muffled voices instructing their drivers, Home, Go west, Take us to town. Dwight scanned them, men and women of funereal colors, as if Carol were already buried.

It brought Dwight great pleasure, the success of the wake.

The burial must be no different.

As the coaches drove away, dust from the drive rose knee-high in a cloud. And deep within the cloud Dwight saw Lafayette’s form approaching.

Every town on the Trail harbored someone capable of culling any and all resources from the others. In affluent Harrows, Lafayette was that woman.

Dwight heard the knocking at the door. Lafayette, who wore the same clothing she’d worn the evening before, was professional enough to have knocked quietly. No obvious urgency in a woman who got things done as quickly as possible. And Dwight did not answer straightaway, watching as he did the last of the leavers, making a small game of the meeting-to-be, reminding his partner who wielded the power in this house.

As the last coach vanished, Dwight responded. Quietly, without speaking, he walked Lafayette into the kitchen, where the sink was stuffed with dishes and the table still loaded with desserts.

“Let me tell you a story, Evers. You wanna hear a story?”

Her voice was too loud for Dwight. The early-afternoon dew glistened off the toes of Lafayette’s boots. Her long chin bobbed as she spoke, in step with her considerable ponytail against her upper back, and the words seemed to cascade down the buttons of her white business blouse. Lafayette was a true two inches taller than Dwight, and her size had long assisted her in these matters.

“A young man out of Friar came to see me once. Said he had spent the whole of his life working toward becoming an oilman. Said he got himself on Mossman’s team digging holes and worked himself up to some kind of supervisor. I told the kid I didn’t give a pig’s shit how well he was doing. He was real nervous, asking me if this mister or that mister could hear us and whispering when whispering wasn’t necessary. Told me his family was getting in the way of his being an oilman. Had a wife and three daughters. I told him that sounded nice. He told me it would be if they didn’t get in the way. I told him whatever family he had was his own decision and his own fault and he looked over his shoulder and asked me to keep it down. Said he needed to get rid of the family. I told him he should get a divorce. Even cited a lawyer he should see. ‘I didn’t come to you for legal advice,’ he says. I said, ‘But yes you did.’ He told me the wife was demanding he be home for this or that, making life real hard for him when he made to leave for the day’s work. I told him that’s what families do. But he was serious and he had the money and I suggested to him the same man I’m suggesting to you right now. He said fine, that would be fine. I don’t know if he had something on the side, and a pig could shit and I’d care more about that, but he paid me right then and I told him to go to work tomorrow just like he did every day and by the time he got home it’d be done. He shuddered like all men shudder after things are determined, and we parted ways. He came to me a week after, shaking, boiling, fumed. I don’t like public scenes, Evers, and I took him by his shirt and pulled him into an alley and told him he better get his head together. He told me he came home from work to find his wife charred, her bones in an odd way on the front lawn, the spine and arms and skull set up as though she were crawling up and out of the earth. I told him the man I’d suggested sounded like an artist. He said that wasn’t the worst of it. Said he found the bones of his three girls sitting on the porch in a circle. Black bones. Said they were set up so they were pointing at the bones of their mother, as though acknowledging her emerging from the ground. Said they were screaming, ‘screaming skulls.’ I told him any skull can look like it’s screaming. He was mad, Evers, red-mad. He said he hadn’t asked for the children to be involved. I told him he’d asked for the family. He said he meant it different, meant it like his wife was the family and don’t I know that kids can’t stop a man from moving up in the oil world? I told him to be more specific next time. He started shaking again and he told me that around the knee bones of the kids was a small pile of snuff, as if momma was coming up from the dirt to get her some and like the kids didn’t want her to have it. Told me the ‘animal’ had to’ve set it up that way, that while he was at work, a true-blue psycho was chuckling on his lawn, setting up his daughters’ bones like they were little fiends. I asked him if he had more time now…for the oil gig. He said yes he did.”