Unbury Carol(83)

Smoke did not look back.

“Moxie Moxie Moxie mane,” he said without singing. “I once crawled legless through the rain.” The horse began trotting. Smoke back on the chase. “Moxie Moxie Moxie mat.” The darkness, the wind, the Trail. “You can’t get away from a man like that.”

His horse, stronger than Old Girl, gained ground with every step. As if the legendary outlaw were slowing down, without noticing, without seeing it, without knowing why.





“I’ll tell you why I’m not going to that funeral. Whether he’s invited people or not.”

Farrah was holding the bottle of whiskey she’d been carrying when Sheriff Opal stopped her on the boardwalk. Clyde lifted his glass without speaking and she poured him some more without looking.

Clyde had been worried about her all day. This morning, when they woke, he’d asked innocently if she’d like him to accompany her to the funeral. Farrah looked at him like she might hit him. Clyde didn’t mention it again. He rose, got dressed, and left the house for work. When he returned, Farrah was opening that bottle of whiskey and she said, “I saw you coming up the road. Thank hell’s heaven it was you.”

At first Clyde didn’t want to share the bottle with her. He’d had a full day of working (and working off his own drinking), helping to reinforce the wooden beams of Harrows’s one theater, the Northern. More than that, he didn’t know if Farrah should be drinking so much so fast. And yet they were a quarter of the way into the bottle when she told him she’d talked with Sheriff Opal about Carol and Dwight Evers.

But there was more. Clyde knew. Something else had happened, too.

“The man’s up to no good,” she told him. Then she looked over her shoulder to the window, and Clyde looked over her shoulder, too, before looking her back in the eye.

“What is it, Farrah?”

Farrah frowned and poured more whiskey. Clyde thought it just about the saddest, most lovely face he’d ever seen.

Farrah rose and went to the front door. She tried the handle, making sure it was locked. Then she stepped to the window and peered out the drapes. Clyde watched her in wonder.

“I’ll tell you why I’m not going to that funeral, Clyde.”

Suddenly, for the first time all day, there was some life in her eyes. Clyde liked to see this. But he had a bad feeling about the story she was about to tell him.

Sometimes, Clyde knew, the life in someone’s eyes was fear.

“When I came back from talking with Sheriff Opal, I set this bottle on the counter and I went into the bedroom and lay down for a spell. I didn’t sleep. I don’t think I slept. I stared at the ceiling and thought about what I told the sheriff and whether or not I told him enough or enough of the right things. I started to feel like I’d done something wrong. What if Mister Evers is actually just a grieving man? I might have suggested something really awful then. No, if that’s the case, if Mister Evers is truly grieving, then I did do that. Even worse than that. I stood on a dirt road right there in the middle of all of Harrows and told the sheriff I thought Mister Evers might have played a part in Carol’s death. And what does that mean? Clyde? What else could it mean? It means I suggested he killed her!”

Farrah looked beyond Clyde then, to the window in the kitchen. She walked quickly past him and peered outside once more. It was dark out. In the glass she saw only the kitchen reflected, Clyde at the table.

“Ah, you don’t really think that, do you, Farrah?”

Farrah turned to him quick, her face pale from the whiskey. Her eyes looked crazy.

“He was here, Clyde. I heard him outside. Then I heard him inside.”

Clyde, stunned, looked over his shoulder to the front door.

“At first I thought it was an animal,” Farrah said. “I was in bed, lost in replaying that terrible conversation I’d had with Sheriff Opal, when the sound of footsteps on the grass came through the open bedroom window. I told myself it was a deer. A fox. Something. You would’ve done the same. But it sounded heavier than any of those and suddenly there was a shape in front of the window, blocking the sun. A black shadow came across me and across the bed and I just about screamed. Someone was there. Someone was right there at the window looking in.”

Farrah slumped into the other kitchen chair and sipped from her glass. Clyde thought about stopping her, telling her maybe she shouldn’t drink so much right now. Had she been drinking when she saw someone outside the window?

“I pulled the blanket up to my eyes and stared at that shape at the window. No, I couldn’t see a face. A black silhouette is what it was. I imagined any second he might break the glass. Reach right in. What was he looking for? Who? Well just as suddenly as he came, he was gone. And just as suddenly someone opened the front door.”

Clyde stood up now. He walked to the front door and checked the lock.

“Shudders, Farrah,” he whispered. “You’re scaring me.”

“I heard footsteps in the house and I slipped quiet out of bed. I got on the ground and looked through the crack under the bedroom door but I couldn’t see anyone. I know our house is small, Clyde, I know it’s just these few rooms, but he wasn’t in sight. I got so scared, I crawled right under the bed. You might’ve done the same thing. I crawled under the bed and held my hands in little fists up by my face. I listened to those footsteps. And they were slow, Clyde. Like the man didn’t want you or me to hear he was inside the house. And then…he said my name.”