101 Mystery Stories

68 Cattails Marcia Muller

We came around the lake, Frances and I, heading toward the picnic ground. I was lugging the basket and when the going got rough, like where the path narrowed to a ledge of rock, I would set it down a minute before braving the uneven ground.

All the while I was seeing us as if we were in a movie — something I do more and more the older I get.

They come around the lake, an old couple of seventy, on a picnic. The woman strides ahead, still slender and active, her red scarf fluttering in the breeze. He follows, carrying the wicker basket, a stooped gray-headed man who moves hesitantly, as if he is a little afraid.

Drama, I thought. We’re more and more prone to it as the real thing fades from our lives. We make ourselves stars in scenarios that are at best boring. Ah, well, it’s a way to keep going. I have my little dramas; Frances has her spiritualism and seances. And, thinking of keeping going, I must or Frances will tell me I’m good for nothing, not even carrying the basket to the picnic ground.

Frances had already arrived there by the time I reached the meadow. I set the basket down once more and mopped my damp brow. She motioned impatiently to me and, with a muttered “Yes, dear,” I went on. It was the same place we always came for our annual outing. The same sunlight glinted coldly on the water; the same chill wind blew up from the shore; the same dampness saturated the ground.

January. A hell of a time for a picnic, even here in the hills of Northern California. I knew why she insisted on it. Who would know better than I? And yet I wondered — was there more to it than that? Was the fool woman trying to kill me with these damned outings?

She spread the plaid blanket on the ground in front of the log we always used as a backrest. I lowered myself onto it, groaning. Yes, the ground was damp as ever. Soon it would seep through the blanket and into my clothes. Frances unpacked the big wicker basket, portioning out food like she did at home. It was a nice basket, with real plates and silverware, all held in their own little niches. Frances had even packed cloth napkins — leave it to her not to forget. The basket was the kind you saw advertised nowadays in catalogs for rich people to buy, but it hadn’t cost us very much. I’d made the niches myself and outfitted it with what was left of our first set of dishes and flatware. That was back in the days when I liked doing handy projects, before...

“Charles, you’re not eating.” Frances thrust my plate into my hands.

Ham sandwich. On rye. With mustard. Pickle, garlic dill. Potato salad, Frances’s special recipe. The same as always.

“Don’t you think next year we could have something different?” I asked.

Frances looked at me with an expression close to hatred. “You know we can’t.”

“Guess not.” I bit into the sandwich.

Frances opened a beer for me. Bud. I’m not supposed to drink, not since the last seizure, and I’ve been good, damned good. But on these yearly picnics it’s different. It’s got to be.

Frances poured herself some wine. We ate in silence, staring at the cattails along the shore of the lake.

When we finished what was on our plates, Frances opened another beer for me and took out the birthday cake. It was chocolate with darker chocolate icing. I knew that without looking.

“He would have been twenty-nine,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Twenty-nine. A man.”

“Yes,” I said again, with mental reservations.

“Poor Richie. He was such a beautiful baby.”

I was silent, watching the cattails.

“Do you remember, Charles? What a beautiful baby he was?”

“Yes.”

That had been in Detroit. Back when the auto industry was going great guns and jobs on the assembly line were a dime a dozen. We’d had a red-brick house in a surburb called Royal Oak. And a green Ford — that’s where I’d worked, Ford’s, the River Rouge plant — and a yard with big maple trees. And, unexpectedly, we’d had Richie.

“He was such a good baby, too. He never cried.”

“No, he didn’t.”

Richie never cried. He’d been unusually silent, watching us. And I’d started to drink more. I’d come home and see them, mother and the change-of-life baby she’d never wanted, beneath the big maple trees. And I’d go to the kitchen for a beer.

I lost the job at Ford’s. Our furniture was sold. The house went on the market. And then we headed west in the green car. To Chicago.

Now Frances handed me another beer.

“I shouldn’t.” I wasn’t used to drinking anymore and I already felt drunk.

“Drink it.”

I shrugged and tilted the can.

Chicago had been miserable. There we’d lived in a railroad flat in an old dark brick building. It was always cold in the flat, and in the Polish butcher shop where I clerked. Frances started talking about going to work, but I wouldn’t let her. Richie needed her. Needed watching.

The beer was making me feel sleepy.

In Chicago, the snow had drifted and covered the front stoop. I would come home in the dark, carrying meat that the butcher shop was going to throw out — chicken backs and nearly spoiled pork and sometimes a soupbone. I’d take them to the kitchen, passing through the front room where Richie’s playpen was, and set them on the drainboard. And then I’d go to the pantry for a shot or two of something to warm me. It was winter when the green Ford died. It was winter when I lost the job at the butcher shop. A snowstorm was howling in off Lake Michigan when we got on the Greyhound for Texas. I’d heard of work in Midland.

Beside me, Frances leaned back against the log. I set my empty beer can down and lay on my side.

“That’s right, Charles, go to sleep.” Her voice shook with controlled anger, as always.

I closed my eyes, traveling back to Texas.

Roughnecking the oil rigs hadn’t been easy. It was hard work, dirty work, and for a newcomer, the midnight shift was the only one available. But times hadn’t been any better for Frances and Richie. In the winter, the northers blew through every crack in the little box of a house we’d rented. And summer’s heat turned the place into an oven. Frances never complained. Richie did, but, then, Richie complained about everything.

Summer nights in Midland were the only good times. We’d sit outside, sometimes alone, sometimes with neighbors, drinking beer and talking. Once in a while we’d go to a roadhouse, if we could find someone to take care of Richie. That wasn’t often, though. It was hard to find someone to stay with such a difficult child. And then I fell off the oil rig and broke my leg. When it healed, we boarded another bus, this time for New Mexico.

I jerked suddenly. Must have dozed off. Frances sat beside me, clutching some cattails she’d picked from the edge of the lake while I slept. She set them down and took out the blue candles and started sticking them on the birthday cake.

“Do you remember that birthday of Richie’s in New Mexico?” She began lighting the candles, all twenty-nine of them.

“Yes.”

“We gave him that red plastic music box? Like an organ grinder’s? With the fuzzy monkey on top that went up and down when you turned the handle?”

“Yes.” I looked away from the candles to the cattails and the lake beyond. The monkey had gone up and down when you turned the handle — until Richie had stomped on the toy and smashed it to bits.

In Roswell we’d had a small stucco house, nicer than the one in Midland. Our garden had been westernized — that’s what they call pebbles instead of grass, cacti instead of shrubs. Not that I spent a lot of time there. I worked long hours in the clothing mill.

Frances picked up the cattails and began pulling them apart, scattering their fuzzy insides. The breeze blew most of the fluff away across the meadow, but some stuck to the icing on the cake.

“He loved that monkey, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“And the tune the music box played — what was it?”

“ ‘Pop Goes the Weasel.’ ” But she knew that.

“Of course. ‘Pop Goes the Weasel.’ ” The fuzz continued to drift through her fingers. The wind from the lake blew some of it against my nose. It tickled.

“Roswell was where I met Linda,” Frances added. “Do you remember her?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”

“She foretold it all.”

“Some of it.”

“All.”

I let her have the last word. Frances was a stubborn woman.

Linda. Roswell was where Frances had gotten interested in spiritualism, foretelling the future, that sort of stuff. I hadn’t liked it, but, hell, it gave Frances something to do. And there was little enough to do, stuck out there in the desert. I had to hand it to Linda — she foretold my losing the job at the clothing mill. And our next move, to Los Angeles.

Frances was almost done with the cattails. Soon she’d ask me to get her some more.

Los Angeles. A haze always hanging over the city. Tall palms that were nothing but poles with sickly wisps of leaves at the top. And for me, job after job, each worse, until I was clerking at the Orange Julius for minimum wage. For Frances and Richie it wasn’t so bad, though. We lived in Santa Monica, near the beach. Nothing fancy, but she could take him there and he’d play in the surf. It kept him out of trouble — he’d taken to stealing candy and little objects from the stores. When they went to the beach on weekends I stayed home and drank.

“I need some more cattails, Charles.”

“Soon.”

Was the Orange Julius the last job in L.A.? Funny how they all blended together. But it had to be — I was fired from there after Richie lifted twenty dollars from the cash register while visiting me. By then we’d scraped together enough money from Frances’s baby-sitting wages to buy an old car — a white Nash Rambler. It took us all the way to San Francisco and these East Bay hills where we were sitting today.

“Charles, the cattails.”

“Soon.”

The wind was blowing off the lake. The cattails at the shore moved, beckoning me. The cake was covered with white fuzz. The candles guttered, dripping blue wax.

“Linda,” Frances said. “Do you remember when she came to stay with us in Oakland?”

“Yes.”

“We had the seance.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t believe in the damned things, but I’d gone along with it. Linda had set up chairs around the dining-room table in our little shingles house. The room had been too small for the number of people there and Linda had made cutting remarks. That hurt. It was all we could afford. I was on disability then because of the accident at the chemical plant. I’d been worrying about Richie’s adjustment problems in school and my inattention on the job had caused an explosion.

“That was my first experience with those who have gone beyond.” Frances said now.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t like it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

There had been rapping noises. And chill drafts. A dish had fallen off a shelf. Linda said afterward it had been a young spirit we had contacted. She claimed young spirits were easier to raise.

I still didn’t believe in any of it. Not a damned bit!

“Charles, the cattails.”

I stood up.

Linda had promised to return to Oakland the next summer. We would all conduct more “fun” experiments. By the time she did, Frances was an expert in those experiments. She’d gone to every charlatan in town after that day in January, here at the lake. She’d gone because on that unseasonably warm day, during his birthday picnic at this very meadow, Richie had drowned while fetching cattails from the shore. Died by drowning, just as Linda had prophesied in New Mexico. Some said it had been my fault because I’d been drunk and had fallen asleep and failed to watch him. Frances seemed to think so. But Frances had been wandering around in the woods or somewhere and hadn’t watched him either.

I started down toward the lake. The wind had come up and the overripe cattails were breaking open, their white fuzz trailing like fog.

Funny. They had never done that before.

I looked back at Frances. She motioned impatiently.

I continued down to the lakeside.

Frances had gone to the mediums for years, hoping to make contact with Richie’s spirit. When that hadn’t worked, she went less and spiritualism became merely a hobby for her. But one thing she still insisted on was coming here every year to reenact the fatal picnic. Even though it was usually cold in January, even though others would have stayed away from the place where their child had died, she came and went through the ritual. Why? Anger at me, I supposed. Anger because I’d been drunk and asleep that day...

The cattail fuzz was thicker now. I stopped. The lake was obscured by it. Turning, I realized I could barely see Frances.

Shapes seemed to be forming in the mist.

The shape of Richie. A bad child.

The shape of Frances. An unhappy mother.

“Daddy, help!”

The cry seemed to come out of the mist at the water’s edge. I froze for a moment, then started down there. The mist got thicker. Confused, I stopped. Had I heard something? Or was it only in my head?

Drama. I thought. Drama...

The old man stands enveloped in the swirling mist, shaking his gray head. Gradually his sight returns. He peers around, searching for the shapes. He cocks his head, listening for another cry. There is no sound, but the shapes emerge...

A shape picking cattails. And then another, coming through the mist, arm outstretched. Then pushing. Then holding the other shape down. Doing the thing the old man has always suspected but refused to accept.

The mist began to settle. I turned, looked back up the slope. Frances was there, coming at me. Her mouth was set: I hadn’t returned with the cattails.

Don’t come down here, Frances, I thought. It’s dangerous down here now that I’ve seen those shapes and the mist has cleared. Don’t come down.

Frances came on toward me. She was going to bawl me out for not bringing the cattails. I waited.

One of these days, I thought, it might happen. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but someday it might. Someday I might drown you, Frances, just as — maybe — you drowned our poor, unloved son Richie that day so long ago...