An Ice cold Grave

Ten

SEVERAL times during the trip into town, I was almost sorry I'd turned on my cell phone and gotten Manfred's message. That was the most frightening driving experience I've ever had. Tolliver managed it, but he said every bad word in his vocabulary, even a few I didn't quite understand. We met one other car on our journey, and it was filled with teenage boys, who all have a built-in death wish. As soon as I thought that, I remembered the boys in the frozen ground, and I was sorry.

There were mighty few visitors' cars parked in the hospital parking lot. Snow had covered the sodden yard around the little building, so it looked almost pretty. When we went in, the reception lady was not at her desk, so we wandered back until we found a nurses' station. We inquired there about Xylda Bernardo.

"Oh, the psychic lady," the nurse said, looking a bit impressed. "She's in ICU. Her grandson is in the ICU waiting area, if you want to see him." She gave us directions, and we found Manfred sitting with his head in his hands. He was in one of those waiting areas that's just a little nook lined with chairs and littered with coffee cups and old magazines. It looked as though the hospital cleaning staff hadn't made it in this morning. That wasn't good.

"Manfred," I said. "Tell us what's happening with Xylda?"

He raised his head and we could see his eyes were red. His face was tear-stained.

"I don't understand," he said. "She was better. She kind of collapsed last night, but this morning she was better. The doctor had been in to see her. The minister came and prayed with us. They were going to move her to a regular room. Then she just—I left just for a minute, just to get some coffee and use the phone—and when I came back she was in a coma."

"I'm so sorry," I said. There's really nothing you can say that'll make the situation any better, is there?

"What does the doctor say?" Tolliver asked. I sat beside Manfred and put my hand on his shoulder. Tolliver sat at right angles to us and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. I looked at his face, so serious, so focused, and I felt a wave of love that almost knocked me over. I had to concentrate to get my mind back on Manfred and Xylda's misfortune.

"It's the same doctor that saw you, Harper," Manfred said. "The guy with white hair. He seems okay. He says he doesn't think she's going to wake up. He doesn't know why she took such a turn, but he says he's not surprised. It's all…it doesn't seem definite enough. No one's telling me exactly what's happening with her. I thought medicine was sharper than that now."

"Have you called your other relatives?"

"My mother is on her way. But in the traffic conditions between Tennessee and here, there's no way she'll get here before Grandmother passes away."

This was awful. "Your mom's relying on you to make the decisions?"

"Yeah. She says she knows I'll do the right thing."

What a great thing for a mother to say, but what a huge responsibility.

"I was hoping," Manfred said after a long moment, "if you could go in to see her, you'd be able to give me some advice." He was looking at me when he said this, and he said it very seriously. I understood what he meant, after a moment. He wanted to know if her soul was still there.

Okay. I was cringing inside, but I nodded.

He showed me the door to the ICU unit, which of course was quite small at such a little hospital. I thought Xylda would benefit from going to somewhere larger with more machines—isn't that what it boils down to?—but there was no way to get her there. Nature had overthrown technology once again. That seemed amazing to me, as I looked at all the machines Xylda Bernardo was connected to. They silently recorded everything that was going on inside her; and yet, when Manfred wanted to know something as basic as whether or not his grandmother's soul was still attached to her body, he had to ask me to do it.

I held Xylda's limp hand for a moment, but it wasn't necessary for the task that had been set me. Xylda's soul was still there. I was almost sorry. It would have simplified the decisions ahead for her family if her soul had already departed.

Barney Simpson stuck his head in the door and looked at me quizzically.

"I thought we'd kicked you out," he said, keeping his voice low out of respect for the quiet figure on the bed.

"You make visits to the patients in the ICU?"

"No, to the families of those patients. I saw someone in here, so I came to check."

"I'm just standing in for her grandson for a minute," I said.

"You're a good friend. This is the other lady, right?"

"Xylda Bernardo. The psychic. Yes."

"She told the law enforcement people about Chuck Almand."

After a second, I nodded. That was more or less true.

"Yes."

"What an extraordinary talent," Simpson said. He ran a hand over his bushy dark hair, trying to tame it, but he didn't have any luck.

"She's definitely out of a different mold," I said. I took a step toward the door. I wanted to report back to Manfred. Simpson stood back to let me pass. A nurse went by us as she entered Xylda's room. "You again," she said to Simpson. "Can't get rid of you today."

"Nope. My car's iced in," he said, smiling.

"Oh, so your stay isn't voluntary," she said.

"I'd love to go home."

So would I.

By the time I reached Manfred, Barney Simpson had continued on with his round of visiting.

"She's still intact," I said. Manfred closed his eyes, whether in dismay or gratitude I couldn't imagine.

"Then I'll wait in there with her," he said. "Until she goes."

"What can we do for you?" Tolliver asked.

Manfred looked at him with an expression that almost broke my heart. "Nothing," he said. "You've claimed her, I can see. But having you two as friends is good, and I'm really grateful you made the effort to get into town to see us. Where are you staying?"

We told him about the lake cottage. He smiled at the story of the Hamiltons. "When you two leaving?" he asked. "I guess the cops have cut you loose?"

"I guess we'll leave tomorrow," I said. "But we'll come by the hospital to check on you before we go. Sure there's nothing I can get you?"

"Since the hospital still has electricity," Manfred said, "the shoe may be on the other foot. You can get hot food here. The cafeteria is open."

The phrase "hospital cafeteria" didn't sound very appetizing, but "hot food" did. We coaxed Manfred into going with us, and we ate hot biscuits with gravy poured over them, and some hamburger steak, and some green beans. I had to swear to myself I'd do double running the next week.

At the last minute, I almost turned back to stay with Manfred. He seemed so alone. But he said, "There's no point in you staying here, Harper, as much as I appreciate the offer. There's just sitting and waiting here, and I can do that on my own. My mother should be here tomorrow morning, if the roads clear. I'll step out of Grandmother's room from time to time to check my voice mail."

I gave Manfred a hug, and Tolliver shook his hand. "We'll come if you need us, man," he said, and Manfred nodded.

"I don't think she'll last the night," he said. "She's tired out. But at least she had a last moment in the sun yesterday. She told me she thought the boy definitely killed the animals, but that something else was going on there, too."

"Like what?" I'd been moving away, but now I turned back to face Manfred. This was bad news.

He shrugged. "She never told me. She said the whole property was surrounded by a swamp of evil."

"Hmmm." Well, "swamp of evil" sounded pretty bad. What could Xylda have meant? See, this is what makes me nuts about psychics.

"She used a different word."

"Than what?"

"Than swamp. She called it a…miasma? Is that a word?"

Manfred wasn't stupid, but he wasn't much of a reader, either. "Yeah, it is. It means, like, a thick unpleasant atmosphere, right, Tolliver?"

Tolliver nodded.

Had I missed something, like a body? Had I made a mistake? The idea was so strong, so shocking, that I hardly noticed the bitter cold as we made our way to our car. "Tolliver, we've got to go back to that property."

He looked at me as if I were nuts. "In this weather, you want to go poke around private property?" he asked, getting all his objections in one sentence.

"I know the weather is wrong for this. But Xylda…"

"Half the time Xylda was an old fraud, and you know it."

"She wouldn't be about this." A thought occurred to me. "Do you remember when we were in Memphis, she said, ‘In the time of ice you'll be so happy?'"

"Yeah," he said. "I do remember that. And it is the time of ice and up until you wanted to go trespassing, I was happy." He didn't look happy. He looked worried. "As a matter of fact, I wanted to go back to the cabin and stoke up the fire and get happy again."

I smiled. I couldn't help it. "Why don't we just ask?" I said.

"Just ask this guy if we can look over his property again? Just ask him if he snuck some bodies in there while we weren't looking? Because there's a miasma of evil around it?"

"Okay, I get your point. I just think we have to do something."

Tolliver had started the car the minute we got in and the heater was finally working. I bent over a little to let the hot air blow directly on my face.

"We'll go by, have a look," he said, very reluctantly.

"Then we'll follow your plan about the cabin."

"Okay, that part sounds good."

We traced our route of yesterday and alternately slid and bumped our way through the nearly deserted streets to the back of Tom Almand's property. The area where all the police and media vehicles had parked was a churned-up mess, the black mud hardened into a sea filled with black crests. Tolliver parked where it would be very hard to see our car from the house. I got out of the car and moved carefully to the barn. What had I missed there?

Inside the barn, the air was cold and still and stale, and there were several holes in the dirt floor. This was where the sacrificed animals had been exhumed. I thought about the boy, Chuck, but then I banished the picture of his sad eyes from my mind, and I concentrated on opening myself to the vibration that came uniquely from the dead—the human dead.

When I opened my eyes, Chuck Almand was standing in front of me.

"Oh, God, you scared me, boy!" I said, raising a gloved hand to my throat.

He was wearing heavy boots and a heavy coat, a hat and gloves and a scarf, so he was appropriately dressed for the weather, at least.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Did you think you'd missed something?"

"Yes," I said. I had no reasonable story to tell. "Yes, I wondered if I'd missed something."

"You thought there might be dead people here?"

"I was checking."

"There aren't any. They're all dug up, out at Davey's old farm."

"You don't know of any others?"

His eyes flickered then, and I heard someone else outside. Thank God.

The door of the barn opened, and my brother came in. "Hey, Chuck," he said casually. "Honey, you finished?"

"Yeah, I think so," I said. "Negative results, like we expected."

Chuck Almand's light, bright eyes were fixed on me. "Don't be scared of me," he said.

"I don't believe I am," I said, trying to smile. And it was true I wasn't exactly frightened of the boy. But I did feel very uncomfortable around him, and I was concerned about him in an impersonal kind of way.

Then I heard another voice calling from outside, "Chuck! Hey, buddy, you in there? Who's here?" To my bewilderment, Chuck's face changed in the blink of an eye, and the boy punched me in the stomach as hard as he could. His lips moved as he hit; I saw them on my way down to the floor.

"Get out of here!" he screamed as I stared up at him from my kneeling position on the cold dirt. "Get out! You're trespassing!"

Tom Almand dashed in, the door to the old barn creaking and groaning as it kept moving after he'd shoved it. "Son, son! Oh, my God, Chuck, what did you do?"

Tolliver was at my side, helping me up. "You little son of a bitch," he said to the boy before me. "Don't touch her again. She wasn't doing anything to you."

I didn't say anything, I only stared up into his eyes, my good arm across my middle. He might hit me again. I wanted to be ready this time.

But the only thing that happened was a lot of talk. Tom Almand apologized over and over. Tolliver made it clear he wasn't going to let anyone else pound on me. He also made it clear that he didn't want the boy anywhere around me again. Tom thought we shouldn't have been trespassing. Tolliver said the police had been glad to welcome us here to this same spot the day before. Tom informed us that it wasn't the day before and that we needed to get the hell off his property. Tolliver said we'd be glad to, and he was lucky we weren't calling the police to report his son's assault on my person.

I sagged against Tolliver as he helped me out to the car. He was in a complete state. He was trying so hard not to say "I told you so" that he was practically bursting at the seams. But God bless him, he managed not to say it.

"Tolliver," I said, when we were safely in the car and on our way back to the cabin.

He stopped in mid rant. "Yes?"

"Right after he hit me, before he started yelling at me, the boy said, ‘I'm sorry. Come find me later,'" I said.

"I didn't hear him say that."

"He said it real low, so you wouldn't hear. So his dad wouldn't hear."

"He said you should come find him?"

"He said he was sorry. Then he told me to come find him later."

"So is he schizophrenic? Or is he trying to persuade his dad that he is?"

"I think he's trying to persuade his dad of something, I'm not sure what."

The rest of the drive back to the cabin, we were silent. I don't know what was in Tolliver's head, but mine was busy trying to understand what had just happened.

When we parked at the top of the slope again, we noticed that the Hamiltons' place was silent and still except for the smoke rising from the chimney. Maybe they were taking a nap. That sounded like a good idea.

"I'm not pleased with myself, thinking like a seventy-year-old," I grumped as we made our way down the drive to the steps up to the door.

"Oh, I bet we'll think of something to do that the Hamiltons aren't doing," Tolliver said, in such an intimate voice I felt all of my blood rushing to a critical point.

"I don't know; the Hamiltons are pretty hale and hearty for people in their seventies."

"I think we can give them a run for their money," Tolliver said.

We started right away, and with pauses to throw some more wood on the fire and lock the door, we managed to make a good effort. I don't know how the Hamiltons' afternoon went, but ours went just fine. And we did eventually get the nap.

That night we made more hot chocolate and ate more peanut butter. We also had some apples. I like to think we would have talked to each other just as much if the electricity had been working, but maybe we wouldn't have. There's an intimacy to being alone together in the near darkness, and every time we made love I felt surer of him, and our new relationship became more solid. Neither of us would have taken the step off the edge of the cliff if we hadn't been after more than yet another one-night stand.

"That last waitress in Sarne," I said. I gave him a narrow-eyed stare. "That was the one I really minded, and for a couple of weeks I couldn't figure out why."

"Well, two things. I was hoping you'd come in on us, clobber the woman, and throw her out and tell me I was your one and only; and barring that, I was horny," Tolliver said. "Plus, she offered. Okay, that's three things."

"I was tempted," I admitted. "But I never felt I could risk it. I kept thinking, What if I ask him not to, and he asks me why not? What can I say back to him? No, don't do it, I love you? And you would say, Ohmigod, I can't travel with you anymore."

"I was thinking you'd say the same thing," he said. "You'd say that you couldn't be with someone who wanted to go to bed with you all the time, you had to have a clear head to do your job, and you didn't want to fog it up with dealing with lust. After all, you picked fewer bed partners than me."

"I'm a woman," I said. "I'm not gonna go around sleeping with whoever wants to sleep with me. I need a little bit more than that to go on."

"Not all women are like that," he said.

"Yeah, well, lots of them are."

"Do you hold it against me? Those random women?"

"Not as long as you're disease free. And I know you are." He got tested as regularly as he could, and he always used a condom.

"So," he said, "we're together now."

He was asking a question. "Yes," I said. "We're together."

"You're not gonna go with anyone else."

"I'm not. You?"

"I'm not. You're it."

"Okay. Good."

And just like that, we were a couple.

It seemed strange to get ready for bed and then climb into Tolliver's.

"We don't always have to sleep in the same bed," he said. "Some beds are going to be narrow and even lumpier than this one. But I want to sleep with you. Really sleep."

I wanted to really sleep with him, too, and it was easier than I thought. In fact, hearing his breathing beside me seemed to help me doze off faster than I normally did. I hadn't slept in the same bed with anyone for a long time; and maybe not for a whole night since I'd shared a bed with my sister Cameron. When I'd stayed with a guy, I often hadn't made it through till morning.

I did wake up a few times during the night, record my new situation, and fall right back to sleep. On one of these moments of wakefulness, I saw that my phone was vibrating against the floor by the bed. I reached down and scooped it up.

"Hello?" I said quietly, not wanting to wake Tolliver.

"Harper?"

"Yes."

"She died, Harper."

"Manfred, I'm so sorry."

"Harper, maybe someone killed her. I wasn't in the room."

"Manfred! Don't say that out loud. Don't say that where anyone can hear you. Where are you?"

"I'm standing outside the hospital."

"Why do you think that?"

"I think that because she was getting better. The nurse even said she thought Grandmother was going to speak. Then she died."

"Manfred, you need us to come in?"

"Not until morning. It's too bad out there. There's nothing you can do. You stay in bed. I'll see you in the morning. My mother should be here then, too."

"Manfred, you need to go back to the motel and lock the door. Don't eat or drink anything at the hospital, all right?" I tried to think of more advice to give him. "And don't be alone with anyone, okay?"

"I hear you, babe." He sounded barely conscious. "I'm getting in the car now, and I'm going to drive to the motel."

"Hey, call me when you get there."

He called again within ten minutes to tell me he was safely locked in his room. Furthermore, he'd seen some reporters who were up drinking, and he'd told them someone had been following him. So they were as alert as drinking people could be, and they all professed to be disgusted that someone was following him around on such a sad night. Somehow they all knew already that Xylda had passed. Maybe they were paying one of the hospital staff to be a news clearinghouse.

None of this woke Tolliver, which surprised me until I recalled he'd been outside helping Ted Hamilton earlier. Plus, we'd had our own share of vigorous indoor exercise.

It was after three in the morning when I talked to Manfred the last time. I lay awake praying for him for a few minutes. Since I knew he was safe, and Xylda was beyond my help, I slept again.