Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017

Manglevine by Dominic Russ-Combs

Dominic Russ-Combs is a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University and a recipient of an emerging artist award from the Kentucky Arts Council. About to complete a Ph.D. in English at Texas Tech, he has already had fiction published in many periodicals, including the Chicago Tribune, The Kenyon Review, and The Carolina Quarterly.

A severe thunderstorm had knocked out the power earlier that afternoon, and the August humidity overran the house, fogging the windows in the kitchen where Luke and his mother were canning the vegetables the storm had jostled loose from their garden. Luke had pulled the last tray of poblanos from the gas oven when he saw a bedraggled figure in a white T-shirt emerge from the ravine. Luke wiped the window and watched as the spindly form lumbered to the fence line.

“It’s a man,” Luke said. The charred peppers crackled and hissed on the counter.

The ravine dropped sharply about a hundred yards from the house, and the dip was just deep enough for the green bulbs of the treetops to align flush with the yard grass, giving the illusion of a long stretch of flat land. This vista added something deliberate and unavoidable to the man’s pace. When the stranger looked up from his feet to the house, Luke startled. The pan beneath the peppers popped, contracting in the cooler air.

Luke followed his mother into the yard, anxious to be meeting this strange man on their own. The radio said the outage in Menifee County would last at least a week, and his father had left shortly after the storm to buy a generator. Back when his father was still with the county police, people used to come knocking, and his father would go with them, no matter their appearance or the hour. A few of these unannounced visits were among Luke’s earliest memories.

“Momma?” Luke said.

“I know,” she said without breaking her stride. “But that storm likely wrecked a lot more than people’s gardens. He may be in trouble.”

Emaciated and lanky, the long-haired stranger gripped the highest rail of the fence. Judging by the portion of his torso over the posts, Luke could tell he was tall — six and a half feet at least. Luke’s mutt hound, Fang, barreled out from behind the shed, barking madly. The second the dog came within striking distance, the man said a single word, and Fang heeled.

“Sheriff Johnston about?” the man asked. Fang slunk forward in the grass, a paw’s length, maybe two.

“Lemuel hasn’t been with the department for years,” Luke’s mother said. “He runs the sawmill now.” Luke’s mother stepped closer to the man. “Who are you?”

The man turned and studied the valley’s treetops that stretched like stepping stones from plateau to plateau. He smelled of rotted wood and moss.

“You don’t remember me, Ellen?”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar,” she said.

“Bart. Manglevine.” He spoke the parts of his name as if he’d retrieved them from an attic closet. “I live at the old Carson place.”

“Bart Manglevine. You look near fell off to skin and bones.” Luke’s mother twisted her head. “What brings you here? It’s so far. Are your people hurt?”

“I’d rather speak it to your husband.”

“All right,” she said, “but if it’s police business, phone them. Ours still works.”

Manglevine rested his sleepy brown eyes on Luke. “He yourn?”

“Luke,” she said.

“He’s shaped like his daddy.”

“What’s the matter, Mr. Manglevine?” Luke said, but Manglevine ignored him.

“Would you mind me on your porch, Ellen, until Lemy returns?”

“Of course you can wait.” She opened the latch to the gate. “Luke,” she said, “fetch Mr. Manglevine a towel.”

Luke headed back to the house. Emptied of rain, the remnants of the storm blackened eastward where flashes of lightning still wired the eaves of the world.

Luke’s mother shifted the phone from one ear to the other and glanced out the window. “I don’t know, Lemy,” she said, “he looks shook up. I can’t tell if being out in the storm spooked him or what.”

Luke could hear the pace and tone of his father’s response through the receiver but not his actual words. His mother pointed him with a cup of tea to the front.

“He won’t tell me what for.” She shook her head. “He’s just sitting there.”

Luke took the tea to Manglevine, who was mummied in a red beach towel. He sat looking out onto the green cap of the ravine, his boots drying beside him on the step. Luke stooped to offer Manglevine the tea and saucer, but he didn’t lift his eyes. Watching them both, Fang whimpered and let out a truncated whine. Manglevine reached in his pants and wielded out a pack of cigarets and lighter, both dry despite the rain. When Manglevine lit the cigaret, Luke saw little scratches on his fingers — red breaks in the pruned white flesh. Luke began to head inside, but Manglevine’s voice caught him at the threshold.

“I bet you see more out there than treetops.”

“What?” Luke said and spun to the porch. The screen door bounced against his back.

“I see you at the window. Searching.”

“I wasn’t spying,” Luke said.

“That ain’t what I meant, and you know it,” Manglevine said and then made a sweeping gesture with his long arm as if pinning the left corner of the horizon to the right. Luke backed deeper into the house, turning only when his feet found the carpet of the den.

“Tell your momma not to bother fixing me anything,” Manglevine said through the empty doorway.

Luke returned the tea to the kitchen, where his mother was peeling the skin off the roasted peppers. “He has cuts on his hands,” Luke said. “Little open sores.” The house had darkened with the coming night. “Who is he again?”

“Bart played basketball with your daddy back in high school,” his mother said, wiping her nose. “But then he and some others started this thing across the county. A commune. They make all their own food, have their own church.”

“How many of them live there?” Luke leaned across the table to study Manglevine’s back through the screen. Fang rolled over to offer the stranger his belly. Manglevine puffed at his cigaret, the wind carrying the ends of his hair gently eastward with the smoke.

“I don’t know. Three men, four women. Seven, last I heard.”

“You mean they live in one house together?”

“Don’t ask me,” his mother said. “They say it’s some kind of family.”

“He said he didn’t want any food or tea.” Luke started making his way back to the porch.

“Leave him be, then,” she said.

Luke stopped. “What’s a matter with him?”

“That’s for your daddy to sort out.”

It was dark when Luke watched his father pull in, a generator strapped to the bed of the truck. Manglevine stood and draped the red towel over the back of the porch swing. Luke sped out the kitchen door to greet his father. Fang, soon on his heels, finally broke away from the stony stranger.

Luke’s father let down the tailgate and undid the moving straps. Manglevine put on his boots. Luke and his father lifted the generator from the truck.

“Lemuel,” Manglevine said.

“Bart.” Luke’s father shook Manglevine’s hand. “What brings you by?”

Manglevine nodded in return but then flicked his forehead Luke’s way. His father clipped Luke’s shoulder. “Take it around back,” he said, and Luke lifted the generator by the hitch. The gravel popped against the tires. Manglevine whispered something to his father that Luke couldn’t make out. Luke listened as his father told him not to forget the diesel in the shed.

Luke lifted the hitch and yanked it forward. Halfway through the yard, he repositioned his hands on the hitch and glanced over at the two men. Manglevine was maybe a foot taller, but Luke’s father was twice as stout. Manglevine extended one of his lanky arms to pat his father on the shoulder.

Luke came in through the kitchen to catch his mother peeking around the dining-room sash. “What are they talking about?”

“How should I know?”

Luke stood behind his mother, looking over her shoulder. A slanted image of the kitchen reflected in the windowpane, and his eyes adjusted to catch his father heading back to the house. Manglevine remained by the passenger door of the truck. He opened the door slowly until the dome light came on, then he closed it.

His father kicked the water off his boots and entered the side door to the kitchen. “Living out there must’ve put the zap on his brain,” he said. “He starts talking one way then crisscrosses to something else. I can’t get a bead on him.”

“What’s he want?” Luke’s mother asked. Luke’s father went to the sink to splash the sweat from his face. He wiped the headband of his hat with his handkerchief and put it back on.

“He says he wants a witness.”

“What for?”

“Won’t say.”

“Where?”

“Back at the old Carson place. Apparently there’s been some sort of rift.”

Their whispers flitted in the darkened kitchen like feathered things. Luke dug his hands in his pockets and did what he could to be quiet and listen. Every few seconds, the dome light of the truck would blink on from the gravel drive. Fang sat in the grass, corkscrewing his head at the light.

“What’d Jim say when you called?” his mother said.

“Like I figured. They’re up to their necks with fallout from the storm, and it would be a favor if I used my emergency deputy status and check this one out.” His father sprayed his hands again. “This ain’t nothing I can’t handle.”

“Alone?”

“I was planning to take Luke with me.”

His mother shook her head.

“I want to come,” Luke said, leaning forward so quickly he knocked over the salt.

“Bart said the bridge is flooded, and that we’re going to need an extra pair of hands to spot us on the line as we cross. Otherwise we’re going to have to circle the ridge on foot.”

“A witness?” his mother said.

“I’m bringing my pistol and cuffs. If you want I’ll connect the generator before I go.”

She shooed him and brought her hands to her hips. “I think I can handle a generator. It’s Luke.”

“Momma,” Luke said, rising, “I’m fifteen. That dotty fella can barely stand. He won’t mess with the both of us.”

“We’ll be fine,” his father said and went for his slicker. “Bart always proved meek enough. I don’t even think I ever heard him raise his voice.”

“But it’s been ten years.”

“A person can’t change that much.”

She turned her palms face up and shook her head again. “There’s a reason you quit the law. I don’t see why you’ve got to start back up now.” As she spoke, the dome light flashed again, casting Manglevine’s marionette shadow over the dog and wet yard. She pointed. “He’s plainly not in his right mind.”

“I know,” his father said. “That’s why I’ve got to go.”

Luke’s father demanded Manglevine eat a bologna sandwich and drink some milk before they went. He downed his meal on the tailgate and they were off. The seats in the back were cramped, and Luke and his father were surprised when Manglevine insisted he sit there. At first, Manglevine’s knees dug into Luke’s back through the cushion, but then Manglevine removed his boots and swung his legs across the bucket seat. “I knew I shouldn’t have eaten,” he said as he slouched against the window. “I’m so tired.”

“Go ahead and rest up,” Luke’s father said. “You won’t miss a thing.”

Manglevine nodded off before they’d reached the highway. Twenty minutes later they were at the bridge that led to the commune, but the deluge had washed over the low pass, submerging it entirely. Luke’s father called Manglevine’s name again. He didn’t open his eyes. “He’s out cold,” he said. “Stay here. I’m going to check the water level.” Luke’s father pulled a bundled cord from the cubby in the truck bed, followed the path of the headlights to the water, and tossed in a weighted line. As his father plumbed the current, Luke studied the sleeping Manglevine in the backseat, the dome light still on from when they tried to rouse him. His beard wasn’t as thick as it had appeared. There were furrows on both cheeks where whiskers refused to grow, like he’d been scarred long ago by a garden fork.

Luke shuddered as his father popped the latch on the door. “Two feet over the bridgeway at least,” he said, spooling up the cord around his elbow. “We can’t risk a stall, but I can cross easy enough on foot.”

“He’s still asleep,” Luke said.

“Listen. I don’t want to leave him alone as he is, so you’re going to stay here as I hike up to the main house. About a mile through those trees.” His father went back to the storage cubby. “Come up if he wakes. Otherwise I’ll be back soon enough.”

His father studied him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. If you sense trouble, just beep the horn twice and long.” Luke squared his shoulders and nodded. His father clipped him on the forearm. “I’m trusting you as a man, now. Prove you can handle it.”

“Yes, sir,” Luke said. He watched his father cross the water, forging the current in his rubber overalls. When he disappeared completely, Luke switched off the lights and opened the windows.

The forest throbbed with insect noises. Luke listened for approaching footfalls or shouts, but only discerned the occasional nightingale medley or barred owl monkey-screech. The moon capped the near ridge to spotlight a winged frenzy above: bats, hundreds of them, feasted on a glittering swarm of bugs.

“Breach born, all of them,” Manglevine said, his voice as if into a cave.

Luke startled. “What?” Turning to Manglevine, Luke became aware of Manglevine’s ancient wooden smell. “How long have you been awake?”

He pointed to the moonlit ravaging. “Bats. They’re born tailfirst or they’ll die.”

“Okay.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t understand.” Luke cracked open the passenger door so that the dome light came on.

“You need to believe me.”

“Why?”

“At first I thought your daddy would see my side, but he’s ate too long on the lie. Just five minutes with him proved that. But you coming along was a sign. The second I saw you looking out your window, I knew we’d be having this conversation.”

“What?”

“You’re young, unmuddied. I can work with you.” Manglevine took out a cigaret and lit it. Smoke filled the cab, drifting in leathery billows under the light.

“Daddy doesn’t let people smoke in his truck.”

Manglevine smiled. “Okay,” he said and, after one last drag, flicked the cigarette out the window.

“We should go up now.”

“In a minute,” Manglevine said as he searched for his boots on the floorboard. “Ask me a question.”

“We should go meet my father.”

“Ask me a question, and we will. I’ll speak the truth.”

Luke glanced at the horn. “Are you married to all those women?”

“Is that what you want to ask?”

“I guess,” Luke said, but Manglevine studied him for so long it felt like Manglevine might have fallen asleep with his eyes open.

The insect throb escalated outside, drawing Manglevine and the confines of the cab closer. They were the only two people on earth, hemmed in by the leafy din. Luke fought a sudden impulse to run his fingers over the scarlike furrows in Manglevine’s beard. Instead, he reached into the right hip pocket of his slicker and clenched his keychain so that the keys spiked between his fingers. He held them that way for another second or two.

“Marriage means ownership,” Manglevine said. “We own nothing. For many years, we never felt apart.”

“Apart from what?”

“Each other. But I was the first to see. Hank and Mary began to privilege each other. Then it was Chuck and Delilah and Jeanette. I stopped with Lucinda. Only I had the will to sleep alone.”

Luke opened the door a crack further, letting his boot dangle against the step rail. A fine, rainlike mist fell, forming tiny runnels on the windshield. The insect noise subsided as fat drops began to trickle down leaf by leaf, the treetops plopping all over like a crazy clock.

“They were poisoning themselves. I had to convince Chuck of that. With him on my side, we could’ve turned the rest. No TV. No books. My mind is clean.”

“You’re nuts,” Luke said. He reached to beep the horn, but Manglevine’s words caught him midway.

“But I ain’t a killer like your daddy.”

Luke’s slicker rubbed against the seat as he twisted around. “My daddy never killed anyone.”

“Sure he did. He shot James Polity in the face. I saw it.”

“Then he must’ve deserved it.”

Manglevine took a breath that didn’t seem to make it down his throat. “James wanted to kill Alamo Bond,” he said. “Alamo got drunk and ran over James’s brother. Your daddy tracked Alamo down from the scene of the accident to a speakeasy I worked at outside Frenchburg. But then James got word and showed up swearing he’d shoot Alamo right there in the lot. Things got rough pretty quick, and your daddy opened James’s face with a shotgun. The bones of his skull whiter than his teeth. James never fired a shot.”

As he spoke, Manglevine peered out the window. When he finished he turned to fix his eyes on Luke. “Do you believe me now?”

Luke had heard very little about his father’s time heading the department, and in an instant, all the shootouts and countywide pursuits he had conjured as a boy were totally eclipsed by the faceless pulp of a man named James Polity. It was as if the empty house that stood inside his father had suddenly been painted and filled with furniture. He killed a man. The news fit. Luke tried to listen to the treetop noises to center his mind on something else, anything. The trickle-down clock in the treetops dissipated as the rain stopped.

“If my daddy’s so awful, why did you come to him?”

“Because I thought he’d know the difference. I’ve got nothing to cover up. I’m no murderer.”

“Is somebody dead?”

“My mind is clear.”

The insect din picked up again outside. Luke shook his head. “What?”

“I know you hear what’s out there, I see you listening. Like on the porch earlier, remember?” Manglevine reached out his lanky arm and repeated that same sweeping gesture that seemed to connect one end of the earth to the other. “That’s the sound of millions and millions of years of life without names or laws. I’m that clear in my mind.” Manglevine brought his hands together, palm to palm, and pointed. “Do you think your daddy sleeps easier at night thinking the law was on his side?”

Then the ridge came alive with the bouncing bulbs of a half-dozen flashlights. Luke poked the horn twice and blinked the headlights. Manglevine watched the bobbing lights swarm down. Luke snatched the keys from the ignition and ran out to the gravel bar, calling out to his father across the water. Without breaking stride, his father marched across the current and drew his revolver. He checked his son for signs of harm, remaining mindful to keep his gun aimed at the cabin of the truck. Luke spotted the other members of the commune across the rushing water. A starved and ragged troupe, they scurried along the opposite bank.

Manglevine hobbled out of the back and went down to his knees. He placed his hands on the back of his head and waited to be handcuffed. His prisoner secured, Luke’s father went to hit Manglevine with the butt of his revolver, but Luke called out. Stunned, his father glanced back at Luke before returning his attention to his prisoner.

“You son of a bitch,” his father said. “You should’ve told me what I was walking into. A man dead and hanging in your closet. A man dead.”

“He did it to spite me,” Manglevine said.

Luke’s father holstered his .38 and spat. “Bullshit,” he said. Creek water dripped down his rubber overalls as the bats still feasted above. “These people think you talked Chuck McCracken into killing himself. They say his diary proves it.”

“Proves it how?” Manglevine glanced at Luke. “It’s not like I put a shotgun in his face and fired.”

The words popped his father like a balloon. All the sturdiness Luke had ever felt in him gave way. When Luke’s father turned to him — remembering he was there, watching — he swelled back up again. “Keep quiet now,” he said. “You know nothing about that.”

“I know I don’t have to hide anything,” Manglevine said. “My mind is clean.”

“Jesus, Bart, what happened to you? They’ll charge you with manslaughter. Maybe worse.”

“I needed a witness.”

When his father shook his head, Luke understood that he had gotten it wrong. Luke was the witness Manglevine intended, not him. Luke was the one who now saw.

During the drive home Luke waited for a reprimand that didn’t come.

“Are you certain he didn’t lay hands on you? There’s no shame if he did,” his father said. “It’s important you trust me.”

Luke’s eyes climbed the kudzu-smothered ridge that ran alongside the highway. Silvered by moonlight, the vines’ tresses draped down from the peak like hair from the back of an old woman’s head.

“He told me something.”

Luke’s father turned from the wheel. “About McCracken?” His teeth gleamed yellow by the light of the dash.

“No,” Luke said. “But it seemed true.”

“What did he say?”

Luke breathed through his mouth. The headlights lit up a road-hazard sign that had been bludgeoned with birdshot.

“Why did you quit as sheriff?”

Luke’s father flipped on the blinker to turn down their road. “Was tonight not enough to prove the headache it can be?” A few drops plopped down on the cab of the truck. A breeze combed through the overhead branches. Luke imagined putting his palms to the roof of the truck to feel the sprinkles vibrate against the metal.

“Listen,” his father said. “Bart always had a sincere way of putting things. He’s been cut off from the world for so long there’s no telling what he’s convinced himself of. The important thing is that you handled yourself well.”

He gave his father the nod he expected. As they pulled into their driveway, the porch lights were on. “Looks like your momma got the generator running.”

Luke turned his fork over in his plate. The last of the ice cream pooled with the remaining crumbs from his slice of peach pie. His mother took both their plates to the sink and sprayed them with the nozzle. His father had gone out to secure the shed and refill the generator to last them through the night.

“Have you ever heard of a man named James Polity?” Luke spoke to the back of his mother’s head.

She stopped at the sink, letting the water run for a few more seconds. “What makes you ask?” She turned to her son.

Luke folded his napkin, corner to corner. “I heard something once. At school.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said, drying her slender fingertips on the end of her shirt. “Such an awful mess.”

“So it’s true,” Luke said, “he killed him?”

She faced her son and sighed. “Luke, you need to understand something. There are truths you tell and truths you don’t.” She stepped forward and reached across the table to thumb her son’s chin. “James Polity is one you don’t. Do you understand?”

Luke nodded as if he did.

That night, Luke sat up in his bed. Outside the diesel generator buzzed. He flicked on his bedside lamp to give his mind sturdy shapes to settle on. The soft light shone on the half-open closet door, and he studied his belt hanging on the knob, how the buckle dangled just above the sliver of dark around the frame. Once you take the names away from things, the more jagged and alive they become. A bedroom is just another room among the rooms of other houses. Father just another word for a man who once wore a badge and a gun.

“Manglevine,” Luke whispered, and he rolled toward the window.

Fang barked from the back porch, fending off phantom threats in the dark — a raccoon sifting stray bits of trash, the stink of a creeping possum. Luke closed his eyes to the black pane and imagined the long ravine with its treetops that connected one crest to the other, their rainslick stepping stones so hazardous and thrilling to cross.

© 2017 Dominic Russ-Combs