Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Twenty

The next day is Thursday. I put on a mask — not because of the virus but so I can endure the stench of the chicken house and chop a hole in the ground with a mattock and bury the feathers and entrails and frozen bodies and smashed eggs of my poultry, then scrub the wood floors and walls with Clorox and Ajax. But no matter how long I scrub or mop, I can’t get rid of the smell. I light two lanterns and set them on the floor in hopes of cauterizing the air. Then I feel a presence standing behind me in the doorway, and I turn and see a figure backlit by the sun and wearing a Felix the Cat T-shirt and an Easter straw hat with plastic flowers on it.

“Hi, Fannie,” I say. “I was worried about you.”

What’s that smell?

“A little girl named Mary was here. She said she’s Ruby Spotted Horse’s niece. She said you taught her how to make shadows on the walls that look like animals.”

I don’t know her, Pops.

“I didn’t think so. Where did you go?”

To ask for an extension.

“What was the answer?”

Rules are rules. There’re billions of people out there.

“You were clean and sober. It’s not fair.”

Neither is death. I wasn’t ready. I was supposed to promote your new book. That’s why I was allowed to hang around. Now you’ve gotten yourself in a mess.

“Talk to someone.”

Stick with Short Stuff. She can do anything I could.

“I just offended her.”

What am I going to do with you, Pops?

She’s beginning to fade into the light as though molecularly dissolving into pollen.

“Don’t go away, Fannie Mae. Come back. I can’t take this.”

I don’t want to scare you, but there’re creatures following me. I don’t know who they are. I don’t think they’re supposed to be here. They’re frightening to look at. There’s a pause, then her voice changes when she says, Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy.

She only called me Daddy when she was afraid. She starts to cry. Her words crackle like static in an electric storm. She breaks apart in the wind like a thunderclap and is sucked away, the remnant of her voice fading into the chirping of a tiny bird abandoned in the nest.

I try to pretend I’ve created a fantasy. But I know better. I go into Lolo and order lunch at a sandwich shop but can’t swallow my food. “You feeling sickly, Mr. Broussard?” the waitress says. She’s shy and young and is embarrassed by her question.

“I look a little gray?” I ask.

“No, sir. I just wanted to say I’m real sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you. But I’m okay. Just pack it up for me, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” she says. “I think there’s a boy been looking through the window at you.”

I turn around but see no one outside the window.

“He’s gone now,” she says.

She packs up my sandwich, and I go outside and look up and down the highway. The submarine sandwich feels warm and heavy and greasy through the tightly wrapped sack cupped in my hand, and I throw it in the trash can. Then I see Jack Wetzel walking toward a biker bar at the intersection where Highway 12 commences westward over Lolo Pass into Idaho. I get in my pickup and drive to the bar and park and go through the door. I can hear pool balls clacking and a jukebox playing, and I smell my old enemy, alcohol of any kind, which hangs on the edge of my sleep or whenever the sun turns into a sliver of black carbon and slides off the edge of the earth.

Wetzel is not there. Two bikers in jean vests are playing nine-ball. The bartender looks at me. His body is truncated, his face bearded, his earlobes hung with gold rings, his forearms wrapped with hair and leather wristbands. “What will it be, my man?” he says.

“My man?”

“What are you having, sir?”

“Nothing. What happened to that kid who came in here?”

“There was no kid in here.”

“Don’t tell me that,” I say.

He balls a dry cloth in his hand and idly rubs a spot on the bar. The pool players have rested the butt ends of their pool cues on the floor. Their bodies are thin and motionless, bent like bananas, framed like carrion birds against the glow of the jukebox.

“You guys see that kid who came in here?” I say.

Neither of them responds.

“Time for you to travel, bub,” the bartender says.

“Give me a Collins with cherries and orange or lime slices in it. And cut the ‘bub’ shit.”

“I can see it’s gonna be one of those days,” he says. “A young guy came in here, used the restroom, and left. Maybe that was your guy, maybe not. Now get the fuck out of here.”

The darkest days and nights of my life have been connected with alcohol. Its effect on me involves the instant release of the gargoyles I’ve kept closed up in the subconscious since I was a little boy. The room is beginning to spin, then it warps out of shape as though it is made of reddish-black licorice. The two pool shooters look at me like pallbearers. I hear someone pick up a phone and punch in three numbers.

I stare into the bartender’s face.

“What’s with you, man?” he asks.

“You are. With me, I mean. In my thoughts.”

“What are you talking about?” he says.

“I was thinking about killing you.”

“You were what?”

“I’ll leave. I’m sorry for having bothered y’all.”

I walk out the door onto the wide gallery that fronts the building. I feel as though I’m walking with buckets on my feet, and I have to grasp the railing before I fall down. Jack Wetzel is standing on the shoulder of Highway 12, trying to thumb a ride with one of the truckers shifting down for the long grind up Lolo Pass.

“Hold up there, kid,” I yell.

A diesel truck boomed down with ponderosa has pulled to the side, the driver shoving open the passenger door for Wetzel to get in.

I start running as best as I can for a man my age. “Jack!” I yell. “It’s Aaron Broussard! I’m the only friend you’ve got, kid!”

He hesitates, then gets up into the cab and pulls the door shut behind him. The truck swings back on the road, blowing a black cloud of nitrogen oxide in my face.

I feel my gears starting to strip. I cannot deal with the image of my daughter being pursued by monsters on the other side of the veil. When I return home, I occupy myself in whatever fashion I can to keep those images out of my head. I finally connect with a graduate student at the university who says he will tutor John Culpepper’s son for fifteen dollars an hour. I tell him to ask for only seven and I’ll add eight to it, but he should say nothing to Mr. Culpepper about our agreement.

“They’re poor people?” he says. “Because if they are, I can go down on the price a little bit, Mr. Broussard.”

“Nope, leave the price right where it is.”

“You’re a kind man.”

“I just threatened to kill a man in a saloon in Lolo,” I reply.

“You’ve got a great sense of humor, too.”

I make it to five o’clock without buying a bottle of Scotch and drive to Ruby Spotted Horse’s house on the res. I have no idea whether she will be home or not. If it’s the latter, I’m going to stay there anyway and either sleep in my truck or break into her house and see what is in the back of her cellar.

It’s cold when I arrive, the magpies pecking the pumpkin rinds in the adjacent field, the few leaves on her maple trees lit by the sun’s last yellowish-red effort. Her cruiser is parked in the yard. Although the house was built much later, it reminds me of seventeenth-century Pilgrim homes, put together by shipwrights, the design angular and utilitarian, the once-silvery wood blackened from grass fires, the windows little more than gun loops, sacrificing light for the containment of heat, and perhaps because of the late-sun-orange smoke billowing from the two chimneys.

I knock hard on the front door with my fist. Ruby opens the door, a sandwich in one hand. “I told you about coming here without calling.”

“Would you have given me permission?”

“No.”

“I saw Fannie Mae. She said she’s being pursued by creatures she called frightening.”

“Have you been drinking? Because that’s what you look like.”

“I thought about it. But I didn’t. May I come in?”

She rubs the heel of her hand in her eye sockets. “I’m really tired. I’ve got an awful lot to deal with.”

“I understand.”

“Where do you plan on going right now?”

“Back home.”

She nods as though in agreement with me. But she is not in agreement with me. I think she is very angry. “What did your daughter say when she left you?”

“I don’t know. She broke into hundreds of gold particles. Then she and her voice were sucked away.”

Her sandwich is dripping on the rug. She seems to have nowhere to put it nor words that will take care of the problem I’ve brought her.

“You said you have a lot to deal with,” I say. “Can I help?”

“I don’t think we’re very good for each other, Aaron.”

“You have someone else to lean on? McNally, your ex, your colleagues? I don’t see them here.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Yeah what?”

“Yeah, maybe you can help,” she replies. “How does it feel to be so fucked up you can understand someone like me?”

She offers to fix a sandwich for me. “I don’t eat meat anymore,” I say.

She gets a box of doughnuts out of the icebox and sets it in front of me on the kitchen table, then sits across from me and resumes eating her sandwich, her eyes empty. Her tabby cat, Maxwell Gato, sits on the table alongside us.

“The only other person I’ve seen allow pets on the table was my daughter,” I say.

“Most pets have better hygiene than human beings,” she replies. “At least Maxwell Gato does.” She picks him up, kisses his head, and sets him back down.

“What kind of trouble are you having?”

“My ex is filing suit for half the house. He’s also telling people I’m crazy and I’m mixed up with an old man, namely you, and talking out of school.”

“I don’t get that last part.”

“Ray has told my superiors I’ve given you information about a major investigation into drug trafficking. I can lose my job.”

“You made a slip, but I didn’t repeat it, so your ex is lying.”

“When did I make a slip?”

“You asked me about my visit to Virginia Stokes. I figured somebody carrying a wire told you.”

“You figured wrong,” she says. “I patrol that area. I saw your truck parked by Stokes’s church. Forget it. Ray is out to get me. He lies and lies until his lies become the truth. I’ve never known anyone like him. He’s the most selfish human being I have ever known.”

“I think something or someone much bigger than your former husband is on your mind.”

“Okay, here it comes,” she says. “I’m one of the Guardians. I signed up for life. The only way I can get out of my situation is to find a replacement.”

“Me?”

“You fit the profile. A loner, an idealist looking for a cross, a guy who hates the Herd.”

“I’m not signing up. Put that down as DOA and FTS.”

“What is FTS?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Aaron, you have every sign of a man experiencing a nervous breakdown. Except it’s not a nervous breakdown. Everything you and I have seen is real. In fact, it’s even worse than real. Your daughter has become prey to spirits like Eugene Baker. Notice I’m talking in the plural. Would you like to see who is behind the stones at the back of my cellar?”

No, I would not. But I’ve already gone across a line and entered an unseen world in which my daughter has disappeared and may be in the hands of predators.

“Answer me,” she says. “Are you willing to look at what’s down there? Because if you look, you will never be the same. Tell me now.”