Stone Angel

CHAPTER 6

Aboveground phone lines and power cables were tucked away at the rear of the building. No jarring reminder of modern times marred its historical character. Even the wavy distortions in the window glass of Jane’s Cafe were true to the period. Near this window, the mother and son were seated at a table laid with a wine-red cloth and sparkling white napkins.

Charming.

However, when Charles entered the cafe, he found himself back in the correct era. A giant coffee machine gurgled in time to the music of soft rock. A gleaming metal and glass counter lined the back wall. Deep stainless-steel wells were filled with an amazing variety of salads, breads and cold cuts to be loaded on trays and paid for at the electronic cash register. All the white napkins were paper, and all the red tablecloths were washable, late twentieth-century plastic.

He collected a broad array of sandwich makings, condiments and salad greens on his tray. After paying for it, he settled down at the table next to Darlene and Ira Wooley. The woman was speaking to her son in a soothing mother voice, but the young man wasn’t listening. He was absorbed in constructing a tower of food on top of a slab of rye bread.

In a soft-spoken, one-sided argument, Darlene pointed to the items that would set off Ira’s allergies, and then she pulled out the offending layers. The boy stared at the mutilated sandwich for a moment, and Charles braced himself for the screaming fit common to autism. But Ira was very calm as he quietly disassembled the sandwich and began again with a new slice of bread from his mother’s tray. He worked deftly, despite bandaged hands and the splints on two fingers. Charles determined that there was nothing wrong with any of the motor skills, as Ira laid a precise line of sardines across a bed of mustard-slathered bread.

Darlene Wooley was looking at Charles with the suspicion common to overprotective mothers.

“Forgive me for staring,” said Charles. “Sandwiches are my hobby.”

Ira looked up for a moment as Charles spread mustard on pumpernickel and then embellished it with stripes of red from a pointed squeeze bottle of catsup.

Ira reached into his mother’s salad bowl and carefully picked out the carrot sticks and arranged them in a Crosshatch over his sardines.

Charles made a perfect circle of croutons on his stripes of catsup. Ira noted this and added a squared slice of ham on top of his carrots. Charles laid down two slices of bright yellow cheese, one layered askew over the other to form an eight-point star. Ira countered with a dollop of cream cheese spread over the ham in the rough smear of a triangle.

Though Darlene Wooley seemed very tired, she was smiling at the pair of them as they engaged in this conversation of sandwiches.

Charles stacked his ingredients faster and higher. Ira took up the challenge, finishing his own design first and crowning it with a slice of white bread.

Charles applauded the winner, and Ira’s laughing mother joined in, taking unreasonable delight in the moment. It must be an oasis in her day. He noted her bitten nails, the red veins of her eyes and the vertical worry line etched between her eyebrows. All the telling signs of life with an autistic child.

Well, her son’s mind was certainly alive. Wheels were turning, and quickly. Charles wondered if Ira was articulate. Many autistic people were not. They were as diverse as snowflake patterns in their behaviors; few generalizations would hold for all.

Ira was again absorbed in his food, and never looked up when his mother exchanged names with Charles and introduced her son. Ira’s eyes were looking elsewhere, not fixed on any point in the immediate universe.

When Charles had explained his interest in autism, he learned that eating lunch in the cafe was part of Ira’s behavior therapy, and he approved. This daily exercise would account for the lack of stress, despite the babble of conversation, the comings and goings, and the company of strangers.

“There’s no local program for autism, so four mornings a week, Ira goes to a state school for the mentally retarded.”

“Well, it’s miles better than no therapy at all,” said Charles. And it was common practice. A sympathetic doctor would alter the diagnosis of autism to that of retardation in order to utilize whatever program was available. “I imagine they use many of the same methods, learning skills through repetitive tasks?”

“Yes, and they do make a special effort with Ira. I tried to get him into a private program in New Orleans,” said Darlene. “But he couldn’t pass the screening test.”

Finally, the conversation turned to Charles’s business with the sheriff. “Augusta Trebec believes the young woman in custody might be Cass Shelley’s daughter. As the executrix – ”

“Well, who else could that girl be, Mr. Butler?”

When she became comfortable with calling him Charles, she recounted Mallory’s arrival in Dayborn on the day of the murder. “She stepped out of a cab in front of the bed and breakfast.”

Darlene had been sitting on the front porch, talking to her friend and neighbor, Betty Hale. “The girl was the very image of her mother. You couldn’t forget a face like that, even without the reminder of Cass’s angel in the cemetery.”

Babe Laurie had also seen Mallory, and reeled like a drunk, his eyes grown to the size of saucers. “So Babe sat there on the edge of the fountain while the girl was checking into Betty’s. Then his brother Malcolm came for him in the car. But Babe wouldn’t leave the square, and they got to arguing.”

Her son had slipped away and gone home to his house next door. “And then I hear Ira at the piano, and he’s playing this same little handful of notes, over and over. It drove Babe wild. He stormed into my house, with his brother right behind him. Well, I could not believe they had done that – just barged into my house. I was up from my chair and heading that way when the music stopped. And then my boy was screaming. The Lauries came out the door as I was going in. I found Ira at the piano with his hands smashed and blood running over the piano keys.”

Charles glanced at Ira to see how he was reacting to Darlene’s replay of a traumatic day. The boy seemed not to hear them. Charles surmised that Ira was shutting out the noise, not perceiving it as meaningful. His primary thoughts would probably be a cascade of images, not words. The perception of spoken words would require the concentration and effort of discerning a second language. Food was more alluring to Ira just now, but he might be responsive to music, another language more natural to him than the spoken word.

In the spirit of an ongoing examination, he turned to Ira. “Could you hum the tune you were playing on the piano?”

It was his mother who answered, “He won’t hold normal conversations with people anymore. He used to talk a lot when he was a little boy. But now he just repeats things. It’s called echolalia. That’s why he can’t pass the screening test for the program in New Orleans.”

Well, that was reasonable. An advanced program would make a prerequisite of communication skills. Though the echolalia sometimes passed for response to conversation, a kind of shortcut. “Perhaps you could remember the notes?”

“Oh, no,” she said, throwing up her hands in mock helplessness. “I got a tin ear. My boy has all the musical talent in the family. If you sit him down at the piano, he’ll play, but he won’t do requests. Just plays what he wants. And sometimes he’ll sing for you – if he wants to. He has the most beautiful voice you ever heard.” She looked down at her hands and their ruined fingernails. “You think that’s just a mother talking.”

“No, not at all. The sheriff spoke very highly of Ira’s talent.”

She smiled with some embarrassment and hid her hands under the table. “Sometimes, if the windows are open, every living thing in the square stops to listen to my boy when he sings. They just stand there, so still and quiet you’d think they were all in church. And I have seen people cry when Ira’s song is over.”

He could ask for no better corroboration. So the sheriff had given an accurate account of Ira’s gifts, and now Charles was doubly intrigued. This was something very rare, well beyond the odd case of multiple talents in the savant. The gift of song was unrelated to quirks and mysteries in the autistic brain. The origin of autism was unknown; its symptoms developed after birth. But song came from the egg.

Done with his sandwich, Ira stared at his hands and moved them in circles as he rocked back and forth in his chair. Charles knew the young man was using this activity to calm himself, but why? He had not been agitated a moment ago.

Darlene covered Ira’s rolling hands with her own, not touching flesh to flesh, but only threatening contact to get her son’s attention. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“What’s wrong,” said Ira, staring at the door.

Charles and Darlene both turned to see a figure standing in the doorway. It was the man with two faces, the artist of altered states, and he was smiling at Darlene, one hand rising in a greeting.

Her face was rigid as she quickly gathered up her purse and her son and departed with a strained goodbye.

The man engaged Charles’s eyes as Darlene and Ira passed by him. Walking toward the table, he extended his hand. “My name is Malcolm Laurie. But you call me Malcolm.” This was stronger than a suggestion. “May I join you?”

“Of course.” Charles reached out to grasp the proffered hand. “I noticed your resemblance to Babe Laurie.”

“He was my brother.” Malcolm Laurie sat down with a comfortable attitude, as though he were in his own personal dining room.

“My condolences on your loss,” said Charles.

“Thank you, Mr. -?”

“Butler.” He neglected to mention his given name, as he usually did, for he felt the need of polite distance. As Malcolm leaned forward, Charles was mentally backing up, saying, “I understand your brother toured the country as an evangelist.”

“We all did. The road show is a family enterprise.” The winning smile was back. Perhaps the man sensed that this was the face that elicited the most favorable response. “Ever seen a real tent show?”

“Yes, when I was a child – ” Charles stopped himself from mentioning his summer with Maximilhan’s Traveling Magic Show, but he could not have said why. “I expect they’re all gone now. All the evangelists have television shows.”

“Not all of ‘em. Our family still tours with a tent. Bought it off a bankrupt circus when Babe was a little boy.”

“A circus? So it’s one of the great tents?” He had not seen one of those beauties since he was a child. “How big is it?”

“Biggest you’ve ever seen – I guarantee that. It’s going up tomorrow for Babe’s memorial service. No girders – all single shafts and raised with muscle and line. It’s a thing to behold. If you wanna see that tent raising, you’ll have to get out to the fairground early. Round eight in the morning?”

“I’ll be there.” Charles was elated. He would have given anything for this chance. He had never expected to see such a sight again. “Thank you, so much.”

“My pleasure.”

Though it could not be true, Charles had the impression that Malcolm never blinked. His eyes were bright and riveting. Charles felt self-conscious for staring into them. The other man seemed to sense this and pulled back with his body, leaning into the slats of his chair, and perhaps his eyes had pulled back on their brilliance, for now they were merely the color blue.

“I understand you have some business with the prisoner,” said Malcolm.

Was that her name now – the prisoner?

“If she’s a friend of yours, I want you to know I’ve forgiven her for murdering my brother.”

“Jumping the gun, aren’t you? She hasn’t been charged with murder. She’s being held as a material witness.”

And now Charles realized that he had given this man something of significance. It was clear by Malcolm’s surprise.

Charles cast his eyes down. It was surely no great secret he had given away, or the sheriff wouldn’t have mentioned it. However, he had violated Augusta Trebec’s caution not to give any useful information to the opposition, and this man was surely not a supporter of Mallory’s. In an effort to lead the conversation away from her, he said, “I’m not familiar with your religion. Is the New Church close to Baptist?”

“No, you’re confusing your southerners, sir. This part of the map is wall-to-wall Catholics. We tour with the biggest damn crucifix you ever did see. Now that bleeding, twisting torture on the cross, that’s the Catholic stress on His dying for our sins. The Protestants like to see an empty cross as a reminder that He rose again.” Malcolm shook his head in amused reproval. “No passion. Those Protestants are real boring – no offense if that’s your poison.”

“So the New Church is a Catholic sect?”

“I’d say we’re a bit of one thing and another, a little something for everybody. Come see for yourself. Gonna be a big turnout for the show tomorrow night, but I could save you a front-row seat.”

“Thank you, I’d like that. So, exactly what sort of ideology do you practice?”

“Awareness. When you learn to see things as they really are, you can participate in the energy flow. You follow the New Church steps to awareness, and soon you begin to notice that everything that happens to you was meant to happen. Each event, however small, is moving you closer to your destiny.”

Charles recognized the corrupted, reworded prophecy of a hippie philosopher from the early seventies. The original work had been recently appropriated and regurgitated by an ungifted author on the bestseller list.

“I’ve seen the destitute led to riches and the weak led to power.” And now Malcolm shifted to a poor man’s version of Zen from another bestseller. “You don’t even have to work at it. The less you strive, the closer you come to getting what you want – everything you want, and everyone.”

This man had obviously researched the New Age promise of enlightenment, lucre, and instant, everlasting love – all on sale at any bookstore.

So the New Church was yet another shoppers’ outlet for a larger life, a hipper soul and every tactile desire. And it was pain-free, labor-free, and best of all – tax free, for this was a religious enterprise.

“There is a lacking in your life, isn’t there?” The brightness was back in Malcolm’s eyes. “What you have is not enough. You want something more. Am I right?”

“Of course,” said Charles. Who did not?

“The kingdom of heaven is all around them and men do not see it.”

In keeping with New Age style, Malcolm had failed to give Jesus Christ a credit line. “Shall I tell you how to get the thing you prize the most?”

Somehow, Charles doubted that he could, but he waved his hand as an invitation to continue.

“It’s a woman you want, isn’t it?” And now the man was nodding, in answer to his own question, as though he had just seen the word ‘yes’ lighting up in the center of Charles’s forehead, in a splash of neon light. “A woman – that’s it!” More confidential now, he asked, “The prisoner in Sheriff Jessop’s cell is a beautiful woman, isn’t she?”

Charles said nothing, yet he knew he had given a reply of sorts, for Malcolm was aglow with satisfaction over his discovery of this raw nerve, this emotional admission of a very personal link to Mallory.

How to fix this? And how to avoid betraying her with every change of expression? Mallory had once reminded him that unartful deception was the downfall of a man with something to hide. More precisely, she had said: ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to play poker without a bag over your head.’

Sudden inspiration made him smile broadly, well aware that this expression gave him the unwitting appearance of a cheerful, but harmless lunatic. It was the only deception he could pull off with any great success, for he had been born with this foolish feature. But until this moment, he had found no practical use for it.

“I see where you’re going with this, Mr. Laurie,” said Charles, disregarding the invitation to use the man’s given name. “Yes, I suppose attractive women are beyond the man who is decidedly unattractive.”

“I never meant – ”

“No, that’s all right. Every mirror reminds me of it. I can well understand your making that connection. You’re right – my fantasy is a beautiful woman I can never have. But anyone who’d seen my face would’ve guessed that. So while your observation is accurate, it’s not particularly astute.” And this was the truth, mightier than the lie.

Now Malcolm’s own smile wavered. “But there is one woman you want.” He said this with a rising inflection, close to a question, not quite so self-assured.

“New York is full of beautiful women, and not one of them has the slightest romantic interest in me. Perhaps it’s the nose that puts them off. Hard to ignore it, lunging out in space as it does. But I’m worse off than you know. I also require intelligence. A woman with that combination can have any man on the planet. She won’t pick an ugly one. I’m nothing if not a realist.”

Malcolm sat back in his chair, and Charles watched the blue eyes making reassessments and finally fixing on a course. “I believe I’ve isolated the problem. Your enemy is your ego. It anticipates reaction to everything you do. It creates fear and kills all your forward motions.”

“I must be careful about my forward motions. I wouldn’t like to accidentally batter a woman with my nose.”

This time, Malcolm grinned with spontaneity. “So, in your mind, it would take a miracle to get that woman.”

“I would say so.”

“What a coincidence. Miracles are my business.”

“Business implies a price tag.”

“I like you, Mr. Butler. Your money’s no good with me. I’m going to see that you get what you want. I look on it as karma in the bank.” Malcolm lightly slapped one hand on the table. He was smiling with purpose, metaphysically rolling up his sleeves to go to work in earnest. “Forget the past and every failure, every rejection. Don’t think about the future.” The commands were soft-spoken, but they were commands. “Accept the moment for what it is. Surrender to it, and then you can observe the problem with some detachment.”

Detachment? But his largest problem was hanging off the end of his face.

“Not your nose,” said Malcolm, following the track of Charles’s eyes to that peninsula of flesh at the center of his visual field. “The woman.”

And now Malcolm ceased the plagiarism of an Indian twelve-step program to universal insight. He leaned forward on the prop of his folded arms, and the conversation became a more personal conspiracy of men against that other sex. Charles soon discovered that a beautiful woman had certain expectations, which Malcolm listed as the attention, admiration and dogged devotion of males.

“So don’t be predictable. She expects you to follow after her,” said Malcolm. “Don’t do that. Just walk away. That’ll tie her up in knots for a while, and then she will come to you.”

“But why?”

“All of a sudden, you’re the unattainable one. She’ll assume you’ve found some fault with her. It’ll drive her crazy until she figures out what it is.”

“So, by moving away from her, I’ve created an equal but opposite reaction?”

Malcolm nodded. “And remember, a beautiful woman has no experience in failure. That’s where you have the edge.”

“And now my drawbacks have become advantages.” Charles was rather enjoying this. From his early years, as a child among grown college students, to his adulthood in the think tanks, he had met no one who could competently discuss women. He had made his most intimate friends late in life, too late for adolescent questions like – How do you get a woman?

“All right,” said Charles. “Now she’s following me. How do I close the gap without reversing her forward motion?”

“Let her do that. Women are the ones who make the contract, lay down the rules, create the relationship. That’s their job. Your job is to grudgingly allow her to bind you to her. Just remember, as she’s dragging you off – you’re only humoring her to be polite.”

There was good logic here. But would any of it apply to Mallory? Some malformation in her psyche had created a disfigured mirror, which neatly killed the concept of beauty’s expectations. Yet his own behavior was still predictable to her, for every time she turned around, there he was. Perhaps that was why she had not said a word about her plans to leave New York. It would have been predictable that he would follow her, creating problems by giving up all her secrets with his naked face.

“You have some doubts, Mr. Butler?”

Charles met the eyes of the mind reader – more accurately, the face reader. Evidently, his raised eyebrow had expressed a doubt, and he had punctuated the thought with downcast eyes. He resorted to the old conjuror’s trick of substitution. “Mr. Laurie, what do you suppose women really want?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He grinned, accepting this doubt in place of the other. “If you work this right, you’ll never be troubled with that question again.”

Against his will and better judgment, Charles liked this man and found himself smiling more and more. He was leaning into the conversation, drawn to Malcolm. The charismatic quality put Charles in mind of Louis Markowitz. He had seen his old friend draw strangers close enough to bind them up in toasty warm intimacy on only ten minutes’ acquaintance. And now he made a mental note to write his next paper on charm as a true gift.

A half hour later, when Malcolm rose from the table, Charles shook his hand with genuine warmth. Shortly after the door closed, the sense of energized well-being died off, and regret settled in with a feeling of loss. Charles was left alone at the table with an untouched sandwich, one last question and no witnesses to the worried state of his face.

What did Mallory really want – what had brought her back to this place? Homesickness was not in his bag of possibilities. Even if she were not devoid of sentiment, there was no longer a family tie to this place. Her mother was dead – a sudden death, according to Augusta Trebec.

The sheriff gripped the bars of Mallory’s cell. “You haven’t changed so much. Taller, that’s all. How well do you remember me?”

Very well. Her last memory of Sheriff Jessop was betrayal. Though she had buried it deep, the act had come back in bits and pieces of unguarded thoughts and violent dreams.

In the early days, Louis Markowitz had rescued her from every screaming childhood nightmare. He had flooded her bedroom with light and held his foster child close until her dreaming feet ceased to run from the bloodbath, and she awakened to touch down on safe and solid ground. When Markowitz died, her life had begun to unravel. Ugly images had plagued her every day since she had laid the old man in the ground.

Mallory waited for Tom Jessop to tire of being ignored, to go away and leave her in peace. But he was a stubborn man. He hugged the bars. She was tempted to rush the cell door and rake him with her nails. Her hands balled into fists, and her long red fingernails pressed into the flesh until she felt real pain.

She stared down at the indentations in her palms. Was she getting a little crazy? Hadn’t she been moving in that direction for more than a year? Markowitz was gone, and now she didn’t even have his pocket watch anymore. The sheriff had it, and Mallory added this to the list of Tom Jessop’s crimes against her.

“Do you know how your mother died?”

As if you didn’t. And didn’t the sheriff know another song? She was so tired of hearing the same words every day. Mallory stared at the wall in silence. She heard him sigh.

“When you were a kid, you didn’t talk much,” he said. “But you laughed all the time. You were a little copy of your mother. I miss her, too. Maybe we could help each other, Kathy.”

“Don’t call me that.” And now she turned to him. Her face conveyed solid hate.

Startled, his hands dropped away from the cell bars. “I can guess what you’re thinking.”

Can you? Then why don’t you die? She continued to stare at him until he looked away.

“You think I should have closed the case by now, arrested every one of them.” He turned his face back to hers. “Don’t you think I wanted to?”

No, I don’t.

And now he looked into her eyes again, and it seemed to cause him some pain. “I wanted to do a lot worse to them.”

Yeah, right.

“What the hell happened to you out there?” He grasped the bars again. “You were the sunniest child. Look at you now. You got the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. If I knew who did this to you, I swear I’d kill him.”

He wanted to touch her; she could sense that. She had an old memory of this man tossing her high in the air and catching her in a bear hug. How old was she that first time? Three or four? She had screamed in delight. Every time she saw him after that, she had run into his arms for the chance to be airborne again.

And then the world changed. Four days ago, she had wanted to shoot him dead the moment she recognized him.

“When are you going to charge me, Sheriff?”

“With murder? Never. You’re a material witness in protective custody.”

“Give me my gun. I’ll protect myself.”

“Maybe it’s the town I’m protecting. I don’t care if you killed Babe. I wouldn’t touch you for that. But what about the rest of them? I can’t let you go after them all.”

Mallory waited out this last long silence, and then, finally, she heard his footsteps leaving her, walking down the corridor. She spun around, pressed her face to the bars and whistled a short phrase of familiar music.

He faltered in his steps, and one hand went to the wall, as though he suddenly needed its support. The sheriff walked on, but his stride had changed. He was less sure of his legs now, and his head was bowed.