Stone Angel

CHAPTER 7

Augusta fished deep in the pockets of her dress. “I can’t think what I did with those keys. I know I had them on me this morning.”

The white horse lowered his huge head over the paddock fence to nudge her shoulder.

“Oh, I remember. I gave them to Henry Roth. He said he’d look at a pipe joint for me. The local plumber is a thief.”

“I don’t want to disturb Mr. Roth while he’s working.” Charles stroked the horse’s silky muzzle. The stallion was a bit long in the tooth, but still a fine-looking animal.

“That’s no problem.” Augusta held the paddock gate open, and the horse walked out to nuzzle her neck until she waved him off, annoyed and pleased at once. “We’ll give Henry a call after supper.”

They crossed the open ground between the fenced enclosure and an old carriage house in need of paint. The horse wore no halter, but trailed behind them, docile as an old dog.

“So, Charles, how do you find our small town? Does it bore you?”

“Hardly. I met Malcolm Laurie today. He’s a fascinating man.”

Augusta pulled on the latch of a wide arched door, and it swung open on a dark and cool interior, pungent with the smells of hay and horse. The sound of running water came from a trough at the rear of an open stall, and the horse was on his way to it.

When the stall gate was closed and latched, Augusta turned a stern face on Charles. “Don’t you go falling in love with Malcolm.”

That was an order.

“I beg your pardon?” Did she think that he was -

“You know, it’s been years since I made a man blush like that. Come along.”

His eyes had no sooner adjusted to the dimness than she was leading him into the bright light. He was blinking, making all the readjustments to his eyes and his head.

Fall in love with Malcolm?

She motioned him to follow her back to the house. He walked alongside of her, hands jammed in his pockets as he picked his words. He was searching for just the right phrase to protest – but not too much, when she took his arm, as she had done on the day they first met.

“Settle down, Charles. I’m not implying anything carnal. Men are always falling in love with other men. What with their war heroes and sports heroes, I believe the love for another man is much more potent than the love for a woman. Though any man would be shocked if you threw that up to him.”

“It’s not quite the same thing,” he said, and perhaps he said it a bit too fast.

“Not like sex, you mean? Well, of course it is. Malcolm uses sex just like a woman does. He’s shameless. And men succumb to him the same as women do.”

Charles squared his shoulders and drove his hands deeper into his pockets. “The leader of a cult religion has the devotion of his followers. I’ll grant you that.” He wondered if his tone of voice was too defensive. “But based on a psychiatric profile of the typical cult member – ”

“Forget the psychiatric voodoo.” Her grip on his arm tightened, and she scowled at him as if he were an errant child. “Get your mind out from behind that zipper in your pants, and pay attention. You’re going through a bad patch, Charles. You’re vulnerable now – easily led or misled. We’ve all been there. Man or woman, sometimes we all feel that need to be swept up in strong arms. Malcolm invited you to the show tomorrow night, didn’t he?”

“The memorial service? Yes.” Why did he feel as though he had just confessed to a lovers’ tryst?

“When you see Malcolm on that stage, he’ll be larger than you remembered. He’ll swoop down on you with his eyes, and he’ll carry you away with promises of heaven on earth.”

And this Malcolm had already done. The kingdom of heaven is all around them and men do not see it.

“And you’ll believe in him because you want to, you need to.” Augusta opened the door between the staircases and paused with her hand on the knob. “Malcolm will show you a vision of paradise so real you can go live in it for a while. You’ll be spellbound – and grateful.”

She stared at him now, as though she had intuited his conversation of the morning. She was shaking her head, disapproving of whatever knowledge she had gained from his telltale face. She went into the house and down the hall to the kitchen. He followed close behind her, just as the horse had done.

Walking to the stove, her back was turned on him when she spoke again. “Then he’ll ask you for something – probably a small thing compared to his own gift of the moon and the stars. And you’ll be glad to give it to him… this small thing.” She lit the flame under the burner. “That’s how it begins. Maybe you don’t get between the sheets with the man, but it’s a consummation. When you yield to him that first time? – it is a surrender.”

She was facing him now, gesturing with slow swirls of a wooden spoon. “In a sense, you’re on your back, eyes all full of love and trust. He can do whatever he likes with you – and you will want him to. So, Charles, don’t go falling in love with that man.”

Though he had just been rather imaginatively raped, Charles was nodding. The spell she spoke of was within his experience. He could have used the old woman’s frightening counsel when he was falling in love with Mallory. Too late now.

He sat down at the table and watched Augusta’s back as she stirred the contents of the pot. Though he had missed his lunch, he was nearly immune to the aromas of chicken, vegetables and spice scents he couldn’t name. Hunger had been displaced by high anxiety.

On the bright side, he was perfectly safe from the likes of Malcolm. That most excellent thief, Mallory, had already taken everything of value – his pride, his self-respect. He had traveled more than a thousand miles for a rude brush-off. How pathetic was that?

Malcolm was right. If he wanted Mallory, he must not pursue her anymore. He would not try to see her again. She always found him so predictable, she would not know what to make of that. It would definitely disconcert her. Well, good. If it gave her a few bad moments, she well deserved it.

Thank you, Malcolm.

Two fragrant bowls of thick gumbo and rice were set on the table. He looked up and met Augusta’s eyes. She stared at him with such intensity, he wondered if she was tracking his thoughts. Had he simply become conditioned to this paranoia? Or was she even more skilled than Malcolm Laurie?

Ah, but it was all in his face, wasn’t it? – the anger, the petulance, the plotting. Augusta, a master of human nature, was watching his slow fall into the dangerous pit she had just mapped out for him. She had drawn a huge sign and set flares by the side of the road, hadn’t she? But he had gone off the edge, stone blind and foolish.

“I do understand,” he said, and this was finally true. He would not be seduced by the evangelist. Mallory was his friend. Whatever she needed from him, it was hers, whether she wanted his help or not. If he had been in trouble, Mallory would have done the same for him. How could he have forgotten that?

Having restored his priorities and prevented his fall from grace, Augusta sat down at the table with him and bent over her bowl. Though they ate in silence, there was much going on between them. He smiled and inclined his head to acknowledge his admiration for her dark science of human behavior. She smiled back, approving his good sense in following her advice, however slow he might have been to catch on.

By the time their meal was done and they were working on the second round of coffee, Charles’s mood had changed radically. The food had done wonders for his state of mind. In fact, he was feeling slightly euphoric.

Augusta eyed him over the rim of her cup. Her expression could only be described as good-natured evil. “I bet you’re feeling better now.”

“Miles better. Your cooking has worked a miracle.”

She nodded. “That’s the Saint-John’s-wort talking.”

“Pardon?”

“Hypericum perforatum.” She pointed to one of the small herb gardens along the windowsills. “It’s that pretty little yellow flower. I gave it to my mother to treat her depression. ‘Course she died. But I seem to be having better luck with you.”

“You drugged my food?”

“Oh, not much. That silly looking grin on your face will wear off in a little while. Now that side effect comes from one of my hybrids.”

“You drugged me?”

“Time to call Henry,” she said, pushing her chair away from the table and politely ignoring the fact that he was repeating himself.

Charles’s smile would not leave his face, but it had grown a bit tense as he followed her out of the kitchen and into another doorway off the hall.

This larger room was a century removed from the modern kitchen. Diffused light softly illuminated hand-colored Audubon prints on every wall. On a round table with delicate wood inlays and intricately carved legs, her sketchbook lay open at the foot of a rare white owl. Around the room, a score of other birds fixed him with their bright eyes, their bodies frozen in that tense moment before the flight, or the attack. They were all artful compliments to the craftsmanship of Augusta’s taxidermist.

So she had followed Audubon’s custom of using dead models for the drawings.

The ceiling was low, creating the atmosphere of a cottage. The tables and odd pieces were a mix of periods and styles; all were in fabulous condition. It was a cluttered but comfortable room with a narrow bed built into the window alcove. Against one wall, an armoire was flanked by two French Régence bookcases, and volumes with ornithology titles were stacked on every surface. Apparently, this single room served as her living quarters. Why had she retired into this small portion of a mansion?

He had no sooner sat down on the couch than the cat joined him on the brocade and forced him to move off the center cushion by advancing on him only an inch or two – with her lips curled back over a mouthful of pointed teeth. She arranged herself on the vacated cushion and continued to stare at him in silent contempt.

Augusta was speaking into a telephone which he could date to the first decade of the century. “I counted twelve taps. Tap again if I got that right, Henry.” She turned to Charles. “Is twelve noon all right with you?”

“Yes.” He was looking at a narrow staircase leading up to the main floor above them.

“Well, fine. Thank you, Henry.” She set the antique phone receiver back on its cradle. “He’ll meet you at the house. Now the large key will unlock the front door, and the smaller one will let you into the attic where I stored Cass’s personal things.”

Charles waved his hand to include the entire room. “This is an amazing collection of antiques. I love your house.”

“But there’s forty-odd rooms you haven’t seen. Would you like a tour of the place?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

And now he noticed the neighboring cushion was cat-free. He turned to see the animal stealing up the staircase. Clever creature; she had anticipated them. She was waiting, purring, when they reached the top of the stairs. Augusta stood on the landing and hissed in the cat’s own language. The animal backtracked to stand on the stair behind Charles.

“Be sure you don’t let her out.” Augusta passed through the door and left Charles to fend off the wild thing with one shoe. He escaped with only minor damage to one pantleg.

He stepped into a long gallery, and space expanded in all directions. Every flat plane was a far distance and every vertical line soared. He judged the ceilings to be at least eighteen feet high, and the doorframes were made for eleven-foot giants.

Augusta’s hand rested on a Dresden china doorknob as she pointed up to the ornate friezes at the ceiling molding. The upper wall was studded with delicate roses. “The flowers were made from a mixture of Spanish moss and plaster.”

She guided him into a room of even more generous proportion. Tall windows extended from floor to ceiling and provided light enough to see delicate tapestries falling to tatters on the walls, and mold gathering on the furniture. All the pieces in this room might have been worthy of a museum, but now they were beyond restoration. The cracked window-panes had allowed rain damage. A chair-backed settee was kneeling on broken forelegs. The thick Oriental rug, which should have lasted centuries was rotting on the floor. Threads gave way under his shoes and beetles ran out from underfoot.

So poverty was not the cause of the neglect. The sale of these pieces would have paid for maintenance on the house. He averted his eyes as they passed by a cracking landscape of foggy moon and ghostly trees. It had been worth a fortune – once. They passed into the vast dining room, where other precious paintings were warping and cracking on water-stained walls.

“Why has it all gone to ruin?” He hadn’t meant to ask that aloud, but he could not contain himself.

“Well, I had to let the house rot. That was a promise I made to my father as he was dying.”

Had the man been demented? That probably would be a rude question, and Charles kept it to himself as he followed her back to the long gallery, where another set of doors opened onto a grand ballroom.

Now this was glorious, luminous. The white walls and floor reflected all the light at the end of the day and dazzled him into a wide smile. But now his smile waned as he stared at the ruined marble floor. Each tile bore a crack and some were nearly pounded to dust.

“You can blame that damage on one of my horses,” said Augusta. “That Appaloosa was a good strong animal, but you’d be amazed how much punishment the tiles can take before they crack.” And then in the afterthought of a tour guide, she said, “It’s all Italian marble.”

This was almost too much for Charles. His parents had never allowed him to run indoors, lest he damage some old and valuable piece of china glass – Augusta had ridden a horse through the house.

He followed her up the grand staircase, and as they passed by the open doors along the hallway, she gave him a running commentary.

here were precious clocks in every room, all stopped at the same time, the hour of her father’s death.

Augusta said, somewhat disgusted, “The house is made of cypress. Termites cannot penetrate it. The walls will not fall down. These floors are made of heart pine, and there’s hardly a patch of wood rot. However, I am making some headway with the roof. It’s got some prominent holes that’ll let you see daylight. The poor bats, though. They don’t take too well to direct sun. Some of them are migrating to the lower floors.”

He peered into the last room before the next staircase. The carpet was spotted with dung. Bats had indeed taken up residence here. Against one wall was an elaborately carved canopy bed. He had only seen one like it at a New York auction house. Mosquito netting partially covered the bed in a wreckage of gauzy spiderwebs and woven rotted threads of cotton. A dead bat lay on the mattress, its molding body fusing with the material.

They continued up the stairs and into the attic, where he found more antiques serving as homes to spiders. At his feet lay a broken Federal bull’s-eye mirror.

“Wait here a minute,” said Augusta. “I’ll make sure they’ve all cleared out. There’s only been a handful of bat rabies cases in the past thirty years, but you never know.” She disappeared through a doorway, and the scent of something foul came wafting through the brief opening.

He turned to the only source of light and air. This was not the round window facing the town. This one afforded a view of the land at the back of the house. A pair of field glasses lay on the broad sill.

Looking down, in the hour of dusk, he could still make out what once had been a carefully planned maze and stepped terraces of lush vegetation. This was the good bone structure of a ruined garden. He could imagine it in bygone days when the shrubs had been carefully trimmed and the flowers confined to their beds. A flagstone path wound through the grounds, disappearing in places where it was overgrown with plants reverting to the wild, blooming in random bouquets of blue and red. More exotic flames of orange were -

Oh, but now two bright-colored blossoms took flight, and all the flowers called out to one another. Birds – the garden was alive with birds. In a chain reaction of motion, all the colors were rising from the foliage in a brilliant wave, fluttering on the air and singing songs.

He picked up the binoculars and trained them on the small pecan trees and shrubs. Here and there, he picked out the conical tops of bird feeders spread throughout the avian sanctuary.

This was no side effect of Augusta’s neglect; it was an act of creation.

She was back again, standing beside him, and the flowers continued to fly and sing.

“My compliments, Augusta. It’s the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.”

“Let me show you the view from the other side while we still got some light. Hold your nose when you pass through that door.”

He did as she suggested, but the stench of dung and urine was overwhelming, and his eyes stung. He could feel the crunch of bugs beneath the soles of his shoes, as she led him around the stalagmites of droppings with the beam of her flashlight.

Not all the bats had flown at sunset. A pair of tiny eyes gleamed with reflected light. He turned away quickly, not wanting to alarm the creature into sudden flight. When they had cleared the midsection of the attic and passed under an archway, a breeze of fresh air alleviated the smell. Light penetrated the roof through a gaping hole between the wooden ribs of the ceiling. Foliage had attached itself to sod trapped by the wind in the cross wood of exposed beams. Ironically, he recognized the encroaching plant as resurrection fern.

And now he noticed that another bat had been left behind. The animal was revolving in circles on the floor, trailing a torn wing in the dust.

“I wonder if that cat’s been up here.” Augusta looked down at the poor beast and shook her head. “Now that one – see the red metal on his leg? He was banded fifteen years ago. The government man wanted to mark a lot more of them that way, but he had clumsy hands and crippled as many bats as he did right, so I run him off the place. That bat is the old man of the colony.”

And now it was at the end of its life. The injury to its wing fit well with a cat’s claw. If the bat could not fly, it could not feed. “What’s the name of the bat?”

“Charles, if you ever hear me giving pet names to flying rodents, you can tell them it’s time to put the old woman away.”

“Sorry, I meant the species. Brown bat? Serotine?”

“The government man who checks the bands, he calls them big brown bats or sometimes Genus Eptesicus. I call them owl food.” The old woman was standing at another round window overlooking the town. A telescope stood on a tripod, its long barrel pointed down to the earth. A notebook lay open on the sill and bore a crude map recording the sites of nests.

This was what the bird in flight must see. The whole countryside was laid out before him. Augusta pointed to a Victorian house on the other side of the cemetery. A wide dirt-colored ribbon led away from the building, and he recognized it as the mystery road along Finger Bayou, the one with the blank sign.

“That’s Cass Shelley’s place.” She moved the telescope closer to the glass and focussed it. “Here, take a look.”

He put one eye to the lens. The Shelley house bore a recent coat of paint. The shrubs had been cut back, and all the flowers kept to the perimeters of rock gardens surrounding the trees in the front yard. There were no signs of neglect, and that was odd for a property in Augusta’s stewardship.

Beyond the boundary of wide Upland Bayou were the homes and shops of Dayborn. Augusta was pointing to the line of trees beyond the town square.

“Now you see that windbreak of trees? That’s the end of Dayborn’s proper limits and the beginning of Owltown. That’s where the New Church roadies live in their cracker box houses and mobile homes.”

He followed her pointing finger to a crescent of neon lights bounded on its far side by another bayou.

“Owltown never sleeps,” said Augusta. “Twenty-four hours a day, you can buy liquor and drugs. Gambling goes on till daybreak. That’s the Lauries’ work. Almost everyone in that place is related to the Lauries by blood or marriage. Don’t you go there after dark, unless you take a gun.”

“Why is it called Owltown?”

“Oh, it’s had that name forever. Up till thirty years ago, we used to have quite a population of rare owls on that plot of land. That was before the damn Lauries took over the habitat and cleared the horseshoe bend on the lower bayou to make a fairground. Damn waste.”

“I gather you dislike these people.”

“It wouldn’t bother me if the whole place burned to the ground. I don’t trust myself to go to Owltown with matches in my pocket.” She moved the telescope back to the side of the window. “Well, now you’ve seen it all.”

“Thank you for the tour.”

“My pleasure, Charles. Anything else I can do for you?”

“You can tell me how Cass Shelley died.”

She was genuinely surprised. “I thought Henry or Betty would’ve told you that by now.”

“I never thought to ask them. So, how did Mallory’s mother die?”

“I believe the attack was outside the house. That’s where Henry found Kathy’s dog. Poor beast was half dead. Cass’s bloody handprints were all over a good portion of one side of the house where she must have been driven back to the wall. The grass was covered with her blood, and they found two of her teeth there. And there were rocks scattered around – lots of rocks. They had bits of her skin and blood on them.”

“Are you saying this woman was stoned to death?”

Jimmy Simms bore the Laurie family resemblance in a girlish delicacy of bone structure. And though he had turned thirty this year, his unshaven face was still spotty with the straggly silken hairs of an adolescent beard.

Jimmy’s father would no longer speak to his small half-finished son, and neither would the man allow him in the house anymore. But over the long years of estrangement, Jimmy’s mother had continued to slip him her husband’s castoff clothes. He could roll up the legs of his father’s long pants, but the shoes were so big, even with newspaper stuffed in the toes, he always limped with a blister on one foot or the other.

He shambled up the path to the Shelley house. The old black Labrador retriever knew his footsteps, despite the alternating limp. The animal raised his regal head in the usual greeting, a look of tolerance but no great interest.

Jimmy reached into the pocket of his oversized windbreaker and pulled out a bulky package. Unfolding the paper wrapping, he displayed the half-eaten fish fillet for the dog’s approval. He had recently retrieved it from the trash bin behind Jane’s Cafe, and now he set it down on the dirt in front of the black Lab. Years ago, he had brought offerings of red meat, but the dog had since lost his chewing teeth, and now Jimmy’s gifts were made of softer foods.

“Babe Laurie is dead,” he said to the dog for the fifth day in a row, as if by repetition he could make himself understood. He sat down in the dirt and stroked the animal’s neck.

The dog only sniffed at the fish, and then rested his massive graying head on his paws.

The sun had set, and the light was going fast. It had been Jimmy’s long habit never to be caught out after dark, but tonight he decided to remain until the moon had risen. There was no telling how much time was left for the ancient dog.

The animal slept for a while. From the low growls and the frantic movement of a hind leg, Jimmy surmised that the old black Lab did not like his dreams. Now the dog snapped awake, raised his head and turned his face upward until the waxing moon was reflected in his eyes. Jimmy jumped in his skin, believing the eyes had begun to glow.

The dog stood up with great effort. He yelped, then crooned, his voice slowly swelling to a full-throated howling.

The old lab still had magnificent moments. One day soon, the animal would die, and Jimmy would miss his company and their common bond of despair, which the dog expressed so eloquently in his song to the moon.

The dog believed his own name was a long high note and two whistling ripples of music from a child’s mouth. No one had called him by this sound since the child went away. She had done the unthinkable. She had left him behind, broken and bleeding. And she continued to do this to him night after night, in every dream, eroding his sanity a little more each time he closed his eyes.

He parted his lips and bared his remaining teeth to the little man beside him, growling low, until the man scrambled to his feet and limped away.

Now the dog began to wail in earnest, sharing his dementia with Alma Furgueson down in Owltown. The dog howled and Alma cried. Her neighbors pretended not to hear. The strange duet went on for hours.

Alma pulled the covers up over her head, but still she could see the rocks flying and hear the sickening sound of their impact on human flesh and bone and teeth. She could hear the sound of Cass’s body breaking.

Alma’s nearest neighbor was long accustomed to this racket. But now he removed the sound-baffling pillow from his head. He woke his wife, and they both listened, for this was something they had never heard before. Alma had begun to harmonize with the dog.

Lying on her bed in the Dayborn jail, Mallory was also listening. She turned her face to the bars that kept her apart from the dog.

One fist rose high in the air and crashed down on her pillow with enough force to burst the case and send the feathers flying all around her cell, like small freed birds. Throwing off the covers, she stood up and walked barefoot to the window, the better to hear her dog’s mad serenade.

After a time, the old black Lab fell into an exhausted silence. Mallory returned to her bed and to sleep, lying under a blanket dusted with feathers and resembling a sheltering wing.