The judge would be wanting to hear from me, and since I had nothing much to report I thought that maybe it was time I visit Brenda Carlyle, which I’d been putting off. Her husband, Mike, had gotten all the way to Chicago in the Golden Gloves just before he left for Korea. He worked at his old man’s lumberyard and spent his idle hours beating the crap out of any guy who so much as glanced at his wife, which wasn’t easy not to do, believe me, her being one of the most quietly erotic women ever born in our little valley here. She is not innocent of her charms.
In high school, I’m told, she used to pursue various boys and, when done with them, turn them over to Mike for summary punishment.
Mike either didn’t know that she’d approached the boys, rather than the other way around, or he chose not to know.
Certain legends were passed among the panting young men in our town. Many of them concerned Brenda.
Most of the stories were variations on the stuff the panting young men had read in the sort of books Kenny Chesmore writes. You know, that she liked to stand on certain husband-gone nights draped only in the gauziest of teddy-bear nighties and try to lure foolish boys inside in the way a sea siren would. That she rewarded the best high school football player of the year with a special night all their own. And that at Christmastime she gave herself to the young man who struck her as the most exciting.
But remember, folks, this is Black River Falls, after all, and there isn’t much else to do but think up stories like these.
I decided to stop by the lumberyard and make sure that Mike was at work. Didn’t want him to surprise me by opening the door of his home.
The lumberyard always unmanned me. I come from a long line of handymen. If a tornado knocks your house down tonight, my dad and a couple of his brothers will have it standing, good as new, twenty-four hours later. I have trouble pounding nails in straight. Or getting screws to stay in. And anything I painted always came out striped, as if I’d used several subtly different colors. When I was in tenth grade my dad asked me to help him install a new window over the kitchen sink. We got the window in all right, but when I was putting the shutter back on, my hammer accidentally slammed a corner of it and shattered glass all over my mom, who was innocently washing dishes. My dad never asked me to help him again and I couldn’t blame him.
But the lumberyard dazzled me with all its manly secrets and rites of passage: whine of electric saw, smell of fresh cut lumber, stacks of wood in the yard, men in big overalls, their pipes tucked into the corners of their mouths as they loaded lumber into the backs of their trucks, their tool belts packed with all sorts of arcane instruments that would be lost on me. I had a pair of bib overalls but the legs were too long. And I had some tools but Mrs. Goldman kept them because she used them-and used them well-mch better than I did.
I saw him and he saw me. He didn’t like me. One night in a bar his wife had grabbed me and swung me out onto the dance floor. It was fast dancing but he still hadn’t liked it. He had a good memory. He’d been glowering at me ever since that night. And that had been at least four years ago.
He didn’t wear overalls. He wore a shirt and tie and trousers. He was huge but quick and deft for his size. He picked up a pile of two-by-fours and dropped them in the bed of a truck.
No reason to stay there. I turned and walked away, inhaling the perfume of fresh sawn lumber.
I got in my ragtop and drove maybe three blocks to the narrow road that would take me to the Carlyle house when I decided I’d better check in at my office.
“Uh, just a minute, okay?” Jamie answered.
This is one I hadn’t heard before. I’d heard “It’s your nickel,” I’d heard “Uh, Mr.
C’s office.”
Now she said: “Damn, I just spilled my nail polish all over the desk.”
There was no sense being angry. God was punishing me for all my sins.
“Okay, I’m back,” she said.
“It’s me.”
“Oh, gosh Mr. C, I’ve been trying to find you.”
“You have?”
“Well, I was about to try and find you I guess I should say. Turk brought me a sandwich and we’re just sort of eating it.”
A lurid picture of them humping on my desk filled the drive-in screen of my mind.
“Ah, lunch.”
“She tried to kill herself, Mr. C.”
“Who did?”
“Molly.”
“Molly Blessing?”
“Yeah. Molly Blessing. Her mom called and said Molly wants to talk to you.”
“Where is she now?”
“The hospital. Not the Catholic one.”
That was how she always referred to things. The Catholic one or not the Catholic one. The dime store that’s not Woolworth’s. The pizza joint that’s not out on Highway 6.
“I’m going over there now. were there any other messages?”
She cupped the phone. “Didn’t somebody else call, Turk?”
A muffled male voice.
“Turk says no other calls. I was in the ladies room for a while, Mr. C. He was watching the phone.”
Watching I wouldn’t mind. Talking into it I would. If her phone mannerisms were bad, imagine Turk’s. He’s Irish by the way.
God only knows where the name Turk came from.
I drove straight to the hospital. Not the Catholic one.
I wasn’t surprised by a suicide attempt, not after the way she’d acted the other night.
When I got to her room, the nurse said, “Her parents are downstairs talking to the doctor. You can have five minutes or so. She’s weak.” Betty Byrnes read her name tag.
“What happened?”
“She got into her mother’s tranquilizers.
Took a dozen or so. Fortunately, they’re not especially strong dosage-wise. She’ll be fine.”
She didn’t look fine. The only vibrant color in the room was her coppery hair.
Everything else was white, including her face.
She looked like a dying angel. She seemed to be sleeping. I didn’t want to wake her up. I started to turn and walk away.
“Hi, Sam.”
I turned back to her. “Hi, Molly.”
“Pretty stupid thing to do, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, walking over to her.
“Pretty stupid.”
Deep sigh. There was a table on wheels next to her bed. A silver metal water pitcher was beaded with sweat. An abridged version of the King James Bible. A movie magazine with Rock Hudson on it.
She said, “I just couldn’t deal with it.
It really hit me. You know, that he was dead and not coming back. I had a couple of drinks from my father’s bar in the basement and then I found my mom’s tranquilizers. I don’t remember much after that.”
“You in any pain?”
“Not really. Just kind of groggy. This was so dumb. It’s embarrassing.”
“Anything I can get you?”
She tried to smile. “A phone call from David would be nice.” Then, “I wish I were as strong as Rita.”
“She’s pretty tough.”
“She wouldn’t pull a stunt like this one.” She laid her head back. Closed her eyes. “You think I’ll ever get over it, Sam?”
“I don’t know about getting over it. But you’ll be able to deal with it.”
“I wish I were an adult.”
“We all wish we were adults.”
She opened one eye and smiled at me.
“You’ve got a great sense of humor.” Then, “David did, too. He was never boring to be with. Never. You could just sit somewhere and he could keep you entertained for hours. I’d never known anybody like that before.” Then, “My folks told me Cliffie’s mad at you because you’ve been asking people a lot of questions.”
“Just trying to make sure that Egan’s death was accidental.”
“You didn’t like him much, did you, Sam?”
“Sometimes I did. Sometimes he was pretty hard to take. The way he felt sorry for himself and everything.”
“He had good reasons to feel sorry for himself, Sam.”
This wasn’t the time for a debate. “His aunts will see to it that he gets a nice funeral.”