“No thanks. I just needed some air. I’m going to turn in.”
“Good night, Valdiva. I hope you sleep better than I will.”
“Good night, Mr. Finch.”
I’d started walking back along the jetty when he called out again. “Valdiva, do yourself a favor.” I looked back at him sitting there, pouring himself another whiskey. “Get away from here. It’s useless advice, I know. But this town is going to start getting unhealthy. And I’m not talking about any disease here. I don’t know what it is, that’s the funny thing. But when I walk ’round and look in my neighbors’ faces I start getting a bad taste in my mouth.”
“What do you think might be wrong?”
“I don’t know. Something just isn’t right. So if I were you, I’d get right away from here… as far as you can. Call it cop instinct.” He picked up the bottle as if to read the label. “Aw, what do I know?” He smiled and seemed to step up the amiable old drunk act, as if he’d suddenly had second thoughts and didn’t want me to take what he’d said at all seriously. “Forget it, Valdiva. It’s just the whiskey talking. You get yourself a good night’s sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.”
There’s nothing to worry about. I tended to believe everything the old cop told me. But I didn’t believe that last comment. There’s nothing to worry about.
With the man’s lie echoing inside my skull I walked home.
Ten
The smell of bacon woke me. Lynne had slipped in early to cook breakfast. She did this every week or so. When I pictured her husband making breakfast for their two children at the same time I pulled the sheet higher over my head.
As I heard her singing lightly to herself I imagined her moving ’round the kitchen to pour orange juice, or spoon coffee into cups. That lovely swaying walk of hers that made me think of Hawaiian dancers in grass skirts. After cutting bread she’d push her long hair back away from her face, or maybe move it with a flick of her head.
I knew if I called down to her to forget breakfast she’d come upstairs, peeling off her T-shirt as she came, exposing those firm, perfectly shaped breasts. She’d slip down the tiny skirt she wore. I’d admire those long golden legs, then pull back the sheet so she could slide into bed beside me.
That ache of longing twisted me up inside. All I had to do was take a breath, then say her name out loud. Lynne.
Instead I lay there not moving as the ritual continued. It was one of those sweeteners. Hot tasty breakfast for the town executioner. An idea cooked up by the Caucus months ago. Of course, they’d suggested it would be Lynne’s civic duty to provide anything else that I might want along with bacon, scrambled eggs and golden pancakes.
Just had to click my fingers. She’d be there naked in the doorway. Smiling sexily, she’d ask, “How do you want me? It’s your choice, Greg-anything. Just command it.”
A couple of hours later she’d walk up the hill to town, maybe a little on the sore side, so she’d discreetly carry her panties in a bag.
As I warred with my own conflicting emotions-part of me craving to call her upstairs, the other part ready to order her back to her husband-I suddenly realized that things might be set for change. Now that the town had slapped a prohibition on strangers entering the island, where did that leave me? Before they let me screen newcomers in (as the man said) my own inimitable fashion. When that monkey instinct inside a dark corner of my mind made me kill they’d accepted that it was a necessary evil. They cleared away the bloody aftermath and rewarded me with chocolate cake and sex.
But it was different now, wasn’t it? Now that they’d sealed themselves from the outside world they didn’t need my services anymore. What’s more, they’d always been suspicious of me. They tolerated me because I was essential to their own survival, that’s all. The old ex-cop’s warning came back to me from the night before. Valdiva, do yourself a favor. Get away from here… as far away as you can…
Maybe right now they were discussing the proposal on the agenda: Get rid of Valdiva… oust the monster. I could see all those gray heads nodding ’round the table as Miss Bertholly agreed: “Valdiva’s surplus to requirements now. Can anyone nominate a hunter who’s good with a rifle?”
“Get him before he figures out he’s redundant,” old man Crowther would say. “Make his whore girl go down to cook him breakfast. I know a guy who’ll blow him to pieces with a twelve-gauge while he’s still in bed. Better still, why waste good bullets? Wait until he’s screwing her and kill the pair of them with one shell.”
That mental movie of my blood hitting the bedroom wall was clear enough, I can tell you. At the sound of the door opening downstairs I bounced out of bed and went to the top of the stairs. Lynne looked startled as she opened the screen to the veranda.
“You gave me a scare, Greg,” she said, seeing the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”
I looked at the plate full of breakfast on the table. “Where are you going, Lynne?”
“Nowhere. Well… I was just throwing out this bread for the birds. You should get in the habit of checking it. It’s so stale you could crack rocks with it.” She threw the crust out onto the grass, then came back into the kitchen, smiling. “There’s chilled juice, and I made fresh pancakes. Coffee?”
“Yeah.” I looked through the window at the top of the stairs. Outside there was no one about. No Crowther narc anyway, with a shotgun. Maybe my imagination had gotten overripe. Even so…
“Greg. Relax. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Yeah, my own.
She played with her hair a little in that sexy way of hers. “Say. .. do you want breakfast in bed this morning?”
I thanked her but declined. I said I needed to make an early start cutting wood out back. She was thoroughly pleasant, even flirty, but all we did was make small talk.
The old cop swilling whiskey on the jetty had prevented me from taking the boat across the lake to Lewis to find out who it was burning the lamp up in the ruins. But now I was more than ever determined to take that trip. What’s more, this town seemed even more claustrophobic-dangerous, even-now that I realized its people didn’t need me anymore. When I walked down Main Street I knew I’d get an itch between my shoulder blades just where a rifle bullet might find a home.
Lynne nibbled toast with me as I ate her breakfast. It was good, and the temptation to suggest half an hour up on the bed took some time to quit. But eventually she said her good-byes before heading back up the hill in the direction of home. I hauled the chainsaw from the shed, topped up the tank, then fired her up. The logger’s chainsaw was muscular enough to loosen the fillings in your teeth, but it made short work of the heftier pieces of driftwood. I cut the timber into disks maybe eight inches long. Soon a blizzard of sawdust filled the air, turning the sunlight misty and golden.
I worked through the pile of timber the lake had given up (along with its more grisly fruit). I thought of the severed head with its extra set of eyes. Suddenly I could taste the scrambled egg in my mouth again with that extra spice of bile.