“Chepachet?” I asked, and she shrugged.
“Sure. Not all that far from here.”
“Well, okay, but the tree was news tome. Want another beer?” I asked her, and she glanced at her bottle, still almost a third full, but gone warm, and she nodded. I stood and walked across the room to the icebox.
“Old man Blanchard didn’t bother mentioning it, before you signed the lease?” she asked.
“No. Must have slipped his mind,” I said, opening the bottles and returning to my seat, handing one to her. “I had no idea I’d rented a house on a haunted farm. Or that the last tenant here was writing a book about the tree, then went and hung himself from it.
”“Ah, yeah.That would be Chuck Harvey,” Constance said. “Took a couple of classes from him, when I was an undergrad at URI. Again, not exactly a big fucking secret. I always did think the dude was, you know, sort of out to lunch.”
I let my eyes stray towards the window, towards the huge green canopy of that tree moving slowly in the afternoon breeze, recalling my walk the day before and how I’d found absolutely nothing the least bit out of the ordinary about the oak. How I’d almost dozed off on that big flat stone at its base.
“He was writing a book about it when he died,” I said again.
“Really? I never heard that part of it. I don’t think it made the news.”
“So this happened before you moved out to LA?”
“Yep,” she nodded. “I only went out there late last summer, near the end of August. No idea what I was thinking, really. I knew someone from college who wanted to split the cost of an apartment in Silver Lake, and there really wasn’t anything here tying me down. But Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I swear to fuck, Los Angeles is the worst. It’s like someone decided to build a concentration camp for ass-holes or something, hoping the earthquakes and wildfires would clean up the gene pool.”
I told her I’d never been very fond of the place myself, and she started in explaining to me about the friend from college, another painter, and how this girl had gotten mixed up with a heroin dealer, how it turned out the roommate was a junkie herself. After all manner of drug-related Sturm und Drang,Constance had decided it was time to get out, and so here she was, drinking Narragansett Beer with me at the kitchen table. “I think they’re all probably in jail by now,” she told me. “In jail or dead. I’m just glad to be away from there, clear and free of that bunch of jerk-offs and needle freaks. Maybe now I can get back to work.”
And here she stopped and squinted at me through a gray veil of cigarette smoke. “So, he was writing a book, yeah? About the red tree? I wouldn’t have guessed there was enough material there for a whole damn book.”
I shrugged and pointed to the manuscript box. “Well, he seemed to think so. I found it in the basement. Rather, I found what there is of it. He died without finishing it.”
She took a last puff from her Camel, then crushed the butt out in the ashtray. “No shit? I thought that was maybe something you were writing. It just got left here, after he died?”
“That would seem to be the case, though I’ve talked with someone at the university who’s taking it off my hands next week. Someone who used to work with him, I think. He has a daughter, but she doesn’t seem to want anything to do with him.”
“Didn’t know that, either,” Constance said. “In school, we always assumed he was gay.”
“Maybe he was. He was certainly divorced.”
“Weird shit,” she sighed, and sipped at her beer. “So, Sarah Crowe, tell me. Are you the sort who believes in ghosts and cursed trees and the like?” she asked. “Does it make you nervous, all these skeletons in the closet?”
“No, I do not believe in ghosts,” I replied. “Or Rhode Island vampires,or swamp monsters. I’d be lying, though, if I said learning about Harvey’s suicide didn’t. ” and I trailed off, searching for words that wouldn’t be taken the wrong way, because suddenly I found myself caring about this stranger’s opinion of me. “It was unsettling,” I said. “And then, finding that manuscript, hidden away down in the basement. ”
“You think Blanchard intentionally hid the manuscript?”
“Sorry, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Just a figure of speech,” and see there what I mean about being careful of the words I choose, because I hadn’t meant that at all.
“Don’t you wonder, though, why he didn’t just toss it out, burn it or something?” Constance Hopkins asked, and now there was a faintly mischievous glint in her lazy eyes. “I mean, why save it? Why go to the trouble to stash it away in the basement?”
“You got me,” I said. “I don’t write mystery novels.”
“No, that’s right. You don’t, do you?” And as quickly as it had appeared, the glint faded from her rusty eyes. She lit another cigarette, and offered another to me, but I declined.
“How about you?” I asked, and, with hindsight, I see that the question was not merely an act of reciprocal curiousity, but a response to what had felt like a challenge or taunt from a woman almost fifteen years my junior.
“What about me what?”
“Are you,Constance Hopkins, the sort who believes in ghosts. or cursed trees, for that matter? Are you the sort who goes in for all this Fortean nonsense?”
She peered back at me through a thick cloud of smoke, looking confused. “Fortean? You just lost me.”
“You mean to say, you’ve never read Charles Fort, king of the cranks, archenemy of all that is rational, self-professed defender of so-called damned phenomena excluded by orthodox science? Rains of blood, fish and frogs falling from the sky, unexplained disappearances, mystery animals, and what have you?”
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Not ringing any bells.”
“No problem,” I replied. “It’s probably for the best. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question.”
“Do I believe in ghosts?” she smiled.
“Yes. That’s the one.”
She continued to smile, and I did my best not to stare at that chipped tooth while she seemed to gaze through me, at least through the surface of me. Finally she nodded, very slightly, her smile widening just a bit, and shrugged.
“It’s complicated. Maybe we should come back to that question another time,” she said. “I expect I ought to wander upstairs and see just what I’ve gotten myself into,” and she looked at the ceiling.
“Sure,” I replied. “No hurry,” but there was an odd and unmistakable pang of disappointment, that she hadn’t answered the question. For a moment, I thought she was going to leave the table, but then she started talking again, and the conversation turned to more mundane affairs — just how much she dreaded going up those stairs to the attic, because she knew what a dump it would be. How there was a sleeping bag and an air mattress out in the car that would have to do, as far as bedding was concerned. How she hoped we didn’t both freeze to death when winter came around.
“I try not to think about the winter,” I said, truthfully. “I’ve never lived anywhere cold in my whole life.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “it’s not so bad. Though it tends to get colder here than it does nearer to the sea. Sometimes, we get mild winters.”
“Other times?”
She winked, and then blew a series of perfect concentric smoke rings before replying. “Well, I was born during the Blizzard of 1978. It snowed for thirty-three hours straight, drifts fifteen feet high some places. Hurricane-force winds all across Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but the worst of it was right here in Providence County. It was a hell of a mess, and a lot of people died. My mother used to say, ‘You came in like a lion, Connie, riding on that wind.’ ” She laughed then, and I think I laughed, too. I know I was regretting not having accepted that second cigarette.