Sewerville Read online

  Based on the evidence, Karen Sumner reasoned that this road kill had been there at least a little while, plenty long enough to have drawn the attention of some official or another.

  It seemed only logical that somebody would notice there was a damn dead cow right there in the damn middle of town. You would think they would do something about that. You would think.

  She sat there for another minute, hands rested on top of the steering wheel. No Sewardville official came by, which was not really a surprise. The sheriff’s department operated on its own schedule, Karen knew that as well as or better than anyone. That schedule was never exactly tight to begin with and surely even more out of whack with Sheriff Slone laid up in the hospital. Hell, half the whole town operated at the whims of her father as much as anything else.

  Something needed to be done, though, so she picked up her cell phone and dialed the county dispatch.

  “Seward County Dispatch,” answered a slow drawl of a voice. “What’s your emergency?” A nasally banjo twang, like something out of an old hillbilly radio comedy, Swampgrass or Lum and Abner. It belonged to Lou Clark, the oldest deputy in the department, who served under the last six sheriffs. He was five foot five and a hundred and forty pounds. The voice fit him.

  “Lou? It’s Karen.”

  “Hey there. How’s your brother?”

  “Dad says he’s fine. I’m on my way to see him now. Lou, there’s a dead cow on Church Street.”

  Silence. She pictured the dispatcher sliding his mesh baseball cap back, scratching his head, thinking about it. She thought she heard him chuckle, but wasn’t completely sure.

  “Lou?”

  “A dead cow. Really?” He didn’t believe her. How could he not believe her? Had nobody reported this already?

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “How dead, do ya think?”

  “Pretty dead, Lou.”

  “Well, huh. What about that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You think you could send somebody out here to do something about this?”

  “Well, I guess so.”

  Karen heard Lou take a long, slow breath and imagined him thumbing through a departmental procedure manual. A few more empty seconds passed.

  “Where abouts exactly is this cow?” he said, finally.

  “Near the Kwik Mart,” Karen said. “Just send somebody. There’s a dead cow on Church Street. It’s pretty hard to miss.”

  She hung up without waiting for him to answer. She shoved the Escalade into gear and drove around the animal, as everyone else had apparently done before her. Surely they could get that cleaned up now. She’d done her part, made them aware.

  Samantha shifted in the seat and looked over at her mother. “What happened to that cow?” she asked again.

  “Somebody ran over it,” said Karen.

  “With a truck?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or a car?”

  “Maybe a truck, maybe a car. I can’t really tell. Are you ready to get some flowers now?” Soon they were headed to the local florist, and the cow was a memory.

  THE NEWS PEOPLE

  Put the quarter machines and the video poker in the supply room. The reporters will be there. The TV people. After everything else, I’d hate for us to go down over a goddamn quarter machine.

  Walt’s words rang shrill in the dingy air, as Boone sat in his truck staring at the concrete blocks of the Bears Den. This was the menial reality of his day, no matter what happened, even the day after he shot his own brother at the behest of Walt Slone.

  Jimmy loved the quarter machines, Boone recalled. He’d put at least ten dollars a day into the one at the Bears Den.

  Boone got out of his vehicle and slammed the door shut. Yellow police tape still ringed the parking lot of the Bears Den, further separating the gravel area where Jimmy shot Sheriff Slone and Deputy Caudill. A white news van from WTVL–TV Live on Your Side sat near the building’s front door, which hung open enough that Boone saw a young lady reporter interviewing Lorna near the corner of the bar. A tall, fat guy with a black mustache and a University of Kentucky baseball cap manned the video camera. The reporter wore a navy pantsuit and matching high heels from her favorite mall department store, and the thought crossed Boone’s mind that she had bought the outfit especially for this occasion. Her long blonde tresses seemed especially well–coiffed, too.

  Boone walked up the lot, into the Den, his eyes trained on the reporter. His mind ticked back and forth, back and forth.

  He pivoted towards the reporter. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re doing an interview,” she said, looking like she expected that Boone would simply walk away. But instead, he grabbed her microphone and slammed it to the ground, fast and angry, like he was pulling a viper from a demon’s hand.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn about your interview!” Boone snapped. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m with WTVL, from Lexington.”

  “I didn’t ask who you were with,” Boone said flatly. “I asked who you are.”

  No answer. The reporter stared at the microphone, and at her cameraman, who just stood there in no hurry to do anything.

  “What’s your name, lady?” Boone asked again.

  The reporter kept quiet, blinked at the cameraman in such a way that said she clearly wanted him to keep quiet, as well.

  Boone glared at her. He knew plenty enough about her already, having seen her live reports on a nightly basis. Her name was Carla Haney, and she was a reporter from WTVL–TV, the NBC affiliate from Lexington. In fact, their paths crossed on occasion; Boone firmly believed that WTVL kept Carla Haney and her news van on call, just in case something newsworthy happened in Sewardville. Sometimes it was big news – one night a robbery, one night a warehouse fire, one night a busted prostitution ring. Sometimes it was not such big news. Whatever, whatever.

  Boone had the general impression that she enjoyed sharing their bad news. Every time any scrap of a news story appeared in Seward County, she buzzed into town and flitted about like a prom queen candidate. Boone guessed that it must have taken her about four and a half seconds to get across the county line once news got out that two local police officers had been shot.

  He snapped his fingers in front of the girl’s face. “I said, what’s your name?”

  She pointed at the camera and told the man working with her, “Turn it off.”

  Lorna frowned, and slunk away, back to cleaning beer mugs.

  Carla Haney, WTVL Live On Your Side picked her microphone up. Hot blood flashed behind her eyes. A sense of bold indignation reared up in her chest. “You’d better hope this still works,” she said to Boone. “Because if it doesn’t, your little act will cost you about three hundred bucks.”

  “Fuck you and fuck your three hundred bucks. How about that?” Boone shrugged.

  The camera man tugged at the bill of his cap and looked for a second like he might take a step towards Boone, but Carla Haney, WTVL Live On Your Side held up one hand and stopped him.

  “Get in the van, Bruce,” she said.

  Bruce the camera man took on a cloudy, confused look. “What are you talking about? Who is this asshole?”

  “I said, get in the van, Bruce,” she repeated.

  “Yeah. Get in the fuckin’ van, Bruce,” said Boone.

  Bruce lowered his camera, still confused, and now more than just a bit embarrassed. But he didn’t say anything else. The way Boone cocked his head just a certain way told Bruce the camera man he should shut his mouth and walk away. And walk away Bruce did, towards the white news van with the big red–and–blue station logo painted on both sides.

  Carla Haney crossed her arms, patiently awaited Boone’s next words. He didn’t immediately offer any. Instead, he let the uncomfortable moment sink into her skin. She fidgeted, anticipating more confrontation, and he enjoyed that. One thing he knew about all the reporters that came from Lexington and Louisville, with their satellite trucks and their cameras and
their microphones and their cheap Macy’s suits and their wannabe stylish hair and their sense of utter snot superiority: these people felt like they walked above the simple folk of Sewardville.

  Boone looked down at these reporters the way they looked down at him. Their diplomas and white–collar jobs and big fancy subdivision might hold sway at the country clubs, but meant nothing east of Interstate 64.

  “I’m surprised you weren’t here before they got the sheriff loaded in the ambulance,” he said with a sneer. “You people never miss a good opportunity to take a swipe at mountain folks.”

  “You people?”

  “Yeah, you people. You motherfuckers. The news. Whatever the you call yourselves. I figured soon as you caught wind there might be a dead body in Sewerville, you’d all be movin’ faster than cats coverin’ up shit to get up here and stick a camera in somebody’s face.”

  Carla Haney closed her eyes, reopened them, looked away towards the open door of the Bears Den. Boone thought she might head for the safety of the news van, but she didn’t. Instead she only nodded her head, carefully waiting as the proper words danced into alignment at the edge of her tongue.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally.

  “I’m just here to do a story on the shooting of Sheriff Slone and one of his deputies. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to work.”

  Boone swished saliva around in his mouth. He yanked the reporter’s microphone away again, slammed it on the ground, and stomped on it, until the microphone broke into three distinct pieces which he angrily kicked out the door and into the gravel parking lot.

  When that was done, he turned around and once more faced Carla Haney WTVL Live On Your Side. She stood there, hands balled into fists, one resting on each hip.

  He said, “Fuck off.”

  This time, she did. Carla Haney stalked out of the Bears Den, casting a witch’s stare at Boone as she went, but he couldn’t care less.

  When she was gone, he walked to the bar, sat down on exactly the same stool where his brother had been just the night before, and stared at the little television that rested to the left of the liquor shelves.

  Lorna came over and poured Boone a pint of Budweiser. “You handled that awful well,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Boone. He gripped the cold glass, turned it in his hand, but didn’t lift it off the bar. The only thing that came to mind was, “They see the quarter machines?”

  “Nah,” said Lorna. “Those people come in from Lexington, they think they own the town, you know?”

  “I guess so,” said Boone.

  “Don’t think she’ll be back for a while, though.”

  “I guess not.”

  Lorna reached under the bar, got a towel, wiped down the wood surface. Boone finished his beer, then went into the supply closet and emptied the three quarter machines of everything they had, which as it turned out, meant two hundred and twelve quarters, four Canadian nickels, and some burnt–out marijuana roaches that somebody stuffed in the catch basin. He put the money in a plastic bag, threw the roaches in the trash.

  When Karen got back to the great Slone house on the hill, she found her father out back. Walt stood at the border of the little cemetery, a solitary figure in the wet grass. He leaned against the white pickets, and gazed at the black marble monolith that was his wife’s headstone. He didn’t look sad, he didn’t look contemplative. He looked like he was there. Just there.

  Karen had watched her father visit the grave almost every morning since her mother died, had even joined him on many of those mornings, and never once had she heard him say a single word. Instead, the whole time, he stood there, and stared at the smooth black marble marker of his beloved. Sometimes they would be there for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for even longer. And no matter how long he stood, Karen never said a word.

  And he stood there now.

  Karen figured he’d come out here soon after she pulled out of the driveway that morning. She approached the gravesite, carrying a new bouquet of white Mountain orchids, the beautiful flowers that grew only on the hillsides of Seward County, whose long white petals drooped downward and came together at the ends like tiny hands clasped in prayer. Little Samantha carried a bouquet, too.

  The mother and the daughter opened the wrought–iron gate, walked to the headstone, and put the flowers in the round vase at the bottom of the stone, carved from the same piece of marble.

  “Where you been?” Walt said.

  “I told you, I was going to get some orchids for Mom.”

  “Well, yeah. I see you did. They look fine, mighty fine.”

  “Mom loves them.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  He bit his lip. The wind blew.

  “Did you see Boone?” he said, from the bottom of his mouth like it was an afterthought.

  Karen stood up straighter, surprised. “No. Should I have seen Boone?”

  “I told him to go move the quarter machines at the Bears Den. The news is in town. I told you they’d come. If they saw those quarter machines, we’re fucked.”

  “They won’t see the quarter machines.”

  “Those news people, they look for stuff like that.”

  “They got bigger things on their mind, Dad.”

  “You say that.” He turned and spit across the fence, back into the yard. Not near his wife’s grave. “All I’m saying is, we got to be careful with people from the TV running around. You know how that is.”

  “I do know how that is,” she said.

  He nodded in agreement, with her and with himself.

  It seemed like a good time to change the subject. “I got some flowers for John, too,” she said. “We can go see him in a little while.”

  “Don’t want to,” said Walt. “Not until he wakes up. There’s no point going down to that hospital until he wakes up.”

  Karen patted her father on the back and kissed his cheek. “We’re going back in the house,” she said, and picked up Samantha so the girl could hug her grandfather. When the hug was delivered and the child’s feet were back on the ground, the three of them stood still, looking at their reflections in the polished black marble of Ellen Slone’s headstone. Her headstone, which cost more than many houses in Seward County.

  Walt’s gaze shifted a few times – the stone, the flowers, the dewy ground, Samantha – and then settled on Karen again.

  The daughter and the granddaughter waited for a few seconds to see if he would leave with them. When they realized he wasn’t leaving the gravesite just yet, Karen and Samantha walked back out through the gate and headed up the hill. Samantha bounded ahead with a playful laugh, and her mother let her go.

  DEATH

  Boone left the Bears Den with a sack full of quarters. From there, he headed for the Faulkner Brothers Funeral Home, the only funeral home in Sewardville. He’d said good–bye to all four of his grandparents there, his father, too, and now he had another family member that required a final sermon. Harley Faulkner ran the place now. He did a lot of work for Walt, too.

  Not feeling very comfortable, Boone wandered in the front door. He never felt comfortable here, whether Harley had someone out for showing or not.

  The parlor stood empty, an eerie sight, given that Boone normally experienced it filled with mourners and floral arrangements. The small room with pink pastel walls looked ready to go, just waiting for the next unfortunate soul that came through the doors ready for their final send–off into the great Who Knows.

  A worrisome notion kicked around in Boone that he might actually be the one next in line, that he’d arrived just a bit too early, like coming in on a surprise birthday party while the guests were still blowing up balloons. Maybe the surprise would be his; maybe ol’ Harley was getting ready for a funeral all right – Boone’s.

  A wicked shudder knifed up his back; he glanced over his shoulder, looking for men with weapons, waiting to jump him. But he saw nothing.

  Boo
ne descended a flight of creaky wooden stairs, into the basement. There he found a tall, lithe man with wild white hair down to his shoulders. Harley Faulkner, the chief mortician and last of the original Faulkner brothers, bent over in quiet preparation for his next funeral service. His muscles clung tight to the skeleton underneath, even in middle age. He wore khaki slacks and golf shirts every day, except when meeting families of the deceased and during the actual funeral proceedings – in those times, he wore either a blue or a brown suit, but never a black one. Never, unless his own family member lay in their final repose. Harley deemed the wearing of black at funerals appropriate only for friends and family of the dear departed; for everyone else, it was bad luck. Better to wear another color than to test all fate and superstition.

  Hearing someone on the steps, Harley called out, “Who is it?”

  “It’s just me,” said Boone.

  Harley said, “You ain’t supposed to be here while I’m working. Only people can be down here when I’m working are me and the goner.”

  He always called it a “goner” when in familiar company. Not the corpse, not the body, not the dead, not the departed. The goner. Total detachment from human tragedy was a requirement of the job.

  A seventeen year old girl lay on the steel slab, covered in a white sheet from the neck down; the skin that was visible looked gray as rainclouds. Her waxy hair, long and straight, spilled over the table’s edge, the dingy color of river mud. Boone noted with mild amusement that she’d dyed a pink streak in the front, centered above her forehead. She had two noticeable bald spots – one behind her right ear, one at the crown of her head – as though she’d yanked her own hair out in an angry fit. Her right arm was exposed, also hanging over, pockmarked with sores.

  He saw nothing in the girl’s face that lit any flames of recognition. She just laid there, the goner of the day.

  “Who is this?” Boone asked, on the approach.

  “Shelley Coldiron,” Harley muttered, without looking up from his business. He wore latex gloves, adjusted the fit while he trimmed her fingernails.