February Heat. Wilson Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ fee for all this, you know.”

      “Fee? I never thought of a fee.” She laughed as she said it.

      I stroked my beard. “Private investigating isn’t cheap, you know. At the least I expect you to come back down here and stay at my place while we paint the island red.”

      “You’re a nice man, Frank, but I’ll pay your fee in cash, as soon as I can afford it.”

      The tension in her voice, the set of her jaw prompted me to drop it. My own tension level was high enough. I didn’t like any of this, but I was growing to like who I was getting into it with. Keeping my mouth shut was the best move I could think of right then. We loaded the duffle bag in the back seat of the Gurgel with her and drove off.

      Ten minutes later we pulled into my driveway. It was pouring rain. Splashing through flooded potholes, the three of us soaked to the skin, wet clothes and hair clinging to us, we bellowed out the theme song to Gilligan’s Island in three-part harmony, two madmen and a madwoman screaming musical defiance at absurdity and violence.

      Halfway down the drive we stopped.

      Rumble’s head was impaled on a bamboo pole stuck into a mud puddle in the lane, his tongue sticking out, his upper lip curled back in a snarl.

      The body was hanging neck down from a rope tied around the rear legs, anchored to a nail above my front door, a pool of blood already caking beneath it. Flies were buzzing. Chance and Liz stood behind me. They were quiet, but I could hear their shaken breathing.

      Turning away, I sat on the steps of the verandah, my head buried in my hands as I wept for the little dog I had raised from a puppy, and had fought as bitter a custody battle for as most people do over children in their divorces.

      In both my Springfield apartment and on St. Ursula, Rumble had been my closest companion, running, often hopping after me on his short muscular legs as we walked through the bush. He would lie on the beach with me or hang out in bars, scamming food, wriggling, nosing, making small noises until he succeeded in needling someone into petting him or tossing a stick, a piece of broken shell or pebble for him to fetch. Chance had said on many occasions he would walk into the Tabard, the Deck, Long Johns, one or another of our favorite haunts, and someone would be sure to say, ‘Hey, where are Rumble and Frank?’

      “I’m sorry, Frank.” Liz put her hands on my shoulders, kneading them as she spoke.

      “Mean fucking thing,” Chance said. “Takes someone with rot shot right through his soul to do this.”

      Liz said, “I’m afraid this is because of me.”

      My throat tight, choking back my sobs, I didn’t say anything. Walking around the porch to the ocean side of the house, I stood in the full midday heat, the sun on my head, watching the Caribbean crash along the shore of St. Ursula. I could see the tip of the western peninsula of Great Harbor. Across Pelicans Passage, Queen Anne Island rose, quiet, unspoiled, save for the Paradise Isle complex. There is only one road there, unpaved, running for a five-mile stretch along the southern shore. The remainder of the island’s byways are for donkey and human foot traffic.

      The sun was bright on the water. I shaded my eyes.

      “Go inside, Frank.” Chance had come up behind me. Putting his hand around my shoulder, he spoke softly. “I’ll take care of him.”

      I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. “No. He’s mine. Leave me alone. You go inside.”He hugged me as I walked by him, into the house.

      The living room was dark after the sunlight, but things seemed to be in order. I had been afraid Rumble’s murderer might have trashed the house. The fact it had not happened somehow made the slaughter all the more calculated and threatening. If the inside had been vandalized it would have been easier to mark it all up to some kind of madness, even though it wouldn’t have taken away any of the pain or stopped my tears.

      I pulled the bottom drawer from my dresser. Dumping the clothes on the floor, I lined it with a quilt my great grandmother had made. Taking it outside I set it on the porch and eased Rumble’s body down from the doorjamb. It was cool. His legs were already stiff. I had to forcibly bend them to place him in the drawer.

      Wrapping the quilt around him, I sat next to the drawer for a few minutes, my hand under the cover petting his stomach as I wept. When the tears dried I picked up the drawer and carried it awkwardly down the drive, the quilt hiding its contents.

      When I reached to the pole in the driveway I set the drawer on the ground. I stared at Rumble’s face with its dull and frozen eyes. Quickly scratching the top of his nose, I put a hand on either ear and pulled upward, gently, as though a sudden jolt might hurt him.

      The head did not move. I pulled harder. The bamboo pole pulled out of the ground, the head still attached.

      I howled. I roared obscenities at the air. I stamped my feet, dancing in a circle of rage, hooting, snorting, rasping incomprehensible syllables through my throat

      When my raged eased I saw that I was sitting on the ground looking into Willis Penn’s brown eyes, my lips pressed against the top of Rumble’s head, Willis’ hands holding the opposite end of the bamboo. He twisted it gently, releasing the head.

      Opening the quilt, I placed the head in the drawer, as close to the neck as I could, and covered him again.

      “This was made to look like a West Indian warning,” Willis Penn said. “But the pole gives them away. A St. Ursulan would leave both parts of the body lying on your porch.”

      “Why would anybody do something like this? I don’t understand. He was just a dog. A sweet little dog.”

      “I do not know, Frank. But nobody is going to get near enough to your house to do you any more harm. The others and I, we will watch. This is a bad thing and I do not approve of bad things, you know.” He smiled and slipped into the thick bush along the drive, the green vegetation closing around him, the leaves still within seconds of his passing.

      I buried Rumble in a shallow grave, piling it high with rocks covered with flowers. The style of his death may have been phony West Indian, but his burial was the real thing.

      It was three o’clock when I was finished. I could have used a drink, several drinks, many drinks. I could have gone to bed, pulled the covers over my head, shut my eyes and gone away from the world for a few days. I stood over the cairn I had erected over Rumble’s grave. My breath slowed. The beating of my heart returned to normal. My raged cooled into blue ice as I thought of finding whoever had done this. Turning back toward my house where Liz and Chance stood on the gallery, watching me, I waved and walked toward them with determination. We had plans to make.

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