This is a short story I wrote this past summer.  It was my entry in a contest on a writing forum, and it won.  There was no prize or anything, it was just for fun.  Anyway it’s a sequel to “The Dark and Lonely Road,” and whether it’s canon or not I have yet to decide.  This may become the bones of a novel, or it may stand as a short story.  Anyway, I thought I’d share it since it’s been a long while since I posted anything here.  If the prose seems sparer than usual, there was a word limit and a prompt I had to work from!

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Along the Winding Way

“Well if y’don’t want to do this, don’t.”

Ethel Burkitt had come in from the garden, and stood in our kitchen sort of hipshot in her shapeless overalls and too-big flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled midway up her forearms.  Dust from the yellow earth covered her knees and backside.  It was July of 1961.  As it always did in summer, the sun had turned her light brown hair to copper-gold, and raised a dusting of freckles across her cheeks and nose.  She had a basket of squash and zucchini nestled on her hip, and her eyes were the color of cobalt as she looked up at me, twisting her mouth to one side as far as it would go.

“When you agreed to marry me—” I started, but she cut me off.

“Well for Godsakes Harry Cobgill, I didn’t marry you because you flip burgers.”

I didn’t quite know what to say.

“Do you know why you cain’t hold down a job, Heironymus?”

“Oh here we go.”

“It’s because all these damn jobs is beneath you.”

I wasn’t sure much of anything was beneath me.  I’d let my best friend take a grenade for me in Ardennes, gotten kicked out of the Army, and fired from about everything else in the last twenty-plus years.  When I met Ethel she’d asked me to help her with some bad guys causing trouble for her family, but she wound up saving herself.  Which explained why I married her, but not so much why she’d married me.

She handed me the basket of squash and poured herself a glass of lemonade.  Fawkes, our pet fox, was snuffling around my feet wondering if he liked squash.

“At any rate, Mildred has questions and she thought you might help.  I told her we’d let her know one way or t’other, so you’ll have to make up your mind.”

“Right now?”

“Well that’s up to you,” Ethel said, and shucked off the overalls, her legs sturdy and pale beneath the hem of the big flannel shirt as she headed for the shower.  I set the squash on the table and went after her.

***

Later, after lunch and some other things, I got in my red-and-black Ford Crestliner and drove over to the store in Gera to use the phone since we didn’t have one at the house.  Mildred Harris was glad I called and said she was home and I could stop by anytime that afternoon.  I bought a newspaper and an RC Cola from John because I felt guilty.

“Still got that grey fox?”

I had rescued Fawkes the same morning I met Ethel.

“Yep.  Wrecks the house, but Ethel likes him.”

John just smiled and shook his head as he made change.

I drove out to Purkins’ Corner and west on Route 3, through King George Courthouse and out past Arnold’s Corner, then north on Comorn Road, a small two-lane headed towards route 218 at Osso.  Osso was an old two-story house with a tin roof, a decorative front-facing gable, and a wide porch with ornate posts and railings, on the southeast corner of the T intersection.  A few miles further on 218 was a more modern home, a small bungalow-type house with an umbrella clothesline in the yard and a white ’59 Galaxie in the driveway.

I parked behind the Galaxie and stepped up on the porch.  I tried tapping on the stormdoor at first, then tentatively opened it and used a small brass knocker in the middle of the door.  I heard Mildred holler “just a minute” and then there was a shuffling from inside and a clank, and the door sucked open and Mildred stood there in her cat’s eye glasses and pea green dress, her dark hair piled high on top of her head.

“Oh, Harry, you made it.  Come on in.”

Her living room was full of flower arrangements people had given her, and cards, and I felt momentarily ill-prepared as I’d brought her nothing.  But I remembered then that Ethel had already done for us.  Millie led me into the kitchen, asking if she could get me anything to drink.

“Just coffee, if you have any.”

In the hallway just before the kitchen, I noticed the framed photo of Millie and Dane, her late husband, on their wedding day.  He was an awkward-looking man, bald and narrow-faced, with a black fringe and tortoise-shell frames, and a smile that somehow always looked forced.

“How are you and Ethel getting along?” Millie asked, as I lurked uncomfortably between the Frigidaire and the formica table.  “And sit down, for goodness sakes, you’re making me nervous!”

The chairs were formed of chrome tubing and vinyl padding, and the table’s legs were chrome too, as were the edges of the formica top, which was printed with little pink and blue boomerang shapes.  There was a rotating spice rack backed up against the wall, and a napkin holder and a little sugar bowl with a lid and a notch for the spoon.

“We’re good,” I said.  “Although I wonder why she puts up with me.  You know they let me go up at Horne’s.”

The percolator sighed and farted rhythmically.  She had a fancier one than mine, white with blue cornflowers stenciled on the side and a black plastic stand under it.

She laid out a small plate of cookies, poured us each a cup and sat down across from me.

“How about you, Millie?  I was sorry to hear about Dane.”

“Thank you,” she said, “for agreeing to help me out.”

“Always, but I have to warn you, I’m not much of a detective, whatever Ethel may have told you.”

“Stop doing that,” Millie said.

“Excuse me?”

“Stop putting yourself down.”

“But I’m really not a detective,” I said.  “though I occasionally detect.”

“That isn’t the point, Hieronymus.  Do you respect your wife?”

“You know I do.”

“Then respect the fact that she sees your worth.  Even if you don’t.”

I sensed I had touched a nerve.  I’ve always been bad at people.

“You’re right, Millie.  I’m sorry.  What is it I can do for you?”

“It’s about the circumstances of Dane’s passing.”

“I didn’t know there was anything unusual.”

“Well, Sheriff Powell ruled out foul play, and the doctors did say it was a heart attack, but I just can’t help thinking…”

I didn’t prod her.  I didn’t really know what to say, or what to ask, and it was hard to imagine what she was getting at.  She’d come home from helping her sister with a new baby out in Culpeper, to find Dane laying across the bed in his boxers and undershirt.  His pants were folded over a chair and the closet door was open.  There was nothing too peculiar about any of it, except that Dane’s heart had stopped.

“Well he was on the wrong side of the bed,” Millie said.  “And I’ve never seen him put his pants over the chair like that, and why do that with the closet door open, that’s where he usually put them.  The hanger wasn’t even out.  And…Hieronymus you mustn’t tell anyone, but there were two glasses in the sink, and I just have a bad feeling, and I’m so embarrassed…” she choked up a little and I took her hand.

“It’s probably nothing, Mill.”

And I figured that was probably the truth.  Dane wasn’t the type, and I said so.

“There wasn’t lipstick on one of the glasses or anything?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Well there you go, they were probably both his.  I don’t want to take your money on this, Mildred, it isn’t worth it.”

“Now damn it, you will take my money and you will do this for me, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I don’t feel good about this, Millie.”

“It would put my mind at ease.”

Assuming I was right about Dane, sure.  I exhaled.

“If you’re sure this is what you want.”

She said it was, and she gave me an advance, which I tried like hell to refuse.  I even tried to forget it when I left, but she caught me and pressed it back into my hand.  The only thing more embarrassing than receiving charity was taking money from a widow.

I had a list of Dane’s friends that Mildred had supplied me, but like a lot of people in the county back then I didn’t own a telephone.  Rather than exploiting John to call them, I figured I’d pay them personal visits when they weren’t at work.  But since I wanted to spend the evening at home, I decided I’d start in the morning.  Plus, it would be Saturday and I’d have all day to do interviews.  So I drove back home, fixed supper for Ethel and myself, and then we sat out on the porch drinking coffee in the shade, and watched the dragonflies glistening like precious jewels as they hovered in the evening sun.

***

The next morning I woke early, Ethel’s head on my chest and one pale leg across my waist.  The faint strawberry fragrance of her hair took me back to a day nearly two years before, when I first understood that I never wanted to be without her.  I extricated myself from her sleeping embrace, put on pants and made my way to the kitchen.  I got the percolator going while I diced a couple of potatoes and a small yellow onion, and fried them up with a big hunk of butter and a sprinkling of Sauer’s coarse ground black pepper.  The potatoes took about fifteen minutes, so while that was going I opened a can of hash and scrambled a couple of eggs.  The smell brought Ethel out in a little while, wearing one of my shirts.  She put Fawkes out in his pen, then said grace over our meal.

I had to shower alone this time while Ethel was out in the garden.  Our house was a century-old farmhouse, one of those plain-faced jobs with a tin roof, three windows across the upper floor and two on the lower, with the door in the middle and a wide, sagging gallery.  The yard had once been overgrown with wildflowers and weeds, the fences draped with Virginia creeper, but Ethel and I were reclaiming the farmland and expanding our crops.  The driveway was a mile long out to Gera Road, and west on Gera led to Millbank and I turned right, going north until I came out between the school and St. Anthony’s church, then turned right and joined Route 3 near Willow Hill, just short of Arnold’s Corner.  At the corner I took a right onto route 206 and wound along the tree-lined way until I passed the Weedonville Post Office and pulled onto Eden Drive.  Eden Estates was a new subdivision built to accommodate the influx of people coming to work at the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren.

Maynard Carter was a mathematician.  I’m not sure what he did as a civilian employee of the Navy, but I’m sure it paid pretty well and probably had to do with blowing stuff up, which seems like good work if you can get it.  Two little boys were running around the yard with bath towels tucked into the neck of their t-shirts, arms outstretched like George Reeves on television.  The one was fussing to the other that Batman couldn’t fly and he’d have to stay behind.  There was a lot of crying.

“Hey mister, can Batman fly?”

“I don’t think so.  I think Captain Marvel could, he could do about anything Superman does.”

“Captain who?”

“Uh, he was this kid who yelled ‘Shazam!’ and lightning hit him and he turned into a big Superman guy who looked like Fred MacMurray?”

“Wow!”  the kid yelled.  “SHAZAM!”  And he took off running after his brother.

My day was unlikely to get better from here, but I stepped up on the porch and rang the doorbell anyway.  The house was a brick rancher with a small front stoop and brown shingles.  It was so new the paint on the shutters was fresh and the mortar between the bricks looked clean and smooth.

The woman who answered the door looked tired, and a little frazzled, and she did not invite me in.  Instead, when I asked after Mr. Carter, she summoned him and disappeared into the house.

“We’re not interested in buying anything, mister.”

Maynard’s hair was a tangled mass that didn’t look like it’d seen a comb in a week.  His khakis fit him poorly, bagging off his ass and covering his slippers, and he had a short-sleeved button-down with a pen in the breast pocket and crumbs down the front.  His cheeks were rosy and his smile was strangely dark.

“Well I’m not selling anything, Mr. Carter.  My name’s Harry Cogbill, I’m working for Mildred Harris.”

“Oh.  Yeah, poor Dane.”

“Poor Millie,” I said.

“Yeah, true, I guess Dane isn’t the one hurting.”

“I hate to bring this up, but Millie’s a little concerned that Dane might have been entertaining a guest when he died.”

“What, like a friend?”

“Well, for example.  Maybe a special friend.”

“What, like a work friend?”

“Like a lady friend, Maynard.”

“I never thought Dane was the type.”

“Me neither.  Still, what if he was?  Can you think of anyone, maybe from work, that he might have been seeing?  Did he have a secretary, or…?”

“No.  I mean Christ, socializing?  Who’s got time for that?  Let alone fraternizing.  Dane?”

“He didn’t talk to anybody?”

“I don’t watch what people do.  It’s boring.”

***

Shirley Dodson was the secretary for the department where Dane had worked on base.  She and her husband had a farm out near Rollins Fork, on the east end of the county where Route 3 crossed into Westmoreland.  I almost missed the turn, then pulled off onto a dirt drive flanked by pens where horses grazed, tails and ears flicking the flies away, raising their heads to watch the car as I drove by.

I found myself walking out to the barn with Ms. Dodson while she fed the horses.

“Dane Harris didn’t have a woman over when he died, Mr. Cogbill, I’ll guarantee you that.”

“You seem awfully sure.”

“I am sure.  Dane Harris didn’t like women.”

“He was sure married to one.”

“Mr. Cogbill, it’s nineteen-hundred and sixty-one.  Just because a fella’s married to a woman doesn’t mean he’s sexually attracted to her.”

I had to admit it explained a lot.  But it was 1961, and regardless of what Shirley Dodson believed, most folks didn’t think about that kind of thing.

“I’m not sure that’s something I want to take back to Millie.”

“I wouldn’t either.  It’s beyond the point of mattering now, isn’t it?”

Shirley Dodson was a practical woman.  I liked her.

“But how do you know?”

“You know who you need to talk to, Mr. Cogbill?  A fellow by the name of Maynard Carter.”

“I just came from Carter’s, ma’am.”

Ms. Dodson regarded me like a teacher patiently regarding a slow child.

“Oh shit.”  I left her there, turned my car around fast as I could in front of the house, and raced in a trail of dust back out to state route 3 toward Office Hall, then up 301 to the east end of Eden Drive.  When I got back to Carter’s house, the car was gone, but the kids were still in the yard.  The tired-looking woman came to the door when I rang.

“Mrs. Carter, is your husband around?”

“No.  I don’t know what you said to him earlier but he’s a good provider and he means well.”

“Where’s he go when he’s upset?”

I found the car right where she said, out at Westmoreland State Park, down by the waterfront on the Potomac.  He was nowhere around.  I took off down the beach and after a while I found him sitting on the rocks, with a steak knife in his hands, contemplating the river.

“Carter.”

“What now, you haven’t finished ruining me yet?”

“I haven’t done anything to you, Maynard.”

“Maybe not yet.  What happens when you tell Mildred about Dane and me?”

“What’s the knife for?”

“Lillian and the kids’ll have the money.”

“I haven’t told them, Maynard.  I don’t care if you’re gay.  It’s not my business.  You don’t want to do this.”

“It isn’t logical, that I’m the way I am.  I’m a mathematician, I’m accustomed to things making sense.”

“Okay, so some things aren’t logical.  I can’t solve your problems for you, but I won’t make them worse.  Okay?  I’ll tell Millie there was nothing to learn.  Dane was alone.”

It took some work, but finally he believed me, and threw the knife away.

***

I kept my word to Maynard Carter.  I tried to give Mildred Harris her money back on the grounds that I’d found nothing, but she wouldn’t take it and I finally had to drive home feeling like I’d ripped her off.  That night Ethel and I took our coffee on the porch, watching the lightning bugs in the field, the sound of cicadas like waves breaking across the trees.

“I don’t think you ripped her off, Cogbill.  She wanted peace of mind, and I reckon you gave it to her.”

“On a lie.”

“Well it ain’t a perfect world.”

“Parts of it are.”

“I do like this part very damned much,” Ethel said.

“Me too.”

At length I said, “You were right.  I don’t want to flip burgers or anything else.  I just thought you deserved the stability.”

“I wanted stability I wouldn’t have chose you, Hieronymus.  Quit trying to be something you ain’t.  Just accept it, you’re a detective.”

“You’re right,” I said.  “I am.  I want to do this.”