My Wholly Heartbreaking Heretic by Danielle Peterson
I drove back to the airport and called an associate of mine back in Reno and told him that due to a family emergency I would be taking time off. He agreed to pick up my clients for the time being. As I hung up I hoped that I wouldn’t be completely engulfed with this and that I would be able to return to my satisfactorily average lifestyle once I had finished.
I took a flight to Wichita that evening. I’ve never spent much time in Kansas, I haven’t got much of an opinion on the state. It’s flat. Lots of farms. Smells nice in the morning, but I’ve always had a soft spot for prairie air. It reminds me of a short lifetime we spent together in South Dakota, of a few years of happiness before it all came crashing down. Ah, how my heart weeps for what could have been.
Unless this Eugene Muller had a damn good explanation for pilfering Ma Bichette’s apparently precious video reel (which was possible, after all, she’s a devious con artist and it’s not entirely unlikely that he did have a good reason) I would be harvesting him in a little more than a week. At least, I hoped to have tracked him down by then. I had no experience with investigation, aside from what I’d seen in films and television. I had no authority to back up my words and since I look like a philosophy major fresh out of college and not a grizzled war vet, I did not think I would be able to intimidate people into telling me where Eugene was. I needed a lie to legitimize my hunt. On second though, ‘lie’ is too strong of a word. I needed a cover story.
It was late when I got in and I spent a sleepless night in a hotel, lying in the bathtub, wondering if Ma Bichette really was resentful enough towards me to end it once and for all. The thought of really losing her forever and having to spent the rest of my long days on Earth alone made me shiver no matter how much hot water I poured into the increasingly cold water. If I didn’t have her, I had nothing. With her there were no lies and false names and subterfuge and “oh, darling, I don’t know why I have blood all over my saddle” poker faces. Even if I was no longer attracted to her sexually I would still be attracted to her everything else, the everything she is to me.
I should have been coming up with a plan of action, but all I could process was the gripping nausea in my stomach over the memory of Ma Bichette turning and running from me. She had never done that before. Yes, she had slapped me before and told me I was a bastard and a monster and all manner of unpleasant truths, but she had never just given up on chastising me. I worried that something had finally broken in her, that her ceaseless optimism had been exhausted and now all that remained was unbearable despair. And I had done it to her.
I lowered my head under the waterline. When my lungs are filling with water it hurts for a while (oddly enough it stings the back of my eyes) but once they are completely full the discomfort ends. I attempted to conjure up some sort of plausible back story for looking for Muller but Ma Bichette had given me no additional information on him. I called her when I first got into Wichita to get more info, but the call was received by one of her bootlickers, who informed me that she didn’t wish to speak to me. I rebutted that he wasn’t supposed to be in the house and he promptly hung up.
That set my resolve. I was going to be the conquering hero, not one of her sniveling peons. I was going to be the one who Got Things Done. I was going to prove that she needed me and that she had no choice but to love me.
It was going to be about a half-day’s drive and I therefore direly needed some rest, especially considering I hadn’t slept at all the previous night. Luckily for me, drugs still work (remind me to tell you sometime about how much opium you can take when you can’t die) so I inhaled from a cloth soaked with ether until I passed out. Old-fashioned, yes, and remarkably dangerous for everyone else, but it does the job well enough. If the fact that I use drugs from time to time is what shocks you about me, well, you’ve got your priorities severely out of order.
I regained consciousness midmorning the next day, although I laid on my side on the bed for a while and stared out the window while floating in and out of coherent thought and lucidity. Aside from the occasional drug induced hallucination (that particular incident I saw multiple blue and red orbs flitting about my room like bees after I awoke, but much like being undead, psychedelic hallucinations are something that you learn to manage after a while) I readily admit that I am not as…well, inventive is a nice word for it, lets go with that. I am not nearly as “inventive” as Ma Bichette. I approach things with steady and deliberate reasoning. Dighton is a small town and unless he’d been exiled the residents were likely to circle the wagons around him if I, as an outsider, posed a threat. I could not make my rouse too specific either, since I didn’t know much other than Ma Bichette had enraptured him at some point last year and he had that reel of hers.
Muller wouldn’t have left and joined a counterculture cult, even on a temporary basis, if he was satisfied with his home life. Hell, I was a young man myself once, and I rejected my father’s way of life for a comparatively exciting career in law and life in the city. There was no guarantee that Muller was even in Dighton, of course, and it was just as likely as not that no one knew hide nor hair of him. Considering that I had no other clues, however, it looked like I was going to have to make it work somehow. I have every confidence in myself and my abilities, issues with Ma Bichette not withstanding. If I had to tear apart everyone in Kansas to please her, well, so be it.
A decent ether binge works up quite an appetite in me, and after a large breakfast of hotcakes and fatback I began the drive with yet another rental car. I decided to pose as a young man with wanderlust who had met Muller during his voyages. I was going to say that I knew him in California, as they all seemed to have drifted through there at some point or another. I was just going to say that I knew Muller, that I was driving from California back home to Wichita, and I thought I’d pop in and say hello. Simple enough, but the simple things work best.
I was a bit concerned that I didn’t have that typical counterculture look down. I shave everyday (long gone are the days of the elaborate sideburns and assorted whiskers, which is just as well because I’ve never been able to cultivate much of a beard anyways) and I didn’t own any clothing that made me appear to be a member of the counterculture. I had jeans and a white T-shirt on under a flannel shirt and heavy denim coat for that trip. I didn’t look like a hippie because I am sure as shit not one.
Perhaps you find yourself wondering what I do look like. Fair enough, we’ve come this far together and I suppose it’s not a secret or anything. Describing one’s self objectively is a challenge, but I shall do my best. First off, I’m just shy of six feet tall, medium build (which means I am neither fat nor thin), no identifying scars or tattoos. I’ve got light brown wavy hair, which is always styled as fashion dictates. One nice thing about eternal youth is that I never fret about going grey or bald. I’ve got hazel eyes and, well, all the features that a face usually has. It’s hard to describe a nose or a mouth unless there is something wrong with it, and thankfully that isn’t the case with myself. Ma Bichette says I have a squinty look about me, but I don’t really know how that translates. Narrow eyes? Whatever. I’m pureblood French, both my parents emigrated from France (my father from the Saintonge region, but I do not know about my mother). I would be hesitant to describe myself as handsome, both since that sounds particularly vain and because I don’t know what counts as handsome anymore, but I’m not terrible looking. Ma Bichette has called me more or less everything on the list of awful things, from cheat to monster to pervert, but never ugly, so I would presume that the thought has never crossed her mind. And who knows us better than our loved ones?
It seemed colder there than in Oregon, although it may have just been my perception since I was far away from her, yet again. I daydreamed about her joyous reaction when I returned her film to her. Only her warmth would comfort the aching cold that lingered in my flesh, even with the car heater cranked. All would be forgiven, I told myself. No more anger, no more bitterness, no more resentment; just over this treacherous pass lies the land of milk
and honey. It’s pathetic, but I don’t think I could function if I stopped believing that one day I could mend our threadbare relationship and make it like new again. To have her back, the way she was before, back when we were mortal…ugh, I am letting my self-pitying whiney claptrap leak again. Back to the story we go.
I rolled into Dighton just around dusk and checked into a motel. I was not expecting much excitement from a small town, even though it was a Friday night, and I was not disappointed. I probably would have been able to sleep without the ether considering I had been hopping around the country for the past few days like some sort of deranged travelling salesman, but what the hell, I was on vacation. I wouldn’t say I exactly enjoy the hallucinations brought on by toxic amounts of ether, but the aberration that the episode brings is a welcome change of pace.
The next morning I set out to hunt my quarry. There was only one address for a Muller in the local directory; a Mr and Mrs Franklin Muller. I presumed they were his parents, and I prepared myself for my usual routine of blowing sunshine and daisies up their nether regions. While shaving (with a straight razor, I’ve not transformed into a complete plebian) I kept having the lingering suspicion that this was not going to bear fruit, that I would fail her again. I pushed aside my doubts; I made no joke earlier when I said I would tear everyone in the state limb from limb if I had to. I have one ultimate goal-to satisfy her.
I decided not to call upon them too early in the morning, so I was forced to watch a fair amount of Saturday morning television while biding my time. I don’t care for cartoons though, so I believe trying to hustle things along may have cost me there. Perhaps the Mullers were not morning people.
The address was a rectory for a church. I don’t recall what particular denomination, but I was raised Catholic so every church other than a proper one is, to me, just another batch of heathens. Might sound very condescending coming from myself, unholy monster that I am, but I like to imagine that I have some authority on the issue. As a mortal, lingering doubts about the nature and even the existence of God and the afterlife nag at the back of your mind; I, like many, pushed those thoughts aside, afraid that if I examined them too closely I would be forced into conclusions I didn’t want to make. However, I have been given a definitive answer, my faith has been reinforced. These things are, no matter how much I now wish they weren’t.
Of course it’s no fairy tale either (it is much, much more complex than that), so I didn’t burst into flames or melt when I stepped onto the consecrated ground. I could see my breath in the crisp cold air and I exhaled slowly. Physical proof like that, undeniable biological evidence that I still “live”, it’s a salve to counteract what I mentioned above, the conclusions that I just don’t want to have to make.
I knocked on the door to the rectory. I hoped they would not notice the discomfort that my thoughts were giving to me. I cast my eyes about nervously. I blew it. I looked so shifty-eyed they probably thought I was there to rob the place.
“Can I help you?” Mrs Muller was a heavy set lady, the sort that could probably knock you senseless if you tried to steal her purse from her.
“I know your son,” I blurted out. “Knew him, at least, and I was coming though here on my way home. To Wichita.” There was a large cross on the wall behind her and I was getting distracted. Walls of fire, lakes of fire, burning alone, forever, even longer than the forever I have now…I began to breathe faster.
She probably thought I was high. “Eugene?”
I couldn’t take my eyes from the cross. Typically I am not affected like that by religious symbols, but a combination of the general theology that Ma Bichette had got me thinking about and the horrible feeling I had the night previously in Wichita had provoked a fresh tide of immortal terror in me. “Yes,” I answered quickly. “I knew him when he was in Oregon. I’m going home. To Wichita.”
“Eugene isn’t here,” she answered. “Hasn’t been here in years. If that’s what you come for, you best be moving on.”
“Where is he?” I asked, probably too eagerly. I shake my head now that I botched it so badly, but at the time I was in the throes of one of my existential crises.
“I reckon you’d have a better idea than I have,” she answered. I knew she was lying, no mother would refer to her child’s mysterious absence with such a cavalier tone.
“I haven’t seen him since around Christmas,” I said and looked directly into her yellowed eyes, hoping to relieve myself with the cold comfort that I would be forever twenty-six and never grow decrepit. It didn’t really work, but the guilt that the Schadenfreude brought on revived me. I can manage guilt.
She shook her head. “I don’t know where he is, young man.”
“David,” I said. “David Crandall. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” I snapped out of my visions of Hell…if I can save her, if I can soothe her, then maybe… “I apologize, I’m a bit out of it, I’ve been driving all night. I just want to get home.”
“Then you best be heading on home, isn’t too far now,” she informed me. She had every right to be suspicious of me.
I nodded my head ever so slightly. I had lost this round, but I formed a second plan almost immediately. “You’re right. If you see him, give him my regards.” I turned and walked back towards my car. I didn’t stop or even slow down, but I noted the times for services posted on the door. The next service was tomorrow morning.
I’ll skim past how I killed time until Sunday morning. It would be as boring to read as it was to experience. Come Sunday morning I waited until the church bells fell silent, then slipped in the back door (they didn’t even lock it) and began to rifle through their belongings. I found a pile of letters and shifted through them as speedily as I could, but none of them were addressed to “Father” or “Mother” or signed “Eugene”. I figured I had an hour at best and I wasted ten minutes searching through those letters and another ten flipping through what turned out to be handwritten theology notes (my eyes caught the words “eternal hellfire”) and then I skimmed their address book, again fruitlessly.
I didn’t want to start adding to the charges against me by using physical force to get a minister and his wife to tell me the location of their son so that I could go terrorize him on the orders of my extremely blasphemous partner in fornication and murder. I was lost in thought for a moment or so to the distant sounds of the church organ. Someone was singing an off key solo and I shook my head in derision at the amateur hour those Protestant heathens disguise as worship.
My gaze fell across a recent photograph on the mantel. I picked it up. A young plump woman who bore a striking resemblance to Mrs Muller was arm-in-arm with a young man in Army dress. The seventies were an absolutely brutal time for fashion, so I couldn’t be completely sure, but I was fairly certain it was a wedding photograph. I opened the back of the frame but there was no further information. I felt like I had already pressed my luck enough that day, so I retreated back to the motel until nightfall.
One would be tempted to describe one’s self as a creature of the night in my circumstance, but that’s hardly apt. I can’t see any better and I still have a regular sleep cycle. Certainly it’s easier to kill at night, but unless it’s the new moon you’re more likely to find me watching The Daily Show from the comfort of my living room than out skulking about in cemeteries or abandoned mental asylums. (Now I’ve got that song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show stuck in my head, great.) The benefits that the cover of darkness provide, however, are not inconsiderable. While I fear no mortal man there are extensive annoyances in getting caught, and I recognized that I was probably already on the radar for my performance the day before.
I slipped into the library, using my bewitched hands to open the locked door. (If you didn’t read the first volume or don’t remember, that was a procedure I had done when I was immortalized). Again, I shall not bore you with the details of searching through back issues of the local newspaper (I will bore you with other details, and parenthetical sidebars). After
a mind-numbingly boring search through a newspaper where it’s a big story when grain elevator malfunctions, I found what I was looking for.
Miss Doreen Muller became Missus August Short not even year previously. According to the wedding announcement, Mr Short was redeployed to Vietnam as a communications specialist shortly after their wedding. The same photograph that I saw at the rectory accompanied the article. I studied the grainy black and white photograph, although in my head I was seeing the one from her parents house.
She wasn’t a looker, and I’m being charitable. Please do not think me to be shallow, I’m just stating a fact. The cogs in my mind began to turn. She might know where her brother was. She was a likely lonely woman. There is not a woman alive or dead I could not charm into bed. (I’m not bragging, it’s just practice, anyone can get good at it.) Oh, I wasn’t going to sleep with her; I had no desire to since when I reconcile with Ma Bichette I can’t imagine why I would ever want another woman. I was just going to pump her for information while I was subliminally suggesting to her that I would…well, I don’t really like to talk about the particulars, it isn’t proper.
According to the directory and local maps I pulled out, which were difficult to read since I was trying to keep light to a minimum, Doreen lived in an even smaller town called Grinnell to the north of Dighton. I hoped she was doing nothing on Monday because I intended on dropping in on her under the guise of having a wrong address for a distant relative, acting all confused as to what had gone wrong, then asking her if I could use her bathroom, then working from there. If she had seen her mother or talked to her in the past two days it was likely that she knew all about David Crandall’s suspicious actions. I never really cared for that name anyway, I picked it at random while filling out a driver’s license form. Naturally I would prefer French names, but they have been rather uncommon in America in the past hundred and fifty years or so (it’s funny how politics work out) and when you’re an undead cannibal it’s best to blend in the best you can. I’ve got multiple absolutely wonderful middle names that have used in the past, my full name being Rémi Benoît Thierry Étienne Toupinier (ugh, I cannot tell you how much I loathe having to make accent points on keyboards configured for the bare-bones alphabet that is English. Toupinier is supposed to have accent marks as well, but I’ve just given up on that). What can I say? Back before there was electricity you entertained yourself with whatever you could come up with, and inventing long and complicated naming conventions for your children was one way to pass the time.
Speaking of passing the time, let’s jump ahead to Grinnell. The photograph in the newspaper didn’t do her justice, Doreen was much more pleasant looking in person than on film. She smiled at me when I knocked on the door. She had the same dirty blonde hair that her mother had, as well as the same unfortunate barrel shaped torso.
“Oh, I must have the wrong address,” I said with faux disappointment. “You aren’t my cousin.”
“Probably not,” she said. “Sorry about that, you look tired. Did you come a fair piece?”
“Drove all night,” I said and smiled back at her. With women like her, raised by a minister, no doubt modest, already married, the name of the game is subtlety. To be forward is a gross insult to her, and what’s more, if she immediately consciously recognized her own carnal needs she shames herself for them, and will withdraw from the conversation immediately. The trick is to let her own subconscious fill in the blanks; a lingering gaze here and a double entendre so opaque it’s only recognizable in hindsight there and she’s mine. Time is important as well, the longer I hack away at it the easier it is, but I didn’t have that luxury.
“Who are you looking for? I know most people here, I could probably point you in the right direction? But first, why won’t you come on in? It’s just freezing out there.” Poor girl. So helpful and kind, they make themselves victims so easily. I don’t like doing it, but let the sin fall upon my shoulders and not my little doe’s, as this was all my ultimate doing.
I accepted and she gestured for me to sit down on the sofa. “How about some coffee, mister?”
“Where are my manners? Name’s Stefan Lefevre,” I answered. I tend to regress into a bit of an archaic drawl when I speak English for more than a few words. Not that I am complaining, women love that sort of thing. I figured it would be easier to slip things by her than it was by her mother, so I added that I had driven straight through from Fargo (I had spent time there in the past so the location just popped into my head).
“You must be beat!” she exclaimed. “My name’s Doreen Short, but everyone calls me Reen,” she introduced herself. “You have yourself a sit-down, I’ll wrangle you up some coffee and we’ll figure out where you are supposed to be.”
“That’d be lovely,” I said and sat on the sofa.
“Lafevre, you said your name was? I don’t know any one ‘round these parts named that,” she continued from the kitchen. “Do you take sugar?”
“Yes, please,” I answered and glanced around her living room for any further information on Eugene. My eyes fell upon a family portrait. I recognized the mother and Doreen, but there was two younger boys in it as well.
Doreen came out from the kitchen. “What’s your cousin’s name?”
“Robert Moreau,” I replied. I really did have a cousin by that name, but he’s long dead, of course.
“Hm,” Doreen said thoughtfully when she handed me my mug. “There’s the Moorhead’s out by the old rail line, could that be them?”
I grinned at her. “I doubt it.” I caught her eye and gazed at her longer than a stranger should, but she didn’t look away. “To tell you the truth, Robert and I have never really gotten along. He probably gave me a false address as a joke.”
“Some joke,” she said. “Do you want to look through the phone book?”
I was going to have to start working her. “Oh, I couldn’t trouble you further,” I said. I began the politeness duel, whereupon I show what a polite person I am by refusing help and she counters by offering me even more assistance, and I am then bound to accept her help because I am so polite. The Japanese have a word for it, I believe, but it escapes me at the moment and I don’t feel like looking it up (I’m doing other internet stuff at the moment).
“No trouble at all, I’m happy to help,” she said. “But first finish your coffee, you look exhausted.”
I did appear weary; I had purposely stayed up all night to cultivate that appearance. I had bungled her mother so badly that I was leaving nothing up to chance with her. I know I am coming off like a serial killer or something (well, I am, but not recreationally), what with my calculated and targeted friendliness, but I had a job to do. I can be a perfectly cordial person by nature, but at the time I needed impersonal efficiency, because the more I think about what I do, the more I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. I went though some years of that, and it’s not pleasant. It produces nothing but more agony and Ma Bichette finds it very unsexy.
I sipped my coffee while she fussed over me and my bastard of a cousin. Robert was a bit of jerk, but I had last seen him when we were children, so I couldn’t say what sort of man he lived and died as. I complimented her on the coffee, which honestly tasted atrocious, but it was Kansas in the early seventies, what could I expect? Ma Bichette says my expectations are too high in regards to food, but I am not going to apologize for a sophisticated palate (says the man who eats human hearts). I complimented her on the biscuits and jam she then offered me and feigned astonishment that she made the strawberry jam herself. That isn’t difficult with modern appliances, you know what’s difficult? Making pawpaw preserves in the middle of the Ohio wilderness in a log cabin over an open fire and mason jars aren’t invented yet. But everyone likes to feel valuable and special.
Over the next cup I asked Doreen about herself. Not about her husband, but about who she as an individual was. She said she worked part-time as a seamstress, not because she needed the money but because she needed something
to do. I told her she should design her own dresses since she’s clearly very creative, creative being a nice word for the macramé owls that hung from the wall. Doreen was in a high school production of Ten Little Indians and I expressed shock that she hadn’t pursued acting further. I know, I was laying it on extra-thick, but the poor thing was just starved for male attention and couldn’t see past my blatant flattery. She insisted that I stay for lunch, probably so I could tell her more about what an enchanting siren she was, and I accepted.
During a lunch of Waldorf salad I broached the topic I had come there for. I mentioned that Robert had always been a bit jealous of the good relationship I had with my brother (I had no brother, only a sister) and that’s always been a point of contention with us since he and his brother have a terrible relationship.
Oh, lonely Reen, who wanted someone to talk to on that cold winter’s day, who’s husband was on the other side of the world repairing telephones for the military, who was helpful and friendly and more than hospitable, you gave me exactly what I needed without any additional prodding. I know it’s quote from a television show, and a campy one at that, but in another reality I could have called you friend.
“I got two brothers,” she said chirpily. “Bill, he’s in college to be an architect, and Eugene is working on his act down in Vegas,” she informed me.
“Is he a singer?”
“No, a magician. Mother and Father, well, they don’t like that very much, but he’s always been real good with card tricks and hiding birds in his pants. He preformed at the fair once and he made nearly twenty dollars!”
“A magician,” I echoed slowly. Some of the pieces were falling into place.
She must have mistook my tone of voice for derision and was quick to defend her brother. “He’s really good! He told me that he’s got a job in a casino now, and that he’s working on something really big. He’s going to be famous, and he’ll be on TV! When August gets back we’re going to go see him!”
I nodded my head. “Las Vegas is really something,” I said. I had gotten what I needed and I saw no need to press her for more information and possibly arouse her suspicions. I had been to Vegas in the early 1950s at Ma Bichette’s urging (naturally). She wanted to see Sinatra and loose hundreds of dollars at craps, which she assured me understood the rules for, but I don’t believe she does. I had to suppress a laugh; this was getting stupid, even by the standards of what Ma Bichette usually gets up to.
“Have you been there?”
I described to her what it was like, although not too specifically since that would perhaps belie that I was there nearly twenty years ago. I mentioned the heady atmosphere of gambling and that I had stayed at the Desert Inn, but not how Ma Bichette and I had gotten absolutely loaded on brandy before going on the Hoover Dam tour, and then dared each other to jump off a spillway. “It won’t hurt,” she whispered into my ear while fishing through my pockets for the flask. “Not for long, anyways. I’ll do it with you, it will be exhilarating.” I almost did, but it would have attracted too much attention. Nor how to console herself after losing nearly one hundred dollars on one hand of blackjack (something like a thousand dollars today), Ma Bichette spent twice as much on jewelry, then modeled just the jewelry for me back at the hotel room. I have these memories, a dozen lifetimes of them, these narrow and wilted slices of joy to prop myself up with. I would not share my intimate recesses with Doreen, I only share them with you now as a way of restoring them.
“It sure sounds nice,” Doreen said wistfully, and then absentmindedly glanced out the window at the dismal frosty prairie.
I shook off my memories of our trip to Las Vegas. To wrap myself in a shroud of static dreams of my little doe was unforgivable when she needed me in the here and now. “It’s surely something. I’m thinking on making another trip there before too long.”
“You should see my brother’s act,” she blurted out. Dear sweet Reen, how you eased this weary wander’s burden. “He’s at the Landmark.”
I had what I needed, but I couldn’t just barge out, that would have been rude and should her and her mother compare notes they would no doubt make the connection and possibly warn Eugene that someone was looking for him. Oddly enough, that wasn’t my first thought, however. My initial reaction was that Eugene Muller was a terrible stage name, but perhaps that’s because I have had so much familiarity with pseudonyms. I strung her along for a while longer, finally ending the performance by saying that I really did need to get going, that I needed to call my mother to get the correct address, and she lived in Virginia, and I wouldn’t dare dream of running up her telephone bill. I would use a payphone in town.
“If you ever come back this way again, please feel free to stop in and say hello.” Reen, you must be over sixty by now, and I never did come that way again. And if I had, I would not have come by, because I never age, and I would not have been a welcome visitor so much as I would be a haunting specter of things your minister Father wouldn’t dare admit exist. That the cursed and forsaken forever wander, and that they are not ghouls but pleasant looking men and women who have grown so tired of forever pacing this imperfect world of pain and loneliness and isolation that they resort to hyperbolic melodrama to get their point across.
I was not being completely dishonest (I’m usually not, to weave in parts of truth lends a vital tinge of authenticity that pure fabrication lacks), I really did have to make a telephone call. As much as I would have loved to call my mother, I could not, for she had passed through the veil of death when I was an infant. I have so many things to ask her.
Anyway, I drove up next to a payphone in the center of the bustling metropolis that was/is Grinnell and combed through my pockets for change. I was only able to scrounge up a few coins so it would have to be a short call. My success blotted out my earlier setback and I could almost feel myself radiating with pride as I flipped through my wallet looking for the slip of paper with Ma Bichette’s number on it. I had done good; I had begun to pay off my massive debt. I had pacified my conscious enough to have earned at least a week straight of being able to fall asleep without ether or a quart of rye or whatever else happened to be on hand. Yeah, I don’t sleep very well when I’m alone. In bed with her, well, that’s one thing, it bestows an artificial serenity, but I wasn’t doing all this with the express purpose of getting back with her. I did it out of guilt. Massive, massive amounts of guilt.
A rusted pick-up truck slowly drove past me and the elderly gentleman driving it glanced at me. We locked eyes for a moment. There is always this splinter of terror when I make eye contact with a stranger; that they know what I am, that they can see the iniquity that stains my soul and that they see me for what I am. But, obviously, that’s just guilty paranoia. He drove on by, no doubt immediately forgetting his unwitting brush with immortality.
The telephone rang dully as I gazed out across the frost encrusted prairie. I don’t mind the cold so much, you can protect yourself from the cold with layers of insulation and cozy fires and a copacetic woman to bundle with. It’s just the eternal hellfire I dread. If I get lucky it’ll be a river of boiling river of blood; maybe I’ll get used to it, like one does to a Jacuzzi.
“Allo, oui?” Ma Bichette greets telephone calls in French, regardless of whom she thinks may be calling. People find it either pretentious or charming, depending on the place and the time.
“I’m glad you picked up,” I said, cognizant that I needed to keep the conversation short, but still yearning to clear up the bad way in which we had parted.
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re right, mon canard, it’s not fair to order you around like that without explanation. I don’t want to talk about it on the telephone, but later I’ll explain.”
I shrugged off her genuine bemusement and apology as I was too eager to tell her what I had discovered. “Ma bichette, I’ve tracked him down, he’s in Vegas,” I blurted into the receiver. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly was more than what could be comm
unicated over the telephone.
“Really? Oh, that’s excellent,” she said chirpily. “That’s just…I mean I didn’t realize…Oh, Rémi, that’s great.”
I smiled. It no longer mattered that she had utilized every trick in her book to get me to come out here because I had made her happy. No one else can do this for her, only I can even approach the ability and the opportunity to make her happy. “I’ll get it for you as soon as I can. The moment it’s in my hand I’ll come up to you.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “It means a lot to me.”
“It’s nothing, my darling,” I said and I closed my eyes. I envisioned her gorgeous face, smiling wide with gratitude and her deep brown eyes sparkling as she thanked me. I didn’t want anything as crass as obligatory intercourse from her as a reward for this, I just wanted her to be happy. That was, and is, my bounty and my jewel.
“Remember Vegas?” Ma Bichette asked.
“Yes,” I said, keeping my eyes shut and focused on my reverie. “I do.”
“You’re good at this, mon canard. I’m sorry I was condescending about it, I know it bothers you.”
“That’s alright, ma bichette. I’ll get it for you and bring it back as soon as I can.” I opened my eyes and was blinded by the harsh daylight for a moment, as my eyes had been focused so clearly on the past. “Did you like my sketch by the way?”
There was a pause. “What sketch?”
“On the back of the note I left. You didn’t see it?”
A longer paused followed. “No, I didn’t.”
I assumed she meant that she hadn’t flipped the note over. “It was some of my better work.”
“We have what, a week before notre exigence, right?” Our requirement, she calls it. It’s got a nice ring to it. I adapted to English more willingly than she did, so my euphemisms of “harvest” and “the hunt” tend to fall flat in the shadow of the innate nobility of French. If you only knew the struggle it was to get her to learn English, kicking and screaming, in the first place. Not out of an inability to do so, but she hates the way English sounds. She’s fluent in it now, has been for at least the last hundred and fifty years, along with competency in several other languages, but she flat out refuses to speak English with me in private.
“Something like that.”
She hummed to herself for a moment, her melody-less thinking tune that always sounds the same but I could not reproduce. “You know what? I want to show you my thanks. Don’t worry about the heart, mon canard, let me procure one for you. Be here for it?”
“I’ll be there, film in hand.” Much like many of the skill sets we posses, cooking is one of things you get good at through the virtue of sheer practice. In the beginning Ma Bichette was not great shakes at it, but over time she’s become an accomplished chef. I mean, she’d sort of have to be, she runs a bakery at present.
“Good. I love you, mon canard. See you soon.”
She hung up before I could respond, no doubt dashing off headlong into whatever had just popped into her head. I hung the receiver up and walked back to my car. Again, for the sake of brevity I will bypass all the absolutely riveting details of driving back to Wichita, waiting at the airport (I tried to read Lord of the Rings but after the hundredth hobbit drinking song I left the book on the seat next to me and stared out at the tarmac for several hours), the connecting flight to Dallas, etc.
I took a taxi from the airport to an off-strip motel. I don’t know if it is technically jet lag if you’ve only moved between three time zones on the same continent, but I was suffering from some subgenre of high altitude whiplash that evening. Instead of tracking down Muller as I should have, I laid on my stomach on the bed and staved of the typical guilty melancholy by bombarding my senses with whatever was handy; in this case, as in many, it was television. The Vietnam War was still dragging on, and had I been a young man I more likely than not would have been one of those earnest protestors; not the shiftless sort that Ma Bichette collected for her plantation, but put-together enough to provide well reasoned arguments about foreign policy in television interviews. I appreciate so much that enthusiastic expression of dissent now was (and is) something that was tolerated and accepted, and probably wouldn’t involve a brick being thrown through my window and being called a ‘nigger lover’ by my charming neighbors for daring to mention in public that President Wilson was a racist embarrassment to the nation. Sure, he was dead by my hand the next month, his wife and children left destitute, but it still would have been nice if society had evolved enough by that point so that the only outlet for his barbaric behavior was poorly coded internet forums.
However, I watch the news, and all these bad things happen, and I am still stricken somewhat by the horror of it all, but I am held back from any further sort of action because I realize, with fresh terror each time, that I am one of the bad things. A rough estimate puts my kill count to twenty-seven hundred people and some change. That’s…just awful. How can I live with myself? Short answer is that I have no choice. Long answer is I really can’t, but I push myself forward for her sake. I stop, she dies the eternal death along with me.
Anyway, that’s all a very philosophical and whiney territory, and I’ve already wasted enough breath with that sort of nonsense. I would find it boring to read, and I presume you do as well. Mercifully, after the news there was a movie, one of those delightful Toho films. This one concerned Mothra, my favorite. The part of me in which hope still lives wanted that this bit of luck, whereas I got to drown out my terrible thoughts with a favorite film, to be some manner of divine comfort; however, I know I didn’t deserve it.
I took a flight to Wichita that evening. I’ve never spent much time in Kansas, I haven’t got much of an opinion on the state. It’s flat. Lots of farms. Smells nice in the morning, but I’ve always had a soft spot for prairie air. It reminds me of a short lifetime we spent together in South Dakota, of a few years of happiness before it all came crashing down. Ah, how my heart weeps for what could have been.
Unless this Eugene Muller had a damn good explanation for pilfering Ma Bichette’s apparently precious video reel (which was possible, after all, she’s a devious con artist and it’s not entirely unlikely that he did have a good reason) I would be harvesting him in a little more than a week. At least, I hoped to have tracked him down by then. I had no experience with investigation, aside from what I’d seen in films and television. I had no authority to back up my words and since I look like a philosophy major fresh out of college and not a grizzled war vet, I did not think I would be able to intimidate people into telling me where Eugene was. I needed a lie to legitimize my hunt. On second though, ‘lie’ is too strong of a word. I needed a cover story.
It was late when I got in and I spent a sleepless night in a hotel, lying in the bathtub, wondering if Ma Bichette really was resentful enough towards me to end it once and for all. The thought of really losing her forever and having to spent the rest of my long days on Earth alone made me shiver no matter how much hot water I poured into the increasingly cold water. If I didn’t have her, I had nothing. With her there were no lies and false names and subterfuge and “oh, darling, I don’t know why I have blood all over my saddle” poker faces. Even if I was no longer attracted to her sexually I would still be attracted to her everything else, the everything she is to me.
I should have been coming up with a plan of action, but all I could process was the gripping nausea in my stomach over the memory of Ma Bichette turning and running from me. She had never done that before. Yes, she had slapped me before and told me I was a bastard and a monster and all manner of unpleasant truths, but she had never just given up on chastising me. I worried that something had finally broken in her, that her ceaseless optimism had been exhausted and now all that remained was unbearable despair. And I had done it to her.
I lowered my head under the waterline. When my lungs are filling with water it hurts for a while (oddly enough it stings the back of my eyes) but once they are completely full the discomfort ends. I attempted to conjure up some sort of plausible back story for looking for Muller but Ma Bichette had given me no additional information on him. I called her when I first got into Wichita to get more info, but the call was received by one of her bootlickers, who informed me that she didn’t wish to speak to me. I rebutted that he wasn’t supposed to be in the house and he promptly hung up.
That set my resolve. I was going to be the conquering hero, not one of her sniveling peons. I was going to be the one who Got Things Done. I was going to prove that she needed me and that she had no choice but to love me.
It was going to be about a half-day’s drive and I therefore direly needed some rest, especially considering I hadn’t slept at all the previous night. Luckily for me, drugs still work (remind me to tell you sometime about how much opium you can take when you can’t die) so I inhaled from a cloth soaked with ether until I passed out. Old-fashioned, yes, and remarkably dangerous for everyone else, but it does the job well enough. If the fact that I use drugs from time to time is what shocks you about me, well, you’ve got your priorities severely out of order.
I regained consciousness midmorning the next day, although I laid on my side on the bed for a while and stared out the window while floating in and out of coherent thought and lucidity. Aside from the occasional drug induced hallucination (that particular incident I saw multiple blue and red orbs flitting about my room like bees after I awoke, but much like being undead, psychedelic hallucinations are something that you learn to manage after a while) I readily admit that I am not as…well, inventive is a nice word for it, lets go with that. I am not nearly as “inventive” as Ma Bichette. I approach things with steady and deliberate reasoning. Dighton is a small town and unless he’d been exiled the residents were likely to circle the wagons around him if I, as an outsider, posed a threat. I could not make my rouse too specific either, since I didn’t know much other than Ma Bichette had enraptured him at some point last year and he had that reel of hers.
Muller wouldn’t have left and joined a counterculture cult, even on a temporary basis, if he was satisfied with his home life. Hell, I was a young man myself once, and I rejected my father’s way of life for a comparatively exciting career in law and life in the city. There was no guarantee that Muller was even in Dighton, of course, and it was just as likely as not that no one knew hide nor hair of him. Considering that I had no other clues, however, it looked like I was going to have to make it work somehow. I have every confidence in myself and my abilities, issues with Ma Bichette not withstanding. If I had to tear apart everyone in Kansas to please her, well, so be it.
A decent ether binge works up quite an appetite in me, and after a large breakfast of hotcakes and fatback I began the drive with yet another rental car. I decided to pose as a young man with wanderlust who had met Muller during his voyages. I was going to say that I knew him in California, as they all seemed to have drifted through there at some point or another. I was just going to say that I knew Muller, that I was driving from California back home to Wichita, and I thought I’d pop in and say hello. Simple enough, but the simple things work best.
I was a bit concerned that I didn’t have that typical counterculture look down. I shave everyday (long gone are the days of the elaborate sideburns and assorted whiskers, which is just as well because I’ve never been able to cultivate much of a beard anyways) and I didn’t own any clothing that made me appear to be a member of the counterculture. I had jeans and a white T-shirt on under a flannel shirt and heavy denim coat for that trip. I didn’t look like a hippie because I am sure as shit not one.
Perhaps you find yourself wondering what I do look like. Fair enough, we’ve come this far together and I suppose it’s not a secret or anything. Describing one’s self objectively is a challenge, but I shall do my best. First off, I’m just shy of six feet tall, medium build (which means I am neither fat nor thin), no identifying scars or tattoos. I’ve got light brown wavy hair, which is always styled as fashion dictates. One nice thing about eternal youth is that I never fret about going grey or bald. I’ve got hazel eyes and, well, all the features that a face usually has. It’s hard to describe a nose or a mouth unless there is something wrong with it, and thankfully that isn’t the case with myself. Ma Bichette says I have a squinty look about me, but I don’t really know how that translates. Narrow eyes? Whatever. I’m pureblood French, both my parents emigrated from France (my father from the Saintonge region, but I do not know about my mother). I would be hesitant to describe myself as handsome, both since that sounds particularly vain and because I don’t know what counts as handsome anymore, but I’m not terrible looking. Ma Bichette has called me more or less everything on the list of awful things, from cheat to monster to pervert, but never ugly, so I would presume that the thought has never crossed her mind. And who knows us better than our loved ones?
It seemed colder there than in Oregon, although it may have just been my perception since I was far away from her, yet again. I daydreamed about her joyous reaction when I returned her film to her. Only her warmth would comfort the aching cold that lingered in my flesh, even with the car heater cranked. All would be forgiven, I told myself. No more anger, no more bitterness, no more resentment; just over this treacherous pass lies the land of milk
I rolled into Dighton just around dusk and checked into a motel. I was not expecting much excitement from a small town, even though it was a Friday night, and I was not disappointed. I probably would have been able to sleep without the ether considering I had been hopping around the country for the past few days like some sort of deranged travelling salesman, but what the hell, I was on vacation. I wouldn’t say I exactly enjoy the hallucinations brought on by toxic amounts of ether, but the aberration that the episode brings is a welcome change of pace.
The next morning I set out to hunt my quarry. There was only one address for a Muller in the local directory; a Mr and Mrs Franklin Muller. I presumed they were his parents, and I prepared myself for my usual routine of blowing sunshine and daisies up their nether regions. While shaving (with a straight razor, I’ve not transformed into a complete plebian) I kept having the lingering suspicion that this was not going to bear fruit, that I would fail her again. I pushed aside my doubts; I made no joke earlier when I said I would tear everyone in the state limb from limb if I had to. I have one ultimate goal-to satisfy her.
I decided not to call upon them too early in the morning, so I was forced to watch a fair amount of Saturday morning television while biding my time. I don’t care for cartoons though, so I believe trying to hustle things along may have cost me there. Perhaps the Mullers were not morning people.
The address was a rectory for a church. I don’t recall what particular denomination, but I was raised Catholic so every church other than a proper one is, to me, just another batch of heathens. Might sound very condescending coming from myself, unholy monster that I am, but I like to imagine that I have some authority on the issue. As a mortal, lingering doubts about the nature and even the existence of God and the afterlife nag at the back of your mind; I, like many, pushed those thoughts aside, afraid that if I examined them too closely I would be forced into conclusions I didn’t want to make. However, I have been given a definitive answer, my faith has been reinforced. These things are, no matter how much I now wish they weren’t.
Of course it’s no fairy tale either (it is much, much more complex than that), so I didn’t burst into flames or melt when I stepped onto the consecrated ground. I could see my breath in the crisp cold air and I exhaled slowly. Physical proof like that, undeniable biological evidence that I still “live”, it’s a salve to counteract what I mentioned above, the conclusions that I just don’t want to have to make.
I knocked on the door to the rectory. I hoped they would not notice the discomfort that my thoughts were giving to me. I cast my eyes about nervously. I blew it. I looked so shifty-eyed they probably thought I was there to rob the place.
“Can I help you?” Mrs Muller was a heavy set lady, the sort that could probably knock you senseless if you tried to steal her purse from her.
“I know your son,” I blurted out. “Knew him, at least, and I was coming though here on my way home. To Wichita.” There was a large cross on the wall behind her and I was getting distracted. Walls of fire, lakes of fire, burning alone, forever, even longer than the forever I have now…I began to breathe faster.
She probably thought I was high. “Eugene?”
I couldn’t take my eyes from the cross. Typically I am not affected like that by religious symbols, but a combination of the general theology that Ma Bichette had got me thinking about and the horrible feeling I had the night previously in Wichita had provoked a fresh tide of immortal terror in me. “Yes,” I answered quickly. “I knew him when he was in Oregon. I’m going home. To Wichita.”
“Eugene isn’t here,” she answered. “Hasn’t been here in years. If that’s what you come for, you best be moving on.”
“Where is he?” I asked, probably too eagerly. I shake my head now that I botched it so badly, but at the time I was in the throes of one of my existential crises.
“I reckon you’d have a better idea than I have,” she answered. I knew she was lying, no mother would refer to her child’s mysterious absence with such a cavalier tone.
“I haven’t seen him since around Christmas,” I said and looked directly into her yellowed eyes, hoping to relieve myself with the cold comfort that I would be forever twenty-six and never grow decrepit. It didn’t really work, but the guilt that the Schadenfreude brought on revived me. I can manage guilt.
She shook her head. “I don’t know where he is, young man.”
“David,” I said. “David Crandall. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” I snapped out of my visions of Hell…if I can save her, if I can soothe her, then maybe… “I apologize, I’m a bit out of it, I’ve been driving all night. I just want to get home.”
“Then you best be heading on home, isn’t too far now,” she informed me. She had every right to be suspicious of me.
I nodded my head ever so slightly. I had lost this round, but I formed a second plan almost immediately. “You’re right. If you see him, give him my regards.” I turned and walked back towards my car. I didn’t stop or even slow down, but I noted the times for services posted on the door. The next service was tomorrow morning.
I’ll skim past how I killed time until Sunday morning. It would be as boring to read as it was to experience. Come Sunday morning I waited until the church bells fell silent, then slipped in the back door (they didn’t even lock it) and began to rifle through their belongings. I found a pile of letters and shifted through them as speedily as I could, but none of them were addressed to “Father” or “Mother” or signed “Eugene”. I figured I had an hour at best and I wasted ten minutes searching through those letters and another ten flipping through what turned out to be handwritten theology notes (my eyes caught the words “eternal hellfire”) and then I skimmed their address book, again fruitlessly.
I didn’t want to start adding to the charges against me by using physical force to get a minister and his wife to tell me the location of their son so that I could go terrorize him on the orders of my extremely blasphemous partner in fornication and murder. I was lost in thought for a moment or so to the distant sounds of the church organ. Someone was singing an off key solo and I shook my head in derision at the amateur hour those Protestant heathens disguise as worship.
My gaze fell across a recent photograph on the mantel. I picked it up. A young plump woman who bore a striking resemblance to Mrs Muller was arm-in-arm with a young man in Army dress. The seventies were an absolutely brutal time for fashion, so I couldn’t be completely sure, but I was fairly certain it was a wedding photograph. I opened the back of the frame but there was no further information. I felt like I had already pressed my luck enough that day, so I retreated back to the motel until nightfall.
One would be tempted to describe one’s self as a creature of the night in my circumstance, but that’s hardly apt. I can’t see any better and I still have a regular sleep cycle. Certainly it’s easier to kill at night, but unless it’s the new moon you’re more likely to find me watching The Daily Show from the comfort of my living room than out skulking about in cemeteries or abandoned mental asylums. (Now I’ve got that song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show stuck in my head, great.) The benefits that the cover of darkness provide, however, are not inconsiderable. While I fear no mortal man there are extensive annoyances in getting caught, and I recognized that I was probably already on the radar for my performance the day before.
I slipped into the library, using my bewitched hands to open the locked door. (If you didn’t read the first volume or don’t remember, that was a procedure I had done when I was immortalized). Again, I shall not bore you with the details of searching through back issues of the local newspaper (I will bore you with other details, and parenthetical sidebars). After
Miss Doreen Muller became Missus August Short not even year previously. According to the wedding announcement, Mr Short was redeployed to Vietnam as a communications specialist shortly after their wedding. The same photograph that I saw at the rectory accompanied the article. I studied the grainy black and white photograph, although in my head I was seeing the one from her parents house.
She wasn’t a looker, and I’m being charitable. Please do not think me to be shallow, I’m just stating a fact. The cogs in my mind began to turn. She might know where her brother was. She was a likely lonely woman. There is not a woman alive or dead I could not charm into bed. (I’m not bragging, it’s just practice, anyone can get good at it.) Oh, I wasn’t going to sleep with her; I had no desire to since when I reconcile with Ma Bichette I can’t imagine why I would ever want another woman. I was just going to pump her for information while I was subliminally suggesting to her that I would…well, I don’t really like to talk about the particulars, it isn’t proper.
According to the directory and local maps I pulled out, which were difficult to read since I was trying to keep light to a minimum, Doreen lived in an even smaller town called Grinnell to the north of Dighton. I hoped she was doing nothing on Monday because I intended on dropping in on her under the guise of having a wrong address for a distant relative, acting all confused as to what had gone wrong, then asking her if I could use her bathroom, then working from there. If she had seen her mother or talked to her in the past two days it was likely that she knew all about David Crandall’s suspicious actions. I never really cared for that name anyway, I picked it at random while filling out a driver’s license form. Naturally I would prefer French names, but they have been rather uncommon in America in the past hundred and fifty years or so (it’s funny how politics work out) and when you’re an undead cannibal it’s best to blend in the best you can. I’ve got multiple absolutely wonderful middle names that have used in the past, my full name being Rémi Benoît Thierry Étienne Toupinier (ugh, I cannot tell you how much I loathe having to make accent points on keyboards configured for the bare-bones alphabet that is English. Toupinier is supposed to have accent marks as well, but I’ve just given up on that). What can I say? Back before there was electricity you entertained yourself with whatever you could come up with, and inventing long and complicated naming conventions for your children was one way to pass the time.
Speaking of passing the time, let’s jump ahead to Grinnell. The photograph in the newspaper didn’t do her justice, Doreen was much more pleasant looking in person than on film. She smiled at me when I knocked on the door. She had the same dirty blonde hair that her mother had, as well as the same unfortunate barrel shaped torso.
“Oh, I must have the wrong address,” I said with faux disappointment. “You aren’t my cousin.”
“Probably not,” she said. “Sorry about that, you look tired. Did you come a fair piece?”
“Drove all night,” I said and smiled back at her. With women like her, raised by a minister, no doubt modest, already married, the name of the game is subtlety. To be forward is a gross insult to her, and what’s more, if she immediately consciously recognized her own carnal needs she shames herself for them, and will withdraw from the conversation immediately. The trick is to let her own subconscious fill in the blanks; a lingering gaze here and a double entendre so opaque it’s only recognizable in hindsight there and she’s mine. Time is important as well, the longer I hack away at it the easier it is, but I didn’t have that luxury.
“Who are you looking for? I know most people here, I could probably point you in the right direction? But first, why won’t you come on in? It’s just freezing out there.” Poor girl. So helpful and kind, they make themselves victims so easily. I don’t like doing it, but let the sin fall upon my shoulders and not my little doe’s, as this was all my ultimate doing.
I accepted and she gestured for me to sit down on the sofa. “How about some coffee, mister?”
“Where are my manners? Name’s Stefan Lefevre,” I answered. I tend to regress into a bit of an archaic drawl when I speak English for more than a few words. Not that I am complaining, women love that sort of thing. I figured it would be easier to slip things by her than it was by her mother, so I added that I had driven straight through from Fargo (I had spent time there in the past so the location just popped into my head).
“You must be beat!” she exclaimed. “My name’s Doreen Short, but everyone calls me Reen,” she introduced herself. “You have yourself a sit-down, I’ll wrangle you up some coffee and we’ll figure out where you are supposed to be.”
“That’d be lovely,” I said and sat on the sofa.
“Lafevre, you said your name was? I don’t know any one ‘round these parts named that,” she continued from the kitchen. “Do you take sugar?”
“Yes, please,” I answered and glanced around her living room for any further information on Eugene. My eyes fell upon a family portrait. I recognized the mother and Doreen, but there was two younger boys in it as well.
Doreen came out from the kitchen. “What’s your cousin’s name?”
“Robert Moreau,” I replied. I really did have a cousin by that name, but he’s long dead, of course.
“Hm,” Doreen said thoughtfully when she handed me my mug. “There’s the Moorhead’s out by the old rail line, could that be them?”
I grinned at her. “I doubt it.” I caught her eye and gazed at her longer than a stranger should, but she didn’t look away. “To tell you the truth, Robert and I have never really gotten along. He probably gave me a false address as a joke.”
“Some joke,” she said. “Do you want to look through the phone book?”
I was going to have to start working her. “Oh, I couldn’t trouble you further,” I said. I began the politeness duel, whereupon I show what a polite person I am by refusing help and she counters by offering me even more assistance, and I am then bound to accept her help because I am so polite. The Japanese have a word for it, I believe, but it escapes me at the moment and I don’t feel like looking it up (I’m doing other internet stuff at the moment).
“No trouble at all, I’m happy to help,” she said. “But first finish your coffee, you look exhausted.”
I did appear weary; I had purposely stayed up all night to cultivate that appearance. I had bungled her mother so badly that I was leaving nothing up to chance with her. I know I am coming off like a serial killer or something (well, I am, but not recreationally), what with my calculated and targeted friendliness, but I had a job to do. I can be a perfectly cordial person by nature, but at the time I needed impersonal efficiency, because the more I think about what I do, the more I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. I went though some years of that, and it’s not pleasant. It produces nothing but more agony and Ma Bichette finds it very unsexy.
I sipped my coffee while she fussed over me and my bastard of a cousin. Robert was a bit of jerk, but I had last seen him when we were children, so I couldn’t say what sort of man he lived and died as. I complimented her on the coffee, which honestly tasted atrocious, but it was Kansas in the early seventies, what could I expect? Ma Bichette says my expectations are too high in regards to food, but I am not going to apologize for a sophisticated palate (says the man who eats human hearts). I complimented her on the biscuits and jam she then offered me and feigned astonishment that she made the strawberry jam herself. That isn’t difficult with modern appliances, you know what’s difficult? Making pawpaw preserves in the middle of the Ohio wilderness in a log cabin over an open fire and mason jars aren’t invented yet. But everyone likes to feel valuable and special.
Over the next cup I asked Doreen about herself. Not about her husband, but about who she as an individual was. She said she worked part-time as a seamstress, not because she needed the money but because she needed something
During a lunch of Waldorf salad I broached the topic I had come there for. I mentioned that Robert had always been a bit jealous of the good relationship I had with my brother (I had no brother, only a sister) and that’s always been a point of contention with us since he and his brother have a terrible relationship.
Oh, lonely Reen, who wanted someone to talk to on that cold winter’s day, who’s husband was on the other side of the world repairing telephones for the military, who was helpful and friendly and more than hospitable, you gave me exactly what I needed without any additional prodding. I know it’s quote from a television show, and a campy one at that, but in another reality I could have called you friend.
“I got two brothers,” she said chirpily. “Bill, he’s in college to be an architect, and Eugene is working on his act down in Vegas,” she informed me.
“Is he a singer?”
“No, a magician. Mother and Father, well, they don’t like that very much, but he’s always been real good with card tricks and hiding birds in his pants. He preformed at the fair once and he made nearly twenty dollars!”
“A magician,” I echoed slowly. Some of the pieces were falling into place.
She must have mistook my tone of voice for derision and was quick to defend her brother. “He’s really good! He told me that he’s got a job in a casino now, and that he’s working on something really big. He’s going to be famous, and he’ll be on TV! When August gets back we’re going to go see him!”
I nodded my head. “Las Vegas is really something,” I said. I had gotten what I needed and I saw no need to press her for more information and possibly arouse her suspicions. I had been to Vegas in the early 1950s at Ma Bichette’s urging (naturally). She wanted to see Sinatra and loose hundreds of dollars at craps, which she assured me understood the rules for, but I don’t believe she does. I had to suppress a laugh; this was getting stupid, even by the standards of what Ma Bichette usually gets up to.
“Have you been there?”
I described to her what it was like, although not too specifically since that would perhaps belie that I was there nearly twenty years ago. I mentioned the heady atmosphere of gambling and that I had stayed at the Desert Inn, but not how Ma Bichette and I had gotten absolutely loaded on brandy before going on the Hoover Dam tour, and then dared each other to jump off a spillway. “It won’t hurt,” she whispered into my ear while fishing through my pockets for the flask. “Not for long, anyways. I’ll do it with you, it will be exhilarating.” I almost did, but it would have attracted too much attention. Nor how to console herself after losing nearly one hundred dollars on one hand of blackjack (something like a thousand dollars today), Ma Bichette spent twice as much on jewelry, then modeled just the jewelry for me back at the hotel room. I have these memories, a dozen lifetimes of them, these narrow and wilted slices of joy to prop myself up with. I would not share my intimate recesses with Doreen, I only share them with you now as a way of restoring them.
“It sure sounds nice,” Doreen said wistfully, and then absentmindedly glanced out the window at the dismal frosty prairie.
I shook off my memories of our trip to Las Vegas. To wrap myself in a shroud of static dreams of my little doe was unforgivable when she needed me in the here and now. “It’s surely something. I’m thinking on making another trip there before too long.”
“You should see my brother’s act,” she blurted out. Dear sweet Reen, how you eased this weary wander’s burden. “He’s at the Landmark.”
I had what I needed, but I couldn’t just barge out, that would have been rude and should her and her mother compare notes they would no doubt make the connection and possibly warn Eugene that someone was looking for him. Oddly enough, that wasn’t my first thought, however. My initial reaction was that Eugene Muller was a terrible stage name, but perhaps that’s because I have had so much familiarity with pseudonyms. I strung her along for a while longer, finally ending the performance by saying that I really did need to get going, that I needed to call my mother to get the correct address, and she lived in Virginia, and I wouldn’t dare dream of running up her telephone bill. I would use a payphone in town.
“If you ever come back this way again, please feel free to stop in and say hello.” Reen, you must be over sixty by now, and I never did come that way again. And if I had, I would not have come by, because I never age, and I would not have been a welcome visitor so much as I would be a haunting specter of things your minister Father wouldn’t dare admit exist. That the cursed and forsaken forever wander, and that they are not ghouls but pleasant looking men and women who have grown so tired of forever pacing this imperfect world of pain and loneliness and isolation that they resort to hyperbolic melodrama to get their point across.
I was not being completely dishonest (I’m usually not, to weave in parts of truth lends a vital tinge of authenticity that pure fabrication lacks), I really did have to make a telephone call. As much as I would have loved to call my mother, I could not, for she had passed through the veil of death when I was an infant. I have so many things to ask her.
Anyway, I drove up next to a payphone in the center of the bustling metropolis that was/is Grinnell and combed through my pockets for change. I was only able to scrounge up a few coins so it would have to be a short call. My success blotted out my earlier setback and I could almost feel myself radiating with pride as I flipped through my wallet looking for the slip of paper with Ma Bichette’s number on it. I had done good; I had begun to pay off my massive debt. I had pacified my conscious enough to have earned at least a week straight of being able to fall asleep without ether or a quart of rye or whatever else happened to be on hand. Yeah, I don’t sleep very well when I’m alone. In bed with her, well, that’s one thing, it bestows an artificial serenity, but I wasn’t doing all this with the express purpose of getting back with her. I did it out of guilt. Massive, massive amounts of guilt.
A rusted pick-up truck slowly drove past me and the elderly gentleman driving it glanced at me. We locked eyes for a moment. There is always this splinter of terror when I make eye contact with a stranger; that they know what I am, that they can see the iniquity that stains my soul and that they see me for what I am. But, obviously, that’s just guilty paranoia. He drove on by, no doubt immediately forgetting his unwitting brush with immortality.
The telephone rang dully as I gazed out across the frost encrusted prairie. I don’t mind the cold so much, you can protect yourself from the cold with layers of insulation and cozy fires and a copacetic woman to bundle with. It’s just the eternal hellfire I dread. If I get lucky it’ll be a river of boiling river of blood; maybe I’ll get used to it, like one does to a Jacuzzi.
“Allo, oui?” Ma Bichette greets telephone calls in French, regardless of whom she thinks may be calling. People find it either pretentious or charming, depending on the place and the time.
“I’m glad you picked up,” I said, cognizant that I needed to keep the conversation short, but still yearning to clear up the bad way in which we had parted.
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re right, mon canard, it’s not fair to order you around like that without explanation. I don’t want to talk about it on the telephone, but later I’ll explain.”
I shrugged off her genuine bemusement and apology as I was too eager to tell her what I had discovered. “Ma bichette, I’ve tracked him down, he’s in Vegas,” I blurted into the receiver. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly was more than what could be comm
“Really? Oh, that’s excellent,” she said chirpily. “That’s just…I mean I didn’t realize…Oh, Rémi, that’s great.”
I smiled. It no longer mattered that she had utilized every trick in her book to get me to come out here because I had made her happy. No one else can do this for her, only I can even approach the ability and the opportunity to make her happy. “I’ll get it for you as soon as I can. The moment it’s in my hand I’ll come up to you.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “It means a lot to me.”
“It’s nothing, my darling,” I said and I closed my eyes. I envisioned her gorgeous face, smiling wide with gratitude and her deep brown eyes sparkling as she thanked me. I didn’t want anything as crass as obligatory intercourse from her as a reward for this, I just wanted her to be happy. That was, and is, my bounty and my jewel.
“Remember Vegas?” Ma Bichette asked.
“Yes,” I said, keeping my eyes shut and focused on my reverie. “I do.”
“You’re good at this, mon canard. I’m sorry I was condescending about it, I know it bothers you.”
“That’s alright, ma bichette. I’ll get it for you and bring it back as soon as I can.” I opened my eyes and was blinded by the harsh daylight for a moment, as my eyes had been focused so clearly on the past. “Did you like my sketch by the way?”
There was a pause. “What sketch?”
“On the back of the note I left. You didn’t see it?”
A longer paused followed. “No, I didn’t.”
I assumed she meant that she hadn’t flipped the note over. “It was some of my better work.”
“We have what, a week before notre exigence, right?” Our requirement, she calls it. It’s got a nice ring to it. I adapted to English more willingly than she did, so my euphemisms of “harvest” and “the hunt” tend to fall flat in the shadow of the innate nobility of French. If you only knew the struggle it was to get her to learn English, kicking and screaming, in the first place. Not out of an inability to do so, but she hates the way English sounds. She’s fluent in it now, has been for at least the last hundred and fifty years, along with competency in several other languages, but she flat out refuses to speak English with me in private.
“Something like that.”
She hummed to herself for a moment, her melody-less thinking tune that always sounds the same but I could not reproduce. “You know what? I want to show you my thanks. Don’t worry about the heart, mon canard, let me procure one for you. Be here for it?”
“I’ll be there, film in hand.” Much like many of the skill sets we posses, cooking is one of things you get good at through the virtue of sheer practice. In the beginning Ma Bichette was not great shakes at it, but over time she’s become an accomplished chef. I mean, she’d sort of have to be, she runs a bakery at present.
“Good. I love you, mon canard. See you soon.”
She hung up before I could respond, no doubt dashing off headlong into whatever had just popped into her head. I hung the receiver up and walked back to my car. Again, for the sake of brevity I will bypass all the absolutely riveting details of driving back to Wichita, waiting at the airport (I tried to read Lord of the Rings but after the hundredth hobbit drinking song I left the book on the seat next to me and stared out at the tarmac for several hours), the connecting flight to Dallas, etc.
I took a taxi from the airport to an off-strip motel. I don’t know if it is technically jet lag if you’ve only moved between three time zones on the same continent, but I was suffering from some subgenre of high altitude whiplash that evening. Instead of tracking down Muller as I should have, I laid on my stomach on the bed and staved of the typical guilty melancholy by bombarding my senses with whatever was handy; in this case, as in many, it was television. The Vietnam War was still dragging on, and had I been a young man I more likely than not would have been one of those earnest protestors; not the shiftless sort that Ma Bichette collected for her plantation, but put-together enough to provide well reasoned arguments about foreign policy in television interviews. I appreciate so much that enthusiastic expression of dissent now was (and is) something that was tolerated and accepted, and probably wouldn’t involve a brick being thrown through my window and being called a ‘nigger lover’ by my charming neighbors for daring to mention in public that President Wilson was a racist embarrassment to the nation. Sure, he was dead by my hand the next month, his wife and children left destitute, but it still would have been nice if society had evolved enough by that point so that the only outlet for his barbaric behavior was poorly coded internet forums.
However, I watch the news, and all these bad things happen, and I am still stricken somewhat by the horror of it all, but I am held back from any further sort of action because I realize, with fresh terror each time, that I am one of the bad things. A rough estimate puts my kill count to twenty-seven hundred people and some change. That’s…just awful. How can I live with myself? Short answer is that I have no choice. Long answer is I really can’t, but I push myself forward for her sake. I stop, she dies the eternal death along with me.
Anyway, that’s all a very philosophical and whiney territory, and I’ve already wasted enough breath with that sort of nonsense. I would find it boring to read, and I presume you do as well. Mercifully, after the news there was a movie, one of those delightful Toho films. This one concerned Mothra, my favorite. The part of me in which hope still lives wanted that this bit of luck, whereas I got to drown out my terrible thoughts with a favorite film, to be some manner of divine comfort; however, I know I didn’t deserve it.