SAFELY BURIED Chapter 27: Unfamiliar Roads

Back home, I drank another cup of coffee while admiring the car through the front window. If another bird christened it, I’d get a gun and shoot him. That reminded me of the .45 pistol Edward had given me. I ought to get it out of my desk and bring it home. It was going on nine o’clock. I finished my coffee and brushed my teeth. Then I took a shower and put some better clothes on. At 9:30 I was on my way to Jodie’s house.

Jackie Grapevine was trimming rosebushes when I pulled into the driveway. A floppy sunbonnet nearly touched her shoulders, and she was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and full-length jeans. “Hello again,” she said. “Long time no see.”

“Right, it must be twelve hours.”

“How’d you like the party last night?”

“It was very nice. Your parents have a beautiful place.”

“Don’t they though?” She laughed as she said, “I’m thinking of moving back in with them. Since our neighbors were murdered, I’m afraid to be here by myself.”

“I bet. But at least now you’re on your guard.”

“Yes, and we have Don’s guns all over the house in case somebody breaks in. There’s a double-barrelled shotgun standing on my side of the bed.”

“Good idea.”

“Jodie says I’m paranoid. But I’m not used to living in New York like she is.”

I realized she was putting on an act. She seemed self-dramatic, as if craving attention. “You’re not really afraid, are you?” I said. “You have Don to protect you.”

“Yes, when he’s here. But he’s back at work now. He took a week’s vacation last week, but he’s not here during the day anymore.”

“Where does Don work?”

“At Cummins, in Columbus. He’s an engineer. He’s been there—”

“Sorry I’m late,” Jodie called, running out of the house. She was in a sleeveless top, a short skirt, and sandals.

Jackie asked where we were going.

Jodie turned to me: “Where are we going?”

“For a ride,” I said. “There’s a place I want to see at the other end of the county. You can help me find it.”

“Don’t count on me to find it. What place is it?”

“The old Good Shepherd Home for kids.”

Jackie said, “What do you want to see that for? Is it for sale or something?”

“I just want to see what it looks like, and maybe take a picture. We might do an article on foster care in Meridian County.”

She shrugged. “Okay, but are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay here with me?”

“We’re sure, Mom.” Jodie gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Okay, have a good time. I’ll see you later.”

As we walked to the driveway, I felt ashamed of my old Civic, but Jodie showed no sign that it wasn’t good enough for her. She hopped in like a young girl and watched me walk around the front of the car. I saw the same bemused expression that I had seen last night when she saw me with Lillian. I thought I knew what it meant last night, but I couldn’t tell what it meant this time.

“You look nice,” I said as I got behind the wheel.

“Thanks. So do you. The beard suits you.” She waved at her mother, who waved back from the rosebushes, and we took off toward Hampstead.

I said, “I plan to shave it off as soon as the cuts and scratches get better.”

“Maybe you should think about keeping it. It makes you look older.”

“Why would I want to look older?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t you pretty young to be the editor-in-chief of a newspaper?”

“Maybe the New York Times. Not the Gleaner.”

She gave herself a little slap on each cheek for saying the wrong thing. “I just think the beard makes you look more—I won’t say ‘experienced,’ because I know you’re experienced—it makes you look more . . . formidable.”

“Well, that’s good to know. Would I look even more formidable if I let it grow longer?”

She pretended to weigh the idea. “Uhhh, maybe not. You’d look like the mountain man who lives in the cabin we just passed.”

“That’s the look I want—South Hoosier redneck.”

We drove through the knobs to Hampstead and turned left at the county road. It took us down to U.S. 50, where I turned right. I knew where I was going because the postmaster, a friend of mine, told me how to get there.

Along the way, Jodie asked if the police were any closer to finding out who killed Wayne and Cheryl Garth.

“It doesn’t look like it,” I told her.

“That doesn’t say much for the police, does it?” she complained. “Don—my stepfather—says if you want to get away with murder, you should move to Meridian County.”

“The police are trying,” I said. “At least the state police figured out the real name of the woman I picked up that night I showed up at your house.”

“Yes, it’s Boofey. See, I read the Gleaner. But they still haven’t found her.”

“That’s true.”

“Don thinks she had something to do with the murders.”

“Why?”

“He says maybe she came back to burn down the house to hide the fact that they were murdered.”

“Why didn’t she burn it down right after they were killed?”

“That’s what I said. He said it may have been an afterthought.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Anything is possible. But I doubt she helped kill them. She went nuts when she found the bodies. They were her friends.”

Twelve miles west of Campbellsville, we turned left onto County Road 650W, which cut a straight path south through some of the richest farmland in Meridian County. Rolling fields of corn and soybeans, pumpkins and watermelons, and even a little tobacco, stretched to the Muscatatuck River, the county’s southern boundary. We passed two green road signs, and I slowed down as we approached the third. I turned right on 185S, a gravel road that bent left almost immediately and underwent a number change to 660W. A quarter mile later the road made a sharp right and became 210S. Dust swirled behind us as we bounced along the washboard road. After another half mile, we went through a patch of woods, and when we came out the other side, I saw the Good Shepherd Home up ahead.

“It looks spooky,” Jodie said.

It was a square, three-story house on a low rise. Huge oaks and sycamores surrounded the red brick building. One of the sycamores was dead, its bare white branches reaching into the sky like the ghost of a giant hydra. The tall windows had wide black shutters, and the faded slate roof had been patched with gray shingles in several spots.

Apparently someone lived there. Near the entrance to the lane was a rusty white mailbox that drooped forward on a wooden post like a sombrero on a man taking a siesta, and next to the mailbox was a Gleaner newspaper tube. But no one was in sight, and there were no vehicles in front of the house. I drove in to get a closer look.

When we were about halfway up the lane, a spotted dog came charging toward us. I wasn’t driving fast, but I slowed down even more to avoid hitting it. Barking, snarling, slobbering, the dog leaped against my side window. I didn’t stop, and the dog kept jumping against the side, clawing at the window and snapping at me with bared teeth. It was a pit bull. I blew the horn to scare him off, but that only made him more excited, so I stepped on the gas and gave him a snoutful of dust as he chased us toward the house.

“Nice friendly dog,” I said.

“The hound from hell,” Jodie said.

I stopped at the front steps and hit the horn again in case someone was inside. No one came out. The lawn was ragged but recently mowed, and an upstairs window had a long, duct-taped crack in it.

“How do you think it felt to a little kid seeing this place for the first time?” I asked Jodie.

“Creepy . . . like a haunted house.”

I followed the driveway around back. The dog went on barking and snarling and jumping at the windows. A weather-beaten barn stood behind and below the house, and a small herd of Black Angus cattle grazed in a field. Except for the hell hound that was now lunging at Jodie on her side of the car, it was a peaceful bucolic scene.

Jodie moved away from the window as far as she could. “Isn’t this fun?” she said.

“You want me to run him over?”

For a moment she seemed to think I meant it. Then she laughed and said, “No. It’s his house. Let’s get out of here before he chews through the door.”

I drove around to the front and took a picture through the dusty windshield. I didn’t run the washer because I didn’t want to make brown mud. The dog jumped up on the hood and then the roof. I gunned the engine, and he slid off, clawing at the trunk on the way down. Dust swirled around us as we rattled out the lane. The mutt chased us to the county road and then turned around and went home.

“Well, we got through that alive,” I said.

Jodie laughed. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time. What’s next?”

“I thought we might take a tour of the wastewater-treatment plant.”

She laughed again. “Whatever you say.”

I went back to 650W and turned right. A few miles later we crossed the Muscatatuck through a green steel bridge and parked on the Washington County side, where boaters had access to the river. Tall trees on the banks formed an arch, and the river, which was more like a creek, seemed to flow through a tunnel pierced by sunbeams.

We sat on a flat boulder. Jodie pulled off her sandals and dangled her feet in the water. I kept my shoes on—one of my socks had a hole in it.

“It’s nice here,” she said. “We should have brought a picnic lunch.”

“I wish I’d thought of that.”

“Or a boat. Wouldn’t it be nice to float slowly down the stream?”

“Uh-huh, until we had to row back up.”

“That would be your job.”

The trees whirred with the sound of locusts. I watched the water sparkle at her feet. Her toenails were a light rosy pink. Her narrow ankles swished back and forth in the clear water. The short skirt rode high above her knees.

“Phil,” she said, “do you believe in God?”

The question caught me totally off guard. “I believe in something,” I said.

“What do you believe in?”

I remembered what her stepfather had told me: she does not go to church; she had drifted away from religion.

“There might be a God,” I said, “but if there is, I don’t think it’s the one I was brought up with. I don’t think he—or she—treats us like little children.”

“You’re not afraid of going to hell?”

“Are you?”

“I don’t believe in hell,” she said. “But I worry I might be wrong.”

“I think you should just be true to yourself.”

She put a hand on my wrist and gave it a little squeeze. “I like that.”

Our eyes were inches apart. I put my arm around her waist and kissed her. Her lips pressed back.

“I’ve been wanting to do that since the night we met,” I said.

“I never kissed a guy with a beard before. It’s nice.”

We sat in the green shade and talked about ourselves. She had moved to New York after college and got a job with MetLife as an actuary. A year and a half ago she began living with a broker who worked at Charles Schwab. His name was Curtis. He was several years older, in his mid-thirties, and separated from his wife. They were supposed to be getting a divorce, but then last Christmas they got back together.

“I was devastated,” Jodie said. “We were talking about getting married after the divorce, and then all of a sudden my life goes down in flames.”

I said, “I know how it feels,” and told her about Vickie.

“I know your ex,” she said when I was finished. “We go to the same hair salon.”

“It’s a small town.”

“She hurt you badly, didn’t she?”

“It hurt. But guess what—it all went away today.”

She squeezed my hand. “Me too.”

“You have pretty shoulders,” I said.

She drew back and laughed. “Is that all you see that you like?”

“No. Your elbows are nice too. And your knuckles, your eyebrows, your knees. . . .”

“I see where this is going.”

We kissed again, longer. I thought about asking her if she’d like to go back to my apartment, but I stopped myself. I hadn’t slept with Vickie until our wedding night. It was what she wanted, and I went along with it. I couldn’t treat Jodie with less respect.

After a while we drove back to town on unfamiliar country roads. We cruised past farmhouses, cornfields, trailers, churches, cows. Long panatela-shaped clouds hung in the high blue sky like an alien fleet.

We had lunch at Applebee’s, across the street from a deserted strip mall that Wal-Mart had nuked. Jodie said, “Look, there’s a Big Lots going in over there. They’re like pokeweed, a pioneer plant that springs up in a wasteland.”

She was bright, quick, and beautiful. I reached across the wide table and held her hand while we waited for our food to come.