First Interlude Gwen, Underfoot #10
Gwen slowed to a crawl as she went around the dancer in the street, and when Sheldon glanced over his shoulder, he didn’t
appear to recognize her. His glasses were smeared over with soot. One tail of his shirt had come out of his filthy corduroys.
He had the crème br?lée butane torch in one hand, and he squeezed the trigger and blue flame spurted into the darkness. His
tongue hung out, like a dog after a crazed run.
“Keep going, Gwen,” Tana told her. “Just keep driving.”
Sheldon turned to watch them drive away, dancing all the while to music only he could hear. Maybe, Gwen thought, he had recognized
her after all—she could see him staring after her in the driver’s-side mirror, his eyes wide with fascination. He had been
more attentive that night than anyone had realized, and not just to her. He had heard Bridget Fleming muttering about Firsts,
the antiquarian book fair too. The bitch had underestimated him, and in more ways than one. Later he told the police he hadn’t
needed to use his lighter to burn the place down, that he had been able to start the fire just by thinking about it—through the sheer power of his hate—which was probably why he was remanded to a wing for the mentally ill in Bridgewater
State Hospital.
Gwen hit her blinker, turned the corner, and Cordis Street was gone.
But she could see the reflected light of the fire for a long time, the glow of the flames illuminating that coil of rising smoke.
That tower of sparks and cinders could be seen for miles .
. . almost as if King Sorrow had paid the neighborhood a visit.
19.
April 23, 1990
The letter was the first Daphne Nighswander had received during her entire incarceration. She had served just over a year
so far. Twenty-four more to go.
She read the letter from her eldest daughter once, her lips moving, and then again, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her
cell, while other inmates catcalled one another, cussed and jabbered and laughed, their voices echoing in the concrete halls.
Somewhere music was playing an old-fashioned calypso full of horns and rattling hothouse drums. A man with a fruity Caribbean
accent sang about the graveyard. I nearly bus’ my head runnin from the dead, he sang. The Trinidadians in Black Cricket loved their old jigaboo island tunes, laughed and sang along, like anyone in
that joint had anything to be happy about.
Dear Momma,
Well I’m out Nevada way with Ronnie. Business went south before we did. Long story. We got out of town like there were wild
dogs chasing us. Seriously, I thought if I stayed one more day in Maine I was going to DIE of boredom. Ronnie’s cousin is
out here and might be able to hook us up with something.
We left in such a hurry, I forgot to say goodbye to a few friends.
If things don’t work out for us here, you might get back to Gogan sooner than I do.
If that’s what happens, maybe YOU could say goodbye to them for me: Colin Wren, Donna and Donovan McBride, Allison Shiner, Gwen Underfoot, and especially Arthur Oakes.
You remember his mom. The Holy Mother. Best, I think, to forget you ever knew her.
Trust me on that. But remember her kid, for later.
It would mean the world to me if you could send him my love.
Oh, hey, I think Tana likes him. Art’s a fun guy—he’s pulled a couple funny ones on me!
Real prankster, that one!—but he’s not right for her, and I hope you’ll tell her so.
I hope you’ll look after our Tana. God knows she can’t look after herself.
She’s too easily swayed by bad influences.
When she was little, Tana was always scared there was something bad hiding in the dark at the back of her closet. I used to
laugh at her but it turns out she was right. Pretty funny, huh?
From Reno,
Jayne
Daphne’s attention was like an ant, crawling slowly from word to word, sentence to sentence. When her mind had finished its
second crawl across the expanse of words, she folded the letter and put it under her pillow. But she continued to go over
it in her mind: what the letter said, and more important, what it hadn’t. Down the hall she heard a breathy, throaty exchange
of accusations, a clash of steel on concrete, a desperate scuffle, a hoarse eruption of victorious laughter, and a desperate,
groveling voice making desperate, groveling promises. Bitches being bitches. Daphne had lukewarm noodle soup for supper. A
nervous little born-again went down on her in the last half hour before lights out and Daphne made sure she got a little paper
envelope of sticky black heroin for debasing herself in the eyes of her Lord. And even while the scrawny little white girl
was down between her legs, Daphne’s mind was half on the letter, and the names in it.
A week later a guard came for her after lunch to say the social worker, Ms. Adams, wanted to speak with her. The guard was new, a kid with a feather-down brown mustache and big eyelashes, and he hadn’t learned to hide anything yet. He regarded her with compassion and sorrow.
“I can’t tell you what it’s about, so don’t ask,” he told her.
“I know what it’s about,” Daphne Nighswander said, and pulled herself out of bed and went to find out where her eldest daughter
had died and how.
Some women in grief said the rosary, but Daphne didn’t grieve, she got even, and on the walk to the social worker’s office,
she didn’t bother reciting the Apostle’s Creed. She said the names to herself instead, feeling each one almost as a stone
in the mouth, resting on the tongue.
Colin Wren.
Donna McBride.
Donovan McBride.
Allison Shiner.
Gwen Underfoot.
Arthur Oakes.