Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

Rob shook his head, which made him wince. “Never saw her before this morning.” He wondered anew if he’d imagined or dreamed the whole thing. But no, damn it, the dried mud had been there on the floor and windowsill this morning.

“So what brings you to Needsville?” Kizer asked.

“Oh, this and that. You guys honeymooning?”

Kizer looked around, then said softly, “No, we just said that so we’d get the biggest room. We’re actually here to research my genealogy. It was supposed to be a fun trip, tracing my ancestors and all.”

“And it hasn’t been?”

Kizer chuckled ironically. “No, not a bit. But at least nobody’s hit me in the head yet.”

“So how do you go about doing genealogical research?”

“Mostly you prowl libraries and cemeteries. A lot’s on the Internet now, too. But I’ve hit a dead end, and I know I’ve got some family buried around here, so if I can find them and see who else is buried with them, I’ll know where to keep looking.”

“Your wife doesn’t share your enthusiasm?”

He aimed his eyes at the ceiling, toward his room. “You could say that. Plus most of the cemeteries are old and grown over, and you can’t even read the tombstones half the time.”

“I saw one like that yesterday. Out behind the fire station. Seemed to be mostly the Swett family.”

“Hey, that’s one of mine,” Kizer said, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes. “Where’d you say it was?”

“Behind the fire station, just outside of town. If you want, I can show you where.” He had nothing else to do, and Kizer seemed like a nice guy.

“That’d be really cool,” Kizer said appreciatively. “I need to go upstairs and grab my stuff. Meet me out front in about ten minutes?”

“Sure.”

Kizer used the key ring remote to unlock the doors on his SUV. The inside was littered with evidence of a long trip: wrappers, audiobooks, CDs, and odd socks. As they settled into the seats, he asked Rob, “So which way, captain?”

“Huh?” Rob said, looking up at the second-floor windows and pondering the intruder.

“Which direction?”

“Oh. That way. Down Main Street.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Just thinking. Did you say that your wife thought someone was watching her last night?”

“Yeah. But she generally thinks that most of the time.”

“I imagine she’s usually right.”

“Yeah.”

Rob nodded at the street. “Head that way, and I’ll show you where to turn.”

As they drove past the post office, Rockhouse was back in his usual place on the porch. The old man waved, and Rob noted the six fingers, just like the much smaller print on his windowsill.

Ten minutes later, a bored Stella Kizer walked down Main Street, hands in the pockets of her jacket, lost in bitter thought. Her marriage, the goal she’d pursued her whole life, was disintegrating around her, and she seemed powerless to stop it. None of the fairy tales she’d loved as a child, none of the sermons preached by her minister, had prepared her for the reality of a partnership defined, it seemed, by all the things each did to annoy the other. Often she’d lie awake, watching Terry sleep and considering how he’d feel if she died… or, alternatively, how she’d feel if he did.

Now she was stuck in the world’s most isolated and backward town—“second oldest in the state,” the frighteningly countrified woman who ran the hotel said with pride—while her husband continued his necrophilic pilgrimage. Ever since he’d discovered his family’s link with the mysterious Tufa, he’d been obsessed with tracing his lineage, as if it might somehow tell him something about himself he didn’t already know.

That made her smile: the idea that Terry, so supremely self-absorbed, might not know something about himself. She almost laughed.

“Life sure is funny, ain’t it?”

She looked up. Rockhouse Hicks smiled at her from the post office porch. The sun was in her eyes, so she couldn’t see him clearly, just a vague impression of an old man in a rocking chair. “Excuse me?”

“Especially when you get married,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You get up there and say ‘I do,’ but they don’t tell you ‘how to,’ do they?”

Stella shielded her eyes with her hand. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Naw.”

“Then… why are you talking to me?”

“Just being neighborly. Pretty thing like you should be used to that. I bet men been neighborly to you your whole life.”

She walked up onto the porch in order to see him more clearly. He wasn’t the first dirty old man she’d encountered; since puberty, she’d dealt with the unwanted attention of older males. When she rejected or ignored them, they often turned hostile, and she knew how to handle that as well. And today she was particularly in the mood to deal harshly with anything masculine that crossed her path.

“Look, I’d appreciate it if you’d mind your own business. What if I were your granddaughter and some old man started coming on to her? How would you feel?”

“Well, if she was as pretty as you, I’d at least understand it. Men have to be men.”

She scowled. That sounded enough like a threat that it made her a bit nervous. “I’m married, too, you know.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t happy about it.”

She folded her arms. “Now, why would you say that?”

“I seen your husband drive off with somebody else in his truck earlier.”

She blinked a little. They knew no one in this town; Terry had found it on a map and made reservations on the Internet. He hadn’t mentioned anyone accompanying him when he’d rushed through the room, grabbing papers. “Who?” she asked coolly.

“Had dark hair, that’s all I could see. Lots of people around here do.”

Stella was taken aback. Could Terry really be having an affair ? Could he have met some local woman on the Internet, come here to tryst with her under the pretense of this genealogy research, and then picked these fights in order to have time alone with this new paramour? Was he that devious, that resourceful?

“I don’t believe you,” she said at last.

“Suit yourself,” Rockhouse said with a shrug. “But a pretty girl like you shouldn’t be alone.”

“I think I can manage.” She turned to walk away, then froze. Standing ten feet behind her was the most handsome—no, the most beautiful —man she’d ever seen. Her stomach dropped, her mouth went dry, and her whole body seemed to surge with sensation. When he smiled, she thought she’d pass out.

“Hey, there, little lady,” he said, and his voice made her whole body shudder. “My name’s Stoney. What’s yours?”

“So where is it?” Kizer asked.

Rob scanned the field behind the deserted fire station. Everything was just as he remembered it, but he saw no sign of the tombstones poking above the waving grass. “It was right there,” he said in disbelief. “I swear.”

“Maybe we’re not in the right spot to see it,” Kizer said helpfully.

“I was standing right here yesterday and saw it,” Rob grumbled. “Right here, ” he repeated with certainty.

“Hm. Well, It didn’t show it on any of my maps, so maybe you made a mistake.”

“Look, I walked up to them and touched them. I read the inscriptions off them. I took pictures with my phone. I’m telling you, they’re here somewhere.”

He marched out into the grass, toward the spot he knew the graveyard had occupied the day before. Kizer followed, a little wary now. “It really isn’t that big a deal,” he called, but Rob ignored him.