Theresa Weir: Bad Karma

© 1999

Folks there called it Missoura. Daniel Sinclair used to call it Missoura. Now he called it Missouree. That pretty much summed up his status in the small town of Egypt, Missouri. Outsider.

His was a bigger fall from grace than most, because he hadn’t always been an outsider. No, Daniel Sinclair had been born into the welcoming, nurturing arms of Egypt, Missouri, which was the only way you could ever really belong. You could live there twenty years, but if you hadn’t been shot from someone’s loins on that sacred soil, you were an outsider. And if you were born there and left, well, then you could add traitor to your resumé. And if you came back, nobody forgave you and everybody talked about your hoity-toity accent, which was really no accent at all, but rather the absence of one, a fact there was no use in arguing. You would never convince anyone in Egypt that he or she was the one with the accent.

In California, they’d teased Daniel about his lazy drawl. In Missouri, they teased him about his city talk. A guy couldn’t win.

Daniel stood looking out the door of the one-story clapboard house, past the flies that clung to the screen waiting for their chance to get in, and past the gray-painted porch at his battered blue truck, which was waiting to take him someplace he didn’t want to go. As a kid, he’d harbored the horrendous misconception that once he became an adult, he wouldn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do. Then he’d grown up and realized what a bunch of shit that was.

“Beau!” Daniel shouted over his shoulder, preparing to announce his departure.

Knowing his brother, Beau would still be in the bathroom, going through the ritual of combing his hair until not a strand was out of place, and shaving so carefully and thoroughly that his face took on a baby-smooth sheen.

“See you in a few hours!” Daniel put a hand to the door. The flies stirred, then resettled, their very sluggishness seeming to mock the heaviness that seemed so much a part of Daniel these days.

It was going to rain, Daniel told himself. Flies always wanted in when it was going to rain.

“Wait!” Beau’s shout came from the dark recesses of the house. “Wait for me.”

Daniel’s shoulders sagged. He’d been afraid of this.

Beau hurried as much as Beau could hurry, which meant it was a full three minutes before he stepped from the bathroom, every hair in place, his striped polo shirt tucked snugly into neatly creased jeans.

“You can’t come,” Daniel told him.

“Why?” Beau’s blue eyes held surprise. “Aren’t you picking that lady up at the train station? I love trains. You know I love trains.”

Daniel didn’t want to keep Beau from seeing the train, he wanted to keep him from seeing the lady, the psychic. To Daniel’s supreme irritation, the town of Egypt had hired a damn psychic. Daniel had agreed to pick her up so he could give her his personal welcome, which he hoped might just end with their guest purchasing a ticket back to the voodoo land she’d come from. The encounter wouldn’t be pleasant, but somebody had to do it.

“The lady’s name is Clara,” Beau stated with authority.

“Who told you that?”

“I heard you talkin’ to Jo about her. Said her name was Clara. Clara Voiyant.”

Daniel laughed. “Her name’s Cleo Tyler, although I think I like your name better.”

“Cleo. That’s a weird name.”

“Maybe it’s short for Cleopatra,” Daniel joked.

“That’s even weirder.”

“No shit.”

Beau shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What key is she going to find?”

Oh, man. Daniel had hoped to keep the key business quiet. “You haven’t told anybody about it, have you?”

Beau looked down at his feet. “Maybe Matilda.”

“Matilda?”

“You know. The girl at Tastee Delight.”

The whole damn town probably knows by now.

It was so stupid, and unfortunately so damn typical of Josephine Bennett. When her husband, the former chief of police, died two years ago, Jo took over. That would have been fine, except she went on a spiritualism kick, and she now thought rocks and cards and candles could answer everything. What was next, séances at the police station?

Jo had read about Tyler ’s involvement in a kidnapping case in California. But Daniel had heard Cleo Tyler hadn’t had anything to do with it, that she’d been brought in just as the police were ready to rescue the victim. An opportunist, Tyler hadn’t wasted a second in taking credit for solving the crime and saving a kidnapped child’s life. Daniel had tried to tell Jo that Cleo Tyler was nothing but a fraud and a con artist, but Jo wouldn’t listen.

“I’ve consulted my cards,” she’d told him. “And they say she’s the one.”

“The one what?” he’d asked. “The crackpot?”

“When did you get so serious?” Jo had replied. “You need to lighten up. What’s happened to you, Danny boy? When you were little, you were always laughing. I never see you laugh anymore.”

“Nothing’s funny, Jo.”

And that was the truth. Nothing was funny.

“The patrol car’s being worked on,” Daniel told Beau. He’d deliberately taken it to the garage the previous day so he’d have an excuse to leave Beau at home. “There won’t be enough room for all of us in the truck. I’m sorry.”

“We can fit. Three people? We can fit. Three people have fit before. Is she fat?” Beau thought about that for a while. “Even if she is fat, we can fit. I’m skinny, and you’re… I don’t know, you’re regular.”

“She has a dog.”

“What kind of dog?”

“I don’t know.” Daniel felt his impatience growing. He fought it and failed. “A dog,” he said sharply. “Maybe a big dog. Maybe a take-a-bite-out-of-your-ass dog.”

Daniel instantly regretted raising his voice. It wasn’t Beau’s fault that the town of Egypt had hired some whacko to come and read tealeaves.

Beau was easy-going, but he knew when he wasn’t being treated fairly.

Daniel had been told that, even as a baby, Beau had been good-natured. That he hardly ever cried and hardly ever stopped smiling. Daniel wouldn’t know, because Beau was two years older.

Beau was a little slow. He’d come into the world in the front seat of their parents’ car, and had been deprived of oxygen for several minutes. Funny thing was, Beau didn’t consider himself cheated in any way. No, he was one of the happiest, most content people Daniel had ever known. And wasn’t that what life was all about, if not happiness, then at least contentment?

Daniel thought it would be easy, moving back from LA, but living in Missouri was just a different kind of hard. As a kid, Daniel had pored over travel books. He’d soaked in everything he could about places he feared he might never see. Sometimes he thought that if he hadn’t read those books, he’d be like everybody else in Egypt -complacent, almost smug in that complacency. The people in Egypt didn’t think about what was going on in the rest of the world, what they might be missing.

People were always reaching for more. Maybe the secret was to reach for less.

Daniel watched as, wordlessly, Beau plopped down on the couch, picked up the remote control, and clicked on the television. He was pissed.