Katherine Page - Body in the Bog

“I’ll tell you everything; just give me a minute. If I don’t get out of these clothes, I’m going to develop a serious rash. Even with my long underwear, this wool itches like crazy. Now I know why our ancestors all have such pained expressions in their portraits. I thought it was ill-fitting teeth, but they were merely waiting for a break to scratch.”

From the way Tom was speaking, Nelson must be out of danger, Faith thought.

“Do you want a sandwich?” she asked.

“At least two,” he called back over his shoulder.

When he returned, the first person to demand his attention was Ben, who had been doing Legos in a corner of the kitchen.

“Mom says we can’t watch the parade from the church,” he told his father woefully.

Tom and Faith looked at each other over the little tyrant’s head. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

“I told him I would take him to see the clowns—and Samantha and Danny, if the senior-class car isn’t too far away from the clown contingent,” Faith explained.

“That’s going to have to be it for this year, Ben. You know Mr. Batcheldor is sick and we have a lot of grown-up worries right now.”

This plus a promise of cotton candy appeased the boy enough to send him back to his construction.

Faith set Tom’s food on the table and all of them looked at him expectantly.

“Chloral hydrate. But that’s not to leave this room.” Everyone nodded solemnly.

“A Mickey Finn,” Sam said. “Of lethal proportions.” He liked to read mysteries from the thirties and forties.

“Exactly. Nelson was regaining consciousness and I went in to see him. Charley and Dunne were both there asking him questions, which is how I found out.

It must have been put in something he ate at the breakfast, because it acts quickly and there was no trace of it in his flask. They were trying to get him to remember what he’d had, but he was pretty out of it.”

“It is still used to help people sleep, though,” Pix said. “My mother had some in the medicine cabinet from my father’s last illness, until I made her throw it out. It was in a brown bottle, a red liquid. Father used to complain about the cherry taste. That would be pretty easy to put into Nelson’s juice.” Faith thought of Ben’s bright red mustache. The cloyingly sweet juice would have masked the flavor of just about anything.

“But pretty hard to top up the man’s drink in a crowded room without attracting some attention,” Sam said.

“It also came in capsules, but those were too hard for father to swallow at that point,” Pix remembered.

She also remembered her children and jumped to her feet. “It’s after two o’clock; maybe the cable company will be televising the beginning of the parade.” They all crowded into the small room with the TV to watch. At first, all Faith could see were fezzes. The Shriners made up a good fourth of the parade—Shriners dressed as Minutemen, Shriners in tiny Model T Fords, Shriners playing bagpipes, Shriners on floats, Shriners on motorcycles, and her own favorite—Shriners playing snake charmer’s flutes dressed in Arabian Nights costumes with gold leather shoes that curled high in the air at the toe. A huge model of the Shriners’ Burn Institute adorned yet another float. The fezzes were mingling with huge bunches of balloons carried by vendors, banners, musical instruments, and flags—so many that at times the screen was filled with nothing but red, white, and blue.

“There they are!” Pix cried. They had a fleeting glimpse of the car, now decorated with blue and gold streamers and other Aleford High insignia. Danny and Samantha were just visible, wedged in the midst of the other occupants. Everyone was smiling. The camera panned to the Aleford High Drum and Bugle Corps behind them and a group of pint-sized twirlers.

Two of them dropped their batons. The Patriots’ Day Parade had started. The screen went blank for an instant and then the morning’s reenactment appeared.

“They won’t show any more until they reach the center,” Faith said, staying to watch the reenactment, as she hadn’t earlier. She’d been too eager to tell the police to get a tape. Everyone else stayed, too.

It was like watching something that had occurred months or even years ago, Faith thought. Just as it had been that morning, the figures on the green were scarcely visible in the darkness; then as the day dawned and the action started, the players appeared.

Nelson had answered in the roll call, but the camera was on Gus Deane, so it was impossible to see how Nelson looked. His voice sounded a bit reedy and weak, but the sound quality was not the best. Faith saw him take his place in the line; then the musket fire started and it was impossible to see anyone. She wished she had thought to tape it herself. She wanted to go back over it.

Nelson didn’t look well when the smoke cleared and seemed to stumble as he obeyed Captain Sewall’s commands.

She left the room to call the cable company to find out when it would be broadcast again. She had a feeling it would be replayed often today.

Ben was sitting in the corner. With Tom home, she could take her son out to the celebration for a while.

Not that she felt like celebrating, but she definitely felt like getting out.

They walked across the green toward the reviewing stand, stopping to get Ben his cotton candy. He pulled gauzy pink pieces of it away from the cardboard tube it was wound around. Some was already in his hair.

Faith pulled a piece off, too, and for a moment the grainy sweetness on her tongue tasted good, a reminder of family outings—carnivals, the Jersey shore.

She swallowed. It was enough.

“Come over here by the curb. We’ll be able to see them and wave when they go by,” Faith told Ben.

They hadn’t missed the clowns, more Shriners. They hadn’t missed something else, too.

Millicent Revere McKinley, flag in hand, waving the other with practiced, stately mien, was standing on top of the reviewing platform. She was flanked by two state policemen and there was no mistaking the look of triumph in her eyes.

Seven

It had been a long day and it was a long night. The Millers and escort went back home after the parade, only to return for supper at Faith’s insistence. She would have liked to have stayed by Pix’s side until midnight, but Pix had declared that doing nothing was exhausting and she wanted to go to bed early. Devoted friend that she was, Faith could not see herself lying across the bottom of the Millers’ connubial four-poster. In any case, one or more of the dogs usually occupied that position. Dale was relieved by someone from the state police, and Faith tossed and turned all night, afraid the phone would ring.

Somehow, she got everyone off to work and school the next morning, then presented herself at Millicent’s for the meeting to compose the letter for POW!’s town-wide mailing. She felt even more bedraggled when Millicent opened the door, starched, every hair in place. The exultant look Faith had seen on her face the day before had, if anything, intensified. And she not only had energy; she was raring to go. Faith considered leaving, pleading a sudden indisposition.

Then Brad appeared at the end of Millicent’s walk and Faith felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. She had work to do.

Brad had his laptop. They were all sitting around Millicent’s dining-room table. She’d pointedly got out the table pads when she’d seen the computer.

“Don’t want to mar the surface. Mahogany, you know.”

Faith looked at the highly polished surface. Millicent’s whole house reeked of beeswax. Mahogany veneer, maybe.

After this operation, Millicent sat at the head of the table and opened a bulging folder.