You Live Once Read Free Page B

put it in my top bureau drawer.
    The next was the worst. She was sickeningly heavy. I got her by wrist and ankle. I tried to hold her out away from me, but she swung against my shins. Her free arm and leg dragged and her head thudded against the door frame. I put her in the middle of the tarp. She sprawled on her side, hair across her darkened face. I was breathing hard. I got my flashlight and carefully inspected the inside of the closet. I couldn’t see anything, but the walls were smooth enough to take prints. I took a towel from the laundry bag and wiped the inside of the closet. It was good that I did because the damp towel picked up three more long black hairs that I had missed. I wiped it again and found nothing.
    I picked up the four corners of the tarp, and joined them. She curled into a ball in the middle. Taking a good grip on the four corners, I picked her up off the floor with my right hand. She must have weighed somewhere around one twenty. I moved over to where I could inspect the sight in the full-view mirror. The tarp fit her body snugly and it was unmistakably a woman in a tarp. Nothing else. If I’d gone out with that, Mrs. Speers’ eyes would have bulged like a Thanksgiving dinner.
    I set her down and thought some more. Then I went through into the shed and came back with a paper bag of cans and bottles. I held the four corners up again and wedged the cans and bottles down between her body and the tarp so as to destroy the distinctive rounded outlines. I missed on the first try. The next time, after I had gotten some down around her hips, she no longer looked like a woman in a tarp. She looked like a tarp stuffed with angular junk.
    After counting to ten I hoisted her off the floor again and walked through the living room and out the front door. Mrs. Speers was alarmingly close, snipping at a rose bush. I wanted the tarp to look as light as possible. I used every ounce of strength to handle it negligently,swinging it into the back end of the car, lowering it without too much of a thump. As I swung it I heard the old rotten fabric rip. I saw Mary’s tan elbow sticking through the rip. I banged the lid down and did not dare look at Mrs. Speers.
    “My, you
do
have a load,” she said.
    “Quite a load this time. I let it accumulate too long.”
    “Why, I thought you went last week!”
    “I didn’t take it all that time.”
    “This is certainly a lovely day to be going up to the lake. Do you go to Smith Lake?”
    “Yes m’am.”
    “Mr. Speers and I used to go up there years ago. He adored bass fishing. He was never very lucky, but he loved to fish.”
    “I guess it used to be a good bass lake. There’s talk of restocking it.”
    “It’s nice that you have friends up at Smith Lake, Mr. Sewell, with summer coming on and all. It makes a nice change. Who are you going to see up there? Any of the old families?”
    “Mary Olan invited me up.”
    “You don’t say! Their place is one of the oldest places on the lake. It certainly is the biggest, at least it was the last time I was up there. You know, Mr. Speers and I used to know Rolph and Nadine Olan quite well. I mean we weren’t
close
friends. When Mary was quite little my youngest girl used to play with her. Their tragedy was a terrible shock to this city, Mr. Sewell, they were so prominent.”
    “I haven’t heard much about that. Mary doesn’t mention it, of course.”
    “She wouldn’t, poor child. I can remember it like it was yesterday, the expression on Mr. Speers’ face when he read it in the morning paper. Nadine always seemed like such a quiet woman. Almost shy. Sensitive, too. And Rolph was so clever at business. They say she never has responded to a single treatment and she’ll have to stay inthat place the rest of her natural days. I suppose it’s a blessing though that she isn’t well enough to realize she killed her husband. Afterwards we heard that he had been … seeing someone else.” Mrs. Speers blushed delicately.