The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Pitman says my Daddy injected my vertebrae with Rayburn family pride, why I walk like there’s a broomstick up my rear. Why I’m so stiff (Pitman is just teasing!) in bed.
“Yes? Who is this please?” I’m determined to remain cool and poised for Pitman and I parted early this morning with some harsh words flung about on both our sides like gravel. My husband is known as a man who flares up quickly in anger but, flaring down, which can be just a few minutes later, he expects me to laugh, forgive and forget as if nothing hurtful passed between us. Pitman is a longtime joker and this wouldn’t be the first time he has played phone games with me so I’m primed to hear his voice in this deep-gravelly male voice so suddenly intimate in my ear asking: “Are you Ms. Pitman, the lady of the house?” Quick as Ping Pong I say, “Mister, who are you? I don’t talk to strangers.”
You’d think that after living with a man for more than five years and being crazy in love with him for six years preceding you’d at least recognize his phone voice, but damned if Pitman hasn’t disguised it with something like pebbles in his mouth (?) or a layer of some fabric over the phone receiver, and speaking with the broad A’s of a Canadian! Also he’s making me nervous so I am not thinking as clearly as usual. The voice is chiding, “Ms. Pitman! You sound like some stiff-back old Rayburn,” which convinces me that this is Pitman, who else. My face is hot and eyes tearing up as they do with any strong emotion, sweat breaking out on my body, I hate how Pitman has this effect upon me, and my cousin a witness. The voice is inquiring, “Is this ‘Pitman’ an individual of some size and reputation?” — a strange thing to ask, I’m thinking.
So I say, “‘Pitman’ is a law enforcement officer of dubious reputation, a cruel tease I am considering reporting to authorities.” My teasing with Pitman is never so inspired or easy as his with me, it’s like wrestling with Pitman on our bed: I’m a scrawny ninety-seven pounds, half his size. The voice responds quick as if alarmed, “Hang on, now, baby: what authorities?” and I hear baby, this has got to be Pitman, baby in his mouth and it’s like he has touched me between the legs and any ice-scrim that has built up between us begins rapidly to melt. I’m saying, my voice rising, “He knows who! So he’d better stop playing games,” and the voice says in mock alarm, or maybe, genuine alarm, “What authorities? Sheriff? Police?” and I say, “Pitman, damn! Stop this,” but the voice persists, “Is this ‘Pitman’ armed and dangerous at all times, baby?” and there’s something about this question, a strangeness of diction, the sick sensation washes over me, This isn’t Pitman and my throat shuts up, and the voice continues to tease, husky and breathy in my ear, “Fuck Pitman, baby — what are you wearing?” and I slam down the receiver.
Andrea takes my hands, says they are like ice.
“Oh, Lucretia! Wasn’t it Pitman, I thought for sure it was.”
Andrea thinks that I should report the call and I tell her yes, I will tell Pitman and he can report it. He’s a law enforcement officer, he will know best how to proceed.
Things you do when you’re crazy in love, you’ll look back upon with astonishment. Maybe a kind of pride. Thinking That could not have been me. I am not that person.
When I married Pitman, my Daddy disowned me. Daddy had come to believe that Pitman had cast some sort of spell over me. I was not his daughter any longer. I had not been his daughter for some time.
My father was a stubborn man but I was stubborn, too.
Eighteen when I married Lucas Pitman, old enough to be legally married in New York State, but not old enough to be so coldly discarded by my father whom I loved. I’d come to believe that I hated Daddy and this was so, but I loved Daddy, too. I would never forgive him!
My mother disapproved of Pitman, of course. But knew better than to forbid me marrying him. She’d seen how Pitman had worked his way under my skin, cast his “spell” over me. She’d known long before Daddy had. Back when I was fourteen, in fact. Skinny pale-blond girl with sly eyes given to believe that, because she’s conceded to be the smartest student in the sophomore class at Au Sable High, she can’t mess up her life like any trailer-trash Adirondack girl.
I never did get pregnant, though. Pitman saw to that.
Luke Pitman was the youngest deputy in the St. Lawrence County sheriffs department when we first met: twenty-three. He’d been hired out of the police academy at Potsdam and before that he’d served in the navy. There were Pitmans scattered through the county, most of them with reputations. To have a “reputation” means nothing good except when it’s made clear what the reputation is for: integrity, honesty, business ethics, and Christian morals. For instance, Everett Rayburn, my father, had a reputation in St. Lawrence County and beyond as an “honest” contractor and builder. Everett Rayburn was “reliable” — “good-as-his-word” — “decent.” Only the well-to-do could afford to hire him and in turn Daddy could afford to hire only the best carpenters, painters, electricians, plumbers. Daddy wasn’t an architect but he’d designed our house which was the most impressive in Au Sable Forks, a split-level “contemporary-traditional” on Algonquin Drive. In school I hated how I had to be friends with the few “rich” kids. I got along with the trailer-trash kids a lot better.
There were Pitmans who lived in trailers as well as in dilapidated old farmhouses in the area. Pitman himself was from Star Lake in the Adirondacks but he’d moved out of his parents’ house at the age of fifteen. He told me he had a hard time living in any kind of close quarters with other people and if our marriage was going to endure I would have to grant him “space.”
Right away I asked Pitman would he grant me “space” too and Pitman said, tugging my ponytail so it hurt: “That depends, baby.”
“Like there’s a law for you, but a different law for me?”
“Damn right, baby.”
You couldn’t argue with Pitman. He’d stop your mouth with his mouth. You tried to speak and he’d suck out your breath. You tried to get serious with him and he’d laugh at you.
How I met Pitman was quite a story I never told it to anyone except Andrea.
I was bicycling back home from Andrea’s house in the country. She lived about a mile and a half outside Au Sable Forks which is not an actual town but a “village.” Summers, Andrea and I bicycled back and forth to see each other all the time; it was something to do. Andrea had more household chores than I did and my bicycle was newer and faster than hers and I was the one who got restless and bored so it was usually me on my bicycle slow and dreamy and coasting when I could and not paying much attention to cars and pickups that swung out to pass me. It was late August and boring-hot and I was wearing white shorts, a little green Gap T-shirt, flip-flops on my feet; I wasn’t so young as I looked. My ash-blond ponytail swept halfway down my back and my toenails were painted this bright sparkly green Daddy insisted I had to cover up, wear socks or actual shoes at mealtimes. I was maybe smiling thinking of how Daddy got upset, or pretended to, at the least “infraction” of household rules on my part, when Pitman came cruising in the car marked ST. LAWRENCE CO. SHERIFF. I wasn’t paying too much attention to this vehicle coming up behind me until a male voice came out of nowhere: “You, girl — got a license for that bike?”
I didn’t know Pitman, then. Didn’t know what you’d call Pitman-teasing. Almost crashed my bicycle, I was so scared. For there was this police officer glaring out his car window at me. He wasn’t smiling. His aviator sunglasses were tinted so dark I couldn’t see his eyes except they were not friendly eyes. His hair was tarry-black and shaved at the sides and back of his head but grew long and tufted on top like a rock musician’s. How old he was, I couldn’t have guessed. I was so scared I could hardly focus my eyes.