“Probably because of all the company and stimulating conversation.”
Her eyes brightened and she grinned. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.” We stared at each other for several beats, that strange feeling flaring in my chest again. I raised my hand to massage it away when Betty approached.
“Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to our most recent resident,” Betty said, placing the now-empty jug of hooch down and clapping her hands together. “Chief Travis Hale.” She waved a hand back to me and I glanced around at the welcoming faces, all except one of course. “And now we have a full house,” she said. “All six guest rooms are filled. Isn’t it exciting?”
In addition to Easton and Haven and myself, three others made up the guest list. There was the already infamous Cricket—the woman with the blond-and-white hair and sporting the overalls—and next to her, Clarice, a striking woman with jet-black hair and aqua eyes in town as a vendor at the blueberry festival where she told fortunes and sold crystals to fools and hippies （the description of her customers being my—inevitably correct—judgment alone and not part of Betty’s introduction）。 Admittedly though, it was eerie the way Clarice smiled knowingly at me like she’d read my mind.
And then there was Burt, a blind man in town on a bird-watching expedition. “It’s probably more apt to call me a bird listener,” he said, his deep-brown skin crinkling at the corners of his milky eyes.
Betty put her hand on my arm, leaning closer. “Burt became a bird…oh dear, oh dear,” she said, frowning, her eyelids fluttering as they’d done earlier upstairs, two fingers hitting her forehead as though trying to shake something loose.
“Enthusiast,” Cricket said.
“No, no,” Betty answered, looking distressed, tapping harder. “Well, yes, but no.”
“Aficionado,” Burt interjected.
She let out a sharp breath, smiling. “Yes! That’s it. Aficionado. Burt became a bird aficionado after the most amazing turn of events,” she said. “He’d lost his will to live after losing his sight. You see, it was very unexpected and he wasn’t adjusting well.”
“Drank myself stupid one night,” Burt chimed in eagerly.
“He made his way up to the top floor of his apartment building and climbed out the window at the end of the hall,” Betty continued.
“I stood on that ledge, the breeze in my face, nothing but silence all around me,” Burt said, seamlessly picking up the conversation. “It was early morning, and not a soul was awake yet on my quiet street. All of a sudden, this bird starts singing. The sweetest song I’d ever heard. It felt like that bird sang just for me. I stepped back inside, and a moment later, that birdsong faded and I heard the rustle of wings rising back into the sky.” His eyes teared up as though he was hearing it right that moment. “Saved my life,” he said quietly. “Saved my life.”
Despite the oddity of this whole situation, I felt a small lump form in my throat.
“Burt still hasn’t identified what type of bird it was,” Betty added. “But he will someday,” she said warmly.
Burt smiled in her general direction.
There was a three-legged cat lounging on an ottoman, because of course there was.
“That’s Clawdia. C-L-A-W-dia,” Betty enunciated, giggling when she obviously noticed me staring at the cat. “Get it? C-L—”
“I get it, Betty,” I assured her. “It’s…clever.”
A full house of eclectic misfits. And I was now one of them.
Betty turned and began talking to Clarice, so I leaned slightly toward Haven. “There’s a grave beneath my window.”
“I know,” she said. “I saw it a few days ago when I took a walk down to the dock. Betty says an old barn cat is buried there.” She paused and my shoulders relaxed. “Who names a cat Bob Smitherman, though?”
“This hooch gets better by the glass,” Burt said, moving my mind from the supposed barn cat—named…Bob? Smitherman?—with the oversized tombstone below my bedroom window. Maybe I should check the police department’s database later and find out if Betty’s dead husband had been named Bob.
Cricket nodded. “That it does. Of course, not making it in a toilet means it lacks a little something.”
“We’re all grateful for that, Cricket,” Haven offered.
“You think so,” Cricket said, turning to her, “but I’m telling you, the flavor is that much better when excess bacteria aids the fermentation process.” She tapped her head. “Prison science.”
“You should write a book on that,” Clarice said, shooting her a knowing wink.
“I am,” Cricket said. “It’s almost done. Do you want to read it?”
“God no.”
Cricket laughed, slapping her hand on her knee. “You do have to have a tough disposition to seek out certain forms of knowledge. Some don’t have a choice though. The knowing of things that no one wants to consider finds them,” she said sagely.
That struck me as true and wise. We all possessed unpleasant truths based on where life had taken us and what we’d encountered, whether personally or professionally. Most people didn’t mention such topics during social hour. Most people didn’t like to think about those things alone in their own head.
Like me. A drowning I’d arrived at years ago came to mind, the way the five-year-old victim’s mother had screamed his name until her voice was nothing but a ragged whisper. And then the memory of a coffin flashed, the way my father’s lips had been sewn shut, the way I’d screamed for him in my head, begging for him to come back. The way I still pictured him sometimes, even in heaven, trying to smile around the tight thread.
Next to me, Haven’s face had gone curiously blank as though she too was reliving a painful memory. I wanted to know what she was thinking. I had this strange urge to take her hand in mine.
I took another drink of hooch, this one more a swallow than a sip.
Easton, seeming to take advantage of the fact that everyone was turned toward Cricket, slunk out of the room, glancing back once at me before turning the corner and disappearing out of sight.
“He’s acting so strange,” Haven said, her brow furrowed, her gaze lingering on the place where her brother had just exited the room. “He didn’t even come over and say hi.”
I took a sip of hooch. It was true, it got better the more you drank. I could only imagine the headache one would wake up with after drinking too much of this rot gut. I set my cup aside. “Well,” I said, “it might have something to do with the fact that I walked in on him in bed with my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend now—last week and, thinking he was a sexual predator who’d broken into her apartment, had pulled my gun out and was aiming it at his head. The big one. Not the one stuck inside my girlfriend at the time.”
Her mouth had dropped open and she clapped a hand over it, her big eyes round saucers in her face. “Oh my God,” she breathed, dropping her hand. She grimaced and then met my eyes. “Your revenge. He’s the object. Oh God.” Her face had gone colorless.