Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [27]
It had to be about the Schuler murders. The date was right. They never did know the truth about what happened. Sometimes her mom would talk about the incident, saying that she missed her sister Bertha every day of her life. “She was a good wife and a good mother and a good sister and she could bake a peach pie like you wouldn’t believe.” High praise from her mother.
One time, after her mother had died, and Arlene and her father had gone out to look at the old homestead, Arlene brought up the murders with her father. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened. All he’d say was that it was a sad story that didn’t bear repeating.
Her parents had inherited the Schuler farm. Otto Schuler had had no family in the area. All his relatives were still in Germany and couldn’t be found. Her dad farmed the land, but he didn’t want to rent out the house. He did little to keep it in repair, but he kept a roof on it. Her dad claimed no one would want to live in it after what had occurred there. Finally, he rented it to the Danielses not long ago.
When Arlene was little, she would sneak over and climb into the house through a broken window. The house was kinda spooky. There had been brown stains on the kitchen floor that she imagined came from the blood of the murdered children—her five cousins. She would have had a different life had they lived. She would have been part of a big family. As it was she was raised all by herself.
Hearing a noise, she lifted her head to see her father’s truck come barreling down the road, raising a cloud of dust behind it. He pulled into the driveway and drove right up to where she was sitting.
“All through working for the day?” he asked her.
“Just taking a break. You want a cup of coffee?”
“Naw, just thought I’d check and see if I was welcome for supper.”
“You know you always are, Dad. Come by around six.” She shook the paper at him. “You see the Durand Daily yet?”
“No, I don’t bother with that paper. Nothing in it I want to know about.”
“There’s a letter that I think might be referring to the Schuler murders.”
He stared at her.
“Says that they want to find out the truth about what happened.”
He shook his head. “They’re dead and gone. What good’s the truth now? It’s too late.”
Opening the door to the basement, he smelled the scent of darkness. He found it a comfort, allowing him to feel safe and away from the world. He stepped down the first step and closed the door behind him. This was another of his holy places—the basement. His wife never went down into it, hating the cold and damp. They kept the freezer out in the garage and she stored all her canned goods in the pantry, so she had no reason to go down there.
It wasn’t even a full basement. The old farmhouse had been built in pieces, and the basement was only under half the house. It was built of old limestone and seeped water most of the summer, but he liked it down there. His father had built a workshop in the room right under the stairs and now it was his. He still kept all his father’s tools in their proper places. A diagram drawn in pencil on the wood backboard made it easy, outlining each tool hanging on its nail.
Above the tools hung his mother’s graduation picture. In it she wasn’t smiling; she was watching. He knew she finally understood what he was doing. Even she had to admit the time had come.
Upstairs, his wife was stretched out on the couch, watching one of her soap operas. He couldn’t tell one from the other, even though she would talk about them as if the people lived just down the road and he saw them at church every Sunday. They filled her life and he was glad of it. She needed something.
He had a lemon, a jug of water, and a little vial. He had brought down a good cutting knife from the kitchen. Slicing the lemon into quarters, he had decided, would be the way to go, as a quarter