Dead Dancing Women by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

reaching out to grab at our jackets and tug at our hair. Harry didn’t use the driveway for more than walking out to the road, as far as I knew. He owned a vehicle—of sorts. A kind of half-breed he’d put together himself from spare parts, with a black pickup cab for a front, and a flatbed he’d built on the back. He drove over to my place in it when he came to take out a fallen tree, or get a wasp’s nest from under my eaves; but always avoiding main roads, taking the old logging roads so Dolly couldn’t catch him. On the flatbed of his unique vehicle, Harry kept chain saws and oilcans and rags and even a beekeeper’s veiled hat. He was a man equipped at all times to take on any disaster I came up with.
    â€œI’ve seen Harry’s car,” Dolly said, as we walked along through a new layer of fallen leaves. “Always gets away before I can check to see if he’s got a license on it. Can’t be coming in and out this way though. Take a look at this drive.”
    I was taking a look. Close up, bent halfway over, eyeing the thorns on the branches, burrs on the bushes.
    I didn’t answer Dolly because I was sure Harry didn’t fool with licenses for anything he owned. Not his dogs. Not his hunting. And certainly not that old, slapped-together car. But I wasn’t going to help Deputy Dolly look into it. Our partnership stretched only so far. “Lots of last-century logging roads back in the woods for him to get in and out on,” I said. “And Shell Oil put in roads to get to the rigs and the pumps they’ve got going back in these woods. Some of the roads must run behind his property.”
    â€œDidn’t find oil on your property, did they?” Dolly grinned over her shoulder at me. “You’d be a millionaire if they did. Making millionaires out of some of the damnedest people.”
    â€œDon’t own the mineral rights,” I said. “I think Shell does.”
    â€œYeah, most don’t own ’em. Old mining company bought ’em up years ago. Sold ’em to Shell. But you’d be amazed what some of the scrub and sand land is bringing folks who didn’t sell out.”
    While we walked, cussing a few times when the brambles got us, the weather turned again, with the sun going behind the clouds, leaving fumes of cold to scuttle along the ground like tiny goblins. More shadows than I cared to think about slipped in and out around us. I shivered in my denim jacket and told myself it was time for warmer clothes. Sooner than I cared to think about, it would be time to trot out the down jacket, knee-high boots, and the wool cap I pulled over my ears on below-zero mornings when my breath froze into cartoon balloons in front of me.
    I’d never been to Harry Mockerman’s house. I always left notes in his mailbox, asking him to come repair a screen or a window; come cut a fallen tree. There was something about Harry that didn’t invite cozy friendliness. Maybe it was that dead-looking black suit and yellowed shirt he wore day in and day out, season after season. Harry in that funeral suit—with his long gray hair and grizzled face, with almost opaque eyes—could be intimidating. He was old, and skinny as a razor’s edge. Never looked at me when he spoke, only down at the ground, always hunting earnestly for something. He’d stand dead still a minute then walk away to examine a thing he’d spotted. When he wandered back, he’d have a leaf in his hand, or a stone, or a piece of some unidentifiable item I didn’t want to put a name to. He’d look up at me with his sad, faded blue eyes that were almost lost in his face, folded back in among fossilized wrinkles, and he’d give me a look that was pure question. As in: Who are you? How’d you get here? Where are we?
    Harry’s stubbled chin would start to work then. He chewed thoughts over in his head, and in his mouth. His furry