Jack B. Bedell

— after Frances Glessner Lee’s murder diorama

More often than not, assumptions kill an investigation. They close off possibilities and tighten focus. Other scenarios fail to add up. No doubt, though, investigators walking into this scene made a few of them. Remote log cabin, the Hy-Da-Way. Local insurance salesman, Arthur Roberts, face-down dead on the floor from a gunshot that passed from his chest through his back at close range. The woman who reported everything, Marian Chase, said he’d pulled out a cigarette but dropped it on the floor. When he bent over to pick it up, she heard a gunshot and watched him fall to the ground. Marian told police she had picked up the gun in her panic before dropping it back onto the ground where it presently lay. She also mentioned the couple were married, but not to each other, and that Arthur had broken off the affair upon arriving at the cabin. Marian insisted there had been no quarrel. It’s those last two admissions, Marian handling the firearm and there not having been an argument after the breakup, that would have led detectives down assumption boulevard. I’m sure of it. Marian’s purse was left on the bed, letting the cops know where she thought the rendezvous was headed, and the gun was dropped on Arthur’s left side a foot from his head, an unusual drop if he’d shot himself bending over as Marian’s account implied. Two people having an affair. One breakup. One dead body. One survivor. One story. The math practically sums itself.

Post-Katrina Ghost Story

The private investigator never forgot a set up. She even remembered her parking spots on the cases she worked while she was still in college. That’s why the address she was headed to now bothered her so much. Like a memory where faces and names are blank, but still familiar somehow. Like déjà vu.

Even after she eased her van into a great sight line, nothing about the house reminded her of anything. Not the layout of the neighborhood. Not the pitch of roof. Just the address.

The Old Heads at Camp

	—after Joe Wilkins’ “Evening Elegy”

I remember the old people marking time at camp,
sitting around the table as if it would fly away 
if they ever stood up, as if the weave of their stories 
would keep everything where it needed to be, locked
in place and secure against time, memory, decay. Every
fish brought to the table to clean, every deer carcass,
every decision made, or left hanging—the old men 
connected it all to the past, to whatever happened
before we arrived in that moment. Somehow, 
they had the gift of making everything the result of some
other thing, not so much judged but considered against
the past they shared, or kept alive at their table.
Every meal, every breeze, every sunrise connected
to another they’ve known already. Even the taste
of black duck stewed over rice, decades-old memory
attached to the present for all of us to share. 
All of it. Young or old. With them or dead.

Memory, Sound Device

My dad stayed with us
on weekends after my mother
passed. Every night
we’d hear him downstairs, talking
to Mom, not in any desperate
way, just patiently letting her
know what we did all day.
Some nights, he only
talked about what we’d eaten,
the gravy she would’ve loved,
the roux just the color she’d
want it. Other nights, we
could hear real joy in his
voice bragging about
how good my daughter was
at math or how one of the boys
had done something kind
for the neighbors none of us
knew. At first, the kids
worried about him whenever
they heard him, but after
a few weeks the sound
became a Sinatra tune
lulling all of us, ushering us gently 
from this place somewhere else.