An Absence of Light

Valerie Heath came out of the front courtyard gates in a hurry. She was still wearing her less than wonderful romper, still smoking furiously, and she was carrying a purse with a shoulder strap. They heard the chirrup of the security system on the car as she hit the disarm button on her key chain, and in a matter of moments she was in the car and was pulling out of the driveway.

“We’re going to follow her?” Paula asked.

They watched her taillights grow smaller and smaller.

“You’d better move it, Casey. She’s-”

“I’m not going to follow her,” Neuman said, taking off his tie and jacket and tossing them in the back seat He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt “I’m going to go around to the back of her place and get her trash. Watch for me at the left front corner of the house. When you see me, pull up into the driveway.’

Chapter 32

They pulled off the Gulf Freeway when they were well out of the subdivisions around Clear Lake, and Houston was still just a glow on the night horizon. Neuman drove down the access road until he came to a dirt track that seemed to lead to nothing but darkness through miles of the flat coastal plain. He turned off and drove a hundred yards or so until the uneven ruts dropped slightly, and the tall clumps of plume and muhly grass hid them from the highway.

“Okay,” Neuman said, cutting the motor. “If you’ll hold the flashlight, I’ll do the shit work.”

“No argument from me, but why don’t we just shine the headlights on it?”

“Because this is going to take a few minutes, and I don’t want anybody seeing us and deciding to drive out here to see what it is we’re doing.”

They got out of the car and Neuman opened the trunk and took out two large plastic bags of garbage and set them beside the road. He took a pair of surgical gloves from a box of them that he kept in the trunk, pulled them on, and walked over to the plastic bags.

“If this doesn’t pay off, I’m going to be pissed,” he said. He bent down and tore open the first bag and began dumping everything out in one of the sandy ruts of the road, walking backward as he shook out the contents of the sack. The hot humid days had steamed everything in the sacks, and the odor was horrendous. Paula held her nose and quickly found the downwind side of the refuse. Taking a step or two into the tall grass, Neuman came back with a stick, straddled the string of garbage, bent down, and set to work.

There was a soft breeze coming across the grasses from the coast, but it was warm and gummy and there was not enough of it to carry away the stench of what Neuman was stirring around with his stick. But more important it wasn’t enough to blow away the host of mosquitoes that quickly found them. The spring rains had provided these insects with enough pools and puddles and mud holes to multiply themselves into numbers that approached plague proportions and within minutes they were swarming as thick as a fog. Paula swatted at them furiously and swore and fidgeted while Neuman inched his way along the rope of garbage. After ten minutes of this Neuman stopped and looked up.

“Paula, if you don’t hold the damn light still I can’t do this,” he said, his voice rising slightly.

“We’ve just got to figure out something else. This is not going to work.” She was writhing. “They are eating me!”

“You wearing a slip?” he asked.

“Yeah…”

“Squat down, pull the slip down over your legs, pull the dress up over your head, stick the flashlight out of a hole, and KEEP IT

STILL!”

While Neuman waited, Paula did as she was told, taking a few minutes to arrange herself in the manner Neuman had described, squatting in the grassy median between the two sandy ruts and finally managing to get the flashlight through a hole near her face and guide the beam onto Valerie Heath’s garbage.

“Beautiful,” Neuman said, and returned to perusing his cache, flicking at pieces of paper with his stick. Now and then he would pick up something crumpled and unfold it or pry sticky things apart from one another or pull wadded pieces of paper from cans or waxed cartons. If it was something with printing on it, he picked it up and looked at it; if it was something he couldn’t identify, he picked it up and looked at it Not wanting to use his hands to swat at the insects, every few moments he would duck his head and wipe at the mosquitoes on his face with his shirtsleeves. Neither of them spoke. They just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

As trucks whined by on the highway, Neuman gathered up a little pile of papers he had salvaged from the debris of the first bag and put them in the trunk of the car. Then he went to the second bag, ripped it open, and strung out its contents a little way from the first line of garbage.

“This is actually going pretty damn good,” he said, picking up his stick and waiting for Paula to rearrange herself near the second line of garbage.

“Aren’t the mosquitoes killing you?” she said from under her dress.

“Not that bad,” he said. “Come on.”