Simple Genius

HORATIO BARNES DROVE HIS RENTAL CAR out of the Nashville airport. An hour later he was in rural Tennessee looking for the small town where Michelle Maxwell had lived when she was six years old. He found it after several wrong turns and some time-consuming backtracking. He reached the small, crumbling town center, stopped and asked for directions at the hardware store and drove out of town heading southwest. He was sweating because apparently his rental fee didn’t cover a car with functioning air-conditioning.

The neighborhood where Michelle had lived clearly had seen better days. The homes were old and dilapidated, the yards ill-nourished. He checked house numbers on the mailboxes until he found it. The Maxwell house was set off the street. It had a large front yard with a dying oak anchoring it. On one limb was a tire hanging from a rotting rope. In the side yard was a 1960s-era Ford pickup up on cinder blocks. He saw the jagged dead stumps of what looked to be the remains of a privacy hedge that had run across the front of the house.

The paint on the clapboard siding was peeling away and the screen on the front door had fallen off and was lying on the steps. Horatio couldn’t tell if the place was inhabited or not. From its piecemeal look he reasoned it was an old farmhouse. Presumably the original owners had sold the bulk of the land to a developer and the neighborhood had sprung up around their homestead.

He wondered what it would have been like for the young girl to grow up here with just her parents, the beloved sons having moved on to manhood. Horatio also wondered again if Michelle’s conception had been an accident. Would that have influenced how her parents treated it? From experience Horatio knew that one could cut both ways. Which way had it cut with you, Michelle?

He pulled his rental to the edge of the graveled shoulder, got out and looked around, wiping the sweat off his face with his handkerchief. Apparently there wasn’t an active neighborhood watch program because no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Probably there was nothing here worth stealing.

Horatio walked up the gravel drive. Part of him was waiting for an old hound to lumber around the corner of the structure with teeth bared just looking for a plump leg to bite. However, no animal or person came forward to greet or attack him. He reached the porch and peered inside the busted front door. The place seemed abandoned, or if not, the current inhabitants were setting a new standard for minimalism.

“Can I help you?” a firm voice said.

Horatio swung around and saw a woman standing there at the end of the drive. She was young, short and chubby, wore a faded sundress and had a fat baby riding on her left hip. Her hair was dark and curly and in the humidity it clung to her head like a skullcap.He walked toward her. “I sure hope so. I’m trying to find out about the people who used to live in this house.”

She stared over his shoulder. “You mean the bums, druggies or whores?”

He followed her gaze. “Oh, is that what it’s used for these days?”

“I pray to the Lord to strike the sinners dead.”

“I presume the sinners don’t come by in the daylight, just at night.”

“Well ain’t no law says we got to hide in bed when it gets dark. So we see the evil and evil it is.”

“Well, I’m really sorry about that. But I wasn’t talking about the, um, evil. I was talking about a family named the Maxwells; they lived here about thirty years ago?”

“We’ve only been here five, so I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Anyone else here who might?”

She pointed a thick finger at the farmhouse. “Because of that evil, ain’t nobody want to stay too long.” Her baby gave a hiccup and spittle ran down its mouth. She wiped him up with a rag she pulled from her pocket.

Horatio handed her a business card. “Well, if you think of anyone who might be able to help me, you can reach me at that number.”

She studied the card. “You a shrink?”

“Something like that.”

“From Wash-ing-ton?” She said the word with a pronounced sneer. “This here’s Tennessee.”

“I have a big practice.”

“Why you want to know about these Maxwell folks?”

“It’s confidential, but I can tell you that it’s to try to help a patient of mine.”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“I thought you didn’t know them.”

“I know somebody who might. My granny. She gave us this house when she went in the nursing home. She lived there, oh, must’ve been forty years or so at least. Hell, Gramps is buried in the backyard.”

“That’s nice.”

“Grass grows real well over that spot, I tell you that.”

“I’m sure. So your grandmother’s at a nursing home. Near here?”

“State place, about an hour away. She couldn’t afford nothing fancy. That’s why she give us her house, so’s she could get help from the government. You know, so they wouldn’t know she had stuff.”

“Like assets to be used to pay for her care?”