“I don’t know. Maybe back in ninety, ninety-one.”
“That was after he had committed several murders.”
“Alleged murders,” she corrected. “He was never convicted for anything back then.”
“Alleged,” Trout conceded. No reason to argue that point. “Did you know about his … um … activities?”
She made a face. “Ever heard the expression ‘country don’t mean dumb’?”
“Sure.”
“You’re asking a question that you’d ask a stupid hayseed who didn’t know shit from Shinola. Is that how this is going to run? You going to treat me like I’m poor unedumacated white trash.” She leaned on the deliberately mispronounced word, giving it a heavy rural twist. “If I say I knew what he was up to then I’m an accessory. I look old, but do I look stupid?”
Trout grinned, unapologetically. “No, ma’am,” he said, “you don’t.”
“Show some respect.”
Trout found he suddenly liked Aunt Selma. “Sorry.”
She nodded and took a long drag.
“Did you have any contact with Homer Gibbon after he was arrested for murder?”
“No.”
“No letters? E-mails? Christmas card?”
“Homer strike you as the kind of guy who buys Christmas cards?” she asked, smiling.
“Actually,” Trout said, “he tried to send valentines to the jury during his first trial.”
“Publicity stunt. Probably cooked up by his lawyer to make him look crazy.”
“So, you had no contact with him after his first arrest?”
“No.”
“At all?”
“No.”
“Then why did you place the request to have his body brought here to Stebbins for burial?”
She shrugged. “Family.”
“Sorry, Selma,” said Trout, “but that’s thin. Not to offend, but it doesn’t look like you have two dimes to rub together. Between the fees, transportation, mortuary costs, and a crew to dig a grave, you have to be shelling out five, six grand.”
“Four and change.”
“Still a lot of money.”
“Only if I was interested in saving it.” Selma picked a fleck of tobacco from her tongue and flicked it into the wind. “You have any family?”
“A sister in Scranton,” he said. “Distant cousins somewhere in upstate New York.”
“When’s the last time you saw your sister?”
Trout had to think about that. He and Meghan had never been close. They swapped cards at the holidays, but the last time he’d actually seen her?
“Couple of years ago.”
She arched an eyebrow. “A couple?”
“Okay, four years ago.”
“So, you’re not close. If she died, would you go to her funeral?”
“Sure.”
“You say that without thinking about it. Why?”
“She’s my sister.”
Selma nodded, and Trout got it.
“Well, yeah, okay,” he said, “but she’s a nurse and a mother. She’s not a serial killer.”
“Neither was Homer last time I saw him. He was a scared, lost young man who hadn’t gotten much of a break or a kind word from anyone. His mom gave him up when he was just born — and let me tell you, that leaves a mark — and he was in and out of foster care until he ran away. You ever do a story on foster care, Mr. Trout?”
Trout said nothing.
“Yeah, I bet you have. So, you know what kind of meat grinders they are. Half the foster parents are in it just for the paychecks and they don’t give a flying fuck about the kids. The other half are pedophiles who shouldn’t be around kids. You think Homer got to be the way he was because he had bad wiring?” She tapped her skull. “Fuck no. He was made to be what he was. The system screwed him every bit as much as those baby-raping sonsabitches they call foster parents. Don’t try to tell me different because then you’d be lying.”
“No,” he said. “I know what those places are like. A lot of kids get torn up in there and that makes them victims of the predators and victims of the system.”
“And it turns them into predators themselves,” observed Aunt Selma.
“Not all of them,” said Trout. “Not even most of them.”
“Enough of them. Enough so that people became used to them being killers and when that happened it stopped being an aber … aber … what’s the word I’m thinking of?”
“Aberration?” Trout supplied.
“Yes. And then they say that since most people don’t turn bad then those that do have done so because of choice.” She threw her cigarette into the cold dirt and ground it under her heel. Trout noticed that she wore bedroom slippers with little hummingbirds on them. A touch of innocence? Or a memory of innocence lost? Either way it made Trout feel sad for her. He wondered how much of her life was forced on her and how much was choice? And that made him wonder if a person who is forced into bad situations over and over again when they’re too weak or helpless to do anything about it will eventually make bad choices of their own simply because they’ve become habituated to them.
He’d have to talk to a psychologist about that. It would make a great motif to string through the whole story, be it a book or a screenplay.
“Are you saying that none of what Homer did was his fault?”
Selma did not answer that right away. She took out her Camels and lit another and puffed for a while, one arm wrapped around her ribs, the elbow of the other arm propped on it, wrist limp so that the hand fell backward like someone considering a piece of art in a gallery. Only this wasn’t an affectation, he was sure of that. She was really thinking about his question. Or, he thought a moment later, carefully constructing the content of her reply. On the roof of the barn one crow lifted its voice and sliced the air with a plaintive cry that was disturbingly like that of a child in pain.
“No,” she said at length, “that wouldn’t be the truth and we both know it. Homer may have been pushed in the wrong direction, but over time … yeah, I think he got a taste for it.”
“And yet you wanted to have him buried here.”
Selma nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?” Trout asked.
“You asked that already.”
“You never actually answered the question.”
“He’s family.”
“Okay, but it’s not like this is your ancestral home. You were born in Texas. Homer was born in Pittsburgh. Why here?”
“It’s the family place now.”
“Is there more of the family around?”
She shook her head. “I don’t expect you’d understand, Mr. Trout.”
“I’d like to.” He intended it as a lie, but he surprised himself by meaning it.
She smoked her cigarette and stared at the line of gray clouds that had begun to creep over the far tree line.
“I’ve got cancer,” she said.
Her comment startled Trout. “What? I mean … God, I’m sorry. Is it very … advanced?”
“I’m a corpse,” she said. “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” She waggled the cigarette between her fingers. “Three packs a day for forty years.”
