Yorick

Chapter One

 Roberta murdered her best friend on the anniversary of her husband’s death, and now the world brimmed over with emptiness and dread. She leaned heavily on the stout wooden guardrail dividing the Riverwalk’s narrow strip of pavement from the dewy grass, mewling like a beast in pain. She fought down the agony of her deed.

 Why did I have to kill her on Andy’s day?

 Memories of her friend shoved one another in a desperate struggle to occupy a place in her heart. Peanut’s throaty purr as she walked over Roberta’s sleeping form, kneading the blankets or turning endless circles until Roberta reached out from cloudy sleep to pet her. Peanut’s caramel fur beneath Roberta’s stubby fingers, softer than fleece. Her insistent meowing at the pantry door for just a little more catnip. Roberta even welcomed the ammonia reek of the litterbox when she neglected to change it, and Peanut had showed her displeasure by shitting in the hall. 

 I will not go in there, the cat was saying, for she was a dignified creature.

 Roberta had looked upon her companion with alternating waves of denial and terror as Peanut wasted away to little more than a bag of bones over the past few months. 

 She’ll be okay, Roberta had told herself, and mostly she believed it.

 But the veterinarian had been right and the cancer spread; it became a matter of time. The threat of emptiness loomed in her dreams, and the thought of being alone chilled her middle. Roberta resisted the inevitable as best she could, but then Peanut didn’t eat for four days, and the cat’s suffering became intolerable. Peanut was miserable, and her misery submerged Roberta with the awful truth. Peanut was ready to die. 

 Weeping, Roberta took her little friend back to the vet’s office. Dr. Bradley told Roberta it was time in a soft and professional way, but it did nothing to assuage the overwhelming guilt that choked her throat. Peanut had been her bastion against the world throughout the twelve long years since Andy had passed away.

 And now I’m all alone.

 She thought briefly of calling her daughter Janice for moral support, but she was all the way out on the West Coast, and they hadn’t spoken in months.

  Alone.

 Her heartbruise throbbed.

 Roberta shook her head furiously, flinging salty drops from her cheeks, and forced the memory away. She bit her knuckle and mewled again, fighting down another sob. She took an experimental, shuddering breath and stared at the sloshing brown water as it churned along to better places.

 What is there for me now?

 A soft but pressing realization bloomed in the back of her mind. The river was swollen from weeks of excessive rain. She wasn’t a good swimmer. The current was fast.

 She sighed heavily, beaten, and her chin sank toward her chest. There it rested for awhile before she looked back to the fattened waters.

 Roberta glanced along the Riverwalk to where the pavement curved out of sight as it followed the course of the Merrimack, and then behind her toward the Aiken Street Bridge, where distant traffic hummed. 

 The Riverwalk was empty on such a dreary day. A fine mist fell so slowly that it seemed to defy gravity, its opaque drops rolling on the wind. There were no joggers, mothers pushing carriages, people walking their dogs, or brash teenagers careening about on skateboards. There was no one around to stop her; it was an overwhelming and depressing reality.

 Why should I have to be so secretive? she wondered, suddenly angry. People stepped over the fence all the time to fish off the banks or collect cans. 

 Roberta steadied herself on the thick post, lifted a foot with a grunt, and heaved half of her bulk over so that she was straddling the guardrail. She was a low, squat woman, and the knee-high railing proved more challenging than she had anticipated. Her sneaker squelched down in the mud. She clung to the post and swung her other leg over in a clumsy arc. She slipped a little, clutched more tightly, and then leaned on the railing, her heart thumping. Roberta was not an adventurous woman.

 The river drew closer in little fits and starts, and as she neared it, she noticed a funny little dome poking out of the grass near the shore, a pimple in a patch of thinning hair. The riverbank was speckled with crumpled beer cans, plastic containers, planks of wood, a deflated basketball, and other discarded treasures, but this little dome seemed strange to Roberta. For a moment she thought it must be the top of a tattered old volleyball, or maybe the arc of a white plastic bottle, but no, the seam along its top was very thin and wildly curved as it progressed from one side to the other in a tight pattern.

 Her curiosity was a numbed thing however, and her eyes drifted back to the river. It would carry her swiftly to another place where Andy and Peanut would be waiting. And that would be good, very, very good. She moved toward the water.

 Her sneaker suddenly shot forward on a slick patch of mud and by instinct, she threw her weight backward. It was too much. Her legs shot out from under her, the world tilted, and she flopped down on her back in the grass. She lay there in shock, the breath driven from her lungs, and stared at the leaden sky through dazed eyes. She took a deep, shuddering breath, tried to sit up, failed, and flopped back down. Roberta began to cry.

 I can’t do anything right! I’m just an old woman struggling in the mud like a pig! I’m a useless pig!

 This image defeated her, and the heartbruise throbbed. 

 Slowly, she wiped away the tears, and slowly, she heaved herself up into a sitting position. She started to push herself up, but one of her hands flopped onto the dome. Roberta frowned and ran her fingertips over it. It was smooth but imperfect, its little bumps and valleys small enough to be perceived only by touch.

 Maybe I should dig it up. No! That’s absurd! But Peanut was always so curious and brave. Do it for her.

 Perhaps she could finally honor the cat’s memory. She hadn’t had the heart to take her furry companion home for a proper backyard burial. It was too difficult and she’d opted for cremation, but what seemed easiest at the time soon flared into a betrayal. Roberta hadn’t even had the decency to see Peanut put to rest in a grave befitting her years of undying loyalty. She pushed away images of an unceremonious dumping into the blocky mouth of an incinerator. Fresh tears emerged, but were dammed by determination. 

 Roberta would make amends to Peanut.

 She poked the dome. Maybe it’s lonely. She giggled at this silly thought.

 A small, flat rock about the size of her hand proved to be a useful excavator, and she dug carefully around the object. Roberta was a patient archeologist, and she thought the thing might be the size of a coconut or a soccer ball once it was freed. She started at the back and worked her way forward, because the dangerous edge of the riverbank was just a step or two away, and she was not yet ready. The mud formed ant hills among the grass wherever she flung it, and she soon discovered that the sides of the dome sloped sharply downward.

 It’s not symmetrical at all.

 She scraped away an inch of dirt, and then probed along the front of it with her fingers, before they slipped into a hole in the dome. She yanked her hand back as a primitive image of something slimy flashed through her brain.

 The scare made her nervous, so Roberta checked again for anyone who might intrude upon her little act of rebelliousness – fences were put up for a reason, after all – but no one emerged from the gloom. She returned her attention to the curious little dome with its crazy zigzag seam.

 Puzzled, taking a deep breath, she took a risk and pivoted closer to the water’s edge for a better look, her considerable rump poking out toward the Merrimack. She scraped more dirt away, revealing a vaguely circular orbit, and then another one right next to it. Her eyes bulged.

 Roberta Spear had discovered a human skull.