Geraniums

“Was I sure? Had I ever seen a dead body before? How could I be sure she was dead? Why didn’t I go in there after her? You saw her the night before and she was alive? Did you kill her? Did you have sex with her? Have you ever had sex with her? You don’t see her for ten years and the next time you see her she’s face down in the mud?”

These were all the insane questions that the sedentary local constabulary would have asked me had I called them about my recent discovery. On seeing Trudie face down and in the mud, my initial reaction after I thought ‘where had I seen her like that before’ was to head to the nearest payphone and call the police or the ploddau as they are known in the Underbelly. Halfway across the bridge, I decided to turn back, sure that if I called, they would descend in minutes to trample and desecrate the scene with state of the art rescue equipment. It’s not very often they get to fish a ‘real one’ out of this river. For the time being, I decided to have them leave their gear in the plastic wrappers. Trudie was not getting any colder. It was early in the morning and it occurred to me that apart from the car that had nearly run me over, I might have been seen. It was unlikely unless the invisible council workers were digging something up on overtime, which seemed even less likely given the time.

When I’d met her the other night, she’d had a look of sad acceptance beyond even desperation and I felt bad that I hadn’t delved further into her troubles. My thoughts turned to the possibility of her suicide until I realised that people rarely kill themselves naked in rat-infested rivers. Besides, throwing herself off a bridge was never Trudie’s style; she was too introverted, too arbitrary; not one of life’s decision makers. If Trudie were to depart by her own hand, it was a safe bet that she’d be at home with a few bottles of wine, some pills and a warm bath. I remembered that we’d even talked about it in our teens. No, this was murder or a fairly spectacular sexual accident involving a trebuchet. Trudie’s conversation with the Incredible Zac outside the Dog and Frog had been cryptic and childlike but undoubtedly for my benefit.

TRUDIE: (pats dog) You’re a good old boy aren’t you Zac?
ZAC: Woof
TRUDIE: (grabs dog behind both ears) You’ll protect your Auntie Trudie if the bobcats come won’t you?
ZAC: Woof, Woof
TRUDIE: Because if that big bobcat comes and I haven’t given him what he needs, he’s gonna be soooooo mad.
ZAC: Woof Woof Woof
TRUDIE: (shakes dogs head playfully) He’ll probably come along and bite off my head.
ZAC: Grrrrrrr (licks Trudie)
TRUDIE: That’s right. Now you just remember that nothing is ever what it ever was in this town and nor was it ever meant to be, so you young man, watch where you go digging your paws in, because you’ll never know what you’ll turn down.

By the time I made it back to the other side of the bridge, the rushing inward waters had risen considerably. I could just make out the shock of red hair that had begun to float on the tide. I picked a handful of geraniums from the basket welded to the side of the iron bridge. Shutting my eyes I breathed in their sharp dusty fragrance and dropped them into the waters where one of the flower heads caught in her hair. As her body was taken lifted effortlessly away upstream towards the clearer waters, I watched the flower slowly disappear from sight.

Perhaps it was the redness of her hair or possibly that of the geraniums, but I knew that I had to return to the Incredible Zac as quickly as I could.