Mission

by Paul Forrester-O'Neill

  She walked past the covered arcade and the Station Hotel with a half-moon hung low over the prairies. The choke of burnt metal, of toxins and oils that’d hit her when she first came, was fading from the town, so too the ubiquitous smell of its timber, its dust less possible to sweep away with an index finger, less likely to coat windows or catch the back of the nose or throat, or, more insidiously, go down into the lungs.

  When she got to the bottom of the hill, she raised her head and inhaled a last time. She picked up the river, the metal of the tracks, and the thread of that same cigar somewhere. Outside the station, the family of five, with additional juju chains, stood once more around the gathered stones. Frances walked past them and, as the coming train got louder and other passengers prepared themselves, including the single woman younger than herself, so two long, unbroken columns of beetles marched over the stone.

  He watched from a cluster of trees down by the tracks. He smelled of the cooled sweat that’d strapped to his chest and imagined only one thing as he looked out; the 8oz rib-eye steak with fries and relish, the redness of the meat and the trickle of its juice. He saw Frances shiver, saw her pick up the suitcase and valise as the train shambled in and shook to a stop. He watched her climb on, lift her things onto racks and seats, sit, breathe, and settle.

  She thought of the postcard she’d sent back home to herself; a rooftop view of the town, with the stacks of the mill and the loom of Rupture Hill behind it, with Blessings Point to the north-east, with the burial grounds and the snake of the river and the bridge that went from the mill to the town. And, just before the woman younger than herself stood to make her way down the train towards her, to sit next to her, she thought of her prize possession; her bookshelf of encyclopaedias, A-Z, handed down from her father who’d bought them for her when she was six years old from a man in Cuban heels.

  “I’m Delilah Morris,” the woman said, “do you mind if I sit?”

  Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas. He could smell with one crooked sniff how the night air spiked the grass as he stood on the veranda and looked out across the land. He could pick out the berries, the ripeness of, the shoots and vines as he looked towards Coronation Point with its bare scalp, to the Mallender estate and the low hills beyond. When he turned he got the faint chance of rain, saw the gape of the armchair’s wound, the tumorous stuff, the useless entrails. California, Colorado, Connecticut.

  He moved towards the porch-way in the black suit full of hatpins, felt the weight of the spade and looked down at the teeth of the saw with the first hints of rust. Through the half-opened door, he could see the kitchen table and the chairs around it. He could see, even through the gloom, the photograph of Vincent Clay, as the rescuer and life-saver, face down. To one side of it was the newspaper folded to the burnt mill and to the other, signed in a gambler’s flourish by his great-grandfather, were the deeds of the Cassidy land.

  He walked into the house, across the linoleum floor and into the room where he slept. The mattress in the corner was the same his father had shuffled into sleep on, like a feather with bent and weakened quills. The drapes were thin and drawn, and on the bedside table was a piece of driftwood like a shinbone and a mottled stone, both from the shores of the lake. The boxes were there still, shoe and shirt, so too the volumes of history and the encyclopaedias, some of which pinned the local maps down and one of which lay open, on knots, on examples of bowline, hitch and drummer’s chain.

  He picked up the shotgun propped against the wardrobe and went over towards the closed cellar door. On the floor beside him was the tin of half-eaten peaches, the masking tape and the two strands of rope, one thick, one thin. He opened the door quietly, went down the stone steps with the gun held out in front of him. At the foot he stopped. Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  The weight in the corner shifted, the sound of a sack as if being hauled, catching grit and small stones on its way.

  John sat on the bottom step, the shotgun beside him. The darkness began to drain out, revealing slowly the tins of industrial paint, the primers and undercoats, varnishes and finishes. On the far side were foodstuffs log-jammed against the wall; fruits, meats and vegetables preserved in water and brine. There were soups and fish and pulses. There was rat poison.

  The weight was curled up, the wrists and ankles tied by cord and rope. There was the cloth blindfold and the strips of masking tape over the mouth. It moved again as John stood and went closer, dragging itself back into the nook of the wall, the knees up under the chin, the head down, the brow beaded with sweat.

  “My problem is what to do with you, Jake,” he said. “I save your skin. I wait in the dark and drag you off the riverbank where they left you for dead. I bring you here. But if I give you another chance, you’ll fuck it up.”

  The weight shook its head.

  “Yes, you will. I give you chances. I offer them up on a plate. I set you up with Lester, with Vincent. I get you money to make a new start. And what do you do?”

  John laid a hand on his shoulder. “Wait here,” he said.

  He walked back towards the steps, and up to the kitchen, ran the water first into the sink and then with a different pitch into a bowl. There was the rip of material, the chink of small bottles and the clip of scissors. Then he went back, slower down the steps, with the lap of the water. He laid the bowl down, picked up the scissors and cut into Jake’s sweatshirt neck downwards until it fell open.

  “You break into my house. You rip my father’s chair. You drink his beer…Let me see.”

  The bruising around the rib cage was all kinds of violet and crimson, burgundy and black.

  “Show me your hands.”

  Jake lifted them like paws so John could hold them up, could rinse out and clean the cuts and grazes.

  “You smoke your cigarettes, you go into my room and ransack my things, his things. You take information about me, you go to Ted Mallender and tell him so he can make me look foolish.”

  He placed a dampened cloth over his bruised and buckled ribs, a towel over his arms and back. For a moment, he pulled the tape from over his mouth and dabbed at the bulbous lips, at the maw of spittle and blood, sucked up, unspat.

  “So, what do I do?”

  John looked down at the row of creams, unguents and antiseptics. He picked up the masking tape, tore off a fresh strip and held it between his hands. He leant in closer.

  “You said I was a human being,” Jake said, almost inaudibly. “You said I deserved better.”

  “We all deserve better,” he said, and spread the strip over the pounded, hung meat of his lips.

  Idaho, Iowa, Indiana. The eyes were swollen shut and sealed, a palette of blues and deep greens, the nose almost certainly broken, hard to drag air through, the cheekbones flushed. One of his ears was puffed and torn and his forehead was riddled with bumps and rises, so too the muddied scalp. John took the ripped shirtsleeve and wet it, holding it across and around the eyes so that the wounds almost sizzled as the water ran into and over them. He dried him, patting him with the fibres of the towel. He took a dab of cream on the end of his middle finger and smeared it like a corner-man over the swell of the eyelids and brows. Then he folded out the shirtsleeve and tied it around the back of the head. He threw the sweatshirt to one side, next to the blindfold, and laid a horse blanket over him, picked up the bowl again, and stood.

  “Nobody knows you’re here, Jake, but if I cut that rope and loosen that cord and you manage to crawl your way out, you will either be tracked down like an animal and killed like one, or you’ll squeal like a pig because you can’t help it. Somebody isn’t paying you enough attention. Somebody isn’t listening to you. Somebody isn’t giving you what you want and so you open your mouth and tell them it was you burned the mill down, it was Vincent Clay paid you to do it, and it was John Cassidy, son of Jack, great-grandson of Patrick, the gambler and stealer of land, who set the whole thing up.”

  He reached up an
d pushed the bowl onto the kitchen floor above, and picked up the shotgun.

  “I can’t risk that, Jake. I’ve come too far to let it all slip.”

  He watched the weight recoil under the blanket, tighten up like a drawstring beneath the makeshift mask and tape.

  “So, I’m keeping you here. In the cellar. Locked up. I can’t waver, not now. It’s too late.”

  The weight slid sideways, its head up against the wall. Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky.

  The investigation into Jake’s disappearance unearthed nothing. Perhaps investigation, as Frances Harte had discovered in her own dealings, was something of a misnomer for what the department figured was regular police procedure; the questions around the neighbourhood block, the hours spent looking for non-specific clues and what amounted to a lifting back of the bedsheets in his apartment.

  So, apart from a slovenly approach to detection, why no tracker dogs with muzzles smeared in Jake’s nicotine scent? Why no sketched drawings on every available post and notice board? And, more to the point, why no interrogation of any of the mill workers who’d punched, kicked, raked bottles down or stood complicitly by, or, of Harry himself, who’d let the whole thing happen, on his land? Well, one of the reasons was that nobody liked him, that over the years those uniformed officials had witnessed first-hand what a grade-A prick he was. Plus, the more senior officials had known Harry a long time, and the rest of them had grown up side by side with the mill workers. So, they found nothing.

  And the reason they found nothing in the apartment was because Vincent got there before they did and removed every item of incrimination; the bulk buying, the cartons of cigarettes, the crates of beer, the motorcycle magazine with the ringed Harley, the purchases on a grander scale than usual, the bank rolls. And the grassstained sneakers, the Texan boots, and any creams, unguents and oils that looked like they might be used for burns.

  Plus, poor beaten Jake was overshadowed by two major events: First, just after Easter, with the burgeoning of colour to the banks of Rupture Hill and the emergence of lustrous berries and buds and the return of the wintering flocks, Lily Mallender flew back in herself. She called into Sylvie’s before she went anywhere else to have herself fluffed and pampered and then, with her sprays and scents, she nestled herself back in the old, colonial house with Ted. And second, in early May, the big news came through from the east, that Frances Harte’s recommendation of unconditional negligence had been unanimously upheld. The verdict was official and the company had to pay. A week later, having little choice, the company sold the land to the Land Management Agency for peanuts, including that on which the migrant housing stood, and two days after that, Vincent Clay of Carpe Diem Enterprises walked into the Agency building and, with born-again Ted as a bona fide and contributary confederate, signed the cheque for the land and vowed, for the esprit of the town, that the plans, whose full details he could not yet divulge, would bear substantial and life-changing fruit and that he, Ted Mallender, could ready his white charger and polish his bugle.

  “To the completion of phase two, Lester,” Vincent said as they sat in the foyer of the Station Hotel that same afternoon. “To the sabot and his disappearance, and to Frances Harte and her verdict. Now for the Cassidy land.”

  “I had plans for Jake,” Lester said and looked at the oil paintings hung on the wall. “I had the long roads and the woods. He was on his knees.”

  “I know you did, but the world does not run on well-oiled tracks. If the world ran on well-oiled tracks, we would be fucked. The reason we are not fucked is that it’s the rank stupidity of most people that makes the world go round. It’s the mistakes, the near-blindness, the inability to sniff out anything that isn’t right there in front of them, the gross lack of attention. People are under-developed, Lester. They are emerging from the crawling stage, the all fours, the slack, mandible jaw. They are primitive, and any pretence to anything higher is just that, a pretence, a series of coded acts, of behaviours they’ve seen before, manuals they’ve read on how to walk and talk and piss straight and how to gather all that brittleness of being they won’t even acknowledge into some semblance of solidity. And still it doesn’t work.”

  Lester sighed and checked the time on the ornate clock, studied the numerals.

  “I need these people, Lester. I need to give them faith. Without them I have an obdurate man in my way.”

  “So when?”

  “Give me a week. Then I’ll go and see John Cassidy about his land.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “The meantime is Madeline,” he said, and sat back in the give of the upholstered chair.

  Madeline was the woman framed in the photograph on his bedside table. She had been, over the last fifteen years, as and when necessary, his loyal wife, his errant wife, his sister, business partner, business rival, travelling companion, gambler’s moll and a woman he’d met on a train. She had been Dolores, Nancy, plain Jane and, once, Conchita, had been an authority on stamps, coins, race-tracks, five-card stud, palmistry and a whole host of homespun hunches that tilted people the way she wanted. And, six years previously, she had been on the end of the phone-call that said, “Honey, put out an extra place, I’m bringing a friend.” Yes, she was the cook in the gingham apron, the keeper of the warm-coloured and tasteful apartment for two days that summer. She was one half of the audience to Jack Cassidy’s tales of Utah beach and the single aunt that dragged the comb across his skull, the woman with the tied-up hair who welcomed him into their home, who played and listened to music from his era, watched his feet and fingers tap along and who, over those few hours, served up a homemade stew of such persuasion that poor, trusting, lonesome Jack with his best days behind him, was hooked before the blueberry pie was served.

  Madeline was context. She was usually two or three days of appearance money. In this case, she was Madeline, the devoted wife, the benefactress to worthwhile causes, the lucky charm, glamorous and homely both. She was a couple of evening gowns, some fancy jewellery, hair that looked like somebody else dealt with it and a few synchronised performances designed to do one thing; to make the people of Mission trust Vincent Clay by trusting her first.

  So, as she opened the door of the Station Hotel and stood as though trapped in mid-afternoon aspic, in shoes with a moderate heel, draped in a lambswool shawl and with a clutch-bag dotted with pearls, she looked like success and money and the kind of congruence that could walk into any building in the world and induce the faith that Vincent was looking for.

  And, over the next few days, that was exactly what she did. Whether it was in the leisurely parades of the town, arm in arm with her childhood sweetheart, stopping to browse and buy in stores that began to seek her custom out or in Sizzlin’ Steve’s smoothing over the still-wet plaster of the Mallender reunion, or down in Harry’s with an increasing number of regulars swinging by on the grapevine she was there, her performances were, as always, beguiling.

  It was the impact on others that mattered. It was the fact that her actions, whether small-scale, like helping the desk clerk with his puzzle, or large, like walking through the town in a mild drizzle to give a sizeable and tearful donation to the mill workers’ hardship fund, offered the place and its people a possibility, somehow, of something better.

  And that was how it worked. In and out. Less than a week. Any shorter, people don’t notice. Any longer, the impact starts to wane. All about the timing. All about getting people at just the right time. In the days after she’d gone, people began to stop Vincent in the street. They wished him well for the first time, complimented him. They offered him thanks for the simple appearance of Madeline. And even though, as yet, there was no plan for the land, no project he could speak of in detail, still the faith in him was beginning to stir.

  “They’re coming with us, Lester,” he said as they stood on the crown of Coronation Point and looked north-westerly over the Cassidy land, “on all fours, they’re coming with us.”

  It was always Delilah that went t
o John. There were no arrangements or patterns. Most times she would just get in the Oldsmobile and drive out to the homestead because she felt like it, and when she was there, they’d sit at the kitchen table or stand on the veranda and feel the chill or the rain or the weak sun on their cheeks. Sometimes they’d eat together. Sometimes they’d sit and leaf through the pages of his father’s encyclopaedias, or look at the maps and the old photographs. Sometimes she’d stay over, and sometimes they’d sleep in the same bed but the proximity, the warmth, the one human body against another, changed nothing.

  She was an outsider, an orphan from the age of two, living first out on farmland to the north and then in one of the southern neighbourhood blocks. She had no connection with the way most people lived, neither as child or adult. She didn’t see things the same way, couldn’t figure, even when she wanted to, how their lives were strung together, how their days went from one to the next so simply. She switched off, removed herself. Even as a child, and as a teenager twisting inside her own skin, she had enough indifference to things to blanch them out, to drain entire situations of colour and context until they were all just mime. That was how she saw the world. And, like John, she was often wordless, like an animal.

  For him she was a portal to the town and a shield from it. But of his scam, his grand construction, she knew nothing. Nothing of the letters. None of the players, none of the stars or walk-ons. She saw no strategies, no game-plans. If he asked her about the town or any of the people in it, she answered him straight, incurious as to why he might want to know. Even when he sat her down and asked her to follow Frances Harte and warn her of the town’s risk of collapse if the company should win, and to modify Jake into a lost soul with a boy’s breezy brain and a gift for fabrication, which was exactly what she did, still she never asked why.