by Joe Clifford
“Didn’t say it was.” Francis lit a cigarette, peering down the long service road.
“What now?” I asked.
For the first time since our journey together began, Francis was beaten. I could see it in the way his posture slackened. The fiery determination had vacated his eyes. I thought retracing Jacob’s footsteps was part of the plan. I was mistaken. Retracing footsteps was the plan.
“Might as well get a room for the night,” he said. “You slept in the car. I’m running on empty.”
Fifty bucks and change bought us two key cards and access to an unspectacular space that barely fit two beds. We were on the first floor, way in the back, the furthermost room. But it had porch access. Francis wasn’t in the mood for talking, making for the porch to smoke cigarettes and stare into the void. I left to grab a Coke from the vending machine.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the machine didn’t take cards—I was used to the vending machines at SUNY—but this was so old school there wasn’t even a slot for dollar bills, which I didn’t have. Seventy-five cents. Three quarters. I didn’t have that either.
Turning to head back to the room, I saw the maintenance man on a ladder. I didn’t have any idea what time it was, having neglected to check the clock in either the lobby or room. What difference did it make if it was eight o’clock or midnight? In a way, this mission was timeless.
“Excuse me,” I said to the man, who didn’t stop fiddling with wires in the wall, a light fixture he was perched beneath. He was older. Not Francis old. Fifties maybe. Rough-hewn, lean, drawn, a man who’d excavated his existence from the grind of menial labor in hardscrabble positions. He remained silent. I wondered if he’d seen me, or maybe he was disabled, handicapped, unable to communicate. I stood there a moment, awkward, trying to decide how to proceed.
“What you want?” he said, continuing to crank the screwdriver in his hand. He still wasn’t looking at me.
“My friend was here last week. He’s…gone. I’m trying to track his final movements.”
Formulating the words in my brain, they sounded strange, and they spilled out even odder, spoken too soft, tripped over. I hadn’t given him reason to help, but the maintenance man stepped down from the ladder, wiping hands on pants.
“You got a cigarette?” he asked.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You smell like smoke.”
“My…grandfather…smokes. We’ve been driving since New York.”
“New York, eh?”
The maintenance man nodded for me to follow him. We walked down a little alcove reeking of urine—who can’t make it to their room to relieve themselves?—and then out to the sidewalk path encircling the motel.
In the clear moonlight, the maintenance man pointed down the parking lot. “This was about two weeks ago?”
“About that.”
“Your friend a great big fat guy?”
“Jacob was large, yes.”
“Couple weeks back. Around five or so. There’s a great big fat guy.” He pointed toward the lobby. “Keeps going in and out of the office. Door swingin’ back ’n’ forth. Can’t stand still. Like he’s got bugs crawling up his ass.”
“That sounds like Jacob.”
The man gestured toward the adjacent field, where an electrical box stood. Maybe it was a generator. I’d never been the handiest of men.
“Rewiring the fuses.” The man pointed at the electrical panel again in case I was confused. “He was in the car talking to his girlfriend. Arguing.”
Disappointment settled. “No, that wasn’t Jacob. He didn’t have a girlfriend.”
“Had New York plates on the car. We don’t get a lot of out-of-staters here. And you said he was a hefty fella?”
“Did you get a look at her?” I asked. “This girlfriend?”
He gestured at a streetlamp. “They were parked under the light. He seemed to be punching outside of his weight class, if you know what I mean.”
“She was pretty?”
“Not bad. Skinny, underfed. I like ’em with more meat on their bones. She didn’t seem as loopy as your buddy, if that’s who it was. And if it wasn’t, I don’t know what to tell you. You say New York, couple weeks ago, I remember the night, New York plates. And he was a big fat guy acting strange.”
Outside of the girlfriend, the rest sure fit.
“You remember what he was driving?”
“Old muscle car. Camaro, I think. Dark. Navy, purple.”
Under the wide country sky, I tried to read his nametag, like I’d done with Gustavo and Nadine. I liked learning people’s names. It’s manners. There wasn’t one. A nametag was stitched into the fabric where a name should be, but the space remained blank.
“I watched ’em,” he said as if divulging a scandal. “They stopped arguing and got friendly again—real friendly. If you know what I mean…” He wriggled his eyebrows. “When they were done, fat guy buckled up, put ’er in reverse, and they hightailed it out of here.”
“Which direction they go?”
The maintenance man pointed toward the lights on the horizon.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
“Dead end.” He pointed the direction Francis and I had come. “Highway onramp and center of town’s that way. No reason to go down there.”
The maintenance man shrugged and headed back the direction he’d come.
I rushed to the room to tell Francis. I wasn’t sure why this should matter, but it felt important. Jacob? A girlfriend? The Jacob I knew was never concerned with girls. Not that he went the other way. I knew he liked girls; he’d tell me about the girls he had crushes on. Or he used to. Before he changed and the darkness took over.
Jacob Balfour. On the run, risking it all for a girl?
The door was ajar. My heart seized up. I took a step back and bumped into someone, which made me jump, skittish as a stray cat found under the house.
“What’s gotten into you, boy?” Francis was holding a bucket of ice.
I looked at the ice bucket, which was absent any drinks, alcoholic or otherwise.
“My dogs hurt,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get old too.” He studied me up and down. “Speak up, spit it out.”
I told him what the maintenance man told me, about the girl in the car, their argument, reconciliation, and the quick, sudden decision to hightail it away from town.
“Did you know he had a girlfriend?” I asked.
Francis shook his head. I could see him running through scenarios. The two had been in frequent communication over the years, sharing intimate conversations, but Jacob hadn’t confided in Francis about the girl, whoever she was. Why the secrecy? The omission felt huge, although I wasn’t sure why.
I followed Francis into the room, expecting him to put down the bucket, peel his grubby socks, and soak his decrepit feet, a sight I wasn’t looking forward to. Instead, he tossed the ice in the bathtub, grabbed the keys, and made for the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Behind the wheel of the big Buick, Francis didn’t speak, a man consumed. After a few days on the road with the guy, I knew better than to press. He clamped onto his cigarette, brow furrowed, stare narrowed, heading the opposite direction we’d come, toward the dim lights on the horizon.
I watched these lights grow brighter until I couldn’t take any more. “What do you plan on doing, Francis?”
“The quarry,” he said through an exhale, expression swallowed in a cloud of smoke. “Where they found Jacob’s body.”
I checked the dashboard. There was no clock; I knew that.
“The quarry is closed for the night. No one will be there.”
“That’s the point.”
“Don’t you want to talk to workers or supervisors on-site? See if anyone saw anything?”
“Not anymore.”
“Because of the girl?”
Francis shook his head. “They found all that money
, jewelry. No one was trying to rob my grandson.”
I hated thinking what I thought next. How could I not, though?
“If Jacob was traveling with this girl, whoever she was, how do we know she didn’t…?”
“Say it.”
“Pretty girls don’t date guys like Jacob.”
“If her intention was to rip him off,” Francis replied in that droll, pedantic tone of his, “why did she leave behind so much money and jewelry, eh, bright boy?”
“Maybe there was more money. Maybe she got all she needed. Maybe she broke Jacob’s heart.”
Francis sucked on his cigarette, saying nothing. Towering tripod structures, transferring enough wattage to power a small city, broke the sky, and broad halos ringed across the large-scale construction site.
The location of the site was a couple miles from the motel—was this why Jacob and his girlfriend chose the Super 8? Why were they fighting in the car? Who wanted to forge ahead? Who wanted to stay behind? What was so important inside this quarry?
“What’s the urgency, Francis?” Something had triggered this immediate response, provoking the sudden need to see the crime scene.
Francis curled his lip, his way of telling me to shut up. I could see he was disappointed I wasn’t getting it quicker. I didn’t know what I was supposed to get. How did we know the maintenance man had seen Jacob? My dead friend couldn’t have been the only guy from New York with a weight problem to pass through Black Grove. What answers could we hope to glean after hours at a closed quarry? I needed to voice these concerns.
“We need to be on the same page,” I said. “Working together.”
“You’ve never been a part of this, boy. Why did you even come along?”
“You asked me!”
“I’ve known people like you my whole life. You have nothing to offer. So you leach off the rest of us, the ones who are interesting, the ones with a story to tell. You’re a user.”
“Stop the car,” I said. “I’m done.”
Francis stopped the Buick at a chain-link fence, which was locked up, like I knew it would be. An unoccupied brown shed stood to the left where visitors were meant to check in. There was no nighttime guard. At least not one visible or waiting. That didn’t mean one wasn’t prowling inside keeping watch. Heavy, expensive machinery filled the space. Whatever was being excavated had to be worth a lot of money. One thing was clear: no one was meant to get inside.
Jamming the car in reverse, Francis K-turned, speeding back toward the motel, a relief. I wasn’t up for breaking and entering. At last, I thought, I’d gotten through. Finally, he was thinking straight.
About a half a mile down the frontage road, Francis pulled over, shielded by a bank of red twig dogwood. I recognized the variety from botany class. Come fall these unassuming trees would light up flaming red, as though on fire. For now, they were adequate cover to have a late-night conversation.
He punched the car in park but left the engine running. He reached low into the runner to retrieve something. “Drive back to the motel.”
“What are you planning on doing?”
“Drive back to the motel, boy.” Francis started to get out of the car. I grabbed his sleeve. He yanked back his arm.
“I can’t let you go wandering off in the middle of the night.”
“You’re not going to let me?”
“You’re too—”
“What? Too old to make decisions for myself? What do you think we came out here for? You’re too scared to scale that fence, I’ll go alone.”
“I didn’t say I was scared.”
“I can see it in your eyes, boy. You’re scared of everything. Ain’t no way to live your life.”
I had no intention of breaking and entering a construction site. As for being scared of life? Ha! After all I’d overcome, that didn’t even deserve a response.
His left hand, the one that he’d dipped between the seat and door, was hidden out of sight.
“What’s in your hand, Francis? Is that a…gun?”
Francis whipped his fist around, presenting a flashlight. He scoffed. “You live in a fantasy world.”
“I live in a fantasy world? I’m not the guy off his meds, making up fairy tales.” I should’ve felt bad talking that way to a man Francis’s age. I didn’t. “What are you hoping to find? A letter Jacob left behind with photographic evidence stuffed in a tailpipe? Jacob is gone!”
Francis’s face twisted up, eyes whittled mean. I knew I’d gone too far but I wasn’t backing down. Let him rip into me all he wanted.
Instead, he replied, calm as could be: “Why do you think we made this trip?”
“Honestly, Francis? I don’t have a clue. This whole thing has been a…” I wanted to say “waste of time.” But I couldn’t destroy what little faith he had left.
I held up my hands, letting him know I didn’t want to argue. Clarity had returned, striking me hard between the eyes. “Listen,” I said, speaking softer. “It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. I loved Jacob. He was my brother. That’s why I came along. I wanted to believe too. But after that guy at the motel…I think it’s obvious what happened.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Jacob was with a girl. They stole money, jewelry.” I stopped myself before Francis could object to the term. “I won’t speculate how they came in possession, but they were running, under duress. They had a fight. She took her cut and left. We don’t know how much money and jewelry there was to begin with.”
“Was that before or after my grandson wandered into a quarry and set himself on fire?”
“It’s a construction site. There are a thousand and one ways to get hurt in there.”
“Do you know how the cops were able to ID Jacob? Dental records, from the few teeth that weren’t torched to dust. Usable fingerprints of one hand. The rest of my boy was ash.”
“I’m sorry, Francis.”
“I don’t want your pity. I want whoever killed him and tried to cover it up to pay.”
“You want to believe the police are lying or there’s a cover-up we can uncover that the dumb cops can’t. Because it’s easier than accepting the truth: we couldn’t save him.”
“There’s no ‘we,’” Francis said. He’d meant it to be cutting, a knife plunged in my heart. The dig didn’t stick. The intent was there, the execution weak.
“All we need is in front of us,” I said. “Nothing concealed, nothing hidden. The police ruled it an accident. Because it was an accident.” For the first time in a long time, I was me again, whole, confident. I could see Francis was hurt. I wasn’t going to abandon him. I couldn’t imagine how difficult this had to be, to know your grandson, your flesh and blood, suffered like that. And at his own hand? “I know this is important to you,” I said. “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll come back tomorrow, okay? We’ll talk to the people in charge and get answers.”
I thought I’d done a convincing job. Hearing the words out loud, I tried not to feel like a sucker for having let it go this far. But better to wake up and realize you’ve been a fool for three days than wake up and realize you’ve been a fool for four.
Reaching for the handle, Francis smiled. It was a sad smile. “I’m gonna take my flashlight and poke around.” He climbed out, drummed his fingers off the hood, tossing me a bone. “I’m sure you’re right. I won’t find anything. Let me have this.”
“It’s locked! They’ll have security cameras and guard dogs, or—”
“Let me worry about that, kid.” He winked. “Go to bed. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“The motel is at least two miles away.”
“Not even. And I walk that every morning.”
I sighed, or maybe it was more of a groan. I was frustrated. I could see I wasn’t changing his mind.
“Please,” he said. “Let me see where my boy died with my own two eyes.”
I let my head fall back.
“I need to do
that, Brandon.”
Francis leaned in, grinned, smacked the top of the old Buick Skylark, and started moseying toward the quarry. Ten, fifteen feet later, I couldn’t see him anymore, the country night so black.
I slid over into the driver’s seat and headed back to the motel.
At the Super 8, I asked Nadine for a toothbrush and toothpaste. She passed along a miniature complimentary set.
At the door, I turned around. “And when you see your maintenance guy, tell him I said thanks.”
“What maintenance guy?”
I recapped our earlier conversation, how the maintenance man had seen Jacob going in and out, just as she had. “My friend had a girl with him. It’s the first new information we’ve learned since leaving New York.”
“We don’t have a maintenance guy,” Nadine said.
“He was working on the lights.” I pointed a finger through the wall, unsure the direction. “Down the corridor…”
“It’s just me here. And Carol, the owner, does all that stuff herself.” Nadine reached for the phone. “I should call her. What did this man look like?”
I gave a brief description, including age, height, and build, which was generic at best.
“That’s strange,” Nadine said, punching digits and cradling the receiver. “Maybe Carol forgot to tell me. Not like her.” Nadine stopped, hand cupping mouthpiece. “Voicemail.” She turned to leave her message in private, but not before saying, “Sleep tight, Brandon.”
In the room, I stripped down to my boxers, brushed my teeth, and conked out.
I woke to the maids knocking. Startled out of bed, I was pulling on my pants, shouting to give me a second, when I noticed Francis’s bed was undisturbed. He never returned. The knocking continued, forcing me to hop, one leg at a time, twisting around as I tried to slide on my tee, wondering where he was.
Hand on handle, I caught sight of the clock. Seven a.m.
Opening the door, I didn’t find the maids.
It was the police.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Shirt half on, I stood there, unable to finish getting dressed. The police don’t show up at your motel room at seven a.m. with good news.