by Proehl, Bob
“That’s a very old man thing to do.”
“There was an old couple on the next bench,” he says. “The geese liked them better than me, I think. They were woven together. The couple, not the geese. I couldn’t read either of them alone. It was kind of beautiful.”
“That’ll be us,” she says, then wishes she could take the words back, that the physics of the Hive would let her pluck them out of the air and stuff them in her pocket. “When we’re old and nobody else wants us,” she adds. “Feeding the geese after the end of the world.”
“I can imagine worse things,” says Miquel. He smiles at her in a way she wills herself not to think about. The underlying problem with Miquel as a friend is that he’s an empath. He reads the feelings of other people like flyers on a corkboard. And Carrie’s right in front of him most hours of the day, wanting him like a neon sign in the desert, and somehow he doesn’t see it. Or he does and has to pretend he doesn’t to keep her close but safe, to keep their friendship protected from the way she feels. She doesn’t know which it is or which would be worse.
Everyone agrees that something’s missing. The book feels like a collection of articles, and the evolving nature of the situation makes that a dicey sale.
“We need one story in there that’s timeless,” Avi’s agent says. “Something where the moment expands, the particular becomes general.”
Avi has spent the last five months looking for that story. He was chasing it at Janine Coupland’s manslaughter trial in Montana. He’d been to a warehouse in Laredo where Immigration and Customs Enforcement held a dozen Resonant women who fled Guatemala to avoid being burned as witches. He road-tripped through the South with a con man who swore he could induce Resonance in baseliners, charging hundreds for what amounted to a three-hour adrenaline rush. Nothing seemed to work; all the stories became additions to the incoherent pile the book had become.
The night before Thanksgiving, Avi gets a call from Patrick Davenport. It’s beyond unexpected; Avi doesn’t even have Patrick’s number in his phone.
“You remember the town I told you about in Wyoming?” Patrick says without bothering to say hello. “The family that died?”
“Guthridge,” Avi says. “Mother and three kids.”
“Four kids,” Patrick says. “One of the killers was arrested last night. I have a contact in the local police department that can get you in to see him, but it’s got to be tomorrow.”
Avi says no. He’s invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Kay’s new place in New York at Emmeline’s request and over Kay’s protest. Kay made sure he knew it wasn’t the beginning of anything. It was a concession to their daughter, not a gesture. Unsure whether that made it more important or less, Avi accepted. Even if it isn’t a beginning, missing it would be an end.
Patrick continues to feed him details of the case, and there’s no getting around it. This is what the book needs.
When they get off the phone, he calls Kimani. Her voice drips with annoyance.
“Haven’t you got family or something?” she says.
“Patrick called me,” Avi says. “I need you to pick me up tomorrow and take me to Powder Basin, Wyoming. Then back to New York so I can have dinner with—”
“Avi, I’ve got to go,” Kimani says. “Tomorrow is—Thanksgiving is not a good day for me.”
She hangs up. Equal parts angry and chastised, Avi goes online and books an overpriced ticket to Wyoming.
Avi struggles against the flow of humans at Denver International Airport. The rush of Thanksgiving morning goes in every possible direction at once, and Avi is buffeted, caroming off bodies, clutching his cane and messenger bag. He runs calculations in his head. The flight to Cheyenne gets him in around noon. From there, it’s four hours to Gillette. Patrick’s contact at the police station comes off shift at six, and by tomorrow Scott Lipscombe will be moved to Campbell County Detention Center, cut off from anyone but his lawyer. The window’s closing.
At the gate, he calls Emmeline.
“Hey, Dad,” she says. “I had my hand up a turkey’s butt.”
“Well, that’s big news,” he says. “How did the turkey feel?”
“Cold and slimy,” says Emmeline. She crunches on a piece of celery. “Where are you? It’s loud.”
“I’m at an airport,” he says. There’s a pause on the line.
“Which one?”
“Denver,” he says. Another pause.
“You’re not coming,” Emmeline says. There’s a rustle, a sound like wind. He hears Kay asking Emmeline to check on the turkey, and then she’s on the line.
“You’re not coming?” says Kay.
“There’s something I need to follow up,” he says.
“It couldn’t be tomorrow?”
“It couldn’t,” Avi says. “You have to know—”
“Just don’t,” Kay says. “She’s going to be destroyed. She’s been talking about this for weeks.”
“I’ll be done by six. Shit, that’s Mountain Time or something. I’m done at eight o’clock. I can call Kimani and see if she can—”
“We eat at four,” she says. “We always eat at four.” He’s broken by the factuality of this, how it calls on all the Thanksgivings of their marriage and deploys them against him. The early dinner had been a tradition from his family, something he imposed on theirs. By eight o’clock, it should be he and Kay alone on the couch, Emmeline sacked away upstairs in a food coma, the two of them moved on to whatever bottles of wine were collecting dust in the pantry. Even if Kimani could get him back to New York the minute he was done, it would be too late for Thanksgiving, a long-standing afternoon event in whatever remained of the Hirsch family.
“Is it worth it?” Kay asks.
They’re calling his flight.
“I think this might be the piece that ties the book together,” he says.
“Not just this,” says Kay. “The whole thing. Everything you’ve been chasing. I could be okay with it if I thought you were getting what you need.”
“I’ll have Kimani bring me right there the minute I’m done,” he says. “It’ll be before eight even. Save me some pie or something.”
“I’ll see you, Avi,” she says. Avi gets in line for boarding, the blind idiot rush of the story convincing him he’s solved everything.
* * *
—
Avi drives by the police station in Gillette three times before he finds it. It’s past five, the window closing. Avi imagines his contact’s replacement looking ruefully at his watch, hauling himself out of his chair over the jeers of family members watching the Broncos on television. He can see him refastening his belt, saying something about time and a half. He can feel his approach.
The receptionist doesn’t answer the first two times Avi rings the service bell. Three more minutes click away. When she shows, she glares at him, making him aware that he’s an inconvenience. He can see the television on in the break room, a skeleton crew grouped around its glow.
“I’m here to see Officer Brennan,” Avi says.
The receptionist shrugs and heads back toward the break room. “Andy,” she says. “This one’s yours.”
Officer Brennan is a hulk, a build that announces linebacker, with two rows of perfectly aligned fluoridated teeth. When he shakes Avi’s hand, he closes his eyes and his grip goes limp. For a fraction of a second, Avi thinks the man is going to faint. Then he opens his eyes and looks at Avi warily.
“You’re not one of us,” he says quietly.
“No,” Avi says. “I’m a friend.” Brennan looks unsure, but he leads Avi down the hall, back to the holding cells.
“He turned himself in,” he explains. “Right away. Basically, he shot the kid, then he called us. He was waiting in the living room when we got there.”
“Where was the wife?”
“I don’t want to tell tales out of sc
hool,” says Brennan, “but word is Nora’s got a pill habit. Not like she’s the only one. Lot of folks down in the Basin are having trouble since. But still. She didn’t even wake up from the gun. Her sister’s been with her. They’re keeping her pretty far out of it.” He taps his forearm below the elbow with two fingers, then mimes a shot being administered.
“Listen,” he says. “I can’t give you much time. Boss is in at six, and I need you out of here by then. But no one around here’s going to ask him what needs to be asked, and I figure maybe you will.” He opens the door to the holding cells. Avi thinks about the room where Owen Curry is held and how it’s a cleaner, shinier version of this room. There’s the low smell of sealed concrete with damp already underneath the sealant, rotting out the walls and floors from the inside. The institutional mix of urine and disinfectant plays up the worst parts of both. The hum of bright white fluorescent lights reminds Avi of the green lights in Owen’s cell, the flimsy leash they keep on their monster.
Brennan brings a folding chair and sets it in front of the middle cell. Inside, a skinny man collects himself between sobbing fits. His eyes are red, the skin around them puffy, and his breath hitches against his control like an unruly animal. He looks at Avi, immediately pleading for absolution Avi is unwilling and unable to give.
“Scott,” he says, opting for familiarity. “My name’s Avi. I’m a reporter. I’m here to talk to you about what happened.”
Scott Lipscombe looks at Officer Brennan like he’s been betrayed. Brennan shrugs and leaves the room, locking the door quietly behind him.
“I think it could help you to have someone to tell your story,” says Avi. “These things, they’re tried in the press. I have some clout. I write for national outlets. And I think your story is going to speak to people’s fears. I think people will hear you if you talk.”
“Don’t want to talk,” says Scott.
“No, I understand that,” Avi says. “It’s fresh still. But talking can also be a way through it. Have you spoken with a lawyer?” Scott Lipscombe shakes his head. “That’s good. Believe it or not, that’s good. A story takes shape when you say it out loud. It crystallizes. The way you tell it becomes the way you remember it. And talking to a lawyer, it forces things into a certain shape. That’s important, too. It’ll be important later. But for now, what’s good, what’s best for you, is just to speak about it. Just tell me what happened to your son, Scott.”
“I shot him,” he says, starting to blubber. “That’s why I’m here, right? I shot my son dead in his sleep.”
“Can you tell me why you’d do that, Scott?”
“He was one of them,” says Scott Lipscombe. “Like the…uh. Like the Guthridge boy. Like Sam.”
The urge to chase this is almost overwhelming, but Avi knows better. He lets it lie for now. “How did you know?” he asks. “How did you know your son was one of them?”
“He wasn’t ever anything like us,” Scott Lipscombe says. “Like Nora or me. He plays piano and guitar and all. He makes these songs on his computer that I can’t barely call them songs. We don’t even have a history of anything like him in either of our families. Anyone else, their kid’s a stranger to them, they talk about some old aunt who ran off to New York or Grandpa Whoever that never was quite right. Nora and I, neither of us have any of that. He’s out of nowhere. I think the music stuff, I think that’s his ability. Like he can speak in music or something.”
Scott Lipscombe’s talking about the dead boy in the present tense, avoiding his name. He’s strung between poles of recognition and denial. The full weight of what he’s done isn’t on him yet. It’ll fall tonight or the next night in a cell like this. It’ll hit him alone and break the already broken pieces of him, smashing him to sand. Even if Avi got an interview tomorrow, there wouldn’t be enough of Scott Lipscombe left to talk to. He presses gently.
“So what if he was?” he says. “Why did it mean you had to kill him?”
“He was,” says Scott Lipscombe. “I’m sure of that. Not as sure as we—” He catches himself. “I couldn’t let it stand. I couldn’t let him be one of them after what we did.”
“What is it you did, Scott?” Avi asks.
Scott Lipscombe looks at the ground. “I’m not saying.”
The door opens behind Avi. Officer Brennan trails behind an older man, the boss he mentioned. Avi checks his watch. He was supposed to have more time.
“That’s enough of that,” says the sheriff.
“Scott, you see where you are here,” Avi says, standing and approaching the bars. “You know what you did, and you know you’re going to be punished. But it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not clean, Scott. If you go down carrying something, you’re going to sink. You’re going to sink into yourself forever.”
“You know,” says Scott Lipscombe.
“I said enough,” the sheriff says, laying a meaty paw on Avi’s shoulder. Avi exchanges a quick look with Officer Brennan. Whatever it is you can do, he tries to say, whatever your fucking ability, I need one more minute. Brennan’s face is a stony blank.
“I know, Scott,” says Avi. “But I need to hear you say it.”
“I don’t want to say.”
“It’ll feel good to say it, Scott,” Avi says. “It’ll change you to say it out loud. To have it said and heard.”
The sheriff is gripping Avi, pulling him off the bars.
“We killed them,” Scott Lipscombe says. The room stops; the sheriff’s grip goes slack. “We killed Sam Guthridge and his momma and his little sisters. I stabbed little Paige Guthridge, and the light poured out of her. Me and Danny Randall and Joe Sabine, and Alvin McLaughlin, and…”
Scott Lipscombe begins a list of names, and Officer Brennan fumbles his notebook out of his back pocket, catching them as they come, as if he doesn’t already know them. The sheriff holds Avi loosely, glaring at him as a litany of murderers washes over them, broken up by Scott Lipscombe’s sobs.
* * *
—
He calls Kimani from the rental car, sitting in the parking lot of the police station. It’s started to snow, occasional flakes like glitches in his visual field. The line rings and rings until Avi’s convinced that voice mail should pick up. He’s formulating what he’ll say if it does, what phrasing he can use to impart a sense of emergency, when Kimani answers.
“I need you to get me to New York,” he says. “I’m in Wyoming, and I need to get back.”
“I’m off the clock,” she says. Her voice is flat. “Try Delta.”
“I’m missing dinner with my daughter, Kimani,” he says. “I need your help.”
“I’m not a cab, Avi,” she says.
“I’m here for you,” Avi says, losing his temper. “I came all the way out here on Patrick’s say-so, and I got a confession out of one of the Powder Basin killers. He gave up all their names. Twenty men who killed those kids and their mom. I did that. Me. Now I need you to get me back home to my daughter for Thanksgiving.” He waits, out of breath. There’s a click, and the line goes dead. Avi throws the phone at the passenger door and bangs his palms on the steering wheel as snowflakes melt into the windshield.
Alyssa eases the car around the first hairpin turn of Oceanside Way, a branch off Highway 1 just north of Ogunquit, Maine. A Leonard Cohen album blasts on the stereo, loud swirls of synthesizers and backing vocals, a wall of sound graffitied with Cohen’s baritone.
Despite the cold, the windows are down. Alyssa wants to smell the ocean.
“This is ridiculous,” Fahima says, gesturing at the massive empty houses that line the street. “Who lives like this?”
“I always wanted a beach house,” Alyssa says. “Imagine: in the fifties, everyone had beach houses. They all went up the shore in the summer.”
“A golden age for white people,” Fahima says. “A chicken in every pot, a servant in every kitchen.�
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“You think the Davenports have servants?” Alyssa asks.
Fahima shakes her head. “I asked Sarah,” she says. “Servants get Thanksgiving off. Their mother teleports everything in piping hot from Dovetail down in the city. Walks out the door onto 77th, then pop, here on the beach.”
“Have we eaten there?” asks Alyssa.
Fahima laughs. “It’d cost us a month’s rent.”
The house where Patrick and Sarah grew up is set into a natural levee so that the first floor opens out on the shore side and the upper three look out onto the ocean. A salt breeze smacks Fahima and Alyssa as they round the corner of the house. Standing in the doorway to greet them, Mrs. Davenport looks like a senator’s wife from a seventies political thriller, down to the string of gob-stopper pearls around her neck. She smiles, and Fahima feels a ping in her brain. Mrs. Davenport reaches through the Hive to check Fahima’s bona fides. Her smile goes flat as she tries the same thing with Alyssa but finds nothing. A momentary lapse in decorum, but she recovers quickly.
“You’re Paddy and Sarah’s friend from school,” she says, as if Fahima is in gym class with her son. “And this is your partner?”
“Alyssa,” says Fahima. Alyssa holds out her hand. Mrs. Davenport is unsure what to do with it, like she might kiss Alyssa’s knuckles. She takes it, and Alyssa gives her a firm, businesslike handshake.
“Your generation is so progressive about these things. I think it’s wonderful. And this,” she says, pinching the trim of Fahima’s hijab, rubbing it like a cloth merchant in the souk, “is beautiful.”
“This is going to be aw-ful,” Alyssa sings into Fahima’s ear as they follow Mrs. Davenport inside.
Sarah rescues them before they reach the living room, a glass of wine in her hand. She pauses when she sees Alyssa, looking momentarily confused, but then Cortex trots up behind her, brushing her leg, and her memory returns. She hugs both of them: long, genuine embraces that give Mrs. Davenport time to make an exit.