The Widow's Son

by Thomas Shawver

  Eleven o’clock saw a crowd gathered at Union Cemetery to watch costumed reenactors pretend to bury poor fictional Paddy Dignam with due pomp and ceremony, complete with horse-drawn carriage. In nearby bars and cafés dedicated “Bloomies” ate “with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls,” washed down with pints of Guinness, that “foaming ebon ale.”

  And somewhere within the bowels of Redemptorist Church a bedraggled group of volunteers continued to wade through a marathon out-loud reading of the novel they had so optimistically begun twenty hours earlier.

  By noon the cyclists had completed their odyssey and the Dignam mourners were trading their lamentations for drinks in tents set up on the street in front of McCabe Hall. Students from the Art Institute, dressed as characters from the novel in bowler hats, feather boas, petticoats, weskits, and bloomers wandered through the throng while the local opera diva, Sylvia Langan, opened the music performances with a medley of Victorian songs favored by Joyce.

  The crowd continued to grow, but it wasn’t until Aidan Delahunt took the mike to belt out “Amhrán na bhFiann,” Ireland’s national anthem—entirely in Gaelic, no less—that things began to take off.

  Natalie, with the help of Aidan and a subsidy from Fitzpatrick’s Galway Pub, had managed to bring in the top Celtic bands from the region. An extra bonus came in the form of New York’s Larry Kirwan, late of Black 47, who was in town on his way to a solo gig in Denver.

  Once the music began it didn’t take long for the street to become a sea of excited faces, young and old, celebrating their real or imagined Irish cultural heritage in a way that was far different from the drunkfests that have come to characterize too many St. Patrick celebrations around the country.

  All credit was due to Natalie and her tiny group of volunteers. They’d pulled it off despite lingering memories of the O’Halloran debacle and the recent turmoil in her life. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d known Natalie long enough to understand that beneath her fiery passion lay a granite foundation of fortitude.

  The sun was dipping under the tree-lined hills to the west when I noticed her standing to the side of the stage. The Doolin Academy Irish Dancers were going through their jigs and reels to thunderous applause. Arms confidently folded in front of her and a satisfied smile creasing her beautiful face, she reminded me of Boadicea, the legendary queen of the ancient Celts, who for one brief, shining moment defeated Britain’s Roman invaders.

  After the dancers departed the stage, she took the microphone to thank the people, the sponsors, and her volunteers for making the celebration such a success. Then she invited those with tickets for the play to move into McCabe Hall’s theater for what always proved to be the best part of the daylong festivities.

  The lights dimmed at eight o’clock, and Moira D’Arcy strode onto the stage in her role as narrator. The spotlight shone on her as she intoned:

  “The Ormond Hotel restaurant and pub. Just before four o’clock in the afternoon. Bronze by gold, Miss Douce’s head by Miss Kennedy’s head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal’s hoofs go by, ringing steel…”

  Costumed actors streamed onto the stage and thus began—Brigadoon-like—the audience’s magical transport to dirty, lyrical, mercenary-encamped, bordello-infested Dublin, circa 1904; an imaginary slate gray universe in which soldiers, medical students, whores, barflies, and ink-slingers interact with a Jewish everyman in search of home and a son in search of a father.

  An hour and a half of theater time later, Leopold Bloom had prevailed over seductive sirens, caught a “refreshing” sight of Gerty MacDowell’s ankles, rescued Stephen Dedalus from the perils of Nighttown, and, at the end of a very long day, reclined at the foot of his conjugal bed, kissed his wife’s rump and fell asleep, presumably content.

  The curtain closed and the fourteen actors who had brought James Joyce’s colorful Dubliners to life bounded from the wings to be rewarded with a standing ovation. After taking their bows, the cast glided from the stage. However, before the audience headed for the aisles, the narrator reminded them that one more scene remained.

  The curtain opened to reveal Natalie in the role of Molly Bloom reclining seductively on an old brass bed. She wore a flimsy cotton skirt, ripped fishnet stockings, and a low-cut bodice. Her face wore a mask of bold-faced shamelessness.

  She was the character, no doubt about it—all fire and flowers and flesh—and every eye in that theater locked on her.

  At first Natalie portrayed her as a working-class Madame Bovary, an overripe bourgeois wife of questionable reputation; so her soliloquy began quietly, in the sleepy voice of a slightly bemused adulteress who suspects her sexually unsatisfying husband has come home late after a fling of his own. But as the words continued to flow in a languid stream of consciousness Natalie/Molly evolved into a model of consummate womanhood. Slattern and saint, she was the universal Earth Mother, nature in all its richness.

  The monologue was intensely, shockingly personal and, except for a few moralists who scurried out a side door during the earthier passages, the audience remained in their seats, captivated by the unfiltered rendering of what it is like to be female.

  For me, her character became all the women I had known and loved: Carol and Josie and Annie and Alice and Sandra Epstein and Pillow Wilkes and Esme Mackin and Beryl Cowper and little Aronui of the South Island.

  Even my own beautiful, alcoholic, abused and abusing mother. God rest her soul.

  And first I put my arms around him. Yes. And drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume.

  Yes.

  And his heart was going like mad.

  And yes,

  I said yes, I will.

  Yes.

  And with that ultimate affirmation of life, the spotlight on Natalie faded to dark. Seconds passed in silence until, like a tempest surging from the eye of a hurricane, the theater erupted with applause.

  It went on uninterrupted for ten minutes, maybe more, ending only when Claire climbed onto the stage. After exchanging hugs with her mother, the girl stood to the side, raised her hand for silence and began to sing.

  I later learned that the tune, “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” was from a nineteenth-century romantic opera favored by Joyce. But it could have been “It’s Not Easy Being Green” or the Notre Dame “Victory March” and I wouldn’t have noticed. That’s because I saw that her eyes had suddenly become focused on something or someone toward the back of the auditorium.

  Josie noticed it as well.

  Turning as one, we saw that the object of Claire’s attention was a stocky, muscular man standing to the left of the double doors under a red exit sign. He wore a mesh trucker hat sporting a Lynyrd Skynyrd logo, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and faded blue jeans. It was too dark to see his face, but I had no doubt whom it was.

  Chapter 23

  Now that’s pretty. Real nice. Like an angel singing. This girl is definitely coming with me when this is over. Definitely. Have to put a bag together. Don’t want to worry about not finding any rope in the house. Knife, of course. Precut some cords, pack tape and a little mirror.

  Josie had already dialed 911 when I hurried up the aisle with the intent of keeping the man there until the police arrived. He noticed me, but didn’t move, so intent was he on watching Claire’s performance. I stopped at the top of the stairs, close enough to grab him should he bolt, yet far enough back to avoid a swipe of his arms if he had a knife.

  It wasn’t until Claire finished singing and the curtain closed that he turned his head to acknowledge me with a look of utter vacuity. The yellow-gray eyes studied me as if I were a dead catfish. Under the cap were an exceptionally meager forehead, a protuberant nose, grizzled chin whiskers, and razor-thin lips. He smelled of diesel fumes, cigarettes, and dried piss—a human truck stop.

  Josie appeared by my side while two friends of mine, Danny Regan and Ed Scanlon, planted themselves in front of the door ready to pounce should it be necessary.

/>   “Porter Grint?” I inquired.

  “What of it?”

  His words oozed like bubbles through swamp water.

  “The police would like to see you.”

  “Would they now?” He leaned against a railing. The eyes examined Josie with ratlike interest. “Who made them interested?”

  “I think you know.”

  “I think I don’t.”

  “A whole lot of people.”

  “I served my time. I’m as free a man as you. Nobody’s got anything on me.”

  “At any rate, here they are now. Try selling your story to them.”

  —

  Josie and I followed the police car to the Jackson County courthouse, where an hour later we watched through the one-way glass while Detective Fletcher interrogated Grint. It quickly became apparent that getting him to confess was as likely as getting a snake to warm itself on ice.

  He denied everything, but he was a lousy convincer. He said he was in Independence, Missouri, at the time of the fire in Lawrence. He was staying at the Days Inn Motel, but he knew of no one who could vouch for his presence anywhere that day. He claimed to be in Jackson County to visit the original site of the Garden of Eden, a goal he had set on while in prison. There was something authentic in the way he insisted on this. When asked about the pact to kill Natalie Phelan, his denial was accompanied by an oily smile. He feigned surprise upon hearing of the attempted assault on Emery in the hospital.

  “So Emery’s here,” he said, looking at the mirrored glass as if he could see through it. “I sure would like to talk to him.” He paused. “For old times’ sake.”

  The next day I hired an attorney friend to petition Judge Atwell to issue a restraining order preventing Porter from communicating with or coming within a hundred feet of Emery, Natalie, or Claire.

  I might as well have asked for a ticket to the moon for all the good it did.

  Chapter 24

  On the twenty-sixth of June, Josie took a call at noon from a very upset volunteer at the Celtic Center. Natalie hadn’t shown up that morning. The Irish Consul General, who had come down from Chicago specifically to get a tour of the place after hearing about the tremendous success of Bloomsday, was cooling his heels in the library. The volunteer had called the hospital, but Natalie hadn’t been there, either.

  Josie tried Natalie’s home and cell phone numbers with the same result the volunteer had. She called the principal’s office at Ursuline Academy, who reported that Claire was absent. Josie rushed downstairs to get me. I put aside the book I’d been describing for a new catalogue and two minutes later gunned the Jeep for the Phelans’ apartment in Roeland Park.

  I found the manager skimming leaves from the pool. She ran to her office to get the key. It wasn’t necessary. The newspaper lay outside the half-open door. I told the manager to call 911 and walked inside. There was a teakettle atop a cherry red stove ring. The water in it had evaporated. A leg of the coffee table was broken. A lamp lay on the floor, its shade crushed but the lightbulb still on. A chair in the kitchen had been knocked over. In Claire’s bedroom I found blood smeared on the inside doorknob. I sat on the small bed that was covered by a single sheet and telephoned Detective Fletcher. I called the Days Inn in Independence, only to learn that Grint had checked out the day before. I hung up. I called Josie. I called Buford Higgins. I turned off the stove.

  Then I waited for the police to arrive.

  —

  While the crime scene technicians busied about the apartment taking measurements and photographs and dusting for prints, I sat in a patrol car describing to the deputy sheriff what I knew. Five minutes later his radio announced that Grint was in police custody following an altercation at the Kansas City Zoo. A zookeeper had ordered him to stop feeding sunflower seeds to an Amazon parrot and he responded by shoving the woman against the netting. He ran when she called security, but an alert patrol officer nabbed him on Monkey Island.

  “Monkey Island?”

  “You heard right,” the deputy said. “Lucky for him the chimps were opposite where he landed. Nasty buggers, chimps.”

  —

  Back at the Jackson County jail interrogation room, Grint was being more cooperative than he’d been the first time.

  Sergeant LaVar Stratten, an enormous black cop, now asked the questions. He seemed more effective than Detective Fletcher, more patient and understanding. He made nice with Grint. He called him Porter. He offered him coffee and apologized when the Mormon refused on religious grounds. It was odd seeing the difference in Grint this time around. He looked dog-tired and jumpy. More than worried, he seemed scared.

  “This is not good,” Josie insisted, as we watched behind the glass. “He’s had no sleep in a while. That boy’s been up all night doing things.”

  “I was at the zoo all day,” he said in response to Stratten’s first question. “I ain’t been near Kansas.”

  “Have you seen Mrs. Phelan or her daughter since that night at the school play?”

  He answered by not answering.

  “Okay, Porter. Where did you see them?”

  “At the Irish place.”

  “In Union Station?”

  “If that’s what you call it.”

  “You went in?”

  “No. Just stood outside in the hall.”

  “Why would you do that knowing there was a restraining order? You must have a mighty big crush on her.”

  Grint grinned. “I ain’t queer. And who’s to say I wasn’t a hundred feet away?”

  Stratten grinned back, topped it with an understanding smirk. “We talkin’ about the mother or the girl?”

  The prisoner raised his chin. “Why are you shakin’ me down again? They go missing?”

  “You tell me, Porter. Someone broke in to their apartment. Made a mess. Bloodstains on a bedroom door. I want to know where they are.” The big cop leaned forward, no longer Officer Friendly. “You want me to know where they are. And you most definitely want me to find them alive.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  Grint reached across the table for a mint Stratten had pushed toward him earlier. His thin fingers peeled off the wrapping paper and popped the candy in his mouth.

  “You’re not going to find my prints in that apartment, Sergeant. You’re not gonna find particles of my hair, no fibers from my clothes, no hint of my DNA. I never been there.”

  Stratten took a few moments to look into the man’s face. I saw what he saw. Porter Grint seemed to believe what he was saying.

  “Three of you vowed to kill Natalie Phelan. One’s still in a coma, the other is physically incapable. That leaves you. Give me a reason to believe it isn’t you.”

  “I don’t want to harm her.”

  “I see,” Stratten sneered. “You just want to sniff around, peek in on her and her little girl. Harmless fun.”

  “Yeah,” Grint said, his reddened eyes glistening. “For twelve years it’s all I could think of, how I’d disappointed my uncle by getting sent to prison in a stupid fight. I’ll admit it, Sergeant, I was ready to honor the oath. That’s what I’d been trained to do. But I began to think different once I started readin’ my LDS Bible without my uncle looking over my shoulder, guidin’ the meanings to fit his way. It took a while and some talk with the prison chaplain, but I finally figured it wasn’t what Joseph Smith wanted. Not even Brigham Young. Sometimes words get twisted funny. People read in them things that aren’t real.”

  He leaned back. Stared into the big man’s eyes and said, “I killed that dude in Rock Springs. Still feel bad about it, even though he would’ve skewered me first if he hadn’t been so drunk. But I ain’t out to hurt nobody, less’n they come after me.”

  “Then why did you show up in this neck of the woods?”

  “I wanted to see her, to tell her not to worry. Not about me, at least.”

  “Who should she worry about, then?”

  “Cousin Emery, of course.”
Grint accepted another mint. “Our uncle always thought it would come down to him. Wild-ass that I was as a kid, he knew I’d get waylaid some way, somehow. Emery was Mr. Quiet, not a mean bone in his body, but you should have seen him take to the lessons that last year with Lamar. Nothing could stop him if he believed in something. And he believed more than me or Dennis in that atonement hooey.”

  I glanced sideways at Josie. Her upper body was rigid as she stared through the glass.

  “Why would a guy admit it to the woman he intends to marry?” Stratten asked. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “You asked my opinion. I gave it.”

  “Okay. Let’s say you’re tellin’ the truth. That leaves Emery, who isn’t going anywhere for a long time, and a man with no legs and one arm.”

  “So you ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

  “If you had wanted to kill her, how would you have done it?”

  “We were taught to slit her throat so that the blood would consecrate the ground.”

  “Any special time or place?”

  “That’ll be up to the avenging angel.”

  His grin when he said that was the most repulsive thing I’d seen in a long time.

  Josie turned her head to me. Instantaneously, we mouthed: “The Garden of Eden.”

  Chapter 25

  Independence, Missouri, is surrounded by the megalopolis of Kansas City, but its historical significance is just as great as the larger city’s. In the late 1840s the settlement teemed with migrants escaping foreclosures and lost opportunities in the Eastern cities. But for these intrepid dreamers it was only a way station, a starting point where they hitched their dreams and sole possessions to oxen, horses, and mules for the great treks to California, Santa Fe, and Oregon.

  Then came 1849 and the forges, stables, and taverns went into double duty servicing a different clientele, for this was the beginning of the Gold Rush. The apron-skirted mothers, penniless farmers, and bawling children mixed with raffish Europeans, Indian traders, buckskinned mountain men, Indian scouts and squaws, Mexican mule drivers, and fancy ladies—a gathering of sinners and saints of all races, all hopes. For all their differences, they were united in one respect: the desire to find fortune on the other side of the continent. It was nothing less than the incubator of the American West.