Hermit
Page 28
‘I, that is, I . . . no. I don’t think so, no. My parents would’ve . . . uh, they thought it was time for me to leave. Maybe, beyond time.’ He paused, then threw in something else. ‘Jeb would have been angry, though.’
Dana needed to pursue those two things carefully: why it was beyond time, and why Jeb would be angry. They meant something. They meant something significant.
‘Your parents felt that twenty-three was old enough to move out, is that it?’
Nathan flinched before replying, and Dana realised that wasn’t it.
‘Uh, possibly. Most people have moved out by that age – university, new job, the military: some reason or other.’
He was misdirecting. She wanted to push it and push it fast, but she had to move at his pace: guide and goad. Driving on would also hasten the moment when she’d have to tell him that his parents were dead.
‘But that isn’t why, is it, Mr Whittler? There’s a deeper reason than that.’ Dana saw him wince, as if she’d leaned over to strike him. ‘Regardless of your age, they felt 2004 was overdue for you to get out.’ She pushed. ‘Not so much leave as . . . escape?’
It was a hunch. If the parents thought his leaving was overdue, but Jeb would have been enraged by it, maybe the reason Nathan ran was not overly religious parents. She’d been inclined to assume his sudden departure was a rebellion against zealotry and imposed piety; now she was beginning to feel she might have been wrong.
‘Escape, yes. It was, yes.’ He was welling up, looking away to the corners. ‘Horrible, horrible. I don’t want to talk about it.’
But you have to, thought Dana. I can’t close this case without knowing why you ran.
‘You mentioned having to hand over nearly all your income, Mr Whittler. Was it a strict household?’
‘Strict? Not . . . yes . . . I mean, not unusually, I don’t think. My parents were quite religious, stern by modern standards. But not bad parents, really. Parents are, uh, very influential, don’t you think?’
The question stabbed her. The pen stayed poised over the page, quivering. Dana caught her breath then took a moment to formulate an answer. Nathan hadn’t asked what her own parents were like: he was too smart to be so direct. He’d fired from an angle; from a sniper’s knoll. And hit.
‘We can’t always escape what they make us, that’s true. But there’s no reason we have to behave like them either. I try to take what I can from childhood, then move on. Don’t you agree, Mr Whittler?’
‘That’s a noble aim, Detective. But no; I don’t think that’s possible. Their influence is in the marrow – literally. It can’t be exorcised, can’t be wished away. A large part of us is always shaped by what we experience as a child. I could never truly escape it.’
He looked straight at her: ‘I don’t think anyone can.’
She tried to swallow that down. It was impossible for Nathan to know about her life – impossible. And yet, and yet. He could infer it, sense it; understand enough from conversing with her to have some inkling. It made her fear she was that transparent with others: that they were discerning what she fought to hide.
‘We do our best, though, don’t we, Mr Whittler?’
‘Oh yes, I think so, Detective. I mean, for men, fathers are the key, aren’t they? We expect something more from them, somehow, purely because we share gender. We look to them for . . . values, example. Is it the same for girls with their mothers?’
No, she thought, it isn’t. But mothers can have a hideous, overbearing, dark impact. If you have no power, if what happens in your life is beyond your control.
‘Not really, no,’ Dana replied. ‘We’re supposed to be close to our mothers, as you describe. But it doesn’t always work out that way.’
‘No, no,’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes, a big something comes along and rips all that to shreds. Leaves debris, really.’
Her silence would seem to him like assent. Which it was.
She needed to get away from this; could feel it unravelling her.
She had to switch the focus back on to Nathan’s home life and what had made him run. They already had Jeb’s take on it: he had seen a house of tight discipline, pared-down piety; a deliberate refusal to engage with the modern world. Jeb had heard no music: instead, quiet contemplation, the threat of cellars; a plethora of Bibles and strictures. Dana could picture such things – had lived them. She knew the iconography, the sounds, even the taste of the air. It chilled her to be wrenched backwards.
But Nathan hadn’t seen that house: not quite as Jeb saw it. They’d witnessed the same things but had viewed them differently. She was close, but she wasn’t quite nailing it. Nathan’s answers were scattergun, deliberately imprecise: he dissembled when he turned the issue back on her. He was hiding something, able to hold back because he hadn’t had to address it. She wasn’t asking the right questions.
‘At some point, Mr Whittler, I feel your family life took a turn for the worse. I feel sure of that. How old were you when that happened?’
‘Eight, or maybe nine. About then.’
It was a hoarse whisper. She could feel the crackle in it, the giving way of the ice.
‘What happened?’
Nathan shied away, turning his back. She thought about speaking, or even about reaching out, but decided against both. Nathan had his face buried in his hands. It felt like he was hiding. She understood that he had an acutely developed sense of shame, and not always for himself.
Eventually he sniffed then wiped his nose carelessly with a sleeve. His face was blotchy and he looked pale and drawn. She considered stopping the interview or calling the doctor, but Bill would lacerate her if she didn’t keep going now. And, she felt, rightly.
Besides, Dana had an overwhelming need to know.
And Nathan had a latent need to tell.
‘I . . . uh, okay. My brother, Jeb . . .’
Nathan stopped, blinked hard and swallowed. He reached for the cup with a shaking hand then changed his mind.
‘Take your time, Mr Whittler.’
He nodded. ‘Jeb was really big for his age. I mean, nearly two metres, and wide with it. He used to bully me a little, push me around. But, in reality, I was so small and young I didn’t matter. He could shove me about quite easily, any time he wanted, so he didn’t bother much.’
Nathan was staring at his reflection in the mirror, forearms resting on his knees. Again, that compulsive nail-draw down his fate line.
‘Around that time, my parents became extra-quiet. I’m not sure I noticed everything at the time, except that one day I realised exactly what was going on.’
He stopped, looked to the floor and half coughed. She silently passed him a tissue, which he took without acknowledgement. He used it to wipe the snot and ignored the tears. He clutched the used tissue as he continued. Dana took short, silent breaths.
‘My parents had been strict, yes. But fair. They had a code: respect the Bible, live simply, don’t answer back. It was easy to follow, Detective. It chimed with my . . . with me. I didn’t find it hard to stick to, so I wasn’t in a heap of trouble. We’d argue about what was a suitable book, but other than that I was no problem to them. But Jeb? When he became a teenager, Jeb was a different story.
‘When he got to sixteen he started pushing them around. Physically pushing them around. He argued with Father and locked him in the cellar. Literally – dragged him by the arm and hair and pushed him into our cellar. It was where we kept the root vegetables and the wood for the stove. Dark, damp, unhealthy; snakes and fear. And my father screamed. Claustrophobic, you see: I mean, he really screamed, like someone was chopping his limbs off. I’d never heard anything that bad before. An hour in there and he was begging. Jeb went down and told our father his fortune. That was all it took: we had a new boss.
‘Jeb started to call the shots. Who went where, what we did. He could threaten Father with the cellar, and other things, and Father knew they weren’t idle threats. Besides, Jeb had shown his power. It was that simple – a
ll the prayer, all the authority of parenthood, dissolved when someone was big and brutal and violent and didn’t care. Like that thing Mike Tyson said, Detective: Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
‘And Jeb could threaten Father by threatening Mother. After all, Father was out all day and I was eight: she was at Jeb’s mercy, and he had none. I had no choice; I had a new path in terms of discipline, orders and behaviour. A new master. A new father.’
Dana swallowed. Below the desk, finger and thumb tapped. She was horrified how many parallels there were between her life and Nathan’s. Both were ruptured when they were eight. Both rattled and riddled by something they could barely comprehend. Both lives dominated by a quiet, resilient but directionless survival.
‘Jeb began to change things. I liked some of them – a bit of pop music, some more TV. But it was only ever what Jeb mandated, only what Jeb allowed and could take away. Some of them I didn’t like. Jeb took control of the bank accounts. Soon enough, they transferred all the property to his name. I was ten then, old enough to begin to understand what that meant. We were all Jeb’s tenants now: at his beck and call.
‘When I started high school I got a little release. Jeb never stopped me going, but he sneered at any education that wasn’t practical. Useless, he called it. Empty. When he drank, he started hitting people. Things. Anything in his zone. It got uglier and uglier. He started having girls over from the city – his party nights. My parents and I had to go to the barn and sleep among the machinery – he wouldn’t have us in the house. Shivering, silent; water from a trough. We never spoke of the implications, Detective. We barely spoke at all: we all felt the shame, and it didn’t need spelling out.’
Nathan stopped, slurped at the water with a needy, raspy breath, spilling some of it. Dana wondered whether to speak or wait for him to resume. But it became clear he needed a prompt, for there to be another voice in the room. Some counterpoint to the sound of his own desperation.
‘There was never any rebellion? No thoughts of escape?’
‘Not really. Jeb could smash any of us to a paste, any old time. My parents were not the adversarial type, Detective. Nor was I. We were raised compliant – not so much submissive as accepting. There’s a subtle difference. Our meekness was a practical survival instinct, an acceptance of the consequences. Jeb had the property, the money, the only car. We were isolated socially, physically. We were terrified; we’d seen what he could do and how easy it was to do it. That was the overriding thing – his cruelty was easy for him, a default. Sometimes I harboured ideas of sneaking up on him when he was asleep, slamming into his head with a shovel. But really, it was an empty dream – I lacked the guts and I knew it would go wrong. Dreaming it made me feel weaker: it emphasised that I would never do it.’
Classic abusive behaviour, thought Dana. The threats, the isolation, the destruction of self. Almost everything by implication; it rarely needed to be carried out. A very real but utterly intangible danger – one others couldn’t see, chose to ignore or wouldn’t care to understand.
‘Didn’t you acquire a car of your own? A Toyota? Couldn’t you escape in that?’
Nathan thought for a moment, temporarily perplexed.
‘Ah, no. That thing. That was much later. A scam by Jeb; my name on the forms, but I never even saw the car. He had some con going; insurance, I think.’
‘I see. Sorry.’ Dana cursed herself for interrupting the flow – she should have stayed silent.
Nathan sat back in his chair and regarded his hands. When he was struggling with what to reveal he seemed to shrink back to this childlike body language. Dana wondered when that impulse had emerged and felt a connection to her own finger-and-thumb reflex.
‘I . . . uh, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this.’ Nathan’s voice was almost a whisper.
She shuddered inside. She couldn’t let him stop – not now. Her interruption had given him the option.
‘Why are you reluctant, Mr Whittler?’
He shook his head.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘that you have something you’ve held within for a very long time. I respect that; understand that. As you appreciate. But I also know that some things have a natural timing; there’s a reason they reach for the light and a reason you should let them.’
He shook his head sadly. She could feel revelation drifting from her grasp.
‘As things stand, Mr Whittler, you have something inside you that you want me to know. You want me to understand it; that matters to you, and for a very particular reason. You know that I can put information together. You know I can comprehend. More than that, I can understand. So I think that, while you’re nervous about the telling, you actually want me to know.’
She paused to see if she was having any impact. There was no sign of it.
‘The telling doesn’t have to be precise or perfect, Mr Whittler. It simply has to communicate what you wish me to understand. That’s all.’
He swallowed hard, then nodded. Dana tried to hide her relief. Nathan resumed, almost reverential.
‘He made me get a job. He wanted money, and Father’s wages weren’t enough. Jeb was working construction a little; dealing drugs on the side. Lots of building buddies wanted some stuff for the weekend – Jeb made himself indispensable. And then, about a year before I left, it got much worse. Oh, God.’
Nathan’s limbs suddenly flailed, as though slapping away an invisible force. She feared he’d fall to the ground. Gradually, his shaking arms came under control and he settled again, his voice continuing to quiver as he stared at the wall.
‘Each Saturday, Jeb would tell my parents after lunch that it was “nap time”. I was twenty-three, Detective. A small, weak, pummelled, ashamed twenty-three. He was way bigger than all of us. My father was average height but skinny; my mother was tiny. Jeb was full-size: bigger than any of your colleagues. He barked, “Nap time,” and they’d all shuffle off up the stairs. Jeb didn’t need to tell me to stay where I was – one look was enough.’
She’d guessed this morning that the crucial issue would lie with Nathan’s parents, but now, clearly, it was something about Jeb. Dana wished she had more on Jeb. Mike had started things and Rainer was chasing more background, but that wouldn’t help her right now.
‘They’d come back down around dark. They wouldn’t have made a sound up there. I had no clue what they were doing. I only knew that nap time meant the three of them went upstairs and came back a few hours later. I was too scared of Jeb to go looking for answers.’
He reached for the cup without turning around. Dana slid the handle into his fingers and he took a swig, more to give his breathing some order than to assuage thirst.
‘This went on for months. Months. I had no clue what it was about. Now I know, I wonder if I’d ever have been able to stop it. I don’t think so. Just finding out about it nearly got . . . well, finding out was the worst thing I could have done.
‘One day Jeb called nap time and sent our parents upstairs. But this time he didn’t go with them. I must have frowned, or looked puzzled. He started smiling and told me he’d show me something I’d never forget.
‘I was confused, Detective. I didn’t understand. Whatever it was had been private between the three of them. None of them ever spoke about it or referred to it. I knew I wasn’t allowed to ask anything. There was this big secret the three of them held, and now I was supposed to be a part of it?
‘Something in me was certain I shouldn’t have that knowledge. Maybe I thought that, if they were so silent up there, it couldn’t be a good thing. Jeb’s idea of fun wasn’t mine. It usually ended with me hurting and him laughing. I couldn’t see how this would be any different.’
Dana scribbled Pitman without once taking her eyes off Nathan. The air conditioning hummed.
‘I thought it was a trick. I thought he’d get me upstairs and lock me in a cupboard or something. I told him it was a trick, and he looked at me funny. No trick, he said. Science.
Nathan put down the cup and the used tissue. He squirmed.
‘Then he got mad and grabbed at my arm. I clutched at the staircase, but he was way too strong. He could still drag me around like a little teddy bear. After he slapped me I gave in and he pulled me up the stairs by the collar. Nothing I could do. Our parents’ room was at the end of the landing. The door was slightly open and I could tell the curtains had been drawn. It was the middle of the day. I wanted to run, but Jeb was behind me with his hands on my shoulders. His fingers dug in – he knew exactly where the nerves were and he liked making me spasm like that.
‘Closer, closer, closer: until we were right outside the door. Even as an adult, I never went in my parents’ room: I always knocked and waited and they’d open the door a sliver to talk to me. Yet here I was, with Jeb telling me to push it open. I touched the handle but I was too scared. Jeb thumped on my wrist and the door shuddered open.
‘At first, all I saw were crosses, statues of Jesus. Dozens of them: maybe half of all the icons in the house were in their room. Across every surface, crowded on every wall – Jesus and God, and the idea that this place was holy, safe and pure. It proved to be the opposite of that. I’ve never got that image out of my head, Detective. Never.’
Me neither, thought Dana. That contrast never fades; it simply bites.
‘Inside, Father was sitting in an armchair. One of those tall, upright ones; butterfly chairs, I think they’re called. His hands were tight on the arms of the chair – rigid. Terrified. I could see it in his eyes. He stared at me, and up at Jeb, and he shook his head slightly. Just a little. Jeb told him to shut up and he dropped his eyes.
‘I looked across to Mother. She was lying on the bed, eyes closed, her arms across her stomach, like she’d died. I could barely see her chest rise and fall. Utter silence. Jeb marshalled me to the side of the room, next to a radiator. He walked into the centre of the room, took a glance at each of them in turn. He put a hand in his pocket, turned to me and said, “Look what I can do.”