“Come on, Hall. I’m curious.”
“Oswald, did you not—”
“I heard you. Don’t worry. I’m a patriot. But I’m a curious fucking patriot.”
Hall looks back up the hill and back to Michael.
“We haven’t finished all the body work yet.”
“Makes sense. It must take a long time to do eighty-seven postmortems by candlelight in an undisclosed location.”
“Right,” he says turning to go.
“So you don’t know all the causes of death, but you know some?”
Hall turns around. “Yeah, so far, they were all strangled. Is your curiosity sated?”
“When did it start?” Michael asks. “You got the first pioneer bones from the 1850’s, but when did the modern stuff start?”
Hall takes a deep breath and looks at him hard. Michael raises his hands in surrender.
Hall huffs. “Continuous,” he says. “It never stopped.”
Chapter Fifteen
Michael waits for an hour in the foyer. He should have known that state workers get longer than normal lunches and planned to arrive after two or before ten. But it doesn’t matter. He enjoys time alone with his thoughts. It’s his new favorite pastime: thinking, not thinking, letting his mind wander to dark and terrible places to return exhilarated and alive.
He slept a couple hours on the side of the road outside of Cedar City. When he woke up, he pissed in a ditch and drove straight to Salt Lake. He raced the sunrise, pushing his car above a hundred just to sense the wheels rise above the road, death threatening from a pebble. He rolled down his windows and howled into the wind. On a lonely straight-away he switched off his lights, took his hands off the wheel and closed his eyes. He pushed the pedal to the floor with both feet and listened to the roar of air until his courage faltered.
He’d ordered a triple-sweet maple latte and borrowed Wi-Fi from a coffee shop. He researched the names he could remember. He had one he was sure of: Calum Lane. He can’t remember any of the other social workers from his past. He knows he had a lot of them but they are but vague recollections, flashes and scenes, no faces and no names of the string of public bureaucrats who shuffled him across his childhood.
This is what he needs to know. How has he forgotten? Even more than “what” has he forgotten, the “how” troubles him more. He senses a deceit. There are lies here, lies so strong and so deep that they dam up the first ten years of his life.
It’s not surprising that he can’t remember much of his childhood, most people can’t. He doesn’t have a scrapbook for reference or an oral history.
He doesn’t even have an imagined past before the Dormitory, something he made up for security. It’s bothering him now, but how has it never bothered him before? Has this forgetting been recent? Did he ever talk to Carla about his past? He doesn’t think so.
There are no threads there for him to pull on or connect further back than the Dormitory. Only recently, since he first saw the woman in St. George has any of this started to return or even mean anything to him. It is vexing. No. It’s more than vexing. It’s enraging. It’s maddening. He feels his grasp on reality slip away with each dig at the mental wall, but he can’t stop. There is something behind it and he has to get to it. He has to get to the child sealed away because that child knows the truth.
He recognizes Calum Lane when he comes in. He’s put on ten pounds and twenty years. His brown hair is thinning but Michael thinks the color is still his own.
Calum doesn’t glance at Michael as he swipes his magnetic keycard to gain access to the inner offices. He has that beaten-down, thousand-yard stare so many social workers get after years of seeing family tragedy on a daily basis.
The receptionist who knows that Michael is waiting acts like she didn’t see Lane come in. She might not have noticed it, so enthralled is she in her solitaire game. He gives her the benefit of the doubt as he waits for her to pick up the extension or god forbid, actually walk back there and tell Lane he has a visitor. Michael makes up little lies that allow him not to despise this woman. Maybe she is so used to the sound of the buzzing magnetic lock that she doesn’t notice it anymore. Maybe her peripheral vision was damaged in a childhood injury. Maybe she is deliberately letting her co-worker settle in to give Michael the most favorable interview possible. Lies. All lies. He notes them each, checks them off in turn, and listens to the clicking mouse behind the glass partition. He smiles as he realizes he’s suffering the brunt of a power-trip. He’s the victim of a little person with a little power getting her little rocks off by inconveniencing a stranger. He sees himself behind the glass then, creeping up behind her, his hand coiled around a rope.
A woman with a screaming toddler bursts through the door. In her arms are two more babes, squalling like there are pins in them.
The woman behind the counter has to look up then.
Michael catches her eye and holds it for a moment. He seethes with malice.
She picks up the phone and turns her back on Michael to make the call.
“I gotta get outta’ my house,” shrieks the mother to the woman on the phone. “This time. He’s gone too far!”
“Who’s your social worker?”
“Calum.”
“I’m next,” says Michael standing up.
“Surely, you’ll let Mrs. Grant go ahead of you,” says the receptionist.
“Surely, I won’t.”
“This is an emergency,” yells the mother over the crying children.
“Your bad choices are not my emergencies,” Michael says to her. To the receptionist he says, “If you’d called Calum and told him I was waiting when he got back, I’d be gone and Mrs. Grant’s domestic tragedy could have center stage. But you didn’t do that. I’ve sat here over an hour, plus the fifteen minutes you sat on your fat ass before making the call.”
“He gunna’ kill me!” screams Mrs. Grant.
“You’d be that lucky,” says Michael.
“What did you say your business was with Mr. Lane?”
“I didn’t,” says Michael. “Red eight on the black nine.”
The receptionist flushes and gives Michael a cold stare before buzzing open the door.
“Second door on the right,” she says. “Mrs. Grant, have a drink of water. There are some toys in the corner for Connor.”
Calum Lane’s door is closed.
Michael knocks once and goes in. “Hello Calum.”
The social worker looks up from a file and goes wide-eyed.
“You look like someone just walked over your grave,” Michael says.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t remember me? I’m Michael Oswald.” He sits down in front of the desk. “Calm down. I’m saving you from Mrs. Grant. She’s a mess.”
“She always is. Michael Oswald. Michael! How are you?”
The smile seems genuine. Calum takes in his old ward, examining the clothes, haircut, skin—probably gauging his success as a social worker by the fact that Michael isn’t in rags and tattoos, marred with meth scabs and knife scars. “How’ve you been?” he says.
“Married and divorced,” says Michael taking some of the steam out of him. “But I’m doing alright.”
“You working?”
“I got laid off last month,” he says. “But it wasn’t much of a job. I was an insurance thug. Sleazy stuff. Glad to be out of it.”
“What brings you to my door?”
“I need to ask you who I am.”
He laughs. “An existentialist.”
“I can’t remember my youth,” he says. “It’s bothering me.”
Calum stops chuckling and purses his lips. After a moment, he nods. “That’s not uncommon,” he says. “It’s your mind’s way of coping.”
“Coping with what?” Michael’s tone is sharp.
“A troubled past.”
“What? Specifically.”
“Specifically? I don’t know. I met you when you were at Salt Lake Juvenile Detention.”
&nbs
p; “I thought we weren’t supposed to call it that. I thought it was “The Dormitory.””
“Now it’s “Juvie.” It’s more jail now than home. Actually, it’s all jail now. You were there when it worked. I’d like to get some information about you for my records. I could use a success story.”
“So what about the Dorm—Juvie?”
“Well,” he says. “What was it? Twenty-five years? Yeah? About that. I don’t remember why you were there, but if you were there you did something wrong.”
“I was a foster kid,” Michael says. “That much I know. Before I was at the Dormitory, I was with a foster family. The Hilchens I think. They had a boy named Ken. Before that, I remember very little. I think there was a very poor family evicted from a lousy apartment. There might have been a homeless shelter. I remember situations, but I can recall none of the names.”
The social worker shakes his head helplessly.
“Calum,” says Michael. “I don’t even know why I was a foster kid in the first place.”
“What can I do?”
“Can you get the file? Look me up on the computer or something?”
“You were a minor,” he says. “The records are sealed.”
“Even from me? They’re mine.”
“What are you looking for?”
“You said it. An existential journey.”
“Michael, you’re doing so well. Why go dredge up a mucky past?”
“How do you know it’s mucky?”
“Because you were in Juvie. Because you were in foster care. That’s mucky. Put it aside. Move on.”
“You think I’m doing well?”
“Oh yeah. Compared to the dregs of humanity I see every day, you are one for the text books.”
He’s hearing that a lot.
“You’re saying that because I came out of foster care?”
“Do you have all your teeth?”
“Yes.”
“Success.” He beams.
Mrs. Grant’s toddler howls like someone stabbed him with a pitchfork. The door does little to muffle the screams. Calum cringes.
“Please,” Michael says. “Can you look at your files? Surely you have some notes. Something.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Please,” he says. “It’s important.”
“What happened?” Calum says. “Why now? What brought this on?”
“Isn’t it enough I want to know?”
“Was it your divorce?”
“Partly.”
“You have kids?”
“Two. One’s starting college. The other lives with her mom. She’s sixteen. They’re good.”
“You’ve done well, Michael,” he says. “How long you been divorced?”
“Years,” he says.
“So what happened recently? A death?”
Michael recalls the imaginary woman, thinks about the bodies laid out like railroad ties at Crystal Springs. He was well on his way to Calum’s office then, but it gives him an excuse.
“I was in a coma for a while,” he says. “They don’t know what it was. I could have died.”
“Feeling your own mortality, huh?” he says.
Actually, Michael thinks, he’s feeling others,’ but he nods. “Please Calum. I’m a solid upright citizen. A grownup. A success. I just have amnesia. I think I lost my memory from the coma.” The lie comes easy, and he presents it well.
“Okay, Michael. I’ll see what I can find. Where can I get ahold of you?”
“Right here.”
“What?”
“I’ll wait. I’m at a dead end. I have nowhere to go until you give me something. I’ll go get a snack and come back after you deal with Mrs. Grant.”
“Ugh, Mrs. Grant,” he says wearily. “There’s a hard case. When she’s not high, he’s hitting her. The kids are doomed.”
“Why don’t you take the kids out of the house?”
“We probably will eventually. These things crawl like drunk caterpillars unless something really bad happens.”
“I’ll still wait,” says Michael.
“Okay,” Calum says. “Give me to the end of the day. Meet me at closing time. Five.”
“Thanks.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“But you’re trying.”
Michael leaves his old social worker in his cluttered office and lets himself out through the locked door beside the surly receptionist. He considers waiting in the foyer again but changes his mind when he sees Mrs. Grant changing a diaper on the only comfortable chair in the room. The look she gives him seals the deal and he leaves to find a restaurant.
He’s jittery from too much coffee and not enough food. He didn’t like the way he sounded with Calum. Too needy and desperate. It was too close to the truth. He has other options than Calum. He can go the Dormitory and demand to see his records. He could try that. He could hire an attorney. He could get another job to pay for that attorney.
He wanders to an ubiquitous Salt Lake convenience store and finds himself not pointing to cigarette boxes, but filling his hands with candy; Sweet-Tarts and red licorice, jaw-breakers and Pixy Stix. Sweet. Always sweet. He craves it like he used to crave cigarettes, but unlike the nicotine he’d get from his L&M’s, the candy never satisfies his needs. It’s not what he’s really looking for, but it’s close. It is the closest thing he can find. It’s like humming a tune from a concert, full of memory, nostalgia and meaning, but still just an echo of the real experience he seeks.
An hour later he’s back in the foyer of the Social Services branch office rolling a jawbreaker in his cheek. The receptionist glares at him, but he ignores her. She’s content to let him sit there, never asking what he wants, never informing Calum Lane that he’s back. She’s moved from solitaire to Facebook with an occasional telephone interruption.
At five, Calum comes out of his office and sees Michael in the waiting room.
“Come back Michael,” he says.
The receptionist doesn’t stir.
Back in his office, Calum looks glum.
Michael, still in the silent reverie he’d been in since three, waits patiently for him to begin.
“There is something weird here,” Calum says. “You’re not from Utah. You were transferred to our center from one in California.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Well, you were in trouble. Your foster family released you. That’s a nice way of saying they didn’t want you anymore. They gave you back. My files mention that you and your foster brother didn’t get along. There was an altercation and you, uhm, hurt him.”
“Hurt?”
“Actually you nearly killed him. You broke his trachea. He was in the hospital for months.”
Michael’s tries to imagine the scene, tries to use it to tease out a memory. It’s not forthcoming.
“What’s strange here,” Calum says clearing his throat, “is that California cared enough about you to give you another chance.”
Calum steeples his fingers and pinches his face up in a pained expression. “It’s hard enough to find homes for kids who, uhm, are uhm…”
“Who won’t kill the other kids?”
“Yeah. So it was pretty weird how much trouble they went through for you. They moved you to Salt Lake at a time when Juvie wasn’t a warehouse for child criminals but a reputable rehabilitation center.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “We had to make room for you too. We moved one boy out to the jail so you could get a bed.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Yes,” he said. “For a violent kid. Very rare.”
“But I’m not violent,” he says. “I barely get in arguments. I don’t even comment on the internet.”
“I guess you learned that at the Dormitory. Have you talked to Karen Stewart? She had more to do with you during your Dorm stay. She was your psychologist.”
“I remember her,” says Michael, her face
appearing in his mind as if from a mist. A haggard woman, always late, hair never set. Broken brown eyes.
“I came in late,” Calum explains. “I didn’t meet you until you were ready for another family. I coordinated the transition to the Oswalds. She was there from at least your arrival in the state, two years earlier.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“She retired years ago.” He turns to his computer and rattles the keys, shifts the mouse and rattles some more. “She’s dead,” he says. “Died five years ago. She was pretty old.”
“Would there be records?”
“That’s a stretch,” he says. “She wasn’t the type to keep anything.”
“How about the Dormitory?”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t be part of the electronic records. If you were lucky you might find your name and birth date on a piece of rat-bitten microfiche.”
“Give me something, Calum.”
“How about a warning?”
“How about a name.”
He sighs. “There’s a contact in California. Rebecca Brennan. Case manager. Just a mention in a footnote.”
“What’s the warning?”
“I’ve come up with a couple.”
“Go.”
“One. Stay away from the Hilchens. You can do no good there.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. What’re the others?”
“Leave this alone, Michael. The boy I knew and the man I see here bear no resemblance to the eight-year old who strangled a teenager. Bury that boy. He’s gone. Forget the past. If you’re feeling existential, re-invent yourself into something good and great.”
“I appreciate your help, Calum,” Michael says offering his hand.
“Good luck, Michael,” he says, taking it.
Chapter Sixteen
Michael had had weekly sessions with Karen Stewart during his first year at the Dormitory. She wore too much perfume and spent the first ten minutes of their half-hour session asking him how he was doing in a dozen different ways. When he said fine, she’d exhort the wonders of Mormonism and he’d tune out.
He thinks now that his sessions with Stewart were training seminars to what he became. He’s no Mormon, but as he recalls that time, he sees how he put on a facade to appease her. He let her believe whatever she needed to believe to let him alone. That was his time at the Dormitory in a nutshell; he learned how to fit in by creating a mask. By lying. Only somehow, along the way, he forgot what the truth was.
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