The Cure

by Athol Dickson

  Bree emerged from the room. Dylan said, “How is she?”

  “She’s all balled up,” said Bree. “I don’t think she remembers a thing that happened.”

  “They warned us about that,” said Dylan. “Remember?”

  “But she’s talking?” asked Riley.

  Bree nodded. “She’s pretty hoarse from that breathing thing.”

  The doctor had explained that talking would be an excellent sign. Riley thanked a God he no longer knew and then he said, “Can I go in and see her now?”

  Bree fixed her cryptic eyes on him. “She asked for Dylan next.”

  Riley let a moment pass, more time than he would have hoped, because he knew it made his feelings clear to everyone. “Uh, sure,” he said. “Okay.”

  Dylan frowned. “She’s just confused, man. I think you should go next.”

  “No.”

  “I really think—”

  Riley flung his coffee cup against the wall and turned on the man. “I’m not gonna stand out here and argue about this! Go on in there!”

  As the coffee ran across the floor between them Dylan looked away, but Bree’s unblinking eyes remained on him. Riley returned his daughter’s stare defiantly. How he hated her! How he hated Dylan, and Hope, and everything— himself most of all. Naked and ashamed at the center of his daughter’s pitiless examination, Riley spun on his heels and strode down the corridor. Around the corner he collided with a man holding a camera, nearly knocking him down. A nearby woman said, “Riley Keep! I’m Julia Armstrong, with CNN. Can we please have a moment of your time?”

  Riley roared in frustration, shoving the cameraman away and breaking into a run. Bypassing the elevators he entered the emergency stairwell, his footsteps echoing hollowly in his headlong descent to the lobby, where he burst through the doors. He looked left and right to get his bearings, and then charged to the exit.

  Outside in the parking lot, Riley Keep kept running. He had no idea where he was going; he only knew he had to get away. Weaving through the cars he made good time. This was what he had been training for all winter. A marathon escape from Dublin. Soon he was across the parking lot and loping with an easy stride across a recently mown field. He was not even breathing heavily. He was in the best shape of his life. He could have run all day and night, and might have had he not thought for one moment he heard Bree’s voice calling from behind.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  The possibility of it stopped him in his tracks.

  He had not heard that word in . . . in a long time, longer than a lifetime. He stood motionless in the middle of the field, not turning around. He heard the buzz of insects and saw a cloud of gnats rise up around him. The sun felt hot on his shoulders. The ripe smell of cut green grass brought vague memories of childhood, of laughter, of rolling on the surface of the earth. Some of this was real, but Riley knew he was imagining the best of it. Still he did not turn. He did not want to turn and find he was alone. He stood in the field, breathing in and out, trying to maintain the illusion of that word on his daughter’s lips, but knowing better, knowing those could not possibly be her footsteps in the grass behind him, knowing he could not possibly have heard her breathless voice.

  The cloud of gnats hovered golden in the sunshine, burning like the cherubim of Eden. He closed his eyes and lifted his face toward heaven and saw the glowing through his eyelids. To maintain the illusion, he said, “Did you just call me Daddy?”

  A pause, and then a voice behind him saying, “Yeah, I guess.”

  Reluctantly, he turned. Bree did indeed seem to be standing there. Still uncertain of reality he opened his arms. She walked into them stiffly. Her broad little body stood rigid against him, distant, and yet possibly right there. He said, “I love you,” which was so deeply true even if nothing else in his life was, and she said, “Oh, Daddy,” and the muscles of her back began to soften underneath his hands, and both of them began to weep, and he held her, and then he looked up and through his tears he saw Chief Novak and a uniformed policeman coming for him on the fresh-mown field.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  MANY OF THE OTHER PRISONERS had sworn to kill Riley Keep, so although every other cell in Dublin’s small jail was packed to overflowing with looters and arsonists arrested during the riots, he had been confined alone. The walls between the cells were solid concrete, but only steel bars separated him from the men just across the corridor. They cursed him unmercifully. One raving lunatic threw feces at him. Riley pulled the thin mattress down from the top bunk and propped it up on the end of the lower bunk, creating a barrier to hide behind. Since the men across the way could no longer see him, they lost interest after a few hours. Riley passed the time by staring at the tan paint on the wall beyond his feet, trying to decide if what had happened in the field with Bree had been real, or if it had been just another of his pitiful delusions.

  They interrogated him five times in the first two days, putting manacles and shackles on him every time as if he were a homicidal maniac, short-stepping him along between the six little cells as cursing men spat and flung toilet paper from the left and right. The chief always interviewed him personally, asking the same endless questions.

  After denying everything again and again, Riley just quit talking.

  On the third day they put a man in his cell. He was three sheets to the wind and very small—maybe five feet tall and a hundred pounds at most—so probably they assumed Riley could handle himself if the guy caused any trouble. But there was no trouble. The little man was a friendly drunk, laughing to himself and talking cheerful nonsense without ceasing. Riley knew from long experience the fruitlessness of answering his drunken questions. So Riley lay on his bunk silently while his talkative cellmate paced their tiny cell. Eventually the man sat on the floor with his back against the wall and started snoring. An hour after that they turned the lights off in the cells and Riley fell asleep.

  Early the next morning he found the small man curled up on the bare concrete floor. Feeling guilty, he put the mattress back on the upper bunk and climbed up there to make room should the newcomer desire to drag himself to bed when he awoke. Riley lay staring at the paint as usual, hoping the prisoners across the corridor would not notice he was exposed to them again. Finally he started to drift back to sleep.

  “Hey, man. Don’t I know you?”

  Shifting to his side, Riley opened his eyes to see his cellmate standing by the bunks, staring up at him. Their faces were about a foot apart. When the man’s rancid breath hit his nostrils Riley rolled away to face the wall.

  “Yeah, I know you. Ha. You’re the guy what cured me that time.”

  Still half asleep, the significance of this remark did not occur to Riley for a moment. Then he rolled back to face the man. “What?”

  “Don’t ya remember me?”

  Mainly to get the man to move away so he wouldn’t have to smell his breath, Riley said, “Hand me my glasses, will you?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Ha ha.”

  The little man took a step away, lifted Riley’s eyeglasses from the single steel shelf beside the sink and gave them to him. Riley sat up on the bunk, put on the glasses, and looked down. “Were you at the shelter last winter?”

  “Yep. Timmy Frank, that’s me. Man with two first names. Ha ha.” He held a grimy hand up to Riley, who reached down to shake it. The man asked, “What’re you in for?” and Riley started to reply, but heard the answer in his head before his lips could form the word. Murder. Unable to say it, he kept quiet. His cellmate didn’t seem to notice. He continued, “Me, I’m just drunk and disorderly. Ha. Least I think that’s all this time. Mighta had some stuff I borrowed on me, some kinda misunderstandin’ ‘bout that maybe, them thinkin’ I borrowed it without permission, so to speak. Ha ha. Yeah, I think I remember somethin’ about that. Ha. Oh well.” Timmy Frank crawled onto the bunk below. “Oh, my aching head. Ha ha.”

  Riley watched a housefly as it furiously circled the ceiling light above him. “You said som
ething about me curing you?”

  “What? Oh yeah. Ha.”

  “You’re one of those guys? The ones I gave it to?”

  “Yep. Taste like chocolate. Whole different kinda kick to it, though. Ha ha.”

  “Didn’t it take away your urge?”

  “Oh, sure. Absolutely.”

  “But . . . you were drunk last night.”

  “Ha ha. Was I ever.”

  The fly kept slamming itself against the glowing light, again and again and again. Riley kept his eyes on it, the most interesting thing in sight. “How come you started drinking again? Did the urge come back or something?”

  “Naw. Least not till after I started up to drinkin’ again. But after that first drink it sure came back—tell ya that for sure. I mean, with a vengeance. Hey. Gotta drink? Ha.”

  “But, if you didn’t have the urge, how come you started drinking?”

  “Hey, who wants to be sober, ya know? I mean, like they say, it ain’t the drinkin’ that’s the problem, ya know? It’s the not drinkin’. Ha ha.”

  Riley thought about that, and remembered closing his eyes and picking a clear plastic thimble from the Communion tray, not caring if it contained grape juice or wine. Still watching the fly he said, “You sure laugh a lot.”

  “Ha ha. Yessir. Yes, I do. Like my dear ol’ momma used to say, it’s either that or cry. Ha.”

  Timmy Frank’s forced cheerfulness grated on Riley’s nerves at first, but after a while he realized it was just a habit, the way some of his young students back at Bowditch used to say “like” at the start of every sentence, or threw in “actually” all the time. That too had annoyed him at first, but he had learned to ignore it. Soon he didn’t notice Timmy’s constant chuckling either.

  Days went by, with Dublin’s little jailhouse slowly emptying around Riley as the other prisoners were freed, released for time served, or transferred to other jurisdictions. When they came to free his cellmate, Riley was sorry to see the little fella go, but Timmy couldn’t wait to get outside and bum a drink and left without a backward glance.

  One day Chief Novak appeared at Riley’s cell with a suit of clothes and a guard. “Here ya go,” he said, passing the clothes through the narrow opening in the door. “Get dressed for the courthouse.”

  Riley had been issued white cotton socks, a pair of terry cloth slippers, and white cotton overalls with a broad orange stripe down the outside of each leg and sleeve. His beard had grown out half an inch. When the chief arrived he was reading the Bible and thinking of his old friend Brice and his new friend Timmy, and the impossibility of getting five thousand dollars one handout at a time while the devil in your belly demanded constant payment. The Good Book said, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth, but Riley Keep’s experience indicated otherwise.

  He closed the book and rose and took the two steps necessary to reach the cell door. Accepting the clothing he said, “Did I forget a hearing?”

  “Naw,” said the chief. “Spur of the moment deal.”

  Riley stripped out of the coveralls and donned the shirt and suit and tie and put his hands through the opening in the door, waiting for the guard to cuff him as usual before letting him out. It was a familiar routine, although it was different for the chief to come to get him personally. Because Riley’s wealth would have made travel to another country very easy, he had been denied bail during his first courthouse visit. Dylan had found him a whole team of the best criminal defense attorneys available, and they had filed a lot of motions, but the judge would not be swayed. According to Dylan, the best he could hope for was an early trial date, maybe within six months. The worst case scenario was life without the possibility of parole.

  “Guess I must of lost track of the days,” said Riley. “I thought this was Saturday.”

  “Ayuh,” said the chief as the guard closed the handcuffs on Riley’s wrists. “That’s right enough.”

  The door swung open. Riley moved out and then two steps to the left, as usual. The guard closed the door as the chief backed to the far side of the corridor. They did not put shackles on his ankles this time, which was strange. Instead, the guard gripped his upper arm and steered him toward the cell block entrance. The chief fell in behind.

  “What’s going on?” asked Riley without looking back at the chief.

  “Hard tellin’ not knowin’.”

  “But Saturday?”

  “Ayuh. It’s a puzzler.”

  Beyond the steel door at the entrance to Dublin’s little jail, Riley turned right and entered the sally port. The gate shut behind him. Then the door in front of him opened, and he was led directly into the back of a police car. He settled back on the gray vinyl seat as an officer closed the rear door and the vehicle started rolling.

  Swaying with the squad car’s motion, Riley raised his manacled hands and scratched his beard. The lawyers wanted him to shave and trim his hair, but he wished to abandon his disguise since it was no longer needed. There was no point in hiding as his old self now that the whole world knew who he really was.

  The squad car passed the homeless shelter, which had been shut down. Riley stared at the empty black glass storefront and thought of meetings with his lawyers, of sitting mutely as they warned of the persuasive power of the cross in his pocket that had been tied to him with his fingerprints, along with Willa Newdale’s murdered body that was found in the trunk of Hope’s ruined Mercedes. In the smoldering debris of Riley’s garage apartment an arson investigator had discovered his homemade exercise system. The prosecuting attorney claimed the metal rings and chains had been used to restrain Willa during the months between Riley’s alleged bloody assault on her in the homeless shelter and the discovery of her body in the car. Riley knew his lawyers had been trying to get Lee Hanks to agree to testify in his defense. Mr. Hanks was the one person other than Riley himself who had been inside the garage apartment during that time. He could verify that Willa had not been there, but so far Riley’s lawyers had not gotten through to Hanks in spite of many calls and letters. Riley did not understand this. Mr. Hanks had spent a fortune paying men and women to go throughout the world to spread the Gospel. How could he fail to come and tell the truth when a brother Christian’s life depended on it?

  Now the squad car passed by Henry’s Drug Store, and Riley thought of the giant from Houston who had terrorized him on that night so long ago. Riley’s lawyers said the man had been arrested in the riots, then he had obtained a reduced charge by agreeing to testify that he saw Riley beating Willa in the shelter. It was a lie of course, but unlike Mr. Hanks, Riley understood it.

  The hardest part had come when Riley’s lawyers told him that Hope could not remember who had fired the shot that struck her—short term amnesia was a common side effect of head injuries like hers—and the prosecutor had accused him of trying to murder her as well as Willa. The police compared the bullet that had nearly killed Hope with the ones they found in Willa’s body. They were a perfect match. When a nurse had come forward to say she saw Riley fly into a rage, throw a cup of coffee in the hospital hallway, and run away after Hope awoke from her coma, the prosecutor claimed Riley was afraid Hope would identify him as her assailant.

  Every bit of the evidence against him was circumstantial, but according to the defense team, many people had been jailed for life on less.

  Dublin Township had rules against outgoing telephone calls or written messages from inmates to their alleged victims for obvious reasons, and they allowed no incoming calls to inmates whatsoever, except from lawyers. As far as the outside world was concerned, Riley might have been a corpse in a tomb. The only news he received came through his lawyers, or from Bree, who had visited him as often as she was allowed.

  Bree often relayed verbal messages from Hope, expressing her mother’s concern. Riley wasn’t sure what to make of that. He hadn’t been allowed to visit Hope, of course, and her condition kept her at the hospital, so she hadn’t come to the jail or attended the hearings. Riley suspected
Bree’s messages might be a childish ploy to resurrect her parents’ marriage by telling each of them sweet lies. Fearing this, he had asked no questions of his daughter. It was often better not to know the truth. It was like the exhilaration he had felt when he first got sober, which quickly disappeared. You dreamed of something that would make your life complete, and then against all odds it came, and then there was nothing. As the days and weeks went by, Riley had begun to wonder for the first time if his chronic discontent was based on something independent of his character or circumstances. He might be free of alcohol, might be free to love again, might even have found some slight goodness in his heart, but he was still a ghost.

  The squad car rolled to a stop. He sat patiently, handcuffed wrists at rest atop his thighs. The guards opened the door, sending a slice of early morning sunshine in across his face. Squinting, he climbed out and stood beside the car, awaiting orders.

  They led him to the corridor outside the courtrooms as usual, only this time they surprised him by passing the courtroom doors and turning into a smaller hallway farther down. Moments later, he was shown into a large office, richly paneled with dark wood, a desk topped with green leather at one end of the room and a long mahogany conference table surrounded by bookcases at the other. On the far end of the table sat a television set, looking strangely out of place. Around the table were the judge, who wore chinos and a plaid shirt open at the neck instead of his usual black robe, and the prosecuting attorney, and a woman with an open stenographer’s pad, and Dylan, and a woman from Riley’s team of lawyers, and another man whom Riley had not seen before—a young man with an earnest, freshly scrubbed appearance who, except for Riley, was the only person in the room dressed formally. All of them rose and turned to face him, which was yet another surprise on top of all the others of the morning.