“Albert spoke to me of you before Younger.” Miller said. “He told me he thought you might have had a hand in what happened at Allendale.” He had never really believed Albert. He had thought Albert was trying to say things to make him feel better. Lies and consoling words were often synonymous. “He told me of seeing you near the drug dispensary. I was sure he was making it up. He hadn’t said anything about it when it could have helped me at Allendale. I didn’t believe his story that he hadn’t remembered it until weeks afterwards. Did he accuse you when you saw him Younger?”
“I’ll beat the rap! I’m not going to be dumb about It.” plainly he was talking to erect courage within him, “I’ll know what to do!”
Younger would never escape conviction and he knew it, but Miller wasn’t angry with younger. He’d derive no satisfaction from seeing him executed.
“I’m not condemning you for what you’ve done.” He spoke softly; reassuringly he’d treat younger like a patient. He had to win Younger’s confidence. He’d speak objectively; clinically you didn’t condemn a warped body. Mind and body were not separate entities. Mind or body either could be twisted.
Younger answered with curses. He cursed and would not listen to miller. He cursed Rodgers, Allen, and Miller, everyone he knew. Miller went quietly away.
He did not wait for the taxi which he’d ordered to return for him. He walked to the hotel through the rain, through the soft gray fog.
Sally had not yet returned to the hotel. Miller sat on his bed in his room. He waited, waited the rain made melody on the tarpaper roof, Dripped the notes down water spouts, the same raindrop rhythm of long past years. When he’d been a kid it had meant slow selling papers, at Millersburg it had meant black gloom among the patients, schizoids at low ebb, monotonously mumbling phrases for hours on end, locks and keys, keys and locks, lock and keys, catatonics batting their heads into walls. He rose paced he heard past sounds vividly in his mind. The makeup of a man didn’t change, that was plain in the continuity of his life, and again and again he looked out the window with its oblique view of the highway.
A yellow cab drew up to the curb. He hurried to the stairs, he met Sally halfway down.
“I thought you were never coming back.” He said.
“You’ve finished? You’ve finished whatever it was you had to do?”
“Yes, I’m done.”
“Well,” she spoke in a wan way, “I’ve finished too.”
Finished taken care of her father’s arrangements, “if you’re going to New York now, we can go together.”
He felt depression winding its black sheet about him as he got Sally’s bags. There was no cab, they waited in the hotels entrance way, looking at the rain. Sally was wearing the hat she’d had on in grand Central. It’s woven, black strips sprayed out over her glistening hair.
“I’m afraid there won’t be any cab,” Sally said at last. “That cab driver told me when he left me off here that he was on his way to pick you up at the state police barracks. He’s probably waiting there now, from the nice things he said about you, he’ll wait forever.”
The woman at the desk provided them with an old umbrella. They walked the long blocks to the station. Miller thought of New York, his New York was Julie, the apartment on Seventy-Ninth Street, Liebermann and his pill machines.
“I’m not going back to it,” he said.
“To what?” Sally asked. His words had jumped out at her, frightened her. But there was no need to be frightened, he only had to make himself clear and she would understand.
“I was a doctor,” he stopped walking they were at the station, “I wanted Younger to help me forget some things out of my past, a mistake I made that caused people to die. I wanted Younger to take the blame for the mistake. But Younger wouldn’t talk.” He looked into the rain, thin, gray silver needles, “and I don’t care Sally.”
“Is that where you were, to see Younger?”
“I was afraid and I married Julie because I was afraid and I didn’t want to be alone. It was something twisted in my mind, Sally. Loss and failure make you afraid, but somehow I’m not afraid any more. I just want you to know how I feel, because, I’m not going to let you go. I want to keep you with me for always.” He looked at her face, wet pale with the cold rain. He had his answer in her eyes.
“I’m not going back to Julie,” he said. “She’s through with me. I’ll see that the whole matter is cleared up between us. She’ll agree to it because when she’s free I’ll pay for her support if she wants it or needs it, and that’s all I’ve ever meant to her.”
He spoke with resolution, “and I’ll be able to afford it, because I’m going to be a doctor again.”
He felt it with a mystical certainty, but actually it was the certainty of knowing he had faced the biggest problem of his life, and mastered it, and now the other answers should come easier.
They stood there as Moe’s cab drew up the rain fogged street, the door swung open.
“Mister! Where were you? I was by the police, they tell me what happened and that you were gone. I told them I could find you, so I been looking for you, at the hotel they tell me to look by the station.”
“What’s the excitement?” Miller asked.
“That man, he confesses everything. You just saw him and left and now he says he’s guilty of everything!”
“I don’t know what he means,” Miller told Sally, “I don’t believe you Moe.”
“I’m telling you, mister!”
At the state troopers barracks he, and Sally beside him saw the penciled note younger has written a denial that he was implicated in any way of the Millersburg deaths. Those murders the note declared had been the work of Joseph Rodgers; Allen’s death, Albert Smith’s death. Then there was a last paragraph that Miller alone could explain to Sergeant Sammy, it mentioned three deaths in a Virginia institution.
I want John Miller cleared of any blame for them. He’s a good doctor; I was the one who spiked their medicine. I didn’t mean to kill anyone. I just wanted to land them in the sick ward and get Miller in trouble. They died and I saw to it we shoved the blame on him. Miller wanted to see Younger and thank him. There was something decent in Younger, something that made him want to spare another man and their characters were as complex as life itself.
But miller knew Younger would like it better if he never saw him. The hulking ex-doctor would likely be completely ashamed of what he had done. He’d likely think of it only as softness, weakness when he wanted to be hard.
Later when Miller and Sally left for the Millersburg station, Miller saw the future pattern of his life. He knew now why he was no longer afraid. He had purged himself here. Albert Smith had called him here for that purpose, and he’d purged himself. He was clear, clean and he’d never stand before a machine again and he was humbled by its power. He had been a doctor; he would be a doctor again. That was what he needed and Sally was why he needed it.
About the Author
Douglas Sandler born April 13, 1967 in Brooklyn, NY lived there till 1973 then moved to Woodbridge, Illinois where he lived 1973-1975 then to East Northport, NY and lived there 1975-1979. He then moved to Lilburn, Ga. in 1979 where he lived till 1995 when he moved to Metairie, LA till 2000 when he finally moved to Panama City, Florida. He served in the US Navy 1984-1986 honorably discharged as an YN3.
He has an A.A History from Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, FL May 2010 and an A.A.S. Paralegal/Legal Assistant from Gulf Coast State College May 2012 and is currently enrolled at Florida State Univ. Panama City, FL. He suffers from Adult ADHD disability of math and written expression.
to contact author via facebook author page
yscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
bad memories Page 15