by John Hart
Unsure what to say, I balanced my drink on an overturned wheelbarrow and lit a cigarette. The silence stretched out as I fumbled the pack back into my shirt pocket. When I looked up, I saw that shadows filled the doctor’s eyes, which made me strangely sad. He had warm eyes; always had.
“Your father was the biggest asshole I ever met,” he said, then pulled on his cigar as if he’d commented on the weather. I said nothing, and after a few seconds the old man continued. “He was a self-centered bastard who wanted to own the whole damn world, but you know that.”
“Yes,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I know that.”
“An easy man to hate, your father, but he would look you in the eyes as he slipped the knife in, if you know what I mean.”
“No.”
“He was honest about his avarice. Other honest men could see that.”
“So?” I asked.
“Am I finished yet?” he asked, and I said nothing. “Then let me talk. There was also Jean. I never liked the way he raised your sister. Seemed like a waste of a perfectly good mind. But we can’t choose our parents, and that’s her bad luck. I’ve watched her, too, and now that Ezra’s dead, I think she’ll be all right.”
A harsh laugh escaped me. “How closely have you watched her?” I asked, thinking that Jean was so far from being all right.
He leaned forward, a sharp glint in his eyes. “Closer than you, I bet,” he said, and the truth of it stung. “I’m not worried about her. It’s you that troubles me.”
“Me?”
“Yes, now shut up. This is what I came out here to tell you. So pay attention. Your father was a big man, with big visions and big dreams. But you, Work, are a better man.”
I felt tears sting my eyes and wished fervently that this man had been my father. There was blunt honesty in his face and in the way he moved his thickened hands, and for a moment I believed him.
“You’re better because you don’t want big things for small reasons. You’re better because you care—about your friends and family, things that are right; you favor your mother that way.” He paused for an instant and nodded. “Don’t choke on Ezra’s burdens, Work. I’m eighty-three years old, old enough to know a thing or two, and the most important is this: Life is goddamn short. Figure out what you want. Be your own man and you’ll be better for it.”
He stood slowly and I heard his joints pop. Ice rattled on glass as he drained his drink.
“Bury your old man, Work, and when you’re ready, we’d love to have you over for dinner. I knew your mother well, God rest her soul, and I’d love to tell you about her happy times. And one last thing—don’t lose any sleep over Barbara. She’s a bitch by nature, not by choice. So don’t be hard on yourself.”
He winked at me and smiled around his cigar. I thanked him for coming, because I didn’t know what else to say; then I closed the door behind him and sat where he had, on wood still warm from his narrow haunches. I sipped ice-watered bourbon, thought about my life, and wished the old man were right about all the things he’d said.
Eventually, my glass ran dry, but this I could fix. My watch showed it was almost five, and as I stood, I thought briefly of Detective Mills. I’d not called her and at the moment didn’t care; all I wanted was that drink. I was in and out of the kitchen without a word, and if that offended people, then too bad. I’d had enough. So I returned to my dank cell to watch the shadows crawl and to drink my bourbon warm.
I stayed in that awful place long enough for the light to dim and the walls to tilt. I was not an angry drunk; I didn’t get weepy and I didn’t figure out a damn thing. My jacket went into a box filled with lawn clippings I’d never emptied and my tie ended up twisted around a nail in the wall, but I kept the rest of my clothes on, which was hard. I wanted to shake things up, break the complacency bowl, and for one crazy moment I pictured myself running naked through the house. I’d chat with my wife’s friends and dare them to pretend, at the next inane social gathering, that it had never happened. And they would—that’s what kept my clothes on. Every last one of them could look me in the eye over drinks or dinner the next week, ask in all earnestness how the practice was doing, and then tell me what a fine funeral it had been.
I wanted to laugh and I wanted to kill somebody.
But I did neither. I went back inside; I mingled and I talked. I kept my clothes on, and if I made an ass of myself, no one said a word to me about it. Eventually, I left, and as I sat in my car, windows down and purple light on me like a second skin, I thanked God for one thing: that, drunk as hell and drowning in faces and words without meaning, I had not uttered the one irretrievable thought that had haunted me. And searching my ruined eyes in the mirror, I acknowledged, to myself at least, that I thought I knew who had killed my father.
Motive. Means. Opportunity.
It was all there if you knew where to look.
But I did not want to look. I never had. So I twisted the mirror up and away. Then I closed my eyes and thought of my sister, and of times that were no less hard for their simplicity.
Are you okay?” I asked Jean.
She nodded, tears dripping off her tiny pointed chin to soak into her white jeans like rain into sand. Her shoulders hunched lower with each sob, until she looked bent and broken, her hair hanging just low enough to cover the top of her face. I pulled my eyes off the little gray teardrop circles, trying not to look at the blood that spread from between her legs. Red and wet, it soaked the new pants she was so proud of, the ones our mother had given her on that morning of her twelfth birthday.
“I called Dad and he said he’d come get us. Soon. I promise. He said so.”
She didn’t say anything and I watched the red stain darken. Without a word, I took off my jacket and spread it across her lap. She looked at me then in a way that made me proud to be her big brother, like I made a difference. I slipped an arm around her shoulders and pretended that I was not half-scared to death.
“I’m sorry,” she said tearfully.
“Everything’s okay,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it.”
We were downtown, at the ice cream parlor. Mom had dropped us off on her way to Charlotte for the afternoon. We had four dollars for ice cream and plans to walk home afterward. I barely knew what a girl’s period was. When I first saw the blood, I thought she might be hurt, and only then did I realize that her eyes had been filling with slow tears for awhile. “Don’t look,” she’d said, and bowed her head to the tears.
Dad never came, and after an hour we walked home, my jacket around her waist. It was almost three miles.
At home, Jean locked herself in the bathroom until Mom got back. I sat on the front porch, looking for the courage to tell my father what a bastard he was—for not caring about Jean, for making a liar of me—but in the end I said nothing.
How I hated myself.
I woke in near darkness. There was a face in my window and I blinked at the thick glasses and heavy whiskers. I pulled back instinctively, not just because the man was so ugly.
“Good,” he grunted. “I thought maybe you were dead.”
His voice was guttural, with a heavy southern accent.
“What . . .” I said.
“Shouldn’t sleep in your car. It’s dangerous.” He looked me up and down, glanced in the backseat. “Smart boy like you should know better.”
The face withdrew and, like that, he was gone, leaving me half-asleep and still drunk. What the hell was that? I opened the door and clambered out, stiff and sore. I peered down the street and saw him pass from light to dark, long coat flapping around his ankles, earflaps loose on his ears. It was my park walker, and after years of silent passings, we’d finally spoken. This was my chance. I could put feet to pavement, catch him in the dark, and ask my question; yet I didn’t move.
I let him go, the opportunity lost to the paralysis of indecision. I got back into my car, mouth like glue, and I looked for gum or a mint but found neither. I lit a cigarette instead, but it tasted h
orrible, so I tossed it. My watch showed it was ten o’clock; I’d slept for two, maybe three hours. I peered down the street at my house. The cars were gone, but lights still burned, and I guessed Barbara was up. My head was pounding and I knew that she was more than I could bear right then. What I really wanted was another beer and an empty bed. But what I needed was something entirely different, and as I sat there, I realized that I’d been putting off the inevitable. I needed to go up to Ezra’s office, to make peace with his ghost and to look for his gun.
I turned the ignition, thought of all the stupid drunks I’d defended on DWI charges, then drove to the office. It was that kind of day.
I parked in back, where I always did, and let myself into the narrow hallway that ran past the tiny break room, the copy room, and the supply closet. When I got to the main office area, I flipped on a lamp and tossed my keys onto the table.
I heard something upstairs, a scrape followed by a low thump, and I froze.
Silence.
I stood and listened, but the sound didn’t come again. I thought of Ezra’s ghost, found the thought not funny, and wondered if I’d imagined it. Moving slowly, I walked to the front of the office and turned on every light. The stairwell to Ezra’s upstairs domain gaped at me, all darkness and slick, shiny walls. My heart was up and running and I felt that unhealthy bourbon sweat. I smelled myself in the stillness and wondered if I was a coward after all. I reached for some kind of calm and told myself that old buildings settle and drunken men imagine things all the time. I reminded myself that Ezra was dead.
I flashed a glance around the place, but everything looked as it always had: desks, chairs, and filing cabinets—all in order. I looked back up the narrow stairwell and started to climb. I moved slowly, one hand on the rail. Five steps up, I stopped, thinking that I saw movement. I took one more hesitant step, heard something, and stopped. Then something huge, dark, and very fast descended upon me. It crashed into my chest and I was falling. I felt a moment of blinding pain; then all was blackness.
CHAPTER 6
I saw light. It flickered and died, then flickered again. It hurt. I didn’t want it.
“He’s coming around,” a voice said.
“Well, that’s something at least.” I recognized the voice. Detective Mills.
I opened my eyes to bright, fuzzy light. I blinked, but the pain in my head didn’t go away.
“Where am I?”
“Hospital,” Mills said, and leaned over me. She didn’t smile, but I smelled her perfume; it was ripe, like a peach too long in the bag.
“What happened?”
Mills leaned closer. “You tell me,” she said.
“I don’t remember.”
“Your secretary found you this morning at the foot of the stairs. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
I sat up against the pillows and looked around. Green curtains surrounded my bed. A large nurse stood at my feet, a bucolic smile on her face. I heard hospital voices and smelled hospital smells. I looked for Barbara. She wasn’t there.
“Somebody threw a chair at me,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” Mills said.
“Ezra’s chair, I think. I was walking up the stairs and somebody pushed the chair down on top of me.”
Mills said nothing for a long moment. She tapped a pen against her teeth and looked at me.
“I talked to your wife,” she said. “According to her, you were drunk last night.”
“So?”
“Very drunk.”
I stared in dumb amazement at the detective. “Are you suggesting that I fell down the stairs?” Mills said nothing and I felt the first stir of anger. “My wife wouldn’t know very drunk if it bit her on the ass.”
“I corroborated her story with several people who were at your house last night,” Mills said.
“Who?”
“That’s hardly relevant.”
“Relevant! Christ. You sound like a lawyer.” Now I was mad. Mainly because I was being treated as if I were stupid. “Have you been to my office, Detective Mills?”
“No,” she replied.
“Then go,” I said. “See if the chair is there or not.”
She studied me, and I could all but see the debate. Was this guy for real or just being an ass? If she’d ever considered me a friend, I saw right then that she did no longer. Her eyes were intolerant, and I guessed that the pressure was getting to her. There had been many stories in the paper—retrospectives on Ezra’s life, thinly worded speculation about the manner of his death, vague details about the investigation—and Mills had been mentioned many times. I understood that this case would make or break her, but for some reason I’d imagined that our personal relationship would remain apart.
“What’s your secretary’s name?” she asked. I told her and she turned to the nurse, who looked uncomfortable. “Where’s your phone?” The nurse told her to use the one in the triage nurse’s office. Down the hall. Second door. Mills looked back to me. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said, and I almost smiled before I realized she wasn’t making a funny.
She flapped her way through the curtains and disappeared. I heard her heels on the tile and then I was alone with the nurse. She fluffed my pillow.
“Is this the emergency room?” I asked.
“Yes, but Saturday morning is slow. Shootin’ and stabbin’ is done until tonight.” She smiled and suddenly became a real person.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Oh, nothing but some bruises and such. Your headache might last longer than it would have otherwise.” Another smile and I knew I wasn’t the first Saturday-morning hangover she’d seen. “You’ll be discharged shortly.”
I laid my fingers on the warm dough of her forearm. “Has my wife been to see me? Five five. Short black hair. Pretty.” She looked blank. “Hard eyes,” I added, only half-joking. “Attitude.”
“I’m sorry. No.”
I looked away from the pity in her face. “Are you married?” I asked.
“Twenty-two years,” she said.
“Would you leave your husband alone in the emergency room?” She didn’t answer, and I thought, No, of course not; differences end at the hospital door.
“That would depend,” she finally said. She smoothed my blankets, her hands moving sure and quick, and I thought she didn’t want to finish the sentence.
“On?” I asked.
She looked at me and her hands grew suddenly still. “On whether or not he deserved it.”
And there it is, I thought, the difference between her and me. Because I would be there regardless. No matter what. Suddenly, this nurse was not an unexpected friend, and with that bleak realization the warmth in the tiny curtained place evaporated. And even though she remained and tried to make further conversation, I found myself alone with my headache and the disjointed images of the previous night.
I had heard a sound. Wheels on wood flooring. Ezra’s big leather chair being rolled to the top of the stairs. I knew I was right about that. I’d felt the weight, damn it.
I hadn’t been that drunk.
When Mills appeared, she looked pissed. “I spoke to your secretary,” she said. “There’s no chair at the bottom of the stairs. There was no chair when she found you this morning. Furthermore, nothing is out of place. No windows are broken. No sign of a forced entry.”
“But Ezra’s chair . . .”
“Is at his desk upstairs,” Mills said. “Where it has always been.”
I thought back to the day before. I’d sent my secretary home early.
“Maybe I forgot to lock the door,” I ventured. “Look, I’m not making this up. I know what happened.” Both Mills and the nurse stared at me, wordlessly. “Goddamn it, somebody threw a chair down those stairs!”
“Listen, Pickens. You’re not high on my list of favorites right now. I wasted an hour yesterday trying to track you down, and I’m not going to waste more time because you decided to tie one on. Do I make myself clear?”<
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I didn’t know what infuriated me more, that Mills refused to accept what I’d told her or that my wife lacked the decency to come to the hospital. My head was about to split, my body felt like the loser at a Tyson fight, and I thought I might puke hospital green.
“Fine. Whatever.”
Mills looked at me as if she’d expected more fight and was disappointed. The nurse said she had some papers for me to sign, then disappeared to fetch them. Mills stared at me and I stared at the ceiling, determined to keep my mouth shut. This day could go two ways. It could get better or it could get worse. After what felt like a long time pretending to be interested in white acoustic tile, Mills finally spoke.
“We still need to discuss the night Ezra disappeared.” Her tone was softer, as if it had occurred to her that this information might be relevant and that I controlled it. I said nothing, and her temper finally exploded. “Damn it, Work, he was your father!”
I looked at her then. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” I said, and immediately regretted the words. There had been venom in my voice, and I saw the surprise in the detective’s eyes. “Listen. I need a shower. I need to talk to my wife. Can we do it this afternoon?” She started to speak and I cut her off. “Your office. Three o’clock. I’ll be there.”
“Don’t make me regret this,” she said.
“I’ll be there. Three o’clock.”
The ripe-peach smell lingered after Mills left. Would I make the meeting? Maybe. The night in question had been a bad one and I’d not talked about it. Ever. Some secrets you keep, and I’d shared this one with my sister alone. It was Ezra’s last gift, a lie wrapped in guilt and mortified to pure shame. I’d lost sleep to that lie, and maybe my soul, too. What did Jean call it? Ezra’s truth. Well, Ezra’s truth was my truth; it had to be, and if Jean thought differently, she was kidding herself.
I lifted the sheet. Somebody had put me in a tie-up dress. Perfect.
The nurse let me dangle for almost an hour. When she finally appeared with my paperwork, I still had no clothes, and she left me for another twenty minutes while she collected them for me. The day was getting worse and the feel of dirty clothes against my skin only made it more so.