Don't Kill The Messenger

by Joel Pierson

  I help her into the passenger’s seat and quickly get behind the wheel, driving us a half mile to a park in the center of Wyandotte. Once there, I park the car and look over at Rebecca. Neither of us can speak for many long, agonizing seconds. I have no words to begin this impossible conversation. She can’t even make eye contact. Instead, her head is down, tucked tightly to her chest, her eyes squeezed shut to keep out the truth that’s been revealed to her.

  Just as I am finally contemplating the possibility of offering words of comfort, her tears explode forth from her in a primal shout of disbelief and rage. “No!” she sobs, emitting so many tears that I swear I can taste salt from across the car. “It’s not true! It can’t be true!”

  “Rebecca …”

  “He wouldn’t do that, would he?”

  “I don’t know him,” I say softly, in all honesty. “But you do. Did he manage a zinc factory?”

  “He doesn’t talk about that time in our lives,” she says through her hitching sobs. “He doesn’t talk about the past.”

  “You knew this town,” I remind her. “Spring Street. The Christmas parade. You were three years old when it all happened. Young enough that memories are vague, but just old enough to be reminded when you see familiar sights again.”

  “No …” she says, her voice quivering with the realization that I could be right. She then lifts her head and looks out at the park where we have stopped. She glances from the fields to the benches, then over at the rusted, decaying remains of a playground. Suddenly, without warning, she opens her door and dashes from the car. I call to her but she does not even turn around. She runs, still crying, toward the playground equipment. Daylight is fading, and I don’t want to lose sight of her, even for a minute, so I open my door and sprint after her.

  My heart pains as I see her stop at the entrance to the playground and focus her attention on something, then drop to her knees and bury her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

  From a distance, I can’t tell what she’s found that has her so upset. Moments later, I catch up to her and see that she is kneeling in front of a small engraved plaque, which now looks more like a tombstone than a dedication. There is barely enough light to read the words, but they tell me everything I need to know:

  DEDICATED

  TO THE PEOPLE OF

  WYANDOTTE:

  PERSEPHONE’S

  PLAYLAND

  A GIFT FROM

  MR. AND MRS. CALVIN TRAEGER

  She looks up at me with sorrow etched deep into her face, and utters two simple words that freeze my blood, words of terrified acceptance: “I’m home.”

  Chapter 11

  Before I can reach out to comfort her, before I can even say a word of appeasement, Rebecca springs to her feet and runs back to the car, climbs in, and starts the engine. I hurry back and jump into the passenger’s seat, fairly certain that if I dawdle, she will leave me behind.

  “Rebecca, where are we going?”

  She doesn’t answer. At first, I am fearful that she wants to return to the Harbisons, to have words with them that would tell them who she is. I am relieved when her path takes us away from Spring Street, away from the factory, to the edge of town. Here, as everywhere else, there is no sign of life. The houses are bigger here, more elegant, or at least they were long ago, when they were inhabited. But this elegance has made them a prime target for vandals and looters, and their present level of violation makes me sad.

  Rebecca proceeds like a woman possessed, tapping into memories long since buried, retracing streets that she must have only seen from the vantage point of a child’s car seat. At this point, I don’t even try to speak to her; I’m fairly convinced that she wouldn’t hear me if I did. I’m home, she told me in that park. And that’s precisely where she is going.

  Two lefts and a right later, we are on a street called Fairview. At the end of a driveway—whose missing bricks suggest the smile of a gap-toothed child—sits the remains of a once-grand two-story Victorian home. The gate that long ago kept unwanted visitors at bay now stands mangled and useless. Rebecca turns on the brights and powers the Sebring up the driveway, not even flinching when the car’s tires bounce and skip over the gaps left by missing bricks. At the end of the drive, she turns off the engine but leaves the halogen lights on, illuminating the double doors. Still wordless, she exits the car with haste and purpose, moving toward the house.

  I open my door and step out. “Rebecca—”

  Startled, she turns to look back at me, staring at my face as if she is actually surprised that I am there with her. “I’m home,” she says again, in the tone of a powerless child. And without another word, she turns away from me and opens the door to the house.

  Well aware of the potential danger, I run after her, catching up to her just inside the house. The light from the headlights does a good job of illuminating the exterior, but once inside, darkness owns the place, and I have to stop short just a few paces in, to keep from bumping into her.

  “We can’t stay here,” I tell her gently. “It’s too dark; it isn’t safe.”

  She looks around, seeing the pervasive state of disarray that has consumed her childhood home. I can see only shapes in the darkness, silhouettes of debris. The smell of decay and mold fills my nostrils, burning its way into my throat and my lungs. I stifle a cough and put my hands firmly on her shoulders.

  “Please come with me,” I say. “I’ll take us someplace where we can rest.”

  Her tears have stopped but she is nothing resembling herself. Gone is the strong, intelligent woman I’ve gotten to know over the past few days. Here, now in front of me is a frightened child whose entire life has been inverted in an instant. She looks at me, trying to find my expression in the darkness, just as I try to find hers. Silently, she gives in, allowing me to escort her out of the house.

  Relief washes over me. I had visions of her running deeper into the house, maybe even up the stairs to try to find her old room. My mind conjures possible futures that include her falling through holes in the floor, being injured or even killed. I am powerfully relieved when she walks with me to safety.

  Just a few steps from the car, we are back in the headlights’ beam and I can see her face again. She is ashen, her eyes puffy from crying. I turn her to face me, knowing that she is not well, and she looks at me with no recognition in her eyes.

  “What is it?” I ask her, very concerned.

  A single word emerges in response. “The …” Then her eyes roll back in her head and she loses consciousness, falling forward into my arms.

  The fluorescent lights are very bright, particularly harsh in contrast to the darkness we faced in Wyandotte just a few hours ago. I’ve managed to filter out the sounds that have been all around me as I sit by Rebecca’s bedside, but there’s no way to block out that light. She is still unconscious, and I am feeling overpoweringly guilty. I got her into this. She’s here because of me. Tonight changed everything. How could I let myself get close to her like this when I know I have to let her go tomorrow?

  My ponderings are interrupted when I see her flutter her eyelids and open her eyes. She looks confused, disoriented until she sees me sitting by her bedside. “Where am I?” she asks weakly.

  “Three Rivers Hospital. You fainted.”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve never fainted in my life.” Her voice is quiet, straining to form each sentence.

  “All right then, you jumped into my arms and took a spontaneous three-hour nap.”

  “Three hours? I’ve been out for three hours?”

  “Yes.”

  She lifts her arm, looking at the tube leading from it. “What’s this?”

  “I.V. fluids.”

  “Tristan, why am I in the hospital?”

  “How much do you remember?” I ask her.

  She
thinks a moment. “Everything … I think.”

  “When you came out of your house, you collapsed into my arms. Once I was sure you were breathing, I put you in the back seat and drove you to the nearest hospital. You’re dehydrated and you have stress exhaustion. The doctor asked me where we’d been tonight, and I said Wyandotte. That prompted him to do some blood tests. You had some mold, asbestos, lead, and sulfur exposure too.”

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “I’m not exactly ready to go out dancing, but I’d say I’m doing pretty well for an old man.”

  She smiles. I can see the weariness on her face. “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “They want to keep you overnight for observation. There’s two beds in this recovery room, and I made arrangements to sleep in the other one, so I’d be here if you need anything.”

  “It’s not exactly the Hilton,” she observes.

  “Ironically enough, it’s a bit more expensive than the Hilton. But the room service is better here.”

  “You think they’d let us have sex?” she quips.

  “I think you’ve had enough fun for one day, tiger. But on the bright side, Detective Fogle called me a couple hours ago and said I was free to leave Atlanta.”

  “Lucky you. You wanna drive or should I?”

  “I’ll take us,” I tell her with a smile. “I think you might oughta sleep.”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “If you need anything during the night, I want you to wake me or press the button to call the nurse, okay?”

  I stand and go to her bedside. She reaches out a hand to me and I hold it in mine. “Tristan … what am I going to do about my father?”

  “I don’t know. We can talk in the morning, after we’ve both had some sleep.” I kiss her fingertips as I watch her struggle to stay awake long enough to talk to me.

  “I’m scared,” she says.

  “I don’t blame you. We learned some scary things today. Try to sleep, though.”

  “Don’t leave me?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The night is uneventful for both of us, and morning arrives too quickly. In the minutes before sleep came for me, I had silently wished for another assignment, even if it was accompanied by terrible pain; just something to keep Rebecca with me even one day longer. But nothing came, and today is the day. We are only three hours’ drive from her father’s home, and today I will have to say goodbye. Words can’t adequately describe how much I don’t want that to happen. For a few brief seconds last night, I actually considered faking a new assignment, just to delay the inevitable, but I couldn’t do that to her.

  As daylight begins to fill our room, Rebecca awakens. I can tell that she is momentarily disoriented; waking up in a new place every day will do that to you. Once she remembers where she is, she looks over at me in my bed and smiles. “You stayed all night,” she says.

  “Where else would I go?”

  “Come sit by me,” she invites.

  I get out of bed, still in the clothes I wore last night, and return to the chair at her bedside. “How are you feeling today?” I ask.

  “I think I’m all right again. Sleep helped. And I guess whatever they’re pumping into my arm did too.”

  “It’s pudding, actually. I checked with the nurse. Intravenous pudding. Radical new treatment they’re trying.”

  “What flavor is it? You better not say tapioca.”

  “No, see, they can’t use tapioca, because the gooey bits clog up the tube. This is medical-grade chocolate fudge.”

  “No wonder I’m feeling better. That always made me feel better when I was a—” She doesn’t finish the sentence. The memory has clearly stirred others, and after last night, it’s not somewhere she wants to go.

  “What am I going to do?” she asks.

  “That’s up to you. Right now, nobody in your family knows you’re coming. You could go back to your father’s house. Or you could go live with your mother. Or … you could travel with me.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leech off of you all the time.”

  “You wouldn’t be leeching. You’d be working with me. Everything you’ve done so far has helped me. And I like having you with me.”

  “I’m so afraid to face my father … but I have to know. I have to know what really happened and why he made the decisions he did. He buried the truth for so long. Now I need to know why. Would you be upset with me if I asked you to take me home?”

  “Of course not. It was the original plan anyway. Just as long as you’re sure this is what you want to do.”

  “I’m as sure as I’ll get,” she tells me.

  “Then let’s get you there.”

  The hospital graciously allows us to take showers, something we haven’t done in more than thirty hours, even after all the work we did. The warm water and a fresh change of clothes feel good. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and a new assignment to come in, but it doesn’t. Maybe this recent outbreak of back-to-back assignments really is an anomaly, and I can look forward to a few days of peace at a time.

  We pause long enough to have breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. Clichéd jokes about hospital food aside, it’s really quite satisfying and very much needed.

  “Thank you for bringing me here last night,” she says.

  “I was worried about you. I know enough first aid to know that you were alive and you needed someone who knew a lot more. This was the closest hospital.”

  “What did they say when you told them we’d been in Wyandotte?”

  “Not surprisingly, they asked why. I told them we were doing a report on the town and that seemed to end that line of questioning, but it was clear from the doctor’s attitude that Wyandotte still has a reputation as a health risk. Your situation just adds to that perception.”

  “Do you think the place will ever be inhabitable again?” she asks.

  “If enough people make an effort, and there’s a whole lot of money put into it, then maybe. The things that poisoned that town tend to last, but the earth is good at healing. Eighteen years is a long time.”

  “I remember things now—things from my childhood, from before the smog. I was very young, but I have so many positive memories. All this time, I never knew the town’s name. My birth certificate says I was born in Pittsburgh.”

  “Well, maybe when you’re a big-time lawyer, you can make Wyandotte a pet project.”

  “Yeah,” she replies, “maybe I can.”

  “I hate to be indelicate at this tender moment, but after breakfast, we need to get out of this place. I didn’t want to look for an insurance card last night, so I told them I’d get it from you this morning.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yeah. An insurance card.”

  “Shall I infer from your repetition of those words that you don’t have an insurance card?”

  “Well, they kinda don’t give you one if you don’t have insurance.”

  “Fair enough. Come on, let’s head to the business office.”

  I pay for her treatment on my credit card. She protests but quickly realizes that without my generosity, she’s somewhat stuck, so she accepts.

  “I’m going to find a way to pay you back,” she insists as we make our way to the hospital’s parking garage.

  “Consider it worker’s comp. You were injured on the job.”

  “I was injured,” she corrects, “by going back to my family home, someplace I had no business going.”

  We get into the car and exit the garage, with the top down and me behind the wheel. The conversation continues. “I would’ve done the same thing,” I tell her. “If I knew I was that close to my childhood home, I would have wanted to see it. Even in the condition it was in.”

  “Once I was inside, i
t didn’t feel like my home. And it wasn’t just the destruction. I just felt like I didn’t belong there.”

  “I’m sorry, Rebecca. I brought you there, opened up all those old wounds. I would never have asked you to come along if I knew the connection.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “the connection. Don’t you think we’re seeing a lot of those?”

  “Yes, I do. At first, I thought it was coincidence, but there’s just too many of them. The only thing that’s missing for me is an explanation. You have to leave Key West, because you’re in some danger if you stay there. We end up in Marathon, in Casner’s room, so it’s possible that Casner was the danger, but we don’t know why. Then I get the assignment to go to Atlanta to save Casner.”

  “But if he was the reason I was in danger,” she rightly points out, “why would we go to Atlanta to save him?”

  “A fair question. One of many I can’t answer at this point. Then we head to Wyandotte, which just happens to be your childhood home. It seems to me that all these coincidences started when I picked you up.”

  “So I’m the key to all of this?”

  “I don’t know, but it sure feels like it. But for every connection, there’s a disconnect. A piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit with the rest. Your father, for instance.”

  “Shit, that reminds me—I still haven’t called him to tell him I’m coming home.”

  “Do you want me to pull over so you can have some privacy?”

  “I don’t need privacy, but it’ll be easier with the top up. Can you pull over just long enough for me to make the call?”

  I find a safe spot to pull to the side of the road and put the top up. Rebecca gets her cell phone out and stares at it for a few seconds, finding the courage to make the call.

  “Not too late to change your mind,” I remind her.

  “Thank you,” she replies. She dials the number from memory—hers, not the phone’s—and waits patiently as it rings. I can see the apprehension on her face. “Hi, Daddy. It’s Rebecca.” I can’t hear what he’s saying; all I can do is gauge it based on her words and her reactions. She looks very tense. “I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you in so long. I’ve been busy.” I watch as she listens. “I’ve been working hard to save up some money.… I know, but it was important to me. I have something to tell you, and I’m sorry that it’s kind of short notice. I’ve decided to go back to school.” She appears to be bracing herself for his reaction. “Well, that’s why I’m calling you. I’m on my way home now. I’m less than three hours away.…” Is he pleased to hear this? I can’t tell by her face. I try hard not to stare, but it’s almost impossible. “I’d really appreciate it if I could stay with you for a few days until I can get living arrangements settled on campus.… Thank you, Daddy. Sorry it’s such short notice.” She looks at me and nods; apparently, Daddy approves. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be arriving by car.… A friend is taking me home.… It’s no one you know; it’s someone I met in Florida. That’s where I’ve been living, Florida.… Well, I should go so we can finish the drive. Thank you for letting me stay. I’ll give you all the news when I get there.… See you soon. Bye.”