The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  Kate, shouting eleven thousand miles across the world, “Run! Run, Yusuf!”

  The controller yelled: “We’ve got a squirter! Keep shootin. Keep shootin.”

  Another explosion and more dust and when it cleared something that had once been her husband lay in the rubble.

  Kate was sobbing, calling out Yusuf’s name, when somebody touched her on the hand and when she opened her eyes to the pink gloom she was lying on a cloth on the cooling sand, buttery lamp light spilling from the hut, hearing Suzie singing a song as she rocked in the hammock, something about, animals, animals, animals, and it was JP hovering above her, concern in his eyes.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, lifting herself on an elbow, sand raining from her hair. “Just a dream. Shit. Sorry. How long have I been asleep?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I hung out with Suzie. It was fun. And now she can fish like a pro.”

  Kate pushed the dream away and found a smile. “Are you real, JP? Huh? Seriously?”

  He smiled back, but there was a hesitation. Her radar attuned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Nussing. “It’s ’Arry.”

  “What about Harry?”

  “He just called me. He’s over there,” nodding toward the neighboring beach. “He wants me to go over in the Zodiac and get him.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  JP shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

  Then he headed down the water and pushed the inflatable out and she heard the clatter of the outboard and watched him disappear.

  She stood and gathered her towel and her cloth and went up onto the balcony.

  Suzie, still rocking in the hammock, stopped singing and said, “Is Harry coming?”

  Kate nodded and said, “Yes, Harry’s coming.”

  As she stared out at the last mauve light, fragments of the dream floated around her like bats and the calm and the peace she’d felt these last days was gone and all that remained was sadness and desolation.

  And cold, corrosive rage.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It was dark when Nadja surfaced from a slumber and heard voices below.

  Morse’s strangled whisper and Lucien’s rumble. Then she heard the front door of the townhouse closing.

  She wiped her face and went downstairs to where her husband stood alone in the kitchen, dressed in one of his bespoke suits.

  “Darling,” he said.

  She didn’t reply, her nostrils flaring at a pungent fragrance.

  Her imagination, surely?

  But he had a paper bag with him. Take-out. Szechuan take-out.

  Like a magician he produced a series of little red cardboard tubs, each bearing the Pavilion’s panda bear logo, releasing the perfume of the food that brought Michael back to her with breath-robbing clarity.

  Lucien—the man who loathed Chinese food with a passion—licked sauce off a finger and smiled at her blandly. “Are you hungry?”

  He observed her as she poured a glass of water from the faucet, her back to him. Composing herself as she sipped.

  Nadja turned to Lucien and smiled and said, “Of course. How thoughtful.”

  And as she sat and ate the food—ate it all: the searing, blood red ma po tofu; folding the salty shredded pork into the little white pancakes as delicate as hankies and tearing into them with her teeth; inhaling the squid with pepper salt—turning the meal into a kind of a celebration of who Michael Emerson had been and how he had freed her, Nadja decided that she would not destroy herself, after all.

  No. She would destroy her husband.

  FORTY

  When Kate emerged from the shower, dripping, barefoot, dressed in a loose cotton dress she’d bought in Bangkok, Harry Hook was installed at the kitchen table, drinking a glass of Coke in the draft of a fan that went tick, tick, tick and lifted his still abundant and only slightly graying hair away from a forehead that shone with sweat.

  He was winning hearts and minds—love me, love me, love me was the refrain of his breed of spook, love me even while I betray you and torture you and kill you—JP and Suzie hanging on his every word as he told the story of his boat trip over, turning a two hour hop in a long-tail into something Homeric.

  He looked at Kate and smiled a smile that didn’t quite take, the smile of a huckster who knew that he was peddling snake oil. She stood in the doorway, her eyes locked to his, and waited for him to explain why his plan hadn’t worked, why her searches on JP’s iPad had yielded no information about a sensational discovery at the crash site of AirStar Flight 2605.

  But he looked away from her and dipped a hand into the plastic bag that sat folded on the table and took out a puppet, a little female figure with a white face and a conical crown, its traditional garments dazzlingly bejeweled.

  Suzie stared at it and her mouth formed a perfect O as Hook manipulated the strings and had the little slippered feet dancing on the wooden tabletop, white hands with red painted nails waving like a Twenties flapper.

  Hook handed the strings to the girl. “It’s for you. Go on, take it.”

  Suzie looked up at Kate who wanted, in a moment of churlishness, to spit a comment about the aptness of the puppet metaphor and grab the little doll and sling it into the ocean for the tide to carry to India, but she nodded and said, “What do you say?”

  “Thank you, Harry,” Suzie said and planted a kiss on Hook’s cheek, which caused him to flush with both embarrassment and pleasure.

  Suzie took the puppet, in awe of its gaudy beauty and went off into the bedroom to play.

  Kate sat down and crossed her arms and said, “So, what brings you here?”

  “Just checking in.”

  “Bearing gifts and bonhomie?”

  “Something like that.” He smiled one of his winning smiles. “How’s the finger?”

  “Gone, remember?”

  He crinkled his eyes at her. “No pain?”

  “No.”

  This was his time to segue into an update about his master plan, but he said nothing and sipped at his Coke, his eyes on the fan.

  The silence was awkward and she felt for JP so she asked the question that she’d wanted to ask for a while, “So tell me, Harry, why did you choose Thailand?”

  He looked at her and she could see him relax as he stepped off a little ledge of uncertainty onto firmer, more familiar footing.

  “Let me tell you my Thailand story.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve got a Burma story and a Lebanon story and an Iran story and a Jordan story, haven’t you?”

  His smile soured a little. “Hey, you know what it’s like? We get around.”

  “Oh, we do. Regular little globetrotters for Jesus.”

  He sighed. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  JP topped up his Coke. “Tell us, ’Arry.”

  “When I first came out here, maybe fifteen years ago, I saw all these Thai guys—tough looking little buggers with teeth like tombstones and tattoos and scars—buzzing around on scooters carrying bamboo birdcages. Couldn’t see into the cages, because they were covered with cloth, but you can guess what I thought?”

  Kate said nothing, but gentlemanly JP filled in as the straight man. “Cockfighting?”

  “Yeah. Cockfighting. You spend any time in Asia and you know that these guys love their blood sports. I’ve been to cockfights. Sickening. Never want to go near another one.” He sipped his drink. “So, I put those cages out of my mind, then one day I was riding a bike outside of a small town when I saw maybe twenty guys in a field, standing around poles strung with wires and these cages were hanging from the wires. And this wasn’t like any cockfight I’d ever seen. So I stopped the bike and went over and found a guy who could talk a little English and he told me that the birds in the cages are bulbuls. Jungle songbirds. And what these men do, once a week, is put their songbirds in competition, laying heavy beats, too. Betting on which bird can sing the sweetest and the loudest for the longest.”
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  “So that’s your Thai story?” Kate asked.

  He shrugged. “No ladyboys or bargirls or ping pong shows. Bird singing competitions. That’s Thailand, for me. That’s why I’m here.”

  She tilted her head and said, “That’s a sweet story, Harry.”

  “I think so. And a true one, too.”

  “Now isn’t that a rarity?”

  He said nothing, looking at her, drinking his Coke.

  She could no longer dam up her rage and disappointment. “What the fuck are you doing here, Harry?”

  “I just told you.”

  “No, here. Here in this fucking kitchen.”

  JP stood and said, “Maybe I take Suzie and her puppet out onto the beach?”

  They watched him walk through to the kid and lead her and the toy outside with a lantern.

  “It was all fucking bullshit, wasn’t it, Harry? This plan of yours? This plan to save us?”

  “Now slow down.”

  “Why couldn’t you just accept you were a burned out fucking case, that whatever mojo you once had was gone and let us get the hell out of your orbit? Why did you have to fuck with us?” She held up her bandaged hand. “Get me to do this?”

  “Jesus, you don’t flirt with bluntness, do you? You just go right in and give it the clap.”

  “Your little bird story was cute, Harry.”

  “You already said that.”

  “You were always one for the songbirds weren’t you?” He stared at her. “‘Find your fucking nightingale?’”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Oh, it was legendary. The gospel according to Harry Hook.”

  He sighed. “I may have expounded a little too long and a little too loud about that in times gone by.”

  “That was what so many of your brilliant schemes, your coups, turned on Harry, not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “The poor stooge who went out there and sang what you wanted him to sing? Sang it loud and sang it clear? Loud and clear enough to change the minds of the unbelievers?”

  He stared at the fan and sucked his teeth.

  “But this time your plan was just a little undercooked, wasn’t it? A little makeshift? A little desperate?”

  He looked at her. “It had all the food groups.”

  “But there’s nobody to sell it, is there, Harry? You cut off my finger and had it dumped at the crash site. And then you waited.”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words, you shoved a note into a fucking bottle and tossed it into the ocean?”

  He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose.

  “Where’s your fucking nightingale, Harry? Where’s your fucking songbird?”

  When he didn’t reply she went out onto the balcony and stood in the dark and watched JP and her daughter playing on the sand in the light of the lantern, the puppet sending long, inky shadows out toward the water, the child laughing and tugging at the strings.

  For the first time Kate felt pain in her finger. Not at the joint, but up near the nail. The nail that wasn’t there. Phantom pain. She’d been warned about it, in her googling, her nervous system still wired to believe that the digit was attached.

  Just like she was wired to believe that all she had lost was still out there.

  Somewhere.

  - - -

  Hook hovered in the doorway, watching Kate, and said, “I never made you any promises.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said, her eyes on the child on the beach.

  “What I did wasn’t an exact science. It was always like this, back in the day. A crapshoot. Seat of the pants stuff, all guesswork and blind reckoning, like a pilot lost in a cloud.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. Maybe you picked the wrong guy for help?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  He stared at her. “Why did you come to me, anyway? Surely you’ve heard all the stories about how I flamed out?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard them all.”

  “But you still came?”

  “Yes, I still came. Because I carried my own little flame in my heart, that the magnificent Harry Hook would save my life.”

  “Well, as you said earlier my powers have waned.”

  “I came for you because of your legendary abilities, sure, but . . .” She paused.

  “But what?”

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “Forget it.”

  Hook was withdrawing, ready to return to the kitchen, to take himself beyond the range of her anger when she spoke again, so softly that her words barely rose above the hiss of the ocean.

  “I came to you because you’re my father.”

  He produced something that resembled a laugh. “You’re being metaphorical, right?”

  “Nope, I really am your daughter. Your unknown and unloved spawn.”

  Kate turned toward him, her face catching a spill of yellow light from the doorway as she smiled sourly and said, “What, the great Harry Hook is lost for words?”

  When he stayed mute she shook her head and walked down onto the sand toward her child, leaving him standing alone in the dark.

  FORTY-ONE

  Dawn. The red sun bleeding into the lilac wash where the flat ocean met the sky at the horizon found Hook walking away from the bungalow, trying to reassemble himself as he followed the trail of seashells that traced the tideline on the deserted shore.

  Last night, when Kate had dropped her bombshell, it’d been too late to cross to the neighboring island, so he’d hidden on the beach in the dark and crept back into the bungalow when the others were asleep, crashing on the sofa.

  He’d lain awake, pulling one of the all-night vigils that he’d become so good at. Listening to the soft snores of Kate and Suzie in the bedroom.

  His daughter and granddaughter.

  Jesus.

  Exactly what he was meant to do with that information he had no idea.

  Was it even true? Or was it just a fiction concocted by a woman driven mad by grief and fear and alienation?

  As a retailer of untruths Hook knew only too well that he, by authoring his narratives, had not only invented fictions, he had re-invented himself. Taken himself far away from what had been fragile and fearful by creating personas that were more comfortable to inhabit than the real Harry Hook.

  Wasn’t it possible that she had done the same? That, hunted, on the run, her life and the life of her child endangered, she had unraveled and become marooned on the far side of the fuzzy line where truth and fiction blurred?

  Hook found himself standing frozen on the beach, unable to process his thoughts, feeling as if his mind had a dozen tabs open simultaneously.

  He waded into the warm ocean, letting it lap at his calves. There was enough light to see the tiny silver fish, little bigger than ameba, that darted around his legs in the clear water.

  He sank down into the ocean, submerging his body, stilling his mind. He drifted to the surface and floated on his back, letting the gentle rocking of the water soothe him, staring at the beach and the jungle and the sky.

  Bob Carnahan had first brought him here three years ago. Carnahan had once owned a house on the tiny island, built on government conservation land. The 2004 tsunami had destroyed the house, along with all the other dwellings, wiping out almost the entire population of a village of sea gypsies.

  The government had no wish to develop the cay after the disaster and the surviving gypsies had disappeared. The animist Thais (fearful of vengeful spirits) considered the place bad luck and the boatmen on the neighboring islands refused to venture here. Only the splintered remains of one bungalow, that, cupped by an enfolding cliff, had weathered the onslaught a little better than the other houses, had survived.

  Over the space of a year, Hook and Carnahan had come out a few days at a time and camped on the beach while they repaired the bungalow. Carnahan was a skilled builder and what Hook lacked in expertise he’d made up for in enthusiasm. Th
e renovation complete, they’d hauled a gasoline-powered generator over from the mainland and the place had become their bolt hole. Every month they spent a couple of days chilling and fishing and playing chess and smoking a little weed.

  Nobody bothered then, the ghosts keeping the island safe from invasion.

  The perfect hideout for Kate and Suzie Swift.

  As Hook stood up out of the ocean, shaking his head like a dog, releasing silver beads of water from his hair, he saw Kate’s face, as she’d turned toward him last night on the balcony when she’d said what she’d said, and goddamit if he didn’t finally own—with terrifying clarity—the resemblance to the face he’d shaved thirty years ago, when he’d been young and handsome enough to get into all kinds of trouble.

  And he knew to a bone certainty that, despite all of his elaborate smokescreens, she wasn’t lying.

  She was his daughter.

  The acceptance of this drove him down the beach, toward the jungle beyond, not ready, yet, to go back to the bungalow and learn how and when he had unwittingly fathered that intimidating woman.

  The clatter of an outboard stopped him and he saw the Zodiac, snout riding high in the water, take off toward their larger neighbor, JP at the tiller and Kate and Suzie in the prow.

  And what did Hook feel?

  A fleeting moment of regret was replaced by relief.

  They were gone from his life. He was free.

  Free of obligation. Free of guilt.

  He shut down the traitorous thought that filled him with dread as he flashed on empty bottles and days lost to alcoholic amnesia and his life slowly sinking into the kind of drunken torpor and lassitude that had claimed so many of the foreigners he’d known in this country, and walked slowly back to bungalow.

  The bedroom was empty of all female paraphernalia.

  He went to the kitchen and helped himself to a bottle of water from the fridge. On the table the Burmese puppet he’d bought for the kid lay beside JP’s iPad. He tossed the puppet onto the counter, and, out of some reflex, activated the iPad and scanned the news sites.