An Occasional Hell

by Silvis, Randall;

  “What about the Jewetts, Larry?”

  “What about them?”

  “You don’t think it’s peculiar that in a year and a half they never saw or heard Jeri and Alex down at the inlet? That they didn’t hear the gunshot?”

  “You have to understand who you’re dealing with there, Ernie.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “We’ve got families like them all over the county. All over the state, for that matter. Reclusive, suspicious, backward—if you didn’t go looking for them, you’d never even know they exist.”

  “I’m not unfamiliar with the type.”

  “All I’m saying, Ernie, is yes, I do think they would have at least heard something. But do I expect them to admit it? No. Do I see anything incriminating to their reticence? No again.”

  “What about the high incidence of fires in that vicinity?”

  “Arson isn’t murder. Not in this case anyway.”

  “It might be attempted murder, though. The Kinetics might very well have gone up in flames.”

  “There’s only one Kinetic we’re concerned about now, and he’s in custody. And as far as I’m concerned, Ernie, his premise sounds a lot more believable than yours.”

  “The Jewetts are involved in this, Larry, I know they are. They’re involved up to their eyeballs.”

  “Show me the proof.”

  And that, of course, was the very thing DeWalt lacked. So he could not go to Abbott yet, it would be a waste of time. Just as standing here at the inlet was a waste of time. No bottle was going to wash ashore with his proof inside it. No blackbird could whisper the truth in his ear.

  If there was any truth to be found or heard, it was where it had always been, where no one had ever yet looked. He climbed back into his car and drove to the Jewett’s house.

  He approached the house cautiously, driving slowly until he saw that the blue pickup truck was gone. Aleta, probably, would be the only one home. At most, Aleta and Draper. DeWalt could say he had come to inform them that the suspected murderer was now in custody. He could watch their eyes, observe the emptiness within. Maybe remark casually about last night’s fire. The high incidence of brushfires hereabouts. Ask about the back door and steps, how had they come to be burned? Ask once again about the possibility of having heard a gunshot on the day of the murder, about hearing Jeri’s screams.

  Ask Draper if he was absolutely certain he did not know Alex Catanzaro; if, upon reflection, he was still sure he and his brother had never met the man who every Saturday morning used Draper’s favorite fishing hole, posted NO TRESPASSING, for his own private lover’s lane; sure he and Clifford had never spoken to Catanzaro, never worked for him, never spied upon him and his naked girlfriend.

  That’s all he would do, he would watch their eyes. Aleta’s eyes, he knew, would reveal nothing. But Draper’s, perhaps, those yellow poisoned eyes might have a thing or two to say. They would tell DeWalt nothing he could take to court, nothing that might mend a friendship or insure abiding love or reverse the damage of time, but it might be something to hang a hunch upon. It might be something finally to vindicate an unrequited passion, a passion more dormant than moribund but reawakened now, rewanted, the only heat now left to him, that unavailing, impractical, untenable passion for truth.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Jewett house stood as silent as ice, all doors locked. The sound made by DeWalt’s knuckles rapping on the front door seemed swallowed by the wood itself, wood dry and chipped and warped, thirsty for attention. There was no echo to the knocking, no answer from a barking dog. He let the screen door close quietly, not wanting it to bang shut, not knowing why. He made his footsteps light too as he descended the wooden porch and went to the side door, as light as the leaves of the oak trees scratching the breeze, high dry branches creaking.

  Because the steps to the side door were all but burned away—there remained only a skeletal black frame that would support no weight—he had to stand close to the house and reach above his head to put a hand through what was left of the screen door—it too little more than a blackened frame, the rectangle of wire mesh melted from its bottom upwards to the corners like an intricate cobweb touched by a cigarette. He tried the knob of the charred wooden door. This door too was locked. The outside veneer of the hollow door had been burned through; it would be no trouble, not even for DeWalt, to put a fist through the flame-weakened panel that remained.

  Easy enough, he told himself, but he did not do it. He looked at the smudge of soot on his hands, smelled the smoky stench of the door. What you need to do now, DeWalt, is to walk away from here. Walk back to your car. Drive into town. Find Abbott.

  So there’ve been a lot of fires in that area, Abbott will say. So what? What does that prove?

  Nothing, DeWalt answered. Zero.

  The lock was an inexpensive Weiser, the type that could be opened with a coathanger or screwdriver, the type that protected with the illusion of protection a hundred thousand homes across the country. DeWalt had a very nice set of screwdrivers but they were in the basement of his home, too far away. Everything he needed, would ever need, was, it seemed, too far away.

  He walked to the rear of the house. Here he found a half acre of detritus stored, a lifetime of junk. A strip of fiberglass panels, braced five feet off the ground on a framework of two-by-fours nailed against the house, provided an awning for, gathered in no discernible order, birch and oak logs, an assortment of lumber, bricks and building stones, old truck tires and naked rusting rims, plastic and metal buckets, a washtub filled with dirt and, DeWalt guessed, fishing worms. There was a bicycle frame, wheelless and without a seat; at least two coffee tins filled with oxidized nails; half a pair of sewing scissors; tools including a trowel, handrake, spade, hoe, pickaxe and maul, all with blades either rusted or caked with dried mud; a wooden crate containing over three dozen railroad flares wrapped in clear plastic sheeting; two sets of antlers, a five-point and a nine-point; a piece of animal hide thrown over a stump, the hide so weathered that DeWalt had no idea what species of hapless creature had been stripped of it; and, sticking out of a rotted black work boot, a plastic-handled steak knife and a forked sassafras twig, the twig scraped clean of bark, incipient handle for a slingshot.

  DeWalt picked up the steak knife and holding it flat against his leg returned to the side door. He glanced toward the driveway. He should not be doing this. He didn’t yet know whether he would do it or not. Why should you do it, DeWalt? What’s any of this to you? Go home and watch television, DeWalt. Go home and piss through a tube.

  He stood facing the side door, steak knife in his right hand. Another glance down the driveway. Surely if the Jewetts returned while he was inside he would hear the truck pulling up out front, he could slip out the side door and into the woods. That was how it would work in an ideal world.

  No, not quite. In an ideal world you wouldn’t be doing something like this. He pushed the tip of the knifeblade into the keyhole, twisted the knife side to side, probing, and heard the lock click. Worthless, he thought. What good is a lock that any six-year-old can pick? He returned to the woodpile then, wiping the knife clean on his trousers before he dropped it into the leather boot.

  He held open the screen door and knocked again on the charred wood, louder this time. He took a long look down the driveway. Then, pushing the heel of his palm against the doorknob, he turned it, he swung the door open. Careful then not to lean on the catheter tube or the plastic bag folded against his abdomen, he pulled himself up over the threshold and into the kitchen. Quickly he stood; looked out; quickly and quietly reclosed the doors.

  He was here now and did not know why. Do you really think you’ll find anything now, DeWalt, so long after the murder? After all that has happened, how can you remain such a romantic?

  A cancelled check would be nice, he thought. A check signed by Alex Catanzaro, with note attached: Thanks for a good firebombing and robbery, boys. It would be nice to stumble across the murder weapon too.
With several nice sets of usable Jewett prints all over it. And nearby, Jeri Gillen’s body. No, make that Jeri Gillen, alive and well.

  And then DeWalt thought, alive and well, that’s an oxymoron.

  But hey, as long as you’re fantasizing, DeWalt, why not find a couple of kidneys and a healthy liver too. Maybe they’re over there in the sink. Soaking in ice water.

  He made himself stop it then. “Concentrate,” he said aloud. He would find nothing in here, though: this was Aleta Jewett’s domain, her enclave and escape. This kitchen was as clean as her memory, as sterile as her crystal gray eyes.

  The kitchen opened onto the living room, and, to his right, the dining room. He only glanced into the dining room, which housed no table, but a sideboard, an armoire full of knickknacks and plaster figurines and a few china plates, a bent hickory rocking chair beside which, on one side, was a basket stuffed with skeins of yarn, and, on the other side, Tippy’s wicker red-cushioned bed. This, too, Aleta’s room.

  It was just as easy to see who owned the living room: two recliner chairs, separated by a small table on which set an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. The chairs faced a color TV. A 26–inch color TV, new, DeWalt told himself. Eight, maybe nine hundred dollars. Maybe he had found that cancelled check after all.

  The house was warm and smelled vaguely of damp shade. It was silent but for a constant hissing sound, so low in volume that DeWalt could not determine where it was coming from, could not in fact ascertain if it originated inside or outside his own head. Maybe I’ve sprung a leak, he thought.

  He looked again at the living room. A brown worn sofa. White plastic end-table holding a telephone. Nothing else here, no Pennsylvania long rifle mounted on the wall, no naked girl chained to the wainscoting.

  He went to the front door and glanced outside. An empty driveway. He turned and, walking on his toes, crept up the stairs.

  The first thing he noticed was that the hissing noise grew louder as he mounted the steps. From the second floor landing he could peer down the narrow hallway to the far end of the house. On his immediate right were two bedrooms, both doors open. On his left was the bathroom, then a linen closet, then a room with its door closed. It was the closed door that drew him. Doors are kept closed for one of two reasons: to keep something in, or to keep someone out.

  Even before his hand touched the doorknob, DeWalt had identified the hissing noise. He knew it was coming from inside the room and he knew what the noise signified, what that pale blue odor of natural gas signified, a yellow towel stuffed against the inside bottom of the door, protruding through the crack like sunlight too thick to escape. His initial thought was that the door would be locked and he would have to kick it open, but the door had no lock. He turned the knob, pushed steadily but firmly, and a wave of natural gas washed out through the opening, shimmering, a heat mirage of soporific poison.

  At first glance the room seemed unnaturally bright, already filled with flame. But it was only the afternoon sunlight pouring through curtainless windows. It was all DeWalt could see for a moment, the quivering golden light. Dizzy from the initial blast of scented air, he did not move, he remained on the threshold, squinting, holding his breath, until finally he located the source of the hissing noise, a gas jet low on the righthand wall. Attached to the gasjet was a small space heater, flameless, the dirty ceramic burners cold. The hiss echoed inside the white enameled heater before venting into the room, a room effectively closed off, sealed, until DeWalt had opened the door.

  DeWalt went first to the gasjet, but the knob on the release valve had been removed; he would need a pair of pliers to shut off the hissing gas, and there was no such tool in sight. He glanced across the room at the bed pushed into the corner. Draper Jewett lay fully clothed atop the bed covers, clothed but for his shoes as he lay in the center of a neatly made bed. His skin was yellow and bloodless, his limbs even thinner than DeWalt remembered. His eyes seemed huge—dots of empty black on swollen yellow balls. They were watching DeWalt. DeWalt looked at him for just an instant before turning to the window. With the heels of both hands he pounded on the upper sill. But the window would not budge, would not slide up. DeWalt’s lungs felt about to burst but he did not think he should chance a breath yet, not until the room had cleared a bit more. He hammered at the window.

  “Get away from there,” Draper said. His words were slow and flat and thin, a moan, a breathless dream-speech.

  “Don’t be stupid,” DeWalt told him, tasting the gas. It tasted of cold metal, impossibly dry, a hard blue clot of poison.

  He gave up on the window then and went to Draper’s bed. Leaning over Draper, he slipped one hand beneath the fleshless knees, another beneath the brittle wings of his shoulderblades. But before DeWalt could begin to lift, Draper’s left hand rose lazily, dreamlike, from between the bed and the wall, bringing into view the pistol it held, the longnosed .38’s gleaming silver barrel turning heavily toward DeWalt, sleepily, finding him then, the round little killing mouth pushing into his gut.

  It is not difficult to snatch a gun from a man’s hand if you do not hesitate. You must react without thinking. DeWalt had been that quick and sure for a time in his life. This time he was neither. Whether it was gas or pistol or memory that caused it, he felt suddenly awash with nausea, submerged in it. Only by driving his knuckles into the bed, his hands still beneath Draper Jewett, could he keep himself from falling atop the man. Haltingly he backed away, gagging, his stomach in spasms.

  DeWalt, bent nearly double, nodded as he backed into the hallway. Just as he cleared the threshold he saw Draper begin to rise up, turn, try to find him again. “… that door,” Draper seemed to say.

  But DeWalt was in the hallway now, breathing, sucking cool shade into his lungs. Christ, he thought, trembling, because for an instant he had actually believed it was going to happen again, had to happen, over and over without change. But he was moving down the stairway now, heavy-footed, moving as if through a narrow tunnel with the bannister rail smooth and cool beneath his hand. His feet were finding the steps, hard and sharp. He kept expecting to hear a gunshot, and then, as anticlimax almost, a heavy wallop breaking his spine. He kept expecting his legs to give out. Jesus fucking Christ, he thought. There was no air in the tunnel, he could not satisfy his lungs. He felt his heart slamming hard against his throat.

  When he was halfway through the living room he stopped. He turned to face the stairway, but Draper was not behind him, no silver-rimmed black eye staring, no wink of light, the stairway was empty.

  Slowly the tunnel expanded and his breath came back to him. He was getting hold of the nausea now, squeezing it into something smaller, containable, a lead ball in his belly. The house seemed to be roaring, but it was the blood in his head, the crashing wave after wave of his pulse. In the midst of this thunder came a dull thud—it took him a few seconds to realize that Draper had closed the bedroom door again, was probably stuffing the yellow towel into the crack.

  So be it, DeWalt thought.

  He sat on the swaybellied sofa, elbows on knees. He would not wait out the suicide, Draper had too far to go yet. But DeWalt had his own long walk ahead of him, outside and to his car. He needed to steady his legs first, quiet his head. Clifford could come home and find his brother dead. Or Aleta could find him. Anybody but me, thought DeWalt. I’m through with this.

  Maybe Clifford and Aleta already knew what they would find when they came home. Surely they knew. This day or another, sooner or later, they knew. Draper had been dying for a long time now. Since birth, DeWalt thought; just like the rest of us. He almost felt sorry for him. For everybody.

  Christ, cut it out, DeWalt. Thoughts like that will ruin you for sure.

  The world is fucked, remember that. It’s fucked for always now, for an always as long as will matter to any living man and his children. And probably for the bigger always as well, the one that will end the always always and forever.

  So what does a man do in the meantime, DeWalt? A man with s
uch knowledge. He can quit doing anything at all and learn to live with his uselessness. Lots of people do. Is that what you want to do, DeWalt? Is that why you are here now, in this house, in this life, with a plastic tube in your side?

  A man can do what he does best, he thought. For no other reason than that he can do it, and that doing it well pleases him and maybe a few others.

  That and cowardice, he told himself, is all you need to keep yourself going. Cowardice and hope. Hope and Crosby. No, Crosby is gone. We still have his records, though. We still have our memories. And maybe that, not cowardice or hope, is what keeps the world alive: the way we remember it. The way we remember the way we thought it would be.

  He slid to the edge of the sofa then and reached for the telephone, a squat black rotary model. Not many of these left, he thought as he dialed the numbers, 9–1–1. He would summon an ambulance, then go outside and toss a rock through Draper’s window. No easy death this time, buddy. There are still a few things to be answered for.

  He gave the dispatcher the address and asked her to notify Trooper Larry Abbott of the Pennsylvania State Police, Menona Barracks. The patient was armed, dizzy but dangerous.

  As the dispatcher repeated the address DeWalt’s eyes focused on what he had been staring at for several moments now, staring without recognition, a small colored glass in Aleta’s armoire, a juice glass among the figurines and china plates. He was too far away to read the lettering but he could make out the blue waterfall and the rainbow mist it made. He hung up the phone, stood, and on still-shaky legs, stepped up to the armoire. NIAGARA FALLS, NY, the glass read.

  He swept an anitmacassar off the small table beside Aleta’s rocking chair and used it to open the armoire. He could see the juice glass clearly enough, but even so he felt compelled to look at it with no obstacle between them, this beautiful evidence, this connection. He would not touch it, though. He would leave it here for Abbott. Could Abbott refuse then to check the hotel registries in Niagara Falls, to find a clerk, a waitress, anybody who would remember seeing Draper or Clifford Jewett in the area on or about the time of the Fort Erie robbery? Could Abbott refuse then to turn this house upside down, to search the grounds, subpoena the Jewett’s bank records, ask them to explain how a family living on welfare could afford a new 26–inch Sony?