by Neal Bowers
“Maybe it’s all a lie. Maybe the story could be told another way. Whose word do I have but Haupt’s? Hell, I essentially made up the story. All he did was embellish it.” What if they never had an affair at all but were acquainted only through Haupt’s forwardness? Maybe he was someone she met by chance and didn’t really like. What if he had attached himself to her and she was trying to get rid of him?
Maybe the heart attack had occurred while she was in Haupt’s company—at the mall, perhaps—and he had rushed her to the hospital, not noticing her purse on the floorboard until sometime later. And Haupt could have made his own key to the house, once he had possession of hers, on the chance that she would recover and then he would have a decided advantage over her.
The more Davis unspooled such fictions, the more real they seemed. In some respects, they were more plausible than what Haupt had told him. At least the narratives he was developing made better sense in terms of what he knew about his own mother.
“He was taking advantage of her, and now he’s screwing with my head because it makes him feel powerful.” But the truth had become negotiable, not fixed; Davis realized he was fashioning his own version. Nothing is certain. That old adage winked at him from within, revealing an ambiguity he had never before realized: The one absolute certainty is nothing. In his head, the statement went round and round like a mantra: Nothing is certain nothing is certain nothing is certain.
Davis felt that familiar shaft opening inside, and he began falling into himself, saying, “Oh, God, no, not now, please, please!” He started the engine and turned on the radio, hoping the noise would break his descent. The song was one he knew, and he sang along, loudly at first and then softer as he regained control—“Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo, now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.” He had always despised it, but finding it on a station his mother had preset on the dial tethered him once again to the ground.
Tipping his wristwatch, Davis saw that it was only ten-fifteen. Still almost two hours before visitation at Berkley’s Funeral Home. Plenty of time to stop by his mother’s house and change clothes. A dark suit for the dark occasion. Forgetting he had already started the engine, Davis turned the key in the ignition, generating a loud squeal, then pressed hard enough on the gas to rattle the midday air. Across the street, a screen door opened as he stuttered away.
Davis was so distracted by the clumsy start that he took a wrong turn and found himself suddenly in a wilderness. He knew the army owned great tracts of undeveloped land straddling the Kentucky and Tennessee state line, woods and fields used for military exercises and to create a buffer zone between whatever secrets the military kept and the prying eyes of the outside world, but he had seen the land only through chain-link fencing marked with NO TRESPASSING signs. He was looking for a place to turn around when something in the mirror caught his eye, a windshield flashing sunlight.
“The MPs,” he thought, wondering if they had the authority to arrest him for being in a place marked off-limits. Studying the mirror, he lost sight of the narrow road and slammed on the brakes too late to keep from galloping headlong into and then out of a shallow ditch, coming to a standstill in a field of scrub cedar. The smell of gasoline from the flooded engine made him think of insulin, an oily sweetness that made him gag. Pushing the door open into weeds almost window high, Davis swung his legs around and started to get out when he heard someone rustling nearby.
“Stay where you are.” The voice was high-pitched with youth and nervousness.
Davis tried to stand so he could see who was speaking, but the tension in the voice forced him back into his seat: “Don’t move!”
“I don’t have time to play army games. Okay? If you’re gonna shoot me, just get it over with.” Again Davis tried to stand, but this time something rushed through the weeds and slammed him back into the car. At the same moment, the door on the opposite side opened and someone grabbed him under the chin and pulled him across the front seat. When he tried to move to lessen the strain on his neck, he realized his knees were being held down by whoever had knocked him backward. His throat was narrowed by the pull—it might have had a large stone lodged in it, the way his breath wheezed and thinned. The pulsing in his ears evened out into a low roar, and his whole body convulsed just as the pressure stopped.
He lay coughing, looking at the beige headliner, unable to move even though no one was holding him now. Around him voices rose and fell like birdcalls—a twitter, then an embellishment. “Rosy-breasted nuthatch,” he guessed. The beige above him hung like a winter sky in evening. “Flannel,” he thought, just as someone gripped him under each arm and dragged him all the way across the seat and into the field.
Davis’s coughing turned spasmodic, and he rolled onto his stomach, retching and dragging for air. Against his face, the dead weeds were reedy and smelled of dusk. But lower, closer to the ground, the green was coming in. He spat several times and sat up, expecting to see a soldier with a gun pointed at him. When he tried to look over his shoulder, his neck hurt so much he had to shift his body. No one.
“Who’s there?” His voice was burred and broken. Again, “Who’s there?” When no one answered, he tried to stand, moving first to his knees, then putting his weight on one foot. As he rose, he lost his balance and staggered a little before steadying himself. His mother’s car sat in the weeds with both front doors open. Its dull yellow hood blunted the overhead sun.
“Jesus,” Davis said, turning several times to look around the field. Still wobbly, he sat down in the dead and reviving weeds, thinking, “That bastard Haupt.” But he hadn’t seen Haupt, hadn’t seen anyone, really. He might have been attacked by aliens, for all he knew. The thought caused a laugh that set off a fit of coughing. “Had to be Haupt.” Maybe the message was that he could do whatever he wanted, without explanation, even without reason. “Sergeant God,” Davis said. “Sergeant God, sir!”
Inside his mother’s car, Davis picked at the sticktights that speckled his trousers and leaned over to see his face in the mirror. His neck was red, and three fingertip indentations appeared just to the left of his windpipe. Davis hooked his right thumb and forefinger beneath his chin and placed his other three fingers in the spots, where they fit exactly. The mechanics of the assault intrigued him. Was it some kind of Green Beret hold or just a clumsy grab? For a long time, he studied himself, his hand coming from beyond the view of the mirror like someone else’s. He lifted his fingers one at a time, then put them down again, as if playing a saxophone.
When a sudden gust whipped through the car, Davis slid across the seat to reach the handle of the opposite door. The solid slam stunned him, and he sat like a passenger waiting for the driver to arrive. This was the nowhere zone, the place from which everyone answers “Nothing” when asked “What are you thinking?” Hard to articulate the scuttle of images, mixed and random as leaves blown along a sidewalk—his mother, Haupt, Ann Louise, his half-assed job in Des Moines. If someone who knew where to go and what to do would slide in on the driver’s side, Davis could close his eyes and take the ride.
When he scooted back behind the wheel and turned the key, the engine made an oblong groan, the sound of something turning very fast around an elliptical circuit—loud, then far away, then loud, finally breaking free in a straight-line roar. Slamming his door, Davis stared over the hood for a place to steer through the field, hoping to drive out the same way he had come in, but brush raked the undercarriage, and the land was so uneven that he veered off and felt for smoother ground. He was concentrating so intently on pitch and roll that he intersected the road by accident. A charge of the engine, a final gallop, and he was once more on pavement, tires shrilling as he grappled the wheel to straighten up. When he was squarely in his lane, he placed the car in neutral and raced the engine, the way he had done at stoplights when he was a kid, then shifted back into drive and held the accelerator pedal to the floor. At first, no movement, just a steady boil of smoke at the rear; then a screech
ing thrust pinned Davis so hard against his seat he caught his breath.
He was still driving fast when he crossed Perimeter Road. Seeing the sign made his foot come down suddenly on the brake, and the car yawed hard, its rear end wailing forward to the right, forcing half a spin before everything came to a full stop. The engine was loping, half dying, then catching again. The smell of rubber was sickening, an industrial stench. Davis wanted to drive on but couldn’t lift his foot off the brake pedal for fear the spin would continue. As long as he sat perfectly still, nothing would happen. Nothing was happening. Even death couldn’t be safer. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he had been killed in the field. As a test, he took his foot from the brake. Nothing, until he eased down on the gas and turned onto Perimeter.
Not knowing what he would do when he got there, Davis drove back to Haupt’s house, trying to spot numbers on the identical buildings as he trolled along. The playground and the swing set where Haupt had sat marked the place. Davis idled at the curb, leaning across the seat to stare at the front door. The screen and the shadow from the small porch roof made it impossible to tell if the door was closed. Davis thought of getting out or sounding the horn but did neither. He sat for a long time, but no one came.
“He’s in there, and he knows I’m out here.” Davis imagined himself in the middle of a standoff. “Wants me to make the first move so he can call the MPs. Stupid bastard.” Feeling oddly triumphant, Davis lifted his middle finger as a farewell salute and slowly drove away, nosing through a maze of streets until he finally found the visitors’ gate.
The guard came out of his clockwork box and signaled Davis through. But just as the blockade arm came up and the car rolled forward, the toy soldier began to yell and wave his arms. Before Davis could pull onto the highway, the guard was in front of him with both hands on the hood.
When he was certain Davis understood he was to stay put, the young man said, “Just a minute, sir,” and walked to the rear of the car. For a moment, he was out of view, and Davis felt the car lift a little on its springs and heard something rasping against metal.
“Don’t want to drag this down the highway,” he said, holding out a tangle of brush and small limbs for Davis to see.
“Shit. So that’s what’s been making that racket. You know, I must have snagged that stuff when I was out in the country this morning.”
The soldier looked hard at Davis. “Probably so, sir. Glad I caught sight of it before you pulled off.”
Davis said, “Thanks, soldier,” and, before he could stop himself, actually gave the young man a military salute as he eased into traffic. “Could be in the reserves, for all he knows. Captain . . . no, Colonel Banks.” Davis felt in charge again as he gained speed along the Fort Campbell Highway.
When he looked at his watch, he saw that the crystal was broken. The second hand was still sweeping the dial, but the time couldn’t be right—almost twelve-thirty—unless he had lain unconscious in the weeds for two hours. If that was the right time, he would make it to Berkley’s with only a few minutes left in the visitation hour. He stared at the watch again, wondering if it had cracked when he ran off the road or if his attackers had fractured it. “Watches and clocks are supposed to stop at the exact moment of the crime or accident,” Davis mused, feeling cheated. Pulling back his sleeve, he slammed his wrist into the side window. The car veered to the left with the motion, causing someone in the adjacent lane to blow his horn. “Yeah, yeah,” Davis said into the windshield. The driver leered as he ripped by, but Davis looked instead at his watch. It was no longer running.
When he got to Berkley’s, only a few cars speckled the parking lot, and Davis studied his watch, shattered at its last correct time. Leaning against the fender of a car near the building was Uncle Oscar, part of a circle of men, some of them smoking, occasionally spitting back onto the grass. “Nice you could make it,” he drawled as Davis approached. “You been runnin’ with the hound dogs, son?” A muffled laugh rippled through the group. Looking down at his clothes, Davis saw for the first time how filthy he was. Sticktights clung everywhere, and he was stained with new grass and soft earth. Stopping for a moment to consider his condition, he looked directly at Oscar but said nothing. As he entered the building, he thought, “All the mangy dogs seem to be here,” and considered stepping back outside with the remark, but he had lost the moment.
Inside, he was met by Mr. Berkley, his eyes downcast in a display of deference and respect. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, finally glancing up to see Davis’s face, then taking in his full presentation. “You all right, Mr. Banks?”
“Had a little accident, but no real harm done.” Davis found it hard not to confront Berkley with accusations about his father’s shoddy burial. “Cheap little bastard,” he thought.
“There’s a bathroom in my office. You’re welcome to clean up a little.”
Davis shook his head and continued along the corridor that materialized as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. When he reached the door leading to his mother’s body, he paused to look at the guest book spread open on a small table and was offered a pen by an overly made-up young woman in a short black dress. From behind him, Mr. Berkley said, “He’s a member of the immediate family, Daneen.” Embarrassed, she withdrew the pen. Davis saw that the top of her dress was a fine mesh, beneath which the straps of a black slip or bra were visible. “My youngest,” Mr. Berkley proudly announced. “Learning the business.”
Daneen was not just Berkley’s child but also his vision, an angel of the dead in a trampy dress. Pale with the same cosmetics used on the corpses, she was ghoulish but alluring.
Aunt Goldie padded up, giving Daneen a brief look of disapproval. “Thank the Good Lord, you’re finally here,” she said to Davis. “Everyone’s been askin’ ’bout you.” She kept score in these matters, giving herself extra points for being the first to arrive and the last to leave. He had been assessed heavy demerits.
“Had a little trouble with the car.”
Ignoring his remark and oblivious to the condition of his clothes, she continued, “The family is s’posed to be here to greet the visitors.” She looked expectantly around the room, making precise little smiles and nodding at the late arrivals.
At the far end of the room, stands of gladiolas flanked the casket. No one was near his mother, whom Davis half expected to see rise from her box like the magician’s assistant, showing that the saw hadn’t touched her. He walked briskly to a small group hovering near the back of the room.
“Hello, hello! How good to greet you. I’m Davis Banks. Come this way and I’ll introduce you to my mother. You’ll have to forgive her for not getting up.”
Someone’s throat made a noise, midway between a choke and a chuckle, but no one moved. Even Davis stood motionless until his aunt said, “We’re all under an awful stress.”
“Yes, an awful stress. Heaven knows how we carry on, but we do, don’t we, Aunt Goldie?” Davis stressed the words “carry on.” When she began to cry, he proclaimed, “I rest my case.”
He walked to the casket and, without looking at his mother, closed the lid. Then he turned to face the nearly empty room. “That’s it for now, folks. Show’s over.” As the impresario of the dead, he took a deep bow. “That’s it. Get out.” His aunt had plopped onto one of the folding chairs and begun to sob, bobbing with spasms that rose into her throat at regular intervals. When she and Davis were the only ones left in the room with the corpse of Ellen Banks, Davis made a small patter of applause. “Well played, Auntie. Good show.”
By the time Davis reached the front door, word of his behavior had spread into the corridor and spilled outside. Rushing in, Oscar grabbed his arm. “What the hell’s goin’ on?” Davis wrenched free and barked, then bayed like a hound in the musky night and pushed through the door to the parking lot. Someone said his name, but he didn’t look to see who it was. Again the voice called out, a woman’s. He turned long enough to see Linda standing on the sidewalk in front of the funeral home. The look on
her face rushed him back to days of their marriage, one of them always leaving in the other’s baleful glare. “The living dead,” he thought, and as he swung the car out of the lot he howled, the sound covered by the rumble of the exhaust.
CHAPTER 10
__________
WHEN HE GOT home, Davis shucked his pants, turning them inside out to keep the sticktights off the carpet, and went into the bedroom to find clean clothes. He studied his broken watch as he took it off. “Twelve twenty-eight forever,” he exulted, catching sight of his face in the dresser mirror. The finger-marks on his neck had become a blotch. “You’re losing your goddamned mind,” said the face looking back at him. “Hey, we’re under a lot of pressure, here,” Davis replied, trying first for a Marlon Brando imitation and then for Jimmy Stewart. “Shit, I do need to get a grip,” this time in his own weary voice.
The doorbell rang its bing-bong Hollywood tones. Wearing only his dress shirt and underwear, he swung the door open, expecting to see Ann Louise. There was Linda, doleful enough to be his widow rather than his ex-wife. Making a mock gesture of covering his privates, he said, “Just a minute,” and returned wearing his inside-out pants, unzipped because the fly was backward.
“I don’t think I should come in,” she said.
Without replying, Davis stepped onto the small front porch. They hadn’t been this close in years, and he concealed his unease with brashness. “Have a seat,” he offered, plopping down and patting the step beside him.
Linda hovered over him for a moment, then descended the steps and stood in the front yard, facing him. “You all right?”
“Was I ever?”
She lifted her arms, letting them fall to her sides. “Same old Davis. Never a straight answer. Never anything the easy way.”