Trophies and Dead Things

by Marcia Muller

  “Not that I remember. Those people were all of a kind, and not too many of us trusted them. Their motives weren’t pure, you see.” Widdows laughed—both amused and self-mocking. “We had a long list of people who weren’t to be trusted. Anyone over thirty, of course. The university administration and most of the faculty. Politicians, if they were of a major party. The military-industrial complex, including scared second lieutenants in the National Guard. There were spies lurking behind every tree: the Berkeley cops, narcs, the FBI, the campus police, and—when bombing became the thing—the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.”

  “A hotbed of paranoia?”

  “Right. And not totally drug-induced. But one thing about the spies: not too many of them worked out, no matter what agency they were from. Button-down collars and cordovan shoes did not go down too well at SDS meetings. And the ones who did manage to worm their way into the counter-culture usually went over to the other side—got hung up on drugs or women. The FBI, I’ve heard, had to periodically call them in from the field for a sort of deprogramming. It was a bizarre time, all right.”

  “What happened to Perry’s group of friends, do you know?”

  “Either got kicked out or dropped out of school. I think he told me that a bunch of them had moved to the city, set up as a commune. Political action shifted around sixty-eight or nine—to S.F. State. Perry was in contact with them, that much I know. Once he said they might make a good story for us, but nothing came of it.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “Who knows? Perry was very independent-minded; I never knew what he was going to turn in until it was on my desk. But by then communes were a dime a dozen, and when he thought it over, he probably decided it was a story whose time had gone.”

  I was silent, retrieving what Widdows had told me. Finally he asked, “Have I helped?”

  “Yes, you have. I didn’t come to Berkeley until years later, and you’ve given me a feel for those times. And now I won’t keep you from your work any longer.”

  “I’m not sure you’re doing me a kindness.”

  Widdows walked me to my car, pointing out the prize tomato plant of his vegetable garden. I confessed to having a black thumb even when it came to houseplants, and he smiled and suggested that it helped if one watered them. After I got into the MG, he leaned on its doorframe, looking down at me through the open window.

  “Would you like to go out sometime?” he asked.

  I hesitated, thinking I preferred men who lived more in the real world than he seemed to. Then I thought, what the hell. “Yes, I would.”

  “Great. I’ll call you soon, or you call me. We could see a play or take in a concert. Go on a picnic, whatever. Or, “he added. “I could always pay a house call on your plants.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When I left Berkeley, I didn’t feel like going back to the office; only routine chores awaited me there, and I was primed for more active pursuits. So I decided to drive over the Richmond Bridge to Marin County and pay a call on Mia Taylor.

  The fog had remained in abeyance, and although the wind still gusted across the West Marin headlands, the sky’s clear blue was reflected brilliantly on the rippling water of Tomales Bay. The sun made the cypress and eucalyptus groves a deeper green, the summer-burnt hills a warmer shade of tan. As I drove I made absent note of the natural beauty—not without appreciation, but with only a small part of my attention. My mind was on the past, and the possible ramifications of its events on the present.

  When I arrived at Taylor’s Oysters, there were a couple more operational-looking vehicles in the parking lot than on my past visit, but the restaurant was again devoid of customers. A slender, blue-jeans-clad young woman with waist-length black hair was scrubbing with a rag at one of the oilcloth-covered tables. She turned when she heard the door close behind me, her hair swaying. Her face was bronze, with prominent handsome features.

  I asked, “Are you Mia Taylor?”

  She nodded, studying me and frowning slightly. For a moment the intensity of her gaze puzzled me; then I realized she was probably trying to place me on some remote branch of the family tree. As I’d told Libby Ross the other day, I only have one-eight Shoshone blood, but it shows in my hair color and high cheekbones. I seldom think of myself in terms of either my Indian heritage or the Scotch-Irish blood that makes up the remainder of my genetic composition. My attitude is a symptom of what’s happened to ethnic groups in America, and I suppose in some ways the blurring of differences is a good thing. But on the other hand, there’s an inherent sadness in the loss of consciousness of our roots, the loss of touch with the history and traditions that make us who we are.

  To spare Mrs. Taylor further confusion, I said, “I’m Sharon McCone, the investigator with All Souls Legal Cooperative. Is your husband available—”

  “No,” she said quickly. “D.A.’s sick.” Her nostrils flared in disgust. “Passed out, if you really want to know.” She went behind the bar, flung the rag into the sink. Her body was rigid with tension; she grasped the edge of the counter, fighting for control. After a moment she spoke in less harsh tones. “Look, you want some coffee?”

  “That sounds good. Thank you.”

  She shrugged and poured two cups from a pot on a warmer. “Black?”

  “Please.”

  She carried the coffee to the table she’d been cleaning and motioned for me to take a chair. When she sat across from me, her face was impassive, all emotion reined in.

  I asked, “D.A.’s been drinking heavily?”

  “Yeah. He’s been awful upset for a couple of days now. Yesterday he took Jake’s truck”—she motioned out the window at the antiquated red pickup I’d seen on my previous visit—“and went running off to see Libby Ross. When he came back he got into the beer. It always starts with beer. Jake took the truck keys away from him, but he must have had another set made sometime, because the next thing we knew he was gone again.”

  “Where?”

  “Joyriding, like always. Barhopping. By the time we caught up with him, it was after one in the morning, and he was in Wiley Tavern out Two Rock way. Shit-faced. He’d been in a bar fight, had lost his jacket, was acting meaner than a snake. Took the three of us to drag him home.”

  “Does he do that often?”

  “Often enough. He’s not supposed to be driving. Hasn’t had a license in years. There’s been a lot of trouble with the sheriff. I’m scared to death that someday some deputy’s gonna take a shot at him, and that’ll be the end of D.A.” Her fingers clutched her coffee cup, their nails going white.

  “Isn’t there something you can do for him?”

  “You’re thinking maybe of a psychiatrist or a drug rehab clinic?”

  “Those are possibilities.”

  She laughed bitterly. “And how am I gonna pay for that? Look at this place.” She gestured around the room. “You see any customers? We don’t even have a phone anymore. They took it out last month because we couldn’t pay the bill.”

  “But after D.A. gets his inheritance—”

  “Jake and Harley’ve got plans for that money, and none of them have got anything to do with D.A.’s welfare.” Her voice had risen. She glanced over her shoulder toward the door and modulated it. “Besides, ain’t nothing can help D.A. Something inside that man is broken. Happened when he was in prison. You know about him being in prison?”

  I hadn’t, of course, but in a way the revelation didn’t surprised me. Prison does terrible things to most people—but particularly to those who are neither strong nor insensitive. By his own admission, Taylor was not a strong man; from my observations I knew he was not shallow or calloused. Rather than answer Mia’s question directly, I said,” I’m not clear on what he did that got him sent there.”

  “Me neither. It happened back practically before I was born. D.A. don’t talk about it—leastways anything that makes sense. Jake and Harley won’t talk about it. All I know was it was mixed up with Vietnam, and D.A. and his frie
nd being against the war. The whole thing was stupid, if you ask me. D.A. had a chance to go to college and better himself, and instead he ruined his life.” She paused. “Don’t suppose it matters anymore what happened. What matters is that he’s my husband and my babies’ daddy, and I got to take care of D.A.”

  I was silent for a moment, thinking of the people in this world who somehow always manage to be taken care of. While many of them are genuinely helpless, others are extremely clever in shifting responsibility for themselves to friends’ and loved ones’ shoulders. In D.A. Taylor I sensed a curious combination of the types, and I wondered if his young wife was aware of it. It was not, however, my place to point it out.

  I said, “Mrs. Taylor—”

  “Mia. I don’t like that ‘Mrs.’ Stuff. Makes me feel old.”

  ‘Mia, has D.A. ever mentioned anyone named Tom Grant to you?”

  “. . . not that I recall.”

  “What about Jenny Ruhl?”

  “Who’s she?” The response was quick and reflexive, tinged with suspicion. I supposed she was the jealous type and that her husband might give her reason to be.

  “She died a long time ago.”

  “Oh. No, I’ve never heard the name.”

  I reached into the zipper compartment of my bag and removed the medallion I’d found in the pouch with Hilderly’s gun. “Does this look familiar?”

  Her face tightened. “D.A.’s got something like that. Different letters, though.”

  “May I see it?”

  “ . . . I guess that would be okay.” She shivered, drawing her arms across her breasts. “It’s creepy—he hasn’t worn it, not ever so far as I know, but sometimes I catch him taking it out of the dresser drawer and looking at it like it’s some kind of . . . I don’t know, charm, maybe. Like it’s got power over him. I think it’s got something to do with . . . all that.”

  “All that?”

  “The stuff, you know that happened before.” She stood abruptly and moved toward the door. “I’ll get it. You best wait here.”

  While she was gone I went to the window and peered through the salt-caked glass at the bay. Hog Island was visible in sharp relief today, rocky prominences standing out among the thick trees. I thought of the allure the island had for D.A. as he sat at the end of his dock day after day; I remembered his stated intention of going there when things became too much here on the shore, and my uneasy certainty that he meant to take his own life. A life that he’d long ago ruined for what his young wife claimed was a silly cause.

  I didn’t agree with Mia on that. For one thing, the antiwar movement had not been silly; it had saved lives, gotten our troops out of a place where they had no business being, given us—for a time, at least—hope for the future. For another thing, D.A.’s ruination had its roots not in his antiwar activism so much as in his own internal weaknesses. He could just as easily have fallen prey to those weaknesses had he completed his education and gone on to achieve the full professorship of the partnership in the prestigious law firm or the place in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company.

  To me, D.A. Taylor was both a pathetic and heroic figure. Pathetic because of his drug abuse and inability to let go of the past, but heroic because of what that past had been. At least the man had once cared passionately about something besides himself, had stood up for what he believed in. Perhaps I was allowing my view of him to be colored by the negative feelings I harbor toward much of what is currently going on in America; the lack of compassion, the fear of taking risks, the failure to embrace and hold tight to unselfish ideals. But Taylor was a man who had tried to make a difference—at whatever the personal cost.

  After a while a motorized skiff piloted by Harley pulled up to the ramshackle dock behind the restaurant. The mangy dogs that had been sleeping in the sun—there seemed to be virtually dozens of them—jumped up and ran to meet him as he disembarked. In the kitchen that opened off the bar something made a pinging noise. A motor—the refrigerator’s?—whirred, ground, and stopped. I turned away from the window and surveyed the empty, cheerless restaurant.

  No amount of money, not even what Hilderly had willed to D.A., could reclaim this moldering place. No amount of renovation and financial acumen—which I doubted any of the family possessed—could make a go of the moribund business. Recalling what Mia has said about Harley and Jake having plans for D.A.’s inheritance, I made a mental note to speak with Hank and encourage him to convince Mia that the money should be placed in trust for D.A., her, and their children.

  The sound of the door opening broke into my musings. Mia entered, her face drawn and mouth pursed tight, as if to restrain tears. “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Something’s always wrong. D.A.’s woke up and wandered off again. I don’t know where—none of the trucks and cars is gone. And you know what? Maybe I don’t care. Maybe if he stumbles out onto the highway and a car picks him off, or if he falls in the bay and passes out and drowns, maybe that would be the best thing for me and my babies.” Her eyes flashed with anger now. She tossed her head defiantly.

  I sensed that anger was how she got through—that, and a devotion to her family that made me forgive her not understanding D.A.’s similar, although long-dead, devotion to the wrongness of the Vietnam war. I said, “You know you don’t mean that.”

  She shrugged and sat at the table again. I reclaimed my chair.

  “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “I don’t mean it. But I get so damn tired. Look at me: how old do you think I am?”

  “I can’t tell. I’m not a very good judge of age.”

  “You’re just trying to be nice. I’m twenty years old.” She smiled bitterly. “Twenty. Not even old enough to serve drinks here, though I do, when we get a customer who wants one. I was fourteen when D.A. knocked me up. My mother had to sign so we could get married. The way it was, I was working in a market down in Point Reyes after school, and he’d keep coming in and talking to me. I was so young and dumb I didn’t realize how fucked up he was. And then there was Davey, and I couldn’t let my baby go without a daddy, could I?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Jake and Harley came around after I told D.A. about the baby. They tried to talk me into getting an abortion. Said they’d pay. Maybe I was stupid not to take them up on it. You think I was stupid?”

  “Do you think you were?”

  “I don’t know. I love my kids. They’re mine; at least I have something. No way of knowing if my life’d been any better if they’d never come along. But sometimes I wonder—could I have made something of myself if I’d of at least had a chance?”

  Age-old question, never to answered. “Did Jake and Harley tell you why they were making such an offer?”

  “Oh, sure. They went on and on about D.A. being weirded out. But like I said, I was young and dumb and didn’t want to believe them. Fourteen, Jesus. I thought I could help him.” She laughed mirthlessly. “You hear that? Help him! I can’t even help myself.”

  “Mia, the money will make a difference.”

  “Not if Jake and Harley have their way.”

  “Hank Zhan can get around them—I promise.”

  Her eyes stared intently into mine for a few seconds. I thought I caught a glimmer of hope, but the she shrugged—as if to say she knew all about promises and that everything she knew was bad.

  “Anyway,” she said after a moment. “Here’s that necklace thing you wanted.’ She pushed a handful of gray metal across the table at me.

  I picked up the chain, which was the same type as the one I’d found at Hilleary’s, and let the letters dangle from it. They were an A and an M; the A was bracketed with the same kind of curved edging as the one on the other chain; there was also a clip-like protrusion on the back of the M. I took the other chain from my bag and lay the two beside one another on the table, beginning to visualize the whole. It would have been an oval, perhaps two inches across and three high. I wondered how many pieces it had been broken into.


  “May I borrow this?” I asked, pointing at the one that belonged to her husband.

  She hesitated, and then shrugged. “If you bring it back soon. D.A.’s gonna be too out of it for a while to notice it’s gone.”

  “Thanks.” I put both chains in my pocket.

  Mia asked. “Do you know what those are?

  “I think so.”

  “Some devil-thing, maybe?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “But then why does that one have this . . . power over D.A.? What does it mean?”

  “Nothing much now. But it’s not bad. You shouldn’t worry. It’s . . .” I paused, searching for the right words. “It’s nothing but a symbol of things that are over and done with.”