Inheritance

by Joe McKinney

  Mike was glancing over Paul’s shoulder, like he was expecting to hear a commotion at any minute.

  “Why?” Paul said. “What did you do?”

  “Well,” Mike said, “you know those stink bombs? The ones in the foil packets with the vial inside, you bust it open—”

  “I think I get it, yeah.”

  “Well, we probably ought to get going. Somebody might have, you know, set one off in Barris and Seles’ car. Sitting out here in this heat I imagine it’s probably gonna be pretty nasty-smelling in there.”

  “Nice,” Paul said.

  ***

  It took them twenty minutes to get out of the church parking lot, and there was still more than half the parking lot left to empty out behind them by the time they got on the road. Paul looked out the windshield and saw a long line of bumper-to-bumper police cars proceeding at a snail’s pace down the road, all of them with their emergency lights flashing. In the rearview mirror, the line was even longer. Traffic officers were stationed at the intersections along the route to the cemetery, and at one point Paul saw them bring traffic to a stop, spin on their heels, snap to attention, and cut crisp salutes as the widows’ cars drove by. He was baking in this heat, even though he was wearing short sleeves and had the air conditioner blowing full blast. He could only imagine what those guys were going through, directing traffic in their Class As and black gloves.

  Rachel watched one of the Traffic guys as they rolled through the intersection, and she said, “Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves. Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.”

  “Huh?” Paul said.

  “It’s a line from a poem by W.H. Auden,” she said. “I always thought the white and the black in that line was just a symbol of his grief. I didn’t know they really wore black gloves.”

  “They don’t, usually,” said Mike from the backseat. He had given up the front seat to Rachel so she could sit next to Paul while he drove. He said, “Most of the time they wear orange or green glow-in-the-dark gloves. Or none at all. Today is special.”

  “Oh,” said Rachel.

  There was a long moment of quiet, the only sound that of the straining air conditioner and the faint whir of the lightbar on top of the car.

  But then Rachel turned to Mike in the backseat and said, “You’re gonna take care of my husband, aren’t you Mike?”

  “Rachel,” Paul said.

  Rachel ignored him. Still looking at Mike she said, “You will, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” Mike said. “But you know, Paul doesn’t have as much to worry about as you think. He’s got good instincts. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. A lot of officers, they get in trouble because they let their pride get in the way of their common sense. It’s easy to do. Hell, I’ve done it before. But not Paul. He knows when it’s best to just shut up and let it roll off his back.”

  “Like how? Give me an example.”

  “Rachel, come on,” Paul said.

  She turned almost all the way around to face Mike. “Let him talk, Paul. I want to hear what my husband is like on patrol.”

  Mike said, “Oh crap. Sorry, buddy.”

  “Yeah right,” Paul said.

  “Tell me,” Rachel said. “Paul says you’ve got a story about just about everybody on the Department. I bet you’ve got one on Paul.”

  Mike laughed. “Yeah, all right. The other night. We arrested this crazy lady for throwing goat’s blood all over this other lady. He tell you about that?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Goat’s blood?”

  “It was pretty gross. Anyway, Paul gets her in the car, and the whole time this woman is telling him all sorts of stuff about how he’s been marked and how he has a charge to keep and all this other witch crap. I swear I was ready to brake check her, you know? Slam on the brakes and let her take a face-first dive into the prisoner cage. But not Paul. He just reaches up and closes the vent window, lets it all roll off his back.” He leaned forward and gave Paul a slap on the shoulder. “You’re doin’ good, buddy.”

  He smiled at Rachel and went back to looking out the window.

  Rachel slid back down into her seat and spent a few moments looking at her hands folded in her lap. Then she turned to Paul. Paul stared back at her, and he could almost read her thoughts in her eyes. That’s what you said to me the other night. What your father told you, that you have a charge to keep. It can’t be true, can it?

  ***

  They arrived at the San Antonio Municipal Cemetery some twenty minutes later and shuffled to the graveside. A tent had been placed over a row of chairs so that the widows and their families could sit in the shade and listen to the service and be close by to receive the neatly folded flag handed to them by the chief.

  Paul stood between Rachel and Mike, shuffling uncomfortably beneath the relentlessly bright sun that burned the back of his neck. He could smell Rachel’s perfume, and that was nice. But he could also smell all the other bodies crammed in around them, and that wasn’t so nice. He touched Rachel’s hand and she closed her fingers around his. He looked down at her, and she smiled back at him and gave his hand a little squeeze.

  There was a breeze moving through the trees, but it was barely strong enough to jostle the leaves. Paul looked out over the endless stretch of white marble grave markers, and he remembered the funerals he had attended for both his parents. Both were miserable, quiet affairs, with only a priest and one or two local folks there to show their support for Paul, nothing at all like the very public show that this double funeral was designed to be. The little country graveyard where his parents were buried could probably fit in one small corner of this place. And yet, for all the added show, for all the pomp and circumstance and size of the spectacle, it was just as quiet here as it had been at both of his parents’ funerals. There was an occasional cough. Sometimes a baby would cry. But for the most part, it was silent. Everywhere he looked Paul saw people with their heads turned down to their feet. A few had their eyes closed. Others were murmuring prayers.

  And then one of the chaplains was speaking again.

  “From the Gospel of Matthew,” he said, his voice carrying easily in the still air. “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

  Paul found himself drifting, partly out of tiredness, partly out of distraction. The image of his father in that Mexican motel room flared up in his mind. He saw the man leaning over a muddy toilet and screaming in pain as he tried to pee because he had thought the combination of hallucinogenic wild mushrooms and peyote and a whore’s crotch would force open the doors to perception. Paul wondered what would make a man crave knowledge like that, like he wanted it more than he wanted his own life. It was a dangerous question, he knew; for once he understood that impulse, once he knew what had driven his father to be the kind of man he was, to make the kind of choices that he had made, he would understand the man. And Paul had enough sense to know that understanding is the same thing as becoming. Understand the man, become the man.

  You have a charge to keep.

  The chaplain went on. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. Love does not insist on its own way. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw the color guard readying their rifles for the salute. He saw the line of chiefs standing by patiently, ready to offer their sympathy and support to the sobbing widows.

  Paul squeezed Rachel’s hand. She had seen them, too, for Paul heard her gasp, and when he looked at her, he saw a woman whose sensibilities had just been fiercely shaken.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath. She was looking at Herrera’s two year old son, standing next to his mother. Somebody had dressed him in a miniature version of his daddy’s uniform, and he stood stiffly, picking at the
seat of his pants, uncomfortable in the heat and mystified by the spectacle going on around him.

  He turned slightly and tugged at the hem of his mom’s dress, and Rachel clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Love never ends,” said the chaplain. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.”

  There was a stir as the color guard called out their commands. At the first volley, Rachel jumped.

  Paul looked at her and saw she was crying.

  The color guard fired twice more, and both times Rachel jumped.

  ***

  When the service ended, the assembled crowd moved as a slow, somber wave across the lawn of the cemetery towards their cars. Rachel had stopped crying. She had retreated inward again, though this time Paul knew it wasn’t because of him, and he felt a little ashamed at himself for feeling glad about that.

  Paul remembered a time when he and Rachel were in bed one night in the little house on Huisache, watching a documentary on JFK. The show replayed the famous scene of John F. Kennedy Jr., a toddler of maybe two or three at the time, coming to attention and saluting his father’s casket as it passed by. The scene had made Rachel groan in her pity for the boy, and she had said something under her breath about the sadness the boy had just inherited. Paul thought back on that moment now, and he thought of Herrera’s little boy, and he thought he understood exactly what she had meant that night.

  And then somebody bumped his shoulder, hard. He turned, an annoyed expression on his face, and was shocked to see Magdalena Chavarria standing there in a simple black dress, a black shawl draped over her shoulders. She didn’t speak, but she did stuff a note into his hand. Paul looked down at it, a simple piece of folded-over white paper no bigger than a bookmark, and back to Magdalena. But she was gone that fast. She just melted into the crowd.

  “Paul?” Rachel said.

  The crowd was trying to move around him, but they were packed in shoulder to shoulder, and he got bumped more than a few times.

  “Paul?”

  He looked down at the paper and opened it. Eight words were printed there. Just eight words, but they took his breath away.

  Come see me. I can answer your questions.

  “Paul?”

  He looked at the paper, then folded it over and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Coming,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  Paul and Rachel sat at the little folding card table in their kitchen. Rachel was drinking a cup of coffee, Paul a glass of milk. The morning sun was coming in through the windows, and as Paul looked across the room towards their bed the stillness of the place irritated him. He was covered in sweat and dust from his shift the night before, and he was exhausted. Between the funeral the day before and working all night he had slept little. And yet, for as tired as he felt, he was still restless. He felt like there was something calling to him, waiting for him, only it was too faint, too distant to get his mind around.

  “That thing on your forehead still worries me,” Rachel said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “That bruise. Shouldn’t it have started to get a little better by now? It’s been a week.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Yeah I know, but...Paul?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, though in his head he was miles away, thinking about the past. “It doesn’t hurt, Rachel. I promise it doesn’t.”

  “Okay.” She sipped her coffee and watched him. “Paul?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking about what Mike told us in the car. That woman you arrested?”

  He looked at her.

  “Magdalena Chavarria.”

  “Is that her name?”

  “Yes.”

  Rachel looked down at her coffee. “That woman said you have a charge to keep. Was that what she said? Those were her exact words?”

  Paul didn’t say anything.

  “What does that mean, Paul?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Like Mike said, she’s just a crazy old lady.”

  “But you said...Isn’t that what you told me your dad said when you...when you saw him in that...?”

  He just stared at her. He wasn’t trying to make this difficult for her, but he couldn’t do anything about the way it was unfolding either. There was so much she didn’t know, even after all he had said to her. And he wasn’t even sure it made sense to him. As soupy as his head was, he could probably babble on for a million years and not get any closer to explaining it for her.

  “Paul, I want to talk to you about this. I think it’s fair for you to know that I just can’t make myself believe it. I want to believe what you’ve told me, but it’s just so...so strange.” She waited a beat, then said, “I have to go to work now, but I want to talk to you, Paul. Can we talk tonight, before you go to work?”

  “Sure,” he said. He traced the curve of her face, the delicate point of her chin. “Sure,” he said. “Tonight. We’ll talk then.”

  ***

  Paul watched her go through the kitchen window. He had the Barber in his hand and he was practicing a few simple vanishings. Down below Rachel paused and looked up towards the window. She raised one hand in a wave that seemed hesitant, almost cautious, then turned and got into her pickup and backed out. He listened to the sound of her pickup accelerating into traffic, and when that sound was gone, he got up, crossed the apartment to the bed, and began to peel off his sweat-soaked uniform.

  He took a shower, and though it felt good to clean off the grime of the east side, it didn’t do anything to settle the restlessness that filled him. He thought about eating something. Some fried chicken maybe. But he knew it wasn’t food he wanted. What he really wanted was to feel the way he’d felt during his vision of his father in Mexico. He wanted to experience more of that bond with the man that he realized he was only now starting to get to know. And wasn’t that funny? Paul had to kill the man to understand him.

  No, he thought, correcting himself, No, that really isn’t all that funny. None of it is. Not all the death. Not the confusion. Not the fear. Not the unknowing. None of it is all that funny.

  He put on a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt, then went around the apartment turning on the box fans that he and Rachel had started using because the air conditioner just couldn’t be counted on anymore. Rachel said she woke up four or five times a night because of how hot she got. During the day he sometimes had to go to the kitchen and put a wet rag in the freezer box so he could put it on his forehead while he slept. The landlord had promised to get the unit fixed, but so far they were still baking.

  Once he had a good cross breeze working through the apartment he went back to the recliner next to the bed and put the box of stuff from his father’s house on the floor in front of him. He went through the contents one by one, taking each picture out and holding it in his hands, waiting for that certain image to rent the veil between this world and the other, the one where his father waited. He paused for a long time over the picture that had set his last vision in motion, the one of his father and mother and him on his mother’s hip in front of the house in Smithson Valley, and when nothing happened he grew irritated with himself, angry that he wasn’t doing something he was supposed to know how to do.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Finally, frustrated, he tossed the pictures back in the box and kicked it away from him. The box slid across the hardwood floor and struck the wall, where it made a small, dark hole.

  “No,” he said, thinking about the three hundred and fifty dollar security deposit they wouldn’t be getting back now. “No.”
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  He crossed the floor to the box and pushed it aside. Then he probed the hole in the wall with his fingers and was surprised at how mushy the drywall felt. Almost like it was rain-sodden.

  “Fuck,” he said. Then, almost shouting it, “Fuck! Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  Wait. Maybe I can fix it.

  He threw on a pair of jeans and went down to his truck to get his toolbox. When he came back up he sat Indian style on the floor in front of the hole and opened the toolbox. He pushed a hammer and some screwdrivers aside, looking for a retractable blade. But when he picked up a battered old Craftsman socket wrench, he went numb.

  He raised it to eye level and saw “M.H.” scratched into the handle. His father’s wrench. He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, and when the world around him started to turn hazy and dark and a different world began to take its place, Paul Henninger smiled and let it come.

  ***

  It took him a moment to realize where he was. The floor beneath him was a metal mesh catwalk. The walls were not walls, but metal railings. Metal pipes crisscrossed above him, throwing striped shadows across the catwalk. Ahead of him the catwalk joined with the floor of a large, circular chamber. Paul heard the sounds of men working, voices yelling on the catwalks around him, heavy trucks straining in low gear down below him. The smokestacks gave it away. He could see them peeking out over the rim of the chamber ahead of him and to the left, and he realized this was the Morgan Rollins Iron Works—not as he knew it, but as it had once been.

  A transistor radio was playing one of his favorite songs, The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” and it brought a smile to his face. He followed the music into the chamber and saw a big diesel generator hunkered down in the middle of the room like a sleeping dinosaur. Machine parts were scattered everywhere. The place smelled like dust and oil, but it wasn’t an unpleasant smell. Sunlight filled every corner of the room, but it wasn’t hot. It felt like springtime.