Dead Sand

by Brendan DuBois

  So there I was, and usually these moments of peace and repose calmed me down and made me ready for a good night’s sleep, but not on this October evening. I was thinking more of yesterday, seeing Bronson Toles getting murdered, and seeing my friend Paula fall to the ground. I also thought of Paula in the hospital, how much she had changed overnight, and how she had sprinted away from the demonstration earlier today. Then there was Diane Woods, doing her job, living her life in a closet, and wanting so much to break out. And, of course, my dear Annie Wynn, no doubt in some anonymous hotel room, working hard to elect a man she believed in president.

  All these women in my life, I thought, looking up at the stars, all trying to live, trying to survive, trying to make a difference.

  What was I up to?

  I put the binoculars down, took a sip of wine, and watched the stars some more.

  * * *

  The next day I stopped at the offices of the Tyler Chronicle, stuck on the first floor of an old office building in the center of Tyler proper, which is a few miles west of its famous beach. I wandered in through the back entrance, past piles of newspapers and walking on stained industrial-strength carpet that was worn in plenty of areas. Cables and power cords snaked out through the suspended ceiling, and up ahead was a tiny warren of desks with computer terminals on top. The place was empty, save for the Chronicle’s editor, Rollie Grandmaison, who was sitting before his own terminal, peering at the screen over half-frame glasses, and typing with as much effort as if the keyboard had been printed in Japanese.

  Rollie could have been sixty, seventy, or eighty, and if anyone knew, they weren’t saying, and he had on his usual uniform of black trousers, white shirt, and black necktie, and what little hair remained was plastered over a freckled scalp. He didn’t look up as I approached his cluttered desk, but he grunted and said, “She’s not here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I don’t know where she is, either. I just know she’s out working. Probably be at the Stone Chapel in a couple of hours, for that memorial service.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, “but I’m not here to see her.”

  That caused Rollie to look away from the screen, and before he could say anything else, he had a fit of coughing that turned his face the color of a stop sign. Another secret was the status of his health, which was why Paula had gotten a promotion some months ago to assistant editor, to help out Rollie.

  If Rollie was grateful for that, though, he kept that emotion as secret as his age and state of health. When he stopped coughing I said, “I’m actually here for a favor, Rollie. I was hoping to look through your clip file.”

  “What for?”

  “Want to see what kind of stories you’ve got on Bronson Toles and the Stone Chapel.”

  He took off his black-rimmed half-glasses, rubbed at his eyes, and said, “Anyone else I’d tell ’em to go screw, that I had better things to do, but Paula … well, consider it done. Go on down to the cellar and I’ll send along my college intern for the fall.”

  I looked around the empty office. “You’re still getting interns? And paying them?”

  Rollie said, “Oh yeah, we’re still getting them, but we’re not paying them. Those days are gone. Most of the time, we use ’em where we need ’em. Filing, answering the phone, filling out classified ad forms.”

  “Don’t think they’d learn much by doing that,” I said.

  Rollie grinned. “They’re learning a lot, I promise you. About real life, and buddy, for most of ’em, that’ll be the most important thing they ever learn.”

  * * *

  In the basement of the Tyler Chronicle it was damp and musty, with a sump pump in one corner that Paula told me often fought a losing battle over rainwater seeping in. On wooden stands there were filing cabinets and bound back issues of the Chronicle, and in one corner an abandoned darkroom from the days when photos came about from a mixture of film, chemicals, photo paper, and odd men and women who often seemed to have sniffed too many of the chemicals over the years.

  Before me was a scarred wooden table, and deposited on the table by a quiet college-aged boy who had a phone headset attached to one ear was a thick green file folder, and with open notebook in hand, I started going through the clip file for Bronson Toles and the Stone Chapel.

  The old smell of the glue and tape tickled at my nose. The first clippings were stories about a mansion that had once belonged to Bonus Norton—a wealthy Tyler businessman from the early 1900s—that had burned to the ground in 1977, with the only surviving structure being an adjacent stone chapel that was used by Mr. Norton so he didn’t have to travel far away from his beloved home on Sundays to attend services. Further articles went on about the ruins being bulldozed, a small-scale housing development going on the property, and the stone chapel and its land being bought by a collective led by a graduate student from Harvard named Bronson Toles. From there, the clippings told stories about different rock bands and folk groups that played at the Stone Chapel—now fully owned by Bronson Toles—and how the Stone Chapel was known as a place where groups made their debut before “breaking out.”

  Which was true, for there was a clipping from Time magazine in 1983 listing the number of famous bands that got their start at the Stone Chapel. More clippings followed, with more photos of Bronson Toles—one showing him at an event, recording the music with one of those old-fashioned reel-to-reel recorders—and then, in the late 1980s, Bronson branched out into protests, social justice causes, and the like. Nuclear freeze, organic food, free-range chickens, sustainable coffee, renewable energy, and the usual other issues. A number of presidential candidates also showed up at the Stone Chapel to get Bronson Toles’s blessing, and twice over the years, the Stone Chapel was threatened with closure because of increased utility bills and property taxes. Somehow Bronson rallied, and along the way, a few years back, he married one Laura Glynn, who became Laura Glynn Toles, and there was a happy wedding photo of the groom and bride and best man—a very young Victor Glynn Toles—standing inside a flower-strewed Stone Chapel.

  So there it was. A man’s life and career in one thick folder, with space for the next clipping, his murder and subsequent funeral.

  I checked the time. The memorial service for Bronson was set to begin in less than a half hour.

  * * *

  The Stone Chapel was located next to a housing development called Norton Meadows, at the upper end of Tyler, just a few hundred yards away from North Tyler. The beach was nearby but not visible; what was visible was the hordes of people lining up to try to get inside. I parked and grabbed my reporter’s notebook and my ever-useful press pass, and I lucked out, for the press pass did have value this morning. Off to the left, by the full parking lot, was a yellow rope line with a handmade sign dangling in the breeze that read: MEDIA THIS WAY.

  The Stone Chapel was made in a sort of faux Romanesque style, with tall stained-glass windows, and double wooden doors that led inside. To the rear was a small attached two-story cottage that was probably the living quarters for the Toleses. The media entrance was a side entrance off to the left of the chapel, and a somber-looking young man with a handlebar mustache, patched jeans, and a tie-dyed T-shirt looked at my press pass and gestured me in. Inside, the place was packed, standing room only, with a raised stage at the near end. Light came from the stained-glass windows and lamps hanging down from black chains. The area roped off for the media was near a stone wall that held framed photos of musical groups that had played at the Stone Chapel, each photo with a grinning Bronson Toles standing nearby, and a couple of him sitting behind some recording gear.

  There was also a wide cork bulletin board with photos of the workers here at the chapel, and among the dozen or so photos, I noted one of Haleigh Miller, my UNH contact, smiling and standing with a group of young people, including Vic Toles, Bronson’s stepson. Other photos of young ladies were there as well, most of them with Bronson Toles standing with his arm around them.

&nbs
p; Banners were hanging from rafters up in the ceiling, promoting either the usual leftist causes or musicians, and even with the people inside, it was fairly cool. Up on the center of the stage was Bronson’s casket, a green and white flag draped over the plain wood. Also up on the stage were speakers and microphones and stools for musicians, and there were a few people up there, talking to each other. Vic Toles was standing by himself, arms crossed, staring at the casket of his stepfather, while his mom was a few feet away, talking to someone in an animated way, lots of hand movements, facial expressions changing like the flipping pages of a book from humor to anger to sadness. The someone she was talking to was wearing pressed jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black suit coat, and he had sunglasses perched above his carefully coiffed blond hair. He stood there with arms folded as well, nodding here and there.

  Somebody nudged me. I turned and smiled. It was Paula Quinn, looking tired, wearing khaki slacks and a black turtleneck sweater.

  “Hey, good to see you,” I said. “I was worried yesterday. I didn’t see you leave.”

  “Well … I chickened out. Something about the marchers and seeing the cops and National Guardsmen in all their paramilitary gear … it seemed like something violent was about to break out … and I didn’t want to be there.”

  “It stayed pretty quiet, all things considered.”

  “I know, I know. I just … panicked. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  “Lewis—”

  “Look, we’ve got time, and I really want to know what happened.”

  Then it looked like Paula shrank into herself, as if I had just had a visual premonition of what she would look like fifty or sixty years down the road. She started to speak, stopped, then caught herself and said, “I felt … exposed. Standing on that bare patch of ground, with all those people around … and the woods out in the distance, beyond the marshes. It sounds crazy, but I was thinking about the sniper who killed Bronson. I’m sure he had a telescopic sight. Am I right, Lewis? A shooter like that, he’d have to have a telescopic sight to make that kind of shot.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said.

  “Then the bastard saw me,” Paula said, voice quivering. “He saw me when he was aiming at Bronson. He had to … and I’ve been thinking about that. That he saw me, then moved his rifle just a bit, and pulled the trigger—but what if I had moved instead? What would have happened? It would have been me dead up on the stage, not Bronson.”

  “The killer was aiming at him, not you,” I said, “and you’re here.”

  She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I know that. I know I’m here. I also know there’s a killer out there who saw me, who took note of me … and suppose he liked what he did to Bronson and decided to go after somebody female next? What then?”

  “Paula, the chances that—”

  “So when I was up there, at the plant site, with all those people, I started getting nervous. Scared. I imagined that the shooter was still out there, in the woods, watching us all … and maybe he was going to kill Bronson’s wife the next time … or his stepson … or maybe he saw me out there, standing there, and he knows what I look like, and … I had to get out of there, Lewis. I had to get out of that plant and Falconer and go home and lock the doors and have a good cry.”

  “I see,” I said. “So how are you doing today?”

  Paula stayed quiet and motionless, and then she shook herself, and some sort of transformation occurred, for now she seemed to be her own age. “Oh, I’m hanging in there—and I’m glad to be here … honest, I am.”

  “Really?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “No, not really. I have to be here, I have to keep working—though to tell the truth, I’d rather be curled up in bed, reading Jane Austen, with the computer, cell phone, and landline phone off.”

  “Come on, you’ve told me that you’ve read and reread all of her books at least a half dozen times.”

  “True, but you know what? It’s comforting, you know? No surprises, nothing bloody, everything genteel and soft, the good ones get their rewards in the end. After last week—it’s pretty seductive.”

  “I see.”

  She gave me a rueful laugh. “Jane Austen … it’s all fantasy. As well written and special as it is, those books show a slice of upper-class, privileged life. When sweet Jane was living and writing her books, a starving ten-year-old girl could be hanged in London for stealing a loaf of bread.”

  Then came the hum of a sound system being turned on, and as I had the day before, I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and as she had the day before, she turned away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The memorial service started, and then went on, and then went on. No offense to the memory of Bronson Toles, I was bored to tears after the first half hour or so. Speaker after speaker went up and rambled or ranted about the man, about oppression, about imperialism, and oh yeah, about a certain nuclear power plant. I took notes the best I could, wondering how regular news reporters could do this, day after day, without turning to heavy drinking. At least when I was a lowly columnist, I could choose my own topic, something that interested me. I really had no interest in being here, save for keeping my fairly well-paid job. It wasn’t just me, I either; could see some of my fellow scribblers yawning, with some of the more sneaky ones texting on their cell phones or PDAs. Even some in the audience seemed restless, with the applause and cheers declining for each subsequent speaker.

  After time dragged on for another hour or six, Laura Glynn Toles came to the microphone, and the crowd came alive, cheering and applauding and whistling. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked as if she had gotten maybe a handful of hours of sleep over the past couple of days. She had on a long multicolored peasant skirt, heavy boots, and a gray cable sweater. She came across the stage and touched the bare wood of her husband’s casket. More cheers. Laura walked up to a microphone and held up both of her hands. To her side was Vic, applauding, biting his lower lip, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  When the applause and cheers finally died away, Laura bent her head to the microphone and said, in a hoarse whisper, “I’m … I’m so sorry that I cannot speak for very long … for my voice is slipping away … though my spirit is still fighting.”

  The cheers came up again, and again she raised her arms to silence the crowd. She coughed a couple of times and then lowered her head. “I … I have nothing more to add … to add what my wonderful friends have said before about my husband, my soul mate, my fellow traveler on the journey to make this a safer and more sustainable world.”

  A few more cheers, but others in the crowd tried to silence their friends, to let her continue talking. She took a few moments to wipe at her eyes and said, “What … what I have to say next is important … but sad … I have to say … that with my dear husband’s death … it has … the time has come to close the Stone Chapel.”

  The place erupted with shouts, cries of “No!” and more yells. By me the reporters had stopped yawning and texting and were busily writing up their notes, taking photos of the slim form of Laura, up there onstage. She shook her head and turned away, then came back to the microphone. The crowd eventually became quiet, and she coughed again and said, her voice even more hoarse, “We have done so much here … but it is time to move on. This place … this place was kept alive by Bronson … and with his death … I cannot run it by myself.”

  “We’ll help you, Laura!” came a woman’s shout, and more cheers. She smiled and said, “No … this was Bronson’s place … his and his only … and I know someone will eventually reopen the Chapel … maybe someone here in the audience … but there is something more important … for all of us. That is … the day after tomorrow … the day after tomorrow … all of us will be there in Falconer, there in Falconer to march across the marshes, march over the fence line, and march onto Falconer to shut her down!”

  With that last phrase, she had raised her fist, and now she said again, louder, “Shut her down! Shu
t her down!”

  The audience quickly took up the cheer, echoing her, making it louder and louder, and it seemed like the banners overhead were fluttering from the impact of the hundreds of voices.

  * * *

  There was a brief media availability in the Stone Chapel’s greenroom, where performers would wait until being called onstage. Laura Toles was stuck in a corner, surrounded by camera crews and radio reporters with extended microphones, and she looked like a female quarterback in a huddle with her teammates, though she certainly didn’t look like she had any control over them. Lots of questions were being tossed her way, and she was doing her best to answer in a voice that was raspy and hoarse.

  I edged up the best I could and then stepped away. The frenzy here was for the electronic media, and although I guess with my new marching orders from Denise Pichette-Volk I was somewhat electronic, I felt out of place with my pen and notebook.

  In another corner of the room, where chairs had been piled up, Vic Toles stood by himself, watching his mother do her best with the loud questions being directed her way. I went up to him, and he looked at me and gave me a nod, and I nodded back. He had on worn dungarees and one of those blue and white sweaters that were supposedly popular with preppies a decade or a century ago.

  “Lewis Cole,” I said. “Shoreline magazine. Sorry about your loss.”