by Paul Hond
“You good?” Nelson called after him.
Ben looked back. “Yeah.”
Nelson raised a fist, then closed the door.
Ben stood there a moment, trying to bask in the warmth of the moment. Nelson. Could he have asked for a better friend?
He walked back to the bus stop, dribbling the ball with his right hand, almost wishing someone would get up in his face. With his left hand he reached into his pocket and probed the hole of the muzzle with a skinny finger. He was armed now, and he felt the pressure of the new obligations that being armed entailed. Was he a man or not? What excuse did he have not to avenge his mother?
His teeth chattering, he walked toward the homeboys who had called after him on the way to Nelson’s. Let them just try to rob him! They were playing a dice game against a wall, laughing, but even as Ben stopped twenty feet away and dribbled the ball they refused to notice him. But why? Were their instincts really that sharp? Surely they knew he was there; and yet they ignored him. After a moment, Ben found himself wishing he could join them in their game.
He walked on, then ran when he saw the bus pulling up. There was no one but old black women aboard, and a few little kids. He was armed, and now, wouldn’t it figure? there was no one around to provoke him.
He got off the bus and jogged home. Huffing down the alley, he pulled out the gun and waved it in the air. He came close to squeezing the trigger, and was pleased that he could control his fingers, that he could hold back if he wanted. The lumbrical muscles. His mother used to talk about that. The fingers.
He went around to the front and opened the door. By the sound of things back in the kitchen, no one heard him come in, or even realized that he’d been gone.
Mickey tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Benjie?” he said. “You awake? I thought you might like to see the water.”
They were driving on the eastbound span of the Bay Bridge. The water below was a dull silver with flecks of blue mixed in, the color, Mickey told himself, of Emi’s eyes. Tiny whitecaps erupted and faded like stars twinkling. There were few boats out because of the cold. A speedboat rocked over the choppy water, cutting a long white slash across the Chesapeake.
“Ben?” Mickey glanced over. The kid was sound asleep. Or maybe he was faking it to avoid conversation. Either way, Mickey was grateful. In the three days since the murder, things between them had been strained; Mickey was so busy with reporters, investigators (no suspects, no solid leads, though it was, Detective Flemke told him, still “early in the game”), the crematory, and with phoning his clients and vendors, that he’d barely had time to shed a single tear, to say nothing of trying to comfort Ben, who had withdrawn into a puzzling adolescent silence, an impenetrable bubble from which he could see out but no one could see in. Mickey had hoped for a breakthrough today, if not in the car, then by all means at the ocean, where they would walk out on the old fishing pier and scatter the ashes just as Mickey had planned, each holding part of the container and turning it over on cue.
Emi had made her wishes known years ago, and although cremation went against the traditions with which Mickey was most familiar, he’d agreed to see to it, should he survive her; they’d even shared a spooked laugh over the idea of a body reduced to ashes, though a minute later Mickey had frowned at the thought of his own splendid body decaying in a box. Maybe he ought to be cremated too, he now reflected, or preserved in some morbid fashion, though he had to admit that there was a certain dignity to ashes, an eloquence, a statement of modesty that seemed to honor the best in a person. Not that a burial would have been undignified. In fact, Mickey could see as how a traditional funeral might have even worked to his advantage, in that it might draw all sorts of interesting people from Emi’s life, including, perhaps, a certain gentleman who might reveal himself in the way he stood, the way he mourned, whose demeanor at the grave might shed some light on why, near the end, the deceased (as Flemke liked to call her) had been so cold toward the man who had loved her most.
Dense metallic clouds the color of the bridge’s suspension towers created a harsh, muted light; Mickey lowered the visor to keep out the glare. On the eastern horizon a white V passed high across the clouds. Canada geese? Yes: it must be. It was their time of year. Mickey recalled his old drives with Emi, the way he’d point such things out to her. They must have made this drive a hundred times.
Mickey tried it now. “Look, Benjie,” he said, pointing at the white-breasted birds. “Canada geese.”
There was no reply.
About thirty miles later Mickey pulled onto the gravel lot of a small general store. There was a motel across the road, then a couple of ramshackle houses.
Ben woke up. “Where are we?” he said.
“Getting close,” said Mickey. “You want anything from the store?”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay then.” Mickey got out of the car, heartened by this small exchange. He’d get the kid a soda anyway.
He pulled up the collar of his long coat and walked across the gravel. A bell tittered as he pushed open the shop door. The woman behind the counter looked at him; she wore a green polo shirt and a faded denim jacket.
“Mornin’!” said the woman. It was like a command, an attempt to startle him. She was blond, freckled, her skin and hair sea-whipped, wind-whipped. Rough lips, hands, strong white teeth. A salty, robust health whistled from her face like the menthol of a Fisherman’s Friend.
“Morning,” said Mickey. He looked around the place. Three aisles of basic provisions. Canned soup, powdered drinks. Fishing supplies at the back.
In the far aisle, a black boy of maybe sixteen was looking up at a shelf of breakfast cereals. Mickey felt a chill. The kid looked suspicious. Mickey wondered if the woman had delivered her greeting forcefully in order to alert the boy that she was no longer alone in the store; she seemed to sense what Mickey knew all too well: that a kid like this might be carrying in his pocket more than just a couple of nickels and a penknife. Mickey caught the woman’s eye to let her know that he was aware of the problem and would stick around until the boy got the picture and beat it. The woman returned what Mickey thought was a smile of gratitude.
“Looking for anything in particular, sir?” she said, loud enough for the boy to hear.
“As a matter of fact, I am,” Mickey said, matching her volume. He almost wished the boy would try something, just so he could jump the little bastard. He said, “I’d like a coffee and a Coke.”
“What’ll you take in the coffee?” said the woman, reaching for the pot. She seemed to relax some as she poured the muddy brew into a paper cup.
“A little milk, a little sugar,” said Mickey. He kept his eye on her, just in case she looked up for assurance. But she didn’t; no, she was good, she was just going about her business as though hoping to lure the boy into their trap. Maybe she had a gun of her own behind the counter there; Mickey could picture her heaving a shotgun, taking aim like an old-time matron of a saloon. Still, Mickey liked to think his mere presence an ample deterrent; so far, the kid hadn’t moved.
The woman turned her eyes in the direction of the boy. “Troy,” she said. “Could you bring this gentleman a Coke?”
The boy stared at the cereal boxes a moment longer, then slipped off to the refrigerator where the sodas were kept. Mickey felt the blood rise in his cheeks.
Troy brought the cold can to the front and set it on the counter, then picked up a rag there and returned to the back.
Mickey kept his head down as he fished in his pocket for change. He supposed he ought to feel like a horse’s ass, jumping to conclusions like that. But those looks he’d exchanged with the woman—what, then, had they meant? He’d figured everything wrong. It’s your state of mind, he told himself. Still in shock, et cetera. He gathered up his purchases and mumbled his thanks and leaned his shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge; he had to transfer the Coke into the hand that held the coffee and pull the door instead. Bells cackled.
Bac
k on the road, Ben said, “What about her car?”
“What about it?” said Mickey.
“What’s going to happen to it?”
Mickey sipped his coffee. He hadn’t even thought of that; her car was still parked at the crime scene, for all he knew. Or had it been towed? He’d have to make some calls when they got home. In any case, it was a hell of a thing to think about at a time like this. “I’ll probably sell it,” he said, not only to punish the kid for having asked such a selfish, insensitive question—obviously he wanted the thing—but because he meant it: that car would always be tied in his mind to what had happened, and he never wanted to see it again.
“You okay?” Ben said.
Mickey nodded, wiped his goddamned eye. He was okay. They’d’ve shot her anyhow, whether he’d told her to get out of the car or not. Mickey dared anyone to contradict this, though of course no one would. He alone had been there; he alone knew. Emi should never have parked there—she’d put them both in harm’s way. Stupid! And the craziest thing of all was that in his heart of hearts Mickey really believed this, really believed that he wasn’t responsible. That was the horror: it was as if a lack of guilt equaled a lack of caring. But that wasn’t true. He’d do anything to bring her back. Maybe, then, it was the general opinion that the wrong person had died that fueled his defiance, though of course he had no real proof of such a consensus. But why did he need a reason to feel guiltless? Weren’t the facts of the case enough? After all, everyone he’d talked to, from Flemke to Morris to Joe to Shirley Finkle, had told him it wasn’t his fault, even when he’d stopped suggesting that it was—as if they were concerned that he’d recovered too quickly, and were insisting on his innocence as a way to convince themselves that he was in a state of proper turmoil. Still, it was a strange sensation, this lack of guilt—like probing with your tongue for a missing tooth. Always that void, surprising and awful each time. But why awful? He’d been spared, for God’s sake. He’d have thought people might want to celebrate that; it could so easily have been worse.
“Maybe,” Mickey said, “this isn’t the best time to think about her car.” But he understood. To talk about her car was to deny the death. Mickey watched from the corner of his eye as Ben slumped down in his seat and looked out the window.
They drove in silence. The land was utterly flat under a sky that was taking up mellow swirls, the purple and pink of seashells. Between dried corn and soybean fields and reedy marshland lay old farmhouses, billboards hawking real estate or suntan oil, trailer parks, the odd inhabited shack, produce stands offering apples and pumpkins and Indian corn, even peaches, motels long and flat as the land itself and the occasional rambling shopping center.
Mostly, though, Mickey noticed the red leaves of the woods: sumac, dogwood, sweet gum. He thought to point them out, name them, but instead he fixed his eyes on the road until the world opened up and the smell of the sea filled the car, and the horizon ahead dropped off to nothing but white sky. Mickey breathed in. Gulls shrieked around the marshes. Then a horizontal bar of darkness rose above the distant trees: the sea, or a reflection of it. He turned down a back road. Ben sat up, tense and expectant as a dog by a door. Through a narrow passage of overhanging willow trees and wild hemlock appeared a bridge that took them over an inlet and onto a sandy strip of land. There were boat slips on the inlet, a marina, a bar, a police station.
They parked in a public lot. Mickey fed the meter and retrieved the container from the trunk. “This is how she wanted it,” he mumbled. The air was cold, raw, smelling of fish and dead wood. The sky was white, sagging; gray substratum clouds passed one another like ghostly ships. Mickey could hear the surf, the hiss of salt bubbling on the wet sand.
They walked down the sandy path toward the ocean. A lone fisherman stood about two hundred yards down the beach, water surging past his knees, his line taut against the current.
It was maybe sixty yards from the end of the path to the nearest tidemark. Mickey clutched the container and stepped carefully over the pebbly dunes that descended into a lumpy expanse of pale, tawny beach: wind-smoothed hillocks draped with long twisted ribbons of seaweed, scalloped with a million shells, bits of coral, the knocked-out teeth of the sea. Several gulls stood motionless in the sand, facing the waves.
Mickey spotted the old wooden pier in the distance. He headed toward it, conscious of his son behind him, stumbling over the sand. They arrived to find the entrance cordoned off by a rusty chain.
Mickey touched the chain, and was almost surprised that it didn’t electrocute him. He jiggled it experimentally.
“It might be dangerous,” Ben said. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“It’s fine,” said Mickey. “This pier’s been standing for years, it’s not going to fall down now. The ashes have to go out to sea.” He cleared his throat and added, “It’s the law.” He then raised the chain and ducked under it. It wasn’t ideal, having to trespass on condemned property, but what else could he do? He climbed the steps of the pier and advanced a few paces on its damp and rotting planks, feeling a thrill of lawlessness. “Come on,” he called down to Ben. He turned and walked to the end of the pier, the wind swelling the back of his coat. He heard Ben’s footsteps behind him.
He stopped just shy of the protective rail. The water was deep here. Mickey removed the container from his coat pocket. “Benjie,” he called through the wind.
The kid stood there as if on a precipice. “What if this thing collapses?” he said. He was halfway out.
Mickey held up the container to remind him of what really mattered. “Let’s go,” he said.
Ben lowered his head and started walking. Mickey held out his free hand, but quickly withdrew it for fear he might be snubbed. And who would blame the kid? A father, a husband, was supposed to protect his family; that was his job. What good was his outstretched hand if it had failed to defend his wife, failed to defend the mother of his only child? Not that he himself believed this, but he could see as how Benjie might.
“We could get arrested,” Ben said, coming closer. He looked back several times as if to make sure the patrols weren’t out; one hand kept playing around in his pocket. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
Mickey thought he understood: the kid wasn’t ready. Well, neither am I, Mickey thought. Maybe, then, they ought to postpone it, wait a few more days, weeks even. No one said they had to do it right away. And yet why shouldn’t they? With burials they got the body in the ground quickly, sometimes within hours of a death. Already it had been three days. The time was now. It seemed that Emi couldn’t truly be free until they released her.
“One of us can hold this thing,” Mickey said, “and the other can take off the lid. Then we can both hold it and tip it over.” It was like talking clinically about a sexual act; Mickey felt ridiculous, even ashamed. Was this the best he could do for her? Shouldn’t there be someone to say a few words?
Mickey held the container over the rail. “Benjie,” he said. “Take off the lid.”
“Shouldn’t we say something first?” Ben said.
“No,” said Mickey. He felt the tears coming again. “Come on now, take the lid off.”
Ben closed his eyes tightly.
“It’s okay,” Mickey said. He took a step, and Ben, hearing this, feeling it, stepped back and covered his face with his hands.
“Just give me a minute,” Ben said. He breathed in, out; the hands came down. “It’s cold,” he said. He sniffed. “Can we just do this?”
“Yes,” Mickey said. He held out the container and watched as Ben’s hands floated to it. His fingers picked at the lid. Mickey used his other hand to help. Their skin touched: Ben’s hand was warm. Mickey figured it was the hand that had been in his pocket. “Okay,” said Mickey. “Pull it off!”
Ben’s hands began to shake, and the trembling spread instantly to Mickey’s hands: their fingers twitched, fumbled, and in a frozen instant they watched openmouthed as the sealed container dropped straight down into the dark, deep
water.
It floated there, a tiny white object dipping and rising. Mickey stared. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
Ben stepped back. “It wasn’t my fault!” he said.
Mickey gasped. He leaned over the rail, searching. It was there, it was gone. He turned and rushed to the other end of the pier, a whimper in his throat. He ducked the chain and stumbled back on the sand. “Damn it!” he yelled. He rushed the tide, his feet sinking in the wet sand. He clutched at the air. He could hear Ben calling him, alternately apologizing and denying any blame. Cold: he was now ankle-deep in the water. He shook his fists at the waves.
The container was nowhere in sight.
How could it have happened—how could he have failed her? She was trapped forever, encased; they were all trapped.
Mickey slipped and fell, then got up with surprising quickness. His coat was soaked through and his hands were raw and red, the fingers dripping with wet, oily sand. He staggered back, unable to find his footing in the soft ground. He was overwhelmed: the ocean, the knife-colored sky, his own raging grief. There was a great power aloft in the mist. Mickey threw back his head and hollered up at it, a great bellowing syllable that encompassed all his anguish.
“Dad!” Ben called. “Don’t go back in!”
Mickey spat again, then turned and stumbled over the hillocks and dunes and up to the path that led back to the car, only half aware of Ben following after him at a frightened distance, the tail of a long strip of seaweed in his hand like a child’s blanket being dragged through the dust.
“Crumb? That you?” Nelson carried the phone into the kitchen. His little cousins were playing in the living room, and he couldn’t hear too well. “Where you at?”