by Austin,Robin
I wasn’t proud of what I’d done, but I wasn’t ashamed either. Even before I demanded he tell me, I was convinced that Kaufman had killed his own child. His pleas were irrelevant; I just wanted the confession he didn’t want to give, and managed not to.
It’s not my problem anymore. The police will figure it out after I find the grave in the woods. After I call them to dig up the bones of a baby who no one cared about enough to remember except one damaged psyche split in two by a madman.
I’m on the highway out of town when I pull over to heave the bile that’s churned in my stomach and burned my throat. It’s that damn pig jerky, I tell myself. I need something to help get rid of the taste, otherwise, I’ll never make the long drive back to Ruston. I turn around and drive to the restaurant where I dropped off Chris.
Baxter’s a decent size small town with decent people, the backbone of America with hard won American values. The restaurant is filled with dozens of them; chatter dominates as dishes clack from the grill to the tables and back. People are dressed mostly in work clothes, a few are dressed as if dinner at a diner is a special night out. The crowd is mostly older folks. A few teenagers try to temper their mischief making.
I look around for Chris but don’t see him. He should still be here, still waiting for Stevie. I sit at the counter and read the menu. My head is throbbing and my jagged nerves and low blood sugar threaten my balance. I order a chicken salad and coffee. The menu proudly proclaims that the salad comes with a full basket of rolls.
“I dropped someone off here earlier,” I say to the waitress. “Tall, thin man with short light brown hair, blond streaks, mid-twenties. He was wearing a pale green shirt and jeans. He had a ring in one pierced ear. I thought he would still be here.”
The woman looks tired. She raises a single eyebrow, her jowls droop. At first, I’m embarrassed. The older woman in search of this much younger man.
“He left,” she says. “Don’t none of us like those kind around here.”
“What kind is that?” I ask.
“Fags.” A male voice behind me booms. The waitress laughs and stomps off with her coffee pot, holding it at the hip like a six-shooter.
I turn to face the man. “Excuse me?”
“You know, homo’s, queers.”
“You mean my friend, Chris? Is that who you’re talking about? My voice is too loud. I blame it on the sugar, not my growing delirium. I need protein, more Tylenol, something solid and normal to hold on to.
The man is stirring his coffee in slow figure eights. He’s probably in his late forties, his hands are callused and stained. His shirt and jeans are a testament to hard work and a strong will. The backbone of America. I’m waiting for him to look up, to make another smartass remark when the waitress slams a plastic bag on the counter.
“Take out,” she says, flipping the ticket in my general direction.
The man laughs. I can still hear his spoon hitting the rim of his cup. A head, covered with a paper hat, turns and bobs behind the counter. The cook looks up and glares at me with spiteful eyes while the food on the grill sizzles and pops. Without a blink, he throws a plate on the pickup counter and calls out the order. The lively chatter has turned to whispers.
“That’s the thing about small towns. The people are always so damn friendly. Nobody would ever guess that so many of them are homophobic hillbillies.” I say this to the man next to me, loud enough for everyone to hear. I toss bills and coins across the counter, some drop to the floor. I’ve lost my mind.
As I cross to the door, I give strangers dirty looks and swing the door open so hard it doesn’t close on its own. I’m fighting tears and mucous is clogging my throat as I rush to my car and lock the door. I drive a ways down the road then stop to eat my salad, too weak to care that the waitress or the cook– probably both– put something vile in it.
I sit for awhile telling myself to relax, calm down, knock it off. Deep breathing isn’t enough, I need a gin and tonic. Still, I’m worried about Chris, even more than I should be. I fear that after they threw him out of the restaurant, he started walking in the direction Stevie would be coming… if he was lucky enough to be left to leave on his own.
I pull onto the highway and drive well below the speed limit. For all I know Chris is dead in one of the ditches I’ve already passed. I keep driving, over thirty minutes go by. Every pair of headlights in my rearview mirror terrifies me. My imaginary lynch mob either passes me or turns onto another road. Then I remember Chris used my phone and I pull over to resend the last number.
An elderly woman answers, and I ask for Stevie. She doesn’t know anyone by that name. “He’s a friend of Chris, Chris Williams?”
“Who is this?” she says, after a pause.
“A friend. I gave Chris a ride earlier.”
“Earlier than what? What’s this about? Chris has been dead for over a year.”
“Oh, I’m sorry– no, maybe Chris Junior? He’s young, in his twenties.”
“Yes, he was.”
“No. What?” I say, but she’s already hung up.
I scroll through the phone numbers and start to press the one I know is Stevie’s, the one I know the old woman will answer. Instead, I sit and watch the time on my phone tick by.
I’m parked on the side of a narrow highway on the outskirts of town after having almost– possibly– caused the death of a man, behaved unlady-like, as my mother would say, and frantically searched a dark country road for a young gay man that’s been dead for over a year. Crazy has finally come calling.
Just a mistake. The woman was old and senile. Technical problem with the phone, cell tower interference, something in the pig jerky or chicken salad.
I press one on the speed dial and listen to the rings until it goes to voice mail. “Hi, it’s me. I just wanted to say hello. Guess you’re sleeping. I hope alone… or maybe not. Take care of yourself, Rick.”
I’m back at the hotel, barely with a few hours of sleep when loud voices in the hallway wake me. It’s just as well, I’m anxious to get this over and done with. I leave in a fog, heading to Ashland.
A friendlier nurse is at the front desk and tells me Eunice is outside. I ask if Eunice ever had visitors on Sundays from the church. She smiles and says she doesn’t think so.
“They’d have to sign in though, right?”
“Yes, everyone signs in. But I can’t give you that information without permission.”
“Is Pat Fowler working today?”
“You mean Patricia Ann, Head Nurse Fowler?” She corrects me with a wicked grin and laugh. “No, she only works weekdays. You won’t ever find her here on a Sunday.”
I head outdoors. Eunice is sitting on a bench, staring into her world, the one she doesn’t have to share with the rest of us. I envy her, a self-serving indulgence.
For a moment, I wonder if Kaufman wasn’t right about that humane thing. Maybe Ruby was premature or seriously deformed, with no one who would want to care for her. No place to board her but Ashland.
I’d like to think that the man didn’t kill a perfect and innocent baby. But then what do I know? I’ve probably lost my right to judge.
The chain link fence installed after Eunice’s escape so many years ago has no openings. I go to the west side of the facility and decipher the workings of a maintenance gate latch, allowing me access to the woods. Allowing me to search for a tiny grave, one marked only by a wooden cross without a name.
The farther I walk, the taller the grass. Birds and snakes and other creatures complain about my presence, squawking and scattering when I get too close. I reach the end of the back fence and enter the woods and soon, the clamor of the patients is muffled.
The woods are thick, the mud is thicker. A nearby stream swishes and gurgles. I stop to listen for the bells that as a kid my mother convinced me the fairies rang to warn children not to go beyond the banks.
At the edge of the woods, I cross from west to east before going farther in and crossing again. High thickets
and rotted logs slow my progress and disrupt my pathway.
As I go deeper, the occasional squeals and wails from patients are replaced by the water now splashing and pounding the rocks. My boots are covered with mud, my steps are more calculated.
I stop at what I think is close to the east end of the facility, turn deeper into the woods and repeat my careful but zigzagged steps westward. I’m getting disoriented and can’t see Ashland anymore. I decide to make my way back towards the facility before I get lost, reorient myself and try once again.
I’m depending on the patients to guide me back and they do. A female voice shouts above the others. “Come on. Come on, this way.” I turn in her direction and trip on a rock, landing on my knee, and there it is.
A tiny cross, no more than three feet high, with two wooden slats held together by two rusted nails that are losing their grip. It’s almost hidden by leaves and pine needles. Yet still it’s visible and finally found.
Nothing states that a little body claims this as a final resting place, but I know it’s her. I listen for the voice that was calling me to this place, listen for any sound at all from Ashland. All I hear is the stream’s rushing waters.
I’ve brought twine and loop it around the rock I tripped over, preserving for the investigators’ benefit whatever may be left of the long ago crime scene. Then I trail the twine, weaving my way back to the clearing. Back to where I can see Eunice still sitting on the same bench, still staring into space, oblivious for now of what is to come.
I call the Ruston Police Station and wait. I’m watching Eunice, refusing to leave Ruby until they come for her.
Chapter Twenty Three
§
After the police came, I wanted to go back inside to talk to Eunice, to Matilda. To tell them Ruby will finally have a proper burial. But Detective Glen Martin from the Ruston Police has other plans for me.
This part I seem to have forgotten, at least how I was going to explain myself. As a reporter, I know lying to the police without good cause never turns out well. I just can’t think how to explain the events that led me to Ruby– not well enough anyway to sound logical and sane.
I sit in the backseat of Martin’s unmarked police car while he drills me and takes an initial statement. He tells me we’ll talk again soon– after he processes the scene.
Once I’ve walk far enough from the investigators not to be heard, I call Ashland. A nervous voice tells me they are on lockdown. I decide to return to the hotel and get some sleep, give everyone time to sort through my upheaval.
Unfortunately, I also forgot about the news coverage my discovery would elicit. About how quickly they can smell blood these high-tech days. I pass one television news van that is racing to Ashland. As soon as I get to the hotel, reporters are waiting. They’ve arrived like locust, ready to swarm and ravage for ratings, no matter the destruction. According to a utility van in the parking lot, at least one of those reporters is from The Stratton Herald.
My former editor is long since retired and replaced by someone young and eager, and of course, tech-savvy. That means one of the reporters standing at the hotel entrance has access to all the archived records, including those that have to do with me.
My phone rings and I think it’s one of the reporters, wonder if it’s Rick, and hope it’s not my mother. It’s Detective Gavin Carter from the Baxter Police Department. He’s on his way to Ruston and wants to make sure I’ll be available to meet with him at the station at two o’clock. I explain, very poorly, that I hope to be leaving town by then.
Carter says he needs to talk to me about Ira Kaufman. If he has to come to Stratton, he says with a taxing intensity, he will.
I agree to meet him at the Ruston Police Station, but only after he tells me Kaufman suffered a second heart attack. Just a few questions, he says, before he closes his file on the deceased. I hear him listening to my silence.
With a scarf and sunglasses as a disguise, I brave the walk across the hotel parking lot. “No comment,” I say as they rush me. “As soon as the police have finished their investigation, I’ll provide a statement for the press.” That haggard line I used to hate hearing feels good, powerful even.
“Denton Sledge, Stratton Herald,” says a skinny kid with a microphone in my face and a cameraman behind him.
“No comment,” I repeat.
“Come on, Jan,” Sledge says, like we’re old friends. “What’s going on at Ashland? You covered the Ira Kaufman rape trial thirty years ago. Does this have anything to do with Kaufman and his crimes? Is it true that the police have discovered a grave in the woods?”
The cameras are clicking and the other reporters have their microphones in my face now too. They’ve blocked my path as best they can. “Do you know who the victim was?” one of them shouts.
A Ruston police car pulls in with red lights flashing– so are the cameras. A determined voice over a loud speaker announces that the reporters are on private property and demands they move to the street. I turn and rush back to my car before I become front page news.
After a few sharp right turns and a brief stop in an alley, I find myself by the Methodist Church and decide to disappear into the Sunday crowd. This isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done considering I gave the detective Davenport’s name or rather Matilda’s chosen surname, guilt by association. I can’t claim innocence on my part though.
It’s been over three hours since I walked out of those woods. I doubt the Ruston police have talked to him yet. If anyone has, seeing me will require a lot of good old Christian forgiveness on the Pastor’s part, if he notices me. I admit a part of me wants to see the look on his face if he does, to see if the mask stays in place.
I park in the back lot and hurry inside. A few parishioners in the end pews almost smile at me. Twenty minutes later, Davenport says amen, and I come close to sliding out unnoticed when Shirley catches my arm and asks if she can talk to me. “Just for a minute,” she whispers.
“This isn’t a good time,” I say. “I’m going to Ashland then meeting someone before I head home. I just needed a few minutes of prayer–” this part I mumble then grimace. I’m close to the door with Shirley in tow, her hand still attached to my arm.
“It won’t take but a second,” she says, looking back before releasing me. I feel a cold chill as he says my name.
“Ms. Abbott. Nice of you to join us in service today.”
“Pastor. Thank you. It was a very nice sermon.”
“I’m sure you’re in need of God’s support during this trying time.”
Shirley has slipped behind me, almost hiding. “Yes, I do. Unfortunately, I’m a little short on time so if you’ll excuse me, I need to be going. Thank you again.”
Squeezing between a crowd standing in the doorway, I head to my car. When I pass the front of the church, I see Davenport standing on the sidewalk. He’s surrounded by church members, watching me drive by.
I’m going to try Ashland again. If I can get in and out before meeting with Carter, I can hopefully get out of Ruston without further delay.
A news crew is busy filming the police taped-off woods and doesn’t seem to notice as I stop and announce myself at the iron gates.
“Ms. Abbott,” a voice finally crackles through the intercom. “We’ve been instructed not to admit you.”
“Instructed by who?”
More silence. Then more muffled, the voice says, “Dr. Rodham.”
Martin already told me they’d notified Rodham. “Out of town,” he’d said. “Won’t be back until Monday afternoon.”
“I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge,” I yell into the intercom. Broken whispers crackle in the background before I’m told Dr. Rodham is unavailable, and no one is authorized to speak on his behalf.
I back away from the gates and stop not far down the road. The news crew is interviewing Martin at the edge of the woods. The Ashland grounds are empty.
Now, I have time to kill before my meeting with Detective Carter. I driv
e by the hotel, see the reporters, and head to the diner.
The place is packed and frantic. All eyes follow me across the room to a table piled with dishes.
“Sorry,” the waitress says, clearing and wiping. “We’re short staffed today. I’ll be back as quick as I can.” This latter part she says while walking away.
On my laptop, I stare at my partially written article. I intend to finish it because I have a contract that states I’ll be paid if I do. I suspect Rodham has already talked to Palmer, and that I’ll need an attorney to collect that payment; one who also does criminal defense, in case I’m not walking out of the Ruston Police Station today.
I’m giving Palmer and Rodham the story they want. The one about a state of the art facility and a loving community both in and outside of Ashland. An environment where mentally ill patients flourish and become highly functioning residents. Residents who enjoy friendships and the support of a professionally managed staff with an exceptional educational program that enables each, regardless of their bruised and broken psyches, to reach their highest potential. I have the quotes from Rodham, the statistics, and of course, proof positive from the samples that this story is all true.
It’s all bullshit as has been this assignment from the start. It was never even remotely about the truth. It was never the investigative report I wasted my time trying to make it. The article’s conclusion was predetermined, and the facts just needed to be tailored accordingly. Palmer should have hired a fiction writer. But I’ll write it just as she wants, without a word about Kaufman or Ruby or the tiny grave in the woods.
I’m ready to put it all to rest, but one thing’s nagging at me. One person’s input that I’ve excluded, purposely, foolishly.
At UCLA, one of my professors reminded us ad nauseam to use our heads when writing and our guts when investigating. I’d left out Patricia Ann Fowler, Ashland’s head nurse and former Kaufman co-conspirator. I’d done it for no other reason than I couldn’t stand the woman. That same professor also liked to lecture about the sins of the ego unleashed.