by George Wier
It was Ty Hennessey.
He spoke of pleasant evenings with the Judge and his wife, of tall tales told out of school, of service to family, community and nation, and of warm smiles and even warmer embraces.
Julie wept. She’d never met the man, but something had been stirred inside her. Perhaps she had seen my face. She tried to pass me a tissue, but I wouldn’t take it. I wiped my tears away with my thumb.
*****
As we filed past him one last time, I couldn’t help myself. I reached over and touched his cool right hand.
*****
Outside, underneath the over-arching boughs of tall elm trees, a group of friends huddled close together. Ty, Lief, Darla, Tate Lancing.
“They’re waiting for you, Bill,” Julie said. “Go to them. I’ll wait.”
I went.
Five friends, a family of sorts, smiled and shook hands and hugged each other so tightly that it hurt. Few words were said. What good are words anyway?
It was only a few moments that I spent with them, but they were good moments.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Darla and Lief were married the next day. It was a small but happy affair.
Darla wore a beautiful, white wedding dress ― her mother’s. Lief wore a black suit and cowboy boots. He was no less than fifteen years her senior, but they complemented each other in the way that couples who are right for each other always do despite their apparent differences.
They stood before a Justice of the Peace, exchanged vows and went out into the warm sunshine. And that was it.
*****
During the trip home, Jennifer insisted that she be allowed to sit in the front seat between us. After a great deal of wrangling around, Julie managed to fish the middle safety belt out from between the seats and dusted it off. I hadn’t known that they existed until that moment.
Jennifer talked to us most of the way home. She had comments about everything: the silly games that Luke had played with them where they pretended to be different kinds of animals and make funny sounds, about her grand idea that illegal aliens shouldn’t necessarily have to go back to their home planet as long as they stayed friendly and didn’t shoot people with their laser beams. Stuff like that. Julie and I winked and smiled at each other and listened attentively.
From the back seat Jessica and baby Michelle didn’t let out so much as a peep. Jessica had her portable CD player and her headphones on. Whenever she took them off for mere seconds at a time to put them on her baby sister’s head, I caught the deep bass and staccato caterwaul of rap music.
Kids these days, I thought.
We stopped for supper at a roadside diner in the town of Round Rock. For some reason I wouldn’t let anybody sit near the windows, but instead chose a booth near the rear of the restaurant where I could see the doorway to the kitchen. Go figure.
After dinner, as the sun was going down through the telephone wires and trees, Jennifer noticed something.
“What’s that, Daddy?” She asked.
“What, darling?”
“That. Is it a book?”
It was the journal, sitting there innocently on my corner of the dashboard.
“You’d better tell her,” Julie said. “If you don’t you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Okay.” I picked it up and handed it to her. “It’s a journal. That’s a book where people write down the things they’ve seen and done.”
“Oh. Like a documentary on paper.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Documentary. That’s a pretty big word.”
“What is this one about?”
“Well... You remember when we were talking about the bad people?”
“Of course I do, Daddy. I don’t forget things like you do.”
“That’s right. You don’t ‘cause you’re very smart. It’s a journal from one of the bad men.”
“What does it say? Does it say bad things?”
I shuddered. I couldn’t help it.
“Yes, darling. It does. But fortunately I can’t read it. It’s written in German.”
“Oh!” she said. I suppose that explained everything sufficiently enough for her. “I thought all the bad people were asleep. How can they write in their sleep?”
“Because,” I said, not knowing how I was going to continue. “Because the bad people may all be asleep, but they’re only half asleep. The good part of them is all the way asleep. The bad part of them is, unfortunately, very much awake. I hope that’s not too scary for you.”
I looked over at Julie. She wasn’t frowning, which meant that I was doing okay.
“It’s not scary,” Jennifer said, and laughed. “Not like the bad movies. But...”
“But what?” I asked.
“Oh. It’s just sad, that’s all.”
“Yes it is, honey,” I said. “It most certainly is.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Washington, D.C. was cold during the first week of November.
Ty Hennessey was waiting for me outside of the Senate and gave me the news: the Oversight Committee’s inquiry had rapidly concluded after the grilling of a key witness. The whole affair had been dropped into the lap of the Senate Investigating Committee. I asked him who the key witness was. He grinned. Salmon Jockovitch.
At first Jockovitch had clammed up, and then after exhortation and threat from the combined panel ― threats to send him to prison, to have him disbarred and publicly pilloried ― he caved. I was willing to bet that it had not been a pretty sight.
Ty and I took our turns in the chamber. We didn’t get to hear one another’s testimony, but it was just as well. We already knew, pretty much, what the other was going to say.
An elderly senator from Indiana asked me about the journal lying on the table in front of me: “Mr. Travis, is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“May I borrow it for copying and translation?”
“Certainly,” I said.
A clerk took the journal and disappeared through an ornate doorway. I didn’t see it again until the next day when my testimony resumed. It was returned, along with a neatly-typed translation and scans of the photos on glossy paper, all handsomely bound in a black leatherette cover.
And there was something even Ely Green had missed. At the end of the translation was the breakdown of a code hidden within the text.
*****
I read the whole thing during lunch that day.
I looked long at the picture of the church, at the blurred face at the broken-out window. I flipped hurriedly again through the translated pages and found it: a column of names and ages. There, three-quarters of the way down was a name: Ilya. She was nine years old.
And then I read the coded part. Although there were complete sentences there, it turned out to be little more than a madman’s ravings. In the end it appeared he wanted everyone in the whole world dead. I suppose that was the only way he could feel secure.
*****
I had said all that I had come to say by 3:00 p.m. that afternoon. I was roundly thanked and then dismissed.
Ty was waiting for me on a bench outside the chamber. He had become somewhat of an old pro at waiting. What was a couple of days? As Mrs. Sinclair had said, “time is nothing.”
“Did you read about the code?” I asked.
“I sure did. Gave me the willies.”
“Me too. The journal was supposed to have been retrieved by the government shortly after Pfeffer was ousted. One of the exhibits behind all of it was a letter from the National Archives.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I read that too. What I can’t understand is, why would anyone think that by torturing people you could control their minds? And what possible business could our government – or any government ― have in wanting to do so?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know. It’s just weird, that’s all.”
I suppose I shivered at that moment. Ty caught it.
“Let’s go get a drink,” he said. “I know an old Irish pub outside the Beltway.”
“Fine by me,” I replied.
*****
My flight wasn’t until the next day, so I went back to my hotel not far from the Capitol and spent yet another restless night there.
And dreamed.
*****
I stood outside the crumbling church on muddy earth.
The face appeared at the second-story window, and then was gone. It had been no more than blur, but I could tell: it was a little girl of perhaps nine or ten years of age.
I suddenly knew why I had come. I had come for her.
I walked up the steps, my legs trembling with each step although they seemed to have little substance.
Inside the church the ancient wooden pews were piled haphazardly in a corner. An old man with silvery hair and prominent chin stood there. He had an axe in his hand and he was taking careful aim at the splintered piece of wood at his feet.
“The little bitch is upstairs,” he said, and then let the axe fly. The board at his feet disintegrated. There was nothing left of it.
He laughed.
Off of an alcove to my right there was a narrow staircase.
I ran up to the second floor. Oversized cockroaches scattered in my wake.
I came to an iron door. It had tall, narrow, beveled-glass panes, behind which was a bit of white linen curtain. I couldn’t see inside, except for one lone indistinct shape.
I pushed at the door and it opened, swinging back with a loud whine.
She stood there, regarding me.
It was Jennifer, my daughter.
Her face was hollowed and sunken. She was a mass of bruises, but for her delicate white face.
She ran to me as I knelt and she threw her arms around me.
I carried her to the window.
Outside, over and beyond the small town, a lone white cloud traversed the sky.
“We’re going,” I said. “Hold on tight.”
I stepped out onto the air. The town disappeared beneath us and re-formed itself again and again to become other towns, some familiar, others not.
We fell slowly until we landed by her bed. I laid her there on her Sailormoon comforter next to her dolls. Her bruises began to heal before my eyes.
“Go to sleep now, honey,” I said. “Everything is fine now.”
“I will, Daddy,” she said.
As I was leaving the room, I hesitated, my hand on the light switch by the door.
I looked back to find her snoring softly.
“I’ll let you sleep with the light,” I whispered, and closed the door.
*****
Before hopping into a cab for a ride to the airport, I had a moment to talk with a D.C. native. I recognized him from two days before when I was checking in. He was the Assistant Manager of the hotel. He was standing there outside the hotel taking a cigarette break.
“Oh,” he said. “How was the room?”
“Just fine,” I said. I guess I’ve been a little restless, though.”
“Really,” he said. He nodded his head and exhaled a plume of smoke. There was a bit of a sardonic grin on his face.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I hope not. I guess somebody should have told you the other night and gave you the option to take a different room.”
“Why’s that? It seemed fine to me.”
He threw his cigarette down and crushed it under his shoe.
“It was the room that John Hinckley, Jr. stayed in the night before he tried to kill President Reagan.”
“Oh,” I said.
A yellow cab pulled to the curb in front of me.
“Here’s my ride,” I said. “See you around.”
*****
I couldn’t help thinking about it as I rode to the airport.
John Hinckley, Jr. He’d been on some kind of psychiatric drug before he tried to assassinate the President.
News reports flashed through my head: Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre in Killeen, Texas. Others came to mind as well but suddenly there were too many to track.
Most of these things have already come to pass.
Rogan Sinclair’s words.
There on the outskirts of the National Capitol it hit me. The scope of it, the sheer magnitude of its scale opened up and I could see it all: the mayhem of an entire culture, a culture that the whole world emulated in some fashion.
The world nearly went up in flames, Ely Green had said.
“Not in my lifetime,” I said. “Not if I can help it.”
“What’s that?” the cabbie asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Just nothing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I stopped by to visit Lief and Darla at the lake house at Camp Creek on a Saturday morning that next Spring.
It was a bright, hot day.
“Come on in, Bill,” Lief said. “Unless of course you have snipers on you.”
“No snipers,” I said. “And I haven’t been walking behind any horse parades with my head in the clouds.”
“That’s good. Darla! Bill Travis is here,” he called back into the house.
I went inside. The place looked subtly different than when I had last visited. It took me ten minutes to figure it out. The house had become a home for a couple. A love nest. I suppose I spent the remainder of my visit with a sappy grin on my face.
“Bill,” Darla said after lunch was cleared away, “someone’s been asking after you.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
She wouldn’t tell me right off, but when the three of us were ensconced in Lief’s pickup and on the highway headed north, I knew who it was.
“Tate Lancing,” I said.
“Yep,” Lief replied.
*****
I talked Lief into driving the length of the downtown area of Calvert. The antique stores and art shops were busy. If we were intent on parking and shopping, we would have had to either wait until a slot was free, or park a few blocks away and walk to the center of town. I didn’t need to shop though. Some other time, perhaps.
Tate Lancing’s house looked little different from the only other time I had been there. The paint was mostly gone and the front porch was still tilted oddly. That was good. Some things shouldn’t change, if only for the sake of someone else’s memory.
The three of us tromped up onto the ancient porch and Lief rapped on the door facing.
“Who’s there?” a hoarse voice called from inside.
“We need someone to crack a safe,” I said.
The front door opened.
“Well land sakes alive. Come on in here, folks. Hiya, Bill,” Tate said, grabbed my hand and shook hard. He gave Darla a bear hug.
“Haven’t seen you folks since ―”
“It’s okay, Tate,” Darla said. “I can talk about it, now. Thanks to Lief. He had me tell him about it again and again the night we buried granddad. That last time all of my tears were gone. I miss him, and remember the good things about him.”
“Me too, ma’am,” Tate said. “I’ll never forget him.”
Darla let go of Tate and put her arm around Lief’s waist. They looked good together. They looked right.
“I hope you were joking about that safe, Mr. Travis,” Tate said.
“I was.”
“That’s a good thing. ‘Cause I’m really reformed now.”
“That’s great!” I said. I meant it.
“Yeah. Say, you folks want to go horseback riding? I’ve got to go over to the Sheriff’s place and take a look at his new remuda. He’s got some Arabians in there. Also, th
ere’s an old brood mare, Miss Darla. She’s as gentle as you please.”
“Bill and I will take you up on that, Tate,” Lief said. “But no riding for Darla.”
“Well why not?” Tate asked. “I’m telling you. That mare don’t even swat at the flies.”
“I have a strict policy,” Lief said. “No pregnant wife of mine is to ride a horse.”
You could have dropped a battleship into the silence that ensued.
EPILOGUE
The light fades from the sky, as it has ever done with the turning of the Earth.
From up here, in the air, we see car lights turning on one by one in the distance. There is little difference here between these box-like vehicles passing below and the horse-drawn wagons of old. Those wagons once traversed these same spaces of hill and forest with little more than a coal-oil lantern to spread a circle of light.
The road, once fresh and smooth, has begun to show signs of wear, but it is difficult to tell the difference at this late hour. There are cracks here and there in the pavement. The weeds growing alongside it have matured, and they ripple with the passage of cars and large trucks, the life-blood of a people, a civilization, a culture.
A lone red hawk circles overhead briefly, tucks in his wings and drops like a stone onto the cleared field beside the road for one last bite of supper before night descends.
Close by there is a dark forest, straining against its bond of barbed wire. Let us move that way. Let us see what we can see.
As we traverse this quiet, peaceful space, we note the appearance of bright Venus above the distant trees. And not far away, southward, Orion is beginning his climb into the sky, feet first, his bow forever poised, forever still.