18 Seconds

by George D. Shuman

  He explained, over what turned out to be an hour, that his client had “friends” in Philadelphia who gave credence to Sherry’s part in the Teamster matter. Because of them, he said, his client had come to believe that Sherry could help the police learn what had happened to her husband. He said the woman was prepared to give her an additional fifty thousand dollars for forty-eight more hours of her time. After that, no strings attached, she could keep the sixty thousand and Mr. Abernathy would see that she was returned to her doorstep.

  Sherry protested that she honestly didn’t believe she could help, but the attorney would not take no for an answer. He assured her his client’s money was going to end up in someone’s hands and that the next person might not be as scrupulous.

  Charles Goldstone had gone on a hunting trip with his best friend, Bernie Lennox. Dropped in a camp on the Canadian border, they hiked into the woods as they had done a dozen times before.

  The men had been missing for three weeks before Bernie’s partial body washed up on the shore of the river that ran through an Indian reservation. Mrs. Goldstone simply wanted to know where Charles had met his end. She held little hope he was still alive, but could not bear the thought of leaving him in the wilderness for eternity.

  Sherry didn’t even know what to wear. She had three outfits to her name, all dark polyester pantsuits that she wore to work. For the first time in her life she left the city limits of Philadelphia, flew on an airplane, rode in a limousine, and slept in a hotel.

  The next day she flew in a four-seater from Rochester, Minnesota, to the Ontario border, then was driven to a small hospital in Fort Francis. Abernathy had warned her the previous night not to eat anything exotic. She wasn’t sure what exotic meant, but now that she was having the first stirrings of what she was about to undertake, she got the message. “Exotic” meant anything she couldn’t keep down.

  This was no fallen man on a street corner that she was about to encounter. This was the partial remains of a man pulled out of a river, and God only knew what had been nibbling at him for so many weeks.

  What would he smell like? How would his skin feel? She had a very limited knowledge of what happened to a body after it died. She knew of course that it must rot, but how long did that take? Weeks, months, years? Maybe she wouldn’t be able to concentrate long enough to feel anything. Maybe it wasn’t even possible to feel anything with someone who had been dead that long.

  A very young and proper police officer had picked her up at the plane; the bitter winds had buffeted the small plane during the landing and Sherry was doubly glad she hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning.

  She felt the slippery tile underfoot as they left the snowy sidewalk, and was startled by a blast of hot air from above as they crossed the threshold into the reception area. A female physician met them at the counter and led them to an elevator in which they descended to the basement. Sherry couldn’t say anyone was unpleasant to her in Fort Francis, but she couldn’t say they were warm, either. Undoubtedly they were as skeptical of the whole affair as she was, and likely feeling foolish at the expense of some rich woman. In the morgue, the physician took her into a chemical-filled room and offered her a hard, molded chair to sit on.

  “I will wheel the cadaver alongside you,” the woman said. Her voice had a peculiar accent, something not even hinted at in the languages Sherry had yet been exposed to.

  “It has been cleansed—not cleaned,” she said, “and wrapped in plastic, except for the arm.” Meaning there was only one arm?

  “Please do not handle the skin roughly. It will come off. I have a mask for you if you’d like.”

  It took all of Sherry’s will not to get sick. The hand felt like a rubber glove filled with ice water, and there was never a smell in her experience more putrid or powerful than the stench of that body. But the moment she took the hand she saw snow beneath her feet and the images started to pop like flashbulbs.

  Something glimmering…a river…bloody hands…rushing water…last rock in a line of rocks…an arm in an orange coat sticking out of the snow…a massive boulder with pits for eyes, it had a shadowy crevice for a mouth and limbs and branches caught up around its base in the river like a dark fur collar…he jumped…underwater…

  It took only seconds. Sherry dropped the hand and pushed her chair away from the corpse. Hearing the door open, she said, “I’m ready to go now.”

  If the woman was expecting an explanation, she didn’t ask, nor did Sherry provide one. It was a private matter, she felt, something between her and the woman who had paid her. She thanked the doctor and left with the young policeman, stopping first at a lavatory to wash her hands and then taking his arm out to the car.

  “Do I smell bad?” she asked the officer on their way back to the airport.

  He laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do I smell bad?”

  “You mean like that body?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s in your head,” he told her. “Literally in your head. It gets in your sinuses and taste buds and won’t go away for days.”

  “So I don’t smell bad.”

  “No.” He laughed. “You don’t smell bad.”

  Sherry sat with her head against the headrest, feeling two conflicting emotions. One, the horrible ordeal the man had gone through, the cold, the hopelessness—the heartache of his surrender to the river.

  Then there was the elation of achieving what she had come to do. She had done it! She had purposely reached into another person’s mind and read his thoughts. How unbelievable, she thought. How incredible. How uniquely her!

  Mr. Abernathy was waiting for her in Rochester when she landed.

  “Mrs. Goldstone wondered if she could meet you in person. She lives an hour from here. I took the liberty of making another night’s accommodation for you if you decide to stay.”

  “I would love to spend another night,” she said sincerely. “More than you can know, Mr. Abernathy. But I have to be at work in the morning or they’ll fire me.”

  “The Department of Motor Vehicles,” he said dryly.

  “Yes.”

  Sherry thought about her overnight bag. She hadn’t even brought extra underwear, let alone clothes for a second day. She knew, too, that she couldn’t risk her job, no matter how much she wanted to prolong the adventure. And she couldn’t take Mrs. Goldstone’s money. Not for something as simple as telling her someone else’s thoughts. Besides, everything about the trip had been a learning experience, terrifying and exhilarating, but oh how wonderful, and she thought it was payment enough.

  No, she didn’t want to return to her puny apartment in South Philadelphia and the halls that smelled like burnt grease and roach spray. She wanted to lie in the luxurious bed at the Hilton and eat twice-baked potatoes and taste the milk chocolates left on the fresh-scented sheets.

  Abernathy sensed her dilemma. “I would be happy to pass on your message to Mrs. Goldstone since you are unable to, but what if I were to arrange another day off for you at work? Do you think you might reconsider?”

  Her face lit up. “That’s not really possible, Mr. Abernathy, is it?”

  “Everything is possible, my dear,” he said kindly.

  “Then yes, but may I ask just one more question?” she said.

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “Do I smell bad?”

  Sherry spent two hours with the woman. She might not have eyes to see, but Sherry could tell the size of a room when she entered one, and if rooms were supposed to be like this, then she had been living in closets all her life.

  “A truffle, dear?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what they are.”

  “Then take one,” the woman said, placing a napkin in her hand. “I’ve never known anyone not to like them.”

  The old woman put Sherry at ease, assuring her that she had long been prepared for news of her husband’s death. As Mr. Abernathy had said, she only wanted to know where he was, so she could put him
to rest.

  Sherry told her about what she’d seen: her husband’s friend Bernie at the river’s edge, trying to cross the rocks, but then falling in. Mrs. Goldstone was gracious and tranquil in spite of the news, sitting by a fragrant fire afterward and reminiscing about her husband.

  Sherry listened with rapt attention for nearly an hour. She had the impression that the woman rarely had an opportunity to share her feelings about Charles with anyone, that her wealth had somehow isolated her. Mrs. Goldstone had lost not only her husband but her best friend as well.

  This, Sherry thought, was the relationship she had been trying to articulate all these years. This was the kind of love she sought for herself, the marriage of friends and lovers.

  “Oh, what good friends we all were. I miss them so.” Mrs. Goldstone sighed. “And I’m afraid I’ve bent your ear all evening long. Finalizing Charles’s affairs has drawn all of my attention, and then the children came and the board of directors; I seem to have been engaged since this happened. I haven’t had the time to think of my memories just yet. I’ll have Dan wire your money in the morning and see that you get home safe and sound. Is there anything else I can do for you, dear girl?”

  Sherry nodded. “Mrs. Goldstone, I can’t accept the money you offered. It was far too much to begin with, and you have given me an experience I’ll never have again.”

  “Nonsense,” the old woman said. “I always do what I say, and you should endeavor to do the same. The money will be wired as discussed. Remember, Sherry, that you have a gift, a rare gift, and I have a feeling you’ll be doing lots more traveling before it’s all over.”

  Sherry smiled and said thanks, thinking nothing could be further from the truth.

  “Miss Moore.”

  Abernathy had appeared out of nowhere; his car was idling under the covered drive.

  Sherry turned quickly. “Ma’am, there is one more thing you could do for me, if you don’t mind me asking.” She looked pathetically embarrassed.

  “Please tell me, girl.”

  “Might I have another truffle?”

  Indian guides knew of the face in the rocks that Sherry described. Starting on the opposite shore, they retraced Bernie’s route and found the remains of Charles Goldstone only a few hundred yards away. He’d been killed by an ice fall while walking under a ledge. Bernie, badly wounded, had gone for help, but was too weak to manage a river crossing.

  Word crept out of Fort Francis about Sherry’s vision, and soon Sherry was famous. Entertainment Tonight, People magazine, Popular Science, Newsweek…Everyone was interested in the girl who could talk to the dead. The big four networks tried to get interviews, late-night talk shows called, and schools for the blind solicited her for speaking engagements.

  Mrs. Goldstone was better than her word, depositing an additional twenty thousand dollars in Sherry’s bank account the day they found Charles’s body. She also sent her a box of truffles and continued to do so every year on the anniversary of their meeting.

  The letters came rolling in by the hundreds.

  Mail began to take on a whole new meaning to Sherry. She no longer worked at the DMV, but lived off the interest of her earnings. She accepted several “consulting” projects and was eventually recognized by some of the more liberal circles in law enforcement.

  In time, she moved out of her little apartment and purchased a home on the Delaware.

  Her gift brought her money and her money brought her security, but it was the sudden need that everyone was showing for her that rewarded Sherry the most. Their need gave her purpose, and purpose was a real reason to live. It was a dream fulfilled.

  She had lived in the stone house for almost nine years now. Detective Payne helped her move her few things in and bought her her first housewarming gift—a golden kitten she named Truffles.

  She soon met her neighbor, Mr. Brigham, widowed and well into his seventies, full of boyish energy. He was the tinkering sort, always hauling things around behind his lawn tractor. He took an interest in her immediately, sharing his evenings to read her mail or just chat over a glass of his beloved port.

  So life had turned out better than she ever could have imagined; she had always been grateful for that, but she had never forgotten the sound of Mrs. Goldstone’s voice as she recounted the stories about her husband. To have that kind of love was to have everything. That was what everyone lived for and so few experienced. That was the one thing that remained beyond her reach.

  Sherry’s world was small, even though she was making friends across the continent. She had no social circle and no events to attend, other than those Detective Payne or her neighbor Mr. Brigham might drag her to, and they were mostly Christmas and retirement parties where couples dominated.

  There were, however, three suitors over the last nine years. One, the result of Brigham’s attempt at matchmaking, was a political science professor who held a civilian position in the defense department. He was also an avid football fan and, much to her delight, invited her to an Eagles game for their first date. Sherry was impressed that someone could understand how a blind person might find excitement in a stadium filled with people. Most people never saw her as another human being; were concerned with what she did, not who she was; wondered what she was thinking when she took their hand, if she could somehow read their minds. Either that or they treated her like an invalid.

  She saw him a second time, for the symphony, and a third and last time over dinner. He had been made an unexpected offer in the Middle East, the details of which were sufficiently murky to suggest CIA to Brigham, but who would ever know? Brigham told her later that his colleague had sold his home and was never heard from again.

  Then she met a police captain in Dallas on a case in Fort Worth. They saw each other monthly throughout 1995 and 1996, though monthly seemed to be enough for both of them. It was a purely sexual relationship, if she was honest with herself.

  Most recently it had been the doctor from Denver whom she considered the biggest heartbreak of all.

  They’d met while she was working on a privately funded project in Pueblo, an archaeological dig by an internationally known salvage hunter named McKeewan. She’d worked for Gavin McKeewan before and was said to have put millions in his pockets. The focus of the dig was a mummified Indian embedded in the cavernous walls of an old copper mine; McKeewan was looking for gold, not copper, and the Indian carrying primitive tools had a bag of pure nuggets in his pocket. Sherry’s attempt to read him produced nothing, but that’s how it went. Nothing was ever for certain, not when it came to the dead.

  Since it was winter, she considered the trip a welcome respite from the gloom of her house. Sherry was a summer girl in spite of her sightlessness, and the cold seemed only to work against her state of mind.

  On the evening before her departure, the treasure hunters crowded into a saloon at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. The salvage boys liked the place for its hearty stews, but the real appeal was the local beer.

  A physician who was friends with one of the salvage crew came to the table and ended up buying a round and staying. The night grew old before the salvagers decided to leave; they still had an hour’s drive back to Pueblo, but the doctor stayed on, and Sherry, who was booked at the Broadmoor a block away, could think of no reason to leave.

  The Bee, as the saloon was known, was packed and noisy by midnight. They drank half-yards of beer and the waitress threw the trademark bumblebees that stuck to their clothes. One o’clock came and went, they had begun touching each other’s arms as they talked, getting louder and laughing harder, and trips to the restroom aside, Sherry believed she had not had so much fun in all her life.

  He called her cell phone the next morning and again that night when she was back in Philadelphia. He sent her a snowball packed in dry ice with a note that read “You’re It.” When Brigham opened it and put it in her hands, she knew she had left her heart in Colorado.

  They talked on the phone all that week. On Saturday, he flew in to
take her to dinner; he stayed at the Radisson rather than in her guest room. On Sunday they bundled up for an openbus tour of downtown Philadelphia. He was funny and interesting. He seemed to know when to do something and when not to. He didn’t dance around the fact she was blind and he didn’t over-compensate. She could tell that his words came from his heart rather than his mind, and they reached her every time.

  The following weekend she was back at the Broadmoor. He waited in the spitting snow with horse, carriage, and driver. She would never forget the jingling reins, the soft clomp of the animal’s hooves, the driver’s gentle nudges, and the old seat creaking as the doctor put his arm around her and pulled her into his shoulder.

  She stayed at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain all that week and half of the next. And the year 2000 became the happiest year of her life.

  She looked back on that wistfully. Things changed over time. The trips weren’t always possible; his shifts were long and he had other obligations as well. Sometimes she was on the road, too. Then his calls came less frequently, and reluctantly Sherry had to accept that he was moving on.

  The answering machine kicked on and she heard Detective Payne’s voice. “Sherry, are you there?”

  She pushed the cat away and got to her feet, making her way to the wrought-iron table and felt around for the phone.

  “John, I didn’t hear it ring.”

  Payne was the only person in Sherry’s life with whom she could be open. He was someone on whom she could dump her troubles during those very rare occasions she chose to open up her heart.

  Sherry counted him as the first person ever to take her seriously and their friendship had grown steadily on that cornerstone. From the media attention she’d gained over the Teamsters, to the shores of Lake Francis to Arkansas and Colorado, Payne had always been there when she needed him most.