Fogbound

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Then he’d walk over and check with Edna, to see if a letter might have come for him from New York City. But each day, the answer was the same: nothing. The only break in the routine came on the fifth day, when the moment he walked in and closed the screen door carefully behind him - to avoid letting it bang and fall off its rusted hinges - Edna had some news.

  “Hello, Mr. Bigshot Celebrity!” was how she greeted him.

  Jorgensen could only frown in confusion.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t you see yourself on the tee-vee,” she said.

  “Don’t have a TV,” he replied.

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Well,” she said, “that Trial TV program says you’re going to be arguing a big case in front of the Supreme Court. That a fact?”

  “Could be,” Jorgensen admitted, “if they say so.”

  “You looked real good, you did. And Jake, too.”

  Jorgensen cleared his throat. Accepting compliments had never been one of his strengths.

  “So how come you been holding out on us?”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal, really. I get to stand up and talk for forty-five minutes, that’s all. Hell, you do that every time I see you.”

  “Well,” said Edna, “I think it’s a right nice thing you’re doing, speaking for that colored boy. Of course, not everyone feels that way.”

  Jorgensen raised an eyebrow.

  “I mean,” said Edna, “there’s no excusing what he did to that poor little white girl, is there?”

  “No,” Jorgensen agreed, “there isn’t.”

  “But then I guess somebody has to take his side, right?”

  “Right,” said Jorgensen. And as far as he was concerned, Edna Coombs had pretty much hit the nail on the head. “Any mail for me?” he asked.

  “Fraid not,” said Edna. She knew he’d been expecting a letter or a package for almost a week now, but she’d refrained from teasing him about it. Something in the way he’d been stopping in each morning and asking had told her it was too important for that. “But I’ll keep an eye out,” she promised him.

  Edna Coombs was a smart woman.

  August Jorgensen was a patient man, ordinarily. But this silent treatment he was getting from Jessica Woodruff was getting to him. He knew full well he wasn’t part of the brain trust on this appeal, and no one had ever led him to believe he’d be a charter member of the inner circle responsible for making tactical decisions. His role was pretty much limited to that of a figurehead: They’d give him words to mouth, prep him on recent decisions and developments, and run him through a series of practice sessions, until they were satisfied he could hold up his end. Then, when the time came, they’d bring him up to Washington and he’d argue the case. After that, he’d be done; it would be up to others to continue the fight, if there was any fight left to continue.

  For a time, he’d been okay with that arrangement. But now things had changed, and changed hugely. Boyd Davies was innocent, and Jorgensen had been the one who’d figured things out. That had to count for something, didn’t it? And yet, they continued to ignore him, to leave him completely in the dark. He had no way of knowing if Kurt Meisner had told Jessica and the Duke the same things he’d told Jorgensen, before he’d suddenly clammed up. He could only hope that they’d gotten Meisner to tell his story again, and that they’d either got it down on tape or convinced him to sign an affidavit swearing it was true.

  He just needed to know, one way or the other.

  On the morning of the eighth day, a storm blew up from the south, bringing torrential rain and keeping Jorgensen inside his lighthouse for a full two days. He took it as an omen of sorts, a sign that when the rain finally subsided and he was able to drive to the mainland, there’d be a letter from Jessica waiting for him at the post office. Every few hours, he’d crack the door open and let Jake slip out or back in. (Jake loved the rain; to him it was nothing but a giant sprinkler, custom-made for him to play in.) At one point it occurred to Jorgensen that he himself was some sort of a modern-day Noah, riding out The Flood, and Jake was his dove, whom he dispatched every so often to see if the waters had begun to subside. But he dismissed the idea as far too grandiose: Noah had been summoned by God to save all the creatures who inhabited the earth’s land, while Jorgensen had been enlisted by some folks at a television station to help save one poor soul.

  Still, a week and a half of not knowing was driving him absolutely crazy.

  In the end, it only seemed as though the storm lasted forty days and forty nights. In fact, it ended on the evening of the third day. With the overhead sky nearly black from the last of the rain clouds and the approach of night from over the ocean, the western horizon suddenly cleared and lit up, revealing a band of orange light and a glowing red sun. To Jorgensen, there was something about the effect - as strikingly beautiful as it was - that was positively eerie. Just before the sun disappeared from view, it sunk low enough in the sky to light the undersides of the clouds above him, casting a purple glow to everything. Then, moments later, it was dark.

  The following morning, Jorgensen rose and made the trip to the mainland, driving slowly through a thin mist created by the evaporation of more rain than the ground could soak up. It was after nine by the time he got there, so he decided to stop at the post office first, figuring that in the three days since his last visit, a letter from Jessica simply had to be waiting for him.

  “Nothing,” said Edna Coombs.

  Which meant, since it was Saturday, nothing until Monday, at the earliest.

  At Doc Crawford’s, he used the phone once again to call New York City. “Hi,” said Jessica’s voice, but immediately he recognized her recorded message; he’d certainly had enough practice. “You’ve reached Jessica Woodruff of Trial TV. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get right back to you.”

  Without bothering to leave a message, he placed the headset back on the cradle of the wall phone. By this time, he’d already left her half a dozen messages, more than enough to let her know he wanted to speak with her, needed some word from her, however brief, however discouraging. He imagined she had to be very busy; TV folks probably worked hard, dealing with deadlines and updates and breaking stories and all sorts of other stuff he couldn’t even begin to imagine. No doubt she’d get around to calling him one of these days. Leaving another message was only going to annoy her.

  Jessica Woodruff heard the ring of her cell phone and flipped open the cover. The numbers and letters that came up on its LCD screen were by this time familiar to her. They told her that the incoming call was from Crawford’s General Store in Cumberland, South Carolina.

  “It’s him again,” she said to no one in particular, although she was seated at a conference table with six men and two other women.

  “Him?” someone asked.

  “Jorgensen.”

  “Who’s Jorgensen?”

  “The judge,” she said, “the old retired judge who’s going to argue the Eight Amendment case before the Supremes next month.”

  “Oh, Larry Lighthouse?”

  “Yes,” she said, “Larry Lighthouse.”

  “Call him later, Jess. These Nielsen numbers are important.”

  She closed the cover of the phone.

  For a long moment, August Jorgensen’s hand continued to rest on the phone’s cradled headset, as though there were some magnetic pull that was making it impossible for him to let go of it. He could feel Doc’s gaze on the back of his neck, and though he knew Doc was far too kind to ever say anything harsh, Jorgensen didn’t need to be told that he was being played for a fool.

  After a time, he picked the headset back up, put it to his ear, and listened for a dial tone. Then he punched in another number. He listened as it rang three times before being answered. Then a woman spoke to him, a woman with a pleasant voice, who asked if she could help him.

  “Yes,” he told her. “I’d like the number for American Airlines.”

  The big jet touched down on the runway
and bounced slightly, its engines roaring, before settling into its deceleration run. August Jorgensen loosened his death grip on the armrests of his seat a bit, and finally allowed himself to breathe.

  He hadn’t always been a white-knuckle flyer; it was simply that he was out of practice. The flight from Charleston to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, all two hours of it, marked the first time he’d set foot in a plane in almost ten years. He knew how safe flying was supposed to be, had heard all the statistics, and had no doubt that the pilot was well-trained and experienced. Still, he hated the feeling of being so terribly out of control. In a boat, when a situation came up, you dealt with it. You eased up on the sheets, you reefed the main, you doused the jib, you ran a radar reflector up the mast, you dragged a storm anchor - whatever it took. Sitting in the passenger compartment of a plane, you were completely powerless. All you could do was tighten your seat belt, grab onto those armrests, and pray. So for two hours, he’d done his share of all three.

  And it wasn’t just the flight; his anxiety had been compounded by several other things. He was worried about Jake, who’d be looked after by a neighbor (neighbor being a decidedly relative term on a barrier island), but nevertheless wouldn’t quite be himself until Jorgensen’s return. Beyond that, Jorgensen had neglected to reserve a hotel room in New York, figuring that wouldn’t be much of a problem, given all the hotels there had to be in the city. Marge had always taken care of that sort of thing. But now he began to wonder: Suppose there was some huge convention going on - or three or four of them, simultaneously - and all the rooms had been booked? He imagined himself sleeping in some doorway, or bedding down in that big park they had, until he heard the pilot announce that it was 22 degrees in New York, and snowing lightly. So much for camping out.

  Finally, he was worried about locating Jessica Woodruff. Getting to Trial TV should be no problem; he’d copied down the address of their headquarters from a letter Jessica had sent him, back when she’d been sending him letters. But suppose when he got there, she wasn’t around? Suppose she was out of town? Suppose she’d picked this very week to fly down to South Carolina and meet with him?

  Still, he’d decided against leaving word for her that he was coming north. Two weeks of calling her had convinced him she was deliberately avoiding him, for whatever reason. Maybe Kurt Meisner had refused to talk to her and the Duke, and she was too embarrassed to say so. Maybe Meisner had changed his story, dug in and decided to protect himself and his son - or at least his son’s memory. On the other hand, maybe Meisner had repeated for Jessica everything he’d told Jorgensen, and now all the folks at Trial TV were scurrying around madly, drawing up papers to get the Supreme Court argument put off while they went into state court to move for a new trial. Whatever it was, Jorgensen was determined not to give her another opportunity to duck him. Better to take his chances showing up unannounced. That way she’d have to let him know what was going on, whether it was good news or bad.

  The plane seemed to taxi for almost as long as it had been in the air. When it finally reached the gate and pulled to a stop, an audible “Ping!” signaled the passengers to stand and fill the aisle, and Jorgensen rose, too, only to find himself pressed in from all sides by a sea of people in a terrible hurry to get somewhere, but unable to budge.

  “Welcome to New York City,” said the pilot.

  The cab driver dropped him off at Madison Avenue and Fortieth Street, but only after relieving Jorgensen of $26.50 for the fare, $3.50 for the tunnel toll, another $3.50 for a tip, and a $1.50 surcharge occasioned by the driver’s having had to walk all the way from the front seat to the trunk, where he stood by and watched as Jorgensen lifted out his bag. If the ride had set him back $35.00, Jorgensen shuddered to think what a hotel room might go for. He shuddered, too, from the cold, although the light snow forecast by the pilot had thankfully failed to materialize.

  He found the building with numbers that matched the address on Jessica’s letter, a huge mass of glass and steel that filled an entire block and had too many floors to count. Inside, it was like a city, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people crisscrossing the lobby. There were restaurants, newsstands, boutiques, a shoeshine, a barbershop, even a subway entrance. Jorgensen made a mental note that if he couldn’t find a hotel room, this might be as good a place to stay as any: A person could easily spend a week here without attracting notice.

  A huge glass-covered directory informed him that Trial TV occupied more than a single floor of the building. RECEPTION was on the forty-eighth floor, as opposed to RECEIVING, which could be found on forty-nine, apparently not too far from SHIPPING. But Jorgensen had no interest in announcing his arrival, whether by being received, receipted, or shipped. PERSONNEL, meanwhile, was down on forty-seven, along with MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT AND MEDIA RESEARCH. In the end, he opted for EXECUTIVE OFFICES. Jessica Woodruff had to be an executive, he figured; his best chance of finding her ought to be there. Besides, the number was the easiest to remember: an even fifty.

  He found the elevator bank marked 45-60, hoping it referred to floors, rather than the age group of passengers permitted. The ascent took only seconds, followed by a slightly longer period for his stomach to catch up to the rest of him.

  He found himself in a plushly carpeted area roughly the size of Delaware, with hand-rubbed wood (no anti-fouling paint here) and indirect lighting. There were several doors to choose from, all bearing numbers, but only one with raised bronze lettering spelling out:

  TRIAL TV

  EXECUTIVE OFFICES

  He tried the knob somewhat tentatively, having heard that New Yorkers unfailingly secured themselves behind multiple deadbolt locks. To his surprise, the door swung open. A large black man, wearing a military-type uniform, sat behind a handsome wooden desk. Jorgensen, who knew something about wood, recognized it as mahogany, probably Philippine.

  “May I help you?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” said Jorgensen. “I’m Judge Jorgensen. Miss Woodruff, Jessica Woodruff, is expecting me, sort of.” He looked at his watch, or where his watch would have been, had he been wearing one. “Though I’m afraid I’m running a bit late,” he added.

  “They’re all across the hall,” the man said. “Screening Room One.” He reached for a phone. “Your name again, please?”

  “Jorgensen. And do you happen to have a restroom I could use first? I’ve been traveling, and-”

  “Down the hall on your left.”

  “Thank you,” said Jorgensen. Then, setting his bag down on the floor, he added, “I’ll just leave this here for a moment, if I may.”

  On his return, he stuck his head into Screening Room One. Except for a movie screen on the far wall, it was dark. Jorgensen mumbled, “Sorry,” as he closed the door behind him and slipped into the nearest seat. It was the kind they used to have in the movie theaters of his youth: red velvet, padded arms, and cushiony soft. It even reclined a bit as you leaned your weight against the backrest.

  Once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he looked around. A half-dozen people sat in chairs identical to his, in rows in front of him. He thought he recognized Jessica Woodruff’s blonde hair in the first row, but it was hard to be sure, from just the back of her head.

  His attention moved to the movie screen, which, he could now see, was actually a television monitor, only about a hundred times bigger than any he’d ever seen before. It showed a man, seated behind a metal table, talking into the camera. He looked vaguely familiar, though at first Jorgensen couldn’t quite place him. But when it came to him, it came like a punch in the gut, knocking the wind out of him.

  He was looking at Kurt Meisner.

  But it was a Kurt Meisner who seemed better, much healthier than he had just a couple of weeks ago. And they’d combed his hair, made it look thicker somehow, and managed to get him out of that dreadful room of his.

  “. . . the Davies boy,” he was saying, “he just came along at the wrong time. He helped me bury her, he did that. But he didn’t h
ave nothin’ to do with, you know, with what happened before.”

  “And you know it was your son that did that?” The voice was that of a woman, coming from somewhere off-camera.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Like I told you,” Meisner was saying. “The glove. The dirt on his clothes. His reaction when I saw him after. It wasn’t any one thing, you know. It was, it was everything.”

  “No question in your mind?”

  “No question.”

  By God, they’ve done it! Jorgensen wanted to shout out at the top of his lungs, to jump up and leap for joy. Why hadn’t they gotten word to him? Why were they all sitting around so quietly, instead of whooping it up, as he was on the verge of doing?

  A technician was rewinding the tape now, in fast motion, with a squealing noise. Jorgensen decided to postpone his celebration; he figured if he kept quiet, he might get to see the thing from the beginning.

  “What about the date and time?” the blonde woman was asking, and now he definitely recognized Jessica’s voice. “Can that be changed?”

  “Absolutely,” said the technician, stopping the tape and letting it resume playing, this time without the sound track. For the first time, Jorgensen became aware of writing superimposed on the lower left-hand corner of the image.

  JULY 11, 2000 3:38 p.m.

  “Show us,” said a man, seated next to Jessica, one arm draped over the back of her seat.

  “What would you like?” the technician asked.

  “Can you go earlier?” the man asked. “Say, to January?”

  The technician pressed some buttons on a keyboard in front of him. The writing disappeared for a moment. When it returned, it read:

  JANUARY 11, 2000 3:38 p.m.

  Even as they watched, the 3:38 changed to 3:39.

  “How about later?” the man asked. “Can you go into next year, for example?”