Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

  “Why didn’t you call me when you found it?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” and again Hopewell said he knew this wasn’t the kind of thing Jack wanted to be doing. He wasn’t any more convincing than before. “I need to make sure your son wrote this.” The detective tapped his finger on the paper. “Can you confirm it’s Danny’s handwriting?”

  “I’d be more certain if I could see the original.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s evidence in an ongoing investigation and I’ve got to keep it on file until I make a final determination. I’m sorry about that, but it’s the way we have to do things around here. I’ve got to follow procedure.”

  “I can’t even see it?”

  Hopewell rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, took the Xerox from Jack, then reached into one of the folders and pushed the creased and torn original across the desk.

  …crossing the line.

  He cries a silent cry.

  In the night he feels

  alone. There is no

  mother or father, no one

  to tuck him in, to say good night.

  No friends come to play.

  It is so very co

  “Can you identify it?” Hopewell asked.

  “It’s Danny’s handwriting.” Jack held on to the paper, which Danny’s hand had held, like the yellow and green pot holders in the first grade that he was so proud of and which he brought home for Jack to hang in the kitchen; the ceramic ashtrays from arts and crafts class that Jack kept in his office. And this scrap of paper that Danny had placed in his back pocket—did he forget it was there? If it meant anything, he would have left it in the house for Jack to see. Surely, it was never intended for—

  Hopewell leaned across the desk, crushing the folders in front of him, and tried to take the paper away from Jack. Jack pulled away.

  “Dr. Owens.”

  Jack didn’t move.

  “Dr. Owens.”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “Dr. Owens.”

  Jack didn’t look at him. He looked only at the piece of paper in his hands.

  “The poem, Dr. Owens. Please.”

  Jack held on to it, reading the words Danny had written, then he just stared at them, at the shapes of each letter, the curves and lines, the simple and clear penmanship.

  “The poem. Please, Dr. Owens. I can let you have the copy, but I need the original.”

  Jack held on to the poem a moment longer, then handed it to the detective.

  Hopewell pushed the copy across the desk and dropped back into his chair. “Did he write other things like this?” He opened the folder and put Danny’s poem inside.

  Jack answered no, Danny had never written anything like that before. Not that he knew of.

  “It sounds like he was feeling depressed.” He began filling out an official-looking form. “Did he suffer from depression, Dr. Owens?”

  “No. What are you writing?”

  “It’s my report. I have to write one up for every case I’m working on.”

  “Case?”

  “Only in the technical sense,” Hopewell explained, without looking up. “So he never wrote about being depressed and you’re sure he didn’t suffer from depression?”

  “I’d know if my son were suffering from depression.”

  “Was he acting out at home or in school?” The detective still hadn’t stopped writing. “Did his teachers ever call your attention to anything like that? Did he ever act depressed in school?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Was he on any special medication or suffering from any medical or psychological problems?”

  “No.”

  Hopewell answered “Hmm” in a way that made Jack think the detective didn’t believe him, as though Jack were hiding something, and when he asked, “Is there anything you might have overlooked?” he might as well have said: “Nevertheless, Dr. Owens, your son did kill himself. There has to be a reason.”

  But Jack had nothing more to say.

  Telephones rang outside the office, there was the sound of voices and footsteps. Hopewell’s phone rang, and while he spoke low, monosyllabic answers, he continued writing. When he hung up, he took a deep breath and exhaled a prolonged, labored sigh. “How old was Danny?”

  “Fifteen—he turned fifteen last month.”

  “His date of birth?”

  “April fifth, nineteen eighty-one.”

  “Where did he go to school?”

  “John L. Lewis High School.”

  “Ninth grade?”

  “That’s right.”

  Hopewell then asked for Jack’s full name and date of birth, and the name and date of birth of Danny’s mother.

  “Danny’s mother and I are divorced,” Jack told him.

  “I still need her name. Date of birth, if possible.” Hopewell had that same look on his face that Jack had found so disturbing yesterday, and the same disturbing tone of voice. Jack looked over at Lois to see if she noticed it, but she wasn’t looking at Jack, she was watching Hopewell. “I know none of this is very pleasant”—the detective kept his head down, kept to his work—“but this is a police matter and there’s a certain protocol we have to follow, that you have to follow, the same as I do.”

  Jack gave him what he wanted.

  Hopewell asked, “How long have you been employed by the college?”

  “Ten years.”

  “Since, what, eighty-six?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you on any special medication? Suffer from any medical or psychological problems?” The way Hopewell said this made Jack feel like he wasn’t there, except as a source of information, part of the protocol that the detective was obliged to respect, and if Jack were to suddenly disappear, if he’d been able to produce a stand-in, Hopewell would not have cared, so long as his report was completed, the procedure followed.

  “You still have my son. I want him out of there.”

  “The medical examiner should get here sometime tomorrow. The day after at the very latest.” When Hopewell raised his eyes, it was only to glance at his watch, then he continued writing.

  “I want him out of the morgue now.” Jack made no attempt to hide his anger. But it wasn’t only anger that he felt, it was also shame. Danny’s shame that Hopewell had set his eyes on the scrap of paper and that Danny was now under the detective’s scrutiny, that he was a case. He felt shame for the questions Hopewell had asked about Danny, about his presumptions.

  “I can appreciate what you’re going through. I’ll do all I can,” Hopewell said. “Until then, I think the best thing to do is for you to go home. I’ll let you know when the medical examiner is finished. Come on, Dr. Owens. Ms. Sheridan.” He came around the desk, put his hand on Jack’s arm and gave him a slight push. “You’ll get your son. Just give it time.”

  Three girls in school uniforms walked down Oak Street, talking and laughing. When they came to the corner, they crossed quickly against the light. Lois sat behind the wheel of her car and let them pass. She turned to Jack. “What are you going to do about Anne?”

  “What can I do?” Which was enough of an answer, because Lois knew the story. That Anne had left no forwarding address. That Danny’s birthdays had passed, and the Christmases, without a call from her, without a card. Danny’s expectations the first few years, and his disappointment. Jack had even tried to track Anne down, just to tell her off. But he never did find her.

  Then Jack stopped thinking about Anne, and only thought about Danny, that Hopewell had besmirched Danny’s life and death, turned Danny’s suicide into something to be written up and filed away, an unimportant formality. He was thinking that he’d left Danny unprotected.

  The car moved away from the corner.

  Jack said, “I can’t go back to the house. Take me to my office.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I’ll go crazy if I go home.”

  “But you’ll call me when you’re ready to
leave so I can drive you home?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  Jack wanted to sit in his office because time was still normal there and nothing had changed. The phone would ring at any minute and it would be Danny calling. The door would open and it would be Danny standing there. It was the place where Jack had left his future. The place that time forgot. Where Eileen was waiting for instructions. Where ignorance was bliss.

  “Did you get the senior grades in?”

  “Just under budget,” Eileen told him, borrowing one of his pet phrases, and she smiled because she was still living in the time where Danny Owens was alive with a father who taught at Gilbert College, and the past was solid and the future assured. Jack could not readily disturb that, and he waited, allowing the minute to stretch out, languidly, like the last days of the semester.

  He waited a minute longer, while he walked to the photograph of Danny, where it was always a bright and hope-filled summer day. He touched the face in the frame and held his hand there. He looked out the window at the progress of students crossing the quadrangle, and at the corner of sky that reflected back at him. He walked across the room and made sure the door was firmly closed. He waited, not because he believed there still existed some remnant of the day before, but because nothing remained of that day and he wanted to allow Eileen, allow himself, a final moment with it.

  Then he said, “Danny killed himself yesterday. Post a notice that all nonsenior grades have been delayed indefinitely.”

  Eileen looked down at the floor and said nothing. She was a twenty-one-year-old small-town girl. The only bad news she knew about were failing grades and boring dates, the teacup crises that roommates bring with them, or days when it rained too hard to go swimming, or snowed too hard to drive to the movies. The only people who died were aged relatives, finally and mercifully. She did not know what to say. She only put her hands over her face and stood motionless.

  Jack put an arm around her and led her to the couch. He sat her down. She wept into his shirt. He could only let her cry. He rocked her carefully in his arms. He dried her tears with his sleeve. When the telephone rang, she moved to answer it. Jack told her to let it be. She sniffled and put her head on his shoulder and clutched his arm. She cried and cried.

  Jack sat with her a little while longer before he said, “I have things to take care of. I have to tell Stan.” Only he didn’t get up right away. He was in no hurry to tell the story to his department chair—each telling only making Danny’s death more real, more permanent—standing at the desk, facing questions that needed to be asked, and questions left unspoken: “How could you let this happen, Jack? How did you miss it?” Trying to squeeze out an explanation.

  But Stan Miller was away from his desk, and Jack, gratefully, left a note, explaining only what was necessary. All he wanted now was to get out of there and be left alone.

  He was hot, his mouth was dry, his shirt and the skin beneath it were damp with Eileen’s tears. He needed to sit by himself and think about Danny, to feel close to him. He needed to feel his grief, unmediated and uncontested. He did not need further conversation or company or commiseration; and he did not need Carl Ainsley, poised in the hallway.

  “If it isn’t our very own Bob Cratchett,” Ainsley sang out.

  Jack didn’t reply. He tried to walk around him.

  “Wait a minute. I think you ought to know, I was a very naughty boy.” Ainsley laughed softly. “Oh, don’t worry, it wasn’t with Miss Mouth. However, one of our esteemed col—”

  “Not now.”

  “Not even a reprimand?” Ainsley grabbed Jack by the shoulder.

  Jack shrugged off Ainsley’s hand. “I’m having a really bad day.” He tried to sidestep him a second time.

  Ainsley followed him down the hall. “It’s those long hours, Owens.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then what about it? What the hell. We’ll go on over to Chase’s—”

  “Not now.”

  “Come on. Where’s the famous Owens joie de vivre?”

  “Not—”

  “It’s cocktail time, somewhere in the world.” Ainsley put his hand on Jack’s arm and held him back. “You can even scold me for the roué that you think I am. Come on. One hour, more or less, isn’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference whether or not you and Danny—”

  Introspection is not part of the primitive mind, and when Jack snatched Ainsley by the front of his blue cotton shirt and slammed him against the wall, it was purely primitive.

  He was surprised that Ainsley didn’t resist. Maybe he thought it was a joke; more than likely, though, he couldn’t believe what was happening. But when Jack slammed him a second time, Ainsley grunted, “I’m only having sport with you,” and pulled himself free.

  Jack went at him again, but Ainsley pushed him back and held him at arm’s length. Jack grabbed him by the elbows and swung him around.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Ainsley cried out, and shoved Jack away. “Cut it out.”

  Jack came at him quickly this time, catching him low and knocking him off-balance.

  “Cut it out.”

  Jack slammed him against the wall a third time. Ainsley’s head snapped back, his mouth clamped shut.

  If nothing else in these most unfair twenty-four hours was unfair, it was the fact that Ainsley, who had the conscience of a cat burglar, would go home to his son, who was still alive, to a wife who accepted him on his own terms—chilled martini in the shaker, kiss on the mouth—and life would be as it always was. Impulsive and predatory, Ainsley had a son who didn’t ride his bike to the park and tie a plastic bag around his head. Ainsley, himself a son of Nature’s indifference, did not have to go to the morgue and identify the body. He did not have to wait for the medical examiner to perform an autopsy on his boy. His son wasn’t lying on a slab, dead and cold in the dark. For all that, Jack slammed him again, or tried to, but Ainsley pressed a muscled arm under Jack’s chin and shoved him to the opposite wall.

  “What did I say?” Ainsley cried out. “What the hell is your problem?”

  The problem was, Jack couldn’t beat up Hopewell for being an unsympathetic, disingenuous functionary. He couldn’t beat up on the medical examiner for dragging his ass in Terre Haute, but he could try to beat up on Ainsley because the unfortunate son of a bitch happened to be standing there. But Jack didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He straightened up and walked quickly down the hall. He did not dare look back. He was disgusted with himself, and afraid of what he might do next.

  Eileen was standing in the doorway when Jack got back to his office. She said, “Maybe you should go home. Please, Jack. I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Then I’ll stay with you.”

  “There’s nothing you can do here. Please. I need to be alone now. Really.”

  She didn’t move. “You’ll call me if you need anything?”

  He nodded his head.

  “You’re sure I can’t—”

  “I’ll be all right. Lois is coming by in a little while.”

  She hugged him. “I’ll be around until commencement…”

  “I’ll call.”

  Jack sat with the picture of Danny tacking into the wind, and with the slim vestiges of a morning in late spring when his life was whole and seemed part of a wonderful continuum, when he could reach inside himself whenever he needed to and feel the place where he and Danny were together.

  He walked across the quadrangle carrying his briefcase and the work he’d left undone. He walked west through the daguerreotype streets feeling the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. He felt sorry for what he had done to Ainsley. He felt sorry for Ainsley, who was probably up in his office right now, talking on the phone to his wife and friends, licking his wounds, trying to make sense of what Jack had done to him.

  He walked west, past the White Brick bakery and Laine Bros. department store, the Palomino Grille, where the old-timers sat in the
smoky dark and retreated into the comfortable past. He stayed clear of the courthouse lawn, the police station and the morgue, the way a kid avoids the graveyard, even in the daylight, crossed South Third Street and, a block later, the railroad tracks, and didn’t stop until he came to the nameless bridge that overlooked the Wabash.

  He leaned against the old corroded railing and stared at the river, to the place where it disappeared beyond the sycamores that bent over the muddy banks, to the vanishing point, where a reverse pointillism occurred: objects dissolved back into dots. He stared at the vanishing point and wondered what he was going to do now that Danny was dead. He stared at the vanishing point as though the future were waiting around the bend and if he looked hard enough and wanted it strongly enough, he could summon it. And what if the future extended its hand, natant and roseate, and carried him away? Would it matter if he knew what was waiting for him tomorrow or the next day? Would it matter if he saw the rest of his life stretched out before him? He thought he knew all of that when he woke up yesterday morning. He thought he owned a little corner of the future. The trips to Cape Cod and New York. The fishing vacations in Nova Scotia. Classes taught, lessons learned, while his son grew into a man. It was a foregone conclusion, his reservations confirmed. But inside his pocket was a poem that wasn’t part of the plan. The funeral in New York was not on the original itinerary.

  Jack watched the river carry the flotsam and debris on its way to meet the Ohio, taking whatever fell in its path, leaving behind whatever dropped away, endlessly unraveling, like time itself. And what was he going to do, he wondered, with all of his time?

  The old girders creaked and swayed under the weight of the afternoon traffic. Jack kept staring into the distance. And even if the future is never generous enough to make itself known, Jack stared anyway, before he picked up his briefcase and walked off the bridge and along South Third Street to Fairmont Park and the ruins.