The Clearing

by Dan Newman

  “Come on, Tristan, stop it,” he said.

  Tristan turned and let fly at Richard with a handful of river bottom. It splashed wildly around the little blonde boy, and only hit him lightly about his shorts. Richard laughed and retaliated, sending a handful that somehow held together in flight and hit Tristan clean in the chest. Nate and Pip (squinting with one eye closed), both saw the hit, and let out a collective Oh!

  Tristan’s lower lip disappeared into his mouth and he bit down hard. He was instantly enraged, and everyone could see it. Like a car engine revving out of control, Tristan started throwing handful after handful of gravel at Richard, with no respite from the withering fire. Richard covered his head, turned away and ducked low in the water, cringing as the sand and gravel lashed at his back.

  Moments later the stony rain stopped, and Richard heard the splashing sound of someone approaching fast.

  Something in the way Tristan moved brought Nate to rigid attention on the bank. “Tristan! No!” he cried out with growing alarm.

  Richard raised his head and looked: Tristan was only six feet away. His hand was already raised, his fist locked tightly around a rock the size of a brick.

  • • •

  Nate hadn’t left his apartment since the death of his father two days earlier. Instead he watched TV. He watched the glossy screen for hours at a stretch, letting the sounds and images wash over him. Occasionally a comment or a scene snagged his attention, just for a moment or two, but soon he would slide back into something softly catatonic, and the television would hum along in front of him.

  The letters still sat in their two neat rows on the kitchen table, and he knew on some level that he was avoiding them. Still, every few hours his head would tilt just enough to see the table and the letters—just to make sure they were really there.

  On third day the phone rang—a timeshare salesman that never made it to the second sentence before Nate hung up. But for a moment, a very brief moment as the first chirp sounded out from the phone, Nate had thought it was his father calling.

  The call jarred a memory loose. It floated into view like a silk scarf caught in the wind. He hadn’t been able to remember the very last conversation he had with his father, but it returned now, crisply and in full focus. It would have been an unremarkable conversation, really, if not for the fact that it was the last one.

  “Hello?”

  “Nate, it’s your dad. I’m on my own tonight.”

  “Everything okay, Dad?”

  “I miss him, you know. I really miss him.”

  “I miss him, too, Dad.”

  “Family, you know. It’s the only thing…”

  “Dad…”

  “You seen your mother lately? How’s she doin’? Is she…is she seeing anyone? When I took that big walk with you, with your mother, there was s’posed to be more, you know? That was s’posed to count for something. Let me tell you something, son, I gave everything up for you. My career, my wife, my house, all of it. Everything. For you. Both of you. I was on the fast track. I was going up, but when I had to close ranks around my family I did it—cons’quences be damned. ’Cause that’s whacha do, goddamn it! That’s what family’s all about. And when they leaned on me to explain myself, I said no. No fuckin’ way. ’Cause that’s whacha do. That’s what family’s all about. And they’re still askin’ Nate. They’re still askin’. I goddamn well shut the doors tight on those bastards. I protected you. I protected your mother, this whole family. I protected you! And then the bastards pull the floor out from under me. Abandonment of post, they said. Dereliction of I don’t know what the fuck. And then your mother walks out. And then the fucking bank, the house, all that shit.”

  “Dad, I’m…”

  “And what do I have now, huh? What’s my legacy to the world? What has my sacrifice brought?”

  “Dad?”

  “What are you going to do now, Nate? I’d like to see you do one damn thing properly, you know? One damn thing that honors everything I did—everything I gave up. For you. What’ll it be, Nate? How ’bout something solid, like I did for you back then. Something I can be proud of, something Cody, God rest his little soul, can be proud of—or how ’bout just something you can be proud of. Don’t you get it, Nathan? It’s about doing the right thing, and to hell with the goddamn consequences. That De Villiers boy. Jesus, there was nothing I could do for him. Nothing anyone could. But you. I could still do right by you. And I damn well did. That’s my legacy, goddamn it.”

  “Dad, I love you. And I’m so sorry.”

  For the most part he always played it cool when his father got like that, just turned the proverbial cheek and went on his way, but it always hurt. His father had been a drunk since Nate was in his early teens, perhaps even earlier. And when his mother left a week after his sixteenth birthday, it seemed the world had really ended. The drinking got much worse, the blame much thicker.

  But this call, this memory that had somehow eluded him since his father’s death, it burned now with an intensity and panic he recalled from the early days, before the drinking and shouting had all became a numbing routine. The memory brought emotions he hadn’t felt since then, since his teens when his father and mother fought wildly, or even worse, when they retreated to a deathly silence that lasted for days.

  The memory of that call with his father—it seemed grotesquely bloated with importance now. Was it because it was the last conversation? Was it because Nate had hung up on the old man, silenced him just as he’d meant to, but this time forever? It settled on him thickly now—his father wouldn’t be calling back. There would be no next time when Nate could decide to finally dig deep and listen, really listen to the old man. His father would never kick the habit, never sit down and have some candid twelve-step conversation about life and loss that Nate had somehow always secretly believed would come. There would be no chance to make up for anything.

  In his mind Nate saw an image of Richard he hadn’t conjured in years. The boy was bright and smiling, and in the space of a single heartbeat it brought him to Cody. His face crumpled as he fought the memories.

  He rose from the chair and walked zombie-like to the bedroom, where he picked up the shoebox from behind the door and opened it. The pain came faster now, but it was important to feel it. It was all he had left, that burning, untouchable, un-soothable pain that had become his definition, his demonstration of how much he missed Cody.

  He reached in and lifted a small plastic figurine, a well-muscled Spiderman, and he rolled it through his fingers the way some might handle the Hope Diamond. He set it back and dipped his hand again, this time a yellow fuzzy sleeper from when Cody was only a year old. He held it to his face and breathed deeply; it didn’t hold the scent that it once had, but still he tried to take it in, to find some last trace of that once perfect boy. He sobbed quietly, and dropped the sleeper back into the box.

  Finally he reached in and took out one last item. It slipped into his hand easily, and he sat looking at it for a long time before he pressed the power button. When he did, the little screen on the voice recorder brightened, and a red light flashed its readiness. On the small screen the message said “File 1: 6 minutes, 43 Seconds.”

  Nate held his breath, and pushed play.

  Cody laughs. He is five, and his laughter is as light as angels’ wings.

  But instead of the wallowing that would normally follow, Nate felt something else. It seemed some threshold within him had finally been reached­—perhaps from too many trips into that harrowing shoebox, or maybe thanks to his father’s sudden and violent departure—but whatever the cause, the sensation rising inside him felt steely and unyielding. Where there was usually pain, there was a new sensation, like a hard and silvery ball bearing pinched in the leather pouch of a fully drawn slingshot, ready to let fly and tear off in new direction.

  Nate walked purposefully to the kitchen table and collected the letters. In the hall closet he found the simple file folder—the one he had tucked away carefully
out of sight and out of mind. He checked to see the contents were still there, then tucked it under his arm and returned to the bedroom.

  Something was beginning to gel, to make sense. Nothing could be fixed. None of it. Nothing could be salvaged, repaired or propped up. It was completely and utterly fucked, and the blame was in the right place. The thought of it was suddenly energizing.

  And in that instant, he finally understood where salvation lay.

  Nate took the two letters from the file folder and placed them on the bed. Then he placed the others, the ones he had collected from his father’s house, on the bed as well. It was clear they had all come from the same place. They bore the same handwriting, the same postmarks, and all had stamps from St. Lucia.

  The two Nate had in his folder had been sent to him in the last four years—one in 2008, and the other just last year. He knew unequivocally that, like the others sent to his father, they were all from Smiley Edwin. And they all wanted the same thing.

  As Nate looked at the postmarks he understood that over the years, both right after the events and in the decades that followed, Smiley Edwin had been quietly calling out for someone to set the record straight.

  He resolved to go back to the root, to the beginning where he knew it had all gone wrong. Nate believed there was one event, one offense that might have echoed through time and set everything in motion. He would go back, way back, and fix the first one. The first sin. The first bad call.

  It might not bring everything in line again—in truth he knew it would do nothing for the mess swirling around him now—but it would be a start. For Cody. For Richard.

  And for right now, that would be enough.

  27

  The ride north was quiet, awkward, with no one really trying to keep the conversation alive. The car was cool with the air conditioning blowing hard, and Nate sat in the back seat reveling in the sensation of the icy jet of air against his feverish forehead and eyes.

  The car slowed and turned off the road, then slipped through a security gate that hummed closed behind them. Nate looked around and saw they had entered a beautiful estate; they followed a sinuous driveway that carved like a river through perfectly manicured lawns of brilliant green, past ordered flower beds and soaring palm trees that wore their tin rat-bands like jewelry. They stopped in front of a low-set house designed to sit perfectly into the hillside it occupied. Its walls were alabaster set against dark wood trim with large, thick plantation shutters in the windows. There were huge sections of floor-to-ceiling glass panels that swept back and opened the place up like an endless veranda, and brilliant tropical flowers beaming from tastefully positioned pots and planters, some as large as oil drums. It was like a Frank Lloyd Wright design brought to its most contemporary, thought Nate—the kind of million-dollar property you’d find in a magazine dedicated to life at the platinum end of the scale.

  Nate could see right through the house. Through the glass walls, through the main living room, and out to the intense azure blue of the expansive pool on the other side. And beyond that, to the Caribbean Sea.

  They went inside and into the living room. It was dressed with wide, oversized rattan furniture appointed with rich, white fabrics and luxurious, chocolate throw pillows, and at one end there was a sweeping white bar with a soft blue glow that lit the bottles from behind. To the back of the house was another unobstructed view, this time to the pool, and when the floor-to-ceiling glass panels were drawn back the room spilled out almost seamlessly into the backyard space. The far edge of the pool was flush with the surface of the water, giving the illusion that the water ran right up to the horizon and merged with the sea in the background.

  Rachael took Smiley into the kitchen, and Nate explored the deck and marvelled at the beauty of it all—and the cost. He could see a set of stairs winding down beside the pool and terminating at a small and very private beach with impossibly white sand. There were coconut trees at perfect intervals, flower beds that curved and undulated around the pool in architectural harmony with the house. Christ, even the retaining wall at the far end was a work of art.

  With all the white and glass, Nate found it too bright to stay outside. His feverish head was already pulsing, and the brightness only made it worse. He turned back and noticed that from this angle the house revealed much more of itself than it had from the front entrance. It was actually comprised of two levels. It was luxurious, magnificent, but never over the top. A remarkable building, thought Nate, but he couldn’t help guessing: Three million? Four?

  “Nate, come inside,” said Rachael from a gap in the glass. “You’ll blind yourself out there without sunnies.”

  Inside, he found Smiley reclined on one of the lounge chairs in the living room. His shoulder had been cleaned and bound, and he wore a fresh shirt, unbuttoned, and with only one arm through the sleeve. He looked remarkably comfortable for a man nearly speared to death only hours before.

  “How is he?” Nate asked Rachael.

  Smiley answered for himself: “I am jus’ fine, man. Just fine.” His smile was back.

  Rachael patted him on the shoulder gently as she brushed past him. “No real damage done, just some nasty lacerations and a bruise he won’t soon forget.”

  “Shouldn’t we get him checked out at the hospital?” Nate asked hesitantly.

  Smiley laughed. “Man, you haven’t been in dat room she calls a kitchen. De size of my house an’ better outfitted than de whole hospital,” he said cheerfully.

  Nate and Rachael sat down in chairs. “Okay,” said Nate. “I’ll go first.” He turned and looked at Smiley. “What happened back there? In the car. Who was that? I know it was no accident, and it’s high time you told me whatever you know.” He let the moment hang, watching as Smiley processed it all.

  “Well, let I lay it out for you,” said Smiley. He rubbed his shoulder and shifted slightly. “Dis thing today, you right: it was no accident. It was intentional for true.”

  Nate leapt in. “The same person responsible for all the black magic bullshit, right?”

  A flash of disapproval swept briefly over Smiley’s face. “It not bullshit, Nate. And yes. Same people.” He took a long breath. “Dis thing today—it an attempt to repeat what happen three years ago. It all tied together.” He looked over at Rachael, whose face was buried except for her eyes. “Dat right, Rachael?”

  Smiley continued. “Three years ago, when Des died, it was on de Spice Rack, a forty-foot pleasure craft owned by Tristan De Villiers. Dat day three men died, and two of those men were invited on board for a diving trip, as I understand it, by Rachael.”

  Nate looked toward her in mild surprise, but Rachael just continued to stare at a point somewhere far away on the horizon. “By Rachael?” he asked.

  “The Spice Rack belongs to her family.”

  Rachael protested in a quiet voice, and one that was perhaps at the edge of uncertainty. “Belonged—past tense.”

  “Back den, Rachael here was married—and Rachael, please jump in if I dun get anyt’ing wrong here—to Tristan De Villiers.”

  Something in that news stung Nate, but it was irrational. He brushed it aside.

  Smiley was about to continue but Nate cut him off. “I don’t understand. You said three men died. Who else? I mean other than Des, who else died? Who else was on the boat?” he asked.

  “One of them was Pieter Prinsloo.”

  Nate’s face was pleated with questions. “And he’s related to all this how?”

  Rachael lifted her head momentarily from behind folded arms. “Really? You don’t know?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Pieter Prinsloo.” said Rachael in a tone of mild disbelief.

  Nate found himself getting mildly annoyed. “Still don’t know.”

  “Everyone called him Pip as a kid.”

  The name struck Nate like a slap in the face. He blinked hard and his mind raced to assemble the pieces. “Pip?” he asked incredulously.

  Smiley nodded. His face wa
s solemn.

  “You’re fucking kidding me. It was Pip who called Des? Pip came here asking questions about what happened all those years ago. When we were kids?”

  “Dat’s right, man,” said Smiley flatly.

  “Did you send him letters, too? Like the ones you sent me and my Dad? Is that why he came?”

  Smiley turned his palms upward. “No. I would have, but I was never able to find him. He worked overseas most of his life. But he came back here on his own. And of his own will.”

  Nate’s mind was reeling. Again he went silent, forcing unwieldy pieces together. Finally: “And you say this was no accident—that Des would never go out on the water, let alone a diving trip?”

  Smiley cut in. “I believe what happened to dem out on de water was no accident,” and as he said it he looked over to Rachael and waited for a reaction. None came. “I believe those two were taken out on dat boat an’ drowned because dey was digging up de past.”

  Suddenly Nate was angry. His mind began connecting thoughts, linking ideas and seeing plain logic where there had been none only seconds before. The accident on the boat was no accident, and it was Rachael who had invited them out on the boat. He began to bristle. “Rachael, did you know?”

  Smiley cut in again, this time raising his hand. “Now hold on, man. Me never said Rachael knew what was going on dat day. I could never prove it, an’ in fact I believe she knew nothing. She was not on de boat—she just make de invitations. If I am correct, she was a patsy in dis.”

  “But why invite them to the boat? Why?”

  “My guess? Because she was told to,” said Smiley, again looking to Rachael for a reaction. Nothing.

  “What do you mean told to?”