The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  “Are you really half Mexican?”

  “Yes, I just found out today that my father was Mexican. I . . .haven’t even absorbed it yet. It strange to know that there is a half of me that I know nothing about.”

  Pilar nodded pensively. “Is that why you are here? To tell me that?”

  Brendan could hear an unusual intonation in her voice. She sounded annoyed but he had no idea why.

  “I . . . just wanted to see you.” His instincts told him not to mention his conversation with her brother.

  “Where did you go with John today?” she asked in the same tone.

  Brendan blew out. Sothat’s why she’s annoyed, he thought to himself.

  “Just . . . just . . . well, I’m trying to help him find out where he’s from.”

  Pilar raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What? Do you know how dangerous that is for him? Do you know how – how affected he will be when you find nothing? He is sick, Brendan. John is mentally ill. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Brendan glanced down and then moved his eyes to the kitchen window. An invisible mosquito buzzed outside the fly screen as it tried to find a way in.

  “I’m just trying to help him,” he said.

  “Then leave him alone. Brendan,I’ve seen you with him and you care for him. That’s good, really it is, but you don’t know anything about him. Maybe you’re interested in him because of your own background. You just said that it was strange not knowing anything about your father.”

  “I don’t care about my father. I was referring to my background,” he replied sharply. “And what do you know about Jonathan?” It was rhetorical because he didn’t believe she knew anymore than he did.

  “How much do I know?” she shrieked.

  He had never heard her raise her voice before.

  “I know that when he was found he was half starved and that he had old injuries that showed he had been beaten for most of his childhood. He had three fractured ribs and a broken arm that had never received medical attention. Some of his teeth were missing. There were marks on his back that proved he had been beaten with a belt. He had a form of rickets called antirachitic. That means that he saw very little sunlight because he was probably kept locked indoors for most of his life. Brendan, John doesn’t remember his past because he has blocked all of that out. His family must have been responsible for that. What other explanation is there? Have you considered that those evil people thought he was dead? That he escaped and he is now safe? And you want to help him find them? If they did know that he was alive, the reason they never came forward and claimed him is because they knew they’d be charged with child abuse.”

  “You don’t know that. He’s told me lots of stuff. He has a lot of happy memories with his brothers and sisters.”

  “Jesus, Brendan! It’s all fictitious. Don’t you know that? None of that is real.”

  A voice came from the other room.“Don’t blaspheme!” Guido shouted.

  Pilar glared at the wall separating her from her brother and then sighed. “None of it is real, Brendan. Please believe me. Please promise me that you won’t encourage him.”

  Brendan looked away from her. He did not want to give up on Jonathan. His friend’s quest had got into his bones and made his blood pulse through his veins like it hadn’t done in a long time. But he couldn’t refuse her, even though he already knew that he would not keep his word.

  “Okay. I promise.”

  A door slammed and Pilar’s brother came into the kitchen. He had his gun on his hip and was letting Brendan know that his time was up. Brendan couldn’t take his eyes off the weapon and swallowed hard.

  “Well, are you going to turn him down and make me happy?” Guido joked. “What’s your answer? I have a right to know – isn’t that so, Brendan?”

  Brendan cringed.

  Pilar looked from Brendan to her brother.

  “You came here to ask for my brother’s permission to ask me out! In 2013!” she bellowed. “¡El permiso de mi hermano! ¡Estamos en 2013! ¿Cómo se atreve? ¡Yo decido con quién salgo!”

  “Pilar!” Brendan pleaded. “Please speak in English. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “You don’t ask for my brother’s permission. It is 2013 and I decide who I date!”

  “I’m sorry. Frank said –”

  “Frank!” she growled. “Probably that was how it was when he worked with my father a long time ago, or maybe how it is in Puerto Rico now, but not here, not in America!”

  Guido laughed and made his way out of the room. “Too bad, man – you heard her.”

  Brendan heard the front door slam and the car rev up in the driveway.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I can see I’ve made a mistake. Forget I ever called.” He was already wondering how he would face Pilar in the shelter the following day. “See you.”

  Brendan left the kitchen, walked down the hallway and opened the door to let himself out. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment on the pathway with his face buried in his handsin embarrassment. He’d had plenty of rejection before but it was always in a dark crowded pub and he’d usually have had too many drinks to fully remember the details the following day.

  As he walked down the pathway he could hear Isabel and Pilar talking in raised urgent voices as if they were arguing. The door opened and he turned to see Isabel pushingher sister-in-law out and closing the door loudly behind her. Pilar stood rooted to the spot and did not raise her eyes to meet his. Her face was burning red.

  “Brendan . . . I’m . . .”

  “Look, you could have just said no. End of story. No need to make an opera out of it!” he said angrily.

  She kept her eyeson the ground.“I’m sorry. If you were here to ask me out . . . you should have asked me directly, that’s all.”

  Brendan sighed. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he came here but he hadn’t expected this. He felt like a fool now and it would take him a long time to get over the humiliation. He looked at his watch. It was ten to six and he had to get to the shelter for Eileen. He thought about how beautiful Pilar had looked when she was so angry, shouting at him in Spanish. He looked at her now, all cool and calm. She had returned to the Pilar he knew.

  “Pilar,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “When you’re angry or – or afraid, do you speak in English?”

  She frowned at him. It was not the question she was expecting. She thought about it for a moment.

  “It depends but, I guess, no, I usually speak in Spanish.”

  “Because it’s your first language?”

  “Yes,” she replied, confused.

  “Pilar?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you think in Spanish?”

  Pilar screamed. “Sí, sí, pienso en español. ¡Ahora lárguese!” she roared, reverting angrily to her native tongue. “Get out!” she screamed again in English to ensure he got the message.

  Brendan frowned, unsure why she had become angry again. As he opened the gate, the hinges squeaked loudly.

  “That needs oiling,” he said.

  Pilar lifted a small ceramic pot plant and threw it at him, narrowly missing his head.

  “¡Agghh, bastardo!” she screamed.

  “I understood that!” he shouted as he headed out of the cul-de-sac towards safer ground.

  As he walked towards the shelter, Brendan thought about the first time he had seen Jonathan up close. He remembered how the strange man spoke in Spanish as he cowered in fear on the steps of the shelter. As though it was his first language. But none of Jonathan’s stories mentioned his family speaking Spanish. It was yet another mystery surrounding the man who had had become so important to him, another mystery he was determined to solve.

  Chapter 14

  “You sure Alice said we could go all the way to Mountain Park?” Jonathan asked.

  Brendan nodded and stopped to catch his breath. He bent over and placed his hands on his thighs. He had no i
dea he had become so unfit until he attempted the steep incline through the forest walk of the park’s Blue Trail which would lead them to a magnificent lookout over Dover town.

  “The view from the top is supposed to be nice,” he said.“Think you’ll like it. I think you’ll feel more relaxed talking up here.”

  After twenty more minutes of hard ascent, the pair arrived at a large open area which was too rocky for trees to grow on. Together they walked to the edge of the rock and looked out over the entire town.

  “Wow, that sure is pretty!” Jonathan said.“I’ve never been up here before.”

  Brendan placed his backpack down and sprawled on a large boulder to the side of the rocky outcrop and panted loudly.He thought of Alice and how each day she seemed more out of breath. On more than one occasion, he had almost asked her what was wrong. It was clear that she was sick but he decided that if she wanted to tell him, she would have done so, and that she was obviously keeping her illness to herself for a reason. He took out two bottles of water and threw one to Jonathan.

  “We used to come to a place like this when I was a boy,” Jonathan began.

  Brendan took a large swig of water and sat up to listen.

  “Once a year we’d meet on this high point of the mountain and give thanks for the harvest. It was like our own private Thanksgiving. I think my great-great-great-great-grandfather started the tradition and the family kept it going. He was a pioneer from the old country. We’d meet up with our cousins, aunts, uncles. Everybody would be there and we’d bring honey-glazed hams, sausage, fresh pies and potatoes. We’d stay there from sunrise to sunset, my two favourite parts of the day. When I was small, I loved to see the sunrise. I loved to watch its red and yellow glow light up the land and spread out across the sky. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Always felt sorry that Cassie couldn’t see it but I’d try to tell her what it was like and she’d smile and thank me. That big yellow sun would go down right before our eyes at the clearing. My daddy said that clearing was there long before us Nelsons settled there. He reckoned it was an Indian place of worship and I could see how it would be. It sure was beautiful. It’s one of the first things I’m going to do when I get home – climb that ridge and look out in time to see that sun rising. I’ll take Cassie with me and explain it to her like I used to.”

  Jonathan stopped speaking and squinted into the sun as it climbed over the town. He raised his hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare.

  “You can only just about hear the wind up here. It’s so quiet. I love the quiet, don’t you?”

  Brendan shook his head.“No. I can’t stand it. It . . . it makes me . . . nervous.” Brendan didn’t want to talk about himself and the heavy silence his mother had raised him in. He preferred to hear about Jonathan’s incredible life, to listen to his extraordinary stories.

  “I need the tranquillity, the peace that silence brings to my heart when I am alone with my thoughts,” Jonathan said. “Sometimes at night it takes a long time for the men in the dorm to go asleep and I lie there and wait for the silence to rise up from their roomsand settle in my head. When it finally comes I think about my family and imagine where they are, maybe keeping the tradition going in that clearing and wondering where I am. Maybe they set a place for me. I think they would do that. Yes, the quiet lets you see into your heart, into your soul, lets you listen to your thoughts so you can know who you really are. You can’t do that if you fill your life with noise.” He paused. “That’s what I miss most of all, you know, the things that I know were important to me. Like big family get-togethers around the table, sharing a meal and talking about the day.”

  Brendan thought about this for a moment. He looked at his friend. Jonathan was wearing his old woollen vest with the orange diamonds and the same faded corduroy trousers. His pale face and clear blue eyes gave the man an air of innocence but there was a depth of maturity behind those rimless glasses. He was a man who had experienced a lot of things, but which of those memories were real and which were, as Pilar put it, fictitious, was anyone’s guess.

  “I’d like to know more about how you speak Spanish.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “I told you. I always spoke it.”

  “Always?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  Brendan stood and threw a stone over the edge of the rocky outcrop as he tried to think of more questions.

  “When you were found, did you speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “And read and write English?”

  Jonathan frowned. “No. I remember someone would come to the hospital and teach me to read and write. A lady. She was real nice. Then I was sent to a foster home, four actually, but none of them really worked out for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I kept running away, looking for home. Couldn’t see how I needed a foster home when I had my own family to get back to.”

  Brendan bit the side of his lip as he absorbed this.

  “So you went back into that hospital, the one Dr Reiter was at?”

  “Yes, until I was an adult because I couldn’t run away from there. Everything was locked. When I left, I just drifted around looking. When I finally settled at the shelter, Dr Reiter agreed for me to stay on in Dover because he was sick of me running off and felt I’d be a lot happier there.”

  “And you definitely couldn’t read or write English when you were found?”

  “Definitely.”

  “What else do you remember?” Brendan asked, anxious for more.

  “Well, that clearing I was talking about, I went up to there on my own one day. I was about fourteen and I was upset. Can’t remember what it was about now. Seems like I can never remember the things that made me sad. I just know that they’re there, somewhere in my mind but something just won’t let them come out. Maybe I’m lucky to be that way. I don’t know. Anyway, I made my way to an old shack and it was empty. I didn’t really plan on going there. I just found myself outside that hut and I let myself in. I knew it was empty cos the old Indian woman who died there, well, she was the last of her people. I wonder what it is like to be the last of your people, to be the only one left. Well, I slept there for three whole days and just ate whatever I could find around the small clearing she had dug out for herself. At night I swear I heard her moving around, making her medicines and humming the way she used to. My momma said that old Indian had a cure for snakebite, said she saw her save a man when she was a young girl. But I wasn’t afraid. I was more afraid of going home.”

  Brendan wondered if he should ask Jonathan if he was sure about his age in this story. The newspapers reported that when he was found he was anywhere between the ages of eleven and fourteen so he must have been younger in the story than he remembered. He decided not to interrupt the flow of the story and made a mental note to ask him about it later.

  “You were afraid to go home? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were you afraid that your father would beat you?”

  “Oh, my daddy never beat me. No, sir! Now Virgil and Clay, they got tanned lots because they were always looking for it. But me, no, sir, I stayed out of the way and did as I was asked.”

  Brendan took a blade of grass from the ground and began to chew on it.

  “Jonathan?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Did Virgil and Clay look like you? I mean, a lot like you?”

  “Guess so. Why?”

  Brendan leaned back and propped himself up on his elbows and thought about the upset his suggestion might cause Jonathan.“No reason.”

  “What did happen when you went home?”

  “I don’t remember.” Jonathan looked away and squinted into the sun again. “I love the sun.” He began to rub the side of his head the way he did when Brendan’s probing became too much for him.

  Brendan stood and walked over to the edge of the rocky surface, aware that it was time to change the subject.

  “There’s a big lake down there. Do you
fancy a swim? It might cool us down.”

  “Sure.”

  Together they slowly negotiated the steep descent and stripped down to their underwear.

  Brendan walked slowly into the lake to gauge its depth. He looked back at Jonathan who was still standing at the water’s edge.

  “Careful, it’s cold and real deep!” Brendan shouted and waded on through the ice-cold water.

  He glanced back. Jonathan was still standing at the edge.

  “Come on in!” Brendan shouted, and dived into the water.

  He swam vigorously across the lake which was about three hundred yards wide. When he got to the other side, he turned but could not see Jonathan anywhere.

  “Jonathan!” he called out but there was no reply.

  He swam back to the middle of the lake but still could not see his friend. He shouted again and could hear his voice echo off the rocks surrounding the lake. He swam back towards the water’s edge.

  About twenty yards out he put his head under the water and swam around in circles, looking to see if Jonathan was mischievously hiding under the water to frighten him.

  He swam closer to the shore, in line with the place he had last seen his friend, dived under and swam forwards a little. He came up for a breath and dived again.

  And then he saw him – floating lifelessly in the water.

  He came up for air, then dived again. Placing his arm around Jonathan, he dragged him upwards before pulling his limp body to the water’s edge.

  Brendan laid him on his face on the rocky surface and gasped at the sight of the long, narrow scars that ran the length of Jonathan’s back. He turned his motionless friend over and checked but he was not breathing. Brendan tried to remember the lifesaving he had learnt during school swimming lessons and winced at the thought of putting his mouth over another man’s. He shivered, opened Jonathan’s mouth and blew air into his lungs. He repeated the sequence until Jonathan began to splutter, his hands instinctively rushing up as he tried to push Brendan off him.