by Alex Austin
Hanna said nothing as Hugh dragged the body from the water, hoisted it on his shoulder and climbed the embankment. He set the body down slowly, gently. There was no rush. Kyle’s face was gray, his eyes staring blankly. On his forehead was a dark indentation.
“I couldn’t lift him,” said Hanna. “I tried, really I tried.”
“When? How—”
“I just saw him there at the bottom of the water.”
“Was he at the party?”
“No, but I told you. He was following me.”
“He may have just fallen. Hit his head on the stone. Was he on something?”
“Oh, sure, something. Bath salts, maybe. Drinking too, I suppose.” She glanced at Kyle. “He stayed on the bottom. The sonofabitch stayed on the bottom. He was always going on about his muscle density. See what it got you?” She twitched, rubbed her thumb across the black lip stud. “They’re gonna blame it on me, huh?”
“In the dark, Kyle slipped, hit his head on a rock and drowned,” said Hugh. “Nobody’s fault. Just bad luck.”
“He’s dead like that.”
“Yes, like that.”
“Kyle, you’re an asshole,” said Hanna, but she leaned sideways and touched his cheek. “Not gonna sell any newspapers to the Chinese now.”
“I’ll call the police, explain what happened.”
“They won’t believe you—me.”
“It was an accident, that’s all.”
“Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?” moaned Hanna.
“You can stay in my house until the police arrive.”
“You’re leaving?” asked Hanna.
“For a while . . .”
Hanna reached into the rock pool, scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on her face. Hugh stared into the pool. The sediment was settling, the water clarifying. A crayfish scuttled across the bottom and disappeared under a rock.
As Hugh waited for the crayfish to reappear, a red glow spread across the surface of the pool. Blood, Hugh wondered, glancing at Hanna, whose eyes had turned toward the house. An engine revved, and then died.
What else? What fucking else?
“Did you call them?” asked Hugh.
Hanna shook her head.
“Wait here,” said Hugh.
The patrol car had parked behind the Volvo. The red light continued to flash as two officers exited the car. It was Escher and the other officer who had been there the night of the fire.
“Mr. Mcpherson?”
“Yes?” said Hugh, reaching the end of the path.
“I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Hugh came to a dead stop. The sequence of events was wrong. They could not have a warrant if they hadn’t discovered a crime. He finally managed, “My arrest?”
The two officers looked beyond Hugh. He followed their glance to Hanna. Rising to her waist like a Polynesian skirt, the brush hid Kyle’s body.
“Excuse me, miss. Would you come here,” Escher called out.
Hanna walked slowly up the path. A hesitant bride. Hugh met her eyes, uncertain of what he was warning. She stopped alongside Hugh. The cops looked her over.
“What’s your name?” asked Escher.
“Hanna. Hanna Baker.”
“You appear to be at least twenty-five years old.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” said Hanna. “I’ll be thirty in November.”
The cops exchanged looks. Escher shrugged.
“You know Mr. Mcpherson?”
“Sure,” she said, almost brightly.
“What’s your relationship?” asked the other officer, his hand on his holster.
Hanna shrugged. “He’s my friend.”
“You’ve slept together,” said the officer.
Hanna looked at Hugh, who nodded.
“Maybe a little,” said Hanna. “I mean, yes. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Sleeping together isn’t against the law.”
“Not completely,” said Escher’s partner.
“You said you have a warrant. For what?” asked Hugh.
Escher ignored him. He took Hanna’s wrist as if taking her pulse. “Do you know someone named Anna Mendez?”
“Nope,” answered Hanna.
“You never saw Mr. Mcpherson with Anna Mendez?”
“I don’t know her, so I wouldn’t know. I mean, if I saw him with her.”
“Anna is fifteen years old.”
“Well, Mr. Mcpherson teaches.”
“Yes, he does,” agreed Escher. “But we’re talking outside of school. Have you ever seen Mr. Mcpherson with girls who appeared younger than eighteen?”
“Is that illegal?” asked Hanna.
“Depends,” said Wiseass.
“Would you please tell me what the warrant is for?” asked Hugh.
“You’re being charged with the sexual exploitation of a minor.”
“I gave a couple of students a ride. Jesus Christ, that’s all—”
“Save it, Mr. Mcpherson.”
The earth sunk, shifted.
Hugh was hardly aware of his arms being pulled behind him. The smooth cool metal and the soft jarring click.
They gave him one minute to say his good-byes to Hanna. He kissed her on the cheek and whispered for her to do nothing. Wait in the house. If she needed something— the trunk in the closet. Cash.
As they settled him in the backseat of the patrol car, Escher took pity on Hugh and informed him that they’d located Anna Mendez that morning. When asked about the photo, she said that her teacher, Mr. Mcpherson, had taken it.
At the station, Escher read him Miranda and allowed him to call his attorney.
Chapter 35
Fingal’s Cave/34
THE ARROW
“. . . For their fifteenth birthday,” said Katashi, “I presented Brent and James with mountain bikes and took them and my daughter on a holiday to a cousin’s farm.
“For a day or two they were happy enough riding the bikes through fields and over hills, but on the third day, while exploring my cousin’s barn, they found a store of sports equipment, including sets of bows and arrows. Brent sorted through the gear.
“‘We should leave it alone,’ said James. ‘Mom wouldn’t—’
“‘Stop worrying,’ said Brent. ‘Pretend Dad is here.’
“A quarter mile from the house in an open field, they set down their bikes, shouldered their quivers and set their bows. Brent and James emptied their cases, but for one last arrow in Brent’s: a hunting arrow. High above, a seagull floated.”
“‘Bet I can hit it,’ said Brent.
“‘No way.’
“Brent withdrew the arrow and gazed at the razor-sharp, blue-steel tip.
“‘Let’s retrieve the arrows,’ said James, darting away.
“Brent set the hunting arrow, drew the cord and aimed,” said Katashi, miming the action of his grandson.
“‘Now,’ Brent whispered, sliding his fingers from the bowstring. He watched the arrow climb. Closer. Closer. There! But no, the arrow passed before the bird, reached its apogee, turned, floated for an instant, and then gathered speed. The arrow would strike the ground at 150 mph.
“‘Did you see that?’ asked Brent, glancing toward his brother, who had vanished. Brent’s heart leaped as he saw James one hundred feet away, beneath the very spot where the hunting arrow would fall.
“‘James!’ he screamed, and it was to that fearful cry that their mother, who had come out of the house to summon the boys to breakfast, responded.
“Brent dropped his bow and ran toward James, who plucked his arrows like a child picking dandelions.
“‘Get out of there!’ screamed Brent. ‘Arrow!’
“But James merely lifted his head to look toward his brother. Nor could he have seen the now-invisible arrow, racing through unavailable time.
“‘James, cover!’ Brent shouted. The sound was hardly more than a handclap. Protruding from James’s neck, the shaft was still vibrating as Brent took his brother�
��s weight, and pulled the arrow from his brother’s throat, which uncapped the artery. Brent screamed, as did Sumiko who ran toward them. Holding the arrow and drenched in his brother’s blood, Brent looked up at his approaching mother and then plunged the shaft into his own heart.
“Screaming for help, Sumiko fell to her knees beside her dead and dying sons. She cradled their heads in her lap, tried to breathe life back into James, listened to Brent confess what had happened. She pressed her hands to their wounds, but with all her strength and all her great will, she could not save them. Unless—”
Katashi covered his mouth, breathed into his hand. He bent his head. His hand floated up as if weightless.
“When I came out, I found my grandsons alive and my daughter dead, an arrow through her heart. James and Brent were unwounded but swore to what had happened.
“‘She vanished, Grandfather. And then I saw above me the gull circling. There was the sound of an arrow flying and then the scream of the gull, the arrow in its breast. It fell, spun, but never landed. And then beside us was our mother with an arrow in her heart, and James and I unwounded.’”
Katashi put his fingers to his lips, tore out a smile. “Can one turn back time? Can one turn herself into another thing? Or was this an elaborate lie my grandsons had come up with to explain a terrible deed or mistake.” The smile flickered, went out. “I only knew that my daughter was dead.”
Yuudai drove his hand through the stupid red locks, still wet from the sea. He had wanted to crush Katashi, but Yuudai was the one squeezed of life.
Katashi glanced down at the puddle, which appeared to be spreading across the floor and gaining depth. It’s coming for me, he thought, the water wants me. Wants me back.
Katashi put his hand on Yuudai’s, uncurled his fingers from the knife’s handle. Katashi held the blade’s hilt in two hands, centered the blade over his own midsection.
Someone knocked on the door. Yuudai turned.
“Dad?” asked a soft voice through the wood.
Fingal’s Cave/Epilogue
The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg hypothesized that narrative is rooted in hunting societies, derived from the hunter reading the clues of his invisible prey: scat, spittle, trails, fur, odors, entangled feathers, broken twigs. In deep forests or vast prairies, the hunter must instantaneously recognize and decipher from the track such subtleties as the trail’s age, the animal’s gender and even its emotional state. The hunter had to assemble the whole from the part, a complex and demanding process that the historian found traceable to “the narrative axis of metonymy.” The hunter told a story based on the all-but-invisible signs, a sequence of causes and effects that was nothing less than a plot. In a nutshell, Ginzburg argued that the hunter’s story told over the millenniums led to the invention of writing, which generated the myriad forms of the reading of shit, blood, piss, pus, guts, fur, feather and stink. From piss to Proust, but never escaping that old tale: No mystery, no narrative.
Chapter 36
Andy Benedict, Hugh’s lawyer, took off his glasses, set them on the plastic table and dug his fingertips into the outer corners of his eyelids.
“Aaron Diaz,” said Benedict.
“Yes,” said Hugh.
“The grandfather is on the father’s side? Not maternal?”
“I’m . . . not sure.”
“We’ll start out with Diaz.” Benedict slipped on his glasses, took up his pen and made a few more notes.
“I didn’t take the photo.”
“Of course. Bad timing, that’s all.”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” said Hugh.
“You understand that this,” Benedict gestured, “is not a misdemeanor.”
Hugh met Benedict’s gaze. Hugh had been incarcerated for twenty-four hours, not a moment of which had he slept. He couldn’t think clearly about the crime he was charged with, and he could not think at all about the implications of a dead body resting one hundred yards from his home. He wanted to blurt that out to Benedict too. But it would be too much. Too much of a shitstorm.
“You said you’d check on bail?” asked Hugh.
“Right now it’s at a half million. I’ll try to get it down.” Benedict closed his notebook. “Never give a student a ride, right?”
Takumi and Hitoshi meant nothing to the attorney. Hugh was in the here and now. Anna’s photo. Benedict shook Hugh’s hand and told him not to worry.
Hugh worried.
Chapter 37
Kazuki couldn’t drive slowly enough to neutralize the ruts. Even at ten miles per hour, the little rental car bounced unmercifully, setting his stomach on edge and loosening his bowels. On the passenger seat, the white box too was jittery, its cover popping up every two seconds to give the pages a peek at their destination.
With each completed novel, Kazuki experienced a day or two of inertia, but this time he felt different, as if every good system in him had gone bad and every bad had grown worse. Eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs, circulation—shot. “Small, old, empty man,” he whispered, hearing his bones creak, his blood trickle, his heart hiss.
Beyond the hills, the sea was a blue tongue, licking itself clean.
Were I the sea . . .
Kazuki was relieved to see Hugh’s cottage and car.
He parked behind the Volvo and waited a moment for his stomach to settle. It was only ten A.M., but the sun had already seeped into the hills and everything seemed to radiate warmth, from the blades of grass to the rocky outcroppings.
It was not an uncomfortable heat, like being in one’s mother’s kitchen on a winter day. How far away those days seemed!
Kazuki was confident that the charges against Hugh were false though he could not fathom how the circumstances unfolded. Not quite true. The world could throw nothing his way that Kazuki could not frame, but he didn’t have the energy to imagine it. He was truly, as the English said, fagged out. Kazuki gazed jealously at the stands of scrub oak and eucalyptus, without hope but uncompromised.
The young woman was no doubt in the house, watching daytime talk and medicating herself. Kazuki walked up the path to the front door, but hesitated. The house smelled of carbons, an uneasy scent, hinting at the end. He held the white box in one hand, knocked with the other.
No response. He knocked again. Soft movements and a curtain drew back a centimeter.
“We don’t want any,” said a woman’s voice.
“I’m a friend of Hugh’s,” said Kazuki.
“He’s not here.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you looking for him?”
Kazuki held up the box.
“What’s that?”
“Perhaps you could open the door?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Hugh’s ex-father-in-law. Kazuki Ono.”
The eye stayed at the curtain a moment longer. Kazuki heard her footsteps. The latch clicked and the door opened.
He had seen her before, down at the P&L, in fact had let her play a small part in Fingal’s Cave. It wasn’t much more that a physical description. He did not bring the combative boyfriend into it.
“I’ve read your work,” Hanna said stiffly.
“Are you a fan?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“How much have you read?”
“Um, ten pages maybe.”
“Not bad.”
“So what do you want me to do?” asked Hanna.
“I want to leave this for Hugh.”
“What is it?”
“A book.”
“Well, he’s not here . . .”
“I’m leaving the country,” explained Kazuki. He offered her the box, which she tentatively took. She stood on her toes and glanced over Ono’s shoulder, fell flatfoot, and then averted her eyes.
“Thank you,” said Kazuki.
“Sure, no problem.”
As Kazuki turned, he heard the door slam.
Kazuki walked down the worn path to his car, but then, remembering Hann
a’s self-conscious glance, veered onto a descending path that led into thicker vegetation and rock outcroppings. Twenty yards down the path, he saw a stream, a rock pool and something else. At first, he failed to recognize the object as a body, thought it might have been a gnarled fallen tree trunk. But as he closed, he saw clearly what and who it was: the man whom Hanna had argued with at the café.
What had they done? Despite the heat, Kazuki dug his hands into his pockets and glanced back toward the house.
The body was a problem.
Kazuki noticed something scurrying in the rock pool. Reddish and a few inches long. It burrowed under a rock. Hunching, Kazuki untied his shoes, took off his socks and rolled up his pants. Wading into the water, he bent down, lifted the rock and grabbed the crayfish by its tail. As he did so, he saw several more of the little creatures scuttling about. Holding the crayfish, he walked out of the pool. There was a wound on the man’s skull where the flesh looked tender, but the body was too far from the water. He shoved the wriggling crayfish into his pocket, grabbed the man’s shirt and tugged the body until the head was floating in the pool. He set the crayfish on the open wound. The creature froze for a moment, but then realizing its luck began to probe with its claws. As it dug into the flesh, the scent produced an immediate interest from other nearby crayfish, and soon a half dozen crawled out from the mud and rocks, mounted the body and were gnawing merrily away. The notice of the banquet went rapidly upstream and downstream. Among the advancing army of crayfish were several of different color: silver metallic. One crawled up the man’s face and with its power claw rammed a hole in the man’s skull. Soon numerous crayfish, the robotic well-represented, were disappearing the argumentative young man.
Taking out his cell phone, Kazuki dialed Nakamura Reality. The arrangements made to move the body, Kazuki sighed. He tugged at a lock of his thinning yellow hair and thought of the café poet.
A rock pool can be calm, but deep.