“Both of you just shut the fuck up, all right?”
Donald disappeared into the back and Rick looked at me with genuine surprise. I turned away but heard him mutter something unintelligible, and from the corner of my eye saw him shake his head.
We headed into the south end of the city, one of the rougher areas of New Bedford. Even in such weather, the streets seemed unusually empty, the city unnaturally quiet, as if in anticipation of our arrival.
“Nice neighborhood,” I mumbled.
“Fucking shit-bin.”
“As Melville said, ‘Such dreary streets’,” Donald offered quietly. “Such a historically significant city, such decent, diverse, hard-working people, yet still so dreary in some parts. I wonder what Herman would think of her now.”
“Drugs, that’s the goddamn problem,” Rick said, turning onto a side street. “Drugs are ruining this country, and let me tell you—”
“Is there anything you don’t have an opinion on?” Donald asked. “The city’s been on the rise for quite some time now.”
“I got your rise right here, swinging.” The Jeep slowed and Rick pulled over into the only vacant space, a spot near the top of the block. The narrow street consisted of two-story tenements with tiny fenced-in yards and side driveways. Most were dilapidated and in various stages of disrepair, and even bathed in steady rain, strewn garbage and assorted filth defiantly clogged gutters and stained sidewalks. It seemed darker here; as if night had not yet fully released the city like it had the outskirts and beyond, as if the dreary streets Melville had written about in Moby Dick could still be conjured more than 150 years later. Rick pointed over my shoulder. “That’s it.”
The building stood on the corner; the front yard cordoned off by a rusted chain-link fence, the tiny section of grass beyond unkempt, cluttered with toys and other debris. I felt my stomach clench as I noticed a small window along the base of the tenement. Somewhere on the other side of that grimy pane of glass one of my best friends had lived out the final days of his life and eventually killed himself. My eyes shifted to the windows on the first floor. One facing the street was filled with light.
How could anyone continue to live there after what Bernard had done?
I tried to picture him walking this block, moving through the rickety gate and going inside. I tried to picture him alive here, but all I could see, all I could sense, was death.
“Let’s go.”
Rick’s gruff tone snapped me back, and I was out of the Jeep and standing in the rain before I’d even thought about it. Donald, looking nauseous and pale, stepped out just as Rick rounded the front of the vehicle and set the alarm with a push of a button on his key chain. We all stood there a moment, watching the building like children staring down the local haunted house.
The next street over emptied into an enormous vacant and weed-infested lot, beyond which loomed one of the more infamous housing projects the city had to offer. I vaguely remembered cruising that project nearly two decades before while still in high school, searching for a quick pot buy before heading off to a party in nearby Westport.
This seemed like another life entirely, and maybe it was.
“OK,” I heard Donald say through a lengthy sigh. “Let me do the talking.”
With Donald in the lead we moved through the gate and huddled near the front door. I could sense the ocean nearby, its smells and sounds and physical presence always evident, watching and whispering reminders that it was still the pulse of the city, and like an audacious child, it would not be ignored. Despite having lived my entire life within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean, I was reminded how oddly uncomfortable it made me. Like the living thing it is, the sea had always seemed ominous and threatening to me, a malevolent sentry eager to swallow me whole if only given the chance. The idea of drowning, of dying at sea was terrifying, and unlike most residents of southeastern Massachusetts, I was not an avid swimmer, only set foot on a boat if I absolutely had to, and wouldn’t eat seafood with a gun to my head. The ocean had always been something I found fascinating but beautiful only in a fatalistic sense—much the way a tornado or a particularly violent storm could be beautiful—that by its very nature and power its magnificence was inherent. But it was also something I wanted to experience only from a comfortable and presumably safe distance. Living here meant that the ocean was always with you—always close—and even when you couldn’t see or hear or smell it, you could feel it.
Why I was so focused on the ocean at that point I don’t know, but death was on my mind, sharing space with the first sensations of fear. Beyond the door, somewhere in the bowels of this slowly decaying building, Bernard had died—had been dead—and no matter what was or wasn’t said or done, we were too late.
Donald rapped on the door and the sound brought me back around. When no one answered, Rick gave it a try and seconds later we heard locks disengaging. I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as the door swung partially open to reveal a tired-looking, slightly overweight woman. Her dark eyes narrowed a bit at the sight of us. From deep within the apartment behind her I heard a child’s voice interspersed with sounds of a television. She stared at us questioningly.
“Hi there.” Donald forced a smile. “Is Sammy in, by any chance?”
The woman nodded, held up a finger then closed the door.
“The bitch even speak English?” Rick mumbled.
Before Donald could argue with him or I could tell them both to knock it off the door opened a second time, this time fully, and a large man in a tank top and a pair of Dickeys stood before us. With thick and well-muscled arms covered in tattoos, a shock of dark bushy hair and more than a day’s growth of beard, he was imposing and seemed anything but pleased with our presence on his steps. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry to bother—”
“What do you want? I know you?”
From his expression I knew Rick felt challenged and planned to respond. He opened his mouth but Donald spoke before he had the chance. “I’m Donald LaCroix, I spoke with you late last night on the phone.”
The man relaxed a bit. “Oh, you Bernard’s friend?”
“Yes, we spoke last night.”
“Right, right, OK.”
Donald motioned to Rick and me. “Rick Brisco and Alan Chance.”
He gave a quick nod, a genuine smile, and shook our hands in turn. “Bernard talked about you guys all the time, come on in out of the rain. Sorry, we don’t get a whole lot of people coming to the door this time of morning, especially on a Saturday. Never know today, right?”
As he stepped back and let us pass, we all moved into a cramped and dim foyer. An adjacent hallway emptied into a well-lit kitchen near the rear of the building. To our immediate right was a modestly furnished den where two young girls sat in front of a console television eating cereal, and to the left was a closed door I knew without being told led to the basement.
Sammy closed the door, turned the deadbolt. “So what can I do for you guys?”
“I apologize for hanging up so abruptly last night,” Donald said, “I was just—well—at any rate, we thought we’d stop by and see if there was anything we could do.”
“Appreciate that,” he said. “I wanted to call one of you guys but I didn’t know your numbers or nothing, so I figured you’d get a hold of me eventually. There really ain’t nothing left to be done.” He looked into the den. His wife had joined the girls there, and all three seemed preoccupied with the TV. “Like I told you last night,” he continued, “they buried him across town in one of the plots the state puts aside for people who can’t pay. He ain’t got no stone or nothing, but if you go to the office the cemetery workers can show you where he’s at. I feel bad about it and all, I mean I wish I could’ve done more but you guys know how it is. I work two jobs, my old lady works; we got two kids, rent; the car. Money only goes so far every month and funerals are expensive.”
“No,” Donald said, “please don’t think you have to explain any of this to
us, we understand completely. I’m only sorry we couldn’t have helped.”
Sammy folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “To be honest, I figured the military would take care of everything. If a guy’s a veteran and dies broke they cover the funeral and burial costs—all of it.”
“Bernard was in the Marines for a year before he got hurt,” I said.
“That was bullshit.”
We all stood there silently, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Bernard lied,” he finally said. “They got no record of him. He was never a Marine.”
“How could that be?” I looked to the others for some sort of confirmation. “He joined up right after we graduated from high school.”
“That’s what he told you guys but it never really happened.”
“So how’d he hurt his knee?” Rick asked. “He said he lost his balance on a training platform, wrecked his knee and that’s why he got the early discharge.”
“He went somewhere for a year,” I said.
“Well it wasn’t the Marines.” Sammy shrugged. “It’s nuts, I know. I was confused when they told me too. I mean, Bernard always claimed he’d been a Marine, and hey, I don’t mean to disrespect the dead or nothing, but it just wasn’t true—that simple. To be honest, we weren’t all that close. You guys probably knew him a hell of a lot better than we did. Our family is so small, there ain’t many of us left, and I felt bad for Bernard because he didn’t really have anybody, no wife or girlfriend or nothing. It was kind of sad the way he always lived at home, you know? And when Aunt Linda died he was never the same. Bernard was a strange guy, kind of secretive, and lots of times I was never sure if he was telling the truth or not. He had problems, you guys know what I mean.”
I suddenly wondered if we did.
“When he lost his job things got bad, and by the time the bank took the house he was a mess. Like I say, we weren’t never that close, but he was family, and he was being put out on the street, what could I do? He asked if I’d put him up until he got back on his feet, so I let him move into the cellar.” His eyes again shifted to the den before returning to us. “If I’d known what he was gonna do I never would’ve…I mean, what if one of my kids had found him, you know what I’m saying? Christ.”
“Well,” Donald said, “we just wanted to stop by to see if there was anything we could do.”
“That’s real nice of you guys, but it’s over and done with and I just want to move on, you know? The girls,” he said softly, “they don’t even know he died here. It’s bad enough my old lady knows, still freaks her out. Me too, but what can you do?”
“Did Bernard leave anything behind?” Rick asked suddenly.
Sammy looked at him without bothering to mask his suspicion. “How do you mean? He didn’t have no money if that’s what you’re asking. I already told you he was broke.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Rick answered. “I didn’t mean money, I was just wondering—”
“The only thing was his car, that old Buick he had, and a duffel bag he had his stuff in when he moved in. The car I sold to a guy at work. Didn’t get much, it was a piece of shit, but it paid for the suit they buried him in anyway. The duffel bag I went through the day after he died but there wasn’t no cash in it. Had all of two bucks in his wallet. I didn’t charge him no rent or nothing, but we’d have him up for dinner when he was around, which wasn’t that much. Still, he needed money for gas and shit, and toward the end he was totally broke. He hit me up a couple times, twenty here, ten there, but I ain’t exactly a bank, right? I got bills.” Sammy turned back to Donald, the pissing contest with Rick apparently over for the moment. “Why, you guys looking for something?”
“No,” Donald said, “we just thought there might be some personal mementos he left behind. None of us have anything of Bernard’s and sometimes it’s nice to have—”
“I know what you mean.” Sammy’s eyes shifted between the three of us, lingered on Rick the longest then returned to Donald. “The duffel bag is still downstairs. I been meaning to run it over to the Salvation Army bin but I haven’t had the chance. You guys can go through it if you want. Ain’t nothing special, some clothes and stuff, that’s about it, but if there’s any of that shit you want—whatever—you know, you’re welcome to it.”
Even as he moved to the door I knew he didn’t plan to simply go into the basement and retrieve the bag. Something in his eyes, in the way he sauntered to the door and hesitated, the knob in his hand, told me we’d be accompanying him into the cellar.
“Come on,” he said, “it’s down here.”
The door opened and I forced a swallow. Donald glanced at me; he was on the verge of a major panic. I looked to Rick. He offered a quick wink and moved to the front of the line, but I could see through his cavalier routine, he was just as uncomfortable—if not more so—than Donald and I were. Yet like he so often did, Rick led the way, stepping through the doorway, old stairs creaking beneath his weight as he disappeared into darkness.
* * *
A musty odor filled my nostrils before I’d reached the bottom. Sammy flipped a switch from somewhere behind me, and the small section of basement Bernard had converted to a living area appeared. There was no fixture, only a single but powerful light bulb at the end of a thick wire dangling directly from the ceiling. Once we reached the bottom of the stairs I realized that the cellar had been divided into two separate areas. Directly in front of us another door stood closed, concealing what was undoubtedly the larger of the two areas.
Sammy was the last one down the stairs, but hesitated at the foot, bent forward and pointed to an old cot against the far cinderblock wall. “Bernard stayed there,” he said, his voice distorted and unfamiliar as it bounced along the tomb-like cement cell. “We use the rest of the basement for storage.”
At the head of the cot was a makeshift nightstand fashioned from a cranberry crate turned on end. The blankets he must have used were folded neatly at the foot, and as my eyes panned across the tiny cellar, I ignored the beams overhead and instead focused on the lone small window I had seen outside. The idea of living in these cramped and dingy quarters for any amount of time was nearly beyond belief, but nothing indicating the remnants of life resided here. It looked and felt and smelled like death, like a dungeon of sorts, a chamber where one might be sent to wither away and die, and that’s exactly what Bernard had done. Yet I had no specific sense of him here, no trace of his or anyone else’s presence, as if he’d never really been there at all, or perhaps it was this place itself that was void of even the echo of anything alive or vibrant.
Sammy pointed to a canvas bag propped against the wall next to the stairs. “That’s his duffel there.” He leaned further into the room without leaving the staircase and leveled a finger at a particular rafter perhaps a yard from where I was standing. “I found him right there.”
Rick crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the duffel. Donald and I stayed where we were; it felt good to have a little elbowroom. We’d been cramped from the moment we’d entered the house, and the claustrophobic feel had only worsened upon descending into the basement.
“He’d already been dead a while when I found him,” Sammy added.
“You sure you want to go through that here?” I asked Rick.
“It’s OK, I’ll be upstairs. Come on up when you’re done. Just make sure you shut the light off and lock the door behind you.”
He left us, and I wished I could’ve joined him. There was something final about the way he closed the door behind him, and again, the nightmare I’d had began to play in my mind. I forced it away. “Come on, man,” I said to no one in particular, “let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What was that shit about the Marines?” Rick asked. “How could Bernard lie about being a Marine and us not know it?”
“Let’s talk about this later, OK?”
“Don’t go getting all spooky now.”
“Bernard died here, man. Right fucking here. I w
ant to leave, this place is creeping me out.”
“I know it’s freaky, but it’s no different than standing in a hospital,” he said. “People die in them all the time.”
“I hate hospitals.”
“My God,” Donald whispered as if mesmerized. “What an awful place.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” I muttered.
Rick defiantly hoisted the duffel onto the cot, pulled it open and emptied the contents. Mostly dirty clothes tumbled free, wrinkled and old, many of them I remembered Bernard wearing at one point or another. I did my best to zero in on the contents of the bag, but noticed Donald gazing apprehensively at the rafters. His eyes brimmed with tears, so I pretended I hadn’t seen him.
“Hey,” Rick said, crouching over the items, “check this out, Alan.”
My legs felt like they’d been filled with lead but I forced myself over to him. He held up an aged photograph that had been taken at my wedding. Rick, Donald, Bernard, and myself, together at the reception, smiling, holding up drinks or beer bottles, broad smiles spread across our faces. We looked so young. “I remember when that was taken,” I said.
“Me too.” Rick resumed rummaging through the pile.
The photograph trembled and I realized my hands were shaking again. “I remember that moment…that exact moment.”
“He’s got a bunch of them.” Rick handed me a small stack and continued his search.
I rifled through them—six in all—four from my wedding and one of Tommy’s high school yearbook picture, wallet-size. The sixth was of a woman I didn’t recognize. I handed the rest to Donald. “Who is this?”
Rick glanced up and shrugged. “Dunno, some broad he knew I guess. A relative, maybe?”
There was something that told me she wasn’t a relative. There was casualness in the woman’s posture and facial expression that signaled she might have been more to whoever took the picture. She had a medium complexion, thick auburn hair to her shoulders, and dark eyes. Her lips were curled into a combination smile/smirk, like an inside joke had been cracked just before the picture was snapped. The shot was from the waist up, and she wore a low cut shirt knotted just above her navel. Something about her seemed overtly sexual. The smile was more than a friendly one, the glint in her eyes telling yet mysterious. The picture had been taken in what appeared to be a kitchenette of sorts; the woman leaned against a counter. The setting was not familiar. I showed the picture to Donald. “You know who she is?”
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