by Lawton Paul
Gentleman Caller
Angela runs upstairs the moment she gets back to Chickasaw. Dog tries to follow but she tells him to wait in the kitchen. She blows past Bo with a “Gonna check the old room.” And it’s not until she reaches the top step that she realizes she didn’t suffer over the rug and the stain.
Walt always put his laptop on the top shelf in the closet. Angela killed the last one when she accidentally slammed it shut with a pair of earphones sitting on the keyboard. The next day Walt came home with two computers. Here, try not to destroy this one, he said, handing her a new MacBook. He got another black IBM.
She stands on her toes and reaches up to the top shelf of the big walk-in closet. She finds some old running shoes with grass stains, a bag of golf balls with little XXXs on them he liked to hit into the river, and a worn out paperback: Hemingway’s, A Moveable Feast.
But no laptop. Just an empty spot where it used to be. She gets a chair so she can get a better look, and still nothing. She rifles through the laptop bag on the floor, but it’s empty.
Downstairs she asks Bo if she’s seen it.
“Nope,” says Bo. And no one’s been up there, except me. I dusted about a month ago, then before that no one except the sheriff and his crew during the investigation.”
“I’m pretty sure he had it right up until the end,” Angela says. “He used it every day. Maybe it was on his boat when it got sold?”
Bo opens a cabinet and turns on the CB radio. It comes to life with a warm hum and the dial lights up red. She turns the channel knob, CHUNK, CHUNK, CHUNK, with static in between, stops at 12 and grabs the mic. “Daisy Duke calling Boss Hogg, you there? Come in Boss.”
“Roger that, Daisy. Boss got you loud and clear.” Dog sits up when he hears Carl’s voice.
“Report to home base. Repeat, report to home base el pronto,” says Bo.
“Roger that, Daisy. Be there in 30. Just finishing up. I got trout, reds, some flounder and some okay-sized shrimp. What you want?”
Bo pauses for a second, says reds, then starts getting dinner ready. A half hour later Carl’s at the back door.
“What’s the dang rush?” he says. Bo just points at the table, Angela waving. Carl lights up. “An audience with the queen!” he says, taking off his rubber apron, gloves and boots, leaving them outside in the grass. Dog starts sniffing Carl’s little pile of shrimp-smelling gear immediately.
“I’m looking for Walt’s laptop,” Angela says before Carl could even sit down.
“Well, I didn’t take it,” he says, smiling.
“Where’s Walt’s old boat? Some guy named Dipper bought it, right?”
“Yeah, I seen him a few minutes ago. He’s still draggin’ now. Probably pulling up his nets.” Angela jumps up to go, then realizes she hasn’t asked yet, but Carl’s already heading for the door, Dog on his heel.
It’s mid-morning, the full heat of the day still to come. On the shrimp boat a few gulls are perched on the edge of a wooden box, swallowing shrimp whole as fast as they can. “Git ‘em, Dog,” says Carl. He pulls the bow close to the dock and Dog jumps down onto the deck and the birds take flight, hovering over the boat for a moment, squawking angrily before flying away.
Carl hands Angela an old blue hat. “It’ll keep the sun off your face and hair out of your eyes in the wind,” he says. She adjusts it smaller, the inside band brown from sweat and God knows what. She considers a test sniff, thinks better of it, and puts it on anyway.
A few minutes later they are under the 17 Bridge. Angela spots Walt’s old boat immediately. It’s got a dirty white hull like all of the other work boats, but Walt’s has a canvas top over the console to keep the sun off. Carl pulls alongside the man named Dipper. He waves at Carl, points at the old gypsum plant dock to say that’s where he’ll pull up his nets. The old boat chugs along, the big, diesel, V-8 rumbling at low rpms, dragging the huge net behind.
Carl waves back, content to hold it steady alongside, but before he can say no Angela jumps onto the bow of the other boat and is at the console in a flash.
“You Dipper, right?” she says. He just shakes his head and shrugs at Carl, sticks his gloves into the river, wrings out a stream of brown water. “I’m Angela. Was there a black laptop on this boat when you bought it?”
“Naw, woulda remembered that, I imagine. Take a look if—” But she’s already there at the console, opening the little cubby under the steering wheel. “You got a flashlight?” she says without looking up. He hands her an orange one covered in dried, brown fish slime. There’s nothing but an old jacket, a kid’s Snoopy fishing box full of rusty lures, and some tools.
Dipper says, “You know,” then spits an amazing amount of brown tobacco juice in a graceful arc into the river, wipes his chin on his glove, adjusts his belt. “I mighta put some stuff in the box up front.”
Angela opens the storage box in the bow and reaches as far back as she can into the dark space, her hand sliding along the fiberglass bottom, hoping to feel a smooth plastic laptop case. Nothing but a brand new coil of rope. She pulls it out and underneath is Walt’s logbook. She recognizes his handwriting immediately.
She holds it up so Carl can see. “Found the log!”
Back in Carl’s boat Angela tries to take a peek at the log, dying to know if there are clues about Walt, but the boat’s moving too fast and the wind nearly rips the first page out. So she clutches it tight against her chest with both hands.
The boat goes over some small waves and the bow lifts a few inches off the surface, then crashes down again, everything in the boat shaking. They cruise along for a few minutes, Angela watching Sand Island pass by: thick green shrubs and a shell beach. Bo said she used to get drunk on that island.
She looks up to ask Carl exactly where you were supposed to party on that thin strip of land, but he is gone. Maybe he ducked behind the console, she thinks. Then she sees his legs sticking out like he was laying down. He must be trying to get something under the console.
She holds on to the edge of the boat and heads his way. At the same time she’s being pulled in the other direction. The boat has gone into a tight turn and the G-forces pin her to the side. She makes it to Carl and he’s laying on the deck sort of smiling but it’s more like a grimace. He’s in pain and trying not to scare her. He can’t move. His whole body is taut and his hand is over his chest.
Suddenly she hears a loud horn. She looks up and realizes the boat is headed straight for the gypsum plant dock: thick concrete pilings that would splinter the old shrimp boat. She grabs the wheel and whips it hard back towards the channel. Carl is thrown into the side and Angela is nearly thrown out.
Carl’s still holding the CB mic so she grabs it and starts yelling for Bo. She has no idea how to operate a boat. It has a steering wheel, thank God, she thinks. And she knows the deep water is in the center if she follows the big buoys. Then she looks down and finds the gas lever. She eases it off and the boat slows, the engine going from a high whine to a low grumble.
“What you want?” says Bo.
“Carl’s having a heart attack. I think,” screams Angela.
“Go to the firehouse!” says Bo.
“Where the hell’s that?” yells Angela.
“You coming home now?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn the boat around. No sharp turns or you’ll sink it. Nice and easy. Head back the way you came and look to the right. There’s a dock with a red firehouse. I’ll tell them you’re coming.”
“Shit, Bo! What if I can’t find the damn thing!?”
“You can do it. The Chief’ll be on the CB in a second so hang on and head back!”
Angela makes a wide turn like Bo instructed then eases the lever forward and picks up some speed, then checks Carl. He’s pale and looks like shit, she thinks.
A few minutes later there’s a calm, older voice coming through on the CB. “Mrs. Fleetwood. Mrs. Fleetwood, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she says, trying not t
o yell, trying to sound like she’s not freaking out.
“This is Chief Lowrey Jansen out at Firehouse substation 5. I got eyes on your boat now. I got a man with a yellow flag on the end of my dock. Can you see him?”
“Yes! Yes.” Way down the river she can just make out a tiny yellow flag moving back and forth.
“Now, Angela, I want you to point your boat right at the flag. Can you stop the boat? I want you to come in nice and slow, okay? Carl’s going to be just fine. I want everybody to come in safe. Okay?”
“Yeah, but I’m not slowing down just yet.”
“That’s fine.”
Angela looks down at Carl again and it scares her. His mouth is opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“Hey…” Angela can’t remember his name. “Hey Chief, I don’t think he’s gonna make it. He’s white and I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“No. He’s going to be fine, Angela. You are going to guide that boat right to me and you are gonna slow down well before you get to the dock and we’ll take care of him.”
Angela can see the flag man now about a few hundred yards away. She pushes the lever down as far as it will go, the wind ripping her hat off, the boat flying. She takes another look at Carl. Their eyes meet and his eyes close and she knows.
This is the end.
“He’s going, Chief. I think he’s going!” she yells into the CB.
“We’ll take care of him, Angela,” says the Chief in an old-man’s calm, gravelly voice.
“Is the ambulance there yet?”
“We’ll deal with that when you get here.”
“Is the ambulance there or not?” she yells.
“It’ll be here soon. Got tied up on another call. We’ve got everything we need right here.”
Angela’s about a football field away. She can see the fireman wearing a blue t-shirt and blue pants. Carl is still as stone and his mouth isn’t moving anymore. His skin doesn’t look right, more like wood, or plastic.
And that’s when the thought hits her. The Chief is still giving her the warm, grandfatherly vibe on the CB. She slows the boat a bit and he says that’s fine just head straight in.
But instead she pulls hard left on the wheel and the boat cuts a 180 degree arc across the water. Time to go home. Back to Bo’s. Back to the power.
The Chief’s tone changes. Now he’s a father who wants to full-on yell at his kid but is trying to keep it under control. “Angela, you gotta head this way, Honey! Turn that boat around. NOW!”
But she drops the mic and it dangles from the curly black cable. She turns off the CB and pushes the gas lever down all the way again.
She slows down just a touch under the US17 bridge and through the trestle, then guns it again. She points the boat straight at Mrs. Kaufman’s house thinking she can get the boat over the bulkhead and up onto her property, but the tide is too low so she aims for Bo’s dock. Close enough to the power source?
She slows down twenty yards out, throwing a wake onto the bulkhead, the bow dipping down just before crashing into the old dock. A piling near the bulkhead cracks like a tree snapping in half. The hull catches the mud and Angela lurches forward into the steering wheel. The engine dies and everything is quiet and still.
Bo runs out on the dock, the front of the boat holding up the walkway where the piling snapped. She lays into Angela. “The Chief just called and said you turned back.”
“Carl was gonna die, Bo!” Angela yells, teary eyes and wind-tunnel hair.
Bo’s on her hands and knees on the dock. She leans down and looks at Carl in a pile at the bottom of the boat and starts to cry.
“He’s already gone. He’s gone,” she says.
“I know, Bo. That’s why I brought him here. Here he has a chance.”
“Here ain’t got no ambulance. No defibrillator. No drugs.” Tears are coming down and her hands cover her face. Carl, a silent, still clump on the patched-up fiberglass deck of the shrimp boat.
Angela rolls Carl onto his back and tries to remember how to do CPR. She tilts his head back to clear his airway, then listens for breathing, puts her hand on his chest, but nothing. No heartbeat. No air moving. She gives him three breaths and starts chest compressions. This goes on for a few minutes and her arms get tired and start shaking, sirens wailing in the background.
She looks up at Kaufman’s house, only about thirty yards away, keeps pushing down on Carl’s chest, one-and-two-and-three-and... “We’re close enough!” she yells, staring off towards Mrs. Kaufman’s house, her arms ready to give out. After a few more minutes Bo tells her to quit. Angela pushes down on his chest a few more times, then checks for a pulse, but still nothing.
She stops, sits there at the bottom of the boat for a moment just holding Carl’s hand.
“Come up, Angela,” says Bo. So Angela crawls onto the dock and Bo tries to help her up and they are both crying, holding on to each other. They walk to the driveway to meet the ambulance, the rush over. And Bo starts to console Angela. “You did your best,” she says. “Nothin’ more you coulda done.” And that made Angela just want to cry more.
The sirens get louder—a few streets off.
“You wait here, Bo,” says Angela when they get to the driveway. “I don’t want to leave him alone.” Angela walks back towards the boat. Kaufman’s tiny brick house on her right. She wants to yell at the chain link fence and that damn mango tree as green and alive as ever. I’m going to rip that mango up from its roots. Maybe there is no power. And then Dog starts barking. She looks up and her legs get weak and wobbly.
Carl is standing in the boat.
Dog is there tail-wagging like nothing was wrong. Angela gets her feet under her and stumbles down to the boat and suddenly she doesn’t know what to say. Carl’s got both hands on the wheel and his eyes are open. He sees her and smiles, tries to wave, but the hand goes back to the wheel to steady himself.
Angela jumps into the boat and puts a hand on his chest and feels a good, steady beat, and Carl does a weak laugh, then sits on the edge of the boat. “Thanks,” he says. “I felt it. Out on the water. I went away for awhile, but when we got here I started coming back. I didn’t want to go just yet.”
The doctors at St. Vincents don’t find any sign of damage to Carl’s heart, but decide to keep him overnight as a precaution. So Angela leaves Bo and Carl in his room watching Rockford Files reruns like everything is fine.
And she goes straight home to the old house, straight to her room with a cup of hot tea and Walt’s logbook. She puts the black notebook on the bedside table next to Walt’s card, still there after eight months. She has it memorized: I have always loved you. No matter what, I’ll always be yours. Let’s talk tonight.
She takes a sip of tea, grabs the notebook and starts again at page one, searching for answers. Most of the entries told the tale of a failed shrimper.
Jan 19: 2 drags, Eastport, hung net. Carl helped out, advised staying away from east side of Rock Island.
Jan 20: 1 drag, Eastport, got the nets up. Handfull of shrimp and a noisy fish the locals call a croaker.
But then on the February page he wrote in the margins: mango survived a hard freeze. Epicenter?
Then later in log: S.S., impossible drop in late 1979! What happened in 79? she wonders.
More shrimp entries, then, Torino at night. Again. I worry about her. Is this the right course of action?
On the back page he wrote: Angela. Then under that a list of dates, each followed by a two-digit number. Dammit Walt, she thinks, why do you have to be so cryptic?
She stops a few minutes later and says aloud to the room, “What were you going to tell me, Walt? And how did you know her?”
The phone rings. It’s Greg.
“How’s Carl?”
“Better.”
“Good to hear. Probably just angina,” he says. No, it wasn’t, thinks Angela.
“Hey. Got some news,” says Greg.
“What?”
“She had brow
n hair,” he says.
“Who?”
“Kaufman.”
“How do you know?”
“Hair still grows after death. The hair sample tox screen that came back was typical so I didn’t think anything of it. Most women have all sorts of chemicals in their hair. But then the other night on a hunch I went in and took another look at her actual hair.” He pauses for effect. “She’s got brown roots!” He’s breathing like he just stepped off a treadmill but she imagines him in his lab coat at the morgue. “I didn’t see it the first time though because the hair hadn’t grown, but there it was, two weeks later.” He pauses again, and then Angela realizes she needs to say something.
“Excellent work!” she says, wondering if it’s okay for the out-of-work widower living on insurance money to praise the doctor like a little boy. Just like petting the dog. Maybe Marlina was right about men and dogs.
“Perhaps this is simply observational error on my part, which my ex would attest to, but don’t most women want to appear younger?”
“Startling observation, Doctor, but yes.”
“Lest we forget I’m much more comfortable with dead people than living. The dead do not lie.”
“Lovely sentiment.”
“My social failings aside, I’m starting to think there’s something to this. Maybe this woman is not the real Marlina Kaufman? Or maybe this birth certificate is fake? I don’t know. The documentation looks good so I’ve got to work this from her side. I can’t go on appearance alone, but the science, the physical evidence will lead us to the truth.”
“Okay, that’s great. Keep working that angle.” Another little pause. “I’ve got another favor to ask.”
“Anything.”
“Something happened in Chickasaw in 1979. Something health related.”
“What?”
“Yeah, not much to go on, I know, but Walt wrote in his log …impossible drop in 1979! And I think it was a good thing. Possibly health related and in Chickasaw. Can you check on that?”