Impulse

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She looked at the scrub brush, cacti, and air already shimmering off the desert floor and wondered what possessed her to agree to this craziness.

  “You’re the doctor. I’m right behind you,” she replied, but without much conviction. They marched away from the parked car and made their way along a barely discernable path westward into the desert. It was already too hot for her.

  ***

  An hour later, he slowed down. She had fallen twenty yards behind him. He stopped and waited for her to catch up. Her water bottle was nearly empty. She sat on a boulder and pulled off her cross trainers. She frowned in annoyance. The shoes used to be white but now were the same dun color as the desert floor. They were not the best things to hike in, but he made a point of staying on the level path. If she had been better equipped, he would have taken them farther east and hiked up a small mountain.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Then he saw the red marks on her feet, markings that would soon develop into a set of very nasty blisters. He dug around in the rucksack and found the moleskin he kept there in case something like this happened. He knelt in front of her and picked up one foot.

  “Here, let me take care of that.” He cut strips of the soft fabric and applied it to her feet. “Where did you get these shoes, anyway?”

  “I’ll have you know they are very expensive designer cross trainers,” she said and inspected one foot.

  “Expensive, but very bad for your feet. Look at these marks. Next time you buy shoes, get ones that fit and are good for your feet, not ones with a fancy label. We have to get you back or you won’t be working tonight.”

  “Will that stuff keep it from getting worse?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to take any chances. Besides, you look like you’ve had enough for one day.”

  “Suits me,” she said and leaned back. “Let me rest a minute, then we can go back.”

  He nodded and wandered a few yards farther along the path. He squinted and shaded his eyes against the sun and scanned the horizon. He focused on a large rock fifteen or twenty yards away. He couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw an inscription.

  “Put your shoes on and come with me,” he shouted.

  “I’m tired. Let me rest some more.”

  “No, this is important. You can rest later. Come on.” He heard her grumble in the background and he set out toward the reddish boulder. She scrabbled up behind him.

  “Look at that,” he said and pointed.

  “Some kid scratched a picture on a rock. Big deal.”

  “No, no, it’s a petroglyph.”

  “Huh?”

  “A picture carved into the rock by a Native American hundreds of years ago. Maybe longer.”

  He walked closer to have a better look and stumbled over the canvas tarp. It had been bleached the same color as the gravel and sand around it. He gave it a kick and flipped the corner back. She screamed. At first, he thought a scorpion bit her. He had forgotten to warn her about scorpions. Then he saw what she saw.

  The bones were yellow-brown and bits of clothing still clung to some, but insects and small animals had removed anything resembling either flesh or features.

  “Shhh…” he said.

  “Is it a person?” she whimpered.

  He lifted the canvas a bit more. Insects scurried over the bones and away into the desert. He made out the distinct outlines of a pelvis and more fabric.

  “Yes, I think so. I’m guessing a woman. We have to call the police.”

  “Police?”

  “Yeah. I’m just an anesthesiologist and a long way from freshman gross anatomy, but that jagged hole in the cranium is not supposed to be there.”

  Her face took on the ashy expression one sees just before people faint. He grabbed her just as she collapsed and kept her from falling into a jumping cactus.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dexter Light woke with a class ten hangover. He’d started classifying his hangovers in the Army. A class one might be annoying but not debilitating. He could function normally and it would usually disappear in an hour. The scale and degree of debility was directly proportional to the size of the indicator and at the nine or ten level could include vomiting, sweats, and any number of equally unattractive bodily functions. He groaned and tried to sit up. He failed.

  “On your feet, sunshine,” the burly cop said. “The judge says he’s not interested in party drunks this morning, so you’re free to go.”

  “Say, Barney, you wouldn’t have a little something to kill the grizzly bear that’s eating my brain, would you?”

  “Sure, but not what you’re thinking of. And don’t call me Barney unless you want to spend a month or two in the slammer. You’d be surprised how many drunks turn violent in the morning and attack an officer of the law.” The cop smiled when he said it, but the smile did not make it up to his eyes. Dexter heard the warning.

  “I’m slow, officer, but not stupid. I’ll take whatever you have to kill my bear.” He expected the usual battery acid coffee. Instead the cop handed him a quart bottle of water.

  “Drink this,” he said.

  “Water? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Alcohol dehydrates. Your brain is ischemic, that’s why it hurts.”

  “Ischemic?”

  “Lacks fluid in the intercellular spaces. I read a book.”

  “And if I drink the water, it fills up the spaces?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, this is a first. I usually get a bad cup of coffee.”

  “Worst thing for you. It’s a dehydrator, too, and will play hell with your stomach. You need to rehydrate and rest. Give your body a break. This afternoon, take a walk. Eat a sensible meal. Take it easy, and get off the booze. You’re killing yourself.”

  “I mistook you for the wrong TV character, before. You aren’t Andy’s deputy, you’re who? Doctor somebody.”

  “Nope, just a guy who used to be just like you.”

  “Like me? I don’t think so. How, like me?”

  “I used to be a drunk, son. Here, take this.” He handed Dexter a leaflet.

  “AA? You think I should join AA? Doc, I appreciate the thought but the last thing on this earth I want to do is lose my right to drink myself into oblivion.”

  The cop shrugged his shoulders.

  At the booking counter, Dexter got back his belt and shoelaces. He signed for the manila envelope containing the rest of his possessions.

  “I had a coat,” he said.

  “Not when you checked in here, you didn’t. You must have lost it.”

  Dexter did not figure the cops stole it. It would be a thing only to be coveted by a very select group, bums and the homeless. He relaced his shoes, slipped his belt through the pant loops, missing two, and dumped the envelope’s contents on the desk. Not much there. His wallet, fourteen dollars in bills, twenty-seven cents in change, his round trip ticket stub for the Metro, a Timex that looked like a Rolex, and her picture. He pocketed the change and put the bills, picture, and ticket in his wallet.

  “Who’s the picture?” the cop asked, “your wife, girlfriend?”

  Dexter shoved the wallet in his hip pocket. The water seemed to be working.

  “Nobody,” he said.

  “Okay, Mr. Light, you can go. Think about what I told you. It’s one day at a—”

  “—time, right. Thanks, but no thanks, Officer. Now, if you would just point me in the direction of the nearest Metro station, I’ll get out of your hair.”

  He’d missed his train. The next one that went from out in the county all the way downtown and across to the east side would not be along for a half hour. He walked a block, found a McDonald’s, and ordered a breakfast platter of soggy pancakes, sausage, and eggs. Well, they were supposed to be eggs. They were yellow and looked vaguely like eggs. The little plastic fork bent when he poked them. He pushed the sausage patty out of its puddle of grease and sipped his water. Eat sensibly, the cop sa
id. Right. One day at a time. Right. He wondered if his stomach was up to the swaying and lurching of the Metro. He wondered if he went back to Scott, would he find his coat. After all, he didn’t have a lot on his agenda today. He drank more water. He skipped the sausage and eggs and ate the pancakes. The sugar in the syrup seemed to revive him. Carbs—the quicker picker upper. He’d go back to the school, retrieve his coat, and then maybe….

  ***

  The last remnants of the reunion weekend lay in untidy piles and bundles, stacked on the grass beside the quadrangle. Boxes and tables, their legs folded modestly beneath them, sat ready to be loaded into vans. A few workmen milled around. He didn’t see any students. But then there weren’t as many boarders nowadays. Dexter pivoted around in a complete circle, taking in the buildings, the trees. Sunlight glinted off rooftops. He could smell trampled grass and a hint of honeysuckle. Did he imagine it? He couldn’t see any honeysuckle in the area. Honeysuckle grew thick in Old Oak Woods. Honeysuckle and wild forsythia.

  He looked for the cannons. There used to be two vintage World War I cannons in front of Main Building, but now they were gone, casualties of the demilitarizing of the country in the seventies. When he thought about it, which he rarely did, he believed the worst thing that ever happened to the country was the Vietnam War. A whole way of life disappeared. But then, his father said the same thing about Korea, so there you are. Somewhere in his genealogical tree he guessed someone probably said it about World War One, the Spanish American War, and the Civil War. His stint in the army had been between conflicts, free of even the hint of war. Like many men who missed out on combat, he sometimes wondered how he would have performed under fire. He hoped he would have been brave. Then he thought about his present state and realized he didn’t have the courage to face a day without alcohol. God only knew what he would do in a real crisis.

  He made his way across the quadrangle to the spot on the grass where twenty-five years before, he’d called the student body to attention. He closed his eyes and saw it all. Companies of boys in West Point blue-gray, ranging in age from six to eighteen, standing in platoons of twenty or so, three platoons to a company, eight companies, all of them waiting for the Corps Commander, for him, to give them their orders. He felt tears stream down his cheeks. He caught his breath. Sobriety did that to you, he thought, filled your head with useless memories and reminded you of lost things, lost loves, lost lives. He bowed his head and walked back into the shade. He needed a drink. He needed a drink in the worst way. He sipped from his water bottle instead.

  He found his coat balled up on a bench. It was badly wrinkled and reeked of stale beer and cigarette smoke. He had a dim recollection of sitting there the night before and talking to someone about the boys, but he couldn’t remember who or why. Something to do with that writer with a woman’s name…somebody Smith? And there were other people, too, or did that happen earlier? He had a nagging feeling it would be important to remember, but he couldn’t think why. He had the uneasy feeling he’d made an ass of himself, but then realized he always made an ass of himself at parties and most folks had come to expect him to. They’d be disappointed if he didn’t. He wondered how long he’d been lying to himself like that and then pushed that thought aside. That way led to madness. He’d stay with being a drunk.

  He wandered over to the chapel and sat on its granite steps. The carillon groaned and ran through the Westminster chimes sequence for the three-quarter hour. His head did not pound with each note as he expected. Have to give the cop some credit. Who’d have thought water would do the trick? The chapel’s dark oak doors were not fastened—at least that had not changed. He pushed his way in and sat in a back pew. Light filtered through stained glass windows. The chapel had its own distinct scent, a mixture of wet marble and furniture wax. His classmates said, facetiously, it was the aroma of righteousness. He began to feel uncomfortable in its presence.

  He weighed his options. If he walked down the hill one way, he’d go back to the Metro stop and eventually home. If he went down the other side he would end up in Old Oak Woods. The first choice he found depressing, the second frightening. He stepped outside, pulling the doors closed, and walked a few paces, considering. He finished the bottle of water and started to throw it away, then changed his mind and refilled it at a drinking fountain. That was new, too. In his day, there were no such luxuries, conveniently placed water fountains outside the buildings. The only fountains he’d known were in the buildings and you required permission to use them. Now the school had fountains, vending machines…he closed his eyes. He suddenly realized he was sounding like the alumni he’d ridiculed the night before, like an old man. He put on his jacket, shoved the bottle in one of its pockets, and headed downhill.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “She’s dead, Barbara. What else do you want me to say? In any case like this, the prime, no, the only suspect the police consider is the ‘nearest and dearest.’ They have been after me for years, asking the same questions over and over again, so much I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘Did I do that?’ I almost drank myself to death. I had to get rid of all the booze in the house. I threw my gun away…my gun, the one the studio gave me out in Hollywood when they shot the twenty-sixth episode of Collars. And you, my own daughter….” Anger, frustration, and the pain of years of nagging doubt drove the words from him, hammered at her. She staggered, clasped the back of a chair, and stood mouth agape. She started to cry again. Frank let her. He was out of napkins and out of patience. What did she think he would say? At least Rosemary had the decency to let it lie.

  “I don’t want to believe you did anything,” she sobbed, “but I need to know. The police must have a reason….”

  He sighed and sat down. “What can I possibly say to you that will help? No matter what comes out, you will always wonder, don’t you see. When the police made the allegation, they poisoned the well, and left me with nothing to say to anyone, one way or the other.”

  “You could say if you did it or not.”

  “Yes, I could, but I won’t. Your mother disappeared four years ago. She went for a walk and never came back. That’s it. There is nothing I can add to that. Not now, maybe later.”

  “Later? What can happen later that can’t happen now?”

  “The police can do their job. If they do that, I may have something to say then, but not until.”

  “Dad, I’m your daughter!”

  “And I’m your father, damn it,” he shouted. They stared at each other, two broken hearts with nowhere to go to fix them.

  “You might have asked about her, you know,” he said, this time softly.

  “Ask about her? What do you mean, ask about her?”

  “She had cancer, Barbara, ovarian cancer. You know about that?” Déjà vu, he thought.

  “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Your mother wanted it that way. She wanted to be remembered as she used to be, not as a sick, dying old lady. The pain, the real pain, had just started. Walking seemed to help take her mind off it. You remember how she was when you were little?”

  His daughter wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. Her mascara smeared across her face making her look like a depressed raccoon. “Oh my,” she said, her words barely audible. “She taught me to play tennis. I never went to summer camp, but Mom made up for that. She could do anything…dance…sing…she even played the ukulele. She was always so full of…you don’t think that she—”

  Frank shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said. But the look still lurked behind her eyes. A dark idea forming in her mind, a new possibility? The old doubts shifted over to different paths and scenarios, about him, about a violent death. They insinuated themselves into her mind. Did she? If she didn’t, then…what?

  Frank watched as her thoughts flitted behind her eyes like bats at twilight. He wondered if killing Sergeant Ledezma could be considered justifiable homicide, if not in
the eyes of the law, at least in the eyes of God. A clear case of self-defense if ever there was.

  ***

  His youngest grandchild bore his name. They’d started by calling him Frank Two, one generation removed from becoming a junior, sort of. He did not have the correct surname, but who cared? His older brother, made aware of the procession of generations and the proper way of designating them, Junior, the third, fourth, etc., and of royalty and their tidy enumeration, dubbed him Frank the Twoth. which quickly became Frank the Tooth and finally just Tooth. Barbara hated the nickname, but Tooth thought it the best name ever and happily introduced himself to all her friends that way.

  “Tooth,” Frank called, “where’s your brother? It’s time to go to the game.”

  “I’ll get him.” Tooth scampered out the kitchen door to the backyard. Barbara, face washed and looking slightly better after an hour’s nap, but still red eyed and drawn, slipped in behind him.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I won’t bring it up again.”

  “No,” he said, but he didn’t believe her. She was like a dog worrying a bone. She would chew on it forever. Doubts and distrust would be a wall that would separate them until one of them died. He hoped it would be him. Once the dogs are let out, there’s no getting them back until they’d hunted and killed.

  Tooth skipped across the lawn toward them, his brother, Jesse, ten paces behind. Jesse carried his lacrosse stick, working it back and forth, keeping the ball low in its pocket. In the springtime in Baltimore, lacrosse sticks become a permanent part of a boy’s anatomy. No self-respecting kid living north of Thirty-third Street would be caught dead at a college lacrosse game without his stick. Tooth would grab his before they left as well.

  “Hey, Tooth,” his brother shouted, “catch.” With that, and before Tooth could turn, Jesse cradled the ball in the stick’s webbing and hurled it at his brother. The hard rubber ball caught him square in the back of his head and, propelled at the thirty or so miles an hour the leverage of the stick provided, knocked him off his feet.