Fail

by Rick Skwiot

  Gabriel vaguely recalled that Huck had taken off down river while others had presumed him dead, but forgot exactly how he did it. Now he was curious.

  On a website that catalogued old books now in the public domain he found an 1885 Charles L. Webster and Company edition. The title page read, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). By Mark Twain. With one hundred and seventy-four illustrations.” In the contents he located what seemed a likely spot for his search:

  “CHAPTER VII. Laying for Him.—Locked in the Cabin.—Sinking the Body.—Resting.”

  There Gabriel found Huck’s serendipitous escape plan: While hunting in the woods he came upon and shot a wild pig. He used its blood to stage a murder scene at his father’s cabin, breaking in the door with an axe, smearing the axe with blood, and sticking on some of his own hair for good measure. Then he dragged a sack of rocks to the river to simulate a body being disposed of there and left clues to indicate a robbery. Now all he had to do was disappear, and he was free.

  It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they’ll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. And they’ll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me.

  Gabriel sipped at his beer. Maybe that’s what Stone wanted: for people to think he was dead, for no one to bother any more about him. But Gabriel wanted something too, and the only way to get it was to find Stone—dead or alive.

  - 20 -

  Next morning the valet had brought his Dodge up from the garage and had it waiting at the curb. Gabriel stepped to it through snow flurries coming in horizontally. He threw his bag in the trunk and slipped behind the wheel.

  He drove west on the Parkway, north on the Inner Belt, west on Interstate 70. After he crossed the Missouri River at St. Charles he soon headed north on Missouri 79, which paralleled the Mississippi. He could have traveled quicker going up the newer four-lane highway. But he wanted to stay on the flood plain and pass through the hilly river towns like Clarksville and Louisiana where the riverboats piloted by a young Sam Clemens had put in. If he was going to find Stone—he was now convinced—he had to think not only as if he were a professor but also as if he were Mark Twain. His target was doing the same, he gauged and hoped, apparently channeling his master.

  Gabriel sensed a solid beauty in the countryside’s somber winter palette: muted grays and browns—the sky, the hills, the river, the fields, now dusted with the falling snow. He stopped at Clarksville where stood one of a series of dams that now tamed the upper Mississippi, making it more a series of lakes than the fierce and capricious force Twain wrote about in Life on the Mississippi.

  In a diner on a low hill overlooking the dam he got eggs and bacon and ongoing chatter from a middle-aged black waitress eager, apparently, to talk to one of her own people for a change.

  “You here for the eagles?”

  “What eagles?”

  She tilted her head toward the wide windows overlooking the river. “The bald eagles. Only reason people come in winter, watch the eagles catch fish.”

  He studied the river, pocked with ice, and soon saw a great black bird with a white head glide down and snatch a fish from the waters with its talons. Could he swoop in and find Professor Stone with the same efficiency? He didn’t know, but he was damn sure gonna try.

  Back outside, Gabriel had to brush a thin blanket of snow from the Charger’s rear window before getting back on the road. As it wound it’s way north, the dark, glistening highway twisted through hills covered with bare black trees and across beige valleys where he spied wild turkeys feeding in shorn cornfields. The road rose to cliffs from which he glimpsed the river and, beyond it, Illinois bottomland with bordering limestone bluffs.

  He passed the sign—Hannibal, population 17,757—and found himself on Mark Twain Drive. The snow let up as he cruised around town. Clemens Avenue. A billboard advertising the Injun Joe Campground. Signs for the Mark Twain Dinette, The Becky Thatcher Restaurant, and Mrs. Clemens Antiques & Ice Cream. He found Tom Sawyer’s Fence and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. There was also a Mark Twain Cave, Mark Twain Hotel Apartments (“affordable housing for senior citizens”), Mark Twain High School, Middle School and Elementary School, and Mark Twain Behavioral Health. At least they didn’t name it for Huck Finn.

  He parked downtown at the marina, and walked to the Mark Twain Statue and then to the river’s edge. The old two-lane bridge he remembered from a childhood school trip was gone, and the river sped by dark and frightening, chunks of ice bobbing on its surface. He thought again of the jumper from Eads Bridge and the body in the morgue with its face sliced off. With a shiver, he moved back to his car.

  He drove up Broadway and found the Holy Family Church. Sunday Mass was likely finished, according to a sign listing weekly services and the Friday night bingo. Nearby a man in a hooded red parka tossed salt on newly swept sidewalks.

  Gabriel killed the engine on the Dodge and asked the man where he might find the priest.

  “Father Salas?” The man glanced at his watch. “Depends on what time’s kickoff. You’ll most likely find him watching the game,” he said, directing him to a tavern in a downtown hotel.

  At the hotel restaurant the priest was easy to spot given the handyman’s description. He was the only patron at the bar wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey. A wildcard playoff game was under way.

  “Father Salas?”

  He turned from the TV, a stein of beer, and some nachos. He was a young man, maybe thirty, bespectacled, paunchy, and Mexican. “Yes?”

  “May I have a word with you about an official police matter?”

  The priest turned back to the screen for an instant then held his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. “Just a minute,” he said with a trace of accent. “Till the quarter.”

  When a commercial appeared, Salas wiped his lips on a paper napkin and walked over to Gabriel, who had taken a seat at a table near the door. He showed the priest his badge and a photo of Jonathan Stone.

  “I was wondering, Father, if you’ve seen this man?”

  Salas took the photo and studied it. “Is he wanted by the police?”

  “In a way. A missing person. We’re trying to find him before he can harm himself.” He left it at that.

  “Maybe. Last week. At Tuesday morning Mass. But I’m not sure. Unusual to see a young man on weekdays. He sat in back. Then he came forward to take the Eucharist.”

  “And this morning?”

  “I don’t recall seeing him.”

  “Confession?”

  The priest shook his head. “Nope.”

  Gabriel put his tongue in his cheek, thinking.

  The priest turned to gaze at the TV, where the teams were lining up. “Anything else, detective?”

  “Go Cowboys!” Gabriel cheered. Salas gave him a high five and hurried back to his barstool, and Gabriel made his way back out into the cold.

  If Father Salas had in fact seen Jonathan Stone, then Father Mohan was right and Stone was still alive—or at least he was five days ago. And maybe Gabriel himself was right; perhaps he’d picked up Stone’s trail.

  The Hannibal Police Department was also on Broadway. It was a newer, boxy, two-story redbrick building. Once inside, Gabriel identified himself to the officer at the reception desk. She told him to have a seat and made a call. Soon another uniformed officer—thirtyish, crewcut, muscles bulging beneath his blue shirt—approached and held out his hand to shake. Smedstead, his nametag read, said he’d been working on the request Gabriel had called in, and they headed down the hall to
an office with four desks, computer monitors and keyboards on each.

  “Pretty slow today. Vehicles sliding into ditches. Nothing as exciting as a missing person.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Gabriel as he sat.

  “Hereabouts,” said Smedstead as he manipulated the keyboard, “it’s property crimes and hillbilly heroin—methamphetamine. Domestic disputes. Giving directions to tourists—in summer I’m on bicycle patrol downtown.

  “There we are. Nothing showing on your man at the hotels—we got only five and a handful of B & Bs. Emailed them the photo you sent. Negative so far. Doesn’t mean a night clerk didn’t check him in under a different name. And he could have rented a room somewhere.”

  “I just talked with Father Salas from Holy Family. Said he may have seen him at Mass last Tuesday.”

  “Could have moved on by now. Why you think he’d come here?”

  “Some noodling and a hunch. He’s a professor doing research on Twain and his Hannibal boyhood. Seemed possible he might want to soak up some local atmosphere while he finished writing it.”

  “Local atmosphere we got. Nothing on his credit cards?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “That’s what I don’t get. What he’s living on? Where’d he get the cash? What he’s using for transportation?”

  “Must have been planning it, squirreling away some money.”

  “Maybe. Lots of guys keep slush funds, if only to buy a new set of golf clubs when the wife wants a dining-room set.”

  Smedstead turned to him, thinking. “Or a new deer rifle….”

  “Anyway I thought I might ask around, flash the photo.”

  “Come with me. Less explaining to do.”

  Smedstead was proud of his new patrol car, a traditional black-and-white with “Hannibal Police Home of Mark Twain” painted on the sides and equipped with all the computerized bells and whistles. He demonstrated an automatic digital camera that started as soon as you flipped on the flashers.

  They tried a couple bars—the football game now in overtime—without good result and moved on to the Mark Twain Family Restaurant.

  Business there was slow on a snowy Sunday. Three waitresses, all in their twenties, gathered round and gawked at Stone’s photo. A blonde elbowed the brunette next to her.

  “That’s him! But without the beard. The one you wanted to shag.”

  The brunette slapped the blonde’s shoulder. “I did not say that! Just said he was cute.”

  “It was implied.” The blonde—Marcella, said her nametag—put her hands to her hips and gyrated, bringing laughter from the others.

  Gabriel asked the brunette, “Josie, when did you first experience this mad desire?”

  She couldn’t stop giggling. Finally she managed to say, “When was it he came in? Suzanne was on too, so it must have been Friday.”

  “What time?’

  “Dinner time. Maybe six.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  “Sharp. Preppy, like a college boy. Corduroy jacket. Turtleneck.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Left a three dollar tip for a ten dollar dinner.”

  “Notice what he was driving—or if he was?”

  Neither had.

  “And I assume he was alone.”

  “Yep. Just sat there reading.”

  “Reading what?’

  “Well…” Josie paused, all eyes on her. She milked the moment then said: “When I brought him his plate—fried catfish dinner—and he closed the book, I saw that it was a grammar book. That’s when I figured he was a teacher.”

  “Right you are.”

  “Did he run off with a student?”

  “You wish!” said Marcella.

  “He armed and dangerous?”

  “I think you’re safe,” said Gabriel, grinning.

  “Darn.”

  Smedstead added, “Give us a call, girls, if you see him again.” Back behind the wheel of the patrol car he said, “Seems like he’s still around. We’ll find him sooner or later.”

  “Has to be sooner.”

  “Could put his picture in the Courier-Post.”

  “Let me think on that.”

  Smedstead edged the car from the curb. “That’s where Mark Twain first worked, setting type at the Missouri Courier.”

  “He’s everywhere here, isn’t he?”

  Smedstead shrugged. “It’s all we got.”

  - 21 -

  Sunday night in Hannibal started early. By five-thirty the streets were dark, and everything had closed except for a few taverns. Gabriel got a room downtown in a newer hotel and called The Gecko’s safe number from his room phone.

  “Area code five-seven-three—where the hell’s that?” he asked Gabriel.

  “Stone’s alive. At least he was last Friday.”

  “You tell Ellen Cantrell?”

  “Just texted her to that effect. Anything new on your end?”

  “Nothing. Still no credit card action.”

  “Damn. Looks like more footwork. Luckily there aren’t too many places to put your feet up around here.”

  “Jeez, area code five-seven-three covers half the fricking state. Here we are, the Hannibal Huck Finn Inn on Mark Twain Drive.”

  “You can’t escape him.”

  “Good luck getting back. More snow coming in tomorrow.”

  “I already feel stranded. Nothing here but woods, cornfields and the river.”

  After they hung up, Gabriel got out his laptop. First he checked his email. Nothing pertinent. Then back to Stone’s dissertation, skimming it and thinking on pressing matters—such as Stone’s whereabouts—without good result. Then he returned to Huckleberry Finn.

  He followed Huck to Jackson’s Island, where he surprises the runaway slave, Jim, who, like others in Hannibal, thought Huck murdered and dumped in the Mississippi.

  “Doan’ hurt me—don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz liked dead people, en done all I could for ‘em. You go en git in de river agin, whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz awluz yo’ fren’.”

  Perhaps best for Ole Carlo, too, if Stone would go back into the river where he belonged—or at least where the mayor would have him reside.

  Huck went on to disabuse Jim of the idea that he was dead.

  “Well, I warn’t long making him understand I warn’t dead. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I warn’t lonesome now. I told him I warn’t afraid of HIM telling the people where I was.”

  Maybe Stone was lonesome too and needed a “fren.” Yet the only folks he trusted were priests. Unlikely that he would trust Gabriel—and for good reason: Even Gabriel himself was unsure how he would handle Stone if he found him. It depended largely on Stone and how reasonable—or unreasonable—he was. But of course Gabriel didn’t yet know where he was.

  That thought made him back up a few pages to find out exactly where Huck was. He had gone to the far shore of Jackson’s Island, facing the Illinois side of the river.

  Gabriel found an online aerial map that confirmed what he had observed, damn little on the Illinois shore except for largely unpeopled bottomland. A few small towns south, Quincy, larger, a few miles north.

  If Stone, the born-again Catholic who ordered fish on Friday, had not gone to Mass at Holy Family in Hannibal on Sunday or taken confession previously with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader Father Salas, he likely did it somewhere else. So he typed in a search for nearby Catholic churches.

  Just north of Hannibal in Palmyra, Missouri, he found St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. And, closer still, just across the Mississippi at Quincy’s southern edge, St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.

  Gabriel smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Bingo!” he said aloud. “‘Something’s lost and can’t be found / Please, St. Anthony, look around.’ Thank you, Father Mohan!”

  Stone, fond of masks, subterfuge, and wordplay—and seemingly trying to find himself—might be lured by such serendipity.

  Gabrie
l clicked through to the website and learned the church conducted weekday Masses Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings at seven-thirty. He left a wakeup call for six.

  Then he opened the bottle of whiskey he carried in his briefcase, found an NBA game on the TV, and called out for pizza. Fuck the diet. He felt good about this hunch—cause to celebrate. He sipped iced bourbon from a plastic cup, put his feet up on the bed, muted the TV, and cracked open English Grammar for Idiots.

  Gabriel drew back the hotel room drapes. Morning again came gray and cold. He checked his email and looked at the weather online. It was as The Gecko had said, more snow coming in from the Plains.

  Gabriel paid his bill at the front desk, found his Dodge in the parking lot, and headed north out of Hannibal. He took the new bridge—new to him at least—and crossed the Mississippi into Illinois. There he traversed flat, denuded bottomland, brown and unwelcoming. He followed the highway as it bent north, and soon left the interstate for the old highway and found Saint Anthony Road.

  The church was modern, located just southeast of Quincy—more of a metropolis than Hannibal, with some forty thousand inhabitants. A dozen cars rested in the parking lot outside the church. As he walked to the sanctuary a westerly wind cut through his overcoat.

  Inside, the parishioners were mostly gray-haired women, a few elderly men. No Stone, though he was early. Gabriel genuflected, crossed himself, and sat in a back pew. Another half dozen elderly joined the worshippers, and after a few more minutes Gabriel looked at his watch, seven thirty-five. When he looked up, Stone was moving down the aisle toward a seat in the middle of the sanctuary.

  He wore dark slacks and a brown corduroy sport coat with professorial elbow-patches. He sported a burgeoning blonde beard that made him look like an Anglicized Christ. Gabriel launched a brief silent prayer: “Thank you, Saint Anthony, for your help and guidance.”

  The priest, a tall, burly, and balding middle-aged man, entered to organ music and went to the altar. Soon he turned to the congregation.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”