Splintered Silence

by Susan Furlong

  Wilco and I would find a body, a young soldier, nothing more than a boy or girl really, and I’d see the marriage that would never be, the kids and grandkids that would never happen, a family tree altered forever. I grew to understand that there was no closure for the heart-wrenching grief felt by those who have loved and lost. They’d hold their sorrow for a lifetime of milestones that would never be. And that realization slowly ate away at me.

  I’d had to grow stronger, tougher, resilient . . . cold. I had to learn to view the corpses we recovered as just the end product of our job, not as the people they had been. “Found another brown bread,” a British recovery team leader once told me in his Cockney slang for the dead. That was another insulating cloak—they were retrievals or brown breads or anything other than a person’s name.

  No problem with that in this case. My mother’s name had already been taboo in our household. No pictures of her on the walls, not even a whisper of her name over the years. As a young child, all I’d known of her was that she left or, as I often expected, was kicked out because of her rebellious nature, or because of me. A fatherless child. A bastard . . .

  “Ms. Callahan?”

  My head snapped up. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “It’s fine. She was a stranger to me.”

  “You never knew her?”

  “She left when I was a baby.”

  Her brows shot up. “Your father?”

  My shoulders tensed. “He wasn’t in the picture.”

  “I’m sorry. That must’ve been a rough way to grow up. Especially without a mother.”

  “My grandparents raised me.”

  Her mouth drooped. “Still . . .”

  An awkward silence ensued. I’d said too much. I shut my mouth and turned my full focus to my coffee.

  Parks pulled a piece of bacon out of the bag and dipped her chin toward Wilco. “Can he have some?”

  “Sure.”

  She tossed it his way. Wilco snatched it mid-air, his ferocious jaws clamping down with a snap. Parks flinched. “Glad I’m not apiece of bacon!”

  “Two hundred pounds of bite force.”

  “Ouch.” She quickly tossed another piece and tipped the bag my way. “I have doughnuts too.”

  Chocolate glazed. My favorite. I eyed them warily. Parks looked like she’d had her fair share of doughnuts during her career, but I doubted this was just something she happened to have on hand today. Bacon for my dog, doughnuts for me. She was being just a little too nice. “No thanks.”

  She shrugged and took one for herself. “I’ve got a couple kids. A boy and a girl. Boy’s a sweetie, girl’s a handful, though.” She chuckled. “She’s going to give me hell when she’s a teenager. I can already tell. Know what I mean?” She shot me a wink.

  That’s right. A wink. Parks and me, we were just two girls chatting it up over doughnuts. Yeah, right. My eyes slid toward the closed cell door. Pusser had put her up to this. A woman cop, he thought, one of my own, certainly I’d open up, bear my soul, spill the beans . . .

  My grandparents were right: There’s no trusting the settled law. At least not in these parts.

  I sipped my coffee and took a good look at Deputy Parks: middle-aged, dark hair pulled back tidy and tight, no makeup, broad shoulders, short clipped nails over gray-stained fingertips. Gunpowder stains. She’d been out on the range already this morning. That told me two things: One, she’d been too busy to clean her gun; and, two, she worked hard to keep up with her male counterparts. I liked this gal. Liked, not trusted.

  “You have kids, Brynn?”

  “Nope.”

  “Husband? Boyfriend?”

  “No on both accounts.”

  “Footloose and fancy-free, huh?”

  “Guess so.”

  “I remember those days.” Her eyes took on a dreamy look. Parks was a good actress. “Still, I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything. My husband maybe, but not my kids.” She giggled. I didn’t.

  Enough with the games, lady.

  She cut the giggles short. “So . . . all these years you never saw or talked to your mother?”

  I shook my head.

  “Never talked to her on the phone. No birthday cards, nothing?”

  I shook my head again. Slower this time.

  “And you had no idea she was coming back to Bone Gap?”

  “No.”

  She leaned forward. “Someone in your group up there must’ve known she was coming back.”

  Group? There it was: another term that belied a blanket stereotype. “We’re a clan of families. Travellers. Pavees. Not a group.”

  She ignored me and continued. “Didn’t your grandparents know? One of your cousins? Maybe one of your mother’s old boyfriends?”

  Okay, enough. I knew exactly where Parks was coming from. These local cops were so predictable. Another crime? Must be one of them crazy, immoral, backwoods gypsies. Who else could it be?

  “Am I being officially held for questioning?”

  Parks looked hurt. “No. Why?”

  I stood and handed her my empty cup. “Because I need to get back to my ‘group.’ ”

  She stood and met my gaze. “The sheriff’s going to want to talk to you.”

  I tilted my head toward the closed cell door. “He knows where to find me.”

  She removed Wilco’s lead from her pocket and handed it to me. I secured Wilco and followed her down a short hall that held a half-dozen more cells. All were empty except the last. I stole a glimpse inside as we passed by. A guy hovered in the corner, visibly trembling, and practically scratching the skin off his arms. There was a puddle of vomit on the floor next to him.

  Terror flashed over his face at the sight of Wilco. He screamed, “Wolf! Wolf! Someone help me!”

  “Damn addicts,” Parks mumbled.

  I looked away.

  His terrified screams followed us through a series of doors until we ended up in a central lobby of sorts. A couple of heavy security doors lined one wall; one had a sign that said CENTRAL BOOKING, the other was unmarked. Across the way, on the far side, two uniformed females hunched over computers at a counter fronted by bulletproof glass. One was older, with a gray bob and reading glasses perched on her nose. The other was much younger and heavyset, with frizzy yellow hair and a dark brown stripe running along her part. They both looked up as we approached.

  The older one stood and spoke through a metal insert in the glass. “This the Bone Gap woman?”

  Parks nodded.

  The fake blonde leaned back and gave me a hard stare, her eyes lingering on my neck scar.

  Parks looked at her with raised brows. “She’s checking out. I need her stuff.”

  Blondie let out a huff and rose from her chair, her fat behind sashaying across the room to a small bank of lockers. She keyed into one of them and removed a plastic tub. Walking back over, she plunked it down on the counter and shot me a nasty look.

  “Gray sweatshirt, wool scarf . . .” The gray-haired woman was checking my items against her paperwork. “Black tactical knife, and . . .” She looked quizzically at Deputy Parks and held up a small plastic baggy. “And seven white tablets?”

  Parks squinted at the pills. “Looks right. Thanks, Barb. Pass the paperwork through.”

  Barb slid a small stack of papers and a pen under the glass. “Sign here and here, please.”

  I did. The papers went back under, and my stuff came sliding out. I put on my sweatshirt and adjusted my scarf. I’d just pocketed my meds and knife when a door behind the desk popped open. Deputy Harris strolled in with a stack of papers and crossed over to the blonde. “Hey, darlin’, would you mind—”

  He looked up from the papers, saw me, and stopped short. His expression hardened, his eyes darting back to the blonde. A telltale blush crept over her face.

  Aha. So this was Harris’s girlfriend? Guess that explained her attitude toward me. Their recent pillow talk probably included a mention or two about us cr
iminal gypsy types.

  The room seemed to shrink in on me. I turned to Parks. “My car’s at Mack’s Pub.”

  Harris snorted. “Yeah, we figured.”

  The other two women laughed as Parks and I pushed through the door.

  * * *

  On my drive back to Bone Gap, my irritation at the settled law’s attitude morphed into an even deeper anger at my own kind. The bitter taste of betrayal gnawed at my gut, and by the time I’d pulled up in front of Gran’s trailer, all I could think of was all the time that’d been wasted. Had I known my mother was still alive, things might have been different.

  I thought back to my teen years. I was obsessed with my mother back then. What was she like? Her wants, her dreams? What was her favorite color? Her first kiss? I was relentless in my pursuit to know more about her. I spent hours on the local library’s computer, searching the Internet for her name. Then I questioned others, intent on asking everyone in the clan if I had to. That’s when Gran and Gramps broke the news to me. They said they’d been hesitant to tell me, wanted to spare me the grief, the embarrassment of knowing that my mother had committed what we Pavees consider the ultimate sin: suicide. A condemnable act, strictly forbidden and rarely discussed in our deeply religious culture. The clan didn’t know, and they wanted it kept that way. For my sake. I’d accepted this news. I’d even grieved my loss, in my own way—privately and alone. Maybe that’s why I felt nothing but numbness now. I’d already grieved for my mother. Thanks to my grandparents, I’d lost her years ago.

  Lies. How many had my grandparents told me over the years?

  And had my grandparents told this same lie to others? I had no idea. Probably no one had asked about my mother’s absence. That’s the way things operated within the clan. People minded their own business. Unless there was an occasion to celebrate; then everyone became involved. Births, First Communions, engagements, weddings, and, yes, deaths—the exception being suicides—brought about raucous parties. Especially death. Settled folks never fully understood the rituals that surround a true Irish wake: after a brief period of intense mourning and keening for the deceased, usually a couple of days, and after the funeral, we’d set aside our grief and begin celebrating our loved one’s rebirth into eternal life with lively music, dancing, and an abundance of booze. People come from near and far—family first, then other folks. A Pavee never mourns alone. Or parties alone.

  And by the looks of it, Gran didn’t need the official report to start the wake process. The bereaved had already begun to arrive. The front yard was cluttered with vehicles; some of them I recognized, some I didn’t.

  Inside, I found mourners crowded by the dozens in the small front room of our trailer. For the rest of the day, cigarette smoke, grief-filled murmurings, and tidbits of comfort in both English and Shelta dialect drifted back and forth. My mind found it cloying and insincere. Had any of these people ever even asked about her in years?

  Then I heard one of the clan’s elders say to Gran, “Swart a manyath.” She’s in heaven now.

  “Took her long enough,” I quipped. The elder glared at me, and Gran quickly turned her back on me. Me and my too-quick mouth. It was yet another of those insulators: the gallows humor soldiers fell back on. Yet part of me didn’t care anymore what I said, not now and not in front of my grandparents either. After all these years of thinking my long-dead mother was burning in hell for committing the ultimate sin, was I supposed to find some comfort in his thought that she was in heaven now—finally—because someone shot her brains out and dumped her in the rocks?

  I’d once heard someone say that one man’s sin was another man’s virtue. Had my grandparents considered it virtuous to let a little girl think her mother had done such a horrible thing? And all that time, I’d believed them. “When I wrote to her about his failing.” That’s what Gran had said the night before. Those words, unmasked and spoken in grief, cut worse than the truth of knowing that I’d discovered, and not recognized, my own mother’s dead body. I might have expected a lie of that magnitude from Gramps. But Gran? How could she? I didn’t know what was real or what was a lie. All I knew was that I couldn’t stand to face Gran or these grievers any more. I wanted to leave, but I was trapped. So I retreated back to the kitchen, wordlessly dishing out more food and drink to accommodate our visitors, all the while slipping into a deeper, darker mood. Wilco, who sensed my decline, hovered close by my side.

  I was at the sink washing some dishes when one of our neighbors, Mrs. Black, stepped up beside me. “Coppers came by first thing asking your grandparents all sorts of questions.”

  “They did?” Funny, Deputy Parks hadn’t mentioned that my grandparents were questioned this morning. Just one more reason the deputy was so chatty: buying time so the police could come back here and harass my grandparents.

  “Yes. But don’t you worry none, dear. Your Gran didn’t tell them nothing about us. Real strong, she was.”

  I pressed my lips together, my eyes sliding to the bread she was holding: a round loaf, the top scored in a cross, its thick crust curled open at the marks to reveal its dark and heavy texture. Its fresh-baked, sweetish scent rose to my nostrils. Wilco’s nose lifted and flared as well.

  Mrs. Black cocked her head. “Should I slice some up now, dear? Or do you want to save it for later?”

  “Now.” My comment came quickly as I dried my hands on my jeans and opened a drawer for the bread knife. I hadn’t felt hungry for any of the offerings brought earlier by clan members, but this smelled delicious. We sat at the small kitchen table, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything this morning. As she sliced the bread and I opened the butter dish, she babbled on about her recipe, as if I cared . . . or cooked.

  “It isn’t soda bread. Not really anyway. I mean, I do use buttermilk and soda instead of yeast. But this has blackstrap molasses and uses only whole-grain, not white flour.”

  “Uh-ha.” I took the first slice and spread the softened butter over the dense treat. I raised it to my mouth for the first warm bite.

  “So you can’t call it Irish soda bread, although some mistakenly do call it that. It’s actually a very proper Irish brown bread.”

  I choked, spewing brown globules of dough across the table.

  “Oh, honey, are you alright?”

  “Brown bread?” I glared at her—desert corpses: brown breads—and grabbed a napkin to wipe off the remnants still clinging to my mouth. “How appropriate of you.”

  “I just knew your family would like it.” She beamed, ignorant of my tone. “But brown bread can be a bit heavy to swallow in one big bite. Here, let me get you some tea.” She hustled to the simmering kettle on the stove, still going on about her family recipe, oblivious to my sarcasm. I pushed the loaf to the side. She had no idea how heavy a “brown bread” could weigh on a family.

  She handed me a cup of tea, then busied herself making another in one of Gran’s heavy ceramic mugs. “A spot of tea should warm your grandmother too, I think.” She poured in a nip of whiskey, a gift from a well-meaning friend.

  I raised a brow. “Gran doesn’t much care for whiskey.”

  The woman tipped the bottle again. “Nonsense. It’s just what she needs at a time like this.”

  A whiff of the amber liquid floated to my nostrils. My mouth watered. It’s just what I need too.

  I should have stayed inside, played the part of dutiful granddaughter, offered to be of more help, but all I wanted was to numb the strange mix of ambivalence and anger that was quickly consuming me. As soon as Mrs. Black left the kitchen to deliver Gran’s tea, I snatched the bottle from the counter, grabbed my coat from the peg by the back door and motioned to Wilco to follow me outside.

  I sat at the bottom of the back steps with Wilco curled around my feet and brought the bottle to my lips. The warm liquid enveloped me like a hug from a dear friend. One I’d just visited the day before, one that I’d spent too much time with already, but nonetheless welcomed. My shoulder muscles loosened. The grinding feel
ing in my stomach eased as I sucked in the chilled air. Tennessee’s autumns are a brew of aromas that reek of summer’s decline and winter’s threats: sodden soil molds, pungent burnt leaves, all trapped in mountain air. I slumped back and continued drinking until a few minutes later when I heard the back door creak open behind me. I turned to see a face from the past.

  “Colm?” His name came out as a whisper at first. I stood and blinked, the whiskey bottle still clutched in my hand. How could it be possible that he was here? “Colm Whelan? I didn’t know you were back in the area.”

  “I’ve been back for a while. I came as soon as I heard.” He tugged at his soiled jacket. “Excuse the way I’m dressed. I was doing some yard work when I heard the news about your mother.”

  “You look great.” I cringed at the eagerness that rang through my voice. For all I knew, he was married now. Maybe he even had kids. A lot of time had passed. Even so, he hadn’t changed much over the years. Tall, with a strong build and a vulnerable bend to his posture, he was never really handsome. His nose was too big, his jaw too strongly set. But time had been good to him, softened his features a little. And his dark eyes still held that mischievous gleam that always sent a zing of attraction through me. Still did.

  My cheeks stung with heat as I noticed him eyeing the whiskey bottle in my hand. I giggled and raised the bottle. “Remember that time you lifted a bottle from your father’s stash and we went up to the rocks?”

  His smile stiffened. “I remember. We got plastered and . . . well, we were just kids. It seems like so long ago now.”

  A flood of memories rushed back: the warmth of the sun-drenched rocks that day, the heat of the whiskey, the even hotter rush of excitement as we explored each other’s bodies. Instantly my body responded, ready and all too willing. My eyes wandered to his chest, down to his belt, and down to . . . Don’t go there, girl! I turned away and sat back down.

  He stepped down to my level and joined me on the steps. I offered him a drink, but he waved it off. Embarrassed, I capped the bottle and tossed it aside on the ground, as if it meant little to me, and then ran a finger between my scarf and now sweaty neck as I struggled for something to break the awkwardness. “I’m surprised you’ve kept up with the people in Bone Gap. How did you know to come here? Do you know my grandparents?”