House of Bones: A Novel

by Dale Bailey

  Abel had felt it, too. They’d all felt it.

  That was the crux of it: the almost spiritual veneration one felt for a religious relic, a fragment of the true cross. Now, here, in the storm dark with the stunted shadow of the tree looming over him, Abel recognized that superstition for what it had really been: a desperate product of the fearful abyss underlying their everyday lives. He understood his mother’s anger, her sense of betrayal, all too well—and with a depth of insight that transcended his twelve years he understood something else, too: that her anger had less to do with the watch itself than with the man who had worn it, the man she had so often begged to find a safer profession and who had so often refused her.

  Not that any of that mattered. In the end it came down to a simple truth: his father had prized the watch highly, and for that alone Abel wanted it.

  He groped blindly on his bedside table for the photo he had snatched from his mother’s drawer. He stared at it through a shimmer of tears, and then, still clutching the photo, he flopped back on the bed. The watch shimmered in the cage of shadows printed on his ceiling.

  What had she done with it? he thought. What on earth had she done with it?

  6

  It was snowing, a cold blustery February morning, by the time Fletcher Keel stepped off the El and made his way down to the street. Wedging a battered shoe box under his arm, he dug a scrap of paper out of the pocket of his jeans and stared down at it. The address he’d copied out of the Yellow Pages was two blocks northwest.

  Keel folded the paper carefully and slipped it back into his pocket before he turned up the street. He carried the box tucked under his arm like a football, his free arm swinging. As he walked, he systematically monitored his surroundings, parsing each block into quadrants and scanning them one by one. The process itself was automatic, habitual rather than purposeful; most of it occurred well below the conscious flow of his thoughts, which were uncharacteristically agitated. Yet he was constantly filing his impressions—of the pedestrians who scuttled past, faces tilted into their collars; of the vehicles moving by him on the street; even of the buildings themselves, a mix of three-and four-story brick storefronts, their security gates rolled back for the day. If necessary, as it occasionally had been, he could reconstruct the scene before him in near-perfect detail. The irony of his situation—present errand included—was that this impressive set of skills no longer served any practical function.

  Keel grimaced.

  He’d resolved not to think about that. Squaring his shoulders, as much against the relentless press of his own thoughts as against the wind sweeping in from the lake, he slipped past a white-bearded vagrant methodically probing the change receptacles in a bank of newspaper machines. Two or three steps later, a gnarled hand closed over his shoulder. Keel turned, the bum looming up before him, so close that he could see the grime packed into every crevice of the man’s seamed and ancient face. He was swatting randomly at something unseen in the air between them, like a man milling his arms through a swarm of insects.

  “Microwaves,” he was saying. “Goddamn Russian microwaves—you seen these ovens—” He reeled toward Keel suddenly, his eyes clearing, his hands outstretched. “Spare a little change, friend, be a friend now—”

  Cursing, Keel pushed him away. Turning, he glimpsed his own reflection in the window of a hardware store. Five years ago, the image would have pleased him. Now he could see beyond the figure’s exterior—tall, well muscled, handsome in a fleshless, rawboned way—to an inner core of desperation not entirely unlike that of the vagrant still raving at his back. There was something haunted in the deeply recessed eyes, the thin line of the mouth, something that hadn’t always been there. People no longer pointed him out on the street, but Keel didn’t have any problem recognizing his own lean features behind the narrow goatee he had grown after the trial. Nor did he have the stomach to look at them, he thought as he hurried past.

  Halfway down the block, he found the place. Though he didn’t need to—he’d memorized the location with the same natural facility he used to memorize the street around him—he fished out the slip of paper he had written the address on. He stood there, studying it, feeling his heart lurch into a quicker rhythm. What he was about to do was a betrayal—of his father, of his father’s ideals, of everything his father had sought to instill within him. Keel scowled. No. The betrayal had occurred six years ago. This was merely its final consequence, the rejection of a legacy he had failed to live up to, maybe even a kind of suicide: the sacrifice of the self he had aspired to be.

  Good riddance, too, he thought.

  He looked up at the storefront. There was an intercom by the door, with a neatly lettered sign: PLEASE RING FOR ADMITTANCE. The store was otherwise unmarked, the interior invisible beyond the black screen which stood inside the plate glass windows.

  Keel pressed the button.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Fletcher Keel,” he said. “I called yesterday.”

  “Yes, Mr. Keel. Come in.”

  There was the buzz of an electric lock. Keel opened the door and stepped inside. After the wind, it was pleasantly warm, an open, plushly carpeted room. Glass display counters crowded the space—an enclosed island of them in the center, and more along each wall, gleaming in the tasteful illumination of recessed spots. But for the handguns under the countertops and the enormous Nazi flag hanging on the back wall, it might have been a jewelry store—it had the same kind of luxurious appointments, the same prosperous hush. The city outside seemed infinitely remote, a faraway hum.

  A man in khaki slacks and a finely woven maroon sweater stood inside the central enclosure of display counters, making notes in a ledger. He was at least a decade older than Keel, early forties, maybe older: a thin, compact man, with dark hair that had started to recede. “I’ll be with you momentarily, Mr. Keel.”

  “You Maitland?”

  “That’s right. Charles Maitland.”

  Keel glanced over his shoulder at the locked door, thinking of the unmarked exterior. “I guess you don’t get much in the way of walk-in traffic.”

  Maitland gave him a dry smile. “It’s not that kind of clientele.” He closed the ledger, slid it into a drawer, and came around the counter.

  With a little shock, Keel saw that his right arm was missing from the elbow down. The sleeve of the sweater had been pinned up neatly. Keel shifted the box, and extended his left hand. Maitland’s grip was cool and poised, firm without any showy exhibition of strength. He seemed comfortable, thoroughly at ease in his own skin. “Most of our customers are serious collectors. They come in once or twice a year, by appointment only. And of course I notify them when something they might be interested in comes my way. We also do a catalog.”

  “Maybe I’m in the wrong place.”

  “You said you had some memorabilia.”

  “Just a few things.” Keel lifted the box. “Nothing like this.” He glanced around the store. Daggers and bayonets gleamed in the case to his left, medals and pins in the one to his right. Framed recruiting posters—Spanish, German, American, and maybe half a dozen other nationalities—adorned the walls. A collection of combat helmets stood on shelves in one corner, some of them in mint condition, others battered. Keel let his gaze linger on one with a massively spiked crown and the ornate emblem of an eagle on the front.

  Maitland noticed his interest. “A Prussian Pickelhauben, World War I vintage, near-mint condition. A bargain at $250.” He smiled. “We’re not snobby about the size of a collection, Mr. Keel. Most of our stock comes from veterans or their families. Personal items, the spoils of victory, so to speak. You might do very well with just one or two quality pieces. Why don’t we have a look?”

  Relinquishing the shoe box, Keel allowed himself to be led to the counter. He watched as the other man removed the lid deftly with his single hand.

  “See, this is a very nice piece here,” Maitland said, examining the ten-inch dagger that lay inside. “Your grandfather was in the
war?”

  “My father.” Keel swallowed, staring at the knife. The blade was age-stained and dull. “I don’t know the story behind it. He didn’t like to talk about it.”

  “It’s very good. An officer’s blade. Luftwaffe. Made in Solingen by Hoster. See the mark?” He held up the blade. “And the swastika on the pommel is well preserved, which is important.” He set the dagger aside, dipped into the box once again, and came out with a pistol. He broke it open, checking the action. “This is good, too,” he said, “though it’s a very common item, of course. A Luger P08, the standard-issue German army sidearm through ’42. Does it work?”

  “I haven’t fired it.”

  Maitland raised his eyebrows. “The Walther P38 replaced it. It was a superior weapon, but it certainly didn’t have as much style.” Putting aside the gun, he said, “What else have you got?”

  “Those are the big things, I guess. The rest is just medals and stuff. Some insignia, some badges—I’m not sure what they are.”

  “German infantry badges, most of them,” Maitland said, holding one up to the light. “Good. I can use these, as well.” And then, in an offhand way, his attention still on the contents of the box: “Did you do any military service yourself?”

  “Four years. Special Forces. Army Airborne.”

  “Ahh,” Maitland said without looking up. He had taken a pad from under the counter and was making notes as he sorted through the box. It was a slow process: pick something up, examine it, put it down, pick up the pencil, make a note, put down the pencil, and start over again. There was something hypnotic in the rhythm of it. “I was in the Marines, myself. Khe Sanh in ’68. The arm was my ticket home. When were you in?”

  “’Seventy-five. I missed the action.”

  “I’m not snobby about that either, Mr. Keel. Would that we’d all missed it.” He lifted out a medal and set it aside. “Some of your father’s service decorations seem to have gotten mixed in here, Mr. Keel.”

  “Yeah,” Keel said. And then, “I mean, I know. There’s a couple of them. I want to get rid of them, too.”

  Frowning, Maitland stared down into the box. He combed his fingers through the jumble, lifted a swastika-embossed button, examined it, and placed it back down gently. He’d stopped making notes.

  “He died fifteen years ago,” Keel said, trying to ignore the scalding voice which sprang up inside his head. A good thing he did, too, the voice said. A good thing he didn’t live to see—

  “Still—”

  “We weren’t close.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” Maitland said. “The problem is—” He broke off abruptly. Keel felt a weight swing loose inside him when he saw what the other man had plucked from the bottom of the box. Maitland lifted his head, his gaze slowly coming to rest on Keel’s face. “The problem is, it’s illegal to buy or sell American service decorations.” He rolled the medal across his fingers and read the inscription. “I thought you said these were your father’s decorations.”

  “I—” He hesitated, searching for an explanation, but nothing came. “I did.”

  “John Martin, that was your father’s name?”

  “Yeah.” Keel straightened and put his hands flat on the counter, preparing himself for the question that he knew would follow.

  Instead, Maitland said something else entirely. “Do you understand what this is?”

  “I do.”

  “What did he do to earn it, do you know?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Are you aware how many of these medals have been awarded?”

  “My father made a point of telling me.”

  “As he should have.” Maitland frowned. “I didn’t get into this work out of a sense of patriotism, Mr. Keel. I have no illusions about combat heroism. But still—” He nodded at the medal. “You should keep this.”

  “I’m sure you can find a buyer for it.”

  “Perhaps.” He hesitated. “Almost certainly, in fact. But the question of legality aside, I think you’d regret it in the end.” He laid the medal atop the counter and pushed it across to Keel. Keel didn’t move. They stared down at it together.

  “I’d like to buy the Luger, the knife, and the rest of these items,” Maitland said, “but only on the condition that you take your father’s decorations and put them in your pocket before you walk out of here. I’ll write you a check for a thousand dollars, but I have to see you carry the medals out the door.”

  They stared at one another in silence. Keel was confident in his powers of intimidation: he was a big man to start with, and his eyes had a steely quality of resolve that most people found unnerving, an attribute that had served him well for years—and one which, like his powers of observation, had ceased to have any professional function. He had spent five years trying to nullify that fact. Just last week he had failed once again, irreversibly this time, and he had done so in a way that would have further disgraced his father. It shamed Keel too, and the shame awakened the anger, and he let that show in his eyes as well. Maitland wasn’t backing down, though. He simply stood there, staring back at Keel, comfortable with the silence.

  “How’d you lose the arm?” Keel said.

  “We were pinned down by VC fire and the guy beside me took a round to the throat while he had a live grenade in his hand. It seemed like a good idea to get rid of the grenade before it went off. I came up about a forearm short.”

  Keel flushed, feeling another surge of self-disgust. He nodded at the medal. “You get one of those?”

  “I did not. As I said, Mr. Keel, I’ve long since lost whatever illusions I may have had about heroism. What I did was purely a matter of self-preservation. Nonetheless, I fully intend for my son to inherit those decorations I did receive. I expect he will pass them along to his son in turn. Whatever your father’s medals mean to you, they may someday have value to others in your family. Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time: it’s illegal to sell them.” He waited a moment, and then he added, “It’s a point of honor with me,” the word—

  —honor—

  —ricocheting like a bullet inside Keel’s head. He felt a hot flush mount into his face.

  Maitland said, “The question is: How badly do you need the thousand dollars?”

  Keel swallowed hard. He stared at Maitland another moment, and then he scraped the medals into his open palm and pocketed them.

  “I’ll write you a check,” Maitland said.

  Ten minutes later, Keel was back outside. He glanced up the street as the door swung shut behind him. A white CPD cruiser idled at the curb, its flashers blinking, and as always Keel had to choke back that old sense of camaraderie, of common cause in a worthy enterprise, rising up to reclaim him. He swallowed his instinct to hail the officer inside. Five years. Five long years of struggling to regain that shared sense of purpose, that confidence in his lineage of honor, in his very life—and it was over now. In a moment he’d thrown it all away. He didn’t care what Maitland had said.

  He didn’t deserve his father’s medals.

  He started toward the El, clutching Maitland’s check in one hand. The wind seemed sharper now, blasting in off the lake and slicing through the seams of his coat. He lowered his head, no longer bothering to watch the street before him, no longer caring. And then hands were at his shoulder, clutching at him. He looked up, furious, to find himself staring once again into the ravaged face of the bum. His eyes gleamed above the matted froth of his beard. His breath washed over Keel in a fetid wave. His voice was empty, without affect, a steady unvarying cadence: “—spare me a little change, friend, c’mon now, it’s cold today, it’s mighty cold, just a cup of coffee, that’s all I ask—”

  “Here,” Keel snapped, digging into his pocket.

  He shoved everything he found there at the old man, a handful of change, a crumpled dollar bill, his father’s medals. Everything. The whole impossible legacy. He didn’t deserve it, hadn’t lived up to it. He couldn’t bear dragging i
t around behind him any longer.

  The bum took it in his cupped hands and reeled away, already veering off once again into his litany of grievances against Russian microwaves. Keel was nearly at the corner before the enraged shouts caught up to him.

  “You call this change?” the old man was screaming. He waved the medals angrily overhead, the colored ribbons fluttering in the wind. “What the fuck is this?”

  Keel felt tears starting to his eyes as he turned away.

  7

  Voices woke him, an incoherent babble in his dreams.

  When he had been younger, at the outer cusp of infancy in a world still marvelous and strange, still new, Abel’s family had shared a party line with the house next door. Even now, he could recall how disorienting it had been, picking up the telephone in the midst of an ongoing conversation, suddenly at sea in the unfamiliar cadences of people who were little more than shadows on the other side of the fence, enthralled by these disembodied echoes of a hidden world beyond the walls of his own narrow house. Now, swimming up through a sodden well of sleep, he felt that same disorienting rush of wonder, as if he’d caught a tantalizing echo of a larger world—

  And then he was awake.

  For the space of a breath, a single throb of his heart, the voices lingered. He tried to sort them out, but there were too many of them—a hundred, a thousand, maybe more—all of them talking, talking, incessantly talking, taut with urgency, trying to break through—

  In the next instant, they were gone, plunging him into silence. Abel sat up. The apple tree outside his window cast a net of shadows across his bed. The snow—which had continued on and off throughout the day, from the time he woke still clutching the photo of his father until he crawled back into his twisted sheets—had finally stopped. The sky was cloudless, stippled with the bright, hard points of stars, and as he leaned closer to the thin pane of the window, the air felt faintly warmer against his bare skin. The street had already started melting clear. A black sheen of pavement glimmered here and there through a cloak of molten ice.