Cape Perdido

by Marcia Muller

  But that knowledge didn’t make it any lighter, or possible to put down.

  One home run, that’s all I need, and then maybe I can let go of this need to match up to Casey.

  One home run—but I’m afraid I won’t hit it here in Cape Perdido.

  JOSEPH OPENSHAW

  Joseph fought the wheel as the old van bounced through the ruts of the narrow, unpaved road. The wind buffeted the clumsy vehicle, and the rain came down too hard for the wipers to clear. He cursed himself for not yielding to his impulse to buy a heavy-duty pickup before moving back from Sacramento; at the time, he’d told himself the move was only temporary and the van would be adequate until he returned to the state capital. Now he knew that he was here in Soledad County for good. Stuck, end of the line.

  His headlights showed a dark shape in the road, and he swerved, tires skidding on the mud. Tree branch, big one, and plenty more would come down in this storm. He was nuts to be out on a night like this, but at least he had come prepared: even after his years in the cities, he had not forgotten the time-honored local wisdom of always carrying your chain saw during the winter months.

  He rounded a curve, avoiding a couple of other branches, and then a horizontal row of orange reflectors on a board fence told him he was entering the rez. The power, on the same vulnerable grid as Cape Perdido, was out here, too. Familiar landmarks lay in darkness, but in his mind’s eye he could see them: the Mallons’ old Airstream trailer, the boarded-up prefab community center, the Quonset hut that housed the small store, the old, weathered barn. Nothing much had changed here since the days of his youth. He could find his way blindfolded.

  He slowed to a crawl, peering through the windshield for the narrow lane that led to a collection of ramshackle houses and trailers. Turned onto it, drove to the end, and stopped. When he stepped out of the van, rain lashed at him. He hunched, pulling his denim jacket over his head, and ran through a grove of swaying pines to a single-wide that sat apart from the others, climbed its rickety steps to the door. No one answered his repeated knocks, and he saw none of the telltale flickering from oil lamps that he’d noted in the other dwellings’ windows.

  So Curtis wasn’t home. What now? They’d never in their lives stood on formality—few on the rez did—but this was Joseph’s first visit here since his departure from Cape Perdido nearly two decades before. You didn’t just walk into a man’s home after all that time—certainly not into the home of a man like Curtis Hope.

  A fresh gust of rain forced him to action. He walked in anyway.

  The air inside the trailer was cold and damp. Joseph waited till he could pick out dim shapes, then groped toward the bar that separated the main room from the galley kitchen. In the days when Curt had lived here with his mother and father—both now deceased—the emergency lamps had been kept in the cabinet under the bar; Joseph doubted he’d moved them.

  When he took one of the lamps out and lit it with the matches that were also stored there, he saw that Curt had made few alterations in the place. A patchwork quilt that his grandmother had sewn hung on the wall by the door; narrow metal bookcases contained paperbacks and knickknacks; the plaid couch and hulking sixties-style console TV were the same. He moved closer, looked at the titles on the bookshelves: romances and Westerns. The knickknacks were mainly ceramic cats. No, Curt hadn’t changed a thing; it looked as if time had stopped for him with the death of his parents.

  Joseph knew he should sit down to wait for his old friend’s return, but curiosity drew him along the narrow hall to the bedrooms. The larger of the two was outfitted with a double bed covered in another quilt, and looked unused. The door to the other bedroom was shut; Joseph hesitated a moment, then pushed it open. A narrow iron bed, one Joseph remembered as being Curt’s since childhood, stood against the far wall, made up with a woven blanket. The small, high window was draped with a heavy brown fabric. On the end wall hung a tapestry depicting a golden eagle; below it on a bureau lay a scattering of rocks.

  Joseph moved closer and examined them. They were smooth and polished like those found in stream beds, arranged in a rough triangular shape, the top point toward the wall. He looked up, and the fierce eyes of the strangely lifelike eagle bored into his. The Pomos used most species as a source of food, but there were a number that were forbidden—the golden eagle because it was an extremely dangerous bird. Interesting that Curt had chosen to display this tapestry above what looked like rocks collected from the bed of the Perdido.

  He backed out of the room and went down the hallway, his hand going automatically inside his jacket to the shirt pocket where he used to keep his cigarettes. It had been five years since he smoked, and the desire didn’t come over him often, but when it did, it was strong and usually triggered by unease. He’d heard that Curt had developed an interest in the ways of their ancestors, but the display—call it a shrine—in the bedroom disturbed him.

  He returned to the living room, sat down on a platform rocker that faced the door. Waited, feeling the damp and cold seep into his bones, listening to the rain beat on the flat roof. After more than an hour, he heard the growl of an engine, then the slam of a door. Footsteps approached and climbed the steps. The door flew open, hitting the wall and admitting a gust of wind. Curt’s stocky figure filled the frame.

  “What’re you doing here, you son of a bitch?” he demanded.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Making free with my place, are you?”

  “Too cold to sit in my van.”

  “So you just walked in.”

  “Always used to.”

  “That was before.”

  Curtis came inside, shut the door behind him. For a moment he stood still, then took off his slicker and tossed it onto the sofa. Sat down beside it, wary, hands braced on his knees. “What do you want, Joseph?”

  “To talk about what happened this afternoon.”

  “The shooting? I’m talked out. Bernina, the others, they don’t know where to go from here. They’re waiting on you for guidance.” He laughed harshly. “Guess they’ll go on waiting.”

  “That’s where you’ve been, with them?”

  “. . . Yeah.”

  “And where were you this afternoon?”

  In the glow from the lamp he saw Curt nod. “So that’s what this visit is about. Well, I wasn’t on the roof of the admin building at the mill, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You know who was?”

  Curt was silent.

  “Well?”

  “Who appointed you my inquisitor?”

  Joseph didn’t reply.

  “You know,” Curt finally said, “I never thought it would come to this.”

  “What would?”

  “Our friendship.”

  “We have a friendship? You couldn’t prove it by me. I’ve been back, what? Seven, eight months? And this is the first time we’ve spoken in private.”

  “In order to speak, you need something to say.”

  “We have something to say now.”

  “No, Joseph.” Curt shook his head slowly. “We don’t.”

  “Look, I’m not going to judge you, but I need to know what’s going on. If there’s a problem, I’m here for you, just like I used to be.”

  “You weren’t ever here for me. Or for Steph. Or Mack. And you’re not here for Steph or me now. So get out and leave me alone.”

  “Curt—”

  “Go away, Joseph.”

  What else could he do?

  He went.

  As he drove through the storm to Cape Perdido, Joseph reflected on what Curt had said. Maybe the reason his words hurt so much was because they were true.

  STEPH PACE

  Her heart was pounding as she hurried along the moss-slicked path that wound through the palms, toward the stone wall at the edge of the property. Mist curled around the trees’ trunks and dripped from their fronds, and the air lay very still. She was so intent on escape that it was some moments before she realized that the footsteps
behind her had stopped.

  She paused, her hand on one of the rough boles. Listened.

  Silence.

  She peered through the darkness to where the path curved at the statue of Kwan Yin.

  No one there.

  Now the flesh at the back of her neck rippled. One second he’d been close on her heels; then, before she knew it, he was gone. As if he’d been plucked up by some large, invisible hand.

  Go back? Keep going, and hope they’d connect later? Maybe he knew another way out of here and had opted for it? But why would he leave her . . . ?

  The canvas bag in her right hand was heavy. She shifted its long straps onto her shoulder.

  Go on? Go back?

  Go on. Hurry!

  She turned and ran clumsily along the path to the wall—and safety. As she climbed it, she heard a shot—

  A bright light flashed, instantly bringing Steph awake. The bedside lamp, left on to signal the end of the power outage, rescued her from the dark landscape of the dream. The old dream again, as ever, with not a detail altered.

  She pushed up and squinted at the clock. Quarter to midnight. She couldn’t have dozed off for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, yet the dream, like the actual experience it replicated, had seemed to go on for hours. And before that—

  A banging at the door. She struggled from the bed, reached automatically for her robe, realized she still had it on. As she hurried down the hall of her small frame cottage, shreds of the fear that had enveloped her in sleep still clung to her. She fumbled with the dead bolt, eased the door open, and saw Joseph standing there, rain sluicing down his face.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “I’m afraid Curtis is out of control.”

  TIMOTHY MCNEAR

  Timothy got out of his car and faced into the wind, feeling the fine droplets on his skin. The storm was abating, blowing inland to the valley and, eventually, to the foothills of the Sierras. The power had come back on, and the bright security spotlights that illuminated the perimeter of the mill shone steadily. Here, well beyond the fence, the spots were dimmer and farther apart, the shadows deeper. But Timothy had no need for light; he’d walked this property more times than he could count.

  Love versus hate: that was his relationship with the mill. Love, because it had provided him with a good living and allowed him to prove himself an adept manager, until the lumber business declined so badly that there was no possibility of keeping it operational. Hate, because it had taken his life in a direction he’d never wished it to go.

  When he left Cape Perdido for Stanford in the late 1940s, he’d never expected to return. The lumber industry was thriving due to the postwar building boom, but Timothy had no desire to join his father at the helm of the mill. Instead, he would study history, go east for his PhD, and perhaps join the faculty of one of the universities there. Stanford had been a compromise—his parents wanting him close to home—but once he was eligible for a graduate fellowship and able to support himself, the choice of a school would be his own.

  He was making his plans to move to New York City, where Columbia had offered the most substantial financial support, when his mother suffered a crippling stroke. Timothy returned to Cape Perdido to help out for the summer, and there he became reacquainted with Caroline Corelli, the daughter of one of the coast’s big ranchers, whom he’d known since grade school. Caroline had attended private high school in San Francisco, then studied English literature at Wellesley, and she was not at all happy with her parents’ insistance that she return home after taking her bachelor’s degree. Over the summer and into the fall, when Timothy put off his move to New York because of his mother’s worsening condition, the two discovered they had much in common. And when Louisa McNear died shortly after the new year, it seemed natural for Caroline and Timothy to marry and move into the big house on the ridge to care for his grieving father. Natural, months later, for Timothy to begin learning the mill’s operations. Natural, five years after that, to take over.

  Unnatural, all of it.

  Timothy turned and walked toward the main building. The rain had let up entirely now, and brought with it freshness and the scent of kelp. As he walked, he avoided looking toward the pier, where the giant water bag foundered in the surf; he hadn’t willingly visited that structure in two decades, and he would not do so tonight.

  The doors of the long building, through which two shifts of men had once streamed daily, were secured by a padlock, but Timothy had a key. He fumbled with it, got the lock open, slipped inside. Silence and darkness. He turned on the flashlight he’d brought from the car, went to the switch box, flipped the lever for a set of lights on the equipment track high up toward the ceiling. Then he made his way to the stairs that led to the mezzanine, where the shift supervisor had had his office. Climbed up there and leaned on the railing, looking out over the empty mill floor. He couldn’t have articulated why he’d come here tonight or what he was looking for, beyond a desire to reclaim something that had been lost to him.

  The building was gutted of its saws and hoists and slings and conveyor belts—sold off at pennies on the dollar at closure—but once it had hummed with activity, the air ringing with the steady whine of the saws. Fifty million board feet of lumber shipped in a good year, a quarter of that in the bad. And the bad had just kept coming. . . .

  He’d tried, God knows, but he couldn’t keep the mill going. The decision to shut down wasn’t one he’d taken lightly, and he hadn’t been unfeeling toward his employees’ plight. He’d wept the day they sent in the petition asking him to reconsider, but he was tired of a life that had been thrust upon him by circumstance. So he’d pulled the plug, and the workers had left town or, worse, remained, in a state of permanent resentment.

  When did everything go so wrong?

  Perhaps when Angela died. His little girl, just fourteen, victim of leukemia. Perhaps the first time he’d been unfaithful to Caroline. No excuse for that, or the times that followed, except that he no longer loved his wife. Perhaps the turning point had been much earlier, when they both mistook their common resentment of being trapped in Cape Perdido by familial obligations for a deeper, more lasting connection. It didn’t matter, not anymore. He’d made those mistakes and worse, and was left with nothing.

  He knew now why he’d come here tonight: to confront what lived inside him and ate at his innards every day.

  Is this what your legacy’s going to be, old man? Is that what you want them to carve on your tombstone?

  He flinched as the thought seemed to echo in his mind.

  Legacy: anything handed down from the past. What remains after all else is said and done.

  No, he didn’t want his final gift to be one of ruin.

  I could change that. But it would take a courageous act, and I’m not by nature a courageous man. A courageous man would not have let matters go this far. He would have spoken up, and damn the consequences.

  Consequences: the result of what has gone before. Also what remains after all else is said and done.

  No, he couldn’t accept those particular consequences. He’d long ago plotted out the remainder of his life; it resembled the downside of a bell curve on a graph, allowing for no sudden peaks or valleys.

  And yet, there might be a way. . . .

  If he thought long and hard, he might find a way. . . .

  Sunday, February 22

  JESSIE DOMINGO

  “Idistinctly remember putting the information on Mr. Whitesides’s travel arrangements in your packet,” Ann, ECC’s office manager, said. Her voice had an edge; in spite of her dedication to her job, she probably resented being called at home on a Sunday.

  Jessie shifted the receiver slightly and reached for her coffee cup. “I guess I’ve misplaced them. Will you check on his flight time for me, please?”

  “What about Mr. Collier? Did he misplace the information, too?”

  “I don’t know. He’s away from the motel, and I can’t reach him.” A half-truth; Fitch was across th
e street at the Blue Moon, having breakfast with the hydrologist.

  “All right.” Ann sighed. “Let me get to my computer and pull up the file.”

  Jessie took a sip of weak coffee, then bit into the sugared doughnut that had been one of the offerings on the motel’s continental breakfast table. It was stale.

  “Here it is,” Ann said. “His charter leaves San Francisco at one o’clock, arrives at two thirty-five.”

  “When were the travel arrangements made?”

  “Last Monday, right after the organization out there accepted our offer of assistance. Someone will be at the airport to pick Mr. Whitesides up?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” Relief was plain in Ann’s voice. “And when you see Mr. Collier, will you ask him to check his packet?”

  “Yes, I’ll do that.” Jessie replaced the receiver.

  So Eldon Whitesides’s trip to Soledad County had been arranged on Monday, before Jessie even received her assignment. She couldn’t believe that Ann had neglected to include the information in her trip packet, and contrary to what she’d said on the phone, she knew she hadn’t misplaced it. That meant someone had removed it after the file was delivered to her.

  Okay, had she been in her cubicle when it arrived? No, that was the day she’d met her mother for lunch near the ABC studios; the file had been on her desk when she returned, and she’d gone over it immediately. During her absence, anyone in the office could have removed the sheet. But who? And more important, why?

  To make her think Whitesides’s trip was spur-of-the-

  moment.

  Again, why?

  A pounding at the door, so hard it rattled in its flimsy frame. Fitch’s voice called out, “Ready to go, Jess?”