by John Straley
A wet gust of wind blew down hard. The men held on to their caps. The bloody gauze on Sean’s wound flopped down on the blanket, and the EMTs snapped their cases shut. Police officers were spooling out crime scene tape and pushing back any of the people who had come to gawk. Parents pleaded to know if their children were all right, and volunteers were leading men and women toward the principal’s office.
“The suspect was the only casualty,” I heard one of the policemen say to a worried parent who had heard the rumor of a schoolyard shooting. “Lucky, really,” the cop finished.
I grabbed George Doggy by the elbow, pulling him away from Sean’s body.
“Who called you, George? Who tipped you that he was bringing the gun up here, and what in the hell was in that photo book Sean wanted so badly?”
“That’s part of the investigation, Cecil. It’s evidence and closed to the public right now. I’m telling you this because I like you, son. Just stay out of this for your own sake, for the sake of that little girl of yours. Stay out of this.”
His eyes were tired and for the first time I thought I heard pleading in his voice. I knew he was telling at least part of the truth. I knew he didn’t like killing that boy. Maybe it was a certain meanness in me. Maybe it was the fact that he had invoked my own baby girl. “You don’t have the authority to kill a child, George,” I said softly with my fists clenched.
“I know what I’ve done, Cecil.” He looked down at me and now his sad expression was starting to make me tired. “He was going to open fire on those children. You want me to talk to him while he’s dropping his playmates? You want me to reason with him then?”
George pointed down to the schoolyard where parents were gathering around the door of the school. Some were banging on the door, and the ones in the back of the crowd were standing on their tiptoes.
“I want to see that photo album, George,” I yelled through another gust of wind.
“Go home, son,” and the wind sucked away his voice.
“What did you do with Richard Ewers?” I asked. The gust was still pushing through and Doggy’s hat blew off his head. He watched it tumble toward the swings but he made no move after it. He locked his eyes on mine.
“I’m not talking about Ewers. I’m telling you to go home, son. You don’t know what you’re into here. Talk to me next week when you calm down about”—he waved his hand in the direction of the dead boy—“about all this mess. Call me then, and we’ll talk more about splitting wood.”
I started to walk away. Then I went back to Sean. One of the officers tried to push me away and I pushed him aside. Somebody yelled my name. The green ammo pouch was lying next to Sean. An EMT’s syringe lay on the dirt, and one dry end of the bloody gauze flapped wildly in the cold wind. I touched the boy’s cheek. Then I buttoned up his shirt, and covered him with the blanket. A young cop jerked me by the shoulder and laid me flat on the ground. Another one kicked me once. I heard George yell at them to stop. I got back up on my knees. I understood why they had kicked me. I was destroying their crime scene, but I didn’t care. I folded my coat and put it under Sean’s head anyway. Then I walked out of the schoolyard against the flow of the concerned parents and headed downtown with the rain soaking through my shirt.
“Kevin Sands is not here, I’m telling you, Cecil. He made bail just today,” the jailer said.
“Christ, that can’t be true,” I almost shouted at him. “Who put up the money for him?”
“Dunno.” The jailer shrugged. “The detectives were in with him most of yesterday morning. All the time after you left here. Then, all I know is that he had the money. I had to cut him loose.”
“Who brought him the money?” I demanded.
“I dunno, Cecil. Criminy, relax a little, will ya? You want to talk to some of the officers, you’re going to have to wait. They’re all up at the school.”
“Did Kevin know about Sean being killed?”
The jailer was backing away from the protective glass between us. “He left before that call came in. I don’t know where he went, if that’s what you’re going to ask me next.”
I left the jail and started walking as fast as I could up over the hill and down through the woods. The trees in the old graveyard were sizzling and flailing their limbs. Twigs fell randomly onto overturned gravestones. Black birds darted through the middle story of the forest, where the whole environment seemed to have stepped on some kind of third rail. Everything was sparking with the energy of the coming storm. As I neared the harbor, I could hear halyards slapping against aluminum masts. The flags left on small fishing boats snapped a counterpoint to the hollow rattling. Gusts moaned through the rigging and through the electrical wires. Some fishermen were double-tying their boats, and some were bailing their skiffs. I ran hard down the ramp and turned right toward the last slip on the closest finger.
The Naked Horse was gone. Her mooring lines had been left on the dock. One of her bumpers floated just under the lip of the stall.
“He’s one crazy character. I tried to talk him out of it,” a voice called to me over the din of the gusts.
“Huh?” I asked the man I didn’t recognize and hardly looked at anyway.
“Crazy sonofabitch came and cut away. Said he was headed out into the weather.”
“How long?”
“Half an hour anyway,” the man said, and hunched his shoulders against the wind and sucked on the cigarette pinched between his lips. “Could be a wild old ride.” The rain came in spatters, but the drops hit hard. I was only a couple hundred yards from my house.
I ran out to the end of the pier.
By the northern entrance to the channel, the Naked Horse was pumping into the swell rolling just inside the breakwater. She was laboring into the storm, but from the dock I could see the Naked Horse lunging ahead as if she were a hobbled mare cantering onto a billowing plain.
7
Jane Marie was up on a tall aluminum ladder reinforcing the gutters. She saw me walking down the street in my wet shirt, and although I hadn’t noticed it before, my hands had smears of Sean’s blood across them. She waved her hammer at me, then she replaced the hammer in the loop on her tool belt and carefully made her way down the ladder.
“Hey, big guy.” She hugged me and her old canvas chore coat smelled like the rain. I kissed her cheek and then pulled her close so I could smell the whole storm in her hair.
I hate telling Jane Marie bad news. As a child she’d lost her brother, and she has forbidden anyone to start a sentence with either the phrase, “You’d better sit down,” or “I have something to tell you.” But she can read my body language from halfway down the street.
“Sean is dead. George Doggy shot him up at the school. Looks like Sean was going to open fire on his classmates and George stopped him. He’s dead though. Sean, I mean,” I said, as if from my sleep.
Her arms tensed around me and she pushed her mouth down into the cleft between my neck and collarbone. She rubbed her hands up and down my shoulder blades and she murmured into my ear, “What in the world is going on in this town, Cecil? Has everyone gone crazy?”
She looked up over my shoulder to the eerie gray sky. “That boy lived with every kind of bad luck, didn’t he? Some of his own, and some of everyone else’s,” she said in wonder.
Todd stood at the top of the stairs looking down at us. He had an old movie camera in his hand. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping on you, but did I overhear that someone was deceased?” he said in his usual tone of open inquiry.
“Yes,” I said, stepping back from Jane Marie. My nose was running. Janie kept her arm around my waist.
“Sean Sands . . . I was trying to help him. But . . .” I pinched my mouth shut, shaking my head. I wanted to say something more, but I couldn’t think of anything.
“I see,” Todd said. “Well, I was thinking about going over to Martin’s house
and showing him this new camera and seeking some advice on the final repair aspects. Will it still fit into the agreed-upon plans for the evening if I do that?”
“Yes, of course it will,” I said.
Jane Marie and I went up the stairs. Jane Marie’s nephew, Young Bob, was putting together a puzzle while he listened to the radio. Neil Young was singing through the cracked speakers of our old boom box on the kitchen counter. Wendell the terrier was chewing on the tip of Young Bob’s shoe as the boy tapped his toe to the music. Blossom was asleep in the back bedroom.
Young Bob was ten and he was using the tip of his prosthetic hand to slide puzzle pieces into place. He had known Sean as an older kid and a distant kind of boy who evoked more fear than revulsion. Young Bob had never particularly liked Sean. Young Bob was being home-schooled by his mother this year, and for that reason hadn’t been in school today.
Young Bob didn’t look up at us when we came up the stairs. He stared intently at the puzzle and tapped his hook nervously on the tabletop. His expression was grim. We walked past him into our small kitchen.
“I’ll have to talk to Bob about it, don’t you think?” Jane Marie looked over my shoulder to where the boy sat tap-tap-tapping his steel hand.
“We can do it in a bit,” I said. “Did you see anything of Jonathan Chevalier today? His boat is sailing out of the harbor.”
“In this weather? That’s crazy. It’s going to blow up tonight. Big storm. Seventy, eighty knots, they say. Are you sure he’s headed out in it?”
“I saw him pulling out past the breakwater. Storm sails up. He was under way.”
“Cecil, who’s the doctor who plays in the band with Gary?”
“His first name is Clem . . . I don’t remember but it’s Clem . . . something. I forget. Why?”
“He knows Jonathan. They were friends when they both first came to town. Jonathan used to take this Clem exploring. They went all over in that boat. You could ask him maybe. The band is playing down the street tonight. I think they should be doing their sound check pretty soon.”
I sat down on a step stool. Our old house swayed slightly on the tall pilings as each gust blasted the walls. I looked around the corner and saw the boy tapping his prosthetic hand against the table, while the strange terrier dog gnawed on his shoe. “It was just two days ago, all she wanted was my help. I was supposed to find her husband.” I felt a sickness bubbling up from my stomach. “Maybe it’s time to go to work for George, huh? What’s so wrong with being a chore boy for charter fishermen?”
I couldn’t say anything more. I kept hearing the tap-tapping of Young Bob’s metal hand on the table.
“People dying, and I’m always too late,” I said.
Jane Marie cupped her hands around my face. “Take a deep breath,” I heard her say. I felt my lover’s hands on my face and could hear her say my name over and over again but from a long way off.
When I was young we had a well in the back of our house. It was a deep shaft, down to where gravel gave way to a cleft in the rock and an artesian spring welled up. Once when I was ten I cut the rope that was laced through the rusty pulley above the well hole. I remember the silent drop, then the splash of the bucket that sent the darkness echoing. I also clearly remember my father tying the sawn-off end of that rope to my beaded belt and lowering me down into the well to retrieve the bucket. This is how I felt as I lay in Jane Marie’s arms that day. I could taste the mud and sour ooze on my tongue as I looked up toward our ceiling. Jane Marie wove her fingers through my hair and kissed me. I half expected to see the profile of my knobby-eared father leaning over the edge of the well. He would be telling me that I had to learn from my mistakes, and his voice would set the black water echoing all over again.
I heard the baby crying far off, then a crashing sound, and puzzle pieces scattered across our wooden floor. Jane Marie left me for a moment. Finally I was able to breathe, and the world began to soak through with color again.
“Young Bob took off.” Jane Marie stood over me holding Blossom in her arms. “And the little girl woke up. Why don’t you hold your daughter while I go after Young Bob? You’ll be okay, yes?”
I nodded and reached up. Jane Marie kissed Blossom’s cheek and held her out to me, and then turned out the door toward where her nephew had disappeared.
This little girl could fit in a bucket. I usually had a strange feeling of exhilaration and dread when I held her, but today her body still had that sleepy warmth as if she had been lying out in the sun. Her strange dark eyes scanned around the room, and when I held my finger out to her, she grabbed on and put it in her mouth. Then I saw the blood on the back of my hand. My stomach churned and bile pushed up my throat. I jerked my finger back, and she began to squawk, her face turning a radish red. I balanced her in my arms awkwardly while I washed my hands three times with the hottest water I could stand. Blossom squawked and cooed when I sat in the chair and gave her my finger again. She held it, looked straight into my eyes, and for a moment I almost felt known. Her lips formed a tiny O as she yawned. She put the tip of my finger in her mouth and then closed her eyes. I leaned back in the chair. Neil Young stopped singing and I closed my eyes.
That evening we all ate dinner together. As Jane Marie dished out the halibut and rice, we felt the storm push in all around the house. Jane Marie had brought Young Bob back to the house and she led a discussion about Sean’s death. I answered all Young Bob’s questions about guns and what they really do to people. He wanted to know about Sean’s injuries and I told him. We talked about self-defense and about the police. I didn’t really know what to tell him but I tried to tell the truth. By the end of the conversation I think Young Bob felt more at ease somehow, or at least more able to look up from whatever puzzle he was working on after dessert. I felt sick and couldn’t eat my halibut. Todd took my portion without complaint.
Todd had fixed the camera and was filming us around the room. It was an old camera with a huge floodlight on some kind of antler-type rack. He panned the room with light so bright it felt as if he were purifying the space of toxins. I lay on the couch reading Out of Africa and after he focused on me for thirty seconds I felt as if he were trying to cook me. I suggested that he film something else, and he was able to get some good footage of Jane Marie nursing the ravenous Blossom.
He filmed Wendell chewing on an old phone book Todd had rolled up and wrapped in duct tape. He had about ten minutes of the terrier rolling and barking when finally he turned off the camera and the room dimmed. He looked carefully at his old camera and said, in his well-paced voice which always sounded as if he practiced everything two or three times before saying it, “Cecil, I just wanted to extend my condolences to you on the occasion of the unfortunate death of that young boy.”
“Thank you, Todd,” I said, and closed the book lightly. I looked at Jane Marie and Blossom, then at Young Bob, sitting at his puzzle, and finally back at Todd, who was rocking gently back and forth. I realized that, like it or not, this odd group of people constituted my family, and I had things I should be doing so I could feel more worthy of them.
“I might take a stroll down to the bar,” I said, as all eyes in the room, including Wendell’s, came to rest on me. “You think that doctor Clem-something will be setting up down there?”
Jane Marie smiled and nodded sleepily.
I caught the Screaming Love Bunnies between sets. The crowd was small this early in the evening and the Bunnies are known for long breaks, so I was able to coax the drummer into a fairly quiet booth. Clem had already sweated through his shirt, and he was replacing the tape around the blisters on his fingers. This had only been their dinner set, but then the Love Bunnies are not known for their moderate-tempo material.
“Have you seen Jonathan Chevalier?” I asked him.
“Cecil, are you working? I mean, am I going to be subpoenaed or anything? I just want to know now, okay?”
“I just need to find Jonathan. I won’t tape our conversation. I won’t even write your name on a piece of paper. Just help me find him.”
Clem smiled at me and nodded. “I don’t really know Jonathan all that well, Cecil. I went out on his boat with him a few times. Something spooky about him. I don’t know, something intense,” he said, as he stripped off a narrow piece of white tape and then wrapped it around one of his knuckles.
“What can you tell me about him?”
Clem shook his head and rubbed his palm across his bristly hair, which appeared to have been freshly cut.
“I can tell you he doesn’t like you much. Other than that, I’m his doctor, Cecil. I don’t have permission to talk about certain things. You understand that.”
I sat silently for a moment. “He’s been giving money away on the street and besides that, I think someone may want to hurt him,” I told Clem, trying not to make it sound any weirder or more dramatic than it was.
Clem walked away from the table. He moved a cymbal stand and adjusted his drummer’s throne. I was about to get up and leave when he abruptly walked back to the table.
“Let’s just talk theoretically, all right, Cecil? Just theoretically, you understand me?”
I nodded that I did.
“Let me tell you about people who are manic-depressive.”
“All right,” I said, as the barmaid brought Clem’s soda and my ice water. He watched her walk away before he started speaking again.
“Okay. Manic depression is properly called bipolar disorder. It is treated almost exclusively with lithium. A patient with this condition has uncontrollable variations in their moods. Let’s say we’re dealing with a male patient . . .”