Strawberry Fields

by Hilary Plum

  The PTSD doctor at the VA hospital had grown unexpectedly fond of me, and once was I believe on the verge of asking me over to dinner. With no grounds I suspected Modigliani had said something to her. But what did he ever say? Lately I wondered if he was even in this city anymore, or if he left for the better part of each week, I even tailed him once to the airport, sure the whole time that he knew I was there.

  It’s my sense of time that fails me: never exploiting myself, or not soon enough, as a body within it. Your timing’s just off, an editor had said to me once and convincingly. So I had wandered away from the hurricane, and now I was again paralyzed, looking out over this, the original corrupt city, where I hadn’t found even one bar I could sincerely enjoy. I blew on the window as though to fog it, write with a fingertip. There was a knock at the door.

  Was I a fool to hope as I crossed the room? It was some sort of workman. Did you call about a fridge? he said. I was wearing only a bra and jeans with the belt undone. Not me, I said, not smiling, and closed the door.

  When I turned around the room was as it always was. In that college town I had taken to going to an open mic every week at this coffeeshop, a bunch of townies strumming guitars or reading wretched poetry. One woman performed famous monologues. I had an idea that this experience was amusing, authentic, or better than being alone. One man, a devotee of Cat Stevens, gave me his number, and a few days later I called it, didn’t leave a message, and didn’t pick up the five times he called back. When he wrote the number on the side of my disposable cup, gripping it doggedly, I knew this was more or less what would happen. I made a deal with myself that I would go until the woman got to the opening of Richard III. As it turned out she never did, not in my time there. To the south that city still sang its long dirge, its people scattered, and among the thousands a man and a woman lay dead, victims of some human crime, murdered, the mythic time of the storm like a map lost in the waves. I think this now, I don’t know what I thought then.

  Zeke

  That is correct. I was not in the room.

  We were stationed in the hallway and tasked with preventing any interference with the execution of the sentence.

  Yes, I mean the execution, the sentence was an execution. That’s what I meant.

  Yes, ma’am, and to ensure that the body was properly handled.

  I’m not personally familiar with the burial customs.

  There were several employees of the state morgue, as well as a religious official of some kind responsible for that.

  All I meant was, we were there to ensure that the body was properly secured and transported to the proper location. That nobody photographed it or stole it or whatever.

  That is correct.

  We learned about the video the same way you all did, on the internet. I heard about it from—

  Ma’am, we had no orders to search the staff, so I don’t know how we could have prevented it. It’s a local problem.

  I don’t need to speak the language to search someone for a camera phone.

  No, that’s correct.

  And I do appreciate your point. I just don’t think—

  We were outside in the hallway, like I stated. You can actually see the hallway in the video. Before the stairs to the gallows, which just looks like a big platform.

  The guy with the camera would have been standing at the bottom of the stairs, you can tell from the angle.

  There were no Americans in the room. We were stationed outside, in the hallway. We were under orders not to go into the room or participate in any way.

  That’s correct. No Americans, no women.

  Well, you can see in the video that they were all wearing masks, and everybody I saw go into the room was wearing a mask, but I can’t guarantee anything, seeing as there could have been some men already in the room before I was stationed outside. Or any of them could have removed their masks when they got in the room, obviously.

  It was his request to leave his face uncovered. He was definitely offered the hood.

  Not by me personally. I did not interact with the prisoner.

  There were thousands of hangings under his regime, a lot of them in that room, as I understand.

  I’m not an expert. I believe so.

  I can’t speak to that.

  When I first saw the video, I thought maybe it was his idea.

  To get his supporters outraged. So you can see his face.

  That’s an advantage in terms of the video, but it was in no way necessary, there were doctors on hand to certify it was him, using fingerprints and other means. I personally saw him enter the room and saw his body exit it.

  Stranger things have happened.

  I’m not sure what they’re saying. He says something back, you can see his lips move.

  From where I was I couldn’t hear.

  I heard the shouting, absolutely. But as I said, we were under orders not to go in.

  I thought I heard the crash when the trapdoor opens, like you hear it in the video, but I can’t say for sure.

  One thing was the name of the insurgent leader, the cleric. His father was also a rebel. The father was executed back in the ’90s and now the son runs half the city. He’s our real problem now.

  That’s one way to look at it.

  I’m not familiar with the customs. I heard he’s buried with his sons, in the same graveyard, which if you ask me seems like a pretty good deal.

  The doctor was already in the room. Then the body was removed by a professional team, which we let in.

  That is absolute rumor and speculation.

  I’ve seen the photo. But maybe the rope did that, injured his neck like that. I’m not a forensic expert. I personally supervised the removal of the body and there was no interference of any kind whatsoever.

  You think someone could have stabbed him a whole bunch of times without us noticing?

  There wasn’t even any time. If it did happen, which in my opinion it absolutely did not, it happened off-site, when the body was in local custody.

  That was not our responsibility.

  Someone would have had to have a knife obviously, to cut the rope.

  I can’t speak to that.

  He was in a body bag when he passed us, it was unzipped just enough so we could get a visual ID.

  I can attest that we were all doing our due diligence.

  No, that is correct.

  It was not our responsibility to—

  I don’t see how he could have been stabbed while he was alive because you see him die in the video. And don’t tell me that fall didn’t kill him. Either way there would have been blood in the room, and we saw no evidence—

  In my personal and professional opinion.

  It appears to be a stabbing wound, sure, but it’s just a photo and can be altered or whatever.

  I don’t know anything about that. But he definitely would have been dead by then.

  You said desecrated, ma’am, those were not my words. And the thing is, even if he deserved it, I agree—

  You have no idea who these guys are working for, they could have been working for him and five other guys, you don’t know. That’s how things are done there. It’s like, some of them are working for us and for the terrorists, every week, two paychecks. You have no idea, I mean listen to all the stuff people were shouting in there. I hope for the sake of law and order and the sort of peace of the country that nothing happened, but for him, it’s like, what can you expect. But nothing did happen, as I said, and if any of it happened, it was after he was already dead.

  I think you’re missing the point, ma’am, is all.

  Like I said, not under my immediate supervision.

  Right. None of us saw anything with our own eyes.

  Alice

  I discovered Diana’s fake name, and why did it take me so long? Artemis
. I looked up at my rearview as though her spirit might be at a steering wheel in pursuit in the night. The rehab facility she’d gone to was on the exact other side of the country—fold a map in half and the two towns could have kissed.

  A woman who had been there at the same time as Artemis had agreed to talk to me if we met far from her home, location her choice. Indeed the zoning here seemed to value anonymity above all, a late capitalist mode as bleak as the Soviet style it contested: everywhere strip malls, everywhere the same stores repeated, variety solely in the names of the pizza shops or occasional sign indicating the way to historical sites one was sure one had already seen. A lot of development around here, I said blandly to the man at the hotel front desk, and in his heavy accent he began to recount in detail the area’s history, slow road to its current afterlife: how waterways had been the only streets, which was why there were no town centers and now only sprawl, and how in the last few decades the oystermen and tobacco farmers had been disappearing. Meaning not that the men themselves had perished, only their vocations fallen away.

  I arrived at the meeting place, a hibachi steakhouse, and sat far from the windows, near the kitchen, as instructed. Despite its outdated signage and view onto a parking lot, inside the restaurant was bright and tranquil, except for the music, which lent even the flat planes of tofu a frenetic gleam. I had come early, and pulled out a notepad that the waitress glanced at as she poured my tea. Jean arrived twenty minutes before our appointed time.

  Jean wasn’t her name, but that’s what she’d asked to be called.

  She looked around as though the dining area were interesting, and after shaking my hand opened the menu to read it slowly, on each of her false nails a rhinestone, white, blue, green. She ordered a full meal, I a cucumber salad.

  Did you know about Artemis’s murder before I called? I asked.

  She shook her head.

  She was shot? she said. I nodded.

  It’s so sad, she said, I’ve been having nightmares.

  Her soup arrived, and she said nothing until it was gone, when she resumed: She was really into guns, you know, she used to go do target practice. There’s a gun range near the facility, though you wouldn’t think there would be. I never went.

  Did she consider herself in danger, I said, was there—

  Everything’s confidential, she said.

  I understand, I said, I won’t use your name.

  No, no, I mean, everything’s confidential that happens there. I don’t think I can tell you what she said or what goes on in the meetings or anything. It’s a sacred space.

  And so it went and after half an hour I had nothing but the confirmation that the woman whose picture I showed her had indeed been in treatment for the dates I’d already confirmed, and that this woman said she had a daughter, Jean had once seen a picture of her.

  Mixed-race, she said.

  So is my nephew, she added.

  Did she talk about the girl’s father?

  Jean shook her head. I understood this to mean a refusal of the question and not a reply.

  I don’t know his name, she said, I’m sorry.

  It’s all right, I said, I do.

  What is it? she said.

  That hardly seems fair, I said.

  I had shown her photos of the other four victims, expecting nothing, which is what she offered.

  Most women are murdered by someone they know, usually a partner, she said.

  I mean, most women who are murdered, she added.

  But in this case there were the four others, I said. I leaned forward, a droplet of tea falling onto my thumbnail, and said: The police have no idea who did this. Anything you could tell us—

  She nodded, opened her mouth, but then said nothing, instead fidgeting with her blouse, which was tighter over her breasts than she seemed to have expected.

  What made you choose this place? I asked.

  I’m part of a group that does protests at the naval base, she said.

  I was embarrassed by my surprise.

  Protesting what? I said.

  High-frequency sonar, she said. Actually, it’s all unnecessary sonar testing, but we’re focusing on high frequency. It’s deadly for the whales. And no one has any idea about the wider effect on ocean ecosystems. I got interested eight years ago when there was a test here—did you hear about it? I shook my head. Anyway, there was a sonar test, although they didn’t admit that, but eighteen whales beached themselves, you know, swam out of the water onto the shore to die, all within two days, which never happens. They were bleeding from their ears and in their brains, the scientists said. It was horrible. So first they say it’s a big mystery, but it turns out there was a huge sonar test that same day, and this is happening all over wherever there’s sonar tests. Whales and dolphins beaching themselves after. And you know, even if they don’t beach themselves, it can still kill them, because they use their hearing to eat, and they stop hunting because of the noise and may not start up again because it’s terrified them or even left them deaf or insane, and they starve to death. We only know about the ones that beach, but most whales when they die, they just sink to the bottom of the ocean. So I joined up with this local group that protests and tries to get guidelines in place that will protect the whales. And once we were thinking of doing this anti-whaling campaign, and we used to talk about pamphleting this restaurant and some other places, because the Japanese have such bad whaling policies, and one guy thinks they serve dolphin meat here. But then we decided not to, it didn’t seem right to single out Japanese people, how would that look, and the dolphin-meat guy didn’t seem that reliable. But anyhow, I was curious about the place, and no one would ever think of me coming here, you know?

  I work at a restaurant by the naval base myself, she added, waitress. You probably figured—and with this for the first time she smiled.

  Figured what, sorry?

  Well, I look like a waitress, don’t I? Everyone always knows, I don’t even have to tell people. Don’t put that in your article, though.

  I won’t, I said.

  It’s funny about people you meet in places like that, she said. It’s like you’re supposed to feel some connection.

  She didn’t go on.

  You could help us, I said, you could help us figure out what happened to her.

  I don’t think so, she said. I don’t think it’s right to say things after she’s dead. I probably should have said that on the phone. But I was so shocked when you said she’d been shot I wasn’t thinking.

  I watched her unfold a slice of pickled ginger with her fork. The bell by the door dinged twice and a group of businessmen shook hands by the window.

  Five veterans were killed, I said.

  She didn’t say anything, then said: Artemis is the one who, when a man sees her naked, she turns him into a deer and his own dogs eat him?

  Yes, I said. I think so.

  I thought that’s what I remembered. I think she told me that. Goddess of the hunt, that’s what she’d say, when people asked. Almost everyone asked.

  There was nothing for me but to go home. It was Christmas. I arrived a few days earlier than I’d meant to, I’d planned to visit a friend on the way but canceled when I learned she’d just had a third baby. Everywhere it was too warm, the earth soft, grass green. I walked jacketless on trails that other years had been inches iced over, the reservoir was dark and open, ice just a mucosal film across the shallows. It was so quiet, the geese gone, and always before there had been the serenata of water releasing beneath ice, deep pops and creaks resonating.

  Climate change, my father said, washing plastic bags in the sink, the kitchen was festooned with bags.

  We discussed the news and I made a soup.

  In the backyard fat squirrels stretched themselves from tree trunk to birdfeeder, one leg akimbo. All day squirrels ate the birdseed and if it
didn’t snow soon who knew how fat they’d get: we’d wake up to find them gruesome on the patio, popped open like so many overfed ticks.

  At various gatherings people asked me about the investigation, people had heard about the murders. When there was nothing to report I would comment on the weather or not quite say how long I’d be in town.

  I kept my phone on silent but checked it twice an hour.

  On the day the war ended—all troops out of Iraq, except for the thousands on the bases or who’d become private contractors, except for the thousands dead—I texted Modigliani to tell him. Like I had a scoop, this was my joke.