After the Fog Clears

by Lee Thompson

  Behind him, a man said, “It’s hard to bury a body in a northern winter.”

  Luther didn’t turn around immediately. He clenched the entrenching tool, thinking, Step closer, you’re too far away…

  It was the killer, he knew; he’d come back to check the dump spot, maybe to talk to the dead girl and tell her she had made a poor choice by climbing into his car for that last ride of her life. Made Luther think of that Eminem song “Tonya (Skit) Same Song and Dance”…

  He could hear the man breathing, the crunch of twigs beneath his shifting feet. He was keeping his distance and Luther needed him to get within striking range. But maybe that was it; the killer was unarmed, and the killer could clearly see Luther wasn’t.

  Luther said, “What did she do?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Luther turned. His dad was squatting with his back to a birch tree, hands hanging limply between his knees. His dad said, “You don’t have to hide what you are from your old man. What are you going to do with her now? You want my advice?”

  “I didn’t hurt her,” Luther said.

  “You look guilty as hell.”

  “I thought you were the guy who dumped her here when you first said something. I’m still not ruling that out.”

  “Not me,” his dad said.

  “You been following me?”

  “What if I was?”

  “You think that’s going to reconcile things between us?”

  “I’m not searching for redemption or forgiveness. Only a start. You’re right, I wasn’t any kind of father. But I couldn’t be when I was inside a cage, or cages, as it may be. You don’t owe me a chance. Devil knows I’ll never get it from your grandmother, some hearts get broken so bad people spend the rest of their lives cutting themselves to pieces with the remains. But I don’t really care what she or anyone else thinks. Just you and your brother.”

  “You’re saying we’re the only ones you got? That it should be enough for me to trust you?”

  “In not so many words, yes.” His dad stood and dusted his hands off. He said, “Did you ever ask your grandmother about all the letters she hid from you and Herman, the ones me and your mother wrote?”

  Luther shook his head. He looked at the body barely covered by dirt and twigs, a broken pine bough draped across the white, bruised thighs. He said, “I need to call the police.”

  “Do you know who she was?”

  “No.”

  Luther told him how they were fishing last night and heard the sounds up over the bank and Herman had urged him to investigate. Luther said, “She must have some family. They need to know.”

  “It’d be best to mind your own business. Let somebody else find her.”

  “And if no one does?”

  “Then no one does.”

  “What about the guy who killed her?”

  “The police probably won’t find him unless he turns himself in.”

  Luther pulled his cell.

  His dad said, “You got any money? I’m starving.”

  He looked lean and grisly and raw-boned.

  “I got money,” Luther said.

  “So let’s go get something to eat. Let me tell you some things you don’t know. If nobody finds this girl by tonight, you call the police.”

  “I should call them now. Then we can go.”

  “Okay.”

  Luther nodded. He was glad his dad agreed, or gave his consent, or whatever. But he thought again about the safety of his grandmother and Herman.

  He said, “Last night, after we got back in—me and my brother—somebody had gone through my glove box. They left the registration and insurance papers on the seat.”

  “Only you and this guy were out here.”

  “Right.”

  “So he knows your name and address, just in case.”

  “Probably snapped pics of them with his phone.”

  His dad nodded. “Way to cover himself. The police question him, you’ll be the first person he visits. Only known witness. Let somebody else find her. Your family is your first responsibility. You don’t know the story here, and you probably don’t want to.”

  He cracked his knuckles loudly. “Either way, we shouldn’t hang around here much longer.”

  Luther avoided the girl in the depression. He said, “No matter who finds her, if they call it in anonymously, he could think it was me.”

  “It’s unlikely.”

  No, Luther thought, it’s very likely.

  “Someone else finds her, they’ll make sure everybody knows it was them. They’ll have faith in the justice system, and they’ll want this story to tell their family.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Trust me,” his dad said. He rubbed his stomach and then yawned, ending in a stretch, like some old tomcat. After Luther had gone his whole life without this man in it, there was something surreal about the two of them there together with the dead girl, talking like they’d known each other all this time, as if they were merely catching up.

  “What if he comes back and moves the body?”

  “Then your troubles are solved. You won’t stumble across him again.”

  Luther felt inhuman for wishing that were possible. He said, “I get sick of hearing your voice, or don’t like who you are, I don’t want you bothering our family again. You get a chance, all you asked for, all I’m willing to give.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of messing it up again. You’ve already got enough trouble.”

  His dad didn’t judge the old Impala, just slid into the passenger seat a couple of minutes later like he’d done it a hundred times. He stretched out and said, “Roomy.”

  The fishermen Luther had seen earlier weren’t casting their lines anymore, they were at an old F-150, packing their gear, laughing. A short respite from obligations large and small, surely, enjoyed by two old friends. Luther smiled at them as they climbed in the truck and the passenger slapped the side of the door.

  His dad didn’t bring up starving again, but Luther heard his stomach growling. He pulled the car in gear, looked at his grandmother’s dress on the seat between them and figured he could run it to the cleaners after he and his dad shared their first lunch together.

  Luther wanted somewhere with privacy; the best place of all would have been the house he lived in, but he wouldn’t take his dad there; Luther’s grandmother already had enough broken hearts. He settled on a place on the north side, hoping they’d have time to talk on the drive, but neither of them had said anything. In the diner, they found a quiet booth in the back corner. After they ordered coffee, Luther said, “To start off, you can tell me what you went to prison for.”

  “Just like that, huh? I’m not surprised your grandmother didn’t tell you.” His dad grinned and it made him appear younger. “Your mother was like that, like you, straight to the point, when we first met. It was on a June morning, the third, I think, the sky gunmetal blue and a thunderhead was crackling with shots of lightning over the river like arching cables. I’d been working for this guy, we made good money, building basements, decks, roofing houses. I wasn’t the biggest guy, but I was fast and strong, and I had an eye for detail as sharp as the pride I took in doing a damn fine job. But we go to this new place out on the bay, over in Caseville. Rich town. Lots of money. I meet this other kid at the bar. He’s loaded, people like him, but you can tell he likes to keep to himself. Only he sees me and starts a conversation, like we’ve known each other all our lives, or in a past life or something. And here we are, reunited.

  “I’m surprised enough that this guy is feeling this way. And even more surprised that I have this affinity with this character I’ve never seen before. First time for everything, I guess. You meet a guy like that though, who you feel this unexplainable kinship with, you bond fast. You think, Nothing can be stronger, more enduring, than this right here.

  “And then you meet this guy’s girlfriend. You’ve been hanging out with him for a month, getting into
what he’s into, right? And all along he’s been hiding the true jewel, his crowning achievement—something no man can really earn, a man so blessed, so blindsided by this spectacle, can only receive it and thank his lucky stars. But all love stories end in tragedy.”

  Luther said, “You’re talking about my mom?”

  “How about you? What kind of luck have you had with women?”

  “I got a girlfriend.”

  “Did she light you up from the first moment you saw her?”

  “I’ve been with her since the ninth grade.”

  “Would you move the world for her? I tried doing that for your mother. It cost me most of my life. It cost me you. If I had it to do again, risk it all for her, gamble my life away to save hers, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “How did you sacrifice anything? How did you save her life? She’s in prison right now, isn’t she?”

  “I’ve been staying out in the woods, right by where some asshole dumped that body. Been spearing fish, and I’ve been thinking a lot about your mother, and about you boys. Do you think you could sneak Herman out to meet me?”

  “You really messed him up.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Luther.”

  Then their food came and his dad didn’t speak a word again until he finished eating.

  21

  Raul drove to Regina’s. She lived in a duplex on the north side. Her car and another were sitting in the driveway. A man answered the door when Raul knocked. The man was tall, skinny, and he wore a pink robe with Regina’s initials stitched into it. His hair was still wet from the shower. He was glowing the way men do, the way Raul had, many times, after bedding a beautiful woman.

  Raul said, “Who are you?”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Is Regina here?”

  “She’s in the shower.”

  Raul nodded, tried looking around the man, but he had filled more of the doorway, placed one hand on the casing. He said, “What do you want with Reggie?”

  “Are you dating her now?”

  “Are you an ex-boyfriend? Is she supposed to be expecting you? She didn’t mention any visitors coming over.”

  “She wasn’t expecting me, but I need to talk to her. Right now.”

  “Give me a minute.” He closed the door and Raul heard his footsteps retreating deeper into the house. He had a sudden fear that the man wouldn’t return at all, that he’d sit on the couch and watch television, or worse, climb back into the shower with Regina, press his lips to her shoulder, stroke her sides. While he was gone, Raul turned and looked at the car. It was a newer Denali. Black. Tinted windows. Large chrome wheels like he was some kind of gangbanger. He wasn’t Regina’s type at all.

  He couldn’t figure her out lately. First her infatuation with Isaac and now spending the night, he assumed, with this derelict. He wanted to slap some sense into her, kick the guy she’d had over hard enough that he’d become unrecognizable to his closest friends.

  It was a good idea for a distraction. Inflicting pain helped him forget his own. He didn’t want to face the death of his son, or the coming loss of his wife. She wouldn’t stay with him. He couldn’t blame her, although he believed he deserved a chance to make things right. But he wasn’t going to get it. Not from Geneva or Regina.

  He could make them stay, somehow, maybe?

  After the love he had given them over the last few years, it seemed they owed him.

  He’d never felt that way before, but then, he was a different man today than he was yesterday. He’d never had any reason to feel a different way. They had all been firmly placed in their roles, and he had to do something to negate the present flux. He thought what he was going through—this large shift toward aggression and no longer hiding his emotions like his father had taught him to do—to be both freeing and terrifying. There was also something necessary about it. Why should a man hide what he wants from those able to give it to him?

  Too long, and too often in his life, he’d allowed the chips to fall where they may, never once considering that he could pick them up and arrange them the way he desired.

  No more hanging your head, he told himself. No more remaining quiet and docile. Regina couldn’t punish him for anything when he hadn’t done anything to her, could she? And the little games she was playing lately, mostly trying to make him jealous over other men, would hurt her, not him.

  When the man opened the door again, Raul said, “I think you should leave.”

  “Me?”

  “All she’s doing is using you.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I mind,” Raul said. “Grab your shit.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “She’s mine,” Raul said.

  The man laughed. Raul remembered how it had felt to beat on the fat cop—it’d felt terrific, like all along he’d had this gladiator hiding inside him, one who had forgotten the taste of an opponent’s blood, and upon that reawakening, needed more.

  He swung from way down by his right hip, planning to catch his opponent on the bottom of his jaw, rock his head back, drop him instantly, and then drag him out by the road like refuse. His fist clipped bone and the impact sent a jolt of electricity up his arm and into his shoulder.

  The man staggered back and Raul leapt at him, batting the guy's arms aside, trying to land punches on his rib cage. But unlike the fat cop, the skinny man backpedaled, covered his ribs with his elbows and the blows were mostly ineffective as Raul chased him into the duplex, swinging wildly, expecting with the element of surprise he’d used, that he could win the fight.

  Then he saw Regina in the hall behind her lover and Raul, for a mere second, lowered his fists.

  The guy hit him square in the face, between the eyes, and it felt like someone had thumped him with a baseball bat.

  Raul fell down, held his bloody nose, and the man stood above him, gloating, rubbing his fist.

  Regina ran to Raul, tried to help him up until he jerked his arm away.

  She said to the other man, “I’ll call you later. Go.”

  “He started it.”

  “Raul doesn’t start fights with people,” she said.

  The man shrugged and feigned a kick as he walked by Raul.

  Raul flinched.

  The man laughed. He said to Regina, without looking back as he went past her, “Some tradeoff.”

  He went back and dressed and came out to leave while Regina pressed an ice-cube-filled dishcloth to Raul’s nose. After her lover was gone, she said, “What the hell has gotten into you lately?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You need to relax.”

  “What am I supposed to do? I love you.”

  “Poor Raul. Such a martyr.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You should be home with Genny.”

  “She doesn’t want me there. She sent me out to make the funeral arrangements this morning.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t do it.”

  “Maybe,” Raul said. “I had a hard time with it myself.”

  “Is that what all of this is about? You lost your son unexpectedly and now you’re afraid you’re going to lose me? Genny asked me this morning what I wanted, and she asked me what you want, too. Do you know what you want, Raul?”

  “I want for things to go on like they have been.”

  “They can’t. I think I lost my best friend this morning. We keep at what we’re doing and we’ll only continue to hurt her. Are you really that selfish?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, you’re not, Raul.”

  “What do you want?”

  She sighed. “It’s a horrible question because it should be so easy to answer. I want to go back to our innocence, before you and I looked at each other like we were more important than her, and at some point we obviously decided that, even if we never put it into words.

  “And I want to go back further still, sometimes, some moments, and to steal you from her, to place myself on th
at park bench where you found her reading that John Irving novel. Again, it’d be innocence. It’s what I want. But time doesn’t work that way. We’re guilty. Maybe I only want to take her hurt away and relieve my own guilt in the process. Yet I know we’ll always be guilty, don’t you think? And right now you’re too proud to listen.” She nodded, blinked. “You should see yourself, Raul.”

  “How is my nose?”

  “It’s stopped bleeding. Can you stand up?”

  “I don’t want to,” he said. “It was stupid, foolish, selfish, to come here. But I don’t know what else to do. Geneva found out and she doesn’t want me there, and I know why. She doesn’t want me around while she decides what to do with our marriage, the rest of our lives.”

  “If you’re not together, it’s not the rest of your lives, only hers, and separately, only yours.”

  “And if she leaves me?”

  “I want her friendship, her trust again. That’s more important to me than anything else.”

  “You’re saying we can’t be together?”

  “We can’t. It’s over. Done. Get it in your head. Enjoy it for what it was, the cheap, fun, not-so-innocent fling.”

  He felt horribly irrational. The room darkened around them, and her whitened face stood out in stark relief. He tried to touch her cheek but she gently slapped his hand away as if he were a child reaching for something he couldn’t have.

  She said, “I don’t know what else to do. I should be there with her right now, and so should you, but we ruined any chance of that, and she’s the lonely one, isn’t she? Don’t you feel the least bit awful for that?”

  “I do,” he said, believing he felt something along those lines. But when had he ever put himself first? It had always been others—parents, wife, teachers, bosses, his son. He said, “When is my time, if not now? I’m unburdened, aren’t I? My dad doesn’t need me, Geneva has reason to hate me, and will leave me, my son will never have to worry about becoming what I’ve become. And this is all new and scary, but I can make a new life for myself starting right now. I want you to be part of it.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “I know, this doesn’t sound like me. And I’m not sure if this other me was hiding somewhere deep inside the whole time, or if he was born this morning, or this past week. Things are different though, everything is different, isn’t it?”