“And he stopped seeing you and Matthias completely after Nancy’s disappearance?”
“As best he could. He told me that he didn’t dare spend time with us. That if we stayed together, then we would go the same way as his friends in Guadalcanal, the same way as the people he worked with in Picayune, the same as Nancy. He believed that he was protecting us by becoming reclusive, by never seeing us, by staying away.”
“And you were all with her the night she disappeared, right?”
Maryanne smiled. “Yes, and that was the last time I saw her. It was the last time we were all together in the same place at the same time.”
“So what happened that night?”
“Nothing happened, Sheriff. Nothing at all. It was the same as so many other times that we had been together. It was a summer evening, August, 1954. We were in the field. We had the old record player from Matthias’s house. Catherine had left much earlier, and then when Matthias went back to get the record player, he took Eugene and Della with him. Then there was just the four of us in the field at the end of Five Mile Road near the trees, and we played music and we danced. And then Michael and Nancy went into the trees, and she never came out again.”
“And the police?”
Maryanne shrugged. “They found nothing. No sign at all. Don Bicklow was the sheriff at the time. George Austin was his deputy. They asked around; they spoke to Michael, to Matthias, to all three of us, and we didn’t know what had happened.”
“What did Michael tell them?”
“That they had gone into the trees together, that it was dark, that they had gotten separated but that he could still hear her singing. And then it went quiet, and he couldn’t hear her anymore. He went looking, and he called out for her. He got no answer, and he thought that maybe she was just hiding from him, that she would suddenly jump out from behind a tree to scare him, but she never did. Then he came out to the field again, and I was there with Matthias, and Michael figured she would be with us. She wasn’t, and so Michael and Matthias sent me home, and they went into the trees again to look for her, and after about an hour, they still hadn’t found her and they went to the Sheriff’s Office.”
“And when Michael and Matthias went back into the trees, did they search together, or did they split up?”
Maryanne shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“And Don Bicklow figured she was a runaway, and that was the end of it, right?”
“Seemed so, but now we know different. Now we know that Michael found her body, and then he did what he did . . .”
“We think that Michael found her body,” Gaines said. “We cannot be sure what really happened from the evidence we have.” Gaines leaned forward and looked at Maryanne directly. “What do you think really happened, Miss Benedict?”
Maryanne smiled. “Miss Benedict? No one calls me Miss Benedict, Sheriff Gaines. I am an institution here. I am the crazy lady who lives alone with cats and flowers and memories. I am just Maryanne.”
Gaines nodded. “Maryanne,” he said. “What do you believe really happened that night?”
She looked away toward the window, back to the sink, the stove, the wall behind Gaines. Never once did she look at him directly as she considered her thoughts.
“I agreed with what a lot of people said at the time, Sheriff Gaines,” she eventually replied.
“And what did people say?”
“That the devil came to Whytesburg to collect on Michael’s debt.”
38
Gaines believed in crazy.
In war, truth was the first casualty. So said Aeschylus. Gaines did not agree with Aeschylus. In war, sanity went first, and crazy followed in right after to take its place.
As crazy as the handful of survivors who made it out of the NVA assault of Lang Vei in February of ’68.
As crazy as the nineteen-year-old lance corporal telling you that you were lucky to be going someplace that had a lower-thanaverage kill rate.
Gaines remembered someone telling him that the Marine Corps was earning its reputation as the most efficient and effective means of killing young Americans ever devised.
A dead marine cost eighteen thousand dollars.
Someone else, maybe like a spec 4 from Special Forces, cost a good deal more.
So yes, Gaines knew all about crazy.
Despite the fact that he had not been there in Khe Sanh at the end of ’67, he knew that Khe Sanh was really was the beginning of the end. The NVA had the US encampment surrounded—the 304th division lay to the south, the 320th to the east; northwest was 325C, northeast was B, and a fifth unidentified division waited patiently across the Laotian border. The NVA were using routes along foothills bridging Laos and Vietnam, routes that had been used by the Viet Minh in the 1940s. They understood the war. They understood the weather. They understood the country. This was their territory.
In April and May of ’67, additional forces that had been deployed to keep Khe Sanh secure engaged with NVA battalions holding hills 881 North and 881 South. The 1st and 3rd Battalions of 26th Marines were rotated through the firebase.
In the Terrace Bar of the Continental, in the L’Amiral Restaurant, the Danang Press Center, in the daily forty-five minute briefings in the Saigon press rooms, endless parallels were drawn between the 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and what was happening in Khe Sanh. Fortune was against the United States. America had challenged fate, and fate would not be challenged lightly. Special Forces had moved in in ’62 and built their defense lines over the remains of the French bunkers. The French had lost there, and so would the Americans. Monsoons favored the NVA. Air observation and cover were impossible to maintain. Khe Sanh was encircled. All evacuation routes, including Route 9, were NVA held. Everyone was going to die. The war was going to be lost. That was where you found real crazy. Soldiers on their way out found themselves unable to leave. Their tours were over, and they could not go home.
Only in war did people understand war.
And then—finally—when bad news was coming in from Hue, Danang, Qui Nho’n, Khe Sanh, Buôn Ma Tht, Saigon, from every fucking place, that was when people really started to lose it. That was when they realized that the entire fucking thing had been pointless. The administration already knew it was over. The VC had the embassy, they had Cholon. Tan Son Nhut was burning to the ground. Convoys of trucks were coming from Phu Bai with replacements. So many had been lost in all the shit going down south of the Perfume River, and the rain was heavy, and the mud was everywhere, and Gaines could remember standing at the side of the road and watching that convoy of vehicles coming in. He saw the faces of the grunts, and he knew what they were seeing. They saw their own deaths. Some of them were there for the very first time and yet somehow they understood that this was where they were going to die. Everyone knew the end was coming, but the war machine was too dumb and too arrogant to cry uncle. Those boys were going to see a handful of hours, a day perhaps, and then they’d be shipped back in body bags while another five hundred fresh ones were convoyed in. It was like delivering targets to an amusement park shooting gallery. Gaines had been with the Marines of 2/5 when they gained the central south bank, and he saw the graves. Five thousand graves of all those the NVA had executed.
There was a Hotel Company, a Sierra Company, an India Company, a Foxtrot Company. No Charlie Company. That would have been too much irony for anyone to bear. It just started Alpha, Bravo, Delta, like the first three acts of some ironic Greek tragedy. And in every company there was always the one. He walked between bullets; hell, the guy could even walk between raindrops in monsoon season, to hear his fellows speak of him. He was the one who always survived, who went in first, came out last, never a scratch. A million near misses and almosts, bullets close enough to feel the sharp breeze and hear the whistle, but never a hit, as if God had some other divine intent and the war was just a movie to sit through so he could say he’d been there.
And every day the kind of sights that opened one eye wide in shoc
k and caused the other to rapid-fire blink in disbelief.
That drove you crazy.
That was what crazy was all about.
And that’s what Michael Webster had carried in his heart and his soul all the way from Southeast Asia, and that’s what he had delivered, unexpectedly perhaps, unintentionally, to Whytesburg.
And that kind of crazy was contagious. Perhaps airborne, perhaps absorbed through the pores of the skin, but insidious, malignant, consuming.
Maryanne Benedict had it, and perhaps Matthias Wade too.
Nancy Denton had escaped early.
What had they uncovered? Really, what had they dug up out of that riverbank? Gaines could not believe that it was simply the preserved body of a teenage girl. They had opened a door, a portal, a window into some other place, some other reality, and through that aperture had come something strong enough and malevolent enough to poison the very air they breathed. They were all infected. The town was infected. And there was no way to put it back where they had found it.
John Gaines sat alone with these thoughts in his car, and he wondered if he was going crazy, too. He was just a little way down the street from Maryanne Benedict’s house, but he could have been a thousand miles away.
It seemed to be a closed circle now, much like the snake itself. It had swallowed its own tail and would finally disappear.
Gaines started the car. He headed back to Whytesburg. By the time he arrived home, it would be close to eight, maybe a little after. He’d had enough. He would spend some time with his ma, perhaps watch a little TV, try to get a decent night’s sleep. He would address this tomorrow, Sunday, and see if there wasn’t some thread left somewhere that he could follow.
What had happened that night in August of 1954 was, in truth, less important than what had happened to Michael Webster. If Webster had in fact been responsible for Nancy’s death, then there was nothing further to investigate. The killer had found his own justice, albeit two decades after the fact. The killer of Webster, however, was—in all probability—somewhere close, and Gaines believed it was Wade. Had Webster and Matthias Wade searched those woods together that night? No one but Wade knew, and he was not talking. If they had searched separately, then either one could have strangled Nancy without the other knowing. And if Wade had been her killer and Webster had known this, why had Webster maintained his silence? And why did Wade wait for twenty years to kill Webster, knowing all the while that Webster could tell the truth of what happened?
Gaines’s head was filled with thoughts, images, bizarre ideas, and none of it made sense. In the final analysis, all that mattered was the identity of Nancy Denton’s killer, the identity of Michael Webster’s killer, and Gaines could not escape from the intuitive certainty that they were one and the same person: Matthias Wade.
Irrespective of what Gaines might believe, however, he had nothing of a probative nature with which to pursue an investigation of Wade. Wade had paid Michael Webster’s bail, had driven him away from the Sheriff’s Office, and that was that.
If Gaines discovered nothing else of significance, then the investigation—to all intents and purposes—was over.
That troubled him more than anything else: the simple fact that whoever had done these things might never be called to account.
But tonight, just for a few hours perhaps, he had to let it go. He had to rest his mind from the ever-nagging insistence of these mysteries. He had to devote some time to his mother, to her needs and wants. He had neglected her these past days, and that needed to be remedied.
Gaines turned on the radio. He turned it up loud. He found a music station somewhere out of Mobile. He forced himself to hear the song. He tried hard not to picture Maryanne Benedict’s face as she’d told him that the devil had come to Whytesburg.
39
Yes, childhood was a time of magic, but perhaps the magic came at a price.
People do bad things, and then they run away from reminders. They move towns, change states, sometimes even countries. But conscience is an internal country, and guilt is a town you can never leave, and that’s just part of being human. No matter how you change the landscape, there’ll always be someone or something that reminds you of the worst you’ve ever done. What was it that we did that made this happen? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.
It was a special time, but it ended with a strange and inexplicable tragedy that no one could comprehend.
But that day, that afternoon, that evening seemed like all the others.
Dusk approached; the sun kissed the tops of the trees, and we could hear Matthias returning with the record player even before we saw him.
Matthias had changed his shirt and combed his hair, and as he set up the player and started winding it, he glanced at me.
He knew that I would have to dance with him, and yet I sensed something else. More than before, I was aware of how pleased he was that Eugene was not there to vie with him for my attention. I felt awkward, and then I dismissed it. This was Matthias. This was my friend Matthias. Nothing would happen here unless I wanted it to, unless I agreed to it. How naive I was, for never once did I consider that what would happen might involve Michael and Nancy.
Matthias put on a record. It was “Cry” by Johnnie Ray, and then he played “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” by Joni James. I danced with him, and I could feel how close he was. I think he must have been wearing some of his father’s cologne, because he smelled sweet, like lavender maybe, or violets.
I danced with Matthias for a little while, and then I was content to just lie down in the cool grass and watch Michael and Nancy.
I felt warm and sleepy and so utterly alive.
Matthias sat right there beside me, and I could feel his hand against my leg, and even though I was aware of how close we were, I did not want to move.
Nancy was perfect. Michael said one time that they left the gates of heaven open for a moment, and an angel escaped. She seemed like that to me that night, more than any other night, and it was as if her feet never touched the ground as she danced with her soldier, her Michael, the handsomest and bravest man in Whytesburg.
But there was something else present, too, though I could never have defined it.
Perhaps I knew the end was on its way. Perhaps I knew in my heart that here was a night that I would recall for the rest of my life. When I became an old lady, sitting somewhere on a stoop, perhaps rocking in a chair on a veranda somewhere, I would cast my mind back and relive this evening, this night. But I would not remember it for the sunshine or the picnic hamper or the music we played that evening, or the way Nancy danced with Michael, her with her bare feet on his shoes, the way he held her at a gentle distance, never too close, never too near, as if he understood and respected the simple fact that she was not yet the woman he could love with anything but his heart and mind. No, I would not remember it for those things, but for something altogether different. Something terrible and awful, something that struck right through my heart like an iron nail, a nail that would lodge there and spread its rust into my blood for the rest of my life.
It should have all been so right, and yet it was all so very wrong.
Love may be blind. It may be quiet. It may rage like a torrent or howl like a storm. It may begin lives and end them. It may have the power to extinguish the sun, to stop the sea, to illuminate the deepest of all shadows. It may be the torch that lights the way to redemption, to salvation, to freedom. It may do all these things. But regardless of its power, it is something we will never truly understand. We do not know why we feel this thing for someone. We just know we need to be near them, beside them, to feel the touch of their hand, the brush of their lips against our cheek, the smell of them, the sensation of their fingers in our hair, the realness of who they are, and know that they will forever find a home in our heart. We need this, but we do not comprehend it.
But loss. We understand loss. Loss is simple. It is perfect in its simplicity.
They were there, and th
en they were gone.
That is all there is to say.
I could feel their love—the love so effortlessly shared by Michael Webster and Nancy Denton—and it was pure and simple and perfect.
It should have stayed that way forever, but nothing lasts forever, does it?
At least nothing like love.
40
His mother was well enough. She had slept much of the day. She told him that Caroline had brought her some supper, and now all she wanted to do was sleep some more.
Gaines sat with her for a good hour, listened to her talk of Nixon yet again, what a dreadful man he was, how he had lied his way into office, how he was now attempting to lie his way out of any responsibility for what he had done. “He will fall,” she said, “but it is just a matter of how many others he will take with him when he goes.”
Gaines listened, but he did not pay a great deal of mind to the significance of what she was saying. In that moment, the machinations of Nixon’s tentative hold on power were the least of his concerns. When it came to politics, Gaines agreed with Eugene McCarthy, that it was nothing more than a game for those smart enough to understand it and yet dumb enough to think it was important.
It was nearing ten by the time Alice Gaines finally wound down and drifted to sleep.