“What?” said the counterman. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Harry left the beer, turned, and went out and back along the sidewalk. He went a way he knew that led toward a little street that passed between a grove of pecan trees. He went that way because it was a shortcut that had always been safe, nothing horrible in any sound he had ever found.
Went along knowing that the street connected to another that would lead him to Tad’s.
Tad was the man. Tad had some answers.
Kayla unlocked the door to her little house on the shadowy end of the street, hoping that damn dog Winston wasn’t loose in the yard. He was big, a Great Dane, and he loved to stick his nose in her ass, as well as stand on her car. Anyone’s car or ass, for that matter. He must have thought he was a cat. If she didn’t like the silly dog so much, she’d turn in his owner for not keeping him on a leash.
Winston didn’t show.
She went inside, moved slowly through the dark. She didn’t need a light. There wasn’t much to figure out. Furniture was minimal.
When she got to the den, which she had transformed into an office, she turned on the light. There was a clutch of darts sticking up in a block of wood on top of a large carved wooden bear. The bear had been her father’s. He bought it for her when she was ten. They had been driving along on their way to visit relatives in Houston, and there it was, along with a bunch of other chain saw–carved critters. She had squealed so loudly he had pulled over and bought her the bear, right there on the spot, had to rent a truck later to come back and get it.
The block of wood fit right between the bear’s ears.
Kayla picked up the block, pulled the six darts out of it, put the block back between Harry’s ears. That’s what she had named the bear. Harry.
After all these years she hadn’t forgotten Harry, and of course he remembered her too. A little. Had asked for her number. Just to be friendly, most likely. A sort of I’ll call, we’ll do lunch. That wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. It wasn’t the way she dreamed things would be. She thought she would grow up and see Harry again and he would fall madly in love with her and they would marry.
Two interlocking pieces of the same great puzzle. Hadn’t that been the way they talked that time so long ago?
Tonight hadn’t quite been the vision she had imagined.
Course, she had a lot of other things in mind, and nothing had come of any of those either. Like solving her father’s murder for one.
Suicide they called it, not murder.
Well, strictly speaking, no one back then thought it was a suicide. Autoerotic accidental death. That’s what was thought. But her dad had been a cop, and the police force didn’t want that out, the stuff about the autoerotic business, and they spared her and her mother from having that in the paper.
Suicide.
That’s how it read.
It wasn’t.
And it was no accident either. She didn’t care what the cops thought or what it had said in the paper.
It was murder. She was sure of it.
There was a target on the door across the way and she threw the darts one by one at it. Three of the darts stuck in the door. She was going to have to replace that door pretty soon. It was pocked with holes. The landlord found out, he’d be pissed. Maybe, she thought, I can get some cork board, cover the whole door, that way I miss, no damage.
She collected the darts, tried again from a closer distance. She hit the board five out of six times. A couple of them landed in the general vicinity of the bull’s-eye.
When she gathered them up a third time, she picked up the block of wood, stuck the darts in it, replaced it between Harry’s ears.
So much for sports.
She turned on some music, doo-wop, her favorite.
She fixed a cup of instant coffee, heating it in the microwave. It tasted dreadful. She sipped it, standing at the kitchen sink, thinking about the events of the night, about what Harry had said about a redheaded guy, thinking this while she listened to the Tokens sing about the lion in the jungle.
She sat down at her desk in the den with her cup and used a key under her chair cushion to unlock the central desk drawer.
She took files out of the drawer, placed them on the desktop, shuffled them open. She looked at the photocopies of the crime photos inside.
Her father. Hanging. Wearing lipstick, a bra, lace panties, and fishnet stockings with leg hair poking through.
You couldn’t tell it in the photos, but the panties were pink. They really didn’t go well with his skin color, and they certainly didn’t match the bra, which was white and rather loose-fitting.
Nope. Didn’t look good. Loose bra. Hair poking through the stockings. And those frilly pink panties. Just didn’t work. Especially in the bug-smeared light of his garage. Bad atmosphere.
It was an atmosphere she remembered very well.
She was the one who found him.
43
Harry found Tad’s door wide-open, and when he went cautiously into the house, turned on the light, he smelled something that he recognized immediately.
Liquor. Alcohol. A lot of it. You could have given about fifty fat people a full-fledged rubdown with just the smell alone.
Damn, thought Harry. Damn.
Tad’s feet were poking out from under the kitchen table, cans and bottles were spread all over. Two empty bags of honey-roasted peanuts lay ripped open nearby.
Harry got Tad by the feet and pulled him out from under the table. Tad groaned, threw an arm over his eyes. “Turn off the goddamn sun,” Tad said. His voice was so slurred, it took Harry a moment to understand what he meant.
“It’s a lightbulb, Tad.”
“Goddamn bright.”
Harry dragged Tad across the room, down the hall to the bathroom, by his feet. By the time Harry got him there, Tad was out cold again.
Harry hit the light, bent Tad over the tub, turned on the shower, gave Tad’s head a good dose of cold water. Tad came up sputtering. Harry had a hand on Tad’s shoulder, and before Harry could figure how it happened, he was in a wristlock that hurt all the way to his spine and caused his head to touch the floor.
“It’s me, Tad,” Harry said, his face against the tile. “Harry. You remember Harry.”
“Oh,” Tad said, letting him go, falling to a limp sitting position against the wall. He put his arm over his eyes to fend against the bathroom light. “Any more peanuts?”
“I think you ate them all. You fucked up, Tad. You fucked up big-time. We had a deal, and you blew it.”
Tad didn’t move his arm from over his eyes. He seemed suddenly sober. “On this day they died. Don’t seem that long ago to me, though, Harry. It’s like fucking yesterday. My boy, he’d be your age, I’d been on time. Shown up when I was supposed to.”
“It happened on this day?”
“Today, so many—but not so many—years ago,” Tad said, and began to cry.
“Damn,” Harry said, reaching out to gently touch Tad’s shoulder. “Damn. I should have been here. You should have said.”
After about ten pass-outs and two pots of coffee, and with morning near, Tad was sober, or at least something that passed for it. They positioned themselves in lawn chairs in the backyard with large cups of coffee. The only light in the yard was starlight, and there wasn’t much of that, but there was a glow from the next-door neighbor’s yard light as well. The wind was blowing gently and so were the leaves, dry now as mummy wrappings.
“My boy, he would have been your age, Harry.”
This was something Harry had heard a lot. Tad had repeated it both drunk and sober all night.
“I know, Tad. I’m so sorry.”
“Knew the day was coming. The anniversary of the event. Thought I had it by the balls. Really did. Then it came, and I got to thinking, and you weren’t around—”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. I was kind of glad you weren’t, because I wanted to feel m
iserable and sorry for myself. And I knew I was going to do it before I actually went to do it. About dark I drove down to the liquor store, bought all manner of knock-down juice, and well, you see the results. I’m not proud of myself. To put it simply, tonight has not been a good night for our hero.”
“Not on my end either.”
“Oh?”
Harry told him all about it, Talia, the shelter, Kayla, his own trip to the liquor store, his close call there, whole ball of wax.
“Damn,” Tad said. “Your day really did suck the big old donkey dick. I’m sorry about Talia.”
“Me too. Sort of. I should have known better. There was plenty there in the way of signs to tell me I was getting jerked around, and then…the shelter…what I saw there.”
“Hey, you got to cast your line in the water, try and drag something in from time to time. Now and again, you do that, you get a stinker. But what about this cop, Kayla? You know her, she gave you her number. Said you used to have a crush on her.”
“I think she gave me her number in a friendly way. You know, old times.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“You don’t know, Tad.”
“Sure I do. She wouldn’t have given the number to you if she didn’t want you to call.”
“We were neighbors, old schoolmates. That’s all it is.”
“Old schoolmates can talk. So what’s wrong with that, talking?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Darn tootin’.”
“Tad, got to tell you, when I thought about getting drunk tonight, what you taught me helped me block the urge, fight the sounds. Got to admit, I’m not living with them so much as I’m hiding in plain sight. But it’s something. They aren’t chasing me around like before. Well, not as much. Some. But not as much. And thinking on that, trying to pay attention to what you taught me, I didn’t drink. Didn’t lose my head completely.”
“And I did. Some fucking role model I am. Told you from the start, kid. I’m great at giving advice, not so good at following it.”
“You’re doing what you can. In spite of this, you’re doing better.”
“Good to have a friend. I forgot what that was like.”
They sat silent for a bit, sipping coffee, then Harry said, “Tonight, down in that shelter, cellar, whatever the hell it was, that wasn’t little stuff. It was murder. I know it sounds crazy—”
“I believe you.”
“You do?”
“At first I thought you had been dropped on your head, or that the mumps infected your brain, wiped out some cells. But now I think if you’re crazy, well, I’m crazy too.”
“Means a lot coming from you. You may be the only one who believes me. And maybe Kayla. Hard to tell. But someone was murdered there in that shelter, and I have a hunch they were never plucked for the crime.”
“Said you thought at first it was Mr. McGuire? But now you sound like you’re rethinking it.”
“Don’t know what I think. I quit saying it was him at the police station, ’cause I wasn’t sure. Tired of being in trouble. I was lucky McGuire dropped the charges—”
“But that makes you suspicious.”
“Another thing. More I think about it, Kayla, she probably does believe me. She asked about the redhead, and the sergeant didn’t. Not really. He asked me for a description to kind of mock me, I think. But she seemed to believe me.”
“I tell you, she likes you.”
“Maybe.”
“Gonna call her?”
“Maybe.”
“Want to move a bit across the yard? Show you some new moves? Think I’m up for it. It’s the kind of thing that can get your head straight, moving around, meditation in motion.”
“You sure get over a drunk good.”
“Hey, boy. I’ve had a whole lot more practice than you. And who said I’m over it?”
“What about next time?”
“You mean next year, same time, same station?”
Harry nodded.
“Don’t know. I’m worried about tomorrow. And the next day. It’s like they say in AA, one day at a time.”
“You belong to AA?”
“Nope. Tried a few years back. Never could accept that shit about letting a higher power have the hold of things. Don’t believe in a higher power, so that wasn’t for me. I think you live, you die, and that’s it. Heaven to me is a fairy tale, like the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny. But the double-A drunks, they’re right about that one-day-at-a-time stuff. All you can do. Got to think about now, not tomorrow. I’m proud of you, Harry. For having more balls than I do. For not getting on the liquor wagon tonight. Especially after those goons came by. That takes a tow sack of nuts, friend.”
“I don’t think my fucked-up love life, a slap, and a punch compares to what you’ve been through.”
“It’s not a matter of degree, Harry. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. Drinking compounds the problem. Want to know something, Harry?”
“Sure.”
“Before I met you, I knew I was unhappy, but I didn’t know just how lousy I made myself. Really was no fun being a drunk, and tonight didn’t help anything. I want to keep trying to quit…I am going to quit. That’s final.”
“I believe you.”
“Good. ’Cause me, I’m a little uncertain…. You sticking around for what’s left of the night, or going home?”
“If it’s okay, I’ll stay.”
“You know where the spare room is.”
“Sure.”
“Like to think my boy had lived, he would have been a lot like you.”
“That’s a special comment.”
“I got you something. It’s in the house. It’s a cell phone.”
“That’s nice, Tad, but the bill—”
“I’m covering that.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Listen, I want you to have it so we can be in touch, so next time I get the urge to go stinking, I can call you, or you can do the same. It’s got like, what do they call it, text messages. Where you can write me on the phone, don’t have to call. We can even take pictures and send them to each other. And here’s a real extra. You can use it as a phone. That’s pretty fucking uptown, I think.”
“Tad…”
“It’s as much for myself as it is for you.”
“Sure, Tad. That’s great. Thanks.”
Tad cleared his throat. “Now let’s get up and move.”
They moved in the starlight, soft and light, and the crickets chirped, and somewhere a frog bleated. Harry felt as if the night and the stars, the sounds, were an extension of himself, gliding through the dark, sucking it up, deep inside the absolute where he was part of the ebb and flow and pulse of the earth. Most important, he was connected to the universe without seams, gently breathing, gliding along, out and away, the sun rising slow and red and hopeful, gradually blazing out the night and the stars.
44
Fall flowed by and winter flowed in, and it was a cold one, and wet. Harry thought of what he had seen down there in the McGuire shelter, but there was nothing to do with his thoughts but wonder.
Tad believed him, but so what?
There was not a thing they could do about it.
The police were reluctant to investigate ghosts.
In time, Harry let it all slip to the back of his mind, tried to keep on keeping on, studied for finals, worked as much as possible, spent time with Tad, practicing, learning.
He spent less time at his apartment, and never answered Joey’s calls, which kept coming, filling up the answering machine. He played them back, he got a series. They sounded like someone trying to patch things up with his lover.
Beep.
“Came by. You weren’t there.”
Beep.
“See you soon.”
Beep.
“I’m gonna drop by.”
Beep.
“Call me,” all the messages ended.
But Harry didn’t call.
He thought about Kayla.
He thought about Talia. How she had looked that night when she had dragged the crowd after her, out to where he stood under the great lights, waiting for the cops. He remembered the way she had held Kyle tight, like it was all she ever intended to do in the first place.
But, damn. She sure had looked good.
He hoped she got the suit he sent back to her, sort of hoped she might hang herself with the tie.
In November he voted in an election, but his man lost.
It was Tad’s man too.
“Such is it always for the righteous,” said Tad. “Way you got to look at it is, the people have spoken. The goddamn ignorant cocksuckers.”
At school Harry found himself creeping around again, but it wasn’t so much the sounds that freaked him, it was Talia. He didn’t want to see her. Started going to class the back way, so he wouldn’t cross her path coming out of the building, wouldn’t see her on the spot where they had first met.
And it worked well. He saw her only once in the next few weeks, and from a distance. He started missing a lot of classes, studying out of the book. Talia had been right about that. The tests were out of the book more than the lectures. At least there was that good thing about their relationship, him knowing how the old man graded.
On the way to his other classes he was cautious too, just in case she changed her path and he came up against her, like a surprise meeting with a panzer division.
But she wouldn’t do that. He knew better. That wouldn’t be her way. She would know he would change his route. She was that confident. He was certain of it. Must be a good feeling, being that confident, that certain.
He had almost been there. Right in the middle of Confident Town. Almost. Once. And maybe some of the confidence he had learned had returned of late. He flowed better and better, and now Tad was attacking him, and he was defending, and once, just once, out back of Tad’s house, during the middle of a cold day, he had managed to touch Tad a bit, right close to the jaw.
Then he had gone unconscious.
When he awoke, Tad said, “You got to watch both hands. Most guys, they got two.”