Gateways, page 27
Jack wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to tell him he was sorry about that but sensed his father wasn’t looking for pity. He’d merely been stating a fact.
So Jack ducked it. “Hey, want me to slice those scallions?”
“Sure,” Dad said with a grin. “Think you can slice them nice and fine?”
He washed them off, then handed Jack a slim knife and a cutting board. Jack positioned himself on the other side of the counter and began slicing.
“Hey,” Dad said. “You’re pretty handy with that blade.”
“I’m a super sous chef.” He’d picked up a lot from helping Gia cook.
“While you’re doing that, I’ll open this bottle of Chardonnay I’ve had in the fridge. Been saving it for a special occasion.”
“Omelets are a special occasion?”
“Company is a special occasion, especially when it’s one of my sons.”
Jack realized then with a pang how lonely his father was.
“Can I ask you something, Dad?”
“Sure.” He’d pulled a pale bottle from the refrigerator and was twisting a corkscrew into its top. “Go ahead.”
“Why didn’t you ever remarry?”
“Good question. Kate always asked me that, always encouraged me to get into a new relationship. But…” He grabbed two glasses and half filled them. “There’s more where this came from, by the way.”
Jack got the feeling he was trying to stall, or maybe even evade an answer. He wasn’t going to let that happen.
“You were saying about not remarrying?”
He sighed. “Having your mother taken away like that—one moment she’s sitting next to me in the car, next moment there’s blood all over her and no one can save her. She’s…gone. You were there. You knew what it was like.”
Jack nodded. His knife picked up speed, slicing the scallions faster, harder, thinner.
Dad shook his head. “I never got over it. Your mother was special, Jack. We were a team. We did everything together. The bond was more than love, it was…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe it. ‘Soul mate’ is such a hackneyed term, but that pretty well describes what she was to me.”
He pulled a carving knife from a drawer and started dicing the thick slice of cured ham he’d bought.
“And let me tell you, Jack, the grief over losing someone that close to you, it doesn’t just go away, you know. At least it didn’t for me. Something like that happens and people pepper you with all sorts of platitudes—it got to the point where I wanted to punch out the next person who said, ‘She’s in a better place.’ I almost committed murder on that one. Then there was, ‘At least you had her for a little while.’ I didn’t want her for a little while. I wanted her forever.”
Jack was moved by the depth of his feeling. This was a side his father kept hidden.
“If I can use an equally hackneyed phrase: She wouldn’t have wanted you to spend the rest of your life alone.”
“I haven’t been completely alone. I’ve allowed myself short-term relationships, and I’ve taken comfort in them. But a long-term relationship…that would be like telling your mother she can be replaced. And she can’t.”
Heavy going here. Jack tossed off the rest of his wine and poured them both some more, all the while trying to think of an adequate response.
His Dad saved him by pointing the carving knife at Jack’s chest.
“Your mother,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it. I’ve always suspected that it made you a little crazy, but now I want to hear it from you. I remember you at the wake and the funeral. Like a zombie, hardly speaking to anyone. You were never a momma’s boy. Far from it. You were closest to Kate. But to see your mother killed by violence, to have her bleeding and dying in your arms…there’s no shame in having a breakdown after what happened. No one should have to go through that. No one.”
Jack gulped more of his wine. He could feel it hitting him. He’d had nothing to eat since breakfast and the alcohol was jumping directly into his bloodstream. So what? And why not?
“I agree that no one should have to go through that. But it wasn’t Mom’s death that put me on the road.”
“What then? It’s driven me crazy for the past fifteen years. What made you disappear?”
“Not her death. Another death.”
“Whose?”
“I was pissed at everyone back then for not finding the guy who’d dropped that cinder block. The state cops were going on about keeping an eye on the overpasses, but it takes a lot of effort to track down someone who commits a random act of violence. And they had better things to do—like ticketing speeders on the Turnpike. God forbid we drive above the limit. And you, you weren’t doing anything but talking about what should happen to the murdering bastard when they caught him. Only it wasn’t a ‘when,’ it was an ‘if’—an ‘if’ that was never going to happen.”
Jack finished the glass and poured himself some more, killing the bottle.
Dad looked up from the ham. “What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“Something. Anything.”
“Like what? Go out and track him down myself?”
“Why not?” Jack said. “I did.”
Oh, shit, he thought. Did I just say that?
“You what?”
Jack raced through his options here. Say never mind and stonewall it? Or go ahead and tell all. Abe was the only other person on earth who knew.
But now the wine and a cranky, don’t-give-a-shit mood pushed him to let it roll. He sucked in a deep breath.
Here goes.
“I tracked him down and took care of him.”
Jack thought he saw Dad’s hand tremble as he put down the carving knife. His expression was tight, his eyes bright and wide behind his glasses.
“Just how…I’m not sure I want to hear this but…just how did you take care of him?”
“I saw to it that he never did anything like that again.”
Dad closed his eyes. “Tell me you broke his arms, or smashed his elbows.”
Jack said nothing.
Dad opened his eyes and stared at him. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Jack…Jack, you didn’t…”
Jack nodded.
Dad sidled left to one of the counter stools and slumped on it. He cradled his head in his hands, staring down at the pile of sliced scallions.
“Oh, my God.” His voice was a moan. “Oh, my God.”
Here it comes, Jack thought. The shock, the outrage, the revulsion, the moral repugnance. He wished now he could take it back, but he couldn’t, so…
He walked around the counter, past his father’s bent back, opened the refrigerator, and took out another bottle of wine.
“How did you know it was him?” Dad said. “I mean, how could you be sure?”
Without bothering to remove the black lead foil, Jack wound the screw through it and into the cork.
“He told me. Name was Ed, and he bragged about it.”
“Ed…so, the shit had a name.”
Jack blinked. Other than hell and damn, his father had always been scrupulous about four-letter words. At least when Jack was a kid.
He lifted his head but didn’t look at Jack. “How?” He licked his lips. “How did you do it?”
“Tied him up and dangled him by his feet off the same overpass. Made him a human piñata for the big trucks going by below.”
The cork popped from the bottle as Jack remembered seeing Ed swinging over the road, the meaty thunk! as the first truck hit him, then the second.
Music. Heavy metal.
Dad was finally looking at him. “That’s why you left, isn’t it. Because you’d committed murder. You should have stayed, Jack. You should have come to me. I would have helped you. You didn’t have to spend all those years dealing with that guilt alone.”
“Guilt?” Jack said, pouring more wine for both of them. “No guilt. What did I have to feel guilty about? No guilt, no remorse. Send me back in time to relive that night and I’d do the same thing.”
“Then why on earth did you just take off like that?”
Jack shrugged. “You want an eloquent, thoughtful, soul-searching answer? I don’t have one. It seemed to make sense at the time. From that moment on the world looked different, seemed like another place, and I didn’t belong. Plus I was disgusted with just about everything. I wanted out. So I got out. End of story.”
“And this creep, this Ed…why didn’t you call the police?”
“That’s not the way I work.”
Dad squinted at him. “Work? What does that mean?”
Jack didn’t want to go there.
“Because they’d have carted him off and then let him out on bail, and then let him plead down to a malicious mischief charge.”
“You’re exaggerating. He’d have done hard time.”
“Hard time wouldn’t cut it. He needed killing.”
“So you killed him.”
Jack nodded and sipped his wine.
Dad started waving his arms. “Jack, do you have any idea what could have happened to you? The chance you took? What if somebody saw you? What if you’d been caught?”
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but something in his father’s words and tone stopped him. He was going on about…he seemed more concerned about the possible consequences of the killing rather than the killing itself. Where was the outrage, the middle-class repugnance for deliberate murder?
“Dad? Tell me you wish I hadn’t killed him.”
His father pressed a hand over his eyes. Jack saw his lips tremble and thought he was going to sob.
Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “I never should have told you.”
Dad looked at him with wet eyes. “Never? I wish you’d told me back then! I’ve spent the last fifteen years thinking he was still out there, unnamed, unknown, some kind of wraith I’d never get my hands on. You don’t know how many nights I’ve lain awake and imagined my hands around his throat, squeezing the life out of him.”
Jack couldn’t hide his shock. “I thought you’d be horrified if you knew what I’d done.”
“No, Jack. The real horror was losing you all those years. Even if you’d been caught, you could have pled temporary insanity or something like that and got off with a short sentence. At least then I’d have known where you were and could have visited you.”
“Better for you, maybe.”
A jolt in the joint, even a short one…unthinkable.
“I’m sorry. I’m not thinking straight.”
Jack still couldn’t believe it. “I killed a man and you’re okay with that?”
“With killing that man, yes, I’m okay. I’m more than okay, I’m—” He threw his arms around Jack. “I’m proud of you.”
Whoa.
Jack wasn’t into hugs, but he did manage to give his dad a squeeze, all the while thinking, Proud? Proud? Christ, how could I have read him so wrong?
Once again Anya’s words from that first day came back to him.
Trust me, kiddo, there’s more to your father than you ever dreamed.
They broke the clinch and backed off a couple of feet.
Jack said, “If I’d have known you felt that way, I might have asked you for help. I could have used some. And you would have been doing something instead of waiting for the police to do it for you.”
Dad looked offended. “How do you know I wasn’t doing something? How do you know I didn’t take a rifle and sit in the bushes, watching that overpass, waiting to see if someone would try again.”
Jack managed to suppress a laugh but not a smile. “Dad, you don’t own a rifle. Not even a pistol.”
“Maybe not now, but I could have back then.”
“Yeah, right.”
They stood facing each other, his father staring at him as if seeing a new person. Finally he thrust out his hand. Jack shook it.
Dad looked around and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s get going on these omelets.”
“You start the eggs,” Jack said, “and I’ll finish dicing the ham.”
A good night. A surprising, shocking, revelatory night. Like nothing he could have anticipated.
He might have enjoyed it even more if he’d managed to bring Carl home. He wondered how the poor guy was doing.
12
Carl looked up at the starry sky, at the misshapen shadows of the surroundin trees, at the water in the lagoon, anywhere but at the lights. Leastways he tried not to look. But as much as he wanted to stop it, his gaze kept driftin back to the sinkhole…and the lights.
They’d set him here on the ground, his back against one of the Indian hut support posts. They’d been ready to tie his hands behind him when they remembered that he only had one, so they lashed him to the post with coils of thick rope around his arms and body.
He’d overheard Semelee mention that Jack had found her shell but how’s it would have to wait till tomorrow. Tonight was too important.
The air was warm and wet and thick enough to choke a frog—maybe that was why they weren’t peepin. Even the crickets had shut up. The lagoon and its surroundins was quiet as a grave.
The lights had started flashin a little after dark, strange colors and mixes of colors he never seen nowheres else. That was when it really got crowded around the hole. But there’d been lots goin on before that. Luke and Corley and Udall and Erik had been settin up some sort of steel tripod over the mouth. It had a pulley danglin from the top center where the three legs came together. They threaded a good, long length of half-inch rope through it, then tied that to some sorta chair.
He kept telling himself, Naw, she ain’t really gonna do that. She ain’t that crazy.
But come full dark, when the crazy flashin colors was lightin up the trees and the water, sure enough, Semelee put herself into the chair. She was danglin over the hole, with the lights reflectin even stranger colors off that silver hair of hers, and then Luke and a couple other guys Carl couldn’t recognize cause their pan-o-ramic backs was to him started lowerin her down into the hole.
After she disappeared he could hear her voice echoin up from below.
“What’re you stoppin for? Keep me goin!”
Luke called out, “You’re deeper’n you should be already. How much to go till you hit the water?”
“Can’t see no water. Looks like it all dried up.”
“Then where’s the bottom?”
“Can’t see no bottom, just the lights.”
“That’s it,” Luke said. “I’m haulin you up now.”
“Luke, you do that and I ain’t never gonna speak to you again! You hear that? Never! It’s like nothin I could ever dream down here. The lights…so bright…all around me…feels like they’re goin through me. This is so cool. You keep on lettin out that rope. I want to see where they come from.”
Carl wasn’t sure of a whole lotta things in life, but he was damn sure that was a real bad idea. He was glad he was back here, away from the lights. He would’ve liked to be even farther, like in his trailer watchin TV. He was missin all his Friday night shows. But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to get outta here.
He’d been usin his hand, workin at the knot behind his back, but this was one good knot. When you lived out here in the wilds, specially on the water, you learned how to tie a good knot. But that didn’t keep him from tryin to loosen it up.
“Keep a-goin!” he heard Semelee call up from the hole, her voice faint and all echoey like.
Luke shouted, “We’re almost outta rope!”
“Take me down to the end! As much as you got!”
Good, Carl thought. They’s all concentrated on her.
If he could just get this knot loose, he could sneak down to the water and steal a canoe and slip away real quiet like. He could be long gone before anyone noticed. Then he’d—
He jumped at the sound of a scream, a long tortured sound like someone havin their skin tore off—not just a piece, but the whole thing.
Everbody around the hole started shoutin and callin and movin this way and that. Four-five guys was haulin on that rope as fast as they could. Finally they got to the end. Carl caught a peek between the shufflin bodies and saw Semelee still in the chair. But she was all slumped over like a piece of fish bait and not movin a muscle.
She looked dead.
SATURDAY
1
Semelee heard herself scream and woke up all sweaty and thrashin.
Where am I?
“Semelee! Semelee, are you okay?”
Luke’s voice…and then his face appeared, hovering over her.
She sat up, recognized her corner of the Bull-ship, then flopped back.
“Here,” Luke told her. “Drink this.”
He tipped a bottle over her mouth and she gulped. Water. Lord, that tasted good.
She looked around again. “How’d I get here? I don’t remember going to bed. I—”
“You was down in the lights,” he said.
The lights! Of course.
She remembered now. She’d been down in the hole, baskin in them strange weird lights like a sun worshipper. But she hadn’t felt strange. She’d felt welcome, more welcome than she’d ever felt in her own home. She remembered wantin to tear off her clothes so the rays could go straight to her skin. But she didn’t get the chance…
Because that was when the voices began.
Whispers at first, so soft she could barely make them out. Not sounds, really. More like voices in her head, like she was a mental case or somethin. She wasn’t even sure they was talkin to her. Maybe they was jawin at each other and their words was passin through her head, but she had a feelin they was talkin to her. She wanted them to be talkin to her.
“What happened to you down there?” Luke said. “You screamed like I ain’t never heard nobody scream, and when we pulled you up you was out cold. I thought you was a goner.”
Out cold…she jammed her hands against her temples. Damn, she wished she could remember what had happened, and remember more of what them voices had said. She did know she kept hearin about ‘the One.’ All sorts of yammerin about the One, repeatin it over and over again. The One what?
