The Words Between Us, page 22
Then it struck me. I didn’t have to lie. I didn’t have to say anything at all.
He had already decided that the parrot had escaped, that he’d had a bad owner. Before that he’d decided I must have hit a raccoon with my car without even looking in the cage, without even looking to me for confirmation of his assumption. If I just didn’t answer his question, wouldn’t he simply answer it himself?
I stood in the doorway of that little office and smiled at him. Just smiled.
“You speak English?” he finally said.
I continued to smile.
He frowned. “You okay?”
Just kept smiling.
The old man screwed up his wrinkled lips and took off his glasses. “You look like you could use some coffee. Follow me.” He leaned back over the cage. “You too, Polly.”
I followed him into a small break room with a refrigerator, sink, and coffeemaker. A table and three mismatched plastic chairs filled almost all the space in the room. A hand-scrawled sign admonished coffee drinkers, “Turn off the burner when the pot is empty—this means you, Dave.” Posters on three walls identified freshwater mussels, poisonous plants, mushrooms you could eat, and mushrooms that would kill you given half a chance. The fourth wall was taken up by an enormous map with zillions of squiggly lines and numbers.
The man poured me a cup of coffee and then opened the fridge. “Where’s that bird? Got some grapes in here. You good with that coffee? I’ll just go see if I can get your bird to join us.”
There. He was my bird. Safe with me.
The man grabbed a handful of grapes and left the room. I stared at the map with the squiggly lines. Little triangles marked camping sites along a footpath labeled NCT. A number of spots along the lakeshore were named: Sand Point, Miner’s Castle, Mosquito Beach, Chapel Rock, Hurricane River, Au Sable Lighthouse.
Log Slide.
The only thing that stood between me and the place Peter had brought me for my first glimpse of Lake Superior was about five miles of sand dunes.
“Here we are!” The old man walked in with The Professor on his gnarled hand. “Took a minute to get this rascal to come out, even for the grapes, but we’re good friends now. Looks to me like your bird is stressed, plucked out all the feathers he could reach. And I saw through the window you have a car out there that looks pretty packed. So I figure you musta drove a long way and maybe the two of you could use a place to lay your heads, am I right?”
I smiled again.
“I thought so. It just so happens I got a place just off 72 on state forest land. I was born in Grand Marais, and I been moving south ever since. So far I’ve gotten about five miles.”
Instead of laughing like I wanted to, I just shook my head. The old guy liked that reaction.
“You get used to jokes like that, honey. There’s a lot more where that came from. What’s your name?”
I almost said it. But I stopped myself. If I could speak a name, any name, I could answer questions. If I could write a name, I could write answers to questions. And that would mean the lying would have to begin.
“Okay, I’ll go first. My name’s Dave. Dave Dewitt. What’s yours?”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. Dave Dewitt would not make me speak.
He turned to the parrot on his hand. “What’s your name, little guy? Polly? Bozo? Who’s a pretty bird? Who’s the pretty bird?”
“Professor,” said The Professor under his breath.
“Professor? I’ll be! Professor who? Professor Parrot?”
“Professor,” the bird said again.
“Okay, Professor. Now who’s that?” He held The Professor up toward my face and pointed. “Who is that nice lady?”
“Who,” The Professor repeated.
“Yes, who?”
“Who.”
“What’re you, an owl? Who is—”
“Alex,” said The Professor.
I knew he was talking about the host of Jeopardy because of how many times Dave Dewitt had said “who.” But it didn’t matter. I was Alex now. The name of Peter’s football-star brother.
“Alex? Is that what he said?”
I smiled.
“Alex. Okay. Well, Alex, I don’t know what your story is, but I know a damsel in distress when I see one. I seen plenty over the years. You wouldn’t think so living out in the middle of nowhere, but I guess that’s where your kind tend to go when they got trouble. Most the time it’s about a guy. Sometimes it’s about parents. You don’t want to tell me about your situation, that’s your business. I won’t pry. But don’t think you not talking will keep me from talking.”
He motioned for me to follow him, walked back to the little office, and put The Professor back in his cage. He wrapped the blanket around it and shrugged into his heavy winter coat. “You follow me down the road a ways and I’ll show you where I live. It ain’t much, but it’s better than sleeping in your car.”
Dave Dewitt did indeed live just five miles away. A green mailbox adorned with the silhouettes of a family of three black bears marked the dirt drive, which wound through a pine forest that still held pockets of snow in the low places. The dingy house at the end of it was not much bigger than my grandmother’s trailer. There was no yard to speak of, just trees and dirt and a fake deer eating nonexistent grass.
I parked behind his truck and took a moment to reexamine the situation. I had followed a strange old man to his remote house in the woods with $499,900 in my trunk. Beyond one neurotic parrot, no one knew where I was. The only way this could have been dumber was if Dave Dewitt were an able-bodied lumberjack of a man instead of an arthritic old codger.
There was still time to drive away. There was still time to drive south to someplace warm, where I could live outside and The Professor wouldn’t freeze to death.
Then Dave Dewitt was opening the passenger door and removing the travel cage.
Even then, there was still time. When he shut the door I could peel out, leave the bird behind. He’d be a good new owner for The Professor. They were both old and gray with gravelly voices and too much to say. They were made for each other.
But then, wasn’t he taking a leap of faith here? He had led a strange mute girl to his remote house in the woods. For all he knew I would kill him in his sleep and make off with whatever valuables he might have stashed away under his mattress or hidden in his freezer.
I turned off the car and stepped out onto the dirt driveway. If this was going to work, I had to trust him as much as he trusted me.
“Right this way, Alex. It ain’t a palace, but it’s warm in winter and sweltering in summer. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. ’Til you get on your feet or your boyfriend’s put in jail or whatever it was that sent you looking for peace up in the Great White North.”
We entered a small sitting room, and Dave Dewitt let The Professor out of the cage.
“Not that I blame you. When you’re looking for peace, this is the place to find it. I’ll take you out on the trail with me tomorrow, if you like. I walk the park a lot in the spring. Time to get all the branches cleared out from the winter storms before the hikers come through in the summer. Maybe you can give me a hand with that.”
He looked at me for confirmation, so I smiled. I think I’d smiled more in the past twenty minutes than I had in the past twenty days.
“Spring’s one of the best times in the park. The waterfalls are all raging, and there’s no bugs yet and not so many people. It’s quiet. Gives a person time to think. If you need it. Just gotta watch out for hungry bears, especially mamas with cubs. But don’t you worry. Me and the bears got an understanding. I’ve known some since they were born, and now they’re ten and twenty years old.”
I wasn’t worried about bears. I was worried that this peace and quiet Dave Dewitt mentioned would be subsumed by his insatiable need to talk. He talked during the entire tour of his little house. He talked as he helped me bring my bags into his den. He talked as he made up the squeaky hide-a-bed. He talked as he filled a bowl with treats for The Professor, who was given free range in the house.
My host talked through breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He talked on the drive back to the visitor station, talked as he arranged souvenirs and pamphlets, talked as he cleaned up the little kitchenette. I followed him everywhere, doing the small tasks he set out for me—sweep the floor, fold the brochures, alphabetize the mailing list.
When we left for the night, I turned off the coffeemaker.
By the end of that first day I knew his life story, his daily routine, his favorite and least favorite foods. I knew the names of the rangers and when they started working for the park. I knew the names of all the people who used to work there, when and why they left, and whether or not they were an asset to the park service.
When I crawled, exhausted, under the covers of the hide-a-bed, I could still hear his voice reverberating in the silence, like the echoes of a rock slide bouncing wildly up the sides of a deep ravine. The next day would be quieter. It had to be.
I’d already heard everything one person could possibly have to say.
31
Now
There are days that end before you notice they’ve begun, and there are days that linger long after the sun is down. The days after I left Sussex at age fifteen were of the lingering variety. Days of hiking through forests and gathering wild blueberries and bathing in frigid waterfalls. Days of scrubbing sinks and toilets in the visitor center bathrooms. Days of chopping carrots and onions and rutabaga for Dave Dewitt’s signature backwoods pasties. Days filled with occasional second-guessing but no second chances. The type of days you wished would get themselves over with because you were bone tired. But now as summer marches inexorably on, I’d give almost anything to have one of those unending days back.
Bit by bit, book by book, the Dreadnoughtus takes shape. Each day there are a few teenagers working alongside Ryan. Each evening after closing time, I continue the work late into the night, striping books with adhesive from one of the many caulk guns left on the worktable and pressing them into place. Sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes Ryan works beside me. Sometimes we talk about inconsequential things. More often we work in silence. If Sarah were there with us, we might get past the near-miss with Peter’s books more easily. She would know what to say, how to cut through the unspoken tension. She never was one to be at a loss for words. But she never comes by anymore. She’s too busy with her own ArtPrize entry as the deadline draws ever closer.
The frenetic monotony is broken when I open my postal box one morning to find an envelope with a return address in Terre Haute, Indiana. I rush back to the store and up to my apartment to fill out the requested information and scan copies of the necessary documents. I stuff an envelope and run it back to the post office within an hour. I don’t chance putting just one stamp on the thing in case it should be a tenth of a percent of an ounce too heavy. I cannot miss my window due to insufficient postage. I affix three stamps and slip it into the big blue box that indicates a pickup time of 5:30 p.m. At 5:20, I close the store again in order to go watch a man transfer the contents of the box to his little mail truck.
Two weeks later, I find another envelope from the prison in my box. I have been approved. I won’t ask Dawt Pi to give up another Saturday, and Ryan can’t spare the time now that we’re so close to finishing the Dreadnoughtus. Brick & Mortar Books will simply be closed.
Early Saturday morning before it is light, I feed and water The Professor and change the newspaper at the bottom of his cage. I have no old used mass market romance or mystery to give him; they’ve all been taken down to the marina. Even the castle in the window is gone. I look around the room for something for him to destroy and come up empty.
“Sorry, buddy. I’ll stop and get you a new toy on the way home.”
He gurgles and grumbles under his breath. I head for the back room.
“Robin.”
I stop. He’s never said my name before. Ever.
“What did you say?”
The bird regards me silently.
“Robin?” I prompt.
Nothing.
“Fine.”
I turn away.
“Robin.”
I hold the back of one finger up to the outside of the cage. He tests it with his beak, but does not bite.
“I’ll be back tonight, buddy. I promise.”
As I walk away, I wish he’d say it again, even though I don’t have time to stay and chat. He doesn’t, though.
When I stop to gas up the car it’s 5:00 a.m. With a couple stops for food, I should reach Terre Haute by noon.
1:17 p.m., Saturday, September 7th. He is the fifth and last prisoner to enter the room, and at first I think there must be some mistake. The gray, shrunken figure in wrist and ankle shackles that are linked together with a noisy chain is not my father. Yet this is the person who sits down across from me and looks at the table in front of him. As my hair has grown unchecked, his has receded until there is nothing more than a shadow of stubble ringing a waxy bald crown. It’s clear his nose has been broken and healed badly. Across his face run lines of dejection, anger, and resignation.
He is not a monster. He is barely a man.
1:18 p.m. I have already wasted a minute. Twenty-nine left. I cannot waste any more. What must be said? What should I have said to him in the letters I never sent, the calls I never made, the visits I never scheduled? What do you say to someone you’ve blamed for everything? What do you say when you’ve been so very wrong?
“I’m sorry.” It comes out of my throat in nothing more than a croak.
He looks up at me, and memory squeezes my heart—of the last time he looked at me, across the table, over our empty plates, his lips smiling, his eyes sad, excusing himself to answer the phone ringing in his office.
Then it’s gone.
He looks down at his hands. “It’s good to see you,” he says.
I wait for more, for some indication that he’s heard my apology.
“I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch,” I say. “I thought . . . But I know now that you didn’t do it, and I’m sorry I thought you were capable of such things.”
He scratches the back of one hand. “Oh, everyone’s capable.”
“Okay, but still. You didn’t . . . and I assumed that if you were arrested you must have. You shouldn’t be where they put people like Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh.”
He nods. “I appreciate that.”
1:20 p.m.
“I’ve talked to Mom. She told me everything. About Billy, about the bribe. If I had known what that money was, I would never have used it.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“It would. I found it in March. That was months before the new trial. I could have brought it to the police. If you’d been exonerated before 9/11, they couldn’t have tried you again.”
He is shaking his head. “Sure they could have. In the first trial I was charged with the murders and embezzlement, not with treason. Different crime, so additional charges cover facts that weren’t known before. The outcome may have been the same either way. There’s no way to know.”
“I think it would have been different.”
We are quiet a moment. 1:21 p.m.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Who can say? Some people get a stay and hours later everything goes ahead as scheduled. Some people get a stay and their lawyers battle things out a little longer, and a few months later they’re dead anyway.”
“What are your lawyers doing?”
“Buying time. Looking for evidence to support your mother’s latest statement.”
“What evidence is out there?”
“Mainly a letter from Billy to your mother. She spoke to my lawyer about it back in February. She sent it to your grandmother along with a number of other letters from him just before she was arrested. In it he may allude to two of the murders.”
“This February? Why wouldn’t she have told someone about a letter like that when she first got it?”
“Why would she?”
“Why? Because if Billy confessed to the killings—”
“I didn’t say that. It’s not so cut-and-dried. It takes interpretation to see it, and at that point she didn’t have the right context to understand it. Billy was good at fooling people into trusting him. It probably won’t be enough to exonerate me, but it might be enough to get my sentence commuted.”
I frown. “Still, why wait so long? She’d have to have wanted you to . . .”
He puts a hand up to stop me from saying it. “I don’t think that’s it. Prison gives you time to think. Too much time. You go over things enough in your mind, and you make a lot of trips between anger and despair and blaming and denial. You cover a lot of ground. But sometimes you don’t look in the one dark little corner that’s always been there because you just don’t want to consider it.”
He picks at his thumbnail.
“It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I really was a bad guy, that I’d used a lot of people for my own gain and hadn’t cared who I hurt on the way. I spent the first five years here feeling like I’d been sorely mistreated. There were all sorts of people out there doing the kind of stuff I’d done and they weren’t in prison, so why was I? Seemed pretty unfair and unjust. And the other people in here? They were all actual bad people. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t psycho or bloodthirsty or ruthless. I was clever. I was someone who gamed the system and got ahead, and all the money and the women seemed like things I had a right to because I was a big shot.”
He sends an apologetic look my way. I nod for him to continue.
“But you’re inside long enough and one day you’re going to stumble into that dark corner you’ve been avoiding because it’s the only place left to go. And that’s when you realize what you really are. A monster. After that you can deny it or embrace it. Or you can do what I’ve done, what your mother did—accept it and repent of it.”
