Shades of Eva, page 12
Amelia apparently didn’t agree with that, either. “You had five years with her!” She said as much as if those five little-boy-years were an eternity. I suppose they were for a mother who’d lost her daughter at age two. But how do you measure such pain? I could only shake my head in frustration, for all of us.
“Five years!” I responded. “Wow!”
I didn’t want an argument, not after the tragedy Amelia had just shared with me, but my defensiveness just came naturally. It was almost as if it’d been provoked—and maybe it was. As much as I hated to hear it coming, that awful, pre-argument silence engulfed the car. I looked down at my lap. Five years with a mother is nothing. It’s an evening together. I wanted Amelia to sense the pain my ignorance meant to convey, to sense my longing for more time with her. Amelia must have heard only the bratty voice of a toddler who had just had his dessert taken away, and shook her head in distaste.
The short silence left us.
“You had five years of memories and all you can say is you were ashamed of her? That life was hard?”
I finally erupted. “What do you know about it? Who the fuck are you to be judging me?”
Amelia laughed again. I was expecting fight. Instead, I got mockery.
“Ooh, he says big words! Eva’s son who changed the name she gave him and moved 2500 miles away can say fuck! Well I can say fuck, too. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I couldn’t believe her audacity. One minute she was listening patiently, the next she was mocking me. On one level it was the same mixed bag of emotions I offered myself just about every day. Did she really think that I was fine with who I’d become: a drifter at best? That I was happy to have morphed into some shadow of my former self? Some alias?
“I’m sorry I’m not what you expected,” I said. “It must be disappointing to come all this way to find some shell of the man who you think I should be.”
All she said was "I’m sorry too."
We arrived back at the Scorpion’s Den, back to the scene of my ass-kicking. My truck was still parked where I had left it, but upon closer inspection, the windshield had been shattered. There was also a parking ticket beneath one of the wiper blades to add insult to injury. At least I thought it was a parking ticket. It was actually a note that read: You and your bitch friend haven’t seen the last of me! It was unsigned.
I assumed it was Meade’s handy work. I showed it to Amelia, who snickered at it and looked toward the bar. Then she crumpled the note up and tossed it into the gutter. That’s when I noticed someone had thrown a rock through my back window to boot.
The front window of the bar where I’d taken a flying leap was boarded up, but the open sign was still blinking in the front window and we could see through the glass of the front door. We stood there staring at the crumpled paper and a few other cars parked out front, one I recognized as Meade’s. I almost couldn’t believe Scotty had allowed Meade back into the place, but then again, Scotty had no bouncer and who was going to bounce Jake Meade?
The blood stain I’d left on the sidewalk was still there, too. It hadn’t quite been washed away by the rain surprisingly.
Amelia and I lifted our gazes from the broken glass—of my truck and the bar—to the gutter, and then to each other, and then, almost simultaneously, into the open air in quiet resignation.
Amelia began laughing.
I watched her austerely, wondering if that weren’t schizophrenic—laughing in the face of madness like this, like being happy in a nuthouse—and then I started laughing with her. When we stopped, Amelia reached into her bag and withdrew a manila envelope and handed it to me. It had no writing on it. It was just a sealed envelope.
“What’s this?” I said.
“It’s more reason to come home.”
“Is it money?” I asked, offering up more ill-timed humor. She ignored the question and gestured me to open the envelope.
I opened it and withdrew a set of stapled papers.
My eyes worked over the first few lines of the top page. Its header read: AUTOPSY REPORT. The subject of the report was Eva Fay Rennix.
“What the hell is this?” I said, not expecting an answer and not getting one. My mother’s date of birth: August 28, 1936. Date of death: December 12, 1970. Date of report: December 14, 1970.
“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “This is more reason to come home?”
I studied the document for a minute, and then turned to the last page. Conclusion of report:
No anatomical cause of death. I suspect stress-related arrhythmia.
I stared at the report for quite some time, feeling as if I’d just been paralyzed. I was repeating the words over and over again in my head, stress-related arrhythmia, wondering about the nature of that stress and if it had an identity. Then I wondered if stress weren’t an alias for husband or psychiatry or father. Maybe it was an alias for the Asylum. And then I wondered if stress weren’t an alias for son. Son-related arrhythmia! I was the only one there with her that night, the only one crying because the air in that house was so cold and I was so hungry. I was the only one she was holding that night. It was all so hard to remember, and so very hard to forget.
“I thought she had a heart attack,” I finally managed to say. “They always said it was a—
“They lied!” Amelia said, interrupting me before I could finish. “Whoever they were, they lied. She was killed, Mitchell. Maybe she wasn’t shot. Maybe she wasn’t stabbed or thrown through a glass window, but she was killed. That institution killed her, and as far as I’m concerned, her brother and his friend killed her and they aren’t going to get away with it!”
"No, they shouldn’t!"
And in that instant, the images of the shooting in that shed and the chaos that ensued began rising like a phoenix from that paper, a stupid, inconclusive document that now lay red-hot in my hands. The longer my eyes scanned those words and the empty explanation they conveyed, the more I looked into the sincere eyes of this young woman, the more those images of that toolshed and that homicide and that fateful night turned from black and white to stark, vivid color.
What left me was the dull grayness of apathy. It was like someone had dropped a hallucinogen in my drink or shot me with adrenaline. Purples like the many-layered purples of a bruise shown before me. Golds like the golden color of sweet corn in the summer, or freshly panned golden nuggets from beneath teal seas filled the sky all about me. Tin-colored rays and crimsons, sun-setting oranges and reds lay themselves in oscillating planes all around me and I froze, petrified by what had come over me by reading that one, kaleidoscopic burst of a phrase—no anatomical cause of death.
Even the bang of the peacemaker, spent in bronze-colored smoke, and the shells of the all the earwigs in that shed, pewter-colored and glossy black, not empty, but alive with fluid clarity, danced before me. I remembered with sudden lucidity that the shed was burgundy, not cherry red, bathed in an aura of midnight and teal blue darkness within, a teal blue that hid my assailant as surely as time ever had, and the chocolate brown of the burlap, his guilty face.
Amelia put her arms around me. “I know about her death, Mitchell. I know that you found her, that you were all alone. I know that’s one of the reasons why you’re so far from home. I know the guilt, because I, too, have had to come to terms with death, and feeling helpless to do a damn thing about it. But we’re not helpless.”
I had run so far from home and those truths that to think about Michigan—about River Bluff—or anything that happened there was like imagining someone else’s existence.
But it was my existence. I hadn’t had the sense that that little boy—either of them: not the one who was in that shed with that devil when he got shot, nor the one wishing he could shake his mother’s dead body hopelessly back to life—were me. Not until Amelia handed me that envelope. Those boys, minutes ago buried in distant anonymity, were now before me wringing their hands in frustration, eyeing me expectantly, pleading with me as if there were something more I could do.
I turned to Amelia. Again, that look of wicked determination painted her face.
“There is something we can do, Mitchell. “Right now I lack a certain something called a dead body, which is another reason why I’m here. I think I know what they did to Elmer…and I think I know where they buried him. I think we can find Fred Levantle and bring him down, and I think we can give your brother a last name and a proper burial. And I think I can get you that inheritance.”
An authentic smile appeared, on my face, and Amelia’s. It was the first instance of true happiness I had had in Neah Bay, or any town, in a long, long time, and it had nothing to do with permanence and less to do with the money. This was a sudden emotion, entirely distinct from the perfumed happiness gleaned from a whorehouse or that from inebriation. This was a hopeful feeling that held within itself the promise of peace.
Also inside the envelope were two plane tickets. Amelia had purchased two one-way tickets to South Bend, Indiana, just south of the Michigan-Indiana border. The purchase dates read three days ago. The name on one ticket was Emily Biggs. The name on the second was Elmer Gerard.
“Who are these people?” I asked.
“Elmer is your next alias,” Amelia replied. “Emily is mine. Depending on how things go, I’d rather not be traced back here. I’d assume you wouldn’t either.”
She was either very confident, or very stupid. There wasn’t a refund option on either ticket. I had to laugh because if I left, and if I ever wanted to come back to Neah Bay, as Elmer Gerard or Mark Engram or anyone else, it was going to be on my dime and it was a long train ride from Michigan back to the West Coast.
The flight was to leave at ten o’clock the following day.
I put the tickets back into their envelope and tucked it into the back of my waistband, smiled, and nodded. I told Amelia I was taking my truck, broken windows and all, back to the cabin, and I was going to rest up. But first there were a few loose ends I needed to tie up.
Amelia seemed happy, but concerned. She asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that, referring to the tying up of those loose ends. She knew what I was about to do, and she knew what kind of condition I was in.
I told her I was sure, and turned my attention to the bar.
We could hear music coming from inside. I looked to Jake Meade’s car parked brazenly out front, the same place it was parked the night prior. He drove a Dodge Challenger, a nice ride, jet black with aluminum rims and dual exhaust. It made me think of a little Matchbox car my mother’s psychiatrist gave me on my fifth birthday. It was a Dodge Challenger, too.
I could’ve paid back vandalism for vandalism and planted a stop sign through his windshield, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. I took in a deep breath and tightened up the wrap around my ribs. I gestured to Amelia’s rental, telling her in so many unspoken words that it was time for us to part.
“If I don’t see you in the morning at the airport,” Amelia said, “I’ll know you’ve either changed your mind, or your dead.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
I walked her to her Grand Prix and opened the door for her.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?” She asked. “I’m sure he has friends.”
I smiled. It was kind of her to care, but there was only one answer a man could give to a question like that. “No,” I said. “I’ll be alright. Go and get some rest. It’s a long way to Michigan.”
Amelia looked up at me and reached a hand toward my arm and held me for a moment. Her hand was soft, but strong. She dragged her fingers along the span of my palm as we separated, and then she drove away.
I stood on the curb looking at my bloodstain and the crumpled up warning note in the gutter, and turned to face the bar. I’d had four whiskey sours and a few shots, the last one two hours ago, but with the tolerance I’d been building for twenty-five years, I was stone sober. The reason I say so is because I never fought a man sober, and it was due time that I did.
I walked into the Den and stood at the front entrance looking around. Meade had his back to the door. I watched him for a minute. He had found three younger fellows to play cards with. It looked like Meade was winning. He was laughing; in fact he was slapping a leg when I entered, stealing one of Ogelthorpe’s celebratory gestures.
Scotty the Barkeep was wiping the countertop when he looked up and saw me. He froze as if he had just seen a ghost.
Meade hollered out for a drink, but Scotty didn’t respond to him.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you barkeep?” Meade hollered. Two of the other men at the table parroted Meade, but still Scotty didn’t answer them.
Meade hollered again. “I said we need another round, barkeep!”
Meade then noticed something had Scotty’s attention. He turned to the doorway where I was standing. Again, our eyes met. This time mine weren’t clouded by tears or uncontrolled passion. They were clear. Meade’s eyes still held that same daring insolence.
“Who are you?” One of his tablemates hollered to me, standing up as if he was going to confront me.
Meade put a prideful hand up as I figured he would, and stopped the man. “No,” Meade said, hefting his three-hundred-plus pounds to his feet. “I’ll take care of this.”
Scotty picked up a telephone. I don’t know if he was calling the police or a pre-emptive ambulance, but I didn’t care. In ten minutes I was either going to be dead or long gone.
Meade stiffened his chin, wobbled a little, and steadied himself. “I must not have made a strong enough impression on you last night?” he said.
I didn’t answer him. I only walked swiftly toward him. He stood his ground. “Where’s your girl bodyguard?” he hollered, cracking a mischievous smile. We were ten feet apart. I could see his hand reaching for his back pocket, for his switchblade, most likely. We were five feet apart when he withdrew his knife. I accelerated a bit and he began to raise it up as if he were going to stab me. We were three feet away when I kicked him in the jaw.
I heard a crack of breaking bones, and I saw his eyes fill with tears and his face turn beet red. He stumbled backward, cringing, but before he could open those starry eyes, I kicked him again, this time a roundhouse to the nose.
One of the other men from the table took a swing at me. I side-stepped the punch and it at caught part of my right shoulder. He was drunk, like Meade. I gave the man an elbow to the jaw and he fell backward over a table. The third man cautiously backed away.
Meade had regained his balance and came at me again with the knife. He had that wild look on his face that I was used to seeing in men who’d just been kicked in the face, this time with one eye working and one not, and blood streaming from his nose. That’s when I kicked him a third time, this time in the center of the chest. I could sense the air leave him, much like it left me a night ago. I could hear ribs cracking. His eyes closed in a hurry and he dropped the knife and fell backwards, gasping for air.
I picked up the weapon and put Meade in a headlock and dragged him outside onto the boardwalk. “You want to fight fair,” I said, “we can fight fair, but don’t pull a knife on an unarmed man!”
He was still resisting. I slammed him facefirst into the boardwalk at about the same spot where my bloodstain was, and mounted his back. I tossed his knife into the street and began rubbing his already broken nose into that stain, mixing his blood with mine. He was retching and sneezing, and still hadn’t caught his wind. He finally ceased his fighting.
“You’re going to remember me, Meade,” I said, pressing his forehead deeper and deeper into the wood.
All at once he drew in a shallow breath. He began whispering frantically, heaving, and then yelling. He was screaming then, panicking, begging for someone to help him. There were spectators screaming, but no one pulled me off of him. No one dared try.
I turned him over and grabbed the collar of his shirt. His hands went up in submission and he began crying, begging me not to hit him again. “You’re going to pay for what you did!” I told him, then reached a hand into his pocket and withdrew a wallet he had chained to his jeans. I let go of him and withdrew all the cash he had, which looked like about four-hundred dollars.
“This will help pay for Scotty’s window,” I said. “Do we understand each other?”
Meade nodded.
I dismounted him and stood up. I walked in and slapped the cash on Scotty’s countertop, and told Scotty, “I hope this covers some of the damages.”
Scotty looked at the money, and then reluctantly took it up. “Mark, you better get going. Police are on the way.”
“You didn’t call an ambulance?” I asked, grinning just a bit.
Scotty nodded. “I called both. There were three of them and one of you. After what happened last night—
“Where’s your faith in me, Scotty?”
He smiled and we shared a brief laugh. I thanked him for putting up with me. He told me I was always welcome at the Den.
I gestured a thanks, and said, “Scotty, there’s something to be said for clarity. You know how you asked me last night, when was the last time I was happy?”
“Yes.”
“I was happy today.”
“Was it that pretty little thing who saved your neck last night?”
“Kind of,” I said. “I met a real woman for once. She wasn’t looking for money or sex.”
“What did she want then?”
“Art.”
“Art?” Scotty echoed.
“It’s complicated. She wants me to come home for a while to explore my past.”
“I thought you wanted to pluck the past out of your head,” Scotty said. “Amputate it or something like that.”
“I did.”
Scotty frowned. He looked to the doorway where several people were tending to Meade. “You might have time for a quick one…on the house,” he said, reaching for a bottle of Jameson.
On any other day I would have taken Scotty up on his offer. But this wasn’t a life I wanted anymore. I put my hand out to stop Scotty from pouring.
