Carolina Moon (13 page)

It was near dawn when I snuck into my house and there in my dark pantry I slipped off my coat and pants and was just as I had been hours before: white cotton gown, barefooted. And when I slipped into bed, my side so cold, my husband moved in close to me like he might be guided by sonar, like the dolphins you were telling me about. He sensed life, heartbeats, blood flowing.

And now I have to do that again. Now I don’t even bother to hide my nightgown but wear it bunched up and stuck into my pants. I’m wearing
my slippers. It’s strange but I still feel like I’m doing something wrong, like I’m committing some great sin, and when my husband rolls in close to me I’ll worry if he can tell that I’ve been with you. You, the invisible, the dead.

WALLACE KNEW WHICH
pier she was talking about in this letter. He knew by the angle of the moon, by the beacon she described, and the direction of the point. He had gone many times, right after that letter came. Since then Hurricane Hugo has slapped the end of the old pier into the sea and it’s been rebuilt, the new wood golden blond and green next to what had remained. He had sat there at the end just as she had done, seen the world exactly as she had seen it. He felt compelled to call out to Wayward One in his own mind. Silently, in rhythm with the waves, the rolling pull and the whining give of the creosote pilings beneath him, he asked that if
he
was there, and if
he
could hear, that he please get in touch with that woman. “How could you do that to such a good woman?” he asked, a man who had enough sense to understand the power of the moon. And that was when Wallace began to wonder if everybody has a folly; if every life plan, no matter how carefully executed, doesn’t overlook some important part. And now, gently folding the letter back up and into its plastic bag he knows that that is true. Something or someone is always overlooked, and it’s only in looking back that it all comes clear.

When Robert Bobbin gets down to the Fulton police station, the first thing he does is pull the record assigned to him. His hands shake and his damp fingers leave smudges of ink. All of the guys are stalling before the day begins, doing what they do, which is pick on the newest guy, who happens to be a girl. “Did the department issue you those panty hose?” one guy asks and she turns around and shoots him the bird. She’s really kind of cute, pixie-looking, with short frosted hair and a skinny little body, and everybody at the Fulton Police Department is trying to match Robert up with her. Apparently she has heard the news, because she turns and smiles at him as he passes. It’s the first day to really feel like autumn, brisk wind and leaves flying, and she’s all wrapped up in a regulation jacket that’s way too big for her. She looks like some child playing school crossing guard, and he can’t help but be a little relieved for her to know that by noon it will be one of those Indian summer days where the heat of the sun is in full swing and she will need to shed the wool. It’s supposed to hit eighty later in the day, or so the weather guy said on the radio; he ended his segment with a silly jingle to the tune of Bill Bailey.
Won’t you come home, Jones Jameson?
People all over town are
placing bets on where the asshole might be, and all Robert can think about is the jerk’s wife, a woman who surely doesn’t need to be mistreated. Robert nods quickly and goes into his little tiny cubicle of an office and begins reading the updated report:

Jones Jameson officially disappeared on August 27th when he told his wife he was driving to Raleigh for a Disc Jockey reunion. Wife said they had not been getting along but that “that was nothing new and everybody in town knew it.” The wife, Alicia Jameson, reported that he never telephoned her as he said he would. She said that it was not unusual for him to forget to call home on his first night somewhere, but that he almost always called by late on the second day, if for no other reason but to see if he had any messages. She said that whenever she telephoned him on past trips she was greeted by party sounds, or more often, just the sound of someone in the background. This time there was no record whatsoever of his arrival at the Holiday Inn in Raleigh. His parents also have not heard from him.

At this point in the police record, there was a break with a notation that Mrs. Jameson had broken down and cried. Robert wishes he had been the one to ask the questions, that he had been there to touch her shaking shoulder. The first time he ever saw Alicia Jameson, the attraction was so powerful it left him tongue-tied and spastic like he used to be and had been most of his life. She was beautiful in a serious, forlorn-looking way.

Robert reads on to find that Jones Jameson never showed up at the meeting in Raleigh (turns out there was no meeting). State troopers are looking for a gold Audi 5000. On the afternoon of August 30, the wife came in and filed a missing person report after having called that
morning. When questioned about why she had waited, she repeated that he had stayed away from home often and she had no reason to believe that this time was any different from the others.

It is clear to Robert this is the first report the new girl has ever written. It just goes on and on, telling what everybody was wearing (Alicia wore a tight denim skirt above the knee and a black T-shirt). Then she has what she calls “an aside note,” such as “There was a big woman with Mrs. Jameson by the name of Quee Purdy. She is the wife’s employer and likened the missing party to an alley cat out to
youknowwhat
.” On past occasions Jones had stayed away for as long as two days without word. “Aside note:
son of a bitch
the big woman said and the wife agreed.” So does Robert. When asked why this time warranted a call to the PD, Alicia said that she grew suspicious when she started getting phone calls in the middle of the night from (she assumed) the girlfriend he had gone off to meet in the past. It was a woman’s voice but she was trying to sound like a man and she kept saying “Jones, please.” Finally, Alicia told the voice she had no earthly idea where Jones might be and then this voice called her a lying whore and hung up. In the report, “lying whore” was typed in caps and underlined. The aside note said: “Big woman says: ‘Lying whore my foot—well, if that ain’t the pot calling the kettle.’ ” Alicia called the department the very next morning with the encouragement of her employer, “the big woman: owner and operator of Smoke-Out Signals, a place for nicotine addicts to seek treatment.”

Alicia had brought a picture of Jones Jameson. It is the photo the radio station uses when he does a live show like at Tart’s TV or Brew-meister Palace (his most recent public appearances). The rest of the report is all about the asshole’s physical appearance, and the report is
way
too personal sounding for police records, but Bobbin isn’t going
to be the one to take down that little crossing guard; she’ll figure it out.

The photo of the missing party shows a Caucasian male of age 40 with receding hairline. Hair is brown and buzzed close to the head. Head is somewhat elongated, some might say equine-like, and he also has prominent teeth to go along with above said description. He has big brown eyes which is why (wife said) he thinks he’s something. (Though it doesn’t sound very good and though a person might hate to admit it, he is downright gorgeous like somebody who could pose on a Stud calendar if you happened to be somebody who likes that sort of thing which I’ll assure you Deputy Bobbin, I am not!) Wife also said that though you can’t see it in the picture, his body is his strong point. He is six feet one and two hundred pounds. He works out on a regular basis and has a lot of body hair. When asked if he had any special identification traits, wife turned bright red and looked down.
Yes
she said but did not continue. After several rounds of questions she finally admitted to his being “endowed” at which point the big woman accompanying the wife burst into such a fit of laughter that she had to be asked to leave the room. (I hesitate to put this in the report but it could prove to be valuable information I’d think.) The wife then continued by telling that on the day he left home, he was wearing what he was always wearing: khakis, a white, all-cotton Izod shirt open at the collar, a salmon colored alpaca sweater (his golfing sweater) tied around his waist, loafers, no socks, Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and a madras belt that she had given him when they first started going out. The Jamesons have one child, a son Taylor who is two. Wife can be reached at any time at
home and/or her place of employment: Smoke-Out Signals, a place for people trying to kick the habit.

“So? What did you think?” The new girl pops her head into Robert’s cubicle and points at the file on his desk, that asshole Jones Jameson looking up at him.

“About?”

“The report. My first report.” She steps into the room now and in the light from the window, without all the guys gawking, Robert sees that she’s right pretty, in a frail bleached-out way. She reminds him of somebody he used to have quite a thing for back when he worked in Marshboro and was the butt of everybody’s jokes. “Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m sorry.” His neck gets prickly. “You remind me of someone.”

“Oh.” Under her big jacket she is wearing full police uniform, except she’s got on a skirt instead of trousers. The gun hanging off of her belt is about as big as her thigh. “Somebody good, I hope.”

“Oh, yeah, she was, uh is. Great report.” Robert stuffs Jones’s picture back in and then pats the folder. “It’s very colorful.”

“I have a flair that way.” She sits perched like a little bird on a wire, her head cocked to one side. “And”—she tosses an envelope on top of the folder—“here’s the latest. A woman who says she saw Jones Jameson
after
his wife saw him. She’s their neighbor.”

WHEN PEOPLE ARE
missing in Marsh County, the river is one of the first places to go. This was something Robert knew even before he came to work in this town. The men down at the station regularly drag nets up and down through that twisting brown river, one man in the boat designated to watch the branches of the live oaks for snakes that might sense the warmth of bodies below and drop onto them. It
has happened many times. Grown men have peed in their pants, shot holes in their boats, and, on one occasion, shot a buddy in the leg. No, if Jones Jameson hasn’t turned up before long, they definitely
will
drag the river, especially now that this morning a couple of old fishermen found his car hidden in a thick grove of pine trees not far from the Braveman Bridge, which is, or so Robert has been told, one of the best fishing spots along that part of the river. There was a change of clothes in the backseat, a white Izod shirt, a pair of khaki pants, and a pair of jockey briefs (red ones), like he might be Jim Palmer. Robert has thought of buying that kind of underwear but fears he would look like an idiot. Now the puzzle is that these clothes were tossed in the backseat and not there in the hanging bag where he had two more identical outfits—he had more briefs, a black pair and a paisley pair. If he’s the average person who likes to shower at least once a day you can pretty much figure he was planning a two- or three-day trip. There was a tape of several of his own radio shows in the tape deck.

ROBERT HAS COME
a ways since moving to this town, so maybe he
will
buy some briefs. He could walk into Belk-Leggett and do it. Why not? Everybody used to tease him without mercy because he was the teasable kind, the chicken bleeding all over the barnyard, but a couple of years ago he stepped up to a new level in life. It was like he’d done his time. He decided to stop going by Bob and called himself Robert. Robert Bobbin didn’t tempt people to say shit like Bob Bobbin had. He got depressed, was the truth of it. After years of trying so goddamned hard to make people like him, he one day just said to hell with it. He sat one whole night studying his .38, holding it, the heaviness. He thought of all the famous people who had simply picked up a gun and fired. Hemingway and Del Shannon and Cecil Lowe, who was the closest this town had ever come to having a
celebrity. And then he realized how quickly people forget. Maybe not Hemingway so much, but how often do you hear people talking about Shannon or, especially, Cecil Lowe? The local stories about his death circulated for a few years but then that was it, the stuff of old ghost stories and something to be told to a newcomer, something whispered when you pass by and see Cecil Lowe’s son up on top of somebody’s house putting on a new roof. It was when Robert realized that there was nobody who would really give a damn if he died that he put down the .38.

What happened then was amazing; when he stopped giving a damn about people, they started lingering at his desk, asking if he’d like a cup of coffee, asking him what kind of weekend he had. He took to renting foreign films and sat every night in his dark living room reading the subtitles and trying to follow what was happening. He didn’t always follow, but what it did for him was take him off to another place. He was a foreigner in a strange land. If he got up to take a leak, he missed it all. He chose the movies by hit or miss, the same way he ran his life. Sometimes he got tired of reading and just watched it all happen, people laughing and crying and kissing and so on. He liked to watch with the sound off. Some of them were hotter in a sex way than anything he’d seen in English.

He’d go into the station and people would say, “Hey, Bob, uh Robert, what did you do last night?”

“I watched this Italian movie,” he might say, interested that very rarely did anybody ask him the title, relieved, too, because he couldn’t always remember. He had hated that one about the man who was so abusive: swept away, washed away; Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell had done a funny one similar. He had actually LIKED that movie, but he didn’t say it. He ate an occasional scone or croissant, and before long he had this new image. People looked to him as one of the “intellectual”
cops. He was made detective. Alicia Jameson, who used to work as a social worker, started spending her coffee break with him, in spite of the fact that he was a nervous wreck when she was near him.