Places in the Dark (11 page)

He stared at me steadily. “What do
you
want from a woman, Cal?”

“What I always get. A little pleasure, then a good night’s sleep.”

“So it’s only sex, then? You’ve never in your life wanted more than that?”

He was alluding to the Saturday nights I spent on the waterfront in Royston, of course. I’d never kept that aspect of my life from him. But neither had I ever expected him to bring it up in this way, as an accusation.

“Don’t you want more from a woman than that?” he demanded. “Something … beautiful? Something that lasts forever?”

I felt under attack, and struck back.

“Dad did, didn’t he?” I asked hotly. “Dad wanted a lot more from our mother. Something perfect. That would last forever. Someone to share his life with, his soul with. What good did it do him? Or her, for that matter. She’ll die alone. And so will he.” I felt the air harden around me, the walls of the Bluebird Cafe squeeze in. I reached into my pocket, flung a few coins on the table. “Let’s get out of here.”

The sun glittered on the snow as we made our way down Main Street. We walked all the way to the front door of the
Sentinel
without exchanging a single word. Then, as he was about to go inside, my brother took my arm and turned me toward him. “What I said at the cafe, I didn’t mean it, Cal. That you’re just a … whoremonger.”

“But, I am, Billy,” I said without apology. “That’s exactly what I am. That’s my dirty little secret.” I stared at him emphatically, driving home an earlier point. “Everybody has one. Something weak about them. Something grimy.” I gave the nail a final bang. “Even this new woman of yours. Dora. This woman who ‘senses’ things.”

Billy stared at me silently. I knew I’d reached that
place where the next word mattered so much, it would be best not to say it.

I glanced down at his worn overcoat and found a joke to save us. “Well, one thing’s for sure, she couldn’t be after your money.”

He seemed relieved that I’d found a way past our harsh words, that for all our differences, we were still brothers. He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll give you that, Cal. Dora couldn’t be after my money.”

He turned and headed into the building. I watched him hang his coat on the peg by the door, then stride deliberately toward his desk, rolling his sleeves up as he walked. Henry Mason was scribbling classifieds at the front counter. Wally Blankenship was setting type, his body swathed in a stained leather apron, his face half hidden beneath a green eyeshade. But it was Dora March I found myself watching. She was sitting at her metal desk in a far corner, her back to the row of wooden filing cabinets where back issues of the
Sentinel
were kept. A newspaper was spread before her on the desk. She was peering at it intently, a single finger moving back and forth along the gold band of her glasses. As I watched, she read a moment longer, then closed the paper and looked up. Her lips remained tightly sealed, but somehow in that silence, I thought I heard a scream.

T
hat was why I did it. The look on Dora’s face, along with my brother’s certainty that “something” had happened to her. I didn’t doubt that she might have suffered some loss in her past. Most people had. And for those who hadn’t, it was only a matter of time. No life went forward without bereavement. No human being had ever, in the end, outrun regret. What I feared was that this wound had scooped something from the core of Dora March, dug a pit within her, and that my brother now walked perilously along its ever-crumbling rim.

It happened three hours later, when Jack Stout came into my office. He was wearing baggy pants, as always, black except for the places where cigarette ash left small dusty stains. He plopped down in the chair opposite my desk, unfastened his jacket, and let his belly flop over a cracked leather belt. “Headin’ for New York, Mr. Chase,” he said. “To pick up Charlie Younger.” He thumped a cigarette from a crumpled pack and offered it to me.

“No, thanks.”

Jack plucked the cigarette from the pack, lit it with a match raked across the side of his boot. “They got him in a place called—” He stopped, yanked a piece of paper from his pocket, and squinted. “Tombs.”

“That’s the city jail.”

“It’s on an island, Mr. Ferguson told me.”

“Rikers Island. It’s in the middle of a river. The one that runs along the east side of Manhattan.”

Jack crammed the address back into his shirt pocket. “It’s just me, you know. Nobody else going with me.”

“You don’t need anybody else.”

Jack grinned, his bottom teeth rising like a jagged yellow wall. “Figure Charlie’ll go peaceful, do you?”

“He’ll be wearing everything but a muzzle,” I said. “Feet and hands, both shackled. A chain running under his crotch. You won’t need help, believe me. Not to bring Charlie Younger home.”

“Well, he sure scared the shit out of Lou Powers.”

“The gun wasn’t loaded. Charlie was desperate, that’s all. He never had a problem before that. He won’t give you any trouble.”

Jack Stout grinned again. “Famous last words, Mr. Chase.”

“When are you leaving?”

“‘Bout an hour. Just gonna grab a clam roll at the Bluebird, then head out.” He crossed one leg over the other. A huge brown boot wagged in the air, the heel worn flat. “Hoping I won’t hit too much weather.” He stroked his chin. “Think I need a shave? Mr. Ferguson says I need to look professional.”

I didn’t see how Jack Stout could ever look professional. Shave, haircut, even dressed in a neat blue ready-made suit, none of it would have mattered much. Jack bore the mark of what he was, one of six brothers
from a family of scavengers and poachers, the type who lived in shacks at the end of winding mountain roads. As a group, the Stouts had always preferred, as if by nature, things that were unhinged and collapsible, could be broken into pieces and dragged through the piney woods or hauled up rocky trails. Jack was the only one who’d made a life within the law, usually as a laborer, but sometimes running errands for Hap and Sheriff Pritchart, fetching prisoners back to Port Alma from the places they’d fled to, and from which they surrendered, penniless and hungry. Charlie Younger was just the latest in a growing line of such men, driven by harsh times to harsh acts, then tracked down in flophouses from Portland to Baltimore, and brought back to face consequences no less harsh. I pitied them briefly, prosecuted them energetically, and sent them, dazed, to jail.

“You look fine,” I told him.

Jack pinched off the lighted end of his cigarette, blew a speck of ash from what remained, and dropped the rest into his pocket to smoke another time. It was the sort of small economy the poor practiced in those days, and I couldn’t help admiring it, not so much for the savings as for the sheer frankness of the gesture, a raw admission of want, offered with neither apology nor resentment.

Jack slapped his knees and rose. “Well, can I bring you anything from the big city? Besides Charlie, I mean?”

At that instant, I saw Dora’s face as she’d looked up from her desk a few hours before. An idea came to me. It was one of those impulses we either act upon casually or casually deny, then live forever in the wake of a fatal choice.

“As a matter of fact, you
could
do something for me, Jack.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a place in New York. A residence hall for women. I’d like for you to drop by, check something out.” I took a piece of paper and wrote the address and name, 85
^th
and Broadway, Dora March.
“Find out what you can about this woman,” I said as I handed him the paper.

Jack glanced at the note. “Dora March.”

“She works at the
Sentinel.
It’s always good to have a little extra information.” I smiled. “I’ll pay you for this, of course.”

Jack’s bulb burned dully, but not without illuminating a small patch of ground. “Looking out for your kid brother, are you?”

“You could call it that.”

“You bet, Mr. Chase,” Jack said. He stuck the note in his shirt pocket. “I’ll be back in four or five days.”

“We can settle up then.”

“You bet,” he repeated as he left my office.

A few minutes later I saw Jack trudging through the slush toward the Bluebird Cafe, his red jacket open, his belly pressing against his plaid shirt. He’d pulled on his cap, and the earflaps dangled haphazardly, like furry black legs. He was by no means a crack investigator, of course, so I expected to learn relatively little about Dora, perhaps no more than a few scant details of her life in New York. Certainly, as I watched Jack Stout amble down Main Street that morning, I had no expectation that the information he’d bring back to Port Alma would be of any great importance. Nor did I want it to have any such gravity. It was only the surface of Dora’s life I sought to probe, not the black depths I later found.

A
nd yet, in some way, perhaps I should have sensed that the ground was already trembling beneath my brother’s feet, should have seen at least that much in the look on my father’s face as he and I sat in his front parlor three days later, playing our weekly game of chess.

“I spoke to William yesterday,” he told me, reaching for a pawn, then drawing back, taking a bishop instead. “He just came by for a chat, but the subject turned somewhat serious.” My father was in his late seventies, and in old age, liked to think of himself as deeply sagacious, the sort of man a son would go to for advice, though he clearly understood that for any real guidance, Billy would certainly turn to his mother.

“So, what’d Billy have to say?” I asked idly, more intent upon plotting my strategy, hoping for checkmate within five moves.

He sat back, twined his fingers together. “He was asking about children.”

“What was he saying about children?”

“Just general things,” my father answered. “Having them. Raising them.” He placed his hands firmly on the armrests, a pose he associated, I think, with statues of great men. “He seemed extremely intense, Cal.”

I continued to study the board. “Billy’s always intense, Dad.”

“But what’s got him suddenly thinking about children?”

“True love,” I answered with a cynical smile.

“That never did run smooth,” my father said.

I expected him to add some grave remark, assume the worldly tone he often took with me, convinced of how alike we were, he and I, how different from Billy and my mother, we the truly knowing ones, steeped in
life’s unflattering realities, they forever pursuing golden shards from the Holy Grail. But instead, he remained silent for a moment, then told a story I’d never heard before.

“It certainly didn’t run smooth for your mother and me,” he began. He shook his head at the difficult life they’d lived together. “Not even during the courtship.”

“That’s supposed to be the best time, isn’t it?” I asked, though with little actual interest, my attention on the board, where I had a knight in peril.

“Supposed to be,” my father replied. “I guess it is for most couples.”

I reached for my queen. “But not for you?”

“No, not for me. Your mother never made it easy.” He smiled softly. “But she was such a jewel, Cal. No one else like her. No one in the world. I didn’t want to let her go. But what could I do? From the way she acted, I couldn’t see that she gave a damn whether I came or went. So I finally told her that I couldn’t go on with her the way it was. I said, ‘Mary, I guess it has to come to an end with us.’”

I lowered the queen to the board.

“I used practically those very words,” my father went on. “While we were walking along Fox Creek, not that far from where she went to live. I said, ‘Mary, it’s time for us to part.’”

“What’d she say?”

“Nothing,” my father answered. “She just looked at me. Like I was a mannequin in a store. Finally, we walked over to my buggy and I drove her home. Neither one of us said anything all the way. When I pulled up to her house, I didn’t even walk her to the door. I just said, ‘Well, good-bye, Mary.’ And she said, ‘Good-bye, Walter,’ and got out of the buggy. She said it almost cheerily. Like I was a cousin, or just someone
who’d dropped by and taken her for a buggy ride. She walked straight to her house. Didn’t so much as glance back at me.”

A terrible emptiness had swept over him after that, my father told me, a misery like none he’d ever known. “You’ve never felt it, Cal,” he said assuredly, equally convinced that I never would, certain that not even the sharpest arrow could pierce me as deeply as it had once unexpectedly pierced him. “Mary was everything. And she was gone.”

Or so he’d thought. Until he came home from the
Sentinel
one afternoon, still heartsick, to find a note slipped beneath his door, folded into a white envelope that bore no name, no address.

“I thought it was one of those anonymous tips I got about once a year,” my father told me. “Usually somebody informing on a local politician or shopkeeper.”

But it had been from her.

Four lines.