The Detective's Garden (24 page)

“You ever seen a river this big, Clarke?” King asked.

“Not even close.”

“You’ve seen it before, right, Elsie?” King asked.

“Nope,” she said. “I’ve never been out this way. I’ve never
been anywhere.”

Just outside Bellevue, they turned onto a dirt road and drove
to the far side of a slight hill and parked the Charger among
cast-off burn bins and old car tires. They got out of the car and
walked into town. Clarke held tightly to King’s hand and King
did not pull away.

Before dark settled over Shabbona State Park, two men
in green waders caught a glimpse of a giant man hurrying
through ascetic trees. They looked up from their fishing poles
for a moment. “Nice rifle,” one muttered.

From one of the lake’s artificially sanded beaches, a boy of eight
caught a dark glimpse of Dominick on a fir-covered hill. In the
middle of a raspberry bramble, a pair of spotted hounds snuffled
past him, their noses against the ground. A group of pastel-sweat
ered women on a pontoon boat stared when he passed out of one
patch of wood and moved through a field. At a concession stand,
Dominick stood in line for hot dogs and French fries wrapped in
greased paper and half-a-dozen hunters and fishermen took no
note of him. In a virgin wood, he pressed through scrub brush and
passed a lone turkey hunter in an orange vest traveling in the oppo
site direction who raised his hand and mouthed, “Good luck.” The
orange sun fell, and Dominick lay on the ground beneath a willow
tree. He was tired. The earth was soft with decay.

In Bellevue, Iowa, the moon sat low against the horizon.
On foot, Clarke led Elsie and King past a sign for a saloon,
a line of shined-chrome motorcycles, Eagle’s Rest Antiques, a
True Value hardware store. At the riverfront park, they sat on
wooden benches and stared at the moving river and watched
the muskies jump. Dark backs and white bellies, hard landings
splashing the water into hundreds of separate drops, each with
its own narrow parabolic trajectory.

They waited for their father. Their heads lifted at every ap
proaching footstep. King sniffed. She looked around. “Why
does it smell like chocolate?” she asked.

Clarke and Elsie looked at each other. They sniffed. They
held hands. It did smell like chocolate. “There,” Elsie point
ed down. “The flower beds are mulched with cocoa shells. Re
minds me of my grandma.”

“Why doesn’t everybody do that?” King asked.

Elsie pulled her coat around her. “It’s getting cold.”

“Dad isn’t here tonight,” Clarke said. “We’ll have to sleep
somewhere.”

“Where?” King asked.

The moon shone bright over the Mississippi. Its light came in
low and white and caught at the edges of things and the barren riv
erside trees cast thin leggy shadows that blurred with the shadows
of benches or rounded bushes or boulders and formed a new shape
behind them that looked to King like a great dark centipede.

With the money his father had given him, Clarke bought
corn chips and small chocolate-covered donuts and a half-gal
lon of milk. They walked back to the car in the dark. Elsie hung
her head and pushed her hands into her pockets and shivered.

“There’re sleeping bags in the car,” Clarke said and Elsie
looked up at him from under her eyebrows.

They walked without speaking, their feet hitting the pave
ment with the noise of biding time. The rusted Charger looked
appropriate among the long brown grass and the rusting metal
cans and the cracked rubber of old tires. They wrapped them
selves in the mummy bags and ate donuts and chips until their
stomachs protested. The dark settled heavily on them, cold and
close, as stifling as the growing sense that each one of them
must have done something wrong. No one said anything. None
of them had slept for a very long time.

When King’s eyes closed, Clarke reached out for Elsie’s
shoulder. He said, “I’m sorry.”

He said, “What did you think it’d be like?”

He said, “I had to leave him.”

She reached out and touched him back. “I’m sorry, too,” she said.

Then they all slept.

In the middle of the night, Clarke woke to their soft even
breathing. His heart pounded. Stars pinched the black sky.
Though the air was cold, his body was covered in sweat. He
opened the car door and the cold wet air slipped over his skin
like an iced tongue. He stepped out and closed the door softly.
The town of Bellevue was invisible but surrounded by a soft
hill of light. He set about gathering wood and kindling and
threw what he gathered into a pile. He squatted down and
cupped his hand and held a lit match to some cotton batting.
Light welled as if out of the wood itself. A little fire. He held
his hands out before it.

A plastic grocery sack had caught on the knuckled branch
of a fallen elm. All night, while Dominick slept, it fluttered
hollowly, catching a breath of wind and bellowing full, then
collapsing again like a thin pale lung. He had slept on the
ground before, on sand and dirt and field, beside Benny Ward
and DeJesus and Floyd, while the air cooled fast and they
pressed together, any self-consciousness having long abandoned
them so that their sense of themselves as individuals with sharp
edges grew confused and they stayed as warm as they could.
He woke before first light, shivering cold, and jumped up into
the dark. He threw his bag over his shoulders and walked to
stay warm. On a dirt trail, he passed a long-haired couple hik
ing with trekking poles and tall brightly colored packs. They
stopped as he approached and offered him an avocado. He cut
the avocado in half with his knife and scooped out its flesh with
his teeth. His legs pinioned the hills beneath him and he rose
and fell over grassy knobs of earth. In one moment he felt the
immensity of himself, the way he rushed outward along his
edges like burning light. But in the next moment the thorned
brush rose up from the ground and obscured any possible view,
the triangular trees leaned over the dark trail, and low branches
pushed against him like the great pressing weight of his ano
nymity. He moved out of the brush on the south end of Shab
bona State Park. A gray-green pickup sat on the side of a road.
The plates were out of Iowa. Two men tossed a pair of turkeys
into the truck bed. He approached them with a broad smile.

CHARLIE BASIN WALKED
through the trailer
home. He looked through the torn screen on the rear door. He
pushed the coffee table aside with his foot. The beds wore the
impressions of the bodies they’d held. Windows were open. The
whole place smelled of unwashed skin. In the bathroom sink,
he found a used bar of soap, a muddy thumbprint on the wall.
On the vinyl floor beneath the sink, salt spilled into words.

Map, he read, Finger, Bone.

Charlie shook his head. He sat on the couch. When his kids
were still in high school, he’d taken them to a place like this,
a dumpy top half of a duplex a block off Rehoboth Beach. Os
well’s tall white frame looked out of place in the sun. They got
sand in their shoes. He had to drag Charlene out for French
fries, banana splits, lemonade. She wanted to stay in the du
plex listening to music on her headphones or turning on the
TV and lounging on the dirt-colored couch. Mostly he let her.
What did it matter? Maybe what people needed most was
headroom, a place left open that they could expand into. At
night, when Charlie lay in bed, half asleep, there was a slight
electrical hum he couldn’t source. Drunks gently cursed each
other in the streets. The gurgle of Oswell’s breath in the bed
room next to his. A creak inside the wall. A mantel clock that
stuttered. Then the couch squeaked as Charlene rose off it. Her
feet sounded softly. Her shoes were off. The slight sucking
knock of the front door sticking in its frame. A pressure shift,
a moist breath in the dry conditioned air. He listened to her
leave. Where was she going? Did anyone care? Did a secret
ever hide anything that mattered? Weren’t important things
always hidden in plain sight? Charlie reached over and turned
the bedside lamp off. Wasn’t it a mark of childhood to believe
that something exciting, something undreamed of, could be
found by sneaking outside?

In the morning, Oswell cooked sausage in a cheap aluminum
pan on the electric range. The fluorescent overhead hummed.
“She snuck out last night, Dad,” Oswell said.

“Charlene?”

“She was gone a long time.” Oswell pushed the sausages in
the pan with a wooden spoon.

“How did you know?” Charlie asked.

“She woke me when she came in. She said she’d gone to meet
somebody. A boy, I think.”

“That right?” Charlie said.

“She was drinking, too. She smelled.”

The bed creaked as Charlene rose. She came out of her bedroom
in bare feet. She wore the jeans and brown sweater that she’d worn
the day before. One of her hands was smudged with dirt.

Was Charlie supposed to come down hard? Was he meant
to say something weighty? Was he meant to cut to the center
of things? When she sat at the table, Charlie said, “You snuck
out last night?”

“No, I didn’t.” Her face looked as innocent as a mirror.

Charlie put his hands against the edge of the table. “I’m not
good at this,” he said. “Am I supposed to say, ‘Yes, you did’?”

“What?” Charlene said. “You’re not good at what?”

“I don’t know.” Charlie shook his head. “Jesus, Charlene, I
don’t want to talk about this any more than you do.”

“Are you okay, Dad?”

“Of course I’m okay,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m okay.”

“You don’t seem okay.”

“I don’t?”

“Not really,” Charlene said.

In the trailer in Malta, Illinois, Charlie stood. The floor
shifted slightly beneath him. He rubbed his chin, ran one hand
over his face and through his hair. He picked up the phone. He
twirled the cord around one finger. He hit redial. The phone
chirped and peeped and then someone picked up on the other
end of the line. Charlie heard the scratch of rough skin across
the receiver, a cleared throat, an indrawn breath, a voice.

“This is Jon Howland.”

WHEN DOMINICK HAD
finally come back to Penn
sylvania for good, he felt like a distant observer. Which side of
the line was he on, friendly or enemy? It didn’t really feel like
either. Driving home, in his uniform, he took his time. What
was the rush, anyway? When he neared the A-frame on Flint
Valley Road, he stopped the car in the middle of the street. No
body was coming in either direction. The sun felt good on his
hands on the steering wheel. He could smell heat and asphalt.
He sat like that for five minutes. Nobody came by. When he’d
made up his mind, he pushed the gas hard and drove fast to
within a half-mile of the cabin. There he pulled to the side of
the road, parked beside the black raspberry brambles, got out
of the car, slipped into the woods. He knew he wanted to see
them, his family. He wasn’t sure he wanted them to see him.
He took his time in the woods, listening to the knocking of
woodpeckers. The trees were mostly oaks and white pines and
hemlocks. He felt their barks with his palms. It felt strange be
ing alone. He stopped among beds of drying pine needles and
sunlight filtered through the lacework of leaves. He breathed
in. He’d hunted this land all his life, and he knew exactly where
he was going. He could feel the cabin up in front of him beat
ing like the heart of the wilderness. He moved in.

Before he could see his family, he could hear them. The
high pitch of his children. How much had he changed? Would
they recognize him? The ground ahead lightened where the
trees broke and the land turned to field. Then he heard Sarah’s
voice. Calm. Instructive. Sweet. He couldn’t quite make out
the words. He wanted to see them, just to watch. What did his
family do when he wasn’t there? He slunk toward the tree line
and looked out. He let his eyes adjust. The corn was knee-high
in the fields. On the lawn near the cabin was a table piled with
cabbage. There was Clarke beside the table. How old was he
now? Seven? He looked so strong, holding a cabbage in each
hand. There was Sarah. His wife’s thin arms moved back and
forth, shredding cabbage on a wooden mandoline. At the far
end of the table, his daughter, King. She had grown so much,
her hair dark and unruly and curled around her neck. She
poured cabbage and salt into a large bowl and put her hands in
and kneaded. She handed Clarke the bowl, and he dumped the
mixture into an earthen crock.

They sang children’s songs, off key but beautiful. “My Bon
nie Lies over the Ocean.” “Little Po Beep.” “Little Boy Blue.”
They worked so well together. The sun shone straight down on
them so that their skin was bright. Dominick shaded his eyes.

EARLY THAT MORNING,
on the path back to his
kids—through state parkland and then hunkered in the extended
cab of a pickup—it had seemed to Dominick that he was following
a darkness that receded before him. His body felt smooth-skinned
and calm and strong and he didn’t worry once about his ability to
find them. They would be found for him. Squeezed in the back
seat, he woke from cramped tempestuous dreams and felt relief
that the war no longer owned him. The pickup bumped along and
the darkness passed away. The sun balanced like a ball on the flat
horizon. Dominick watched and waited until they hit Bellevue,
then he called out, “You mind pulling over here?”

“Sure thing,” the driver said. A short man in hunter’s camo
with a pomaded curl over his forehead, he pulled the wheel and
braked and the pickup came to a stop with one wheel on top
of the curb.

“Good place to eat just there,” the other man said and point
ed across the street toward Richman’s Café, “if you’re interest
ed.” A broad scar split one of his eyebrows.

When King woke, she heard the crackle and spit of wood
smoke. The car windows were fogged on the inside. She reached
into the front seat and shook Elsie awake. Together they wiped
the fog off the windows to look out. Elsie pointed with a bit
ten fingernail at Clarke, who squatted on his haunches before a
small fire. The growing flames reached out and covered half of
him with flickering light.

In the morning, the three of them walked into town, look
ing for breakfast. The river frothed at the mouth. Shivering,
they walked fast along the road; their hearts quickened and the
sun began to warm the outside of their coats. The water caught
the light and held it close. The air smelled good, like frying
fat, and Clarke’s fear was overcome by a deep satisfaction for
no better reason than that they were all walking together, all
in the same direction, hungry and sharp-eyed and young. They
all started to feel better, sure that after eggs sunny side up and
maple syrup and pancakes and bacon, they would be delivered.
One of them would know what to do.

A bell rang as they entered a bland-looking diner. Clarke
stood next to King. Behind them, Elsie reached out and
pinched the back of Clarke’s arm. A meaty bearded man in a
short white apron squeezed around them. “Pretty full up,” he
said. He spoke out of the side of his mouth as if he had some
thing clenched between his teeth. Clarke surveyed the small
full space.

In Richman’s Café, Dominick ordered what his daughter
would have ordered: blueberry pancakes and bacon. The wait
ress brought a glass of water, and he felt the cold move down
his esophagus and spread like oil through his stomach. Before
his breakfast arrived, his kids stood blinking just inside the
entrance as their eyes adjusted.

“Dad?” King said.

Dominick rose and swept them up in his great arms and felt
how solid they were, how real and how good. He buried his face
against his son’s shoulder and his son did not push away.

“You’re okay?” Clarke said. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Dominick said.

When they left the diner, the huge blue sky spread over Bel
levue like an umbrella. Elsie and King walked back to wait in
the gully with Elsie’s Charger. That left Dominick and Clarke
beside a low-slung medical building faced with brick.

Dominick pointed at a blue Honda in a half-full parking
lot. Maybe his father was bad. Clarke didn’t know. Right now,
he didn’t care. What he knew was that there was bad and then
there was worse.

“That blue one?” Clarke asked.

“I’ll teach you how,” Dominick said. One of his huge hands
caught his son’s shoulder. “You’ve got to commit to this, Clarke.
I’m going to need your help.” He slung his bag against Clarke’s
chest. “Get out the drill and the screwdriver and the slim-jim,
okay? You want to do this?”

“Yeah.”

Dominick slipped the slim-jim between the window and the
door, popped the lock, and opened the door. “You see how I did
that?” he said.

“Not really,” Clarke said. “What’d you do?”

Dominick glanced around once, not furtively but like a man
surveying his property’s imperfections. Then he locked the
Honda door and pushed it shut. He handed Clarke the slim-
jim. “Here you go,” he said. “You try.”

In the blue Honda, they stopped to pick up Elsie and King.
Dominick asked Elsie to drive and they traveled west out of
Bellevue. In the passenger seat, Dominick split a green apple
with his Wharncliffe knife. Clarke and King sat close to one
another on the rear seat. Elsie’s dark hair curled behind her
ear. Dominick passed out pieces of apple, then reached out and
touched Elsie’s shoulder. He watched the slow movement of
his hand. The thickened knuckles and yellow calluses. Elsie’s
shoulder felt soft, her clavicle belonged to a bird. When he
spoke, he was quiet. He said, “I can’t say how much I appreciate
you helping my kids.”

She looked at him quickly and returned her eyes to the road.
Her eyes were large and wet. Her teeth clenched and her round
ed lips bunched together. Dominick nodded. He understood
what his son saw in her.