The Detective's Garden (26 page)

Charlie stood on the lawn holding a birthday present under
his arm. It was dusk. A line of orange hovered over the horizon.
Bats flitted against the dark blue sky. The present was wrapped
in yellow paper and tied with a blue ribbon. He set it on the
ground. He toed off his shoes, sat down in the grass, and pulled
off his socks. Though he felt a little self-conscious, he didn’t get
up for a minute. He could hear all the sound from inside. The
tinkle of glasses coming together. The high-pitched moments
of recognition, of old friendships momentarily rekindled. The
giddy peculiar laughter.

He felt comfortable outside, watching through the window.
He didn’t belong in there, did he? If they knew he was out
on the lawn, they would want him to come in. At least Rosa
mund and Oswell would. Maybe Charlene was the honest one.
Wasn’t it all just a matter of form? Charlie understood that
they couldn’t let him sit outside. What would they want in
their heart of hearts? To speak with him or to be left alone?

He went in and they were all over him. A neighbor whose
name he didn’t remember (Marilyn? Meredith? Mary?) put an
orange martini in his hand. A few old FBI men slapped their
hands down hard on his shoulders as though even the briefest
of male touch had to hold the possibility of violence. Rosa
mund put her lips to his cheek and pulled him by the hand to
see Oswell. Beside Oswell stood Charlene. Had she been there
all along? Had he failed to notice her? Her face looked sharply
defined by cheekbones and jawbones. She had lost weight. Her
wrists were wrapped with flesh-colored medical tape. When
she saw her father, she looked down, letting her hair mask her
face.

“Oz,” Charlie said. Oswell’s friends nodded and smiled and
faded back. Charlene turned and pushed past a purple blazer,
past a yellow-and-orange dress, past the cabriole legs of the
highboy, into the candlelight of the kitchen.

Oswell pointed at Charlie’s feet. “You’re not wearing any
shoes,” he said. His cheeks were flushed with too much to drink.
He lurched forward. He’d always been such a good kid, a light
weight when it came to alcohol or any other kind of trouble.
Oswell lifted the present from Charlie’s arms and dropped it on
the blue velvet couch, then he turned back toward his father
with his long arms outstretched. Charlie stepped up into them.
How long had it been? How long had he been shorter than
his tall stooped son? Oswell held Charlie’s shoulders fiercely. “I
didn’t know if you were going to make it, Dad,” Oswell said,
his mouth an inch from Charlie’s ear. “Charlene needs you. I do,
too. I’m really glad you could come.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Charlie said.

Oswell put his mouth even closer to Charlie’s ear. “I’m a
little drunk,” he said.

Charlie refilled his martini glass, then walked toward the
kitchen on tiptoes. The fibers of the rug spread around his feet.
He stepped on dropped bits of prosciutto, goat cheese, melon
balls. Something wet and yellow had spilled on the kitchen tile.
Charlene stood by the sink with her back to him, washing her
hands. The soap smelled of his wife, of lavender and of thyme.
Charlene’s hair, dark at the sides of her neck, curled like a shep
herd’s crook. In the candlelight, she faded in and out of focus.
“Charlene?” Charlie said.

“What?” she answered. Someone walked into the kitchen
and out again. The flames on the candles bent over and then
righted themselves.

For a moment, Charlie could see the pulse of a muscle in
Charlene’s jaw. “You want to talk to me about the hospital?”
he said.

“No. I don’t feel like talking at all.”

“This isn’t the way I wanted us to be.” He leaned back and
rested on his hands against the cold tiled countertop. “I don’t
want to talk, either, Charlene.”

“What?” she said. “What isn’t the way you wanted us to be?”

“Angry. I don’t want us to be angry.”

“Mom didn’t tell me you were coming home,” Charlene said.

“Are you doing okay?”

“No,” she said, “I’m not okay. Nothing is okay.”

“You still seeing the same therapist?”

“I’m still seeing her.”

“That’s good,” Charlie said. “You still talking about me?”

“She thinks maybe I learned to be distant from you.”

He took a deep breath, held it, then released. “You’re not
distant,” he said.

“Last visit,” Charlene said, “she told me I was acting like a
child.”

“Yeah? So how’d you like that?”

“I’m thinking about seeing a new therapist.” She turned
around from the sink and faced him. The edges of her mouth
had been slightly downturned since she’d been an infant. Near
her hairline was a slight indent from the obstetrician’s forceps.
Her thin eyebrows lifted and her eyes widened and her brow
curled just as it always had, asking some question that a father
ought to have been able to answer.

“Hey,” Charlie said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you that
somebody hit me in the head with a tire iron.”

“Mom told me,” Charlene said. “Who was it? Who hit you?”

“Just a girl. I woke up in the hospital, in a blue gown. Twen
ty stitches.”

“Why’d she hit you?”

“She was with a fifteen-year-old boy whose father is the man
I’m looking for. I guess she was scared.”

“You got knocked out by a teenage girl?”

“That’s right.”

“You told people at the office?” Charlene said. “You’re going
to take a lot of shit for that.”

“Haven’t told them,” Charlie said. “You know what I felt in
the hospital, when I woke?”

“No.”

“I felt pissed.”

DOMINICK WAS BEGINNING
to think that
they might live a life like this. Raw and ranging. Sleeping in
the open. Not minding. Seeing such great sights as this coun
try had to offer. So when they neared the Columbia River and
the Grand Coulee Dam and the chorus from the seats was that
opportunity should be seized, Dominick saw no harm in stop
ping. Didn’t such sights serve as a key to the landmarks inside
them? Some dark hand guided them, didn’t it? Was this not a
wild country?

They joined a tour that got them inside the gates and they
stood at the bottom of the dam. The breadth of the river made
them hold their breath. Whitewater at the base. Hundreds of
feet of concrete rising above them. A cold gray wall they couldn’t
see beyond. King leaned against it with both hands. “You feel
that?” she said. A low vibratory noise moved things around in
side them. A sense of weight waiting behind the cold wall.

“I feel it,” Dominick said. His hands were pressed to his
trunk but he pushed his cheek against the concrete. Elsie and
Clarke slipped off their shoes and toed the sand. King sank her
shod feet in the cold water.

Clarke looked up. “It’s so huge,” he said.

“It’s bigger,” Dominick said, “than I imagined,”

“I never heard of it,” Elsie said. “What’s it for?” Steelhead
rolled across the water’s surface. “What’s that?” Elsie said. “Did
you see that?”

“What?”

“There’s something in there.”

“No, there’s not,” Clarke said.

“Yes, there is.”

“I don’t like it down here,” King said. “Let’s go up.”

They walked to the top and arrived out of breath at a great
lake. The Grand Coulee Dam was a mile long. A two-lane road
ran along the crest. Members of their loose tour group moved
about in small bunches. Dominick looked up at the closed-cir
cuit cameras affixed to each light pole. The others followed his
line of vision to the camera lenses above them. The wind blew
hard in such open spaces. They huddled together. Their clothes
flapped around them.

King said, “Nobody is watching us, right?”

“Somebody’s watching,” Clarke said.

“Who?”

“Somebody in a uniform,” Clarke said.

“Are they going to come get us?” King asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Clarke. “Not yet.”

“They can see us,” Dominick said, “but they don’t know who
we are.”

The kids moved to one side and looked down over the edge
of the dam. A placid lake. Millions upon millions of gallons
trying to flow in one direction. Hairline cracks. The pressure of
the water bulked behind the concrete.

“Dad,” King called. “Dad! Come see how calm it looks over
the side.”

After lunch, the Sawyers left the Grand Coulee Dam be
hind them. Inside the blue Honda, time did not seem to move;
outside, scenery rolled past as though projected by a magic lan
tern. They passed a few earth-colored buildings in some name
less place. A half-dozen trailer homes scattered loosely around a
crossroads. A gas station with a single blinking light and a pay
phone where Dominick called Benny Ward.

They abandoned the Honda and turned onto the roads in
a Volvo station wagon. The miles metered the hours of their
lives. Sometimes they talked and at other times they were qui
et. Sometimes they passed around dried apricots or peanuts or a
bag of small plums and sometimes they wished they had some
thing to occupy their hands. If they gazed out the window, the
glass became nearly opaque with condensation or it became a
beacon of reflected light too bright to gaze at without pain.
Sometimes they pressed against the hard interior paneling and
held their own limbs close. Sometimes they liked each other
and sometimes they did not.

They gazed out on vast hollow landscapes and felt broad
and uncontained. But then canyon walls rose around them or
they tunneled through banks of earth toward harsh and distant
lights. They spoke to each other gently. They touched each oth
er’s skin as though it was something holy. Sometimes the soft
silence gave way to gentle sleep.

The moments that tip the balance in our favor, or against,
are always small enough to go unnoticed. The Sawyers spent
the night on the roadside and in the morning drove the remain
ing miles to Leavenworth, Washington. They found a quiet
chrome-edged table in a nameless diner. Elsie slumped against
Clarke. King pushed the salt shaker in loops. A waitress wear
ing a faded purple apron and a nametag that read glenda served
them French toast and eggs and orange juice. The plates rattled
in circles on the tabletop. Glenda had a light fuzz of hair on her
upper lip and her face hung too loosely from its underlayment.
She had dark beautiful hazel eyes. She brought King a donut.
She said, “You remind me of my son’s little girl.”

“I do?” King asked. The waitress’s eyes were the shape of her
mother’s.

“You sure do.”

Dominick swallowed the rest of his glass of juice and looked
at the waitress as though she was a knuckled rock or a drift
wood root. He tipped his empty glass. He said, “Can I get a
refill on this?”

“Sure, honey,” Glenda said. She retreated to the kitchen.

They all listened to the mindless sound of chewing and the
low hubbub of older men. When they finished eating, Clarke
and Elsie went to wait in the Volvo. Dominick rose and walked
toward the bathroom. Outside the large windows, the sky
looked like an old dishrag. By the window to the kitchen, Dom
inick passed the dark-eyed waitress, now laden with plates of
pancakes and omelets. Her head pointed down so that the skin
of her neck folded up against her chin. When the bathroom
door squealed shut, she dropped the plates on a table filled with
farmers and headed toward King. She set her hands against her
hips. She asked, “You headed over the mountains?”