When All Light Fails

by Randall Silvis

  Yes, the NDE had changed him, and he was still wrestling with that change, still holding on to maybe, she guessed, 30 percent of his old cynicism, and she was okay with the other 70 percent. More than okay. It made him kinder, gentler, a happier man. What she was not okay with but had no way to change was the NDE itself. Whatever he had experienced was beyond her understanding, no matter how many books she read or YouTube videos she watched, and it would always keep them, so to speak, a room apart. Yes, that’s what it was like for her, as if they were always a room apart now, him in the dining room, for example, her a few feet away in the kitchen.

  She leaned backward and puckered up for a kiss, which he was happy to give. Then she climbed out and closed the door. But as she started around the front of the car, his door popped open.

  He stood outside the door and handed her the foam box heavy with two more servings of barbecued brisket and pork. “Tonight?” he asked.

  “And a salad,” she said as she took the box.

  “Aye, Captain.” A wink before he closed the door and started the engine.

  She walked toward the house and told herself not to turn and wave as he drove away. Such a trivial thing really, him going off alone for an hour or two. But it was more than that and she knew it. She had hunches too, and she could feel this one in her bones.

  Seventy-Six

  A bridge over rubbled water

  He drove as far as he could on the road that ran alongside the Trout Island trail, a 2.4-mile asphalt walking and biking path that paralleled the old Erie and Pennsylvania railroad tracks and ended not far from where the tracks crossed the Shenango River. At mile 1.9, about a half mile from the trestle bridge, he parked in the little lot off Thomason Road, locked his car and strode onto the path.

  The afternoon was growing cooler, and with the heavy canopy on his left shading that side of the path, he wished he’d worn a light jacket. Through the sparser brush on his right he could glimpse swamp and field and an occasional house. But the path was flat and even and made for easier walking, and the movement loosed his joints and soon became pleasant.

  As far as he could tell, he had the path to himself. Summer would bring heavier traffic, walkers and runners and bikers and parents pushing babies in their strollers. It had been a couple of years since he’d been there, and he wondered why he’d never suggested the place for him and Jayme and Hero to walk. Probably because his previous outings there had been in troubled times, fall and winter Sunday mornings after brooding alone beside Baby Ryan’s grave, times when his mood was as unrelentingly dark as the swamp water. He made a mental note to bring Jayme and Hero here next Sunday, and with their company to change the quality of the light.

  He walked for fifteen minutes before the path ended. There a narrow footpath led through high weeds a while longer, then veered sharply left up a small bank to the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. From there to the trestle the rails were elevated several feet above the natural ground level, the bed and banks packed for stability with chunks of limestone the size of a woman’s fist. Trains still made infrequent trips along those tracks, though he had no idea what the boxcars held or where they were headed.

  The trestle seemed unchanged from the last time he’d seen it but for the graffiti. Nearly every section of the bridge’s walls sported a chalk or spray-painted declamation of love for a person or drug or the venue itself, a curse aimed at the scrawler’s school, girlfriend, or life in general, or an amateurish sketch of some kind. Why, DeMarco wondered with a smile, do kids so love to draw an erect penis and balls? Had it become the modern Kilroy?

  His favorite piece of graffiti was a triptych spray-painted in white on three contiguous metal panels, each rusty panel separated by a vertical beam, which gave each of the periods more emphasis, a chance to sigh and gather one’s strength: It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine. To DeMarco it seemed an echo of Beckett’s famous existential cry at the end of The Unnamable, which he now quoted aloud, just as he had many times throughout his life: “‘You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.’”

  But he didn’t linger long with the graffiti. He walked out over the water, looked down at the little cove full of driftwood and snags. Though the water was brown he could see the rocky bottom. Farther out along the bridge, the river deepened. “If he jumped or was pushed,” he mused, “it was here. Near the shallows.” But the shallows showed no evidence. “Nor would they,” he said.

  Now he lifted his head and gazed downstream toward the concrete Route 18 bridge. Then turned to his left to look down the long parallax view of the tracks to the campground on the other side of the river. A few seconds later, he peered down at the ties and tracks again, then took another long look along the top of the bridge wall.

  “Nothing,” he said out loud. “No blood. No recent scuff or drag marks. No evidence, no smoking gun. No X marks the spot.”

  He came back across the bridge and crawled down on the right side, moving carefully over the bed of loose limestone chunks. “Wouldn’t want to twist an ankle here,” he warned himself. The limestone soon gave way to hard-packed earth and tufts of scraggly grass and weeds.

  He ducked under the rails. Here there was a relatively level area directly under the bridge, maybe thirty square yards of well-trampled dirt before it sloped steeply down to the river. This slope, except for a very narrow footpath, was thick with larger rocks, basketball-sized and smaller, and congested with thorny vines and other weeds. The bank was littered with dented beer cans and broken bottles. Here in this dim little alcove teenagers huddled, he imagined, to pass a joint around, or to spread a blanket for some quick, furtive sex. He remembered the time a younger, miserable DeMarco had once sat out the rain in this place, hoping in vain for a leavening of his sorrow and guilt.

  Here, now, he searched for something of interest, something the police might have missed. Something that was responsible for the insistent urge that had brought him there. He went up and down the slope three times, from water to bridge and back again. Then, convinced he had missed nothing, he stood a few feet from the water’s edge and peered up the slope.

  “Nothing,” he conceded. Nothing in the dim space directly under the bridge, nothing on the sloping bank, nothing along the uneven shore. Only dirt and rocks and litter and weeds and water. Nothing to tell the tale, nor even to suggest the presence of a tale to be told. “Son of a gun,” he said aloud.

  He was three-quarters of the way up the slope, a few steps from the level area, when a rumbling sound caught his attention. It was faint at first, but quickly grew louder. He turned and peered up through the ties and rails. Something moving in the distance. A train. And coming on fast.

  Long strides up the remainder of the slope. He had almost reached the level area as the train rumbled overhead. Bits of rock rained down from the nooks and niches where they had lain, chips of rust falling from the bridge walls. The ties shook, the bridge rattled, the train raced by with a deafening roar. He hurried to the side, moving too quickly in a low hunch, and lost his footing when he moved from the dirt and vines to the looser chunks of limestone. Tumbled and rolled.

  Long after the train was gone, he lay motionless. “Dumb shit,” he told himself. Bruised but not broken. And when he got his breath back, he chuckled. Life always found a way to humble him.

  Okay, so he had been wrong. There was nothing here. “So pick yourself up, DeMarco, and get your sorry ass back home.”

  He rolled over onto his hands and knees, intending to crawl away from the limestone before standing. He wasn’t about to chance those slippery chunks again. He started slowly, then, wincing when a sharp edge bit into his kneecap, decided that standing might be less painful. This, too, he executed an inch at a time, not convinced that every joint and rib and vertebra was going to cooperate. “No more mac and cheese for you,” he groaned. Then stood for a moment, caught his breath, and looked down to pick out his next step. And saw, or th
ought he saw, something red. Maybe an inch long, half as wide. Something red smeared on the rough edge of rock half-buried beneath a larger rock. Was that blood? His blood?

  He patted his head, looked at his hands. Nothing. Felt around his neck. Checked his bare arms and hands. No blood there. Knees, legs, thighs, small of his back. No torn clothing anywhere. A couple of scratches but no blood. Anyway not enough to be dabbed on that rock.

  He put the toe of his shoe against the rock, pried it up and flipped it over. More red. Lots of it. “Is that hair on it too?” he asked, squinting. Something wispy and white. “Probably just a cobweb.” He hunkered down for a closer look.

  A moment later he stood upright again, fumbled in his pocket, felt for the cell phone. “Don’t be broken,” he muttered as his hand closed around it, a kind of prayer. “Please don’t be broken.”

  Seventy-Seven

  It’s in the bag

  The Sharpsville Police Department sent two officers to bag and tag the bloody rock. He walked a few steps behind them as they strode, youthful and confident, back to their SUV in the little lot off Thomason Road. His right shoulder ached from where it had impacted the limestone when he fell. A twinge of pain stabbed at his pelvis with each forward swing of his right leg.

  “Well, at least this will solve one mystery,” the officer carrying the evidence bag said.

  “If it’s the old guy’s blood it will.”

  “Who else’s would it be?”

  “I’m just saying if it is. We won’t know until we know,” the second officer said. “It won’t tell us who put it there, though.”

  “Did I say it would?”

  “In fact, when it turns out it is his, it will solve three mysteries, not one.”

  “How’s that?”

  “First, whose blood is it? Second, was it a suicide or an accident or a homicide that killed him?”

  “And third, where it actually happened.”

  “Like I said, three mysteries solved. But not the big one. Not the one that really matters.”

  In the lot, DeMarco thanked both officers, then climbed into his own vehicle and started the engine and powered down the front windows to let the imprisoned heat flow out. As the police SUV pulled away, he shut off the engine and phoned the coroner.

  “Yel-low,” the coroner answered.

  “You have your Wite-Out ready?” DeMarco asked.

  “New development?”

  “Murder weapon. That’s my guess anyway. About an eight-pound rock. The flat side has been painted red.”

  “Ho ho!” Mazzoni said.

  “It’s headed for the lab now. With instructions to notify you with the results ASAP.”

  “And just where did this Rosetta Stone reveal itself?”

  “Half-buried in the limestone bed off to the side of the railroad bridge.”

  “Found by you?”

  “I was on my way home empty-handed,” DeMarco told him. “Just happened to look down and see a little sliver of red.”

  “You old dog, you. Always digging, aren’t you?”

  “Just wanted to give you a heads-up, Connie. You mind calling me back when you get the results?”

  “Can do,” the coroner said. “Could be as early as tomorrow if the lab’s not busy.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “I guess maybe dead men do tell lies.”

  “They keep secrets, that’s for sure,” DeMarco said. “Have a good night, Connie.”

  “We don’t use Wite-Out anymore, by the way. We use the Delete button.”

  “That just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, does it?” DeMarco said.

  After he hung up, DeMarco sat there a while longer with the windows down and everything quiet. The air was fragrant and cool, the walls of living green blending their scents, leaves and grasses and weeds and vines. “I wish I could bottle that,” he said. He would dab a little of it under his nose every morning, keep a vial in his pocket for emergencies. “Nature’s perfume.” It wasn’t as dizzying and stomach-fluttering as Jayme’s scent when she climbed into bed freshly showered and scantily clothed, nor as saliva-generating as a plate full of heavily sauced barbecued meat, but it was a terrific scent all the same, subtle, soothing, and satisfying. Very satisfying indeed.

  But too much satisfaction is a kind of stagnancy, and the night was not yet over for him. Even as the light softened and the sky deepened its gray, even as the second helping of brisket waited, a bit of work remained to be done.

  Seventy-Eight

  Oh, for a dab of nature’s perfume!

  Inside the Marigold, a couple of servers were setting up equipment for the Sunday night karaoke. DeMarco counted eight customers already seated facing the little stage, nursing beers and other drinks. Five of the bar stools were occupied too. A low hum of conversation ran through the room, with one voice or another rising now and then above the others.

  DeMarco went to an empty end of the bar and waited. Besides the older woman he had spoken with earlier, another bartender, a tall, broad-shouldered young man with a loose mop of long black hair, was working the bar that night, filling the wells and checking the ice.

  DeMarco caught the woman’s eye, but she ignored him. He waited.

  Eventually the young man pulled his hands out of the ice bin, dried them on a bar rag, crossed to DeMarco and asked, “What can I get you?”

  “Her,” DeMarco said with a nod to the woman.

  “Rose?” the bartender asked after a look her way.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” DeMarco said.

  Rose didn’t even glance his way when the young bartender passed on the information. She nodded but made no reply. Did a little shuffling of the bottles lined up beneath the bar. Turned and went to the cash register, moved the order pad closer to the register. Popped open the drawer, checked the cash inside, closed the drawer again. Then, otherwise motionless, she lifted her eyes to the mirror behind the bar. DeMarco met her gaze in the glass and raised his eyebrows in question.

  She looked away. Moved the order pad a half inch from the cash register. Then turned sharply. Came down behind the bar to pass in front of DeMarco without looking his way and crossed under the open archway into the kitchen. He watched her through the doorway as she walked to the back of the kitchen and out a door.

  Whether it was a door to a bathroom or a pantry or a door to the outside, he did not know. But he had a feeling. “Door number 3,” he whispered to himself. Turned away from the bar and headed for the entrance just as a noisy group of five twentysomethings came barreling in.

  Behind the Marigold, there wasn’t much of interest to see. To his right, the backside of the Hot Dog Shop. Straight ahead, the back of Laskey’s Furniture. Beyond that, Water Street, more buildings, and the Shenango River. But to his left, close up against the side of the adjacent building, a dumpster. With a wisp of smoke drifting over it. And the figure producing that smoke standing in the shadows between the dumpster and the building.

  He crossed to her and stood with his left shoulder toward her, as if he were appraising something out near Water Street. The stench coming from inside the dumpster was strong. Soiled meat and rotting vegetables, dirty diapers and other putrescence.

  Rose took another drag on her cigarette, released the smoke and said, “You know what happens to my business if it gets out I’m talking to you.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “It’s not like you’re just anybody. Your picture’s been in the paper how many times now?”

  “So you own the Marigold?”

  “Some of it. Used to be all of it.”

  He nodded. “Looks like business will be good tonight.”

  She tossed down her cigarette. Watched its tip glowing in the dirt. When she looked up at him there were tears in her eyes. “I’ve known OC all my life,” she said.
/>   “OC being Oscar Szabo?”

  “You could never meet a kinder man than him. He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

  “You heard what happened to him?”

  “Why do you think I’m standing here now?”

  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s looking less and less like either suicide or an accident.”

  Her mouth went into a scowling pout; her nostrils flared as she inhaled.

  “Do you know where Benny is?”

  She looked at the cigarette a few moments longer, then ground it out beneath a foot. “No,” she said.

  He waited for more, but it wasn’t forthcoming. “What do you know?”

  She had seemed so authoritative behind the bar, a woman not to be crossed. But now she appeared to shrink before his very eyes, perhaps not physically but in terms of resolve. She leaned forward a bit to peek around him. Then straightened again.

  She said, “A few days back, I think it was Wednesday or Thursday, I’d have to check my receipts to be sure. OC’s up at the bar as usual. But this time he’s buying for the house, and that never happens. Usually he just sits there waiting for somebody else to buy him one, or for me to fill his glass again. And I never begrudged doing so. There was a time…” She blinked. Sniffed. Looked away from DeMarco.

  “You said you’ve known him a long time.”

  She nodded. “He wasn’t always like that. Vietnam did that to him. He came back and, I don’t know. All his gumption was gone. He worked construction before he got drafted, and he could do it all. Carpentry, plumbing, wiring, whatever needed done, he could do it. It was that fucking war.”

  “War has ruined a lot of good people.”

  “He lent me some of the money for the down payment on that place,” she said with a nod toward the Marigold’s back door. “And I paid him back, every penny of it. Not that he ever once asked for it. Or ever would.”