Then the gurgle turned to a rhythmic whoosh, this great big undulating thing, like a motor at full cap. I tripped going through the doorway and fell across the stairs with a thump that hurt like hell. I do remember giving the door a kick behind me and seeing it close. Didn’t hear it though. Everything was shaking to beat the band. I wouldn’t have heard my voice in my own skull if I had let out a shout. And maybe I did. I don’t know.
I musta conked myself clean out on one of them wood stairs. When I woke the bulb in the stairwell was burnt out and the light streaming down on me was sunlight from upstairs. My watch was cracked and had stopped around quarter past ten but sunlight meant it had to be sometime after five-thirty. This was the last half o' June, 19—uh—72, that’s right. Sun up’s after five for sure.
So. I’m laying on my face. Everything was silent as St. Dominic’s church on a Tuesday morning. None of that rumbling racket. No shimmies, no shakes. I got up from the stairs. My back and shoulders and knees ached something awful. I needed black coffee, a shower and—God help me—a brand spankin’ new body. I’s so old and battered I was moving in first gear and thinking how much I hated this ol’ Coroner’s office across the creek. Was I still scared? You bet your boots I was. Confused too. Musta been unconscious for hours, at least. I turned the knob on the door to the exam room not knowing what I’d find. I went in. I tried the bank of light switches and they all worked except for the fixture over Moort’s open drawer. I lit the whole place up expecting, what? A gaping hole in the floor? A down-home island sock hop?
Just spic n’ span. The whole tiled exam room. Clean through.
But Moort wadn’t there. The cadaver was gone. Just the empty drawer pulled out and nothin’ on it. No sign of the body anywhere in that basement. And there’s only the one stairwell out of that basement, boys, I can tell ya that with certainty.
That room was clean as a whistle. No blood, no skin, no bones. And no FrankieMoort. He didn’t have a hair on his hide when he’d been brought in. And there wasn’t a stray hair that morning neither. I searched that place upside down. He was the only cadaver we had in storage then, but I tell ya, I checked all the drawers to see if the extra wine had made my memory do backflips. Nothing. No Frank Moort.
What we did was bury an empty box, Mac. To your question, Frank Moort was never put in the ground at all, not by us. Everyone who came to the Union memorial just assumed the gossip was true—that his body was too far gone for an open casket and a viewing like you had with yer Ma—like most have with their loved ones. I don’t mind admitting this to ya now, Mac, Dave. My career’s long behind me. Deader ‘n a door nail and maybe deader n’ ol’ Frank Moort too. An ol’ codger like me ain’t needed in the doctor’s office, nor the delivery room, nor the place where they cut you open to try and guess what poison you drank. But five-odd years ago I didn’t understand that yet. I lied to keep things quiet. I shouldn’a been drinkin’ on the job. I knew I shouldn’t. But the stress of Agnes and her illness, the weight of having this body in my care and no one could conclude what did him in. I used everything as an excuse to take to drinking with those mainland boys that night. I wanted a camaraderie with ‘em, Y’know? To be on a level playing field.
I wanted it to go away fer one evening, escape that weight of things coming, that voice telling me nothing would ever be the same.
I wanted to feel like a young man again.
I shouldn’a drank. Shouldn’a lied about the corpse either.
But there it is. One of the mistakes in a life of many…
8.
Mac and I sat quietly to see if the Doc had any more on his mind. We looked off and watched Zeke move from wide puddle to narrow, jabbing into the water with his trash spike and then getting down on his hands and knees to clear wet leaves and newspaper from the hidden grates. I had to admit, Zeke was doing a good job of getting the water flowing on Main Street this morning. Tourist season was long over by late October but sometimes we got snow that stayed a week or longer. A layer of ice under it would pose all kinds of hazards. Not for Mac and me, though. We’d leave Dovetail Cove again just as soon as we could.
Chief Birkhead passed us in his cruiser and pulled into an angle stall in front of his station a half block down. The trees wavered and cloud banks moved in. I chewed on what Doc had told us. I looked over at Mac, who studied the sky too. I didn’t know if two more stifled men than the McLeod Boys had ever walked this world in its storied history. What do you say after hearing what Doc had just admitted to?
I realized that Ol’ Doc Sawbones was crying quietly between us on the bench under the wide eave of Harlow’s Grocer that Tuesday morning. My brother and I did what we always do when things are hard. We left.
9.
I’d shaken Ol’ Doc’s hand and told him we had some of Ma’s banking business to see about, then headed off with Mac. I’d thanked him for his time but neither Mac nor me tried to comfort the man about the troubles he seemed to be ruminating on. Maybe it was still a sadness at the loss of his wife or maybe it was something bigger, something about the sunset of manhood or the feeling of lost height in the eyes of the world. I just didn’t know.
I believe Agnes took a turn that summer after the rather infamous autopsy, but whether his tears came because he’d left her at home alone, I just don’t know that either.
In the station house, Chief Birkhead was at his desk with his feet up, taking a swig of coffee when we came in and stood at his doorway. He was looking out through the slats of his blinds, maybe deep in thought, maybe bored.
But I had a question for the chief, the man in his fifties whom everyone called Birksie behind his back and Chief to his face.
“Chief,” I said, “How are ya today?”
Chief startled himself out of whatever he was ruminating on and turned to us. He set his coffee mug down. “I don’t have more on yes’day’s intruder at yer Ma’s place, boys, nothin’ at all—”
Mac cut him off, came in, and sat down in the chair facing Birksie’s desk. “Ah, don’t worry at all, Chief. We know it. Not here to put pressure on or nothin’. You got money on the Yanks or the Dodgers for the Game tonight?”
Birksie’s face lit with that, instantly erasing its heavy lines. I had to hand it to my big bro. He didn’t say much—not to anyone or on any topic—but when he wanted to butter someone up, he could read people better than most read newsprint. And he’d only spend a handful of words on it.
Chief said, “I shouldn’t be putting money on the game t'all but I will tell you I have a good feeling about L.A this time. I think they’re gonna do it—” His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned forward just a shade. With a wink he added, “And I got twenty-five hundred that says so.”
Mac and the Chief had a big laugh at that and I joined in a little late but the Chief didn’t notice. Mac did but he knew me. I had never been a baseball fan like he was. Nor hockey. Nor football. But if you wanted to talk to men of a certain age and of a certain ilk you had to keep track of the basics. Who got traded, who was playing badly and who had a hope in hell of taking things to the cup...or to the bowl...or to the title match, depending on which game was being discussed.
So there it was. Mac had opened the door and loosened Birksie’s tie for me. It was up to me to walk in and ask what I came in to ask.
“Listen, boys,” Birksie said before I could amble in to the conversation or even the room, “I am so awfully sorry to hear about your Ma. I didn’t get a chance to say it proper to you yesterday when I came by. And it’s just awful about that man in the kitchen over there at the house. What are the chances something like that would happen on a day that well—Y’know. On a day for the, uh, funeral, I mean. I am duly sorry the Missus and I didn’t get to the service. We had just a hive of activity the last while at the office. And I had to head out to Hellegarde’s this morning to do the yearly on our missing person—”
“Missing person?” Mac said.
“Yuh. Oh, you two likely ain’t been back long eno
ugh. It’s so rare here, well, as you both would know. Usually it’s some tourist who turns up with someone he ain’t married to—” Chief laughed at that. “Or some teenager who goes up to King’s Corner with some friends and doesn’t tell Mom or Dad. But this one was the genuine article. Ain’t found him in a year. Up and vanished. Wife said he told her boys he was sick and tired of married life and left. Only no one’s seen him since.”
Chief picked up a thin file folder on his desk and thumbed through it.
“Funny,” I said, finally coming into the office and taking the chair beside my brother, “That’s actually why we swung by. This missing…kid—?”
“Oh, I know what yer gonna say. I already thought of it. Not a kid. A man. And he’s been gone nearly a year now. But your description—and the Doc’s—it doesn’t sound a thing like who we’re hunting for. This one’s name is Everett Campbell. You know him?”
Mac and I both shook our heads. “Don’t think so,” I said.
“Ya sure? He worked at Ethan’s last couple years before he turned to smoke.”
“We been at sea the last couple years,” Mac said.
“Yuh. Course. Well, he’s been gone a year now and no hide nor hair. Doing a follow-up in case anyone has a magic memory. Sometimes people remember the damnedest things. Even ten years later. His boss at the docks, Ethan? Year ago, he reported that Campbell hadn’t been in to work. Funny thing is, the wife didn’t report it. I had to call her. That’s where I was again yes’day when the funeral was on. Drove up over the bridge to their old place even though they moved back to the mainland months ago. Took a look around the property, Predis Field, just to see what’s what. She and her boys never saw'm again. Told the oldest he was gonna have to ‘go away' for a while.” Chief raised his eyebrows at the words go away as if code for something else.
“Y’ask me,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee, “I think this Everett Campbell might be the sort that didn’t want to turn up.”
“Did this Campbell have any tattoos?” I said. “Anything like that?”
Chief looked from me to my brother, as if he needed the go-ahead to answer. The two of them had the connection over baseball and betting. Right now, I was just the outsider with the nosy questions. In my periphery, I saw my brother nod to Chief Birkhead. Birkhead opened the tattered old file and looked down at it.
“None like you described, David. Lessee. One tattoo,” he said, reading. “Left forearm, green and black ink. “Naked lady on boat anchor.”
“Any others?” I asked, pressing, but just a little.
“Nope,” Chief said, not looking up from the file. “Jes that one. But the wife filled in some stuff his boss couldn’t. His birthdate, where he’s from. Oh, and he has a large birthmark.” Chief put his finger on the report. “'Left pelvic bone. A long, wide purple mark.'“
Chief laughed out the side of his mouth. “Right beside his Johnson’s my guess. Would hope his boss has never seen that before.”
My heart was going fast now. Chief looked up at us both and either saw something in my face or in Mac’s. “Any trouble?”
“Nothin’ at all,” Mac said, his voice way more even than mine would have been.
Chief’s eyebrows went up and he took a photo from the file in front of him. He held it out. “Recognize this ‘Campbell’ feller?”
I looked. He was wiry. I could tell, even though the photo was chest, shoulders neck and head. He had a full head of dark hair and a know-it-all sneer that I didn’t care for—not even after only a glance. But I didn’t know him. Maybe I’d seen him around town years ago and maybe not. But his wasn’t the snarling, angry face I’d seen bust through Ma’s glass and wood pantry door yesterday after the internment.
Suddenly exhausted by the swell of all this information, I yawned. “No, don’t know him from Adam,” I said and stood up. “Mac, all this craziness, I’m gonna head home. I’m wiped out. You comin’?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Mac stood with me. His wheels still turned on this birthmark business too. We made to head out. “Thanks for yer time, Chief,” Mac said as he left Birkhead’s office. I followed.
“Didja boys come in for something else?” Chief called after us. We must have skedaddled in a hurry. “Nothin’ else, Chief,” I called back. “Just curious about that missing man is all. Thanks a heap.”
I heard Chief say, “Again, my condolences to you and yer sister” before the front door slammed shut behind us. And, like that, we left the station and stood back outside in the blinding sun.
10.
No sign of Doc when we came out from seeing the Chief —which was just as well. I imagine Mac felt the same as I did. No old man would be crying on my shoulder. Not today. If I could carry my own mother’s box through the rain after everything our family had been through, and not let a single drop of saltwater mingle with fresh, I sure as hell didn’t want to see the ol’ town Doc shed his own.
Mac and me walked back to the lawyer’s office. Zeke was still patiently working away at draining puddles. A few cars waited out front of Harlow’s and a couple more headed up Main. Most folks would be heading home for lunch soon, I expected.
I wanted to do the same, and follow it with a nap. Being back here, with so little physical activity and no movement under my feet, it made me the opposite of what land-dwellers might expect. I was dizzy, with a fog in my head and down the course of me.
“You think Teeny stayed away?” Mac asked me as we both got into his old Ford and he flipped the driver’s side visor down. The keys plopped into his lap, from where he always kept them. “On purpose, like?” He clarified. He was, of course, speaking of our little sister who’d headed for the mainland some years back. “To get away from Mama,” is all she said, when I asked her why once. That’s what she called Ma—Mama. Just one of the millions of difference between how we looked at the world and how Teeny did. She was quite a few years younger than me and we never traveled in the same circles growing up.
“I imagine she did,” I said as Mac pulled out from the curb and we headed, not for home, but for Ma’s house.
He clicked his silver Zippo and steered his old white Ford with one hand while he lit a cigarette. He drew a long breath off it and we drove in silence, only the rumble of the badly tuned motor to fill the gap between our words.
Mac pondered my answer. In a minute or two he spoke. “If Da hadn’t named me executor, I wouldn’t have come either,” he said. Da had predeceased Ma, but his will carried for the both of them and Ma hadn’t seen a need to change it. It said we three would get equal shares of anything but, of course, there would be a hundred small activities to handle. Cancel the phone, the power, the gas. House insurance and on and on. But with Ma’s new mortgage, something I wasn’t even sure Mac knew about, I bet the remainder in any savings accounts would be almost nothing. And who knows how much equity Ma had dug out of the house. I didn’t want to think about why. I put my thumb and forefingers on my temples. An extreme headache was creeping in behind my mind-fog.
We pulled up at the house and Mac put the truck into park with a jerk of its old tranny. The day was clouding up again. I bet there’d be rain by game time. Wouldn’t matter. Most would be huddled on couches and recliners to watch on their big TVs. There’d be parties in basements and wet bars would be stocked tonight.
“I’m gonna miss her, Dave,” Mac said. “I know she went a bit...off...after Dad—how could she not? But, I’ll miss knowing she’s here. She did her best, I think.”
Mac sat behind the wheel and I could only see him in profile, the stub of his cigarette turning to ash between his lips. Even still, I’m nearly certain I saw a twinkle in his eye. He blinked hard a few times then took a breath. I think I knew what he meant. As hard as Ma had made things, especially for Teeny, I think I knew what he meant. We always had a home. Even if it wasn’t homy anymore.
Mac cleared his throat and spoke again.” When I was at the lawyer’s, I ran into Joey. Him and the boys are having a party tonight.
Y’know, to watch Game Six. I didn’t think you’d want to come, but I told them I’d ask.”
I yawned. “Naw, man, I’m gonna stay back.”
He reached down to some wide envelopes and papers he had stacked on the bench seat between us. He made to pull a sheet out but only got it about a third of the way free. “Oh, and here’s the copy of Ma’s note. The one Mrs. Walsh found. Did you want to see it?”
“No, Mac,” I said, irritated and not sure why. “Why would I want to see that?”
Mirroring my irritation, Mac said, “Jeez, Dave. I don’t know. Maybe cuz she was your Ma too. Thought maybe you’d want to see what she wrote.”
Sheepish, like I’d been scolded by our Da and I might be in for a lickin’, I said, “Did she write anything about me?”
Mac let out a sigh, but not an exasperated one. More like he was feeling some of the fatigue I was. “Naw,” he said. “Nothing specific. It’s short. Doesn’t say much about anything at all. All right, I’m going to see a few people, then head over to Joey’s. He’s married now. Two kids. Can you believe it?”
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