Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  Four months later.

  Reverend Verney stands in the hallway of his house. From where he stands he can see the TV in the front room. He can see his wife as she watches it.

  A pretty blonde girl appears on the screen.

  She holds a microphone.

  Behind her Reverend Verney can see a Penitentiary building.

  The pretty blonde girl speaks.

  'In yet another revelation today, the North Carolina State Appellate Court ruled that Daniel Ford, the Sumter Penitentiary Death Row inmate found guilty in 1971 of the murder of Nathan Verney, was tried unconstitutionally and was the victim of a premeditated conspiracy. North Carolina District Attorney Robert Moriera today issued a subpoena for ex-Greenleaf City P.D. Lieutenant Michael Garrett after testimony forwarded by retired P.D. Sergeant Karl Jackson revealed that Garrett was involved in the conspiracy. In return for his testimony, Sergeant Jackson is said to have been granted immunity from prosecution.

  'Special Investigator Frank Stroud, a man who earned his reputation in the early '70s when he was involved in the failed attempt to prosecute Congressman Richard Goldbourne for complicity in the assassination of Robert Kennedy, said today that he was overjoyed at the outcome of the appeal, and stressed the importance of reviewing the death penalty and its consequences in North Carolina.

  'Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this case was that of Linda Goldbourne, daughter of Richard Goldbourne who, prior to his death, had been a leading political figure in the State. Information revealed during the appeal indicated that Linda Goldbourne had been incarcerated in North Carolina State Psychiatric Hospital by her father for nearly twelve years, in fact the same length of time Daniel Ford was himself imprisoned.

  'Having been classified as mentally unfit to give testimony at Ford's original trial in the early '70s, Miss Goldbourne's legal and personal affairs were managed exclusively by her father. In order to prevent her from appearing before the court or making a statement to the police, Richard Goldbourne continued to deny his daughter access to any visitors except himself and certain immediate family members. With his death, Linda Goldbourne was interviewed by Special Prosecutor Stroud and the full facts of the original killing were made available.

  'Though District Attorney Moriera made it clear that convictions were unlikely due to the death of Richard Goldbourne, he still emphasized his gratitude to Special Prosecutor Stroud in uncovering this dramatic miscarriage of justice.

  'And now, leaving Daniel Ford somewhere in North Carolina celebrating his release after twelve years of imprisonment, and his rescue just two days before his date of execution, this is Cindy Giddings for NBC News returning you to the studio…'

  Mrs. Verney stands and turns.

  There are tears in her eyes.

  She reaches out her hands and her husband walks towards her.

  His huge presence engulfs her, and she buries her face in his shirt.

  'Praise the Lord,' he whispers. 'Praise the Lord…'

  No-one had told me what was happening. Father John said he wished to avoid any possibility of false hope being given.

  He figured I was more likely to talk to a priest than a Federal investigator. So he changed his profession, and he changed his name.

  And Linny Goldbourne had been the one to start all of this. After her father's death she spoke freely. Stroud had been there to listen to her, just as he had listened to me. And if he listened because he wanted to bring Richard Goldbourne down any way he could it didn't matter. The fact was that he listened, and he listened good. Linny told him she didn't know who had killed Nathan, had never seen them before herself, but she did know one thing.

  I had not murdered him.

  I am sitting in a diner somewhere in Charleston.

  Opposite me is Caroline Lanafeuille.

  She is beautiful. Her hair is multi-hued between amber and ochre and straw. And then there is the way she tilts her head and half-smiles.

  'And so she'll return home,' she is saying, but I am not really paying much attention. I am watching her lips move. I am thinking that once there was a time when I had kissed those lips. A time that now seems a hundred lifetimes ago. A life that I believe now could never have been mine.

  'And seeing as her mother's still alive, and the family home is more than sufficient for her needs, I think Linny will be fine. It will take time… like with you, Danny.'

  She reaches out and takes my hand. She smiles. 'But I think she will be fine.'

  I smile. Sometimes I feel like crying, but now it is different.

  'Thank you,' I say, I think for the hundred thousandth time.

  She nods.

  A waitress appears to my right.

  'You folks hungry?' she asks.

  'Starving,' Caroline says. 'Can you make some eggs and rye toast?'

  The girl, whose badge says Charlene, says Sure we can make eggs and rye toast.

  And then Charlene turns to me, and she smiles, and she asks me what I want.

  I look up at her. I want to hug her. 'You have a baked ham sandwich?'

  Charlene smiles again. She has the whitest teeth of anyone I've seen.

  'Sure we have baked ham,' she says. 'Honey, we have the finest baked ham this side of the Georgia state line.'

  I start to laugh.

  Caroline frowns.

  Charlene starts laughing too, but she doesn't know why.

  Frank Stroud did not lose his job for impersonating a priest.

  He made me believe such a thing was possible, but he was joking.

  He seemed to take it all in his stride, like he didn't even need me to tell him thank you.

  After the appeal was over, after my story was forgotten news, I saw him on TV. He was saying something about corruption in some police precinct somewhere.

  He was like that, it seemed. Always fighting something.

  I will never forget him.

  She ate her eggs the same way she always had.

  We could have been in Benny's. We could have been on the verandah enjoying the smell of my mother's fried chicken cooking.

  I asked her why; why did she come to see me after so many years?

  She just smiled. She just smiled and said Because…

  I asked her also why she left the way she did, what it was that her father did that prompted their sudden departure from Greenleaf all those years ago.

  She was quiet for a time, and then she said that there were things that happened back then that she didn't understand, but she felt it had something to do with people he was involved with. He had been a doctor, a good one, but there were people who came to him for help late at night, or the early hours of the morning sometimes, and she believed that those people were connected to another part of his life that he had no wish to share with her.

  She had thought about pursuing this, discovering the truth of what had happened, but she'd been scared to look, scared to touch a wound that was almost healed.

  And then she smiled once more, and laughed gently, and we didn't speak of it again.

  'I would like to see you again,' I said.

  'I understand,' Caroline said.

  I leaned forward imperceptibly. There was something in her expression, something there back of her eyes… a word, a sound… something…

  I felt my heart close up like a child's fist, tight and desperate, a futile response.

  'I have a life, Daniel -'

  She looked at me, looked right through me perhaps.

  I felt transparent.

  I heard nothing but the sound of my own heart, beating frantically like the wings of a moth.

  'I have a life,' she said, repeating it as if to convince herself. 'What happened between us… we were kids, nothing more than kids… you know that, right?'

  I sensed a fragment of desperation in her tone, as if once again she was saying these things merely to convince herself that she was right.

  'I have a job,' she went on, 'and I have my own house and a car and a dog…'


  She paused, she looked right at me. There was something so direct in her unflinching gaze that I was momentarily unnerved.

  'And a husband,' she said. 'I have my life…'

  She glanced away. I could see tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

  'Frank came to see me… he told me about Linny, how her father had died and she wanted to give evidence about what had happened. He told me she had tried again and again to send some message out but her father had always been there. He told me what he was doing and why… and believe me, I wanted to believe you were innocent; all these years I really wanted to believe you were innocent… and now I know you are I feel like I have attained some sense of closure…'

  She reached towards me and closed her hand over mine.

  'But I can't see you again. You have to go forward, Daniel, but I can't go backwards to meet you, you understand?'

  I did not, but I nodded as if I did, perhaps in an effort to make myself believe I understood her, believe that she was right.

  'I wanted to see you again,' she whispered. 'I thought of you often, more than often, but I could never bring myself to come see you in that place… the thought of you dying…'

  She turned away, just for a moment she turned away.

  'I wanted to make sure you were okay… I wanted to tell you that whatever anyone might have said, you were the first.'

  I looked up at her.

  She smiled with that same tilt to the side, her hair falling in slow-motion.

  'Always the first. And I did love you, loved you the only way I knew how back then… but I have to leave you here to find your own way.'

  She left the rest of her eggs and rye toast.

  I watched her rise. I watched her edge sideways from behind the table. I watched her stand and gather her things, reach towards me and touch the side of my face.

  I could smell her perfume even after I could no longer see her.

  And though I heard the sound of her car I did not turn and look through the window to watch her disappear.

  I did not let her go; I was merely bound by honor to release her.

  And released she was… like a moth, in that last hair's- breadth of silence before the flame at last consumes.

  And there were so many questions I had wanted to ask her.

  I felt a breeze creep in through the diner exit, a breeze that seemed to close in around my table and occupy the seat where Caroline had been only moments before, and I wondered if I would ever have had the courage to ask those questions.

  She had come and gone so quickly.

  Just like before.

  I stared at the plate ahead of me.

  You have to make your own way now, Daniel…

  I questioned her reasoning and motivation for coming at all.

  … attain some sense of closure…

  What had Frank Stroud told her?

  I believed I would never ask him.

  I believed he would perhaps tell me the same thing: that I had to find my own way.

  So I let her go without a struggle.

  And as the sound of her car faded into nothing I told myself that I had let her go.

  Time would tell.

  I believe I will see him again, my brother.

  He will hold his head high.

  As will I.

  And this time, when we walk together, we will not take separate paths.

  We will walk side-by-side, as we always did… if not in body, then surely in spirit.

  Sometimes I ask myself about my own life. By almost anyone's standards I am still a young man, a man who has seen twelve years of his life folded away quietly somewhere in the zone of forgetting.

  Sometimes I try to tell myself that those twelve years were part of my growing up, part of the necessary steps I had to take in order to become an adult.

  I watch people around me - in the street, the mall, the tidy lives of those who spend their daylight hours confined within some office somewhere - and I see how they take those hours and days and months for granted.

  To do such a thing scares me.

  People sometimes ask me about myself, just in passing you know, like at the bus station, waiting somewhere for something one has to wait for, and I smile, I make small talk, and I tell little white lies. Not because I am ashamed, for I know, have always known, that killing a man was never within me. That's why I didn't go to war. But people are prejudiced and judgemental, and their own past experiences have served to darken their thoughts and expectations. Like they expect the worst. Like they are indoctrinated into thinking that it's always best to believe the worst… for in that way you can rarely be caught out.

  Truth is, I am not trying to catch anyone, but then again I wouldn't expect them to know that. I am a stranger, just like everyone else who passes in the street, and it seems a shame that these days one cannot smile at a child, an adult even, and not be received with some air of suspicion.

  I will find work. I was never afraid of it, and it will come my way, but for now, just for a little while, I will take the time to look at the world once more. To try and see it for what it truly is. I forgot how it was, and I find myself in a position where I am learning all over again. There is a certain magic in the process, like sight returning to the blind, hearing to a deaf man, but there is, equally, pain in my recognition that as we have advanced in so many ways, we have also walked backwards.

  And the house where I was once a child still stands. It is damp. The windows are broken. The screen door hangs from its hinges and leans out across the front steps like a drunk. When you stand on those steps you can feel your weight threatening the very fabric of the structure.

  But still, I went down there.

  Went inside.

  I was alone, it was quiet as a cemetery, and once inside I moved slowly, carefully, walking on eggshells. Once again I stood in the hallway looking through into the kitchen where almost every childhood meal had been eaten, where Nathan and I had hidden from the world when we returned from Florida. I turned and stood in the same doorway where I had watched Nathan and Linny, where I had believed my trust violated, where I had recognized my own inability to control the significant aspects of my life.

  I shed some tears. For Nathan. For Linny. For myself.

  I think of her even now - Linny Goldbourne - and I imagine her somewhere in North Carolina, coping with her own healing process, and though I could pick up a phone and hear the sound of her voice within a heartbeat, I do not wish to.

  I believe also that she does not wish to speak with me, because each of us would remind the other of a part of our lives that is now gone. Not forgotten, just gone. A part that is better gone.

  What happened, happened.

  We should each let it go.

  The first time I returned home I did not go upstairs. I told myself that it was dangerous, that perhaps the stairs were unsafe. That was not the truth.

  So I went back, and I steeled myself, and I went up there like a ghost from my own past and stood there on the upper landing and looked in through the door of my bedroom.

  I left with the candlemoth, clutching that small wooden frame, the glass intact, the creature behind still perfectly preserved.

  I hung it above the narrow bed in a room on the outskirts of Charleston, a room I call home for now.

  I will sell the house, and I will eventually decide what to do and where to go.

  For now it doesn't matter.

  I have time.

  I had time at Charleston, time at Sumter.

  Now I have a different kind of time.

  Like each day is a new thing, and I want for it to mean something.

  I ask myself what life is, what does it mean? Perhaps nothing more than a story, and each story different and rare and pronounced with its own voice. Some lives rich and heady, tales told with such fervor and passion one is lost in the language of the telling. Other lives racing forward with such power one would be carried along by the sheer momentum of events, and care not how th
ey had been told. Or what language had been used. Just that they were, and you were there to hear about them.

  I believed - once upon an age ago - that I would perhaps have such a life.

  And then I lost my belief.