I scratched the back of my head, and thought, what the hell. “Where do you bank, Tom?”
“Firefighter’s Credit Union. Why?”
“What about church? Did you or your wife attend anywhere?”
“I was raised Catholic, but I let it slip. Same with Rhonda. Does that mean anything?”
I didn’t answer him and instead looked at Ron with an ‘anything else?’ look on his face. Miles shook his head. I was about to excuse himself when Tom Rhodes spoke. “She’s really gone?” he said, his voice all at once small, like a child.
“Tom, look,” said Miles. Why don’t you go on home. You’ve got a tough few days ahead of you. Gather your family around you and let them help you. You don’t want to be here right now. When they move her body, it’s, well…it’s just something you don’t want to see.”
“Where are they going to take her?”
“They’ll take her to the hospital, Tom,” I said. “There will be an autopsy, and after that they’ll send her to the funeral home of your choice. But Detective Miles is right. Go home. Let us do our job. We’ll figure this thing out.”
“All she wanted to do was help people. Why would someone do this?”
How do you answer a question like that?
I followed Miles into the coffee shop and was introduced to the waiter who served Rhonda just before she was shot.
“How about we sit down for a few minutes? I’ve got a few questions.”
“I’ve already answered just about every cop in the city, so far,” he said.
“Well, not everyone,” I said. “It looks like you were the last one to speak with her before she died. I just want to ask you a few things. Sometimes witnesses know something they don’t even think they know, and it can be something little that might not mean anything to you but can make all the difference in the world to us. Here, have a seat,” I said and pointed him to a table in the corner. No other patrons were in the cafe. The smell of burnt coffee hung in the air.
After the three of us were seated Ron and I stayed quiet for a minute or two. Sometimes one of the best things you can do when you want answers from someone is to just be quiet. Sure enough, after another minute or so the waiter began to talk. “You know what’s weird?” he said. “I don’t really feel anything. I mean, I’ve known Rhonda for a long time. Well, that’s not quite right. I don’t really know her at all. What I mean is, I’ve been serving her for a long time. We’d talk, you know? Nothing substantial, not really. Just the casual ‘how you doing’ kind of chit chat bullshit that customers and waiters have. Jesus. I’ve never seen anyone get shot before. Aren’t I supposed to feel something? I feel like I should be upset. I mean more upset than I am. Is something wrong with me? Am I in shock or something? Is this what shock feels like?”
The waiter sat with his elbows on the table, the heels of his hands pressed into his forehead. His fingers worked their way into his hairline and pulled his hair back taught. It gave him a haunted, almost effeminate appearance. “You may very well be in shock,” I said. “Do you feel like you require medical attention?”
He let go of his hair and forehead. “No, no, I’m fucking good. Besides, I don’t have any insurance.”
“Just take us through it, from the time she walked in the door until you saw her get hit. Take your time. Don’t leave anything out.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the waiter said. “I mean, there just isn’t anything to say. She came in, same time as she always did, sat at the same table she always sits at, unless someone else is sitting there, except they weren’t, so she did.” He pointed to the table in the opposite corner of the establishment. “That table right there.”
“Alright, that’s good,” I said. “Go on.”
“Well, like I said, there just isn’t anything to say, really. She sat down, spread out her paperwork and started doing whatever it is she did with it. The paperwork, I mean. I asked her if she wanted her usual. She said yes, so I brought her a cup of our house blend and a muffin. The muffin was on me. It wasn’t part of her usual. I just wanted to give her a fucking muffin, you know? We made nice for a few minutes and I got back to work. Before she left I asked her if she wanted anything else. She says ‘no I’ve got to run. See you tomorrow though.’ I said something like ‘you bet’ or whatever and then she walked out and I just happened to glance up from behind the counter and I saw her flying backward through the air. She hung there for a second, hell not even that long I guess, ‘cause you know how everything seems like it’s going in slow-mo? Well, anyway she hung there for a sec in the shape of a big C, you know with her arms and legs flying forward and her body going backwards. Anyways, that’s what it looked like to me. A big C. It’s kinda ironic if you think about it, because that’s what she always called cancer. The big C. Just like that series they’ve got on Showtime. It’s called The Big C. Anyways…”
“And you didn’t hear any gunfire?” I said.
The waiter shook his head. “Nope. Hell, it looked like she got hit by a huge gust of wind or something. It was unreal. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening.”
“What about a car backfiring? Did you hear anything like that? Some kind of noise that may have been a gunshot but in the moment it just didn’t register?”
The waiter shook his head. “Huh uh.”
“What did you do next?”
“What do you mean?”
I tried not to let my impatience show. “I mean, what was the very next thing you did. Did you call 911?”
“No.”
“Did you run outside to help the victim?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I guess, I…well, what I mean is, I just sort of froze. Besides, we’re not supposed to leave the cash drawer unattended.”
“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t. “How much money was in the drawer?”
“I don’t keep an exact accounting.”
“If you had to guess,” I said, the impatience in my voice now obvious.
“Well if I had to guess, there might be, I don’t know, seventy or eighty bucks in there or something like that.”
I leaned across the table. “So a woman, a Hospice nurse, comes into your coffee shop damn near every day of the week, sits at the same table, orders the same thing, then one day leaves and gets shot to death right in front of your eyes and the only thing you could think to do was guard the seventy or eighty bucks in the cash drawer?”
“Hey, man, come on. That’s a little harsh. I didn’t shoot her.”
“No, I guess you didn’t, but you sure didn’t do much to help her after she was shot.”
“Look, guys, I’m sorry about Rhonda. I really am. She seemed nice. She did good work. She was a consistent tipper. But that’s all I know. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing. Maybe I panicked, or froze or whatthefuckever. But I didn’t do anything wrong. There were about ten other people in here who were already dialing 911 and I know about as much emergency first aid as a Cocker Spaniel. Besides, even from behind the counter you could tell she was dead before she hit the pavement. You could just see it. So, what, I’m supposed to lose my job over something I couldn’t do anything about?” He stood up and started to walk away, then turned back. “Hey, you guys ever ask yourselves why no one ever wants to talk to the cops?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
My house is on one of the last remaining gravel roads in the county just off of highway 37 south of 465, the loop that circles Indy. I have ten acres of land, the back third wooded with a pond between the edge of the woods and the house. While I do not welcome the suburban sprawl as it grows ever closer, my privacy is reasonably assured by the long drive at the front and the woods at the back.
I tossed my mail on the table next to the door, checked the answering machine-no messages-and turned the shower on to steam the bathroom. Thirty minutes later I was back in the truck, headed downtown to the bar.
The bar my father and I own is very popular and draws a great cr
owd. I turned into the back lot, parked my truck at the far end and walked in through the back door where the kitchen area is located. The aroma of burgers and chicken halves that sizzled over an open broiler caused my stomach to gurgle and I suddenly realized I had not yet eaten today.
Robert, our Jamaican cook, looked over at me, flipped a burger on a bun then brushed the surface with his homemade jerk sauce, tossed on a slice of red onion, and held it out at arms length as I walked by. He gave me a skeptical look. “Dat shrimp, mon, it be comin’ by later tomorrow.”
“Was supposed to be today,” I said.
“Yeah, mon. But the truck already left. So tomorrow. Hope it good. Day say day raise it in a swimmin’ pool or some ting like dat. But it’s your money, no?” I took the plate, clapped him on the back and walked into the darkened atmosphere of the bar area.
The patron area of our establishment is long and narrow with high-back mahogany booths along one wall and the bar itself along the opposite wall with an aisle-way between the two sides. A large mirror runs the entire length behind the bar and gives the illusion of extra space when in fact there is none. Hand made stained-glass light fixtures hang low over the booths creating an intimate atmosphere that often conflicts with the mood of our customers. A blue neon sign displayed above the bar mirror advertises ‘Warm Beer amp; Lousy Food.’ Robert, our cook, still can not seem to grasp the meaning of the sign and has on more than one occasion pulled me aside and said “Dat sign has got to go, mon.” A small elevated stage at the back between the kitchen entrance and the restrooms provide just enough room for our Reggae house band that plays from midweek through the weekend. The lunch hour during the week is usually busy with downtown suits, and the weekend nights have been standing room only since opening day over three years ago.
The city of Indianapolis offers hundreds of small bars where you can eat and drink your fill, but to my knowledge our little bar is the only one that offers the true taste and atmosphere of a small island nation that has held a place in my heart most of my adult life. A few years ago on my last visit to Jamaica, while driving through the Hanover Parish, I experienced one of those rare moments which can change your life for the better if you are not too preoccupied to notice and let it happen. One of the tires of the rental car I was driving picked up a nail and I pulled to a stop in front of a ramshackle, multi-colored hut fashioned from scrap metal and drift wood at the edge of a town called Lucea which sits at the approximate half way point between the resort towns of Montego Bay and Negril. A handsome and well dressed bald man approached me and asked if he could help. His voice carried across the gravel lot with the musical lilt of his native land. “What you do, you?” he said. “Dat tire no good now, mon. Come inside. Have a drink and someting to eat. We fix you right up.” He held out his balled hand and we bumped fists and when we did, he said, “Respect, mon, respect.”
I shrugged, said ‘respect’ back to him and he smiled and led me inside the hut, his arm around my shoulder like we were old friends reunited after years of separation. Three and a half hours later I was full from too much Jerk chicken, slightly drunk from too many Red Stripes, but my tire was fixed and I had made two new friends.
But the story doesn’t end there. The owner of the establishment, the man who came out to greet me was named Delroy. He served the drinks and befriended his customers while his partner, Robert, handled the cooking, and apparently, tire changing. During the course of our conversation I learned they both longed to live in the United States. I listened politely to their stories, gave them my business card and got back in my car. Three weeks later after cutting through the red tape, Delroy helped me and my father set up the bar and Robert took over the kitchen. They both fly back to Jamaica twice a year for a week at a time to visit with their family and friends, and every time they do I panic just a little at the thought of losing them.
I took a stool at the mid-point of the bar and sat down with my burger and watched my father at the far end laughing with an attractive, middle-aged female customer. A row of clean beer mugs lined the drip trough on the tended side of the bar and when Delroy saw me he turned one over, set it under the tap and pulled a Red Stripe draft then placed it in front of me. My father walked down to greet me, looking back over his shoulder at the woman he’d been laughing with.
“Hey Pops. How’s it going?”
“Going just fine, son. Just fine.” He glanced back down the bar at the woman who was watching them in the mirror. “How’s the Governor’s main man?”
I sipped my beer and watched my father as he pulled two shot glasses from under the bar, and filled each with an ounce of over-proof rum. “I’m squeakin’ by,” I said, my eyes following his to the woman in the mirror. “Who’s that?”
“That’s Carol, you know, from over at County Dispatch. She’s going to help wait tables around here, mostly on the weekends. She answered the ad. Starts tomorrow.”
I felt a kernel of anger pop inside my chest and while I fought to contain it, in the end I put some teeth into my next question without really intending to. “Known her long?” I regretted the words as soon as I had spoken, but to my father’s credit he did not take the bait. Instead, he thought for a moment while wiping the bar between us. “You’re a grown man, son.”
“Point being?”
“Point being,” Mason said, “I was a grown man before you were ever born. I live my life, my way. Might not be your way, and that’s alright. But it’s mine.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and when I did, I saw my father’s face in my own, and sometimes wondered about who I saw staring back at me. I have always been comfortable with myself, but at forty-one years old I’ve noticed my hair already starting to turn gray at the temples, the lines in my face around my eyes growing more prevalent with the passage of time. I have a faint scar that runs the length of my jaw line on the left side of my face and it runs from under my ear then curves slightly upward to meet the corner of my mouth, a result of a boyhood injury I sustained many years ago. It is not nearly as noticeable as I sometimes think it is, but it flashes with white whenever I smile. I try not to smile, unless I want to scare someone.
I looked back at my father. “I just miss her, is all.”
“Jesus, Virgil. You think I don’t?” he replied, some teeth of his own. “One year, today. Not a day goes by, hell, not a minute goes by, I don’t think of her.” He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I can remember walking in the park with her. We’d see an old couple, not old like me, hell, I’m only sixty-eight, but I mean old, eighties, nineties even, holding hands. Your mom, she’d smile and say ‘see that, Mason? That’ll be us some day.’ Well, that day isn’t ever going to come for me, Virgil. Not ever. That part of my life is over now. I don’t know what you’d have me do, but I know what your mother would want. She’d have me honor the time we did have together by getting up and getting on with my life. So that’s what I’m doing.”
He picked up the shot glasses and held one out for me. We had toasted my mother once a month for the last eleven months. “She’s gone Virgil, but she’s not forgotten. Not for a minute. I love her and I always will. But I’m done toasting the past. So here’s to you and me, Son, and whatever waits down the line.” My father drained his shot glass and set it down hard on the bar then walked away, leaving me sitting there alone, staring at myself in the mirror.
I suppose my father grieves his loss in ways I do not yet and hope never to understand. But I also grieve in my own way and not a day will pass that when I think of my mother I do not also think of her father, my grandpa. He died long ago, and when he passed, to say that things were never quite the same with our family would be a gross misrepresentation of our ancestral history. He was quite simply the center of our universe and we circled happily around him like planets around the sun, as if when immersed in his shining love there was nothing ever to fear, no darkness that could not be illuminated and laid bare for what it really was.
&n
bsp; I have a picture of my grandfather that sits on the mantle of my fireplace at home. In it, he is sitting in his finished basement, facing the camera, his arms stretched just so while speaking with someone out of frame of the photograph. His back faces the descending stairway that was lined with light colored natural pine panels, and hung at eye level on the walls in a diagonal fashion are pictures of his grandchildren and a few other people I do not recognize. But one picture in particular hanging on the wall behind him always gets my attention. It is a picture of my father as a young man, perhaps taken even before he and my mother were married. It is black and white, and I think it is the most handsome picture of my father I have ever seen. There is a look of quiet confidence on his face and the way it hangs just over my grandfather’s shoulder in the photo tells me the love he showered on me was not exclusive. If you were a part of his life, you were a part of his love.
But when he died and we were forced to carry on without him, without his guiding influence in our lives, things slowly began to change. We began to drift apart, our exaggerated steps taking us further away from each other instead of closer together. Earlier when I spoke of the influence he had in our lives I used the analogy of the sun and the planets, and after he died if felt as if we no longer had his gravitational force around us to hold us together. Everyday we were together I remember a sense of anticipation and wonderment at what lay ahead, but after his death those hopeful days began to diminish as if our world had stopped turning and we were now stuck on the edge of an eternal night, locked in a phased elliptical orbit on the dark side of a place I thought I might never escape.
Eventually I learned a lesson from what happened to our family after my grandfather died, a lesson that clearly my father had learned along the way as well. I would honor his life and the lessons he tried to teach me by living my life to the fullest, the way he did.
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