Blue Avenue

by Michael Wiley

  I drove toward downtown on a road that skirted marsh, river and a field of petroleum storage tanks. An egret soared across the road, its long wings staggeringly white in the afternoon sun, so white that it dizzied me and hurt my eyes. Too much white. Too much sun.

  Terrence. My boy?

  Would I try to save him even knowing the impossibility of his redemption? How could I try? Hold him from behind, my hands over his mouth and nose so that he couldn’t breathe? Hold him until he felt the pain and orgasmic pleasure of suffocation, until he knew what it means to die in another’s arms, a father’s arms? Hold him against my chest until he wept tears that washed him and me clean?

  He had no such tears inside him. I felt certain of it.

  Would I turn him in to the police? No. That I wouldn’t do.

  The white cable-stayed Dames Point Bridge rose in front of the car like a bleached skeleton of two enormous wings, wings of a huge angel that had crashed or fallen into the old river.

  Whose wings?

  Belinda’s?

  Belinda was dead.

  Aggie’s?

  Aggie was dead too.

  Don’t be an asshole, Charles had said. She was dead and that knowledge burned in me. What had Charles done? What had I done? Aggie was still breathing when she was in the room at the Luego Motel. What do you want to do with her? Charles had asked. Had he ever planned to take her to the hospital? Too complicated. Charles was protecting me. Allowing me to get Belinda’s killer. Charles knew how to move from point x to point y. Use no more energy than necessary, no more force. Just enough to do the job. Charles’ motto. Not that he always lived by it. Get rid of Aggie and get to y. What did she matter in the bigger scheme?

  Why not get rid of her if getting rid of her meant I could stop Terrence?

  Would I kill Terrence? Would I save him? I drove to Belinda’s house hoping that when I came face-to-face with him my next step would become clear.

  The highway cut across an area that until the early 1980s had been uninterrupted pine forest and wetlands and where, even fifteen years ago, I sometimes saw wild boars and deer and, every now and then, a black bear. But now there was a shopping mall and strip after strip of highway-side apartments, though I still heard stories of water moccasins slipping from the creeks and shading themselves under cars in the parking lots.

  I drove over the Intracoastal Waterway, its surface gleaming under the low concrete bridge, cruised past condominium developments and turned on to the dead-end street where Belinda had lived.

  I stopped the car.

  Emergency lights, muted by the glaring sunshine, flashed in the cul-de-sac. Thick black smoke rose from Belinda’s house. Neighbors were hurrying from their driveways toward the house. I drove down the street and parked behind a police cruiser. Four fire trucks, a paramedic van and three more police cars had pulled into Belinda’s driveway and were parked on the lawn.

  Flames poured upward from the second-floor windows. The fire made a low roar. As three firemen steadied a hose, the flames died back and black smoke disgorged from the openings. Then the tile roof above one of the windows buckled inward and flames flared into the sky.

  I joined a loose crowd that the neighbors had formed about fifty yards from the house, far enough to keep out of the way of the firefighters. Terrence was on the lawn talking to one of the police officers. My heart froze as I realized the officer was Daniel Turner. Did he suspect Terrence of the killings? Terrence pointed at one of the second-floor windows. If I remembered right from our search, it was Bobby Mabry’s room. I looked from face to face in the group near the house. Bobby wasn’t among them.

  Daniel yelled something to one of the firemen, and Terrence looked up at the billowing smoke, then out at the yard. A man in the crowd gave him a sympathetic wave and Terrence waved back. Then he seemed to see me and he panicked. What he saw in my eyes or face I couldn’t guess. He backed away from Daniel and ran toward the burning house. No one stopped him until he started up the porch steps, where a fireman put a hand on his forearm and spoke to him. Terrence shook the hand off and continued, and when the fireman seized him again and held him, Terrence stared at him a moment, then swung his free fist at him. It connected and the fireman stumbled backward off the porch steps. Terrence ran inside.

  I yelled, ‘Terrence!’

  He kept going. But my yell got Daniel’s attention. He looked at the crowd and found me, then went to two uniformed policemen, talked to them and pointed in my direction. The policemen unholstered their pistols and ran toward me.

  I was stunned. What had Terrence and Daniel seen in my face? What had they heard since I’d last seen them?

  There was an explosion of wood and metal. The garage door to Belinda’s house burst outward, and the Nissan SUV that Charles and I had seen while searching the house came through the shattered door, spun on the driveway and headed for the street. Terrence was at the wheel.

  The two officers who were coming for me turned and watched, uncertain whether to go back to the house. Then three firefighters emerged from the front door, holding Bobby, his shirt and shorts darkened by soot, his face covered with an oxygen mask.

  I ran.

  I was halfway across the yard when Terrence drove out of the driveway on to the street. I got into my car and jerked from the curb. Terrence had reached the end of the street, and I followed him, expecting police cars to follow us. None did. There’s no law against plowing through your garage door when your house is on fire, and the officers who were coming after me had gotten caught in the confusion.

  Terrence drove north and then west toward the Interstate. We flew up the bridge over the Intracoastal and accelerated down, my Lexus shaking from the speed. We shot past sound-damping walls that protected neighborhoods from the highway noise, stands of oleander bushes with pink flowers that lit up the air like candle flames and leaves so poisonous that eating just one could kill a man, and a billboard for a surgeon who removed varicose veins. Traffic thickened and Terrence slowed as the downtown buildings rose in front of us. We snaked over the bridge across the river and as we came out of downtown Terrence opened up again and headed toward the airport and the Georgia border.

  We passed highway-side churches and a large industrial park and drove into the heavily wooded land north of the city. As we neared the airport we passed another industrial area and Terrence moved into the left lane and then whipped across the highway into the exit lane. But the exit was a tight cloverleaf and Terrence was going ninety miles an hour. He seemed to realize that he would never make it and jerked the wheel so he skidded on the shoulder gravel and returned to the highway.

  He sped up but I moved in close behind him. We drove north to the next exit and Terrence slowed, veered down the ramp, cut around a car at the stop sign, and turned. He was heading to the airport by the two-lane back road.

  The road passed some farms and sank back into thick pine forest. I hit the gas, cut into the oncoming lane and moved alongside the SUV. If I turned the wheel, I could end the chase for him and me both.

  A sign on the shoulder indicated that to get to the airport we needed to take a hard left at the next crossroad. We were moving too fast, but Terrence hit the brakes and I flew past. I watched in the rearview mirror as he tried to make the corner. The SUV slid sideways on to the roadside gravel, spun once and rolled down the embankment.

  When I turned around and pulled to the spot where the SUV had left the road, Terrence was still inside, spinning the tires, setting the car deep into the mire, so I got out and started down toward him. He got out and ran to the edge of the pine forest. I yelled after him. ‘Why are you running from me?’

  He stopped for just a moment and yelled, ‘Why are you trying to kill me?’ Then he ran into the woods.

  The ground was soft from yesterday’s rain. I slid down the embankment and followed him over a ditch, through a brake of switch cane and into the trees. The air was warm and dark. The forest floor was thick with pine needles, and fallen leaves blanke
ted wind-felled branches and sandy soil. Live oaks, scrub pines, bay trees and palms blocked out the sun. Terrence leaped over a fallen log about fifty yards in and disappeared. I ran after him, tripped over a branch, caught myself and ran again.

  We went for twenty minutes or more, tripping, sliding on damp leaves and running. When sweat soaked my shirt and blurred my vision, I slowed and yelled at him to stop.

  He kept going.

  I ran after him.

  The only sounds in the woods were our breathing and the swishing of our feet through leaves and pine needles. After a half hour Terrence finally slowed but when I got close he ran hard again so I slowed too and soon we were walking and running both, him fifty yards in front of me, never out of sight and never within reach. An hour passed and we went into a grove of scrub pine, planted years ago for a paper mill, then crossed the old logging road, now thick with saplings and weeds.

  We ran for a way along the road and then I stopped, unable to continue. I yelled, ‘I’m done,’ and sat on a spot of grass. He kept going another twenty yards or so and stopped too. I could see him panting. I could hear him. He eyed me warily and lowered himself to the ground. We sat apart, breathing heavily, sweating. Mosquitoes and deer flies hovered like a halo around my face. I yelled, ‘Why?’

  He sat silent for a long time, watching me. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Your mother, for Christ’s sake!’ There were tears in my eyes.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. ‘Fuck me.’ I got to my feet and stumbled toward him.

  He pushed himself up and ran again.

  I ran after him.

  Another mile in, the ground dipped and the soil became soft and wet. We slogged forward. He stopped once and leaned against a tree but as I neared he moved onward. Once, I stopped and he put thirty or fifty more yards between us but I never let him out of my sight. Never.

  We came out of the mire on to a dry grassy space as the afternoon light fell toward evening.

  ‘No more,’ I yelled. I sat down, close to despair, my clothes soaked with sweat.

  I expected him to keep going but he sat.

  I was hot and thirsty and knew he was too. There was no breeze, no sound but the high whining of a locust.

  Then my phone rang in my pocket. I jumped, fumbled for it, looked at the display and answered, ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Charles. ‘Are you anywhere that the police can find you?’

  I looked at the woods around me, looked at Terrence sitting across the clearing. ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘They’re looking for you. They’re convinced you did Belinda Mabry and the others.’

  I felt empty and exhausted. ‘How did this happen?’ I said.

  ‘They’ve placed you at Melchiori’s house two nights ago and in his hospital room last night. They’ve also placed you in Aggie’s room at the Luego Motel.’

  His words made me light-headed. ‘How did they do that?’

  ‘Someone saw us carrying her out of the motel room and called it in.’

  ‘They after you too?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘You’re the only one they named. The caller recognized you from the TV coverage of Belinda’s death.’

  ‘You should’ve taken Aggie to the hospital,’ I said.

  ‘Belinda Mabry’s house also just burned down. They think you lit it.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked, as if he could help.

  I mumbled to him about chasing Terrence across the city and into the woods.

  ‘Are you still with him?’ Charles asked.

  ‘He’s sitting fifty yards from me.’

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ he said.

  ‘He won’t let me get near him.’

  ‘Tell him I want to talk.’

  I called across the clearing. ‘I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you!’

  Terrence laughed derisively.

  I told Charles, ‘He’s laughing at you. Or me. Or both of us.’

  ‘I heard. Tell him again.’

  I said, ‘Charles wants to talk!’

  Terrence seemed to think about that. ‘Bring the phone halfway here, leave it and go back where you are.’

  I said to Charles, ‘Hold on a minute.’

  ‘Good man,’ Charles said.

  ‘Don’t stir him up,’ I said.

  I put the phone where Terrence told me to and went back to my spot in the grass. Terrence approached as if the phone were a trap, spoke into it and listened. Then he broke the back from the phone and threw the pieces in my direction.

  ‘Damn it!’ I yelled at him.

  He walked away.

  I started after him. ‘What did Charles say?’

  He kept going.

  TWENTY

  The ground beyond the grass clearing became soft and dropped into a shallow black-water swamp. We trudged ankle-deep past cypress knees, over roots, sludge and God knows what as the sun dipped low and the woods darkened. Night birds whisked through the branches.

  ‘You know what lives in this swamp?’ I yelled. Once or twice a year, visiting northerners, men hunting without permit, or hikers found themselves deep in the wetlands and got bitten by a snake or something else invisible and poisonous, and the sheriff’s department airlifted them out – those who had cell phones. Those without cell phones crawled out themselves or didn’t.

  Terrence kept going.

  I stepped on something hard – a branch, a bone, something. Terrence disappeared in the shadows and reappeared.

  ‘We’ll die out here!’ I yelled.

  Silently he arced to his left. For ten minutes he turned through the darkening woods before I realized he was taking us back to the clearing. A three-quarter moon was rising as we climbed, legs caked with swamp mud, back on to the grass. He crossed the clearing and sat facing me. I sat too. For a long time we stayed silent as the sky turned black and insects, frogs and birds began to make a low nocturnal hum. The moon cast a yellow light. Thirst and hunger gnawed at my throat and belly.

  I said, ‘When your mother and I met we were just kids but I’d never seen anyone like her and I’ve never seen anyone like her since.’

  He said nothing.

  I said, ‘She had no limits. There was nothing she wouldn’t do. That’s how it seemed to me then. And that was freeing to me because until I met her I was … cautious. Overly. I grew because of her. I lived. Do you understand?’

  For a while he was quiet. Then he said, ‘You screwed a girl when you were a teenager and you never got over it. That’s what I understand.’

  ‘It was love,’ I said.

  ‘It’s pathetic.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Between love and being pathetic? Yeah,’ he said. ‘There’s a big difference.’

  ‘I don’t think I want your opinion.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ he said.

  I laughed at this man, whose blood I shared, who’d killed his own mother and trussed her and wrapped her in a plastic bag like she was supermarket meat. I laughed, surrounded by miles of forest, sitting across a grass clearing from him – this man who I wanted to kill and save.

  When I stopped, we sat quietly again, eyes on each other in the moonlight. The sounds from the trees ebbed and flowed and the woods seemed to tighten on us. I was thirsty and hungry and felt a bone-deep fatigue. The moon cocked high in the sky and, although the night was clear for as far as I could see, distant thunder rumbled.

  I wondered about Terrence. What if I hadn’t been his father? Would that make any difference? I’d told Charles that he was mine, that he needed to be, and I felt that the past few days had made this much true.

  I called to him, ‘When I first met you, I didn’t recognize myself in you. I didn’t see it.’

  He said nothing and we fell back into silence.

  The heat, humidity and darkness clung to me. The moon shined, a single dull eye, three quarters open. I
t was nothing like the single eye of light on the approaching train engine on the last afternoon that Belinda and I spent together. She’d let her blouse fall between the railroad tracks. She’d unhooked her bra and let it fall too. I’d told her I loved her. She’d told me she loved me too. As the train had closed on us, its whistle blowing, she’d come, bucking like a terrible muscle. I’d ripped away and crawled down the embankment and she’d lain between the rails, her legs open, and waited for the train to take her. I’d opened my mouth to scream, and when it had seemed too late, when the train was yards or feet from her, she’d rolled off the tracks and on to the other embankment. Away from me. Away. With a freight train between us. Because – I knew then and still knew – there was no other way to divide from each other.

  No other way. Terrence knew nothing about the past.

  The night flaked away. The forest noises rose to a high pitch, then lowered as animals found mates or prey, and for a while all was silent except our breathing and our beating hearts. The moon hung overhead and began to descend to the west and sometime I drifted into an unpeaceful half-sleep in which the darkness and moonlight and the noise and silence blurred and left me in a spot between the world and unconsciousness.

  Soft footsteps woke me. I opened my eyes and saw Terrence a few yards from me. The moonlight shined on his face. He held a heavy branch. I leaped up and he dropped the branch and ran back to his spot in the clearing. It happened, it seemed, without a sound.

  I stood in the night. ‘You were going to kill me.’

  He asked, ‘What did you expect?’

  A good question. What did I expect? I still didn’t know what I would do to him when I got my hands on him. I’d chased him across the city and through the woods all afternoon and into the night. That was more than enough to make him think he needed to defend himself by crushing my head while I slept. But he’d run from me as soon as he’d seen me outside his burning house, and he’d already seemed to think that I was dangerous to him. He would’ve heard the stories about me beating the men who’d attacked the Honduran students and breaking the ribs of the man who was riding with a Garfield doll after the rape and killing of a six-year-old boy. But those were old stories and they hadn’t seemed to worry him when I’d first talked with him.