White Birch Graffiti

by Jeff Van Valer

  WHITE BIRCH GRAFFITI

  Jeff Van Valer

  To the importance of old friends.

  CHAPTER 1

  ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

  January 20, 2000

  Thursday evening

  Cornelius “Neil” Shepherd, J.D., Ph.D., professor of law, civil rights historian, and modest local celebrity slipped on the ice and almost dropped his daughter’s birthday cake. With a quick balancing move, his arm shifted just so under the box, saving it.

  “That was a close one!” said Esther, who held her bakeshop’s back door open for him.

  It was getting late and was well beyond dark. Neil had spent the last ten or fifteen minutes watching the news across the bakeshop’s counter. Neither he nor Esther could peel themselves away from the screen. The White House had another scandal, and this one was big. Just in time for the primary elections, the incumbent suspended his campaign. Rumors—first of impeachment then resignation—soared. A pungent hysteria and partisan finger-pointing captivated the nation.

  “Maybe you should run for president, Professor Shepherd,” Esther said.

  “I don’t know about that. Presidents need to do more than keep from slipping on the ice.”

  She laughed.

  “Besides, this daddy-daughter thing is much more of a challenge.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen today.”

  “Oh, boy. You got’cher hands full.”

  The cake said, Happy Birthday, Danielle! Chocolate cake, lavender icing, and orange lettering. Just what she asked for. Why those colors, he didn’t know, and it wasn’t his position to judge.

  Esther adjusted her grip on the door. “She’s a lucky girl to have you for a father.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You could teach most daddies a thing or two.”

  An icy gust stole through the alley.

  “Be careful on your way home.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And you do the same.”

  The weighty metal door clanged shut. Neil stood quietly in the dark alleyway. Still fearing for the integrity of the cake, he mumbled to his car, “Door’s not gonna open itself.” He tested the ice with one foot. As though on cue, his new cell phone, buried in his coat pocket with the car keys, played its tinny, electronic rendition of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue.” He let it ring.

  On my way home, hon.

  His objectives were many. To protect the cake was paramount. The modest, secondary aims included staying on his feet, getting home safely and on time, and defending ten-year-old Clarence from all the teenage girls. Or maybe he’d defend them from Clarence. He’d find out when he got there. Either way, answering the phone, at least right now, didn’t rate at all.

  “Professor Shepherd?” a gentle voice said behind him.

  “Sir,” Neil said as the phone stopped ringing. It has to be a student, he thought. How’d he find me here?

  “If I could borrow a moment of your time?”

  The younger man revealed himself. He wore what looked like a black surgical cap and gown. He had odd, baggy, plastic gloves on. Strange outfit for an ice storm.

  “All right,” Neil said, his mind racing for reasons he couldn’t articulate.

  “Toccata and Fugue” started again.

  “I’ll do what I can to help,” he said to the young man, “under the circumst—”

  “It’s nothing personal, brother.” In an instant the man pushed his left arm behind Neil’s coat and around his back. A plastic-covered right hand shot in and up, punching Neil just beneath the angle of his ribs. The box fell to the ground.

  The cake!

  The punch knocked Neil’s wind out, and he bent forward. He’d never been hit that way before. The pain was awful, the punch feeling sharper than he would have predicted. He couldn’t catch his breath. Dark circles plopped hollowly on the upside-down cake box.

  He dropped to his knees, and the stranger knelt down with him.

  “That’s the way,” the young man said. “Just take it easy. Don’t fight it.”

  Something tasted like iron as Neil coughed a dark splatter onto the white box. Neil had wondered for thirty years what it felt like to be stabbed. He figured maybe he had it coming. Maybe they all had it coming for keeping the secret. Zeke and Ted flitted through his mind before he focused on his wife and kids.

  “That must be Danielle’s cake,” the man said.

  Wha—?

  Neil’s vision constricted. He could only see the other man’s face. Bright, wispy points of light meandered inward from the darkening periphery. Between the surgical cap and mask mourned the eyes of a man who seemed more fit to help another off the ice, not stab him to death.

  “There you go, now,” the young man whispered.

  The man’s nurturing tone revealed a little curiosity, even an air of courtesy. In another second or two, Neil lost all sight and collapsed onto Danielle’s cake.

  In full blindness, the last thing he pictured was his daughter seeing him there. She was crying.

  I’m so sorry, baby.

  ~~~

  Mr. Gray gave a few upward pumps with the fillet knife before letting go of the professor. He’d shoved the blade in and up, all eight inches of it, just under the end of the sternum, wondering if its tip made it through the heart, into the aorta.

  His partner, Lewis, stepped out of the deepest shadow and whispered, “You trying to make friends with these people?”

  “Shut up,” Mr. Gray said.

  “Seriously. You don’t have to talk to ’em.”

  “This one’s different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Never mind. Let’s get outta here.”

  Mr. Gray pulled out the knife and stood, reflexively checking the lot for witnesses. The alley was dark and quiet. He took one step back, leaving the professor facedown and motionless. With his left hand, Mr. Gray pulled the little trash bag off the right, turning it inside out to contain the knife. He followed a set of practiced steps, disrobing the disposable gear. In seconds, he was standing in street clothes, holding a clean, plastic bundle ready for a dumpster in another town.

  The partners got into their minivan, which hid around the corner. They drove away from the dark lot, turning on the lights as they accelerated up Ashley Street. Blending into the modest traffic on Huron, they headed out of town.

  CHAPTER 2

  Emergency Room

  Blue County Hospital

  Blue River, Indiana

  January 21, 2000

  Friday morning

  “Are you okay?” The female voice was urgent and slithered into one of Ted’s forest fire dreams. “Dr. Gables? It’s Joni. Is everything all right?” The Karen fragrance—something like perfume, but only lightly—turned rank, like burning hair. Lloyd lay motionless, his face blistering, inches above the scintillating, orange and white coals. Flames crawled across his shirt and jeans.

  Ted jerked and felt a warm hand on his shoulder. Kathryn. Karen? Whoever it was kneeled next to him, an arm’s length away. Something wasn’t right. He reached for the voice and blinked once or twice. The lights were dim. The silent TV screen flickered through the aging cycle of BREAKING! cable news.

  “There he is,” she said to him in a bedroom voice of pure, tasty butterscotch.

  Ted gripped his wife’s toned upper arm and squeezed gently, pulling her toward him.

  “Whoa,” Joni said, reeling back. “Hold on, tiger. We’re at work. It’s Joni.”

  Ted gasped. “Joni.” He pulled his arm away and rolled onto his back. The crappy hospital pillow he’d been using fell from the old couch. “Jesus. I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay. You didn’t get a hold of anything good.”

  “But
still… that’s awful.”

  “Adorable is what it is.” She patted his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. The ID badge hanging from the bottom of her V-neck scrub top wiggled as she stood. “Sorry to intrude, but we’ve been trying to call you from the nurses’ station. Looks like you unplugged your phone again.”

  “Guilty,” he said.

  “I’ve learned your tricks over the years. This time, I came into your room because you didn’t answer my knock. With all the commotion in here, I’d swear you were seizing. You actually scared me a little. Lemme turn on the lamp.”

  Ted awoke fully. He was in the on-duty ER doc’s room, a place he’d known for thirteen years of night shifts. The LED desk clock said 4:58 a.m.

  “You know,” Joni said, reaching up the lamp’s skirt and fiddling for the knob, “I really ought to turn on the fluorescents. That’ll wake you up.”

  The lamp’s soft light caught Joni from the neck down and turned her into an artist’s rendering of light and shadow. Rock hard in some places and curvy and soft in others, she leaned her butt into the desk and rested her hands on the edges. She crossed one ankle over the other and took a deep breath.

  Ted had worked with Joni for five or six years. She was a good nurse, both tough and gentle. She’d assisted him through a million pediatric upper-respiratory cases, a thousand confused elderly people, and a few-hundred suture jobs on lacerations. Heaps of broken bones, heart attacks, strokes. A few handfuls of families grieving over sudden deaths, even a couple of long, rigid items mired in men’s rectums. Ted and Joni had chit-chatted over almost all of the cases. He’d even say they were close.

  The ER staff chided the two of them for finishing each others sentences. Outside work, they ran into each other occasionally. She’d smoked him in a few triathlons out at the reservoir. Their mutual respect and admiration were true. Joni was welcome to knock on Ted’s call-room door to wake him.

  But she’d never stepped into the room.

  He didn’t mind her coming in, since she was worried, but he knew how it’d look to the staff. Especially after the pneumatic door closer did its work. Everybody at the nurses’ station would wonder what the two of them were doing behind the closed door.

  “Joni.”

  “Mmm-hm.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did I just grope you?”

  Her lips thinned slightly as the corners of her mouth turned up. “No. I said you didn’t.”

  “You’d lie to protect me.”

  “Yes I would,” she said softly, “especially to protect you from yourself. But in this case? Scout’s honor. You didn’t grope me.” Her smile widened and revealed her teeth.

  Self-consciousness grabbed him as he remembered from somewhere that in men, Rapid Eye Movement sleep generally results in penile erection. His scrub pants wouldn’t hide a thing. He heaved himself into a sitting position and rubbed his face with his hands, hoping to God and Jesus he didn’t have a tent down there. Not in front of Joni, of all people.

  “This old man’s tired,” he said. No way was he going to stand up with her in the room.

  “Sounded like an awful dream, T—Dr. Gables.”

  “Happens sometimes.” Hell. It happens all the time. Fires and blood and thunderstorms and knives.

  Still leaning against the desk, Joni folded her arms across her chest. “So,” she said, “who’s Zeke?”

  If Ted had been drinking coffee, he’d have sprayed it out in a brown mist. “I said ‘Zeke?’”

  “And Hoss.”

  Oh, God. HOSS. There was a name Ted didn’t want to think about. Neil and Zeke, yes. But Hoss? Huh-uh.

  “Just some old friends of mine,” he said. The idea of uttering those names in a dream worried him. If he refused to spill a thirty-year-old secret while he was awake, he might just do it in his sleep.

  He yawned. “Hey, Joni, gimme a minute. Will you, please?”

  “You bet,” she said, standing quickly, business-like. “Your drunk facial lac’s waiting for you, cleaned up and ready to suture. I’ll be out front.”

  She opened the door. As she did, Betty, the receptionist and Emergency Department gossip, walked by, cradling her latest can of Diet Coke in her stubby fingers. She stopped, facing the open door. Her jaw even dropped a little. Betty’s glare moved from Ted to Joni, then back to Ted. The lack of any words was awful. A ghost of a smile transformed Betty’s face as she went back to her desk, where she belonged.

  Joni exited, and the door drifted shut. The second it latched, Ted checked his pants. No tent. At least not now, anyway. If Betty saw something like that, with Joni in the room? He didn’t even want to think about it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ted stood and re-tied his scrub pants at the waist. The cable news repeated images of an anguished, caught-red-handed president. Lifting a hand to slap the power knob on the television set, he stopped when the news broke to a certain commercial.

  It was a new version of an old ad. On screen were two men standing side by side. One looked like a seasoned CEO, and the other a police chief in honor-guard dress. The two men shook hands, then faced the camera.

  The suit said, “Partnering for your home, office…”

  “…and family,” the officer answered.

  The camera zoomed out. In unison, the two men said, “McDaniel Security,” then faded to black.

  A schematic padlock appeared on its side. In the lock’s body were the letters Mc. The looping shackle formed the capital D, and -aniel Security followed to complete the company logo. McDaniel Security was a private company well known to grant equipment—from radar guns to uniforms—to small law-enforcement departments across the country. It maintained one endowment, the Patrick McDaniel Foundation, which, after one nationwide search a year, provided one outstanding and needy department with all new cruisers and interceptor vehicles. According to urban legend, the company even granted fat salaries to some police chiefs and sheriffs in counties surrounding St. Louis, the McDaniel Security’s headquarters. Accusations of McDaniel bribing law-enforcement spanned Ted’s entire adult life, though none of it had ever been proven.

  Ted slapped the TV’s on-off knob. He had no reason to feel any dread when he saw the commercial, but he did. Maybe because Betty was going to gossip about the fictional affair between Joni and Ted. Maybe the next big heart attack and all the stress that came with it was going to roll into the ER. And maybe, the long history of forest fire dreams had built dread into a kind of home for Ted’s expectations.

  He stepped into the room’s private bathroom. As the water warmed, he gawked at himself in the mirror. He looked every bit of forty-two with a few years thrown in.

  He didn’t blame Joni for entering his quarters, not if he’d been carrying on the way she said, but after this episode of the Ted ’n’ Joni Show?

  The gossips’ll go wild.

  Splashing water on his face, he wondered how long, in a town the size of Blue River, Indiana, it’d take for the news to reach the courthouse. The story would leave the hospital thusly: Dr. Gables and Joni were alone in his lounge at five in the morning. By the time the news flowed down the street and spilled south on Washington, the tale would include something like My lands, she was in his room for fifteen minutes… And even before the culmination of five-plus years of Ted ’n’ Joni yarns reached the courthouse steps, the gossips would swear on the bible they’d heard Joni climax through the lounge’s closed door. It was just a matter of time. Kathryn Gables, the county prosecutor and Ted’s wife, would soon hear the faux news of her husband’s secret affair.

  “Friggin’ people,” he mumbled.

  Drying his face with a towel, Ted had a hard time shaking off the last of his dream. He had always assumed the past would drift away and be forgotten. But it hadn’t and wouldn’t. The summer of 1970 was like an untreated case of syphilis. In dreamland and the waking world, after thirty years, it was clear. What happened when he was twelve just wasn’t
going away.

  Ted’s mind raced into the labyrinths of his accrued knowledge to escape those dark places. Immersing himself in good patient care had long ago become a tool he used to distract himself from the old stuff. But no matter how many lives he had saved in his chosen career, his thoughts wandered back to summer camp, to one he hadn’t.

  Sometimes, those thoughts took hold by overwhelming force. One day in his teens, while watching Wild Kingdom with his dad, Ted noticed in particular how prey fell to a trapdoor spider. Some thoughts about White Birch Camp were like that. Ugly and frightening, his own trapdoor spider burst forth from time to time, wrapped its spindly legs around him, and yanked him into his mind’s darkest places, where his big deception hid.

  Ted, you gotta tell Dad. Do it soon. You’re already telling the story in your sleep.

  Kathryn hadn’t ever said anything, but she was bound to have heard something after thirteen years of sleeping next to him.

  He stepped out of his room and into the scrutinizing looks of the gossips. Joni stood at the nurse station, the only one looking somewhere else.

  “He lives,” came the deep, droll voice of an x-ray technician.

  Ted held up his hands as though arriving to a group of adoring fans. “Morning,” he said to the group. “Where are we going, Joni?”

  “Exam One.”

  Ted poured some viscous coffee into a styrofoam cup and walked toward Exam Room 1. Joni followed.

  “Good weekend planned?” she asked.

  “You mean other than coming back tonight for more of this?”

  She dropped her chin and laughed. “Tell me about it. I meant after that.”

  He figured Joni would hit the health club and tone up one curve or another. “Nothing planned,” he said. “Couple days off, lying around home—” He stopped walking and said, “I forgot my stethoscope in the room.”

  “It’s just a simple suture job. You don’t need it.”