Scary Creek

by Thomas Cater

  I wasn’t sure what I stood to gain, but I knew the body of that dead child did not belong anywhere, but with its mother.

  “Maybe a few points with Elinore,” I said. “She’s never seen her child, never known it; I think they belong together.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re crazy, you know? You really are.”

  “I’ve got to protect my investment,” I said, trying to lighten the impact of his accusation.

  I loaded the tools in the van and climbed into the cab.

  “Want to come along? I could use some help,” I said in an effort to redeem myself rather than placate him. He shook his head, as I knew he would.

  “You’re going to do it now, in the middle of the day?”

  “No, not right now; I’ve got an appointment with a Harmon on Orchard Street. If you want to help, I’ll come back.”

  I could see there was no chance of him taking me up on the offer, so I made it easy. “I’ll return at 7 pm and blow the horn.”

  He nodded, relieved to be rid of me. It had to be done; there was no other way. Everything now relied upon getting the baby and its mother together.

  Halfway out of the drive, a pickup pulled in behind me. Walter jumped out and ran to the front of the van waving a book in his hand. I rolled down the side window.

  “Here it is,” he said. “This book has everything in it about stone walls, castles, prisons, ancient and modern. I turned the corners down on pages I want you to read.”

  He passed the book to me through the window. I flipped through while stopping at several dog-eared corners to study pictures of masonry. There were striking similarities between the pictures: an ancient fort in Peru, a wall in Mexico, a prison in France, a bunker in Germany and a wall in Berlin. My eyes were unable to see distinctions.

  The photo of a man standing beside a laboring mason was Walter Ulbricht, a dictator in East Germany and surrogate for the Russians. He was watching a mason install a massive stone for the Berlin Wall. The date was 1949, the man with the elevated trowel was short and possessed a head full of black kinky hair and dark eyes; he looked like a gypsy.

  Ulbricht…Alberich…?

  “I’d like to keep this book for a day or two, Mr. Kepler. I want to show the pictures to Mrs. Abacas.

  “Keep it as long as you like,” he said. “It’s a library book and due back in two weeks.”

  I placed the book on the seat and backed into the street.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Orchard Street was near the abandoned railroad station. It was a small, narrow street rapidly becoming Vandalia’s only inner-city slum. There were four houses and a Southern State Cooperative standing side-by-side. Two of the houses were derelict. One was a tenement and the other, number 34, was Louis Harmon’s residence.

  I knocked on the door and heard a child stampeding across the floor to the front door. The shrill voice of a girl growing old too quickly shouted for him to “Stop running!”

  A five-year-old runny-nosed kid wearing a dime-store cowboy hat pushed a plastic pistol through a torn hole in the screen door.

  “Your granddad home?” I asked.

  He vanished leaving the front door open. I invited myself in. It was not a warm or comfortable room, only by the most rudimentary standards. The few pieces of worn furniture looked as though they were salvaged from a junk shop. There was also a strong odor of cooking grease mingling with the unpleasantness of roach spray and grime.

  The girl stepped into the dining room. She looked as worn and neglected as the rest of the house. She didn’t seem surprised to see me standing near the open door.

  “My name is Charles,” I said quickly. “I belief your granddad is expecting me.”

  “Pa!” she shouted, without taking her eyes off me. “Man here to see you.”

  He returned her summons.

  “You from the welfare?” she asked.

  I shook my head, realizing that many expectations had been dashed with that bit of uneventful news.

  I told her I was interested in looking at pictures her father owned. Her lips pantomimed the words.

  “Your Uncle Frank,” I said, curious about the blood relationship.

  “You the man who called yesterday?” she asked, angling a closer look in my direction.

  I nodded. A smile awakened the corners of her mouth and revealed two rows of snuff-darkened teeth. I tried a smile, but to no avail.

  “Pa, you coming?” she shouted, shifting her gaze.

  A gray-haired man in his eighties wearing a checked shirt and baggy green corduroy trousers shuffled into the hall. He was wiping his nose with a red hanky.

  “I’m coming, Shell, you don’t have to shout. There’s enough noise in this house.”

  She took his arm and guided him toward a rocking chair, which he grasped.

  “Come on in and sit, Mr. Case; we’ll have a cup of tea” he said. “Shell!”

  “Yes, Pa,” she replied in a gentle voice and vacated the room. She left him coasting under his own power. I caught his elbow and offered support.

  “She’s my granddaughter,” he said “One fine little lady. She’s been with me for five years; divorced. Some red neck got her in a family way and then left town, or went to jail. I wished to Christ I was younger. I’d beat some sense into these damned hoops. They think you can screw anything and damn the consequences.”

  He paused in the doorway to assess whether he was able to continue.

  “You married, Case?” he wanted to know.

  “Divorced,” I said, liberating myself from any potential arrangements with Shelly. He shook his head.

  “Any chil’ern?” he asked squinting through one eye.

  “None,” I said, dismissing all cause for blame. He shook that gray, mangy head.

  “When will people ever learn?” he asked.

  “When it’s too late to make a difference,” I replied.

  He lowered himself into the chair and pointed toward a padded easy chair.

  “Have a seat and tell me again what you’re looking for,” he said, blowing into his hanky.

  “I’m trying to find out what I can about your father’s brother, Frank Harmon,” I said, as if I were inquiring about my own relatives.

  “He kin of yours?” The old man asked.

  “I’m inquiring for a friend,” I said, trying to evade lengthy explanations, which seemed to satisfy, but not enough.

  “I told you,” he said. “I don’t know much. He wasn’t with us very long.”

  “You said you had pictures,” I insisted.

  He thought about it, dabbed his nose a few times with the handkerchief and called aloud once more. “Shell!” he shouted.

  “I got the family album out and started going through it.” The old man said. “I found pictures of Frank. One is clear, but the others are all faded. I wish I could be more help. Shell!”

  She appeared in the room, a plastic quart container of milk and two cups in her hands.

  “Go up to my room, darlin’, and get that album on the table by my bed. It’s open to pictures this man wants to see.”

  She set the milk carton down between the two stained cups and tea bags.

  “Water’s not hot yet,” she said, “I’ll get it for you when I come back.”

  I nodded. She went through the hall and up the stairs. The old man watched until she disappeared. He mumbled a comment about trusting her, cash missing from his billfold, the loss of two pension checks and decided to time her absence.

  I wondered what else he might have and not want her to see; a tin of snuff, a pack of cigarettes, maybe pictures of granny in the nude?

  “What’s your stake in this, Case?” he asked, as if we were negotiating.

  I was weary of justifying my interest in ghost stories and the town’s history. I decided to appeal to the greed in every man. I thought it might provide him some satisfaction to know that at least one member of his family had a brush with power and wealth, even if it may have
caused his demise.

  “I think it’s possible that your uncle Frank was married to Elinore Ryder. If you and your grandkids could substantiate that connection, you might just possibly fall heir to whatever is left of the Ryder fortune,” which sounded strange coming from me, since the house could possibly have been all that remained of any kind of legacy.

  He was silent while the words settled in his mind. I knew it would not sink to any depth. Wealth would be nothing but a vague illusory dream. He’d been around too long and knew the poor were never intended to inherit anything but faith and grief.

  “Elinore Ryder?” He said, “The old maid who lived in the house on Scary Creek?”

  I nodded.

  “That can’t be; she was an old maid. If he was married, why would he leave?”

  “That’s part of the riddle I haven’t been able to answer,” I said. “I hoped you might be able to help.”

  His eyes tried to focus on forgotten things from the past.

  “I can’t help you,” he said. “I know nothing about him. I was just a kid myself.”

  Shelly returned with the album. She held it open and let it rest between us. Then she kneeled on the floor and leaned against the old man’s leg. He flipped through the pages.

  “This is my dad and a friend of his. This is a friend and this is Frank. It’s the best one. You can even make out his features. Dapper, ain't he; with that little bowler on his head and that tight fittin’ suit. He’s a good lookin’ man, maybe in his early to mid twenties?”

  It was a breathtaking surprise. “Jeez,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” The old man asked.

  “That picture of your uncle…it looks familiar.”

  “My dad’s younger brother,” the old man said.

  “Mr. Harmon, your uncle looks a lot someone I knew … when I was his age.”

  He readjusted his glasses, took a long, hard critical look at me and the picture and mumbled. He studied the photo, a scornful expression on his face.

  “It’s possible,” he said, “but he’s been dead a long time.”

  I pressed closer to the photo album and examined the picture. “Do you know where this picture was taken?”

  The old man narrowed his eyes and tried to identify the background. “No, can’t say that I do. That house doesn’t look familiar at all. Frank was a great one for getting around the country.”

  “I think I know,” I said. “It looks like a townhouse in D.C., although I don’t know what he would have been doing there, unless…”

  “Unless what?” The old man asked.

  “… Unless he was into spiritualism.”

  I lifted the picture out of the album.

  “Would you mind if I had a copy made? I’d like to compare this with some of my old photos. To me, the resemblance is…uncanny.”

  “I don’t see that it’s a problem,” he said, “if you bring it back.”

  I agreed with a handshake and thanked him. Shelly concealed a smile by covering her mouth and teeth with her hand. I climbed into the van.

  *

  I was driving down the road thinking of Frank and Amy Taylor’s use of his and my name. What if we were related? The Hindus believed in reincarnation, but that was too simple; life is was more complicated. I’d seen so many things and so many faces, it was getting difficult to separate reality from the past and what I imagined. I stopped thinking about it and suddenly realized I was driving in the wrong direction to go to the hospital.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Her reception was not as warm or enthusiastic as it had been in the past. Her lips were thin and tightly drawn and her eyes, well, they were hard. I was mystified.

  “You are the most irresponsible human being I have ever met,” she said, before I had a chance to tell her the good news.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. I could not imagine what I had neglected or forgotten to do. I wanted to apologize, but wasn’t sure where to begin, which made me wonder why I was feeling so guilty.

  “If I am, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” she scowled, “but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  If it did not matter anymore, why was I hearing about it?

  “What did I do, or not do?”

  She screwed her eyes down into narrow slits and burned them into mine. “Does the name Joanne Zimmerly mean anything to you?”

  A light went on and I wished it hadn’t. “Zimmerly? Yeah, I think so. Why?” I asked.

  “That bitch is out to get me!” She shouted. “She’s called here six times in the last 24 hours, and every time she’s given me the tongue-lashing of my life, and I don’t know her! Whoever she is, she wants me out of this hospital and she’s going to do everything in her power to get me fired. Do you want to know something? I think she can do it. Do you mind telling me what the hell happened between you two?”

  “Balls,” I said. “That woman is deeply troubled. She’s a teaching 'doc' at the university and doesn’t like people asking questions about mental illness. I visited her and asked if she knew anything about Grier. I showed her the paper he wrote.”

  “You didn’t tell her you got it from me, did you?”

  “No, I told her I found it among papers that were stored in a house I purchased.”

  “That’s all you said?

  I wagged my head. Connie breathed easier.

  “That’s a relief. Are you through with Grier’s journals?”

  I nodded again and laid them on the edge of her desk.

  “Good, I’ll put them back where they belong,” she said.

  I pushed the books across her desk. “So what else did Miss Zimmerly say?” I asked embarrassed by my own curiosity.

  “She said she was going to the top, to Dr. Jerome Weismann in New York.”

  “What will he do?” I asked, anxious about the possibility of some greater authority on the Ryders taking over my little inquiry. What made me think others would be interested?

  “Probably nothing,” she said. “He doesn’t like being an administrator. It’s a political expediency, something he has to do to qualify for something else. He’ll probably be as surprised to hear from her as I was to hear that you were a ‘liberal democrat, an anti-intellectual and a trouble maker from the governor’s office’.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “You think I made it up?”

  I was beginning to feel sorry for the problems I had created for Miss Zimmerly.

  “How do you suppose clever folk like her get so bent out of shape?”

  “It has to do with ‘persona’, a term professionals use to hide behind the image they have of themselves,” Connie said.

  I couldn’t have agreed more. “You should have seen this woman,” I said. “Nothing but class; she dressed like a model, probably went to some yuppie school. She had the makings of a noble face, if she’d done something with it. Her mind however was a slum ghetto. I’ll bet she longs -- deep down inside -- to jump out of every open window she passes.”

  “She couldn’t have been that terrible,” Connie said, but with growing interest.

  I sensed something coming and thought I’d change the subject before she turned it against me.

  “Well, she’ll probably run to fat as she ages.”

  “Why, did you take her to lunch?” Connie asked.

  I laughed. “Are you kidding? She threw me out of her office in five minutes flat.”

  “Yes, she said you were there only long enough to expose yourself. What did she mean by that?”

  I shrugged and spread my palms to the sky. Under no circumstances would I have exposed myself to Zimmerly. She would have anticipated that and been ready with a straight razor.

  “Anything else interesting happen while you were out of town?” she asked.

  Many interesting things were happening, but that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. In fact, I gathered from her voice that she had something to say and did not want to hear a word out of me.

  “No
t much,” I said, “Anything new happen in your life?”

  I couldn’t believe how inane small talk could get. Here I was, standing on the brink of discovering for the first time whether life and death were mutable, or was it as common as a traffic accident.

  She was silent for a moment, licking envelopes, which concerned me. A solemn expression gathered at the corners of her mouth.

  “Well, how about it?” I felt compelled to ask.

  “Jeffrey’s father came back,” she said.

  That was neither a sudden nor a surprising revelation. For all I knew, he could have been coming and going for the past five years.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means we won’t be able to see each other,” she said.

  I disliked being treated like a game fish: played, hooked and allowed to run, and then abandoned to die in the sun. I felt regret stir inside me, but it did not last. It was that insidious territoriality in men. In fact, it seemed to dissipate in a breath.

  “Where did Jeffrey’s father come back from?”

  “He’s been working on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf. He made enough money for a down payment on a house in Louisiana and wants us to live with him.”

  “I think a child should be with both parents,” I said, “if it’s possible.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that because I wasn’t sure…”

  “Sure about what, Jeffrey’s father?” I asked, angry with myself for being so understanding, though in a strange way, this is how I expected it to end.

  “I love him,” she said, “but I don’t’ know if I can trust him. He wasn’t always that way. I think it was not being able to find work with dignity that made him unfaithful. Always waiting for life to get better only made things worse. West Virginia has always been hard on her people. It seems that politicians and parasites feeding off people make things worse. That’s why the ones with pride usually leave. It’s not in them to sell out for a hand out. Men like Jeffrey would rather leave than accept anything less.”

  “Young men are like that,” I said, “intolerably proud, but easily swayed from obligations and responsibilities.”

  “Do you think it will work out?” she asked.