Cards in the Cloak

by Jeremy Bursey

  ***

  With a newborn at home and a tired wife stuck caring for him by herself, Norman resolved to check only the leads that would get him home by the weekend. He decided to keep his route to the ones closest to Chicago for now. Even though his desire to resolve this mystery had been eating at him after nearly thirty years, he knew that life would’ve been worse for him if he were to forsake his family for this quest, so he had to make the firm decision, in the driver seat of his brand new 1946 Ford coupe convertible, that he would devote only the time it would take to get him to Sunday before he’d call it a session and head home. As a husband who worked all the time, and a new father who didn’t want a future stepfather taking care of his son, he held this decision fast. Ultimately, he just needed to cover as much ground as possible and work as fast as he could to knock out as many of the names off the October 23rd list as he could.

  As he passed through Maryland, on his way to the Midwest, he checked the local roadmaps for support. His first goal was to reach Springfield, Illinois. It was closest to home, and in the event that getting information were to lead to a detailed investigation and take longer than expected, he needed a close proximity to Chicago in his favor. But he didn’t expect bad weather in Ohio to slow him down. He also didn’t expect the flat tire in Indiana, which he’d gotten from a nail that had blown across the road in the Ohio storm. By the time he’d gotten to Springfield, it was already Friday night. He had just one day to finish business.

  The man he was looking for was Gregory Hutchins—or rather, the person he was looking for was the relative of Gregory Hutchins. The profile that the War Department had on him was minimal, just a basic bio on where he lived, who his next of kin were, and his approximate date and place of death. The time stamp was fuzzy, given that war waited for no doctor to call his time of death and no historian to document it in a timely or accurate manner. The list was very much an idea and not necessarily a rule. But he was willing to go with it. It was a step in the right direction. If Gregory Hutchins and Maxie McWalter were the same person, then it was the only step he needed to take.

  He found the address beside Hutchins’s name nuzzled in a quiet neighborhood on the south end of Springfield. It was a two-story house, made of old wood, with several stripped honeylocust trees leaning their naked branches toward the roof. The grass was hidden under the season’s last coat of snow. An old sedan from the ‘30s was parked in the driveway, also hidden under a blanket of snow.

  Norman waited for several minutes on the front porch, huddling into his jacket, as he waited for the house’s resident to greet him. The old female voice kept calling to him to wait, but it didn’t seem to move any closer. Just to speed the lady up, he knocked on her front door—he was, after all, on a timetable—but it didn’t seem to change her pace in the slightest. She appeared in the door almost five minutes later, her best Sunday hat on her head, unusual since it was Friday night, and a cup of hot coffee in her hand.

  “Coffee don’t heat itself,” she told him, when she opened the door. “Who are you?”

  “Norman Jensen,” he said, with a slight bow. He studied her face for just a couple of seconds, trying to assess who this woman might be. She was much older than him, at least seventy, maybe even eighty. She walked with her back straight, but her skin was sagging, and her teeth were rotting. However old she was, she was certainly old enough to be his mother. Therefore, he assumed that she was old enough to be Hutchins’s (McWalter’s?) mother. “I think I might’ve been a friend of your son’s.”

  She wrinkled her brow at him.

  “Oh boy, has Milton gotten himself in trouble again? Can’t bail him out anymore. Truman’s not giving me enough money for that.”

  Norman shook his head.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’m here about Gregory.”

  He raised his eyebrows to test her recognition. Even though he hadn’t outright asked if he had gotten the right residence, he still needed to imply the question. He didn’t want this trip to fail before it really got going.

  The old woman frowned. Then she shook her head.

  “You’re thirty years too late if you’re looking for Gregory,” she said.

  Norman felt a burst of relief. She knew whom he was talking about. That was good news.

  “Ma’am, I was wondering if I could talk to you about him. I didn’t know him for very long, but I’m thinking about my youth and the people who changed it, and I just wanted to know about some of the things I’d never gotten a chance to ask.”

  She gave it some thought. Then she held the door open wider and let him in.

  “You can have a seat in the living room while I get you a cup of coffee,” she said. “Watch out for Trigger, my dog. He’s nice to me, but he bites most strangers. He’ll most likely go for your hand or forearm. Hopefully he won’t.”

  Norman paused in the doorway before taking a second step.

  “And if he does?”

  “Just let me know,” she said, with her back turned to him. “I have bandages in the kitchen. Just take me a couple minutes to get ‘em.”

  Fortunately, this dog of hers didn’t make an appearance when he sat down, so he stretched out in the easy chair feeling fearless.

  While he waited for Hutchins’s mother to return with the coffee, he glanced at the many photos she had standing in strategic places around the room. Many of them featured the same dark haired young man with the angular face and sharp nose. It was difficult to see them in detail from where he sat, so Norman got out of his chair and paced the room.

  “Do you like your coffee black?” the old woman shouted from the kitchen.

  “Certainly,” he shouted. “But I’ll drink it however you make it.”

  He plucked one portrait off the mantelpiece. The young man was looking off to the right in profile. The photo was sepia toned, and the background was empty. Just a basic photo, classic to early twentieth century form. He screwed his eyes in thought. He couldn’t remember this guy to save his life.

  The old woman came out with the coffees and saw him staring at the photo. She set her coffee down by a rocking chair.

  “That’s my Milton,” she said. “My oldest. Last I checked, he was running with the mob.”

  Norman set the photo back on the mantelpiece, relieved. No wonder he hadn’t recognized this guy. But he didn’t keep his peace for long. He noticed that the other photos were more recently taken, many of them family portraits involving a slightly younger version of her, a man clearly twenty years older than the other men in the picture—probably the old woman’s husband—Milton, a woman standing next to Milton, and three children. Other photos consisted of just the old lady and the old man. Some were just of her grandchildren (if that’s who they were). Some photos weren’t of people at all, but of landscapes. But none featured another man of similar age to Milton.

  When Norman returned to the easy chair and sat down, he took a sip of his coffee, swirled it in his mouth as the question assaulting his need for understanding swirled in his mind, and then he dared to ask the question that was nagging at him.

  “How come you don’t have any photos of Gregory?” he asked.

  She set her coffee on the small table beside her.

  “Oh, but I do,” she said. “Just not out here.”

  “How come?”

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “Because I don’t like to feel pain.”

  Norman leaned forward to show her his interest.

  “May I see the photos of him? For my memories?”

  She leaned toward him.

  “I keep them locked up in a trunk in the attic. Not the easiest to get to.”

  Norman leaned back. This was going to be more difficult than he thought.

  “How do you remember if you keep them locked away?”

  “I don’t keep them locked away. I can still get to them. It’s just more difficult than what’s worth my while.”

  “Okay, but why? Don’t you want to remember your son?�
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  She leaned back, took her coffee cup to her bosom and held it there as she thought about how to answer his question.

  “I do remember him. And it brings me pain.”

  “Would you mind if I had a look at the trunk?”

  Norman knew his request was forward, a potential invasion of privacy, but his mission was more important. The health of the entire world was at stake. He needed that influenza cure, and one way or another, he was going to get it. For all he knew, the recipe for the cure was locked away in that trunk. He had to get inside of it, tact be damned.

  “You’ll have to go alone,” she said. “I don’t go in the attic anymore. Too many stairs to climb.”

  Jackpot, he thought.

  The old woman led him as far as the dropdown ladder and pointed at the pull chain. He tugged on the cord and brought the access hatch down. Next thing he knew, he was staring at the house’s cavity of memories, its crown of junk. There was plenty of floor space to move around in. Most of the family relics were likely downstairs, in the living room. All he found up here were an old mattress, some boxes, and a chest covered in cobwebs. He went right for the chest.

  Norman slid it out from the corner of the attic and brushed aside the cobwebs. Then he pulled at the metal tongue to open the top. It didn’t move. He fiddled with the latches keeping it closed, but those also failed to budge. He called back down to the old lady.

  “The trunk is locked,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s what I said,” she said from the access hatch.

  “But I need to open it.”

  “Why?”

  Norman wrinkled his brow. He wasn’t sure why he had to explain this.

  “I said I wanted a look at it.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

  He laughed under his breath. Old people.

  “No, I meant inside the chest.”

  “Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? I’ve got the key somewhere. Hold on. I’ll see if I can find it.” Her voice trailed off down the hallway below and away from him. “Where did I put it?”

  She came back to the ladder fifteen minutes later. Even though the outdoors were still exhibiting the cold of winter, the old lady’s attic still carried the sweltering properties that unventilated rooms often had, so Norman was sweating by now. When he climbed down to retrieve the key from her, he was relieved to feel that slight chill overcome him. He was pretty certain her heater was dying.

  “Thank you.”

  When he returned to the trunk, he held his breath and turned the key in its lock. Then he closed his eyes to shield himself from the surprise of what he might find inside as he opened the lid. Then he dared to sneak a peek. Then he gave the trunk’s contents his full attention.

  What he found were photos, all right. Just photos. But the boy in the pictures was nobody he recognized. He checked the backs of each image to see if they had any writing. Some did. They dated as far back as 1909, when the boy in the picture was maybe ten or eleven—same age as Norman, most likely. Most of them had his name written beside the dates. “Gregory.” That was it. No nicknames, no secret formulas or plant ingredients. Just a name. A legal name. No Maxie McWalter.

  Norman thumbed through all the pictures to be sure of what he was looking at, but he didn’t need to lie to himself about it. He knew that the boy in the pictures was Gregory Hutchins of Springfield, Illinois, and not Maxie McWalter of Anywhere, USA.

  He closed the trunk, thanked the old lady for her hospitality, and went on his way. He decided he would check the next house when he had a little more time for another quest.