Walking the Bones

by Randall Silvis

  He did not know if what he felt for Jayme was love or only gratitude. As a trooper she was first-rate, intelligent and perceptive, flawlessly reliable no matter what task was assigned. And when she unbraided or uncoiled her hair for Saturday night and when she stepped out of the gray-and-black uniform, she was something else too. She was beautiful and loving and more than a little magical whether in moonlight or in the soft pink glow of sunrise.

  So he told himself that gratitude is a kind of love. And that the tenderness he felt for her was a kind of love. And the emptiness when she was gone, and the nervous anticipation of being alone with her again. And the sickening, hollow fear that one day soon she would change her mind and he would be left with an incrementally deeper, never-healing ache.

  It was the inevitable punch line to a cruel cosmic joke, but one he knew he deserved: to be the recipient of such love when he, the only other time he loved, had loved so poorly.

  SEVEN

  That same winter, in southwestern Kentucky, the man named Hoyle sat alone on the front bench seat of his Ford Bronco, his feet swung into the passenger side as he switched out his standard black brogues, size 9.5 EE, for a pair of black Skechers Energy-Downforce cross trainers whose white S logo he had blacked out with a permanent marker. The customized bench seat allowed him not only more room, but also easier entrance and egress from the vehicle, and the tinted windows provided a degree of anonymity.

  The January night was cold, a few degrees above freezing, so beneath his black suit coat Hoyle wore a black fleece pullover with the collar zipped. Because of his bulk, putting on a pair of new shoes was never easy, but even more so bent double in the front of his vehicle.

  Seated behind him, Rosemary Toomey, a small Caucasian female wearing a jogging suit of indigo velour, kept watch out the side window, alert for anomalous lights or movements in the trees between the vehicle and the McGintey trailers. Beside her, a tall African American male, David Vicente, outfitted more casually in a pair of dark-brown corduroy slacks and a drab olive-green cardigan sweater, held in his hands the binocular night vision goggles Hoyle had purchased online. All three individuals were well into the eighth decade of their lives. From the moment the vehicle was parked along the side of the dirt service road, all conversation took place in voices hushed to half whispers.

  Hoyle said, “Please do not put that on over your head, David.”

  “I am simply examining it,” Vicente said. “Besides, my hair is clean.”

  “I have adjusted the straps precisely.”

  “I shampoo every day.”

  “All hair contains oils. As do shampoos.”

  “Rosemary,” Vicente said, “has this thing touched my head?”

  “It has not,” she said without turning to look.

  Vicente said, “I thought you were buying the monocular unit.”

  Hoyle continued to struggle with his left shoe, head bent near the dashboard. He said, between huffing breaths, “According to research conducted by the United States Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, the binocular goggle provides the best ocular configuration for visually directed activity.”

  He finished with his shoe finally, sat up, and caught his breath.

  Vicente held the goggles toward him. “You’re out of breath already. If you weren’t such a germophobe, either Rosemary or I could do this one.”

  Hoyle reached for the goggles and fitted them on over his head. “Mysophobia is a pathological condition. My concerns are wholly practical.”

  He swung his legs back to the left, under the steering wheel, and then toward the door, which he quietly opened. The interior lights remained off, all bulbs removed.

  “Ten minutes in, ten minutes back,” Vicente said.

  “At whose pace?” Hoyle asked.

  “All right; thirty total.” He clapped Hoyle once on the shoulder, even though he knew that his friend would flinch from the touch. “If the dogs start up, hotfoot it back here. Rosemary will blink the flashlight on and off to guide you. I’ll be ready at the wheel.”

  “Wear gloves, please,” Hoyle said. He then turned to his left, feet dangling outside the vehicle, and, gripping the steering wheel with his right hand, eased himself down as slowly as he could. Then he closed the door, switched on the goggles, and headed into the now green-lit woods.

  His movements were slow and precise, only a slight reduction of his usual pace. He knew his limitations. As a younger man, even then a hundred pounds overweight, he had studied and practiced the movements of other large men, and discovered that the difference between ponderous, as evinced by Orson Welles, for example, and graceful, as demonstrated by the comedian Jackie Gleason, rested in the patience with which they moved. In patience is grace, he used to remind himself, until the habit became inherent to his nature. Only his mind moved quickly.

  Now, as he stepped deliberately through the green landscape, he was thinking several thoughts concurrently, some fleeting, based on moment-to-moment observations, and some lingering, recognized by his consciousness and then left to stand like a pedestrian waiting for a break in the traffic: a strange, eerie green everywhere I look, as in a Roger Corwin movie; Lucas’s trailer dark, a single blue light in Chad’s; should have at least tested the binocular and monocular units; Skechers are indeed quite comfortable; sixty yards, more or less, to go; fingers numbing, should have worn gloves…

  Eventually, the tree line loomed. Beyond it, a scraggly yard. Then the rear of the trailers. Dogs out front, he reassured himself. Still, his breath quickened.

  The device, which eavesdropped on internet usage, recording up to five hundred gigabytes of data, had been attached to the cable descending from the satellite dish at the point it entered Chad McGintey’s trailer. Vicente, before installing it two weeks earlier, had stenciled the Dishnet logo and an imaginary serial number on the black surface. Now Hoyle slipped a hand into his breast pocket and removed the wire-cutting tool.

  He walked laterally until directly behind the rear corner of the trailer. Leaned into a thick trunk. Fifteen yards of open lawn lay ahead. If such can be termed a lawn, he told himself.

  Thirty seconds to the trailer, he calculated. Snip snip. Thirty seconds back to the trees. If he could make it that far without waking the dogs, all would be well. A leisurely stroll back to his vehicle. Drive home, plug the USB cord into the device, download the data onto his computer. If Chad had viewed any child pornography in the past two weeks, particularly of a kind featuring African American girls, he would advance to the top of their list. If not, they would concentrate on Henry and Royce, try to eliminate one or the other. They were also hoping to find email communication between Chad and Virgil Helm. Either discovery would be culpatory.

  Hoyle fully expected the case to open up now that Vicente and Rosemary had agreed, reluctantly, to employ the latest technology. Legality be damned, he had argued. Thankfully, frustration finally won the day. Any evidence gained could be submitted anonymously to the authorities, search warrants secured, computers seized, arrests made. Fait accompli.

  Hoyle closed his eyes in an attempt to quiet his heart. Watched his breath going in through his nostrils, out through his mouth. “Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” he whispered into the bark. “I am that I am. I am that I am…”

  And then away from the tree, forward to the trailer. Wire cutters extended in his right hand like the fighting claw of a coconut crab. Fourteen yards to go. Thirteen. Twelve.

  When he was ten yards from the trailer, motion sensor lights flared on, drenching the entire lawn in blinding white. Immediately the barking began, fierce and malevolent. Hoyle was stunned for but a moment, then whipped the goggles off his head and hurried forward to the trailer, reaching toward the cable, searching for the unit.

  But it wasn’t there. In its place, a large clear plastic ziplock bag was affixed to the cable. And in the bag, a sheet of paper. Hoyle tore the bag free, flipped
the goggles down, turned, and, as best he could, ran.

  He was halfway to the car when the barking grew louder and fragmented in voice. Unleashed, he thought. Three large, vicious dogs now hot on his scent.

  A flashlight beam cut through the trees ahead and to his left. Blink blink. Blink blink. He veered toward the light, heart thundering, every gasp scalding his throat and lungs. Long, lurching, graceless strides. The dogs, by their sound, close on his heels.

  The car. Engine running. Headlights on. Rear door open. He dove inside, head landing in Rosemary’s lap.

  Vicente gunned the engine. Dirt flew beneath the wheels. “There were no lights last time!” Vicente said. “When did he install those lights?”

  He received no answer. Then asked, “Did you get it?”

  Hoyle, a hand pressed to his chest as he grunted “Unh…unh…unh” and tried to fill his lungs, raised the bag to Rosemary. She took it, shined the flashlight upon it. Opened the bag and removed a single sheet of notebook paper, on which a short message had been typed in bold black script. She read aloud.

  “‘Dear FBI slash CIA slash NSA slash DIA slash all USSA Nazi Cabal Federal Reserve trespassing ass wipes…’

  “Oh my,” she said.

  Vicente asked, “What else?”

  “Just two words. The first one is ‘eat.’”

  Vicente blew out a breath. Banged a fist atop the steering wheel. Looked in the rearview mirror and saw three vociferous dogs being swallowed in the dust.

  Two miles later he came to the highway. Hoyle was still saying “Unh” with every breath, still clutching his chest.

  Again Vicente looked in the rearview mirror, this time at Hoyle, who was sitting with his head laid back over the seat, eyes closed. “You’re wheezing like a leaky accordion,” Vicente told him. “You doing okay?”

  Hoyle’s only answer was another groan.

  Vicente looked to his right down the dark highway, then to his left. “Okay,” he said. “Where to now? Restaurant or home?”

  Hoyle sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then, exhaling, said, “Hospital.”

  EIGHT

  As a boy Ryan learned to cultivate stillness—the appearance of stillness—whenever his father was home. Early mornings were easy because the boy had only to lie motionless in bed, face to the wall, until the heavy presence filling his doorway stomped away and into Ryan’s mother’s bedroom instead, where that harsh, demanding voice would continue for a while until silenced by the softer, soothing one. And then the headboard would bang and his father would groan and lapse into sleep, allowing Ryan the opportunity to escape to school or into the woods.

  Late afternoons were more tenuous for the boy. Then his father sometimes came banging in suddenly, throwing open the trailer’s cheap aluminum door which even in winter had no glass in the panel, then the thicker but no more substantial wooden door, and Ryan might be caught doing his homework at the little banquette table, or playing Old Maid with his mother. Immediately he would stiffen and fix his gaze anywhere but on his father’s face. His father would go to the kitchen first, opening and banging shut cupboards and drawers as he searched for a few errant dollars. Then he would find Ryan’s mother’s purse and rifle through it and sometimes dump its contents onto the table right under Ryan’s nose. With luck his father would find enough change for a shot or a couple of beers and be gone without further harm. Ryan’s mother tried to keep a few dollars just for such emergencies, but money was never plentiful and sometimes she spent what she had squirreled away, pressing it into Ryan’s hand for lunch money, or buying a bottle of wine to share with their neighbor Paul when Ryan’s presence was insufficient to abet her need for affection and approval.

  Sometimes his father’s noisy search would leave him empty-handed, and he would turn to Ryan then and demand, Where’s yours? Ryan, without lifting his eyes to his father, would will his body to be still and answer: I don’t have anything. And then his father’s face would come close, the stubbled cheeks and sour breath and stink of smoke and old sweat, and with the words spitting into Ryan’s face he would say, Don’t you lie to me, boy. Where you keeping it? Ryan would say nothing and give no sign of recognition and wait for what he knew would happen next, which was to be grabbed by the arm and dragged back to his bedroom and tossed inside and told to start looking. And you better hope you find something.

  He would find a nickel and a few pennies atop his dresser, a quarter in the dust underneath his bed. Ryan would lay these coins on the corner of the bed and his father would snatch them up in his fist but remain in the doorway blocking the opening. Then crawling across the floor on his hands and knees, Ryan would dig through his pile of dirty clothes and search every corner of his tiny closet. Then pull the small thrift store dresser away from the wall and search behind it. Maybe even lift his mattress and show the emptiness underneath.

  I guess that’s all there is, he would say, and sometimes his father’s eyes would fill with contempt and he would stomp away, back to ransacking the rest of the house. But sometimes his father would say, There sure as hell better be more, if you know what’s good for you, and hold his position, in which case Ryan would pretend to think and scrutinize his room and then feign recollection and hurry to his backpack hanging from the headboard, unzip and turn it upside down over his bed shaking out the pencils and notebooks and a solitary quarter. I forgot about that, he would say, and his father, snatching up the coin, would glare at him and mutter, I bet you forgot.

  Ryan would look at his father’s chest but not into his eyes. I was saving it for pizza day at school, he might say, and with luck the big hand would only cuff the back of his head and knock him sideways onto the bed. With luck his father would leave the bedroom then and after another ten minutes of ripping up cushions and screaming at Ryan’s mother, would then storm out the door with his final pronouncement: It’s a damn sorry state of affairs when a man is reduced to picking up bottles along the highway just to get himself a beer!

  Only then would Ryan relinquish his stillness with a smile. He had already picked up and redeemed every bottle on the streets leading away from their home, and he had already stashed those coins in a tobacco tin Paul had left on his concrete patio one day, and he had already buried and reburied that tin a dozen times beneath his favorite tree in the woods behind the house. At last count the tin contained eleven dollars and forty-seven cents. Before long he would have to find a second container. He had no idea what he intended to buy with the money. He only knew that his father would never have it.

  NINE

  In other ways, too, the winter bruised and laid its welts upon DeMarco. He was hounded by the media to recount Thomas Huston’s final hours. This he adamantly refused to do. A production company offered him three years’ salary for the rights to his story. “It’s not my story,” he told them. “So I have nothing to sell.”

  He made the mistake one time of agreeing to sit down with a writer from Cleveland Magazine who claimed to be writing a memorial piece about Thomas. She was young and full of enthusiasm and DeMarco agreed only as a tribute to his friend. After taking notes for thirty minutes, the writer had asked, “Can you tell us about how you finally tracked down the murderer? How you put all the facts together and finally figured things out?”

  He wanted to walk away then, but he also wanted to do right by his colleagues and their profession. So he answered truly, if obliquely. “It’s never just a matter of gathering the facts,” he said. “Facts are just a part of the story. Sometimes not more than an outline. First you have to know what happened. That’s the easy part. Then you need to know why it happened. That’s the hard part. There’s the tip of the iceberg, and then there’s the rest of it hidden below the water.”

  He waited for her to ask, Didn’t Hemingway say something like that? But she only smiled and nodded, kept her eyes open wide as if he were about to impart an ancient wisdom.

 
“There’s text and there’s subtext,” he said, and struggled to remember the full conversation with Thomas and all the writer’s words. “There’s implication and inference. There’s story and there’s backstory. In fact, there’s no story without backstory. There’s no you, for example, without your mother. Without your father. There’s no present without the past.”

  “Wow,” she said while scribbling furiously. “Just wow. That’s really good.”

  He excused himself then and went back to his office and closed the door. When the piece was published, he refused to look at it.

  And throughout that winter he also thought of Laraine again and again, always questioning if he had made the right decision. Their relationship after the separation had been toxic, yes, but was leaving her alone with the poison the best thing to do? Every weekend he fought the urge to drive to Erie and check up on her, and managed to talk himself out of it with the logic that she picked up strangers at bars and took them home and had sex with them only because she knew he was watching; therefore, if he stopped watching, the behavior would cease. This was a good logic after the sun went down, but in full light it fell apart. There was also an element of self-destruction to her activities. She probably wanted to wipe out her memories as badly as he wanted to erase his own.

  The psychiatrist he had met with after Huston’s death had attempted to broach those memories, and a part of DeMarco had been rooting for the guy to succeed. But the other part, self-schooled in silence since the age of four or five, found itself immune to the litany of carefully phrased questions, so that the only effect of those questions was to make DeMarco drowsy. How has the incident affected your relationships at work? Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you think you drink too much?