Black Evening

by David Morrell

  "I'm coming to that." Your uncle rubs his wizened chin. "Yes, I'm starting to… Nineteen thirty-eight. The worst of the Depression was over, but times still weren't good. Your father said that with the baby coming, he needed to earn more money. He felt that California — Los Angeles — offered better opportunities. I tried to talk him out of it. In another year, I said, Chicago will have turned the corner. Besides, he'd have to go through the trouble of being certified to practice law in California. But he insisted. And of course, I was right. Chicago did soon turn the corner. What's more, as it happened, your father and mother didn't care for Los Angeles, so after six or seven months, they came back, right after you were born."

  "That still doesn't…"

  "What?"

  "Los Angeles isn't Redwood Point," you say. "I never heard of the place. What were my parents doing there?"

  "Oh, that." Your uncle raises his thin white eyebrows. "No mystery. Redwood Point was a resort up the coast. In August, L.A. was brutally hot. As your mother came close to giving birth, your father decided she ought to be someplace where she wouldn't feel the heat, close to the sea, where the breeze would make her comfortable. So they took a sort of vacation, and you were born there."

  "Yes," you say. "Perfectly logical. Nothing mysterious. Except…" You gesture toward the coffee table. "Why did my father keep this woman's adoption agreement?"

  Your uncle lifts his liver-spotted hands in exasperation. "Oy vay. For all we know, he found a chance to do some legal work while he was in Redwood Point. To help pay your mother's hospital and doctor bills. When he moved back to Chicago, it might be some business papers got mixed in with his personal ones. By accident, everything to do with Redwood Point got grouped together."

  "And my father never noticed the mistake no matter how many times he must have gone to his safe-deposit box? I have trouble believing…"

  "Jacob, Jacob. Last month, I went to my safe-deposit box and found a treasury bond that I didn't remember even buying, let alone putting in the box. Oversights happen."

  "My father was the most organized person I ever knew."

  "God knows I love him, and God knows I miss him." Your uncle bites his pale lower lip, then breathes with effort, seized with emotion. "But he wasn't perfect, and life isn't tidy. We'll probably never know for sure how this document came to be with his private papers. But this much I do know. You can count on it. You're Simon and Esther's natural child. You weren't adopted."

  You stare at the floor and nod. "Thank you."

  "No need to thank me. Just go home, get some rest, and stop thinking so much. What happened to Simon and Esther has been a shock to all of us. We'll be a long time missing them."

  "Yes," you say, "a long time."

  "Rebecca? How is…"

  "The same as me. She still can't believe they're dead."

  Your uncle's bony fingers clutch your hand. "I haven't seen either of you since the funeral. It's important for family to stick together. Why don't both of you come over for honey cake on Rosh Hashana?"

  "I'd like to, Uncle. But I'm sorry, I'll be out of town."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Redwood Point."

  ***

  The biggest airport nearest your destination is in San Jose. You rent a car and drive south down the coast, passing Carmel and Big Sur. Preoccupied, you barely notice the dramatic scenery: the windblown pine trees, the rugged cliffs, the whitecaps hitting the shore. You ask yourself why you didn't merely phone the authorities at Redwood Point, explain that you're a lawyer in Chicago, and ask for information that you need to settle an estate. Why do you feel compelled to come all this way to a town so small that it isn't listed in your Hammond Atlas and could only be located in the Chicago library on its large map of California? For that matter, why do you feel compelled at all? Both your wife and your uncle have urged you to leave the matter alone. You're not adopted, you've been assured, and even if you were, what difference would it make?

  The answers trouble you. One, you might have a brother or a sister, a twin, and now that you've lost your parents, you feel an anxious need to fill the vacuum of their loss by finding an unsuspected member of your family. Two, you suffer a form of mid-life crisis, but not in the common sense of the term. To have lived these many years and possibly never have known your birth parents makes you uncertain of your identity. Yes, you loved the parents you knew, but your present limbo of insecure uncertainty makes you desperate to discover the truth, one way or the other, so you can dismiss the possibility of your having been adopted or else adjust to the fact that you were. But this way, not being certain, is maddening, given the stress of double grief. And three, the most insistent reason, an identity crisis of frantic concern, you want to learn if after a lifetime… of having been circumsized, of Hebrew lessons, of your bar mitzvah, of Friday nights at temple, of scrupulous observance of sacred holidays… of being a Jew… if after all that, you might have been born a gentile. You tell yourself that being a Jew has nothing to do with race and genes, that it's a matter of culture and religion. But deep in your heart, you've always thought of yourself proudly as being completely a Jew, and your sense of self feels threatened. Who am I? you think.

  You increase speed toward your destination and brood about your irrational stubborn refusal to let Rebecca travel here with you. Why did you insist on coming alone?

  Because, you decide with grim determination.

  Because I don't want anybody holding me back.

  ***

  The Pacific Coast Highway pivots above a rocky cliff. In crevasses, stunted misshapen fir trees cling to shallow soil and fight for survival. A weather-beaten sign abruptly says REDWOOD POINT. With equal abruptness, you see a town below you on the right, its buildings dismal even from a distance, their unpainted listing structures spread along a bay at the center of which a half-destroyed pier projects toward the ocean. The only beauty is the glint of the afternoon sun on the white-capped waves.

  Your stomach sinks. Redwood Point. A resort? Or at least that's what your uncle said. Maybe in nineteen thirty-eight, you think. But not anymore. And as you steer off the highway, tapping your brakes, weaving down the bumpy narrow road past shorter, more twisted pine trees toward the dingy town where your birth certificate says you entered the world, you feel hollow. You pass a ramshackle boarded-up hotel. On a ridge that looks over the town, you notice the charred collapsed remnant of what seems to have been another hotel and decide, discouraged, that your wife and your uncle were right. This lengthy, fatiguing journey was needless. So many years. A ghost of a town that might have been famous once. You'll never find answers here.

  ***

  The dusty road levels off and leads past dilapidated buildings toward the skeleton of the pier. You stop beside a shack, get out, and inhale the salty breeze from the ocean. An old man sits slumped on a chair on the few safe boards at the front of the pier. Obeying an impulse, you approach, your footsteps crunching on seashells and gravel.

  "Excuse me," you say.

  The old man has his back turned, staring toward the ocean.

  The odor of decay — dead fish along the shore — pinches your nostrils.

  "Excuse me," you repeat.

  Slowly the old man turns. He cocks his shriveled head, either in curiosity or antagonism.

  You ask the question that occurred to you driving down the slope. "Why is this town called Redwood Point? This far south, there aren't any redwoods."

  "You're looking at it."

  "I'm not sure what…"

  The old man gestures toward the ruin of the pier. "The planks are made of redwood. In its hey-day" — he sips from a beer can — "used to be lovely. The way it stuck out toward the bay, so proud." He sighs, nostalgic. "Redwood Point."

  "Is there a hospital?"

  "You sick?"

  "Just curious."

  The old man squints. "The nearest hospital's forty miles up the coast."

  "What about a doctor?"

  "Used to be. Say,
how come you ask so many questions?"

  "I told you I'm just curious. Is there a courthouse?"

  "Does this look like a county seat? We used to be something. Now we're…" The old man tosses his beer can toward a trash container. He misses. "Shit."

  "Well, what about… Have you got a police force?"

  "Sure. Chief Kitrick." The old man coughs. "For all the good he does. Not that we need him. Nothing happens here. That's why he doesn't have deputies."

  "So where can I find him?"

  "Easy. This time of day, the Redwood Bar."

  "Can you tell me where…"

  "Behind you." The old man opens another beer. "Take a left. It's the only place that looks decent."

  ***

  The Redwood Bar, on a cracked concrete road above the beach, has fresh redwood siding that makes the adjacent buildings look even more dingy. You pass through a door that has an anchor painted on it and feel as if you've entered a tackle shop or have boarded a trawler. Fishing poles stand in a corner. A net rimmed with buoys hangs on one wall. Various nautical instruments, a sextant, a compass, others you can't identify, all looking ancient despite their gleaming metal, sit on a shelf beside a polished weathered navigation wheel that hangs behind the bar. The sturdy rectangular tables all have captain's chairs.

  Voices in the far right corner attract your attention. Five men sit playing cards. A haze of cigarette smoke dims the light above their table. One of the men — in his fifties, large-chested, with short sandy hair and a ruddy complexion — wears a policeman's uniform. He studies his cards.

  A companion calls to the bartender, "Ray, another beer, huh? How about you, Hank?"

  "It's only ten to five. I'm not off-duty yet," the policeman says and sets down his cards. "Full house."

  "Damn. Beats me."

  "It's sure as hell better than a straight."

  The men throw in their cards.

  The policeman scoops up quarters. "My deal. Seven-card stud." As he shuffles the cards, he squints in your direction.

  The bartender sets a beer on the table and approaches you. "What'll it be?"

  "Uh, club soda," you say. "What I… Actually I want to talk to Chief Kitrick."

  Overhearing, the policeman squints even harder. "Something urgent?"

  "No. Not exactly." You shrug, self-conscious. "This happened many years ago. I guess it can wait a little longer."

  The policeman frowns. "Then we'll finish this hand if that's okay."

  "Go right ahead."

  At the bar, you pay for your drink and sip it. Turning toward the wall across from you, you notice photographs, dozens of them, the images yellowed, wrinkled, and faded. But even at a distance, you know what the photographs represent, and compelled, repressing a shiver, you walk toward them.

  Redwood Point. The photographs depict the resort in its prime, fifty, sixty years ago. Vintage automobiles gleam with newness on what was once a smoothly paved, busy street outside. The beach is crowded with vacationers in old-fashioned bathing suits. The impressive long pier is lined with fishermen. Boats dot the bay. Pedestrians stroll the sidewalks, glancing at shops or pointing toward the ocean. Some eat hot dogs and cotton candy. All are well-dressed, and the buildings look clean, their windows shiny. The Depression, you think. But not everyone was out of work, and here the financially advantaged sought refuge from the summer heat and the city squalor. A splendid hotel — guests holding frosted glasses or fanning themselves on the spacious porch — is unmistakably the ramshackle ruin you saw as you drove in. Another building, expansive, with peaks and gables of Victorian design, sits on a ridge above the town, presumably the charred wreckage you noticed earlier. Ghosts. You shake your head. Most of the people in these photographs have long since died, and the buildings have died as well but just haven't fallen down. What a waste, you think. What happened here? How could time have been so cruel to this place?

  "It sure was pretty once," a husky voice says behind you.

  You turn toward Chief Kitrick and notice he holds a glass of beer.

  "After five. Off duty now," he says. "Thanks for letting me finish the game. What can I do for you? Something about years ago, you said?"

  "Yes. About the time these photographs were taken."

  The chief's eyes change focus. "Oh?"

  "Can we find a place to talk? It's kind of personal."

  Chief Kitrick gestures. "My office is just next door."

  ***

  It smells musty. A cobweb dangles from a corner of the ceiling. You pass a bench in the waiting area, go through a squeaky gate, and face three desks, two of which are dusty and bare, in a spacious administration area. A phone, but no two-way radio. A file cabinet. A calendar on one wall. An office this size — obviously at one time, several policemen had worked here. You sense a vacuum, the absence of the bustle of former years. You can almost hear the echoes of decades-old conversations.

  Chief Kitrick points toward a wooden chair. "Years ago?"

  You sit. "Nineteen thirty-eight."

  "That is years ago."

  "I was born here." You hesitate. "My parents both died three weeks ago, and…"

  "I lost my own dad just a year ago. You have my sympathy."

  You nod, exhale, and try to order your thoughts. "When I went through my father's papers, I found… There's a possibility I may have been adopted."

  As in the bar, the chief's eyes change focus.

  "And then again maybe not," you continue. "But if I was adopted, I think my mother's name was Mary Duncan. I came here because… Well, I thought there might be records I could check."

  "What kind of records?"

  "The birth certificate my father was sent lists the time and place where I was born, and my parents' names, Simon and Esther Weinberg."

  "Jewish."

  You tense. "Does that matter?"

  "Just making a comment. Responding to what you said."

  You debate, then resume. "But the type of birth certificate parents receive is a shortened version of the one that's filed at the county courthouse."

  "Which in this case is forty miles north. Cape Verde."

  "I didn't know that before I came here. But I did think there'd be a hospital. It would have a detailed record about my birth."

  "No hospital. Never was," the chief says.

  "So I learned. But a resort as popular as Redwood Point was in the thirties would have needed some kind of medical facility."

  "A clinic," the chief says. "I once heard my father mention it. But it closed back in the forties."

  "Do you know what happened to its records?"

  Chief Kitrick raises his shoulders. "Packed up. Shipped somewhere. Put in storage. Not here, though. I know every speck of this town, and there aren't any medical records from the old days. I don't see how those records would help."

  "My file would mention who my mother was. See, I'm a lawyer, and — "

  The chief frowns.

  " — the standard practice with adoptions is to amend the birth certificate at the courthouse so it lists the adopting parents as the birth parents. But the original birth certificate, naming the birth parents, isn't destroyed. It's sealed in a file and put in a separate section of the records."

  "Then it seems to me you ought to go to the county courthouse and look for that file," Chief Kitrick says.

  "The trouble is, even with whatever influence I have as a lawyer, it would take me months of petitions to get that sealed file opened — and maybe never. But hospital records are easier. All I need is a sympathetic doctor who…" A thought makes your heart beat faster. "Would you know the names of any doctors who used to practice here? Maybe they'd know how to help me."

  "Nope, hasn't been a doctor here in quite a while. When we get sick, we have to drive up the coast. I don't want to sound discouraging, Mr…"

  "Weinberg."

  "Yeah. Weinberg. Nineteen thirty-eight. We're talking ancient history. I suspect you're wasting your time. Who remembers that far back? If they'
re even still alive, that is. And God knows where the clinic's records are."

  "Then I guess I'll have to do this the hard way." You stand. "The county courthouse. Thanks for your help."

  "I don't think I helped at all. But Mr. Weinberg…"

  "Yes?" You pause at the gate.

  "Sometimes it's best to leave the past alone."

  "How I wish I could."

  ***

  Cape Verde turns out to be a pleasant attractive town of twenty-thousand people, its architecture predominantly Spanish: red-tiled roofs, arched doorways, and adobe-colored walls. After the blight of Redwood Point, you feel less depressed, but only until you hear a baby crying in the hotel room next to yours. After a half-sleepless night during which you phone Rebecca to assure her that you're all right but ignore her pleas for you to come home, you ask directions from the desk clerk and drive to the courthouse, which looks like a Spanish mission, arriving there shortly after nine o'clock.

  The office of the county recorder is on the second floor at the rear, and the red-haired young man behind the counter doesn't think twice about your request. "Birth records? Nineteen thirty-eight? Sure." After all, those records are open to the public. You don't need to give a reason.

  Ten minutes later, the clerk returns with a large dusty ledger. There isn't a desk, so you need to stand at the end of the counter. While the young man goes back to work, you flip the ledger's pages to August and study them.

  The records are grouped according to districts in the county. When you get to the section for Redwood Point, you read carefully. What you're looking for is not just a record of your birth but a reference to Mary Duncan. Twenty children were born that August. For a moment that strikes you as unusual — so many for so small a community. But then you remember that in August the resort would have been at its busiest, and maybe other expecting parents had gone there to escape the summer's heat, to allow the mother a comfortable delivery, just as your own parents had, according to your uncle.