The Incredible Life of Jonathan Doe

by Carol Coffey

  Brendan turned him over and helped him to his knees. A gush of water flowed out of Jonathan’s mouth and ran onto the silvery rocks as he coughed up the fluid from his lungs.

  Once he was sure his friend was okay, Brendan lowered himself onto the rocks and sat motionless in shock.

  “I thought you could swim!” he gasped. “You said you swam in the lakes at your home!”

  “I thought I could too,” Jonathan replied weakly.

  “What? What the hell does that mean?”

  Brendan placed his head in his hands and groaned loudly as he imagined himself telling Eileen that her reason for living had drowned in his company or telling Pilar who had no idea that he had even taken Jonathan out for the day.

  “I saw it. I saw myself swimming,” Jonathan finally said.

  “What?”

  Jonathan moved his lips as he tried to speak and explain himself.

  “Jesus, never mind,” Brendan said as he rose to his feet. He quickly dressed himself.

  Jonathan tried to stand but stumbled forward, falling onto the rough rocky ledge. Brendan moved to steady him and squirmed again as he stared at the disfigured flesh on Jonathan’s back.

  “Did your father do that to you?” he asked.

  “No!” Jonathan yelled. “My daddy never raised his hand to me. I already told you – he is a good man. Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Then who did it? Who did that to you?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You can’t or won’t?”

  “I can’t.”

  Brendan stared at his companion for a moment and the irritation he felt slowly evaporated.

  “Jonathan, you must remember something about it. Even if you’ve suppressed it, there must be some trace of memory there. Can you remember anything about it? Anything?”

  Jonathan put on his trousers and pulled his shirt and woollen vest over his wet body. He fumbled around the rock in search of his glasses and squinted as he pushed them tightly up the bridge of his nose.

  “I’ve tried. Each year of my life, I have tried. Dr Reiter would show me photos of when I was found and he’d say ‘Tell me what you see’ and I saw nothing. All the things I am afraid of, Dr Reiter felt they were connected to what happened to me but even exposing me to those things didn’t make me remember.”

  Jonathan shook his head. He leaned on a rock as he put his socks and shoes on.“Sometimes I think it’s useless,” he said.

  Brendan had never heard his friend sound so despondent.“Don’t give up, Jonathan. Something will happen, you’ll see.”

  As they made their ascent back up to the forest pathway Brendan stopped to catch his breath.

  “The mountain, I don’t suppose you remember its name?” he asked doubtfully.

  “No, but it was about a five-mile hike uphill. I know because I had to haul some of that food up there from our house.”

  “What did your house look like?”

  Jonathan stalled and stared out at the view. Brendan took a rest and stood behind him, waiting.

  “I told you – it looked a lot like the shelter. Guess that’s what made me stop there. Seems like I always had the name of this town in my head, like Dover should mean something to me, so I came here – looking. I walked the length and breadth of the town and, just when I’d almost given up looking, I found myself on Maple Street and there it was – my home. Least, it looked a lot like it. Our house was made of white clapboard too but it didn’t have the attic room. It was at the end of a long driveway and, until you drove up that dirt road, you couldn’t even tell there was a house in there. The first thing you saw when you got to the top of that driveway was an old tyre swinging from a huge oak tree. My daddy said that tree was as old as the Declaration of Independence. He built a tree-house in it just for me and I’d sit there for hours listening to the birds singing and sometimes I’d see an airplane flying slowly through the clouds over my head. There was a row of old apple trees in the middle of our lawn. I can remember someone lifting me up in a little yellow coat I wore and letting me pick a red apple from its branches. I remember that the house had a screen door that always squeaked when you opened it and that it had a pretty wooden porch that wrapped the whole way around the house. It had a swing that was suspended from the porch roof by two chains and Cassie and I used to fight over it. There were hens and I remember a black-and-white cow and a cat that didn’t drink milk and spat at you when you passed. But the house I’ve described is like a million other houses and Dr Reiter thinks I saw it in a book or something. I didn’t though. It is real. I am sure of it.”

  Brendan moved forward and looked into Jonathan’s face.

  “Maybe you were very young when you left there which is why you don’t remember the names of places. Maybe you were taken somewhere else to live and something bad happened there,” Brendan offered.

  Jonathan shrugged. “That’s a lot of maybes.”

  “It would explain why you have such good memories at age four and why you cannot remember anything from then until you were a teenager. Wouldn’t it?”

  Jonathan shrugged again.“I’m tired,” he said as he began to climb again. “Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” Brendan said, disheartened.

  They reached the forest pathway and began their descent of the mountain.

  “Don’t tell Pilar that you almost drowned,” Brendan said. “Or Eileen,” he added.

  Jonathan turned and grinned. “You promise that you won’t give up on helping me and I promise not to tell Pilar. I won’t even tell Eileen that you kissed me!”

  Brendan let out a huge laugh. He raised his hand and touched Jonathan on the shoulder. He noticed that for the first time his friend did not recoil from his touch.

  “I promise.”

  Chapter 15

  “Come in, son!” Frank hollered from the lounge room where he was sitting alonein the dark.

  Brendan entered and sat down facing his uncle who had not come to dinner and who, according to Coleen, had been moping about all day.

  Frank had a small glass of amber liquid in his hand.

  “I’d give you one if you were allowed,” he said.

  Brendan waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fine, really.”

  His enforced sobriety had not bothered him as much as he’d thought it would. He didn’t know anyone in Dover with whom he could go drinking anyway.

  “I don’t drink much but I’ve got a lot on my mind,” his uncle said.

  Brendan could hear the slurring of his speech which suggested Frank had been drinking for the better part of the day.

  “Oh?”

  “Just your mother. I’m worried – worried that it’ll all come up again. I mean, I don’t want to see Eileen hurt.”

  “My mother knows what happened to Eileen?”

  “I had to write and tell her. Felt she ought to know. Told her I’d handle it. She phoned me all upset, crying.”

  Brendan couldn’t imagine his mother crying about anything and wondered why his uncle felt the need to tell her about it.

  “Well, just tell her not to mention it,” he said matter of factly.

  “Ha! You ever try to tell your mother to do anything? She’d do the goddamn opposite to what I say. You’ll see. She’ll start trouble in this house. Won’t agree with how I’ve managed things.”

  Brendan looked away and smiled to himself. The whiskey was obviously causing his uncle to exaggerate. His mother had very little interest in her own son, never mind poking her nose into Frank’s family affairs. He stretched his feet out onto the deep pile carpet and wondered if this would be a good time to ask for his uncle’s help.

  “Frank, did you ever come across any live John Doe’s in your time on the force?”

  “What the hell do you mean live?”

  “I mean people who were found by the police alive but didn’t know who they were.”

  Frank thought about this for a minute.

  “Yes, there was one ca
se. I remember. This pedestrian, oh, it happened further along on the highway out of town. Emilio and I were called out to it. She was out walking and was run over by a car. Hit and run it was. She didn’t have any identification on her – seems her handbag was stolen – and when she woke up in the hospital, she had no idea who she was. We checked the area, brought her photo around and no one knew her. We had to put her photo in the newspaper here.She had a New York accent so we put it out there too. Anyway, her sons identified her, said she was passing through Dover on her way to visit a friend but that her rental car broke down in the dark. She had phoned one of her boys from the highway but she must have got run over shortly after that. It ended up okay. They came and took her home.

  “There was this other one. Oh, this is much more interesting. There was this guy from Cleveland down here on business. Well, while he was here, he hired a boat and took in some fishing on Lake Hopatcong. The water was a bit choppy and I guess he fell in and hit his head off the side of the boat as he fell.Lucky for him another boat was passing and pulled him out. When he woke up in the hospital, we thought he was on holiday here because he woke up talking with a sort of British accent. It was the strangest thing. Difference was, when he was well enough to talk to us, he was able to say he was American and knew all his details, address, phone numbers etc. The doctors said it was some kind of rare brain damage from the knock he got. Oh, some specialist came down from New York to see him. Boy, when his wife arrived she thought it was strange hearing him talk like he was a tourist. I wonder if he ever got his own accent back? Guess we’ll never know.”

  Brendan looked out of the window and thought about this. Maybe Jonathan was wrong about the state he was from. Maybe his accent was also brought on by a blow to the head and he had been looking in the wrong state for all of these years.

  “Did you ever find anyone . . . like a child . . . that no was looking for? You know, that no one ever claimed?”

  “A child? God, no! I’ve heard of a few cases in the big cities but, no, I never saw anything like that here. Every child’s got a mother, right?”

  Brendan nodded.

  “Why are you asking me about this? Is this about your father? Are you wondering about him?”

  “No.”

  Brendan’s answer was so immediate, so resolute, he began to wonder why he had no inclination to find out about his father. He knew he should be longing to know more or should even want to meet him, but he had looked as far into his heart as he knew how to and found that that longing simply wasn’t there.

  He stood and closed the lounge door to ensure Eileen didn’t hear him. He was running out of ideas and felt he had no option but to use Frank’s expertise in the search for Jonathan’s family.

  He pulled his chair closer to Frank and he told his uncle everything he knew about Jonathan Doe, with the exception of his relationship with Eileen.

  When he finished Frank poured himself another whiskey and thought about it.

  “Seems to me like you have to go back to the scene of the crime,” he said.

  “Which is?” Brendan asked.

  “Goddamn it, Brendan. Good job you didn’t go into the force. Embarrass the life out of me. That house in New York, of course. Take the man there. See where it leads.”

  Brendan nodded. It seemed like a really good idea. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

  “It’s good to have a man-to-man chat like this,” Frank slurred.

  “Coleen wants you to come in for your dinner,” Brendan said, only now remembering why he had come looking for his uncle in the first place. When he didn’t answer, Brendan moved closer and heard a low wheeze emanating from his uncle’s nose. He grinned at his sleeping uncle and took the whiskey glass from his hand, then took a blanket from the sofa and threw it over him.

  Okay, he said to himself, New York, here we come.

  Chapter 16

  Brendan was already showered, shaved and waiting in the kitchen when Eileen came downstairs.

  He had phoned Alice the night before to ensure she was on the following morning. Brendan had not seen Pilar since their row and was relieved that she would not be on day shifts for another few days. It would give them both a chance to cool down and hopefully put the sorry event behind them. When Eileen arrived in the doorway, she was wearing a green cotton dress and fashionable sandals. The dress, which had long sleeves, made her grey eyes look green and set off the red in her hair in the sun-filled kitchen.

  Brendan stood up.“You look lovely,” he said.

  She smiled shyly and sat beside him.

  “I haven’t worn this dress for years. I took it out the night we had our talk and I’ve been looking at it hanging on the wardrobe door ever since. Brendan, you were right when you said I was covering myself up and you were also right that I don’t need to do it anymore. But . . . I wasn’t doing it because I was ashamed or embarrassed about myself. I did it to shut the world out, to protect myself, and it occurred to me that in a way I was helping Dad to shut myself away, to block out the world. I’m not going to do that anymore. What’s more, I am going to Alice’s party.”

  Brendan put his coffee cup down and stared at his cousin.“How are you going to talk Frank into that?”

  Eileen took a deep breath. “I am going to ask and, if he says no, then I’ll go anyway. If you’re going, he might be happy for you to escort me. You are going, aren’t you?”

  Brendan nodded. “I was hoping to ask Pilar but . . .”

  Eileen grinned. She had known that her cousin was interested in Pilar but wasn’t sure if he had taken it any further.

  “Will I be in the way?”

  “No, she threw a pot plant at me so I doubt she’ll be interested in going anywhere with me.”

  Eileen laughed. “That doesn’t sound like Pilar!”

  “Well, you should have been there.”

  Brendan looked at his watch. It was nine and he would need to hurry if he was to catch the 10.07 train which would get him and Jonathan into Penn Station a little after eleven thirty. He hurried Eileen and walked as quickly as she could keep up with him.

  When they arrived at the shelter, Kuvic was signing for a delivery of wood in the hallway. He looked at Eileen from head to toe and wolf-whistled as she ran down the hallway to the laundry.

  Brendan reached forward and caught him by the throat, pinning him to the wall and sending the delivery dockets flying about the hallway.

  “You ever look sideways at my cousin I’ll kill you,” he said.

  Kuvic sneered and jerked free from Brendan’s hold, pushing him with full force across the hallway.

  “How many weeks you got left here, Paddy? Might have to tell Thompson to cut them short. I can keep a closer eye on Eileen for you then. Or Pilar. I see the way you look at her but, don’t forget, I saw that little border-hopper first.”

  Brendan lunged forward and grabbed Kuvic by the shirt collar, pushing him hard into the wall again.

  “She’s Puerto Rican, you stupid bastard. That means she’s an American citizen.”

  Kuvic raised his arms to loosen Brendan’s grip and punched him, knocking him into the hall table. Brendan lunged forward and punched Kuvic in the face, sending him flat into his back on the polished tiled floor. He stood over him and was about to punch him again when he heard Alice shouting from the landing.

  “Stop that!”

  He looked up and backed away from Kuvic who clambered to his feet and dabbed his bleeding lip with a handkerchief.

  “See what he did?” Kuvic asked Alice who glared down at them.

  “Kuvic, where is Zeb?” she demanded.

  Brendan grinned as the smile on Kuvic’s face slowly faded.

  “I had to throw him out last night. I warned him about fighting but that dumb son of a bitch just kept on starting rows. Couldn’t get a moment’s peace.”

  “That’s a lie!” another voice called from the upper floor.

  Jonathan walked down the stairs, followed close behind
by Alice. His blue eyes were ablaze with anger.

  “Zeb was shouting allright but you didn’t give him a chance to settle down. Said he was interfering with your favourite TV programmes. I heard you from my room. You just dragged him down the stairs and threw him out. The other men were afraid. There was hardly a word in that room until morning. They were even afraid to come out to use the bathroom.”

  Kuvic looked at Alice who was now standing in the hallway with her arms folded about her body.

  “Are you going to believe this nutcase over me?” Kuvic asked in disbelief.

  “Don’t you dare ever refer to any of the clients with those words again!” Alice replied. “Do you hear me? I won’t only be going on what John says. I’ll be asking the other men this evening and I’ll ask Zeb when he comes back tonight. If what they say is true, you’ll have some explaining to do. Don’t forget, I am the manager here.”

  “Not for much longer,” Kuvic murmured as he turned on his noisy heels and walked away.

  Alice sighed and stood for a moment in the hallway. Brendan noticed that she looked deflated, spent.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, but you two get on out of here now. Time is running out.”

  As they took their seats on the train, Jonathan squinted nervously out of the window and remained in a trancelike state for the next twenty minutes of the journey, occasionally glancing at Brendan with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?” Brendan said at last.

  “I can read!” Jonathan responded sharply.

  Brendan leaned forward and touched Jonathan’s knee.“What’s the matter?”

  “Why are you taking me to New York? I want to go to Newsart, Virginia, not New York City!”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Jonathan looked out of the window and swallowed. “Are you taking me to see Dr Reiter? Cos if you are, I’m getting off at the next stop. I mean it, Brendan. He can’t help you anyway. He only knows what you know.”