Portland Noir

by Kevin Sampsell

  I watch the vein on Spider’s neck as it pulses life now. He shifts a little, snores, then shifts again, goes silent, that pale neck at once vulnerable and inviting.

  Anger is the enemy of art. Spider said it himself. Smirked when he said it. But there was a lot Spider didn’t know. He tried to make me believe that the anger lived inside of me—like it was something intrinsic I couldn’t exterminate even if I wanted to. He thought he had me, like a fly in a web. Just like Mustang once thought she could pull the wool over my eyes. Just like Birdie. I chuckle, only a little, when I think of Birdie’s stupid face. Did they really think I’d just let it go? Family, I laugh, sigh. I study Spider’s neck and smile. Did he really think I was so stupid? That I’d never figure out how to handle an enemy of art? I feel those Bombay martinis in my very blood now, making things clear. As I reach for Spider’s neck, for that stupid vein, I’m filled with a perfect sense of calm. I think about all the paintings I’ll soon make—all the shows I’ll have at First Thursday and Last Friday and whatnot. I glance up at the picture of Marie Claire on my nightstand and I think: You’ll still feed me, won’t you?

  ALZHEIMER’S NOIR

  BY FLOYD SKLOOT

  Oaks Bottom

  It was about 10 at night when I saw her walk out the door. Now they’re telling me, No, that’s not what happened, she wasn’t even there.

  II don’t buy it. The room was dark, the night was darker, but Dorothy was there. We were in bed and her curved back was against my chest. She wore the pale yellow nightgown I love, with its thin straps loose against the skin of her shoulders. My arm was around her, my hand cupped her breast, we were breathing to the same rhythm. Then she slipped from my grasp and I felt a chill where she’d left the sheets folded back. She drifted like a ghost over the floor, down the hall, and out the front door that’s always supposed to be locked. I saw her fade into the foggy night.

  They tell me I’m confused. What else is new? I’m also tired. And I have a nasty cough from forty-six years of Chesterfields, even after two decades without them. And I don’t sleep worth a damn. That’s how I know what I saw in the night. Confused, maybe, but the fact is that Dorothy is gone.

  For three, four years now, Dorothy is the one who’s been confused. That’s what we’re doing in this place, this “home.” She has Alzheimer’s. We had to move out of the place where we’d lived together around sixty years.

  “Jimmy,” she’d say to me, “you look so much like Charles.”

  Well, I am Charles. Jimmy’s our son, gone now forty-two years since he went missing over Cambodia, where he wasn’t even supposed to be.

  It broke my heart. Filled me with despair, all of it: Jimmy gone too soon, then Dorothy slowing leaving me, now Jimmy somehow back because of her confusion so I have to lose them both again, night after night.

  I miss her. Where is my Dorothy? I saw her walk out the door that’s supposed to be locked. Because Alzheimer’s people wander. They try to get out of the prison they’re in, who can blame them? I feel the same way, myself.

  But at eighty-two I still have all my marbles. Thank God for that. Memory? Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, then what’s-his-name, then Nixon, Jackson, no, Johnson, Kennedy, and I can go all the way back to Coolidge but I don’t want to show off. Or I could do 100, 93, 86, 79, 72, 65, and so on.

  I saw her fade into the foggy night. The staff here can’t remember to lock the front door, and I’m supposed to believe them when they say what I saw with my own eyes didn’t happen? It’s a crime, what they did. What they’re doing. Negligence. It’s like they’re accomplices to a kidnapping. Anything happens to Dorothy, I hold them accountable.

  Truth is, I’m not sure how long she’s been gone. I thought it was only a few hours, but then I look outside and see the day’s getting away from me. Dark, light, dark again. Makes me weary.

  “Let me use the phone,” I say to Milly, the big one, works day shift.

  “Sorry, Mr. Wade. I’m not authorized to do that.”

  Always the same thing. “Look, Dorothy wandered away! No one here’s doing it, so I need to call the police and file a missing-persons report.”

  “What you need is a rest.”

  “What I need is a detective.”

  Milly shakes her head. “We’ve been through this ten times today.” The phone is in a locked closet. She tests the door on her way to the kitchen.

  I saw Dorothy fade into the foggy night. They tell me that’s not what happened, she wasn’t there, but I don’t buy it. Her curved back against my chest, the chill, her long white hair fading as she drifted like a ghost over the floor, down the hall, and out.

  Well, okay then, it’s up to me. I’ll have to find her myself. Be the detective myself.

  Why not? I’m used to hunting around, discovering lost old things. Forgotten old things. For fifty-plus years, I had my own antiques business here in Southeast Portland, just a short walk from Oaks Bottom. Sellwood, the neighborhood’s called, and that’s just what I did: sold wood. Found my niche with bookcases—Italian walnut, mahogany, inlaid stuff with wavy glass doors—and then with other library furnishings, and rare books eventually. Always liked antiques. I just never planned on turning into one.

  Wait a little while longer till it gets dark, till the other residents are in bed and the night staff is “resting” like they do. No doubt with a rum, a beer, whatever they drink. What I’ll do is sit here in the old rocker, a perfect reading chair I found at an estate sale in Estacada, must have been ’48. Dorothy wouldn’t hear of me trying to sell this thing. Nursed Jimmy in it.

  I find her at the Dance Pavilion. I knew she’d be there. With her long lean body and long blond hair, she’s easy to spot. Lights reflect off the polished wood floor that’s marred by years of dancing feet. The low ceiling makes for good acoustics, and in the temporary silence I hear Dorothy laugh. I walk right over to her and take her hand.

  No, that was 1945, just after the war. I’d met her two weeks before, and she told me where I could find her if I wanted to. Oaks Park, the Dance Pavilion, not far from the railroad tracks and the totem pole. I’m nineteen and it feels like it’s happening right now. Like I’m at the Dance Pavilion with her hand in mine.

  I wake up in the rocker, still eighty-two. Stiff in every joint, I creak louder than the old oak itself. What I need is a shot of good Scotch. The kind that’s been aged twelve years, the last two years in port barrels, say, with a hint of chocolate and mint. Nothing peppery. Even when she was going away into Alzheimer’s, Dorothy remembered her stuff about Scotch. I enjoyed kidding her about it. The old dame knew her booze. How I’d love to toast her at this moment, to look across the room and see her gorgeous back exposed by one of those bold dresses she wore in the heyday, see her head turn so those green eyes twinkle at me, her hand rising to return my gesture, the amber liquid in her glass filled with light.

  I find her tucked against the bluff in Oaks Bottom, looking up at wildly whirling lights. Discs, that’s what they are, silvery and thin as nickels, and they’re maybe forty or fifty feet above the ground, spinning in circles, blazing with cold fire. Mesmerized, Dorothy doesn’t see me yet. She can’t take her eyes off them, these flying saucers. But I dare not risk calling out and alerting the figures moving toward her in the mist. Any luck, I’ll get to her before they do. Before they can kidnap her and whisk her onto their ship.

  No, that was 1947, when she was pregnant with Jimmy. Dozens of people down there in Oaks Bottom screaming, pointing toward the heavens, saying the aliens were landing. All over Portland they saw these things. Cops, World War II vets, pilots, everybody saw them.

  I find her sitting with a half-dozen women on the bluff overlooking Oaks Bottom. All their chaise longues face north, upriver, with a clear view of Mount St. Helens. It’s twilight, but steam plumes are clearly visible and what feels like soft rain is really ash. Mount St. Helens has been fixing to erupt for months now.

  Dorothy waves me over. She spreads her legs, flexes h
er knees, smoothing her flowered dress down between them, making room for me to join her on the chaise. I sit there on the cotton material she’s offered to me and it’s still warm from her body. I lean back against her, waiting for the mountain to blow.

  No, that was 1980, when she was thinking the world might come to an end. Hoping it would, I believe. We were tired of it then, so you can imagine how we feel now.

  No, we’re not watching the mountain. We’re watching Fourth of July fireworks from Oaks Park like we do every year. Surrounded by kids, happy kids, full of life.

  Ah, Jesus.

  It’s time to go find her. At least there’s no rain. Always rains around here, often deep into June, and that would make it harder to track her. Not that a little rain would stop me. I have a warm jacket, a Seattle Mariners baseball cap, a flashlight. Nothing will stop me because I think this is it, the last chance. Because I don’t know how long Dorothy’s been gone. Floating down the hall. The dark. The night.

  The only thing that makes sense is that she’s lost somewhere in the woods again over in Oaks Bottom. That’s her place, all right. One of the big reasons I decided to move into this “home” instead of some of the others we looked at was because it was in Sellwood and close to the bluff above Oaks Bottom. Clear days and nights, we can see across the wetlands and the little lake to the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster and the Dance Pavilion there at Oaks Park. Jimmy called it the musement center. Loved to ride the merry-go-round, spend a whole afternoon at the roller-skating rink. Sometimes now we hear the kids screaming as they spin or plunge on the rides. We hear the thunder of wheels on tracks. Lights flicker. I think Dorothy thinks it’s him calling. Jimmy.

  Even after Jimmy was gone, she liked to walk in Oaks Bottom. Not go over to the musement center, of course, but wander along the trails now that the city has turned all that land into a refuge. She’d stroll along the trail and name the trees: maple, cedar, fir, wild cherry, black cottonwood. I think maybe she was pretending to teach young Jimmy. Breaks my heart. She’d stroll along and smell the swampy odor, stumps sticking out of the shallow water, ducks with their ducklings. She’d—

  Then she started to get lost in there. One time I found her walking past the huge sandy-hued wall of the mausoleum and crematorium, up at the edge of the bluff. How she managed to climb there from the trail I never understood. She was silhouetted against the building, eight stories high, its wings spread like a giant vulture. Or like the great blue heron painted against a field of darker blue on the building’s center wall. She was drifting vaguely north, and I hated to see her there, of all places. I had nightmares about that for months afterwards. Another time I found her ankle-deep in water at the lake’s edge, swirling her left hand through algae then looking at it as though she hoped her fingers had turned green. There were three little black snakes slithering around and over her right hand where it braced her body on the bank. One time I found her on the railroad tracks at the western end of the wetland. Just standing there like she was waiting for the 4:15 to Seattle.

  Dorothy has stamina. I can’t be sure where she might have gotten to this time. Or who might have found her and done something awful to her. Those neighborhood kids in their souped-up cars she always used to annoy, telling them she’d call the cops.

  I’m quiet leaving my room, quiet going down the hall, with its threadbare carpet, its dim lighting, quiet opening and closing the unlocked front door. But I don’t have to be. No one is watching. I head off down the street like I’m going to buy a carton of milk, don’t turn to look at any cars hissing by, just make my slow way toward the river and Oaks Bottom. It’s not far.

  On television, detectives always begin their investigations by going door-to-door, asking the neighbors if they’ve seen anything. But I can’t risk that. Start ringing doorbells around here, people will just call the “home” and say another old loony is on the loose. Turn me in. I’d be finished before I got started. Maybe when I get closer to Oaks Bottom itself I can find someplace to ask questions.

  But after a few blocks, I have to stop and rest. The weariness just keeps getting worse. I think my only energy for the last few years has come from caring for Dorothy. It’s what’s kept me going. Without that, I’d probably be in the crypt by now, dead of exhaustion, locked away in the big mausoleum there overlooking the musement park. Or I’d be technically still alive but sitting in a chair all day while time comes and goes, comes and goes.

  Now it’s a few minutes later, I think. Could be more than a few. Truth is, I’m not sure exactly where I am. But that’s because my eyes aren’t any good in the dark, not because I’m lost. I’m right above Oaks Bottom, somewhere. It’s just that the landmarks are hard to make out. But there’s a tavern here. I don’t remember seeing it before. But it’s so old, I must have seen it without noticing. Or noticed without remembering. That’s what getting old is, I tell you, nothing but solitary seconds adding up to nothing.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here. Or why I’m in front of this new old building. Squat little windowless place looks like it’s made out of tin, painted white and red, with a tall sign in the parking lot: Riverside Corral. Then I remember: I should drop in for a quick minute and find out if anyone’s seen Dorothy. Could have happened. The old dame knew her booze. Maybe she dropped in to the Corral for a quick Scotch on her last rambling.

  I take a deep breath. Which at my age is something of a miracle right there. And figure I have maybe another couple of hours before I’ll need to head back to the “home,” before they might start to miss me. So this can’t take long.

  I walk in, planning to sidle up to the bar and question the keeper. But the music, if that’s what it is, is loud, and what I see stops me dead: two stages—one dark, one light—and on the stage lit in flashing colors a naked woman with long light hair swirling as she gyrates above the money-filled hands of two men who look like twins.

  Is that …? It’s Dorothy! I’d know those broad shoulders anywhere. How could … no, wait, I blink and see now it’s not her. Of course it’s not. I’m confused. What else is new? But for a moment there …

  I would give anything to see her again. To touch her again. To stand here near her again.

  “What can I get you, old-timer?” the bartender asks. He’s twelve. Well, probably mid-twenties, pointy blond hair and a hopeful scrub of mustache.

  I forget where I am, forget why I’m here. Looking around, seeing the dancer again, I say, “My wife.”

  He smiles. “I don’t think so.”

  Then I’m walking through the parking lot, using my flashlight so I can access the trailhead and make my way down the steep bluff toward the trail. I’m too old for this, I know it. All the walking could kill me, even though I’m in pretty good shape. But I can feel through the soles of my feet that Dorothy has been here, and if it kills me I’m still going to find her.

  A series of switchbacks gets me to the bottom, though I’m so turned around I’m not sure which way to walk. Time comes and goes like the wind, and I see the moon blown free of clouds as though God himself has turned a light on for me. It shines across the lake. Looking up through a lacing of treetops, I see the now-moonlit mausoleum. So that’s where Dorothy must be.

  I begin walking north. Maple, cedar, fir, wild cherry, black cottonwood. The water makes a lapping noise just to my left. It sounds spent. Stumps sticking out of the shallows create eerie shadows that seem to reach for my ankles.

  Rising out of the water, just beyond a jagged limb, I see a figure stretch and begin to move toward me. From the way it strides, I know it’s my son, it’s Jimmy. He’s wearing some kind of harness that weighs him down, but still he seems to glide on the lake’s surface, so light, so graceful.

  Jimmy was never trouble, even when he got in trouble. That time, when the cops came to our door, it was only because he’d gone to protect his best friend, Frank. Johnny Frank. Or maybe Frankie John. I don’t remember. A wonderful boy, just like my Jimmy, but a scrapper, and
that one time he was surrounded by thugs and Jimmy went in there and—

  Oh, Dorothy was so good with our son, all that time they spent at the musement park, and Jimmy lost all fear of the things he’d been so afraid of. Came to love the rides, the scarier the better. Of course, that’s why he went into the service, why he ended up in flight school, why he ended up in a plane over Cambodia, shot down where he wasn’t even supposed to be. Dorothy told me once it was all her fault. I took her in my arms, told her all that was her fault was how wonderful our son turned out to be. And now look, here he is, still wearing his parachute harness, coming home to us at last.

  “Come on, Jimmy. Help me find your mother.”

  “Where is she this time?”

  I point toward the mausoleum. He follows my finger and nods, and just then the clouds return, and the mausoleum fades into the night, its sandy face turning dark before my eyes.

  Jimmy can see anyway. He leads me and I follow. The trail rises and dips, follows the contour of the bluff. I think I’m doing well with the tricky footing for an old man. Then I realize Jimmy is carrying me.

  No, he’s stopped walking and now he’s the one who’s pointing. We’re very close to the mausoleum. Up ahead, standing against the building where Jimmy’s ashes are stored, where my ashes will be stored, where—I remember now—Dorothy’s ashes are stored, I see my wife smiling. She is leaning back against the wall just under the legs of that giant painted-blue heron.

  The wind rises. The clouds unveil the moon again and the building lights up. But no one is there after all. No one and nothing but a wall on which a hundred-foot-tall heron is preparing to fly toward heaven.