by Rich Foster
The crew member, which had gone down to the ground, turned toward Alan and handed him a note. “I think this was intended for you.”
Alan took the proffered paper. “It wasn’t my heart, it was gangrene. I didn’t want to leave you alone. Thanks for going, and thanks for coming back. If I can, I’ll let you know whether life is a geode or not. Karl”
They were silent for the rest of the flight back. The helicopter slowly settled to the ground. The engine roar died and the whine of the rotors slowed to a fading whock-whock-whock and then faded away.
The pilot looked at Alan. “Who was he?”
“Just someone I met in the woods. His name was Karl Bjorn. He said he was flying down south from his ranch up north. When he said he needed medical help, I didn’t stay around to chat. Other than that I don’t really know anything.”
“Well, you’ll have to come in and file a report.”
“Sure.” Alan said.
Soon people were scurrying about servicing the plane. Karl’s body was transferred to an awaiting ambulance and the crewmen went inside to change out of their flight suits. Somewhere in the ensuing activity the hippie who had found the man just disappeared. There was no doubt that Karl had died of natural causes, one look at his bloated discolored leg answered any question as to cause. Consequently, there was limited interest by the authorities as to whom the stranger was who had found the plane. It received limited play on the news. Without a survivor to interview there was little traction for the news story.
*
Early that evening Alan was dressed in new clothes and carried an equally new rucksack. Both were acquired at an Army Surplus store he had passed on the road. In the bathroom at the state park he trimmed his beard and hair with a pair of scissors. Then filling his rucksack with his meager possessions he walked out to the road. A half-mile down the road he came to a small motel where they were always glad for the business and didn’t ask too many questions. For some unknown reason, he put down a false name and address on the registration card. Something inside made him want to cling to his anonymity. He picked up the phone and called his house. He was inclined to hang up, but he held on, expecting to hear Lilly’s voice. Instead he heard a recorded voice state that the number he had reached was disconnected or out service. Alan looked at the phone perplexed. The message repeated itself and then the line was disconnected.
Alan took a long hot shower. Afterward he walked across the street to a small restaurant and ate voraciously for almost an hour. The waitress watched mystified from behind the counter. Alan worked through enough food for a family of four. She couldn’t help but wonder how he managed to stay so thin.
That night, fully sated with food and ensconced in a bed that seemed to be the softest he ever knew, Alan lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He considered his experience. He thought of Karl and of Lilly. He thought of the past and for the first time in quite a while he thought of the future.
He could not imagine going back to his old job, not that there was any chance of it still being his. He could not imagine “things” ever being as they “were”. He sensed he had changed, in fact he knew he was different. Alan felt like a butterfly that had just shed its cocoon and he was ready to spread his newly found wings. Tomorrow he must face the past, and then he would be ready to face the future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As summer moved in on Beaumont, winter was building in the southern hemisphere. Far away from Beaumont, at the tip of South America, the Queen Mary 2 was rounding Cape Horn. It was night and flurries scudded through the night air. The seas ran a small chop and occasionally the wind would rip the top from a wave and send it spilling in a spray of white foam. However, it was not sufficient to even move the glasses in the ships bars. Clouds left the night sky absolutely black. Beyond the faint glow of the ship’s lights there was nothing to see. No silhouette of the coastal mountains showed. Not a light gleamed on shore. It was a lonely and uninhabited coast. Only the ship’s lights sparkled like attractive jewels, except there was no one to see them.
Lilly stood outside leaning against the rail of their luxury suite’s private balcony. The wind bit at her face and an occasional flurry of flakes landed on her coat. She clutched her jacket closed at her throat. Far below cold black icy water sliced past the hull. A small shiver ran through her. The thought of drowning frightened her. She thought of Alan and how he had died. She shivered again, partly from the cold air, but mostly from thinking of Alan swept away by a stream fed by snow melt. She pushed the thought away from her mind. She did not care for unpleasantness. And the thought of Alan and the past was exactly that.
Quite quickly she was becoming accustomed to people stooping and fetching for her. Her voice was rapidly acquiring the imperious impatience of the snob. She would send a dish back to the kitchen simply because she could, knowing the deferential staff would smile and apologize. Lilly had never had money and now that she had access to it, she felt it was her right after what she had suffered. Not that it was not without a price. Charles could be a bit of an impetuous child at times. The cavalier playfulness with which he had taunted the police was a part of who he was; Lilly could see where his small but petty demands might become a burden. But then she was used to putting up with things.
The sliding door opened and Charles called to her.
“What are you doing out there, Love? Come in and put this new negligee on. It’s time for bed.”
Lilly obediently came in. Don’t fight things you cannot change, was the unspoken message in her mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Early the next morning Alan was waiting by the Waffle House when the Trailways bus rolled in. A dozen passengers disembarked for their breakfast stop. Alan bought a ticket to Beaumont from the driver, who was in a hurry to get to his coffee and waffles. He boarded the bus and took an open seat toward the back. He found he sought out the seat that seemed most removed from the detritus of his soon to be fellow passengers.
Alan nodded off to sleep and roused up as the motor roared and the bus jerked forward. The bus shifted roughly and then as it picked up speed it settled into the rhythmic hum of rubber on asphalt. He watched the miles speed by. The landscape was lush and green. In the distance the snowcaps on the mountains were vastly shrunken. The sky was blue and Alan was content to be alive. The road was unfamiliar to him. Lilly and he had never traveled the road east of Beaumont in the time they lived there. It wasn’t until the driver called out, “Beaumont!” that he realized that they had entered the outskirts of the town in which he lived.
He stepped off the bus and walked up the main street of town. He could have taken a taxi but he enjoyed the walk, and perhaps he admitted to himself he was delaying the moment when he would walk into the house and the past would catch up with him. In a half hour he had reached his street. It was familiar yet he felt as though it was a place from his distant past. He looked at his neighbors’ houses and he realized he didn’t really know any of them. There were a few he would wave to with familiarity when he drove past, but in fact he did not even know their names. He came to his own house. He considered it. The drapes were drawn, the grass shabby and uncut. As he walked up the front walk he saw a “For Rent” sign tilted over and lying on the lawn. He mounted the stone steps to his front door and knocked as though he were a stranger. He knocked again.
“If you’re looking to rent you should ring the agent. No one lives there!” a voice called from across the street and down two. Alan turned to see a woman who was vaguely familiar in a washed out sort of way. She was standing at the curb; an empty trash can in hand. She didn’t know him, and with his beard, tan, and weight loss, she would not recognize him even if she did. Alan turned away from his front door, retreated down his front walk, and crossed the street. He smiled “Good afternoon!” She smiled back with the careful caution of suburbia. “Since when?” he asked.
“Since the man disappeared. They say it was a car accident but they never found the body. The l
ady was put on trial for murder but a fancy big city lawyer got her off. Seems she had taken up with some rich fellow from across town. Soon as the trial was over they took off together. At least that is what the papers said. It was all a little too quick and easy to me! She looked kind of nice and sweet, just shows you can’t tell a book by its cover. Lots of folks think there’s more to the story than came out at the trial. They had a vicious fight the night her husband disappeared!”
Suddenly the woman was embarrassed. “Perhaps they were friends of yours and here I am running on with gossip!”
“No,” said Alan. “I never really knew them well. In fact we were really only familiar strangers.” Alan glanced back at his house and then bid the lady good-bye and walked away.
*
In the police station in downtown Beaumont, Sergeant Maddox sat in Police Chief Holland’s office.
“I just got the word Ray. Detective Dalton won’t be coming back. The disc-surgery has healed but the doc is giving him an out for early retirement with partial disability.” Maddox waited silently for the Chief to get to his point. “You did a good job handling the Chandler case even if it did end up just being a lot of smoke. I think you should sit for the Detective exam. You’d have no trouble passing it.”
To the Chief’s surprise Maddox said he just might do that.
“Well if you do, I want you to know that you’ll have no trouble getting the nod from me.”
“Thank you Chief. I think I might be ready for the change.”
He knew the interview was over so he rose and walked out into the hall.
*
Three blocks away Alan was sitting in the City Library, reading past copies of the Beaumont Star. His fingers were smudged with ink from the stack of old newspapers next to him. The top paper said “Not Guilty” in resurrection type. Below was a photo of Lilly on the courthouse steps. An old man shuffled past and glanced at the paper. He paused and, unsolicited, said to Alan, “I think she killed the guy!”
“No, take my word for it, she didn’t.”
The man shuffled on murmuring about bleeding-heart liberals.
Alan came out of the library, squinting in the bright morning sun. He walked up the street to the Courthouse where a taxi loitered in the shade. He slid into the backseat and gave the driver his destination. The car slipped away from the curb and joined the light afternoon traffic. Soon they were on the edge of town. Tightly packed houses became spread out, the lawns grew broader, and soon the houses disappeared completely behind tall trees and wrought iron automatic gates. They crossed the river. On the far side across the slack flowing water he could see a large white house. A moment later, the driver slowed and turned into what must have been the same house’s long gravel drive. They drove through a corridor of shade made by large, tall deciduous trees. The cab pulled into the motor court.
Alan stepped out of the cab and looked around. Even he was impressed by the size of the house and properties. Compared to their house, which was saddled with debt, this was a Shangri-La. No wonder Lilly jumped ship he thought. And then for the first time he wondered just how long Lilly and Charles Blain might have been an item.
On the far side of the gravel area a beat up pick-up truck was parked. The back was loaded with gardening tools and paraphernalia. Alan handed the cabbie a twenty. “Please wait, I won’t be long.” He stepped around the front of the cab and walked toward the garage. Standing on his toes he looked in the garage door window. Lilly’s red Miata was in the first bay. He turned back toward the front door. As he mounted the flagstone steps a gardener hurried around the corner of the house. “No one here! You shouldn’t be here. I not supposed to leave gate open!”
“Where are they?”
“They gone on trip. Big trip!” the gardener said in fractured English.
“When are they coming back?”
The gardener shrugged his shoulders. “I no know! Now go!”
Alan felt the panic in the poor man’s voice, worried because he had left the gate open. He gave up and retreated to the cab. “Let’s go!” he said. “There’s nothing for me here.”
When he arrived downtown, Alan paid off the cabbie and went to a bar to think. He ordered a beer from a surely waitress who had missed her opportunity to get out of Beaumont at least thirty years before. As she set the glass down hard sloshing beer on the table, it seemed unlikely she would ever have a future.
In the library he had read every article that he could find about his disappearance and about Lilly’s trial. It was as though this was a tale about a stranger. He felt sorry for her, and then surprised himself when he realized the feeling was closer to pity. He sipped the beer. Lilly had always hated conflict; he knew that. Maybe Charles was her ticket out from a failing marriage and mounting debt. Then again, perhaps Charles was the reason the marriage failed.
He found he was reluctant to pick up the mantle of his old life. Something had changed in the woods. He had learned to let those things go over which he had no control. He now saw that much of his angst had been in the service of avoiding living life. As Thoreau had said, he wanted to “push life into a corner and if it were mean, to get the full meanest from it.”
Over his second beer he let Lilly go. The fantasy of surprising her in the kitchen evaporated. In his mind the story never had an epilogue anyway, now instead there was a conclusion. It was time for them to both start over. A part of him had died in the woods and now he felt reborn and ready for the future. Over another beer he contemplated his future.
There were few people in the bar when he first came in but it slowly filled up as the afternoon waned. There seemed to be a crowd of regulars. Two policemen in uniform came in together. Alan was eye level with their pistols as they passed. They took the booth behind him. As he drank he feigned to be reading a newspaper while he listened to conversations around him. Most concerned arguments about sports, others were people complaining of work now that another day was over.
It was eavesdropping from idle boredom. Bits of the policemen’s conversation came to him.
“So what did the Chief want?” Delaney asked.
“He wants me to take the Detective exam. It seems Dalton is taking early retirement. He said I handled the case very well.”
“If you go for it there will be an opening for Sergeant won’t there?”
“That there will, Mick!”
“But what I don’t understand is why you busted her so hard but then turned right around and gave her a break.”
“Mick, our job is to gather the facts, that doesn’t preclude our drawing our own conclusions. There was plenty of evidence against her. She had plenty of motive and opportunity but the means never made sense. The simplest solution is usually the best. When I couldn’t make sense of the way she got rid of him, nor explain her strange behavior, I started to look for another explanation. That is when I noticed the key was in the off position in the car. I tried to tell the D.A. but they weren’t listening, so I gave the tip to the defense.”
“You helped fry the D.A.?” Delaney asked incredulously.
“No, I just helped serve justice. Besides I don’t think Dennison will be around here for long. She probably thinks that Webster dug it up himself, and I don’t think he will talk. He enjoys being the wonder kid who can pull a rabbit out of the hat.”
Alan knew what case they were talking about and he eyed the big gray haired officer. He did not appear exceptionally bright, just another plodding public servant. He thought he ought to stand and introduce himself, instead he flagged down the cocktail waitress, paid his tab, and as an afterthought that of the two policemen. He left without speaking to them.
*
That evening as dusk settled on the city, Alan burglarized his own house, if such a thing is possible. He located the spare key that they kept on a nail below the porch deck. Enough light filtered past the drapes that he moved easily through the house. Upstairs in the master bedroom he found his clothes still hanging neatly in the walk in closet.
Traces of Lilly’s scent lingered in the room. Many of the hangars on her side were bare. Selectively, he packed his favorite clothes in a suitcase. He moved the naked hangars to Lilly’s side of the closet. She would never notice that some of his clothes were gone. In fact, when she came back she would likely scoop them all up and drop them into a cardboard carton to be left on the curb for Goodwill, abandoned detritus from her past life.
In his dresser drawer he found a small photo album that contained snapshots of his brother and himself. Cowboy outfits and home-built coaster cars. A smile passed across his lips at the memory. He looked for his laptop, but un-known to him it was still in the police station’s evidence room in that they were unable to contact Lilly. By the time he let himself out the back door it was dark. He returned the key to its sinecure and walked away down the drive carrying a suitcase and all the memories of his former life.
That night Alan slept in the bus station. It was posh comfort compared to his time in the woods. The next morning he caught the 8:52 bus for Red Lake. The bus moved down the valley past verdant fields of alfalfa. Cows in abutting fields pushed their heads through the fence trying for that proverbial other side. Large summer cumulus clouds floated overhead like scoops of whipped cream. Ahead he could see the mountains rise.
The motor noise dropped and the bus began to slow. Across the aisle from him a farm laborer gathered up bags and totes, then slowly made his way toward the front of the bus. The tires scrunched as they hit the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Out the window, Alan saw it was the gas station he had stopped at for gas and donuts. Draped across a metal lawn chair out front was the same languid youth. Alan felt an urge to go talk to him, as though there was special significance in the last conversation he had before he went into the woods. But he realized it was an insignificant conversation. After all, he thought, most of life’s conversations are banal. The bus door closed, the air brakes hissed, the tires scrunched and the bus pulled away from the station, leaving the youth behind to watch life as it passed him by.
