Godsend

by Barry Knister

  Twenty minutes later Brenda parked the Buick and walked toward the entrance. It was now four-thirty but still in the low eighties. She needed more coffee, yogurt, some English muffins. Sweeney had said you couldn’t come to Florida without eating key lime pie. She had no interest in sweets but would get a pie for Rayette Peticore.

  As she passed between rows of luxury cars, a grim-looking Hispanic man glanced her way. A metal clothes hanger dangled from the window of his van. He turned back and resumed shoving the hanger through the window’s rubber seal. She felt sorry for him but kept walking. Locking keys in her car always made her feel both stupid and victimized.

  The doors scissored open, and she stepped into frigid air. By comparison to chains, Wynn’s Market was small. She got a cart and followed a woman with perfect white hair. The woman marched purposefully behind her cart, shoulders back, elegantly turned out in a gray silk tunic and white slacks. If you wanted a quick read on class, shoes told the story. The woman was wearing what looked like Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo. As Brenda shopped, she saw that most of Wynn’s customers fit the woman’s demographic. Well-shod, well-dressed.

  Everything on the shelves and icy displays of fruit and vegetables looked suited to such shoppers—buffed, perfected. Employees in the aisles were assembling orders for customers too old or rich to shop for themselves. Brenda found the last of her items. She got in line, paid, and carried her groceries outside.

  The sun was at her back now, casting shadows. Beyond the lot lay U.S. 41, the Tamiami Trail. Tropical flowers filled the median. Distracted by heat and color, looking for Mrs. Krause’s white Buick, Brenda again saw the man with the coat hanger. He wore white pants and a white polo shirt. From this angle, Brenda now saw oversized lettering on his van’s windshield sunscreen. ALL HANDS ON DECK.

  “Can I do anything?” she called. “Do you want me to phone the police?”

  He looked at her. “Why you want to call the police? This is my van.”

  “So they can send a locksmith.” He shook his head and turned back to the coat hanger. “Are you with All Hands on Deck?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Sullen and angry, he was not interested in talking.

  “Do you know James Rivera?”

  “I know him.”

  “He did me a favor,” Brenda said. “I’d like to help.”

  The man lowered his arms. Short and dark, perspiring, he again looked at her. “Mrs. Krause,” she said. “She asked James to pick me up at the airport. He asked a friend to show me around Naples today. It was very helpful. Do you live in Immokalee?” He nodded, regarding her.

  “I’m Brenda Contay.” She came to him. When she shifted her groceries and held out her hand, he rubbed his own on his pants and they shook. Next to the van lay white PVC pipe.

  “Ray Colon,” he said. “I’m his cousin.”

  “That’s even better.” Now she recognized him from the company website.

  “How you mean better?” Colon didn’t smile.

  “You two are family,” she said. “Relatives.”

  He reached up and batted the wire. “Like you see here, Quinto—James—he the one with the brains.” She laughed. “I drive this truck every day, this never happen to me.”

  “And your phone’s inside.”

  “The phone, all my tools.” He looked at the PVC pipe. “I stop to go in the hardware—” He pointed to the Ace Hardware next to Wynn’s. “I never come here before is maybe why it happen.”

  “I was planning on seeing Immokalee,” she said. “This is as good a time as any.”

  He looked back at her, suspicious again, but curious. “You need to see my cousin?”

  “No, but that would be fine, too.”

  “He out on a boat, fishing. He don’t come back until late.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You want to drive me to Immokalee? Now?”

  “Why not?”

  “I got another key there.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  He shrugged. “That would be very good for me.”

  “Come on, then.”

  She pointed the way. Ray Colon gathered up his plumbing supplies and followed. Brenda used the remote to pop the trunk. As he loaded the PVC pipe, she put her groceries on the floor of the back seat. They got in and slammed their doors, fastened seatbelts.

  “You know where is Immokalee?” he asked. “How to get there?”

  “You’re going to tell me.”

  She started the engine and the air conditioning blasted to life. Brenda guided the car back onto southbound 41. Without speaking, Ray Colon motioned for her to make a U-turn at Central Avenue. Hands between his knees, he sat back, waiting to learn more before saying anything else.

  “This isn’t my car,” Brenda said. “It belongs to Mrs. Krause at Donegal. All Hands on Deck did some work for her.”

  “Last fall,” he said. “I put up some fans.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “The pipe you just bought. Someone needs plumbing done?”

  “Pelican Bay. A water line for a fountain.”

  “People who can fix things,” she said. “Or make things. I’m always impressed. You say your cousin has all the brains, but I don’t think so.” Finally Ray Colon smiled. “Your company seems to have something people really need.”

  “We got it divided,” Colon said. “James real good talking to people. I can do a lot of things like plumbing. Some electric like the fans. I do tile. People always need more shelves in the garage or the closet. That kind of thing.”

  “Especially old people.”

  “What happen, they don’t know how many things you got to have two people. To hold something while you working. Hand you a tool. What happen, one die, they need help to do something they always done for themself. The thing about James, he understand old people.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Ray didn’t answer. “Are you afraid to talk about him?” she asked. “Because James is undocumented?”

  They looked at each other a second, and Brenda faced forward. “The woman he asked to show me around Naples,” Brenda said. “Her name’s Noelle Harmon. She says everyone here likes your cousin. No one wants to give him a hard time, and neither do I.”

  They rode a minute in silence.

  Finally he said, “Quinto figure out a lot from when he was young. We come from Mexico City. His father’s brother, my father, he come here when I was twelve. Three years later, he send for me.”

  Ray motioned for her to get in the right lane.

  Maybe it was because she already knew his cousin was undocumented, or because she was giving him a lift home. But now Ray Colon relaxed. He explained how Rivera’s own father—a teacher, poor but educated—had died of TB. He had left a wife and two boys, with a third child on the way.

  “James was the oldest,” Ray said. “You know what is a barrio?” Brenda nodded, eyes trained on the car in front of her. “We live in a bad one. Near a dump. In Mexico City, you got to have a lot of money to move. A lot of sickness from air pollution. That’s what kill Quinto’s father.”

  After her husband’s death, Rosalla Colon had cleaned for a wealthy family. When her baby girl was born, they let Rosalla come back. But with three children, the young widow had made a quick decision: she would send her smartest, oldest son to Cozumel. Another cousin was there, working in a hotel and making good money. Tourists tipped well.

  A month later, in the back of a truck loaded with carved onyx bookends for the souvenir shops in Cancun and Cozumel, thirteen-year-old James had reached the Yucatan Peninsula. His cousin paid the necessary bribes and soon Rivera was washing dishes in the hotel’s huge kitchen. After six months, he was made a busboy, then a waiter. Now he could work directly for the tourists and study them.

  “That’s when he really start learning English,” Ray said. He pointed again. “Up here is Golden Gate Parkway. You got to turn.”

  Brenda nodded and angled right.

  “At night,” Ray said, “af
ter the guests go to bed, Quinto stay up. He watch satellite TV from the States, in the lounge. He do that for eight months.”

  Enjoying the story himself, Ray described how, on a night off, James and his cousin had sat on the dock, watching tourists return to their cruise ship. It was huge and white, with flags and steam. “Like a dream, he tell me,” Ray said. “He say looking at it make him think of the movies the priests show us when we was kids. Old ones they got from a church in the States. They show them outside at night, everyone watch under the stars. To him, he say the big ship make him feel like being in a movie.”

  A happy memory. As she drove, Brenda saw two boys on a dock. They were sitting with their legs over the side, looking up at a cruise ship.

  “He say not to tell anyone this story,” Ray said.

  “Why not?”

  “He don’t like people knowing.”

  “Why, Ray?” Colon didn’t answer. “It’s a wonderful story.”

  Don’t stop, Brenda thought. She hoped that helping him would lead Colon to trust her, to break the code of silence his cousin had imposed. She stopped for a red light. When the logjam of cars finally moved, she followed others up a bridge. Signs showed she was on her way to I-75.

  “Please, Ray,” she said. “It can’t hurt anything. I’m from Michigan, I’ll be gone in two weeks. I want to know what happened. I won’t tell anyone, that’s a promise.”

  Again Colon seemed to think about it. He looked out his side window. “Okay,” he said and faced forward. “Quinto help you out, so I trust you. But don’t forget, you can’t say nothing. He find out, he get really mad.”

  “I understand.”

  “Okay,” Ray said again. “That night, the cousin have to get back to work. He leave Quinto alone on the dock. Sitting, watching. He say…what you call it, they put you to sleep, but you still awake?”

  “Hypnotized?”

  “Yeah, hypnotize. By all the lights and music. He stay like that until all the tourist come back. They laughing, tripping. Got all kind of souvenirs.”

  A night of stars and music. As she drove, Brenda now saw just one boy, alone and still dazzled by glamour and music as he walked back along the dock. Some of the ship’s crew were just then returning from town. “They was drunk,” Ray said. “Like the vago men in the barrio. They stumbling, arguing.

  “Thirteen years ago,” he said. “Quinto was fifteen. He say there was a full moon, no clouds. Two crew guys pass, running fast for the ship. But two others are fighting in front of the dock. When he get there, Quinto see one with a knife. The other guy, he was swinging something. You know what it is?”

  Brenda shook her head. The story had her on autopilot. She had followed a broad curve, and was now driving north on I-75.

  “A thing for books they make out of stone,” Ray said. “From Mexico City. Some passenger drop it walking back. Maybe it come in the same truck with Quinto. The one with the stone, he fight better, real hard. He hit the other guy a lot of times. Quinto say there was all kind of blood. The guy with the statue, he see my cousin, he grab him. He make Quinto help pull the other guy off the dock. He really drunk, but he never let go of Quinto.”

  “Your cousin takes the dead man’s place.”

  She looked over. Ray Colon nodded yes, and she turned back to the road. She had hardly been conscious of driving. “The crew member tells your cousin he’s part of it,” she said. “He says James—Quinto—has to take the dead man’s place. If he doesn’t agree—”

  “No.” Ray shook his head. “Quinto tell him. He want to go, see? He don’t want to stay in Mexico. He come in a truck with those statues, see? It all fit together in his mind. He tell the guy, you hit him with a stone, a carving. I come here in a truck with those statues. All this is suppose to happen. You take me with you, I do what you say.’”

  “The bookends are the connection,” Brenda said. “He thought it was all fated.” When Ray didn’t answer, she looked over. “Destiny?”

  “Okay, yeah,” Colon said. “‘Es mi destino.’ Is my destiny. Quinto always saying that. The guy tell him not to talk. He tell him, if anyone ask, your name is Diego. James in Spanish. The officers are all white, he say. Unless someone make trouble or steal money from a cabin, they don’t see the crew. They never notice you different.”

  “Diego,” she said, and Ray nodded. “But you keep calling him Quinto.”

  “That his own name back home,” Ray said. “Quinto mean fifth in Spanish.”

  “Why not James Colon?”

  Ray laughed. “He thinking in English now, not Spanish. He say colon mean something make people laugh here.”

  “And he kept watching English-language TV,” she said. “The news. Watching a successful reporter named Geraldo Rivera. Why not James Rivera?”

  Ray laughed again. “You are a smart lady,” he said. “You should come work for All Hands on Deck.”

  Ash River, Minnesota

  When Charlie Schmidt reached the landing at Northern Lights Houseboats and Cabins, it was fully dark.

  The parking lot had been plowed, and one high-up security lamp glared down on shadowed mounds of snow. Schmidt parked next to a lone Chevy Blazer facing the river, then sat a moment. The frozen river was grooved by tracks from snowmobiles. All the houseboats were in storage farther up the river. Here, thirty miles east of International Falls, the snow didn’t melt until spring.

  He reached in back for his parka and felt yesterday’s painting in his shoulder. The long drive, too. Twelve hours. He got out, pulled on the parka and crossed the lot. At the main lodge he rounded the corner and was glad to see lights on in the convenience store. Behind the counter, a girl sat watching a wall-mounted TV. As he stamped his feet and entered, she turned. Her face was framed by coal-black hair. Her eyes and lips were also black, her makeup chalk-white. Schmidt closed the door.

  “There’s nothing for rent,” she said.

  “I know. I’m friends with the owners.”

  “They’re in Key West? There’s more people using their places in winter, that’s why the store’s open?”

  “Right.” He pointed at the set. “What’s on?”

  “Families of people in jail? Ones they think are terrorists?”

  Schmidt nodded and looked to the shelves. The girl’s makeup made him feel old. So did the way she ended everything with a question mark. He had picked up supplies in Milwaukee, but stepped to the cooler. He got out a pint of half-and-half and brought it to the counter.

  “This, and a package of Advil.”

  On the TV, a talk-show host was interviewing a middle-aged Arab couple. Dressed in traditional clothing, the man sat stiffly, hands on his knees as the woman spoke. In the moment, Schmidt felt something for them.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  He turned off the county road and began the short, bumpy ride to his property. After dinner with Tina, for no reason he could think of, Schmidt had decided to go back to where everything had happened last spring, the Boundary Waters.

  The Ford Explorer humped and rocked. All at once the windshield went blank—his SUV had dislodged snow from a pine bough. Schmidt stopped and tried the wipers. The sluggish blades shoved snow that was replaced, and shoved, until the third sweep gave way to clear glass and the glare of headlights.

  He moved forward, tunneling his way back in space and time. Everything long avoided was still here, waiting for him. Starting out that morning, he had known only that he needed to do it. Now he felt confident. You could put it off ten years, he thought. It wouldn’t make any difference. All of it would still be waiting for you.

  He kept going. Now the truck’s headlights revealed the two big granite boulders marking the halfway point to his house. He rounded them and saw the pole barn on his right, the house dead ahead. Behind the barn was where the body of John Nielson’s father had been buried under leaves. John had found the body right after finding Schmidt. The pole barn door had slid open. Charlie? Schmidt had been sitting very still, bound with duct tape on a straigh
t chair. Hold on, don’t move. The legs of the chair had been balanced on a pair of jet skis, the noose around his neck tied to a crossbeam. John Nielson had slowly lifted the noose off Schmidt’s head with a broom handle.

  Even nine months later, he flooded with relief. Schmidt now felt a powerful wish to reclaim what was here. To find what was missing.

  He lurched in the truck, guiding it through the last snow-laden pine boughs. He slowed to a stop outside the barn. Snow reached almost to the padlock on the sliding doors. He would have to shovel a path. That’s why you put a shovel in the house nine months ago, he thought. It pleased him to have thought ahead, even after all that had happened. It seemed like a sign to him. Even then, he had meant to come here like this.

  Schmidt turned off the ignition and got out. Quiet blanketed everything, broken only by the ticking of the hot engine. He breathed in deeply, felt his nose hair freeze. He looked up, the evening sky blue. Marion Ross had once said the sky in Naples was very blue, with puffy clouds like cotton candy. We have clouds like that here, he thought. Summer was actually warm. Balmy even, but without the Florida humidity.

  He looked again to the barn. Had his son Andy been up? No, probably not. Andy was sensitive, like his mother. After what had happened to his old man, he would think twice before coming up here. In all, six people had died. That’s right, Schmidt thought. Before Andy walks into the hardware or the Dew Drop Tavern, he’ll think twice.

  It didn’t concern him. Schmidt shoved through knee-high snow, glad for the roof he had put over the front entry in ’96. He stepped under, stamped, and pulled open the screen. He used his key, then pushed in.

  The smell of mothballs and pine sap greeted him as he closed the door. Dim evening light came from the glass door wall at the back. It was cold—he could see his breath—but he peeled off his parka and hung it on the coat tree. As he had thousands of times over four decades, Schmidt crossed the pine-plank floor to the leather couch. He glanced at the stone hearth. Seeing familiar things in the dark was like touching or blessing them. Bringing them back to life.