by R. L. Fox
My mother hugs me again and pats my back. “You did the right thing, dear.”
“And Mom ... huh ... huh ... you’re not going to ... huh ... believe this, but Mike is ... huh ... huh ... there was an accident, Mom, with ... huh ... Daniel and the gun.”
My mother’s mouth goes agape with the shock of it all. She’s rendered speechless, it seems, and she looks like she’s going to cry.
I watch as Daniel stands and brushes off his shirt and jeans. He walks gingerly over to Frank’s flashlight, lying in the dirt. He picks it up and walks back to the edge of the promontory and points the shaft of light into the canyon. My mother and I shuffle over, arm in arm, and stand next to Daniel. The three of us gaze downwards.
Frank’s fall has been cut short by the outcrop of boulders and trees fifty or sixty feet below the shelf on which we are standing. Frank’s body lies face down, spread-eagled atop a large boulder. There’s blood all over the place, on Frank’s head and on the surface of the rock. I look away.
My mother begins to cry openly, sobbing like I had sobbed a few minutes ago. She probably feels very alone, just as she did when William ... uh, my dad, died. My mother probably loved Frank, or thought she did, actually, because she didn’t even know the real Frank.
“He fell onto the fertility site,” I say. “Right on the yoni stone.”
Daniel adds, “Sarah’s blow didn’t kill him. The yoni stone did.”
“What’s a yoni stone?” my mother asks, sniffling. She needs a tissue but she doesn’t have her purse.
“I’ll tell you later about the yoni stones, Mom,” I say, flushing a little.
“I’m going down to take a look,” Daniel says boldly.
“Wait just a minute. I’ll go with you.” I run to the base of the escarpment and pick up the red diary, and then return to Daniel’s side.
“This belongs to you,” I say, handing Daniel the book.
“The diary belongs with my mother,” he replies. He puts an arm around me and kisses my hair when I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Young lady, it’s time to go home,” my mother interjects with authority. “We have phone calls to make. An attorney and then the police.”
I look at her with defiant eyes. “No, Mom,” I say. “I’m going down to the fertility site with Daniel.”
My mother relents. “You can go,” she says, “but not without me.”
Daniel, with the flashlight, leads the way. I follow closely, and then my mother, right behind me. The sweat chills on my arms in the cool air as we descend slowly into the ravine. I can scarcely see five steps ahead, so I keep my eyes on Daniel as he walks.
When we reach the yoni stone, a huge boulder, Daniel walks steadily towards Frank’s unconscious form. He’s probably feeling, as I am, an imposing sense of dread. The side of Frank’s skull has been laid open. Blood is everywhere. I look away for a moment.
Then Daniel vaults to the top of the rock and leans over Frank, looking for signs of life. He put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and shakes him.
“He’s dead,” Daniel says flatly. “He isn’t breathing. He really is dead.” Daniel had spoken as if he thought he might have found his father alive.
Head down, I begin to cry again, and my mother draws me into her arms. I see Daniel grab the gun out of Frank’s waistband and shove it into his own pants. As Daniel moves away from the corpse, Frank’s hand seems to grip Daniel’s shirt. He starts, and then he scurries down the rock and jumps to the ground.
“I want to take the body out of here,” he says, “but I’ll need some help. I need one of you to navigate.” He looks questioningly at me, and then at my mother.
“I’ll help,” I say.
“I can help, too,” my mother says, with apparent reluctance.
The three of us climb onto the rock. Daniel braces his legs to adjust his leverage on Frank, and with help from my mother and I, he shoulders the corpse.
With the flashlight in hand, I lead the way back up the narrow path. My mother steadies the burden as Daniel, with seemingly superhuman drive and strength, carries his father’s body out of the canyon.
When we reach the top, Daniel, out of breath, walks over to the escarpment, kneels, and then rolls Frank’s body to the ground.
At the edge of the promontory, Daniel starts looking around for something in the dirt. He picks up a rock, the rock, and shows it to my mother and I.
“This is the rock Sarah used,” he says. I beam in with the flashlight. There’s a patch of blood on the rock. With his tee shirt Dan wipes off the rock, except the blood. Why is he doing that? I wonder. He fingers the rock for a moment with both hands, and then he drops it.
“All right, this is our story,” he says, with authority, just like my mother speaks sometimes. “Sarah was not involved, directly, in Frank’s death. My fingerprints are on the rock. I hit Frank with it while we were fighting. End of story.”
Daniel’s new demeanor seems to suggest the qualities of a real leader, like he’s commander of a Navy ship or something.
“Why did you take the gun from Frank’s body?” my mother asks.
Daniel looks at her soberly. “It belonged to my brother Mike, not Frank,” he says. He walks away from us, but then he stops, turns back around and says, in a casual tone, “Anyway, I have unfinished business to attend to. Sarah knows her way down the mountain.”
I run to Daniel and put my arms around him. “Don’t go, Daniel,” I plead. “Please don’t go.”
He holds me tight and kisses me softly on the lips. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I haven’t a choice. You know my heart will be with you, always.”
“I love you too, Daniel. Will you call me as soon as you finish whatever it is you have to do? Come see me?”
“I promise. I haven’t forgotten about the notices for Manny.”
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I back away from Daniel. I can do this, I tell myself feebly. I must let him go. He turns and trots down the path. As I watch him disappear, the crash of thunder sounds. The roar of it rolls through the mountain, and the echoes seem to cry savagely, “You’ll lose him, you’ll lose him!”
The faint smell of burning wood hangs in the air. I feel a raindrop. I miss Daniel already. I should have gone with him.
“Let’s go home, dear,” my mother says.
26
Daniel
Friday night, August 8
El Cajon Valley, San Diego, OB
With my mother’s diary in my back pocket, and the truth about her death revealed, I reach the base of the mountain. On the way down I’d sniffed the presence of a fire. As I jog towards The Gables, I see smoke rising from the house. Where is Julie?
The act of running, with the intractable metal of Mike’s gun moving against my belly, seems to ease my anguish. I wish I could let myself go, weep as I’ve never wept. I can’t; I have work to do.
Mike and my mother have been reduced to memories, but I’ll cherish forever those surrealistic dances of word thoughts and visions that play in my mind. Because the life force in Sarah is so fresh and immediate, she’s there to keep things real, and I’ll go on loving her in the only way that matters, the only way my heart knows.
Somehow, Frank’s downfall, his death, makes me feel uneasy, like an argument that, although won, leaves a taste of doubt. I vividly recall, with a sense of awe, the moment I’d spent gazing at Frank’s corpse, the dread of going near the cold, dark smell of death. Frank’s color had faded to bloodlessness under the skin. His mouth was open, his eyes dulled, motionless, as if, zombie-like, only the neck muscles could give them direction. Alone on the rock, staring into the face of death, it seemed I was sharing with Frank a place in his hell. It’s amazing when I consider the time Frank now has at his disposal, an eternity to reflect on the error of his ways.
Would Frank really have run off with Julie? Of course not. As with most everything Frank did, there was an ulterior motive. He wanted the diary. That Julie trusted Frank only attests to her delusional sta
te of mind.
As I reach The Gables, I bound up the steps of the back porch and try to open the door, but it’s locked. Smoke pours from every crack and crevice in the big yellow house. The smell is noxious. I run quickly to the front of the house only to find another locked door. I make my way to the garage, roll back the sliding door and grab my old Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
At the front of the house again, I step onto the porch and rip the screen off a window that leads into the living room. With the head of the metal bat I shatter the glass.
The ensuing explosion, the force of escaping heat and smoke, knocks me backwards, sending me off the porch and onto the grass a few feet away. I lie flat on my back for a moment to get my bearings and then I sit up. Flames are licking at the vacuum I’ve created as smoke bellows forth into the night air.
What caused the fire? I can only hope that Julie left the house before it started, and that Wags has run off like he often does. Brief consideration of the fate of Mike’s corpse, Sarah’s suitcase and her purse, my books, stereo and CDs, my clothes, leads me to the obvious conclusion—all lost, I’m sure.
I hear the distant wail of a siren. Getting to my feet in a hurry, I run full speed, a fifty-yard dash, to my car. I back my Mazda up in a whirl of dust and race down Ballantyne Lane. The siren grows louder. I make a right turn and then a quick left onto First Street. I observe the red fire truck and pull to the side of the road as it passes. A black and white police car follows the truck with lights flashing. Sarah and her mother will be in good hands.
I continue on, and a few minutes later I’m parking my car behind a grove of pomegranate trees, in a weed-infested field near the high school. I take Mike’s pistol from my jeans, remove the cartridges from the cylinder, put them in my pocket and return the gun to my waistband. I remove my pocketknife from the glove box and pick up my mother’s diary from the passenger seat. Then I step out of the car and put on my blue flannel shirt. After taking up the ounce of pot from the trunk I walk down the street to David’s house.
David’s white Mustang is parked in the driveway, and there’s the glow of light in the garage, David’s converted bedroom. I knock on the garage door. Seconds later the door swings open and my best friend, or rather, my former best friend, sandy-haired and freckle-faced David Goldberg, stands facing me.
For a long moment there’s hardly a sound in the world beyond our labored respirations. I study David’s face with an amused yet soulful gaze. I want to communicate ... something ... forgiveness, perhaps.
David seems, like me, to be thinking about the uselessness of words, of the insurmountable condition that has arisen between us and will only become more complicated with speech. Suddenly David moves closer and we embrace warmly, break apart and then affect a brotherly handshake.
“What up, dude?” David says. “Love you.”
“Me, too, bro.”
“Weed smells good.”
“It’s for J-man. Tell you about it later. Devon is in trouble. She needs us. Liz will help; we can pick her up on the way. They’ll be looking for my car. You drive; I’ll do the rest.”
“Your call, dude.”
When we’re out of the Valley, traveling west on Highway 94 towards downtown San Diego, I begin to tell David about all that has come to pass this evening. David listens attentively. I don’t mention anything about the gun I’m carrying.
“Shut the front door, dude,” David says emphatically. And then with a grimace, he adds, “It seems unfair that they should put you or Sarah in jail for something I myself would have done.”
I feel a slight easing of the tension in my muscles. “I’ll get by,” I say. Man is the animal, I reflect, who gets accustomed even to not getting accustomed. However, without Sarah, without being able to see clearly a future with her, the world has no up or down for me—I can only float disembodied in a dark void.
“As far as Devon and I are concerned,” says David, “I figure things are over. I haven’t heard from her in a long time, and I don’t know where she’s been. But, I know we can get it back together, given the chance. I love her, dude.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” I say.
***
David parks his Mustang on Market Street, a few blocks east of the waterfront. The Bodyshop is located nearby, around a corner. The noise of the vibrant city, the combined effect of the rumble of traffic, the droning beat of music and the buzz of people milling about, is deafening in contrast to the usual quietness of El Cajon Valley.
“Wait here. I won’t be long,” I tell David.
Above the front door of The Bodyshop hangs a colorful neon sign: “NUDE DANCING.” I enter, my heart racing. I show the doorman my doctored driver’s license and he waves me on. I walk up to the nonalcoholic bar with smooth, sure steps. To hell with self-consciousness.
In the back of the room there’s a dancer’s cage with pink bars, raised to stage level. A stunning blonde, topless, who wears only bikini bottom and high heels dances suggestively to “When Love Comes to Town,” recorded by U2 and B.B. King, as it pumps loudly over the sound system.
I listen to the hard rock blues song as if with new ears, the music no longer a simple piece but a pure and tender enlivening of the heart. Words of Mr. Christie ring free in my memory: “The blues do to most people what milk does to a baby. The blues are what spirit is to a minister. We play the blues because our hearts have been hurt, and our souls have been disturbed. But when we play the blues, we let it be classy.”
When the tune finishes, the dancer scampers backstage, her buttocks moving like Jell-O on springs. With the ease of a dreamer, I imagine myself climbing into bed with her. Then, as the overhead lights are switched on, I squint in the sudden violence of their brightness and chastise myself for giving in so easily to the need for such a sensual fantasy.
The mood of the bar is coarse and implacably hostile, a delirious, shouting pattern of mostly male faces and voices. There are also a few animated women, feminine faces contemplating me from the bar, where they’ve arranged themselves in a restless line, exaggerating intimacy with the shark-eyed bartender, pressing on the brass rail, touching shoulders and hips.
The red-haired bartender, tall and gangly, approaches as I lean over the bar and wave a hand.
“What’ll it be?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m looking for—”
“You have to order something, or get out.”
“Pepsi.” I’m on the brink of asking the bartender about Liz, when the lights grow dim and Britney’s “Till the World Ends” begins to pump. Liz is in the cage. She’s wearing a frilly white bikini and red high heels, with a red bandana at her throat. Her hairstyle is new, a much shorter cut. She’s become so thin that her face has contracted to its essential lines, which are strong and noble, lit by her eyes with generosity and wildness.
I move away from the bar, find an empty booth at a point of vantage and sit down. My eyes are met briefly by the eyes of a thin, dark-haired, mustachioed man of average height, wearing a pinstriped suit with bowler hat pushed back. He’s sitting in the booth next to mine. The handsome Hispanic man appears indolent and bored, grating his gold ring on the wooden table. He reminds me of a New York City pimp, the type seen in gangster movies like the classic New Jack City.
From my dark corner I can see Liz, but it would be difficult for her to see me. Watching Liz dance, I laugh with pleasure to hide my emotions. She is as I remember, beautiful as ever, a little older and harder around the eyes, and it hurts me to look at her. I had lived and breathed Liz for some time. I don’t want to remember, and I do want to remember. I was “in love” with her face and her hair, her body and her independence, but I’ve moved far beyond the time when Liz was everything that mattered. My love belongs to Sarah.
Strangely, as I watch Liz waggle her behind and slowly remove her top, her performance comes out in a shape like beauty. As a poem exists only at the moment of its being recited and has no other purpose than to create a state of m
ind, Liz’s performance tonight is not futile amusement, but more like poetry, an art form that encompasses the action of living creatures in its entirety. I realize that Liz’s erotic dance isn’t sinful or shameful in any way, but, rather, erotic.
When the music stops, Liz hurries backstage, covering her breasts with her arms. The lights come on.
I stand, and as I debate with myself whether or not to go backstage and speak with Liz, she enters the bar area. She sees me and, at the same time, the pimp stands and approaches her with an affected strut to his walk. The wise have only to check out the way in which this guy carries himself to know caution.
Liz sidles past the pimp and walks over to me. “What are you doing here, Daniel?” She smiles nervously. Her mouth, augmented by lipstick, seems large and moist.
I notice the blackened bruise on her cheek and wince inwardly. She doesn’t appear to be aware of the swelling and discoloration of my face. “I thought you might help me get Devon out of the hellhole she’s in.”
“Now?” Liz is apparently confused. “You are so gay. Of course I want to, but can’t you see I’m working at the moment?”
“Take a break,” I say. “It’s your sister. David is waiting in the car.”
Liz blushes, turns away.
“Forget the thing with David,” I tell her. “I’m over it.”
The pimp is now standing close to Liz. He chuckles and touches his mustache in a lordly gesture. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, skank,” he says, matter-of-factly. He shakes his head with an air of tolerant disgust.
Liz crowds into my arms, shrinking from the pimp and covering her face with a hand as if he might strike her.
I push Liz away gently, avert my eyes and laugh brainlessly, implying the whole affair is none of my business. Then I quickly shift my feet and strike the pimp squarely in the face with all my weight behind a solid left. As the pimp stumbles into a table, I follow and punch him again with a hard right. The sound of the pimp’s head making contact with the floor produces a resounding thump, but he’s not seriously hurt. He lies on his back, open-mouthed and dazed, moaning softly with face bent sideways, like the floral leaves of a rose on a broken pedicel. I grab Liz’s hand and we make our way outside.
