The Big Finish

by James W. Hall

  A lost hardwood forest, a gained library. In the grand scheme, a fairly even trade, but as much as Thorn loved books and libraries, he missed those lignum vitae and mahoganies, and the secret dens of raccoons and possums and the nests of osprey and ibis and egrets, making their homes and raising their young in the very spot where Thorn was now sitting.

  As Thorn was shutting down the computer, Sugarman settled into the adjacent chair, reached into his shirt pocket, and slid a postcard across the table.

  “Came today.”

  Thorn looked at the glossy image of a river twisting through the lush woods of some foothill wilderness.

  The caption read: The Neuse River, Pine Haven, North Carolina.

  Thorn turned to the computer keyboard.

  “Don’t bother,” Sugar said. “I looked it up already.”

  “So tell me.”

  “The Neuse runs southeast of Raleigh, all the way to the coast.”

  “What’s the issue this time?”

  “That’s the thing.”

  Sugarman took a cautious look around the library as if checking for eavesdroppers.

  Sugar was Thorn’s age, but was enduring the years far more gracefully. He seemed to be growing more handsome, more dignified, more calm. His caramel skin was still silky smooth, his dark eyes full of the quiet fire of youth. A man whose Jamaican father and Scandinavian mother had bestowed on him a lucky genetic legacy. An elegantly structured face, coffee dark eyes, and a thick mat of densely coiled hair that Sugarman had always worn short.

  “What’s wrong, Sugar?”

  “What’s wrong is this time there is no issue.”

  Thorn looked again at the card.

  “I checked online news sites, blogs, Twitter, everything I could find. No protest, no mention of any outside agitators or an environmental issue.”

  Thorn sat back in his chair, glancing around at the quiet carpeted space. The clean December light was filtering through the tall windows. No one listening, no one looking in their direction.

  “So whatever they’re planning hasn’t happened yet.”

  “A reasonable inference,” Sugar said.

  “Which makes this different. A different kind of message.”

  “Appears that way,” said Sugarman.

  “An invitation?”

  Sugar’s face was blank.

  “Tell me what’re you thinking.”

  He just shook his head, waiting for Thorn.

  “Seems pretty obvious,” Thorn said. “He’s ready to come home.”

  Sugar closed his eyes. He massaged his forehead as if trying to drive away an ugly thought.

  At the age of two, after his parents abandoned him, Sugar was adopted by an African American church lady who’d raised him in Key Largo’s one black district. Under her influence, Sugar acquired a finely tuned moral sensibility. He resolutely followed the codes of decency and honor. Controlled and methodical and steady. In that way he was Thorn’s opposite and because they’d been close friends since childhood, fighting side by side in more battles than Thorn cared to recall, Sugar had saved his ass dozens of times, snatching him back from the brink of one disaster after another. The good cop to his bad. The wise counsel to Thorn’s impulse.

  Sugar’s gaze drifted to the windows across the room, his eyes faraway as though he was revisiting a time long past when their shared world was uncomplicated and their struggles manageable. Back when it was possible to be full of hope and confidence, before the losses and heartaches and ambiguities began to complicate every decision—a time when the future was as sharp and bright as the winter sky beyond the library windows.

  Thorn had been at this precise point so many times before, feeling the first click of gears meshing, the revving heart, the flutter in his blood. Another long stretch of tranquility interrupted. He no longer deluded himself about his ability to resist. This was who he had become. A hermit on call.

  “Let’s say you’re right,” Sugar said. “Then what?”

  “I’ll go get him.”

  “And how would you do that?”

  “Fly up to Atlanta or Charlotte, rent a car.”

  “Yeah? And how the hell do you accomplish that, fly commercial without ID? You going to go get a driver’s license this afternoon? A Social Security number, a credit card. After all these years you’re going to register your sorry ass with the U.S. government. Check in with Uncle Sam, say, hi, I’ve been living in the shadows for the last half-century, but I decided I want to take a plane ride, so I’m signing in.”

  “Then I’ll drive.”

  “Goddamn it, Thorn.” He stood up. “The shape it’s in, your car wouldn’t make it to Miami.”

  “I’ll borrow your car.”

  “No you won’t.”

  Sugar was shaking his head. Couldn’t believe where this was headed. Thorn searched Sugarman’s eyes.

  Sugarman looked away and said, “The last time you tried to get Flynn away from these people, flying solo, a lot of folks went down and you were almost killed.”

  “You offering to help me?”

  “I’d have to be crazy to do that.”

  “Forget it. You’ve got a job, responsibilities.”

  Sugar snorted. He’d been complaining lately that in these rough economic times when people wanted to investigate somebody or track down a runaway spouse, more and more they handled it on their own. For a small fee to some online service, they had access to all the public records on their target. The Internet was taking a toll on Sugar’s profession. All summer and into the fall his business had been dead. He’d been talking about putting the house he’d lived in for thirty years up for sale, forced to use the equity just to get by.

  “Look at the card again, the back side.”

  Thorn picked up the postcard and turned it over. As usual the card was addressed to Sugarman at his office address, hand-printed in all caps. The message side of the card had always been blank. This time it wasn’t.

  Help Me was printed in the same blocky letters.

  Thorn straightened in his chair.

  “Now check the postmark.”

  The card was stamped, but there was no postmark, not even the faintest sign.

  “That happens sometimes. Something slips through.”

  “Sometimes?” Sugarman said. “I’d say almost never.”

  “So Flynn came to your office and dropped this in your mailbox? Is that what you think?”

  Sugar paused, looking off at Julia, the purple-haired librarian.

  “Okay,” Sugar said. “I’ll drive you up there. I’ll go along.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “But I have to be back by next Friday.”

  “Friday?”

  “A job interview.”

  “With who?”

  “Sheriff’s department, Monroe County,” Sugar said.

  “Your old job?” Thorn was staring at the postcard.

  “Something new,” he said. “Community affairs, media relations.”

  Thorn looked up, smiling in disbelief.

  “Writing press releases? Crime-stopper meetings?”

  Sugar nodded, halfhearted.

  “You wouldn’t be on the street, no real police work. You’d hate that.”

  “The interview is Friday at ten,” Sugar said. “I have to be back no later than Thursday night. This takes any longer, I don’t know, Thorn. I got bills stacked so high I can’t see out my kitchen window.”

  “No sweat, back by Thursday. What’s today, Monday?”

  “It must be nice,” Sugar said. “Living in a timeless zone. Don’t know the day of the week, what month it is.”

  “It’s December,” Thorn said.

  “Today’s Friday,” said Sugar.

  “No problem. It’s probably a small town. Leave today, drive straight through. We find Flynn, grab him, back by Sunday, Monday at the latest.”

  Sugar fluttered his lips and shook his head. Whether it was Thorn’s tainted karma or just his general reckles
sness, nothing ever turned out simply when Thorn was involved.

  “A drive that distance,” Sugar said, “I need to change my oil, check my tires. Throw a few things in a suitcase. I need to call Tina, tell her I’m leaving.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “So here’s what you do. Get yourself ready, then take your skiff down to the docks at the Lorelei. Victor will let you dock it there for a few days. I’ll meet you at the bar in a couple of hours.”

  “Why not just swing by my house, pick me up? It’s on the way.”

  “Look, Thorn. If someone’s monitoring your mail, they might be watching your comings and goings. Take the boat.”

  “What’re you saying? This is a trick? The government playing games?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “I’ll tell you what it is. Flynn’s in trouble. Serious trouble. Something he can’t handle.”

  Sugar patted him on the back and got to his feet.

  “Tranquilo. We’ll find him, bring him home. It’s going to be fine.”

  Thorn held up the postcard. The Neuse River. He’d never heard of it. But it was pretty, with a gentle flow, clear, sparkling water. Looked like a perfect spot for a family reunion.

  THREE

  THE LAST ROAD TRIP THORN had taken was decades earlier, a drive from Key Largo to Baltimore with his adoptive parents, Kate and Dr. Bill Truman. They’d driven straight through to drop Thorn off for his freshman year at Dr. Bill’s alma mater, Johns Hopkins. Thorn had lasted exactly two months in college, flunking all his courses, bored by the aimless debates over current events, and tormented by the drab autumn weather which felt bitterly cold to Thorn, but which Baltimore locals described as the mildest fall on record. He dropped out and was back home in Key Largo by Thanksgiving and was never drawn north of Palm Beach after that. Until now.

  In an old gym bag he packed underwear, long-sleeved shirts and jeans, along with his only sweater, a heavy black crewneck that years ago some girlfriend had presented him for his midsummer birthday. A gift so weirdly inappropriate it seemed to signal both the great divide between them and the end of their affair. The sweater smelled as musty as a rat’s burrow, but Thorn stuffed it into the bag anyway, along with the few toiletries he used.

  There was no one to notify of his departure, no one to ask to keep an eye on his old Cracker house. His ancient thirty-two-foot Chris Craft would have to fend for itself. If someone wanted to steal it, all they had to do was untie the lines and find a way to crank that balky eight cylinder.

  He left the front door unlocked so thieves wouldn’t need to break a window to steal his loot. Happy hunting. If they gathered every valuable Thorn owned and pawned them all, they’d be lucky to clear enough for a fish sandwich at Craig’s Diner.

  On the boat ride down to Islamorada the ocean was glassy and pulsed with pale blue wintery light. Earlier in the week a mass of Canadian air had swept in, and now as he headed out to deeper water the sharp sulfurous tang of the exposed flats gave way to the bracing arctic air that had flooded into the Keys, bringing the cypress and fir scent of old-growth forests and the undertone of melting glaciers, that blue ice that seemed to be releasing into the atmosphere precious molecules of oxygen so ancient they’d never been sullied by the lungs of humans.

  He docked, found an empty barstool, ordered a bottle of Red Stripe. After he’d had a taste, a young man next to him tapped on his shoulder and asked if he could take Thorn’s photograph. He was wearing a bright pink flowered shirt the same throbbing tone as his sunburn.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “For a project,” he said. “College art class.”

  Thorn asked him what kind of project.

  “A collection of Keys characters. And you, damn, you’re perfect. You got that local-color Jimmy Buffett thing going on. The sandy hair, the jaw, that weathered skin. Like some crusty Old Man and the Sea desperado hanging out in Margaritaville. My professor will love it.”

  “You don’t have people like me where you’re from?”

  “You kidding? In South Bend?”

  Thorn declined as politely as he could manage. Waited a decent interval, then got up, moved to a table alongside the dock. The thought of being in someone’s local-color slide show made him feel even older and sadder.

  When Sugarman finally arrived he had Tina Gathercole in tow. Sugar had been dating Tina for the last few weeks, though Thorn couldn’t see the attraction. Tina was wired and fidgety and a breathless talker. She was barely five feet tall, wore her blond hair cropped in a scruffy pixie apparently meant to project a just-rolled-out-of-the-sack look.

  She ran Island Treasures, a gift shop in Tavernier, a tiny space crammed with goofy seashell geegaws and row upon row of customized bongs. She created them at a hobby table at the rear of the store. Each was covered in peace symbols and flashy plastic beadwork. Patchouli or sandalwood incense burned in every corner of the space. If you weren’t stoned when you entered Tina’s store, you were at least a little dizzy when you left.

  “I’m going with you guys,” she said to Thorn. “Sugar called to tell me he was driving north and I asked could I come along, and my sweetie said yes.”

  “As far as Jacksonville,” Sugar said, shooting Thorn a conciliatory look. “Tina’s got an aunt in the hospital up there. So I volunteered to give her a lift.”

  Thorn said sure. No problem.

  “What’s the big mystery?” she whispered to Thorn as he was settling his gym bag in the trunk of Sugar’s Honda. There was a full-size army duffel taking up most of the cargo space. “Come on, Sugar won’t tell me a thing.”

  “It’s a secret,” Thorn said.

  “I hate secrets. They aggravate my hormones, make me sweat like a camel.”

  “We’ll stop and get you a bag of frozen peas. I hear that helps.”

  She brayed with laughter.

  “And some of the girls say what a grumpy stick-in-the-mud you are. But no, you’re funny, Thorn. You’re a regular riot.”

  “Maybe three bags of frozen peas. One for each of us.”

  She rode shotgun, casting looks at Thorn in the mirror in her sun visor. Smiling at him, mugging, trying to get him to loosen up. It didn’t work.

  As they hit the nightmare of Miami traffic, Tina cleared her throat and sat up straight, ready for an announcement.

  “I know what the mystery is. It’s your son, Thorn. Flynn Moss.”

  Sugarman’s foot came off the gas for a moment, and Tina said, “Bingo.”

  “What makes you think that?” Thorn said.

  “It adds up,” she said. “Everyone knows what happened with the power plant and Flynn. Then he disappeared. Now you two are off on a mysterious road trip. It’s just two plus two. Anybody could figure it out. And the postcards.”

  “Postcards?” Thorn said. “What postcards?”

  “Julia Jackson—you know, Thorn. Works in the library, cute, with lavender hair. She works in my shop on weekends. We were talking and she said you’re always at her computers, a picture postcard on the desk in front of you and you’re Googling this and that. Looking at maps and photographs and newspaper stories. So we figured it was about your boy. He’s sending you messages and you’re checking up on him.”

  Thorn looked out at the traffic. Sugarman said nothing. Driving with full concentration.

  “Now don’t start thinking I’m a gossip,” Tina said. “It’s just the coconut telegraph. You hear things, you can’t help it.”

  Thorn tightened his seat belt, settled back into the seat.

  “Oh, okay. I guessed your secret, so now I get the silent treatment. I’m not welcome. You want to dump me on the side of the road.”

  “We’re taking you to Jacksonville,” Sugar said.

  “You sure you don’t want to talk about Flynn? I could give you a woman’s point of view, help you out with whatever the problem is.”

  “Kind of you to ask,” Thorn said. “But no thanks.”

  They drove in silence
while Tina fiddled with the radio until she found a talk show and turned up the volume. Some blowhard was ranting about the president, ridiculing him for his lies and failures and corruption. They listened to the rant for several minutes, Thorn trying and failing to tune the guy out.

  “Maybe some music,” Sugarman said.

  “Hey, I need my fix of straight talk,” Tina said. “You’re just biased against political discourse.”

  “Is that what that is? It sounds like hate speech.”

  Tina turned around to face Thorn.

  “Me and Sugar have these arguments. He’s so accepting. So naive about how the world works. I’m trying to convert him to a rabble rouser.”

  “Good luck,” Thorn said. “First you need to get his pulse over thirty.”

  She brayed again. Sugarman reached over and punched a button on the radio and got a station playing seventies rock. Tina gave him a good-natured punch in the arm and turned back to Thorn.

  “You know, all these years, I never had a chance to actually sit down with you, Thorn. But now I’m starting to see why you and Sugar are buds.”

  “Normally he’s not this chatty,” Sugarman said. “Thorn’s said more to you in the last fifty miles than he’s said to me in a month.”

  “I have that effect on men, honey. You know that. I open them up like cans of tuna fish.”

  “How many more hours to Jacksonville?” Thorn said.

  “You know what helps make the miles go by faster?” She drew a fat joint from her shirt pocket and held it up. “Anyone use a toke?”

  Sugar declined and Thorn said no, he was content in his present state.

  “Suit yourself,” Tina said, lighting up.

  It did smell good. He could feel it riding heavy in his shirt pocket, the postcard from Neuse River. With a fingertip he touched the card through the fabric and sat back and watched the flat, empty miles. The winter migration of birds was filling fields and power lines with Cooper’s hawks and ospreys and plovers and kingfishers, willets and terns. They seemed unperturbed by the outlet malls and the housing developments crammed along the highway. Somehow those traveling birds were still finding patches of green and standing water in drainage ditches. Getting by, making do, adjusting as all pilgrims must.