Midnight Rain

by Newman,James

  This led me off on a new search. I removed that piece of film from the microfiche machine and carefully stuffed it back in its box before moving across the room to the file cabinet containing archived editions of the Charlotte Observer. After finding a range of dates I assumed would contain the information I needed, I grabbed several boxes from the top drawer of that cabinet, starting with four or five spools of film all cataloging issues within about three years before Burt Baker had been elected Sheriff of Polk County, when he and Henry lived in Gastonia.

  It took several tries, sure—not to mention over an hour of constant scrolling and skimming, removing one spool of film then threading the next one into the machine, repeating the tedious process again and again as I searched for Baker’s name in the news—but I eventually found everything I needed within a box labeled “CHARLOTTE OBSERVER”/APRIL 1, 1973—JUNE 1, 1973.

  It happened on May 27, 1973. I gasped when I saw it, although I wasn’t all that surprised:

  LOCAL TEENAGER SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING

  ACCUSED OF RAPE

  Police are searching for Henry Ronald Baker, 16, for questioning in the alleged rape of a 14-year-old neighbor.

  Baker was last seen Saturday night at the Gilby’s Steak House on Tenth Street, where he is employed part-time. He is the son of Gaston County Deputy Sheriff Burt Baker.

  The Gastonia Police Department requests anyone with information leading to Henry Baker’s whereabouts call 1-704-555-4645 as soon as possible.

  I just sat there for the next minute or so, nodding. I popped my knuckles, and the sound was very loud in the Midnight Public Library’s NC Genealogy room.

  This confirmed what I knew all along, what Baker had mentioned that night in my Old Shack and what my brother had alluded to at the airport…

  He had done it before. Henry Baker had a history of messing with underage girls.

  I had to know more. I started scrolling again…skipping useless crap about how Richard Nixon accepted “full responsibility but not blame” for Watergate and about the launch of America’s first space station, Skylab, and details of the massive food drive the Gaston County 4-H Club planned to sponsor the following summer…

  What I did not expect was for Henry’s story to turn out like it did.

  The sheriff’s son was in the news yet again in an issue of the Charlotte Observer published two days after the previous article I had read. My jaw dropped when I learned what he had done this time, though, as it was an act so uncharacteristic of the Henry Baker I knew, it seemed like fiction at first:

  RAPE SUSPECT SURRENDERS TO POLICE

  Monday afternoon Gastonia Police Chief Scott Thompson arrested Henry Baker, 16, for the rape of a local girl.

  Gastonia Police have been searching for Baker since Saturday night, after the alleged victim filed a complaint with the Polk County Magistrate’s Office.

  Chief Thompson said Henry Baker was arrested without incident, though the young man “denies any wrong-doing.” Meanwhile, Judge Gordon Hurkee denied public defender Victoria Lawson’s request for bail yesterday.

  Baker is the son of Gaston County Deputy Sheriff Burt Baker.

  At first I could only sit there and stare at the screen, confused. But then I started nodding. And I kept nodding like that, dumbly, for the next two or three minutes…

  As perplexing as it all was, it made so much sense at the same time. I could feel the gaps filling themselves in the more I read, could almost see the story playing itself out in my head like one long, disquieting movie. Although every detail was not yet lain out before me, and most of the jigsaw puzzle facts were still spread about waiting for me to bring them together, I knew what had happened in Gastonia a little over four years ago as clearly as I knew I had two arms and legs.

  I knew because I knew them. Burt Baker and his son.

  Henry had raped another girl. And he had run away. That much was clear from the first newspaper. Yet another fact became obvious to me as I pieced it all together…

  After Henry ran, and the cops began their search for him…Deputy Sheriff Burt Baker had faced embarrassment the likes of which he had never known. Perhaps dear old Dad’s job had been in danger as well because of his son’s crime.

  Burt Baker couldn’t have that, of course. He wouldn’t have that. The scandal was too much for him to bear.

  “Cut your losses and do the right thing,” I imagined him telling Henry, days after the troubled teen forced himself upon a neighbor who was still more child than woman. I envisioned the sheriff’s thick black eyebrows furrowing, spittle escaping from his fat brown lips as he gnashed his teeth and demanded not because it was the right thing to do but to save his own sorry ass, “By God, boy, you will do as I say, or I will carry you back to Chief Thompson myself!”

  Once Henry did that—once he turned himself in and the powers-that-be punished him for his crimes—Burt Baker’s reputation would be saved. Bad memories eventually fade, after all. Humans favor resolution. Once the rapist was behind bars, Gaston County could forget what had happened. And Burt Baker could go on with his life.

  For once, he had been unable to protect his delinquent son. So he’d been forced to do the most important thing. Look out for Number One.

  I couldn’t find out fast enough how the whole thing had ended. I cursed as I realized I had come to the end of that last spool of film. I jerked it out of the machine, and my hands shook as I replaced it with the next spool on the desk beside me. I dropped the new one twice before I finally got it threaded into the microfiche viewer…

  This time I skimmed over catalogued issues of the Charlotte Observer published from June to August, 1973…searching carefully for key words like “Gastonia,” “Deputy,” “rape,” and “Baker”…

  Finally, there it was, a brief article on page three of the July 12 edition of the Charlotte Observer, approximately six weeks after Henry Baker had turned himself in. I started biting my nails again as I read it, and my heart slammed in my chest like some dark creature fighting to free itself from a prison of flesh and bone:

  CASE DISMISSED AGAINST GASTONIA TEEN CHARGED WITH RAPE

  Henry Baker, the 17-year-old son of Gaston County Deputy Sheriff Burt Baker, is a free man as of yesterday morning.

  The young lady who previously accused Baker of rape recanted her story on the witness stand mere minutes after Baker’s trial began. Judge Gordon Hurkee then granted public defender Victoria Lawson’s immediate request for a dismissal of all charges in toto.

  Henry Baker’s only statement to the Charlotte Observer was “I knew the truth would come out. (This is) the best birthday present a guy could ever have.”

  The temperature in the room felt as if it had risen a thousand degrees. My forehead grew slick with sweat.

  That couldn’t be right.

  “No,” I said aloud. My voice was hoarse. “Impossible…”

  I read the article again. Then a third time.

  “He can’t…no…he couldn’t have gotten away with it…”

  But he had. And I knew how.

  I wanted to slam my fist through the screen of that microfiche viewer.

  The article told me nothing and everything at once…

  After all that had happened, after Henry Baker came so close to having to pay for his sins, his father had pulled his skinny ass out of the fire once again.

  Burt Baker had forced the poor girl to recant her story. He had threatened her, had warned her not to testify against Henry. Or else.

  And she had taken it all back. Like one big, dirty lie meant to destroy an innocent young man’s future.

  I idly scrolled through the rest of that piece of film, not wanting to read any more. My hands shook, and the words upon the viewer screen blurred like fading memories beneath the tears in my eyes.

  And then I saw it. In an issue published one week after Henry’s exoneration.

  He had not gotten away with his crimes after all, it seemed.

  I felt strangely hollow inside as I read i
t. Perhaps I should have been pleased in some sick, vindictive way, but at that point I no longer knew what to feel about the whole godforsaken thing:

  LOCAL YOUTHS ARRESTED FOR ATTACK ON MINOR

  VICTIM IN STABLE CONDITION

  Last night Gastonia Police arrested three local teenagers after a younger man was attacked in Bergen Park.

  According to Police Chief Scott Thompson, the suspects—Chad Simple, 20, Greg Gonce, 20, and Malcolm Stahl, 19—face various charges including aggravated assault on a minor and assault with a deadly weapon.

  Shortly after 10pm Monday evening, 17-year-old Henry Baker was admitted to Gaston County Memorial Hospital with a number of severe injuries. According to Dr. Gil Halford, Baker is now in stable condition, though “psychologically he may never be the same.”

  According to one officer who asked to remain anonymous, police have closed Bergen Park to the public until further notice as they search for a (unspecified, at press time) dismembered part of the victim’s anatomy.

  I realized my mouth had been hanging open as I read. I closed it, but otherwise I did not move for several long minutes.

  The rain droned on outside. Like a whispered taunt from some invisible tormentor.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  Finally I took a deep breath, turned off the microfiche machine.

  I cupped my testicles through my jeans. Wondered if I would ever sleep again without one hand covering my penis.

  My brain throbbed as I tried to process everything I had learned in the last couple hours…

  Henry hadn’t raped Cassandra Belle Rourke that night in my Old Shack after all. Such a thing might not have even been possible, if my assumptions were correct regarding what had happened in Gastonia. He had hurt Cassandra Rourke, yes. He had beaten her until she could barely stand. But he had not raped her. If those young men had mutilated him to an extreme at which the Charlotte Observer insinuated, Henry would never force himself upon a woman again. He would never make love to a woman.

  They had disfigured him. Taught him a grisly lesson.

  I shuddered, wanted to let out a sick chuckle as I thought about that, but at the same time I wanted to run and hide from what I knew, leaving it behind like something I could just drop off in the nearest muddy gutter.

  I almost felt sorry for Henry Baker.

  Almost.

  Four years ago the sheriff’s son had paid for his crimes, contrary to what I had believed mere minutes before. Henry Baker got what was coming to him, and brutal as his punishment had been, I could not deny that he deserved it.

  For some reason, though, I did not feel better about any of this at all.

  ****

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Schifford,” I said a few minutes later, throwing up my hand. My voice cracked when I said it. My hand shook like the pale appendage of something twice as ancient as Old Miss Shit-Bird, and I quickly shoved it into my pocket so she would not notice as I passed by her desk.

  Ms. Schifford said nothing. She glanced up at me and her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but after a couple seconds she went back to whatever she had been doing.

  It was the last time I would see Miss Shit-Bird for many years—that final image of her standing so straight and proper, meticulously stacking those GET YOUR OWN LIBRARY CARD TODAY pamphlets on one side of her desk with a look on her face like she’d just smelled the king of all farts. The old lady retired not long after that, and a younger, friendlier librarian (who I actually developed quite a crush on until the eighth or ninth grade) took her place.

  Years later, when I was a freshman in college, I received word that Mrs. Schifford had passed away after a long battle with cancer.

  Imagine my surprise when I learned that she had left yours truly something in her will.

  A yellowed, dog-eared copy of The Joy of Sex.

  It was the very copy, I discovered as I thumbed through it, from which Teddy Worsham had once helped himself to a picture of two heaving breasts, breasts he had used to make himself a pair of silly paper goggles.

  Old Miss Shit-Bird, it seemed, had possessed a sense of humor after all.

  But that last laugh I shared with her.

  AUGUST 9

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  On Wednesday, August 9, I realized I had no choice but to act immediately.

  I had to do something.

  That was the day Sheriff Burt Baker arrested an innocent man for the murder of Cassandra Belle Rourke.

  ****

  I rose from bed that morning with a terrible headache, and I remember wondering if this was how Mom felt the mornings after her binges. How could such throbbing pain be worth something Dan assured me didn’t even taste that good?

  I stepped into the bathroom across the hall to grab some aspirin before going to find Mom on the other side of the house. I started my search in the kitchen, but it was empty. Where the room should have been filled with the delicious aromas of eggs, bacon, and toast, only a pungent fermented smell permeated the air. The bittersweet stench of fruit gone bad.

  I shook my head, disgusted. Once again, my mother had “tied one on” the night before, and it was up to me to work out all the knots.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” I said under my breath, before moving toward the living room.

  It was already seven-forty, which meant Mom should have been out of bed already. Her shift at the woodworking factory began at eight, and even on a day when traffic was sparse the drive took her about twenty-five minutes. That was all we needed, her getting fired. We could lose everything we had.

  “Mom!” I shouted through the silent house. “You’re gonna be late for work!”

  Finally I found her. On the sofa in the living room, watching television. She was still wearing her nightgown. It was thin, and I could see her tiny brown nipples through the flimsy material. I swallowed, quickly looked away to the lamp-stand beside her. It was coated with a gray sheen of dust, yet the fat bottle of vodka atop it was shiny and new. The bottle almost looked pretty next to every other ratty old thing in our middle-class home, like some expensive new knick-knack amidst a world of junky clutter.

  “Is all that shouting really necessary, Kyle?” Mom asked me, her moist gaze never leaving the television. “Jesus. Wake the dead, why don’tcha?”

  I could smell her from where I stood, an odor stronger even than that of her liquor. I was used to it, though. The sour stench of her addiction. It had been seeping through her pores for years, festering in her breath until it had become a part of her, just like my mother’s bright blue eyes and the way she licked her lips when she was nervous.

  I said nothing to Mom, just stepped further into the room so I could see the TV. It was turned to Channel 5, the WHLP Morning News from Tryon.

  “Looks like they found him,” Mom said. “Should’ve known Burt Baker would get his man before long.”

  I yawned. Didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. But then I froze. My mouth hung open as I watched. As I listened. I forgot all about Mom being late for work.

  “No,” I said to the television, beneath my breath. “That can’t be…he—”

  “Bastard’s gonna fry,” said Mom. “At least, we can all hope.”

  On our battered old Zenith a man with perfect white teeth and immaculately-combed blonde hair offered me a smile so laughably fake, so condescending, for a second or two I thought he looked plastic. All the color must have drained from my face as I listened to what he was saying, as guilt ate at my soul like something with a multitude of hungry, razor-edged mouths…

  Especially when the suspect’s mug-shot flashed upon the screen. When those sad, sad eyes stared across the living room into mine.

  “Shortly after six a.m. this morning,” announced the anchorman over the grainy photograph, “Sheriff Burt Baker arrested twenty-seven-year-old Calvin Tremaine Mooney for the murder of Cassandra Rourke, the young lady whose body was found in Midnight’s Snake River this past weekend. Further details are currently unavailable, but rest assured, the C
hannel 5 News crew will keep viewers updated as we know more ourselves.”

  I covered my mouth with one trembling hand, made a pained whimpering sound in the back of my throat.

  “Back to you now, Freddy, with this week in sports.”

  I turned away from the television to stare through my mother while a guy who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Dan rambled on about football or baseball or some such trivial nonsense.

  “I always knew that guy was weird,” Mom said. Her hand went to her chest, a moment of sheer melodrama. “Isn’t that scary, Kyle? You pass someone on the street every day, but you never know what’s lurking just beneath the surface.”

  I did not reply. I shook my head as I staggered out of the living room and down the hallway.

  I didn’t bother turning on the light as I entered Dan’s bedroom. I collapsed on his bed, feeling both physically and mentally drained.

  With these latest developments it became clear to me that the whole terrible situation had changed drastically. My dilemma was no longer as simple as it should have been the night I witnessed the murder, and now it was not only Cassie Belle Rourke’s blood that stained my hands, should I shirk my responsibilities once again…

  Calvin Tremaine Mooney was a skinny black man who had walked the streets of Midnight for as long as I could remember. Everywhere he went he towed a squeaky red Radio Flyer wagon behind him, a wagon filled with soda cans and bottles he had scavenged from all over town. That was how he earned his meager living, apparently, returning those cans and bottles for their nickel and dime deposits.

  The kids all called Calvin “Rooster” because of the way he’d flap his arms and make high-pitched squawking noises when he got excited. He probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. His mouth always hung open slightly, as if he were constantly planning to say something but couldn’t remember what it was. His teeth were horse-like, crooked and discolored. Along his left temple and half of his cheek he sported a birthmark, a thin pinkish stain I’d always thought resembled a shriveled worm trapped just beneath his flesh.