by Paul Lederer
Shit!
There was nobody on the dark, cloud-shadowed pier but one young man walking slowly toward him…. Eric!
Edward started quickly toward his brother. His gray suit was damp and heavy on him. At first glance, Eric looked directly at him, but then seemed to be looking through or past him.
‘Eric!’ Edward shouted, meeting his brother, turning to fall in stride with Eric’s measured, unhalting steps.
‘He’s still a filthy bastard,’ Eric said without raising his eyes.
‘What?’
‘Raymond. He hasn’t changed a bit. He’s still a bastard, isn’t he?’
Edward had no intention of discussing his father’s personality.
‘Where is Mother?’ he wanted to know. ‘We have to get these documents signed today, Eric. It’s most important.’
‘I haven’t seen the old doll,’ Eric said with a haphazard smile. ‘But wait…!’ He stopped in his tracks. They had reached the blue-trimmed white bait-house at the foot of the pier. ‘God! I think I saw Sarah, Edward. I went right by her.’
‘She was alone?’ Edward was shocked, fearful.
‘Yes…’ Eric amended that quickly, ‘without Mother, that is. But she was with some guy.…’
‘What guy?’
‘I don’t know,’ Eric said weakly, ‘some guy.’ The rain had begun to fall more heavily again. Far out at sea, thunder grumbled. They had to yell to be heard.
‘You didn’t stop her?’ Edward demanded angrily. ‘You know your sister. She can’t be out there wandering around alone, for Christ’s sake!’
‘It didn’t register. Edward. It really didn’t. After that fight with Raymond … maybe I was concussed or something, but it just didn’t register. I was on another planet for a while, you know? If she’d been with Mother, yeah, it would have registered. But it just didn’t.…’
‘All right,’ Edward interrupted harshly. ‘It didn’t register. Your own problems were too important for you to be concerned about your sister.’
‘It wasn’t like that! Edward….’ Eric was genuinely distressed. The brothers faced each other through the mesh of driving rain for a long silent minute.
‘OK,’ Edward said with a deep sigh, ‘where did you see her?’
‘Three, four blocks up that way. Where’s your car?’
‘I have no idea,’ Edward answered woodenly. ‘We’ll walk. We can’t get any wetter. Let’s find Sarah first, all right?’
‘Sure.’
They started up the sloping, narrow road toward the avenue where Eric had seen Sarah. Neither spoke; there was nothing to say, and the buffeting wind made normal conversation impossible. Directed by Eric’s occasionally pointing finger, Edward slogged along in his heavy suit, briefcase in hand, continually, proficiently, and energetically cursing the day, his fate and his family.
‘It was right around here,’ Eric said, as they paused, chilled and trembling beneath the striped awning of a card shop.
Fine, Edward thought sarcastically. Somewhere around here. What did that mean? It reminded him of some of the vague descriptions he had pried out of witnesses in his brief stint as a trial lawyer. ‘A guy about medium height’ … ‘a black guy’ … ‘a big dude.’ Edward’s own mind was more precise in thought and description than Eric’s; he understood that, but this was Sarah they were discussing.
‘Which way were they walking?’ Edward asked without heat, drawing on his last reserves of patience.
‘That way … because I was coming from Dennison’s office, right? That way.’
‘What did the guy look like, Eric?’
‘I dunno. A blond guy, I think. His hair was kind of long,’ Eric’s brow furrowed, ‘and he had on a green jacket, one of those quilted ones and a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap.’
‘All right. OK,’ Edward said. ‘This is a pretty small town. Someone around here might know who he is.’
‘She looked OK, you know, Edward. Smiling and stuff.’
Edward answered savagely, ‘When isn’t Sarah smiling? She’d trust anyone who came along, Eric, and you know it! Don’t be so damned stupid!’
Eric said abashedly, ‘I just meant … the guy wasn’t dragging her along or hurting her or anything….’
‘So you knew everything was OK, right? You didn’t even stop to help your own sister.’
‘It wasn’t like that, Edward.’ Resentment mingled with shame in his eyes. ‘It didn’t ring true, that’s all. My head was.…’
‘All that girl needs is another major trauma in her life.’
‘Yes! Edward, I know but….’
‘Then you can find a way to avoid responsibility this time, too.’
‘God damn you, Edward!’ Eric yelled. His battered body stiffened and he hunched forward angrily.
‘Go ahead,’ Edward challenged, ‘swing at me. I wouldn’t mind being the second member of the family to kick your ass today.’
‘Stuff it,’ Eric said, letting his breath out. ‘Let’s find Sarah.’
The siren of the ambulance flying by was harsh and piercing. Red and blue lights cast fearsome reflections against the low gray clouds.
Ellen was being transported to the hospital.
Sarah stood at the studio window in the borrowed blue robe; it was much too large for her so she had rolled the sleeves up six inches. The rain still fell but it had settled into a steady, almost soothing rhythm. The room was warm, the wick of the kerosene heater burned evenly, brightly. A warm yellow glow filled the room, only faintly smoky.
Sarah wondered where the young man had gone that it was taking him so long. It should have been simple for him to find Mother. But she would wait. Her thin dress was dry now, hanging above the heater from a nail in the beam. Her hat looked weather-battered and sad, but she had already shaped it a little and smoothed the pink ribbon. By the time the sun returned it would be dry and pert again.
She had spent most of her time studying the photographs on the wall. It was so strange. Moments of life which were not life. At home, they had a family photograph album filled with pictures of dark unsmiling people staring into the camera with a sort of dread in their eyes. Maybe they knew that the camera was taking this moment from their lives and holding it as a sort of decorated headstone to be stared at incuriously when they had run out of all their moments; Mother always cried when they started looking through it.
The photograph that Sarah liked very much was of the fish and the birds winging away above them. She thought she understood what the young man had wanted to capture in it … perhaps. To Sarah, it looked like the souls of submerged dreams winging away to the freedom of the long blue skies.
Below her suddenly she saw Edward and Eric walking together through the rain. How had they come to be together? She rapped against the windowpane futilely, trying to get their attention, but they couldn’t hear that sound above the rush of the rain and never even looked up.
Only moments later, she heard an automobile horn blare, and she saw the big blue Buick race by, throwing water up from its wheels.
And Daddy was driving it! He didn’t stop for Edward and Eric but kept on roaring up the concrete road, taking a corner so wildly that the rear end of the car almost slid out from under him. He narrowly missed a parked moving van and roared on, disappearing over the hill.
This, Sarah thought, seating herself on the white-painted wooden chair, was a very odd day.
She wished she were at home with Poppsy and the sun was shining and White-ears would come back to the mouse nest. She hadn’t taken Baby a daffodil yet today, and she did not like the rain anymore.
There was nothing to do, however, but to sit and wait for the young man to come back. To wait for Mother … was she sick again? Sarah hoped not. Sometimes when Mother got sick she broke things and even hurt herself like the time she had put her hand through a windowpane the night after Daddy had left to … well, to do whatever it was that Daddy had to do. Then everyone had been screaming and yelling. Auntie Trish, Edward and Eric cr
ying and yelling at once….
That, it seemed, was over now. Daddy had come back to town. Mother was here. Edward and Eric were walking together as they had when they were younger, towing her in a red wagon in the sunshine while Poppsy bounced along after them.
Everything would be better. Mother and Daddy would stay at the house again, and Eric would come home. They could all go down to the lake again and skim across the sun-bright water in the rowboat, and Daddy would laugh and hug Mother and dumb old Poppsy would bark at the fish.
Yes, something she did not understand was happening today; but they were all here together again and that could only mean something good. Maybe when they were at home again the blond young man would come and show her his pictures and they could sit in the yard on a clover-warm day.
This was a day of great promise despite the crazy confusion.
Sarah studied the pictures again, feeling sorry for the girl who had no clothes looking out the window for her daddy. Sarah’s daddy had come home, maybe hers would too. Probably he had in the very next picture. Everything was going to be fine again. Not exactly the same as before, but bright and hearth-fire warm with no yelling! Mother was not strong; Daddy was. So strong. He could fix so many broken things.
Still, Baby could not be fixed. They had told her that, when Baby died. Baby was broken and so they had buried her secretly and solemnly, all of them taking whispered oaths to tell no one. All except Sarah, that is. She couldn’t take any oaths; she could tell no one. She had quite forgotten how to speak.
Raymond Tucker thundered through the streets in the old Buick, his blood pressure hammering at a dangerous level. The bitch! The crazy bitch. On the bottle still. He knew it! Eric – little bastard. Strutting Edward. Had he actually fathered them?
He continued to brood, driving faster and faster.
‘Damn you, Ellen!’ He hated the bitch. If she was out drinking, what had she done with Sarah? Once Ellen started drinking, she wouldn’t stop. He’d find her three days later – a week maybe – in some peeling, musty motel room with a stranger wearing cowboy boots and a stupid grin…. ‘Where’s Sarah?’ And half the time she wouldn’t know.
So whose fault was it really when that happened to Sarah? Yeah, but Raymond got the blame for it because he had left home and allowed it to happen. Anybody would have left that stupid bitch. Anyone with half a brain.
Couldn’t she have stayed off the liquor for one day, get these god-damned papers signed. No, she couldn’t let the opportunity slip by…. Raymond braked uncertainly. For just a moment he thought … was that Edward and Eric walking up the hill in the rain? It couldn’t have been. For what reason?
An ambulance whipped past Raymond, siren blaring, lights flashing angrily. He glanced at it and slowed down a little. He could end up in the back of that the way he was driving. It wouldn’t do any good for him to crash the car or lose control of himself completely on this difficult day.
He had always been emotional, in the wrong way. From his own father he had learned only one emotion: anger. Touching, sensitivity, he had not really understood. Looking back he didn’t think that he had ever said ‘I love you’ to Ellen except when he needed a piece of ass. Any gentleness had been interpreted as a sign of weakness by his father, and giving in to any of those ‘woman’ ideas of softness and love talk was just emasculating, a loss of autonomy and authority … at least that was what he had learned and he was damn sure too old to alter his perspectives now.
Love. That was their key word. They asked for promises of love … just before they went off and slept with some punk sailor in a hotel. Was that supposed to be ‘love’? What a joke women were, all of them sluts. He wanted nothing more to do with any of them. All Raymond wanted now was to live out his life in placid isolation.
He slowed the Roadmaster as he reached the main street of the rain-decimated town. He cruised slowly toward the establishments where the neon lights flickered through the gray mist in garish disregard of the lost day.
His eyes searched past the sweep of the windshield wipers for the shadow of Sarah. His blood was beginning to flow hotly again as he analyzed what had happened.
He had never been able to control Ellen because he had been a heavy drinker himself in his younger years. Again, so had his father; it was what men did. Jack Daniel’s and Coors, and if someone didn’t like it, you went to fists. He wondered how many fist fights he had been in, in his life.
All right! Maybe it had all been wrong, some remnant of the frontier times his father and grandfather had sprung out of. But he didn’t like these feminists and new-wave politicians telling him he should put a pink ribbon in his hair and ‘yassuh’ to minorities and women. Like, when a kid needed to be swatted, he needed it. That was all. When some broad wouldn’t shut her quacking mouth, sometimes it had to be shut for her. No, Raymond Tucker had tried to understand modern times, but he couldn’t!
He swung the car in at the curb, parking in a red zone. If the cops didn’t like it, they could go to hell, too. What were they going to do? Write him a ticket or scare him with jail? He had seen a few of those, and tougher than any they had around here; from La Mesa prison in Tijuana to Ban Tho in Vietnam….
His thoughts drifted briefly. All right, he was lying: those places had scared the hell out of him! He watched the crazed reddish streaks and neon green ripples reflected against the rain-smeared windshield.
He knew that he had just never learned to control his temper. No one had told him how it was done. A man fights. A dog sniffing through the alleys, that was what they all were. You sniffed their butts and that told you if they wanted to fight or fuck. Beyond that there weren’t any significant relationships.
Raymond sat with his hands resting limply on the steering wheel. The changing colors of the neon bar sign continued to streak the gray day and the cold windshield. There was a different world just outside the car door.
The thought came from nowhere. ‘I am sorry, Eric,’ he said deep inside himself, ‘my baby boy.…’ But he could not sustain the emotion and his rage returned. How could any boy do that to his own sister? It was so disgustingly distant from his own inculcated morals that it was completely incomprehensible. His own father wouldn’t have only horse-whipped him, he likely would have pulled his old Colt .44 from his desk and shot him in the balls….
‘I am,’ Raymond thought, rubbing his forehead, ‘growing very old and tired.’
He climbed heavily from the car and walked through the silver rain toward the bar, wondering what he might do or say when he did find Ellen. He knew only that it would not be pretty.
Three
THE BAR WAS dark, subdued, when Raymond Tucker shoved his way through the door. He bumped shoulders with a young blond guy in a green jacket and Red’s baseball cap who was just leaving, but Raymond didn’t even nod an apology; that, of course, would be a sign of weakness.
There were only a handful of men drinking draft beer scattered along the bar, wearing cowboy hats or yellow Caterpillar caps – construction guys knocked off the job because of the rain. The place smelled of wet flannel shirts and green beer. The jukebox, flashing red and yellow lights, was playing, but it was turned down so low that Raymond couldn’t even hear the words to the song. A cowboy-type in cheap boots, hat tilted back, was hunched over it, studying the selections. A big Budweiser sign with its ‘B’ burning out, flickering against the dark mustiness of the bar, hung above a long mirror. The bartender was a doleful, balding man. Short, thick, with hound-dog eyes and a swollen nose. Someone ordered a pitcher of beer and the bartender nodded and filled one from the tap. He took a five-dollar bill from the guy, swept up some change left as a tip from the bar and pocketed it, whistling along silently with the muted jukebox tune.
‘Hey bartender!’ Raymond said. Heads turned. His voice was loud in the quiet bar.
‘One second…’ the bartender closed the register drawer and ambled to where Raymond stood, his stance and crossed arms aggressive, ‘what’ll it be, friend?�
�
‘I’m looking for a woman.’
Ike held up an interrupting hand, ‘about five-three, maybe 45 years old? Wearing a blue dress and hat.’
‘How in hell do you know that?’ Raymond asked.
‘She’s the only woman’s been in here this morning. She fairly well screwed up my morning.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She came in. Got real drunk. Fell off the stool and cracked her head open. I had to call an ambulance … say, I just told your friend all of this. What’s up?’
‘What friend?’ Raymond asked suspiciously. His eyes narrowed ominously as the bartender answered him.
‘That guy that just went out. You must have seen him. Young guy in a green quilted jacket and red baseball cap.’
‘Who is he?’
‘His name’s Don. I don’t know his last name. He comes in here now and then for a few beers,’ Ike shrugged, ‘that’s all I know.’
Someone at the end of the bar was spinning an empty bottle to catch his attention. He glanced that way and held up a hand to ask for patience.
‘The ambulance took her to the hospital?’ Raymond asked.
‘Sure did. She knocked her head real good. Split it right open. Be surprised if she doesn’t need twenty stitches.’
Shit. Well, it really was no surprise.
‘Which hospital did they take her to?’
‘They didn’t say. It would be County General, wouldn’t it? That’s the closest one around. That’s all I know.’
‘OK,’ Raymond took a step away and then turned back toward the bar, ‘that young guy – how did he know her? Was he drinking with her?’
‘I don’t know, Mister,’ Ike said, ‘I don’t watch who comes and goes, what they’re doing unless they’re making trouble.’
‘Ike!’ The man with the empty beer bottle was growing impatient.
‘I’m coming! Sorry, pal,’ he said to Raymond, ‘I told you all I know.’
