by John Smolens
Pearly walked into the room and he saw them on the windowsill, the light gleaming off their rounded surfaces. They looked like large pearls. Frank saw them, too. He went over and picked up one of the bulbs.
“All right, put it in and let’s see what we got here. You know we’re not alone.”
Pearly took the bulb, felt around in the air in the center of the room for the electrical wire, but then he heard feet, the scuffling of shoes. Frank’s gun fired, the flash from the barrel imposing a silhouette image on Pearly’s vision, two men entwined. They slammed against the wall, and then there was one long, painful gasp.
There was stillness and only the sound of their breathing. Pearly found the electrical socket above his head, screwed the bulb in, then walked over to the door to the kitchen and felt around for the light switch.
SEAN TURNED OFF his truck and saw a light come on in the third floor of the house. Hannah got out, ran up to the front door and into the hall. Sean went after her, and as she reached the staircase, he caught her by the elbow. “Why don’t you just wait down here?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I really don’t know anymore,” he said. “Except I’m going up there.” Sean put his other hand into the pocket in his sweatshirt and took out the 9mm Smith & Wesson. “See, he’s not the only one who came prepared.”
She leaned back against the banister as he passed, and when he was almost to the landing, she said, “I should call for help.”
On the landing he paused and smiled down at her. “Good. You call Buzz Gagnon. He’d enjoy this.”
Sean continued up the stairs to the second floor, which was dark, but as he turned up the flight to the third floor, each step took him into the light, which angled through a doorway above him. He could hear a voice—it was his father whispering.
He reached the top floor and entered a room where a bare lightbulb swung on a cord from the middle of the ceiling. Pearly stood above Sean’s father, who was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. Martin knelt in the corner near several toolboxes. Their shadows swayed beneath them, making the room pitch and yaw as though they were in a rocking boat. At first Sean was baffled by the shadow in the center of the floor—it wasn’t attached to any of them, and it spread slowly, running along the seams between boards, filling knots and nail holes.
“He’s bleeding bad,” Pearly said.
“Who did it?” Sean asked.
Martin tried to get up but remained on one knee. He didn’t look afraid, but resigned. “I didn’t know it was him. We were expecting you.”
“And now I’m here.” Sean realized that Martin was holding his leg with one hand and that he had a utility knife in the other. “You shot?”
“Strangest thing,” Martin said, his voice oddly high and curious now, as he slit his pajama pants open, from the knee down. Peeling back the fabric, he exposed a long splinter of wood that had been driven at an angle clean through his calf. There was hardly any blood, just a trickle that ran down over his heel.
Pearly said, “The bullet must’ve broken off a piece of the floorboard. I don’t know if pulling it out will make it better or worse.” As Pearly spoke, the shadow of his nose swung like a pendulum over his mouth. “The bleeding could get worse.”
“Hannah’s calling the station,” Sean said. He put his gun in the pocket of his sweatshirt and walked toward his father, but he avoided stepping in the blood. He could see that it was coming from beneath his father’s hand, which he held over his left side. A curved wood handle protruded from his fingers. “What is that?”
“Keyhole saw,” Pearly said. “The kind used for cutting holes in Sheetrock. Sharp point, rough teeth. Might do more damage to pull it out.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” his father said hoarsely.
“More advice?” Sean said.
“I was taking care of this.”
“You did that all right.”
“I’ll finish it.” His father winced as he leaned over and extended his right arm out toward his gun, the .357 revolver he’d used on duty for years, which lay on the floor.
Pearly kicked the gun across the floor and it hit the baseboard.
Looking up at Sean, his father whispered, “I said I’ll take care of it.”
“You always have,” Sean said. “I guess we think too much alike.”
Pearly nodded. “You could see that.”
“Could you?” Sean said. “And I always thought we were, I don’t know, so different.”
“Right.” Pearly went over to Martin and helped him lie down on his side, arranging his legs so the splinter wouldn’t touch anything. “All we got to do now,” he said, “is wait till Buzz comes.”
“We could.” Sean squatted down in front of his father and again said, “We could.”
“The hell,” his father said.
“Maybe we’ve done enough?”
His father turned his head away. “You’ll never understand.”
“But I do,” Sean said. “You should have listened to Mary. She gave you good advice. She gave me good advice.”
“What advice did she give you?”
“Do nothing,” Sean said.
“How would you know about her advice?”
“How do you think I knew you were here? Listen, you can’t go back there to Northern Lights, and you sure as hell can’t go to Mom. Your problem is where you going to be?”
“My problem?”
“Maybe you should find your own place.”
“Now you’re giving me advice.”
“Let’s call it an opinion.”
Something changed in his father’s eyes and Sean realized he was being shut out.
There were footsteps on the stairs and Sean knelt on the floor and turned around.
ALL FOUR MEN looked at Hannah when she entered the room. For years men had looked at her, but never like this. The bare light hanging in the middle of the room was harsh, forcing her to squint. She saw the blood in the middle of the floor, which was coming from a wound in Frank Colby’s side. In the corner Martin was lying on his side, in pain. There appeared to be a piece of wood sticking out of his calf.
Pearly started across the room. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said to her.
She said, “Buzz Gagnon is on his way.” She was surprised by the calm neutrality of her voice, as though she were making a public announcement, one which would not favor anyone in particular.
Sean knelt in front of his father, whose face was as white as the freshly painted wall behind his head. His stare was hard enough to make Hannah take an involuntary step back into the doorway. She had seen that stare the night Frank and June Colby came to her mother’s house. He wrote out a check at the kitchen table, tore it off—the sound of the paper separating along the perforation seeming as cruel and final as the procedure the money was intended to pay for—and then he gazed up at Hannah, who was standing behind her mother’s chair. Suddenly she turned and walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down to her bedroom, where she slammed the door shut. But now, with her hands clenching both doorjambs, Hannah refused to retreat any further, and she stared back into Frank Colby’s hatred until he lowered his eyes.
Everything was sideways.
Lying on his side, Martin’s view of Hannah was partially blocked by Pearly as he walked toward her.
Martin watched Frank Colby lower his head and take his hand off the wound in his side. There was a moment, a pause, when Colby seemed to make a decision. Then he reached out toward his son and yanked something from the pocket of his sweatshirt, causing Sean to lose his balance and fall forward so that he knelt with his hands in the pool of blood.
Frank Colby aimed a gun—another gun—at Hannah.
She didn’t move but stared defiantly across the room.
Pearly took another step, then turned. “Frank,” he said. His voice was not unfriendly, perhaps a little disappointed. “Come on, Frank.”
“Step out of my wa
y,” Frank Colby said.
“Frank,” Pearly said. Behind him, Hannah remained in the doorway.
“Last time,” Frank said.
“No, Frank.”
Martin tried to get up, but the splinter through his calf caused pain to surge up his leg into his haunch. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes just as a shot was fired. Hannah yelled, and when Martin opened his eyes, Pearly was sprawled on the floor at her feet. His arms and legs strained as though he was trying to climb the floor, then he simply stopped moving.
Hannah crouched over him, screaming. Her arms stretched out to Pearly, but it was as though she couldn’t quite reach him. Her hands came within inches of his shoulder, his head, his face, but she couldn’t actually touch him.
SEAN WAS ON his hands and knees. Blood covered his hands. He turned around and sat back on his haunches, rubbing his palms on the front of his jeans. His father still held the gun, both arms extended, but he was weakening and his hands shook. He was trying to aim at Hannah, but as Martin began to crawl across the floor toward Pearly, he turned the gun on him.
“Enough,” Sean whispered.
His father seemed to be having trouble seeing. “It’s never enough.”
“Dad.” Then Sean said louder, “Frank, let it go.”
His father was suddenly alert and genuinely curious, and with effort he aimed the gun at Sean’s chest. “Why?” he asked.
Sean stopped wiping his hands on his thighs. “Listen to me. This afternoon you said something about what you know, what you can say to yourself. That’s what’s most important. You can say enough.”
Behind him Hannah was moaning as she knelt over Pearly’s body, and Martin was gasping as he tried to crawl across the floor. Though the gun was still pointed at Sean, he felt oddly cleansed. What seemed so urgent and important wasn’t anymore. He was calm, as though this weren’t happening. His father stared hard at him, confused, perhaps threatened. Finally, Sean made his own decision and slowly turned his head away.
He waited and he kept telling himself it was all right. Or perhaps in the confusion and noise he was saying it—he wasn’t sure. When the second shot was fired, it sounded different, muted. Sean looked back at his father, who was slumped forward now, blood and bone and hair coating the wall above his head.
27
NOTHING LIKE THIS had ever happened before in Whitefish Harbor. Suicides, occasionally. But murder-suicides were something that occurred out there—or, to be more accurate, down there, in the world below the Mackinac Bridge. For several days the town was taken by a kind of possession. Newspaper reporters came from Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee, and more than one TV camera crew was seen filming a news segment with the harbor or Ottawa Street as a backdrop. Business was good at the Hiawatha Diner.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was packed for Frank Colby’s funeral. Hannah sat in the last pew with her mother. People spoke about Frank’s devotion to his family, to serving the community, to his military service. The actual events surrounding his death were never referred to directly, as though there was no need to name the vile disease that had needlessly taken another victim. It could have been the funeral for anyone but the man who had died. To acknowledge what had happened to Frank Colby might almost suggest that there was some flaw in the fabric of the town itself. No one spoke to Hannah before, during, or after the service. Her mother had said she didn’t have to attend, but Hannah was insistent. To not go would have been worse, far worse.
THERE WAS NO memorial service for Pearly. No church could claim him. Instead, the day after Frank Colby’s funeral, about a hundred people gathered on the beach while Peter DeJohn rowed out into the harbor and poured the bag of ashes into Lake Superior. Afterward they walked up to the Portage.
Around two in the morning, Peter and Michael DeJohn went down to their fishing boat, the Elizabeth Ann, accompanied by Hannah, Martin, Sally, and her son, Jason. They cruised into Petit Marais and dropped anchor about fifty yards off a small wooded point. Peter donned his wet suit and scuba gear and went into the water with a flashlight. He found the mast exactly where they had left it on the silt bottom in 1975, perfectly preserved in twenty feet of cold water. He fastened the winch hook and Michael raised the mast up to the boat.
The following morning when the first cars started to pass through the village, some slowed down and others even stopped in front of the town hall. Somehow, overnight, the mast had been erected in the flagpole stand, which is really a measure of how quiet it can get in Whitefish Harbor. Carved into the base of the mast was Pearly 1952–1996.
HANNAH COULDN’T GET Pearly out of her mind. Several times she went into the Portage. She sat at the end of the bar where she could look at the photograph of Pearly that had been in the Herald in the early seventies. Even though it was before she was born, she knew—everybody knew—about how he had put the walleye on Judge Anderson’s porch. In the photo Pearly was in his twenties. His hair was darker, longer, thicker, and his cheeks hadn’t yet collapsed. He was fiercely handsome and the look in his eye suggested that he could take on anything that came at him.
The Pearly she knew was more chiseled away, more tempered. He possessed a dogged restraint and was mildly disappointed in everything. Except her. When she looked into his eyes, when she spoke to him, he was always right there. The last morning when they sat together at the kitchen table with the rain outside the window, he had said she and Martin were the only family he had, but she understood that he was avoiding the truth, that he loved her both like a lover and a daughter. She felt it when he put his arms around her, his hands gentle on her hips. She couldn’t help but kiss him on the mouth that one time. It was for both of them. She would keep it for the rest of her life.
One afternoon she found Martin sitting in the Datsun parked in the driveway. His aunt Jane had called from Florida several times. She said that Pearly’s house had been sold, but Martin should keep his truck and tools.
Hannah got in the passenger side. Martin’s hands gripped the steering wheel.
“You like the truck?” she said.
“What do you think we should do with it?” He stared out the windshield as though he was pretending to drive. He hadn’t driven since being released from the hospital.
“You know what Pearly would say—keep the truck or sell it. But keep the tools. You’ll need them for the house.”
“Nobody’d buy this truck,” he said.
“Even Arnie couldn’t sell it.”
After a moment, they both laughed.
“I say we keep the truck.” Martin seemed pleased at his own decisiveness. “We can sell my car instead—but we shouldn’t keep the money. We could donate the money to something in Pearly’s name.”
“Okay,” she said. “What could we donate it to?”
“Something to do with keeping the lake clean.”
“Pearly would like that.”
“See what people think about that. I know how they look at you. They think we’re both somehow responsible, don’t they? But it doesn’t matter.” He took his right hand off the steering wheel and laid it along the back of the seat.
“Let them think what they want.” Hannah slid over and leaned against him.
“Pearly didn’t give a shit what they thought. Why should we? You know, he’s still here. I believe that. This is really his house, and now it’s our job to take care of it.”
“I believe that, too.”
“What do you say when somebody dies?” he asked. “When somebody decides to die for someone else? Someone they love?”
“I don’t think you need to say much. You go on living.”
“It’s a gift,” he said. “You treat it as a gift.”
Hannah raised her hand and touched his cheek. “Do you remember the day we met, here in this house?”
He looked her right in the eye and shook his head. “What did we talk about?”
“Dead cats.”
“Dead cats?”
“And I was in love with you
before you even got out the back door.”
“I know what people think, I know what they say about me—I see it in their eyes. The fact is I can’t remember not being in love with you.”
She reached for the door handle. “Now come into the house with me.”
THE SECOND TIME Buzz Gagnon talked with Sean was more informal. There were no state detectives present. It was mid-afternoon and he had stopped out at the house, ostensibly to pay his respects to June. She sat at the kitchen table with her drink and cigarettes, and she wouldn’t look directly at either of them. After a few awkward minutes, Buzz asked Sean if he could see where his father had kept the unregistered gun.
Sean led the chief to the workbench in the basement.
Buzz said, “I just want to go over it again, why there were two guns there.”
“Sure.” Sean put the wooden box on the workbench, lifted out the Milwaukee circular saw, and removed the slotted plywood floor. “Dad kept the throw-down in here, when he didn’t have it with him in his cruiser.”
“He’s got the gun cabinet in the house,” Buzz said. “You couldn’t take any of those because it was locked?”
“Right.”
They went outside and walked around to the garage. Since yesterday, when the house had been full of friends and relatives, Sean had been looking for something to do, something that, as he told his mother, would make him useful. Before Buzz arrived, he had been cleaning out the garage, and there were three bulging plastic bags full of refuse piled out in the driveway.
“So you saw your father that afternoon and somehow you just knew he was going to go to Martin’s house that night—with his gun, his registered gun.” Buzz squinted at the bags as though he could see their contents. “And then you followed him over there with the unregistered gun he kept in that box—the one he used on Pearly and himself.”
