by Boston Teran
Flesh put her briefcase and file down on the table, but before going out she just watched boxes be carried from the back bedroom and was struck by how much clandestine time and effort Essie had put into collecting all this for nearly half a year.
* * *
ESSIE WAS sitting against the stone well ledge smoking as Flesh made her way up through the thin briared footpath. The day was clear, the horizon so artistically marbled with clouds it had almost no right to be.
The two women embraced, they kissed. Flesh leaned back against the well ledge beside Essie. She rested her head on Essie's shoulder, Essie rested her head on Flesh's in a moment of shared human need and exhaustion. Of the telling acknowledgment about what they had been through.
The news chopper circled above, its propeller blades cutting the sky apart with noise. After a time Flesh said, "They haven't recovered the body yet."
"Roy," said Essie. She spoke with the sadness of a distant friend.
"Roy," said Flesh. And when the chopper moved into the far radius of its arc, Flesh added, "You know a lot more than you've admitted to, Essie."
Flesh stirred when Essie did not answer. Her head rose up. She leveled a gaze at the woman beside her she thought she knew so well.
"Not even remotely surprised by the question?" Flesh did not wait for a response she was certain she would not get. "I talked to the Dean of Princeton Law. He adamantly denies any knowledge of the incident Roy told me about that got Dane 'removed' from the university. Though he would acknowledge a D. Rudd studied law there for two years and left for unknown reasons. When I asked for his records I am told they no longer exist… the managing director at the eye bank gave me the complete stonewall and when I said I'd subpoena Dane's records he said, 'Contact the Justice Department.'"
Essie trimmed the lip of her cigarette on the well ledge. Flesh watched her friend's face for any sign of surprise.
"Do you remember William Hyde?" asked Flesh.
"He worked with Roy once. I think he joined the IRS."
"He's part of an HIDA task force now. He's been on the phones for me since last night. And you know what he told me about two hours ago? 'There are things going on here I can not, and will not discuss.' Does any of this come as a surprise… or shock?"
If unemotional silence to such a question was an answer, Flesh had been answered.
"You know, Essie, the FBI and the DEA will take someone facing an indictment and offer him, or her, a plea, immunity, the witness-protection program if they think they can use them in an investigation. And if this he, or she, has certain skills, or background, they'll press hard to get what they want… I feel it's possible when Dane Rudd arrived in Rio Vista that first day he was no innocent.
"If in fact that was his first day in Rio Vista. That he should just appear at the airport and strike up an acquaintance with the Carusos, who were not only good friends of Taylor's, but of yours, now seems highly suspect. And when I think back to his conversation the night of the tribute, it appears too incredibly pointed."
Essie handled Flesh's leveled stare and everything she said with a fixed and infuriating silence.
"I thought I knew you pretty well, Essie. But you surprise me. Keeping all those files. Secretly amassing information. Not knowing if or when it would be of any value. Even breaking into Nathan's computer at home. Never opening up to anyone… except him." Flesh cocked her head sideways and got her face close to Essie's. "Know what I think… I think you and Dane Rudd are a lot more alike than anyone would have ever expected. Would ever have guessed. The two of you could probably share one shadow, and I mean all that as a compliment. I swear I do."
Essie took one last hit off the cigarette, ground the stub into the stone ledge, then flicked it down into the well. "You're right, you know," she said. "Dane and I are a lot alike."
"You are… present tense. As in…?"
Essie looked away, she took to watching the news chopper in its noisy circle above the slough.
"What else am I right about? Am I right about the possibility that Dane is still alive? That Paul Caruso landed him somewhere?"
The sun had moved across their faces and the muscles around Essie's eyes tightened in what looked to Flesh to be a graph of emotions from the dramatic to the introspective. "Roy would be proud of you, Francie. You make a very good prosecutor."
Flesh was taken aback. The statement drew down on her in half a dozen ways, telescoping into every inch of her personal and professional life, and now tragedy. She stood. She started to cry but she fought back the tears shaking her head, denying their existence. Essie grabbed her by the hand and held on. "I meant that as a compliment, you know. As a way of—"
Flesh shook her head, she knew. "I promised myself I would not cry until this was done. Then…"She wrung her loose hand as if she could shake the torment out through the fingertips. She daubed at the corners of her eyes with a crooked finger. "What else am I right about? Essie?"
From the kitchen door the lieutenant called up to the women letting them know he wanted Essie back down in the house. Flesh pointed to her watch and flashed her fingers for five more minutes.
"The newspaper you gave me," said Flesh. "I called the ex-wife of that agent killed less than two weeks before Taylor died. I asked her if she knew Dane Rudd. And you know what she said to me? Not, 'I never heard of him,' not 'I know him.' She said, 'That is not something I can, or will discuss.'
"It sounds to me, doesn't it, Essie, that she might have known him. Or at least what was going on here."
The chopper must have had enough footage for a little flash and carry for it started back across the Empire Tract. Soon, its noisy blades were no more.
"Maybe," said Essie, "he was just someone standing on a train platform when the express went by and chemicals were thrown in his face and he was left for blind. And who wanted what I want, what you want, what most everyone wants. And with a borrowed set of eyes, he tried—"
For the first time since they started talking Flesh saw Essie's lower jaw begin to tremor, her lips moved to speak but stopped short of words. From somewhere within Essie, all she knew and felt were finding their way, were leaving their mark, were making themselves known. She was now a living moment in the paper of their days.
Flesh knew to stop, she knew. "Inside of me, I feel… part of this is my fault. I worked Charles to back Roy and he used it. He used it."
"You can't expect to be able to hold it all there in your hands to see. You can't, Francie. No one can." Essie, when she told Flesh this, was thinking of Dane standing within the river beacon's light.
"If you get the chance," said Flesh, "before I do. Thank him for going back onto that houseboat and trying to find Roy." Flesh's voice broke down. "If I'm right, if you get the chance."
Essie was gazing down at the house and the slough beyond. Her voice drifted, sorrowfully, Flesh thought. "I'll do that." Essie looked back up at Flesh cupping a hand over her eyes to shield the sun. "If you don't mind, I'd like to be alone for a few minutes?"
"I'll see you at the house."
* * *
ESSIE WATCHED Flesh negotiate that woeful meander of a path down through the weeds and briars. Alone, the chopper gone, all that was left to fill in the quiet was that windmill wheel slowly moving on with the day.
She looked at the bare open slope, crepe soft in the light. She tried to fold back into the hours they lay there. To drift along the river of those emotions as they went from one port of heart to another.
It would be a matter of days, at most, before the truth were known, she knew. She was surprised the video of Taylor's tribute taken on the river boat that first night had not fallen into some reporter's hands and made its way onto the six o'clock news. That alone would be enough. That too she knew would happen.
From her back jeans pocket Essie took Dane's letter and began to tear and retear it slowly into tiny pieces. She did not need it, she knew it by heart even before she'd ever read it.
The few missing details of
anyone's life only touch upon the idea of who they are, or were. The doubt and dreams carved into their face say much more. What someone feels and thinks and does is what should be inscribed in lightning.
We are mere pauses, and like the windmill wheel moving across the eye of the sun in a blink we are there then gone, there then gone, there then gone. We count our miseries more easily than we do our blessings. We examine everything except ourselves. And we cannot acknowledge that we last not much longer than the average breeze.
Essie sat with the warmth on her face and watched Disappointment Slough carrying the sunlight on its back toward an outstretched country as it had done for centuries. We should all be as simple as water and as strong, but we are not. What we are is everything heartbreaking, and everything beautiful.
She then leaned around and took those bits of letter and dropped them into the well where they fell like flakes of light, tumbling and turning down into that dark stony portal until they were no more.
He would always be with them, she knew. The video alone would ensure it. He would be an image remembered, standing at the far corner of a darkened stage, with his head slightly bowed in a moment of mourning, his hands folded behind his back, waiting at the shadow of their lives. That, he had earned.
With all she wanted to give, with all she felt and wanted to say she but whispered into that well, "If you can hear me… we'll be all right."
Then she leaned back around the other way and looked up at that windmill wheel moving fan wise across the eye of the sun. She watched for timeless seconds and then in a voice light as ether told him again, "If you can hear me… we'll be all right."
