After the Fog Clears

by Lee Thompson

  They found they had other things in common. They shared a motel room their first week there while they looked for a suitable apartment. Geneva could have lived in a hut, she’d lived in worse. But Regina, unable to admit it, or simply not realizing it, had tastes, and expectations of her own. They settled in and found jobs and Regina was popular among the men when they were out on warm weekend nights. Geneva was shy, a bookworm, a watcher, yet some men had liked that. The two women complemented each other well; Geneva probing for Regina’s intellectual core, pushing her toward learning new things; and from her, Geneva learned how to be a little more outgoing, and to enjoy the company of others.

  So, when Regina came into Dom’s bedroom that morning, after Raul and Isaac had left the house, Geneva felt a lump in her throat as she patted the small mattress and asked her only true friend to sit beside her.

  Regina sat and took in the room.

  Geneva said, “I lost my son.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “No, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Her coffee was cold when she sipped it. She set it down, glanced at Regina, and seeing no point in delaying the inevitable, said, “Do you and Raul want to be together?”

  The surprise on Regina’s face was not manufactured and she was about to deny her affair until her expression went blank, then saddened. Geneva thought, You don’t know what sad is…

  “It just kind of happened.”

  “Do you want to be together?”

  “Is this something we have to talk about right now?”

  “We might never get another chance,” Geneva said.

  Her friend sighed and shifted her feet and said, “I don’t know what I want.”

  “And Raul?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “No.”

  “That makes it so much worse in my book. If it was love, this wouldn’t hurt as much. But you two just wanted to fuck. I feel like you were both laughing at me, even if you—”

  “We weren’t—”

  “Shut up. You humiliated me, the last person I would have ever expected to do that. And for what? Don’t answer that. I can tell by the look on your face you don’t know for what. And that makes it hurt more too, because it means nothing to you, and I mean even less to you. I’ll forgive you but I don’t want you around my husband. Don’t try to fix this, you can’t.”

  Regina stood. She had tears in her eyes. “You won’t let me explain—”

  “I don’t want you to embarrass yourself with any further stupidity or lack of judgment. Just go. Don’t come back.”

  “And where does the forgiveness come in?”

  Geneva pushed herself off the mattress and pointed at the door. “The forgiveness might take a while. Don’t come back.”

  “Give this all time?” Regina asked.

  “Get out.”

  After she was gone, Geneva positioned herself near the living room window, waited for Raul’s return, watched the world outside thaw while the world inside her felt unstable and the future clouded. She took it a moment at a time. What else could she do?

  The loss of Regina, she told herself, was no great loss.

  She wiped her tears away and blew her nose and gathered clean clothing from her bedroom, casting one furtive glance at the bed, feeling that horrible pang beneath her heart, and she went to the shower and tried to still her mind beneath the heat and the roar of the spraying water.

  There was a car in the driveway when she returned to the living room, toweling her hair, a cool draft snaking its hand up beneath her pink robe and caressing her thighs, the bottom of her buttocks.

  The car was a beat-up Buick with a cracked windshield, some kind of parking permit hanging from the rearview mirror. There was no one inside the vehicle. She listened for any sounds of forced entry. Then she could sense a presence close by. She turned, hoping she could reach her cell on the nightstand, or the landline in the kitchen. But there he was in the living room doorway, and she didn’t recognize him at first because she’d only seen him in shock, in despair, after he’d run over her son.

  He was wide across the hips. His face was pale except for his red cheeks. He was breathing hard.

  Geneva said, “Get out!”

  He shook his head. She said, “Do you realize what you’ve done to me? Do you? To this family?”

  “It was an accident,” Hazzard said.

  “And you think breaking in a suitable way to apologize?”

  “The front door was unlocked. I thought I heard you cry out for help.”

  She inched toward the television. There was a pair of scissors there. She wanted to gut him, for the policeman to feel what she and Raul, and most of all, Dominic had felt.

  He said, “Don’t make things harder on yourself.”

  She reached the scissors and snatched them up. Heat flooded her face. She said, “You will leave or I will kill you.”

  He frowned. “What was his name?”

  “What?”

  “Your son’s name.”

  She raised the scissors and advanced on him. He lifted his hands and she knew he, as chunky as he was, would probably be able to tear her apart. But who cared, part of her wanted to die—she felt she deserved it; she had failed as a mother in protecting her son; she’d failed as a wife for her husband, and as a friend to her best friend, for them to betray her for God knew how long.

  She opened the scissors and slashed back and forth, five feet from Hazzard. He stood his ground. She jabbed at him, the tip of the scissors poked him high in the chest, but they were rounded and didn’t penetrate even his shirt. It had barely touched him, and there was no blood, but her stomach heaved and in her mind she might as well have murdered him. If it’d been a knife she’d been holding, she would have. He gently pushed her hands aside and closed the distance until they were chest to chest, his beefy arms entwining her slim waist, his left hand motionless on her lower back, his right making small circles between her shoulder blades. He felt like an overstuffed teddy bear. Geneva sobbed against his chest.

  16

  The last thing Nathan had expected to do was embrace the mother of the son who ruined his life. It fit though—as he felt her warmth, her tears—that going a little crazy might make him act on impulses even he failed to understand. She was a pretty girl. Older than he preferred. But with her pressed to him, shuddering, she felt much younger, the way Barb had. He cursed himself for allowing the traitor to cross his mind. The woman in his arms cried harder and said in a choking voice, “Why?”

  “It’s the greatest question, isn’t it? I don’t know the answer and I’m sorry. Shhh… Shhh…” Meaning it, stroking her back more gently. She was a lover, the kind of woman he admired and had long ago ceased believing existed. The kind who would risk death for those she took under her wing. He whispered, “You’re a brave woman.”

  She didn’t agree or argue with him. She just sank deeper into him and he wanted to stop up her hurting, be the plug she needed. He thought, Maybe, somehow, some good can come of all this…

  He could comfort her and maybe he needed her forgiveness. Only her forgiveness. And it seemed as she held him and he held her that forgiveness was within his reach.

  Her grip loosened on him, the woman cried out now, he thought. It was quick and brutal, like a sudden summer storm when all the leaves, moments before the downpour, turn over to drink of the sky’s bleeding. He whispered in the most gentle tone he could create: “I know it won’t be all right for a long time. We’re not to blame though, remember that.”

  “Who’s to blame then?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I feel guilty as hell.”

  She withdrew although he wanted to embrace her a few minutes longer. It seemed there was a threshold that one must surpass for a new bond to cement. Had it been long enough? Would she think later about this bit of compassion and tenderness they shared?

  He feared he would. It made him nervous.

 
; He said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “There’s a question my husband should ask me.”

  “Has he?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t remember.”

  She bit her lip and said, “Do you have children?”

  “No. I was planning on it. I had a live-in girlfriend. She left me last night.”

  “Because of the accident?”

  He liked hearing her say that word. Why couldn’t anyone else understand?

  “Because,” he said, “people were calling the house and harassing her. She couldn’t take it. She pulled out.”

  “Raul should be home soon.”

  “Would you like to go somewhere?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We could grab a cup of coffee in a public place. Maybe it’d be good for people to see us out together, talking.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re here,” she said, squinting, suspicious suddenly.

  “I’d like to make things right.”

  “There’s not any fixing this,” she said. “Dom’s gone. Wherever his spirit went I believe it’s safe, he can continue being a boy. But I’m not sure we should talk any more. I’ll remember yesterday morning, your car, your face, the street, my son, until the day I die.”

  Then the front door opened and the husband and the other man stepped in. The husband was grayish and drawn, the friend not quite as melancholy, but a serious type. He stared at Nathan but it was the husband who said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Geneva said, “This is the policeman who killed our son.”

  She didn’t realize what she was saying, what it might drive the man to do, but Nathan couldn’t hate her for it.

  The husband had grayed further. Spittle flew from his bloodless lips. She was too good for this guy, Nathan thought, too strong…

  Then the husband growled. It sounded three times too large to have come from him. Nathan, shocked, stood there as the man lunged, swinging. And it’d been so long since he’d had a physical confrontation that he could feel his brain rattle against his skull, the whole room light up, as Raul clipped him in the jaw. It was a sloppy swing, but filled with rage, and it dazed him, knocked him back a step. Geneva screamed something he couldn’t hear over the pounding in his ears. And the husband threw more awkward punches that landed solidly with Nathan’s shoulder, his arm, and the last, his stomach. It knocked the wind out of him and doubled him over.

  He wasn’t really hurt, but he couldn’t defend himself without any breath. He sank to one knee. Raul would have kept punching him if Geneva hadn’t yelled for him to stop. The man had too much breath, breathing in and out quickly, his face flushed and fists like little rocks at his side. Geneva told the other man, “Help him out to his car, Isaac.”

  Isaac’s fingers dug into the meat on the inside of Nathan’s upper arm and he hauled Hazzard to his feet, said, “You need some exercise, bud. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  Nathan ignored the insult. He said to Geneva, “Thanks for talking to me.” He looked at Raul, secretly steaming, and said, “I’m sorry for your loss, sir. I’m sorry I had any part in it. You all have a good day.”

  Nobody replied. He wanted Geneva to, so badly. Isaac helped him out to the Buick and said he’d move the Camaro so Nathan could take off. Nathan asked him, “Who are you?”

  “None of your business, boss. Hit the road before that little fella comes out and embarrasses you some more.”

  17

  Luther hadn’t slept well. Herman snored a lot, and loudly, but it was the buried thing in the woods that stole any possibility of slumber. He had noticed his glove compartment open after he got the boat loaded on the trailer and was putting Herman in the passenger seat. The old Buick was gone but whoever had driven it had looked at his registration and car insurance and the man had wanted Luther to know it because he’d left that glove box open and the paperwork on the seat. Herman hadn’t noticed anything amiss. In a way, it was scarier that the man hadn’t waited for them to come in from the lake because the perpetrator was as faceless as fog. Yet the man knew Luther’s name and address. And he was out there somewhere, that ghost, and he could appear anywhere and hit them where it hurt most if Luther alerted the authorities to what he’d seen. It was a big if. He didn’t like the idea of this guy knowing what he drove and where he lived, and the danger it could put his grandmother and Herman in.

  He fretted through the night. Every small noise the wind created caused him to jump. He figured he needed to go back to where he’d seen the man burying something and make sure it wasn’t a dog or cat or something there in the grave. Of course, if it were only an animal he’d sown in the earth, Luther knew the person wouldn’t have looked through his Impala. He’d be damned if he put his family at risk over somebody he hadn’t known. But then he was afraid the body would rot out there, the dead’s family never knowing what happened. He didn’t like the idea of the man circumventing justice due to his indecision, complacency, or fear.

  His grandmother waddled into his bedroom. She said, “Look at you, all gloomy. You know what you need?”

  He stood and went to her and wrapped his arms around her thick middle. She was soft against him and she stroked his back and said, “There, there… There, there…”

  Luther kissed her forehead and she said, “Is it about the Spencer boy?”

  He had forgotten all about Raul’s troubles after seeing the man in the woods with the shovel. He nodded. His grandmother said, “Will you take my dress to the cleaners?”

  “For the funeral?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Maybe after you drop the dress at the cleaners we can go visit your boss and see if there’s anything we can do for his family.”

  Luther didn’t correct her. Raul wasn’t his boss, Mr. Spencer, Raul’s father, was. He said, “Where’s your dress, Grandma? I’ll go now.”

  “It’s on my bed. Do you need to clean your suit?”

  He hadn’t worn it since his grandfather’s funeral five years ago. It’d hung in the closet ever since. He’d been fifteen at the time. The suit wouldn’t fit him anymore. He said, “I’ll get it cleaned.”

  “That’s good thinking. You look handsome in a suit. You’re an intelligent boy, to boot.”

  Luther blushed.

  She said, “You and Herman are always going to be my pumpkins, no matter how big you get.” She slapped his bottom and said, “Don’t just stand there.”

  He kissed her cheek and said, “I love you.”

  After he grabbed the dress, Luther went to check on Herman. His brother sat at their desk, hunched over, working with a magnifying glass as he built a model plane. Luther didn’t know what kind it was; he didn’t know anything about flying and didn’t care to. But Herman loved them, said if he could be anything, he’d be a pilot. He’d never flown as a passenger yet, and soon as Luther could save the money he planned to take his brother on a flight, live that experience with him, pay attention to every little joyous sound Herman made, and lock away the image of his brother’s excitement. There was an aeronautical museum somewhere, he was sure, just had to look it up online, take Herman there, give him the next best thing to being an actual pilot.

  Luther didn’t want to bother him and break his concentration. He smiled and carried the dress to the Impala. It was cool out. The dress went on the passenger seat and he knew he’d have to hit TJ Maxx or somewhere he could buy a decent suit for cheap.

  A fifteen-minute ride later and his nerves started bothering him as he pulled slowly up by the boat launch. There were two fishermen perched on the bank, talking quietly, sipping beer, using a blue cooler as a table between them. He waved when they glanced his way and the men smiled and waved back. Luther had an old army entrenching tool in the trunk of his car. It had belonged to his grandfather, who had served in Korea. After some punks had beaten Luther into the street when he was fourteen, his grandfather had given him the tool and told him to carry it on his backpack. It was collapsible, could
be used as a shovel or a hoe. He carried it close to his side as he loped into the woods. He glanced over his shoulder every now and then. He didn’t see anyone stalking him. He circled around the area near the bank and found bent and trampled weeds, and occasionally a footprint. Men rarely buried other men they murdered. Luther knew the victim was a woman.

  He gripped the entrenching tool tighter, thought, This is it. No going back from here.

  The man had not dragged her far into the woods. Maybe thirty feet. Luther thought it couldn’t be a body, no way, nobody in their right mind plants somebody low that close to where so many people frequent. Of course, with all the critters out here, and the nearly constant stink of fish butchered on the shoreline by inconsiderate fishermen, maybe nobody would smell the dead person’s odor. Maybe the ground would soak it up, wipe the air around it clean.

  18

  Hazzard sat in his Buick, wiping the blood from his cut lip with a handkerchief he’d wet with spittle. It hurt to open his mouth, made his eyes water. He could see his uniforms in the backseat, three of them hanging from the post above the rear passenger door. He had to take them to the dry cleaner’s later. He’d hang them at home, when they were returned, and he’d stare at them every day, he figured, until he couldn’t be a cop anymore. It wasn’t like he had a choice. They were going to boot him. Not much else mattered, either, he figured, except for how it made him feel and what he chose to do about it. He’d put in a lot of good years with the department. He was a rock star that nobody appreciated. His arrest record was triple that of any other patrolmen. He knew the crooks too. He knew who you could touch and who you didn’t. He helped the detectives with their cases, and they took all the glory. How fair was that?