Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  She would ascend the steps and pause on the front veranda, where waited a spectacular view down across the slope of terracotta-colored roofs and flat white apartment tops. Beyond them, the ocean would rise above the shore, by some trick of optics mimicking a sheer wall of turquoise water. The world, as Julianna saw it from the veranda, simply ended here in California, on the edge of a marine fortress so impenetrable and unknowable, so desirable must be the secrets it guarded within. She would marvel at it all and appreciate the fact that it still took her breath away, even knowing that when she got it back, as with all nights before, the next breath would be a disappointed sigh. Eventually, she would climb the far steps to her own apartment above the main residence. Once inside, as she had repeated for the last four evenings, she would delay showering for a good 30 minutes. Surely if there were a telephone message from him, Missus Cohen would come immediately to tell her; so she would keep a hopeful vigil once again.

  And if there is still no word, five days after you left the stones for him?

  Well, she would probably stay in. She could always convince herself she was more pissed at the loss of her 200 bucks—her father’s 200 bucks, she chided herself in correction.

  So he’s an ingrate and a thief?

  Yes, and you’re just a silly stupid deluded McSappy!

  She could always finally relent and acquiesce to the next guy who hit on her.

  Or wait another week, because…

  Shut up! Just ‘because’.

  Julianna ascended to Missus Cohen’s front door in the center of the veranda. Tactically, she paused there and leaned to the rail, taking in the ocean view. Within seconds, she felt it to be a sour and unmoving sight, its majesty wasted on her tonight.

  She stepped back and made a point of audibly scuffing her sneakers on the dry planks of the deck, for no other reason than to alert Missus Cohen to her arrival home.

  Then, totally dejected, she walked to the end of the veranda and turned to climb the short stairway to her door. Immediately her eyes widened when she saw what waited for her.

  Chapter 5

  Sunday June 15—Five days earlier

  Shortly after Eight on a breezy Sunday morning, Scott rode up to Glendale in the open rear of a Parks Department truck. He’d been landscaping for the city for two weeks and managed to bum a ride with a maintenance crew headed to Griffith Observatory.

  The truck stopped for a red light at the corner of Brand and San Fernando. The crew captain, Antonio, hollered back from the cab. “Scott. Forest Lawn. Vamoose!”

  Scott hopped onto the median. He weaved through the stationary traffic to the sidewalk beside Seeley’s Furniture. Looking around, Glendale seemed to his eye just another faceless suburb of LA, to his mind a flat soulless city; and infuriatingly impossible to navigate!

  Antonio thrust his meaty arm out of the cab window and pointed ‘that-a-way’ to aid the hapless hitcher. “Scotty. Norte! Doscientos metros,” he directed. Under his bushy-thick moustache, his nicotine-brown teeth only enhanced the warmth of his cheeky grin. “Buena suerte, Romeo!” he teased, as the lights changed and the truck roared off.

  Scott braved a stop-go dash between the vehicles streaming along the San Fernando Road and, moments later, found himself before the splendid double gates of Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The entrance looked imposingly regal and—clad only in a shirt and jeans, soiled now with grass and dirt from the ride—he felt irreverently grimy.

  Shoulda brought a tie! he thought, dusting down as best he could.

  The location of Merle Oberon’s grave had cost Scott $20 from a star graves huckster on Rodeo Drive. Another $10 bought him a blotchily xeroxed guide to the cemetery. The sheet informed him that, alongside luminaries such as Bogie, Disney, and Gable, there were over 10,000 souls up here. Scott figured there must be a typo with the number. 10,000? Right!

  But as he entered through gates which towered like portcullises, saw the vast undulating lawns sprawling as distant as the eye could follow, Scott’s shoulders sagged and the smile flatlined on his mouth.

  It’s as big as Central Park, for godsake, he despaired.

  He tried to conjure up the same resolve which must surely have helped Julianna overcome her own reaction on seeing the daunting scale of the place. Surely she didn’t expect him to scour every nook and cranny of it? Was she that demanding? Would she have walked its entire expanse, leaving her markers so sadistically far apart? Ominously, the morning was quickly losing its agreeable chill around him now.

  When he got over the discombobulating fact that there were no conventional headstones, he felt a bit better. Each plot on the putting-green-perfect lawn was marked only by a flat brass plate, with little more than a name and two dates, the less for Scott to read. There were no boundaries to define each grave, just the plates spaced a foot apart in each row. As he began scanning them, he realized how he was keeping a good six feet away from the plates, instinctively maintaining a reverential remove.

  This is ridiculous! he chided himself. He could easily miss any of her marker stones at this distance. He did a quick mental math. 10,000 plots. Allow five seconds to check each, makes 50,000 seconds to cover the lot. Call it 60,000 seconds. One thousand minutes.

  Over 16 hours!

  16 hours of constant indefatigable unbroken hunting in the June heat.

  “Why the hell am I doing this just to get a date?” he asked aloud.

  You’re only able to be here in LA, doing this—or doing anything, man—because she hauled your ass out of the fire in Arizona, spoke his better nature. But it was really the memory of that almost-kiss, and the indelible image of her smile afterward, which called his resolve back.

  “16 hours, 16 hours…” he muttered, recognizing the tune it prompted, thereafter whistling it while he reworked the lyric, finally singing it to himself as he walked.

  “16 hours, whataya get?

  Another row over and deeper in sweat.

  I wish I’d see the goddamn stones,

  she placed over their boxes of bones.

  Nur-nur. Nur-nur. Nur-nur-nur!”

  He did it without thinking, finding evermore bawdy versions for the lyric from within his imagination. Though he was a by-the-numbers engineer, this was his innate gift: he could be wickedly funny and endlessly inventive with word and rhyme.

  Many of his college mates at New York State University in Albany had displayed their own simple gimmickry. Stu Steadman could make a silver dollar dance around his knuckles, like a fat salmon rising and falling through the white froth of Fall Creek, glinting as the sun hit its scales. Hal Perceval could strike a match with his thumbnail. Sometimes it would even light, though never with the ladies watching. Only Vance Anderson had a God-given. He played mean blues and classical piano. Their group had always decamped to Pauly’s Hotel when there was serious drinking to do. Once Vance had sufficiently drowned his inhibitions, he would stagger over, flip the lid on the bar’s upright, and make the muses dance to his command.

  Vance didn’t play sober—ever. Scott alone knew how Vance resented being made to take lessons as a boy. Only when he was tanked, Scott surmised, could Vance get beyond this and play for the memory of his dead mother, the woman who had indelibly molded the music in her recalcitrant child.

  Stacked against Vance, the rest of them were mere jesters. Simon Watkins did a neat line in card tricks and John Jameson, Scott’s cousin and second-best friend in college, was a vicious and dead-on mimic of any man who ever drew breath.

  Scott did wordplay. It was the divinity in his DNA; silly rhymes and pithy phrases, most done mentally for his sole amusement. When he did let fly in company, it always seemed to escape the others. Scott was nonetheless quietly proud of himself such times. It hadn’t gotten him laid and it wouldn’t command a paycheck. It was just his thing, something he thought himself actually rather good at.

  In truth, his wit had never been lost on the Albany gang, especially Vance. Scott never knew Vance referred to him as ‘Byron’. It
was a respectful moniker. They all figured Scott’s true calling would prevail in time, that his name would catch someone’s eye from an airport bookshelf in the not-too-distant future. It would not be Vance Anderson though. Four years from now, Scott’s name will not be on any of the book covers that Vance scans, as he makes his last living walk to Departure Gate 32 at Logan Airport. Vance will die on a bright Fall Tuesday morning, in the year 2001. After, Scott gives the brief but wrenching eulogy beside the casket of Ground Zero dust and rock. Vance’s father rises from his pew and quietly, passionately embraces Scott as he descends from the pulpit. “She always thought he hated her for making him learn, Scott,” Mister Anderson whispers in the clinch between them. “Thank you. He’ll be able to tell her himself, now they’re together. Thank you for telling me today.”

  But now, blissfully unaware of the furor the future will hold, Scott continued absent-mindedly along the headstones. He had tired of Sixteen Tons and, as he pondered a new tune to rouse his spirits, he almost missed the first Navajo stone.

  It sat inconspicuously at the top-right corner of a bronze nameplate, so close to the edge that an unruly tuft of grass almost concealed it. What caught Scott’s eye was the bright-painted motif: a large circle filled with an intricate arrangement of smaller lines and circles. A tiny stick figure was trapped at its core. Julianna hadn’t explained the symbolism of every stone. Unbeknownst to Scott, he had discovered The Man in the Maze. He curled his fist around it now, barely believing it was real… and solid. And found.

  Taking her original stone—the deer tracks—from his shirt pocket, he held them together and shook his head, marveling.

  Holy Crap, he thought, she’s for real.

  He read the nameplate.

  Robert Williams

  1894–1931

  He pocketed both stones and scribbled the details on the back of the map, circling the significant number 1. His smile returned, even cockier than before. She was as good as her word. She trusted him. She believed in him. One down, five to go.

  As the morning wore on, he claimed two more stones, noted two more numbers:

  Nora Henny

  1905–1948

  And:

  Sam Cook

  1931–1964

  The same age Mom was, he reflected, dwelling there several minutes more than his timetable allowed.

  Shortly after that, he called ‘lunch’. He bought a burrito and Coke at a Mexican café out on San Fernando Road and sat on a bus bench, watching the world pass through an Amoco gas station while he ate. He couldn’t know the stones had left Julianna’s hands only a day earlier, or how she had kissed each as she placed them, kissed her palm and planted a blessing on each plate chosen to be players in the game of her heart’s chance.

  “Thank you, Sam, and for the music too,” she had said. “Keep this safe and rest well.”

  And so it went with each. At Merle Oberon’s plot, she stayed a while longer. She cried and remembered the wild and barren Yorkshire moors in the grainy TV images of her first encounter with the movie; remembered how Oberon’s Catherine Earnshaw had entered the windows of her own young soul, found a room prepared, and never left.

  Scott put his trash away. He resumed in Julianna’s footsteps. Moments later, it hit him. He stopped in his tracks and groaned, unfolded the map, and stared at the three numbers.

  1-8-4

  Yeah, that’s how I found em but what order are they in the telephone number?

  He considered the large distance he’d already covered.

  Dammit! Shit!

  Could it simply be that the order he found them was the composition of her telephone number? That was too random. He grabbed the quartet of stones from his pocket. Instantly he began to laugh.

  She is really for real. And a helluva lot smarter than I am.

  In his palm, small bright-red flakes were speckled among the four stones. He turned the Maze Man over. She had written something on its rear. The loose flecks of red were evidence of how the nail polish she used was wearing away as the stones jostled in Scott’s pocket. The red polish shaped as a number ‘1’ was barely legible. The other two stones found during the hunt had their own similarly worn numbers.

  In the nick of time, he realized. Another hour and they’d have rubbed clean.

  He sat on the grass and wrote a second sequence on the sheet: the three numbers painted on the backs.

  1, 3 and 7

  They had to be the positions in her telephone number where the actual numbers from the graves—1, 8, and 4—placed. He had the first, third, and final digit of it but, having missed this aid until now, he couldn’t be certain of the order of these three. He decided it was better to have three to guess than the entire set of seven and he did the math again. Once all the stones were found, the three mixed-ups presented six possible permutations. Had Julianna’s system escaped Scott until the end of the process, he’d have faced over 5,000 potential arrangements of her number. He had caught a break—another break—early enough to consider it provident. Maybe there was something to this Native mysticism after all.

  He mapped out the seven-digit layout and filled in the information he already had:

  And ‘7’ goes in whatever slot is unused at the end of this crazy scheme, he thought. Easy!

  Crisis contained, he carried on and two more stones revealed themselves as the day wound down.

  Errol Flynn

  1909–1959

  Painted on the back was a swashbucklingly suave ‘6’, the tip of which Julianna had mischievously adorned with an arrowhead. And

  Robert B. Stacey

  1884–1975

  His stone yielded a ‘5’, both from the date and its painted position. His nameplate also had a simple rare epitaph.

  ‘Tomorrow Was Yesterday’

  It will be tomorrow at this rate, Scott thought. He was suddenly conscious of how the afternoon had stolen away from him while he paced mechanically, thinking of nothing but the ground passing beneath each step. Now the sun was sinking. He checked his watch. It was ten after Six. The park closed at Six. It was clearly posted at the entrance.

  As if on cue, Scott noticed a figure approaching, a sharp-suited man who trained his hyper-healthy complexion toward Scott’s sun-baked face as he neared.

  “Sir, I regret to inform you that the park closed ten minutes ago,” he announced. “You’ll need to accompany me to the staff gate.”

  “Err… I didn’t reckon the time,” Scott said feebly. “I’m trying to find someone.”

  “We are open from Eight all through the summer. Myself or any of the other attendants can check the registry when you next return. We’ve quite a large number of residents here.”

  Scott squeezed the incomplete set of stones in his fist. A swift return was out of the question. He had a week’s work waiting. No way the last stone would stay undisturbed for a whole seven more days. “I don’t know anyone here,” he admitted, the adventure seeming stupid now. “I just knew Merle Oberon was here. And I don’t even know who she is.”

  Feeling as abject as the fairytale Jack, with only a handful of beans to show for the family cow, Scott presented the stones for the newcomer’s inspection.

  To this, the man offered only a bemused shrug. “Time’s up, I’m afraid. Follow me, please.” He set off with lithe unruffled strides, prompting Scott to lumber after on exhausted legs. The orchid and the ragweed, the pair crossed the manicured lawns toward a nearby service gate.

  “If it’s any consolation,” the attendant said when they reached the gate, “Miss Oberon’s plot is just down along the wall there. I can let you pay a brief respect before you leave.”

  Scott was inclined to simply cut his losses and scram. Still, he didn’t want to appear rude, unappreciative, or any more stupid than he figured he must already look.

  “Ok, thanks,” he said, trudging down to the spot.

  Merle Oberon

  1917–1979

  The final stone rested on her nameplate.

&n
bsp; Scott gasped. He went to snatch it, thought better of it, and paused. The attendant was watching. So Scott knelt on aching knees instead and bowed his head, feeling dumb and conniving and about as happy as any man ever felt.

  “Goddamit Julianna. You pick em, right enough,” he muttered under his breath. He crossed himself for the benefit of his audience. “Don’t ever. Do this. To me. Again!”

  He leaned forward, gave the plate a caress for effect, and palmed the stone in the act. Feeling mighty pleased with his performance, he returned to the gate.

  “This is too cool,” the attendant chirped, breaking at once into a giddy grin. He took an envelope from his jacket and handed it to Scott. “I feel like that guy in Back To The Future, you know, the one who keeps the letter from Doc Brown for 50 years and has to deliver it to Marty at the exact place at the exact time. Oh—My—God. You guys are just so Sleepless!”

  He opened the gate and offered Scott the sidewalk. As Scott stepped out, still wondering what the heck the guy was talking about, the attendant pouted at him through the bars.

  “You cost me ten bucks. I bet Christian you’d get them all before closing time.” He leaned toward Scott with gleeful conspiracy. “Do you know, I caught him last night trying to space them even farther apart. The cheat! Rest assured, I had him put every one back and he’s so getting couched for the week. Even so, I should be disappointed at your performance too; but she was right—you are just too damn cute.”

  Beyond bewildered, Scott watched the attendant return the way they’d come, gliding between his cherished charges.

  Chapter 6

  A Navajo stone sat on the lowest step to Julianna’s apartment, such that she almost trod on it. Picking it up, she greeted it as though it were an old friend.

  “Hello, you.”

  It was warm and familiar in her hand. Redolences of the Arizona sky under which they had parted seized her memory as she held it. She skipped up the stairs, gathering the remaining stones as she went, and expectantly gripped the door handle.