Bad Things (20 page)

being said.

Pierce nudged the conversation. “First time you’ve been back?”

“Yes.”

“Visiting friends?” I looked at him, and he smiled. “Sorry. Habit.”

Talking to him, I remembered something else about Pierce: that,

in the hours following Scott’s death, he had seemed something of a

father fi gure, or the closest thing to one that had been available at the

time. Quiet and dependable, the person who might stand in the way

of you backing helplessly into the pit an event like this opened up.

This in turn made me realize that I hadn’t seen my own father since

that time. Three years. Nearly a twelfth of my life. How could that

be right?

“No,” I said. I hesitated, and then thought . . .
what the hell
.

“Someone contacted me. A woman. The one who overheard the con-

versation I told you about. She implied she might know something

about what happened to my son.”

Pierce frowned. “And did she?”

“No. She’s been bereaved and I think it’s made her a little un-

stable. Do you know the Robertsons?”

134 Michael Marshall

“Of course. I grew up right here in town.”

“The woman I’m talking about was Gerry’s second wife. Ellen.”

He nodded. “I’m aware of her.”

“Was there anything weird about her husband’s death?”

“Nope. Went on a run, blew his pump. Which is why I take care

to never go above a walking pace. Don’t see the sense in giving death

a helping hand.”

“Very wise. And that’s all she wrote?”

“Just one of those things. You ever get to the bottom of what hap-

pened to your boy?”

“No,” I said. “And I don’t suppose I ever will.”

“Could be there’s no bottom to be found,” Pierce said. “Sometimes

there isn’t. Stuff happens, and that’s all there is to it. As a police, you

learn that.”

I shook his hand and walked away down the street, leaving him to

fi nish his coffee in peace.

I killed a couple of hours walking around town. I hadn’t meant to.

The truth is, I got lost. That doesn’t happen to me often. I have a

good sense of direction and Black Ridge is not a large place. Unlike

pretty much every other settlement of its age, however, whoever laid

the place out clearly hadn’t believed the right angle was king. I felt

tired and as if whatever energy I had was seeping into the ground as

I walked. The whole town felt pretty much the same way—perhaps

literally. Streetlights fl ickered. As I passed a tired-looking diner on a

side street, all its interior lights went off at once. They came back on

again. Through the window I saw the lone customer and a waitress

look at each other. It was impossible to tell what the look communi-

cated, if this was business as usual.

By the time I got back to the motel it was full dark. I sat on the

bed and fl icked around television stations that seemed to have been

conceived with someone else in mind. I couldn’t convince myself I

B A D T H I N G S 135

was hungry. Instead I found myself cradling my phone in my hands,

considering phoning my father but wondering what good could come

of it.

Fathers are often portrayed as distant, eyes and attention con-

stantly elsewhere. It wasn’t until I’d become a parent myself that I

realized this might be because fathers may be tired, bored, and mired

in an existence they don’t understand. Our culture is rife with parent-

hood porn, the idea that children are bundles of innocent joy and our

love for them should be unconfi ned—keeping silent about the fact

you may occasionally wish to bang their head, or your own, against

a wall. Resisting this urge is precisely what makes the bond between

the generations so strong, but sometimes you want to do the banging

nonetheless.

I knew this, and yet still I found talking to my father hard. It

hadn’t always been that way. When I was young, he and I used to

go for a walk every Saturday morning. We met in the kitchen at ten

o’clock sharp. It was our Norman Rockwell moment. I suspect now

that the ritual was likely a negotiated concession, driven by a mother’s

need for a couple hours’ friggin’ peace, but regardless of this drab adult insight it remained a slot my dad and I got together. There was

a randomness in the way my father chose which streets to cross and at

which points that made the voyage seem different every time. The last

stop was always the same, however, the drugstore, where dad would

order a coffee and Mr. Franks would ask how he wanted it and Dad

would say “hot and wet.” Neither ever smiled during this exchange,

and it took me a long time to realize it was a weird grown-up joke, not

evidence that both were retarded.

Before the drugstore came the penultimate stop, Walter Azara’s

Ford dealership. My father knew Azara to nod to, but when we paused

outside the lot he made no effort to strike up conversation. Quite the

opposite. Unless we’d happened to pass Walt earlier, so Dad knew

he wasn’t on the premises, the time we spent looking at the cars was

charged, as though there was something illicit about it. I didn’t get

136 Michael Marshall

why this might be. Weren’t they on the front lot precisely so people

could
admire them?

This was the early 1970s and the glamour Fords were Mustangs,

which Dad would peer at for some time, conferring judicious atten-

tion to every detail except the price banner across the windshield. For

me the real draw was the area where Walt displayed a couple of older

vehicles, including a 1956 De Luxe in canary yellow and a Crown

Victoria from the same era, in tan and cream. Back then you still

sometimes saw these fi nned showboats on the roads, shedding rust

and lumbering along as if baffl ed at the modern world, this cramped

universe of straighter lines. The cars on the Azara lot were mint,

however, restored by Walt’s wizardly chief mechanic, Jim.

I would look them over, week after week, running my hands over

bulging fi ns and smooth panels that were searing hot and shiny in the

summer and cold and sleek the rest of the year. I would try to fi ll in

the gap between when all cars looked like this and the way the survi-

vors on the roads looked now, but could not. I did not yet understand

about time, or how there could come a point where something bright

and sparkling new—a car, job, or wife—becomes just another thing

you have; then something on the periphery of your vision that you

don’t think about much anymore; and fi nally the thing that’s break-

ing down the whole time and making your life a living hell. You learn,

though. You learn about all that.

We made this walk every Saturday for a number of years. I don’t

remember the fi rst time, so I can’t be sure when it started. I do re-

member when they stopped. I was twelve. There had been an atmo-

sphere in the house for a few weeks. I didn’t know what was behind

it. Dad simply seemed distracted. We took our walks as usual but one

time he forgot to say “hot and wet” and Mr. Franks just had to get

on with pouring him a coffee. I remember the sound of it splashing

into the cup, and seeing him glance at my father. Dad remembered

his lines the next week, and I didn’t think much about it. You don’t,

when you’re a kid.

B A D T H I N G S 137

Then one day we got to Azara’s and something changed. It was a

cold fall morning and there was no one else in the lot, and I remem-

ber feeling relieved because by then I’d begun to sense the tension in

my father if there were other people around. We started across the

road, me veering straight toward the fl ashy dinosaurs, but I hadn’t

made the far curb before I realized something wasn’t right.

I turned to see my father had stopped halfway across the street.

He wasn’t looking at the lot, or at me, but at some empty space half-

way in between.

“Dad?” He didn’t say anything. “You coming?”

He shook his head. At fi rst I thought he was joking. Then I re-

alized from the set of his body, already half turned to head up the

street, that he was not.

“Why?” I said. It was inconceivable to me that we would not do

this. We
always
did.

“I’m tired of looking at other people’s cars.”

He walked toward the drugstore. After a moment I followed.

When he ordered coffee he and Mr. Franks did their joke but my

father laughed afterward, too loudly.

The next Saturday I went to go fi nd him in the kitchen at ten

o’clock and he wasn’t there. I looked through the window and saw

him in the yard, raking leaves. I waited a few minutes but it looked

like he was going to be a while over it and so in the end I went back to

my room and read a book.

Over the next few years we’d occasionally fi nd ourselves heading

into town together on a Saturday, occasionally covering much of the

same ground, but we never really took that walk again. When you’re

a kid so much changes, all the time, that it’s hard to tell what’s impor-

tant and what’s not. It was a decade before I came to regret the loss of

the walks we did not take, and to wonder why they had stopped.

In your twenties you think you know every damned thing—and

are furthermore prone to grand gestures. So I went back home one

weekend and tried to get my father to go on the walk again. At fi rst

138 Michael Marshall

he didn’t appear to remember what I was talking about, but fi nally I

got him out of the house.

At the pace of two adults, it only took ten minutes. Walter Azara’s

lot had become a discount carpet warehouse. At the drugstore—now

a Starbucks, naturally—I gave a great big smile and asked for my cof-

fee hot and wet. And both the barista and my dad looked at me as if

I was retarded.

I called him, in the end. We spoke for ten minutes, and, as such

conversations go, it was fi ne. Afterward I walked out to the burger hut

on Kelly, bought the last quarter pounder out of Dodge, walked back

with it. Then I watched more television until I fell asleep.

What would we do without TV? Live, I guess. And sometimes

you’re just not in the mood for it.

I woke with a start, as if someone had slapped me hard across the

face. It took me a couple of seconds to realize a phone was ringing.

The sound rang out again, a harsh, jangling noise, and I realized

it was the phone next to the bed. I levered myself up, groping for the

handset. The room was dark but for a glow from the television screen

and red numerals on the bedside clock which told me it was one-

fi fteen. It was raining hard on the roof, and the wind was up.

“Yes,” I croaked, into the phone. “Who is this?”

“You’re making a mistake,” said a woman’s voice.

“Ellen?” I said, but I already knew it was not. This voice was

harder, deep with cigarettes and command.

“Bad things have already happened,” it said. “If you get involved

in matters that aren’t your problem, it will get worse.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“No one you know,” she said, and laughed, rich and throaty. Then

the line went dead.

C H A P T E R 1 9

There was no sign of life in the motel office but I kept banging on

the door anyway—crowding in close to get out of the rain. After a

few minutes a light came on in the back and Marie came into view,

wrapping a gown around herself. She opened the inside door and

peered up at me through the screen.

“What is it?” Her voice was slurred, befuddled with sleep. Her

hair was sticking up in back. “Isn’t it late?”

“Someone just phoned my room,” I said. “Is there any way of

fi nding their number from your switchboard?”

“Well, no,” she said, confused. “They’ve all got direct lines.

From”—she yawned massively, before continuing—“when you

could rent them by the month.”

“How would someone fi nd out the number?”

“It’s not hard,” she said. She had the weighed-down look of

someone who’d assisted the onset of sleep with either a pill or a

sizable glass of something with a kick to it. “It’s listed in the room.

Don’t you
know
who it was called you?”

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said.

She blinked owlishly, turned around, and trudged away into the

gloom.

140 Michael Marshall

When I was back in my room I checked and, sure enough, found

the direct line handwritten at the bottom of the framed list of things

that you weren’t allowed to do. That ought to have made things eas-

ier, but when I reached the operator I was told the call was from an

unlisted number.

I’d been barely awake during the conversation, and found it dif-

fi cult to recall the exact words, but I had no problem remembering

what had been said. It struck me, too, that whoever had called had

been confi dent I would be there. Since I’d been in Black Ridge I had

not mentioned the name of where I was staying to anyone—not even

Ellen. Also, though it was late, it was not so very late. I could have

been elsewhere. Had the caller just assumed I was at home, or. . .

I went back outside. The wind had grown stronger, and was very