Shades of Eva (16 page)

“I’m sorry I’m not what you expected,” I
said. “It must be disappointing to come all this way to find some
shell of the man who you think I should be.”

All she said was "I’m sorry too."

We arrived back at the Scorpion’s
Den
, back to the scene of my ass-kicking. My truck was still
parked where I had left it, but upon closer inspection, the
windshield had been shattered. There was also a parking ticket
beneath one of the wiper blades to add insult to injury. At least I
thought it was a parking ticket. It was actually a note that read:
You and your bitch friend haven’t seen the last of me! It was
unsigned.

I assumed it was Meade’s handy work. I
showed it to Amelia, who snickered at it and looked toward the bar.
Then she crumpled the note up and tossed it into the gutter. That’s
when I noticed someone had thrown a rock through my back window to
boot.

The front window of the bar where I’d taken
a flying leap was boarded up, but the open sign was still blinking
in the front window and we could see through the glass of the front
door.  We stood there staring at the crumpled paper and a few
other cars parked out front, one I recognized as Meade’s. I almost
couldn’t believe Scotty had allowed Meade back into the place, but
then again, Scotty had no bouncer and who was going to bounce Jake
Meade?

The blood stain I’d left on the sidewalk was
still there, too. It hadn’t quite been washed away by the rain
surprisingly.

Amelia and I lifted our gazes from the
broken glass—of my truck and the bar—to the gutter, and then to
each other, and then, almost simultaneously, into the open air in
quiet resignation.

Amelia began laughing.

I watched her austerely, wondering if that
weren’t schizophrenic—laughing in the face of madness like this,
like being happy in a nuthouse—and then I started laughing with
her. When we stopped, Amelia reached into her bag and withdrew a
manila envelope and handed it to me. It had no writing on it. It
was just a sealed envelope.

“What’s this?” I said.

“It’s more reason to come home.”

“Is it money?” I asked, offering up more
ill-timed humor. She ignored the question and gestured me to open
the envelope.

I opened it and withdrew a set of stapled
papers.

My eyes worked over the first few lines of
the top page. Its header read: AUTOPSY REPORT. The subject of the
report was Eva Fay Rennix.

“What the hell is this?” I said, not
expecting an answer and not getting one. My mother’s date of birth:
August 28, 1936. Date of death: December 12, 1970. Date of report:
December 14, 1970.

“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “This
is more reason to come home?”

I studied the document for a minute, and
then turned to the last page. Conclusion of report:

No anatomical cause of death. I suspect
stress-related arrhythmia.

I stared at the report for quite some time,
feeling as if I’d just been paralyzed. I was repeating the words
over and over again in my head, stress-related arrhythmia,
wondering about the nature of that stress and if it had an
identity. Then I wondered if stress weren’t an alias for husband or
psychiatry or father. Maybe it was an alias for the Asylum. And
then I wondered if stress weren’t an alias for son. Son-related
arrhythmia! I was the only one there with her that night, the only
one crying because the air in that house was so cold and I was so
hungry. I was the only one she was holding that night. It was all
so hard to remember, and so very hard to forget.

“I thought she had a heart attack,” I
finally managed to say. “They always said it was a—

“They lied!” Amelia said, interrupting me
before I could finish. “Whoever they were, they lied. She was
killed, Mitchell. Maybe she wasn’t shot. Maybe she wasn’t stabbed
or thrown through a glass window, but she was killed. That
institution killed her, and as far as I’m concerned, her brother
and his friend killed her and they aren’t going to get away with
it!”

"No, they shouldn’t!"

And in that instant, the images of the
shooting in that shed and the chaos that ensued began rising like a
phoenix from that paper, a stupid, inconclusive document that now
lay red-hot in my hands. The longer my eyes scanned those words and
the empty explanation they conveyed, the more I looked into the
sincere eyes of this young woman, the more those images of that
toolshed and that homicide and that fateful night turned from black
and white to stark, vivid color.

What left me was the dull grayness of
apathy. It was like someone had dropped a hallucinogen in my drink
or shot me with adrenaline. Purples like the many-layered purples
of a bruise shown before me. Golds like the golden color of sweet
corn in the summer, or freshly panned golden nuggets from beneath
teal seas filled the sky all about me. Tin-colored rays and
crimsons, sun-setting oranges and reds lay themselves in
oscillating planes all around me and I froze, petrified by what had
come over me by reading that one, kaleidoscopic burst of a
phrase—no anatomical cause of death.

Even the bang of the peacemaker, spent in
bronze-colored smoke, and the shells of the all the earwigs in that
shed, pewter-colored and glossy black, not empty, but alive with
fluid clarity, danced before me. I remembered with sudden lucidity
that the shed was burgundy, not cherry red, bathed in an aura of
midnight and teal blue darkness within, a teal blue that hid my
assailant as surely as time ever had, and the chocolate brown of
the burlap, his guilty face.

Amelia put her arms around me. “I know about
her death, Mitchell. I know that you found her, that you were all
alone. I know that’s one of the reasons why you’re so far from
home. I know the guilt, because I, too, have had to come to terms
with death, and feeling helpless to do a damn thing about it. But
we’re not helpless.”

I had run so far from home and those truths
that to think about Michigan—about River Bluff—or anything that
happened there was like imagining someone else’s existence.

But it was my existence. I hadn’t had the
sense that that little boy—either of them: not the one who was in
that shed with that devil when he got shot, nor the one wishing he
could shake his mother’s dead body hopelessly back to life—were me.
Not until Amelia handed me that envelope. Those boys, minutes ago
buried in distant anonymity, were now before me wringing their
hands in frustration, eyeing me expectantly, pleading with me as if
there were something more I could do.

I turned to Amelia. Again, that look of
wicked determination painted her face.

“There is something we can do, Mitchell.
“Right now I lack a certain something called a dead body, which is
another reason why I’m here. I think I know what they did to
Elmer…and I think I know where they buried him. I think we can find
Fred Levantle and bring him down, and I think we can give your
brother a last name and a proper burial. And I think I can get you
that inheritance.”

An authentic smile appeared, on my face, and
Amelia’s. It was the first instance of true happiness I had had in
Neah Bay, or any town, in a long, long time, and it had nothing to
do with permanence and less to do with the money. This was a sudden
emotion, entirely distinct from the perfumed happiness gleaned from
a whorehouse or that from inebriation. This was a hopeful feeling
that held within itself the promise of peace. 

Also inside the envelope were two
plane tickets. Amelia had purchased two one-way tickets to South
Bend, Indiana, just south of the Michigan-Indiana border. The
purchase dates read three days ago. The name on one ticket was
Emily Biggs. The name on the second was Elmer Gerard.

“Who are these people?” I asked.

“Elmer is your next alias,” Amelia replied.
“Emily is mine. Depending on how things go, I’d rather not be
traced back here. I’d assume you wouldn’t either.”

She was either very confident, or very
stupid. There wasn’t a refund option on either ticket. I had to
laugh because if I left, and if I ever wanted to come back to Neah
Bay, as Elmer Gerard or Mark Engram or anyone else, it was going to
be on my dime and it was a long train ride from Michigan back to
the West Coast.

The flight was to leave at ten o’clock the
following day.

I put the tickets back into their envelope
and tucked it into the back of my waistband, smiled, and nodded. I
told Amelia I was taking my truck, broken windows and all, back to
the cabin, and I was going to rest up. But first there were a few
loose ends I needed to tie up.

Amelia seemed happy, but concerned. She
asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that, referring to the tying
up of those loose ends. She knew what I was about to do, and she
knew what kind of condition I was in.

I told her I was sure, and turned my
attention to the bar.

We could hear music coming from inside. I
looked to Jake Meade’s car parked brazenly out front, the same
place it was parked the night prior. He drove a Dodge Challenger, a
nice ride, jet black with aluminum rims and dual exhaust. It made
me think of a little Matchbox car my mother’s psychiatrist gave me
on my fifth birthday. It was a Dodge Challenger, too.

I could’ve paid back vandalism for vandalism
and planted a stop sign through his windshield, but that wasn’t
what I had in mind. I took in a deep breath and tightened up the
wrap around my ribs. I gestured to Amelia’s rental, telling her in
so many unspoken words that it was time for us to part.

“If I don’t see you in the morning at the
airport,” Amelia said, “I’ll know you’ve either changed your mind,
or your dead.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I walked her to her Grand Prix and opened
the door for her.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?”
She asked. “I’m sure he has friends.”

I smiled. It was kind of her to care, but
there was only one answer a man could give to a question like that.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be alright. Go and get some rest. It’s a long
way to Michigan.”

Amelia looked up at me and reached a hand
toward my arm and held me for a moment. Her hand was soft, but
strong. She dragged her fingers along the span of my palm as we
separated, and then she drove away.

I stood on the curb looking at my bloodstain
and the crumpled up warning note in the gutter, and turned to face
the bar. I’d had four whiskey sours and a few shots, the last one
two hours ago, but with the tolerance I’d been building for
twenty-five years, I was stone sober. The reason I say so is
because I never fought a man sober, and it was due time that I
did.

 I walked into the Den and stood at the
front entrance looking around. Meade had his back to the door. I
watched him for a minute. He had found three younger fellows to
play cards with. It looked like Meade was winning. He was laughing;
in fact he was slapping a leg when I entered, stealing one of
Ogelthorpe’s celebratory gestures.

Scotty the Barkeep was wiping the countertop
when he looked up and saw me. He froze as if he had just seen a
ghost.

Meade hollered out for a drink, but Scotty
didn’t respond to him.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you barkeep?”
Meade hollered. Two of the other men at the table parroted Meade,
but still Scotty didn’t answer them.

Meade hollered again. “I said we need
another round, barkeep!”

Meade then noticed something had Scotty’s
attention. He turned to the doorway where I was standing. Again,
our eyes met. This time mine weren’t clouded by tears or
uncontrolled passion. They were clear. Meade’s eyes still held that
same daring insolence.

“Who are you?” One of his tablemates
hollered to me, standing up as if he was going to confront me.

Meade put a prideful hand up as I figured he
would, and stopped the man. “No,” Meade said, hefting his
three-hundred-plus pounds to his feet. “I’ll take care of
this.”

Scotty picked up a telephone. I don’t know
if he was calling the police or a pre-emptive ambulance, but I
didn’t care. In ten minutes I was either going to be dead or long
gone.

Meade stiffened his chin, wobbled a little,
and steadied himself. “I must not have made a strong enough
impression on you last night?” he said.

I didn’t answer him. I only walked swiftly
toward him. He stood his ground. “Where’s your girl bodyguard?” he
hollered, cracking a mischievous smile. We were ten feet apart. I
could see his hand reaching for his back pocket, for his
switchblade, most likely. We were five feet apart when he withdrew
his knife. I accelerated a bit and he began to raise it up as if he
were going to stab me. We were three feet away when I kicked him in
the jaw.

I heard a crack of breaking bones, and I saw
his eyes fill with tears and his face turn beet red. He stumbled
backward, cringing, but before he could open those starry eyes, I
kicked him again, this time a roundhouse to the nose.

One of the other men from the table took a
swing at me. I side-stepped the punch and it at caught part of my
right shoulder. He was drunk, like Meade. I gave the man an elbow
to the jaw and he fell backward over a table. The third man
cautiously backed away.

Meade had regained his balance and came at
me again with the knife. He had that wild look on his face that I
was used to seeing in men who’d just been kicked in the face, this
time with one eye working and one not, and blood streaming from his
nose. That’s when I kicked him a third time, this time in the
center of the chest. I could sense the air leave him, much like it
left me a night ago. I could hear ribs cracking. His eyes closed in
a hurry and he dropped the knife and fell backwards, gasping for
air.

I picked up the weapon and put Meade in a
headlock and dragged him outside onto the boardwalk. “You want to
fight fair,” I said, “we can fight fair, but don’t pull a knife on
an unarmed man!”