The Extinction Event (16 page)
Read The Extinction Event Online
Authors: David Black
“Legation of the United States
“Madrid, March 4, 1844
“My dear Commodore:
“Ill health, which has made me rather irregular in my correspondence, has prevented⦔
Jack glanced down to the signature at the bottom of the paperâ
“I am, my dear Commodore,
“Ever very truly yours,
“Washington Irving.”
âand the addressee below the signature:
“Commodore M. C. Perry
“Commanding African Squadron.”
Perry, yeah
, Jack thought. Robert had mentioned he was an ancestor.
The following file had a letter written horizontally and then, when space ran out, sideways up the page, crossing the horizontal lines. Reading it was a trick, Jack thought, like the psychology experiment in which a picture, focused on one way, was a vase and, focused on another way, became two faces looking at each other. It was from Commodore Perry to what seemed to be his daughter, Bell, Robert's Perry ancestor.
“Navy Yard, Vera Cruz
“November 2, 1847
“My dear child:
“I was very much gratified last evening by the receipt of your truly affectionate letter of the 3
rd
of last month and am very glad that your mother has entrusted your education to the charge of Madame Cheganay for whose attainments and ability, and estimatedâ”
Jack figured the word should have been
esteemed
.
“âqualities I have always entertained the highest respect.”
A different world, Jack thought, glancing at Caroline's haloed silhouette in the front seat. A truck went by fast. The passing airstream slapped their car so hard it rocked.
Caroline turned on the radio, which was tuned to the local NPR station.
“Songs of the Auvergne” filled the car.
Jack would have looked for a rock station. Rhythm and blues. Or jazz.
Songs of the Auvergne â¦
Jack wasn't a reverse snob. He'd learned to appreciate, even like, classical music, although his tasteâWagner, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Puccini's
Turandot
âtended toward the lurid or sentimental. But, when tired or stressed, he gravitated to the music of his youth: the Dell Vikings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, the Blues Project, Mingus.â¦
Songs of the Auvergne â¦
Jack smiled.
The music of Caroline's youth?
As Jack worked his way through college and law school, struggling not to get good grades, which he found easy to do, but to civilize himself, he often regretted that he didn't have Caroline's kind of background, picking up art, classical music, great books from the very air she breathed at home. Junior year of college, when Jack knew enough to realize he was missing references others found obviousâSinbad, “My Last Duchess,” Ratty and Mole, “The Pied Piper,” the Jabberwockyâhe bought himself a used copy of
Journeys Through Bookland
and read it, volumes one through eight of the faded blue-covered books, from Mother Goose to Peter Stuyvesant. He'd smoke dope and spend hours gazing at the color-drenched illustrations of
The Water-Babies
and
Robinson Crusoe
. He bought a child's version of the Greek and Roman myths. A book about the Norse myths and one about the legends of Charlemagne. He got to know all the common store of references that a cultured person in the first half of the twentieth century might know.
But he
knew
them.
That was the problem.
He hadn't
lived
them.
He could never catch upâany more than Caroline could catch up with baseball statistics, games Jack had listened to in the dark in his bedroom, the radio dial glowing the color of the gold-brown old letter from Frank's files in his hand.
See for yourself why over five million glasses of Ballantine beer are enjoyed every day.
â¦
Jack could remember the ads, remember Mel Allen and Phil Rizzuto's voices:
Our broadcast today will be joined by the Armed Forces Radio Service, short-waving this broadcast around the world to our troops.
â¦
Jack was a Red Sox fan. South of Albany right over the Massachusetts border, there were pockets of Sox fans, although most of the kids in his neighborhood were Yankees fans. Every season, Jack got into half a dozen fistfights.
The final game of the season â¦
October 1, 1961.
JFK was in the White House, and the Sox were at Yankee Stadium.
No TV. Jack had to listen to the game on a New York AM station, which faded in and out. He was too far west to get a Boston station.
1961âthe year that looked the same when turned upside down.
And there's the pitch. It's in there. Strike one.
â¦
A couple of weeks earlier, Jackâwho was a UFO buff as a kidâhad followed the news about the first report of a Gray alien. Maybe one of the spacemen Caroline was afraid might sneak through her opened window â¦
And the pitch. Curve inside.
â¦
Between the commentary, the fans in the bleachers made a background
churr
like the cicadas outside Jack's window.
⦠swung on and fouled off. One and two.
â¦
Roger Maris was one home run away from beating Babe Ruth's record.
⦠strike three.
â¦
Jack had a buried affection for Maris, because the other Yankees ostracized him; they didn't consider him a real Yankee.
Here's the pitch to Maris. Left field. Going back to Yastrzemski. And he manages a one-handed catch.
â¦
Jack liked Yaz. Instantly liked himâeven though this was his first season. Shit, he was born on Long Island, Southampton, wherever that was, and yet he was a Red Sox, playing left field just like Ted Williams.
When Maris got up at bat again, it was his last chance to break the Babe's record.
Last time up, Roger hit deep to left field.
â¦
The fans stood up to see if Maris could pull it off. Hit number sixty-one.
Way outside ⦠Ball one.
â¦
It was the middle of the afternoon. Jack lay on his back on the bed, staring at the brown water stains in the ceiling.
There's the wind up â¦
⦠and it's a hit to deep right.
â¦
The crowd went wild, drowning out the sportscasters.
Who was the pitcher? Jack tried to remember.
Another standing ovation for Roger Maris.
â¦
Stallard. Yeah, Jack thought, Stallard.
I've got a headache.
â¦
Which one of the announcers said that? Rizzuto? Allen?
You still have it?
I still got it.
â¦
An odd personal exchange, caught on radio, remembered vividly almost half a century laterâremembered more vividly than Maris at bat, about to beat the Babe's home-run record.
The sweet summer smell of grass had seeped in through Jack's window, which he left open, not for Peter Pan like Caroline, but for a breath of air in his small, hot room in the old shack.
Songs of the Auvergne â¦
⦠qualities I have always entertained the highest respect â¦
How alien Caroline's world seemed to Jack. Not like the aliens Caroline feared, but real, physical beings, people Jack saw on the streets in clean, pressed clothes that fit them. People driving in new cars. People at home reading in the glow of a lamp, seen from the sidewalk through their windows at night. People who didn't have to worry about whether there would be food in the house on alternate Thursdays, the day before the pay envelope came home.
Because the '61 season was eight games longer than seasons before, they tried to say Maris's sixty-one home runs didn't count.
They always try to screw the underdog, Jack thought.
Caroline swerved, swerved again, her fingers gripping the steering wheel.
“I can't stop killing them,” she said. “They're all over the road.”
2
In the headlights, Jack saw what Caroline was trying to avoid hitting: The road was swarming with tiny frogs, which the tires were squashing.
“I can't help killing them,” Caroline said, “but I don't have to kill us.”
Jack watched as Caroline grimly plowed through the plague of frogs.
“It's a massacre,” Caroline said
Although Jack could see her eyes bright with tears in the light reflected back from the road, she started laughing, a low, almost animal bark. Not quite hysterical, butâJack thoughtâclose enough to hysteria.
Jack wanted to touch her, to put a hand reassuringly on her knee, but knew the gesture would be misinterpreted.
After a while, where the road was drier, the frogs thinned and then disappeared.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
“Why wouldn't I be?” Caroline asked back.
Jack studied her.
She felt him studying her. Her right eye twitched.
3
Jack went back to examining the bankers boxes.
A faded diary of a cruise up the Nile, written by Robert's great-great-great aunt, Edith, who apparently was sinking into depression.
A sheet of soft, thin paperâ“a flimsy”âwith a rusty pin in the upper left hand corner. Whatever had been attached was missing. The ink looked blurred, furred from where it had bled through onto the copy, the nineteenth century equivalent of carbon paper or a photocopy.
The next: “
Great Barrington, Apr. 27/62
1862.
“My dear Barlow, The conduct of the Administration against McClellan is really disgraceful
+ wicked
âit shows once more that instead of patriots and statesmen we have only partisans at the head of government.⦔
Next: A paper book sewn together with brown thread: “
Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, Held in 1864, At Chicago,
” printed a third of the way down the fading cover.
Flipping through the documents, which, in the second bankers box, ended a month ago, Jack felt he was seeing a panorama of American history.
Jack felt that, unlike the Flowers and their relatives and friends, who had such an intimate connection with the historical events, he had no part of that history. He was excluded. Like a child in his bedroom, vaguely hearing the sounds of an adult party downstairs.
Maybe, when he was a kid, Jack should have closed his nighttime window against aliens after all.â¦
From the last folder, Jack took a slip of paper, the torn bottom of a yellow legal sheet, which had written on it in Frank's hand, underlined and circled three times:
07-2376
.
“A docket number,” Caroline said when she glanced at the paper Jack held out to her. “One of Jean's cases?”
Jack shrugged as he studied the number.
“The
07
indicates the year,” Jack said.
“Not so long ago,” Caroline said.
“It's got its own file,” Jack said, looking ahead at the car's headlights on the curving road.
“Frank must have thought it was important,” Caroline said.
“It's in the Flowers files,” Jack said. “Maybe Keating can help us with that, too.”
1
The stone sphinx and harpy flanking the entrance to the Flowers estate dripped rain. It looked like the creatures were weeping.
As Caroline drove up the winding way through the grounds towards the big house, Jack noticed in the wet, jade green undergrowth huge concrete turtles with waffle-patterned backs, one of the Flowers company's big sellers thirty years ago for playgrounds and school yards.
Yellowing vines climbed up trees and covered the branches like giant spiderwebs.
Low clouds scudding across the sky looked like curdled milk.
Through the car windows came the reek of chicken shitâsharp, a yellow stink, more unpleasant than the maroon odor of cow or horse manure. Worse than skunk.
The smell made Jack's eyes water.
They parked on the circular gravel drive in front of the chipped and cracked stone staircase leading up to the house.
You'd think a family in the concrete business could keep the staircase patched, Jack thought.
Withered rolled-up morning glory blossoms, looking like joints, littered the ground near the entrance.
“What's that?” Caroline asked.
She was looking at the left side back panel of the car.
Jack walked around to her and followed her gaze.
In the metal was a round hole.
Jack touched it with his forefinger.
“Someone shot at us?” Caroline asked.
Jack didn't answer.
“When?” Caroline said. “Not while we were in the car. We would've noticed.”
Jack was silent.
“And why would they shoot when we weren't in the car?” Caroline said.
Jack walked away from the car. Up the chipped stone steps.
“It's probably not a bullet hole,” Caroline said, following him.
“It's a bullet hole,” Jack said.
2
Someone shot at him? At Caroline? At the car?
Jack assumed it was to discourage him. Them. From trying to find out who killed Frank.
But that question ramified into questions Jack couldn't even frame. A constellation of unknowns and uncertainties.
Don't get distracted, Jack told himself. Keep it simple.
Who killed Frank?
But how could he untangle that from who killed Jean? Who killed Stickman? And why?
And what all that had to do with Robert and his father?
Caroline watched Jack charge up the steps and throw open the huge, heavy, oak front door, which was half again their height, as if designed for a generation of giants.