Chapter 24

 

At 5:30, I was sitting on the edge of the bluff with the old man. He was being strangely quiet this evening. There was no slobbery muttering this time. Evidently, he had given up trying to communicate with the dummy that sat beside him. I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I was so lost in my thoughts I was barely conscious of his being there. I wished the day were over, but it wasn’t. I had a reporter coming and then the hardest job of all, calling my wife and telling her what had happened at the party and how I was on the outs with the Boss. Well, it was time to get my man back to the kitchen’s warmth.

“Arness, are you ready to go?”

He struggled to say something, and I thought, oh, no not again. “Short . . . ” 

There it was, plain as day. Short. I decided he meant we had stayed out a short time.

“Yes, we did stay out a short time, didn’t we? Sorry.”

It looked as though he was going to shake his head, but then he nodded. 

“Ready?” I asked.

He gripped the sides of the wheelchair and leaned forward. Off we went, with me barely keeping the wheelchair under control as we careened down the hill to the house.

Mrs. Mordant waited at the door with a grimace and raised eyebrow. “Someday you’re going to have a wreck!”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, “I guess I do get carried away coming down that hill. I’ll try to go slower next time.”

“Hair . . . ” 

“Would you listen to that! Dad, you’re doing better!”

Mrs. Mordant wiped her eyes and wheeled him off to his room. I watched them go, thinking about his situation, and how lucky I was to be standing there in one piece.

 

It was 6:30 by my watch when I heard a knock at my door that I had come to recognize as being Mrs. Mordant’s hurry-up-I-don’t-have-all-day knock.

“There’s a Ms. Jems downstairs wanting to talk to you,” she said, through the door in a voice loud enough to wake the dead. Or was she giving me a chance to jump out the window and make my escape? I was sure Mrs. Mordant knew all about the woman with the buckteeth. I roused myself off the bed and said I’d be right down. After a quick check in the mirror I walked downstairs to see Emily, dressed casually in Levi’s and sweatshirt, standing there in the kitchen.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“No, thank you,” she murmured.

I knew we couldn’t talk in the kitchen, and talking in my room for very long would raise the town’s eyebrows. There was only one place to go, and that was the bluff. I retrieved my jacket and got a cup of coffee.

“Shall we go?” I asked, hand on the doorknob.

Mrs. Mordant looked aghast. “Why, you don’t have to leave. You can chat in the TV room while I work here in the kitchen.”

Like hell we could. She would have an ear cocked against the door between the two rooms. 

“Thanks, Mrs. Mordant, but it’s still light. I think we’ll go up to the bluff and go through the interview up there.”

Mrs. Mordant’s eyes narrowed. “I thought from the newspaper article that had already happened.”

“This is a follow-up.”

I gave Emily a quick look of admiration. She had saved my bacon while I was trying to think up something plausible.

“Shall we go?” I repeated, turning the doorknob, hoping we could escape Mrs. Mordant. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her brain. She wanted to know more, but was afraid of going past the line of social politeness. I was beginning to think I had made a mistake telling Emily to come here for the interview. However, we couldn’t be seen sitting in a bar or restaurant or in a parked car somewhere. No, it had to be here. 

“Just a minute, I have to get my coat,” she said.

She got her coat out of the car and we proceeded up the slope to the top of the bluff. There was still a trace of warmth from the sun dancing on the waves and I thought, Yeah, I could live here. But then, I already had a home elsewhere in Alaska with its own beauty.

“Do you mind if I tape your statement?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, “but we have to lay down some rules. First, I too am going to record our conversation—for my protection—you understand?”

Her raven eyes popped open at this revelation. As if she was just now realizing this was the big time. Lawsuits could result from the wrong thing being said or implicated.

“Also, have you told anyone else about this?” I could feel my left breast vibrate this important question as my recorder hummed and then stopped.

“Yes . . . my editor.” 

I’m sure my Adam’s apple bobbed at least twice when I heard that last revelation.

“Can he be trusted?”

She smiled that smile of hers. “Yes, I trust him implicitly. He was at the party the other night at Ashley’s house.” 

I nodded. Great, just great. “What do you think or know of Ashley?”

I turned from the sea to look at her dead on. 

She returned that look and I saw hurt, vulnerability—name it, and the hurts were there. But hurts or not, there was determination too. This gave me comfort. I had picked the right person to tell my tale.

“She is bright, ambitious and . . . beautiful,” she responded.

I nodded. “That she is, but she is much more. Something akin to evil.”

I started my tale about who I was and where I came from and that I was married to a good woman out at Howes Bluff. I even got a smile when I told about laying in the weeds on the knoll back of the post office. 

“So that’s why you were not eager for me to report that in the ‘Seen about Town’ column.”

I nodded and brought her up to date about the party and the picture and Ashley blackmailing me. About how my boss wouldn’t believe me.

“Have you told your wife?”

I shook my head and looked down. There was a late-season fly crawling along the ground, making its way toward my shoe. Maybe he thought he would find sanctuary there. I shook my foot, warning him off.

“No.” 

She laid her hand on my arm and I looked again in her eyes.

“You must,” she said, and again, “You must.”

I nodded. “I know, but I’m afraid.”

“She will forgive you.”

“Perhaps so, but will she forget?”

She removed her hand and stared out to sea. “It is so beautiful here.”

“But it takes more than beauty to make a life,” I said. “By the way, if Chief Wattle tries to make you talk about me, don’t. I think he is in this up to his elbows.” 

 She nodded, closed her notebook, and turned off her recorder. “This is big. Bigger than I thought.”

“Scary, isn’t it?” I said.

We walked slowly down the hill to her car, each lost in thought, I suppose. In a fatherly way, I was taken with this young woman. Despite her buckteeth she had found a productive place in this world, an Alaskan world at that. Journalism jobs do not grow on trees in small-town Alaska. We stopped for a moment by her car. 

“Thanks for coming,” I said. 

I checked my watch. Eight-thirty and the sun was going down into the ocean. It was the time when the green color of the plant growth really stood out, making the scenery look almost surreal. Some would call it a magic time. 

Emily reached into the back seat of her car. “May I take your picture?”

“Of a condemned man?” I tried to joke.

She shook her head. “I always take pictures of the people I interview. And you are, in a way, a unique person. Stand over by that alder, please.” 

I still have the picture. In the twilight of that Alaskan day, she captured a bit of the soul that resides in me. Red baseball cap and all.

She left. I waved her off as she turned the corner onto the main road. Without warning, I shivered. I had a hunch why, and it wasn’t from the evening chill. The die had been cast; there was no turning back now that I had told someone. Was I being naïve? Maybe, but I had to have somebody local who stood on neutral ground. Someone who could be objective, and, if anybody could, it was Emily. I only hoped her editor was more committed to local politics than to the neutral ground that journalists were supposed to stand on. It would not do to have him publish anything about the post office and the drug scene.

The other reason for my shivering was the phone call I was about to make to Jeanette. Well, no time like the present, I thought and walked into the house. Mrs. Mordant was waiting for me, just inside the door.

“Your wife called. I told her you were at the bluff talking to that . . .that newspaper reporter.”

I thanked her and went upstairs to my room, where I sat down in my one easy chair to compose myself before I called back. I had a feeling that what I had to tell Jeanette would not make her angry, but only sad. I had failed her, and I was not the first. Her first husband was an alcoholic and Jeanette had for a time, drank with him. Her only child, by some Divine Providence was a beautiful teenager, suffered from fetal alcoholic syndrome or a mental malady and had died from a drug overdose. Tears welled up in my eyes. Dam it! Not now, Bronski! 

It hit me from nowhere—the scene from long ago, the accident, my first wife’s voice.

“Leo, it’s late. We should be going home.”

“Yeah, sure, honey,” I had said with a wink at my host. Obviously, my wife thought I had had too much to drink and wanted me out of a social situation before I did something really stupid. This time I didn’t argue with her. She usually had an instinct for this kind of thing. One I hated. By the time I had my coat on and had dithered around getting to the door she was seething. I pushed past her, leaving her to scurry after me to the car.

Once we were in the car she came unglued.

“Leo! You know how important this client is to me. Now, I’m going to have to do all sorts of repair work because you couldn’t keep away from that bottle. Leo, I don’t know what happened over there in Vietnam, but you have got to get counseling.”

“I don’t need counseling!” I roared back. “Besides, what would those counselors know about the real Nam anyway? Just a bunch of pimple-faced kids working on their next degree!”

“Leo, keep your eyes on the road!” she snapped.

I jerked the car back into my lane. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t forget, we have to pick up Cheryl,” she said. Then she went back to harping on how I was wreaking her career and ruining my life and obviously didn’t care or I’d get counseling.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Dam it, Charlene. Shut up or I swear I’ll smack you one!”

There was a sharp intake of breath. I never before had threatened her. She shut up, no doubt thinking up all kinds of reprisals for the next morning. It was still quiet in the car when we pulled up in front of the babysitter’s house. 

She uttered just two words. “Stay here.”

I grunted a reply. She was probably worried I would say or do something embarrassing. Soon she returned, our daughter Cheryl in her arms.

“Aren’t you gonna put her in her car seat?” I asked.

She gave me a stony look. “She’ll fuss back there. I’ll hold her, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” I answered. Charlene was one of those people who didn’t believe in seat belts. She had a horror of being trapped in a burning car or something. If I’d been sober I would have insisted she buckle her belt around herself and the baby, but instead I peeled off, squealing the tires as we left the sitter’s place. I don’t know why. Just a drunk’s answer to the world, I guess.

“Leo,” she said in a tired voice, “watch where you’re going.”

“I’m watching! I’m watching!” I guided the car carefully down the street, pleased with myself for keeping it between the lines. I was looking for the two side-by-side yellow paper boxes that marked my next turn.

I was getting real sleepy. If only I had a cup of coffee . . .

“Leo! Watch out! The bridge!”

I came out of the trance when I jumped straight up out of the easy chair. My mind evidently thought I had tortured myself enough. I was sweating like a pig. The trance was over with, but my thoughts went on about how things really went to hell after the accident. I lost my position with a good company, the whole works—my friends—everything. Yeah, Charlene should have had her seat belt fastened, but I was drunk and that took precedence. A tear drifted down my cheek and I automatically started to reach for the bottle at the head of my bed. Good Old Jack, just one sip . . .But for some reason—and maybe it was the vision of a waiting Jeanette—my hand took a detour. I lifted the phone off its hook and dialed. Jeanette answered on the first ring.

“Leo?”

“Jeanette, how did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know. It’s something I’ve always had—the ability to know the person on the other end. How are you doing?” she asked. Thank goodness, she seemed cheerful.

“Uh . . .so, so.”

“Leo, is it that bad?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I’m being blackmailed.” There, it was said.

“Do . . .do you want to tell me about it?”

“No,” I said, “but I have to. I love you and want to keep you. I . . .I hope you feel the same way about me when I’m done talking.”

There was a moment’s pause. The silence through the phone was so complete I actually thought she’d stopped breathing.

“Jeanette?”

“It’s okay, Leo. I’m ready.”

I took a deep breath and went on to describe everything about Ashley and the drug scene as I saw it. That I had told the Boss but he didn’t believe me. That was how tight Ashley had him wrapped around her little finger. How she was starting to run the main floor with her rules, and every time I objected, she would haul out that damn picture.

“But I didn’t do what the picture suggested,” I said. “Only nobody would or will believe me. I think Emily Jems, the reporter, does, but I wonder if I didn’t make a mistake telling her.”

The whole time I was talking, Jeanette had not said a word. I knew she hadn’t hung up, but I did wonder if she was there. I said a quick prayer. 
“Jeanette? Are you there? Do you believe me?”

“Yes, Leo, I was just thinking.” 

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Do . . .do you believe me?” I asked again.

“Oh, Leo, you poor man. Yes, I believe you. I knew you were under stress when you lied about getting home from the party. I knew something was wrong. But I decided that if you were worth your salt, you would eventually come to me with the truth. I knew you were a good man when I married you. No one is perfect. Now we must put this behind us and decide how you’re going to fight this evil. Are you drinking?”

“A glass or two in the evening until last Saturday evening, when I sort of . . .got carried away,” I answered.

Jeanette’s voice became firm. “A glass or two is okay, but no more getting carried away. I won’t put up with a man who is a drunk. Do you understand that, Leo?”

Okay, maybe that does sound like a parent talking to a child. But we drunks sometimes need to be talked to in that manner.

I gulped. “Yes, I understand.”

“Leo, I love you from the bottom of my heart.”

There was another moment of comfortable silence.

I told her I would try to keep her abreast of everything happening to me. She told me she sensed a storm was gathering, but not to worry, just keep bailing the water out of the boat and eventually I would come to safe harbor. With that, we said our good-byes and hung up. I felt like a new man, ready for Ashley and her evil.