(11)

When the wrecker pulled my father’s car out of Moon Lake ten years after it went in, I was at my house working on an article for a daily newspaper.

I was writing about some poor lady who had died in her home and been partially eaten by her two dogs. They found her in a house full of dog crap and stacks of old newspapers. Both dogs were small and cute and had on little red dog sweaters with MOMMY’S BABY stitched into the material with red and white thread, and according to the cop who climbed through the window and found her and them, the doggies had blood on their teeth.

When the cop discovered her body, it was so covered in flies, he said he thought it was a buzzing black electric blanket on the fritz, but when he moved forward and startled them, they rose in a tight wad of beating wings, and in the narrow hallway where she was found, it sounded like the roar of a lion. Being religious, the cop thought it was her soul leaving her body via bloated houseflies. Interesting.

I was about to wrap the piece up when I got the call. I was trying to find a way to put the emphasis on her animal-rights work and leave out the part about how her starving pets had snacked on her and the putrid detail about the roar of the flies.

As for the dogs, I sympathized. Had I been trapped in a house and not had thumbs or fingers to call for help or pizza delivery, I would have eaten her too, but the public didn’t want to read about that, not in a small-town newspaper.

The call was from old Sheriff Dudley, who was still on the job, although he was now with the New Long Lincoln police force and was Chief Dudley. He told me they had found the remains of my father, broken and scattered across the front and back seats by water and time, and, in the trunk of the car, suitcases and bodily remains—meaning bones and withered flesh—wrapped in a blanket that had turned into a kind of mud-covered cloth mush. Their guess was the remains belonged to my mother.

It was a startling moment, to say the least.

At first when I was invited to come there and hear what they had to say, make some kind of funeral arrangements, I was both confused and reluctant.

It wasn’t that my part-time job for the newspaper was making me real money that I feared to lose, as I had recently sold a second novel proposal for enough money to keep me in good shape for about six months; it was that, by that point, after feeling pain and loss for so many years, I had to a great degree disconnected. It was a part of my past that had wandered off into the weeds, and if it hadn’t died there, it was badly wounded and lying mostly still.

I wrote a poem about my past once. It remains unpublished.

Thing that was foremost in all this was that I was going to have to cancel my therapy session to go to New Long Lincoln. My session wasn’t with an actual therapist but with a YMCA boxing coach.

I was getting pretty good, and as I had learned from Mr. Candles, boxing centered me. It was my therapy. I had also learned to protect myself with skepticism and, at times, a smart mouth.

I finished up the piece on the partially dog-eaten woman, wrote a half a page of the novel I had started, then tried a few poems, and as usual, all of them sucked. But writing, like boxing, lets the pressure off my mind, no matter what I’m writing about. I wondered if the ancients drilled holes in skulls to let those kinds of pressures out, thinking they might fly away, although instead, the patients ended up with infections and a new fondness for hats of some sort. Still, the urge to drill would be strong.

I drove to work with my article in a manila folder, and when I was inside the newspaper building, the air had gone foul and it was sticky warm.

Saul Albright, who owned the business, was the only one there. He was red-faced and white-haired, thin as a starving model and sharp as a samurai sword. He always seemed at attention, even when sitting down, but today he appeared to have shrunk in height. He was standing outside his office door, leaning against the doorjamb. His clothes hung on him as if they were draped over the back of a chair. He looked tired and dank.

“Daniel,” he said.

He melted into his office, and I followed. He tucked in behind his desk as he always did, his long legs stretched out, his hands in his lap. I placed the folder with my article in it on the edge of his desk. He eyed it sadly, like a hungry man on a diet who was looking at a dessert he knew he shouldn’t eat.

“I got a call this morning. From the police department in New Long Lincoln,” I said, then summarized it. “I’ll need to be gone a few days.”

“Oh, that’s horrible, Danny.”

“I suppose it is.”

“You’ll have to go, of course.”

The realization that my father must have murdered my mother meant that the night we drove over to Moon Lake and parked on the bridge before playing submarine, her body was in the trunk the whole time. I had helped load that car trunk, and I couldn’t figure out how my father had put my mother’s dead body there without me knowing, though one of the suitcases was large enough to contain her.

“Damn,” I said. “It’s hot in here. Where is everybody?”

“I’ve turned off the central air. The electricity and water are next. Not the best of times to hit you with this. I’ve already told the others, but I’m worn out, old enough to remember when I could remember. These days I’m putting my pants in the refrigerator at night.”

I didn’t believe that, but it was Saul’s way of sneaking up on something he really wanted to tell me. It was his method.

“I’m closing the paper, Daniel. I was going to call you but decided I wanted to see you in person. You, like the Scarecrow, I will miss the most.”

“Why are you closing?”

“Nobody reads it and they don’t wrap fish in it anymore. I thought about selling it. But who to? Tyler newspaper and the TV news have taken all of our little-town thunder. I’m not making any money. I’m in arrears on damn near everything. I been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and Peter died. Today is the last day.

“Got up this morning, looked at what I owed, figured I could get it all paid, but the idea of struggling through another month, wearing cold pants from the fridge, it wasn’t all that appealing anymore. I got your check here. Shit, Danny. Money you make here is about enough to buy a birthday cake and a party hat. You don’t need this, being a novelist and all.”

“I felt like I needed it.”

“Maybe as a hobby, but not much else.” He opened the desk drawer and pulled the check out and gave it to me.

“Look, if you can’t afford this—” I said.

“Don’t be silly. I can’t afford the goddamn paper, but this I can afford. Drop in and see me from time to time. Not here, of course. Come by the house and wear refrigerated pants with me. I’ll keep an extra pair ready. I’m sorry about your father and mother. I don’t know exactly what to say.”

“Not much to say. Turns out my father murdered my mother and was trying to kill me too. I think that’s enough said.”

“You don’t know the whole story, Danny boy.”

“Mom didn’t crawl into the car trunk and die on her own.”

“I suppose not. But you’re a reporter, even if it is for a half-assed paper that dies today. You know enough to realize what seems real at first might not be. Assumptions instead of facts can make an ass out of everyone.”

“Some things are so obvious, it’s not about where there’s smoke, there’s fire—it’s where there’s fire, there’s fire.”

Saul stood up and stuck his hand across the desk. I shook it.

“You go to New Long Lincoln and decide to stay there, you might want a job. I know the lady runs the newspaper. Christine Humbert. She runs a bigger outfit than this one. They might even be able to pay you enough to drive to work in the morning. I could put in a word for you.”

“Didn’t say I was staying there.”

“True. But I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re truly curious about something, and in this case your curiosity is linked to a personal reason. Look, I’m locking up and going home, and tomorrow I’m going fishing. I’ve never been, so I thought I might. Course, I need to get some gear first, so I might not go after all. It seems like a big damn bother to catch a fish and clean it, more I think about it.”

“Guess you won’t be printing the obituary I wrote.”

“Afraid not. Sorry to say, in the case of the poor old lady, she will lie in her grave with her horn un-tooted. At least, not by us.”

“Sad.”

“Beyond my powers now, Danny.” Saul was already coming around his desk, heading for the exit. “Come on.”

When we were outside and he was turning the key in the door, I said, “I’m going to miss this place.”

“It had its moments, didn’t it? Decide you don’t want to go to work at another newspaper, take advantage of this time off. You’re a remarkable young man. You got on here without a degree in journalism because you had already written and sold a novel. It’s damn mature for your age. An old soul. I thought about writing a novel once. I’m still thinking about it. I know I’ll never write it. But you, you’ve got one out there and a second sold. Forget this piecemeal journalism. Finish your book.”

“Thanks for everything, Saul.”

I went home to pack.