Authors: Neal Goldy
Water Home
might have answered because, the minute he
finished speaking, pain was released into his arm. He tried to jerk it off, but
his arm slammed onto the office desk. Growling in anger, D. scratched its edges.
He needed something to hold onto. The pain – no, it wasn’t pain anymore, but something
a lot worse. Agony – no, not that either. It was beyond his superstitions, cleaving
his head in two. Heaving hard, D.’s eyes began to stream out tears so much so
that it deemed itself unreal, like the artificial emotions coming from robots and
false humans. Where the hell was all this coming from?
No luck
came to old detective D.: no one was home. Living by yourself had, he knew now,
its consequences, some of which were dangerous like this one. But wait a minute.
He forgot
what to say. D. crumpled to the ground, one arm still over the desk. Who knew someone
could sleep like that?
Hours later
he woke up. Drool was slimed over the desk, probably before he fell off, but it
hadn’t reach the paper, thank God. D.’s arm was no longer over the office desk,
but instead was lying somehow across the floor. Inspecting it, he noticed hardwood.
Hmm, it was some time since he had seen a hardwood floor. Next D. wiped off the
drool from his mouth, then cleaned up the desk. No one, not even he, needed to leave
it there.
What time
was it? He had forgotten that people didn’t exactly have the same time frame as
they used to when he was a boy.
D. went
deep into the family’s odd business affairs. He started from the top of the family
tree to the first family member who lived in America – or closer in the city, which
would be better. The man was Donald McDermott, and he moved to the U.S. when he
was 7-years-old. Old photos of him painted the image of the young boy. One had been
taken near Ellis Island, where they were processed into the country. The boy’s family
huddled together (was the weather then below freezing?), all of them smiling at
the camera. It struck D. when he saw little Donald as a big-toothed fella with freckles
sprinkled over his face, so that when you stood back enough, the smiling Donald
boy looked like he had cat’s whiskers. Not to mention his hair, of course. Old detective
D. took note of the hair. Different from most boys, he wore it long, and, judging
by the many shades of gray, it was of a brown, almost chocolate, hue. Journals and
newspapers including old records of immigrants coming into the country made D. conclude
that the McDermott origins were from Sweden. If so, then why the surname McDermott?
He figured
that one out, too. According to filed papers in courts, the family had changed their
name. Any reasons why they did it he couldn’t find. Their original name had been
Olander. So Donald Olander was the first boy of his family to enter America. He
lived with his mother, father, uncle, and even his grandfather for a time – some
sources said ten years, others fifteen – but they all ended the same. Donald’s father
hadn’t been doing well in his business as a supervisor in the industry of steel
construction. Grandfather Olander persuaded his son to take part in it (probably
the same business he had taken part in back in their native country), but he should’ve
realized of what his son was capable. D. shook his head as he gathered the information,
days and days of piling books and journals and diaries and newspapers and pictures
and recorded interview tapes onto the desk. Huh, he thought; sooner or later this
desk just might be such a mess that people will think it’s the work of a madman.
It was that or someone with schizophrenia, which D. favored as the more plausible
answer. Later Donald’s father had betrayed his wife for some other woman of German
descent. Like the McDermott’s, the German girl had changed her surname a few months
after arriving in America. Was there a problem back then where you were discriminated
against by people from your home country? If so it would clear up many things
up about the McDermott and German girl’s relationship.
A week
later, during which time most people, like the police department, grew in their
concern as to the whereabouts of D., the old detective visited the cemetery in Green
Square Garden. He thought it funny, but not in a humorous way, to have numerous
corpses buried next to growing fruits and vegetables. The man or woman who thought
of this idea either came up with the cemetery or the garden to be put next to it;
the one responsible for this idiocy must have decided to place a garden after
the fact. Most fools would agree.
The day
was clouded, the wind crisp in the air. A raunchy smell was somewhere out here,
to be sure, but D. felt grateful for the speck of wind going by; it loosened up
the dead air, unfolding the rigid arms crossed over in hefty moods. His eyes swayed
across rows and rows of people whose stories were hidden before his eyes. They were
far too many stories of loss.
Near the
end of cemetery, not quite up to the final tombs, there was a tombstone slab falling
apart. He crouched to lean in to see more, like eavesdropping on another’s conversation,
pricking your ears to integrate all the details. Since the decades it had been here,
the slab contained a sour yellow and green coating that looked like glowing limestone.
On the tombstone read the name DONALD MCDERMOTT; somewhere else was his father,
and it was here that D. found out the father’s name, ERNEST MCDERMOTT. Apparently,
the father died after the son did.
*****
Chandler Elementary
School buzzed with voices regarding what happened to the McDermott family a few
days ago. Most of the kids were messenger bees but the subject was gossip instead
of pollen. They neglected Winnie, pressing themselves to the building’s walls rather
than walk normally.
“What’s
with everyone?” Winnie asked one of her friends, Berkeley. Both of them were
sitting on the playground swing set. Berkeley treated the swing differently than
Winnie did, he was twisting the chains so hard that they coiled into a French braid
of metal. And then he let go, spinning himself silly until he was sickened. Winnie
just sat there rocking back and forth. She stared at the gravel below.
“I don’t
get it, Win,” said Berkeley. “Everything looks fine to me.”
“That’s
because you’re not looking at it!” Winnie protested. “Don’t you see? Everyone’s
ignoring me! Is it because of what happened when the policeman came into our house?”
Berkeley
shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Of course
you may not know, but you could ask! Is it that hard? You know I would do the same
thing if I were you.”
“I know
. . .” He didn’t sound like he knew, though.
A group
of girls, all wearing pink, sprinted onto the swing set. They seemed to want to
join in, but then they noticed Winnie. Their tones were hushed, but she knew they
talked about her. Who else would they be talking about, Berkeley? Nobody cared about
him except her, and that was only because he asked.
“What did
the president officer look like?” Berkeley wanted to know.
“For the
last time, he’s not a president! Just because his name is Lincoln –”
But Berkeley
didn’t care. “So what if he isn’t? I still wanna know!”
“Well,
let’s see . . . he was beaten up, I remember that.”
Her friend
rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Winnie, you said that already! I wanna know if he’s as
cruel and dangerous as they say.”
“I don’t
think so. He looked pretty harmless to me.”
“That’s
only because you’re a girl,” said Berkeley, “because if you were a boy, maybe he’d
show his true colors.”
“I don’t
think so,” Winnie said again.
“Fine,
if that’s what you suspect. But for me, yeah, I think otherwise.”
“Whatever,”
she said, going back to staring at the gravel.
Sirens
blared across the street, out of their reach. Even if they wanted to see it like
some kids wanted to do from the way they were climbing on the fence, none of them
would’ve reached the top to climb over. Winnie heard about a rumor of one particular
kid who jumped over the boundaries of the school (she wasn’t sure if she heard it
from a teacher or a classmate). As in a prison camp, the kid was caught before he
even crossed the street where the police were right now. The teachers from their
school weren’t very happy about the kid’s decision, she was told, and he suffered
very bad punishment. It made her blood boil thinking of the consequences.
“What are
the police doing these days?” Berkeley wondered. “All the time going back and forth
with their sirens, wee-woo, wee-woo. It’s annoying!”
Winnie
had to admit, Berkeley’s siren noises were pretty convincing.
“I heard
that a building caught on fire,” she told her friend. “Don’t you think it’s weird
that both the firefighters and the police were on the scene? One time someone’s
home was on fire, and I never saw the police there. Something bad must have been
happening.”
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah,” said Berkeley. “I just wish they’d shut up. Mom’s complaining ‘bout
my grades tanking so low, but it’s not my fault the police are so ear-aching!”
And Berkeley
was right. Everywhere – even during pop quizzes and tests – police were cruising,
breaking speed limits without getting tickets. Winnie wanted to know what the police
people were doing now across the street. Who knew, but maybe Officer Lincoln was
there. He might recognize her!
“Children!”
called out their teacher, Ms. Bonnie. “Children, get inside right now! Recess is
over!”
Winnie’s
classmates began piling into the traditional line like machinery in a conveyor belt.
Berkeley hopped to his feet but Winnie stopped him. Her arm held him close.
“What?”
“Something’s
wrong,” she said. “Just wait and see what happens.”
Ms. Bonnie
noticed the two standing there. “Winnie! Berkeley! Recess is over!” Her title was
Miss, but her fifty years gave that away. Her eyes lowered to the Magic Lowbrow,
as some kids called it. Once children saw the Magic Lowbrow, they obeyed. But neither
of them obeyed like the rest, and were kind of rebellious, really.
“Children?”
trembled the tweet-tweet voice of Ms. Bonnie. “It’s time to go back inside!”
“We’re
not coming!” Winnie shouted in defiance.
Policemen
from across the street scrambled out onto the sidewalk. Many of them fired their
pistols, some falling to their deaths. Winnie got off the swing set, to go watch.
Ms. Bonnie, turning white from the inside out, began running over to where the two
children were staring. She didn’t say anything but grabbed them from any harm. Not
having children didn’t mean you couldn’t help yourself from protecting young children.
*****
When Donald’s mother
left, the world of happiness left. His soul turned gray, shriveled up like the leaves
in the autumn, only darker and more meaningless. That metaphor never had been in
the information D. found through his isolated research of this period of his life,
but it fit the feeling Donald had according to the journals he had kept to
express his most personal feelings. Two of these journals D. kept for further research:
the one before his mother left and the one after. It frightened him (and he almost
fell out of his chair) when he read the cover of the journals. Both of them shared
the typeface used in his Impromptu, kept the golden hue, and were leather bound.
It became obvious to him that he wasn’t all that special. Other people had bought
these journals before him, and surely with more knowledge.
Another
week went by, and he had covered the mother’s tracks. She had moved from the city
they lived in to the High Lands where she found work as a waitress. The restaurant
had been a four star, most reviews aiming for the positive. French chefs owned the
restaurant and kept their tradition of French cooking. She hadn’t prospered, however,
and lived a hopeless life after she married Noel Lewis. He had been arrested when
he abused her, beating her physically and with words. Some of them had been transcribed
to his shocking revelation. Lines of what seemed like monologue went like this:
“Feel the graceful pain that withholds your inner jumper . . .” Cryptic language,
or was it something nobody could make an interpretation of?
Donald’s
mother died from a brutal beating from a gang that roamed in the poorer parts of
High Lands. Fang Gang, they were called, so when the papers mentioned them, people
would know it rhymed--though it served no purpose at all. None of them gave interviews
about the rape. According to numerous police departments, the mother had died from
severe depression (although the rape and beating after did quite a good deal of
damage no doubt). D. didn’t cry from it. Why should he after going through severe
things himself? Crying, he thought now, was a pure waste of time. There were more
important things to be doing, y’know.