Authors: Thomas Cater
A five-year-old runny-nosed kid wearing a dime-store
cowboy hat pushed a plastic pistol through a torn hole in the screen door.
“Your granddad home?” I asked.
He vanished leaving the front door open. I invited
myself in. It was not a warm or comfortable room, only by the most rudimentary
standards. The few pieces of worn furniture looked as though they were salvaged
from a junk shop. There was also a strong odor of cooking grease mingling with
the unpleasantness of roach spray and grime.
The girl stepped into the dining room. She looked as
worn and neglected as the rest of the house. She didn’t seem surprised to see
me standing near the open door.
“My name is Charles,” I said quickly. “I belief your granddad
is expecting me.”
“Pa!” she shouted, without taking her eyes off me.
“Man here to see you.”
He returned her summons.
“You from the welfare?” she asked.
I shook my head, realizing that many expectations had
been dashed with that bit of uneventful news.
I told her I was interested in looking at pictures her
father owned. Her lips pantomimed the words.
“Your Uncle Frank,” I said, curious about the blood
relationship.
“You the man who called yesterday?” she asked, angling
a closer look in my direction.
I nodded. A smile awakened the corners of her mouth
and revealed two rows of snuff-darkened teeth. I tried a smile, but to no
avail.
“Pa, you coming?” she shouted, shifting her gaze.
A gray-haired man in his eighties wearing a checked
shirt and baggy green corduroy trousers shuffled into the hall. He was wiping
his nose with a red hanky.
“I’m coming, Shell, you don’t have to shout. There’s
enough noise in this house.”
She took his arm and guided him toward a rocking chair,
which he grasped.
“Come on in and sit, Mr. Case; we’ll have a cup of
tea” he said. “Shell!”
“Yes, Pa,” she replied in a gentle voice and vacated
the room. She left him coasting under his own power. I caught his elbow and
offered support.
“She’s my granddaughter,” he said “One fine little lady.
She’s been with me for five years; divorced. Some red neck got her in a family
way and then left town, or went to jail. I wished to Christ I was younger. I’d
beat some sense into these damned hoops. They think you can screw anything and damn
the consequences.”
He paused in the doorway to assess whether he was able
to continue.
“You married, Case?” he wanted to know.
“Divorced,” I said, liberating myself from any potential
arrangements with Shelly. He shook his head.
“Any chil’ern?” he asked squinting through one eye.
“None,” I said, dismissing all cause for blame. He
shook that gray, mangy head.
“When will people ever learn?” he asked.
“When it’s too late to make a difference,” I replied.
He lowered himself into the chair and pointed toward a
padded easy chair.
“Have a seat and tell me again what you’re looking
for,” he said, blowing into his hanky.
“I’m trying to find out what I can about your father’s
brother, Frank Harmon,” I said, as if I were inquiring about my own relatives.
“He kin of yours?” The old man asked.
“I’m inquiring for a friend,” I said, trying to evade
lengthy explanations, which seemed to satisfy, but not enough.
“I told you,” he said. “I don’t know much. He wasn’t
with us very long.”
“You said you had pictures,” I insisted.
He thought about it, dabbed his nose a few times with
the handkerchief and called aloud once more. “Shell!” he shouted.
“I got the family album out and started going through
it.” The old man said. “I found pictures of Frank. One is clear, but the others
are all faded. I wish I could be more help. Shell!”
She appeared in the room, a plastic quart container of
milk and two cups in her hands.
“Go up to my room, darlin’, and get that album on the
table by my bed. It’s open to pictures this man wants to see.”
She set the milk carton down between the two stained
cups and tea bags.
“Water’s not hot yet,” she said, “I’ll get it for you
when I come back.”
I nodded. She went through the hall and up the stairs.
The old man watched until she disappeared. He mumbled a comment about trusting
her, cash missing from his billfold, the loss of two pension checks and decided
to time her absence.
I wondered what else he might have and not want her to
see; a tin of snuff, a pack of cigarettes, maybe pictures of granny in the
nude?
“What’s your stake in this, Case?” he asked, as if we
were negotiating.
I was weary of justifying my interest in ghost stories
and the town’s history. I decided to appeal to the greed in every man. I
thought it might provide him some satisfaction to know that at least one member
of his family had a brush with power and wealth, even if it may have caused his
demise.
“I think it’s possible that your uncle Frank was
married to Elinore Ryder. If you and your grandkids could substantiate that
connection, you might just possibly fall heir to whatever is left of the Ryder
fortune,” which sounded strange coming from me, since the house could possibly have
been all that remained of any kind of legacy.
He was silent while the words settled in his mind. I knew
it would not sink to any depth. Wealth would be nothing but a vague illusory
dream. He’d been around too long and knew the poor were never intended to
inherit anything but faith and grief.
“Elinore Ryder?” He said, “The old maid who lived in
the house on Scary Creek?”
I nodded.
“That can’t be; she was an old maid. If he was
married, why would he leave?”
“That’s part of the riddle I haven’t been able to
answer,” I said. “I hoped you might be able to help.”
His eyes tried to focus on forgotten things from the
past.
“I can’t help you,” he said. “I know nothing about
him. I was just a kid myself.”
Shelly returned with the album. She held it open and let
it rest between us. Then she kneeled on the floor and leaned against the old
man’s leg. He flipped through the pages.
“This is my dad and a friend of his. This is a friend
and this is Frank. It’s the best one. You can even make out his features. Dapper,
ain't he; with that little bowler on his head and that tight fittin’ suit. He’s
a good lookin’ man, maybe in his early to mid twenties?”
It was a breathtaking surprise. “Jeez,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” The old man asked.
“That picture of your uncle…it looks familiar.”
“My dad’s younger brother,” the old man said.
“Mr. Harmon, your uncle looks a lot someone I knew … when
I was his age.”
He readjusted his glasses, took a long, hard critical
look at me
and the picture and mumbled. He studied the photo, a scornful
expression on his face.
“It’s possible,” he said, “but he’s been dead a long
time.”
I pressed closer to the photo album and examined the
picture. “Do you know where this picture was taken?”
The old man narrowed his eyes and tried to identify
the background. “No, can’t say that I do. That house doesn’t look familiar at
all. Frank was a great one for getting around the country.”
“I think I know,” I said. “It looks like a townhouse
in D.C., although I don’t know what he would have been doing there, unless…”
“Unless what?” The old man asked.
“… Unless he was into spiritualism.”
I lifted the picture out of the album.
“Would you mind if I had a copy made? I’d like to
compare this with some of my old photos. To me, the resemblance is…uncanny.”
“I don’t see that it’s a problem,” he said, “if you
bring it back.”
I agreed with a handshake and thanked him. Shelly concealed
a smile by covering her mouth and teeth with her hand. I climbed into the van.
*
I was driving down the road thinking of Frank and Amy
Taylor’s use of his and my name. What if we were related? The Hindus believed
in reincarnation, but that was too simple; life is was more complicated. I’d
seen so many things and so many faces, it was getting difficult to separate
reality from the past and what I imagined. I stopped thinking about it and suddenly
realized I was driving in the wrong direction to go to the hospital.
Chapter Forty-Four
Her reception was not as warm or enthusiastic as it
had been in the past. Her lips were thin and tightly drawn and her eyes, well,
they were hard. I was mystified.
“
You are the
most irresponsible human being I have ever met,” she said, before I had a
chance to tell her the good news.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I could not imagine what
I had neglected or forgotten to do. I wanted to apologize, but wasn’t sure where
to begin, which made me wonder why I was feeling so guilty.
“If I am, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” she scowled, “but it doesn’t matter
anymore.”
If it did not matter anymore, why was I hearing about
it?
“What did I do, or not do?”
She screwed her eyes down into narrow slits and burned
them into mine. “Does the name Joanne Zimmerly mean anything to you?”
A light went on and I wished it hadn’t. “Zimmerly?
Yeah, I think so. Why?” I asked.
“That bitch is out to get me!” She shouted. “She’s
called here six times in the last 24 hours, and every time she’s given me the
tongue-lashing of my life, and I don’t know her! Whoever she is, she wants me
out of this hospital and she’s going to do everything in her power to get me fired.
Do you want to know something? I think she can do it. Do you mind telling me
what the hell happened between you two?”
“Balls,” I said. “That woman is deeply troubled. She’s
a teaching 'doc' at the university and doesn’t like people asking questions
about mental illness. I visited her and asked if she knew anything about Grier.
I showed her the paper he wrote.”
“You didn’t tell her you got it from me, did you?”
“No, I told her I found it among papers that were
stored in a house I
purchased.”
“That’s all you said?
I wagged my head. Connie breathed easier.
“That’s a relief. Are you through with Grier’s
journals?”
I nodded again and laid them on the edge of her desk.
“Good, I’ll put them back where they belong,” she
said.
I pushed the books across her desk. “So what else did
Miss Zimmerly say?” I asked embarrassed by my own curiosity.
“She said she was going to the top, to Dr. Jerome
Weismann in New York.”
“What will he do?” I asked, anxious about the
possibility of some greater authority on the Ryders taking over my little
inquiry. What made me think others would be interested?
“Probably nothing,” she said. “He doesn’t like being
an administrator. It’s a political expediency, something he has to do to
qualify for something else. He’ll probably be as surprised to he
ar
from her as I
was to hear that you were a ‘liberal democrat, an anti-intellectual and a trouble
maker from the governor’s office’.”
“Did she say that?”
“You think I made it up?”
I was beginning to feel sorry for the problems I had
created for Miss Zimmerly.
“How do you suppose clever folk like her get so bent
out of shape?”
“It has to do with ‘persona’, a term professionals use
to hide behind the image they have of themselves,” Connie said.
I couldn’t have agreed more. “You should have seen
this woman,” I said. “Nothing but class; she dressed like a model, probably
went to some yuppie school. She had the makings of a noble face, if she’d done
something with it. Her mind however was a slum ghetto. I’ll bet she longs --
deep down inside -- to jump out of every open window she passes.”
“She couldn’t have been that terrible,” Connie said,
but with growing interest.
I sensed something coming and thought I’d change the
subject before she turned it against me.
“Well, she’ll probably run to fat as she ages.”
“Why, did you take her to lunch?” Connie asked.
I laughed. “Are you kidding? She threw me out of her
office in five minutes flat.”
“Yes, she said you were there only long enough to
expose yourself. What did she mean by that?”
I shrugged and spread my palms to the sky. Under no
circumstances would I have exposed myself to Zimmerly. She would have
anticipated that and been ready with a straight razor.