Shadow Man (7 page)

That's what I was asking her two years ago, the night I finally gave up the bottle. The boys were out, and me and Kat were alone. I wanted to be close. I'd been drinking. So had she. We started yelling at each other and knocking stuff over. Then everything went topsy-turvy.

Katherine got hurt. I'm not sure how. She was down on the floor and her nose was bleeding. Then Gabe was in the room. He threw me into the wall. “Don't touch her! Don't you dare hurt her!” he's screaming. He didn't even know what was going on, but I was too far gone to explain that Katherine was the one who had started it; when I tried to kiss her, she bit me.

I went into the bedroom and got my rifle and went back into the kitchen. Gabe was bending over his ma. She screamed when she saw me. He didn't look scared. He said, “Go ahead and shoot me, you crazy old fart! You've already killed everybody in this house!”

I almost pulled the trigger. But suddenly I saw him; I saw that I was going to shoot my own son. I ran outside and threw the gun in the pond. I haven't touched a drop since that night, not even a single shot. Because I'd rather be dead than hurt my own children. Katherine thinks it's my fault Timmy died, but it's not. I was just playing cards. He climbed out of his crib. I would've cut off my arm if it would've brought him back, but wishing and crying don't change a damn thing.

This driving around is getting me no place. Jennie won't be found till she wants to be found. That's the thing about kids; they're so selfish. They don't think about other people's feelings.

I've got a bottle with me now, in the glove compartment. Picked it up this morning, just in case. In case the pain gets too bad. Like in the Civil War. Somebody got hurt, they'd give him whiskey, if they had it, and operate on him right there in the field. Cut off the hurt part, an arm or a leg. Most of them didn't make it.

I vowed on my son's life that I wasn't going to drink. But it didn't do no good. He's just as dead now as if I'd shot him.

23

Jennie Harding

We'd done a lot of things, we'd kissed and touched, but we hadn't made love, not all the way. Gabe wanted to. “Why not?” he'd say. “Don't you really love me?”

He knew I did. But no matter how much love I gave him, he was starving. He never understood why people loved him. He thought it was some kind of trick.

I was afraid to make love. I didn't want to take chances. “It's not like I'm going to get you pregnant,” he said. We argued about that. We argued a lot. He absolutely didn't want me to go away to college.

We had an awful fight about that, one night, here on the beach. We'd been wrapped in blankets, looking at the stars, just talking. Then I told him about this brochure I'd received, from a college back east. Gabe went crazy. He was screaming that it was Mrs. Sanders's fault; that she thought I was too good for him. “Oh, you're such a brain,” he sneered. “Much too good for Willow Creek.”

He kept ranting and raving. He wouldn't listen to me. This time I didn't feel like apologizing. I felt cold and hard inside. I got up and started walking.

“Where do you think you're going?” he called.

“Back to town,” I said. “I've had it.”

He came after me. He tried to make me stop walking.

“Jennie, I'm sorry. Honey girl, please listen—”

“I'm not listening to you anymore!” I said. “You say you love me, then you treat me like this! You say you won't drink—I smell beer on your breath! Mrs. Sanders doesn't hate you; you hate yourself! If you want to wreck your life, go ahead! But leave me alone!”

I hadn't talked like that to Gabriel before. He looked shocked. He burst into tears. He was like a little boy, clinging to me, pleading. “Please don't go!” he sobbed. “Please don't leave me!”

I had never seen Gabe cry. He'd rather shed blood than tears. I was crying too. We sat down on the sand. We kissed and hugged. I wanted to be inside him, to fill up all the places that were sad and empty.

It was just that once. It only happened one time. When my period was late, I could not believe it. It took me months to accept that the baby was real and not a figment of my guilty imagination.

Sometimes I've wondered if Gabe wanted to make me pregnant, so I couldn't escape, so I wouldn't leave him.

I don't believe that abortion is a sin and that people who do it will go to hell. Gabriel thinks people should have to have kids, even when they don't want them. He doesn't like women having so much power, or that a decision like that could be up to me.

We were here, on the rock, when I told him I was pregnant. Things had gotten bad; we were always fighting. I had made up my mind to tell him we were through. He'd gotten so strange. He was drinking all the time. When I asked him about it, he'd deny it. He couldn't have fun unless he was high. Those were the only times he told me he loved me.

I didn't love Gabriel any less. It was just that I'd realized that he wasn't going to change. He wasn't going to stop drinking, or fighting, or sneaking around seeing other girls. He thought I didn't know about that. As if you could keep a secret in Willow Creek.

When I told him about the baby, he looked both scared and pleased. His eyes flashed more thoughts than I could read. Then his face hardened, shutting me out.

“What're you going to do about it?” he asked, as if the whole thing was my responsibility.

“Get an abortion,” I said. “It's already scheduled.” I was afraid to make the appointment, but I'd done it, feeling like I was someone else, like I didn't know myself anymore.

I told him I thought we should break up, or at least stop seeing each other for a while.

Gabe looked stunned. He almost hit me. He stood above me, blocking the sun. The shadow of his hand landed on my face. When I didn't flinch, he broke down.

He said, “I promise I'll change! This time I mean it! Things are going to be different! Just wait and see. Give me one more chance. Don't kill the baby! I'll be good to you, honey! Jennie, please don't leave me!”

His sadness overwhelmed me. I loved him so much. I thought the power of my love could overcome all our problems.

I was so stupid.

I haven't told my parents about the baby. Whenever I try, the words dry up in my throat. I keep picturing how those words will change my mother's face. So I've waited and waited, as if the baby might disappear.… Now it's too late to undo what's been done. I'm caught in the present and Gabe has escaped. He didn't want the baby; he wanted me.

My belly is swelling, even my face is changing. My parents would've found out soon, when they finally saw what they didn't want to see. They would've been mortified, angry, hurt. How could you do this to us? they would say, as if I were only a mirror for their dreams.

It would hurt them most to know that this had nothing to do with them. That night on the beach they didn't even exist. The whole world was Gabe and me.

24

Donald Morrison

The oldest brother, David, came down here to settle some business for his father. I asked him if he wanted to look at Gabe.

He shook his head no. His hands were trembling.

“I'll go in there with you, if you want me to,” I said. His eyes are as big as Gabe's, but dark.

He glanced toward the parking lot, then back at the door to the room that holds Gabe's body.

“All right,” he said. He stayed close by me. He smelled of booze and cigarettes.

Five feet from the worktable, David stopped walking. “I can't,” he said.

“He looks okay,” I said. “It just looks like he's sleeping.”

“But he's not.” David reached for a cigarette, then put the pack back in his pocket. He heaved a long, shuddery breath. “I feel like I can't, but I have to,” he said. “He's my brother.”

We walked up to the table. David didn't say a thing. Big tears like raindrops splashed on his hands and one fell on Gabriel's cheek.

“Dad's not done with him yet,” I said, to say something, to try to make him feel better. Luckily he didn't hear me.

David didn't stay long. He came back into the office, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve. He said he didn't know how they wanted the service, that things were still up in the air.

“My mother—,” he began, then left it there.

“No problem,” I said. “Take all the time you need.” I told him we'd be in touch.

My father and Clyde Bridges came into the office shortly after David left.

“My God, what stinks?” My father opened a window.

“David McCloud was just here. He said—”

“No sense talking to him. He's a drunk.”

My father sat down and offered Clyde a cigar from the silver box on his desk. Clyde's in real estate. When an old person dies, Clyde's usually the one who puts the house on the market. He hears about it first. He and my father are friends.

“I'm going out for a while,” I said. “I want to help look for Jennie.”

My father waved the words away. “There's no sense in the whole town getting hysterical, just because some teenager wants attention.”

“You know how this town is,” Clyde said, chuckling.

I said, “Mrs. Harding called. They're afraid Jennie might kill herself, because she loved Gabe so much, and it turns out she's pregnant.”

My father almost smiled. He said, “That figures.”

“I told her I'd help.”

“I need you here.”

“Mom can answer the phone.”

“You heard what I said. Clyde and I have business.” He dismissed me.

I figured I knew what they needed to discuss. I lingered out of sight, to listen. The Sea Horse Festival, a brainchild of Clyde's, is scheduled to be held this weekend.

“People are saying we should postpone it,” I heard Clyde say, “because Gabe's dead and everybody's sad.”

“People die every day.”

“Lucky for you.” Clyde laughed.

Mendocino gets most of the tourists to the coast. Willow Creek is a few miles inland. Clyde came up with the Sea Horse Festival as a promotion, combining our location near the coast with what he calls “the pioneer spirit bit.” He's hoping it will catch on and become an annual event. Then people will buy gas at Clyde's gas station and eat meals in Clyde's restaurant and spend the night in Clyde's motel, and we'll all be so grateful, we'll change the town's name to Clydesdale—

“Why couldn't Gabe have gotten killed next week?” he said. “We all knew this was going to happen. The only question was when. Count on the McClouds to screw things up.”

My father said, “Gabe had a lot of friends.”

“Sure, I liked Gabe. He was a nice enough kid. Could've been one hell of a quarterback if he hadn't got kicked off the team. Your kid ever play?”

“No,” my father said.

“Well, the show must go on. We can't cancel it now. I'd still have to pay the band and the clown. Everybody's sad, but a week from now it will be back to business as usual,” Clyde said. “Some kid gets killed, everybody's all worked up. They blame it on society. They blame it on the family. The kid's friends swear they won't drink anymore. The next weekend, they're having a big beer party at the cemetery, knocking over tombstones. You know what I'm saying.”

I could picture my father's nod. He said, “I see it all the time.”

“What a pickle.” Clyde sighed. “What a can of worms. If I don't have the festival, I'm out a bundle, and if I do have it, everyone will hate me. I try to put this town on the map and people just think I'm being greedy. There's nothing wrong with making a profit. That's how you stay in business.”

“It's up to you,” my father said. “It's your baby.”

“It's not like it'd bother Gabe,” Clyde said. “He'd probably want people to have some fun. Maybe we could dedicate the whole thing to his memory.”

I was on my way out, but before I left I had to make a few phone calls.

25

Carolyn Sanders

I just got off the phone with Jennie's mother. She was practically hysterical. She's convinced that Jennie's going to kill herself because she's pregnant.

I said, “I'm sure she wouldn't do a thing like that. She's probably just upset.”

That's why they pay me the big money, folks: for brilliant observations like that. Of course she's upset. She's devastated. She really believed that she and Gabe would stay together; that love would conquer all their problems.

Mrs. Harding talks as if Jennie has died. In a sense, she has; the little girl is gone. A woman has been sleeping in Jennie's bed, masquerading as the dutiful daughter. How odd it must be to have a baby, who changes into a toddler, who becomes a child, who becomes an adult.… Do mothers mourn those lost babies, unreachable as the unborn?

I have no children. I have many children: all the students who pass through my classes, a steady stream of eager faces, untapped potential, bored yawns. They can't wait to grow up and become adults, because they think we're always free to do what we want.

Surprise, surprise.

I had spoken to Mrs. Harding on the phone in the main office. She had begun to cry.

I said, “Sharon, please don't worry. May I call you Sharon?”

“Yes, that's fine.”

“I'm sure Jennie's going to be all right.”

“We can't find her!” she sobbed.

“Gabe's death must be a terrible shock for her. She probably just wants to be alone for a while.”

“She's pregnant!” Mrs. Harding almost screamed, as if I must be stupid or deaf. “How could she do this? She's ruined her life!”

It's too bad she's pregnant, but I'm not surprised. Kids think they are immune from disaster; that “just this once” it will be okay if they make love, don't wear a seat belt, drink and drive.