Summitt

Chapter Nine

The Rakestraw Bridge had been designed by a local architect, Charles Rakestraw, in 1885. Construction was completed by the Union Iron Company two years later. A sturdy fifty-foot span, it was built with iron rails and locust logs and covered with an arch of curved and seasoned planks which had weathered gray over the decades.

The Buck Run Road crossed the Rakestraw Bridge and dead-ended on the opposite side of the creek against Dade Road, a wide, two-lane blacktop.

Selby’s station wagon made a rumbling noise as he drove onto the bridge. It’s high roof cut off most of the early morning light, and for an instant he traveled through a long, dark cylinder with a glowing circle of light at its end.

Shana’s tunnel, no doubt, he thought as he came into the daylight. But where from here?

About a quarter of a mile to his right was the Brandywine Lakes Country Club, a complex of houses and sports facilities, private and expensive. The community was known locally as The Lakes.

At the entrance to The Lakes a large billboard displayed aerial photographs of the fairways and swimming pools. The string of pools was like a blue necklace strung among the dark lawns and green belts. Selby noticed a name in the corner of the photographic display: “Creative Photography, J. D. Parks, East Chester.”

In the opposite direction on Dade Road heavy woods stretched for miles with homes set back on lots screened by trees. A cemetery sloped down to the creek, slate-colored headstones glinting in the morning sun. Further on the countryside opened up and the meadows were bordered by thick stands of timber. The land was as yet untouched by the construction boom churning up the countryside.

He parked beside the cemetery and looked at the headstones stretching down to the water, some slanted with age, the letters and dates worn smooth as moss.

So far this morning he had seen nothing of Eberle’s gray Ford. He waited beside the White Clay Creek for an hour or so, occasionally checking the rear-view mirror, then drove on home.

Shana was lying on her bed in the dark. Her radio was turned so low that the music almost faded out when occasional winds struck the house. In the glow from the dial Selby saw that she was staring at the ceiling, her arms crossed on her narrow chest.

He had the historical society’s book with him. “Can I turn on a light, Shana? I want to show you something.”

“All right, just a minute.”

She went into her bathroom and closed the door. Water ran in her hand basin. Her room had been straightened up and smelled of talcum powder.

When Shana came out he saw that she had combed her hair. There were damp grooves in the blond waves. She had changed the bandage on her right hand; the strips of gauze and adhesive tapes were white against her tanned skin. A heavy lock of hair was combed to slant sideways and cover a pink welt on her forehead.

Her mood had changed from the day before; the anger and hostility seemed to have faded somewhat.

Selby showed her the picture of the Rakestraw Bridge. “This is probably the tunnel you talked about. It might help if you remembered which way you went when you crossed it. If you turned right, you’d have been heading for Brandywine Lakes. To the left is a different stretch of country.”

“That must’ve been the way then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything. You’ve got everything I let hang out on those tapes. What else do you want?”

“I’d like to know what you’re afraid of and why you get your back up when I try to talk to you. Please try to understand we’re trying to help—”

“Why am I supposed to understand?” Her voice was tight and angry again. “People do what they’re strong enough and grown up enough to do, and then they expect me to understand it. Why should I? I can’t make people do what I want, so why should I be expected to understand them?”

She turned and stared at him. “Why didn’t you come home from San Francisco that summer? Because you didn’t want to, that’s why, but you expected me and Davey to understand, didn’t you? Her name was Angela, wasn’t it?”

Selby felt as if he’d been hit by a blockingback. “Yes, I think it was,” he said, conscious of the inanity of his response.

“Well, I’m sure it was,” Shana said. “I wrote her name fifty times on a piece of paper... Angela, Angela, Angela, over and over till my hand was tired and then I burned the paper and buried the ashes down at the pond and told Davey, because he was so little then, that that would make you come back.”

“Shana, listen to me, those two weeks had nothing to do with you and Davey. I didn’t even know you knew.”

“How could we help it? We heard mommy on the phone and heard her crying after you hung up. Davey thought you’d never come home, he thought you were dead. He sat on my bed every night, with that spelling game you bought him one Christmas. He’d spell out the time he’d hope your car would come into the drive. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, till he couldn’t stay awake anymore—”

“Your mother and I had an argument, Shana. There happened to be an Angela around afterward.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” She had begun to cry, the tears bright under the hair that had fallen across her swollen face. “For a long time I thought what was important was somewhere outside of me. Where Tishie’s mother and father died in Germany. Or how you had to work on a railroad and make teams to get through school, and that big Frenchman, Claud, you hated.” She pushed her hair back and let her breath out slowly. There was a catch in her voice as she said, too wise for her years, “Life isn’t outside you. What’s outside is just what changes. But nobody tells you that. You hear about sex and not getting fat on the pill or anything. When I had my first period mommy said it was like opening a wonderful new book, but I think she was thinking about knitting things and grandchildren.”

She looked out the window. “Your own bedroom, funny kittens, even poor old Blazer, the feeling that everybody will be at breakfast and dinner in their same places forever and ever — they tell you that’s yours, that it belongs to you, but they can take it away any time they want to, except you don’t know that until way later. Davey still doesn’t know it.”

The phone began to ring. “I’m sorry, daddy. Give me a handkerchief, please.”

He gave her a handkerchief and she wiped her eyes. “Want me to get it, Shana?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I’ll take it in my bedroom,” Selby said. “Will you try to remember I love you? I know what I mean by that. Remember that, too, okay?”

It was Casper Gideen. “Harry, I think you ought to know. There’s talk going around Little Tenn about Goldie Boy Jessup and Coralee, Barby Kane’s ma. They been meeting with some stranger, not here but once near the old Cooper Mill, another time at Pyle’s Corners. I was watching, Harry. Coralee’s mighty jumpy now. I figure they got to be hiding something. And it touches you, Harry — some way I can’t figure yet. So I’ll keep watching ’em.”

“Casper, you could be letting yourself in for trouble.”

“That could go two ways, I expect. Trouble for somebody else. I won’t call next time, Harry, we’ll meet somewhere. I don’t want my wife and boys knowing about this. Goodbye to you, Harry.”

Selby tried to concentrate on what Gideen had told him, but the scene with Shana had splintered his thoughts.

What was he supposed to tell her? How could he explain away her fears. Goddammit, Selby thought, and slammed his fist down on the desk. The bell at the phone base sounded in tinny vibrations. The Israeli athletes on the wall... was there truth and comfort there? Or where Tishie’s parents had died, or where he had hoisted creosote-soaked railroad ties onto a railway bed, or swung a spike maul in the heat? Did any of that make a little more sense than the words on Shana’s T-shirts? “Reagan for Rex,” “Sky Lab Missed Me,” “Uppity Women Unite!” and “Miss Piggy Is a Pet Rock”?

Selby drove back to Dade Road and studied the terrain on both sides of the bridge again, the sprawling elegance of The Lakes, and the stretch of blacktop cutting through deep woods and past lonely houses.

He didn’t see Eberle’s gray Ford but he wasn’t worried about that now. Something else was bothering Selby. He felt he had missed something. A big, simple truth was staring him in the face, but he couldn’t make out its details and patterns.

He stopped half a dozen times to copy down names from signs and mailboxes, some of them barely visible through the underbrush — Sorenson, Windfall, Vinegar Hill, Ratcroft, R. J. Rose...

He drove back to Muhlenburg and picked up Davey. In the fading light they returned to Dade Road. “You were right,” Selby told him as the station wagon rattled across the shadowed bridge. “I’m proud of you.”

“But where’d he take her from here?” Davey asked, all but ignoring the compliment.

“Let’s keep looking.”

Selby drove first toward The Lakes, the creek shining on one side, a stretch of fairways and sand traps on the other. A wind had come up and the pennants at the entrance to The Lakes were pointing stiffly into the low, gray skies. The guard’s kiosk was centered between red-and-white traffic standards. A man in uniform stepped from the booth when Selby stopped at the traffic barrier.

“Help you, sir?”

The uniform was smart and military, gray twill with epaulets and shining metal buttons. The guard’s hair was white, but there was a capable look to his ruddy face and big hands.

“I was admiring the photographs,” Selby said.

“I saw you drive by earlier, didn’t I, sir?”

“That’s right. I brought my son back for a look.”

“You’re sure welcome. We’ve got a fine place here, the pictures don’t tell half of it.”

The photographs were mounted on a billboard whose wooden supports were painted in black-and-white stripes. The large photographs were of swimming pools, homes and fairways. Smaller photos presented views of tennis courts and riding stables.

Selby smiled at the white-haired guard. “How long have the pictures been up?”

“Couldn’t say for sure,” the guard told him. “A few weeks anyway.”

Selby backed out of the entrance and drove on for a few miles. Then he pulled off the road near the cemetery. When he rolled his window down, a cold wind blew around them. Birds were crying in the trees.

Selby said, “Shana’s afraid of something. Something she won’t talk to me about.” He paused. “You have any idea what it is?”

“No, dad, I don’t. But I wouldn’t know anyway.” Davey sighed. “She won’t talk to me either — about what happened that night. Everything’s different now. We used to talk all the time. We’d pretend we lived together and had our own house. Shana would be an airline pilot and I’d be the navigator and we’d fly through storms sometimes or so low we could see Blazer barking up at us... Or I’d be the steward, getting everybody Cokes. One time we were captains on a Mars shot. We talked about that every night one winter, figuring out how one of us would get lost and how we’d look for each other, or get hit by asteroids or something...” Davey nervously moistened his lips and looked at his father, his face a pale blur in the shadows. “She’s afraid of you, dad. That’s part of it, I think.”

“You told me she hadn’t been talking to you.”

“It’s not what happened that night, dad. It happened a long time ago, something about her playing a jukebox. She says I was there but I don’t remember.”

“Did she tell you this in secret?”

“Well, she didn’t make me swear not to tell.”

“Then we can talk about it, okay?”

“I guess so. She said she was playing records, putting dimes or quarters in a jukebox and something made you mad. You and mommy were there. I was too but I don’t remember it. It was in some kind of restaurant or a bar. An argument started not with you and mommy but with some men. That’s all she’d ever tell me. Maybe that’s all she remembers. But whatever you did, I guess it scared her...”

How old had she been? Selby had to think about it. Eight, nine maybe. The details were vague, but he remembered... Shana in shorts and a halter, dancing by herself, snapping her fingers like adults she’d seen on TV. But where? Philadelphia, or New York? And two young men drinking beer and calling out something to Shana.

“Do you remember what scared her, dad?”

“Some character said something unpleasant to her. I told mommy and Shana and you to go outside. Then I tried to explain to a pair of morons that their language was out of line. They had friends with them and didn’t want to back down. But finally they heard me out. They hadn’t realized Shana was so young. They were sorry they’d embarrassed her. That’s the whole story, Davey. But Shana may have added some imagined details over the years.”

“Maybe so,” Davey said. “Maybe that’s it, dad.”

There had been one other thing, Selby recalled, as he turned the station wagon around and drove back to the bridge. She hadn’t been wearing shorts and a halter, it had been a fancy skirt, and she’d been sick on the sidewalk outside the bar and grill off Sansom Street when she saw the flecks of blood on his knuckles.

As they drove back to the bridge, Selby tried to isolate a thought that had been puzzling him all that day. “Davey, what was it you told me about you and Shana being lost in space?”

“About getting hit by asteroids?”

“No, something else.”

“Flying so low we could see Blazer staring up at us?”

Selby struck the steering wheel with his fist. “Right. Those aerial photographs in front of The Lakes were all taken at night. You could tell from the lights in the houses and swimming pools. Which means they were taken by a low-flying helicopter. The pictures have been on display a couple of weeks, the guard said. So the helicopter could have been flying around the night Shana... if she was somewhere near Dade Road that could have been the hornets she heard.”

At the drugstore in Buck Run, Selby checked a phone directory. Then after leaving Davey off at home he drove into East Chester.

The J. D. Parks photographic studio was in the business district of the old Quaker town. Parks himself was an energetic young man with high color and thinning but long, black hair which he had allowed to spread untidily over his forehead and ears. He wore a canvas windbreaker with slanted marks on the sleeves where chevrons had been removed, a yellow kerchief, boots and jeans.

Selby had caught him as he was leaving his studio on assignment, a folded tripod under one arm and a bulging leather camera bag slung over his shoulder.

“I remember the Lakes job, sure, but I can’t check the negatives now. I’m running late.” Parks put the tripod down, fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a wallet and gave Selby a business card. “How about you calling my answering service in a couple of days, give ’em the date and I’ll check my files when I get back to town. Brandywine Lakes, you wouldn’t believe the prices out there. There’s nothing for sale, but I hustled the management into a layout. Image. Eat your heart out, you peasants. First time I worked out of a chopper since ’Nam. I must’ve shot a dozen rolls each night. What was it you wanted to check on, Mr. Selby?”

“A car on Dade Road, a red sports car. Probably parked in a driveway.”

“I got it, you got it, pal — fair exchange? Call the service, okay? I’ll be in Marcus Hook, underwater shots of a ship with a busted hull. Insurance stuff. Her name’s Jenny, the answering service. Peace.”

A delivery truck was parked in Selby’s drive, the lights on and the motor running. The white door panels were decorated with smiling faces drawn inside fat doughnuts. As Selby got out of his car Normie Bride came hurrying along the flagged walk from the house.

“Evening, Mr. Selby. I stopped by to drop off some chocolate rolls for Shana. She likes them for breakfast sometimes.”

“Did you talk to her, Normie?”

“No, sir, she’s resting, Mrs. Cranston told me.”

Norman Bride was seventeen, almost as tall as Selby but thin as a fence post. His long, gangling arms and big hands, along with good reflexes, had earned him a starting slot on Muhlenburg’s varsity basketball team. Nights and weekends he made deliveries for the Dandy Doughnut Shop in Muhlenburg. His unformed boyish face became solemn as he said, “I wish you’d tell Shana, sir, that I don’t mean to bother her by coming around. But I know she likes those chocolate rolls.”

“I’m sure she understands.”

“If I ever meet that guy who hurt her, he’ll be sorry. I can sure tell you that, Mr. Selby.”

“I understand how you feel. But finding who did it and punishing him is a job for the police and the courts. Remember that, Normie.”

“Yes, sir. But it would be a temptation, if I ever saw him.”

Something occurred to Selby then and he asked Normie if there had been anything in the sports section of last night’s paper that might have been of particular interest to Shana.

“Well, she’s not really into sports, sir. Basketball scores at school, maybe. But I usually tell her about them. I used to, anyway. Let’s see. There was a story about field trials for gun dogs, and some pictures of old classic cars they’re showing out at Longwood.” He added, “I could call and ask her, Mr. Selby.”

“No, don’t mention it to her, Norm. I was just curious.”

Selby wondered later at his injunctions to Norman Bride about the perils of private justice and the necessity for leaving retribution to the community’s cops and judges. And other truisms and bullshit.

It was bullshit, or an excessive “tolerance,” attitudes that had been as natural to Sarah as breathing. She would even be worrying about the man who had tortured and violated her fourteen-year-old daughter... Just like her daughter...

Selby was working off his frustrations by splitting up the sectioned tree trunks that Gideen had brought down from the meadow. A light at the corner of the garage gave him a pale illumination to work by. Yes, Sarah would have said, “Think how dreadful his sickness must be for him. Because it is a sickness — you can’t send lynch mobs after him for that.”

He tapped wedges into place with the butt of an axe, battered them into the tree trunks with a twelve-pound sledgehammer, slugging their steel flanges until sparks flew in a stream and the apple wood cracked and sheared off into slick white staves that sharpened the cold air with the smell of wild fruit. Turn the other cheek, that beautiful, all-embracing absolution for everyone... even himself. Like hell... Turn the other cheek and feel noble all the way to the goddamn ovens...

Of Angela he remembered only the argument with Sarah about something or other on a bad connection from Pennsylvania to California, and then the Mark Hopkins Top-of-the-Mark bar and the girl with a gin drink in front of her. Of Big Sur and Angela he recalled most clearly that a stopper had worked itself out of a bottle of perfume in her luggage and that all her clothes, even her hairbrushes, smelled of violets. Why in Christ’s name had he needed to be forgiven for any of that?

He was sweating heavily by then, his bare hands aching with each blow of the sledge. At last he was tired enough to bring the argument with his dead wife to an end. Let her alone, for God’s sake. Forget it. All of it... her apartment with the picture of Judge Learned Hand and Satchmo and loving everybody and lost causes, and snapping back at racists and bullies because you loved them too and couldn’t stand to condemn them for their ignorance...

She had gone into that curve too fast, that was all, or struck a patch of slick oil in the rain. Forgive her an instant of panic, for hitting the brakes too hard, forgive her for leaving them that night in Spain without a goodbye...

Selby sat on a log, breathing slowly. The backs of his hands were pale and damp with sweat in the bright light. A fleck of blood where he’d nicked himself stood out clearly.

He had spent too much time this way, he thought, wondering about himself, judging himself...

In a magazine article he had read: “What your father made of himself may have little relation to the hereditary factors he passed on to you. He gave you, remember, only half his chromosomes. And those he gave you depended entirely on chance. You can only guess what came to you by studying any unusual traits that you and your father shared...”

Without a father to study he had been forced to study himself. Once in a supermarket in Davenport he had asked his hands to make their own choices. Without looking at the shelves he had grabbed products at random, squandering a week’s wages in an attempt to find some revealing pattern in these unbidden choices. Jars of pickles and cocktail onions, work gloves, powdered milk, breakfast foods, shoe polish, a corkscrew, paper napkins, cans of vegetables, he remembered the look of them when he spread them out on his bed in the dorm at St. Ambrose, and how anxiously he searched them for clues to his father’s character and his own, as hopeful and credulous (he’d known later) as some bare-assed savage looking for auguries in monkey dung and cloud patterns.

From the back door, Mrs. Cranston called to him. “Mr. Selby? Mr. Selby, there was a call from your brother just now. He left a number.”

Jarrell had called from a motel called the Greentree in Quinton, New Jersey. He had told Mrs. Cranston that he was using a pay phone but he would be back in his room, 119, in a few minutes and that he’d appreciate it if his brother would call him.

Selby dialed the number. A clerk connected him to room 119. The phone rang three times. A click. A voice Selby didn’t recognize said, “Yes?”

“My name’s Selby, Harry Selby. I’d like to talk to my brother. Is he there?”

“Jarrell? No, he’s not. His brother, you say?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Me? I’m Johnny Cole. I expect him back pretty soon.”

“You a friend of Jarrell’s?”

“Well, you could say that. We’ve had some drinks in the bar here, hit it off pretty good. We’re both looking for work, and we got to talking about prospects, that sort of thing. He asked me to come by tonight for a drink, a welcome notion, like the fella says.”

“When will Jarrell be back, Mr. Cole?”

“Can’t say for sure. I came by just a couple of minutes ago. His door was open and the phone was ringing. So I answered it. He must have went out to do some shopping.”

“I’ll call back in about a half hour. Would you tell him that, please, Mr. Cole?”

“I sure will, Harry.”

Selby made himself a mild drink, walked aimlessly about the study. On the hearth, his head between his paws, Blazer followed him. Checking his watch, Selby experienced a flash of memories. Summitt and the girl and the sergeant with the brown and rigidly sculpted features...

A clerk with a high, nasal voice answered his second call to the Greentree Motel. He was sorry, he told Selby, but the gent in room 119, Jarrell Selby, had just checked out without leaving a forwarding address.

No, the clerk said in answer to Selby’s questions, he couldn’t tell him anything about a Mr. Cole. There was nobody registered at the Greentree Motel by that name.