Distant Blood

25

It was like a waking death for me.

Somehow, Deborah kept me breathing when my lungs felt like lead. She screamed at me through the swimmy visions, through the fading lights, and as the Coast Guard helicopter rocketed away from the island with Philip, Aubrey, Candace, Jake, and me aboard, through the convulsions. Philip hollered at me, too, that I had to live. His voice-not a whine this time-pierced the rumble of fading thunder.

I asked for Pop. They would not tell me where he was.

At one point I believed myself dead. It seemed logical. My blood felt as cold as it could be without freezing into slush. Cut me and it would have been like pricking a Icee cup. Then I remembered the swirly Icees Sister and I drank as children, chattery cold and sweet against our teeth. I fell asleep-or slipped into coma, you pick-before we landed at the Port Lavaca hospital.

I awoke under a rebreather mask, oxygen pouring into my system, an IV dripping into my arm. My fingers felt numb, but when I scratched on them there was a flash of sensation. Jake was correct. There was no specific antidote to monkshood, but the hospital had pumped me full of oxygen and heart stimulants and I had made it past the first crucial hours. When I could speak, and a nurse busily strutted into the room, I said, “I want my father. And I want my girlfriend.”

She started like I'd scared life out of her. “I'll see what I can arrange.”

She arranged Gretchen.

My stepmother took my hand and held it close. She explained that Pop had told the police everything. About Paul. About Brian. About Mutt. Paul's suicide had been reopened, and Pop was being questioned under house arrest.

Candace was going to be okay. So was Aubrey. They were just down the hall from me, and when I could have more visitors, and they felt up to it, they could come see me, or I could see them. Many of Gretchen's sentences were long. She spoke forever. She held my hand and she cried.

Philip's wound was superficial, although he told me it hurt like hell. He joked and he laughed, and when the rebreather mask came off and I just had the nasal prongs, he said they should charge me less. He said the doctors had identified the poison used against Aubrey and Candace- convallatoxin, a cardiac glycoside similar to digitalis, found in lilies of the valley. Jake had apparently poured water from the vase of lilies in the study into the cranberry juice. The water was poisonous from the cut lilies. I remembered the vase, sitting there in quiet beauty, and shuddered.

Philip said Jake had a heart attack after attempting to kill me. Apparently his medication had been misplaced and they couldn't find it to give it to him in time. I remembered Pop's voice taunting Jake with the pills.

It was an entirely new code of silence.

Aubrey's notes and laptop had been found, stashed in Jake's room, full of hints from phone calls from Lolly that Paul's demise was no suicide and telling him she kept evidence under Sweetie's watchful eye. Aubrey, not Pop, had been the one ripping open Sweetie's bed to locate Paul's stashed jewelry. Wendy had simply either lied to me or seen Pop in the hall right after Aubrey made good his escape. Jake had stolen Aubrey's notes and laptop right before his attempt to kill Aubrey and silence him forever regarding Paul's death. Aubrey was no hero, though; he confessed to being the one to spike Gretchen's drink, eager to note for his book how the family-and Gretchen-would react to her loss of sobriety. Gretchen and Sass were not pleased with him in the least, but they waited until he was released from the hospital to lecture him thoroughly and suggest he get some counseling.

I kept asking to see Candace. Later, I was told. Later.

The police questioned me-Victor Mendez and Tricia Yarbrough leaning down into my face. I told them I'd fainted during the poisoning and seen nothing. I kept my eyes focused on a ratty piece of tile in the ceiling.

Jake's death was ruled natural causes, by heart failure. And several days later the toxicology results came back from Travis County. There was a lethal dose of digitalis in Lolly's system.

This story has three endings. First, about Pop.

Time passed. I rose from my bed, trembling with the sensation of knowing I would live, wheeling the IV along with me, easing a robe over me, when Pop arrived with Gretchen.

We embraced in silence. He rubbed the back of my head gently.

They sat in chairs, I sat back down on the bed.

“They said you told them about Paul's death-” I began, glancing toward the closed hospital-room door. I was in a private room, which I couldn't afford. I had heard one of the nurses talking about the press descending on the hospital because of that “crazy family on that island.” At least I would hear this alone.

“Yeah, I did. And there's going to be a hearing.” He stumbled over the words and would not look at me. “Gretchen, would you excuse us?”

“Of course. I'll go check in on Aubrey.” She did not mention Candace. I watched her leave.

“No.” I shook my head at the word hearing. “No.”

“They're searching for Uncle Mutt and Wendy,” Pop offered by way of diversion. “He's been charged with Rufus's murder.”

“The boat-?”

“No sign of it. Or them.”

“Pop, they can't find you guilty. We'll all testify-”

“Yeah, Jordan, family members on the stand should sway ajury…”

“We aren't manufacturing that three of us were poisoned.

And poor Rufus was shot, for God's sake. Do a residue test on all our hands. That'll prove none of us killed Rufus…” My voice trailed. “And Jake. He died from the heart attack.”

Pop's face was ashen. “Yes. He died.” His face cracked, and his voice broke under the unimaginable weight.

“We need never speak of this again.” I could hardly hear the words coming from my own throat. But you don't believe in codes of silence.

“I killed my brother, Jordy, and now I've killed my uncle. I-I'm some sort of fucking monster!” Pop sobbed hard, covering his face with his hands, shivering under fearsome grief.

I wrapped my arms around Pop. And heard Jake's voice from that nightmarish evening: I'm not a monster.

“No, you're not,” I murmured. “You're not. You're not.” It turned into a slow, slow litany. Eventually he came to know it was true.

Pop did not go to jail. The police talked to him and Aunt Sass for hours on end about Paul Goertz.

After the truth about Paul came out, Deborah didn't speak to Pop. Or Aunt Sass. Or to any of us, ever again. I think of her often. She moved to Atlanta, to work in a clinic. Texas had gone bad for her, forever, I suppose. I think she could understand Pop having to shoot Paul; but she could not grasp the fear that made the family hide the crime, and the hiding of the crime is what killed Brian. The guilt was no less burdensome because it was shared by so many.

Paul Goertz's body was never recovered. Sass confessed she, Lolly, and Mutt had weighed it down and dumped it far out at sea. Perhaps his bones still remain in the watery sludge at the Gulfs bottom. We will never know.

The police exhumed Brian Goertz's remains. The tests found traces of monkshood in the boy's body. Jake had poisoned him when he'd discovered Brian was close to unearthing the truth about Paul's disappearance, then taken him down to the beach and drowned him. At least, so they hypothesized. I tried not to think what had transpired on the dark beach so many summers ago, the poisoned boy being dragged toward the water by his bruised throat, an old man with the bright flames of hate in his eyes.

Pop was exonerated. After a humiliating hearing that made him an old man. He and Gretchen are back in Mirabeau now, but press across the state had their field day and it doesn't seem quite so busy at his car lot. He sits and watches the tabloid talk shows much of the day, as though he needs to hear confessions of others, no matter how paltry or sordid.

The second ending came far after the others, but it is the least important. The following Thanksgiving, I received a letter with a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, postmark and the following text, printed in a generic computer font: I know you enjoy receiving mysterious mail. Sorry for all your troubles. Don't bother trying to find us – a friend has mailed this, and we are far away from Baton Rouge, and any other place you might wander. I'm sorry for what Jake did. I never knew he hurt Brian. I would have killed him myself had I known. And I'm sorry he hurt you. I didn 't want to believe that he killed Lolly. It was easier not to. I was horribly wrong. But nothing I do now will undo that. Nothing. I dream of Rufus sometimes. He was really worried about us going out into the storm. He didn't understand it was forever. He shouldn't have tried to stop us. I wish it hadn 't happened that way, but it wasn 't my fault. It was yours. You were opening too many cans of worms, Jordan, forcing me to act too soon. I don't hold Rufus's death against you and do hope you don't blame yourself. I was glad to hear that Jake didn't kill you. I hope you are well. I miss our talks. But I don't think of you often. When I do, though, it is at that Little League game, you at shortstop, and my heart swelling with secret pride. I am not too old to finally be a father myself you know. But my child will not be blond like you and me. Perhaps I someday will tell my child about curious Cousin Jordan. But probably not. Life always seemed easier when you were a family secret. We should have stuck to that rule and never allowed you near us. Do not come looking for us. I don't believe you are interested in trying.

The letter was not signed, and my friend at the police station in Mirabeau could find no prints on the paper or the envelope. I gave the original to the FBI. They gave me a copy. I burned my copy one night, watching the smoke waft into the air in the quiet of my backyard. I did not want it in my house.

The final ending came in the cool of Candace's cottage back in Mirabeau. She had left Port Lavaca without me.

I didn't know where her heart lay. Philip and Gretchen told me that when she recovered her senses from her poisoning, she sank into deep depression when told her baby was gone, and that I had been poisoned as well. But when I recovered, she showed little interest in seeing me. I railed and begged the others to take me to her, trying once to get to her room and forcibly being restrained. Gretchen assured me Candace did not want to see me as the needle slid home and I faded into a chemical drowse.

She came in once, while I slept, and Gretchen said she seemed to want to take my hand, but then she fled the room. Her father and mother came from Mirabeau to drive her home.

After I had visited Sangre Island one last time, I returned to Mirabeau. My sister fetched me and cried much of the way home. Candace, she said, would not speak to her.

I had been home three hours, feeling frozen and inert, when I rallied the courage to go to her house. I felt ill, and I felt sad, and I felt hot anger that she had abandoned me.

She answered the door, looking thinner than was good for her and pale under the barest summer tan. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail.

“Sweetheart?” I said. “Are you just never going to talk to me again?”

She made no move to let me in. “No, I'll talk to you. You're looking good, much better than when I saw you last.”

“I didn't get to see you then. You left-”

“I had to, Jordan. I don't ever want to see the Texas coast again. I needed to be… away from that place.”

“I needed you. Pop was a wreck, and Deborah wouldn't speak to any of us and left, and-and I needed you.”

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt you.”

Her eyes were flat, uninterested in what I had to say. “Do you not love me anymore?” I asked hoarsely.

“I don't know. I can't do-I can't do this anymore.”

“What, sweetheart? Tell me.”

“You're drawn to trouble, Jordan. You can't bear to pass it by. You can't leave things alone. If you had-”

“If I hadn't, Jake would have gotten away with murdering Lolly and Brian.”

“If you hadn't, I'd still be pregnant with our child.” The cold, hard truth hung between us.

“That's not my fault.”

“I'm not sure I believe that, Jordan.” She began to ease the door shut. “I just have to have some time to think. Think about us. If there is an us.”

I slammed my hand against the closing door. “I love you. You know how I love you.”

“Yes. Right now I wish you didn't.” The door shut.

For a long while I stood on her porch, unable to move. I had no words for her. I had no comfort for her.

Because I didn't think she would have believed the end of my story. When I returned to the Goertz house on Sangre Island with Pop and Gretchen and Philip and Tom-to see what was left, to begin to put our lives in order-I had spent a restless night in my own room, endlessly contemplating Pop's upcoming hearing, the dread I'd felt when Candace collapsed, the loss of my unborn child, the death I'd nearly faced, the horrible secrets that had shrouded this house so long it had warped the very wood of the building itself. I was taken with a notion to burn the house to the ground and salt the earth. I'd wandered out to the porch in my sleeplessness.

And there I saw two small figures, standing hand in hand at the house's edge-one a boy of twelve, the other a boy of younger years. They'd shimmered in the midnight moonlight, their faces in brief, stark relief. Brian, and a child I did not know, yet knew with my heart and soul. With Candace's eyes, and my nose and blond hair, and a wide, pert smile of sweetness like Pop's. They both raised hands toward me- in warmth, in love-and dissolved into the night breeze from the bay.

I wanted to follow him, into the breeze, into the night.

Instead, I went back inside the house, to the family God had given me. I went into Pop and Gretchen's room, where I listened to the soft sibilance of his snore, and sat on the floor, watching my father sleep until the dawn.