Everybody's Fool

A Sundering

RAYMER STARTED UP the Jetta and, just in case Miller was watching in his rearview, put the car in reverse so his taillights would pulse. When the cruiser pulled out onto the two-lane blacktop and headed back toward town, he put his car back in park and turned the engine off. Rummaging around in the glove box, he located the flashlight he kept there, but naturally the batteries were dead. A sign, if ever there was one, to cease and desist, to put a merciful end to this bloody, god-awful day. Tomorrow would arrive soon enough and with it numerous opportunities for further lunacy. Hadn’t he already crammed a good hundred pounds’ worth of shit into today’s fifty-pound sack? Go home, he told himself.

Except what did that even mean? Home, at least until he could make other arrangements, was still the Morrison Arms and officially off-limits. If he ignored his own yellow tape and climbed into his own bed, his sleep would likely be haunted by phantoms of the escaped cobra. His other alternatives were nearly as unattractive. He could return to the couch in his office, but he’d be discovered there bright and early by Charice, and given the evening’s events he couldn’t really face that. Like the other residents of the Arms, he had a voucher for a motel room, but so late, with this a holiday weekend, he’d surely be greeted by a NO VACANCY sign.

As Raymer made his way into Dale on foot, there was renewed rumbling to the south, the low clouds reflecting distant lightning strikes. The air was again full of electricity, the hair on his forearms standing up, just as it had on Charice’s porch (before he destroyed it). With nothing but sporadic lightning to navigate by, he stuck to the path as best he could but managed to stray anyway. The Dale grave markers, set flat to the ground, jutted up just enough to trip him, and twice he went down, the second time hard. Rising slick with mud, he was grateful for the dark. Between the charcoal ash from the Weber and the fresh coat of mud, he could easily imagine what he must look like. It put him in mind of that book Miss Beryl had assigned in eighth grade, the one where a boy comes upon an escaped convict on the marsh. The old woman had made a special point of telling him he would identify with the boy in the story, but after reading that first chapter he’d put the book away and refused to pick it up again. When he failed the test, Miss Beryl, puzzled, had asked him if he’d found the book too difficult. He lied and said yes, because the truth was even more embarrassing. He’d quit because the scene on the marsh had terrified him, and even though the chapter ended with the convict being led away in chains, Raymer had been afraid he would return. It was a long book, one that would take weeks to read, and he knew he’d spend the whole time worried sick. For some reason he related this story as a lighthearted anecdote to Becka on their honeymoon, though she’d appeared genuinely stricken. “Don’t you see?” she explained. “You cheated yourself.” And maybe she was right, but really, was that such a terrible thing? Didn’t people cheat themselves all the time, over more important things than eighth-grade reading assignments? “Was I right?” he asked her, because clearly she knew the book in question. “Did the convict come back?”

“Of course he did,” she admitted. She seemed about to say more but thought better of it, which was a shame because in describing the poor kid’s predicament — whether or not to rat the man out — Raymer discovered that he actually did want to know how the story turned out. (Miss Beryl was right — he had identified with that lonely, friendless boy.) Becka’s refusal to satisfy his belated curiosity suggested that even now, so many years later, he didn’t deserve to know. More troubling still was the possibility that this had been her first inkling that their marriage was doomed, that a cowardly boy had grown up to be a cowardly man.

These were his thoughts as he trudged through marshlike Dale, his shoes ruined, his socks squishy. He wasn’t even certain he was headed in the right direction until the sky lit up obligingly and he saw the old judge’s grave, its fresh mound shrunk considerably by the earlier deluge. Was it really just this morning that he’d stood here listening to that idiot preacher? It felt like last week. Pitch dark descended again, but he had his bearings now, and he had a pretty good sense of where the yellow backhoe had sat and also, a few rows off to the right, where someone had placed that bouquet of red roses.

When he located Becka’s grave, he would…what? Try to fall asleep again in hopes that she’d return to him in a dream, as she had earlier, and tell him whatever it was she wanted him to know? If she could visit him on Charice’s porch, over a mile away, surely she’d be able to contact him here, mere feet from all that remained of her physical existence. Whatever she wanted to convey had seemed urgent, though after this long, what could it be? The identity of her lover? Okay, but why now? That she’d come to understand in death what had eluded her in life — that it was he, Raymer, and not this other man, who she truly loved? Or that the time had come for him to stop obsessing about her lover’s identity and move on with his life? Maybe the reason she visited him there on the porch, after the lovely evening he and Charice had spent together, was to give him her blessing. It was possible. But so, alas, was its opposite. What if she’d come to warn him about Charice, that he was about to make a terrible mistake?

Given the swift approach of this new storm, however, would sleep even be possible? Exhausted though he was, he was feeling pretty wide awake. And even if he did manage to drift off, wouldn’t the first clap of thunder thwart him all over again? On the other hand, maybe sleep wasn’t the only means of summoning her. If she was a ghost and near to hand, maybe she’d just appear to him? If she did, what would he say? He supposed he might begin by apologizing for not having visited before now, that a better man would’ve grieved her loss instead of allowing himself to be consumed by the betrayal she’d been contemplating when she came down those stairs like a Slinky. Because for her to have fallen in love with someone else, she’d first have had to fall out of love with him, and he must’ve had some role to play in that. And while he was apologizing, now might also be a good time to admit he never should have married her in the first place, knowing as he always had that he didn’t deserve a woman as beautiful and smart and self-confident and talented and full of life as she was. Of course Becka would stray. How could she not?

The trouble with such abject groveling as an opening conversational gambit with a dead woman was that Becka would immediately identify its source as self-loathing, the very thing she’d always liked least about him. If after death some part of the old Becka remained, and he — face it, the aggrieved party — begged her forgiveness, he could all too easily imagine her dismayed response: Christ on a crutch, don’t tell me you’re still at it? But how was he to entreat her if not with kindness and understanding and forgiveness?

The only thing he could be certain of was that if Becka was a real ghost, then the conversation — whatever its content and form — had to take place tonight. Tomorrow morning her visitation at Charice’s would feel like a dream, and he’d interpret that dream accordingly, in the context of his own emotional need — his subconscious inventing her so that she could inform him it was okay to have feelings for another woman and to act on them. And tomorrow, in the cold light of day, sure, why not? Tonight, though, in the intimate dark, he wanted Becka to be real, to have come to him out of her own need, not his. Here in Hilldale he wanted more than cheap parlor tricks of his own devising.

Though of course all of this was assuming he survived the next half hour. Crazy, but he’d been treating the approaching storm as if it were a friendly presence, lighting his path to Becka’s grave, yet now that it was upon him — directly overhead, in fact — there was nothing friendly about it. A bolt of lightning sizzled audibly overhead a split second before illuminating his surroundings, and in that heartbeat, before everything went black again, he saw the ground was pocked with splotches of dull red. It took a moment for him to understand what he’d seen, that the earth beneath his feet was strewn with petals, all that was left of the beautiful bouquet of roses he’d noticed that morning. Which meant he was close. Becka’s grave was nearby. With any luck the next lightning flash would tell him which one was hers.

What came instead was the rain, all at once and furious, just like the earlier downpour in town, except now there was no dry police cruiser to duck into, no dim-witted Officer Miller to distract him from the deluge. What on earth had possessed him to come out here? he wondered, awed for the second time in an hour by nature’s fury. Why hadn’t he waited for the storm to pass in the comfort of the Jetta? In a matter of seconds he was drenched to the skin, the last of the charcoal ash leaching out of his hair, running in rivulets under his collar, down his back and into the waistband of his boxers. It occurred to him then that if this was a ghost story he was in the middle of, here was how it would end: in the morning he would be found, cold and dead, at the foot of Becka’s grave. Because in a ghost story Becka wouldn’t have summoned him to Hilldale in an electrical storm to tell him that all was forgiven. No, her ghost would be vengeful. She would’ve brought him here — Raymer swallowed hard — to kill him.

Still, if the knowing, sentient universe was waiting for that fatal symmetry, couldn’t he deny it by remaining right where he was? He had no idea who lay interred beneath these rose petals, but he doubted whoever it was had anything against him, certainly no reason to call terrible vengeance down upon him. The ruined bouquet of roses suggested this was the grave of a woman — someone’s beloved wife or sister or daughter. It didn’t really matter who she was, so long as she wasn’t…

REBECCA WHITT RAYMER.

The very name on the stone at his feet that he himself had grudgingly paid for. This was what that lightning flash had revealed, and when the world went dark again her name remained as sharp before him as a photographic negative. Rebecca Whitt Raymer. The thunderclap that followed the lightning strike shook the ground so violently that the wire cone used to hold the flowers in place tipped forward at a forty-five-degree angle in the loosened soil, as if offering him the thorny, denuded stems. The green cellophane that had served as a sheath was now flapping wildly in the wind, the small florist’s card somehow still affixed.

This, then, Raymer thought, dropping to his knees in the mud, was how Becka meant to communicate with him. An obscene giggle erupted at the thought. There would be no dream, no conversation. The florist’s card would contain a name. Raymer would read that name and finally would know. After which the lightning would find him. The knowledge he’d sought arriving in tandem with death. Perfect. Biblical in its justice, when you thought about it. The end of his selfish, foolhardy quest would be the end of him. Fair enough. Because he’d been, as always, an idiot. It wasn’t even knowledge he’d sought. There would have been some dignity in that. No, he’d been willing to settle for information, a lesser thing entirely. He’d wanted, and still did want, her boyfriend’s name. His identity. Beyond that he had given the man himself little real thought. Until just now, when he realized that these once-lovely red roses had been for Becka, it hadn’t occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t the only one haunted by her, still in love with her, unwilling or unable to move on. How had that obvious truth eluded him so completely? How many other failures of imagination had he been guilty of?

The one that troubled him most was Becka herself. In the short time they’d been married had he ever asked about what she was feeling or thinking, whether she was happy? There had been moments, especially toward the end, when he suspected something must be wrong, but she always denied it when he inquired, claiming that she just had a case of the blues, that she’d wake up feeling more cheerful in the morning. And he’d been all too happy to be reassured. Why dig deeper?

As was invariably the case with Raymer, such specific self-doubts and accusations led to other, more global ones. Was it possible to be a good cop, a good husband or a good man when you were disinclined to imagine the inner lives, in particular the suffering, of others? Wasn’t this just basic empathy? Was it empathy she’d gone looking for and found in the man whose name was on the florist’s card? Had he taken the trouble to understand her more deeply than Raymer ever had? Or was empathy just the tip of the iceberg? Raymer supposed he could stand it if the man was taller or trimmer or better looking, but was it possible the fucker also possessed intelligence, wit, elegance and grace? Was he everything he himself was not?

That, then, was what it all came down to: vanity. He simply had to know, even if it cost him his life. That was why it seemed he had no choice but to reach out and grab the florist’s card, which he did just as the wind tugged the green cellophane free of the wire mesh. The information he was after was now literally within his grasp, but in that very instant the sky was cleaved by yet another shaft of lightning, and he felt a searing heat in his right palm, as if the little card had somehow burst into flame. He felt a desperate howl building deep in his chest and knew he would have to cut loose either the howl in his throat or the card in his fist. The howl, then, he decided, and it merged with the thunderclap as if the two had the same source.

He couldn’t tell how long he’d been howling, but when it was over, he felt a profound change to his being, his psyche. An odd sensation, not unlike vertigo, like something essential had been hewn in two. He’d entered the cemetery as Douglas Raymer, a man who for a very long time, maybe his whole life, had been going doggedly through the motions. Now he felt a second presence, as if the skin and bones that had until then belonged to him, and him alone, now played host to another. Douglas Raymer, wholly familiar, was still here, the same boy Miss Beryl had thrust books at, that had been bullied by boys like Roy Purdy and later mocked by scofflaws like Sully and ridiculed from the bench by Judge Flatt. Who had run for public office on the promise that he wouldn’t be happy until those he served were unhappy. A fool, face up to it. A fool and a milquetoast who was forever banging on about becoming a better cop, a better husband, a better man.

Strange that he should feel so familiar with the second presence even before being introduced, as if he’d known this “other” all his life. Call him…what? Dougie, Raymer decided, because the presence he felt seemed younger, like a kid brother. A mean one. The thing about this Dougie? He absolutely did not give a shit. Not about Becka, not about duty, not about what people thought of him, especially Douglas Raymer, who, in Dougie’s considered opinion, ate far too much shit on a daily basis. Dougie’s inclination, long held in check, was to kick ass and take names. Get the fucking job done.

It was Dougie who would know what came next. After they looked at the card. After they knew who the son of a bitch was.