Loon Lake

38

At a certain point Railroad Street made a ninety-degree curve and you could leave it, cut across an empty lot, and reach it again a block closer to home. The lot was filled with rubble, bricks, rusted sled runners, pieces of baby carriage, garbage a feast for Saint Garbage remnants of chimneys and basement foundations and all of it covered with snow. I was thinking it was the place to be, the place to be, I stumbled along drunk, to tell the truth, drunk on two glasses of rye through this moonscape of white shit. I heard the distant bell of the trolley and saw over a tenement roof the flash of its power line like the explosion of a star. I fell and fell again, cutting my knee on something sharp, getting a sockful of snow, but Red James jaunted along smoothly he even sang one of his songs the funeral dirge of the Southern mountains, hearing the whistle blow nine hundred miles, the condemned man in prison the betrayed lover the orphaned child everyone across the night suffering loss and failed love and time run out raising his head to hear the whistle blow through the valleys of the cold mountains. And then I was down again, hard this time and I shook my head to find myself on all fours I hadn’t fallen. I heard something terrible, a grunt of punched-out breath, snapped bone, a man retching. I tried to stand I was flattened by a great weight, a violent steam-rolling weight pressing my face in the snow my forehead slashes on something sharp at my eye the snow turning wet and black the weight is gone, I scramble to my knees, breathing that is tearful, a desperate exertion, a mass of bodies tumbled past me I heard Red scream and hurtled myself against this mass of black movement butting it with my head taking purchase like a wrestler grabbing a leg a sleeve a back. Everything fell on me and I felt going down my arm twisted the wrong way I heard it break. This seemed to me worth a moment’s contemplation. I lay still and even found a small space in the snow to spit out blood. I lay there under the murder. The intimacy of the shifting weights, the texture of their coats on my face, sobbing rages, one vehement crunch and I heard, we all heard, the unmistakable wail of a dead man. Then a hissing gurgling sound. Then no sound. After which, silence from us all and the night coming back in this silence, the weight lifted from me by degrees I look up portions of the night sky reappear suffused in the milk light of the moon I hear something sibilant, hoarse, it is my own breath, the wind brushing past my ears, I hear hitting hitting but it is the heart pounding in my chest.

He was heavier than he looked, I dragged him one-handed by the collar he kept snagging on things at the edge of the lot I found the right terrain, pulled him to the top of a flat rock and then sitting on the incline below it and easing him over my shoulder and sliding down in a sitting position to the sidewalk and standing up with the full heft of him in a fireman’s carry on my good side, I took us to the curb under the streetlight to wait for someone passing by.

The police chief nods. It’s cold in this room. I sit shivering in my coat. There’s a clock on the wall, like the clocks in grade school. The minute hand leaps forward from one line to the next.

The chief is not cold. He sits at his desk in a short-sleeved shirt. Arms like trees. His wrist watch appears to be imbedded in the flesh. His badge, pinned to his shirt pocket, pulls the material to a point. He’s enormous but with an oddly handsome unlined face prominent jawline straight nose. He is a freak who has managed to make himself a full life out of being born and raised in Jacksontown. I try to look as if this is not my opinion. He goes back to reading his file.

I have been very cooperative. Even though they did that to me I have told my story as completely and accurately as I can.

I hear the minute hand move on the clock.

We’re in some room on the ground floor that looks into the courtyard. A couple of cops are standing around out there. The window has bars.

I don’t even ask to smoke. I show no impatience. I don’t want to give them anything to work on, if I don’t seem to be in a hurry they’ll be quicker to let me go.

A cream-white La Salle with whitewall tires pulls up in the courtyard just outside the window. The driver holds open the rear door and the man who gets out immediately has the attention of the cops. He wears a dark overcoat with a fur collar. A pearl-gray fedora. They seem to know him, they come over, they seem eager to shake his hand. He says something and one of the cops moves out of my view.

“Are you deaf, son?”

“What?”

“I said where are you from?”

“I’m from Paterson. Paterson, New Jersey.”

“Like your name.”

“Yeah.”

He nods. “I see. What was your last job?”

“What? I rousted for a carnival.”

“Whereabouts.”

“Uh, upstate New York. New England.”

“What carnival?”

“What?”

“What was the name of it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember the name?”

“No.”

“Well, how long did you work for them?”

“I don’t know. Listen, is this going to take much longer?”

“It’s up to you. You worked at this carnival?”

“Yeah. A couple of months. It was a summer job. Some lousy carnival.”

“And before that?”

The man in the courtyard sees something. He removes one gray kidskin glove, takes off his hat. He’s a short man, dark-complected, his black hair shines, shows the tracks of the comb. He is shaking his head, he seems genuinely relieved, he raises his arm, lets it fall. His eyes are large, dark, glistening, with long black lashes, they are shockingly feminine eyes.

There is Clara.

They look at each other, a wave of emotion overcomes them both and they hug. He holds her at arm’s length and he laughs. He is charmed by her. He shakes his head as if to say, Oh what am I going to do with you!

“Sit down, son.”

Side by side they lean against the cream-colored car and they talk. Clara’s wearing her fur jacket. He says something to her, he smiles and holds her arm, whispers in her ear, it is as if he is in some night club somewhere at a dark table, and the intimate things he has to say are covered by the music of the swing band.

I am at the window.

“Son of a bitch, what does he see out there?”

“Clara!”

She has pulled her arm away, I hear something, I hear the high wordless whine of impatience with which she sometimes fends off the male approach.

“Clara!” I pound the window. He seems undismayed by her response, as if he knows too well it is a ritual, that it is in fact a form of encouragement.

“CLARA!” My arm, I am jerked back, a cop is pulling down the dark shade, is this my last sight of her head half turned as if she’s heard something hair blowing back from her face eyes shining the winter courtyard as if she’s heard something in her past, someone, just losing hold in her consciousness?

“Boy, don’t you know you’re being interrogated? Don’t you understand that?”

I am slammed back in the chair.

“I gotta talk to Clara Lukaćs. She’s out there.”

“All in good time.”

“It’s important! Look, I’ll answer anything any goddamn questions you can think of just let me talk to her a minute.”

The cop is still behind me I have risen from my chair he presses me back down.

Another cop has come in and places Red James’ gun on the desk. He takes up position with his back to the door, his arms folded.

The chief examines the gun. “A very serious piece of equipment. This is what the department should be carrying,” he says to the cop. “Not the shit we got.”

“Never been fired,” the cop says.

Do I hear a car door slam? If I am to remain sane I must believe she is not leaving. I must believe she is handling things in her own way. I must believe that she is capable of dealing with Tommy Crapo as she knows he must be dealt with to get him off our backs. I will believe these things, and take heart and deal for my part with the situation in this room. An hour from now we’ll be on our way. We’ll make a slight detour down to Tennessee and then head for California. We’ll be laughing about all of this. We’ll be talking about the adventure we had.

“Where’d you get this, son?”

“It’s his. Red James’.”

He shakes his head and smiles. “Didn’t do him much good, did it? You take it off him?”

“No, it was in his house. It was hidden behind the radio.”

“Yesterday you went down to Mallory the pawnbroker’s. You collected six hundred dollars on the deceased’s insurance policy.”

“That’s right. The money belongs to Mrs. James. I’m holding it for her. She’s fifteen years old and we’re taking her home to her folks.”

He nods, not to indicate he believes me, but as if to maintain the rhythm of the questioning. I look at the clear-eyed, steadfast face of the police chief, the lean face carved from his mountainous self. I’ve underestimated him.

“You expect them to give you trouble?” he says.

“Who?”

“Her folks you’re taking her home to. That you were packing this thing.”

“It wasn’t for that.”

“What was it for, then?”

“I was glad to find it. I sat up all night guarding the door with it.”

“Why?”

“Until we got out of town, in case someone came after me.”

He gives me his full attention. “Who?”

“I don’t know who. Whoever killed Red.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. If they thought I saw them? If they thought I could pin it on them?”

“Could you?”

“I told you. I didn’t see anything. I got hit from behind and went down and it all fell on top of me. Could I see my girl, please?”

“Well, if you were afraid, why didn’t you call the police? You think this is the Wild West?”

The policemen guffaw.

“Why would anyone want to kill him, anyway?” the chief says.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re in the union, ain’t you?”

“You have my billfold!”

“Maybe you killed him,” he says.

“What? Jesus H. Christ!”

“Sit down, son. And watch your language.”

“Oh, this is swell. This is really swell. No, I didn’t kill him, he was my friend, we lived next door to each other!”

“Did you fool with his wife?”

I hear the ticking of the school clock. From far away comes the metallic screech and thunder of the car couplings as they make up the trains at the freight yards.

“Answer, please. Did you fool with his wife?”

The way is open for my full perception of official state-empowered rectitude. I am suddenly so terrified I cannot talk.

“Did you?”

I shake my head. A weakness, a palpable sense of my insufficiency drifts through my blood and bones.

“Okay,” he says, “we could hold you for possession. But I think we have enough to hold you as material witness. You know what that is?”

I shake my head.

“You’re all we have to go on. You were there when it happened. It means we hold you while we work up the case. I make it you diddled the wife and decided you liked it too much. The insurance didn’t hurt neither.”

And now I find my voice. I’m swallowing on tears, I’m producing tears and swallowing them so that they don’t appear in my eyes. “Hey, mister,” I say, “look at me, I don’t look like much, do I? My arm’s been broke, one side of my face is stitched up, I’ve been pissing blood … Jesus, since I came to this town I’ve been short-paid, tricked, threatened, double-crossed, and your Jacktown finest felt they had to work me over to get me here. I probably don’t smell so good either. But I tell you something. You wouldn’t hear from my mouth the filth that has just come from yours. I mean that is so rotten and filthy, I’d get down on my knees and beg that little girl’s forgiveness if I was you.”

“You oughtn’t to tell me to do anything, son.”

“Or else you’re being funny. Is that it, are you being funny? I mean what’s the idea — that I killed him before he broke my arm or did I kill him after he broke my arm? After? Oh yes. It makes great sense, it really does: with my one arm I was able to get him to hold still so as I could bash his head in. And then just to make sure everyone would know it I lifted him on my back and took him out to the street to get a ride to the hospital. Smart!”

“He’s pretty stupid,” the police chief says to the cop, “if he thinks we have to be smart.”

The policeman laughs. The chief looks at me with the barest hint of a smile on his face. “You don’t like my story, maybe you have a better one.”

You don’t like my story, maybe you have a better one.

Do you think, Paterson, we’d threaten a man in public a few minutes before we meant to jump him in a dark alley use your brains lad.

My brains.

Clara asked me about my work one day I told her she was furious. What’s the matter? Don’t move, look at how you’re standing: it was so, my hands were in the air as if I were tying the cable, my feet were spread as if I were standing on the vibrating cement floor, I had not only told her, I had acted it out and I hadn’t known I was doing that. I understood then the abhorrence of men on the line for bravado. The failure of perception is what did you in.

A murder is valuable property it gives dividends how much and to whom depends on how it’s adjudicated.

I thought this was about Clara it is not it is about my life.

Tommy Crapo didn’t think this up, he didn’t do this to me, he didn’t have to. You don’t have to buy the police chief in a company town — he’s in place! This dolmen stone skull has been here since the beginning of time.

I held up my hands. “Look,” I say softly, new tone of voice, “you’re making it wrong, it wasn’t like that. We were family friends, Red and me. My fiancée Clara and his wife Sandy. We took care of their baby for them when they went to the movies.”

“Your fiancée!”

“Yes, sir,” I say, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Clara and I are engaged to be married. You don’t know my Clara or you wouldn’t think I had an eye for another woman.”

“She’s something, eh?”

“Well”—I sit back in my chair and smile in reflection—“only the best, most beautiful girl in the world!”

The chief folds his arms. One of the cops leans over, whispers something to him. He listens while he stares at me. “Maybe we ought to see the little lady,” he says.

The cop leaves, closing the door behind him. We all sit there waiting. It might be night the dark shade a globe light hangs from the middle of the ceiling the wood floor the oak furniture my chair creaks. The walls are painted dark green from the floor to halfway up, light green to the ceiling. I hear footsteps. I stand. The door opens the cop holds it open for Sandy James with her baby. From the empty hall behind her a cold wind sweeps into the room.

“Sandy, where’s Clara?”

She stares at me unable to speak. But from her eyes gleams a sorrow not her own and a small light of courage or hope of possession. I see the decisive functioning matriarchy I have not before seen in her. It comes to them regardless of their age or intelligence when they have settled their claims.