Stone Shadow

Highland Park

They began in the living room, papers strewn around her, both of them formal and businesslike. Each working hard to cover any base that might help Ukie's seemingly disastrous legal position. Covering all the trivial tidbits of fife that make up one's past. The modest surroundings of orphanage and foster home had given both of the twins the desire if not the will to achieve. But there the identical biochemistry somehow lost its ability to influence and shape their lives.

“I wonder,” she thought aloud, “how is it that two identical twins, each with the same potential gifts, can end up so differently. Where did you two first start differing in your achievements?"

“Ooooooeeece,” he sighed quietly, “that's going to have to go so far back into our childhood."

As he started to talk she was aware that she was wondering if Laurindo, over their softly strumming his unamplified, open-string Spanish guitar in the background, was the right music. My God, the RIGHT music. She's working with an accused murderer's brother and selecting music like she'd brought a date home. And this hunk sitting there in his tailored shirt and slacks that looked like they'd been painted on, why couldn't he be wearing a baggy old suit, cuffed trousers showing an inch of white skin above short socks? Why couldn't he be another Ukie and be sitting here in his cranberry double-knits and white belt? But Joe Hackabee was something else again. She blinked and took a deep breath and shook off this thing she was feeling.

'—having to work and I'd been luckier and found something at Holman's Ice Cream, and it was manna from heaven—you see you made minimum wage but you got all this precious OVERTIME every third week and you saved a lot of money because the ice cream was tree.” She smiled. “So to a kid—you know, this was a kid job, a bunch of little squirts working under some teenage tyrant they'd found as the kid version of a shop steward—anyway, it was such a great job to find. All the kids we knew wanted to get a job at Holman's. And of course I got Bill a job there. They were always losing kids, having to fire them or whatever, and I probably wasn't, there a week before somebody quit or was let go, and I naturally spoke up. They'd ask you—now this is serious business and we don't want you bringing somebody in here who steals or is lazy or treats the customers poorly, and I promised that Bill was great, and they said okay they'd give it a try and they liked me so they took him too."

“What happened?"

“You asked how twins can end up differently and I don't know. We were alike in so many physical ways but INSIDE we always seemed to be at odds. He wanted it handed to him and I knew you had to work for it. They said he stole. Holman's. And it was like a little trial. I recall one Saturday morning. Funny. I still remember this so vividly. The boss kid called us all in"—he smiled wistfully—"and he said it was about Bill. He'd been accused of taking some money. ‘I don't remember how much—it couldn't have been anything—maybe the till was a dollar short but that was a major offense. And he said we were to tell him if Bill had taken it. Passing little scraps of paper around like secret ballots to vote on his guilt. A little jury. If only we'd had you there to defend him, huh?"

“Yeah.” She was hanging on every word.

“And of course, needless to say, a little boy jury of his peers found him guilty as hell."

“Kangaroo court."

“Probably not even that. We didn't get to examine the ballots so the boss kid could have dumped on him. He was out. But we were still close as you'd expect identicals to be. I told them to jam the job"—he shook his head disgustedly—"left a perfectly neat job at Holman's Ice Cream to go out and look for work with Bill. And we found the next job together. Vorchardski's Nursery, I'll never forget. It was poor money and they worked you like a slave but we thought it was great because you got to work outside.

“We both envisioned being these all-star twin jocks one day, at the time we both loved baseball and we were extremely conscious of working hard to get in shape. But it's one thing to fantasize about working hard and another to actually do it."

“Was U—Bill a lazy boy?"

“Ummm. Not lazy precisely. He just had his head on a little tilted if you know what I mean. He'd stay up all night scheming or working on some way to scam somebody but as far as out there in the hot sun with a trowel and a handful of peat moss, huh-uh. He'd bitch to me about how crummy the wages were or whatever and I'd be out there enjoying it, working away, and I guess one of the bosses saw what he was like and they axed him immediately. I don't think he lasted ten days. That was the beginning of our problems. Right there at Vorchardski's. I wouldn't quit this time. I needed the money and I didn't particularly love the place but I couldn't see quitting. The was furious with me. I was disloyal. I was the cause of all his problems."

“Did he get another job?"

“Not for a long time. He fell in with a pack of street kids but that didn't work out either.” He chuckled at the memory. “We weren't very tough. Neither of us. We always talked our way out of fights. And I guess the gang found him out soon enough. But I think he got tired trying to find empty redeemable bottles to sell to the drugstore, and he got some terrible job. He wiped off cars for a used-car dealer. I remember the rags had some sort of chemical on them and he would break out. His skin was broken out all the time. Anyway"—he laughed his mellow laugh—they found him in the backseat of an old car reading comic books and fired him."

“Oh, no."

“Yes. And it was a succession of jobs. He'd GET these great jobs. You know, it's like he could convince the personnel people to hire him, and he had some great jobs for a kid—one he got with a tablet company I remember he was bragging about the wages it was really impressive. And he'd keep the jobs a week, two weeks, he just couldn't “hang in there."

“Were you still close?"

“Sure. But looking back I think that was the beginning of the real resentment. I can recall to this day how irritated and disappointed he was with me because I didn't quit out at the nursery to be out of work with him again. I think that incident cut him pretty deeply. I'm not sure Bill ever forgave me for it."

He kept telling her about Ukie's young life. About the girls they both took out. And as he talked Noel began to get an impression of sibling rivalry that was nurtured and reinforced by Ukie's failures to overachieve as Joseph had, and a pattern of compensation in erratic and antisocial behavior. As Joe talked she began questioning the possibility of whether or not Ukie might indeed have been the one who had committed those murders. But the pattern she was seeing was something else. It was one of hostility and frustration, but it seemed to her that it would be insufficient as a foundation to spawn a mass murderer.

They eventually moved into the patio, a closed-in, glass-walled solarium and dining area on the side of the house, and he raved about her home while she served coffee to herself, Perrier to Joe.

“I've never seen a home more beautiful, Noel."

“I'm glad you like it."

“This is just great. And all this ground—what a layout."

“It's nice to have a little room."

“You call this a little room; in Houston we call this an estate."

“Hey, wait now. I've seen how you guys live in Baghdad-on-the-Bayou. I know. This is only five acres of ground but it's plenty I think.” She got up and switched on the exterior floodlights.

“My God, you've got a fabulous yard."

She laughed. They started talking about other things and she asked him about his flying.

He quickly warmed to the subject of the Ultra-light and told her, “I can fly right hi here, land right down there, in your yard.” He pointed. “Perfect landing field."

“You can't fly right in HERE,” she said quickly.

“Oh, it doesn't harm your ground, Noel."

“I don't mean that, I meant I'd be frightened half to death to see you land that thing in my yard."

“Naw. It's totally safe. And even if you have, uh, let's say a little problem, it's no big deal."

“Crashing is no problem?"

“Well"—he laughed—"crash is a kind of strong word. I've crashed it a couple of times I guess you might say. But you know, it's no big deal, you walk away from it."

“I'd walk away from it all right. I'd set fire to it first and THEN I'd walk away from it."

“Oh, come on."

“I'm serious, Joe. It sounds so damn dangerous."

“It's nowhere near as dangerous as, oh, say, hang-gliding. It's very safe, really. Usually."

“Hang-gliding.” She sighed. “I suppose you do that too, right?"

“Umm,” he admitted. “It's not that hairy if you use your head. But I want you to see my baby. You'd enjoy it I'll bet."

“You're not getting me up there in that thing."

“No.” He smiled. “It's a single seater. It'll take four to five hundred pounds, though. And still get airborne. I want to come out here and show her to you. I can come right in there, all the room in the world.” He gestured over at the corner of her property, his hand sweeping across the glass in front of them. “Taxi along that little stretch of ground right there. You'd get a kick out of it."

“God, don't you dare,” she said but her eyes were sparkling and he could tell the idea of the little aircraft excited her. Everybody loved to watch him fly her.

“It's totally safe—truly. Unless you do something goofy. I used to stunt-fly, and that's kind of dumb to do aerobatics and such, but I don't do that anymore."

He was being very serious, gentle, she could tell he was wanting to convince her, as if she needed much prodding from him. She smiled inwardly at the word “prodding,” poking, get your mind off it girl, she chastized herself.

“I don't want to watch your third crash in my backyard."

“Piece of cake, really. I could even take ‘er in right under that power line. You've got fifteen, twenty feet clearance there and I only need about twelve feet or so. That's not necessary though."

“You bet it's not,” she roared and he couldn't help but laugh with her.

“Just wait till you see that baby. It's beautiful to watch. And I'll just drop her nose down and sit down pretty as you please right here. What do you say?"

She shook her head no, slowly, and both of them knew it meant yes as she smiled, purring inside at the prospect of seeing Joe again. And again.