The remains

Chapter 76

By the time I opened my eyes again, it was going on late morning. A nurse was standing beside the bed. She was holding my left hand in her hand, the pads of her middle and index fingers pressed against my wrist. When she was through, she jotted some information onto a clipboard.

She then tossed me a smile for the brokenhearted.

But I was also a woman whose leg had been grazed by a bullet, who’d suffered a mild heart attack, plus two broken ribs, a hairline fracture in my right hand, numerous abrasions, contusions and lacerations.

The nurse shifted her eyes toward the door.

“Looks like we have some visitors,” she said before slipping out the door.

Enter Caroline and Franny.

Franny, my hero.

Caroline, dressed in her jeans and Crocs; Franny, dressed in his baggy jeans, red T-shirt, bright yellow suspenders, thick gray-black hair all mussed up.

“Come here, Franny,” I whispered, my voice forcing itself from out of dry mouth and burning throat.

There was something in his hands. Another canvas. It dawned on me then, there had to be a fifth painting. That is, if he were to stay true to all five senses. This must have been the fifth and final one. He set it against the chair, its image facing the opposite direction. He came to me, stood up against the side of the bed, face down, eyes staring down at his shoes.

“Can I hug you?”

Out the corner of my eyes, I saw Caroline smiling.

“Go ahead Franny,” she pressed. “It’ll be okay.”

Without shifting his eyes, he leaned into me. I took hold of him. Although I had very little strength left in my arms, I hugged him as tightly as possible.

“Thank you, Franny,” I whispered into his ear. “I love you.”

I felt a tear run down my cheek. I felt my face touching his. I knew he could feel the tear against his skin too.

“You’re my friend,” he mumbled.

I let him go. He stood up, went back over to the corner, where he stood by the painting, as if guarding it.

Caroline turned to him.

“Fran,” she said, reaching into her jeans pocket, producing a five dollar bill. “Go down to the cafeteria. Get a hot chocolate and a piece of pie. You can enjoy it right there. When you’re done come back up here.”

Without a single word of objection, Franny took the money and, mumbling something happy about pie and hot chocolate, exited the room.

Caroline turned to me then. With pursed lips, she approached me. She had something in her hand. A paperback book. My old dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird it turns out. She set it on the bed beside me.

“I thought you might want this,” she said.

Then, pulling one of the chairs closer to the bed, she sat down and exhaled. She asked me how I was feeling, if I needed anything. She told me she would take me down to see Michael as soon as he was out of recovery. She would do it even if she had to strap me onto her shoulders. Then she told me not to worry about anything. That if money was an issue, she would take care of it. She told me not even think of arguing with her.

I didn’t.

Then she began to tell me a story about the past. Not my past, but her past, my father’s and mother’s past. It was about an event that took place back in the early 1960s before I was born. Back when my father had just begun his career as a state trooper for Rensselaer County, back when the house in the woods was not a house in the woods at all, but a house surrounded by farmland.

“There had always been something terrible surrounding that home,” she said. “It was a dark place, the house not kept up, the vegetation that surrounded it overgrown and neglected. They had a few animals, but pathetic stock. Your father had just moved to his place at the time and had, in fact, purchased his spread from the Whalen’s. They were always desperate for money so eventually they sold off most of what they owned, including a good sized parcel of Mount Desolation.”

She looked away from me, toward the window.

“The Whalen family was what you might refer to in today’s day and age as, dysfunctional. The father was a heavy drinker; an alcoholic. Rarely did he emerge from the house, other than to start up his truck, drive it into town for groceries and of course, whiskey. Mrs. Whalen did the best she could raising a daughter and a son on what little money came in. Although it was never proven, it was widely believed that young Joseph took the brunt of his father’s anger.

“I believe his father beat him, beat him terribly. Joseph was an abused boy and like many abused boys he grew up to be cruel. He was eventually dismissed from high school for stalking and then inappropriately touching a girl in his class. The incident was kept hush-hush. Not a strange thing for the day. But Joseph was asked not to come back and I think for him it was a relief. He spent his days and nights on the farm after that, rarely leaving it, hunting and fishing for food; growing what he could.

“Things were quiet for some time, until one night not long before President Kennedy was assassinated, we all awoke to a fire. The Whalen’s barn was burning. The fire lit up the night sky and we all came out of our houses to see it. My husband and I got in the truck and drove down to your parents’ place. Your father and mother were already up and holding vigil outside in the driveway. She was pregnant at the time with a baby that eventually miscarried. Your father had this look on his face I remember. It was a cross between worried and downright furious. The door to the squad car assigned to him was open and the radio was spitting out orders. Your dad was being ordered to investigate the scene while fire and police backup were on their way.

“What he found inside that house that night shook up our small community something terrible. Joseph shot them all while they lie asleep in their beds. His mother, father and sister. Your father found them like that, in their beds. He found Joseph sitting outside the barn, the shotgun in his hands, just staring unblinking at the fire.

“Your father arrested the fourteen-year-old boy on the spot. He was convicted and because of his age, treated as a youth. A ‘crime of passion’ they called it; the desperate action of an abused youth. In the end he was incarcerated for ten years up in a mental institution just outside of Saranac. By the time he was released in 1973 he was twenty-four years old. He returned to that house that by now was surrounded by thick woods. Joseph kept to himself, but still we were acutely aware of his presence. It was as if the devil himself was in our midst.

“Then women started going missing. Young women, some of them girls. No one attributed their disappearance to him at first, but I think your father suspected. Finally, an Albany woman had the guts to come forward and identify Whalen in a lineup. He’d abducted and attempted to rape her, but somehow she’d managed to get away. After she came forward so did a few others who’d been lucky enough to escape him.

“They sent him away then for thirty years and what we thought would be for good. You girls were still young at the time so I can’t begin to describe the sigh of relief that was breathed by our entire community.”

I took in Caroline’s story. Each one of her words seemed to bear a great weight. I had no idea about my father, about what he’d seen, about what he’d been ordered to do by his state trooper superiors. In my mind I pictured him walking the upstairs of that horrible house only to witness the dead bodies. I knew then that the reason he forbade me and Molly to enter those woods had nothing to do with a stream that ran as deep and strong as a river or the cliff and waterfall beyond it.

It had everything to do with Whalen.

How he could have kept the horrible story of that house and the people who had been murdered there from Molly’s and my ears for so long a time was beyond me. But certainly not impossible. Not when it came to my dad. Not when it came to protecting his daughters. Molly and I knew about Whalen’s rape conviction; knew that he’d been sent to prison for a time that seemed forever. We felt secure because he wouldn’t be able to get to us from prison. He wouldn’t be able to hurt us or our parents. We knew about his arrest but we never knew about his murders. And I’m glad we didn’t.

Caroline stood.

“Joseph Whalen,” I said, my voice stuttering, stammering, eyes tearing. “When Molly and I were twelve…” She pressed her open hand against mine. “We… never… told anyone.”

She too began to cry.

“I know,” she said, patting my hand. “I didn’t always know. But now after what happened to you in the woods on Friday… after what the detective told me… now I know.”

We were silent from that point forward.

Until Franny came back.