Trophies And Dead Things

Six

Blackhawk, the development where Hilderly's former wife and sons now lived, has long struck me as a phenomenon that could only have occurred in the latter decades of the twentieth century. It is an exclusive enclave of custom-built homes nestled in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and insulated from the world by high walls, a private security force, and recreational facilities that ensure no resident need seek pleasure elsewhere. Everything is designed for the ease and comfort of the busy property owners, most of whom are engaged in making fortunes in the industrial parks that cover what used to be farmland near San Ramon. A buyer may purchase a house that is fully furnished and equipped, down to the last teaspoon and guest towel; the local supermarket boasts of clocks that display the time in such global cities as London, New York, and Tokyo-presumably so shoppers can rush home and call their brokers before the stock exchanges close. While Blackhawkians may appreciate and even need these refinements, I find something vaguely depressing about a place where life's edges have been so smoothed and rounded.

After I was admitted past the guard station at one of the gates, I drove through a maze of large homes on spacious lots to the Fleming house. It was mock Tudor, with a big live oak in the front yard. I parked at the curb and went up a flagstone walk that bisected the neatly barbered lawn.

When Judy Fleming answered the door, I recognized her as an older version of the woman in Hilderly's photo album; her short brown hair was now streaked with gray, and she was no longer plump, her face having that gaunt look that comes from frequent dieting. She greeted me pleasantly and led me to the rear of her air-conditioned house, where an informal living room overlooked a swimming pool full of noisy teenagers. The room, a dining area, and the kitchen were all connected, and there was a lived-in feel to the space that had been missing from the more formal rooms we'd passed on the way.

Mrs. Fleming seated me on the couch, offered coffee- which I accepted-and went to pour it from a percolator that stood on the wet bar. She hesitated, then poured a second mug for herself. "I shouldn't," she said. "I drink too much of it. But I'm dieting, and it keeps me going."

She certainly did look tired, I thought as she seated herself in a rocking chair opposite me. Bluish circles under her eyes were more pronounced in the late sunlight that slanted through the glass doors behind her, and her movements were weary, almost leaden. I suspected her fatigue stemmed less from unwise dieting than from her ex-husband's death and altered will.

A roar of laughter-muted by the closed doors-rose from the pool, and the kids began clapping; two boys had just tossed a struggling girl in. Mrs. Fleming smiled and said, "It's good to hear laughter around here. The last week and a half have been grim. My boys weren't close to Perry-by his choice, not mine or theirs-but his death and now this business of the new will have been upsetting."

"Why did he choose to distance himself from his sons?"

"That was his way. It was one of the reasons I divorced him. The main reason, actually." She paused. "I've always loved Perry, though. That's why this business of him disinheriting the boys is so hard to take."

"Hank Zahn had the impression you don't mind about the money."

"About the money, no. It's Perry's lack of caring and the… inexplicableness of what he did that's disturbing."

"So far I've been able to locate two of Perry's new beneficiaries-Thomas Y. Grant and Jess Goodhue. Did he ever mention either of them to you?"

She shook her head.

"What about a David Arlen Taylor, Libby Heikkinen, or Jenny Ruhl?"

"None of those names is familiar. I'm sure I'd remember if I'd known or heard of them."

"Well, neither of the two I've spoken to claims to have known Perry, or understands why he would name them in his will. Perhaps when I locate Taylor and Heikkinen, they can shed some light on his reasons. The other person I mentioned, Jenny Ruhl, was the mother of Jess Goodhue. Goodhue thought her mother might have known Perry at Berkeley."

"That would have been long before I met him."

"When was that, and where?"

"At S.F. State, after he'd come back from Vietnam. I was only nineteen; he was several years older, and very intriguing to me. A distant, silent, haunted man, who had already lost a wife and a child. I thought I could help him, bring him out of himself. That's how naive I was!"

"I take it he remained distant."

"Yes. It wasn't until after my first son, Kurt, was born that I realized how distant. I remember looking at Kurt and wondering which of us he would be more like-Perry or me. And then it came to me that I knew virtually nothing of the man who had fathered him."

"Do you mean what he thought and felt, or actual biographical details?"

"Both. Oh, he'd sketched out a chronology for me when we first met, but it was more like an outline, with none of the substance."

"Where was Perry originally from?"

"Albuquerque."

I thought of the father wearing a string tie who had visited Jess Goodhue. "Did he speak of his childhood?"

"More than any other part of his life. It sounded fairly normal. I never met his father; he died when Perry was in high school. His mother had remarried and they traveled a lot; I only met her once. She was quite outgoing, so wherever he got his remoteness, it wasn't from her."

"And you divorced Perry ten years ago?"

"Ten years next month. Toward the end we were living in Pacifica. We'd bought a house. Perry commuted to the city. He kept long hours-purposely, I thought. It wasn't as if he didn't love the boys or me; he just couldn't cope with the intimacy of family life. Eventually he became more like the fog that drifted in and out, rather than a husband or father. I felt as if I were failing him when I divorced him, but he seemed more relieved than anything else. I guess he'd gotten in over his head emotionally by marrying and having a family."

The kind of uninvolved individual Mrs. Fleming described didn't mesh with the young man who had clowned and laughed his way through the stormy days at Berkeley. Even the man Hank had known in Vietnam had sounded more connected to others. I wondered if it had been the deaths of the woman and child over there that had changed him. But even when they had been alive, Hilderly had been closed off in certain respects,

I asked, "After the divorce, did you see Perry?"

"Very occasionally. He'd pick up the boys on their birthdays to take them to the city to the zoo or a ball game. On Christmas he'd send gifts-usually ones that were inappropriate for their age levels-and call. But that was the extent of it."

I'd been wrong in thinking Judy Fleming knew anything useful about her husband's past. "I know you find Perry changing his will inexplicable," I said, "but I'd like to ask you to think over the contacts you and your sons have had with him in, say, the past year. Was there anything in his behavior that even hinted he might do such a thing?"

She considered, pleating the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. "One occasion comes to mind. Perry was behaving oddly… but maybe you'd best talk to Kurt about it. He was there and I wasn't." She went to the glass door and opened it, called out to one of the boys by the pool. He came to the house, toweling himself off as he walked.

At around sixteen Kurt looked quite a bit like early pictures of his father. He was tall and lanky, but possessed of a natural grace; his hair was blond, curly, and somewhat on the long side. He shook my hand and greeted me with a directness unusual in one of his age.

The introductions over, Kurt sat down on the raised stone hearth, his long arms wrapped around his bare knees. His mother said, "Tell Ms. McCone about your birthday celebration with Perry." To me she added, "Neither of the boys felt close enough to call him 'Dad.' That's what they call my husband."

Kurt asked, "You mean tell her about the weird stuff?"

Judy Fleming nodded.

"Okay. This was in the middle of June, a Saturday. I went into the city on BART and we took in a Giants game. Perry was kind of quiet. I thought it might be because for my present he'd given me this video game that was really for young kids, and I couldn't work up much enthusiasm over it." Kurt paused, looking at his mother. "He was always doing that. You remember the year he gave me the big stuffed koala bear for Christmas? I was thirteen and into Indiana Jones."

Mrs. Fleming merely smiled.

"Okay," Kurt went on, "after the game we started back here and stopped in Walnut Creek at a Mexican restaurant. Perry got into the margaritas. They make a strong one there-" He glanced at his mother again. "Or so I'm told. Perry had four. After the second he started going on, sort of-what's that word I just learned? Maundering." He seemed to savor the new word; his mouth shaped it as if he were tasting each syllable.

"About what?" I asked.

"All sorts of stuff. He started by asking me if I'd decided on a college yet, but before I could answer, he said that the decisions people make early on are important, that the wrong one can change the whole course of your life. He said that even a right decision can come back at you later, even if you know you did the right thing."

"That sounds like fairly standard father-to-son advice."

"You didn't know Perry. He wasn't much on advice. Anyway, then he started going on about this seminar he'd had to go to for his job a couple of weeks before. He said he hadn't wanted to go, but that it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. 'It's changed my whole life,' he said. 'I know what I have to do to get in touch with my former self.'"

"Those were his exact words?"

"More or less."

"What kind of seminar was it?"

"He didn't say, and I couldn't ask; he was getting really weird by that time. Then he started in on… well, what he said was, 'You can't beat yourself up for being unable to control the consequences of your actions.' And other stuff along that line."

It sounded to me as if Hilderly had been trying to articulate the preachings of a pop psychologist to his son-and had not done too good a job of it. "Anything else?"

"Well, there was some stuff about ideals. How you should hang on to them, but sometimes you had to dump some in order to live up to the most important of all. And then he got into guilt and atonement. All the time I was trying to eat my enchiladas, he was sucking up margaritas and carrying on like a born-again."

"Maybe he had gotten involved in some religion; there's a lot of that going around."

Kurt looked dubious. His mother said, "I can't imagine that. Perry was a lifelong atheist."

"What else did he say?" I asked Kurt.

"Not much that made any sense. It worried me; I'd never seen him that way before. Like Mom says, I wasn't close to Perry, but he was a nice man, and I hated to see him sort of… losing it. You think maybe he was cracking up, and that was why he made that weird will?"

"Maybe." I made a mental note to ask Hilderly's former employer about the seminar he'd attended late in May.

"Well," Kurt said, "whatever made him do it must have been really something. I know he loved my brother and me, even if he was sort of off on another planet most of the time." Up to now Kurt had sounded almost cavalier about his last dinner with his father, but as he spoke a tremor came into his voice. He turned to his mother. "I wish I could have done or said something-you know, to let him know I cared."

Judy Fleming said, "Kurt, he knew you cared."

"But there should have been something.I'm sorry now that all those years I wasn't a better son to him."

Quickly she went to him and put her arms around his shoulders. "You were a good son. You were the best you could be, under the circumstances."

She could easily have countered Kurt's feelings of regret by pointing out that Perry hadn't been much of a father, but instead she'd chosen the more difficult option of refusing to degrade her former husband's memory. She may, as she'd said, have let Hilderly down when she divorced him, but now, at the end, she hadn't failed him.