Dysphoria Page 8

  The guard, who looked about seventeen, gave Sammy Blackfoot two cigarettes to keep him quiet. After two more hours, Paul was beginning to think his phone call had been forgotten.

  He got to his feet and felt his knees crack, bone against bone, bone pushing close to tendons, and pecked against the window with the back of his hand.

  "Give it up, man.” It was Blackfoot. Paul pretended not to hear him and knocked the glass again. "Did you hear me? I said it's pointless, pointless, pointless."

  "Yeah."

  "What'd you say?"

  "Dammit to HELL!” Paul screamed. It was the best idea he'd had in a while.

  The door swung open and immediately Blackfoot threw his hands in the air. "I don't know what he’s screaming about,” he said innocently.

  Paul walked to the guard. "I've been in here for like five hours. I want my phone call."

  He stood for a few seconds with the phone in his hand. The woman without emotion was licking her thumb and separating papers. She wore a dark blue uniform, neatly pressed, and her hair was pulled back in a bun so tight her eyes were left as two small slits. She didn't seem interested in rushing him, so he tried to take a minute and decide who to call. It might be a long time before he had the chance again. He knew his grandfather and the sheriff were close.

  The phone rang five times before someone picked up. It was his grandmother.

  "Mamaw, this is Paul."

  "Paul, honey, where are you?"

  "Listen, I'm in jail down here. Can you--"

  "Lord, honey, don't tell your papaw."

  Paul heard a loud click and then nothing. For about a full minute, he stood with the phone to his ear. When he finally took the phone away from his ear he instantly regretted it.

  "Okay. Back in.” The high strung desk clerk's voice was dry and deadpan.

  "She hung up on me," Paul said in his most truthful but least whining voice.

  A deputy jailer had him by the arm, pinching the muscle, moving him away from the desk and the clerk who hadn't looked away from her stack of papers.

  He spent the next three hours in a corner of the holding cell watching a skinny man with dark hair holding his knees and rocking back and forth. He was facing the wall and whispering while he rocked. Two mats down from him, Blackfoot was talking about a dream he had. In the dream he had AIDS, he said. The cell door opened about four hours later.

  "I need to make another phone call," Paul said quickly. The guard had two plates in his hand and was pulling a metal table with four others closer to him with the heel of one boot. Paul realized he sounded like a typical inmate, complaining and making demands, but he had no choice.

  "I been in here, in this holding cell, for two-hundred and seventy-three days.” It was Blackfoot leaning in close to his ear. "I never made one phone call. They put me in here to get me out of the general population. Can I have your coffee?"

  The guard finished handing out the plates of food and then wandered over to Paul. "Won't need one. Somebody's out here gonna post your bond, I think."

  In the holding cell there was a single window, and although it was large, it was rendered fairly useless to the inmates by a set of blinds that were apparently forever closed. No one had bothered to open them once in the several hours Paul had been pacing around the cell.

  Now he rapped on the window, lightly at first, and then gaining steam with impatience. In the upper left corner, two of the blinds moved apart. Paul could see a small feminine finger and hooked thumb keeping them apart.

  "Hey!"

  The blinds opened for the first time since he had gotten there. Synthetic light poured through in bars of blue and pale yellow. Through the brightness, Paul made out a familiar face.

  "Thank you, Jesus," he whispered against the blinds.

  "You're welcome," Blackfoot answered.

  16

  On the ride from the jailhouse, Paul didn’t speak to his uncle. It was clear Hill was put out. And it wasn’t because he had dropped money on bailing him out. It was almost as if Hill could sense Paul’s impending breakdown, or what he must have been sure would be Paul’s breakdown. When they made it to the junkyard and were settled into Hill’s trailer, Paul felt comfortable starting conversation.

  "Don't suppose Larry's been here has he?” Paul asked after Hill switched off the air conditioning. The unit hung precariously from a window above his living room couch, scotched with a stumped two-by-four jammed into the bottom section of the window sill.

  "I seen him around, up by Cramer's yesterday," Hill said. "He didn't say nothing, I didn't say nothing. I figure he's doing all right. Probably eating better than you have the past day."

  Hill grinned for a second or two and then went serious. He swung his feet off the coffee table and leaned up from his seat.

  "I managed a dismissal of charges with Judge Thomas, but you put me in a spot, that’s for sure. Couldn't pull it off without easing into some kind of deal with Cramer. Turns out he just wanted to put a scare into you, get you to leave him alone. Guess he's joined everybody else in figuring that you're intending to stick around awhile."

  "Cramer can kiss my ass," Paul said and eased onto the couch beside Hill. His head ached terribly and he smelled bad.

  "Well that’s good enough, I guess," Hill answered.

  "How many times he dunned you for your dad's old bill? Two, three times? More? He can move to Michigan and die for all I care."

  "Maybe leaving Red Knife would be a good thing for you,” Hill said.

  "I gotta go."

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “No, I mean I gotta head out.”

  Hill stood up quickly and held up one finger. He disappeared into the back of the trailer and came out with a photo album. "I reconsidered offering you the details about the tipple.”

  Handing the album over he said, "I would have brought it out a long time ago, but I just didn't see any reason for it. Plus, I wasn't sure your dad hadn't told you, or somebody else, for that matter. There was always the chance of that.” He paused, thinking, "Either way, there it is."

  The cover of the photo album was the color of mustard. Big round bulging spine and no description on the front. There was a buildup of permanent dust on both sides that didn't slide away when Paul rubbed the palm of his hand across it. Placing it on the kitchen island, he hooked his thumb under the cover and carefully let it fall open. The album seemed old and he wasn't surprised to find a black and white photograph on the first page.

  The picture was of a smiling teenager. Clean skin, captivating smile full of broad white teeth. The teen’s hair looked wet and was combed back from the forehead. He could still see the path the teeth of the comb left.

  "You know who that is, don't you?” Hill said.

  Until Hill asked, Paul would have been hard pressed to give an answer, but with a lead question like that, it became obvious.

  "Dad?"

  "Yep. Junior high. That was the year before the acne got hold of him. Damn that was bad. We hadn't even heard of laser surgery and here Dave was having it done on his face. Daddy thought they had poisoned him. Thought it had changed him because of how different he was later on.”

  "What're you doing with this anyway?"

  There was a pop and then a quick dying away of fresh suds as Hill opened a beer. He shook his head a little and then took a drink. Paul could tell the beer was hot because there was no condensation on the outside of the can. Suddenly, with a picture of his smiling dad, a stranger to him, out in front of him he badly wanted a beer, cold or hot.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "What, the album?"

  "No, the beer. Well, and the album, yeah."

  He tossed the photo album on the coffee table and walked three steps into the small kitchen. On the floor beside a garbage overfilled so that the sides heaved outward was a torn 10-pack carton. Inside there were three more Coors. He plucked one and turned back to Hill, who had finished his off.

  "Yeah, you might need t
hat.” A certain gravity had taken over Hill’s voice. He might have been easing his way into the ears of an unsure jury. "Thing is, what you're about to see. Hell, Paul, what you're about to see is what you're about to see, I guess. That's all."

  Hill went silent while Paul stood in the door looking out on the junkyard. The dark purple of evening was finally starting to settle across the hills. Weak moonlight and starshine flinted off broken windshields. After three long drinks of beer, Paul twisted the tab off and tossed the can onto the heap rising up from the garbage can.

  "Need to do some cleaning," Paul said. He settled himself over the album again.

  "We found it under Dave’s mattress. Look at it when you're ready,” Hill said. “I'll be outside. Take as long as you want.”

  Paul watched Hill ease out the door, watched him as if his uncle might keep walking off into the night, out of sight and mind. In the new quiet of the trailer, he flipped the front page of the album and saw right away that a newspaper clipping covered the second page. The paper was brittle with age and had a large headline. In the headline was the word SEARCH. He closed the album.

  Hill moved between a broken down Mercury and a Honda without wheels perched firmly atop a set of four cinder blocks. Soon the white of his shirt faded into the black of the metal landscape and became just another silent reflection of a star.

  From the screen door Paul saw Hill moving around out by the junked cars. Pretty soon he stopped at a random vehicle and put his hands on his hips, popped the hood and started pushing and pulling at something out of sight deep into the workings of a motor that would probably never run again. The album was in his lap and he pulled the cover back again.

  Hello, Dad.

  Lively eyes, freshly combed hair. His black and white shirt mostly unbuttoned, revealing a crooked and imperfect black and white collarbone. A black and white nature scene had been dropped behind him. He turned the page and saw the newspaper clipping with the headline in all caps.

  SEARCH FOR MISSING BOY CONTINUES.

  And then another headline under that one.

  Officials, Family Fear the Worst.

  He read the story. It was vague in spots and clear in others, but the basics were that his father had once gone missing for just over three days. The date in the top right corner was June 14, 1966. The article said David Shannon had been missing for three days at that time. Paul thumbed through the pages until he came to the next story. Without reading the rest of this one, he thumbed quickly through several pages of the photo album. The final newspaper clipping included in the album came more quickly than he thought it would, and it wasn't the headline that caught his attention, but the feature picture that accompanied it. It was his dad, probably not more than two weeks after the yearbook picture was taken, the one where he looked fresh faced and ready to take on the world. But he now looked like an entirely different person. Two police officers flanked him. Their faces were solemn and serious. The photo caught his dad hanging his head, walking, it seemed, in such a way that the police were basically carrying him. In the background was only a hillside like any other hillside in the county. The headline was straight forward: RED KNIFE BOY FOUND.

  Outside Hill stood up slowly from the spot he’d been leaning under the hood of a junked car. He reached behind him and pushed the balls of his wrists into the small of his back, let out a few grunts, and closed the hood. He could see Paul sitting on his couch through the living room window. He could almost see him drop the photo album beside him on the living room floor. Passing Paul on the way out he tried to pretend he didn't notice his nephew’s face, how mashed up it looked with his peeled back lips and bloodshot eyes. And he didn't call after him when Paul popped off the porch and disappeared across the creek and into the darkness away from the trailer.

  17

  Paul sat on the river bank with his knees pulled up to just below his chin. His dad squatted beside him, bent over an inflatable raft, inhaling and then exhaling in large bursts. The raft hardly moved, its thick blue and white wrinkles expanding only occasionally and then dying again, flat and collapsed.

  The raft was hardly a raft at all. It was more like a balloon. Along the river to the left of Paul and directly in front of his dad larger rafts negotiated the rapids, bought maybe in Wyoming and shipped here. They zipped past, full of laughing people, paddling people moving ahead while together he and his dad watched blue and white wrinkles grow large, disappear.

  When the job was complete, Paul stood beside the raft. Roughly six feet in length and about three feet wide, it would seat two people. There were no paddles, just the raft. After a minute to see that it didn't deflate, they pushed it to the edge of the water, scraping rocks and pebbles along the bottom. After the raft hit the water, held back with his dad's large grip, Paul thought then it would have been better if they had just picked the raft up. But he didn't say anything and instead eased carefully through the water and crawled into the raft in front of his dad, who had taken a seat in the back, one leg draped over the edge, anchoring the fifteen pound vessel with toes dug into the rocky riverbed.

  No words, no conversation, as the two pushed ahead their combined weight and started across the water. Within seconds, a larger raft swept in from behind them carrying a man and two small boys, all wearing helmets, all wielding paddles, looking at Paul and his dad and the blue and white raft. They were laughing hard and they were laughing at Paul and his dad and the raft. They pushed ahead, and Paul couldn't see his dad behind him, but he knew what was in his eyes, blue determination.

  The trip had been planned quickly after Paul returned from vacation with a set of cousins rarely heard from in Florida. His dad had sent Paul with his cousins, saying he couldn't afford a vacation, but if he wanted to go and stay for a couple weeks, it was fine by him. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and, when Paul returned, he spoke often of the things they had done. Fishing and strawberry picking and shooting basketball with the ocean twenty feet away. Two days after he returned, his dad bought this raft, and now here they were floating down the Big Sandy with the trees whipping past and the sky moving slower overhead and his dad tense and determined behind him.

  The entire situation made Paul feel as if he couldn’t gather air into his lugs. But, after a time, it was easy to forget with the way the river stretched out ahead of them, starting to turn from the muddy color that collected near the banks to the clear white-capped sections they were beginning to navigate. Paul didn't mention paddles, and saw no real reason to. His dad shifted from side to side, guiding the raft just to the left and right of rocks, hitting just the pocket of stream to keep them far enough away from the bank and moving ahead.

  Further ahead, more rafts passed, canoes, families, friends, laughing. Pointing.

  His dad bought the raft for ten dollars at a bait shop on the drive up. He was uncomfortable then, going into the shop and buying the raft. Paul could see it on his face. And he seemed uncomfortable now, spearing this way and that way, guiding the raft through the water. And before long, they were passing one of the custom-made rafts. No more laughing and pointing. Just stares. Paul didn't even look in their direction. He was focused on what was ahead, a clearing.

  Other families rested in the clearing, backsides in the sand of the riverbank, their arms wrapped lazily around legs, heads hanging down, beaten by the short interval of rapids he and his dad had just cleared without paddles in a ten-dollar plastic raft found hanging above the display of nightcrawlers in a dusty cardboard box at Denver's Bait and Tackle Shop.

  As the two swung into the clearing, Paul pulled at the sides, bringing the raft into a spot where the water was calm and tossed out, hanging the crook of his elbow onto the raft while his dad raised slowly and stepped into the water beside him. They walked onto the bank, pulling the raft behind them, and examined the men and boys drenched and banged up all along the bank. It was only then, when they were standing on the bank, Paul's dad stuck out his chest and nearly folded into the sand and rocks underfoot. H
e bent low, holding himself up with two large hands across his shaking kneecaps. Water dripped slowly from the tip of his nose and his hair hung in thick, black clumps over his eyes. And Paul stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and then around his waist and then around him, holding him close enough to feel his heartbeat against his own chest.

  "Let go of me," his dad said.

  Paul stepped back slowly. "We made it," he said and tried a smile. He was still holding to his dad’s elbow.

  "Let go of me."

  He let his arm drop and watched his father stalk off up the bank, past the fathers and sons without looking up. None of the sons and none of the fathers offered to help him deflate the raft and fold it under his arm. It was nearly dark before he finished, and he walked very slowly back to the car.

  18

  He was sure the old man he shared the not-taxi with on his way in was the John Harper. And he was pretty sure this man was there at the tipple that summer day when his dad's life changed. Somewhere deep within the well of himself he felt this to be true. The newspaper articles hadn’t mentioned anything about the tipple, only his dad being held captive, and most of those details were stripped down to mostly law enforcement statements. It was fairly clear there was more to the whole thing than anybody was going to say publicly.

  He was awake early enough that it would be another hour before sunrise. Larry was gone; that much was clear in the darkness. His dirty work boots that had been dropped during the night sometime beside the floor vent were gone, as were the two shirts and three pairs of pants he had bought a few days ago at the Dollar General. He might have gone to Hill's, but Paul doubted it. Larry Fenner had most likely felt William Shannon's weight on his shoulders, the weight that came from his eyes when you passed him and something was on his mind that dealt primarily with you. But it hardly mattered at this moment.

  Now, at this moment, it was only John Harper, son of George Harper; George Harper, a man so rich and so unwilling to talk about being rich that other men couldn't stand it. The myth and legend of this family was well learned and handed down in Red Knife. Paul knew the background as well as he knew that Herbert Hoover had caused the Depression, and through the same education, too. The school of William Shannon.