The Dying Ground (29 page)

I
entered the Grapevine, the winding mountain road that marked any journey between northern and southern California, just as night fell. I aimed my car north and watched ink spread through the midnight-blue sky.

I drove with a clear destination, a purpose, for the first time since my search began. I knew what lay at the end this time. I knew it was also possible, finally, to get some long-deserved answers.

I ignored the pain coursing through my body from my shoulder, face, and rib cage as I moved on. In reality, the pain I carried in my heart was the most potent of all, but I needed it there, tangible and on the surface, in order to remain focused. I needed the pain to remind me of my goal: to find Felicia and learn the details of Billy’s murder.

Fresno was a logical conclusion, once I pieced it all together. I’d known that Felicia’s mother was buried there, far away from her childhood home of San Clemente. But I hadn’t
known, until my conversation with Venus, that her death was the result of her husband’s rage.

The knowledge made me sad, hollow, and more aware than ever of the ways in which so many of us were linked by tragedy. It was like a bloody, contagious game of connect-the-dots. I’d lost my mother through drugs, and so had Holly, though his mother was still alive, a skeletal strawberry on the East Oakland streets. All her maternal instincts had long been compromised by the pipe. She had little regard for her son beyond his accessibility to high-quality narcotics. He refused to sell to her but he never acknowledged to me, or maybe even to himself, the anger that probably fueled his choice of career.

Holly rarely saw his mother, or his equally smoked-out uncles, but I know she was a continual thorn in his side. He had chosen the sanctuary of the Redfields to replace what was missing in his own life, but after Cissy’s attack, and the exposure of their affair, the family would never again provide what he’d taken for granted.

There were ashes all over Oakland, the ashes of relationships, lives, and futures. A part of me, the weakest part, was glad to be away from The City. Holly’s rage could be all-encompassing. I’d seen the look in his eye when he’d slammed through the doors of the hospital; it was like seeing a caged animal spot his prey on the other side of its bars, just out of reach.

On the other side, the murderous side of connect-the-dots spiraled out to bind me to Felicia. I considered my father’s giving a highball to my mother to be murder, plain and simple. And Felicia had known all along that we shared this link.

The three of us, at twenty-three years of age, were connected by abandonment and pain. Our parents, in their own unique ways, had made the choice to disregard us and forever relegate us to orphan status. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake, even in happiness, an emotion I could never trust, even in sleep.
It was there, always there, the realization that I was not worthy of the good things in my life.

From memory my gut knew the good things would all disappear one way or another, and they had, bit by bit: my mother, my father, baseball, school, Felicia, Billy, and one day Alixe. The signs were already there. Some of the loss was my own doing, I couldn’t argue that, but it all stemmed from the same place.

As I wheeled off the highway and into the nearest gas station, I realized I was too exhausted to continue the emotional game. I didn’t want to explore the ways in which Billy was linked, or Chantal, or Scottie, or even Smokey, but the bottom line was drugs, the common denominator for us all. Drugs and a self-hatred so deeply embedded in the psyche of our community that we gave away the souls of our children for a golden calf.

The rental’s tank was nearly empty as I turned off the engine and climbed from the car. I stood up and stretched to release tension and ease some of my discomfort. Around me the streets were deserted, the rush of highway traffic making the only sound in the still night.

The attendant watched me warily, and I remembered the bruises on my face and my disheveled appearance.

“Listen.” I spoke for the first time in hours. “I need to know how to get to this address.” I slid the ripped paper and twenty dollars for gas across the counter.

The man studied the paper for a moment and then pulled a map from one of the racks. He opened it and pointed to a road that ran alongside a river.

“It’s an odd part of town,” he said. “Mostly abandoned railroad shacks, houses for migrant workers, and such.”

I nodded as he wrote directions on the map.

“No need to pay for this. Most people around here know their way around.” He slid the map to me, eyeing my face. “Car accident?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Couple days ago.”

“Well, good luck.” He put the money in the cash register and returned to his magazine.

I got to the door before he spoke again. “There was a girl in here not too long ago looking for that same part of town.”

I knew it was Flea. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

I stepped out into the night.

T
he man’s directions were precise. I found myself at my destination in a little under twenty minutes. He was right. It
was
an odd part of town, a mixed bag of single-family homes and trailers along a nearly depleted riverbed that looked baked through and weathered from the notorious Central Valley heat. By moonlight and the glare of the streetlamps I could see the hay-colored lawns that marked the stationary position of the lower middle class.

It all looked unkempt, forgotten, a neighborhood where the inhabitants didn’t bother to invest themselves. Cars were parked across front lawns; curtains were tightly closed with only the blue light of television seeping through.

I drove to the end of the block, searching the numbers, until I came to a red stucco with an attached wooden porch. The house was neat, or at least neater than those of the neighbors on either side, but it still carried an air of neglect. The driveway was empty and all the lights were off, but I saw a dog
sitting calmly on the front porch. I slowed down, rechecked the address, and parked a couple of houses away.

I waited for flickers of curtains or for porch lights to come on and indicate that I was being watched. None came. It was definitely a place to disconnect, where TVs and stereos were turned up loud to drown out cries for help or the sounds of someone being beaten. This was a neighborhood where people came to forget and be forgotten.

I contemplated knocking on the front door or looking through the window, but I knew there was a good chance my arrival would be met with violence. I didn’t know the state of Felicia’s mind; I didn’t know who she was with or if I would be a welcome presence. I decided to wait for the sun.

I was awakened by the sound of activity on the street and light beaming through the rear window. The dashboard clock read ten o’clock and I was amazed to have slept ten hours in the cramped hindquarters of a rental. When I stepped from the car I noticed that the dog was still in the same spot. He didn’t budge even as I approached the house.

“Hey, boy,” I said. “Easy, boy.”

The pretense wasn’t necessary. The dog looked as if he’d been waiting for me. Under his watchful gaze I knocked on the front door several times but got no response. I thought I heard something inside but I couldn’t be sure. I peered through the window into a spartan house.

Around back, my knock was met with the same silence. I twisted the knob, and the door opened with ease into a small kitchen with a rickety table in the center of the room. Every inch of available counter space was filled with liquor bottles, neatly stacked and grouped by color. A transistor radio played softly, tuned to a sports station announcing the pitchers for
game one of the World Series. I had to chuckle. The series seemed as far away and unreal as my chance of suiting up to replace Dave Stewart.

I moved through the house quickly. There wasn’t much to see and less to indicate that anyone had been there.

Just as I reached the front door, I heard a sound behind me. The dog? I stopped to consider it, and whatever or whoever was making the noise stopped too. My body tensed. I’d been ambushed twice, and I knew the signs. A glance to either side revealed nothing that could be used as a weapon. My only chance was a quick exit out into the wide-open street and a prayer that at least one neighbor would be compassionate.

I pulled the front door open, ready to move quickly, when I felt myself yanked backward by a hand over my mouth.

“Be still, boy.” The door closed in my face, but I instinctively reached out for the knob. “Be still, hear me.” The man dragged me backward. I felt the strength in his arms, the solid mass of muscle in his chest and shoulders. At my best I couldn’t beat him without a gun, and I was doomed by my injuries.

“What you doing in my house, huh? What you sneakin’ in people’s houses for?” He squeezed down on my shoulder until I felt the bone shift beneath his fingers. A pain shot through me but I wasn’t giving up. I swung backward into his rib cage.

He swept my feet from beneath me and delivered one forceful blow to my spine to stop my attack. As I fell forward, scrambling for balance, I landed on a dinner tray. It collapsed like a board, and I threw it at him. He punched the tray away and kept coming. I moved like a crab, trying to make it to the lamp on a side table. I wanted something, anything, to throw at his head. I aimed the lamp and watched it graze off his forehead. Blood sprang from a cut near his eyebrow but even with blood dripping into his eye he kept coming.

His hands were at my throat before I could move. He pinned
me to the floor with his hands, hands that reminded me of my grandfather. I reached for the tray again and beaned him twice before I felt him let up.

I saw his fist spiraling down toward me. Then I heard a soft, steady voice from somewhere in the house. There was no urgency in the words, just direction. “Daddy. Don’t.”

Two words, two beautiful words, and Felicia stepped into my view.

“Let him go.”

I focused on the red in Big Reggie’s eyes, the red rage of fifteen years and no relief from his guilt. Now here he was, right before his daughter’s eyes, sinking into the same murderous state that had cost her her mother. He let me go and fell back against the wall, his head in his hands. Felicia watched him from her position across the room, a coldness in her eyes I’d never seen before.

I scrambled up and away toward the front door, coughing the entire time.

“Did that feel better to you? How long have you had to wait for that?” I watched in amazement as she baited him with cruel words that recalled her mother’s death. She dropped into the chair beside him so she could look him in the eye. “Does it feel the same?”

She held on to the cruelty for a minute like a hard-won toy. Then I saw her lip quiver, and she dissolved into a vulnerable heap. I didn’t know if I should move forward or run. I looked at Big Reg, who remained on the floor, silent and spent. Before I could decide she ran out the back door toward the riverbank.

I
hesitated for a moment, only a moment. My goal was and always had been Felicia, but I was stymied by the sight of her father, crumpled in the corner and weeping loudly into his hands. His sobs were filled with anguish, the anguish of facing a daughter he had managed to avoid for over fifteen years.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I could hear him mutter through the tears. “I’m so sorry.” It sounded inadequate even to me. I could only wonder what it sounded like in his own head.

I found Felicia down by the river, sitting on a slab of rock with the dog at her side. The fire that usually burned within her looked to be forever extinguished. She turned to look me over and there was absolutely no welcome in her face.

Something told me to stay where I was.

She looked as if she might bolt or kill me if I made any sudden moves. She reached into her pocket, removed a lone cigarette
and a lighter, and lit the end. When she caught my eye the usual trust and happiness that lived in her face was gone.

I moved closer but she drew the cigarette up between us like a shield. I got the distinct impression that she would shove it in my eye if I provoked her in any way, so I took a seat on a rock a couple of yards back. Felicia lit a second cigarette with her first and flung the first one into the river.