Carnival of Shadows (21 page)

“Did you not want to do that?” Doyle repeated. “Did you never feel the urge to throw all of this aside and just escape into a world of your own creation?”

“N-no,” Travis said hesitantly, but even as he said it, he didn’t really know why he hesitated.

“People think we are the ones who have abdicated responsibility. People think we are the ones who have failed in our obligations to society. What society? The society that kills and maims and commits its people to war, the society that sees color as a reason to hate, to persecute? The society that commands obedience from its citizens but hounds them with taxes and laws and a justice system that is flawed and corrupt and diseased from within? That society, Agent Travis?”

Doyle paused for a moment and just looked at Travis.

“People always assume we’re running away,” he went on. “Always, that we’re running away. Like the world didn’t want us and we were cast out. You ever think that maybe we didn’t want the world?”

Doyle took a slight step forward. “There is no one here who will not talk to you, Agent Travis. No one at all. They will answer your questions as best they can, and I am sure they will tell you the truth as they see it. But they will talk to you because they want to, because they are willing to, not because I ask them to, nor because I set any example. There are no enforced agreements here, Agent Travis. There are no foolish and unfounded laws that we follow blindly, unthinkingly. We are all prisoners. Those who realize they are prisoners at least understand that freedom is possible. When you see that you yourself are just as much a prisoner as the very people you send to Leavenworth and Sing Sing, then perhaps there will be hope for you.”

Doyle waited for just a moment, perhaps to see if Travis would respond, perhaps to emphasize the point he was making.

Travis said nothing. He had nothing more to say.

“I suggest you start with Mr. Slate,” Doyle said. “His is the caravan over there.”

Doyle turned and walked away.

Travis did not feel angry. Travis did not know what he felt. He would begin with Slate, just as Doyle had recommended, but first he would take a few moments alone. He returned to the car, sat in the driver’s seat, and closed the door firmly behind him.

The world beyond the vehicle went quiet, and yet the world within started clamoring for attention.

The words that Valeria Mironescu had used had shaken him to the core.

I think that sometimes things happen simply because you believe they will.

It was Esther, still there, still haunting his thoughts, but even more than that, it was the day that they had driven out to Flatwater to collect his few possessions.

The day they returned to the house of his childhood, a place he had not seen since the death of his father.

14

That first night, lying there beside her sixteen-year-old ward, Esther would have imagined herself racked with guilt, her every emotion twisted back upon itself, her sense of self-respect and personal worth just nothing in the fact of this heinous crime she had perpetrated. The age of consent in Nebraska was seventeen. How she knew this, she could not remember, but she did. Most states it was sixteen. Not so in Nebraska. She had broken the law. There was always the possibility of finding herself in jail right beside her cousin—the killer and the child abuser side by side at the State Reformatory for Women.

Nevertheless, she did not feel guilty, nor did she feel ashamed. She felt alive.

She slept that night, Michael breathing softly against her side, the smell of his hair, the excitement of his presence filling her body, her mind, her very
self
with a range of emotions she had long forgotten.

She was not so naive as to believe that she was
in love
with him, not as a woman loves a man, but she loved him nevertheless. Simply stated, she did not want to be denied what she was feeling. She did not want to be elsewhere.

Michael stirred in the early hours, the air still cool, the vaguest light finding its way through the curtains to the right of the bed.

He opened his eyes and found her watching him, a faint smile already on his lips.

His hand strayed across the flat of her stomach. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, and then leaned up to kiss her mouth.

“You slept,” she whispered.

“Dreamed,” he replied, his voice distant with the vestiges of sleep.

“Of what?”

He shook his head and stretched. “Not of what,” he said. “Of who…”

She stroked his fringe from his brow, kissed his forehead and his nose. She turned sideways, pulled him close to her, and he found his way inside her without any help at all. The previous night, hungry, almost starved of real human contact, they had made love in a clumsy, awkward way. Now it was different. Now it was in slow motion, and even as she pulled away, aware that he was climaxing, it felt so right, so perfect. She held his erection in her hand, massaged it slowly until he came, and then leaned close to his ear to whisper.

“We need to get some things,” she said.

“Things?” he asked, and then it dawned on him. “Things,” he repeated.

There was silence for a time, the pair of them lying beside each other, enjoying the simple fact that they were not alone, and then she asked if he wanted coffee, something to eat perhaps.

“Not yet,” he said. “I just want to stay here a while longer. This is the best I have ever felt in my life, and I don’t want it to end.”

She said it then, even though she didn’t want to. She said it because she knew it had to be said.

“It will end, Michael. You know that, don’t you?”

Michael smiled so simply, so beautifully, that she wondered why she’d had to utter those words. But it did not matter. He surprised her then, surprised her more than she could ever have believed possible.

“Life is crazy, Esther,” he said. He rolled onto his front, leaned up on his elbows. “Life is crazy, and so are most of the people in the world. People think there are rules and regulations for everything. They imagine terrible things will happen if they don’t follow those rules and regulations, but it’s just not true. Who says we can’t just enjoy what we’re doing? Who says we have to behave in a certain way? And what will happen if anyone finds out?”

“Well, for a start, Michael, the law…”

“What are you planning to do? Call the cops?”

She laughed, touched his face. “You are too smart for your own good, Michael Travis.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Mrs. Faulkner.”

“Don’t call me that, for God’s sake!”

“This is what we are doing. I want to do it. I think you want to do it too. Don’t you think half the fun comes from knowing that we are the only two people in the world who will ever know how good this is? Makes it all the more exciting when you know it’s a secret…”

“To be honest, I don’t know if I was the one who seduced you, or you were the one who seduced me.”

“We seduced each other, Esther.”

She reached up her hands, placed one on each side of his face, and kissed him.

“As long as you understand that this might go horribly wrong,” she said.

“I am happier than I have ever been. It might be a terrible mistake, it might go wrong, but until that happens, which I doubt it ever will, let’s not wish for it, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and then she shifted sideways and got off the bed. She pulled her robe around herself, stood looking down at him on her bed, and smiled.

“Who would have thought it…?” she said, almost to herself.

It was that afternoon, Saturday the eighteenth, that Michael asked her once again if she would go over to the Flatwater house with him.

“You really want to go?” she asked.

“Yes, I really want to go,” Michael replied. “I
need
to go.”

“Then we shall go tomorrow,” Esther said. “I will call a friend of mine who has a car. He’ll take us.”

Esther made the call, the friend agreed, and early the following morning, Michael saw a black Studebaker Commander pull up against the curb in front of the house. The man who alighted was sharply dressed, perhaps in his early to mid-fifties, and there was something about his bearing that suggested a military background.

“That’s Robert Erickson,” Esther said, “an old friend of mine. Was in the army, got himself shot in the leg.”

As if to highlight the consequence of being shot in the leg, Erickson came around the side of the car with a cane, leaning heavily on it as he made his way up toward the house. The limp was pronounced, and even the few steps to the front door seemed to require a good deal of concentration.

“Everyone calls him Sarge,” she said.

Sarge opened the screen and knocked.

“Come on in!” Esther called.

Esther greeted him with an enthusiastic hug.

“So good of you to do this, Sarge. Really, really appreciated.”

“Nothin’ at all,” Sarge replied.

Michael appeared in the doorway.

“This must be your Mr. Travis,” Sarge said. He extended his hand. Michael came forward and they shook.

“Esther told me a good deal about your trials and tribulations, son, and I must say that my heart goes out to you. Terrible bind to be finding yourself in at such a point in your life.”

“Thank you, sir,” Michael said.

“Oh hell, son, just call me Sarge. Everyone does. Now, we’re headed out to Flatwater, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And whoever from the Sheriff’s Department knows we’re coming?”

“Who?” Michael asked.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Esther said, and touched his arm. “Seeing as how this is all still going on… with your ma an’ all, well there has to be someone there from the Sheriff’s Department. You know, to make sure that we don’t mess with things that we shouldn’t be messing with.”

Michael nodded.

“You sure you wanna go out there, son?” Sarge asked, genuine concern in his tone.

“I need to go out there,” Michael replied. “It’s just something I have to do.”

“Well, let’s git, then,” he said.

Sarge and Esther sat up front, Michael a little cramped in the back. Sarge lit one cigarette after other, and soon the world beyond the windows was obfuscated by a dense fog of smoke.

“You don’t mind?” he kept asking, and though Esther seemed not to, the smoke bothered Michael tremendously. He did not feel he could say a word in protest, however. He needed to get out to the house, and Sarge seemed to be the only available way to do it.

The drive was a straight north on 281, a west turn toward Flatwater, a brief stopover to alert Flatwater’s deputy sheriff, Harold Fenton, that they had arrived, and then the last couple of miles out to the house itself was in a two-car convoy behind a black-and-white.

The house came up into view like something from a dream.

From a distance, it seemed a mere speck at the side of the road, but as they neared the property, it seemed to grow, not only in real terms, but also in Michael’s mind, as if the significance of what had happened here had now afforded the building itself a greater meaning and potency.

The black-and-white pulled to a stop, and it was only when the deputy got out that Michael remembered him from the day his father had died.

This was the man that the sheriff had left behind, the one who had kept an eye on him until the coroner came to take Jimmy Travis away.

Precisely one year and one month had passed since Michael Travis had last seen this house, and yet at once it seemed both yesterday and a thousand years ago.

The Michael that had left and the Michael that had returned were very different people.

Deputy Harold Fenton, all of five seven with an attitude, stood at the foot of the steps leading up the screen and hitched his thumbs through his Sam Browne belt.

“You can enter the house, but aside from your own room, all other areas are out of bounds—”

“Lighten up there, Captain,” Sarge interjected. “The kid knows not to touch anything.”

“I understand that, sir, but I would be remiss in my duties if—”

Sarge placed a large hand on Fenton’s shoulder and squeezed it firmly. “We’re both institutional men,” he said. “We understand the dos and don’ts just fine, eh, Deputy? Situation such as this affords a touch of humanity, wouldn’t you say? Now, why don’t we just take a moment over here? Let’s have a smoke together. You can tell me some war stories, and we can let the lady and the kid just sort out what needs to be sorted out. There ain’t gonna be no monkey business here. What’s done is done, and nothin’ that the kid might or might not do is gonna change that fact.”

Harold Fenton looked a little befuddled, a little off guard, but then he nodded and said, “Sure thing.”

“Good ’nough.” Sarge nodded at Esther and Michael, and then he turned back to Fenton and said, “So tell me, how many bank robberies you get around these parts? I heard these small-town banks are just heaven for the Dillingers and Barrows of this world.”

“Ha,” Fenton said. “I’ll tell you now, one time we had ourselves a real…”

His voice faded as Sarge walked him back toward the cars.

Michael stood there for a time.

Esther was right beside him, even reached out and took his hand, but he was not aware of it at all.

After a minute, perhaps two, he just started walking. He crossed the dusty yard and started up the steps. The screen catch was flipped. He unhitched it, opened it with a creak and then pushed the front door. It swung inwards soundlessly, and Michael stood in the dim coolness of the hallway without remembering the steps he’d taken to get there. Esther hung back behind him, right there on the other side of the screen.

Everything was strange, and yet everything was too familiar. The hat stand, the rug on the wooden floor, the way the banister turned slightly at the bottom as if inviting you to climb the stairs, the light at the end of the hallway that led down to the kitchen.

To his left was a window that looked out from the side of the house, to his right, the door to the main room of the house. The room where they ate. The room where his father would kick off his shoes, lean back in a chair, listen to a ball game on the wireless. The room from which his voice would echo up the stairs to Michael’s room…
Janette, bring me another beer
… or
Michael, get on down here and tell me what in tarnation this mud is doing on the God-darn floor!

Michael took a step, knowing even as he did so that he would find him.

The board creaked beneath his foot.

He looked back over his shoulder, saw Esther standing there on the steps, her features obscured through the fine mesh of the screen. She said nothing, but he could read her body language.

Shall I come in? Shall I stay right where I am and leave you to deal with this alone?

Michael wanted her beside him, wanted to feel her hand in his, but knew that if she was there, he would not hear what he’d come to hear, would not see what he knew would be waiting for him.

He took another step, and boards that had never creaked now seemed to cry back at him in faint, desperate voices.

His hands were dry, cold even, but his forehead was varnished with sweat. His heart was like a clenched fist, a knot of dark and shadowed muscle deep within his chest, its beating no more evident than the sound of the breeze beyond the walls and windows, as if it wished to have none of this, as if it wished to be elsewhere.

Michael reached the door, and before the table came into view, he closed his eyes tight. He blinked several times then, shook his head as if ridding it of cobwebs, dreams, fragments of imagination that might be precipitated by the surroundings.

Nevertheless, he knew it would do no good.

Michael took one further step, reached the threshold, his right hand on the doorjamb, his left hand down by his side, the calm and measured beating of his heart like a metronome.

Hey, son
.

Jimmy Travis sat right where he’d been. That day. That very day. The last day of his life.

He looked directly back at Michael, his right eye open wide, his left eye a bloody socket with a strange glimmer right in the center. It was only when Jimmy smiled and moved his head that Michael saw the knife that was still embedded in his face. Head on, there was merely that dull, gunmetal glint to remind Michael of what his mother had done.

You done fucked the quiff, eh, boy? I seen her a coupla times. Cain’t ’member when, but I seen her and figured she’d be good for a party. But you beat me to it, you old dog, and you only sixteen years old. God darn it, boy, you sure as hell is your father’s son.

Michael wanted to reply, but even as he opened his mouth, he knew that the words would never be forthcoming.

You just go on thinkin’ whatever you wanna think
.
I can hear you just fine an’ dandy.

Michael wondered if he was crazy. He wondered if the trauma of what had happened had turned his mind completely.