A Sudden Silence (6 page)

M
OM HAD TO
drive Dad to work next morning. I went, too, and we swung around and stopped off at the cemetery first.

"The police went door to door in the park yesterday," Dad said as we walked up the curving narrow path that led between the grave markers. "They were there while we were at the airport. I guess they asked questions of everyone. Joe Grossman told me." Joe Grossman is the parks maintenance man.

"Mary Daniloff said they went through the tunnel and talked to the lifeguards," Mom said. I wondered if they'd talked to Sowbug, too.

It was another gray, foggy morning, mist falling like white rain on the headstones. Bry didn't have one yet. Dad had ordered it from Crocker Brothers but it would take a while. For now there was just the brown earth, the wreaths of flowers beaded with fog and already turning brown.

My mother shivered, looking across the churchyard to the band of colorless ocean. "I wonder if the sun's shining inland? On a morning like this I feel like moving from the beach. It's so damned dismal." She wrapped the edges of her long coat more closely around her.

"On a morning like this I feel old," my father said, turning away for the long walk back to the car.

He looked old as he walked into the big glass-and-concrete building in Irvine where he works as one of the electricians. How could he have gotten as old as my grandfather this quickly?

It was almost nine when we got home, and I was about to go down to look for Sowbug when our doorbell rang. Officer Valle and Officer McMeeken stood outside. Behind them, ghostlike, was their Laguna police car.

"Is there something new?" my mother asked. "Has something turned up?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Oh," Mom said in a flat voice. "Come in anyway. Would you like some coffee? I just made a pot."

"No, thanks, Mrs. Harmon." Officer Valle was wearing a big scarf, white-and-beige stripes over a big, bulky sweater. I wondered if she kept her gun under that sweater or in her purse. She unwound the scarf and smiled across at me. "How's it going, Jesse?"

"OK, I guess."

"Did you happen to remember anything more about that car?" Officer McMeeken pulled what was probably the same notebook out of his parka pocket.

"Not really. And I've been driving myself nuts trying."

"I know how that can be. In the middle of the night..." Officer Valle smiled that nice smile. I tried to imagine what she would have been like at my age. All those little scars would have been pimples then. She'd probably been self-conscious as hell. But not anymore.

"I have a suggestion, Jesse. How would it be if we go back down there, on the highway, and re-enact what happened?"

My mother made a little sound and Officer McMeeken turned quickly toward her. "We'll have all the traffic stopped, ma'am. There'd be no danger to Jesse, I promise you."

"How do you feel about it, Jesse? Can you handle it?" Officer Valle asked.

"I suppose. If you think it'll do any good."

"No guarantees. But let's try." She wound her scarf back around her throat. "And ma'am?" She stopped in front of my mother. "I hope it won't inconvenience you too much if someone from our lab comes by to get some fingerprints from the trailer here."

My mother's hands fluttered to her throat. "Prints from here? Why?"

"Oh, it's just routine. The police department's full of formalities."

Mom looked at me for support.

"It'll be all right, Mom." I thought I knew why they wanted those prints.

I drove with the two officers through the park.

"Did you get prints off Bry's shoe?" I asked.

"There are some on there all right. They're smudged, though. Some seem to be your brother's. Some will be yours and probably your mom's. We'll have to see what's left."

I didn't want to ask when they got Bry's—or how. I knew anyway.

Officer McMeeken put out red flares to block off the north-bound traffic, and Officer Valle asked, "Ready, Jesse?"

I nodded and began walking where I'd walked on Saturday night. It was different now. Day instead of night. There were no cars behind me. That same smoky flare smell, though, that had been there afterward. Traffic coming toward Laguna slowed to a crawl to gawk, and I heard Officer McMeeken shouting, "Come on. Move it along. There's nothing to see."

I kept walking. On Saturday night Bry had been here, in front of me. He'd been alive then. Dead now, under the dead flowers. I clenched my fists in the pockets of my denim jacket and tried not to start bawling.
You're here to remember,
I told myself.
Remember, dummy!

I didn't hear the police car cruise up behind me till its lights came on and its brakes squealed, and I dived onto the side of the road just the way I'd done then. This time, though, I didn't call out first. There was no one to call to.

The car skidded to a stop where the other one had stopped. I lay, bawling for sure now, biting the back of my hand, staring at its rear bumper, the brake lights, the trunk, the back window. Nothing.

Officer Valle was beside me. "It's OK. It's OK, Jesse."

"I don't remember a damn thing," I whispered, banging my fist against the ground. "They were round and they were white, that's all I know."

"They? More than one?"

I nodded slowly. "Two. White circles on black."

"How big, Jesse?"

"Big as ... big as the top of a jar. And something, some shape inside the circles."

"Anything else?" Her voice was quiet and easy.

"No."

I stood and began pulling bits of wet grass off my jeans and she helped, neither of us talking. The cop car backed up and Officer Valle left me and went to kick the flares to the side and stamp them out. We got into the car and she patted my shoulder.

"See? It's coming, Jesse, bit by bit. It will all come."

"I was wondering about hypnosis. Maybe I could try that and I'd remember everything."

"Hypnosis is tricky. In the first place, it's questionable in court. It would be better if you'd remember naturally, Jesse. And I believe you will."

Chris Sanchez waved from his post on the gates as we went past, and Officer McMeeken half turned from the driver's seat. "Did anybody question that kid in the booth?"

"He goes off at nine
P.M.
so he was gone before it happened. Too bad for us." Officer Valle handed me a Kleenex from her big, black purse. I'd thought she hadn't noticed that I was sniffling a bit.

"Did you talk to Sowbug?" I looked out the back window at the beach, at the empty sand and three brown pelicans flying low across the cold sea. "You know who I mean?"

"The old fellow who lives on the beach? We know him well. He wasn't there yesterday. Probably gone on vacation to another beach for a few days, up to Scotsman's or down to Aliso. Or somewhere with a tunnel. Sowbug likes tunnels he can crawl into."

We were stopped now in front of our trailer and I could see Mom, pale as a shadow behind the window.

"I think he was there that night and he may have seen something." I waved reassuringly in Mom's direction. "But he's paranoid about going to jail."

Officer McMeeken grinned at me in the rearview mirror. "And we treat him so good, too. Free bed and board."

"He won't talk to
you,
that's for sure," Officer Valle told him. "You tease him too much and he doesn't understand. Old guys like Sowbug spend their lives scared of cops. Will he talk to you, Jesse?"

"He wouldn't. But I'm going to try again." I opened the door.

"Jesse? Tell your father Channel 5 has agreed to run his reward notice tonight as a public service. We could get something from that."

"I'll tell him."

Mom had made more fresh coffee and we sat at the table and drank it and ate wheat toast, and I told her what had happened and that nothing had happened, and we each pretended to read the
Bay News,
rustling the pages as if this were just another morning. Except that normally I wouldn't be here; I'd be up in West-wood. And normally Bry would. I turned a page. There was a swimsuit ad for one of the expensive stores in South Coast Plaza. A girl, on a beach at sunset, wearing a dark swimsuit, seriously studying a shell that shone pale and transparent. She was beautiful. Her hair was short and black like Chloe's, and she was all shining legs and hollowed shoulders. I'd make a bet her eyes were blue. I made myself turn the page again.

"Isn't it ironic," Mom said loudly. "I don't drink, your dad never has more than a couple of beers, and here's our son, killed by a driver who was probably drunk." She was hidden behind the paper, which shivered in her hands. "Doesn't that seem ironic?"

I got up and stood behind her and kissed the top of her head.

"Sh, mom. Sh."

There were going to be lots of mornings like this.

After we'd cleared up she said she thought she'd go to the Safeway. They had a special on canned tuna, three for a dollar. Its hard to believe sometimes how the mind can slip from death to canned tuna. It must be some kind of release valve. I said fine, I had laundry to do, and she asked if I'd take the bathroom towels and wash them, too.

We always have lots of laundry quarters in the yellow ceramic pig on the dresser. As soon as she left, I dropped a handful in my pocket, stuffed my clothes and Bry's and the towels in the big laundry bag, and left, too.

Our laundry room is at the top of the hill on the high green, with maybe the best ocean view in the whole park from its two dirty little windows. Bad architectural planning, somehow. The only saving grace is that the gazebo's there and it gets the view, too. I slung the bag over my shoulder and began hiking.

The sun was coming through the gray sky now, and the gazanias in the borders in front of the trailers were beginning to open their yellow and orange eyes. The park gazanias are like the park people: They stay closed up till the sun appears.

Miss Ernestine and Miss Gabby and Fluffy were in the laundry room. I don't like doing the wash when they're there. They're so modest about their things, standing in front of the folding tables, shielding the privacy of their laundry with their bodies. I'm almost afraid to glance in the direction of the tumbling clothes in one of their dryers in case they think I'm a Peeping Tom.

"Good morning," I said, and rubbed Fluffy's head. He had gook in the sides of his eyes. I don't think I've ever seen Fluffy's eyes when they weren't gooky, but the sisters don't seem to notice.

"Fluffy's so happy to see the sun," Miss Gabby said. "I think I'll just take him out on the grass for a few minutes, Ernestine."

"Do. Certainly." Miss Ernestine kept her head bent while I filled two washers and stuffed my clothes and the towels in one, Bry's in another. For some reason it seemed important to keep Bry's separate.

"I think I'll go outside myself, Miss Ernestine," I said. "You won't let any thief rip off my wet laundry while I'm gone."

"No, indeed, Jesse." She had a pink spot on each cheekbone. Poor Miss Ernestine has a hard time talking to me when things are normal, and these days they for sure aren't normal. I was mooching toward the door when her little, high voice stopped me.

"Jesse? I have something to say to you."

I turned and I was getting that strange, creepy feeling again. Miss Ernestine
knew
something.

I sat down, keeping an empty chair between us. Any false move and I felt she'd run, run out to Miss Gabby and Fluffy and safety.

She turned a box of fabric softener in her hands. "We didn't tell the police when they came to our door because it probably
is
silly, as Gabby says, but..." She took a deep breath and shot a glance at the window where Fluffy was sniffing at the oleander hedge and where Miss Gabby stood beside the gazebo looking down on the million-dollar ocean view.

"The night your brother was hit by the car, Gabby and I took Fluffy for his evening walk. We always watch the late news at ten on Saturday nights. Then we walk Fluffy to the gate so he can ... you know..." The pink spots deepened.

"Sure, I understand. And you walked down Saturday night. The late news is on for an hour?"

"Yes. So at about ten after eleven, or maybe a quarter past, because we had to put on our coats and get Fluffy's leash and lock up and ... and that's too early, you see, because your poor brother, poor Bry, was hit at eleven-thirty. Isn't that what the paper said? And besides, the car was going the wrong way."

I guess I was staring at her too hard. She gave a little nervous jump and began pulling ribbons of softener from the box, shredding them. "It is silly to have mentioned it after all, isn't it?"

"No. It's not silly. You mean you saw a car—a car that you noticed for some reason—but it was going south, toward Laguna. It wasn't coming from Laguna?"

"That's right. And the reason we noticed it was because the driver was weaving all over the highway. Gabby said to me, 'Ernestine, would you look at that car!' And there it was, coming round the curve. It went up on the grass, almost off the cliff. I thought for a minute it would go over, and then it swung across, right at us, Jesse. We picked Fluffy up pretty fast, I can tell you." She was trying to cram the ribbons of fabric softener back in the box." 'That driver is
drunk,
Fluffy,' Gabby said."

"Could you tell me what the car looked like? What color it was? Big? Small? Anything?"

"That's just the trouble. Gabby and Fluffy and I have gone over and over it. It was a dark car. We know that for sure. But
I
think it was dark green and
Gabby
thinks black. It wasn't small, the way the Sanchez boy's is small, but it wasn't as big as the Captain's."

Chris Sanchez drives a VW bug. The Captain has an old Cadillac.

"About medium then." My heart had started that same, heavy thumping. "Did you see the driver, Miss Ernestine? Was it a man?"

"Oh, my, we didn't stay around long enough to see anything like that. There were these big headlights, dazzling, coming right at us and you can't know..." She stopped and began tearing at the fabric softener again. I knew she'd remembered that, yes, I did know what it was like to have great dazzling lights coming at you, back or front. "We just picked Fluffy up and retreated, Jesse. Retreated."