Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (22 page)

“It’s called retrograde amnesia,” Jack told him. “You can’t retrieve memories of events right before you got hit. There’s a good chance over time your brain will sort them out, but then again, it may never.”

His father stared at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

Oops. “A sort of lecture I listened to once. Very interesting.”

The speaker had been Doc Hargus. Jack had been knocked cold in a fall from a fire escape. After coming to he’d known enough to get to Hargus to have his scalp sewn up, but couldn’t remember why he’d been on the fire escape in the first place. The doc had explained about post-traumatic memory loss, both antegrade and retrograde. It had taken a few days, but Jack finally remembered how he’d got there. And who’d shoved him off.

“Well, I hope mine comes back soon. As for the accident being reported before it happened…” He shook his head. “Impossible. So we can forget that. Somebody’s watch was way off. That’s the only explanation. Wasn’t it Sherlock Holmes who said, ‘When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’?”

Jack was sure he’d heard Basil Rathbone state that a hundred times.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Except, considering the course of Jack’s life these past months, the impossible was not as easy to eliminate as he’d once assumed.

After Jack parked the car in the cul-de-sac, his father insisted—over his son’s protests—on helping carry Anya’s groceries into her house. They left her there with a promise to return for cocktail hour.

As he preceded Jack into the front room of his house, he said, “I guess I should be saying, Boy, it’s great to be home. But I can’t. I may have been in that hospital bed for days, but I feel as if I left here only a few hours ago.”

He lowered himself into the recliner and stared into space. Jack watched him and realized he was scared. He’d never seen his father scared, or imagined he could be. He knew he couldn’t leave him like this.

“I’m going to stay a few days,” he told him. “If that’s all right with you.”

His father looked up at him. “You? Acting like you’re a member of a family? What gives?”

The remark stung, and that must have shown in Jack’s face because his father’s voice abruptly softened.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m glad you’re here. You don’t know how glad. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Kate’s funeral. Why weren’t you there? I still can’t believe you didn’t show up.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Like hell. A hundred, maybe two hundred people showed up. Mothers bringing the children she’d treated, people she’d treated as kids bringing their own children. All those strangers made it to her funeral, but not her own brother. She touched a lot of lives in her life, Jack, but yours most of all. She practically raised you. You brought out the nurturer in her. When you needed changing or needed to be sung to sleep, she’d take over, she’d say she’d do it. She’d all but fight with your mother to take care of you.”

“I know,” Jack whispered through a constricting throat. “Don’t you think I’d have been there if it had been possible—any way possible?”

“Then why weren’t you?”

How could he tell him it was because BATF and FBI people were there too? Taking pictures. Because of the way Kate died, and the events leading up to and connected to her death, they’d camped outside the funeral home and cemetery with their telefoto lenses. Jack had spotted them just as he was about to turn into the funeral home parking lot. He’d driven on. He couldn’t let them take his picture and have it end up pinned to a corkboard wall with a question mark beneath it. Who he was was a question he didn’t want them even asking, let alone answering.

“It wasn’t…it just wasn’t possible.”

“Why not? Were you in jail? In a hospital in a coma? Those reasons I’ll accept. Anything less…”

“I was there. I couldn’t make it to the ceremonies, but I visited her grave after the funeral.”

“If you could show up then, why couldn’t you show up before?”

Jack remembered the anger he’d felt at spotting the feds outside the funeral home. But it had been an anger tinged with guilty relief. Their presence meant he wouldn’t have to face Kate’s kids, her ex-husband, and his father. Because there’d be too many questions about Kate’s last days and he couldn’t tell them anything because there was so much she hadn’t wanted them to know. But most of all because he felt in some ways responsible for her death. In her last moments he’d soothed her while she bled, held her cooling hand after she died.

“Through the whole ordeal,” his father said, “everyone kept asking if the long-lost Jack would show, and I said of course you would, especially since she’d just been taking care of you while you were sick.”

“You know about that?”

“She called Ron the night she died…told him. She was still looking after you, even after you’d grown up.” Tears filled his eyes. “She brought Kevin and Lizzie down for Easter week last spring. I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see her alive. I was supposed to go up and stay with her awhile in July. Instead I went up for her funeral.” His voice hovered on the edge of a sob. “I miss her, Jack. Even though I moved down here we still talked. We phoned each other two or three times a week.”

Jack took a step closer. He reached out a hand to put on the old man’s shoulder, hesitated halfway there—would he shrug it off?—then pushed past the doubt. He gave his father’s bony shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Kate was a wonderful person, Dad. You can always be proud of her. You and Mom deserve a lot of credit for that.”

He looked up at Jack. “I wonder. Kate turned out great, but you and Tom…where is he, anyway?”

That reminded him: He should call Tom and let him know Dad was out of the coma. Not that he seemed too worried. He’d yet to call for an update.

“He couldn’t make it. He told me he’s tied up with some legal thing in Philly.”

He shook his head. “Figures. Tom’s always got something else to do; we all know who’s number one in his life. And then there’s you…the vanished son. I suppose your mom and I deserve credit for the two of you as well as Kate, don’t we.”

He sounded so bitter. Maybe he had a right to be. Jack started to slide his hand off the shoulder but his father grabbed it and squeezed.

“I’m sorry, Jack. I had to let this out. It’s been eating at me since the funeral. And since you never returned my calls…”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Again, he hadn’t known what he could say.

“…I never had a chance to get this off my chest. I still don’t understand, and I guess I never will. You’re holding back on me. I don’t know why but I hope someday you’ll tell me the real story.” He released Jack’s hand and slapped his palms against his thighs. “Until then, I’m through with this kind of talk. It’s putting me in a funk.”

He sat in silence for a moment, Jack standing beside the chair, trying to come up with something to say. But he didn’t have to. His father broke the silence by rising from the chair and heading for the kitchen.

“I’m going to have a beer. Want one?”

“Do you think you should? I mean, you were in a coma this morning and—”

“Do you want one or not?” he snapped.

If you can’t beat him, Jack thought, join him.

“Yeah, okay. Pop me one.”

His father opened the refrigerator door and pulled out an amber bottle. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s an Ybor. It’s a Florida brew I discovered.”

His father gave him a hard look. “What did you do? Move in while I was out cold?”

“Well, Anya said you’d want it that way.”

“She did, did she?”

These mood swings between friendly and hostile were getting to be a bit too much. “Look, if you want me to move out—”

“I wouldn’t hear of it.”

He popped the caps off a pair and handed one to Jack. They clinked the bottles.

Jack said, “To letting bygones be bygones?” At least for now.

“Not always as easy as it sounds, but I’ll drink to that.” His father took a sip and then studied the label. “Ybor Gold, ay? I like it.”

Jack took a long pull. “Yeah. But they should have named it Y
gor
Gold. Then they could have had this sneaky-looking hunchback on the label. Would have been very cool.”

His father stared at him. “Now why on earth would you think of that? Why would anyone think of that? You know, I used to worry that all those monster movies you watched as a kid would warp you. Now I can see they did. I swear they did.”

“Hey, I’ve watched lots of romantic films too, Dad, but they didn’t make me romantic. And I know I must have seen hundreds, maybe a thousand comedies, but they didn’t make me funny. I haven’t committed stand-up yet and, trust me, I’m
not
the life of the party.”

His father laughed for the first time since he’d come out of the coma. That was a good thing.

8

They hung around the front room for about twenty minutes or so, sipping their brews and making small talk, then his father dozed off in his recliner. At first Jack worried that he’d lapsed back into coma, but he responded when Jack shook his shoulder. He left him sleeping in his chair and went outside.

Through the late afternoon haze he spotted Carl working three houses down. When he saw Jack he hurried toward him across the dry grass. A small garden spade protruded from his right sleeve.

“I heard about your daddy,” he said, flashing a yellow grin. “Real glad he’s okay. That’s pan-o-ramic!”

“Sorry?”

He shrugged. “I just like the word. Anyways, I’m glad he’s back.”

“Thanks, Carl. He’s napping now.”

“Good. Real good. Looks like the list don’t get more pan-o-ramic.”

Wishing he’d never uttered that word, Jack said, “What list?”

“The list of Gateways folks who’ve gone before their time—not that ‘before their time’ means a whole helluva lot round a place like this. Funeral home waiting rooms is what they is.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Had a bunch of strange deaths real recent like.”

Jack felt a crawly sensation in his gut. “Like what? Hit and runs?”

“Nup. Nothin’ like that. I mean strange. Like Mrs. Borger bein’ attacked by about a dozen pelicans last year—right before Christmas, it was. Pecked her to death. I hear tell one of them bit into her neck and there was blood shootin’ everwhere. Been in Florida all my life and I ain’t never heard of no one bein’ attacked by no pelicans. Then back in March there was Mr. Leo, all bitten up by a bunch of spiders. Brown recluses, they say.” He shuddered. “If I was ever on
Fear Factor
, that’s what would set me to runnin’. Anyways, Doc Harris said he’s never heard of someone gettin’ bit more’n once, but there you go. Poor old guy died in the hospital.”

“Jeez.”

“Then just last June, Mr. Neusner trips and falls into a whole nest of coral snakes. He was DOA like the others. Come to think of it, your daddy was the only accident that made it to the hospital alive. I guess that’s a good sign.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Funny thing about Mr. Neusner and the coral snakes. We got a sayin’ down here: ‘red touch yellow—kill a fellow.’”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, there’s coral snakes, which got red, yellow, and black stripes, and they’s poisonous as all get out. And then there’s the scarlet snake and the scarlet king snake which got similar stripes but they’re harmless. The way you tell ’em apart is by the order of their stripes.”

“You mean people hang around long enough to check out the stripe order?”

“Sure. If it’s got a red stripe next to a yellow stripe, it’s a coral snake. If it don’t, then you’re okay. You may get bit, but you won’t get poisoned.” He pronounced it “pie-zund.”

Jack said, “I’m a city boy. I see any snake, striped or plaid, I’m gone.”

He much preferred dealing with human snakes than the legless kind.

“But the thing is,” Carl added, “I seen one of them snakes, the one Mr. Neusner stomped on before he keeled over. Don’t know bout the other ones that bit him, but this one didn’t have no red touchin’ yellow. It shouldn’t have been poisonous, but it was.” He shook his head. “Kinda scary when somethin’ you always depended on turns out not to be true anymore.”

Tell me about it, Jack thought. He’d seen the pins kicked from under more than one Cherished Truth lately.

“You said there was a nest of them? Right here at Gateways? How? The place looks so…manicured.”

“I can’t figure that one neither. I run the mower over that spot every week and I ain’t never seen no snake nest. I think a buncha them just coiled theirselfs all together durin’ the night and was still there when Mr. Neusner come by like he did every mornin’.” Carl looked away, toward the Everglades. “Almost like…”

“Almost like what?”

“Like they was waitin’ for him.”

Jack’s gut crawled again. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

A shrug. “Just a thought.”

“I’m having a thought too,” Jack said as the crawling sensation increased. “December, March, June…every three months someone buys it. And three months from June is—”