Forever Odd

Wishing to avoid being seen by the authorities who would be going to and coming from the Jessup house during the remaining hours of the night, I stepped through the gate in the picket fence at the back of the Ying property. Because taking a seat on the deck without invitation seemed to be ill-mannered, I sat in the yard, under the brugmansia.

The eight-year-old in me wondered if the grass could have absorbed poison from the tree. If sufficiently potent, the toxin might pass through the seat of my jeans.

My cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

A woman said, “Hi.”

“Who’s this?”

“Me.”

“I think you have the wrong number.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I’m disappointed,” she said.

“It happens.”

“You know the first rule?”

“Like I said—”

“You come alone,” she interjected.

“—you’ve got a wrong number.”

“I’m so disappointed in you.”

“In me?” I asked.

“Very much so.”

“For being a wrong number?”

“This is pathetic,” she said, and terminated the call.

The woman’s caller ID was blocked. No number had appeared on my screen.

The telecom revolution does not always facilitate communication.

I stared at the phone, waiting for her to misdial again, but it didn’t ring. I flipped it shut.

The wind seemed to have swirled down a drain in the floor of the desert.

Beyond the motionless limbs of the brugmansia, which were leafy but flowerless until late spring, in the high vault of the night, the stars were sterling-bright, the moon a tarnished silver.

When I checked my wristwatch, I was surprised to see 3:17 A.M. Only thirty-six minutes had passed since I had awakened to find Dr. Jessup in my bedroom.

I had lost all awareness of the hour and had assumed that dawn must be drawing near. Fifty thousand volts might have messed with my watch, but it had messed more effectively with my sense of time.

If the tree branches had not embraced so much of the sky, I would have tried to find Cassiopeia, a constellation with special meaning for me. In classic mythology, Cassiopeia was the mother of Andromeda.

Another Cassiopeia, this one no myth, was the mother of a daughter whom she named Bronwen. And Bronwen is the finest person I have ever known, or ever will.

When the constellation of Cassiopeia is in this hemisphere and I am able to identify it, I feel less alone.

This isn’t a reasoned response to a configuration of stars, but the heart cannot flourish on logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.

In the alley, a police car pulled up at the gate. The headlights were doused.

I rose from the yard under the tree of death, and if my buttocks had been poisoned, at least they hadn’t yet fallen off.

When I got into the front passenger’s seat and pulled the door shut, Chief Porter said, “How’s your tongue?”

“Sir?”

“Still itch?”

“Oh. No. It stopped. I hadn’t noticed.”

“This would work better if you took the wheel, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. But that would be hard to explain, this being a police car and me being just a fry cook.”

As we drifted along the alleyway, the chief switched on the headlights and said, “What if I cruise where I want, and when you feel I should turn left or right, you tell me.”

“Let’s try it.” Because he had switched off the police radio, I said, “Won’t they be wanting to reach you?”

“Back there at the Jessup house? That’s all aftermath. The science boys are better at that than I am. Tell me about the guy with the Taser.”

“Mean green eyes. Lean and quick. Snaky.”

“Are you focusing on him now?”

“No. I only got a glimpse of him before he zapped me. For this to work, I’ve got to have a better mental picture—or a name.”

“Simon?”

“We don’t know for certain that Simon’s involved.”

“I’d bet my eyes against a dollar that he is,” Chief Porter said. “The killer beat on Wilbur Jessup long after he was dead. This was a passionate homicide. But he didn’t come alone. He’s got a kill buddy, maybe someone he met in prison.”

“Just the same, I’ll try for Danny.”

We drove a couple of blocks in silence.

The windows were down. The air looked clear yet carried the silica scent of the Mojave vastness by which our town is embraced. Scatterings of crisp leaves, shed by Indian laurels, crunched under the tires.

Pico Mundo appeared to have been evacuated.

The chief glanced sideways at me a couple times, then said, “You ever going back to work at the Grille?”

“Yes, sir. Sooner or later.”

“Sooner would be better. Folks miss your home fries.”

“Poke makes good ones,” I said, referring to Poke Barnett, the other short-order cook at the Pico Mundo Grille.

“They’re not so bad you have to choke them down,” he admitted, “but they’re not in the same league with yours. Or his pancakes.”

“Nobody can match the fluff factor in my pancakes,” I agreed.

“Is it some culinary secret?”

“No, sir. It’s a born instinct.”

“A gift for pancakes.”

“Yes, sir, it seems to be.”

“You feel magnetized yet or whatever it is you feel?”

“No, not yet. And it would be better if we don’t talk about it, just let it happen.”

Chief Porter sighed. “I don’t know when I’m ever going to get used to this psychic stuff.”

“I never have,” I said. “Don’t expect I ever will.”

Strung between the boles of two palm trees in front of the Pico Mundo High School, a large banner declared GO, MONSTERS!

When I attended PMHS, the sports teams were called the Braves. Each cheerleader wore a headband with a feather. Subsequently, this was deemed an insult to local Indian tribes, though none of the Indians ever complained.

School administrators engineered the replacement of Braves with Gila Monsters. The reptile was said to be an ideal choice because it symbolized the endangered environment of the Mojave.

In football, basketball, baseball, track, and swimming, the Monsters haven’t equaled the winning record of the Braves. Most people blame it on the coaches.

I used to believe that all educated people knew an asteroid might one day strike the earth, destroying human civilization. But perhaps a lot of them haven’t heard about it yet.

As though reading my mind, Chief Porter said, “Could’ve been worse. The Mojave yellow-banded stink bug is an endangered species. They could’ve called the team Stink Bugs.”

“Left,” I suggested, and he turned at the next intersection.

“I figured if Simon was ever coming back here,” Chief Porter said, “he would’ve done it four months ago, when he was released from Folsom. We ran special patrols in the Jessup neighborhood during October and November.”

“Danny said they were taking precautions at the house. Better door locks. An upgraded security system.”

“So Simon was smart enough to wait. Gradually everyone let down their guard. Fact is, though, when the cancer took Carol, I didn’t expect Simon would come back to Pico Mundo.”

Seventeen years previously, jealous to the point of obsession, Simon Makepeace had become convinced that his young wife had been having an affair. He’d been wrong.

Certain that assignations had occurred in his own home, when he had been at work, Simon tried to coax the name of any male visitor from his then four-year-old son. Because there had been no visitor to identify, Danny had not been able to oblige. So Simon picked up the boy by the shoulders and tried to shake the name out of him.

Danny’s brittle bones snapped. He suffered fractures of two ribs, the left clavicle, the right humerus, the left humerus, the right radius, the right ulna, three metacarpals in his right hand.

When he couldn’t shake a name out of his son, Simon threw the boy down in disgust, breaking his right femur, his right tibia, and every tarsal in his right foot.

Carol had been grocery shopping at the time. Returning home, she found Danny alone, unconscious, bleeding, a shattered humerus protruding through the flesh of his right arm.

Aware that charges of child abuse would be filed against him, Simon had fled. He understood that his freedom might be measured in hours.

With less to lose and therefore with less to constrain him, he set out to take vengeance on the man whom he most suspected of being his wife’s lover. Because no lover existed, he merely perpetrated a second act of mindless violence.

Lewis Hallman, whom Carol had dated a few times before her marriage, was Simon’s prime suspect. Driving his Ford Explorer, he stalked Hallman until he caught him on foot, then ran him down and killed him.

In court, he claimed that his intention had been to frighten Lewis, not to murder him. This assertion seemed to be contradicted by the fact that after running down his victim, Simon had turned and driven over him a second time.

He expressed remorse. And self-loathing. He wept. He offered no defense except emotional immaturity. More than once, sitting at the defendant’s table, he prayed.

The prosecution failed to get him on second-degree murder. He was convicted of manslaughter.

If that particular jury could be reconstituted and polled, no doubt it would unanimously support the change from Braves to Gila Monsters.

“Turn right at the next corner,” I advised the chief.

As the consequence of a conviction for assault involving a violent altercation in prison, Simon Makepeace had served his full sentence for manslaughter and a shorter term for the second offense. He had not been paroled; therefore, on release, he had been free to consort with whomever he wished and to go wherever he wanted.

If he had returned to Pico Mundo, he was now holding his son captive.

In letters he had written from prison, Simon had judged Carol’s divorce and second marriage to be infidelity and betrayal. Men with his psychological profile frequently concluded that if they couldn’t have the women they wanted, then no one would have them.

Cancer had taken Carol from Wilbur Jessup and from Simon; but Simon might still have felt a need to punish the man who had taken his role as her lover.

Wherever Danny might be, he was in a desperate place.

Although neither as psychologically nor as physically vulnerable as he had been seventeen years ago, Danny was no match for Simon Makepeace. He could not protect himself.

“Let’s drive through Camp’s End,” I suggested.

Camp’s End is a ragged, burnt-out neighborhood where bright dreams go to die and dark dreams are too often born. Other trouble had more than once led me to those streets.

As the chief accelerated and drove with greater purpose, I said, “If it’s Simon, he won’t put up with Danny very long. I’m surprised he didn’t kill him at the house, when he killed Dr. Jessup.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Simon never quite believed he could have produced a son with a birth defect. The osteogenesis imperfecta suggested to him that Carol had cheated on him.”

“So every time he looks at Danny …” The chief didn’t need to finish the thought. “The boy’s a wise-ass, but I’ve always liked him.”

Descending toward the west, the moon had yellowed. Soon it might be orange, a jack-o’-lantern out of season.

7

EVEN STREET LAMPS WITH TIME-OCHERED glass, even moonlight failed to smooth a layer of romance over the crumbling stucco, the warped clapboard, and the peeling paint of the houses in Camp’s End. A porch roof swagged. A zigzag of tape bandaged a wound in window glass.

While I waited for inspiration, Chief Porter cruised the streets as if conducting a standard patrol.

“Since you’ve not been working at the Grille, how do you fill the hours these days?”

“I read quite a bit.”

“Books are a blessing.”

“And I think a lot more than I used to.”

“I wouldn’t recommend thinking too much.”

“I don’t carry it so far as brooding.”

“Even pondering is sometimes too far.”

Next door to an unweeded lawn lay a dead lawn, which itself lay next door to a lawn in which grass had long ago been replaced by pea gravel.

Skilled landscapers had rarely touched the trees in this neighborhood. What had not been permanently misshapen by bad pruning had instead been allowed to grow unchecked.

“I wish I could believe in reincarnation,” I said.

“Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don’t make me go through high school again.”

I said, “If there’s something we want so bad in this life but we can’t have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.”

“Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness, and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we’re here to learn.”

“You once told me that we’re here to eat all the good Mexican food we can,” I reminded him, “and when we’ve had our fill, it’s time to move on.”

“I don’t recollect being taught that in Sunday school,” Chief Porter said. “So it’s possible I’d consumed two or three bottles of Negra Modelo before that theological insight occurred to me.”

“It would be hard to accept a life here in Camp’s End without some bitterness,” I said.

Pico Mundo is a prosperous town. But no degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.

Where an owner showed pride in his home, the fresh paint, the upright picket fence, the well-barbered shrubs only emphasized the debris, decay, and dilapidation that characterized the surrounding properties. Each island of order did not offer hope of a community-wide transformation, but instead seemed to be a dike that could not long hold back an inevitably rising tide of chaos.

These mean streets made me uneasy, but though we cruised them for some time, I didn’t feel that we were close to Danny and Simon.

At my suggestion, we headed for a more welcoming neighborhood, and the chief said, “There’s worse lives than those in Camp’s End. Some are even content here. Probably some Camp Enders could teach us a thing or two about happiness.”

“I’m happy,” I assured him.

For a block or so, he didn’t say anything. Then: “You’re at peace, son. There’s a big difference.”

“Which would be what?”

“If you’re still, and if you don’t hope too much, peace will come to you. It’s a grace. But you have to choose happiness.”

“It’s that easy, is it? Just choose?”

“Making the decision to choose isn’t always easy.”

I said, “This sounds like you’ve been thinking too much.”

“We sometimes take refuge in misery, a strange kind of comfort.”

Although he paused, I said nothing.

He continued: “But no matter what happens in life, happiness is there for us, waiting to be embraced.”

“Sir, did this come to you after three bottles of Negra Modelo, or was it four?”

“It must have been three. I never drink as many as four.”

By the time we were circling through the heart of town, I had decided that for whatever reason, psychic magnetism wasn’t working. Maybe I needed to be driving. Maybe the shock from the Taser had temporarily shorted my psychic circuits.

Or maybe Danny was already dead, and subconsciously I resisted being drawn to him, only to find him brutalized.

At my request, at 4:04 A.M. according to the Bank of America clock, Chief Porter pulled to the curb to let me out at the north side of Memorial Park, around which the streets define a town square.

“Looks like I’m not going to be any help with this one,” I said.

In the past, I’ve had reason to suspect that when a situation involves people especially close to me, about whom I have the most intense personal feelings, my gifts do not serve me as well as they do when there is even a slight degree of emotional detachment. Maybe feelings interfere with psychic function, as also might a migraine headache or drunkenness.

Danny Jessup was as close to me as a brother could have been. I loved him.

Assuming that my paranormal talents have a higher source than genetic mutation, perhaps the explanation for uneven function is more profound. This limitation might be for the purpose of preventing the exploitation of these talents toward selfish ends; but more likely, fallibility is meant to keep me humble.

If humility is the lesson, I have learned it well. More than a few days have dawned in which an awareness of my limitations filled me with a gentle resignation that, till afternoon or even twilight, kept me in bed as effectively as would have shackles and hundred-pound lead weights.

As I opened the car door, Chief Porter said, “You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”

“No, thank you, sir. I’m awake, fully charged, and hungry. I’m going to be the first through the door for breakfast at the Grille.”

“They don’t open till six.”

I got out, bent down, looked in at him. “I’ll sit in the park and feed the pigeons for a while.”

“We don’t have pigeons.”

“Then I’ll feed the pterodactyls.”

“What you’re gonna do is sit in the park and think.”

“No, sir, I promise I won’t.”

I closed the door. The patrol car pulled away from the curb.

After watching the chief drive out of sight, I entered the park, sat on a bench, and broke my promise.

8

AROUND THE TOWN SQUARE, CAST-IRON lampposts, painted black, were crowned with three globes each.

At the center of Memorial Park, a handsome bronze statue of three soldiers—dating from World War II—was usually illuminated, but at the moment it stood in darkness. The spotlight had probably been vandalized.

Recently a small but determined group of citizens had been demanding that the statue be replaced, on the grounds that it was militaristic. They wanted Memorial Park to memorialize a man of peace.

The suggestions for the subject of the new memorial ranged from Gandhi to Woodrow Wilson, to Yasir Arafat.

Someone had proposed that a statue of Gandhi should be modeled after Ben Kingsley, who had played the great man in the movie. Then perhaps the actor could be induced to be present at the unveiling.

This had led Terri Stambaugh, my friend and the owner of the Grille, to suggest that a statue of Gandhi should be modeled after Brad Pitt in the hope that he would then attend the ceremony, which would be a big deal by Pico Mundo standards.

At the same town meeting, Ozzie Boone had offered himself as the subject of the memorial. “Men of my formidable diameter are never sent to war,” he said, “and if everyone were as fat as I am, there could be no armies.”

Some had taken this as mockery, but others had found merit in the idea.

Perhaps someday the current statue will be replaced by one of a very fat Gandhi modeled after Johnny Depp, but for the moment, the soldiers remain. In darkness.

Old jacarandas, drenched with purple flowers come spring, line the main streets downtown, but Memorial Park boasts magnificent phoenix palms; under the fronds of one, I settled on a bench, facing the street. The nearest street lamp was not near, and the tree shaded me from the increasingly ruddy moonlight.

Although I sat in gloom, Elvis found me. He materialized in the act of sitting beside me.

He was dressed in an army uniform dating from the late 1950s. I can’t say with any authority whether it was actually a uniform from his service in the military or if it might have been a costume that he wore in G.I. Blues, which had been filmed, edited, and released within five months of his leaving the army in 1960.

All the other lingering dead of my acquaintance appear in the clothes in which they died. Only Elvis manifests in whatever wardrobe he fancies at the moment.

Perhaps he meant to express solidarity with those who wished to preserve the statue of the soldiers. Or he just thought he looked cool in army khaki, which he did.

Few people have lived so publicly that their lives can reliably be chronicled day by day. Elvis is one of those.

Because even his mundane activities have been so thoroughly documented, we can be all but certain that he never visited Pico Mundo while alive. He never passed through on a train, never dated a girl from here, and had no other connection whatsoever with our town.

Why he should choose to haunt this well-fried corner of the Mojave instead of Graceland, where he died, I did not know. I had asked him, but the rule of silence among the dead was one that he would not break.

Occasionally, usually on an evening when we sit in my living room and listen to his best music, which we do a lot lately, I try to engage him in conversation. I’ve suggested that he use a form of sign language to reply: thumbs-up for yes, thumbs-down for no. …

He just looks at me with those heavy-lidded, half-bruised eyes, even bluer than they appear in his movies, and keeps his secrets to himself. Often he’ll smile and wink. Or give me a playful punch on the arm. Or pat my knee.

He’s an affable apparition.

Here on the park bench, he raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if to say that my propensity for getting in trouble never ceased to amaze him.

I used to think that he was reluctant to leave this world because people here had been so good to him, had loved him in such numbers. Even though he had lost his way badly as a performer and had become addicted to numerous prescription medications, he had been at the height of his fame when he died, and only forty-two.

Lately, I’ve evolved another theory. When I have the nerve, I’ll propose it to him.

If I’ve got it right, I think he’ll weep when he hears it. He sometimes does weep.

Now the King of Rock ’n’ Roll leaned forward on the bench, peered west, and cocked his head as if listening.

I heard nothing but the faint thrum of wings as bats fished the air above for moths.

Still gazing along the empty street, Elvis raised both hands palms-up and made come-to-me gestures, as though inviting someone to join us.

From a distance, I heard an engine, a vehicle larger than a car, approaching.

Elvis winked at me, as if to say that I was engaged in psychic magnetism even if I didn’t realize it. Instead of cruising in search, perhaps I had settled where I knew—somehow—that my quarry would cruise to me.

Two blocks away, a dusty white-paneled Ford van turned the corner. It came toward us slowly, as if the driver might be looking for something.

Elvis put a hand on my arm, warning me to remain seated in the shrouding shadows of the phoenix palm.

Light from a street lamp washed the windshield, sluiced through the interior of the van as it passed us. Behind the wheel was the snaky man who had Tasered me.

Without realizing that I moved, I had sprung to my feet in surprise.

My movement didn’t catch the driver’s attention. He drove past and turned left at the corner.

I ran into the street, leaving Sergeant Presley on the bench and the bats to their airborne feast.

9

THE VAN SWUNG OUT OF SIGHT AT THE corner, and I ran in its windless wake, not because I am brave, which I am not, neither because I am addicted to danger, which I also am not, but because inaction is not the mother of redemption.

When I reached the cross street, I saw the Ford disappearing into an alley half a block away. I had lost ground. I sprinted.

When I reached the mouth of the alley, the way ahead lay dark, the street brighter behind me, with the consequence that I stood as silhouetted as a pistol-range target, but it wasn’t a trap. No one shot at me.

Before I arrived, the van had turned left and vanished into an intersecting passage. I knew where it had gone only because the wall of the corner building blushed with the backwash of taillights.