Phantom of Riverside Park (23 page)

“I ‘member, Mommy. He’s Mr. Kitty Hammer.
See. I drawed his picture.”

Nicky help up his latest crayon portrait
which had captured the stranger’s red neck tie and swarthy skin to
a tee.

Celine started hollering again, and Nicky
leaned over to whisper, “Is she a witch, Mommy?”

“I think so,” Elizabeth whispered back. “All
she needs is a broom.”

Nicky put both hands over his mouth to hold
in his giggles while Elizabeth gathered his art supplies. She was
going to put him in a safe spot behind the glass counter, and she
didn’t care what Celine said.

o0o

Elizabeth and Nicky would be home any minute
now, and Lord, help him, what was she going to say about the fire
truck parked in their front yard? Not to mention the charred stove
and the burnt paper peeling off the walls?

“It’s a good thing you called us when you
did, Mr. Jennings. Otherwise this whole house would have gone up
like a tinderbox.”

The fireman couldn’t have been nicer, but
Thomas was still shaking like a leaf. All because of a cup of
soup.

That’s all he’d wanted. Some soup and
crackers. He’d got off the couch about three o’clock, feeling some
better, he was glad to see. He’d opened a can of chicken noodle
soup and set it on the stove to heat, then he’d gone back to the
couch for a minute. Just to catch his breath, a little.

The next thing you know, smoke was billowing
around him and the whole wall behind the stove was on fire.

He nearly died on the spot.

“I didn’t mean to go to sleep on the couch,”
he said.

“You woke up in time, Mr. Jennings. That’s
the main thing. Some folks aren’t so fortunate.”

Maybe he’d be fortunate enough that the fire
truck would be gone by the time Elizabeth got home, and he’d have
time to scrub the stove and the wall with Ajax. It wouldn’t fix the
mess he’d made, but it might make things appear less
disastrous.

“Papa!” He could hear Nicky yelling clear out
in the yard. It was already too late. He burst through the kitchen
door, eyes big as saucers. “Can I ride the fire truck?”

Elizabeth was right behind him, taking
everything in with one glance. “Oh, Papa,” she said.

“Just put me in a home, that’s all.” He was
ashamed of how his lips quivered. “Just put me in a home.”

Her arms came around him, and he could feel
her soft rounded flesh pressing against his bones. He’s getting
skinny as a racer snake with every bit of muscle he once had now
shriveled up. Just one more sign of old age.

“Nobody’s going to put you in a home,” she
whispered fiercely. “Not now. Not ever. And I don’t want to hear
another word about it.”

“Papa, how come the stove’s black?” Nicky
said.

Thomas had his family, so full of life and
love they made the old nearly-burned-down shanty feel like a
palace. What more did a man need? He pulled himself up tall and
proud. “I did a little redecorating while you were gone.”

Early evening was David’s favorite time of
day. The deep blue shadows were kind not only to him but to the
gardens he loved. Over the long hot summer they’d gone almost
barren. In spite of the efforts of the gardener and a very good
sprinkler system, the Carolina jasmine David had planted to climb
over the pergola had hardly grown at all and the lace-cap
hydrangeas nearby looked droopy and forlorn.

Even the trees had not escaped the drought.
The giant elm that had been on the farm as long as he could
remember was already casting off its leaves in an effort to save
itself.

David had started outside to inspect his
gardens when the teenaged boy who sometimes helped McKenzie at the
stables entered the pergola with a nubile girl. Probably with
McKenzie’s permission. Or maybe not. Jonsey Clark was seventeen and
full of daring.

Jonsey’s arm stole around his girlfriend and
David watched from the window transfixed, doing what he did best,
viewing life from afar. The burden of isolation had never seemed
heavier.

For one brief stolen moment David had known
the feel of Elizabeth in his arms. What would it be like to fall
asleep at night and have someone on the other side of the bed,
someone he could curl into for warmth, for comfort, for the simple
rightness of the thing? He would never know.

Turning his back to the window, David went to
his favorite chair, a big leather wingback his Grandfather Snead
had bought at an auction over in Pontotoc. He remembered sitting in
that same chair as a child, sitting on his grandfather’s lap and
listening to him tell stories about how he came to be called Hooter
and why he started selling baby chicks in the back room of his feed
and seed store and how he came to acquire the rusted out old
watering can that had been sitting on the top shelf above the cash
register as long as David could remember. Weaving a web that
connected threads of the past with the present, Grandfather Snead
grounded David in time and place and gave him a sense of his own
destiny as well as his heritage.

Telling family stories was a tradition that
dated back before the Civil War, and now the thread was broken.
David would pass on neither stories nor genes. Perhaps McKenzie
would. The only hope lay with her.

David turned his attention to the library.
Books lined three walls, a collection that included history,
philosophy, architecture, medicine, law, great literature and
current bestsellers. There were books that told you how to succeed
in business, how to live and even how to die.

All of a sudden David was struck with an
unutterable sadness. How could he learn to die well when he’d
hardly even lived? He grabbed the remote control and snapped on the
TV. He wasn’t an avid fan of TV. Sometimes though, it was exactly
the anesthesia he needed.

He surfed the channels until he found an old
movie classic that never failed to move him to tears: “Now Voyager”
with Bette Davis.

One of the scenes that most fascinated him
was Bette Davis’ transformation from ugly duckling to seductive
beauty. He never saw it without a wrenching in his gut, a sharp tug
that tore lose memories of the long-lost days of his youth. Before
Iraq. Before innocence was gunned down and dreams shrapneled.
Before Sgt. David Lassiter led his patrol into ambush.

Gone. All gone.

And now this. Now Elizabeth and Nicky. His
mission with them was accomplished, and they were gone, out of this
torturous existence he called life.

And wasn’t that what he deserved? He’d lost
the right to be caretaker for others. Except from a distance.
Always from a distance.

The black mood descended on David and
wouldn’t let go. Even when he heard the library door open and knew
it would be McKenzie coming in to check on him under the guise of
saying goodnight, his dark spirits refused to lift.

David snapped off the television and was left
sitting in the dark.

“I give you fair warning,” he said. “I’m not
fit company for man or beast.”

“Sisters are the exception, I hope.” McKenzie
snapped on the lights and swept through the room like a good stiff
spring breeze.

“Sit down, McKenzie. I want to talk to
you.”

“This sounds omnibus,” McKenzie said,
resorting to a game they used to play when one of them needed
cheering--deliberate word misuse by substituting a word similar to
the one needed. Tonight David couldn’t even muster a smile. “David,
what’s wrong?”

Nothing and everything.

“I’m going away for a while,” he said.

McKenzie looked relieved. She was accustomed
to David’s abrupt leave-takings and unexpected arrivals.

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. For as long as it takes.”

“To do what?”

“I’m out of answers, McKenzie. All I have are
questions.”

“David, you’re scaring me.”

“I don’t mean to. There’s nothing to be
afraid of. Peter will be in charge while I’m gone.” This was not
unusual. David could stay gone indefinitely and his business would
be in good hands. “If there’s anything you need, all you have to do
is call him.”

McKenzie sniffed. “I won’t call him. I won’t
have to.”

“Still, he would never betray my trust.
That’s why I can vanish at a moment’s notice.”

“Vanish?” McKenzie was out of her chair.
“Where are you going, David?”

He said the first place that popped into his
head. “Italy, for starters. Assisi.”

“One of my favorite spots in the whole world.
I might just go with you.”

“Sorry, McKenzie. This trip has to be solo...
Peter will take care of you while I’m gone.”

“I don’t need
taking care of
.”

McKenzie glared at him, more on general
principles, David figured, than any righteous indignation. David
kissed her goodnight then slipped out the door.

He would leave town tomorrow evening, fly out
in the cover of night, and with the exception of McKenzie and
Peter, nobody would even know he’d gone.

Why would they? How could anybody miss a
shadow? That’s what he was, a man reduced first by circumstances
then later by will to nothing more than a featureless outline that
cast a sudden darkness on whatever it touched.

Maybe he would leave and never come back. He
could live abroad. He could live in one of those shining white
houses with the red-tiled roof in a grape vineyard in the Tuscan
countryside. In the mornings he would pick grapes with the dew
still glistening on their purple skins, and in the evenings he
would sit in the shade of an olive tree older than most countries
and drink good wine while the sun painted his house vermillion.

David stood on the third floor balcony and
watched the moon track across an inky sky sprinkled with stars.
Some people charted their lives by the stars. They turned to the
horoscope first thing every morning seeking direction for their
lives, their loves.

In Italy maybe he’d become one of those
people. He would seek celestial guidance for the best time to plant
grapes, the best time to drive into Verona to watch an outdoor
performance of “Aida” while a full moon rose over the ruins of the
theater. The best time to eat. The best time to sleep. The best
time for everything except love.

Love would never be part of his future.

He went inside and closed the curtains
against the pull of the moon, the spell of the stars. A vast bed of
hand-turned walnut faced the windows. It had been his Granddaddy
Snead’s bed. He’d brought his bride there, conceived his children
there, died there.

All of a sudden it struck David as sad beyond
bearing that the old bed had not seen a woman since he’d assumed
occupancy. It would never provide comfort for a bride, never
witness the conception of a child.

David jerked a quilt off the bed and spread
it on the sofa in the adjoining sitting room. Tomorrow would be
soon enough to pack.

Nicky had more paint on himself than the
kitchen wall, but that was fine with Elizabeth. He was perfect and
happy. That was the main thing.

She still couldn’t get over the fact of her
good fortune. Never mind that she still lived in the same run-down
little house. Never mind that the landlord had had a conniption fit
about Papa nearly burning down the kitchen. Never mind that Celine
had threatened to fire her if she ever brought her child to the
bakery again. Elizabeth had life by the tail. She had the world on
a string. She was sitting on top of the rainbow, and every other
cliche’ she could think of.

She giggled for no good reason, and Nicky
giggled because she did. Papa and Fred, engaged in a lively game of
gin rummy, grinned.

“You two birds are having too much fun over
there,” Uncle Fred said. “Painting’s supposed to be work. Didn’t
you know that?”

“The seven dwarves whistled while they
worked, didn’t they, Nicky?” She winked at Papa, and his face shone
as if it had been scrubbed down with Ajax.

“Whistle while you work, Mommy,” Nicky said,
and she pursed her lips and got out nothing more than a blowing
sound.

“I can’t. You try, Nicky.”

He got no further than puckering up like a
fish before he burst into a fresh fit of giggles.

“Whistle the drawf song, Papa,” Nicky
said.

“I don’t know that song. How about ‘I’ve Been
Working on the Railroad’?”

Nicky made a face. “We not on a railroad,
Papa. We in the kitchen.”

All of a sudden Fred Lollar puckered up and
rendered a perfect version of the work song from the Walt Disney
movie “Snow White.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Papa
said.

“There’s lots of things you don’t know about
me, Thomas Jennings. I’m a man of mystery.”

“Shoot, all you are is a man about to be
beat.” Papa spread out his cards. “Gin,” he said.

“Well, I’ll be doggoned.”

“You ought to been payin’ more attention to
your cards and less to your whistlin’.”

Fred opened his mouth to argue when the
doorbell rang.

Elizabeth couldn’t have been more shocked if
an elephant had walked into the kitchen.

“Are we expecting company, Papa?”

“Not me. My company’s here. What about
you?”

“Quincy’s in Arkansas visiting her son.” The
bell pinged once more. “It’s probably a door-to-door salesman.”

She looked around for something to wipe her
hands on. The kitchen was a mess--newspaper on the floor to catch
the drippings, fresh roller pads scattered everywhere, one paint
can open, the other blocking the narrow passage between kitchen and
den.

“Sit tight, everybody,” Fred said. “I’ll get
rid of him.”

“This is not your house,” Papa said.

“Yeah, but I’m meaner than you, Thomas.”

“Fine, go on, answer the door. Give you a
chance to vent your spleen on somebody besides me.”

When Fred jerked open the front door all
Elizabeth could see was the pointy tip of a pair of white
shoes.