Carnival of Shadows (17 page)

He should have made time to research it. He could have so easily consulted a text at the library that morning, but he had not. Had he
really
not wanted to know? Had he actually been scared to find out what it meant?

What could he tell these two old men? What could he even say? It made no sense. None at all.

“Agent Travis?” Beck asked. “You look like someone walked over your grave.”

Travis did his best to explain. He had sleepwalked, that was all he could say. He had risen in the night, and unaware of what he was doing, he had typed this very word on a single sheet of paper and left it right there in his typewriter. Or the other possibility… that someone else had done it. He remembered how he had felt that morning, the dull ache in his head, the lack of clarity in his thoughts. And then he considered yet another possibility, something even more disturbing. What if he had been drugged? What if someone had crept into his room and drugged him in order to leave that message on his typewriter?

For a few moments, his mind was utterly quiet.

“I see that this has come as a great shock to you,” Saxon said, “but then again, perhaps it is not so much of a surprise.”

“More than a shock, Professor Saxon,” Travis said. “It’s beyond coincidence.”

Beck smiled. “We have age and experience on our side, Agent Travis, and perhaps some small understanding of the nature of the human mind, certainly when it comes to the field of education and retention of information.”

“I don’t understand…”

Beck laughed, almost sardonically. “You said you drove down from Seneca Falls?”

“Yes, I did, this morning.”

“A little ironic.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Roman philosopher, Seneca. Didn’t he say that luck was nothing more than the coincidence of preparation and opportunity? You seem to have been very lucky in finding us.”

“I don’t understand,” Travis said, still confused, still trying to come to terms with what was happening to his logical thought processes. It felt as if events were conspiring to break him down, to get him to explain something that possessed no rational explanation.

Trust you spelt well…

“Sometimes there are things that can be explained, and sometimes there are not,” Beck said. “I guess the nature of your work requires you to be a man of routines and habits, of logic, of concise and complete explanations. I can also see that you are greatly troubled by this. Fortunately, this is one of those situations where an explanation is almost too simple.”

“Too simple?”

“Yes, of course. You went to school, did you not?”

“Of course.”

“You say that as if going to school is the most ordinary thing in the world. You appreciate that there are a great many more people in this world who do not go to school than those who do?”

“In America—”

“Even in America, Agent Travis, your education depends a great deal upon who you are, where you’re from, the color of your skin. However, fortunately you are white and not without some intelligence, and therefore you were able to go to school.”

“Yes, I went to school.”

“How much information can the human mind absorb and retain, Agent Travis?”

“Well, the brain is—”

“Not the brain, the mind,” Beck said. “The brain is a few pounds of hamburger, and I am not sure that I like the idea of my intelligence and character and personality being attributed to a half dozen pounds of hamburger, do you? Just as I do not wish to consider that a muscle in my chest is responsible for who I love.”

“The brain, the mind… they are the same thing,” Travis said.

“We will agree to differ, Agent Travis. Regardless, the question stands.”

“How much information can the human mind retain?”

“Yes.”

“I have no idea, Professor Beck.”

“A human being can learn ten languages, study music, philosophy, read through a library of books, visit a thousand places, and the capacity of the mind is never even stretched. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course,” Travis replied.

“Did you ever study astronomy, perhaps? Did you ever take a lesson in the physical sciences where someone spoke of the universe, the stars, the heavens?”

“I never studied astronomy, no, but I studied other things, physical sciences, I’m sure.”

“Did any ever speak of Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Orion, nebulas, asteroids, such things as this?”

“Yes, of course. I have heard of all of those things.”

“Well, is it not possible that someone might have shown you some diagrams of the constellations and given their names?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“So there is your answer, Agent Travis. The mind absorbs; it retains. You think you have forgotten, but you never really forget anything. The only thing you forget is
how
to remember.”

Travis paused in consideration of Beck’s explanation. “So you’re saying there’s a possibility that I knew that the diagram was this constellation all along, and it just took some time for that information to surface?”

Saxon leaned forward. “You know, it has been said that if you simply asked for a detail about someone’s life every day… if you just asked them once each morning for that same detail, they would eventually remember it. It could be the most precise and specific detail you could ever imagine, something so unimportant there is no way the person could recall it, but it is there, and if you ask for it, you will get it.”

“But typing in my sleep?”

“We dream, we walk, we write, we have conversations in our sleep, Agent Travis. The body sleeps, but the mind and the spirit are always awake.”

“What you say makes some degree of sense,” Travis said. “The fact that I could have remembered that information, but it unsettles me nevertheless.”

“And that is because you are a man of logic and pragmatism and evidence and facts. However, a fact is only a fact in relative terms. There is a huge amount about the mind and life that we have never even begun to grasp, let alone understand.”

“So now you need to find out what kind of person has a tattoo of a constellation on their body,” Beck said. “And if it is Eastern European, then you could do worse than go up to the university and see the head of foreign studies. That would be a point to start, at least.”

“I’ll do that,” Travis said.

“I’ll call ahead and tell them you’re coming,” Saxon added.

And so it was, amid the banter between the old men, interrupted solely as they disagreed about the best route to take to the university, that Travis collected his hat and saw himself out of the house. He sat for a little while in the car, still deeply disturbed about what had happened, though reassured to be perhaps one step closer to identifying the man that lay stiff and cold in the Seneca Falls morgue.

Travis felt disturbed; more than that, he felt
invaded
. That was how he’d felt in the company of both Doyle and the Mironescu woman. It felt to him that each new aspect of this case was testing the very seams of his existence. He was hearing things that were not spoken, remembering things that had long been forgotten, finding that the memories of his own history were seeking him out and cornering him. He knew he would have to remember all of these things, even the very last time he’d seen his mother, the certainty of her death in the room as if another person had indeed been present.

That would come in its own time, but as he drove across to the university, he felt he could no longer avoid the truth of what had happened in Grand Island, a part of his life that would always and forever be Esther’s.

12

Michael Travis would not live with Esther Faulkner for much beyond three and a half years, but those three and a half years would influence and affect his view of the world far more than the previous years he’d spent with his parents. What those three and half years would do for Esther, well, that was another story entirely.

The Grand Island house was a small affair by any standard. It needed a lick of paint inside and out, and the wiring was affected by damp from the basement. Odd patches of mildew appeared in the corners of the ceiling when it rained, suggesting holes in the roof and rotten attic timbers, but it had been solidly built and would stand resolute even if nothing was done to improve it. There was a sitting room, a kitchen, and a narrow utility room on the lower floor, whereas upstairs provided two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage space filled with everything that had no official place elsewhere.

It seemed, from what Michael could observe, that Esther had made a real effort to make him welcome. The house was clean, his assigned room had laundered sheets, curtains, a couple of threadbare blankets that had seen better days, and a rug on the floor upon which was some kind of faded seascape. On the wall was a painting of an elderly man with a pipe, the brushwork somehow clumsy and inarticulate, but there was an expression captured that seemed uncannily real.

“That is my grandfather on my father’s side,” Esther told him. “My mother painted that. Only thing I have of hers.”

“So I am related to him, right?” Michael asked.

“Yes, very distantly, I s’pose. Not by blood, of course, but yes, you’re related.” Esther paused, and then she laughed, and for just a moment Michael saw the girl that she must have once been.

There was no doubt that Esther was a very attractive woman. No doubt at all. Whereas Janette Travis was petite and brunette, almost demure in an understated and fragile way, Esther was altogether bigger, not only physically but in her personality. Esther’s hair was a mountain of uncontrollable blond curls that she piled on her head as best she could. Of an evening, she would unpin the whole affair and let it do as it wished. She looked better that way, or at least Michael felt so. Esther wasn’t beautiful in a predictable and obvious way, but there was an alluring sexuality in her manner that went much deeper than her skin.

Years later, Michael Travis would sit in a movie theater in Kansas City and watch the first half of
A Streetcar Named Desire.
He saw there on the screen both Janette and Esther, as if each of the significant women in his early life had subsumed some part of Stella, some part of Blanche, and made it their own. He could not bear to watch the entire film, feeling as though something within himself was being twisted painfully tighter and ever tighter. A tourniquet on his heart, his soul perhaps.

But for now, standing there in the room that Esther had made up for him, a thousand unasked questions on his lips, Michael knew nothing of Tennessee Williams, nor of what life would be between that moment and a movie theater in Kansas City, and he closed his eyes and clenched his fists and held his breath for just a moment.

For Esther, something else happened.

From the moment she had seen the young man standing there in the reception offices of the Nebraska State Welfare Institution, she knew it was no longer about the money. The letter she’d received from Howard Redding, the letter that clearly detailed her duties as legal guardian until Michael reached eighteen (…
to provide adequate and acceptable shelter and nourishment, provision of medical aid or treatment as required in the event of accident or injury, moral guidance, accessibility to recognized and accepted academic and/or educational tutelage as deemed by law to be appropriate for the child in your care
…) had slipped from her mind. Even the addendum included with the letter, the way it nonchalantly informed her that the sum of fifteen dollars and forty-five cents per month had been approved for her care of Michael Travis, seemed irrelevant.

Esther Faulkner had never seen Michael before, and yet there seemed to be something so familiar about him. Whatever was happening, she felt it in her heart, her mind, her soul, right through her body to the tips of her fingers. This was a special thing, and she could not remember ever feeling like it before.

In those few moments as she stood behind Michael—noticing the way he looked at the painting on the wall, the bed beneath, the way he glanced back at her, almost nervous, anticipatory—she wanted to reach out and enclose him with everything she possessed.

She wanted Michael to understand that she would do anything she could to keep him safe, to make things somehow better, to counterbalance the effect of the terrible things he must have already suffered in such a few short years.

Michael took a few tentative steps forward. He reached out and pressed the edge of the mattress, almost as if he were determining its capacity to stand his weight. He turned and sat down.

“You know my mother is in prison, right?” he asked Esther.

Esther nodded. She felt like she was going to cry.

“I haven’t seen her.”

“I know,” Esther replied. “Mr. Redding told me.”

“Mr. Redding?”

“He’s the man from the State Welfare Department. He’s the one who found me and asked me to take you in.”

“Can I go and see her?”

“I would think so, yes. I am sure you’re allowed to go and see her.”

“And I want to go to the house in Flatwater, too,” Michael added. “I want to get my things.”

“Mr. Redding said you could go there, but you couldn’t take anything from the house. He said that everything was the property of the state until the trial was over and the legal process had ended.”

“He means that I can’t have anything from the house until she’s dead, right?”

The sudden rush of emotion was understandable, unavoidable and terrifying. Esther felt as if the world had suddenly filled her chest with all the pain it could muster. Her clenched fist flew to her mouth, and she bit her knuckle to prevent herself from crying out.

Michael, however, just looked at her blankly, as if he had made some comment about the prospect of rain.

“Right?” he echoed.

Esther nodded just once, knowing full well that this—beyond any reasonable doubt—was the fate that awaited Janette Travis. She did not know the full details of the case and did not care to know. Howard Redding had informed her only of those things that he’d felt absolutely necessary. Esther understood that there were those who were inexorably drawn to the morbid details of the dark deeds of others, and then there were those who just simply could not face them. Esther was in the latter category, almost as if such acts of violence and mayhem would serve to remind her that life was raw and angry and possessive of some innate madness in all its aspects and facets. If you went looking for such madness, you were likely to find it, and it was hard enough to cope already. So Howard, gentleman that he was, alluded to the killing of Jimmy Travis as
this most unfortunate incident
and Janette’s fate as
the penalty of the law
. It was better that way. It meant that both of them could make believe that they were dealing with something far less threatening and dangerous.

But Michael had not hidden from the reality of what had happened. Michael had been there to see it in all its 3D Technicolor glory. He had seen the knife in his mother’s hand. He had seen the handle of it protruding from his father’s punctured eye. He had seen the way Jimmy Travis had stared at him, his one and only son, as if—even from the gates of death—Jimmy had looked back from eternity with some sort of unspoken promise on his lips.

Will haunt you forever, kiddo. Gonna be in your dreams, your nightmares, your waking thoughts… always and forever… and though your bitch of a mother might burn in hell for what she did, that won’t be enough for me. Wanna see you suffer too, kiddo. Wanna see you suffer if only to make her feel worse…

“R-right,” Esther said, and heard her voice crack with grief.

“Will you come with me?” Michael asked, and for one dreadful, petrifying moment, Esther believed that he was asking her to be there when they killed his mother, to watch as they fired a thousand million volts of electricity through her body and burned her to pieces from the inside out.

“Wha—” she started.

“To Flatwater,” Michael said. “Will you come with me to Flatwater and to see my mother in the prison?”

“Yes, of course,” Esther said without thinking, so utterly, indescribably relieved that he was not asking her what she’d thought he was asking her. It was then that she understood that she could no longer hide from the truth of what had happened. She would have to go and see Janette, and she would have to stand in that house where the terrible thing had happened. She could not backtrack; she could not now decline Michael’s request. She had said she would go, and that was that.

Swiftly, as if pushing aside what she was really feeling was something she had practiced too many times, she changed the subject.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

Michael looked at her, hesitance in his expression.

“Did they institutionalize your stomach, young man?” she asked, smiling. “Here we can eat whenever we like.”

“Sure, I could eat something,” Michael said.

“So what do you want?”

“Whatever’s easiest, Miss Faulkner. I don’t want to be any trou—”

He was cut short by her laughter. “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “That’s gonna have to stop right here and now, Michael Travis. My name is Esther, not Miss Faulkner, just Esther and nothing more nor less than that, okay?”

Michael smiled. It was good to hear someone laughing so unashamedly and not at the expense of someone else’s dignity, as had so often been the case at State Welfare. Things had happened there, bad things, wicked things, and he was doing his best not to remember them.

“So, what do you want to eat?”

“You eating too?” he asked.

“Sure am.”

“Then I will eat whatever you’re having,” he said.

“Well, I s’pose that makes things simple,” she said. She paused for a moment, just looking at him, thinking to herself that he was really a very good-looking young man, that he would be quite the heartbreaker in his own way, and she felt an odd and awkward stirring among the miasma of emotions that had so vigorously assaulted her since she’d first seen him standing there in the corridor of that terrible, terrible place. Was there guilt there? Some small shadow of guilt for thinking such a thought about such a young man?

“You want to come down and help me?” she asked.

“Sure thing,” Michael said, and then—almost as an afterthought, perhaps to begin getting used to something that was sure going to take some getting used to—he added, “Sure thing, Esther.”

He rose from the bed and walked toward her. Esther held out her hand and Michael took it. She led him along the hallway, down the stairs, and through to the kitchen.

“I think things are gonna be just swell between us,” she said as she opened the refrigerator and took out some cold chicken and a bowl of salad. “I reckon you and I are gonna get along just fine an’ dandy.”

“I hope so,” Michael said. “I want to get along, Esther. I really do. I don’t want to be trouble to anyone no more.”

She turned then, and she looked at the expression on his face—the way he seemed so innocent, so naive, yet tainted by some deeply disturbing shadow, a shadow so profound and dark that it would hang over him for the rest of his life. How did you even begin to deal with such a thing? Everyone he met, every friend he made, every personal relationship he instigated would find that wound and push its fingers deep inside.

Esther started crying then, and the tears came fast and furious, and for a moment she believed she might just fall to the ground.

Michael was beside her then, and he put his arms around her and pulled her close.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “It’s okay… It’s okay, Esther. It’s gonna be fine. We’ll cope. We’ll do just fine an’ dandy, like you said. We’re gonna make it…”

And Michael, his heart as hollow as a balloon, paid lip service to consolation and sympathy and wondered if he would ever be able to put into words how truly empty he felt.

Esther’s tears soaked through the cotton of his shirt, and he felt their warmth, and he understood what they meant, but there was no connection at all.

If you had something, even something so intangible as an emotion, then life would just take it from you anyway.

Michael had decided to feel nothing, to remain uninvolved, to keep all of life at arm’s length and just observe it from the sidelines.

It was safer that way.

Within a matter of days, Michael was enrolled at the closest high school that would take him, and he set himself to catching up the months of study he’d missed while in State Welfare.

Initially, he was treated with a degree of suspicion, as if word of his background had telephoned into something far more threatening and dangerous than it was.

Maybe the kids believed him a criminal, the
juvy
guy, and while they were arranging sleepovers and drive-in trips, Michael was never asked nor included. He was not aware of missing the Saturday-night drive-in showings of
Girl Crazy
with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney or
The Constant Nymph
with Joan Fontaine, but he was aware of the way in which conversations would drift awkwardly into silence as he passed these clusters of kids—the girls kind of coy, the boys seemingly bluff and defensive—in corridors and outside classes. He did not understand why he was being excluded, nor did he ask.

Within only a couple of weeks, he was called in to see his homeroom teacher, Mr. Julius, for an
informal word
.

“You seem lonely, Michael,” he said, easing himself back in his chair and stoking his pipe.

“Lonely, sir?”

“You don’t seem to have any real friends, no one you’re close to.”

“I’m fine, sir. Really.”

“Are you, Michael? Are you really fine, or are you just saying that?”