Read Wintertide: A Novel Online
Authors: Debra Doxer
Wintertide: A Novel
WINTERTIDE
Copyright
© 2013 by Debra Doxer
All
Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be
reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored
in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
To my family...Thank
you for everything.
I killed
someone.
I think of him often, much more
than I did before I killed him. You'd be surprised by what goes through your
mind after you've taken a life. I’ve found that inherently evil killers, career
criminals, don't react that way, and I certainly don't include myself in that
group. I really don't consider myself to be a bad person. Although, who does? Maybe
sometimes, when you’re immersed in the moment, the line between right and wrong
simply isn't clear. I know not everyone would agree. Perhaps you have to
experience a stark, naked, moment of choice, to understand the pressures that
can affect your sense of right and wrong, good and bad, in that instant that
seems so pivotal.
My name is Daniel Hiller. I’m a
true crime writer. I'm especially fascinated by those who admit to taking the
lives of others. I've interviewed many of these incarcerated killers and I've
searched for qualities in these men and women that I might possess. I didn’t
have to look far to find one. It’s the mask of normalcy, a calm exterior that
hides the truth within. Much like myself, nothing obvious sets them apart. They're
the sort of people you meet every day. One major difference is that these incarcerated
criminals killed people who mattered. I did not. No one gave a damn about the
person I murdered.
It's hard to know where to begin my
own story. There were so many events, most of which seemed inconsequential at
the time, that made me the person I was that night. I was a boy who felt that
his entire future was at stake. How had it come to that? I still have a hard
time fitting the pieces together, seeing the way they appeared to mesh so
convincingly that night and so many terrible nights before it.
I grew up in a small town on Cape
Cod called South Seaport. Cape Cod is generally thought of as a seasonal place
filled with tourists in the summer, a peninsula covered in sand dunes, peppered
with sprawling resorts and lush, green golf courses, crowded with happy
families on vacation. For three months out of the year, it is exactly like that.
But for the other nine months, South Seaport is just like any other small, poor
American town. Or maybe it's just a bit more bleak because it has those warm,
bustling, colorful months for people to long for during the endless, grey
winter stretches.
The year-rounders don't own most of
the glorious seaside homes. The permanent residents of South Seaport have been
there for many generations in their small clapboard houses set just far enough
back from the narrow winding roadways. Driving through town, you can see tiny
yellow-petaled windmills decorating lawns, automobiles in various states of
disrepair resting on cement blocks in driveways, and the weather-worn faces of
residents simply trying to scrape together enough cash to carry them through to
the summer and the arrival of the tourists with their large wallets.
Winter on Cape Cod is unpredictable.
It can be balmy and uneventful or its frozen winds can cut and chafe without
mercy. Most winters are a combination of both, the calms giving you just enough
time to recover before the next onslaught arrives. I used to think the razor-sharp,
winter winds were nature's payback for the beautiful days of June through
August. I don't believe in paybacks anymore.
From the time I was old enough to
see my parents as they really were, my goal became to leave South Seaport. My
father was a construction foreman. He started off as an independent carpenter,
but he took a job with a large company when he finally admitted that surviving
on his own was impossible. When the weather allowed, he was busy helping to
erect bigger and more elaborate homes for the wealthy seasoners. In the snowy
months, business was slow. Dad had to get a part-time job with an insurance agency
for some of the winter season. He hated every minute of it, and he took no
pains to keep that fact a secret. It was my mother who made him sell insurance
every winter because they needed the money. I remember those fights well.
My mother never had a paying job. I
was her life. I am her only child, all the more precious to her because after
she had me, there were complications and she could have no more children. I
don't believe she had any other interests. Being the center of my mother's
world was both unpleasant and uncomfortable. I withstood it with clench-jawed
silence, all the time working to avoid her while not hurting her fragile
feelings.
As far as I could tell, my parents
were not happy. I'm not sure if they ever were. They are smiling in their
wedding pictures, but everyone smiles in pictures. I would like to believe that
they loved each other at one time, but a happy woman does not bestow all her
attention and affection upon her son unless she receives neither of those
things from her husband. I gave them both what they wanted from me. I allowed
my father to ignore me and my mother to dote on me, the entire time thinking
how wretched their lives were.
Somewhere along the way I began to
associate my parents’ unhappiness, and my own, with the town of South Seaport
itself. I saw the job my father hated and the life my mother didn't have. I
noticed their friends who seemed to be no better off than they were. I saw the
kids that I went to school with, especially Eddie, and I could clearly imagine
all of their lives ending up the way my parents’ had. I decided not me. I was
going to leave South Seaport. I wasn't going to live there the rest of
my
life.
I received a half tuition
scholarship to a large university in Boston. My parents gave me what money they
could, which wasn't much. I worked for the rest during the summers and
throughout the school year. I left for college after senior year and suddenly I
was in the city, with all sorts of people, most of whom seemed fairly exotic to
someone who had spent their entire life in a small New England town. I decided
to be a pre-law major, mainly because it sounded impressive. It meant being in
school three more years after undergraduate studies. It also meant freedom from
South Seaport.
I believe I was the only university
student who dreaded vacations. As each break loomed before me, I would scramble
anxiously for the means to stay in Boston over the weeks of Christmas and
summer. I got odd jobs and roomed with college friends in old run-down apartments.
Even the worst roach-infested places seemed better than going home to the
fights and the hopelessness. My mother was very upset when I remained at school
over the breaks. I found it was much easier to refuse her pleas by telephone, an
act I was never able to follow through with in her presence.
For a year and a half my plan was
successful. I managed to go back to the Cape for only a day here and there,
merely hours, and never overnight, hardly time to see much of anyone. Then I
would have to rush back to school. I never intended to return for a longer
stretch. But toward the end of the fall semester of my second year, my carefully
laid plans for the Christmas break slowly began to unravel. I had to work
during those weeks to earn money for the next semester. That was a given. At
the last moment the friends I had planned to room with pulled out, and the job
I had lined up fell through. The dorms were closed for break, and I certainly
couldn't afford an apartment on my own.
I remember dashing down to the job
board at school the last week of finals. I copied down every listing there and
made several hours worth of telephone calls, but at that late date all the
positions were filled. There was one prominent posting that I did not want to
inquire about. It was a job that my eyes kept wearily returning to as every
other available option seemed to evaporate. A professor who resided in Hyannis
was looking for a student who lived on Cape Cod to work for him at his house
over the break as a research assistant. The pay was unusually high for the
position. I began to weigh the options. Not working for three weeks until
school started again wouldn’t make or break me. I already had two work study
jobs lined up for next semester. But it wasn’t in my makeup to do nothing for
three weeks when I knew I could use the extra money, and Mom had been leaving
messages all week about my coming home for Christmas.
I recognized the professor's name,
Professor Sheffield. I had him for a creative writing class last year. He gave
me a B which was a decent grade for his class. I thought Professor Sheffield
looked and sounded exactly like Burl Ives. I expected him to break into a
rendition of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” each morning as class was
beginning. He had a reputation for being eccentric. Although, I wasn’t sure how.
To me, he seemed otherworldly. He smoked a pipe and wore tweed jackets. His
thin white hair and beard were always trimmed neatly. He smelled of tobacco and
peppermints, which he always kept in his pocket or in a nearby ashtray. The
wrapped candies would crinkle slightly every time his wrinkled hand found its
way into his coat pocket. I began to think that while spending time working
with him, his aura might rub off on me.
I was looking for some positive
rationale for my returning home for three whole weeks. But really, it was very
late, and probably that position had already been filled like all the others. I
decided that if the job was available, then it was meant to be. If not, I would
remain in the city and scramble for a place to stay.
But the position was available, and
fate was already beginning to conspire against me.
I packed a duffel bag and glanced
around my sparse dormitory room. Three weeks wasn't really all that long. I
recalled the last Christmas I’d spent at home, two years ago. Dad drank too
much, and Mom pretended she couldn't hear his petty complaints about the
holidays as she arranged the feast she’d been cooking all day on the kitchen
table. We sat in silence, and the next morning I opened my gifts. I received
some shirts and socks. But apparently one present was missing. My mother kept
telling me to look under the tree. There was something else. But there wasn't.
She turned suddenly accusing eyes
on my father. He grumbled, lifted himself from the sofa with a grunt and walked
out of the room. She chased after him, asking the back of his head what
happened to the check from her sister. What I could surmise from their angry,
elevated voices, was that my aunt in Pennsylvania had sent me a large check to
put toward college. Dad forged my name and cashed it. He paid off some bills
with the money, yelling that if he’d allowed the truck to be repossessed, he'd
be out of a job.
Mom cried and yelled until he
finally stormed out of the house. I left a few minutes later and stayed away
all day. That night, as I lay awake in bed staring at the shadows on my
ceiling, I heard my dad's truck pull into the driveway. I listened to his
footsteps on the walkway, the front door creaking open, the familiar sound of
his heavy construction boots ascending the stairs. He knocked on my bedroom
door and slowly entered the room. He stuck out his hand and placed three
hundred dollars in cash on my blanket. He said that it was left over from the
money my aunt had sent. I picked it up mutely, and he walked out. Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year.