Lost Echoes

14

Harry was surprised, because the neighborhood he drove Tad to was pretty nice.

Correction.

It was damn nice.

Fact was, the place was ritzy.

Harry thought Tad must have bought his place before it all got built up. Must have some little house tucked away amongst all the expensive stuff. A yard with a tree and a run-down house and a car on blocks. Maybe some beer cans tossed about. A dead cat under a bush.

Tad said, “Pull over to the curb.”

“You got to puke?”

“No. This is home.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

Home was large, adobe style, and around the house was a high brick fence. There was a gate drive. The gate was open, and oak and sweet gum trees grew high and shady around the house, which covered a lot of ground.

“You have an apartment in the back?”

“They let me sleep in the yard, under a tree.”

“What?”

“It’s mine. Even the fence.”

“Damn.”

“You haven’t seen my housekeeping yet. Hey, you want to come in, have a Coke, some more coffee, somethin’?”

“I guess.”

“Well, I won’t get out here then. Take a right, go up the drive.”

“There never were any murders in this house, were there?”

“What?”

“Murders? Any violence?”

Tad studied Harry. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah. Kind of am.”

“I don’t know of any. Wife’s family property, got the place when we were twenty-five. Her folks lived here before, but I never heard of such. They may have had some vicious games of Go Fish, however.”

Harry drove through the open gate onto the estate. Inside they had a Coke. They sat at a long table in a large room. On one end of the table was a pile of books; the other end held a collection of crumpled beer cans. There were beautiful carpets hanging on the wall, some pretty snazzy paintings that appeared to be of…well, they were of colors. If they were supposed to be of anything in particular, Harry couldn’t make them out.

One wall had a shelf of knickknacks, little ceramic animals: elephants, tigers, lions, bears. They ranged from pink to green to blue.

The place was dusty, and there were clothes thrown about the floor.

“You are a shitty housekeeper,” Harry said.

“My wife was great. She called in the maid. Me, I had to let her go. The maid, I mean. About ten years back. I take out the trash and toss out paper plates and such. Live kind of like you do. Mostly I stay in this room. It was the family room. There’s a television behind that wall. Sliding panel and all. I think it still works. Fact is, except for the toilet and a room or two, I’m not sure I remember what all the other rooms are like.”

“Except, you have a lot of rooms.”

“Twenty rooms, to be exact, not counting kitchens and bathrooms. And the dojo.”

“Dojo?”

“Japanese word. Gym. Workout room for martial arts. I used to teach it. An art called Shen Chuan.”

“What happened?”

“Life happened. About that murder business—why’d you ask?”

“You wouldn’t want to know, and if I told you, you’d think I was nuts.”

“Maybe I would, but what else you got to do? What do you care if some drunk you don’t even know thinks you’re nuts? And it would be entertaining to me. Nuts tell good stories.”

“You tell me about you, and I’ll tell you about me.”

“I didn’t want to play fair,” Tad said. “Just wanted to hear about you.”

“Then no deal.”

Tad nodded.

“All right, kid. I’m not sure why I’m telling you, but, okay. Maybe I owe you one…. Naw, bullshit. I need to talk about it. I talk to the fucking wall, no one’s here. And, except for you, no one has been here in years. Except an old parrot named Chester. Belonged to my wife. I was one happy motherfucker when that feathered bastard died. Was always cleaning out shitty newspapers from his cage and such. There’s lots of things I miss, but that parrot ain’t one of ’em.”

“Your life story is about taking care of a parrot?”

“Let me put it this way, kid. Back when I was a little older than you, I was a drunk.”

“You’re a drunk now.”

“True, but let me tell my story, all right? So I was a drunk. And then I met my wife. This woman, she was so beautiful she made my back teeth ache. Oh, there were probably more beautiful women, but for me, she was it. Before her I was just banging tail. Wasn’t lying to anyone to get it. Just dating, doin’ the thing, you know. It was the seventies. There was so much free pussy it was like money from home. Then I met Dorothy. I loved that woman deeply, my friend. I don’t know how often that happens, that kind of love, but when it does, it’s an amazing thing.”

“My mom and dad. They were that way.”

“They’re lucky…. Were?”

“Dad died of a heart attack.”

“Well, me and your mom, we got similar tragedies. But me and Dorothy got married, I quit drinking, and we had a boy. A fine boy. Dorothy had an inheritance, and she worked as an interior decorator. She was good. She made big dough doing that. Me, I had a martial arts school, and though it wasn’t the sort of thing that would make you wealthy, it was a good living. Believe it or not, boy, I was once considered one of the best.”

“I believe it. I seen you do it, remember?”

“That was some drunk shit, but back then I was deep in the martial arts. Not just the ass-whipping part. I found my center.”

“Your center?”

“The center of my being. That sounds all metaphysical and shit, but it isn’t. It’s about finding the core of who you are, living with it, learning to accept it, and becoming calm. Like you’re the eye of the hurricane, and all around you the world is a-spin, but you’re focused. Nothing fazes you. That’s how I was. Nothing fazed me. I didn’t think anything or anyone could disrupt my center.”

“But something always can,” Harry said.

Tad nodded. “Way I worked is I had small classes, some private lessons. People who wanted to be here and were willing to pay me what I was worth. Then there was the accident. Day it happened, I had a private lesson, a beautiful young woman. There was nothing between us. No monkey business, outside of that feeling any man gets when he’s around a woman that amazing. I mean, it was just great to be with her. Nothing like my wife, that was a whole ’nother thing. But teaching that woman…well, one day her hour is up, her private lesson is over, and she’s got a few questions, and so I say to myself, ‘All right, I’ll stick.’

“Now, you see, I’m supposed to, right after that lesson, go and pick up my wife and son. He was ten then. It was a Saturday, and they went to the movies, some cartoon thing, and the deal was, soon as my lesson was over, I was supposed to go get them.

“They had about a fifteen-minute wait between the time of the movie being over and my lesson ending up here. Wife’s car, it was in the shop. No big deal. Fifteen-minute wait, fifteen minutes for me to drive over; they got thirty minutes to kill.

“But me, I’m talking to this woman like I’m trying to pick her up, and I’m not, you see. My wife was it, but I wanted to see if I still had the old charm. You know, if I had some appeal, ’cause then I was in my mid-thirties, starting to lose a bit of hair, and no matter how hard I worked, no matter how good I was at Shen Chuan, I was getting a bit of a pouch, you know.”

Tad patted his belly as if to prove it.

“So, I’m chatting up the young thing, and I realize suddenly, Damn, I’ve forgotten about Dorothy and John. But you know what? I think, well, another five minutes isn’t going to hurt. Because I’m explaining some special moves to this gal, nothing she’s ready to do, really, but it’s fun to show my stuff, you know. Show what I got. And finally I think: Shit, I got to go, so I do.

“Dorothy called the house. I didn’t know this until later, ’cause there’s no phone in the dojo. Later, I see the phone light blinking, turn it on, and it’s Dorothy. ‘Honey, are you okay? We’re waiting, and I’m a little worried.’ Worried. She was worried. About me. I should have been there, and she’s worried something happened to me. And me, I’m chattin’ up poontang like I’m on the hustle, just to keep the old ego polished.

“So later I learn they went to the little café next to the theater, had a Coke, something like that. They came outside to see if I’d made it yet, and a truck—this is like something out of a bad fucking movie—but a truck, a fucking dump truck full of gravel, going down the main drag, not where it should have been hauling that shit, makes a corner too fast and turns over. It doesn’t hit my family. But the gravel does. Like thousands of little bullets.

“When I got there, they were under it, kid. Under all that goddamn gravel. Someone says, ‘There’s a woman and a kid under that shit,’ and I knew…knew it was them. Started trying to dig them out with my bare hands. On top of that fucking pile digging like a goddamn dog. People all around helping.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tad held up a hand. “Let me get to the bottom of it, kid. They were dead. My fault. Had I been on time, they wouldn’t have been there when that truck came around. They’d have been fine. Just gravel on the sidewalk. They were the only ones standing in that spot. Can you believe that? Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Standing there. Waiting on it.

“You want some fucking schmaltz, now. You want the shit they put in the cheap fucking movies? John, my boy, he had a card in his pocket. Wasn’t Father’s Day, wasn’t Christmas, wasn’t my fucking birthday. But at school he made a card with his own hands. I still have it. It says, ‘World’s best dad.’ Cops gave it to me later. All crumpled and shit, but it’s my most prized possession. Is that schmaltz, kid? Is that the shit?

“I began to lose my center. I thought it was just the pain at first, and a year later I’m trying to pull it all together, reestablish my classes. The young woman I was talking to, one I was trying to impress, she wanted to come back, but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look at that woman again. It’s not that she did anything. I did something. Let my ego loose. That’s about the first thing you learn in martial arts. Put your ego in a sack and take a stick to it. I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t see her again, or anyone else I knew.

“Got all new people. Started being too rough. Hurting people. If they fought back hard, I hurt them more. I quit teaching. I didn’t need the money. My wife had money, and now it was mine. I was all alone. No wife. No son. No students. The in-laws hated me, as they should have.

“I took to the bottle. So here I am. Sober for the moment. Thinking about a drink. Seeing you, all drunk like me when I was young, I got to think, is it just fun with you, or is it something else? I think it’s something else.”

Harry didn’t know what to say, so he said what he had said before. “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too. But what about you? What about that drinking? What’s your story?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“We had a deal.”

“Okay.” And Harry told him about the honky-tonk, about the old car when he was a kid. When he finished, he said, “Now what do you think?”

Tad studied him, scratched behind his ear. “Sounds, huh?” Tad said.

“Yeah.”

“That’s some weird shit.”

“You think I’m nuts?”

“I’ve heard some say we’ve lost abilities over the centuries, since we crawled out of the primordial soup. Things like extrasensory perception, the ability to smell a female in heat from a mile away, a prehensile tail, an inordinate love of bananas. Maybe you rediscovered some of it. Or maybe you’re just fucking nuts. Ever been dropped on your head? I’m serious now. You been dropped, you know of?”

“No.”

“Hit with something?”

Harry shook his head. “The mumps, like I told you. That’s it.”

“Do they cause brain damage, the mumps?”

Harry sighed.

“You got to let go of that booze,” Tad said. “Trust me on that, kid. Follow my advice, even if I don’t take it.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“What happened to me, happened. This shit about the sounds, I don’t know. I’d ask your mother about being dropped, that’s what I’d do. Get some specialist. Somebody knows about the brain, can get in there with a cutter, the pliers, fucking tire tool and a truck jack. Whatever it takes. Maybe you’re schizo. It’s no crime. It’s a condition. You got it, you didn’t ask for it. Just showed up, and now you got to deal with it, and the way you do that, you see a doctor.”

“I’ve seen them. They can’t help me. I live with this every day, and it’s not schizophrenia, and I wasn’t dropped on my goddamn head.”

“Don’t shit yourself. Just said it could be something like that.”

“Let me tell you something. When I first found my apartment, I went over every inch, stomping, slamming doors, whacking the walls, scraping the chairs, seeing if there was, so to speak, a ghost in the machine. None. That’s why I live in that shithole. Not just to save money, but because I’m certain there’s nothing lurking inside it.

“Just to make sure I didn’t miss some spot, I taped cardboard and egg cartons all over the walls. Didn’t want to drive tacks—afraid I might find a spot, you see. A spot holding some disaster. Hear what I’m saying, Tad?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I don’t even go to my friend’s Joey’s bathroom. You want to know why?”

“Sure, kid. Lay it out.”

“I was in his shitter, doing my business, stood up after the wiping, and my pants, which were still around my knees, caught the toilet lid, popped it up and down, and there was this guy in the sound, and I could see him sitting on that toilet long before Joey was renting the place. He had a sawed-off shotgun under his chin. I just clicked the goddamn toilet cover, the one with the hole in it, one you sit on—”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“Clicked that with the back of my pants, and I see him, the sawed-off under his chin, and he pulls the trigger. Blood and brains and skull everywhere. The sound of that gun going off in that small space…it was deafening.

“Why did I see him? Why? Because he’s getting ready to do it, his pants around his ankles, and he rose up a bit and clicked that fucking lid. When he did, he pulled the trigger and the lid snapped down again, holding the sounds. Can you believe that?”

“I’m working on it.”

“It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

“You may already have taken the trip, kid. Relax.”

“I looked it up. This suicide. I’m a bear on research because of this stuff. But I looked it up in newspapers, on the Internet, and sure enough, a guy killed himself there. Despondent over a breakup with his wife, something like that. I never told Joey. Just don’t use his bathroom. I’m over there, and I got to go, I hold it. Fact is, I try not to even visit unless I’m drunk.

“This research I do—because of it, I know every spot on campus, around campus, where there has been a major car accident, where anyone was killed or even badly injured. I got a notebook in my back pocket, got it all written there, if I ever need to be sure.”

Harry pulled the notebook from his pocket, tossed it on the table. Tad picked it up, flicked it open, glanced at it. There was writing and little crude maps drawn inside.

“Pretty detailed,” Tad said.

“I wear soft-soled shoes, rubber tipped. That way, I hit some stone wall with my shoe where there was a car wreck, step hard on some spot where someone was thrown clear of a wreck, I don’t activate it. Trapped memories can be anywhere. You wouldn’t believe how many rapes there have been on campus. People don’t report them all.”

“So,” Tad said, “it’s like someone gets hurt, they touch something, the sounds, the whole event is in what they touch?”

“No. Woman gets slammed violently against a jukebox, that records. Guy kills himself in a toilet, and the lid clicks as the gun goes off, that records. Not only the sound. Not only the event. The emotions. Sometimes I get echoes from the original sounds. Reverberations. Old images…only I’m not so sure they’re images. It’s like…there are ghosts. Spirits. Not religious bullshit, but some bit of something left over from when they were alive. Their emotions. I feel it, and I can hardly shake it.”

“I want to believe you, but—”

“It’s amazing how much violence there is in the world. Sometimes it’s just a kind of mind bump, a push, a sound and color flash, and it’s gone. Not always something big-time serious. But it’s there, and I can hardly go anywhere without coming up against it.”

“You got a point, kid.”

“The world is full of it, stuffed with it. And it’s not just the hidden stuff. I got to deal with that, then I got to deal with what everyone else hears as well. All the anger and meanness. It’s in the music. Fuck this, motherfucker that, kill this one, fuck that one. Death to cops and queers and women. If it’s not the music, it’s the way people talk to one another. It’s the goddamn talk shows, the political shows, all that arguing. Never stops. And you want to know why I drink? Why I won’t stop?”

When Harry finished talking, he slid down in the chair and took a deep breath. He had almost worn himself out.

Tad studied him for a moment, said, “Kid, you ever go to a real city, not some burg like here, some big place like Houston, someplace like that, and this sound shit is real, or you even think it’s real, you’re gonna have the top of your head blow off.”