David Halliday - The Hole

Must have been asleep. That’s what getting old is all about. You forget things. Faces, places, but especially names. Parts of your life just disappear on you. I should have taken more pictures.” The detective leaned over the table and sipped his coffee again. It was drinkable this time.

Joe continued. “Imagine all the photographs that have been taken since the camera was invented. Billions of ’em. Where are they? Forgotten in drawers. Buried in dumps. Disappeared. If you had all those photographs, I’ll bet you could wallpaper the planet.” The detective nodded. “Went ahead without you, Joe. I hope that was okay.”

Joe took a swallow of his coffee. The heat didn’t seem to bother him.

“I got a special measuring tape from the Ministry of Natural Re-sources,” the detective continued. “They use it to measure old wells just like yours. Joe, I let it all out. Two thousand feet. And still it hadn’t reached the bottom of your well.”

Joe took another swallow. He shook his head.

“Ask me if I’m surprised.”

The detective leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we could lower a video camera down and see what’s there.”

“Won’t it be too dark?”

“Ya, I thought of that. Maybe we could strap a flashlight to it. I’ve been doing a little research. There’s a hole like yours in Sweden. That’s what they did. Lowered a camera.”

“What did they see?”

“Not much. But when they reached what they figured must have been the bottom, they saw a tunnel leading off in another direction. And they saw what they figured was the remains of animals that must have fallen down there. They went down almost twenty-four hundred feet.” Joe was silent for several minutes. He sipped at his coffee, then took a pouch of tobacco and filled a pipe that he retrieved from his back pocket.

The officer waited in silence. He knew that Joe needed a few minutes to mull over the problem. He read another clipping on the wall. The United States had defeated Britain in a World Cup championship match played in Rio de Janeiro. In another article he read about the rise of suicides after World War II. It had been especially noted that the rise was chiefly among young men who had returned from active military service.

“The first problem I see,” Joe began, “is weight.” 57

“The camera is fairly light,” Sam responded. “I figure we can use some of that test line that fishermen use to catch marlin.”

“But once you get that far down,” Joe went on, “most of your weight is the line itself. You think there might be something down there?”

“We know your neighbors have been dumping garbage,” Sam responded. “Who knows what else they dropped. If we can find something suspicious then we can get some authorization to spend more money on investigating the hole.”

“June used to say she could hear the screams of hell coming up from the hole. Of course she was half in the tank most of the time. You think that someone might have fallen down there?”

The detective shrugged his shoulders as he swallowed a mouth of coffee.

“Maybe,” he replied.

Joe relit his pipe that had gone out.

“I have to find out, Joe,” the detective said.

“Like an itch you have to scratch,” Joe responded with a laugh.

The detective nodded.

“Your wife drank a lot?” the detective asked.

“Like a fish. My fault,” Joe said, shaking his head. “She was young and lonely. And I wasn’t much company. Foolish of me to marry her, but I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I’ve never been a man who needed it much but something about June brought it out. In the beginning, I was as randy as a jackrabbit. If only she hadn’t been so stupid. Dumb as a doorknob.”

The detective smiled. “She was in love with you?” Joe shrugged. “She never said she was, never said she wasn’t. Didn’t seem to matter.”

Shot Glass

Jack tilted the glass slightly to one side as he eased the draft beer down its throat. Just before the beer reached the top he released the throttle on the keg he was drawing from, then placed the glass of beer on the table.

The foam rose above the lip and briefly threatened to spill over the top before it finally settled down to a perfect head.

“So you were saying, Sam?” Jack smiled.

The detective picked up his beer and sucked softly on its head, the foam sticking to his thick black moustache.

“Well, I haven’t found out much. I checked with the hospital records at Lakeshore and Etobicoke, and I checked our records. You said the guy talked to a cop, but I asked around. Nothing. No one knows a thing about a man dying out front.”

Jack stared at Sam. “Well, I didn’t bloody make it up!” he cried.

Jack was angry. The detective couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Jack angry. There was no one more congenial than Jack Anderson.

Of course it was his job, but over the years there should have been some crack in the facade. The detective had never seen it.

The detective patted Jack on the hand.

“Don’t believe you did,” he said. “But no one can remember any such incident. Ah Christ, I think we’re all going a little mad. I’ve spent most of the week up at Joe Mackenzie’s place trying to find out how deep his bloody well is. I got no answer to that one either. Lost a video camera the other day. The line broke. We’re going to try one of those big spotlights they use sometimes over the city. What worries me is that the hole might not go straight down. But I ain’t giving up on your case, Jack. Officer McSherry said he heard of a death on the corner but it was before his time. Herb gave me the name of a retired cop, Ed Kaye. I’ll ask him.

Lives around the corner here in the retirement home.”

“But this happened the other day, Sam,” Jack responded.

Sam Kelly said nothing. After a few moments of silence he asked,

“What do you know about Joe Mackenzie?”

“Not much,” Jack said, shaking his head. “His wife used to come in here quite often before she took off.”

“Did you know that he was a graduate of Harvard University?”

“That big college in the States?” Jack asked.

The detective nodded.

Jack shook his head. “Well, I’ll be.”

The detective said, “He works as a night watchman at the plaza across the street. A little overqualified for the job, don’t you think?”

“He must be getting up there in years, Sam. His wife used to complain that he was too old. Harvard, eh? Maybe it’s just a job to pick up some extra cash. Not easy for seniors these days.”

“As far as I can tell, he’s never had any other job, Jack. And the walls of his house, the walls that aren’t covered with bookshelves, are covered with newspaper clippings. He told me some story about his father putting the clippings on the wall to educate his kids in current affairs.

Trouble is that as far as I can tell, all the clippings are from one year.” Jack’s mouth dropped.

“What did I say?” the detective asked.

“What year?” Jack asked, taking a small shot glass from beneath the bar and pouring himself a shot of whiskey.

“The year?” the detective replied. “Jesus, I think it was-”

“Nineteen-fifty,” Jack said.

Sam looked at the bartender, grabbed the whiskey from Jack’s fingers, and swallowed it.

The Office

Mary Hendrix plucked away at the typewriter. She stopped occasionally to take a puff from the cigarette that tightroped on the edge of an ashtray. A woman entered the office. Mary turned.

“You’re early,” she said.

“I was bored,” Margaret replied.

“Let me finish these invoices first,” Mary said.

“God,” Margaret said, “are you still using a typewriter?” Mary nodded. “Brennan hasn’t forked out for a computer yet. Worries about every nickel.”