William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“The death of Hope.”

“Faith, the middle girl, was my grandmother. She married, of course, to a Shaw, with much charm and fading fortunes. He was of the Shaw Brothers Department Store, the old cast-iron building at Eighth and Market, but the store was doing badly and he married my grandmother for her money, so they say, in an attempt to save the business. From everything I’ve heard he was a scoundrel until the war, when his heroism came as a shock to everyone. Through it all, my grandmother loved him dearly. She was widowed young and spent the rest of her life caring for her son and grandchildren, mourning her husband.”

“How did your grandfather die?”

“It was an accident.”

“A car accident?”

“No,” said Caroline. “My grandmother never remarried, never even dated. She stayed at the house and tended the gardens with Nat and took care of the house and the estate.”

“Nat?”

“Old Nat, the gardener. He’s been with the house forever. He’s really the family caretaker, he supervises everything. My mother’s interests lay outside the house and my father cares even less, so it is all left to Nat. He’s probably busy tonight.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes, when it rains, the lower portion of the property floods. There’s a stream that flows all around the house, leading to the pond.”

“Like a moat?”

“Just a stream, but during heavy rains it overflows the road into the gate.”

“What happened to Charity?”

“Aunt Charity. She ran away.”

“It’s hard to imagine running away from all that money.”

“No it isn’t,” she said. “That’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

She pressed my car’s lighter and reached into her purse for a cigarette. As she lit it, I glanced sideways at her, her face glowing in the dim red light of the lighter. What was it like to grow up weighed down by such wealth? How did the sheer pressure of it all misshape the soul? I would have loved to have found out firsthand, yes I would have, but looking at Caroline, as she inhaled deeply and mused wistfully about the grandaunt who escaped it all, for the first time I wondered if all I had wished to have been born to might not have been such a blessing after all.

“Charity was sort of a fast girl,” said Caroline.

“I haven’t heard that expression in a while.”

“These are all my Grammy’s stories. Grammy said that after her sister disappeared she had guessed that Charity had gotten pregnant and would return in half a year or so, saying she had been abroad, or something like that. That’s the way it was done. But there was apparently a bitter fight between Charity and my great-grandfather, that’s what Grammy remembered, and then Charity was gone. Grammy used to sit on our beds at night and tell us strange and fascinating tales of a traveler in foreign lands, overcoming hardships and obstacles in search of adventure. Grammy was a natural raconteur. She would weave these beautiful, brilliantly exciting stories, and the heroic traveler was always named Charity. It was her way, I think, of praying that her sister was well and living the life she had hoped for when she left. Of all of us, really, only Charity has been able to rid herself of the burden of being a Reddman.”

“And, unfortunately for her, the Reddman money. Any word ever about the child?”

“None. I’ve wondered about that myself.”

“Anyone ever make a claim to her share of the estate?”

“No, the only known heir is my father. Turn here.”

I braked and turned off the road into a paved lane so narrow two cars could pass each other only with scratches. Foliage grew wild on the sides of the road and the trees, boughs heavy with rain, bent low into my headlights as if in reverence to Caroline as we passed. The rain thickened on the windshield so that I could barely see, even with the wipers, and there was a steady splash of water on the undercarriage of the car. I slowed to a crawl. I hoped there were no hills to go down because I figured the brakes were too soaked to stop much of anything.

“Tell me about your childhood,” I said.

“What’s to tell? I was a kid. I ran around and fell a lot and skinned my knees.”

“Was it happy?”

“Sure. Why not? I mean, adolescence was hell, but that’s true even in the best-adjusted families, though no one ever accused us of being one of those. We’re all in tonight, which is a rare and oh-so-delicious treat, so you can judge for yourself. My brother Bobby, my brother Eddie and his wife, Kendall, and my mother. There may be others, too. My mother has a need to entertain and though most refuse her invitations now, there are always a few parasites who can be counted on to grab a free meal.”

“We should figure out what to tell everyone about me.”

“We should. I’ll say you were a friend of Jacqueline’s and that she introduced me to you. But you shouldn’t be a lawyer – too obvious.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a painter,” I said.

I was waiting for Caroline to dub me a painter when instead she screamed.

A huge figure, shiny and black, lumbered out of the woods and stood in the rain before my oncoming car.

I slammed on the brakes. The car shuddered and slid sideways to the left as it kept humming toward the figure. It looked like a tall thin demon waving its arms slowly as my car slipped and skidded right for it.

“Stop!” said Caroline.

“I’m trying,” I shouted back. I had the thought that I never really knew what it meant to turn into the skid, as I had been forever advised in driver’s ed, and that if a clearer instruction had been implanted in my brain I wouldn’t be at a loss at that very instant. As a row of thick trees swelled in the headlights, I twisted the wheel in what I hoped was the proper direction. The car popped back to straight on the road and then veered too far to the left. I fought the wheel again and locked my knee as I stood on the pedal. With a lurch the brakes finally took hold. The car jerked to a sudden stop and stalled.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” said Caroline.

I said nothing, just sat and felt my sweat bloom. With the wipers now dead, the rain totally obscured the view through the windshield.

When I started the car again and the wipers revived I could see that my front bumper was less than a foot from the shiny black figure. It was a man, clothed in a black rubber rain slicker and cowl.

“Oh my God, it’s Nat,” said Caroline. “You almost hit Nat.”

The man in black stepped around the car to the driver’s side. I unrolled the window and he bent his body so that his dripping cowl and face loomed shadowy through the frame until Caroline reached up and turned on the roof light. Nat’s face was long and gaunt, creased with deep weather lines. His eyelids sagged to cover half his bright blue eyes. Circling his left eye was a crimson stigma, swollen and irregularly shaped. There was no fear on his face and I realized there was no fear in the way he had held his body as my car headed right for him, just a curious interest, as if he had been waving his arms not to ward me off but to increase the visibility of my target.

“You need to pump those brakes, young man,” said Nat in a dry friendly cackle.

“I wanted to turn into the skid but I couldn’t figure what that meant,” I admitted.

“Can’t say as I’m sure myself, but that’s what they say, all right. How are you, Miss Caroline?”

“Fine, thank you, Nat. This is a friend of mine, Victor Carl.”

“Welcome to Veritas, Mr. Carl.”

“Isn’t this a marvelous rain, Nat?” she said.

“From where you’re sitting, maybe. Stream’s rising.”

“Can we make it up?”

“For a little while, still. But you won’t make it down again, not tonight. Not without a boat.”