F. Paul Wilson - Gateways

Jack supposed that was good. But he hadn’t come here tonight just to see his father.

“Where are his personal effects?”

“Effects?”

“You know, his clothes, his wallet, any papers he had on him.”

Dr. Huerta glanced at Nurse Mortenson who said, “They’re in a locker by the nurses’ station. I’ll get them for you.”

Dr. Huerta moved on and Jack stepped into his father’s room. He stood by the bed, watching him breathe, feeling helpless and confused. This wasn’t right. His father should be at Anya’s place, drinking gimlets and playing mahjongg instead of lying here unconscious with tubes running in and out of him.

Mortenson came in with a clipboard and clear plastic bag.

“You’ll have to sign for this,” she said. As Jack made an illegible scrawl across the sheet, she added, “We couldn’t keep his clothes. The blood, you know.”

“But you emptied his pockets first, right?”

“I assume so. That’s done in the ER, long before he gets to us.”

Jack handed back the clipboard and took the bag. Not much in it: a wallet, a watch, some keys, and maybe a buck’s worth of change.

When the nurse was gone, Jack checked the wallet: an AmEx and a MasterCard, AARP and AAA cards, a Costco card, seventy-some dollars in cash, and a couple of restaurant receipts.

Jack dropped it back into the bag. What had he been hoping for? A note with a cryptic message? A scrap of paper with a hastily scribbled address he could check out?

Watching too many mystery movies, he told himself.

Maybe thereis no mystery. Maybe it was just an accident. Maybe Dad was simply out for a drive and wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time…got clocked by accident by someone who wasn’t quite legit and couldn’t hang around to explain himself to the police.

Jack understood that. Perfectly.

Just an accident…a random collision…

But his gut wasn’t buying. Not yet at least.

Jack looked down at his father.

“Have you been holding out on me, Dad?”

No response, of course. He patted his father’s knee through the sheet.

“See you tomorrow.”

17

Fortunately Anya had left her gate passcard in Jack’s car. He used it to breeze through the resident’s arch. The old lady’s lights were out by the time Jack reached the house. Her lawn ornaments clinked and clanked and whirred in the dark.

Once inside, he went straight to his father’s room and took out the metal lockbox.

“Sorry, Dad,” he muttered as he carried it to the kitchen.

He hated invading his father’s privacy, but this box might hold an explanation as to why he’d been out in the swamps after midnight instead of home in bed.

First, a beer. He grabbed another Havana Red from the fridge, then searched the bathroom for a pair of tweezers. He found one, and twenty seconds later the lid popped open. Jack hesitated. Maybe there were things in here his father didn’t want anyone to know about. And maybe Jack wouldn’t want to know about them once he saw them. Maybe parents should be able to keep their secrets.

All fine and good when they weren’t the comatose victim of a hit and run.

Jack lifted the lid.

Not much there. A handful of black-and-white photos, now sepiaed with age, and something that looked like a small jewelry case. He checked the photos first. Mostly soldiers. He recognized his dad in a few of them—he didn’t recall him ever having that much hair—but most were of other uniformed guys in their late teens or early twenties posing awkwardly for the camera against unfamiliar landscapes. Jack spotted a pagoda-like building in the background of one.

Korea. Had to be. He knew his dad had been in the war, in the Army, but he’d never wanted to talk about it. Jack remembered pressing him for war stories but getting nowhere. “It’s not something I care to remember,” he’d always say.

The last photo was a posed shot of eight men in fatigues, four kneeling in front, four standing behind, grinning at the camera. His father was second from the left, standing. It looked like a plaque had been set up in the right foreground but that corner of the photo was missing. It appeared to have been torn off.

Jack studied the other seven men, looking for a connection to his father. Who were they? They all looked so young. Like a high school varsity basketball team. It looked like a graduation photo. But from what?

Maybe he’d never know.

He put down the photos and picked up the jewelry case. Something rattled within. He snapped it open and found two medals. He didn’t know much about military decorations but one he immediately recognized.

A Purple Heart.

His father’s? That meant he’d been wounded. But where? The only scar he’d ever seen on his father was from his appendectomy. Maybe this belonged to someone else…a dead war buddy that his father wanted to remember?

Nah. Purple Hearts tended to be kept by the loved one’s family.

Which meant this was probably his father’s.

He checked the other medal: a gold star hanging on a red-white-and-blue ribbon; a smaller silver star was set at its center. This could be a Silver Star. Wasn’t that for extraordinary bravery in battle?

Trust me, kiddo, there’s more to your father than you ever dreamed.

I guess you got that right, lady. Maybe I should have stayed in touch more.

Funny…just a few months ago he wouldn’t have felt this way. But after reconnecting with Kate…

With frustration wriggling under his skin like an itch he couldn’t scratch, Jack replaced the contents to the box in roughly the same order that he’d found them. He’d wanted answers, but all this damn box had provided was more questions.

He returned it to the closet shelf, then headed back to the kitchen for another beer. Along the way he spotted his father’s watch on the table. He hadn’t noticed the cracked crystal when he’d brought it home from the hospital. He checked it out. An old Timex. No, not old—ancient. The wind-up type. Typical of him: If the old one still works, why get a new one? This Timex had taken a licking but hadn’t kept on ticking. It had stopped at 12:08.

Wait a sec…

Jack pulled the accident report out of his pocket and unfolded it. He’d scanned through Officer Hernandez’s report. He’d mentioned a call coming in to the station at…where was it? Here.

11:49P.M.

But that would mean the accident had been reported before it happened. No way. His father’s watch must have been set ahead. Some people did that. Or maybe he’d forgotten to wind it.

But not his father. He’d always been a stickler for the correct time, down to the minute. And he’d always wound his watch at breakfast. Jack had seen him do it a million times.

Hernandez was mistaken about the time of the call. Had to be. But for all his brawn the cop had seemed like a pretty tight, spit-shine type. And hadn’t he said that even though it took him twenty minutes to reach the accident, it looked like it had just happened?

Shaking his head, Jack went to the fridge. He decided against another beer. Right now he needed a gimlet.

Wednesday

1

Jack awoke with a buzzing in his ears. At first he thought it was a mosquito, but this was lower pitched. Then he thought it might be gimlet-related, but he’d had only two. Finally he realized it was coming from outside the window. He lifted his head and looked around, momentarily disoriented by the unfamiliar room.

Oh, yeah. He was at Dad’s place. In the front room. Must have fallen asleep on the couch. He’d foundRio Bravo playing on TNT or some such station and had watched it for about the thirtieth time—not for John Wayne or Dean Martin, and certainly not for Ricky Nelson, but for Walter Brennan. Hands down, Stumpy was his best part, best job, ever—except maybe for his Old Man Clanton inMy Darling Clementine . Old Walt made the movie for Jack.