This Day's Death Read online

  “Salvador—married!” Estela is surprised.

  “Where is his wife?” Jim asks quickly.

  “Who knows, perhaps still in St. Louis.” She rushes on as if to forget again: “He married her here—I mean, in El Paso—just after he entered the army—and she followed him to St. Louis, where he was stationed; and then he was sent overseas, and he was— . . .”

  “You lost contact with the girl?” Jim asks.

  “I never saw her,” their mother says with finality.

  “Did he have any children?” Estela asks.

  “No,” Mrs. Girard said. And her tightened lips tell them she will explain no further.

  There was a darkness among them.

  “I loved Salvador, so much— . . . And my Esperanza— . . . Pieces of my life.” Her voice was conquered again by the horror of their deaths. “Your father loved flowers,” she repeats, “but not the yellow ones.”

  ESTELA WALKED TO THE CAR WITH JIM. “DO YOU STILL see that very beautiful girl— . . .” she asks him casually.

  “Barbara. Yes.” Those intervening days he had seen her again—often. The tension of that fateful night’s encounter eased gradually. The sexual relationship continued, but tensely; yet the confessional interlude of that afternoon had brought them closer in another way, a closeness which each—or at least Jim—seemed to pull from.

  “How does Mother feel about her?” Estela just asked hesitantly.

  The shadow of their brother’s wife.

  “She likes her a lot,” Jim answers. “You think Salvador was happily married?”

  “Is that possible?” Estela asked.

  As soon as he reached the motel where he’s staying, Jim called the photographer. Yes, tomorrow afternoon. Color him.

  Then he calls Steve. “It’s all set for tomorrow.”

  “Jim, if you’re going to be around, why don’t you stop by, can you?” Steve asks hurriedly as if forming the question had required a great deal of courage.

  Jim hesitates, is about to say he’s got something else to do.

  “I want to tell you something—but in person,” Steve says.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No—no. I just— . . . Can you?”

  “Okay, I’ll see you later,” Jim responds to Steve’s urgency. “But I can’t stay long,” he adds hastily.

  Steve’s is a handsome apartment. Instantly Jim felt embarrassed to face him alone—the paradoxical embarrassment and closeness of people bound by a mutual charge.

  “This is a nice pad,” Jim says awkwardly.

  “We had just moved in; I thought I could finally afford it,” Steve says. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Oh—uh—yeah, just some juice; I can’t stay long.”

  Jim sees, framed, five oval shots of a boy, two years old perhaps. Another photograph: Steve and a pretty young- woman, both smiling, his arm about her shoulder, his chin against her head. (What does he say to her?)

  Seeing Jim looking at the photographs, “I married her just after— . . .” Steve starts, stops abruptly. He sits facing Jim. Silence. Then: “I’m afraid, Jim; I don’t mind admitting it. I’m afraid even when things seem so perfect. I keep thinking: fifteen years! That’s what we could get— fifteen years for something that didn’t happen. It doesn’t seem possible!”

  “It isn’t,” Jim says emphatically. “We’re going to prove the son-of-a-bitching cop is lying. . . . What did you want to tell me?” he asks quickly.

  “What? Oh, I— . . . Oh, uh—that— . . .” Silence. “I guess I forgot.” He changes the subject: “Edmondson said the films could backfire on us.”

  “How the hell would he know?—has he bothered to go there?” Jim snaps. “Alan has. Look—how could they backfire? They prove the cop is a liar—and that’s what we want to prove, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you think Daniels lied?”

  “I don’t know—I’m not sure; I mean, I am— . . . I’m sure he— . . . I think he— . . .” (Was it him?!) “I don’t know,” Jim said.

  Silence.

  Jim asks: “You still can’t remember what you wanted to tell me?”

  Steve shakes his head.

  Silence.

  Jim gets up. “I’d better split, I’m late.” He’s already at the door, turning the knob. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You really have to go?” Steve asks.

  “Yes,” Jim answers.

  “Jim—that afternoon— . . .”

  “It’ll all be over next Wednesday, man,” Jim interrupts him firmly. “Just like it never happened. Except that when we’re acquitted, that’ll be just like convicting Daniels—and he knows it. Wednesday it’ll all be over.”

  Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday.

  The next day was crystal. By afternoon smog sailed into the city, creating a day very like that summer afternoon.

  The films developed quickly, Jim, Steve, Alan, and Edmondson viewed them in Alan’s office on the rented equipment they would use in court. Playing “devil’s advocate,” as he described it, Edmondson asked Jim questions the prosecutor might in attempting to refute his testimony Wednesday; he proceeded vigorously, sharply—often aiming a look at Jim which seemed to say, I know you’re guilty, I’m just playing a clever game with you. Only as part of his role as surrogate prosecutor? . . . At the termination of the him and the outlined testimony, even he seemed impressed. “Maybe the cop doesn’t have a case after all,” he said casually. Still, Jim wondered whether he was really convinced at last that Daniels had lied.

  In the lull of the intervening days, Jim avoided Roy, feeling constantly, even silently, questioned by him. Almost every day he went to his sister’s. His mother was in fine spirits. Each day, Estela would drive her and Miss Lucía to a different place. Miss Lucía would return with sparkling trinkets.

  When Jim went over Sunday—Estela wasn’t up yet, she had gone out the night before with the man she works for—his mother asked him to drive her to mass. Miss Lucía, in an anti-priest mood, decided not to go.

  Too late for mass. He entered the church with her. The blind statues. Futile sputtering candles. So small inside the church, his mother kneels, crosses herself with holy water, says prayers, lights seven candles—she touches the wounded hand of Christ. At the same time that Jim realized how total his emancipation is from this ornate emptiness, he also knew he would never want it to change for her.

  Feeling close, he drove her back the long way to his sister’s. Estela was up, Miss Lucía was cheerful—the two were laughing. Estela was taking them to the wax museum that afternoon. “Dead people’s flesh is like wax,” Miss Lucía remembers from some terrible time. “But the soul is like— . . .” she grasped into her cluttered mind. “. . . —like a tender wound!”

  Monday. A day of summer in the California “winter.” Jim drove to the beaches. Avoiding everyone—wanting no one now—nor pills, nor pot: as if in preparation for an unknown initiation. Venice West—that city of unfinished canals and arched, crumbling, uncompleted buildings. When he lived here several years ago, he existed virtually on the beach from morning till late afternoon—shirtless, barefoot, like now: Once again he’s a wanderer on the sand. Bearded youngmen and their girls, long-haired, huddle under Indian and Mexican blankets. The new nomads. A generation preparing to surface from its underground, experiencing perhaps the death that precedes resurrection in rebellion—already begun in the streets. How easy to join them again. . . .

  Tuesday. Santa Monica. The beach again. He lies stretched on the warm sand, eyes shut, facing up, averting other eyes. A cloud screens the stare of the sun. Unexpectedly, a sudden coldness chills his unprepared body. Late afternoon. Mist stalks the ocean. The beach looks frozen in the pale-silver sun—and ghosts of hunters float, search, in that icy mist.

  Now: Hollywood Boulevard. . . . From the beach to the streets, retracing the origin of that turbulent afternoon.

  Sunset Boulevard. He sees a girl with silver-painted lips. He waits. Remembers
. He walks away quickly. Past melted rainbows on coffeehouse windows. Rock sounds. Imitation hallucination. The despised cops everywhere, unleashing the hatred that may yet explode on them.

  Quickly he drives to Los Feliz—that wide, long street bordered by Griffith Park sprawling so green for miles.

  Suddenly he speeds away.

  “My Son!” his mother says happily. “How is your business progressing?”

  “Fine! We’ll be able to leave Thursday morning.”

  “So soon?” Estela protests. “I wish you’d stay forever. I’m taking Mother and Miss Lucía to some hobby shops: they want to make artificial flowers. And tomorrow we’ll— . . .”

  Tomorrow: Wednesday.

  Jim walks them to the car; he stood watching as they drove away. His mother radiated happiness.

  He stayed for dinner. Afterwards, Miss Lucía and his mother huddled about a table—wire, crinkled sheets of colored wax paper, scissors, green sheets for leaves—all spread out on it: making flowers. Mrs. Girard carefully rejected all the yellow papers; she would make no yellow flowers, not tonight.

  “Look!” She holds out a perfectly wrought pink flower.

  Suddenly suffocated by depression, as if it had physically struck her—her eyes buried deeply in black—Miss Lucía left the room. Jim had noticed the depressive moods attacked her more often.

  “I’ll call you late tomorrow to tell you what time we’re leaving,” Jim tells his mother. “I’m going to be very busy during the day.”

  Tomorrow.

  “We’re almost packed now,” his mother tells him. “I always hate to leave you, Estela,” she tells her. “But I do want your brother’s business to end—all this going back and forth; he’s got to be calm for lawschool.”

  Jim went to find Miss Lucía. She was in the bedroom where she and Mrs. Girard slept in similar beds. She was crying, her face a map of tears and paint. “Is something wrong, Miss Lucía?” Jim asks her.

  “No. Yes! When I see happiness, I think about unhappiness—but, then, the heart has valves; blood pumps— . . .”

  He understood what she meant—the first part of it—because only moments earlier, looking at his mother, he had felt sad at her happiness; it could turn so suddenly into sadness.

  Quickly Miss Lucía laughed. “My mood is over.”

  In the front room, “Give me your blessing,” Jim tells his mother.

  “Bless you, my Son,” she says, outlining a cross with her hand.

  Tomorrow.

  Freeway. Lights on speeding cars like tracers. The radio is on in his car: Conspiracy charges threatened against students. . . . Another raid on Black Panther headquarters, a black man dead. . . . Now a man is recalling a distant peace demonstration at Santa Monica’s Century Plaza: “It was a horrifying sight—that helicopter hovering over us—with machine guns sticking out, ready—it was like a deadly, giant mosquito. Then the police rushed us; I saw a woman with a child fall, and an officer struck her, I threw myself on top of the child, to shield it, and I felt the officer’s club strike me over and over, until I felt nothing more— . . .” It was all a part of the same savage horror in which he was caught, Jim knew. A horror rampant in the country.

  Wednesday.

  Standing outside the courtroom with Roy and Steve, Jim sees Daniels approaching. Not knowing what he’ll say or do, Jim walks quickly toward the cop. The confrontation. Inevitable. Now! “You— . . .” Jim starts.

  “Jim! Don’t!” It’s Alan, coming out of the courtroom with Edmondson. “I know how you feel, but that wouldn’t help at all.”

  Edmondson shook his head at Jim.

  The cop walks past them.

  “I’ve got bad news, Jim,” Alan is rushing; “the judge can’t hear our case today—his calendar is crammed—he can’t give us the time required. It’ll have to go over for another month.”

  Miles and miles. Desert. Dead birds.

  “Oh, God, no,” Steve moans. “I was sure it would be over today—my wife’ll be back this weekend.”

  Edmondson looks at Steve as if he’s intruding on the orderly process of law.

  “A month is the earliest,” Alan is explaining. “The judge is going out of town—and his calendar— . . .”

  Jim’s thoughts rush: I’ll stay, the miles, just the accusation, Lloyd, Ellen, Barbara, I’ll have to tell them, no, the miles, Mother, I’ll gel a job here for that month, not guilty, the miles, Daniels, the expenses, Mother, Barbara, not guilty, Mother, I’ll have to go back.

  His mother beside him—her cane across her feet, her Bible on the console between them—Miss Lucía in back: Jim left for El Paso early the next day. He told his sister—but not his mother—that they would be coming back in a month.

  On the long exit from Los Angeles on the San Bernardino Freeway, Jim saw in his rearview mirror the smoggy tangle of gray of the city of lost angels.

  The month in El Paso passed like this:

  His mother remained well—as Miss Lucía became a permanent part of their house, as her life blended with theirs. Often she told Mrs. Girard long narratives which combined Biblical stories, Indian legends, and the plots of movies she had seen. She continued to make up prayers: “One in the sacred house . . . the fifth house. . . . The shadow of the cross on Calvary. . . . Jesus passed through here too, weighted by his heavy cross.” She blessed movie stars and sheepherders, “restless children and beggars.” At times her wild dreams of having studied to be a movie star, nurse, singer, of being a seer were tamed into one—a longing for “a place in the hills eventually, with a swing on a porch overlooking a river; with flowers—and a peacock.” “Of course, you and the youngman can come with me,” she’d say. To Mrs. Girard she would occasionally speak vaguely of wanderings, a long period “in a home in the hills”—but she gave no real particulars, her life remained a mystery: “My own Calvary—but here there’s a tree like that of the Garden of Eden—though even the Garden of Paradise was invaded by a snake,” she said. She had bought several pieces of sparkling costume jewelry in California.

  Often she wore a tawdry brooch, even two, pinned to her blouse. She fixed her hair in giant swirls. Before going to bed, she applied fresh make up. Once Jim saw her writing a letter, urgently scribbling illegible signs. She looked up at him, her gigantic paint-outlined eyes exploding. “I’m writing to— . . . I’m writing to— . . . !” She frowned. “Who!?” she asked, as if she were trapped. Moved, Jim touched her, barely, on the shoulder. As if that was all she required—to be touched—her whole body relaxed. She tore the letter to no one. Other times—when the erratic behavior clouded her sweetness, as if reality were conspiring to riot against her dreams—she would water the garden, plant flowers—always careful not to expose Mrs. Girard to her moods.

  Between Barbara and Jim there continued that other closeness despite his attempts to wrench away from it. His life recurrently forcing an evaluation, he opened up to her again. He even told her about Caroline, and Emory. . . And I yelled at that poor scared kid, ‘Fuck her, Emory!’ . . . What happened to him? And to her?”

  Conversely, between him and Lloyd and Ellen a silence developed. He tried to avoid being alone with them—using his work as an excuse. Finally he could no longer postpone telling Lloyd of his return to Los Angeles. Lloyd merely accepted it as he had news of the previous trips.

  But that night in the office, as Jim transcribed notes on an accident investigation, Lloyd walked in. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you, Jim?” he asked him suddenly.

  Strangely not surprised, Jim hears himself answer: “No.”

  “Maybe I can help,” Lloyd persists.

  Jim realizes Lloyd knows he’s lying, but the lie must be preserved. “I’m not in trouble,” he said. Now all he wonders is whether Lloyd knows or suspects the charge.

  And so again: the desert for the fifth time since summer. His mother, her Bible, the cane, Miss Lucía in the car with him. He had told his mother only a few days earlier that he—they—would return to Los Angeles.
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  Speeding to the miracle, now demanded. A miracle? To be acquitted of a false charge?

  This time Jim didn’t drive straight through to Los Angeles. They stayed in Phoenix in a gaudy motel like a plastic sugar cake; his mother and Miss Lucía chose it. He rented a room with two beds for them, and an adjoining room for himself.

  That night he heard a crash from her room. Rushing in, he saw a beam of light searching the foreign room. He turns the lamp on, his mother lies on the floor, the flashlight beside her, a glass broken. Miss Lucía is up too.

  “Mother!”“Señora Girard!”

  “I tried to get up, I slipped, I fell!”

  He places her on the bed. No cuts from the jagged glass. Her ankle is sprained. Miss Lucía was already filling the tub with water for Mrs. Girard to soak her foot.

  When they arrived the next day in Los Angeles, his mother was exhausted, her ankle was sore but not too swollen. She went to bed immediately.

  “I’ll take her to the doctor tomorrow—I won’t go to work,” Estela said.

  “She’s just tired from the trip,” Jim insists. “She’ll be okay tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. The trial. Tomorrow.

  When Jim finally fell asleep that night in the motel room he again rented, he had a scattered dream: A whorl of green. A face, indistinguishable features. He leans to kiss the face.

  “PEOPLE VERSUS GIRARD AND TRAVIS!”

  Judge Cory looks fatter today, his skin redder than pink.

  Jim sits at the long table before the judge’s bench. Steve is beside him. Alan and Frank Edmondson are standing. A woman this time, the court recorder is ready to commit the words spoken to symbols to be interred in silent files. A tan-uniformed cop sits next to a telephone at a desk, handcuffs, gun, and contemptuous smile all ready. As if just their presence exposes a lie, Daniels, at the same table, frowned at the projector and screen already located. Again, Jones is not here. Like at the preliminary hearing, there are no spectators. Jim didn’t ask even Roy to come this time.

  The deputy district attorney with the crossed eye has been replaced by a tall, heavy—not fat—man.