The Black Brook Read online

  He worked downtown at night, on the fifteenth floor of a narrow building of light green stone near Boston Harbor. He would ride the Red Line across the Charles and climb the stairs from the subway stop under South Station, carrying a brown paper bag with his supper and a Foster’s Lager inside.

  He had come from a small town in Rhode Island, and the mere fact of getting around in the city made him feel worldly and competent in a jaded way. The setting sun dropped shadows on the streets. Taxicabs and Ryder trucks rattled along Atlantic Avenue. The wind came off the harbor and on some nights the elevator would scrape the shaft sides going up or down.

  Paul typed the details of felony assaults on a keyboard hooked by ponderous wires to a cathode-ray tube. That was the sum of his internship. He worked by himself at a long metal table flanked by rows of shelves bearing Xeroxed crime records from seven cities in the greater Boston area. The seven cities had not wanted to make or consolidate these copies but had done so under the terms of a federal grant that they had used to buy new guns and undercover disguises. The orphaned records resided in damp cardboard boxes, and the shelves groaned and shifted ominously as Paul moved among them, pulling boxes down or putting them back.

  The work went slowly, as the terminal that he had been given lagged, froze, and buzzed in threatening tones. The machine stored information by punching holes in rolls of mint-green paper. When a roll was full of holes, Paul took it off its spool and snapped a rubber band around it. Then he tossed the banded roll into a shoebox. He was in no hurry once he understood that nothing was required. The only trend he identified was the tendency of home assaults to take place in the kitchen.

  A gaunt professor of criminology named M. Leonard Dalton came up to the fifteenth floor every once in a while to supervise Paul’s internship. He wore a silver bracelet identifying himself as an organ donor, and carried a leather portfolio full of car magazines, for he had restored a Fiat convertible.

  “There’ve been three more kitchen scenes tonight,” Paul said. “One with a serving fork.”

  “Don’t think about patterns,” said the professor. He smoked emphatically, with the cigarette jammed down between his index and middle fingers. “Take any two researchers and provide them with the same material, and the chances are one will make fine, startling observations and the other one will end up with bland results. What accounts for the disparity? Well, in all likelihood the second one got entranced by the anecdotal. And as a result he can kiss his research money goodbye.”

  “Was one of those researchers you?” said Paul.

  “I’ve lost funding. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Paul typed furiously, then stopped. “The woman in the kitchen was named Cheryl,” he said. “When the cops arrived she was standing by the electric range with a fork hanging out of her arm. I can’t get over it.”

  “It is a wicked world.”

  “She said, ‘It isn’t what you think.’”

  “I drove the Fiat tonight but it needs a new head.”

  Paul wondered about the proper response to this remark. “That’s too bad,” he said.

  “I’m getting this white smoke, just a little touch of white smoke. I don’t like driving the Fiat into Boston in the best of circumstances. The thing about a convertible is they can slice through the roof and tear out the radio in a heartbeat. But my wife has our other car.”

  Paul cracked his knuckles and stared at the glass screen. “You leave it on the street?”

  “Oh Jesus, no. It’s in a parking garage. And so in that respect you would think I could relax. But even in a garage someone could go ahead and slash through the roof in a matter of seconds.”

  “Do you have insurance?”

  “I’m working on a comprehensive package.”

  “Listen to this one,” said Paul. “Subject states that he did not mean to hit complainant in face and states furthermore that he does not know what gets into him sometimes.”

  Dalton turned the pages of Car & Driver with his heels resting on Paul’s table. “What’s your major again?”

  “Biology and economics.”

  “We never get criminology students. Year after year they throw in obscure majors like you just because your old man is some big deal down at the cop shop.”

  “My uncle.”

  “You prove my point. What school did you go to?”

  “Sherwood University,” said Paul. “It’s in Quebec. Maybe I’m not the one for the job, but it all seems like some kind of joke.”

  “Well, that’s right,” said Dalton. “It is a joke. But even joke books have a serious chapter.”

  “I could type faster if I had a better terminal. I know that much.”

  “Everybody wants something. Why Quebec? Are you Canadian? Or should I say, Are you a Canadian?”

  Paul shook his head. “I’m from Rhode Island.”

  “The little state.”

  “Sherwood gave me the best deal of all the colleges I applied to.”

  Dalton planted his feet on the floor and hunched forward to tear a coupon from his magazine. “I’ll bet that was a spirited competition.”

  The internship left Paul’s days free. He visited Revere Beach, the parks of the Emerald Necklace, and Harvard University. He was surprised to find that the Harvard students looked like students at all. He was surprised that you could just walk into the middle of the campus, that you could just walk into Widener Library, that you, anyone from anywhere, could sit down and read a book in the reading room of Widener Library; that you could then walk out of the reading room and gaze for twenty minutes, without anyone telling you to move along, at John Singer Sargent’s mural of a World War I soldier in a death’s embrace with a blond angel. Paul had expected gates that never opened, earthen embankments, a difference in elevation. He had expected to get so close and no closer. The forking sidewalks of Harvard Yard seemed to suggest the rich and intricate lives that lay ahead of the Harvard students, and once, when a woman in a blue dress asked Paul for the time as he crossed the campus, he thought that she must have taken him for a Harvard student. Paul considered his own school, on the Canadian shore of Lake Memphremagog: it was a scenic campus but no Harvard.

  Paul had a black tin mailbox near the doorway of his apartment building, but almost all of the mail that came was addressed to the person from whom he was subletting. One day, though, while leaving for work, he encountered the mailman, who drew from his bag a long manila envelope and said, “Do you work for the City of Boston?”

  “In a way.”

  “I’d like to know how you swung it. I truly would. You’ve got to know somebody to get that gig.”

  Then he handed Paul the envelope, which contained a letter saying that Professor M. Leonard Dalton had died in an automobile accident. The funeral service would be held at the Church of the Logical Assumption in Wellesley, with burial to follow at Hopp Hill Cemetery. Paul found this very hard to believe. If a line connected the sarcastic character who had visited the record room from time to time with the man herein claimed to no longer exist, it was a line he could not follow. He would have to go to the funeral to get to the bottom of this reckless claim.

  Paul went to a clothing store on Summer Street in Boston to buy a tie for the funeral. The salesman was a thin and elderly gentleman with a faint accent from some other country.

  “It’s for a funeral,” said Paul.

  “I’m glad you told me though,” said the salesman. He went into the back of the store and returned holding in both hands a blue tie with small white dots. “A good pattern for a funeral — subdued, well meaning — and afterward it will retain its utility. Feel. That’s one hundred percent silk.”

  “Are you from England?” said Paul.

  “I come from a town in the Scottish Highlands,” said the salesman. “It’s a beautiful place, but my broth
er is there, and we don’t get along.”

  “I thought you were from somewhere.”

  “He’s not the only reason,” said the salesman. “But if you met him, you would know what I mean.”

  On the day of the funeral, Paul retrieved his car from a storage lot in Somerville and drove to Wellesley. Logical Assumption stood at a crossroads, a brick church with a shallow peaked roof and bronze medallions set into the facade. The medallions were the size of manhole covers and had been embossed with religious scenes, and Paul examined one while waiting for the funeral to begin.

  Jesus hung on the cross — actually, he seemed to float — and a ribbon of blood flowed from a cut under his ribs into an urn below his feet. Two deer with antlers like ferns drank from the urn while in the background a candle burned and a skeleton bent forward as if discouraged, with finger bones fanned over eye sockets. The image suggested victory over death but had been rendered with a lurid lack of subtlety.

  As Paul read the inscription he heard two women talking on the steps of the church.

  “They say there wasn’t a mark on him,” said one.

  “And the car was a convertible.”

  “It’s almost a miracle.”

  “Well — he is dead.”

  “It’s unusual, at any rate.”

  “I just feel that the term ‘miracle’ gets used way too much these days,” said the doubtful woman. “Every time you turn around, this or that is being called a miracle. People see a pattern of knotholes in a tree, it’s a miracle. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy all these miracles.”

  “At least the Daltons have no children.”

  “That is good. Although, again, it’s no miracle.”

  The church had a black-and-white-checkered carpet and a large mahogany altar. Paul waited in line and then looked into the open casket. He thought that dying would be easy compared with lying in a box for all the world to see this way. Then he realized something — that he and Dalton wore the same tie, blue with small white dots.

  Leonard’s friends took the pulpit one at a time. They said he liked the art of the Southwest, that he was a gifted mimic, and that he had a well-hidden generous side. Paul imagined a speech that he could give: “I did not know Leonard Dalton well, and yet I say to you that he loved cars and car parts.”

  The other drivers in the automotive caravan to the cemetery would not admit Paul’s car until the end of the line, as if they suspected that Paul did not care about Professor Dalton the way that they did, if at all, and only wanted to see what the funeral would be like. Maybe they regarded his car as shabby, which it was, a 1969 Plymouth Fury, military green, with large tires, no hubcaps, and an anti-handgun sticker on the windshield that seemed somehow wrong for a funeral. The car rose and fell like a graceless boat as Paul floored it through red lights to keep up with the procession. He wrenched the dead man’s tie from his collar and jammed it under the seat.

  Wind gusted through the tall and airy trees of the cemetery. Paul stood across the grave from the criminologist’s wife. She wore a long-sleeved black dress and a dark and dotted veil that kept getting pushed aside, revealing red lips and glazed eyes.

  “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” said the priest.

  The casket was gunmetal blue and suspended on a motorized lift over the grave.

  Two thirds of the cars dropped out of the procession when it was time to go back to the Daltons’ place for supper and drinks. Mourners drifted through the house, past desert paintings, sand-colored and green, and rattlesnake bones on driftwood bases, and lamps made of smooth stones. Leonard had been a Johnny Mathis fan, evidently, and his wife drank Tom Collinses, spun Mathis records, and rocked gently to the sound of the strings. She had discarded her veil, and Paul saw that her hair was golden and her eyes were round and dark and tranquil. “Take my hand,” sang Johnny Mathis, “I’m a stranger in . . . paradise.”

  The afternoon wound down. Students from Leonard’s summer classes sat staring gloomily into the empty stone fireplace. Low sunlight streamed over the garden and into the windows of the house. Paul finished his drink, walked over to the young widow, and kissed the top of her forehead, where her hair was drawn back in discrete furrows the color of straw.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It isn’t fair.”

  She looked up. “Who are you?”

  “Paul Nash,” said Paul, for Nash was his family name, and it would be years before he had to change it. “I was one of your husband’s students.”

  “So was I,” she said. “But that was a while ago. I’m Mary Dalton.”

  Paul thought her very beautiful. “How long were you together?”

  “Three years,” said Mary. “Would you like to see my wedding dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re looking at it.” She still wore the black dress, with long sleeves that narrowed to the pulse points of her wrists. She lifted her arms. “Get it? This is my wedding dress.”

  “In a way,” said Paul.

  “Nobody gets it,” said Mary. Her arms settled in her lap. “Why don’t you come out to the kitchen with me?”

  They left the living room, crossed the kitchen, climbed some back stairs with a drawing of a cow on the landing, and made their way to a sky-blue bedroom with clouds painted on the ceiling. Mary walked into a large closet while Paul inspected a row of small horses standing on top of a dresser. Little gold chains hung from the bridles.

  After a few minutes Mary came out of the closet wearing a white dress. Embroidery covered the upper part, and the skirt was long and glossy and full. The modest neckline revealed the graceful curve of her shoulders.

  “This is it really,” she said.

  “Did you like being married?”

  “We were getting there. We were getting to like it. But you have to understand Len.”

  “I don’t understand Len,” said Paul. “I had no idea he collected paintings.”

  “Those are mine, actually. I painted them. I can paint in virtually any style, and the desert scenes are what he liked.”

  “They are excellent,” said Paul. “It’s a good house.”

  “We don’t own it. We rent the house from the college. What happens next is your guess as well as mine.”

  She looked at him steadily as they talked. He was not used to her gaze, and heat rose to his face, although he could not tell whether she was looking at him any differently than she looked at anyone else.

  “On our honeymoon we went to Lake Mead,” said Mary. “That’s in Nevada. You’re blushing. Have you seen Hoover Dam? Overall, I didn’t like Lake Mead that much, I’m not one for that dry heat, but I’m glad that I saw the dam. Len was very happy, as I recall, on our honeymoon.”

  The bed was low, and they sat side by side on it for some time without talking, but the quiet was not uncomfortable.

  “When I was a girl,” said Mary, “I spent time on a sheep farm in Europe. You should have seen the sheep when they were first born. They walked just like this.” She demonstrated manually, with the fingers of her right hand mimicking the lambs’ stumbling steps on the bedspread between them.

  Paul worked no more on the study of assaults. No one supervised it and he did nothing requiring supervision. He spent his nights in the record room reading and drinking. He had switched from beer to wine, a transition that made him feel even more jaded than he felt on account of understanding the subways. He knocked over a glass of red wine, staining the pages of Looking Backward, a Utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, in which a doctor falls asleep in Boston and wakes up in a better world one hundred and thirteen years later. Paul lugged a television set up to the file room and watched The Movie Loft on Channel 38. Of all the shows he had seen that tried to create a sense of camaraderie between the host and the viewer, The Movie Loft succeeded the most.
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br />   One night he opened a file cabinet and found some cigarettes and car magazines. He brought them to the long table where he used to work and began reading about the new Corvette. The new Corvette looked flabby and obvious compared with the Sting Rays of his youth, and Paul thought the makers should call off the model before the proud name became a joke. The article asked who could resist the chance to drive around in an orange neon Corvette.

  “I could resist that,” said Paul idly. Then he called Mary and asked her to come into town for the magazines.

  “Can they wait?” she said.

  “They could,” he said. “I want to see you.”

  “Give me an address.”

  Paul took the elevator to the lobby of the building. Rain streamed down dark, key-shaped windows. Mary arrived wearing sandals and jeans and a yellow slicker, and carrying a white canvas bag. Paul explained that she should not worry if the elevator hit the shaft walls, because it just did that occasionally, but it didn’t happen this time. She took off her slicker and folded it over a chair in the file room. Underneath the slicker she wore a ribbed white sweater with short sleeves. Her arms were long and tanned with fine blond hair. She leaned over the computer terminal and turned it on.

  “You don’t see many of these,” she said.

  “It’s junk,” said Paul.

  She began typing. “I work with computers. Did you know that? For a living. This terminal is primitive, but still it responds to the Basic language. What I’m doing right now is creating an infinite random pattern.”

  She stood back. A green helix caromed slowly around the screen. When it hit the edges it would break apart and begin again somewhere else.

  “The way you looked at me at the funeral,” said Paul. “I couldn’t help thinking it meant something.”

  “It did, it does,” she said.

  “Look at the windows,” said Paul. He turned off the lamp on his table and the city lights came up.

  She pulled a folded Navajo blanket from the white cloth bag. Between the stacks they fell to their knees on the blanket. He kissed the side of her face near the ear and felt the buzz of the soft whorled hairs at the turn of her jaw. Her breath slowed and he could feel her eyes closing, could feel the hesitation of the falling lids. His hands held her sides through the sweater; his thumbs met beneath the sternum, where the hard bone gave way to banded muscle. Then she nudged his hands away and lifted the sweater. Her fists, holding cloth, rose on either side of her face. He smelled her skin, a warm sandy smell like pencil shavings.