23.
We got back to the house late and took the bedroom Leonard had left us. He was asleep on the couch. We made love again and talked some more. I told Florida all I knew about Illium Moon, about how we found the body. She thought we should call the police. I did too. But Leonard had taken bullets because of me, the least I could do was give him some time.
“You never heard any of this,” I said. “It comes up, except with Leonard, you don’t know a thing.”
“Oh, Hap.”
“Not a thing, Florida.”
“That poor man… down there.”
“He don’t know he’s up or down. Another day isn’t going to matter.”
We finally snuggled and fell asleep, and I dreamed.
And in this dream I was under water. Down there in the bookmobile with Illium, but I could see clearly this time. It wasn’t as dark as it had actually been. Uncle Chester was there too. They were swollen and spongy and their faces were no longer black. They were the color of damp oatmeal. Illium was sitting behind the wheel. He had a jar of coupons. Beside him, on the passenger side, reading a paperback copy of Dracula, was Uncle Chester. I was in the back, leaning between the seats, watching them. They didn’t seem to notice I was there. I looked over Uncle Chester’s shoulder. He was reading the part of Dracula about the “Bloofer Lady,” the vampire child murderer. I could read it clearly, even though the words were gibberish, hieroglyphics at best.
Illium unscrewed the lid on the jar in his lap, and the jar filled with water and the coupons floated up and out, paraded before him like small, wafer-thin fish. He plucked one of them between his fingers and put it back in the jar. He grabbed another, and another, but as fast as he put them in the jar they floated out. Uncle Chester turned and looked at Illium. He shut the book and held it in one hand. With the other he reached over and clutched at the floating coupons. He helped put them in the jar, and still they floated out. The process was endless. Illium and Uncle Chester grabbing the coupons, putting them in the jar, and the coupons floating out.
I turned to the back and there was a trunk in the van, and the lid was up. It was Uncle Chester’s trunk. I looked inside. There was a little black boy in there. Nude. His eyes wide open. His lips formed the words Help me, but I turned away.
On the opposite side of the van, mounted on the wall, was the painting Leonard had done of the old house amid the trees. The paint began to bead, then bubble. The bubbles filled with colors of the paint and streaked down its length as if crying Crayola tears.
I felt uncomfortable. Hot. I realized I was holding my breath. The back door of the van was shut. I tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. I turned and tried to walk to the front of the van, but now I was swimming. I tried to ease between Uncle Chester and Illium, make my way to the driver’s window, but it was closed. I was growing weak, dizzy. I grabbed at the window crank and attempted to roll the window down, but the crank wouldn’t work, and now Illium and Uncle Chester had hold of me and were yanking me back. I twisted and tried to fight them. Their faces were more puffed than before. Their eyes poked from their heads like peeled grapes. The little black boy was out of the trunk. He swam between them, took hold of my shirt. His eyes were pleading. His hand tugged at me. His arm came loose at the shoulder and floated up, but still his fingers held my shirt. Then his other arm came loose at his shoulder and floated to the top of the van. Then his legs. And finally his head. His torso came down to rest on my chest, and his body parts bobbed all around me, shedding flesh, leaving only the floating bones, the rib cage lying across me. I tried to pull the skeletal arm and fingers from my shirt, but I was too weak. The bony arm began to tug. Coupons swam by me. Illium and Chester Pine leaned over me and smiled. The water turned murky. I felt as if I were blacking out.
Then I woke up hot and mummy-wrapped in the covers. The moon was filling the room. Florida had rolled to the other side of the bed. The moonlight was mostly on her, and I was in shadow. I noted that the shadow made my skin dark as hers. I untwisted the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed and took in some deep breaths. After a while, I rolled back on the bed and took hold of the sheet and covered Florida and myself.
I thought about what I had dreamed. It seemed pretty silly now. There was a logical explanation for everything in the dream, but I felt my unconscious was also trying to tell me something I’d overlooked all this time. I still didn’t know what it was, but I thought I had hold of the edges of it, and if I kept my grip, I might pull the rest of it into view.
I lay awake until the moon slipped away and the sun eased up, rose and gold and already hot.
Florida was still asleep, and so was Leonard, when I tiptoed into the kitchen and started coffee. By the time the coffee was beginning to perk, Leonard was awake. He came in wearing his gray robe and some grungy bunny- rabbit slippers. You know, those silly things with the ears on them, white cotton tails at the heels. Personally, I’ve always wanted a pair.
Leonard yawned, sat at the table. “Where’s Florida?” he said.
“Still sleeping. We were up late.”
“Contemplating the universe, of course. What’s this?”
He was pointing at his painting. After I got the coffee going, I had brought it into the kitchen and propped it up in a chair. I had the copy of Dracula on the table. I had a pencil and paper there too. I had drawn on the paper.
“I been thinking stuff over, Leonard. I believe I’ve come up with some ideas.”
“Like what?”
I poured him coffee, poured myself a cup, and said, “I’m looking at this now from your standpoint. Your uncle isn’t guilty. Once I could get myself to think that way, I began to get some ideas. That’s all they are, though, ideas.”
“Let’s hear them,” Leonard said.
“Your uncle was a fan of mysteries. He wanted to be a cop. He was a security guard. He claimed to have information regarding child murders, and wanted to have his own personal investigation with assistance from the police, but he didn’t want them in complete control. We know from what Hanson said that the child disappearances here on the East Side weren’t exactly given top priority, and now, even if someone came in and wanted to pursue them, like Hanson, it’s such an old case, it would still be a back-burner operation. We know too racial prejudice most likely affected the conclusions of previous investigators.”
“Bottom line, my uncle didn’t trust the police, but he saw himself as an investigator. It was his big chance to solve a real mystery.”
“Let’s say Illium, who was an ex-cop, met your uncle through one of his personal programs. Bookmobile, the recycling, whatever. They became friends, and they began to investigate this business. I don’t know why they began to investigate. Some little pieces of evidence got them curious, and they were bored, and they went to it. Or they found the skeleton by accident, and your uncle brought it here because he wanted to examine it, try and figure what happened. Thing is, though, if he was investigating with Illium, and they were serious about what they were doing, they must have made notes. But where are they?”
“You’re right,” Leonard said. “Uncle Chester would have made notes.”
“Let’s hold our water there and back up. Your uncle began to lose it. Alzheimer’s, not enough blood to the brain, whatever, but he began to experience problems. He got his will straight through Florida, left his stuff to you. But his thinking continued to muddle. Say he couldn’t work on the case anymore, and that just left Illium. Your uncle wanted this business solved, but it was different now. His brain was melting. He couldn’t hold his thoughts. I think that’s why you have that bottle tree out there. A part of him knew there was something corrupt about, but he couldn’t remember what.”
“So he translated it as something supernatural?”
“Something evil. If he heard about bad spirits when he was a kid, it could have come back to him as real, his mind messed up the way it was. He might have thought he was actually doing something that could protect him. And in clear moments he wanted to tell you about it, or write it down, but he couldn’t remember long enough, so the things that were important to the case became all the focus he had, and those things became symbols rather than thoughts.”
“The coupons. The book. The painting.”