I just smiled enigmatically and walked off into the mist like Lauren Bacall, past the fish-feeding station, over the bridge, under the willows, around the lake, and back past the swimming pool-all deserted except for the ducks that paddled along in case I had a loaf of bread with me. If Denn McCloy was anywhere in the park, I couldn’t see him.
A gray Ford pickup had materialized near one of the service areas, but before I got my hopes up, I saw that it sported one of those silver-gray permanent licenses issued to state-owned vehicles.
The skies turned dirty gray again, the mist became distinct drops. The hell with it, I thought. It was bad enough I hadn’t called Dwight the minute I hung up from talking with Denn, why should I stand out here and get drenched to the bone playing out his games?
I rounded the full-sized 1940s-style caboose parked beside the miniature train track and was heading for my car when I heard, “Psst! Deborah!”
“Denn?”
“Shh!”
I looked up and saw him gesturing dramatically from one of the caboose windows. Damned if it wasn’t going to be Strangers on a Train after all.
The interior of the old red caboose was painted a shiny gray enamel. Big iron boxes were bolted to the wall and floor to form wide benches. I wondered if these were old-time bunks and wished that one of the lockers still held a rough wool train blanket.
Denn looked warm in corduroy trousers, plaid wool shirt, and a quilted vest. Since his normal wear was black leather, I guessed this getup was his idea of a disguise. He even wore a John Deere cap to hide his short white buzz cut and, without his usual earring, looked almost like a little old farmer come to town to sell watermelons.
Keyed up though he was, he noticed my damp and chilled condition and said, “I’ve got an extra jacket on the truck. Want me to get it?”
“If it’s not too far away.”
He pointed to the gray pickup sitting in plain sight.
“You stole a state license plate?” I said.
“Borrowed. And I’ve got to give it back by five o’clock.”
It was three-thirty.
I watched as he splashed over to the truck, slipped aside the tarp that covered the bed, and pulled out a black plastic garment bag, which he brought back to the caboose. Inside were several shirts, a couple of tweedy slacks, and a Durham Bulls warm-up jacket.
It felt wonderful around my shoulders. I settled back on one of the iron benches and said, “Okay, talk.”
“How about some coffee, kiddo?” he asked. “I bet they have some at the concession stand.”
“C’mon, Denn. You promised if I came without telling Dwight-”
He slumped down on the opposite bench and the wrinkles around his mouth made him look another ten years older. “Yeah, okay. I know.”
But he couldn’t seem to start. I’d seen this with witnesses before.
“You left me a message on my office machine,” I prompted. “You wanted me to meet you at the theater?”
“Yeah, but before that…” He got up and started pacing back and forth from one end of the caboose to the other. Rain drummed so noisily on the iron roof that I barely heard his words as he walked over to the doorway to watch water cascade off in silver sheets.
I felt like drumming my fingers on his head. “Why was Michael there?” I prodded. “Did you shoot him?”
“God, no! How can you even ask that?” He turned and for a moment I thought his face was splashed with rain. Then I realized that beneath his John Deere cap he was crying uncontrollably.
“I loved him. He was my life.” Tears streamed from his eyes and dropped in dark splotches on his vest. “Now he’s dead- and dear God in heaven, how can I-how will I live without him?”
I can’t stand to see anybody cry uncomforted. Convulsive sobs wracked his thin body as the rain sluiced down all around us, and I held him like a child and went on holding him, listening to his incoherent grief, till the worst was over.
Yet, even after his emotions were back under shaky control and he’d used his handkerchief to wipe his eyes and blow his nose, it still took a few minutes before he could talk about anything except his enormous loss.
“I’d been with others by the time we met-hell, it was the swinging sixties-of course I had. We both had. But after that, he was the only one,” said Denn. “I never looked at another man after our first night together. After a year, he comes back down here and I think I’ve lost him forever… but then he sends for me and eighteen years, kiddo. Sounds soupy in this day and age, doesn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “Actually, it sounds lucky.”
“We were good together, too.” He sat down on the iron bench opposite me. “Michael gave me security and I gave him warmth-someone he could be free with for the first time in his life.”
“My mother used to say that Dancys live behind glass walls,” I said.
He thought about it a minute, then nodded. “Only Michael was always trying to get out. He was a good person. Too good sometimes. Too religious. The kind of religion that-” He fell silent again, twisting his handkerchief in his small clever hands. “I’m not religious myself. But I always thought it ought to comfort and sustain. Not put you on a cross, too.”
The rain had slacked off. I glanced at my watch. Almost four.
“What happened Friday?” I asked again.
“We fought. Again. He’s been so restless this spring.” His face threatened to crumple again, but he forced himself to stay calm. “He says he’s tired of me. Tired of the country, tired of making pots and being good, tired of me.” Denn’s voice dropped. Became shamed. His head drooped until his face was obscured by the bill of his cap. “He’s seeing someone else. Someone younger than me over in Durham. Twenty years younger.”
Once more he resumed his pacing. “But he’d have come back to me. I know that now. He would have.”
How many times I’ve sat in my office, filling in the blanks of a divorce petition, and heard tearful wives or brokenhearted husbands say those exact words: “It’s just a phase. A fling. The seven-year-itch. The other lover doesn’t matter. It won’t last. We have too much history together.”
Sometimes they did; more often they didn’t.
“I pop off. I admit it. I say things I shouldn’t. Make threats I don’t really mean. But after all the things he says-” He blew his nose again to cover a choked gulp. “This time’s different and I see there’s nothing to do but leave until he comes back to his senses.”
While Michael had gone stomping off to the creek with the dog to cool off, Denn had flung his most important possessions into the pickup.
“-because I can’t get my Chinese chest in the Volvo and I don’t want to leave it. Not that I expect to come back and find the locks changed-”
From his tone, I gathered that was exactly what he expected. It sounded as if there’d been an ultimatum: get out or be thrown out.
“So why was Michael at the theater?”
“Cathy must have heard me call you and told him. I don’t know. Maybe he thinks I’m gonna keep the truck to make him mad. He’s ashamed of being gay. Did you know that? That’s why it was so brave of him. To come out down here-I mean even if it was self-punishment-which it wasn’t. Not really. But he could be pure Primitive Baptist at times. Very moralistic. And, of course, the truck’s part of it.”
He was chattering, lurching from one subject to another, barely making sense, and I said so.
“Well, it was like, okay, maybe he’s gay, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a man like any of those other good ol’ country boys. Pickup truck, dog in the flatbed, rifle on the gun rack, the whole goddamn schmear. Sitting up there in the cab of that truck, he can tell himself he’s just like everybody else. I hate the fucking thing, but I need it to move my stuff to a friend’s place over here. I was gonna see you and then take it back and get my car.”
While I was still curious about what he wanted to give me, I’ve learned not to interrupt witnesses when the narrative flow is upon them.
“It takes me longer to get my stuff unloaded than I think and it’s a little past nine before I get back down to the theater. I drive around to the rear and the first thing I see is the Volvo. I drive right up to it and shine the headlights inside and-and-”
