been inside no more than five minutes.
I was just starting around back to look for her when a delivery van pulled into the driveway. It was from neither UPS nor FedEx. I didn’t think I’d ever heard of this company-Hicks Worldwide-before, but I wasn’t certain. I went to meet the driver, who handed me a parcel the size of a carry-on shoulder bag and asked me to sign for it as he scanned the shipping label.
If he was wondering why there was blood on my clothes, he gave no indication.
“Did you happen to see a dog wandering nearby as you drove up here?” I described the dog and her condition, hoping that would satisfy any curiosity he might have about the state of my clothes. The driver adjusted his wool cap, wiped some sweat from his face, and shook his head.
“Nope, I’d’ve noticed a dog in that kind of shape. You call the pound?”
“Of course,” I said. When it became clear to him that no further details would be forthcoming, the driver thanked me, returned to his van, and left. I carried the package inside and dropped it on the kitchen table and probably would have let it go at that if it hadn’t been for the way it was addressed.
The package had been overnighted to me, had a tracking number, and required a signature on delivery. It had my name and home address in order, nothing odd there, but the return address was also mine.
Someone wanted to make damn sure I got this right away. This same someone also (or so it seemed) did not want me to know who’d sent it until after I’d opened the thing.
We live in anxious times; terrorist attacks, mailorder anthrax, letter bombs, all sorts of unspeakable horrors delivered right to your door-or so say the paranoia-mongers who know a populace kept on edge is a populace easily manipulated. I try not to buy into the fear, because once it’s got a hold on you, it grinds your voice under its heel until your spirit is mute.
I put down the blanket and opened the package. I only wanted to find out who’d sent it, if it was some kind of practical joke, then I’d go take care of the dog and hopefully get to the group home in time to take Carson to the movie. Just a few extra moments without the blood of another living thing on my hands or clothes. It didn’t seem unreasonable.
Inside was a large, well-taped and well-packed cardboard box that revealed two layers of bubble wrap and packing peanuts before finally unveiling the first of its treasures: five record albums, sleeves undamaged, LPs in perfect condition. Steppenwolf 7, Yes’s Fragile, The Best of Three Dog Night, Neil Young’s Harvest, and the masterpiece of masterpieces, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.
I stared at the albums in wonder. I’d long ago lost my copies of the records, had replaced them on (in order) reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette, and CD. Who the hell would be sending me mint-condition copies of albums in a format no one listened to anymore?
Beneath the albums, each in a clear plastic protective sleeve, were several 45 rpm records: “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” “Join Together,” “Don’t Want to Live Inside Myself,” “Ode to Billy Joe,” “They’re Coming to Take Me Away (Ha-Ha!),” “Cherry, Cherry,” and at least a dozen others I’d heard on the radio while growing up. God, the memories that were brought back just seeing the titles on the old record labels-Decca, Dunhill, RCA, Cotillion and Reprise… a shorthand history of 1970s popular music, here in my shaking, blood-tinged hands. Growing up, I’d become something of an expert on the various changes made to their labels by record companies over the years-the loss of the multicolored lines on the Decca label, the way the Reprise logo got smaller and smaller, how Capital went from black to the coolest green with its circle-within-a-circle to just a boring shade of pea-puke that shamed my turntable’s aesthetic. I was the only person I knew of who noticed or even cared about trivialities such as this – except for Beth.
Beth.
I looked through the LPs and 45s once again, my arms shaking more and more as it began to dawn on me that these records were not thrown into this box at random; they were selected with a great deal of attention, a private meaning in their arranged order, chosen as she’d choose them.
Or would have.
All of these had been among Beth’s very, very favorite albums and songs. Beth, my first and truest friend; Beth, whom I’d loved more than anyone else before or since; Beth, whom I’d last heard from one sweltering summer night over twenty years ago; Beth, who’d been missing and presumed (later officially declared) dead for a majority of my adult life.
For a moment her face superimposed itself over the old man’s, and why not? I’d been the last person to see either of them alive.
Over the years I had managed to convince myself that Beth wasn’t really dead, she’d just run off to some exotic foreign place without telling anyone and was living there under an assumed name, maybe as an artist, or underground writer, or something just as gloriously bohemian. That would suit her; just say, “Fuck you!” to the world at large and vanish into a new country, a new identity, “finding herself” until she was confident enough to come back and say, “Ha! Fooled those complacent smirks right off your faces, didn’t I? Boy, have I got a story to tell you! ”
I gently placed the records aside, making sure to stack them so they wouldn’t slide off onto the floor; already I was planning on pulling my Gerard turntable out of its box and hooking it up to the stereo so I could listen to them until I hit the city limits of Sloppy Nostalgia (our motto: “Wax with us or wax the damn car!”).
Underneath another layer of bubble wrap were books, hardcover and paperback; Judy Blume, Kurt Vonnegut, a first edition of Stephen King’s Carrie, The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a bunch of old comic books- Spider-Man, Prince Namor: The Sub-Mariner, Hawkman, Ghost Rider #1.
Heaven; I was in heaven.
There was a 9? 12 clasp envelope sandwiched between two of the comic books. I opened it and dumped the contents onto the coffee table.
The first thing to spill out was a present I’d gotten Beth for her twenty-first birthday-a thin gold necklace with a small cameo that opened to reveal a photograph of me and her standing in front of a King’s Island roller coaster, taken at one of our yearly summer outings when we were still young enough to believe such trips were what made living worthwhile; next were two condoms, still in their sealed packets (the empty third packet was taped to them); a pair of crescent moon-shaped earrings; a half-empty pack of Benson amp; Hedges Menthol 100s; a program from a community theater production of Pippin ; and, most telling of all, a pair of tattered Valentine’s Day cards: the first one I had given Beth when she was eighteen and I was twelve: “I Love You Best of All!”; the second was one she had given me shortly before I turned eighteen: “Just wait until you’re legal!”
I could still smell a trace of the musk oil with which she’d doused the card, the same musk she used to daub behind her ears and on her neck. It was still the sexiest aroma ever created. At least that’s what memory had me now believing.
If I’d had any doubts about who’d sent the package, this card erased them.
Beth was alive.
I suddenly remembered a quote from the poet Oscar Wilde: “One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.” God, how true that was.
Beth was alive.
So much had already happened today that I couldn’t fully absorb the meaning of that, and so much was still happening that, for the time being, I didn’t have the time to absorb its meaning.
I folded the envelope and was about to toss it among the other goodies when I felt something else inside, wedged into a corner at the bottom. I reached in and scratched away with my fingernail until the object came loose.
I opened my hand and looked at what lay nestled in my palm.
At first, nothing registered; there was only a vague – grabbing my shirt and pulling me toward him, blood seeping into the cotton of my shirt as I lifted the bowler and showed him that it was undamaged, looking into my eyes, his lips squirming in a mockery of communication, sounds that were a burlesque of language, but there was something there, something that drew him to me or me to him, and he turned his head ever so slightly to the right and I saw – impression of memory, a needling sense that this thing was supposed to mean something to me. I felt I should recognize it-perhaps the part of me that did recognize it hadn’t gotten to the light switch yet (No, not yet, but I’m making my way there, pal, you can count on that.)
– but there was nothing.
Wait, scratch that.
