Trophies And Dead Things

'Where?'

'Joyriding, like always. Barhopping. By the time we caught up with.him, it was after one in the morning, and he was in Wiley's Tavern out Two Rock way. Shit-faced. He'd been in a bar fight, had lost his jacket, was acting meaner than a snake. Took the three of us to drag him home.'

'Does he do that often?'

'Often enough. He's not supposed to be driving. Hasn't had a license in years. There's been a lot of trouble with the sheriff. I'm scared to death that someday some deputy's gonna take a shot at him, and that'll be the end of D.A.' Her fingers clutched her coffee cup, their nails going white.

'Isn't there something you can do for him?'

'You're thinking maybe of a psychiatrist or a drug rehab clinic?'

'Those are possibilities.'

She laughed bitterly. 'And how am I gonna pay for that? Look at this place.' She gestured around the room. 'You see any customers? We don't even have a phone anymore. They took it out last month because we couldn't pay the bill.'

'But after D.A. gets his inheritance-'

'Jake and Harley've got plans for that money, and none of them have got anything to do with D.A.'s welfare.' Her voice had risen. She glanced over her shoulder toward the door and modulated it. 'Besides, ain't nothing can help D.A. Something inside that man is broken. Happened when he was in prison. You know about him being in prison?'

I hadn't, of course, but in a way the revelation didn't surprise me. Prison does terrible things to most people- but particularly to those who are neither strong nor insensitive. By his own admission, Taylor was not a strong man; from my observations I knew he was not shallow or calloused. Rather than answer Mia's question directly, I said, 'I'm not clear on what he did that got him sent there.'

'Me neither. It happened back practically before I was born. D.A. don't talk about it-leastways anything that makes sense. Jake and Harley won't talk about it. All I know was it was mixed up with Vietnam, and D.A. and his friends being against the war. The whole thing was stupid, if you ask me. D.A. had a chance to go to college and better himself, and instead he ruined his life.' She paused. 'Don't suppose it matters anymore what happened. What matters is that he's my husband and my babies' daddy, and I got to take care of D.A.'

I was silent for a moment, thinking of the people in this world who somehow always manage to be taken care of. While many of them are genuinely helpless, others are extremely clever in shifting responsibility for themselves to friends' and loved ones' shoulders. In D.A. Taylor I sensed a curious combination of the types, and I wondered if his young wife was aware of it. It was not, however, my place to point it out.

I said, 'Mrs. Taylor-'

'Mia. I don't like that 'Mrs.' stuff. Makes me feel old.'

'Mia, has D.A. ever mentioned anyone named Tom Grant to you?'

'… Not that I recall.'

'What about Jenny Ruhl?'

'Who's she?' The response was quick and reflexive, tinged with suspicion. I supposed she was the jealous type and that her husband might give her reason to be.

'She died a long time ago.'

'Oh. No, I've never heard the name.'

I reached into the zipper compartment of my bag and removed the medallion I'd found in the pouch with Hilderly's gun. 'Does this look familiar?'

Her face tightened. 'D.A.'s got something like that. Different letters, though.'

'May I see it?'

'… I guess that would be okay.' She shivered, drawing her arms across her breasts. 'It's creepy-he hasn't worn it, not ever so far as I know, but sometimes I catch him taking it out of the dresser drawer and looking at it like it's some kind of… I don't know, charm, maybe. Like it's got power over him. I think it's got something to do with… all that.'

'All that?'

'The stuff, you know, that happened before.' She stood abruptly and moved toward the door. 'I'll get it. You best wait here.'

While she was gone I went to the window and peered through the salt-caked glass at the bay. Hog Island was visible in sharp relief today, rocky prominences standing out among the thick trees. I thought of the allure the island had for D.A. as he sat at the end of his dock day after day; I remembered his stated intention of going there when things became too much here on the shore, and my uneasy certainty that he meant to take his own life. A life that he'd long ago ruined for what his young wife claimed was a silly cause.

I didn't agree with Mia on that. For one thing, the antiwar movement had not been silly; it had saved lives, gotten our troops out of a place where they had no business being, given us-for a time, at least-hope for the future. For another thing, D.A.'s ruination had its roots not in his antiwar activism so much as in his own internal weaknesses. He could just as easily have fallen prey to those weaknesses had he completed his education and gone on to achieve the full professorship or the partnership in the prestigious law firm or the place in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company.

To me, D.A. Taylor was both a pathetic and heroic figure. Pathetic because of his drug abuse and inability to let go of the past, but heroic because of what that past had been. At least the man had once cared passionately about something besides himself, had stood up for what he believed in. Perhaps I was allowing my view of him to be colored by the negative feelings I harbor toward much of what is currently going on in America: the lack of compassion, the fear of taking risks, the failure to embrace and hold tight to unselfish ideals. But Taylor was a man who had tried to make a difference-at whatever the personal cost.

After a while a motorized skiff piloted by Harley pulled up to the ramshackle dock behind the restaurant. The mangy dogs that had been sleeping in the sun-there seemed to be virtually dozens of them-jumped up and ran to meet him as he disembarked. In the kitchen that opened off the bar something made a pinging noise. A motor-the refrigerator's?-whirred, ground, and stopped. I turned away from the window and surveyed the empty, cheerless restaurant.

No amount of money, not even what Hilderly had willed to D.A., could reclaim this moldering place. No amount of renovation and financial acumen-which I doubted any of the family possessed-could make a go of the moribund business. Recalling what Mia had said about Harley and Jake having plans for D.A.'s inheritance, I made a mental note to speak with Hank and encourage him to convince Mia that the money should be placed in trust for D.A., her, and their children.

The sound of the door opening broke into my musings. Mia entered, her face drawn and mouth pursed tight, as if to restrain tears. 'Is something wrong?' I asked.

'Something's always wrong. D.A.'s woke up and wandered off again. I don't know where-none of the trucks or cars is gone. And you know what? Maybe I don't care. Maybe if he stumbles out onto the highway and a car picks him off, or if he falls in the bay and passes out and drowns, maybe that would be the best thing for me and my babies.' Her eyes flashed with anger now. She tossed her head defiantly.

I sensed that anger was how she got through-that, and a devotion to her family that made me forgive her not understanding D.A.'s similar, although long-dead, devotion to the wrongness of the Vietnam war. I said, 'You know you don't mean that.'

She shrugged and sat at the table again. I reclaimed my chair.

'You're right,' she said after a moment. 'I don't mean it. But I get so damn tired. Look at me: how old do you think I am?'

'I can't tell. I'm not a very good judge of age.'

'You're just trying to be nice. I'm twenty years old.' She smiled bitterly. 'Twenty. Not even old enough to serve drinks here, though I do, when we get a customer who wants one. I was fourteen when D.A. knocked me up. My mother had to sign so we could get married. The way it was, I was working in a market down in Point Reyes after school, and he'd keep coming in and talking to me. I was so young and dumb I didn't realize how fucked up he was. And then there was Davey, and I couldn't let my baby go without a daddy, could I?'