“Facts are facts,” Moth replied, smiling. “But they slip and slide and change over years. History is a little like wet clay.”
The doctor laughed. “Very apt,” he said. “I believe so, too. But it is not so much that the facts change as much as it is our perception of them.”
The doctor picked a pencil off his desk. He tapped it three times, then started to doodle on a pad.
“He wrote ‘My fault’ on a paper…” Moth started.
“Yes. That troubled me,” said the doctor. “It’s an intriguing choice of words, especially for a psychiatrist. What do you make of it?”
“It’s almost as if he was answering a question.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But was it a question that had been asked or was it one that he expected to be asked.”
The doctor scratched his pencil hard against the pad, making a black mark.
“In the study of history, Timothy, how do you examine a document that might tell you something about your subject?”
“Well, context is important,” Moth said.
But what Moth was thinking was: Place. Circumstances. Connection to the moment. When Wellington muttered “Blucher or night…” it was because he understood that the battle hung in the balance at that precise second in time. So, Ed writes “My fault” because those words have a bigger context right then.
“I have another question,” Moth said.
The doctor didn’t reply, other than to lean forward slightly.
“Why would Ed own two guns. Or even one gun?”
The therapist’s mouth opened slightly. He seemed to think for a moment.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
“That is troubling,” the doctor said. “Unlike Ed.” He seemed to think hard-as if the two weapons seemed to represent some facet of personality that he’d failed to explore. “And the note-the ‘My fault’-where precisely was that on the desk?”
Moth had not thought about this. He replied slowly, cautiously. “Just a little to the left of center. I think.”
“Not to the right?”
“No.”
The doctor nodded. He reached out, grabbed a prescription pad, held his hand over it as if he was about to write something. Then, he looked down, pointing. “But it was over here…” He gestured at the opposite side of the desk. “Perhaps that means something. Perhaps it does not. It is curious, however.”
He looked at Andy and then to Moth.
“I think you will need to be more than curious,” he said.
This statement seemed to indicate that the interview had ended, as did the doctor’s pushing back in his chair.
Andy Candy had been quiet, listening.
“If not exactly who, then what was Ed afraid of?” she asked.
The doctor smiled.
“Ah, a clever question,” he said. “Despite his education and training, like many addicts and alcoholics, Ed feared his past.”
Andy nodded.
In Shakespeare, she thought, there are Seven Ages of Man, from infancy to childhood and on to old age and extreme old age. Ed never made it to that stage and the first two are probably hidden, even for a historian like Moth. So, look to the stages where Ed became an adult.
“Do you know why he came to Miami?” she asked.
The doctor paused. “Yes,” he said. “At least perhaps in part. He spent many years fleeing from who he was, trying to escape his family, who had insisted on his medical education taking place amidst all the trappings of prestige that only the Ivy League and similar institutions provide. Timothy, I suspect, is familiar with this pressure. His marriage was the same picture-do what others expect of you, not what you want. This is not that unusual in Miami. I know we’re a great place for refugees from all over the world. But don’t you think we’re an equally good spot for emotional refugees?”
Andy saw Moth lean forward. She recognized the look. He sees something, she thought. At least, this was what she hoped she saw in his face.
11
Student #5 was on the back deck doing early morning yoga exercises when the bear walked through the rear of the yard. He froze in position so not to startle the animal, holding a pose called falling butterfly. He could feel his stomach muscles tighten with exertion, but he refused to lower himself even to the worn wooden floor. The beast would be alert to any odd noise or telltale motion.
The bear-four hundred pounds of lumbering black bear with all the grace of an old Volkswagen Bug-seemed intent on finding a fallen tree and scraping out an I’ve just awakened from winter hibernation and I’m damn hungry appetizer of grubs and beetles, then probably moving back into the thick trees and scrub brush that bordered on Student #5’s modest riverside property to find a more significant meal.
An easy shot, he thought. Just inside the house was a Winchester 30.06 deer rifle. But it would have to be a kill shot. Heart or brain. Big animal. Strong. Healthy. More than capable of running off and dying slowly in the deep woods where I couldn’t track him down and put him out of his misery. He was reminded of the U.S. Marine Corps sniper mantra: One shot. One kill.
He was tempted to lower himself to the deck and crawl to the weapon, draw a bead, and fire. Good practice.
He watched as the bear inspected and rejected a few of the rotting opportunities, wearing what Student #5 considered a look of bear-frustration coupled with bear-determination. Then, with a visible shrug that seemed to make every inch of luxurious midnight-colored fur twitch, the bear wandered off into the woods. A few bushes quivered as the animal passed by and disappeared. Student #5 thought it was as if the weak, gray, early morning light had enveloped the bear and cloaked him in fog. The dark forest that rose behind stretched for miles, though steep hills and empty onetime logging lands, now set aside for wildlife preserves. His house-actually a ramshackle double-wide trailer perched on cinder blocks with a small wooden deck built off the tiny kitchen-was barely a hundred yards from a bend in the Deerfield River, and the early day hours trapped all the cool night moisture that gathered above the waters.
He listened carefully for a few moments, hoping to catch a fading bear sound-but he could hear nothing, so he lowered himself to the deck. He breathed out sharply, thinking it was like being underwater. He looked out at the backyard area, trying to spot some residual sign of the bear’s morning intrusion, but there were none, save for a few damp streaks in the dew where paws had been set down.
He smiled.
I’m the same sort of predator, he thought, hungry, finished with hibernation, only a lot more lean and a lot more focused. And my tracks fade just as quickly as his do.
I’m the same sort of predator.
Patient.
In the kitchen behind him an old-fashioned windup alarm clock rang. End of exercise time. Student #5 lifted himself up and stretched a little bit before he hustled back inside to dress. Even in a world that bordered on ancient, where a bear was his neighbor, Student #5 prided himself on organization. If he set aside forty-five minutes for physical fitness, then forty-five it was. Not one second less. Not one more.
By mid-morning he was folding donated clothes and stacking canned foodstuffs at a combination Salvation Army outlet and attached free food pantry on the outskirts of Greenfield in a sad strip mall that featured a Home Depot, a McDonald’s, and a boarded-up space that had once housed a bookstore that had gone out of business. He volunteered at the outlet whenever he arrived in Western Massachusetts. There were pockets of poverty throughout the rural area he lived in, and the small city had been hard hit by recessions and tough economic times.