“The white light at the end of the dark tunnel,” Mary repeated-then wished she hadn’t. “People say that’s what you see when you’re dying.
Like the escalator at the airport. Don’t believe any of that myself. When you’re dead, you’re dead. No heaven, no hell, just a lot of nothing.” Mary swept the long blonde hair away from her eyes with her long painted fingers. Lauren Bacall, they used to call me.
“You’re not religious, Mary?” The detective furrowed his eyebrows impatiently.
He knows my name. That surprised Mary. Jack must have told him. He must have asked.
“Nothing against religion, Detective. I was baptized myself but I just can’t see that there is anything else. You do what you can in this life and then you’re gone, swatted off the planet like a mosquito on your arm.”
“I went up to the Mackenzie farm,” the detective said to Jack, ignoring Mary’s remark.
“Joe Mackenzie?” Mary asked. Wonder if he’s married.
The detective nodded.
“Up by Echo Valley?” Jack added. “I thought they closed the place down. Passed there the other day and it looked boarded up.”
“Nope. Still occupied. They’re letting old Joe live out his last days there. Hydro bought it off the Mackenzies years ago but they had some kind of agreement with the old man about letting Joe live out his days.
Joe’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer but looks to me like he pulled one over on the commission. Free rent for life.” The detective and the bartender shared a laugh.
“Joe Mackenzie,” Mary declared. “I went to school with Joe. He was in grade eight, a couple years older than the rest of the class. Nice-looking fellow. He had a scar on his left cheek. Something he picked up from his old man. The father was always whacking those kids around. I was in his younger sister’s class. Joe was pretty smart. Everybody said so. Just didn’t take to school.”
“Police business?” Jack asked.
The detective nodded, glancing over at Mary, expecting her to add something.
“Joe’s complaining that his neighbors have been dumping garbage down his well.”
The bartender wiped the surface of the bar. “A well? Doesn’t Joe have running water?”
The officer nodded. “Doesn’t use the well for water. I’m surprised that the city hasn’t forced Joe to fill it in.”
“Didn’t Joe get married?” Mary asked.
“Don’t you remember?” The bartender turned to Mary. “His wife disappeared about ten years ago. Folks figured she ran off with someone.
She was pretty wild as I recall. One of the Hare sisters. She’d been sleeping around on Joe ever since they tied the knot. Used to come in here when I first started, came on to any pair of trousers that walked in the door. Nice figure. Loved to dance. Put a dime in the jukebox and ask 6 anyone who was available to dance. Women like that are asking for trouble.”
“Nancy Hare?” Mary asked. Women like what?
“June, her name was June,” Jack replied, then turned back to the detective. “So people are throwing garbage in Joe’s well. Why the hell would they do that to Joe?”
“Joe said they’ve been doing it for months. Started during the garbage strike last winter. I checked out the well. You’d expect it to be overflow-ing with garbage, but I couldn’t find anything.”
“No garbage?” Jack asked.
The detective shook his head.
“There wasn’t even the smell of garbage,” the officer continued.
“Maybe Joe’s lost whatever marbles he had,” Jack suggested. “Just looking for attention. Pretty lonely up there all by yourself.”
“That’s what I figured,” the detective said, rubbing the side of his nose with his finger. “But Joe was insistent. I took a stone and dropped it down the well. Figured to hear a splash, or a thud if the well was dry.”
“And?” Mary asked.
The detective shrugged. “There wasn’t anything.”
“What do you mean, there wasn’t anything?” An ash dropped off the end of Mary’s cigarette.
“Silence,” the officer replied.
“It would have to be one hell of a deep well if you can’t hear a rock hit the bottom.” Jack slid Mary’s ashtray closer to her cigarette.
“I asked Joe how deep the well was. Joe didn’t know. Said his father hadn’t dug the well, that it had always been there. Joe couldn’t recall if there had ever been any water in it.”
Mary ground her cigarette out in the ashtray.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mary said. “You don’t dig a well if there’s no water.”
“I asked Joe why his father didn’t fill the well in if there wasn’t any water.”
Jack nodded as he reached over to light Mary’s fresh cigarette.
The detective smiled. “Joe told me his father had tried to fill the well in but after several days of trying and no discernible change, he gave up.
He figured the well was too deep.”
Mary smiled. “I remember June Hare. She got knocked up in grade seven. Haven’t thought about her in years. Funny how that happens.
Someone in your past whom you could never remember suddenly pops 7 up in your head. Makes you wonder what else is hidden in your head.
Like the memories of a life you’ve clean forgotten.” Assassins
Detective Kelly toured the walls of Joe Mackenzie’s kitchen. The walls were papered with newspaper clippings that had long since yellowed or faded. Some clippings overlapped others with no design or recognizable pattern. The detective stepped up to the wall and read one particular article, a description of two assassins, identified as Puerto Rican nationalists who had attempted to murder President Truman. Didn’t even know there were such things as Puerto Rican nationalists. Another clipping announced that Pope Pius XII had declared the Assumption of Mary as Roman Catholic dogma. All this nonsense about Mary ascending into heaven. People just don’t disappear off the face of the planet.
“Pa thought we should be up on our current events,” Joe Mackenzie said as he placed two coffees on the kitchen table. Joe was a small man with a few wisps of hair on a bald head. There was a faint scar on his cheek. A black stain filled in the gap between his teeth.
“Who’s that a picture of?” Detective Kelly asked.
“William Faulkner,” Joe responded, then added, “You take sugar?” Kelly nodded. Looks like a bank teller. “Is he important?”
“He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950,” Joe replied.
Kelly smiled. He’d been led to believe that Joe was retarded. He’d been misled. Didn’t that blonde in the bar say that Joe was smart?
“No, 1949,” Joe corrected. “Bertrand Russell won in 1950, although I don’t know why a physicist would win in literature. Have you read The Sound and The Fury?”
“No,” the detective responded, taking a seat at the table. Everything looks familiar-like I’ve been here before.
“I could lend you a copy,” Joe offered.
Kelly shook his head. The last novel the detective had read had been in high school. He couldn’t remember anything about the book except its title- Mr. Blue. Solve the homeless problem by having people live on rooftops.
Wasn’t that Mr. Blue’s great insight? The suicide rate would soar.
Joe added, “I’ve got a pretty good library upstairs if you’d like to browse around. Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, Camus. You should read Crime and Punishment. Right up your aisle.”
“I’m not much of a reader,” Kelly confessed. “Maybe you could give me a tour some other time.”
“I guess solving the mystery of disappearing garbage isn’t exactly what you hoped for.” Joe spoke so softly that the detective found himself leaning over the table to hear.
“What do you mean?” Kelly asked.
“The crowning achievement of a long career,” Joe explained. “I heard you were retiring.”