It was the beef and the greed that killed Leonard Martin’s family. Walter remembered, better than most. Bad beef, born of corruption and venality, deception and disregard. Hamburgers. And where was Leonard Martin when he was needed? Where was he? Walter remembered that too. While Leonard’s wife, daughter and grandsons were joyfully broiling the poisoned meat, he was with another woman. When his family needed him most, he was absent, cheating, fucking. The only reason Leonard Martin lived was because he skipped that poolside barbeque, skipped it to have sex with a woman who was not his wife, not the mother of his child or grandmother to his grandsons. For Leonard, getting laid that morning gave an evil twist to getting lucky. He always felt his affair was manageable, acceptable so long as Nina didn’t know, so long as no one got hurt. He never thought the hurt would come like this. Afterward, when he held Nina’s lifeless hand, and then tried to comfort his daughter, Ellie, as she died, frantically worrying about her boys, Leonard’s cowardly soul burned in Hell, charred from head to toe with dirty ash, the filthy soot of his guilty fire. His life became an inferno, the flames quenched only with the blood of vengeance. Walter accused Leonard of that, confronted him with the charge that his revenge was not so righteous after all. “Where were you?” Walter shouted at him. And now. “Where were you?” he screamed at himself. “Where were you?” He saw Michael DelGrazo, the Cowboy, Leonard Martin, each pointing an accusing finger. “Where were you?”
He made three phone calls before driving away, this time for good. He would never set foot upon this place again. He swore it. The first call was to Isobel. “It’s Walter Sherman,” he told the receptionist, and when Isobel picked up the phone, before she could speak, he said, “He’s dead.” He shut the cover on his cell phone before Isobel said a word. The second call was to the New Mexico State Police. There was a body, he told them, in a cabin… He told them where, then hung up. His final call was to Billy. “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?” he asked the bartender.
“Yeah,” said Billy.
“I need a few more days. I’ll be back Friday. Everything all right?”
“Yeah.”
“No problems?”
“None.”
“Turn her loose.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You tell her I know she had nothing to do with it. Tell her if I ever see her again, I’ll kill her. She’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Just tell her.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
PART THREE
And I can hear the devil whisper,
“Things are only getting worse.”
Walter didn’t stop in Santa Fe this time. He had no desire to walk among the Indian women sitting around the Plaza, fat women, younger than they looked in their layers of warm clothing bundled against the cold, selling their jewelry, keeping their spirits up with hot tea and little flasks filled with whiskey. No gifts today. No pendants changing shape in the wind and sun. He made it straight through, all the way to Albuquerque, took a room at an airport motel and booked an early flight to Atlanta. He didn’t sleep. How could he? He took a couple of Mylanta he carried in his travel bag. Tylenol too. Didn’t help much. He must have dozed off for a few minutes here and there because somehow the morning came. He slept on the plane.
When he landed in Atlanta, Walter rented a car and made the drive to Roswell. Sadie Fagan was not expecting him, and when she saw the pain written on his troubled face, the misery in his eyes, she knew something terrible had happened. She didn’t hear a thing he said. It only took a few minutes. She did not invite him in for a cold drink. Harry was dead. He told her, then it was plain he had to leave. All the Levines were gone now. David, Elana and Harry. Long ago Sadie became a Fagan. She cried for her father. Walter had no part in Sadie’s grief. No part except that her torment was his fault. They both knew it. When he got back in his car he was feeling no better. He hadn’t eaten since-he couldn’t recall. Perhaps something in his stomach would make a difference.
Walter was alone, in a booth at a Waffle House restaurant in Roswell, Georgia, just at the entrance to the GA 400 highway, when he collapsed. He felt the bottom fall out, the air in his lungs desert him, his strength disappear, draining from his head to his feet like water in a flushed toilet. That’s where it all was headed. Into the toilet. At the same time fatigue swamped him, the pain in his chest took a gargantuan leap from a bothersome ache to a brutal squeezing pressure, gripping his upper body in a vice-like nutcracker, pushing out from within and in from without, threatening to crack his body like the fragile shell of a walnut, while simultaneously an unseen hand pulled the pin on a grenade buried deep inside his chest. His left arm hurt so bad he couldn’t lift it. A lump the size of a softball crawled up his throat. Perspiration, warm and chilly at the same time, swept over him. He could feel his balls shrivel up, his knees weaken, his hips give way, his head spinning. Even fear could not save him. He passed out leaning forward, his last conscious act a desperate effort to get up. He fell with his face in his eggs, knocking a glass of Diet Coke to the floor.
First there were the lights, zooming swiftly by. One at a time. One after the other, straight above his head. Bright dots, headlights in the window, reflections in a darkened sky. Then there were the hills across the river. The hills that never changed. Frozen in winter, lush in summer, always the same. When he was a boy, Walter saw them for the first time. The hills across the Hudson. They never moved. They were always there just as they had been before. Today, yesterday, forever. They rolled north from Kingston, beyond the bridge, surely all the way to Albany and then to who knows where, past the known world, to other mysterious places. No matter what, he knew he could go to the river, look to the other side and find comfort. And now, his father came to see him. How could that be? Snow was everywhere. There was nothing but snow. No trees. No shoes. He had no shoes, yet his feet were not cold. How could that be? Maybe it was he who went to visit his father. Which was it? Who cared. He didn’t. But he couldn’t visit his father. His father died when he was six. For a while his mother used to go to the cemetery. For a while. Sometimes she took him with her. He remembered the long rows of gray stones, the place where she finally stopped and cried. She always said they were going to visit his father. But Walter never saw him. Was that a visit? Not like this one. How old was he the last time? Nine? Ten? Who cared? He didn’t. The pain and the warmth swam together, one overlapping the other, then separating, then joining again in wave after wave. The pain. The warmth. The pain. Where was the warmth? Where was it? Come back!
Johnny Sherman, Walter’s father, was right there waiting for him, sitting in an old wooden chair, open on the left with a wide, desk-like area sticking out by the right armrest. It was a place big enough for a tray of sandwiches and hot chocolate or maybe beer and sausages, a newspaper or magazine, even big enough for a child to sit on. It was empty now, only his father’s arm resting there. Those chairs had a name. What was it? The chair was in the snow, encircled and surrounded by snow as if set down in the middle of a great open field. The sky was bright, white and cloudless. Johnny Sherman wore a green t-shirt, like Army green except he was never in the Army. He had on jeans, the sort that used to be called blue jeans, heavy, dark blue, coarse denim with the cuffs rolled up two or three times showing the material’s lighter underside. Walter was sure nobody had worn jeans like these for fifty years. His father had no shoes. They both had no shoes. How could that be? Snow was everywhere. His father’s legs were crossed, right over left, at the knee. Was he smiling? Was he? He said nothing. He didn’t move in any way. His eyes looked at Walter, into Walter, through Walter, but they never blinked. He made no motion with his head. He was silent. Yet Walter heard him, understood him, knew perfectly well what his father was telling him. There was no mistaking him.