A Blind Eye (11 page)

R
odney de Groot’s house sat on an unpaved road that ran along the southern edge of Sterling Lake, a mile-long ribbon of oily black water that had begun to see recent gentrification along its northern shore but that at Rodney’s end remained firmly mired in the early nineteenth century. Although the property extended to the waterline, a thick stand of cedars shielded the house from the lake, as if any desire Rodney de Groot may have had for a lake view had been summarily sacrificed for the sake of privacy.

The cabin itself was two stories high. The exterior was covered with tar paper, which, in places, had peeled away, revealing the house’s original white cedar shingles. The overgrown yard was decorated with seven cars. One up on blocks. Two on their sides. The newest, which looked like it probably ran, was a piebald twenty-year-old Chevy Impala parked over by the front door. Apparently Rodney saw fit to keep his collection of personal memorabilia nestled outside among the autos, as a couple of old refrigerators, a hand-wringer washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, and what appeared to be the remains of a pinball machine lay scattered about the grass. Despite the sensory overload, what caught Corso’s eye was the central incongruity: the red hand pump standing on a small wooden platform in the yard and the satellite dish atop the ten-foot steel pole right there next to it.

Corso braked the Ford to a halt behind a restored red and black Studebaker pickup. Through the oval rear window, he could see a high-powered rifle with a scope, hanging from a gun rack. Corso got out, looked over at the pump again, and smirked.

To the left of the front door, a thick plank spanned a pair of five-gallon cans. A man with long tangled hair sat on the plank hand-rolling a cigarette.

Rosen did not approach. Instead he cupped a hand around his mouth.

“You Rodney de Groot?” he shouted.

The man on the porch gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head and then looked down at the partially rolled smoke in his hand.

“Hey,” Rosen tried again. The guy brought the smoke to his mouth and licked the paper. His body language said the head shake was all they were going to get.

A white-haired African-American man appeared in the doorway. He was muscular and well built and moved with an economy of motion belying his advanced years. He wore a faded red T-shirt that had long ago had its pocket torn free and a pair of grimy white boxer shorts. When he spoke, the warm air in his lungs became a thick white plume in the cold air. “Don’t just stand out there shoutin’,” he hollered. “Come the hell in.” With that pronouncement, he turned and quickly disappeared inside. The wispy trails of his floating breath were all that remained.

Single file, they picked their way along an uneven bark path to the front steps. The man on the porch didn’t move a muscle until Rosen stepped up onto the porch. His head seemed abnormally small for his body. He had a thin, pointed face and bright blue eyes. From close range, he was younger than he’d appeared from the car. He wore a visored leather cap that had become dark with age. His shirt was coarse-woven and had eyelets down the front through which he had woven a leather thong. Below the waist he wore canvas trousers and a battered pair of Red Wing work boots.

As the trio stepped up onto the porch, he turned his undersized head away, refusing to acknowledge their presence. “Nice day,” Corso ventured on his way past. The man looked up, pinning Corso with a pair of defiant eyes. “If you say so.” His mustache and fingers were stained yellow by nicotine. In a much practiced move, he flipped the cigarette in the air, caught it in the corner of his mouth, and simultaneously used his thumb to fire a kitchen match and light it. Pleased with his little trick, he took a big pull, expelling the smoke through his nose. Still holding Corso’s gaze, he spat a thick brown stream onto the ground and then, with a narrow smile, turned his back to the doorway. Corso followed the others inside. He reached to close the door.

“Leave it open,” Rodney de Groot called. “I favor the air.”

The cabin was L-shaped. Straight ahead was the kitchen, where Rodney sat at a yellow linoleum table chomping a pork chop, fried potatoes, and white bread. At the center of the space was a huge coal stove, from whose stout black body shimmers of heat radiated in all directions. The room to the right was lined with threadbare but comfortable-looking couches and chairs of all sorts. At the far end, a thirty-six-inch Toshiba flat-screen TV squatted in the corner like a shiny silver elephant. CNN. Close-captioned. Yasir Arafat making a speech.

De Groot asked each of them in turn if he could cook them a pork chop. Said they could have as much bread as they wanted, but seemed a little relieved when nobody took him up on it. “Don’t believe in eatin’ till I’m hungry,” Rodney declared. “Hope you don’t mind if I finish up here.” He shoveled another forkful of potatoes into his mouth and then swallowed and made a circular gesture with the fork. “Find yourselves a seat,” he said. “Don’t get many visitors. Especially not people lookin’ for me. Get some lost lowlanders…maybe some of those new folk from up-lake…but nobody lookin’ for Rodney de Groot.”

As bidden, Corso, Rosen, and Dougherty found themselves a place to sit. For the next five minutes they watched in silence as Rodney methodically made his way through his meal. On two occasions he stopped eating long enough to refill his glass from the gallon jug of water on the table and then went back to his repast. When the plate was empty, he pushed it away and leaned back in his chair until the front legs came off the floor. “Well,” he said, lacing his fingers over his middle, “you folks came a long way off the beaten path. What can I help you with?”

“We were hoping you could tell us a few things about Smithville,” Rosen said. Rodney de Groot’s eyes widened. He slowly set the front legs back on the floor and got to his feet. His deeply lined face was hard and blank.

“Dead and gone,” he said. “Nothin’ at all left there anymore.”

His tone carried a finality devoid of hope. As if Smithville had somehow reached a state of nonexistence where its mere mention was moot. He put his hands on his hips and stared out through the open doorway until Corso cut into his remembrance.

“That’s what we want to talk about,” he said. “Back at the end of the sixties when that Parker guy killed the girl and Smithville came undone.”

“May of ’68,” Rodney said. “We were comin’ off a drought winter. Wasn’t even summer yet and the woods were burning,” he mused.

He went on for twenty minutes. Seemed like he talked about every person in Smithville, their kids, their kin. All of it. How it was that spring of ’68. He picked at his teeth with a yellow twist-tie and gabbed right up to May 1968, when all of a sudden his conviction seemed to waver. He began to look as if he were suddenly hearing other voices from other rooms. He squared his shoulders and bowed his neck. “Just a bunch of people living life the way they’d always lived it before. The way their folks and
their
folks…all the way back…the way they all lived it.” He said it with emphasis, as if his pronouncement were the end of the matter. And then his eyes wavered. He seemed embarrassed now, as if his prior recitation had somehow been in bad taste and he now regretted having said anything at all.

Rodney took a deep breath. Worked up some bluster. “Then all of a sudden they couldn’t do anything right. Wasn’t nothing to be done, neither. Those that didn’t move off…ended up dead or ended up in jail.” He was doing indignant, but his words carried no conviction. Corso picked up on it immediately. Dougherty also. She scooted forward on the couch and met Rodney’s gaze.

“Jail for what?” she asked.

Rodney fanned the air in front of his face as if shooing a fly. “Whole raft of stuff,” he said. “Things got out of hand.” He said it again as if a simple repetition would eliminate the need for further explanation.

“Out of hand how?” Dougherty pressed.

“People turning on each other. Kin comin’ down against kin. Kids turning on parents…social workers callin’ in the law.” He shook his head in disgust. “Whole thing just come apart.” He snapped his strong-looking fingers. “Just like that.”

“During that time,” Corso began, “was there a fire up there in Smithville? Something like where maybe a whole family burned up in a house?”

Rodney frowned hard and brought a finger to his lips. The room fell silent as he tiptoed over, took the door in hand as if to close it, and then, on second thought, peeked out. His relief was palpable. Leaving the door ajar, he turned back to his guests. “Boy up and left,” he said. “He’s like that. One minute he’s here, next minute he’s off in the woods someplace.” Rodney walked to the table. He turned the back of his chair toward the visitors and sat down with his arms atop the seat back. “That’s Tommie de Groot,” he explained. “My cousin Jeannine’s boy. He’s the only one left, ’cause he was down on the flats in the hospital when it all happened.”

Rodney looked from one confused face to the next. “Food poisoning,” he said. “Damn thing saved his life.” When his words again failed to produce a glimmer of recognition, he sighed. “Right about that time”—he waved a hand—“when the whole town was coming apart”—he stopped to make sure they were with him—“his entire damn family burned up. My cousin Jeannine and her husband, Paul. Three of the four kids too.” He used his fingers to count them. “The boys, James and Christopher, and the little girl, Leslie Louise.” He snapped his fingers again. “All of ’em gone…just like that.”

“How old was the little girl?” Dougherty asked.

Rodney acted as if he hadn’t heard the question. “I always told myself it was maybe for the best.” He looked at his guests for validation but didn’t find any. “They was right in the middle of the whole mess.” He made a pained face. “Wasn’t nothing good gonna come of it anyway. Might have been better that none of them was there for the end…the way it panned out and all.” His eyes took on a distant look. “Might be better off up there in the graveyard, with the family,” he said.

“Better than what?” Corso prodded.

Again Rodney de Groot ignored the question. “Only one still alive when it was over was poor Tommie there. By the time the dust settled, I was the only kin he had left around here. The welfare folks had him for a coupla years. After that, it was me. I raised him up since he was six.” Rodney cast a defiant eye at his visitors. “Wasn’t nothin’ else I could do. I was the only family he had. Couldn’t very well be turning a blind eye to the boy, could I?” He pointed out over Rosen’s head. “Got him a little cabin over on the other side of the rise there, but he spends most of his time over here with me.” He made a sad face. “Can’t blame him for wanting a little company, can ya? After what happened to him and all. It’s just natural.”

This time Rodney got the agreement he’d been looking for. Thus validated, he seemed to feel a need to explain. “Tommie was in the Marine Corps for a while. Been around some, he has. He’s a hell of a woodsman, though, that boy. Best damn shot you ever seen too! Knows every squirrel hole in the whole damn mountains,” he enthused. “Takes that fancy old truck of his every summer and goes out to visit friends in Idaho. Kids he went to school with. Gets him a regular haircut and a shave and all.” His eyes traveled inward for a moment. “He ain’t like the others. They get away from these mountains, and they
stay
gone….” He wandered toward the door and looked out. Tommie’s absence seemed to trouble him. “Yeah…Tommy gets around some now and then, but he comes back. Coupla weeks later. He always comes back.”

Corso jumped in. “I’m still a little unclear about—”

Rodney waved him off and then stepped out onto the porch. He’d had enough of talking. “I’m gettin’ old,” he said. “Sittin’ here blabbering like an old woman. Talkin’ about the dead instead of getting on with my business.” He walked over and stood by the door. He was too polite to ask them to leave, but the interview was over.

He thanked each of them for the visit. As the others started back to the car, Corso walked to the pump. A blue metal cup hung from the well by a rusted piece of chain. A coffee can full of water rested next to the handle. Corso used the coffee can to prime the pump, then refilled the can before pumping himself a cup of water. He drank deeply, allowing some of the cold liquid to run down over his chin.

He replaced the cup, nodded at Rodney de Groot, and started for the car. “Thanks for the drink,” Corso said on his way by.

The old man laughed. “Ain’t my water,” he said. “It’s the Lord’s water is what it is. You want to be thankin’ anybody for the drink…you be thankin’ Him.”

T
he Studebaker pickup was gone. Looked like it left in a hurry. A pair of angry black ruts showed where Tommie de Groot had swung the truck off the driveway and spun his tires getting around the Explorer.

Dougherty buckled her seat belt. “Maybe Rodney’s right,” she said as she settled in. “Maybe the dead ought to be left alone.”

Rosen seemed to agree. He checked his watch. “Gonna be dark in an hour or so,” he announced. “And if you two don’t mind, I’d rather not be up here in the dark.”

“How far’s Smithville from here?” Corso asked.

“Over the next hill,” Rosen said.

“We got time to go there before it gets dark?”

Rosen looked weary and maybe a little scared. “I guess,” he sighed.

Corso turned the key; the engine rumbled to life. “Which way?” he asked.

“Left out of the driveway,” Rosen said.

Rosen talked as they drove. He was one of those people who felt a need to fill silence with his voice, as if he found something in the void sufficiently frightening to require a constant stream of chatter to keep it at bay.

Halfway up a steep incline, Corso caught a silver flash in the rearview mirror. He braked the Ford to a halt and turned in the seat, staring back down the road.

“What?” Dougherty said.

“Thought I saw somebody behind us.”

Everybody took a turn staring out the back window, but whatever had caught Corso’s attention did not reappear. He lifted his foot from the brake and urged the car up the hill. Rosen resumed his chatter. As they neared the top of a rise, he was retelling how he’d always wanted to come up here but how Justine just wouldn’t hear about it. He caught himself. “I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?” he asked.

“You ever think about maybe finding out what Justine’s doing these days?” Corso asked. Dougherty held her breath and turned her face to the window.

Rosen seemed surprised by the question. “No. I mean…I’m sure she…”

“Maybe she’s been thinking about you, all these years,” Corso suggested. “With women, you never know.”

In the backseat, Dougherty bit her lip and tried not to listen. Rosen said something about roads not taken. She wanted to put her fingers in her ears and yell so loud she couldn’t hear what was being said.

Corso brought the car to a halt at a T in the road. Rosen consulted his notepad.

“Go right,” he said. “Smithville should be down the end of this road.”

Corso did as he was told. The Ford settled into the well-worn ruts, following the road like they were on rails. For a mile and a half, Rosen talked about the choices one makes in life. How seemingly meaningless decisions, made in moments of haste, nonetheless color the entire fabric of our lives. He’d been lecturing undergraduates for so long, it never occurred to him he didn’t have much to add to the subject. Seemed to him that if he was talking, it must be interesting. Corso turned on the radio, couldn’t find anything but static, and disgustedly snapped it off again.

A makeshift wooden fence appeared on the right. Made of cedar branches wired together into a primitive but sturdy version of a picket fence. Seventy yards later, a wide turnout led to a narrow walkway into the cemetery. Corso stopped the car. No mausoleums here. No disapproving stone angels. Mostly simple wooden headstones and crosses. Some leaning at crazy angles. Others ramrod straight, their carved faces weathered bone white by the summer sun. The graveyard of the de Groots.

Ahead the road was mostly grown over. Whoever came out to the graveyard never ventured farther. Ahead the grass was bumper high. Thick bushes encroached on the roadway from either side. Spindly limbs hovered above the roadway.

Rosen looked nervous. “Whadda you think?” he asked. What he was asking was what Corso thought about turning around and going back.

Corso had other ideas, however. “I think Hertz is gonna be pissed off again,” he said, pushing the accelerator. As the big Ford plowed through the debris, it sounded like a thousand fingernails being drawn along the paint and undercarriage.

Half a mile later, the brush began to thin. A final dip in the road bounced them up and down just as the Ford burst out into a clearing. A cul-de-sac really, for this naked spot in the wilderness was both Smithville and the end of the road. The Woolfes and Rodney de Groot had been right. There was nothing left. Six feet of moss-covered stone foundation straight ahead. Three former fence posts standing like gaunt sentinels in the gathering gloom. Corso jammed the car in Park and got out, leaving the motor running. Rosen stayed put. Dougherty sat in the car for a minute and then climbed out.

It had begun to drizzle. She walked over and hooked her arm through Corso’s, then moved with him as he slowly walked around the five-acre clearing. Overgrown patches of ground here and there spoke of long-ago dwellings. “It’s just over thirty years ago,” Dougherty said. “You’d think there’d be more junk.” She gestured with her hand. “You know, falling-down buildings and such.”

Corso stopped. Looked down at her and smiled. “Yeah…you would, wouldn’t you?” he said. He took her by the hand and led her over to the nearest of the homesites. He pulled her down with him as he squatted and began to dig in the dirt with his free hand. Beneath a thin frosted crust, the ground was mostly decayed organic matter and digging was easy. Six inches down, he stopped, lifted a handful of dirt to his nose, and sniffed. He tossed the soil aside and dug some more. A foot down, the dirt was streaked with black. Again he sampled the odor. This time, he smiled.

He opened his palm and lifted it toward her face. “What do you smell?” he asked.

She took a tentative whiff and then another. “Fire,” she said. “I smell fire.”

He pulled her back the way they’d come. All the way back to the front of the car and the small piece of stone foundation. Inside the SUV, Rosen turned on the windshield wipers and leaned forward in the seat, watching them intently. The slap of the wipers filled the air.

Corso dug along the side of the little stone wall, pushed his finger deep into the dirt, and then pulled it back out. He drew his sooty finger along the tops of the rocks. A wavy black line appeared.

“Something happened up here,” he said. “Something nobody wants to talk about. Something worth burning a whole town down over.”

Dr. Rosen tooted the horn. Gestured that it was getting late. Dougherty grabbed Corso’s arm and pulled him close. “You better cut the nostalgiafest with Rosen,” she whispered. “His mountain dream girl’s been dead for years.”

Corso turned away from the car and made a pained expression. “Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s what I get for being optimistic.”

“Proves your ongoing theory that virtue is its own revenge.”

He put a hand on her back and guided her toward the car. “Next time I get to acting all silly and sentimental, you be sure to remind me of that,” he said.

The interior of the Ford was warm on the face and hands. Rosen seemed relieved as Corso pulled the SUV in a wide circle and started back. His relief lasted only as long as it took Corso to get back to the entrance to the Smithville cemetery and pull to a stop. Corso looked over at the professor. “I’ll leave it running for you,” he said.

Rosen was all right with the idea of waiting in the car until he heard Dougherty open her door and step out. After that, it took him about five seconds to join them.

“Might as well see it while I’ve got the chance,” he said.

Corso reached in and turned off the engine. He used the electronic gizmo on the key chain to lock the doors, gestured “after you” to Dougherty and Rosen, and followed them up the short path to the burial ground.

The graveyard was tiny. It would have fit in an unnoticed corner of the Allentown cemetery. Maybe sixty graves in all. The earliest they found was from 1784. Guy named Wilhelm Van Dunk. Died when he was fifty-seven years old.

As they walked among the graves, they kept a respectful distance from the markers, stepping awkwardly here and there to avoid any possibility of treading on the dead. Of course, Rosen talked, his endless words echoing among the trees like musket fire.

Seemed the trip up into the mountains had actually been a journey into his past and, as such, had produced a moment of epiphany for Dr. Randy Rosen. As they walked, he resolved to reengage his research into what he now called the Ramapo people and, most emphatically of all, to see if he couldn’t find out what had happened to the long-ago object of his desire, Justine de Vries. His newfound enthusiasm prevented him from noticing the strained looks on his companions’ faces as they shuffled among the dead. Corso and Dougherty were grateful for his blindness.

Had they started their search at the other end of the graveyard, they would have immediately found what they were looking for. As it was, they came upon it last, and maybe it was better that way because the sight squeezed the air from their lungs and stood every hair of their bodies on end. Five graves, all in a row…like pretty maids.

Five identical wooden markers, lined up, it seemed, in order of rank. On the left, the carved letters read “Paul de Groot Husband-Father 1924–1968.” Then “Jeannine de Groot Wife-Mother 1926–1968.” “James de Groot 1949–1968.” “Christopher de Groot 1950–1968.” And finally, down at the end, “Leslie Louise 1951–1968.”

The first four headstones had been vandalized. Each letter and number of the inscription had been individually x-ed out in black, almost as if somebody had been keeping score. Then the names and dates had been crossed out again horizontally, as if the black streaks themselves were part of an act of denial. The graves themselves were untended and ran to weeds. Except for Leslie Louise’s down at the end.

Her marker bore none of the vandalism. The area around her final resting place had been smoothed and picked clean of debris. A rusted can of water had been dug into the earth, so it couldn’t tip over. The can held a thick array of pussy willows, whose soft silver buttons quivered slightly in the evening breeze.

Dougherty broke the stunned silence. “Somebody’s very angry here,” she said. Nobody argued with her. Finally Corso coughed into his hand. “They were both de Groots.” He pointed. “Right? Didn’t Rodney de Groot say Jeannine here was his cousin?” Dougherty acknowledged the fact. “Paul here was a de Groot too.”

Rosen found his voice. “They were probably cousins too,” he said. “It was quite common for—”

Dougherty stepped in front of Rosen and walked along in front of the markers. “How old did you think that Tommie de Groot guy on Rodney’s porch was?”

“There was a gene pool that needed a lifeguard,” Corso said.

“Thirty, thirty-five,” Rosen offered. Corso nodded his agreement.

“Big gap between the last two kids,” she commented.

“Mama was nearly forty when he was born,” Corso said.

“Lotta birth defects with mothers that age,” Rosen said. “Maybe that explains—”

A noise from the woods brought the conversation to a halt. They hunched their shoulders and froze. Everyone ceased breathing and turned their attention toward the surrounding thicket. Waiting. Scanning the maze of twisted branches for any sign of movement. Another crack. This time farther away. And then another.

“Let’s get out of here,” Corso said, taking Dougherty by the elbow and hurrying toward the path. They hustled along the fence line in silence. Wasn’t till the car came into view that anybody exhaled. Once inside, they got giddy. Making fun of their own imaginations as Corso backed out into the road. The kidding stopped when they saw the red and black Studebaker pickup truck blocking the road. Silence.

“Uh-oh,” Rosen said.

When Tommie de Groot stepped out of the truck holding his rifle in both hands, Corso thrust himself out from under the steering wheel and began to crawl over the seats toward the luggage in the rear. He was lying across the tops of the seats, shaking the clothes from his bag, when he heard the door swing open. He turned just in time to see Rosen step from the car and raise his open hand. “Young man,” the professor began, “I assure you that we—”

De Groot never removed the cigarette from the corner of his mouth as he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Before the sound of the report, before the eye could register the muzzle flash, the back of Dr. Rosen’s head came off in a high-pressure spray of blood and bone and brain matter. The impact drove him one staggering step backward before he crumpled onto the road, his legs twisted up under him, like a discarded doll.

With one hand Corso reached for the door latch, with the other he groped for the zipper at the bottom of his suitcase. “Come on!” he screamed at Dougherty. “Get your ass back here!” She didn’t need to be told twice. By the time he’d opened the rear hatch she was there, hurling herself out onto the ground just at the moment when Tommie de Groot let loose with another high-powered round. The bullet shattered the wind-shield and passed so close to Corso’s head the shock caused his ear to go numb.

De Groot had covered half the distance between his truck and the Ford and was raising his rifle again when Corso put his hand on Deputy Sheriff Cole Richard-son’s gun and then somersaulted out into the road. As he thumbed off the safety, another round rocked the car and then went whining out over their heads.

Corso took a single belly roll out to the left of the rear tire and fired a quick shot de Groot’s way. In the instant before he rolled back to cover, he heard the sound of metal slamming into metal and the unmistakable tinkle of broken glass. He put his chin on the ground and, from beneath the car, looked up the road. As he’d hoped, the feet were retreating. He reached over and pulled Dougherty to his side.

“I think he’s leaving,” he whispered.

Corso jacked himself to his knees and peered around the corner of the car just in time to see the red and black Studebaker throwing rooster tails of black earth into the air as it roared in a circle and disappeared from view.

Dougherty grabbed his belt. “Dr. Rosen,” she said. Corso looked deep into her eyes and shook his head slowly. “No way,” he said, dropping to her side and taking her in his arms. They lay on the wet earth and listened to the sound of the truck as it slowly faded to silence. Only then could they hear the ticking of the Ford’s engine and the pecking of the drizzle on last season’s leaves.