From a Dead Sleep (8 page)

Something her father once told her just then drifted through her mind.
“Honey, you’re smart in everything but men.”

At the time, the comment had infuriated her even though she knew deep down that he was probably right. Growing up, she’d always found herself attracted to the wrong boys; the ones who played by their own rules and didn’t respect authority. Ironically, her husband was perhaps the only man she’d brought home who her father actually liked. He respected her husband’s career, especially with the obstacles his disability forced him to overcome in order to achieve it. Even with her father’s approval, she feared his original assessment of her might have still held true.

Her back slumped against the bottom cushions of a brown leather couch at the edge of the living room. It creaked with age. She interlaced her fingers behind her head, kicked off her running shoes, and found herself glaring straight up at the high ceiling. The silence was deafening, other than the sound of her own breathing and the occasional settling of the foundation.

Two years ago, the cottage was a place that promised a future of fond memories, like when her husband lay in the same position as she was now in, on that very couch, with his eyes closed and faint snoring drifting up from his mouth. He had, for once, seemed relaxed. From the open bedroom loft directly above, she’d sprinkled rose petals down across his body until he awoke with his hair disheveled and that bright smile she hadn’t seen in so long. She remembered the spontaneous giggle that leapt from between her lips as he playfully ran up the spiral staircase, skipping every other step, to join her.

She yearned for those pleasant times to return. She had hoped that coming back to the cottage might rekindle some of those old feelings. Instead, with him being gone again, it served as a torture chamber of false assurances.

Chapter 9

T
he imposing howl of the Nova’s shot muffler wreaked pandemonium across the otherwise tranquil forest. The smell of exhaust clouded out the usual scent of pine and mountain water.

With the sole of his boot clamped to the brake pedal at the center of Meyers Bridge, Sean’s neck swung from window to window looking for the police cruiser or any sign of Lumbergh or Jefferson. Nothing. He couldn’t believe they had already come and left, but that
had
to be the case. They had left the station for the bridge long before Zed arrived to pick him up.

With his ample back pressed into the deteriorating vinyl car seat, he found himself gazing out through the open passenger window and along the fast-moving water that roared steadily below. The river’s path disappeared around a distant barrage of trees.

A suffocating feeling of insignificance overcame the small town security guard, and he coughed on his own breath. He popped the transmission into park, stepped out of the car, and crossed to the railing where the stranger had let himself fall. He dropped to his hands and knees, and extended his head over the guardrail, scanning for a splatter of blood along the metal and wood planking. He spent several minutes doing this, occasionally using his knees to work himself to the side. Nothing.

Sean’s jaw squared, and he shook his head in disgust. He felt his blood boil, and he raised his head to the sky, aiming a scary glare at God. Sean was a Christian and never questioned his faith, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why his Maker seemed to take such delight in hanging him out to dry. It was as if he was a prop for the Big Man’s amusement.

He thought back to the sight of the stranger that sat on the edge of the bridge mere hours earlier. The hopelessness he must have felt, deciding that there was no other solution than to rid the world of his existence. At what point had enough become enough? At what point was the battle no longer worth fighting?

Sean knew hopelessness.

He had promised himself countless times before last night that he would never let it get that bad again.

The drinking.

No more blacking out
, he’d sometimes tell his reflection in the mirror. Memories of old friends and family, who had long written him off, drifted through his mind as they often had. He understood their discouragement with his inability to come to odds with his problem. He knew they were right, but he always had an excuse for why they were wrong. He could understand what might put that man on the bridge.

A sudden, cool breeze whipped against his face as he climbed back to his feet. His right eye started to water up. He quickly used the back of his hand to sweep away all moisture.
Crying is for sissies.
Sean Coleman doesn’t cry.

A moment later he was back in the car. His foot left the brake pedal and he pumped the gas, sending gravel and dust in his wake as he sped across the bridge. A quarter of a mile up the road, he passed the hunched-over frame of Ruth Golding who was clad in a white knit sweater and retrieving a handful of envelopes from her mailbox. She waved to Sean as he flew by, like she always did with any car that happened to be driving by while she was outside. He ignored her as usual, but then suddenly slammed on the brakes when a thought arose. He quickly backed up and popped his head out his window.

“Ruth!” he yelled.

The elderly woman was frail and slow, and had probably spent the last ten minutes crossing her property to reach the road. She was bent forward at the waist, retrieving a small American flag from the ground. Years ago, she’d started using the old classroom flag with its pencil mast as an outgoing mail alert after the plastic red one on her mailbox had broken off. The position of her body revealed more than Sean was ready for with the horizon of her pale blue underwear poking up from her skirt.

He looked away in disgust and again called out her name. Once upright and favoring her hip, she turned to greet him from under her frazzled white hair and large, dark-framed bifocals.

“Did you see some guy walking around here this morning?” he asked.

“Who?” she replied in a dainty voice.

“Some guy. I don’t know his name. He was dressed in black. Did you see him out on the road this morning?”

She took a moment and squinted at him. “Who?” she repeated.

“Jesus,” Sean said in annoyance. He raised his voice. “Anybody! Did you see anybody at all down here by the road this morning?”

Her wrinkled face twisted in befuddlement. She arched her back and her eyes rose to the air as if she was straining to recollect a memory from her youth.

Sean tapped the side of his door impatiently with the broad palm of his hand.

“Well . . . I can’t say as I did.”

Without another second wasted, the rear tires of the Nova spun circles and Ruth Golding was left behind in a cloud of dust as Sean advanced hurriedly back down the road.

Sean didn’t answer his phone once that evening. He let his machine bear the torture. There had already been one scathing message left from his landlord. It had been awaiting attention since early that morning. A similar one came through around six p.m.
That fat bastard
, Sean thought to himself. Bailey lived right downstairs. He was either too lazy or too scared to come up and speak to him like a man. Sean took some gratification in believing it to be the latter, although he was fine with skipping the confrontation for one more day.

He spent the next hour searching through cluttered drawers and disheveled closets for possessions to sell off. It wasn’t an uncommon practice, but each sale left him feeling like he had less of an identity. When he had moved out of his mother’s house, she gave him what was left of his father’s stuff. For years, she had kept the belongings around for some unknown reason. Sean speculated that as much as she hated him, it was her way of keeping up hope for her husband returning someday. Finally letting them go was her way of forgetting.

The mementos were Sean’s only attachments to the man who had left his life so abruptly without as much as a goodbye. But like with his mother, each abandonment relieved his mind of another memory, whether it was an old pair of steel-tipped boots or a small HAM radio with rainbow-colored, entangled wires stemming from the back.

Pickings were now slim. Almost every keepsake that would bring in more than just spare change was now gone—all but one . . . the one that Sean once promised himself he would not part with. It lay nestled away safely in his locked, top right desk drawer.

He sat back on his large, overworked, brown leather recliner for hours in the dimmed living room that was growing darker with the sky. Time moved by slowly, like it often did. He found himself barrenly watching flashes of light from his nineteen-inch television set dance across the surrounding walls. The volume was turned down low. Now dressed only in checkered boxer shorts and a frayed t-shirt that had once been white, he repeatedly twisted his raised ankle in a clockwise motion to loosen up the aching and stiffness. One of his hands was wrapped around a warm bottle of beer while the other one massaged the ears of the old overweight dachshund who lay contentedly bundled up in a ball across his lap.

Rocco. The thirteen-year-old pooch had belonged to Diana before she left for college years earlier. She could have left him with their mother, but she felt the crotchety canine was a better companion for Sean. Both were rambunctious and ill-tempered—a perfect match. He had initially protested the gift, fearing that the responsibility would cramp his style. But as a favor to his pleading sister, he eventually gave in. He never regretted it. The two were kindred spirits—standoffish, territorial, and set in their ways. Rocco had gone completely blind from old age within the last year, but he was still tough. He didn’t let the disability get to him. Through every fall and collision, he always managed to pick himself right back up. No whining. Sean admired that.

He moved a finger under Rocco’s coarse, gray beard that years ago had shone with a reddish brown, smooth coat. Rocco always liked having his chin rubbed. It was the one thing that turned the grumpy dog into putty. His tail flopped from side to side against Sean’s chest, and his nose pointed to the ceiling.

Around nine p.m. came that dreaded call. Lumbergh. Sean sneered at the somber tone in the chief ’s voice that emitted dismally out through the speaker. Lumbergh asked twice for his brother-in-law to pick up, but Sean answered only with a swig of beer. After a sigh, Lumbergh detailed out his findings. No surprises. There was no blood or shells on the bridge, or any other proof of what Sean had seen. A dead end.

Sean nodded his head, a sour scowl forming on his lips. He slowly cocked his arm back before snapping it forward and sending his half-full bottle of beer sailing at the wall above the kitchen counter where the answering machine resided. The thunderous crash sent glass and liquid spraying in multiple directions, and prompted Rocco to perch up on his front legs with risen ears. The aging dog twisted his head to face his master with eyes as cloudy as Sean’s composure.

The clear image of the stranger’s body dropping from the bridge
before
the shot was ever fired reverberated like a scratched record through Sean’s mind. Gravity explained the absence of both blood and the shell.

Lumbergh offered up some additional, meaningless details before he concluded with, “I don’t know what else to say, Sean.” Click.

Consciously slowing down his breathing, Sean slid his fingers familiarly to the back of his head, and he found himself once again glancing aimlessly across the room. Rocco rolled back into a ball.

“Why would he do that?” he abruptly said out loud, with his face twisted in thought. “Why would that guy jump
and then
shoot?”

Fighting off exhaustion and humiliation, the gears in Sean’s head began turning. Since that morning, the peculiarity behind what had happened at the river had taken a backseat to the importance of its believability to others. He was the one person who didn’t need convincing. He knew what he saw.

One thing was undeniably certain: what he’d witnessed was no ordinary suicide. There was a story left to be told. There had to be.

The deterrent of the others’ skepticism had kept hold of Sean’s spirit like a pair of tight handcuffs, but now those binds were bending. Perhaps all he had needed was Lumbergh’s withdrawal—in a sense, an admission of defeat. Now, it was Sean’s turn.

No longer distracted with having to defend his claims, he made himself clear his mind and start from the beginning. If no one was going to believe him, it was time to take the matter into his own hands, if only in a defense of his own sanity.

With a straining grunt, he lowered his arm under the top of the end table to grab a thin spiral notebook from the middle shelf. He normally jotted down grocery lists in it, but he was about to put the pages to much better use.

He pulled a whittled-down, chewed-up pencil from the center of the metal binding and began tracing back through the timeline, feverishly writing down each image that came to mind. He included everything from the oddest of details to the seemingly most insignificant.

Sean’s tired eyes steadily moved from item to item. They stopped on
Why the bridge?
Without even taking into account the man’s preparations as he sat at the edge, on its own it was strange that he would bother jumping into a roaring river if he was going to shoot himself. Sean understood doing one or the other, but both?