The Night Watchman (44 page)

‘So I’ve been led to understand,’ he said knowingly.

When Jorge got on the phone, he raced headlong into his need for me to hear about his adventures with his neighbourhood friends, and it was a blessing to listen to his wayward stories. When Ana took the phone back, she said – as though speaking an incantation – ‘As you can see, our kids miss you a lot.’

I didn’t reply because I wanted to hold on to this moment.

‘Are you there?’ she asked.

‘Ana, I’m sorry for withholding so much from you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to—’

‘Hank, Ernie explained what happened to you as kids,’ she cut in. ‘He showed me his scars, too. So I understand why you made up so much about your childhood. I’ll tell you this – seeing Ernie’s scars made me want to kill that father of yours!’

A sense of climactic arrival made me look down at my watch. It was four minutes to eight on Thursday 12 July 2012. It was suddenly clear that I’d waited all my life for a woman to tell me she’d defend me and Ernie to the death.

‘You’d have stood up for us?’ I asked.

‘Listen, Hank, I can’t know exactly what I’d have done, but I sure as hell hope I would have had the courage to A) report your father to the police, and B) testify against him. And if that didn’t work, to C) put him in his grave!’

That Ana spoke like an outline written with rage made me want to throw my arms around her.

‘You know, I was up half the night figuring out how I’d do it,’ she continued eagerly. ‘It was that suicide you had the other day – with cyanide – that made me figure it out. When I remembered that, I knew how I’d get rid of your father.’

Hearing the unshakable determination in her voice, I felt the pleasant, dizzy disorientation you get when you hike above the tree line, up there with the unpredictable, feathery, high-flying thoughts you can’t normally reach.

‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked.

‘Cyanide tastes like bitter almonds. He’d have spit it out.’

‘No way, I’d have put it in his rum!’

The back-and-forth intimacy between us was like a game of hide-and-seek, which was how I began to understand what I’d never put into words before: that my love for Ana was also a form of child’s play.

‘Maybe that would work,’ I told her. ‘But we’d have to get rid of the body, too – and without anyone seeing.’

‘I’d let you and Ernie take care of that.’

‘I guess we could haul it off to Black Canyon and toss it over the rim.’

I wasn’t sure why I said that, but it seemed our best option.

‘Listen, Hank,’ she said, shifting tone, ‘lots of things make sense now that never did before. But what I can’t understand is why you’d think I wouldn’t believe you?’

‘The emergency room doctor who treated Ernie the first time Dad hurt him badly was certain that I was the one who’d cut off half of his ear.’

I’d waited more than thirty years to protest that unfairness. And yet I didn’t scream or holler, as I always thought I would.

‘How could any doctor think that?’ she asked. ‘You were only a kid yourself.’

‘Because that’s what my father told him. The doctor swore he’d put me in a juvenile prison if I hurt Ernie again. And you should have seen the way he looked at me – like I was dirt. So I could never risk telling anyone.’

‘I don’t see why one thing follows from another.’

‘Because if I was in a juvenile prison or home, I wouldn’t be able to protect my brother. Sooner or later, Dad would have killed him. Ernie and I both knew that. We wanted to tell people what was happening to us, but at the same time, we were terrified that someone would find out. Because we knew Dad would end up charming whoever we told. Waiting for bad things to happen is a killer, Ana – maybe even more destructive than the bad things themselves. And keeping quiet was the hardest thing I ever did – that
we
ever did. And we got nothing for it. Nothing!’

I started hiccupping, but that didn’t stop the rush of words spilling out of me: ‘And then later, when Dad vanished, we didn’t say anything about what he’d done to us, because the local police thought Ernie and I might have killed him. They separated us. That was really bad. They questioned me for seven straight hours. They probably still think I did it, for all I know. Ernie has worried about that every day for twenty-eight years. He still thinks I might get extradited and put in a Colorado jail.’

Ana told me then that she hated talking about such serious matters with me over the phone. ‘I’ll be right there. Don’t go anywhere!’

As soon as she arrived, she emptied her backpack on my cot, and four sunset-coloured mangoes spilled out; I’d begged her the day before for tropical fruit. While I was turning one of the mangoes over in my hand, she sat next to me and said, ‘What more do you need me to know about what happened to you as a kid?’

I was stunned that she’d asked such a perfect question, but I was also having second thoughts about telling her too much. ‘Ana, I don’t know where to begin.’

‘You’ve dropped hints about how going to church was awful. Start there.’

‘All the folks in town thought Dad was the ideal Christian father,’ I told her. ‘And in a way, he was. He led the congregation sometimes in hymns.’

‘Was that important?’ she asked in disbelief.

‘It counted for a lot where we grew up. He had a great singing voice.’

I sang the opening lines of ‘Soldiers of Christ Arise’. Without irony. As I’d sung it as a kid, when I’d done my best to believe in the invisible being everybody I knew seemed to worship.

‘You’re the one with the wonderful voice!’ Ana said, laying her hand on top of my head as though to bless me.

Had Ernie told her there’d been a competition between me and my father over him?

‘My voice is my father’s,’ I confessed.

‘Is that why you never sing to me any more? I used to like that – being serenaded while you were scrubbing me in the tub.’

As though I’d landed in a place I’d never even imagined before, I realized that it was neither my fear of my father nor my contempt for him that kept me from singing to Ana.

‘Love is more persistent than hate,’ I told her. That seemed an amazing discovery to make.

‘Does Gabriel . . . Does he love your father, too?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘No, I kept all the love,’ I said. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.

‘Tell me about him,’ Ana said, as if we’d finally reached our destination.

‘You won’t like what you hear.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Seeing the resolve in her eyes, I realized I’d underestimated Ana for a very long time – maybe since we’d met.

I told her what I knew, mostly from back to front, building up speed in a kind of lunatic rush, like an LP that got switched to 78 RPM. But she didn’t interrupt, even when I made no sense. I ended by telling her about the first time he’d come to me.

‘I want to speak with him,’ she told me when I’d finished.

I flinched as though she’d slapped me. And then backed far into a corner of myself.

She stood up and began tying her hair in a ponytail, as though readying for battle. She stared down at me urgently. ‘I need to tell Gabriel something.’

‘Bad idea,’ I replied.

‘Hank, I have to talk to him!’ she repeated.

‘No,’ I said, because any encounter with him would make her think differently of me – as though I’d never been the man she thought I was.

‘I went to the library and got a book about this,’ she said. ‘It seems that you might be able to bring G to you whenever you want. And Ernie told me that G always takes you over when you picture a lot of blood.’

‘I can’t permit you to meet him. Jesus, Ana, I hate the idea of it!’

‘We’ve already met – and in our bedroom.’

I decided to win this argument by not responding.

‘Hank, you have to do this for us. It’s the only way forward.’

I counted the seconds passing. At seven, she said, ‘If not for us, then for the sake of the kids.’

‘It’s not fair to bring the kids into this!’ I snarled.

‘You think I’m going to play fair when it comes to you!’ She laughed caustically. ‘If you think that, then you
are
crazy!’

‘He’ll be rude to you. He’ll make fun of you.’

‘Who cares? Hank, I can take care of myself – you know that. This is the way it has to be.’

We argued a bit longer, but I knew I’d already lost.

I pictured Jorge falling off his bicycle. Just a small accident, but he cut his knee and the gash bled all over my hands.

When I returned to myself, my eyes were awash with tears. I was out of breath, too, which made me realize that Gabriel had been talking to Ana, from our ranch, or somewhere else high up in the mountains.

Ana told me that my body went limp. And that when I sat up, the dismissive, irritated look in my eyes wasn’t one she recognized.

‘You have any cigarettes?’ Gabriel asked her.

To Ana, my Colorado accent seemed more pronounced than usual. And my voice was deeper. ‘You’re . . . you’re not Hank,’ she said, and though she intended her words as a statement, it came out more like a question. She was seated in the white vinyl chair, trying to look casual. She felt distant from herself, as though she’d wandered into someone else’s life.

‘No, Hank’s not home right now, honey,’ G replied. ‘Come back later. So do you have any cigarettes?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t,’ she replied.

‘What good are you?’ G asked, frowning.

‘Not much, I guess.’

With her quick admission of uselessness, Ana was hoping for a smile from G, but he glared at her instead. ‘You want me to be sorry about hurting you, but I’m not!’

‘That no longer matters.’

‘So what does?’

Ana sat forward and put her hands together. ‘Hank matters.’

Gabriel looked her up and down and grinned. ‘You’ve got nice-looking breasts.’

‘Very thoughtful of you to let me know,’ Ana replied.

‘And your Argentinian accent is
muy hermoso.’
G winked. ‘I bet Hank likes you talking dirty to him in bed.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ she shot back, pretending his talk of sex didn’t discomfort her. ‘Though just for the record, what I do in bed with Hank isn’t any of your business,’ she added.

G pounced on that. ‘Everything that concerns Hank is my business!’

Ana looked away, unable to find a reply. She began to understand more about why I’d never told her about G. At length, she said, ‘Maybe we should start over.’

‘Do us all a favour and don’t try to be Aunt Olivia.’

‘Look, I asked Hank to let you come to me because I wanted to thank you. That’s all.’

‘Thank me, why?’

‘For one thing, for defending Ernie all those years ago.’

‘And now you want me to be all friendly and nice – because you’ve thanked me. Look, honey, I’m not friendly. That’s Hank’s department. And, by the way, what’s the story with the purple streak in your hair? Your fortieth birthday hit you hard, didn’t it?’

Ana turned away, intimidated by G’s condescending stare. Tears were rising inside her chest.

‘Getting old isn’t easy, is it?’ Gabriel continued.

Ana felt that she had to win G to her side or she wouldn’t be able to say the other thing she needed to tell him. ‘I wish I’d been with you in Colorado,’ she said, ‘because I’d have had Hank’s father arrested.’

‘On what charges?’

‘Child abuse.’

‘That seems unlikely. He’d have fooled you like he fooled everyone. You’d have thought he was a charming guy. You’d have sucked his cock any time he asked.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’d have hated Hank’s mother, too – for not protecting him and Ernie.’

‘I don’t want to judge her.’

‘Oh, go ahead! What’s life for, if not for judging people you don’t understand!’

‘Hank hardly ever talks about her. And Ernie never does.’

Gabriel took a gulp of breath and rubbed his hand over his cheek, suddenly seeming unsure of himself. ‘The thing I regret most is not being able . . . to save her,’ he whispered. ‘I wish I’d known how to do that.’ He made an ugly frown. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I must be crazy!’

Ana hoped he’d spoken to her of his failure because he, too, wanted them to be fighting on the same side. ‘You saved Hank long enough for him to meet me and create Nati and Jorge in me,’ she told him. ‘Even if you never end up trusting me, I want you to know I’m more grateful to you than I think you could ever understand.’

When G reached his hand to his lips, she noticed it was shaking. He leaned his head on his hand and gazed away. He looked like Ernie to her – scanning a faraway horizon for signs of danger. His dejected, crooked posture gave her the impression that his strength was giving out.

When G finally faced Ana, he said, ‘Bring me some dark chocolate. Leysieffer chocolate-covered coffee beans are my favourite.’

‘I’ll try to find them.’

He licked his lips like a cat. ‘Smoking a cigarette after eating chocolate-covered coffee beans is the best thing I know.’

Ana sensed in his look of delight that something between them had shifted.

‘You can’t smoke in the hospital,’ she told him. ‘But you’ll be out of here pretty soon.’

‘Still, if you really want to thank me, smuggle me in a pack of Marlboros!’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think that’s a bad idea – for Hank, I mean. It might . . . compromise his recovery.’

‘His mistake was stopping smoking in the first place.’

That remark struck Ana as so heartfelt but politically incorrect that she laughed.

‘I’m glad you find me entertaining,’ G said in an amused tone.

Ana felt encouraged. ‘Listen, I’ll want Hank to start . . . talking with a therapist when he leaves the hospital,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid there ain’t no cure for what he’s got.’

‘What’s he got?’

‘He loves a man he hates, and he hates a woman he loves.’

Ana thought that sounded just about right.

‘He’s irreversibly fucked,’ G added. ‘I mean, if you want my opinion.’

‘I just want him to accept himself and . . . me. I want him to be the person he wants to be. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Yeah, I think it probably is. Besides, I’m not going to go away.’