Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

Big Dick Bradigan and seeing him leaning over the top of the cruiser did nothing to calm the unsettling feeling washing over me. “Just the man for the job,” the cop said seeing Steve. “A double fatality. Volkswagen vs. Conrail, No positive ID on the victims. I’m running the tags now.”
“A black GTI?” I asked, throat tightening around my words.
Bradigan looked at me. “Yeah,” he answered. “You know ‘em?”
“Shit,” I cried. I bolted towards the railroad tracks calling her name. “SHANNIE!”
“Hey! Yo! Stop! Where do you think you’re going?”
“James!” Steve’s voice trailed. “Don’t!”
Ignoring them, I ran past a firefighter returning from the other side of the resting dragon. I climbed between boxcars and dashed upon the horrid scene. A hundred odd feet south of Main Street, in the artificial light of another fire truck, Saphix lay sheered in half. Four firefighters worked over the wreckage.
Slowly, disbelieving, I approached the twisted mass. I stumbled over something; I threw my hands in front of me. Pain raced up my arms. I looked to see what I fell over. A blue tarp covered her. I bellowed a mute scream. A small white hand clenched into a fist protruded from the tarp. Kneeling next to her body, I watched my hand seek Shannie’s. I wretched feeling its coldness. She couldn’t be dead! I reached above her head to remove the tarp.
“Don’t James!” A far away voice warned.
Suddenly a force drove me backward, flattening me against the ground. “Don’t do it James,” Steve’s voice cried out from above. “You don’t want to know.”
I struggled under the weight. Suddenly, I felt myself pulled upwards, off the ground and onto my feet. Shouting, cursing and crying I struggled to free myself from the powerful grip. From faraway, I heard Steve pleading with me to calm down. The more I struggled the tighter the grip became before I was yanked off my feet and restrained against Bradigan’s chest. “Relax buddy, relax,” the lummox’s voice coaxed. “It’ll be okay.”
“Put me down!” Somehow detached, I heard my pleading screams. My voice, like my thoughts seemed eerily removed – like a distant wolf’s howl on a fog-laden night.

“You okay?” my father’s voice asked.
I jumped, startled to hear his voice. My father stood inside the kitchen door, keeping a safe distance. He looked exhausted, dark rings were tattooed under bloodshot eyes. Recent developing jowls hung from his chin.
“Is it true dad? Please, please tell me it’s just a nightmare. Tell me it’ll all go away.”
My father shook his head. “I wish I could James. I wish I could.”
I turned my back to him. I gazed at the Ortolan’s house in the morning gloom. It was silly to be pissed at him, I knew he couldn’t do anything about Shannie, but I couldn’t help hating him for never being able to do anything about anything.
“Come over; stay with Diane and me for awhile.”
“I can’t.” I eyed his reflection in the window. His eyes swelled as I mouthed my answer. “I’m sorry. I can’t dad. There’s too much of her there. Shannie’s everywhere. I can’t be there now.” I pretended to study the tombstones while watching my father’s reflection. It approached me and placed its hand on my shoulder. I recoiled to his touch. He didn’t withdraw his hand.
“You know, you’re not the only one she abandoned.”
I knew he meant my mother. I faced my father. His eyes met my glare. Moments passed before I blinked. “How’s Diane?”
“Sedated,” he sighed. “We’ll see how she does later today.”
“She’s a strong woman,” I said stupidly, wincing at my platitude.
“Yes she is. She’s going to need every bit of it.” He placed his hand on my shoulder again. “James. It would mean a lot to her – it would mean a lot to me, it would mean a lot to the both of us if you spent time with us now. We need each other.” My father paused again. “Please?”
After my father left I stared at the phone, finding reasons not to return Krista’s call. I fought the temptation to hop into my car and drive. Where, I hadn’t an idea. As much as the idea appealed to me, I couldn’t, whatever remained of my family needed me. I was oblivious that the exact opposite was true.
I retreated to my room. I avoided looking over Shannie’s yard and Fernwood. I was tired of life at this dead end. Eyes closed, I pulled my window shades shut and climbed into bed. Despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep. My mind raced back to the accident.
“It’s definitely them,” Steve told Bradigan after identifying the bodies. “The Driver’s name is Genise Gray. The passenger’s name is Shannie Ortolan.”
“Any idea of next of kin for Ms. Gray?” Bradigan asked.
“She has a brother,” I broke my silence. I was leaning against the back of the police car. “If it helps, his name’s Calvin Gray. Used to be in the Army, 101st Airborne.”
“That’ll help,” Bradigan said.
Turning my head away from the cop, I noticed Russell standing on the steps of JD’s, towering above those on the sidewalk, his facial features obscured by a cloud of cigar smoke. I imagined him peering through his sunglasses, studying the scene. I scratched the idea of approaching him and breaking the news that his Butterfly lay broken on the far side of the tracks. I overheard a shaken voice identify himself as the train’s engineer. I turned towards the owner of the voice.
A combination of rage, compassion and pity struck me as my eyes fell upon him. Whatever I expected an engineer to look like, he wasn’t it. How could someone so frail operate such a powerful beast? In the years Shannie and I dodged freights, I’ve always harbored images of engineers being big, burley men –worthy of operating something so powerful. This man was suited for operating a card-catalogue at the public library. His haggard face was framed by small oval glasses, like my grandfather used to wear. Unlike my grandfather’s meaty, round face, the engineer’s face was thin and sickly, an oval with pencil marks for nose and lips, his eyes no more than slits topped by eyebrows as thick as forsythia. He looked incapable of accidentally killing an ant let alone someone as vital as Shannie.
“What did you see?” Bradigan asked.
The engineer paused, exhaling a long breath before speaking. “As we approached the crossing, the car pulled around the gate and stopped on the tracks. I’ve seen it before, you know, drunks playing chicken. Hell, I’ve had pedestrians at this very crossing stand in front of me, waiting till the last second before dodging me; damn imbeciles. I don’t know what possess them. Anyway, the car stops, I lay on the horn. It wasn’t till the passenger door opened and the blonde jumps out that I figured this one wasn’t playing. I immediately laid on the emergency breaks, but you know as well as anyone there’s no way the train was going to stop in time. The passenger, the blonde, I could see her in the headlights, she paused for a second, looking at the train, I swear she was studying it. She ran around to the driver’s side. I could see her yanking on the door, pounding on the window. She looked up at us again; I could see the fear on her face. I started to yell, screaming to her to clear the crossing, like she’d hear me. Instead she jumped over the hood, leaned into the car, across the driver and opened the door from the inside.”
The engineer paused, lowering his head. I watched him as he stared at snowflakes evaporating upon the street’s surface. Looking up, the engineer continued. “She tried to get out. She did, she tried to get out. She ran out of time. She just ran out of time. I closed my eyes when the car slipped under my sight line. I cringed when I felt the crash.” The engineer returned to his study of the melting snowflakes.
“What are we going to tell Diane?” Steve asked. We were sitting in his car at the intersection of Cemetery and Bainbridge Streets. We both stared at the darkened house at the end of Cemetery Street.
“Shannie burbled,” I said.
“She what?” Steve asked.
“She burbled. She did something too good. She was so good she got herself killed.” In short sequence, all the lights inside the house at the end of Cemetery Street sprung to life. I groaned.
“She knows,” Steve sighed. “Man, her life just changed. Fuck.”
I glanced at Steve as his car crept towards Diane’s driveway. I wasn’t comfortable with our charge, but Steve was right, besides providing whatever comfort we could, we had to stop Diane from seeing the carnage that claimed her daughter. God knows I regretted stumbling upon the scene.
“You know how she’s going to react,” I told Steve as we approached the front door. “I don’t know if I can handle this.” Pausing, I took a deep breath before knocking.
The door swung open. I fell upon my heels as I met Diane’s eyes. Hers was Shannie’s face, but aged, more weather beaten. Shock deepened the crow’s feet aside Diane’s green eyes, which were dull and bloodshot. “James,” she sighed, her dry lips quivering under her thin nose. As we embraced her blond hair cascaded over the front of her shoulders. Through my tears I noticed that even their hair smelled similar. Diane pulled me tighter to her chest, itself heaving with sobs. She rested her head upon my shoulder. In every way, mother and daughter seemed similar, even how they climbed the short flight of stairs and floated across the kitchen floor. Only in the eternal absence of one did I gain this understanding of the other. At that moment I realized I could no longer live in Beyford. I loved Diane like a mother, but I couldn’t exist near this living, breathing reminder of Shannie. She was already a haunting replica of who Shannie could have been.
It didn’t take much convincing on Steve’s part to dissuade Diane from journeying to the scene or viewing Shannie’s remains. “She wouldn’t have wanted me to see her like that,” Diane whispered hoarsely. “You know, I always had this feeling, this feeling that something would happen to her. She was always so carefree, terribly carefree. Reckless.”
I peered over the top of my coffee at Diane, surprised by her words. I never thought Shannie reckless. To the contrary, she was extraordinarily calculating when it came to risk. She was keenly aware of threats. She always had an escape route. That’s why the engineer’s account troubled me. If she wanted out, she would have stepped away. In her last moments, I wonder what she thought, I wonder if she regretted her choice?
The four of us talked into the night, sometimes painfully honest, sometimes not, the kitchen walls witnessed many tears, long moments of silence, and even a laugh or two. Steve assured Diane he would handle the smallest of details. As the first hint of morning flirted with the eastern sky, my father suggested that we try to get some rest, offering valium to any taker. My father, I thought, such the subtle diplomat, what better way to sedate Diane than offering us all a sedative. Maybe he isn’t the clod I know him to be.
I snuck out of Diane’s house as my father put Shannie’s grieving mother to bed, leaving behind the grueling details to Steve and my father. I wandered through the Ortolan’s yard, under the bare limbs of the tree line and into Fernwood. I stared at Count’s headstone. I glanced at the darkened old chapel before heading home. I’d break the news to the Lightman’s after they woke.

I bolted upright