Jokers Club (12 page)

“Do you think he’s here?”

“What do you think?”

He didn’t let me answer, just got in his car and drove off. But I wasn’t sure how I’d have answered him. I wasn’t sure what I thought. I wasn’t sure where the story was going.

*   *   *

A wind began to blow, kicking up leaves all over the ground. They danced around my feet, sounding like screeching animals as the crisp ones scraped the pavement. It was getting cold and I thought of heading back to the inn, but there were other places my legs wanted to take me, other things to see. There just wasn’t enough time.

I found myself heading out to the cemetery beyond the Pines and the Little League field. I noticed the headstones were creeping closer and closer to the outfield fence of the ball field, as if the two of them were fighting for territory, as if death were overtaking the ground where youth once held reign. I could almost picture a future scene where outfielders would have to dodge concrete slabs while shagging a fly ball.

I visited my parents’ graves, wishing I had brought some flowers because I think, in the back of my mind I knew I was coming here. They had both died of cancer just a few years apart. It must run in the family. My father succumbed while I was in college; my mother died a few years after I graduated, before I left for New York City. I had no reason to stay. No family, no Meg, no work. It was as good a time as any to get (run) away.

The headstones looked cold, the plot lonely. This was where I could be soon, beside them, a family again. If they knew what I was facing they could comfort me. They could tell me it was all right, that it wouldn’t be so bad. But here I was, their little boy, and he was very frightened.
I don’t want to do it alone.

The breeze kicked up, chilling me and I wrapped my arms around myself. Was it death that made this place so icy?

I heard a car door and saw, over to the east side of the cemetery, a man emerging from a vehicle. I also saw a figure moving along the birch tree covered slope on the northern end of the cemetery. I felt this was an invasion of my privacy. I wanted this whole place to myself. These people had no right to intrude.

The man from the car stood in front of a grave and as I stared, I noticed it was Oliver. I started walking in that direction, but then slowed. Maybe I shouldn’t disturb him. Let him have his private moment. But I had the sudden urge to talk to him, so picked up my pace. When he turned and noticed me, he smiled.

In that instant, when his expression was framed in my mind, I was reminded of my first memory of Oliver. I was about five years old and wandered out into my new neighborhood and saw the scruffy looking kid with the black hair dangling in his eyes look up at me from behind a sand castle in the middle of his sandbox, smile at me and ask me if I wanted to help him build it. We had spent the better part of the afternoon piling the sand higher and higher until we had a castle King Arthur would have been proud to call home.

I remember that smile and wondered what could make an innocent young boy grow up to be such a hard man. Then I looked down at the grave he stood in front of: his father’s.

He had died a few years back when he was drunk.  His car went off the road at a high rate of speed on a rainy evening, slamming into a tree and splitting in two.

There was no empty plot on either side of Mr. Rench’s reserved for Oliver’s mother. She had deserted the family long ago, leaving Mr. Rench alone with the three boys. That had happened not long after the bicycle incident. It had been the summer Oliver was nine. His father had lost his license for drunken driving. Chief Hooper was the one who pulled him over early one evening right as Mr. Rench was turning onto Maple Street on his way home. Hooper wasn’t even on duty. He was on his way to his house on Elm Street and was driving behind Mr. Rench. Oliver’s father had pleaded with Hooper to let him off, since he was less than a hundred yards from his house and offered to walk from there. But Hooper arrested him and his license was revoked. I think that was the start of Oliver deciding to play pranks on Hooper. It was a way to get back at him — torture him for revenge.

Shortly after Mr. Rench lost his license, his wife came home with a brand new bicycle. She parked it in the driveway on its kickstand and called out to Oliver’s father. I guess she figured during the nice weather he could ride it to work until he got his license back.

I remember staring out my living room window and watching Mr. Rench glare silently at the bike. From across the street I could see his face redden. Then he exploded. He turned to his wife and began screaming and swearing. My father came into the room and we both watched silently as Mr. Rench picked up the bicycle and raised it over his head and with a clatter of steel, slammed it down on the asphalt. He jumped up and down on top of the bicycle with his big heavy work boots, spokes snapping and popping, and stomping it as if trying to sink it out of sight beneath the surface of the tar.

His cowering wife turned and fled into the house and Mr. Rench soon followed. The screaming was louder when they were inside. My father went to the phone and picked up the receiver, fingers hesitating before the numbers pad. I saw the deep furrows on his forehead as he thought about what to do. Then he hung the phone up and told me to come away from the window.

Oliver and I stared at his father’s grave, and then I decided I should be the one to break the silence.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” I said.

He laughed. “I come here once a year. I don’t bring flowers though. I may have hated the bastard, but I respected him. He made me what I am today.”

“Is that what you want to be?”

“He made me tough, and that’s how you have to be to survive, because it’s a tough world.”

“And you’re happy?”

“I’ve got everything I want, and I’m only going to get more. There’s no stopping me.”

“Oh?” I knew something that could stop him dead in his tracks. He read my mind.

“That?” he laughed. “That doesn’t worry me. I’m not afraid.”

I’m not either
, I thought.
It didn’t matter to me
, I realized.
I’m already dead.

“I keep tossing it back and forth in my head,” I said, “that maybe the killer isn’t one of us. Maybe the whole thing is just some random, senseless murder.”

“Is that what you really believe?”

“The more I think of it, I doubt it.” I looked around the cemetery, still seeing the man standing amongst the birches. “The killer is close to us. I can feel it.”

“You think it’s me, don’t you?” His face studied mine looking for some kind of reaction. If anything, my expression showed puzzlement.

“I’m just not sure about you anymore.”

“Don’t trust anybody, that’s my motto.”

Then I asked a question that had festered in the back of my mind for a very long time. “You knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe in that refrigerator, didn’t you? You knew it would kill him.”

“Is that what you believe?”

Don’t play games with me, I thought. Just tell me. I want to hear it.

“What about you?” he asked. “Ask yourself if you didn’t know what would happen.”

No. I had no idea what was going to happen. I’m sure of it. I never would have let it get that far if I had known. I’m sure.

“I know I’m no killer,” Oliver said. “But I will kill if I have to, to protect myself.”

I decided to tell him what Hooper told me about Woody.

“Well that’s an interesting twist,” he replied.

“I can’t help but think about something he said to me when I visited him, about having to pay for what we did. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should be punished.”

Oliver burst out laughing. “Do our penance? That’s the way it is?” He shook his head. “You don’t think we can’t go through life unpunished for our dirty deeds? God, you’re so naïve.”

“I really believe it’s why we’re here.”

“What about the killer then?” he asked. “If it’s one of us, and he kills us off, then he’ll be left. He’ll go unpunished.”

“What makes you think he hasn’t been punished already?”

He looked at me queerly.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

I don’t know
, I thought. Something very strange.

He walked away, as if unsure of who I was, and headed to his car, not taking his eyes off me. When he opened the door, he stopped.

“Do you want a ride back to the inn?”

It was still cool and the thought of a ride back to the warm inn was tempting, but I didn’t want to get in the car with him, and I think he was just as glad I declined.

As he drove away, I began to meander through the cemetery, working my way along the pathways toward the northern end. I took in the names on each tombstone as I passed. These could be my new neighbors soon. I should get familiar with them. Some names I recognized, could even picture the faces that went along with them. Here was a guy from high school who had drowned trying to swim all the way across the lake on a dare one hot summer night. Here was a young man who was accidentally shot by his father in a hunting accident. There was the headstone of a girl who had lived only five years before riding her tricycle into the road and getting run over by a garbage truck. I remembered the whole town mourning that day.

Would the whole town be mourning my death when it came? Or would I be placed here in my designated spot, to be forgotten with all the others. This cemetery was growing, stretching itself out, like the tumor that clung barnacle-like to my brain. Soon, would it outgrow the whole town? Death was something that would not stop.

I moved down a path parallel to the slope rising gently to my right. As I glanced up, I saw a man who moved slowly behind the birch trees. I stopped. The man, who was thin like the trees that nearly concealed him, emerged from the cover of a birch and looked at me.

I froze, not from the chilled air that engulfed my body, but from a sudden shock that numbed my soul.

“Woody!” I screamed.

He turned and ran.

It was him. His face was smudged with dirt, his loose clothes covered with pine needles and dead leaves, as if he had been crawling along the ground, but there was no mistaking it. It was Woody.

I ran after him, zigzagging around the trunks and headstones. The incline made my footing slow. My legs were numb and aching from walking all day long. I wasn’t gaining on him. He moved swiftly, but I could see him in the distance ahead.

“Wait, Woody!” I cried, using up almost all the breath my lungs held. “Stop!”

I came to the top of the rise, where the trees ended in a clearing of graves, and stopped. As my breath sputtered in rapid bursts that stung the bottom of my lungs, my eyes searched. There was no sign of him. Beyond the clearing began the thick brush and woods that led to the Colonel’s hidden tomb. I closed my eyes and listened, hoping to hear the sound of Woody’s movement through the undergrowth. When the echo of my breathing dimmed in my ears there was only silence.

Then they picked up the sound of jingling bells.

It came from somewhere off to my left. I moved toward the sound. I saw its origin as I neared. My body trembled. What was going on in my head?

The Joker stood in an open grave, spade shovel in hand, digging out shovelfuls of dirt and throwing them on a pile beside the grave. He went about his work, not looking at me as I approached the side of the grave and peered down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Digging,” he replied, still not looking up. He was almost completely below ground level. I looked at the name on the headstone.

JASON NIGHTINGALE

I cringed.

“Why are you digging?”

He stopped and looked up. His black lips were spread in a wide grin. “Why, to get to the bottom of course.” He dug the tip of the shovel into the dirt and tossed it over his shoulder.

“But why are you digging here?”

“Can you think of a better place to dig?”

How about the plot that’s reserved for me?
I thought.

I heard the thump as his shovel struck something hard. I closed my eyes tight. Make this vision go away please.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed. I heard the scraping sound of dirt being brushed off the lid of the coffin. I opened my eyes to see the Joker climb out of the hole. He stood beside the pile of dirt he had removed, one hand leaning on the shovel, the other extended out toward the hole, palm open.

“There you are,” he said.

“I don’t want to look.”

His smile faded. “What are you afraid of?”

I was afraid of everything. But my body did move, it did take small steps to the edge of that hole. I looked down.

I wanted to scream.

There was no coffin. Instead, lying in its place was a refrigerator.

“Don’t do this to me,” I cried.

“But I didn’t do anything,” the Joker said. “I had nothing to do with this.”

I fell to my knees beside the hole. Every muscle in my body trembled in spasmodic fits. I put my face in my hands, trying to hold the tears in.

“I don’t want to remember.”

“Geoffrey,” came a voice. It sounded like it came from a great distance. It wasn’t the Joker’s voice. It was higher pitched. It was a youthful voice; it sounded like it came from …

I took my hands away from my face, staring from behind watery eyes into the hole.

“Geoffrey!” came the muffled voice from inside the refrigerator.

It was Jason’s voice.

“Help me,” it said.

I stared, afraid to move.

“Don’t just sit there,” the Joker said. “He needs your help.”

“Please, help me.” The voice was louder.

Frantically, I jumped into the hole, onto the refrigerator, grabbing the door handle and pulling it. It wouldn’t open.

“Geoffrey!” the voice screamed. “Let me out!”

I yanked on the handle, but it still would not open.

“I can hardly breathe, Geoff.” The voice was growing weaker.

“Hang on, Jason!” I screamed. “I’ll get you out!” I kept jerking the handle back with all my might, but it wouldn’t budge.

“I … can’t … breathe.” The voice was fading.

I began pounding my fists on the door, smashing them one after the other.