30 March 2012: Scene VI - Take 2

VI – Take 2

At six-thirty, for the second time in less than four hours, Ben was jarred awake, this time from the music pouring out of the speakers a few feet away.    Wanting to avoid the anxiety that came with a bedside alarm, he struck upon the idea of locating his wake-up system out in the living room so that the music would filter in from a distance.  But, having fallen asleep just an hour ago in his recliner, the morning revelry was having the opposite effect with the only positive note being that he was too disoriented to think he was back in Iraq. 

He never intended to go to sleep.  The links for Alexa Brantley quickly ran out but he found himself thinking about the two missing bullets from the chamber which led him to searching for compact metal detectors and from there to independent ballistic services to test if the bullets he would presumably find with the detector actually came from Gabe’s gun.  By then, it was five-thirty and going to bed was pointless since he knew very well from past experiences that he would wake from that hour of sleep groggy and befuddled and in a terrible mood.  Better to put on a pot of coffee and catch a quick snooze later in the day.

But, while the coffee brewed, he sat down in the recliner and rehashed the implausible connections between Gabe’s bike accident and the skeleton, trying to concoct a credible scenario and contemplated himself right to sleep.  Now, he struggled to get out of his chair and hurried to lower the volume on the receiver.   

            “Good morning,” Molly said.

“Molly?” he called out, looking around the living room and finding her perched by the window, its wooden sill in shredded splinters. 

            “Ah, shit,” he said a bit too loudly and hoped Molly wouldn’t add that to her vocabulary. 

            “Oh, Molly.”

            He took a moment to contain his anger before walking over to her. 

            “What a nice mess, sweetie,” he said, through a wide smile.

Slowly, he put his hand out.  She hesitated, cocked her head, eyed him carefully before finally jumping onto his arm.

            “Good girl,” he said, walking her over to the cage. “I need you to be in here for right now.”  He was thankful that she hopped in without a protest and supplied her with a few strawberries.

            “All right,” he muttered and shook his head vigorously, trying to wake and think more clearly.   A quick shower, some breakfast and lots of coffee, he thought mulling over his plan of action before heading over to Gabe’s.  The coffee.  Ben spied the untouched pot of java still sitting on the burner while he heard the machine, programmed to go off with the morning music, sputtering in an attempt to make a new pot. 

            “Breakfast?” Molly asked.

            “No,” he said tersely, wondering what the she thought the strawberries were.

            He dumped the old pot, reset the machine and put another to brew and looked forward to a quick shower.  But on his way out of the kitchen he froze in his tracks.

            “Oh, my god.”

            Scattered about on the floor, around the computer desk, were fragments of what once made up a complete skeletal hand.

            “Oh, Molly,” he said, knowing that she wasn’t too blame. 

Instead of breakfast, he felt an obligation to gather the bone parts and get them back into the ammo box, as if the hand would feel less defiled if they were congregated in one place.  True, Gabe would forgive him for being a few minutes late but his own work ethic insisted he be on time.  Besides, tardiness could lead to questions and then Ben would have to hide the truth and he certainly wasn’t ready to engage him in a conversation about yesterday’s events.  Maybe once he got Gabe in his wheelchair the time would be right.

Ben entered the house, as he always did, giving a quick one-two rap on the door and offering up a husky, “Mornin.”  He used to enter with an even deeper and more guttural “Oorah,” but, judging from Beth’s reaction, he thought she found that rather abrasive and switched to what he thought was a toned-down greeting.  There was very little change in her response and rather than taking it personally, Ben decided she just wasn’t a morning person. 

He looked for her in the kitchen where she usually was with her cup of coffee after her morning run.  Her absence was welcomed as he wasn’t looking forward to their usual morning exchange to see how her night had gone and to find out if there was anything about Gabe he needed to know.  He already knew she was up at least as long as he was and he wasn’t in the mood to get an earful that his duties needed to be expanded to include redeye calls.

            “I don’t think it seems to be too much to ask if at least once a week you would be responsible for tending to Gabe if he wakes up in the middle of the night,” she had stated a couple of months back after a disturbed night of sleep.

            “I can see where you would feel that,” he had replied calmly.  “I’m right here, so why not?”

            “Exactly.’

            “I would be willing to do that but I need to be able to recoup the time elsewhere.”

            “I don’t get to recoup the time.  If I have to get up, I still need to go into work that day, even if I can’t get back to sleep.”

            Ben folded his arms, pursed his lips and nodded lightly.  He felt caught in the middle of a sour relationship sensing that this was much more about Beth feeling trapped in having to stay with Gabe now that he was confined to a wheelchair and less about equity of rest time.

            “It’s a matter of burn out,” Gabe said, knowing that it didn’t really matter how he replied.  “If I don’t get enough down-time, it won’t be too much longer before I would have to pack my bags.”  He didn’t mean for it to come out as a threat but he could see in Beth’s eyes that she took it that way.  

            “Yeah.  Well, I’m burning out, too.” 

           

            Ben moved through the empty kitchen, assuming Beth was in the bedroom getting ready for work and thankful for the momentary reprieve. 

            “Hey.” 

            He stopped, not even thinking that she would be sitting in the sunroom, drinking coffee in the comfort of her bathrobe. 

            “Oh.  Hey,” he said, making eye contact with her and carefully studying her manner.  Nowhere in her tone or face did he perceive the anticipated animosity and he found himself lingering by the doorway.

            “Bad night?”

            “You could say that.”

            “Gabe?”

            She nodded her head and took a sip of her coffee, looked at the large painting that hung on the wall and then gazed out into the morning.  It was the perfect opportunity for Ben to make his escape.

            “Was he too hot or too cold?” he asked.

            “Too hot.”

            “What time was that?”

            “Two-thirty.”

            “And, you’ve been up since?”

            She nodded again and gave Ben a tired look.  He thought of bringing up the subject again of hiring someone to sleep in the den and tend to Gabe when he woke, but thought better of it.    Her gaze moved back to the painting and remained there.  Ben watched her for a moment and he looked at the painting as well.  Five feet vertical and two feet wide, it portrayed a very abstract caricature of what seemed to be a rock star playing a guitar; Ben thought it resembled Mick Jagger.  Gabe had purchased the picture some time back and, for some reason, thought the sunroom was the perfect place to hang it.  Beth wasn’t that fond of the piece and he couldn’t understand her attraction to the artwork this morning.

            “Are you going into work?”

            “No.”

            This took Ben by surprise as well as he couldn’t remember her missing a day of work since he had been there.  She loved her work as the curator of a new art museum that had opened in the past year, just two months before Gabe’s accident.  The museum was a real feather in the cap for the region and Beth was a driving force in its creation and seeing it becoming a reality. 

            “Was Gabe up long?”

            “No.  I took a cover off and he was practically asleep before I left the room.”

            Ben looked in the direction of Gabe’s room even though he couldn’t see it.

            “He’s still asleep,” she said, still looking at the painting. 

Perhaps she’s considering the piece for a new exhibition at the museum, he thought.  Her demeanor continued to baffle and disarm him and he took the tone of her reply to indicate that she wanted him to stay.  A long silence overtook the room as he stood in the doorway, waiting, while she looked back out the window and caught the sun that was just rising above the trees. 

            “Are you happy here?”

            “Pardon?”

            “Are you good with the arrangement you have here?” she restated, turning to speak directly at him.

            “Yes.”  He was waiting for her to follow up with talk of midnight duty and he was steeling himself for standing firm.  Once again, he was very glad that he had established boundaries from the onset, anticipating just such a development. 

            “And, do you see yourself staying here for another year or two?”

            “I have no plans on leaving,” he said, matter-of-factly.

            She nodded and looked away.  The sun was beginning to fill the room, bringing the potted plants to life and seeming to accentuate the broad smile of the rock star on the painting. 

            “I do,” Beth finally said.

            “What?”

            “I plan to move out.”

            She looked squarely at Ben to gauge his response.  While he knew the topic ran below the everyday surface, her statement just now took him by surprise.

            “I see.”

            “We had talked seriously about it before Gabe’s accident.”

            “Gabe mentioned it.”

            “He did?”

            “Yes,” he said, not sure if he had revealed a confidence.

            “It doesn’t matter,” she said sincerely.  “That’s why I’m asking about your intentions.  Can you commit to staying here at least another year?”

            “Not a problem,” he said, but his thoughts suddenly were filled with a vast array of logistical questions and how that would impact his job description.

            “There needs to be consistency for a while.”

            “Sure.  When are you thinking of moving out?”

            “As soon as possible.  I’ve already been looking at apartments and houses near the museum.”

            Ben nodded.  Beth looked again at the painting and he followed her gaze there.  Then, it struck him.  Alexa Brantley, aka Alexa Fern, the artist of the painting on the wall. 

Copyright © 2012 Philip Zweig

26 March 2012: Scene VI

VI

It wasn’t the best night sleep.  He had certainly seen worse and he intended to crawl back in bed and get a couple more hours of shut eye before having to tend to Gabe.  But the minutes continued ticking away as he searched further on Alexa Brantley, coming up with nothing of consequence and nothing to jog his memory over why the name rang a bell. 

The two missing bullets jangled about in his head and he did a search to see if there were independent labs nearby where he could run a ballistic test, assuming that there were indeed bullets to be found.  To his gratification, there was a facility less than two hours away.   Before he knew it, the clock was reading 5:30 and, rather heading for his bedroom, he headed for the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee.  Sitting in his recliner, he waited for it to brew and went over once again in his mind the seemingly implausible connections between Gabe’s bike accident and the skeleton a quarter of a mile away, trying to concoct a credible scenario.  

At six-thirty, the sound of Ben’s alarm clock kept echoing in his head until finally bringing him to consciousness, still taking him another few moments to orient himself and realize the source of the music.  Groggily, he pushed himself out of the chair, vigorously shaking his head and trying to emerge from his muddled fog.   He felt worse than if he had stayed awake and, from his past experience, the bleariness would stick with him through most of the day accompanied with a good dose of irritability.

            Turning off the alarm, he headed for the bathroom, relieved himself and turned on the shower when the circumstances of the past few hours fully set in.

            “Molly?” he called out, looking around the living room.

            “Good morning,” she said, perched on a window sill where she had shredded the wooden ledge.

            “Ah, shit,” he said a bit too loudly and hoped Molly wouldn’t add it to her vocabulary. 

            “Oh, Molly.”

            He took a moment to compose himself and contain his anger before walking over to her.  Slowly he put his hand out to see if he managed to conceal his anger well or if she was picking up the irritation boiling below.  She hesitated, cocked her head, eyed him carefully before finally jumping onto his arm.

            “Good girl,” he said, walking her over to the cage. “I need you to be in here for right now.”

            Once more he headed for the shower but stopped and looked over at the computer desk.  Letting out a big sigh, he ran both hands up along the side of his head, through his hair and resting at the back of his neck with his head down and his eyes closed; lying on the desktop and on the floor below, as well as scattered around the room, were fragments of the skeletal hand.  A couple of hours earlier, thinking that he had a name to go with the remains, Ben began to feel guilt at having taken the hand.  Now, the desecration felt complete. 

            Ben looked up and took in the full extent of Molly’s work with his scan ending on his magnificent bird eyeing him through the bars of her cage. 

            “Breakfast?” she asked.

            “Not yet.”

            He quickly mulled over what his plan of action would be for the time remaining before getting over to Gabe.  A quick shower, some breakfast and lots of coffee.  The fragments could wait but he felt an obligation to get them picked up and gathered back into the ammo box, as if the hand would feel less defiled if they were at least congregated in one place.  The time he normally spent with Molly in the morning would have to be nixed.  Even though she had much of the early morning to roam as she pleased, Ben knew she would miss their morning routine and, so would he.  He walked over to the cage, stuck his finger in and rubbed her beak and tongue.  Then, he headed for the shower, thinking about Alexa, the fingers of her hand that he held so delicately in his palm, thinking if he was in any kind of mood for talking with Gabe, and, with the relaxing feel of the warm water coming down on him, thinking about the coffee maker, which was set on automatic, going off with no water in the well and the earlier untouched pot of coffee still sitting on the burner. 

When Ben entered Gabe and Beth’s house in the morning, he always gave a little knock on the door and announced himself with a melodious “Hooah.”  This was meant for Beth’s sake as Gabe was safely tucked away in bed awaiting his arrival.  Usually, Beth was either in the kitchen with her morning cup of coffee or back in her bedroom, changing from her morning run and getting ready for work.  If she was around, Ben would exchange a few words with her to see how her night had gone and to find out if there was anything about Gabe he needed to know.  He could tell immediately if her sleep had been disturbed as she made no effort to hide her irritation of being roused in the middle of the night.  This had, in fact, been a point of contention between the two of them.  She felt that since Ben lived on the premises, his duties should include, at least some of the time, answering those redeye calls.

            “I don’t think it seems to be too much to ask if at least once a week you would be responsible for tending to Gabe if he wakes up in the middle of the night.”

            “I can see where you would feel that.  I’m right here, so why not?”

            “Exactly.’

            “I would be willing to do that but I need to be able to recoup the time elsewhere.”

            “I don’t get to recoup the time.  If I have to get up, I still need to go into work that day, even if I can’t get back to sleep.”

            Ben folded his arms, pursed his lips and nodded lightly.  He felt caught in the middle of a sour relationship sensing that this was much more about Beth feeling trapped in having to stay with Gabe now that he was confined to a wheelchair and less about equity of rest time.

            “It’s a matter of burn out,” Gabe said, knowing that it didn’t really matter how he replied.  “If I don’t get enough down time, it won’t be too much longer before I would have to pack my bags.”  He didn’t mean for it to come out as a threat but he could see in Beth’s eyes that she took it that way.  

            “Yeah.  Well, I’m burning out, too.” 

           

Ben was not eager to run into Beth this morning as he had seen the den light on the entire time he was up.  He gave a very light knock as he entered and a barely audible “Hooah,” hoping to quickly make his way to Gabe’s room with nothing more than a quick “Good morning.”

            Looking to his left he didn’t see Beth in the kitchen and thought he made it home free.  But a few steps in, Beth was on his right in the sunroom, in her robe and drinking a cup of coffee.  Startled, he found himself stopping.

            “Oh.  Hey,” he said, making eye contact with her and carefully studying her manner.

            “Good morning.”

            Her reply lacked the bite that he expected and he felt further immobilized.

            “Bad night?”

            “You could say that.”

            “Gabe?”

            She nodded her head and took a sip of her coffee, looked at the painting on the wall and then gazed out into the morning.  It was the perfect opportunity for Ben to make his escape.

            “Was he too hot or too cold?” he asked.

            “Too hot.”

            “What time was that?”

            “Two-thirty.”

            “And, you’ve been up since?”

            She nodded again and gave Ben a tired look, not the intense guilt-ridden glare that he expected.  Her gaze moved back to the painting and remained there.  Ben watched her for a moment and he looked at the painting as well. He couldn’t understand why she was focusing on it as he knew she detested the piece.  Five feet vertical and two feet wide, it portrayed a very abstract caricature of what seemed to be a rock star playing a guitar; Ben thought it resembled Mick Jagger.  Gabe had purchased the picture three years ago and mounted it without even asking Beth.  Yet, now, she kept staring at it as if it held special meaning for her and was providing her with solace.

            “Are you going into work?”

            “No.”

            This took Ben by surprise as well as he couldn’t remember her missing a day of work since he had been there.  She was the curator of a new art museum that had opened in the past year, just two months before Gabe’s accident.  She loved her position there and Ben admired her enthusiasm and drive.  The museum was a real feather in the cap for the region and Beth was a driving force in its creation and seeing it becoming a reality. 

            “Was Gabe up long?”

            “No.  I took a cover off and he was practically asleep before I left the room.”

            Ben looked in the direction of Gabe’s room even though he couldn’t see it.

            “He’s still asleep,” she said, still looking at the painting. 

            Beth’s demeanor continued to baffle and disarm him.  He took the tone of her reply to indicate that she wanted him to stay.  A long silence overtook the room as he stood in the doorway, waiting, while she looked out the window catching the sun that was just peeking out above the trees. 

            “Are you happy here?”

            “Pardon?”

            “Are you good with the arrangement you have here?” she restated, turning to speak directly at Ben.

            “Yes.”  He was waiting for her to ask about midnight duty and he was steeling himself for standing firm.  Once again, he was very glad that he had established boundaries from the onset, anticipating just such a development. 

            “And, do you see yourself staying here for another year or two?”

            “I have no plans on leaving.” 

            She nodded and looked away.  The sun was beginning to fill the room, bringing the potted plants to life yet landing on the painting and accentuating the gross caricature qualities.  He and Beth may have had their differences but he was in full agreement on the so-called artwork and couldn’t understand Gabe’s desire on having it mounted in such a pleasant setting. 

            “I do,” Beth finally said.

            “What?”

            “I want to move out.”

            She looked squarely at Ben to gauge his response.  While he knew the topic ran below the everyday surface, her statement took him by surprise.

            “I see,” he said, hoping to display a poker-face, but knew he already had shown her his true reaction.

            “We had talked seriously about it before Gabe’s accident.”

            “Gabe mentioned it.”

            “He did?”

            “Yes.”  He felt himself blushing from embarrassment, an emotion he wasn’t used to, and was looking to extricate himself from the situation even if she couldn’t see his blood filling his face.  “I didn’t think –“

            “It doesn’t matter,” she said sincerely.  “But that’s why I’m asking about your intentions.  Can you commit to staying here at least another year?”

            “That won’t be a problem,” he said, but his thoughts suddenly were filled with a vast array of logistical questions and how that would impact his job description.

            “There needs to be consistency for a while.”

            “Sure.  When are you thinking of moving out?”

            “As soon as possible.  I’ve already been looking at apartments and houses near the museum.”

            Ben nodded.  Beth looked again at the painting and he followed her gaze there.  Then, it struck him.  Alexa Brantley, aka Alexa Fern, the artist of the hideous painting on the wall. 

Copyright © 2012 Philip Zweig

26 March 2012: Rewrite Last 3 pgs of Scene V

Ben picked up the skeleton. 

“I think this is definitely an adult, Molly.”

From his shoulder, she bent down, and tried to reach it with her open beak.

“No.”

He looked up out the window and towards the den light that was still on.  Off to the right was Gabe’s room which remained dark.

            “Well, at least he’s not a child killer.”

            Not that Ben thought he was any sort of killer. But, the fact remained that there was a skeleton lying in some brambles a quarter of a mile away from where Gabe had his bike accident.  And, lying only thirty feet from the body was a gun with the initials GH engraved in the handle, the same inscription on Gabe’s other revolvers.  “And, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Ben could imagine the district attorney animatedly addressing the panel, “this is the same gun that the defendant usually carried when he went biking but could not be found after his accident. Coincidence?  The same gun which was missing two bullets from its chamber and was found lying on the ground beneath the skeleton.”  This last piece of evidence was pure speculation on Ben’s part as he had no idea about the location of the two missing bullets.  Ben hoped that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation which forensics could quickly sort out.  But, Gabe’s run-in with the DA two years back did not bode well for a judicious account being reached.  Gabe and the District Attorney had butted heads over gun rights and the carrying of a concealed weapon and after fifteen rounds Gabe came out the victor on a technicality.  The DA was not happy and Ben was sure he would have a field day with these circumstances.  Quadriplegic or not, the DA would probably try to make Gabe’s life as miserable as possible, as if it wasn’t a fairly close second to that at the moment. 

Ben wanted to talk with Gabe yesterday about everything he found down in the creek bed, but everyone was beat and Gabe was really having trouble concentrating.  Mornings were the best time to communicate with him when he was well rested and feeling the least amount of pain.  Of course, the fact that Gabe remembered nothing from that day created quite a challenge.  In the meantime, Ben thought he would do some research and maybe come up with something that might be of use when they talked. 

            Molly nibbled on his ear again, but this time, instead of seeking a belly rub, she seemed to be trying to re-focus Ben’s attention to the computer. 

“Hey,” he quietly muttered as he gave her a quick rub before dedicating both hands to the keyboard.  He searched for missing persons from ten months back and clicked on an FBI link that filled the screen with thumbnail portraits of faces ranging in age from toddlers to men in their sixties with every race, gender and age in between.  Some of the missing went back more than fifteen years.  The ones that made Ben’s hair stand on end were those who’s missing date were within the past month or two, as if they were just standing next to him a moment ago and then, just like that, they vanished.  Just like in combat, life suddenly disappeared, he was reminded all too easily.  The eyes, the smiles, all those faces.  Ben was taken aback by the number of photos.  Again ambushed.

            He clicked on a young attractive looking woman with straight blonde hair.  She looked even prettier in the full-sized shot and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the “last seen” date – almost exactly a year ago.  Could he have been that lucky – was lucky the right word? – to have stumbled upon the identity of the remains that quickly?  Reading further, she was last seen in a state that was several hundred miles away and her shoe was found on the side of the road.  That wouldn’t fit…or would it? He assumed that he needed to look for a missing person from the area, but a woman could have easily hitched or traveled down from another state.  Or, Gabe could have met the woman out of state and…It seemed too preposterous. Why was he even pursuing this line of thinking?  Ben prided himself in his ability to read a person. It seldom failed him and he felt he knew Gabe.  Still…

            He went back to the thumbnails, looked at the pictures again and then at the hand on the desk.  He shook his head in dismay at the assumptions he was allowing himself to fall prey.  That was his other characteristic that not only served him well but saved his life and the life of others over in Iraq; never assume anything.  Yet, here he was assuming that the skeleton was female.  The hand, and what he saw of the lower arm bones, seemed slight and thin.  A quick search of the skeleton web sites revealed that it was virtually impossible to differentiate between male and female from a hand, the radius or ulna.  If he really wanted to determine the sex of the skeletal hand in front of him, he would have to dig up the pelvis, and even that wasn’t a hundred per cent guarantee.

            Ben opened a new window and entered Gabe Hartnett.   This wasn’t the first time he Googled Gabe.  When offered the job ten months earlier, Ben wanted to have a good idea who he would be so intimately involved with on a daily bases.  As happened on his search the first time, Gabby Hartnett, the legendary catcher for the Chicago Cubs in the 1930s, occupied the top line.  Gabe’s dad was a huge fan of the Cubs and was thrilled to share the same last name as the star catcher.  As Gabe told the story, his dad couldn’t wait to marry and have a son so he could name the offspring Gabby, but his wife wouldn’t go for it so they comprised on Gabe.  The most prized possession of his father’s was a baseball glove autographed by Gabby Hartnett which Gabe still had.  It was mounted in a glass case that hung on the wall next to a photograph of Hartnett signing a baseball for Al Capone, the same photograph Ben was looking at on the computer; it was hard to tell who was more intrigued with whom.  Further down on the screen, another link caught Ben’s eye.

            “Huh.  Look at this, Molly.”

            She leaned in and gave a playful touch of her open beak against his face.

            Ben clicked on a Gabe Harnett, missing the middle “t,’ that had been murdered three years ago. 

            “I didn’t see this last time.”

            The murdered Gabe was only twenty-one and the death was drug related.  There was an eerie quality staring at the young man, as if somehow this was Gabe’s alter ego, a life of Gabe’s that was waiting to emerge.  Even more chilling was the fact that the murdered Gabe was also from Chicago. 

Ben moved on to links related to the Gabe Hartnett living next door.  Most articles cited his arrest and trial of the gun charges.  He perused through them to see if there was anything he may have missed the first time around, something that gave a deeper insight into his past.  Nothing stood out.  His wishful thinking had him hoping to stumble across a link that would reveal any affairs Gabe had and listing all the women with whom he had been involved; the only list of adulterers were limited to famous people.

As expected, there was no link that revealed Gabe’s work as a software developer for the military.  Ben had only learned of that after he started working for him.  Nothing especially hush-hush about it, Gabe explained; mostly efficiency software that helped move shipments of all sorts from one place to another in the shortest amount of time.  But, when Ben asked him further details, Gabe moved on to another subject as if suddenly realizing that he breached a privacy agreement.  It was easy to do, Ben thought.  Every quadriplegic he knew was on a slew of drugs and a loose tongue was hard to control. 

            With some effort, Ben did find a link taking him to the work that made Gabe independently wealthy.  After contracting with the government, he turned to the private sector developing software that coordinated elevator cars in large office buildings and hotels.  Instead of just pressing the up or down button, a person pressed the floor he wanted to go to and a read-out flashed which car the person should take; it cut waiting by at least fifty percent.  Simple, but brilliant. Though, not flashy enough to warrant an easy find when Googling Gabe Hartnett. 

            All very interesting, Ben thought, but getting him nowhere. He went back to missing persons and searched within the state at a different link.  Another page of smiling faces who were missing for years and years to just a few days ago.  And then, just shy of ten months.  Last seen the day before Gabe’s accident.  A young woman. Twenty-six.  Alexa Brantley.  From a small town just down the road.

            Ben rolled the name around in his mind.  “Alexa Brantley,” he said softly, repeating it silently and waiting for it to register. 

            “Why does that name sound familiar, Molly?”

            She responded by tugging at his ear and he reached up and stroked her head while he continued staring at the screen at the fuzzy photo of Alexa who stared back from behind a somewhat unkempt mop of shoulder length brown hair, intense dark brown eyes set in a slightly rounded face but with a prominent chin and a gaze that did not approve of being photographed.

            “Alexa Brantley,” Ben uttered again.

            He picked up the skeletal hand and placed it on his upward facing left palm, thumb to thumb, wrist to wrist, fingers to fingers, its weight barely perceptible.  He looked from the hands to Alexa and back to the hands, thinking of the skeleton in the brambles, thinking of Gabe and wondering what kind of mess he was getting himself in.  How easy it would be to discard the hand, throw the gun in a lake and that would be the end of it. 

            “What do you think, Molly?”

            She craned her head toward the computer, opened her wings so that the left one pressed up against Ben’s head and let out a loud squawk.

“All right,” he said, going back to the keyboard and resuming his research.

      

Copyright © 2012 Philip Zweig

18 March 2012: Scene V

Finally.  Scene V.

(Author’s note:  I have changed Ron’s name to Gabe.)

V

A booming thunderclap rattled the windows and shook the house.  They found themselves in a downpour on the ride home with the storm lying low for the rest of the evening only to re-ignite at three in the morning.  Ben jerked awake and sat up quickly, expecting to hear, “Corpsman up!”  His heart pounded and the sweat began to flow; just when he thought he had such knee-jerk reactions under control, he was ambushed all over again. 

From the other room, Molly squawked and spouted off a rapid succession of words in protest to the rumble.  He blamed himself for not doing a better job of concealing his own neurosis to the bright flashes of lightning and the bellowing thunder.  Like any good parent, he hoped his emotional scars would go unnoticed but he knew, given how attuned to feelings Molly was, it was inevitable he would not only repeat words she heard but reflect his own set of emotions.     

 “I’m coming girl.”

One trait she did not pick up, and only because she was not in Ben’s bedroom when he woke, was taking a quick, reassuring glance for any insurgent that might have embedded himself into the room while he slept.  His look was swift and nonchalant, an effort to fool even himself in thinking that he wasn’t really going through the motion.  But, he knew that if Molly were with him every morning, before long, she would be making the casual sweep as well.  On cue, he did so now as he stepped down from his bed, glancing furtively into the dark corners of his room.

As soon as Ben stepped out into the living area, Molly greeted him with another long series of rambling words and screeches, giving voice to the angst that churned silently inside of him.    

 “Didn’t like that, did you?”

He turned on a floor lamp that bathed the room in a soft, amber light that helped neutralize the stark flashes from outside.  Even without the lightning, it was an ambience they both found very soothing.  Ben wasn’t quite sure if Molly just took on his likes or if it was more that they were soul mates and happened to gravitate to the same preferences; his inclination leaned heavily toward the latter.

He opened the cage and she wasted no time leaping to the entrance and onto his arm.  They simultaneously leaned toward one another and exchanged a mouth to beak kiss.

“Hey, sweetie.”

“Hey, sweetie,” she replied.

Another bright flash lit up the room followed by another house clattering boom.  Ben ducked, quickly collapsing into a squat causing Molly to spread her wings and dig her claws into his arm.

“Dammit!” he muttered

“Dammit!” Molly repeated, quickly climbing up his arm to rest on his shoulder.

Even before he purchased Molly, in anticipation of her arrival as he waited for her to be completely weaned, Ben worked on cleaning up his vocabulary.  Not that he was a fountain of colorful words but enough still found their way into his speech so that he wanted to watch his step just as if he was around children.  But “dammit” hung tenaciously on, being his default phrase in a stressed situation. 

“Yeah.  It’s okay, girl.”

Inspecting his arm, he wasn’t surprised that she had drawn blood.  Being a hyacinth, the largest of the macaws, meant she also had the most powerful beak of her species and the most lethal of claws.  Yet, she managed to be incredibly gentle with her fierce weaponry and he knew the wounds on his arm could have been much, much worse.  She gently nibbled at his ear with her open beak and he responded by stroking her deep blue belly; she had him well-trained and thanked him by rubbing her head up and down against the side of his face.  He studied his arm once more and dabbed at the scratches with a napkin, letting that suffice for his first-aid.  Now that he was up at that un-godly hour, the events from yesterday gnawed at him and he was eager to follow up. 

From a cabinet he pulled out an ammo box and placed it on the kitchen table.  He learned long ago that if he had anything he valued to securely store it away from Molly’s reach.  Tucked away in a cabinet was not enough as she could easily open the door.  While the metal ammo containers were not foolproof, they would at least thwart her long enough for him to get wind of what she was up to.   He placed the box on the table, opened it and peered at the skeletal hand inside.  The gun and the bullets were in another box in the same cabinet. 

“No touch,” he said, for whatever it was worth.

Molly cocked her head and repeated “no touch,” while craning to get a better look in the box and eyeing the bones a bit too enthusiastically for Ben’s liking. 

“Here,” he said, pulling an eighteen inch length of two by four from a barrel full of various pieces of wood and placing it on the table.  “Have a go at that.”

For the most part, the chunks of wood kept her well occupied.  But the instinctive desire to chew on objects sometimes got the better of her and her handiwork was evident throughout the house.  The distressed furniture look was very much in vogue, Ben would remind visitors.  She squawked and stayed put on his shoulder, uninterested in his current offering.

“How about some music?” Molly said, just moments before the words were about to leave Ben’s mouth.  He was in the mood for some mellow country but that wasn’t her cup of tea.

“Classical?”

She dipped her neck and did a little up and down dance with her head.

“All right.”

“All right,” she repeated.

He chose a piano nocturne that was one of her favorites, especially when she seemed stressed.  The same piece he played often in Iraq for the very same reason and for which he took a lot of ribbing from his fellow corpsmen.  Being black and listening to classical music seemed incongruous to them; listening to country music didn’t fare much better of a response.

“Chopin.”

“Chopin,” he repeated. 

The music helped take the edge of the remnants of lightning and low thunder that still made its way into the room.  Ben entertained the idea of smoking a joint but he wasn’t about to leave Molly to go out on the porch and, because of her, lighting one up inside was definitely out of the question.   And, besides, work was calling.  He settled for a beer. 

With a bottle in one hand and a small bowl of strawberries in the other, he walked back to the table and placed the bowl down.  Molly hopped down to enjoy her favorite fruit.  Watching her eat, he was glad that yesterday, on their ride back, Gabe had suggested to drop Max off at the vet to have him checked out, vaccinated and bathed with a flea dip before bringing him home.   He wondered what the heck he was thinking wanting to bring a dog into the house.  At almost three feet long, Molly was quite the adversary, but, still, the last he heard, dogs ate birds.  Maybe he would Google macaws and dogs to see what came up but, at the moment, he was ready to nix the whole dog thing.

Ben picked up the hand and placed it once again in his open palm.  He had looked at it earlier before going to bed but, by the time he had fed Gabe dinner, cleaned him up for the night and transferred him into bed, Ben was too tired for tackling any riddles, including wondering if the two bullets missing from the gun chamber were lodged in the skeleton.  He took another swig of his beer, bent over, looking more closely, remembering something about spaces between the joints in a child’s hand, the bones not being fully fused. 

With hand in hand, he walked over to the computer desk; Molly picked up a strawberry in her beak, hopped down from the table and followed him.  The computer hummed to life and, while waiting, he looked out the window towards Gabe’s house and saw that a light on in the den.  It had to be Beth who could be up for a number of reasons relating to Gabe, the top three being he was either too hot, too cold or having a nightmare.  Or, maybe, she too was up because of the storm and unable to go back to sleep.  His gaze kept lingering out the window even after the computer was fully booted, picturing Beth sitting in her lounger, not happy by the new cards she had been dealt these past ten months.  Ben knew that she and Gabe had talked about a separation before his accident but that was now put on an indefinite hold. 

Molly tugged at his pajama leg and brought his attention back to the computer.  He placed his arm down, let Molly hop on and she crawled up to his shoulder where she liked to perch when Ben was working.  She sat, staring intently, as if waiting to see where his late night search was about to take them.

 “Here we go,” he said, after sifting through a few sites.

“See?  Look at that.” He pointed to the screen at dark areas between the joints of a child’s skeletal hand.  “That’s cartilage.  And, here.  On this adult hand,” he said as he scrolled the screen down, “it’s solid.  The cartilage has turned to bone.”

Molly squawked, as if in agreement.

Ben picked up the skeleton. 

“I think this is definitely an adult, Molly.”

From his shoulder, she bent down, and tried to reach it with her open beak.

“No.”

He looked up out the window and towards the den light that was still on.  Off to the right was Gabe’s room which remained dark.

            “Well, at least he’s not a child killer.”

            Not that Ben thought he was. But, the fact remained that there was a skeleton in some brambles with Gabe’s gun nearby all lying a quarter of a mile away from where he had a bike accident.  There probably was a perfectly reasonable explanation which forensics could quickly sort out.  But, Gabe’s run-in with the DA two years back did not bode well for a judicious account being reached.  Gabe and the District Attorney had butted heads over gun rights and carrying a concealed weapon and after fifteen rounds Gabe came out the victor on a technicality.  The DA was not happy and Ben was sure he would have a field day with this scenario.  Quadriplegic or not, the DA would probably try to make Gabe’s life as miserable as possible, as if it wasn’t a fairly close second to that at the moment. 

Ben wanted to talk with Gabe yesterday about everything he found down in the creek bed, but everyone was beat and Gabe was really having trouble concentrating.  Mornings were the best time to communicate with Gabe when he was well rested and feeling the least amount of pain.  Of course, the fact that Gabe remembered nothing from that day created quite a challenge.  In the meantime, Ben thought he would do some research and maybe come up with something that might be of use when they talked. 

            Molly nibbled on his ear again, but this time, instead of seeking a belly rub, she seemed to be trying to re-focus Ben’s attention to the computer. 

“Hey,” he quietly muttered as he gave her a quick rub before dedicating both hands to the keyboard.  He searched for missing persons from ten months back and clicked on an FBI link that filled the screen with thumbnail portraits of faces ranging in age from toddlers to men in their sixties with every race, gender and age in between.  Some of the missing went back more than fifteen years.  The ones that made Ben’s hair stand on end were those who’s missing date were within the past month or two, as if they were just standing next to him a moment ago and then, just like that, they vanished.  Just like in combat, life suddenly disappeared, he was reminded all too easily.  The eyes, the smiles, all those faces.  Ben was taken aback by the number of photos.  Again ambushed.

            He clicked on a young attractive looking woman with straight blonde hair.  She looked even prettier in the full-sized shot and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the “last seen” date – almost exactly a year ago.  Could he have been that lucky – was lucky the right word? – to have stumbled upon the identity of the remains that quickly?  Reading further, she was last seen in a state that was several hundred miles away and her shoe was found on the side of the road.  That wouldn’t fit…or would it? He assumed that he needed to look for a missing person from the area, but a woman could have easily hitched or traveled down from another state.  Or, Gabe could have met the woman out of state and…It seemed too preposterous. Why was he even pursuing this line of thinking?  Ben prided himself in his ability to read a person. It seldom failed him and he felt he knew Gabe.  Still…

            He went back to the thumbnails, looked at the pictures again and then at the hand on the desk.  He shook his head in dismay at the assumptions he was allowing himself to fall prey.  That was his other characteristic that not only served him well but saved his life and the life of others over in Iraq; never assume anything.  Yet, here he was assuming that the skeleton was female.  The hand, and what he saw of the lower arm bones, seemed slight and thin.  A quick search of the skeleton web sites revealed that it was virtually impossible to differentiate between male and female from a hand, the radius or ulna.  If he really wanted to determine the sex of the skeletal hand in front of him, he would have to dig up the pelvis, and even that wasn’t a hundred per cent guarantee.

            Ben opened a new window and entered Gabe Hartnett.   This wasn’t the first time he Googled Gabe.  When offered the job ten months earlier, Ben wanted to have a good idea who he would be so intimately involved with on a daily bases.  As happened on his search the first time, Gabby Hartnett, the legendary catcher for the Chicago Cubs in the 1930s, occupied the top line.  Gabe’s dad was a huge fan of the Cubs and was thrilled to share the same last name as the star catcher.  As Gabe told the story, his dad couldn’t wait to marry and have a son so he could name the offspring Gabby, but his wife wouldn’t go for it so they comprised on Gabe.  The most prized possession of his father’s was a baseball glove autographed by Gabby Hartnett which Gabe still had.  It was mounted in a glass case that hung on the wall next to a photograph of Hartnett signing a baseball for Al Capone, the same photograph Ben was looking at on the computer; it was hard to tell who was more intrigued with whom.  Further down on the screen, another link caught Ben’s eye.

            “Huh.  Look at this, Molly.”

            She leaned in and gave a playful touch of her open beak against his face.

            Ben clicked on a Gabe Harnett, missing the middle “t’, that had been murdered three years ago. 

            “I didn’t see this last time.”

            The murdered Gabe was only twenty-one and the death was drug related.  There was an eerie quality staring at the young man, as if somehow this was Gabe’s alter ego, a life of Gabe’s that was waiting to emerge.  Even more chilling was the fact that the murdered Gabe was also from Chicago. 

Ben moved on to links related to the Gabe Hartnett living next door.  Most articles cited his arrest and trial of the gun charges.  He perused through them to see if there was anything he may have missed the first time around, something that gave a deeper insight into his past.  Nothing stood out.  His wishful thinking had him hoping to stumble across a link that would reveal any affairs Gabe had and listing all the women with whom he had been involved; the only list of adulterers were limited to famous people.

As expected, there was no link that revealed Gabe’s work as a software developer for the military.  Ben had only learned of that after he started working for him.  Nothing especially hush-hush about it, Gabe explained; mostly efficiency software that helped move shipments of all sorts from one place to another in the shortest amount of time.  But, when Ben asked him further details, Gabe moved on to another subject as if suddenly realizing that he breached a privacy agreement.  It was easy to do, Ben thought.  Every quadriplegic he knew was on a slew of drugs and a loose tongue was hard to control. 

            With some effort, Ben did find a link tying him to the work that made Gabe independently wealthy.  After contracting with the government, he turned to the private sector developing software that coordinated elevator cars in large office buildings and hotels.  Instead of just pressing the up or down button, a person pressed the floor he wanted to go to and a read-out flashed which car the person should take; it cut waiting by at least fifty percent.  Simple, but brilliant. Though, not flashy enough to warrant an easy find when Googling Gabe Hartnett. 

            All very interesting, Ben thought, but getting him nowhere. He went back to missing persons and searched within the state at a different link.  Another page of smiling faces who were missing for years and years to just a few days ago.  And then, just shy of ten months.  Last seen the day before Gabe’s accident.  A young woman. Twenty-six.  Alexa Brantley.  From the very same friggin town. 

            He rolled the name around in his mind.  “Alexa Brantley,” he said softly, repeating it silently while the name tumbled inside and clanged against the walls of his braincase. 

“Holy shit,” he found himself muttering again in less than twenty-four hours. 

“Holy shit,” Molly repeated.

Copyright © 2012 Philip Zweig