The Hole Read online

  The Hole

  David Halliday

  David Halliday

  The Hole

  PREFACE

  The stain on the cement stared back at me. I wanted to go home and get a pail of hot water and wash it off. Several ants were grazing on it. I looked around. Everything was the same as it had been a few days earlier. The telephone booth. The newspaper boxes. The Six Points Plaza across the street. The plaza was empty. Business was bad. Several of the stores were abandoned. The stain was the only sign that something terrible had happened.

  “You all right, mister?”

  I turned around. A young boy looked up at me. He was about ten years old, with a lock of red hair falling over his eyes. He looked like Johnny at that age. The resemblance startled me. He was bundling newspapers into his carrier’s bag.

  “You come to pick up your newspapers?”

  He nodded.

  “I used to have a paper route,” I said. “ The Telegram. Pink newspaper.

  Ironic for a conservative newspaper.”

  “What are you talking about, mister?” the kid asked.

  “An old man died here yesterday.” I pointed to the stain on the sidewalk.

  The boy looked down at the stain. “Is that all that’s left of him?”

  “He made that stain when he died. His bowels emptied.”

  “He shit his pants!” the boy gasped. “That’s gross! Was he shot?” I shook my head. The boy looked disappointed.

  “Did you see him die?” the boy asked.

  “I heard him die,” I responded. “My back was turned.” The boy thought about that for a moment.

  2

  “What did it sound like?”

  “A whistle. Like a balloon deflating.”

  “Our cat gave birth to some dead kittens. They were stiff. Was he stiff?”

  I sat down on the curb of the street.

  “What are you crying for, mister?…It wasn’t you that died.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  First Drink

  Mary Hendrix smiled as she warmed the glass of white wine in the palm of her hand. With the other hand, her long spider fingers traced the glass’s edge. Her painted blue eyes rose. Frank Sinatra crooned one of his standards, “The Lady is a Tramp,” from speakers hidden in the ceiling of the bar. She raised her glass to her lips and took a sip. A smudge of lipstick lay on the glass like a stain. Why does Sinatra make me feel like I belong in bars?

  “The first drink of the day,” she said with a smile. An old joke. The bartender looked up. Long threadlike hairs fell over his eyes. He hadn’t been listening. My God, he is ugly. Mary glanced around the small narrow room. She could have sworn there had been another customer in the place. Perhaps they’d gone downstairs to the washroom. Strange how people keep disappearing. It was one of the signs of alcoholism, she’d read somewhere. Thinking people around you were disappearing. Short-term memory loss. That’s what Hank had said, and wouldn’t he know.

  “That’s quite an accomplishment,” Jack said with a laugh, the gaps in his teeth stained with cigarette smoke.

  Mary nodded toward the bartender, accepting his accolades. He had been listening after all. Mary liked Jack. Everyone liked Jack. He never seemed to rub anyone the wrong way. But then, wasn’t that what made a good bartender? And Jack never made advances toward Mary. It was a relief to be able to talk to a man and not feel he wanted to sleep with her.

  And it was comforting that he wasn’t attractive. You don’t want to sleep with your bartender. You can always find a lover. A good bartender is hard to find. Mary laughed to herself. Wasn’t that another sign? The bartender looked at her, waiting to hear what she found amusing.

  “Well, it’s almost three o’clock, Jack.” I wonder if it’s started to rain?

  “That’s better than yesterday. Two thirty. Everything in baby steps, Jack.

  Got to wean myself off this stuff one drink at a time. Inside two weeks 3

  I’ll be stone sober. Doesn’t do no good to go cold turkey. Just increases the appetite. That’s the trouble with all these diets people go on. Crash diets followed by binges. I lost twenty pounds, Jack. And how did I do it? Baby steps. And I’ve kept that weight off.” Mary slid off the stool and modeled for Jack. Jack smiled appreciat-ively. Mary laughed and climbed back on her stool. Still got my looks.

  “They say it’s going to rain,” Jack said with a smile, cleaning a glass.

  Jack was always polishing glasses.

  “First the waistline. Then the drinking. Cigarettes will be next. One battle at a time.” Mary smiled, taking another sip of wine. Did he say I still had my looks?

  “Slow at the office today?” Jack asked.

  “Mr. Brennan don’t mind if I leave a little early on Friday. I mean, I’m in there six days a week. We got this new girl to look after the phones.

  She spends a lot of time talking to her boyfriend, but I don’t say nothing.

  The more incompetent she is, the more I’ll be appreciated.” Jack shook his head. “You’ve got all the angles covered, Mary.”

  “You better believe it.” Mary nodded and laughed heartily, a smoker’s laugh with a cough added periodically for parenthesis.

  “Brennan likes me.” Mary took out a cigarette. Jack grabbed a lighter from beneath the bar and lit her up. Mary liked that. She looked at Jack from beneath the first smoke of her cigarette. She wondered for a moment about Jack and shook her head. You can always find a man, but a good bartender is a real diamond.

  “A lot of men like you, Mary.” Jack placed the polished glass daintily on a shelf. He took his rag and polished the bar.

  “I know what men like.” She smiled, tapping her cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. The cigarette dangled like an acrobat in Mary’s fingers.

  “And it isn’t a long list.”

  “You still got your looks,” Jack said with a smile, shaking his head.

  “You seen my kid in here lately?” she asked. Mary was always keeping tabs on Terry. He wasn’t going to be like his father. You can put that in the bank.

  “You know I don’t serve minors,” Jack replied.

  “I’ll let that one pass,” Mary looked around the bar, swinging slowly around on her stool. Deep in the corner, one of Jack’s regulars nursed a beer as he watched a tennis match on the television. How had she missed him? Did he just come in or had he been there all along? What about the one that had gone downstairs? Maybe he had left. The front door of the bar opened and a flood of light poured into the darkened tavern. Mary 4 shielded her eyes. Every time someone entered the bar it was like having your picture taken with a flash camera. Mary smiled.

  “Who’s that?” Mary asked.

  The Hole

  Jack set the scotch down in front of the officer who laid his hat on the bar.

  “Tough day?” Mary smiled from several stools away. She’d seen the cop before. He was a regular, though the two of them had not exchanged more than pleasantries. Jack had told her he was a cop, but even without a uniform Mary could tell. There was the cut of his hair, and the shoes he wore, and the cheap suit, and the way he always scanned the place when he took a seat at the bar. Tall and lean. I fancy that type. There was a nobil-ity about the officer’s face.

  The detective smiled politely and downed his scotch. Jack took a bottle of Red Cap out of the cooler under the bar and snapped it open, pouring half its content into a glass and setting the glass and bottle in front of the police officer.

  “I thought I was having a near death experience when you opened the door and all that afternoon light poured in.” Mary laughed and added as explanation, “Walking toward the light.” Near death experience.

  The officer nodded with a smile, then took a long sip of the beer. He never looks at me. It’s like I don’t exi
st. Would it be such an effort to glance my way? Other cops look. I’m not a bad-looking woman. And they’d laugh at Jack’s stories. He never laughs.

  Jack was a great storyteller. If a customer told Jack about something that had happened to them, that tale became Jack’s story for the day. It was as if his whole life was a collage of other people’s experiences. The week before, Jack had told a real wild tale to one of the rookies on the force. The rookie swallowed every word Jack uttered. I almost died laughing.

  “The white light at the end of the dark tunnel,” Mary repeated-then wished she hadn’t. “People say that’s what you see when you’re dying.

  Like the escalator at the airport. Don’t believe any of that myself. When you’re dead, you’re dead. No heaven, no hell, just a lot of nothing.” Mary swept the long blonde hair away from her eyes with her long painted fingers. Lauren Bacall, they used to call me.

  “You’re not religious, Mary?” The detective furrowed his eyebrows impatiently.

  He knows my name. That surprised Mary. Jack must have told him. He must have asked.

  “Nothing against religion, Detective. I was baptized myself but I just can’t see that there is anything else. You do what you can in this life and then you’re gone, swatted off the planet like a mosquito on your arm.”

  “I went up to the Mackenzie farm,” the detective said to Jack, ignoring Mary’s remark.

  “Joe Mackenzie?” Mary asked. Wonder if he’s married.

  The detective nodded.

  “Up by Echo Valley?” Jack added. “I thought they closed the place down. Passed there the other day and it looked boarded up.”

  “Nope. Still occupied. They’re letting old Joe live out his last days there. Hydro bought it off the Mackenzies years ago but they had some kind of agreement with the old man about letting Joe live out his days.

  Joe’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer but looks to me like he pulled one over on the commission. Free rent for life.” The detective and the bartender shared a laugh.

  “Joe Mackenzie,” Mary declared. “I went to school with Joe. He was in grade eight, a couple years older than the rest of the class. Nice-looking fellow. He had a scar on his left cheek. Something he picked up from his old man. The father was always whacking those kids around. I was in his younger sister’s class. Joe was pretty smart. Everybody said so. Just didn’t take to school.”

  “Police business?” Jack asked.

  The detective nodded, glancing over at Mary, expecting her to add something.

  “Joe’s complaining that his neighbors have been dumping garbage down his well.”

  The bartender wiped the surface of the bar. “A well? Doesn’t Joe have running water?”

  The officer nodded. “Doesn’t use the well for water. I’m surprised that the city hasn’t forced Joe to fill it in.”

  “Didn’t Joe get married?” Mary asked.

  “Don’t you remember?” The bartender turned to Mary. “His wife disappeared about ten years ago. Folks figured she ran off with someone.

  She was pretty wild as I recall. One of the Hare sisters. She’d been sleeping around on Joe ever since they tied the knot. Used to come in here when I first started, came on to any pair of trousers that walked in the door. Nice figure. Loved to dance. Put a dime in the jukebox and ask 6 anyone who was available to dance. Women like that are asking for trouble.”

  “Nancy Hare?” Mary asked. Women like what?

  “June, her name was June,” Jack replied, then turned back to the detective. “So people are throwing garbage in Joe’s well. Why the hell would they do that to Joe?”

  “Joe said they’ve been doing it for months. Started during the garbage strike last winter. I checked out the well. You’d expect it to be overflow-ing with garbage, but I couldn’t find anything.”

  “No garbage?” Jack asked.

  The detective shook his head.

  “There wasn’t even the smell of garbage,” the officer continued.

  “Maybe Joe’s lost whatever marbles he had,” Jack suggested. “Just looking for attention. Pretty lonely up there all by yourself.”

  “That’s what I figured,” the detective said, rubbing the side of his nose with his finger. “But Joe was insistent. I took a stone and dropped it down the well. Figured to hear a splash, or a thud if the well was dry.”

  “And?” Mary asked.

  The detective shrugged. “There wasn’t anything.”

  “What do you mean, there wasn’t anything?” An ash dropped off the end of Mary’s cigarette.

  “Silence,” the officer replied.

  “It would have to be one hell of a deep well if you can’t hear a rock hit the bottom.” Jack slid Mary’s ashtray closer to her cigarette.

  “I asked Joe how deep the well was. Joe didn’t know. Said his father hadn’t dug the well, that it had always been there. Joe couldn’t recall if there had ever been any water in it.”

  Mary ground her cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Mary said. “You don’t dig a well if there’s no water.”

  “I asked Joe why his father didn’t fill the well in if there wasn’t any water.”

  Jack nodded as he reached over to light Mary’s fresh cigarette.

  The detective smiled. “Joe told me his father had tried to fill the well in but after several days of trying and no discernible change, he gave up.

  He figured the well was too deep.”

  Mary smiled. “I remember June Hare. She got knocked up in grade seven. Haven’t thought about her in years. Funny how that happens.

  Someone in your past whom you could never remember suddenly pops 7 up in your head. Makes you wonder what else is hidden in your head.

  Like the memories of a life you’ve clean forgotten.” Assassins

  Detective Kelly toured the walls of Joe Mackenzie’s kitchen. The walls were papered with newspaper clippings that had long since yellowed or faded. Some clippings overlapped others with no design or recognizable pattern. The detective stepped up to the wall and read one particular article, a description of two assassins, identified as Puerto Rican nationalists who had attempted to murder President Truman. Didn’t even know there were such things as Puerto Rican nationalists. Another clipping announced that Pope Pius XII had declared the Assumption of Mary as Roman Catholic dogma. All this nonsense about Mary ascending into heaven. People just don’t disappear off the face of the planet.

  “Pa thought we should be up on our current events,” Joe Mackenzie said as he placed two coffees on the kitchen table. Joe was a small man with a few wisps of hair on a bald head. There was a faint scar on his cheek. A black stain filled in the gap between his teeth.

  “Who’s that a picture of?” Detective Kelly asked.

  “William Faulkner,” Joe responded, then added, “You take sugar?” Kelly nodded. Looks like a bank teller. “Is he important?”

  “He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950,” Joe replied.

  Kelly smiled. He’d been led to believe that Joe was retarded. He’d been misled. Didn’t that blonde in the bar say that Joe was smart?

  “No, 1949,” Joe corrected. “Bertrand Russell won in 1950, although I don’t know why a physicist would win in literature. Have you read The Sound and The Fury?”

  “No,” the detective responded, taking a seat at the table. Everything looks familiar-like I’ve been here before.

  “I could lend you a copy,” Joe offered.

  Kelly shook his head. The last novel the detective had read had been in high school. He couldn’t remember anything about the book except its title- Mr. Blue. Solve the homeless problem by having people live on rooftops.

  Wasn’t that Mr. Blue’s great insight? The suicide rate would soar.

  Joe added, “I’ve got a pretty good library upstairs if you’d like to browse around. Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Thomas Hardy, Camus. You should read Crime and Punishment. Right up your aisle.”

  “I’m not mu
ch of a reader,” Kelly confessed. “Maybe you could give me a tour some other time.”

  “I guess solving the mystery of disappearing garbage isn’t exactly what you hoped for.” Joe spoke so softly that the detective found himself leaning over the table to hear.

  “What do you mean?” Kelly asked.

  “The crowning achievement of a long career,” Joe explained. “I heard you were retiring.”

  The detective nodded.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you something with a bigger bang,” Joe added.

  “No one goes out with a bang.” The detective smiled. Everyone wants to make my life more interesting.

  Joe smiled uncomfortably as if he had touched a nerve with the officer and regretted it.

  “So how deep is it?” Joe asked.

  Didn’t the blonde say something about a younger sister?

  The detective looked past Joe at the wall behind him. He’d seen walls like it in 52 Division when there was a big murder case going on. He’d never worked on a big case.

  Joe smiled. “Pa used to quiz us every week on the new clippings. He was a self-taught man. Didn’t think too much of the educational system.

  Said it produced morons and lawyers. Some say there’s not much to choose between the two.”

  The detective laughed.

  “Do you know a woman named Mary Hendrix?” he asked.

  “Should I?”

  “She knew your wife.” Did she say that? Or was it something about a sister?

  Joe rubbed his finger across his nose. He’s going to lie, Kelly thought.

  “Possible,” Joe responded. “June had a lot of friends before we were married. Can’t remember anyone named Mary Hendrix.” The detective wondered if he should mention the unwanted pregnancy. Perhaps Joe had never been told. Must have been years before he knew her.

  “What did she say about June?”

  The detective tapped his finger on the table. It caught Joe’s attention.

  “Said she didn’t like school.”