One of Us Read online

Rick, who was described to me before I began my descent as the most normal of normal guys, a nice, easygoing family man who hardly ever raises his voice and whose only vice is an inexplicable love of rap music, is exactly the kind of man who should value his life but has decided he doesn’t want to survive, while Carson Shupe would have done anything to survive including murdering young boys; it was the only thing in his mind that gave him a reason to keep getting up in the morning.

  We finally come to a stop. Alongside the fact that every inch we’ve traveled looks exactly the same to me, the ins and outs of the mains have me completely confused. If I were to be left alone, I could never find my way out of here.

  I try to push this thought out of my mind and fill it with bright, airy, generous images. Everything I come up with centers around my mother: the beautiful summer day we painted our garage Pepto-Bismol pink; the colorful cookies we used to make to share with our neighbors; her sitting in Tommy’s rocking chair near the sunny front windows knitting another addition to her rainbow coalition of hats.

  Shawn gets off the mantrip and motions for me to follow him. The ceiling has become low again. He moves quickly, even gracefully, hunched over like a gorilla, using his miner’s hammer as a walking stick.

  I try my best to keep up with him and to keep my panic at bay. Everywhere I look I see nothing but black nothingness, yet I know I’m surrounded by something impenetrable.

  In the light cast by our two helmet lamps I think I see movement. I’ve been placing my hands on the moist rock walls to help keep my balance. I drop them to my sides.

  “Are there rats down here?” I ask Shawn.

  “Haven’t seen any, but we got spiders big as Labrador retrievers.”

  I hear him chuckling to himself.

  A face suddenly appears out of the gloom, reminding me so much of the faces seared to the seam wall in my nightmare that I almost faint.

  I jerk back and bump into the wall that I’m convinced moved and I jump forward to get away from it.

  The two men pay no attention to me.

  “How’s he doing?” I hear Shawn ask Carl Kelly.

  “Not good. He’s not himself.”

  “Brenna got Danny Doyle to come talk to him. He’s a shrink, you know.”

  A moment of silence passes while Carl considers this new development.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, but I’m willing to try anything. What are you gonna say?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know he’s got a gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s right over there.”

  They point into the midnight abyss of solid black rock. I see nothing.

  I maneuver my lamp until I can make out a miner sitting against a wall. He has his own lamp turned off.

  I tap my helmet.

  “What if all the lights go out?”

  Shawn spits a stream of tobacco.

  “Then you’ll be in the dark.”

  I join Rick Kelly, concentrating on the task at hand and trying to ignore once again where I am. It’s not easy.

  “I’m Danny Doyle,” I say to him, taking a seat next to him. “Tommy’s grandson. We met here at the mine a couple days ago.”

  “Oh, man,” he unexpectedly wails. “They sent me a shrink. I’m not crazy.”

  “No one thinks you’re crazy.”

  “Then why’d they send me a shrink?”

  “Your family and friends thought maybe I’d have better luck talking to you. Since that’s my job, getting people to talk just like”—I pause and look around me at our dungeon surroundings—“this is your job.”

  “Not for too much longer. Tim’s bankrupt. He’s going to close down.”

  His face and clothes are covered in soot. He’d blend in completely with the coal behind him if it weren’t for the white rings around his eyes and the emotion shining in them.

  He suddenly looks as frantic as I feel.

  “Who knows about this?” he says. “Who’s out there? Does my wife know?”

  “Just the guys on your crew, Brenna, and your dad’s here, too.”

  “My dad? He’s sick.”

  “Your dad loves you.”

  “I know my dad loves me. I don’t need a shrink to tell me that. I’m not fucked up.”

  I glance at the handgun sitting in his lap and the pile of dynamite lying next to him.

  “No one thinks you’re fucked up,” I assure him.

  “You made a long trip for nothing. I don’t feel like talking.”

  “Don’t you think you owe them an explanation?”

  “They can figure it out.”

  “That’s the thing about suicide. The person doing it thinks the people they leave behind will understand, but they almost never do.”

  “I got no way to make a living. My wife’s got no way to make a living. We got kids and bills,” he says, ticking off the reasons.

  “There are resources. Programs, people who can help you.”

  “Don’t give me any of that liberal helping-hands bullshit,” he says loudly.

  I expect an echo but the chamber we’re in is too compact and the walls too dense for sound to travel.

  “I want to work. You understand me? I want to work. My wife wants to work. We’re not freeloaders. We don’t want the government paying for us.”

  “I’m not talking about welfare.”

  “We don’t want anyone paying for us.”

  My mind races trying to come up with anything I can say that can help this man solve his problems.

  “When I was a kid I didn’t want to go to Heaven,” he tells me. “You know why? Because it sounded so frickin’ boring. No one had a frickin’ job. What do angels do all day?”

  “You’d rather toil in hell than lounge in Heaven. Interesting.”

  “Don’t call me interesting. I’m not a chapter in one of your books.”

  “You’ve read my books?”

  “I can read.”

  “I didn’t ask if you could read. I asked if you’ve read my books.”

  His eyes flash angrily.

  “Turn your lamp off,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Turn your goddamned lamp off,” he repeats through gritted teeth.

  Even though Rick is armed with a gun and explosives, there’s still a part of me that would rather risk more of his wrath than do what he’s asking of me, but I know I won’t be able to reason with him if he stays mad.

  I turn off my light and my sight is gone. I close my eyes; I open them. There’s no difference in what I’m seeing. I hold my hand up two inches in front of my face. Nothing.

  Next to me I feel the tension flow out of Rick’s body. I realize that he likes the dark. More than that, he likes this mine.

  I think of all the times I’ve heard Tommy talk about the mines he’s worked in as if he were talking about women. Some were unpredictable, some complained more than others, some were silent and serene, some were generous, some were tough and hard to please, but the miners entrusted their lives to all of them without question. Each lady enfolded them in her depths and looked after them while they took the riches from inside her.

  Rick’s overwhelmed by his obligations and responsibilities. He can’t keep his head above water. He’s a drowning man.

  “You want to kill yourself in the mine because you’re not afraid of dying here. You like it here. But you’re afraid of something. You’re afraid of drowning.”

  “How’d you know that?” his disembodied voice asks.

  “Everyone has a particular means of death that terrifies them more than any other and they fall into the four categories of the elements. There’s sky, fear of dying in a plane crash or falling from a great height; water, fear of drowning; fire, fear of burning in a fire or exp
losion; and earth, fear of being buried alive.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Being buried alive.”

  “Then you’re in the wrong place. I could tell you’re petrified. Your voice is shaking.”

  I have nothing to add on this subject. I clench and unclench the hands I can’t see.

  “If you’re so afraid, why are you doing this? Don’t say to help me. You don’t know me.”

  I try to recall all the reasons I gave myself before I made the decision to come down here, but only one seems to make any sense to me now.

  “I wanted to be useful.”

  He says nothing to this and I have nothing to say to him. This isn’t a good sign in a psychotherapy session.

  “You’re trying to solve a problem for your family but I don’t think you want to die,” I try. “People who succeed at killing themselves do so because they want to die.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you’re not going to do it.”

  “Is that a dare?”

  Bad idea. I search for another avenue of self-discovery.

  I know how much he cares about Lost Creek. I’ve seen the scale model he made of the town on display at the NONS museum in Nora Daley’s attic. The details are painstaking. It required not only time and craftsmanship but love.

  “You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t have a reason to live. I mean, look at this shithole you live in.”

  “Reverse psychology? That’s the best you got? You suck at this.”

  Third time’s a charm.

  “What about your children?”

  “Now you’re gonna try and convince me I should keep living for my kids? Man, you really suck at this.”

  “Your kids need you.”

  “Don’t talk about my kids. You got kids?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I begin to list the reasons: “Selfishness, fear, a dislike of clutter.”

  “Your problem is you think too much,” he tells me.

  “We’re not talking about my problems.”

  “I’d rather talk about your problems.”

  “My biggest problem is I’m sitting in a coal mine.”

  “Don’t you have a messed-up mom? The one who went to prison for killing her baby?”

  I nod, then remember he can’t see me.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you became a shrink?”

  “It might have had something to do with it.”

  “She’s one strong lady from what I’ve heard.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mother described this way.

  “I mean, her illness,” he explains. “She had spells, right? But she always came back to you and kept being your mom. That must’ve been hard for her.”

  I envision my mother clawing her way through the crushing terrain of her illness to get back to me, her blue sky.

  She wanted me to be an astronaut. She made me a tablecloth covered with celestial bodies and all of them were happy.

  “Rick, I’d like to hire you. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if you get me the hell out of here.”

  The silence is maddening. It’s louder than the streets of Philly at rush hour.

  “You expect me to take your money?”

  “It’s not charity. It’s not even a loan. I can’t leave without you. I’m paying you to do a job.”

  More silence, then I hear a sigh and the lamp on his helmet snaps back on, spraying a glorious shower of white light across his filthy features.

  “I can’t take your five grand,” he says, “but I’ll do it for two.”

  twenty-three

  I LEFT THE SCENE AT the mine in the capable hands of Rafe and left Rick Kelly in the capable hands of Dr. Versey, who agreed he should be put under a seventy-two-hour psychological hold.

  Rafe didn’t know how things were going to shake out in regards to criminal charges. No one was ultimately hurt, but threatening to blow up a coal mine, even an empty one, is no small matter. Just to be on the safe side I put Brenna in touch with a friend of mine who’s one of the best defense attorneys in the state and adept at vindicating people who have committed their offenses under extreme emotional duress.

  Back at Tommy’s I immediately stripped and took a long, hot shower with the rock-hard lye soap he used to scrub with after every shift. I held out my hand to him and he placed the grainy cake, the color of old snuff, in my palm with all the sober majesty of an aged king ceding his scepter.

  In return I gave him the garbage bag containing my clothes.

  Sporadic bursts of Kellys showed up throughout the rest of the day, all of them bearing some type of casserole or baked good as if the ordeal of helping their emotionally embattled kinsman return to his senses must have given me an insatiable appetite. Tommy and I made small talk with them about everything under the sun except for the topic of Rick; no one came close to asking me to disclose anything he might have said to me.

  Mom was feeling better and played the charming hostess. She chatted and made coffee and never showed a sign of her illness, yet everyone present knew her history and could probably sense my nervousness at having her on display. A condition they once feared or pitied or maybe discounted or even ridiculed had shown up in their own lives and become suddenly real to them. They looked upon Tommy and me with a new awareness and regard. Rick’s alarming actions were brought on by desperation and will hopefully never be repeated; his situation is a far cry from my mother’s, yet once a family witnesses a loved one’s disintegration they can never escape the constant dread that it might happen again and that the next time it will be worse.

  I did my best to appear fine on the outside, but it took most of the day before I stopped shaking inside.

  Rafe told me to stop by his house when he got off work so we could talk. As I stand outside his front door, the exhaustion of the day finally catches up to me. I’d like nothing more than to stretch out on his couch and fall asleep while he sits in a big easy chair drinking a beer watching an action movie or a favorite sitcom. I assume this is how an evening at home with Rafe would sound and look. After all these years of knowing him, I’ve never been across his threshold.

  As a child, I imagined Rafe’s home to be similar to Superman’s fortress of solitude. High on a hilltop he would retire after a day of writing speeding tickets and mopping up the countryside to contemplate the woes of humanity and the peril of driving seventy down a one-lane country road.

  As an adult, I was surprised to discover he lived in a small unremarkable house badly in need of a fresh coat of paint and a new roof. Tommy and I were driving by once while he was in the front yard, shirtless, on a tractor mower. We stopped to talk to him. He asked us if we wanted beers then hustled off to put on a shirt, but not before I saw the four puckered gunshot wounds in his chest he had picked up in Vietnam.

  At the time he was between wives. He’s had two more since then, but the house is the same. Either he moves wives in and out or he always keeps this house on the side just in case.

  He greets me at the front door in jeans and a Penguins sweatshirt. It strikes me that my entire life I’ve only seen him in a police uniform or most recently the visual cacophony I’ve come to refer to in my mind as his detective clothes.

  It’s strange to see him look like a regular guy.

  “I’m making dinner. Come on in.”

  It’s also strange to think of him cooking.

  We’re about to step inside when the Mayhem Machine comes roaring down the road and into Rafe’s driveway.

  Velma hops out of the van. He’s swapped his duster for a billowing black cape and is also wearing a fur hat that looks like a large gray cat curled on top of his bald head.

  He drags out a small toboggan and places it firmly in the s
now. Wade leaps out and onto the middle of it where he remains sitting imperially in a shiny lavender ski jacket, matching earmuffs, and four tiny blond UGGs while Velma pulls him toward the house.

  As soon as he sees Rafe, Wade goes crazy. He starts barking uncontrollably and chasing his tail while somehow managing to stay on the very limited surface of the little sled. The need for the contraption becomes apparent when his agitation gets the better of him and he tries to propel himself into Rafe’s arms but falls short and soundlessly disappears into the deep snow like a toy dropped into a child’s bubble bath.

  Much to my amazement, Rafe bends down and pulls him out of the drift then slips the shivering dog into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks Velma. “I thought you were leaving today.”

  “Tomorrow. We want to go back to the gallows one more time. We experienced some very promising activity last night.”

  “What are you doing here at my house?” Rafe says.

  “Oh, well, Wade insisted on seeing you again.”

  “Am I still in danger?”

  “No. Now Wade’s insisting there’s a tortured soul from the other side who needs your help crossing over.”

  I’m surprised to see Rafe’s highly skeptical look soften into one of possible consideration.

  “You actually believe in this stuff?”

  “What I believe isn’t important. All that matters is what Wade believes.”

  Rafe reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little dog. He holds him up in the air by the back of his jacket. Wade hangs limply in the air.

  “Is he yours?” I ask Velma.

  “Wade doesn’t like the O word,” Velma replies, then silently mouths the word “owner” to us.

  “He also doesn’t like the T word. ‘Trainer,’” he mouths again. “But yes, I’m both.”

  “And you really think he can see ghosts and predict the future?”

  Wade begins to whine. Rafe sets him back on the sled.

  “Wade was a rescue dog,” Velma begins, “and one of his little quirks was he’d suddenly for no reason start barking and running in circles then run into a corner and sit up in a begging position and shake all over looking positively terrified. I said to my partner at the time that he looked like he was seeing a ghost, but we had no idea what was really causing it.