All My Goodbyes: Stories

By Jacob Mendelsohn

Every night a man drives the darkened asphalt of America. Every morning a woman recollects a former lover who disappeared years ago. A boy witnesses a horrific crime, but is unable to tell anyone about it. A girl glimpses the horrors that reside beneath the veil of ordinary life. A job whose simple description is: Follow him.

These are stories of the seekers and dreamers, the travelers who futilely try to escape their pasts. They are the men and women who live on the fringes of society, on the barstools and bookhouses, on the roadways that separate us, and in the shadows where they are always watching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483507835

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Jacob Mendelsohn

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Cover art by Catherine Lee

Author photo by Justin N. Lane

ISBN: 9781483507835

FIRST EDITION

First Printing

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

In memory of my Bubbie, Ruth Howard

Table of Contents

Witnesses

Station to Station

Travelers

The Shift Workers

The Day of the Day

Good for You

Drift

The Early Hours

Points of Departure

All My Goodbyes

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Mark Twain

Witnesses

I.

On Saturday, July 22, 1989, an eight-year-old black boy disappeared from the streets of Lennox, Mississippi. His name was Darryl Barnum, and his father was the Reverend Henry Barnum, a Baptist minister of some note in the community. The town had been a powder keg during the civil rights movement. Over the years the tensions had cooled in Lennox, and there was little open animosity between the races. Still, most understood that a simmer could birth a boil with the least of provocations.

After three days, there were still no leads in the disappearance. Members of the black community marched on the police department demanding more officers be devoted to the search for Darryl. In truth, the Sheriff had already put most of his men on the case; unfortunately, most meant four.

A week after he disappeared during his walk home from day camp, Darryl Barnum was found. He had been strangled with a hemp rope, which had dug so deep into the boy’s neck that it was nearly impossible to remove it without taking his head as well. He had been raped both prior to and after he was killed. His body was then dumped in a vacant lot on the edge of town. It was found by two boys who were playing a game the locals called Bottlecaps.

Close to two hundred attended the funeral. They were black and white, rich and poor. Years later many locals said that the abduction and death of Darryl Barnum was the event that finally healed the town of Lennox, Mississippi.

The police never made an arrest in the case. There were no similar murders reported in Lennox, and Sheriff Rudy Simpson believed the boy had been killed by a drifter. When he could go no further in the case, he sent the file to the F.B.I., who promptly placed it in a storage locker.

The only person questioned in the case was a seventeen-year-old named Wilson Vincent Anderson, who lived with his mother in a house on Governor’s Way. This house sat between Darryl Barnum’s day camp and the Barnum residence, and Darryl used to pass it every day on his way home.

People always thought of Wilson Vincent Anderson as an odd duck. He was a fixture in every remedial class in school until he turned sixteen and dropped out. Many believed him to be illiterate. He was prone to both crying fits and tantrums and would often take out his frustrations on the walls and furniture. He had a fondness for stray cats and had brought dozens home over the years, only to have his mother remove them from the house once he began to neglect them.

When he was younger, the other boys called him a retard, a word that never really hurt Wilson because he never understood what it meant. The kinder folk—including the Reverend Henry Barnum—described him with the benevolent euphemism of slow, as in poor Wilson is just a bit slow, but he’s a sweet child.

No one ever thought he could harm anyone, let alone an eight-year-old boy.

The day after Darryl Barnum’s abduction, Wilson entered the sheriff’s station and sat on a bench next to the American and Mississippi flags. No one noticed him for about an hour. Finally, Mae Cunningham, the station secretary-cum-housekeeper, went up to Wilson and asked him if something was wrong.

Wilson opened his mouth and made a raspy, guttural sound. Mae saw his tongue contorting as it tried to form words.

It’s okay, just take it easy, she said.

But Wilson was not the kind to take it easy. His entire life had been one moment of difficulty followed by another. Where others could walk across the street without a care in the world, Wilson had to wait for the red light to turn green, then turn back to red, and then to green again. He had never been able to tie his shoelaces, even though he knew how to do it; his fingers just wouldn’t listen to the instructions given by his brain. And sometimes when he opened his mouth, the words got stuck in his throat. In these moments of the highest frustration, Darryl would hit himself.

Mae got up and soon returned with a glass of water and a bag of Cheetos.

My momma says I can’t have cheese, were the first words he said to Mae.

Don’t worry, it’s not real cheese.

He chewed them mouth open and without a hint of shame at the social awkwardness of the act. Mae Cunningham was a good Christian woman who was particularly sympathetic towards those whose bounty had been less than that of their brothers and sisters, and she could only imagine the types of taunts the boy had received when he was younger.

Are you okay, son? she asked in the kindest voice she could muster. As she did, she put an arm around his shoulders.

Wilson shook his head, nodded his head, and then did something that was a combination of the two. His eyes darted this way and that, like they were following the dance of fireflies. The Sheriff and most of the men were out looking for the poor Barnum boy, and Mae didn’t quite know what to do about Wilson. Do you want me to call your mom, son? she asked, but Wilson only shook his head some more.

When he finished the bag of Cheetos, Wilson gulped down the water and placed the glass on the bench. Then he got up and walked out without a single word of farewell to Mae.

Four days later, at the funeral of Darryl Barnum, Mae noticed Wilson Vincent Anderson standing with his mother, swaying from right to left, biting his fingernails, and looking everywhere but in the direction of the hole in the ground. There were two things Mae saw in his eyes. The first was fear, the other shame.

The next day she went into Sheriff Simpson’s office.

What is it Mae?

There was this boy in here last week. I don’t know his name, but I saw him at the funeral yesterday. I think he might know something about the Barnum boy.

Did he say something to you?

No, it’s just a hunch.

Ah. The Sheriff knew that Mae Cunningham thought of herself as an amateur sleuth because she watched Murder She Wrote and Matlock and always solved the mystery before minute thirty-five. Rudy Simpson did not believe women should have anything to do with the business of law enforcement outside of bringing the boys coffee. But Mae Cunningham was one of his mother’s oldest friends, and if he dismissed her hunch out of hand he’d have hell to pay later.

Even without a name, it was easy to find Wilson Anderson—in Lennox everyone knew someone who knew someone else, and so on. The day after Mae told Rudy Simpson about her encounter, Wilson and his mother sat in the coffee room at the Sheriff’s station.

The Sheriff began by telling Wilson who he was, that he wanted to ask him a few questions, and that he wasn’t in trouble, but there were some matters that needed clearing up.

About a week ago, you came into this office, is that right?

Wilson didn’t say anything.

You spoke with Miss Cunningham. She said you seemed scared. Was there something you wanted to tell us?

Wilson did that thing where he both nodded and shook his head.

That boy who went missing, Darryl Barnum, do you know anything about what happened to him?

Wilson continued to shake and nod.

Did you know Darryl, Wilson? Did you ever speak to him?

Wilson opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a groan.

Sheriff, Henny Anderson said, what is this all about exactly?

As I told you before, Mrs. Anderson, he said, it has come to my attention that your son may know something about what happened to the Barnum boy.

Sheriff, my boy doesn’t really have a mind for knowing things. And if he did know something, he wouldn’t know that he knew it. You get my drift?

Perfectly, Mrs. Anderson.

Now, are you accusing him of something or not?

Of course not. The sheriff had no other leads besides Wilson Anderson, who, when he thought about it, wasn’t much of a lead in the first place, just the wayward intuition of an old maid.

Good, then we’re going.

Of course.

Henny Anderson stood. Come on Wilson. But the boy wouldn’t stand up. He merely stared at the sheriff, his head bobbing in and out, and up and down with nervous energy. The boy’s eyes grew moist, and soon he began to cry. The sheriff watched as tears rolled down the boy’s cheeks and onto the table. Then Wilson let out a moan of such immense anguish and heartbreak that later that night the sheriff could not eat his dinner or drink his beer. Instead, he sat out on his front porch and stared at the stars and thought that whatever had happened to Darryl Barnum was at least over and done with, but within Wilson Anderson there was an affliction that would never be mollified.

Sheriff Simpson never once thought that Wilson Vincent Anderson hurt Darryl Barnum. Even years later, when he looked back on the events surrounding the case, the sheriff would always say: We may not have been a perfect town, but nobody would do something like that to his neighbor.

He was right.

The man who abducted, raped, and murdered Darryl Barnum was named Stephen Branch and, as the sheriff suspected, he was a drifter. He was making his way from Florida to New Mexico when he stopped in Lennox, Mississippi. During the same trip, he abducted two other children—one a boy of ten, one a girl of eight. He raped and murdered both. In neither case were any substantial leads formed by local law enforcement. In both cases, the files were sent to the F.B.I. and shelved without an inquiry.

Stephen Branch did not know why he did what he did. If asked, he would say that it was as if another person were controlling his body. He considered himself perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing and firmly believed that he was just as much a victim as the children he killed.

Just over a quarter century later, a drunk trucker would stab and kill Branch with a broken bottle in a brawl at a bar just outside of Bakersfield. Branch’s final total would be twelve boys, eight girls, and one pesky do-gooder adult who got in his way.

Outside of Stephen Branch, the only person who had any knowledge of the fate of Darryl Barnum was Wilson Anderson. On the day Barnum was taken, Wilson was sitting in his room and staring out the window at the street below. Through much of his life, he enjoyed looking out the window and watching the people pass by. When they did, he would make up stories about them.

Mrs. Creader was an old woman who walked with a cane. She went past Wilson’s window three or four times a week. In his mind she was going to Monte’s, which was a fruit stand down the street that had slightly better prices on nectarines than the store closer to Mrs. Creader’s house. She had seven children and thirty grandchildren, and each day as she walked back from Monte’s she hoped and prayed that one of them would call her when she got home. When she was less than a block from home, she imagined that her phone was ringing and picked up the pace to get there in time.

James McDougal was the mailman, and he pushed his cart down the block and whistled the same tune every day. Wilson recognized it as Rockin’ Robin, because Wilson could remember almost any song he ever heard. Wilson conjured the idea that Mailman McDougal had a girlfriend named Robin; as he made his rounds, all he did was think of her and be happy, pure and simple. Robin had dark eyes and long lashes and a smile that seemed to hold all sorts of secrets.

Whenever Wilson saw young Darryl Barnum walk by, he thought that this was a lonely boy, probably an only child, possibly one of those boys that other boys picked on because he was small for his age, shy, and maybe had a stutter, or a lisp, or peed his bed every now and again. Wilson felt sorry for him.

Wilson had seen Darryl Barnum many times prior to the day he was taken, but he had never seen Stephen Branch before. Branch wore jeans and a white linen button-down. He had sweat through the shirt so much that Wilson saw more skin than shirt. He sported about four days’ worth of dirty stubble. His nose curved like it had been broken and never set right. He limped like one leg was slightly longer than the other.

As Darryl passed Wilson’s house, Branch approached him and squatted down to talk to the boy. Branch gave the boy a smile that could charm the fat off a pig. Wilson saw that the lonely and shy boy was fooled by that smile. The man opened his hand to reveal what appeared to be chocolate. Darryl looked at it for a second, and Wilson knew the boy was thinking about that thing his mom had once told him about candy and strangers. It was, after all, the most important rule when you’re eight years old.

As the boy put the piece of what looked like chocolate into his mouth, Wilson opened his own mouth to shout, Don’t do that. He’s a bad man. He’s going to hurt you. But when he tried, his tongue throbbed like it had tripled in size, his throat seized up, and all that came out was breath that smelled of bologna and cheese. Wilson tried to look away, but his head would not turn. He tried to close his eyes but could not even blink them.

It seemed like forever, but what Wilson saw next took only a minute.

Stephen Branch said something to the boy, who was still eating the chocolate. The boy nodded, and the man smiled. Then the man reached behind the boy’s ear and pulled out a quarter, which he held in front of the boy’s eyes. Darryl Barnum stared at the quarter, and a moment later he fell to the ground. The man—who was no longer smiling—unfolded something that became a duffle bag. He opened it and put Darryl Barnum’s body in it. Then he walked off.

Only when Branch and his duffle bag disappeared from view was Wilson again able to turn his head and blink his eyes.

The next day Wilson went to the police, because the police are the people you go to when somebody is in trouble. But he couldn’t speak to them, no matter how hard he tried. After a while, he stopped trying.

For weeks afterwards, Wilson couldn’t sleep. He would wake three or four times a night from a nightmare that he had only experienced once before. In it he was eight years old again and he walked down into the basement of their old house on Low Street. There he saw his father twisting an old bed sheet. His father saw Wilson, and put one finger to his lips and said shhh, with a smile that Wilson would not see again until the day Stephen Branch took Darryl Barnum. Then his father, calmly, slowly, coolly, finished what he was making, and looped it over a beam in the basement ceiling. Gerald Anderson got up onto a chair and put his head through the loop he had crafted from the sheet. Then he kicked the chair away. Darryl watched his father swing in the dim light, all the while smelling the shit that the man had expelled at the moment of his death.

II.

Lynda Laredo’s mother took her to the bar every Tuesday and Thursday, as well as alternating Fridays and the last Sunday of every month. Today was the second Tuesday of July 1993.

Before she entered the bar, Babs Laredo put a wedding ring on her long bony finger. To keep away the assholes, was the reason she always gave Lynda. Years later, Lynda would come to believe that women who donned rings to keep creeps away tended to think too much of themselves.

Inside, Babs ordered a SoCo and Tab, and a virgin SoCo and Tab for the kid, she said. Babs would have two or three drinks while waiting for whomever she was there to meet. After he arrived, she usually had two or three more. She always met a man. Sometimes it was the man with dark hair and round glasses and a checkered suit that smelled of wet and smoke; occasionally it was the man with the dark suit and red tie that always had a spot of mustard on it, or the man with the turtleneck and the moustache that never seemed real but like something out of one of her mother’s T.V. shows, or the man who wore hats.

Sometimes Lynda thought that they were all the same man, just with different disguises. On rare, hopeful occasions Lynda thought that one of them might be her father, but then she remembered her mother telling her that her father was dead. Lynda thought Babs was lying about this like she lied about so many other things.

The man on this particular Sunday wore a tuxedo with a white tie and tails, all stained with grease and grime. When he smiled, Lynda saw a mess of rot that was once teeth. Like a dying fish, the smile flopped and twisted and could never make up its mind on where it would land.

When the man sat down, he shot Lynda a sideways glance and said to Babs: Cute kid. Gotter motha’s eyes.

Drink your drink, honey, Babs told her and turned to the man in the tuxedo. They spoke in voices too small for Lynda to make out, though she had learned early on not to listen in on her mother’s secret talks. Instead she sipped her drink and cast her eyes around the bar. Sunlight fell into the room through windows with broken shutters. The air conditioner dripped into a pail next to the Rock-Ola. Barbara Ann oozed from an overplayed record. Endless cigarette smoke filled the air. Besides her mother and the strange man, no one spoke a word.

When she finished her Tab, she didn’t ask for another, only fidgeted with the straw until Duke gave her a refill, a wink, and a smile. It was a sad smile, but at least it was a real one. She liked Duke because he didn’t treat her like a ten-year-old, and he always let her have as many maraschinos as she wanted.

Besides Lynda, her mother, Mr. Tux and Duke, there were four people in the bar. Each one of