When I woke up, I was thinking about the moon. For some reason I was concerned about it. It occurred to me that the moon might pull my attention just as it pulls the sea. But no. That wasn’t it. The flow of my mind in that drowsy world was drawn by the current much stronger, of someone else’s life moving sharply in a direction of its own. I felt it distinctly, but I could not identify the person. It could have been anyone. It could have been the pull of my own life, flowing inward like a whirlpool.

Looking for a distraction, I put it out of my mind and called Tamara. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Hello,” said a voice. It sounded tinny through the phone, but it must have been low and resonant in person.

“It’s Liza. I’m calling to speak with Tamara Menser.”

“Hang on,” said the voice.

There was a pause, as if someone had covered the receiver completely to have a private conversation with someone else in the room. I was sitting in the lounge chair and pulled my legs up under me. I realized it was probably Gunther, the man who introduced me to Tamara.

Then she came on the phone. “Hello, Liza?”

“Tamara. Yes, it’s Liza. Can I meet with you? Sometime this week?” I wasn’t sure how much I could say over the phone regarding her younger brother, or the man who probably murdered him, without breaking our contract of secrecy. It wasn’t likely for somebody to tap my phone. Nobody would have any reason to listen in. But the radio tower is far away, and the airwaves pass through miles of unknown sky, even when you call somebody close by. You never know who might intercept them.

Tamara seemed to nod, or to pause in thought. Perhaps she glanced at a calendar on her coffee table.“Are you free tonight?”

“Sure,” I said. I pulled my planner off the top of a nearby cardboard storage box, and flipped through it to make sure. “I have no commitments tonight.”

“Great. Why not come for dinner? We can speak privately. But, is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine, but I have some information I want you to hear. I wonder if it might stir up something you wouldn’t remember otherwise.”

“You think you’ve found a piece of information like a key, and it will unlock some memory?” Her voice pitched up a bit, like she was annoyed.

“Yes, something like that. I admit it wasn’t my idea. But it’s worth a shot.”

“I like you, and so I don’t mind playing along, but I didn’t leave anything out.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Even someone with a good memory might consider certain events or details insignificant, but you might evaluate some of those details differently with new information. I didn’t have time to listen to everything you remember anyway.”

“You think, if we meet, we might hone in on something useful.”

“That’s what I hope.”

“Have you run out of leads then? Does everything I told you lead to a dead end?”

“No. In fact I have a lead I need to follow up on this afternoon, if I can. But some have led to dead ends, yes.”

“Do you mean that you’ve lost the trail, or that you’ve run into some kind of wall.”

“To tell you the truth, it’s both. I followed the trail of the older gentleman we discussed, and I was able to call someone who used to know him, but I don’t think they would tell me everything they knew.”

“Hmm. Say more tonight. God willing, I can put the pressure on them. It might be enough. What do you say?”

“I may need your help with another lead as well. But help of a different kind. I have a lead, but it seems like an expensive one to follow. We discussed my payment, but we have no agreement over out-of-pocket expenses or reimbursement.”

“Tell me more tonight. If I can afford it, I will front you the money, and you can do as you please. Or if possible, I will make the purchase myself, or through a discreet third party to protect our privacy. Can you tell me what sort of expense you’re talking about?”

“It’s a book. I can’t imagine it would be dangerous.”

I waited, but she didn’t say anything. I imagined her deep in thought, tucking her thin blonde hair behind one ear and leaning with her chin in her hand, elbow on the kitchen counter.

“That’s all I can tell you over the phone,” I said after a while.

“Right. We can say more over dinner. I will send the call back to Gunther now, and he will set a plan for dinner.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes,” she said. I couldn’t read her tone.

Gunther picked up and offered 6:00 for dinner. If I was going to be late, I should call him.

He was about to hang up when I said, “Wait. I thought about what you told me.” It hadn’t crossed my mind for a few days, but it flashed into my mind now.

He didn’t say anything so I went on, in case he was confused.

“About the world changing, and things becoming possible again,” I went on.

After another long silence he said, “You thought about that.”

“Yes, I thought lots about it. I think it’s good advice.”

“When I saw you, I knew that you were the kind of person who decides about things with absolute finality.”

Before I could respond he continued. “I will pick you up at 5:30. Call me if you are going to be late, and wear something warm, and nothing too fancy.”

“I will.”

“Goodbye.”

That afternoon I hunched in front of my computer and searched for the book. The trains rolled overhead. I applied chapstick to my lips periodically, and sometimes wore headphones to stave off boredom. I was listening to the soundtrack of a youtube documentary, about vacuum fluorescent displays. The background music was jumpy and electronic, with a synth wash in the background, and it kept me calm while I searched for clues.

After an hour of looking, I decided I wasn’t going to find anything, so I took off my headphones, pushed my chair back, stretched, and stood up.

The clock above my window read Four O’Clock. I had time to make some dinner before Gunther came to pick me up. Barefoot, I padded onto the tiled floor of the kitchen and pulled open the fridge. In the cool light, I saw a variety of vegetables, mostly green, a plastic carton of blueberries, a small mason jar of almond milk, and a bag of sliced gouda deli cheese.

I finagled a cutting board from its place in the cabinet, took my good knife—the small one—, and sliced an onion into small cubes. I wasn’t anything spectacular in the kitchen, but I handled a knife well, and chopped the onion quickly enough that it didn’t burn my eyes. Then I poured some olive oil into a pan, and got going.

While I ate, slowly and carefully, I thought about what Gunther had said.

It was 5:25 when I finished getting ready. I closed the windows, locked them. Then I fetched a hoodie from the closet and threw it on over my shirt. Why had Gunther asked me to dress warm?

At 5:30 a car honked outside. Slipping out the apartment door, I walked to the lobby and looked out through the front window. There was the car, baby blue.

When I got in, Gunther ignored me, responding with only grunts and nods. He had his cowboy hat, but a thin scarf was around his shoulders, and a warm fur-lined coat sat in the front passenger seat, while I sat in the back.

He was silent, so I said, “Where are we going.”

He flashed a look in the rear view mirror. “Ms. Menser’s abode.”

“Why the coat?”

“She’s outside.”

We found Tamara in a white gazebo, halfway down the lawn. She wore sweatpants and a t-shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail which bounced in the gusts of sea-wind.

She glanced at us before turning her head over her shoulder, and stretching her side.

“Not many people see me like this,” she said over the wind, when Gunther opened the screen door to the gazebo. “I try to keep up appearances. But to tell you the truth I don’t like dressing up. Anything that restricts my movements restricts my mind. There is a flow in my body, and clothing can get in the way of that flow, and make certain movements uncomfortable. The result was sometimes that I stayed still when I ought to have moved, or changed position in some way, and that made me stiff, and sometimes it affected my mood, or other things. My thinking, for example.”

“There’s nothing wrong with dressing like this,” I said.

“Of course not, but some of my business partners would judge me harshly, showing up to a meeting like this.”

I shrugged. “Maybe their thinking is obstructed.”

Tamara smiled, but didn’t face me. She was still looking over one shoulder. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead, and her shirt was damp in the front and in the lower back. But it was cool outside.

“I was exercising,” she smiled. “I never lift weights, but I like to perform bodyweight maneuvers to keep myself strong. And to get out of my own head. There’s an awful lot to think about sometimes.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“What does a former TV actor think about?”

Finally she looked at me. “I was thinking about you, actually. And the work you’re doing.”

With that, she stood up, pulled the sweatshirt over her head, and led me to the bench in the gazebo.

I noticed that Gunther had gone. He was outside on the lawn, out of earshot, gazing over the sea, and speaking in a low voice into his earpiece.

A light touch on my arm brought my attention back to Tamara.

“When we called,” she said, “You said you wanted to tell me something, and you thought it might stir up memories that had otherwise been lost to time.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You said your memory’s good. That helps. I just want to tell you what I’ve learned, and maybe you can give me with some more details. To start, I found Larry.”

“That’s right. You found Larry,” she said. There was a stiffness to her tone. “I’ve been thinking about things. I’m not sure if it was right for me to put this responsibility on your shoulders. If you find out enough about him, there’s a possibility that you might meet him. Whatever you may feel about him, please don’t let him know you’re angry, or loathing, or whatever it may be. Maybe you feel a certain loathing or disgust knowing what he might have done with my brother. I don’t condone his actions, but don’t put yourself into a dangerous situation. This past seems to be alive and dangerous, and I am sorry to have entangled you in these events.”

I nodded. “I understand. A friend of mine recommended I abandon this case, but I won’t do anything stupid. It isn’t like me. I have been through stressful situations before, and I keep my cool. Even when I’m angry. Maybe it comes out later in odd ways, but in the moment I am always in control of myself, including my expression, so that I don’t give anything away. But we should talk about Larry, and the book. Larry worked for the Coney Island Firewatch, which is a fire lookout on Mount Coney, which started on this island to watch for forest fires on the mainland. It was useful because it has a unique view of the low coastlands and a few harbors, and also because the wind is so fierce here that a coastal fire could spread with deadly speed, gobbling up trees the way a vacuum cleaner tears at a carpet. When Larry worked for the company, he probably lived on this island.”

As I spoke, something quickened in Tamara’s eyes. I could see the memory surfacing, in a breathtaking display of thought captured through human facial expression. I left off, and we were both silent for a long time. Outside, bees hummed through the greenery, tipping fronds of goldenrod with their weight.

At last Tamara spoke.

“He was on his way to a mountain when he took my brother,” she said. “You remember my brother was sent away because of what he did to our stepfather. I think my mother, I guess, not knowing what else to do, just needed him to go away… She was scared, and she loved him, but she was not equipped— I think he killed the boy. But it’s not my mother’s fault; she was raised just like I was. She was, well, I don’t know what she was. A God-fearing woman.”

Tammy sits very still as if a memory is playing in front of her eyes… or the fear of God had momentarily frozen her.

“If this case puts you in danger, I will do everything within reason to help alleviate that danger. A man who can murder a child could do other things.”

I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I tried to speak slowly and reassuringly. I said, “The best thing you can do is answer my questions accurately.”

“I can do that, but I was only six. My memories have likely changed beyond the point of usefulness. If I remembered things more clearly, I might have looked into things myself.”

“You told me that Larry Eastman took your brother up the mountain.”

“That’s what I think, anyway. Obviously I didn’t see them go.”

“Assuming he did take him up the mountain, you also told me that your brother never came back down. What did you mean by that?”

“Only that I never saw him again. I suppose I don’t know if he came back down again.”

“I think your intuition is correct. A mountain is an easy place to hide a body, especially when an investigation is so unlikely. Nobody goes up there, except for the fire lookout and a baggage train, which brings supplies by mule-train to the fire lookout, once every three months or so. The trip is difficult and dangerous, and nobody is likely to go off the path.”

“And with the storm,” she said.

“What?”

“And with the storm that had blown in,” she said. “There was a huge storm that night, all across the west coast. I remember because I was worried about the storm. I dreamed that lightning struck my brother, and pulled him into the sky.”

“You dreamed that?”

“Yes. Lightning wrapped around him,” she said. “Like cold white fingers, they pulled him into the clouds. “It was a nightmare,” she said, without a hint of irony.

“An atmospheric Phenomenon,” I said. My voice was devoid of tone or meaning.

Outside a car bumped past her house. On the lawn, Gunther spoke quietly into his earpiece. The surf tumbled on the rocks.

Tamara sat very still, her posture relaxed, but I sensed a great tension in her back, as if she were suppressing a shiver, or holding her breath.

“Starting from the beginning, I was born in International Falls, Minnesota,” she said mechanically. “My mom and my biological father were Pentecostal preachers. After I was born, something happened that removed any affection my mom had for the church. She divorced my biological father. She wouldn’t go to church anymore.

“During what she called her estrangement from the church, she remarried. I think she was seeing this guy even before the divorce, and maybe he was the reason for their divorce. One night, in his sleep, our new stepfather was strangled to death by my younger brother, whose mental condition had probably been another reason for the recent divorce. My mom and my biological father hadn’t been able to agree what to do with my brother. In the new marriage, my brother did something with our step father. There’s a weird symmetry.

Blinking, she said, “That happened in 1948. I was 6. He was 5. I don’t know if that’s important.”

I nodded. “The details are important in a case like this.”

Glancing at me, she went on. “After he strangled our new stepdad, my mom thought he was possessed—he probably just had a mental disability of some kind—I realize that now—but my mother didn’t know that, and she had no idea what to think. She gave him to one of our friends, who was going to take him on a trip and ditch him somewhere. That’s what I gathered. I didn’t know where, or who the relative was. I assumed he was going to live somewhere else. I don’t think he did.

“I want to know what happened to my brother. I told you I believe he had autism—I really don’t know for sure, but it could have been that. Here is why. First of all, he did not grow at a normal rate, physically or mentally. He was always either very fast or very slow. He was also extremely flexible. I also should mention that he built very elaborate houses out of twigs, leaves, bark, and shells, along with anything else he could find on the island, which was a lot back then. He was also very strong for his age. He never stopped moving. I guess it’s called stimming, and it’s something he did because it made him feel better. He needed intense physical stimulus all the time, and so he was always on the move. And he didn’t always understand what other people said to him. People would say things, and he would know all the words, but he was confused anyway.

“I was asleep when it started. My brother and I shared a room. I woke up when the door opened. My brother ran into the hallway, which was filled with queasy light from the moon. I was too sweaty to fall back asleep right away, so I threw off the covers and followed him. I found him opening my mom’s door. I tried to tiptoe fast enough to stop him, but he slipped in and left the door swinging.

“My mom and stepdad were both naked, with the sheets only half covering them. The harsh moonlight fell on them both. Their breathing sounded completely different. My mom’s was deep and nasally sounding. Our stepdad’s breath was short and thick, even in his sleep. Each breath was like a cough. My brother was out of sight. Then he popped up beside my dad, onto the bed. I wanted to run in and pull him off. He was going to wake them up, and I was scared about something. I don’t know what. But I couldn’t go in. I felt as if a wall stood between me and the room.

“My brother crawled up toward the head of the bed and sat for a moment near our stepdad’s head. His hair was thick and black, with a small thinning patch on the back. His face was pale and tired. I remember The skin on his neck was loose. My brother grabbed him in one smooth motion. I saw his eyes open in panic as my brother squeezed. His body was still sleepy, not fully awake. He tried to struggle, but his hands were still weak from sleeping.

“And then something happened that I haven’t told you yet. I don’t know why. But yo should know that my mother woke up. I saw her eyes open, but she didn’t move. And I smelled something then in the room, something that had been there all along without my realizing it. I have never smelled it since then, but it’s the one thing I remember with absolutely clarity.

“At this point my father wasn’t struggling so much. He had already been weak. And with my brother’s bony arm across his windpipe, he went unconscious pretty quickly.

“That’s when I ran away, tore myself away. I don’t know how to describe it, but it took violence to wrench myself away from the sight. I ran back to my room, threw myself in bed, and pulled up the sheets. I thought there was no way I’d sleep, but somehow I did, and when I woke up, there were police sirens outside. ‘Dad’s going away for awhile,’ was all our mom said to me.

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“I went away to an all-girl’s school after that, because my mother didn’t need a kid around. Then I actually got into Brown, which was unheard of at the time. Then I became a show-host on the christian television show, because their usual co-host had quit.

“It was 1962, and I was 20 years old, and the studio was going under. They had a monthly operating budget of $700. They had almost no money to pay me, but it’s not like I was doing anything else, and lord knows I needed the money, so I joined.

“My co-host retitled it Jim and Tammy, after he started sleeping with me. The two of us invented the idea of the 700 club to raise money. To keep us on the air.

“We ran a special telethon version of the show, and the idea was that all seven hundred members of the club would contribute ten dollars a month, and get a producer’s credit. It worked so well, we ran the telethon every year.

“Then Jim was let go, and nobody would say why. And I left too.

“When the two of us left, the studio execs destroyed all our props, and tore down the old set as a kind of symbolic retribution for something. But they couldn’t touch us in any meaningful way, apart from firing Jim.

“For a while we had no income. Jim had a lot in savings, but that wouldn’t last forever. We both made a lot of phone calls, and even got some job offers, but at the time we were so madly in love we couldn’t bear the thought of working separately again, so we set up a television network of our own. Then something happened that nobody expected. The $700 club followed us.

“It was as if the old studio had cut ties with them, when it cut ties with us. They funded us, and kept on funding us. That was a turn of events so unheard of (maybe less so nowadays) that we got national news coverage, and pretty soon our viewership skyrocketed. We put a down payment on a new house after just one year: this house,” she said, gesturing to the whitewashed wall just up the lawn. “A decade later, we paid off the mortgage.”

I watched her closely. While she told me all of this, I sensed that she was drawing closer and closer to her point, like water swirling around a drain just before the last of the water sinks down, and the tub is empty.

“Jim, he was very good to me.”

In that moment, I felt fear closing over me, out of nowhere. Tamara peeled away the coverings, one at a time, of forbidden knowledge. Our conversation had wandered into parts unknown. We found ourselves in a perilous place. “We should not be here,” I wanted to say. I wanted to run out of the gazebo, bowl past Gunther and his earpiece, run up the lawn, past the multi-colored stone patio, and into the street. But I did not run. I sat still, as she pulled the words out of the deep places of her memory, and pulled out strings of my awareness, strings that went straight back to the parts of my brain that do not forget what they hear. A shiver ran down my spine but still I did not move. Could not move.

But all she said was, “He passed away.”

I let out a breath. Deep breath. We had circled the drain, and nothing more.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Tamara smiled. “Oh don’t be sorry. He was bound to die sometime, and God knows I’ve learned to cope with it. Really, it was a long time ago.”

“How did he die?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the doctors couldn’t tell why he died. It was of natural causes.”

“But you don’t know which ones.”

“Sorry?”

“Nevermind. I think I understand.”

“I would like to read that book as soon as possible. Can you front the money?”

“Give me the title and we’ll see. There isn’t much risk it’ll exceed our budget.”

----------------------------------------

I never learned about this until later, but Gunther a few days later Gunther held the receiver with his chin on his shoulder. “Tamara Menser?”

“Yes. Gunther?”

“It’s Gunther. I found the book.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“It contains interviews from two separate sources on a peculiar atmospheric phenomenon in the late 1940’s. Your late husband is cited.”

“You’re sure it’s him.”

“I checked.”

“Huh.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Nothing. I made a husband out of him. Seems he made something else out of himself.”

“You didn’t know about this?”

“What year did your husband die?”

“1970.”

Gunther sighed. “I thought so.” There was a long pause. Then the line went dead. Gunther kept it to his ear, but the receiver only emitted a dull static. “Don’t blame her,” he muttered. “And I won’t blame her one bit for whatever she does about it.”