R     O     G     I     E     R

He chalked big, block letters

on the board, then underlined.

That is my name. It is not Roger.

It is not Rodge  e  er.

It is not Rodge  ear.

It is Rowjhay. It is French.

Can you all say genre?

               Good.

Again.

               The same G sound

is found in my name. Rowjhay.

Of course, you will preface it

with Mister. As I shall preface

the surname of the gentlemen

in this class. Each of our ladies

shall be Miss.

He enunciated homeroom roll call:

Mr. Agnew

Mr. Collins

Miss Gabel

each answered or grunted Here

until he reached

Mr. Roteks

to which Peter responded

Yeah,

rhymes with Kotex.

Perhaps you will be able to put

pen to that pad, delight us

with a Roteks Kotex poem

by the end of this week.

Touche, Rogier

I met with him for only a few minutes, which was more than I would have expected to spend with a man so sullen and seemingly comprised of tallow and resignation. He had been drinking, heavily. Alcohol fumes blasted from his nostrils, encased us in a cocoon of strong vapors. Still, through all the slovenly and over-worn appearance there was something about him that pulled me into the glue that was his wisdom and authority. He cast a voice of otherworldly quality, one which belied the obvious physical condition of the being before me. He began by telling me to lose the beard, or the pathetic sprout of what may, or may not, grow into a respectable beard.

 

He was aware of the list, but did not mention how he came about this knowledge.  I asked and the response was a barely negligible head shake, coupled with an expression of minor disgust. He clutched at the pockets in his pants and shirt, searching of a cigarette, but found none. I told him I didn’t smoke, which drew a quick, “No. I should have known. Rather than being a fool who kills himself with smokes, you want to be the idiot who runs with the bulls or dives off high cliffs.”

This stunned me, pushed my senses to a place between anger and fear. Fear that this drunk, this unknown person would dare be so familiar with my personal affairs, and speak to me about them.

He continued, “Young men have the will and the ability to do what they want. Very old men are useless, without will, without ability. You, however, are a danger to others and yourself. You have the will, but not the ability. Go revise your list. Stay alive as long as you can.”  Then, he turned and walked away. I have not seen him since.

I did revise the list, removing Pamplona and La Quebrada. If a piece of paper could speak, it would tell me of its disappointment. However, that disappointment would be a fraction of my own. Perhaps a simple solution to be considered is to add one of the items back to the list, but place it at the end. Then, if the man was right, the bucket would be empty when that last item was crossed off.

I have always hated being assigned these cases. With murder, you are handed a folder and, if there is nothing else certain, death is the given. You take the death and work backwards. The missing children cases are like having a huge suitcase full of hope plopped onto your desk. A suitcase that needs to be unzipped and all that hope scooped up and embraced, which you do, as a detective. But, after working a few, there is the inclination to close the eyes and clamp the jaw, at teeth-cracking pressure, while you gently slide that zipper. So often, more often than not, there is nothing but stale air inside, nothing but a big scoop of dead end and it springs out like a powerful jack-in-the-box. That is where you start, at a dead end, but with all the hope that there is still life in that dead end and work towards finding that life.

This particular dead end begins at a park. The entertainment industry has made case investigation look easy. In a movie or TV show there is something convenient, maybe a single, critical item that leads to a quick arrest, and always at the perfect time. Maybe a cigarette butt loaded with the perp’s DNA was flicked onto the parking lot, along with hundreds of others, but this butt is the butt. Perhaps a shoeprint from some oddball foreign sneaker is imprinted in medium density clay so it is near exact, and, of course, the sprinklers in the park just happened to be broken so the shoeprint was preserved, and that shoe is the only one like it in several states and somebody just happens to know who is wearing that oddball foreign shoe. Yeah, I have learned to hate how those detectives always get the suitcase that is brimming with leads and evidence and convenience. I understand it is fiction. It is entertainment and everything has to be wrapped up in an hour or two. The problem is that friends and family of the victims cannot always differentiate between real and pretend. I know, because I have had them in my face, or on the phone, telling me how it is done in Hollywood.     

Sure, we catch a break now and then, but the park was scoured and it was clean. No butts, no shoeprints, no empty drink cans in the trash to fingerprint, no witnesses, no trail for the dogs to sniff, no Hollywood convenience goodies half-hidden like Easter eggs. So, I go there, with my big scoop of dead end and hope to see if I can add to it. Nothing plus anything equals something! That is one of the signs in the coffee room at the station, hung there maybe twenty years ago, to give us another bushel of hope. Someone else, just to rib a rookie who puked at this first dead body scene posted another—S S S. It stands for Sick, Seasoned, Sick. But the joke is really true. The first cases make you physically sick. Then you toughen, get seasoned, until you have had enough and get sick and tired of the whole job.  That is when it is time to call it quits. I’m kind of there, at that third S, but I still have enough competitive edge left in me to stay, to outwit the scum that has attached itself to society.

No one is at the park, it is still cordoned off, but there are plenty of adults walking by on the other side of the street, plenty of kids on bikes and foot, also. Gawkers. Something else Hollywood has done is create an intense curiosity in the average citizen. I walk the perimeter, see nothing, feel nothing. I do my best to evaluate the whole scene as the perv would. I have been good at that my whole career, so good that I am nicknamed Pervis, a combination of Melvin Purvis and pervert. I don’t mind it. It’s a good thing.

I walk park a second time to take photos from all points, and something finally starts perking near a wood fence at the east end, a spot where the parking lot ends along the back side of the fence. From a physical perspective, it would be the best place to do a snatch, easy to get to a car, a little obscure and hidden. I walk around the fence, photograph the shit out of it, both sides. But on the park side I suddenly hear children, very faint. They are happy, almost excited, and they are asking where they are going. I look around, no kids, no other sounds, only those faint voices. I blink, scrunch my eyes tight a couple times. Then there is a low rumble of voice that is rough as dry corn husk. It tells the kids they will have a really fun time, that there will be some surprise treats. The voice is bass, as low as I have ever heard, the kind that tickles the eardrum. The kids giggle, the rough voice says to hurry and come on, so they don’t miss anything. Anything. Right. I take another glance around, both sides of the fence, into the low shrubbery at the left end of the fence, and still there is nothing, nothing but my sick and tired Pervis imagination.

At home, I pour a glass of Jack, take it, and the bottle, to my desk, where I download the photos, to have another quick study before supper. Photo after photo after photo, no AnythingNothing to give me Something. My finger is tired. Tired of clicking a shutter button, tired of clicking a mouse, tired of tapping on my steering wheel and desks, but only a few more pic to look at, so I tap the mouse, click fast to get finished. The last sip of Jack calls. It is bite on my tongue, I swish it around, swallow, feel a tepid flush in my throat.  Over the top of the glass I catch something in one of the last photos that flashed by. I put the glass down, click back and push my face to the monitor. What the… Shadows on the fence. Not just a shadow of me clicking away on the shutter button, but other shadows as well. Shadows from non-existent bodies. A large shadow and a couple little shadows.  Shadows from voices. I have been immune to gooosebumps and shivers for years, till now. I slowly pull back from the screen, still staring at the image, and  can think of nothing, other than refilling my glass, retirement and another banner in the coffee room. We will chase every lead, through the gates of Hell, if necessary! So, I pour and start downing in gulps, thinking, one way or another, how that particular banner may be correct.

I remember the day, not the exact date, but it was in late spring 1964, near dusk, when I looked up and saw it. I saw it, I really did. To me, living in Kansas, it was as odd as aurora borealis. It had been a long day of hard play and several of us, all third and fourth graders, were stretched out on the crisp stubble of grass in our back yard. Mike, Calvin, Russ and Ross—the twins, and Gwen, a girl from Alaska who had moved next door a week earlier. There was no particular conversation. Minds and bodies were too exhausted. Mike mumbled that the Cardinals had won, with Bob Gibson pitching. The twins were chatting, to each other, about what cereal they wanted their mother to buy at the commissary on Sunday. I was quiet until I noticed the sky—half dark, half light. Not black butted up to white, with a straight line of definition, but with the roll of my eyes I could see blue in the west and the darkness of full night in the east, the center having a murky transition. It occurred to me at that point that we must be living on the center of the earth, directly under the center of the sky, maybe the center of the universe, and I said, “Look at the sky. Do you think we live at the middle of the world?” Only Gwen responded, “That’s keen.” I had never heard that word before and asked her what it meant. She explained it was a way to say that something was nice or very, very good. Evidently they said keen lots in Alaska. She was a twig of a girl, pale as clouds with carbon black hair and a huge mouth. She was friendly, but I thought she was extremely ugly and, because of that, hated that word, or the use of it, my entire life. 

None of them answered my question about our spot, right there in Wichita, being the middle of the world. It was also  the spot, that little house on Deerfield Street, where I began to love sports, all sports. Baseball on the radio and television got me started, but listening to the fight between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston hooked me forever, with the excitement and victory of the underdog. Playing sports would eventually dissolve the daily kid play. That was the spot, the home, where my family would all live together for the last time. My father would go to Vietnam in a few weeks. I would be left at my grandmother’s home in West Virginia, while my mother, two brothers and two sisters traveled on to Ohio to live. Ultimately, my question was answered. Any place, every place, can be the middle of something, physical location or otherwise, just as any place or every place can be a starting point or endpoint.