Wintertide: A Novel Read online

  WINTERTIDE

  by

  Debra Doxer

  WINTERTIDE

  Copyright © 2013 by Debra Doxer

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To my family...Thank you for everything.

  Table of Contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty one

  epilogue

  one

  I killed someone.

  I think of him often, much more than I did before I killed him. You'd be surprised by what goes through your mind after you've taken a life. I’ve found that inherently evil killers, career criminals, don't react that way, and I certainly don't include myself in that group. I really don't consider myself to be a bad person. Although, who does? Maybe sometimes, when you’re immersed in the moment, the line between right and wrong simply isn't clear. I know not everyone would agree. Perhaps you have to experience a stark, naked, moment of choice, to understand the pressures that can affect your sense of right and wrong, good and bad, in that instant that seems so pivotal.

  My name is Daniel Hiller. I’m a true crime writer. I'm especially fascinated by those who admit to taking the lives of others. I've interviewed many of these incarcerated killers and I've searched for qualities in these men and women that I might possess. I didn’t have to look far to find one. It’s the mask of normalcy, a calm exterior that hides the truth within. Much like myself, nothing obvious sets them apart. They're the sort of people you meet every day. One major difference is that these incarcerated criminals killed people who mattered. I did not. No one gave a damn about the person I murdered.

  It's hard to know where to begin my own story. There were so many events, most of which seemed inconsequential at the time, that made me the person I was that night. I was a boy who felt that his entire future was at stake. How had it come to that? I still have a hard time fitting the pieces together, seeing the way they appeared to mesh so convincingly that night and so many terrible nights before it.

  I grew up in a small town on Cape Cod called South Seaport. Cape Cod is generally thought of as a seasonal place filled with tourists in the summer, a peninsula covered in sand dunes, peppered with sprawling resorts and lush, green golf courses, crowded with happy families on vacation. For three months out of the year, it is exactly like that. But for the other nine months, South Seaport is just like any other small, poor American town. Or maybe it's just a bit more bleak because it has those warm, bustling, colorful months for people to long for during the endless, grey winter stretches.

  The year-rounders don't own most of the glorious seaside homes. The permanent residents of South Seaport have been there for many generations in their small clapboard houses set just far enough back from the narrow winding roadways. Driving through town, you can see tiny yellow-petaled windmills decorating lawns, automobiles in various states of disrepair resting on cement blocks in driveways, and the weather-worn faces of residents simply trying to scrape together enough cash to carry them through to the summer and the arrival of the tourists with their large wallets.

  Winter on Cape Cod is unpredictable. It can be balmy and uneventful or its frozen winds can cut and chafe without mercy. Most winters are a combination of both, the calms giving you just enough time to recover before the next onslaught arrives. I used to think the razor-sharp, winter winds were nature's payback for the beautiful days of June through August. I don't believe in paybacks anymore.

  From the time I was old enough to see my parents as they really were, my goal became to leave South Seaport. My father was a construction foreman. He started off as an independent carpenter, but he took a job with a large company when he finally admitted that surviving on his own was impossible. When the weather allowed, he was busy helping to erect bigger and more elaborate homes for the wealthy seasoners. In the snowy months, business was slow. Dad had to get a part-time job with an insurance agency for some of the winter season. He hated every minute of it, and he took no pains to keep that fact a secret. It was my mother who made him sell insurance every winter because they needed the money. I remember those fights well.

  My mother never had a paying job. I was her life. I am her only child, all the more precious to her because after she had me, there were complications and she could have no more children. I don't believe she had any other interests. Being the center of my mother's world was both unpleasant and uncomfortable. I withstood it with clench-jawed silence, all the time working to avoid her while not hurting her fragile feelings.

  As far as I could tell, my parents were not happy. I'm not sure if they ever were. They are smiling in their wedding pictures, but everyone smiles in pictures. I would like to believe that they loved each other at one time, but a happy woman does not bestow all her attention and affection upon her son unless she receives neither of those things from her husband. I gave them both what they wanted from me. I allowed my father to ignore me and my mother to dote on me, the entire time thinking how wretched their lives were.

  Somewhere along the way I began to associate my parents’ unhappiness, and my own, with the town of South Seaport itself. I saw the job my father hated and the life my mother didn't have. I noticed their friends who seemed to be no better off than they were. I saw the kids that I went to school with, especially Eddie, and I could clearly imagine all of their lives ending up the way my parents’ had. I decided not me. I was going to leave South Seaport. I wasn't going to live there the rest of my life.

  I received a half tuition scholarship to a large university in Boston. My parents gave me what money they could, which wasn't much. I worked for the rest during the summers and throughout the school year. I left for college after senior year and suddenly I was in the city, with all sorts of people, most of whom seemed fairly exotic to someone who had spent their entire life in a small New England town. I decided to be a pre-law major, mainly because it sounded impressive. It meant being in school three more years after undergraduate studies. It also meant freedom from South Seaport.

  I believe I was the only university student who dreaded vacations. As each break loomed before me, I would scramble anxiously for the means to stay in Boston over the weeks of Christmas and summer. I got odd jobs and roomed with college friends in old run-down apartments. Even the worst roach-infested places seemed better than going home to the fights and the hopelessness. My mother was very upset when I remained at school over the breaks. I found it was much easier to refuse her pleas by telephone, an act I was never able to follow through with in her presence.

  For a year and a half my plan was successful. I managed to go back to the Cape for only a day here and there, merely hours, and never overnight, hardly time to see much of anyone. Then I would have to rush back to school. I never intended to return for a longer stretch. But toward the end of the fall semester of my second year, my carefully laid plans for the Christmas break slowly began to unravel. I had to work during those weeks to earn money
for the next semester. That was a given. At the last moment the friends I had planned to room with pulled out, and the job I had lined up fell through. The dorms were closed for break, and I certainly couldn't afford an apartment on my own.

  I remember dashing down to the job board at school the last week of finals. I copied down every listing there and made several hours worth of telephone calls, but at that late date all the positions were filled. There was one prominent posting that I did not want to inquire about. It was a job that my eyes kept wearily returning to as every other available option seemed to evaporate. A professor who resided in Hyannis was looking for a student who lived on Cape Cod to work for him at his house over the break as a research assistant. The pay was unusually high for the position. I began to weigh the options. Not working for three weeks until school started again wouldn’t make or break me. I already had two work study jobs lined up for next semester. But it wasn’t in my makeup to do nothing for three weeks when I knew I could use the extra money, and Mom had been leaving messages all week about my coming home for Christmas.

  I recognized the professor's name, Professor Sheffield. I had him for a creative writing class last year. He gave me a B which was a decent grade for his class. I thought Professor Sheffield looked and sounded exactly like Burl Ives. I expected him to break into a rendition of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” each morning as class was beginning. He had a reputation for being eccentric. Although, I wasn’t sure how. To me, he seemed otherworldly. He smoked a pipe and wore tweed jackets. His thin white hair and beard were always trimmed neatly. He smelled of tobacco and peppermints, which he always kept in his pocket or in a nearby ashtray. The wrapped candies would crinkle slightly every time his wrinkled hand found its way into his coat pocket. I began to think that while spending time working with him, his aura might rub off on me.

  I was looking for some positive rationale for my returning home for three whole weeks. But really, it was very late, and probably that position had already been filled like all the others. I decided that if the job was available, then it was meant to be. If not, I would remain in the city and scramble for a place to stay.

  But the position was available, and fate was already beginning to conspire against me.

  I packed a duffel bag and glanced around my sparse dormitory room. Three weeks wasn't really all that long. I recalled the last Christmas I’d spent at home, two years ago. Dad drank too much, and Mom pretended she couldn't hear his petty complaints about the holidays as she arranged the feast she’d been cooking all day on the kitchen table. We sat in silence, and the next morning I opened my gifts. I received some shirts and socks. But apparently one present was missing. My mother kept telling me to look under the tree. There was something else. But there wasn't.

  She turned suddenly accusing eyes on my father. He grumbled, lifted himself from the sofa with a grunt and walked out of the room. She chased after him, asking the back of his head what happened to the check from her sister. What I could surmise from their angry, elevated voices, was that my aunt in Pennsylvania had sent me a large check to put toward college. Dad forged my name and cashed it. He paid off some bills with the money, yelling that if he’d allowed the truck to be repossessed, he'd be out of a job.

  Mom cried and yelled until he finally stormed out of the house. I left a few minutes later and stayed away all day. That night, as I lay awake in bed staring at the shadows on my ceiling, I heard my dad's truck pull into the driveway. I listened to his footsteps on the walkway, the front door creaking open, the familiar sound of his heavy construction boots ascending the stairs. He knocked on my bedroom door and slowly entered the room. He stuck out his hand and placed three hundred dollars in cash on my blanket. He said that it was left over from the money my aunt had sent. I picked it up mutely, and he walked out. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

  two

  I departed at the last possible moment. The campus was deserted. The janitors were beginning to make the rounds of the dormitories checking to see that everyone was out before they locked up the buildings. I boarded a bus to Hyannis. I was one of only five passengers. The two hour ride was uneventful. The tall, shiny buildings disappeared, and the land flattened out into long stretches of brown grass and leaf-bare trees. We rode over the Sagamore Bridge, and I peered down at the Cape Cod Canal. The water flowed smoothly and slowly beneath us. A broken, jagged film of ice lined the edges of the waterway. Heavy barges inched their way toward their destinations.

  The bus turned into the parking lot that served as the local station. The other passengers stood, stretching their legs and collecting their bags. I waited until everyone had departed before making my own way to the exit. My mother was waiting to pick me up in her beat-up brown Buick. I spotted her immediately. She was bundled in her blue ski jacket and had on a white wool cap and gloves. Her baggy, khaki pants were tucked into rubber fisherman boots. Her face lit up when I stepped off the bus into the chilled, salty air. She had to stand on tiptoe when she reached out her arms to embrace me. She looked the same as when I had last seen her during that brief visit in August, a bit heavier maybe. Her curly, grey hair peaked out from under the bottom and sides of her cap. Her nose and soft wrinkled cheeks were ruddy and flushed. Her pale blue eyes, which mirrored my own, sparkled to life when she spotted me. I swallowed the guilt I felt clogging my throat.

  "Oh, Daniel," she said, already chastising me, "why didn’t you wear your heavy winter coat? You'll freeze to death. You remember how cold it can get here. Come on now, get in the car quickly. We'll just have to dig out one of your old coats when we get home. You're so grown-up looking. I can hardly believe it.”

  The interior of the car smelled like cigarettes. The vinyl seats were split open in several places. The radio was gone, having been stolen years ago. The ashtray was pulled open overflowing with old butts and candy wrappers. "I thought you said Dad quit smoking?"

  Mom pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. "Well, you know your father," she said with a sigh.

  It was a simple enough statement. The thing was, I didn't know my father at all.

  As the car moved slowly toward our house, my college world, the one into which I had so fervently immersed myself, began to slowly fade away. I groped for it as we moved down the narrow wooded road, recalling my dormitory room, my friends, the term paper that ruled my life for weeks. They all seemed distant and fleeting. Reality was South Seaport again. That drowning feeling, suffocation and entrapment all inexplicably rushed in on me. I knew I would leave again in a few weeks, but it didn't matter in that moment. The distance I had put between myself and this small town, both physical as well as mental, was slipping away with each mile of road the car covered.

  As Mom drove toward home, I found myself giving her a lifeless account of the past semester. I also absently agreed to get a haircut, to search for my old winter coat, and to help her pick out a Christmas tree.

  "Of course, if that professor needs you to come work for him on those days, then you'll just have to take the car and do that. I'll make do without it."

  I turned toward her. Her eyes were on the road. "I'm not sure how often Professor Sheffield is going to want me. It could be several days a week. I told him I needed all the hours I could get."

  "Don't worry. I understand. All I'm saying is that this is your vacation, and your father and I hardly get to see you at all. We just want to spend as much time as possible with you, Daniel.”

  My stomach churned.

  Our street looked the same. The house was the same. I thought that I could probably leave and not come back for at least one hundred years and the house and the entire block would remain exactly the same. Dad's truck wasn't in the driveway when we arrived. I felt relieved.

  The small, weather-worn clapboard house with its squat, square windows and red door was badly in need of a painting. The molding was nearly gone, and small speckles of white paint clung lifelessly to the grey wood. The ground was littered with paint flakes. It hadn'
t snowed yet this season, and the burnt yellow grass was matted flat to the dirt. The sky was a low leaden curtain. I couldn't have conjured up a bleaker image if I’d tried.

  Mom emerged from the car happily and made a good show of trying to lift my large duffel bag from the back seat.

  "Mom, please stop. It's too heavy."

  She moved aside so I could reach in. "All right I give up. I just don't want you to have to work, that's all. It's your vacation."

  As I followed her up the cement path to the front door, I made a sweeping motion with my arm and said, "I love what you've done with the place. It looks great."

  She put the key in the hole and turned to me curiously, seeming surprised. "Well your father's been very busy. I've been after him to paint the house."

  I immediately felt badly. "I'm kidding. Everything looks the same. That's all I meant."

  Our house originally belonged to my grandparents, my mother’s parents, who had redecorated the interior during the sixties. When my parents took the house over, they didn’t change a thing, not the green rugs or the gold and beige furniture, not the white and yellow kitchen with the curled and scuffed linoleum flooring. The whole place smelled damp and musty, as though no one had bothered to open a window in years.

  As my mother instructed, I brought my bag up to my bedroom. The same old pictures lined the narrow upstairs hallway. I saw myself at different ages and Mom and Dad when they were younger. There were no recent photographs of them. The last picture taken of me was in high school.

  My room was just as I had left it. In the far corner stood a dark wooden dresser and a night stand. Under the window, my bed was neatly made with a crochet spread my mother had sewn. There was the plastic Godzilla poised atop my bookshelf next to my long discarded comic books. I threw my bag down on the bed and peered out the window. I could see the dense woods across the lane. When I couldn’t sleep I would go and sit out there, sometimes alone, sometimes not.