The Shadow Catcher

I take the Book and hold it in my hands. Inside the cover, fixed to the left flyleaf with a piece of tape, dry and brittle as a shed snake-skin, is a Teamster’s Union membership card dated 1946, with a black and white photo of a young black man, a younger version, I recognize, of the old man in Sunrise Hospital, his face slicked with optimism under a hat barely containing his oiled wave of black hair. The card identifies the man as CURTIS EDWARDS, his employer as the PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, and his occupation, PORTER.

Another piece of history slips out from beneath this one — a wallet-size photograph in color, one of those ubiquitous elementary school sittings that rose to popularity in the 1950s. This one’s of a boy, probably eight or ten, all grin, his adult-size teeth too big for his still child-size face, his dress shirt buttoned up to just below his adam’s apple, punctuated by a black bow tie. Across the bottom of the frame, as if to prove its mug shot origins, a black banner with white letters announces, ELKTON ELEM SCHOOL — ELKTON, VIRGINIA.

Next to these two pieces of real evidence, lodged into the gutter of the Book, is a newspaper clipping, the color of toast, folded down the middle, and as I peel it open, carefully, the headline hits me,

BODY OF PENNSYLVANIA MAN

FOUND IN NATIONAL PARK.

Don’t read this, races through my mind, Stop reading this, but my eyes, trained to a page for hours every day, speed over the words that say the body of a Pennsylvania man was discovered in the early morning hours of April 28 in Shenandoah National Park.

The cause of death was apparent suicide.

The body of the man, whose identity has not been revealed, pending notification of the surviving family, was discovered just after dawn yesterday by Mr. Curtis Edwards, a resident of Elkton.

Mr. Edwards, an employee of Pennsylvania Railroad, discovered the body on National Park lands, near the road.

Mr. Edwards, a porter on the transcontinental Pennsylvania Railroad train service, was driving home to surprise his son on his 10th birthday.

“After I called the police, I went back and waited with the body ’til they came,” Mr. Edwards told this paper.

“It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Mr. Edwards and his family live in Elkton.

I guess I’ve sat down on the bed because the next thing I realize Lester is crouching down in front of me asking, “Daughter—? Are you all right?”

I hand him the news clipping and he reads, aloud, all over again, “Body of Pennsylvania man found in national park. The body of a Pennsylvania man was discovered in the early morning hours of April 28 in Shenandoah National Park. The cause of death was apparent suicide.” He seems to read the rest in silence, to himself, before he looks at me. “The ‘Pennsylvania man,’” he says. “—your father?”

I nod, realizing, late, that he’s laid a healing hand on me.

“Our guy stole my father’s wallet,” I say, my voice sounding, even to me, like a shadow of itself. “—why would he do that? — why would anybody do a thing like that?”

Lester’s face lets me know that given who he is and where he comes from he doesn’t understand why people do the things they do, but that they do them, have done them and will continue to act beyond the range of decent social action and that their choices are a brutal fact of life in these united states and I must learn to live with them.

There will be times — and places — for my outrage, but this isn’t one of them.

“He had a son,” I say and pass the picture of the boy to him. “—has a son,” I correct myself, hoping to suggest that it’s my duty, now, to try to find him.

Lester pats my knee and is about to say something when we hear the screen door slam, accompanied by a blast of angry language — is it Spanish? — from the living room.

Lester’s on his feet, heading for the source. I hear a rapid, overlapping dialogue in two competing foreignnesses, one voice shouting at Lester in what I now recognize as Mexican Spanish and Lester speaking back in what I can only guess is Navajo.

When I appear before the two of them, still clutching the Bible, the noise arrests. Then, in English, “—who are jou? — what are jou doin’ in thees house? — where’s Johnny?”

A tiny woman weighing maybe ninety pounds, dressed in a cotton nightgown and a flannel robe, her hair still bedhead, sits in a motorized wheelchair, shoeless, one foot lividly discolored and the other one replaced by a pink prosthesis.

With one hand she operates the joystick on her wheelchair, caroming back and forth in short, small spurts, threatening Lester with a cane that she wields with her other hand, jabbing at him, repeatedly, in the chest, as he backs up, hands above his head.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“—jo Mendoza. — jo landlady. — how did jou get in here? — where is Johnny?”