Sixers Review

The Death of Zorro

            He had seen his children, his loving wife was at his side. He was an old man, he was happy and fulfilled, and for a week now without pain he had been in the process of dying.

            Twice, once in the late night, once in the morning just before dawn, he had left his body, floating effortlessly along the ceiling as the monitors went off and the nurse ran in flipping dials and switches, which brought him down to just above and then back inside the old man lying white and closed-eyed on the bed.

            He had seen no tunnel or loved ones waiting in the light, perhaps he had not gone far enough, the ceiling had blocked him in, but he knew for certain now that Warren had been right, that death was not really death but a kind of second, better life, and he was eager to see his fallen brothers-in-arms.

            And Sandra, whom death had taken early, who would be radiant, red-cheeked and young.

            “Dear?”

            Under the strictures of any religion worth the name, he had committed a mortal sin, but he felt only joy!

            “Drake?”

            The republic was at peace, at last there was justice, racial harmony, full employment. The ideals of the Roosevelts, Adlai Stevenson, King, Medgar Evers, Dag Hammarskjöld, JFK and Robert Kennedy had triumphed in the end . . . .

            And he’d played a part, in a secret way—a way no one but his wife would ever know—he had helped bring it about. His life had been worth it.

            “Are you all right, dear?”

            He felt Laura grip his hand and he opened his eyes. He could see her kindly face, though he felt that he was looking up through hazy warm water, like bath water milky with soap.

            “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m going to think about the call.”

            “The call?” she said softly, with concern. She leaned close, so her face nearly touched the surface of the white water.

            “The day the call came,” he said. It was all he could manage.

            It wasn’t water, because he could hear clearly, he was breathing. When he spoke, his words didn’t wobble upward in bubbles, like that time 50 years ago, when he’d suffered the sudden breakdown at the office, after Reagan was re-elected . . . .

            “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Think about it if you want. I’ll be right here.”

            He closed his eyes.

            He was crossing the red-tiled patio of the big Spanish house on Corona Street as he heard the remembered words—it was an experienced, cultured, slightly weary and impatient older man’s voice, speaking inside his ear.

            It was Anthony Hopkins, the actor:

            “There’s an old saying: ‘When the pupil is ready, the master appears.’ If you want to kill this man, I can help you think, move, and gain revenge with honor.”

            Successful, youngish for 56, and suddenly at leisure, his head still full of the wonderful old movie, estate attorney Drake Jackson stepped through the Mexican kitchen with the bag of Dryer’s vanilla ice cream and the chocolate syrup.

            The kids were gone for the weekend, up to the lake with the Murphys. Sepia, early 21st century California light spilled through the blinds.

            “Is that you, Drake?”

            “Sorry,” he answered, then took a bold, high-booted step and in a deep Spanish baritone announced suddenly,  “It’s . . . Zorro!”

            With a flourish, cutting a flashing Z on the air with an invisible foil, he stood in the doorway to the den.

            He bowed, lowering the sword.

            “At your service.”

            “Where’s your mask?” Laura smiled from the sofa.

            “Between the box spring and mattress,” he joked, he felt energized as he turned back to the kitchen to make the two sundaes.

            Last night, on disc, they’d watched the old ’90s film with Antonio Banderas in the lead.

            Love and Right were a heady combination, a grand passion Drake had lost the savor of. As the movie played, he’d heard a bugle trilling at his ear, echoing from a far distance, from the golden and forsaken sunlit country of youth.

            Spooning the ice cream, he felt like watching the movie again, then going back to bed.

            “Drake?”

            “What’s that, Senorita?” he said over his shoulder, opening the cupboard to get the candy sprinkles.

            Now Laura stood in the door.

            In a different way, she was as gorgeous as Zorro’s raven beauty. He loved her shaped haircut, the bright smooth blonde strands flecked with silver.

            “You got a call.”

            “Did you say you and I had moved away?” he said happily. “Don Diego lives here now. He retires in six months.”

            “Do you know somebody named Zeke?”

            He dropped both bowls on the tile counter, the earthenware exploding and throwing fragments.

            He looked forward at the open cupboard. All the dishes and cups and glasses ticked, ready to vaporize.

            “Honey?” Laura stared at him. “What’s wrong?”

            “He leave a message?” He could barely get the words out.

            “Hardly,” Laura said. “Just a number.” They spoke across the scattered floor. “Who is he?”

            “Is that all he said? To call him?” Now his ears buzzed, he tasted something sour.

            “Drake, you’re scaring me.” Her eyes were wide, looking into his. “You all right? You take your pill?”

            “Where’d you put the number?” he said after a moment.

            “By the phone.”

            He stepped through the shards, slipped past Laura and into the living room. He took the notepad beside the phone and went down the hall to their bedroom.

            It was a stranger’s hall, a foreign bedroom. He closed the door.

            He sat down on the bed, took four deep breaths, then held out his hand to check its steadiness. His hand trembled, not like Zorro’s. He turned it over, saw the dim whitish scar like a stitch mark at the heel.

            In a bright flash, he saw the dappled woods, smelled hot sun on fallen needles, now heard in the June distance the drone of a yellow wasp, as he intoned the single awful word spoken in unison by the intense solemn youthful voices a lifetime ago, so his throat moved with the memory:            

            “Swear.”

            With a shaky finger he pushed the numbers like a code.

            The phone rang once, he’d let it ring again, then hang up.

            “Drake?”

            “Zeke?” It was like a dead man talking. He hadn’t heard the voice in 35 years.

            “Drake,” Zeke said. “Warren’s here.”

            “Warren?” He gripped the phone. The curtained room seemed suddenly darker. They’d agreed to separate, the three of them stay clear of each other and wait.

            “Did you see the news tonight?”

            “No,” he said. He waited. “No, I didn’t.”

            “He announced.”

            “Announced?”

            “He’s running.”

            “Christ.” He felt his stomach rise and turn over.

            Without thinking about it, subconsciously, he’d stayed clear of the newspapers and TV for the last week.

            “Can you meet Warren and me?”

            “It’s been years,” he said. “You can’t be—”

            “Have you followed his history?”

            There was no give in Zeke. It was a ’60s thing, like the woods. He was adamant.

            “Somewhat,” he lied automatically, in his neutral unflappable wealthy tax attorney’s bullshit voice. He looked down at his buff loafers as Zeke summarized, mostly things he’d already known or suspected.

            He’d cringed over the years, when some story would hint at an irregularity or worse and then each time quickly die. Each time, with a thrill, as if he bit down on foil that ignited a filling, he’d known it was true. He’d remembered Zeke and Warren, thought of them reading the news, thinking.

            The last six weeks things had heated up. Calls for a draft, Native Son.

            “Same stuff,” Zeke said. “The girl, over and over.”

            The girl, the girl, the girl. Sandra. Sandra Potts, 20. He touched his forehead.

            “Anyway, we don’t have any choice.”

            “What do you mean?” It was scary. Zeke was crazy.

            “Warren thinks he’s been tailed.”

            “What about the phone?” he shot back.

            “I’m on a secured line, Warren set it up.”

            “What about mine?” He heard his voice rise an octave.

            “It would light up here, if it were bugged. Can you meet us?”

            “Meet?”

            “Drake?” Zeke said softly. “You want out? There’s no shame.”

            “Out?”

            “Yes or no. There’s no time to waste. If you’re out, we ask one thing, as former friends. Forget you ever knew us. You owe us that much, given what’s at stake.”

            Given what’s at stake . . . .  His throat tightened to the edge of spasm. In the woods, after graduation, under a coast redwood they’d each made a slit with Zeke’s camping knife at the heel of the palm, then joined blood as they swore to stake their lives.

            He was a better man then, at 21.

            “Where?” Someone else said it, a ghost.

            “San Francisco. We’ll pick you up at the airport.”

            “You’re going ahead?”

            “Everyone’s locked in, nowhere to go. It has to be.”

            Has to be . . . .

            “Warren’s been keeping tabs. He’ll fill you in. It’s ugly, uglier than—”

            “When do you want me to come?” he said suddenly. He didn’t want Zeke to say Sandra’s name.

            “Can you come tonight?”

            “Tonight? You guys realize what this is going to do—”

            “If you want out, say it now.”

            “No, I don’t want out,” he said, bucking up. Goddamn it, no.

            When their blood had mixed in tree shadow, somehow it had been the blood of Martin, Bobby and John, Salvador Allende, of the kids at Kent State, Jackson State—of everyone who believed, alive or dead. It was black and white, one side or the other.            

            Anyway, it had been coming for years.

            Lately, that’s why he’d been all geared up. The Zorro thing had been a cover, a “displacement” for something rising in his guts. That’s what Dr. Barnes would say. He felt better now, resigned. It was fated, from the first.

            “I’ll book the first flight, then call you back.”

            He sat for a moment on his bed. It was done. A done deal. It was the most important call he’d ever made.

            Call to Action. Call to Arms, he thought, Call to Death?

            There went his life with Laura. And the kids, the kids, and then he thought of Sandra again, saw her smart pretty face. She’d been two years older than Tom was now, three years older than Molly.

            He called the airport, then Zeke, who said, “We’ll be there.”

            He was packing a bag when Laura came in.

            “Drake, you tell me right now what’s going on.”

            He dropped the shirt into the case and went to her, taking her in his arms.

            “I love you with all my heart.”

            “Whatever it is, we can work it out—” She was trembling. “Dr. Barnes—”

            “Dr. Barnes can’t help with this.” He led her to the bed, sat her down, then held her hands in his. Now he felt only calm.

            Then he jumped up, he stepped into the bathroom and turned on the fan, the faucet, then came back.

            He didn’t speak, looking long and deep into Laura’s face.

            “What’s going on? Drake!” She said it sharply, as if to wake him from a trance.

            “It’s Zeke Tandy.”

            “Who’s he?”

            “I haven’t seen or heard from him since school, undergraduate.”

            Laura waited, gripping both his hands.

            “Zeke and a boy named Warren Taylor and I were friends, on the same floor, in the dormitory.”

            He saw it all again, the curtained room with the piles of books and records, the posters of Dylan and Hendrix and famous writers and American Indian chiefs tacked to the walls, the long-haired boys in jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts sitting on the floor, Warren’s wire-rimmed glasses. Now he caught the sandalwood scent of Kashmiri incense masking the strong graham cracker smell of hashish from Afghanistan as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang “Four Dead in Ohio!”

            “They were smart, I mean smart. Zeke was going to be a radical Thoreauvian

political philosopher, Warren a Jungian and paranormal psychiatrist. I was going to be a civil rights lawyer—

            “Anyway, we were really close, through the anti-war thing, the changes that were happening—”

            He stopped, taking a breath.

            “For a while, there was another boy. He was student body president, very ambitious, very smooth, very tight with the administration. A phony liberal with a razor cut. For some reason he tried to attach himself to us, always hanging around, listening, gleaning information and ideas that would turn up in his essays, the teachers would praise him up and down. He won some award. Warren was sure he had political ambitions.”

            He shook his head with disbelief. “Warren was right.”

            “So?”

            The fan hummed. He looked his wife in her blue eyes.

            “His name was Paul Atherton.”

            “The Paul Atherton?”

            He nodded. “All these years I’ve watched his progress.”

            “All what years?” Laura drew back.

            “I’d get chills, but I never said anything.” He glanced down at the flowered bedspread. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it.”

            “Think about what, other than he’s a right-wing creep and everyone loves him?” Laura grinned, relieved. “I hate that jerk.”

            “That’s it, in a nutshell. Creepy. And more.”

            “What more, Drake?” Laura frowned, watching him.

            “District attorney, congressman. Interim senator—”

            “I know that,” she said impatiently.

            “Atherton announced for president today.”

            He slipped his right hand from Laura’s, then scratched at the gold and yellow bedspread with a fingernail.

            “I guess I’ve been expecting it. Since Granger pulled out when the bribe thing surfaced. A part of me has.”

            “I don’t understand,” Laura said. She turned toward the open suitcase. “Granger was good on the issues, but a crook. Let’s face it. It’s another disappointment but we’ll get over it. Life goes on. This isn’t the Reagan thing again.”

            “In school, Zeke and Warren and I—Warren was the first—began to get suspicious, about little things. Stuff missing, then minor fights we’d get into. Later we’d find out Atherton had whispered in someone’s ear, some little lie. But always malicious.” He curled his lip. “Always cruel, like a fish hook.”            

            Laura shook her head so her hair swung. “You’re not making sense.”

            “He stole a term paper, accused another boy, a boy named Brusque, of cheating. The guy was expelled. We cut Atherton off, tried to help Brusque but it wasn’t any use. Warren used to say that Atherton was certifiable.”

            “So what else is new? This is silly,” Laura said. “Is this is a joke?”  She started to get up. “The water’s running.”

            He took her wrist, pulling her down. He gripped her other wrist.
            “Drake, you’re hurting me!”

            “Listen to me.” He let up the pressure, then went on. “My senior year, a girl I knew from class, a girl Warren had lost to Atherton, came up missing.”

            “Missing?”

            “She was never found. Independently, Zeke, Warren, and I thought Atherton was responsible.”

            “But you told the police,” Laura blurted, “surely they—”

            “There was nothing definite.” Now his throat was scratchy. He touched his eye. “Her name was Sandra, Sandra Potts. But Atherton had an alibi.”

            “But you don’t know—”

            “This wonderful, innocent, beautiful, brilliant girl.” He turned his head.

            “Were you in love with her? Is that it? That’s a long time ago, Drake.”

            “I don’t know. I guess we all were,” he acknowledged. “We put it together, it was circumstantial, but in our guts we knew, we knew. We went to the police. By the time it was over, Warren was booked on Murder Two. Zeke and I were detained as material witnesses.”

            “You never told me this.”

            He felt Laura studying his face, as if to gauge his innocence, his stability. Was it happening again, out of the blue, like when Reagan won the second time and started Star Wars?

            He could almost hear her thinking. Even with the fan and faucet the house was still.

            “The note in Sandra’s copy of the Iliad, her stained back pack in the tree outside Warren’s room, a motel receipt Atherton left on Zeke’s stereo—”

            He rubbed his forehead.

            “It was as if each shred of proof had been dropped for us to pick up, as if Atherton knew we’d suspect him and he’d left a trail of breadcrumbs, like in some damn Hitchcock movie. He turned it all around, ended up as the bereaved boyfriend.”

            “Are you serious?”

            “He used Sandra to get sympathy, made a big scene with her parents at the funeral. He brought it up in his run for San Francisco D.A., victims’ rights, that was his thing. Warren was lucky it didn’t go to trial, that the senior prosecutor took another look and dropped it. It ruined Warren’s career, Duke and Johns Hopkins pulled their fellowship offers. Hell, I got grilled when I applied to law school.”

            “You’re saying the presidential candidate is a murderer?”

            Laura’s voice echoed in the dark room.

            “He’s framed some people, I’m sure of that, probably Granger.”

            “Now, Drake—”

            “And before, that guy Rogers, the one he ran against the first time for congress? The scandal with the young boy? Five years ago, a young woman, Atherton’s press secretary, was found floating in the Potomac. Her throat was cut.”

            “I don’t remember that—”

            “The alleged kickback scheme and the investigative reporter who died of an overdose, like Abbie Hoffman—” His voice began to rise. “No one can touch him. I mean, the man’s a monster, another Hitler!”

            “I don’t believe this,” Laura said. She closed her eyes, dropping her head against her chest.

            He squeezed her hand. “I took an oath.”

            Laura stared at him. “What oath? As a lawyer?”

            “Did you ever see the program on the young wealthy German officers, the ones who plotted?”

            Laura’s face was blank.

            “There was one,” he said, now his voice shook, “one who went to his father’s estate. He told his father that he was going to make an attempt to shoot Hitler the next day, this might be the last time he and his father would meet. He asked his father for advice. The old man looked out the window, then said, ‘Of course. There’s no choice. You’ve got to do it.’”

            “Oh, Drake!” Laura threw her arms around his shoulders, gripping his back. “Drake, this is crazy. No more news, no TV. Was it the movie, the Zorro thing, last night?”

            “He’s diabolical,” he said. “Zeke said Warren may have been tailed.”

            She took her head from his shoulder. “You think he might pressure you, to keep you quiet?”

            “I know it sounds unreal.”

            “Of course it is. Drake,” she said calmly. Now she touched his hand. “I’m going to call Dr. Barnes. He can give you something stronger. We’ll catch it early this time.”

            He stopped her now, raising a hand as he cocked his ear.

            Below the whine of the fan, something creaked.

            “Drake— You stop this now.”

            He went to the window, cracked the curtain.

            “Drake?”

            A young muscular man who looked like a swimmer, with a blonde crewcut, dressed in a black suit and a black polo shirt, moved crouched along the stucco fence beyond the blue tile pool.

            Drake turned back, motioning to Laura, picking up the paper notepad and slipping it into his pocket.

            She hesitated, stepping back, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall, back through the living room where he got the car keys off the table, then turned to the cellar stairs.

            He shut the door, threw the bolt, led her down and flipped off the light.

            “Drake?”

            “Wait,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips.

            In the dark he heard footsteps overhead.

            He climbed up on the workbench, took a hammer from the rack, then hoisted Laura up when she tried to turn away. He lifted the window, pushed her through, crawled out after her into the flowerbed of red chrysanthemums.

            He gripped her hand so she couldn’t run away. They crept with backs bent around the corner of the house.

            Through the kitchen window he saw a gray-haired man with a drawn gun standing by the stove. Laura saw him too.

            He thought about the car, then pulling Laura’s hand he hurried to the back fence and eased open the gate.

             If I had a hammer . . . .  It’s a good day to die . . . .

            It was good to be back. He was in it again, after falling away.

            “The neighbors, call the police?” Laura whispered.

            If you want to kill this man, I can help you think, move, and gain revenge with honor.

            “Come on,” he said, squeezing the hammer’s cushioned grip like the hilt of a sword.

            Hand in hand, like the masked, caped Spaniard and his black-haired beauty, they ran down the alley, as if they raced through time instead of space, through the lengthening shadow of November 7, Election Day.

            He dropped the hammer, flagging down an approaching city bus . . . .

            When the pupil is ready, the master appears.

            “Zorro!” he nearly shouted as Sandra and Zeke and Warren rose and clustered about him.

            “Yes, my love,” Laura said, down through the white water, smiling, gripping his hand, then turning it over in hers. “Zorro.”

            With a bright fingertip, gently, on his thin palm she traced a large Z.

Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley and earned degrees from UC Santa Cruz and theUniversity of Montana. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and a citation in its Joseph Henry Jackson competition. Hanson’s short stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Long Story, Short Story, South Dakota Review, Starry Night Review and other literary journals. He has farmed and taught and now runs a writing/editing business with his wife, Vicki, in San Luis Obispo, California.