No Name Corpse
By UC Poika
Copyright as Smashwords Edition 2012
Chapter 1
Accident
Midway Drive was dark and the streetlights seemed more of a hindrance than an aid, as James R. Tuisins made his way into the night along the large lake shore four lane. He never saw him. He never knew the pain that drove him. But, all the same a man lunged into his lane from the cement that made up the lakeside sidewalk to Jimmy's right, ending his life with a thud, well buried in the noise of city life.
Jimmy wouldn't have stopped but the blood on his windshield looked like nothing else as it smeared in his windshield wipers, and his engine fan began making a strange noise.
“What did I hit?” he said as he reached to the center post of his steering mechanism, pulled out the little red plastic tab labeled EMERGENCY, and opening his door was startled by the car horn of a passing Pinto, which had barely seen his flashers in the wet nighttime.
He couldn't see anything at first. It was raining a bit more now, and the heavy drizzle coated blacktop shined in the streetlights just as the one near him flickered and went out. When he started to get back in the car the red lights of the police lit up the night as their siren, well heard above the noise of the traffic, blared in his ears, felt as much as heard at this distance and the cop car soon parked right behind his.
“What is the problem here?” one of the officers wanted to know.
“I could've sworn I hit something,” Jimmy said.
“Something big, by the looks of that dent and broken grill,” the cop said touching the bumper, a moment. “Yeah, you hit something, a deer probably, but it must have been one big bugger to do that much damage.”
Jimmy was surprised he hadn't really noticed the damage before; he had been so concerned about what he had hit. How could he have missed it? His poor car!
As Jimmy accompanied the policeman back to the cop car Jimmy looked up at the rain as it seemed to swirl as it fell, reminiscent of snow in a storm with largely variable winds. Then sitting in the backseat of the car he was struck by the way the rain beads up on the window, before the memory of the blood on his windshield came back to him, strangely, and unwanted.
The cop handed him his driver's license back, as the other cop got in, leaned over and seemed almost to whisper in his partner's ear something obviously very important.
“Right! Uh, Mr. Tuisins, how well do you know another man named James Robinson Twosins?” the first cop he met asked.
“I- I don't think I ever heard of him.”
The interrogation was short and sweet because not only had Jimmy not noticed whatever he hit, but a witness had seen James Robinson Twosins leap into the road just as Jimmy had come along. Why Jimmy? No one knew, but it was clear it was nothing personal; if one can actually commit suicide and it, not be personal to anyone it touches.
“What did I hit?” Jimmy asked, after they told him, he was free to go,
“That is not your problem, Mr. Tuisins. We'll take care of everything,” the second cop said to Jimmy as an ambulance arrived, its lights flashing, but with its siren oddly not present.
“What do we have here?” the EMT asked one of the officers.
“Nothing really, just some damn Indian jumped in front of a car,” the first cop said.
Both the second cop and the EMT were silent with the EMT looking at Jimmy, who had not had any inkling the corpse was a Native and apparently male, but more importantly to Jimmy, the cop was prejudiced as hell. But like the other cop and the EMT, he got back in his car and never said a word.
“Damn cop!” Jimmy said as he hit the windshield washer button despite the rain flooding the entire window with fluid. “He's what you would probably call a 'nigger' in the woodpile,” he added feeling clever because he did so as he drove in silence, not proud of his reaction in the least. Finally he reached into the front window and looked up at the rain, still swirling down, and said, “I wonder what he was like,” not proud he had not really considered it before.
Then he saw it, for the first time. What it was, Jimmy was not sure. It had arms and legs like a man, and even what looked like a staff or a spear with a large feather hanging from it.
“What the hell is that?” he asked as he slammed on his breaks hard enough to go into a skid, for he would have hit it had it not disappeared before his car got to it.
Chapter 2
Killer
Morning fog found Jimmy driving near the lake on Midway Drive again after a single swipe of the windshield wipers had cleared the way for him to see where he was going, well, as far as anyone actually could see that morning. He had been distracted by the nearly black splatters and dark brown ring around his windshield, but a second time through the car wash had taken care of it as far as he could tell. But when sunshine hit it just right, Jimmy was almost certain he could see the splatters revealed as if they had been made on a sunny day. They were somehow a darker shade of the same color than the rest of the hood, and an almost constant distraction as he rode into the sun that day.
“What happened to you?” a man buying a paper out of a box in front of a favorite convenience store asked. “That must have been one helluva deer!”
Jimmy just walked right on by without saying a word, looking at the damaged front end in the light of day, amazed there had been so much damage and yet his car still went as if it had not been in an accident, except for the nagging sound of the blades of its fan making racket as they continually struck some unknown object under the hood near the radiator, if not the radiator itself. If that was the case, he knew, it would not be long until it leaked antifreeze, but for the present there was not even the slightest odor of coolant, and Jimmy was glad about that, but relieved would have probably expressed the situation a little better, he felt as he walked clear to the back of the store to get a can of pop, some gourmet popcorn in the aisle he took back to the front, and a chocolate bar at the counter.
As he scanned each item the clerk asked, “Did you hear about the homeless guy who bought it down by the bridge last night?”
“No,” Jimmy said as if he didn't care. “How does it go?”
“What do you mean, 'How does it go?'” the clerk asked.
“It's your damn joke not mine! How am I to know how it goes? That's about what I meant to ask, knot head,” Jimmy said.
“It ain't a joke. A homeless guy really did buy the farm right before the bridge in all that rain last night.”
“Suicide?” Jimmy played dumb.
The clerk nodded.
“Rude bugger,” Jimmy continued to pretend he didn't know a thing. “Imagine the poor joker who hit him!” he added as he pocketed his change.
“How big was that deer you hit anyway?” the man who had earlier asked about the damage to Jimmy's car asked again.
“About the same size as that bum,” Jimmy said, hoping he didn't give it away entirely.
“Seriously?” the clerk asked as Jimmy went through the door. “You hit a big old buck in the rain, this time of year. That's a fluke,” he added almost laughing at Jimmy's hard luck. Then cranking his head around just so he could see Jimmy get into his car the clerk said aloud but to himself, “That was no deer he hit, you idiot. That was the homeless guy!” Then as Jimmy went back out onto Midway Drive again and made a wide left to go west the other man asked, “Did you know him at all?” and the clerk replied with a nod followed by, “As well as you know any of them.” Then they both watched as Jimmy drove out of sight, their view blocked by other cars.
By the time Jimmy got back home the sun was all the way up and the fog was all but gone. He took off his billed cap, wiped his forehead with the dirty sleeve of his denim shirt, looked into the sun a moment and then watched the blue spot it created in whatever he looked at for a while after, wondering how it could have taken such a short time for the whole scene to have changed like that.
Something was nagging at him and he couldn't quite put a finger on what it was, so as to squash the bugger and cut off its head with his thumbnail. He pondered the dirty dishes in the sink, the fact his carpet needed both vacuumed and cleaned, the toilet mirror and stool touched up, the lawn mowed, and now the damned car's front end fixed too and that was it of course, the fact he had taken a life whether Native or White, that guy was alive before he hit him and now he was dead, and Jimmy felt like he should at least go to the funeral.
Jimmy got up and walked to the front door of his house and took the paper out of the blue plastic tube, the paperboy had been so pushy as to install right on the porch, and read the headlines, then scanned the minor topic headings and even some of the Obituary contents. There was no mention of a homeless fellow being run over by anyone, at any time. What was so secret about it? Jimmy couldn't understand.
Finally he found in a little column in the paper labeled, Police Activity, the only reference to the situation anywhere in the paper: “Police were called at 11:47 PM Tuesday and directed to an accident involving a late model Ford driven by James R. Tuisins, and the body of a man of undetermined identity and origin was removed from the scene by Bemidji Ambulance. A billfold belonging to James Robinson Twosins was found at the scene containing only Mr. Twosins' driver’s license. Police are puzzled.”
“What about James Robinson Twosins?” Jimmy said, searching the pile of papers on his kitchen table for a phone book.
“'Two Inlet's Barber College'? Weird. 'Two For One Always.' But no Twosins. He dialed 4-1-1 and the phone rang a few times before he said, “Yes, would you try to find a James Robinson Twosins for me... Yes, Bemidji...T W O S I N S... Yes, Ma'am... No such listing? You mean his number is unlisted, don't you? ... No, Ma'am... Thank you.”
“What the hell? What made this guy so different? How come he had no identity and yet he had a driver’s license in the possession of a homeless guy?” Jimmy thought aloud.
He had a name just about the same as Jimmy's. It was spelled differently but you could clearly tell it sounded the same, or was intended to sound like that when you said it aloud.
“Not only are the police puzzled,” Jimmy said. “I am too.”
He dumped his coffee in the sink and walked out to his mangled car, thinking, 'My poor car!' as he hurdled the peonies, he had planted last spring, right in his way, trying to encourage himself to use the sidewalk rather than cross that same stretch of the lawn every time he got in his car. Distracted, he put the car in reverse, and just sat there a moment, trying to get back on beam so that he could figure out what his plan had been before. “Got it!” he said and backed up again, for the second time today. He really had to stop running the wheels off his car by all of this going downtown all the time.
But, once there, he pulled up in front of the courthouse and went in hunting around for the records office until he found it, surprised there was no line to wait in, for surely he imagined a lot of people would need to use the records office from time to time.
“Can I help you?” a middle aged woman with obviously dyed black hair and old fashioned glasses asked him.
“Yes,” Jimmy said, attempting to sound official. “Where might I find the records of a man called James Robinson Twosins?”
“Not here!” the woman said. “The police and the three of us have been all over looking for his whereabouts. I even called the state offices and there is no mention of him. The license on him was a forgery, or a stolen document signed by a Jonah S. Judas supposedly of this very office except, there is not now, nor has there ever been an employee of this office by that name. Who shall I say inquired after him, Sir?”
“James Robinson Tuisins,” Jimmy replied and then quickly spelled his last name for the woman who smiled and said that she appreciated it very much. “Could you please let me know if anything changes? My phone number is. . .” He suddenly broke it off as the two police officers from the night before entered the records office.
“Mr. Tuisins!” the bigoted officer almost shouted. “May we have a word with you?”
“Well- uh- my car is parked outside. It doesn't start so well anymore, and I'm afraid that since the accident it tends to overheat if it idles too long. Uh- can we- uh- do this some other time? Gotta run!” he shouted as he almost ran past the officers to his car.
Once at the car he had not realized it was in full view of the courthouse doors, and for the first time he felt guilty for begging off from talking to the cops, as he started the car, quietly, except for the problem with the fan, and had to drive right by the two policemen watching his every move as if he was, suspect.
Back onto Midway Drive Jimmy went, expecting the police to visit him shortly should he go home. Back past the spot where he ran over the homeless man he hurried as much as the law allowed. Back to the same convenience store he drove, signaling his intentions as he entered the parking lot.