Interpreter for the Dead Read online

  Interpreter for the Dead

  Content copyright © David Lee Martin. All rights reserved

  Published in the United States of America

  First Publishing Date: March 2011

  Cover Image: Shutterstock Standard License

  Chapter 1

  Henry Dane hunkered down by the old wood stove tucked in a corner of the kitchen. He rubbed his calloused hands together while he watched the frost on the kitchen window melt beneath the warmth of the rising sun.

  Outside, a cold front had buried the spring grass beneath several inches of snow. A bitter wind now carried off the last of the apple tree blossoms, dropping pink petals all the way from the orchard to the stables. Henry could just make out the dozen horses as they snorted out angry clouds and stamped the ground.

  He turned back to the fire, stared past his hands and into the flames.

  He hadn't slept well last night. He tossed and turned, finally waking up to a chill that he could feel in every one of his sixty-year-old bones. The first thing he did after pulling on his long underwear was stumble to the kitchen and get the fire going.

  The warmth slowly seeped into his hands and the crackle of the fire took him back to when he was small boy, living in this very same house, though it had seemed much larger then.

  He had been oblivious to the cold then. A wrinkled smile turned up the corner of his ice blue eyes as he remembered his mother's wagging finger and her pinched brow, her mouth moving in angry shapes whenever he had come in from outside with coat half off and mittens gone, signing to her excitedly about the rabbit he had almost caught. He could not hear her voice, so he had to read her face and body language. She was upset about the lost mittens. The smile fades from his face as he remembered begging her not to tell his father.

  His father would angrily point to Henry's hands, red from building a snow fort or snowman. Or to Henry's pants, soaking wet from splashing in the river yet again. It usually ended up with his father shaking his head and making Henry get the paddle. No matter how hard he tried to remember and understand what they expected of him, he just never figured it out. They did not know sign, and he could not hear.

  When they finally sent him away, he was sure it was because he had been so unable to learn, so stupid.

  It was the end of summer, not long after his seventh birthday, and he was playing with his new boat in the creek that ran near the house. He had been unaware of his father until he saw him reflected in the water, standing behind him.

  He crooked his finger for Henry to follow, and walked away. Henry snatched his boat from the water and ran to catch up.

  Henry began to imagine the worst. Had he been stupid again? He had played in the creek before. He caught up to his father and tugged on his hand, but his father pulled it away and kept walking.

  Something turned over in Henry's stomach and he began to cry, even though he knew his father would only get angrier. To his surprise, his father just kept walking. By the time they'd gotten to the house, Henry was so upset he could barely breathe. Soon, his father would take the paddle from the wall and spank him. He was sure of it.

  But Father didn't go in the house. Instead, he went around to the front and stood by the car in the driveway.

  Maybe he was not in trouble. Maybe they were going to town!

  Henry was uneasy, for some reason his mother was not there. He held the boat on his lap, water soaking into his pants as the car bumped along the road. His father stared straight ahead, giving him no clue as to where they were driving. Henry searched his face.

  Something glinted from the backseat. A latch on a suitcase. One of the ones they used when they went to see his grandparents. Henry liked visiting them, even though they always made sorry, baby faces at him like he had just hurt his knee or something. He didn't think they were going there.

  They drove for so long that the water on his pants dried. They did go to town, but they didn't stop there. They drove past all of the shops and busy streets and houses until they were out in the country again.

  The road dipped down and he could see they were headed into a valley at the base of the mountains. He had never been this close to the mountains before. At the end of the road, several large buildings the color of rust stood surrounded by evergreen trees.

  Parking the car, his father got out and yanked the suitcase off the back seat, then yanked Henry out too. They entered the building through a set of immense double doors.

  A young woman in a pretty yellow dress greeted them. She smiled and gently grasped Henry's hand. Tentatively he shook it, clutching his boat with the other hand.

  Motioning for Henry to sit on the bench, his father then disappeared into the room the young woman had come from.

  The place was huge. It looked like castles he'd seen in books. The hallway was twice as long as their whole house, with lots of mysterious doors.

  A shaft of sunlight worked its way across the floor as he swung his feet back and forth beneath the bench. Something moved in the shadows at the end of the hall. Two older girls walked around the corner. They didn't even notice him; they were too busy looking at each other's hands.

  Henry stared in disbelief as their fingers twisted and turned, moved across their faces, darted around their bodies. The girls stopped when they saw him staring. Smiling, one of them waved to him and he waved back. Then she touched her fingers to her ear and made a questioning face. His face flushed red and he turned away to hide it. When he looked back a moment later they were gone. One of the doors down the hall fell shut.

  He did not like this place. He was thinking about going through the door his father had gone in when it opened and his father stepped back out.

  Henry jumped eagerly off the bench, ready to leave. But his father took his hand and sat him back on the bench, kneeling down in front of him. He held Henry by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes, shaking his head. Henry thought his father was going to cry. He could feel him tremble slightly, and then his father nodded to the woman without another look at him.

  She took Henry's hand and held him close while he watched his father hurry back to the car. The image blurred through a veil of tears. He felt a pain in his chest he was sure would never heal.

  A man in a fancy suit had come to take Henry to his room. His hands gentle as he led Henry through the daunting halls, the man had dried Henry's tears with his handkerchief. Henry would later learn that he was the doctor at the Boulder School for the Deaf and Blind, Dr. Hiram Emerson. It was the first time a man had treated Henry with any kind of tenderness.

  The fire in the wood stove flared and sparked, bringing Henry back to the present.

  The sun was higher and he still hadn't fed the horses. He dressed, then slipped on his heavy woolen jacket and went out into the morning.

  As he braced himself against the wind, he noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the snow as he struggled to shut the door behind him. He knew what it was before he picked it up. The face of Boulder's 'Number One Realtor' leered up at him from a cheap business card.

  Sometimes Henry wished he'd never learned to read. The bastard must have come by again while he was in town picking up feed yesterday. The man would not take no for an answer. He kept coming back with an interpreter to make sure Henry knew "what an incredible opportunity he was missing".

  Henry Dane had learned to read faces long before he had learned to read letters, and he could tell everything he needed to know from this man's face.

  As he walked he studied the mountains. Where the snow lay in the higher elevations it was pure white, but down along the Front Range it was dirty yellow. When he was a boy all the snow had been white. Now there were too many people, too many cars.

  Just
fine for people selling real estate.

  The wind was worse than he thought. He dug his leather work gloves from his pockets and slid them on. Henry had never liked wearing gloves, but he found it even more disagreeable after he learned sign language.

  As much as he thought he was going to die the first few weeks at the Boulder School for the Deaf and Blind, he not only lived, but thrived. Within weeks he had begun to learn sign - the forbidden language that all the children used in the dorms and playgrounds and all the secret places the hearing teachers could not see them.

  It was not like it was now. When he was going to school, you could count on getting slapped with a ruler on the knuckles for using signs instead of speaking. Not that it mattered. Bruised or bleeding, children's hands spoke across classrooms and schoolyards and even in the moonlight after lights out. He and his friends would not wear gloves even on the coldest days. The learning, the knowing, the sharing, was worth the risk of frostbite.

  He was genuinely excited when his parents came back to take him home for that first Christmas holiday, but by the third day he longed to be back at the school where he could talk, and be heard, by others like himself.

  All he could remember of holidays away from school were weak smiles and nodding heads. The only communication between himself and his parents had been short notes passed back and forth. After a few years an unspoken agreement was reached. They would write and ask him if he'd like to come home, and he would reply that as much as he would like nothing more, there was actually a play or game that he had to practice for.

  He hurried inside the stables, grateful for relief from the wind that had already numbed his ears and cheeks. He had a knot in his stomach. After he fed the horses he would feed himself.

  He opened the bin where he kept the grain and was momentarily perplexed at seeing it empty. Then it dawned on him he had never unloaded the grain from the back of his truck the night before, because he had visitors waiting for him when he got home from town.

  It was probably better he had left the feed in the truck, he thought, now he could just throw a bale of hay in the back and drive the twenty yards to the corral.

  He hoisted up a bale and walked out to the old '49 Dodge, feeling the snow give beneath his boots.

  He tried not to, but he found himself looking over at a small boulder he had placed in the backyard. He had hoped it had just been a bad dream, that the stupid dog had gone off chasing a fox and simply gotten lost.

  When he had come home last night, Oren McConnell and Oren's daughter AJ were waiting for him in the driveway. Oren was a deaf friend of his who had purchased a small tract of land from him years ago, and lived just down the road. He was relieved to see his dog Lady in the back of Oren's truck. AJ had given him Lady when she was just a pup, not long after Henry's wife had passed away.

  And Michael left.

  It still pained him to think about the last time he had seen his son, Michael. So many years of heartache he'd given the boy, it was no wonder he'd left home. He couldn't blame his son for hating him.

  When Oren and AJ had climbed out of the cab of their truck, Henry could see AJ's eyes were puffy and red. She cried as she signed the words.

  "I found Lady by the side of the road. I'm so sorry, Henry. I think she was hit by a car."

  He had solemnly lifted the golden retriever's body out of Oren's truck, and shook his head no when they asked if they should stay.

  Henry dropped the hay on top of the snow-covered sacks of grain in the truck bed, then climbed in the cab and pumped the gas. Turning the key in the ignition, he felt the starter roll over, but the engine didn't engage. He pumped the gas and tried again. Nothing. The battery was dead.

  He retrieved an empty five-gallon bucket from the barn. Opening the tailgate, he dragged one of the grain sacks to the edge, slicing it open with his pocketknife. Holding the bucket underneath it, he filled it with grain.

  Just a couple years ago he could have carried the whole sack on his shoulder over to the corral, but now he was beginning to sweat just doing this.

  He grabbed the hay bale with his right hand and picked up the bucket with his left and set out.

  The horses jostled each other as they saw him approach and caught wind of the grain.

  Easy. I'm coming.

  The wind turned the sweat to ice on his face, and a hard ball formed in his stomach as he moved along the fence. Feed the horses, then feed himself and maybe read a book by fire with the dog curled up beside-

  He stopped and took a few deep breaths, pretending he wasn't looking back to see if the dog was following along behind him. Nothing.

  She's gone.

  He had tried to leave her inside the house a couple times when the weather was like this, but the scratches on the door and the torn up rug let it be known she would not allow it, even if she limped the whole way. She'd been kicked by one of the colts years ago, shattering her back left leg. Henry didn't think she would ever be able to walk again. AJ, just out of veterinary school up in Fort Collins, managed to put her back together. Even though it meant the metal pins in her leg would cause her to limp every time a cold front moved in.

  He had never realized how much a part of his life the dog had become. She woke him up in the morning. She let him know when the coffee pot was done. Let him know when someone was at the door or the phone was ringing. The dog had been his constant companion for the last seven years.

  His vision blurred and the ground seemed to shift beneath him. He needed to stop thinking about the dog and get this done. Only ten yards to the corral.

  He took a step and then froze. A metal band seemed to suddenly wrap around his chest and began to squeeze. He let the bale drop and steadied himself against the fencepost.

  Damn.

  AJ had been the one who made him go to the doctor six months ago when she saw him rubbing his chest. He insisted it was just indigestion, and thought that was the end of it. He should have known better when she asked if he would help her load up some feed in town the next day. They went to the granary, but not to get feed. AJ knew she would never get him in to see a doctor, so she had talked one into meeting them at the granary.

  At first he was angry, but once he saw that the doctor was genuinely concerned, he realized the girl had been right. She had probably saved his life. All he had to do was take the pills twice a day, every day and see the doctor once in a while.

  And take it easy.

  His vision seemed to clear and he pushed himself away from the fence and started back to the house. Then the band became a fist and squeezed around his heart until he dropped to his knees. The pain shot down his left arm and up his neck until even his teeth hurt.

  No.

  He could barely breathe now, and pain was moving down his right arm. The sweat from his face dripped onto his jacket and formed frozen teardrops.

  His jacket.

  He had put some pills in the inside pocket. Just have to get one and pop it under my tongue.

  His right hand froze halfway, refusing to obey the signals from his brain. He forced it to his face, his body now partially paralyzed and his vision a complete blur. Craning his neck out, he pulled the glove off with his teeth. He cried out as he forced his hand down into his inside pocket and got hold of one of the pills between his first two fingers. The sleeve wanted to catch on the zipper.

  So close.

  He somehow managed to get his fingers to his mouth. He let the pill slide under his tongue, and prayed it wasn't too late.

  He could have sworn he had taken his medication this morning.

  Yes, before he started the fire.

  He was sure of it.

  Henry knew in that instant what had happened, and who had done this to him. Henry Dane had one last dragon to slay to make things right, but it had slain him first.

  Fumbling for the text pager on his hip, Henry tried to type out a message.

  His ears began to ring and he slipped beyond the pain. His mind was flooded with images. Image
s of the children who had come over on bright yellow busses from the deaf school and helped him pick the first crop of apples from the orchard he had planted the year after his wife had died.

  His wife - laughing as they swam in the lake behind the school and she taught him another language with her hands.

  His son - fumbling his first signs through his tiny hands.

  His wife - lying in the hospital dying.

  His son - his face contorted in anger after they got home from the funeral.

  His wife. His son. Seven years since he had seen them.

  As the cold claimed the last of his consciousness, Henry William Dane hoped only that his wife would still love him.

  And that his son could somehow forgive him.

  Chapter 2

  Michael Dane kept his foot on the brake while he pumped the Maserati's gas pedal, the car rocking side to side from the engine's torque. He desperately wanted to let loose the 360 horses under the hood, the extra-wide Perelli tires throwing off asphalt like a dog shaking off fleas.

  Instead, he took his foot off the gas, sighing as he crawled through the restaurant parking lot.

  He whipped the Mazerati into an undersized parking space, a Lincoln Navigator on one side, a Cadillac Escalade on the other. After setting the brake, he flipped through the radio stations one last time.

  "It's a beautiful day. Don't let it slip away..."

  He nodded along with the U2 song, instinctively turning to admire the mountains. Instead he found the two towering SUVs on either side, blotting out the sun.

  The car felt like a tomb.

  He wasn't going to let them win. He popped the convertible top and reclined the seat, the roof folding back like a movie curtain. A dazzling armada of hot air balloons floated across a powder blue sky.

  Cranking the volume, he closed his eyes. He let the sound waves wash over him.

  It was like being a kid in a candy shop. Five hundred watts of electricity brought to life two JBL woofers and a subwoofer hidden in the trunk, a pair of Orion three-by-nines coiled in the back window, a cross linked set of mid-rangers tucked inside the door panels, another set concealed beneath the dash, and finally a pair of tweeters, poised inside the left and right front roof supports.