by Mike Ramon
Chapter Ten
Tom was tired, his eyes red and watery when he checked himself in the rearview mirror. The dream of the previous night had stuck with him throughout the day, clinging to him like a thin, oily film that wouldn’t wash off. He had already hit up two homeless shelters in town, the Hope House on Dalton Road, and the Nancy David House on Altamont. He hadn’t found anything useful at the first, and he discovered that the second one only took in women; the woman who informed him of this talked with him through a locked door, apparently wary of opening the door for a strange man. Now he was parked in front of the Open Arms Home for the Displaced, reflecting on the irony of the penchant of homeless shelters to put the words “house” or “home” into their names. The name “Open Arms Home” also brought to mind that other “Home”, but he pushed the thought away.
The Open Arms Home was a squat, single-story building painted a faded shade of light blue, with a fence surrounding it on three sides. Besides his own car the parking lot had only two other vehicles in it, with empty spaces for five more.
Tom got out of the car and walked into the place. When he walked through the front door he found himself in an empty room that looked like a waiting room at a doctor’s office. There were two rows of chairs lined up at ninety degree angles along the walls. Ahead there was a hallway with doors set at intervals all long it on both sides; the hall ended in a tee, with two more halls branching off in opposite directions. All of the doors that he could see were closed save for one, the nearest door on the right-hand side. He walked to the open doorway and peaked into the room. There was an elderly man with a shock of perfectly white hair, and thick coke-bottle glasses that were perched precariously on the tip of his nose, sitting at an old beat-up desk. The man was typing something into an ancient computer that looked like it was manufactured sometime in the late 80’s, and he didn’t seem to notice Tom standing in the doorway.
“Excuse me?” Tom said.
The man stopped typing just long enough to hold up one finger, the universal sign for “give me just a moment”, before resuming his work. Tom stayed standing in the doorway, not sure if it would be appropriate to enter the room without an express invitation to do so. The old man kept typing for at least another minute before he finally stopped, cracked his thick knuckles, and turned in his chair to face his visitor. He looked Tom over, first at his face and then travelling all the way down to his shoes, and then back up to his face.
“I take it you don’t need a room here?” the man said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what can I do for you, Mister…?”
“Dwyer. Tom Dwyer. And you are?”
“I’m George. I help run this place. Like I said before, what can I do for you?”
“I write for the Cedar Falls Review. Here, let me give you my card.”
Tom searched his pockets, finding one of his cards and handing it to the man, who looked at it briefly before setting in on the desk.
“I’ll ask a third time,” George said. “What can I do for you? Are you doing a story on shelters, or something of that nature?”
“No, it’s actually, um…the thing is, last night I was driving home and I saw this man walking on the sidewalk, and he looked like he might be drunk.”
The old man said nothing; he sat looking at Tom impassively, waiting for him to elaborate.
“He was kind of staggering about,” Tom continued. “He looked like he was having a hard time keeping on is feet. Later, when I got home, I was kind of worried about it--you know, whether the guy would get home all right. I drove back to the spot where I had seen him, but he was gone. The thing is, he looked…well, he looked like he might be homeless, and I thought I would check at a few shelters in town to see if I could find him and make sure that he’s all right.”
“So you saw the guy staggering around drunk, but you didn’t stop? You just went home?”
“Yes, but I went back.”
“And a lot of good it did you.”
Tom fought to keep his annoyance in check.
“You’re right; maybe I should have stopped when I first saw him and offered to give him a lift, but I didn’t, and I can’t change that now. I just want to see if the guy is okay.”
George didn’t say anything.
“Was there anyone who didn’t make it back here last night who should have?” Tom pressed.
“Yeah,” George said. “There’s one guy who didn’t make it back for curfew. He hasn’t shown his face at all today, either, but that’s not unusual. He misses curfew quite a bit, usually because he’s been drinking, and afterward he stays away for a few days because he knows I’m gonna lecture him again and give him extra chores around the place.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t feel comfortable telling you that.”
“What? Why?” Tom asked. “Look, I’m just concerned about this man’s safety. I don’t want to cause anybody any trouble.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I don’t know you from Adam, no matter how many fancy cards you have in your pocket with your name on them. I don’t feel comfortable giving out any information about our residents to strangers.”
Tom sighed, irritation creeping up on him and settling in the back of his neck in a tight ball.
“Okay, how about this. How about if I tell you what the guy looked like, and you tell me if it matches the guy who didn’t show up last night.”
George shook his head and crossed his arms, which were covered in a thick coat of wiry white hair. Those arms were thick with muscle in a way that reminded Tom of Popeye.
“Uh-uh,” George said. “No dice. Like I said, I appreciate your concern, but I’m not going to give out intimate details of any of our residents.”
“Intimate details? I’m just asking…you know what, never mind. Could you at least do this much for me, could you call me if the guy turns up, just to let me know that he made it back safely?”
George thought about it for a second.
“I’ll tell you what I can do. If he comes back, I’ll tell him you were in here asking about him, and I’ll give him your card. If he wants to he can call you and tell you that he’s okay. How about that?”
“That sounds good,” Tom said, thinking that he had no other choice. “Thank you for your time.”
“Yeah,” George said tersely, turning back to his computer, stashing Tom’s card in a desk drawer and resuming his typing.
Tom, who had been standing in the doorway the entire time, turned toward the front door.
“Asshole,” he whispered as he walked away from the old man’s office/room, too low for George to hear.
Tom left the Open Arms Home and headed for his car at the end of the lot.
“Hey, hold on,” a voice called from behind him.
“Tom stopped and turned expecting to see George, thinking that maybe the old man had had a change of heart and had decided to answer some of Tom’s questions. What he saw instead was a painfully skinny young man in an outdated Michael Jordan number 45 t-shirt coming toward him.
“Yeah?”
“I heard you talking to George, man. I know the guy you were talking about.”
“You do? What’s his name?”
“His name’s Walter. I don’t know his last name.”
“Is he an older guy, white hair and beard, has one shoe with the sole coming off?”
“Yeah, that’s him, man. I told him to get rid of those shoes, but he keeps hanging on to them. Hey, do you think he’s all right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure he’s fine,” Tom said. “Thanks for helping me out. George wasn’t much help.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad once you get to know him. But yeah, he can be kind of a dick sometimes.”
“Well, thanks anyway. I’ve got to go, so…”
“Yeah, I’d better get back inside before George realizes that I’m out here. See ya.”
The man turned back to go inside, but Tom stopped him.
“Hey, listen,” he c
alled to the man. “Did Walter have a regular place where he went when he wanted a drink?”
“Yeah, man. He usually went to the Moonlight Tavern on Ninth Street.”
“Thanks.” Tom said.
The thin man hustled back inside, and Tom got into his car. He sat there for a few minutes, just thinking. Walter. That was the man’s name. Walter fit the description, even down to the shoes, and he hadn’t come back last night. He hadn’t been seen all day, either. It could just be a coincidence; they happened every day, coincidences did. But Tom couldn’t quite convince himself that that’s all this was. He had told the skinny man that he thought Walter was okay, but he didn’t really believe it. He started the car and drove out of the lot, one thought repeating in his head.
His name was Walter.
He drove to the Shop N Gas on Main Street, filled up the car’s tank, and then drove to Ninth Street and found the Moonlight Tavern, which was closed at that time of day. He followed the route he figured Walter would have taken the night before, stopping and parking at the curb when the route led him to the Home. The building stood staring blankly at the clear summer afternoon.
Tom got out of the car and walked along the fence until he found the cut section where Walter had squeezed through (and where the Gardener children had squeezed through weeks before). He scanned the empty parking lot, and the empty, dirty windows of the Home. He looked at the far end of the lot, at the fence facing this one, where he knew there was another torn section where people could duck through. Then there was Cardinal Street, and if you followed Cardinal west for five blocks you would come to Owl Drive. If you went north on Owl for a quarter mile you would find the Open Arms Home for the Displaced.
Walter had been walking to the only home he had.
Tom spared one last look at the empty building that was once an orphanage. Just as in the dream those blank windows reminded him of cold, staring eyes, and the thought made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He got back it the car and left the Home behind. When he got home he called Patricia and told her everything, about the dream, about the homeless shelter, about George and the skinny guy, and about how the Home was directly in the path Walter would have taken to get from the bar back to the shelter. She listened quietly, letting him get it all out. She said she would tell Harry.
“When is he planning on showing up?” Tom asked.
“He definitely wants to come, but he’s tied up right now. Plus, he wants to find a couple of volunteers to come with him. He’ll come, though.”
“All right. I just hope he hurries the hell up.”
“These dreams. You, me and Frankie have all had them. Why us? It’s like we’re connected somehow.”
“But the dreams aren’t quite the same,” Tom said. “You and Frankie started having dreams after a family member went missing in the Home, but I have no connection to it myself. You and Frankie both had dreams where you were lost inside the Home, but Frankie also had the dreams about the kids getting punished in the Special Room. My dream was of something that, from all appearances, was actually happening in real time.”
“Still, it’s like we were meant to meet each other. Like we were meant to form a group. Speaking of which, maybe it’s time you had a talk with Frankie,” she said. “Before he gets impatient and does something foolish, like trying to go in there alone.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow. You’d better go ahead and get in touch with Harry and fill him in on the latest news.”
“All right. Call me tomorrow and let me know how it went with Frankie.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Tom ended the call and set the phone down on the table next to the couch. Now he had a new problem; he had to figure out how to get ahold of Frankie.