by J. D. Barker
The room itself was a mirror image of mine from a few weeks earlier—same size, shape, same two beds. The first empty, Dunk in the second. His leg was raised in a large sling. I expected a cast, but instead, small metal rods ran the length of his leg, the one side connected to some kind of plastic exoskeleton, the other end disappearing down through his skin. I had never seen anything like it.
I stepped closer, my shoes squeaking on the polished tile floor.
Dunk said, “Gross, right? The doctor said it’s called a Hoffman Device. Those things are screwed into my bone.” Dunk’s eyes remaining closed, his head resting on two pillows. A heart monitor beeped steadily beside him. “I’ve been in here for three weeks, and this is the first time you visit?”
I almost apologized. I nearly told him I wanted to come sooner, that I couldn’t come sooner, things got in the way. I almost said the hospital wouldn’t let me see him, wouldn’t let anyone see him. He’d know that wasn’t true.
Instead, I said nothing.
His eyes still closed, he raised a weak hand in my direction. “Thanks for pulling me out of there.”
I gripped it for a second, then quickly let go. His skin felt damp and clammy.
Dunk said, “I don’t know how you did it, I probably have thirty pounds on you, but thank you, I mean that, man.”
“Who are those guys out in the hall?”
“The cops? I think they’re worried I’ll run. They might be right—even with the bum leg, I think I’m faster than the fat one.”
“Not the cops, the other guys.”
“They’re there to keep an eye on the cops.”
“They think you did this, the police.”
Dunk’s head turned away, toward the window. “I don’t care what they think.”
“They think you had Crocket killed so you could take over his business.”
“And what do you think?”
“I haven’t been able to think much of anything in the past few weeks,” I said quietly.
“Alonzo Seppala killed Crocket.” Dunk shifted his weight. “The squirrelly fuck confessed before he offed himself.” His shoulder twitched under the sheets.
Dunk grimaced. “My everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt, itches. They’ve got me on morphine for the pain, which is great, till it’s not. After the first few days, it made me itch under my skin, like ants running over all my bones. Even if I could scratch, I can’t move much. The doctor said if I shift just a little bit in the wrong direction, the bones might start to heal out of place. If they move too much, they might even need to rebreak something. The leg is bad, but my ribs are the worst. Every time I take a breath, it feels like someone is jabbing at me with a dull knife. One of the bullets tore up my guts pretty good, so no solid food. They’re feeding me through one of these tubes. I can’t imagine what they’re feeding me. You know the weirdest part? I haven’t had to shit since I got here. Can’t be good for me, whatever they’re forcing through the tube.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said.
“He was a piece of shit.”
“Still your dad.”
“He hasn’t been my dad for years.” Dunk coughed, and his eyes pinched shut even tighter. Sweat trickled down from his brow. His tongue licked at his dry, cracked lips. “Is there any water on the table?”
There was a plastic cup with a straw. I filled it from the small pitcher beside it and brought the cup to Dunk, maneuvering the straw into his mouth. His eyes remained closed as he drank.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
Dunk finished drinking, and I set the cup back down on the table. “Sorry, the light hurts. I think it’s from the meds.”
He opened his eyes, looked up at me.
Dunk blinked. “Have you been back to school yet?”
And I knew.
I didn’t want to, but I knew.
I shuffled backward, my knees hitting the other bed. I tried to say something, but I lost all words. I turned, started for the door.
“Jack?” Dunk said. “Jack, wait. Let me—”
I was halfway to the elevator before he finished the sentence.
I would like to say I was strong.
I would like to say I took what happened at Krendal’s and somehow rose from the pain, somehow captured all that was good about my Auntie Jo and Gerdy and all the others I lost that day.
After speaking to Dunk, I left the hospital and wandered the streets of Pittsburgh for nearly five hours.
I walked.
No destination in mind, I just walked.
Good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, I didn’t care. I think part of me purposely veered toward the bad neighborhoods, hoping to land in some kind of trouble. Itching for a fight. With each step, my anger boiled, fed upon itself, until there was nothing else. When a bus roared past me, a little too close to the sidewalk, I cursed myself for not jumping in front of it. As I passed the dealers on the street, I stared them down, wondering which ones worked for Crocket, which ones worked for Dunk, and which ones weren’t sure but kept on selling anyway, knowing someone would come along to replenish their stash and collect the proceeds. Somehow, they recognized me as some kind of threat. More than one pulled back a shirt or a coat to show me the butt of a gun or a knife. I found myself smiling at these guys, hoping they would pull their little weapon, hoping they would take a shot, wondering if it would even kill me if they did.
The sun was long gone by the time I found myself back on Brownsville Road. I didn’t go home, though, not right away. Instead, I pushed through the doors of Mike’s Package Liquor and Beer and bought a bottle of something called Jameson. Being underage, the clerk wouldn’t sell it to me at retail, but I quickly learned $100 in cash would buy just about any bottle in that particular store.
Back in my apartment, I didn’t turn on the lights, I didn’t take off my shoes. I dropped down into Auntie Jo’s favorite chair, twisted open the bottle, and drank. I kept drinking until I could no longer see the outline of Gerdy’s discarded dress lying on the floor, just outside my bedroom door.
I didn’t like the taste of Jameson at first, but it grows on you. It settles in like a warm blanket on the coldest winter night.
Representatives of Brentwood High School called a lot that week, but I didn’t answer. When they couldn’t reach anyone at my apartment, they tried Ms. Leech across the hall. She told them I left for school, she said she packed me a lunch—ham and cheese on whole wheat. She told them I was probably there somewhere and some teacher fumbled the attendance, bunch of idiots in that building. They called Dewitt Matteo next, and he told them I wouldn’t be returning for the final weeks of my junior year, but I would be back in the fall. He told them I would make up any necessary work at that time. The phone calls stopped after that.
Some time in July, there was a knock at my door.
It was Dunk.
I didn’t answer.
Matteo told me he hadn’t been charged, not with anything. Not a damn thing. Dunk had traded his hospital bed for a wheelchair, with hopes of trading the chair for crutches. He didn’t move back into his apartment, he didn’t go back to Brentwood High School, either. I’m not sure where he went, and I didn’t care.
The next knock at my door wouldn’t come until two months later, July 29. I probably shouldn’t have answered that one either.
Log 07/29/1993—
Subject “D” within expected parameters.
Audio/video recording.
“Why is the phone in there?”
Warren glanced up from his clipboard and shrugged. “Somebody must have figured it was easier to leave it in the room. He can’t dial from in there. The line is dead, unless we activate it.”
“Did they put him on a call today?”
“Two, just this morning.”
“Are there more scheduled?” Carl asked.
“Dunno. Probably.”
“He’s got a newspaper in there, too.”
“He’s been asking for newspapers a lot la
tely. I guess the doc caved. He’s read every book under the sun, doesn’t get to watch television, I don’t see any harm in him reading the paper,” Warren said.
“And the doc gave it to him?”
“Yeah, the doc.”
“Not you?”
“I wouldn’t go in there. That would be crazy.”
—Charter Observation Team – 309
9
I was in bed, when the incessant pounding at the door began.
At first, just a light tap.
Polite.
Noninvasive.
I imagine the knocking started well before the sound worked through my alcohol-fueled slumber and the pillow over my head. By the time I heard the racket, the knocker had established a rhythm they felt comfortable continuing for a while.
About three weeks prior, I took a cue from Elfrieda Leech and taped aluminum foil over my bedroom windows, yet somehow the sunlight still managed to find a way around the edges with enough ferocity to cut at my eyes. I managed a squint before closing my eyes again.
“Open the door, Jack!”
The added dynamic of words containing my name brought my needle closer to awake than asleep, and I tried to place the voice.
Male. Familiar, yet not.
Eyes still shut, I crawled off the bed, planted my feet on the floor, and sat there a moment, my hands rubbing my face. I had a steady knock happening in my skull, too.
I stood and started across the room, nearly tumbling as I tangled in the bedspread on the floor. I must have kicked the down comforter off the bed last night or the night before or the night before that. Frankly, I was amazed I had even found my way to my bed. I took a liking to Auntie Jo’s chair, and when I found myself dozing there at three in the morning, it seemed pointless to make the trek all the way across the apartment to my room. The chair was closer to the bathroom, after all.
My brain bounced off the inside of my head with each step, so I took it slow, a shuffle more than steps. I paused at the kitchen, where I swallowed a handful of aspirin dry.
Clearly, whoever was out there was in for the long haul, and they would wait. If they didn’t, I didn’t really care.
I fumbled with the dead bolt, opened the door enough to see who was standing there.
Willy Trudeau.
A smile filled his face, and he managed to hold it, even though it morphed from authentic to forced the moment he saw me. “Hey, Jack.”
“Willy? What are you doing here?”
He handed me a note. “Your neighbor told me to give you this. She poked her head out about twenty minutes ago.”
Ms. Leech’s shopping list.
“What day is today?”
Willy pushed past me into the apartment, his nose crinkling. “Thursday. What the hell is that smell?”
I hadn’t left the apartment for a week. Last Thursday, Ms. Leech braved the hallway and slipped her shopping list under my door. Worried I’d forget about her. One week ago.
“This place is a fucking mess,” Willy said.
He spotted Gerdy’s dress on the floor and started for it, her panties off to the side. His voice dropped lower. “Do you have a visitor?”
“Don’t touch those.”
The words came out harsher than I meant. “Sorry, just please, don’t.”
Willy backed off the dress and panties, glanced into my bedroom, at my empty bed, then returned to the living room.
He turned slowly, taking it all in.
He opened the lid of a pizza box on the table with the tip of his finger, let the lid drop when he saw the contents. I think I ordered that on Saturday. A couple of Chinese delivery boxes sat beside it. The older ones were in the kitchen. Empty bottles of Jameson, Captain Morgan, and other assorted bottles of varying size, color, and brand filled the places between take-out.
I scratched at my belly. “What do you want, Willy?”
“I got a call from your attorney. He asked me to check on you. He told me to get you to his office, one way or another.”
“My attorney? How did he get your number?”
“Dunno.”
“What did he tell you?”
Willy thumbed through my posters of Stella, stacked under the pizza. “I’ve seen these around town. Dunk filled me in a few months back. Any luck finding her?”
“What’s today’s date?”
“July 29, why?”
Not August 8.
“I don’t have a calendar.”
Willy seemed to understand. “You have a little over a week.”
Part of me was surprised he even remembered. We hadn’t talked about it since we were kids. Years. A lifetime ago.
I said, “If she shows, yeah. What did my attorney tell you?”
Willy leaned back against the table. “He said you’ve been holed up in here for months, you don’t answer your phone anymore, skipped out on school, missed your last appointment with him. ”
Shit. That was Tuesday. I was supposed to go to his office on Tuesday.
Willy went on, “He’s worried about you, thought you might need a friend. Clearly no need for concern, though. Looks like you’re doing great.”
“Friend? You didn’t go to the funerals. None of them.” I ticked them off on my hand. “Not Jo’s, or Gerdy, or Krendal. All those people who died.”
“My parents didn’t think—”
“Your parents? Seriously? You’re going to blame them? You didn’t know Krendal that well, I get that. I can even give you a pass for Jo, but Gerdy? Come one, she was your friend, too. And hell, if you were my friend you should have showed.”
Willy looked down at his shoes. “Dunk was in some shit. Is in some shit. You’re tight with Dunk. My parents thought it would be best if I kept my distance. I’m going to college next year, Penn State, they worried that—”
I crossed over to the door. “Just go, Willy. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I should have been here all along,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“I want to be alone.”
“That’s the last thing you need.”
“Get out, Willy.”
“What was I supposed to think? Envelopes with cash mysteriously appearing. That SUV that tried to killed you when we were kids.”
Tried.
“I figured all that had something to do with Dunk. I thought maybe he started in with those people back when we were kids, and it all escalated since then. I thought the money was his way of paying you for helping him or for working with those guys or both, or something. He really spooked me with the gun. I pretended it was all good, but shit, Jack, a gun? We were twelve. We had zero business with a real gun. I figured the story about the girl was some elaborate coverup you concocted instead of telling me the truth. I kept my distance. I thought the whole story was bogus. Then I started seeing these posters around town with your phone number and her picture, and I knew it wasn’t. All those things you and Dunk told me back in the day about this girl, I thought you made it up. I should have known you wouldn’t lie. Dunk, maybe, not you, though.” He stared down at his shoes. “I’m sorry. You were my friend, and I let you down. I let you down on so many levels. I should have been there the whole time, and I wasn’t. I’m here now, though. I want to make things right, somehow.”
An awkward silence fell between us. I found myself leaning against the door, my eyes trailing the thin beams of light skirting around the curtains drawn in the living room. “Have you seen Dunk?”
Willy bit his lip. “I saw him yesterday coming out of the McDonald’s on 51. He didn’t look good. Real thin and in a wheelchair. I didn’t recognize the guy pushing him. There were about six other men with him too, nobody I knew, all older. They loaded him into a van and drove off toward the city with a patrol car right behind them.”
“So he still hasn’t been arrested?”
“My dad knows someone down in the DA’s office, and he told me they couldn’t tie any of it to him. That other kid confessed to orchestrating the shooting, and
he killed himself before they could get the names of the actual gunmen. They’re trying to build a case against Dunk on the drug business too, but like Crocket, he’s isolated from everything. Looks like he’s taking over, probably already has,” Willy said. “Have you seen him?”
I shook my head and told him how he came by, told him about my visit with Dunk in the hospital. As I finished, I found myself looking at a bottle of Jameson on the table beside Willy, about a finger or two left in the bottom.
“Dude, you stink,” Willy said. “When was the last time you took a shower?”
Three, no four days.
“Yesterday,” I said.
He opened his mouth to say something, and I raised my hand and waved him off, heading toward the bathroom.
I stood under the hot water for nearly an hour, just stood there, let the water run over me, before I finally picked up the soap.
When I emerged from the bathroom, the aluminum foil was gone from the windows, all the boxes and bottles had been picked up, he even put fresh sheets on the bed, dirty laundry piled at the foot. Willy was in the living room, scrubbing at a mystery stain on the coffee table with a rag in one hand and a bottle of Windex in the other.
Three black trash bags stood in the center of the room, all full.
Gerdy’s dress and panties were still on the floor, where she left them, the only thing in the room left untouched.
Two McDonald’s bags sat on the coffee table, steam rising from one. A bottle of Gatorade beside them, orange flavored. Willy gestured toward the bags. “I got you two McGriddles. You still eat those, right?”
The idea of eating anything made my stomach churn, but I knew I had to get some food in me. My entire body was shaky from lack of calories, and my mouth tasted sour. I pulled one of the breakfast sandwiches from the bag and took a bite. The second bag contained a large coffee. I helped myself to that, too.
Willy gave up on the stain and sat on the edge of Jo’s chair. “I talked to Matteo. He wants us to come down there.” He pointed at the Gatorade. “Try to chug that. The electrolytes will help with your shakes.”
I nodded, finished the first sandwich, and started on a second, wondering what Willy did with the bottles that still contained a taste of whiskey. I didn’t see them anywhere.