The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

by Hannah Tinti

  The day after Hawley shot himself his daughter came outside and brought him dinner. His heart caught up in his throat when the door opened and he saw her small figure coming down the path. He grabbed the bearskin rug from the backseat and threw it over the guns beside him. She came straight to his car and knocked on the window and he rolled it down.

  “Hi Dad,” she said, and handed through a plate wrapped in tinfoil. It was still warm. He put it on his lap, and she passed him a knife and fork and a napkin, too. In the doorway, he could see the outline of Mabel Ridge watching them, her arms folded tightly across her gigantic breasts.

  “Thanks,” said Hawley.

  “Grandma says you shouldn’t be out here all the time.”

  Loo was leaning on the window. She was so close Hawley could smell her hair. It smelled just like Lily’s.

  “Tell Grandma I said tough.”

  He’d been careful about parental rights, paying large sums to a high-end, discreet and ruthless lawyer. Each time Mabel Ridge went to the courts to get sole custody, he’d shut it down. He’d been generous with child support, but all the real money was locked up tight for Loo. He didn’t want the old bat getting her hands on it, or trying to push him out of his daughter’s life, either.

  “Are you sick?” Loo asked. “You look sick.”

  “I’m okay.” He could feel the heat of the plate through his pants, across the tops of his knees. The Percocet was starting to wear off and there was a puddle of blood beneath the parking brake. Loo’s eyes trailed to the passenger seat. At the bear covering the guns. Usually when he came to visit he brought presents, and he could tell she was trying to figure out if there was something hidden there for her.

  “What are you going to be for Halloween this year?”

  “A witch.”

  Hawley tried to think of something else to say. Something that would keep her next to the car. But he could already feel his strangeness rising up between them, the same way it emerged whenever he left his motel room, a block of ice between him and the world.

  “Come inside, Louise,” Mabel Ridge called.

  “I could swing by tomorrow,” said Hawley. “Take you trick-or-treating.”

  “I don’t think Grandma would like it.”

  Hawley looked down at the plate in his lap. He wondered what was underneath the tinfoil. It smelled like some kind of pasta. Spaghetti, maybe with meatballs.

  “Pretty please,” he said.

  Loo ran her hands back and forth along the car, like she was testing the metal. It looked like she was searching for hinges, hinges that could fold the car in two. Something in the back of Hawley’s mind flashed forward, a memory tilting and sliding, and his stomach gripped as if he were suddenly teetering on the edge of understanding some great secret of the world. And then it left him.

  “Okay,” Loo sighed. And she turned around and walked back up the path to the house. She opened the door and went inside and shut it behind her. And then Mabel Ridge went to each window and pulled down every shade.

  —

  HAWLEY CAME THE next night at five-thirty. The sun was just beginning to set. He parked his car, got out and then walked up the path. Mabel Ridge had never invited him inside, but he knew every inch of the place. The way the kitchen was set behind the living room, the way the stairs ran up behind the chimney. Two second-floor bedrooms with two windows each, separated by a hall and one bathroom. Laundry in the basement, and a bulkhead door that led out into the backyard and was locked with a chain.

  He didn’t want Mabel Ridge to smell anything on him so he hadn’t had a drink all day. Instead he took an extra Percocet so he could walk on his foot without limping too much. He’d cleaned out the wound again and wrapped it, but his toes and ankle were swollen and he could hardly fit them inside his boot, so he’d removed most of the dressing and covered the bullet hole with a sock. He’d shaved. He’d bought a new shirt. Even his fingernails were clean.

  Hawley lifted the heavy pineapple knocker and rapped it three times. He could hear little footsteps tup-tup-tupping, and then the door swung open and there was Loo. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a red circle glued to the front, and a cardboard poster tube spray-painted silver was tied to her head like a crown. At the very top a bunch of bubble wrap was glued in a spiral, stuck out in front like a traffic signal. In her arms was a basket full of apples.

  “Trick or treat,” Hawley said.

  Loo handed him one of the apples.

  “Don’t you have any Milky Ways?”

  “Grandma says no candy.”

  “The kids are going to love that,” said Hawley. “What are you, a periscope?”

  “No,” Loo said. “I’m a toothbrush.” She poked the red circle on her shirt, and made a whirring, machinelike sound in the back of her throat.

  “I thought you were going to be a witch.”

  “She was,” said Mabel Ridge, coming in from the kitchen, wearing her apron and goggles and rubber gloves, looking every bit the mad scientist. “Her teacher made this costume for a school play, and now she won’t take it off.”

  Hawley crouched next to his daughter. Her dark hair was cut short, to her chin. A month earlier she’d stuck gum in her hair. Mabel Ridge had tried ice and peanut butter and all kinds of soaps and finally sat his daughter down at the kitchen table, wrapped a towel around her shoulders and cut all of her hair off. Hawley had watched each snip of the scissors through a pair of binoculars. Loo had cried the whole time.

  “Boop,” said Hawley, and he tapped his finger to the red button on her shirt.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” said Loo.

  “All right,” said Hawley.

  “Push it again,” she said, and this time when he touched his daughter she made the sound again, a kind of growling.

  “This is for you,” said Mabel Ridge, and she handed Hawley a tall white paper hat with pleats on the sides, the kind that chefs wore in fancy restaurants. Then she held up a T-shirt. A piece of red felt in the shape of a triangle was sewn to the front, with the word CREST painted in white.

  “I made it for me, but it should fit you just fine.” Mabel stood there, waiting for him to balk, and it wasn’t until he saw her tight, steely grin that he realized how much the old woman still hated him.

  “I’ll wear it,” said Hawley.

  “Let’s give your dad some privacy,” said Mabel Ridge.

  “I need the shirt,” he said, and she threw it at him. Hawley took off his jacket and drew the costume over his head. He put on the chef’s hat and looked in the hall mirror. He thought of ways to get Mabel back for this. Then he smothered the whole idea. He had to give the old lady credit—it really did look like the cap on a tube of toothpaste. And it was enough that he was in the house at all. It was enough that Loo was smiling.

  “You look funny,” she said.

  “I know,” said Hawley, but he didn’t really know how funny until he walked outside with Loo and started going from house to house and ringing bells. People opened their doors with smiles that quickly faded when they saw him lurking in the shadows of their porch. He was the only parent wearing a costume. No one knew what he was supposed to be. They didn’t know what Loo was, either.

  “Maybe we need a routine,” Hawley said.

  But Loo was interested only in the candy. She approached each new house with growing confidence, until she was dashing ahead and leaving Hawley behind on the sidewalk. He hadn’t been around so many people in months and it made him nervous, the children in their costumes, shrieking and running past in the dark. Witches and fairies, clowns and skeletons and a whole cast of cartoon characters that Hawley didn’t recognize. The other parents clustered in groups, grinning and nodding. Pumpkins glowered on doorsteps. And Loo’s tiny hand slipped into his, her fingers gripping his thumb as they made their way down the street together. Toothpaste and toothbrush.

  Hawley’s foot was throbbing by the time they started back. He could feel the sock soaked with blood, and the side
of his boot was starting to show a bright stain across one side.

  “You’re leaking,” Loo said.

  “It’s just some paint I spilled,” said Hawley, and when she kept staring, unsure, clutching her bag of candy tight in her fist, he said, “Look,” and turned his boot and dragged it along the sidewalk, one way and then the other, until he’d made the letter L in red on the concrete.

  “For Loo?” she asked, delighted.

  “That’s right,” said Hawley, though he’d been thinking of Lily. “And now it’s time to go home. I promised your grandma I’d have you back by eight.”

  “One more house,” Loo begged.

  “You’ve got enough candy,” said Hawley.

  “But they have so many pumpkins.” Loo pointed to a bungalow at the end of the block. “Please? Please?”

  Hawley knew it was the candy and not him she wanted, but it still felt good. “All right,” he said. “Last one.”

  There was already a group of kids at the door. A ghost, a punk girl and a hot dog. As they got closer, Hawley could see that the kids were teenagers. Fourteen, maybe even fifteen. Their costumes were haphazard. Their pillowcases filled to the brim. They snatched at the candy bowl like they were aiming to empty it.

  “That’s enough,” the man at the door was saying.

  The punk girl hefted her bag onto her shoulder, but the ghost and the hot dog kept grabbing at the bowl.

  “I mean it.” The man took a step toward the teenagers. He was dressed up as a policeman, his cap pulled down on his forehead. He was wearing a badge and mirrored sunglasses. The hot dog looked up and dropped the candy in his hand, while the ghost hooted and then they scattered down the walkway.

  Loo hurried into the space they’d left behind, holding up her pillowcase. “Trick or treat,” she said. That’s when Hawley noticed the handgun snapped into the policeman’s holster and the nightstick and can of pepper spray dangling from his belt. That’s when he saw the cruiser parked in the driveway.

  The policeman held on to the glass candy bowl and watched the teenagers laughing and hurrying down the street. Then he turned to Hawley.

  “And what are you?” he asked. “Some kind of superhero?”

  “Toothpaste,” said Hawley.

  Loo gave a big smile. “Push my button,” she said.

  “I’m a little afraid to do that,” said the policeman. He peered at the bubble wrap stuck on the end of the poster tube. “Is something special going to happen?”

  “I’m going to brush your teeth,” said Loo.

  “I’ve had a lot of candy tonight, so that’s probably a good idea,” said the policeman. He turned his mirrored sunglasses toward Hawley, and his expression could have meant a thousand different things. He bent down and pushed the red patch on Loo’s shirt, and as soon as he did she started up with her growling.

  “That’s great,” said the policeman. “Who made the costume?”

  “Her grandmother,” said Hawley.

  Loo took a step toward the policeman, angling the top of the poster tube, as if she were getting ready to shove the whole thing inside his mouth.

  “That’s enough, honey.”

  Loo stepped back. She held up her bag again.

  “Those damn kids nearly took it all,” the man said as he dropped a candy bar into Loo’s pillowcase. He leaned down. “Don’t ever become a teenager.”

  “Are you a real policeman?” Loo asked.

  The man laughed. “I left the suit on after my shift. I was hoping it would keep the eggers away. They get my car every year.”

  “Little pricks,” said Hawley.

  The policeman glanced down at Loo and then back at Hawley, eyeing him carefully. “They’re only kids,” he said. “I did worse in my day.”

  “Dad,” said Loo, “you’re leaking again.”

  And he was. As they were talking a small puddle of blood had spread out of Hawley’s boot and made its way onto the policeman’s porch.

  “Is that paint?” the policeman asked.

  “Fake blood,” said Hawley. “We were playing around earlier. I guess some of it spilled onto my shoe.”

  “A bloody toothbrush?”

  “Root canal,” said Hawley.

  “That would have been something.” The policeman wrapped his arms around the bowl of candy and looked at the puddle on his porch. His sunglasses reflected back all the darkness of the world.

  “Happy Halloween,” said Hawley. “Sorry about the mess.”

  “Thanks for the candy,” said Loo.

  “You’re welcome,” said the policeman. He stood on his porch, watching the two of them walk down the path. Hawley tried not to limp, and only glanced back once they’d reached the corner. Under the streetlamp, he saw that he’d left footprints, tracked all the way down the policeman’s stairs and along the sidewalk. Beside them were the small footprints of his daughter, the soles of her sneakers caked in his blood.

  —

  WHEN HE GOT back to the motel later that night, Hawley brought a beer into the bathroom and started unlacing his boot. Maybe it was enough, he thought. To see Loo now and then, to be on the edges of her life. He’d been lucky to have as much of her as he did. He didn’t know how to take care of a child. And after Wyoming and Texas and New Orleans, he didn’t think he deserved to, either.

  His foot looked inflamed. He could barely get his toes free, and had to yank the laces out entirely. The wound probably needed sewing, or at the very least to be cauterized. Hawley ran the tub and emptied a bottle of peroxide over the bullet hole and watched the edges of his skin foam white and burn.

  Properly this time, he bandaged the wound, packed the wrappings tightly and bundled layers of dressing. In the end his foot looked like a mummy’s. He didn’t even try to put a shoe back on. He just cut the leg off an old pair of sweatpants and slipped that over his foot and then tied the ends and wrapped a plastic bag around it and then duct-taped the whole thing for good measure.

  The room was splattered with red. What a mess he’d made, Hawley thought. He wished he could erase his entire life, starting with his father’s death and then every step that had led him here to this crap motel room, every bullet, every twisted turn of the road he’d followed—even meeting Lily, even having Loo. Hawley wanted it all gone.

  He popped another Percocet and washed it down with beer and then he started searching under the bathroom sink until he found a bucket. He filled the bucket with soap and sponges and paper towels, and then he went under the kitchen sink and found a bottle of turpentine there, and also a bottle of bleach and a pair of rubber gloves. He brought it all out to the car and then he drove back to Dogtown.

  The porch light at Mabel Ridge’s house was out but there was still a pumpkin burning by the door, its jagged smile illuminated. Hawley parked in the street. He filled the plastic bucket with supplies and crept onto the path, dragging his bound-up leg behind him.

  One by one, Hawley began to erase his own bloody footprints, from the sidewalk to the house. First his. Then Loo’s. It was difficult to get the stain off the pavement, and even harder to get it off the wooden stairs to the porch. He added some bleach to the bucket, and took a scrub brush and leaned his full weight against it, going back and forth, back and forth. Then he’d stop and check his work with a flashlight. Then he’d start again.

  He’d been out there for maybe twenty minutes when the porch light clicked on and the front door opened. Mabel Ridge leaned against the doorknob, dressed in striped pajamas. Hawley stopped scrubbing.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “I’m cleaning your porch.”

  “I nearly called the police.”

  “I just need to finish this,” said Hawley. “It won’t take long.” And he went back to pushing the scrub brush back and forth.

  “Is that blood?”

  “It’s paint,” said Hawley. “I was painting and I got some on my shoes and I tracked it here so I wanted to clean it up before it dried.”

&n
bsp; Mabel Ridge stood over him. “It looks like blood.”

  Hawley was still wearing the Crest T-shirt that Mabel Ridge had made. His pupils were fixed from the drugs. But he didn’t feel high. He didn’t feel anything.

  “I think your car got egged.”

  “Goddammit!” Mabel Ridge came out onto the porch. Then she went back inside and flipped on more yard lights before going to inspect the damage. Hawley had noticed a few broken shells as he came up the driveway, but now he could see that the old Pontiac had been fully covered, at least two dozen yolks smeared across the windshield.

  Mabel Ridge went around to the side of the house and unspooled a hose. She turned on the water and began to spray the car. “What kind of soap are you using?”

  “All kinds,” said Hawley. “I wasn’t sure what would work.”

  “Well, if you’ve got any dish soap, bring it over.”

  Hawley carried his bucket and sponges and the liquid soap over. He refilled the bucket with water and added some soap and helped Mabel Ridge clean the car. It wasn’t what he’d planned on doing. But Hawley didn’t have much of a plan anymore for anything.

  “Is Loo awake?”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” said Mabel Ridge.

  “So she’s asleep?”

  The old woman eyed Hawley’s foot, the bandages and plastic bag sealed with tape. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in. But don’t bring it here.”

  “There’s no trouble,” said Hawley.

  Mabel Ridge stared at him. “Are you drunk?”

  “Nope,” said Hawley.

  She went inside and came back with the basket of apples Loo had offered him earlier.

  “Why don’t you eat something.”

  “Thanks,” said Hawley. He chose one and took a bite. The fruit was crisp and juicy. The skin stuck in his teeth, the tartness coating his tongue.