Exigencies

by Richard Thomas

  “I remember,” Stewart said quietly. “I had to stuff newspaper into my shoes and wear all your clothes.”

  Dale laughed. “You looked like you were shrinking.”

  The phone rang, but neither of them got up. Dale sipped his coffee and Stewart did the same, holding back a grimace when the bitter taste made his mouth twist. Their mother called out to Dale.

  “What?” Dale shouted back.

  “It’s for you,” she said from the other room. She walked in, standing by the doorway. “It’s . . . work.”

  Dale jumped out of his seat and went into the other room, closing the door behind him. Mother started noisily cleaning, clearing the table and washing dishes. Dale’s voice filled their ears in the short moments of silence. Stewart sipped at his coffee again, adjusting to the bitter taste. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, feeling for his mother as she scrubbed the charred bits of onion off a cast iron skillet.

  Everything is fine.

  Stewart sighed, letting himself fall deeper into her thoughts, reliving the first time he felt her years ago. They were poor and she thought a lot about money, adding and subtracting numbers, paying one bill at a time. Then one day Dale came home with two bags of groceries and a portable heater. Mother wanted to ask how and why, but she didn’t and after enough time had passed, she didn’t even think it. The only time she ever really fretted at all was the night Dale came home with a long cut over the right side of his face. She said nothing and merely dressed the wounds, but Stewart could feel the way she was screaming inside of her head over the sight of Dale’s blood.

  He sometimes thought about telling them that he could feel their minds, but deep down he knew that if he did this they would never think freely again and their thoughts would hide from him like cockroaches in the light and he would know less about them had he been a normal boy.

  He let himself slip further into his mother’s past, going back days, months, years. Feeling the panic when father left and she was pregnant again, feeling the nights when she had to heat up a pot of water to melt the ice in the toilet, nights when they shook themselves to sleep under three comforters stiff from the cold. He shifted forward to the day Dale came home in his first suit and she thought how handsome!, and he brought her outside to show her the Cadillac he had just bought.

  “Someone will steal it!” mother had warned him.

  Dale laughed, saying that no one would ever touch it.

  “Even the birds are afraid to shit on it.”

  The birds are afraid of who you work for, she thought.

  Then a brief flickering memory of waking up early one morning and kissing Stewart’s forehead as he slept while Dale sat at the kitchen table, staring at nothing in particular, smoking, drinking a cup of black coffee while tracing his finger down the long scar on his face.

  The door creaked and Stewart’s eyes shot open, ripping himself to the surface.

  “Come on,” Dale said, kicking the chair his little brother sat in. “Got a call.”

  “We’re not looking for the girl anymore?”

  Mother ran the water again, noisily scrubbing out the empty sink.

  “I’ll explain in the car,” Dale said, putting on his jacket. He swallowed the rest of his coffee and headed out the front door. Stewart followed on his heels and as he closed the door behind him, he caught a snippet of his mother’s thoughts as she started wiping down the kitchen table a second time.

  Everything is fine.

  They drove out to a bar on the highway half an hour north of the city. Behind them, skyscrapers were a faded row of books that sat on the horizon’s shelf, slowly sinking away as they descended upon their exit. The road was absent of traffic and they passed several warehouses before reaching the bar.

  The doorman led Dale to an office in the back while Stewart sat on a stool by an empty bar. There was a pinball machine in one corner of the room, but all it did was eat quarters and after a minute of trying to get his money back, Stewart returned to his original post. The place was empty save for the doorman who sat on a stool by the entrance and another man Stewart didn’t know. The other man played pool, indiscriminately arranging one ball or another to get the shot he wanted. He chain-smoked, tossing the used cigarettes in an overflowing ashtray that gave off half a dozen tails of smoke.

  Everywhere I go there is smoke, Stewart thought. The air in the room stung his eyes and he started blinking, letting them water.

  Without trying to, he could feel the jealousy of the stranger playing pool. The man wished he was the one talking to Marcus Winters and the only reason he was playing pool was to give his hands and eyes something to do. The man watching the front door thought of a girl he slept with when he was eighteen. Sometimes he would glance at the man playing pool or Stewart, shifting in his seat whenever they made eye contact.

  The door in the back opened and Dale stepped out. Stewart hopped off the stool, meeting his brother halfway. Dale gripped him gently by the arm.

  “Jin is going to drive you for a little while,” he said, nodding towards the man playing pool.

  “Jin?”

  “Until you learn how to drive,” he said. “I got a few things I need to take care of, so I need you to take over looking for the girl for me.”

  “Oh . . . ” Stewart looked down at the ground and when the cue ball smacked another pool ball, there was a jaw-breaking crack that made his shoulders twitch.

  “Hey,” Dale said, tilting his brother’s chin up. “It’s easy, right? Pale skin, freckles on her nose, curly blonde hair.”

  “Thin legs but thick thighs,” Stewart added.

  Dale nodded. “No cuts, no bruises.”

  “No track marks.”

  “Right, and why is that?”

  “Because it isn’t what I want,” a man said behind them.

  Stewart looked up from the ground, looking past Dale as he turned to see the man that had entered from the back office. He wore a gray suit with black leather shoes that were slick like oil against the grimy tiled floor. He took out a silver cigarette case and as he turned it in his hands, it gleamed shards of light that took the glow of the yellow lamp above them and bleached it bone white.

  Jin set his pool stick down and took out a lighter, bringing it up to Marcus Winter’s face as he lifted the cigarette to his lips.

  “Are you the new boy?”

  Dale cut in, “This is my brother Stewart.”

  “Does he talk on his own, or do you have to wind him up first?” Marcus said, taking a drag off his cigarette. “Is he dumb or something?”

  Dale blushed. “Nah man, he’s real smart.”

  “If he’s smart, then he can—”

  “I can talk,” Stewart said, stepping up next to his brother. “What would you like me to say?”

  Marcus Winters narrowed his gaze on the boy and stepped closer, handing his lit cigarette to Jin. Dale remained frozen, his arms limp by his sides while Stewart took another step closer to Winters, bringing the two a mere foot apart. Up close, the boy could see the crow’s-feet around the man’s eyes. The pale ghosts of ancient scars crossed his face on a dozen different places, his cheeks the warped surface of a bleached cutting board.

  “Your scars . . . ”

  Winters smirked. “Occupational hazard.”

  Stewart blinked, feeling a flash of images. The small hands of a girl pushing him away, painted red nails scratching his face. Then there was the cold calculation of rigid thought as Marcus Winters brushed aside this montage of images and returned to his detached assessment of Stewart.

  “You look like something has you tongue-tied,” Winters said. He knelt down, resting his hands on bent knees, looking into the boy’s eyes.

  “I’m okay,” Stewart said. “I just want to work. Support my family.”

  “Family is important,” he said, smiling. “Do you have any questions about your work?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Stewart,” Dale mumbled, reaching out to grab his little brot
her.

  “Shut up,” Winters said. “Let him talk.” His eyes never left him, never blinked.

  Stewart drifted again, letting himself slip into a tiny hole of darkness. The pit of this hole had a shallow pool of sweat and when he looked up he caught the glimmer of a silver switchblade and a bleached bone handle, feeling the hands of two men holding him still as the sharp tip of the blade ran down the side of his cheek, hot blood running down his face.

  Dale.

  He was inside of his brother, that empty box he had reached his hand into so many times. His brother was sweating and every limb was frozen.

  Bring me another girl with bruises, and I’ll carve your face off.

  Stewart opened his eyes, staring at Marcus Winters.

  “Who’s the girl?” he asked evenly.

  The man’s eyes bulged in response with pupils that were dark and glassy, like those of a doll that sat on the edge of your bed and followed your every move. Jin closed in on the boy and a hand reached into his jacket, but Winters lifted a flat palm and gestured that he back away. He inched closer until his slow breath brushed against the boy’s face, leaving the stench of warm tobacco.

  “You’ve memorized her face? Her body?” he asked. “Every detail?”

  “Yes,” Stewart said. “She has curly blonde hair, and—”

  Winters shook his head. “No need,” he said, placing a hand on Stewart’s arm. His fingers gripped him lightly. “All you need to know is that the girl is someone I’m paying you to look for.”

  Stewart let the only words in his head leave his lips like so much loose change. “What will happen to her?”

  The man frowned, narrowing his eyes. “That’s none of your business. Look kid, you’re new, you don’t know how things are done around here, so just listen, shut up, and do your job.” He glanced at Dale. “Just like your big brother, okay?” He took his hands off his knees and stood up straight, looking down at the boy. “Understand?”

  “Yes,” Stewart said. He looked down at the floor for a moment and felt Marcus Winters, searching for an explanation, but there was nothing there except the observation of himself; nothing but a thick surface of ice that obscured what lay below in the darkness. If they left now, he would never find out why he wanted the girl until it was too late. He clenched his body and looked back up at the finely dressed kingpin, already in mid turn to leave them.

  “Do you hurt the girls?”

  There was a crack and he fell through the thin ice into a cold lake of moments, feeling the girls around him as they banged against the thick ice, fighting for the surface. Everything was small and broken and stained with blood spit from split lips and torn skin, and there were hours of screaming, hours of a yellow light swinging above them, a hundred shadows thrown against a concrete wall, hours of a musty bed they would never walk away from on their own two feet.

  Marcus turned back and slipped a hand into his coat pocket. He pulled out the blade and unhinged it. Dale swooped in front of him and grabbed Stewart by the arm and turned him around, backhanding him across the face.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said. The second blow was a tightly wound fist. “You think this is some kind of fucking game?”

  Stewart cried out, but in his mind he exhaled and sank deeper into Marcus Winters, sinking until his toes brushed the murky bottom and the surface was nothing more than a pinhole of light that faded to infinite black by the time it reached him.

  My wife was gone and a little girl hid in her room, afraid for what would happen to her. There was no money back then and I wanted to feel big and she was so small, so easy to break, I thought of her in ways I could never tell anyone and it was over so quickly, I could think of nothing else but those few moments when I was in control, believing there would never be anything quite so perfect in my life.

  In a matter of seconds, Marcus resumed his cold, calculating thoughts and the memories were buried beneath the ice, but they were like an oil slick that left Stewart’s mind slimy and black.

  “Listen to your brother,” Marcus Winters said, folding the switchblade up and returning it to his pocket. “He knows a thing or two about how things work around here.”

  Dale dragged the boy by the arm as they left the bar, but he dragged his feet, trying to grasp every last second he could of Marcus Winters, watching the black oil of his past shift in a silent current beneath the frozen glass, hearing the thud of fists as they banged against the thick ice, seeing the girl’s face as she screamed her name, her voice lost in the frigid water, her words a bubble of air that smacked silently against the ice.

  He could see the name on her lips.

  He held on to the name. He held tight as Dale continued to hit him, saying that it was not a game, to not ask questions. He wanted to cry out, to tell him what he felt and saw. He said nothing. He said nothing when his lip and his nose bled and a hard gust of wind bit the tears off his face. He said nothing on the quiet drive home, nothing when his mother cried out over the sight of his face.

  The name Gloria was a secret he kept inside of him.

  The last embers of night were still lingering in the kitchen when Dale walked in and found Stewart already at the table, stirring a shallow bowl of milky cereal. For more than a week the boy had avoided his older brother, getting up early and leaving the apartment before Dale even awoke. Saying nothing to his little brother, he walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself an inky mug of yesterday’s brew. He sat down at the table and sipped the cold coffee, looking at nothing in particular while silence counted the seconds between them. The bruises on Stewart’s face were finally starting to fade, but it left the skin on his face worn out, like an old pair of work gloves.

  Dale tipped his coffee mug towards the boy. “Once your face looks better, you can start working again.”

  “They said that?” Stewart kept his eyes on his cereal, sifting the last bits of sludge out of the milk.

  “They don’t want any attention, with how you look and all,” Dale explained. He paused before adding, “But yeah, they said you can work. I had to vouch for you. Convince them that you could be trusted to do your job without questions.”

  The spoon scraped the inside of the bowl and he let the milk spill out. “Do you think that’s true?”

  Dale widened his eyes in surprise to the question. “Is there something you want to say to me?”

  Stewart set the spoon down and met his brother’s eyes. They were neutral and cold and he could see his own reflection in them, bruises and all. When they came home a week ago and his face was still bleeding, they told their mother that he had slipped on ice and fell flat on his face. She didn’t believe them at first but eventually she stopped fussing about it. Now the scars were nearly faded, leaving a mask of ten years over the boy’s face.

  “What happens to the girl?” Stewart asked, keeping his gaze on Dale.

  His older brother kept his face still. The long scar on the side of his cheek was a white line that looked gray in the morning light, like a corpse with its eyes clenched shut. He shook his head.

  “This isn’t a game, little brother.”

  “I know,” Stewart said. “That’s why I want to know what happens. Because it isn’t a game.” He kept silent after, waiting for an answer. A full minute passed by before Dale gave a heavy sigh, looking away as he spoke.

  “When I find the girl, I find out where she lives. Then I call some people and give them the address. After that, I wait until he asks me to find another girl.”

  “But you don’t know what happens to her?”

  “No,” Dale said, shaking his head. “They keep us all separate. The guy I call? I don’t even know his name. But he gets her, and someone else probably brings her to Marcus. But I’m the guy that finds her.” He dragged a finger over his left eye, closing it. He shrugged. “If I stopped looking, he’d just pay someone else to do it. So I might as well do it myself if I can get paid and take care of you and Mama.”

  “He kills those girls,” Ste
wart whispered.

  “Probably,” Dale said evenly.

  “He would’ve killed me if he wanted to,” Stewart said quietly.

  Dale said nothing and their silence pushed Stewart’s eyes over the long white scar on his older brother’s face, knowing then that it was a lesson Dale saw every day when he looked in the mirror. Stewart’s own bruises would soon fade away altogether, leaving nothing but the memory of his brother’s fear, the shallow pool of sweat he kept hidden inside of him.

  Stewart leaned in. “You weren’t going to stop him.”

  “No,” Dale said coldly. “I would not have stopped him.”

  Hearing the words sunk in more than Stewart would’ve thought, and he lost his breath for a moment.

  “I’m going to look for the girl,” Dale said, “and when I find her, I’m going to find out where she lives and make a phone call. And then after that . . . I don’t know what happens to her. But she’ll be gone and that’ll be that. And there’s nothing we can do, so what difference does it make?” He slid his chair back and got up to leave, looking down at the boy. “Mama told me you’re out all day but you aren’t at school?”

  “No,” the boy said. When he looked up at Dale, he shrugged.

  “If you’re not going to work with me, then you’re going to go back to school, understand?” he said. His voice was stern and he didn’t bother waiting for a response, slipping his jacket on and heading towards the door. “I’m not gonna work and put food on the table just so you can spend all day fucking off with your friends.”

  The door slammed shut when he left and Stewart waited, listening to the soft footsteps of his brother’s shoes as they echoed up the stairwell. He sat there for several minutes before putting on his jacket and leaving, walking down the stairwell and pausing before the front door of the building. He took out a small note in his back pocket and read over the lines. It was scribbled and misspelled, but it would have to do. There was no one he could show it to.

  After reading the note a second time and sounding out the words, he felt in his pocket for a loose cigarette he had pilfered from his brother and lit it, sucking in a quick drag before going outside into the cold. The smoke made his lungs feel like cold steel and he coughed less and less the harder he breathed in. The wind shoved him back from time to time, remaining still between its heavy gusts. He took the train north towards a neighborhood in the city he had gone to earlier that week, walking the streets, searching.