The 17

by Clint Kelly

  “Care to share the umbrella?”

  She reminded me a little of Ruthie back in the day —bright, direct eyes, sure of herself. I shifted to accommodate.

  “Thanks.” She joined me under the umbrella. “When I told my boyfriend I’d forgotten mine, he said maybe that older guy will be nice and share his. He had you pegged.”

  “Old?”

  “Nice.” The word shot back the way Ruthie would have done it, without hesitation, sassy with humor.

  “You’re not from around here?”

  “I’ve been in school in France for two years. Graphic fashion design. Finishing up here. How’d you know?”

  “Locals don’t forget their umbrellas. If they’re caught out without one, it’s because they chose to leave it home. We’re a defiant bunch, especially when it comes to our weather.”

  Ruthie would have given the girl the umbrella to keep. I wasn’t Ruthie.

  The 17 snorted to the curb, lowering hydraulically to a more convenient boarding height. A kneeling bus, they call it. Today it reminds me of an elephant curtseying. Yesterday it settled with a groan that put me in mind of Sister Sanchez kneeling for Mass at the mission.

  The girl sat in the front side-facing bench seats, and I took a spot in a front-facing seat across the aisle.

  Knitting Needles Lady was in the seat ahead, calm as moss, clicking away on a lime-green sweater.

  Adjacent to the girl were two older security guards coming off night shift. They leaned into one another like two old tugboats knocking the barnacles from one another’s hulls. Without transition, they went from talking about the rising incidence of suicide among New York City cops to quitting smoking.

  “The patch, that’s how I’m going to quit,” said the tall, bent one. ‘And a glass of orange juice every day.”

  “What’s the juice for? You don’t swallow the dang thing,” said the shorter, squinty-eyed one.

  “I know that, genius. Somehow the nicotine from the patch works with the orange juice and the craving dies.”

  “Yeah.” Shorty nodded sagely, practically knocking heads with his seatmate. “The day I die is the day I quit smoking for good!”

  The girl, who had been checking her yellow-and-white-checked pocketbook, stood and walked to the front to speak to Bill.

  The two old rental guards surveyed her every move, the topics of suicide and smoking cessation on hold.

  When she returned to her seat, she tore open a Band-Aid strip and wrapped it around a slightly bloodied right index finger.

  She smiled at the rent-a-cops. “Cut my finger on a new dollar bill.”

  Shorty slapped Tall Guard’s knee. “Glad it weren’t no twenty or we’d be lookin’ at amputation!” He wheezed a chuckle, which Tall Guard leaned in and shared, knocking a few more barnacles loose.

  I’m guessing they were processing a few pints of McGinty’s Finest with which they’d celebrated end of shift.

  The girl looked right past them at me. “It would have been especially ironic since the driver tells me that this is the Ride Free Zone and fare is not required.”

  I smiled but said nothing.

  G’s up. C’s up. B’s down below. What did that even mean?

  Three stops later, I might have ignored the graffiti on the Welcome to Seattle sign affixed to the seat ahead of me but for the fact that it glowed. I mean glowed like neon, like reflective paint, like white moon in black velvet sky.

  Get off the bus at the next stop.

  Not knowing how I knew the two “signs” were connected, as sure as Lewis needs Clark, my heart, no matter how riddled with holes, knew with zero margin for error that “the voices” had returned, and that I wanted no part of them, especially in twos. My palms sweated, my chest thudded. Air was again in short supply.

  I sat on my hands so that I would not be even remotely tempted to pull the stop cord. Schizophrenically, I prayed to the same God who I suspected knew where the messages were coming from. I was expected at the mission. Breakfast didn’t serve itself. Leave me alone.

  From the corner of my eye, I watched the right arm of the Siberian-tiger-print coat rise into the air and a bandaged index finger pull the cord. I sensed her staring at me and glanced in her direction.

  “My stop.” She said it apologetically, as if somehow responsible for my discomfort. “The Fashion Design School.”

  Why did I nod? We had just met and were not accountable to one another.

  I stood and followed her off the bus.

  “Thank you again for sharing your umbrella. Do you work around here?”

  “I, um, volunteer at the Gospel Mission twice a week. Serve breakfast. Clean up. Serve lunch. Clean up. Help with chapel.” I sounded like an idiot.

  She smiled and nodded. And waited. “That must be a lot of work.”

  I nodded. “Hundreds of meals a day.”

  We waited.

  “Street folks need a little hope and comfort each day,” I said as if it needed to be said.

  Walk west on Seneca.

  Frantically, I searched for a coffee shop. To hide. To disappear. In a city of ten thousand Starbucks, not a hint of java anywhere.

  “Well, you probably have to get to class and I need to brown the sausages. I’m Jim, by the way, and I wish you all success.” I stuck out my hand.

  She took my cold, clammy paw into her smooth, gentle touch and made eye contact. “I’m Greta. Listen to your heart, Jim.” She turned to go.

  “Walk with me?” I blurted. In for a penny of madness, in for a pound.

  She looked to be searching for the right way to shut me down.

  Hurry!

  “Well, I guess I could, as far as my school anyway. It’s just down Seneca a couple of blocks towards the water.”

  West on Seneca.

  We walked in silence, hands in pockets, listening to a city come alive. Delivery trucks, their warning backup beepers echoing among the tall buildings, brought the day’s produce and office supplies. Jets from nearby Sea-Tac International Airport glided overhead, the Sounder commuter train clanged through a nearby intersection, and gulls wheeled on the breeze and cried their business.

  The stylish exterior of the multi-storied Seattle Fashion Design School rose from the corner in pale pink and blue pastel. I felt foolish for having walked her to school and angry at irrational impressions.

  I have lived alone too long. I am cracking up.

  Turn in here. Hurry!

  “Here” was the Bayview Apartments, a squat brick building of three stories, white wooden window boxes rampant with red geraniums, a residence dating from the 1920s.

  A fist of urgency slammed my gut.

  Eyes closed, I asked for help. “Greta, please don’t think me crazy or a pervert or anything, but will you come with me to the Bayview? I think someone in there needs our help. Please. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was urgent and I’ll stand a better chance of getting in if there are two of us.”

  “A woman, you mean.”

  I sighed. “If you’re anything like my Ruthie was, you’re worth two of me any day.”

  Greta took two steps back, opened her pocketbook, and removed what could only be a canister of pepper spray. “Any funny business, Jim, and you will regret it.”

  We walked side by side to the entrance of the Bayview Apartments. We stood alone outside the locked and secure building, no one coming or going.

  Greta looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “G’s up. C’s up. B’s down below. Think, Greta. What does that mean to you? That message was given to me and I was told to get off the bus and head west on Seneca. I know it’s cryptic, insane really, but somehow that information’s going to get us inside the Bayview.”

  She studied me, suspicions and pepper spray in plain view. “What are you talking about, Jim? What message? Who told you?”

  “A message given to me on the bus. And I’m not sure who, but as we neared your school, I was told to turn in here to this apartment building. And t
o hurry.” I’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole and I couldn’t get up.

  I saw raw fear pass over her expression, a wolf’s shadow on fresh-fallen snow. “Jim, I—”

  “Greta, you’ve got to stick with me. You know something strange is going on. Insane strange, not X-Files strange, but maybe supernatural.” I saw the panic in her eyes. “No, no, forget I said that. I don’t know what it is, OK, but I’m no loon.”

  Her look said that’s exactly what I was. “After we left the bus, you said, ‘Follow your heart, Jim.’ What did you mean?”

  Now her look said she remembered saying no such thing. “Jim, look, I’m sorry but I have to—”

  “No, no. Here, right here, let’s check the residents’ names on the register.” I could not bear the thought of her leaving. I kept rattling on, not wanting silence to send her darting off. I ran my finger along the resident list. There were thirty-five units in the building. “Remember back there at your stop, how you waited instead of immediately leaving for school. You were waiting for me to make a move, to tell you my story. And why did you tell me to listen to my heart? You felt some prodding too, Greta, a nudge from some unseen hand. Am I right?”

  She looked around as if suddenly aware of how alone we were, of how isolated from the street. “I don’t know, Jim. There did seem to be something different about you, a glimpse of something that made me think I should hear you out. But now you’re getting wild, incoherent. Maybe I’ll see you around again on the bus.” She gave me a wide berth and started back up the walk.

  “Wait! Wait, Greta! G’s up. C’s up. G. and C. McCutcheon, here they are! Up, upstairs. Third floor. Unit 30. Please, look, there’s a security camera here above the entry. Just stand with me so that the McCutcheons can see we’re a couple, that it’s safe to talk to us, to me.”

  She turned and gave me a look usually reserved for bad dogs. “We are not a couple. I have no intention of going in there or anywhere with you. Good day, Jim!”

  “I’m simply listening to my heart,” I said to her retreating back.

  She stopped and though I could not see her face, it was evident she was having a tug of war with her own heart.

  Again the pocketbook. After a few seconds, it snapped shut and she slipped it into a pocket of her coat. When she turned back around to face me, she held a pepper-spray canister in each hand. She marched back to the entry, the canisters held in front of her, ready for launch. She nodded, grim-faced, but said nothing.

  I frowned pointedly at her hands until she had the canisters more or less concealed in palm and sleeve.

  I buzzed Unit 30. It took a second buzz before a hollow voice came over the intercom. “Yes?”

  “Ma’am, am I speaking to C. or G. McCutcheon? I am James Carter of Kids Safari and this is my associate, Greta.”

  After a short pause, the voice in the box said, “I’m Gloria McCutcheon and my husband says we don’t care to donate at this time. Thank you.”

  “No, no, no! Gloria, please, don’t go anywhere.” My mind was racing a million miles an hour. I wasn’t used to thinking this fast on the fly. Plus, I didn’t like falsely representing myself, even a little, but we were way beyond that now.

  “I have a message for B. McCutcheon. Is she at home?”

  “My husband’s mother? Do you know where she is? Bea’s not well, not supposed to be alone, and she needs her medication. She disappeared from the apartment an hour ago and we’ve been frantic to find her. Carl’s in a wheelchair. Busted a leg on that fool ladder of his. We called the manager, but he’s out. We were fixing to call 911. We’re not spry as we once were. Carl, I’ve told you before we’ve got a maintenance man who’s supposed to do all that…”

  Hurry!

  I prayed for strength. I hoped they didn’t think I was implying that Bea was dead and buried. “Gloria, Gloria, listen to me. If I tell you that Bea is down below, does that mean anything to you?”

  Thankfully, Gloria stopped berating Carl long enough to reply. “The basement? Why on earth would Mama be in the basement? Who did you say you were again?”

  Please, please. “I didn’t say basement, Gloria, I said down below.”

  “I know very well what you said, young man. That’s what we call the basement. ‘Down below.’ Must be a holdover from when we lived on the farm and had a root cellar for our preservables. We were always sending one of the grandkids ‘down below’ to fetch us some pickled beets or canned beans or winter potatoes or cling peaches or—”

  “Gloria, Gloria. Please unlock the door for us and we’ll go right to the basement and see if Mama’s there.”

  “Why would she be there? That’s just laundry and storage down there. And a rat or two, I suspect.” She paused. “Oh dear, Mr. Carter, you get down there right now!”

  The door buzzed, I gave it a yank, and we raced to the end of the hall where a set of stairs led down.

  Taking the steps two at a time, we rounded a landing, pounded down the remaining flight and onto the dimly lit, low-ceilinged, musty-smelling basement level. We barged past piles of old newspapers and burst into the laundry room as an elderly woman in a blue print dress and seated in a lawn chair raised a revolver to her right temple and closed her eyes as if in prayer.

  We skidded to a halt, three feet from the chair. “Hello, Bea.” I forced myself to say it calmly and kindly. “I see you found my pistol.”

  Rheumy gray eyes snapped open. She looked past us as if lost in the new thought. With her free hand, she tugged on an ill-fitting platinum-blonde wig. “Your pistol? Are you certain?”

  “A gift from my grandpa. He’s gone now and that’s all I have left.”

  Greta had been inching forward. Slowly, she knelt at the foot of the lawn chair and patted the old woman’s thigh. “This blue print dress was always my favorite. Thank you for wearing it today.”

  Bea smoothed the faded dress where Greta had touched it. “This worn thing? It’s nothing but a hackabout. You must remember it new. Mighty pretty then.”

  The gun wavered, the arm that held it dropping to rest on the arm of the chair.

  I reached out and gently took the revolver from her.

  “I just get so tired,” Bea said, eyes glistening. “So, so tired.” She looked at me this time, and then down at the gun. “I’m so glad you found your grandfather’s gift. Where was it?”

  I patted her hand. “Down here, way back on a shelf. Who knows how these things happen?”

  “Isn’t that the gospel truth?” Bea yawned. “I think I’d like a nap.”

  3

  The next week, I stayed away from the bus. It was as if the cologne incident was a trial run meant to get me familiar with the idea of taking messages from the 17. But it had been too easy to dismiss the business with Doomie and Stella as a not unhappy coincidence.

  The gun, chambers full, had been all too real.

  Whatever game the cosmos was playing here, I wanted no part of it. It was capricious and vague. One shouldn’t risk the life and death of an old lady by putting her salvation in the hands of a random and reluctant guy named James Carter and his ability to read puzzles planted in the graffiti on the back of a bus seat—James Carter, a man with flat feet, a loose crown on a lower left molar, a developing front porch, a hankering for maraschino cherries, very different politics from the other Jimmy Carter, and two holes in his heart.

  I’d never run for office, been to the Grand Canyon, or watched the Indy 500 start to finish. I apparently had little effect on the chief indicators of consumer confidence. I could go for two weeks without purchasing so much as a pack of gum, and the Associated Press would report that consumer confidence was at an all-time high. Or I could go on a buying binge of beer, pepperoni sticks, a jar of the aforementioned cherries, two tins of smoked oysters, a small ham, and a large box of powdered donuts and not move the confidence meter a single tick. Next time, I’d splurge on the Copper River salmon. If nothing moved except my taste buds, my government conspiracy theory would be validated. />
  The holes in my heart were a little more complicated. The first was a small hole in the old pumper the diameter of a pencil. I was told it’s a congenital defect in which there’s an opening between the right and left sides of the heart. Atrial septal defect. That means a portion of my blood is not pumped to the lungs. My defect was small enough that no surgery was required and the hole mostly closed on its own over time. I still get tired sometimes and a little short of breath. One game of bowling instead of two. No mountain climbing. Watch the blood pressure. I never gave it much thought.

  God put me here; God will remove me.

  The larger hole was more serious. Ruth Anne Hampton was the cutest girl at Tumwater High. She worked part-time after school as a library page. She was a whiz at finding books for people and helping them research this insect or that Alaska congressman. Whenever I went into the library, she dropped everything and made me the center of her world. At least it felt that way. The sparkle in her gray-green eyes, the way she tilted her shapely body in my direction, the merry wind chimes of her laughter, soft, light, never disturbing other patrons. I never heard her laugh that way with anyone else.

  I proposed on the bridge over Tumwater Falls. For the longest minute of my life, she “thought it over” before most of her “yes” was delivered in a cascade of kisses that the song says were “sweeter than wine.” I’ve tasted wine, and I have to tell you the sugar content of Ruthie’s kisses was way higher.

  We were closing in on our thirtieth wedding anniversary when Ruth Anne got sick. Long story short, it was a rare blood disease, unpreventable, nobody’s fault, here’s your copy of the death certificate, our condolences. “Mercifully, she did not linger, Mr. Carter.”

  Mercy had nothing to do with her death, but everything to do with her life. Though we could have none of our own, Ruthie loved children and spent hours at Children’s Hospital holding them, tickling them, and helping me apply clown makeup so that I could wring a chuckle or two out of the misery they were in.