The 17

by Clint Kelly

  Don’t take away my freedom to decide to participate or to stay home with the blinds drawn. “I received no messages from the bus today. Is that as deranged as it sounds?”

  She looked out the space between vendor booths and cocked her head to one side, almost as if she were listening for something. “If you hear voices, you hear voices; if the next day you don’t hear them, you don’t hear them. Maybe that’s it,” she said, lifting a handsome, hand-tooled purse to her nose and sniffing its rich, leathery newness. “Maybe your direct assistance was needed for a short time and that time has passed.”

  I felt her touch on my arm, no more than a light, feathery brush really, and it thrilled me. Ruthie, my love, it’s not sexual. Not for one second. It’s validation. Human warmth and compassion. No more.

  “You are cut from a different cloth, Mr. Carter. My Randy’s a good, ordinary, meat-and-potatoes guy. Works hard. A couple of beers now and then. Utters the odd epithet, always appropriate to the occasion. Follows the NBA. Thinks colored T-shirts are a fashion statement. A good provider, but not in any spiritual sense. I’m afraid he does not hear voices.” She looked as if in some unseen record book, she had slapped him with a demerit. “We all have our mysteries, all our secrets to keep.” Greta watched thunderclouds piling on the horizon and I saw great longing in those dark eyes. “You, though, there’s something more about you than meets first inspection. I think you and your wife must have been a force once upon a time. I think maybe you don’t know what to do with your half of that faith force now that the woman who completed you is gone.”

  I dropped my honey stick in the trash receptacle. Its smooth goodness had gone grainy in my mouth. I looked away, hot tears welling in my eyes. “How? How do you know so much about me? About my wife, Ruth, and what we had? I didn’t tell you all those things.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she said. “Some things you sense about a person without having to be told.”

  I again met her gaze and knew I wanted her happiness more than anyone since you, Ruth Anne.

  My heart ached for her. Greta’s chances were fifty percent or less that she would marry for life, that her children would be whole and healthy all their days. I didn’t like those odds any more than I liked getting messages from the 17. How could the human race mess up so badly and ruin so thoroughly? And why did Greta, why did any of us, have to eat the bitter fruit of so much rebellion?

  Her eyes read me with as much comprehension as yours, dear Ruth. And she did not turn away.

  God does not turn away.

  Startled, I looked around for the source of the voice. “Did you hear that? Just now, Someone else spoke to me.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now she’d know I’d escaped from the asylum.

  “I have to go, James.” There was a trace of anxiety in her voice, as if I had come too close with a running chainsaw. “Perhaps I can let you know when the wedding is. You’d be welcome, although if I know my Randy, it’s as likely to be a small, private ceremony at a stock-car speedway as at a church or hall. I’m trying to talk him into a pretty little garden on Vashon Island, but he’s not keen on the expense. Wish me luck.” She stuck out a hand and waited.

  I enfolded her hand in both of mine, a bit more warmly than intended. “Good luck, Greta. I don’t even know your last name but now I may as well wait until you take a new one.”

  She laughed. “I was thinking of retaining my own name.”

  Young people do that nowadays. And sometimes they go so far as to take a third identity that is different from either of their last names. Gives me the willies, Ruthie.

  I reached into my inside jacket pocket and withdrew a brand-new umbrella in a spotted leopard-skin pattern. “To go with your coat,” I said.

  Greta looked pleased. “Well, James Carter, this is where I came in.” She opened the umbrella, gave it a saucy twirl, and with a wave and not another word, she sashayed off in Rachel’s direction.

  How I hated to see her go.

  I sat on the seawall until dark. Watched the water, the sunset, the arrival and departure of half a dozen ferries. Breathed the smell of brine. Couples arm in arm, families laughing, everyone soaking up the pleasant sea air. Enjoyed a waffle cone with two scoops of huckleberry ice cream. Didn’t attempt to talk to God, but whispered good thoughts on behalf of Greta and Randy. Even threw Doomie and Shy Stella into the mix.

  Most of the walk home was uneventful. No pushing my luck riding buses. No expensive cab rides I couldn’t afford. Petted three dogs out with their masters for the evening’s constitutional, stuck my head in at Jake’s and called him Popeye, and stopped to listen to an accomplished street musician play his steel drum for strollers young and old. I tossed two dollars into a plastic cup after he took my request for a lively Jamaican rendition of “Music Box Dancer.”

  It felt good to just do normal-people things. Sane things. Felt good all the way to Third Street Deli.

  I now had everything needed for tomorrow night’s meal with Bill. Stouffer’s, said my neighbor, Lillian Pryor, this afternoon, makes a quite respectable meatloaf. She took pity and gave me one from her freezer. With enough catsup, Bill’s bread, and a mostly fresh bag of shredded lettuce doused in sweet sesame dressing, we were in business. Did I mention the rocky-road ice cream?

  Go inside the deli and get a gallon of milk.

  I walked faster, the gaudy neon of the deli bathing me in a garish blue glow. My heart was in hyperdrive.

  Go inside the deli and get a gallon of milk.

  This wasn’t happening.

  I stopped at the newspaper rack just inside the deli’s front door and studied the front page. Auto sales up. Home prices down. A wildfire burning uncontained in Idaho.

  A gallon of milk.

  I couldn’t drink that much milk before it went bad. Bill didn’t strike me as the dairy type. What was I supposed to do, wash my hair in it? My blood pressure rose along with my temper. This was ridiculous. Now I was God’s grocery boy? And wouldn’t the real voice of God say delicatessen instead of the more colloquial deli?

  I stormed down the aisle to the eggs-and-dairy case, yanked open the door, grabbed a plastic gallon of whole milk, checked the expiration date, and practically hurled it onto the counter in front of the frowning cashier.

  “Three dollars and sixty-nine cents,” he said, ringing it up.

  I slapped the money on the counter, threw the change into a charitable-donation jar in the fight against some dreaded something, and nearly collided with the next customer coming into the store. With muttered apology, I straight-armed the door open and stood on the sidewalk, breathing deeply of my irritation, the refrigerated cold penetrating my fingertips.

  I turned toward home and stopped. Nobody wanted to be in the safety and sanity of his own apartment more than I, but I could not move. Not a muscle. It had to be fifteen minutes I stood there. The funny looks I got from passersby weren’t funny. My fingers were numb from the cold, yet I couldn’t switch the milk to the other hand. Was I having a stroke? Instead of panicking, I waited. Expectantly. As if any minute, the mother ship would hover overhead and all would be revealed. And I did something I hadn’t done in weeks. I prayed.

  Father in heaven, what in blazes is going on?

  I didn’t say it was a noble prayer.

  Will You please tell me how to get home?

  Nothing.

  Would You please help my legs to work again?

  Nothing.

  Should I ask for help?

  Again nothing, and when I tried to ask a pedestrian to call 911, the words would not come, but again I wasn’t worried. I waited and knew beyond the shadow of a single doubt that my answer would come. What am I supposed to do with this milk?

  Second and Fairhaven.

  That is a sketchy part of town, Lord. Why there?

  Nothing.

  Lord?

  Second and Fairhaven.

  That area is always in the news, God. Muggings. Shootings. Drugs. I couldn’t go there.


  I tried again to move my feet and couldn’t. There was no pain, no paralysis, just zero mobility. It was as if my shoes were glued to the sidewalk.

  Help, Lord.

  Nothing.

  What is that address again?

  Second and Fairhaven.

  OK, let’s go.

  I pulled hard on my right foot and nearly fell over backward as it came off the ground as naturally as you please. The cashier from the deli came out to stare at me. “Do you need assistance, sir?”

  “And good night to you as well. Thank you for the milk.” It was not the most elegant of exits, but it was all I had.

  Ten minutes later, I was at Second and Fairhaven. There was much less traffic. Abandoned businesses. Two people sleeping under cardboard in the doorways of a dry cleaners and a print shop closed for the night. It was past ten, and the hodgepodge of houses and dilapidated apartment buildings were for the most part dark, any inhabitants out or gone to bed.

  Two thirteen Fairhaven.

  I stood in front of that address and saw the barest glow seeping from behind the window curtains. The aged car at the curb looked as if it had gone there to die. Even the air was still with disappointment.

  Lord, I cannot go up to that door this time of night. Those people are asleep. I might get shot. At the very least, they’ll think I’m an idiot.

  As much as I tried to keep the whine out of my voice, there it was.

  Deliver the milk.

  I wondered if I ended up in the morgue, who would mourn my passing? The list was depressing in its brevity.

  The milk.

  I approached the door, a dim street lamp accenting the dirt and neglect.

  Hands trembling, I knocked.

  Again.

  It was some time before the door opened a crack, held back by a chain lock.

  “What?”

  The word hung there between us. Either of us could as easily have asked it. What in the name of all that was sane were we doing?

  Feeling as stupid and unsure as I’d ever felt, I said, “I’ve come to give you this milk.”

  The chain came off the door and swung wide. Standing there in boxers and a muscle shirt, feet and legs bare, a freckled young man of nineteen or twenty ran a shaky hand through a thick thatch of red hair. “Milk?”

  I lifted the gallon container into the lamplight as if it was the Holy Grail.

  Eyes wide, he snatched the milk from my grasp, turned, and leaving the door wide, all but ran down a dimly lit hallway to the back of the small house, from which the tiny sounds of a crying baby were emitted.

  A young girl in tank top and cutoff shorts rushed to the front of the house, the baby cradled in one arm, the milk in the other. Right behind them was the young man. All were crying.

  “Our prayers are answered! Our prayers are answered!” the man shouted over and over.

  From the kitchen where the girl went came the rattle of pans. She was warming the milk. “We prayed for milk for the baby! Every last dime we had went for the rent and into that danged car. How were we going to feed our baby? So we got down on our knees and we asked God for milk. Milk for our little Carrie. And here you come, mister, here you come with exactly what we asked for!”

  I ended the night two hundred dollars poorer and another hundred questions in my repertoire.

  11

  It was Friday and not my finest hour. I was sick at heart and beaten thin by the Sovereign hammer.

  I don’t know if I can get this out and wouldn’t even try if it weren’t for Bill. I’m sorry to make you cry, Ruth Anne, but I haven’t felt this empty since you slipped from me. This morning, I stayed in bed with blinds drawn and dared God to flush me out.

  Once out of bed, I’d flipped between the soaps and the court shows and the daytime talk-meisters, anything to keep from forming the mental picture of mother and father and infant waiting last night in desperation for God’s reluctant provider to arrive with the milk. Their tear-stained faces. Their loud prayers of thanks for answered prayer. My promise to have Mike of Bread of Life Mission stop by with groceries. The mother kissing my hand; the father clapping me on the shoulder; the baby asleep at last, its world put right so easily by a bottle and a half of Bossie’s Best. Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in full flight from the ghosts of Barstow, California, in search of a new beginning in Seattle.

  The creeping suspicion that had held me prisoner beneath the covers was that the milk episode hadn’t been as much for that family’s benefit as it was for mine. I mean, God could have sent any one of a hundred or a thousand people to take them the milk. Or He could have materialized a cow next to their dump of a car and provided milk enough for the neighbors.

  That He sent me with a single gallon and placed such an enormous emphasis on the timing of it proved my theory. I am but His messenger boy and it was the last thing I wanted. When I balk and start to exercise a little of that famous free will of His that everyone talks about, including you, Ruth, He reprimands by sending me out for milk. Undoubtedly, my discomfort with all this places a giant cement block right where God wants my breakthrough to occur.

  I know it sounded arrogant, but I didn’t like being shoved around by forces I couldn’t see, no matter how divine.

  Finally, around two in the afternoon, my phone call to Mike completed, I dug a sweatshirt and jeans out of the clothes hamper, downed some pickled cauliflower and sardines, and set off for the 17. Since I was now sent messages outside the bus, I figured to stay out of God’s way by going out when I good and well decided it was time to go out. Surely He wasn’t going to expend His energy much longer on a rebel like me. I’d wait Him out on my terms, ride the bus at my whim, and ignore any more signals from the sacred semaphore.

  For a fleeting moment I entertained the idea of canceling dinner with Bill, and would have had I not been so concerned that Metro’s finest would take it personally. Besides, why punish Bill because of my feud with Jehovah?

  Bill was all smiles when the doors swung open and I boarded the 17.

  “Where to, my good man? Bermuda? Palm Springs? The Poconos?”

  “No can do, Bill.” I swiped my transit pass and figured I owed Bill some banter. Plus, I needed to lighten up by the time he arrived for dinner. Better start now. “I’m having a fancy dinner with a VIP, a regular raconteur who shall regale me with tales of the smoky backrooms at Metro and the latest scuttlebutt from the bus barn. No amount of white-sand beaches and heart-shaped bathtubs can tear me away from this man’s riveting stories!”

  “Sheesh,” said Bill, who pressed on the accelerator and with a practiced swing of the wheel pulled away from the stop. “I don’t know about rivets and raccoons, but do tell me more about the fancy dinner.” He gave me that cocksure grin that said tonight’s meatloaf was the highlight of his social calendar.

  I slid into the first side-facing seat by the front doors so we could yak without shouting over the talkative transmission. “No chipped jam jars or paper plates for my guest. We’re eating off stoneware and drinking from mismatched bowling mugs, courtesy of Bryce Portofino’s sidewalk sale. He’s in 5E.”

  “You don’t have to impress me.” Bill took a wide swing to the right to detour around the lane repaving at Westlake and Mercer.

  “Wait’ll you see the full, unopened bottle of chocolate sauce for the ice cream. And Market Roast coffee, did I mention that?”

  “The VIP is a very fortunate man.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “My shift goes ’til five, but as soon as I get this baby back to the barn, I’m coming straight over. You not doing the usual?”

  I managed a grin. “Nothing usual about these days. I called the Safari and they said they had a female volunteer this morning who could work circles around me. I said yes, but could she lift in excess of fifty pounds? Anyway, you’re stuck with me to the Ballard Locks.”

  The Locks was a manmade channel that lifted boats between the fresh water of the Ship Canal and the salt water of Puget Sound
. Paralleling the Locks was a fish ladder and an expanse of grass for cloud-watching. It was a favorite picnic spot of Ruthie’s and mine, even now.

  Bill frowned. “Dinner going to make itself?” He winked.

  “What’s put you in such a jolly mood?”

  Bill’s chest swelled. “Oh, nuttin’ much. You’re just looking at Operator of the Year for the third time!”

  “Wow, Bill, that’s fantastic! Congratulations—Roxie must be so proud!”

  A beaming Bill ran a meaty hand through a thatch of rapidly thinning gray hair. “You got that right. She wanted to celebrate tonight, but I said no, that those shenanigans are reserved for weekends.” Up went the thick eyebrows, followed by a knowing laugh, something just between us guys. “I said it was because of passengers like you that I’ve lasted this long. Ya know?”

  I shook my head. “It’s all you, my friend, and most deserving. I don’t want to ruin the party.”

  Bill blustered and brushed it off but I could see how pleased he was. “Nawh, nawh. She doesn’t mind. ’Sides, Sweet Rox might just get a nice new dress out of this deal. You’ll have to come dancing with us. The Fred Astaire Studio’s a great place to meet the ladies.”

  I had difficulty formulating a picture of Bill gliding across the dance floor, but maybe he approached the waltz with the same workmanship he brought to wrestling a bus around town. He got the job done.

  By the time we came to the stop at the seaplane terminal on Lake Union, the bus was empty of all but Bill and me, and I was starting to doze in the sun-warm window.

  That’s when I heard Bill mumble, “Oh, please, not today.” Something in his tone made my eyes snap open.

  The four street toughs with foul mouths whom Bill had lectured on proper bus etiquette were back. Same sideways ball caps, same too-big pants, same frank stares. Same tall Tsunami in the lead, same doting pilot fish at his side. Same smirks. They clopped up the steps in oversized, unlaced basketball shoes and clopped past the money box without paying,