On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  “Sometimes you just have to let things go,” a woman in red jeans says to a woman in camouflage leggings.

  Irwin can’t listen to people in the wrong universe anymore. Its muddied reality is creeping up his torso. He stands and pushes through the sludge to a tree, spots a strong branch but can’t figure out how to get to it, or if his belt will be long enough. Harriet would know what to do. He focuses and chants, trying to get her to interact. But he’s too tired and his head hurts, and the pressure from the wrong universe stifles him. He crumples onto the grass as the muddied reality closes over him.

  He feels wetness on his forehead and opens his eyes. A small boy with brown skin and pond green eyes stands over him with a squirt gun. “You spazzed out,” he says.

  Irwin rolls onto his side, away from the boy. He can’t get up.

  “Dude, why’s your head so big?”

  “It’s a condition.”

  “Must mean you’re really smart.”

  Nothing’s changed, the middle-aged men in plaid shorts are still on the bench, the pigeons are still pecking at the overflowing trash bin, the clouds are still glued to the sky.

  The boy steps around Irwin and squats, facing him. “They took your money.”

  “Who did?”

  “Some dudes.”

  “I didn’t have much.”

  “Well, they took it.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “With what?” The boy squirts his gun at a sparrow and misses.

  “Where’s your mother?” Irwin asks.

  “At work. What’s your name?”

  “Irwin.”

  “I’m Samuel.” He offers his hand and Irwin shakes it to be polite, but he wishes Samuel would go away. “Can you sit up? Come on, man, sit up.” Samuel helps Irwin to a sitting position.

  “Why didn’t those men on the bench stop the dudes from robbing me?”

  “They don’t give a fuck.” Samuel hikes up his oversized shorts. “Anyway, they were fast, totally pro.”

  “How do I know you didn’t take it?”

  “If I took it, would I be standing here waking you up?”

  “You should do up your shoelaces.”

  Samuel squirts at a squirrel and misses. “This pistol blows, man.”

  “Is it normal for you to be alone in the park?”

  “Me? Totally. I’m the bull shark, man, hunting night and day, killing dolphins, sea turtles and even other sharks. Before I attack, I butt their heads.” Samuel bends over as though about to butt Irwin’s head. “That’s how they know they’re going to die.”

  As Irwin slowly gets up, Samuel prances around him. Irwin tries to pick up speed but it feels as though he is wading through Jell-O.

  Samuel hikes up his shorts again. “I bet you thought the great white was the ocean’s fiercest predator.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Fuck no. The bulls can beat the shit out of those pointy-nosed glamour boys. Besides, bulls can live in rivers and oceans. They got special kidneys and glands in their tails. They swim in the Amazon and the Mississippi.”

  “Cool,” Irwin says. He can’t tell his mother that he seized in the park and was robbed. He can’t tell anybody.

  While he waits outside Gennedy’s door, the white Rasta with floor-length dreadlocks shambles towards him. “Cho!” he says. “Every hoe ha dem stick a bush.” He flips his dreads and points to Gennedy’s door. “Bald head is fayya buttu, a bong belly pickney, a bugu yaga.” The Rasta pokes his finger into Irwin’s chest. “I and I cut yai, craven choke puppy. Life is just a ketchy chuby game.” He points at Gennedy’s door again. “Bald head is a boderation, a downpressor. Fenky-fenky!” Irwin envies the Rasta because he seems certain what he’s saying is right and necessary. Nothing Irwin says feels right or necessary. He knocks harder on Gennedy’s door. He couldn’t call ahead because Bell cut Gennedy’s service. “It’s me, Irwin.”

  The door opens. “Why didn’t you say so, champ? I thought it was Bob Marley over here.” He pulls Irwin inside. The room is even messier than the last time he visited. Stacks of newspapers, magazines, books and misplaced bookmarks collect on the floor, the bed, the desk. It seems to Irwin that everything about Gennedy is getting messier and wearing out: his clothes, his Crocs, his chipped mugs and plates, his teapot, his sheets, his towels. He sits at his cluttered desk and picks up a pencil, looking over something he has scribbled on a yellow notepad. Irwin rarely visits him anymore because he’s uncomfortable about interrupting Gennedy’s novel writing. Gennedy says he is driven to write, and that all those years spent in penury trying to build a law practice were wasted. “This is what I was meant to do,” he insists. “This is what I am good at.” Irwin never asks to read his novels because if he didn’t think they were good, he would be relegated to the despised ranks of the cretinous publishers who have rejected them. Gennedy insisted that Lynne read the first one. Irwin saw her skip entire sections of its 631 pages. When she told Gennedy that she’d finished it and it was good, he wanted to know what she thought was good about it. “Give me specifics,” he said.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How can you not remember? You just finished it.”

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind. I’m under a lot of pressure at the bank.”

  “You’re always under a lot of pressure at the bank. What about the ink stain? Wasn’t that ingenious?”

  “Ingenious,” she agreed.

  “There is no ink stain in the novel,” he said. “You didn’t even have the decency to read it thoroughly. I’ve supported you all these years. Whenever you’ve needed me, I’ve been there. Now it’s my turn.” He jabbed his thumb into his chest. “My turn.” Next he started shouting, which he’d been doing more frequently since Harriet’s fall. With Harry dead there was no one to shout at but Lynne. She told him he shouted at her because no one else would put up with him. “No one else can stand you,” Lynne said.

  The night she pretended she’d read his novel, he shouted about how she didn’t respect him and treated him like a serf. Irwin didn’t know what serf meant but understood it couldn’t be good. To stop them arguing he announced he was going to have a bath. He was only six and still needed to be watched in case he seized in the water. Lynne sat on the toilet seat with her head in her hands. “He’s right,” Irwin said. “You didn’t read it properly. I saw. You skipped all kinds of pages.”

  “Shhh,” Lynne held her finger against her lips. “It was soooo boring. Never tell him I said that.”

  Irwin hated keeping secrets. There were many the year before Gennedy left. He and Lynne said hurtful things behind each other’s backs then told Irwin not to tell the other what they’d said. He felt like a Ping-Pong ball being batted back and forth.

  “What can I get you, champ?”

  Irwin knows Gennedy can’t get him anything besides tea because he doesn’t have a kitchen, just an electric kettle. He’s not hungry anyway. It feels as though there is something too big inside him trying to bust out—maybe the coiled spring.

  “How’s your mother? Still working two jobs?”

  Irwin nods.

  “That woman’s thirst for cash will be the end of her.”

  “She has to pay rent and buy food and pay Bell.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Gennedy waves his pencil dismissively. “There is more to life than paying bills.”

  “We couldn’t live in one room like you do.”

  “The money will come, Irwin. It always does.”

  “From where? You get welfare but my mother says it wouldn’t be enough for us to live on.”

  “Not in the style to which you have become addicted. I can’t tell you how my life has improved since I got off the grid.” Gennedy scribbles more words on the yellow notepad.

  Irwin shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I need to ask you so
mething.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why did you hit Harriet?”

  “That’s a loaded question.”

  “Can’t you answer it?”

  “I didn’t hit her, Irwin. I slapped her. Two very different actions.”

  “How are they different?”

  “A hit is a blow, very deliberate. A slap is spontaneous, unpremeditated.”

  “Why did you do it, though?”

  “Because she took off without spending time with you, little man. You were crying you so badly wanted to see her, and she just left.”

  So Irwin is to blame again. “I didn’t ask you to slap her. If I’d known you were going to hit her I would have asked you not to. I’d have stopped crying.”

  Gennedy scratches behind his ear with the pencil before jotting something else down on the notepad.

  “Did you know my mother hooked up with Buck?”

  “Where are you going with this line of questioning, Irwin?” He looks up from the pad with an avian stare, and Irwin recognizes the eye from Harriet’s beaky and clawed creature.

  “I want to understand what happened,” Irwin mumbles. “Why Harriet fell.”

  “She was a tortured soul.”

  “Then why were you so mean to her if she was already tortured?”

  “I wasn’t mean to her. She was self-absorbed and uncooperative, and sometimes I lost my patience.”

  “I didn’t think she was self-absorbed and uncooperative.”

  Gennedy taps his pencil on the pad and stands as though about to leave, but Irwin knows he has no place to go. “We’re never going to agree about your sister, champ. And I’ve got to get back to work. This is all ancient history and, frankly, I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  “You never said it to me. What did you say on the subject?”

  Gennedy lifts his empty mug to his lips then sets it back down.

  “Mum thinks Harry fell because you hit her.”

  “Eleven-year-old girls don’t throw themselves off balconies because someone slapped them. She was mentally ill, Irwin. She was sick. She needed medical care. I always said she should have been seeing a psychiatrist, but your mother and her hippie physician insisted it was a phase, or a food allergy, that she was artistic yadda-yadda. Anything but face the fact that she had a personality disorder.” Gennedy rifles through papers on his desk and uncovers a Spiderman T-shirt. “This is for you, champ. You had a birthday a while back.”

  “Thanks.” Irwin takes the T-shirt, suspecting it’s too small to fit over his hormone-hit girth. Even so, it’s nice to be remembered. He’s about to reach out for a hug but Gennedy picks up his chipped mug again, puts it back down and looks over his scribbling on the notepad. He grabs the pencil, scratches out some words then jots down another sentence.

  “This is it,” Heike says.

  “You can’t go in there. It’s got police tape all around it.”

  “Who says I’m going in?” She pulls out her notebook and magnifying glass.

  “We’re going to get in trouble.”

  “The LEOs are long gone. It’ll be a cold case in no time.”

  “They could come back.”

  “They’re not coming back. Some old man was murdered in a basement. It’s not a top priority.” She crouches down and examines a stain on the concrete with her magnifying glass. “Anyway, all you have to do is be the lookout. Just tell me if somebody’s coming. A situation could suddenly erupt.”

  Irwin looks up and down the street, so nervous about a situation suddenly erupting that his bowels loosen. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Heike prints in her notebook. “I’m numbering this evidence. I’m starting to see a pattern.”

  A black man in an undershirt pushes open the door to the apartment building. “What you playin’ at?”

  Heike ducks under the tape. “Sorry, sir. I was just looking for my notebook.”

  “You get outta here. This is private property.”

  “Actually, I have a friend in the building.”

  “What friend?”

  “A little girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “She lives in the building. I just wanted to say hi, if that’s all right, sir.”

  The man pulls his sweaty undershirt away from his body then lets it snap back over his potbelly. “You mean Amy in 2A?”

  “Yeah, is she home?”

  “How should I know.”

  “Is it okay if we check?”

  “Just don’t go messing with the crime scene.”

  “Is this a crime scene?”

  “Can’t you see the tape?”

  “I didn’t realize it meant it was a crime scene.”

  “Wise up, little girl. Get your butt over here.”

  “Can my brother come too?”

  “I’m not going.” Irwin knows he can’t let her go in there alone.

  “Suit yourself.” Heike slips into the building and disappears behind the man. Irwin hurries after them but, once inside, can’t see either Heike or the man. A dog barks behind one of the apartment doors. The stairwell smells of fried meat.

  “Heike?” He hears footsteps and the bass beat from a stereo. He doesn’t know whether to go upstairs or down. “Heike?” To suppress the urge to shit, he sits on the stairs. Behind a door a man and woman argue. “He’s three years old,” the woman shouts. “You’re making him into a hockey star when he’s three years old?”

  “It’s ten bucks for half an hour,” the man shouts back. “This coach knows his stuff. I’ve seen him working with the five-year-olds.”

  “Ten bucks for half an hour? Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s an entire meal for us. A pizza for fuck sake. Forget it, no more hockey shit.”

  “Don’t tell me how to fucking raise my son.”

  “Get out and take your fucking dog with you.”

  Heike skips down the stairs. “Amy’s not home,” she says loudly. “What a bummer.” She holds her index finger against her lips and points to the basement. Irwin shakes his head and tries to grab her hand, but she’s halfway down the stairs already.

  The man in the apartment shouts, “Don’t dis my dog!”

  “Just get him out of here for fuck sake. His drool makes me sick.”

  Irwin follows Heike into the gloomy basement that smells of cat piss and mould. He finds her on the wrong side of the police tape. “That’s against the law,” he tells her but, as usual, she ignores him. He hears a door open and the clacking of a dog’s nails on the linoleum.

  “What is it, boy?” the man says.

  Irwin holds up the police tape with one arm and yanks Heike to the right side of it with the other.

  “You’re hurting me,” she yowls.

  The dog charges her before she has a chance to say nice doggy. Seeing the dog’s jaws clamp around Heike’s calf causes an internal scream in Irwin. Simone, the therapist, told him to let out his internal scream. He does, scaring the dog. It releases its hold and sprints to its master.

  “What are you doing here?” the man demands. He has a handlebar moustache, tattoos and Indian braids.

  “We’re friends of Amy’s,” Irwin says. “We were just leaving.” He grabs his little sister and throws her over his shoulder. He did not know he had the strength to do this. She starts to bawl. Each step he takes causes a hiccup in her cries as his shoulder pushes into her stomach.

  “She provoked the dog,” the moustached man yells. “Don’t go thinking you can get him put down. You were trespassing and she provoked him.”

  “Definitely. We’re really sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry!” Heike wails. “Your dog should be on a leash.”

  “Shut up,” Irwin commands. He has never said this to Heike. It seems to work, although he can’t see her
face. Her calf is bleeding onto his arm. He doesn’t want her to see the blood.

  “I’m going to barf upside down like this,” she says.

  “Suck it up, buttercup.” This is what Dee said.

  “My leg hurts.”

  Irwin dreamed last night he was riding the bus to school with no pants on, trying to pretend this was normal. Similarly he tries to pretend it’s normal to have a howling, bleeding seven-year-old girl slung over his shoulder.

  “This is the meanest thing you’ve ever done,” Heike moans. “And I’m going to make you pay.”

  “You do that.” Having her completely under his control has freed him of the urge to shit and he realizes how stressful loving her is, how bad it is for him. Why love someone you can’t control, who makes situations suddenly erupt? Who makes coiled springs and big things swell inside you? Because she is life itself. Uma said this. Life itself is bleeding on Irwin’s shoulder. The weight of her causes burning pain in his neck, forcing him to stare down at the sidewalk. He needs Harriet to tell him what to do. He focuses and chants quietly but particles block him from all sides.

  The seniors swarm them outside the elevator. Mr. Hoogstra scratches under his captain’s hat. “You better get her a rabies vaccine.”

  Mr. Shotlander tugs up his trousers. “Has she had a tetanus shot? I’ve told her a hundred times, if she’s going to go around dumpster diving, she better get a tetanus shot.”

  “This isn’t Harry,” Mr. Chubak says loudly to Mr. Shotlander’s good ear. “This is Irwin’s little sister, Heike.”

  “What kind of name is that? Kraut?”

  Forbes knows what to do. “Lay her on the couch and get her leg elevated. Use pillows. We have to stop the bleeding.” He hobbles to the bathroom and returns with a clean towel. “Press it over the wound. Give it some pressure.” Heike has become eerily quiet, but when she sees the wound, she starts to blubber like a regular little girl and Irwin has no idea what to do about it. Heike never cries like a seven-year-old. The corners of her mouth drag down, her bottom lip trembles, her face reddens and endless tears streak her cheeks.