But he didn’t feel anything bubbling up. Maybe she would stay safe and he could stay hidden.
Give it time, Wendell thought, because it’ll come. Soon enough, it’ll come.
“No,” he snapped, touching his forehead. “I mean,” and he looked at Agatha, “I mean no, no you don’t have to do that, get involved and—”
“You really don’t know what you mean, do you?”
They both stared at each other. Part of Wendell was waiting—hoping—for her to invite him into her apartment again.
“A few years back,” Agatha said, “on the floor below us, a lonely divorcé who just heard that he would never see his kids again blew his brains out all over his breakfast cereal. And for some reason, the cops thought it would be better if someone like me were nearby. Not for the neighbors, I thought, as much as for the cops themselves. You don’t forget something like that. Even cops who’d seen everything couldn’t un-see something like that. It wasn’t like on TV. I can remember hearing the shot from up here. A little pop. It didn’t seem like such a little pop could have caused all of what I saw.” She looked up at Wendell.
“I didn’t know it was loaded.”
So, then you’re just a jackass, her face said. “That doesn’t have to happen to you, Wendell,” she said. “Whatever your situation is, your future hasn’t been written yet.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s not how it works. You’ve got free will.”
“Some things can’t be changed, Sister. Maybe shitty lives just end shitty, no matter what you want.”
“Let me in then,” she responded, gesturing into his apartment. “Let me in and tell me what can’t be changed.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“I’ll just stay for a few minutes, let you unload anything that needs to be unloaded. Maybe just the gun.” She stepped into the door, but Wendell blocked her with his body.
“No, really, I’m okay.”
“Wendell—”
“It’s fine.” He started to close the door. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
Agatha stopped the door with her forearm and stuck her head into the opening.
“So there’s going to be a tomorrow for you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You can’t lie to a nun, you know.”
“I won’t try.”
Agatha relaxed her forearm and stepped back. “Loneliness is a killer. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“You’re not like most people, are you?” Wendell said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But you know I’m right.”
“I’m fine, really.” He leaned on the door. “And thanks for… I should go.” Agatha stepped back again. The door closed, and he quickly locked it and slipped the security chain onto the slide.
Open it back up, he told himself.
“Okay, Wendell,” Agatha said, “but I’ll see you tomorrow. And…” But she left the thought hanging. Wendell heard her enter her apartment and close her door.
He turned towards the kitchen table, the sink and refrigerator. He could drop to his knees again, or go for the gun. He frowned, opted for a third choice, and headed for the bathroom.
Wendell sat in the bathtub, gripping the box of borax with both hands. The water, quickly browning, had even more sediment—more flecks of himself, more Wendell sediment—floating in it this time. His tongue worked the backs of a few teeth, still loose in his gums, and he stared down at his feet, at his toes, now black, as if they had been barbecued. His feet were purpled, with black lines still tracing the lines of bones going from his ankles down each foot. But at the ball of each foot the blackness started. He stared at them, and poured the borax into the cup of his hand and slapped it against his chest, rubbing it in. Then to his armpits, his groin, behind his ears. He scooped some borax into his mouth, then cupped in a handful of water, swished it all into a slurry and spat it out.
“This won’t clean,” he said. “It can’t be cleaned.”
Outside, car horns dueled with an ambulance siren. Then came a loud bang that residents would have tried to convince themselves was a car backfiring when he was a child, but clearly was not. No one needed convincing now, as gunfire was as commonplace as midnight church bells. Night started to fall, and the city’s underbelly began to show.
“There’s gonna be a tomorrow,” Wendell said, “and tomorrow will be…” He stopped. My last day in this world, at best, he thought. But he knew he wasn’t that lucky. Ugly, he thought, tomorrow’s gonna be ugly. So scrub up, go to bed, and get ready for a lot of ugly.
“So I’ll leave, and for real this time. Up with the sun, and walk until…” Until these feet stop working, he thought. Which might not be long. “Least I can do is get out, and die under some tree in the country.”
And with that there was a sense—albeit brief—of relief, that things still could move in the right direction. That he could control something. That his fate wasn’t completely bound up in what those scientists had done to him. They couldn’t steal all of his free will. Maybe Agatha was right.
“A plan. I just need a plan.” A rare smile crossed his face.
Wendell arched his back against the ceramic tub, hearing it crack, feeling the already stretched and painful skin stretch even more. And he tried stretching his blackened toes towards himself, and then did the opposite, tightening the arches in his feet. His arches tightened, and not at all inexplicably—since they all looked dead already, and that’s what dead things do—the little toe on his right foot broke off and fell into the water. It floated in place, black and lonely, a calcified little worm.
Wendell stared at it, incredulous, thinking it a dream. One last bead of saliva and borax fell from his lip.
His first reaction should have been to cry, to scream out, put his fist through the wall and curse God. Should have. But it was all so ludicrous, this little digit still with its nail, like a tiny window on a burned-out boat, bobbing in the water, and a man bathing in his own detritus, watching himself confirm a scientific impossibility: his own transformation into a new species. Ridiculous. Foolish to even consider. Laughable.
So Wendell began to laugh, with tears welling in his eyes. He clamped his mouth shut to keep it at a snicker, but he couldn’t keep his shoulders and chest from pumping up and down, the tears streaming down his cheeks. This couldn’t be happening. This was impossible. But there it was, that toe, floating along and staring up at him. That couldn’t be denied. So he laughed.
“It’s gonna be quick now,” he whispered, calming himself and biting at his lip, feeling his teeth shift in their places.
Wendell continued to stare at the toe, sitting on top of the water, then hovering under the surface, and then sliding down to rest at the bottom. And in it he saw his future, where feet became talons, or hooves, and the abomination staring at him in the mirror begged to be named. The tiny stump on his foot where the toe once stood now looked like a jagged piece of charcoal. He knew he wouldn’t last. In the city, outside the city, he was done. The urge to laugh came back.
“But I can’t die here, not here.” He looked up at the bathroom’s walls, the sink, the single bulb over the vanity. “Please God, don’t let me die here.”
Then leave, he thought.
Wendell pulled the plug out of the tub’s drain, and the black toe whirled around and dropped down it. He stood up and stepped gingerly out of the tub.
“Leave,” he whispered. “Not much of a plan.” But it had to work. If it didn’t, he would force himself to die trying to leave the city. Wendell limped out of the bathroom and into his mother’s bedroom, where his clothes sat in a pile on the bed. He dressed, then fell into the bed, desperate for a night without dreams.
Outside the apartment, worlds away from Wendell, the sun had set behind an oncoming line of thunderheads, and another day died.
DAY SIX
SUNLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH THE CRACKS between the drapes. Wendell awoke.
Up, o
ut of bed. Socks on—delicately. Then shoes. To the kitchen for—
No food.
He knew that. Still, he hoped he was wrong, somehow. But there it was, the kitchen, as dead and empty as the day before.
Get the trench coat, he thought. He slipped it on. And the gloves. On the table, which he pulled over his skeletal fingers. Gun. And the key. Top of the refrigerator, and then dropped into the coat pockets.
And then to the door. For the last time, he hoped.
Still limping—and thinking of his little toe shooting through rusted plumbing like a stony minnow—Wendell made it down the stairs and out the front doors. He was met with a muddy sky that erased the street’s shadows and soaked the neighborhood in a viscous gray haze. The fat men were on the sidewalk again, working on another pile of pistachio shells. The air was thick and the traffic slow, as all things struggled through the morning, but Wendell felt a new energy. The sun would emerge and burn away the haze before him, his feet would be light and his back straight. He would walk, reach the city limits and continue on. He would see the country. It was, at least, a satisfying dream.
Down the block to Wendell’s left, outpacing everyone else on the sidewalk, despite her bowed legs and bent back, was Sister Agatha.
“Of course it is,” he said. “This is gonna hold me up.” Still, he couldn’t say he was entirely disappointed to see her.
Agatha looked up at the front doors, at Wendell, and smiled. She hopped up the stairs and stopped next to him.
“Our paths cross again,” she said.
“Convenient. Like one of us is following the other.”
“So I’ll have to ask you to stop stalking me,” Agatha said, and laughed. “Just home from Mass,” she added.
“Looked like you were talking to yourself.”
“What? No. Just mumbling to God. People on the street just aren’t as talkative anymore.”
“Does he listen?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head, curious at the question. “He’s not always easy to hear, but he does listen. I do hear him at Mass.”
“Mass?”
“Yes. You know, what we Catholics do. You aren’t Catholic?”
“No.”
“Then Protestant.”
Wendell thought back to the churches he had attended in his life, a list memorable but short. “I don’t think so.”
“You ever go to church?”
“There was this healing assembly over on Mortimer Street we went to sometimes.”
“I remember that place. So you were a Pentecostal then. They used to put on quite a show.”
“That’s why Mom went, for the show.”
Agatha paused, looked down at the fat men on the sidewalk, then out at traffic. “It’s a bowling alley now. Or was. Even that shut down. That church eventually moved to the suburbs.” She turned to Wendell. “So you’re packing it up and heading out, right?”
“Yeah. Gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Out. Just out.”
“Not content with becoming part of the scenery,” Agatha said, pointing to the two fat men below them, “like those two.” She absently tapped the small wooden cross hanging around her neck against her chest. Wendell noticed that some of her knuckles were oversized, as if the bones themselves had swelled.
“Do they hurt?” Wendell asked, pointing to her hand.
“These?” She looked at them. “Rheumatoid arthritis. The thorn in my flesh. When it’s flaring, it’s not pleasant. But you learn to live with it.” She brought both hands up in front of her face, bent and relaxed her fingers, and dropped them both at her sides. “What about yours?” she asked, nodding at Wendell’s hands.
Instinctively he put both gloved hands behind his back.
“An accident at work. Chemical burn.”
“That so?” He could see that she didn’t believe him. “Anyway, I rent a space in a garage a few blocks away for my car. I could give you a ride to the airport, or the bus station, if you—”
“No, thanks.” His own words surprised him. Refuse a ride?
“Okay then.” She readjusted her purse on her shoulder and hooked a line of gray hair with her finger and set it behind her ear. “Well, if you were going to be around for another day, I’d invite you over for lunch. But you look like a man ready to move.”
“Yeah, I should probably get going.”
“But no ride, no lunch?”
“No.” He took a step down, and stopped. “Listen, about last night…”
“I’m just glad to see you now. People have their pain, Wendell.”
“Do you?”
“I was at Mass this morning, wasn’t I? I try to leave any of my pain at that altar.” With Wendell a step below her, she looked at him at eye level. “Whatever it is, it’ll keep following you. It’ll burn you up.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Everyone says that, Wendell.” She rummaged through her purse for her keys, which were hooked on a metal ring that she let slide down her index finger and stop at one of its swollen knuckles. “Police’ll be here today.”
“Why?” Wendell’s heart froze.
“Our mutual friend Drake.”
Now his neck tightened, and he balled his hands into fists.
“A friend of mine at St. Jude’s told me that they found his body late last night. Some gangland thing, they’re saying, since he was pretty chewed up. These drug dealers aren’t content with just killing anymore. They have to torture too. So, I’d expect them any time, ready to check out his apartment, and discover a shrine to his bald-faced lunacy. Evil begets evil, you know. I guess it was just a matter of time.”
“A matter of time?”
“Before Drake crossed the wrong people. He was a brutal man. Cruel. I’m thinking he got an earful from Saint Peter last night, right before he…” She dropped her eyes.
Four police officers, two patrolmen and two plainclothes, approached the apartment building from Wendell’s right. Their patrol car and black sedan were parked across the street.
And behind them was another sedan with darkened windows.
“They’re here already,” she said.
“I gotta go,” Wendell said, taking one more step down and eyeing the sedan with darkened windows. If one of its doors opened, he would bolt, most likely snapping the rest of his toes off in the process.
Agatha kept talking, but Wendell wasn’t listening. She went on about cleaning up the streets and broken homes and open running sewers, speaking truth but with no one to agree, her tinny reproaches sinking into the fevered morning air. Wendell watched the car, and for a moment his vision swam when the headache returned, like sledgehammer hits over his eyes. But the car didn’t move—and more importantly, nothing within the car exited. Agatha continued on about corrupt politicians and urban blight, and Wendell imagined himself, infused with a horrible energy, launching himself into the air, landing like a meteor on the car’s hood, and thrusting his fists through the windshield, grabbing all that he could and pulling it all through the spider-webbed safety glass. Men with ghost faces, their hands grabbing at Wendell’s arms. The police, powerless. Pedestrians screaming. Agatha, unconscious on the steps.
“Wendell,” Agatha said. “Hello in there.” She tapped his shoulder and he turned to her, then back to the car.
“I should go,” he said.
“You could slow things down a bit. Take some time to think about where you’re headed. It’s too hot to just be wandering the streets with no direction.”
“I’m good, Sister.”
“Just come on up and let me get you some food.”
He didn’t move, just stared at the sedan, and the two of them spent the next minute in silence.
“So, you think he listens,” Wendell finally said.
“Who?”
“You said that he’s not easy to hear, but that he listens.”
“God? Yes, he does.”
Then Wendell tried to smile, for Agatha’s sake and not
his own, trying somehow to reassure her that things would be okay, or rather, that things would soon end and that she wouldn’t need to worry about him anymore, because he saw the worry in her face. He stretched his lips up at the corners; it was clearly forced, and she knew it. But she returned the smile with one of her own.
“You’re a nice lady,” he said.
“And you, Wendell, are—”
But he was gone, bounding down the last three steps and hurrying down the sidewalk. He didn’t look back.
For the first fifteen minutes Wendell kept on a straight course, turning frequently to see the apartment building recede behind him. The sidewalk traffic thinned out, then quickly increased as he passed a three-block commercial district, then promptly thinned again. Two blocks later and the street terminated at a T, forcing him either right or left. Looking up to his right and seeing the city’s downtown skyline hovering overhead in the near distance, he turned left. Traveling away from it, he assumed, was the best course of action. Every time the sun peaked through the clouds behind him—painting construction sites and delivery vans yellow with its rays—it didn’t last, as the clouds swallowed it again. The sun would disappear, but the heat remained. Oppressive, wilting heat. Wendell would wipe his forehead with his gloved hands until the gloves themselves became saturated with sweat. At the end of the block he slowed, estimating that, with his left turn at the end of the previous street, he hadn’t yet managed to put very much distance between himself and the apartment building. Much of the scenery looked familiar: the low red brick buildings with fenced-in, yellowed front lawns; the corner post office, later a night club, now a struggling corner store with a haphazard collage of liquor ads and weekly sales posters plastered on its front window. Wendell saw the street sign at the corner, Madigan Avenue, which was cocked slightly at an angle after a truck had backed into it years ago, and a memory flooded back. He approached the corner, looked down Madigan to his right, and there it was.
The Death of Wendell Mackey Page 13