Watchlist

by Bryan Hurt

  JUDGE JUDY: I don’t understand.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: She said, don’t you love me?

  JUDGE JUDY: I still don’t understand.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: A fever sore, she gave me a fever sore.

  JUDGE JUDY: A cold sore.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I’d never had one before but then she gave it to me.

  JUDGE JUDY: You don’t know that she did that, or that she even did it on purpose. Everybody gets cold sores. My grandkids get cold sores! Did she give them cold sores, too?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Probably not, Your Honor.

  JUDGE JUDY: So you got a cold sore. So what?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: And then it began to bubble and blister and then it erupted.

  JUDGE JUDY: So. What.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: And there was an eye there.

  JUDGE JUDY: You got one in your eye?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: No, Your Honor, when the blister burst there was an eye inside, watching me.

  JUDGE JUDY: I don’t understand.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: It was her eye. She had always kept it on me but now it was there, in the open.

  JUDGE JUDY: In the sore?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: In the sore.

  LOLA ZEE: If I may, Your Honor—

  JUDGE JUDY: Hup hup hup hush.

  LOLA ZEE: But Your Honor—

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Rolling around as if the tender rim of the wound was a socket. Every time it blinked, I felt the nerves fire. It wept, sometimes. Infectious tears.

  JUDGE JUDY: What happened next?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I felt like I was unraveling. I was ugly, watched. I begged her to make it go away. It knew what I was thinking. Knew I was afraid. I said please, please let me have my own mind back. I wept. It read my mind, betrayed me. I fell down in a street, crying. Eye was responsible.

  JUDGE JUDY: You were responsible?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: No, eye.

  JUDGE JUDY: When you say that it read your mind—

  SAKSHI KARNIK: It knew. It knew what I did in my room, alone. It knew what I read. It knew everything new. And she knew. Before she could possibly know.

  JUDGE JUDY: What happened next?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: And then the eye began interfering with my own eyes, like a signal. It interfered with my reading.

  JUDGE JUDY: What do you mean?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I would try to read and the text would be blackened out, like a hand had gone over with a censor’s hand. And it could read my thoughts and perceptions. It discerned and influenced like a king’s mistress.

  JUDGE JUDY: What did you do next?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I went to a woman who lived deep in South Philly, who was rumored to know how to make the eye go away.

  JUDGE JUDY: And?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I found her. She told me to run. She told me that I needed to get it out and I needed to run away as fast I could before the ember that I am is stomped out into nothing, into ash. She gave me instructions.

  JUDGE JUDY: Did you do what she instructed?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I tried. I followed her directions exactly. I bought the goose. I cut its throat on the full moon and then cooked the bird, ate it while lying on the bed where Lola and I had once come, and come, and come, and I burned sage, and rubbed orange oil in my hair and kissed the ground and licked my palms and prayed for deliverance. I wanted to be free. I needed to be.

  JUDGE JUDY: What?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Free.

  JUDGE JUDY: What did it cost you?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: More than I had.

  JUDGE JUDY: And then what?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Nothing. Nothing happened. It stayed there.

  JUDGE JUDY: It’s not there anymore!

  SAKSHI KARNIK: You can’t see it, but it’s there. It’s like the morning after a fine meal, and as you drowsily floss, you rock a sliver of basil leaf, which had been wedged between the cloven hooves of your teeth, into your mouth. And then among the notes of blood and wax, there is a sweet bite of herb, a memory.

  JUDGE JUDY: But where is it?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: It’s hiding, Your Honor. It’s shy.

  [Titters of laughter from audience]

  JUDGE JUDY: All of you, shhhh! I will kick you out. [To LOLA] All right, your turn. Uncross your arms! Now, tell me about this party.

  LOLA ZEE: It was my birthday and I wanted to celebrate.

  JUDGE JUDY: And how did you want to celebrate?

  LOLA ZEE: You know, choice booze, choice food, choice weed.

  JUDGE JUDY: Wipe that smirk off your face! She might be crazy but you’ve got an attitude and I don’t like attitude. Byrd here will tell you that I hate attitude.

  BYRD THE BAILIFF: [Inaudible]

  LOLA ZEE: Sure. So I was going to buy all of the groceries and stuff but then I had stuff I had to do and she offered to buy the groceries. So she bought the groceries.

  JUDGE JUDY: Did she offer, or did you ask?

  LOLA ZEE: Oh, she offered.

  JUDGE JUDY: Then what?

  LOLA ZEE: She bought the groceries.

  JUDGE JUDY: And you never paid her back?

  LOLA ZEE: It was a gift. She was my girlfriend at the time.

  JUDGE JUDY: Did she ask you to pay her half?

  LOLA ZEE: Nope.

  JUDGE JUDY: When did you and Miss Karnik break up?

  LOLA ZEE: About a month later.

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Karnik, I’m afraid I can’t award you anything. These groceries were—well, you bought the groceries. Presumably as a gift for the defendant’s birthday. This cold sore was not an injury.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Fever sore, Your Honor.

  JUDGE JUDY: Fever sore, cold sore, what difference does it make what it’s called? It’s the same thing.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: It makes a difference to me, Your Honor. The cold lays the body low. The fever burns the body bright. One is submission. The other, resistance.

  JUDGE JUDY: Well either way, it’s not an assault.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: But Your Honor—

  JUDGE JUDY: Did you miss work?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: No.

  JUDGE JUDY: Did you go to the hospital?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I tried, but eye wouldn’t let me.

  JUDGE JUDY: Were you afraid for your life?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: [No response]

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Karnik, I—

  SAKSHI KARNIK: She doesn’t need to pay me. No one needs to pay me. Just take it out. Please take it out. There’s nothing between it and I, between eye and it. We are inseparable. I want to be separated. Eye does not, but I do.

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Karnik, you’re no longer dating Miss Zee.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Not her. It. Please. Please. I need justice from the state.

  JUDGE JUDY: From the state?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: For my state.

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Karnik, I feel for you. This was obviously an unpleasant situation, one that you should be happy to be free of. But there are no damages here.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Your Honor—may I show you something?

  JUDGE JUDY: No funny business, Miss Karnik.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: On my life, Your Honor. None.

  JUDGE JUDY: Fine. Byrd, take that from her. Miss Karnik, what is this?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: A vial of my tears, Your Honor.

  JUDGE JUDY: You know, Miss Karnik, they don’t keep me up here because I’m beautiful. They—

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I know, Your Honor. I wish I could say the same.

  JUDGE JUDY: What do you want, Miss Karnik?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Anything, Your Honor. A dollar. A nip of thread. A piece of paper that says “You were right to trust.” It’s the symbol that matters, Your Honor. My honor, Your Honor. You understand.

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Zee, reach into your pockets.

  LOLA ZEE: What?

  JUDGE JUDY: Your pockets. Am I speaking English? Your pockets. Turn them out. What do you have there?

  LOLA ZEE: A peppermint wrapper. A paper
clip. A condom. A—another condom. A penny.

  JUDGE JUDY: Please give her the penny and the paperclip.

  LOLA ZEE: I don’t—

  JUDGE JUDY: Byrd, please take the paperclip and the penny. There, Miss Karnik. Are you satisfied?

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Yes. Thank you. On the matter of the eye. The one that remains inside?

  JUDGE JUDY: Miss Karnik, there’s no eye. We’re done here.

  BYRD THE BAILIFF: Parties are excused, you may step out.

  Final Interview:

  LOLA ZEE: I don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s crazy.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: I’m not crazy, I just want to be alone again. So does eye. We are tired of each other.

  LOLA ZEE: Whatever, yeah, I’ve moved on, no biggie. Got a new girlfriend.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: Sometimes, I wonder if the eye is just below the surface, waiting.

  LOLA ZEE: It’s not like I did any of that stuff anyway, she’s just crazy.

  SAKSHI KARNIK: How else did she know that I think that fig seeds explode in between my teeth like tiny glass beads? How else would she know I knelt down in front of the mirror and spread? Why else would I have listened, and listened, long beyond the edge of my patience or understanding? How is it possible that love can stretch so thin, so long?

  The Taxidermist

  by David Abrams

  Tucker Pluid stared at the hollow eyeholes, trying to decide. Blue? Hazel? Or the old standard, amber?

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was important. Whatever he chose for Herman Knight’s elk meant, essentially, that was the color of eyes the animal was born with. It didn’t matter if no one ever saw a blue-eyed elk before. If that’s what he glued in the head, then by gum, that’s how it was when Knight shot it and dragged it off Arrow Mountain. Besides, from all he’d heard about the schoolteacher, Tucker doubted he’d even notice anything wrong with the head.

  “A blue-eyed elk would serve the son of a gun right for getting lucky his first time out,” Tucker said aloud in the dead silence of his workshop. His voice was muffled by the feathers piled in soft mounds, the furs folded and stacked like blankets, and the naked Styrofoam mannequins stored in a jumble along the west wall.

  At forty-eight, Tucker Pluid was no longer embarrassed by the sound of his spoken thoughts. He’d worked alone in the drafty plywood-walled workshop for so many years, it had ceased to worry him. His trailer was on the outer limits of Flint where not even the strongest Wyoming wind could carry his voice into town.

  He picked up a handful of glass eyes, most of them the tame amber the hunters expected; but a few of them were brighter and more exotic—the color of showcase gems or Caribbean lagoons. He shook them across his palm like dice, trying to decide.

  For Tucker, this was the most critical step in the mounting process—never so crucial as that moment with that head, Herman Knight’s elk head.

  Herman Knight was sleeping with Tucker’s ex-wife and that made all the difference in the color of eyes his elk received.

  There was another reason Tucker held the glass eyes in his hand for so long, clicking them back and forth. Once the eyes were in place and Herman came to collect his elk, Tucker could watch his ex-wife’s lover as if through a hidden security camera. He would retreat into his workshop where he would pick up a freshly labeled jar from the shelf above his workbench. Inside that jar would be the elk’s real eyes and when Tucker Pluid so much as laid one finger on the glass of that jar, a lightning bolt would pass down his arm and shoot straight up his spine. Then he would close his eyes as the vision, sharp as the bitter smell of cordite, burst free in the back of his head. This was his gift from God: to peer into the homes of Flint through the eyes of the animals he mounted.

  One year ago, at the beginning of moose season, Tucker Pluid was sitting in the congregation of the First Baptist Church of Flint when a tremor passed along his network of muscles, lit up his brain. It was like, he later told the stuffed heads, the pews were wired with joy buzzers.

  Tucker listened as the Reverend Donald Dodge read straight out of God’s Word: “For His eyes are upon the ways of a man and He sees all his steps.” Like a flaming meteor striking the earth, the verse lodged in his head, scattering all other thoughts. He’d been troubled by thoughts lately, plagued by dreams in which he seemed to have turned into a camera poking in and out of scenes from what looked liked TV sitcoms but that were, on morning-after reflection, actually the homes of his friends and neighbors. And now this verse from Reverend Dodge’s lips seemed like a revelation, a clarity to the muddle. If he hadn’t been sitting in the middle of church, Tucker Pluid would have clapped his hands together, loud as a gunshot, and shouted, “That’s it! The eyes, the eyes!”

  He held himself in check until he dashed home to his workshop and fished in the waste bucket behind his trailer until he stood there holding the antelope eyes—scooped out of Frank Withers’s kill the week before—in the palm of his hand. The eyeballs were a soft, sticky mess, but he’d closed his fingers over them and concentrated.

  After an initial, startling blur of sagebrush and black hooves in his peripheral vision, Tucker’s sight sharpened and changed. He stared at Frank sitting in his kitchen. One forearm rested on the blue-checked oilcloth, the other hand stirred his coffee then tapped the spoon delicately on the rim. Frank took a sip and Tucker saw the tiny beads of light brown coffee clinging to the tips of his mustache hairs. Frank looked up along the wall where Tucker was perched, staring googly-eyed, and raised his cup to the freshly mounted antelope head. He smiled and said, “Looks like the ol’ Pecker Factory’s still in business, pardner.”

  Marilyn, Frank’s wife, entered the kitchen. Her hair was tousled, as if she’d spent a restless night in bed. Frank turned to her and said, “Heckuva buck, isn’t he?”

  “If you say so, Studley,” Marilyn purred as she dropped two slices of wheat bread in the toaster. “What say you to a little more, um, exercise?” Then, with a smile and a cocked eyebrow, she brought her hands to the belt of her robe, tugged once, and let everything fall open to her husband.

  Tucker dropped the eyes on the workbench. They made a soft, spongy splat when they hit. He was too afraid to touch the eyes again and so he left them there like that for the rest of the day, the filmed-over pupils staring off in opposite directions.

  Tucker was afraid of what he’d seen in Frank’s kitchen, but he was equally afraid to turn away from what God was offering him. Two weeks earlier, the Reverend Dodge had delivered a sermon about the gifts God plants in every person, Christian and sinner alike, and though some people waste those talents, burying them in the earth and going on about their business, God’s ultimate desire is to see those gifts used to glorify Him. Really, it was just a simple matter of cultivating the gift so that God would be fully pleased with Man.

  The Reverend Dodge had been so earnest during the sermon, his face straining and his eyes shining, that Tucker wracked his brain for two weeks, studying himself in the mirror several times every day to figure out what gifts God had given him, Tucker Pluid, a battered old rodeo star who now made his living sewing up other folks’ dead animals.

  Then, when the Reverend Dodge read that verse about the eyes of God, it was like the Lord Himself snapped a puzzle piece in Tucker’s brain. When he rushed home and touched the antelope eyes, he knew he’d found his gift.

  At first he was skeptical, thinking he must be under some sort of spell—maybe Shirleen had gone to consult with a voodoo specialist during one of her shopping sprees to Denver. He didn’t think she would, but he also wouldn’t put it past her.

  But, he reasoned, the magic was too authentic, too startling to be anything but something released directly from the Hand of God.

  Over the past year, Tucker had learned his gift was by no means an exact science. Sometimes all he saw was a confused tangle of pine branches, magpie tails, and steaming dung piles. Sometimes all he heard was the exploding crack and then everything�
�the sky, the sage—was rolling uphill away from him.

  However, most of the time when Tucker Pluid closed his eyes he was in the homes of his customers. He saw his banker, Glen Hume, frowning over crossword puzzles while his wife Gloria sang hymns in the kitchen and fixed a meal that sizzled in the frying pan. He watched Bill VanSant, hosting a cocktail party last New Year’s Eve, reach up and stick his pinkie finger in the snarling nostrils of the wild boar he’d shot on his trip to Texas. His guests blew party favors at him and laughed as Tucker sneezed at his workbench.

  Tucker stayed up long into the night, letting his eyes roam every corner of Flint. He’d wake up in the morning, head throbbing, and reach for a pair of eyeballs like a smoker reaches for his first cigarette of the day.

  There was Edith Pond sitting on her sofa, watching Cary Grant movies around the clock after her husband died; Chance Gooding Jr. making out with Roseann Hume on his father’s bed while the seven-foot rattlesnake Chance Sr. shot the previous summer coiled like a spring on the nightstand beside the bed; Juanita McPherson folding laundry and singing along with a John Denver album on the turntable; Ringo Smits copying his girlfriend’s homework; the 6:00 a.m. regulars at the Wrangler Restaurant drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and staring up blank-faced at the wall of heads behind the counter.

  Tucker preserved the dead animals’ eyes in baby food jars. By now, he had several shelves of labeled jars, each with its own pair of eyes floating in formaldehyde like large pearl onions. He no longer needed to hold the hard, slippery eyes in his hands—he had only to touch the jars to start seeing through the walls of Flint’s homes.

  Eventually, Tucker limited himself to one pair of eyes a day. “After all,” he said, “there’s only so much of Flint a fella can take.”

  When he had time to think it through, Tucker Pluid had a pretty good idea he knew exactly when God first handed him this gift (though he hadn’t recognized it for what it was back then).

  It came at the end of his rodeo career—that hot afternoon in Billings, Montana, when the black, dusty hoof crashed down on his head, leaving a deep purple dent between his eyes; when everything—the sun, the foaming nostrils of the bronc, the pennants waving like colored hands from the announcer’s booth—flicked off like a light switch.