by Tony Burgess
The best thing to do is to never think about this again.
Ever.
TWELVE
Something indicates that the movement toward drifting apart has begun: the cutting up into little pieces. The wind comes down off trees, at the edge of an August storm, pulling branches so their leaves sweep at the dust on the ground. When the morning sky brightens through a gauze of cloud, the storm holds itself up off the earth in order to move on and the trees hang limp with insomnia. The air is tired of being subjected to so much electricity. It looks tired. It feels tired. It smells tired.
As the storm moves off, it leaves the exhausted air cooler and less lit; there’s neither white nor black in the sky. Just a drip. A vast dirty orange cardigan dripping infrequently. Once. Twice.
Four drops of water land in all of Caesarea. Four measly little dirty drops of water.
The Mayor has not slept since talking to the boy. He has been thinking hard about every word the kid said. The only thing that has prevented him from sleeping is “red.” His own little red car. This morning, under the low grey mass of the sky, red is not so easy to pull out from other colours. The colours this morning are nearly uniform. And red, perhaps, is the least distinguishable.
The orange sky seems to have lifted all the red away, hiding it along microscopic capillaries beneath the surface of the clouds. This morning there are no red cars. This is the morning when all the cars used to be red. But tomorrow morning? Tomorrow there may be just a single red car: the car sitting in Robert’s driveway.
Robert gets up off the couch and goes to the window. The early traffic is fairly heavy. Cars splash and drone along the wet roads.
None red. All red. None red.
He turns back down the hall and goes into the kitchen. He retrieves an object from a drawer; it’s bundled in a white napkin. He unravels the bundle as he walks into his bedroom.
The Mayor holds the gun over the sleeping boy’s head and fires once.
After returning the gun to the kitchen drawer, the Mayor changes into his day clothes in the middle of the living room. He lifts the blanket off the couch with a snap, pulling its tucked corner out and onto the coffee table. He pushes his fingers into the stain and feels a prickly moisture. When the blanket is folded neatly in half, he lays it across the armrest of the couch.
The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hi there Faruzi. What can I do for you?”
“No. I’ve been up for a while.”
“Well. I don’t … I guess so. When?”
“Right now? Where are ya?”
There is a knock on the door. The Mayor jumps.
“Hang on. I got somebody at the door.”
The Mayor lays the phone on the table and walks down the hall. This time he looks. It’s Faruzi. He’s grinning, with a cell phone planted to the side of his face. Robert glances back down the hall quickly and slaps a hand hard against his hip. He realizes, with the sickening drop down in his guts, that he’s just reached for a gun. Faruzi taps his cell phone against the window. Behind him the sky has whitened; it’s not quite clear, but brighter.
The Mayor opens the door.
“Oh, you crazy … You had me goin’ there. I, uh …”
Faruzi steps into the hallway and laughs.
“Oh shit! Ha! Oh shit! Ha! My Jesus, son. You should a seen your face!”
Faruzi makes his way down the hall, slapping the floor with large rubber sandals. He wears what appear to be long baggy swimming shorts under a tan long-sleeved shirt. He is a man who is prepared at all times for every aspect of his semi-retirement.
“Hey listen, Rob. You got any Scotch?”
The Mayor is still at the door, looking out across his lawn. He closes the door slowly, turning the handle so the lock can silently slip into its setting.
“You didn’t think that was so funny, did ya?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Mind if I have a drink?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Where? Right here, eh?”
“Yeah, yeah. Uh, help yourself.”
“Want one?”
“No, uh, no thanks. I’m … It’s a bit early for Scotch don’t ya think?”
The Mayor sits on the couch. Faruzi remains standing and lifts the glass to his lips. He takes a quick air-filled sip before setting the drink back down on the open bar.
“That’s good. Good. Yeah Rob, it’s a bit fuckin’ early, alright. But I’ll tell you, these days I need it earlier and earlier.”
“Hmmm?”
“Ya get older, eh? Wake up in the middle of the goddamn night, take a piss. Who’s goin’ back to bed? I’m getting old. By my clock, Robbie, this ain’t so early.”
Faruzi turns to the bar and touches up his drink, which he hasn’t really touched.
“Besides, Jesus. These are bad days, Robert, bad days.”
The Mayor scoots to the end of the couch, making room should Faruzi decide to sit down. He doesn’t.
Faruzi steps out in front of the sliding window and raises his glass. He’s a very large man. Thick around the middle, but not fat. Immense legs. In this outfit he could be a wrestler. The Butcher from the Beach. There is a light crust of sand along the hem of his shirt. Robert stretches an arm down the blanket and fingers the dark stain on the edge.
Uh oh. Blanket. Spilt cola.
He slips the blanket to the floor beneath the end table.
“What ya doin’ here? Something to do with that awful thing yesterday?”
Faruzi slides open the window, then the screen.
“A little grey today. Might get better.”
He steps out onto the back deck and half turns, talking to the Mayor through the open doorway.
“Well, Robert, not exactly. Not directly.”
Faruzi takes a swig then holds the glass up to his eye. The gold is flat. It looks like a heavy tea.
“Well then, what is it?”
“Come on out here, Robert. Let’s sit out back here.”
The Mayor sighs and heaves himself forward off the couch. Outside, Faruzi flips rainwater from a plastic deck chair with the edge of his hand. He pivots the chair toward the Mayor, then sits carefully in another without bothering to wipe it.
“The cops are all over the shooting. I won’t have anything to do with that. Looks like it’s gonna wrap up pretty quick anyway.”
Robert notices the shed door has been pried open at the base. He can see a watermelon rind glowing green inside. Raccoons. On the patio stones in front of the shed paw prints are visible in a fine brown patina of Critter Ridder. The Mayor sits up, placing an elbow on the green circular table. He wants to talk about this, to be as casual about things as Faruzi, but can’t. Faruzi notices and looks directly into the Mayor’s eyes.
“What?”
Robert freezes for a second. He feels caught by the look.
“Uh, nothin’. Just …”
He gestures to the shed with a hand that won’t quite point.
“What?”
“Oh, coons in the shed.”
Faruzi reaches down with his free hand to help bring his leg up onto his knee. Once there he tosses his foot at the ankle, lightly brushing the table edge with a huge sandal. The Mayor stretches his hands out.
“Gotta watch it. Gotta watch these cheap tables.”
“Huh?”
Faruzi hadn’t noticed that he was bouncing the table with his foot. The Mayor speaks quickly.
“Yeah, I got a problem with them coons. I’ve laid mothballs in there. Reinforced the door. Put a shelf up in there for the garbage. And lately I tried that Critter Ridder. But those animals, those animals are like bears. They’re huge.”
“Yeah. You gotta come out guns ablazin’.”
“Oh no. Don’t wanna do that. Last thin
g I wanna do.”
“You got a gun, Robert?”
“Uh, no.”
“Should get one.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have a somewhat compromised survival rate around here these days.”
The Mayor can’t say anything. He lowers his head.
“I’m sorry, Robert. I’m sorry. That wasn’t funny. Why don’t I tell you why I’m here.”
The Mayor doesn’t look up. He is watching a drop of rain that has fallen onto his slacks from the table edge. It lays on the surface of the fabric, held up out of the weave. Number five.
“Well, remember that Buddy Holly kid they were looking for yesterday?”
The Mayor flicks the droplet away. The pants show no sign of it ever having been there. He curls his finger back into his fist. His hand is hard and white. Beneath it his thigh trembles.
“Well, I’ve been hired to find the kid. I figured he’d just show up at home last night. But he didn’t. I’m afraid he’s disappeared. And the parents are frantic. But what I’m really worried about, Rob, is that after asking around Buddy Holly it turns out the kid was hanging around with Gorley. Before he cracked. Gorley. That son-of-a-bitch. See where this is going?”
The Mayor has been looking down for too long. His entire face is fixed this way. He does not trust it. If he moves his expression may break to bits.
“And I was told by some of the other brats that Gorley and the kid were playing with knives the last time they were seen.”
Faruzi drains his glass.
“Can I get another?”
While he’s inside, the Mayor looks up, rotating his head on a stiff neck, opening and closing his mouth frantically. Faruzi returns with the glass in one hand and the blanket in the other.
“Mind if I sit on this? This plastic thing is pinchin’ my ass.”
The Mayor says nothing.
“So, I got this terrible feeling now, Robert. I think that I might be looking for … for a kid’s body.”
The Mayor feels a fizz rising in the base of his throat. He lowers his head, touching his chin to his chest, trying to prevent anything from coming up into his mouth.
“Jesus, Robert. I come to tell you this, off the record, ’cause I think there’s gonna be a goddamn media frenzy here any minute now. I think you’re gonna be called upon to talk about these things.”
Something crumbles inside the Mayor’s chest and he moans involuntarily. A small sigh.
“Jesus, Robert. I gotta tell ya. This isn’t gonna be easy. What with suicides, double homicides, and missing children — I don’t think there is a single person who isn’t grieving some loss or other today.”
The Mayor tries to make an agreeing noise. Something deeper. But he only manages another musical whimper.
“Buddy. You and I gotta keep it together. Gotta give the impression that we can lead folks outta this. I don’t mind tellin’ ya though, I can’t wait ’till this business is just a bad memory.”
The Mayor does it now. A deeper noise: “Hmmm.”
“One thing’s for sure. That fuckin’ trailer park is history. Gone. That’s something you can talk about. Ya, that’s good. Talk about that. We’re gonna get rid of that fuckin’ snake pit with a fuckin’ truckload of Critter Ridder.”
Faruzi drains his glass again and points it at the shed.
“What the hell is Critter Ridder, anyway?”
The Mayor leans forward and clears his throat, breaking a drum skin of phlegm with his voice.
“Uh, Critter Ridder, yeah, Critter Ridder. It’s a natural product, all natural ingredients. Safe to use, they say. Don’t know what’s in it, but it’s supposed to get into the animals’ sinuses, irritate them. Long lasting. Supposed to work.”
The detective is up and dragging the toe of his sandal through the brown grains.
“Well, I don’t know, Robert.”
He bends down and draws the watermelon rind out through the bent door.
“Looks like they pretty much ignored it.”
“Yeah. I don’t mind if he took a snootful home. Maybe he won’t come back.”
“Right, ha-ha. Yeah, right. He’s got a bad case of sinusitis: won’t be comin’ in to work tonight. Pretty weird. Raid: the Potpourri. Ha-ha.”
Faruzi crouches and lifts a pinch to his nose.
“Hmm. Pretty weak smelling. I think you got taken there, Robert.”
Faruzi rises and slaps his hands on his swimming shorts. He lifts a pair of sunglasses hanging by a black nylon cord around his neck and pushes them up the bridge of his nose.
“Sun’s gonna break through, though.”
The Mayor gets out of his seat, uncertain about how to hurry the detective away.
“I can see my way out, Rob. I think I’ll swing by again later this morning. I wanna keep you up to date on all this.”
The Mayor doesn’t want to enter the house first.
“You OK, Robert?”
“Sure. Yeah. You OK Faruzi?”
“Me? I’m always OK.”
When the detective has gone the Mayor darts into the washroom and throws up. He hangs his head in the bowl for a long time, listening to the ocean sounds that whirl around his ears and fall through his heart. The sounds harden and spin at the top of the rim.
He is laughing.
There is a poor dead child in my bed. My hands are made of hooks. If I touch him he will hang bleeding from the end of my arm.
The Mayor pulls fingers out from under his knees to loosely embrace the foot of the toilet. Icy water burns down the sides of his hands.
Sweat. Toilet sweat. They call it toilet sweat. Beads of perspiration appear on the outside of the bowl and then, heavy, they roll as pearls down to this perfect lake of clear water in my hand.
He pushes his finger into the black gum coast of this lake. There is nothing worse than me.
Robert Forbes spits into the toilet, opening his eyes to see the thick white bubbles floating on lime bile. There is no choice but to think about this.
It’s always this way. What I haven’t thought is punishing me. And so I will think about this, because that will make it better.
OK. OK. I shot bullets into vulnerable people. I remember picturing myself, seconds before it all happened, on a horse that bucked up, and then I turned back to ask someone on a hill — “Is this it? I just shoot?”
And I don’t even know what they said but I shot anyway. Why? Because I had a gun in my hand.
Because they looked over when I called their names.
And so I pulled a trigger and … shot.
But I’m still not thinking about it. It was so sudden. It happened so quickly. What was I thinking?
Was I thinking: I can never take this back? Or was I thinking: I can always take this back? I think I was feeling both. Both will become true. I only have to remain alive. Is that it? I only have to remain alive? Was I in danger of dying? If I was in danger of dying then maybe I still have a chance. If I was looking up, terrified that I would die if I didn’t …
I still can’t think. That’s the lie. The situation has been controlled somehow. I am doing what I’m supposed to do.
Think about it. You’re thinking things that have definitely been thought before, probably even now. Others, maybe hundreds of other people, are thinking about their own strangling hands. Their own murderous mornings. We’re thinking this hours before the rest of you take an interest, and it becomes …
It becomes what we, in this moment, know it will never be — a deterrent.
Is that what I am now? A deterrent?
No.
No, not a deterrent. I am everything that goes on around this toilet. I am cold. Cold hands in the water.
“Robert? Robert? You OK in there?”
A voice walking in behind the Mayor.
“Ah, jeez, I’m sorry, to bust in on you Robert. You OK?”
The Mayor pulls his head up, watching his reflection shrink to a point. When he speaks his lips feel large and chilled.
“Oh, I’m OK. I’m OK.”
The Mayor reaches up, flips down the lid, and flushes the toilet. Brent has removed his hat and placed it by the sink. He hands the Mayor a towel.
“Here. I had a couple questions I wanted to ask you Robert, but I’ll come back later.”
Robert stands, pushing the white towel against his face.
“No, Brent. No. There’s no point in later. Let’s go have a seat, I’ll be fine.”
The Mayor believes he will be caught. He can’t quite bring himself to say what has happened; but he knows, at least, that every lie he tells will be discovered.
He decides that the only thing left for him to do is to continue lying.
“OK, Robert. Well, since I last talked to you I got onto another investigation. Anyway, it’s probably related; Robert, there’s a boy missing from Buddy Holly.”
“Oh no. You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding, Robert. Wasn’t Faruzi around here talking to you about it?”
“Uh, Faruzi? Well, he was here, but he didn’t mention …”
“He didn’t? Well, what the hell was he telling me then?”
“I don’t know, Brent.”
“I don’t have the patience, Jesus, to play fucking games this morning.”
“He said he was just hired by someone …”
“Yeah, well, I don’t care. I’ll charge that son of a bitch if he’s playin’ with me.”
“I don’t know, Brent.”
“No. No. Forget it. Anyway, remember last night with that cat and those kids out front?”