Very Bad Men

by Harry Dolan

  A voice in his mind said, The headaches are a symptom. His doctor’s voice. It was something his doctor had told him again and again.

  The trouble started near midnight. Lark had a beer in front of him that he’d been nursing for an hour. He watched a crowd of young people heading for the exit. Clean-cut, well-dressed—dealers from the casino, if he had to guess. The last of them held the door for a brawny man heading in.

  That one’s not a dealer, Lark thought. A laborer or a fisherman maybe.

  Madelyn knew him. She got up and met him halfway across the room.

  “Kyle, my love,” she said carelessly.

  He was a younger man, maybe forty—the age she was pretending to be. He wore denim work clothes and heavy canvas boots. She led him to the bar, ordered him a drink. She chattered away at him, her hands brushing his collar or resting on his arm. She had the nervous energy of a woman caught where she shouldn’t be.

  The old man, Charlie, sat forgotten beside her, his face souring as the minutes passed. The other patrons at the bar seemed to lean away from the three of them, as if they sensed what was going to happen.

  Lark watched it from his corner table. Charlie putting a hand on the back of Madelyn’s neck. A proprietary gesture. Madelyn turning to shoot him a look. Kyle, hunched over his glass, doing his best to ignore what was happening, until he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  Kyle got to his feet, and Charlie followed. Madelyn made a halfhearted effort to get between them, but Kyle pushed her gently aside.

  Lark knew that the quickest way to win a fight was to break the other guy’s nose. A broken nose puts a man down, takes all the struggle out of him. Charlie knew it too. He made a fist of his right hand and jabbed at the bigger man’s face.

  Kyle saw it coming and ducked down to catch the punch on his forehead.

  The bones of the hand are delicate, the bones of the skull less so. Charlie drew his fist back with a cry. Kyle shook his head to clear it, then stepped forward casually and scuffed a work boot over the wooden floorboards, sweeping the old man’s legs out from under him. Charlie landed on his backside and on his wounded hand, howling and curling up on the floor.

  Kyle reached behind him for his glass, drained it, and headed for the door, beckoning for Madelyn to follow. She glared at him and growled, “Damn it, Kyle,” but she went with him after only the briefest of glances at the old man.

  Lark left the bar a few minutes later. By then some of the locals had helped Charlie up onto his stool and wrapped a handkerchief around his knuckles and set him up with another beer.

  DARK UNDER THE BIRCH TREES. Lark found the cabin again, drove past it, and parked at the side of the lane. He cut the Chevy’s engine and waited. A tire iron lay on the seat beside him.

  Charlie’s pickup truck appeared at one in the morning, rolling to a stop on the lawn. The old man stumbled up the stone-paved walk and went inside. Lark got out of his car with the tire iron, crossed to the porch, and retrieved the key from underneath the wooden bucket.

  The door squeaked on its hinges when he opened it, but not enough to catch the old man’s attention. In fact, when Lark stepped into the cabin, the old man was nowhere to be seen. A table lamp cast its glow over the sofa and the television. Over a pair of worn shoes abandoned on the carpet.

  Lark saw the lamp reflected in the dark glass of the window behind the sofa and quickly crossed the room to draw the curtains. As he stood by the window he heard the rush of water running, and without thinking he vaulted the sofa and pressed himself against the wall beside the bathroom door.

  With the tire iron raised in his right hand, he waited for the door to open. A minute passed, then two. From his earlier visit he knew that the window in the bathroom was a frosted square too small for a man to climb through. Charlie must be waiting on the other side of the door.

  Lark said, “You may as well come out. How did you know I was here?”

  A brief delay, and then the old man’s voice came through. “You stomp around like an elephant. Who are you? A friend of Scudder’s?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Kyle Scudder. You’re one of his pals?”

  “No, but I saw what he did to you at the bar. You should have your hand looked at. I can help you.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I know some first aid.”

  “I don’t need your help. You clear out, before I call the cops.”

  “The phone’s out here.”

  “I’ve got a cell.”

  Lark looked around at the ragged sofa, the threadbare carpet, the wornout shoes.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  He could hear faint sounds through the door. The old man’s breathing. The medicine cabinet being opened, then softly closed.

  “All right, I’m coming out.”

  Lark lowered the tire iron and stepped in front of the door, pivoting so that his right shoulder faced it. He braced his feet, waited for the knob to turn, and hit the door with everything he had.

  CHAPTER 2

  The razor won’t do you any good,” Lark said.

  “Fuck you.”

  The old man sat on the floor where he had fallen, his back against the vanity of the sink, the straight razor from the medicine cabinet clutched in his left hand. His right hand, still wrapped in a handkerchief, came up to wipe the blood that ran over his upper lip.

  “Your nose is broken,” Lark said.

  “I’ve had it broken before,” said the old man, his speech distorted only a little, like someone talking through thick glass.

  “Ice might help.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Leave the razor and come out,” said Lark, “and I’ll get you some ice.”

  He backed out of the doorway and watched as the old man laid the razor on the floor and pulled himself up the vanity and to his feet. The man swatted away the hand Lark offered and made his way to the sofa, where he fell back against the cushions and pressed the heel of his left hand gingerly against his nostrils.

  Lark kept an eye on him from the kitchen. He laid the tire iron on the seat of a kitchen chair and took an ice tray from the freezer, a pair of dish towels from a drawer. He piled it all on the chair and carried the chair into the living room.

  He bundled some ice cubes in a towel and the old man accepted them without a word, laying the bundle against the side of his nose. Lark filled the second towel and pressed it against his own forehead.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the old man asked.

  “I get headaches.”

  The old man’s laugh sounded half like a groan. “That’s a damn shame.”

  “It’s a symptom,” Lark said absently, and then a thought occurred to him. He had settled into the chair with the tire iron across his lap, but now he rose and put the iron and the towel on the floor and dug his notebook from his pocket.

  He found the page he wanted and held it a foot away from the old man’s eyes. “Tell me what you see,” he said.

  Twisted strands of iron-gray hair hung over the old man’s brow. His eyes squinted. “That’s my name.”

  “Is there anything odd about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it moving?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What color would you say it is?”

  “Is this a joke? It’s written in black.”

  Lark turned the notebook around and read the name. Charlie Dawtrey. “Yes, the ink is black. I know that. Intellectually. But the words seem red to me. They don’t seem red to you?”

  The old man’s eyelids fluttered. “God in heaven.”

  “They don’t ripple, like they’re floating on water? They don’t expand and contract, like they’re breathing?”

  “God in heaven. I’m talking to a crazy man.”

  “I’m not crazy,” Lark said, turning back a page. “What about these names?”

  He watched the old man’s eyes move down the list. Henry Korm
oran. Sutton Bell. Terry Dawtrey.

  “That’s my son. My son and two of his no-good friends.”

  “But you don’t see the letters breathing?”

  “Is this about my son?”

  Lark closed the notebook and slipped it into his pocket. “Are you close to your son?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “If something happened to you, would it matter to him?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Would he mourn, if you were gone?”

  “What do you want here?”

  A dull ache wound itself in a figure eight behind Lark’s brow. He returned to the chair and reached for the towel-wrapped ice.

  “I want you to answer my question,” he said. “I think if you were gone, it would affect him. He would mourn your passing.”

  The old man sat forward slowly. His ice pack lay neglected on the sofa cushion beside him. His nose had stopped bleeding.

  He said, “Mister, if you think you can get to my son by hurting me, you’ve gone off the rails. No one’s going to care much when I’m gone, least of all Terry.”

  “You haven’t kept in touch with him?”

  “He’s been in prison the last sixteen years. I gave up on him, and he gave up on me, a long time back.”

  “You never go to see him?”

  “Not anymore. So why don’t you clear out now, and take whatever grudge you’ve got with you.”

  “I don’t have a grudge.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I don’t think so. You have a sparrow calendar.”

  The old man brushed iron-gray hair out of his eyes. “What?”

  “There’s providence in the fall of a sparrow. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Bible.”

  “Oh Lord, you’ve gone crazy again.”

  “I’m not crazy. That line about the sparrow—it means we’re all part of a bigger plan. You shouldn’t be afraid of playing your part. You shouldn’t lie to get out of it.”

  “I haven’t lied to you.”

  The towel was damp against Lark’s brow. He felt a drop of icy water roll along the bridge of his nose and onto his cheek.

  “You have a sparrow calendar,” he said again. “Every other Saturday is marked with a ‘T.’ Short for ‘Terry.’ You’re still close to him. You visit him at the prison every other Saturday.”

  The old man didn’t try to deny it. He flexed the fingers of his swollen right hand. His eyes settled on Lark’s.

  “You don’t look good. How’s your head?”

  Lark shrugged the question away.

  “Maybe it’s trying to tell you something,” the old man said.

  The pain traced its figure eight. The ice helped, but not enough.

  “The headaches are just a symptom,” said Lark. “I’ll have them until I deal with the underlying problem.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? You imagine killing me is going to solve all your problems?”

  “It’s all I can think of.”

  The old man shook his head sadly. “Look, mister, you don’t want to do this.”

  “The truth is, I don’t. If there were another way, I’d try it. But they’ve got fences at the prison, and towers. This is the only way I can get at him.”

  The old man’s eyes fell shut and a jagged breath escaped him. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper.

  “The men in that prison are animals. Terry’s been in there sixteen years. Do you think there’s anything you can do to him that hasn’t been done? Do you think you’re going to make him suffer, by killing me?”

  Lark drew the towel away from his brow, dropped it to the floor. A cube of ice skipped quietly over the carpet.

  “It doesn’t matter if he suffers,” Lark said. “The point is, they’re going to let him out. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Just for a few hours.”

  The tire iron lay at Lark’s feet. He bent to pick it up.

  “I can’t get through the fences, or past the towers. But I think they’ll let him out. He’ll be at your funeral.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Doesn’t matter how you get there, Lark’s father used to say. Just so long as you get there.

  Thomas Lark spent thirty years building Mustangs at the Dearborn Assembly Plant on the Rouge River. After the first few months the job lost all its appeal, but he clung to it anyway, because he only wanted a few modest things—a wife and a family and maybe a fishing boat—and it didn’t matter how he got them as long as he got them.

  So he stayed on, weathering layoffs and buyouts, and he found a wife—Helen, a kindergarten teacher. They had a son, Anthony. And Thomas Lark bought four boats over the years, starting with a small aluminum skiff, ending with a twenty-four-foot fiberglass runabout. His three decades on the assembly line earned him two years of retirement before a valve in his heart gave out and he collapsed on a dock one fine spring morning an hour before sunrise.

  Helen Lark, who had spent her days teaching children their letters and numbers, never complained about the equation of her husband’s life: thirty years in exchange for two. When Anthony Lark wept at his father’s funeral, she drew him close and did her best to comfort him. Then she took him by the shoulders and said, “Promise me you’ll use the time you’re given.”

  He thought of her on the morning after his encounter with Charlie Dawtrey, and though he would have liked to sleep the day away he decided it wouldn’t be right. He had a few days, at least, until Dawtrey’s funeral, but there were preparations he needed to make.

  He took a long drive south through mild June heat, crossing over the Mackinac Bridge around midmorning—Lake Michigan on his right, Lake Huron on his left. He kept on driving, first to the town of Grayling on the Au Sable River, then west to Traverse City. At a sporting-goods store on Front Street he bought a Remington hunting rifle, a scope, and a box of 30-06 cartridges. He ate lunch in a park by the water and watched the sailboats out on the bay.

  He drove back to Grayling in the afternoon and got on I-75 heading north. When he saw an exit that looked like it wouldn’t lead much of anywhere, he got off the interstate and drifted along until he found an unpaved road that took him through bramble fields and past an abandoned grain silo.

  Three miles after the silo, he pulled over to the side of the road and got the rifle out of the trunk. He mounted the scope, loaded the magazine, and fired into a stand of trees thirty yards from the roadside. The first shot chipped bark from a sickly looking ash and shocked a pair of crows into the sky—a reckless flutter of black wings against the blue. He took a few more practice shots, returned the rifle to the trunk, and drove back to I-75.

  The next day he made some calls from his hotel room and found the funeral home handling the arrangements for Charlie Dawtrey. A mass would be held at Saint Joseph’s in Sault Sainte Marie. The burial would be directly after at a local cemetery. The date for the funeral was July eighth, still a week and a half away. He took some encouragement from that. The family would need time to arrange to have Terry Dawtrey attend.

  The days passed slowly, but Lark didn’t mind. Sometimes in the evenings he flipped through the channels and managed to find the woman with the wondrous smile. He watched her with the sound down and his headaches stayed away from him.

  If he couldn’t find her, he could always read. He had some paperback novels with him—Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly—and several copies of a mystery magazine called Gray Streets.

  He had an affinity for crime stories because the language tended to be simple, the sentence structure straightforward. The words stayed put on the page—not like the names he had written in his notebook, which still seemed to float and breathe in a way that made him uncomfortable.

  There was a term for his condition; his doctor had told him all about it. Synesthesia. A confusion of the senses. A rare affliction that manifested itself differently in different people. Some experienced sounds as having color. Some associated textures with emotions. In Lark’s case, written words w
ere endowed with color and movement.

  Ornate language tended to unsettle him. Passages from nineteenth-century novels might glow like hot coals or squirm like heaps of snakes. In fact, he tried not to read anything written before the First World War. Hemingway made a good cutoff point. Hemingway’s sentences were a nice deep blue, and they mostly held still, like stalks of wheat on a windless day.

  Novels from the 1950s and ’60s were generally safe. Kurt Vonnegut wrote comfortable blue-green prose that moved patiently, like a slow upward escalator. Joseph Heller was a different story. Heller’s characters rarely came out and said anything: instead they “cried heatedly,” they “declared jubilantly,” they “whispered cautioningly.” All those adverbs made it impossible for Lark to get through Catch-22. For Lark, adverbs buzzed like static on a television screen or swarmed like marching ants.

  Mystery novels rarely gave him any trouble. A wisecracking first-person narrative flowed reassuringly, a stream of cool green letters. So mysteries and newspaper stories occupied Lark’s days as he waited for the funeral of Charlie Dawtrey.

  Dawtrey’s death was all over the papers. The early stories hinted at progress. The sheriff of Chippewa County believed there could soon be a break in the case. Then a headline announced that an arrest had been made: Kyle Scudder.

  The development caught Lark off guard, though he told himself he should have anticipated it. Scudder had been in a fight with Charlie Dawtrey on the night of the old man’s death. He had knocked Dawtrey to the floor in front of a barroom full of witnesses.

  In the days after he read the headline, Lark filled several pages of his notebook, writing a summary of his encounter with Charlie Dawtrey. He thought at first that he should go into reasons and motives, but when he did, the sentences were black (not a good black) and bristly and grainy. They trembled on the page until he scratched through them and decided he would stick to the facts.