by Joe McKinney
“About the party?”
“Yeah.”
“It's a bit late if I was, don't you think?”
“It's never too late,” he said. “If you're not sure about it, then it's probably something we need to talk about.”
“I'm okay, Billy. Really, I'm fine.”
He looked me in the eye, then nodded. He went back to work.
I sat there with my eyes closed, letting the sun warm my face and my arms until I heard a car pull up.
“Looks like Chunk's here,” Billy said.
“Yeah.” To Connie, I said, “Honey, Uncle Reggie's here.”
She jumped to her feet and sprinted across the spread of purple horsemint flowers that had grown up in the yard.
Chunk rounded the side of the house just as Connie ran up to me.
“Hi, Uncle Reggie,” she said.
Chunk was carrying a medium-sized white cardboard box, and Connie went for it immediately.
“Did you bring me something for my birthday?” she asked.
“No,” he said, smiling down at her. “This is for your Mom. I'm bringing you something special tomorrow, though.”
Chunk handed me the box, shook hands with Billy. I glanced into the box and saw everything I needed for Connie's cake.
I nodded a thank you to him. He just smiled.
I took the box into the kitchen, put up the stuff that had to be refrigerated, and then went back out to the yard with glasses for everyone and the pitcher of iced tea.
Billy said, “You want a slice of lime with that?”
“With my tea?”
“Yeah, last time I was at the center, they had these huge five pound bags of them for sale. I bought two.”
“Yeah, but in my tea?”
“Okay,” said Billy. “Suit yourself. It's good though.”
He cut up a lime with his pocket knife and handed me a wedge. Billy and I both took our tea with lime.
Next came the awkward ritual of drinking while wearing a surgical mask. The way we all kind of learned to do it was by turning our heads a little to one side while we lifted our masks and took quick sips. It was all kind of silly when you stopped to think about it, though none of us did. It was just one of those things that had become part of the invisible constructs of our lives in the plague city.
“I got a call from Myers last night,” I said.
“Oh yeah? What'd he want?”
“To tell me that someone had taken the hard drives from Bradley's three laptops. The way he sounded, I think he thinks we did it.”
“Us?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Paranoia seems to be going around.”
“I guess.” He sipped at his tea. We all did.
“Still,” I said, “it's strange about the hard drives. Why would somebody take them? If whoever did it knew enough to take the hard drives out, why not take the whole computer?”
“Are you talking about looters?” Billy asked.
“I'm not sure,” I said. “It doesn't sound like something they'd do, you know? Their style would be to steal everything.”
“Or maybe just trash it,” Chunk said. “Smash it just to hear it shatter.”
“Yeah, that's true.”
“You said some specimen traps were taken too?” Billy asked.
“All of them.”
“Why?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe they weren't stolen. Maybe Bradley put them back out after she took the first batch of specimens out for testing.”
“She'd have mentioned that in her journal,” Chunk said.
He was right about that, of course. Despite the enigmatic "WE ARE ALL GONERS!" Bradley was very organized in her journal. She would have included something as basic as putting out fresh traps.
“So, who would want to steal the hard drives to three laptop computers and six specimen cages?” Billy asked. “Why those things and nothing else?”
“It has to be because of what she was working on,” Chunk said. “That has to be it.”
“So, where does that leave us?” I asked.
“It's either somebody she was working with or against.”
“Against? You mean like Cole?”
“I like him for this,” Chunk said.
I liked him too, only I was still troubled by the idea of a 70 year old man beating Kenneth Wade to death with his bare hands. That part just didn't make sense, and I said so.
Chunk didn't have an answer for me.
“But speaking of Wade,” he said after a moment, “on the way over here I got a call from Treanor. He wants us in his office on Monday morning.”
“Great. There isn't any way that's gonna be good.”
“Treanor's that lieutenant you told me about?” Billy asked.
“That's him.” To Chunk, I said, “Did he say what he wanted?”
“I doubt it's to play canasta,” Chunk said. “I think you really pissed him off this time.” Chunk turned to Billy and said, “You really ought to tell your wife to stop pissing off the brass.”
“I wish I could,” Billy said. “But you know how women are. They're not happy unless they're complaining about something.”
I threw my wedge of lime at him.
Connie got bored fast listening to the adults talk and started to fidget.
“Honey,” I said, “why don't you take your binoculars and try to find me an oriole.”
She liked that, I could tell, but then got a real serious look on her face and said, “Mommy, the orioles like to nest in the cypress down by the river, and Daddy told me not to go down there alone.”
Billy smiled at me.
“That's right, hon,” I said. “How about that blue jay from earlier? Can you find him again?”
“Okay,” she said, brightening. The next instant she was off, running through the backyard, leaping over Billy's coffins. Billy and I both watched her go, then gave each other a glance. Go ahead, my look said to him. Now's as good a time as any.
Billy nodded, wet his lips with his iced tea. He said, “Connie and I went down to the creek yesterday with her binoculars.”
I looked into my tea. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chunk look at Billy, then at me. This was leading into something, he just couldn't tell what.
Chunk said, “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “You know, once you get down to the creek, it's only about a third of a mile to the wall.”
“Really?” Chunk said. “I didn't know it was that close.”
“Oh yeah. With a pair of good binoculars you can see just about every little detail in the wall. Of course, you can't go much closer than that or the motion sensors will activate and the helicopters will blast your ass to a mud puddle, but you can see the wall plain as day.”
Chunk shifted in his chair somewhat. He glanced at me, but I was still watching my tea swirl around in my glass.
“We went down there yesterday to try to see the orioles,” Billy said. “The kid's crazy about those birds.”
“I knew that,” Chunk said.
“Yeah. So you know it rained pretty hard on us the night before, and we wanted to see if their nests were okay. The water had run over the banks pretty good.”
Chunk nodded. Patient, letting the conversation develop.
“I took Connie's binoculars, and while I was looking through them I happened to turn towards the wall. Where the creek goes under. The Army put a heavy grill there when they set the thing up, you know? No way to cut it or anything like that.”
Chunk said, “The grill's still there?”
“Yeah, it's still there. Only I was kind of surprised to see that a small section of the bank next to it had been washed out, gone.”
Chunk shifted around in his chair again. Nobody said anything for a long time after that. We sat there, sipping our iced teas, the air so thick between us I could barely breathe.
Finally, Chunk said, “It must have been some storm.”
“A lot of rain,” Billy said. “And you want to know
something else funny about it?”
“What's that?”
“While I was looking at that hole under the wall, I couldn't help thinking that somebody could make a boat—a long one that might look like a brush-covered log from the air—and float right underneath the wall.”
I sucked in a breath and held it. There it was. Out in the open.
“The hole's big enough,” Billy said, “that if somebody wanted to do that they could probably make a raft big enough for three adults and a child. They could just float on the current all the way out to the Guadalupe River. From there...” Billy shrugged.
Chunk put his tea between his legs and stared out at the yard, looking over the coffins there.
“The trouble with doing that,” Chunk said, and the way he said it was still that we're-just-having-a-hypothetical-conversation-here tone, “is that the helicopters are equipped with thermal imaging cameras. If three adults and a child were to slip under the wall, they'd be shot on the spot.”
“They might,” I said. “Of course, if they were to borrow one of those SWAT sniper blankets, that would make them invisible to thermal cameras. Stick some shrubs on top of the blanket, and if anybody saw them they'd just look like debris floating down the river.”
Chunk took a long sip of his iced tea. “You know, if Cole is right about there being three killer strains of H2N2 out there, three adults and a child could hardly be blamed for wanting to get out.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.
Billy said: “It is something to think about.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 21
The party started around five-thirty. We set it up in the dining room because that room opened up directly onto the back patio, where most of our parties ended up anyway. The dining room faced to the northeast, so it avoided the direct heat of the evening sun, yet still had plenty of natural light, which, as it turned out, we needed, because the power went out about an hour before anybody got there.
Chunk showed up first, bearing a beautifully wrapped yellow box that Connie promptly took from him and put on the table in the kitchen.
“You did a good job wrapping that,” I said.
“I think she's really gonna like that one.”
Connie was busy looking the box over, bouncing on her toes, barely able to contain herself.
“Looks like she's having a good time with it already.”
Chunk smiled at her. “Yeah, this was a good idea, Lily. I can tell Connie needed it. I bet you did too.”
“I don't know,” I said. “I'm a nervous wreck.”
“It's not gonna be that big of a crowd,” he said. “Just a few friends.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Just then Connie turned around and said, “Mommy, can I open it please? Pleeeease?”
“No, honey. You'll have to wait till the party starts.”
“Mommy, please?”
“No, Connie. Put it down.”
“You could let her open it now,” Chunk said. “It might actually be better if she did.”
I gave him a crossways look. Why? What did you get her?
“It's okay,” he said, reading the look, but ignoring it. “Really, it's okay.”
I turned back to Connie, who seemed to know what was going on, for she was poised over the yellow wrapping paper like a hawk about to fall on a dove. She looked at me expectantly.
“Go ahead,” I said.
She started ripping paper before the words had completely left my mouth. She got down to the box inside, popped that open, and looked inside, her face glowing with the light of childish wonder.
Her mouth turned to the shape of an O, and a long "Ahhh" sound came out.
“What did you get her?” I asked Chunk. But all he would do was smile.
Connie reached into the box and pulled out three yellow porcelain combs—fancy ones, very old, very expensive looking. Each one had a finely etched bird pattern on the edge. I recognized them from Chunk's grandmother's collection. They could be used as a regular comb, or folded over and used as a clip. Perfect for Connie now that her hair was getting so much longer.
“Mommy, they're so pretty,” Connie said. Then she ran over and hugged Chunk. “Thank you, Uncle Reggie. I love them.”
She was bubbling over with excitement, trying to figure out how the set worked.
Chunk mussed her hair. “You're welcome, squirt. You'll have to get your Mom to teach you how to use them, okay?”
“Okay,” Connie said, never taking her eyes off the combs.
My mouth was hanging open the whole time. As soon as Connie was out of ear shot, I turned to Chunk.
“That's too much.”
“Nah,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “it is. Those things are priceless antiques. And you already did more than enough getting me the stuff for the cake.”
“Please,” he said, waving me off. “It's nothing. Besides, it's not like I'm ever gonna use them. Gram would have wanted them to go to a little girl anyway.”
Before I could argue with him though, there was a knock on the door and Billy let in our next door neighbors, Avery and Lynn Cameron. Billy brought them inside and introduced them to Chunk.
Avery Cameron was a sickly thin cadaverous man with absolutely no chin. He wore obscenely huge eyeglasses, had a pale and waxy complexion, and when he shook your hand made you feel like you were squeezing an almost frozen fish.
Avery was a photographer by trade and a staunch liberal in politics. He also affected a flamboyant style in his clothes that I guess he thought made him look more artsy, but in my opinion only made him look silly. For the party he wore vibrantly green pants and a matching jacket, a white, silk shirt, and a bright green cravat with gold flecks worked into the fabric. The cravat matched his face mask.
His clothes were so bright that I didn't notice until a moment later that he had a dollop of shaving cream on his cheek, like it had dried in the process of dripping off his face. The entire party I had to force myself not to reach out and flick it off.
Avery's wife Lynn was just as flamboyant, and the poor thing was blind as a bat. She wore a canary yellow pantsuit with a matching surgical mask and Elton John-style oversized glasses and white shoes. She had a beautiful head of flame-red hair, and her complexion, though very light, was free of the freckles that redheads usually have.
They were quite a pair, but for all the jokes that Billy and I told at their expense, you'd never catch me saying anything bad about them. Or at least anything that I intended seriously. When we first met them, they were both in their late 50s. They had never had children of their own, but it was obvious from the first time they saw Connie that a great injustice had been done there. The two of them loved children, and would have made wonderful parents. In all the time we'd known them, argued with them about politics, laughed about their ridiculous clothes, they had never been anything less than guardian angels to our daughter, and for Billy and me, that qualified them for sainthood.
Of course, Chunk lacked that point of view. He stared at the two of them during the introductions like they had just stepped off a space ship and asked him if he were interested in an anal probe.
Avery shook Chunk's hand so delicately he almost looked like he expected Chunk to kiss the back of it.
Lynn, however, grabbed Chunk's hand and pumped it fiercely. She did everything that way, in an urgent, overly friendly kind of way.
“My, but you are a big one, aren't you?” she said to Chunk. “Have you ever modeled for a photographer? My Avery is a photographer you know. He does landscapes mostly, but I think you would make a lovely subject for his camera. So many muscles.” Lynn turned to Avery and said, “What do you think, dear? Would Mr. Dempsey here do well as a model?”
Avery considered Chunk head to toe. “Maybe so,” he said. “He's very dark. I'd like to use some hard lighting to bring out the texture of his skin, but all in all a very impressively built man.”
Lynn put a confidential hand on Chunk's massive bicep. “Avery is actually very good with live models. We've been married for forty years, and in that time he's photographed me exactly three hundred and eight-one times.” Then she flashed her mischievous eyes at Chunk and said, without lowering her voice a bit, “Eight of those times were in the nude.”
Poor Chunk. It looked like his face was about to crack. He gave me a look. For God's sake, save me from this crazy lady, it said.
But I didn't have to, for just then, there was another knock on the door and Connie exploded through the room to answer it.
“That's her friend June,” I said. “She hasn't gotten a chance to play with anybody her own age since, well, you know.”
Everybody nodded, suddenly a little sad as they remembered that children weren't supposed to play together in the plague city.
I followed Connie to the door, my hands instinctively close to her as she opened the door. “Not too close, honey,” I said.
“Mommy.” She gave me a look of her own. God, Mom. Would you relax, please?
Six years old going on 30.
Connie opened the door and let in Gloria Webb and her daughter June. June held a used soccer ball with a red ribbon tied around it. June handed it to Connie.
“Cool,” Connie said. “Come on.”
Before either Gloria or I could stop them, the two girls ran for the living room. June was a year older than Connie and a true tomboy. She wore jeans and a red t-shirt with a standard white face mask. She ran naturally, her short, bobbed hair cut barely moving.
She made quite a contrast to Connie, who in her white and pink party dress and long, curly brown hair, was the very image of a girly girl. Still, it was good to hear her laugh, and June did that for her, made her laugh.
Gloria and I followed them into the living room, each of us gently guiding our girls away from the other just a little. It was pathetically transparent, and there was an uncomfortable moment between Gloria and me, neither wanting to give the impression we thought the other's daughter was dirty somehow, contaminated, but neither of us willing to take the chance either.
I tried to cover my embarrassment with a compliment. Gloria had highlighted her hair, a purely amateur home job that made her look like a can of blonde paint had dripped onto her chestnut hair, but I told her I liked it.