Benighted

by Kit Whitfield

  Who tried to collar me.

  He chased me with his silver gun,

  He chased me with his pole,

  I jumped on him and sat on him

  And bit him full of holes.

  My mama says I’m naughty,

  I should have let him be—

  But Mama, I was hungry, so—

  Don’t

  Blame

  Me!

  They showed me to the jury,

  They showed me to the court,

  They showed me to the bareback judge

  And this is what he thought:

  He’ll lock me up forever,

  He’ll throw away the key

  Your Honor, I was hungry, so—

  Don’t

  Blame

  Me!

  They’ll hit me with a catching pole,

  They’ll chain me in a pit,

  They’ll push me off the courthouse roof,

  They’ll chop me into bits,

  They’ll skin my pretty fur coat off,

  They’ll drown me in the sea,

  But catcher, catcher, I am hungry—

  Can’t

  Catch

  Me!

  Becca had to pick me up after school. “It’s your job in the family,” my mother would say, which we both knew meant no arguments allowed. My job in the family was less tangible. My mother hardly ever said the phrase to me. It was as if I wasn’t part of the contract.

  However, it was part of the contract that I had to wait for Becca to pick me up. Her school was a few minutes’ walk from mine, and finished a quarter of an hour later. I first heard that rhyme on one of those days. Becca had arrived fairly early, before I’d had time to scuff more than the tips of my shoes kicking the desk, and we walked home in a good mood. I was trying to tell her about my piano teacher, I think, who wore long scarves and had red nails that clicked on the keys. Piano lessons were one of the things that my mother insisted on me taking, also insisting that Becca oversee me to make sure I practiced. While at first I had resented this effort to turn me into a lady, I was in the process of discovering a liking for it. That I had enjoyed the pretty sounds I could get out of the white keys was, on that day, something of a revelation, and I was trying to communicate it to Becca, while Becca was trying to explain to me what an octave really meant. I said it was eight notes, and she, from the height of her ten years, had explained that there were different musical scales, and even semitones weren’t the only way to measure things.

  It’s funny how clearly I remember that day.

  “I know what an octave is,” I said, “Miss Dencham showed me, look, it’s like this.” I pulled my hand out of her grip and stretched my fingers wide.

  “That’s not an octave, May, your hand’s too small.”

  “Is not.”

  We rounded a corner. I could feel the warm pavement through my shoes, and there was a summer smell of cut grass from somewhere. Ahead of us was another school, one that neither of us attended. Becca frowned and took my hand in what I thought was an officious grip. “Come on.”

  I pulled my hand away. “Look, this is an octave, I can do one.”

  Becca grabbed my hand again. There was a yellow plastic watch on her wrist. “Come on, May, we’ve got to get past this school.”

  “Will they throw stones?” I said—I had just been reading a book in which that happened.

  Becca gave me a brief glance of puzzlement, then threw a nervous one at the school. “No. Come on.”

  I don’t know why I hadn’t heard it. They were chanting. “Don’t Blame Me” is a clapping rhyme, I learned later: you sing it, and whoever’s It chases you at the end. As we got nearer, I was able to make out what they were saying.

  They were going to eat me.

  They didn’t know I was a non. Becca took my hand and yanked me forward, her head held high and her face scarlet. From a distance, it probably just looked like a girl trying to make her little sister behave.

  Becca kept walking, pulling me, with the rhyme going on in the background. The blush on her face was one that I was to see a great deal in the future. Even when I wasn’t around, I think she was uncomfortable when people called attention to how different nons are, and there she was in public, with people out-and-out singing it, and she was stuck with her non little sister. She marched forward, saying to me, “Just keep going, May.”

  If she hadn’t pulled me, I might have walked by. Gone home and cried. But Becca’s tugs on my arm infuriated me, and between her trying to jerk me into pretending it didn’t matter, and the children behind the fence chanting, I lost control of myself.

  I gave a mighty pull and freed my hand from Becca’s. The clapping children stopped their rhyme to see the drama that my mad dash was promising, and I ran up against the fence, shouting at them. And then, of course, they cottoned on. I was shouting, “I’ll catch you! I’ll catch you!” It crazed me that I could think of nothing to shout at them that was as bad as the jokes they’d been throwing around, quite casually, about me. I was in that state of fury that only children feel, fury that can crack you in half, fury that you know will never go away, that no more thinks of calming down than of considering the devil’s point of view.

  They started laughing, pointing. “Bareback! Bareback!” I shook the fence and someone shouted, “Look at her soft little hands! Come and get us, bareback!” Another started up a new rhyme, and they all took it up.

  I shrieked, and Becca came up behind me. She grabbed me around the waist, and pulled me, struggling, all the way past the playground into the next street.

  The horror doesn’t leave me. I don’t understand how it is that a nursery rhyme enables me to sit back and watch one man beat another. But a childish slur is a hard one to deal with. It seems so immense at the time, the fact that it maddens you and no one cares is something that can never be understood. I stare at Nate’s back because it is not in itself a violent thing.

  I am ashamed of myself. I am holding a nursery rhyme as a talisman against torture.

  There is no excuse for what we do to him.

  Nate steps back, a little winded, and cracks his knuckles. I look at him, and although he’s of my kind, I’m almost more frightened of him than I am of Seligmann. It strikes me that I’ve been pretending to myself that he was performing a task, going through a series of motions, and that the nature and quality of those motions was not important. And he was. That’s what it was to him. His face is almost undisturbed.

  I think he’s damaged Seligmann’s ribs. There’s blood around his lips, his spine strains against the chair, bending inward. His posture is crouched for real now. I can hear every breath he takes.

  I open my mouth, but Seligmann speaks first. “Best you can do?” There’s cancer in his voice, gravel, hours of shouting, only he hasn’t screamed once. He spits through his teeth, pink liquid. It may be that he’s only bitten his tongue.

  I ask him the question that I’ve been wanting to ask all my life, of every wolf in man’s clothing that I’ve ever known. Even as I ask him, I’m cold, heavy, because I know he won’t give me an answer that’ll satisfy me.

  “Why did you try to kill us?”

  I want the answer to this with every fiber of me. Nate leans against the door, not that interested. He becomes almost unreal in my sight, a man of straw. It’s Seligmann who knows what’s at stake.

  Seligmann grins, panting; blood rims his teeth. “Tasty girl. Wouldn’t you take a bite?”

  “Stop it.” My voice is soft, as if speaking through a headache. “I’m not asking you for jokes. I want to know. Why did you attack us? We wouldn’t have hurt you.”

  The irony of me saying this to a man I’ve just watched beaten with hard and exact science doesn’t even occur to him. “You couldn’t of.”

  “Why then?”

  “Shit.” He dabs his tongue against a bright wet cut on his lip, one that I put there. “If you’ve got to ask, you wouldn’t understand.”

  I almost laugh, it�
�s such a ridiculous thing, such a sharp thing to say. My throat hurts. Every inch of him must hurt. “Enlighten me.”

  I get up and walk toward him. I don’t know why. That I can hit him, twist him, compress him, is something that I’ve almost forgotten. He turns his head up toward me, and flinches away. “Bitch,” he says. “Go on, I don’t fucking care. I’ve got you going. I should’ve slashed your face off when I had the chance.”

  I shrug hard, and force a tough answer out of myself. “Maybe so. But I’ve got you by the balls now, haven’t I?”

  He grimaces, moves his arms against the handcuffs. “You don’t have me, bitch. You can’t get me. You and your kind, you think you’re worth something? No chance. Just freaks, that’s all you are. Soulless. Cripples. You’re not even alive. You’re going down.”

  “Soulless?” Soulless? That’s not a word he’d use. It can’t be. Insults, curses, rhymes, these I’ve heard before, and from him, they make sense. They don’t account for why he scares me, but they make sense. And now he’s talking about souls? It should sound weird in his mouth, like he was quoting someone else, only it doesn’t. He spoke with force and conviction, his beliefs alive on every battered inch of him.

  Seligmann looks at me for a moment, a clear straight look, and for just that moment there’s nothing posed or contrived on his face. He looks at me like he might look at a fish gasping out of water, with distaste and distance and no feeling at all. Then he drops his head. Hair hides his face again, and what I see is a man, a hurt, injured, tired man slumped in a chair. He doesn’t look up when I try to talk to him. Nate stays leaning against the wall, a little frustrated by how the interrogation’s going, a little annoyed at being out of things. And I stand over Seligmann, boneless, exposed, and bereft, with no answers to my questions.

  SEVEN

  Something has happened to my fingers, they won’t fan out, they won’t stay straight. They’re concussed. They stumble over each other as I try to type.

  Recommended action: suspect should be held in detention. His behavior may or may not indicate

  What could it indicate? He never said he was up to anything.

  His behavior may be general hostility, or indicative of a more serious problem.

  My bones are hollow, there’s cold air inside them. Something’s eating at me. A death-watch beetle, chipping away, leaving white mazes of cold air behind it till my skeleton is light as a bird’s. It’s going to keep mining me till I’m shredded into a dried-out honeycomb, then flex its wings and fly out of my mouth. I can hear it chipping.

  “That’s your watch, Galley,” I mutter, and push my mouth against my wrist. My fingers are dancing, rippling as if in a strong wind. I suppose I must be shaking.

  The reasons for his behavior are unclear, but his hostility appeared unusual, and it may be best to monitor him for a while. Subject has made no request for visitors or legal counsel.

  I look out of the window and there’s a storm coming in; the sky is the color of an overboiled egg yolk, green and sulphurous.

  I want this report finished. If I could finish it, I could have some coffee and warm up. I’d like very much to dash through it and do a slack job, but I can’t dash if I can think of nothing to say.

  In the light of these facts, it would seem that detaining him here is feasible.

  What made me want to be a lawyer? I don’t think I ever believed I’d set the world to rights. I’ve ended up sitting at a desk using words like “feasible,” and there must be some good reason why I got here.

  There’s a knock at my door. I don’t want to answer it, really, I don’t want anyone to see me sitting here with my veins showing through my skin, but another person might bring some heat into the room.

  “Come in.”

  A head comes around the door, and the cold spills out of my bones and into my flesh. “Is this a bad time?” says the face.

  “No,” I say before I have time to think of a truthful answer. “It’s all right. Paul Kelsey, yes?”

  “That’s right,” says Paul Kelsey, and the next thing I know he’s sitting opposite me. “How are you?”

  “Fine. I’m fine. Sorry, I—” My voice sticks in my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” He puts his head on one side and frowns at me.

  “I—” I touch my forehead, blink hard, my hands won’t keep still. “Sorry, I’m having a bit of a day.”

  “Mm.” He nods, perfectly pleasant.

  “Are you here to talk about Jerry Farnham?” This is practical, this I think I can handle.

  “Well, I was passing.” He’s just sitting there looking happy. He’s bigger than I remembered, a tall man. What’s he doing bringing his happy self into my cramped-up office?

  “You could have made an appointment, you know. My telephone works very well.”

  He ducks his head for a moment, then shrugs. “I could. You’re right.” I haven’t made a dent in his good mood. “But then, I thought I’d just say hello.”

  “Don’t you say hello on the phone?”

  “No,” he says reflectively, “I say, social services, how may I help you. Or I say my name. Are you too busy? Because I can always come back another time.”

  “No.” I run my hand through my hair. “No, I’m sorry. Look…” I shake my head, trying to clear it; my brain knocks to and fro against my skull and I give myself a headache. This is no good. “We seem to have got off to rather an odd start. It’s mostly my fault, but can we just take it from here? Because we do need to sort out Jerry’s case.”

  “Yes, we do.” He gives me a look of amusement.

  “Well, don’t look at me,” I hear myself say. “I’m trying to sort this out as much as you are, pal.”

  “I’m sure.” The amused look lingers, then his face sobers up. “How’s your sister, by the way?”

  “What?”

  “Your…” He sketches in the air. “That night in the bar, you were talking about your sister.”

  “Oh, Christ.” I bury my face in my hands. “Do we have to do this? I’m trying to be a professional.”

  “Have to do what?” He gives me a wounded glance, still looking entertained.

  “I was halfway out of my skull. I was off duty. You don’t have to rub it in.”

  “You were pretty interesting, really.” His face is dangerously close to a grin. “Anyway, who’s talking? I was coming on to you. I was pretty off duty myself.”

  “Oh.” My head comes off my hands and we look at each other. The room goes quiet. “Were you?”

  I wait for him to answer, wait seconds and seconds. A pulse is beating in my throat. He draws a breath. The silence stays between us, thickens, goes solid.

  “Was I what?” he says, too late.

  I look back down at my desk. “Never mind.”

  I glance through my bangs at him. He doesn’t look amused anymore. His mouth chews itself, and then he raises his eyebrows. His face is talking to itself, and I can’t understand what it’s saying. He sits still in the chair.

  One of us has to say something.

  My hands rest on the table, inert. I flex my fingers, drum them against the surface, and look up at him. With a tug of self-control, I even manage something like a wry grin. “Well. If we leave aside my drunk ramblings and your curb crawling, we can still talk about Jerry Farnham.”

  “Jerry Farnham. Yes.” He slaps his palm against his leg and sits up. It’s an arresting mixture of gestures, the slap like a middle-aged man, then his shoulders shifting like a boy’s as he straightens. I stop myself wondering about his age, and put my eyes back on his face, his black-lashed eyes.

  “Yes, Jerry.” I push my hair off my forehead. “Now. Have you found him an AA group yet?”

  “Yes, though that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll go there. I mean,” he leans his elbows on the table, so far forward that he’s almost lying down, “it’s going to be hard to get him to make any real commitment to helping himself. It’s not exactly relaxing, what he’s going through with the loite
ring charge. I mean, my problem is his general welfare.”

  “Your problem?” I say.

  “Mm?”

  “I just thought I heard you say you were going to take some work off my back.”

  He looks pleased. “Well, you shouldn’t have to take away his whisky.”

  “No, I’d just drink it myself. You were saying?”

  “That as far as we’re concerned, it’s the short-term problem, which is getting him off the loitering charge. Do you think you can do that?” His tone has gone professional. It sits oddly with his casual posture. He scrubs a hand against his head, looking up at me and waiting for an answer.

  “Well.” I tap the table, think about it. This is my area. “Do you want it in detail?”

  “Do you have time?”

  I think about what I’ll have to go back to if he leaves. “Yes. Hold on.” I talk to him over my shoulder as I get out the file. My hands are a little steadier than they were. “It could go either way. Clearly he did what he’s charged with; the best we can hope for is a suspended sentence. And whether I can get that or not depends on how world-weary the judge is.”

  Probably that’s an improper thing to say to an outsider, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “As in, I’ve seen too many like him, send him down?”

  I turn. “Hell, no. As in, why bother looking after him in prison.” I look at him. “Have you worked with DORLA before?”

  He shakes his head. “No. My first time. Any advice welcome.”

  He’s new to this, new to everything about us. No scars. DORLA people don’t get government services when they have problems; we have to take care of our own. Social workers only get involved when there’s a lyco client. It occurs to me that it’s just possible I’m the first non he’s ever had a conversation with.

  I sit down, lay the file on my lap, trying to sort what I want to say into words. If I was talking to Bride, I wouldn’t have to, I could just pull a face and leave it unsaid and she’d know what I was talking about. And I’ve never tried explaining it to a lyco before. For some reason, it seems important. “What we want is an exhausted man who can’t be bothered to follow through with the law. It’s one of those laws that a lot of us would ignore if we could. I mean, not every case, there’s a lot of people cause us a lot of trouble loitering, but the screw-ups like Jerry…The thing is, none of us make the laws, and they don’t always work. I’m sorry, I’m not saying this right.”