So Special in Dayville

by D. Clark Gill

  He’s always known this day would come. It comes eventually to everyone in the datos trade. But he never expected it to come this soon, or by such extraordinary means. A month ago, he probably wouldn’t have minded. He’d have faced a bullet with no qualms in his heart—nothing but the peace that comes from already being dead.

  But today, he resists the idea of being dropped, executed, into Broke Mule Canyon. For the first time in a long time, he feels. And what he feels is fear.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mouth hanging open, Ajeno blunders down the alley from its western end. He’s again carrying the overnight bag. Ruiz convinced him the night before to keep watching the child. But now he pushes it wordlessly past the newspaper into the Mexican’s hands. His own meaty palms have clapped themselves to his ears. “I can’t take the sounds no more,” he says finally. “Shouldn’t baby be with parents?”

  “It is complicated,” snaps Ruiz.

  “But there’s a mama and papa, ain’t there?”

  The tall man pushes the bag back into Ajeno’s arms. “It is the Dawdleman child.”

  The fat man’s mouth forms an O. “They didn’t want ’im no more?”

  “Not exactly,” says Ruiz. “It is complicated.”

  Ajeno pushes the bag back into his hands. “Okay, but you take ’im back. Please, Ricky? He’s too loud.”

  Annoyed, Ruiz peeks inside the bag and finds a snoring child. He hands the bag back to Ajeno. “What are you speaking of? He is sleeping. Anyway, I cannot help anyone. I have to get out of town.”

  “You’re leaving?” Ajeno’s mouth sags even lower. His surprise wakes the child, who begins to whimper inside the bag. The fat man scoops out the child to blow in its face. “But, then, who will fix the baby? He makes too much noise.”

  “It is not my concern,” says the tall man coldly. He slaps the newspaper photo of the baby being carried in his arms. “None of this was to have been my concern. They did not pay me to care if you died yesterday, did they?” He snaps his fingers. “No! They pay me only for a job. And you,” he flips his hand in Ajeno’s face, “should have been as nothing to me! Nothing but an inconvenience to be cleaned from the pavement.”

  “Ah, Ricky,” Ajeno, looking hurt, sets down the bag with the yawning baby on a nearby trash can lid, “you don’t mean th—”

  Ruiz interrupts, “Yes, yes I do!”

  “But we’re pals, ain’t we? Real compadres, standing shoulder to shoulder against adversity?”

  Recoiling, the Mexican shakes his head. “You think I want you as my amigo? For people to see us together and think we are the same?” He steps back another pace before pulling the automatic from his waistband. “Go, go now. Do not come back here again.”

  “But,” Ajeno’s voice raises to a whine, “I work here.”

  “No longer. Go, before I must . . . just go!”

  The back door to the diner explodes open as three masked men, dressed largely in black, step outside. Before Ruiz or Ajeno can react, the man walking between the other two rips off his mask. He steps forward, gun in hand, and presses its muzzle against Ruiz’s temple. “We got to settle accounts, sí?”

  “What,” says Ruiz with relative calmness, “do you want, Carlos?”

  Carlos, with his deep acne scars, giggles unpleasantly. “I want only what the cartel wants, entiende? And what they want is proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “Sí,” Carlos nods, “evidence of loyalty.”

  “I do not understand. The FRC collection is almost complete. Why should they think me disloyal?”

  Mockingly, Carlos wags his greasy hair from side to side. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you are playing hero on their time. Time they pay you well for. Time that should be all about them.”

  “Fine.” Ruiz shrugs, careful not to jostle the gun at his head. “I talk to them.”

  “No, no talk. No time for talking. Time for proof.” Carlos sucks in a quick breath before pressing the muzzle deeper into Ruiz’s temple. “Time to . . . shoot.”

  “Shoot?”

  “Sí, that gun in your hand. You have not forgotten how it works, have you?”

  Immobilized by the other man’s gun to his head, Ruiz frowns as he continues facing a wide-eyed Ajeno over the barrel of his Glock. “But why?” he protests offhandedly. “He is nothing but a cook. And not even a very good one!”

  “Humor me,” Carlos whispers into his ear.

  Ruiz and Ajeno exchange glances. Swiftly, the tall man calculates their odds. They are not good. But then Ajeno lumbers forward with surprising swiftness. Swinging up the bag holding the baby, he thrusts it into Carlos’s face.

  “Fix baby,” he cries. “Fix baby!!”

  The child lets out such screeching that the three men in black stumble backward; their eyes vibrating uncontrollably. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

  Ruiz grabs Ajeno’s arm. “We go,” he hisses. Having pushed the fat man, who still holds the screaming infant, back through the diner’s doorway, the Mexican quickly bolts its lock. He and Ajeno stumble wildly through a sea of empty tables, still loaded with stained breakfast dishes, as the three men out in the alley bang on its door.

  “Hey!” Jones emerges from his office looking annoyed. “What the hell is—”

  The diner’s front door swinging shut cuts off his words.

  Ruiz makes Ajeno run three blocks. And cut down five back alleys. And go up and down eight fire escapes. Finally, he allows them to slow their pace, but only as he continually scans their location.

  They’ve stopped on the seedy, deserted end of Lapalooza Lane. Disused factories block much of the city sky above their heads. Ajeno is sucking air like a forest fire. Even the baby is breathing hard as it looks, wide-eyed, at Ruiz.

  The tall man, avoiding its trustful expression, takes stock of their situation. Obviously, the Cartel is unhappy with him for blowing his cover. Scenarios flit through his brain at superspeed. He stares at the brick factory walls above his head. He thinks they may well become his tomb. He twirls around in the empty street, a chill clawing at his clothing.

  No, he tells himself, all is not lost. He may still be able to make it right with Los Espejos. All he has to do is to deliver the last of the FRCs. His hand flies to the pocket of his pants. Yes, he still has the memory sticks. And he has one last transaction scheduled. He checks his phone; the transaction’s scheduled to go down in eight hours. So, all he has to do is to stay safe for the next eight hours. Then all the bargaining chips will be on his side of the table.

  “But where,” he mumbles to himself, “can I hide?”

  Ajeno, still huffing slightly, points to a sliver of light between two buildings in the distance. “I know a place. This time I show you.” He rearranges the infant to fit on his left breast before taking off at a quick pace. “Maybe,” he throws over his shoulder to Ruiz, who follows, “they also fix baby.”

  In little more than an hour, they are standing at the foot of Mount Inselberg. The mountain resembles a volcano with half its rim blown off. Even Ruiz, a newcomer to Dayville, knows how townsfolk avoid it; its only visitors are those like Crystal, who use it for high-impact studies of mortality. Possibly for this very reason, even wildlife avoids it.

  A customer at the diner once whispered to Ruiz that during the Cold War, it was bored into, like an anthill, and used as an underground nuclear bunker. The fact of it once being a super-secret military installation isn’t hard to believe. U.S. Government No Parking signs can still be found fallen and barely covered by the gravel surrounding the mountain’s base.

  “But this won’t work,” fumes Ruiz. His anger flares at the fat man’s foolishness. “The cartel’s satellites can pinpoint even a mouse.” He waves at the lack of vegetation. “Out in the open like this, they will find me in less than ten minutes!”

  “Not gonna be out here.” Ajeno steps up to what appears to be a stray boulder resting against the rocky incline. Brushing aside rabbit brush, he looks to be pressing his fingers into
solid rock. Ruiz, glancing about nervously, opens his mouth to protest, when the side of the boulder disappears into itself.

  “Neat, huh?” The fat man grins. “Just like an elevator.” He lumbers into darkness. “Come on, Ricky!”

  Ruiz barely hesitates. Largely because he knows that far above him, high in space, an orbiting camera is rotating in his direction. Stumbling into a sightless void, he has to stop after several feet. The pitch blackness is relieved only by light coming from the opening behind him. He strains to see ahead. But then a whoosh and a loud click make him jump.

  The door to the outside has slid shut; the darkness around him is now complete. Ruiz can see nothing. Absolutely nothing. “Ajeno!” Stone walls bounce back his voice. Fighting claustrophobia, he retrieves his cell phone. Thankfully, it provides enough illumination to track, in the sandy floor, a steady line of the fat man’s massive footprints. “Ajeno,” he calls even louder. “Ajeno?”

  A careful inching forward into utter obscurity finally brings him to a large cavern leading off the tunnel. He feels rather than sees the echoing space. There, his phone finally illuminates the fat man’s shoes. Ruiz shines it up into Ajeno’s face just to make sure. The other man’s eyes gleam eerily. The Mexican shifts the phone to point upward into nothingness. “What is this place?”

  The fat man shrugs. “Here they fix things.”

  Unable to find the ceiling, Ruiz flashes the phone at a nearby wall. It dully reflects. Stepping closer, he sees how the wall is actually a clear panel. His knuckles rap against it. Not glass, maybe acrylic.

  Ajeno continues jostling the baby, who is whimpering.

  Ruiz, glancing at him, notices how his big eyes stare at the wall panel. The Mexican again studies it, but it is difficult. The thick, dirty acrylic distorts light. Straining his eyes, though, he can just make out a sort of room. He shakes his head. No, there is no visible door. It’s more of a . . . container. It reminds him, for some reason, of the specimen jars, their tops screwed down tight, in the display case at the tampon factory.

  “What,” he asks quietly, “do they fix here?”

  “Mmmm. . . things.” Ajeno holds the howling baby, its dimly lit face shiny with tears, out at arm’s length. “They fix things they collect.”

  “Collect?”

  “In boxes.” He nods at the acrylic wall.

  “Who has told you this?”

  The fat man starts tossing the baby up into the air. “Mama tells me.”

  “Stop that!” Ruiz orders. Ajeno, his eyes tearing up, immediately stops. “Babies are not to be thrown. And anyway,” he pauses while squinting at the heavy dust overlaying the acrylic walls, “no one has been here for many years. Mrs. Garcia is, I believe, mistaken.”

  Ajeno goes back to making faces at the baby, its wails having grown even louder. “Not that m—”

  “Housing!” screams the mayor, as he barrels into the cavern. Lights are popping on high over their heads, flooding the space in artificial daylight. The abruptness of the intrusion is so startling that even the baby stops crying, his only sound being an exhausted hiccup.

  Painfully, Ruiz blinks hard into brilliance.

  The movie-star face of the mayor, bobbing above the heads of reporters, intones, “Originally used as federal offices in the 1950s, this mountain will become The Mount Iselberg Housing Project! Look at it now, folks, you’re seeing MIHP, just like me, for the very first time. And I can tell you that, when finished, it will exceed national standards for low-income accommodations . . .”

  The two men and the baby stay very still as a small crowd swirls around them. Incredibly, they receive little notice. The room itself demands attention. But not for the still functioning if dusty fluorescent fixtures mounted overhead to the forty-foot-high ceiling, or its open floor space of at least ten thousand square feet. It’s rather the acrylic containers lining the blasted rock on three sides that capture focus.

  One reporter, peering past a cloudy panel on the far side of the room, reels backward, bumping into his cameraman. He stabs the air with his finger, pointing and yelling, “What the hell’s that?”

  The mayor frowns, his smarmy expression turning petulant. “Now, boys, we covered this outside, didn’t we? Questions aren’t to be asked till after my promo. Got it?”

  A buzz has started among the reporters. Ignoring the mayor’s protest, they begin crowding around the far container.

  The politician pops in a breath mint before he fights his way through the crowd. “Here now, what’s going on?” A lighting man tilts his quartz lamp so as not to create a glare against the acrylic. On the panel’s other side lies a dead, shriveled shape.

  “What is it?” breathes a female reporter.

  Ruiz steps up beside her and stares. A strange feeling steals over him. Not fear, but recognition. He’s felt this before. The night his mother died. There is death here.

  “Ah, hell.” The mayor flaps a dismissive hand. “Probably just a homeless man. Musta tried getting outta the cold.” His face brightens as he slyly palms a blood pressure tablet from his pocket. “Which just proves how much the Mount Inselberg Housing Project is needed.” Opening his eyes wide, he claps his hand with the pill to his mouth as if having an epiphany. “Why,” his arm sweeps forward as if indicating a work of art, “if the MIHP had existed when this poor unfortunate took refuge here, he’d still be alive today!”

  “But,” says the woman with more insistence, “he’s got a couple of extra arms, don’t he?”

  Swallowing hard, the mayor turns a pit-bull snarl on her. “Well, what did ya expect? His mother obviously suffered nutritional deficiencies when he was . . . er . . . baking.” Forcing a broad smile for the cameras now turned back in his direction, he holds out his hands, palms out. “But we here at Mount Inselberg Housing Project will provide full prenatal services to indigent women. This good, brave man’s fate of extra appendages need not be repeated! Now, if you’ll please go to your right, we’ll take the tunnel into the proposed Training for Excellence job reeducation center.”

  Still smiling, the mayor passes closely by Ruiz, who hears him grunt into the ear of his top aide, “Toss whatever that is in the dumpster! Hell, didn’t anyone sweep this place fore we got here?”

  The two men and the baby are left again in darkness as the babble of excited reporters fade.

  The image of the dead thing on the other side of the acrylic still presses upon Ruiz, however, trapping his thoughts. He sucks in a stale breath of air. It’s like he’s caught at the juncture of two roads: one leading to light, the other to the blackness once seen in his father’s eyes.

  His shoulders sag. Death, he sees now, is not the greatest misfortune. Not when it’s the one thing guaranteed to each living creature. “Ajeno,” he says resignedly.

  “Yeah, Ricky?”

  “This is not, I think, a good place.”

  “True, lotsa dust.”

  “We must protect the child. Understand?”

  Silence is broken by Ajeno’s offhanded, “Yeah, sure.”

  “We will take him back to his parents now.”

  “Okeydokey.”

  It is late afternoon by the time the two men reach the Dawdleman house unobserved. Ajeno stands in the neighbor’s driveway, pretending to be a hatchback, as Ruiz holds the baby who is almost completely hidden by being swaddled in Ajeno’s voluminous undershirt. Stepping up to the Dawdleman’s front door, Ruiz is lightened by an unexpected feeling of warmth. It is, after all, better to give than to take! If he’s slated to die today, then at least he’ll die making amends.

  He hears, from behind the door, the faraway ringing of a bell. Frank Dawdleman answers, but before Ruiz can say anything, a woman’s voice shoots suspiciously from the interior’s shadows. “Frank, get the gun! It’s that pervert, I told you ’bout.”

  “No! You do not understand!” Ruiz holds out the twisted-up undershirt. “I am here to give you—” Wind, from the door slamming in his face, sends him backward.

  From
inside the house comes the shout: “Forget it, mi amigo. We ain’t porn lovers, and we ain’t giving you money for any scam charity! Now beat it. And if you know what’s good for you, don’t step on the grass.”

  The two men reconvene at a nearby fire hydrant. Ruiz shakes his head. Are good intentions not enough? Now he has no idea how to reunite the child with its foolish parents.

  “Such people,” he bristles, “should not be allowed to reproduce. They are . . . What are you doing?” Ajeno is rummaging in his pockets for something to amuse the baby. Grinning, he retrieves a small bottle. “What is that?” Ruiz motions sternly at the medicine container. “Drugs are dangerous for children.”

  A mischievous grin creases the big man’s face as he touches his eyes. “You do too much looking, Ricky. Can’t trust eyes.” He holds up the bottle, shaking it until it rattles. “You just think it is medicine.” A swift twist of the bottle top shows the plastic cylinder to be full of pink squares. “Taste! They’re Sugar Dots.” He gulps a large palmful. “My favorite.”

  After both partake of Sugar Dots, the two men decide to leave the child in a vegetable crate that they hastily retrieve from Mom’s Diner. Pale twilight washes the street as they again approach the entrance to the Dawdleman house.

  Ajeno quickly arranges the box with its sleeping freight. He blows into the baby’s face before holding up three fat fingers. “We run on the count of three, right?” Impatiently, Ruiz nods as the child begins to whimper. Ajeno begins counting, “One . . . two . . .,” he punches the doorbell with a fat index finger as the baby starts all-out wailing, “three!!!”

  “I swear,” howls Frank Dawdleman, answering the door with a baseball bat, “if this is some kind of home invasion trick, I’m gonna kick someone’s fuck—”

  “Frank!” His wife has thrown herself to the ground to kneel beside the box. “It’s a baby . . . hell, it’s our baby, Frank. It’s little Bobby! How did he get out here? Didn’t you put him to sleep in his crib?”