As he edged along, he kept close to the clapboard bungalow, and finally stopped underneath what he guessed was a bathroom window that was slightly ajar. He never would have considered entering this way previously. Never would have needed to. In the past couple of months, his father had been called to three or four homes, and once word spread around Knife’s Point of the break-ins, people stopped leaving their doors unlocked. People weren’t afraid, really, but they weren’t as open anymore to late night visitors. And so, Melvin had to seek out open windows on the main floor or basement windows that he could wedge open with the screwdriver he kept in his back pocket.
Other than the odd trinket or book for Toad, an apple or an opened pack of cigarettes, Melvin wasn’t intent on burglarizing. Instead, he was seeking the answer to a question that vibrated constantly within him. Made his teeth chatter with irritation, and skewed his vision. Someone had stolen from him, plain and simple, and he wanted to discover who it was. His objective would confuse the average person, Melvin knew this, but it was straightforward for him. Someone had taken two of his senses. Even the doctor had said so. And Melvin was going to discover who, if he had to rummage through every house in Knife’s Point.
He crouched underneath the window, thought about how he missed his smell, his taste. Several months had passed, and his senses showed no indication of returning. During a follow-up appointment with the doctor, Melvin explained how these parts of him had gone missing, and how he couldn’t understand where they might be. How, if only he knew where to look, he might find them again. He told the doctor about the soggy sense of worry whenever he chewed a meal, and knew he might as well be eating cardboard. Or, even worse. And how he panicked outside during a wintry night, knowing that no matter how deep he breathed, he couldn’t track the sour strand of smoke on the wind or the stench of car exhaust pushed down to the ground by the cold.
“I knows what it’s like to be an animal.”
“An animal?”
“Taken out of my world. Waiting to be caught.”
The doctor shook his head. “You’ve always been precocious, Melvin. But don’t you worry. They’ll come back in time.”
“No. I got to find them.”
Laughing, “You talk like you lost them in a field somewhere.”
“Nope. I didn’t lose them. They’re just gone.”
The doctor scribbled a note in his file, said offhandedly, “Maybe someone stole them, then.”
“I never thought of that.” Seed planted, earth tamped down.
The doctor laughed again, closed the file. “You got a good sense of humor, son.” Didn’t understand that Melvin wasn’t joking.
Melvin climbed on top of a painted bench, balanced on an armrest, sneakers sticking to the thick coat of yellowish paint. Reaching underneath the glass, he unhinged the window and tugged it open as wide as it would go. One foot hoisted over, he hunched hard, then squeezed and quietly inched his skinny body in over the sill. Slid down the wall directly into a bathtub.
Without breathing, he waited in the tub. Wondering if anyone had awoken. Counted backwards from fourteen, Mississippi. No shadow appeared in the faint orange glow from the hallway, and Melvin got to work. He smelled the bar of soap, the sopping facecloth jammed into the corner, stepped out of the bathtub, lifted the lid on the plastic laundry hamper, stuck his nose down into the rank clothes, damp towels. Nothing. Smelled around the sink, opened the bottle of Aqua Velva, poured an ounce down the drain. Smelled the cleaners underneath the sink, smelled the tarnished doorknob and his own fingers.
Shuffling slippers moving across the carpeting, and Melvin stepped back into the tub, turned himself into a shadow behind the shower curtain. Mr. Simms, his math teacher, trundled into the bathroom, stood wavering in front of the toilet. Sat down, sighed, toilet water splashing. Even though he could have reached out and tapped Mr. Simms on the shoulder, Melvin wasn’t nervous. He believed he would never be caught. Parts of him were missing now, and as he moved through this night world, he was no longer who he once was. So even if Mr. Simms noticed him standing there, behind the mildewed curtain that released no odor, it would not really be him. Just a portion of him. More like a memory of a past time. He would be a partial projection of himself, and nothing more.
Mr. Simms didn’t flush, and eyes closed he wandered back to bed. Melvin once again stepped out of the tub, got down on all fours, smelled around the toilet. Smelled inside the bowl, but was unable to decipher any hint of heavy yellow nighttime pee. Heel to toe, heel to toe, he moved into Mr. Simms’s bedroom, where the teacher slept alone. Moonlight streaming through the window, the man appeared gray and calm, hands folded across his chest. Cuticles growing up his nails even as Melvin watched. What if he opened an eye and Melvin chose to reveal himself? Would they talk about differential equations, the business of relating a function to its derivatives? Or would Mr. Simms bolt upright and bust past Melvin, dash to the phone on the wall near the oven? Call Melvin’s father? What would Melvin do then?
Melvin stepped closer to Mr. Simms, leaned in to smell the breath. Though he could identify nothing on the warm air pulsing out from Mr. Simms’s parted lips, Melvin guessed it would smell like loneliness. Wet wool and boiled onions. The slightest hint of rot. Outside, someone drove by, engine sounding very much like his father’s car, and the headlights moved across the wall of Mr. Simms’s bedroom. Melvin stepped back into the hallway, out into the cramped living room, framed pictures of long-dead relatives decorating the wall space. The largest, a framed picture of a cat. Melvin smelled the top of Mr. Simms’s chair, which should have smelled like years of a resting scalp, but smelled like nothing.
Mr. Simms disliked Melvin because he never had to work at math. Melvin often ditched school for days, showed up stoned, and still aced Mr. Simms’s lame exams. But even though Mr. Simms called Melvin a loser for wasting his potential, Melvin recognized that the man hadn’t stolen from him. There were no smells hiding there, underneath tongues or bathroom sinks, or inside fabrics or the fridge. So Melvin walked quietly to the front door, unlocked it, and strode out into early morning. The first bird had just begun a tune. Some eager buds burst open. Tips of Virginia creepers starting to snake underneath unraked leaves. But, no smells. Melvin sighed, bowed his head, started the long walk home.
“TELL YOUR BROTHER if he does that again, he may as well stay out.”
“Stay out?” Toby said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Yes, stay out. By Jesus, if he lives in this house, he got to live by my rules.”
“So, don’t come home at all?”
“That’s what I said, Toby.” To Melvin, “You idn’t going to torture me, my son.” Then, back to Toby. “Tell your brother he idn’t going to torture me. Staying out all bloody night.”
Toby sighed, tucked his hands into the pockets of his bathrobe. Navy terrycloth, now a riddle of hitches. He looked at his brother, sunken cheeks and eyes, skin the color of ocean sediment.
“Did you hear, Mellie?” he said gently. “Did you hear what Dad said?”
Melvin, who was not more than six feet from the pacing Lewis, said, “Nope. Didn’t hear fuck all.”
Toby took another step. “He said he don’t want you staying out all night.”
“What do it matter?”
“He said he got real worried, Mel.”
Lewis threw his hands up in the air. “That’s not what I said, Toby. I said, if he does it again, he’ll be out on his bloody ass. Can find some other idiot to put up with his nonsense.” He ripped his keys off the hook, leaving the wooden hanger at a sharp angle. Kicked open the screen door, yelled over his shoulder, “Tell him, I wants that load of wood piled up in the basement by the time I gets home. He can toss it in through the window, then stack it up. And Toby, you go back to bed.” Muttering as the door closed. “Up all night waiting for your good-for-nothing brother.”
INSIDE LEWIS’S HEAD, two halves of a single idea were buzzing loudly, yet not connecting. He could sense the
near misses right behind his eyes, and the useless buzz was giving him a headache. There was no relief inside his car, so he pulled off on the gravel shoulder, got out. Without thinking, he slammed the door, walked towards the ditch, and with one giant childlike leap he entered the forest. Years had passed since he’d strolled among these trees, and a patchy darkness came down around him as soon as he was a few yards in. It didn’t take long to locate one of the winding paths, and even though they were softer, the criss-crossing roots thicker, Lewis’s body knew which way to turn, where to lift his foot. He was confident in his choices, and these days, something that simple, that undemanding, gave him comfort.
Drizzle had stopped an hour earlier, but the naked twigs were still dripping. Lewis could hear the drops striking the soggy floor. He reached the narrowest part of the stream and looked up at the sky. The moon had dipped and the sun had not yet crested the horizon. There was no glimmer of a sunrise, and Lewis could already tell the day would promise nothing but dense clouds, faint stunted shadows.
The water reasonably low, he stepped onto the skipping stones, and when he was halfway across he nearly slipped, flapped his arms to balance himself, and there was his brother Roy. The memory rising up before him. How often as children had they stopped on those greasy stones, each holding the other’s hands, not for support, but to see who could upset the other. Roy was always the winner, as he was shorter and faster and stronger. Lewis was gangly, and until adulthood he’d never quite got used to the length of his arms and legs. But standing there now, the stream gurgling past him, Lewis realized there was some other reason why Roy always won. Roy was someone who lunged first, contemplated later, while Lewis studied probabilities and angles. What if. So instead of figuring on how to dislodge Roy, Lewis focused on how to fall without hurting himself.
Lewis crossed the shallow water, walked up the slope on the other side, headed west towards the road that led to his grandfather’s abandoned house. He tried to limit those moments when he thought about Roy, as the years had done nothing to sew up the hole inside of him. Still big enough to put a hand in there. Big enough to truly hurt. On that afternoon when Roy was killed, Lewis’s good sense was absent. His ability to see what might happen was soused. And Lewis knew if he prodded too long, the truth of his culpability would come out into the light. Why had they trespassed onto Fagan’s farm—why hadn’t they wandered into town? Though his recollection was rotted, Lewis had the sneaky suspicion he directed Roy there. Through the woods and into Fagan’s backyard. Lewis wouldn’t have wanted to expose himself, staggering down the main streets, a new constable. Drunk on some bootlegger’s potato whiskey. It was Eli’s hand who drew the blood, no question there, but Lewis knew he was as much to blame as anyone. On those stepping stones back at the stream, Lewis had only thought about the safety of his own head. Never considered Roy’s.
At the end of a dirt road, close to a cliff that lined the ocean, Lewis came to the old house. Some windows broken, others boarded up, long yellowed grass standing in front of the door. Lewis walked up the driveway, saw an abandoned saw beside a few lengths of gray clapboard. Blade on the saw dark orange with rust. Roy had had plans to clean the house up, make it new again. Once he found a woman foolish enough to marry him. He wanted to sit up in bed each morning, he’d often said, know what kind of day lay ahead by peering out at the sea. Tips of the waves iced or bare. None of that would happen now, and Lewis stepped on the saw, felt the decayed metal snap beneath his boot.
Off in the distance behind the house, Lewis saw the outhouse. A weathered box of splintering wood. He went over to it, overgrown grass wetting his pants, and placed his hands on the damp wood. He remembered the afternoon he and Roy trapped their grandfather inside. Roy’s idea, of course, but as always Lewis was carried along for the ride. A gusty summer day, clouds running across a blue sky, and the boys saw their pop making his way through the field towards the outhouse, catalogue flapping under his arm. Once enough time was allowed for him to settle, Roy and Lewis crept up, and one, two, three, heave. They slammed the poorly anchored outhouse with their four open hands, and the back lifted, wobbled, tipped. Hit the ground. Flash of white, a dark crevice, and they bolted over the field, guts in knots of laughter, feet not touching the ground. Crouching underneath an outdoor table, they watched the slender man shimmy out through the hole in the wooden seat, narrowly missing the larger hole in the earth. Stunned, he stood, adjusted his clothes, put a hand to his brow, and stared out to the sea. Hobbled back to the house, scratching his head. He and Roy stood whistling, the image of angels, asked what happened. “Gust of wind,” he’d replied. “Caught hold to the roof. Good t’ing yer nanny weren’t perched in there. She’d never get out!” Guilt soon bloomed, and confession not being an option Roy and Lewis spent three days sawing and stacking a half cord of spruce. Palms weeping, necks and shoulders blistered from the burning sun.
Lewis thought then about Melvin and Toby. And he wondered if they had a single story like that one. He started back down the road. His legs were tired, but the ache felt good, and his headache retreated. Mrs. Verge’s house was only a quarter or so of a mile, and he decided to stop by there. It was late enough now, and Lewis knew she would have hot coffee percolating. A chair at her table. A pair of ears that were capable of listening. A word of two of womanly advice.
When he arrived, the kitchen was bright and warm. Mrs. Verge was tucked into a rocking chair, her slippered foot moving her back and forth. Not much more than a fold of fabric balanced in the crook of her arm. A woman, Terry’s young wife, was seated at the table, her face tight and pale, like dough made with dead yeast. When she saw Lewis, she stood, but not upright, and starting shuffling out of the kitchen, gripping her zippered bathrobe with her fist. Lewis was not insulted by her turned-down expression, he had seen it often. People who didn’t want to be near him, a man who enforced the rules. People didn’t trust their own mouths.
“Do you mind?” she said to Mrs. Verge.
“No, honey. You go on. Rest all you can. While you can.”
Lewis sat down in her spot, wood still warm.
“Where’s Terry?”
“Gone long ago.”
“Working?”
“Yes, oh yes. Helping Skipper Neary fix his nets. Terry got a way with knots.”
“Right.” Lewis looked up at the ceiling. Wondered where the joists would meet behind the drywall.
“The boys?”
Lewis sighed. “You got me, Mrs. Verge.”
“Pay it no mind, now. They’ll find their way.” Voice lowered.
“Who would’ve guessed only a few years ago that my Terry’d be up before dawn earning a dollar, married now, and with this wee one?”
“I guess so.” He smiled.
“No guessing about it. Take heart, my son. Take heart.”
“Thank-you, Mrs. Verge.”
“And look at this, now.” She angled her arm so a tiny scrunched face was revealed. “If this don’t warm you from the inside out, I don’t know what will. Right fresh. Angels still got a hold to him. He’s still being born.”
“Is that what you thinks?”
“Not what I thinks, Lewis. What I knows. That’s why you got to hold them for six weeks or more. Make sure they feels safe enough to stay put in this world.”
“That’s a nice way to consider it, Mrs. Verge.”
“Do you want to hold the little man?”
First instinct was to shake his head, but he could see Wilda clearly in his mind, how rarely she cuddled their sons, how she stared at them with anxiety instead of wonder. And how he was busy, working all hours, keeping the house in good repair whenever he had a free afternoon. He was certain he had unlimited time to connect. Unlimited time to be the best dad. And now, time had slipped away, personalities had set, and he had no idea how to reach his son. All the shouting and shaking and slamming down his fist didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Melvin would not stop flailing in the darkness.
“You can’t
make someone open their eyes,” Lewis said. Out loud.
“No, no, he’s sleeping. The little lover.”
Lewis looked at Mrs. Verge, a lady who wanted nothing more out of life than a happy family, a few good meals, and a reliable fire in the woodstove. “Yes, I’d love to. To hold him. I would, Mrs. Verge.”
“Will you stop calling me that?” she whispered. “I have a name, you know. And I’m not old, yet.”
“Oh. Oh. I’ll try to remember.”
Lewis took the child in his arms, stared into the face, slightly yellow with a flattened nose. He sighed again, and couldn’t help but relax. Couldn’t resist the calm that settled over him. The simple joy he felt being in the company of Mrs. Verge. Peggy.
Then, snap, the two halves of that idea collided, stuck. The break-ins. Every targeted household familiar to Lewis and the boys. Melvin out during the nights. Most men would be able to dismiss it. Defend their sons. But Lewis had doubts. And did not believe in coincidences.
SILENCE IN THE KITCHEN, and Toby went to the cupboard, removed a bowl, found a box of cereal. “You want some?”
“Nope.”
“You want toast? I makes good toast. I can burn it just a bit like you likes it.”
“No, Toad. I don’t want no toast.” Melvin pressed his fingertips into his eyes, then massaged his scalp as though he were washing his hair without shampoo.
“Mellie?”
“Yeah.”
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