Walt

by Russell Wangersky

  I didn’t see anyone who looked like him in the first couple of hours, but I wasn’t afraid they were going to bring me into the examining room or anything like that: the place was steadily filling up, and the symptoms I’d given them were just mild enough, just nondescript enough, to guarantee I’d be sitting in my little blue chair until every single other patient in the place was checked out. The phone lady was getting fidgety, fidgety in a way that included keeping those sunken little eyes fixed on me like she was staring from the inside of a closet, peering out through the gap between door and jamb. Like she thought those hard little eyes were the only part of her I could see. And I just knew that, if any two patients were going to be left to the very end, were going to be left together in the same completely empty emergency room, it was going to be me and it was going to be her.

  Around midnight, when the room was really full, I saw a guy I was pretty sure was Patterson come out of one examining room and flit into the one right next door — younger than me, with a big square face, white medical jacket, and a brightly coloured shirt underneath, like he wanted people to believe he was really a lot more fun than he otherwise seemed. Months earlier, I had dropped Mary off for a volunteer shift and she’d pointed the guy out to me, but it had been all the way across the parking lot, so it was just a far-away guy getting out of his car at a time when it was almost dark anyway.

  That was back before she stopped mentioning Dr. Patterson at all, and before I started getting curious.

  A half hour after that, two more ambulances came ripping up to the door and unloaded a couple of guys from a car accident or something, and the good doctor got called out from the examining rooms and was going over them right there in the hall, checking to see if they were still breathing and looking at where all that blood was coming from, and I took the time to get a real good look at him then. A real good, steady look, breaking my own rules about not being too obvious, and just when I was doing that, he turned and looked straight at me, his face changing like he was confused or something, like he thought I looked familiar and he should really know me, but then he had to go back to what he was doing.

  He seemed like a capable guy, businesslike, and every time he said something to one of the nurses that maybe sounded a little sharp, he had a way of following it up with a rueful little smile, as if trying to admit he’d been too harsh without ever really admitting anything. It was, frankly, easy to see why people would like the guy. Under different circumstances, I might even like the guy.

  Then they wheeled one of the accident guys back into the examining rooms and sent the other scooting off to X-ray. A doctor and a few more nurses came down from upstairs, and when another nurse came beetling around the corner with an armful of IV bags destined for the examining room, I knew the doctors would be tied up and everyone would be sitting in the waiting room for a really good long time.

  I waited ten more minutes before I went back up to the front desk and told them I thought my headache was getting better and I probably didn’t need to see a doctor after all. I got that “thanks for wasting everybody’s time” look and headed for the big automatic glass doors, the clouded glass swooshing back to let me out. Two ambulances were still sitting out there, lights flashing, like they were waiting to make a pickup instead of a delivery.

  Outside, it was a nice cool summer night, the kind that touches the side of your face with a combination of the fading heat of the day and a gentle humidity. I walked all the way home, face up and occasionally catching sight of the moon through the trees, and there must have been something about my pace or my shape or just the way I looked: four times, people walking toward me looked up all at once, saw me coming, and then crossed the road to the sidewalk on the other side of the street long before they reached me. Like I was giving off an air that said it would be better for everybody to keep their distance. And would that psychic cross the street, too, seeing the great dark shape of my aura coming? Or would that looming personal thundercloud just seem like a challenge to her? There was a lot of bravado in that short advertisement: “There is no problem too big or small. I will succeed where others have failed. All readings and help is 100 percent guaranteed.”

  Good luck with that.

  When I got home and up to our room, Mary was sound asleep — or else pretending to be sound asleep — and I eased quietly into my side of the bed, pulled the covers up, and lay there still, watching the ceiling hanging down over me until I could finally fall asleep.

  It took a long time.

  That night I had a dream that I was in an examining room, wearing one of those hospital-issue johnny coats and nothing else, my skinny old arse hanging right out in the breeze. And then Dr. Patterson came in the way doctors always seem to, shoving the door open hard so that it banged against the wall. He looked right at the bed I was sitting on like he was looking through me, and then looked at the file folder in his hand. And he opened the door and called out to someone, a nurse I guess, “Where’s this Walter guy? There’s no one in here.”

  Then he just left. And I had no clothes and no wallet and no car keys, and a helpless feeling that if I ever somehow found the energy to get up, go over, and pull open the big door, there would not be one single person left in the hospital who could help me.

  When I woke up, Mary had already gotten up, gotten dressed, and left the house.

  Once, not even that many years before, I would have told her all about that dream; then, I didn’t dare, afraid that she’d just cock her head to one side, inscrutable, and drop the subject without saying anything else about it.

  Chapter 33

  April 8 — I called the police right away. Not because I’ve seen the guy again, but because I got home and I’m sure someone has been in my house. I mean, you can start worrying about things, start second-guessing everything, forgetting where you left your coffee cup. Except that’s not the kind of thing I’m talking about. Daniel hasn’t been around in over three weeks — we broke up after Mexico — and things just aren’t right. Little things that aren’t where they usually are: I have a set of stacking coasters, and they’re not on the right table. The can of Comet isn’t tucked out of sight behind the toilet like it should be. Things like that. I called my parents, but they said they hadn’t been over. The creepiest thing is that my underwear drawer is all wrong, things I don’t even wear moved up near the top, like my most uncomfortable bra. My place can be a bit of a mess sometimes, but I know where things are. So I called the police and they said, “Is anything stolen?” and I said I didn’t know. And they said, “Is there anyone in the house right now?” and that gave me the shakes, because for some reason I hadn’t thought of that, and then I didn’t know. I mean, I’m never in the basement, except to put the shovel down there once the winter’s over, and the whole idea is like a bad movie or something. And they said they’d come out and have a look, but that it wouldn’t be right away because they had “a lot of other stuff on the go.” Just like that — a lot of other stuff on the go. It just sounded so weird. When they did come, they had a look at the doors and went around to all the ground floor windows and talked about “no sign of forced entry.” Then they asked me if anyone else had a key, and I said no, but it got me to thinking that it had taken two or three days to get Daniel to drop his key off — I think, really, we broke up on the plane coming home — and when he did, he just left it in the mailbox in a white envelope, no note or name on the outside or anything. Just a cold, impersonal key. I didn’t tell them about Daniel and me at first though. It would be like getting him in trouble for something I don’t even know for sure he’s doing — too much like a bitter ex-girlfriend, and I was in no way the bitter one. And, I mean, there are other keys around anyway: Heather and Sue gave me their keys when they left, but I’m not really sure if they had made more than one each. Still, it’s unnerving. I guess this is what it must be like after a robbery: you go around your house for ages, comfortable that it’s your own space,
and then something happens and you’re wondering about every noise, wondering if you’d hear someone coming in the back when you have the television on. Turning the sound down, second-guessing whether you really heard something or whether the cat just knocked something over. It’s losing confidence in some crucial kind of way. Losing trust. The kind of thing I would never have worried about even two years ago. More and more, I can’t stand staying here, but nobody seems to want to help. I could stay with Mom and Dad, make up some excuse, but I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. So I stay awake long after I’ve gone to bed, listening for noises, trying to convince myself they’re all Bo messing around. And angry, too, that someone could get such a hold on me. I wake up at the very beginning of when it’s getting light, and after that is the only time I sleep deeply at all, I think.

  Chapter 34

  Starrigans Place

  Leave the stadium

  Turn right onto the bridge

  After Mount Pearl

  Leave the Conception Bay South bypass at Fowlers Road

  Then Sparrow Drive

  It was directions, I’m pretty sure, on the back of a bank deposit slip. I don’t speak French, and it wasn’t the clearest writing I’d ever seen — neat enough, just not clear. Still, directions are good, because they don’t only say where someone is going to be, they say where someone’s not going to be.

  Cats, they’re more trusting than dogs. Distant, but more trusting. They say dogs are smarter, that there’s science to back that up. I mean, you come into a house and the dog doesn’t know you, it doesn’t matter what size it is. It’s going to go nuts every time you turn up, and it’s going to follow you all over the place, angry. It might never get used to you in there, moving away from you every single time you put out a hand to say hello.

  Dogs don’t like me. And I don’t like them. I know I said I don’t like cats much, but they do grow on you.

  Cats, it’s more like a self-preservation thing. They’ll run away and hide at first, but once they’re sure they’re not in danger, they’ll follow you around the house even if you’re pulling open drawers and emptying them into a sack or something. “Guard cat” is not a concept that makes much sense. After a while, cats just get used to you when you’re there and don’t question when you arrive or when you’re gone. You put out a hand and they curve up toward you for a scratch.

  I went back to Alisha’s house — it’s strange how you often end up going ahead and doing things even though some part of your brain is clearly pointing out how stupid you are to be doing it. But I did go back.

  First I walked by, and the cat was there on the windowsill. And I still had a key.

  So I took a guess about how long it would take for Alisha to get back from CBS, even though I wasn’t absolutely sure that I had the right day. Sometimes you have to guess about things: the other side of the directions had a list of the kind of things you’re asked to bring to a party, a veggie tray and dip, crackers and cheese, and I thought those weren’t the kind of things you go to the store for way in advance. You pick them up when you need them, and as soon as you’ve got

  them, you go.

  So I looked at the cat, and around the street to make sure that no one was paying particularly close attention, and then I crossed the porch and unlocked the door.

  The cat fled for a moment, but after I sat down, it came and sat on the couch near me, staring at me with its big full-moon eyes for a while. Then it came over and walked right square across my lap, kneading my legs with its paws and purring like I’d always been there.

  I wanted to know what the cat’s name was. I thought that I could probably find it somewhere in the pictures on Alisha’s Facebook.

  Before I left, I checked the kitchen and nosed around until I found the cat food bag. There wasn’t really very much in it, but I poured some into the cat’s bowl anyway, so it wouldn’t be hungry or anything.

  Going back toward the front of the house, I’d turned all at once, and there, with the living room spread out all behind him, was a strange man who wasn’t me, but only just for a second or two until I recognized myself in a great big mirror on the wall right below the stairs. After I realized it was a mirror, I thought it was surprising how well I fit into the room — the couch out behind me to the left through the glass door, the curtained windows, the dark colour of the paint. I straightened my shirt then, because the point on one side of my collar had somehow gotten itself rolled back underneath, and then I smoothed down my hair where it always sticks up at the crown and headed for the door. Locked it, like always.

  I went back to the cabin on the Little Barachois, too. Not right away, but I did go back.

  I thought about it for a while first, but all the time, I think I kind of knew that I was going to go back. Maybe to prove to myself that I was wrong — maybe just to be sure of what I thought I’d seen.

  Because there was absolutely nothing, not one single thing, that would make you think there might actually be a body in that abandoned cabin. It was the kind of thing that flits into your head and, if you’re half sensible, flits right out again as soon as the sun’s up and the ghosts are gone. But for me it was a thought that just wouldn’t go away, and when you start worrying at stuff in your head, you start wondering if there’s actually something wrong with you just for thinking it. In the end, you either have to prove that you’re right or prove that you’re wrong.

  I took the same route as I had the first time, like I was following a set of directions hardwired right into me. Stopped at the same gas station, got the same kind of coffee — I don’t know why, perhaps because there was some need not to have any variables in the equation.

  I parked my car, put my long boots on, and took my fishing rod with me, even though I didn’t tie a fly to the leader.

  I went without my backpack, looking over my shoulder to see if there were cars coming before heading out into the bush. I tried to make it look like any other fishing trip.

  I couldn’t help wondering if, at any time, there might be a car nosing up over the nearest hill, the kind of car that might have a slow-driving, thoughtful old man behind the wheel. The kind of old man who recites every single thing he sees to the police in perfect detail because he’s got not one single thing in his entire life left to be paying attention to. White Toyota, all six numbers and letters on the licence plate, what day he saw it, what time it was, and that when he was driving home again, he’d noticed that the car had left.

  By then, it was mid-August, and in the woods, the blackflies were gone because the big dragonflies were out, long, shining green and blue needles that hover over you and then dart away faster than anything else their size.

  They say that dragonflies can eat their weight in blackflies in a single day. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know the blackflies drop right off as soon as the dragonfly larvae haul themselves up out of the brooks onto the warm rocks and split out of their skins before taking to the air.

  One moment, they’re living underwater, catching underwater bugs, and the next, they’re completely changed, taking to the air like metallic fighter jets, flying so neat and clean and direct that it’s like they’ve spent their whole lives training to do it. Only they haven’t — all they’ve done is take that one step that nature has always meant them to take, even if it means permanently exchanging water for air in a single hot summer afternoon. That hot afternoon when everything changes.

  It was hot. The air was steady and humid, no wind but plenty of damp heat, full of the smells of summer: the brush of the barrens was just falling out of the real summer full bloom, but the heat was drying the peat and bringing the complex smell up into the moist air.

  It’s hard to make your way down a river when you’re doing it fast, as if you were using the water as a road. It’s much easier when it’s something you meander along, looking for spots to fish. When it’s a straight, deliberate route, it’s
hard, jarring work, your feet moving too quickly, so quickly that the rocks turn underfoot and tumble sideways and you splash too much — you’re never moving with the river. Always against it. No rhythm to your gait at all, and your balance flees.

  It all slows you down, and heats you up, too.

  There was plenty of water in over the tops of my boots before I got there, good soakings, mostly from big moon-man strides when I’d stepped into deep holes or simply overstepped my balance. I was out of breath and wet and sweating, too, by the time I spotted the cabin again.

  It was just like the first time I’d seen the place: still the sense that someone else clearly owned it. I saw the side of it first, barely noticeable around the corner of the river, and I found myself pulling back again, my back pressed into the underbrush, as if it was still important not to be seen. The door was still half open, the roof still tilted downwards. And I still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was just about to appear in front of me.

  I waited several minutes before I crossed the river. Like the first time, plenty of bright sun — the windows of the cabin looking out like empty black eyes. Every few steps I stopped, listening. But there was only the occasional ripple of water along the edge of the riverbank, and back behind the cabin, the dry crackle of a torn blue plastic tarpaulin that had been thrown over the remains of the woodpile, shifting and rippling in what little wind there was.