The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  They must have figured him for the kind of dumbshit that went joyriding with strange tail in the hopes of getting some, and they were right.

  What about her? She’d either walked off unhurt, or she’d been able to limp away from the scene, or else she’d teleported to her spaceship and jetted back to her home planet.

  He didn’t think there was a why to any of it, beyond his own supreme idiocy. But maybe he could come up with a what, or a who.

  The stolen car belonged to a guy in Nevada City. It took him a long time to get even that far, using the police reports to find out the license plate, telling them he needed it for insurance he didn’t have. Then there was an actual insurance company to wrestle with, bluffing his way through one or another claims person, pretending he was going to sue, and maybe he should, why not. Sue somebody for having such an easily wrecked, easily stolen car. Almost by mistake, they sent him a name. A name wasn’t as much as you wanted it to be, because then he had to come up with the rest of it. The only computer he could use was at the library, and it was a pile of work, but really, what else did he have to do these days?

  Finally he found a work address, a place called Ecoland Systems, whatever that meant, and a phone number to go along with it. The guy who owned the cheap-ass car was called Wayne Horchow. Somehow that fit, though he couldn’t have said why. For the last five days Sean had walked around with this information written on a card in his wallet, and the card was either a grenade or a dud, since people didn’t necessarily know the person who stole their car, in fact more often than not they didn’t. So Wayne might not have had anything to do with Miss Crazypants, and that was what had kept him from calling until now, in case it went nowhere and he was back to square zero and his own stupid life.

  But today, stuck in the house without even the dog to talk to, and not wanting to think about why the dog wasn’t there, he told himself to suck it up. He punched out the number, and asked the girl who answered for Mr. Horchow.

  “Hi, Mr. Horchow? You don’t know me, but—” I know your car? He hadn’t thought this through very well. “I got your name from Allstate.”

  “Allstate? What do you want now?” Horchow sounded on the young side, and a little pissed-off. He drove a crap car, or used to, because he was just starting out. And now his rates were going up. Life was hard.

  “I’m not Allstate. I’m not selling anything. I’m calling about your car, the one that was stolen.”

  “I only had the one car.” Sounds of paper shuffling. A busy man, Wayne Horchow. “Who is this?”

  “I was in your car when it crashed.”

  The paper noise stopped.

  “But I didn’t steal it or anything. I wasn’t driving. I was with this girl, this woman, named Laurie.” He waited a beat. “You know her?”

  “No. Who is this?”

  “She might have called herself something else.”

  “If you’re the one who wrecked my car, I sure hope you’re calling from jail.”

  “I didn’t wreck it. She did.”

  “That’s nice to know. I hope the two of you will be very happy together. I have to get back to work now.”

  “Hey Wayne? You ever go on Craigslist? Ever meet girls that way?”

  For a moment he thought Wayne Horchow might have hung up. When he spoke, his voice was flatter, more cautious. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s how I met her, Craigslist. Well, in a bar.”

  “Huh.”

  “Sort of pretty. Dogs wouldn’t bark at her. She was drinking margaritas. Kind of a lot of them. That ring any bells?”

  “I never said I knew any girl.”

  “But you know, if you did, Wayne, and if for some reason she helped herself to your car, one way to look at things is, I took it in the shorts for you. I mean, it was a pretty bad wreck, it left me real crippled up. It could of been you. You know what I’m saying?”

  Another silence. Then Wayne said, “Are you in town here?”

  “Nope. Sonoma.”

  “I told the police I didn’t know who stole the car. I told my wife I was in Tahoe for a work thing, casino night.”

  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. “Uh-huh,” Sean said, neutral, encouraging.

  “Sometimes there’s situations, circumstances, where you might not be in a position to keep track of your car keys. Your wallet. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “She didn’t call herself Laurie. She was Sandy.”

  “Pretty safe bet neither of those is her real name. Look, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to me, the accident and all. There’s stuff I don’t remember. She say much about herself? Where she was from, where she was going?”

  Wayne’s voice dropped. Nosy coworkers, maybe. “She wore this weird coat. It looked like aluminum foil.”

  “That’s our girl. She say anything about Ohio, being from Ohio?”

  “She might have. Look, friend.” Wayne Horchow was trying to whisper, a hoarse sound. “There’s things I don’t remember either. It was that kind of a night. Let’s just leave it at that. There was some goings-on I’m not about to tell anybody, especially not some strange dude on the other end of a phone. She kept saying she wanted to know what it felt like—”

  “—to do the worst thing you could ever do.” It was like a ladder of light opening up in his memory, and he climbed right to the top.

  “Don’t call here again,” Horchow said, and hung up.

  On Sean’s good days he could just about do without his crutches and ride a bicycle, and today wasn’t a good day but he got Conner’s bike out of the back room and labored and cussed his way to the library. There was supposed to be a time limit on the computer, but the librarians felt sorry for him and let him sit as long as he wanted. For the rest of the afternoon, he went on Craigslist sites as far north as Vancouver and as far south as San Diego, then east to Austin, Las Vegas, Denver. And just for the hell of it, a few in Ohio.

  Reading the personals was heavy going. They convinced you that the world was a failed, lonely, and loveless place, and only through dumb luck did men and women pair off for long enough to keep the species going. She might have been any of them.

  She was all of them and none of them. In the end he logged on and left the same message on as many of the Missed Connections boards as he could find, an all-points bulletin, a warning beacon:

  Hey Pretty Lady 38,

  What’s the worst thing you ever did?

  Well you almost did it to me.

  S. in Sonoma

  The dog had a mass in his abdomen that the vet could feel, but without an X-ray, and probably surgery, he couldn’t tell very much.

  “What does that mean, a mass?” Sean asked.

  “A growth.”

  “You mean, cancer?”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  But it felt too simpleminded and hopeful to think of it as anything else, and then let yourself be ambushed by bad news. The dog had been given what the vet called “supportive care,” and that was a shot of B12 to stimulate his appetite, and antacids, and it had cost almost a hundred dollars. The dog had perked up a little and eaten his dinner. He’d shoved his head beneath their hands to get his ears scratched, and wagged his lumpy tail, and then went to lie down in front of the fan.

  “So, if he has an operation, will that get rid of it?”

  Conner said that the vet wouldn’t know anything without more tests. “Dad? What if I called Mom?”

  “No.”

  “He was her dog too.”

  “I don’t think this is something we should bother your mother about.”

  “It’s not like I’d be asking her for money for us. It’s for Bojangles. And I’d pay her back.”

  “You know how much tests and operations and shit like that costs? You think y
our mother’s rich? She’s not.”

  Conner’s face had a blurred, miserable expression, a kid’s expression. Working outside had tanned his face and neck and arms deep brown. He was roofing again this week, for the same bandit he’d worked for earlier in the summer, but this time all the way out in Yountville, where somebody still had money. He’d cut his hair short and that was something else to get used to. It made him look like a young convict. He said, “Bo’s only nine years old.”

  Sean said, “Nine isn’t the same for dogs as for people.”

  “I can talk to the vet some more, find out how much everything would cost.”

  “Con, we could spend all kinds of money we don’t even have, and it still might not fix him. That’s what the vet said, right?”

  “So when you got hurt, we shouldn’t have spent any money on you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why, because you’re not a dog?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Conner so seldom swore, it took Sean a moment to register. “You need to calm down,” he said, in the Dad voice he didn’t use that often. “Look, let’s think about this. He might start feeling better. He could go on for a long time, just the way he is.”

  “He’s in pain.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Why are you being like this? Don’t say, ‘Like what.’ Like you don’t care about him.”

  Because they couldn’t afford to care about him, Sean wanted to say. Because the ailing dog was one more thing that made him feel low and worthless. Instead he tried again for Dad, the voice of serious, grown-up wisdom, as if he had some to pass around. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, he’s a pretty old dog. He might be a pretty sick dog. It might be one of those things. Of course we’ll try to keep him happy. Comfortable. Whatever he needs.” He liked the sound of it coming out of his mouth. The sad reasonableness of it all.

  Conner looked at him. “What,” Sean said.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. Dogs never live long enough. It sucks.”

  Conner knelt down next to the dog and scratched him under the chin until he stretched his front and back legs out in pleasure.

  They didn’t talk anymore about the dog. Neither talking or not talking felt right. Conner left early and came back late. Sean spent most of his time calling to see if any of the disability claims he’d filed, with the state, with Social Security, were going to come through. Mail still showed up in the mailbox for them here, mostly from the hospital in Ukiah that was never going to get its money. The world was one big goddamn banana peel, waiting for you to slip on it.

  Two more days went by and Conner was still giving him the silent treatment. What did he want him to do, rob a bank? The dog slept and slept. He got up to lap water or stand out in the yard, his nose in the wind. “Hey old dude, come here,” Sean told him, rubbing his soft ears. “You want some hamburger, huh? You eat some hamburger if I cook it?” The dog rested his chin on the edge of the couch and sighed.

  The next morning when he woke up, the dog was gone, and Conner too, and no note this time. Conner wasn’t answering his phone. Sean stood in the center of Conner’s room: a mattress on the floor, piles of clothes. He couldn’t tell if Conner had taken anything with him. He had a sick, hollow feeling that Conner might have gone for good, just given up on him. Then he told himself that was stupid, stupid to even think about. He was the best kid in the world, he didn’t pull stunts like that.

  But what if he had? It wasn’t like anybody would blame him.

  He spent the rest of the day on the couch, too low to get up and do anything. This would be his life from now on, lying around waiting for the next kick in the head. He smoked the last bit of pot in the house and took one of his last Oxys and fell into a heavy sleep. He woke just before dark and heard the truck pull up on the street outside, and Conner walking around to the back door.

  The first thing Sean could think to say was, “Where’s Bo?”

  “At the vet’s. He’ll be there overnight so they can watch him. They operated on him and took out this thing on his spleen. They don’t know what it is yet.”

  “Jesus Christ, Con.”

  “He can probably come home tomorrow.”

  He’d just woken up and his head wasn’t on right yet. “Tomorrow, huh?”

  “I didn’t tell you ahead of time because I knew you’d get all worked up.”

  “I’m not . . . what did you . . .”

  “You don’t have to worry about the money,” Conner said, opening the refrigerator. The refrigerator wasn’t the one they used to have. Nothing was the same as they used to have. This one cycled on and off every fifteen minutes with a lot of shuddering racket.

  Sean said, “There’s nothing in there. No food. Not a goddamn . . . Nothing.”

  Conner shut the refrigerator. “I can go to the Lucky. What do you want me to get?”

  “Did you call your mother? Did you call and ask her for money?”

  “Just leave it, Dad.”

  “I’m not the dog, buddy. Don’t be giving me orders.”

  He was in between Conner and the door and he braced himself to stand his ground or take a punch, he was that kind of mad, a red film over his eyes, but he was too slow and clumsy and Conner was past him before he knew it. “Why don’t you just take another pill,” Conner said, from the other side of the door.

  “Get back in here,” Sean hollered after him. “I’m not through with you, pal, we’re just getting started.”

  The truck started up and the noise of it rolled away down the street.

  He wanted to haul off and break something, but everything here was already broken. His chest hurt from the hollering. The air in his lungs was heavy, and when he tried to breathe, a dragged-out noise, huuuhhh, came out of him. He had to sit down before he had a damn heart attack. He found his phone in between two couch cushions.

  Number number number. It made him furious that he couldn’t find it anywhere. Finally he thought to try the layers of folded papers in his wallet.

  The phone rang for a long time, so that when his ex-wife answered, he was already in the middle of the conversation he’d been having. “Whad he tell you, huh? Whad he tell you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I will beat his teen ass! You don’t believe me, you hide in the house and watch!”

  “Sean? What in the world?”

  “He call you with some big boo-hoo story?”

  “Who, Conner? What happened to Conner, is he all right?”

  “He’s fine.” A small edge of possibility, how he might have really screwed up, inserted itself into his brain. “He’s real fine.”

  “What are you talking about? Put Conner on.”

  “He’s not here. It’s nothing. Forget it.”

  “Sean.”

  He’d screwed up. It was nothing new. “You’d better tell me what’s going on,” his ex-wife said. “Are you drunk? You sound drunk.”

  “I am not. Drunk. Look, would you do something for me? Just this one thing? Call Con. Tell him I didn’t mean it.”

  “Didn’t mean what?”

  “About the dog.”

  “About what? You’re mumbling.”

  “The dog’s real sick.”

  “Oh no, that’s so sad. What’s the matter with him, what happened?”

  There was a rising wail to her questions that was beginning to hurt his ears. “He had an operation, he had a thing on his, this thing they took out. I don’t know if he’s gonna be OK or not.”

  “Oh, poor Bojangles. Oh, poor poor boy.”

  “Yeah.” Sean felt himself giving way, giving out, as if a string holding his body together had been cut. The house was dark and walls he didn’t expect turned solid, bruising him. He found the bedroo
m doorframe and fell onto the bed.

  “Sean? Why were you yelling about Conner? What’s going on?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t ask so many questions.”

  “What? I can’t hear you. I’m going to hang up and call Conner.”

  “Wait, don’t. Sheila? I’m sorry.”

  A little silence that might have been skeptical, but when she spoke, her voice had lost some of its anxious keening. “Sorry for what?”

  “I dunno. Everything.” His skeleton lit up with pain. He was an anatomy lesson in neon.

  “What are you mad at Conner for?”

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “He’s almost grown up. You can’t start hollering about beating on him. Oh yes you were. You called me just so I could hear you doing it. What a crummy stunt.”

  “Ah. Jesus. Crap.”

  “Sean?”

  He kept cursing, softly now, so that she couldn’t tell he was crying. Everything he’d had was ruined, shamed, lost, and he was a busted-up fool, and there was no end to the wrongness of the world. He put the phone down and let the pain roll through him. He hadn’t cried since he was a kid, and he’d forgotten how.

  He’d forgotten also that sooner or later, you stop crying. The phone kept making a small, piping noise, and after he’d calmed himself, he picked it up. “Sean, honey, are you still there?”

  “Yeah. What.”

  “I’m sorry you’re so unhappy.”

  Maybe she was. She used to have his back and he had hers, what people commonly thought of as love, and although that was gone, he felt the shape and the weight of it, the way people are said to feel an amputated arm or leg. “Yeah,” he said. “I gotta go.”

  “Can you just wait a minute? Can I tell you some things?”

  “Hold on.” He put the phone down and reached for something to blow his nose on, came up with a scrap of paper towel. He didn’t care anymore what she or anyone else thought of him. “Right.”