by Thomas Cobb
He waits a full minute, then two. “Hell,” he says, finishing the drink, “I better go get him. His mom will have little fits if we’re late for lunch.”
The inside of the men’s room echoes as the door crashes open. It is a tiny room—a sink of fake marble, brass fixtures and framed mirror, a single urinal and one stall. The walls are glaring orange tile. “Bud,” he calls. “You O.K., Bud?” When there is no answer, he pushes open the stall. There isn’t even graffiti on the walls.
“Did he come by here?” he asks the bartender.
“No, I haven’t seen him.”
“Where the hell?” Bad pants, feeling the panic rise in him.
“Jeez, I don’t know. I thought you were watching him. Weren’t you supposed to be watching him?”
“Goddamn motherfucking son-of-a-bitch. Where the hell is he?”
“Take it easy man, he’s around. There’s a drugstore right around the curve here. They have candy and stuff. I bet he’s in there. That’s where I would be if I were him.”
“Which way?”
“Go right at the door. He’ll be there. That’s where he is.”
But he isn’t. Bad swings up and down the aisles, asking the woman at the front counter, the pharmacist. No one has seen a little boy.
Back out in the tunnel, he looks both ways. Then he has to stop and lean back against the wall. How many drinks has he had? He really should have stopped and eaten something. He can feel the band of his hat growing slippery with sweat and sliding down toward his eyebrows. He wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, replaces his hat and starts down the tunnel away from the bar and drugstore.
He stops at a travel agency, where the man behind a computer and in front of a poster of a blond woman with “Cozumel” printed across her yellow bikini bottom recognizes him. “I used to see you at Larry’s Torchroom in the fifties,” he says. “You were great. I knew then you’d be a star someday. I’m awful glad to meet you after all this time.”
“A little boy,” Bad says. “He has brown hair. He’s only about this tall. He just wandered away. Just a couple of minutes ago. Did he come by here?”
“I’ve been at the computer,” the man says, looking over his half glasses. “Everybody’s got new rates. It looks like another war is starting up.”
“Just a little boy.”
“No. I haven’t seen anyone. Good luck, though. Awful nice to actually meet you.”
The tunnels have become a series of intricate and complicated curves. The gentle turns on the way down have increased and sharpened. He is not sure whether he has come this way already or not. He keeps swinging his weight forward on the crutches. Traffic in the tunnel is starting to pick up. People pass him from both directions. “A little boy,” he says to them, “I’ve lost my little boy.”
He checks his watch. It is five minutes to twelve. Jean is surely already at the restaurant, waiting for them. He pushes forward. At an intersecting tunnel, he turns right, and runs into a blue-uniformed security man.
The security man, a heavy, sweating young man with a brown mustache and thin tendrils of hair oozing out from under his hat, listens dispassionately. “What was he wearing?” he asks at last.
When Bad pictures Buddy, he is dressed only in a pair of saggy briefs, holding a sloshing bowl of Cheerios and a paperback book. When he tries again, he gets a bewildering assortment of images of Buddy in different clothes. He can’t remember which he was wearing today.
“Where did you last see him?”
“In the bar.”
“Which one?”
“The bar. I don’t know which the hell one. It was a little bar, dark, tables, Muzak. Some kid tending bar. His wife works.”
“Which way?” the guard asks, sweating and efficient.
Bad points to his right, unsure, now, which way he has come.
“All stations,” the guard says into his walkie-talkie. “We have a lost boy, four years old, brown hair, named Buddy. No other information at this time. Report back, please.”
“Thanks,” Bad says, starting back down the tunnel.
“Sir, sir. I think you better stay here with me.”
“I have to find him,” Bad explains. “He’s lost. He’s from New Mexico. His mother is waiting for us.”
“We’ll find him. Just stay here. There are eight guards down here, and they’re all watching for him.”
“I’ve got to go. His mother is waiting.”
“Sir, I think you better stay with me. You’ll be a lot more help with me. Come back to Control with me. We’ll find him. You just sit and wait. How much you had to drink?”
“I had a drink. What the goddamned difference does that make?”
“You lost him, sir.”
Bad pauses, rocking on the crutches that have slipped into his armpits. He is having trouble moving his arms and keeping balanced at the same time. “Yeah,” he says. “I lost him. And I’m going to fucking find him.”
If the tunnels were merely horizontal, it would be fairly easy to find one little boy. But the tunnels are also vertical. Elevators move up from the tunnels to the buildings above and back down. Buddy could have climbed into any one of them and ended up at street level and then back out on the street.
Bad stops to consider the possibilities. There is the steady flow of traffic—taxis, buses, hundreds of people moving down the sidewalks. And there are the winos, the hookers and the junkies. People run out of alleys screaming obscenities and loving Jesus. Buddy is four years old and from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
He leans up against the wall of the tunnel and tries to figure whether he should go up or stay underground. There are eight security guards underground, all looking for Buddy. Above, no one is looking for him. The tunnels are crowding up with noontime traffic. He has trouble pushing away from the wall and cutting across to the other side to get into the flow of the traffic.
Out of the elevator, he is in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, and it is also crowded. The bar is right off the lobby, almost a part of it, and he swings through, thinking Buddy may have gotten confused and is waiting here. A waitress in a black skirt waves an exasperated hand. “Everybody and his brother is here, but there aren’t any little boys.”
Outside, he tries to figure where he is. Louisiana Street, as close as he can tell. It’s still hot, well into the nineties, and down here the air is dead, stopped by the concrete and reheated by the exhaust of cars and buses. People shove past him or move in wide arcs to avoid him. He tries to look at this from the view of a four-year-old, but it’s no use. He starts off to his right, turns and heads left.
In two blocks, he realizes his mistake. It is too big out here. There are too many streets, too many people. Each block has a half-dozen or more stores and restaurants. Some he checks, some he passes by, with no real reason. He is hobbling off in no particular direction, with no plan. He feels Buddy getting farther and farther from him.
He is tired and sore. He has started to let his weight shift and the crutches are digging under his arms, pressing the tendons. Back in the Hyatt, he looks around the lobby once more. The air-conditioning turns his shirt icy. His arms tremble from holding the crutches. A drink wouldn’t hurt. Goddamn, he thinks. It’s his only thought, just goddamn.
He sits in Control, lighting cigarettes off the butts of other ones, listening to the static-filled voices on the radio. He keeps hearing the phrase “lost boy.” Security guards and men in cheap suits walk in, get coffee, joke with the dispatcher and leave. He’s been waiting for nearly an hour. He tries not to think of stories about missing children.
Finally, he hears his name and looks up. “Where’s Buddy?” Jean is white and shaking. “Bad, where’s Buddy?”
“They’re going to find him, hon. All these guys are looking for him. They’re going to find him in just a couple of seconds here. You don’t need to worry.”
“How the hell did you lose him?” she keeps asking. “How the hell did you do it?”
“We just stopped for
a second, to get a drink. I turned around and he was gone. He just disappeared.”
“A drink? A goddamned drink. Bad, he’s just a little boy. A baby. He’s a baby. In this city. You know what kind of people they have here?”
“He had a ginger ale.”
For the next thirty minutes, she does not talk to him or look at him. She keeps getting up and walking to the dispatcher, who speaks quietly and sympathetically. Then she sits down and looks away from Bad.
He keeps getting up, heading toward the dispatcher, then swinging around and coming back the other way. He is nearly out of cigarettes. He keeps pulling the same one from the pack and putting it back again, figuring he’s going to need it later. He has had four cups of coffee and his bladder feels like a burning grapefruit under his belt. He sits again and this time lights the cigarette.
“Jean. Hon. They’re going to find him. He couldn’t get very far away. He’s O.K. I know that. You know that. Come on now.”
She turns to him and starts to cry. “He’s just a little boy, Bad. He’s so scared.”
The pressure on his bladder is increasing. “He’s O.K. Hell, he probably doesn’t know he’s even lost. He’s found some guy painting a wall or fixing a light, and he’s probably just having a ball. He has no idea we’re looking for him.”
“I’m so goddamned scared.” She holds on to him, crying.
He can’t sit still any longer. “Hon, I just got to find me a bathroom, and I’m out of smokes. I’ll be right back. Just a second. Can I get you anything?”
She stops her crying and looks at him evenly, her jaw set. “No. Go, just go.”
Being able to sit still does not make the waiting any easier. He keeps lighting cigarettes he doesn’t want, until his throat is dry and itching. Jean keeps turning the pages of a magazine, looking up and sighing at each page. Bad watches her and tries not to look at the clock. When he does, he calculates how long Buddy has been gone. It is going on two and a half hours.
Ten minutes later, the dispatcher stands up. “Mrs. Craddock, hold on, I think we have something here. I didn’t catch the end of that, fourteen, come back, please.”
A woman in a blue dress comes in, holding Buddy by the hand. A security man is behind her, white-haired and smiling. Buddy’s eyes are swollen and tearing. He takes one look at Jean and begins to scream.
While Jean holds Buddy and tries to quiet him, the woman talks to Bad. “He was just walking down the tunnel crying. He kept saying “bad.”
“I don’t know,” Bad says. “I was just talking and then I turned around and he was gone. I don’t know what the hell happened. I just don’t know. Buddy…” He starts toward them. The woman holds his arm.
“He’s pretty scared,” she says. “I think he just needs his momma right now. Just let them be. He’ll be all right.”
Jean has picked Buddy up from the floor. She holds him horizontally, rocking him back and forth. They are crying in counterpoint to each other, though Jean keeps trying to laugh and talk at the same time.
“I just needed a drink,” Bad says. “Just a drink. Then he was gone. I mean, he wandered away from me.”
The woman looks at him, long but not hard. “He’ll be all right. He’s a pretty scared little guy, but he’s got his momma now. He’s right where he needs to be. I’d just leave the two of them be for right now.” She writes her name on a slip of paper, and under it, her number. “If things get rough,” she says, “call me.”
Jean carries Buddy back to the van. Buddy is crying in a steady, unrelenting rhythm now. Bad tries to keep step with them, but he feels distant already, first ahead, then behind, as Jean walks steadily forward, stroking Buddy’s hair and whispering in his ear.
“It’s going to be all right, old Bud,” Bad says, catching up to them. “We just got our wires crossed. Once, back in Indiana, I got lost out in the woods—”
“Shut up,” Jean says. “Will you please just shut up?”
“This ain’t solving a damned thing, you know that,” Bad tells her.
“It’s getting me out of Houston and back to Santa Fe, where I belong.”
“Look, Buddy’s scared, but he’s going to be O.K. Hell, I’m scared. But putting him back on a plane, that’s just going to scare him more. Stay a little while, he’ll be all right. Everything is going to be O.K.”
“Everything is not going to be O.K. He’s scared half to death. He’s never been away from home before, and you take him into some tunnels under downtown Houston and lose him.”
“Aw, hon, I love Buddy. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. It was an accident. I just feel like a dog about this. You’ve got to believe that.”
“Oh, I believe you feel bad. I believe that. I might even believe you love him, but I know you love your damned bottle more. You had to stop for a drink. Don’t you see? You had to stop. You didn’t think about him. You had to have that damned drink, or three drinks or four drinks, however many it was. It’s not your fault. I know that. It’s my fault. You can’t help it. I’m a goddamned idiot.”
He tries dragging the suitcases out the door, but the cabbie is there. “If you’ve got to go, I can drive you. Let me do that at least.”
“No,” Jean says, motioning with her hands as if pushing something gently but firmly down. “No.” Then, “Goodbye, Bad.” As they are getting into the cab, Buddy waves and says, “Bye.” He is crying again.
Back in the house, Bad falls into the sofa and sits, trying to think. Then he gets up and goes to the kitchen for a glass and ice. He goes back to the sofa and pours a full glass. “Fuck,” he says aloud. Then, louder, “Jesus, fucking, Christ.”
He’s still on the sofa when the phone rings.
“Hey there, old-timer.”
“Wayne? Look, I don’t feel like talking just now.”
“Wayne? Who the hell is Wayne? This is Tommy.”
“Tommy?”
“Tommy. Listen, I just got the songs. My guys are going to get in touch with your guys for the details, but it’s like I said. The songs are good, Bad. Real good. And I’m real glad you sent them. This is going to be good for both of us.”
“Yeah. Yeah, well…”
“‘Is This Going to Hurt Again?’ Bad. It’s the best song I’ve heard in years. This is a goddamned monster, Bad. And you’re going to like what I do with it. It’s your song, and I’m going to do it nice and straight. You’re going to like it. I’ve been thinking, maybe just a couple of acoustics, a little flat-picking in the bridge. You’re going to like this, Bad.”
“Tommy, Tommy, you do what you want. Right now, I just don’t give a shit.”
Chapter Fifteen
He sleeps without dreams, but he wakes hung over. He gets up and has a beer to settle his stomach. On television there is college football. He tries to watch. Football interests him less than baseball, but he likes the NFL. College football is too full of pom-poms, streamers and fresh-faced rich kids between every play. Around him, the house is clean, his laundry is back from the cleaners. There are dishes in the sink. He leaves them. Michigan scores and he decides he will be for the other team, which also seems to be Michigan. In the middle of the third quarter he turns it off.
The bar is so dark he is sun-blind when he walks in. A jukebox is blasting out old Rolling Stones. In the middle of the bar, a stage is lit with red light. An Oriental girl is dancing behind a column at the edge of the stage, peek-a-booing her little breasts from either side of the column. He takes a table near the stage.
“Hi,” a black waitress in a sheer white dressing gown says. “What can I get for you?”
“Bourbon rocks, beer back.”
“No bourbon. Beer and setups.”
“Beer. Bud.”
“There’s a package store around the corner. I can bring you a setup if you want to walk over. Tell them you’re here and they’ll give you ten percent off.”
When he comes back with a six-dollar pint, she brings him a can of Bud and a glass and ice. He pays her with a twenty
and she gives him his change in singles. He hands one back.
The rest go to a progression of women who come up, asking to be tipped for their next dance, or for jukebox money. He gets two more glasses of ice, at two bucks a shot. Onstage, three girls alternate dances—the Oriental, his black waitress, and a blonde with hollow cheeks and eyes thickly lined in blue. Each one dances to three songs from the jukebox, taking off all but G-strings and bras in the first, shucking their bras in the second, and then dancing braless in the third, bending over and sliding around on the stage. None of them pays much attention to the beat of the music playing behind them. He sits through the entire rotation twice. Naked deaf girls. He goes through thirty bucks.
At six, he starts for home, but ends up at Denny’s instead. It is as bright as the bar was dark and the noise of conversation and plates and silverware is nearly as loud as the jukebox. He eats a plate of road food and drinks coffee until eight. He goes home and watches TV.
Sunday there is nothing to do. He watches the Oilers lose and then the Cowboys, too. He has forgotten to buy bourbon, and there are no package stores open. He buys a case of beer at noon and drinks them steadily through the games.
At five he calls Wayne but gets no answer.
At seven he is out of beer and sick of television. He remembers the woman in the blue dress. He fishes through the pockets of his shirts and jeans until he finds the slip of paper with her phone number.
“Bad Blake?” she says. Her voice is soft and lyrical, a fairly pure alto.
“From the tunnels,” he says. “You found the little boy.”
“Bad Blake,” she says. “I know that name. You’re a musician, aren’t you?”
“Country. I sing country.”
“Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t really listen to country music much. I guess I should have recognized you.”
“You said we could talk.”
“Of course. When you lost the little boy, I felt so sorry. I could see how bad you felt about it. Is he all right?”