The house was dark, no lights in the windows, on the porch. Maybe his dad was out looking for him. Maybe his dad had been taken away by the cops.
Matthew opened the gate and they started up the front yard. There was something happening in the darkness on the porch, movement and noise. The Kid heard snuffling and snapping, choking noises, and then they were close enough to see Steve Rogers flopping around on the porch. A real seizure, not fake like The Kid’s. Steve Rogers snarfing and gagging, rolling across the porch in jerky spasms.
The Kid didn’t know what to do. Matthew was walking backwards, eyes wide at the thrashing dog on the porch. And then The Kid remembered, he had it all written down, his dad’s instructions, the things he was supposed to do in case this ever happened again. He turned Matthew around and got his notebook out of the backpack. He turned back through the book, looking for the right page, but it was too dark to read anything. He remembered the first thing his dad had done. He ran up onto the porch, stepped around the convulsing dog, unlocked the security screen, the front door, reached inside the house and turned on the porch light. Steve Rogers’s face shone twisted, jaws biting, his eyes searching for help.
Matthew stayed put halfway down the lawn, mouth open, feet frozen in place. “What do we do, what do we do?” he said.
The Kid was scared, too, but there was no time to be scared. The Kid was sick, but there was no time to be sick. The dog gagged and sputtered on the porch. The Kid found the right page in the notebook. His dad had gotten into a good position and held Steve Rogers down, one hand on his ribs, one hand on the side of his head. This was after his dad had gotten bitten and yelled Fuck. The Kid figured he could skip that part. The dog thrashed at his feet. The Kid was afraid, he didn’t want to get down on the floor, put his hands on the dog, get bitten, but the dog needed help and his dad wasn’t there and he couldn’t let Steve Rogers flop around like that. He figured that Steve Rogers was maybe more scared than he was.
The Kid dropped his backpack, knelt on the porch, walked on his knees, slowly, keeping his notebook in one hand, reaching out with his other hand. Matthew stayed put on the front lawn, saying Oh geez oh geez oh geez. The Kid touched Steve Rogers’s fur and the dog jerked away, jackknifing around in almost a complete circle. The Kid was scared but he reached in again, grabbed the fur near the dog’s ribs, holding on when the dog flopped and bucked. The Kid dropped the notebook, left it open on the porch to the right page, reached in with his other hand, the really dangerous part, reaching for Steve Rogers’s head, the flashing teeth just inches from The Kid’s fingers, and then he had it, one of Steve Rogers’s ears, and he flattened both of his hands and pressed down, moved in closer to use all the weight and strength he had, pushing the dog down to the floorboards, the dog jerking and bucking and The Kid pushing and looking over at his notebook. There was something he was supposed to do that he was forgetting, something he was missing, and then he saw it, the thing his dad had said to Steve Rogers, the thing that had finally calmed the dog down. He wanted to get Matthew’s attention, maybe Matthew could read what was written in the notebook, but Matthew was standing in the yard with his eyes closed and Steve Rogers was still bucking so The Kid opened his mouth and tried but nothing came out but air, nothing but a pitiful squeak, the dog thrashing under his hands, all the weight and strength The Kid could muster not quite enough, the dog working itself loose, and The Kid tried again and this time it happened, a strange scratchy sound, an unknown sound of some kind, a secret loose in the world.
“It’s okay, Steve,” The Kid said. “This is fine, this is okay.”
Steve Rogers flopped and bucked and The Kid held tight, held him down, kept repeating what he’d said, his dad’s words, his throat scratched and burning, and slowly the dog moved less and less and then not at all, just lay under The Kid’s hands, panting, his sides heaving, snout against the floor, eyes looking out into nothing. It was over, and The Kid sat with his dog and kept his hands on his dog and felt it all gone, the angel, the Covenant, an unbelievable loss.
“Holy cow,” Matthew said.
The Kid pet the dog, stroked his fur gently. “It’s okay, Steve,” The Kid said. He didn’t need to look at the notebook to remember his dad’s words. “We did it. It’s going to be all right now.”
Bob in a message on the cell phone:
“I got there too late, David. I was in that long line of cars when the fire started, when the feds rushed in. Everyone was screaming and honking their horns. Some guys in the pickup in front of me had hunting rifles and they started firing shots in the air, but no one was moving. It was a one-lane road and nobody could go anywhere. I finally turned back, found a motel a couple of miles away and spent the night. I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t understand why I came up here. What I had planned to do. It didn’t make any sense.
“This morning I got up and drove back out to the compound. The road was mostly empty, just some fire trucks and news vans. The feds had set up a tent about a hundred yards from the press area. There were a bunch of folding chairs, a coffee pot, some bottled water. Nobody there. I sat and watched the recovery workers, the smoke from the compound. Pretty soon, people started coming. Friends and family of the Realists. They went right to the press area and the press pointed them to where I was sitting. These people came over and they were crying or they were raging or they just looked numb, they just looked blank, and I’m sitting there with a cup of coffee and some of them just started talking to me. They must have thought I belonged there, that I was there with the tent. Someone would talk for a while and then they would stop and someone else would talk. There were fifteen, twenty people in the tent at one point. They sat and talked to me all morning. I never told them I didn’t belong there. I didn’t say much of anything. I just sat and nodded, got people coffee.”
Bob coughed away from the receiver, sucked on his cigarette.
“I’m back at the motel now. I’m going to get some sleep, maybe, something to eat. Then I’ll go back to the tent. More people are probably coming and I think someone should be there when they do.”
The Kid was sitting on the porch with Steve Rogers when Darby got home. There was a rip in The Kid’s pants and most of the color was drained from his cheeks and he sat with his hands on the dog, holding the dog like something had come and passed.
Darby got out of the pickup and walked up the front yard. As he got closer to the porch light he saw The Kid’s eyes widen at the sight of the dark stain on his shirt, his nose stuffed with gauze from the old first aid kit in the pickup.
Darby sat next to The Kid and held The Kid’s head to his chest, held him close and tight and then he heard it, quiet at first but gaining strength and volume, The Kid’s sobs, rising up from the porch, coming faster and harder, the beautiful sound returning to the house.
six
They drove east out of the city, past sand hills and turning white windmills, The Kid leaning his head against the window of the pickup, watching the wisps of clouds in the sky, the reflection of the dog in the side mirror. Steve Rogers sat in the bed of the truck, ears blown back, eyes closed, snout to the wind.
About an hour out of traffic they pulled over for a few minutes. His dad stood back by the gate of the truck, away from The Kid, scratching the dog’s neck while he smoked a cigarette.
What had happened in the time since the angel had left? A month and a half. His dad had a new job now, at a hotel out by the ocean, fixing things in the rooms, bathroom sinks and toilets and busted TVs. He worked during the day, leaving for the hotel when The Kid went to school, coming home not too much longer after The Kid got home. They still ate fast food most nights, or got takeout, but once a week a woman from his dad’s new job came by and left dinner in Tupperware containers for his dad to heat up in the microwave, meatballs and boiled potatoes and some kind of pancakes that were supposed to be for desert but that The Kid ate for breakfast. A kind of food The Kid had never heard of. Croatian, his dad said. The woman came by once a week and
talked to his dad for a few minutes on the porch and then left the dinner. The Kid wasn’t crazy about the food, except for the pancakes, but his dad said they should eat it. This woman had gone to all the trouble of making it and bringing it over.
The burned house was gone. Trucks from the city had come and bulldozed it one afternoon, pushing the walls in on themselves, collapsing what was left of the roof. The Kid and Matthew and Michelle had stood on the sidewalk across the street and watched until it got dark and the streetlights came on and they all had to go home.
Arizona was gone, too. Her father had packed the family up and moved back to their old town, her old school. The Kid had gotten a letter from her the week before. She said she was happy to be back where she belonged. She said she thought he’d make a great talk show host someday. On the bottom of the page she’d drawn a red-haired angel with both hands flying up into the sky.
It was dinnertime when he and his dad entered the desert city. New, clean shopping centers, gas stations, restaurants. Palm trees like the palm trees in movies, in TV shows, tall and straight, the dead fronds cut away. Neighborhoods with nice cars in the driveways, neat houses with trimmed green lawns. No traffic, no one on the sidewalks.
They parked on a quiet side street, leaving the dog in the back of the truck. The pink stucco wall was at the end of the block and his dad boosted him up and over and then climbed over after, both of them jumping down, landing on the grass on the other side, bump, bump, one after the other.
The place was just like his dad had described it. The Kid looked around, amazed by the exactness of the vision. Like a memory he never knew he’d had. The colors sharp even in the fading light, green and gold and flamingo pink. The winding streets were quiet, the bungalows quiet, everyone eating dinner, maybe, yellow lights in the windows, the sky getting dark. New Year’s Eve. The clocks would strike midnight in a few hours and then who knew what would happen.
They found a swimming pool, the water bright and blue, rippling slowly with shadows from the palms stretching overhead. They stripped down to their swim trunks and his dad slid into the pool, turning over onto his back, wincing when the chlorinated water rolled over the red lines on his nose, the place where it had been broken and was still trying to heal. Sounds of people laughing in the far distance, one of the bungalows on the golf course, the sound of someone clapping, pop of a champagne bottle. The air warm and dry, the wide sky going orange and red in the sunset. The Kid stood beside the pool. The pebbled cement was rough under his bare feet. He didn’t know if they were going to get caught or what. What would happen if they did. His dad floated on his back in the pool, looking up at the blinking lights of a plane passing slowly overhead. The Kid watched the plane, thought of the weight in that machine, the magic of how it stayed up in the air. He said the word, all three syllables, aeroplane, just loud enough that only he could hear. He wondered if his voice had changed while he hadn’t used it, if it had gotten deeper in the time it was away.
His dad was standing chest deep in the water, neck back, watching the plane. The Kid said his dad’s name, realized as soon as he said it that he wasn’t loud enough. He said it again, “Dad,” louder this time, and this time his dad turned and saw The Kid and opened his arms. The Kid took a step toward the pool, then another, plugging his nose, one foot off the ground, the other off the ground, a moment in the air, rising over the pool, the purple hills in the distance, the plane overhead and his dad waiting in the water below.
about the author
Scott O’Connor was born in Syracuse, New York. Among Wolves, his 2004 novella, about a boy who believes his parents have been replaced by imposters, was praised by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for its “crisp, take-no-prisoners style.” Untouchable is his first novel. He lives with his family in Los Angeles.
F+W Crime is committed to developing the past, present, and future of crime fiction in all of its forms. With widely-praised content at its core, F+W Crime offers readers a true community experience that crosses all spectrums of media, and boldly shares in the evolution of how a story can be told.
Visit us today for information on new authors, exclusive offers, and more!
fwcrime.com
Untouchable Page 33