The Broken Places

by Susan Perabo

  “Shit!” He kicked again with his right foot, ferociously, and broke his big toe. He heard it snap in his sock and a rush of cool pain shot up his leg all the way into his temples. “Shit!”

  His father would make the trip from Cleveland for the funeral, bring the wife. They would stand in the weedy front yard of his mother’s house smoking cigarettes, not even wanting to set foot inside. Kally would cry, he knew this. She would sit on his bed and cry, wipe her face on his tiger blanket, and nobody would do anything about it. It hurt his chest to think of her crying, even if she was a pain in his ass. His mother would be yakking a mile a minute and his father would say something like: well, you had to expect a thing like this was going to happen sooner or later, didn’t you? His father would say something like this to his mother, and his mother would stop talking and just stare at him through a few heartbeats, remembering why she hated his fucking guts. Do you have one decent bone in your body? she would say to him, her eyes burning, while all the while the new wife looked off in another direction, wishing for Cleveland. He was your son, for God’s sake. He was your only son.

  Ian was crying. What the fuck? They’d never find him anyway, and by the time they did his eyes wouldn’t be red from crying anymore, so no one would know he went out bawling like a baby. They wouldn’t even be eyes, probably: they’d be holes. Bugs would eat his eyes. Bugs would eat his eyes. This made him cry harder. God, he didn’t want his eyes to be eaten by bugs, even if he’d be dead and never know it. He imagined his own face, the face his saw in the bathroom mirror every day, chewed up by bugs. Jesus Christ.

  He started kicking again.

  • • •

  Sometime later he woke with a start. How long had he been out? His right leg was limp from kicking, his toes throbbing, his head swimming, his eyes burning, his throat parched, his jeans damp from when he’d peed himself. Black. More black. His hands were moist and trembling.

  Breathe, idiot.

  He couldn’t feel his left foot. His knee he could feel, and part of his calf; the cold from the concrete floor chilled his legs even through the thick denim of his jeans. But it was like that left foot wasn’t even there anymore, not even a part of his body. It didn’t even hurt. It just wasn’t. He thought about a movie he’d seen once, some guy in a car wreck laid up in the hospital, the doctor pricking the guy’s toes with a little pin. Feel this? the doctor would say. Feel this? And the guy just lies there looking down at his foot, half pissed and half heartbroken, and you know the doctor could shove that little pin all the way through the toe and the guy would never feel a damn thing.

  But you couldn’t be paralyzed in just one foot, right? Sure, he was no doctor, but even he knew that either your spine was busted or it wasn’t. And his left foot couldn’t really be gone, cut off or anything, because if it was he’d be lying in a lake of blood and probably dead by now anyway. It’s there, he told himself. Broken, sure. Maybe broken real bad. But there, somewhere down there, in the black. The black. Who knew it could be this black? Who knew?

  He heard something.

  Really? No. Yes. Really? Yes. Sounds from up above. Voices? Maybe. Probably not. Grinding. Chipping. A drill? What if he was at the dentist, stoned on gas, getting a root canal? What if this whole thing was some fucked-up dental trip? A flake of dirt landed on his lip and he licked it off to prove to himself it was real. Yes. Someone was up there. Maybe. A glimmer of hope, fleeting but intense. He might get out. He might actually get out.

  He sat up, stretched his arms until the skin in his pits felt like it was tearing, and grasped ahold of the ceiling. He got his hands around a plank of wood and started shaking with all his might.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Somebody’s down here! Hey!”

  Splinters of wood sliced into his fingers and bits of the ceiling (or the floor? or the walls?) began falling around him.

  “Hey! Somebody’s here!”

  He’d get himself out, that was it. Hell, he wasn’t totally useless, was he? He could weasel himself out of this on his own, goddammit. A chunk of plaster from the ceiling struck him hard on the shoulder but he kept tugging. It was his fault he was here, so he’d be the one to get himself out. He didn’t need any help. If he could just get this one piece loose, this one plank of wood, maybe there would be light above it, maybe there’d be some guy on the other side with a fucking glass of water, maybe there’d be —

  The plank of wood pulled free and slammed him across the forehead, knocking him out cold.

  And then there was a dream, or he thought it was a dream. It must have been a dream because there was light, a dim circle of it, falling on his stomach from somewhere high above. But no, not a dream. He was dead, that was it. And here was God Almighty, right on time, getting ready to slurp him up into the light. Heaven! Who would have believed it? Apparently the requirements for paradise weren’t so strict after all. Apparently old God wasn’t the tight-ass everyone would have you believe. Well, he’d never killed anyone, right? He’d never done anything that bad. And God knew things no one else knew. God knew he took turtles out from the middle of the road. God knew he always gave Kally the bigger order of fries. God knew sometimes he turned on the coffeemaker when he got home at three or four a.m. so his mother would have hot coffee when she woke up.

  But no. Scratch that. It wasn’t God here in this tomb at all. It was a guy. Sonny, the guy said his name was. But Sonny was speaking some crazy language, some Chinese thing, all the words mashed up together. I’m American, Ian tried to tell Sonny. I don’t know Chinese. Were they in China? He’d fallen down a hole in the basement, all the way through the middle of the earth, and now he was in some Chinaman’s basement. But this Sonny guy, his eyes weren’t all slanty, and the yellow writing on the back of his coat was in English: Casey Fire Department. Sonny was a fireman. Was there a fire? Was that what the light was? But if he was a fireman, where was his hose? Sonny the fireman was crawling all over him. Sonny was at his feet. Sonny was touching him everywhere now: his legs, his chest, his throat, his face. Sonny’s lips were moving but now no words in any language were coming out. Now Sonny was flying. Now Sonny’s feet were gone and now Sonny’s knees were gone and now it was just Sonny’s head getting further and further away. Wait, he said to Sonny. Wait, don’t go.

  “Ian!”

  He jolted into consciousness. Him? Ian? Was that him?

  “Ian!”

  “What?” he called. Fucking moron . . . how stupid to yell what? His voice was thin. He sounded like his grandmother. But there was the beam of light on his stomach — it was a hole! — and a voice, a real voice:

  “Hold on! I’m comin’!”

  And then Ian breathed what was perhaps his first truly deep breath of the day. So it hadn’t been a dream after all: he wasn’t dead, wasn’t at the dentist, wasn’t in China. He was in the basement of old man Neidermeyer’s house lying in his own piss, and Sonny the fireman was coming for him. Sonny the fireman was going to free his trapped leg and carry him to the light. Sonny the fireman was going to save his life.

  And then he heard the sad, deep groan, like weary thunder. It wasn’t coming from him. And it wasn’t coming from Sonny. It was the house. The house was groaning.

  “Shit,” he said. “Shit mother fucker goddamn son of a —”

  He closed his eyes tight, tucked his chin to his chest, held his breath. Quick, he was thinking. Just make it quick.

  He’d never felt an earthquake before, but he was pretty damn sure this was what one would feel like. The shudder (was this possible?) was inside him, in his bones, his organs, his tissue, his teeth, his tongue, his blood. And the circle of light, instead of closing, seemed to be sucked upward as the hole above his stomach collapsed. He waited to feel the weight of the house crush him, waited for his lungs to flatten, but instead he felt the fireman, who dropped from the sudden darkness like a sack of dirt and landed on top of him, diagonally, an elbow so sharp into his gut it took the breath right out of him. Blood spattered onto Ian’s f
ace, blood from the fireman’s head, which cracked against the floor beside his left shoulder, knocking the fireman out cold.

  Then everything was still. And Jesus Christ if he wasn’t still alive. He felt himself smiling — smiling! what was he thinking anyway? — and his heart was beating a mile a minute at the miracle of it all. Alive! Jesus H. Christ — it was enough to make him think someone might be looking out for him. The same couldn’t be said for the fireman, who lay motionless across Ian’s stomach and chest and who felt like dead weight. Literally.

  “Fireman,” he said. “Hey, fireman. You dead?”

  No, the fireman wasn’t dead. He could feel the rise and fall of breath — peaceful, unaware — feel the thump of the fireman’s heart against his own rib cage. He’d had a few girls lie on top of him like this, liked to feel the breath and the beat, to pretend he was asleep so they wouldn’t roll off. But this guy weighed more than any girl, and stunk to boot. He heaved him off to the side.

  “Huh?” the fireman asked, slamming into consciousness and thrashing wildly around, striking Ian squarely in the chin, kicking him in the thigh. “Huh? What?”

  “Cool out!” Ian shouted, shielding himself against the blows. Just his luck, right, survives the house falling down on him — twice! — only to be beaten to death by the guy who’s supposed to rescue him. “Cool out, man! Just cool it.”

  A brief stillness in the darkness. Silence, but for breathing. Then, suddenly, more frantic shuffling, another elbow in the ribs.

  “Jesus, quit it! You’re beating the crap outa me.”

  “Shit. . . . Shit!”

  “Shit what?”

  A long sigh, nearly a wail. “Half my gear’s gone. Flashlight. Air bag. Must of got torn off on the way down.”

  “It was bad,” Ian said.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad bad. Earthquake bad. No way we should still be alive bad.”

  Silence. Then: “This my blood or yours?”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “All over the floor here.”

  Ian tried to turn his head toward the voice. It was difficult. With his foot pinned, the only position that resembled anything close to comfort was flat on his back, arms at his sides, staring straight up. “Sounded like you cracked your head when you landed. You were out for a minute.”

  Raspy breathing. More shifting. Weird, Ian thought, to feel the guy and hear the guy but not be able to see him, not one bit, not even an outline in the dark. It was like he wasn’t real.

  “Is this part of the plan?” Ian asked, returning his gaze to the ceiling he couldn’t see, letting his neck relax.

  “Huh? What plan?”

  “The rescue plan.”

  The fireman lay back, sighed, was finally still. “I think the whole house caved in,” he said. “Musta been the wind. Either that or Trusty Construction isn’t so trusty after all. They’re gonna have to start diggin’ all over again. If all the walls are down they can come at us with jack-hammers, speed things up. We’re just gonna have to lie here until they find us. That’s all we can do. So that’s the plan.”

  Ian marveled at the guy. Here he was in his own dusty black grave, and his voice was steady as a stone, full of practiced confidence, arrogant in its sureness. It was the voice, Ian thought, of a guy who usually got what he wanted, a guy who didn’t have reason to doubt much. Asshole.

  “I think the plan is we die,” Ian said.

  “Today’s not my day to die,” the fireman said. “I don’t think it’s yours either. They got through once, they’ll get through again.”

  “Took ’em long enough,” Ian said. “What were you guys doing up there? Having a picnic?”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Finch,” the fireman said angrily. “Guys up there’ve been busting their asses all day to get you outa here. You might think to thank ’em sometime, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Great, Ian thought. Perfect. Of all the firemen who could have dropped down the rabbit hole, he gets Mr. Holier Than Thou Smart-Ass.

  “What happened down here anyway?” the fireman asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “You got no idea?” The voice was laced with suspicion. It was a tone Ian was profoundly familiar with. From the time he was a kid, whenever anything went wrong, all heads swerved his way. Half the times he’d been suspended from school it was for shit he hadn’t even done.

  “I was asleep,” Ian said. “On the couch. When I woke up I was lying here, just like this.”

  “I was down here earlier. You remember?”

  “Kinda. Sonny, right?”

  “That’s right.” A pause. “What were you guys doing down here? You know, before.”

  Ian didn’t say anything. Who knew what had knocked the place down? It was barely standing to begin with. One time a bunch of them had gone upstairs to poke around and Charlie’d put his foot right through the kitchen floor. So maybe the M-80’s hadn’t gone off. Maybe the house just decided to fall down, the way old people sometimes just decide to die.

  “You and your buddies messin’ around with explosives maybe?”

  “No way,” Ian said quickly, much too quickly. Christ, what was wrong with him? He was lying like a five-year-old, his lips smeared with powdered sugar, an empty box of doughnuts on the counter.

  “Pipe bomb?”

  Pipe bomb. That was how the whole thing started. Let’s make a pipe bomb, he’d said to Charlie. For what? Charlie’d asked. Shit, I dunno. Just to see if we can. Charlie had looked at him doubtfully. Charlie was dumb as a cow. You know how to do that? No, he didn’t know how. But everybody was making pipe bombs these days. How hard could it be?

  “It was nothing, man,” Ian said. “Nothing like that. We were just screwing around.” He squirmed; the backs of his thighs were aching and numb from the cold, hard floor. I got some M-80’s, Charlie had said. Left over from summer. Yeah, Ian had thought, they’d done some damage with those babies, hadn’t they? One of them could blow your average mailbox into a million silver splinters; they’d butchered at least a dozen the week of the Fourth. So what if you wired a bunch together? What could you do with that?

  “We were just passin’ the time,” he said. “We weren’t gonna do anything.”

  A snort of a laugh from the fireman. “What? Like blow up the high school?”

  “Shit,” Ian said. “See, there you go. That’s what I knew you’d say. That’s what everybody’s gonna think now, right, that we were some psychos or something, getting ready for a rampage? It was nothing like that. We were just screwing around, man, having a good time.”

  “You having a good time now, Ian?”

  Okay. He deserved that. He was an idiot. And now him and the fireman were going to die because he was an idiot. The high school. Good old Casey Fuck You High. That wasn’t part of the plan. And if it was, if it had ever crossed his mind for even an instant, it wasn’t because he wanted to kill anybody. If he was going to do it, if he’d ever thought about it, it was just so he could scare them. All he’d wanted — if he wanted it — was for those pricks to not be so sure of themselves. He didn’t want to kill them. He just wanted them to know that, if he wanted to kill them, he could.

  “How’s your head, fireman? Not gonna conk out on me again, are you?”

  Silence.

  “Sonny?”

  “I’m just lying here thinking about what kind of asshole would set off a bomb inside a house.”

  “All right,” Ian said. “I’m an asshole, all right? You feel better now? I was asking you a question, man, out of genuine concern for your wellbeing, so if you want to stop raggin’ on me for one fucking minute maybe you could answer.”

  “I’ll be okay as long as I stay awake,” Sonny said. “I think I’ve got a concussion.”

  “I’ll belt you if you fall asleep. They won’t arrest me for that, will they?”

  “Not for that,” Sonny said. “They’ll be too busy arresting you for other stuff.”

  “I�
��m surprised the cops wanted to rescue me at all. Some of ’em probably happy to leave me down here.”

  “You’re in luck,” Sonny said. “Now they gotta rescue you ’cause they gotta rescue me.”

  Well, there was probably some truth to that. They’d probably work a little faster now, pick up the pace, now that their own boy was down here. No more cigarette breaks, guys, the chief would say. Now we got something really worth saving. . . .

  “Anything like this ever happened to you before?” Ian asked.

  “Oh, sure. Two or three times a week I get crushed by a house. I’m getting bored with it.”

  “A comedian and a fireman. You should take your show on the road, man.”

  “You could go on the road yourself, Ian. America’s favorite Nazi comedian. Bet you’d get a nice audience . . . skinheads, Klansmen, all the good folk.”

  Ian felt his stomach knot. “Who told you I was a Nazi?”

  “A couple reliable sources.”

  Ian scoffed. “You believe everything you hear?”

  “You got a swastika on your back, don’t you?”

  That fucking swastika. Like that made him a Nazi or something? Why did people always assume the worst? He’d been drunk, plastered. They’d been in Lancaster, at a club. Tattoos! It had sounded like a great idea. Who’d have thought you could really get a tattoo at two in the morning anyway? He’d stood there in that nasty basement on Prince Street — it stunk of beer and sweat and piss, wasn’t even a legal operation, just some old biker guy with the tools in his basement — looking over the three walls of choices. He’d wanted the meanest baddest thing they had. There were guns and knives and skulls and chicks with blood coming out of their ears and everything you could think of. And then that fat black swastika. This one, he’d said, laying his finger at the point where the lines intersected. I want this one.

  “Who told you that?” he asked. “My idiot friends?”

  “Christ, Ian. You don’t tattoo a swastika on your back if you don’t want people to know about it, right? Isn’t that part of the point?”