The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  “Actually,” Aaron said, “no one’s seen Bill since yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  Steve tried to make sense of it.

  “The last I heard from Bill is when I got you two in a three-way.”

  “Oh yeah, right in the middle of class. He wanted Barks, right?”

  “Yes. He does love your dog.”

  “What was he working on anyway?” Steve said. “You think it could have something to do with this?”

  Aaron stared into space. “All I know is, I haven’t heard from him since that day. And Bill and I are always talking. Always.”

  “Yeah, he’s mentioned that.”

  “Really?”

  Aaron’s reaction was almost heartbreaking. That was the thing with someone like Aaron: all doe eyes and heart on her sleeve. She was pure emotion, and it had started to affect Steve.

  She loves him, he thought.

  He had to look away from those eyes. “I hope he’s okay. I know he was taking Candy’s death pretty hard. Was he taking time off, or . . .?”

  “No, Steve, they found his badge at HMS.”

  “Oh my God. You think he was he there?”

  “Beats me. All I know is Marvin was murdered and—”

  “Murdered? By who?”

  “Yeah, Bill found him, he’s dead. I’m so sorry, Steve. No one’s seen Bill since. Just his badge.”

  “Who, Aaron? Who killed Marv?”

  Aaron had been looking at him so empathically before. Now her blue eyes escaped across the table. “Bill’s our only suspect.”

  “No.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Aaron said, rubbing his arm.

  She wasn’t kidding. Steve hadn’t been sure at first. These public employees, they had all the humor of a hangman.

  He shook his head. “No way, not Bill. Maybe in self-defense, like if he was forced to. No way would he do something like that in cold blood.”

  Aaron gave a sad shrug. “We don’t know.”

  Steve felt the avalanche, everything he’d been holding back. In a way, he was glad. He needed to be numb—wanted to be. “I guess I should go check his house.”

  “I already did. More than a few times.”

  “You check at the bar?”

  “Yep, both.”

  “Both?” Steve asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Sweetie, hey.” Aaron scooped up one of Steve’s hands in hers, which were small but warm. “You have so much going on, let us worry about Bill, okay? We can find him. You focus on your kids, all right?”

  Steve nodded, staring down at the table. The hand lying there didn’t feel like his at all. But the one wrapped in Aaron’s palms had begun to warm, and that was bad.

  He started to stand, found that he couldn’t. Not until his head rush cleared up. “What’s even happening here? Why’s this happening?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know.” Aaron shoved down the hem of her skirt, as if she were cold. “The FAA is saying the pilot lost control, but there’s a rumor going around it was some kid. They were actually controlling the plane with their Tether.”

  Steve shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  JJ, Red Beard, Ingram and his students; and now Marvin and Bill. The shock was becoming just as immobilizing as the grief.

  “Hahaha! Steve, I’m kidding!”

  He shot her a look. Even for Aaron, it was a completely inappropriate response.

  “It probably wasn’t a kid—oh, hahaha!”

  Steve banged his knees getting up. “That isn’t funny.”

  But Aaron was still laughing, slapping her knee, doubling over and nearly crying.

  “Have a nice day,” the receptionist said as Steve blew through the front door. His breath steamed outside.

  * * *

  Steve had nearly run out of staples. He’d been pounding way too many into the posters, more than necessary to keep the wind from blasting the paper off the telephone poles.

  JJ stared back at him from every post, every window, every corkboard Steve stapled him to. It was like watching the receptionist’s slideshow all over again. Steve had picked the same school photo.

  He’d picked it because JJ wasn’t smiling, because JJ never smiled, which meant the picture looked the most like him, except without the hat.

  Steve drove out to the church to put up a poster or two there as well. On the drive he kept thinking about Friday morning. Bill hadn’t shown up at the diner, and JJ had been acting strange, looking completely out of it. Mix that with bad grades and fights with friends at school, and what did you get?

  Pot?

  Something else?

  Something worse?

  Should’ve sat down with him, Steve thought. Both of them.

  The only way to find anything out was to ask. It was a parent’s duty. And yet Steve had dodged it. He’d avoided their Big Talk, had gotten drunk and fallen asleep instead. Because that was easier.

  He had to face it: he was weaker than his kids. They didn’t even care to visit Janice’s grave, which said something. Steve had thought at first that it stirred up painful memories like it did for him, but then he started to wonder if maybe his kids had moved on in a way he never could.

  Now Steve had lost one of them. JJ was gone. The fact that Steve could have done something to prevent it made him double over and cough.

  He slowed down as he approached the church. Vehicles packed the lot, and not just the locals. News trucks as well. Steve pulled into the old car lot across the street and got a better look.

  A new sign hung from the church’s cross:

  #HMS Memorial

  Brought to you by PCo

  Steve could see townspeople crowding a wall, a giant corkboard not unlike Marv’s. People were pinning up school pictures and ads for a brand-new Tether, the T.2 with faster speeds and stronger connection.

  Spanning the foot of the wall, people had laid candles, flowers, stuffed animals, and toys. And, for some reason, old telephones, including their old first-gen Tethers.

  Balloons bobbed up, and one of them, rectangular, already sinking, was a birthday balloon with typed out across a touchscreen.

  A lot of people were being carried away from the wall, wailing and completely broken, streaming spittle, snot, and tears, bubbly and veined.

  News crews had set up cameras and cables to capture the grief of the town. Made-over reporters, surrounded by more cables, interviewed a few of the parents—people Steve knew quite well, actually. Not just from parent-teacher conferences or PTA, but people he’d gone to school with. People he’d known half his life, with whom he’d swam in the quarry. Skinny-dipped, in the case of Mary McPhail.

  “No,” Steve said. “Nope.” He had things to do, and miles to drive. He couldn’t deal with this right now.

  Steve visited a few of JJ’s friends to talk with them and their parents. It was hard and almost for nothing. No one had seen JJ since the crash.

  “Who even cares?” Richard Clement asked.

  “Dicky,” his mother said, but then flinched back when Richard told her to shut up.

  Steve leaned in close to the kid. “Don’t you ever talk to your mother that way,” he said, and when Mrs. Clement didn’t criticize Steve for crossing the line, when the Dick actually shut his mouth, Steve sat back, holding in his sigh of relief.

  I see why now, he thought. Why JJ hit you.

  After the Clements’, Steve visited two other friends who said they hadn’t hung out with JJ, even at school, since, like, seventh grade, which made Steve feel terrible. He didn’t even know who his own kids were friends with anymore. How was that?

  “I think I saw him,” one of the kids did say. “You know, before class. In the hall.”

  “What was he wearing?” Steve asked, leaning in. It was an important detail, one the police didn’t have because Steve himself couldn’t remember what his son had worn that day. The hangover from the beer, the early morning, and perhaps even escaping
the tragedy itself—recent traumas had completely burned it out of Steve’s mind.

  “Hoodie and hat,” the kid said. Beyond that, he couldn’t remember.

  At the last house, Steve stopped his car before pulling all the way up the drive. Mark Jr.’s parents, Hope and Mark Sr., had lost a daughter five years ago at HMS. The girl, Sara, who the kids called Sara #2, had been in Steve’s class.

  No one liked her, except Steve. She had a unique writing voice, and he always remembered good style. But despite his advocacy for their daughter and her writings, Steve had always gotten the distinct impression from Hope and Big Mark that they didn’t care for the idea of their son hanging out with that JJ Gregory.

  It was Mark Sr. who answered the door now.

  “Steve,” Mark said, but then nothing else. He didn’t even invite Steve in.

  “Oh, hi,” Hope said, peering over her husband’s fat arm, which barred the doorway. She was all smiles. “You’ve got to see this!” She knocked Mark out of the way and said, “Let him in.”

  Big Mark let Steve pass, but hogged most of the doorway, standing flat against the jamb and eyeballing Steve like some wall-eyed fish. The door did not shut lightly behind them.

  “Look,” Hope said. She paired her Tether with what looked like wallpaper but was really a wireless screen covering the entire difference wall of their front room. Family photos had been taken down from the spot, piled now in one corner along with plastic baggies and packaging for the screen. A video started playing across the wall.

  “Hehehe, look!” Hope said, giggling at the dancing pig. “Look at his little suit. And, oh, how precious, the little baby one in the tutu and tiara! Little bacon seed!”

  “Yeah, Hope,” Big Mark said. “Real great. Look, Steve, we’re about to leave.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “We’re going to the hospital. Honey, get your things.”

  “How is he?” Steve asked.

  “He’s in a lot of pain. But at least he got a new Tether. Since you lost his.”

  “Oh, well. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah. You can leave so my wife can get dressed.”

  It was true—Hope was in gym shorts so skimpy her oversized jersey nearly covered them. No bra, that was apparent.

  “Of course,” Steve said. “Sorry.” He wished he could say he wasn’t taken aback. After all, he had expected this kind of treatment. Or something like it. He just hadn’t expected this. “Well, tell Mark Jr. I said—”

  “Get well soon, thanks. Bye, Steve.” Mark held the door open for him and Steve began to leave.

  “Oh, honey, wait!” Hope shouted. She’d been playing movies on the wall screen this whole time, YouTube and other internet funnies. “Look, it’s the crash!”

  It wasn’t actually the crash. It was footage from a security camera at HMS, taken minutes before the crash, according to the time stamp.

  “It’s him!” Hope said, pointing, and Steve felt a ghost pass right through him.

  Standing there in the lawn, grainy and warped, was a boy with a gun. He stood there, swaying, staring, no sound, impossibly stretched.

  “It’s Vedder,” Hope said, pointing out the boy’s shirt. Steve definitely recognized the alien head. “I guess they’re finding mutilated animals in the woods again,” Hope said with a grin.

  The boy onscreen jacked back the slide of the gun and headed toward the crappy camera, his body shrinking into more normal proportions. Steve saw that he was wearing a badge.

  “What is this?” he asked, double-checking the time stamp. Yep, the footage was from Friday. This wasn’t Vedder. And that was Bill’s badge, Steve was sure of it.

  The boy with the gun stopped near the door and looked to the sky, head cocked.

  “That’s JJ,” Steve said, taking a step toward the wall screen. “That’s my s—”

  Something shook the screen, and JJ fell to the ground.

  “Wait!”

  The image rolled and broke into static, then went black, but not before showing JJ’s silent scream.

  “Play it back!” Steve said, marching toward the screen. “I need to see it—play it back!”

  “What you need to do is leave,” Big Mark said, grabbing Steve’s shoulder and escorting him out. Steve tried to lodge himself in the doorway, but Mark had a lot of weight to throw around. It wasn’t long before he’d pushed Steve out.

  Big Mark stood at the door, arms crossed. He watched Steve walk toward his car.

  “I know you came here looking for your boy,” Mark said. “You’re not going to find him here. My son hasn’t had anything to do with that kid of yours for a while now, thank Christ.”

  Steve turned to him, cheeks hot. “You know I saved your son’s life. You could at least say thanks.”

  Mark just stared at him.

  Steve slammed his car door and made sure to leave tire marks in the drive. At least now he knew what stage of grief he was in.

  * * *

  By the time Steve drove back by the church, only a few people stood at the memorial. The news vans had left as well. Steve sped right past. Then came back.

  He sat in the parking lot for a long time, staring at the memorial, grinding his teeth and gripping the wheel, coughing till his eyes wept.

  Those ads for the new Tether, mixed in with the pictures of victims, displayed the totally insensitive commercialization of the town’s deepest grief.

  Steve threw open his door and strode to the wall of photos. He’d seen a lot of these faces at the sheriff’s office, in the receptionist’s little slideshow, but some of them he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  Like Hope and Mark Sr.’s daughter, Sara Moore. Like little Mickey Mackeroy or Marvin’s son Chuck. A green alien head caught Steve’s eye.

  JJ, he thought, homing in, but it wasn’t JJ. The kid’s stretched-out face was unmistakable. This was the school shooter. The true alien, Jaime Vedder.

  The name written on Vedder’s picture was “JJ Gregory.”

  “Bullshit!” Steve said, snatching the picture down, crumpling it in his fist as he zeroed in on one of the ads:

  LOAD YOUR NEW TETHER

  WITH PICTURES OF THE

  LOVED ONES YOU’VE LOST

  Steve ripped it down. He moved to the next ad and tore it down too, along with the next one, and the one after that, crumpling them, letting them fly to the ground, ripping more of them in the process and batting balloons out of the way.

  One of the older pictures, one of Vedder’s victims, accidentally came off with an ad, and Steve, feeling a stab of shame, tried to pin it back up. But then something struck him, and it was like the plane hitting the school all over again.

  He started ripping the old pictures down, stacking them. He didn’t want to destroy them, but they didn’t belong here, not like this. Not as part of some viral campaign to sell Tethers.

  The coiled cord of an old telephone wrapped itself around Steve’s foot, and he fell, skinning a palm in the gravel.

  Cursing, climbing to his feet, he kicked the phone off him. The receiver hit the wall, and Steve decided to kick that, too. Again and again. He heard the corkboard crack and kept kicking, emptying everything that had been bottled inside him—the outrage he’d felt, watching the mass suicide at the factory; the affront of his own school administration going behind his back to institute the Tethers; even the anger he’d felt at Bill for keeping things from him, important things about his own kids—Steve emptied all of that into the memorial, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, but doing it anyway.

  He had to.

  “Hey!”

  Kelli Anderson stood at the far end of the memorial. She’d lost her littlest, Sam, in the crash. Steve hadn’t even noticed her until now.

  “Stop that!”

  “Don’t you see what they’re doing here?” Steve said, striding toward her with a handful of ads. “They’re exploiting us! Our own children!”

  A few people had come out of the church, looking ready to be
at the shit out of Steve.

  “I know you’re angry, son,” the pastor said. “Please, come inside. We’ll get you connected. Everything will be all right.”

  The other guys who’d come out of the church started walking toward Steve.

  “I can’t believe you’re letting them do this,” Steve said, taking a step back. He heard gravel crunching. Kelli was approaching him from behind.

  “Doing what?” the pastor said. “Providing a way to remember our loved ones? A way to keep them with us always?” He reached up and pressed a button on his earpiece. “We all have times that try our faith, Steve. Please, come inside. You can become a member, receive communion. Ask The Provider for forgiveness.”

  Steve coughed and shook his head. He gave the memorial one last kick, then left before they could close in on him. He thought they would follow him, but they didn’t. They started to repair the memorial instead.

  As vindicated as Steve felt, he also felt terrible. He hadn’t meant to destroy the memorial or put tears in the pictures of the kids. When he’d kicked the wall, he’d felt as if he were kicking The Phone Company, but the way Kelli had looked at him, he might as well have been kicking her son’s casket.

  Passing Mountain View, Steve looked uphill toward Janice’s grave. He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. There was no way he could bear to tell her that he’d lost their son, or that their son had taken a gun to school, and that Bill might be dead.

  Perhaps more than that, Steve didn’t want to see all those other graves, the ones marked with such fleeting spans of life.

  * * *

  Sarah lay in bed, scrolling aimlessly through her app store, staring through tired, puffy eyes. Things that might have interested her two days ago now seemed worse than boring; they seemed empty. That is, until she came across Edison’s Spirit Phone.

  Bedsprings creaked as Sarah sprang upright.