Stranger Will

by Caleb J. Ross

  William considers the cliché. He wants to correct her, saying that what he is covered with does not in fact smell anything like the dead, but reconsiders when he realizes the possibility of her greater history. William has encountered mostly the results of the long-deceased, those with ripening time, but Mrs. Rose’s dealings come pushed by the burden of time. Maybe this is the new smell of dead, he thinks hard enough to moves his lips.

  When the Turners are gone, their voices just hums behind the saturated wad of toilet paper squishing against William’s cheek, Mrs. Rose nods and says, “good news. They agreed to the adoption,” and “adoption” is hushed to a secret whisper.

  After all of this, when Shelia has moved on, when the Turners are childless, when Mrs. Rose looks to her pupil and tells him with absolute conviction, “you’ve done well, dear,” only then will William be able to escape into something entirely his own. But until then, he simply nods.

  “Now we wait,” she says.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The weekend toils like conscious breath into Monday morning. The sun outgrows the narrow horizon, shrunken by buildings and distant trees; the rays piercing clouds and mist, up the driveway and through the kitchen window, ending against a wall, with a table, chairs and the three of them—William, Shelia, Philip—collectively dealing with the same morning.

  It has been days since they’ve shared a morning, twice as long since breakfast has been anything more than dry cereal and water, but here it is: Shelia, domesticity, and a breakfast nurtured for presentation. William has never had a reason to complain about sausage, blackberry pancakes, and scrambled eggs but something about the mechanics of this situation says that these three items will soon remind him of something he hates. Already the sausage tastes bitter and the eggs pasty.

  From behind, Shelia slides up and fills William’s orange juice glass. “More?” she asks like it’s a dare, like his indulgence satisfies steps two and three in a four-part plan to bring whatever he may contribute to the world to a brick-wall halt. What it actually means, William doesn’t know. He declines the juice. Then she asks if he is still hungry, boasting that her eggs are great this morning. William is still hungry even after this second helping, but he senses a secret motive. Satisfying his hunger beyond strict sustenance is not a risk he needs to take.

  “No,” he says and pours in the last bit of egg from his plate. This final bite goes down unlike the others. Harsh and sticky.

  Philip stands and speaks, but the telephone interrupts. He leaves the room. The table now separates only Shelia and William; Shelia who hasn’t looked well for days, and this morning the sight still pleases him. Pieces of Philip’s phone conversation drip into the silence at the table, words like “dead for days” and Philip asking for numbers, street names but none of it is strong enough to pull William away from Shelia’s alter- nating nausea and happiness. William hears “horrific stink” and Shelia licks the dripping saliva from her lips. He hears “no, insurance probably won’t cover it,” and Shelia is swallowing slow and hard.

  Philip hangs up the phone and disappears into the back bedroom. Ten minutes of silence between the two breaks when Philip returns dressed in stained clothes. They smell like he has been sweating phoraid and liquid sodium hypochlorite for days. He throws back a last gulp of coffee, takes a few forkfuls of egg into his mouth, and leans in to Shelia. He kisses her forehead, her cheek, her chest, her stomach. They share a moment without William. Then Philip is out the door. His car throws dust into the air.

  William isn’t asked anymore if he wants to work, which doesn’t bother him. He would decline anyway. William no longer needs evidence supporting a dirty world. He is living it.

  With Philip gone, William lights a cigarette. He notices Shelia watching him, drool in her eyes. “You want one,” he asks.

  “Sure,” and she accepts the stick from William’s mouth as he lights another. “But I don’t smoke.” She crushes the fresh cigarette under her foot. “I shouldn’t, I mean,” and she kicks the flattened remnants under the oven, purposefully beyond the reach of a potentially desperate William, and takes a handful of dishes to the sink. She offers a ride to school.

  “Why?”

  “Just thought you’d need one. I know you’re going today.” William walks his own plate across the kitchen, the weight of the dishes invigorating dumb nerves in his dog-bitten arm. Just as the wound seems to mend, a simple chore tears it back open. He fills the plate with water and balances it atop two cups already settled into the sink. He tells her, his cigarette bouncing smoke as he speaks, what Mrs. Rose has planned for Eugene, that he isn’t going to live through next week so why bother with being a stranger. “And I hate you for it,” he adds.

  “He’s been dead since well before you got there.” She wipes at a patch of butter on her shirt. “No harm in a final visit, right?”

  “How do you know how long Eugene has been dead?” He inhales at “long” and exhales at “dead.”

  “I told you,” she says wiping at her stomach, grinding the butter into the fabric. “I’m invested.”

  With Eugene having only six days left, William has greater priorities than simple animosity with this woman. “Sure,” and the cigarette floats in a cup in the sink. “A ride sounds good.”

  She stands—chewing, shoes, and coat all at once before William has the chance to initiate rescue plans for Eugene.

  He settles into the car, realizing only when he reaches for the flaccid seatbelt that he’s sitting in Mrs. Rose’s car. He begins to ask, but Shelia, without even full feet of dust and trees behind them, is already speaking mid-thought. Her mouth opens and everything spills. “About the Turners,” she says drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. “I don’t know how she does it, but we are all thankful for it. You too. You’ve done your part, and those two will now be fine. Anthony, at least. Janice will come around.” Full inches separate her back and the seat. “Pretty exciting.”

  “No,” William says. “It isn’t.”

  “Sure it is. You know that kid won’t go anywhere.” “He could.”

  “Says you.” She reaches for the radio, fuzz cracking the speakers. Everything is static and rain. Lyrics fall through the air, fading in, fading out, momentarily permanent. William watches telephone poles come, go, predictable because one needs two others needs two others needs two others until A and B are connected. The commentator on the radio speaks of the rising price of soybeans and the current land stress for corn-based bio fuels driving it. The voice fades in, fades out. William counts the poles, thirty-three, thirty-four, each falling into context, a part only of what surrounds it. He acknowledges their passing while dreaming of a safe Eugene.

  Scenario number one: Eugene is waiting at the bench.

  As common as this situation has become William anticipates a smooth grab. What has become a morning ritual for both of them will continue for another day, and as it does their harmo- nious exit will provoke no confrontation, no opposition, no reaction at all. Because a reaction is not an option for balance, and what, if not balance, have those children been taught to fight for.

  Shelia breaks his smile. She lowers the volume of the static and shakes her head like she knows. “Mrs. Rose figures you’ll try something,” she says. “She isn’t allowing Eugene to talk to you anymore.”

  “Why would Eugene even want to talk to me? If Mrs. Rose is doing anything right he shouldn’t want anything to do with a stranger.”

  “And that,” a thread of hair caught in the crack of the window, bouncing as the wind attacks, “is just the type of behavior that holds him back.”

  Scenario number two: Eugene is protected.

  Eugene being protected means that Eugene has been accepted. He has been found strong enough to continue with Mrs. Rose’s training, which would mean that his attempts to save the boy would be unnecessary. Eugene: a member of the continuum. William reaches for the radio knob.

  Shelia smacks his hand away. She lowers the volume again an
d pulls her caught hair from the window. “The thing is,” she says, “Eugene isn’t your call. Everything had been decided since before you two threw bloody raccoons to each other, since before you met Mrs. Rose, since before even I met Mrs. Rose. This is a lifelong project. She’s had failures. She’s learned from them. We all have. Eugene is just one of them.”

  “Why does Mrs. Rose get to decide?”

  “She doesn’t. The context around her does.”

  And to that William cannot say a thing. He lights a cigarette, feels it flow through his skin and hates the way it makes him so docile. He hates that Mrs. Rose orbits the impossible. He hates that she has so many with her to guide evolution toward an intangible. He hates—sucking back smoke into his lungs to his muscles through his pores—that Mrs. Rose has led everyone to believe that direction is motivated by context. He hates most that he still believes this to be true. He could save Eugene—save his life—but safety is contextual. Who has he saved? From what? If there is danger, there is perfection and one thing William will never agree with is perfection. Mrs. Rose is his teacher and his opponent. His rival, his mentor.

  But he can pull Eugene away. Let him live to come to these conclusions himself. “It may not be a chemical-coated tree,” he says, “but one day he will realize he is alive.”

  “But he isn’t,” Shelia says as soft static still pours into the car. “He loves Mrs. Rose. He respects her. If she tells him to fear you, he will.”

  Scenario number three: Eugene will never listen to William again.

  Loose dirt and gravel fades into pavement fades into a world filled with the chatter of children. William steps from the car and counts every child but Eugene. He walks toward the bench, his bandaged hand against his chest and throbbing as his pulse conquers the sedation of smoke.

  “How’s the hand?” Shelia says. William continues searching.

  “With the cayenne pepper packed in there it shouldn’t get too infected. Unless, it already was. I’m no doctor.”

  He approaches the fence, its diamond links molding the fabric and skin of his body. He pushes further in, feeling his legs separate into shapes. “Eugene,” he yells and not a single head turns. Not a single curiosity among the crowd, wondering what that strange voice is unlike all the others. “Eugene,” he yells again, but the children keep him outside their world.

  He forces a toe into a link, his shoelaces dripping with mud. “Don’t,” Shelia says from the car. “One foot inside and she has to call the police.”

  “She owns the police.” Two toes in and he lifts his body over the top. Scanning from the higher perch, he spots Eugene drawing in sand underneath a silver slide. “Eugene,” he yells again and throws his feet to the other side. Every child remains occupied.

  Gears shift into drive and Shelia is down the road, gone with the radio static.

  He dodges the children, slides past their hopscotch and jump ropes, their bleeding knees and basketball, until he is standing in Eugene’s sun.

  “Hey,” he says, knees cracking as he squats. “I missed you over there.”

  The boy builds a castle with dry sand. Every tower crumbles to a pile as he removes his hands.

  “What have you learned today?”

  The child turns his back and starts a second pile of sand. “You’ve got to listen to me, Eugene. I need you to do something.”

  “Mrs. Rose says I can’t talk to you. She says I can’t let you take me.”

  “She says a lot of things,” and as William sits the boy stands. “Stay here.”

  “I’m not supposed to. I can’t talk to strangers anymore. I’m supposed to tell Mrs. Rose.” Stepping away, he crushes the collapsed towers deeper into the earth.

  “You can’t.” He grabs the boy with his bandaged hand. The grip numbs his arm.

  “Let go.” The entire playground heeds the plea and stops for a silence broken only by Eugene’s shirt as it stretches to his elbow, to his wrist, to his hand. It rips until left hanging like the worn gauze.

  William demands he stop. He takes off after the boy, chasing him through children frozen by this resistance. They watch as spectators privy to a movement, to a new mode of thinking, and William would use the opportunity to plant a seed but Eugene runs faster than a boy his age might let on. “She’s going to hurt you,” he yells, but the boy only runs faster.

  The children toss words like “evil” and “kidnapper,” verbatim from television news programs and lesson plans, the impact of their meaning lost without the independent mind to place it. The claims grow through the crowd to chants and calls. Eugene darts behind Mike the Story Man’s tree, follows the fence, and passes the bench, each landmark’s history hollowed by the chase. He wants to save this child, give him a life outside the playground, but the boy keeps running.

  “If you don’t let me help you…” “Kid-nap-per. Kid-nap-per.” “…Mrs. Rose is going to…” “Stran-ger. Stran-ger.”

  “…kill you, Eugene. She doesn’t love you…”

  “E-vil. E-vil.”

  “…She hates you. She—” but he stops. Eugene cowers in a corner, curled as deep as he can shrink. William wheezes and lights a cigarette with his hand, so damaged each subtle move cracks the skin. “I know she has told you not to listen to me. I know she says I am a bad man, but you’ve got to come with me. You have to leave this place,” and before he can say more, Mrs. Rose stands over the boy, opening for a hug.

  “Thank you,” the boy says.

  “It’s okay, dear.” She kisses his cheeks and wipes her lips on her sleeve. “I’ll take you away from him.” Eugene digs himself into her shoulder. The children have calmed their chants, a few still spread words throughout, but mostly they watch. “Now run inside,” she says squeezing him tight before releasing. He trips over untied shoelaces, never turning back. She turns to the children as the recess bell rings. “All of you.”

  When all that is left of the playground is William, Mrs. Rose, and the stale air, she grabs him by the bandaged hand and admits that she should have noticed the bond earlier. “It is a school after all,” she says. “We are all learning. I met you with a dead bird in your hand, a gun in the other, and a child on the way about whom you spoke with convincing animosity. I’ve made the mistake before. I shouldn’t have made it again.”

  “What is a mistake?” William says ripping his hand from hers. “Without finality there is no right and wrong.” He holds back a tensed bicep and a flexed fist.

  “A failure would change a simple method into gospel.” She waves to children who then compete with each other for the rights of its reception. “I should have let you go after the wreck. I should have given you a pigeon, kept you at a distance, but you seemed to want it. You took the wreck pretty well.”

  William rubs his dying muscle. “Frank is right.”

  “Frank,” she says savoring the name on her tongue, “is an infection. But he will be cured.”

  “I’m not a stranger anymore,” he says, the afternoon air turning sticky.

  “You never were.” She dabs sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. “You are a bum. Probably always were. At least a child will fear a stranger. A bum, they are taught only to pity.”

  “I’ll take pity,” William says. “Pity enlightens a person. Fear controls them.”

  “We are all controlled, William.”

  “Until we realize it,” and he turns in the slow heat, his foot spinning dust into the thick air behind him. “Your words.”

  “I’m not sure Shelia’s fire was a suitable test,” Mrs. Rose says, just loud enough to cross the short distance between them. “You know, there are some people in this town, wayward types, who don’t like the idea of adults sitting around watching kids all day. They would have fun with a guy like you.”

  “About that.”

  “Brackenwood isn’t a place people move to. Brackenwood is a place that people like us end up.”

  William parts the heat for the fence. Children press against windows, watching Mrs.
Rose allow her defunct pupil to escape into a world of his own, born as a child without the heavy skin of his parents. He will come back for Eugene. He will warn Frank. He will continue this ripple with another. But tonight the hospital beckons.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  William wakes to a fist digging deep enough into his skull that he can smell the lustrium of its wedding band. The hardest part, he discovers, about a punch to the face is accepting the inevitability of pain.

  Physically, he can manage the pain. The fists and the boots and even the ground weren’t enough to make him scream. Lying there, face up on the cold concrete, waiting for someone to notice hurts the most.

  “The world has enough people like you,” one guy shouted just before cracking William’s nose with his elbow.

  “Won’t be staring at kids now, will you?” another said, raking William’s eyes with yellowed fingernails.

  “Sicko,” the fattest one repeated like a mantra. He shook his head before each punch. “Sicko.”

  These men he didn’t know, these men who didn’t know him, they came to him angry at his violation of a world they love. And they acted. They stopped him on this innocent street, on this innocent night and contaminated both with his blood.

  William massaged two loose teeth and tongued the stretched spaces in his gums. His body fell numb, the fists and feet only massaged exhausted muscle.

  These men, they beat him down to soup and their only concern was whether or not the world had enough “homeless dirtbags.” They “work hard to keep people like you out of this town,” they said and fell into the redundancy of their struggle with emptied lungs, tired, punches motivated only by gravity as the men pant and wipe sweat from their foreheads.

  “Predator.” “Garbage.”

  And as they walk away, he swears the name Mrs. Rose floats from their escaping silhouettes.

  William hears an ambulance nearby, its sound pitched high, waving loud then soft. But he soon accepts that the siren might just be his dying ears.