Detroit Noir

by E. J. Olsen

  Camille cried, "It was him! That boy!"

  Charles switched stations. Film footage of I-94 near Grand River Avenue was just concluding. "Why should it be I-94? An overpass? The boys on the bus were headed in the other direction. They'd have been off the bus, wherever they were going, hours before. And miles away. It's just a coincidence."

  Camille shuddered. "Coincidence? My God."

  "You still love me. Don't you?"

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Don't you?"

  "Shouldn't I?" A pause. "I'm so tired …"

  Knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep, but he must sleep, he had an early meeting the next morning: 8 a.m., breakfast. At his company's headquarters. Must sleep. They'd gone to bed, exhausted and creaky-jointed as an elderly couple, and Charles lay now stiff as a wooden effigy, on his back. He'd dismissed the incident (urine-colored school bus, smudge-skinned young punks, the ambiguous long-barreled weapon) from his mind, it was over. Beside him Camille lay warm-skinned, ardent. Wanting to push into his arms, to make love, with him, or wanting at least to give the impression of wanting to make love, which, in a long-term marriage, counts for the same gesture, in theory. See? I love you, you are rebuffing me. Charles was polite but unreceptive. What pathos in lovemaking, in stark "physical" sex, when life itself is at stake! Civilization at stake! Charles's head was flooding with images like the screen of a demonic video game. (He had never played such a game. But he'd observed, in video arcades.) The ugly lumbering school bus he'd been trapped behind. The stink of the exhaust. How had it happened, had Camille been speaking to him? He'd become distracted, hadn't seen the bus in time to switch to another lane, and if he'd done that, none of this would have happened. Seeing now the rear window of the bus: craning his neck upward, to see. What were those boys doing? The rear window was divided into sections and only the smaller panes could be cranked open. The pane at the left, directly in front of, and above, Charles, had been opened and it was through this window that the long-barreled revolver had been pointed. No! Don't shoot! Not me! Now Charles saw vividly, unmistakably, the faces of the boys: They were probably not more than twelve or thirteen years old, with dark, demonic eyes, jeering grins, oily-dark hair. As he stared up at them, pleading with them, the gun discharged, a frothdream washed over his contorted face like an explosion of light. Was he already dead? His face was frozen. And there was Camille screaming and pushing—at him—trying to get away from him, as he restrained her. Brake the car! Get away! He'd never heard his wife speak in so hoarse, so impatient a voice. For the baby was somewhere behind them, and nothing mattered except the baby.

  Charles was alone now in the speeding car. A limping-speeding car, as if one of the tires was going flat. Where was he? One of the freeways? Emerging out of Detroit, in a stream of traffic. And there was the school bus, ahead. He'd been abandoned by his family to die in their place. You are born, you reproduce, you die. The simplest equation. No choice except to drive blindly forward even as the gleeful boys, one of them pudgy-fat-faced, a faint mustache on his upper lip, knelt on the bus seat to aim a bullet into his head.

  He heard the windshield shatter. He cringed, trying to shield his face and chest with his arms.

  It is said that when you are shot you don't feel pain, you feel the powerful impact of the bullet or bullets like a horse's hooves striking you. You may begin to bleed in astonishment for you did not know you'd been hit. Certainly you know with a part of your brain, but not the conscious part of your brain, for that part of your brain is working to deny its knowledge. The work of mankind is to deny such knowledge. The labor of civilization, tribal life. Truth is dissolved in human wishes. The wish is an acid powerful enough to dissolve all knowledge. He, Charles, would die; must die at the hands of a grinning imbecile in a black T-shirt. Yet he seemed to know, and this was the point of the dream, that he could not allow himself such knowledge for he could not bear his life under such circumstances. In middle age he had become the father of a baby girl. He had neither wanted nor not-wanted a baby, but when the baby was born he'd realized that his life had been a preparation for this. He loved this baby girl whose name in the dream he could not remember far more than he loved his own ridiculous life and he would not have caused such a beautiful child to be brought into a world so polluted, so ugly a world. As the bullets shattered the windshield of the car, a sliver of glass flew at the baby's face, piercing an eye for she'd been left helpless, strapped in the child safety seat.

  Charles screamed, thrashing in panic.

  "Charles? Wake up."

  He'd soaked though the boxer shorts that he wore in place of pajamas. The thin white T-shirt stuck to his ribs and his armpits stank, appallingly.

  "You've been dreaming. Poor darling."

  Camille understood: Her husband had ceased to love her. He would not forget her behavior in the car, her "abandonment" of him. He was jealous of her acrobatic prowess, was he?—as he was jealous of her way with Susanna who would rather be bathed by and cuddle with Mommy than Daddy.

  It wasn't the first time in nine years of marriage that Charles had ceased to love Camille, she knew. For he was a ridiculous man. Immature, wayward in emotion, uncertain of himself, anxious-competitive in his profession, frightened. He was vain. He was childish. Though highly intelligent, sharp-witted. At times, handsome. And tender. He had a habit of frowning, grimacing, pulling at his lips, that Camille found exasperating, yet, even so, he was an attractive man. He was shrewd, though he lacked an instinctive sense of others. And yet Camille herself was shrewd, she'd loved one or two other men before Charles and understood that she must comfort him now, for he needed her badly. She must kiss his mouth, gently. Not aggressively but gently. She must hold him, his sweaty, frankly smelly body, a tremulous male body, she must laugh softly and kiss him as if unaware that he was trembling. At first

  Charles was resistant, for a man must be resistant at such times. For his pride had been wounded. His male pride, lacerated. And publicly. He'd been having a nightmare just now, yet how like Charles not to want to have been wakened from it, by Camille.

  Panic can only be borne by a man if there is no witness.

  Charles's skin had turned clammy. Camille could feel his heart beating erratically. He was still shivering, his feet and hands were icy. He'd had a true panic attack, Camille thought. She was holding him, beginning to be frightened herself. But she must not let on, of course. "Darling, I'm here. I've got you. You'll be fine."

  Eventually, well before dawn when the baby in the adjoining room first began to fret and flail in her crib, this was so.

  LITTLE HORSES

  BY NISI SHAWL

  Belle Isle

  The white candle on top of her dresser had burned dirty that morning. When she stood up from her prayers she saw its glass sooting up black. Big Momma would say that meant danger of some kind. But what? To who? Not Carter. It was after Carter's funeral that Big Momma had made her promise to burn it.

  Uneasily, Leora turned her gaze away from the boy beside her on the car's backseat. Sometimes it was hard not to stare at him. And sometimes, for the same reasons, it hurt.

  It was her job, though, keeping an eye on him. Leora did her duty. Especially today; might be him who the candle had been warning her about. If Big Momma had a phone, she could have called her and found out.

  If it was her own self in danger, that didn't matter. Not that she'd commit the sin of suicide, but it wasn't natural she should be living on after her child.

  In case her suspicions were right, Leora had stayed close as she could by the door to the boy's room when his teacher came that morning. She'd cut his sandwich in extra tiny pieces, even lifting the bread to check the chicken salad surreptitiously with her finger for bones. Left the lunch dishes for the maid to clear while she fussed at nothing in the basement, keeping an eye on him building his boat models till his mother came and insisted they go outside.

  "Take the car," the mother had suggested, standing on the stairs in one of her
floaty chiffon numbers designed to hide her weight. Against Mr. McGinniss's wishes, his wife had hired a new chauffeur. Now she needed to prove he wasn't a waste of money.

  Outside the car's windows, Belle Isle's spare spring beauty waltzed lazily around them as they followed the road's curves. The chauffeur seemed to understand his business. Not real friendly, but then he wasn't getting paid to talk to the nanny. The 1959 Cadillac was the McGinnisses' third best car, last year's model. He had it running smooth and fine; she could barely hear the engine.

  He had known the best way to take to the park, too, staying on course as the street name changed from Lake Shore to Jefferson, and passing up the thin charms of Waterworks Park without hesitating one second. And he had circled the stained white wedding cake of the Scott Fountain as many times as the boy asked him. Now he steered them past some people fishing, practicing for the Derby coming in June.

  Without looking, Kevin's hand sought and found Leora's. He was all of six years old. Six and a half, he would have said. His fingers stretched to curl over the edge of her pinkish palm, the tips extending between her knuckles. Not such a high contrast in color as it could have been. His daddy was what they called "Black Irish," which was only about his hair being dark and curly and his eyes brown and his skin liable to take a tan easier than some white folks.

  A gentle turn, and the road ran between the waters of Lake Tacoma and the Detroit River. Kevin's hand nestled deeper into her own. She let her eyes sweep slowly away from the window, over the car's plush interior and the back of the driver's head, the pierced-glass barrier dividing him from the rear seat, to the boy's snub-nosed profile. A pause; then she slid her glance past him through the far window to the Canadian shore. So much the same. But different. A different country. Slaves had escaped to Ontario a hundred years ago. Some of them settled there and never came back.

  The driver spoke unexpectedly. "Here's the boat museum site coming up, Mester McGinniss." A pile of bricks, low and flat, ugly even in the late afternoon sun, occupied the road's left side. Holes gaped for windows. The driver honked his horn at a man sitting hunched over on a sawhorse with his back to them and turned sharply onto Picnic Way, stopping right on the road. Two red trucks and a beat-up black-and-purple sedan squatted on the muddy lot around the half-finished museum. "You want to get out, Mester McGinniss, take a look around?" What was there to look at that they couldn't see from where they were sitting? With Kevin's clean loafers in mind, Leora told the driver to keep driving. Time enough for them to visit when it was open; Kevin wasn't like most boys his age, excited by earthmovers and heavy machinery.

  They headed for the island's center. The Peace Carillon loomed up, narrow and white like that black-burning candle. Usually Belle Isle's spacious vistas calmed Leora's spirit, but not today.

  At Central they turned east again, toward the island's wilder end. "Will we see any deer?" Kevin asked.

  "No tellin," Leora answered.

  "I think we should get out when we get to the woods. They're never going to walk up close to a car." He took his hand back to hold himself up off the seat cushions with two stiff arms, a sure sign of determination. "We could hide ourselves behind some trees."

  Leora was about to tell him about the one time she'd seen them here, a whole herd, eight or ten wild deer, crossing Oak-way bold as you please. But the driver interrupted her thoughts. "A fine idea, Mester McGinniss," he said, as if he was the one to decide those sorts of things. "We'll do just that."

  No one else on the road before them or behind them, and the driver took advantage of that to step on the gas again. What was the man's name? Farmer, she recalled, and was ready to speak up sharp to him, white or not, when he slowed down. Way down.

  He grinned back over his shoulder at the boy, a nervous grin not coming anywhere near his pale eyes. "Like that?" he asked. Kevin nodded, grave as his uncle the judge. "You ever try driving?" Leora clamped her lips firmly shut to make sure she didn't call the man a fool to his face.

  "Maybe when we get safe into the woods I'll take you up on my lap, let you to steer a bit afore we ambush them deer, Mester McGinniss." Farmer turned to the front. "If your mammy won't mind."

  "I ain't his mammy."

  "Beg pardon, but I thought that's what—"

  "Mammies is Southern. I'm Kevin's nanny."

  Farmer muttered something, his voice low, lost under the quiet engine's. She should have kept her own counsel. She should have, but there was only so much a body could take, and after nearly thirty years of passing up on pound cake and plucking her eyebrows and creaming her hardworking hands and pressing her hair and dyeing and altering her employers' worn-out gowns so you wouldn't hardly recognize them, Leora was not about to sit silent while some ignorant peckerwood called her after a fat, ragheaded old Aunt Jemima. And her so light-skinned. Even at forty-two, she was better-looking than that. Not long ago, she had been beautiful.

  Mr. McGinniss had called her irresistible.

  Shadows covered the car hood, the road ahead, the view out of either window. Thin shadows, thickening as she noticed them, leafless branches crowding together to warm their sap in the spring sun. They were in the woods, and suddenly that ignorant driver had swung onto an unpaved side road. The car slowed to a crawl, ruts and puddles rocking it along. Farmer stopped again, for no reason Leora could see.

  "Is this where we hide to look for the deer? And I can learn to drive?" the boy asked.

  "Yessir, Mester McGinniss. This here's the place. Just let me take you on my lap." The driver got out and went around the back to Kevin's side. As Farmer opened the door, the fear smell came off him in great stinking waves like a waterfall. Leora reached for Kevin. She got him by his waist and held him as Farmer grabbed his arm, lifting him half off the car seat.

  The boy screamed. They were pulling him apart, hurting him. Leora loosened her grip, but only for a moment. Then she had him again, by his wool-clad thighs this time, and they were both out on the ground, Farmer yelling and yanking Kevin's arm, jerking him around so that Leora rolled in the mud. Sharp pains, blows to her sides that made her sick. Someone was kicking her and she screamed, held on tighter as if the boy could keep away the pain.

  "Stop." It was a man's voice, sounding quiet above all the noise, like smoke above a flame. Leora held Kevin solidly in her arms, sat up on the muddy ground and looked.

  There were three of them. The driver Farmer, or whatever his real name was, and two more. The others wore masks, but she recognized one by his sweater, a thick gray cardigan bunched up over his broad hips. He had been sitting on the sawhorse at the construction site. He had a gun. It was aimed at her. And beside him stood a thin man in a long coat with his hands in the pockets.

  "What do you want?" Leora asked. The thin man snorted.

  "Shut up, mammy." Farmer rolled his shoulder, wincing like she'd hurt him. Good.

  "Bring the car closer," the thin man said. The driver went off out of sight down the dirt road, past the Caddy. That left two. Could she run away and lose them in the woods?

  "Stay down," said the thin man. "And no more noise out of either of you." The one with the gun lifted it, like it was something she might have missed.

  She didn't ask again what they wanted. They were kidnappers, had to be: the danger that dirty burning signified. That's what these men were up to, like in the papers; why else would they be doing this?

  Kevin started crying and shivering, and Leora turned her attention back to him. "Shush now," she told him. "Ain't nobody gonna hurt you, baby. They just gonna ask your daddy to give them some money is all." She hummed the lullaby Big Momma had taught her, soft, no words, so only he would hear, and stroked his hair back from his face. No words. She had never been able to bring herself to sing them.

  It worked well enough; his sobbing wound itself down to where she could listen in on their captors.

  "—shoulda waited to give the signal on a day she wasn't riding along."

  "Farmer said he'd be able to separate them.
Said he'd have no problems." A short pause. "Find a way to tie and gag her too. Give me the gun. Somebody could come along any minute." Smart, that one in the long coat. In fact, she heard an engine now, getting louder, nearer. The police? They had a station on the island's other side.

  "On your feet, mammy." She looked up from Kevin's dark-lashed eyes. The sweatered man held out one hand to help her up; a dingy-looking red bandana drooped from the other. She got her legs under her and stood up on her own, the boy a soft weight in her arms. She could see through the leafless trees now, and it was only the black-and-purple sedan from the construction site coming toward them. The man took her by the elbow. The sedan stopped, and he started to steer her to its back door.

  "No." She planted her feet as firm as she could. Prepared to fight. The thin man had said it himself: Stay here and someone would come along eventually. No telling where they'd take her once they got her in the car. Not anyplace she'd want to go.

  "I'll shoot you," the thin man said. He stepped nearer and the gun's muzzle dug into her neck. She couldn't tell if it was hot or cold or both. "I will. Give me half a chance," he said, and she decided she'd better believe him. Maybe he wouldn't; maybe a gun would make too much noise. She wasn't going to find out.

  Leora laid Kevin down on the car seat the way she would for a nap. He looked up at her accusingly, as if the kidnapping was her fault, and opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head and put her finger to her lips. She tried to get in next to him, but the gun pressed harder. "Hold up," the thin man told her. She stood as still as she could.