The Blinds

by Adam Sternbergh

  Not that everyone here had a choice, of course, she understands that, too. Sometimes the decision finds you. Sometimes the decision kicks in your door or wakes you in your cell or presents itself in stark terms in a bare room with an attorney present while you’re handcuffed to a table. The decision: a lifetime of fear in prison somewhere, dreading death in every moving shadow, or a new life unburdened of all your past sins, with a new name, a new home, new neighbors, hidden away in this place. A decision that’s laid out to you in hard-to-follow legalese, as the Institute’s representative slides a silver folder across the table, with a single, unfamiliar word embossed on the cover: Caesura.

  Will I remember what I did?

  You won’t.

  But will I know that I’ve forgotten it?

  You will.

  So I’ll know I did something bad, but I won’t know what it was.

  You’ll know you made the decision to come to this place.

  That’s the sales pitch, delivered calmly, even soothingly. Like they’re hoping to sell you a piece of land, except this piece of land is in Texas, in the desert, behind a fourteen-foot fence, and you can never come back and, by the way, you won’t even remember this conversation. Then they explain, in an effort to close the deal, that no matter where you go, you will always have a secret, and that the best way to keep a secret is to keep it from yourself. That the one thing in life you can never outrun is the guilt over what you’ve done. That follows you everywhere. Except here. Because they can make it all go away. They tap the folder.

  She spots the sheriff walking away alone, breaking from his two deputies, and she scrambles to catch him. “Sheriff Cooper?”

  He turns. “Can I help you, Miss—” He squints. “I’m sorry, I remember you from intake, but I left before you took your new name.”

  “Burr. Bette Burr,” she says, then laughs. “Well, that sounds weird. Bette Burr.” She rolls the Rs and pops the Bs. “Bette. Burr. I guess that’s my new name now. I’m looking to meet someone.”

  “You just did—Calvin Cooper,” he says. “You can call me Sheriff or Cal or Hey You, they all work fine by me.” She’s got freckles sprayed like buckshot across the bridge of her nose, he notices. Pretty. Seems friendly. From out west originally, he’d bet—her skin looks too sun-toasted to have come shrink-wrapped from the pale-faced East. Late twenties, maybe. You don’t get many people that young in this place. She definitely must be an innocent, he thinks—a victim, not a perpetrator, and a victim of something so traumatic she chose to wipe it from her memory and start fresh. “So how can I help you, Ms. Burr?”

  “I’m especially curious to meet William Wayne.”

  Cooper chuckles. “Oh God, you’re not a groupie, are you?”

  “I just remember all the coverage he got before he came here.”

  “That was ages ago. How do you even know his new name? That’s not supposed to be public knowledge.”

  “Sheriff, there are entire websites dedicated to him. People drive out to the desert with telephoto lenses to try and snap pictures of him.”

  “They used to. That kind of died down. And we do our best to chase those folks away, with a little help from the local U.S. Marshals office.” Cooper wonders if, in the wired world beyond their fences, there’s any such thing as a true secret anymore. “I’ll warn you that William is not much for new friends. He never comes out of his house, just gets his groceries dropped off on the doorstep. Hell, I haven’t seen him in months—and I go out of my way to check on him every so often, make sure he’s still with us.”

  “I was just intrigued. I mean, imagine the stories he could tell.”

  “But that’s the thing, Bette. He doesn’t have those stories anymore. That’s why he’s here. That’s why you’re all here.”

  “Of course. I just thought maybe he remembers some of it.”

  “Not if the Institute did its job.”

  Bette smiles, like she can’t believe she’s been so silly. “Sure, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sure you’ve got other things on your mind.”

  “I’ll tell you what, stop by the police station tomorrow and we can discuss it,” says Cooper. “I’ll tell you all about old William Wayne.”

  Bette looks him over. He’s handsome, or used to be once, with a few intriguing scars, including one that descends in a faint white arc across his forehead and through one eyebrow like a falling meteor. He’s probably used to the easy attention of women. That can be a handy quality in someone you’re trying to get something from, she’s learned. The genial, vain, eager-to-save-the-day sheriff—she may have just cut her work in half.

  “That would be great,” she says. “Nice to meet you in person, Sheriff.”

  “Cal.”

  “Cal.” She smiles again, pausing like she’s about to say something more, then she just nods, gives him a little wave, and walks away. Don’t lay it on too thick, she thinks. You’re simply here to find a door and you just need him to point the way. Once you find the door, you knock. And she has a feeling that when she does, the famous recluse William Wayne will open for her. Once he learns who she really is. Who her father is. Or was.

  The knocking will be the easy part.

  After that, all she needs to do, this newly christened Bette Burr, with her approachable manner and open face and irresistibly pleasant demeanor, is deliver to William Wayne the most unwelcome news of his crooked, wayward, broken, blood-soaked life.

  Fran sits and flips through an obsolete magazine, which somehow washed ashore in this Laundromat from several years in the past. There’s no one else in the place, of course, just her, as usual. Following the welcome interruption of the town meeting, she returned to finish the one task that seems to occupy her every waking hour: the never-ending cleansing of the clothes. Our Lady of Perpetual Laundry. She wonders if anyone else in the town has this many soiled socks and jeans to clean, but then, no one else in the town has a kid. Just her. The only parent. On top of everything else she’s dealing with, lonely doesn’t begin to describe how that feels. Isaac’s off playing right now, alone, in the sad little playground they installed for him not long after he was born, just a patch of dirt, some scrubby grass, a slide, and a swing set with just one lonely swing. Getting his clothes dirty. And so the cycle goes.

  As she glances idly at the magazine’s glossy pages, she wonders if these hairstyles are still stylish. Are these fad diets still the fad? Are these time-saving recipes still saving time? There’s a breezy story about a celebrity marriage, a tell-all about a singer’s comeback from addiction, and a Q&A with a handsome tech guru sharing his lifestyle tips. Buddy, she thinks, you’re a billionaire, so finding time for calming daily meditation is probably not an issue for you. She tries to remember a time in her life, before Isaac, before this town, when she cared about hairstyles and fad diets. She can’t remember a goddamn thing. Just trying to remember gives her a headache. How old is this magazine, anyway? She checks the cover—eight years old, holy shit, it’s the same age as her son. That celebrity couple is definitely divorced by now. That singer is back in rehab. She tosses it aside and glances up, listening to the washers’ throaty grumble, watching her and her son’s clothes tumble, slosh, and paw at the glass, trying to escape their sudsy fate.

  The TV hinged to the concrete wall above the long bank of washers is turned to the all-news channel, prattling disposable headlines piped in from the outside world: new arguments, new advances, new fronts in distant wars, new studies, new polls, new perils. She searches for the remote to mute it. No one here can contact anyone on the outside, but they sure as hell get all the endless news. She was surprised, when she first arrived, how quickly she stopped caring about the ceaseless chatter of current events. Now she actively avoids it, which is easy enough. There’s no Internet, just the TV in the Laundromat and the few stray newspapers that show up at the library. A couple of people keep radios, but she doesn’t bother. She’s come to value the silence. There is certainly plenty of that. />
  As she hunts for the remote, she catches what’s happening on-screen: Coma Tycoon Considers Senate Run reads the news crawl, as a handsome man in a well-tailored suit stands at a podium in front of some flags. “Some call it a miracle, some call it impossible, but I just want my old life for me and a better life for all Americans,” he says. Holy shit! She picks up the magazine to confirm: Yes, it’s that same stupid tech guru with the daily meditation tips. So he’s a politician now? He has time to make a fortune and meditate and run for the Senate, and she can’t even get to the bottom of the laundry hamper.

  She watches him; he’s handsome, she’ll give him that. He thanks the crowd, cameras click in reply, his smile blossoms. Reporters shout questions. Her headache barks again. She finds the remote on top of a washer and changes the channel, flipping until she lands on that station where they show exhumed game shows from the seventies all day long. Now this is more like it: no hubbub of the daily news, just polyester lapels and canned laughter, lightning rounds and mystery prizes.

  Why the Institute didn’t think to put washers and dryers in each bungalow when they built this place, she can’t imagine. She wished they’d told her that before she came here—it might have been a deal breaker. Someday maybe she’ll live in a place with a washer and dryer in the basement. A backyard, a real yard, for Isaac. And playmates. A school. That’s what Cooper’s always talking about, like it’s an actual possibility. Like what happened to poor Jean Mondale and little Jacob never happened. Jean, wild Jean, who got herself knocked up within a month of arriving here and then, a few years back, when Jacob was barely two, decided the Blinds was no place to raise a kid. She was right, of course, she was absolutely right, so they packed up and left, the two of them, and everyone here wished them well. They were dead, mother and son, within a week. The residents can’t contact the outside world, but they sure as hell get the endless news. Everyone gathered around the TV watching the news reports. Now there’s a new rule: If you get pregnant in the Blinds, you don’t have a choice but to end it. There won’t ever be another kid born here. There will never be another kid to swing on that lonely swing. Isaac was the first and, now, he’s the last, for as long as they choose to stay here. Sometimes Isaac still asks about Jacob, what happened to him, where he went. She never knows what to tell him.

  The washers slosh to an end, stilling, the clothes slumping into a sodden heap. She pulls them out, tosses them into the dryer. Everything about this feels so familiar to her. Not just like she’s done it before, but like she’s never not doing it.

  She hits Run on the dryer and turns her attention back to the game show. Someone’s winning something. Someone’s getting hugged. Someone’s jumping up and down with joy. She’s always thought it strange that there’s a whole channel dedicated to reruns of old game shows. Why does she care to see who among these contestants will triumph or stumble? Who will choose the cash in hand and who chooses what’s behind Door Number Three? These are all repeats anyway, so these people’s fates have already played out. Whether they won or lost was decided for them long ago.

  7.

  COOPER STANDS IN THE DOORWAY of Errol Colfax’s darkened bungalow.

  There’s no light; it’s long past dark; the carpeted living room is striped by stray shards of errant outdoor glow. The town’s other residents have all retired to their homes, to their VCRs, their crossword puzzles, their bottles of various potencies, the few distractions kept on hand to tide them through the long silent hours of the night. There’s no tape over Colfax’s doorway anymore, no padlock on the door, it’s been left open for anyone to enter. But best as Cooper can tell, it looks exactly as it did the night Colfax died. No one’s been here in the two months since, save for a band of volunteers, including Greta Fillmore, Spiro Mitchum, and Buster Ford, all among the original eight, who offered to come with buckets and bleach and clean the place up as best they could, out of respect for Colfax. Cooper himself didn’t join them. This house was not a scene he cared to revisit.

  After a long moment spent lingering in the doorway, he steps inside and shuts the door. He stands alone for another moment in the murky dark. The air is still stagnant, just as stale as he remembers it from that night, but now it’s tinged with an ambient tang of cleaning products. He flicks on his flashlight, swings its beam around the room, focusing his search. He figures it’s better not to turn the overhead lights on and spook anyone who might notice him poking around. Part of him doesn’t want to be here at all—more than part of him, to be truthful. Cooper shines his beam over the chair where Colfax died. He spotlights the dark brown oval stain on the floral upholstery. No amount of scrubbing could remove that, apparently.

  He gets on his hands and knees and rubs his palm lightly over the shag carpet, a foot or so from the chair. When Greta and her crew were cleaning up, they would have focused on the blood, not on finding a shell, which would have ejected in the opposite direction. Maybe one of them thought to check for it and never mentioned it to Cooper, or maybe they vacuumed the carpet and sucked up the shell with a rattle without even knowing it, and the shell is gone forever, but he doubts it. Just as he’s contemplating these possibilities his palm rolls over a hard cylinder in the shag, and there it is. He picks it up and holds it in the flashlight’s glare: a spent 9 mm shell. He pinches it between his fingertips and inspects it, then pockets it.

  Then he stands up and walks to the wall adjacent to the chair and shines his light over the painted cinder block. Now this wall, they did a real good job of scrubbing. Cooper remembers well just how much blood there was that night. Now there’s not a trace. Maybe a faint tint, if you look long enough. And the bullet shouldn’t be too hard to find, he thinks. One nice thing about cinder block is that no round is going to penetrate it, and given how close Colfax’s chair is to the wall, the gun was basically fired point-blank into the cinder block, with only Colfax’s skull to impede its journey.

  Cooper traces his flashlight beam over the wall until he finds the point of impact, a small but unmistakable pockmark. He rubs his thumb over it. No bullet lodged in there—not deep enough. So he gets on his knees again and searches. He wonders again if maybe they found the slug in the cleanup. No one mentioned finding a bullet, but then, he’s not sure they would have thought it worth mentioning. After all, there wasn’t any doubt among them about what had happened in this bungalow: Colfax put a bullet in his brain. In a way, it made sense. Colfax was always a recluse. A gun had gone missing in the town. And who among them hadn’t thought at least once of ending it, in that way or some other, during their long tenure here?

  As Cooper searches blindly, groping along the floor, he remembers Colfax’s body, the way it slumped awkwardly sideways in that floral La-Z-Boy chair. Colfax was not the first dead body Cooper had ever encountered, but it was the first he’d seen that had been so violently ended. During his time as a prison guard, he’d seen a few stiffs gurneyed out: diabetic shock, a heart attack, each body gray and unmistakably stilled. Colfax was different. Cooper was profoundly struck at the time by the disorder of it all—the anarchic pattern painted by bodily innards so powerfully ejected. The thought of just how inadequate the body’s natural defenses—skull, bone, brain—were in the face of the advanced physics—lead, gunpowder, momentum—of invented death. It all seemed so absurd to him: that a life comprising so many accumulated years could be interrupted with such indifferent swiftness. The fundamental fragility of it. The truth of it lingers with Cooper still. How quickly and casually it all ends. Unlike the other longtime residents of the Blinds, the ones he’s been tasked to protect, he does not enjoy the privilege of forgetting what he’s seen. He remembers everything.

  His fingers find it first. It’s wedged in a crack in the baseboard where the floor meets the wall. Cooper wiggles his finger in until he gets hold of the slug, then retrieves the misshapen round and studies it under his flashlight. God, he’s getting old, he thinks, his eyes are going, especially in low light. He holds the bullet closer until his ey
es can finally focus and it snaps into detail, this misshapen killer. He’s amazed that the bullet’s still here, frankly, after all this time, just waiting for him to find it, but then, where else would it go? Its job is long over. Just like the people in this town. It served its one purpose and now it’s been discarded and forgotten.

  Except this bullet has one more job, Cooper thinks: To be a witness. To be bagged and sent to Agent Rigo, in Amarillo, to tell him everything it knows. To be compared with the bullet that killed Gable and, possibly, to confirm that they were both fired from the very same gun. Which, if true, would mean that both Colfax and Gable were likely murdered, and likely by the same hand. It’s possible the bullet is too damaged, too mashed, to reveal anything useful, but then again, as the people in this town can attest, even the profoundly damaged sometimes have useful stories to tell. Even if those stories are later wiped away. Some stories are probably better lost forever, never remembered, never told.

  This bullet here, for example, thinks Cooper, has quite the story to tell, if it’s ever allowed to tell it. For starters, it was definitely fired from the same gun that killed Hubert Gable.

  Same finger pulled the trigger both times, too.

  But then, Cooper already knows the story of this bullet, from the moment it left the gun.

  Given he’s the one who fired it.

  He considers the bullet a moment longer, then drops it in his pocket, alongside the spent 9 mm shell.

  Cooper raises a glass.

  Happy birthday. To forty-five.

  He drinks.

  Forty-five, he thinks, is basically a quick spit’s distance from fifty. And fifty, he knows, is the moment in life when you stop looking forward and wondering what kind of person you might become, and start looking backward and wondering how you became the person you are.

  He sits at his kitchen table under the light of a single pendant lamp. It’s nearly midnight. A half-drunk bottle of bourbon is on the table before him, and the half-drunk Cooper contemplates it.