Hurt People

by Cote Smith

  Today it didn’t take long. The man in front of us turned and did a double take when he saw our dad. He was a younger man, with a small body and eyes as big as a squirrel’s.

  “How are you doing, sir?” the man said.

  “Fine, Jason.”

  “Hey, can I talk to you about something, sir? Sue’s got this lawyer, see … do you think we could…”

  My dad sighed through his nose and scratched his mustache. He had a way of not letting his face change when he was annoyed with the public. I tried the same when dealing with my brother, but always broke down.

  My dad turned to us. “You two know what you want?” he said. He gave my brother some money. “Order me whatever you get. Jason, let’s warm up the table.”

  We stood in line and watched our dad lead the young man to a booth by a trash can. We didn’t listen to what they were saying, because we knew the deal. Jason had done something stupid and now wanted our dad’s help in fixing it.

  My brother and I ordered our food, and the cashier gave us a number. Our dad was still talking to Jason, so we picked another booth by a window. We filled paper condiment cups with pools of ketchup for our fries to dive in. We set the table with yellow napkins and extra salt packets for our dad. We were proud and organized, but soon grew bored. We used the table as a football field and a salt packet as a football. By the time our dad came back, we still had no food and the table was a mess.

  “Sit by your brother, son,” my dad said to my brother.

  “What did that guy want?”

  “None of our business.”

  “Did he ask you about the prisoner?”

  “He did.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him we’re going to catch him.”

  “We are?” I said.

  “Of course we are. We’re the good guys, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah,” my brother said.

  “Yeah!” I said, a little too loudly.

  My dad gave me a knowing squint, winked, and sat up a little straighter. I smiled back and sat on my feet, trying to be as tall as him.

  “Find him yet?” a man said. Where he had come from I hadn’t seen. He was an older man, wide in overalls, and with a gray beard down to his chest. I had seen him before and never liked him. He always talked to my dad with fake respect, like how my brother treated me the time I got to rule the apartment for a day as the result of a bet.

  “Hi, Wayne,” my dad said.

  “You talk to his family?”

  “Not yet.”

  “No?” Wayne took a sip from his gigantic chocolate milk shake, rested the cup on his stomach. “Well, I hope you hurry. You know, for your own sake. I mean, aren’t you worried?”

  “Nope,” my dad said. “Not at all. There’s nothing to worry about, right, boys?”

  We nodded. Our dad was going to catch him. That was that.

  “Oh, good,” Wayne said. “That’s real good.” He shook his shake, loudly slurped what was left. “But, um, don’t you think you should be worried? At least a little? I mean, if I was you, if I was the one—”

  “Wayne, it’s not a big deal. Escapes happen. Criminals get out.”

  “Yeah,” Wayne said, “but not ones from around here.” He looked around, as if the Stranger might be watching him. “Not ones everybody remembers.”

  “OK,” my dad said. “We’re trying to eat here.”

  Wayne laughed. Eat? Eat what? He didn’t see nothing to eat. “You know, I’ve been around this city a long time,” he said, leaning on our booth, addressing my brother and me. “I remember when your dad first showed up, just a young pup. A young pup in love. Puppy love,” Wayne said, and wheezed at his own joke. “What I’m trying to say is that I know this city. I know how it works. And I’m telling you if you get this man before anything bad happens, you’ll be chief in no time.”

  Yes. Chief. Our dad would be chief. The good guys would prevail.

  “On the other hand, if you don’t catch him, well, I guess you can always join the Army.” I thought this was a joke too, and that Wayne would wheeze some more, but he didn’t.

  “All right, Wayne. That’s fine.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s one thing to say, it’s another to do.”

  “I hear you. And we’ll get him.”

  “‘We’? Ain’t no ‘we.’ That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You gotta do this. You do. Nobody cares about Tony or that Alan fellow. All eyes are on you.”

  “Wayne.”

  “Lives are on the line. Yours and your boys’.”

  “All right.”

  “You think they’re safe, but I don’t know. I don’t know that anybody’s safe. Hell, what about Aggie?”

  My dad pounded the table.

  “Wayne!”

  The entire restaurant went quiet. Everyone stared at my dad, whose face turned red, like he’d held his breath too long underwater.

  “Listen,” he said, “my family is none of your business. We’ll catch him, OK? Now please leave me and my boys alone.”

  Wayne put his hands up. “Hey, got it. Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb.”

  He waddled out the door and got in his big truck. The rest of the restaurant stopped staring.

  “You should have told that guy to shut up,” my brother said.

  My dad put his head down, like he was looking through the table to see if his shoes were tied, to make sure everything was all right down there.

  “We don’t talk like that.”

  “Why not, he deserved it.”

  The cashier came to our table.

  “I’ve been calling your number,” she said, putting our trays down. “I’ve been calling your number and you never came.”

  My dad didn’t look at her. I wondered if this would be one of those nights where he didn’t talk to us, where he just popped in a movie and told us to be quiet.

  “Make it to go,” he said.

  * * *

  On the way home we stopped by the video store. Our dad stayed in the car while my brother and I ran in. The witch lady was working and she gave us a big bad-toothed smile. We waved at her, but she stared above our heads like there was someone lurking behind us. We quickly moved into the horror section, where a short man with a buzzed head and a patchy beard stood in the way of the movies we wanted. The man thumbed a movie with a bikini-clad space alien on the cover. My brother said excuse me.

  “You’re excused,” the man said. He looked us over, head to toe. “This a place for boys?” We tried to ignore him, his sweat-stained undershirt, his sour smell. My brother grabbed two movies without reading their summaries and pulled me from the aisle to the front counter. The witch lady looked at the movies, then out the store window, where the cruiser idled in the dark. She asked how our dad was doing, and what our plans were for the night. We said we were going to watch these movies with our dad, and would she mind hurrying? She pushed our change back. That sounds like a good time, she said. Enjoy it while it lasts. OK, we said, and we left.

  * * *

  Our dad didn’t go out that night. We watched the first movie and I made it all the way through, head on his chest. The movie featured a pack of dogs that turned into unstoppable killers after drinking from a creek outside a small town’s chemical plant. My dad said something about the environment, but the message was lost on me. After it ended, my dad stayed in his spot on the floor. He didn’t get up and say it was time for bed, then change out of his tank top while we slow-marched to the basement. Instead, he said, “Who’s up for another one?”

  My brother was already walking to the basement door, and the question hit him in the back of the head. “Really?”

  “Don’t look so shocked, boys. Grab the pork rinds.”

  My brother ran into the kitchen, slid on his socks across the linoleum floor. He tossed the bag to my dad and we started the second film, Lieutenant Lazarus, about an Army man who died in the line of duty, only to be brought back to life by his wife, an amateur Wi
ccan, to fight and love again. I knew I wouldn’t last past half an hour. I might see Lazarus die and be revived, but not the climax. I would miss the lessons learned.

  An explosion woke me. I was somehow on the couch with my brother, lying head-to-toe, feet in each other’s face. My brother snored. I did not remember moving or being moved. My dad was on the floor, sitting upright, the only one still watching the movie. It must have been near the end. Flames ate a bad guy’s fort, coloring the screen orange from corner to corner. The screen was like the fireplace at our old house. It felt like Christmas and I did not want to move. When the credits came, my dad didn’t get up or fast-forward to the end to make sure there were no bonus scenes hinting at a possible sequel. The name of every person who worked on the movie rolled by, one after the other, and there were no hidden scenes, no meanings tucked away.

  The screen went black and my dad didn’t move. My eyes adjusted and I could tell the difference between this black, where the film was still playing but had nothing to show, and the set’s real black, when the TV was powered down or unplugged.

  I slid off the couch and crawled to my dad.

  “Are you spying on people again?” he said. I leaned against his shoulder and wondered how much he remembered from the other night. If I said the name Chris, would it mean anything?

  My dad stared at the blank set. “Who’s this guy your mother’s seeing?” he said. He put his hand to the fake-black screen, and I could hear the pop of the TV’s static. I knew he was talking about Rick, but I didn’t want to say his name. “When I patrol late at night, I always swing by your guys’ apartment. Sometimes I just sit there in the parking lot, watching, making sure everything’s OK.”

  He didn’t have to say the rest. I pictured my dad in the parking lot the night before, the night of the party. I saw Rick stumble out of our building in the dark, my mother close behind. I saw her walk him to his car, give him a kiss good night, as wet as the one she gave me. I saw my dad see all of this.

  “Don’t tell her,” my dad said, “but sometimes I can’t take the way your mother looks at me.” He put his head on mine and I could taste his stale breath, battered with cheap beer. He must have started drinking as soon as my brother and I fell asleep.

  “I don’t like being in trouble either,” I said.

  “Well then, I guess we better change our ways,” my dad said. “Otherwise we’re no better than Lieutenant Lazarus, are we?”

  I told him no, I guess not.

  “It’s funny, I kinda learned something from that stupid movie.”

  “What happened to him?”

  My dad put his warm hand on my cold neck. “We’ll find out tomorrow. Time for bed.” He ejected the tape and pushed me toward the basement door.

  “Are you going out?”

  My dad kissed the top of my head. “Good night, you ghoul.”

  * * *

  My brother wasn’t asleep when I slid into bed. He couldn’t, he said. He had Lazarus swimming laps in his brain.

  “There was a spider,” he said. “When I came downstairs. Right on my pillow.”

  “Did you kill it?”

  I knew the answer was no. He hated bugs, so he wouldn’t come close to touching it, not even through a shoe. He would have waited until the spider walked away. He would have crawled into bed and shut his eyes, hoping for sleep. But every time the sheet bristled his leg, he would think it was a spider. That’s why he was still awake.

  “Let’s watch the rest of the movie,” he said.

  “We can’t. Dad’s gone.”

  “We can. Dad’s gone.”

  He rolled over and turned on the lamp. “Fine, you can stay down here with the spiders.”

  He left me with the lamp, and I might have stayed down there if the biggest spider I’d ever seen hadn’t crawled across the ceiling, right above our bed. I didn’t bother closing my eyes, waiting for the spider to drop down a thread of web and land on my face. I ran upstairs to our empty living room, then up to my dad’s room. The light was on but my dad was gone. My brother was rummaging through the trash on his dresser.

  “How do you know it’s in here?” I asked.

  “Because it wasn’t by the TV. And because this is the only room we’re not allowed in.”

  As I stood in the doorway, I was very aware that the last time I’d been here, my dad had yelled at me. To never come back. This, shortly after he moved in. The first weekend my brother and I visited, when the basement was stacked with boxes and there was no bed for boys to sleep in. Our dad had gone out that night to have a few beers, to get a few buddies off his back. It would only be an hour or two, he told us, and set out pillows and sheets on the couch and floor. He left alone and returned otherwise. The next morning I snuck in after a bath, searching for a comb, and surprised a blob of blankets moving in unison. The hallway threw light on the headboard and a woman sighed a soft, spent breath. My dad’s head emerged from the blob, his hair twisted and his face flushed. Get the hell out, he said. Don’t ever come back.

  “C’mon,” I said. “It’s not here.”

  “Maybe it’s hidden,” my brother said.

  He opened a drawer, another, and combed through my dad’s T-shirts and underwear. Nothing. He looked under the bed, felt under the mattress.

  “Why would he hide it like this?” I said.

  “Because he doesn’t want it to hurt anyone,” my brother said. “Duh.”

  I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say. It felt like we were talking about two different things, like my brother was after something other than the movie, though I couldn’t imagine what.

  I watched him wander to the closet, stand before its closed doors like they were the entrance to a forbidden temple. He slowly slid one open. Nothing happened. There were no traps or poisonous darts. There were my dad’s uniforms. There were dress shirts and a tangle of ties, none of which I’d ever seen him wear. My brother pushed the shirts apart. He got on his knees and picked through a pile of shoes.

  “Check up top,” I said. Above the hangers sat something shiny, though I couldn’t tell what.

  “Help me get it,” my brother said. I shook my head. When my dad asked if I’d kept my promise, I wanted to answer him honestly.

  My brother called me a baby, and removed the fan resting on a dining chair borrowed from downstairs. He dragged the chair to the closet, and in an instant was back on the floor, holding a metal box, the temple’s long-lost treasure.

  “Don’t open it,” I said. “That looks private.”

  “Not private,” my brother said. “Secret.”

  The lid opened with a click, and I watched my brother’s face change from wonder to something else.

  “Found it,” he said, and he held up a tape. I turned and ran downstairs, now that the search was over, just in case our dad returned. A moment later, my brother came downstairs, slowly.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  “Relax. You know Dad.”

  He turned on the TV and put the tape in the VCR. A triangle appeared when he hit play, floating in a pool of blue. Then a person. No FBI warning. No rating or warning about the content to come.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” my brother said. “It didn’t say.”

  “What do you mean—”

  A woman sat in a chair. Gagged but not blindfolded. Behind her a gray wall. A basement. Her wide eyes watched something off screen. Her face was something of shock and fear. Of begging and sorrow. Her body twisted, but was wrapped in rope. Her legs tied down, knotted together. All this and the hum of the room. No songs or effects. There was only what was real. A man appeared on screen, his back to the camera. Jeans and a T-shirt. Something in his hand. He took the gag out of the woman’s mouth and let her scream. Until her voice grew to nothing, until she realized it was pointless. The man disappeared from the screen.

  “You know what to say,” he said, off camera. The woman didn’t say anything. She put her head down and shook
with tears. The camera zoomed in on the woman’s face. She was young, not much older than a girl. The man backed the zoom out a bit, so we could see the woman’s entire head, the bubble of space around her. We saw her head thrash. We saw her eyes beg. But she didn’t speak, except to whisper please.

  The screen went black, and I thought the movie was over. But it was just the man passing through the frame, standing in front of the woman before moving to the side, remembering that he wanted everyone to see. He put something to the woman’s head. A toy gun. A real gun. The woman screamed please, she loved him. She wouldn’t tell anyone. The man clicked off the safety and the woman shut her eyes impossibly tight.

  “Go ahead,” the man said. “Tell them why.”

  The woman put her head down. The man’s voice was gravelly, strangely calm. He grabbed her by her hair, slowly tilted her head back.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “I’ve already forgiven you. But you need to tell them. They need to understand that you deserve this.”

  The woman begged. Her brain wouldn’t let her say anything but please. The man’s hand combed her hair. He said it was OK. She didn’t have to talk if she didn’t want to.

  The man put the gun to her head and, before I could shut my eyes, he fired.

  * * *

  The woman’s body slumped limp. For a moment, the man simply stood there, staring with awe at what he’d done. The movie did not cut away. The camera would not move. The man touched the woman’s shattered head. He rubbed the blood between his fingers, on his clothes. He removed the camera from its tripod and made us watch as he untied the woman and let her fall to the floor. The camera marveled at how lifeless something living could become. I felt sick. I tried to tell my brother to stop the tape, but the man started talking. He said things that didn’t make sense. I didn’t know this woman, he said, and zoomed in on her broken face, the dark pool it was drowned in. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me. He said, Nobody knows anybody, and if you think you do, this is what you get. He grabbed her soaked hair and pushed the camera into her face. He zoomed in, tighter and tighter, closer and closer, until there was nothing but her big dead eye.