by Cote Smith
Do you know me? the man said. If you did, would you have done what you did? Would I be able to do this?
He shot her again. The woman’s eye went a thousand directions.
This is what happens, the man said. Don’t worry waiting. This is what we’re all gonna get.
Then the screen went black, and there was nothing.
* * *
My brother wouldn’t eject the tape. He sat on his knees, frozen. The TV was black, but I still saw the tape’s images, over and over. Get it out of there, I tried to tell him, but a sob was stuck in my throat, hung there fat and dry. The tape wasn’t going anywhere. It was here forever.
Who knows how long we would have stayed there if our dad hadn’t come home. The cruiser’s headlights washed over the front-door window, thawing out my brother. Without a word he ejected the tape and sprinted upstairs, returning it and the cursed box it came in. He flew back down the stairs and into the basement, forgetting that I was frozen too, so that when my dad came in, there I was, still sitting on the floor.
“I thought we had a deal,” he said.
“I can’t sleep.”
He shook his head. “It’s the movie, isn’t it?”
My dad bent down and picked me up like I was nothing. He carried me downstairs, into the black of the basement, and tucked me in next to my brother, pretending to sleep.
“Don’t worry,” my dad said, “there’s no such thing as a Lazarus. No one dead like that is ever coming back.”
He started up the stairs and I tried to call after him.
“Dad,” I said. But nothing more.
I rolled over and inched as close as I could to my brother, listening for his heartbeat in the dark.
seven
THE NEXT MORNING our mother picked us up for church again. When our dad answered the door, the sun was behind him, and he was wearing a new polo. It fit his arms well, but was too wide around the body. From the side he looked big and fit, but from the front a bit like a kid in his older brother’s shirt.
He stepped to the side and told my mother to come in. “They’re not ready,” he said, and the entrance hall’s linoleum creaked as my mother walked in, arms crossed like she forgot her jacket. She raised her shades and her face looked tired, her makeup faded.
“What are you watching?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said as Lieutenant Lazarus mowed down a team of Soviets. My dad had put the tape in first thing this morning, and although I didn’t want to watch the rest, I also didn’t want to stare at a blank screen. Lazarus popped open a Russian’s skull like a can of cat food, started gnawing on his brain. He was a cannibal now. One of the ways his witch bride got the spell wrong.
My mom stopped the tape. “Where’s your brother?”
I told her I didn’t know that, either. I didn’t tell her that he was still in bed, that he hadn’t moved since last night. I’d wanted to stay with him, but as soon as I woke up he told me one of us needed to be upstairs.
My dad put the news on.
“Have you heard anything more about that guy?” my mother said, whispering too loudly.
“We’ve got a couple of ideas,” my dad said. “It’s not a big deal.”
“A friend at work said his family still lives around here. Is that true?”
“A friend at work,” my dad repeated. “Huh.”
I turned from the TV and looked at my mom, who was picking at her hangnails, one of her bad habits she could never break. “Yes,” she said. “Cornbread, I think it was.”
“Right,” my dad said. “Cornbread. Well, your friend is right. He still has family. Tony’s already talked to them, but the Chief wants me to head out there today.”
There was a short silence as the news went to the weather. I followed the weather report, waiting for the woman to tell me what today and tomorrow would be like.
“Anyway,” my mother said, “thanks again for the phone.”
“What phone?” I said.
“Your dad bought us a new phone. Dropped it off last night. Cordless, like something from the future.”
“You’re welcome,” my dad said, mouth full of eggs. “Sorry I interrupted.”
That’s where he went. Why he didn’t come home smelling like strawberries.
“Hey,” my mother said, and I heard my dad drop his fork on his empty plate. “Is everything OK?”
A graphic came on the TV. Five columns of clear skies, a large orange ball in front of a pool of blue.
“Of course,” my dad said. “You and your friend have nothing to worry about.”
On the way home after church, my mother kept the radio off. My brother sat up front, but still wasn’t talking. Van noises filled the void. Each sound was a symptom of the van’s larger illness, my mother said. The whining serpentine belt. The thundering muffler. All point to old age, she said. All hint that the van’s best days are behind it.
At Eisenhower and Main, the vehicle idled oddly. My mother petted the steering wheel. “I’ll tell you guys, if I found a way to escape this place, if I stumbled into some money or something, I’d pack my bags and go right back to school. You wouldn’t catch me lurking around.”
My mother let herself smile. I had never seen a college, but I pictured my mother at my school, walking around, hair bobbing, encyclopedia clutched to her chest.
“Of course, you guys would come with me. You know that, right?”
I nodded my head. She turned on the radio. Over the music, I could hear the van’s engine ticking away.
* * *
We went to the pool every day that week, but we never saw Chris. Or the smoking lady. We were careful to sneak out each morning, sneak in each afternoon. When we left the apartment, we sniffed the air for cigarettes, then poked our eyes into the hallway, slicing the pie. The smoking lady was never there, though the hall still smelled of smoke. It became clear that our mother never checked with the smoking lady, to see how we were doing, or she did and the smoking lady lied and said we were good, then went back to sleeping or watching TV or whatever it was she did when she wasn’t smoking. Either way, no one was watching my brother and me. Either way, we could do whatever we wanted.
Our dad had to work that Friday night, so instead of going to his duplex we went to work with our mother. There was something about the weekend, she said, that she didn’t want us home alone. I thought her worry might have to do with the full moon floating in the sky, beaming like a silver coin, or the distant way my brother had been behaving.
At night we weren’t allowed to explore the course like during the day. We had to stay indoors, which was incredibly boring. The cafeteria was closed, so Sandy was gone, as was Cornbread. There was just our mom, leaning against the counter in the pro shop, staring off into space, dreaming of what, I did not know.
When Rick showed, she perked up. He brought two greasy bags of food, one for him, one for her, none for us. Sorry, Rick said, I thought the mice were away. My mother took some change from the register and gave it to us for the vending machine. Make sure you each get something sweet, she said. Rick slid her a burger and pinched her by the elbow. He said, Don’t mind if I do.
The vending machine was downstairs, next to the door that led to the golf cart garage, which was locked at night. The entire way down my brother mumbled mean things about Rick. Things like God I hate that guy and Why can’t he just die? I thought it would have been a perfect time for the candy bar my brother selected to fail to fall, to hang on its hook and refuse to dive. But the bar fell no problem, and when my brother handed me the leftover change, I was a nickel short of all the things I wanted.
Neither of us wanted to go back upstairs. Neither of us wanted to see our mother with Rick, even if it was just eating fries, or straightening the shop for the five customers who came at night after hitting a bucket at the driving range. My brother tried the garage door, just to make sure there was nowhere else we could go. When it didn’t turn, he sat on the stairs and unfoiled his candy bar, eating the who
le thing in three or four vicious chomps, not offering me a bite.
“Do you want to play a game?” I said.
“Do I look like I want to play a game?” He threw the candy wrapper on the floor.
Our mother came looking for us half an hour later. What were we doing, she wanted to know. She had a smirk on her face, seeing us there, alone but not complaining. It was as if she was proud that her two boys could go anywhere and have fun. Like she was happy knowing she could leave us anyplace and we would use our powerful imaginations to turn that place into a new and exciting world, alive with danger and possibility. She didn’t seem to realize that my brother was angry, or upset, or something else. Since we’d watched the tape, it was hard to tell.
We didn’t want to see Rick, I told her. That was all.
“You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to see,” our mother said. She stood there for a second, then sat down on the stairs, her knees popping as she crouched next to us. “You know, I’m not going to make you like anyone you don’t want to like. That wouldn’t be fair.” She picked up my brother’s candy bar wrapper, turned it inside out. “But you won’t be rude to anyone. And you’ll do as I say or suffer the consequences.”
She tried to put her arm around my brother but he brushed it off. Suffer the consequences. It was something a villain would say, a dungeon master, not a dungeon mate. Without a word my brother stood up and stomped up the stairs, leaving me with my mother.
“I guess he’s still mad from the party,” she said, and I felt her gaze drift toward me, as if to say, What do you think, cute boy? And even though I thought Rick was the biggest jerk alive, I still felt something for my mother. I still wanted to lean into her and smell her shirt and say I was sorry, for spying, for lying to her about Chris, for my brother. I wanted to tell her about the tape and for her to tell me it wasn’t real.
But I didn’t say anything, and after a minute of silence, my mother balled up the candy wrapper. She pushed the foil into her fist, like a magician would a handkerchief, until the whole thing disappeared.
* * *
My brother and I spent the rest of the night building a fort in the cafeteria. We dragged two tables together and hid underneath, behind the chairs that sat upside down on the tabletops. We didn’t have a name for it, but our fort was someplace safe. No one could see us, we believed, but we could see everything. We saw Rick hang around, even though it was clear he wasn’t here to work. We saw our mother help a man for fifteen minutes, showing him the different clubs available. We saw the man leave without buying anything, our mother and Rick shrugging and laughing.
When it became late, we fell asleep. We must have. Otherwise we would have seen it when our dad showed up. We wouldn’t have missed him taking two chairs off our fort’s table, turning them upright. We would’ve thought that after our dad sat down in one chair, it would have been our mother who sat in the other. We would’ve heard her thank him again for the phone, their voices warming in a way they hadn’t in a while. We would have heard and seen all these things. We would have never guessed that the person who sat opposite our dad wouldn’t be our mother. It would be Rick.
“Thanks for doing this,” my dad said.
“Hey,” Rick said, “anything for the po-lice.”
It was my brother who poked me awake, I later realized. Who without a word told me to be quiet, and pointed at the chairs, the extra legs present. Our dad’s were all black, draped in his uniform. Rick’s were tight in light blue jeans, though we only saw one on the floor. He must have had his legs crossed, like talking to our dad the police officer was no big deal.
“You know why I’m here?” my dad said.
Rick laughed. “Yeah, I know why you’re here. Because you missed the party.”
“No,” my dad said. “It has nothing to do with that.”
“You sure? Sure you’re not mad that you missed out?”
“Why don’t you shut up and let me do the talking.”
Rick uncrossed his legs. Now both feet were firmly on the floor. “How about you not talk to me like that,” he said.
Or what? I would have said, my brother would have said, if one of us was playing the good guy, the other the bad. What are you going to do? We would have taken out our nightstick and showed it to Rick. Pulled out our gun if we had one. I’m an officer of the law, we would have said. Now sit there, shut your mouth, and do as I say.
“Listen,” my dad said. “I’m not here to get on your case. I know you jailed with Kern. That’s all I want to talk about.”
“Don’t you mean the Stranger?” Rick said. “The big bad Stranger. Though I guess he’s not a stranger to you.”
I heard my dad sigh through his nose, perform his patience trick.
“Fine,” Rick said. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know anything I can use. Did he ever say anything to you?”
“Who? The Stranger? Oh yeah. All the time. Didn’t you know, we were best buds?” Rick laughed. “Yep, we used to talk about all sorts of things. Sports, the weather. Our favorite movies. He liked those violent ones, you know, for mature audiences only.”
“Rick,” my dad said.
“Yeah, me, I’m more into comedies. But he was a real sick bastard. Said he liked making movies of his own. You know, homemade stuff. Real gory. You know anything about that?”
The tape. The woman.
“I’m being serious,” my dad said.
“Good,” Rick said. “That makes one of us.”
“Did he ever say anything about what he wanted to do if he got out? Anyone he wanted to see?”
Rick laughed. “You mean other than you?” he said. “Nope, didn’t say a thing.” My brother and I looked at each other with confusion. “Seriously, are these the questions? You know we weren’t in the same cell, right? Not even the same block. I barely saw the guy.”
There was a pause in the interrogation. My dad crossed his legs at the ankle, making a diamond-shaped window, and through that window we saw my mother. She was still in the pro shop, no doubt curious what this talk was all about.
“Yes,” my dad said. “I do know that.”
“Oh,” Rick said. “I get it.” He stood up, and my brother and I retreated farther under the table so he couldn’t see us. “I was right. This is about what you missed.” He walked away from our dad and faced the pro shop. “Or, miss.”
“I’m just trying to do my job,” my dad said.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “I know what you’re trying to do.” He watched my mother fish a misplaced shirt off a top rack, put it where it belonged. “You think you can scare her, is that it? Remind her who I am and she’ll come running back?”
My dad shifted in his chair, and I heard the click of his pen as he put his pad away.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rick said. He laughed and my dad told him to shut up. That he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Maybe,” Rick said. “Maybe not. But I do know some things. Some things I know for sure.”
Like what? my dad said. Oh, nothing much, Rick said. Just the threat Kern made that day in court, the day he was sentenced to life, with my dad, the arresting officer, watching. Rick pulled out a big dip of chew and tucked a chunk under his bottom lip, ballooning the lower half of his face into that of a deformed monster. “You should have let me die,” the monster said. “You should have let me kill myself. Now someday I’m going to come for you. Someday I’ll hurt the people you love.”
Rick dug an empty soda cup out of the trash, spit into it. With the back of his hand he wiped away the monster drool dripping from his chin. “That about sum it up?” he said. “Or should we invite Aggie in here, reenact the whole thing?”
My dad stood up and put his finger in Rick’s face. I always thought the two were the same height, but seeing them next to each other, it was clear Rick was taller, and more muscular.
“What?” Rick said, looking down at my dad. “What are you going to do? You touch me and I’ll tell her
all about what Kern said. You come near me again and good luck seeing your boys.”
As if on cue, my mother entered the cafeteria. “What’s going on?”
My dad paused. He looked at his finger like how did it get there, like a puppet finally becoming aware of its strings. “Nothing,” he said.
“Is everything OK?”
“Yes.” He smiled weakly. “He’s all yours.”
My mother watched him leave. “What was that all about?”
“He just had a few questions,” Rick said. “That’s all.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “What did you tell him?” There was worry in her voice, though I wasn’t sure about what. Rick pulled my mother into him and stared at the cafeteria door, as if any moment my dad might return.
Rick said, “I told him what he needed to know.”
* * *
The next day the van died. In the morning, my brother and I sat down for breakfast and watched our mother leave for work. We didn’t talk about what we’d heard the night before. What we learned, what it meant. How before our dad arrested the Stranger, he saved his life. That was the part of the tape we didn’t see. But the Stranger hated our dad. The Stranger wished to die and our dad took that from him. Yes, and for that, the Stranger wanted our dad dead. He told him so. In court. And now the Stranger was out. Now the Stranger was coming for us all.
We didn’t talk about these things the same way we didn’t talk about the tape. We ate our cereal in silence until we heard the jangle of keys as our mother unlocked the door and stormed back into the apartment.
“The van is dead,” she said. “Long live the van.”
She grabbed the phone to dial for a ride. I had yet to use the new phone, with its long antenna, like something out of a spaceship. Our mother tried Rick first (no answer), then Sandy, then Cornbread (both stuck at work). She called Rick again and this time left a message. Come get me, she said. As soon as possible. Where are you?