Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  She fell off the chair with a shriek.

  I stood over her. “Listen to me, Joyce, listen very carefully. You came here to confront Buchanan about what he had done. You were out of your head with anger—that’s why you knocked out the security guard downstairs. You came up here and the two of you argued.”

  I picked up her handbag and slammed it against the side of Brother Tick-Tock’s head. “He came at you and you hit him in the head with your purse.” I jumped back over to her and punched her in the nose. “He hit you in the face and you went down right where you are—don’t move. Still with me?”

  “...yes...” she said through a haze of pain.

  “Good.” I went behind the desk and began opening the drawers, hoping to find a concealed weapon of some sort. I did, second drawer on the left, in a metal box that was unlocked. I removed the pistol and shoved it through my belt under my coat, then wiped Joyce’s gun clean before shoving it into Tick-Tock’s hand. “He went for his gun and shot you in the shoulder.” I hauled Tick-Tock’s limp form from his chair, Joyce’s gun still in his hand, and threw him on the floor beside her. “He came around after you went down and you kicked him in the balls.”

  I kicked Tick-Tock in the balls.

  “He went down, and the two of you struggled with the gun.” I placed her hands on the pistol as well. “You shot him twice, once in the chest, and then—” I put the gun up to Tick-Tock’s face and pulled the trigger. Blood spattered Joyce’s face and clothes and my gloves. I dropped their hands and the gun, then quickly removed my gloves and shoved them in my pockets. “You killed him in self-defense, Joyce. I came in here just in time to see the end of it, understand?”

  “...yes...”

  “Can you remember all that?”

  “Yes.” She was recovering from the pain somewhat. This was one tough lady.

  “I’ll get rid of the bodies in your cellar later, don’t worry about that. I hate to admit it, but I’ve got friends who have experience in that area.” I scooped up her purse and removed all the credit chips, shoving them into my pockets. There was still enough junk inside—medicine bottles, makeup, checkbook, etcetera—to give it some good weight. “You’re going to keep this money, Joyce, because you’ll need it.”

  I heard the elevator bell.

  She looked up at me, then at Brother Tick-Tock’s body. “Why did you do this?”

  “Because you’re right, he didn’t deserve to live...and every little boy deserves to see whether or not John Wayne rescues Natalie Wood.”

  She smiled at me, and as Sherwood and his men came running from the elevator, I went into the small room to untie the little boy whose childhood would not be stolen from him for the sake of false gods and their followers.

  I held the child in my arms, and in the darkness I wept, thinking, I can feel you breathe like the ocean, your life burning bright, all the unlived moments before you; may that fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently.

  * * *

  I don’t do as much fieldwork these days; that I leave to the Sherwood, who retired from the force a few years ago and came to work with us. Mostly I trace cyber-trails, gather info, make calls. Every once in a while I’ll go on an assignment with Sherwood, but my conscience always manages to get in the way.

  When at last it all becomes personal, you’re no good in the field.

  And I am a murderer whose greatest guilt is that he feels no remorse for his crime.

  Jimmy and his mother are doing fine. I stop by their home frequently, and I’m glad to report it’s a happy home.

  Happy enough.

  Joyce has the mantel filled with photos now of her and Jimmy. It looks like a family has lived their whole life there.

  Jimmy loves his VCR. We have now watched The Searchers twenty-six times. He never gets tired of it.

  Come to think of it, neither do I.

  Amen to that, pilgrim.

  At the “Pay Here, Please” Table

  When he was a child of eight he was taken on a camping trip by three teenaged boys who were friends of the family; all three were either about to ship out to Vietnam or were preparing to go off to boot camp in preparation for Vietnam. He was the youngest and weakest of the five children they’d taken along that weekend, so naturally when the fellows got good and drunk and dared one another to prove that there was nothing they weren’t prepared to do, he was the one they grabbed from his sleeping bag and dragged deeper into the woods where the others couldn’t hear him scream. Each teenaged boy raped him at both ends, two of them going at him at a time while the third held him still and firmly upright so no one lost their balance; guys readying to ship off to fight the dinks had to learn teamwork, after all. They left him there for the night, naked and bleeding and vomiting on himself. When he was dropped off at his house the next day, it was with a warning that if he told on them, he would be killed. He told no one. In the weeks that followed, each of the three teenaged boys visited him at the house, usually when one or both of his parents were at work. They made him dress up in his mom’s clothes and put on make-up and lots of lipstick. Sometimes he had to wear a wig. He did the things they demanded of him because he was too scared and small and weak to think he had a chance to defend himself. Afterward, he’d put his mom’s clothes back just as they had been, sometimes ironing them because they’d gotten wrinkled. Sometimes he’d wrap himself in a particular dress so he could smell his mom’s perfume in the material and feel protected and loved for a few minutes. The lipstick always tasted terrible; it took him days to get that taste—and other tastes—out of his mouth. He didn’t eat much and lost weight but no one asked him why. Eventually the teenaged boys stopped coming around. They went off to Vietnam. One of them was killed there. The other two returned unharmed. The first became a petty criminal who wound up being sent to prison for forty years; the second became a mail carrier whose route, until he shot himself and three co-workers a few years back, included the boy’s family home.

  Sitting at the Pay Here, Please table outside the garage now, the man who was once a boy of eight looking forward to his first (and only) camping trip watches as various young girls and women impolitely grope every last item remaining from the detritus of his childhood. Twenty-five cents for blouses, fifty cents for shoes and wigs, fifty cents for the dime-store jewelry Mom thought was so exquisite because she never knew better, a dollar for jackets and dresses. An appealing woman of perhaps twenty-seven with luxurious red hair says hello to him as she makes her purchase. He recognizes the dress: it’s the one he was most often made to wear and sometimes wrapped himself in afterward. He feels a pang of regret (because it can’t be grief, can it?) as the appealing red-head buys it (along with some shoes, some books, a couple of LPs), slips everything into a shopping bag, and leaves for her home.

  He wonders what her friends will say when they see her in it. Look, they’ll say. Look at _________’s new dress. It’s so retro-chic. Have you seen it yet? Have you seen __________’s new dress?

  He asks his sister to take over at the table. Rising, he feels sick as he begins following _________. That dress was his favorite. He wonders if she’ll look as good in it as he did. The boys always said he looked pretty when he wore it. He’ll wait for her to put it on and see if she’s prettier. Then he’ll have her take it off. They can maybe go camping there in her house.

  He hopes she’ll understand afterward. She should have just left it on the table.

  Consolation

  “The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.”

  —Roger Scruton, English author, philosopher, and composer

  In the early days of Cedar Hill when the Welsh, Scotch, and Irish immigrants worked alongside the Delaware and Wyandot Indians to establish safe shipping lanes, it was decided that a beacon of some sort needed to be erected. Two miles out from the shores of Buckeye Lake was an isolated island twelve miles in circumference; perfect for a lighthouse. Construction began in April of 1805, time and the elements took
their toll as they are wont to do, and eventually the lighthouse fell to disrepair and decay. Two hundred years later the island was purchased by the Licking Valley Boaters’ Association, the lighthouse was restored, and attached to it now was the Licking Valley Yacht and Boaters’ Clubhouse, whose members kept one tradition from the 1800s; every New Year’s Eve, regardless of the weather conditions, the tower light came on and circled for one minute as the foghorn sounded.

  A few dozen yards from the fishing dock on the Buckeye Lake side, a single Cedar Hill Sheriff’s Department vehicle pulled into the parking lot. First its visibar lights shut off (there was no siren tonight; the driver had used Silent Approach); next, the headlights, their beams filled with the swirling mist of fresh snow and the incoming fog, snapped back into darkness; and finally the driver’s side door opened and out stepped Sheriff Ted Jackson, zipping up his winter coat and blinking against the vapor-trails of his breath. He unclipped his flashlight, its beam cutting through the night-haze of winter, and shone it in half-circles until its gossamer beam at last stopped. Jackson exhaled, nodded, and snapped off the beam, shaking his head. Reattaching the flashlight back onto his belt, he reached inside the patrol car and removed a medium-sized brown paper bag, tucked it under his arm, closed the door, and walked down to the fishing dock.

  He approached the small figure sitting there, careful not to make any sudden loud noises. The figure was rocking back and forth, knees pulled up against its chest, humming a nonsensical and off-key tune and grinning ear to ear as diaphanous bursts of steam exited its nose with the rhythm of smoke from a sleeping dragon. Between its knees and its chest, it clutched a pair of well-read books, covers tattered but still doing their job, yes, indeed.

  “Carson,” said Jackson as he squatted down next to the figure. “A lot of people are worried about you.”

  “I-I’m s-sorry,” he said.

  “How in the heck did you get out here, anyway?”

  “I took the Number Forty-Eight express from downtown. I been s-saving my money. I got enough to get back.”

  “The Forty-Eight doesn’t come through here until six a.m. What were you planning to do until then?”

  “I got enough to go to the truck stop and have a nice hamburger and m-malted or something. I was g-gonna catch the bus there in the morning.”

  Jackson nodded. “Well, something told me you’d probably be here.

  “I’m w-waiting for McDunn.”

  Jackson gave the ghost of a smile. “So you finally gave it a name?”

  Carson nodded, still not looking at the sheriff. “Uh-huh. And I figured that m-maybe since it’s gonna be—hey, you know what? It’s gonna be my birthday in a couple days. I want McDunn to come to my party. It’ll be—you know what? It’ll be great! I’ll be the only b-boy in Cedar Hill who’s ever had a dinosaur come to his birthday party!”

  “You’re right, that would be great,” said Jackson as he slipped the paper bag behind him.

  It was said of Ted Jackson that his eyes always looked as if he were staring at something a hundred yards away that perpetually broke his heart. They looked no different tonight, save for the distance between them and that at which they stared.

  Looking at his watch, Jackson said, “Well, ten till midnight, so what say I wait here with you and we’ll see if McDunn shows up?”

  Carson looked at him now, his smile radiant with gratitude. “Oh, that … th-that’d be real great of you, Sheriff. I ain’t never had n-nobody wait with me before. They all think I’m s-s-stupid.”

  Jackson put his hand on Carson’s shoulder. “Well, I didn’t have any plans tonight, anyway—and, besides, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather ring in the new year with.”

  Carson’s smile faltered a little, maybe from the cold, maybe from something else. “I always liked you, Sheriff. I’m real g-glad you’re the one they sent.” When he said “they” Carson’s arms tightened around the books. This did not go unnoticed by Jackson.

  “Did they try to take away your books again?”

  Carson nodded violently, despairingly. “Uh-huh, and they … they can’t take them away, Sheriff! They’re the only ones I ever had. I just … I j-just l-love them. I d-do.” His eyes began to water, maybe from the cold, maybe from something else. “P-please don’t them take away my books. All my friends are here!”

  Jackson looked into Carson’s eyes. “I promise you, buddy, that no one is going to take your … take your friends away from you.”

  “You mean it?”

  Jackson had to take a deep breath to make sure he could get it out in a steady voice. “I mean it, Carson. I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m a terrible liar, anyway.”

  Carson laughed. “Me too.”

  Jackson’s radio squawked, startling both him and Carson. Patting the tiny rounded shoulders, Jackson said, “Be right back, buddy.”

  “Will you be back before the light comes on and the foghorn sounds?”

  “Count on it.” Jackson rose quickly and walked a few yards away, his bad leg reminding him that it wasn’t a good idea in this weather for a man of fifty-one years to squat.

  “What is it, Rosie?”

  “Sheriff, they’ve been calling here every ten minutes for the last half-hour. You find him?”

  “I found him.”

  “Oh, good. Now I can look forward to them calling every ten minutes to see if you two are on your way back. Happy New Year and God bless us, every one.”

  “You’re a born poetess, Rosie. Tell them I’m going to wait with him until after the foghorn.”

  “They won’t like it.”

  “After everything that’s been done to him, all the lousy places he’s been shuffled in and out of, after all he went through at the hands of that sadistic waste of carbon the county called his father—”

  “—that was a while ago, you gotta let it go, you’re getting yourself all worked up again and we both know your blood pressure ain’t been the best it’s ever—”

  “Well goddammit someone ought to get worked up on his behalf, so why not me? It’s not like I got anyone else in my life to worry about, so if he wants to spend time waiting for McDunn to appear—”

  “—McDunn?”

  “The dinosaur, the sea monster.”

  “From that story in one those books of his? Sheriff, that’s such a sad story.”

  “They’re trying to take the books away from him again, Rosie.”

  “Oh, dear. No wonder he ran away.”

  Jackson looked back at the tiny figure sitting on the dock. “Hell, I would, too. If somebody threatened to take all my friends away.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Jackson closed his eyes, getting hold of himself. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Promise.”

  Back with Carson, Jackson decided to sit this time and not tempt fate. “I miss anything?”

  Carson giggled. “You’re f-funny.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks so, but thanks.”

  Carson reached over and took hold of Jackson’s hand. “I’m real sorry about … about Misses Jackson.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Things happen with married people, Carson.”

  “How come she l-left like that?”

  “That was a lifetime ago, buddy. I just wasn’t … very interesting to her anymore.”

  “Well, I think that was a t-terrible thing to do. You’re such a nice man.”

  Jackson shook his head. “Spread that around, will you? I haven’t had a date in ten years.”

  “That’s a l-long time.” He squeezed the sheriff’s hand. “I’ll bet you g-get … lonely.”

  Jackson looked into Carson’s eyes and saw all the deep, sincere sympathy that a child’s eyes always had; he also saw the phantoms of terrible years of a childhood damaged, a childhood taken away, a childhood denied. Yet Carson’s eyes still maintained that spark of hope and wonder, of dreaming of rockets flying above and inspired chicken motels and million-year picnics, of golden apples of the sun and giant mushroo
m and happiness machines that he probably wished for before falling into his lonely sleep. He saw all of this, yet behind that warm and glimmering they were also eyes that were just sick about something.

  “So, Carson … what do you wish for the new year?”

  “Oh, I wish for a lot! When I grow up, I wish that I’ll go to a Halloween party dressed like Stan Laurel and I’ll meet a girl dressed like Oliver Hardy and we’ll fall in love, and I wish to ride in a rocket, and I wish to build a fake mummy out of scraps of paper and old posters and sticks and pots and pans and anything else I can find so that I can play a big joke on everyone so we’ll all laugh, and the town of Cedar Hill, central Ohio, will tell the story over and over to other children so they’ll laugh, and I wish to travel to Mars and meet real Martians, and I wish to meet a fox in the forest who will laugh at me and my girlfriend ‘cause we dress like Laurel and Hardy, and I wish to meet a famous artist on the beach who will draw a picture in the sand and it’ll be only for me, and it’ll be of a world that’s just the way I hope it will be, where I can travel back in time and maybe meet knights who sit on railroad tracks, and I wish to say farewell to Lafayette and not be sad, and I wish to meet the parrot who knows every word of Papa’s last book, and I’ll talk to it, and then it will tell them to me ‘cause nobody ever told me stories before, and I wish to write poems and put them into blue bottles and cast them out to sea, and I wish to meet a man all covered in tattoos and each one has a story all its own and he’ll tell them to me ‘cause nobody ever told me stories before, and I wish to find a button from a Civil War soldier’s uniform, one lost downwind from Gettysburg, and that button will whisper stories of great battles to me when I polish it and hold it to my ear, and I wish … I wish to fall asleep to soft rains and wake to a golden sun, and I wish to play a far-away guitar at midnight in the month of June … and I wish to be the world’s greatest writer so that I can tell stories to other children ‘cause everyone should have someone to tell them stories on account it’s awful lonely sometimes when you don’t have nobody to tell you stories … and I wish … I wish …” His lower lip began trembling, and his voice become much thinner and unsteady as he fought back the tears. “… I wish to have a place called home with my own room and people who love me …” he pulled the books closer to his chest. “… and I wish that I maybe won’t wish so much ‘cause it’s lonely when you wish and don’t got nobody to tell about them … nobody ever told me stories …” He hugged the books close to his cheek. “… except here, only here, where all my friends are.” He looked at Jackson. “We should go back, Sheriff. McDunn isn’t g-going to show up.”