Remains

by J. Warren

  My father, in reflex, dropped the glass he’d been holding. He flinched. My eyes got as big as saucers at seeing my father flinch back in fear from anything. The shattering of the glass seemed like a gunshot going off. Katy hunched her shoulders and put her hand up over her face. Of us, only Brutus remained unfazed, his teeth bared.

  The next few moments seemed like molasses. My father coming back to his senses from the fear place he’d gone to, my sister coming unfrozen, me struggling to figure out what had just happened. My father, with what seemed like lightning speed, reached out and grabbed the dog’s collar. The angle he had his arm at, Brutus couldn’t get his head around to bite, so my father dragged the snarling dog out of the room. His eyes locked on mine as he passed me by. My sister stood there, motionless, staring. The back door slammed, then the yelping started.

  To be honest, I don’t know why I didn’t stop it. I stood there, listening to what he was doing to the dog, but didn’t move. It seemed to go on forever. “Rape victims often experience that same time dilation,” Dr. Beldsoe told me. The dull thud-thud of his fist, and the snarling that became yelping, that eventually turned into nothing were my entire world at that point. My sister turned for the door and left. One of the other images I see often in my dreams is that leaving; so calm, so ordered. She simply turned and walked out the front door. Sarah came to the top of the stairs and whispered “What’s going on?” but I couldn’t respond. I stood there and shook. Eventually the back door slammed and my father came back in.

  “Why didn’t you get a broom and sweep up the god damn mess, son?” he asked, sweeping past me. He smelled of sweat and that other smell, the strong one of whatever it was he was drinking at the time. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even move. I just shook and stared. He shook his head and walked out the door to the garage. I went to the back door and looked out the window. Brutus was laying on the concrete, and I thought he was sleeping. I didn’t check.

  Brutus never woke up, though.

  Katy didn’t come back, and, in my eyes, neither did my father.

  I don’t talk about this stuff much with Dr. Bledsoe, though. Little boys aren’t supposed to whine. Men aren’t either, but they have the added responsibility of making sure nobody else does, too. That’s what I learned from my dad. Dr. Bledsoe says I’m still angry with him for changing who he was; that I needed him to be stable and he wouldn’t be. He says that I wanted my father to be my hero and when he failed, I internalized. I wonder what he’d say if he knew all of what happened.

  I could say that my mom shut off after Katy left, but that’d be untrue. She’d shut off long before. Like a lot of things, looking back on that made it pretty clear. I’d asked Sarah about it, once, four years ago. She’d said only “Yeah, I noticed, too. I never asked her what had happened.” Neither of us had. All we knew was that one day, dad was okay and mom, though strange, was mom. The next, my mother was almost never awake, and my father turned into the sort of man who’d beat a dog to death.

  My mother stood in the door, the yellow light of the utility room behind her, using her hands to hold her robe closed. I wanted to pause, to stop walking and just look. It seemed like some image from a movie. I wanted it to go on forever. As soon as my foot landed on the car port cement, she started moving toward me. She was immaculate, even in her bathrobe. The light caught the gray in her hair perfectly. She seemed like some movie starlet from the black and white films; glamorous and regal. She stepped closer and I was reaching out to put my arms around her. Sometimes, no matter how old a person gets, all they want is for their mom to hold them, I guess.

  Her face changed, though. She looked back over my shoulder and when I turned my head, I saw headlights coming up the road. I waited a moment, my arms falling a bit. My mother adjusted her bathrobe again. The car was big and yellow. As soon as it pulled into our driveway, I could tell it was a taxi. I thought it was the one I’d taken; maybe I’d forgotten something. Then the door opened, and Sarah got out. My mother immediately moved to greet her. The trunk swung slowly open. My sister was already mumbling and cursing at the driver. I stood there, staring as my mother tried to say hello to my sister, while she was only interested in getting her suitcase out of the trunk, and cursing.

  Sarah had gotten dad’s gift for stringing obscene words together. I was never any good at it. I wanted to be, though. I always wanted to be. When we were little, and Katy was still around, we’d have contests to see who could string together the longest sentence entirely made up of curse words. The rules were that you could repeat something you’d said earlier, but there had to be five new words in between each repetition. I’d always get confused before I could even start to repeat what I’d already said. Not Sarah, though. Even Katy would lay there in awe of my sister’s power for cursing.

  Tonight was no exception. My mom got close, and raised her arms up, trying to put them around Sarah. Once she heard the river of harsh language coming from my sister’s mouth, though, she backed up a step, and adjusted her robe once more.

  Then my father came out. All I heard was “Who in the Sam hell left this god damned door open? Jesus Christ, what am I doing, warming up the—,” he paused, then changed into an entirely different human being, “My god, is that Sarah? Shit and shinola, that’s my baby girl. Come here to me, you,” he said and rushed to her. She closed the taxi’s trunk and rushed to my father’s open arms.

  I was stunned. Something had happened in the last four years that I wasn’t a part of. My sister and my father were embraced and rocking side to side. My mother stood next to them, her hand on my sister’s shoulder. None of them were looking at me. I picked up my bag, and walked to the door.

  My father caught my eye as I walked past, and he said “Well, Mike. I see you made it,” and his eyes closed. His arms squeezed around Sarah just a bit tighter. I stepped in through the door. My father went to the counter, picked up his wallet, and walked out the door.

  The first thing that happened once I was inside was my body relaxed some. It was the smell. Someone told me once that every house has its particular smell. I relaxed the minute I smelled the stale pie crust and old mashed-potato smell of my parent’s house. I walked in to the kitchen and set my stuff down near the dinner table. Centered on that table were the ceramic salt and pepper shakers. I’d gotten them for my mom my first Christmas at school. They’d taken us to a small shop and given us thirty minutes to spend our money to buy gifts for our teachers or friends. I saw them immediately; a salt and pepper shaker set that looked like mushrooms. For some reason, I knew at once that mom would love them. She did, too. She said they were the best gift ever, and put them in the center of the table. They’d never been moved, or even used, that I know of.

  I felt a small wave of tension in my stomach, and something flowing from my nose. I could hear them coming in. I went for the downstairs bathroom, my head tilted back at a crazy angle.

  “Mike?” my mom called out.

  I flipped on the light and rummaged in the medicine cabinet, looking at an odd angle down the length of my face, which was tilted toward the ceiling. I found a cotton ball, wet it, and was jamming it into my nose as my mother came around the corner.

  “What is it, dear?”

  “Dosebleeb,” I managed. In the mirror, I saw her shudder.

  “Still get them quite a bit?”

  “Nod neely az obten az hued dink,” I said.

  My sister, drawn to whatever was happening in the house came to the door. She looked past mom’s shoulder and, seeing two spots of blood on my shirt, said “Gross.”

  PART TWO

  EIGHT

  I set my things on the bed in my room. The springs still grunted like pigs. My mother had long ago taken out the racecar comforter-and-pillowcase set she’d insisted I have from the age of five on. She’d replaced it with a green blanket, covered by a darker green blanket with fringe. The green of the pillowcases was almost black. The curtains were a lighter shade, but overall, the room seemed like a deep fore
st. I thought back to Susan, and how she’d become a Buddhist for a week, stumbling from that into the yoga classes she’d been in ever since. Everything with her was ‘get an indigo car; it’ll be very good to stimulate your third eye, and keep you out of accidents’, or ‘get a green shirt; that will stimulate your Heart Chakra’. I still couldn’t tell the difference between indigo and blue. She would love this room.

  “Mike, dear,” my mother said, standing at the door, “could you run to the store for me? I didn’t get anything for breakfast.” I nodded and pushed on the wad of tissue stuck up my nose. She handed me the keys to her car as I walked into the hallway, then turned to go help Sarah settle in. I stood there for a moment, listening to them.

  “Sarah, dear, you look so thin. Is that girl—what is her name, dear?”

  “Diane, mother,” Sarah said.

  “Diane—is she not feeding you at all?” my mother asked, and I heard Sarah snort. I turned, and walked downstairs. In the living room, my father was parked in front of the television. He’d found highlights of the weekends football games on some news program. He was grinning to himself and squinting.

  “I’m going out to the store,” I said into the darkness of the room.

  He waved a hand at me, saying “That’s fine. Check with your mother and see if she needs something.” I started to reply, but decided against it.

  My mother’s car was a fourteen-year-old Dodge. The light blue interior had long since gone gray, and the imitation-metal plastic of the knobs had long since worn from silver to white. The car smelled like the back end of a flower shop, near the dumpster; a graveyard for air fresheners in clever packaging. I had to roll down a window.

  Street connected to street and I started to remember. Everything seemed to be the same for a second, then completely unrecognizable the next. The butcher’s was now a video rental store, but they never got all of the old paint out of the window, so a phantom ‘$ 0.55/lb’ hung in space next to a picture of Sylvester Stallone in full war gear. Seeing it made something in my chest grow hard, sharp. “The world is always moving on,” Dr. Bledsoe was constantly telling me.

  Nothing had changed about the town. It seemed like any minute, I’d see myself as a kid go pedaling by. It was creepy but comfortable.

  The grocery store was still in the same place, though. Delbert’s market had never moved. I walked in, feeling more than seeing the florescent lights flicker. The smell instantly brought me back; cabbage mixed with cardboard. I tried to tell Susan about it once, in another market, but couldn’t make her understand. This market had always felt like confusion and comfort at the same time, to me. As I walked in, I saw an old woman working behind the seafood counter. Without realizing it, I’d kept walking, though not watching where I was going. I felt my shoulder hit someone, and heard a basket clatter to the ground.

  My eyes came up, and locked with Alvin Densmore’s. He was chubbier than I remember, and his eyes were dull. He had a huge blood-red apron on, and a name tag that said he was “Al” in fat marker strokes. His eyebrows creased together and he squared his shoulders.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re—,” he’d started, then seeing who it was, grinned, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Mike? Mike Kendall?” he stepped back as if unsure of his eyes. He stopped, though, and I could actually see the memory come back to him.

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, and touched his badge. “Al?”

  He smiled and looked at the floor; “yeah, well; too many chipmunk references, y’know?”

  I laughed. He looked up at the sound, checking my face for something. I wondered what it was until it hit me; he wanted to know if I was making fun of him. I smiled back at him, and I saw his face relax.

  “Here,” he said, bending down. He started putting my things back in the small basket I’d picked up. I bent to help him. “You back in town?” he asked.

  “Just for the holiday,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, “you’re dad’s in here all the time.”

  “Oh?” I asked, putting the bread back in the basket. We stood up at the same time.

  “Yeah; I mean, I see him. He doesn’t know me or anything,” he said, shrugging. We walked to the small register behind the little counter. There was no computer screen or keypad; it was the same register that had been here my whole life. I laughed a bit, and gestured toward it. He shrugged and smiled at me, but before I could smile back, I saw his face fall.

  “Pack of Slims,” a voice behind me said, and I froze. I don’t know how, after all this time, I knew instantly who that was, but I did.

  I turned around to find Sheriff Aiken. I remember one time touching a car’s bumper in the school parking lot one December morning. That crisp, clean, icy feeling is the way I’d describe the Sheriff’s eyes in my own head. To anyone else, I’d say they were blue, but I’d know what I meant.

  “Absolutely, Sheriff,” Alvin said, standing and moving off toward the wall where the cigarettes were. I watched him go.

  “You Susannah Kendall’s boy?” the Sheriff asked. I nodded. The edge of his lips quivered upward, “Hell. Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age. How’s your mama?”

  “Fine, sir,” I said. Alvin was rushing back.

  “Where’d you disappear to, son?” the Sheriff asked.

  “Got a job up north,” I said.

  Alvin was nearly to us, when the Sheriff turned slightly, as if knowing exactly where Alvin had been, put his hand out, all without taking his eyes of me. Alvin put the pack in his upturned palm.

  “Three fifteen, Sheriff,” Alvin said as if he didn’t want to.

  “Hell. What sorta establishment you runnin’ here, boy? Highway robbery,” the Sheriff said, reaching into his breast pocket. He handed across four ones.

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” Alvin said, opening the drawer and pulling out some coins. The Sheriff took them and put them back in the same pocket without taking his eyes of me.

  “Awww, hell. Nasty habit, anyway. I gotta quit,” he said, “Ol’ Susannah Kendall. Now there was a looker, boy; I mean,” the Sheriff said, opening the pack and shaking one out. He put it between his lips. Alvin looked like he was about to say something. “You tell ol’ Susannah that I said hello,” he said and smiled. I tried not to think about a wolf. He walked past me, and out the door. I leaned in close to Alvin, who was trying not to look nervous.

  “You tell ol’ Susannah I smoke five packs a day, boy,” Alvin said, doing a fairly good imitation of the Sheriff. We both laughed, looking at the door as if he would burst back through it and catch us. I got the oddest feeling that he was watching, even without being there. I shivered.

  “Jesus, that guy,” Alvin said, still grinning.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I thought he’d be dead by now.”

  “No such luck. Believe it or not, I bet he’s not fifty-five yet,” Alvin said. I didn’t say anything, just looked over my shoulder back out the door. “He’s been damn near impossible to find last two days is what I hear,” he continued.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “This whole thing with that set of bones they found. Newspapers start poking around here, looking for some answers. He knows he doesn’t have ‘em.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No idea who the bones are, is what I mean. I heard it slip around that they’re a little boy’s,” he said, and I froze. I must’ve not looked so good.

  “You okay?” Alvin asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I gotta’ get some stuff for ma and get back. She’ll worry,” I said, and walked away from the counter. Alvin followed behind me.

  “How is your mom?” he asked, “I haven’t seen her in here in a little while.”

  “She’s okay. She doesn’t like to go out of the house, though, you know that.”

  “Yeah.”

  I pulled out the crumpled list from my pocket and tried to remember where things were. After a few moments, I turned to Alvin. He must’ve seen something on my face, because he took the list.

/>   “Come on,” he said, and I followed. “Yeah, he comes in just about every day. Picks up a pack or two of cancer sticks, some ground beef and a six pack of beers. That is, on the normal days,” he said, picking up a gallon of milk and putting it in the basket.

  “Normal days?” I asked.

  “Yeah. See, sometimes he walks through the doors in a bear of a mood. Usually because of his headaches.”

  “Headaches?”

  Alvin paused, and put a package of bacon into the basket, “Duh. How long did you live here for? You didn’t know about Ol’ Head’s Aiken? You never heard anyone call him that?” I shook my head no. Alvin grinned again, and grunted a laugh. “Huh. Yeah, he’s always had ‘em. Bad, too. His nose even starts to bleeding.” Alvin handed me the basket, now full of things. He handed back the crumpled list, as well. Without moving he said, “That’ll be $34.26.”

  I handed him two twenties. I remembered Alvin from the Y. On the ride back to my mom’s house, I thought about how he’d been the best boxer in that class I dropped out of. He beat Kevin O’Mally in the final tournament. I heard about it the next day as I was sweeping up the hallway.

  Two boys came by in their Karate clothes, and one said to the other “You hear about that boy, Alvin Tuner?” and the other shook his head. The first one made the snorting sound that meant he was sucking snot down his throat, and continued “Knocked the crap outta O’Mally.” The second boy said “No way,” and the first said, “Sure did. One-two’d him right in the gut, then came up under his chin,” the first boy said, demonstrating with his own crooked jabs. “Fin Baker says it was—,” the first boy kept on, and the conversation undoubtedly continued, but the boys passed around a corner.