Scrapper

by Matt Bell

  Please, please don’t.

  When the rapper started screaming a nurse slid his arm around the rapper’s neck, applying pressure to put his head against the headrest, placed another ungloved hand across his forehead. The bluing tattoos on the nurse’s arms reading like faded threats. The muted sounds of the nurse’s attention. How the nurses never spoke. How they instructed only with their hands.

  Please, the rapper said. Stop. Stop it. Please stop.

  The flatness of the imperative, spoken in the weak voice of a prisoner.

  This is me, he said. This is me.

  This is me, he said. I can’t do this.

  This is me.

  The three men released him, their hands returning to comfort, to assure the end of the demonstration. The rapper cried as they rubbed his shoulders, as they gently touched his head and face. Less than three minutes from beginning to end. The feeding tube never fully inserted. The nutrients hanging untouched from an IV stand, like oatmeal in a plastic bag. The rapper moaning with his face in his hands.

  When he watched the finished video he knew exactly when they would fade to white, at the worst moment of his disgust with himself, his failure to suffer once what Adnan Fahim was suffering twice a day. The unfreed man, left behind after all the men who had brought him to his prison were sent home, at the end of the bad days. As if the bad days of a prison ended when the guards decided they did.

  See the rapper in his street clothes, face-to-face with the rapper in the orange jumpsuit trapped on the screen, the rapper watching himself on the director’s laptop, in the director’s hotel room. Watching it again, his failure to commit. The fade to white reversing, the rapper’s face returning to the screen, himself sitting in the restraint chair, unmolested again, alone inside the frame. Tears in his eyes but the words read off cue cards. The rapper on the screen saying the words scripted before the demonstration began, the way the rapper had always known he would be expected to end his statement.

  Peace, the rapper heard himself say. His eyes bloodshot, his lip shaking.

  Peace, he said again.

  Peace and good morning.

  PART TWO:

  THE CASE

  4

  AT THE PRECINCT, IT WAS always the same detective who questioned Kelly, a baby-faced man with a hard belly busting over his belt. The heavy detective came in and out of the blank square of the interview room and each time he entered he questioned Kelly and each time Kelly promised to tell him everything he could. At first Kelly thought he remembered almost nothing, that finding the boy had overwhelmed every other possible interest, but with every new question he remembered a little more, and so how to trust what he wanted to say, if he knew it could change?

  What do you remember, the heavy detective asked again. What do you remember now?

  The boy, he started to say, before the detective interrupted: Daniel, the heavy detective said, and Kelly blinked, said, Who?

  The boy, the detective said. The boy’s name.

  Daniel. Kelly knew he wasn’t a reliable eyewitness because when he was confused he believed everything he was told. He remembered more about going into the basement than he had when he walked into the hospital. Or else he thought he did. He could see the shape of the low room, its walls that before had disappeared into the dark. He had not recognized the mattresses nailed to those walls but as the heavy detective described them he saw the sagging outline of each one, the rolled towels and eggshell foam duct-taped to fill the creases between.

  The detective searched his notes, shook his head. He was testing Kelly’s recall but Kelly recalled mostly only what the detective had told him first. The detective said the boy hadn’t seen much either, only a mask over the kidnapper’s face, only the hood of a red slicker worn against the weather.

  The detective asked, Why didn’t you call the police?

  I didn’t think, Kelly said. But whoever put the boy in the basement must have meant to come back for him. I wanted to be gone when he did.

  He asked the detective if they knew who took the boy. The man in the red slicker. Who was he? The detective didn’t know, wasn’t afraid to admit it, at least here in this closed room. The boy’s parents had reported him missing but not until he’d been gone a day. Investigation revealed it was just a miscommunication—each parent had thought he was with the other—and bad parenting wasn’t necessarily an indicator of foul play.

  The heavy detective said, There’s a reward, you know. Did you know about the reward?

  Kelly hadn’t but he said, I saw something, and the detective nodded, made an appreciative noise. It was best when they could agree. What Kelly remembered most wasn’t any particular detail but how the experience had split, how there was a basement with a boy and a basement without. How somehow he had gone into both basements and perhaps two people had come out, with slightly different ideas about what they had seen.

  He’d felt this way before, when he was a boy himself.

  The boy, the reward, Kelly wasn’t sure what he knew and didn’t know. The boy’s face wasn’t the same as in his last yearbook photo, the one the news had shown, broadcast beside some stranger’s cell-phone picture of Kelly cradling the boy in his arms, carrying him into the emergency room, the boy’s face blank, the chainless cuffs clasped around the boy’s ankles, the boy’s skinny bones swinging limp from Kelly’s grip.

  The expression on Kelly’s face hadn’t been one he recognized. The blonde reporter had called it bravery but Kelly didn’t think this was the word.

  When there was nothing else to say the heavy detective put his card on the table. Probably they would have more questions but Kelly wasn’t a suspect. The detective said this several times and each time no qualifications followed, no yet, no at this time. Kelly knew he wasn’t guilty but it was good to hear the detective say the words. Surely the detective must have said his name before this but here it was on his card, seemingly for the first time: sanchez.

  The heavy detective taped the interview, would file the recording for future use. Other officers wanted to collect other evidence and Kelly let them take whatever they wanted. In the parking lot they photographed his truck, measured the tread of his tires, and in the precinct house they did the same with his shoes before attempting to take his fingerprints without success. Fifteen years of manual labor had worn away the ridges on his fingertips and perhaps for years he hadn’t left a proper fingerprint on anything he touched. He’d committed crimes but he’d left less of a stain than he’d thought. He pulled his hood over his hair, shivered in the precinct lobby, waited for the police to release him into the remainder of the night. Perhaps he was freer to act than ever before. But even without fingerprints there were other ways to leave a mark.

  THE EVENING NEWS BROADCAST HIS face, showed his picture every night for a week. To pass the boredom of workless afternoons he visited his regular bars but now everyone there knew his name. He hated beards but started growing one anyway, layered hooded sweatshirts beneath every jacket. He couldn’t go back to scrapping but with the promise of the reward he rented a new apartment in a better neighborhood, farther from the places where he’d worked.

  The phone rang. Once Christian women knew his name they found him too, dropping off casseroles and staying for prayers. More reward. The first woman sheepish when he opened the door, then bold once in his kitchen, opening cabinets and shaking her head at the paltry plates, glasses, silverware. He lived alone but the next day the first woman returned with others, women who brought him food for a family, then circled his table in their Sunday dresses, and when he wouldn’t take their offered hands they closed their circle around him, centered him in their words.

  His kitchen table only had two chairs but the women said they didn’t mind standing. He opened their packages of paper plates, plastic silverware, fed their food back to them: rigatoni for days, a deli platter feeding a dozen. The Christian women said savi
ng Daniel was his penance for the scrap he’d stolen. He listened but he didn’t agree. He didn’t believe in the god they did, didn’t see the benevolence in the universe. Instead the past repeated, with every action representative of a type, every thought representative of a common idea. The Christian women patted his hand, held his in theirs. They said their prayers as if unafflicted with doubt but he thought doubt and fear were the only places he’d found to put his faith.

  The girl with the limp came over to help but what remained was more than any two people needed. She wasn’t supposed to eat food this rich, started to complain. He put on weight too, found the ten pounds of beer weight held back by the swing of the sledge. When he opened his new refrigerator he already thought he could smell some excess turning. The way sealed plastic filled with moisture. The yellow sour of thickening milk, a waste of greening ham.

  The phone rang. The husband of one of the women called Kelly to offer him a job. The husband worked in demolition, owned a small outfit working the zone, removing the wreckage of industry, tearing down other buildings on government contracts. The husband said Kelly would have to start at the bottom but it was fair money and at least it was honest work.

  It’s work you’re used to, the husband said. Though we might do things a bit different. More professional.

  What to call the tone in the husband’s voice. In the word probationary. In the words trial basis. Kelly listened, waited for his chance to speak. He said, How did you get this number?

  The husband’s voice changed, expanded its reproach. The offer was a favor to his wife. Did Kelly want the job or not?

  He did want the job, knew it could last. He had his own truck, he said, his own tools. He had the reward money but it was better if he didn’t have to touch it.

  He said Thank you but not before the husband hung up the phone.

  The phone rang. The heavy detective again, working through the same questions, searching for new angles of entry. There were no suspects. No family enemies, no fingerprints in the basement. The detective said undercover cops had watched the house but no one had returned after the boy had been removed.

  He said whoever took the boy might have seen Kelly’s truck, seen Kelly’s face. He had to assume the kidnapper had seen the news, would remember Kelly’s name.

  Be careful, the detective said. Don’t make a big deal of where you live. Be as cautious as you can, but if you see anyone suspicious following you, you know my number. Probably there isn’t anything to worry about. Probably a person who kidnaps little boys is a sex criminal. He wouldn’t come after a grown man.

  Kelly tried to use the word rape, the word molested. Was this what had happened to the boy?

  There’s a lot of confusion there, the detective said. When we asked Daniel what the man did to him, the boy insisted the man who took him had watched. That’s it.

  The man had worn gloves and a mask and a red hooded slicker and he had cuffed the boy to a bed in a basement and then he watched him. The detective said this as if it were hardly anything at all.

  The detective said there were court psychiatrists, social workers, a process they had to go through to question the boy. The detective joked he could call Kelly whenever he wanted. No rules against talking to you, he said, then laughed, a sort of nervous grunting.

  The detective said, Once in a while a kidnapper gets nervous, brings in the victim himself. Even if he’s done everything right, even if he might never be caught. The kidnapper gets nervous or scared or he becomes concerned for the victim, having come to care for him. Maybe he decides to get out before something worse happens.

  Kelly could deny the insinuation but he didn’t have to. He knew who he was, what he’d done. The detective said the house belonged to the bank but the bank wouldn’t press charges. Kelly was a thief but he was a hero too. Fighting over copper at three dollars a pound wouldn’t buy the bank anything it wanted.

  THE BLONDE REPORTER CALLED and Kelly made her repeat her name until he believed it. Would he see the boy again? She wanted a story of the two of them reunited, the saver and the saved. The salvor, Kelly said—drunk again, slurring into the receiver, and where had this word come from?—and she said, What? He wasn’t sure this was a good idea, hung up. Later she called again, put a number on the table. He could take it or leave it, she said. They weren’t in the business of negotiating for human interest.

  When the reporter appeared the next morning she wore knee-high boots under a pressed tan skirt, had so much blonde hair he couldn’t believe it was all hers. She lingered in Kelly’s doorway, considered his living room, the clothes he’d picked out to wear.

  Do you have a suit, she asked, or at least a tie?

  He’d meant to buy one but there hadn’t been time. There was his new job, the girl with the limp. She had wanted to come along to support him and he’d told her he didn’t know what he needed support for but now he did. The parents would be waiting with his reward, ready to pay him for the boy’s return. They had lost something precious and he worried he’d returned them something quieter, skinnier upon its bones. On the television, the reporter had said only three days had passed between the boy’s abduction and his rescue, barely any time at all. The boy was physically unharmed, except for where Kelly had bruised him, when he’d pulled the boy’s ankles against the cuffs.

  A miracle, the reporter had said, almost as if nothing had happened. But even in a local story you had to listen for what no one was saying.

  At the hospice shop the cameraman stayed in the car while the blonde reporter led Kelly between the crowded racks. She was good at colors and sizes and she said she knew what would look right on-screen. She made him try on the suit, then came into the dressing room. He saw she wore a wedding ring when she reached up to straighten his tie. She saw him looking, said she wasn’t married, said the station made her wear the ring to boost her credibility.

  It’s cubic zirconia, she said. This close to worthless.

  I’m so young, she said. And no one wants the young telling them anything.

  The shoes she picked pinched his toes but he didn’t complain. They were close enough and they were cheap and they matched the suit. After she approved she reached up again, fixed his hair with a licked finger. Every time she moved he could smell her. He didn’t know the names of perfumes but he’d smelled this one before. The confines of the dressing room were tight and their bodies kept touching at new angles. They were all brushes but they started to add up. He knew better than to expect more. Yesterday she’d said he was a hero but this was only the story the news at five had wanted to tell.

  W

  It was the presence of the reward that confused him, a number large enough he assumed the boy’s family would live outside the city, farther north in the surrounding suburbs. Instead the reporter exited the freeway early, staying within the city limits, within the zone. Now the vague terrain of lonely blocks, the way the old and hopeful names for neighborhoods no longer described what you found. Trees grown close around houses, fallen leaves over trashed yards, tall brown grass sticking through the early snow. The blackened frame of a house, all the doors and windows stolen, all its insides gutted, dragged outside and left in the yard.

  A spray-painted sign over a burnt storefront: pet store any varmit you want free.

  Now the house of the boy’s family, as old as the other houses on the block, built of the same architecture but otherwise seemingly from another era. The brick powerwashed and graffiti-free, the porch a new bit of construction and nicely stained, the siding painted a cheerful green. Last week’s snow covered the earth but Kelly could see flowerbeds in front of the house and trellises built along the sides, ornamentation readied for spring growth, summer bloom, the future.

  This was the kind of home he desired, maybe the kind of life.

  The boy’s father answered the door, shook their hands, invited them in. Kelly hadn’t thought to guess
the boy was adopted until he saw the father, the bearded man around the same height as Kelly but heavier, dressed in dark jeans and a short-sleeved checked dress shirt. In the boy’s house Kelly found himself more aware of his movements, knew he was being watched by the father, the cameraman, the blonde reporter. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, tried to smile. The walls were decorated with pictures of the boy, all the official documents of a child, starting when the boy was a toddler and ending at whatever age he was now, ten or eleven or twelve. In the photos from later years another boy appeared in the pictures, after which Kelly assumed the children had taken on new titles: the boy, the brother, the boy’s brother.

  The mother came out of the kitchen to meet him, her long dark hair restrained in a single braid, faded freckles on her face and arms and hands, everywhere else pale skin escaped the bright fabric of her dress.

  Thank you for bringing Daniel back, she said. Thank you for finding him for us.

  As if Kelly had done something purposeful, something tried. She called the boy’s name up the stairs and the boy appeared, dressed in his own gray suit. Kelly knew the boy’s name but there were so many Daniels in the world, so many Dans and Dannys. The boy? There had been a boy before. There was this boy now. It was only generic in the mouths of others.

  The father talked to the blonde reporter, explaining their move back to the city, the price they’d paid for the house, the sorry shape it’d been in. Kelly flushed when the father spoke of the house being ransacked, how the hardwood floors and the winding staircase and the brick walls had held but how scrappers had come in and taken the wiring, the plumbing.

  They did us a favor, the father said. We would have had to tear it all out to put in a modern system. Now the house has grounded plugs, new pipes, central air.

  All new appliances, as of last winter, the mother said, joining in. The walls were already gutted so we took down the plaster to put in drywall, painted the rooms brighter colors.