Reprisal

by Mitchell Smith

  Bobby moaned on his pallet, shifted under his blanket in search of comfort.

  "You ask him," he'd said. "Ask that Mannin' what he's holdin' down there. ..."

  Joanna stood by the dining-room window, looking out into darkening night. The sea sounded clearly up the hill, salt breeze bringing its voice to her. The moon was rising, stretching the cottage's faint shadow over the yard. ...

  There was the sleepiest, most smothering pressure to do nothing. To do nothing odd, foolish, and possibly--even probably--mistaken. She had gone to the authorities, spoken to a lawyer, made a continual fuss. ...

  Would Frank, would her father mind if she did nothing more? Did nothing foolish? Would they mind if she just let it go? ... They were dead; there'd be no bringing them back, whatever or whoever had caused their deaths.--And they might have done it themselves; might have had accidents after all. In a few years, there would only be sadness when she thought of it. Only sadness and dark poetry when she thought of Frank, thought of her father ... and their accidents.

  Bobby Moffit was almost snoring, breathing in slow huffs and puffs, so he sounded like a worn train working uphill ... weary, unhappy machinery.

  Joanna went to him, saw he'd turned onto his side, the top blanket slid off his shoulder. She bent, tugged the blanket up to cover him, then walked into the kitchen, took the slender-bladed fillet knife from the sink drawer, and went out the back door and down the steps.

  Moonlight lay like platinum webbing, rippling, moving as the breeze moved the sea grapes edging the yard.

  Joanna opened the garage's side door, went in, and turned on the light to select what she needed.

  Chapter Ten

  Charis sat studying on her side of the room's table. Art of Poetry, a course that all the jocks--as jocky as students got at White River--attended and depended on for summer credit. Chris Engletree taught it, and it was an easy course to pass, a hard course to get good grades in.

  Engletree, very gay, had little good to say about most traditional poetry, and thought less of Joanna Reed, colleague or not. "--Reed's work tends to be painfully old-fashioned and form-cramped. Personal interactions, moral homilies, concentration on structure and beautiful language, including little narratives and events, and often rhymed.--Read poetry that is truly of today, and you'll see exactly what Reed's work isn't. It isn't of the moment; it isn't structure-free; it isn't culturally inclusive; it isn't all-race-referenced."

  Engletree loved Japanese poetry. "Perfectly minimal, accurate, and cruel ...

  in haiku, seventeen precise syllables. I forgive structure that is ethnically determined."

  Charis, second row center, had raised her hand. "But how does it sound when you speak it?"

  "Ugly, and so what, Ms. Langenberg? Japanese is an ugly language--and so is German and so what?" Chris Engletree, tender with handsome soccer or track men, was tough on women.

  "So, there's no music to it at all," Charis said. "It's limited to evocative observations-"Mount Fuji is very small, seen in my mirror, as I shave my forehead, on the first day of winter"--observations the reader is intended to internalize in response. That's a pretty restricted art."

  "Bullshit," Engletree said. "Is that your rule or something? Are you making up rules about art?"

  "I'm commenting on yours," Charis said. "Japanese paper-making is more intricate than their poetry."

  "That's so cute," Engletree said. "Aren't you clever? But Japanese culture and poetry may be a little too sophisticated for some American coeds."

  He really disliked her. ... Charis had imagined cutting her hair very short for his class, then using no makeup and wearing breast-hiding sweatshirts, wearing shorts, hiking boots, and thick socks just to watch his attitude slowly alter as she became more boyish to look at, more brusque, her voice lowering until she was a strutting casual lithe young man, the finest blond down decorating long unshaven legs. Tough and beautiful, with only a cock necessary to complete him.

  It would have been amusing ... but too much trouble. Engletree wasn't worth the trouble. He didn't like her, but he wouldn't grade her down because she cared for poetry, because it was important to her. ...

  "Charis?" Rebecca, across the table. She was supposed to be doing her Spanish.

  "Charis ...?"

  Charis hadn't spoken to Rebecca all day. Hadn't said a word to her, hadn't answered anything she'd asked.

  "--Charis, if you're angry, I really don't know what I did. I know I've been upset about Daddy and now my grandfather dying. I guess I've been a pain."

  Charis looked up. "I do have two words to say to you, Rebecca. The words are: Greg Ribideau. Okay?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't give me that shit--roommate, friend."

  "Charis, really, I don't know what you mean." Round little face gone pale.

  "--I haven't even talked to Greg except once!"

  "Just ... Rebecca, just study and don't try to talk to me, all right? I'm not interested in hearing a lot of lies."

  "What are you-- Charis, really I haven't done anything!" Sitting confused in pajamas and her pink terry-cloth bathrobe.

  "You are just a little bitch, and that's all you are. Greg says it's you, you, you he likes and finds interesting--and he just realized it and so forth, all that crap! You're both a pair of goddamn liars."

  "What are you talking about? Greg doesn't like me. He never said anything to me!"

  "Oh, right, Rebecca. Sure. He thinks you're "really interesting," a "special person," and he feels as if he "knows" you--and you two haven't even talked?

  Please don't waste my time with this shit, Rebecca. Greg likes you; you like him--and that's great. ... Just leave me alone and stop treating me like some goddamn fool. I'd really appreciate that. Just cut out the "I'm a little mouse and I wouldn't fuck anybody else's boyfriend" bit.--And I will move the hell out of this room just as fast as I can arrange it."

  Charis closed her book, got up, and walked out, leaving Rebecca startled, upset, and pleased. --Charis went down the stairs to the dorm entrance and put three quarters in the snack machine. A small bag of barbecue Doritos rattled down.

  She went out the dorm door, down the steps, and strolled away into a summer night lit by starlight and occasional lamps along the paths. Charis ate the Doritos as she walked; they were deliciously salty.

  Mr. Langenberg had eaten only healthy food--fed her healthy food. Turkey breast and steamed carrots, steamed new potatoes, steamed green beans. He'd hated Doritos, chips, dips, anything like that. ... Mom--Mrs. Langenberg--had been a good cook, and made peach pies. Charis could still remember the pale gold of a peach pie cooling on the kitchen table in the house on Edgar Avenue, in Cincinnati. She remembered having to stand on tiptoe to see along the tabletop. And she remembered the taste.

  After Mrs. Langenberg had a kidney infection, then had more kidney trouble a year later and died--died swollen and itching--after that, there were no more peach pies.

  Mr. Langenberg became very concerned about diet and health, being healthy in mind and body. "Is this a perfect little body, or what?" he asked that whenever certain men came over. "--Is this a perfect little body or what? And not a feather on her." The visitor always agreed that she was perfect. "Bend over and show him," Royce Langenberg would say.

  And the man would make the sound "Mmmm ..." If there were two of them, they'd both make that sound, "Mmmm ...," and take her picture.

  When Charis grew older, and had feathers, Mr. Langenberg would go with her into the upstairs bathroom, and shave her after she took her shower. But she could tell he didn't like having to do it. ...

  Charis came to the Fork, and turned up the high walk, wishing she'd gotten two packages of Doritos.--What the college cafeteria served as dinner was pretty grim, even for institutional food. Supposedly, things improved in the fall, when they had a full staff cooking.

  ... It was difficult for her to remember much in the way of conversation with Royce Langenberg--though they were together until sh
e was sixteen, and it was time for him to have his accident. ... She did remember driving with him back and forth across Ohio. The first few years, she'd sat on a pillow so she could see out the passenger-side window. But it was difficult to remember the individual days, individual conversations. The days and conversations seemed to have fallen out of shuffle, like a dropped deck of cards.

  "A district sales manager is either God almighty--or the goat." He had said that to her once, while they were driving. Mr. Langenberg had four salesmen under him, getting market orders for frozen-food products, prepared meals, and instant mixes. "--Give me a biscuit, give me any baked or prepared food, and I'll tell you the producing corporation." And he could; did it often in restaurants.

  Otherwise, especially when he was driving, he didn't like a lot of conversation. He did say, "Daughter-mine, you just don't know how much I care for you. I care for you just as if you'd been born our own little baby." Said that to her more than once.--But when Charis disobeyed, or brought bad grades home from school, or was rude to a man who'd come to see her, then Royce Langenberg would put her in the cedar chest to think about it.

  "Are you thinking ...?" He'd ask that several times during the day, bend down and ask it in a loud voice so she could hear. "Are you thinking ...?"

  And she'd say "yes," and he'd say, "I am so glad," and take her out next morning in time for the bus, if it was a school day. And at school, a girl sitting behind her once said, "You smell like moth balls."

  ... Charis ate the last Dorito. And as she passed under a maple's lamp-lit leaf ceiling, murmured one of Joanna Reed's poems.

  I wait, and you wait with me, Expecting different visitors. I wait, and you wait with me, But one visitor will not come. I wait, and you wait with me. Who comes, will be unwelcome, So must be greeted with a lie. You are the visitor I wait for. You may go, and return welcome.

  Chris Engletree was an idiot.

  Joanna, wearing old cotton coveralls and her caving boots, drove down the hill by headlight and moonlight, then turned right on Strand Street, its sidewalks empty to the night. She went three blocks, then took a left down Ropewalk. There was no one in the alley. The only light, filtered green-yellow through sea fog, shone down from a streetlamp on Strand.

  Joanna parked the Volvo between two battered pickups at the foot of the alley, by the docks. She got out of the car, and crossed Ropewalk to Manning's. ...

  The warehouse and processing plant was a big three-story brick building, half a block wide and a full block long, its bulk backing up from the waterfront to Strand Street. Huge--and old, built in 1870 ... 1880. There were no windows on the alley side except a row of wide glazed window vents beneath the third-floor eaves.

  It seemed to Joanna it would have to be here.--The front entrance up on Strand was impossible, with streetlamps, alarm tape on the windows and doors, and people certain to be passing by, even this late at night. The dock entrance, below, was almost as bad--alarms on the windows, office door and loading dock

  ... and security lights all along the pier.

  It would have to be here. ... She leaned against the building's brick, stroked it, ran her fingers along the masonry. Ancient mortar, crumbling from sea air, its dampness and salt. Still, she could bolt between the brick runs, haul herself up from anchor to anchor. But it would be noisy--too noisy--and take too long. So, wall-climb whatever was handy, quietly and quickly, with no driven bolts or aids.

  It was a great comfort to have so limited, so familiar a problem.

  Joanna walked up the alley along the wall, and saw a drainpipe down the building's side. It ran a straight line from the warehouse's roof gutter to the street.

  She tried it, gripped the wet metal and tugged left and right for motion. It was very old and rusty cast iron--would be brittle, easy to crack and break, especially where narrow iron straps, almost weathered through, fastened the pipe to the building's bricks.

  An old length of rusted pipe, but a straight run up to the roof ...

  thirty-five, forty feet above the cobblestones. Quiet, and quick.

  Joanna walked back across and down the alley to the car, checked to see that no one was passing up on Strand Street, then opened the trunk and took out her helmet and lamp, a thirty-yard coil of PMI dynamic rope, a short nylon tape sling of carabiners, and a small belt pack. The fillet knife was in the pack, with a butane lighter, small flashlight, her gloves, and the Leatherman multitool.

  Joanna closed the car trunk, checked the street again for any late-night passerby, then rigged up--draped the tape sling and rope coil over her shoulder, belted on the pack, put her helmet on and tightened the chin strap.

  Quietly ... and quickly.

  She crossed the alley, walked up to the drainpipe, gripped and tested it again, then took a deep breath, reached up on the fog-wet iron as high as she could, jumped off the cobbles and began to climb.

  She leaned away from the wall as she went up, frogging--reaching above her with one hand, then both, for a grip on the pipe ... then tucking her knees, digging her boot toes into the brick courses, and straightening her legs to drive herself up.

  Easier top-roped, with ascenders. ...

  Twenty, twenty-five feet up, she stopped on the wall to rest. Her fingers hurt, cramped from gripping slippery round metal. ... She could loop a nylon tape under the pipe, make a sling to hang from for a rest. Could do that--and if there'd been another fifty or hundred feet of climbing, would have had to.

  She hung there, pulled in close to the wall, and looked down into the alley.

  No one ... nothing but sea mist drifting in dim lamplight, dampness, and dark.

  Joanna took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders, reached up and began to climb again. The rope coil was cramping her right shoulder; she had to pause and shift it slightly. Right shoulder, right arm--neither quite the same after her surgery. Something cut in the chest muscle or the armpit, limiting just enough to be noticeable. Noticeable during great effort.

  She frog-climbed another ten or twelve feet, saw the roof gutter overhang only a little higher, and reached up to the pipe for another grip.

  She had it, held it hard--and the pipe made a celery sound, cracked, and the piece broke away.

  Joanna swayed back, the chunk of pipe still in her hands--and she might have fallen, felt that sudden urge to disaster, to let go ... let go and fall back and down through darkness.

  She refused to fall, let the piece of pipe go instead, so it dropped away--and as if she were in love with the building's wall, slumped into it, curved her belly into it, and let herself relax against its brick as the piece of broken iron rang, then rattled on the cobbles below. Her boot toes, at a mortar line beneath her, supported her for that moment ... and her hands, turned to claws, set their fingernails into the brick.

  Only for a moment.--After the moment, if she didn't climb, she would fall.

  Joanna bent her knees only slightly, and as if she had a solid ledge beneath her, jumped ... reaching for the section of pipe just above the break.

  Her boot toes slipped as she went up. She missed the hold with her left hand, and seized it with her right. She had the jagged end of wet pipe in her grip right-handed, and hung there for less than a second until her left hand could join it.

  With both hands holding on, she knew she wouldn't fall. She could hold on forever ... never fall.

  She hung from her sure grip, hung in the air against the wall. The darkness below, the waiting cobblestones, no longer called to her. ... She carefully, lightly, stepped stepped stepped, her boot toes found their momentary purchase between brick courses, and she started climbing the pipe again ... gripping as lightly as she could, so as not to break the rusted iron.

  The roof, its gutter overhang, was now only a few feet above. Joanna went up, and up ... then stretched to touch the overhang. Old iron--but thick, crusted with layers of crumbling paint. The fat, rough, curved metal edge was a comfort to her fingers, a good hold.

  She hung there, brought her other hand
up to the gutter, and rested a moment, swinging slightly to ease her shoulders.

  The nearest vent window was six or seven feet to her left, and a couple of feet down. She began to swing a little more, side to side--setting up a rhythm to help her hand-over-hand along the gutter's edge to the vent.

  There was a sound in the alley beneath her. A soft thud, thud ... thud, thud.

  Joanna stopped swinging and hung still, her fingers aching ... then slowly, carefully, turned her head to look down.

  Someone was walking down the alley from Strand Street--a man in dark shirt, jeans, and black rubber boots. It was too dark to see more detail, make out his face.

  Joanna dangled from the gutter, hanging still as a cave bat, and watched the man walking along the cobbles ... walking beneath her on his way to the docks.

  She allowed her fingers to hurt, as long as they kept their grip--and slowly, slowly turned her head to follow him down to the end of Ropewalk ... then a turn right, onto the pier and out of sight.

  A fishing-boat crewman with some nighttime chore to do. ...

  Joanna shifted her grip from one hand to the other to ease her fingers--the rope coil was weighing heavy on her shoulder--then began to swing left to right and back again, gathering momentum.

  On the end rise of her third swing to the left, she went quickly hand-over-hand three or four feet closer to the vent window ... then took a breath, began to swing again, her hands hurting, and went hand-over-hand three feet farther to hang from the gutter just above the vent.

  The low, wide window, its thick frame hinged at the top, was crusted with peeling white paint. Its bottom edge was canted open four or five inches.--Joanna, stretching down, was just able to get a toehold on the sill beneath the window frame's outward angle. Not stance enough.

  It was very bad practice to fall--even for two or three feet--to a hold. It was a question of acceleration forces. ...