The Sixteen Burdens

by David Khalaf

  At the bottom, they felt their way through a short corridor and into a small room. It was dimly lit from a strip of small white lights running down the center of the ceiling.

  The room was made of stone, and in it was a wooden chair and a small square table with a box on it. Gray walked over to it. It was a tiny cigar box made of thin wood. The lid was hinged; he lifted it open.

  There, sitting in the corner of the box, was an object Gray recognized immediately: its conical shape, its simple brass bands, the eyehole on the tapered side and the refractive glass on the wide end. It was unremarkable.

  It was Newton’s Eye.

  “That’s it?” Elsie asked.

  “What did you expect?” Gray asked. “Isaac Newton’s actual eyeball?”

  Elsie shrugged.

  “Maybe.”

  He took it into his hand and it practically sizzled with energy. Although it wasn’t much larger than a Mallomar, it was heavier than a fruit cake. But what disturbed Gray the most was the undeniable sensation that the Eye was alive—and that it was watching him.

  “What is it?” Elsie asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The Eye had a tiny metal loop at the narrow end and was attached to a small gold chain so that it could be worn as a necklace. He put it around his neck.

  Gray felt in the box to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and came up with a small piece of paper. He held it close in the dim light to see what it was: a ticket stub for some kind of show. At the top was a title in fancy calligraphy.

  “L’homme de mystère,” Gray said.

  “Man of mystery,” Elsie said. “And your French is awful. What’s it for?”

  Gray read the rest of it.

  “A show in Montreal at the Imperial Theatre,” Gray said. “To see Harry Houdini. On the night he died.”

  Gray touched the Eye again. His father had held this very object on the day he died. He had given his life to protect it. Gray looked at the date again, months after he had been born. If Pickford was there that night, was it possible Gray was too? Had he ever met his father? Did Houdini even know Gray existed?

  They heard the sound of voices at the top of the stairs. He stuffed the ticket stub in his pocket and tucked the Eye under his jacket.

  “C’mon, let’s blow this crypt.”

  “But how?” Elsie asked.

  Gray pointed up at the ceiling.

  “These look like the type of lights that run along the aisle of a theater,” Gray said. “I think we’re below one. The lights usually lead to an exit.”

  He followed the line made by the light strip to the far end of the room. The wall seemed solid, but he pushed on it directly below the lights. A well-concealed stone door swung open.

  “Come on.”

  They walked through it, down a corridor of darkness, until Gray bumped up against a shallow step. They walked up a winding staircase this time, and came to a wooden door. There was flickering light coming from a crack beneath it.

  Gray pushed the door open, and saw a huge movie screen to his left. It lit up the entire space. They were standing on a stage right beside the movie screen. Projected on it was a Southern plantation with people at a party of some sort.

  “We’re in front of the movie!” Elsie said.

  “I know!” Gray said.

  “SHHH!” someone hissed.

  Gray nodded to an exit on the other side of the stage. They quickly made their way in front of the screen.

  “Get out of there!” someone else shouted.

  Gray stopped and glared into the audience.

  “Don’t snap your cap, fella!”

  Elsie grabbed his arm and pulled him along.

  They stepped off the stage and slipped through the exit door to the alley in back.

  They ran down the street to the corner where they said they would meet Fairbanks after the show. He was already there, in the car, waiting for them. Gray helped Elsie in the back, then jumped in the front. It had become dark, and the air was considerably cooler.

  “Go, quickly!” Gray said.

  Fairbanks sped off into the night without comment or question. It struck Gray as strange.

  “The Eye,” Fairbanks said after a few blocks. “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah,” Gray said. “How did you know we were looking for it?”

  “That theater has always been precious to Mary. We should have thought to look there. Good work, Gray! I’m so very proud of you!”

  A smile escaped Gray’s face. He had found the Eye. Douglas Fairbanks was proud of him.

  Fairbanks turned off bustling Hollywood Boulevard onto a quiet side street. He pulled over to the curb but kept the car running.

  “Show it to me,” he said. “So we know it’s the real thing.”

  Gray pulled the Eye out from where it hung under his coat and gave Fairbanks a peek.

  “Let me hold it.”

  Gray felt a hand on his right shoulder from behind. Elsie. He felt a wave of fear. Then anger. Then panic. She was trying to tell him something.

  Don’t give Fairbanks the Eye?

  “Let’s wait until we get to Mr. Chaplin’s so we can inspect it better,” Gray said.

  Gray felt a wave of calm. Happiness. Yes, that’s what she meant. But why? What was it that she was sensing from Fairbanks? Gray adjusted the chain around his neck and tucked the Eye back inside.

  Fairbanks turned and saw Elsie’s hand on Gray’s collar.

  “Oh yes, the girl who can detect lies,” Fairbanks said. “Elsie, dear, I’m afraid you’re going to have to walk home from here.”

  Elsie pulled sharply away from Gray and tucked her hands around herself.

  “But Mr. Fairbanks, it’s cold and this is a dangerous area. Why can’t we—”

  “Please get out of the car, Elsie.”

  Gray saw Elsie’s energy bend toward him and she nodded compliantly.

  “What’s going on?” Gray asked.

  Fairbanks opened his door and Elsie slid out. She stood there for a moment like an automaton waiting for instructions.

  “Now be a good girl and get yourself home.”

  She nodded and began walking in the direction of her dorm.

  Fairbanks hit the accelerator before Gray could open his door. They whipped around the corner just as he heard Elsie call to him.

  “Get out!”

  Fairbanks took a hard right on Franklin and flew down the street.

  “What’s the big deal?” Gray asked. “What’s your scheme?”

  “We’re going to go save your mother,” Fairbanks said. “I’ve talked to Atlas, and he’s promised to trade Mary for the Eye.”

  “You talked to Atlas? When?”

  “While you and Charlie were pussyfooting around.”

  He turned left on Highland, heading north. Toward where? The Valley?

  “We can’t give ’em the Eye,” Gray said. “It’s the one thing Mrs. Pickford said not to do.”

  “She doesn’t mean that,” Fairbanks said. “Mary wants to be rescued, despite what she says. I know what she wants.”

  “Do you?” Gray asked. “Or is it just what you want?”

  “She’s in a terrible state,” Fairbanks said. “She needs someone to save her. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Sometimes love requires sacrifice,” Gray muttered bitterly.

  Fairbanks clenched his jaw tightly.

  “Don’t I know.”

  The man looked away. Gray began to wonder why Fairbanks hadn’t ordered him out of the car along with Elsie.

  “You mean to turn me over to them.”

  Fairbanks didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Chaplin said not to trust you.”

  That seemed to make Fairbanks angry, and he floored the gas pedal. He swerved in and out of cars heading north on the street, but the evening traffic refused to let him go too fast. Gray sat there for a moment, disbelieving that the man who had called them a team just days ago was now willing to turn him over.


  Some are friends, some are enemies, and some are a bit of both.

  Whatever Fairbanks was, Gray wasn’t going to let him have his way. He grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the right. The car hopped the curb and went careening into the thick wall of bougainvillea. The hedge cushioned the impact but they still hit the wall behind it. Gray’s head slammed into the dashboard; Fairbanks smacked against the steering wheel.

  Both sat there a moment, dazed. Gray opened his eyes and they were inside the hedge, surrounded by leaves. Speckles of orange light streamed through from a streetlamp above.

  Gray was dizzy; he felt a lump forming on his forehead. Fairbanks looked worse. He had a deep indentation running across the bridge of his nose from where the steering wheel had hit him. His nose was bleeding and possibly broken. Fairbanks closed his eyes and breathed slowly as if trying to fight off unconsciousness.

  “Are you alright, boy?” Fairbanks asked Gray.

  “I think so.”

  Fairbanks reached over and pulled open Gray’s jacket. The Eye was gone.

  “Where is it?”

  “Elsie has it.”

  It took Fairbanks a moment but he seemed to put it together. Gray had slipped the chain into Elsie’s hand when she had grasped his shoulder, and she had understood that he wanted her to pull it free of him.

  “If you don’t hand over the Eye, you’re effectively killing your mother,” Fairbanks said. “She’s starving. She has only days left to live.”

  Gray said nothing.

  Fairbanks’s face screwed up into an ugly expression. He began to cry. Big, angry tears streamed down the face.

  “There’s no other way!” Fairbanks sobbed. “I promised her I would save her!”

  Gray grabbed his fedora from the floor of the car and then crawled out the back.

  “You don’t seem to get it, pally,” Gray said. “You still think you’re the hero. You oughta take a hard look at the possibility you’re the villain.”

  CHAPTER

  T WENTY-EIGHT

  GRAY HASTENED ALONG Hollywood Boulevard with his head down. He was swept up into a crowd that had just gotten out of a movie at the Egyptian Theatre. Like a minnow in a school of fish, he allowed himself to be carried by the current of pedestrians.

  He should have felt angry and betrayed, and on some level he did. But more than anything he felt embarrassed—ashamed that he had let Douglas Fairbanks fool him into thinking they were friends. The man never wanted him as a sidekick; he was just using Gray to get Pickford back.

  People only let you down.

  He turned south on Cherokee to escape the crowd. Only one lamp stood in the narrow street, a solitary orb glowing in the encroaching darkness. The marine layer had finally made its way inland and particles of mist reflected under the light. He kept walking.

  Gray acknowledged his mistake: He had allowed himself to trust in someone else. Fairbanks wasn’t a hero any more than Pickford was a mother. They were all just actors, playing roles in a farce that Gray had confused for real life.

  As the mist became thicker, Gray stopped under an awning at the Crossroads of the World shopping center, its store windows dark. In the window display in front of him, he saw the silhouettes of tiny cars and trains, with smooth shapes that were familiar to him. He realized he was in front of an Emory Partridge Toy Store. Farrell’s father had sold off his toy empire after his hands became too arthritic to do any woodworking himself. That’s when he opened the home for boys with polio, from which Emory Partridge himself had suffered as a child.

  The last time Gray had seen the old man was when he was six. Gray remembered because it happened about the time he first cut himself. It was in the printing room, one afternoon when he should have been folding maps but was playing with the paper cutter. Gray had snipped off the slightest tip of his finger. Blood spilled everywhere, but mostly up onto the high ceiling, where it remained for weeks until someone could get a ladder tall enough to clean it. Mr. Partridge had sewn Gray’s finger up himself with a couple of stitches, and collected some of his dark blood to show the doctors.

  Poor Mr. Partridge suffered a heart attack that same week, and his estranged son had come to fill in until Mr. Partridge recovered. But he never did. Too weakened to run the boys home, Mr. Partridge was put into a facility for the elderly. Farrell took charge of the home and of Gray’s care. The bloodletting began soon after.

  Gray sometimes wondered about old Emory Partridge; he was the only person who had ever been kind to Gray. People, on the whole, were pretty lousy.

  He found a place to sit on a ledge beneath the shopping center’s landmark tower with its rotating globe on top. Aside from the occasional passing car, the hum of the globe’s gears was the only sound on the street.

  Where do I go when this is all over?

  Chaplin couldn’t house him forever; Paulette certainly wouldn’t allow it. Gray wouldn’t go back to the home. He’d rather rot in a garbage bin than smell Farrell’s aftershave again. Would Fairbanks’s betrayal tear United Artists apart? Perhaps the Burdens were never meant to meet like this. It was too much power in one place.

  Gray’s head began to ache. When he lifted his hands to his forehead, he saw that his fingers were as plump as sausages. His entire arm was swollen, like an overinflated balloon. Was it time to bleed himself already? Farrell used to do it only once a week, if that. Why was it coming sooner? And what if it got worse?

  “Are you alright?”

  A young woman stood above Gray, staring at his swollen arm and his disheveled tuxedo. She had her hand around the arm of a young man; they were dressed for dancing.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  She extended her hand to help him up. Gray ignored the offer and stood on his own.

  “No,” Gray said. “I don’t need no help at all.”

  CHAPTER

  T WENTY-NINE

  ONCE THE CONVERTIBLE had pulled around the corner, a fog lifted from Elsie. She had no doubt Fairbanks planned to do Gray harm; the man had radiated greed and guilt from the moment they hopped into the car. Her best bet was to go straight home and call Chaplin.

  She clenched the Eye in her fist and walked quickly through unlit side streets dotted with seedy bars. Men appeared from shadowy doorways and whistled as she walked by, her glittery dress drawing attention like a mirror ball in a nightclub.

  When she finally made it home, she was so relieved, she didn’t stop to consider why no girls were waiting for her in the common room to ask about her glamorous evening. Bedroom doors shut like dominoes as she walked down the hall.

  Elsie opened her bedroom door, and found Jack Siegel there, sitting on her bed. His small, greasy hands were on her sheets, touching the place she slept. She nailed a wooden smile to her face.

  “You’re back early from your trip,” she said. “Did you have a nice—”

  “Shut up.”

  Siegel was smoking a cigar, and he tapped his ash on her bedspread. She clenched the Eye tightly in her right hand, holding it down and slightly behind her.

  “I’ve never seen you wear that dress before. Or those earrings.”

  “I borrowed them from one of the girls.”

  Siegel blew a big puff of smoke at the dress.

  “You look nice. Real spivvy. Like a high-society woman. I think I’ll have you wear that dress every night at the casino.”

  “Every night?”

  He stood and got right in her face.

  “Yes, every night until it’s spotted with sweat stains and spilled drinks. Until the smell of cigar is so deeply infused into the fabric that no amount of washing can get it out. Until the seams pull apart and you begin to look like what you are—a filthy low-class quiff who won’t do as she’s told.”

  “It’s just that I had the night off and I—”

  He clamped his hand around her chin.

  “You don’t get nights off! I own you.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as I say!” />
  He took a drag of his cigar and blew it in her face. His breath was stale and smelled strongly of whiskey.

  “Where were you tonight?”

  “At the movies.”

  “You got this dolled up for a stinking movie?”

  “It was a movie premiere. A special event.”

  Siegel sneered.

  “Whatsa piece of trash like you doing at a special event?”

  Elsie didn’t answer.

  He’s the one who’s trash.

  Siegel grabbed Elsie’s left hand roughly.

  “You seem to have an obedience problem. You leave your job while I’m away. You don’t answer my questions. I’m apparently too soft on you.”

  Siegel removed his cigar cutter. It was like a handheld guillotine, with a hole in the center where a blade sliced off the tip of new cigars. He grabbed Elsie’s pinkie and forced it into the cigar cutter.

  “Please, no!”

  “Think of the time you’ll save. One less nail to paint.”

  He pinched the cigar cutter lightly and brought the blade in contact with her finger, just below the first knuckle.

  “Ready? Snip, snip!”

  Siegel retracted the blade back to give it maximum force on the way down. Elsie screamed and grabbed Siegel’s arm to push him away. Terror shot through her, into him. He jolted and kicked her away; she hit the wall behind her, then slid to the floor.

  Siegel stumbled back up, his eyes bug-eyed and his mouth agape.

  “How are you doing that?!”

  “What?”

  “How are you manipulating me like that?”

  He grabbed her by the wrist and bared his small teeth.

  “Tell me, or so help me I’ll have your entire hand!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You do know!”

  Elsie tried to slip the Eye behind her dresser, out of sight. Siegel grabbed her arm.

  “Don’t try sleight of hand with a guy who runs a casino.”

  He knocked over the dresser and picked out the Eye from behind.

  “Is this how you’re manipulating me?”

  “No! It’s not, I swear!”

  But Elsie felt herself protesting too eagerly. She was panicking. And Siegel could tell. Every emotion she had, she was telegraphing to him.