“Bye, Carl!” Lucas called down the hall toward the den, from which the sounds of a laser gun shoot out could be heard. “Seeya, Lucas!” echoed back.
Lucas tugged at the straps of the knapsack hanging at Desmond’s hip and said, “Daddy, I want to show you something.”
“How about when we get home?”
“I want to show you the paper airplane.”
“I think it’s a butterfly,” Laurie said.
“When we get home, buddy. Let’s let Carl and his Mom get some rest. C’mon, take my hand.”
Laurie watched from the doorway until they were in the car. Desmond turned the key and put The Beatles on. By the time the SUV rolled into the beach apartment driveway and Desmond killed the engine and the music with it, Lucas was fast asleep in his car seat. Desmond carried him to bed without waking him, thinking as he did so that it wouldn’t be long before his son was too big to be transferred like this. Carrying Lucas up the stairs and down the hall, he watched his own reflection in the full-length mirror, growing larger as he approached it with Lucas’s body sagging in his arms. He thought of the sword in the wall behind the mirror, sleeping in the dark.
He laid Lucas in bed, brushed the sweaty hair from his brow, and gently kissed his forehead. A flickering motion caught his eye, and as he rose from the mattress and reached to switch off the bedside lamp, he saw the unmistakable play of blue strobes splashing across the ceiling and a high corner of the wall. Desmond felt something in him clench tight at the realization that the flashers weren’t moving across the ceiling the way they would if a police cruiser were passing by. They were fixed in one spot. The police were parked outside, and apparently they weren’t here to discretely stand watch for a hooded prowler in a samurai mask.
Desmond clicked off the lamp and moved to one side of the window. There was a single black-and-white cruiser parked on the street. A uniformed officer was walking up the driveway beside Desmond’s SUV with the white circle of his flashlight floating ahead of him like a rising full moon, his partner climbing out of the car behind him. The wind picked up and sent a scattering of sand across the street, drawing Desmond’s gaze to another figure perched at the edge of the property beside a silver Impala. He knew that car, and the lines of that silhouette—Phil Parsons.
Desmond looked at Lucas. His first thought was that they couldn’t come in, it would wake him, and then it would take most of an hour to get him back to sleep. They couldn’t just show up at any hour and disturb his sleeping child. They had no right. But, of course, they wouldn’t be here with flashers on if they didn’t have some kind of right. An animal urge to wrap Lucas in his arms and flee out the back door like a fugitive stirred from dormancy, dumping adrenaline into his system. He recognized the feeling for what it was—a primal instinct to protect his own. And what exactly did they think they were doing here…protecting Lucas from him? “I don’t fucking think so,” he whispered at the windowpane.
Desmond took one more look at Lucas, then vaulted down the stairs and pulled the front door open before they could knock on it. They could talk to him on his doorstep.
Phil had advanced some way up the driveway, but he was still hanging back behind the uniforms, blue light painting his face in rapid intervals between the shadows. Desmond looked past the officers to the flickering form of his antagonist. “What are you doing here, Phil?”
Phil Parsons didn’t answer the question; he just shoved his hands into his pockets and looked up at Lucas’s bedroom window.
The first officer to reach the steps addressed him. “Desmond Carmichael?”
“Yeah.”
“We have a citation to remove your son Lucas Carmichael from the home. Mr. Parsons has been granted an emergency temporary appointment of guardianship, and he has a child safety seat in his car for the transfer.”
“Show me the paper.”
The cop held out an envelope. Desmond took it, removed the document, and set his eyes on it, but the adrenaline made it hard to focus.
Sua Sponte Order for Transfer of Care and Custody
After taking in the title, his head swam, and fragments of the document flashed up at him, raising his heart rate: Docket #...Lucas’s name and date of birth…without proper guardianship...incapacity or unfitness of the parent or guardian…where it was determined that this child’s safety and welfare required that he/she be placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services pending a further hearing…. Chapter 119, section 23C…continuation of the child in his or her home is contrary to his or her best interest…signed by a Justice of the Probate and Family Court.
“How did you do it?” Desmond asked Phil.
This time Phil looked at him but didn’t reply.
“You have some old dirt on a judge? Is that how you got this? Because this is bullshit. It won’t stand, and I swear to God, if you put him through this for something so thin that I can rectify it on Monday….” He shook his head, didn’t even know what to threaten, and now he could feel the cops staring at him.
“You can’t rectify this, Desmond,” Phil said, “and you know on what grounds.”
Desmond could feel the tension in his neck muscles, the grinding of his teeth. “Enlighten me,” he said.
“I had a private eye take pictures of you bringing that godforsaken sword into the house. You’re not fit, Desmond, not anymore. It’s an unsafe environment.”
Desmond finally looked at the cops. “Search the house,” he said, “You won’t find anything. No weapons, nothing. See for yourselves.”
“Sir, we’re not here on a search warrant.”
“I’m inviting you in.”
“We’re just here to pick up your son.”
Desmond was surprised by the fire those words stoked in his gut. They couldn’t take Lucas. A monster had taken Sandy, and now the men who were supposed to protect people from monsters were going to take Lucas from him, too? He would have nothing left.”
“Is your son in the bedroom, sir?”
“He’s sleeping. Come back in the morning.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” the officer said. “Please wake him and bring him to his grandfather.”
Desmond took a step forward, but the two uniforms blocked his advance. “You know I didn’t kill her Phil. You do know that, don’t you?”
Phil Parsons’ stoic façade caved in a little, and Desmond could see a flicker of bright pain beneath the awful aging loss had inflicted upon him. “You’re making it hard for me to know anything, Des.”
“You can stop this before it starts,” Desmond said. “He lost his mother, and now you’re going to confuse him, you’re going to hurt him again. Don’t.”
“I’m not going to lose all that’s left of my daughter just because you’re unstable.”
“Unstable? Someone is stalking us! What more has to happen for you to accept that?”
“Let it go, son. Don’t dig yourself deeper.”
Desmond shook his head as Phil continued, “You’ve lost your job, you’re scaring him with a mask and God only knows what kind of stories. You want to be a hero like in one of your books? Then don’t go making up monsters. Don’t bring the thing that killed his mother into the house like you’re gonna slay a dragon with it or some crazy shit. Be a man and get him out of this dump.”
“You gave me that fucking thing in the first place, Phil. You brought it into our home. You’re one to talk.”
The second cop, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, put a hand on Desmond’s shoulder and said, “You two can save all this for the court date. Right now, I need you to get your son and put him in Mr. Parsons’ car, sir.” The cop turned sideways and placed his body between the two men, ready to start pushing them away from each other if it came to blows.
With a quieter tone than the one he’d been using, Phil said, “He’s still sleeping, Des. There are two ways this can go. Think about it.”
It was true. There were only two ways for Lucas to leave the house tonight, but he was le
aving. He was leaving because men with guns were here. Desmond took a step backward, felt his shoulders crumble inward, fumbled with the door, and opened it slowly. “Okay. I’ll get him,” he said.
“Don’t dally, sir, or we’ll have to come in.”
Desmond glared at the cop, then stepped into the apartment and pushed the storm door closed until the latch clicked. He left the inner door open so they could watch him through the glass as he climbed the stairs.
Standing at Lucas’s bedside, watching the dim reflection of the pulsing blue lights on his son’s cheek, he felt helpless. Lucas had been asleep for less than an hour; just enough time for him to be cranky if woken. Desmond shook his shoulder and spoke his name. Lucas wrinkled his face, swatted at the offending hand, and tried to roll back into his original position. Desmond shook him again.
“No,” Lucas said.
“Hey, buddy. Time to wake up. Papa’s here.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, but you have to go to Nana and Papa’s for a sleepover.”
“No, Daddy. I don’t want to.”
“You can go right back to sleep when you get there, okay? Nana will make you pancakes in the morning.”
Desmond lifted him and carried him down the stairs, arms locked under his bottom to form a seat. Lucas had almost fallen back asleep when Desmond set him down on the couch to gather a few essentials—toothbrush, toothpaste, vitamins, and a favorite toy—and toss them in the knapsack with the change of clothes, still sitting by the front door under the coat rack where he had dropped it when they got home from Laurie’s house.
Lucas slid off of the couch onto his knees and started crying. “I don’t want to go to Nana and Papa’s house, I don’t want to, I don’t want to go!” It became a mantra that quickly devolved into a mess of snot-clogged howling. Desmond tried to tune it out and focus on packing. The cops beyond the glass made no secret of the fact that they were watching. “I want to stay with you, Daddy. Daddy, I want to stay with you.” It was a typical tantrum for an overtired kid, but to Desmond it felt like Lucas was playing the role of the Chorus in a Greek tragedy, giving voice to his own wretched emotions. The poor kid had no reason to believe it would be for more than one night, and he was this upset. What would they tell him tomorrow night and the night after that?
Desmond could hardly think straight, was knocking things over now, rummaging through the detritus of a living room shared by a widower and a toddler, feeling ashamed of the mess. With an armload of jumbled clothing, a favorite blanket, and a brown plastic bottle of chewable vitamins spilling over his elbow, he yanked open the zipper of Lucas’s knapsack with enough force to jam the teeth. Inside, atop the folded clothes and a baggie of Goldfish crackers, was a snow-white origami butterfly. His breath caught in his chest.
He remembered Lucas pleading with him in Laurie’s foyer.
I want to show you the paper airplane.
At the time, he’d figured Laurie had done some kind of craft project to keep the kids busy. Maybe she had. Dear God, he hoped she had.
Chapter 10
If only.
Shaun Bell sat in the Logan Airport Starbucks and sipped tea from a paper cup. All he could taste was the paper, and the tea was too hot. He considered dumping it out. Rather than calming his nerves, the wrongness of the drink was only increasing his agitation, but buying it had given him a place to sit while watching the arrivals. His teacher would stand out from the crowd. Sensei had at times studied the unconscious posture and gait of those around him and imitated it to blend in, but Shaun knew how hard it was for him to break the long habit of moving through the world with the grace and purpose of a heron gliding through a flock of crows.
A cocktail napkin folded in the shape of a dog sat on the table beside the tea. The paper was poor, hardly capable of holding the form at all. The head was misshapen and ugly. He idly curled his fingers around it and crumpled it into a ball.
He was aware of Sensei's suitcase on the floor beneath the table. It had preceded the man to Boston, and Shaun had claimed it from the luggage carousel. Shaun let his shoe brush against it. It was the same one Sensei had taken with him when the two of them had embarked on their journey together from California to the east coast.
There were no weapons in the bag. Sensei would have used one of the blades they had stored years ago at the underground dojo on the west coast. That concrete room had been a place of awakening for Shaun Bell. He longed for the exhilaration and clarity of those days of first steps on the path.
Shaun’s gaze moved across the concourse. A man dressed in vacation clothes was standing near the restroom playing with an iPhone while his two little girls chased each other around the terminal.
Everywhere he went he saw this same phenomenon—parents unmindful of their children, their attention fixed on little glass windows in the palms of their hands, mesmerized like drug addicts, longing for some artificial connection while their own flesh and blood careened wildly through a chaotic and violent world behind their backs. The writer was even worse. He invented false worlds and peopled them with ghosts while his motherless son scanned the horizon for a human connection. It was shameful. What did a man need to lose to be shaken from his immersion in a dream? What terminal force could liberate him from the pursuit of phantoms and engage him in the living world around him?
Shaun squeezed the napkin ball in his hand. He turned his fist over and examined his fingernails. There were no traces of the ink. Would the writer even find the message? If he did, it would take him time to decipher it. This was a dangerous game. The man should have acted already. Why did he need more than one message? It was a writer's business to speak the language of symbols. And really, what interpretation was required here? The reaper was coming. What more did a man need to know? But Sensei had taught him to treat all action as art. Shaun had brushed the message to Carmichael as a kanji character, obeying the master's dictum even as he betrayed him. That the betrayal was diffused in poetry, calligraphy, and origami did nothing to diminish the intention. He had strayed from the path of the undivided mind.
Surely Sensei knew that his excuses for failure at the playground were weak. He lacked sufficient yamato damashi to slay a child. Surely Sensei knew this and would test him again soon.
He tapped his foot against the suitcase, and thought of days of long light on the porch in Huntington Beach, recalled vividly the day when he had first seen that suitcase sitting on the planks overlooking the rock garden behind the apartment Sensei had rented from their family on Hale Street. Back before he knew the old man as Sensei.
Shaun had wandered down the back stairs after fixing himself a sandwich and, as on most afternoons, had settled into the lawn chair beside the downstairs tenant’s wooden rocker. The old man had a faraway look in his eyes, but he didn't redress his face at the sound of the creaking steps, didn’t hide whatever sorrow he’d been ruminating on the way most adults did when caught. His eyes met Shaun’s and kindled with the same quiet generosity as always, as his mouth melted into a faint but honest smile. Shaun’s parents never smiled quite like that, like they were really seeing him. They rehearsed a well-worn repertoire of faces and voices for patronizing him. He didn't know if they thought of themselves as masters of feigned interest or if they believed they were really seeing and hearing him during the few hours each week when they were in his presence. It was obvious to him, even at the age of eleven, that the only genuine expression they wore was worry.
They worried about him, and he thought that was probably a sign of love, but they worried more about their jobs, their cars, their house, their gray hairs and crow's‐feet. He saw them separately now, so it seemed they hadn’t worried about him enough to stay together.
The old man patted the suitcase. “I am taking a trip,” he said.
“Where?” Shaun asked.
“Arizona.”
“Why Arizona?”
“I looked up an old acquaintance. It will be a hunting trip.”
“
You hunt? Like with a gun?”
The old man smiled. “I have always wanted to try hunting, but the time never seemed right for it. When you get to be my age, you realize that it is important to try new things, to do things you have always wanted to do, or you may never do them at all.“
“You're not that old,” Shaun said, placing his half-eaten peanut-butter sandwich on the wobbly little whitewashed table between them.
“Life is like a water bubble. No one knows when death will come. We must use the time we have.”
“When will you be back?”
“In a few days.”
“What will I do? After school.”
“You can come down here the same as always. Make the tea. Drink the tea and practice your bokken forms. Just as if I were sitting in this chair. It's good for you to be outside. Don't start watching TV.”
Shaun made the same face he would have if his neighbor had suggested that he might start eating worms, and together they laughed.
A moment passed in easy silence, broken by the double honk of a car horn from the street side of the house. “My taxi is here,” the old man said, rising.
Shaun carried the suitcase to the car for him. It was heavy.
After the taxi disappeared under the purpling sky, Shaun went to the kitchen and made the tea. Two cups. He drank one and let the other cool on the little white table beside the rocking chair. He took up the wooden sword that the old man had carved for him with his mother’s permission. She had been happy to learn that he could still spend some time swinging a piece of wood in the back yard, even after baseball hadn't worked out for him—team sports had never worked out for him, not at any of the schools they’d tried. It would still be several hours before she was home. Enough time to practice his patterns. He walked around the rock garden and stepped onto the freshly cut grass.
It was good to have something to do in the yard while the house was empty, good to have something to keep his mind off the absence of the dog. His mother had gotten rid of the dog soon after she’d gotten rid of his father. Shaun would never know for sure if she had left the gate open intentionally….
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