Keepers (18 page)

Beneath the porch, the dog’s cry became a high, clear song or triumph.

I smiled. I had long ago learned the words with which to name my own secret losses and shames, and the old man on the highway had whispered some of them to me as he turned his head so I could see the small plastic blue tag attached to the back of his ear.

I had thought he was dead. No one could have survived being hit and dragged like that, but as I knelt down beside him his eyes opened.

“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” he’d said to me as his bloodied hand grabbed my shirt. “We can only wait for so long after...after you know. I’m...I’m sorry. Will you forgive me? I just couldn’t finish it. It doesn’t seem right to do it like this. Can you...you...forgive me?””

“Of course,” I’d whispered, brushing his blue tag with the back of my thumb. “Of course I forgive you.”

“I just wanted to look like a human being when this time came.”

I offered him the derby. “I understand.”

“They know,” he said. “They’ve always known. Be careful.” Then he whispered my name. And died.

I knew then he’d been following me—had probably been watching me for a long while (isn’t that what they did with a candidate?)—but in the end had found some reserve of compassion that stopped him from going through with what he’d been sent to do. Knowing what they’d do to him because of his failure, he’d chosen to die, dressed in his snappy suit with a dapper hat upon his head.

I’d pulled the tag from his ear before the police arrived, then tossed it out the window as I drove home. By the time I pulled into my driveway his words were white noise in my memory. Then I found a dog on my lawn. A package arrived. Visitors came.

In the living room I opened the bottle of Johnny Walker I’d taken from its hiding place, lifted it in the air, and toasted the old man on the highway before drinking deeply. The liquor slid so smoothly down that my throat felt like a dead limb suddenly tingling back to life. I made it a long, slow, deep drink, the only one I would take. I pulled the bottle away, wiped the back of my arm across my mouth, and shouted, “Come join the party. It’s gonna be a real barn-burner, motherfuckers!” I threw the bottle across the room and pulled out the second lighter. End of tough-guy action-film moment.

A few moments later Magritte-Man stepped into the hallway, dashing and stylish as ever. The mist was rolling in, covering the floor, creeping up the walls. In a few moments it would engulf the room and he wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“I appreciate this moment alone with you,” I said.

He reached up and gave me a respectful tip of his hat; as he did this, the mist twisted and spread farther across the floor, skirling to our ankles. It felt like lead shackles, weighing down my feet. It was cold, so very cold, yet I could feel something like a damp pulse in its tendrils, firm and strong.

“You put on a good show.”

He spread his arms before him and gave a theatrical bow. At my feet I could hear the reverberating echoes of the screams and gunfire the mist had swallowed, but more than that, I could hear voices, dozens of them, maybe even hundreds, whispering in rapid, anxious tones
of course I understand dear I don’t want to be a burden I’ll be fine here Jesus Christ who’s idea was it to have your mother move in my God will you look at that child I wonder what happened to make it look like that did the mother do drugs you suppose Daddy will you play with me I don’t have anyone to play with why does that kid cry all the time don’t you know I need my sleep it’s not our fault he was born looking like that can’t who didn’t feed the fucking dog the litter box hasn’t been changed can’t walk can’t go to the bathroom by himself can’t understand what he says half the time if we had money for the surgery don’t you think we’d I wish I’d miscarried anything’s better than this so why don’t you call me anymore you put me here and say you’ll visit but now the goddamn thing’s barking all night and I’m gonna shoot it I swear to God
as the churning carpet of silver rose higher—almost to my knees now—and once again unveiled the
bas-relief
zoo: birds, cats, tigers, horses, dogs, sea-creatures whose tentacles blossomed from the tendrils, bears, deer, elk, snakes, all of their faces and forms pressing outward, then came the faces of the chimera, the manticore, the cyclops and centaur and harpy and other creatures of myth. They seemed to recognize me.

“I need to ask you a question.”

Magritte-Man gestured for me to continue as other forms took shape, hybrids and monstrosities and faces of the malformed whispering
I want to, I want to
,
I
want
to, please
....

“We weren’t supposed to be the dominant species on this planet, were we?”

He pointed toward my feet to where a section of mist was pulling back to reveal something. I didn’t want to look away from him, didn’t want to chance being taken by surprise, but there was a stillness between us that seemed far removed from everything that had happened or was about to happen, as if, just for this moment, I was protected, safe from harm. I stared at him for a second longer, and then looked down.

At my feet lay a small grey cat, eyes opened wide in anguish and fear, its neck broken, legs kicking out and back as its body twitched and spasmed. It was just as horrible to watch now as it had been that day nearly three decades ago behind Beckman’s Market. The silver tag on its collar was still covered in blood. It jerked to the side, looking at me, accusing me. I felt my legs begin to give out, and knelt to touch it, whispering now, as I had then, “I’m sorry, kitty, I’m sorry....”

As soon as my hand touched its side, the cat became still; its body relaxed, the choking stopped, and it rolled its head toward me in that same lazy, easy, sleepy-eyed way that any cat looks at you when your touch wakens it from a nap. We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then it leaned its head against the back of my hand and rubbed its face against my thumb.

At least you cried,
said a voice, but who, where, or what it came from I couldn’t tell.

The mist crept back in, blanketed the cat, and a moment later my hand touched only cold air.

At least you cried
.

I rose to my feet and looked at Magritte-Man once more, my unanswered question still hanging between us.

He shook his head. He seemed genuinely sad about it.

Looking into the eyes of the creatures surrounding me, I sighed. It sounded like a petulant child’s noise. “That’s what I thought.”

At least the cat had forgiven me. At least I had that.

I struck flame to the lighter’s wick as the rest of the Pedestrians came at me.

My Hands Are Full Of Blossoms

“
And when we have come down to a place that is right
...”

A few weeks after our excursion to the Keepers facility, my father went into work drunk on his ass (which no one ever knew), fell into his press, and was killed instantly. When she hung up the phone after getting the news, my mother sat down as if every bone in her body had dissolved. She pretty much stayed there for the next two months, with the exception of the funeral and a trip to the doctor for sedatives.

For my part, I wasn’t surprised. Dad’s drinking had gotten progressively worse over the last few years. It was only a matter of time before something terrible happened.

Don’t misunderstand, I loved him quite a lot, and I cried for three days solid after his death, all too aware of the empty spaces in the house and my life and the world where he should have been but was no longer.

Beth and Mabel were there every step of the way; from going with me to identify his body (what was left of it) at the morgue until I guided Mom’s hand to toss the dirt down on the coffin lid, they were there.

I walked out of the cemetery completely emptied of feeling. This was not the world I had grown used to. Dad wasn’t here, so this was another planet, an alien landscape, something out of a book or fantasy film. In the real world Dad would be bitching about dinner being overdone or the rain-delayed ball game or how I wasn’t doing anything with my life. Sure, he got on my nerves and embarrassed me sometimes and I don’t know that I ever much liked him but I
did
love him and now would never have the chance to make sure he understood the difference. I should have said something to him sooner, should have found him the next morning and asked him to tell me about his Downtown Sundays as a child, and I should have listened, and I should have smiled, and I should have been able to enough recognize my duty within those austere and lonely offices to tell him that I understood, and that I loved him.

The luncheon afterward was organized by a group of volunteers from St. Francis de Sales (the parish to which all my family belonged but whose church none of us had stepped into for over a decade). The ladies had set up tables and refreshment stands in the new cafeteria of the grade school located next to the church. I was tired, I was sad, and I was
hungry
, but I couldn’t yet face the well-meaning friends and family members with their sincerely felt but empty-sounding platitudes, couldn’t look at the bowls of potato salad and platters of lunch meat and trays of homemade brownies, couldn’t stand the smell of the freshly-brewed coffee, couldn’t sit beside Mom and watch her try to eat while an army of mourners passed by the table, each of them compelled as if by holy proclamation to put a hand on her shoulder and then mine as they made their way to the baked beans or that great-looking apple cobbler that was disappearing way too fast.

As we were driving back toward the church, Mabel mentioned in passing that she was out of cigarettes, and I grabbed the opportunity for a reprieve.

“Drop me off on the square,” I said. “I’ll run into the Arcade News Stand and buy you some.”

The Arcade—a small enclosed group of shops and restaurants that has been part of Cedar Hill since before I was born—was perhaps a ten-minute walk from St. Francis. I could get Mabel’s smokes, then go over to 5
th
and Main, cut up to Granville Street, and be at the church before the first pot of coffee was empty. Everybody wins: Mabel gets her smokes, Mom gets a few minutes without my moping at her shoulder, and I get fifteen or twenty minutes alone.

No one argued with me about this, no one said my place was at the church, or that I was being selfish, or that it might seem thoughtless to other mourners in attendance. I loved them even more for this.

I was dropped off across the street from the Old Soldiers and Sailors Building. I stood there staring at the structure for a moment after they drove away. It seemed to me now that, thanks to Whitey, I shared a little-known secret with this place; down there, somewhere, stood a wall with the names of some of Vaudeville’s Greatest written on it, and what was before to me just an old hulk of an abandoned theater now seemed much grander. I wished I could have gone in and seen that wall. Maybe I’d come back and try sometime.

I went to the Arcade and got Mabel’s smokes, but as I was getting ready to head on over to 5
th
and Main I realized just
where
I was and what I had a chance to do.

On Downtown Sunday my dad went to the movies (either the Midland or the Old Soldiers and Sailors Building, they were right across the street from one another); then he’d get some candy or comic books afterward (the Arcade News Stand had been in the same place for fifty years); and then he’d visit with the old men sitting on the steps of the building on the corner.

Which meant the site of the old Farmer’s Building and Loan.

Less than two blocks away.

Without realizing it, I had already walked two-thirds of the same route my dad had covered every Downtown Sunday when he was a child.

It wasn’t exactly like following in his footsteps, and it wasn’t as if he’d known I’d overheard him that night or would ever know now what I was about to do, but I’d just been given the chance to honor his memory by retracing his steps through one of his best memories.

How could I not walk over there?

It would be nice to say that I saw the square in a completely different light, much as I had the Old Soldiers and Sailors Building, but the truth was this area of Cedar Hill looked and felt just the same to me as it had any of the hundreds of times I’d walked these streets: tired-looking though dependable brick- and wood-fronted buildings, some with shingled roofs, some with aluminum, others—old warhorses who’d stood the test of time and the seasons and were damned proud of it so why change now—still sporting thick layers of tar paper over two-by-fours… the sturdy, inoffensive banality of a small Midwestern downtown. Nothing about its current state or the way it existed in my own childhood memories made it special.

What
did
make it special was knowing that, back there, just over that way, fifty or sixty years ago, the child who would grow up to become my dad had come along this exact path, walked passed many of these same storefronts, and had probably used the same crosswalk I was approaching.

Maybe this could serve as some small gesture of thanks.

I passed the Hallmark store, the shoe store beside it, and was moving toward the crosswalk when a man in his thirties who’d been walking ahead of me suddenly veered to the right and kicked a small cat that had been pacing him for a few yards. The cat wasn’t being pushy or annoying, wasn’t running figure-eights between his feet as he tried to move along. It was just walking beside him, minding whatever passed for its own fuzzy business, when this jerk, for no apparent reason, decided to swing around and drop-kick it into a doorway.

The cat reeled ass-over-teakettle, spitting out one of those uncanny, almost macabre screech-yowls of pain and fear that you can feel all the way in the back in your teeth, then hit the doorway with a solid
whump
before spin-rolling onto its stomach, legs splayed. It scrabbled its claws against the concrete but quickly found enough purchase to stand and shake some of the
What
-
the
-
hell
-
was
-that-
about
? from its stunned and wide-eyed face. It narrowed its eyes, licked a corner of its mouth, gave the tiniest of shudders, and then released a thin, dinky
meep
so full of confusion and physical hurt that I was ashamed to be a member of the human race in its presence. It looked up at me and blinked as if to ask:
Did
I
offend
?
Please
don’t
hurt
me
.
I’ll
give
you
rubbies
.