Stranger Will (4 page)

At 1309 Merchant Street, the address is not the problem. Finding the stain is difficult because everything looks dead. The mission becomes to first establish what was never human and then search. They tempt a hall dismantled to rotten wooden studs. The carpet starts dry at the front door and slowly dampens as William journeys deeper. Pipes fill the walls, exposed and rusty. All of this under the spotlight and the low light of a street corner lamp because, as the package might suggest, electricity does not exist in this home.

William rounds one of the only solid corners in the building, dragging slowly on the cigarette. He pans the room, the porous walls, walks the hallway and traces its peeling yellow wallpaper with his finger. The bathroom stinks of dust and swollen drywall. In the kitchen, he finds a blood splatter covering half of the refrigerator and three of the four cabinets lining the countertop. The brown stain still looks human. William can see the outline of arms and shoulders, but where the head should be there is a hole, opening into drainage pipes from under the kitchen sink. A few small dots radiate from the center. A typical shotgun death. Possibly self-inflicted. Possibly not. He’d be able to guess more accurately but by the time he and Phillip arrive the body has already been removed, its tissues already embalmed, and the few lines of newspaper commentary already drafted.

Philip starts in with a mop. William pulls on gloves and heads toward the kitchen counter in search of larger debris that may have been overlooked during the initial rundown. He finds a small patch of hair, still attached to skull or a chuck of wood, and peels it from the wall. The hair could be mold, but by the time they complete the cleanup everything will be in plastic bags anyway—the carpet, any untreated porous wood, their rags and mops.

“Why do you think it happened?” Philip asks. This sort of speculation is a common game for the two of them, guessing what might have turned a body into a mess.
Why did this person die
and—unspoken, but etched on both faces—
am I in danger of the same end?

“I don’t know.” William’s typical response, and as his fiancée’s pregnancy packs on months his retort grows increasingly somber.

“This guy obviously wasn’t married. We can be sure of that. No woman would keep a house like this.”

William nods, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and continues his hunt.

“We can rule out wealthy, too.” “Of course,” William says.

“But by the lawn I’d say he took pride in appearances, cared what people thought. Maybe a miser or something. Rich as hell but frugal to match.”

William nods. Philip paces along the remains of a main support-wall, stroking the cracked wallpaper, kicking through piles of paper, boxes of trash, which judging by the smell have sat undisturbed since the day the final resident escaped. He kneels down to a small box, digs through its disintegrating paper and finds what he yells is, “The mother load.”

He pulls a few stacks of paper from the box and shoves the find in William’s face. “Photographs,” he says. “These people were perfect.”

“They weren’t perfect,” William says. “They wouldn’t have been squatting here.”

“Look at these people.” He shuffles through the photographs, paying the most attention to the family portraits—mother, father, children. The sepia-toned subjects are old, dated, great-grandparents and their children. None likely to be the body belonging to the stain they’ve been called to clean. “Looks like this guy had a pretty good family. Why he’d go and shoot himself, I could never guess.”

“We don’t know it was suicide,” William says.

“I envy him is all. I’d love a family this good looking. And he had to have found something special with these people. Why else would he lug a box of photos with him to a dump like this?”

William shrugs.

“Maybe he just didn’t understand what he had.”

“It’s possible,” William says. His stomach rumbles again. “Check the cabinets,” and he flicks his exhausted cigarette filter at a wall. It explodes against the wood, raining fire to the floor.

“Good thinking.” Philip drops the photos, leans his mop against rain-saturated drywall, and approaches the cabinets. “Lots of cans, instant potatoes and stuff. Might mean lazy, might mean busy.” Philip pulls his respirator down over his face.

William’s stomach rumbles again. He sets his biohazard bag on the ground and approaches the cabinets. Staring up to the food, he opens a drawer by touch, finds a spoon, a bowl, and grabs a half-empty bag of chocolate cereal. “I’m not betting on milk,” he says to Philip as he passes him en-route to an open spot on the floor just large enough to breathe and eat comfortably.

Philip returns to cleaning. He wrings out his mop and whistles a muted tune through his respirator. He works for an hour, nothing said between the two of them, wiping down walls and rising dried blood from carpets with peroxide. Most of the carpet they will get rid of anyway, but William doesn’t stop him. Maybe it’s the cereal, dry, that placates him. He becomes lenient to breaking rules, understanding that he is in no position to criticize or judge right from wrong. The only noises in their little world are Philip’s soft whistle and the heavy crunch in William’s mouth.

Philip has always been the worker. Whenever they—

Drip…

Whenever they get out this late at night, Philip becomes a machine, and the hour doesn’t even seem to—

Drip…

Register. He takes pride—

Drip…

“What’s that noise?” William asks. He intends a sort of contemplative inner question, but by the look on Philip’s surprised face William has yelled. Philip might be scared, but this isn’t William’s purpose. He wouldn’t do anything to Philip, but if he’s willing to source the sound, William is not going to—

Drip…

Stop him.

Philip turns quick and in doing so pushes a puddle of blood along the wall with his feet. For a few seconds the drips flow to a hard surface below them. The sudden gush brings William to skim the walls looking for a drain, a vent, anything that would allow the sound of free falling blood and that splash at the bottom.

“What was that?” William asks. He doesn’t expect an answer. The comment serves only to announce the dropping at that place in his stomach, that place that pinches up at the possibility of unexpected work. He reasons that if the amount of blood they’ve heard fall and splash in just these last few seconds has been constant since the shooting, then there is a saturated basement below them, walls seven coagulated layers thick. His boots would have to be exchanged for the waders he has always kept in the van for their credential purposes but never actually planned on using.

William investigates slowly. “Precision” he claims when Philip suggests he hurry. But it isn’t. William’s logic is that if he ignored the slow drips and pretended the waterfall didn’t exist, then maybe neither would.

“I found it,” Philips says half-smiling. He drops to a blank stare when he sees William refusing to share in his excitement. Philip retreats: “Maybe it’s a crawl space or something. We could just let it all soak up into the soil. Splash some water, run the o- zone generator for a while.” Philip brings back the half smile. “At least that was probably all of it. It’s probably soaked halfway to the bedrock by now.”

They’re great thoughts, both of them
, William thinks.

Drip
...

One of them
.

The cereal is stale, a realization allowed by curbed hunger. William sets the bowl to the floor and heads outside to search for a way under the house.

It’s early as the sun breaches the horizon. The air fills with moisture while dew shines the perfect grass. The men track blood from their soiled shoes behind them as they search. Three crimson layers, three times around the house and they’ve found nothing. From above, the house might appear marked for protection. Or the red circle they’ve formed is a target and the entire neighborhood is two seconds to parking lot.

William doesn’t notice until a yell sounds from inside the house that Philip is gone.

“I found it,” he calls.

Philip stands at the far corner of the house with his head and half his torso wedged into a barely open door. He slips in as though stealth would help, but even gaining upper ground would not abolish William’s fear. Full-size doors don’t open to crawl spaces. Full-size doors open to full-size basements, and William has already made up his mind to deny any good that can come from a blood-filled basement. Philip turns back as if wanting a boost, a few words, a blessing even. “Go on,” is all William offers.

He creeps, breathing loud enough to challenge the sound of creaking wood and the harsh sputter of his fingers along the handrail. He turns back to encourage his partner. That move is the only reason William follows.

Philip raises his hand to a string hanging from a light bulb and pulls three times before the absence of electricity dawns on him. William waits three steps from the bottom for Philip to return to the surface for his spotlight. In preparation for the impending climax William pulls out another cigarette.

At the first drag, he calms. He recognizes the false build-up and realizes that one body could not contain enough blood to justify their panic. Two drags and he exhales confidence. He hopes for the worst, something worth a story to back the panic— maybe something liable to extra pay. Brackenwood, and its crime-infatuated, overpopulated neighbor, Alexandria, are big enough, but sometimes just not enough people die violently to keep the bills paid as punctually as creditors would prefer. During the dry season William does road kill to keep Julie’s cable.

Philip returns, runs through William’s cloud of smoke, and lands at the last step as though the before and now are seamless. Philip sweeps light through the area in slow, even strides. William blows enough smoke to fill the room. The spotlight beam is strong, dying only as smoke dissipates. The sun strengthens and they know this only because the crickets have calmed and the world around them grows by slow degrees. The beam finds the corner and stops.

A body, a simple lump of blue skin, black hair, and features, sits molded to the corner. Not a stain, not a mess, but a real human being. Her eyes roll toward the light. In a final stretch for good news, William turns to Philip and shrugs. “At least most of
her
blood is still in her body.”

Chapter Five

The ambulance siren culls a curious crowd. The lights awaken the deaf. William wishes for a single bomb. One giant mess he could clean with no more sleepless nights wasted fearing the telephone’s ring.

Groups of Bathrobes and House Slippers gather as if the initial shotgun blast had, without a doubt, been the last. The first strangers approach the bustle, feigning a reason to be outside wearing sleepwear in white November weather. By the time the almost-dead woman rides a gurney from the house, these neighbors bump each other for front row vantage.

The players—the paramedics, the gurney, William’s own interest—all work to peak the neighborhood curiosity. Whispers circulate the crowd. Soft speech and subtle glances. They divide into smaller groups, accusations shaping faces into blame. Finger pointing and shallow gasps.

“So how do we do this?” Philip asks. They stand as close as unconcerned paramedics will allow, watching this woman rolled out from the basement. Her skin reflects a suffocated blue even under the rising sun. Her throat sprouts tubes and packed gauze. Philip watches the entire display, silence between the two of them, before turning to William. “I’ll ride in the ambulance, then.”

William lights a cigarette and stares. He sympathizes with the ritual of the gurney and all the straps securing the body. He relates to the struggle these paramedics must feel. He understands the endurance necessary for a defeated venture, the obligation to keep something alive when really you trust in this option for escape.
Find a body, clean it up
.
Move on to the next.

“Don’t you think we should go?” Philip asks. “It seems someone should be there.”

“They’ll call family.”

“Until then, though.”

Philip believes that people deserve chances. William believes that people are the exact reason chances don’t work. He considers Philip’s general benevolence toward humanity—and the support his friend could garner from this artificial crowd should this situation take a turn toward rhetoric—and he accepts that one of them will be riding in the ambulance. He jams his cigarette nub into his mouth and holds out his hands, a fist resting in an open palm. “Paper, rock, scissors.”

“You’re disturbed,” Philip says. He jumps into the cab of the ambulance after a few short words with a paramedic. The doors close. William can see Philip’s face still twisted in the passenger mirror. He inhales, the turnout a success.

Philip’s experience with social interaction is limited. He is not a lady-killer. He’s the average guy. Average income. Average clothes. Average eating habits. He is more concerned with keeping his bed made than keeping it full, a heart stronger than his libido. William isn’t surprised that Philip feels the need to be a waking image to this woman. The man has a soft spot for destroyed women. He’s almost married two since William has known him. It’s the law of odds, really, that a dying woman from a job site would someday sway him.

The crowd remains, cocooned within whispers. William accepts the recognition, enjoys it perhaps, but carefully contains any budding smile. The Bathrobes and House Slippers cup their mouths and stare. They nudge and push each other, coaxing, wagering as to who is brave enough to approach the man who found the body in the basement. The cleaning supplies and spotted clothes might give into the impression that William is unapproachable. And he has no problem feeding this conception.

The Bathrobes and House Slippers eventually dwindle. They turn away, whispers growing into real voices as their distance from William increases. A wall of backsides surround. Words like “possibility” and “that guy” catch him at their weakest moments, quiet almost to silence, but they reach him still.

A few remain, dirty Bathrobes mostly, but some bright House Slippers are determined. They watch William as he loads supplies into his van. He is not accessible to them; he is mere entertainment. It is not until he gets to the o-zone generator—a two-person lift—that a short man with a robe, soft like puppy fur, approaches. He offers no help, only company and a smile.