Zero at the Bone (9 page)

That was the key to her: how much she could do with her mind, and how the rest of us must have seemed so slow to her, a family of sleepy, halting bears. I could see it sometimes, how much effort it took for her to be patient when I didn't understand how the famous gene scientist Mendel got white sweet pea blossoms to flutter on the vine next to the red ones.

And I'm not stupid. Spanish slows me down to a crawl, but I manage to take all university prep classes and avoid disaster. But I could see Kyle not really understanding what had happened, gazing around out of his tactless head, looking like a little boy grown tall overnight.

Maybe Kyle was a little afraid of me. He looked at me sideways. “I don't think there was anyone else, Cray. That's my honest opinion.” He wanted to shut up, having trouble judging my mood. But he added, “I would tell you. Even if it hurt my pride.”

I just couldn't work up any anger over him. I felt sorry for him. I could see that he didn't know anything. I had been hoping—depending on it. Now I felt dry all the way through.

“If you think of anything?…” I said, not finishing the thought, feeling for the first time in my life an awkward companionship with Kyle.

I was glad to get on the bus heading down Fruitvale. The day looked garishly normal, people driving, people standing patiently, waiting for the AC Transit bus to roll to a complete stop before they took a move toward it. Even the high-crime areas, windows behind black grills, were sunny, mail being delivered, people carrying groceries.

I was useless around the house, Dad on the phone, and Mom circling him like a major planet, feeding him phone numbers, hints. The police came and went, and I had Detective Waterman's card in my wallet. Every second I spent away from the house was a moment in which there could be good news.

If I stayed away, things could happen. Anita could come home, tell her story, and life could go on. It was like waiting for something wonderful, Christmas, that trip to Yellowstone when I was nine. If you think about it, the hoped-for joy stays away, and never comes any closer.

But I thought Barbara might brighten and give me good news as I rushed through the door into the office. She peered at me, a pile of invoices in front of her. She gave me a shake of her head: no news.

Jesse is as tall as I am. But he is broader chested, heavier all over. I found him in the cabinet room. Workers wielded staplers, hissing, banging. As usual, it was too loud to talk.

“Any news?” Jesse asked. He had to shout.

Jesse shows a feeling in his face as soon as he has it, amusement, irritation. I saw him fire someone for coming ten minutes late and the man didn't even argue, just turned right around and went home. “Not yet,” I said.

Jesse winced.

“You want me packing drawer pulls?” I asked, shouting over the shriek of one of the wood-shaping lathes behind me. The machines take posts of wood, knotted and rough-cut, and shape them into bedposts or table legs.

“We're way behind,” said Jesse, like this was what I wanted to hear.

Maybe it was. I love to catch up, pushing myself. Packing drawer pulls was fun without being something you would pay to do, and it was something that had to get done.

Each nightstand was shipped with a plastic bag in the drawer. Inside the plastic bag was a brass drawer pull and enough screws to put the handle in place. I stood beside a hill of slithery plastic bags and a box of screws. Behind me was a huge, bulging carton of drawer pulls, manufactured in Korea.

I counted out four screws carefully at first, popped them into a bag, dropped a brass handle in on top, and plunked the little package onto a conveyor belt. I couldn't see what happened beyond the pile of stacked, flattened cartons, but I knew that workers in the shipping room were putting the plastic bags of hardware into nightstand drawers and taping them to the bottom of the drawer so they wouldn't rattle around.

There were larger questions I could ask about all of this. I wanted to know why we couldn't ship the stands with the hardware already attached. I wanted to know how far behind the factory was running, and if we would make the deadline. I wanted to know if the fire inspector had arrived that morning, and what we were going to do to keep another fire from starting.

But I let myself not think. After a while I didn't have to count out the screws—I could pinch out four every time, without looking. The conveyor belt was a worn rubberized length with a seam that showed up periodically, a white scar in the dark gray, humming surface. Seeing it come around every fifty-five seconds was satisfying, hypnotic. It was one more thing that almost made me forget.

When my father bought the factory from Mr. Ziff, he said he would keep the name Ziff Furniture because it was so well known. Plus, he said, it didn't sound like a real name, but a name someone might make up, like the names for laundry soap—
Bold, Dash. Ziff
, Anita agreed, sounded like a sound effect in a comic strip, an arrow hitting its target.

Within a few weeks of owning the factory there was a very troubling accident. Dad would talk about it sometimes, but only when he was in the right mood.

Dad was in the office, trying to help Barbara boot up a new computer program, when Henry Wills ran up to the counter. He was breathing hard, his hand wrapped up in one of the pink shop towels. This shop towel wasn't pink anymore; it was red. Henry said he cut himself, and Dad asked him how bad it was. Dad doesn't like to describe what happened next unless he is sure the story won't upset his listeners.

Dad had trouble finding it. And when he did locate it at last, on a dune of sawdust, it didn't look like a thumb, already too white, too withered to be a human body part.

Dad hurried the thumb out to Jesse's waiting car, and Mr. Wills and the thumb arrived at the clinic. The thumb was reattached by Dr. Pollock, the surgeon, and when Mr. Wills retired the following year, he was walking around with five fingers just like everybody else.

As I worked on the bags of drawer pulls, I kept expecting a tug at my sleeve. I kept expecting Dad to be there, telling me in a tone of relief what had happened to Anita. He would be talking nonstop, why she couldn't get to a phone, telling me our lives could go on.

15

A buzzer sounded through the factory every working day at five o'clock. It was a bronze bray that cut through the rumble and hiss of equipment. There was a mix of people in the factory, men and women, people from faraway countries working alongside people who had lived in East Oakland all their lives. The closing buzzer changed the feeling in the air, and most sections of the factory fell silent, making the voices speaking Spanish and Cantonese suddenly sound loud.

The doors to the outside were wooden sections that slid sideways on rollers. I slipped out the shipping room door and ran along the outside of the factory as a shortcut. I was heading against the flow of workers at the front entrance. Most of them must have heard about my sister. The cries of “How's it going, Cray” and “Take care, Cray” sounded quieter than usual, concerned.

I knew that my father would be there in the office, ordering paint or shop gloves, or meeting with the fire inspector. Dad would be there, and everything would be all right.

Jesse was there in Dad's place, his arms folded, nodding in agreement with a man in a dark zipper jacket and a clipboard.

“This is Cray Buchanan,” said Jesse. He said
Cray
with special emphasis, giving the message that I was the owner's son without coming out and saying it. I caught the glint of a badge on the front of the zipper jacket,
FIRE MARSHAL
. I was suddenly tense. I had expected an ordinary inspector, someone with a list to check off. This man had the look of someone who could arrest us if he didn't like our answers.

I shook the marshal's hand, and I could sense his hesitation, wondering how seriously to talk to someone my age. “I'll report to my dad,” I said. “Anything you have to say.” But I didn't sound like a kid needing his father's backup. I sounded like someone who could think for himself, someone this man could talk to.

“I cleaned out all the ducts,” said Jesse. “I had a crew on the roof all day, clearing all the sawdust. And fixing the hole the fire department chopped into the hopper.” Jesse smiled. “So everything's okay.”

Jesse was doing just a little bit of a selling job. Everything
was
okay, probably, but it was important that the inspector think so, too. The marshal had a mustache with a few glints of gray, and narrow eyes. The eyes took in Jesse and switched over to me. It was impossible to tell what the man was thinking. He had one of those perfect faces for making people nervous—lean, showing little emotion.

“Let's go up on the roof,” I suggested.

I was surprised when the fire marshal said simply, “I believe you.” He patted his clipboard against his pant leg. “You don't want this place to burn down any more than I do.”

“But you ought to go up and make sure,” I protested. “Some of those sawdust fires start up again.”

The fire marshal smiled a small, tough smile, one wrinkle in his cheek. He shook his head. “I'll schedule another inspection in about three, four months.” We were due to have our fire extinguishers inspected then anyway, so he was basically telling us that nothing special was going to happen. It was like passing a test too easily. I wanted to argue with him, but I felt Jesse's big hand on my arm.

“Drop by any time you want,” I said, sounding just as fake and easygoing as any grown man talking to an official who could shut down the factory and put it out of business. I had heard Dad sounding like this, as though his favorite moments were when the fire department came by to make sure the Dumpsters were emptied once a week.

“You employ how many people here—one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty,” said the marshal. He wasn't asking as much as thinking out loud.

“A little more,” said Jesse.

“So if this place shuts down, it takes a big bite out of the economy,” said the marshal.

I did something else I had seen experienced men do, and I felt completely phony doing it. I pointed my finger at him, with my thumb up, a silent way of saying “You're right.”

The truth is that these little phony gestures and phrases work. You say them and people respond. The marshal gave me his card, the second card I had taken that day.

When the marshal was gone, I walked with Jesse out into the cabinet room. The place was silent, just one worker pushing a broom around, making a small pile of bent staples. The staples made a faint, tinkling noise along the concrete floor.

I had heard about factory owners paying bribes. Dad wouldn't do it, and Jesse wouldn't—at least, as far as I knew. But I suddenly wasn't so sure.

“I think he must have heard about your sister,” said Jesse. “Decided to take it easy.”

“He still should have gone up the ladder and made sure everything was safe,” I said.

“He was giving us a break,” said Jesse.

“What kind of a world is this?” I asked, too loudly. “People just go through the motions.”

“You want me to run up the street and grab him?” said Jesse. “Tell him to come on back, we want to take him up on the roof whether he wants to take a look or not? I bet the two of us could drag him up there without much trouble.” He was joking, but there was an edge to his voice.

The shipping room was the only department working overtime. The sound of a truck reached us, backing up to the shipping room door. Another shipment of nightstands would be in Southern California by midnight.

“I just think everyone needs to be more careful,” I said. “Everyone has to do their job exactly right.” My voice had taken on a thick, heavy sound, the way it does when I am saying one thing and meaning something else.

I could have called home from the office, sitting at my dad's desk. I thought about it, looking down at the clutter of business cards and memos all over my dad's work space. My dad had a collection of paperweights, rocks Anita had found on the beach. He needed them. His desk top was like his life, dozens of things to get done. One of the rocks had a barnacle on it, a chalk-white miniature volcano.

I actually had my hand on the telephone but I couldn't bring myself to use it.

“You be careful now,” said Barbara as I left the office. She was one of those people who like to add an extra word or two to what they say, not “Good night,” but “Good night now.”

I turned to give her a wave, and the look she gave me made me stop. I pushed my way back through the swinging half-door at the counter. I could not keep myself from thinking: She knows something.

She knows something, and she doesn't want to tell me.

“No, hon, I haven't heard anything,” she said, reading the question in my eyes.

She didn't seem to have a life outside the billing department. A row of framed pictures was on display on her desk, and I realized I had never really paid much attention to them. Children, I guessed. The two elderly people must be her parents. She got to work before anyone in the morning and worked long after the rest of us had gone, recording payments, billing furniture stores, sitting there gazing at numbers on the computer screen, pushing the delete button.

“Did Jesse really have a crew on the roof today?” I asked. I was stalling. I didn't want to go home. I knew what was happening, and as long as I stayed away I could pretend I wasn't a part of it.

Sometimes I walk down a street and I am surprised how easy it is to make a telephone call. Telephones are everywhere. The phone companies must think we can't go three minutes without talking to someone. You can carry a phone in your pocket just in case you need to hear a voice. There was a pay phone by the bus stop, a large metal frame shaped like a telephone receiver. But I didn't use it. The longer I went without knowing, the more time there would be for something to happen.