House of Sand and Fog: A Novel

by Andre Dubus III

  Lester could not move or speak. His veins had turned cold and thick, his lungs empty of air.

  “Nakhreh! Nakhreh! Nakhreh!” Behrani was screaming, crawling past Lester, blood already spreading out around the boy’s shoulder and arm and down his bare leg. Then the two deputies came into view, both of them still pointing their weapons at Esmail and now the colonel, who was wailing, holding his son’s face, then turning him onto his back and pressing with both hands on the wound in his upper chest. “Hospital! Call to hospital!”

  Lester’s gun lay at his feet and he felt it like a pointing finger. One of the deputies crossed in front of him, rested his foot on the gun, and began to pull on protective gloves. The other had holstered his service pistol and was already on his hand radio calling for an ambulance or fire squad, and they were both young, in their mid-twenties, the one near Lester tall and thin, the other short and fair-skinned, and Lester had trained neither of them. They were failing to take in the wider picture, and Lester knew he could slip out of the entryway and disappear into the crowd right now. But the colonel was moaning, pressing down so hard on his son’s wound his shoulders were hunched, and he was rocking slightly too, acting as a pump instead of a plug, blood leaving the boy’s hip wound in pulsing gushes. The deputy near Lester had finished pulling on his glove, but instead of starting first aid, he bent down to pick up the gun at his feet. The radio deputy had finished making his call, but now he was fumbling with his own protective gloves and for Lester everything began to move again, he was as light and diffuse as smoke, his heart in his face, brushing by the deputy: “Goddamn you, the kid’s bleeding to death.”

  Lester knelt by the boy and pulled Esmail’s shorts down past the entry hole, then yanked off his own shirt and thumbed some of the material into the wound. The colonel didn’t turn around but stopped rocking and was just pressing down, sniffling now, saying the same Persian sentence over and over again to his son. The colonel’s shoulder and back were so close to Lester he couldn’t see the boy’s face, and he didn’t want to. He lowered his head and put all his weight into his hands, which were streaked and spotted red. The two deputies had finished protecting themselves and were now pushing back the crowd, making a hole for the paramedics. He could hear the sirens of the fire squad only five, maybe six blocks away. Esmail’s shorts and underwear were pulled almost to his penis, and Lester was looking down at the boy’s pubic hair, just a small patch of black. He closed his eyes and pressed so hard his hands began to ache.

  It took seconds and years for the siren to cut through everything, then fall quiet, and he heard the doors open, the stretcher wheels hitting the pavement. Someone touched his shoulder and he stood, watched as a man and woman from the fire squad knelt by the boy. The man pulled Lester’s shirt away, then put it back and wrapped a yellow tourniquet around Esmail’s thigh while the woman slipped an oxygen mask over his face, and the colonel was still pressing, crying, and he wouldn’t move. The woman had her hand on his and she was saying something to him, but still the colonel didn’t seem to hear her. The tall deputy came up behind him, then bent down, and Behrani sniffled and finally let go, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on his son. The deputy took the colonel’s arm and helped him up while the paramedics slid the boy onto the stretcher, raised it, and rolled it past all the people to the street.

  The boy’s feet were splayed out, the soles of his basketball shoes dirty and worn almost smooth, bouncing slightly as the stretcher was pushed into the paramedic van. The colonel tried to follow but the tall deputy held his arms, and as the van pulled away, Behrani strained forward, the siren coming on again, the radio deputy stepping up to Lester and saying something, asking something, his name, what happened? He had his notepad and pen in hand, and his breath was bad, his voice tremulous, his fingers too. Lester looked down at him, the shooter, at the twitch in his lip as he waited, treating Lester like a civilian, a victim or perpetrator, the kid didn’t know which yet. And neither did Lester.

  More deputies were coming, making their way through the crowd in their French-blue uniforms, and the first was Brian Gleason. His eyes caught Lester’s right away and he stopped and looked down at the blood on the sidewalk. Behind him was movement, Behrani struggling with the deputy, trying to pull his arms free, his eyes on Lester: “It is him! He has done this! It is him!” The colonel was swinging his elbows back, kicking his feet, and Gleason and another deputy moved in and pulled Behrani’s arms back while the other handcuffed him. The colonel was still straining forward, the veins coming out in his forehead and temple, his eyes on Lester: “I will kill you! I will kill you!”

  All three deputies were holding Behrani, and Gleason turned and looked at Lester. The crowd had grown; kids tried to make their way through to stand on their skateboards and look over the shoulders of lawyers and secretaries, of women still in their aerobics class sweats, of shoppers and store owners and salesgirls, all looking at the colonel now, at the boy’s blood on the sidewalk, at the five sheriff’s deputies, and at the man the bald handcuffed foreigner was yelling about, at Lester Burdon, who felt he was in the presence of a moment already dreamed and now real, not an accident, nothing random, but ordered and logical, an inevitable expression of who he really was. His throat was dust, his hands soft and damp, his legs brittle. The deputy was speaking again, asking Lester another question over the colonel’s screaming, but Lester wanted only water, the cold sweet water at the fish camp. “What?”

  “Your name, sir. What is your name?”

  A patrol car had pulled up, and Gleason and the other two deputies pushed the colonel into the backseat, Behrani screaming only in Farsi now, a deep, guttural slash of vowels and consonants that sounded to Lester like a thousand-year curse on them all, on him, on his children, on their children—he looked down at the sidewalk, so dark and red where it was wet, and he wanted to see Bethany and Nate, to hold them and kiss them.

  Gleason shut the patrol-car door and Lester could still hear the colonel’s muffled cries. He turned back to the young fair-skinned deputy, whose face was pale, the twitch still in his lip.

  Gleason stepped up, his hands on his hips, and he nodded his head in the direction of the blood on the sidewalk. “What happened?”

  People were still standing around. The two young businessmen with their water and coffee were looking right at Lester. So was Gleason, and Lester wanted to rise up out of this like a cloud, to drift over the valley and shore to the Pacific, to dissolve into its huge green expanse like rain.

  I FELT RESTLESS. I WAS SWEATING IN THE CAR BUT THE SKY WAS GRAY, and I knew a fog was unrolling itself down in Corona. I could smell the ocean. It was the weather I was used to, the way a normal day looked, and this made me even more antsy; what I really wanted to do was drive my car down the coast highway for hours and not come back until Les got here with the check. But I knew I couldn’t, not in my red Bonneville. We would probably have to leave it here for good anyway, wouldn’t we? And how would we get time to cash that big county check? Tie up the Behranis again? And it was Wednesday. Banks closed early. If Les didn’t get back soon, we would have to wait till tomorrow morning and then keep the family tied up overnight. I felt sick at the thought. And I kept thinking of Lester having to run away with me from his whole life, his kids. I was outside, but I could hardly breathe.

  I went back into the house. I heard the low Persian music. The air smelled like tea and flowers. I walked over the carpet and down the hall and I could feel my father like he was standing there in the dim hallway in his beige Nicolo Linen uniform, a smoking Garcia y Vega between his fingers, his eyes big behind his glasses, looking at me like he always did, like I was a rare bird he was still getting used to seeing in his own front yard.

  When I stepped into the darkened bedroom, Mrs. Behrani was lying as still as I’d left her. Her hands were crossed over her stomach, and her sleeping face looked pale in the shadow of the room. I wanted to do something for her, though I didn’t know what that could be. On the cassette playe
r a young woman’s voice was reciting what had to be poetry, and there was a backdrop of drums behind her, that, and men letting long open-throated sounds out of themselves. My eyes were used to the dark now and I could see the rise and fall of Mrs. Behrani’s breathing, her hands on her stomach. I remembered the way she looked at the bruises on my arm like it hurt to see them. I remembered her face as she washed my bleeding foot, then laid it on that thick white towel, her eyes full of warmth. I thought about wetting a cloth with cool water, laying it on her forehead, but for all I knew that could make a migraine worse. So instead I went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of ice water, set it near the tape player on her bedside table. The glass tapped against the base of the lamp and she squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as if someone had yelled in her ear. I stood as still as I could. Her face began to soften again and I tiptoed out of the room and went into the kitchen.

  The back door was shut, shards of broken glass still in the lower windowpanes. There was a trash container in the corner and I carried it to the door and started to pull the glass out. The big pieces were easy to get free, but for the smaller ones I had to use a butter knife I’d pulled from Mrs. Behrani’s dish rack. I squatted on the floor and dug the broken bits from the frame. Sometimes the knife scraped against the glass and made me shiver. I felt dirty: my skin and hair, my teeth and eyes and tongue, my lungs and stomach and the blood in my veins, still laced with what I took last night. I thought about taking a long hot shower, but then I would have to step back into these stolen clothes and Lester had already been gone close to an hour and I didn’t want to be in the shower when they came back.

  But I had to do something. I pushed the trash container back into the corner and stood there. On the refrigerator was taped a color photograph of the Behranis’ daughter and her husband, I guessed, holding hands in front of a luxury hotel, all canopy and marble columns and gold fixtures on glass doors. The sun was on them, and they were dressed in matching polo shirts and baggy shorts. The husband wore glasses and was small, a camera hanging from his wrist by its strap. The Behranis’ daughter was petite and beautiful, her smile posed but toned-down somehow, like she didn’t want to flaunt too much what she knew she had. And looking at her on my refrigerator, I felt old, worn-out, and cheap. I wanted Lester here, but not because I wanted him to hurry up and finish all this; I just needed to see him look down at me with those sweet eyes and that slightly dumb-founded smile under his crooked mustache, like I was the answer to every painful question he’d ever asked himself and he still couldn’t believe I was his. I hoped he still felt that way. I hoped this past night and day hadn’t changed that.

  I WANT ONLY MY SON.

  They have sat me upon a soft chair in a new office and they ask the same questions they asked me moments ago, and I answer, but I want only to go to my son. They have freed my wrists and a large detective offers to me a wet towel for my hands, but I refuse it. The men regard one another for they fear my son’s blood. I look down upon my red fingers. The skin has tightened as the khoon has dried and I do not want it to dry. I fear washing it from my hands.

  I stand. “Please, I must—”

  Lieutenant Alvarez enters the room. One of the detectives rises from his seat. “Burdon corroborates the whole deal, Lieutenant.”

  The Lieutenant does not look at the detective, keeps his eyes on me only. “Mr. Behrani, this is your recourse.” He begins to speak to me of pressing charges, but I see only the movement of his lips, the fashion in which his shirt collar presses into the flesh of his neck.

  “Please, hospital. Where is the hospital, please?”

  The lieutenant points to the large window overlooking the parking compound of officers’ automobiles, the shops along Broadway Avenue in the sun, a large gray building among others. He tells to me this is where I must go, and there is the offer of an escort, a deputy to accompany me, but I cannot urge my legs for walking quickly enough. Soon I am among the people upon the sidewalk and I begin running. A woman steps away as I pass by and her face is frightened. It is the blood, the khoon, on my hands and shirt, my bloody peerhan. It is that I am running, but I see only the face of Esmail as he held the heavy weapon on the man who would rob us, my pesar’s eyes so dark with the question of what he should do next, the fashion in which he regarded me, his father, and I told to him, “Keep the gun pointed at his heart, do not be afraid.”

  There is across the street a sign for EMERGENCY. Into the khiaboon I am running and an automobile screeches to a stop. Another driver sounds his horn, and then another and another and I turn and curse them in my language, disgracing their mothers and grandmothers and sisters as whores. My throat aches and in my eyes there is a stinging sweat. A Mercedes-Benz drives very close by me and I hear the shout of a man inside but I do not care. I spit upon these people. I spit upon this country and all of its guns and automobiles and homes.

  But inside the hospital it is cool, clean, and quiet. A kind desk woman looks directly at my son’s blood and directs me to the area for emergencies. The corridors are wide and gray, shining from the light tubes above. The air smells of cotton bandages and floor cleaner. And I feel I cannot breathe. I follow the large signs for EMERGENCY. There are now many people in the corridors, some are in chairs with wheels and a husband or wife pushes them. Others walk with flowers and small children. They see the blood upon my hands and peerhan and look immediately to my eyes. And there are many sounds and voices and footsteps but I hear only my breath and I see my son’s face as I pressed down upon his wound, his eyes were open but he no longer seemed to see me and I told to him to hold on, to keep his feet upon the ground, to grip his toes to his skateboard for he is descending very fast down a long hill and he need only hold on. Do not let go, Esmail-joon. Do not let go.

  I am breathing with difficulty, speaking with a tall nurse who has as many years as I. There are deep lines in her face, and she does not fear the blood on my hands as she leads me to a sink and tells me to wash and I do not hesitate. Soon we are in the elevator and as we move upwards towards my Esmail, she holds a clipboard and asks me for the name of my son, my name, our address. I tell to her 34 Bisgrove Street, Corona, California, this property that is still completely my own, Burdon in the custody of his own officers; he has lost and I have won—the nurse two times asks a question of insurance but I do not speak: I must see Esmail. I must see him very carefully, I must see him.

  The doors open and I walk along the empty corridor following the tall nurse who does not press me any further but only leads me. There is a sign for Surgery, a small waiting area with magazines and cushioned chairs, a window overlooking the streets and buildings below. The nurse tells me to please sit and she disappears behind a heavy door. But I cannot sit. Nor can I stand still. I walk back and forth over the thin carpet, and I see the magazines, the colorful covers of famous men and women, the rich and beautiful, and I remember my hand in Shah Pahlavi’s; his palms were smooth as the face of babies and on his smallest finger there was a ruby ring as large as a grape.

  For our excess we lost everything.