When All Light Fails

by Randall Silvis

  “You know I wanted to come see you in the hospital,” Leña said.

  “Then why didn’t you?” Her delivery, she noticed, was flat, as if to balance out all of her aunt’s exclamations.

  “Your mother told me you didn’t want any visitors! Said all you did was to snarl and curse at her and tell her to go home.”

  Flores sipped her tea. Was in no mood to revisit those days.

  “Said she never heard so many f-bombs in her life. And from the mouth of her own little girl!”

  “So how long have you been working here? Last I knew you were living in Ohio.”

  Leña nodded, her mouth in a pucker. Stepped back from the bar, found the bar rag and started polishing the counter and the beer taps. “The last of a long line of mistakes,” she said, and shook her head and grinned. “Our family.”

  “What about it?”

  “The women.”

  “What about the women?”

  “We’re slow learners. But we do learn. Eventually we learn.”

  Flores wasn’t exactly sure what Leña meant by that. Something about getting rid of the men, probably. Or about always picking the wrong kind. But that was a conversation for another day. She said, “Hey. You knew Linda Szabo, didn’t you?”

  “Sure I knew her. We went to high school together. She was a Bittner then.”

  “I just found out the other day that she died a while back.”

  Again Leña nodded. Stepped over to the taps again to serve an elderly man waiting at the bar for a beer. While he waited he inched closer to Flores, and eventually allowed his shoulder to rub against hers. She jerked away and told him, “Hey! You’re in my space, old man. Get your skin off my skin.”

  He took his beer, mumbled something, and shuffled back to his table.

  Leña chuckled. “He’s harmless.”

  “Nobody touches me without my permission.”

  “Geez, baby girl. You have changed, haven’t you?”

  Flores looked away. Shook her shoulders. Sipped her tea.

  “How did you know Linda?” Leña asked.

  “I’m not sure how we met.” Flores pretended to think about it. “I seem to remember it was at some event at the school. She came up and introduced herself to me. Said she knew you and Mama.”

  “Huh. More like she knew your daddy.”

  “What?” Flores asked.

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t know what he was like.”

  “Oh, I know what he was like.”

  “You ever hear from him these days?”

  “He knows better.”

  “I guess so. My baby girl the po-po. Who would ever have thought?”

  “Anyway,” Flores said. “Did Linda have any kids? Do I have any half siblings I don’t know about?”

  “Doubtful,” Leña told her. “She just had that one boy, Benny.”

  “He could still be my half brother. If she and the asshole had a thing.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Leña said. “Linda had a thing with every dick in the county. Never met a penis she didn’t like.”

  “Which only means that this Benny guy could be my half brother.”

  “I’m talking odds here. Powerball jackpot odds. Plus Benny is all white bread.”

  Flores chuckled. “So what ever happened to him? Is he still around?”

  Leña shrugged. “He never comes in here, that’s all I know. He was up in Albion for a while.”

  “No kidding? What was he in for?”

  “Drugs, I’m sure. Him and some other dildo got high one night and ripped off three places in a row. Tried to, anyway.”

  “Ha,” Flores said. “Who was the other dildo?”

  “Mmm…I’m thinking his name was something odd. Something like Milo or Millich or something like that.”

  “And they both went down for it?”

  “I think so. Honestly, honey, I quit trying a long time ago to keep track of all the people I used to know who went to jail or died. There’s just too many of them.”

  “I hear that,” Flores said, and took another sip of tea.

  Leña reached for the pitcher under the bar and brought it up to refill the glass, but Flores covered the brim with her hand. “I can’t, Tía. My bladder’s floating already.”

  “So go empty it and I’ll get you a burger and some fries.”

  “I wish I could,” Flores said, and slid off the stool. “I have stuff I need to get to. Just wanted to see my Auntie Leña again. I’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, baby girl,” Leña said, and leaned over the bar. “Gimme a kiss.”

  They embraced, kissed cheeks, and drew apart. Flores whispered, “I’m about ready to pee my pants.”

  “Right back there,” Leña said, and pointed to the rear.

  In the restroom, Flores entered a stall, wrestled her pants down over the leg brace, and sat on the toilet. When she was finished she worked the cell phone out of a pocket and called Boyd at the station house. “Can you pull the sheet on the guy who was with Benny Szabo the night he got arrested? Guy’s name is Milo, Millich, something that sounds like that. Sorry, that’s the best I can do.”

  She then said goodbye to Leña once more and returned to her vehicle, left the VFW parking lot and drove into Hermitage, where she parked in the big lot in front of the little strip mall behind Lowe’s. Six minutes later she received Boyd’s text: Eugene Miklos. A.k.a. Poindexter, Dexter, Dex. Released eleven months before Szabo. Current address 1873 Fredonia Road. Want me to relay to D?

  I got it, she texted. Thanks.

  Welcome. Get together tonite?

  Yes please.

  He ended the conversation with a smiley face wearing sunglasses.

  Flores laid the phone on the passenger seat, popped open her glove box, took out her Glock, checked the clip, slammed it back in, started the engine, and peeled out.

  Sixty-Four

  The day the lights went out in Fredonia

  The black metal numbers on the mailbox post, nailed in place vertically, said 1873. She turned onto the gravel driveway, drove fifteen yards and parked facing the front door of the small saltbox house. A face at the window, then only curtain. She shut off the engine and climbed out, lingering behind the open door only long enough to toss the keys onto the floor, stuff the Glock into a pocket holster, attach the holster to her side and pull the hem of her shirt down over it. She walked quickly to the door, knocked three sharp raps. Waited five seconds, knocked in triplicate again. Finally the door squeaked open twelve inches.

  One look at Eugene Miklos and she knew exactly why he was called Poindexter. A small, balding, scrawny man with a round, boyish face, startled eyes behind thick black-framed glasses. A cartoon of a man.

  “Hi,” she said. “You must be Dex. Is Benny around?”

  Poindexter blinked. “He is not. I do not know where he might be. I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”

  “Come on,” she said. “He told me he was staying here.”

  Another blink. “When did he tell you that?”

  “When I saw him yesterday,” she said, and pushed past him into the house. She barely had time to take a quick look around the living room, to glimpse the battered blue sofa and green easy chair and the coffee table with five empty beer bottles clustered in front of the chair, before something blew hard against the back of her head and knocked her forward, something like a blast of scorching wind hard and heavy carrying a fireworks finale that exploded inside her skull then almost instantly went black.

  Sixty-Five

  The window to the conscience

  Conrail tracks ran past the Marigold only a few steps from the front door, the Shenango River a short jog across North Water Avenue. The backstreet bar, sometimes now called Marigold I ever since a second Marigold had opened in nearby Sharpsville, had added the word
restaurant to its Facebook page, but to DeMarco the place was the same old Marigold Bar & Grille in which, as a younger man, he had searched on maybe two or three occasions for a deadbeat dad or dope dealer. He had never been a bar drinker himself, had been an exception to the rule that misery loves company, so he was not certain that he had ever been inside this particular bar before or not; most small-town taverns, this one included, considered a place to sit and a well-stocked bar all the ambiance required. The lottery ticket machine, pool table, video slots, dart board and beer signs and TVs were mere distractions to keep the drinks flowing and the cash register ringing.

  There were still a few minutes of morning left when DeMarco stepped inside and took a quick look around. One gray-haired pensioner in a booth by himself, just him and his boilermaker. Another one at a corner of the three-sided bar, sipping from a mug of draft beer. An aging Scott and Zelda seated in front of the beer taps, both drinking what appeared to be gin and tonics, both looking excessively happy to be who and where they were. And, like a past reflection of the old guy on the corner, a man maybe thirty staring into his whiskey neat, oblivious to everything but the ripples of whatever new misfortune had set him there, his ball cap brim pulled low over his forehead.

  DeMarco knew that he could probably walk into any roadhouse in the county, maybe even in the country, and see these same types. Happier people would fill the bar by six that evening, but happy people don’t drink in the morning, though Scott and Zelda were loudly trying to convince themselves that life was their cherry.

  The woman behind the bar wasn’t exactly effervescing either. Seventyish, with short but neatly styled white hair, a round face and rounded shoulders, tired gray eyes that had seen too much, she regarded DeMarco with neither a smile nor a frown. He gave her a nod and crossed to the bar, where he stood midway between the laughing couple and the younger man.

  He said, “Any chance you have a fresh pot of coffee on? I can’t seem to keep my eyes open this morning.”

  She turned and went into the kitchen, came back with a thick enameled white mug filled nearly to the brim and a quart carton of 2 percent milk. “This is the best I can do,” she told him.

  “Perfect,” he said, and took a long sip.

  She nodded toward the milk. “You don’t need that?”

  “And ruin a good cup of coffee?”

  The smile she offered was tentative. She set the carton into the nearest well. Then, without sliding farther down the bar, she turned sideways to him and looked up at the small TV, its audio off. A dog show of some kind. Dogs of every breed racing off a ramp over a swimming pool in pursuit of a rubber rod tossed into the air.

  “You must like dogs,” DeMarco said.

  “Not necessarily,” she answered.

  The pseudohappy man to DeMarco’s left said, “I was a breeder for a while.”

  The bartender gave him a look, then turned back to the screen before saying, “Most women wouldn’t put up with that kind of thing.”

  It took the man a moment to get the joke. Then he laughed, too loud, and explained the joke to his companion, who then chuckled and said, “Oh, that’s awful.”

  DeMarco sipped his coffee. Lowered his eyes and looked to his right. The young man would be more or less Benny Szabo’s age. Might know a little something. However, the two old guys might know Szabo’s old man. It was worth a shot.

  DeMarco leaned back a bit on his stool. “So I’ve been sitting over there in the empty lot across from Warehouse Sales for most of two hours. Waiting for a guy named Sabo or Szabo, I’m not sure how it’s pronounced. Anybody seen him around recently? Older guy? Late sixties I’d guess, maybe more?”

  Every customer but the young man shook his or her head. The bartender asked, “What did you want with him?”

  “I ran into him up at Lowe’s. He heard me asking what they charge for house painting, came up and offered to give me an estimate. I was going to drive him to my place for a quick look.”

  She nodded, then turned to the dogs again.

  DeMarco asked, “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve heard the name,” she said.

  “But you don’t know him?”

  “Not to see him,” she said. “There’s a handful of Szabos in the area.”

  “Well, this one said he’s painted a lot of houses in his time. Said he has his own ladders. Which would save me from having to rent them.”

  Now she shook her head. Turned and looked him in the eye. “Like I said, I’ve heard the name. Wouldn’t know him if I passed him on the street, though.”

  DeMarco didn’t believe her. She knew a Szabo or two, though maybe not the old man. But she wasn’t going to tell him that in front of anybody. He said, “Any chance I could leave my number with you in case he shows up here later?”

  She turned to the cash register, picked up a small white pad and short pencil, and laid them before him. He wrote down his number and pushed the pad back to her. “Just tell him the guy who needs his house painted. From Lowe’s.”

  She laid the pad beside the cash register again, then returned her attention to the TV.

  DeMarco took another sip of coffee, stood, laid a five on the bar. “Good coffee,” he told her. “Thanks.”

  She gave him another look and a curt nod before turning away again.

  Those tired gray eyes, he told himself as he headed for the door. Those eyes know something.

  Sixty-Six

  Quid pro crow

  DeMarco was standing in the trees on a hill overlooking the Oak Tree Lake dam when he got the call. He had had no luck in any of the bars he’d visited, looked too out of place to be trusted by the local barflies and those whose businesses depended on them. Most of the morning drinkers were low-income graybeards, guys needing some hair of the dog, guys with a broken heart, or else petty punks with a chip on the shoulder. He suspected that he had been made fairly early in his rounds because every bar he entered immediately went hushed and few eyes would meet his gaze. Maybe the Marigold’s bartender had set the grapevine to singing. So now he was standing in the trees and waiting for an idea. The air was gray and cool and the water in the lake was the color of a chocolate milkshake, swollen with runoff and littered with natural and unnatural debris. He was alone with the parking lot and restroom and trees except for a crow perched on a high branch not far to his left. Its caws were sharp, one coming every fifteen seconds or so and sharpened by the intervening silences.

  “Screw you,” he told it, because he knew that the crow was shrieking at him, trying to scare him out of its territory, away from its lunch, which DeMarco could not see but could certainly smell, a familiar odor of rotting flesh. Probably a dead fish or two down there on the rocks, suffocated by the thick water. A boom made of bright orange foam barrels roped together lay stretched across the water twenty or so yards ahead of the dam, and trapped behind the boom were branches and plastic bottles and a half-deflated beach ball and what looked like a lampshade, all of them bouncing up and down because of the water rushing under the boom and over the dam.

  DeMarco had never been a devotee of spring. Too wet, too sloppy, too fickle. As far as he was concerned, E. E. Cummings could keep all of spring’s mud-lusciousness to himself. Early fall was the best season. Colorful and comfortable, fewer gnats and mosquitoes, clear blue skies and sunsets to knock your socks off. In the fall the riot of colors from the trees would be reflected in a body of water, and if the water was quiet the double image would take your breath away. He wished he could find a place where it was always late October. But then he remembered that he had been shot in late October. And that his friend Thomas Huston had been killed in late October. And that he and Jayme had lost their unborn baby girl in late October. Maybe April wasn’t so bad after all.

  Life was but a temporary bivouac anyway, this he knew. Yet how strange and dark and ugly it could be. The avidity with which we thieve and kill
and ruin one another! The flesh is undeserving of the souls with which it has been entrusted. We might be the highest of beasts, he told himself, but beasts we truly are in these bodies. It was a wonder to him that the soul is not made rancid by the poison of the blood, the bile of human beings’ rancorous nature. The ego rots everything it touches, he thought. Everything it breathes its toxic breath upon. He recognized that this life might be nothing more than a coed Kabuki, nothing more real than a video game, yet it was now and then disgusting to him all the same, its more sinister characters worthy of a hundred floods and a thousand Armageddons.

  He shook his head. Worked up a gob of saliva and spit it into the matted leaves. Then gazed up through the branches and said, “You should have saved the dinosaurs instead.”

  Caw! the crow told him.

  “Okay, okay,” he answered, and turned away from the water, headed back toward his car. “Go eat your stinking fish.”

  And then the phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out. Didn’t recognize the number, though it was a local one. “Hello?” he said.

  “Is this Sergeant Ryan DeMarco?” a woman’s voice asked.

  “It is. And to whom am I speaking?”

  “I’m a nurse at UPMC Horizon Urgent Care in Greenville. We have a patient here who asked me to call and make you aware of her situation. A Ms. Daniella Flores?”

  “Oh god,” he said. “What happened?”

  “She was brought in with a head trauma about an hour ago. She’s doing okay but she does have a concussion, so we’re sending her over to our imaging facility for a CT scan.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t really know about that, sir, but there is—”

  “Thank you,” he said, and ended the call, and jogged heavily toward his car. The crow dropped down with a final shriek and descended to the shore.

  Sixty-Seven

  The meek shall inherit the bold who get injured