by Paul Cleave
“Don’t say that,” she says.
“He was more than a friend, he was like a brother to me.”
“I know.”
“I just wish . . . I wish, ah, hell . . .”
“I know,” she says.
“I should have done more,” he says.
“You did what you could, Benjamin,” she says, but really she wants to shake him and tell him yes, he should have done more. He should have done whatever it took to keep her husband alive. “Why didn’t you have backup?” she asks.
It takes him a few seconds to answer. “You know why,” he tells her, looking down as he talks, and yes, she knows why.
Ben tells her that Mitchell will be given a full police funeral, and he tells her they will have people make all the arrangements, if she so wishes. She thinks that if the police take care of the arrangements it leaves her more time to lie in bed and cry her eyes out, so she nods and thanks him and tells him yes, she’s happy for them to plan everything. Of course, as much as she wants to hide herself away, she knows she can’t. She has Joshua to care for. Having somebody take care of the funeral arrangements will give her more time to spend with her son.
They sit in silence then, both in their own thoughts, Michelle thinking about what tomorrow will bring without her husband, the first day of her adult life in which he will no longer exist. Ben is thinking about how the morning unfolded. He’s running through the events at the construction yard. He’s thinking that if they had done things by the book, none of this would have happened, but they needed it done in secret. They had broken into Simon Bower’s house without a warrant because the previous night they had unsealed his childhood court records and found that when he was thirteen, he killed a neighbor’s dog, and when he was fourteen, he molested that same neighbor’s daughter. They decided Simon Bower could be a perfect candidate, and after leaving his house they knew he was. They went to the construction site knowing he was their guy. They were going to get him alone upstairs and they were going to question him, and if there was no doubt he had killed Andrea Walsh, then Bower was going to have an accident. There was no place in the world for people who cut women into pieces. No place at all.
He can still smell the gunpowder. Can still hear the sound of the bullet as it entered Bower’s neck. Pulling that trigger after Mitchell was dead gave him a brief moment of satisfaction in this nightmare—but they shouldn’t have been so cocky. They should have known how Bower would react. They never should have split up.
On the other side of town is Vincent Archer. Vincent is the last person Simon Bower thought of before his death, and right now Vincent is sanding back the final edges on the rocking horse he has built for his niece. His niece is four years old, and her name is Matilda, and Matilda is good at turning any conversation back to the pony she’s always wanted. Its name, she tells him, will be George. So he’s been crafting the rocking horse from solid pieces of rimu that he’s joined together, hoping it will be a good substitute for George, and this week the plan was to paint it, and next weekend give it to her for her fifth birthday. So far he’s spent two months handcrafting it in his spare time, and he’s been working on it since getting home from work an hour ago. Sawdust has gotten into his beer, but it doesn’t stop him from drinking it. His garage is full of power and hand tools. In fact, it’s been five years since he was able to fit his car in here, and he thinks he should leave some of the tools out in the cabin he’s been renovating. He spends half his time there anyway, and his dog lives there, only makes sense his tools can live there too. He has a radio on for background noise, and he pauses when he hears his friend’s name. He puts down the sanding block and moves over to the radio and turns up the volume, but the newsreader has moved on to the next story.
He grabs his beer and carries it upstairs. He doesn’t have a TV, and hasn’t had one for nearly ten years now—for which Matilda calls him Crazy Uncle Vinnie. He uses the computer in his study to go online. His friend is the lead story.
His dead friend.
Shit.
He reads the articles. Simon killed a policeman. Simon is accused of killing a woman and cutting her into pieces. What the hell? Would Simon do something like that? He probably would, yeah. As he reads the articles, he thinks about Ruby. No doubt that’s where all of this started. Three months ago, out on the river. He and Simon had been fishing. He’d been standing while Simon had had the foresight to bring along a foldable camping chair. The nose of their boat was jammed up on the bank. They’d been drinking and fishing and watching the river crawl. They’d been swatting at sand flies and shooting the breeze and reapplying sunblock every hour because the week before they’d both gotten pretty burned. Simon was in a grumpy mood and the beer was only making it worse. The woman he’d been seeing for the previous month had decided not to see him anymore. Vincent wasn’t sure why, but her being a complete bitch topped Simon’s list of reasons. The other bitch was Simon’s boss at work. He was already doing the impossible, but she still demanded more from him. Vincent was counting the minutes. His friend could get like this sometimes, and it never made for a fun afternoon.
All that changed with Ruby. She had come out of the woods behind them. She was carrying a mountain bike with a twisted-to-hell front wheel. There was blood and dirt on her elbows and knees in equal parts. She was limping. She smiled at them, and waved, and told them the car park was too far away to carry her bike. She said there was no cell phone reception. She asked if they could help her.
He can’t believe that was three months ago.
He puts his beer down and grabs his keys and goes outside to the car. Simon lived only a few blocks away. He’d bought his house a few weeks after Vincent purchased his. They actually considered flatting together, but decided against it, both men being the kind who enjoy the other’s company but who also enjoy their own company too. It’s nearly dark outside, but still warm, the summer lingering into autumn, which suits Vincent fine because he hates autumn. He hates the way the leaves mess up his garden and how dirt sticks to his shoes and gets on the carpet. He makes it to the street Simon lives on but doesn’t go down it. There are police cars and media vans parked everywhere. He thinks about the last time he saw Simon. It was three nights ago. They’d had a beer out on the porch of Simon’s house, the same porch that police officers are now traipsing all over.
He turns his car around and drives back home. If the police connect Simon to what they did to Ruby . . . How would they? Through her DNA, if there’s still some on Simon’s clothes. He isn’t sure how long it takes to run DNA samples, but he believes it takes a month, perhaps two. He could leave the country. Take advantage of those open borders in Europe and get himself lost somewhere. Get a job on a vineyard, or as a carpenter working on a run-down house. He could learn a language and never come back.
That’s plan B. By the time he gets back home, he has plan A, and plan A is to not panic. He doesn’t see how the police can connect the dots. They will come and see him, but their interest in him won’t be any different from the interest they’ll have in other friends and family and colleagues of Simon. They will want to piece together a narrative, but there’s no way for them to know that narrative should include Ruby Carter. Even if they do match the DNA, they’ll never figure out what truly happened to her. There’s also no way they can know about the cabin. He and Simon made sure to leave no sign of it at their houses in town. No, the cabin is safe.
Back inside, he sits again in front of the computer. There’s an article with a photograph of the detective who shot his friend. He clicks on it to make it bigger. He sips at his sawdust-tainted beer that’s gotten warmer but hardly tastes it. He studies the photograph of Detective Inspector Ben Kirk.
“You’re the one who should be dead,” he says, tapping the screen.
All those power tools in his garage, well now, there are a thousand different ways he could torture Detective Ben Kirk out at the cabin. He could make it last for days. Maybe weeks. He’d even let the dog watch
.
He carries the beer into the kitchen and tips it into the sink. The beer he brews and bottles himself, and he grabs the last one out of the fridge. He pops it open and stares out at the backyard. It will be dark in less than an hour. He thinks about all the ways he could kill Ben Kirk for what he has done.
After a while, it occurs to him that he’s thinking about this all wrong.
He takes his beer to the garage and picks up the sanding block and gets back to work. Revenge for Simon isn’t about killing Ben. It’s about making him suffer. When he’s done working, he will drive out to the cabin. It will be strange being there without Simon, but being there will help him get through this.
While Vincent finishes sanding the rocking horse, and while Mitchell Logan’s body is driven away by an undertaker to be prepared for the funeral, and as Dr. Coleman begins to remove Joshua’s second eye, Joshua Logan, for the first real time in his life, starts to dream.
To really dream.
NINE
Joshua dreams of things he cannot understand. In the past he’s only ever dreamed of shapes, and textures, and smells, but now those shapes are starting to come out of the dark, and they’re taking on more texture than ever before and, for the first time, color too. There are people in these new dreams, and though he’s dreamed of people before, they were avatars without any detail, a collection of blurry shapes. He’s never actually seen a tree in his life, but he sees one now, a large giant on the landscape, then dozens and dozens of them side by side. He sees a river, the water flowing and reflecting light. There is a woman next to a bike. There are fishing rods and a cooler full of beer. The woman is crying. There is a boat. There is a cabin. He sees blood raining down, a storm of it splattering against plastic-lined walls. He sees a woman at a dinner table. She’s laughing. A boy sits next to her. A man falls to his death. He sees all of it but makes sense of none of it as the anesthetic courses through his veins.
When he finally wakes, he doesn’t know what’s happening. School? He thinks so, and he thinks he’s running late. Unless . . . Wait, is it a weekend? No . . . no, because yesterday was Monday and—
He’s in a hospital.
His father. Is. Dead.
And the world. Is. Still. Dark.
A hand clutches at his.
“Mom?”
“No,” somebody says. “I’m Sally. I’m your nurse,” the woman says, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Joshua, you were dreaming.”
“I . . . I don’t remember,” he says, and he doesn’t. All those images have disappeared, but there’s a sense the dreams were different from normal. But how? He reaches up. There is bandaging wrapped around his head, covering his eyes.
“The surgery went well,” Nurse Sally says, and he doesn’t know whether to believe her. She could just be saying that to keep him calm. He holds his breath, then tests the one thing he’s worried about the most—and that’s whether or not he can feel his eyes. He moves them left, and yes—they move! He moves them right, then left again. They hurt, for sure they hurt, but it’s so incredibly comforting to know he can feel them.
“Dr. Coleman said try not to move your eyes around,” Nurse Sally says.
“You can see me doing that?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “I just know that you are. I know how impossible that’s going to be, but do try your best.”
“I will,” he says. “Where is Dr. Toni?”
“She’s with another patient,” Nurse Sally says. “The same surgery she gave you, she’s now performing on somebody else. Two people today are getting the gift of sight. It’s a blessing.”
He wonders if the other person’s dad died as well. “What time is it?”
“One o’clock,” she says.
“In the afternoon?” he asks.
“In the morning.”
“Where’s my mom?”
“At home,” she says. “She’s not allowed to be here. Not at this time.”
“I’m really thirsty,” he says.
“Here,” she says, and she hands him a glass of water. He sips some, then hands it back.
“You should go back to sleep,” she says. “You need it. Dr. Coleman will be here in the morning to check on you.”
He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get back to sleep, but he’s wrong. He’s asleep within a minute of Nurse Sally leaving, and soon he is dreaming again. There is a construction site. He looks down and sees nails sticking out of his chest. One has pinned his hand to his shoulder. Ahead of him an angry-looking man, then all of that shifts and changes, there is sunlight and the building is racing by and . . .
He wakes up. Somebody is squeezing his hand. This time it is his mom.
“You were having a nightmare,” she says.
“I . . . I don’t know,” he says, and already it’s fading . . . fading . . . gone.
“They tell me the operation went great,” she says.
“What time is it?”
“It’s nine,” she says.
“In the morning?” he asks. He’s disorientated. He feels light-headed.
“Yes.”
“What’s happening with dad?” he asks.
He senses her composing herself. “All of that . . . it’s being taken care of.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“Thursday.”
“What’s today?”
“Tuesday.”
“Will I be able to go?”
“I don’t think so, honey. It won’t be a good idea. We can’t risk you getting any kind of infection.”
“I want to be there,” he says.
“I know, but your dad would want what’s best for you. If something happened to your eyes . . . Can you imagine how that would make him feel?”
His dad doesn’t feel anything, not anymore, Joshua thinks. He’ll never feel anything again.
“How about I discuss it with Dr. Toni and see what she says,” his mom says. “In fact, here she is now.”
He can hear approaching footsteps.
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Toni asks.
He isn’t sure where to begin. Tired. Sad. Sore. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess.”
“The operation went well,” she says. “We’ll know exactly how well in a few days when we can take the bandages off.”
“So you don’t know if I can see?”
“It’s important we keep your expectations under control,” she says. Her voice sounds different, less confident, than it did yesterday. “I’m optimistic,” she says, “and we’ll know more in a few days’ time. Is there any pain?”
“Only when I move them.”
“You need to try not to move them.”
“And there’s a lot of pressure on them.”
“That’s to be expected,” she says. “That area of your face has experienced a lot of trauma. It’ll take a week for the swelling to go down, and of course you’ve got the bandages pressing against them. Now, there is something I need to tell you again, because it’s important. Your eyes are going to start itching and it’s going to get bad. You might even be tempted to rip the bandages away to scratch at them, but you can’t. You have to promise me that, okay? Because if you can’t keep from scratching, we’ll have to either sedate you or strap you down. Otherwise you’re going to risk undoing all the good work we’ve done.”
He isn’t sure if she’s joking about being strapped down. “I promise,” he says, which is an easy promise to make because at the moment his eyes aren’t itching.
“I’ll get a nurse to bring in some breakfast for you, okay?”
“Will I be able to go to Dad’s funeral?”
There’s silence for a few seconds, in which he imagines Dr. Toni and his mom are exchanging looks. He’s heard that’s what people do. “I’m sorry, Joshua,” Dr. Toni says. “I really have to advise against it. It’s not a decision I make easily, but if something were to happen—”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he says, and yesterday his dad would ha
ve been thinking the same thing.
“I’m going to need you to stay here. I’m sure your father would understand.”
“How do you know?”
“Joshua,” his mom says, her tone letting him know she’s unhappy with the way he’s talking.
“I used to know him, remember?” Dr. Toni says. She sits down on the edge of his bed, and his body weight shifts towards her. She puts her hand on his arm. “I first met him years ago, when I wasn’t much older than you are now.”
“How come I haven’t met you before?” he asks.
“You have,” she says, and he remembers her telling him she’d met him a long time ago, when he was small. “But the last few years I’ve only seen your dad around the hospital.”
“You worked with him? How?”
“We didn’t work together,” she says, “but sometimes criminals get injured and he’d be in here. The point is I have a pretty good idea of what he would and wouldn’t approve of, and you taking an unnecessary risk to leave the hospital to go to his funeral is one thing he wouldn’t approve of.”
“But—”
“Dr. Toni is right,” his mom says. “It doesn’t make you love him any less, and nobody there will question why you couldn’t go. When you leave here next week we can go to the cemetery together to see him. By then you’ll even be able to see.”
He knows it’s an argument he can’t win.
Dr. Toni gives his arm a quick rub. “Now, you must be hungry, right? Let me get the nurse to bring you something to eat. We’ll talk again later today.”
She gets up off the bed, and her footsteps fade. His mom takes her place. He can hear footsteps and squeaking wheels and crutches padding the ground. His mom tells him how happy she is the operation went okay. She doesn’t sound like she’s crying. Soon he can smell food.
“I hope you’re hungry,” a nurse says to him. She sounds friendly, like all the nurses.
He pictures toast, not just the shape of toast, but what it looks like, golden in color, because he’s been told that’s how it looks. The sun, sand, the way light can play off a calm ocean at the end of the day—golden.
