Any Deadly Thing

by Roy Kesey

  –Bad news, ma’am, I say. Looks like you’ve got some serious contamination here.

  I hand the tube to the lady, who stares in at the Sea-Monkeys and says a very bad word.

  –Not to worry, ma’am. Starting early next week we’ll be installing purifiers in each and every house showing any contamination whatsoever, and until then simple boiling will do the trick. To get the process started we’ll need a sixty-dollar deposit, cash or check, but rest assured that those same sixty dollars will be deducted from your water bill next month.

  It takes a bit more work but finally she bites, and so it goes through the morning, five hundred bucks cash plus another six hundred in sadly useless checks. We thank each client kindly. We stop on the way home for submarine sandwiches, and Angie revels in meatballs, and we have never seen so many toppings employed at once.

  Ten days later and we’re running out of local markets: we’ve done Petaluma, Sonoma, Santa Rosa twice, Napa and Sebastopol, even all the way down to Novato. In the afternoons we poke at wrappers on Highway 128, Highway 281, and once out on Bottle Rock Road. In the evenings we relax with Joe, and listen to his stories of bagging groceries with some girl named Dolores at the One-Stop. Angie brings us things as we sleep, and they are beautiful things: cracked but lovely vases, bent but elegant candlesticks, paper clips twisted like jewelry.

  Our stitches come out cleanly, the Doberman scars hardly show, and the Sea-Monkeys thrive. Using a narrow-beamed flashlight as indicated in the instructions on packet number three, we have even taught them to swim in circles and form a very small, very weak whirlpool. Our only major challenge came when Angie decided the bottle was too dirty due to the gunk on the bottom—she thought it was Sea-Monkeys sewage though in fact it was mainly a graveyard. I took the bottle to the bathroom sink and attempted to transfer the inhabitants using a short length of rubber tubing; I sucked firmly to get the flow started, and inhaled a certain quantity of water and algae and Sea-Monkeys corpses and poop.

  The surviving Sea-Monkeys are apparently not displeased by their cleaner surroundings. They have grown greatly, however, are now perhaps too large to be considered contamination as opposed to, say, infestation. We’ve got enough money saved to last us through Christmas, yams and all, and timewise we’re pushing our luck. We decide on a morning in Healdsburg and then we’ll call it good.

  I fight Angie into her favorite cowgirl clothes and we hit the highway. It’s the shortest drive yet and we get a bit nostalgic, take turns humming bars of favorite songs. We exit at Dry Creek Road and wind our way over to Fitch. The sun’s out and the birds are singing and it’s as fine a day for fleecing as you could imagine.

  The pickings are good, eight houses in the first hour and mainly cash. We circle around to Sunnyside, share a handful of Cheeze Ums with Angie, and fire up again. The first house on the block looks like the kind of place where we might not even need the Sea-Monkeys. I knock and we wait and I knock and we wait, and the guy who answers is maybe six-foot-nine and four hundred pounds, has his sweatpants on inside-out and reeks of weed.

  The water takes its time coming out of the tap. I do the switch, swirl and cringe, hand the tube to Stoner Guy and convey the bad news. Stoner Guy holds the tube up to the light, peers carefully, looks at me and peers again. I begin the purifier speech but he holds out one hand to stop me, and it is the largest hand we’ve ever seen. He sets the test tube carefully back in our rack, selects an empty one, fills it with water from the tap, holds it up. The water is clear. He pours it out and fills the tube again. Again clear. He smiles, walks back to the rack, holds up the pretend contamination.

  –Artemia NYOS, he says.

  –Um. We—

  –Sea-Monkeys. Phylum Arthropoda, class Crustacea. A species of oversized, long-lived brine shrimp.

  –We’re actually not aware of any—

  –And they didn’t come out of my tap. The chlorine alone would lay them waste.

  –If this is a bad time—

  He raises his hand again, and somehow now it is even larger.

  He lays it on my shoulder, and asks us to accompany him. His grip is breathtakingly firm and so we do: out of the kitchen, into a hallway, through a door that leads down steep narrow steps to a basement where the only lights are those of myriad interconnected Sea-Monkeys aquaria, plus the lavender glow of grow lamps in the corners.

  –They were on the space shuttle, you know, says Stoner Guy.

  –The one that crashed?

  –No, the other one. And they breathe with their feet.

  He directs me closer to the two largest tanks. In both of them the Sea-Monkeys drift in joined pairs. He points to the left and says that they are mating, points to the right and says that they are fighting, and this too brings back memories that sizzle and singe. We show all due amazement and would attempt to edge toward the door if we could remember where it was.

  –Did you see the time they got mentioned on Space Ghost? he asks. Episode seven? Amazing. Now tell me again about the sixty dollars?

  I look at the floor. Stoner Guy sighs, and beats the shit out of me in a methodical manner: eyes, nose, mouth, ribs, groin. At one point Sarah whispers for me to try a Fireman’s Carry—I wrestled JV for three years and she never missed a match—but I’m too busy bleeding.

  Finally he stops kicking me, and we hear a door open and close. Footsteps on the stairs, and silence. We rest for a time. The interconnected tanks are a thing of mystical beauty, whispers Sarah. I nod and tell her I can’t feel my face. Then we remember Angie in the van.

  It takes several very long seconds to find the stairs. We sprint up them as best we are able, and sitting on a shredded couch in the living room are Stoner Guy and Angie. They are eating Chocolickles and watching television. On the floor at Stoner Guy’s feet is a baseball bat with strangely-shaped indentations.

  –It’s time to go, I say to Angie.

  –No, she says.

  –Come on, honey. Really, it’s time to go.

  She informs us that she would prefer to stay here with Gus, and takes a fudgy slurp. Gus does not look away from the television. I pick Angie up and she jams her Chocolickle in my ear and scratches at my eyes and screams Gus! Gus! Gus!

  I thank Gus for his time and we head out to the van, and the side mirrors are broken off, and the windshield is shattered. Angie begins striking me about the head and shoulders. I get her into her car seat, put the key in the ignition and turn it, and the van does not start.

  I get out and open the hood. Where before there was a carburetor and an air filter and several parts whose names I do not know, now there are small battered pieces. We look at the house. Gus is standing on the porch. He waves to us. I wave back.

  The morning’s proceeds cover Greyhound tickets back to Fallash, but it is a certain distance from the station to our house. I limp and spit and wince. Sarah floats in circles around me, her bright bright smile, and she hums the very same tunes we hummed this morning, and Angie makes up new words.

  We turn the corner, and Joe’s sitting on the curb in front of the house, his head cocked way too sharp. Angie runs inside to check on the remaining Sea-Monkeys. We sit down with Joe, and he brings his head upright, and I swear I can almost hear the sloshing.

  He looks at me and asks what the hell happened. I put my arm around his shoulders and tell him that it is nothing to worry about. We stare at each other for a time. I look at the houses across the street. He keeps staring and I observe Mrs. Przybysz’s peeling shutters.

  –Stuart, he says.

  –Yeah?

  –That thing about how I can hear the fluid in my inner ear? I made it up.

  –What?

  –Think about it. Who can hear the fluid in their inner ear?

  I think about it until it sort of snags in my mind and starts to burn. I pull my arm away, scratch my elbow and try not to tremble. Sarah shimmers a little, and I wait for her to stop but she doesn’t.

  –It’s just this thing I made up, Joe says. For w
henever I need some space.

  –I thought that’s what the walks were for.

  –Them too. Look, you know I never blamed you for what happened, right?

  –I don’t—

  –Just answer me.

  And Sarah’s fading, slipping away, but she’s still smiling, still my one and only love.

  –Yes, I know.

  –Do you?

  –I do.

  –I’m saying I forgive you. I’m saying we’re going to be okay.

  I look side to side, up and down, everywhere, and Sarah’s nowhere around. She’s never done this to me before. Joe taps himself on the side of the head. He taps again a little harder. He stands, says he got his first paycheck yesterday and there’s a pot roast in the oven. I tell him I’ll be there in a minute, and he heads inside.

  How Things End

  SMALL BOATS SLEEP LIKE dogs down in the cove. The hills on the far side are covered with brush—lavender, mesquite, ceanothus. The morning air is cool and clear and perfectly still, and now Paul hears footsteps. A moment later Dora comes out onto the terrace.

  –Goran just called.

  –Goran who?

  –My cousin.

  Paul follows her inside to the bedroom. He isn’t sure which of the ten Gorans he’s met in the past two weeks is Goran the cousin. He takes his time putting on his shirt.

  –I thought the family thing was tomorrow.

  –This isn’t about the reunion. His old unit was in Osijek when the attacks started. One of his friends was killed, and the funeral’s today in Bibinje. Another guy is at the hospital in Split. Goran will be here in a few minutes to pick us up.

  And so much for spending the next-to-last day of his vacation stretched out beside the Adriatic. Paul looks around for his shoes. Dora sits down, crosses and re-crosses her legs.

  –I’m sorry things had to end this way, she says.

  He slings his camera bag over his shoulder, says that maybe he’ll find something he can use. As they cross the front patio, he sees her parents watching from the kitchen. He waves, and neither of them waves back.

  –Why do your parents hate me so much?

  –They think you’re going to take me away.

  –And they’re right.

  Dora smiles, and they work their way down the path toward a battered Fiat that idles near the breakwater. Paul shakes Goran’s hand, says he’s sorry about his friends, and Goran nods. They all climb in and head along the road that slides between the town and the water, past a square stone tower, the town’s fulcrum and sundial, whose name Paul doesn’t remember or has never known.

  Empty cafés and courtyards, the foamed fringe of the inlet, the highway. Paul breaks out brushes and lens cleaner, catches Goran watching him in the rearview mirror. He’s just gotten a roll loaded as they pull into the city. They drive along the waterfront past the bright limestone of the Diocletian Palace. Jewelry stores and ice cream stands. A soldier and a young girl. A gilded hotel, a barbershop, a bar.

  Then they are at the hospital, and already the day is getting hot. There is a sign on the front door, a pistol encircled and slashed in red. Paul stops to take a picture of it. Dora calls that he needs to stay close, and he jogs to catch up, but now she and Goran are standing in front of a television on the far side of the lobby. The news footage is of a city being shelled.

  –Vukovar, Dora says. Over a month—no water, no electricity. No food getting in. Mass graves.

  Goran leads them up four flights of stairs, into a corridor and left down another, right down still another, all of them lined with yellow doors. He slows, reading the room numbers. He finds the one he wants and enters without knocking.

  The room is small, with four beds jammed together. Dora and Goran are headed out a sliding glass door onto the balcony, but Paul hesitates. The first bed is empty, and a man with no legs is asleep in the second. In the third there’s a man whose head is wrapped in bandages. His eyes are closed, and Paul watches his chest, and it doesn’t rise or fall.

  The fourth bed holds something that looks barely human, a mannequin dipped in acid or rolled in napalm. Paul rips through a few quick frames, and the burned man’s eyes open, go frantic, wider and wider in his wax-rippled face. Paul backs away, stumbles over a bedpan, worms out through the door to the crowd on the balcony—a few soldiers in uniform, visitors in civvies, patients on crutches or in wheelchairs.

  Goran introduces him as Dora’s American photographer boyfriend from Lisbon. The men look at him, and nod, and look away. The next balcony over is full of wounded children. They sit in the sharp light and do not talk.

  Only Andrej, the soldier they’ve come to see, takes any interest in Paul. He wheels past the others, straightens his robe, leans forward to shake Paul’s hand.

  –And where in the United States of America were you born? he asks.

  The man’s English is delicate Oxbridge. Paul answers, and Andrej tilts his head.

  –Northern California, he repeats, holding the words in his mouth like hummingbird eggs. And what is it like there?

  Paul starts to tell him about the tiny town where he grew up, and realizes he could be describing any tiny town anywhere. He shakes his head as if it’s all too complicated to get into, and asks Andrej about his wound.

  –A beauty, he says.

  He pulls up the edge of his gown so Paul can get a look. There’s not much to see except bandages and tape covering most of his left thigh.

  –In two months I shall be fighting again.

  Paul nods, unsure whether or not this is good news. Andrej asks which newspaper he works for. Paul says he doesn’t so much take newspaper photographs.

  –What kind do you take?

  –The art kind.

  Andrej rubs his chin.

  –Neorealist collage, Paul says. Also some things for advertisements, and sometimes weddings, but only to pay the bills.

  Dora comes, says that it’s time for them to go, that Goran will catch up with them at his apartment. Andrej promises that the next time they meet he will be walking without the faintest trace of a limp. The others nod at Paul again, and one wishes him well.

  Paul keeps his eyes on the floor as they walk back through the room. Dora leads him out of the hospital, takes his arm as they head up the sidewalk. A car flies past them, its engine screaming; Dora curses the driver, and as the words leave her mouth he loses control and smacks into a parked bus.

  The car’s windshield has shattered but still hangs in place. The driver sits motionless, his eyes open and both hands still on the wheel, blood running down the side of his face and a cigarette hanging from his lips. Dora asks the man if he’s okay, and he nods, and he’s lying, but at least the hospital is only a block away.

  Goran’s apartment is small and shadowed—dark paneling, spent casings on dusty glass shelves, faded tapestry on the floor. According to Dora it is essential that his boots be polished for the funeral. She’s busy ironing his uniform, so there’s no one but Paul to spread the polish, work it into the leather, brush the boots until they glow and his fingers stink.

  When he’s done he asks Dora if he’s got time for a quick walk around. She checks her watch, says Goran will be back in half an hour. It looks like she has more to say, and Paul waits, but nothing else comes.

  Outside, heat fills the air like water. On the corner there’s a small sculpture set in cement, a waning crescent of steel, helmets and machine guns and empty clips balanced together. He takes a couple of shots, but his hands are bright with sweat and seem thicker and heavier than they should be.

  He stops again in front of an outdoor market, and two children are drawing circles in the dust. Behind them is a table where flies crawl over chunks of raw meat. The children stare at him. He gives them what feels like a smile, dredges his knapsack, finds an old tin of lemon drops. The sugar has melted into shimmering grease. He holds the lemon drops out. The children keep staring. He takes a few pictures anyway and walks down to the shoreline.

  H
is shoes fill with sand. The good early light is gone and the sea is only sea. Then he rounds a point, and before him is a small army camp. Four soldiers are at work, wrenches and pliers and tools he doesn’t recognize, installing what looks like a new antiaircraft gun. He shoots the rest of the roll and is loading another when one of the soldiers sees him, shouts, and now all four are running toward him.

  He closes his camera, holds up his hands and waits for them to stop, but the first one to reach him tries to tackle him at the waist. He sidesteps and spins the soldier off, raises his hands a little more, and the second one nails him chest-high, flips him over and drives his face into the sand. He hears his camera being opened, the film stripped out. The soldiers haul him to his feet and push him toward a nearby tent.

  Their captain comes out, listens to what his men have to say. He examines the ruined film, and asks Paul in English who gave him permission to photograph a military establishment.

  Paul hands over his passport and gives the answer Dora made up for him: that he’s a stringer for AP. The captain asks for Paul’s press card, and he says that he lost it at a checkpoint crossing back over from Bosnia last night, but that the replacement will be here this afternoon, Fed-Exed from New York.

  –At the border, it was Croats or Muslims who took your card?

  –Muslims.

  He hands back the camera and passport, explains to the other soldiers, and they gather around to brush the sand from Paul’s hair and clothes.

  –America! says the one who tackled him. Los Angeles!

  Paul smiles and agrees that Los Angeles is very nice. He asks if he can take a few shots of the men at their battle stations, and the captain is happy to oblige. He arranges them around the half-installed gun, gets them intent on invisible enemies. Paul loads a new roll and shoots twice the number of pictures he could ever need.