CENSUS_What Lurks Beneath

by Marshall Cobb

  As if on cue, his cell phone vibrated against the coffee table. Dave sighed as he picked up the phone and typed in his security code. It was a text message from a client. Dave scanned the text then flipped over to his email box and saw that the client had sent him several messages in the past hour (the first one had come in at 5:15). He’d worked until 2:00

  a.m. this morning on a last minute request for this same client. He’d also shuffled around his entire day to continue working on this project. In the hour following Dave’s theoretical work hours, when he’d shifted to something different to clear his head, the client had apparently gone berserk.

  He scrolled down a little and noticed another dozen emails from other clients that had also arrived at the end of the day. This collection, on top of the hundred or so that had come in earlier in the day, was a never- ending pipeline of work for Dave. On the positive side, it meant he was wanted, and it meant that he would continue to get paid. But it also meant that the smidgeon of a life that he claimed to have would continue to wither under the heat of his work.

  He fished the bottle of aspirin out of his laptop bag, popped the top off with his thumb, and poured four pills into his hand. In a well-practiced

  move, he used his cupped hand to toss all four into his mouth at the same time and then swallowed them whole. He grimaced at the bitter taste as he set the bottle back down. The aspirin didn’t seem to help much, but at least the headaches weren’t getting any worse.

  He texted the antsy client back that he was—of course—dropping ev- erything else to fix this latest issue and would work through the night, sending the solution in the wee hours. He hit send and felt diminished, insignificant. A couple of texts and his whole night was turned upside down, which meant that the work he’d needed to do tonight would get pushed back to tomorrow. This effect would spiral through the weekend, which would become just two more workdays.

  He held the phone in his hand and treated himself to a brief pity party. That party ended when his inbox disappeared and was replaced by the attractive face of his wife, Marilyn, calling him from their home.

  They’d met at a Rice University alumni event. He was ten years her se- nior, and had been amazed to find that this beautiful, successful woman was honestly interested in him. Their conversation had flowed non- stop, each enamored with the other, until she suggested, and he quickly agreed, that they flee the alumni event and go have a quiet dinner some- where. That dinner had led to a succession of other dinners, and those dinners quickly ended up involving breakfast the following morning. They were smitten, and soon married.

  All of those memories chose this moment to flood back. He still loved her. His skin still sometimes ached to feel her touch. His fingers still longed to stroke her long brown hair. It still hurt to know that she no longer felt the same way—so much so that he’d yet to confront her about it and instead continued to act as if nothing was wrong.

  He used his index finger to touch the screen and accept the call. “Hi.”

  Dave sat back down and continued to watch the thumbnails materialize on the laptop as he held the phone to his ear.

  “Hi. I couldn’t remember—are you coming back tonight or tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ve got meetings out this way all morning, and I’ll swing back by the farm to get Sampson in the afternoon and come home.”

  Marilyn moved rapidly within the confines of their large, granite-and- stainless-steel-laden kitchen, pinching the cordless phone to her ear with her shoulder while she distributed trivets and serving dishes along the counter. “That works. The ladies are coming over in a few minutes.”

  Dave rolled his eyes. “The ladies” were a group of other wives in the neighborhood who gathered on a routine basis to discuss books they’d read, plot upcoming activities at the area’s schools, and plan holiday par- ties. It was all organized under the auspices of various “clubs,” but from what Dave could tell, it was always the same cast of characters using a not-too-convincing cover for an excuse to drink a lot of wine on a Wednesday night. He’d learned to keep this theory to himself.

  “Ah. Can I say ‘Hi’ to Adam?”

  Marilyn clicked on the internal oven light to evaluate the proceedings therein, turned it back off, and then attempted to remember what she was supposed to do next. “He’s in the tub, Dave. I’ve got to get him to bed early or he’ll spend the entire evening downstairs trying to entertain us.”

  She absently smoothed the front of the white apron she wore over the peach-colored sundress she planned to wear that night. Many of the ladies, like Marilyn, used these nights to dress up, as none of their hus- bands ever wanted to go anywhere that required anything more than a shirt—any shirt—and two shoes to enter.

  Dave knew of what she spoke all too well. Adam was generally pretty easy to put to bed, and shortly thereafter, he’d fall asleep reading—his favorite pastime. Once asleep, he could sleep through anything, includ- ing a dinner party. However, if he stayed up long enough to see guests arriving, he’d stay up as long as possible and do everything in his power to insert himself into the proceedings. Adam was quite well-spoken for a seven-year-old, and made good use of his big blue eyes and his golden- brown hair, but his charms quickly wore thin in a gathering of the ladies.

  “Can you just put me on speaker and let me yell out ‘Goodnight!’ to him?”

  Marilyn sighed, then clicked the face of her phone and walked over to stand at the foot of the nearby stairs.

  “Adam,” she yelled up the stairwell, “Daddy wants to say ‘Hi’ to you!”

  After a momentary pause, followed by a small splash, the high-pitched voice of Adam surged through the partially open bathroom door. “Hi, Daddy! When are you coming home?”

  Dave smiled and, much to Marilyn’s chagrin, yelled back into the phone from his side of the call. “Tomorrow night! Sampson and I will be home before dinner.”

  Marilyn, holding the phone away from her and toward the stairwell to mitigate the screaming from the phone, chimed in. “Ok, boys, Mommy has to finish up what she’s doing so she can read Adam a bedtime story.”

  “What are you doing Mommy? Is someone coming over?”

  She brought the phone back down and pressed it against her chest as she yelled back, “No, baby, I just have a lot of things I have to do!”

  Her response was met with more splashing sounds from above and a dismissive grunt.

  She brought the phone back to her ear and got out, “Dave…”

  He interrupted her with, “Lie much?” and sat back on the couch with a smug look on his face.

  She fumed for a second, trying to figure out if Dave was getting at more than her fib to Adam, then decided to move on. As she re-entered the kitchen she replied, in a hushed tone, “Stop it. You know how he gets. It’s easy for you, sitting there at the farm with no kid to deal with.”

  Dave sat back up. “Easy? Would you like to see my inbox? Do you know how many meetings I have in the next two weeks?” His anger carried him to his feet. “You’re having a party and I’m buried in work, plus I have everything over here to take care of…”

  She pulled a pair of hot pads out of a nearby drawer and again pinched the phone to her ear while she opened the door to the oven. With her hands protected by the hot pads, she grabbed the cake pan and walked over to the counter to set it down. She wished they made something equivalent to hot pads for volatile spouses. “The farm was your idea. Don’t go complaining about it now. If you didn’t have the time to keep up with it, we shouldn’t have bought it.”

  Dave’s anger had carried him over to the window. He rubbed his tem- ple with his free hand and stared out at the expanse of grass and trees. He decided the thing he didn’t have time for at this point was this con- versation. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you when I’m headed back tomorrow afternoon.”

  She stared at the golden finish of the yellow cake and used a nearby toothpick to probe it once again. She put the phone down as she stared at the result—a
perfectly clean toothpick; a perfectly cooked cake—and thought about Dave. Too many of their conversations, like this one, erupted into anger for what seemed like no reason, and too many of

  these same calls ended with one person hanging up on the other. Rare was the time that civility reined, much less affection.

  She walked over to the trashcan concealed below the counter and dropped in the toothpick. She got that he was stressed. She under- stood that he worked his tail off for their collective benefit, but she was equally sure that he had no idea about all of the things she handled involving the school, the neighborhood, and the day-to-day care of their son.

  “Mommy, do I smell cake?”

  Marilyn took a deep breath. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay Dave? Have fun out there.” She clicked end and put the phone down on the counter.

  “Mommy?”

  CHAPTER TWO: The Window

  On his next trip to the farm, Dave returned to the couch and set the phone face-down on the coffee table next to the still-chugging laptop. He had the all-too-familiar feeling of anger mixed with bewilderment, and a small dose of guilt, for not being home to see Adam. He did need to have a frank conversation with Marilyn, but tonight wasn’t the night.

  Hadn’t she called him, and better yet, hadn’t she called because she couldn’t remember what day he was coming home, and probably didn’t want him showing up to mess up her ladies’ night? He tensed for a mo- ment, then turned the page. Dwelling on it wasn’t going to fix anything, and he needed to get the picture transfer out of the way so he could shift gears and spend the rest of the night hammering out exhibits for his needy client.

  He stared at the screen again, and roughly a minute later, the download was complete and the automatic erasure of the duplicate files on the SD card began. Dave clicked on the icon for the download folder and was treated to a full screen image of the first photo—which must have been triggered by a shadow or a gust of wind, as there was nothing to see except an expanse of tall grass. This was not an unusual occurrence, as the finicky settings of the various cameras involved weren’t sophisticated enough to enable the selection of fauna over flora. Several more similarly empty pictures appeared as he paged through the images.

  About seven pictures further into the cache, the light began to fade as the sun started its slow drop over the horizon on that particular day. The

  game camera automatically time-stamped each picture, and also pro- vided the ambient temperature. A few more increasingly dark photos later, the tail end of a deer was clearly visible on the right side of the screen. As Dave continued to scroll forward, the rest of that deer was illuminated, as were a number of other deer that had come to feed. The camera was set to take a picture, and then wait sixty-seconds before the next, so as he scrolled through the photos, the various deer, and portions thereof, appeared and disappeared. He arrived at a section of the saved pictures that showed a large gathering of deer illuminated by the flash of the camera but otherwise cloaked in darkness.

  A few shots later, all the deer pictured had turned their heads in alarm to gaze at something not captured by the camera, off to their left. He moved ahead to the next photo and found it devoid of deer. There was something just at the edge of the camera’s flash range where the deer were looking, but Dave couldn’t make it out in the dark grainy photo.

  In the past couple of years there had been a few wild pigs tagged by the cameras. Were deer scared of wild pigs? There had also been plenty of photos of coyotes in the past, but the rough outline of whatever this was seemed bigger.

  Dave scrolled forward and then back again through the shots a few times, trying to figure out the unidentified visitor, but to no avail. Oddly, the rest of the sixty or so pictures taken by this camera over the nearly two- month span were devoid of deer, or anything at all besides the gently waving grass.

  He selected the photos with deer and gave them odd names so he could easily find them among the other files. The shot of the deer staring di- rectly into the flash was now “readyformycloseup,” and so on. The rest of the pictures, primarily of waving grass, went to the delete bin.

  There were still several cameras full of photos out on the property, but that was going to have to wait for another day. This process was painful

  and time-consuming, but it was still infinitely easier than the other op- tion the county tax assessor would accept: a hand-written log of the animals seen on the property—including date, time and a description of the animal. Dave closed the laptop cover and picked up his phone— dismayed to see that the texting client had just asked for more exhibits.

  Dave pursed his lips, then got up and walked over to his computer bag to retrieve his work laptop, which he powered up before sinking back into the couch. As he waited, he looked out the window at the now- dark pasture. He wished he could play hooky tomorrow and stay here for a nice long day of mowing, trimming, and moving heavy things from point A to point B. Every day at the farm, which in reality grew nothing but fire ants and tall grass, was a long, full day. There was always a list of things to do and never enough time to do them, but at least there was tangible proof of Dave’s efforts along the way. It was completely different from his day job, where the only proof of his existence involved changes to a spreadsheet or financial reports that almost no one read. At least grass stayed mowed for a few days.

  His laptop beeped as it finished booting up. Sampson briefly raised his head to ensure that this wasn’t the first step of a sinister plan to leave him, and then settled back down. Dave looked past the sleepy dog at the guitar case propped in the far corner. The dust gathering atop the soft black case was proof enough that the guitar had become an ornament, not an instrument. He’d promised himself he’d start playing again several times, to no avail.

  The dull pain slowly built in his right temple as he picked up his laptop and his phone, and began to climb the night’s mountain of work. He rubbed at the spot that ached, with no effect, and thought about taking some more aspirin.

  He awakened some time later, his thighs burning from the heat of the laptop. He’d gone to sleep on the couch with the laptop on his lap and

  his phone in his right hand. He looked blearily at his phone but saw no new frantic calls or texts. That was good. He lifted up the hot laptop and moved it over to the cushion on his left. He typed in his password, and tried to get a sense of the emails he’d addressed, versus those that still needed his attention, but the internet connection had failed again

  —not an uncommon occurrence out here in the country. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he could tether his laptop to his phone and still get some work done—albeit at a much slower speed.

  He pressed the phone’s screen with his thumb and entered his security code. The display indicated that it was 3:15 a.m. He opened his email account and checked the “sent” folder. He’d sent his last email at 2:05 a.m., which meant that he’d gotten about an hour of sleep. He dropped the phone back to the couch and raised his arms above his head to stretch. Sampson, who had slept quite a bit more than that, took note of Dave’s activity and trotted off to the bedroom to begin sleeping in earnest.

  Dave creaked to a standing position and ambled over to the windows; he was greeted by pitch darkness. This was not city-dark, where the ambi- ent light still provided more than enough illumination to see. This was country dark on a cloudy night. The darkness was suddenly interrupted by the annoying glare of the floodlight connected to the motion sensor at the left corner of the porch. The nuisance light played out over the cov- ered patio, and almost to the shed just beyond. This particular motion sensor marched to the beat of its own drum, often triggering the light to engage in the middle of the afternoon.

  He grimaced at the floodlight illuminating a whole lot of nothing and walked to the small kitchen to retrieve the keys to his truck. He hit the lock button on the remote and saw the parking lights blink through the glass in the front door. He dropped the keys back on the counter and returned to the front door to lock the de
adbolt.

  Yes, this was the country, not the big city. The country should be safe— at least safer than the big city—but another reason for the game cameras

  that Dave didn’t talk about was safety. He’d only had this place for a couple of years, but someone had cut the lock on the main gate and stolen his trailer last year. Earlier this year someone—probably a neighbor, as the gate was untouched—pushed their way into the house via the flimsy front door. True, they’d mostly taken food, but this act and the theft of the trailer had stripped away a lot of the innocence that Dave had previously associated with his farm.

  Dave pushed on the new, sturdier door a little more and gave the deadbolt lever an extra nudge. He stared out at the complete blackness outside, the floodlight having given up for the moment, and took it all in.

  Sampson, who had heard him fumbling around with the door, had left his bed and was now standing next to him. Dave absently reached down and petted his head. “Nothing to see, boy. Let’s get to bed. For an hour.”