Got to Kill Them All & Other Stories

by Dennis Etchison

  It was from the Doubletree Lodge at Triangle Lake.

  The other receipt was from a Union 76 station on Highway 5, just north of L.A.

  That was on the way.

  If they took the trip, after all, why didn't Mr. Ellsworth want him to know?

  Paulino tried to put it out of his mind. It was none of his business. He placed the receipts in the glovebox, then went around to the other side.

  As he opened the passenger door he noticed some streaks on the inside of the window. He imagined Mrs. Ellsworth falling asleep last night, on the way home from the lake, with her face against the glass. It looked like she had put her hand there, too, to support her head. He placed his fingers over the streaks.

  Then he remembered that there had not been a trip.

  That was what Mr. Ellsworth said.

  Paulino decided to roll the window down into the door before wiping it. That way the rubber seal would do some of the work for him, like a squeegee. He turned the key and hit the button. But when the window came back up one of her lacquered fingernails came with it, wedged halfway under the seal. And the streaks were worse, with a pink rainbow clinging to them, as if the gears inside the door were wet with strawberry soda.

  A faint purple residue came off on his blue towel.

  Something had spattered or spilled against the window, a soft drink, maybe. And she had tried to wipe it off and broken her nail. The litter bag under the glovebox held a few crumpled tissues. Paulino emptied it and saw stains on the tissues that had dried to a darker color, like dirty lipstick.

  He probed under the seat with the vacuum. As soon as he did that something hard started to rattle. It was not a piece of paper. This time there was a long, pointed object, rounded at one end, stuck between the floormat and the door. He plucked it from the nozzle and looked at it.

  One of Mrs. Ellsworth's high heels.

  The rubber tip had cut a sharp black line into the mat. The line continued out of the passenger compartment and left a gouge in the paint, just inside the door, before the heel snapped off.

  If she was asleep Mr. Ellsworth must have carried her out of the car. But he had not lifted her legs. It was more like he had dragged her. The edge of the mat was curled where her shoe had snagged it.

  He pulled on the mat, and the rubberized backing made a sucking sound as it peeled away. The carpet underneath was wet. He dropped the mat on the asphalt and looked at his fingers.

  They were red.

  Suddenly a breeze came up and blew through the open doors. He felt it in his chest and in his fingers as he waited for them to dry. He tried wiping them on the towel but they were still sticky.

  Now there was an emptiness in his stomach, as if he had skipped breakfast and the coffee was ready to pass out of his body in a rush. He wished it were time for lunch but he had hours, long hours, ahead of him. He looked around at the car wash where he worked, where everything was made clean and spotless again and no one had to think about what happened in the world outside. He heard the grinding of the machinery and the hiss of the spray, saw the scum on the water as it ran down to the sewer and the steam rising into the polluted sky, and knew that even this place was not safe anymore.

  The street was packed with cars, dirty inside and out, pumping so much filth into the air that the sky might never open again. It was too soon to pick up Rosalie, and if he tried to drive home in the morning rush he could lose his way and be trapped out there forever.

  He saw the rest of the crew, wiping and polishing for tips, joking and staying busy so they would not have to look at what was on their towels, as the laundry barrel filled up until it would be too heavy to lift at the end of the day. He saw the customers, reading newspapers and making cell phone calls and staring at nothing, waiting to be born again, fresh and squeaky-clean. And he saw Mr. Ellsworth, watching him.

  The man came over and stood next to the mat with its sticky underside turned up.

  "What do you want me to do with this?" said Paulino.

  "Throw it away."

  "Why?"

  "I'll get new ones."

  "But why?"

  "Because they're ruined."

  Paulino knew he should not say anything else but could not stop himself. "How's Mrs. Ellsworth?"

  The man squinted at him.

  "She went away."

  "Where?"

  "To visit her relatives. She won't be back for a long time." He took out his wallet and handed over another hundred dollar bill. "Here. For the mats."

  "We don't have any," said Paulino.

  "Get some."

  "You have to go to the dealer for that."

  "You do it for me." He tried to give him fifty more. "Keep the change."

  Paulino got out of the car.

  "Where are you going? You're not finished…"

  He went over to Ruben, who was working on a Sportage at the end of the ramp.

  "I can pay you twenty today," Ruben said.

  "Forget about it, vato." Paulino took the first hundred from his pocket and handed him both bills.

  "What's this for?"

  "The LX420."

  "Huh?"

  "If you don't want to do it, that's okay with me. Give some to Craig and Manny. And Linda. She works hard, too."

  Paulie walked on to his Escort at the back of the lot. He took off his jumpsuit as he went, stepped out of it and left it on the asphalt without breaking stride. Then he got behind the wheel and turned the key.

  He pulled into the alley and squeezed past the line of waiting cars, hoping to spot a sidestreet that was clear. On the way to find Rosalie he turned on his radio to block out the traffic noise. The first station he came to was playing power oldies. He raised the volume and began to sing along, not paying attention to the words. After a mile or so he realized it was the same tune he had heard when he woke up this morning, a love song that kept circling back on itself and starting again. You make me feel so brand-new, sang Al Green's high, soulful voice. Let's stay together, whether times are good or bad or happy or sad….The lyrics sounded so beautiful to Paulino that his eyes burned. He kept singing along even after the record was over. He did not want it to end.

  Home Call

  Linda Fowley had been working the field for less than a day when she knew that she was afraid.

  The full weight of it took her by surprise. It left her momentarily disoriented, then close to tears, then angry at the numbing inevitability of it all. For she recognized it as the same fear that how blown through her that day near the end of her final trimester at the University, when one more simple précis, in itself no different from any of the hundreds of others she had written, suddenly became too much for her to bear, the detail that would surely reduce her to despair.

  Perhaps some part of her had been aware all along that the fear was building again, that it was bound to return. For hadn't it been born of the same stifling balance of determination and futility which now described her work with Social Services?

  No, she thought fiercely, I'm not going to chuck it all in, not this time. I won't!

  After all, it had been easier to drop out then. She hadn't worried about what her professors or the school would think. Why should she? And her friends? They hadn't understood; how lucky for them.

  In the ten years since, it had been easy enough to remain withdrawn and anonymous, to keep plugging away at one pointless job after another, simply because there was nothing at stake, no reason she should have cared.

  But her job with DPSS was different.

  This matters, she thought from the beginning, this means something. Because I care what happens to children, I really do. I always have. I know that now. They, at last, were something truly worthy of her caring. Weren't they? Yes, yes, they were. Are. Somebody has to care. I do.

  And yet…there was something else, something else.

  She tried to put it out of her mind.

  So what that the transfer she had requested out of the Hall and into the field was not al
l that she had expected? That instead of bringing her closer to the children and the source of their problems, it left her even less able to do anything meaningful for them? That the whole morning long most mistrusting foster parents had not even answered the door? That the same battered, neglected, runaway kids would probably be returned again and again to the county residence facilities, no better off than they had been before she submitted her casework recommendations?

  Things would smooth out. She would find the key soon. Of course she would.

  She had always known that she might fail. That in itself did not frighten her. Why should it?

  And yet she was frightened now.

  She was not concerned about her own competence; she never had been.

  She was afraid, she realized, that soon, very soon she might no longer be able to make herself care.

  And that was truly terrifying.

  …And this time, too, there was something else, something more, as well….

  She walked around the block three times.

  The address was at the other end of Sunset, at the top of one of those steep terrace courts set back from the cliffs above body and fender shops, storefront restaurants, import wholesalers and junk sellers posing as antique dealers.

  The house was there, hunched among an uneven line of wood frames angled together back in the twenties or thirties, like the others all shingles and peeling enamel and cracked porches sinking slowly away from the humped sidewalks and deeper into the darkness of eucalyptus and oleander.

  But, once she had deduced the house number from the misplaced curb markings and the corroded brass numerals, she was flatly unable to convince herself that anyone had passed in or out of this particular front door in some time. She tried, but it didn't scan: a week's worth of throwaway newspapers and advertising flyers were gathering leaves on the walk, frayed window shades were turning yellow behind the occluded windows, and the shrunken lawn was burning out and succumbing to dandelion and wild grasses between the quietly splintering trees and misshapen bushes that indicated the uncertain boundaries of the lot.

  So this is what it means to work in the field, she thought.

  At least in the office I got to deal with real human beings with eyes and voices and feelings that could be reached. But here—what am I supposed to do? Break down doors, scrawl notes, force myself and my questions on people who really and sincerely hate my guts?

  Because they do. And why shouldn't they? Who am I to strong-arm my way into their lives, telling them how to budget their assistance checks and cook their meals and clothe their kids? (For the foster children are their kids now, for better or worse, God help them.) Who ever presumed to tell Papa how to raise me after what happened? Of course—and this is the irony—if someone had, I might not be here today, standing on one foot in front of a home (and it is that; with a child inside, now it is a home) with a casebook in one hand and a load of bureaucratic bullshit in the other. A self-canceling circle, she thought. Do they ever think of that down at the Department of Public Social

  Services? Do they grasp that if we were somehow able to do our jobs properly, there would be no further need for our services?

  And still. They do need us. The children do. If Papa had been counseled, perhaps I wouldn't have to be here today, trying so desperately to atone for something I can't even remember.

  The children need whatever help they can get. That much is certainly true.

  So. This is what they send me out to do. I'm supposed to care about names, numbers, people who exist only in theory, people I can't even see. How do I go about generating that? Will somebody please tell me?

  But I've got to. That's all there is to it. I've got to find a way.

  As she walked away from the house, she thought she saw one of the curtains move.

  Sure, she told herself.

  She climbed into her car at the end of the block and drove back down the hill. She had to crank it for a full minute before the engine caught, but it finally took hold and she was away.

  She got back onto Sunset and drove by a school, a closed gas station, a TV repair shop whose dusty picture tubes seemed to follow her as she passed. The radio was full of more of the usual; she clicked it off. She made a right turn and found herself at the edge of Echo Park. The water appeared unnaturally still, and on the far shore a solitary figure hunkered at the bank, fishing with a dropline between the floating debris.

  She remembered that she had not yet had a lunch break.

  I'm entitled to a full hour, she reminded herself. They can't stop me from taking every last minute of it. Not this time.

  She parked on the empty street and picked her way over cool grass. I should have brown-bagged something. Why didn't I? I was too nervous to think last night. She started to sit anyway, but the sound of the nearby freeway rushed in her ears, magnified oddly by the surface of the lake. She brushed herself off and headed toward a small restaurant of indeterminate ethnicity on the other side of Alvarado.

  The door was open but, as soon as her eyes adjusted, she saw that there were no other customers inside. She slid into a booth and waited for a menu. No one came. I could use something to drink, she thought. She drummed her fingernails on the table, then stopped herself and listened. She believed she heard distant voices, but there was no one behind her, only the walls. Before anyone could appear out of the shadows, she stood again quickly and left the restaurant.

  Crossing the street, she spotted another restaurant with a fast-food window attached. She squinted as she drew near, but could not read the takeout list behind the counter. Gang writing crosshatched the glass like webbing.

  As she came up, a Latino boy watched her from inside.

  "I don't suppose you serve margaritas out here, do you?" she asked, gesturing at the adjacent restaurant. "Or beer?"

  He regarded her blankly.

  Well, it was worth a try, she thought. I could use one right now, though. Or two. She smiled. It was a joke, see? A— she noticed that the restaurant section was closed.

  He looked back impatiently.

  For some reason it seemed important to make herself understood to this boy. She tried again to read the overhead menu, but it was no use.

  "Can you just make me a hamburger, then?" Did he understand? "Hamburger? You know, a plain old American—"

  He shrugged disinterestedly and began scraping the grill.

  She went to the table.

  Was he laughing at her? It didn't matter. Why should it? She plopped her casebook down in front of her.

  My God, she thought, I actually brought it with me. Why? She opened it while she waited, closed it, opened it again listlessly, and stared at the run-down street and the scrawny palm trees sagging high above the deserted park. As she watched, a rented two-passenger pedal boat drifted slowly in her direction across the lake. From where she sat, there was no one visible behind the wheel.

  She considered the open file inside her binder. The sixth visitation of the morning, the one she had just made. Tried to make. The way things were going, it might be the last call of the day. The old house above Sunset. I can't just write this one off, too, she thought. I don't really care what they think back at the office. If I have to, I can even fake an interview report. How would they ever know? But I can't keep going like this without accomplishing anything, I just can't.

  She flipped through the rest of her new caseload. There were several more, including the X'd file. Why bother to count? At least she wouldn't have to worry about that one. It had been canceled last week, she'd been told at the last minute, and handed her by mistake as part of the stack. She was supposed to have dropped it back at the front desk before going out. The others were in Pasadena, Highland Park, Eagle Rock, wherever that was. All the way back across town, she guessed.

  No.

  It stops here. Starts here, rather. I'm going to make my stand before this goes any further. I'm going to get through somehow, no matter what. I've got to.

  Anger welled up in h
er again at the predicament in which she had been placed. Or in which she had placed herself. No, she thought, they didn't have to give me the old shit-list of hardcases, not on my first day out. Did they really have to do that little thing? Is that the way their petty minds work? You know what this is like? Hell Week in a college sorority. I thought this was supposed to be about something more important than staff mindgames. I thought that.

  She rose and went to the phone booth at the curb.

  I'll call in and tell them what I think. I'll tell them that they're not going to break me, not here, not yet. I'll tell them that I got in to see Mr. and Mrs.—what was the name? Wintersole. On Alta Vista Way. That's right, the one above Sunset. One foster child: Billings, Billy, age ten. Sure, I got in. We had a nice, long talk. Anybody else you want me to see today? Yes, this is me. Linda Fowley. Fowley, Linda. What's that? You're surprised? Oh, it was nothing, really….

  The telephone wouldn't work.

  The receiver smelled of hair tonic. She held it away from her face and read the directions on the coin box. IF NO DIAL TONE—it was impossible to make out the rest of the words through the gang writing.

  She tried a quarter. It didn't come back. So what? I don't need to talk to them. I don't need their sadistic advice.

  The phone booth floor now began to exude an odor very much like something dead. She clattered the door back.

  Her hamburger was up.

  She held it between two fingers as she reread the previous caseworker's report on Billings, Billy, age ten. Almost eleven now, she noted by the date. Brought in by the

  Sheriff's Department. No known relatives, last place of residence, Santa Mara,

  California. After the usual court proceedings, he had been placed with the Wintersoles. Mid-forties, childless, own their own home. A nice couple, she thought. I like them already. Or do I? With a house like that…but they're probably doing the best they can; they're trying. That's what counts.

  She stopped reading and took a good look at what was at the ends of her fingers. It tasted like—what? Like something she had put in her mouth once but forced herself to forget. The meat had been fried in the same oil used to cook something that wasn't on any menu she'd ever seen. She screwed up her face and tossed it in the trash can.