Where All Light Tends to Go

by David Joy

  With the paper quivering in my hand, I stood up from the floor, and just as my legs straightened, I felt a stiff forearm hook deep under my throat, the other arm forcing my head down from behind. Trying to breathe proved worthless. There was absolutely nothing there. No air. No breath. I tried to turn my head, twist my body to see who held me, but whoever had me was strong, much stronger than me, and all of that spinning and fighting got me nowhere. Whoever had me cinched my body up onto my tiptoes, just the tips of my boots still making contact with the floor. Even in a moment when time passed slowest, it didn’t take long. The curtains went down on my eyes, fell and fell till there was only a sliver left of the floor, then surrender.

  —

  DUCT TAPE WRAPPED my wrists and elbows to the arms of Daddy’s tall leather desk chair. I couldn’t see how my legs were attached, but they were tucked back under the seat of the chair so that I leaned forward, and they were bound tightly. A cigarette dangled from my mouth and had been hanging long enough to have dried to my lips. As I tried to open my mouth, the skin held on the butt of the cigarette and I had to lick at that dry stub to get it to fall free.

  I was facing the desk and that yellow invoice from Queen lay on the top of a tall stack of papers, the invoice squared off and even with the rest of the pile. I turned to the corner where the safe stood open. I turned the other direction to where shelves held the black-and-yellow cases of DeWalt tools. My neck couldn’t wrench far enough to see the door. Yanking and hopping, I was able to spin the chair an inch at a time, the wheels of the chair smacking the laminate each time I jerked. When I got turned enough to see, the door into the garage was open. There was no one in the room with me.

  I screamed wildly and shook in the chair, and as the first scream faded I heard metal clanking against the concrete slab in the garage. I knew the sounds of that place well, and it sounded like a wrench falling onto the floor. Next came the footsteps tromping toward me. Then he appeared in the doorway.

  “You truly are your mama’s bitch, aren’t you? Couldn’t raise the pussy out of you.” Daddy stood there and wiped grease from his hands onto a ratty red rag. The white T-shirt he wore was smudged with grease stains, those black marks extending past his shirt and onto his jeans. He scrubbed at his forearms with that rag and itched hard at a place where it was hard to say whether oil or ink tattooed his skin. A day unshaved left stubble sprigging from those aged acne scars. A crescent of hair had fallen from his part and cut a sickle across his forehead. He walked over to the radio and turned on the tunes so he could talk.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” Daddy smiled and laughed a little under his breath. “You come in to my shop, break in to my safe to steal my fucking money, and have the gall to ask what I want?”

  “If you’re going to kill me, then kill me! But don’t waste the time I’ve got talking a bunch of bullshit!”

  “Bullshit?”

  “Yeah, bullshit. You know goddamn well you owe me. You know goddamn well the work I’ve done!”

  Daddy looked at me for a while like he knew I was right, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t say a word.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?”

  “There’re people watching this place all the time, Jacob.”

  “Well, go ahead and kill me, goddamn it! Quit wasting your fucking time!”

  Daddy walked over and picked up the cigarette from where it had fallen into my lap. He held it to his lips and struck a lighter from his pocket, took a few quick drags, and pushed it into my mouth. Smoke rose from the cigarette and wafted into my eyes. He pulled a soft pack of Winstons from the pocket of his jeans and flicked one up into his mouth. He lit it and walked behind me, spun me around in the chair so that I was facing him as he leaned against the desk.

  “I’m going to talk now, and you’re going to listen.” There wasn’t a bit of hostility in his voice and hadn’t been since he walked into the room. “I’m tired, Jacob. You understand me? I’m goddamn tired.” Daddy angled back and blew a long, narrow cloud of smoke over my head. He resituated himself on the desk and glared into me with narrowed eyes. “When you do the type of shit that I’ve done, you get to worrying that one of these days someone out of your past is going to show up to put a fucking bullet in your skull. You understand? I’m tired of having to look over my shoulder. I’m tired of not knowing who might be watching. I’m just goddamned tired, Jacob.”

  Daddy took one last drag from his cigarette and snubbed it out into the ashtray. He took the cigarette from my mouth too, a long, curved piece of ash breaking loose and crumbling on my lap. He stood from the desk and walked over to the safe, shut the door, turned the handle, and the bolts sounded loudly. He spun the dial and looked at me. “Now, I understood a long time ago that you weren’t cut out for this shit. It just ain’t in you. You’re weak, Jacob. As much as it kills me to say it, you’re weak.” Daddy walked to the desk and shifted the stacks of already evened paper till he’d reset them all exactly equidistant from one another. He slouched against the desk again and looked me square.

  “I’m out of here come winter, Jacob. I’m going to finish fixing up that old Nova out back and drive till I find a place that suits me. That’s the plan. But there’s something that I need done in order for that to happen. And there’s something that you want.”

  “What is it you think I want?”

  “It’s not really a question of whether or not you want it. The money, Jacob. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it? So you do this for me, and I’ll give it to you.” Daddy looked up at the ceiling. “Every last dime you ever earned, and that’s my goddamn word. That’s all a man has is his word. I’m not a man of much, but I’m a man of my word.”

  My arms chafed under the duct tape. Sweat beaded on my brow and rolled down my forehead. Though I hated to ask, there was only one way out. “What is it you want?”

  “Robbie Douglas.” Daddy slapped his hand down on the desk, that loud slap echoing from that room to the far end of the garage and back. He slid the soft pack of Winstons out of his jeans, fired up another cigarette, and offered them to me. “Robbie Douglas is the only fucking thing left alive that could ruin me.”

  “And how exactly do you expect me to do it? Ain’t like I can just waltz into that hospital and put a bullet in him. Folks say the goddamn law’s been standing outside his door since he went in there just waiting on him to wake up so he can say who did it.”

  “That ain’t my problem, Jacob.” Daddy stood from the desk, the cigarette hanging and smoking from his lips, and peered into me. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket and flipped it open with his thumb, that old sodbuster blade shining under fluorescents. Daddy knelt and swiped the duct tape loose from my feet with the blade, ran the knife clean through the tape on one arm then the other. The thick rolled tape popped when the blade slid through and I was loose, but I didn’t move. Daddy walked past me, his footsteps sounding toward the door, and left me in that chair staring at the stack of papers on his desk, Queen’s invoice on top of the pile. I listened to him stomp through the garage. The door hinge creaked open then slammed, the latch clicking as it shut. I was left in the room alone now. The only sound came from the radio. But there were no longer words to hide.

  29.

  A povidone-iodine yellow glow came through closed curtains as I stared from the parking lot at windows lighting checkered patterns along all four stories. The old hospital had been built to last with bricks that still held red even decades after the mortar dried. Lighter sand-colored bricks cut pin stripes on the building where floors divided, and outlined the windows to add a touch of style. But despite the attempt to liven the place up, there was no hiding it. This is where people came to die.

  Electric doors slid back and a woof of air from heavy fans overhead blew against my hair when I entered. Doctors and nurses wearing scrubs with silly patterns like wrapping-paper designs walked in and ou
t of hallways carrying notepads and stethoscopes, one younger nurse bearing a drip bag as she hopped onto the elevator and waited for the door to ding. Check-in was to the right at a long countertop where three women all wearing reading glasses and sour faces squinted at computer screens. When someone would approach them at the counter, they’d hand them a notepad and pen or answer a question without ever looking up from the monitors.

  A large, brightly lit aquarium with colorful fish and plants that seemed to pulse and breathe separated the room from where doctors hurried and families waited. The left side of the room was lined in chairs, some of them filled with folks holding sleepless, zombie-type expressions with mouths gaped at a television in the corner spreading the drone of nightly news.

  Standing there, I caught on very quickly how the place worked. Folks who stood around with confused looks or walked aimlessly rubbernecking around corners and into rooms were asked what they needed, who they were looking for, or how they could be helped. The people who rushed about frantically and never let their eyes fix onto one thing for too long were allowed free range without a question asked. There were black signs with white type over most of the doorways and similar signs with arrows pointing down halls, up staircases, and into elevators. Following those signs, a man could navigate that place pretty easily without having to speak to anyone. I headed past the aquarium and toward the hallway like I owned the place, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the women behind the counter look my way, but my stride never broke and my focus never altered. Intensive Care pointed into the elevator. Intensive Care pointed up the stairs. I took the stairs.

  The dimly lit stairwell smelled of chlorine and the concrete floor felt tacky. My boot soles peeled from the stairs like I walked on transparent tape. There was no one else in the stairwell from what I could hear, but outside elevators dinged, phones rang, and fast-paced footsteps drummed through the halls. Up six flights, a sign over the doorway split the fourth floor between the Post-Operative Surgical Unit and Intensive Care. Robbie was in the latter.

  I opened the door into an empty hall. The wall in front of me held framed paintings of boldly colored shapes that never seemed to make much of a picture no matter how hard I looked. The narrow hallway opened up at both ends into brighter rooms, well-lit rooms that beamed a sanitized sort of white light. Large black signs hung from the ceiling by chains at the entrance of each: to the left Post-Op, to the right ICU.

  Ambling down that empty hall, it was harder to play it off like I was meant to be there, my boots clomping the stillness and silence that seemed to belong in that place. One nurse perched behind a desk where the room opened up. She was a young Cherokee-looking girl with dark skin, black hair pulled into a bun, and plump lips that she pursed and pursed while she read through the latest Hollywood gossip in one of those tabloids found at grocery store checkouts. She marked her spot in the magazine and placed it down on the counter as I walked by.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  I turned and met her eyes. Her stare was wide and her eyebrows angled up and that facial expression told me awfully fast that she wasn’t into being cutesy. “Came to see my grandma,” I said.

  She squinted a bit like she was trying to see through a lie. “Visiting hours were from three to six.”

  “I know, ma’am.” I walked closer to the desk and tried my damnedest to look vulnerable. “Thing is I don’t get off work till five and it’s a haul up the mountain to get here.” I braced my elbows on the top of the counter and looked down at her, tried to get a read on whether or not she was buying. “I just wanted to look in on her for a minute. I won’t be long, I promise.”

  “Like I said, visiting hours were from three to six.”

  I buried my head in my hands like the disappointment just might kill me. “Please, ma’am. I promise I won’t be long.” When I pulled my head up out of my hands I could see that I had struck something in her. Her eyes had drawn back into some softer place where things like protocol didn’t seem to matter so much.

  “Just for a minute or two,” she said. “But don’t make me have to run you off. I need this job, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  The young nurse nodded, and I strolled around the corner to where a long hallway was lined on both sides with doors. There wasn’t a deputy anywhere in sight, but the hall continued around the corner, so I kept walking. Some of the machines in the rooms beeped every second or two, but some let out a raspy-sounding breath when plungers pushed down and gave air. An old man in the room on the left was having a horrible time, and he was groaning as loudly as he could, too weak to yell. A doctor in teal-colored scrubs and one of those paper-type hats they wear jogged from around the corner and disappeared into the room where the man lay. I kept walking till I got to the edge of the wall and peeked around the corner.

  A young, strong-looking bull sat on a metal folding chair outside of a room three doors down, the last room on the wall before the hallway turned up the other side. He didn’t see me right then, but I didn’t want him to catch sight of me sneaking around, so I kept ahead and stood at an open doorway that looked in on some old woman. The woman lay there with tubes running every which way. She was pasty-looking and a line of drool ran from the corner of her open mouth. That old woman had her eyes on me, and I would’ve sworn her dead if it wasn’t for the blinks that came every so often. I turned down the hall to where the bull sat, and he was watching me while he moved a plug of tobacco along his gums with his tongue. His arms rested on his knees. I flicked my eyes back to that old woman, but soon as I did I heard that bull’s shoes clapping across the terrazzo floor.

  When his footsteps stopped, I could feel him next to me, and I tried to stay calm. That old woman still stared at me with her mouth slouched open, and I smiled at her. “They don’t think she’s got too much longer,” I said.

  The bull put his hand on the doorframe and leaned real close to me to peer inside of the room. “That your grandma?” His head right beside my shoulder, he twisted up toward me.

  “Yeah. They don’t think it’ll be more than a week or two.” I turned and looked at him, took a deep swallow. “I just wish she could’ve died at home, passed away in her sleep or something, you know?”

  “I know what you mean. Lost mine a couple months back. Same type of thing.” The deputy patted me on the shoulder hard and looked at me with dark brown eyes. “It’s tough.”

  I stared at the old woman, who still hadn’t took her eyes away from me. I was sure she was somebody’s grandma, and I was sure they wished all of those things I’d just said. She just wasn’t mine.

  The deputy patted me on the shoulder again. “Hang in there, man. It’ll be all right.” He smiled with a black wad of tobacco poking from his gums. “I’m going to go see if I can’t talk that nurse up front into letting me take her out sometime.”

  I grinned at him and nodded, and that deputy strutted down the hallway, slicking his hair down with his hand. I watched him move up to the counter and rest his elbows across the top. He worked his feet back far behind him so his body slanted at an angle toward the counter, and he rested his head where his forearms crossed, cocked his head to the side to flirt with the Cherokee girl. I had a minute or two to do what needed done, and I didn’t waste a second. I walked fast in long strides and tried to keep my feet from making any noise against the floor. Noise echoed in those halls and I didn’t need that bull coming back.

  The last door before the hallway turned up the other side was where Robbie lay. I would have never recognized him if I hadn’t been there to witness what Jeremy Cabe had done. His face was healed past the tissuey white burns I’d seen when the acid splashed and lit him afire, but what healed was a warped smooth skin that bent and curved the way oil does on top of water. Only a portion of his face along his left eye and cheek still looked like him. The rest was darker and looked like a mound of pink clay that children had smudged into a face.


  A feeding tube jutted out of his throat. Lines with all different-colored fluids running through them wrapped around his arms and chest and slipped under the sheets to someplace I couldn’t see. He was hooked to one of those raspy breathing machines, the expandable plunger rising and spreading like an accordion before it pressed down and huffed. There wasn’t a lick of movement about him. His chest never rose when the machine filled him with another breath.

  “Who are you?” a tired-sounding voice asked from a darkened corner at my side. I hadn’t seen her there until she spoke. “Who are you, boy?” She stood up from a maroon upholstered chair and walked over to me. She couldn’t have been all that much older than Mama, but you’d have never known. The way she wore her hair and the way she dressed made her look a good ten years older than she was. Her dark hair was short and permed into curls that had been mashed flat on one side where she’d pressed her head against something for rest. She dressed like a schoolteacher, with pastel-colored slacks ironed into a crease and a loose-fitting cotton shirt that held like a T-shirt but fancier. “Are you a friend of Robbie’s?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I looked at her for a second but turned away fast enough that she couldn’t quite get a good look at me. “I mean, I’ve known him a long time.”

  “When he was a little boy, why, he was the wildest thing anyone had ever seen.” She came close and stood by my side, then turned and stared at her son on the gurney. “He was wide open from the moment the doctor laid him in my arms, I tell you. Ain’t ever seen the likes of something so wild.” Robbie’s mother walked over to the bedside and picked up his hand. For a split second I thought of that folded photograph I’d found in his trailer that bookmarked a place in his Bible, a place in his life when his parents stood proudly beside him. His mother did not seem proud anymore, but she would not leave his side. She held his hand gently and stroked back and forth, right beside where an IV line ran into him. She placed his hand back on the white sheets, turned her head and looked at his face. “Now, I knew he was into some trouble. Me and his daddy had known that for a long while, I guess. But this? No, I don’t think either of us could have figured it would come to something like this.”