Zed

by Jason McIntyre

  Sound expanded. In only moments, it was a roar. The water seemed to pull him under. He was powerless to fight its tug. Mouth and nostrils went under now and he was incapable of stopping it. He shouted, but only a throaty, stifled call came, drowned by the insulation of the water. It was in this moment he felt the multitudinous tickle. He couldn’t see them, but he pictured the tiny krill-critters traversing into his open mouth while he tried to shout. An undulating wave of them infiltrated him.

  His mind raced, grasping at runaway memories. If he had been panicked to get back here, this was outright terror. His heart pummelled the insides of his rib cage.

  Doan like the tub, Mr. Tom, he had said. Like showers. Me and my daddy, we’s always like showerin way better den tubbin.

  And, after this, Zeke has no memory of anything at all.

  PART III

  The World Has Teeth

  1

  Mary had almost nothing to say that night. Not to Tom, and not to anyone else either.

  She and Ingy shared one bathroom for their bath and Smitty used the other. After he was done, Tom took Dar for his. Once Tom had him in the tub and the water run, Dar mostly took care of his own cleaning. Tom just kneeled with him at the edge of the tub and talked with him—basically just stayed to make sure he didn’t tip over and drown since he was numb from the waist down. Made sure he didn’t defecate in the water and then bathe with it either. That had apparently happened a time or two before.

  At about ten after seven, Nurse Karen left without word, without mention that Tom was now in charge. It was understood, he guessed. Like this was some lesson of an elder to a junior, passed on silently. And part of the lesson was in not speaking of it. Or, on the part of the junior, in not questioning it. Passing the trivial test was to know it was a test.

  Or some shit like that. Tom almost laughed thinking about how high and mighty that woman could be at times. As though she was a tirelessly sage wizard come down from the mountain to school him in the ways of the world. What was her garbage about parenting on the verandah the night Mary disappeared? And this afternoon? That nonsense about not reneging on a deal?

  That got a big mental eff-you from Tom. He was thinking of her while he gave Dar his bath. Of all the houseguests, Dar needed the most help. Tom still had skinny wrists and tiny ankles, but he’d grown strong this summer. Lifting Dar out of his wheelchair and into chairs, bathtubs, hot springs, it had all worked to strengthen the boy’s back. He was no muscle man, but he felt strength in his forearms. When he looked in the mirror these days, he saw a man looking back at him, not the boy of the last eighteen years. He had biceps, and, yes, pecs.

  No wonder Farrah With No Last Name was all over him.

  He caught himself almost laughing again. This daydreaming wasn’t so shit-hot. He should be focusing on his duties. The houseguests needed him. Right now, Dar needed him. He’d not been his usual chatty self and Tom realized the paraplegic’s eyes were closed. Covered in suds, Dar was in the middle of the tub, still upright and holding his wash cloth squeezed in his hands under the water, but most definitely asleep.

  Tom reached a hand into the water. It wasn’t ice cold. But it wasn’t warm either.

  He dried his hand then reached up to the counter beside the sink where he’d left his watch. Twelve or thirteen minutes past nine. His legs tingled with sleep of their own. He flexed them, stood, and got the blood flowing again. He had to sit again on the toilet seat until he felt he could put weight on his legs. Shitty night if he hauled Dar out of the tub and then fell over and cracked both of their skulls on the porcelain.

  When he was sure he could do it, he got up again.

  If Tom had believed in God, it would be this type of cruel, yet comical God who would reign from the clouds above. It would be His type of lesson to teach. Ignore a legless man in your charge and have your legs taken from you—if only for an hour. Just to make you think on it with some heft.

  Tom readied a towel and hoisted a dripping Dar Salem from the tub. Suds fell from him, but there weren’t many left. He shivered, but Tom wasn’t sure he really woke up.

  Instead of putting him in his chair and wheeling him to his room, he just carried the older man there instead. It wasn’t much effort and Tom did it easily. Without turning on the bedroom light and waking Smitty, he worked with only one dim hall light spilling in—much like he had last night in the girls’ room when he stood flabbergasted at seeing the nonchalant return of Mary Smithson.

  Now he sat the half-sleeping Dar on his bed while Dar muttered and rubbed his head, still with his eyes closed. Tom dressed him in a fresh set of pyjamas and laid him down. He pulled the light, summer covers over Dar and left the two old men to their sleep. Smitty snored like a distant timber crew starting and stopping their work.

  He checked on Mary and Ingy. All four of his charges were asleep. Time for sleep of his own, he thought. Halfway down the main stairs, Tom heard a tapping.

  A gentle rapping, a rapping upon my chamber door, he thought and took a chill. Poe from high school still rattling around in his head. Where had that come from?

  He went to the front door and through its high window he spied the top half of Farrah’s face.

  “Shit,” he said, and then wondered if she heard that through the heavy tongue-and-groove wood panels. He’d totally forgotten. He was not one to make promises lightly, but that one had been under duress.

  It’s not that he didn’t like the girl. She was funny. A bit crazy, but funny trumped a lot of red flags. One flag he might not be able to look past was this thing Mikey had told him. That she could sometimes be a cat with a dead mouse, unable to stop playing with it for all the catnip in the county. Tom didn’t want to be the dead mouse. Besides, he was leaving in a week and a half. And, most likely, would never return to this island. It had been a fruitful summer. He got his camera, he got his photos. He’d even had some experiences to tell the grandkids one day... but he didn’t need a pen pal girlfriend out of the deal.

  He opened the door with a finger crossing his lips. “Hi,” he said, “They’re all asleep. If you wake them, we’ll be singing Mary Had a Little Lamb for forty-five minutes.”

  Farrah smiled and stepped in. The rain had slowed. She only had a few dark drops on her shoulders. She must have run up the walk from her dad’s car at the curb. She was in cut-off jeans, frayed so high up on her thigh that the pockets hung down and peeked out. Her hair had that fresh-from-a-swim lilt of salt water. Tom thought she’d take some really good photos right now.

  “I’ve been told my singing voice ain’t bad,” she said. “Church choir. School pep band.”

  Something was off. He’d only been with Farrah, what, three times? Four counting right now? But her voice—and her eyes—didn’t have their usual spark.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tom said, leading her in as she kicked off her sandals at the doorway. “I, well, I wasn’t thinking last night when I promised we could hang out.”

  She gave him a “yeah, right” look with tilted head, but he kept digging for himself.

  “I, uh, I tried to broker a deal for the night off with the boss-lady of the house after the weather turned, but she wouldn’t have it—” That was a lie. A small one, but he still felt ugly for it. He had tried to renegotiate, but it hadn’t been for Farrah. He’d forgotten all about Farrah.

  “’S okay,” Farrah said. “The weather’s poop anyway. Nobody’s going to the beach. Maybe another night for that.”

  “Okay,” he said. He thought he should say, “I’d like it if you stayed here. We could watch TV on the couch.” But he didn’t. Sometimes Tom thought he never said the right thing at the right time. Sometimes, he said the right thing a moment too late. Or on the wrong day. And sometimes his timing was golden but he said the wrong thing when he should have said nothing at all. Or when he should have just been there. Presence is a present, and all that.

  “So you found all your—” She was going to say ‘retards’, he knew she was, but she caught hers
elf. “—houseguests, did you?” she finished.

  Tom blew out his breath. “I did,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around at all the leavings of his houseguests. Toys and puzzles. The TV remote was upside down on the big couch with the batteries pulled out. Dar’s world map puzzle looked the same as it had since Tom had arrived in May. Little progress, none today.

  “But one’s gone missing again,” he said.

  “Oh no,” she said, too quickly. He couldn’t tell if she was feigning that and still pissed that he had blown her off tonight or if she was genuinely worried.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like it’s my fault this time. Zeke. He’s easily the smartest and most independent. He buggers off from time to time and Karen—that’s the bossy lady—she doesn’t bat an eye. Truth be told, she’s pretty heartless. Doesn’t care where he goes. Says it’s one less mouth to feed. As long as Zee’s dad pays the bills, I don’t think she would care if he never came home. I’m not as worried as I was last night. That one was totally my fault—”

  He was babbling. And Farrah cut him off.

  “Can I stay here?” she blurted.

  The couch was right behind Tom and he sat, as if her question had knocked him over. In a way, it had. “What, like, to hang out for a while?” he said. Presence is a present and all that. Right timing, wrong thing to say.

  “No,” she said, impatiently. Now he saw it: the puffy, red eyes. The congestion in her voice. She looked off at the room in general. “Not, ‘like, to hang out for a while’,” she said in a fading mimicry.

  An awkward silence. Extended. And then extended more.

  And then, in a rush, Farrah turned back to him and plummeted to the couch. She sat with him and leaned in close to kiss him. He pulled back. “Whoa,” he said. Colour flushed his face. His hands felt like heavy blocks as he put them on her shoulders.

  She wasn’t embarrassed. She was angry. Her brows lowered. Her lips wrinkled. Her eyes pinched at their corners. Up close, she was incredibly gorgeous. Before, he’d only really looked at her from some distance, and her face was either covered by sunglasses or sitting in the Porsche in profile. But she was really, really beautiful.

  “Y’know, Tom,” she said. “You’re pretty dumb for a college boy.”

  She got up. She crossed the room without looking back at him. “Figure your shit out and let me know what you want, okay?” Then she was out, flinging the front door wide and hard so it slammed the wall. She was gone and only the sound of rain was left in her wake.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, deluded and holding absolutely no information in his brain about what that really was supposed to mean.

  In a moment, the Porsche revved: gas, clutch, gear shift and then the fade of it with distance.

  The cool night air crept in through the gaping wound of the front door. It played with Tom’s longish hair in a way-ta-go-champ sort of tousle. You just scored the winning touchdown, it said. You just finished your paper route in record time. It’s summer vacation and you’re going to Disneyland. It was sarcastic, that wind.

  “What just happened here?” he asked the room. The messy room did not answer back.

  2

  Polish-the-glass. Polish-the-glass—

  It was this simple, hard thought that propelled Zeke out of his water coma.

  Like before, he sat bolt upright in the shallow water to greet a black night, made blacker by the pressing-in of storm clouds and their violence. Trees wavered and the sound of it meant even if someone had been around, they might not have heard him vomit up a gallon and a half of mineral water and bile. Blood came too, came with his ugly retching.

  He got to his feet, feeling that tingle emanate from his throat, from the crown of his head, and then to all points on its way to his toes. He staggered in the light droplets of rain. The hot, steaming water settled at ringlets around his calves. He fell into the second pool and coughed more up. Then he hiccupped and three or four krill-critters trailed from his string of spit and snot. He brushed them away and strained to get out of the water. If he got out of the water, he’d be okay. He knew he would, though he didn’t know quite why. It was an irrational thought based on nothing.

  Polish-the-glass. It was as simple as that. He knew other things were just as simple now too. Like that his rump felt fine. There was no rational reason but he still knew it. The way he fell into the shallow hot pool at the start of this... polishing session... he should be black and blue back there. He should be hitching his breath with the pain of each step. But he’s not. No bruising back there—or anywhere. If he had a full-length wardrobe mirror, he’d be able to confirm it. His lily-white ass would be just that: lily-white.

  Same with his leg. He gave it a long gash going in. Desperation made him clumsier than usual. And he’d spilled a half-pint of blood, easy. It mixed with the hot water and then flowed on out to the other pool, and then wherever it goes from there in this design-by-divine hot spring leisure land.

  But his leg appeared untouched. It was repaired. Or it never happened.

  No, it happened. The memory was unmistakably bright.

  He made it to the edge of the middle pool and raised his leg out to prop it on the rocky edge. As he did so, the pool lit up as if underwater bulbs had been switched on. It beamed blue and there was a vibration to it, pulsing like a heartbeat. He pulled himself up on good, sturdy, clean legs, stronger than they had been in a long time. And when he did, water and several of those krill-critters bled away from him, back to the spring water.

  And the pulsing stopped. The blue light didn’t fade entirely, but the wattage dropped.

  Zeke turned, puzzling this out. He dipped a toe back in the water. And the pulsing began again. It grew and retreated, grew and retreated.

  He removed his big toe. And, again, the pulsation stopped.

  Zeke backed away from the pool, rubbing his skull. The pain was less intense this time.

  Less to polish, he thought and wondered where that thought came from.

  But maybe it was true. Maybe each time he climbed into the pool for a refresh, the chemistry or whatever it was, didn’t need to work as hard. Less work, less time, fewer side effects.

  He had no idea.

  But he did know he had to tell someone.

  3

  Tom puzzled through Farrah’s last words for only about ten minutes while he tidied up the living room. Then he made sure the windows on the main floor were closed and switched off the lights. He went down to bed and looked through his photos of Mary, but then his eyes sagged and grew itchy with fatigue. He put them all back in the manila envelopes and slid the stack under his cot. He switched off his lamp and fell asleep in minutes.

  Zeke crept in after midnight, same as last night. He went down to bed and sat on the edge of his cot in the dark to watch Tom sleep. He didn’t want to wake him. But he had to tell someone who’d understand. He had spent three hours walking and thinking. He was smart enough now—since the hot spring had patched up his thinker-bottle—not to wander in the woods at night. Though he was sure he’d find his way through, he knew it was too much of a risk now. Where, before, Zeke wouldn’t have thought ahead, now he planned things out. He had a broad concept of time. And he felt it passing. He also knew it was a real possibility that his glass thinker-bottle might start its cracking business again. He’d hate to have reason and memory leave him while he stood clueless in a wood he’d walked a hundred times, but with no memory of it—or how to emerge safely from it.

  He also had the memory of the dogs to keep him out of the woods. Not sure if it was myth, rumour or truth mixed in. He remembered overhearing the men his age at the Highliner with their talk of the world. Some of them had been discussing the proliferation of wild dogs in the northlands. They liked that the dogs might take care of the odd hippie on a commune up there, but not that a pack might creep south and snatch up a young child at one of the beaches.

  Still, Zeke wasn’t sure he
should trust Tom. Watching the boy’s chest rise and fall in the dim light, he thought about how Tom had tricked him into fooling Mary. Oh Mary, lovely Mary. She’d taken off her clothes for this... boy. And at Zeke’s urging.

  Maybe telling Tom wasn’t a good idea. Maybe Tom wasn’t trustworthy.

  Zeke got up from his cot. The springs squeaked and Tom rustled. But he didn’t wake.

  Zeke went out and up the stairs. He didn’t want to sleep anyway. He felt rested. He felt more invigorated than he had since he was a boy. And he didn’t want to cause cracks in his thinker-bottle again. Last time he went to bed, the juice started to run out and the snot-cracks reappeared. He would stay up all night and wait for the sun to come up.

  He wandered the house for hours. He thought about his past, piecing things together, stringing along moments that made sense and those that did not. There were still massive holes in his memory, but fewer than yesterday. In his teens, his daddy had taken him to see a special doctor who did what he called a series of treatments. They usually consisted of spoonfuls of awful-tasting salt mixture then tests where Zeke sat at a table across from the doc and tried to remember what was written on big white cards.

  Treatments, yes. That was the word Daddy had used. But Daddy stopped paying the doc because, as he said, the treatments never took. And now Zeke thought of his two visits to the hot pool as treatments. But maybe these treatments actually ‘took’.

  Absently straying into the wide hall between the living room and stairway, he saw the low shelf where he and Mary and the others pass each morning. There were cubbies made of wood panels. Each houseguest’s name appeared on a cubby, written on masking tape. And in each cubby was a set of plastic dishes, each subdivided by three.