Zed

by Jason McIntyre

  When she came out she was all wet and stinky. I think she was sweaty. I think she was real worried about something.

  She told me to hurry and come with her back inside. I gave myself some slaps. Right in the face, Tom. Real hard, I mean real hard. I wasn’t sure if I was awake or sleeping but I was pretty sure I was awake. I saw a big lion in the trees. He was talking to me and telling me to go to sleep, right there on the grass.

  But I didn’t. I promised Nurse Karen I’d help. And I would. I always keep my promises. Daddy taught me that’s what a man does. Right, Tom?

  So I said goodbye to the lion in the trees and I said see ya later to the lion in the trees and I went with Nurse Karen back into her big house on the avenue.

  We went back down the stairs. Long, deep dark ones that open out into the yard, Tom. Not like here at Ocean View where them stairs, they come up to the kitchen and the screen door. These stairs, they come out a big box in the ground. Nurse Karen, she kept saying shhh! and quiet down. And she called me a big—what’s the word? Galoot? A big galoot, yeah, that’s what she called me. I remember really good now, Tom. I will tell you about my remembering soon. My words are getting better and I can put them together better but I still talk like I did before. I can put things in order and remember things to come back to later. I will remember this and tell you about it when I finish the part about what I saw down those deep, dark steps.

  On the cold, dirt floor was a big, rolled up blanket. And one little bulb shone dim down there. Nurse Karen hurried over to the big rolled up blanket. It was pink on the inside and so fluffy and downy. But it was dirty. On the outside, it showed wheat grass and a white flower pattern that repeated and repeated. I remember it so good now, even though I couldn’t before the spring water made me better.

  She said, “Hurry. Pick it up. Be a good boy now and take this to the truck, Zeke. Be quick about it and don’t you fall.” And she knelt down in the dirt with a jangle of keys. She used one of them keys to unlock a length of thick silver chain. It sparkled kinda like in the one dim bulb and looked kinda nice. It went to the big wood beams and looped up there. Like Nurse Karen didn’t want no one to steal her old blanket.

  Nurse Karen, she grunted to get up and down to her knees three more times. She undid three more locks. Four locks all told, Tom. My counting is so good now. Last night I counted to a million. I didn’t know I could count so high or think about numbers for so long.

  She wiped her hands on her white uniform and made the white go dirty and brown. She used her hem and pulled it up to wipe her forehead. We’s had an awful hot summer, huh, Tom?

  So I picked up the blanket and oomph! I nearly dropped it. I nearly did what Nurse Karen told me for sure not to do. But it was heavier than I ever thought it could be. And I doubled under it and got myself back upright. And I headed for those stairs. Even if Nurse Karen yelled at me a hundred more times—no, a million—I would not let her down. A man is as good as his promises, my daddy said.

  My knees almost buckled on the dark stairs. But the lion was up at the top and he said I could do it and that when I did what Nurse Karen wanted, I could have a super big sleep. The lion in the trees he tole me I’d a never have to remember the dark night with the neato bed. He tole me I’d a never have to remember the lion in the trees neither, not if I didn’t want to.

  So I got myself and the big, dirty blanket to the stairs. My heart hurt me, Tom. It was pounding harder than it ever pounded. Well, except maybe that one time with Daddy and the axe, but I’ll tell you about that too. Don’t worry. I don’t forget to tell things like I used to. Not anymore.

  I didn’t stop and I didn’t take any breather-breaks. I got my second wind, they say. I got that big dirty blanket with the pink backing and heaved it right there into the truck.

  But a man’s hand flopped out. His hand and his cuff and all the way to an elbow. I think it was Mr. Chris’s hand because I remember his wedding ring. Him and Nurse Karen, they haven’t been married forever but they’ve been married a lot of years and Mr. Chris, he always wore that wedding ring she gave him on their wedding day. He also wore that Brute aftershave and I could smell a whiff of that too. Same as when he comes to visit us all at Ocean View.

  I looked at Nurse Karen. She followed behind me to the truck and I musta looked like a ghost got me, because she said, “Don’t worry. It’s Mr. Chris. He’s sleeping. I gave him the nighttime vitamins too. They don’t make you strong when it’s time to sleep, Zeke. You’re gonna sleep soon. But Mr. Chris, he gonna sleep now. He’s been super sick, Zeke,” she said. “And I’m going to let him rest at the house north of the creek. He’s gonna get better. But he’s catchy now, and I don’t want anyone else in town to get his sick, see?”

  I didn’t see. Not then. I do now, Tom, but I didn’t on the night of the lion in the trees and the long, deep stairs down to the dirt.

  I said that I did see. I lied to Nurse Karen. But I knew she wanted me to see. I knew it. I had to lie. And she wanted me to. I could read that much of it in her eyes, even in the dark.

  We got in and we drove without saying another word. Not to each other and not to Chris covered up in that big, dirty blanket in the back of my truck. It wasn’t clean anymore, my truck. Not by a long shot.

  I was close to done and when I got back to the new house across the creek, I didn’t need Nurse Karen to tell me what to do. I just got to it. I just did it.

  I took Mr. Chris in his bundle out of the truck-back and I took him in the house and to the back bedroom where that old bed waited. Those houses up there north like that, they have big yards. They built a few of them to try to sell copies, I guess. But the copies, they were never built. And there was all this space between them. I couldn’t see lights from any houses when I looked out that bedroom window. An I couldn’t see the town lights neither.

  I musta looked out the window a long time. Nurse Karen, she used that neato bed to get Mr. Chris settled into sleep. He was still under that dirty blanket but I wasn’t really watching. I was looking out the window at the lion in the trees. I couldn’t stop looking at that big lion. He was far away and I couldn’t hear what he said... but I couldn’t look at anything else.

  I finally forced my head to turn back and saw Mr. Chris’ hand sticking out from under the dirty blanket again. It was done up in a brown leather strap. Nurse Karen did his other hand in one and then strapped the ankles too. I could hear Mr. Chris snoring now. Big heavy, snotty snores. I reached for the blanket. I wanted to see him and make sure he was okay. But Nurse Karen pulled my hand away. “Ah-ah,” she said. She led me out. I followed. I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake.

  “Nurse Karen’s gonna nurse Mr. Chris back to full health,” she said to me. “He’s gonna be right as rain, he is.”

  And then we left. I think we did. I don’t remember anything after that. Not driving back into town, not anything.

  The next thing was the blue sky and green leaves and blinking at it all. It was me in the back of my truck.

  I was under the dirty blanket with the pink backing and the wheat grass and the white flowers. It was morning and I was in the turnaround at Ocean View.

  Smart people have always thought I’m dumb people. But I fell in the hottest water at the hot spring, Tom. The night that Mary ran away. And it changed me. I don’t fully know why. And don’t know how.

  My thinker brain is a glass milk bottle and when I was four, a quarter horse reared up and kicked me. And I mean hard. I forgot for a lot of years, but now I can remember. His hoof caught me square in the chest, knocked my wind from me and sent me to air, as they used to say about them people who went up in air-o-planes. I landed on a big flat patch of hard dirt—or maybe it was rock bed, I don’t know for sure.

  Daddy always said after that day, my glass bottle never filled up with water. It was broken and no amount of snot nor mud could piece it together without it leaking like a sieve.

  And since I come to Ocean View, I think the snot cracked even worse. My th
inker couldn’t hold a drop more than a few minutes. I think it’s them submarine vitamins, Tom.

  And now that I been dipped in the water and it fixed up my cracked thinker, I don’t want to eat them vitamins anymore. I don’t wanna put my thinker back the way it was. I can’t. I won’t.

  13

  Upstairs, Fidela called, “Supper!” and the main floor erupted with the noise of footfalls and Dar’s wheelchair over Zeke and Tom’s heads in the furnace room of the basement. It could have been a herd of buffalo up there. Tom sat back and his cot gave a squawk with a spring shifting badly under him.

  “Come on, Zeke, ol’ buddy,” Tom said. “You’re telling me that you conked your head and fell in the hot spring—and now you can remember all these things you couldn’t before?”

  “And I can think like a smart person now,” Zeke said, full of exuberance. “My words are still dumb, but I’m learning to smart them up too. It’s hard to polish up fifty-some years of dumb ol’ words.” He thought for a second. Then he added, “And I didn’t conk my noggin. Not this time. I did when I was four. But this time it was a yellow and black stripy dragonfly that stung me in my neck—see?” He tilted his head back and drew his hand to his throat to show Tom the hard lump and black dot right there where the guys on Hawaii Five-O checked pulses on dead perps. That made him think of Mary who was upstairs, probably sitting down to eat with the rest of them—and with a potential new guest. Nurse Karen would be putting on her song and dance. She was good at that.

  “Lemme see,” Tom said and bent to have a look. There was a hard black point there, at the middle of a small, raised goose egg. He whirled around and tilted his bedside lamp up at Zeke who stood like a doctor’s patient on the examining table.

  Tom opened the bedside drawer. It jangled with different things: nail clippers and a magnifying loop. He reached in for a pair of tweezers he used for handling negatives.

  “I need to have a look,” he said and reached in with the points of the tweezers. Zeke seemed amenable enough.

  He poked at it and it was a simple, round lump with a tiny black nipple at its centre. It could have been a bug bite or a spider bite. Tom didn’t know a thing about bites. Or it could have been the tip of a sliver from a dark oak cabinet. It would have been a massive sliver if that was the case.

  Without warning Zeke, he squeezed the tweezer points on the protruding tip of black. He got it on the first try and yanked without giving himself—or Zeke—a moment to protest.

  It was a soft, squishy, movement. The curved, black stinger was about an inch and a half or longer. It was thick and solid, like a piece of sturdy wire. When it came out, Tom was surprised at its girth and length. It left behind a white bubble of pus at the hole. Then the hole widened and dark red blood spurted. Tom reached for his towel, still in a damp puddle on his unkempt bed. He got a shot of the red blood right in the face.

  “Oh my God,” he said quietly.

  “What?” Zeke said without any hint of pain—or even knowledge of what’s happening.

  “Nothing,” Tom said, wiping at his face with the back of his hand and pressing the bunched up towel to Zeke’s neck. It was one of Ocean View’s towels. Tom didn’t care one lick about ruining anything of Nurse Karen’s. Not at this point.

  “Am I gushing?” Zeke said. He was calm and hadn’t moved yet. His head was still thrown back and his bloody neck bared to Tom, the most humble and surprised vampire of all time.

  “Not—really,” Tom said in a stifled choke. He had no idea what should be done. “There’s some blood,” he said.

  Zeke put his hand to it and pressed way harder than Tom had. “It’s okay,” Zeke said. “My daddy taught me how to staunch.”

  “Okay,” Tom said, disbelieving that anything would stop such a gush. The towel, which was three thick bands of orange, brown and yellow, was already showing big, dark brown patches where it had sucked up the blood. His fingertips were wet and red. So were Zeke’s in a matter of moments. Tom reached out, after examining that long black wire, he let it and the tweezers fall with a clink and a tink into the ashtray on the night stand.

  Zeke breathed heavy and closed his eyes.

  “Everything’ll be okay,” Tom said. He was rattling through his head about first aid and what Karen told him about calling the doc. Where was that number? On the telephone desk in the wide hall upstairs?

  “I know,” Zeke said, as calm as could be. “It’s weird, huh, Tom?”

  “Yeah. The weirdest,” Tom said.

  “—That I should get my thinker squeaking again like it was brand new out of the box?”

  “Uh-huh,” Tom said, worried. He looked off at the axe sitting on the dresser top. “—And this other thing, this thing with Chris rolled up in a dirty blanket, I don’t know, passed out? That story just came to you?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Zeke said. “It’s no story, though, you can mark my words on it, Tom. I don’t tell stories, not since my daddy took the story-telling out of me when I was a bit older than four.”

  “You have to understand—”

  “—uh-huh?”

  “—This is all a bit... far-fetched, Zeke, ol’ buddy.”

  Zeke thought for a second. “If you don’t believe, take that fancy new camera you have and load it with the film it eats.”

  “Yeah?” Tom said. “And what should I do with it then?”

  “Come with me after suppertime. See the house with the old bed that has those leather straps for the hands and feet. Nurse Karen’ll do what she does. Show off Ocean View and tell her lies about vitamin pills and day trips.”

  Tom raised his eyebrow in consideration of that. It’s about as succinct a description of what Karen did as any. Zeke sure seemed more on the ball than he did a few days ago. But it might just be that he was looking for thoughtfulness that was always there. It’s possible he was clear-headed from chucking his vitamins. That could be all it was, and it could be enough to let him remember Nurse Karen doing something out there, north of the creek.

  Upstairs, he’d just be in the way. Karen would probably call him a little shit again if he said anything that didn’t fit with her view of a perfect environment for her cash cows... her guests, that was. So he’d go with Zeke. Fidela and Karen could be in charge tonight while they showed off the house and how wonderfully docile all the guests were. What, would she fire him now? He didn’t care if she did, though he would admit, he wanted that last paycheck at the end of the month. Maybe after he went to see this house Zeke was sure held a sleeping Chris Banatyne who was sicker than a dog, he might wander up to Neckline and see if Farrah With No Last Name was about. Maybe he could make nice with her. Maybe he could tell her how Mikey Dean had let him have it—just for putting his arm around the guy. He thought on it a second and realized his hip still hurt. His ass would be black and blue by morning, if it wasn’t already.

  “So,” Tom said. “We go out to this house, the one with the old restraint bed and we take pictures... of what we find, like?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Zeke said, a look of satisfaction rolling over him. He put down the wet towel. The bleeding point on his neck was pale and flat again. His skin was pink. It hadn’t formed a scab, just a small dark spot which no longer gushed. On his face, he wore a gleaming look that said this was the first time he’d ever won over another human being. He had used logic borne from his previously faulty thinker-bottle to convince a person to do something he believed in. And, in a way, he had. And, for Zeke, it was the most novel feeling in the world.

  14

  Upstairs, Zeke took a dirty look from Nurse Karen at the head of the old, polished oak table in the formal dining room. As far as Tom remembered, the dining room was off limits and never to be entered by the guests.

  The two took the empty chairs as far from Karen and the new folks as they could. Zeke hadn’t gotten re-dressed or wiped himself. He still stunk of old sweat in his t-shirt and stained jeans. He was dressed too heavily for a day like this but didn’t seem to notice.

&
nbsp; They ate the cold food in front of them while Karen told their guests about the rich program of learning and activities the house guests enjoyed. Then she went into her standard diatribe about how each person was a guest in her home and that we all treated them like that: a guest.

  And two of those three wore a look of intense, courteous interest. It was a man, a woman and, presumably, their daughter who was wheeled up to the dining table in a rather elaborate wheelchair. She must have had cerebral palsy. She didn’t say a word and her neck was cocked at an odd angle from her shoulders. Same for her arms. Her torso was twisted and she looked like she had thick rubber bands tying her to the chair. Despite that, she was wearing a pretty orange and white dress. And her hair was combed neat. She wore thick plastic specs—similar to Zeke’s lost pair—and her eyes moved around like big googling baubles. She said nothing. Her parents or guardians, they said nothing either. It was the Karen Banatyne Variety Hour.

  But it would last all evening.

  Mary picked at her food. She didn’t interact with the guests but she’d never been shy before. When dinner was over, Tom excused himself before dessert. Outside, Zeke joined him after saying he had to go to the bathroom. When the front door squeaked and slammed shut behind him, he looked up at Tom standing out on the verandah. He said, “I took Mary to the hot pool.”

  In all honesty, Tom was surprised Zeke remembered the plan they’d concocted in the basement. It all seemed so stupid. Like he was following the daydream of a madman. And he just might be. “And?” he said to Zeke, checking the settings on his camera in the dim porch light, currently devoid of any captives.

  “I don’t think it worked,” Zeke said. “Not for Mary.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tom said absently. “Where’s the truck?”

  Zeke gestured to the front street, which was hidden by heavy trees and shrubs. It was a beautiful yard. Very private. Tom put the lens back on his camera and replaced it in the case. He followed Zeke down the steps.