House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus III

  There is very little time. Inside the bungalow, I pull from the cabinet beneath the sink the roll of tape we used for our moving boxes. In my office I retrieve the plastic covering of my uniform. Then I enter the darkness of my wife’s room, my heart once again thrusting inside my chest. My face and neck release sweat, and my uniform is fitted too tightly at the upper back; it is all the work here I have done, it is all those days in the heat and dust and fog, a garbage soldier working with men who before would have bowed their heads if I passed by. I sit upon the bed. I pull sufficient tape free of its roll, the sound like the cracking of ice over a frozen lake, what I felt beneath my feet as a boy with my father in the north mountains. I hold with both hands the tape and lean to kiss Nadi once more. Her lips are still warm but I feel if I do not hurry she will have left me behind. I apply one end of the tape to my knee, and my fingers shake as they did when I first undressed my wife on the night of our wedding, our new home silent as it is now.

  I take the plastic covering and place it over my head and face. But there is a small hole near my mouth and I must double the layer and now I see only a vague dimness as I take the tape and secure it firmly around my throat and neck. My breath draws in the plastic immediately and I expel it with my tongue. I lie down beside my Nadi. I reach for her hand but cannot at first find it and my heart leaps against my chest, then I find it, small and cool, soft with expensive creams, and I am for the moment calmed. I close my eyes and mouth and breathe deeply through the nose, but the plastic quickly fills it and I again open my mouth to complete the breath but the plastic is there as well and I force it away with my tongue, drawing in more air, all that I will need, I tell to myself, holding it in, my chest weakened by its fullness. I feel Nadi’s shoulder pressed to mine and I regret not having played music on her new player. I have a sharp desire to hear it, the poetry of Dashtestani, the ney and domback, the beckoning music of home. I release my breath, its sound a wind in my ears, the plastic slipping from my nose and mouth but then returning with the insistence of the sea, covering all the sand prints left behind, filling all the holes and channels. I attempt to force the plastic out once more, just once more, but the ocean is rising with the moon, its pressure growing in my chest, my heart and lungs beginning to burst beneath the weight of an unseen hand, my body struggling as it sinks into the bed. The plastic becomes iron against my face, and my arms float weightlessly as I attempt to pull free the tape but my fingers do not function correctly, fluttering uselessly against my throat and chin. I no longer have legs, and there is a terrible sound in my ears, the deafening pitch of low-flying F-16s, my chest beginning to fracture, my abdomen heaving, heaving—something beginning to open and release, a warmth filling me, vodka and fire, the hot wind of a desert sky, the earth falling away beneath me.

  LESTER’S CELL WAS A STAINLESS-STEEL SINK AND TOILET, A STEEL WRITING desk, and two iron bunks recessed into the wall. Above each mattress was a small rectangular window, its bulletproof glass fogged so that all Lester could see was daylight, and the floor was eight feet wide and twelve feet long, the ceiling thirty feet above him, three iron girders painted as white as everything else. Lester sat at the edge of the bottom bunk, both hands resting on his knees. His eyelids were heavy and burned slightly, and his mouth hung partly open with fatigue. He was too warm wearing both jail-issue shirts and he lay back on his bunk, staring at the myriad of holes in the steel bed-frame above him. At the Hall of Justice, he had sat without his shirt in a hardback chair and heard himself tell the truth about everything, his voice low and subdued as he kept seeing the boy spin, his arms hanging loose as rope as he let go of the gun and landed on his side, one arm stretched out, almost pointing, the way toddlers do to something they recognize but can’t name.

  Someone had handed him a glass of water and Lester drank it down all at once. In the small room were two deputies, two detectives, and Lieutenant Alvarez standing with his back to the bright window, his face in shadow. The detectives were asking Lester about the Behrani family, their imprisonment overnight, Lester pointing his service pistol at them, moving the son and father against their will to Redwood City. They asked him about Kathy. Was she at the Corona address right now, holding Mrs. Behrani against her will? And Lester’s voice sounded almost normal. “No, she’s waiting for us to get back, that’s all.” Lester looked down at his hands, imagined Mrs. Behrani hearing her son had been shot. He imagined hearing his own son had been shot, how he would immediately picture the worst, little Nate’s smooth face contorted and pale as too much blood left his body too fast. “Is the boy all right?”

  One of the detectives said he was in surgery, and Lester turned his wedding ring twice on his finger. He’d washed his hands but there was still dried blood in the tiny cracks of his palms. He thought of Kathy, her red Bonneville in the backyard when a patrol car got there. He looked up. “I’d like to call my wife.”

  Lieutenant Alvarez was writing something on a pad of paper, and he stepped forward as quickly as if someone had just insulted him. “You’ll get your two calls at intake, Burdon.”

  Lester had felt an impulse to look away, but didn’t. Alvarez shook his head like even this, this eye contact, was way out of line, and he told two deputies to arrest him and take him across the street to the new holding facility, a short walk usually, but now it was long, Lester as handcuffed and bare-chested as a wino, a deputy at each arm, his face down. Inside they uncuffed him and Lester gave them what they wanted, his wallet, car keys, and wedding ring. One of the arresting deputies told him to hold his arms out and he gave Lester a pat search, his hands heavy and careful. The intake officer had broad shoulders, short red hair, and a small white scar on his chin. He sat behind glass and put Lester’s keys and ring in a manila envelope, counted the cash in his wallet, then had Lester sign a form in two places, Lester thinking of Kathy being there when a patrol car pulled up, everything going as completely wrong as it could. He heard himself ask to make a call, but again, his voice was subdued, muffled somehow. The intake officer looked right at Lester but didn’t answer him, just dropped his personal possessions into a box Lester couldn’t see.

  The deputies disappeared and one from the holding facility took their place, a short Chicano with a neck as wide as his jaw. He escorted Lester to a part of the procedure he’d never had to stay around for, to a fluorescent-lit room with no windows, a Filipino woman there in a white lab coat. She was small and dark and pretty, her hair held back with a red-and-purple pelican barrette, and Lester wished he at least had his shirt on. She wore white protective gloves. She wiped alcohol on the inside of Lester’s forearm, then pressed a round TB skin pop into it, pulling it away just as quickly. She told him to sit down and she leaned against a counter covered with jars of cotton swabs, held a clipboard, and asked the Chicano jailhouse deputy Lester’s name.

  “Lester Veector Burdone.” The deputy’s accent was East Palo Alto barrio. Now the pretty nurse was asking Lester questions of his medical history, his body since he was a boy, his sexual relations since he was a man. Had he ever tested positive for HIV? She looked at him then, directly in the face, and it left Lester feeling he had something to lie about when he didn’t. He answered no and then he was in the photo and fingerprints room standing against a wall in front of the Edicon machine, the technician telling him to look straight ahead at the blinking green light, Lester feeling he was being x-rayed, that this computer graphic of his face, this jailhouse mugshot, was really him, the true Lester.

  The Chicano deputy called him over to the Identex and began rolling Lester’s fingertips one by one onto the computer pad. It felt strange to have each finger guided like that, like someone was helping him to dress or feed himself, and as the Chicano officer finished, then escorted Lester down a bright corridor, Lester felt something was about to begin that wouldn’t end for a long time. He knew the schedule for bail; he knew there wouldn’t be any for kidnapping. That meant he’d be here until a hearing. And that could take months. Sometimes over a ye
ar. He felt queasy, his mouth suddenly full of tacky saliva. He thought of Carol, saw her in the kitchen dicing onions at a counter. He imagined the kids, both of them drawing with crayons on the floor of Bethany’s room, and again he saw the colonel’s son drop heavily to the sidewalk, blood pulsing from two wounds, and he felt afraid.

  The deputy led him around a corner and opened a door for him. It was a small room with a desk and telephone, its white cinder-block walls freshly painted.

  “Two calls on the county, Burdone. Five minutes.”

  The door was reinforced glass, and the Chicano officer stood on the other side, his arms folded, glancing in at Lester every few seconds. Lester picked up the receiver but didn’t know the colonel’s number. He dialed information, hoping that wouldn’t count as one of his two calls, then he was ringing the Behrani residence, a brand-new listing. His throat felt thick and dry. The phone began to ring and he remembered Kathy as he’d left her, standing in the hallway of her stolen house in shorts and a Fisherman’s Wharf T-shirt, her hair slightly unkempt around her face he’d kissed before leaving. By tonight, he’d imagined the two of them driving north in a rented car, maybe giddy for having just gotten away by a hair. Now he just wanted to hear her voice, a bit husky and unsure of itself. He just wanted to hear her say his name. But the phone kept ringing and no one was picking it up. A patrol car might have gotten there already, but he didn’t think so. Maybe Kathy and the colonel’s wife weren’t in the house, but outside. He pictured them sitting up on that new widow’s walk, waiting.

  The deputy tapped on the glass and pointed at his watch. Lester let the phone ring four more times, then hung up. He hadn’t expected Kathy not to answer and now he felt as cut off from things as he could imagine. For a second, it was as if she had never existed and wasn’t real at all; what they had started together was an illusion, just a lovely rug thrown over a hole in the floor and now the rug was gone and Lester was falling into something that had been there all along and she had only come into his life to lead him to it. Cold spread through his bowels and his face grew hot. He glanced at the deputy’s dark profile, thought of Behrani screaming in Farsi inside the patrol car, the veins coming out in his forehead and neck. Maybe he’d called his wife from the hospital and Kathy had taken a chance with the Bonneville and driven there. That’s just what she would do. Lester dialed information again and was going to ask for the hospital’s main number when the deputy walked in and pressed the hang-up button.

  “Two calls.”

  “Two were information. I didn’t know the numbers.”

  The deputy took the receiver, hung it up, and motioned for Lester to step back into the corridor. Lester felt a tightening heat deep in his middle and he wanted to hit the deputy in the mouth.

  “Let’s go, Burdone.”

  “It’s Burdon. Deputy Sheriff Burdon.”

  The Chicano smiled, blinking his eyes as lazily as a lizard’s. “You’ll want to keep that to yourself around here, FTO. Now move.”

  Lester walked with the deputy back down the corridor, his breathing shallow, the cinder-block walls a glossed eggshell white, not a blemish anywhere, no scuff marks or chipped holes from a leg iron, no graffiti, no dried spit and blood. A brand-new facility. He began to feel that edge again, all of his tissues clear and ready, his stomach a low fire.

  Then he was in a small room with four or five others. Arrestees. All waiting for dressdown. The deputy told Lester to have a seat among a single row of steel chairs welded into two walls, facing each other. The Chicano handed Lester’s paperwork to a desk deputy, then left without a word. Across from Lester sat a long black kid, his skin the color of flan, his short hair freshly cut, his initials or his girlfriend’s shaved into his head. He wore a tank top, oversized jeans, and white Converse All-Stars untied. He kept picking at his nails, three gold rings on the fingers of his right hand, two on the left.

  The others were young too, an Asian and a white kid who seemed to know each other, the white kid whispering to the Asian about a dead boy named Beef, the Asian leaning his head back against the wall, his eyes half closed in a waking nap, a small blue serpent etched beneath the corner of his left eye like a tear. Lester glanced at the man beside him. He was sitting sideways in his chair, his wide back hunched to the others, his hair dark and matted, and when he saw Lester he looked away quickly and Lester did too, a gush of heat letting go inside him. The man was Filipino, a small-deal bookmaker out of Daly City, and Lester couldn’t remember how or when their paths had crossed. For a moment he kept his face down, but then he thought he might appear weak so he raised his chin up again and sat back straight in the chair, his heartbeats lost somewhere inside his tongue.

  The door opened and a jailhouse deputy called in the bookie, a name Lester didn’t know, and he smelled him as he passed by: piss and sweat and cigarette smoke in old denim. The door shut behind him and now the Asian kid was looking right at Lester, his eyes dark slits, his head still against the wall, his arms crossed in front of his chest. The white kid stopped talking and looked too, taking in Lester from his running shoes and bare chest to his face.

  “You looking for something?” Lester said.

  The white kid shrugged and glanced at his friend. The Asian stared at Lester a few seconds longer, then smiled and turned his head away slightly, closing his eyes and leaving the smile on his face. The other kid looked at Lester one more time, then at a spot on the wall just to his right, and Lester glanced at the desk deputy, a lean man in his fifties eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, reading the San Francisco Chronicle. The Asian looked asleep, his eyes closed, his legs stretched out in front of him, but his lips were still fixed in that smile he’d given Lester, and Lester didn’t like seeing it now; it was as if the kid had looked and seen the trajectory of Lester’s entire life and was now gratified it had all come down to this.

  The door opened again and the white kid stood but the dressdown deputy called in Lester, pronouncing his name perfectly, and soon the clothes Lester had yanked from his suitcase this morning at the fish camp were gone and he was pulling on orange jailhouse skivvies, orange canvas pants, an orange T-shirt, and a canvas button-down shirt with COUNTY JAIL embossed in black letters on the back. For his feet he wore orange socks under orange rubber shower sandals, and they clicked softly against each heel as he walked with a new deputy down a brightly lit corridor to Central Holding. The deputy was short and smelled of Old Spice cologne. It was what Lester’s father used to wear, and the deputy was chewing gum as they walked, reading through Lester’s paperwork. “An FTO? What happened, man?” He lowered the jacket to his side and picked up his pace. He didn’t look at Lester, just kept his eyes straight ahead waiting for an answer, without judgment, it seemed, like they were two old friends running together, talking out a problem. Lester’s legs felt heavy and stiff and he began to breathe harder, the jailhouse sandals slapping his heels like a reproach.

  They reached a wide steel door at the end of the hall and the deputy pulled from his pocket an ID card attached with a clear plastic cord to his belt. He inserted the card into a slit in the wall, then opened the door for Lester, and they stepped into a cavernous room with three tiers of closed door cells, the fluorescent-lit ceiling over a hundred feet above. In the center of the floor was a rounded desk with two officers on duty, and in the corner of the second tier was a one-way-mirrored control booth. The air smelled of fresh paint and new air-conditioning, and Lester could hear the buzz of half a dozen radios in the cells above. Each cell door had a small window in its center and in one on the second tier was a man’s face, a strand of white hair hanging over his eyes. Lester followed the deputy to the desk where one officer was on the phone and the other was checking off names on a headcount sheet. The escort deputy dropped Lester’s paperwork on the desk. “When’s the last time you guys had an FTO in Protective?”

  The deputy on the phone stopped talking, looked up at Lester, then glanced through his jacket. He shook his head once,
pushed the papers over to his partner, then hung up the phone and gave Lester his full attention, squinting his eyes like he wanted to pose a question but wasn’t quite sure how to start.

  “I haven’t gotten through to my lawyer or wife yet,” Lester said. There was a dull metallic bang from one of the upper tiers.

  “You didn’t get your two calls?”

  “No one answered.”

  “Last meal’s at four. We’ll get you to a phone after that.”

  “Home Sweet Home.” The escort deputy knocked once on the desk, then smiled and left, the electronically locked door closing behind him with barely a sound.

  NOW LESTER LAY back on his bunk. He could hear the faint bass note of another prisoner’s radio, but nothing else. It was lockdown and the walls were thick. All was quiet and white. He was hungry and he had no idea of the time, but he knew at four they’d bring him food and then he could make his call. It would have to be to Carol, of course. He’d explain to her what he could, that one thing had just led to another, that he hadn’t quite been himself lately and now things were upside down and inside out. But none of that was true; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt more alive, more like who he might really be than in the last few days—making love with Kathy on the ground at the Purisima, coming inside her beautiful mouth, even sticking his pistol up under the colonel’s chin. But he would tell Carol none of this. He would ask her to call their lawyer, ask him to hold off on their dissolution papers long enough to suggest a criminal attorney. A criminal lawyer. He would ask to speak with Nate and Bethany and he’d tell his daughter he’d see her at visiting hours and explain everything, that he was in this place because he did something wrong and people were right to keep him here for now. He imagined her face, more his than Carol’s, her dark eyes filling up right then, and he’d say, “No, no, it’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”