Servants of the Storm

by Delilah S. Dawson

  The bartender slides a tall glass of Coke in front of Baker, complete with the same sword of cherries. Baker, who knows my addiction to maraschino cherries, hands the sword to me wordlessly, sets the straw on the bar, and tosses the drink back in a few long, slow gulps. I eat the cherries and have a little sword fight with myself. Then Baker slumps down onto his elbows and chuckles for no good reason. I look at him, and we grin at each other. I guess I’m forgiven. He takes a plastic sword from me, and we make lightsaber noises while we battle.

  My stomach rumbles, and I look around for a minute before asking the bartender for a menu.

  “Kitchen’s closed,” he says with an uneasy glance at the curtained window to the kitchen.

  “Bummer.” Baker burps.

  “Let me refill your drink,” the bartender replies.

  He slides Baker a new glass of Coke, and Baker spins around to face the room while he slurps it down like he’s dying of thirst. I focus on the bartender.

  “You look really familiar,” I say.

  He glances down at my empty glass, then back to the glass he’s polishing. But he won’t meet my eyes.

  “I’m just filling in,” he says carefully. “But can I give you some advice?”

  He leans closer with an inviting smile, and I lean closer too. Baker is oblivious, crunching on the ice in his Coke and staring into space. The bartender gets near enough to whisper into my ear and says, “You can’t come back here again. You’re already on their radar. You can’t fight this. You need to forget about Carly. They’ll never let her go. Everything would be a lot better if you just took your medicine.”

  The bartender’s breath is hot on my jaw and smells of cinnamon. He pulls back just a little and puts his elbows on the bar and looks at me. This time it’s straight into my eyes, and his pupils are huge, like caves, like vacuums, like the black part of space that has no stars, surrounded by guileless blue. “Take your pills and forget all of this,” he breathes.

  I almost get lost in his eyes. But one thing sticks with me, one sharp blade rasping against my memory. Finding the words is painful and hard. But I dredge them up from the muck, and they fall from my mouth one by one, as heavy as bricks.

  “I can never forget Carly,” I say. “I promised. I flushed my meds, and I’ll never quit fighting.”

  His eyes finally leave mine, and I find I can blink again, and there are tears on my cheeks. The bartender leans back and studies me, his gorgeous face tilted perfectly, a strip of honey-blond hair falling over one eye. It’s like he’s seeing straight through me, watching my heart beat covered in blood, and something warms in my chest. Without meaning to I lean even farther toward him, my pulse quickening. That part of me that was lost in the blue of his eyes wants to throw away the GPS and get sucked right back in.

  “You shouldn’t even be able to argue right now,” he says softly.

  “My mom’s a lawyer,” I murmur. “It’s in my blood.” My lips part slightly.

  “You change things,” he says.

  “You’re pretty,” I say, and he laughs.

  “Pretty is as pretty does. Maybe I’m not as pretty as you think I am.”

  “I’ve got eyes. I see you.” I lick my lips. “How about another drink, pretty boy?”

  Instead he takes the empty glass that I’ve been twirling in my fingers and chucks it into the garbage can with a crash. With his back to me he fiddles with something behind the bar. When he turns around, he’s holding a plastic sword with three cherries, dripping red. He leans close, and I eagerly surge toward him, breathing faster, heart fluttering, my eyes on his cinnamony mouth. My lips are open when I feel the brush of sweetness. One after the other I take the cherries he offers with my teeth and swallow them down, and a hot slippery fire blooms in my middle.

  When our foreheads are almost touching, he gazes into my eyes and says, “I want you to remember this. If you really want to know the truth, come find me. My name is Isaac.”

  Our lips are only inches apart. I can feel his breath on my face, the warmth of his forehead just millimeters away. I feel dizzy and reeling and floaty, like he’s the only thing tethering me to the earth. And I can’t help thinking about how well I’d be tethered if he were kissing me.

  His eyes are intent on mine, full of black fire ringed in ice. He’s a force of nature, this beautiful bartender, and he told me to come find him. I promise myself that I will.

  “Go home,” he breathes. “And wake up.”

  Beside me Baker swivels and falls off his stool. Isaac and I jump apart guiltily. The connection is lost, the moment gone. Isaac turns back to his bottles, and I sit up straight and feign interest in tracing the wood grain of the bar.

  “What happened?” Baker says with a dreamy slur. “Where’s my Coke?”

  His drink is gone. I spin on my stool to glance all around the room, and everything feels sharp and threatening, like a card house that could collapse at any second.

  “I think it’s time to go,” I say, putting a hand down to help Baker. He slaps it away.

  “I’m a big boy,” he says. “I can do it myself.”

  When I turn back around, Isaac has disappeared. On the bar beside three plastic swords is a business card for a hotel I’ve never heard of, the Catbird Inn. I hold it out to Baker, who’s wrestling with his bar stool like he’s trying to have a thumb war with it.

  “Have you ever heard of this place?” I ask.

  “You’re pretty,” he says with a goofy smile.

  I snort and stand, hitching Baker up around the waist to help him out of the restaurant. How I’m going to get back to the car carrying him is beyond me. He’s a lot bigger than I am these days.

  I hear something move, and my heart beats faster. It’s on the other side of the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, and it sounds like something heavy being dragged across the floor, a whisper of plastic and a heavy clunk. I breathe “Hush” into Baker’s ear and freeze, but I can’t pick out any words. Just a low, dangerous chuckle that sends shivers down my spine.

  I’m not sure where Isaac went, whether he slipped out through the front door or the back one. Or maybe he used a secret passage, since these old historic buildings are full of them. But if he disappeared, then I’m pretty sure we should too. My imagination goes into overdrive. I’m certain I hear the rasp of a tarp, and then a sick, wet clunk like a cleaver cutting through bone echoes through the closed door. I know that I definitely don’t want to see what’s on the other side.

  Half carrying, half pulling, I propel Baker out of the restaurant and into the still night. With a heavy thud the door closes behind me. The lone streetlight is out, and the sign is dark. At least I know where I am now, at the corner of Broughton Street and Bull Street. I’ve got to walk several blocks back to my car carrying a boy who’s a lot heavier than he used to be. And he’s already been mugged once tonight.

  “Can you walk?” I ask.

  He giggles. “On purpose?”

  “Jesus, son. This is serious.”

  He giggles again. I push him up against the streetlight as gently but firmly as possible, my hands on his chest. I get right up in his face, and his breath catches. He stops giggling and goes still, his face tilting toward mine, entranced and hopeful.

  In Carly’s sassy voice I say, “Joshua Baker, you best quit acting like a fool. Stand up and walk like a man!”

  He gulps and pushes his hair out of his eyes and blinks at me a few times, then takes on his weight and stands. He’s a little wobbly, but now he looks like he’s the one who’s seen a ghost.

  “Damn, Dovey,” is all he can say.

  I get my keys out and advance down the street with Baker stumbling on my heels. The air is cold and sharp and still, the stars obscured by clouds. The tall, broken buildings seem to lean in over the cracked streets, and I trip over chunks of old bricks and tree roots gone wild. The stores, the restaurants, the offices—they’re empty, as flimsy as the papery gray layers of an abandoned hornets’ nest. And just like with a hornets’
nest, something in me senses a latent, malevolent buzz, like a few half-asleep denizens are waiting deep within. Every now and then I think I hear footsteps following us, but when I stop and listen, they’re gone. Baker is silent behind me, except for the sound of his teeth chattering from the cold.

  Finally we pass a streetlamp that’s actually on, and the warm circle of light feels like home. A group of girls walks past us, fluttering their eyelashes at Baker and whispering, and I raise an eyebrow at him. He gives me his old, impish grin and a knowing smirk, like he’s used to this sort of thing. I hadn’t really noticed until this week, but I guess he has gotten cuter. And he’s not acting drunk anymore either.

  “Feeling better?” I ask.

  “I felt fine before.”

  “You were acting drunk.”

  “I didn’t feel drunk,” he says, stepping next to me instead of skulking behind me. He digs his hands deep into his pockets and purses his lips while he’s thinking. “Relaxed, maybe.”

  “So relaxed you fell off a stool and lost your drink?”

  He nudges me in the side and says, “Whatever. You were making googly eyes at the bartender. He’s got to be at least twenty.”

  “Ooh, are you jealous?” I say in a singsong voice.

  “Maybe.” He blushes, and I’ve never been so grateful to see my car. I pop the trunk and rustle around for my backpack, utterly avoiding his eyes and not saying a word. He knows better than to try and open my door for me, but he must feel as uneasy as I do, the way he scans the alley while I hurry into the car.

  “Why’d you go there, anyway?” Baker asks as he slides into the front seat. The fake leather must be freezing through his flannel, but he’s too intent on me to notice.

  “I told you,” I say, trying to get the engine to turn over in the cold. “I’m looking for Carly, and I’ll do anything to find her, even go to creepy bars.”

  He takes a deep breath and turns to face me.

  “Dovey, it’s easy to find Carly. She’s buried on the hill in Bonaventure Cemetery. She’s gone. Have you talked to your therapist about this? Or told your parents?”

  The engine finally sputters to life, and I reverse onto the street with a squeal. I gun the car through downtown, running a few yellow lights and cornering on two wheels to keep from having to stop and acknowledge what my supposed friend just said. We turn onto Truman Parkway, and I push the old Buick as fast as she’ll go, daring Baker to say a single word and risk splitting my attention. One tiny shift of the steering wheel could send us crashing through the divider or plummeting to our death in the forest far below. The lonely highway surges on and on in the dark, and I can barely see the lines, and it feels like an old map on a flat world, like we might just be near the end of everything. Like we might fall off the edge.

  “Your ‘Check Engine’ light is on,” he says quietly.

  In response I press harder on the gas.

  When I screech to a stop in front of his house, he pauses and looks at me like it’s my turn to say something, but I look straight ahead, chin up.

  “I’m sorry you’re angry,” he says. “But someone has to be honest with you. That’s what friends do.”

  I turn slowly, jaw clenched, and meet his gaze.

  “Friends never give up,” I say.

  “That’s what I said.”

  He turns, shoulders slumped, and walks to his front door. I can see the silhouettes of his younger sisters mobbing him like puppies, but I don’t let myself smile.

  What he said, and what I said? Not the same thing.

  10

  BACK AT MY HOUSE, I’VE never been so glad that my mom is working late. I’m starving, so I heat up a Hot Pocket and gulp it down as soon as it’s cool. It sits in my stomach like a cannonball as I consider how complicated things have gotten. I can’t believe that Baker would dismiss me so easily. I may be dramatic and I may be pushy, but I’ve never been a fool. Baker was always the most cautious of our trio growing up—the one who reminded Carly and me of the possibility of getting spanked or grounded, when we were already halfway over the fence. But his mischievous side always won out in the end. Either that or Carly and I were simply unstoppable when we were together. Maybe I just need more evidence to convince him. Maybe I just need more time to get my head clear.

  I look on the big wipe-off calendar my mom started keeping when I went on the meds and got forgetful, and it reminds me that tomorrow is garbage day. I hate garbage day. But I didn’t complain about it before, so I can’t complain about it now.

  I pull the bag out of the kitchen pail and carry it at arm’s length through the back door and out to the big can by the gate. Then I have to drag that monster can down to the end of the alley. That might not sound too bad, but it’s never fun. The alley behind our house is barely wide enough for a car, and every house on our row backs up to it, as do the backs of the houses on Henry Street. It’s pretty much a claustrophobic tunnel, a space that has only gotten smaller since the day I found my cat Snowball splayed out in two pieces in a rusty ring of blood-soaked sand. It’s been seven years since that happened, but I still don’t look at that spot if I can help it. Carly used to say the alley was haunted, that she had seen Snowball’s ghost running along the fence. As if that weren’t enough to give me a wiggins, the honeysuckle and wisteria intertwine and brush your face like it’s swallowing you whole, and I always get back inside with cobwebs in my hair.

  And then there’s the neighbors. Sometimes I just have to deal with growled death threats from Axel the German shepherd, and sometimes it’s drunken catcalls from the middle-aged Duvall brothers who live two doors down. Worst of all, though, are the old people who want to reminisce about how great the street used to be and tell stories about my grandmother, when she still lived around the corner. It didn’t bother me so much when I was on my meds. I was zoned out anyway. But before the meds—and now—I just dreaded it. It hurt too much.

  The can rumbles behind me on its bad wheel. The night has gotten even colder, and I move fast, hoping I might not have to talk to a single soul. Maybe the chill has driven the lot of them indoors, Axel included. And that’s when I hear a methodical sort of slobbering, and I pause and slump over in defeat. I can’t turn back, because he’s already heard the can, and he’ll just call me by his favorite stupid nickname until I come back.

  “That you, Lovey Dovey?” an old man’s voice calls sweetly, and I steel myself to walk past the big pecan tree and into sight of Mr. Hathaway’s backyard.

  My mama calls him the scourge of Gordon Street because every single person on our alley has asked her to do something about him. She’s not on the HOA, but people around here seem to think that lawyers actually have power. Unfortunately, there’s nothing she can do; he’s ornery and settled in his ways. The last neighbor who threatened him had to move after lightning struck his house and burned it to the ground. That lot now sits empty, charred black.

  Mr. Hathaway’s home is in disrepair, with crooked shutters and broken windows and a roof that rains shingles when the wind’s up. I’m kind of amazed Josephine didn’t flatten it. His yard is so overgrown with weeds that you can barely see the back door. And his slobbery old basset hound, Grendel, takes a two-pound dump on somebody’s doorstep every morning. All that, and you still have to put up with talking to him while you’re taking out the trash.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Hathaway,” I say, putting on my sweetest Southern accent. “How you doing tonight?”

  He watches me from his backyard, waiting beside a cheap metal fire pit, its glow illuminating a face I’d rather not see. He’s crouched on an old lawn chair next to Grendel, who’s licking the old man’s feet over and over again—hence the methodical slurping. It’s a sight I’ve suffered before, and it’s a small mercy that I don’t have to see it in detail now, thanks to the shadows. My back porch lights almost reach his fence. Almost.

  “Well, I’m fit as a fiddle,” he says. “Thank you for asking. How are you?”

  “I’m doing fine, thank
you,” I lie. And then I wave and walk briskly away before he can say anything else. I know he’s going to catch me on my way back, but I should at least be able to dump the trash first and not stand there, freezing to death and breathing in the stench.

  Three more dark houses to go, and then I abandon our can with all the others at the end of the fence. Something rustles farther up, and I grab a stick and throw it into the shadows. A dark shape leaps out from between two cans and lands in the grass at my feet, and I screech and lurch back and almost fall over. The opossum looks at me like I’m an idiot and sashays off with its long, creepy tail in the air, a stripped and broken chicken carcass dangling from its mouth.

  Three houses down I can already hear Mr. Hathaway laughing at me.

  “Bless his heart,” I say to the sky, reminding myself to be patient. From what I hear, Mr. Hathaway wasn’t quite right in the head before he got old. He’s only been worse since Josephine, but my nana always told me to show him respect, or else.

  “Lovey Dovey, are you makin’ friends with a possum?” he says as I step into view. “Back in my day we would’ve eaten that varmint for supper.”

  “I already had a Hot Pocket,” I say, still walking. “Y’all have a good night.”

  “Wait,” he says, and I know I’m in for it. I stop and turn around.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Something’s different about you,” he says. “Come closer.”

  I’ve always felt skittish around him and his mangy old dog and his broken-down house, but with the last two days of seeing things that aren’t there and chasing Carly’s clues, I’m downright suspicious. And a little disturbed. I try to remind myself that he’s just a damaged old man too poor and short to replace his outdoor lights, but right now I can’t find a single ounce of kindness for Mr. Hathaway.