Sarah Court

by Craig Davidson

  “You’re missing his eyes.”

  I pointed out two holes in the driveway where air bubbles in the foundation had popped. I modelled the man around those pits.

  “Beefy fellow,” said Frank Saberhagen. “What’s his favourite food?”

  I said my own favourite food. “Fish, chips.”

  “Fish and chips?”

  “Fish, chips.”

  He nodded, then picked up—stole—one of my chalks to trace his son’s outline on their driveway. Afterwards he yelled at Nicholas, especially his “gorilla arms.”

  That night Mama came into my room with a pizza box. Also the mallet I used to break the head off Wesley Hill’s sand-cast dog. She took Gadzooks! off the bookshelf. Shut him inside the pizza box.

  “I saw you talking to that awful man today.”

  On the box was HEAVY DUTY in orange script. Cheapest pizzeria in town. Pepperoni with the texture of bologna. I did not know what putting Gadzooks! in a box or malleting him to death had to do with me talking to Frank Saberhagen. Had Gadzooks! done something to make Mama wish to squish him? If she killed the squirrel I would bury him. As you did with dead things. Put them in holes.

  “Don’t ever—ever—talk to that horrid man again.”

  “Alright.”

  Inside the box, Gadzooks! made the same noises as when he had been only a baby.

  Last autumn Mama collapsed. An emergency procedure addressed a saccular aneurysm in her brain. Surgical complications. Mama’s legs no longer function. A machine now regulates her nocturnal oxygen supply.

  Mama was homebound. Smashing her belongings. Urinating in her pants on purpose. I bought her a computer. Presented it with a red bow tied round.

  From Your Darling.

  According to her, Mama became “a regular computer nerd.” I signed her up for Cyber Seniors at the library. Mama is online “24/7.” She has many cyber-friends.

  “Same as real friends,” she says, “only less polite.”

  New friends keep Mama young at heart. You can reach out, she says, and touch anybody.

  Cappy showed up after Mama’s miseries. But she did not want him dragging his “ragged ass” back into her life. Allegedly he called her “fat as the queen of sea cows.”

  “Flat busted” though he looked, Mama did say Cappy drove a fancy automobile.

  The night Gadzooks! got run over I visited Tufford Manor.

  “Lonnigan?” said the black orderly. “You’re his relation?”

  “No.”

  “Shoot. Then you must be psychoneurotically disturbed.”

  “Pop by to offer my sympathies and she calls me ragged assed,” Cappy Lonnigan told me, once the orderly located him. “Who put the potato up her tailpipe?” He went on in this vein. “She suffered a man before me. Don’t know his name—do you think he could have surrendered even that? She grinded that bum down to a nub. She sure bled all the charm and romance out of self-pity. Days lying in the dark unwashed. Nowadays there’s pills for that. She take pills?”

  “Vitamins.”

  “What Clara can’t admit is, she’s sick-minded. Comes over her like a thundercloud. Turns her into somebody else—no: just a worser reflection. Pills are for weaklings. That’s how she sees it. She hasn’t a hateful heart. Just not an ounce of flex to her.”

  Sick-minded? Sick is vomit. What was Mama’s mind vomiting? I went to the toilet. When I returned Cappy was gone. Also the keys in my jacket pocket. I found him jamming my apartment key in the ignition.

  “Let’s blow this popstand.”

  “This is my minivan.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” He pointed out the hockey tape I’d affixed to the steering wheel. “What’s this?”

  “So I remember where to put my hands.”

  “Well, that’s creepy. We should go tomcatting.”

  “You are wearing a housecoat.”

  “So? A man never feels so good as when he’s got a full tank of gas, fifty bucks in his pocket, the night ahead of him. Yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s the mystery.”

  “The gas in the tank belongs to me. Do you have fifty dollars?”

  “Did I say I felt good personally? A man feels good. A hypothetical. Jeez. I got to buy matches. Clive’s canvassed every store in a five-block radius. No matches for this man—toting a Polaroid of me, as if I aim to light myself afire.”

  We drove to a Big Bee convenience store near the bus shelter. Inside, the overhead fans flapped like heron’s wings. I brushed past a woman with a baby. Her back was turned to me. Cappy Lonnigan entered.

  “No matches for the old man. He’ll burn his hair off. Yeah, yeah. Where’s the pisser?”

  When we go outside, my minivan is gone. Cappy removed one foot from its slipper. Wiggled his toes.

  “You left it running.”

  “Hadda whizz. Who thought anyone would nick it?”

  Emotion I do not grasp. Irony, yes.

  “Thievery, Jeffrey. It’s the lowest form of human behaviour.”

  The car is a rental. Ford Taurus. Car equivalent of Teflon: eyes slide off. On a static scale it would weigh twenty-two ounces over stock: mass of the Phoenix Arms 9mm affixed to the undercarriage. Exposed hammer. Satin nickel finish. It is the firearm equivalent of a Ford Taurus. Everyone owns one.

  I rigged the car at a do-it-yourself garage. The gun’s polished blue barrel friction-taped to the steering linkage. Stock U-clamped to the left rear wheel well. Trigger, recoil spring in the washer fluid reservoir. Hammerhead rounds in the passenger seat coils. Firing pin under my tongue.

  Days ago I received my employer’s call.

  “Come. Now.” Click.

  I drove to the Niagara district airport. Boarded a Cessna Twin. Landed on a dirt strip near Coboconk. Drove the waiting car to my employer’s. He lay on the floor of his lake house. He’d been dog-mauled, apparently. A plate of inflated flesh over his left eye. Webs of skin thin as bat’s wings connecting his fingers.

  “Slipper-footed space bugs,” he kept saying.

  When he was able to walk I helped him to the car. We drove until daybreak. A lab complex. Fletcher Burger. Men in scrubs. Whine of a surgical saw. Burnt bone dust. I leave with a cooler marked ORGANIC MATERIAL.

  At the Coboconk dock I found Fletcher Burger’s houseboat. I drove downriver to Happy Houseboat Rentals. I discovered Fletcher Burger had stolen the houseboat.

  “That doggone prick,” the owner of Happy Houseboat Rentals said when I told him where he could find it. “I should wring that guy’s doggone neck.”

  My minivan was in the lot. Covered in maple keys. Fletcher Burger must have stolen it, too. There was a bucket of chicken bones between the seats. The upholstery stunk of fried chicken.

  Flash-forward to right now:

  I clear the U.S. border. Niagara Falls, New York. I drive up Pine Street. Men outside bodegas with bottles between their feet. Stop at Piggly Wiggly for a bottle of Faygo Red Pop. Ask for the bathroom key. Take the toilet paper roll.

  In a parking garage near the Niagara Falls airport authority I reassemble the gun. Blow off road grit with bursts of WD-40. Trigger hitch lubed with saliva. I empty the pop bottle. Stuff it with toilet paper. Fix the top over the barrel with duct tape.

  There are rows of cheap units off 44th street. My employer’s Cadillac is curbed with two flattened tires. In the apartment hallway I remove my shoes. Bread bags go over my feet, taped to my ankles. Skin lotion on exposed skin. Shower cap. Surgical gloves.

  13A is unlocked. Tiny B&W TV. Mr. Turtle pool full of soil. Books: Raising Earthworms for Profit. Harnessing the Mighty Nightcrawler. An old video game unit. I play Stuntman with the volume off until James Paris arrives. His pitbull wears a plastic headcone. Catgut racing its flank. He sees my gun pointed at his chest.

  “Place the dog in the closet.”

  “Easy,” he says. “What’s with the bread bags? . . . my wallet on the boat, right? You can take the car back.”

  “You w
ere told not to take it at all. My employer has a strong code of ethics.”

  He accepts this without rancour.

  “I don’t even have the cash to offer you double whatever you’re being paid. You know, like in the movies.”

  He laughs. But his lips hardly move. He roots his pockets for a slip of paper. Name, phone number.

  “Call her. She’ll take my dog. Tell her she has to feed Matilda Iam’s Scientific Diet, okay? None of that Purina bullshit. Liver pills everyday. Liver ailments are common with the breed. Mix baby food into her kibble for the complex proteins. Silly, I know.”

  “Silly.”

  “I was trying to raise worms.” He nods to the Mister Turtle pool. “Garden centres, bait shops. Like drugs: there’s gradients. You must establish a rep as a premium worm producer. Well, I guess they’ll die.”

  “They will die.”

  I raise the gun. James Paris’s forehead butts the bottle’s plastic nubbins. He rocks forward on his toes. The weight of him on my shoulder. His heels do not touch the floor.

  When a bullet enters a human body a number of things happen simultaneously. For small calibre arms such as mine, the unjacketed round—free of casing, propellants dispersed—weighs 110 grams; 132-grains ballistic calibration. Entering James Paris’s forehead it will cause two types of damage: permanent cavity damage where the projectile tears directly into flesh; radial displacement of neighbouring tissue stretched in the projectile’s wake. The pop bottle is a single-use silencer. All his neighbours will hear is a momentary high-pitched tssst!, like steam blowing the lid off a saucepan.

  I pull the trigger.

  Compressed gasses expand the bottle. Its base explodes into James Paris’s face. Suddenly, his face resembles a red starfish.

  . . . this could have happened—if not for the kiddie pool. You see, you bury bodies in dirt outside. Here dirt was inside. You must never bury a body inside. Unsanitary.

  I lower the gun. A little moan comes from somewhere. I open the closet. Matilda sits on her haunches. A doggy cough: houch-houch! I am aware that James Paris should be dead. I am aware that he is not dead. But I think he is. I have had a brainfart. This is a very lucky thing, I think, for James Paris.

  I drive to the Niagara Falls aquarium. Under the security halogens I break the gun down. I heave the parts into the basin. The border guards give me no hassle over the canis domesticus.

  Mama ’s hysterectomy became a public showcase. Her uterus was riddled with pre-cancerous fibroids. Adenomyosis: uterine lining thickening into the organ walls. Mama instructed her doctor to “rip out the plumbing.”

  Following the laparotomy Mama became obsessed with her pulse. Resting, active rates. She instructed us to check ours hourly. Log it in a notebook. It made Cappy Lonnigan CRAZY.

  “Who gives a good goddamn about your pulse. It’s beating. You’re alive.”

  Mama’s phantom hot flashes were unbearable. She wanted to “take in the days.” Teddy, myself would push Mama around Sarah Court in a wheelchair. Mama had a bowl of M&Ms on her lap “for wellwishers.” Neighbours made enquiries with eyes in the sky.

  “Missus Russell,” said Philip Nanavatti. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing but a little hysterectomy, dear.” Mama took this opportunity to approach Frank Saberhagen. The surgeon was drinking with Fletcher Burger. Pitting their children in some sort of contest in his garage.

  “Your kid stole my Caddy what, six months ago? Thanks for pencilling me in.”

  “Mister Saberhagen—”

  “Doctor.”

  “. . . I’ve undergone a hysterectomy.”

  Frank Saberhagen examined the sole of his deck shoe.

  “Yeah? Those can be a bitch.”

  “I wished to discuss, civilly, Jeffrey’s actions and my dog’s treatment of yours some time ago. You can’t blame Excelsior. Your corgi was eating squirrel babies.”

  Frank Saberhagen turned to me. “Jeffrey, right?”

  I looked at Mama. She nodded so I nodded.

  “Do certain colours scare you, Jeff?”

  I peered at my shoes. The yellow band running over the toes I had coloured over with black marker. I was not SCARED of yellow. It did make me feel as I did riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Lion’s Club carnival.

  “Are there specific words you prefer not to say? Do you know about autism, Jeffrey, or Asperger’s syndrome? Has your ward of the state told you about those?”

  “Nonsense,” Mama said through tight-gritted teeth. “Darlings, wheel me home this instant.”

  At home Mama smashed dishes. RAGING against the “rat-shit jack-bastard.” The “hateful brute and lush.” Were Cappy present he would have exclaimed: “She’s on the warpath!”

  “A rotten trickster,” Mama told me. “As doctors are. Warp your body, warp your mind. You have a black spot on your brain because your amoral mother smoked drugs. That’s why . . . that’s why . . . everything!”

  In the kitchen that night Mama crushed shards of bone china with a rolling pin.

  “Pull that ground chuck out of the icebox, Jeffrey. Sloppy joes another night.”

  Mama crunched the china to sparkling powder. Knuckled sweaty hair out of her eyes. She rolled the raw chuck through glass.

  “All I ever want is to help. But people so seldom take the cure.” Pinpricks of blood on her hands. “They spit the bit. You believe me, darling, don’t you?”

  I cannot tell what other choice I ever had. Under a gibbous moon I threw the raw meatball into Doctor Saberhagen’s backyard.

  Before dying , Gadzooks! chewed through my telephone cord. I have to go to Mama’s house to call. “Is this Patience?”

  “. . . it is.”

  “I call on behalf of James Paris. Who is dead.”

  “James Paris? . . . oh! Dead. Christ. How?”

  “Police are stumped. His pitbull, Matilda, is with me. Old Family Red Nose. White coat. Brindle pattern over left eye. High stiffles. Clipped ears. A proud bitch.”

  “I knew him only one night. We met at the Legion in Fenlon Falls.”

  “Otherwise she must go to the Humane Society. For gassing.”

  “Gassing?”

  “He wanted you to have the dog. Otherwise—”

  “Gassing, gassing. My life may not tolerate a dog.”

  But she agrees to meet. I hang up. Mama is off at the Lucky Bingo. My elbow brushes the computer mouse. The monitor brightens.

  A MySpace page. A girl in pigtails.

  We meet at Montebello Park. Patience is Patience Nanavatti. She is wearing a floppy sunhat. Big sunglasses accord her face the aspect of a dragonfly. She is also pushing a pram.

  “Jeffrey?” Chin tucked to her neck. SUSPICION. “From Sarah Court?”

  I mimic her chin-tuck. “Patience Nanavatti?”

  Matilda licks the baby’s foot. The baby’s name: Celeste. She grabs the air in front of her face. Patience Nanavatti takes Celeste’s hand. She pins it gently to her belly.

  “She is very scrawny,” I say. “Have you seen a pediatrician?”

  “She . . . no, she eats. Why won’t you take Matilda?”

  “This dog was not offered to me.”

  “She’s yours.”

  Celeste emits hitching, painful sobs. Her eyes swivel so far back in their sockets it is as though she wishes to examine the inside of her own skull.

  “Celeste is the toilet baby. I read of you both in the newspaper.”

  “Please.” Is she soliciting help or begging me not to tell? “Jeffrey, please.”

  Patience Nanavatti tells me how she stole her. Then she fled up north but, finding nothing at all, she returned to the city. The police may be monitoring her home. I ask how long Celeste was in the toilet.

  “Four minutes, maybe?”

  Onset of advanced cellular decay: two minutes.

  “Something is the matter with her brain.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I do not know what else to say. I say this:

&n
bsp; “I will take the dog.”

  “Can’t stand to see her gassed?”

  “I will take the dog.”

  My employer is entombed in a wheelchair. Bandages clad his head, eyes, to the midpoint of his nose. Hands encased in gauze. He appears to have shrunk several sizes. His body is like an alpaca sweater sent through the wash. There is a large depression in the side of his head. A wet, red, glistening hole like a medical photograph of someone’s wrecked vocal cords. Tonight he will be visited by Nicholas Saberhagen. My presence a precautionary measure. The dreadlocked kid, Parkhurst, who my employer says is a biographer of some sort, is curled up in a corner. I saw this person, Parkhurst, not too long ago. In the company of Colin and Wesley Hill.

  When Nicholas Saberhagen arrives, I observe unnoticed from the top of the stairs. Nicholas asks permission to photograph the box. There is some commotion in the viewing chamber. Nicholas brought his son with him, you see. Somehow the fat vampire boy got into the viewing area with the box. Next Nicholas is bundling his son into the car. I follow them in my minivan. They pull into the Motor Motel. I park in a washout. The dark fluttering of wings in the trees. Time goes by. Nicholas exits his room in a towel. He retreats inside.

  Next: bracing animalistic screams.

  I get out of the car, walk across the road. The boy is lying on the motel carpet. Rope burns ring his neck. Nicholas Saberhagen pushes at his chest. He spies me. As if to spy a demon. I kneel beside them. There is a visible dent in the boy’s throat.

  “Your boy’s trachea is crushed.”

  In my pockets: a notebook, a pen, a penknife. I chew off the pen’s cap. I pry out its ink wand.

  “The fleshy tube running down the boy’s neck. You must cut below the obstruction.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” says Nicholas.

  “The veins run here”—I trail a finger down the boy’s neck—“and here. I know to avoid them. I know the trachea’s consistency is that of a garden hose. I know about how hard to push.”

  I kneel patiently. The towel has fallen away from Nicholas’s body. There is a dark stain on the tip of his penis. The boy’s skin is presently the blue of a picture-book sea.