The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  Parkman reached out and touched a chair and tried to lower himself into it, but he ended up going to his knees instead. He kept his face turned to the wall. His voice was a whisper, so low Orlando had to lean in to catch it. “He met her. He knew her.”

  Orlando and Brendan looked at each other, and both took a step toward the chair where Parkman kneeled.

  “I was afraid. I was afraid he wasn’t . . . normal.” He lowered his head and it was even harder to hear him. There was a small noise from the bed. The girl sighing in a dream. “I thought he needed help, maybe. He was so delicate. So strange. I couldn’t know him. A father wants things for his son. His mother didn’t understand. She babied him and I thought . . . I don’t know. Something went wrong.” He pointed over his shoulder at the bed. “I sent her. I sent that girl. To him. Gave her money to be with him.”

  Brendan sighed. “Jesus Christ. Because he didn’t what? Act like you? You sent a prostitute to your own son?”

  “My father did it. The same thing. It was how I learned. And I did it.” His voice was a whisper. “Don’t judge me. You can’t judge me. I thought, what normal boy wouldn’t? What normal boy?”

  Parkman got to his feet and walked out to the hallway. His eyes were unfocused, as if he’d gone blind. Brendan and his brother walked out and let the door close softly behind them. Orlando asked Parkman, “Did he have sex with her?”

  The voice was almost inaudible. “I don’t know. Maybe. He wouldn’t talk to me.”

  Brendan looked at Orlando. “Would he have?”

  “He was a good kid, I think. A kid who tried to do the right thing for people. But he was still a sixteen-year-old boy.”

  “So. He might have. He might have had sex with her, and then when she shows up pregnant . . .” Brendan drew a breath, his face drawn up as if in pain. “Do you think? Do you think he saw her pregnant and thought it was something he’d done?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know that it mattered to him. He saw somebody who needed help, so he wanted to help her.”

  Parkman looked at them each in turn, then down at his feet. “What are you going to say? About this?”

  Brendan shook his head. “Christ. There’s no fucking end to you, is there?”

  Orlando lifted his brother’s arm and looked at the watch there. “We don’t give a shit about anything except that girl gets help.”

  The door opened at the end of the hall and Francine Parkman stepped through. Orlando looked at his brother, and then back and forth between the advancing woman and Parkman Sr. He nodded, then banged through the stairwell door, leaving them behind.

  Parkman put his hand to the side of his face. “What are you going to say?”

  Brendan spoke quietly, his mouth close to Parkman’s ear. “That this girl needs help. That your son died trying to help her. That’s all. If she gets what she needs, that’s all.”

  . . .

  The brothers got Cokes at a Burger King drive-through and put the windows down as they rode across town. The streets were clogged with rush hour traffic, everyone abandoning the city for the shore. Orlando held Brendan’s cap and fingered the badge as they rode, and they talked about the Parkmans.

  Orlando said, “What did you tell Francine Parkman?”

  “I just said George Jr. was trying to help Sienna when he was killed, and that she did need a lot of help, and taking care of her might be a way to honor that. I didn’t think there was a reason to get into anything. About anything.”

  “No.”

  “But to tell the truth, I got the impression she knew more about all of this than she let on.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me. She knew them both, her husband and her son. Better than anyone.”

  “Anyway, she’ll help or she won’t. You did what you could.”

  Orlando looked down. “What I could.” They came off the Parkway near the river, and both of them looked at the skyline. “How’s Michael making it?”

  “The doctors say he’s a hundred percent, but we can see he gets a little hesitant with some things. I guess it’s not really his brain or anything, just, you know. Remembering the trauma or whatever. He’s a little more thoughtful before he does anything. I guess that’s not the end of the world for a teenage boy, huh?”

  “No. How’s the shoulder?”

  “Okay, you know.” He shifted, moved his arm to demonstrate. “It never really hurt, so I did too much and it got infected. Kathleen gave me shit about it, but it’s okay.”

  “Have you talked to Detective Martinez? Is he . . . can he walk?”

  “No, he’s still in the chair. The bullet’s right up against the spine, so I guess they have to figure out whether they can get it out or just let it sit there.”

  Orlando thought about that. “Jesus. Wouldn’t you be afraid to do anything, then? That you’d hurt yourself worse?”

  “I guess you deal with it. Don’t put yourself in situations where you could get hurt.” Brendan thought about the last time he’d seen Danny Martinez, staring out a window at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and watching earthmoving machines tearing a hole in the ground for some kind of expansion. He’d listened quietly to Brendan tell their side of it, which Danny hadn’t known. About the pregnant girl, and Geo trying to help her. Danny’d nodded, distracted, looking at his watch. Brendan asked when Danny thought he’d be able to return to duty, and Danny said he wasn’t worried about that. In fact, he said, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a cop anymore, and Brendan didn’t know what to say to that. After a few minutes a tall, striking woman had come in and Danny had introduced Brendan to Jelan Williams. He felt suddenly like he was intruding, and said his good-byes. When he left, she was sitting on the bed and touching Danny’s hair, saying next time she’d bring her scissors.

  . . .

  Brendan slowed at a light, and Orlando pointed to where two kids shook hands, passing something between them.

  “Corner runners.”

  Brendan looked down the blocks at City Hall, its yellow clock like an eye. “Here, too?”

  “Here, there, everywhere. Maybe it’s why people build cities. So they can have a place to score dope.”

  “Have you talked to Zoe?”

  “Ah, no. I saw her leaving the hospital. Her parents were taking her home. I talked to the nurses and they said she was doing good when she left. I just didn’t know, you know. What to say. She’s better off. Even with them. Anywhere, with anyone, right?” They stopped at a light, and Brendan put his hand on Orlando’s arm while he looked out the window.

  “I think she knows you love her. You did the best you could.”

  “No, I didn’t. Not for her, not for anyone.” He wiped at his eyes.

  “You were trying to do something good.”

  “Does that even matter? Jesus, Bren. Everyone just ended up dead or fucked up.”

  “It matters. It matters to me and Kathleen and Michael. I think it matters to Francine Parkman. And Sienna.”

  Brendan looked at his brother.

  “No, listen, it always matters. Everything right that you do, it doesn’t always make things better. Sometimes, I don’t know. Sometimes it does just hurt everyone, but maybe that’s how you know it was the right thing to do.” He closed one eye, like he was trying to focus on something. “And you were alone, and that was my fault. I gave up on you, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “I gave up on myself.”

  “Well, we’re neither of us doing that now.” They stopped, finally, at a gray building on Thirty-third overlooking the edge of Fairmount Park. There was a small plaque near the door that read SUNRISE DRUG AND ALCOHOL CENTER, and two anxious-looking women standing near the door smoking cigarettes. The brothers both looked up at it, then at each other, and Brendan smiled. “How long are you in for?”

  “Thirty days. Thank God for Medicaid, right?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Yeah? What if it doesn’t, you know. Take.”

  “Then we’ll do it again, or we
’ll do something else.”

  “You sound pretty fucking sure of yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, I get to sit out here at the curb.”

  Every day in rehab, Orlando watched an old man tie up a dog in front of the church next door. He’d sit in the window in his room and smoke a cigarette, a habit he’d fixed on after he came out of the detox ward and moved into the small room at the front of the building overlooking the park. Everyone here had a cigarette going. The meetings were blue with smoke, and people went at smoking the way they’d gone at dope on the outside.

  The dog was big, with wolfish ears, long haunches, and an arched back, and the old man would tie it up early and leave it there while he went into the church. Sometimes the man would bring cleaning supplies and be inside the place for a while, and Orlando watched people come up and talk to the dog and pat it on the head. Once a little girl gave it a cookie from a plastic bag and screamed with delight as the dog accepted it and sat placidly, its long jaws working.

  Orlando was awake at odd hours and would watch people in the park. Girls in tank tops and boys with shaggy hair tossed Frisbees and dumped water over their heads and then threw themselves down on blankets and talked, talked. At night kids ran around in packs, screaming to each other, throwing rocks at the stars. He read, whatever was around. There weren’t a lot of books, so he read an old copy of War of the Worlds twice. Somehow it suited his mood to read about stunned people drifting through a ruined landscape, wondering whether anyone else had survived.

  He had terrible, vivid dreams about fires and wars. People lost and people dying. He drank coffee, though somewhere in the second week he’d switched to decaf. Somehow he had ended up with Zoe’s iPod and listened to her music when he was up in the middle of the night. Sufjan Stevens’s fluttering clarinets. Neko Case telling him to hold on, hold on.

  He walked out August fifth, the day after his birthday, and, standing in the lowering sun, traded phone numbers with a couple of his rehab friends and shook hands with his counselor and his sponsor, Austin, a tall, red-haired guy who clerked at a record store in University City. Austin hugged him hard and told him, “Things go right or things go wrong, call me. Remember, you’re not Superman anymore.”

  Brendan was at work, and Marty was going to pick him up when his shift ended, so he waved off Austin’s offer to get a cup of coffee, paced the curb, and stood alone, watching the traffic skirt the park. The dog was sitting at the corner, and he smiled when he saw it, reaching into his pocket for an oatmeal cookie he’d saved from lunch and extending it with his head a little bowed.

  The thing went berserk, laid back its ears and charged him, its long head low to the ground and front paws splayed. Now he was close, he could see it had a long black scar, a ridge of dark flesh bisecting one milky eye. It lunged and hit the end of the lead, and the cord made a noise like a plucked string and gave out. Orlando laughed but stepped back, almost lost his footing, and threw his ass onto the hood of a car at the curb. The dog came on, its claws hitting the front panel and scoring the paint, and Orlando pivoted and put his feet down on the street and took off running.

  They’d done some exercising every day in rehab, and it felt good to be moving the first twenty yards or thirty yards. It was hot, though the sun was beginning to drop across the river and the shadows were dark blue lines pointing into the city behind him. He turned to see the dog still moving in a fast, uneven lope, its eyes a hard yellow over the black muzzle. He lost momentum in turning and it closed with him, getting a piece of his jeans below his right knee and tearing his skin.

  He cut hard and headed north, feeling the fabric give and the heat of the dog’s open mouth. Across the park he could see a couple playing tennis and hear cars moving on the river drives. The dog lost its footing, skidded, but got traction on the asphalt path and shot after him, making a noise deep in its throat that sounded like desire.

  He ran hard, past statues and across a wide street, and the dog kept pace. Tongue out, a low modulated whine in its throat like it was trying to communicate something intricate. Orlando panted, openmouthed, crossing lanes and passing strolling couples and people on bikes. The sun was getting lower, and when he tried to cut back east, to circle around toward the rehab again, the dog anticipated him and swung wide to his right, barking and going at his heels, as if it were herding him north and west.

  If he kept going that way, he knew, eventually he’d hit the river and then he could swim. Pictured it, broad strokes and white wings of water over his shoulders. Leaving the city behind, heading out toward the Main Line. Toward Zoe, maybe, out there somewhere in the Tudor castle where she’d grown up, behind high walls he’d scale to get to her. Or he could just keep going out of the city, wander south and west into the fields and along farm roads that lead one to the other and where he didn’t know anyone.

  He looked back and the dog was lagging, so he slowed, and then it wasn’t a chase, but something else. Maybe they’d run together until the sun went down, and then they’d walk. Maybe the dog was his now; maybe that was the way it worked and you had to tear at someone a little to belong to them. He could see that and laugh, let everything go and just put one foot down and then another. Cross the fields that smelled like grass, into the shaded cemetery that smelled like stones and water. Keep going, into the woods to get lost among the trees as the world went black. Disappear but for white teeth and yellow eyes. Bay and whine and snap at the dark. Drink from the river and wait for the faint, answering howl.