by Tom Kakonis
“Pleased to meetcha, Mr. DeCruz,” Lester said, palm extended, grinning extravagantly. Wasn’t often he got introduced to somebody important, especially by Jimmie. More like never.
Dingo didn’t move from the fender. Didn’t move his arms either, which were folded over his chest, over the silk sports shirt he wore, ice green, to match the color of his eyes. “Call me Dingo,” he said, also smiling, but with lips unparted. A trio of smilers.
Lester let his hand float in the air a moment, then lowered it and said puzzledly, “Dingo?”
“Yes. Dingo.”
“Funny name.”
“You find it funny?” Dingo asked, soft-toned and mild, less a challenge than an expression of genuine curiosity.
“Ain’t that what they call them dogs? Y’know, ones run loose? Over in Africa?”
“Australia, I believe it is.”
“Yeah, one a them places over there. Saw it in a movie once, or on the TV.”
Now Dingo pushed off the fender and approached him, staring dead-on into the inflamed eyes. “So you’re Lester.”
“That’s me,” he confirmed, witless grin still all over his face.
“You know who I am, Lester?”
“Just what Jimmie Jack tol’ me.” He turned, only to discover Jimmie had backed away, several feet behind him. “What’d you call him, Jimmie?”
“Supplier,” Jimmie mumbled, inspecting the gravel at his feet.
“Supplier,” Dingo repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose that’s accurate. You see, Lester, I’m the one supplies you with all those redbirds, peaches, yellow jackets. All that product you depend on to get you through the day.”
“No kiddin’. Here I figured it was Jimmie.”
“No, I’m the one,” Dingo said, speaking very slowly, very patiently, all the while maintaining steady eye contact, as though inviting Lester to join him in deliberating over a proper choice of words. “That’s my business, you see. And as a businessman, Lester, I have to keep a set of books for all my business transactions. Same as Jimmie.”
Dingo paused, tilted his head slightly, gathering his thoughts. “It’s what you call double-entry bookkeeping,” he explained, though he wasn’t absolutely sure he had the term right, the management book being less than clear on that topic. This company, it didn’t matter. “Jimmie enters them in his books,” he went on, “and I in mine.”
“S’pose that’s how y’gotta do it, in business,” Lester said, unfailingly good-humored even though he didn’t have the dimmest idea what the fuck this guy was woofin’ about.
“And mine say your account is well over three months…” Dingo considered plugging in his in arrears, but looking at this imbecile, he rejected it in favor of “past due.” He glanced over at Jimmie, standing now, fittingly, by one of the trash cans, spine pressed to the wall. “What do yours say, Jimmie?”
“Says the same thing, Dingo. ’Course, I told him he got till Sunday. That week you was talkin’.”
“My week ends on Friday. Today.”
“Think he’s good for it, though,” Jimmie said hopefully. “Right, Lester?”
Lester looked back and forth between them. It was finally penetrating, like a distant alarm sounding in a remote chamber of his fogged head, what this tri-cornered conference was all about. “Oh—yeah—right,” he stammered. “I’m good for it. Bet your ass.”
“Well, that may be,” Dingo allowed charitably. “I sincerely hope so. But a man gets that far behind on his payments, you’ve got to wonder if he’s running a swindle.”
“Huh?”
“Looking to stiff you,” Dingo explained, eminently reasonable.
“Oh, no,” Lester said quickly, “it sure ain’t nothin’ like that. Just I had lot a expenses lately. Transmission went out on the car, some other things.” He turned over his hands, a palms-up apology.
“Shame,” was all Dingo said.
Another illustration of his financial woes, this one more graphic and specific, came to Lester. “Then there was that stash I lost. Jimmie tell ya ’bout that one?”
“No.”
“See, what I do is hide it in the back a the oven, in a baggie-like, ’case the law ever come by, toss the place.”
“Very cunning of you.”
“Yeah, ain’t nobody gonna look in there, oven. Anyway, what happen was I come home one night, got a little load on, and I’m hungry, right? So I pull me a TV dinner outta the fridge—maybe it was one a them pot pies—forget—whatever, either one y’gotta heat up the oven first, before y’put it in. Know what happen?”
“Would it be you forgot the product?”
“How’d you know?”
“Wild guess.”
“Bingo. Ain’t that somethin’. Melt down a whole month’s worth a stash. That one set me back little.”
“Most unfortunate,” Dingo said, but there didn’t seem to be much sympathy in it and not much patience anymore, and his stare had hardened, eyes narrowed to needle points.
So Lester said, “That don’t mean I forgot what I owe.”
“That’s good. You remembering, I mean. That part’s good.”
“Viking shits next Friday. I’ll get your money to ya Friday, for sure.”
“That’s what I like to hear, Lester. I can respect a man who owns up to his obligations. Makes commitments.”
“Hey, no prol’um. I say Friday, it’ll be Friday. You got my word.”
As if to seal that pledge, he put one of the apology palms in the air, an oath-taking gesture. Dingo was silent a moment. Seemed to be pondering. He looked over by the trash cans, inquired, “What do you think, Jimmie?”
“Lester’ll step up,” Jimmie said, thinking maybe the flash point was past, hoping the fuck it was. But just in case, just to cover his own ass, he added, “ ’Course, it’s your call, Dingo.”
Dingo didn’t bother to acknowledge his associate’s opinion. Instead, and without a word, he walked over to the door of the Lincoln, opened it, took an object off the front seat, and returned.
“Whaddya got there?” Lester asked.
“It’s a light bulb, Lester. Forty watts.”
“What’s it for?”
“Illumination. You know how people will say a bulb went off in somebody’s head, meaning the person in question understands something? Suddenly?”
“Yeah, I heard that.”
“Well, before I leave I want to be absolutely certain you understand your obligations. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”
“Sound fair to me.”
“Good. So what I’d like you to do is put this bulb in your mouth,” Dingo said, handing it to him.
“In my mouth? Why’d I wanta do that?”
“Just do it for me, please.”
“What for?”
“For that illumination I was speaking of.”
“It’s too big.”
“Open wide. It’ll fit.”
Lester looked at the bulb in his hand. He giggled, the high, nervous whinny of someone who doesn’t quite get a joke, one that’s maybe on him, but then he stretched open his mouth and, very gingerly, inserted the bulb and stood there, cheeks chipmunk-puffed, waiting for the punch line; and then his eyes went buggy as Dingo’s arms shot up and out and back in, flattened palms clapping those swollen cheeks violently; and Lester sank to his knees and from there to an all-fours stance, spitting blood and slivers of glass, gagging, pinching off a scream.
Dingo took a step back, gazed at him clemently. “It gives me no pleasure, this sort of thing,” he said. “But perhaps now you see the light, Lester.” He lifted the gaze and locked it on Jimmie, back fused to the wall, face gone chalky. “Collections are your responsibility, Jimmie, not mine,” he said, but whereas with Lester his voice had been gentle, forbearant, now it was freighted with an ugly menace. “Be here Monday night. With the money.”
Without waiting for a reply he got in the car and backed out of the alley and sped away. Jimmie, however, was careful to wait till he was sure Dingo
was gone, and then he came over and helped Lester to his feet. “C’mon,” he said, “we’ll get ya cold rag or somethin’, your mouth there. Get ya some ’ludes. It’ll be okay.” Somebody got to be doing some p.r. around here.
“Why’d he do that?” Lester whimpered, still hacking up blood-soaked flakes of glass.
“Did it ’cuz he’s straight outta the twitch house,” Jimmie said disgustedly. “That’s why.”
Marshall came bolting up out of a sleep riddled with feverish, fantastic dreams. His father was in them somewhere, and of course his son, and some shadowy figure, featureless, who might have been himself, might not. But the man who was himself sprang into wakefulness possessed of a kind of divine revelation: It was the shape of a person on that bumper sticker. Not an animal, not a bird, not a machine. A person. That much was certain; that much the oracle of night conceded him, and not a thing more. Beyond it, everything remained blurry as before.
The scarlet digits of the nightstand clock read 3:17. He lay there awhile, watching their glacial progress. Time numbering the night. Lori tossed fitfully beside him. At 3:33 he slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room and down the hall to his study. He switched on the desk lamp, dropped into the chair, got out a fresh pad, and began tracing the outline of a human figure: androgynous, for he had no conception of its gender; faceless, for the tantalizing vision had blotted its face. But queerly magnified, larger than life, and distorted somehow, the way a caricature will bend an aspect of face or form to insinuate a quality or a virtue or flaw. Also outlandishly costumed, this murky figure, and hefting some curious appurtenance.
He examined his sketch. No, that wasn’t right. He did another. Still not it. He filled a sheet with variations on this elusive fixation of a theme. His hand moved quickly and by pure instinct, independent of any conscious command, like spirit drawing. At times he seemed almost on the cusp of a breakthrough; other times he left a figure deliberately unfinished, as though informed in advance of its misdirection. When the sheet was fully covered, he put down the pen and studied his collection of crude representations. None of them was right. If indeed there was a right, if the whole thing was nothing other than airy fancy, chimerical as the disjointed dream that had birthed it. Another feeble grasping after hope.
He gazed through the window above the desk, out into a black, humid night. Here and there a firefly winked, like some taunting specter come cloaked in darkness to remind him of his dreadful loss, terrible guilt. Abruptly, he was aware of another presence in the room, a real one, and he spun around and discovered his wife standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing, Marsh?”
Her face bore the blank expression of a somnambulist, and her voice was flat and toneless as the soft bleat of an owl. “You shouldn’t be up,” he said, a gentle remonstrance. “It’s the middle of the night.”
She came padding into the room, slow and sleep-heavy, and stood over him, staring perplexedly at his sheet filled with sketchings. “But what is it you’re doing?”
“I’m trying to remember that damned symbol—logo—whatever it was. On the bumper sticker. Trying to reconstruct it.”
“How will you ever do that, Marsh.”
It was not a question, and it was delivered now in a wistful, condoling pitch that conveyed a hopelessness that trampled the tiniest scintilla of hope. “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is it’s there.”
“Where?”
“In my eye. Like a shadow in the corner of my eye. If I can just coax it around, center it, get it in focus…I know it’s there.”
“Did you speak to the police today?”
“Yes.”
“That sergeant?”
“Wilcox. Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Nothing of any use. They’re no help.”
“Nobody can help.”
“That’s right,” he snapped, and then he took in a long breath, to contain the force of the abstract, sweeping vexation that had got hold of him. “What you’re saying is right. Which is why it’s up to me. Us.”
“Don’t be angry, Marsh,” she said plaintively.
“I’m not. I’m sorry.”
He watched her. Watched her eyes drift languidly over the sheet, bathed in a pool of yellow light cast by the lamp. Saw what he thought was something come into them. “What is it? Do you recognize anything?”
“It’s that one,” she said.
“What? Which one? Which?”
She laid a finger on a rough drawing of a figure holding some object, flat and irregular in shape, unidentifiable, across its chest. “It was something like that.”
“How do you know?”
“Come along. I’ll show you.”
She led him down the stairs and into the kitchen. Marshall got the overhead light, and she went directly to a drawer by the sink, pulled it open, and removed a box of aluminum foil. “This,” she said, holding it up and pointing at the logo stamped on its side, an exaggeratedly muscular male in shaggy buskins, animal-hide skirt, horned helmet, bearing spear in one hand, shield with the embossed letters NA in the other, a proud, fierce glare on the lantern-jawed Nordic face, oddly reminiscent of his philandering office mate. The Norse Aluminum Viking.
Marshall gaped at it. “Jesus, you’re right. That’s it.”
From another drawer he yanked out a phone directory and slapped it on the counter and began thumbing through the yellow pages, stooping over the fat book and breathing fast now, chewing on his lower lip, the veins in his temples pulsing. “Cicero!” he exclaimed, stabbing a finger at an entry on a page. “They’ve got a plant right over in Cicero!” He turned and faced her, made two fists, and shook them jubilantly in the air. “You did it!”
“Did I help you?”
“Help me? You just maybe saved the day.”
She stood there forlornly, a box of aluminum foil in her hands, unable to share his moment of exultant stasis. Her eyes misted over, mouth trembled, and the look she gave him was imploring, needful. “Can you hold me, Marsh? Just hold me? I feel so empty. So lost.”
He came over and wrapped her in his arms. “I know,” he said, “I know. But we’ve got something to go on now. Something tangible. We’ll find him.”
The words seemed to rise out of some dark place inside him, a place he didn’t know about yet, didn’t quite understand. But uttering them, he believed, perhaps for the first time, there was a chance they might be true.
PART FOUR
The congregation gathered for Sunday worship in the First Methodist Church was restless and frazzled and itchy to get out of there, those of them not yet nodding through a sermon of great sedative power, something about the still, small voice of God. But even the man-engineered marvel of central air was feeble in the face of God’s blistering, sticky heat, laid over the land these past forty-eight hours like a divinely ordered test, a lesson in humility. And so when the closing hymn was finally, mercifully called, everyone was relieved to rise and warble, more or less in tune with the golden-robed choir and pealing organ: “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come…” Buck not least among them, belting out the lyrics in a deep baritone, but catching himself thinking, Yeah, right, where was all that good help when Sara was suffering, and where is it now, with this latest shadow cast over their hopes for another run at happiness. Some help, all this loving God drone he’d been hearing the last sixty-plus minutes.
Nevertheless, he sang right along, a little off-key maybe, but doing his best, for Norma’s sake, doing a kind of penance for letting her down Friday night, coming home late and beery and agitated over Waz’s disturbing revelation. They shared a hymnal held above the head of the boy wedged between them and clinging tightly to her free hand, his puzzled eyes barely clearing the pew. And later, at the obligatory post-service palms pumping, Buck was careful to be civil to the pastor, who greeted them with mushy, rigged-out Sunday smile, gurgling, “Norma, Dale, so happy to see you both.” Heavy and meaningful on th
at both.
“It’s always good to be here,” Norma said.
Buck seconded that sentiment with a quick jerk of the head and simultaneous recovery of his hand.
“Dale,” said the pastor, gently chiding, “it’s been awhile.” He was a well-fed man, fiftyish, but with a full head of silvery hair and a smooth pink face, not a worry line anywhere in it.
“Yeah, well, been puttin’ in lot a overtime,” Buck mumbled.
“There’s always men’s Bible study. Wednesday evenings. We’d love to have you join us.”
“I’ll sure think about it.”
“I hope you will,” the pastor said, and then he stooped slightly and chucked the boy under the chin. “And how’s this young man today?”
“Can you say good morning to pastor?” Norma prompted.
Evidently not, for he shrank back, eyes lowered and lips squeezed shut. Pastor smiled tolerantly and restored the grace of his attention to the parents. “Everything, uh, going fine for you folks?”
“Real good,” Buck said tersely, leaving it to Norma to expand on an answer to the pointed question. “Just fine,” she affirmed, beaming. “Davie’s made us so happy. He’s part of the family now.”
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” Pastor gushed. “For all of you. There’s nothing quite like family.” And with that benedictory bromide he dispatched them on their way.
Driving out of the lot, Buck grumbled, “He sure knows how to shove the needle in.”
“What do you mean?” Norma said.
“That ‘been awhile’ business.”
She knew how he felt about religion, after Sara, and she never pressed him. For herself it was a comfort of sorts, a grounding, ritual of connection, and she wanted them all to share it, all three of them now. And so it was encouraging when he’d volunteered to come along this morning, particularly since he’d been so moody and glum all weekend, his conversation, what there was of it, falling between long, dour silences.
