Blind Spot

by Tom Kakonis

  Della, with a sure feminine instinct for the advantage pendulum swinging her way, said, “He was actin’ crazy, Waz. Lookin’ that way too. How was I suppose to know what to do?”

  In a voice whittled by anxiety he allowed, “Yeah, well, guess you done the best you could.”

  “I tried.”

  “Know you did.”

  “So what’re you gonna do now?”

  “Fucked if I know. Gotta think.”

  “You never should’ve got mixed up in it, first place.”

  “C’mon, Dell, don’t do that ‘I told you so’ number on me. Buck’s the only real friend I got. Who was it come through that time the bill collectors got my nuts in the wringer? Buck is who.”

  “Loanin’ money’s one thing. Snatchin’ kids, that’s something else.”

  “Wasn’t snatched!” he declared fiercely. “Was a legal adoption. Just a private kind, was all.”

  “You know better than that,” Della said, phrasing her words coolly, reasonably, backing off a little from the spurt of anger, but not much. “You can’t believe that anymore. You got to quit lyin’ to yourself, Waz.”

  “What I gotta do is get movin’,” he said with a jittery glance at his watch. He rose and started for the door, hesitated there a beat and then, over his shoulder, asked, “You, uh, still plannin’ on comin’ out to the hoopla today?”

  “Dunno if I want to now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why? After all that’s happened, you askin’ me why?”

  “Might as well come. Ain’t nothin’ can be done about it today anyways.”

  “Later, maybe.”

  “Pro’ly see you there then, huh?”

  “Waz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You be careful now.”

  “About what?”

  “You know what. This is scary stuff, what’s comin’ down here.”

  “You know somethin’?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Truth is, it scares me too.”

  Helluva thing for a man to own up to, especially it’s his old lady (Waz was thinking, steering the Merc down back streets blessedly empty of traffic at this hour, on his way to dickhead’s place), but there it was, out in the open, said, no duckin’ it. Mostly was he scared for Buck and Norma, how it gonna tear ’em up, this news, but also for himself, box it put him in, serious flak he gonna catch, maybe even from the law, it was a real snatch job got pulled on the kid. Maybe not, though. All’s he done was say a word to a friend, pass along some buzz, instructions. Wasn’t like he actually done nothin’. Unless they could nail you for bein’ a, like, party to the crime, like you see on the TV. If there even was a crime.

  Fuck, he didn’t know. Only thing he knew for sure anymore was what he told Dell back there: gotta think about it. Think hard. Be a whole lot easier to do, you didn’t have a gasbag ridin’ along in the car.

  Except when he swung around the corner and pulled up at the curb, Lester, he just climbs in and nods and mumbles something sounds like “Mornin’.” Which, come to think of it, he’d been doin’ all week, actin’ peculiar: no stories, no jokes, no fartin’ around, nothin’ outta him, just sittin’ there starin’ out the window like some goddam zombie. Which ordinarily be a relief, only now Waz was looking for any excuse not to have to think, so finally he asked him, “Fuck’s eatin’ you?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “How come you ain’t talkin’?”

  “Got a trashed head.”

  “So what’s new about that? Your head always half-swacked.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “So?”

  “Saturdays I sleep in. Get, y’know, regrouped.”

  “Nobody makin’ you work today. Open house is all volunteer.”

  “Ain’t sayin’ they did.”

  “So quit bitchin’.”

  “Who’s bitchin’? All’s I’m sayin’ is my rhythm got broke.”

  “Rhythm,” Waz snorted. “Only rhythm you got is your arm swingin’ a bottle to your face.”

  “Why you raggin’ on me, Waz? I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “Nobody raggin’ you. Just tellin’ how it is. Gonna boil your brains, you don’t ease up, all that sauce and spike you on.”

  Lester put his head between his palms. “Okay,” he said wearily, “how ’bout I promise to do that, ease off. Startin’ tomorrow, or first thing Monday.”

  “You better, you wanta see your next birthday.”

  “I will, it’ll get me ten minutes a quiet here. Never mind birthdays.”

  Waz said nothing. He gripped the wheel and drove the rest of the way in stiff silence. Lester calling for quiet? Lester? Dribble-mouth? Made no sense at all. Weird. Everything gone scatty today. Whole world upside down.

  Like Waz and Lester, Buck was up early that morning, partly out of a lifetime of habit, partly an insomnia quite uncharacteristic for him. Also like them was he wrapped in silence, sitting alone in the stillness of the kitchen, a cup of watery instant coffee, carelessly prepared, indifferently sipped, and a newspaper, unread, on the table in front of him. Norma and the boy soundly sleeping yet. The house walled in silence.

  It wasn’t as though his restlessness sprang from depression or worry. Nothing to worry about anymore. So it wasn’t that, exactly. Was more like one of those trifling annoyances that have a way of taking over your life, dominating it, like a splinter lodged deep beneath the skin, say, or a stubborn itch in the unreachable hollow between the shoulder blades. The same curious imbalance he’d felt at bowling the other night. Same peculiar sense of uncertainty, disharmony. Impossible, for a man not given to introspection, to snare with words.

  He gave up trying. Stuck a cigarette in his mouth, put a flame to it and then, remembering his pledge, held the smoke in his lungs till he got to the back porch, where he released it into outdoor air already gluey with heat. Already bathed in buttery morning light. He squinted into it, surveying the small strip of ground that belonged to them, the Buckleys, its shrubs and grass and garden and clumps of flowers withering, for all their best efforts, Norma’s mostly, under a relentless dog-days sun. Dispiriting, it was, humbling. He resolved to do better, be a better steward of his allotted parcel of earth, his home, family. To shake all those nagging doubts that hounded him. Bury them forever.

  This soon-to-be better man heard the creak of the screen door behind him, felt a timid touch at his thigh. He looked down into a pair of sleep-smudged eyes staring up at him in a glaze of confusion. “Hey, boy,” he said, the forced jauntiness of a too sudden transition in his voice. “What’re you doin’ up?”

  “Woke up,” he said, confirming the obvious.

  “It’s early.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “Huh?”

  “She.”

  “Who? Mom, y’mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Must be still in bed.”

  “I go get her?”

  “Nah, let’s let her sleep awhile. I got a better idea. You hungry?”

  A quick little bob of the head, signifying yes.

  “There y’go. Gonna be a Cubbie, you got to eat.”

  It was a reference to the Chicago Cubs legend on the boy’s pajamas, a summer-weight cotton trimmed at the elbows and knees, exposing frail pink limbs. He looked puzzled. “What’s a cubbie?”

  “Baseball player,” Buck said, and he reached down and took his hand and led him back into the kitchen. Boosted him, this miniature player, feather-light, onto a chair. He searched a cupboard for cereal. In among the cartons of vitaminized, fortified flakes Norma routinely fed the boy was a box of Froot Loops. What the hell—kid had a treat coming. “You like Froot Loops?”

  Another affirmative nod.

  “Froot Loops it is.”

  He filled a bowl, splashed it with milk, and set it before him. Watched him spoon it in, the tiny hands moving steadily, rhythmically, from bowl to mouth, producing the small slurping sounds a child makes. A faint echo from th
e past buzzed in Buck’s ears, kindled a memory, murky and fleeting, of his daughter at this same table, that very chair. To the boy he said, “Maybe we’ll go see a ball game one a these days.”

  The spoon stopped short of the mouth. Eyes lifted expectantly from the bowl. “Go today?”

  “Well, no. Not today.”

  A gaze solemn, wistful, downcast, but without a trace of protest in it.

  “Know why not?” Buck asked quickly.

  “Unh-unh.”

  “Remember what day this is?”

  “What?”

  “Dells day!” Buck exclaimed, the jubilance in his voice genuine now, unfeigned.

  “Where the deers are?”

  “You got it. Y’know, they got a merry-go-round up there too, just like in the park. Free one. Ride as long as you want.”

  The eyes widened. Mouth stretched open in a small, hopeful grin.

  And seeing it, that wisp of a smile on the face of this boy sitting where Sara once had sat, eating from what had surely once been her bowl, Buck seemed to see again the other child, vividly this time, and to remember his unphraseable, almost uncontainable love for her. And it was something like that he felt now. Something very close.

  What Marshall was feeling, that same moment, seated, even as Buck was, at his kitchen table (though without the sustaining presence of a cereal-spooning, memory-sparking child), was a calm almost preternatural, a serenity unlike anything he’d experienced over these past weeks. Certainly unlike the neurasthenic twitchiness of less than an hour ago, jolting out of a sleep dense with dreams that swayed from remote past to unlived-in future with the nutty, time-loosened illogic of dreams. That man, tottering into the bathroom and catching a glimpse of a face shadowed with bruises deep as wine stains and the wild, twinkly eyes of a lunatic clown—that was the man he’d been. No more. This one, stripped of all illusion, no longer haunted by past guilts or tranced by future fictions, existed in a static present grounded on nothing more substantial than a dark conviction of a crossing in store, just ahead. Same face, different man.

  The clock on the stove read 7:07. Much too early to get started. The first tour (he’d determined through a call to the plant) was scheduled for nine a.m. Lori was still sleeping. With any luck he’d be gone before she was up. As before, he had no energy to expend in argument. She knew where he was headed, what it was he intended to do, or try to do. She’d accepted that announcement with a tight-lipped wince but, surprisingly, no protests. If she was capable anymore of objections, they went unvoiced. A break for him. After today—however it came out, whatever direction it took—things would change between them. He’d see to that.

  The moments ticked silently by. When he looked again, the hands of the clock had advanced to 7:50. Another ten and he would leave, arrive with time to spare, join the tour, find the man. Simple as that. Beyond it he had no plan. No fanciful scenarios, no rehearsed scripts. Whatever needed to be said would come to him. Whatever was required he would do.

  He heard a rustling on the floor above him. Footsteps on the stairs. Luck had failed him. While he didn’t believe in omens or portents, he was nevertheless overtaken by a mild dismay. Words, like energy, were in short supply. So when she came through the door, he offered a bland “Good morning” and nothing more.

  She nodded, sank into a chair. She was bundled in ankle-length terry cloth robe, seemingly untouched by the thermometer’s rising red bulb, or touched by it perversely, the way asylum inmates, beguiled by their private demons, invert the seasons, shivering in the heat, sweltering in the cold. He ventured the banal question, “How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine.”

  Fine. Delivered in the clipped accents of a bored child responding automatically to some adult inanity: How was school today? Fine. The picnic? Fine. The circus? Just fine. Marshall withheld a sigh. “You’re looking better,” he said, meaning it, for in spite of the unseasonable robe and terse reply there was a subtle difference in her, the planes and angles of her face almost visible again, some of its narcotic puffiness subsided.

  “Thanks.”

  “Would you like me to fix you some coffee?”

  “Are you having any?”

  “No.”

  “No, then.”

  “Only because I have to leave soon.”

  “For that factory,” she said flatly, no question implied.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re determined to go.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose there’s nothing will change your mind.”

  “No.”

  She stared at the floor.

  “Lori?”

  No response.

  Now he released the sigh. This was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid. Betrayed by ten short minutes. By his own inertia. “Look,” he said wearily, “it’s not as bad as you think. I’ll get in there, find this person, talk to him. That’s it. Inside a plant, all those people around—nothing can happen.”

  “That’s what you said about those bars.”

  “That was different. I was naive then.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  “No…well, maybe a little yet.”

  “They’re going to hurt you again, Marsh.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So you say.”

  “Now is not the time to discuss this,” he said, rising, his patience dried up. “I’ll be back in a few hours. By noon, probably. If I can’t find him or can’t get anything from him if I do, then we’ll go to the police. I promise you.”

  He started across the room, got as far as the door.

  “Marsh?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  She lifted her eyes, gazed at him steadily. “I wanted to find him as much as you,” she said, her face, vacant of expression only a moment ago, now a landscape of emotions. Curiously, her words carried something of the tone of a plea but none of its substance, declaration more than appeal, an edge almost of defiance in it.

  “I never doubted that.”

  “There was a time when I was strong. I will be again.”

  “Of course you will,” he assured her gently, and with that said he was gone.

  She gave it a moment, to be certain, and then she went over to the phone and tapped out a number. A harsh voice winging down the line announced, “District One.”

  Evenly, very firmly, she said, “I need to speak with Sergeant Wilcox. It’s urgent.”

  About the time Marshall was leaving for the plant, Dingo was surfacing, unassisted by alarm, from a night of restful slumber. His first waking thoughts were sunny, spirited, expectant, and he got up immediately, showered (humming a lively tune), shaved, gargled with Oral Pure mint mouthwash, and blow-dried his hair, after which he deliberated thoughtfully and at considerable length on his choice of wardrobe, settling finally on his finest outfit, worn only for special occasions. Why not? Certainly this day, with its promise of auspicious new beginnings, qualified as special.

  Once dressed, he stepped in front of the door mirror and inspected himself critically, head to foot. As always, he was agreeably braced by what it gave back to him, the elegant suit, of course, a salmon pink number with matching handkerchief blossoming like a peony from the breast pocket, though no less the man within it, testing a variety of expressions, smiles mainly, on his reflected likeness. Come a long way from the Facility, that man had, with even further yet to travel.

  By now it was approaching nine a.m., so a glance at his Rolex (one of the fakes but soon to be replaced with the real thing) apprised him. Still ample time for a light, nutritious breakfast. Most important meal of the day, he’d read somewhere, energy-wise, and this would be a day that required energy in abundance. Accordingly, he prepared and consumed a soft-boiled egg, two slices of whole grain toast, juice, and a multivitamin capsule. Coffee he skipped. Made him jumpy.

  After rinsing the plates and glass and stacking them neatly
in the dishwasher, he went into the bedroom and removed the first of three goodly sized cartons from a closet shelf. He carried it through the apartment door, down the hall, and out into the lot. He placed it carefully in the trunk of his Lincoln, went back inside, and returned with the second carton. On his third and last trip he saw a neighbor, a fussy bluehead of slight acquaintance, coming toward him from the other end of the corridor. They converged at the entrance, and she croaked a greeting, “ ’Mornin’, Mr. DeCruz.”

  Dingo produced one of his mirror-enhanced smiles, affable and tolerant, this version, if quick to dissolve. “Good morning, Mrs. Gratz.”

  “Hot enough for ya?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Gonna be a scorcher out there today.”

  “Well, it is August.”

  “Knowin’ that don’t make it any easier.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t,” Dingo said neutrally. Since he had no desire to encourage this meteorologic whine, he balanced the carton on one arm, got the door for her with the other, and they exited into a fierce sunlight that confirmed her direst predictions, which she was quick to revive: “What’d I say ’bout hot?”

  “You’re right again, Mrs. Gratz.”

  Seemed a mannerly enough closure to this circular dialogue. He turned and started for his car, but she fell in with him, trailing behind a bit, moving with the uncertain wobble of age. “Don’t tell me you gotta work today,” she bawled after him, assuming, evidently, the rest of the population’s hearing was as enfeebled as her own.

  “Afraid so.”

  “On a weekend?”

  “Business respects no weekends,” Dingo said philosophically.

  “What line a business you in?”

  “Procurement,” he told her. It was a word he’d come across recently, had a flowing grace to it that he liked, a dignity, mystery.

  “That the same as sales?”

  “You might say that.”

  They had arrived at the Lincoln now. Dingo bent over the trunk and arranged the three cartons meticulously, securing them against any unforeseen potholes or road ruts. Sixty thousand bones—strike that, sixty thousand dollars—sealed in those boxes, can’t be too cautious. When he lowered the lid of the trunk, she was still there. Worse than that, she had closed in on him, the nasty old woman smell of her, a pungent confection of dusting powders, gathering sweat, ineffectual deodorizers applied to armpits and assorted body cavities, and some vile stinkwater cologne, defiling the narrow band of ozone between them. Worst of all was that face, its drooly eyes, curdled flesh, liver lips stretched in a snarly grimace (intended, presumably, as a smile) over teeth the color of tarnished brass, thrust almost belligerently into his. The proximity of it all was dizzying. He was reminded, distastefully, of his own mother, she who had birthed him late in life, she who had taken pleasure in trotting him out for the delectation of company (a helpless child on display, like some bauble brought back from a journey, a novelty, curious, amusing, but of no great value), cackling, “Here he is, our little afterthought,” which witticism excited a hog-calling laugh from his coarse and equally fossilized father. He wondered, idly but with some small satisfaction, what their final terrified thoughts had been, departing this world in a billow of smoke and inferno of flames. Whoosh!—here one minute, vanished the next. Goodbye, Mom. So long, Dad. Godspeed.