The front of the house.
He was telling me I should go look at something in front of the house.
Fuck you, Bowler, I thought. I’ll go take a look when I’m damned good and ready.
I stumbled into the bathroom and threw open the door on the upright cabinet where I keep all breed of crap-extension cords, old lighters, duct tape, loose tools, lighter fluid, a little of this and a lot more of that… and medical supplies. I removed everything I would need: bandages-both the elastic and gauze variety-as well as gauze pads, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a couple of old finger-splints I’d hung on to after getting my left hand caught in a car door about a year ago. I laid out everything on the sink’s counter and took a deep breath.
Do it now, before you turn chickenshit.
I gripped the broken fingers with my left hand, released the breath I’d been holding, clenched my teeth, then simultaneously pressed down and pulled out.
The snap! made by the bones as they popped back into place seemed even louder than the shotgun blast; the pain shot up my arm right and hammered directly between my eyes. I dropped to one knee, grabbing the edge of the sink with my left hand to keep from hitting the floor, and tried to hold in the scream.
From under the house, the dog howled as if she’d felt it, as well.
“I’m st-still here, g-girl,” I whispered, trying to pull myself up. I was hit by a wave of pain, dizziness, and nausea, and fell to the floor.
(You’re not going anywhere for a minute or two, pal, so now it’s my turn.)
I couldn’t fight him; not now.
Hell, I could barely move.
(You left the house right after you found Mabel’s body, remember? )
If you say so.
(You figured Beth had taken the rest of the Its to the Keepers’ facility.)
That sounds about right, sure.
(So that’s where you went.)
Whatever.
(This ringing any bells yet?)
If it was, do you think I’d admit it to you?
(Fine, we’ll do it the hard way, then.
Even though it was cooler than usual, the humidity was high that night, and every street you
THREE
drove along was alive with a thin layer of mist that skirled across the beams of your headlights. You were driving through a sea of cotton. A deer darted across the road at one point, followed a few seconds later by two rabbits. Whichever road or street you took, there was always some kind of animal in your peripheral vision; a dog, a cat, a raccoon moving through the bushes and shadows on the curb.
The facility was harder to find at night; the road wasn’t lit at all, and the moon was hiding behind thick stationary clouds as if it were afraid or ashamed to allow its light to reveal too much.
You passed the building and had to turn around. You killed your headlights before turning up the asphalt drive, then pulled over into the shadows. You were going to have to walk the rest of the way.
Have you ever in your life been so anxiously aware of the silences in the night or the sound of your own breathing? Creeping up the drive like some thief casing a target house and nearly jumping out of your skin when a skunk waddled across the drive on its way from one patch of trees to the other. The area around the building was lighted by a sole sodium-vapor light at the edge of the visitors’ parking lot. You spotted Beth’s U-boat parked at the farthest end. On the other side of the building, Keepers’ vans formed the long, segmented shadow-shape of a giant serpent in slumber.
You started toward the entrance doors when another car turned onto the driveway. Because you were still covered in Mabel’s blood (oddly enough, cleaning up before leaving the house never entered your mind), the last thing you needed was to be seen like this. You leapt aside, cowering behind a trash Dumpster as the new-looking Mercedes drove up and parked in front of the entrance.
A man and a woman got out and opened the back doors. The man removed and unfolded a wheelchair while his wife helped a much older and frail-looking woman out of the backseat; once she was situated in the chair, the man reached into the car, removed a pet carrier, and the three of them went inside.
As soon as they were through the doors you ran across the lot toward the U-boat to see if Beth and the remaining Its were still there. Maybe she’d gotten here, parked, then froze as the shock of Mabel’s suicide finally hit. You’d find her sitting there, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly their knuckles would be white.
It was empty.
You took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to steady your shaking hands. You thought about the day everyone had piled into the car and brought the other Its out here, the way Whitey had gotten so emotional about the leaving women, how Mabel walked through the selection area in a semi-catatonic daze, and the way you’d found Beth coming out of the room behind the large steel door.
Remember how you suddenly wished that you smoked? A cigarette would’ve helped right then, the feel of it between your fingers, the aroma of the tobacco as it was ignited by the flame, the first deep inhalation… oh, yeah. That would have been nice. Mom liked to smoke. Dad preferred a pipe. You missed them terribly. You missed Whitey and Beth and Mabel, missed the world you’d once known and had taken for granted.
You heard car doors slam, and then you slunk over to the front of the building in time to see the Mercedes’ taillights receding; the driver didn’t even signal or slow as the car reached the road, he just tore out of there with a squeal of tires and burst of exhaust and a sudden, violent leftward skid that he quickly corrected before gunning the engine and speeding away.
Wiping blood and perspiration from your face, you took another deep breath and stepped inside.
An old cat sat in one of the top cages; it was the only animal here, and you were the only person. You stared at the cat and it, in turn, showed its interest in you by yawning.
You knew this animal- recognized it, anyway-but couldn’t place it. It wasn’t one of the Its but, still… where had you seen this disenchanted arthritic bundle of fur and teeth before?
The selection area was dark and closed off by a collapsible, barred security door.
That left only the large steel door on the right.
You peered through its window but could see nothing, then realized this was intentional, that a person could only see through from the other side. You reached down and grabbed the handle. It never occurred to you that this door might be locked; if that had been the case, you might be a much different and happier man now, but it was unlocked and swung open with only a minimum of effort and besides, pal, I’m not doing this to play “What-If?” with you.
The cold draft from behind the door seemed less severe than before, but that was probably because the night itself was cooler and so the contrast in temperatures wasn’t as drastic.
You stood there pondering meteorological conundrums for a few more seconds, anything to not step in and hear that door clunk shut. If you’d followed baseball, you might have reviewed stats for the season. You could have counted the freckles on the back of your hand. Or recited all the lyrics to “American Pie” until the Chevy reached the levy only to find it dry.
“Do it, you fucking coward,” you whispered to yourself.
Three seconds later you stood on the other side listening to the door clunk shut behind you. The sound reverberated with the same cold, metallic finality a lifer must hear every night when the prison bars electronically screech into their magnetized locks.
Once the door has been closed, the animal cannot be retrieved from outside.
You were in a dim corridor whose sides were delineated by a string of ankle-level safety lights that stretched its entire length, then bent around a corner roughly a hundred feet away. The walls on either side were vaguely familiar. You could easily see the boards that had been used as forms for the concrete because several of them had warped before the concrete had set properly; they looked like ghosts trapped in the walls, stuck forever between this w
orld and the one they came from and now wished they had never tried to leave.
Remember where you saw this before? That afternoon in the sub-basement of the hospital? On your way to the Keepers’ lab? Of course you don’t-or won’t. If you did, then I wouldn’t be pestering you with all this, would I?
It doesn’t matter. Here you are, in the facility, and you have to find Beth. She was in here somewhere, she had to be, there was nowhere else she could have gone, so you followed the lights until you turned a corner and slammed your shin against something left haphazardly in the middle of the floor.
A wheelchair.
Bending over to rub your leg, you saw the bright bumper sticker attached to the back of the chair: I ACCELERATE FOR FUZZY BUNNIES.
Then you thought of The Waltons with the sound muted, of a handmade quilt neatly folded at the foot of a bed, of a book of poetry and some lines from Browning and faded photographs on a wall and – and knew now why you’d recognized the cat.
You wondered if Miss Acceleration’s file was one of those lying on the floor beside Mabel’s bed, and if Whitey’s was among them, as well.
The dial clicked, another set of tumblers fell into place, and you moved on.
The air back here was slightly warmer but much more damp and smelled of a farm: wet straw, urine and feces, moist fur… But there were other, more disparate smells mixed among them: freshly laundered sheets, antiseptics, talcum or baby powder (you never could tell the difference between the two, could you?), and an eye-watering assortment of medicinal odors-cough syrup, rubbing alcohol, iodine, Mercurochrome, gauze and bandages. What was it you assumed then? That this was the area used for ministering to animals who were ill or hurt at the time they were dropped off.
Except there were no animal sounds; no dogs barking, no cats hissing, no birds chirping or pigs snorting, nothing. Even this late at night there should have been a few animals awake and making their discomfort or hunger known, but the only sounds were the hum of a hidden generator, the steady exhalation of the air-conditioning, and your own footsteps. You were so anxious about the silence you failed to notice the metal lip rising out of the floor ahead and tripped on the damn thing.
Stepping up and grabbing the rail to regain your balance, you discovered that this section of floor was raised and covered in a long strip of rubber tread. The railing extended the rest of its length on both sides; an automated walkway, one of those moving sidewalks used at malls and airports. To the left was a large red button with which to activate the motor.
You chose to move under your own power; the lack of noise might be disturbing, but at least it wouldn’t betray your presence.
As soon as you took your first step a light blinked on to the right and a dog leapt at you. Crying out, you jumped to the other side of the walkway, lost your balance, and landed on your knees. Crossing your arms in front of your face, you took a deep breath and readied yourself for the thing to sink its teeth into your arm.
But nothing happened.
You looked up and saw that the light was from a 12-inch television screen-the dog was nothing more than an image from a home movie.
Screens activated by your weight on the tread lined the walls on both sides of the walkway, displaying videos and photographs of dogs, cats, birds, horses, and countless other animals, all of the images underscored by soft music piped through unseen speakers: it took a moment, but you at last recognized the music as Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite.
You stood up and continued moving down the walkway, looking from one side to the other as the show continued.
Each video or photo of an animal was displayed for perhaps ten seconds before cross-fading into a video or photograph of a person, then the person’s image cross-faded into a photo or tape of someone else, and this someone else cross-faded into another animal. Once the sequence played through, the screen went black and the words “To Be Loved” appeared before everything started again. The screens on the left ran through a similar sequence, only this began with a person, went to an animal, then another animal before coming back to a person, ending with the words “To Have a Place.”
You came to the end of the walkway and stepped down to the floor.
Before you was a set of large swinging metal doors. Over the entrance was a bronze plaque with the words “T HERE I S A R EASON I N N ATURE F OR S OMETHING T O E XIST R ATHER T HAN N OT.” You stared at the words for a few moments before pushing open the doors to reveal a long hallway with more concrete walls, lighted intermittently with bare bulbs cradled in bell-shaped cages of wire dangling from the ceiling. This, too, was known to you (from the hospital’s sub-basement), but you couldn’t place it just then. But that’s okay-you’ve got me for that, pal.
Back here the smell of a farmyard was just as potent, but stronger still were scents distinctly, unmistakably human: sweat and strong body odor unsuccessfully masked by perfumes and aftershaves.
Aware of barred doors on either side up ahead, you moved forward and caught a glimpse of a framed painting hanging on the wall to my right: Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man. Written on a square placard underneath it were the words “T O B E H UMAN.” On the wall across from it hung an almost exact duplicate of the painting, only this time instead of an apple there was a dove in front of the man’s face, and a small light trained on it from above highlighted the dove; the placard underneath this had a simple one-word statement on it: “O R?”
You could still hear the richness of Copland’s masterpiece through unseen speakers; the sound quality grew clearer and fuller the farther you moved down the corridor.
On the left was a large cage with an ox standing inside. It was skin and bones and covered in whip scars, some of them so fresh they were still seeping. Its eyes were a milky red and its lolling tongue was yellow. It stood on trembling legs streaked with dried liquid shit that had squittered from its diseased bowels, not making a sound, turning its head toward you as if asking for help. Its scalp had been peeled away to reveal the skull underneath, a series of red “Xs” decorating the surface.
Something large, wide, and unpleasant-smelling lay sleeping in the shadows of the cage across from the ox. You began stepping over to see if you could get a better look at it, then decided you didn’t want to know.
Each cage was separated from its neighbor by about two feet of wall space, and in the center of that space was another 12-inch monitor displaying the same bizarre series of home movies you’d seen in the corridor. You wondered why caged animals would want to watch home movies. Did whoever designed this area think the animals would understand what they were seeing?
The next cage-cell, cubby, whatever, like it makes a difference-was empty, but the one directly across from it was occupied by Miss Acceleration.
The sight of her in that cage hit the “pause” button on your entire somatic nervous system; you couldn’t have moved at that moment if someone had been emptying an AK-47 at your head.
The monitor next to her cage showed the image of a dog jumping around for no other reason than it was happy to be outside in the sunshine.
She was sitting in well-stuffed leather easy chair with her handmade quilt spread across her lap and covering her legs. She held a small book in her hands and was gently rocking herself forward and back, forward and back, forward and back, her faced pinched with intense concentration, as if remaining still would bring some terrible curse from Heaven down upon her head. The framed photographs from her room at the nursing home decorated the wall behind her.
You gripped the bars and tried to open the door but it seemed welded in place.
Once the door has been closed, the animal cannot be retrieved from outside.
She looked up at you, smiled, and said: “It’s all right. Everything’s all right now. Yes.” Forward and back, forward and back.
You swallowed once, very loudly, and then asked: “Do you know where you are?”
“I’m home,” she said, her voice cracking on the second word as if it were the mo
st beautiful thing she’d ever spoken. “I mean, I’ll be going there soon.”
You started to speak again, but then remembered the new security measures at the nursing home. Were you being watched? Were you on camera this moment? Just because you couldn’t see any cameras didn’t mean they weren’t there; and if there were cameras, there were microphones, as well.
But if you were being watched, if they knew you were trespassing, why hadn’t any of them shown up to stop you?
“Listen,” you said to Miss Acceleration, “I’ve got to find somebody, and as soon as I do, we’re going to get you out of here. Do you understand?”
“Is it time for my programs yet? I do so hate to miss them.” Forward and back, forward and back, staring at me. “Are you my son?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? You look an awful lot like him.”
“I’m sure.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everything’s all right now. I’ll be there soon.” And with that, she closed her eyes and continued rocking.
If you saw her out in the world she would have been just another old woman, the type who usually holds up the line in a grocery store, or is waiting for a bus that’s always running late and so wants to strike up a conversation in the meantime; one of those meticulous old gals who knows and cares about the exact type of gift you’re supposed to give on a particular anniversary, who has so many interesting stories to tell but no one to listen to them because you don’t want to bother with a dry, old, used-up little bit of carbon whose hands are arthritic claws covered in liver spots and grotesque, plump purple veins; you would have looked at her and seen only another humorously annoying old woman counting out exact change as if it were a holy chore assigned to her from above. And you wouldn’t have stopped to think that underneath this monumental punchline of dying cells, wrinkled skin, and fading memories there existed someone who’d always been, but now was rarely seen as, a real human being; one with hurts and hopes and lonely places in their life they filled as best they could by standing in the line at the grocery store, or chatting with strangers at bus stops, or endlessly bending the driver’s ear while counting out exact change. You would never see her as ever having been in love, or dancing with her favorite beau to music from the Glenn Miller Orchestra, young and vibrant, with a laugh that rang like crystal and a long, promising, full life ahead of her. You would never wonder or care if she often cried alone at night, or how many times she’d offered her heart only to have it crushed and spat upon, or if her children remembered to call her on the weekend or visit at Christmas. Maybe there was a Great Love who lay slumbering in some graveyard and she was the only person who took the time to replace the wilting flowers with fresh blossoms-you might have imagined that, maybe, and then smiled at the sad, sentimental absurdity of this image from a fairy tale: There once was an old woman who lived in the past where someday all of us will be.
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