Scowler

by Daniel Kraus

  The doll squirmed inside of Ry’s palm. Horrid images of further violence forced themselves into his brain: Marvin’s tongue ripped out, Marvin’s chest sliced through his coat so that blood and cotton and flannel formed a thick brown stew. Ry felt his arm jerk about wildly as Scowler fought for these damages. He couldn’t allow it. Ry flung himself to the ground, hiding the doll in his stomach.

  Scowler yowled—a glottal choke mixed with the squeal of infuriated swine. Ry grit his teeth and shoved Scowler back into his belt. He, Ry Burke, was the monster. The blame rang up his arm as if he had struck brick. Scowler’s exposed leg of metal, Ry’s exposed ankle bone—what was the difference? He lifted a knee and invented a three-legged method of crawling. Physical pain, though, was a weak distraction from Scowler’s tirades. Ry—failure—had left Marvin alive. He had failed—failed—to finish the job. Scowler saves Ry Burke’s life and this is how Ry Burke repays Scowler? Ry kept the apologies coming as Scowler wept and spat of unforgivable acts.

  These scoldings did not let up when Ry pulled himself past the forest edge and left a trail of blood through the pristine snow of a back lawn. A woman moving toward her woodpile ejected an inadvertent string of cuss words when she noticed the ten-year-old threshing through the snow and mud; her words, sadly, were not loud enough to cut through Scowler’s high-pitched rebukes. When Ry was being carried by unknown parties and deposited upon a family-room davenport, he could not fully appreciate their concern because of the doll’s continued gobbling. Water was poured down his throat. He sensed bandages twining around his forehead and ankle. Covered lamps gave way to sunlight, sunlight to the dim bulbs of an ambulance carriage. Glass cylinders tinkled as the vehicle rollicked over gravel, while medics slapped at his arms, pressed his jugular, and held open his lids to ask him important questions. Ry smiled sheepishly. He promised to answer them right after this doll screamed itself to sleep.

  The Night Surgeon

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 23–MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 1981

  11 HRS., 29 MINS. UNTIL IMPACT

  There was more to the memory, an epilogue even more painful in some respects, but Ry couldn’t drag himself through that, not right now. He inhaled the night through his nostrils, blinked away the ghost of pain between his eyebrows, and tried to imagine the superhuman Marvin Burke wearing the same color pajamas as this old man—Jeremiah, if the name was to be believed—while scrubbing dishes, stabbing hot piles of laundry, lowering the press that imprinted numbers upon license plates. Ry just could not see it. Regardless, this strange senior shared some sort of history with Marvin Burke, and that made Ry closer to him than their silence and six-foot distance would suggest. Jeremiah locked his malformed hands behind his back.

  “Thinking I would head south,” he said.

  Ry touched his scar. “Not much south but grass.”

  “That right? No woods? No corn?”

  “Some. Grass, though, mostly. You may be better off north or west.”

  Jeremiah’s chin made a defiant jerk. “The wide open—that’s what I want. This—all these trees—and the insects and, lord, the birds—it’s not … I’d hoped …” His head moved in aimless loops. “For some reason I got it in my head I can hide best right out in the open.”

  “There’s a place called Canen Clearing.” Ry tried to sound encouraging. “It’s south, just the way you’re headed. It’s not a day’s walk from here.”

  The man’s eyes were distrustful. “Canen?”

  Directions were things empty of emotion, ideal for men, and Ry jumped at it. “It’s a big stretch of wild grass right out in the middle of a bunch of farmland. Big as a football field. You want the wide open, that’s it.”

  “That sounds … fine.”

  “Okay. Just—you know what you should do? Head down the road here and after about ten minutes cut through the Crowleys’ corn. When you come out the other end you’ll be on a road that doesn’t have a name, but if you take a right on that road and cross the bridge, then you’ll be heading right for it. Just keep walking. Tomorrow in the sun you’ll see it.”

  Jeremiah blinked his milky eyes. “I don’t see how I thought it were appropriate. Bringing up Marvin. Just caught me by surprise is all.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not.” His lips swayed where there were no teeth. “Being with people like you, good people—it’s not for me. Quiet—that’s it. Quiet, loneliness.” His words fell cold to his feet. “Maybe I should not have run.”

  The crunch of a woman’s shoes upon gravel rose from the quiet. Ry and Jeremiah looked at each other and then turned to watch the approach. Ry knew it was a quirk of the moth-bothered light, but there was prettiness to the shadows of his mother’s cheeks, the lines of her jaw, the blade of shadow that plunged down the front of her dress. She had a hand on Sarah, who balanced in her arms a stack of folded clothes. She lifted it high, steeled for the sight of those feelers that Jeremiah had no choice but to extend.

  The old man inspected what he took. The bottommost garments were a pair of Marvin’s brown slacks and the pit-stained top half of a set of long underwear; on top of that were a red flannel shirt Ry recognized from his own collection, some socks, and a pair of his old boots in fine shape all directions but earthward. Jeremiah picked up one of the boots and put his eye to the hole worn through the rubber.

  “I can’t guarantee the boots will fit, but everything else should,” Jo Beth said.

  “Oh, they will, I just know it.” Jeremiah smiled.

  Jo Beth nodded. “I’m pretty good at eyeballing sizes.”

  “I missed clothes.” His cataracts seemed to retract at the surprise of this truth.

  Jo Beth’s lips unsealed but found nothing more to say. Sarah coughed and it did not sound promising. Ry prodded the pimple about to break the surface at the side of his nose. All of them became aware of the birds—the sound clattered down like enough loose change to fund hundreds of complete sets of teeth.

  “They’re mad.” Jeremiah looked at the trees. “They know something we don’t.”

  He hitched his bundle into his armpit and began to walk away.

  “You don’t want to put those on?” Jo Beth asked.

  “In the dark, up the road a piece.” Jeremiah pointed his index finger. It looked supernaturally long without its siblings. “Where it’s decent.”

  He took another step and stopped.

  “You don’t have a cigarette,” he said.

  Ry did, actually, back at the house.

  “No,” Jo Beth said.

  “There were this guard. A good friend. Always had the kind I liked: Luckies. Miss that, too.” He considered this for a moment, tipped an imaginary hat, and was on his way. It was scary how quickly he was painted over with nighttime colors. The Burkes stood for a minute, listening to the gravel scuffs.

  “I think I just saw one,” Sarah said.

  “One what?” Jo Beth asked.

  “One meteor. The Jaekel Belt. I need my notebook.”

  Jo Beth drew her daughter to her side. “No good for you to be outside sick.”

  “I’m not sick,” Sarah protested.

  “Of course you are,” Ry said. “You’re always sick.”

  Jo Beth laughed and looked at her son. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Sarah glared at her brother and mouthed: Cocksucker!

  10 HRS., 24 MINS. UNTIL IMPACT

  The seven digits took an eternity to dial.

  “Hello, Peg? This is Jo Beth. Good, thanks. I’m calling—hmm? Oh, yes, of course. Everything is fine. Why, sure. Bless you for asking.” Pause. “Well, everything is very well. How are things for your group? Oh, really? All of them?”

  From the kitchen table Ry monitored his mother’s face. She sat perched atop a stool with her feet locked behind the crossbar like a schoolgirl. The inadvertent twirling of the cord completed the illusion. Ry pictured the other end of the call: the unsmiling Peg Crowley, a rail-thin woman with a black pod of hair, the exact opposite of the flowi
ng contours and grace notes that gave her daughter Esther such allure.

  “That’s right, I’d forgotten. This is Esther’s big week. What’s the lucky school?”

  Hills and valleys of womanhood Esther Crowley had in embarrassing abundance. When it came to book smarts, though, she held only a slight edge on Ry. He tried to take some savage satisfaction in it but it was hard to maintain—she was, after all, a year younger than Ry and already heading to college, while he stood in place doing whatever it was he was doing. Peg’s nasal buzz filed at his brain until he was ready to admit to anything. Fine: Esther was better looking than he was, and smarter, and funnier, all that.

  “Oh, I know what it’s like to get your heart set on something. I was a girl once too. I’m sure she’ll make it worth your investment. Listen, Peg—”

  More buzzing. Jo Beth’s response made it sound like she had lifted her eyebrows, though she had not.

  “Kevin’s back, too? Well, there you go, then. I for sure thought I remembered something about him heading to the fair.… ” Jo Beth listened; she nodded. “Time flies, I guess. Well, I don’t envy the one on dishwashing duty tonight. Dishwashing duty. Dishwashing—that’s okay, I probably mumbled. So listen, Peg, I’ve got kind of a strange question for you.” A twitch—in her forehead, like she had been beaned with a pebble. “Thanks, Peg. I appreciate that, but no, it’s not the mending. I’ll get that to you tomorrow. It’s … have you heard anything about what happened over at Bluefeather?”

  Ry and Jo Beth held their breaths.

  “No, everything is good. We just … we heard from someone passing by that there had been a … I guess an explosion? And I tried calling the prison and just got a busy signal and—”

  Peg took over. Jo Beth’s mouth hung open within a half-formed word.

  “I called the police first but couldn’t get through. And then I tried Marjorie and Betsy. But they didn’t—Betsy Strickland, down the road. You’re my fourth or fifth, Peg. I just seemed to remember that you had a, you know, one of those satellite dishes and may get the Bloughton news out there.” Jo Beth settled her lips to see how this would play. She listened, nodded briskly, made the shapes of a grin. “Okay. Well, if any of you happen to see something about it, you might give me a ring. I—”

  For a moment it seemed as if Jo Beth had convinced herself into cheeriness. Peg, though, did not like the sound of things; you could hear it in the sound of Peg.

  “No, there’s no reason. There’s nothing wrong.” A pause on both ends. “There is nothing wrong, Peg.” Buzz from the Crowley household; Jo Beth squinted. “My husband what? Peg, that was … a lot of time has passed since then.” She rubbed at her eyes; Ry’s knee bounced. “No one makes that kind of generalization about this area, and if they did it wouldn’t be because of him. It would—well, I’ll tell you. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you. It would be because of, and I don’t mean offense, but it would be because of people like you who won’t let it go. Everyone out here is hurting. To blame it on one family, or one person, Peg, is just—”

  Jo Beth’s eyes, upon reopening, were pink. Ry’s legs writhed beneath the table. He felt like a kid again, trapped in a pew by the boulder-like force of an interminable sermon.

  “There’s no safety issue. Peg, listen …” Pause. “I’ve got my children here too. You think if there was anything unsafe about any of this I would be sitting here talking to you? No. I’d be taking care of my kids.” Pause. “Well, thank you. I guess. I suppose I do have a tiny bit of sense, thank you very much for noticing. I … look, I just called to see if you’d heard anything. If you haven’t—” Pause, this one radiating heat. “Well. If you do. It is of interest to me. But I can wait until the paper comes on Tuesday. No skin off my back.”

  Pause, this one as slow and rough as frost.

  “All right. Give Kevin and the kids my best. Tell Esther good luck at school. And you’ll have that nightgown tomorrow. No, I’m not hurrying it on your account; I don’t hurry things that I sew. That’s fine. Okay. Good night.”

  The cradle took the phone, and Jo Beth watched the cord swing. Ry was nodding as if blind affirmation alone could hurry this ritual past the pain.

  “Well,” Jo Beth said. “That went poorly.”

  “Try the Horvaths,” Ry said.

  “No.” Jo Beth stood up and smoothed her pants. “Let’s not do that again.”

  “We can walk there if you want.” Ry was still nodding; anything was possible, anything. “If it makes you feel safer.”

  The way she shook her head made him feel like a child.

  “Right now? In the dark? With Sarah? With a chill like there is, and with her already coughing? That sounds like a good idea to you?”

  “And where’s the shotgun? You never said.”

  “Oh, Ry, let’s not talk about guns.”

  “It’d just be good to have it.”

  “I’ll get it,” she said. “In a while. But that’s not going to solve any problems.”

  “There’s no problem.” Ry tapped his chest. “I’m fine. But if you want to figure out what happened, one of us is going to have to walk down the road, and I’m happy to do it—gun or no gun. I could’ve just walked down to the Crowleys’ with Jeremiah.”

  “With the convict. With the escaped convict. Just traipsing down the road alone at night. You really think I’d let you do that?”

  “Let me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I’m not a kid, Mom.”

  “You’re not as old as you think.”

  “Why don’t you relax? We’ll figure it out tomorrow. I’ll wait until morning and then just walk over to—”

  “No.” Jo Beth’s eyes were steadfast. “We are done asking for help from these people.”

  “Mom.”

  “We’ve done nothing to them. Nothing. And they treat us like this? Year after year? Like we’re criminals?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You weren’t on that phone!”

  “I was sitting right here, Mom.”

  “I’m done with it. We’re gone. We’re leaving. Pack what you need because tomorrow we’re out of here.”

  Jo Beth Burke was not an impulsive woman and pronouncements of this weight did not come from nowhere. She was already turned on her heel and heading for the dining room. Ry knew he was faster. His chair screeched outward, and swooping around her he jammed an arm in the doorframe—a frame he had fixed two years ago, dammit, and repainted last month. The imposition was startling enough that Jo Beth’s nose bumped into his bicep, and in that moment of contact they both felt the vulgarity of this feckless display of strength. She took a half step back and stared up at him. It was a moment straight out of the repertoire of Marvin Burke.

  The dimpled scars along her ear and between each finger no longer seemed so faint. Ry let his arm slide down the doorframe. He felt the veins of paint, the clots of coagulation. It was not a good paint job, not really.

  “Phinny will be here tomorrow?” Jo Beth controlled her voice and Ry felt his face burn.

  “He’ll be here, but—”

  “Then we’ll pack the car, install the part, and then we’ll leave.”

  Ry gaped at her. She meant it. Moving out was supposed to be a lackadaisical process; he had imagined a month or more of packing that, in Ry’s fantasies, would bond mother, daughter, and son as they lifted forgotten artifacts from the backs of drawers and held them up, laughing.

  “You have a place for us to go?” he asked.

  “A couple options, yes.” There was no fear in her gaze, none.

  “So this is something you’ve been planning all along or what?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she said. “I made Sarah look out the front window for her meteors. There’s no point in scaring her all over again.”

  He listened and heard the flutter of his sister’s notebook. Jo Beth rolled her neck.

  “Maybe you don’t feel it,” she said. “I’m not blaming you for that. Maybe i
t comes with being older. But we’re clinging. Ry? We are clinging to this place. We have been for nine years. And I’m through. Just now. Just like that. It’s no wonder we can’t sell it. We’re afraid to. It doesn’t even make logical sense to the brain, selling your house out from under your own feet. But there is a place. More than one place, actually. They’re in Monroeville. Don’t bother me for details; this isn’t something open for discussion. I know you’re upset. But this isn’t really about you. I cannot live here. It has nothing to do with your father and if he’s at Bluefeather or if he isn’t—I couldn’t care less. I cannot live with these people. These so-called neighbors who throw me a few dollars and pretend to be my friends. Have you seen their crops? They’re nearly as bad off as we are and that’s not our fault; it’s the land. I can make real money in Monroeville, Ry, and it can start tomorrow. It can all start tomorrow. You see? All we have to do is do it.”

  Ry opened his mouth and felt a lake of tears lapping at the back of his throat. He took a moment to swallow the salty water.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  Jo Beth reached out and tugged the hair at the side of his head as if checking its fixedness, something she hadn’t done in years. It was comforting, her knuckles so tight against his scalp. He let his head be yanked this way, then that.

  “And then it’s done,” she said.

  9 HRS., 47 MINS. UNTIL IMPACT

  Christmas in August was unintentional; it just turned out that way. By the time Ry had entered the living room, his mother was already speaking to Sarah in tones of such skillful persuasion that she could have been suggesting a suicide pact and Sarah would be nodding along just the same. A surprise trip to Monroeville was how Jo Beth put it, except that they were going to stay awhile and see how that went and wasn’t that exciting? Ry knew that his mother was underestimating Sarah. Insight twinkled in the girl’s eyes, but she knew when it was advantageous to fake gullibility, whether it was in the tooth fairy or a supposedly innocuous visit to what was in fact a new home.