by Bill Cameron
His expression is blank. I can’t tell if he’s afraid or at ease. I don’t know how he got here. Luellen has brought him over dozens of times. He knows my backyard almost as well as he knows his own. He’s helped me fill the feeders and pointed with delight when a flock of bush tits sweeps through. But I can’t remember him coming back here on his own. I don’t think he’s ever crossed the street without his mother.
“Did your grandpa leave you here?”
In response, he looks at me through round, moist eyes, then turns and points at the arbor. “Feed the birds.” The hanging feeders are less than half full, and this time of year they don’t need replenishment often. But Danny isn’t concerned with the details of urban migratory patterns. He wants to pour the seed into the cylindrical feeders. He continues to point until I smile. “Sure, we can feed the birds, but then I think we need to get you to your mommy. Okay?”
“Mommy isn’t here.”
“We’ll find her, little guy.” Like I have a clue. But I can make a call, and until Susan tracks Luellen down, she’ll keep Danny safe.
He heads across the yard for the garage door. He knows where I keep the seed. I follow and push the door open. Together we fill the feed scoop with black oil sunflower seeds. I let him carry it.
When I step back out into the daylight, I see a figure on my deck, a man. He’s tall and broad and crew cut. His brown, leathery face suggests a lot of time out in the sun. He’s got one hand stuck in his pocket, the other tucked up under his chin—an odd, strangled gesture. His dark coat is a little heavier than the cool afternoon demands, and his eyes squint against the grey-white dazzle scattered by the thin overcast. I feel Danny press the feed scoop against the back of my leg as he looks up at the big man from behind me.
“Who the hell are you?”
The man’s jaw pulses. “No one you want to fuck with.” His voice has a mechanical quality, almost metallic. “Bring the boy. We are leaving.”
I push back half a pace. “I don’t think so.”
“Do not argue with me.” He lifts his pocketed hand without pulling it free of his coat. For a moment, the image is almost comical, a slapstick robber pretending his finger is a gun. But his face remains hard and cold, draining any humor from the situation. Suddenly I realize why his voice sounds so strange—why he keeps one hand pressed to his throat. He’s using an artificial voice box. I can make out the black, cylindrical device between his fingers.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to not give me a reason to take my hand out of my pocket.”
A cold, liquid sensation percolates through me. “You realize there are cops all over the place. A team is right across—”
“Shut up.” I can see in the weight of his eyelids he knows the lie for what it is. He draws a heavy breath. “I got no time for bullshit.”
“Maybe we can talk about this.”
“There is nothing to talk about. I will take your phone and any weapon.” He lowers the electrolarynx. If I’m going to try something, now is the time. But I realize just as quickly I won’t, not with even the chance of a gun in his pocket. Not with Danny here.
He knows it too.
I retrieve my cell phone. “I’m not armed.” He lowers his hand and takes my phone, drops it on the deck and crushes it beneath his boot heel. I look down at the cracked plastic and glass, thinking Ruby Jane would say this is my big chance to get the iPhone she’s always wanted. The big man pats me down, one-handed.
Danny doesn’t take his eyes from the man’s hand, seems fascinated by the electronic voice. I’m not fascinated. I once knew a cop who used a voice box after he lost his larynx to cancer. Lifetime smoker, like me. His cancer found his esophagus; mine settled in my bladder. Guess I’m the lucky one, though I’m not feeling too lucky right now. The big man’s throat is a tangle of scar tissue. His jaw seems slightly askew, as if broken and poorly set. It’s no stretch to realize the injury occurred under circumstances that precluded professional medical care.
He raises the device back to his throat. “We will go out through the gate, walking slowly, two men and a boy. No big deal. You get in the Cadillac out front without a fuss, maybe you live through the day.”
“Listen, friend—”
“I am not your friend.”
A knife’s edge of fear slashes through my belly. I run the odds, and they’re not good. My neighbors are all gone, those who don’t work having cleared out once the morning’s excitement boiled down to mere procedural tedium. No news vans, no helicopters buzzing overhead. And now the cops have left too, which means it’s just me standing between Luellen’s little boy and this armed mountain of flesh and scar tissue.
He catches my eye, his expression almost thoughtful. “Whatever you are thinking, I am here to tell you, do not try it. If you fuck with me, I will rain hell down on you.”
The atonal quality of his mechanical voice only adds to the awful dread hanging in the still air between us. I take the feed scoop from Danny and set it on the deck, then grab his hand and lead him around the corner of the house to the gate. The man follows, enough steps behind to ensure he’ll have time to react if I try anything. Not that he has anything to worry about. I’m about fifteen years past trying anything.
Danny and I go through the gate, stop when he tells us to hold up. He takes a quick look around, seems content with what he sees. The one hand remains in his coat pocket. He gestures with his chin and I continue to my empty front yard. No cops, no earnest staring onlookers. There’s a frightful calm in the air. Nothing moves now, but it’s hard to forget that just a few hours earlier bullets were flying. Mitch’s dried blood stands out, stark against the lemon paint on the wall next to his front door. I wonder if Jase will have to scrub it off.
The man points to a battered, land yacht-era Fleetwood of indeterminate color parked across the driveway of the house next door. Any other day my neighbor, a graphic designer with a home office and a deep commitment to his own entitlement, would have been all over it, making phone calls and pitching a public fit.
“Why do you want the boy?”
“Buckle him in the back, then get in next to him.” I hesitate. “Do not give me a reason to kill you. It would be too much hassle to deal with your body. But if you cause trouble I might change my mind.”
There’s a woman in the front seat of the Cadillac, passenger side. She draws hard on a cigarette, then tosses the butt out through her open window. Even when I still smoked I didn’t tolerate butts on my walk, but I don’t get the impression she’ll give a damn about my feelings on the matter. She’s sitting hunkered down, like she’s afraid of being noticed, and I can see in a glance why. Her sunken cheeks and wild, darting eyes are the hallmark of the committed crank head. She glares our way as the big man urges us across the front lawn. I don’t like the darkness in the hungry gaze she fixes on little Danny at my side. I stop, pull Danny against me.
“Keep it moving, mister.” He pushes me up to the rear passenger door.
The woman looks up and down the street. Her nerves seem to vibrate in the air around her. From three paces away, I can smell her, a bitter ammonia reek mixed with tobacco and the whiff of rot. She’s wearing a stained quilted coat, but I see tattoos lacing out from under the sleeves and from under her collar. They’re muddy and dark against her blotchy skin, a tangle of thorns on her hands, unintelligible slashes and cross-hatching on her throat. The artless rendering and smeared color, the blue of a ballpoint pen, tells me she’s been incarcerated.
“What’s the fucking hold up? Jesus.” Her voice is almost as dead and mechanical as the target of her ire.
The big man doesn’t bother to respond as he pulls open the door, pushes Danny into the back seat. I don’t want him in there alone with the woman, even for a moment, so I slide in quickly after him. Then I turn to the big man before he can close the door behind me.
“Fella, listen—”
The woman spins around in the front seat. “Shut the bloody fuck up!
” All I can see are sharp, yellow teeth and fiery red eyes as big as eggs. She swings a bony fist at my jaw. The blow lands like a grenade. Danny starts screaming, but I can’t see him. My vision swirls and I taste blood. As I try to blink the tears from my eyes the big man’s hand snakes in through the open door. He grabs the woman’s wrist just below her filthy coat sleeve. She jerks her hand back, her twitching eyes wide and staring. He points at her across the back of the seat, the gesture buzzing with threat. The moment seems to hang there, a tightening spring, but then she presses herself back against the dashboard and, with an exhalation of foul breath, topples over onto the front seat out of sight. In an instant, Danny quiets, but she starts to sob in his place, a dry noise like wind through a tube.
I turn to the big man, put my hand on his forearm. “There’s still time to stop this. No one has to know it ever happened. I’ll take the boy back to his mother and you go wherever you want to go.”
I’m just pissing him off. He shakes his arm free of my touch and lifts the artificial larynx to his neck.
“His mother is dead.”
For a moment, his words don’t seem to have meaning, as if he’d declared I have a hat growing out of my ear. But then a sharp, sinking despair falls through me. I reach out blindly, find Danny’s hand, clutch it in my own. His skin is cool and dry. I hope he doesn’t understand—if he even heard. I look up through the open car door into the big man’s squinting eyes. “What did you do?” My voice sounds hollow inside my head.
“You think it was me.” The toneless voice offers no clue as to his rectitude. After a moment he shakes his head. For the first time I sense an emotion in him other than cold-blooded resolve. “Some dumb ass boy. I do not even know who he was.” From up front, the tweaker continues to wheeze, but more quietly now, as if she senses the weight of the moment. “Right up there on top of the hill.” Tilt of his head, in case I don’t know which hill he means. “Who can say what really happened?”
That’s all he has, this modest disclosure—modest for him, if not for me. He starts to close the car door, ready to move on to whatever he has planned next, when I surprise us both and allow the name to spill from my mouth. “Eager.” The name of the boy I’ve thought about, worried about, for the last three years suddenly feels alien on my tongue.
He stares down at me. His face is flat, his eyes dead as doll’s eyes. I drop my gaze, turn and look at Danny. Little Danny, quiet and oblivious to everything around him. I have no idea what will happen to him now, but I know that I won’t live to see it. This man beside me—Eager’s father, Big Ed Gillespie, has to be—is not going to let me live after such a revelation.
November 18
Shadow Ale
Shadow.
Shadow something. He could see the word shining. The road was dark, no cars, no people. Just the shine. Shadow. Other words, other letters, over the door. Through the window past glowing signs he saw people. A man, a woman. They were speaking, the man on one side of the bar, woman on the other. He didn’t see anyone else under the yellow glow of old wall sconces. The woman sipped from a tall glass, and suddenly Shadow felt the need to slip inside. He’d grown tired of the scrunch of one footstep after another on the gravel shoulder of the road.
The door stuck for a second, then popped open. The man and woman both turned at the sharp sound. Warm air rushed through the doorway, smelling faintly of a wood fire. Inside, the low ceiling was held up by sawn posts, polished and dark like the paneled walls. A line of booths ran along one long wall, each adorned with its own mounted animal head, glassy-eyed elk and antelope. The wall behind the bar was covered with liquor bottles and fishing trophies.
“Where’d you come from, pal? I didn’t hear your car.” The man leaned across the bar, his forearms resting on wood, his hands clasped together. His head stood tall on wide shoulders and he looked at Shadow through grey eyes. He was smiling. The woman looked at him and she smiled too. “Long way from nowhere.”
Shadow opened his mouth, tried to form the word. It wouldn’t quite come. Half a letter, tip of his tongue. The man’s smile dropped, became flatter, less friendly. One eyebrow lifted the width of an eyelash. Shadow knew he needed to say it, but he couldn’t. He curled his lips, made the shape of the letter. “... W ...” Nothing more. No sound.
“You okay, mister?” The woman’s voice had a ring to, a rising lilt, as though she’d learned to speak by listening to the radio.
He looked at her, clenched his teeth. Tried to smile. “S ... s ...”
“Hey, it’s cool.” The man behind the bar again. “No need to stress out.”
Stress out. He could say that, and with the realization the word he sought presented itself like a treasure. “Strolling.” Then he found his smile as well. The woman laughed, the sound like bells, and the man shook his head. “Okay, you say so. Long way to stroll though. You walk out from West Linn?”
He nodded, unaware of what West Linn was. “Strolling.”
“What can I get you?”
He knew what he wanted. Something. Something to eat. He smelled it in the air. He couldn’t remember last when he last ate, not clearly. How to say it though, that he remembered. “Supper.”
“Grill’s closed, but I can make you a sandwich.”
He nodded. “Sandwich.”
“Sure. No problem. Roast beef, turkey, ham, or smoked salmon.”
Pick the easy one. Not the other stuff, no. “Smoke salmon.” Easy. Saying the words made him want to laugh, but he held his grin. The man pulled a stained white apron over his head and went through a swinging door at the end of the bar. The woman patted the stool next to her, tilted her head, fixed him with a gaze. “Take a load off. Wherever you come from, it had to be a long frakking walk. Not that you need me to tell you that.”
He sat down. She was looking him over, but he didn’t want to look back. Her stare made him uncomfortable. Stare. Staring.
Stop.
“You’ll love the smoked salmon. Todd gets it from some Indians, right from the source, you know.”
Salmon from Indians. The words sounded a tone in his head, a familiar note. He didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t know how.
“They fish down below the falls, smoke it themselves. The old way, you know.”
He shrugged. It was a word he knew.
“You’re not from around here.”
He stole a look her way. She had a long face, red-cheeked and warm, framed by curly brown hair. Her expression was direct, but soft. Not angry. Maybe curious. Did he know that word? After a moment, he shook his head. A way to talk without speaking.
She laughed. “Shy one, aren’t you?”
“Shy.”
That seemed to satisfy her. She turned back to her drink, something brown with bubbles. He waited, silent. Music was playing, soft, a voice going on about a lost dog. He laughed a bit, a quiet snicker, and the woman looked at him. “Song.”
“Yeah, that old crap on the jukebox. Todd hasn’t changed anything in fifteen years. Have you, Todd?”
The bartender came back through the door from the kitchen. “Not a damned thing.” He set a plate down in front of Shadow, the sandwich and some chips, a pickle wedge. “Hope sourdough is okay. I’m getting ready to close, and that’s all I have left.”
Shadow nodded, salivating.
“Anything to drink?”
He didn’t like the questions, but he liked the the taste of the sandwich. He wolfed down half of it before the bartender asked again.
“Nothing?”
“Shadow ...” He didn’t mean to say it. Didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want them to know. But all the talking, all the questions, they made him skittish. And the word over the door. Shadow. It came out before he could stop himself.
“Sure. No problem.” The man went down the counter, grabbed a glass from below. Stopped at a tall wooden rod, smooth, with a brass cap embossed with the word. Shadow.
The word in lights, the word on the rod. A handle. He recognized it. A handle
, a tap. The man filled the glass with brown foamy liquid from the tap.
“Here you go. Shadow Ale. Best amber around.”
“Sure, not that Todd’s an impartial observer.” The woman leaned toward Shadow and winked.
“Hey, it took gold last year at Brewfest.”
He took the glass, lifted it and tasted. Shadow Ale. It tasted like night, like smoke. Like who he was. It was a strange flavor, but strangely familiar, like a long forgotten memory. He drank the glass down, set it on the bar. Surprised himself and the others with his belch. Todd laughed and the woman clapped him on the shoulder. “Good stuff, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Shadow.”
“You want another with your sandwich? Hell, I’ll charge you the happy hour price if you do.”
He didn’t know what happy hour price was. But he did know the Shadow tasted sweet, satisfying. He nodded his head, an unconscious act.
The woman reached out across the bar and put her hand on the man’s forearm. Their eyes locked and Shadow felt disquiet settle over him. She turned her gaze to him, her eyes focused.
“Todd, I’m thinking maybe you should be sure he can pay happy hour prices before you set him up again.”
“Dawn ...” But he didn’t finish. He leaned against the bar top, and his lips screwed up tight. Shadow felt their suspicion like pressure against the back of his eyes. The word formed in his throat, collected against the back of his tongue. He slid off the stool, felt his hands fall to his sides.
“Suspicion.”
Todd pulled himself to his full height. Tall, wiry, taut muscles hinted at under his shirt. “Now, fella, no need for anything untoward. But Dawn’s got a good point. We just need to know you can pay for your meal.” He paused, flexed his hands on the edge of the bar. “You do have some money, don’t you?”
Money. The word meant something to him. He couldn’t form it in his mouth, but he knew what the man was asking for. Sheets of folded paper, green and grey. He’d found some the night before, driven by an urge he couldn’t understand. Money. Green money.
