Damage

by Shea, Stephen

  Sandra looked out the window beside her, but couldn't see where he'd gone. Rain spattered the window, mixing with the dust there. She looked away from the window. The waitress was staring too, her face perplexed.

  Sandra wondered how it was that some men could have such an effect on women. Effortlessly, perhaps even unconsciously, he had grabbed their attention, had erased their minds of whatever they were currently thinking and left them with a dim feeling of loss as he walked out the door. It was like a watered down version of love at first sight, or lust, at least. Isn't it funny how one type can be immediately attracted to another. Not any man could walk in there and get her attention, Sandra knew that.

  She had a feeling that somehow the event had been fated, but she ignored the feeling. Of course fate and all that other crap was hogwash. What happens on this earth, happens, she thought, quoting her father.

  The waitress finally cleared Sandra's plate and deposited a bill, leaving it so that its edge landed in a puddle of Coke. It soaked a third of the way down the bill. Cute, Sandra thought. She picked up the bill from the bottom and went to the cash register. She paid without saying thanks. When she went outside it was raining softly. The air smelled new and promising.

  Sandra walked over to her car, a blue Vega, got in and started it. She pulled on the lights and turned on the window wipers.

  Just as she put the car in reverse she looked ahead and saw a shadow by the wall. She squinted, the wipers wiped the window clean, and she saw it was the man who had come in the cafe. He was leaning against the wall, out of the rain.

  Sandra stared for a moment as the wipers arced back and forth, then, thinking what the hell, she put the car in park and rolled down the window. "Do you need a ride?" she asked.

  He didn't move. He stood like a statue, a fixture. Silent.

  "Do you need a ride somewhere?" Sandra asked again.

  The man slowly leaned away from the wall and walked towards the car. He stopped at the passenger's side. Sandra reached over, set her hand on the lock and tugged upward but the lock was tight and her hand slipped off. She tugged again and the lock clicked up. She felt young for a second, like a child breaking a parent's command. And, as always, she felt a little excited at the prospect of meeting a stranger.

  The man opened the door. Sat in the seat.

  "Hi," she said. "I'm Sandra."

  He looked over at her and even in the darkness she could tell his eyes were blue. Beautiful and perfect. "I'm Wayne," he answered. He had an accent that she couldn't place, she knew it was American but which state she wasn't sure.

  "Where are you going, Wayne?"

  "North," he said. "In a round about way. Up past Saktoon."

  "Saskatoon, you mean," she corrected, at once feeling sorry that she had taken such liberty with a stranger. "It's a strange name, isn't it? It's where I live, so I can take you all the way there, anyway." She stuck the car in reverse, backed up, and pulled away from the cafe. She turned on the highway and headed north. Wayne pulled on his lap belt.

  Wayne stayed silent and Sandra could find nothing to say to him. She was so aware of his presence that her thoughts were scrambled. She searched her mind for points to start a conversation, but every imagined beginning rang small and petty in her head. She breathed in and smelled him, a musky, pleasant smell. His natural body odor.

  After a few minutes she asked. "So where are you from?"

  "Missouri," Wayne answered slowly. "But I come from everywhere. It seems, sometimes. I travel a lot." He paused. "Do you like the rain?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I do."

  "It cleans everything," he said matter of factly. "Everything." Sandra felt a dissonant feeling of discomfort at his words, but before it grew into anything important he asked, "What do you do?"

  "I'm a nurse. I work at the University Hospital."

  "Do you like it?"

  "Yeah. I work in intensive care. There's always a downside, but there's upsides too. What do you do?"

  "Travel mostly. Travel," Wayne paused. "You know it's really nice of you to give me a ride. I'm sorry I didn't say that when I got in."

  "Oh, it's no problem at all."

  "It's just that sometimes I forget to say things like that. I don't talk very much. So I forget things."

  "Don't worry about it," she said, thinking Wayne seemed sweet but slow. I'd like to take him home, she thought. To bed. That'd pay Rod back. She couldn't resist a small, sly smile. It was nice sometimes to think nasty thoughts. She had always liked the forbidden.

  They drove on in silence, but this time Sandra didn't feel uncomfortable, she felt that everything was unfolding as it should, that she didn't have to force anything. If he talked, he talked, if he didn't, he didn't. Just the fact that a stranger was riding in her car was enough—she had done something daring in picking him up, whatever followed from then on didn't really matter.

  She noticed Wayne was staring at her and her feeling of ease slid suddenly towards discomfort. Fear.

  Wayne let out his breath, like a man trying to say something very deep in his heart. "At the hospital. Where you work. Do the patients ever show you their face?" Out of the corner of her eye Sandra could see that his left hand was opening and closing like a claw.

  "I'm not sure what you mean," she said, scared and wondering how long it had been since they'd passed a car. Five minutes? Ten minutes?

  "Their face," he whispered. He was closer now, his smell deep and thick in her nostrils, his breath hot on her neck. She leaned away. How had he moved so quick? She hadn't heard the seatbelt click. "Their real face."

  "Get back!" she said, loudly. "Please."

  He moved closer, pressing against her. "I like you. I know you. I want to show you my face. My real face." Then his hand was over her mouth, on her neck, and she was trying to control the car, slamming on the brakes, spinning the wheel back and forth in a slow nightmare and thinking crazily: I'm going to die! I'm going to die! She felt something jab into her side, twice quickly. For a strange, slow moment she felt no pain, then suddenly it blossomed in her side. The car screeched to a stop in the middle of the highway, on the wrong side of the road. There was another sharp pain below her ribs. Another.

  Sandra bit at Wayne's hand, punched at him, but it had no effect. She realized, in the mad red struggle for her life, that he was crying and whispering, "See me! See me!" His left hand closed over her face, over her eyes and nose and she was pressed down into the seat, gasping for breath, but only sucking at the flesh of his palms. She kicked her legs, quickly at first then slowly. Her lungs emptied.

  Her last conscious thoughts were of her father and of Rod and then her life flickered and was no more.

  7.

  On Sunday night Tyler was restless.

  A tide was loose in his heart, a tide that swept through him, crashing against every thought. He had to move, to do something, to get out of his apartment. The dojo wasn't open but he knew this feeling was too strong to be subdued by karate.

  He paced his apartment. He turned on the t.v. and padded back and forth in front of it. The images it presented, the noises it uttered, were meaningless to him, uninterpretable in his condition. He turned it off again, turned on the radio. An old Elvis song filled the room and he listened to it impatiently. Tyler had always been an Elvis fan but he found the music bland tonight, an aural food without taste. He clicked off the radio.

  He opened the window and a gentle rush of cool air brushed his skin. He knew he had to leave, to travel. He left his apartment, walked down the stairs of his apartment building and went straight to his car.

  He started the car, put it in reverse and backed up into the alleyway. Then he stuck it in drive and drove through the alleys and streets of Prince Albert, no destination in his mind, no concrete thoughts. Just drifting, in car and mind. He turned on the radio to a low volume and rolled the window partially down so he could feel the city. The old streets of Prince Albert accepted him, he became a part of the city. Streetlights flashed green, yel
low, red—a blur in his memory.

  Then he turned onto the highway heading north, not really thinking consciously about it. Little by little the city left him, buildings, lanes, fading away till finally it shifted into fields and fewer buildings. The moon was above him in the sky, his companion. Tyler felt almost happy, or at least soothed. He passed a few cars on the highway, a semi, and that was about all.

  He moved down the highway, his thoughts in his wake. His hands were tight around the wheel, his eyes stared straight ahead.

  After about twenty minutes, he slowed and turned left onto a gravel road. He drove down it, took the first right, then the next left, no reasoning in his mind. He passed farmhouses that glowed like sentinels in the night, their lights like halos. But no feeling of sanctuary emanated from their presences. Tyler found them a disturbance to the natural darkness of the night.

  He turned right, then left, then right, until he was no longer certain which direction he was going. North and South had become vague and unimportant theories. He passed through a valley and at the bottom was a bridge. Water from a stream glowed on either side, like a long bolt of lightning colored by the moon, captured and laid flat on the ground.

  Once outside the valley and on flat prairie again, he drove through land that was familiar, like the face of a relative not seen for many years. He passed a clump of trees he was sure he had seen before, but whether from the other side he did not know. The night changed everything, took away its shape and made it vague. Shadowy.

  Tyler suddenly slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt, spitting gravel as it swerved right, then left. He stared, his heart beating wildly.

  He had stopped at a turn off. His turn off, that led a quarter of a mile to his parent's home. There were trees beside the road.

  He thought, momentarily, of just pressing down on the gas and leaving, because the moment had become too important, too big, but instead he put the car in park.

  He didn't want to drive there, they would know he was coming. He opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. A cool chilling wind swept over him. The trees on either side of the access road were huge shadows, their few leaves still waving in the wind. The air filled with the sound of wind going over a power line: a deep low moan of a lost spirit. Following an impulse Tyler didn't understand, or try to, so deep it was in his being, he began to walk. Down the access road. Home.

  Every step was a struggle as if he were walking into an invisible wall that slowly gained solidity. Shadowy trees hulked around him. The rustling of leaves and the sound of his footsteps was all there was in the universe. The noise echoed to his right, as if someone else were matching him step by step. A dog started to bark, his dog, Coach. Coyotes responded, their voices warbling off key into the night.

  The road turned slightly and the trees were gone. He could see, a few hundred feet away, the yard light beside his house. His house looked small. Light blue paint ragged on its sides, windows yellow in the night. The dog stopped barking, but the coyotes continued to wail.

  Tyler made his way to the house, drawn like a fly to decaying flesh. He didn't think as he walked, at least his thoughts had no meaning, it was as if his mood of melancholy and unrest had swelled through his every level like water so that thought was no longer possible, only mood.

  He walked up the driveway, afraid of the light, afraid that someone would look out and see him. Coach was sitting on the front step of the house, staring at him. He stepped closer and the dog turned and walked away from the house.

  As Tyler neared the house, the yard light was blocked out and he was in darkness. The house had a mood and its mood was one of leave me alone. He walked up to the house, up the steps to the front door and lay his hand on the white siding. Wanting to feel the house, to know it. Again. A sliver of light from the curtained window fell on his hand. He saw clearly the dragon tattoo on his hand, the bracelet tied tightly below it.

  Why had he come here, he thought and this was his first real thought for many minutes. Why?

  He stared at his hand, at the faded white paint on the door, at the curtain. He moved to look inside the window, to see what was going on. What his parents were doing. What Tanya was doing.

  "Tyler?" the voice, from his left, was Tanya's. He turned. Tanya was standing on the lawn, dressed in jeans and a brown sweater. He guessed that she had been playing with the soccer ball out back. He walked down the steps.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Tyler answered, whispering. He stopped on the bottom step for a second, then went over to Tanya. "I don't know why I came." He felt, suddenly, unsure of himself.

  Tanya put her hand on his knee. "You came because I was scared. I asked you to come."

  "What do you mean?" The meaning of her words was often hard to understand. "What are you scared of?" This night, like last night at Rand's, had become disjointed. He felt out of place and vulnerable.

  "Something bad is coming, Tyler. From the trees and from the highway. Something bad," she stopped, looked back at the house. Tyler thought he heard movement inside. Father. "You should go."

  But it was too late. The front door opened.

  Tyler slowly turned his head and helplessly, wanting to, not wanting to, he looked. And for some reason he thought he would see a skeleton at the door, with a face of bleached bone, white eyes and strips of decayed flesh hanging here and there, but he was wrong. His father was there, staring out at them.

  "Tanya," he said, his voice calm. "Get away from him."

  Tanya hesitated for a moment then she pulled away, whispering something, but Tyler could no longer hear. He was stone deaf to everything but his father's voice. "Go inside," his father told her.

  Tanya climbed up the steps, glanced back at Tyler then went past her father and into the house.

  "Now you," Charles said, still calm. "Get the hell off my farm or I'll go inside the house and get the gun."

  Tyler stood completely still, frozen. He wasn't inside his body, or at least it felt as if he wasn't. He raised his arm and started to say something, to do something, but it felt so ineffective he stopped halfway through the gesture. No words came out between his lips.

  Charles stared at the tattoo on Tyler's arm, now visible in the light. "Why don't you cut that ugly thing off?"

  Tyler looked at the tattoo then at his father.

  "Leave," his father said.

  Tyler turned away and walked across the yard. He thought momentarily that he heard his sister's voice calling him, but his hearing was dull. He went down the access road. He came to his car, got in, started it and drove, until the night opened up and the highway found him.

  8.

  Doors. Conn was surprised at how easily doors could be opened. Locked or unlocked, they were the same to him. Click, click and he was inside. There was always a thrill when he opened a door. He knew they were closed to keep things out, that the people inside felt safe and comfortable behind their flimsy locks. They were always surprised to see him, the uninvited guest, standing in their hallways, his hair about his shoulders, his eyes glowing.

  You mean my door didn't work? they would say. Gee, that's strange. I'll have to get it fixed.

  Conn laughed at their dumbfounded looks. That was the glory about the unexpected, it was always a surprise.

  Conn had opened a lot of doors tonight. He had surprised a lot of people.

  And when he was finished his wanderings he went back to that place in the trees where he had caught the lightning. He went to the grave, to the place where there was now only one stone and he laid face down in the musty grass.

  Conn. Angel. Feed, feed me.

  Then colors swirled around Conn like tentacles. Coming up from beneath the ground, reaching into his mind, pulling at the images there. He gave them up willingly, one by one. Images of sharp things and soft things, together. Jumbled. When he was finished he had a glimpse of a white face, far beneath the ground. It was as if he were looking though a window. The
face gave him a thick-lipped smile that filled Conn with warmth and love. The face disappeared and Conn slept, the Chesire smile glowing in his mind.

  He got up later in the night, refreshed, light, like a man forgiven. He squatted by the oak tree and listened like a dog who listens as his master sleeps. And he felt what was happening there—the growing, the changing, the coming into being—he felt it, but did not understand. The swirling pains he had wrought and then brought to this place. To fester, to grow, somewhere beneath the ground.

  What did it all mean? Conn didn't care. He was past thinking.

  It was the doing that counted.

  A few hours later he wandered back to Kinniwaw.

  9.

  At 5:05 p.m. Tuesday, Rand was sitting in his living room, watching t.v. He tapped his cigarette into the ashtray beside him and ashes fell out onto the couch. Rand brought the cigarette to his mouth and took a drag, an automatic motion.

  The events on the t.v. meant nothing to Rand, it was a foreign language, an alien dance. His eyes saw the colors and figures on the t.v. and interpreted them but his brain channeled the input into a waiting room to be ignored. He just needed something to stare at.

  Kari still wouldn't see him. She had spoken to him once on the phone, but now when he phoned her mother would only ask him to let her be for awhile.

  What did he expect? He had hurt her to the core. Did he expect to be forgiven, for her to smile and say it's all right, Rand, I understand. How many times would she do that before it ran out?