Sons of Dust

by P. Dalton Updyke

  Mrs. Ozens left without buying her bread.

  Lydia stood in front of the door, hesitating, listening hard. What if it was a crook? What if she opened the door and a teenager pushed his way in? A teenager with greasy long hair and an earring in his nose, a boy with bad teeth and rotten breath. A drug addict. She’d seen enough to know what they looked like. And what they would do. Why, the boy could do more than rob her and hit her over the head with a gun or maybe not a gun.

  “I’ll kill you,” she muttered. “I would kill you first.”

  The sound came again. Scratch. Pause. Scratch.

  Relief flooded her. The sounds were too small to be made by a man.

  Lydia turned the locks, heard the tumblers click as they slid in, and opened the door.

  The chain was just above her head, so she was able to peer under it. The wedge of porch in her line of vision was dark and empty. The cold air made her shiver, but she hesitated a moment longer. If it was Tom out there, it would take a few minutes to convince him to come in.

  “Kitty, kitty,” she called softly. “It is warm in here, warm and sweet and I can heat some milk…”

  She could see the edge of the bowl. It had been moved. It was almost in front of Mr. Plazer’s door and that would not be good because Mr. Plazer hated cats. He would scream at her if he saw the bowl and if Tom had made a mess, as he sometimes did, Mr. Plazer would turn purple. Once he had even kicked the bowl and sent dry food scattering across the porch.

  “There,” he had said, his voice tight with fury. “Let your damn pussy lick it off the floor.”

  Mr. Plazer was a bad man. A weak man. He wouldn’t have lasted two days in Auschwitz.

  She wet her lips, nervous now, but she didn’t know why unless maybe it was, maybe it was

  the smell

  Lydia drew back from the door, the smell stinging in her nostrils now and thought one word

  Camp!

  and then the smell was overpowering and it didn’t matter if there was a cat out there, it didn’t matter at all because even if there was a cat, it couldn’t come in because it was scented with the odor of death and Lydia knew that smell, she recognized it at once and thought it was a smell she’d left behind in Auschwitz. She grasped the edge of the door to pull it closed and that’s when she sensed the smell wasn’t coming from the porch, it was coming from behind her.

  It was coming from her apartment.

  The light was on! Dear God, I didn’t leave the pantry light on!

  Her breath was harsh and dry in her throat and she was aware that panic was close, she knew panic as well as the scent of death, the two went together. Hand in hand. The sound came again and this time she knew it wasn’t a cat, how could she have been so stupid? It was not the sound of glass against wood it was…it was…

  She started to turn around, her heart hammering in her chest, the word robber robber robber flashing in her brain red and bold and something laughed. Suddenly she realized she was frozen with terror, her feet were locked to the green speckled linoleum and she would have to stay here, stay here in her kitchen

  my home

  my own home

  not the camp, not back at the camp, but the smell of death here in my kitchen

  is this the way they come for you? She thought crazily. Is this the way? Sneaking in the middle of the night. It is true, then. Death is a thief and he comes in the –

  “Lydia.”

  The word was a caress, but fear froze her spine, made her ache with cold.

  “Lydia, Lydia, my darling Lydia,” he sang in the dark.

  She wet her lips. “Who are you?”

  He laughed again. Her eyes darted toward the sound, but she couldn’t make out anything but shadows. She had a sense of a vague shape between her and the rest of her apartment.

  The back door chain is on but maybe I can get it off and run onto the porch and if I scream Mr. Plazer will open his door to tell me to shut up and he will call the police—

  It laughed again.

  “Oh, Lydia. Don’t be such a silly goose. You couldn’t get to the chain fast enough. You’re old, darling. Old and feeble and you outlived your usefulness a long, long time ago.”

  Movement in front of her. The air currents changed. It was coming closer.

  “I hate to leave you, but you really must go, good night Lyd-ia, good niight,” it sang and then it was in front of her and although she still couldn’t see it clearly, she knew what it was and shrieked but the sound never escaped her lips. She drew breath in to try again and it took another step, so close now she could feel its breath on her face and at the next step, it was full into the light and Lydia knew she was dead.

  Chapter 9

  Alex

  The iron gate swung inward easily. The walkway was of cobblestone, as once all these streets must have been, but those days were gone now. Cobblestone roads, like the church itself, were things of the past. Leaves blew around his ankles and he heard the sound of dry crunching under his shoes even over the roar of planes and constant traffic. As always, when he walked the path between the rectory and the church, he felt himself grow calm, whatever trouble in his mind faded. Here was peace.

  Alex crossed the courtyard, dry and dead now, but in a few months the gardens would be a riot of color. Friar Polowski had been an avid gardener. His work blossomed each year and every spring, Alex remembered the priest in one of his homilies.

  The church rose above him, dark and somehow forbidding. Perhaps it was unfair to think of St. Stand’s as forbidding, because in all his travels, he had yet to come across a church that looked welcoming. There was a sense of mystery in the architecture, a solemn awe that transcended from one Catholic Church to another. When he was a child, Alex used to think that St. Stand’s was a castle. When he mentioned his idea to his mother, she had laughed and patted his shoulder. “It is a castle,” she said. “God’s castle.”

  That was back in the days when he believed in such things.

  The brickwork never failed to take his breath away. The windows were long and arched, the stained glass smoky and opaque from this angle. Inside, the aisle would be thick with blue and green color, the brilliant reds and golds seeming strong enough to burn.

  He hesitated at the fork in the path. Left would take him to the side church door, the door used by the priests and nuns serving St. Stand’s faithful. Right would take him around to the back, to the graveyard where parishioners remained for eternity.

  He turned right.

  Morning fog obscured much of the cemetery. He could make out the tallest markers, the ostentatious ones with marble angels blowing horns as if trumpeting the arrival of the newly departed. He could barely make out the worn footpath that snaked between the graves, but he didn’t need to see it. He knew this ground by heart. He’d walked the rows between the dead

  (and he shall come again to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom shall have no end)

  for years and as best he could tell, the last parishioner to be buried in St. Stand’s Catholic Cemetery had been Marion Zaminsky, back in 1926. The graveyard, after that, had been full.

  No more room at the inn

  Alex walked between the markers, letting his mind blank, reading the names as he passed each stone. Litany, ritual…isn’t that what religion was?

  Wladyslaw Polowksi,

  Paul Winters.

  Gladys Yarovitch.

  Marion Zaminsky.

  He angled across the path, walking to the very back of the church’s property, where the oldest crypts were. He stopped at the door of one of them. This was the place where his father should have been. This place, or one like it. Instead, his parents lay waiting for judgment day underground in Revere. When his father died, his mother didn’t have enough money for a headstone. They were poor, even by the reduced standards of those days, and when it came to either buying groceries or a marker for his husband’s grave, his mother had chosen the food.

  And then a great aunt his mother, Nadine, had
never met passed away and left her niece a tidy bundle. Nadine promptly bought a marker for her husband’s plot and she brought Alex there one day, leading him by the hand, even though he was nine and didn’t need to be led.

  His father was buried in an open field, the only plot his mother had been able to afford. She had planted a hedge at the head of the grave.

  Shade, she’d told Alex, Your father always sunburned so easily. As if his father’s body was capable of such things now, and the marker, pink granite, was placed right in front of the widening yew. At first, Alex couldn’t bear to look down at the headstone because to see his father’s name there would be like burying him all over again. But his mother squeezed his hand and motioned him forward.

  “Go on,” she said, “Say hello to Papa.”

  So he took a step and then he couldn’t go any further because his feet failed him.

  “Alex?” his mother’s voice sounded far away. “What is it? Don’t you like the stone?”

  Unable to speak, Alex pointed.

  His father’s name, Vladyjian Soklovitch was in the capital letters and under that 1927-1968 had been chiseled and under that he read

  Nadine Soklovitch

  1932-

  “What is it?” his mother asked again, and this time her voice was sharp, a sign she was alarmed.

  “Your name,” he managed to say. “They put your name there, Mama.”

  His mother laughed a little and Alex could hear the relief. “Is that all? Of course my name is there! I will be here with Papa someday.”

  “But why did they put your name there now? You’re not--” he stopped because the thought had just occurred to him and his chest snapped closed again. It was so hard to breathe, so hard to draw a breath into his lungs and let it out, it took so much effort. “Are you going to die too, Mama?”

  She laughed again and took him in her arms even though he was nine and too old to be hugged by his mother. “Of course I’m going to die. Someday. Just like you. Everybody dies, Alexander. Everybody.”

  Everyone died. Even him.

  “But we’ll see each other again, in Heaven,” his mother was saying and he listened to her now, aware of the scent of her perfume and the feel of her cheek against his.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I said,” she kissed his cheek. “We will see each other again, in Heaven. Papa is only gone from this world, Alexander. He lives in God’s world now.”

  Only Alex hadn’t believed that. Not really. He wasn’t sure if there was such a place as heaven, but if there was, he had to get in. And the only men he knew who could get into heaven, for sure, were priests. They practically had a written guarantee.

  Alex sat on the ground in front of the crypt, picking up a dry leaf and twirling it as he surveyed the landscape around him.

  Wouldn’t the Bishop be surprised to learn I’d entered the priesthood not because I’d been called, but because I wanted to make sure I got into heaven? he thought. And wouldn’t he be even more surprised to learn I don’t believe in heaven anymore. Or God, for that matter.

  After years “serving the Lord,” (his mother’s words), he had come to a basic truth: Heaven was a figment of the church’s imagination. To the faithful flock of St. Stand’s, he was a perfect priest: concerned, compassionate, involved. He’d earned the respect of his neighbors. But it was a farce, because it wasn’t honestly earned.

  The words of the Mass were empty for Alex, as hollow sounding as the names etched in the stones around him. And the words of the funeral Mass, they were the most hollow of all. Try as he might, he could not recall what words he’d used when it was time for him to say prayers for Bo. A part of him had thought – hoped—that he’d be able to find some meaning behind her death, some sense to the whole thing. Was there a plan? A destiny? A divine power? Had it been meant for him to stand before an open grave, his cassock billowing in the breeze, the scent of roses washing over him in the rain as he read words of scripture for Bo?

  No.

  There was no meaning.

  There was no heaven. No hell. This time, this place, this moment. That’s all there was. And Bo knew that. She understood it. Hadn’t she said so, once?

  Yesterday, when he spoke, he talked of the loss of her. He mourned with the others, those sitting in pews, their eyes red with tears, their cheeks streaked with weeping. He reached down inside himself and mourned with them, because that’s what death was. Loss and pain and never seeing your loved one again.

  Never.

  Alex watched the sun rise over the sleeping city, rays filtering down onto the brown earth. The headstones grew brighter, the ground under him began to warm. When the bells began to peal, he pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his pants.

  He might not believe in heaven or God anymore, but there was one thing Alex did still believe in. Showing the good people of his Parish that he was a good Priest. It was all he had left. Faith, of a sort, in himself.

  He walked back the way he had come, reading the headstones in reverse.

  Marion.

  Paul.

  Gladys.

  It was time for 7:00 Mass.

  Chapter 10

  Lucien

  The priest passed within a few feet of Darcy. She huddled under the shrub, pulling the worn green blanket over her shoulders. She knew it was the priest because she could see the bottom of his black chinos and his polished black shoes. She stayed perfectly still until she couldn’t hear the echo of his footsteps anymore.

  He was a meddler.

  As far as Darcy was concerned, the world was broken down into two categories: Meddlers and simple-minded fools. The priest was definitely a meddler. He’d come across her four times already this year and each time he acted as if he were seeing her sorry ass for the first time. He told her she was welcome to sleep in the church basement, they had a cot down there, but she’d have to give up her bottle first.

  Fat chance of that, she told him.

  The bottle was all she had left and she said as much to the tall man with the gray eyes. He stared down at her, his expression kind (they were always kind, the meddlers, but that didn’t make their brand of medicine any easier to swallow, thank you very much). He was sad, too, and for some reason, that made Darcy angry and she told the priest to shove his compassion where the sun don’t shine.

  Compassion, he’d replied. Rather a complicated word to use, isn’t it?

  He didn’t say “for the likes of someone like you.” He didn’t have to. He was like all the other meddlers. So sure he knew what her problem was and how to solve it. So sure she had started her life at the bottom of the heap and that’s where she’d end her days.

  A lot he knew.

  She’d gone to college, had her Master’s Degree, had a fancy job and a handsome husband. And then her husband, Lionel his name was, took to using his hands for more than stroking and his belt for more than holding up his pants and she missed more than a few days of work because there wasn’t enough pancake make-up in all of Chelsea to hide the bruises and cuts.

  She was called down to Personnel on a Wednesday afternoon. She remembered the day of the week perfectly, because Lionel had been on a bender for most of the weekend and he’d finally reached saturation point on Sunday and as always, when Lionel reached saturation, Darcy took the spill-over. It ended as it too often did, with Darcy on the floor, blood mingling with the snot and tears running down her cheeks. When she was finally able to get to her feet and hobble to the bathroom, she saw that he’d done more damage than usual. She didn’t recognize the woman staring back at her.

  Two days she stayed home, the shades drawn, the house dim because maybe then she wouldn’t see the marks on her own flesh, maybe then she could pretend she was fine, everything was fine. On Wednesday, she went back to her fancy office with the awards on the walls, steeling herself against the stares and whispers that followed her from floor to floor.

  The message from Personnel came on a little pink “From the Desk of” memo
pad. She held it in her hand for a long time, knowing that the invite to the downstairs office wasn’t a simple little “hi, how are you doing?” visit.

  She cleaned out her office before taking the elevator, her mind carefully blank as she wrapped up the glass paperweight with the dandelion inside, the picture of Lionel, the lettered bookends and then, as an afterthought, she tossed in the nameplate that read “Darcy Ann Wood.”

  Some part of her knew it was the last time she’d see her name on the edge of a desk.

  She’d been offered a seat in the Human Resources office by a heavy set woman of about 35 or so. The heavy girl’s name was Monique, a name that surprised Darcy even through her numbness. Monique twittered when she talked, she fidgeted, she looked everywhere but at Darcy. Darcy stared at the heavy woman, barely registering the words “-absenteeism, ” “four warnings” and “company policy.” She stared at the woman, waiting for Monique to look at her, really look at her, and when the woman finally did, Darcy was so taken aback she almost gasped.

  The fat woman had tears in her eyes.

  Big, fat, tears, just waiting for an excuse to roll down her pudgy cheeks. Monique laced her fingers together so tight that her knuckles turned white and she said in a shaking voice, “I am just so sorry. More sorry than you can ever know.” Her eyes traveled over Darcy’s face, lingering over the swollen nose, bruised eyes, the cut on her chin, even the finger marks on Darcy’s neck and Darcy felt something inside her gut twist, then snap.

  It wasn’t the shame so much. It wasn’t the humiliation that came with letting a man hit her, or the feeling that she’d brought it on herself. It was the woman’s tears.

  Tears?? Darcy thought, Tears?? What gives her the right to cry?

  The woman was talking, but Darcy didn’t hear a word because the rage was building inside her and for the first time, she thought she understood a part of what Lionel felt.

  She wanted to hit the bitch.

  She wanted to wipe the compassionate, trembling look right off of the sniveling face. She wanted to beat the living snot out of two-ton Annie and when she finished, she wanted to beat her some more.