The One That Got Away

by Joe Clifford

  “They think they can do any goddamn thing they please. Vultures. I know my rights. I’m gonna lawyer up.”

  “Do you know where we can find Cole?” Alex asked. “Since our editor told us to talk to him.”

  “Don’t know what anyone would want to talk to him for. Damn fool has water on the brain. I had to fire him. Showed up here Friday, could barely stand.”

  “You have an address?”

  “Got one of those trailers by the turnpike.” Evie Shuman thumbed out the window. “He’s at the bar most the time though. Man seems intent drinking hisself to death.”

  “Any bar in particular?”

  “Try the ones down by the river.”

  “What was wrong with Benny?” Alex said.

  “What you mean what’s wrong with Benny? He’s a retard.”

  “You said he was really good at fixing things, and if he worked here, he must’ve been able to follow instructions. I’m just wondering what his actual diagnosis was?”

  “How the hell should I know? Ask Lawson.”

  “Lawson?”

  “His doctor. What’s this got to do with that imminent domain you was talkin’ about?”

  “Thanks. I think that’s enough for now.” Alex backhanded Nick’s shoulder, their cue to leave.

  “Don’t you want some documentation or somethin’?” Evie started to walk into an adjacent closet. “I got all the letters they sent.”

  “We have everything we need,” Alex said with a smile.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The nighttime changeover at Galloway usually went off without a hitch. Part of the reason Tracy Karas liked the late shift so much, the stillness. During the day, patients got riled up. Especially during thunderstorms. They’d wail and thrash in their seats, fighting against the restraints. Then you’d have to sedate them. Nighttime, though, was a different story. The institute aggressively applied phototherapy, using light to combat sleep disorders, implementing phase advances, delays. Doctors at Galloway believed a good night’s sleep was the first line of defense against neuroses. Worked out well for Tracy. By the time she got there, natural circadian rhythms had kicked in, all fight drained out. Like baby lambs. Tracy was taking abnormal psyche classes at North State. Part-time, one class a semester, which was all she could afford. But she’d been steady about it, consistent. That’s the key to anything in life. Consistency and technique. She’d already earned her associate’s this way, and in another three, four years, she’d have her bachelor’s. Then she’d apply for a job far from this place.

  Tonight when she slid her security card, Dontrelle, the ex-baller with the bum knee, hopped up, happy to see her, a little too happy, waving both arms from the observation desk.

  “Enjoy your weekend?” she said.

  “Guess who I caught running around causing trouble while you was gone?”

  Tracy set down her reusable mesh bag, which contained her e-reader, textbooks, and tonight’s special: week-old meatloaf. Tasted like brick and poverty. She wasn’t in the mood for riddles or progress reports on psychopaths. Plus, Dontrelle was full of shit. Most of these men were strapped in twenty-four seven. No one was running anywhere.

  Tracy hoisted a dense textbook out of her bag, so thick it made Infinite Jest look like a pamphlet. “I have a lot of studying—”

  “Benny Brudzienski.”

  Benny Brudzienski didn’t have to be restrained. Because he couldn’t move. He had to be rolled over hourly to rotate bedsores. The large man had been this way so long, he’d loss most of his muscle mass. Anytime you sat him upright in a chair, he resembled Jell-O devoid of a mold, absorbing into the contour.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Honest Injun.” Dontrelle raised his hand, and grabbed Tracy by the sleeve, tugging her toward the window. “Put him there. Come back later.” Dontrelle pointed five feet away. “He here.”

  Tracy wrinkled her nose. Dontrelle always smelled like weed. She didn’t care if he was getting high on the job—she wasn’t his boss—but he had to be blitzed out of his skull if he thought Benny Brudzienski had moved.

  “Like De Niro shit,” Dontrelle said. “Y’know, that movie where all the patients wake up at once? Was on TV the other night. I forget the name.”

  “Awakenings.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

  Tracy walked across the floor, to Benny Brudzienski’s room. She peered through the little window in the door. Dontrelle came up behind her.

  “And I wasn’t high,” he said. “I mean that high.”

  Tracy stared inside Benny’s room. Moonlight shone through the window, brightening his blank, doughy face. She didn’t like looking at him. He slept with his eyes open. Freaked her out. Of course she never unlocked the door to check to see if he was actually sleeping. For all she knew, he could be awake the whole time.

  BENNY BRUDZIENSKI

  I have not been cleaning the football fields, or doing any of my other jobs in town. I have been staying at the farm, even though I am not wanted. Dad will not let me help. They could use my help because money has been a problem since Wren came home and Mom got sicker. Mom does not get out of the bed much these days.

  Wren cannot keep playing football because they are not paying him to play football anymore. I hear them fighting in the kitchen when I come home. I am surprised to see Wren because he usually does not come home during the season. Dad and Wren are yelling. Mom is there too but she is not talking. I sit on the stairs and listen. I do not mean to spy. No one notices me half the time, no matter how big I am. So maybe I am not doing anything wrong after all.

  The school said Wren can keep playing but they cannot pay him because they have to use the money for new players. Dad says he will find a way to pay the school. Wren says he cannot afford to do that. Wren is right. We have a big farm but it does not bring in the money we need. I overhear Dad talking to men from the bank. They want to buy the land. Dad says it belongs to the family. Wren says he will help out. I want to help too. But they do not let me. They do not trust me to do a good job. I wish they did. I am still ox-strong. I can lift and move things around the farm as good as any machine.

  Later I try to tell Dad this when he is alone in the kitchen, drinking from his special bottle, but the words do not come, and every time I try the sounds get jumbled in my throat. They stumble over my tongue and spill out in grumbles and moans. He says, “Not now, Benny. Not now.” I want to tell him that Wren should go back to school and I should stop working for men like Mr. Supinski and Mr. Miano because they do not pay what I am worth. Let me help the family. Our family, our farm. I can see Dad wants to be left alone, I should leave him alone, but I want him to know I can help out too. He pays men to do the same things I can do for free. I cannot drive tractors or plows but I can lift heavy things, grain and feed, like I used to lift those pieces of firewood, back when Dad and Mom were proud of me. I do not mean to make Dad angry. It is my fault when he balls his fist and punches the side of my head. I am hard to move. He wants me to leave. He does not punch me hard.

  I see the way the men punch the cows when they have to get them down. It is not out of anger but necessity. It does not hurt. Even when Dad does it again. I will stand here until he hears me. But I am not talking. I am hoping he will understand my thoughts. I am his first-born boy. That must mean something. I am still his son. When I try to hug him, he pushes me away. When I come back he hits me harder. This time he plants his foot and drives his fist deep up into my gut. He punches the side of my head like those men punching steer. It is not his fault. It is the bottle. I know what is in there. I have smelled it on his breath, sour and rotten. I have smelled it on Wren’s breath, and on Mrs. Shuman’s breath, even Kira’s. People drink it to not feel pain, but it seems to make them hurt more. It can make people mean too. That is why Dad is doing this. Pushing me away, calling me names, hitting me. He is a good man. He loves his family and wants to provide for them. He keeps pushing, and I k
eep putting up my hands. I try to wrap my arms around him. I want to tell him it will be okay because he is crying the whole time he is hitting me and I do not want to see him hurting. I open my mouth to speak but the harder I try the louder I moan. This makes him wind up and hit me harder. It is okay, Dad, I say in my brain. You can hit me. I cannot feel anything. Even when my legs buckle and I fall to the ground, I keep trying to speak, tell him it is okay.

  “Why did you have to born?” Dad says. “Why couldn’t you be like other boys?” He is crying so hard he barely gets these last words out, and for once we are the same.

  The next day I look at my big, swollen face in the mirror, and the telephone rings. I hear Dad whispering over the line. He is upset about more than Wren and football and me stuttering. Sick. Cancer. Hospital costs. I understand Mom is dying. The white skin, the dark circles, the sadness when she pats me on the head. Everything is changing, like the seasons switching over. The drafty old house gets colder like the house can feel it too. She is leaving us, and there is nothing we can do.

  I hear Dad talk about selling the farm to those men. I have never heard Mom raise her voice, but she does tonight. She makes Dad promise he will not sell. She says the land is for the boys, Dan, Wren, and Ben. It has been a long time since anyone has called me Ben. Back when they thought I was a regular boy, they called me Ben. When they discovered I was broken, I became Benny.

  I refuse to go to work. I will let not Dad touch me or put me in the truck and bring me to the rail yard. I do not peddle my bicycle to the football field anymore. I stay in my room and wail when anyone comes near me. Dad thinks it is because he hit me, but I do not blame him for that. When he was finished the other night, he knelt beside me to help me up and was crying so hard. He let me hug him and he hugged me back. He kept saying, “I’m sorry, Benny. I’m sorry.” I was not angry then. I am not angry now.

  I watch the men out in the drying fields. There are less of them, thinning out like the dying herd. I understand why Dad does not let me help around the farm. Seeing me out there reminds him of his failure, so they rent me out for pennies, let me do the grunt work of strangers so they do not have to look at me. This is why I am upset. But I cannot tell anyone this. The frustration eats away at my insides. The days pass this way. Wren and Dad fight because of football and school. Dan is at class with Kira, and I miss her. I take the pictures she gave me, the poems I cannot read, and make a book. Mom does not look well. I stay in my room, close my eyes, and hope to make these problems go away.

  The first snowfall comes early, around Thanksgiving. Wren does not go back to school. He moves into his old room. I do not leave mine. After a while, no one remembers I am there.

  When the end comes, it comes fast. They take her away.

  Dad used to say I could crush the life out of a cow. I never knew if that was true. I never thought of trying. But sometimes, on these dark days, I think about going down to the killing fields to try. I want to crush the life out of something to see if I can.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Nick brought Alex to get her car in the morning. They’d spent the previous night searching for Cole Denning, scouring the sleazy bars along the waterfront, staking out his mobile home. They’d deliberately avoided Sweetwater. The search proved exhausting, disheartening, leaving a thousand unanswered questions whirling around Alex’s mixed-up mind.

  “What are you going to do?” Nick asked, handing her the keys he’d retrieved from inside the garage, where Uncle Jimmy barked about a delayed shipment into an old-fashioned landline.

  “What was the name of that doctor Evie Shuman mentioned at the motel?”

  “Why do you want to talk to Benny Brudzienski’s doctor?”

  “Lawson,” Alex said, answering herself.

  “Even if you can hunt him down—even if he is still in town—no doctor is going to talk to you. You know that, right? Not without the family’s approval. Doctor/patient confidentiality.”

  In the yard, hulls and casings peeled off machinery like damp matchbook covers. Shredded tires stacked high in a pyre, awaiting the flame.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Nick said, slipping a house key off his ring. “But you look like shit. Kick back at my place. Watch some mindless TV. I’ll be back later this afternoon. If you want we can go down to the narrows together, pick up where we left off, hunt down Cole, all right?”

  A trash barge floated by, big white birds dive-bombing breakfast.

  “Promise me you won’t go looking for Cole on your own.”

  “I can take care of myself. It was two on one last time. That won’t happen again.”

  “Just promise me. Please.”

  “Fine,” Alex said, snatching the key.

  Back at Nick’s place, she tried to unwind, let her brain go limp. She knew he was right. She was worn down, torn apart. Even after Nick gave up his bed last night and took the couch, she hadn’t slept well, the night too cold, apartment too hot. She flipped, flopped. The gray-scape clawed behind her eyelids, calling her back to hell.

  Curled beneath the comforter, Alex flicked on the television, hoping to catch an episode of Law & Order because nothing killed the hours faster. He only had basic cable. Even with the TV off and overcast skies, it was still too damn bright.

  Alex snatched her phone and did a quick search of every doctor in the area named Lawson. A long shot and no doubt waste of time. Except that she hit on a Dr. John Lawson in Reine right away. Just the one. Called the number. Disconnected. Scrolling pages, she learned the private practice had closed years ago, the doctor retired, but she got his home address. Stratford Road. Up in Schenectady.

  Alex hated that city almost as much as she did Reine. Schenectady was where her mother grew up, making it the place where everything started to go wrong. She thought about calling first but decided she’d have better luck in person. She didn’t want to confuse the old guy or have to shout. Subtracting the practice’s inception to its closure, Lawson had to be pushing eighty by now.

  As Alex shifted the Civic in gear, she felt that creeping sensation return, like someone was watching her. When she turned around she found the same banks of passenger-less cars, pulled along the curb. A mailman pushed a cart, cruising the block in shorts and high socks despite the frigid temperature. She tried to shake off the creeping malaise. Like with Benny Brudzienski’s haunting gaze, she had a tough time.

  The drive from Reine to Schenectady was a short trip, fewer than thirty miles. Denise had dragged her there plenty when she was a kid, back when her mother still had family in the area willing to house them for a night, relatives dumb enough to loan Denise money they’d never see again. Alex couldn’t recollect the names of these people, second cousins, distant aunts, gray-faced, scraggily strangers she wouldn’t recognize if she passed them on the street. What she remembered most were the expressions of disgust when they opened the door, the disdain her mother’s mere presence invited.

  Less than thirty miles took more than sixty minutes. Morning traffic trudged, everything damp, dreary, drawn out. Alex could do nothing to pass the time except smoke and think about all the bad decisions she’d made in her life. She kept checking the rearview, waiting for headlights to rise up like the night Tommy fetched her from the insane asylum. She reassured herself that all the monsters were locked up. None roamed free. But each cigarette only augmented the lunacy.

  The doctor lived in a part of Schenectady called The Plot, one of the oldest and most desirable sections in the city. The name derived from the early 1900s, when General Electric designed subdivisions for its executives to live in. There weren’t liquor stores on every corner, no hit-and-run vigils with flowers, candles, balloons tied to mangy teddy bears missing an eye. Just quiet streets with strategically placed trees concealing two-car garages and three-story houses. This was a part of town Denise never had reason to be in.

  Alex sat in her car. No one peeled curtains. No nosy housewives peeked out blinds wondering w
hat the tatted girl in the crappy car was doing in their cozy community. But she still felt self-conscious.

  Alex ground out her smoke in the ashtray. Normally she’d flick the butt in the street but the neighborhood was so pristine, with its fenced-off plots of green grass, ornate flowerbeds, and unique mailboxes, she didn’t want to sully the illusion.

  Dr. John Lawson answered the door. Slight and frail, he might’ve been closer to ninety than eighty. But his face was kind, warm, and welcoming. Unlike when she was dealing with Evie Shuman, or anyone else back in Reine, Alex experienced no hostility or aggression; therefore, she saw no reason to lie.

  “I was hoping to speak with you about Benny Brudzienski.” Even after Alex acknowledged doctor/patient confidentiality, the doctor brushed aside any such concerns, inviting her inside.

  “I’m not practicing medicine anymore,” Dr. Lawson said, shuffling to the kitchen. “It’s been a long time since I was the Brudzienskis’ family doctor. After everything that happened, I’m not sure it would matter. Can I offer you some coffee? Tea?”

  “Coffee would be great. Thank you.”

  Lawson told her to sit down at the breakfast nook while he poured a cup from a pot already made. The house was immaculate, organized, and homey. The only thing out of place: a newspaper on the table that the doctor had been reading when she showed up, pair of glasses upended atop the world news.

  “My wife passed away three years ago,” the doctor said, bringing Alex a mug, along with a tiny spout of half-and-half and bowl of sugar with miniature spoon.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said, because that’s what you say when someone tells you their wife has died and they live alone, waiting for their own end to come.

  But he dismissed those concerns, too. “Been a long time.” He slowly creaked into the seat opposite her, a bleached-white wooden chair with pastel cushions tied around the back. The sort of accouterment only an old person would have. No one under seventy adds pastel cushions to their kitchen chairs. “Now what can I do for you?”