Trace the Dead Eye

by Steven D. Bennett

CHAPTER TWENTY

  ENTER KENYA

  For reasons that made no sense, I had to see Teresa. She was the only person I could stand being around. Or maybe I just needed to be with someone worse off than me.

  Since her circuitous route contained little variance, it wouldn't be difficult tracking her down. And the walk would give me time to sort things out.

  Why was Jim trying to get money from Tina?

  I had put that question off as long as possible. The idea that he could have anything but the most remote contact with my family brought a mixture of rage and disgust, both of which needed to be restrained if I was to be any help to my family.

  I could understand Jim extorting money from Hewitt, for Hewitt had a reason to pay. He had hired Jim to kill me. But what could Jim possibly say to Tina that would induce her to give him a dime?

  Pay me or everyone will know your husband was cheating on you.

  Who would care? An interesting five minutes on the local news, but there was no upside in that revelation. And it was a guaranteed ticket to jail. Tina might not appreciate the world knowing her husband was a bum, but personally she had accepted it years before and her family already suspected. Tyler wouldn't understand any of it for years.

  Tyler.

  That might explain Tina's fear. Knowing he killed me, she might be afraid of what he would do next. Had he threatened to harm Tyler if she didn't pay?

  Jim was, in essence, running his own protection racket. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as I thought. He saw Hewitt as an endless outlet for money, Teresa a steady outlet for money, and maybe Tina as a third. All he had to do was sit and collect and smoke his life away.

  There were more truths, I realized, lying underneath the surface. Some I had already discovered, but I needed to see them without emotion or bias.

  Jim had killed me. That was true.

  Brent Hewitt had paid him to do so. Also true.

  Jim was now squeezing Hewitt for more money. True.

  Hewitt had to pay to avoid police involvement. Another truth.

  Jim was extorting money from Tina. True.

  She had recognized him when he had driven by our house, so she had seen him before. That was truth.

  She was afraid when she saw him; he represented danger. That was truth.

  But why?

  There were possibilities.

  Jim had contacted her and told her he was the one responsible for my death. He then threatened to do the same to her unless she came up with the cash. That was possible, though unlikely. He told her I owed him money and had killed me when I refused to pay, and was now going to settle the bill with his widow. That was possible. Also unlikely.

  Tina was no pushover and fear was a temporary de-motivator. She knew from my experiences that most criminals crumble at the least resistance. She would have seen through Jim, no matter what the threat, and called the police. She wasn’t the type to let anyone rule her life for ten minutes, let alone keep her in a state of fear for weeks. There was something missing.

  ‘Money, Tyler. Tyler, money.’

  Those two words kept coming back. They had been moving through Tina’s mind since my death, so somewhere in there was the answer. Since Jim knew where I’d lived he would have known about Tina and, hence, Tyler. A threat to Tina would amount to nothing. A threat to Tyler might bring fearful stagnation.

  That had to be the only reason for Tina to behave the way she did. But I had to know for sure.

  Teresa was, predictably, walking on the shady side, head down, making the rounds. There were intermittent honks, a few double takes of interest, but she was trudging, not trolling, waiting for another day to end. At this rate a hundred bucks would be long in the making.

  I matched her stride and touched her mind briefly. The last time she had seen Jim was when I had, and she was in no hurry to see him again. She was tired. Her head hurt. She was hungry. And there was something else.

  She was embarrassed because she didn't think she looked pretty.

  I would have laughed if it weren't so sad. Here was a beat-up, strung-out whore, living trick by trick, and her big concern was her appearance. I was stunned. But it led me to do something I hadn't done before. It made me take a good, long look at her.

  There was a bruise on the left side of her face I hadn't noticed before. One of the many, I figured, throughout her career. There were scratches on her face and arms, and I guess I hadn’t noticed them before either. She had applied a foundation of makeup, trying to cover them, and some mascara in an attempt to appear sexy or human. Her eyelashes looked good, I decided, and her eyebrows a nice natural tone, not like the plucked-thin or clownish drawn-on eyebrows some thought attractive. She had a natural beauty, and when she looked up suddenly at the sound of children laughing on the playground nearby, she smiled. It wasn’t bad, that smile, even nice in a way. Pleasant. Not the one she forced on her lips. This one made her look young, maybe even close to her actual age. It lightened her face and gave it a kind of glow.

  Her face was roundish in shape, her cheekbones high, and her chin soft. Her eyes were dark and brown, of course, but still clear, still colorful, and those colors were rich. I wondered as I watched them move back and forth, surveying the world around, what they saw when they looked in the mirror.

  The eyebrows rose as a woman walked toward us. It was the old woman from before, Kenya, and Teresa’s smile was genuine as they met.

  "Honey, you don't look good," Kenya said to her. "You been beat up." It was not a question.

  Teresa shrugged. "Some. Not much."

  "Some is too much."

  "I'm okay. You know how it is."

  "Yeah, I know. Want to walk?"

  Teresa shook her head.

  "Me neither. Gettin' too old. Let's sit."

  We were standing next to a chain link fence which separated us from the elementary school play yard. They sat while I leaned, then I folded my legs and sat with them. A bell rang and children appeared on the grass behind us, yelling, laughing, lifetimes to be lived.

  "Yeah, gettin' too old," Kenya repeated. "Not like you. You've got a whole lifetime to be lived.”

  I opened my eyes and gave the woman a sharp look. I scanned her face, but there was nothing I hadn’t seen before.

  "I don't think I want it," Teresa said.

  "That's when you know you're young. Get my age, you'd take it. Any amount of days in the past, you'd take 'em all."

  Teresa shrugged.

  "Them," Kenya said, indicating the children, "that's the only time to live, the best time. Young, innocent. Once that's gone there's no going back. The trick is never letting it go."

  Never too old to talk tricks, I noticed.

  "I can't remember that far back."

  "It's a different time, then," the woman said. "It's the time of life God protects you most, I think. Not that you don't go through hard times. My daddy used to slap me plenty when he'd drink. But kids can go through things that would kill someone grown. That's how God protects 'em."

  "I wish," Teresa said, "he'd protect me now. If I could live life all over again, I wouldn't. I feel so old."

  "But you ain't. How old are you?"

  "I don't remember."

  "No one forgets that, 'cept on purpose."

  "Twenty-six."

  "Twenty-six is nothing. But you won't see twenty-seven you keep like this."

  "You did."

  The woman laughed. "Got lucky, maybe. We didn't have the same things you do now. Only thing we had was strong drink. Now..."

  They were mercifully quiet for a minute. Cars drove by. Children yelled. People aged. The breeze blew softly over my face.

  "Now there's other things that can change you from the inside and make you old. Being on the streets, that changes you. You age quick from that. All the tricks, they age you, if you're lucky enough to not get killed. All the people, the eyes looking, judging. People age you by just being. Believe me, we don't need any help in getting older. Things change enough as it
is. This place thirty years ago was a small town. Now look. People everywhere."

  "Did you grow up here?"

  "Nobody grows up here," Kenya said, her laugh becoming a cough. "But I've been here long enough to feel like it. Been everywhere, everywhere there is to go. Seen a lot. Too much, I think. A lot of it good. A lot of it the same things as here just in different places. I guess I don't make much sense. Maybe I've lived too long. A year on the streets is like ten normal. Listen," she said, grabbing Teresa's arm. She leaned over until she was inches from her face. "Don't end up like me. Promise. You don't want to end up like me. I was young once, like you, fresh, clean. It don't take long before the sun bakes the life out of you. Men used to want me for myself, then just for my body, then just for sex. Now they don't want me at all, 'cept in the dark. I don't blame them. But I knowI knowI'm no different now than when I was young. I look out at the world through the eyes of a young girl trapped in this old body and wonder how in the world I got here so fast. And sometimes I can't wait to get out. But I'll do tomorrow what I did yesterday and a hundred yesterdays before, and I'll be glad for it. It's all I've got."

  Teresa nodded through it all and spoke when the woman was finished. "I feel like I died long ago."

  "Parts of you did," she said. "What we do kills us by pieces. But part of you screams against it. It's telling you to get out before it's too late."

  "Out, out," Teresa said. "You're the second person who's told me that. There is no out."

  "There is," Kenya whispered. "I've seen it. I've seen people get away. If you had a chance, would you?"

  There was a long silence as Kenya looked intently at Teresa who was looking off into nothing but nodding at it just the same.

  "Yes."

  "Where would you go?"

  "Away."

  "Where?"

  "Anywhere."

  "There must be a place."

  "Home."

  "I remember. You told me before. Where's home?"

  "I..." she started. "I don't even know if they're alive."

  "Who? Your parents?"

  "Yes," she said, still nodding.

  "Would you go home if you could?"

  Teresa's head stopped moving. "I don't know. I've thought more about that in the last few weeks than I ever have. I want to. But I don't."

  "Why not?"

  She shook her head.

  "Scared?"

  She nodded.

  "Of what?"

  "Look at me. What would they say? What could I say?"

  Kenya laughed. "You've never had kids, have you? Baby, they'd look right past that. If not at first, then later and for all times. They'd see right back to how you were way back when."

  "What if they couldn't?"

  "Well, what if they couldn't? Nobody ever died from being seen as how they are. Funny, I hear people say all the time, 'If only I could see my mother one last time' or my brother or sister. Both my parents been gone twenty years, both of them. They weren't the best, but they did their best. I'd give all the rest of my years to see them one last time. Nothing else, just to see them, look them over alive for a few minutes. But I can't.

  "Suppose you saw your folks and it didn't work out? Suppose they didn't want you back? Girl, I'd give it all just for that, just to look in my father's face one last time, even if it was just to call him all the bad names I called him before."

  They laughed together.

  "You need to go home," Kenya said.

  "What about Jim?"

  "Is he the one who beats you?"

  "Not always."

  "The one who gives you drugs and keeps you hooked on the street." It wasn't a question.

  Teresa said nothing.

  "Is that him?"

  "It wasn't always like that," she said. "There was a time when there was more."

  "What changed?"

  "He got hurt. Construction work. He fell. They said he might never walk again. He did, and it was a miracle, but he was always in pain. Then there were painkillers..." she trailed off. "After a while we needed money."

  "So you hustled."

  "Yeah."

  "And you hate it."

  "Yeah."

  "And him."

  "No."

  Kenya smiled. "I'm glad you don't. You still need to leave."

  "I can't."

  "You have to."

  "After all this time," Teresa said, "I can't just leave."

  "You have to."

  "I can't."

  "Then he'll drag you down with him."

  Teresa looked at her, then got to her feet. "I have to go back. He needs help. I have to try, at least one time."

  Kenya stood with her, slower, and so did I. Teresa grabbed her arm. "Then go. If you truly believe you can help, you have to try. He’s there now, waiting for you. But do it soon."

  "What? How do you know? And why soon?"

  Kenya said: "Because you never know when your chance is coming."

  "Chance for what?"

  "To go home."

  "I don't understand."

  She touched Teresa's cheek. "We all get a chance. Sometimes even a second or third. Sometimes the next one is the last, but we don't know until it’s gone. Take the next chance."

  The woman turned and walked slowly past the school as young feet ran by swiftly by on the other side of the fence. She raised her hand in final farewell like a raggedy scarecrow before disappearing around the corner.