All the wires were smooth. Ben stood and kicked the center of the pile, scattering the metal strings across the floor. He looked at the baler, at the wretched colossus, scaled in sour green. A tribal king scarified with the symbol of his god. He looked at it for a long time. Then he stooped and pinched a wire from the ground; it skidded faintly across the concrete as Ben walked toward the machine.
Ben could feel the eyeless stare of the moonchild watching him and watching the dull end of the wire as it bobbled in the air. Good, it seemed to say. Finally.
This wasn’t stupid. Not any stupider than Eric’s tape. And that was real. This was the point. Something would happen, like a key in a lock. Something would happen.
The wire scraped against the glyph and the world seemed unaware.
Ben sighed and gathered the rest of the cables, then fed them back into the tube.
In the body of the store, the phone in Customer Service was ringing again. Ben breathed with annoyance and began walking toward the sound. It wasn’t all that unusual to get calls after the store was closed, but never three in one night. When Ben was almost halfway to the counter, the ringing stopped and so did Ben.
“Idiot,” he said.
Then a phone behind him rang, and Ben felt a kind of hum at the base of his skull. The ringing sounded like it was coming from the deli. As quickly as he could manage, Ben hustled back toward that department, pushing his way through the swinging doors and into a room he’d never been in. Not knowing where the phone was, Ben followed the sound.
On the wall, just before the entrance to the area behind the deli case, the phone blared. Ben let it ring two more times before he answered.
“We’re closed,” Ben said. No one replied, but Ben lingered. He could hear the faint hiss of an open line. “Call back at six.” After a second or two of silence, Ben hung up.
The phone rang again.
Ben yanked the handset from the hook and pressed it against his ear. He pressed hard, as if it might help him hear better.
“Hello?” a young voice said.
“Hi,” Ben replied. “We’re closed for the night.”
“Um. Is there…”
“Is there what?”
“Who is this?” the voice whispered.
“Who is this?” Ben replied, whispering without meaning to. “I work here.” He checked his watch. A little past three. “We closed at midnight.”
“I’m not supposed to use this.” In the background there were hushed mutterings that weren’t meant for Ben. He tried but failed to pull them from the hiss of the phone.
“A little late for you to be up, huh? Who’re you tryin to call?”
“I think he tricked me,” the voice said. “I’m gonna get in trouble.”
“You—” Ben started, but the line died. He waited awhile before placing the handset back on the dock.
32
Ben hadn’t seen Bill Palmer enter the store, so when Bill’s voice droned out a summons through the overhead speakers, Ben sighed and looked to the wide windows of the man’s office. He knew that Palmer could see him, was probably watching him right at that moment. That there was no way to get out of going upstairs.
Palmer’s eyes stayed fixed on the papers in front of him as he waved Ben inside. The bottom of the door scraped against the floor. Ben had really done a number on it. In the small amount of time since Marty’s accident, a dull, ragged arc had been etched into the tile by the corner of the broken door.
Ben took a chair and sat silently. He checked his watch and let his eyes lose focus on Palmer’s mad pen, scribbling away on pieces of paper. The man seemed to be in no hurry. A few more minutes passed before Palmer leaned back and took off his glasses.
“So, the wire,” Palmer said. “The one that got Marty. You said that it just up and popped. Just like that?”
“Yessir,” Ben said.
Palmer pinched a spot between his eyes, wobbling his glasses. “I know one of you screwed up. You or Frank or Marty. Hell, maybe even all of you together in some massive collaborative fuckup. But there ain’t no way in hell that wire just snapped like that. Okay? That’s what I know.”
Ben didn’t respond.
“I already talked to Frank. He told me that it was you. Now, I don’t think I need to explain just how serious something like this is. So I wanted to give you the chance to get something wrote down. I need you to write down exactly what happened and who messed up so that we can get this all taken care of.”
“I already told the police what happened. That it was an accident.”
“And that’s fine. They won’t ever see this. This is strictly internal.”
“You want me to write down that it was Frank?”
“No. I want you to write down whoever it was,” Palmer said, placing a piece of paper and a pen in front of Ben atop a seemingly mindless arrangement of other papers. “I know Marty was a reckless kid, that he was standin in front of that bale just like you’re not supposed to.” After a moment, Palmer added, “This won’t affect anything having to do with Marty or his family or anything like that.”
“Can I see what Frank wrote?”
“No.”
“You show me what Frank wrote,” Ben said, shifting in his chair, “and I’ll write you somethin.”
“I never said Frank wrote anything. I said I talked to him.”
“So you just want something written from me?”
Palmer pushed the paper closer to Ben, who for no reason at all remembered that he needed to pick up cake mix for that night.
“Here,” Palmer said, placing another sheet of paper in front of Ben. “This might help you get started.”
This page had writing on it. Scratchy to the point of near illegibility, it looked like Palmer’s hand. Ben struggled through the first few sentences, but it wasn’t long before he’d read all he needed to. Ben chuckled with disgust. “You want me to say it was Marty?” Ben shoved the papers back toward his boss. “I ain’t gonna do that. This ain’t on anybody but you and that machine.”
“I ain’t askin you to lie,” Palmer said. “But I know what happened wasn’t just some fluke.”
“What? You think we was playin around? Seein how crazy we could get with that old piece of shit?”
“We made thousands of bales here, and the machine worked fine all the way up to and including now. Them wires is all the same. You boys are the only things in this equation that ain’t reliable.”
Ben offered nothing but an exaggerated shrug. It seemed like Palmer was trying to wait him out, which was fine with Ben, since he was on the clock. They stared at each other across the desk in silence. Then Palmer reached for his phone.
“Beverly to the office, please. Beverly to the office.”
Ben’s brow furrowed. Tapping his knuckles against his knee, Ben considered Palmer. Beverly hadn’t even been in the room for the accident. She’d shown up after it was all over and done with, after the police had talked to everyone. But maybe none of that mattered. What was one more lie on the “strictly internal” report? And what was one more oversight for James Duchaine? Fuck.
From the corridor, Ben could hear Beverly humming. The notes sounded a bit sour, but it was the same tune she carried with her wherever she was. She stopped in the doorway, flour dusting her hands and forearms like ash.
“C’mon in,” Palmer said. He slipped his glasses off, exposing the bright, painful craters the pads had left on the bridge of his nose. “You got anything in the oven, Beverly? Anything gonna catch fire?”
“No. I had just pulled the racks out when you called for me.”
“That’s good.” Palmer gestured that the woman should take the seat next to Ben. “The other stuff’s already baked?”
“It is,” she said after a moment.
“It comes that way, right?”
Be
verly stared at Palmer, her eyes fixed despite the tremors in her head.
“You two are friends, right?” Palmer asked.
Ben and Beverly looked at each other but didn’t respond.
“C’mon now. You two talk in the mornings, sometimes even after Ben here clocks out. So let’s all be friends and talk. What have you two been doing?” When there was no response, Palmer sighed. “Let’s try it this way.” He turned toward Ben. “You never had a CD player. I don’t know what you was really in here for when you said it got stolen, but I know you been back in here since, and I ain’t talkin about when you broke my damn door.” Palmer skipped his fingers along the scattered paperwork. “I know where every single piece of paper goes.”
“That ain’t true,” Ben said, clearing his throat. “I ain’t been up here.” Even as he made the claim, Ben knew it didn’t sound convincing.
“Beverly, what do you guys talk about? All those chitchats in the morning.”
The woman shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Just things. Whatever comes up.”
Palmer sifted through some papers and retrieved one, placing it in front of Beverly. “This ever come up?”
Ben’s heart fluttered.
“That’s his brother’s flyer,” Beverly said.
“Yes, I know,” Palmer said patronizingly. He swept his hands out to invite more words that never came. “You ever see Ben hand these out in the store?”
The woman shook her head. “Not that I recall.”
“I never did that,” Ben snapped. “I never handed not one flyer out here.”
“That’s real interesting, cuz I been finding them. All over.” Palmer exhaled through his nose. “Well, someone’s gonna have to say something here. C’mon now. You two are friends. You get along. Chat with each other. Help each other. Bev, you even made Ben a birthday cake the other day, ain’t that right?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Beverly said. “I don’t know what any of this is,” she added, gesturing to the room itself and all its confounding accusations.
“Alright, let me ask a simpler question.” Palmer set the papers down and looked at them with his swollen, muddy eyes. “Who paid for the cake?”
Ben felt his stomach fall into his bowels.
“Who paid for the cake?” he repeated. “I know it wasn’t you, Ben. I watched you walk right out with it.”
“It was a gift,” Beverly said. “For a birthday.”
Palmer didn’t reply.
“I can pay for it,” Beverly added after some delay. “I shoulda done that anyhow. I can go do that right now.”
Palmer’s chair squeaked as he leaned back. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not going to work.”
“I’ll write the fucking letter,” Ben said.
Palmer plucked up another sheet of paper and pushed it across his cluttered desk toward the old woman. He laid a pen on top of it. “We’ll hold the paycheck you got coming. Come and get it anytime.”
Frail and shrinking smaller still, Beverly leaned forward, trembling. “I can pay for the cake.” When Palmer made no reply, Beverly placed her hand on the desk to steady herself. “I’ve worked…” The woman cleared her throat and swallowed. “I’ve worked here for thirty-five years.” She paused and waited for a reply that didn’t come. “I don’t understand. What is this? The customers like me. I know they do. And I like them. I need this job, Bill.”
“No, they don’t!” Palmer spit.
A shade of red had crept into her wet eyes. She blinked a tear free, and Ben saw it spread through the wrinkles on her cheeks like splitting glass. Her mouth hung agape and trembled as it seemed to search for more to say, but all it could find was “I like baking the bread.”
Ben’s own eyes stung. Whether he wrote the letter, this was going to happen. It was always going to happen. Palmer had made the decision before Ben even stepped into the room.
“This is horseshit,” Ben said.
“You know it occurred to me,” Palmer said with that same peat fire in his eyes that Ben had seen at his own termination, “that apart from using my paper to make these, you would have had to open up that bulletin board outside. Now I know for a fact that that’s a no-no. Waddya say we call and see what they say about all this?”
“You cruel, small man.” Beverly stood and leaned with hunched shoulders over Palmer’s desk. “I’ve known people like you my whole life. You’re a bully, and if you think I’m gonna let you terrorize this boy”—she gestured toward Ben and then jerked Eric’s flyer off the table, scattering much of the surrounding paperwork—“then you’re dumber than everyone says you is.”
“We’ll mail you your check, then. I don’t wanna see you back in here, Beverly. You understand?” Palmer asked. “I’ll call the police. I’ll call them and have you arrested for trespassing.”
“You can’t do that,” Ben said.
“Only one way to know for sure,” Palmer replied.
Beverly stood as straight as her crooked back would allow and stared at Palmer as if she might pour the rest of her hate into him. Her lips seemed to tremble separately from the tremor in her head. In the lingering silence, she unfolded the flyer and finally moved her eyes from Palmer to look at it. She seemed to consider it for a very long time before she smiled unhappily and placed the paper back on Palmer’s desk.
Palmer held out his hand and asked for Beverly’s key. The woman dug it from her pocket and tossed it onto the floor.
“Ms. Beverly, I’m sorry,” Ben said meekly. Perhaps it fell from his mouth too softly for her hearing aids to pick up, because she said nothing more to either of them as she turned and left.
Ben’s handkerchief was in tatters; he’d fussed and picked at it with mindless, brutish fingers for too long. Palmer busied himself with straightening the papers that Beverly had disorganized. The satisfaction that Ben had spotted in the sewers of Palmer’s eyes was gone. Something else had replaced it, though Ben couldn’t tell what.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Ben said, pointlessly. “Fire her over a cake just because you’re pissed at me. You can’t do things like that—”
“So quit then,” Palmer said flatly. “You got no idea what’s goin on here. I don’t expect you to, and I don’t find myself carin too much either way. I done all I can do, and it ain’t no business of yours anyhow. She’ll get her check. She’ll be alright.”
“I’m gonna tell her what you done and why you done it.”
Palmer shrugged and Ben rose and moved toward the crippled door. His desire to tell Palmer just what he thought of him was strong, but not as strong as his desire to leave the room and the company it housed.
“I wouldn’t get too worked up over her, if I was you.” Palmer rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Ben might have thought that Palmer looked remorseful if he believed the man was capable of such a thing. “I kept her around as long as I could. You don’t know anything about that woman. Besides,” he continued, tapping his fat finger on Eric’s flyer, right next to Ben’s phone number, “she’s the one who told me who you were.”
33
After Ben left Palmer’s office, he’d looked for Beverly. He’d walked with purpose, hoping that he might outpace her slow steps, but there’d been no sign of her at all. It wasn’t surprising that she’d decided not to linger.
In the back room, Ben checked the baler again, looked at the markings. Then he stepped over the deep brown stain on the concrete as if it were a hole in the earth that might swallow him up. He stepped naturally, like it was just something that happened to be there, like he hadn’t put it there himself.
Everything outside was cold and wet. Morning dew glinted off the asphalt and turned to mist under the spinning tires of passing cars. The temperature would likely drop only a little more, but by the way some of the folks in town were dressed, you’d think thermometers had bottomed
out. People moved more quickly, as if they might outrun the world itself, but the rest of nature seemed to be winding down like an old clock. The mosquitoes had all died or gone back to hell, or whatever they do when the air itself starts to bite and sting. Tree frogs moved less energetically after the sun sank below the earth, and there seemed to be fewer squirrels around all the time.
Ben had never bothered a customer—never even talked to one about Eric. He’d left everyone alone and done his job. So what the fuck had just happened? Ben was sure that he had never met a worse man than Bill Palmer. Whatever doubt there had been had shuffled out of the room with Beverly. There was something wrong with Palmer.
More cars cast up more mist as they moved in the direction of the store, and Ben fantasized that this was a different day—one with an enormous truck that he hadn’t shown up to throw, leaving Palmer no choice but to fucking do it himself. Ben really could do that to Palmer, but he knew he wasn’t going to. Ben knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
Eric was somewhere, and the path to finding him started at the store. Ben felt it in the marrow of his bones, and in a way that was the most torturous part. Ben knew that there was some door he could open, some window he could peer through, that would end everything, that would be enough to bring his brother home. Just one brief look and life would reset.
Ben stood at the entrance to Marty’s neighborhood. For what felt like the hundredth time, he stared down the dirt road and wondered what might be going on in Marty’s weathered home. Did they hate him? Did they even know that they should? He could find out. Just walk a little farther and knock. Just tap on the door and it would all be over.
So then do it. Do it, you fat fuck. Tell Darlene what you did to her son.
Ben rubbed his left leg with the heel of his hand and walked home.