“Shit!” Palmer shouted, walking briskly toward his car. The driver’s side mirror dangled impotently from its base. Even in the poor light, Ben could see the dent in the hood—like someone had used it as a trampoline.
Palmer kicked the plastic chair that lay toppled beside his car. “Call the fuckin cops!” he shouted to Ben. “I got you on camera, you little shit! Come back and…” Palmer’s voice faded as Ben moved into the store, leaving the doors slightly apart.
His leg protested as he jogged back upstairs. Hurrying into Palmer’s office, Ben paused to take stock of his project. File. Lock. Handle. Glancing out the window, Ben could see that the front doors were still separated. A shadow swept through the headlights, likely Palmer pacing, still yelling. Ben set the phone’s headset next to the dock, pushed speaker, and dialed 911.
“Hi, um…” Ben said when dispatch picked up. “I want to report a car that got beat to shit.” Ben gently lifted Beverly’s folder and slipped it back into the filing cabinet.
“Is anyone injured?”
“No. Just the car.”
There was a sigh. Ben glanced through the glass at the space between the doors, then stretched the broken rubber band down either side of the thick file.
“Sir, this line is for emergencies only. You’ll have to call the non-emergency number.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Ben said, lifting Beverly’s tome enough to slip the ends of the band underneath. The weight would hold the band in place. If it didn’t, Ben supposed that Palmer would let him know. Aloud, Ben repeated the number the woman had given him as he hung up the phone, then he dialed it. Again, Ben glanced through the window, then he cupped a small screw and slid his hand between the first folder and the inside face of the drawer.
While the phone rang, Ben pinched the screw and closed the drawer. “C’mon,” he said at the outgoing ring. The sooner the police arrived, the sooner Palmer would be indefinitely preoccupied. Finally, the call connected, just as Ben was forcing the chain underneath the handle.
“I want to report a car that got beat on.” Swiping the glue off the top of the filing cabinet, Ben explained the situation as he squeezed a few beads of superglue onto the metal threads and then onto the back of the handle’s base. Speaking through his clenched teeth, Ben pressed the handle against the cabinet. “Shit,” he grunted. A shallow puddle of adhesive crept from under the meeting point of the two pieces of metal. The call ended, and Ben hung up.
Ben scraped the glue up with his fingers, then cleaned them on his dirty jeans. He glanced through the window again. The doors were closed. There were no dancing shadows. There were no headlights at all. Palmer had either gone or he was coming.
“Fuck,” Ben whispered. He craned his head, looking through the glass for any sight of Palmer, but there was none. Ben had to leave. He shouldn’t even be on the second floor, much less—
Ben’s hip bumped the side of Palmer’s desk, and coffee from the old cup sloshed over the rim, splashing on the pages underneath it. Ben’s mind reeled. He stood uncertain, shaking his hands near his chest as if he had just pulled them from a fire.
As quickly as he could, Ben lifted the cup and collected the soiled pages. He twisted the bottom of the mug against the papers, then returned it to the desk. That was it. That was all he could do. Ben shut off the light and squeezed his wide body between the broken door and the broken frame.
Ben hadn’t made it halfway down the corridor before he could hear Palmer’s footsteps. Ben could go to the other end, around the corner. And then what? There were no open doors down there. As quietly and as rapidly as he could, Ben walked back toward Palmer’s office and opened the door across the hall.
The room was musty. Stacks of milk crates filled with old papers, which Ben could barely see in the dim light of the hallway, stretched all the way to the far wall. There was barely any room for Ben at all.
Through the sliver between the door and the jamb, Ben watched Palmer stop in front of his office door. He seemed to consider it for a moment before pushing it inward and flipping on the lights. Ben breathed through his mouth. The room stank like old cardboard thanks to all the ancient displays Palmer refused to throw away.
The man stood at his windows with his hands behind his back, posing in his solitude like a lonely king. After a minute, he fell into his chair and scooped up the phone.
“Lotta stock still on the floor, Ben,” he said over the intercom.
Palmer plucked up a few pages and read them, scribbling once or twice. After what must have been twenty minutes, the man stood again, looked out the window, and picked up the phone. “Ben to my office.”
Palmer wasn’t going to leave the room and Ben couldn’t leave his. He watched Palmer watch for him through the windows. Then all at once his throat went dry. Ben realized how stupid he’d been, saw how poorly he’d played at being a spy. Because real spies don’t leave their cameras behind.
It was right next to Palmer, right next to his shoulder. Was that where Ben had left it? Hadn’t he set it somewhere else? Ben’s eyes watered. Palmer swayed from side to side as he looked out over his kingdom for its sole subject. It was only a matter of time before he saw it. Ben had taken only ten, maybe twelve pictures. And they were all Palmer’s now.
Resting his head against the jamb, Ben watched Palmer pick up the phone again only to set it down. Ben squeezed his hands into fists as he watched his boss move toward the camera.
And then he just kept moving.
Ben’s whole body tingled as Palmer walked past his broken door, then out of view. After a few seconds, Ben eased his own door open and peeked out into the empty hallway. Cautiously, he crossed the space and chanced a glimpse through the window. Blue lights strobed outside. Ben snatched the camera from atop the filing cabinet and left the room.
Then the sky wuh-was wet.
“Luh-look out! Look out!” said someone.
And the guh-good thing said back, “I ain’t afraid of rain!”
Buh-but it weren’t rain. The ssssky wuh-was a mouth.
40
As Ben hurried across the damp road, he gave his partner a thumbs-up. Marty shot his hands into the air and shouted like Ben was running the final yard of a game-winning touchdown. He started coughing immediately, but he smiled through it, his hands still raised.
Ben laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He hugged his friend and lifted him off the ground without any effort at all. “Dude, what in the world!”
“I saw him come in,” Marty said frantically. “He was this close to seeing me, dude.”
“I was shouting for you.”
“I heard you! Holy shit. I fucked his car up!”
“Did you see him when he saw it?” Ben snarled and spat, aping Palmer’s frenzied reaction. Marty and Ben laughed together, laughed until Marty had to hold his throat and Ben’s stomach hurt.
Ben told Marty about what had happened upstairs as they walked to the drugstore. Marty didn’t interrupt, not even with exclamations. He just listened, eyes fixed on Ben, a forgotten cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Ben didn’t mention what he’d found in Beverly’s file. He wanted more time to think about it: what he’d seen and what he’d say. Plus, the picture would prove it was real, and then it wouldn’t matter how it sounded. Of course, that was only if he’d taken a photo of Eric’s day, and now he couldn’t remember if he had.
Outside the drugstore, Ben puzzled over that uncertainty while he filled out the photo lab envelope. He knew he hadn’t taken as many pictures as he could have, which was going to gnaw at him. He looked at the small digits near the viewfinder. If he could account for each number—
“What the fuck…?” Ben muttered.
“Hmm?” Marty grunted through smoke.
“I only got one picture left. I should have like ten.”
Marty slipped the camera out of Ben’s h
ands and looked at it. Then he shrugged and stood next to Ben. “Cheeeeeese,” Marty said, snapping their picture. “You was probably in the zone, man.”
Ben took the camera back, sealed it in the envelope, and dropped it into the metal chute. The tag he’d torn from the form said the pictures would be ready in a few days.
“I guess,” Ben replied.
The sky was a gray curtain of clouds backlit by the rising sun. Old cars ambled up and down the street, their wheels grinding loose rocks against the wet asphalt. The air was cold and full of mist.
Marty blew hot air into his hands. “Where the hell did this weather come from?”
At the crest of a hill, Ben could see a seemingly endless sea of trees with gold flakes and bright saffron leaves clinging to the end of their lives amid the emerald of the evergreens. A sharp trench of bare earth carved the forest in half like parted hair before seeming to converge at the edge of the world. Ben wondered where in that ocean of leaves Beverly’s house might be as they walked down the escarpment. The store, their own neighborhoods, and the whole town disappeared quietly behind them.
“You think you’ll come back?” Ben finally said.
“I dunno,” Marty strained as he drew fire into his lungs. “This might surprise you, but I actually don’t like Bill Palmer or his goddamn store. The way he’s tryin to fuck me with this workman’s comp stuff…Figure if he wins, I know I won’t want to be there. And if I win, he ain’t gonna want me around. Hate to say it, but I think that place might have seen the end of my magic touch.”
“Don’t sound much like you hate to say it,” Ben said with a smile. “What’re you gonna do instead?”
“If I knew that, I’d be doin it already.” Marty smiled and shook his head. “Whatever I can get, most likely.”
“What do you wanna do, though?”
“What, you mean like dreams and shit?” Marty seemed to ponder this for a moment, absently rubbing the wound on his neck. “Funny as it is, I always wanted to be a singer, like in a band or something. I could sing real good, if you can believe it. The doctor said my voice might heal up when all’s said and done. That said, I tried singing in the shower the other day and started coughing so bad I damn near puked, so I dunno about all that, really.”
“You mean like sing singing?”
“As opposed to what?”
Ben pointed at Marty’s Guns N’ Roses shirt.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Axl not good enough for you? You Bonnie Tyler–listening fuck.”
“She ain’t like my favorite singer or whatever,” Ben replied incredulously.
“You don’t gotta pretend, man. Not with me.”
“I ain’t.”
“Alright…” Marty lit up a cigarette. “That cuz you’re still holding out for a hero?”
“Get bent.” Ben laughed. “Least she knows what a note is. ‘You’re in the jungle baby!’ ” Ben shouted in his most strained falsetto. “You’re gonna have to move to a city if you wanna do all that.”
Marty laughed as he ran his fingers over the sutures across his throat. “We was talkin dreams, man. Closest I’ll get to bein in a band is stocking shelves at the CD store in the mall.”
After a moment, Ben prodded a little. “Think you ever will? Leave, I mean.”
“I sure would like to.”
“So how come you don’t?”
“Family shit.”
“Aaron?”
“What? No. Just other shit. Responsibilities and all that. Aaron’s gonna be just fine. He’s smarter than me. Hell, he’s smarter than my whole family. Problem is that he knows it. Don’t never have to tell him to do his homework or study or nothin like that. That boy’s already lining up colleges and he’s barely got hair on his nuts.”
“Sounds like he wants to get out too.”
“Big time. And he fuckin better too. Go somewhere and be something. Have more’n goddamn TV dinners for Thanksgiving. When I’m an old geezer, I’ll probably still be able to see the track marks from where he tore outta here, and they’ll be the best-lookin part of this whole wet asshole of a town.”
“Tell me what you really think, man,” Ben said, grinning. “I reckon your brother’s got the right idea, though.”
“I guess. He ain’t got no friends, though. If he wants to see a movie or go somewhere, he’s always coming to me. And that’s alright, but I tell him that he needs to slow down. Life moves at its own pace.”
“What’s he say?”
“That I’m a fuckin idiot. That he’ll make friends later. That boy’s got a lot of lip on him.”
“Wonder where he gets that from…” Ben smirked.
“Fuck if I know,” Marty said, smiling back. “Tim can’t stand him. Getting backtalked by a kid like that. Now Tim, there’s a real prize.”
“Can I ask you somethin, man?” Ben paused rhetorically. “How many brothers do you got?”
Marty didn’t respond. The two walked quietly while Marty smoked. Weak wind teased the trees high enough that Ben couldn’t feel the breeze.
“I was talking to…” Ben hesitated for a moment. “I was talking to one of the Cotter girls. Ellen. The real small one. She’s got this nasty scar on her cheek…”
The tall grass whipping against Ben’s shoes sounded like drops of rain hitting glass. It was the only sound.
“Them girls…” Marty let the bitter words hang in the air. “Ty and Kell Cotter are about two of the most fucked-up people I ever met. Kell used to be alright. Good-lookin. Yeah, believe it. But Ty—I don’t know where he came from or how in the hell he got his hooks into her, but when he showed up, that was it for Kell. I mean…you ever seen tapes of locusts on crops?” Marty gestured to the field to their left. “That’s Ty. He ate her up. Junkie fuck put two babies in her and dragged that whole fuckin house into whatever’s below hell.
“Jessica—the older one—and Aaron was friends forever. Then they got sweet on each other, or Aaron was sweet on her anyway, and she was comin over all the time. Aaron wasn’t allowed to go over there on account of who in their right fuckin mind would let a kid step foot into the Cotter house?
“Then Ellen started comin over. And she’s fine. She…” Marty lit another cigarette and pulled on it. “I do got another brother. Okay? We ain’t fixin to talk about him, but Ellen would not leave him alone. She kept messin with him, and he finally messed back, just like we’d always warned those girls about. And now, because my momma ain’t worth a shit, we gotta keep a lock on his door in case that little shithead comes back over. Or in case my brother tries to get out to get at her.
“I don’t blame Ellen,” Marty said reluctantly. “But Jessica’s older. She’s supposed to look out for her little sister.”
“That’s the job,” Ben muttered.
“Dude, I didn’t mean…Goddamnit.”
Ben waved his hands. “You didn’t say nothin wrong…How come you lied about him?”
“No offense, and I mean it, but he ain’t really none of your business, Ben.”
Ben considered Marty for a long while. “He real young?”
Marty looked toward the sky as if the answer were in the inky clouds. “Seven. No, eight.”
“Eric just turned eight.” Ben swallowed. “You eat any of that cake?”
Marty nodded.
“I been workin on this drawing of him,” Ben said after a moment. “Of what he might look like now. It’s been the hardest thing I ever done. I always used to think that it was the eyes that I couldn’t get right. But I been thinkin that it’s maybe that I don’t know what to put in the eyes, if that makes sense. I carry his picture around, but I…” Ben swallowed. “I don’t know him no more. As hard as I try, I can’t even think of what he’d be like now.”
“Still your brother. Whatever he’d be like, he’d still be that.”
“I know,” Ben
said, mustering a fake smile that struggled to convey his real gratitude. “He had this laugh, man. I’m not kiddin, it would get in your ear and change your whole day. It was the best laugh I ever heard. I think I would still think that even if he weren’t my brother.” Ben wiped his nose. “I don’t know where he got it. Seemed like it just showed up one day. We’d play hide-and-seek, and every time—every time—he’d start giggling when I got too close. And right when I’d be about to find him he’d say, ‘Olly olly oxen free,’ like me finding him couldn’t count no more. And then he’d laugh. Sounded like some eighty-year-old frog-man.
“It’s stupid, but I can’t stop thinkin that he might not even laugh like that no more.”
Marty left the silence alone, only scattering it after it had lingered for a long while. “You can’t think about shit that way, or at least you shouldn’t. If you’re just gonna guess at things, I think that maybe you should guess at something good. I don’t know what that might be, but maybe it’s somethin to try for.
“I also think,” Marty added with the pomp of a debater’s final remark, “that you should just quit the fucking store once and forever. Might not solve a single problem at all, but it at least won’t make things worse. And I hope you don’t mind me sayin that it seems to me that that’s all that place has ever done for you.”
To their left, a flat field of withering plants was stamped into the earth. Spots of white flashed boldly against the brown, late cotton that had missed the harvest. Marty put his arms inside his shirt.
“Do you…” Ben blushed at just the thought of the question, but there was something about being this far away from town and everything in it that made the question easier to ask somehow. “Do you really think there’s something wrong with the store?” Marty looked at Ben quizzically, so Ben tried to supply some clarity. “My first night at the store, you said that it was a weird place. Do you really think that?”
Marty shrugged. “It’s a shithole that feels like a creepy shithole sometimes.”
“What I mean is…” Ben knew what he wanted to ask but wished there was a different way to ask it. “Do you think that a place can be bad?” The last few words tumbled weakly from Ben’s lips as his voice shriveled against its own foolish sounds.