The Killer Is Dying (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

SOMETIMES HE IS THERE AGAIN, with the field burning around him, trees at the perimeter igniting one by one, flaring up like birthday candles. Sometimes he hears the
pop-pop-pop
of rifles in the distance set against the
whoosh
of trees igniting, sometimes it all takes place in silence.

He woke in a pool of sweat.

And sometimes he is elsewhere, in the cardboard shipping case that’s been roughly stuccoed into permanence, into place. The ceiling is so low that, legs spread and raised straight up, short as she is, her toenails scratch at it. He listens to this, listens to the hollow thump of his head against the wall as he pushes into her, hears the cry of hawkers in the street outside with their vegetables and rice, their twine-tied bundles of lemongrass and herbs and canvas bags of prawns and tiny crabs. She has not said a word the whole time. Two infants stand on tiptoe in a crib made of green bamboo, watching, eyes white as boiled eggs.

He lay awake, still awake or awake again, he really can’t tell, staring up at the ceiling, remembering how they all took to calling him Christian because once, as they left a village, he had turned back for a moment and stood with head down. “You praying, Christian?” one of his squad said. He was tired, nothing more. But the name stuck.

He was tired all the time now. The drugs added to it. Fired him up, left him unable to sleep. Made him stupid. And when he did sleep …

The worst of it was the dreams. Dreams of things that had happened, of things that hadn’t; maybe worst of all, those dreams that took place in some no-man’s-land between, dreams of things that had happened but that in the dreaming got twisted, changed.

He shifted in bed, trying to get away from the wetness. A storm was building outside. He sensed the push of it against walls, felt the change in barometric pressure somewhere deep in his chest.

His mother had been obsessed with storms. At the first sign she would lock all doors, secure every window, turn on the radio, later the TV, for a steady feed of bulletins. He remembered one night that she stood for hours looking up at a lone tree on the hill above the house as winds slammed at walls, thunder boomed so hard that the ground itself seemed to shake, and rain pushed in beneath their doors. As though if that single tree, whipping furiously about, were to fall, the whole world would soon follow.

He went into the bathroom to take one of the pills, a whole one this time, and returned to bed. There were no sounds outside, no passing cars. The only light in the room came through the far side of the blinds, where it looked as though a dog had chewed away the outer edges.

Black Dog.

He hadn’t thought about Black Dog in years.

Found her in the yard early one morning, a puppy, sick and covered with ants. Just lying there, looking up at him, him not much more than a puppy himself. Cleaned her, fed her, she got better. And his parents, against their better judgment (an often-used phrase), let him keep her. Always something wrong with Black Dog, though. She slept a lot, ate little, shied away from going outside. Then, when he was ten, eleven maybe, she started to get really sick.

Something else happened then. He’d loved Black Dog as much as he ever loved anything. And as she got sicker and sicker, he grieved, yes. Warmed up bowls of milk for her, petted her endlessly, covered her with an old blanket at night. But something, he realized, had begun to shift. He still fed her, petted her, talked to her. But he had in another sense become an observer, always a step or two apart from the scene, looking on, fascinated at the changes in her body, her eyes. When she died, he was with her, trying to discern the exact moment when life departed, its sign and spore, the turning point at which Black Dog was
there
, then not.

Outside, a car door slammed, there was a shout, then a horn that went on for so long he wondered if it was stuck.

The world speaks to us in so many languages, he thought, and we understand so few.

A couple went by on the walkway outside his room, young from the sound of their voices, and laughing. A bump against his window beyond the blinds led him to imagine them out there arm in arm, hip to hip.

Every time he sees young people it reminds him how distinct are their lives from his own, only the bare outer edges of his world and their world overlapping. Of course he feels that way about everyone; simply more so with the young. People go on, their concerns, their fears, their routines have nothing to do with the world in which he lives, nothing.

A world he is soon to leave.

He wonders what he thinks about that, and realizes that he doesn’t know.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE HEARD THE FEDEX TRUCK pull in and was at the door before the bell rang.

“How’s it going, Jimmie?” Raphael’s shaved head glistened. He wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of a fish and the words CARP DIEM under an unbuttoned uniform shirt.

“Good.” Jimmie pointed to the packages stacked by the door. “You?”

“Can’t complain. Still above ground, have work, cold beer waiting for me when I’m done. Hey, your dad’s been busy.”

“He has. Thanks, Raph.”

“De nada, my man.”

He was amazed that it had gone on so long. That, even with him being as careful and watchful as he was, he’d got away with it.

At first he had waited, living off what was left, canned food, cereal, expecting someone to show up at the door, a neighbor, school officials, police. But no one did. So then, still expecting to be exposed any day, he’d gone on to work with what he had. Now he found it difficult to imagine another life, another way of living. He knew, of course, that this life
would
end, if not in the manner he had first believed. Change was the law, the only law that always applied.

He knew, too, that this feeling, this illusion of permanence, was dangerous.

Still, spend too much time looking back over your shoulder, you never see what’s coming at you. Like that story Traveler loved, about the deep thinker who, eyes turned to the stars, kept stumbling over potholes.

Not that he could see what was coming at him anyway. Not that anyone could.

Mrs. Flores lived in the stucco house four down, not quite Pepto-Bismol pink but of that persuasion, with log ends nailed to the outside walls to mimic adobe construction. Mrs. Flores always seemed either to be sitting on the porch, which was swaybacked like an old horse, or working in her garden, which never seemed to grow anything, whenever he walked by, and he always spoke to her. Just hello at first, how are you, but, past weeks, he’d had the sense there was more behind her voice and the way her eyes fell on him. Not that she came out and said anything, but he’d noticed her looking up over his shoulder, up toward his house, as they were talking.

Then, this morning around ten, there she was at the door, holding up a metal pan covered with foil. He never answered the door. Generally people went away. She didn’t, but kept ringing, then knocking.

“Enchiladas. Fresh made. I brought green
and
red.” She looked around. “Not in school today?”

“I was sick. On my way now.”

“Feeling better, then. Good.” She held up the pan again. “So maybe I can just give these to your mother.”

“She’s … at work.”

She let him take the pan when he reached for it but, doing so, stepped through the doorway. He could tell that, if he turned to go to the kitchen, she’d follow.

“This is really good of you. Thank you.”

“Well, you know how it is, all that’s involved, you can’t make just a few.”

“Good timing, too. This’ll be dinner. Mom’s working late tonight.”

“She do that a lot?”

“Some. I’ll be sure and get this pan back to you.”

“No hurry, I have lots more.” She turned, went through the door, turned back. “It’s Jimmie, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looked at him a moment and smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her smile before. “You ever need anything, your folks aren’t here, I’m right up the street, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. And thanks again.”

He watched her go, remembering how once when he’d stopped to talk to her in her garden, he’d called her Miss and she had corrected him. It was Mrs., she said. Mr. Flores had gone back to Mexico. Jimmie was thinking that seemed the wrong direction to him, but what did he know. “That man always did the opposite of what made good sense,” she went on. “So here I am, alone.” And had been alone, by Jimmie’s reckoning, close to forty years.

He shut the door.

One of the things he knew was that the day had to have structure. Another thing he knew was that it didn’t much matter what that structure was, TV shows that had to be watched, repetitive tasks, to-do lists, small ceremonies, anything. But without that, hours and days and weeks got away from you, nothing seemed to matter anymore, every minute was like every other.

Nights weren’t a problem. He slept, his mother always said, the sleep of the young and guiltless. Well, except for the dreams. He’d had another one last night, something about a box, or a shipping crate. And fires. Gunfire. A jungle somewhere.

But his mother had trouble with both. Days with all those empty hours waiting, holes you could fall into. Nights when she’d sweat and speak in a steady whisper and pace the house for hours at a time, turning on lights as she went. One night toward the end when he’d gone to check on her she’d held up a jar to show him, an old mason jar, God knows where it came from, and if you got up real close and looked in, there were mosquitoes in there, half a dozen of them maybe. “It’s been a good night,” she said. “I’ve been busy.”

She loved straightening things, catching insects, turning on lights, and paying bills. The last year or so, that was about all she did.

He never knew what happened, whether she had left or his father had put her away somewhere, in some hospital or care center. He never asked; they had stopped talking about his mother a long time before. Within the year, his father was gone, too. Jimmie didn’t know about that either. Had he just broken and run? Things had been piling up on him for a long time. Watching him, you could see that, the way days and events pressed down, so that it seemed he struggled sometimes just to keep breathing. And if there’d been an accident, if he were dead, then surely someone would have come to the house.

Not that it mattered much. Change was the law. One went on with whatever life one had. When he thought about it at all, Jimmie recognized the legacy his parents unwittingly had given him. Finding his way among the cracks of his mother’s oddness and his father’s resignation, he had quite early caught on that it was up to him to map the borders and furnish the rooms of a life he could live inside.

When he’d first been left alone, he would sneak out some Friday nights and walk over to the retirement home on Madison. He thought of it as sneaking out, even with no reason to sneak. They had a fish fry every Friday, family night, so there were always kids around, and everyone assumed he was with one family or another, including the occasional resident who seemed to think he was there with them, a grandson maybe. The third or fourth night he’d done that, he met Mr. Burkett sitting at a table with a woman Jimmie thought was his mother but found out was his wife. Mr. Burkett had been in what he called materials management.

“Vendor wanted to be sure he had stock to fill orders, with maybe even a safety bump, he wanted it maintained with no fuss, no bother, I was the one he called. Needed something fast, I had the lines in place … You sure you’re interested in this, boy?”

Jimmie wasn’t, but it kept attention away from him, helped him blend in.

When Mr. Burkett shut the shop down, when his wife got sick, he’d gone into the mail order business on his own, buying in quantity for resale. Toys, shoes, health and leisure products. That sort of thing, he said. And he was as excited to tell Jimmie about this as he’d been about materials management. Where he got supplies, how to package most efficiently and cheaply, how to arrange trades, shipping. All this as he sat holding his wife’s hand and feeding her.

Neither of them knew at the time that Jimmie was sitting there at Harbor Rest getting schooled.

And today was Friday. Hospital day, when they’d roll in, or escort with hands cupped on elbows, a dozen or so residents, some with moist red lips, others with skin so parchment-dry it looked as though it would crumble if touched, walkers waiting at idle in a row against the wall.

He’d worked hard at first to try to find what they liked. He’d bring a bag full of books, read a little from each, watch their eyes. They liked stories in which things happened; that seemed to be the most important thing. Travel books, silly mysteries with schoolteachers or grandmothers solving crimes, historical novels, it didn’t much matter, as long as events kept moving. They liked best the stories that reassured them the world was as they thought it to be, or as they wished it to be. Children’s books and young adult novels always went over well.

“I hope you know how much we appreciate your doing this,” Mrs. Drummond said, as she did every week. “It gives them something to look forward to.” Every week the same words. Then she’d go on to praise him for never missing a Friday, for being on time, for being such a fine young man. Then she’d go off to wherever her Activity Director office might be, wearing her black suit shiny in the seat and pocket-sprung.

This week he’d brought something different.

Jimmie had quickly caught on that most fantasy, and much popular science fiction, had at its heart some kid—a genius if it was sf, a magical prince or princess unaware, if fantasy—who saved the world. This novel, pitched to young adults, which was bookspeak for adolescents, was a parody of that whole thing. It featured a thirteen-year-old whose parents had mysteriously disappeared, who lives with a family she refers to only as The Strangers, and who feels she never has fit in or belonged anywhere. (That sounded like every kid he’d ever known, Jimmie thought, but never mind.) She just kind of blunders into this face-off between Good and Evil, the last showdown, which takes place right out back of the food court at the mall, and they’re so pissed at this kid showing up, they get to rue-ing up one side of the cinderblock walls and down the other and decide to put it off till next time. With the help of another weirdo from school she figures out what’s going on, decides that’s
not
gonna happen, and spends the rest of book on this mission where, always with the best of intentions and often with near-heroic action, she’s just messing up one thing after another, making things worse and worse.

“
Candles for Chance
,” Jimmie announced, then the author’s name, settling in.

He read in what they called the common room, which was also where the residents ate and which reminded him of nothing so much as his old elementary-school gym that, with folding tables set out, doubled as cafeteria. To the familiar smells of staleness, anxiety, sour food, and sour bodies were added new ones: cleansers, medications, heavy perfume worn by many of the women, the acrid sting of their permanents.

After trying a variety of chairs, Jimmie had settled on a wheelchair that seemed always to be there in the room’s corner and never made use of. It had no stirrups, no leg supports. He’d plant his feet flat and roll back and forth in place as he read.

Someone had put a dead chicken in Carrie’s mailbox. Not a real chicken, a rubber one, but still. And it was decidedly dead, with filmy eyes and a floppy beak. She’d gone out there hoping to find the abacus she’d ordered last week. Definitely didn’t expect a rubber chicken. Old Mr. Cody down the street had told her about them, offered to show her how to use it if she could find one. They sounded cool, and it took her almost eight minutes on the Internet to locate a source, some guy up in Maine who cut his own wood. His Web site was bottom-heavy with slogans and quotes about getting back to a simpler life, government intrusion and wars she’d never heard of.

The chicken was a message, she guessed—but of what? And from whom?

Carrie looked around. She saw the mail truck sitting down by the corner, heard the little dog in the house next door (the one that looked like cotton candy according to her dad) yipping.

That was Tuesday. Her parents had been missing for a week.

An hour later Jimmie looked up and saw Mrs. Drummond’s face floating at the back of the room, behind his listeners. She appeared hesitant to interrupt, he thought, and when she said “Thank you, James, our time is up for this week,” the others protested and begged her to let him go on.

“James has to get back to school,” she said. “They excused him just to come and read for you. And it’s activity hour now. But we’ll pick up there next week, won’t we? Let’s thank this fine young man.”

None of them responded, they just looked straight ahead. Jimmie understood that this had nothing to do with him, that it was the only channel of expression left them. Several smiled as he tucked the book in his backpack and said good-bye.

Wind was rising, sky hazy in the distance, out over Camelback. Most likely another dust storm making its way toward the city. Jimmie unchained his bike, plopped the backpack on the front fender, and wound the straps around the handlebars. The bike was a prize, a forty-year-old aluminum-frame Schwinn in mint condition that had involved a series of complicated trades originating at a vintage bicycle site and spilling through several others.

Over by a tree, three birds with long hooked beaks like thorns raucously did their thing. One repeatedly stepped away, then raced back in with wings spread and head low as though it were flying. Another mainly squawked and jabbered, looking around the way people do when they’re making a spectacle of themselves and need to see if anyone’s watching. The third just looked confused.

Two men sat in a car nearby, the driver slouched, the other upright, both facing forward, one of them speaking. When the car started up, all three birds froze for a moment. When it pulled away, off the parking lot and past them, the two aggressive birds flew off, leaving the third beneath the tree.