The Sleeper (17 page)

We started driving before light. Betsy rode shotgun, silent, her eyes closed. Miriam lolled asleep in the back. The mist was rising like breath out of the land and the sun came up warm against the side of my face until, twenty miles from home, I swung off the interstate and headed straight into the dawn. A little after six-thirty, we were in our driveway.

I guess I expected there would be old newspapers piled on the front step and brown leaves from the maple that were never cleared away and junk mail—and all the signs that there's nobody home and hasn't been for a while. And there was all of that. But what I wasn't ready for was the deadness of the house itself, like the soul of it was gone.

Betsy was awake now, just staring straight ahead, and she saw what I saw.

“You want to stay in the car until I have a look around?” I asked her.

She got out of the car. She handed me the keys to the house and I fumbled with them, but the front door pushed open, unlocked. The lights in the house didn't go on. The carpet in the living room was stained where water had come in from a broken window, now covered with a piece of cardboard, and the TV and the video that used to be up against the wall were gone. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was wide open and the chicken pieces inside rotted so long ago they looked like fossils. The little TV on the counter was gone. So were the TV and video in the family room, and my computer. The water was turned off. Upstairs, the sheets were turned back on our bed and on Miriam's just the way they must have been the morning they left. But all the drawers in all the dressers were open, clothes were thrown around. The toilet in the bathroom was dry. The medicine cabinet was open, and there were no medicines in it. Even our lousy bedroom phone was gone.

“We'll clean it up,” I said. “We'll—”

“I can't do this,” said Betsy. “I can't.”

“Sure you can.
We
can. We can make it a great home, just like before.”

“Nothing is just like before, Kurt. And it never will be.”

What I should have said was, “We'll make something new that's even better than what we had before.” But I didn't, because I didn't have the heart to say those words, and I didn't believe them.

“I'm going out to the car—to Miriam,” said Betsy. “Maybe I can leave her with Ruth. Today's her day off. Or it used to be.”

I let her go. I just let her go. Our life had been ransacked by strangers who came from nowhere Betsy had ever been and nowhere I wanted to remember anymore. The Feds. The muj. Griffin. Fuckers. Who was the man at the door? My instinct told me it was the Syrian, but there was no limp. Betsy would have had to notice that.

Betsy. God. She was so lost now. She was my compass in life, my whole Global Positioning System, and she was totally fucking lost and I didn't know how to begin to help her.

I backed against the wall in the front hall and slid down to the floor, my eyes wandering over the inside of the door. I looked up at the frame I'd built with my own hands. There was a big chip out of it near the upper right corner. I couldn't think at first why that would be there. I never saw it before. It looked like it was put there on purpose. There were little bits of putty on the edge of the hole. They'd pulled something out of this hole, probably a microphone they used to listen to everyone who stood in the doorway. If I looked I was sure there would be other holes like this. Maybe they wired the house during that break-in by “kids.” That must be how Griffin was tipped to the visit by my unknown friend who warned about the genie in the bottle. I buried my head in my knees in the old Guantánamo position. My unknown goddamn friend.

I listened. Why hadn't I heard Betsy's car start? There was no engine noise. No—nothing. I ran outside. She hadn't moved. She was slumped forward in the front seat, and Miriam was crying in the back. I threw the door of the car open so hard it rocked on its wheels. And Betsy looked up at me, her honey-brown eyes pools of tears.

“I'm going,” she said.

“Don't go.”

“I'll be back, Kurt. I'll be back—soon. I'm sorry. I—I don't know. I'll be right back. I'm just going to drop off Miriam. Really.”

“I love you,” I said.

“You should,” she said.

“Come back to me.”

She just sort of smiled and closed the door of the car and backed out the driveway.

 

The house cleaned up faster than I thought possible. Ruth still had Tuesdays off, and she did take Miriam, and then Betsy and I bought what we needed with Betsy's credit card, which was still good, and not much used lately. We even bought a new TV and video. It was a much better day than I thought it could be. We weren't talking much. We were moving around each other, not toward each other. But by the time Ruth brought Miriam back about five in the evening, the house looked like someone could live in it. Maybe even us.

“Well Lord have mercy,” said Ruth when I opened the door. “I just can't believe you all are still livin' and breathin'.”

“Kind of hard for me to believe, too,” I said. “But, hey, I am happy as hell to see you, too, Ruth.”

“You going to tell me what you was doing all this time?”

“Reserve duty.”

“That's what Betsy said. But, you know, that don't say much. What kind of Reserve duty?”

“Usual. A waste of time. But somebody's got to do it.”

“You in Afghanistan?”

“Nope. Nothing exciting.”

“You wasn't? I told everybody you was in Afghanistan.”

“Well I won't tell them any different.”

“Why, Ruth!” said Betsy, coming to my rescue. “You didn't have to bring Miriam back. I was just about to come pick her up.”

“You got enough to do,” said Ruth. “I told you—I told her, Kurt—I used to come over here a couple of times a week, but I didn't have no key or nothing and I just figured—well I don't know what I figured. But I figured you all sort of gave up on the place. You know? I mean, like you—it was so strange the way you all disappeared. You, and then Betsy and Miriam.”

“I told you what happened,” said Betsy. “Kurt's assignment was kind of dangerous—and don't ask what, 'cause I don't know either—and with all the strange things going on here and everywhere in the United States, they decided to have us protected for a while.”

“I know, I know. I mean I know now. But I didn't know then. She coulda told me, couldn't she, Kurt?”

“We were all under orders,” said Betsy.

“I didn't know they could do that to wives,” said Ruth.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “You'd be surprised.”

“Miriam says you all was in Washington, D.C.”

“I took her there a couple of times to get off the base,” said Betsy. “But, Ruth, you know, all we want to do now is think about the future.”

“I'm just dying of curiosity.”

“Well I'm just dying of hunger,” I said. “Maybe we could all go down to the Chuckwagon or something.”

“Oh, wait!” said Ruth. “Wait right here.” Ruth ran over to her old Explorer and opened up the back. “I brung dinner for all of us.”

“You are so sweet,” said Betsy.

“Kurt, can you give me a little help with this ham?”

“That's a big one,” I said.

“Nothing too good for you all.”

“You shouldn'ta,” said Betsy.

 

There's nothing like food to bring a little soul back into a house, and after a few minutes, even though we were eating off paper plates with plastic forks, the ham and the potato salad and the Coke and the deviled eggs made everything feel stable, maybe even hopeful.

“Is the war over, Kurt?” asked Ruth.

“Far as I'm concerned it is.”

“Feels over from here,” said Ruth.

“Does it?”

“Watch the news,” she said. “It's all about other stuff these days. But I just wish they'd catch Bin Laden.”

“Yeah.”

“You think he's behind all that stuff?”

“I really don't know.”

“If they'd catch Bin Laden, everything would be okay.”

“Sure,” I said.

“But that Saddam Hussein, he's bad news, too.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You was in the Gulf War, right?”

Betsy rescued me again. “Where
did
you get this ham, Ruth?”

“Somebody gave it to me last Christmas and it's been hanging in the cellar, and I thought I'd cook it for Easter, but then I didn't do anything for Easter, and then, you know, I thought this was as good a time as any to celebrate. Tell you the truth, I was thinking I'd bring some pork chops or something from the Jump Start, but looks like we're out of them. I even squeezed into the back of the freezer—remember we used to have some back there?”

“What happened to them?” I said.

“Oh, they're still there. But the ice is so thick, I'm surprised the freezer's still working. I mean, you don't even want to know what's back there, you know?”

“Well, this ham's just delicious,” I said.

Betsy's Saturn was still in the garage and my pickup was out back, but neither one was running. So I spent early the next morning trying to get them cranked up. Finally at about ten, in the slow time between breakfast and lunch, I drove Betsy to the Jump Start to talk to Bill Tuninga about getting her job back.

“Betsy! Kurt! Hey there, Miriam, you look all growed up—great to see you all again,” said Bill, who was fat and red-faced. Folks always thought he was jolly when they first met him. “You know, Betsy, we was kind of worried. You left me in a fix when you just disappeared like that. Where'd you take this girl, Kurt?”

“Bill,” I said, “I want to let you all talk. Is Ruth around? I'd like to thank her for bringing supper yesterday.”

“Back to the back,” said Bill. In fact, Ruth was all the way out the back door smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, Ruth,” I said. “While Betsy and Bill are talking, I thought I might help you free up some of those pork chops.”

“They been there so long, I don't know if they're going to be worth eating. Bill swears he's going to defrost the whole damn thing and empty it out this weekend.”

“Guess we better get stuff while the gettin's good,” I said, and Ruth winked back at me.

“Well,” she said, “you are about skinny enough to get back there. Bill's too fat. That's why it's like that. You want a bag or something?”

The freezer was so full of frost it looked like an ice cave at the back. I used a big screwdriver to chip it away, making a racket, and then reached up to the shelf above the pork chops and old hamburger patties for the extinguisher I'd left there months before, when I thought I'd be gone a couple of weeks at most. The bag of ice was still there. I dug at it with the screwdriver. Prying, chipping, excavating. Despite the cold, I started to sweat. I reached. I touched. And for a second, just enough to make my pulse surge, I thought the extinguisher was gone. Then my fingers made out the shape under a last layer of frost. Somebody's watching out for us, I thought. I pushed it hard to free it, but the extinguisher wouldn't budge. I laid my hand on it and tried to rock it back and forth, but it wouldn't move.

“What you doing in there, Kurt?” Betsy's voice.

“Nothing, Baby. Just trying to get some of this old stuff out of the ice.”

“Well hurry up. Bill wants me to work the afternoon shift today, and I want to go home first.”

The warmth of my hand finally loosened the extinguisher and it pried free with a kind of sucking sound, like an ice cube from a tray. I slipped it into my daypack. I jostled a box of pork chops free, and a box of hamburger patties for good measure, threw them into paper bags, and handed them to Ruth as I squeezed back out of the freezer.

Betsy was smiling at me. “You look like Frosty the Snowman,” she said, and Miriam laughed.

 

In the early afternoon I drove to the old waterworks, which was just on the northeast edge of Westfield. I remembered taking a school trip there when I was eight, and being really impressed that the waterworks had a big hot furnace. I couldn't tell you what it was for, but I hoped it was still there. I was just sort of reconnoitering, and then I saw the name on the manager's door was Sam Perkins; the same Sam Perkins who was my best friend in third grade, when we took the field trip. Then his folks moved and we went to different middle schools. It's strange how you can lose track of people, even in a small town. You just quit asking about them, and one day they're not in your life anymore.

Sam was a lot more serious as a grown-up than you ever would have guessed when he was a kid. In a town full of people who wanted to look straight as arrows, Sam had a real rage to be normal. I was away in the Rangers, but every so often I'd hear how he got married and had two kids, and now three kids, and four kids, and how he was going to church every Sunday, and then some. Not like my crazy dead Bible-banging nigger-and-Jew-hating brother-in-law. Sam wanted to be seen as a good Christian, a decent man. And maybe he was. I didn't really know him anymore.

“Kurt! Man! You're back!” said Sam when I was shown into his office. The clothes were just what I'd expected, a white short-sleeve shirt and a striped tie, but the face was a lot heavier, and maybe sadder than I thought it would be. “I hear you've been off defending our country,” he said.

“Reserve duty, that's all,” I said.

“The way you all disappeared caused a lot of talk around here.”

“You know what the army's like,” I said. “They want to do something quiet, they make a big noise about it. But there was nothing to it, really.”

“Ranger stuff.”

I was a little surprised he knew anything at all about what I used to do. But Sam made himself pay attention to other people. “Yeah, sort of,” I said, “but I really can't talk—”

“If you told me about it you'd have to kill me, right?”

“Right.” I laughed a little and shook my head.

“How's Betsy and Miriam?”

“Good. Yep, real good.” I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of his wife or any of his kids. “And your family?”

“Caroline and the children are fine, thanks. Gosh, Kurt, it's good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too. Real good.”

“What can I do for you?” he said. I was about to ask him, just sort of by-the-by, for a tour of the plant—ask him to show me what he did. But then Sam asked me: “You looking for a job?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well if you want one, I got one for you.”

“Sam, I just came by to say hello, 'cause I was passing by and I thought it was a long time since I saw you.”

“Yeah, and I'm glad you did,” said Sam. “And I know you'll get your contracting business up and running again soon. But I was thinking—fact is, I could use your help around here.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Somebody with a little discipline is the first thing I've got in mind.” He got up to close the door to his office. “You look at the people I get here and you'd want to cry. The smart ones think they're too smart for the job, and the others are just too stu—Well, not smart enough. And what none of them have is good old reliable discipline.”

“What do they have to do?”

“It's mid-level supervisory stuff, watching the computer, monitoring equipment, checking charts. One of the main things you do is watch the chlorine supply to make sure there's no leaks. There's alarm systems and all, but you can't be too careful. I mean, we're not a nuclear reactor here, and you don't have to be an engineer, so don't worry about that. But we need somebody who's serious about the work, and smart. You got any plumbing background?”

“Putting in kitchens, I did some of the work myself.”

“That's enough, least for short term. But there is a lot of responsibility. If we don't keep things working right, folks don't get clean water. Or worse, they get bad water. And that chlorine gas—whoa, boy, you got to treat that with respect. So when I heard you were right outside my office door I thought, Sam, your prayers have been answered. I had to fire my last night-supervisor just last week. I've been doing double shifts myself since then. And I am just about beat.”

Sam leaned forward over his desk. “Kurt, you'd be doing me a real favor if you'd come on board for a couple of months, just to tide me over until I can find somebody else. That is, if you decide you don't want to stay. And if you do want to stay, then I'll get the papers going to make you full time.”

“Can I think it over?”

“Sure,” he said. “Let me know tomorrow?”

I looked at my old friend, who was so different than he used to be, but still my old friend. “I've thought,” I said. “I'll do it.”

When I got back to the house, the TV was on in the family room and Miriam was planted in front of it. The dishwasher was running in the kitchen, filling the room with clean white noise. The message light was flashing on the new telephone by the bed, but I didn't see Betsy anywhere.

I went back to Miriam. “Where's Mommy?”

The
Scooby-Doo
rerun was just about over, and Miriam waited a second for the titles to roll. “Mommy's in the shower,” she said, without taking her eyes off the screen.

Betsy was just wrapping a towel around her when I opened the bathroom door. “Oh, Baby,” I said.

“No time,” she said. “You're late and I've got to be on time at the Jump Start. I can't believe Bill was so nice.”

“I got news for you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Sam Perkins over at the waterworks gave me a job to help us out. It's a night shift, but it's money.”

Betsy tried to judge whether I was serious about the offer, and then whether I was serious about taking it. “That's real good,” she said.

 

My second night on the job, I brought the Sword of the Angel with me. The waterworks furnace was fired up hotter than a steam engine's, and the yellow-red glare showed through the old mica port. All this equipment was going to be replaced in a few months. Sam said it was a miracle he'd been able to keep it operating so long with such a low budget, but it was on its last legs. I opened the small door and popped the extinguisher inside like a shell into a breech, then slammed and bolted the door. In a second I heard the pop as the bottle exploded and melted. The Sword of the Angel was no more. My old war, my holy war, was over at last. But I was the only one who knew.