Know Your Beholder: A Novel Page 9

“Home improvements?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  I asked what needed improving, and he said nothing major. I said, “Anything you need help with?”

  He shook his head.

  What could he possibly be up to? I wanted to look in the bag. Was he making something? A new kind of bong? A nursery for growing weed? A pipe bomb?

  Just then Mary Bunch walked onto the front porch and stomped snow off her boots. She was again in her many layers, the hazard-orange vest and conical winter hat. Her nose was running and she held two grocery bags from Econofoods. She said hello to Bradley, but her eyes bounced off me like I had a huge raised facial birthmark with fuzz. Then she keyed into her apartment and shut the door, turning the deadbolt on the other side.

  I pointed to Bradley’s Ace Hardware bag and said, “No holes in the walls, now. That Sheetrock was expensive.”

  He replied, “Okay, Dad.”

  Somehow I liked Bradley calling me dad. An absurd notion, I’ll admit, but it made us feel related again, which meant that in some ludicrous reality burbling in the sad part of my mind, I was still in his sister’s life. I said, “You’re free to go, son.”

  It came out way more paternally than I’d intended. I didn’t even recognize my own voice. I sounded like a high school principal who wears chinos or something. Bradley pushed past me and up the stairs.

  It nearly gave me a heart attack to stray from the back porch and forge out into the alleyway, but I had to see what Mary Bunch had left in that Dumpster.

  For the first time in a month I actually ventured from the house, trudging thirty or so feet through twenty-two inches of snow. At first I took baby steps, carefully lifting out of the depths of snow. It was slow going. My teeth chattered uncontrollably in that weird way that has nothing to do with the cold. My heart triple-timed in my chest, as if I’d been injected with some stimulant intended for racehorses. My mouth went dry and my tongue seemed to shrink. I thought my throat would close. I might as well have been teetering on an ancient mountain precipice.

  I had stupidly worn my wool slippers and my bathrobe. A sudden gust sent a snow shower from the branches of the copper beech into my face and eyes, and a blackbird flapped wildly, as if on cue, and disappeared over the garage. It was as if someone had planted the bird. My blood pressure spiked. My heart beat in my mouth. I could feel my dick shrinking.

  The tar-paper shelter over the Dumpsters gave me the false sense that I was at least partly enclosed, so that made it a little easier. Hands on thighs, like an oxygen-starved, postrace miler, I breathed through my nose and tried to calm down. I honestly thought I might have to go to a knee. I’d left my cell phone in the attic, so aside from shouting out to the snowbound neighborhood, there was no way to call for help.

  What a terrible way to die this would be. A heart attack at thirty-six. Out back by the Dumpsters. In thermals and wool slippers. In not even two feet of snow. Literally scared to death for no good reason.

  After I regained what was left of my composure, which wasn’t much, I worked quickly. Inside Mary Bunch’s Hefty bag, scattered among household refuse, were children’s clothes: a pair of navy sneakers with rainbow stickers on the sides; white T-shirts; old bibs with food stains; a few pairs of cotton pants; a denim jumpsuit with an elastic waistband; socks so small they seemed more suited for a doll; a baby bonnet; cotton turtlenecks; and a set of pink poly-blend mittens, joined with a clip.

  Panic seized me again. The only thing that mattered was getting back inside.

  That night I dreamed there was a basement under the basement. A subbasement, if you will, whose floor was soil, black as pitch. A distant crying lured me down there. Crying from a child, muffled and desperate. I had to enter the washing machine and shimmy down a flagpole, fireman-style. The pole was slick with a kind of warm, gelatinous substance and during my descent I had the distinct dream-mind thought that it would be impossible to climb back up, as the flagpole was without ruts or anything to grab hold of.

  My mother was standing in the center of the soil floor, in her hospice gown. She was thin from her cancer, the bones in her face sharp and prominent, her collarbone enormous, a wisp of hair matted over her soft, pale skull. Bethany Bunch was pulled into her, held close, and my mother was covering the little girl’s eyes with her hands. Bethany wore only a diaper, though she seemed old enough for clothes. Her hair was a dirty-blond galaxy, almost pulsing with life. The room was very warm and humid. They were both covered with a film of sweat, both filthy from the soil. It was as if they had walked hundreds of miles and had nothing left, too tired even to sit.

  Then I was suddenly barefoot and could feel between my toes the damp, cold earth, where worms wriggled.

  “She’s blind, Francis,” my mother told me. Her voice was tired. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere else. From somewhere and everywhere. Below and above me. “The little girl is blind.”

  I had the strange sense that there were other subbasements below this one, going on for infinity, with other lost children. A threnody of children’s voices sang from some recessed place. Ugly, unresolved, incomplete harmonies, wailing and feral.

  The copper beech was suddenly in the little room. My mother and Bethany Bunch were gone. I had the horrible, certain feeling that the tree had swallowed them.

  I woke up with such tenacious cottonmouth I had to check to make sure there wasn’t actual cotton in my mouth.

  After instant coffee and some unamplified guitar noodling (unamplified guitar noodling always seems to help rid a bad-dream hangover), I called Mansard and told him about the Hefty bag.

  He said, “Children’s clothes, huh?”

  I mentioned the snowman and the pink scarf, the matching mittens.

  Mansard said, “The mittens were in the garbage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the scarf was on the snowman?”

  “The scarf was on the snowman.”

  “And you’re certain that it matched the mittens.”

  “The mittens were pink and the scarf was pink.”

  He said he would come by and take a look.

  Later today, Baylor Phebe, a man in his early sixties, is coming by to have a look at the available basement unit, opposite Bob Blubaugh. According to his e-mail, Mr. Phebe is a retired junior high school teacher from down in Little Egypt—Cairo, Illinois, to be exact. He’s attending continuing ed classes at Willis Clay and is interested in a two-year lease. Mr. Phebe’s been staying in a local motel, paying a steep monthly rate, and is ready to make a larger real estate commitment. He has an authentic Southern accent, as do most people who hail from the lower third of the state, and the deep melody of his voice alone inspired me to move his request to the top of the small pile of three candidates, the other two being an undergraduate junior-college transfer student and a guy from Arkansas named Reggie Reggie. Both had poor references and nothing to speak of in terms of guaranteed income, and the landlord part of me is loath to offer a lease to someone who calls himself Reggie Reggie. Sirhan Sirhan comes to mind, or some homeless drag queen with third-degree burns. I think having a senior presence like Baylor Phebe around could be good for the overall ecology of the house.

  “You’re going back to school, huh?” I asked him over the phone.

  “Spring semester,” he said. “Just a few classes.”

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  “I was,” he said. “My wife passed away three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s a formality. I have to ask.”

  “Oh, no offense taken,” he said.

  I asked him if he had kids.

  “I have a daughter, lives up in Milwaukee.”

  “Pets?”

  “No pets,” he said. “No wife, no kids, no pets, no attachments whatsoever. It would just be me and my fishing poles.”

  I called Dr. Hubie and spoke to his secretary, Julie Pepper. I told her about the pain in my tooth. I think I actually pretended to cry a little.

 
“Dr. Hubie doesn’t do house calls,” she said. “Most dentists don’t.”

  I told her about my back. I was starting to really carve out some good fiction regarding the injury. A slipped disc. A “hot” disc fragmented onto one of my sciatic nodes. Shooting pains radiating down my left leg. A terrible snowballing ache. I learned about all of this on the Internet.

  “I really can’t get down the stairs,” I told her. “Can you at least ask him to call me?”

  “I’ll put you on the list,” she said.

  Around noon, Todd Bunch knocked on my door. I was rotating thermals, sending the under layer to the laundry basket, replacing it with the outer layer, and adding a new set on top. I also had changed into a new pair of wool socks, probed my ears with Q-tips, applied Mennen Speed Stick, musk-scented, and trimmed a few nose hairs that were on the verge of autogenously braiding themselves into my mustache, à la Detective Shelley Mansard.

  Tying the terry-cloth sash around my bathrobe, I said, “Mr. Bunch.”

  He was sporting a crew cut, which, in sharp contrast to his former floppy head of spaghetti-sauce-red hair, made him look like a young Marine in training. Either that or a counselor at a Christian youth camp. Was the crew cut an attempt to change his image? To avoid being publicly recognized as the evil father of little Bethany, the prevailing media opinion of him?

  Photos were starting to be shown on the evening news. The famous black-and-white Target surveillance still of Todd and Mary Bunch standing in the stuffed-animals section, almost the same exact looks of abject shock on their faces. Holding a stuffed panda bear, as if Bethany had dropped it in that very aisle and they were summoning her spirit.

  Todd Bunch was wearing his navy-blue Pollard Fire Department uniform shirt, with official patches on the shoulders. He had a few days’ growth of a sandpapery beard, fine as mica dust. He seemed tense, ultracontained. I was struck by how small his head was, as if the cavity containing his brain was smaller than most. His hands were fists at his sides. There was a little white bloodless halo around his wedding band.

  He said he just wanted to personally thank me for taking care of the front steps. He spoke slowly, deliberately, almost as if delivering a memorized recitation. “The walkway too,” he added. He was having a hard time making eye contact.

  I told him it wasn’t a problem, that it was my duty as his landlord.

  He opened and closed his mouth in a guppylike fashion, then proceeded to unclench his left fist and drive a knuckle into the meat between his eyes, as though warding off a migraine.

  I asked him if he was okay.

  He exhaled through his nose, a whistling noise. His eyes, open now, fluttered nystagmically, the pupils contracting to little black pinpricks. I thought he might keel over, but he remained standing. Knees slightly bent, extremely still, shallow of breath, he opened his mouth again, closed it yet again, and then launched in, saying, “Mary and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t go through our garbage.”

  It suddenly felt like there was a piece of gravel caught in my throat. I swallowed hard. I think I said, “I” and “uh.” I retched and swallowed again.

  “Mary saw you out back by the Dumpsters.” His lower lip was trembling now. When it came to classic man-to-man confrontation, it was clear that we were equals in the discomfort zone.

  I coughed again and then cleared my throat. I explained that I’ll occasionally do a garbage check to make sure tenants are recycling properly, that I get fined if the city finds recyclables in the regular trash and vice versa.

  He looked down at his feet and said, “Our garbage is not your concern.”

  This was obviously the next thing on the list to say. He wasn’t interested in engaging in a dialogue; he was checking off bullet points.

  My arms folded now, I said, “But it’s my duty to execute the occasional Dumpster check.”

  “We recycle,” he replied quickly, a little too loudly.

  Then his lips got really small and taut. His clenched teeth, which were showing now, seemed to radiate a white-hotness behind his dull braces.

  In my most soothing FM-radio voice I said, “That very well may be true, Mr. Bunch, but I still have to do the compulsory checks. I do it to Bradley Farnham’s and Harriet Gumm’s garbage too. As a safeguard.”

  Then he closed his eyes and breathed through his nose intensely, as if there weren’t enough air in the small space between us. That faint whistling noise again. The tiny head, seemingly shrinking further. The rubbery dome of his skull, visibly pink underneath his crew cut. He turned to the side as if consulting invisible counsel. I realized for the first time that in profile Todd Bunch has almost no nose. This combined with his thick, furrowed brow made him look like the enormous mahimahi trophy that Lyman had had mounted in his office, above the tufted leather sofa in the waiting area. The similarity was almost breathtaking.

  Through his rose-tinted orthodontia, Todd Bunch said, “We threw her clothes out because it’s too hard having them around—” He stopped and made a sound like he was choking, then exhaled powerfully and continued. He explained that he had suggested giving Bethany’s things to the Goodwill, but that Mary couldn’t bear the thought of other children wearing their daughter’s clothes.

  In that moment I felt this man’s heart breaking. I could almost hear it. Like the smallest pinion snapping in a clock’s delicate machinery.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Not about Bethany,” he replied. His voice was suddenly small and boyish.

  I told him that my question didn’t involve his daughter.

  “What, then?”

  I asked him if he’d made the snowman.

  “What snowman?”

  “The snowman in the backyard,” I explained. “Someone made a little snowman.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  I searched his bald, alopecian eyes. “Out behind the copper beech?” I said.

  Nothing for a moment. It felt like the big wintry wheel in the sky had stopped clicking on its sprocket. I think I even heard the clouds above us skid to a halt.

  Then Todd Bunch extended his fist toward me. Not in a threatening way, although it did make me swallow again and quickly find my feet. His fist was very tight and trembling. It was as if he were doing his best to hold a freshly boiled stone. His knuckles were white, his wedding band reflecting the harsh overhead fluorescent light I had installed after Christmas so the tenants wouldn’t feel like they were entering a dark place when knocking on the door of their trusted, down-to-earth landlord.

  Todd Bunch opened his fist to reveal a rent check, crumpled to the size of a piece of popcorn. He grabbed it with his other hand and attempted to unkink it. His hands were shaking, and he continued to breathe very slowly through his nose, working at the check, eventually smoothing it between his palms. He handed it to me and said, “The late fee’s included.” Then he turned and descended the back steps.

  After I heard him key into his unit—perhaps thirty seconds later—I quietly went downstairs to the back porch and looked for the snowman. Although it was only just past noon, the thick cloud cover weirdly made it almost dark out. I flipped a switch to turn on the spotlight mounted over the front of the garage.

  The copper beech lit up monstrously. Like a figure that could chase you down and ruin your life.

  And the snowman was gone.

  I ran back upstairs, taking two at a time, and called Mansard.

  “Hey, Detective,” he said, jokingly, but I had no time for that.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  “Slow down,” he said, “take a breath.”

  “It’s gone,” I repeated, not taking a breath, not sitting, completely winded from the sprint up the stairs.

  “What’s gone?” Mansard said. He was watching a rerun of The Honeymooners. I could hear Jackie Gleason railing on his wife. It irked me that Mansard was watching TV on the job.

  “The snowman,” I said. “The snowman�
�s gone.”

  “Where did it go?” Mansard asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He offered that perhaps it had returned to the North Pole with Rudolph and Santa Claus.

  “Very funny,” I replied.

  “Well, it couldn’t have melted.”

  “Not in this weather, no way.”

  “Huh,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere. “Yeah,” I said. “Huh is right.” The live studio audience was howling with laughter. Even through the phone it felt like they were somehow mocking me.

  “Are you watching The Honeymooners?” I said.

  He said that he was on his lunch break.

  After a silence I said, “Are you still coming by?”

  “Do I really need to?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Snowmen tend to crop up during snowstorms, kid.”

  “But with pink scarves?” I asked.

  “I saw one wearing a sombrero once. It was wearing a sombrero and it had tortilla chips for eyes. Didn’t warrant grounds for an arrest.”

  “But the pink scarf matches the mittens. The ones the Bunches threw out.”

  He asked me if I was in possession of the scarf.

  I told him that I wasn’t.

  “What about the mittens?” he said.

  I told him that I didn’t have those either. I’d stupidly left them in the garbage. I was too panicked to get back to the house.

  “Then there’s not much I can do,” Mansard said. “No scarf, no mittens, nothing to go on.”

  Suddenly someone in Mansard’s office was talking to him. He covered the phone. I could hear the muffled sounds of Art Carney making some indecipherable noise. Jackie Gleason was still screaming at his wife.

  Mansard uncovered the phone and said, “I gotta go, Francis. If another snowman pops up, give me a call.”

  The dark skies persisted for a few hours and then brightened a bit, just in time for dusk. Consequently, it felt like the shortest day of the year.