Water.
Beating down as hard as possible.
Let her drink it; let it cleanse me.
SIX
Fifteen minutes later I stood in the kitchen dressed in clean clothes. The water had been hot to the point of inflicting damage. I’d scrubbed at my hands, arms, and chest until the skin was raw but even now I could still feel the old man’s blood on me. My flesh was tender and pink and still held a sheen from the water; I’d never looked as clean. But the blood was still there, somewhere under the skin, becoming a part of me, linking me to his image, the absurdity of his last moments, and to his corpse which now lay in some cold basement draining out into the corner holes of a silver table.
I pulled the folding step stool out from the pantry and set it firmly in place, then climbed up and opened one of the highest cabinet doors, fishing around toward the back until I found the old and (for many years now) unused bottle of Johnny Walker Black. This was a masochistic little ritual I performed on those rare occasions when my nerves got the better of me despite my insisting otherwise: take out the temptation and stare it in the face and see if you’re still made of something.
I am not one who believes that the best way to overcome temptation is to expunge its source from your universe, no; to me, temptation can only be overcome when it becomes boring, trivial, commonplace, and the best way to make it mundane is to always have it near and remind yourself that it’s near. Makes it easier to hold it in your grip and not caress it as you would the hand of a lover, take a good look at it and give it a good look at you, then smile to yourself because you’ve won and cache it away again until the next time your nerves don’t get the better of you.
Don’t let anyone tell you that recovering alcoholics live well and happily never wanting a taste again; you never don’t want a drink, and eventually that becomes easier to deal with-it’s when you begin to think that the drink wants you that it’s time to dust off that sponsor’s number and put your pride in check.
I looked at Johnny W., he looked at me, and pretty soon (despite the old man’s blood soaking deeper into my core) we decided we’d had enough of each other’s delightful company. He went his way, I went mine, and the folding step stool slipped back into its place wondering why in the hell I’d bothered it in the first place.
I opted for a cup of hot chocolate. Powdered instant. Domestically, I have grown slightly complacent in my middle age. And why not? We’re born into a nearly ruined world, so the best we can do is make ourselves as comfortable as possible whenever we have the chance; the easier it is to do so, the better. Sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes.
I wandered into the living room, sipping happily away at my yummy Swiss Miss, and began to reach for the phone to call the group home once more.
Glancing out the front window, I saw the two black mastiffs sitting across the street, staring at my house.
The Keepers are coming…
The phone rang just as my hand touched the receiver, startling the living shit out of me.
I dropped the hot chocolate, spilling some of it on my pants, cursed, then answered, listening as the anxious voice of the supervisor on the other end informed me that Carson was missing. I told them I was on my way and hung up.
I looked back outside again.
The dogs were gone.
(Maybe they weren’t there in the first place, pal. Maybe they’re just flashes of memory. You remember those flashes, don’t you? The ones you’re always ignoring. The ones that the meds are supposed to help you understand and deal with. The ones you’ve spent half your goddamn life trying to convince yourself don’t exist, that it didn’t happen, that you-)
“Get away from me!” I shouted, kicking the mug across the room where it shattered against the wall.
I took several deep breaths, standing there with my eyes closed until I was certain I had control of things.
There.
All good now.
All better.
I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.
There were no other dogs.
No other memories.
Nothing that would come sneaking out of the dark and take me by surprise.
I grabbed my coat and headed out the door.
SEVEN
I became Carson’s legal guardian after his mother died from a heart condition that no one-including her, as it turned out-knew she had. (“All these years, I thought it was just gas.”) My sister was a woman of singular grace who never let anything phase her; hangnails were met with the same dogged composure as broken bones. In all the toofew years she’d been in my life, I don’t think I ever once saw her panic. Even when she awoke after an emergency C-section to discover that her child had Down’s syndrome and that her peach of a husband had left her because he couldn’t handle it, she never allowed any setback or misfortune to best her. I loved her dearly and miss her every day.
Carson spent three weeks every month at the group home; the fourth week-and all holidays-he spent with me. He wanted it that way, and so did I. After seven days, we started getting on each other’s nerves a bit, so one week a month was just the ticket for us. And I could visit or call him whenever I wanted… which I usually did somewhere around the middle of Week Three.
He was never lonely. That was important to me.
One of the things my nephew and I discovered we had in common was a love of comic books. Admittedly, I hadn’t really been involved in the comics scene since the heyday of Ghost Rider, Aquaman, and The Silver Surfer (though I have to admit to a shortlived renaissance during the early appearances of Sandman), but Carson didn’t care. Spider-Man united us. We were of one mind when it came to the Green Goblin (he was an annoying wuss), Doc Ock (dangerous, scary, and kind of cool), and Kingpin (very fat and rude but never turn your back on him, uh-uh). Carson always helped out at the Cedar Hill store on those weeks he stayed with me; he was my unofficial Comics Manager.
One of our rituals whenever he stayed with me involved his hauling out his latest batch of comic book acquisitions and reading them to me. Another ritual involved our driving out toward Buckeye Lake for dinner at the I-70 truck stop, Carson’s favorite place to eat. (The food is surprisingly excellent.)
As I drove toward the group home, I began thinking how, a few months ago, these rituals had converged.
Carson had adopted a cat that he kept at my house. I had no arguments about his keeping it at the house, as long as he paid for the food and litter from the money he earned working at the AARC sheltered workshop. Besides, the cat proved to be agreeable company at night, was always very affectionate, and didn’t shed nearly as much as I’d feared at first.
The cat-which Carson named Butterball-ran away one night as I was taking out the trash and failed to close the back door behind me. I dreaded telling Carson about it as I drove to the group home to pick him up for our week together. I had the radio tuned to Cedar Hill’s National Public Radio station where two agricultural scientists were discussing the remote possibility that an outbreak of scrapie was starting to infect sheep in Montana.
By the time Carson and I got back to my house (after cheeseburgers at the Sparta and a matinee at the newly renovated Midland Theater, the pride of downtown Cedar Hill) I knew there was no avoiding it.
I pulled up in front, killed then engine, then turned to him and said, “Carson, I need to tell you something. I’m afraid it might be bad news.”
“I know,” he said, softly bouncing up and down in the seat.
I grinned for only a moment. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“Uh-huh. Butterball ran away and-hey, you know what? I got some new slippers. They’re real warm and-”