Chapter 7

1

“Jesus, dad, you look nice.”

            “Don’t act so shocked.”

            “I just mean...” Her face sort of flushed. She was holding Patty and the boy only gave him a toothy grin. Shit, he loved the kid. Loved him to death. His daughter had a point. He’d combed his hair for the first time in months, and put on a pair of trousers that didn’t require any sort of patchwork. Even his shirt was nicely pressed and tucked in, the collar nearly starched it was so stiff against his clean-shaven face. All it took was a little adventure with Adam to light the fire under your ass. It was Betty’s voice. She spoke to him a lot; it was the sort of connection he kept with his old life. A life he remembered with a certain fondness that made it ever more difficult to wake up each morning alone. Maybe it was the adventure, but Lewis liked to believe it was purpose. That’s what he was lacking.

            “You just look like you used to. When you went to work in the morning.”

            He’d never known her to be nostalgic. She was already dressed. It was just after 9. Lewis had a full day ahead of him. Investigative work, he would have liked to call it, but a baser part, a part he knew once belonged to the conscientious voice of his wife, called the very idea juvenile. You’re not forty anymore, Lew. And even then it’s a stupid idea. No, but the boys had stumbled into the shit, and if he was here to protect Adam and Patty, then by all means he had to tread water in the sewers.

            “Well, thanks,” he said. He felt professional. If that was even a thing. But maybe the truth was he felt useful. For too long he was just an accessory. He understood that.

            Barbara looked at her watch. “Trevor, we’re going to be late.” He thought he heard an agitation in her tone.

            “Everything okay?”

            “Yes. Of course. Trevor and I have an errand in Davenport. We should be gone till the afternoon. You mind letting Adam know?”

            “Of course.” Adam was already gone. Lewis watched him leave about a half an hour ago, but he wouldn’t leave it up to his daughter to know that. Adam had made him a promise, and Lewis would have to discover today if he was a boy of his word.

            “Bampa,” Patty said with a giggle. Lewis stroked the boy’s fine hair.

            Trevor came down the stairs, dressed casual. His Sunday best is a grubby T-shirt and jeans. Because he likes to spit on God at any chance he can.

            “Lewis. You look put together.”

            “Trevor, you don’t.”

            Trevor only smiled. He gave Barbara a brief glance then turned to retrieve the keys from the hook.

            “You two play nice,” Barbara intoned.

            “Don’t we always?”

2

He woke up with what felt like a toothache. But sometimes that’s how the discomfort started, digging its roots deep into his jaw like razorblades in bone until the nerve endings exploded and sent tufts of white pain into his forehead until he felt like a buzz saw. It’s been like this since you were a boy. It wasn’t every day. It wasn’t a word he would generally use, but the pain was intermittent. No, what was far more persistent was the resulting nausea...not exactly the sort of bloat he’d most commonly tie with food sickness but the hollow thud of something heavy pressing into his gut until he retched.

            And retch he did. Clayton Miller just made the toilet of his ruddy apartment, a rental from some fucking Jew that had a New York name and a New York way with numbers. He was handy, so he didn’t have to rely on the maintenance prick making his way here from the suburbs where he most likely enjoyed some privacy. No, Clayton spent most of his night listening to Jared and Beth going at it like racehorses until one of them—probably Jared—shrieked at climax and then the shifting, creaking springs were quiet. But the toilet flushed without hassle and he stared at himself in the mirror, picking up the mouthwash and wiping his bare arm across his lips.

            His place was clean. When he did have people over they seemed generally surprised that he’d keep the apartment tidy. “I’m a fuckin’ janitor.” One’s occupation wasn’t an arbiter of hygiene. He could look at himself now, mostly bald pate with those few strings of hair matted to scalp as if in defiance of nature, and those grey patches of stubble that aged him about twenty years; he didn’t look like much, but considering his work he wasn’t decrepit. Today would be tough though. Days like this usually were, and he would be damned if he was going to sit around hoping the grey clouds might pass. Because his entire life was a waiting game. His mother told him to wait it out. His father said the same. His doc told him he had chronic neuritis, which was just the fancy college way of saying disoriented. But even that lacked the sort of gravitas or weight this burden left on his shoulders.

            He wasn’t working the day shift. The treatment plant was ten minutes outside of Creek’s proper. One of the new additions to the infrastructure of the fed’s new gas push that saw some of the dirt being torn up to add pretty sizable sewer lines, and a position with pretty sweet benefits and an ace drug plan. You even walked down a few of those pipes when they were lying outside the ditches. Probably still a few feet above your head too. And those tunnels were under Reedy Creek now, managing the wastewater and regulating Jared and Beth’s shit so none of the garbage got out into the cornfields. That had once been an issue when the septics backed up, and holy hell did he hate wading out into the field wearing boots he’d have to throw out. What do ya expect? You couldn’t do school, couldn’t concentrate. Not when the dizziness kicked you in the balls. So when the doc deduced it was your ear, that it wasn’t the hypochondria of a kid hoping to miss school, or even mono cause every kid gets the kissing disease, he gave you the audiogram, and then you rehabbed with balance tests to ensure some form of intra-neural equilibrium, testing over time what the doc called methylprednisolone anti-inflammatories which did jack shit; the only thing that ever worked, that ever gave you some semblance of a normal life was Nembutal.

            It was something he injected into his arm. He often wondered if people looked at the tracks on his arm and passed him off as a junkie. But he didn’t touch the hard shit beyond the barbiturate that helped to quash the intracranial pressure that had him clutching the wall and bracing himself with the fucking mop handle.

            There was nothing in the medicine cabinet. The vial and fresh syringes were usually packed here. Now there were only needles. He tried to remember if the other vials were by the seltzer water in the kitchen. The second resort to settle the fizzle of an upset stomach.

            Nothing.

            So Clayton Miller would have to try the pharmacy on Main without a prescription. That’s tapped out too. Shit.

            No, his last resort would have to be Dr Serkis, and the last thing he wanted to do was bother the GP at home on a Sunday.

            He threw up once more and got dressed.

3

“Once you get as old as me, you start looking back. It’s like turning back the clock. Memories are cheap though. This way, ya don’ waste money on developing film and giving Kodak every cent you make. You remember, keep your mind sharp. Exercise for the brain, kiddo.”

            It was his mom’s dad. Hell of a guy. He died thirty years ago now. Almost forty. Was it that long? The guy was a machinist, and like any engine, when the oil was low or the fuel gauge empty, the mechanics ceased to work. He died in the hospital. It was on a day when Eisenhower gave a speech. And Lewis had been busy. Too busy to make it to the hospital before he passed. To give the man his formal farewell. Because that was how focus started working when you got old; you got married, popped out a few, and that unrelenting world of responsibility made you forget those finer times when even a candid conversation would mean the world to you. So even as true as his granddad’s statement was, he never divulged how the mean memories, the bad ones, are just as persistent as the good when you reflect.

            Quit genuflecting to pity, Lew. It was the sort of word only Betty would use. He was sitting in a diner on Main. One of the few places open on a Sunday. He had some eggs and bacon, no matter what the good doctor warned about his ticker. Another of his granddaddy’s oldies but goodies: “You’ve made it this far in a world out to get ya, then what does it matter what you put in your mouth and pass out your rear? Far as I’m concerned, the Spaniards couldn’t stop me with a shell in the knee, what chance has a rare steak got when I still shit two times a day?” Words to live by, and Lewis had.

            The interior of this place was the sort of familiar roadside eatery he’d patroned since he once wore the uniform. Then the coffee had been free, and the kids would joke that his job was to eat donuts until Wade Gallagher got drunk enough to pass out on the street. But that was small town business, and he suspected things hadn’t changed that much. The tabletops were Formica and mostly chipped at the routered edges. Some kids had etched something into the table next to him: NUKE THE WHALES. He chuckled a bit only because it was blatantly fudging a slogan he’d heard Trevor mutter at some time or another. Save the whales. There were a few starving kids Lewis would prefer saving before one of those ugly sea-mammals. There were two other people in the place. Another old coot with a coffee and the paper, and a mother and her infant, whom she was trying to feed scrambled eggs to no avail.

            You’re not here just for breakfast, ol’ timer. No, he was not. But often he’d found, even with the uniform on, that once you were doing something regular, normal, like sitting to a bite, your commonality with the rest of humanity turned your gaze from authority to habit. Just one of us now. He once considered that was why cops sat so often for a glaze and double cream and sugar. Because the uniform could disappear behind the simple routine and behaviors might adjust to a frequency that meant Big Brother was not at the other booth.

            Big Brother.

            He looked up. There were two cameras he could see in the diner. One just over the entrance and another by the checkout counter where the cute girl was snapping gum and picking up garbage off the floor with a folded coffee filter. It had been some time since Lewis was in Boston. He wasn’t sure he remembered the sort of surveillance there that he was seeing here and he could only wonder if rural paranoia about the Cold War was now just feeding the delayed reaction to the Cuban Missile crisis, as if none of these bumpkins knew Khrushchev never had any intention of turning the war hot and it was just those crazy Cubans, Castro and Guevara, who would have liked to nuke more than just the whales.

            Oh quit that nonsense, Lew. You only get political when you think of our blessed son-in-law.

            Yes, and Barbara was especially nostalgic this morning. No matter how few words she’d actually said, he knew his daughter well enough to understand she didn’t dwell on memories. You never asked what sort of errand she was going on that require she drive nearly an hour to Davenport. Well, she didn’t usually dwell and he didn’t usually pry. No, the only time he ever got in her business, and Trevor’s by extension, was when the men with the guns came to their home. When they tied Trevor to a chair. And broke his fingers. He took another couple bites of his bacon and finished his eggs. Sunny side up. Goopy yolk smeared over sourdough toast.

            He pushed the plate away from him and stood up.

            Just because they’re young and together, doesn’t mean they’re up to no good. Are you always suspecting the worst of everybody?

            No, but he relied on stereotypes. Like it or not, that sort of prejudice worked for collars. And three teenage boys with two girls, already showing the flirtatious affectations that would have the guys vying for one or the other, meant the party was looking for its favors.

4

“The stuff can be habit forming.”

            It was one of the nicer girls who worked for the pharmacist, and for the longest time he thought she could look past the chlorinated stink of his clothes and see what he hoped was the sort of personality she could settle down with. But even if her intentions were kind, he understood she was just doing her job, and that little statement had planted a very dangerous seed that supposed, no, confirmed that his attacks, his vertigo and nausea, the pain that would wake him up only to stare into the sharp white blade of angry nerves, was only a growing addiction that could no longer resist the remissions between bouts.

            So you actually think you threw up because you need...you require a little oomph? It wasn’t oomph, though, but unimpeded sleep. A sort of tranquility that he imagined would have transpired and permeated...no, saturated the 60s. Serenity now and all of that. What he could do now was throw on jeans he found on the floor, roll the cuffs up over his work boots (whose tongues flopped over the undone laces) and put on a T-shirt whose collar drooped low enough to show the sags of fat that had developed over his clavicle, a bone that had once appeared protuberant enough to define shadows between his tits that might have once fooled the ladies into thinking he spent more time in the gym than not.

            She was there now. She was working alone at the General. He knew she saw him coming in. He knew because she noticed in her periphery and disappeared in the back. Like at work, when you walk down the hall. You’d just been by the treatment stacks, and even though they pumped enough chlorine into the pools to turn the rest of your hair white, all those guys, those chemists, those smarty pants with enough patience to sit through school without throwing up, always find some reason to double back when they see you. You aren’t worth a hello. You aren’t even worth a single fucking nod of the head, because you don’t work with your mind like they do. You stink of your work. You stink of Reedy Creek’s shit. You stink of Jared’s flushed condoms. You stink! He wanted to vomit again. It wasn’t the hollow pit of his gut now but the nerves. He went to the magazine stand for a moment. Because she knew why he’d come. She knew because she thought he had a bad habit. And she was so pretty. Her blond hair was usually tied back over her shoulders, emphasizing her slender neck. He flipped through a copy of Time Magazine, casually glancing back over the shelves toward the counter; he could hear her. He was alone in here today. He was just happy they were open. He wondered if she was church going. If she might try to save him through Christ’s grace, and a part of him hoped she considered him worthy of that sort of pursuit. Maybe if she believed he was an addict, that he had a problem, that it was her job to do something about it, to do something no doctor had the power to do. To cure him of intangible needs by filling that void through God.

            He put down the magazine and lazily thumbed through a few more. Waiting for her to return. But more obviously waiting for his nerves to settle.

            There she was. Wearing the white coat. Her hair up again. Earrings dangling just above the cuff of her collar, her nametag clipped to her lapel. Her name’s Sarah. Sarah Darling. Oh darling. He pushed back his hair, made sure the bulk of it stuck to his crown, concealing as much of that sunburned scalp as he could. The poor thing was stuck working a Sunday because Dr Haliburton wanted his weekends with his family. Or his whores. He wasn’t sure what pharmacists did with all of their money. She was a peon. Like him.

            “Hello Clayton,” she nodded. He thought he caught the skepticism in her tone from the get go.

            How did he look now? There were no mirrors. He wondered if he was flustered. He felt hot. Sweaty. He was certain his cheeks were flushed, and he knew his eyes were vacuous enough to appear sick. “Hi Sarah. It’s been a rough morning.” Should he tell her more? Should he tell her he puked or was that far too much information? The last thing he wanted her picturing beyond his lounging on a La-Z-Boy with a needle sticking from his arm was his rufescent head inside the toilet bowl muffling the clanking echo of his guttural moans. He steadied himself on the counter. His palms were sweating.

            “Nembutal?”

            “Yeah,” he nodded. “But look. I’m out of prescriptions now and the last thing I wanted to do was bug Dr Serkis. You know how it is. I was hoping...you could do an IOU fill this morning and I could come back tomorrow with the paperwork and the good doctor’s Hancock.”

            She arched her eyebrow. You’re a walking bad habit, Mr Miller. He knew she was thinking this, and he hated that he ever walked in here, that he ever stayed when he saw her, when he saw her strategy to avoid him. Maybe that was the sign he needed to leave. But he stayed. He stayed like a schmuck and now she was just going to stand here and judge him.

            “You know I can’t do that, Mr Miller.”

            “Please Sarah. I’m not...I’m not up to anything here. It’s just...” Was he begging? Is that what he was doing? “It’s just been a rough morning. I can barely stand without...without falling over. Look. I’m holding myself up here. My head is swimming.”

            “I know, Mr Miller. But it’s policy. Plus Dr Haliburton probably doesn’t stock any of the stuff without foreknowledge. You know what it is, don’t you Mr Miller?”

            Now she wasn’t just suspicious but questioning his intentions beyond motive to action. If it was a bad habit to rely on Nembutal, to rely on it without knowing what it was and did was beyond insane. It was retarded. She thought he was retarded. A retarded junkie.

            “It’s a pentobarbital. I’ve read some hospitals use it in assisted suicides. I think this is the stuff that killed Marilyn Monroe. I cannot just hand over a drug used for euthanasia, Mr Miller, without proper authentication from Dr Serkis. You know I can’t.” She sounded concerned now, but Clayton knew it was insincere. More than anything she wanted him gone. And more than anything he wanted to leave.

            He didn’t think he could walk without falling. His head was spinning. It wasn’t the vertigo, no, but embarrassment. Pride. He tried to smile but figured what she saw was a mixture of pouty eyes and yellow teeth.

            “Thanks Sarah. I...I get it.” He rapped his knuckles on the counter and turned to leave. He counted to ten in his head. Counted each step, was conscious to ensure he didn’t stumble, that his awry laces didn’t trip him up as he toddled like an infant. When he heard the bell over the door as he left he breathed a sigh of relief. It was getting hot out, but even that felt better than the bleating daggers that were Sarah’s eyes watching him out. Pitying him.

            Clayton Miller went to a payphone and checked the white pages. He fished a quarter out of his jeans, thanking God for small favors. At least there was that. He wouldn’t have to bum money for a call.

            He listened to the dull tick of the ring on the other end. A moment later there was an answer.

            “Dr…Dr Serkis. I am so sorry to bug you on...on Sunday.” Now he was feeling especially sick. Maybe it was the combined heat of the phone booth, the sun beating on the scummy glass, and the thudding pain in his gut and temples. Or maybe it was just more of that same embarrassment clinging to him like a parasite. “But...but I’ve got it bad this morning. Really bad...”

            “Who is this?”

            “I’m sorry...it’s...it’s Clayton. Clayton Miller.” He was stuttering now. Just great. “My prescription’s out, doctor...I tried to...tried to fill it without a prescription, just so I wouldn’t both—bother you, but...”

            “That’s okay, Clayton. What are your symptoms?”

            “Same...same as always, doctor. But mostly...mostly vertigo and naush—nausea.”

            There was silence on the other end for a moment, and Clayton thought he’d lost the doctor. That the man figured he had better things to do on a Sunday morning than listen to sick junkies talk through their maladies.

            “Nembutal, right?”

            “Yes...yes sir.”

            “Are you at home?”

            “No sir. Just on Main outside the pharmacy.”

            “How long would it take you to get home?”

            Clayton smiled. It was the smile of a junkie, he considered. The smile of one who’d just gotten word of his fix, understanding that goddamn pain would be gone soon. Soon.

            “Fifteen minutes.”

            “I’ll see you in twenty.”

5

“Thought your folks got pissed when you ditched out on Sundays?”

            “They do. My mom’s got her mind on other things.”

            “Oh yeah, so you just snuck out the back like a bad little girl?”

            The guy was wearing an Indians cap. The Indians. Beyond those who lived within Cleveland, and even then, he wasn’t sure who the hell might root for the team, let alone fork over ten bucks for a hat.

            “Give her a break, Brad. Our dog’s sick.”

            The girls were cute. Lewis understood the dynamic with teens. The boys would act with the aggressive intentions of a bully because it was that sort of behavior that stuck out and made itself known. And he remembered the boys with Barbara, back when she would sit in her room listening to the Momma’s and the Papa’s California Dreamin’, as if by extension of that rock dribble she could forsake her country upbringing for some west coast sun. She was always giggling, no matter what the little assholes might say, and even now, these two young girls, dark hair pulled back and swishing over their tops as they kept pace with the guys, offered their demure laughs as some form of appeasement even though a poor pup was sick somewhere. The guy named Brad, the one with the Indians cap, put his arm around the older of the two girls. Her name was Angela. The girls were the prim and proper type. It was always those you had to worry about. Barbara was prim and proper once. But that was the wrong way to put it; she was innocent once. In ’64, with the hoopla fermenting as a result of the heavily Republican backed Civil Rights Act, she only asked him what the big deal was: the blacks had hit records. She’d even rocked out to Chuck Berry with her girlfriends. She didn’t yet understand there was a world of bigotry, of hatred, because as a young girl, her influences were pop cultural, headed mainly by the British Invasion and Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.

            No, it wasn’t until she started accusing him and Betty when that innocence went to shit. Don’t you go on playing the blame game today, Lew. If you’re gonna go on gallivantin’ with this private dick act, then at least pay attention to the kids. They just ducked into the back road there by the dumpster.

            His mind did start to wander sometimes. Not as a result of what the shrinks might call onset senility. At least not yet. No, what he had was a case of the Memories, and if looking back at a time before innocence was lost kept him just a little saner than he supposed he should be considering the choices her husband made that impacted her.

            He never stopped thinking about the phone call. Never stopped thinking of his daughter, once the girl who’d ask questions about civil rights not out of naiveté, but a special kind of innocence that could see past the vagaries of a world so hell bent on persecution, huddling with Adam on her lap and Patty in her belly as men forcefully entered their home and strapped Trevor to a chair with belts and began snapping a finger one by one—

            Lewis snapped back. There were constantly two worlds: the past and the now. They sometimes converged and it would often take Betty to bring him back. Because the mind worked with the irony that a past voice could somehow break the paralysis of nostalgia. Wake up, Lew. Wake the hell up! They’re just by the bin there.

            He’d walked as far as the Liquor Depot, an unassuming brick facade with glazed windows. The place hadn’t opened yet. The proprietor would come in soon though; he wasn’t so daft not to capitalize on the MLB and NFL sales garnered by bored house husbands and bachelors who’d rather ride the couch with a brew than enjoy these ever brief summer finales, where the sun is just chipper enough to break some sweat on your forehead before the wind can chill it. Right now it might have been wise to have a smoke. To stand here and wait. At least look like he was doing something. Maybe you look like an old man going for a pre-church stroll. Maybe you’re Catholic. Or Methodist. Or Mormon. Hell, there’s enough of each in the Creek to ensure they could each worship privately. That was usually unheard of in towns. He’d wrangled with Presbyterians in the 60s that downright abhorred booze until they were in their own home and realized boredom couldn’t untangle the poor antenna reception and they’d need a little liquid leisure. It was mostly a Protestant bent. But here, where the ethanol was bringing in city folk to enjoy this upstart, the Creek sought to accommodate the immigrants in a way that smelt of social engineering. There was nothing organic about its Welcome Home acclimation.

            “Shut up Wendy! You Mormons can’t even drink Coke. You’re the reason New Coke bombed.” This was a boy named Oliver; he wore his hair long, like those smut artists AC/DC, but it at least appeared untangled. The kid kept tugging it back over his ears, but no matter how many times he adjusted his locks, they broke the hold and flowed free.

            “Fuck you, Oliver,” Wendy retorted. The guy in the Indians cap howled.

            “Whoa, whoa, easy there Josephine Smith,” Brad said. Lewis snickered at that one. Pug once mentioned he had sisters. There couldn’t be a ton of Mormons here. Enough maybe to sequester a community hall under the sanction of a Ward Sacrament, but these girls were far too pretty to be related to a boy whose nickname matched him with a mutt. “Language, language, girl. I don’t want to be sullied by your naughty nature.”

            “You were already sullied by bad genes, asshole.”

            Angela, the older of the two, gave Wendy a high five. Was there anything sincere about kids? Or was everything just a joke? He understood the draw of sarcasm, but to base an entire relationship around it seemed nauseating. It’s cause you’re an old coot, Lewis. Maybe that was true. But even when Barb was around their age, the boys at least had the good sense to apply themselves. If it meant avoiding the draft and seeing the Far East in a game of chess with the Soviets and their pawn Ho Chi Minh, then they’d do what they could to ensure an education awaited them. But here these kids were, behind a liquor store by a bin smelling of high heaven for the chance they might score some bud. So you assume, Betty said. You think all kids are up to no good.

            No, it was to prove her wrong. The ol’ rub it in your face antics of a husband on the side of too many losing battles.

            At least that was how he felt when the Chevy G20 pulled up in the alley and the bastard everybody, his grandson included, called Lazarus climbed out of the saddle to open the sliding door. You’ve got the vehicle and its make, now, detective. And you were right. Kids are bored, so kids seek a little excitement. He’d left his Tercel outside the diner. Right now he was just an old guy on a walk, leaning against the front of the Depot waiting for the doors to open. But if the van broke off now, he’d never catch it in time.

            “Morning kiddos,” Lazarus said. He was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and ripped jeans; his hair was pulled to the side so that most of it covered the tarnished part of his face where, so the story told, a shotgun slug went through his cheek when a suicide attempt went wrong. “You’ve entered the bazaar. Make sure to wipe off your shoes and show me the cash up front. Then we’ll discuss the eventuality of your mind fuckery.”

            Brad laughed. Lewis supposed that was all a kid like Brad, a fan of the Indians, could do. He was their embattled veteran, so he stepped up first, pulling out a few bills from his pocket.

            “What have you, Chief?”

            “Just some bud.”

            “A lad out and about on a sunny Sunday, a few hours before your Indians take a head bashing on the field, and you’re just asking for weed? I can line your veins with fire. Call it a slick discount on account of your first time. Or do you wanna get high enough to talk some shit with Geronimo himself, so an actual fuckin’ Indian can ask you why in the hell you’re wearing that hat?”

            Brad laughed again. Lewis could hear the nervousness in the cackle. What truly scared him was the outright confidence in Lazarus’s voice; he spoke not unlike a televangelist, and whether or not he was miffing, just testing the grounds with these kids to dangle out options, he wasn’t sure he liked the sort of sarcasm implied here by a man willingly doling out candy H or crack cocaine to piddling teenagers who wanted to get lost in a corn maze.

            “Nah, man, just the weed. Like last time.”

            “Come aboard, then, travelers.”

            Lewis hated this. He did. And he wanted nothing more than to jump out and scare the kids into a run. But he knew there was a greater purpose outside the nominal adventure. He heard the brown door slide closed. He knew Wendy and Angela had climbed in as well; it only took one peek to see the van and its tinted windows parked without any human accompaniment. You’re going to let them do this, Lew? I thought you were out to play citizen’s arrest?

            “You saw the animals, Betty,” he whispered. It was low enough to sound like an exasperated breath. “And you saw the farmhouse. You saw what the boys, your grandson, found inside that house. I bet if the chemists are turning corn into fuel at the distillery, there’s a magician turning out crystals in that house. Crystal Meth.” Lewis wasn’t sure if he’d actually spoken out loud or if it was just a thought, an answer for his dead wife’s ever present voice. It didn’t matter. He watched the van a moment longer then headed back the way he’d come. To the diner. Where he climbed into his car.

6

Success was measured by his first discovery. Lazarus was the Creek’s Vein. The artery to the underworld. Places like this always had a face for the crime. Sometimes it was just the mule, sent out by the overseers to keep the denizens too intoxicated to question the operation, or too high to care.

            He followed that ’85 G20 for the rest of the day. He’d sat idling as he watched those kids climb out of the van, a diffuse smoke following after them and a fresh baggie dangling in Brad’s fidgeting fingers. The girls were laughing. He knew he had to keep his distance. The Creek wasn’t the sort of community conducive to tailing, so he made constant stops. He wasn’t sure if Lazarus cared that he had an obvious shadow; if there was enough money in the operation, you could make the sort of payouts that would keep the coppers out of the sewers. There was a perverse kind of order in the sentiment. But he obviously wasn’t a cop. If he was busted here, he was just making himself a target. He had to become something else entirely.

            He took the by-road out to the woods where the G20 made brief stops at the housing development that would soon turn this part of the Creek into pavement. Give or take a year. Lazarus shot the shit with a few of the framers, who’d climbed down rooftops, electricians carrying spools of wire coming out to the van, unhooking overalls to reach for cash. The guy was on his weekend run here. Lewis watched from behind his windshield. Calculating how he might find his in. Because that’s what this was about. He couldn’t Cagney and Lacey this thing, not when he would become as obvious as he thought he would. The Tercel would stick out like a nurse among a field of camo. And how often did a geezer make circuits around the Creek in syncopated time with a dealer?

            The G20 made a final stop outside Reedy Creek on the 34; there was a rest stop with public washrooms and ne’er used picnic tables, where a big rig hauling lumber made a conspicuous pit stop on the shoulder. Lewis stayed back and watched, gauging his own reflection now in the windshield and seeing the pitting of an old face, remembering just then that he wasn’t the young agile officer of so long ago. That this entire charade might just be insane.

            It’s probably a shipment for the housing development. But Lazarus is meeting him outside town proper because he’s expecting something that wasn’t on the manifest. The trucker, a fat guy in coveralls, waddled in bowed strides toward the back of the truck where there were exposed 2x4s strapped down to the flatbed. He wiped his brow with a rag, peeling off a cap to do so. Most likely huffing the way any fat ass breathed in the high heat. He went to the center stack and pulled quarter-long planks from the pile that were stuffed in as one vertical column; hooked to the end of the boards were garbage bags. Lewis watched the guy hand Lazarus the plastic; Scarface took a quick look inside each and threw the bags into the van. He handed the fat driver another bag. The driver looked inside, doffed his cap.

            That was it. Lewis had just seen one part of the import process. Ingenious really. The trucker stuffed the planks back in; the framers would complain of a shoddy stack, and that would be the end of it, because a formal complaint to the lumber yard wouldn’t prove anything beyond whose dick was bigger and whose voice was louder. The G20 took off. Lewis waited there for a long time. His window was down and the breeze felt nice.

            He’d made good headway for one day.

7
He puked once he got home. He’d driven his Ford and the lunky half-ton made an effort to lollop onto the shoulder, where the axles would have driven the wheels right into, and most likely through, the rusted wells. He must have looked drunk. And he was certain if Andy or his loopy little deputies had been patrolling the streets this fine morn, he would most likely have been taken to the tank without question. Because he could see the vexation in his eyes. He could. Even as he stood over the basin, contemplating mouth wash or toothpaste. You know the Listerine will just make ya stink of alcohol, and you don’t want the good doctor to think you’re three sheets to the fuckin’ wind. He hated thinking this is what Sarah saw. This is what Ms Darling (is it Ms, would a gal like that be single?) was looking at as he begged for an IOU. Pleaded for a barbiturate. Not to get high. No. But to get rid of the spinning. To get rid of the pressure behind his eyes that just wanted to explode. Because he looked like a crazed lunatic. The sort of fella whose picture you’d see on the evening news and think: Jesus, no shit the guy killed kids at an orphanage. Look at him. The proof’s in the pudding.

            He smiled. No, that wouldn’t do. It looked more like a sneer, and even that took more effort than he could give. He heard the knock at the front door and the feeling of relief that followed gave him momentary respite from the vertigo. He adjusted his shirt collar, patted his cheeks, gave himself one last look and headed to the door.

            “Dr Serkis. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

            Norris Serkis was a tall man. Tall and lanky, but he carried the slender frame with a confidence that would defy anybody to call him skinny. Because that sort of attribute would have detailed an effeminate attribute the guy clearly did not have. He wasn’t dressed in his doctor clothes. The white coat and stethoscope. This wasn’t the clinic. No, ol’ Clayton interrupted the poor guy’s Sunday and he made an effort to come out and help quash some discomfort. He was a man of his oath. Hippocrates, or whatever his name was.

            “You don’t look well, Clayton.”

            The two shook hands. His grip was strong. Clayton liked a strong shake, and he hoped the doctor would have agreed the same of his. He mustered just enough energy to ensure he’d leave an impression. “No. I would think so. I’ve been sick all morning.”

            “Have a seat. Please.”

            Clayton did as he was asked. He had a La-Z-Boy in front of the TV. It was the most expensive purchase he’d ever made. It was brand new. Sleek and black. And he was careful to clean up any spill or vacuum up any crumbs. Once you owned something worth owning, you took good care of it. That was something his father once taught him. But the man never owned anything worth a damn. It was an empty platitude. But for Clayton it expressed some hope he might not be a lost cause. He settled into the leather. It felt nice to be off his feet. Norris was wearing a pair of jeans and Nike runners. His golf shirt was squared nicely with his shoulders and a tuft of greyish chest hair peeked above the buttons to match the blooming white by his temples. He was refined. What Clayton would call a gentleman.

            “You were diagnosed with plexitis, is that correct? That some of the prevailing assumptions behind your condition drive not just from intracranial pressure, the result of your vertigo, but perhaps metabolic inflammation frustrating a cluster of nerves?”

            “Is that a question?” Clayton laughed. But it hurt to do so. “From what I understood, doctor—”

            “Norris. Please call me Norris. We’re not at the clinic, Clayton.”

            “Okay, Norris…I’ve always been told its dizzy spells from something in my…ear, maybe. I’ve done balance tests. Sound tests. Nothing’s ever worked but inflammatories. For the…for the nausea.” He felt like he was being studied. Like what he was saying might not have been the truth.

            “Have you ever gotten a CAT scan?”

            “Maybe when I was younger. Nothing I really remember. Why?”

            Norris was leaning down now. Both hands clasped over his knees. He’d set aside his brief case. “As long as I’ve known you, Clayton, there’ve been these recurring bouts. Pain and nausea. Vertigo. Some of that would imply improprieties in the inner ear, certainly, but you’d stated this has been going on since childhood, and to no avail, what we’ve got to show for relief are just temporary fixes.”

            “Are you saying…saying you think it might be something else?”

            Norris shook his head. He wasn’t saying no. Clayton got that. It was confusion maybe, but he felt a sudden onset of nerves. The sort of stress that accompanied public speaking. Because he felt like he was on trial. He felt like the guy had been talking to Sarah at the pharmacy.

            “Your symptoms have been pretty static. Over the long term. I once might have considered a tumor.”

            “Jesus.”

            “No. No, that’s not what I’m saying, Clayton. I might have suspected at one time it was a possibility. I even bandied with neuralgia. Or trigeminal neuralgia, to be specific. Those are just a lot of fancy words to say you’re battling with flares of pain along the trigeminal nerve in front of the ear,” he tapped the area by the grey hair on his temple, “that can be battled with analgesics like acetaminophen, or aspirin, or really any sort of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. But I suspect that’s not what you want to hear.”

            Clayton sunk back into his chair. He wasn’t so stupid not to know the doctor was accusing him. It was in his tone. He was just far more subtle and smart about it.

            “If it was as simple as aspirin, you would not have called or attempted to barter with a pharmacist.”

            “Doctor…Norris, I…I think I know what you’re implying here,” he sat up and the pain shot into his eyes again, spinning his head and reaching down into his gums with splinters, “and it’s the same thing Sarah was fuckin’ thinking at the General. But she was wrong. And so are you. You gotta believe me. It’s my head. It’s…my God, it’s always spinning. I’m always sick. Always. If fuckin’ aspirin could fix it, if I could just pop a few pills and be done with it, hallelujah, praise the lord, I’d be on the moon.”

            “Please, Clayton, lower your voice.”

            “I’m sorry, Norris, but…look, I know what people think of me. I do. I know what you’re thinking. Jesus, this guy calls me on a Sunday for his fix. Pathetic, right? There are other ways to get high in this fuckin’ town than with a doctor.”

            “I know that, Clayton.” His eyes were cross. He wasn’t exactly scolding, but studying.

            “You didn’t come all this way to…to lecture me, did you?”

            “Of course not.”

            “Then, and I don’t mean to sound rude, but…but if you’re here to accuse me, I’m just gonna ask you to leave. I do have that right. It’s my place.”

            Norris stood up. “No, no. I’ve been rude, Clayton. I have. When a patient calls on a Sunday, it’s only natural certain speculations should arise. I just wanted to hear it from your mouth. I’m anything but a pusher.”

            “I don’t look at it that way, doctor. At all. I just…I’m tired of being sick.”

            “I can see that.” Norris picked up his case and unclasped the top. They were gold latches and they made expressed clicks. “Nembutal.” He was holding a vial, pinched between his long forefinger and thumb. “The system can so easily be gamed, Clayton. I meant no disrespect. You sometimes question one so insistent on CNS altering substances, for lack of a better euphemism. But if it’s genuine relief you’re after, I must oblige. I’d usually ask one to roll up his sleeve, but since you’re already in a T-shirt, the request is unnecessary.”

8

The feeling was usually immediate. Clayton knew the brain had that kind of power, that it could sidestep the implications of flaring nerves by borrowing some relief from the future, because that presumed relief was as real as the syringe, the plunger.

            Norris sat on the ratty couch across from him. He wasn’t sure if the good doctor wanted to know he’d found that couch in an alley, and that he’d wrestled it from a stray cat. It was an awkward contrast; he was far too couth. Was that a word? He smiled. He didn’t know why.

            “How are you feeling?”

            “Cloud nine, doc. Cloud nine.” He didn’t know if he’d said that out loud. He wasn’t sure it mattered. “Thanks for stayin’ with me.”

            Norris only nodded. The man was studying him. His arms were folded, but the elegant rigidity of his posture seemed awkward as he sat forward. “You’re not a junkie, are you, Clayton?”

            “I already...told...you...” His breaths were more rapid. It was a strange sensation. It was as if he could not take in enough air...as if his heart was racing as the decompression of his central nervous system alleviated the pressure inside his head that had left him retching and fumbling his way around the apartment. “I’m...just...sick...”

            These last few words were breaths.

            Norris nodded. “Then you’re doing your duty, Clayton. And I will stay with you. It isn’t right for you to be alone.”

            Clayton wasn’t sure what that meant. He wasn’t. He wondered if the doctor could sense his skepticism, but figured he was too comfortable now to care.

            “Duty is the vanguard of any operation,” Norris said, letting his elbows rest on his knees as his posture slackened. He finally looked loose. “You don’t have to agree with the methods of the operation, but to see them fulfilled, it requires a sense of respect, does it not?”

            Clayton only exhaled. It probably sounded like a sigh. In his confusion, he wasn’t quite sure what the doctor was talking about. But he was right. It was nice to have him here. It was nice just to listen. Because he was smart. And most smart people, like those assholes at the treatment plant, always looked for a reason to go the other way when he was around. Like Sarah. She knew you were there and she disappeared hoping you would leave. It was a sobering thought.

            “Do you know the story of U-234? Probably not. There aren’t many books here, Clayton. Oh, what you’ve missed. Perhaps it was your sickness. Perhaps you could not focus long enough for such escape into literature. A shame, really. The U-234 is one of eight large class submarines developed by the Germans in World War II. I say is, Clayton, because it still remains. A fossil of that time, of that notorious regime, but a principled memorial of a lost generation. Its primary mission during the war effort was for transport to Japan. Materials and men. Its cargo would have rivalled our own Manhattan Project, which birthed the atomic bomb. Had it succeeded, of course. On its last voyage, it was learned upon shortwave transmission that the Germans had surrendered. That the lieutenant was to take the sub to the nearest Allied port. He chose a route to the US. But the Japanese onboard, Clayton, they did not consider Germany’s failure applied to their own effort. And why should it, for they had their duty independent of the Germans.”

            Clayton sank back into the chair. His La-Z-Boy. His most expensive possession.

            “You remind me of those Japs, Clayton. You do. Because your duty to the operation is just as entwined as theirs.”

            “What?” What? It was a breath, and all he could really think or say. Nothing beyond. Because he was exhausted. And the light was sort of wavering now. Here and gone. And his breathing. Jesus, his breathing was so fast.

            “Those Japs took their own lives, Clayton. Barbiturates. Just like you.”

            My God. “What?” Have you done? His thoughts and voice were just mixed now. He wasn’t sure which was which.

            “I envy your duty.”

            My... “Breathing?” Thought and voice. Mixed.

            Norris stood up. He was holding his case now. He swam in and out of focus. He was no longer handsome; in those intermittent glimpses, the man lost the features that made him human...masculine. He was blurred into an amorphous template, cut out from the shadows around him.

            “Cheyne-Stokes respiration. A pattern of fast breathing and delayed apnea. It’s par for the course.”

            Norris took the syringe and wiped it with his shirt. He set it in Clayton’s hand. He could not feel the needle. Could not sense its weight. But he knew it was there. Why are you doing this? He wanted with everything in his soul to say those words out loud. To hear them himself. But there was nothing. Just the thud of his heart. The stealing silences between breaths and the cloying suffocation of a coming darkness.

            “You’ll be okay, Clayton. There is purpose in what you’re doing.”

            Sarah warned you, didn’t she? That this stuff was used for euthanasia.

            Yes. She did.