Bottled Abyss (2 page)

CHAPTER I

The Coins

Herman watched the caramel colored whiskey flow down the neck of the bottle to Janet’s pressed lips. Her brown eyes filled and she set the Jim Beam down on the cigarette ash spotted TV tray. “I’m going to kill myself today,” she told him.

Herman had just put on his windbreaker to leave and had one arm stuck into a sleeve at a bad angle. “You’ve said that before,” he replied.

Janet’s eyes seemed near to shutting; it was difficult now to discern their normal weight from the burden of drink. They’d sagged that way for almost a year now, that slight thinning of the vision, like someone sleepwalking or struggling to read an eye chart. She placed a hand back on the whiskey but thought better of taking another tug.

“Don’t drink any more today, okay?”

It took him a moment to remember what he’d been doing before he gently wiggled his arm inside the sleeve. He was getting so damned fat. Soon double extra large would be worn not for comfort but necessity. Going back to the weight room might have been good for him, but he’d just not found the time between jobs.

“Where are you going?”

“To the foothills. Lester’s out there somewhere.”

“Sure he is,” Janet answered with a sick twist of her mouth.

“Are you taking your pills?”

“All of them.”

He waited for her to give herself away. Janet did not elaborate, however, and instead tapped listlessly on her yellow teeth. He remembered her bright white smile once upon a time and wasn’t sure when it had changed. She used to brush after every meal and floss twice a day. The teeth-tapping was something she’d started to do recently and it could last sometimes for several hours. She wouldn’t say anything during these events. Just tap, tap, tap, tapping; eyes wide and overflowing with emptiness, scarce moments taken for blinking; knees locked to her chest. A flashback normally triggered this fugue state.

Just last month, Herman had gotten her to finally tell him which haunted moment was paralyzing her. It wasn’t at all what he guessed. It wasn’t that awful first day, nor was it the day following the hit and run, when the doctor let them into the operating room to be with her.

The moment their Melody was gone forever.

No, the recollection was when they spread some of her ashes at Greenhill Pond, a benign event for Herman, but obviously one capable of serious damage to Janet.

He did have his memories of that day, though.

That duck stuck its head through the ashes.

It didn’t. I can’t take this. Just stop talking.

You didn’t see? It has her ashes on its feathers now. Why did it do that?

Herman shook away that thought. His daughter had been too much in his mind this morning. It wasn’t healthy. People still had to live, didn’t they? People had to carry on after a tragedy, not make it grow into some gigantic life-ending monster. There was work to do. Bills to pay. Air to breathe. And runaway Border Collies to find.

“When was the last time you saw Lester?” he asked.

Tap, tap, went Janet’s teeth.

Tap.

“Did you let him out to pee?”

Tap.

“Did he already get his wet food? You know he’ll be back if he’s hungry.”

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“He probably isn’t much farther than the dirt bike trail. He never goes out that far.”

Janet stopped tapping and Herman froze. He would take any break in pattern as a good sign. She looked at him squarely and the tip of her tongue glided over her teeth. In an instant, she took another sip of the Jim Beam.

Herman took his keys off the top of the oak entertainment center.

“The dog’s gone,” she said. “Don’t bother. The coyotes were howling all last night. He’s not coming back. I know I wouldn’t.”

“You should start tidying up. Evan and Faye are going to make us dinner tomorrow.”

“You aren’t working?”

“I can go into the shop late. They don’t care.”

“I don’t want to be alone right now. Stay.”

“I need to find our dog, Janet.”

She gave him one of her recent inappropriate looks, layered in drunkenness. “I… want you.”

Herman snorted resolutely and went over for the bottle. Janet put it behind her back, crushing it between her and the sofa.

“Give it.”

She looked away, far away.

He tried to work his hand around her body to get at the bottle, but she thrust herself back, reflexively poking her elbows down. Herman pulled back with a tired sigh.

“I hate you sometimes,” she whispered.

“I don’t really give a shit.”

He left her for the kitchen. He could hear her weeping softly in the next room. She responded fairly well to being comforted now, and although he might have taken a chance at mending her mood, he didn’t want to look at her another second. He grabbed Lester’s jerky snacks from the counter, from the junk drawer a leash, his cell phone and a flashlight from the cupboard, then from the fridge a bottle of water.

Outside on the porch, Herman checked the door to make certain the lock really was engaging. Strange that he did this, for the most dangerous thing that could befall Janet was really in here already, with her.

He set out across the sun-bleached yard and left the gate open, in case his dog showed back up before he did. Sunlight funneled down a long break between the rocky foothills. The afternoon was growing older. Dusk would be here soon enough. He’d have to figure on turning back at a good time if he didn’t want a long nighttime stroll through the desert.

Lester’s coat was blacker than it was white, so distinguishing his shape out here in the Southern Californian wasteland would take eagle eyes. Herman couldn’t believe the dog hadn’t come right back after a couple of hours. But then he had no clear idea when Lester had gone missing because he’d been working. On a regular day he volunteered as a mechanic at the water treatment plant from four to about ten in the morning or so, drove into
Redlands
for his shift at Jorge’s Burgers around
noon
. After a full eight hour shift there he’d return home for dinner, smelling like a six foot fried zucchini, and then he was off to the body shop from nine until
midnight
. But the shop only called him when they had large rush jobs for insurance companies.

Today wasn’t one of those days and he’d dreaded coming home to spend a full evening with Janet. Morbidly, he was almost grateful to get out of the house. He knew it wasn’t good to think like this though. Lester could be hurt out here. A snake could have bitten him, a coyote could have gotten at him, he could have broken his legs falling down a ravine. The world’s stage did awful things to its best players. Herman counted on that now. He figured anyone would, had their two year old daughter been run over by a getaway car. In a better universe, Melody should have been safe playing in the front yard with other children in her daycare. Those murdering immoral assholes should have found another residential street to speed through after they robbed that bank. They shouldn’t have taken that corner so sharp and gone up over the sidewalk—

Herman whipped his head from side to side.

This was what hanging out with Janet would get you.
For even half an hour, it was like being tossed into a dumpster with every other nightmare he’d tried to throw away. Most of the images burned into his mind he thought would heal if he just ignored them long enough. The method was cowardly and overused, but Herman could not deny how effective it was, at least until his wife decided to have one of her tapping fits and then his own bad images and ideas would start to surface.

What would it be this time? The spanking he gave Melody the morning of the day she died? Her bent, pouting lip and watering eyes as he scolded her for leaving toys in the bathroom when he’d told her
three
times before? The way he kicked her purple rubber ducky into a corner and startled her?

Or would it be the big unanswered question? When he dropped off Melody to daycare, had he still been grumpy with her? He couldn’t remember if he’d made up with her or not. That memory was gone.

He had held grudges in the past. He could remember times when he dropped her off and didn’t say a word. He could recall being stern, being sour. Melody would give him a hug and tell him goodbye and he would say nothing in return; he wanted her to understand the value of upsetting him. Had the day she was hit by the car been one of those days?

Or had he let it go?

Had Herman told her he loved her and to have fun playing with the other kids?

How long did a two-year old harbor shame for disappointing a parent?

Did she feel, in those moments before passing away, that the car had been some sort of punishment?

Herman closed his eyes, swam in the maddening sadness for a moment, and then shook his head until it made him dizzy. He staggered through the dirt and a pebble went inside his tennis shoe. Stooping, he fished for it with his finger.

The desert expanded before him in all its miserable beauty. Stumpy trees lined a couple ridges, their leaves bursting in full, trying so urgently to be vibrant, but instead possessed a chalky, lusterless avocado color. Shallow lavender puddles of wild flowers contrasted with long stretches of similarly self-loathing gray scrub, as though to reinforce the bone-deep ugliness in everything else.

The rock in his shoe had evaded Herman, but he couldn’t feel it digging into him any longer. It was like it wasn’t there.

He started off again in the direction he thought Lester might have gone, this time at a stronger pace. The land descended into a basin that came sharply together in a collection of weeds. He hopped over and through some of the thorny underbrush and continued out onto a new plateau of hard, colorless sand, only occasionally interrupted by distant brown sugar dollops of tumbleweeds.

The first paw print he found just at the base of a serpentine washout of pebbles and grit, the dirt rippling there like a freeze-frame shot of a dirty river.

“Lester!” he hollered.

He called again.

Herman searched out the direction of the paw prints, though the path wasn’t explicit like in the movies; the prints often disappeared, were half-formed, or extremely faint, causing him to second-guess whether some weren’t just random disruptions of earth. He went where he ultimately thought they might lead, in a direction that took him south, toward the foothills.

He tried to whistle, but had never been much good at it. Lester hadn’t ever been extremely responsive to high pitched sounds anyway. The vet said he had hearing loss, likely from some event in his puppyhood before Herman and Janet adopted him from the shelter. After Melody’s death, he felt like they never gave Lester all the attention he needed. This escape wasn’t the first and if they continued to shuffle about the house with their eyes always turned inwards, it probably wouldn’t be the last.