Stranger Will (3 page)

He almost passes a fallen bird. In the dusk, it so nearly resembles a shrub. The message is dirty and unreadable without a full sun. He stuffs it into his pocket and continues.

A second body appears—fresh, perhaps the bird he just shot. He stuffs the note in with the first.

Sweat pinkens the sock on his hand, and he can feel the pumping blood hit between the beats of his heart. He is tired and satisfied. The messages in his pocket crease tight as he steps back toward the highway.

The sock swells during the ride home. William dumps peroxide from the back of his van over the wound. By the time he climbs the steps to his porch he holds his hand above his head to keep the blood from spilling.

Julie will be sleeping when he opens the door. Or at least very close. She will pretend not to be upset when he wakes her, pretend to have been worried about him for a moment, offering a slow sneer before detailing her day’s events. She will tell him about cravings and pains, hiccups and sore muscles, and all the trauma she’s had to endure to ensure a healthy child. She will have again altered the plans for a future home, and William will listen, nodding as he unbuttons his shirt and removes his shoes.

But tonight when he opens the door she is asleep on the couch. William wants to wake her, to show her
his
wound and describe the situation, elevating the danger enough for sympathy, his own needy parasite, but instead he lets her sleep. He is tired and dirty. The drama can wait for morning.

He piles his soiled clothes in the corner. Naked, he starts toward the bathroom, massaging the destroyed muscle below his thumb. The broken teeth dig into his hand. He is eager to pull them free, let the wound run pink under cold water, but he remembers the messages in his pocket. Careful to keep Julie sleeping he slides into the kitchen, finds a flashlight. It flickers before keeping a steady beam.

The first message mentions a car, a Plymouth Fury, and immediately William conceives taping it next to the group of notes from a man who boasts about sexual conquests in the back of his car. William smiles anyway and shoves it under a loose piece of tape in the Fury Man’s already large neighborhood.

Julie turns and moans.

The second note belongs to a larger story William doesn’t recognize. It rambles on about regret.
Either miscellaneous or start something new
, he thinks and sets the note aside on a small table next to Julie’s head.

All these words, all these stolen messages are pinned along the west wall of his home.

When approached objectively, the wall appears decorative. Long stretches of multi-colored yarn twist and wrap around the pins. These lines connect similar messages William has come to assume represent similar people—his own little neighborhoods. Some strings are left hanging free in anticipation of new lives.

What results from all of this is a massive network of colored veins flowing along the wall. The strands can change; they move to suit his mood. William might shift around entire communities, guessing, waiting for that moment when the Earth slows enough for him to latch on until his world and the real world move together, seamlessly as one.

Until then, it’s all just patching sutures. Connecting dots.

Julie doesn’t mind but insists the wall must be cleared once the baby is born. Daycare might be a valid option. Susan Reynolds offers her services via the pigeon ring and seems trustworthy enough. William has no reason to doubt otherwise. Such a massive network of enthusiasts warrants some open naiveté.

He turns off the flashlight and steps into the bathroom to clean his wound, afraid, yet proud, of what disease or parasite might already be growing within him.

Chapter Four

At three o’clock in the morning, William prays for small talk.

The phone rings. He crosses his fingers hoping for a wrong number or a voice trying to sell him something. He would donate money to anyone speaking with confidence of a rare medical condition. He would switch phone companies, buy vacuum cleaners, even pledge his time for a fundraising walk on behalf of survivors—any survivors, breast cancer, a forgotten World War, AIDS—if this ringing isn’t a work call. But at three in the morning it’s always work.

As the phone hits ring two, stumbles into three, Julie pulls the sheets tight over her head. “Answer it,” she mutters.

William, half-awake, throws his arm to the nightstand and searches through the accumulated mess. Keys hit the floor. A near-empty mix of Alka-Seltzer and warm milk tips over, forcing him up to investigate. Nothing has spilled from the cup so he relaxes.

The phone rings again. Julie replaces the blanket over her head for a pillow.

William returns the cup to the table. A shallow milk film adheres to the inside of the glass, hard and defiant after this half- night of abandon. William counts this as the single relief to a day already blistered and sore. He is not in a mood to clean.

He finds the phone in the middle of its fifth ring. “Hello.” His voice grinds deep with sleep.

“Lowson, we got one for you.” And before William can ask for an address, this first-precinct officer recites numbers with the impassioned confidence typically reserved for Bible verse. “A big red house without windows. We need it cleaned by morning.” The years have taught William to dread where this voice leads him.

“It is morning, Larry.”

“You’d better hurry, then. Already called Filbert,” the officer says.

“Philip,” William corrects him. “The stains will be there tomorrow. They don’t fade away.”

“Nothing does, does it…?” Larry says, letting the moment steal the silence for a few breaths. William ignores Larry’s odd introspection and returns to his night table for a bottle of aspirin. Larry has been a desk officer since well before William and Philip signed on to clean city messes. Larry isn’t their boss, but he leverages the age gap to imply otherwise. An accident on the job left Larry with a split femur that doesn’t abide by fieldwork anymore.

“The place sounds like a residence,” William says. “Couldn’t find any survivors,” and Larry hangs up.

The morning begins. William chokes down two ibuprofen tablets, lubricating the gulp with only his own spit.
Today might be the day
, he thinks,
the day I clean up a spilled life and tell myself the world grows stronger
. The pill fights its way up his throat. He balances it on his tongue.
Or it might be tomorrow
. He massages a stimulated muscle in his neck and tries again.

With an obvious suicide situation—a note covered in fingerprints; or a missing shoe, an exposed toe, and a large gun all married to a single body—Philip and William are called within hours. It might be a family member who discovers the body, calling under guidance of a police official suggesting William and Philip’s services as a “tragically necessary” means for cleanup. Because the city has no responsibility for residential tragedies— other than the body itself—the mess is a family burden. A father or brother or mother or daughter calls still crying, sometimes days after the death, unable to pronounce words like “blood” and “carpet stain” and “no face,” and William has to do the best he can to get an address. But when officials find no surviving family, the police have permission to take action, to get things moving before airborne particles become a public health issue.

The early hour and the “by morning” deadline could mean the officials would rather the press know as little about the situation as possible: drug deal in a quaint suburban neighborhood gone violent, domestic thing, battery turned murder via passion. But this is all speculation. Law enforcement officers give Philip and William nothing to go by because legally they can’t.

For seven years they’ve worked at the bottom of the cities, scrubbing away the remnants of failed lives. They understand the world at a base level, one that rarely gets acknowledged, because acknowledgement would be an admission of failure. And if there’s one thing crying families and grieving friends can teach it’s that failure is a hard concept to accept. Nobody needs it. Nobody wants it.
Nobody asks for it, but we’re all born anyway
.

Julie doesn’t mind for now. She has warned William of the late nights and long days inhibiting a cohesive family. “Once our family starts,” she has said. As her gut expands, she becomes more insistent on a solid family structure, refusing even a grain of sympathy for William’s thoughts regarding the absurdity of new life.

William drops the phone to its receiver. Julie rolls over, asking if everything is alright. He lies to her, making the situation sound worse than it probably is: “a recently divorced man was just found baked to the kitchen floor of his apartment,” he says. “A heart attack left him dead for a straight week. It’s been hot out.” He says this only because in Julie’s feigned concern, foggy under the late hour, she has already forgotten the question.

Julie insists that William keep every detail to himself. She asks about his day with superficial interest. “I’m asking,” she has told William, “because I read that you need to be involved in your partner ’s professional life for a happy marriage.” He pretended agreement, then at her happiest, reminded her: “as dictated by a magazine article you read when you were bored with me.” Julie didn’t talk to him for days after that comment.

If William comes home covered in the brown insides of a methamphetamine dealer hollowed out by the explosion of drug lab built under the influence, he tells Julie it was raining. Got muddy.

If he smells burnt, like a two-story house, ashes now for reasons vocal neighbors speculate might be arson, or insurance fraud, or an “unfortunate lack of precautions, and that poor child, and her mother and…” he tells her that he stopped for something to eat at the new barbeque place on Merchant. “I didn’t get you anything,” William would say, “you said pork is bad for the kid.”

When he tells her what the residues really are, she gets upset and starts insisting he quit to find a more acceptable job. But this is Brackenwood. The jobs stop well short of “acceptable.” Lives are lived and made in this little town just south of Alexandria, and the people do the best they can, but if
work
doesn’t mean a city job, an assembly line, or a small gas station then
work
probably isn’t legal. The truth is William has learned to endure his job. He is paid to be a witness, and even though it might push him deep sometimes, he rides with good company. Philip and William share drinks and laughs between shifts.

It takes only minutes once William wakes to drive over to Philip’s house. The small man sits on his porch swatting at mosquitoes attracted to the light he leaves on when he’s gone. Philip claims the light charade is a low cost form of security. He leaves a worn pair of size seventeen men’s boots on his porch for the same reason.

“Turner Street,” Philip says slamming the large, rusted door on William’s van. “I think that’s on a cul-de-sac, right?”

“No idea.”

“Yeah, probably is. I remember a firework show a couple years ago around there. Got a niece that lives in the area. If it’s the right area, I mean.”

The engine throttles in reverse; William’s stomach competes as he pulls out of Philip’s driveway, each machine rumbling. At three a.m., with the dread of rubber gloves and CaviCide tearing away at thinning nostrils William forgets about breakfast.

“You don’t look so good, Will,” Philip says, eyeing his own shirt, stretching a wrinkle from his sleeve.

“I’m good. Just tired.” He yawns every word.

“No. The hand.” He points to the gauze around William’s palm, brown and loose at the ends.

“Dog.”

Philip nods. “But you hate dogs.”

“Still do.” William tries his best to keep the van on the road. Every blink he stretches to a nap one breath long.

When they arrive at the address in Alexandria the world reflects Brackenwood, only bigger, and fifteen miles different.

Stepping out onto the cold asphalt, Philip inhales the scene and mumbles, “Probably right.” He nods slowly as he examines the house, glancing back to William every few seconds. “Larry told me they think it was a suicide, but mum’s the word and all that.”

“He told you this.”

“Mum’s the word. They haven’t officially stated anything.”

“Of course,” William says. “You know, Larry doesn’t remember your name.”

Philip doesn’t respond. “He did confirm sex. Male,” and he steps to the back of the van appearing moments later in a full Tyvek suit. Respirator, gloves, everything.

They walk past the yellow tape with suitcases of supplies tucked under their arms, their hands overloaded with impressive equipment and cellophane sealed rags. They over-exaggerate this cumbersome ritual out of necessity; the neighborhood must stay docile. If William and Phillip look important, the neighbors sense purpose and don’t bother the department with unnecessary phone calls. Most of the time they need only rubber gloves, a few waste bags, and the CaviCide—stuff they could carry with less of a show—but if people don’t see supplies they fear for the worst.

William steps behind the van and returns with only rubber boots and gloves.

Philip powers on a 9-Watt spotlight. He pans the house, the porch, the grass. “Look at this yard. Perfect. The house is shit— the yard perfect. Trimmed to the millimeter. And those bushes all along the outside, perfect.”

“I respect a kempt yard,” William says. “But this house…”

What is left of the building sits in a perpetual state of falling, the siding shifted and the windows broken by the stress of the tilted frames around them. The walls have only remnant red paint chips and holes where doors used to be. The roof might cover a full two-thirds of the foundation, but at those areas, fear of collapse far outweighs the fear of weather. Vines keep this pile a home.

With a light push, the door creeks back on broken hinges. William lights a cigarette and steps past Philip, who absorbs the dismal circumstance with wide eyes. Philip follows, gentle pressure to the aching floorboards before he commits to each step. He matches the spotlight’s sweep to his neck’s slow rotation.

Locating the stains from a dead body can be difficult. The house may be completely perfect otherwise, entertaining the possibility of a wrong address. And nobody knows the importance of a correct address more than William. Busting through a front door with plastic bags and uniforms asking where the body was demands a certain level of good excuse should a mistake have been made. The first time, William refused to admit his mistake, ensuring the perfect family of four—more alive than most people—that dead body residue had to be around somewhere. Now, he knocks.