The Dope Thief (20 page)

When he was back heading north, the moon was just beginning to show. His cell rang, and he picked it up.

“Raymond?”

“Hey, Ma.”

“I’m home.”

“Good, did you have fun?”

Theresa’s voice got quiet. “You sound tired.”

His eyes clouded over, and his breath hitched in his chest like it was caught on the bones of his ribs. “I am, Ma. I’m so tired.”

“Why are you out?”

“I was just, I don’t know.”

“Come home. Come on home for a night and just rest, hon.”

“I want to.”

“Ray, I have to tell you something.”

“What? Is something wrong?”

“No. No, nothing’s wrong. Your father’s here.”

Ray didn’t know what to say. The rage he had felt for so long was as burned out of him as everything else.

“He’s sick, Ray, and he’s just lying down. He wants to see you.”

“Yeah.”

“You know he’s going to be gone soon.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, just come over and have a meal with me and you can sleep in your room. He’s all doped up anyway, and you don’t have to see him until you want to.”

“I, uh. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll see.”

“Okay, hon. I love you. He loves you, too.”

“Don’t. Don’t say that.”

“Okay.”

HE STOPPED AT
a CVS on Old York Road and bought himself a toothbrush and toothpaste and a bottle of seltzer, and he brushed his teeth sitting half out of his car in the lot behind the store. He spat and swigged from the bottle and threw it back onto the seat and got out to throw away the toothbrush. He stood for a minute, looking at the traffic going by on York and rattling the change in his pocket, and finally went back into the store and bought a box of candy and a tiny spray of flowers and threw them onto the seat. The clerk was a young girl, maybe Spanish, and her skin was caramel colored and smooth. Ray smiled at her when she gave him his change, and she smiled, too.

When he finally pulled up to the house it was full dark, and for the first time since the spring he could feel the slightest cooling when he got out. Ray did math in his head, trying to remember the date. He got out and started to close the door but then remembered and reached back in for the flowers and candy. He wanted a cigarette for the first time in a while. He stood and looked at the house and listened to the motor on the Honda ticking and heard dogs barking up the street and then Shermie started up inside. The sky was full of stars and roaming clouds and the blinking lights of airplanes. Ray walked up the sidewalk. The cell he had left in the car began to ring again and he turned to see if it would keep ringing and should he get it or just let it go and a shape unfolded itself from the dark yew at the border of the yard and stepped into Ray and stuck a knife in him and he went down.

FROM A DISTANCE
it must have looked like they were in an embrace. Old friends finally meeting. The man leaning into him and Ray clutching at the moving arms. Ray made a sound, something like a scream, and then he couldn’t catch his breath. He had a flash of the face, the goatee and long hair, and he knew it was the guy from the midnight blue Charger, and the guy was saying something but Ray couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t important. Ray had heard it all before, about how he had it coming and that he needed to pay, and he had heard it and he had said it even about himself and now it was prophecy coming to pass.

The pain was like a note so high it passed out of hearing. The only thing that hurt after the first seconds was his left leg, though that didn’t make sense. The guy must be swinging wild with that knife, he thought. He heard Shermie, louder now, and the door opened and there he was, the old dog moving faster than Ray had ever seen before. Shermie tore into the guy and Ray wanted to laugh but he couldn’t make sounds anymore and then there was Theresa and she began to scream and stuck her hand into her mouth and there was more he couldn’t follow, but the guy stopped to look at her. Scott, that was his name, he wanted to say it. They were both looking back at the door, at Theresa, and Ray wanted to tell her to go back inside, to get away, and the young guy had hold of Ray’s shirt with one hand and when he turned he turned Ray, too, and he saw Theresa take a step back and say something about the police and then look back into the house.

And here was Bart. His old man, looking tired and small and weird in one of Ray’s T-shirts and pants turned up at the cuff. The old man, out of prison a day, maybe, and he came through the door and the glass in the door broke and Theresa gave a little shout again from the fright of it. Bart moved right over to where Ray was on the ground and Scott crouched over him, turning back to raise the knife when Bart jerked back the kid’s head by the hair and raised Theresa’s cast- iron frying pan and brought it down hard with a hollow noise like two rocks cracking against each other. Ray dropped back and lost sight of the kid but saw Bart’s arm going up and down twice more with a harsh energy like Ray’d seen him use to kill a spider in the basement once when Ray was young.

A car door slammed, and Manny ran up. Come to see the show. He was tall and gaunt as always, and he had his shades on even though it was full dark because that was Manny, man, he lived the part every minute of the day. He was cursing, and Ray saw Manny and Bart pull the kid by his feet into the garage and close the door, looking both ways down the street to see if anyone was out, doing that heads- up check that he had done himself a thousand felonious times, nothing to see here, nothing at all.

Manny was pulling him to his feet now and that was when it was bad, the blood gone from his head and he was fainting and waking up again while the three shouted in whispers to each other and Theresa kept putting her hand out to the house and saying ambulance and Manny was saying no and that’s when Ray got what it was all about and said what he could say, maybe his last chance to weigh in on things.

“No ambulance. Get inside.”

Bart got it and knew it was the right thing even as he wanted to come with them and balled his hands and cried at the sight of Manny half- carrying Ray to the car and screamed a sound of rage that made Ray smile and try to lift his hand and wave. The last he saw of them was Theresa folding her arms around his old man and moving back into the house. Flowers, he wanted to say, and chocolates. Lottery tickets for everyone.

IT WAS
a long ride to the emergency room, hours and days of watching the streetlights flash by like flying saucers tethered to wires, each radiating an orange sodium glare that felt like sand in his eyes. Manny was babbling and kept pushing Ray’s arms down onto his stomach and telling him to hold things together, but Ray didn’t want to feel the ragged edges of himself under his hands, he wanted to feel the wind cooling his hot, wet arms and watch the lights. Manny was telling him a story about Scott coming to his house, but he was busy in his head and couldn’t follow things. There was so much to say and no point in saying it. No one to hear. Manny knew all about it, knew all his secrets.

At the hospital Manny went in shouting and they got him onto a gurney and people with serious expressions gathered around him and he caught Manny’s eyes and tried to wave him off and however it happened Manny was gone and Ray could relax, fi nally, and let go. It was bright and there were people everywhere, and he was tired but didn’t sleep. There were people he knew, he thought. There were bikers with long hair and their hands on fire, Rick Staley looking apologetic, shaking his head like
don’t blame me, man
. Danny Mullen with his one hand and Danny’s mom with a bandage on her throat, and they all looked very concerned. There were other people that he felt he should know, guys from prison and cops, and it made him feel guilty that he couldn’t remember their names. And there was the girl from the picture, in her cap and gown, only it wasn’t the girl from the dealer house, it wasn’t a stranger from Bristol. It was another girl, one he did know. A girl he had loved. Who loved him.

“HE’S DYING
?” an older guy’s voice, clipped and precise. A cop. They all sounded military nowadays.

“Yeah, Gene.” A young woman. A doctor, a low voice in case Ray was listening.

“Does he know it?”

“That I can’t tell you. He’s lost a lot of blood? He’s got major organs compromised?” Her voice making questions out of statements. Meaning she didn’t really know what to tell the cop.

“If he knows he’s dying he can give us the name and we can use it in court.”

“I don’t know his mental state.”

“Can I talk to him?” There was an insistent beeping and electronic whirring noises, nurses conferring and someone being sent for an X-ray cart.

“You can try.”

“Raymond?”

“Yeah.” His own voice, strange and hoarse.

“Raymond, do you understand you’re dying?” The older guy, the cop, his voice raised over the murmur of patients and nurses and machines hissing. Someone was talking loudly into a phone, spelling Ray’s name.

“I got shot at.”

“Did he get shot?”

“No, he was stabbed, according to that kid who dumped him here. Erin, were there gunshot wounds?” There was a sound of paper flipping, a metal clipboard clattering on a desk.

“No, Doctor. Just the penetrating stab wounds, abdomen, left thigh, medial, right arm, left arm. We have . . . heroin on a tox screen. Cocaine. Methamphetamine. Blood alcohol, negative.”

“Christ.”

“No GSW.”

The raised voice again. “Raymond, you were stabbed, do you remember?”

“Shermie’s out.” He was trying to help, but he couldn’t see anything under the bright lights. He wanted to shield his eyes but couldn’t lift his arms.

“Shermie?”

“Shermie, he’s out! Tell Theresa. I call her Mom.”

“Raymond, did Shermie stab you?” Quieter, “Do we know who he’s talking about? Do we have known associates?”

Another voice, deeper, another cop. More paper flipping. “I don’t have a Theresa. Mother’s name is . . . Caroline. According to the fax we got from Lower Makefield. Father’s name Bartram.”

“Tell her to get Shermie.”

“What did Shermie do, Raymond?”

“He was biting.”

“He bit you?”

“No, he’s too old.” There was a long pause, paper rustling, machines going, and the lights so bright it was like a humming in his head. Near his ear a nurse complained that the veins were all blown.

“Doc?”

“He’s going. It’s just . . . random connections, synapses firing. His blood pressure’s down. The surgeon’s on his way, but...”

“Shit.”

There was a beeping, loud and close. A woman said, “Oh, there we go.”

“Yeah, this is going nowhere. Who’s on call for anesthesia?”

“Raymond, can you hear me?”

“What’s her name? That girl. Look in the car. I knew her name. Marletta.”

“He’s out.”

“That’s V-fib.”

“Yeah, he’s . . .”

“Lidocaine? Ringer’s lactate?”

“Is anesthesia here?”

“There he goes.”

“Doc?”

“Start compressions.”

“Doc?”

“Sorry, Dectective. He’s going. He’s got too many holes.”

“So that’s that?”

“That’s it.”

He pulled off County Line Road in Perry March’s Lincoln, the lot packed, cars pulled up on the lawns of houses for graduation. He remembered how hot it was and the radio full of Nirvana because of Kurt Cobain.

Through his open windows he could hear a voice through a loudspeaker and distant cheering, and already people were leaving,
moving in small knots clustered around beaming kids in black and white caps and gowns. And he did feel something, a pang in his chest seeing kids he knew, their arms around each other or being squeezed by parents and grandparents.

He drove slowly, looking at faces, a tall girl he’d had a crush on in junior high whose name he couldn’t remember now; a kid he’d had English with who’d always said “president” during roll call. Then there she was coming across the lot from the gym, her gown lifted and showing jeans on her short, muscular legs as she ran toward the street and her cap under her arm. A smile stretched to the point of breaking, waving over her shoulder at friends, hitting the curb and juking right to run alongside his car. He slowed and she yanked the car door open and they were gone down Centennial Road like a bank heist.

She looked at him a long time without saying anything, and he’d steal glances at her until she smiled and hit his arm.

He said, “Put the cap on, I need the whole effect.”

She did, and moved over to the door to pose, her hand under her cheek. He shook his head.

“So, how was graduation?”

“Fun. How was Juvie?”

“Oh, you know. There was one boy who I liked, but I couldn’t tell if he liked me back.”

“Jesus, Ray,” but smiling when she shook her head. “ You kill me.”

“I could always make you laugh.”

“Really, how was it?”

“Oh, it was fine. I cleared some brush, cleaned up some litter off

611.” She made a move toward him, bringing in her hand like she
was socking him in the jaw, touched his cheek instead.

“I couldn’t sleep, thinking about you in there.”

“Mars, it was fine, really. There are always some retards, but I just give them the eyes and they keep moving.”

“The eyes?”

They pulled up at the stop sign at County Line, and he turned toward her and lowered his head, his eyes hooded and empty, and she turned her head.

“Great. There’s a skill. Honest to God, you scare me sometimes.”

“I don’t want to fight, Marletta.” He put his hand on her leg. She kept looking away but covered his hand with hers.

He said, “I would never hurt you, you know that.”

“Oh, stop. I’m not frightened of you, I’m frightened for you, dipshit.”

“Well, listen to the mouth on Stanard Hicks’s daughter.”

“ Yeah, well, my boyfriend is a bad influence.”