No Ordinary Game

Published by the 2002 Santa Fe Writers Project fiction contest, 

posted among the best 65 entries

by Ed Peaco

Phil woke up in a sweat, his body wrapped around his son, Nathan, a small ball of heat. He could no longer hold up his end of the parentheses he and Anne were forming around their nine-month-old son. Moist from chest to crotch, he turned over in search of cooling relief. It was 3:09 by the red glowing clock. He knew that by 3:12 or 3:14, his butt would be sweating, and he would have to correct the punctuation error. Parenthesis. Parent thesis. He congratulated himself on his wordplay. Their latest parent thesis came from Anne’s reading of an expert’s book. Inviting the baby into the family bed would reduce wee-hour crying and simplify feedings. The expert was right, but he’d failed to address the issue of the light-sleeping father. The sagging mattress made matters worse, sucking Phil closer to the molten core. How could this healthy baby generate such warmth?

Wide awake, Phil sweated over how far he’d stretched Anne’s patience, organizing this Schilling family reunion at his parents’ house south of Chicago, blowing $500 on White Sox tickets and airfare to fly his brother Jerry in from San Francisco, dragging Anne and Nathan up from Indiana. It was no ordinary game; it was their last one in the old Commiskey Park before they tore it down. Plus someone would have to stay home because the box office had limited his order to four tickets. They hadn’t worked that out yet. After this splurge, no more: he would act more like a father and less like a kid. He would rise from this bed and leave it for good.

This bed was no ordinary family bed. Phil had slept in it as a boy. Later, so had Jerry. Gramma Emma had lain her head there before her second stroke earlier this summer, which prompted her move to a nursing home. She’d left things behind. Her dresser-top doilies glowed white in the dark, and must from her books thickened the warm air. They would visit her at the home later that morning. Maybe Phil would take her collected Dickinson and ask to borrow it. He’d always borrowed her books as a child, and now he was reading Dickinson in grad school.

Nathan clutched Phil’s shoulder with soft fingers and emitted his questioning murmur. He seemed to be asking, What is this new thing that I am feeling right now? For the moment of the murmur, Phil loved to hear it, a sign of the liveliness of his son’s mind. But Nathan usually answered his own question with some form of complaint. The baby was no different from an adult; if he couldn’t solve a problem on his own, he whined. 

Anne made a soft humming sound. Phil asked her what she needed; a Huggie, she said. She switched on her little flashlight, a timid ember, and held it in her mouth while she groped in the baby bag. Instead of the Huggie, she pulled out the $2.89 half-pint bottle of Popov vodka. It was Phil’s way of poking fun at her for remaining a teetotaler long past pregnancy, and it took the form of his father’s preferred format for furtive tippling. He was proud of the multiple referents his prop evoked. Phil kept planting the Popov bottle, and she kept finding it.

“Is this necessary?” she asked through her incisors’ grip on the flashlight, which made her sound like a squawking duck. 

“No, it’s a symbol,” Phil said. It was what he always said, and it was getting old, even for him. When would he grow up?

She handed the bottle across her body to Phil, crowding the baby. Nathan squirmed and fired off a deafening scream. My fault, Phil conceded with a clownish frown. Anne agreed, shooting him a grimace that glowed in the dark. She calmed the baby by rubbing his back and offering him her breast. Phil grasped that motherly and fatherly love boiled down to tit versus no-tit, but he’d witnessed times when even tit failed.

Phil again turned his back on his family and threw off a sheet. Then he felt cold and took it back, and the clammy heat soon returned. He stared across the room to the empty crib his parents had brought down from the attic for Nathan. I am the only baby here, Phil thought, failing at my attempts to self-soothe, too restrained to call out for help. He looked over and watched Anne sleep-nursing Nathan, which was how the family bed was supposed to work. Phil decided he wasn’t needed; he would get up and air himself out. He told Anne he looked forward to sunrise, when he would no longer feel obligated to try to sleep.

“You know what I look forward to?” she asked. “Staying here while you all go to the game. I’ll have peace and quiet!” Now Phil wished he’d ordered just one ticket, drove up secretly for the game, and spent the night in some dump in a war zone beyond the Skyway.    

—  —  —

“Hey, Dad, nice to see you up so early,” Phil said, grinning. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Howie said, scrunching his Sun-Times and bumping his coffee mug. Margaret looked up from her Tribune, glared at her husband, and wiped the breakfast table with a napkin. Phil knew Howie knew what he meant, that his father had, for a change, done nothing the night before that he had to sleep off. Phil, enjoying his little moment, looked into the living room and tried to catch Jerry’s eye, but his brother was working on something and did not notice. Howie retaliated by commanding Phil to put up the storm windows before he went back to Indiana. When Jerry laughed, Howie told him his task would be to patch the leaky spots on the roof. Roof work always fell to Jerry because Phil was afraid of heights. Hoping to get another rise out of his father, Phil threatened to go up on the roof, too. Howie chuffed dismissively. “You couldn’t go up on the roof if your baby’s life depended on it.” 

Ouch, Phil thought, escaping to the living room with a cup of coffee. Jerry had cut up the huge Van Halen poster that had hung in his room since the early ’80s. Sitting at the table, Phil got a whiff of the smelly Sharpie pen Jerry was using to create large-print calendar months for Gramma Emma, whose eyesight was going. Three months until the end of the year, and then they could get her a proper large-numbered ’91 calendar, Jerry said. He flipped over a rectangle with the insolent smirk of David Lee Roth, popped a corner of toast in his mouth, and stroked off a remarkably straight freehand grid. Apparently his studies in graphic design had steadied his hand. Jerry paused, turned up his face that he had not shaved in several days, pushed back his hair that he had let go wild, and fumbled in his hip pocket. With shifty eyes, he glanced to the kitchen. Then he passed something under the table to Phil: four hundred-dollar bills. “For the airfare,” Jerry whispered. “And a favor.” He said he’d been dealing weed in his dorm, and that was the last of the profits. A few weeks ago he’d returned from a class to find two officers and a drug-sniffing dog on his floor. He’d been hiding ever since, waiting to fly away, never learning what happened to his roommate.

Phil was bracing for Jerry to ask his favor when their father broke in with news from the sports section that tonight’s game was sold out; they would have to leave early. He went on to declare that this White Sox game would be his last. “I’m never setting foot in that prefab deformity we, the taxpayers, are coughing up for them,” he said, referring to the new Comiskey Park, being built with public money. 

“Me neither,” Phil said, now doubly annoyed as his father piled trivia atop Jerry’s surprise. Then Margaret piped up, babbling on about the first Sox game they attended as a family. Phil had memories of that game, but why share them under these conditions? He watched Jerry fill in October’s dates. The point at the tip of the 1, the 2 curving and tapering down to its base: talent wasted on such a fuckup. 

Then Anne came downstairs with Nathan in her arms. A single peep from the baby energized the grandparents. Phil resigned himself to the interruption as they rushed into the living room, crying out their endearments, Margaret’s Little man! and Howie’s Big Guy! Anne put Nathan down and held his arms as the boy tottered toward his elders across the dining room floor. She let him go, and the boy fell to his knees and crawled into the forest of adults. Phil scooped him up and passed him to Margaret. Bouncing him, she asked Anne if she would like company tonight when the boys went to the game. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I burped a baby,” she said. “And we could make popcorn!”

Anne agreed, and Phil was thrown because this arrangement was one he had not considered. “What about the fourth ticket?” he asked.

“Scalp it,” Howie said. “Place’ll be mobbed. We’ll make a bundle.”

Phil cringed. It was the last night game in the life of the old park, the ceremonial “turn out the lights” game. Yes, they probably could make a bundle. Still, lurking outside the stadium, negotiating in winks and murmurs — surely there was a more adult alternative. 

Anne asked whether scalping was legal, and Howie said there was no law against it in the Land of Lincoln. Phil wasn’t sure about that, but he could think of no authoritative way to refute his father. After Anne said they needed the money, Phil said, “All right, I’ll do it.”

“Not you,” Howie said. “We aren’t trying to give it away.”

“Fine,” Phil said. He turned and glared out the window, looking into the street of his youth, down which he used to run to escape.

“I honor your suffering,” Jerry said. Phil cursed himself for letting his brother pick up on his sulk. Jerry dabbed Sharpie stigmata on his palms — black, not red, but Phil got the idea — and waved them in graceful undulations of simulated suffering while gazing upward in bug-eyed, slack-jawed transmogrification. Phil shoved Jerry, and Nathan cried. 

“See what you get for being a wise ass?” Howie told Phil.

“Me?” Phil asked. Anne reached for Nathan, but Phil cut in, took the boy, and sniffed his bottom. “Dirty,” he lied, making his escape. 

Phil trudged upstairs with Nathan and scrounged for wipes. The boy may not have needed a change a moment ago, but he did now. Phil specialized in what came out, while Anne took care of what went in.  Was that all there was to fathering — Bodily Functions R US? Nathan fussed, and Phil tried to calm him by singing a song that the organist at Comiskey Park always played when an opposing pitcher was taken out of the game. The singsong refrain was meant to be snide, but out of context it sounded like a baby soother. It rarely worked for Nathan, but it never hurt. Then Jerry appeared and ruined the mood. “I need your advice, bro’.”

Nathan drew his legs up to his body and clenched his fists. Phil rubbed his son’s belly, which seemed to help. “Yup. I’m the expert on deep shit.” He took out one of Nathan’s toys, a red plastic radio with a bulbous blue antenna. It had a dial you wound up to play a Sesame Street song, which replayed slower and slower until it petered out. He curled himself around Nathan — somehow the position wasn’t uncomfortable in daylight — and started the song. As the boy sucked on the antenna, the jingle lulled Phil toward sleep, and he gave up trying to advise his brother. But the rumble of feet on the stairs broke into the peace. Howie, Anne, and Margaret entered the room. Phil thought of fleeing out the window to the roof, but they’d probably crawl out after him. Howie said he didn’t mind if the boys killed each other, but he had to save the baby. Margaret remarked that the crib hardly looked slept in, and Howie agreed.

“We didn’t use it,” Anne said. 

Howie gawked at the crib. “You let him sleep in your bed like the Mexicans?”

Because Anne had blabbed, Phil could not tell a lie about how they made up the crib after Nathan woke up. “Fine, Dad. When we roll over and crush the kid, you can say I told you so. Are you happy now?” He knew it sounded immature, but he didn’t care.

—  —  —

Two doors before Emma’s in the urine-scented corridor of the nursing home, Howie called the family to a halt. “I’m not sure about that book,” he told Phil.

“Maybe I can get her to read a poem,” Phil said, clutching the Dickinson tighter against his thigh. He wondered why his parents hadn’t thought of the idea. Wasn’t that the whole point of the family providing support? Anne, carrying Nathan on her hip, nudged Phil with her free elbow and shook her head, but Phil clung to his idea.

Margaret reminded him not to expect too much. “She can’t read anymore, you know.”

“Can’t read?” Phil asked, stunned. 

Margaret recounted how Emma had gone through a time a few weeks ago when she’d start crying soon after opening a book, though she still liked having books around her, which was why Margaret thought the book was worth a try. “We’ve already been through this on the phone. Don’t you remember?” Phil didn’t. They’d all visited Emma in August, several weeks after her move. She was confused then, but Phil felt sure his mother had told him Emma had since regained some function.

Emma poked her head out of her room, and they erupted with a chorus of hellos. Phil froze at the sight of her face; the left side slouching like a clock by Dali. He’d seen her that way before, but the shock felt fresh. Her white hair, whiter than he remembered, fell to her shoulders with the delicacy of corn silk. Emma backed up to admit them, arms quavering as she gripped her walker, and Phil took heart in watching her move around on her own. Margaret steered Emma to the turquoise vinyl armchair and sat next to her on the bed. Anne walked Nathan toward Emma, who smiled and held her hands together at her chest. Margaret told her that the last time she had seen Nathan, he was a tiny baby.

Beaming, Emma placed a bony finger in Nathan’s palm. His fingers closed around hers, and she made little clicking sounds to which Nathan’s eyes darted. “Baby,” she said, followed by other syllables Phil could not understand. The meaningless sounds alarmed him; he’d expected she’d be able to talk a little. He hoped she knew she was a great-grandmother. 

Jerry unrolled his calendar months for Emma, and confusion ensued as he, then Margaret, then Howie tried to explain their purpose. They pointed to her orchid-of-the-month wall calendar, emphasizing the impracticality of the slender, florid strokes of the numbers. Howie took charge, harvesting thumbtacks from wall decorations and mounting Jerry’s months beneath the orchid-of-the-month picture, creating a more readable calendar with the same attractive image.  

Emma said, “No no no!”

“Oh, Mother, you’ll get used to it,” Margaret said.

Jerry wasn’t giving up. He took Emma’s hand and shook it. He kept pumping her hand and smiling, and Emma eventually smiled back. “The hearty handshake,” he said. It was a ritual from childhood. Emma closed the boys’ Christmas and birthday cards Love and kisses, then switched to Love and a hearty handshake when they got older. They’d never leave her house without a hearty handshake. 

This gesture fortified Phil. She still had something inside her, and he felt sure he could bring it out. He stepped up and presented the Dickinson collection. He placed the book in her lap, and Emma blinked as he opened it at random. Then she cupped her face and groaned. Margaret asked her what was wrong but couldn’t get a clear answer. Phil felt helpless against the uproar of whispers, moans, and fractured speech. Emma leaned forward and, with both hands, she grasped the wrist that held the book. At first her hands shook, but then she dug in with a tight, firm grip. She began repeating single syllables that sounded to Phil like can’t, gone, and no. She leaned forward and sucked him into the gray caves of her eyes down toward the washed-out brown irises that shuddered in brief, tightly focused spasms. Gone, Phil thought she said. Gone! She reminded Phil of an old woman in a war movie pleading with a marauding soldier.

“It’s OK,” he said, willing the commotion to die down. “Sorry.”   

“Hey, no griping,” Howie said, smiling at Emma, frowning at Phil, seemingly at once. Phil stepped back, wishing he could vanish, while Margaret made small talk. Minutes later, to Phil’s relief, Margaret went to the closet and replaced a plastic garbage bag of dirty laundry with an empty one. She smoothed her mother’s hair, and they all said goodbye. 

“Tried to tell you,” Howie said on the way out. “Nobody listened.”

“There was no way of knowing,” Margaret said. “She’s different every day.”

Phil tried to remember his mother telling him about Emma’s reading problem. He couldn’t, but he worried that he hadn’t been paying attention. “I thought it was speech that was the problem,” he said.

Howie grunted. “Wait till your brain blows up, Philly boy. See how you read.”

—  —  —

Nathan started crying on the way home and didn’t let up when they got back to the house. Phil worked with Anne to apply the full portfolio of remedies — putting him down, picking him up, bouncing, dancing, changing (unnecessary), draping over the shoulder, cooing, singing, massaging, all manner of toys, and the trump card: the tit. Then Phil proposed the freeway nap, and Anne pointed out that he’d started crying in the car, so what was the point? The point, Phil maintained, was that the soothing freeway drive would put him to sleep, as it did every time he tried it on Highway 37 back home in Bloomington.   

“Fine,” Anne said. “If you bring him back asleep — ”

“ — You’ll take a slug from the Popov bottle?” He grinned.

Anne slit her eyes at Phil and turned slowly away.

Phil collected Nathan, and Anne filled a sippy cup with juice — as if, Phil thought, he could serve a beverage to a back-seat passenger while barreling down I-80, and retrieve it when it fell to the floor every 45 seconds. Howie told him not to be too long; they had to leave for the game soon. Phil fantasized about taking off right then for the ball park with Nathan, whose endless cries he’d readily endure over a crabby wife, a whining disreputable brother and a faultfinding turd of a father!

He packed Nathan into the back of the Corolla and drove out of town amid mounting wails. The volume began leveling off moments after he merged into the westbound lane of I-80. He paid the toll at the Tri-State interchange and sped toward Joliet. Then silence: the freeway nap had begun! After fifteen minutes of high-speed hum, Phil looped off and back on in the eastbound lane. The return trip remained peaceful through the Homedale exit. When the drive reverted to stop-and-go, Nathan stirred. He issued his questioning murmur, and his mood darkened. By the time they pulled into the driveway, he was crying again. Outside, Phil tried bouncing, swaying, and the dance of the deep knee bends. 

“Fat lot of good that did,” Anne said from the back porch. Phil tensed at her brassy call, and he could hardly wait to depart for the game. She put Nathan to her breast, and he greedily sucked. Phil grew furious while he watched Nathan kneading like a cat, content and oblivious. 

“Just luck,” he said. “You tried that before and it didn’t work.”

“Well, it’s working now.”

“Then it’s unfair, damnit!” Phil felt felt even worse for saying that when he saw his mother at the back door. He tried to storm past her on his way in, but she linked arms with him and stopped him cold.

“Easy now,” Margaret said. “You don’t think the little man is going to cry all his life, do you?” Phil didn’t want Anne to see his mother coddling him, but he saw no escape. “Don’t worry about winning an argument,” Margaret said, which was no surprise to Phil, coming from the woman who always lost to his father. Anne took Nathan upstairs, and Margaret maintained her grip on Phil. In a hushed tone, she asked him to watch his father at the game, see that he didn’t drink too much. “He’ll listen to you,” she said. 

“Are you serious?” Phil asked, amazed. “He never listens to anybody.” He broke away and rejoined Anne upstairs, just in time to hear Nathan express his questioning murmur. Phil braced himself for the boy to demonstrate once again that the mystery of life was more complicated than tit and no-tit. He told himself not to gloat.

Anne asked Phil what was wrong, and he told her about his mother’s request, and how he wanted no part of confronting his father. “Well, you told him off this morning when he fussed about Nathan sleeping with us,” she said. “So what are you afraid of?”

“That was just a smart-ass remark to make him shut up.”

Anne slung Nathan over her shoulder and patted his back. “If you stood up to him, I think he’d fall right over.”

Phil sputtered. How did everybody get so smart all at once? Then Nathan spit a foamy white streak, overshooting the towel covering Anne’s shoulder blade and decorating the back of her sweater. Phil dabbed the mess, which Anne could not possibly reach, and wiped the baby’s mouth. He took heart in making these positive contributions.

Howie’s lumbering steps sounded on the stairs. He stopped halfway up. “Gotta go,” he barked. “That means now. ‘Less you wanna listen to the game on WMAQ while we’re parked on the Ryan.”

Phil grabbed his jacket and went into the closet where he found a not-too-badly-mildewed White Sox cap. He kissed Anne quickly and touched Nathan’s cheek. He promised Anne he’d bring her back a completed scorecard of the game, and she reminded him to use backward K’s for strikeouts looking. As Phil scampered downstairs, he had to acknowledge that he regretted having to leave her. 

—  —  —

Standing on the north side of 35th Street in the shadow of old Comiskey Park, with new Comiskey under construction across the street behind several blocks of high chain-link fence, Phil watched his father ply the crosscurrents of sidewalk traffic. “Ticket? Anybody need a ticket?” He held the fourth ticket tightly in his fist, displaying a stub end. He dove into the crowd and resurfaced several paces ahead, jawing with two young men wearing suits, loosened ties, and crisp new Sox caps.  

After a flurry of nods and reachings into pockets and small things changing hands, Howie strode jauntily back to his sons, breaking into a shit-eating grin that unnerved Phil. “Coupla MBA brats, by the looks of ’em,” Howie said, nodding in the direction of his customers. “Wouldn’t know the meaning of money if it jumped up and bit them in the ass!” Phil asked how much Howie got for the ticket, and his father extended his hand in a calming gesture. Drawing the boys into a huddle, he confided that there was a catch. Phil expelled a long, gusty sigh. Howie jabbed his finger at Phil and shouted, “It was two tickets or nothing.” Phil moaned, and Howie told him to shut up. Then he changed his tune, grinning again, this time more slyly. He threw an arm around Phil and flashed four crisp $100 bills. “No man with balls and a brain would turn this down.”

“Nice work, Dad,” Jerry said. “Wow.”

Howie handed three bills to Phil and kept one, calling it his commission. Stunned, Phil jammed the payout into the pocket where he’d stashed Jerry’s wad. Barring car trouble and street thievery, the trip would pay a splendid return. He started to warm to his windfall, but he was thrown again when Howie volunteered to stay outside. Of course, someone had to, but Phil couldn’t help moping. He tried not to let it show. He felt sorry for his father, who would miss the game, and for himself, having failed in his scheme of reuniting father and sons — baseball, childhood, family, and all that. 

“But I hate baseball,” Jerry said. “You two go.”

“Hell, no,” Howie said. “I got my jollies. It’s all in the game, right? Spoiled-rich athletes. Greedy-bastard owners. Slick operators like me!”

“Will you be OK out here? Warm enough?” The words tasted like a burped-up three-dollar hot dog, and he hoped he had not betrayed any loathing in his delivery.

“Hell, yes. I’ll take a stroll, grab some souvenirs. Listen in the car.” He glanced across 35th Street to the towering concrete supports stretching outward, upward, like fingers. “Take a gander at that monstrosity,” he said, shaking his fist. “What do you call them — tentacles? A monster from the goddamn deep. Makes me wanna panic in the street!”

—  —  —

Phil led the way down, around, and up to the lower left-field grandstand, still sparsely populated. He took a seat in the second row, then he moved back to the third row and sat again. Jerry, standing in the aisle with his hands in his pockets, asked Phil what he was doing. 

“Remember our first Sox game as a whole family?” Phil asked.

“No,” Jerry said. “I was three.”

Phil pointed to himself with both index fingers and announced that he was sitting in this very seat when Dick Allen hit a home run at his face in 1972. He replayed the moment in his mind, the distant crack of the bat, the wickedly arcing streak accelerating as it approached. Demonstrating for Jerry’s benefit, he reached out and cupped his palms at the spot where, he insisted, the fan sitting in front of him had snared the ball bare-handed, the seams whizzing to a halt in his grip. “The ball was going to hit me right between the eyes,” Phil said. “I wish I could have shown this to Dad. Now I’ll never get the chance.” 

“Oh, boo-hoo,” Jerry said, twisting his fists into his eyes. “Dad said he’s cool, so deal with it. Where’s the beer man?”

They bought cups of Old Style and took a tour. Snaking over the third-base boxes, they sought unpeopled passages through the grid of green seats accented by bright yellow railings. They checked out the view deep in the grandstand behind home plate, a scene framed by the overhang and two posts, the beige sweep of infield, the deep green expanse of turf, the dark recesses of loudspeakers and disused bleachers, the goofy scoreboard with spikes and pinwheels, the arched openings behind left field revealing the trees of a park. Phil pictured his old man losing his keys or running down the battery in the parking lot. How long would it be before Howie ended up like Emma? They dropped into the bowels of damp concrete along the first-base side, gum smudges and spilled beer underfoot, bundles of tubes and sweaty pipes curving overhead. Through thickening crowds, they inched toward the outfield sections and climbed to the catwalk around the big scoreboard. The high, exposed position made Phil’s stomach tighten, but he’d always wanted to go up there, and this was his last opportunity. Clenching the railing, he took in the long view of the city stretching out between the Sears Tower to the northwest and the Hancock to the northeast, then, to the east, the grand Illinois Institute of Technology introducing bleak towers of public housing extending far to the south. And, directly south, new Comiskey rising up and undying, a carcass with exposed ribs slowly taking on flesh.

Phil gazed, and so did Jerry, but Phil could tell by his brother’s drumming of his fingers on the railing that the view didn’t mean much to him. Jerry sucked on his lips and, with a sweep of the back of his hand that seemed to dismiss much of the South Side, he said, “Like I told you, I need help figuring out what to do about the doo-doo I’m in.”  

Phil watched an El train gliding south down the middle of the Ryan. He had not been worrying about Jerry for a while, and now he felt the train as a worm wiggling across the lining of his fluttering stomach.  

“Don’t you care?” Jerry asked.

“That you’re a fugitive and a traitor to your roommate?” Their father would kill Jerry; lying was his only hope. “Tell them you dropped out. Do it before the check arrives,” Phil said. 

“Gotta be kidding.” Jerry stared below to the bullpen. Phil looked down, too. It was scary, but not as bad as looking out at the skyline. Phil loved the sound of the ball popping into the catcher’s mitt. But, in a weird burst he couldn’t control, he hurried off the catwalk. Back on safer footing, he looked back in disgust at his brother, who was wiping his nose and muttering to himself. 

They trudged up the endless inclines and found their seats in the right-field upper deck, way up where the wind howled. Phil pointed out the view through the arches behind left field. “See how you can see the trees?” he asked. This view was one of the countless little things he treasured about the park. He yearned to linger on it, but he felt the gloom of his brother’s plight overtake him. Earlier, he’d suggested Jerry lie, but now Phil wanted to make him face his problems. “Think of your roommate. Sometimes the best thing to do is simply come clean.” 

Jerry poked his nose inside his jacket. The jacket quaked; he was whimpering inside. 

“Oh, shit.” Phil groaned. “Boo-hoo to you too!”

—  —  —

Through uneventful innings, Phil froze in his seat as the MBA brat next to him hogged the armrest. Jerry refused to pay attention to the game when Phil took bathroom breaks, so the scorecard had gaps. 

In the seventh inning, a bases-loaded single by Frank Thomas, the huge rookie first baseman for the Sox, chased the Seattle pitcher. The fans, led by the organist, sent him off with the signature snide hosanna, Na-na NA-na, Na-na NA-na, Hey-heeeeeey, good-bye, a rhythmic, semi-musical chant. Jerry joined in with the bellow of a happy drunk on the verge of turning into an ugly one. Phil sang, too, because he he’d never have another chance in the old park. Then Jerry reached over Phil and high-fived the MBA brats, one then the other. That was the last straw. Phil shivered through the eighth and the ninth as the Sox relievers secured the victory, then he demanded they leave immediately.

Jerry wanted to stay for the fireworks, but Phil said they could watch from the street. “I despise this cloyingly orchestrated pathos.”

“Just like Dad, blowing off the best stuff,” Jerry said. That only made Phil move faster. They scurried down the ramps but, when they reached the first level, he had second thoughts and ran back for a last look at the field. The ceremony of turning out the lights for the last time had taken place, and the darkness inspired a moment of quiet in the crowd. Out of the silence, the na-na refrain sprung from the stands, but this time, the crowd expressed it more solemnly, further drained of melody, like a medieval chant. Too bad Nathan would never see this place. In five years or so, he’d be old enough to go to a game; Phil had that to look forward to. And shortly after that, Anne could teach Nathan to keep score. 

The fireworks began with rim shots and flams of flash-bang sky bombs. Jerry elbowed past Phil into the main aisle, which was empty except for an usher with his eyes to the heavens. Phil looked around him as faces flickered to life and faded into shadow. An old woman bundled in a blanket cowered against a barrage of deep thuds, and Phil wondered if she was safe out in the cold. As cheers resumed, and Phil relived the awkwardness of taking the book to his grandmother. He could have dashed out her eyes with a hot poker and hurt her less than he did by presenting a book to her when she could no longer read! To be deprived of words was a form of blindness, in some ways worse than not seeing. Then cascades of sparks gushed out of the scoreboard fixtures like a scene from a movie. If Emma could neither send nor receive words, could she think them? If not, she would be robbed of everything, even the means of articulating to herself the quality of her own suffering. And soon she would be dead. Would his Dickinson debacle be her last memory of him, if she could remember?  

The sparkling spews, the fire bursts, the afterglows — Phil hated all of it and wanted to move on. But he felt handcuffed to Jerry, who kept watching while stomping his feet against the cold. Phil yanked his brother’s elbow. Jerry lurched away and said, “Fuck no, I’m not moving.”

Phil kept tugging. “I want to show you something. Outside.” He felt the old horseplay knowledge kicking in, knowing how far to go before Jerry resisted, and Phil knew he couldn’t tug much longer before Jerry fought back. “Come on,” Phil said. “Quick — it will be cool.” 

Jerry whirled and freed himself. “Better be.” 

They had an easy time exiting the stadium because nearly everyone stayed put. Phil speed-walked along the north wall of the park, past a long line of TV vans and satellite trucks, Jerry trailing and shouting insults. Phil turned north at Shields, kept going for half a block, then stopped and turned around. “Look,” he said, pointing to the relentless showering firefall, sparks bursting red, green, yellow, orange, giving way to new, bigger bursts. Then some kind of ground display ignited, and the glow off the teeming people pulsed through the arches. “Isn’t that cool?” 

“Actually, yeah. It is kinda cool,” Jerry said, trying to catch one of the puffs of ash floating down on them. Phil noticed ash falling like big moist flakes of snow and settling on his shoulders. It made him think of death. Then the sky erupted in detonations and flashes more violent than anything on the Fourth of July. Tears flooding Phil’s eyelids threatened to overflow. He alternated between looking down so Jerry couldn’t see him and looking up at the fireworks. Jerry put his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Don’t be a crybaby, you crybaby.” He burst out laughing. 

The fireworks spent, Phil picked himself up, and they walked back in the direction of the car. They started to meet people leaving the ballpark. They were the only ones walking toward it, except for an older looking guy across the street, striding along, looking down at the sidewalk ahead of him, and swearing to himself. It was their father.

“Yo, Schilling,” Jerry called out. Howie looked up as the brothers crossed over to him.

“I had to go way up past 33rd to find a distillery,” Howie said. “Hole in the wall on Wells, crowded. Owner said he’s gonna be demolished.” He spread out his arms. “Whole area’s gonna be a parking lot. What is this goddamn dump of a world coming to?”

“I don’t think so,” Phil said. He tried to explain that he’d read something about how the project would stop at 34th Street.

“Oh, you weren’t there to hear the story, but you read something about it,” Howie said, gesturing above his head and talking to the ground. “Let me bow down and kiss your holy feet.”

Phil realized his usual mistake: opening his mouth. Out of his anger popped the memory of an old resolution dating back to high school: Leave Homedale as soon as possible and never return. It didn’t seem fair to have to feel this way again as an adult.

—  —  —

Phil tried to place the scorecard on the dresser, but it fell off to the side and out of sight. He undressed quietly to keep from waking Nathan, but then he thought, to hell with it. As soon as he sat on the mattress, Nathan surely would erupt. Phil walked out of his jeans and abandoned them, legs inside out, on the floor. Anne emitted a little groan, a tiny, semiconscious sound not unlike Nathan’s questioning murmur.

“There are only frontwards K’s,” Phil said. “Many other irregularities as well.” He stood over the bed. It was hard to see. A trapezoid of gray light from a streetlight sneaked under a partially drawn shade and stuck to the wall next to the bed. It was enough to reveal Anne’s dark eyelashes against her pale cheek, and Nathan nestled under her chin. She blinked but didn’t move. He leaned over and kissed her nose, and she pouted her lips and kissed the air.

“You smell,” she said.

Phil climbed into bed, turned on his side, and thrust one arm under his pillow. He touched something hard and smooth. By the shape, size and texture, he recognized the Popov bottle. “What the — ”

Anne laughed in a lovely, lilting way that made Phil want to flop on her and throw her nightshirt over her face and go from there. She repositioned Nathan between them and sat up. Phil anticipated the questioning murmur, but he did not hear it. Anne switched on the flashlight and pointed it at the ceiling, faintly illuminating the room. “What have you found there, my dear?” she asked.

“You know,” Phil said, suddenly too tired for games, although he appreciated that turnabout was fair play.

“Yes, it’s a symbol, isn’t it?” Anne threw off her covers, hiked up her long sleeping shirt, and propped the flashlight between her knees so it continued to point at the ceiling. Still nothing from Nathan. She took the bottle from him and cracked open the screw cap. Then she reached into the mess on the floor on her side of the bed, and the flashlight threw shuddering halos of light around the room as she moved. After a little scrabbling, she produced a sippy cup. She removed the lid, poured a shot, and handed it to him. “Hold that a second,” she said. Then she unbuttoned her nightshirt. She held out her hand, and Phil passed the cup back to her. She guided a nipple to the lip of the vessel and kneaded her breast until she dribbled into the cup. Phil wished they were not playing games; he just wanted her. “Here you go,” she said. “On the house.”

He took the cup but did not drink from it. He slowly raised it in the manner of a toast.

“It’s an extra-dry white Russian,” she said. “Bottoms up!”

“What’s the deal?” He took a drink, and offered her a taste.

“No thanks,” she said, curling herself around Nathan and going back to sleep.

—  —  —

Armed with a caulking gun, Phil scaled the shingles, loose granules sticking in his palms like sand at the beach. Scuttling sounds from behind startled him, and, for the first time that morning, fear seized him. He looked down and found Jerry swinging up from behind the gable. “How the fuck did you get up here?” Jerry called out as he ascended. 

“Same way you did.” Phil retreated higher. When he could go no farther, he settled his butt on either side of the apex of the roof and sat against the chimney, sweating. 

Jerry pressed his attack, claiming Phil was trying to show him up. “I poured out my heart to you last night, and this is what I get.”    

“Please.” Phil leaned back and tried to calm down, but the excess chunks of mortar bulging out between bricks felt like a pillow of rocks, almost as uncomfortable as the jagged high-altitude patterns now felt as they spread out before him, the gables, the gutters, the shingles leading the eye down, down, down. What made him think he could do this?

Down below, Howie charged across the lawn in his bathrobe, the sash tied under his gut. “What’s this, a cry for help?” he shouted. Margaret appeared, fingering her throat. Howie waved her away, but she wouldn’t go. Then Anne came into view, carrying Nathan. She set down the wiggling child and asked what the problem was. Howie answered, “For the love of Christ, whaddya think?” Phil watched the oafish blob of his father quiz Anne about whether she knew anything about Phil’s fear of heights. It was eerily easy to hear what they were saying.

“No,” Anne said. “I mean yes, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal.” 

Phil watched his father jab his finger at Anne, and Anne tell Howie he was overreacting. With Anne down below, Phil felt stronger. “Jerry wants to tell you something,” he hollered. “He quit school.”   

Howie turned away from Anne and looked up, grabbing the back of his neck. “What kind of horse’s-ass stunt is that?”

Jerry reached out toward Phil, extended his arm, tightened his fist, and flipped him off. Phil laughed. 

Howie stood with his feet apart, frowning in a way that exposed his teeth. “Quit school. That so? Too hard for ya? What?” It bothered Phil that Howie seemed to be feeling sorry for Jerry. 

Now Anne stepped forth. She waved her arms at Phil as if he were a million miles away. He waved back. “You don’t look scared to me,” she shouted. The mention of being scared was not the best thing he could have heard. “So finish the job and come on down, OK?” Then she picked up Nathan and left. Phil heard the front door open and close, again with eery clarity. She was the only one who had enough confidence in him not to watch! But now, with Anne gone, he felt his breakfast burning against the back of his throat.

“If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me,” Jerry said. “You know what I’m saying?” He spat through his teeth. Phil shrugged; he could care less about his brother. He had to get down. The procedure called for lowering himself to the gable over his old bedroom, then swinging around the gable and shuffling along the narrow ledge to the open window and sliding inside. He descended by the seat of his pants until he reached the crease where the gable started. Cracked tar lined the crease, an old patch job. A breeze came up, and a leaf came to rest before him. He stared at the leaf until it blurred into two leaves, and he couldn’t force the two back into one.

Jerry scrabbled forth and said, “If you slip, grab the gutter. You’ll rip it out as you go and fall easy.”

Phil spread himself out, trying to touch the roof with all possible parts of his body. Howie told him not to look down. “No, I’m going to face my fear,” he said. 

A Small Fire

This is an updated version of the story, which was originally published

in 1999 by American Jones Building & Maintenance, No. 5, 1999

by Ed Peaco

It was a Sunday evening and still winter, and I was hoping the square-mile heap of manure would freeze before Doralisa arrived. I live in a trailer next to my ruin of a house, across the road from a huge hog farm that had been a pasture up until the previous fall. I’m in health-care equipment sales. But I don’t work for the seller anymore; I work for a giant distributor that works for the buyer. I don’t get paid for moving product; I get paid for saving money for hospitals and clinics. It’s no way to get rich, but it’s civilized. I’d been too stubborn to sell out to the pig people, and I was beginning to realize what a huge mistake that was. 

Doralisa pulled into my old driveway, which stopped at the aging ruins of my burned-down house. With a mask over her nose and mouth, she scurried toward the row of cinder blocks that kept people from driving over the eight-foot drop into the caved-in pile of rubble. I opened the trailer door at the right moment so she wouldn’t have to break stride.

She took her knit cap off, making her unruly hair stick out in several ways. Inside the trailer, she pressed her face into a fistful of ground cloves wrapped in cheesecloth. She crinkled her nose and stopped my hand as I reached for her. On the stove, I had a pot of kidney, beef, beans and stuff, which, for as long as I can remember, I’d been eating from and adding to. I’d forgotten to hide it before her arrival. “You know I hate the sight of that,” she said, blowing out air from her puffed cheeks. 

“Sorry,” I said. I covered the pot and put it in the fridge. 

“I spent the whole day helping Doc move his supplies out of the Fair & Snug,” she said. “I can’t believe the city agreed to get rid of the building.” 

Doc was one of Doralisa’s colleagues, an unsheltered former medical student who provided a form of healthcare to street people. He was also known as Bob, Doc Bob, and sometimes Lucky, in honor of his gambling problems. I didn’t care much for him. He’d been operating out of the Fair & Snug, an old, vacant building downtown that had once been a grand hotel and was now slated for demolition in the name of progress. It had earned its nickname over the years by providing an unofficial safe place for the folks that Doralisa served. Doralisa helped find useable mattresses and bedding, and provided other resources for the unsheltered people staying there.

She rummaged through her coat and found a package of incense. “I’m not coming out here anymore. You’ve created this entire methane-based environment outside and in. Only you can survive in it.” She lit two sticks and twirled smoke trails from the TV over to the sink and back, which, in my trailer, was not especially far. “Sandalwood this time,” she said. It was one of our agreed-upon scents that didn’t make me sneeze. She placed the sticks in the ceramic Buddha on the coffee table. The incense holder was a gift to herself for when she came to my place. She’d picked it up during one of her shopping sprees. 

I waited until she was through setting up. “Let’s sit down,” I said, running my fingers along her buttons and down her thigh. 

She sighed and stopped my hand again. “Not in front of the Buddha.” She trapped my hand against her thigh and I turned my hand around to hold hers and draw her over to my lumpy, sagging couch. She fumbled with the cloves cheesecloth. 

“We’ve run out of legal tricks,” she said. “Demolition is tomorrow. I hate the demolition but I’m also angry with you. The stench, your stupid trailer, and being friends with Art. He’s such a jerk!”

“Sorry to hear about the demo,” I said. In our town, there’s a do-good non-profit called Change for the Better, directed by my old friend Art. They planned to level the Fair & Snug and eventually that whole blighted part of downtown. The idea was to re-house the homeless in retooled army barracks, to provide better housing as they were steered into the right programs. I had been a member of Change for the Better, but when Art tried to use me to keep Doralisa under his thumb, I got pissed off and quit. That made me feel bad because I liked the reform plan and didn’t think much of squatting. I felt worse because I was sure Doralisa would lose this battle.

“Don’t say you’re sorry.” She ground her teeth. “We’re going to take drastic action, up to and including arrest.” She folded the cheesecloth and flicked yellow residue off her fingers. The sharp odor of cloves mixed with sandalwood made yet a third strong odor. 

I didn’t bother to ask whether the Fair & Snug was worth being hauled off to jail over, or whether it was right to house people in a building that might cave in on them. She had recently introduced me to a few somewhat bizarre street folks like Doc and Gopher. 

Art and I worked out of the same office building downtown and we chatted from time to time. Art was making a pile in financial planning, he lived in a swanky subdivision and he was the school board president — nothing remotely close to my own career path, but to Doralisa I was guilty by association.

“Feel this,” she said, guiding my hand along the window sill. I felt a draft, and I smelled the filth of the hogs. I knew about the draft, but I didn’t care. “You live in substandard housing. You’re probably the only ex-member of Change for the Better who lives in a hovel that wouldn’t even qualify for a federal subsidy. This is karma for setting your house on fire, even if it was by accident.” 

This had been her theme of recent weeks. “The insurance company made a good investment in me,” I said. “I’ve turned things around. I just didn’t anticipate the long term effects of the hog farm.”

“Oh please,” she said. It’s true that my house burned down some years ago. I set the Christmas tree on fire accidentally, but my ex figured I did it on purpose. My then-wife agreed to a divorce if I gave her the insurance money, which was a great deal for me at the time. And then I blew it by not selling out to the mega hog farm. All because I wanted to make a small fire in the fireplace at Christmas. I’d joined Change for the Better out of guilt over the whole thing, a self-imposed sentence of community service, a way of settling my accounts. It was the best way I knew how to live. But, now that I’d quit the group, I needed another way of contributing. And clearly, I needed a new place to live.

“Guess I need to do something about my housing situation,” I said. “Especially if you’re not going to come out here anymore!”

She opened the window and let in a foul, chilly gust. She covered her face and sucked mightily through the cloth. Then she took the cloth away. “You know why I came here tonight? So you’ll know to stay away from tomorrow’s demonstration. I can’t make any kind of point if a salesman in a bad suit shows up to bail me out.”

“Let’s do something then besides talking about bad days,” I said. “I know this will sound a little off the wall,” slamming the window shut. “But the mall closes in an hour.” Doralisa liked to shop as a kind of guilty pleasure. I’d learned to suggest it at key moments. The mall was only a ten-minute drive from my estate.  

She took short, shallow breaths, then nodded. “Sure, let’s get out of here. Separate cars. I’ll head home from there.”

I actually enjoyed watching Doralisa shop—up to a point. I enjoyed watching her cheer up as she stopped thinking about her troubles. Sometimes she bought something; sometimes she didn’t. Of course, as an advocate for the unsheltered, she was self-conscious about wearing conspicuously consumptive things. She liked jewelry, usually necklaces and pendants and such, which she could wear under a turtleneck. The only way I could find out what jewelry she was wearing, if any, was to take off the turtleneck.

—   —   —

I caught up with Doralisa in the glare of the mall’s atrium of spindly trees. For a weeknight in early March, it seemed crowded. This being a smallish city, it wasn’t surprising to run into someone we knew, but I was irritated to see Art waving at us from a distance. He was wearing Dockers, a polo shirt, wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed, slightly graying beard that made him look like the thoughtful, morally superior type of guy he tried so hard to be. He was no doubt bubbling with a spontaneous fable about responsibility and shared values. “Good God, there’s no escape,” she said, and waved to me to hustle into Macy’s. After a number of twists and turns in the store, we felt safe. 

She led me to, of all places, the perfume counter. In the field of cosmetics, she had only slightly more experience than me. But from time to time, she liked to belly up to the counter and sample her arms and wrists full of everything in sight. I’d usually wander off to the housewares department, looking for new gadgets. “I know why I’m here,” she said through the glare of shiny perfume bottles and new aromas. “Are you looking for something tonight?”

I said, “There is one thing I’d like to find: a stackable, detachable, bin system to replace dresser drawers and laundry baskets: convenient, portable storage. I’ve imagined it in my head but don’t know if it exists.” 

“They do exist,” she said as she presented her wrist to a smocked girl across the counter. “I’ve seen them on QVC.” She inhaled, then passed her wrist to me. I braced for the incoming odor. Staying with her was worth the risk of my face swelling up and my sneezing, because I was afraid the next time I’d see her she might be in jail. So I tagged along as we accumulated scents, up one arm and down the other.

“Pick something you like,” I said. “If you like it, you’ll have a positive effect on those around you.” At this, the counter girl rolled her eyes and stepped away to help another customer. Then there was a quiet, awkward moment, so I kept talking. “Why don’t you look at something you might buy? Have something to show for the trip.” 

She huffed and made a 180. “Fine,” she said. She grabbed a pair of gloves from a close-out table and walked away at a brisk pace. I tried to keep up.  

“Will these do?” She said. I kept walking, occasionally staring at the ceiling. I smirked to myself, briefly, and I saw that she noticed. Oh dear. Not good.

“You came here just to laugh at me?” she said.

“No, I came here because we needed a distraction. I was playing along, too.”

We threaded through narrow aisles in the huge store and rubbed elbows with clothes like some form of retail underbrush. “Do you want to look for your bins?” 

“Not really,” I said. We were about to leave the store, and I noticed she was still holding the gloves. “Hey, you never paid for those.”

“How observant.” She slit her eyes at me. It was a scary, serious anger—scary because over the months, I’d done many things that should have made her mad but didn’t. “You wanted me to have something to show for the trip,” she said. 

“Come off it,” I said. “Go back and pay for the gloves.”

“That’s a good one, coming from you. I should be buying face masks instead.”

She slipped away from me and left the store.  

The mall hallway was filling up with people leaving at closing time. I called out for her but came up empty. I noticed a tall, bald guy in a navy blazer escorting Doralisa back into the store. I doubt she saw me or wanted to see me at this point. She was looking down while the guy hustled her along with what I could tell was a firm grip on her upper arm. 

I wandered back into the store in a minor panic. I’d heard about shoplifting but never had to deal with it. I took my time and tried to think of the right things to say. I went up to a clerk and inquired, and the clerk referred me to a woman wearing the same kind of navy blazer as the bald guy. She told me that Doralisa had been arrested and where I could find her. What a night this had become.

                                               — — —

Downtown at the new city-county justice center, I wanted to know when she would be released. But all I could do was talk into a speaker to a clerk behind glass who replied that I should have a seat and wait. 

I knew I was in for the long haul, with plenty of time to think about what I would say to Doralisa when given the chance. I spent what felt like an eternity in the lobby with bathrooms blocked by WET FLOOR DO NOT ENTER signs, which I ignored, my bladder having expanded in the sweaty chair as bright lights made my face throb. I had to say something but wasn’t sure what I could say. I couldn’t tell her it was all my fault for suggesting the trip to the mall, but I was the one with that brilliant idea.

I thought about other people, especially other fairly high-profile women in our town who got stuck in the same pickle. A police woman had to quit after it came out that she stole lingerie. An anchorwoman swiped one of those little bottles of liquor, strawberry-melon schnapps as I recall, but the TV station insisted it was a misunderstanding, and she stayed on. So I thought it could go either way for Doralisa, and either way, redemption was always possible (though never easy) for someone who was otherwise overwhelmingly good. And I remembered both cases came to light a long time after the actual moment the women were caught. No matter which way it went, the opportunity remained for her to go ahead and stage her protest the following day and get arrested for the right reason without this shoplifting issue getting in the way. That’s assuming they’d let her go tonight. Although the whole matter was rather sad, there was a scrap or two of hope I could offer her. When they finally let her out, she took short, shuffling steps and squinted into the glare. She looked sick and I embraced her gently.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“I guess so. I’m just dwelling about how I’ve compromised my position as a maverick activist with already flimsy support. I don’t know what I was thinking, leaving the store like I did.” 

That’s all she said, and didn’t want me talking. She held some paperwork in one hand and in the other, a Black Hills gold heart necklace which I’d given her as something she could wear under her clothes. 

“First, they did a standard suicide assessment,” she said. “I know those questions. I’ve been on the asking end.” She looked at her feet. “I must have passed. They put me in a cage with an honest-to-God screaming meemie. An old woman. But she calmed down after a while, and we had a nice talk.” Doralisa took a deep breath, glanced at me, and looked back at the floor. “I’m so sorry I let you down. So, so sorry.” Arm in arm, we worked our way out the door. She stopped and breathed heavily, like an invalid on a once-a-day walk. Then she spoke again. “This may sound strange, but thank you. I was pissed and just walked off with the damn gloves. I tried to tell them it was a stupid mistake but I don’t know if they believed me.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” I said. “There are a couple of encouraging things to keep in mind. Your case won’t come to light immediately. It may be days or weeks, the way these things work.”

“This night has been like a weird intervention.” She sighed deeply. “Now I need to figure things out.” 

She laughed, a single self-mocking cackle.  “Things couldn’t get much worse.”

“Ok,” I said, “but I don’t see a big deal being made about shoplifting cases. Drunk driving would be another matter. Indecent exposure. That kind of thing.” I tried to infuse a little humor into the situation, but it fell flat.

“That will do for now,” she said. We walked with intertwined arms to my car, gradually picking up the pace. We exhaled gusts of fog into the cold night, and I allowed myself to enjoy the silence. Then she stopped and made her arm into a pretend nutcracker and crushed my biceps. “You may be right. I can rest after I’m disgraced.” We went to my car and drove together over to her car. Before she got out, she leaned over and put her hand on my chest. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She drove off, and I went on home to my trailer.

— — —

Early Monday morning before going to the office, I visited the courtyard, looking for Gopher, the only street guy I knew who was willing and able to talk to me. The courtyard is a spot across the street from the building where I work, down a narrow alley leading to an open area formed by the walls of a historic theater, a parking garage, a bank, and another building I didn’t recognize from the back. No one looked there for the homeless. Fire escape rules kept the alley from being blocked off, so Doralisa used the courtyard to shelter people until she found them somewhere better to stay. She’d taken me there several times to show me what happened when people fell through the cracks. Several big packing boxes sat against the wall. I really wanted to find Gopher and, of course, he wasn’t there. But he must have seen me coming out of the alley, because he and Doc cornered me before I crossed the street, and we went back into the courtyard for a chat. 

“Sad to blow up that beautiful building,” I said.

“Folks are spreading out. You have to keep moving.” Gopher said, chewing on the hair of his fluffy gray beard. He was wearing a jumpsuit like a car mechanic’s, unzipped to his waist over a couple of flannel shirts. “I’m not sure where I’m going. Don’t know about nobody else. I feel like shit today. I’m trying to find D.” Doralisa’s street name was D, or Aunt D. 

I opened my wallet and gave him a five. “Me, too. I haven’t seen D yet today.  She got picked up for shoplifting last night. But she’ll be going ahead with the protest. I hope she’s ok.” 

“Get lost. Leave us alone,” Doc said, a man of many words. “Go away, Marvin.”

Later that morning, I looked down from aloft to the Fair & Snug. From my office on the sixth floor of the grand old downtown office building, I watched a crowd assemble at the vacant hotel site. I saw a bulldozer, a crane, and giant rubble bins. Then Art knocked on my open door and greeted me enthusiastically. He pumped his fist. “Sure you don’t want to go down and watch?”

“Got stuff to do,” I said. I opened my laptop to suggest I was busy.

“She’s down there, isn’t she?” Art asked.

I sat at my desk and pecked at my keyboard. “She’s down there somewhere.”

Art came closer and put his hand on my back. I imagined a massive crab arm. “You know, my friend,” Art said, “you may find it useful to re-evaluate your relationship with her. She’s unstable. She’s not good for the people she champions.”

I twisted in my chair to get out from under his palm. I was afraid of losing my cool. “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said. I got up and went back to the window. “You better go.” 

I had to wait until Art left the building. I didn’t get down the elevator and over to the Fair & Snug until the level of commotion had risen higher than I’d hoped for. What must have been the whole police force with all its vehicles was on hand, outnumbering everyone and everything. I found workers with hard hats sitting in their pickups and curious gawkers waiting for the spectacle of a demonstration or a demolition, or both. 

A helicopter bearing the logo of the klepto-anchorwoman’s station circled as a  turkey vulture would over its intended prey. Doralisa, with a bullhorn and whistle, was stirring up chants from ragged protesters clustered around the four front columns, and cops with billy clubs, masks, goggles and plastic gloves were standing by. She was doing that chant of “What do we want?” and “When do we want it?” I didn’t bother to listen to what they wanted—justice, I suppose.

I pressed firmly ahead into the space between gawkers and radicals, and I tapped her on the shoulder. She flinched from neck to elbow. Then she saw who I was and frowned with one eyebrow raised. “Good luck,” I said. “And be careful.”

She lowered the bullhorn and looked at me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Any minute now, we’re all going to drop to the ground.” I noticed Doc leering at me, and I got the idea I was not part of this crowd. Then she brought the bullhorn to her face and squawked at me, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” That was a knee-slapper for Doc and got a chuckle from the crowd. 

A cop came over with a surgical mask hanging loosely at his neck. He held a fistful of foot-long, slender white plastic strips. He talked to Doralisa. “OK, we’re moving in on you. Two minutes! Fair warning?” She stuck out her chin. I kept thinking, So this is what she’s really like. I kind of zoned out on this thought for a moment. “What are you looking at?” The cop asked me. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m not part of this,” I said.

“You’re interrupting our work, sir,” he told me. “You have to step back.” I must have just stood there, because he took one of his plastic strips and dangled it in front of my face. “I said step back, or we’ll tie you up and throw you in the wagon. And we might drop you a few times.”

“I don’t want that,” I told the cop. My eyes wandered to the bystanders, and Art’s righteously bearded face leaped out at me. I glanced at Doralisa, but she had gone off to rally her troops. I passed through the crowd, which wasn’t all that big anyway.

—   —   —

On the six o’clock news, the klepto-anchorwoman’s station made quite a fuss about the Fair & Snug that night. I saw a few seconds of Doralisa and her bullhorn, then people being hauled off like sacks of manure bound up with those twist-ties. It took half the day to secure the building, they said. They also showed the implosion, which I’m glad I caught, because I’d missed it when it happened, not wanting to look out my window anymore. At the end of the report, they mentioned Doralisa by name as one of the chief radicals and noted that she had a shoplifting charge pending against her. The klepto-anchorwoman didn’t read that part. Her partner did, a guy with a stony chin. He curled up one side of his mouth after he read it, and then there was a commercial.

In a way, I was proud of Doralisa for prevailing on her own terms. 

As for the unsheltered, I’d heard reports the next day of the barracks filling up and of some people with outstanding warrants being rounded up, too. That didn’t sound like such a bad thing to me, but I knew Doralisa would have a different take on it, and I was surprised she hadn’t called to give me an earful. I didn’t see her the next day or the day after and I couldn’t find her, even at her house. The police told me she’d been booked and released. I asked her friends and looked all over, but no results. After three days, I stopped checking with the cops. I left her some long, pathetic messages. 

—   —   —

I drove around, called around and checked the courtyard every day after lunch the rest of the week. I usually ran into Gopher and Doc, who told me nothing. They never asked me for money, but I always gave each of them a five. 

On Saturday, Gopher helped me understand there was another place: the abandoned warehouses along the rails. He muttered, “I know where she is. I’m worried about her. What Doc’s doing for her ain’t helpin’.”

Doc was coming our way. “Steady,” Gopher said. “Don’t say nothin’. Meet me behind Lambie’s at seven. I’ll take you to her.” Lambie’s was a diner where Gopher got throw-away chicken and rolls.

Doc stood over us with his hands in the pockets of his outermost coat. I asked him if he’d seen Doralisa, and he shrugged. I handed out tens. Doc wouldn’t talk to me, but he was happy to take my cash. He showed his front teeth and sucked in. “You made of money?” he asked. “Or just scared of going to hell?”

I played my voicemail over and over. Nothing from Doralisa. I didn’t eat anything. Too nervous. Then, at 6:53, I left for Lambie’s. I found Gopher out back, scratching his back against the flipped-open lid of a Dumpster. He grabbed some old newspapers someone had tossed out. We walked down an alley until we reached the truly crummy part of the city, just a few blocks away from the small prosperous part of downtown. We followed disused train tracks to a warehouse and loading platform, abandoned when the railroad line pulled out. A distant streetlight illuminated puddles, mud, loose boards and scattered pallets of partially looted goods. We went under the loading platform and crawled through a little bashed-in area of the brick wall. We stood up in total darkness.

Gopher felt my back, then groped for my hand and led me along. I stumbled a few times over things that sounded like cans. Gopher lit a match, and I had my phone flashlight. I saw the cans were Sterno, and figured that’s why he had some newspapers. I heard coughing, close, and that scared me. Gopher lit another match, and a far-off light shined in our faces. Then the light shined away from us. It was Doralisa, shining a flashlight in her face and managing a little smile. I saw the light through the shadow of her tangled hair. She looked like she was fading away. She was lying on a pallet of big white bags, like bags for decorative bark or mulch, with bottles of water, protein shakes and electrolytes from Doc. She grunted again, or laughed, and the bags twisted under her.

“See?” Gopher asked me. “My humble opinion, Doc’s not doin’ enough. This place is cold, drafty, smelly and filled with sickies.”

She sat up, cross-legged, holding a small squeeze bottle of water in her lap, wearing an overcoat, giving off a sharp body-odor smell, and looking gray under the eyes. She set the flashlight so it provided a small glow, enough for all of us. I was not surprised to find her this way. I’d already imagined it, and worse.

“I’m fasting so I can think about myself,” she said. She unscrewed the cap of the water bottle and tried to take a drink, but it was empty. “Just taking a break,” she said. “A bunch of things have built up in me. I’m starving them out.” She laughed softly. She held her head in her hands. Then she put her hands in her lap and shook her head in a vague, brief way. “A lot of noise, no sleep, dizzy,” she said. I reached out to touch her, but she shuddered. “I just want to say I was right about some people not using the barracks. They won’t check themselves in if they’ve had trouble with the law. So, as I’ve tried to point out before, we still have an unsheltered problem, and that’s all I want to say about that.” She stared past me, into the dark beyond the small cloud of flashlight yellow. “I know this is a silly, high-strung thing to do. But, you know, it’s my decision.” 

I felt the cold coming up around my ankles. My feet felt heavy. I wanted to sit down but didn’t know where. “Can I get you anything?” I asked. I was worried about her rambling. 

She turned the water bottle upside down. “More,” she said. She slowly arched one eyebrow, then let it fall quickly. “I’m not trying to kill myself. Doc set me up with lots of liquids.”

“Where’s Doc?” I asked.

“Makin’ rounds,” Gopher said. He handed her another water bottle.

I imagined Doc visiting places like this one, taping up sprains, sewing up cuts and helping runaways puke up quarts of vodka. 

“You need help,” I said. “We need to get you out of here, now!”

“Hey,” she shouted, which came out more like a croak than a shout.

It struck me that what she was doing—choosing quackery even though she could afford the best—was like shoplifting, where you do something stupid even though you have money in your pocket to do the right thing. “I don’t get this at all,” I said. “Makes no sense!”

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “You know what I’m doing right now?” she asked. “I’m doing my penance. It’s harder than you might think.”

“Let’s get you out of this jungle of rubble and old needles. I’ll haul you on my back to civilization. Why didn’t you just go home?”

“You really need to leave me now,” she said. “More water, though, would be good. I need a little more time.”

I could tell from her tone, even through the sad croak, that she was serious. That made me mad. I reached for the matches and searched desperately for one of the Sterno cans I’d kicked. I finally found one and clutched it in my shaky hands.  

“I’ll show you what to watch,” I said. I had to use three or four matches before the can got going. I lit a page of newspaper in the small flame. I lit another page and had a modest conflagration up and running. “You can hop on this funeral pyre, or you can save your ass like a smart human being.” 

She reared back and looked scared. “You’re crazy!” she shouted.  

“Me?” The Sterno was sending up bitter smoke that clogged my sinuses while I fed the paper fire. Right about then Gopher bailed out of the room, stumbling and raising a racket.

Doralisa glared at me. A considerable amount of light now filled the room. “You jerk,” she said. It was somewhat fun to see the flames rising. I saw plenty of stuff that would burn real well if it got hot enough—broken down chairs, busted up floorboards, another stack of something, maybe cardboard. I came closer to her, waving a burning page and tried to formulate words, right there on the spot.   

“These flames may look like they’re coming from sheets of paper or that pink glop in a can.” I squinted at her through the smoke. I definitely had her undivided attention. I had to get to the point because my fingers were in danger of being singed. “These flames come from, believe it or not, inside me. I care about you! We have to get you out of here. You have work to do!”

She looked at me for a long time and stood up slowly. “All right, sure,” she said. She seemed to have more energy, now that she was on her feet. I feared she might fall, but she kept going. I stomped on the paper and the flames went out quickly. We made our way back into the area that was pitch-black when we came in, but now had enough light to see shapes. We walked slowly, arm in arm on the tracks back toward downtown. I just wanted to get her away from there.

“I hope I’ll be OK,” she said.

“You will be.” 

She used me for support most of the time, but once or twice I felt a squeeze of a little something extra. That made me feel good, because I was the one dragging her off against her will, and now maybe she was coming around. What she did next had to be up to her, but I was bound and determined not to let her go.

“I’m glad you lit the place up,” she said. 

“So am I. It was the perfect burn, wasn’t it? No more than necessary to make my point.”