Wednesday, December 12, 2012

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 29: Blue and Green and Purple and Pink

XXIX.

I opened my eyes and saw Cait's face above me. She was holding the back of my head over a faucet and pouring warm water on my forehead. She was wearing a clean white t-shirt and her uncombed dull brown hair fell in pieces onto my face. She had that same tricky grin on her face that she did in the picture of her as a young girl.

"Hey," I said.
"Shhhhh," she answered. "Just keep your head back." She smiled calmly.
"Okay," I said.
"Tell me about your favorite colors." She pet my hair and I cooed back like a baby.
"Blue..."
"And?"
"Green..."
"Yes?"
"Purple.."
"Okay?"
"Pink.."
"Like a sunset?"
"Yes."
"And?" She tilt my head back further and water splashed into my eyes. Her voice was cool and pacifying, in a way I'd never heard her speak.
"Black." I closed my eyes tightly as the water became hotter and the pressure increased. I tried to move my head up from her hand but couldn't. She was pulling my hair back down into the tub. I opened my eyes and saw her bright smile and faded eyes watching me struggle from her grasp. I pulled up my head again against her resistance.
"Shhhh," she said again.

Now she moved my head directly under the faucet. The water crashed into my eyes and nose and mouth. I spit it out in struggled breaths. I dug my nails into her warm arms and peddled my head left and right, attempting to escape the water.
"Shhhh," I heard her say again. "Think about the colors," she said. "Blue...and green..and purple...and pink.." She pulled my hair down further into the tub.

Suddenly she let go of my hair, letting my head drop to the bottom of the tub. She pushed my legs in after me and I dropped in like a dummy. The water pressure lightened and I heard the distinct sound of creaking and diminishing footsteps. I felt the steps with an intensity as they faded away, like each foot on the ground was lodged directly onto my spine.

I opened my eyes and there was Tuan sitting on the edge of the tub, with a detachable shower head in one hand and a beer can in the other. He took a long drink from the can and kept the shower head steady in my direction. He glanced at me with a look of happy inertia. It was clear from a certain weirdness and wisdom and ease in his eyes that anything odd we'd experience tonight would be merely average in the great scope of his life.

"Cait," I said.
"Hey!" He said brightly.
Wheeler walked in looking high and holding a large blanket.
"We did it," he said. "We found it."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Who knows," said Wheeler. "Not here."
"I saw her," I said.
"Me too. That was definitely her in the picture. You hit your head hard there in the kitchen. You woke up the dogs, man!"
"She was here," I argued.
"Hacket hasn't seen her in 5 years, yo. And since you passed out things have been gettin' a little weird here. The old man's back in bed but we need to go. She's not here and he doesn't want anything to do with it."
Tuan turned off the faucet and finished his beer.

The two insisted on carrying me out of the Hacket house wrapped inside the blanket like an adult baby. I felt too dizzy to disagree, and we piled into Tuan's car once more, rounded the bend passed Cait's family home, and headed back into the city.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 28: Mouse Guts

XXVIII.

The naked man was holding a flashlight, and as he neared us he stumbled twice into the narrow hallway walls. His footsteps creaked on the wooden floor and he swore manically under his breath. "What the..fuck. What time is it. Goddamn it. Fuck." He focused the light through the screen door and peered into our lit faces, squinting.

"Jesus Christ. What is it?" He said. His voice was both gentle and raspy. His face was dark and tight as though he'd spent days in the sun. He had a head of grey hair and smoker's eyes and lips.
"Do you have a daughter named Cait Hacket?" Wheeler asked, unapologetically.
"Yeah? Why? Who are you?"
"Our friend, Cait Hacket, disappeared from us in Chicago a few days ago. We're trying to track her down. Is there anyway we can see a picture of your daughter?"
"Christ. It's the middle of the goddamn night!"
"We're sorry to wake you, but we came a long way and we really need to find our friend." Wheeler seemed more coherent than I expected.

 It suddenly occurred to me how odd the three of us looked standing on this small slanted porch in the middle of the night. Tuan's perm was wild and disheveled from the windy drive, and I was filthy and skinny and pale from the trip. Wheeler seemed coherent for the circumstances, but his stark features and bug-eyed adrenaline  must have appeared a bit psychotic to this tired naked man on the other side of the screen. We were, after all, three strangers to him and each other, hungry for answers, on a journey of nonsense and disillusion.

"Goddamn it. Hold on a second," he said, closing the door and dipping into a room on the right side of the hallway. He turned on a light and re-approached the door wearing a long navy bathrobe.

He opened the screen door and led us inside. The house was cramped and smokey. There were 4 dark rooms off the hallway and a bright stairwell leading down. He led us down the creaky stairwell, lighting a cigarette and leaving smoke in our path.

The downstairs was the kitchen and living area of the house. Mr. Hacket sat down on a stool at the kitchen island. He didn't turn on any lights as he smoked, and the room was filled with shadows from the lit stairwell. The ceiling was low, which sort of created a sense of pressure and heaviness upon the house. The room was seemingly tidy, and there seemed to be animals everywhere. Two dogs slept on the kitchen tiles, and there were 3 cats eating on the island by Mr. Hacket. Another cat jumped through a broken sliding screen and waited to be fed. The cat jumped on the counter and dropped a dead mouse from it's mouth onto the counter. Mr. Hacket looked at the mouse and looked away, blowing smoke into the room.

 "We haven't heard from Cait in years," he said, breaking the silence. "She left home about.. 5 years ago, hasn't been back since."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Christ. Who knows? She always seemed to be pissed off about something. We weren't surprised when she left. She's always been.. a bit strange."
"Where did she go?" said Wheeler.
"How the hell would I know? She left one day...didn't say goodbye." This sentence sent him into a coughing fit for approximately 2 minutes. He struggled out of the cough then opened the door and spit onto the back porch. He took a relieved breath and sat back down.
"You've never tried to find her?"
"No, no. Not really. She always wanted to do her own thing and I stayed out of her way. She's an adult. What she's doing is her business," he said.
"Is she your only child?"
"Yeah."
"And it doesn't bother you that you don't know where she is?" Wheeler asked, with a dash of intensity and judgement.
"Why the hell should it?" He was becoming agitated.

Tuan was sitting on a couch in the shadows with his head tilted back. He seemed to be asleep or falling asleep. The cats were now eating the mouse on the counter and Mr. Hacket pet the back of one as it competed for pieces of the tiny dead animal.

He got up to find a picture of Cait. There weren't any visible family photos hanging on the walls. There was a rifle and a model sailboat above a fireplace mantle in the center of the room, and the brick walls were empty in the dim of the moonlight. As Mr. Hacket left down a dark hallway, Wheeler grabbed my hand and watched the cats finish pulling apart the limbs and innards of the mouse. The feverish look in his eye was ascending as Mr. Hacket walked lazily towards us with a picture in his hand.

"Here," he said, handing us the picture as if it was nothing. As if she were nothing. It seemed clear that no matter who this girl was, our Cait or just his, he had no intention of finding her.

Wheeler held the picture and I flicked on the kitchen light switch. It was a picture of a young girl leaning against the trunk of a tree. She was slightly chubby and tired looking with a goofy grin on her face. It was suddenly clear to both of us. This was our Cait.

Suddenly the sight of her young eyes and devious smile made me dizzy. My heart beat sped up and I felt weak and nauseous from the stirs of smoke and cat fur, mouse guts and dirty dogs. I felt the weight of the low ceiling and the weight of the picture in my hand. I looked up at Wheeler. His mouth was moving but I couldn't hear any sounds. The room became dark and I felt myself slipping out of reality. I saw a motion of black and suddenly I felt the cold of the kitchen tile on my head. Silence.





Tuesday, December 4, 2012

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 27: He was Naked

XXVII.

It appeared we had exited the city part of this city district and Tuan seemed small gripping the wheel. He looked dimly into the beaming headlights, careful to move right when the road winded such, and left when the road winded such, too.  Wheeler looked at Tuan but watched me in his peripheral view. I hung my head against the seat by the open window. I breathed in the wind and watched trees and low buildings zoom past into a moving scene of black and dark green.

No one spoke now but it sort of felt as though Tuan was really with us. I didn't feel as if we were merely hitching a ride. I closed my eyes and imagined Tuan being with us back at Lake Michigan with Cait. I could see him standing in the distance of the shore, smoking a cigarette and waving towards me as I watched him look at ease beneath the moon light. He would have laughed a bit at Cait and Wheeler kissing in the waves, I thought.

After an unidentifiable amount of time I could hear the sullen voices of Tuan and Wheeler. Suddenly the car stopped and I jolted from my half-dream. We were on a dark dirt road that winded left and descended to a hill. In the curve of the road was a beaten red picket fence that seemed weathered and old. A mailbox by the fence read "Hacket" in the bright of the headlights. "We're here," said Wheeler.

Outside the stars welted and boomed above us, then diminished in the bright of the busy distance. I hadn't seen stars this bright in a very long time, and suddenly the scene of it all made me feel like I took a drink from the hose. The red fence lined a large yard that slanted down. A blue house that seemed to be falling backwards a bit sat in the middle of the hill. The lights were off from inside the small vertical windows by a screen door, and rows and rows of trees lined the right side of a home-made paved driveway.

None of us noted the time or pondered over the appropriateness of our arrival. The endurance of our mission was unspoken and understood, and if this wasn't the right Hacket house we would move on to the next one. I had no hankering for sleep or stopping. I was going to the last two Hacket houses without pause. At the time I hadn't wondered or cared about what would happen after this night. I didn't assume we wouldn't find our Cait. I just began to descend the dark driveway in silence.

I felt a bit of a chill in those steps from the enormity and depth of the woods on our right. I could feel, or at least imagine the feel, of dozens of pairs of eyes peeking between the brush and thick branches at us as we walked. I could sense, or at least fantasize a sense, that critters or ghosts or wild barefoot children in dirty nightgowns were licking their lips and concocting schemes of torture for the fresh flesh in their territory.

There was no electric doorbell on this house, but an old brassy looking bell hung just eye-level of the screen. Wheeler pulled the bell back and forth three times and the chimes seemed louder than we'd all expected. Tuan stood a little straighter at the sound.

15 seconds passed.

Nothing.

Wheeler rang the bell 4 more times with a bit more muscle, and I took a deep breath waiting for life to emerge.

Then, from inside the house a small light turned on, followed by the sound of a deep and sleepy cough.

A man walked into the hallway from a room on the left, and as he moved closer to the front door it became clear; he was naked.