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.
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