Bloodroot (10 page)

 

 

 

WE WALKED OVER TO
the park after dinner; both of us had eaten too much and we didn’t get very far, nor did we talk much. I didn’t know what to say. What could I tell Danny about what he was doing that he didn’t already know? That Mom and Dad wouldn’t like it? That I’d tell? Those threats had never worked before; they wouldn’t work now. I considered threatening to not see him again, not until he got away from Santoro, but it would have been empty and Danny would know that as sure as I did.

We sat on a bench, on the street side of the stone wall bordering the park. The street was quiet. I tried shoving aside what Danny had told and shown me, to not let it ruin the evening. If I was going to help him, I had to hang on to him. I threw one arm over the back of the bench and gazed down the road at the columned façade of the public library.

I had good memories of our grandfather taking us there when we were young. We walked over together, the three of us leaving Dad asleep on the couch and Mom and Grandma snapping green beans in the kitchen, Danny and me throwing acorns at each other the whole way. But once we entered the library, the foolishness ceased. Grandpa insisted on reverence, even more than at church. The library was Grandpa’s cathedral.

Inside, Danny usually grabbed a random book and snuck off to nap on one of the leather couches. He always woke up with a red blotch on his cheek, like he’d been slapped. I disappeared into the stacks, wandering from shelf to shelf, searching for any book that fed my most recent obsession. In grammar school I began with dinosaurs, then moved to whales then sharks and then on to the ocean herself. In junior high, I turned to Egypt, Rome, Greece and Sparta, the empire of the Moors. To the barbarians whose names rolled off my tongue like an ancient spell: Celts, Gauls, and Visigoths. I absorbed the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztecs. I imagined windswept African deserts, or emerald European valleys, or dark, wet South American rain forests where I surveyed a long-hidden ruin. In high school, I discovered America and it stuck.

The children’s section bored me. The librarian arched her eyebrows as my grandfather checked out the adult books on my favorite subjects. I could tell he was proud of me. I had an exploratory mind, he said. As we checked out, Danny stood off to the side, rubbing his red cheek and yawning.

“I miss that library,” I said.

“Do you?” Danny asked. “I got so sick of it. The same shit every Sunday, church and the library. I couldn’t stand it.”

“I miss it,” I said. “I loved it in there.” I thought about work. I hadn’t even read a new book about American history, from a library or anywhere else, in a couple of years. Somewhere along the line, long before Whitestone had gotten on my case, I’d just lost interest.

“Come back over to Brooklyn one day,” Danny said. “On a Sunday, even. I’ll take you there.” He smiled. “I never even notice it and I’m on this street all the time.”

“I’d like that, but it’s tough getting here without a car,” I said. “It takes forever.”

“I’ll have Al drive you over,” Danny said. “We’ll get a pizza after.” He leaned forward, his eyes trained on his shoe tops. “I’ll tell you what, though. I probably slept better in that library than I ever did at home.” He looked up at me. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. I need help with something.”

I braced myself. “Anything.”

“You’re the only one around that’ll understand.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers. “My nightmares are back. They came back soon as I cleaned up again.”

I blew out a long breath I hadn’t known I was holding, running my fingers through my hair. Danny’s constant nightmares had plagued him his whole life. As a child, he could go hardly two weeks without one. At least in my mind, the dreams played a big part in his turning to drugs. They were the only answer. It was his best solution, to sleep while he was awake. Sleep though the night was about the only thing I could do that Danny couldn’t.

When the nightmares came, he awoke sweating, gasping, and falling out of bed. They’d leave him jumping at the slightest sound and afraid of everyone and everything. Nothing Mom and Dad tried, guidance counselors, talking to friendly doctors, sleeping pills, nothing helped him. The only thing that settled him was talking through them with me.

I never asked him questions, never wanted him to feel crazy or guilty for something so obviously beyond his control. Our talks never stopped the dreams from coming, but they helped get him through the day after. I wished I could do more, but was pleased to help even a little bit.

Sitting with him on that bench, I again felt guilty for leaving him alone for those three years. In my brain, I knew it was stupid. He had walked away from me. When his heart stopped, he was living under a bridge. How would I have ever found him? But the thoughts in my brain did nothing for the cold hole in my gut. I reached for the only answer I had, pushing aside my worries about his career in voyeurism.

“Tell me,” I said. “The most recent one.” I stood and stretched. “Tell it to me walking. Like we used to. We’ll go back to Santoro’s. Pretend we’re walking back to Grandpa’s after the library.”

Turning, Danny peered into the dark woods behind us, as if making sure there was no one, or nothing, behind us to overhear.

“Trust me,” I said.

“Not where anyone can see us,” Danny said, walking toward the park entrance.

Danny started his story as we passed under a stone bridge, where it was so dark I could only hear his breathing and his footsteps.

“A hospital,” he said. “A hospital and children but not a normal hospital. No recovery rooms, no beds, no nurses’ desks, or gift shops, or elevators even.”

“Same as always.”

“Pretty much. The white walls, the tile floors, the rusty stains from the leaking water pipes. The stains, they run from the ceiling to the floor and they’re wet and red and spidery, like veins.” He looked up into the shadowy leaves over our heads. “And the water is always running. I can hear it gurgling and hissing in the pipes.” He spread his hands. “And there’s one door. A huge, puke-green metal door, huge like for a giant. With one barred window, way up high, a yellow light glowing behind it. That’s the window the doctors watch us through.

“But now, sometimes,” Danny said, “and this is what’s different, now I can see something through the window. A nose with big, black-rimmed glasses on it. I can see the glasses but not the eyes. And the doorknob turns and clicks, like they’re making sure it’s locked.

“There are children in the room with me. A big white room full of children. Filthy children, young—five, six, seven years old. They’re everywhere, moaning and crying.”

“Fucking awful,” I said. Danny didn’t hear me.

We passed under a light pole and I saw his eyes had glazed over. His jaw had gone slack. He was back in that room and he hadn’t taken me with him.

“We’re all really sick. Drenched in sweat, wearing dirty, ragged hospital gowns. Their breath is horrible, like dead fish. Some have no arms, some have no legs. On some of them, their arms and legs are switched. Their eyes are dead. Like they’re zombies. Sometimes they’ll take one eye out and show it to me. Sometimes I’m one of them and I can take my own eyes out. But I can still see.

“This last dream was the most different. That’s what really scares me about it. I’m still me but an adult this time. I’m lying on the floor at the foot of the big door. I feel the cool air coming from underneath it. I can see the yellow light. From the other side of the door, I can hear the scratching of a sharp pencil on paper, murmuring voices.

“I’m trying to get up, but I have no legs, none of us have any legs. The sick children, they’re all coming for me across the floor. Dragging themselves by their hands. I can hear the skin of their stubs squeaking on the tile. It’s the only sound. The squeaking, and the water running through the pipes.

“And then, suddenly, I’m standing. But now I’ve got no arms. And then they’re all around me, the crippled children, drooling, their mouths opening and closing but not making any sound, like these pink, slimy . . .
things
that crawled up from a cave. They’re reaching up for me, clutching at my legs, trying to pull me down. I can feel the doctors watching us through the window, but I know that door is never going to open. What’s happening is exactly what they want to happen.”

“Jesus,” I said, terrified. Danny seemed so much better, how could the dreams be getting worse? “How does it end?”

“It never ends,” Danny said. “I just wake up. But sooner or later, I know they’re going to get me. The babies, the doctors—one of them is going to get me and that’s the night I’ll never wake up. I know it’s crazy to think that way, but that’s how it feels. Down into my bones.”

We walked along in the dark. My brother’s eyes darted over the shadows on either side of us, electrified with terror, as if at any moment a tiny, dirty hand might emerge from the bushes, a blood-shot child’s eye rocking in its palm. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. I knew that if our places were switched, I’d never have cleaned up. I’d stay high forever.

Our family had never uncovered the root of Danny’s dreams. That was why we never could make them go away. True, our family had a history with hospitals. Our mother was a nurse, our grandfather chief surgeon of Methodist Hospital, where both of us were born. I’d always thought, if anything, that knowing hospitals should make Danny less afraid. He knew doctors as wealthy, gentle men who drank scotch and smoked pipes while watching golf on television.

As a little kid, I’d been to the emergency room once, when I was five, maybe six. I’d fallen so hard on a patch of ice that a bump the size of a peach rose on my head. My folks had me checked for a concussion. I couldn’t recall Danny’s reaction to the hospital, which was weird. I remembered a lot about that accident, the smell of my mother’s snow-damp wool coat when she picked me up off the sidewalk, the blast of dry heat as we entered the emergency room, even the dull, hollowish sound my head had made hitting the ice. In fact, I couldn’t remember Danny there at all, but he must’ve been. There’s no place my folks could have put him. Regardless, that one crisis hardly seemed enough to traumatize a kid for life. Danny himself had been an indestructible child. He hadn’t been in a hospital since he was born, at least until his heart failed. I couldn’t remember him ever being sick.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I finally said. “I don’t know a thing about dreams. And I don’t remember you even being sick much, never mind in a hospital. But still, I could be wrong. Maybe you’re getting better and that’s why the dreams are changing. Maybe they just need to get a little worse before they go away.”

“I doubt it,” Danny said. “And I’m not willing to risk it. You think I’m crazy?”

“No, Danny. I don’t. Everyone has nightmares. As real as they feel, try to remember that they’re not.”

We came out of the park right by the library. Yellow spotlights shone up from its steps, glinting off the brass of the heavy doors and the building’s tall, gold-leafed columns.

“Suddenly,” Danny said, “I don’t feel so much like going back there. Ever.”

“Me either,” I said, backing away from the building, my hand on my stomach. Danny’s story had made me ill. I hoped that nightmares weren’t contagious. “I don’t read like I used to, anyway.”

Walking back toward Santoro’s, Danny glanced once over his shoulder at the library. I patted Danny on the back and quickened our pace. We could see Al waiting for us outside the restaurant, pacing in the gaslight.

“I’ve got some ideas,” Danny said, “for getting rid of those dreams. That’s where I’m gonna need your help.”

Before I could ask Danny what he was thinking, Al caught sight of us and stormed in our direction yelling Danny’s name, reaching us as we made the last block back to Santoro’s.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Al asked Danny. Al held up his cell phone, clutched in his fist. “I been tryin’ to reach you for half a fuckin’ hour. We got a job. An
emergency
job.”

“I had dinner with my brother and we took a walk over to the park,” Danny said, pushing past Al. “I turned the phone off.”

“Off? You turned it off?” Al said, trotting up beside us. “You can’t turn it off. That’s rule number fucking one.”

“Don’t yell at me,” Danny said. “I haven’t seen Kevin forever. I didn’t want us interrupted.”

“I didn’t know you were on call,” I said to Danny. “I didn’t know you did that.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Danny said.

Al froze, staring at me as if I’d materialized out of thin air. He said nothing to me, turning to Danny instead. “What’re we gonna do with him?”

“How big is the job?” Danny asked.

“Medium to big,” Al said. “And very fucking urgent.”

Danny studied Al and then refocused on me. “So it can’t wait?”

“We should be there already,” Al said, his voice wavering. “We gotta be done before our guy gets off.” He sounded afraid, like a good kid desperate to beat curfew. I got the feeling that whatever had gone wrong, Al had screwed it up. Al tilted his head in my direction. “I know this isn’t how you wanted to do it, Dan. We could put him in a cab.”

“I’ll wait in the car or whatever,” I said. “Just drop me off after. I’m off tomorrow. I don’t have anywhere to be.”

Al threw his toothpick down and immediately replaced it with another. He looked over at the Charger. “If we hurry, maybe we could drop him off.”

Danny opened his mouth to speak, looking like he was about to agree. Then his words caught and his expression changed. “Could we use an extra set of hands?”

“Of course,” Al said. “I’ve even got enough tools, but is now really the fucking time?”

“We can trust him,” Danny said.

Al raised his hands in the air. “It’s not that. You vouch for him, that’s gospel for me. You know that, Dan.”

“I don’t need vouching for,” I said. “I’m waiting in the car, right?”