I Am the Messenger (17 page)

Thursday afternoon appears to be traveling well.

Angie Carusso goes through her usual routine at work and picks up her kids from school. She walks with them to the park, and they discuss which ice creams they’re going to buy. One of them makes a cunning decision to get a cheaper one so he can have two. He suggests it to Angie and she tells him he’s still only allowed one. He then switches back to a more expensive choice.

They go into the shop and I wait in the park. I sit on one of the far benches and wait for them to come out. Once they do, I go into the shop myself and try to figure out what kind of ice cream Angie Carusso would like.

Hurry up,
I think,
or they’ll be gone by the time you come back out
. In the end, I decide on two flavors. Peppermint choc chip and passion fruit, in a waffle cone.

When I walk out, the kids are still scoffing down their own ice creams. They’re all on the bench.

I go over.

I topple over my words, surprised that they come out properly.

“Excuse me, I—” Angie and the kids all turn and face me. Up close, Angie Carusso is beautiful and awkward. “I’ve seen you here a few times and noticed that you never get an ice cream yourself.” She looks at me as if I’m a lunatic. “I thought you deserved one, too.”

Clumsily, I hold it out to her. It already streams green and yellow down the side of the cone.

She eases her hand out gingerly and takes it, her expression startled and half broken. For quite a few seconds, she looks at it. Then her tongue rescues the streams on the side of the cone.

When she’s cleaned it up enough, she attempts a bite as if it’s the original sin.
Should I or shouldn’t I?
She looks at me warily again before sinking her teeth into the peppermint choc. Her lips go light green right about the time her boys go charging down to the slippery dip. Only the girl stays and points out, “Looks like you got an ice cream as well today, Mum.”

Angie strokes the fringe from her daughter’s eyes. “Yes, Casey, looks like it, doesn’t it? Go on,” she tells her. “Go play with your brothers.”

Casey goes, and now it’s only she and me at the bench.

It’s a warm day and humid.

Angie Carusso eats her ice cream, and I wonder what to do with my hands. She works her mouth around the peppermint and onto the passion fruit now, nice and slow. She uses her tongue to push it down so the cone won’t be empty. She looks like she couldn’t stand it if the cone was empty.

As she eats, she watches her kids. They’ve barely noticed that I’m there, more intent on calling out to their mother and arguing about who’s going higher on the swings.

“They’re beautiful,” Angie says to the cone, “most of the time.” She shakes her head and talks on. “I was the easy one when I was younger. Now I’ve got three kids and I’m alone.” She looks at the swings, and I can see she’s imagining what they’d look like if the kids weren’t there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away, despite her love for them.

I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.

She cries, momentarily, as she watches. She allows herself at least that. There are tears on her face and ice cream on her lips.

It doesn’t taste like it used to.

Still, when she stands up, Angie Carusso thanks me. She asks my name, but I tell her it isn’t important.

“No,” she protests, “it is.”

I relent. “It’s Ed.”

“Well, thanks, Ed,” she says. “Thank you.”

She thanks me a few times more, but the best words I hear all day come to me right when I think it’s over. It’s the girl, Casey. She twists herself onto Angie’s hand and says, “Next week I’ll give you a bite of mine, Mum.”

In a way, I feel sad and empty, but I also feel that I’ve done what was intended. Just once, an ice cream for Angie Carusso.

I’ll always remember the color of it on her lips.

Now I have to deal with the Roses, and like I’ve said, I don’t think they’ve been tested in the world. It seems they’ve never been asked how they would react if someone from outside came in and interrupted their fighting with foreign fists.

I have their address.

I have their phone number, and I’m ready.

Early next week I get a lot of day shifts, and I go over there every night I have free. Each time, they only argue. There’s no actual fight, so I go home, disappointed. On the way back, I look for the closest phone booth to their house and find one a few streets away.

The next two nights I have to work, which I decide is a good thing. They had a big fight only recently, and they might need a few more days to build up properly to another one. All I need is Gavin to leave the house again. My job isn’t a pleasant one.

On Sunday night, it happens.

I’m there for nearly two hours when the house shakes and Gavin storms out again.

He goes back to the same place and sits again in the gutter.

And again, I go down there.

My shadow only edges onto him when he says, “
You
again,” but he doesn’t even get a glimpse of me.

My hands reach down and grab him by the collar.

I feel like I’m outside myself.

I watch myself drag Gavin Rose into the bush and beat him down to the grass, the dirt, and the fallen tree branches.

My fists clutter on his face and I put a hole in his stomach.

The boy cries and begs. His voice twitches.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me….”

I see his eyes and make sure not to meet them, and I put my fist onto his nose to eliminate any vision he might have had. He’s hurt, but I keep going. I need to make sure he can’t move by the time I’m done with him.

I can smell how scared he is.

It pours out of him.

It reaches up and stuffs itself into my nose.

I realize this could all backfire terribly, but it feels like my only option.

It’s time to explain that before I had to sort out Edgar Street, I’d never even laid a finger on a person in this way. It doesn’t feel good, especially when it’s a young kid who doesn’t have a chance. However, I can’t let that stop me. I’m possessed as I continue beating Gavin Rose on his body and face. It’s dark, and a gathering wind stalks through the bush.

No one can help him.

Except me.

And how do I do it?

I give him one last kick and make sure he won’t be able to move for at least another five or ten minutes.

I get off him, breathing heavily.

Gavin Rose isn’t going anywhere.

There’s blood on my hands as I walk quickly from the bush and up the street. I can hear the television in the Rose house as I hurry past.

When I turn the corner and see the phone booth, I discover a big problem—there’s someone in it.

“Well, I don’t care what
she
says,” a very large teenage girl with a navel ring booms inside the box. “It has nothing to do with me….”

I can’t help it.

I think,
Get out of there, you silly bitch
.

But she only gets more articulate.

One minute,
I decide.
I’ll give her one minute and then I’m going in
.

She sees me but clearly couldn’t care less. She turns around and continues talking.

Right. I’m going in,
and I knock on the glass.

She responds by turning around and asking,
“What?”
The word is spoken like gunshot.

I try manners. “Sorry to bother you, but I really need to make an urgent call.”

“Piss off, mate!” She’s not happy, to say the least.

“Look!” I hold up my hands and show her the blood on my palms. “A friend of mine just had an accident and I have to call an ambulance….”

She talks into the phone again. “Kel? Yeah, I’m back. Listen, I’ll call you back in a
minute
.” She stares at me obscenely when she says that. “Okay?”

When she hangs up, she saunters out and I can smell a mixture of her sweat and deodorant inside the booth. It isn’t too charming, but it isn’t a smell of Doorman proportions, either.

I shut the door and dial.

Three rings and Daniel Rose picks up the phone.

“Yeah, hello.”

I whisper, nice and hard. “Now you listen to me—if you go down to the bush at the end of your street, you’ll find your brother in a pretty bad way. I strongly suggest you get down there.”

“Who is this?”

I hang up.

“Thank you,” I say to the girl on my way out.

“There better not be any blood on the phone.”

Nice girl.

Back on the Roses’ street, I make it just in time to see.

Daniel Rose is helping his brother walk back to their house. I’m far away, but I can see him supporting him, with his arm around his shoulder. For the first time, they look like brothers.

I even let myself imagine some words for them.

Come on, Gav, you can make it. We’ll get you home and fix you up.

There is blood on my hands and blood at the bottom of the street. I hope for a moment that they both understand what they’re doing and what they’re proving.

I want to tell them, but I realize that all I do is deliver the message. I don’t decipher it or make sense of it for them. They need to do that themselves.

I can only hope they’re capable as I make my way home to some running water and the Doorman.

Well, I must say, I’m very pleased with myself. There were three names carved into that great rock at the stones of home, and I’m quite sure I’ve fulfilled everything I had to do.

I walk down to the river with the Doorman and head upstream to where the names are in the rock. It gets a little rough for the Doorman on the way up, and I look at him, disappointed. “You had to come, didn’t you? I told you it was going to be a hard one for you, but did you listen?”

I’ll just wait here,
he replies.

I give him a pat as he lies down and I keep going up the river.

As I climb the large stones, I feel a pride swelling in me. It’s a great feeling to be going there again in victory after the uncertainty of my first visit.

It’s late afternoon but not hot, so I’m barely sweating when my eyes hit the names.

Immediately, I notice there’s something different. They’re the same names, but next to them, there’s also a tick scratched in, obviously for each time I completed what I had to do.

I’m very happy to see the first name.

Thomas O’Reilly. Big tick.

Then Angie Carusso. Another one.

Then…

What?

I look at the stone in disbelief, as the name Gavin Rose is still naked and alone in the tick department.

I stand there with my arm bent around my body, scratching my spine.

“What do I still need to do?” I ask. “Gavin Rose was as complete as they come.”

The answer can’t be far away.

A few days pass, and the end of November is near. It’s getting close to the Annual Sledge Game. Marv’s been calling me up, still agitated about my apparent lack of interest.

December hits, and two nights before the game, I’m still nervous about Gavin Rose and that invisible tick on the stone. I’ve been back there and there’s still nothing. I hoped whoever was doing that part was just running late, but there’s no way three or four days could pass. Whoever’s running this would never allow that to happen.

I’m having trouble sleeping.

I’m irritable with the Doorman.

When I haven’t slept again after Thursday, I go to the all-night chemist at the top of Main Street to get something, anything, to help me sleep. I should have saved some of the sleeping pills I slipped the man from Edgar Street.

As I walk out, I notice a group of boys hanging around across the road.

Nearing home, it becomes obvious that they’re following me, and when we’re all standing at an intersection, waiting for the legs to go green, I notice the voice of Daniel Rose.

“This him, Gav?”

I try to fight them off, but there are too many. At least six. They drag me into an alley and handle me in much the same way I took care of Gavin. They club me with their hands and hold me down and all take turns. I can feel blood crawling across my face and bruises showing up along my ribs, my legs, and my stomach.

They enjoy themselves.

“Teach you to mess with my brother.” This is Daniel Rose making conversation. He kicks me hard in the ribs. The loyalty hurts. “Come on, Gav—take the last shot.”

Gav does as he’s told.

He reefs a boot to my stomach and forces his fist into my face.

They run off into the night.

As for me, I try to get up but fall.

I drag myself home and feel like I’ve come full circle from when I had the Ace of Clubs first delivered.

When I stagger through the front door, the Doorman looks shocked. Almost concerned. All I can do is shake my head and assure him I’m okay with a small, painful smile. I imagine that while all this is going on, a large tick is being scratched into the stone next to the name of Gavin Rose. It’s over.

Later that night I look in the bathroom mirror.

Two black eyes.

Swollen jaw.

A blood stream flowing to my throat.

I look at myself and try my hardest to attempt a smile.

Well done, Ed,
I tell myself, and I stare for a final few seconds at my broken and bloodied face.

I stare strangely into the face of clubs.