The Guardians (31 page)

    In
fact this was one of the places, hidden within the web of metal struts that
buttress the tracks over our heads, the traffic of Erie Street passing in a
tidal wash thirty feet below, where we would gather to smoke or pass one of
Randy's father's
Hustlers
between ourselves. (I have just now the memory
of a twelve- year-old Ben studying one of the centrefolds and, pointing at the
complicated mechanics of the model's upturned hips, asking, "Does the pee
come out
there
, or
there
, or
there?"
and none of us
certain of the answer.) What's different is that, unlike then, it is now
something of a struggle—and not only for me—to crabwalk up the cement slope of
the trestle and into the weeds that have pushed through the cracks. By the time
the three of us have found positions where there is limited risk of our sliding
down onto the pavement below, we are panting like dogs.

    "I
hope your feelings won't be hurt," Carl says eventually, "if I say
that you both look like hell."

    "Funny
thing to say. Coming from you," Randy says.

    "But
I'm the junkie, remember? I'm not even supposed to be
alive."

    "That's
your excuse?"

    "That
and the fact I've gone three days without a shower."

    "So
we smelled."

    If I
didn't know better, I'd say Carl was the actor among us, not Randy. Of course
Carl would be up for different parts: the mob hitman, the craggy roughneck, the
retired boxer looking for one last bout to redeem himself There is the aura of
brutal experience about Carl that would be useful to the camera. He is lean
too, his face pulled back over hard cheekbones and chin. The years, however
harsh, have left him with a mournful handsomeness.

    "That
was you at the Old Grove, wasn't it?"

    "Hello
to you too, Trev."

    "I
saw
you."

    "You
think I'd miss Ben's funeral?"

    "That's
what we were betting."

    "Well,
I was there."

    "But
you were
hiding."

    Carl
doesn't flinch at this. As though he hadn't heard it at all. "I came as
soon as I heard."

    "How
did you hear?"

    "You
left a message. It went down the line of some people I know. And when I got it,
I called in some favours and got enough money to get a standby ticket."

    "You
took a flight?"

    "From
out west."

    "Where
out west?"

    Carl
grinds his teeth. "You sound like a cop."

    "I
just think it's strange, the way you've turned up."

    "You
mean me being in the house?"

    "Yeah."

    "You
were there too, weren't you?"

    I let
this go for the moment. "Why did you run? When I saw you at the
cemetery?"

    "I
didn't want you to see me."

    "Why
not?"

    "I
came for Ben. To say goodbye. That's all I had the strength for."

    "And
spending five minutes with me and Randy would have been too much for you? Saying
hello might have tired you out?"

    Carl
scratches his ankles. He's not wearing socks, and the skin is blue from cold.
"You sound angry, Trev."

    Below
us, another eighteen-wheeler hauling pigs to the slaughterhouse in Exeter
wheels by, and I have to wait for the echoes of its shifting gears to dissipate
before speaking again.

    "Where's
Tracey Flanagan?"

    "I
heard she's missing. That's it."

    "Is
she in the house?"

    "What?"

    "Did
you see her?"

    
Did
you hurt her
? I want to ask
.
Were those your hands that pulled
her back into the dark
?

    "I
didn't see anybody."

    "Because
that's why we were in there. We were looking for her."

    "Good
for you."

    "So
you don't know anything about it?"

    Carl
places his hands on his knees. Shows us the dirty fingernails. The pale
knuckles.

    "If
you want to accuse me of something, say it so I can walk over to where you're
sitting and stick my fist down your throat," he says. "But if you're
just a little worked up, if those shakes of yours have eaten away at your brain
and twisted the wires in the part that tells you when it's time to calm the
fuck down, then I'm ready to forgive you. Which is it?"

    "It's
Parkinson's. And if you talk about it again the way you just did, I'll be the
one to take some of your teeth out the hard way Understand?"

    Carl
starts over toward me. But when he gets within range of my trembling,
cross-legged self, instead of throwing a punch as I—and a stiffened
Randy—expect, he places his hand against the side of my neck.

    "Look
at us," he says. "A pair of grey-haired geezers."

    "I
tried to fight it, then I tried to ignore it. Nothing worked."

    "Me,
I tried to end it," he says. "That didn't work either." He spits
a thick gob and watches the white foam snake down the concrete away from our
feet. Then he elbows me in the ribs.

    "I'm
still waiting for you to tell us," Randy says directly to Carl.

    "Tell
you what?"

    "Why
you were in that house."

    Carl climbs
up onto one of the steel struts and sits on it, perched with his legs swinging
beneath him.

    "You
own a nightclub or something, right, Trev?"

    "Used
to."

    "Get
a nice price?"

    "My
real estate agent is still sending me flowers."

    "There
you go. Even Randy here has been working. I saw you in that Rug Rubber ad a few
months back."

    "You
saw
that?" Randy says, clearly touched.

    "You
were dressed up in fur or something?"

    "A
dust bunny."

    "Yeah!
And then this giant worm—"

    "The
Rug Rubber."

    "It
ate you."

    "More
like it sucked me."

    "That's
right! You were
good
, man."

    "What's
your point here?" I ask.

    "My
point is I don't have any money. And not just 'I'm a little short this month,'
but
nothing.''''
With the departure of his smile he grows instantly
thinner. "My plan was to come into town, pay my respects to Ben and get
out on the train that night. It was pretty much all I could afford to do
anyway."

    "But
you didn't go."

    "No."

    "Why
not?"

    Carl
is standing now. He'd like to pace, but the slope of the trestle makes it too
difficult, and he is left bent over at the waist, shuffling under the girders.

    "I
haven't used in over six months," he says. "It's been hard. The
hardest thing I've ever done. But I've been clean for longer than a week for
the first time since I was thirteen years old, and it feels good. I'm actually
proud
of myself, know what I mean? Then I come here. And as soon as I get
off the train I can hear his voice. The boy's voice. Telling me to do
things."

    "Like
what?"

    "Give
in. To go out and cop a rock, fuck myself up. He wanted to see me fail. No, not
even that." Carl wipes the back of his hand under his nose. "What he
really wanted was to watch me die."

    "It
didn't work," Randy says.

    "But
it almost did. The first night I'm here and I'm calling up some guys I know,
asking who's dealing in Grimshaw these days. Less than an hour after they put
Ben down in the ground and I've got a loaded crack pipe in my hand, sitting on a
bed out at the Swiss Cottage, where they've given me the off-season special,
telling myself that if I smoke this shit, if I go back to that life, it'll kill
me."

    I
don't want to ask this, but I do. "Did you light it?"

    "I
wanted to. The voice was
telling
me to. The boy was saying how my life
was never worth much anyway, so why not enjoy myself a little before joining my
old buddy Ben for a nice, long dirt nap. I came close about seven thousand
times over the next day and a half. But no, I didn't."

    "You
could have come to us," Randy starts. "We would—"

    "I
know
you would have helped, Randy. Or tried. I know you both would. That's
why I came to look for you tonight."

    "You
looked for us in the Thurman house?" I ask.

    "Over
the nights I stayed at the Swiss Cottage, I'd go for walks around town. One way
or another I'd always end up at the bottom of Caledonia Street, keeping away
from the streetlights, looking at that fucking house. And then I saw Trev going
into the McAuliffes'. Figured that's where you were staying. So that's where I
headed first tonight, to see if you were there. But I didn't get as far as Mrs.
A.'s door."

    "What
stopped you?"

    "The
house." Carl looks up through the slats at the slices of night sky
overhead. "What I saw in the house."

    Randy
shoots me a look. One that says that he's not going to ask, so it's up to me.

    "What
did you see, Carl?"

    "A
girl in the window. One of the upstairs bedrooms. Remember, Trev?"

    A picture
of the boy returns to me: standing over the bed, over a girl's body, the
pattern of blood on the walls. I have to squeeze my eyes shut and open them
again to push it away. "I remember."

    "She
was looking down at me," Carl says. "Just a kid. A totally
scared-shitless kid. Trying to claw her way through the glass

    but
at the same time not wanting anyone to hear her, y'know?

    Because
she wasn't alone in there."

    "Was
it Tracey Flanagan? Heather?"

    "No.
It was nobody I knew."

    "Okay.
So you went in."

    "The
truth? I wasn't looking to rescue anything other than my own ass tonight, but
yeah. I ran in there and up the stairs and kicked that door open—all the very
last
things in the world I wanted to do—and nobody was there. Then, maybe a
minute later, I heard sounds downstairs. Footsteps. I went to the top of the
stairs and looked down and there was Randy. And then you too."

    From
far away there comes a low roar. At first I take it as the approach of a
freight train that we can feel through the trestle's rails and ties—cattle cars
and fuel tanks and Made in China whatnot that will soon be passing over our
heads. But the sound rolls on a moment, growing in intensity, before abruptly
receding. Thunder. Unseen clouds that have stolen the few stars from the sky.

    "We
were talking yesterday. Me and Randy," I find myself saying when the air
is still again. "About what we saw in the house when we were kids."

    "The
real things? Or the other things?"

    "You
saw him too then, didn't you?"

    Carl
locks the fingers of his two hands together. A here's-the-
church-and-here's-the-steeple fist. "Him?"

    "The
boy in the house."

    
"We
were boys. And
we
were in the house."

    "It
wasn't us. You just said you heard him as soon as you got off the train."

    "Heard.
Not saw."

    "C'mon,
Carl. We all saw him."

    "Then
tell me. What did he look like?"

    "Look
like?"

    "His
appearance.
If you both saw the same person—if I saw him too—we should be
able to agree on the colour of his hair, his eyes, the length of his nose. All
that."