The Scout
A story by Keith Croes
They walked down a street over asphalt like broken pie crust. It had rained that morning and the smell was of earthworms and gardens, a loamy carnival jungle strong. He held her hand, steering her around the puddles. She recognized the angles of the sidewalk slabs.
"It used to seem so far," she said. "It took me all day."
The store was on a corner and he sat on the concrete step to wait for her. His chin touched his shoulder. Long, cracked streets and the wind. His eyes never stopped moving. He could hear a rumbling in the distance.
"Okay."
Her voice startled him. "Chef's surprise." Grunting, he took the
backpack from her and she latched onto his arm. "
They walked.
"There's not a whole lot left in there, you know? Can you find me another?" She tugged on his arm. "You can't leave without finding me another. There's food, I guess. Lots of cans. Anything but tennis balls. I once tried to cook up a batch of tennis balls. Poured them right into a saucepan." She laughed brightly down the empty street. "But they're running low on soap and toilet paper and...other things. I've never gone anyplace else. That's where mom used to take me."
After several blocks he stopped and raised her hand, turning her like a dance partner toward the steps to the house. She let go and dashed to the top and through the open door. All by memory. She had been blind for the whole of her life.
He put the backpack on the kitchen counter and she came in from the porch and touched his chest. "Thank you." He watched, his eyes adjusting to the muted light of the kitchen, as she unhooked the strap of the backpack and began sliding the cans onto the bottom shelf of the cabinet, standing on tiptoes and stretching, then down again. Up and down. Up and down. In a moment she heard the clatter of buckets and the screen door slam.
"Yes, I know." He guided her hands to the controls on the burner. "Boil the water on the magic hot plate. No electricity, ladies and gentlemen, but here it is, hotter than hell. No more fires in the porch barbeque. No more furniture-bashing. I've tried to get this open, you know. It doesn't open. I mean, there's no batteries in here. And I can open anything. Anything! You're off again this afternoon, aren't you?"
He dipped his fingers in the bucket and flicked water in her face. She recoiled with a startled yelp and his arm hooked across her shoulder and drew her near, squeezing her against his side. She pushed. "Go away. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" She yelled after him as he crossed the porch. "I know you're going to leave. Just like my father left my mom. You men are all alike!" She found the saucepan on the table and submerged it in the bucket. "But it sure is nice having you here. Whoever you are."
The house was dark at twilight when he returned and he closed the blinds, pulled the curtains shut and lit two kerosene lanterns, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. With her legs pulled up against her chest, she sat in her pajamas on the mattress she had dragged downstairs to the living room. She listened. Footsteps. The clunk-ssshhh, clunk-ssshhh of the lantern pumps. Footsteps.
"I wish you wouldn't do that -- close everything up. It's so stuffy in here. There's nobody out there anyway. Is there?"
She heard him sit at the kitchen table. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and spoke loud enough for him to hear. "I guess you don't care why I'm crying. Well, I'm crying because my clothes don't fit. I can't snap my favorite jeans. I think I'm growing. That's what happens when you eat a well-balanced diet of tennis balls and...canned anything.
"I used to cry after.. after everyone left. They took my mom away. She was calling my name. But I was hiding. Some men came in the house and tried to find me. No luck." She put a pillow across her knees and buried her face in it, sobbing.
"All I had to do was say something. But I was so scared." She whipped the pillow behind her on the mattress and stretched out her legs. "The street was full of cars and trucks beeping their horns and people yelling. I was all squeezed into the dumbwaiter upstairs. That was my super secret hiding place. I probably wouldn't fit in there now. Anyway, I don't cry about it anymore.
"I've got a name, you know. Bet you don't even care. Well, I don't care what your name is either. It's probably Floyd or something. Hey, Floyd! Can you find me another pair of jeans?"
She listened to him come through the dining room and toward her across the rug. A hand covered her mouth gently and a plastic cup pressed into her palm. The hand moved to her head and was gone. He sat in a chair a short distance away. "What's this?" She sipped. "Juice! I like this. Uh, I didn't mean to call you Floyd. I know something like that could stick, so I'll just go back to calling you nothing. Nothing's not so bad, when you think about it. Better than Floyd, anyway."
She placed the cup on the floor next to the wall and scooted off the mattress several feet to a cardboard box. "Look." She walked toward him on her knees until she felt his hand on her wrist, placed the jeans in his lap and patted them. "I could really use a new pair. These are too small."
She retreated to the cardboard box and back to the mattress and he approached her and again put his hand over her mouth, then walked back to the kitchen.
"I know, I know. Go talk to yourself or whatever you do. That's the strangest language I ever heard." She listened to him sit at the kitchen table and soon the bubbling sound came, like pigeons cooing. Her hand fell lightly down the wall and landed on the cup. She took a swallow. "I don't need you, you know. I was doing just fine before you came along. I can get my own water. I can get my own jeans. I don't need your hot plate. And I know you have a gun or something. You take it with you every afternoon. And you have other stuff around here that...I don't know. If I had any sense, I'd send you packing. What is that, French? God, it's so pretty."
She brushed her hair, listening, and when the voice stopped made her way to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.
"I always
wanted to go to
"Different
places feel different, you know? I've been to
Her hands were exploring the table and one came to rest on a metal box. "What's this?" He lifted her hand from the box and held it, standing and using his other hand to place the box on the counter behind him. "Yeah, it's one of those gadgets of yours. A radio?" Still holding her hand, he sat down.
She laughed. "I don't care what it is. I don't care one bit. You gotta do whatever it is you gotta do, don't you? And I know you wouldn't hurt me. You wouldn't ever hurt me, would you?"
She was aware of him lightly encircling her four fingers. "If you understand me, squeeze my hand," she said suddenly. "Squeeze!" Her head sank slowly until her cheek hit the cool tabletop. "I used to have friends." The words were muffled. "And music. Do you know music?" She sang. "This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' aroouund. Talking Heads. Great name, huh? Robbie had all their albums. Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est. Hey, that's French!"
He rose and went to the window over the sink, holding the curtain aside and peering out for a long time at the backyard. She sat up. "Expecting company? What's going on out there, anyway? I just wish someone could tell me what's going on out there. Can't even get a new pair of jeans anymore. I'm going to have to go around naked one of these days, you know that?"
She followed him to the window and touched his back.
"Hey. Hey!" She shook him and he turned. "Do you think I'm pretty? Robbie said I was pretty. And my mom, of course. But..." He traced her profile, running a finger down her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, over her lips and down her chin. She took his hand and lowered it to her breast. He raised it and covered her mouth, turned her around and, with both hands on her shoulders, guided her into the living room and to the mattress. He sat in the chair.
She plopped down. "I can't sleep. And why do you sleep there, anyway, in a damn chair? Why don't you go upstairs on one of the beds or bring a mattress down here or something?" She slugged her pillow. "I'm almost 15, you know. I know all about sex. I could show you the time of your life, buddy. But you're probably old and ugly. You're probably an old, ugly...psycho killer."
She fell backward and lay there. A rumbling in the distance. "Sounds like rain."
He began cooing, but it was a different cooing than in the kitchen. It went up and down and sideways in her mind and she grabbed her pillow and hugged it, a thrill shooting through her, arching her back. It was singing. "Oh, that's beautiful," she whispered. The singing went on and on, and it was about birds and flying and what she had always imagined the sky to be, something huge and filled with its own emptiness, emptiness with no end. It soared and it was warm on her face like the sun, like a kiss, wrapped around her like a wonderful smell, rich as baking bread, as her mother's perfume, as the outside after a rain. "I love you," she said before falling asleep. He stopped and watched her for awhile, then turned off the lanterns.
Several hours later his hand on her mouth brought her up from sleep with a stab of panic. There were footsteps in the kitchen and people speaking his strange language. He burbled something in her ear, patted her mouth and walked back to the kitchen. The cooing turned to an angry shrieking, like cats fighting, and she headed for the stairs, climbing the steps as lightly as she could. The sliding door of the dumbwaiter at the end of the hall opened with a groan, and she climbed in and pulled it down behind her.
The light from the lantern swung back and forth, back and forth over the empty mattress. He ran out the front door, back into the vestibule and up the stairs. The noise in the kitchen had stopped. She heard him go through the bedrooms, open the closet doors. She heard him in the bathroom rustling the shower curtain. She heard him in the hall, walking slowly up and down, cooing. He was so close. She opened the door.
"I'm not going through this again. I think I'm stuck. How about a hand, big boy?" Murmuring happily, he put down the lantern and lifted her from the dumbwaiter, and murmured at her all the way down the stairs, holding her round the shoulder.
"Talkative, aren't we? Your friends sound pretty weird, though. You're leaving, aren't you? Que sera, sera."
He pulled her close as they crossed the porch and she held out her hand, pushing open the screen door and closing it quietly behind them. A few feet down the sidewalk where there should have been nothing but more sidewalk he stopped. She reached out and felt the warm metal.
"You're not from this planet, are you?" she said.
There was a ramp, and upward movement, light touches and cooing, cooing all around her. He held her the whole time, stroking her arm and her forehead, mussing her hair. He ran a finger around her eyes and then something touched her there, pressing against her eye sockets like the machines at the hospital. He sang to her on the way back to the mattress, laid her down and kissed her cheek. They made sad love, sad because she yearned it to be real in a dream she knew to be a dream.
THE END
keith@croes.com