James Sallis: Eye of the Cricket

"And tomorrow morning I'll talk to some of the people on the streets, slide them into it. Kids especially."

"Thanks, Richard."

"Es nada. Speaking of which," he said, turning to Don, "the streets and kids, not nada: how's Danny doing?"

Walsh shrugged.

"No job yet?"

"Jobs were rain, he'd be cactus. He did work half a day at a place on the butt end of Canal, one of those old diners that looks like a trailer. The manager, kid about ten years younger than him, started to show him how he was doing something wrong and Danny just walked out. Showed up at the house still in his apron."

"I figured things weren't going too well when he missed our lunch last week."

"Days go by when I hardly see him at all. Others, a block and tackle couldn't get him out of the house. What can you do?"

"Not much, Don, Tough as it is."

"Yeah."

One night last year Walsh had got a call from the Coral Gables, Florida, police department. An officer there said they had his son in custody. The charge this time (yes, they'd had him at the station before) was burglary. Twenty-eight years old, Danny was still living with his mother, unemployed, the officer said, and recently, while she was away at work and he off somewhere, his mother's house had been cleaned out. An investigating officer tracking stolen goods came across her TV in a pawnshop and, following up on it, days later trailed Danny back to the self-storage facility where he'd cached his mother's property. He'd pawned a few things, given some of it away, but mosdy it was just sitting there, stacked up neat as a pin.

The boy's mother now claimed that she might have kind of given him permission, or at least somehow given him the impression that it would be perfectly okay, to haul off the furniture, appliances and even the handles off the kitchen cabinets for chrissake. So, unless she decided to proceed, beyond a court-ordered commitment for observation, there wasn't a lot they were going to be able to do-till the next time. But his, Walsh's, name had come up during the investigation, and now Sergeant Montez was calling as a professional courtesy, officer to officer, because he thought Walsh might want to know what was going on, maybe get involved?

The upshot being that when Danny got out from under the commitment, he decided he'd be better off living with his father. Well, not actually living with him, he'd just be in the same city, you know. So he came to stay with Don while he looked for work and a place of his own and never left.

Big brother-like, Richard had taken him under wing, showing him the city (not that he seemed much interested), introducing him to a few people (in whom he seemed even less interested), meeting him for occasional lunches and coffee.

"Tell him to give me a call," Richard said.

"I will."

"Anyone up for dessert?" Tammy asked. "Sam's put together a sweet potato and pecan pie that he plans on advertising as a threat to intelligent life on the planet."

Most cities, they leave it up to traffic, poverty, automatic-weapons fire. Things like that. Here, they tiy to feed you to death.

We declined.

"Coffee all around, then?"

"With a shot of bourbon and another of these." Don held up the empty Abita bottle. When Tammy brought everything on a tray, he drank his coffee at once, then threw back the bourbon and started in on the beer, nursing it. It was a door I'd spent a lot of years ducking to get through, myself.

"So you're headed back to the hospital," Richard said.

I nodded.

"How about you, Don? You got anything on for tonight?"

"Go home, see if Danny's there, see what shape the place's in. The usual."

"I'm hitting the seven o'clock show at the Prytania, you want to come along."

"You asking me for a date?"

"You bet, big boy."

"Probably some damn French thing, too. Get me in the mood."

"Oh, I thertainly hope tho."

"You guys want anything else? Nah, thanks, Richard. But I think I'll go on home. Not much in the mood for lighthearted comedies."

"Actually, according to reviews it's a gripping, compelling tale of obsession and madness."

"Well then. I definitely don't need any more of that. I get gripped and compelled real hard, every day I go in to work. Most nights too, I don't turn the phone and the beeper off."

Tammy put the check down. I reached, but Don already had it.

"My turn."

Outside, eveiything about the night was quietly transformed. Humidity softened the edge of buildings; glistening wet, the streets looked clean and new; even the headlights of oncoming cars were wrapped in shells of soft white. We walked together a block or two, to Don's car, the same ancient Regal he'd had for years. Richard continued up Prytania.

"Drop you, Lew?"

"Thanks, but I'll walk. Great night."

He looked around. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Let me know how things turn out at the hospital?"

"Don." He'd gotten in. I leaned down to be at a level. "You going to be all right?"

"Sure. Sure I will. We always are, aren't we, you and me?"

"It's been a long siege, my friend."

"Yeah, just sometimes I get tired of looking at the goddamn white of their eyes, know what I mean?"

I nodded and shut the door for him. He looked through the window at me a moment, then rolled it down and stuck out his hand. I took it and we shook. It seemed an odd thing to do with so old and close a friend.

I watched him drive off, into the night. Thinking I'd walk partway then get a cab, I cut over to St Charles and wound up, instead, walking the whole distance.

The upper parts of buildings were gone, as though, from the sky down, everything were slowly dissolving, slowly becoming insubstantial. Cars materialized beside me all at once out of the mist. Buses loomed up like sudden cliffs. Walking across Jackson to Claiborne, I came upon two men sitting together in the shelter of a cardboard box shouting a tuneless duet. Even their words, as far as I could tell, were invented.

After all, Beckett says, when you're in the last bloody ditch there's nothing left but to sing.

His eyes went from the doctor's face to mine, back and forth. They were wholly without emotion or recognition, without presence, lifeless and flat as lentils; and otherwise he made no visible effort to move. His arms lay out beside him on the bed. His feet had thick, horny undersides, as though sandal soles had been grafted on. The toes turned in.

He was probably older than he looked.

"You can talk now, sir. Though you're going to have an awfully sore throat for a while. Can you tell me who you are?"

The doctor's name was Bailey. He bent to hang an oxygen cannula over the man's ears and adjust it Straightening, he looked across the bed at me and shook his head.

Through two narrow windows set together in a corner I could see only the mist roiling outside-not even the city's lights. We were on the third floor.

"Can you tell me what day it is, sir? Do you know where you are?"

Just those eyes, arcing back and forth.

That blankness.

"You're going to be allright. You've had an accident You're in the intensive care unit at University Hospital. You came in last night, Tuesday. So this is Wednesday." He paused. uNow can you tell me where you are?"

He waited a moment. Still nothing.

He turned away.

"I don't know. Looks like we're definitely going to need a neuro consult."

He dropped the endotracheal tube with its cluster of tape into a wastebasket beside the bed, went to the sink and squirted Betadine from a dispenser mounted on the wall. Started washing his hands.

"You want to page the medicine intern for me? I'm getting no breath sounds on the right," a nurse called from one of the beds across the room. At the central desk a unit secretary picked up the phone. "Also a stat chest and an ABG."