Stuart Kaminsky: Bright Futures

There were three small windows in the big room and one in each of the other two rooms. Ames had already moved the air conditioner from my last place overlooking the defunct DQ to a window in the big room. It was already clear that the air conditioner wouldn’t be able to adequately cool one room let alone two or three. There was more space than I needed.

As Augustine had said, my boxes and furniture had been moved. My meager furniture looked sad and frightened in these rooms.

The first thing Victor Woo had done was put up my Stig Dalstrom prints, including a recent painting Flo had given to me as a house warming present. Victor had pinned the Dalstroms to the wall in about the same places they had been in my former space.

“Philip Horvecki,” I repeated into the cell phone which I now reluctantly owned.

The phone was another house warming present. It was from Adele, who was just about to become a freshman at New College in Sarasota. She could have gotten into dozens of colleges, but she wanted to continue to live with her baby, Catherine, in Flo’s house. No dorm experience for Adele, but she wouldn’t regret it. Adele’s father had sold her to a pimp when she was fourteen. Getting her away from Dad and pimp had had its complications, but when Flo took her in, Adele blossomed, turned her life around, became an A student in high school, and was now going to college. There had been one major speed bump in the path. Adele had gotten pregnant by an older man who was now doing time in prison for murder. Adele had named the baby Catherine in honor of my dead wife.

“Horvecki. Did he have a criminal record?” I asked.

“I’ll check,” said Viviase. “The county might have something. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got another place you can look.”

I had walked back out to get better reception.

Victor Woo had followed me out and sat next to me on the top step. The Serita sisters, friends of Flo, lived in the bottom two floors of the brightly painted white and green wooden house. They owned the building, so I’d be paying rent to them, the same rent I had been paying behind the DQ.

From my seat on the top step, I could look past the freshly painted house across the street and into a yard where the edge of a screen-enclosed pool was visible. I stared at the water of the pool flecked with light from the setting sun and decided that I needed a shower.

“Check with Sergeant Yoder in the Sheriff’s Office,” added Viviase.

“Thanks,” I said.

The sun seemed to be dropping quickly now. I heard something below.

“Fonesca, you are one hard dog to find.”

It was Darrell Caton, which usually meant it must be Saturday, but I knew it wasn’t Saturday. Darrell was the fourteen-year-old that Sally Porovsky had conned me into being a big brother for. She was a county children and family services social worker I had been seeing socially and seeking in ways I didn’t understand.

Darrell was lean and black, wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt that had something printed on the front. I couldn’t make out the word from twenty-two steps up.

“It’s not Saturday,” I called.

“I know that,” said Viviase on the phone. “You losing it, Fonesca?”

“Darrell just showed up,” I said.

“It’s not Saturday,” said Viviase, who knew of my weekly commitment to Darrell.

“I know,” I said.

Darrell had grown in the time he had been trailing me once a week. He looked forward to being with me because, as he said, “Man, something’s always happening with you. Guns, dead people, and shit. You are an education, Fonesca.”

I did not want to be an education, but I had grown used to seeing Darrell.

Darrell started up the steps. Victor started to move over so Darrell could sit.

“One more question,” I said into the phone.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you helping me?”

The pause was long. He was considering telling me something.

“He may not be guilty, and it’s not really my case, but if you’re looking into it…”

Darrell was almost in front of me now. He had bounded up the steps. He wasn’t panting. I remember once, when I was fourteen, lying in my bed and praying to God to let me live through Saturday because I had a soccer game on Saturday. We lost the game to Lane Tech, and I missed an easy goal. God did let me live, but it didn’t look as if he were about to do the same for Darrell.

I could now clearly see what was printed on the front of Darrell’s T-shirt. It read, in black block letters, “Pope John Paul II Girl’s Volleyball Team Kicks Ass.”

There was a crack in the air, a sudden sharp pinging sound from somewhere on the side of the house with the pool. Darrell lifted his head toward the sky as if he were startled by the sudden appearance of a UFO. Then he arched his back, groped over his left shoulder blade as if he had a sudden itch.

He was about to tumble backward down the stairs.

I dropped the phone and reached for him. His right hand almost touched mine and he bent over backward. Victor Woo was up, behind Darrell now, stopping his fall, setting him gently on the small landing in front of my door. Victor was holding the rickety handrail and taking the steps two at a time.

I knelt next to Darrell and groped for the phone.

“Fonesca, what the hell is going on?” asked Viviase.

“Someone shot Darrell. Send an ambulance.”

Victor hit the ground running like a sprinter. If he was lucky, he would catch up with the shooter. If he wasn’t lucky, he would catch up with the shooter. Victor was armed with nothing.

“I’m on the way,” Viviase said and ended the connection.

Darrell was groaning. A good sign.

“What the fuck, Fonesca? Oh. I like the action, but I don’t want to be the victim. You know what I’m saying?”

I rolled him gently onto his side.

“This isn’t for real,” he whimpered. “Why’d anyone want to shoot me?”

“I think they were trying to shoot me,” I said. “You got in the way.”

“I took a bullet for you?”

“Yes, but I’m guessing it was a pellet, not a bullet.”

“Hurts like a bullet.”

“You’ve been shot before?”

“Hell no,” he said and then gasped. “Life’s funnier than shit. You know what I’m saying? My mother’s going to be all over your ass, Fonesca. Jesus, it hurts. Am I going to die?”

“Yes, but so am I. You’re not going to die for a while.”

“You know how to make Christmas come early, don’t you Fonesca?”

“Ambulance is on the way,” I said.

“You ever been shot at, Fonesca?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“A few times.”

“Last time?”

“This morning.” An actor took that pellet in the eye.

There was no doubt where the pellet had entered Darrell, just below the left shoulder blade. The hole was small, the T-shirt was definitely ruined. There was blood dripping from the wound, but it didn’t look as if anything vital had been hit.

Police headquarters was, at maximum, a five-minute drive from where Darrell lay bleeding. Viviase made it in three, and somewhere in the distance an ambulance siren cut through the twilight.

The emergency room triage nurse, a wiry thin woman with wiry thin straw-colored hair, looked up at me and said, “You’re back, Mr. …”

“Fonesca.”

“Are you…?”

“I’m fine. I’m here about Darrell Caton. He was brought in here by ambulance a few minutes ago.”

“What’s your relationship to him?”

“I’m his big brother,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

She looked from me to Ames to Victor and said, “He’s being ta k en care of by a doctor. His mother is on the way. Just have a seat.”

We had a seat.