Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

And a week after that he put the extra TV, some books and book cases, a couch from the garage, Maggie’s bed, and his clothes into a truck he rented from Paulson’s U-Haul and drove to his new apartment. He could have afforded a house, but did not see the point. Houses were for people with families and expanding futures. He was no longer one of those people. His future was shrinking.

The first few weeks were strange and sleepless. Not because he missed Deb-he did not exactly miss her-but because he was used to having someone sleeping beside him. Soon enough, though, he got comfortable with the absence. His body learned to spread out across the full width of the bed. He stopped sitting up at night to call Debbie’s name. He stopped believing she was merely in the next room.

Ian knocks on the front door and waits.

He scratches the top of his head where the blond hair is thinnest, then arms the sweat off his forehead. It’s still hellish out.

Debbie pulls open the front door from inside. She’s wearing beige shorts and her white work T-shirt with PINK’S SALON written in cursive across the right breast. She manages the place for Vicki Dodd-who’s the only reason the Dodd family has any money left at all, her brother Carney being useless-and must have just got home. When she sees Ian she frowns. It’s brief, and the frown is immediately followed by a polite smile, but the frown was true and the smile is false. Ian understands this. As far as Debbie is concerned he can be nothing more than a walking reminder of the biggest loss she’s ever suffered. He just looks too much like the daughter she has spent the last seven years trying to forget. She’s tried to bury her again and again. He’s from a part of her life she no longer wants to think about.

‘Ian.’

‘Deb.’

‘What is it?’

‘Have you heard from Bill or Sheriff Sizemore?’

‘No.’

‘Mind if I come in?’

‘Did something happen? Is Bill okay?’

‘Bill’s fine. I thought he might have called you.’

‘About what?’

‘I think you might want to sit down for this.’

‘What is it?’

He doesn’t answer. He simply stands there and waits.

She searches his face for clues, but he gives her none. He keeps his expression blank.

After a moment Debbie steps aside to let him in.

Ian watches Deb as she sits on the couch and looks up at him. Her shoulders are tense, the cords in her neck taut, hands clenching her knees. There was a time when Debbie touched him with those hands, when she caressed him with them. But that was long ago, and he cannot even feel her touch in his memory anymore.

‘What is it?’ she says.

‘It’s Maggie.’

Debbie sighs and the tension leaves her body and she relaxes into familiar bad posture.

‘They found her body,’ she says.

The relief in her voice, the unspoken but nearly audible ‘Thank God,’ makes Ian want to grab her shoulders and shake her and shout at her. What is wrong with you, Debbie? This is your daughter we’re talking about. Your daughter . How dare you sound relieved when discussing her death?

But he knows what’s wrong with her. She wants to move on. The funeral wasn’t enough. It didn’t provide the closure she thinks she needs. Coffins can’t contain memories and dirt cannot cover them. She wants a corpse. She doesn’t understand that even a corpse would not give her what she desires. She doesn’t understand that the dead don’t die until everyone who ever knew them and loved them dies too.

Ian shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s no body to find,’ he says. ‘She’s alive,’ he says.

And she is no longer seven years old, no longer frozen in time. She is fourteen, fifteen in September, and she called for help today. Right into his ear.

He won’t let her die again.

Ian opens his eyes. He is lying on the couch, head turned to the right. With one eye he is looking at his work shoes on the floor near the wall opposite. The other eye can see only his out-of-focus shirtsleeve, his arm folded up over his head. One of his shoes is on its side. There is a blackened piece of chewing gum sticking to the heel. He sits up. His neck hurts. Sunlight shines through the dirty living-room window. Six empty Guinness bottles stand like bowling pins on the coffee table, the labels peeled from two of them and stuffed inside like messages floated in on the tide. Near the bottles is a saucepan, the bottom blackened by flame, with a fork poking out of it. Ramen noodles and a small slice of overcooked carrot cling to the inside of the pan. On the far corner of the coffee table, a chessboard with several pieces resting on it, revealing a partially played game. He puts his face into his open hands and rubs at it. Beard stubble against his palms like sandpaper.

His watch’s alarm sounds. He looks at his wrist, but his watch is not there. It’s on the kitchen counter. That means he must stand up.

‘Fuck.’

He gets to his feet and walks to the kitchen and thumbs the watch silent. Then he rinses the ramen pan he used last night, puts two eggs inside, puts enough water into the pan to cover the eggs, and sets the pan on the stove. The turn of a knob makes a clicking sound which is followed after a moment by the poof of orange-tipped blue flames. With that going he gets the coffee pot started as well, scooping coffee into a filter and pouring water into a tank. He presses a button. A red light flashes green. Liquid drips into the coffee-stained carafe. The drops sizzle, dancing on the heated surface.

After pouring a cup of black coffee and peeling his soft-boiled eggs he walks back to the couch and sits down. He pushes the empty beer bottles aside and pulls the chessboard toward him. He looks at the game in progress. It seems ancient to him, some relic of an era lost in time, but he refuses to consider it abandoned. He bought the chess set from a junk store. It’s a cheap wooden case, lined inside with plaid fabric, one side of its exterior inlaid with veined marble squares to form a playing surface. The pieces were carved also from cheap marble by an apprentice or an old man with shaky hands, and because of the failing of the pieces the set was especially inexpensive. Both the board and the pieces are covered in dust. Ian hasn’t ever brushed them off for fear of disturbing the game, though he has sat and stared at it so frequently, replaying each move in his head, that if knocked to the four corners of the room he could still gather the pieces and reassemble the game in a matter of minutes.

It’s his move. It has been his move for three years. For over three years. And he’s known what his move would be for just as long. It took him an hour of semi-drunken study to figure it out. Queen to b4. But by the time he did figure it out it was late, even in California where Jeffrey was still living with his mother, Lisa, so he decided he would call the next day. Instead he opened up another twelve pack and drank his way through it, drank till the sun rose and he had to drive to work. Three years ago he was still allowing more than a six pack into his apartment at a time. When he got home from work that day the alcohol was finally wearing off and he was hung-over and did not feel up to calling Jeffrey, so another day passed. And another. Then a week passed. Then six months. And how do you call a son to whom you haven’t spoken in six months and say ‘Queen to b4’?

He picks up his dusty black queen and moves it to the new square and looks at it. He sips his coffee. Problem is if Jeffrey doesn’t know about it the move hasn’t been made. Ian puts the queen back and pushes the board aside. Maybe he’ll call Jeffrey later today.

He salts and peppers a soft-boiled egg and shoves it whole into his mouth. He chews slowly and washes it down with a swig of coffee.