Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“He’s out,” she said, the codeine a cold smolder in her now. Was she swaying or was it the wind in the trees?

“Oh. Out?” the man said. “Any idea where?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, bracing her hand on the doorframe, fighting to keep her eyes focused upon his, and not the pure disorientation and terror that lay beyond him.

“You don’t know where your son is?” he said, surprised.

Her mind gluey, she nearly told him that she’d begged Will to stay, but he just wouldn’t listen, then stopped herself. Who did he say he was? Had he?

“You don’t look well, Ms. Cardiel,” he said. “Are you feeling ill? Perhaps I should come in?”

“Wait,” she said, resetting, trying not to sway. The codeine made the floor impossibly soft beneath her feet, like turned earth. But he was familiar somehow, with his theatrical face, like someone from a Fellini film. “Who are you? And why are you looking for my son?”

“Oh, my apologies,” he said with a wide smile. “My name is George Butler. And, come to think of it, I remember you and your brother as children, down at the elevator in the old days, bringing your father’s supper.”

She placed him now. He was the grain inspector at the harbor, who Theodore called “the bug man.” In snow-white coveralls he’d go around checking lakeboats for pests, weevils and worms, before giving the okay to ship them out. He was educated and knew grain as well as Theodore. He was also the one selling Charlie those pills for his asthma that kept him up every night.

“It was truly a shame what happened to your brother. But I have a feeling that wherever he is, it’s a much better place,” he said. “You were living away, I remember? Of course I’m in a different line of work now,” he went on. “You wouldn’t recognize very much on the harbor these days, I’m afraid, Ms. Cardiel. Unfortunately, child apprehension is currently the only growth industry in Thunder Bay.”

“Wait, did you say child—”

“Oh, no,” he said, putting his hand to his heart, “that’s certainly not why I’m here, Ms. Cardiel. But I am afraid your son has found himself mixed up with some boys who are currently on my caseload. Will’s got a bit of his uncle’s — shall we say — moxie? But I’m here to ensure his safety.”

Everything was going too fast for her. She’d expected a deliveryman, a quick exchange. Her mind was sliding. This man’s mouth didn’t match his words.

“Are you sure you don’t know where your son is?”

“He said he had something important to do today,” she said thinly, shutting her eyes to keep the light out.

“Did he, Ms. Cardiel?” he said, leaning closer. “Like what?”

“He said …” She felt a great itchiness under her scalp; the codeine was already waning. She wasn’t sure how much more of the blinding doorway she could stand. “He said he’d left something behind, and he had to go get it.”

“Maybe he was referring to this?” From behind his back he raised Will’s old helmet, dangling from his finger by the chin strap. “We found it in an abandoned shack frequented by criminals. It has your last name written in it, Ms. Cardiel. At first I thought it belonged to another boy in town, but now based on what you’re saying, I’m convinced that your son is in grave danger. Think hard for me, please: do you have any idea where your son went today?”

She braced herself against the door, everything churning, the subway platform finally closing over her, and into her tumbling head came all the smells she’d been finding on Will’s clothes when he returned home from school: grease, sweat, blood, sawn lumber.

Grain.

Will found him sitting in a straight-backed chair in the workhouse, the woodstove roaring like a cast-iron dragon. Titus had shaved, his half-grayed hair dangling at his unlined cheeks like slips of smoke. Beardless, his face was even more fearsome, all diamond-cut angles and the scars of hard Outside living, but younger than Will had expected. Closer to his mother’s age. Titus sat with eyes glazed and fixed, sweat sheening his brow, both hands plunged in the pockets of his parka with large coils of wire wound around the sleeves.

“It’s you, Icarus Number One,” he said, clearing his throat and twisting his head with a queer surprise. His voice was hoarse, and Will pictured him awake all night, yelling at ghosts, Marcus’s included. “Sturdy choice of headgear,” he said.

Will tugged at the strap under his chin. It was tight, but his orange Helmet still fit, though the cranial pressure had him feeling a touch dazed. Perhaps all that he’d learned Outside had made his head bigger. “Felt like I needed a little extra protection today,” he said.

“And your compatriot?” said Titus.

“Don’t know,” Will said. “He won’t be coming down here anymore.”

Titus’s face fell and he shook his head. “I wasn’t ever in much danger of triumphing as his favorite citizen, but that Icarus could piss his name in a sheet of plywood,” he said. “You two should congeal together. Especially if you insist on perpetuating more ventures to this jurisdiction.”

“Well, this is my last time coming down here. I came to ask you some questions.”

“Allow me one last suffrage,” Titus added, standing. “If you’re capable. Plenty of time for exchanges as we venture.”

“What do you need me to do?”

With a twitch, Titus turned to the window to regard the sun-dazzled water. “There are ocean salmon in there. How they established is nobody’s purview. Stowaways likely. Salties suck ’em up as ballast and dump ’em here. When I was a youngster you could catch whitefish right off the piers. Baitless. Clean as a whistle. Fish lined up and bought tickets to get a hook in their lip, like it was fashionable. Now this juncture is so chocked with heavy metal and sick outflow, you’re better off snacking on your chemistry set than some fresh-pulled whitefish.” Behind everything Titus said was a monologue of murmur, a faint whistle, like the ghostly scrapings of his mother’s fingers on the strings of her guitar.

“Is that why you won’t drink the water? Because it’s polluted?” Will asked, but from there Titus tipped into nonsense, every so often pausing to lurch at something, like a dog snapping at an invisible fly. He cleared his throat for long periods while mumbling, just angry syllables hissed under his breath.

In the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, Will gripped the handles of the garrote he’d constructed that morning. He’d removed a string from his mother’s guitar and tied it between two pieces of dowel he’d once made nunchucks with. On his walk to the harbor, Will tried to buttress his courage with the image of Titus pinning Marcus down near the creek and inflicting him with more scars, like that pastor and his wife had done, but it wouldn’t resolve. So Will settled on picturing Titus Inside, rooting through their drawers, perusing Will’s masterpieces, thumbing his mother’s page-turners, watching her sleep in San Francisco, poised to smother her with one of her malodorous pillows.

Then a rustling came from Titus’s coat pockets, and this seemed to evict him from whatever reverie he’d been lost in. “Let’s flitter,” said Titus.

They descended the stairs to the water’s edge, where Titus, breathing desperately, tugged a sheet of tattered canvas away to reveal a wooden skiff lodged in some reedy mud near a clutch of unidentifiable rubble. Titus lifted a pair of boots from the hull, stepped out of his foul shoes and put them on. Will didn’t even need to examine his footprints for the hexagon shape to be certain they matched, same as his grandfather’s.

“We’ll load her trim and even, so she doesn’t capsize or go to toothpicks,” Titus said, tugging the massive hose that Will and Jonah had assembled out from a thicket of goldenrod nearby. As they worked, coiling the hose into the small skiff like a noodle onto a plate, Will saw a fish carcass bob near the shore in a blizzard of flies. Titus also tossed into the boat several grocery bags full of stones. Soon Will began to sweat, and he scratched at his hair, itchy under his tight Helmet.