Craig Davidson - Sarah Court

“Fish and chips?”

“Fish, chips.”

He nodded, then picked up— stole— one of my chalks to trace his son’s outline on their driveway. Afterwards he yelled at Nicholas, especially his “gorilla arms.”

That night Mama came into my room with a pizza box. Also the mallet I used to break the head off Wesley Hill’s sand-cast dog. She took Gadzooks! off the bookshelf. Shut him inside the pizza box.

“I saw you talking to that awful man today.”

On the box was HEAVY DUTY in orange script. Cheapest pizzeria in town. Pepperoni with the texture of bologna. I did not know what putting Gadzooks! in a box or malleting him to death had to do with me talking to Frank Saberhagen. Had Gadzooks! done something to make Mama wish to squish him? If she killed the squirrel I would bury him. As you did with dead things. Put them in holes.

“Don’t ever— ever —talk to that horrid man again.”

“Alright.”

Inside the box, Gadzooks! made the same noises as when he had been only a baby.

Last autumnMama collapsed. An emergency procedure addressed a saccular aneurysm in her brain. Surgical complications. Mama’s legs no longer function. A machine now regulates her nocturnal oxygen supply.

Mama was homebound. Smashing her belongings. Urinating in her pants on purpose. I bought her a computer. Presented it with a red bow tied round.

From Your Darling .

According to her, Mama became “a regular computer nerd.” I signed her up for Cyber Seniors at the library. Mama is online “24/7.” She has many cyber-friends.

“Same as real friends,” she says, “only less polite.”

New friends keep Mama young at heart. You can reach out, she says, and touch anybody.

Cappy showed up after Mama’s miseries. But she did not want him dragging his “ragged ass” back into her life. Allegedly he called her “fat as the queen of sea cows.”

“Flat busted” though he looked, Mama did say Cappy drove a fancy automobile.

The night Gadzooks! got run over I visited Tufford Manor.

“Lonnigan?” said the black orderly. “You’re his relation?”

“No.”

“Shoot. Then you must be psychoneurotically disturbed.”

“Pop by to offer my sympathies and she calls me ragged assed,” Cappy Lonnigan told me, once the orderly located him. “Who put the potato up her tailpipe?” He went on in this vein. “She suffered a man before me. Don’t know his name — do you think he could have surrendered even that ? She grinded that bum down to a nub . She sure bled all the charm and romance out of self-pity. Days lying in the dark unwashed. Nowadays there’s pills for that. She take pills?”

“Vitamins.”

“What Clara can’t admit is, she’s sick-minded. Comes over her like a thundercloud. Turns her into somebody else — no: just a worser reflection. Pills are for weaklings. That’s how she sees it. She hasn’t a hateful heart. Just not an ounce of flex to her.”

Sick-minded? Sick is vomit. What was Mama’s mind vomiting? I went to the toilet. When I returned Cappy was gone. Also the keys in my jacket pocket. I found him jamming my apartment key in the ignition.

“Let’s blow this popstand.”

“This is my minivan.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” He pointed out the hockey tape I’d affixed to the steering wheel. “What’s this?”

“So I remember where to put my hands.”

“Well, that’s creepy. We should go tomcatting.”

“You are wearing a housecoat.”

“So? A man never feels so good as when he’s got a full tank of gas, fifty bucks in his pocket, the night ahead of him. Yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s the mystery.”

“The gas in the tank belongs to me. Do you have fifty dollars?”

“Did I say I felt good personally ? A man feels good. A hypothetical. Jeez. I got to buy matches. Clive’s canvassed every store in a five-block radius. No matches for this man —toting a Polaroid of me, as if I aim to light myself afire.”

We drove to a Big Bee convenience store near the bus shelter. Inside, the overhead fans flapped like heron’s wings. I brushed past a woman with a baby. Her back was turned to me. Cappy Lonnigan entered.

“No matches for the old man. He’ll burn his hair off. Yeah, yeah. Where’s the pisser?”

When we go outside, my minivan is gone. Cappy removed one foot from its slipper. Wiggled his toes.

“You left it running.”

“Hadda whizz. Who thought anyone would nick it?”

Emotion I do not grasp. Irony, yes.

“Thievery, Jeffrey. It’s the lowest form of human behaviour.”

The caris a rental. Ford Taurus. Car equivalent of Teflon: eyes slide off. On a static scale it would weigh twenty-two ounces over stock: mass of the Phoenix Arms 9mm affixed to the undercarriage. Exposed hammer. Satin nickel finish. It is the firearm equivalent of a Ford Taurus. Everyone owns one.

I rigged the car at a do-it-yourself garage. The gun’s polished blue barrel friction-taped to the steering linkage. Stock U-clamped to the left rear wheel well. Trigger, recoil spring in the washer fluid reservoir. Hammerhead rounds in the passenger seat coils. Firing pin under my tongue.

Days ago I received my employer’s call.

“Come. Now.” Click .

I drove to the Niagara district airport. Boarded a Cessna Twin. Landed on a dirt strip near Coboconk. Drove the waiting car to my employer’s. He lay on the floor of his lake house. He’d been dog-mauled, apparently. A plate of inflated flesh over his left eye. Webs of skin thin as bat’s wings connecting his fingers.

“Slipper-footed space bugs,” he kept saying.

When he was able to walk I helped him to the car. We drove until daybreak. A lab complex. Fletcher Burger. Men in scrubs. Whine of a surgical saw. Burnt bone dust. I leave with a cooler marked ORGANIC MATERIAL.

At the Coboconk dock I found Fletcher Burger’s houseboat. I drove downriver to Happy Houseboat Rentals. I discovered Fletcher Burger had stolen the houseboat.

“That doggone prick,” the owner of Happy Houseboat Rentals said when I told him where he could find it. “I should wring that guy’s doggone neck.”

My minivan was in the lot. Covered in maple keys. Fletcher Burger must have stolen it, too. There was a bucket of chicken bones between the seats. The upholstery stunk of fried chicken.

Flash-forward to right now:

I clear the U.S. border. Niagara Falls, New York. I drive up Pine Street. Men outside bodegas with bottles between their feet. Stop at Piggly Wiggly for a bottle of Faygo Red Pop. Ask for the bathroom key. Take the toilet paper roll.

In a parking garage near the Niagara Falls airport authority I reassemble the gun. Blow off road grit with bursts of WD-40. Trigger hitch lubed with saliva. I empty the pop bottle. Stuff it with toilet paper. Fix the top over the barrel with duct tape.

There are rows of cheap units off 44 thstreet. My employer’s Cadillac is curbed with two flattened tires. In the apartment hallway I remove my shoes. Bread bags go over my feet, taped to my ankles. Skin lotion on exposed skin. Shower cap. Surgical gloves.

13A is unlocked. Tiny B&W TV. Mr. Turtle pool full of soil. Books: Raising Earthworms for Profit. Harnessing the Mighty Nightcrawler . An old video game unit. I play Stuntman with the volume off until James Paris arrives. His pitbull wears a plastic headcone. Catgut racing its flank. He sees my gun pointed at his chest.

“Place the dog in the closet.”

“Easy,” he says. “What’s with the bread bags?… my wallet on the boat, right? You can take the car back.”