Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

I once spent the night with a girl picked up at a downtown bar. I can no longer recall her name, her smell, the color of her eyes. She lived in an old building facing St. Paul Street, backing onto Twelve Mile Creek. The bedroom overlooked a wooded dell, creek running swiftly behind. Early that morning I woke to the sound of voices. I sat up and went to the window. Three figures stood in the half-light. Down along the woodline, where it was too dark to make out ages or faces: vague outlines, rough movements and angles. Two larger figures had the smaller boxed in. They shoved the person to the ground—a woman; you could tell by the pitch of her voice. One of them fell on top of her while the other stood off to one side, head sweeping side to side. Predawn sunlight streamed through the window, picking up a patina of dust on the venetian blinds. I went to the kitchen and rooted through the drawers, laying my hands on a butcher knife. When I returned the two on the ground were rocking rhythmically. The other one said something— Give it, or maybe Give ’er —and laughed. I couldn’t quite grasp what I was seeing. I gripped the knife so tightly the grain of it lingered on my palm for hours afterwards. Then I slid it under the boxspring and slipped into bed, curling my body into that nameless girl who never stirred.

Maybe that’s how she wants it, I thought. Maybe there’s an arrangement . A span of dark time went by, punctuated by a single low moan. It wasn’t any of my business. She’d scream if she needed help . Birds chattered in the trees, and below that, the sound of endlessly rushing water. Someone else will notice. Someone else will commit .

And what becomes of it all? The brutalities and insincerities, the callousness and selfishness, wrongdoings real and imagined, the acts of inaction, the fear, regret, guilt? Doesn’t just go away, that much I know. Gil had it right: a balancing act takes place every minute of every day, a silent tally, each act carrying its own discrete weight, its own transformative power.

And do we ever really know where we stand? At this moment, in this breath—which way the scale tips?

Square your debt. Start over fresh.

The whale surfaces. Mouth slightly open, light glinting on the points of her teeth. You’re breathing heavily, held up by pure adrenaline. Run a hand over the smooth cone of her snout. She gurgles low in her throat, angling her head to expose the soft seam of her mouth. Stare into that huge black eye, search for some sign of recognition.

“I’m tired, girl.” You slap her tongue. “So let’s do this thing.”

Taking your signal, Niska moves out into open water. She describes a quickening path around the pool, past the handicapped pavilion where, some million years ago, a young girl with an inscrutable smile watched you rocket into blue summer sky. Niska’s dorsal fin dips below the surface. Give yourself over to the current, its power and possibilities. A locking sensation, all things in balance. Moon an unblinking eye and beyond it a million stars, around which revolve untold worlds.

Water surges beneath you, a thrilling push. Tiny bubbles trail to the surface, bursting with a fizzy club-soda pop. You hear yourself say, “I’m so sorry,” though to whom or for what reasons you will remain forever unsure.

GRAHAM LOVED THE WAY his wife moved. While out walking he used to fall a half-step behind, just to watch. Her hips—but more than that. Legs, arms, the faint bob of her head. The way it all came together, the way it meshed . She loved to dance with her long black hair tied up on top of her head. She wore a moonstone on a leather thong that glimmered in the soft swell of her throat when the light from a mirror ball caught it. Seeing her like that, a snatch of song always came to him: My girl don’t just walk, she unfurls . The photos Graham kept in his dresser gave a sense—weightless, beyond gravity—but didn’t do justice to the way she once moved.

She didn’t move that way anymore. Her limbs jerked erratically or not at all. Her body shook, an abiding shiver. Bradykinesia, the doctors called it, caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain. She’d lost all sense of equilibrium: when she fell she did so heedlessly, the way a chest of drawers pushed from a second-story balcony falls. Pills with names like Sinemet and Comtan and Requip. Sometimes she didn’t take them. At first it was an act of defiance: she’d sit in a kitchen chair facing the wall, fingers white around the armrests, teeth clenched and muscles bunched along her jaw. Now it was an act of exploration: she wanted to see how strong the disease was, sense its power, her own powerlessness against it.

“Like slowly going blind,” she once said. “Better to be born that way, don’t you think?”

When things got really bad Graham held her down. Her wrists escaped the gentle manacles of his fingers, fists striking his chest with a resonant thump. Her body held a mindless strength: as though he were grappling with a possessed bundle of sticks, those brooms in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice . Only her steady gaze, those blue eyes darkened indigo by the drugs, expressed understanding. He’d jam a leg between hers, thigh pressing her hips. At these times he’d recall those days when she’d visited his bachelor apartment—TV on a milk crate, cinderblock bookshelves—making out on his sagging futon, his leg between hers and the friction of denim on denim, eyes half-closed and her voice whispering, Yes, like that. Just … like … that . He’d look down at her body, her now -body, the flailing limbs and skeletal rattle of her teeth and yet always those eyes, that calm indigo gaze.

“I’m heading out, Nell.”

She was sitting in a recliner beside the television tuned to an old episode of The Beachcombers . A book lay open on her lap. She tried to turn the page. Soon Graham turned it for her.

“You’re not watching this?”

“S-suh-seen it a-ah-already,” Nell said. “Relic steals Nick’s l-l-logs in t-thuh-this one.”

“Relic’s always stealing Nick’s logs. Turn it off?”

“It’s uh-o-okay. Something to luh-luh-listen to.”

A sheen of sweat on her face, glittering her skin like frost in moonlight. She was always sweating: the drugs, mainly, and her body never truly at rest. Still gorgeous. She’d never lose that. When Graham first saw her, the words Nordic beauty came to mind: those blue eyes and high cheekbones. He’d pictured her face framed by a white fur hood, a range of snow-topped mountains rising in the distance.

Graham set The Plunger on the hassock beside her recliner. He’d bought it—a saucer-sized disk connected to a phone line running to a jack in the wall—at a medical supply store. When pushed, it automatically dialed 911 to dispatch paramedics. They didn’t have the savings to hire a private nurse while he worked. So … The Plunger.

Graham kissed his wife. The warmth of her lips, that faint tremble. He checked his watch: 11:00. Night pressed to the living room window and beyond that a few stars, very faint, very beautiful.

“See you in the morning.”

“B-buh-be c-caref-ful.”

The clean raw air of the late October night left a taste of winter at the back of Graham’s throat. Snow fell through the arc-sodium glow of a nearby streetlamp, flakes touching his hair and melting in streams down his neck. He opened the door of a ’95 Freightliner tow truck— the words Repo Depot stenciled in blue above the fender—keyed the ignition, and pulled out onto the street.

He worked at night. Safer that way. As a rule, people didn’t react favorably to having their possessions spirited away—their ugly sides tended to present themselves. Graham worked while the city slept. Ninety-five percent of the time, he avoided confrontation.