Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

Jess made a motion as though zippering her lips shut.

“All right.” Herbert rolled his neck and popped his knuckles. “Now, then. Watch .”

He closed his eyes. Soon his body was trembling, fingers twitching through a series of paroxysms as though tuning in stations on a finicky radio. His eyelids quivered like a man deep in REM sleep. His lips moved silently, a string of unintelligible syllables. Jess was reminded of a 911 call she’d answered a few years ago, some burnout who’d smuggled a narcotic toad back from Borneo; his girlfriend reported he’d been licking the poor creature’s backside all night. Jess found the guy sprawled on the kitchen floor in his boxers. The toad’s head poked from under the fridge, appraising its molester with bugged-out eyes. The guy’s body shook faintly, as though undergoing mild electroshock therapy. Herbert’s body was shaking much the same way.

This went on for five minutes. At no time did he disappear.

“Can you still see me?”

“Afraid so.”

“Damn!” His eyes snapped open. “Nothing? Didn’t my skin turn opaque?”

“Maybe a little smoky,” she lied.

“Hah—I told you!” Watching Herbert smile was like watching a match head burst into flame. “Just needs more practice.”

Jess pulled back onto the highway. The highway hooked sharply westward coming through Sudbury. They drove directly into the sun, which, sinking gently into the hills, threw long embers over the landscape. Here or there they passed a motel or trading post or bait shop, but otherwise the land unfolded in great sweeps of pine and maple and poplar. Herbert rummaged through his suitcase and slotted a CD into the player. “Edith Piaf,” he said. “The Little Sparrow. One of Dad’s favorites.” Jess listened to French lyrics sung in a gravelly contralto, trying hard not to hate Piaf just because her father liked her. It was nearly five o’clock by the time they hit Sault Ste. Marie.

THE SLEIGHTON MENTAL CARE FACILITY was situated on the city’s western outskirts, surrounded by a dense forest unclaimed by the logging corporations. The grounds were dotted with tall deciduous trees from which all but the most stubborn leaves had fallen. A wrought-iron fence, rusty bars tipped with ornate points, enclosed the buildings. Jess parked in the visitors’ lot.

“Cozy,” said Herbert.

Jess sat behind the wheel listening to the engine cool. She’d last seen her father as an eleven-year-old girl. Now she was a thirty-six-year-old woman with house and husband and twenty-five years of unshared history. She thought about that night at the Pythian lodge, how her father hadn’t held her gaze for even a moment; he’d simply stepped inside the tea chest, tipped his hat, and vanished. She wondered if it had been premeditated, or if he’d found himself on the other side of the curtain when the notion popped abruptly into his head: walk through the kitchen door out into the alley, turn the corner onto the street, keep walking. A snap decision. Two children, a mortgage, all responsibility— poof . Gone. Like magic.

“We’ve got to do this, Jess.”

“Says who? Nobody’s codified these things, written a guidebook.”

“Do I have to hogtie you, drag you in there?”

The facade of the hospital’s central building was pitted and water stained, chunks of mortar crumbling from the Catherine-wheel window frames. The receptionist’s unsmiling face was framed in a small porthole set in the middle of a pebbled-glass window. The only means of communication was through a perforated metal disk, same as at a theater box office.

“How may I help you?” the receptionist’s voice rattled.

Jess leaned close to the metal disk. “There was a magic show here a few days ago. We …”

“Ward Eight, fourth floor. Elevators down the hall to your right.”

The entrance to Ward Eight: a steel door painted with a faded rainbow; rabbits, chipmunks, and other forest creatures frolicked beneath the colorful arch. The window glass inlaid with chicken-wire.

An orderly sat behind the charge desk reading Archie’s Digest . The man filled out his white uniform to the last stitch, fabric straining under its hopeless burden. The skin of his face appeared to float upon his features, not quite secure, like the membrane forming on cold soup. His name tag read LEE.

“We’re here about the magician,” Jess told him.

Without looking up from the comic, he angled his wrist so Jess could see the digital readout on his watch. “Visiting hours end at five.”

“We aren’t here to visit any—”

“’Tis past five, m’dear.”

Jess reached for her badge, which she still carried. With her suspended it carried no weight, but the orderly didn’t know that. She flipped the top half over his comic and let it hang.

“What do you want with the magician, officer?”

“We have reason to suspect he was involved in a robbery,” Herbert said. “The man is a known hoodlum. We have eyewitness reports, and certain … corroborating evidences.”

“I don’t see how that could be,” said Lee.

“Look, we just want to ask some questions,” Jess said.

“Well, then, guess I’ll go rustle up your magic man.”

The orderly came around the desk and waddled into the ward, walking with the listing gait of a once-skinny man whose body has ballooned to ungovernable proportions. Herbert shot his sister a distressed look. Was their father a patient? Mercurial, recalcitrant, heedless of social responsibility—dear god, he fit the profile! Maybe they’d picked him up years ago, wandering the streets in filthy rags, destitute and mentally unglued. Perhaps he’d been here for decades and every few months the doctors reduced his medication so he could dress up and perform a show for his fellow looners. Herbert couldn’t handle the sight of his father in a ratty housecoat and fuzzy slippers, shambling about like a zombie.

“Do my eyes deceive me?”

They turned to see a man coming out of a glassed-in office behind the charge desk. Mocha-skinned and trim, sporting a pencil-thin mustache of a style cultivated by ’70s-era adult film performers, sleek body nearly lost within a billowing lab coat. “It is! ” he exclaimed, skidding to a stop beside Herbert. “Mr. Mallory, can I just say how honored I am—imagine, the great magician in our ward!”

Herbert inched behind his sister, ignoring the man’s proffered hand.

“Is there a problem?” The man spoke with a delicate Indian accent. “Have I upset you?”

“He’s fine.” Jess shook the man’s hand. “Just, after the accident …”

“Oh my, yes!” A shake of the head. “Terrible accident. Terrible, terrible. I watched on television.” He took a step back, embarrassed by his proximity. “Dr. Venky Iyer.”

“Jessica Heinz.”

“A thousand apologies, doctor.” Herbert bowed. “I mistook you for one of the inmates.”

“Ha!” Dr. Iyer cackled. “Cannot be too careful. Now, what brings you fine people here?”

“You hosted a magic show a few days ago …”

“Very nice, very nice,” Dr. Iyer said. “It certainly brightened everyone’s day.”

Jess glanced around, thinking the ward could use some brightening. The dayroom was covered in olive-green tile, strips of padded foam tacked to the walls at hip level. The light filtering through the leaded glass windows was muted by thick mesh screens.

“So,” Dr. Iyer arched his brows, “will Mr. Mallory be performing?”

He seemed to have mistaken Jess for Herbert’s agent. “I’m sorry, no.” She showed her badge. “We’re looking for information on the man who performed …”

“Here’s your magician.”

The orderly gripped a scrawny fellow by the elbow. The man had thick curly red hair and lips so thin they resembled soda crackers stacked one atop the other. A gourdlike head perched atop a spindled neck like an apple balanced on a breadstick. Standing beside him was a shockingly large woman of about sixty. With blotches of mascara smudging her face and a shock of frizzy black hair, she resembled a chimneysweep after a dogged day’s work.