Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

But then the fat one shut the door of the house on Bernadine Street, and Clementine heard the sliding of a bolt. That was something new. They pulled away from the curb, and Clementine closed the magazine and put it back in her bag. From her crouch, she watched the truck get smaller and smaller, and when it was gone, she got up and crossed the street.

It wasn’t just new locks they’d put in. There was a whole new door. Now when she put her knuckles to it, the door didn’t sound like a dead, hollow tree. She walked around the back and slipped in through the kitchen window. Dummies.

She was lucky her magazines were still upstairs, just where she’d left them. It had been so long since anyone other than her had been in the house on Bernadine Street that she’d stopped hiding them. They were sitting in the corner of the second-floor room that looked like a castle tower. It was her favorite room. On rainy days when she had nothing else to do, she liked to go up there and pretend she was a knight and the squirrels were an invading horde, and she drew back her bow and arrow and— thwunk, thwunk, thwunk —they dropped from the telephone wires. She took the new magazine out of her bag and added it to the pile. Then she gathered up the whole stack and crammed it into the hole behind the loose paneling. When she was done, she went downstairs, and with her favorite marker, a fat red one that looked like it was bleeding when it touched paper, she wrote hahaha right beneath the peephole.

She was home in time for dinner.

At first it seemed she’d scared them off. A week passed, and the men in brown jumpsuits didn’t come back. No fat man, no flame tattoos, no gray truck. Nothing else changed at the house on Bernadine Street, except that some paper went up over the windows one day when she was at school.

She got bored sitting and waiting. She’d read all the magazines and shot all the squirrels a thousand times. Besides, she reminded herself, she had the whole neighborhood to patrol. She couldn’t go spending all her time in just one place.

So she moved on, and for a few days she managed to forget all about the house on Bernadine Street.

But then one afternoon later that week, she was passing through the lot on her way home from school, and someone new was standing on the porch, the new door and the shiny deadbolt open behind him. But there was no truck at the curb, nothing but him. He was tall, and coils of red hair flopped around his head like ribbons. He was dressed in worn corduroys and a heavy coat that fit him like a tin can on a beanpole. He was so pale he almost disappeared in the glare of afternoon sunlight. He was looking right past Clementine, as if she wasn’t even there.

She knew four different ways to get into the house on Bernadine Street. Not to mention that she’d seen the short man with the flame tattoos hide the key in the drainpipe. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see anything through the papered windows, but eventually she figured out that during the day the guy who looked like a sickly clown left the back door open, probably for light. From the empty lot behind the house, she could sometimes catch a glimpse of him moving around inside. No matter how hot it was, he was always wearing the same heavy coat buttoned up to his chin.

After that first time on the porch, she never saw him outside. But somehow he managed to get furniture: a table, a chair, a mattress. She didn’t know what else. At just the right angle, she could see him moving the stuff around, trying different spots. As if it mattered, as if the place wasn’t a complete dump. He ended up leaving it all in the living room. She would’ve put the furniture up in the tower. If he was the kind of hoodlum with guns, the tower would’ve given him the clearest shot. For any kind of hoodlum, that was the smart place to be.

That weekend Clementine was supposed to be helping May-May in the garden. Clementine usually didn’t mind helping, but Car was there too, and she was being the word Clementine wasn’t allowed to say but everyone knew Car was. The two of them were shoveling compost, and anytime a speck touched her shoes, Car would shriek and stomp her foot until it fell off.

“What will the other skanks think,” Clementine said, watching the routine for what felt like the thousandth time, “when they hear you’ve been standing in horse poop?”

“What will your friends think?” Car said, flexing her blood-red talons. “Oh wait — you don’t have any friends.”

“All right,” May-May said, “all right.” And she came over and lifted the wheelbarrow by the handles. “You’re both excused.”

“She’s acting like a baby,” Clementine said.

May-May had already turned away. “I’d rather do this alone.”

Car gave Clementine a nasty look, her face even more hideous than usual.

“Go text somebody,” Clementine said as her sister walked back toward the house.

“Go play with yourself!” Car shouted over her shoulder.

As she watched her great-grandmother weave the wheelbarrow among the raised beds, Clementine thought about how furious Pay would be. It had been his idea that they help. He thought May-May was too old to be out here all alone.

“I’m sorry, May-May,” Clementine said, picking up her shovel again. “I want to help.”

May-May wouldn’t even look at her. “You’re all done for today.”

Pay would be waiting for her at home, and Car would already have blamed Clementine for everything. So she went in the opposite direction, passing through the garden and into the empty lot. She was halfway across when she lifted her eyes and saw something strange on the porch of the house on Bernadine Street: the tall, gangly, clown-looking guy, slumped against the house, as if he’d been shot. But even from the top porch step, Clementine didn’t see any blood. Unless his coat was hiding it.

“Are you dead?” she said.

His eyes opened slowly, and it seemed to take them a moment to focus in on her.

“What’s your name?” she said.

He righted himself, pushing his palms against the peeling porch floor. “Dobbs.”

She came another step closer and stood there looking down on him.

“What’s yours?” he said.

“Clementine.”

He leaned his head against the dirty siding. His eyes looked as though they might close again. “Really?”

“You got a problem with it?”

He pressed a thumb into each of his temples. “It’s just unusual.”

“There’s a song,” she said. “There’s a fruit. It’s more usual than yours.”

“How old are you?”

She put her hands on her hips and thrust out her chest, her trademarked impersonation of Car. “Too young to be your girlfriend.”

“I figured.”

Her gaze wandered over the surface of the porch. It was all so much more depressing now that someone was actually living here. “Your house is terrible.”

He shrugged. “Where do you live?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He got up slowly, one hand against the wall for support. “Are you like this with everyone you meet?”

“Just suspicious people.”

He moved toward the open door.

He’d dumped the mattress in the middle of the floor. Against the wall were the table and chair. His junk was all over the place, a few pieces of clothing, a flashlight, wrappers, and cans.

She said, “It’s even worse on the inside.”

She lost him for a moment in the glare and the shadows. When she found him again, he was standing at the table, lifting a plastic jug to his lips. The water seemed to miss his mouth completely, pouring down the front of his coat.

“Why are you wearing that?” she said. “It’s not winter anymore. Aren’t you hot?”

His right eye twitched. And then the twitch traveled to his nose and on to his other eye. It was like a tremor spreading across his face, making every stop along the way.