Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

“Let me in,” Clementine shouted as the bats swooped low. Their species was dying off from some sort of disease. No one knew why. But who would ever miss them?

The overhead lifted with a jerk. Dobbs stood before her in jeans and a T-shirt. Without his coat on, he looked like a wet dog. His skinny arms were shaking under the weight of the door.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

He jerked his head to show her the way. “Are you coming or what?”

Even though the garage was enormous, entering it felt like squeezing down the narrow stairs into Pay’s dirt basement. The darkness and the damp and the cold hit her from all sides. But Dobbs didn’t seem to feel it. There was pink in his cheeks. Coils of red hair were matted to his forehead with sweat. There was a smear of dirt along his jawline. His palms were nearly black.

A broom leaned up against the wall a few feet away. Next to it was a mound of dust and debris. There was still more grit beneath her sneakers. She toed at the cement floor, and a chunk popped loose.

He brushed the wet coils of hair from his eyes. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She walked past him. The garage area was attached through a wide doorway to the warehouse, which seemed even bigger from the inside. Everywhere she looked, there were more mounds of dust and dirt, but everything still seemed dirty. He could sweep all he wanted, and it would never get clean.

In the warehouse were piles of all sorts of junk: hunks of cement block and broken glass and more of those metal scraps she’d seen outside.

The overhead door squeaked back down. The sound bounced through the building, and Clementine was happy to imagine the confused bats smashing into each other midair. Then it was silent again.

In the middle of the warehouse, overshadowing everything else, was an enormous pile of floppy-looking slabs of something. As she came closer, Clementine realized it was a pile of mattresses. Dozens of them.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Dobbs said.

She shrugged the backpack off her shoulders. “Not yet.”

Clementine walked over and gave the bottom mattress a kick. She felt an urge to jump on top of them, but even she could see they were gross and smelly and disgusting.

“What are these for?”

He opened the passenger door of the van, and the dome light came on. “I found them there.”

She reached out and touched one of the mattresses, carefully, as if it were alive. And it probably was, full of bedbugs. The case was dirty and stained, but not with the dust and grime that covered everything else in there.

“What are they really for?”

He twisted the cap off a water bottle. This time he managed to pour it into his mouth. “People, I guess.”

If this was what he left out in the open, she wondered what he was hiding in the rest of the piles.

“What people?”

His sigh was barely more than a breath, but in that huge, empty space, it sounded like her grandfather’s bellows.

“Are these people friends of yours?”

His tired footsteps clopped toward her. He was carrying her backpack. He was wearing his coat.

“Come on.” He handed her the bag and started back toward the garage.

“Who are they?” she asked again.

He squatted down to lift the overheard door. “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“Because it’s none of my business.”

He hoisted the door onto his shoulder. The pink had drained from his cheeks. He seemed to teeter slightly as she approached.

Halfway under the door, she paused and pointed at the truck. “Why don’t you drive?”

“It doesn’t work.”

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. She could see tracks from the parking lot leading straight inside. She wasn’t stupid, but she didn’t really care either way. She didn’t mind walking. He was the one dragging his legs like heavy suitcases.

The muddy windows in the warehouse had made it seem like it was still night. But once she got outside, Clementine saw the morning sun had already chased the bats away. The trees were backlit, and she could see birds — soft, feathery, nondisgusting birds — perched in the branches. It was hard to believe they’d once been dinosaurs.

The moon was up there too, but it was fading.

“What time is it?” she said as they walked down the alley to the street.

Dobbs shrugged.

“You don’t have a phone?”

He kept walking.

She paused to stomp on a Styrofoam cup. “Who doesn’t have a phone?”

“Do you?”

“I’m a kid. I’m not supposed to.”

“I don’t like them,” he said.

“How do you call people?”

“Let’s go,” he said, waving her on.

“How do you call people?” she asked again.

“I don’t.”

“Jesus,” she said. “You’re weird.” She caught up to him after just a few steps. “My sister would die without her phone. She uses it instead of a brain.”

“You’re the neighborhood watch?” Dobbs said.

Just as quickly as she reached him, now he was falling behind. “I keep an eye on things.”

“Who else are you watching?”

She said, “There’s this cat …”

“And have you told your parents about me and the cat?”

“They don’t notice anything,” Clementine said.

He kept slipping farther and farther back. But she didn’t need him to lead the way anymore. She already knew a shorter route than the one she’d seen him take.

He stopped. He seemed to be struggling to catch his breath. There was a chain-link fence running along the sidewalk. He let his weight fall against it.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“I’m fine.” The coils of hair on his forehead had dried into greasy springs.

“You look like you’re about to fall over.”

The top rail was missing from the fence. The linked chains were cradling him like a hammock.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

He gazed back at her blankly.

Clementine grabbed his elbow. “Come on.” She could see he’d never make it home without her.

It should have taken only ten minutes to reach the house on Bernadine Street, but by the time they got there, the moon was gone. She could tell by the light in the sky that school had already started. There’d be trouble when she got there. It was just a question of how much.

She steered him up the path to the front door. He removed the key from his pocket, and she took it from him and fit it into the lock. Once inside, she pushed him toward the mattress.

“I don’t want to lay down,” he said, but his knees were already folding beneath him.

“Too bad,” she said. “I have to go.”

She got detention, of course. The moment she arrived at school, she was steered straight into Ms. Crossman’s office, and she had to sit on her hands and wrinkle her nose and try not to sneeze at the old lady’s perfume as she pounded out a speech about responsibilityandmaturity and Clementine’s educationalfuture. All the while Clementine watched the hands on the wall clock tick away even more of her precious educationalopportunities .

From experience she knew the worst thing about detention wasn’t detention itself but what would happen when Pay and her mother found out. But today in particular the punishment also meant she wouldn’t get out of school until after four o’clock, and by that time who knew what might have happened to Dobbs.

The day rambled on endlessly, and when they finally opened the doors to let her go, Clementine stuck out her tongue and sprinted down the street, backpack crashing against her with every stride.

When she reached the house on Bernadine Street, she was relieved to find Dobbs sitting on the back step, hidden by the overgrown shrubs.