Adam Johnson - Emporium

I turn him around, but I can’t deal with his sullen, angry face. Mac’s arm is scratched pretty good. But I can’t even deal with him. I take the gun, hand him the flashlight, and walk away for the first aid kit. I should bring him to the cart, to where the light is better, though honestly, I don’t want to see him any closer tonight.

Anger has settled to a kind of emptiness by the time I reach the cart. I find the first aid kit and begin the slow walk back to Mac, my son, whom I will patch up with gauze and Bactine. I make my way along the edge of the open desert and I know in a little while I will have to call Sue to come pick him up because even here, in a simple field under the stars, I am ill-suited for any of this.

I reach the spot where Mac should be, and it takes a moment to bring my head back down to earth and realize he is gone. I do a slow turn before I see him standing down by the wolf pen, shirtless, with a rabbit in his hand. He is rattling it temptingly against the chain link while his flashlight follows in its beam the dim image of a wolf in the dark, more eyes than anything as it sidles, circling, on loping legs. Mac is saying things I can’t quite hear. His free fingers hold the mesh, and he is bent some, talking in hushed tones.

I call to him but he does not respond. He seems to finish what he is saying and his awkward body stands up straight. The light turns off. Then his arm lifts to lob the rabbit over the fence and I am moving. I see the rabbit do two slow turns in the air and I am almost running. It lands on the other side, not four feet from where he stands transfixed, fingers wrapped in the fence. Mac, I call.

He rolls his head to look at me blankly and I slow some. Soon, I am stopped, breathing heavy and watching from behind. It becomes quiet, and as I notice the shh of late-night cars on Van Buren, I wonder what had me running a moment ago. Then it appears from the dark, cautiously, legs wide, watching Mac as it comes close enough to shovel the rabbit into its mouth before it is gone. Mac is glued to the scene, and the thought that he feels connected to this animal brings him closer to me in the one way I do not want.

And then the wolf is back. It is only a gray glow in the moonlight, but belly low it nears the fence again. It pauses and sniffs, then nears more, and I have never seen anything like it, this wolf and my son. Through the fence its nose runs up and down his jeans, and Mac seems almost to press himself against the fence as it sniffs, neck stretched to Mac’s shiny legs. Then it turns away from him, as if to leave, yet pauses. At first I think it is smelling the spot where the rabbit had lain, but the wolf lowers its head, and with a quivering of its hindlegs, sends three great blasts of spray and foamy urine trolloping down Mac.

He turns, mouth open, a mist coming off him beyond smell, and his is the kind of terror I was getting used to on the force. I move to embrace him with everything I’ve got, but when he sees me run at him, he is gone; his legs shudder then burst, a flash of a boy racing down dark paths.

I chase him. I take a breath and run, my keys jangling, my nametag flying off to scramble in the green-black grass. We are running for all we are worth, and soon he is losing me, soon he is only the glint of working shoulder blades and the white arcs of elbows in the moon, and I run. I run until the saliva puddles in my mouth and I am only following his scent. I feel my gun belt take on its familiar cantering rhythm, and I picture him hopping the zoo gate to blur down Van Buren Avenue under dim streetlamps, chasing the traffic, running shirtless past the adult bookstore. I ditch the Maglight and revolver and belt and pull my shirt off until there are only the sounds of my breathing off the asphalt. I round into the wide open of Your Own Backyard, and I know he has gotten away from me, suddenly I’ve chased this kid a thousand times, in an instant I am heading again down old alleys and yards, over hedgerows, across empty causeways, and as a stitch starts in my side all I can do is follow that awful smell on my son and hope it will never leave him because there’s no other way I’ll find him in the dark.

Tonight the bus is unusually responsive — brakes crisp, tires gripping — jockeying lane to lane so smoothly your passengers forget they’re moving as they turn to talk over the seats, high heels dangling out into the aisle, teeth bright with vodka and the lemon rinds they pull from clear plastic bags in their purses. Some stand, hanging loosely from overhead handles, wrists looped in white plastic straps, smiling as their bodies lean unnaturally far with the curves. Off-balance, half-falling, this position has its advantages: hips flare and sway behind you, ribs thumb their way through fabric, and this it seems is the view you’ve grown used to, daring you to touch, poised to knock you down.

You don’t even know where you’re driving yet, but through breaks in the trees, you can see red and blues on the Parkway and know traffic cops are working the outflow of an I-High baseball game. The school is not a place you want to be near tonight, especially bumper-to-bumper with old teammates, especially as a nineteen-year-old go-nowhere who drives a charter bus for a cancer victim support group on Thursday nights. So you’re banking a turn onto the Cascade Expressway instead — not an easy feat in a fifty-six-foot BlueLiner — when you catch a glimpse of Mrs. Cassini walking down the long aisle toward you, her figure vibrating in the overhead mirror, and you know you’re in trouble. Her husband built the Cassini Satellite, the one powered by seventy-two pounds of plutonium, so you know what you’re dealing with.

Your eyes double back from carloads of teenagers behind victory-soaped windows to the sight of Mrs. Cassini growing in the mirror: she’s running the tips of her fingers across the green-black vinyl seat backs, and she’s closing on you in a black Lycra cocktail dress that’s Olympic time-trial tight. The streetlights through the bus windows are flashing across her torso, her arms and neck taking on the cobalt blue of barium dye, and even from here you can make out the bubble-gum ridges of her mastectomy scars. All the other women seem to lean in her wake, as if she is their talisman, this woman who’s walked through the flames, who’s beat cancer three times. The old BlueLiner wants to wander in the fast lane.

Only when Mrs. Cassini reaches the front of the bus do you notice the flask in her hand. At the sight of your SAT study guides on the dash, she says, “Relax, Ben,” and sloshes back some scotch. Amber traces down her chin, pauses at the base of her neck. She slips a tape into the deck and Blue Danube starts over the loudspeakers.

As she leans the backs of her legs against the dash, the door lever forces her closer to you, and the black wing of her pelvis glows an edgy green from the dash gauges. She stares at you hard — eyes rimmed a renal yellow, the color of canary diamonds — then lifts and places a heel in the pocket of seat between your legs. This move hitches her skirt high enough that you can see the white-clamped tip of her catheter dangling before you, and you’re trying not to stare, but man…

Then Mrs. Cassini leans over, her hand like it’s going for your belt loops, and you go limp, drop a hand from the wheel and give her room. “That’s better, Benny,” she says, and soon her strong chest is in your face — you’re in the fast lane! — as she fumbles around on the far side of your captain’s chair. She comes up with the microphone handset, the loopy cord bouncing in your face. When she’s composed herself a little, you give the BlueLiner a quick burst of gas and watch the tip of that catheter circle into a tight orbit below her hem. Cassini smiles sideways at you.