Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

Traffic opened up; we began passing through suburbs and other low-lying development, and the darkness around us became amplified but unthreatening. I glanced over, trying to judge his expression. Mitch was prematurely graying, but his face was boyish, with a rosiness to his cheeks that shone through his smooth, naturally tan skin. He had an enormous nose that somehow made you trust him, but quick, alert brown eyes that sparkled with mischief.

“How are you doing?” he asked finally. Between highways, the road wended through a depressed, incidental area home to auto body shops and ministorage. It looked like a junk drawer.

“I’m depressed.”

Beside a big pile of bedsprings stood a shirtless Asian man watching us pass. He brought a brown paper bag up to his face.

“Did you hear about the shrimp?” said Mitch.

“I’m not sure.”

“You’d know, believe me. Turns out shrimp all over the Indian Ocean are dying. In the billions. They’ve been turning up dead on the surface of the water, and scientists have been investigating, you know, and they’ve been stumped for months. Like the bees. Remember the bees?”

“What was it, colony failure.”

“Colony Collapse Disorder. Still happening. Anyway, they did some tests and they figured out these shrimp were packed full of Prozac. Tons of it was being pumped into the sea, defective pills being produced in factories all along the Indian coast, and these shrimp have been ingesting it and rising to the surface.”

We crossed a river and began passing a field to our left. To the right, on a smaller road running parallel to our own, a diner plated in polished chrome advertised Eggs All Day.

“So they overdosed?”

“That’s what they thought at first. But it turned out that, all pumped full of Prozac, they were actually leaving the darker, colder areas of the water and seeking light.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Thing is, it’s warmer closer to the surface, and it doesn’t have the microorganisms they eat. So there they are, swimming up to the light out of, what, happiness? A sudden burst of self-confidence?”

“ Joie de vivre .”

“Exactly. But in the process, they’re basically committing suicide.”

“Great. Now I’m even more depressed.”

“Well, think of the shrimp, my friend.” A semi blew by us, laying on the horn, and Mitch’s next words were obscured. “Sometimes,” it sounded like he was saying, “in order to stay alive, you’ve gotta resist the urge to alter your past.” But it could have been “path.”

We were silent for a while. I was imagining clouds of shrimp ascending through the cold, dark water toward some kind of utopia, a promised land of light and warmth and transcendence. Mitch’s police radio chirped and he leaned forward, turning a knob to silence it. I stared at the nearly featureless black box. Mitch was the kind of inherently competent person who, like my father, made one feel generally useful while at the same time reinforcing a kind of learned helplessness. My father always had a task for everyone, and the result was you’d wait for his order. If an order wasn’t forthcoming, you’d stare dumbly at your hands, wondering what they were for.

“Will your father be there tonight?” I asked. Mitch worked with his father, was slowly inheriting the family business.

“Nah,” he said. “He’s been working the case, but we’re really just there to take a couple pictures tonight. Simple stakeout. Before we map out the mark’s usual route we might tag team it, but there’s no indication that he’ll be doing anything more adventurous tonight than hitting a high note.”

“He’s celebrating?”

“Karaoke.”

“He’s celebrating karaoke?”

“He invented it, didn’t I tell you? C’mon. We’re going to a karaoke bar. Actually, we’re going to an Elk’s Club with a karaoke machine.”

The suburbs had become exurbs, our connecting route became another highway, and we began climbing foothills. The car slowly rose and fell, a lullaby motion that gave me the distinct impression that instead of moving toward our destination we were more truly receding from something, that the city, long lost from our rearview mirrors, was nonetheless our journey’s true subject.

As a child I’d been panicky, anxious, with terrible nightmares that caused me to fear not just sleep but my bedroom itself. Either in deference to my mother or unable to stand it himself, or both, my father had started putting me in a backpack and bringing me on long motorcycle rides through the winding roads along the waterfront. I looked forward to these rides, but mostly I loved being taken away from the source of my fear — so much so that I’d fall asleep, only to wake again in the morning, in my bed, as though the ride had been a dream. What struck me about it now, driving into the wilderness with Mitch, was that although I could remember certain sights, sounds, and smells from those rides — the chrome fenders and orange tank, the hum of the engine and the sweet toxicity of exhaust — in no memory could I dredge up an image of my father’s face. It was just me, the bike, and a flat expanse of leather back. Could it really be said that we’d shared those experiences? Or did we exist merely in parallel, two people, in their own ways, pushing back the night to reveal our own desperate infinities?

Mitch’s car, a Honda Accord, was far from the Triumph of these memories, but it was a comfort, and he clearly took great care of it — it was impeccably clean and, aside from the CB, all stock.

I gave the dashboard an admiring pat.

“It’s the go-to car for P.I.s these days,” he said. “You just can’t use those big American cars anymore. They stand out, draw attention. Plus they can be mistaken for squad cars. Not really what we’re going for.”

“Your father drive an Accord?”

Mitch guffawed. “Dad drives a Cadillac,” he said.

“But doesn’t that—”

“He figures he’s earned it. Part of him knows it’s stupid, but there are some things I just don’t push with the old man, you know? I think he’s waving the white flag.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But that’s the least of it, really. Then there’s the Internet. Files used to have to pass through, you know, x number of hands before reaching their destination. Each hand was an opportunity, in my dad’s day, to grease gears, ask and return favors, affect outcomes… Now it’s one button and everything’s pulled up, sorted, organized, and compared. Where’s the chase? My dad doesn’t even know how to read his email. He has me print it out.”

“So he’s unable to keep up? Or is it just that he doesn’t like it.”

“Neither. He thinks the truth is just too easy to come by now. There’s no angle in it.”

We entered a long stretch with no streetlights. We were one of very few vehicles on the road, and on the dashboard glowed little white lights, a constellation of relevant facts. We slowed as a pair of shining eyes low to the road stared at us, then darted into the woods. Mitch crept forward until we passed the crossing point, looking out, I imagined, for any other members of the family. I struggled to remember a sympathetic anecdote to relate about my own father, or the Internet, or the truth, but could only think of a time my father had brought me and my brother to a public pool. I couldn’t have been more than ten.

“So we’re at this pool,” I said, “playing with neighborhood kids, and there’s a rumor going around that someone’s put eels in the water, and that they’re actually swimming up people’s butts.”

Mitch gave me a quick glance.

“You know, just kids saying kid shit. I had no idea what an eel even was at that point. Anyway, so it’s fun at first, but it begins to get more frantic, the younger kids crying and leaving the pool, whatever, and I kind of don’t believe it until I think I see a small black squiggly thing floating around right beside me, right? So I kind of spin and thrash around, and then I can’t see it anymore, and Kent—”