Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

They reached the small, treeless park at the center of the city. It was made of cement blocks, with little triangles of closely cropped grass. A large lunchtime crowd of clerks and office workers was munching sandwiches. A few scattered derelicts elbowed their way through the crowds, and to the far end of the park, a small area had been taken over by poor, unemployed men who slouched about in fishnet shirts and drank beer from cans wrapped in paper bags.

“The heat don’t make them nicer,” Caleb said with a small, thin smile. He sat down on one of the few wooden benches and patted it softly. “Take a load off, Frank.”

Frank sat down. “Headquarters would love it to be an accidental death,” he said.

“Fuck them,” Caleb said. He swabbed his neck again. “They got a low attitude about life, and they always have. Top floor’s black now, but nothing else has changed. There’s only one rule: cover your ass.”

Frank watched the long line of barely moving traffic that circled the park: taxis, delivery vans, private cars, and here and there a bicycle that whizzed by everything else. For an instant, he felt a strange envy for the men and women on their bikes, for everything that seemed less stranded and bogged down.

“They don’t see the bigger thing,” Caleb said, “the top brass. It makes them crazy ’cause they don’t.” He crammed the handkerchief in his coat pocket. “So you get this murder and then that one and then the one after that.” He shook his head. “Things blur.”

“Not much of a way around that, though, Caleb,” Frank said.

“I know one,” Caleb said. “You got to do a trick in your mind. You got to think that every murder is the first one that ever was.” His eyes shifted over to Frank. “In every one, there’s some little thing that strikes you,” he added. “I saw a little boy who’d been murdered once. His big brother had shot him. He was laying on the floor, and there was a little toy pistol still in his hand. That did it for me, that little pistol. I kept thinking about it, and in the end, it was all I needed to track that son-of-a-bitch brother down.”

Frank nodded slowly.

“Now with Angelica, it’s her hair,” Caleb said, “the way it was all laid out around her head. Just like a gold fan.”

Frank looked at him unbelievingly. “You think about that? About her hair?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “It’s what keeps the fire going in me.”

Frank turned away and looked at the stream of traffic again. He could not think of small things to sustain him, as Caleb did. For him, it was just the opposite. Instead of a toy pistol, a fan of hair, such small, incidental things, he sensed something infinitely large which lived in the darkest quarters of the city or swept out like a prairie wind across barren, dust-covered fields. It was something which fed on the shadows in which it lurked, and then, suddenly, without warning, stepped out of them and into the adjoining world, swept out like a gnarled hand and pulled someone back into it, leaving only traces behind, a toy pistol for Caleb to remember, or a strand of golden hair.

In his mind, he suddenly saw Angelica’s hair. But he did not see it as Caleb did, but as Karen had painted it in the portrait on Cummings’ wall. Something in the portrait clung to his mind like a silver hook. Slowly, delicately, he tried to bring each feature into view: the shining black shoes and white socks, the gently tapered ankles, the red velvet dress and the lace that curled about its hem then rose in a swirl of white to her chest, where it gathered gracefully in a small white pool. He could see Angelica’s neck rise from the lace collar, and then her face, so beautiful, framed by the blonde hair, each feature so perfectly wrought that it seemed separately made. He noted the ears, the full red mouth, the lines of her chin and cheekbones. Then, at last, he settled upon her eyes. He could see them very clearly, the blue irises, the black pupils, the oval pools of white. It was the irises that drew him back. Something was missing, the tiny white specks that give the eyes their light They had not been painted in the portrait, and because of that, Angelica’s eyes looked dead. Years before, her sister had painted her this way, but even now, as Frank felt a cold wave pass over him, he could not imagine why.

He was still thinking about it when he got home several hours later. For a long time, he stood on the little porch and watched night fall over the city. He stared first at one cluster of lights, then another, but always through the cloudy haze of Angelica’s painted face.

He glanced down at his feet, as if hoping to find a clue clinging like a piece of street debris to his shoes. But there was nothing there, nothing anywhere but in his mind, feelings the facts could not warrant, vague, half-formed intimations. There were times when he was sure his father had been plagued by such odd sensations, times when his deep-lined face would look so wounded that everything around him seemed to grow quiet, and the world would appear as some small, crouching animal, huddled, frightened, sleeplessly listening for the footfall of a larger, predatory beast.

For relief, Frank lit a cigarette. He allowed it to burn for a while, then tapped the ashes and watched them fall slowly toward the ground. They twirled gracefully in the heavy summer darkness, lightly, playfully, as if there were no earth beneath to catch their fall. But the earth came up quickly, and even from several feet above, Frank could see the ashes as they collided with it and shattered into feathery specks of white.

Suddenly, in his mind, he saw Angelica’s face shatter in exactly the same way. It was as if something had exploded beneath it, blowing its separate parts in all directions and leaving only the already lifeless eyes to spin like two dull marbles in the empty air.

He started to go back into the apartment, but as he turned, he felt a tremor move through him. It came from the ground beneath him, and he tried to imagine its source, a slight shift in the foundation, some tiny burrow caving in. He glanced at the window, to see if he could detect any trembling in the glass. But it was still. Everything was still. It was only in him, and so he simply waited for it to pass.

When it was over, he looked back into his apartment. It was an unappetizing clutter of fast-food boxes and newspapers. He could not bring himself to go inside.

The car was his escape, and within a few seconds he was moving down the city streets. Driving at night renewed and invigorated him. The flow of light, the feel of the air as it rushed through the open windows, worked on him like a tonic. For it was as if the streets belonged to him in some special way. He sometimes felt like the sole survivor of a bombed-out and abandoned kingdom, a ghostly presence, silent, restless, with nothing for thought but his own inchoate feeling, nothing for guidance but his hands on the wheel.

It was almost an hour later when he found himself far past the midtown towers. On his left, he could see West Paces Ferry Road as it came to an end at Peachtree Street. As he turned onto it and headed north, he could see Karen’s portrait of Angelica as if it hung like smoke in the passing web of trees.

He slowed down as he approached the Devereaux house, then edged the car over to the curb. The wrought-iron gate had been closed, sealing off the driveway, but to its left Frank could see a small hinged entrance gate. When he pushed against it, it opened immediately, and he walked into the grounds.

As he walked slowly up the graveled driveway, he could see the house very clearly. All the lights were out, but its outer walls glowed softly white in the full moon. For a while he stood beneath a large oak and watched the house. He could see no movement at all behind the darkened windows, and after a while he turned quietly to leave.