Читать книгу Do Not Go On - Bryan Furuness - Страница 7

PETER CREWS WAS HIS NAME, but no one called him that. To his wife, he had been Crews, just Crews, and after she left him, no one called him anything but Droop. This was a reference to Droopy Dog, the cartoon hound with a potbelly and sleepy eyes. Pete had the dog’s slumped shoulders, the thatch of hair, and though he wasn’t fat (especially by Indiana standards), he had a swaybacked way of standing that showcased his little belly.

He drove a banged-up Bronco, which was good in bad conditions, but pretty bad in good conditions, like now, speeding along the open interstate toward the hospital. There was barely a breeze, but when he pushed the Bronco up to seventy, he felt buffeted and had to wrestle the wheel to keep it straight. Pulling off on exit 215, he saw a tree blown over by last night’s storm, a man chainsawing it into rounds near the Trail Tree Restaurant. The man lifted his saw in greeting. Pete nodded at him.

To the good people of Morocco, Droop was a former railroad worker, retired early with a settlement for a back injury. In truth, he was a Deputy U.S. Marshal. His badge was in the Bronco’s glove box, buried in a nest of oil change receipts.

Nine years ago he’d worn that badge on a lanyard as he worked the short-term side of witness security in Chicago, escorting witnesses to safe houses and standing watch as they prepared for relocation. After his life fell apart, he had to get away from Chicago, so the Program sent him to Indiana’s northern district, which hung down from the top of the state like a sleepy eyelid. Now he worked post-relo. Now he was a glorified babysitter who had to hide his badge.

That was the deal on the long-term side: you couldn’t let people know who you were, because it would attract unnecessary attention. It was almost like being a witness yourself. After a while, you grew into your cover story. Some days, Pete felt retired, puttering around the house to fill the hours and avoid the quicksand of the past. Some days he was visited by a phantom pain in his lower back, though he’d never actually had a back injury.

Now, on his way to the hospital, Pete was in danger of living up to his cover story, at least the part about early retirement. He could practically hear his boss’s questions already. What the hell was your witness doing in a tree? What kind of shit show are you running, Droop? Too much going on in Indiana for you to handle?

Bureaucrats. You could always count on them to go heavy on pressure and light on understanding, especially the ones like Boxelder who had never worked a single day as a marshal. How that guy got to be the new Director-designate of Witness Security, Pete would never know. One thing was certain, though: before Pete informed him, he had to come up with some answers. I don’t know wasn’t going to cut it.

He whipped into the parking lot of the Jasper County hospital, hoping Ben didn’t get chatty on pain meds. The lot was nearly empty, so he ended up in a spot right in front. He turned off the car and looked at the entrance.

Concrete planters, bristling with leggy geraniums. A lady holding onto her IV stand like it was a subway pole, smoking a cigarette as the wind tousled her gown. Behind her, the automatic door slid open and closed, open and closed.

Pete was thinking of his daughter. All those nights at Wyler Children’s Hospital, hallways smelling of bleach, cafeteria full of hollow-eyed parents. The drive on I-90, tires hitting the rumble strip and Pete snapping awake. Parking in a lot like this one, getting eaten by automatic doors like those.

He swung a leg out of the Bronco, and waited out a spinny feeling before he stood. God, he hated hospitals.

* * *

Once, Pete saw ball lightning. It fell out of the sky to shamble around his deck like divine tumbleweed, bouncing off benches and chairs and a kettle grill, shaggy and aimless, shedding sparks. He stood under his awning with a beer in one hand and a spatula in the other, aware that he should be afraid, but feeling only mesmerized.

He felt the same way as he listened to Ana rant about her father, the goddamn Program, the tree’s “lack of structural integrity,” and the quality of care her father had received since the ambulance had shown up at the farmhouse. The paramedics were fat and slow, the doctors full of shit—“Does that look like ‘resting comfortably’ to you, Droop? Would you be comfortable with a tube in your dick?”—and the hospital a Podunk outpost that couldn’t be trusted with anything more serious than ringworm.

In the course of her raving, Pete managed to piece together some basic facts. In addition to sustaining multiple fractures, Ben had swelling of the brain. He hadn’t blown his cover (thank God) because he’d slipped from unintelligible to unconscious as soon as they pumped him full of Dilaudid. So it could have been worse. Still, this was pretty bad. What the hell had gone wrong?

“So I have to ask,” said Pete after Ana trailed off in the middle of a complaint about the pushy nurses. “What was he doing up in a tree?”

“Living there.”

“Living there,” said Pete, thinking she would explain further, tell him It’s not what it sounds like, but she just nodded. He said, “How long?”

She chewed on her thumbnail. He resisted the urge to pull her hand away from her mouth. “Two weeks,” she said.

He felt something collapse in his stomach. How on earth. Pete went out to the farmhouse just last week, for Christ’s sake. How could he have—

Now that he thought about it, it had taken Ben a long time to answer the door. He’d claimed he was in the bathroom when the doorbell rang, but had he actually climbed down from the tree and slipped into the house through the storm cellar doors while Pete stood on the porch like a mook? Entirely possible. And entirely beside the point, because there was a more important question to ask.

“Ana,” he said. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

She gnawed on her thumbnail.

“I need to know,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me the instant your father went up in that tree?”

That line sounded ridiculous, straight out of a nursery rhyme, but neither of them smiled. Ana didn’t even look over, which irritated Pete. “I could have helped you,” he said. “Don’t you know that?”

She glanced at her father in the bed. “This is where the Program’s help has gotten us,” she said. “I didn’t think we could take any more of it.”

Pete shifted in his seat. That wasn’t fair, but now wasn’t the time to argue with this girl, not while her father lay unconscious in the bed. “He’ll get better,” he said lamely.

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“How do you know?”

Pete opened his hands. He didn’t have an answer.

“You don’t know,” she said. Her voice trembled with anger. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about what it’s like for us here, and you don’t know if he’s ever going to get better. Do you? Admit it.”

She held his eyes, waiting for an answer, but what could he honestly tell her? The situation is fluid. That’s what the doctors had said about his own daughter, though her troubles hadn’t come from a fall. We’ll have to wait and see.

The truth is that nothing in the world is harder than waiting to see. Waiting is a blank page your mind fills with dark ink. Waiting gives you time to learn terrible things about yourself. Like how you might want an ending even more than you fear one.

Ana’s thumbnail was in her teeth again. He reached for her hand, pulled it gently from her mouth. Sometimes honesty was the worst gift. Sometimes a person needed to rest comfortably.

“Everything will be fine,” he said, though his words rang hollow, even to his own ears. He pressed on awkwardly. “I’m here now.”

Her eyes narrowed. She spoke clearly and slowly, as though he were a child. “Asshole,” she said. “No one wants you here.”