Did he still remember how to drive? I wondered. I leaned in to pat his pant pockets for his keys, and that’s when I caught an eye-watering reek of gasoline. I glanced into the back and saw a red fuel can sitting on the rear seats, next to the stack of photo albums. I knew then what it would ultimately take arson investigators another three weeks to de termine: that the fire at Mr. Beukes’s Cupertino gym had been caused not by a stroke of lightning but by a stroke of malice.
The power outage in the neighborhood, on the other hand, was really just a by-product of the storm. I’m less sure that the storm itself was a purely natural event. An hour earlier, I had considered the possibility that the Phoenician might have some occult influence over the weather and rejected the idea with a certain amused disgust. But the notion seemed less absurd as I looked out upon those acres of slaughtered birds. Did he have a hand in the storm after all? Perhaps—perhaps not. I said there was a lot about that evening I don’t understand.
I imagined reaching into the back of the Caddy and sprinkling what little was left in the can on the Phoenician, then dropping the car lighter in his lap. But of course I wasn’t going to do that. I felt sick about stepping on a dead sparrow. I was hardly going to murder a living man. I left the gas can where it was, but on impulse I grabbed the topmost photo album and stuck it under my arm. I discovered the keys in the dashboard ashtray and started the Caddy for him.
The Phoenician gazed at me devoutly.
“You can go now,” I said.
“Go where?”
“I don’t care. As long as it’s nowhere near here.”
He nodded slowly, and then a sweet, dreamy smile appeared on his leprous face. “That Spanish gin will fuck you up, huh? I should’ve stopped at one! I got a feeling I’m not going to remember any of this tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe I ought to take your picture,” Shelly said from behind me. “So you don’t forget.”
“Hey,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”
“Smile real big, bucko,” Shelly said, and he did, and she thudded him in the teeth with the handle of her broom.
It made a bony thwack and snapped his head to the side. She cackled. When he looked up, his hand was clapped over his mouth, but there was blood dribbling between his fingers. His eyes were childlike and frightened.
“You want to keep that crazy bitch away from me!” he cried. “Hey, bitch! You better watch out. I know some real bad men.”
“Not anymore,” I said, and slammed the car door in his face.
He banged down the lock and stared at us with a mute terror. His hand fell away from his mouth to show blood in his teeth and a swiftly fattening upper lip twisted in a painful sneer.
I didn’t wait to see him take off. I gripped Shelly by the shoulder and turned her around and started back. We were almost to the yard when he drove by. He hadn’t forgotten how to steer his big Caddy after all, and looking back from my more informed adult perspective, I’m not surprised. Motor memory is compartmentalized, set aside from other thought processes. Many people, lost entirely in the blinding white fog of senility, can still flawlessly perform certain piano pieces they learned as children. What the mind forgets, the hands remember.
The Phoenician didn’t so much as glance at us. Instead he was bent forward over the steering wheel, looking this way and that, his eyes shiny with anxiety. I had seen the exact same look on Shelly’s face earlier in the day, when she was desperately scanning the neighborhood for something—anything—that might seem familiar.
At the end of the street, he struck his blinker, turned right for the highway, and drove out of my life.
10
WHEN I PULLED THE SHEETS over her, Shelly gave me a sleepy smile and reached out to grasp my hand.
“Do you know how many times I tucked you in, Michael? Lives have bookends, but you have to keep your eyes peeled if you wanna see ’em, bucko.”
I bent and kissed her temple, which had the soft, powdery texture of ancient vellum. She never said my name again, although there were days when I’m sure she remembered me. There were more days when she didn’t, but now and then her eyes would flash with recognition.
And I’m certain she knew me at the end. Not a doubt in my mind.
11
MR. BEUKES DIDN’T GET HOME until 2:00 A.M. Time enough for me to straighten up and put my clothes through the dryer. Time enough to rake up the dead birds in the yard. Time to pour a glass of strawberry Quik—Mr. Beukes liked to use it as an ingredient in his protein shakes, and I liked to use it as an ingredient in my fat ass—and take stock.
Time to leaf through the stolen photo album. The one marked S. BEUKES in black Sharpie on the inside cover.
It could’ve been anyone’s collection of memories, although the oldest Polaroids in the book showed scenes that had occurred well before color photography was available to the masses. And so many snapshots were of things no one would’ve photographed.
Here was a wooden horse on wooden wheels, with a rope strung through a hole in its head, being pulled along a concrete sidewalk.
Here was a sunlit blue sky with a single cloud in it, a cloud shaped like a cat, tail curled in a question-mark shape. The chubby hands of a toddler reached up toward it from the bottom edge of the photograph.
Here was a brawny woman with big, crooked teeth, peeling a potato at a sink, a radio in a walnut case glowing on the kitchen counter in the background. Based on the resemblance, I guessed it was Shelly’s mother and that the year might be somewhere around 1940.
Here was a twenty-year-old knockout with the body of an Olympic swimmer, wearing white underwear, her arms crossed over her bare chest, a fedora perched on her head. She inspected herself in a full-length mirror. A big mule of a man, completely naked, could be seen in the reflection as well, sitting on the edge of a mattress. He grinned wolfishly and studied her with frank admiration. I had to look at this image for half a minute before it sank in that the girl was Shelly herself and the man behind her was her future husband.
Midway through the book, I came across a series of four Polaroids that gave me a very nasty shock—four snapshots I cannot explain. It was the girl again—the girl with the Paddington Bear. The dead girl I’d seen in the Phoenician’s mind photographs (“thoughtographs”?). They had both known her.
In these images it was the late sixties, early seventies. In one the girl sat on a kitchen counter, her cheeks wet with tears, a scrape on one knee. She bravely clutched her bear to her chest, as Shelly’s big, freckled hands reached into frame with a Band-Aid. In another Polaroid, Shelly’s strong, confident fingers worked a sewing needle, stitching Paddington Bear’s hat back on his head, while the girl looked on with dark, grave eyes. In the third picture, the child slept in a rich girl’s bed, surrounded by stuffed bears. But it was Paddington she clutched tight to her chest in sleep.
In the last photograph, the little girl was dead at the bottom of the world’s steepest stone staircase, facedown in a spreading puddle of blood, one arm flung out as if reaching back for Paddington, who had wound up only about halfway down the steps.