Ghost of a Flea

don’t be careful, that can get to be all we think about.”

He took another sip. The container hovered in the hinterland between dumbbell-and vase-shaped, label bright red and blue. Some sort of dog on it? A naked woman? Could even be a truck. “You ever tried this shit?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t.”

The hand holding the abomination lifted, two ruler-long fingers unfurling.

“Walk over to the other side of those bushes, Lewis, and you’ll come across a fair stretch of grave sites. Lots of birds been laid to rest back there. We put them in the ground ourselves, the boy and me. Just a few at first, then sometimes, later on, as many as three or four a day. With whatever ceremony we could manage.”

He put the container, mostly empty, on the bench beside him. A group of Hispanic teens sat together atop a slide, stretch of dark midriff showing between the girl’s sweater and skirt, guys exhibiting their own brand of midriff: two inches or so of boxer shorts peeked out over low-slung denims. Thirty degrees out and they’ve got skin showing. Tough kids.

“Boy won’t come with me anymore,” Lester said. “Almost got him here a couple of times. Tell him we were going for a walk, maybe we’d stop off for doughnuts after. But then he’d see where we were going and commence to crying and shaking. You remember how much he loved being here, Lewis. It’s a sad thing, truly sad. Boy don’t have much. His room, the park. Now half that’s got taken from him.”

Lester sat shaking his head. “Maybe there really isn’t any more to it. Maybe it don’t make sense and ain’t meant to. Vanity and vexation of the spirit, just like it says in Ecclesiastes.”

He laid a hand on my knee and I found myself wondering if in all these years we’d ever before touched. Surely we’d at least shaken hands. Right: that single, pained handshake.

“Good seeing you again, Lewis. Good that you’re up and about again, too.”

“That’s a lot of goods for someone quoting Ecclesiastes, downer of all downers, just moments ago.”

“What can I say?” The hand came up off my leg; those impossibly long fingers unfolded in the space before us and moved there expressively, putting me in mind of branches in gentle wind, of Dante: Half into life’s journey I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. “It’s a character flaw. Try as I will, no matter how I practice and worry over it, I simply cannot stay glum for very long.” He pushed himself up off the bench. “I’d best be getting back to the boy now.”

I said good-bye, that I’d see him soon.

“Maybe, if you found time, you might even come see the boy again? I think, when you did, that was good for him. I noticed a difference just after.”

“I’ll plan on it, then.”

He looked off momentarily, adrift on his own thoughts. “Good.”

The teens, when I approached them, had some trouble deciding between wary, smart-ass or antagonistic as best response. One of the boys popped the joint they’d been sharing into his mouth and swallowed.

“?Que hay?” I asked. “?De donde son?”

Whatchu care? one of the kids wanted to know.

I told them.

“That boy? We seen him, sure. He ain’t right.”

They went in and out of Spanish as they spoke.

“Always with that same old man you been sittin’ wif.”

To them I was just one of a string of old guys without a clue. At worst a cop, child welfare agent or some other meddler from the outside world, otherwise someone inconsequential, and in either case so far outside the orbit of their lives as scarcely to exist. The Spanish helped. I didn’t come within a mile of speaking it well but, thanks to Rick Garces, on a good day with the wind blowing my way, I could fake it.

Guardedly they allowed as how, yeah, man, they were here most days, so? Had they taken any notice of the pigeons? Rats, they said, rats with wings, that’s what we call them. There used to be a lot of them.

Sure did.

But now there’s only a handful left.

He’s right, they told one another.

“Someone’s been poisoning them.”

The teens had stopped looking back and forth among themselves. Now they all looked at me. What they want to do that for? one asked. Yeah, don’t kill nothin’ you don’t plan to eat.

“Cases like this,” I said, “usually it’s someone from the neighborhood. Someone with a grudge, some private agenda. Maybe they’ve been hanging around, on the edge of things, face at the back of the crowd you never quite notice.”

Hey man, we don’t notice, how we goan tell you ’bout it?

Good point.

’Sides, it ain’t like we spend the day here.

Yeah, we be out here during lunch and once school lets out.

But that’s it for us, mister, we got other things to do. What’s that word you used? Agendas.

Fuck agendas, man.

Yeah, we got lives.

Gracias, I told them. Gracias por su ayuda.

De nada.

Hey, one of them called out, this time in English, as I turned. You need to talk to Mister Bones. He always here.

And it turned out that he was, though in all these years I’d never seen him. If I had, I’d have remembered, what with chicken bones through septum and earlobes African fashion and an Amerind-style breastplate of the same. If this had been a cartoon, some toothy black man would be doing a Lionel Hampton on those. Mister Bones never came in the park-something bad had happened here long past, he told me later-but neither was he ever far away. Mostly he resided under the porch of the abandoned house opposite. Had a mattress, most of a sleeping bag, boxes of canned and dry goods down there. Or else, when things got wet, he’d make his way up into the tree house some kids had built half a century back and half a block down in a massive water oak. Today, as usual, he was under the house. I shouted ahead then started under myself, thinking how my grandfather, working as builder, spent much of his life crawling under houses like this, crippled leg and all, fitting pipe, splicing wire, shoring foundations.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had to be wondering, too, just what the hell I was doing. Alouette was right. My son had disappeared, my god-daughter was receiving anonymous threats, I’d just got scraped up off the floor with the medical equivalent of a spatula-and here I was, fiftyodd years old, snaking under a house to try and find out who’s been killing pigeons. Strange life all around.

“You the tax man,” he said, “or one of Mr. Hoover’s minions, you just might as well go on back out of here, and fast.”

I told him who I was.

“Lew Griffin.” He grunted. “Think I may’ve done heard some ’bout you.”

“Oh?”

“Damn, man, this here ain’t nothing but a overgrown small town. Ever’body know your business. You bring trouble.”

“Got a load with me now, in fact. Thought you might help put me together with the people who need it.”

“So they live happily ever after.”

“Something like that.”

“Ain’t got much truck with other folks’ needs. Not a one of them’s ever he’ped me much.”

“I know that.”

“Think you know a lot, don’t you?” Someone was walking on the porch floor above us. Their floor, our roof. Rotted from rain, desiccated from heat, boards creaked, went swayback and threatened to give way. “But look at you. Come crawling up under here like some goddamn kid looking for answers, still think the world got answers for you. Ain’t no fortune cookies, you know. Break’m open, read what to do in there.”