The Hollow Man

The rental Beretta was parked under low trees by the side of a gravel road. Tall palm trees and a riot of tropical foliage formed a green wall in front and on two sides of the car. The road behind him was empty of traffic. Bremen was sitting with his forehead against the steering wheel, hands on the wheel on either side of his head. Sweat dripped onto his knees and the plastic of the wheel. He was shaking.

Bremen pulled the keys, thrust open the door, and staggered away from the car. He stumbled into the foliage and fell to his knees a brief second before the cramps and nausea rolled over him. Bremen vomited into the undergrowth, crawled backward, was assailed by more waves of illness, dropped to his elbows, and continued to vomit until only noise came up. After a moment he dropped to his side, rolled away from the mess, wiped his chin with a shaking hand, and lay staring up through palm fronds at the sky.

The sky was a gunmetal gray. Bremen could hear the rasp of distant thoughts and images still echoing through his skull. He remembered a quote that Gail had shown him—something she had dredged up from the sports-writer Jimmy Cannon after she and Bremen had argued about whether prizefighting was a sport or not. “Boxing is a filthy enterprise,” Cannon had written, “and if you stay in it long enough, your mind will become a concert hall where Chinese music never stops playing.”

Well, Bremen reflected grimly, barely able to sort out his own thoughts from the distant neurobabble, my mind’s sure as hell a concert hall. I just wish it was only Chinese music playing.

He got to his knees, saw a glint of green water down the slope through the shrubs, rose, and staggered that way. A river or swamp stretched away through dim light. Spanish moss hung from live oak and cypress trees along the shore and more cypress rose from the brackish water. Bremen knelt, skimmed away the crust of green scum from the water, and washed his cheeks and chin. He rinsed his mouth and spat into the algae-choked water.

There was a house—little more than a shack, actually—under tall trees fifty yards to Bremen’s right. His rented Beretta was parked near the beginnings of a trail that wound through foliage to the sagging structure. The faded pine boards of the shack blended with the shadows there, but Bremen was able to make out signs on the wall facing the road: LIVE BAIT and GUIDE SERVICE and CABIN RENTALS and VISIT OUR SNAKE EMPORIUM. Bremen moved that way, shuffling along the edge of the river, stream, swamp … whatever that green-and-brown expanse of water was.

The shack was set up on cement blocks; from beneath it came a loam-rich scent of wet earth. An old Chevy was parked on the far side of the low building, and now Bremen could see a wider lane that ran down from the road. He paused at the screen door. It was dark inside, and despite the signs the place seemed more some hillbilly’s shack than a store. Bremen shrugged and opened the door with a screech.

“Howdy,” said one of the two men watching from the darkness. The one who spoke had been standing behind a counter; the other sat back amid shadows in the doorway to another room.

“Hello.” Bremen paused, felt the rush of neurobabble from the two men like the hot breath of some giant creature, and almost staggered outside again before noticing the big, electric cooler. He felt as if he had not drunk anything for days. It was the old kind of cooler with a sliding top, bottles of cold pop resting in half-melted ice. Bremen fished out the first bottle he uncovered, an RC Cola, and went to the counter to pay for it.

“Fifty cents,” said the standing man. Bremen could see him better now: wrinkled tan slacks, a T-shirt that once had been blue but had been washed to a near gray, rough, reddened face, and blue eyes that hadn’t faded looking out from under a nylon cap with a mesh back.

Bremen fumbled in his pocket and found no change. His wallet was empty. For a second he was sure that he had no money, but then he fished in his gray suitcoat pocket and came out with a roll of bills, all twenties and fifties from the looks of it. Now he remembered going to the bank the day before and removing the $3,865.71 that had been left in their joint account after mortgage and hospital payments.

Shit. Another goddamn drug dealer. Prob’ly from Miami.

Bremen could hear the standing man’s thoughts as clearly as if they had been spoken, so he replied in words even as he peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and set it on the counter. “Uh-uh,” he rasped, “I’m not a drug dealer.”

The standing man blinked, set a red hand on the twenty-dollar bill, and blinked again. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t say you was, mister.”

It was Bremen’s turn to blink. The man’s anger pulsed at him like a hot, red light. Through the static of neurobabble, he could sort out a few images.

Fucking druggies killed Norm Jr. as sure as if they’d put a gun to his head. Boy never had no discipline, no common sense. If his mommy’d lived, mighta been different.… Images of a child on a tire swing, the seven-year-old boy laughing, front tooth missing. Images of the boy as a man in his late twenties, eyes darkened, pale skin slick with sweat. Please, Dad … I swear I’ll pay you back. Just a loan so I can get on my feet again.

You mean get on your feet until you can score another hit of coke, or crack, or whatever you call it now. Norm Sr.’s voice. When Norm Sr. had gone into Dade County to see the boy. Norm Jr. shaking, sick, deep in debt, ready to go infinitely deeper in debt to keep up his habit. Over my dead body you’ll get more money for this shit. You wanna come home, work at the store … that’s all right. We’ll get you into the county clinic.… Images of the boy, the man now, sweeping dishes and coffee cups from the tabletop and stalking from the café. Memory of Norm Sr. weeping for the first time in almost fifty years.

Bremen blinked as Norm Sr. handed him his change. “I …” began Bremen, then realized that he could not say that he was sorry. “I’m not a drug dealer,” he said again. “I know how it must look. The teller gave me the balance in fifties and twenties … our savings.” Bremen popped the top off the RC Cola and took a long drink. “I just flew down from Philadelphia,” he said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “My … my wife died last Saturday.”

It was the first time Bremen had said those words and they sounded flat and patently false to him. He took another sip and looked down, confused.

Norm’s thoughts were churned, but the red heat was gone. Maybe. What the hell … fella can be strung out from his missus dyin’ as much as from drugs. Suspicious of everybody these days. He looks like I did when Alma Jean passed on … he looks like hell.

“You thinking of doin’ some fishin’?” said Norm Sr.

“Fishing …” Bremen finished the drink and looked up at the shelves stocked with lures, small cardboard boxes of bobbers, and reels. He saw cane and fiberglass rods stacked against the far wall. “Yesss,” he said slowly, surprising himself with his answer, “I’d like to do some fishing.”

Norm Sr. nodded. “You need any tackle? Bait? A license? Or you got that already?”

Bremen licked his lips, feeling something returning to the insides of his skull. His scoured, bruised skull. “I need everything,” he said, almost in a whisper.

Norm Sr. grinned. “Well, mister, you got the money for it.” He began moving around, offering Bremen choices on tackle, bait, and rental rods. Bremen wanted no choices; he took the first of everything that Norm Sr. offered. The stack on the countertop grew.

Bremen went back to the cooler and fished around for a second bottle, feeling somehow liberated at the thought of that also going on his growing tab.

“You need a place to stay? It’s easier if you stay out on one of the islands if you’re gonna fish the lake.”

Was that swamp he’d mistaken for the Everglades a lake? “A place to stay?” Bremen repeated, seeing in the reflecting glass of Norm Sr.’s slow thoughts that the man was sure that he was retarded in his grief. “Yes. I’d like to stay here a few days.”

Norm Sr. turned back to the silent, seated man. Bremen opened his thoughts to the dark figure there, but almost no language came through. The man’s thoughts churned like an infinitely slow washing machine turning a few rags and bundles of images, but almost no words at all. Bremen almost gasped at the newness of this.

“Verge, didn’t that Chicago fella check out of Copely Isle Two?”

Verge nodded, and in a sudden shift of light from the only window, Bremen could see now that he was an old man, toothless, liver spots almost glowing in the errant touch of daylight.

Norm Sr. turned back. “Verge don’t talk so good after his last stroke … aphasia is what Doc Myers calls it … but his mind’s all right. We got an opening on one of the island cabins. Forty-two dollars a day, plus rental of one of the boats an’ outboards. Or Verge could take you out … no charge for that. Good spots right from the island.”

Bremen nodded. Yes. Yes to everything.