“My fault,”Daniel says, knowing he must, knowing any other answer will cause more trouble than his taking the blame.
Crane picks up the pistol, checks to see ifthere are any cartridges.
Daniel watches him, wonders ifCrane knows how far his daughter, Mercy, has gone to escape his world.
“Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da…”
“What the hell is he saying?”Crane asks.
“He’s all right,”Derek says.“Don’t worry about that.”Then, to Daniel:“Whose gun is this?”
“Mine.”
“Yours?”Derek tucks his chin in, shakes his head.“Why’d you fire it?”
“Derek, come on.Obviously it was an accident.”
“That’s a hell ofan accident, man.”
“Was anyone hurt? Did it hit anything?”
“Scared the hell out ofat least two people.Enough to call.”Daniel sees it playing out.Derek does not believe him, he knows Daniel hasn’t brought a concealed weapon to this house, but he’s going to let it pass.
“Is this weapon registered in your name?”Crane asks.
”Yes, it is.”
“Mind ifwe take a look?”
“I don’t have it with me,”Daniel says.He turns away from Crane, directs his request to Derek.“How about I bring in the paperwork a little later on?”
Derek looks at Iris, Hampton, and Nelson on the porch, and the three ofthem are silent, their faces blank, their gazes slightly averted, as his eyes carefully move over them.Satisfied, Derek turns back toward Daniel and, indicating Ruby, he says,“You’re carrying pretty precious cargo there, buddy.”
“I know, Derek.I know.”
“It would be a hell ofa thing.”
“I know.”
“Kate know you’re here?”
“No.”
Derek nods, his lower lip slightly extended.After a silence that seems to go on and on, he asks,“You all right?”
“Me?”asks Daniel.
”Yeah.”
“I’m fine, Derek.Just a stupid mistake.”
Derek gestures to Crane, time to leave.Crane hands the pistol back to Daniel.
“You okay?”Derek asks Ruby.
”I’m fine,”she says.“It was stupid.”
While they are talking, Iris, Hampton, and Nelson go inside their house.Daniel doesn’t notice until he hears the door close behind them.
He only wants to go home, but he drives to his office instead.He can no longer afford to pay SheilaAlvarez’s salary—nor can he bear her occa-sional disdain—and he has cut her hours to two halfdays a week.When he lets himself into the office he is surprised to see her there.She is at her desk, behind a pile ofwhat looks like at least a hundred files.
“What are you doing here, Sheila?”
“I’ve been going through the files.There’s a lot ofpeople who owe you money, did you know that?”
He shakes his head no.
She looks at him and then she, too, shakes her head.“You poor thing,”
she says.“Just look at you.”She swivels her chair, puts her back to him, and resumes entering numbers on a calculator.“Your parents were here about twenty minutes ago,”she says.“They dropped an envelope on your desk.”
He goes into his office.He and Iris cleared offhis desk last time they made love here, and now the only things that are on it are his telephone and the envelope left by Carl and Julia.He opens it.
Dear Dan,
You’re going to think we’ve gone senile, but we’ve decided not to change our wills, after all.The Raptor Center can do without us, and we’re going to keep things the way they were.
Much love,
Mother and Dad He stares at the words on the page until they blur and swim away.So the birds won’t be getting his parents’money after all.He buries his face in his hands.Was this why he’d come all this way? Had he just been given what he had been seeking all along, this small, glancing caress?
He is exhausted, he feels unequal to the task ofhis life.He is not put together for such difficulties.
Three hours later, at two in the afternoon, Daniel is in his house, drinking a warm beer, staring out his small living room window at what he can see ofthe white oak in front, he is crouched deep down into the cellar ofhimself, waiting for the storm to pass.He does his best to speak kindly and rationally to himself, but he is inconsolable.He thinks ofthe tone ofIris’s voice as she spoke to him from her porch, the distance, the contempt.As soon as there was anger she spoke to him as ifhe were, first and foremost, a white man.What happened to love bringing history to its knees? How could all those old adversities be having their way?
He weeps.Stops.Drinks.Belches.Stares.Weeps.Weeps.Tries to talk himself down, as ifhis life were a drug, a bad, a terrible, a most power-ful and devastating drug that he must survive while it works its way through his system.
He has lost everything, and there is nothing he can say to himself that can change that.
Kate will never trust him with Ruby again.
Recoil.Try to think ofsomething else.
Hampton.No.Not now.Something else.
Monkey mind swings from branch to branch.
A perfect, pulverizing memory offalling down those stairs.
My God, there is no safe thought, nothing in his mind that is not lethal.
Ruby’s hands.Kate’s kiss.
Those boys in their masks.
That rocket’s fire in the deep wooded night.
And then, most terribly ofall, wherever the monkey swings there is Iris.Her shoes.The smell ofher scalp, her breath.The ten thousand de-tails ofher life fill the tree and then fly off, a terrifying flutter ofwings.
Cut the tree down, pull out the roots, and a river takes its place.And in that river she is there.Her hands, the taste ofher, her hair, her darkness, her car, her keys, what she might say next.
The phone is on his lap, but it does not ring, nor can he dial it.He cannot hear her voice, not that voice from the porch.
Hours pass.Darkness bleeds across the floor, he pushes his chair back, afraid to have it touch him.
Then, atlast, the phone rings, but he does not answer.It chirps in his lap, the machine comes on, he hears his own terrible voice, and then a dial tone.Night fills the room like floodwater.He lifts his feet, tucks them beneath him.
At eight o’clock, Iris arrives.He first sees her headlights flare against his windows, then he hears her footsteps.She lets herselfin with-outknocking.
“Daniel?”she says softly, into the darkness.
He clears his throat, afraid ofhis own voice.“Right here,”he says.
She fumbles for a lamp, turns it on, the bulb dull, quite helpless against the night.She is wearing a redT-shirt, baggy shorts, sandals.She is holding a clear blue plastic container offood.
“What are you doing?”she asks.
He can tell by her face what he must look like.There’s nothing to do about that now.
“Thinking.”
She sighs.She understands what that means.
”That was so terrible, Daniel.I’m sorry.”
“
