“Get that thing out of my face! Even if you do have this on tape, none of it is admissible in court. You people deliberately set me up!”
“Ahhh, but it is admissible, and quite desirably so, as you should very well expect, Mr. Harrison, in matters central to the moral fitness of a custodial parent. How do you think the news agencies will react to your acceptance of and participation in our little wager? Or perhaps the bar association?”
Piper withdrew a stack of papers and a pen from inside his jacket. “We are no longer recording, Mr. Harrison. Please sign this consent decree. It indicates your desire to award permanent custody of Adam to Dr. Harrison, thus obviating the need for the hearing tomorrow. I’m sure you will find that everything is properly addressed within the document.”
Harrison grabbed the papers and scanned them. After a long moment, he took the pen. As he signed, he saw Piper replace the earphone and listen. Harrison looked back down the hill toward Lynn. The white sweater accentuated her long dark hair blowing in the wind. She held a small microphone with a cord trailing into the car, and Harrison could see her lips move as she spoke into it. “What is she saying, as if I really need to know?”
Piper clasped both hands together on his chest and chuckled again, his gelatinous body jiggling as he tried to find breath to speak. “Just this, Mr. Harrison,” Piper managed between snorts. “Checkmate.”
Harrison let loose with a string of profanities shouted at his wife, angry spittle flying from his mouth. Piper roared with laughter, but then interrupted Harrison suddenly with an outstretched hand. Piper touched his finger to his ear again, listening.
“I’ve just been instructed to make you a cash settlement offer, Mr. Harrison. Apparently, Dr. Harrison does not wish for the boy to be fatherless, nor for you to lose the ability to contribute child support. She has authorized me to present you with enough cash to pay off whatever stake there is against you. In exchange for the dog.”
Piper thumbed through a stack of cash and pulled out a chunk of bills. “Please count these,” he instructed as he tossed the still-banded remainder to Harrison. “I would hate for my count to be off.”
Two minutes later, Dexter Harrison stood alone in the park, the wind now colder in the twilight. He quietly cursed as Piper pushed the blue baby carriage down the park path with one chubby hand and struggled to hold onto the tugging dog leash with the other.
Scott Bartels
Swear Net by the Moon
from Tamaqua
I was only nine the first time I was on fire. It was during a family vacation, or as close to one as we ever got seeing as Momma and Daddy gave up tryin’ to travel together since before I can remember. Winter break Momma would take us to Granny’s farm in Verde Pointe (good to wash the sin of the city out from under our nails, Daddy would say as he helped us pack the car). Summertime, me and him and David would strike for the beach in Mobile, or as near a beach as Alabama gulf coast comes. One time I asked him why we never went nowhere all together (except Carnival every February, and that just to shout “Repent!” at the revelers) and he just smiled that crooked smile of his — the one I later suspected he gleaned from Elvis and practiced in the cracked bathroom mirror all through high school — and said they always would fuss and fight over schedules and directions and all that shit. Not that Daddy ever said “shit” in his life. That glib hound-dog grin was as raucous as he ever got.
But that ain’t here nor there. It was during a summer trip and we had the tent up and the lines still in the water and a camp fire going under a new moon sky. A sky like that always makes me wonder how the shepherds made up all those constellations; sky like that has so many stars so close together, what you ought to do is make pictures out of the black spaces between them. Sayin’ shit like that always got David to raggin’ on me. Three years older and four years dumber and it was easier to bully and humiliate me than be overshadowed by my imagination. So while I was staring up at the rivulets of black creases between distant suns teeming with potential, David pushed me ass over teakettle into that camp fire.
I howled and rolled around in the sand long after the flames from my clothes and hair and eyelashes were out, trying to worm my way into the soft, gritty earth and save everyone the trouble of a decent burial. Daddy was in the tent and didn’t come out ’til I was screamin’ and writhing. My brother told him I was lookin’ up and musta got dizzy and fallen in. And later, after I got done floppin’ in the moist granules and spent shells; after I ran down to the ocean, refusing to heed my Daddy’s shouts; after I learned just how salt water feels on a fresh burn; after all that, I said: Yeah, Daddy, that’s just how it happened.
He tried to help me take my mind off the pain, joked about how I’d been “bathed in fire.”
“Speak us some tongues, Esau,” he egged me. (And yeah, that really is my given name, so now you know why I tell everyone to call me Creole, even though I ain’t one.) Didn’t take me to no doctor, though. Didn’t see no doctor ’til the day we got home and Momma took one look at my singed face and mostly scarred skull and that was the only time I ever saw my folks have it out. I remember Momma sayin’ something about Daddy bein’ stupid to think God would heal this one and I remember the slap (“Don’t doubt Him and don’t never doubt me”) and two hours later at Sisters of Mercy I remember me and Momma both getting bandages. To this day I still got no eyelashes and the crown of my bald spot is crinkly like pudding you left in the fridge for two weeks.
I said all that just to say this: the second time I was on fire was two weeks ago. Chase, this guy I’d been buying from, swore to me he had some China White. Got it right cheap, he said, and me being a regular, he’d lay some off to me discount. So I got me a big idea that if I could buy low and sell high I’d be on the road to redemption. And deep down, Faith always wanted a stock broker. So I got a big stash from Chase on credit. Figured to peddle some and pay back inside a week. Only I sampled a little before I sold the first gram. It cooked up nice and I had visions of sugarplums dancing in my head as I loaded up the needle. Dreamin’ about showin’ up at Faith’s doorstep with about ten grand in my pocket. Dream didn’t last long after the spike though, and this damn sure wasn’t China White.
If this were the movies, I’d tell you I knew the smack was bad the second I pushed the plunger. But that wasn’t the case. I watched the little pink cloud float into the liquid, like crimson fingers reaching from my veins to grab hold of the fix and draw it inside. I love that moment, when you know the high is coming and nothing that’s happened up to that very second has any bearing and everything in front of you is going to be fine as wine, right as rain and all that shit. People who don’t get it will ask: who would do that, stick himself in the arm with a needle. But I ask you: a moment when absolutely your whole prior existence is (as Daddy would say) washed away and all your tomorrows are sunshine and peppermint — man, who wouldn’t do that? I hear smack use is at an all time high, but I maintain it’s still the best kept secret in sanity.
So it was maybe four, five minutes after I sunk the spike before I knew I was in trouble. I was just drifting along but I could hear a buzzing, like a mosquito you can’t quite find who keeps whispering: “Here I come; gonna get you; won’t feel me ’til I slide out your skin and skit away, taking a piece of you with me and poisoning you in the bargain.” Heard them kind of skeeters plenty of times on Daddy’s summertime beach retreats.