Ted Krever - Mindbenders

The screams pulled me into the hall and through the open bathroom door, to where Uncle Dave lay in the tub dead; blank-faced, stupid-looking, lights-out-nobodys-home dead.

The tinny screaming poured out of the tube on the counter by the window, where the Prime Minister of India was getting shot on CNN. The anchors scrambled to make sense of the pictures-the frantic crowd stampeding the exits, true believers moaning and pleading behind the podium, bodyguards taking down the gunman in a pile in the corner-everybody screaming, screams in bunches and too late, surely, hopeless, useless, for who, in that insane moment, was listening?

Only those of us across the world, on the far side of the room, where Uncle Daves head was lolling crazy, like a cup tipped on its side in a saucer, his tongue hanging, eyes open, bits of brain bobbing among the soapscum, the blood rolling down his cheek and fanning out in the water like spider veins. I reached out to touch his cracked forehead and then his eye, just to be sure, to know. A little hole nippled the glass of the window, cracks radiating like the blood in the water.

It was right in front of me but then, I wasnt there anymore. I was receding fast, pulling away like a tortoise into its shell. Its not like I could deny what was happening but I did anyway. Thats how I did everything in those days. I knew more than I understood, as Renn would tell me later; more than I could bear to understand.

If Im going to tell this story, you have to know how I was back then, back when I could shut out a bullet through the brain, back before I knew what it was to know, back before I even knew him as Renn-back before everything, really.

I turned the TV off and suddenly the place felt too quiet, too empty, echoing-barn empty. Somebody should have been screaming for Uncle Dave, except there was nobody to scream for him but me and I was lost inside myself. The screams rang in my head, same as they had for a long time.

I wandered to the front door, looking away, way away. A little breeze rustled the willows and the long grass, not that it cooled anything off. If you could sell Florida air by the pound, youd be richer than Gates. Someone was out there, surely not far off, staring back at me-someone with a gun.

Instead, I heard a fluttering and looked up at a pelican gliding overhead, working its heavy wings, pumping air like some wheezing arthritic climbing steps. It circled the house and the marsh full of vines and camellias, sassafrass and begonias, the hoots and hollers of a thousand birds, the hissing of the big snakes and gators and me and Uncle Daves body.

And then the back door opened and there came Mr. Dulles up off the porch, not real tall but way too skinny and looking like he hadnt slept in a week like usual. He marched in with that clunky walk of his, just stopping off on his way someplace else, someplace maybe hed forgot already. You live in the Everglades, nobody has someplace else to go, at least not someplace they cant go tomorrow. Mr. Dulles didnt look like tomorrow; he looked like now.

Wheres your stuff? he said.

I pointed to my room. I didnt know him much but enough that he wouldnt have expected more. Dave had guys in the house who stuttered, guys who put their fists through the wall and guys who didnt know the difference between a wall and a window and a door. I was the one who didnt talk.

Get it together. He didnt even look me in the eye, just slipped by and away.

I didnt really want to go to my room since it meant passing the bathroom, the smell setting in and all, but I went and pulled some clothes together and my toothbrush and a couple books. Not much for living in a mans house for a year but I had nothing when I came and little or nothing left over once I put in for rent and food.

Mr. Dulles was in Uncle Daves room, tearing apart his bureau. The clothes were on the floor and he was pulling out the drawers when I came in.

I picked a drawer off the pile and shook it in his face. Dave kept them locked.

Not anymore, Mr. Dulles said, pulling out the middle one, inspecting the sides and back and tossing it on top of the others. The man was shifty, slippery; I never trusted him, not that Id ever had need to.

He seemed to have known Uncle Dave a long time-together, they never had to finish a sentence. Dulles lived farther out in the glades, they said, someplace where he didnt have to pay rent or talk to anybody for days at a time if he didnt want to.

When he came over, he would sit in the corner while we watched TV or rooted for a game or played music. He never seemed to be doing what we were doing; it was more like he had a quota for being with people every once in a while.

He wouldnt play cards. It wouldnt be fair, hed say and Uncle Dave would nod like that was obvious and no more about it. Shifty, like I say. Now he looked up and said, You ready?

I nodded. Maybe I shrugged. It was about the same thing; I didnt know what I was doing anyhow.

He pulled the bottom drawer out, tilted it backward and upside down and then peered inside the bureau. Ah! he said and pulled out a taped-up bundle of cloth. He ripped it open to show me a piece of paper and a small key. Lets go, he said, heading for the back door.

It threw me, him heading out that way and suddenly I heard my own voice: You want to go this way? Nobody knows this way.

You do, he said, like that was an answer.

The back was the water side. The weeds between the house and the water were like eight feet high and the path jumped around tree trunks and dipped under hanging willows but now Mr. Dulles led me straight down like somebodyd painted a yellow line through the swamp.

I didnt like this. I had no interest in going anyplace with him. Of course, while Im thinking this, hes not slowing down, so were practically on the dock already.

Ill drop you at the VA, he said, stepping into my boat like that was his, too, on the way through town. Okay? He held out his hand for my bag but I didnt offer it.

I live here. It was weird hearing my voice-it had been a long time. I couldnt feel my mouth moving but there were the words so I was talking.

Nobody lives here anymore, he said, pulling the bag off my shoulder and throwing it in the boat. I didnt see his mouth moving either.

What does that ? was as far as I got before the air flashed white-hot all around and blew me off the dock. Mr. Dulles grabbed my shirt in mid-air and dragged me down onto the floor of the boat. I scrambled onto the bow seat as he pulled a couple hard strokes away on the oars-the bow line was gone, burnt from the blast; he didnt even have to cast off. The whole curtain of eight-foot weeds was blazing all around us.

I could see where the house was-where it had been. A fireball curled out of the black smoke, crackling burning itself out as it sucked up into the sky overhead. It looked like the oil blasts outside Fallujah. I think it was Fallujah-I have trouble keeping places straight.

Mr. Dulles rowed up under a stand of low trees, put up the oars and held a finger to his mouth to warn me, not that I needed warning.

The breeze wasnt much but it began to part the smoke and we could make out the men around the house and hear their voices, if not what they were saying. They gave the once-over to the wreckage and started uphill, back toward the road.

Mr. Dulles was hunched on his seat, watching, humming to himself. His hands were on his thighs, palms up, fingers curled inward, meditation-style. Every once in a while, his eyes would flicker with the pupils up under the lids. It was gross, actually.

When I heard their car engines starting up the hill, I got upset-I teared up, to tell the truth. I hadnt heard them coming, when it mightve done some good. You never hear what you really need to.