There is a rare anger that accompanies unwilling separation.
It’s an orchid of fury, sprouting in the stinking manure of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence when normal existence is split in two-the side you loved that is gone and the side you now occupy that is isolated, strange, freakish, and alone.
You wait for the universe to right itself-you wait because you’re human and humans are innately optimistic-and then it doesn’t, and you feel like a sucker.
You are the original fool, a butt of nature’s large, cruel joke.
That’s when the flame begins to flicker, low and cold.
You’re not mad at the world and you don’t want to bluntly attack the innocent-no, it’s a sharp, laser-focused anger. The concentrated nucleus is narrowly defined to kick in the teeth and bust the bones of the specific people who did this thing to you.
I did not know for sure who those people were.
I did know that I would find him, or her, or them.
I also knew that one of my teeth was loose, Harry was shivering in my arms, and I was so oddly calm as I rang the Windy City Gym buzzer that I was probably in shock.
Footsteps echoed through the empty warehouse, a steel door on wheels unlatched and slid, and I heard Willy’s deliberate padding down metal stairs. An eye squinted through a peephole, more locks slid, and he looked me up and down through steel-framed glasses. After an examination of my bloodstained disco dress, fist-marked forehead, and throat decorated with a necklace of purple bruises, he said, “So. How was the dance?”
I dumped Harry in his arms, sprinted upstairs into the shadowy gym, and went directly to the nearest heavy bag. Its bulky form hung from a chain, swaying in a slow, threatening circle, and I began to hit it with bare knuckles. My arms shot from my shoulders as I circled the bag, throwing the oldest combination in the book-left jab, left jab, hard right, left hook-and felt tears mix with sweat until my hands were as bloody as my dress. Willy tried to stop me but I shoved him away, continuing to pummel leather until I couldn’t lift my arms anymore, then collapsed to the mat sobbing. Willy counted silently to ten and then said what he always said to a fighter who was down.
“Get up, Sara Jane.”
I did, slowly, and went into his arms. Willy patted my back until I was done crying, telling me whatever it was, it would be okay.
I stepped back, wiped at my eyes, and said, “I don’t think so. Not this time.”
Willy had lived a long, tough life, both in and out of the ring, and knew there were times that required action rather than reassurance. He led me across the gym to his tiny apartment, handed me clean worn sweats and an ancient satin robe that read “Willy ‘Chilly’ Williams” across its back, and motioned me toward the bathroom. When I emerged, scrubbed clean of blood but suddenly unable to stop shaking, a glass of hot sweet tea waited at a wooden table. Willy set down a slice of buttered toast and a bowl of cold green grapes, saying, “You need it. You’ve been running on all cylinders and now you’re out of gas.”
“Where’s Harry?”
He nodded at a threadbare couch where the little dog rested on a pile of blankets, his side wrapped perfectly in gauze and tape as only a good corner man could do. Willy nudged my shoulder gently and said, “Go on.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t trust yourself right now. Eat.”
He knew something I didn’t know because even though food was the last thing on my mind, I devoured it, along with another slice of toast and two more glasses of tea. When I finished, I quit shaking and started talking. I told him all that had happened, from the scene between my dad and Uncle Buddy to the terrible moment when I walked into my house to the confrontation with Detective Smelt. By the time I was done, the cold flame in my gut was burning brightly again. Willy rose from the table, opened a cabinet, took out a battered tin box, and removed a single cigarette.
“I quit twenty-five years ago,” he said. “But I always keep one on hand for emergencies.” He sat down, scratched a match, and lit it.
“What do I do now?” I said.
“You sure can’t go to the police,” he said. “I’ve known a lot of cops in my time, some good, some bad, some ten times more crooked than the crooks they’re supposed to catch. Whoever this Detective Smelt is, she’s not playing by any cop rulebook I ever heard of. She wants something and she’s obviously willing to break the law-hell, several laws-to get it. Seems like that thing is you.” Willy went silent, smoking and thinking, then said, “Thing is, police are a fraternity-they’re tight, and they talk about everything. The problem is that the good cops don’t know when they’re sharing dangerous info with bad cops.”
“So I can’t speak to any of them.”
“Too risky, at least for now,” he said, tapping an ash into a chipped coffee cup. “I’m more concerned about the freak in the ski mask.”
“Like I said, he was burly and he could take a punch. . or at least a kick,” I said, suddenly recalling the first time I met Willy and how he described my uncle’s ability as a boxer to take a beating and keep on going. “Just like Uncle Buddy,” I said.
“What?” he said slowly. “Buddy?”
“He threatened our family, Willy. Today, at the bakery. He warned my dad not to get in his way, or else.”
“You didn’t see his face, Sara Jane. You don’t know for sure it was him.”
“But. .”
“But nothing. Before you go accusing your uncle of. . whatever. . you better be damn sure he’s guilty. If he’s not, there’s no one, and I mean no one, you’re going to need more than ol’ Buddy.”
“Need?” I said, incredulous. “What would I need him for?”
“Listen to me, girl. Of course I know about the bad blood between him and your dad. . but they’re still blood,” he said. “Buddy is your blood, too. The time may come when he’s the only one you can count on.”
“No, never. You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “You didn’t see Uncle Buddy try to hit my dad at my grandpa’s funeral. You didn’t hear the oaths he swore against our family. Besides you, I’m in this all alone. So I’ll ask again. . now what?”
Willy stared at me with his hands folded on the table like he was praying. A line of smoke snaked toward the ceiling as he said, “The worst thing I ever saw was my own child’s dead body. It isn’t natural, your baby dead before you. ’Course she wasn’t no baby. She was just three years older than you are now, nineteen.”
I knew that Willy’s daughter had died a long time ago but he never discussed her, at least not with me. Carefully, I asked, “How did she die?”
“Cars and alcohol,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. “When you see the body of someone you love who died too soon, you. . die a little with them. You didn’t see any bodies in that house, Sara Jane, and you’re alive. So, what you do now is operate on the assumption that there aren’t any. You assume they are alive, too.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged, stubbing out the cigarette. “Find them.”
“How?”
Willy sighed and pulled a hand over his face, and I saw that he was an old man. “Tomorrow, my girl,” he said. “We’ll talk it out tomorrow.”
“Do you really think they’re alive?”
“I don’t know what to think because I’m confused and tired, and so are you.”
“I won’t sleep. There’s no way.”
“You have to, and despite what you think, you will,” he said. “The Crow’s Nest is clean, empty, and quiet. You have it all to yourself.”
The gym had been a factory a hundred years earlier. Back then, as laborers sweated over assembly lines, a boss kept tabs on the operation from a small wooden office suspended from the ceiling high above the activity-the original “eye in the sky.” That old office was still bolted to the roof, complete with large glass windows. There had always been a steady procession of boxers at Windy City over the years, pursuing careers as pro fighters-a few made it, most didn’t-all of them young and broke. Willy took pity on these up-and-comers and outfitted the office with a couple of old army cots, a floor lamp, and an ancient TV. The steel staircase and catwalk that once led up to it had been ripped down for scrap decades ago; a winch and pulley lifted the furnishings into place. Select fighters were allowed to stay rent free while they trained, as long as they kept the Crow’s Nest clean, used no alcohol or drugs, and mopped the gym every night. To reach it required shimmying up a long, knotted rope; once a person was inside, he could see everything, every corner of the gym, just like sailors who occupied a ship’s crow’s nest; thus the nickname. The boxers who currently occupied it were gone, fighting on an undercard in Granite City, and wouldn’t return for a week.
“Try to sleep,” Willy said. “We’ll figure out our next move in the morning.”
“Okay, Willy,” I said, rising from the table, suddenly so aching and bone weary that I was unsure I could make it all the way up the rope.
“I’m gonna move the Lincoln around back, out of sight,” he said, and I handed him the keys. Harry’s ears perked up at the jingle of metal and he whimpered painfully.
“I’d better take him along,” I said, lifting and wrapping him around my neck. “He might need me.” Willy followed me out to the gym and stood beneath the rope while I made the trip like an inchworm, Harry whining all the way. I pulled open the trapdoor, clambered inside, and looked down at Willy, who waved up.
“Good night,” he said, his voice echoing softly around the vast brick room.
“Good night,” I said.
“Sara Jane?”
“Yeah?”
He wiped at his nose, sniffled, and said,
“Your world seems empty and broken,
but it ain’t completely true.
Even though you feel alone right now,
just remember that ol’ Willy. .
“Well. . what I mean is. .”
“I love you too,” I said, and waved back before pulling up the rope and closing the trapdoor.
After Willy’s footsteps crossed the gym, everything was silent except for Harry’s labored breathing. I made him comfortable and scratched between his ears until he fell asleep. It was when I reclined on a cot and noticed the old TV that I remembered the mini camera from Frank Sinatra’s head. I took it from my purse and went to the television, which had a green glass screen set into a wooden cabinet, and looked more like furniture than electronics. Its dial spun to change channels, it had push buttons for volume, and a rabbit-ear antenna sat on top. The only nod to the twenty-first century was a DVD player attached to it. The mini camera had no accessories, but Lou taught me that almost all electronics are compatible despite their age, since a simple cable is still the heart of the technology-just find something that plugs into something else and it might work. I tried all of the DVD’s plug-ins, first the red, then the yellow, but it was the black that fit.
I turned on the television and its screen yawned and wiggled.
I flipped on the DVD player, and it whirred weirdly, trying to accommodate the camera plugged into its gut.
Finally I pushed Play on the mini camera, stared at the TV screen, and when it stopped wiggling, I watched someone punch my dad in the head.
I gasped, sucking in air around me, and covered my mouth with both hands at the sight of him reeling onto our big leather couch. He tried to stand but was clearly stunned as a thick man in a plaid suit swung his fist again, cracking my dad’s nose. I heard my mom scream off camera. I watched the man turn and when he did, my breath caught in my throat-I saw that terrifying ski mask. He left my dad and sprang in the direction of my mom’s outburst. My dad struggled to his feet and went after him, and I heard something break, something shatter, and then he came spinning back to the couch, and there was Ski Mask Guy bounding after him, raising a baseball bat high in the air-
And then the screen became a blizzard of pixels.
I was ice from brain to toes.
I could not move or think, breathe, or feel.
All I could do was stare at the tiny crackling black-and-white dots and allow myself to fall into them.
And then, zap! The picture was back, and I jumped, and it was my dad again, slumped on the couch with his nose and mouth streaming blood, his hands tied behind his back. Even with the poor picture, I could tell from the weird angle of his left leg that it was broken. Somewhere far away Lou yelled and a door slammed, and then Harry was barking and my mother was screaming, and I saw every sound, every plea for help register horribly on my dad’s face. His chin dipped onto his chest, and when it grew momentarily quiet, he lifted his head and looked into the camera.
“Sara Jane,” he said in a raspy whisper.
“Dad?” I said. “Daddy?”
“Please. . I pray to God. . that you find this tape,” he said. “There’s no reason you should, I have no hope, except. . except that you’re you, Sara Jane. You may not be aware of it, but there’s something in you that’s. . so strong.” He stopped then, trying to hold back tears, swallowing them, and said, “You were right, I should have told you about the family, about the bakery, and about me. Especially about me. But now there’s no time. . ” And he jerked his head, hearing something I couldn’t. He grimaced, straining against the ropes that bound his hands, and freed them, rubbing his wrists and flexing his fingers. He looked nervously over his shoulder and then started speaking again, faster and more desperate, saying, “They might hear me, he might. . listen carefully, sweetheart. Listen inside my words and behind my words.”
I moved close to the screen.
I touched his face and felt cold glass.
He looked at me and whispered, “Sara Jane. . go to the God of Fire. Go to it, go through it, and discover all of its secrets. The God of Fire, Sara Jane. . are you listening to me? Its secrets will save you. The God of Fire. .”
“God of what? Who were you talking to?” a woman’s voice demanded, high and shrill, asking the question off camera; the poor quality of the audio allowed only that the voice was feminine. Ski Mask Guy lumbered into the frame, his back to the camera, as the voice shrieked, “Who you were talking to? What did you just say?”
Weakly, my father said, “Go to hell.”
Ski Mask Guy yanked him upright, my dad grimacing on broken bones. There was a second or two of imbalance and my dad seized it, twisting and throwing a perfect left hook, fist cracking on jaw, and Ski Mask Guy went into a slow tim-berrr, like a redwood about to fall. But then he found his feet, shook his head, and lunged with both hands. They wrapped around my dad’s neck just as they’d wrapped around mine, and I felt them again, watching my dad try vainly to loosen the punishing death grip.
“Repeat it or you’re dead,” the woman hissed. “Who were you talking to?”
My dad’s face was tightening from lack of oxygen, his eyes wide and bulging, and his fingers dug frantically into Ski Mask Guy’s hands as he uttered a few last words before the tape ran out.
I heard what he said but was unsure what he meant.
Was it an answer to the question-“Who were you talking to?”
Nobody! Nobody! No. .!
Or, so much worse-was it a final plea for mercy?
No, Buddy! No, Buddy! No. .!
The recesses of a troubled brain at rest are terrible places because they have no boundaries-no backward or forward or beginning or end. They are timeless, bottomless pits where a sleeping soul goes to sort out its worries and woes.
The body’s electricity hums at a lower rate while blood flow slackens its pace.
Limbs are immobilized, eyelids flicker.
Whispered clues escape moving lips.
Meanwhile, the subconscious spins like an awful, haunted buzz saw. It turns faster and faster, ripping through the day’s events, shredding forgotten memories, and slicing to bits all hope for the future. Among that splintered debris, it searches for an answer, or if not an answer, resolution, or if not resolution, peace.
Willy was right-somehow I slept.
It was not restful sleep.
I did not wake peacefully or with resolution.
But I did have an answer.
I blinked awake late Saturday afternoon knowing exactly where I was and what had happened. Gray sunlight leaked through the glass windows and Harry had somehow made it to my cot, his head on my chest. I stared at the ceiling, parsing my dream, which had been less a dream than a search through the archives of my brain until I stopped on the day long ago when I rushed into the kitchen of the bakery, excited and upset over my first kiss, and melodramatically threatened to climb inside the oven.
I remembered my dad and grandpa overreacting in a way that seemed silly then, but meaningful now.
I remembered how Uncle Buddy was as confused as I was over their outburst, having no idea what they were talking about.
Then my dream switched to my literature teacher, Ms. Ishikawa.
She was pacing the front of a classroom, relating a subject that should have been boring except that she was always so excited, and her excitement was contagious.
Mandi Fishbaum stopped buffing her nails, Walter J. Thurber moved the hair out of his eyes, Gina stopped whispering, and Doug set aside his laptop as Ms. Ishikawa recounted with great drama the violent, stormy world of the Roman gods.
Jupiter was the king of the gods, the ruler of sky and thunder.
His wife, Juno, was goddess of the Roman Empire.
Together, they produced a misshapen little boy who eventually developed into civilization’s most famous pyromaniac.
Lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, I recalled the name of their son, who would one day become the God of Fire.
It was stamped in capital letters on the door of the bakery oven.
Vulcan.