Night Navigation Page 22

  21 : Struts

  FUCKING PHONE. Just when he sinks into the nothingness, they drag him back with their machine-words: Rozmer. Charlie. His mom. Mark presses both pillows against his ears.

  "Mark, just want to make sure you saw my note…" Even with the pillowcase stuffed halfway to his brain, every word in stereo. "The Wild Life Control man probably won't get there until tomorrow, but he says he can definitely fix it so no more bats…" He heaves the pillow over the railing full force. The machine crashes to the floor. "I'll drop the car off early tomorrow so you can get to the periodontist…" He goes down two steps at a time. "Well…"

  He mutes the machine, turns off the ringer. Days and days since he's really slept. Meds not doing their thing: red ghoulies hanging out on the edges. He opens the hall door, then Tess's door a crack. No Tess, no dogs. He looks out the window. Tess's truck is parked right where they left it. Then he sees her sitting on the picnic table, Queenie and Luke underneath.

  A full sheet of paper stuck to the coffee can. His mom's message. Perfect black marker block print, second draft. He sets the paper aside and loads the coffeemaker: high-test. Rolls a cigarette. He is not going out to smoke. He doesn't want to talk to Tess. He doesn't want to talk to anyone. No meetings. No check-ins with his sponsor. He loads his coffee with sugar and starts up the stairs, then he backs down again and wads the message into a ball, sticks it in his shorts pocket. Maybe he'll read it later; maybe he won't.

  He removes the towel he's tacked over the window, but there's no air out there, only a heavy blanket of swamp-heat. He turns the fan on full, turns it on his sweating chest. He lies so his head is at the bottom of the bed, so the sun doesn't blind him. Everything sticks. He smokes, drinks his coffee. Maybe he's going to make it through this; maybe he isn't. He needs something, something to make it semi-bearable. He could get something, somewhere. Nothing heavy duty. Just a toke of hope. Not through any of the Morletti connections. Somebody else. Who? Get something going with his music again. Weeks since he's written any songs, really played. Everything turns to shit. At least there's this: Rudy's ass is in jail and he is going to have access to a car. He unwads the ball of paper, smoothes out some wrinkles, then holds it up to the sun.

  Bats flying around in my bedroom woke me up about 4:30. I turned on the light: three of them were hanging from the overhead globe in my ceiling. The sliding door in my closet is still completely sealed, so I have no idea how they're getting in. I think they must have already been in the room when we duct-taped. Would you please locate them and put them out? You and Tess should close yourselves off again tonight. I left a message for the Wild Life person. Car's by the barn, so you can get to the periodontist. Call me when you get up and going. Mom.

  Barking, hullabaloo, the dogs roar up: their "someone's coming" frenzy. The noise trails off down the drive. Mark puts his head out the window. Smithy's truck. Carla. He ducks back. Tess is directly below, still sitting on the table.

  He hasn't seen Carla since the night before he went to detox—four-plus months ago. He watches her cross the yard. Shit warmed over: bony, all the jolt gone. Her eyes two dark pools you could fall into. And wearing long sleeves on the hottest day of the year. The prosecution rests its case. No hugs. Tess sits on one side of the table; Carla sits on the other. She stretches both hands toward Tess, flops her palms open, her wrist braces a reminder of her pain. Meek: how she's going to play it. "Oh Tess. I was hoping you were back in Texas. Away from all this." Carla's words loud and clear. He might as well be sitting at the table. She takes out her cigarettes. Too bad he can't swoop down and bum a couple. "Del around?" Tess shrugs. Carla edges forward a little more. "You know I never meant for you to get messed up in this." Tears in the throat. Not even a shrug this time. Carla reaches out. Tess fades back: no touching. "But, well, it's good to see you … see you looking so … healthy."

  Tess pushes up from the table. "Not getting messed up. That's what I'm working on. I'm applying to Marwick Community for the fall." Her voice is so soft, he has to risk moving closer to the window. "Like I told you on the phone: I'm going to see about a regular job in a few minutes, so I don't have much time."

  "Smithy's…"

  Tess smacks her hands over her ears. "I'm paying rent and being careful not to cause Del any worry. It's not going to work if you start coming here, keep calling. And you know why."

  "Tess…"

  "You know why."

  Carla squashes out her cigarette and lights another. "I know why. Such a good thing you're going to go to college. What courses are you taking?"

  Tess stops pacing. She gives Carla a long look. Then she sits down, hesitates. "I'm going to take the vet tech course."

  "Vet tech?"

  "Veterinary technician. In two years I can have an AS degree: give shots, dress wounds, do follow-up exams."

  "You mean you might have to get in a stall with a horse? Sounds dangerous." Compared to the safety and security of her current life.

  Now Tess is doing the leaning forward. "You know what I'd really like to do?"

  Carla smiles. "What?"

  "Work in a zoo."

  Carla throws up her hands and laughs. Her old guffaw, the old Carla. "Zoo? Why, baby, you don't even have to leave home to do that."

  When Mark comes out of the bathroom, both trucks are gone. Tess off to see about shoveling shit for Hoop Dawes. Already she's trying to line him up as her helper: earn a few bucks, get his ass out of bed. Six A.M. He's going to have to score some under-the-table cash if he wants to score some under-the-table bliss. "Dog day afternoon," he says to Luke and Queenie, who lie stretched on the hearth. Mark brings the fan down from the loft and sets it so it rotates slowly back and forth across the dogs' heaving sides. He picks the machine up off the floor, erases his mother's message and presses the Play button again: "Mark, I don't know what happened at Harbor exactly, but I know you're pissed. And I know you're up there in the rack, on the rack, with the covers over your third eye. It's important you call me and get yourself to a meeting. If you're having trouble getting a ride…" He deletes Rozmer. "This is Charlie. I'm not going to be able to jam with you and Tess tonight. Maybe I'll see you at the noon meeting." Third time Charlie's canceled. Finally they've got this great space to practice and record, but Charlie and Tess always got places to go, people to see. Screw it: whatever he wants to do, going to have to do it on his own.

  Nooley. Might be able to wangle something there. Not that he's exactly got an open invitation to Nooley's, but maybe if he left his bass with him as a guarantee that when his money comes … He checks the calendar: July 24. Ten days until he gets his part of his SSD. Way too early for harvest, but maybe Nooley's got some summer stash. And what are you going to say when one of them asks, Mark, where's your bass?

  The first bat was easy: a pouch of brown stuck to the closet door. Usual semi-somnolent protest as he carried it out to the woods: squeak, squeak. He slides the closet door back again, shines the flashlight along the floorboards below the clothes. A heap of something dark. He catches it with the hook of a hanger and drags it into the light. A crumple of fur, two stiff feet splayed underneath. He doubles the dish towel and scoops it up. Bat number two: DOA.

  The woods are cooler than inside. The bat's ears are folded forward, the eyes closed. So small now. Maybe not even full grown. He turns the bat over and slowly pulls the wing open: a thumb and four long ridges, covered by a thin membrane that webs between them and connects to its body. Four bony fingers. The bat's hands are its wings. Mark raises his arm, spreads his fingers, does a drum-roll flutter through the air: lift off and glide away. He folds the wing back against the bat's body. Then he scuffs out a place under a log and places the bat in the hole, pushes the earth in, presses it down. "R.I.P., buddy, R.I.P."

  The dogs' muffled barks come from the house. He sprints to the side door and locks it behind him. The bolt's already on in front. The dogs up the volume. Mark climbs the stairs to his mom's room, steps to the edge of her big window so h
e can see, but not be seen. A rattle-trap panel truck appears over the crest, turns at the barn and then slowly backs toward the house.

  Wild Life Control

  Experienced Licensed Agent

  Zephyr P. Dixon

  433-6622

  Humane 24-Hour Emergency Service

  Life-sized silhouettes of creatures creep about beneath the letters: a raccoon, a fox, a skunk. Several bats float above. Zephyr. Five bucks says his hippie parents had just downed a tab when they came up with that one. Zephyr's short legs show up first as they jut from the truck, camouflage fatigues, black army boots. The rest of him follows: a small person with a humping gait who pauses every few steps as though he's sniffing the air.

  Mark waits. Queenie emits indignant yelps. Luke's barks have turned to savage snarls. There's a hard knock. The dogs quiet down. Another knock. Then the man appears at the side door directly below. He raps on the glass. "Wild Life Control. Anybody home?"

  Bugger off, Bat Man. No Longer Speaking's indisposed. The man takes something from his pocket and sticks it in the door. Then he slowly begins to walk along the edge of the house, staring up at where roof and stone wall meet. He vanishes around the corner and appears in back, all the while looking up at the wall and pacing off the length of the house. If it's holes he's after, ground-level inspection is not likely to yield diddly. From time to time the man draws a paper and pencil from his pocket and jots down notes. Then he returns to his truck.

  Now that he's turned away the expert, he's going to have to rise to the occasion. He's already been inch by inch through the bedroom and the hall. The big thing is how they're getting in. He stretches out on the braided rug at the foot of his mom's bed and stares up at the high ceiling. His mom said she woke up and there were three bats clinging to that globe. He shifts over a few feet and turns his head to the side, squints to bring into focus the thin dark ridge around the top of the silver bracket that holds the globe. An open space, not much more than a quarter of an inch wide. Impossible, but indeed that's possibly it.

  On the top shelf of the closet in the laundry room he finds what he's looking for: the tube of silicone caulking they used to seal around the bathtub. Back in the bedroom he pushes a trunk directly below the light, then he places the stool on top of that. He rests one hand on the ceiling for balance. Carefully he squeezes the caulking along the narrow opening on one side, then presses the bulge flat with his thumb. He steps down onto the trunk and then back up on the stool, facing the other way. He caulks the space on that side, careful to make sure the opening is completely sealed. Small dark bits, scatterings, shadow the bottom of the translucent glass of the globe. He laughs. Bat shit. Guano calling cards. Proof this is their fucking entry. The world outside is taking on that glow, that golden-pink of the sun going, dusk coming on. The third bat is somewhere close, getting ready.

  There's the sound of the key in the lock. No barks. The dogs know it's Tess. Quietly he steps down onto the floor. There are muffled sounds of her calling up her news to the loft. Got to hand it to Tess. In the up-and-going category she gets the blue ribbon. Fucked-up family not going to back her down. But for now let her think he's up in his bed, brooding, buried in the wet sheets.

  The last light's going. Nighttime: his time. One by one he removes the screens from the windows. Then he sits on the stool in the corner, the cordless phone in his lap. No hurry. He leans his head against the wall. Finally cooling down. A skitter of sound and there it is: swooping, fluttering, around and around. Mark doesn't move, just keeps his eyes wide. He wants to see the moment of exit, the flash into the night. Maybe he blinks, maybe he looks toward the wrong window, but suddenly the air is empty.

  He listens down the stairs. There's the sound of dishes. He lifts the phone. Nooley's number? Been a while, but then, there it is. He dials. He's got the song all ready. The phone rings, rings. He watches the sky, the evening star. Soon he'll be up there. Far. Far away.

  22 : Roost

  WHAT DEL WANTS is for her pencil to find the flash of light, the glitter of eyes. Instead, night is what she keeps coming up with, the graphite grinding blacker and blacker until there's no tooth left on the paper. The only way she can find anything in that blackness is by squashing the kneaded eraser hard against the surface, then lifting the lead away one tedious layer at a time. The heel of her hand is sooty, and she knows if she looks in the mirror, the smears will be all over her face.

  The screen door opens. She hears Richard in the kitchen, probably going through his mail. She knows he will be giving the Harbor Freight catalog and new offers of interest-free credit cards his full attention, that when she enters he will not even mention his appointment with the urologist, his rising PSA count that theoretically should read zero since the prostate was removed eight years ago.

  The phone. That immediate contraction in her chest. Did Mark make it to the periodontist this morning? It's worrisome he didn't respond to her note or her call yesterday, but maybe it's only Tess with a bat report. She rushes into the bedroom to pick up. Richard always lets the machine answer. The machine does get there first with Richard's concise-as-a-knife message that she now has to yell over to be heard.

  "Wild Life Control here," the voice says, "Zephyr P. Dixon."

  For a second she's at a loss. "Oh, yes, about the bats."

  "No one home when I went by your place last night, but I was able to do a careful external assessment."

  One problem at least about to be solved. "How are the bats getting in?"

  "You've probably got a hole, maybe even holes, in the screening behind your vents. You've got six vents, four main ones and two small. Could be going in any one or all of those. Screening rots out."

  "But those vents don't lead into my bedroom. How are they getting in there? We've had at least seven bats in two days. Maybe more."

  "Bats can get through a space not much bigger than a crack. What you've probably got are the babies just starting to fly. They feel a current of air and that's where they go."

  "Babies? I want you to get rid of all the bats and close up the holes so they can't ever get in again."

  "I can seal up where they're getting in your bedroom. But I can't do anything about the bats that may be up in the airspace above your ceiling until the fall, say early October?"

  "October? Why not now?"

  "Got to wait until they all can fly. Trap them up there and you'll have to smell a bunch of dead bats right over your head. In October I'll get the bats out of the airspaces, put new screening in your vents, and caulk all the holes between the stone walls and the roof. That's the main thing, caulking all those holes, and you've got plenty of them."

  "Oh, I don't think bats are in the stone house section. You're sure there are holes above the wall?"

  "Yep, and if I shut the bats out of their current entries, when they come back in the spring they'll find a way in. They just need one tiny hole, and they'll all take up residence above one of your ceilings."

  "Spring? They're coming back in the spring?"

  "Absolutely, April or May, they'll be back."

  "How many bats are you talking about?"

  "Hard to say. Depends on how many years they've been living in your house. You want a rough idea…" There's a long pause. "Sunset's at 8:57 tonight. Get enough people so you can see all six vents at once. Watch until it's almost dark. Don't blink. A bat is fast—a little flash and then it's gone."

  "Let me get this straight, you'll come now and find where they're getting into my room and we won't have any more bats in the house. Guaranteed."

  "Right. Then I come back in the fall, get all the bats out of the airspaces, and bat-proof your house so they can't get back in."

  "That's great." A gust of relief. "About how much will the whole thing cost?" Richard has come to stand in the doorway. He's wearing his "Beware, it's a jungle out there" frown.

  "Better if I come to your place and go over the estimate—time and materials—with you."

  Richard's silenc
e is gaining in volume. "Well, just give me an overall estimate for now," she says in her most in-charge tone. She pulls a pencil and a pad from the bedside drawer.

  There's a pause, a rustle of papers by Zephyr's phone. A clicking sound. "Whole thing's going to take a few days, plus all the sealant and screening. I should be able to do it for about seventeen hundred."

  She sits down on the bed. "One thousand seven hundred dollars?" Richard takes the pencil from her and writes on the pad: There's a solid sill between your roof and the stone wall.

  She stands up and waves for Richard to let her deal with this. "I can't afford seventeen hundred dollars. What will you charge just to come and seal the bedroom … and then to come back in the fall to get rid of the bats and change the screening on just those vents?"

  Zephyr P. Dixon clears his throat—not a good sign. "I make it a policy to only do complete bat-proofing. If I do a partial, well, the bats come back, people see my truck parked in front of your house again and again like my work is ineffective. It's bad for my reputation."

  "Mr. Dixon, my house is on a private road. No one is going to see anything." Richard's hand reaches out and tugs at the waistband of her shorts, pulls her down to sit on the edge of the bed and hands her the pad once again. I'll get rid of the bats. Guaranteed.

  Again that weird clicking. "Sorry, that's my policy. Full bat-proofing or nothing."

  She sets the pad on Richard's chest, thumps it lightly. "Thank you for your time." Slowly she replaces the receiver. Richard moves over and she settles on her back beside him. They listen to the whir of the fan, stare at the ceiling. "What did the urologist say?"