Forest Hill

Forest Hill

First we traded dreams, and I had something good, not the one where the bus sped on the bottom of the pool, taking in water, everyone swimming up to the air bubble at the ceiling to gasp for breath except for the driver who seemed to have evolved gills, sitting in his transit uniform, looking straight ahead, holding the pedal steady against the muffled noise of the motor underwater, no, and not the night where I heard the shot that killed Candy (Candy?) from two houses down, knowing I shouldn’t have left her with the crystals (crystals?) alone, the first time I had ever held a real gun, no I would probably never tell anyone about those, despite writing them down in a lost notebook somewhere, no I would tell her and her mocha brown eyes the one with young Stalin, this one I could take out of my rolodex of night tales and share with the confidence that tonight the world had seemed to catch up to its brand of craziness or at least was headed that way as the bar tender stringing Christmas lights from the ceiling dropped ornaments on the floor and belly laughed, jolting us out of our stumbling conversation and sending me into the golden bubbles flying through my glass of beer, occasionally looking up at the figure of a night owl perched in the corner of the room watching over us.

Young Stalin walked the cobblestone streets of Moscow flanked by military guards, I told her, but as he rounded a turn in the alley, he turned into a snake and his serpent tail knocked a jeep into a medieval house, destroying the front wall to reveal an old woman, surprised of course, in her kitchen. The guards walked in to appease the woman, and the serpent sled on.

What have you been reading?

Reports mostly. Reports of reports.

I loosened my tie.

Do you want to get drunk?

I already am

I thought you had stopped drinking wine before the bar?

Another ornament smashed on the ground.

I know it’s against the rules, but can you tell me more about the paperless people?

We sometimes only talked in dreams, when life was too depressing, agreeing that melancholy grows from dreams put to rest, a secret society of two. She despised the word lovers. I didn’t care what we called it as long as no one found out.

I went to the bar for two more beers first, spying a milk crate on the corner outside.

It was mostly imperceptible until one day it wasn’t. They were everywhere. Sullen, nameless people, sitting in the parks and on corners. People with no papers, and we didn’t know where they were coming from. They weren’t immigrants. They were born here, and they rearrived as if they had lost their pasts. The city had no walls of course, nothing barbaric like that. Anybody could waltz across the highway first and right in. They kept coming until someone said something had to be done. Who were they first of all? And what was their business?

We need you to solve this they said to me, my assistant, his assistant, her assistant and his assistant. And so we gathered all the strands of evidence we could, attracting top rate researchers from graduate programs and winning grant money from the feds. What makes you paperless? They asked. Were they born paperless or did they become paperless?

It had been a couple weeks since I had first talked with one of the paperless. I’ve told you how I was at the crosswalk, waiting, green light, cars start. Rat a tat tat tat. Rush and exhaust. The man drummed until click. Red light. Stop. Drumsticks down. Motors stall. Birds chirp. A few windows cracked. Sideways trades of glances. Jumbled words of the radio like mumbled acid jazz. Sticky pavement and smoke. Green light. Rat a tat. Roar.

He seems to turn up on random days. There is no science that we can determine, even though the whole department has been working for months to track him down. So, last night I got a lead and went out to Forest Hill to check out a late night disturbance at the park.

That’s right near my house.

She never leaves her house. Drones bring her everything except real love.

I know.

And you didn’t stop by?

I thought about it. I really did, thought about her looking out through the teary window of her apartment all night, climbing into her bed for a few hours.

I got caught up, lemme tell you.

Hesitating, because we usually don’t talk about our lives, distractions really, but she looked somehow lonelier tonight than usual, engulfed by her big black coat, swimming in red wine, she seemed to like my work stories and I had no one else to tell.

I got called out to Forest Hill to interview the guard working the gate house. He told me it was snowing but then just rain for most of the night. The radio kept going in and out, and it was cold in the gatehouse. They just had a little heater to warm up the room. I had to keep my gloves on inside and take ‘em off for turning the pages of a book. I thought about dinner at home and what game would be on tomorrow night, the steering fluid leak, the oil light, you know thoughts that run through your head when you got nothing else to do but then I heard a noise and thought I saw smoke coming from one of the shelters. No one usually comes in for the first couple hours, so it’s just you on your own. The shelters in the park close at sundown, but we kept a man on through the night still. Why can’t we leave at dusk or a reasonable time, but the managers keep the overnight shift. Makes no sense. No fires after dark, but tonight, it’s probably a bum just getting dry. I let him stay before calling the city. We had directions now to call right away when you spotted someone out of the ordinary, the whole paperless people thing, but we never saw anyone, usually they stayed by the river and the main roads. It was sleeting now and they were calling for it to not let up till the morning. I said I’ll give him half an hour, which turned into a full one. It was cold. By 7 I got my stuff ready for a round, hitting the shelter last. Saw footsteps in the mud, going behind the gatehouse away from the main road towards the shelters, boots it looked like. The trees were dripping wet and I was soaked by the time I got in view of the last shelter, still lit up by a fire, smoke trailing out of one of its chimneys. Still didn’t see anyone or hear any voices. As I got closer I saw something on the picnic table in the center, a bag? I stopped and looked around, still no one. I radioed central. No response. My gun. I held my flashlight up and walked forward.

“Hey, no fires after sundown!” I yelled out to anyone. This has only happened once before, to another guard. You call the cops and they take whoever to the soup kitchen. There’s probably a soup kitchen nearby. The shelter was on the far edge of the bluff that held all of the park’s maintenance structures. Trails go down into the valleys and creekbeds below surrounding the high ground on three sides, stretching towards the river about a mile north. Countless entrances, countless exits, one guard. Good luck my boss used to say to cops called to the park. Twenty yards away, I saw trash bags and the body, unmoving. I stopped. It was a woman, filling up a heavy coat, white curly hair, older 50-60 maybe. She looked peaceful, like she was happy to be gone. And there were two types of footmarks in the shelter, meeting up by the picnic table and then one going out into the woods. I followed the footsteps out of the shelter, behind the chimney and up to the wall of forest, splashing through the mud, not really following anything, taking one of the paths, listening for anything but all I could hear was the rain, seeing no one, absolutely nothing except shadow.

Then the guard left, his shift over. The fire was still going, and I looked through the backpack and wondered if she’d be happy the state has finally taken an interest in her.

And you didn’t come over after that?

Our glasses were empty, just the foam at the bottom. An ornament smashed, but we barely noticed.

Well what about tonight?