At the chosen point of entry, finding loss

FICTION by Randall Osborne

When the search team gets near, I dig up what's left and move it. Once, I squeaked Latex casings around my criminal fingers and cast Red Devil lye upon the problem like snowflakes, but after the hiss and reek, after the acrid clouds ghosted away, enough still lingered below to make an identification. And so I found myself in the far part of the forest preserve at midnight, shoveling, just as I'd been waist-deep in a dewy ravine the week before, shoveling. Headlights, potato sack. Two steps ahead of them, for now at least.

Late December, another hotel. I thrash amid this dream that my life is puckered into while the bedside drawer's book stays mute and hides, and I wake with jaw pain, the hinge loose and screaming as if I held a wooden block between my teeth for hours. The taste of bleach, smoke. A week ago in Hobart's Dollar Inn, the bathroom mirror pranked a large plum, and within the slit of it my terrified eyeball jiggled as if wanting escape, as if recalling what the rest of me could not, such as where the cuts came from, and why I limped.

But today, only the baffled hangover mug. I peel the tile of waxy soap, loose in its paper like a gift wrapped by a child. The shower groans hot needles, and afterward thin, rough towels, almost whiskery, scrape my flesh until it reddens. All the discomforts of not home. Do I miss our "guest" bedroom (we had no guests), that chilly spare where I, the lame-duck husband, fought for sleep during the six months leading up to the letter? No. What about Alison — I'm sorry, Al; it's just "Al" now, like a bowling buddy. Do I miss Al? I see as much of her as I want, and more.

In the lobby I veer past the newspaper rack. I might be famous, this 53-year-old claims adjuster from northwest Indiana, on the run since ... too long ago. ("For some time," let's say.) May have remained in the area. I can't leave. South Bend to La Porte, Chesterton, Valparaiso, and back, with forays into anonymous Chicago. May have remains in the area.

The truth is, among those who would prosecute me I am obvious to the point of invisible, or almost, and I want to provide some record how it is, this life, before I enter fully into my new condition. I want to tell you, or tell anyone. Tell him, the overnight desk clerk.

Strong and alert, the lad has fastened to himself every feature sought in a host who is charged with steering this dilapidated craft of inferior lodging through the black hours of potential strange events. Something raced between us yesterday, my third day, when I asked about mail, messages. A vague but sure flicker, a signal I have learned to watch for, rose up and sank. The chance for words, I suppose — but talk is nothing more than keening, a wail muted and shaped for dignity, with sharps, clicks, and melodic improvisations added before it is cast into the space between us, the space left by what we have lost.

I never entirely unpack; there is so much more to it than concealing who you are. As Alison knew.

She situated the envelope on my pillow while I hexed monsters out of Beth's room and told another story. Three single-spaced pages clicked on a keyboard at her job (Alison's in administration; she administers). I've been wanting to share something with you for quite some time. As if she had held back some thrilling update, or baked a special pie. Known since I was a girl, since my first crush ... Never dated a boy ... Made a decision as an adult, and truly believed.

In the weeks after, she clipped her hair, floated away from me in bed, and became steadily more rectangular. She insisted on her new name, and took up yard work with a damp vengeance. On weekends, she hiked.

We turned into clichés.

"On the lam" — do cops use the phrase anymore? The sacrificial lamb. That's Beth, of course.

The desk clerk at dawn wears his last-lap mask, his shift dwindling, fool enough to bully the clock. He might be 24. No name tag, and I like him this way. My amble today contains another moment ripe to prick him with the awakening dart that I practice blowing across our distance to make him trust — make him keep my secret, like Chicago does — but instead, chin down, I convey myself beyond him to the front door and leave on its glass a handprint.

The Toyota turns over, greedy. That first time, about a month ago, the vehicle's own urge for adventure seemed to push me back in the seat (relax, sir!) and pounded I-80 at twilight from the Super 8 in Valpo to Lake Station, on to Gary, and Hammond, and at last I-94 toward the sky-traced promise, full of glitter. Management gave me the territory as a stand-in briefly last year, until they made another hire, so I knew the North Halsted strip. But not as I have come to know it since. We'll go again tonight.

Now, brown turns gold as the sun pushes above our Midwestern plain, our plain Midwest, and I park in the drugstore lot, walk two blocks, and approach the building from behind. I yank down the brim of my White Sox cap. Find my spot behind the tree.

Punctual, as always, Alison's car nudges the curb of the drop-off lane and stops. She comes around, hitching her jeans, but Beth already has sprung out, prim and crisp in new clothes — Christmas gifts, probably, from Alison's parents.

Alison cups my girl's ear. She whispers into it some secret, a surprise. Maybe a plan for later, when Mom is off work and daycare done. Another week more of holiday break. Beth hunches over her lunchbox, her smile widens. Alison taps her on the back and she scrambles inside.

Christmas Eve: one of the few nights from the past three months that I can remember in whole pieces. Shuffled out of the skin-tightening slap that whistled off Lake Michigan, into the bar. Three beers later, lifted the pay phone and dropped it back into the cradle. A muscle shirt I felt sober enough to comment on, the snap and spark of his Thunderbird Zippo, again and again, hypnotic, and later the top of my head thumping against wood, the Zippo's cool metal on my back where he tossed it and smoked. No name.

I would lie if I said the pain has left those moments when, as a spectator, I stand aside from what once passed for my domestic life, and when I allow to pass what my life stands for now, which is an indecipherable factor marked by shame. That lie would fail like the lye in my repeating dream, which evolves and seeps its exchanges into my days.

As time goes on (there is time in dreams, time is everywhere, and it goes on), I will make more digs and more transports, farther from the old sites. I will need to enter areas not reached by the usual means. Zones more remote, to be taken on foot.

Every existence is lonely, and help might arrive in any form. What I believe I require most could surprise me with its uselessness. And has.

But this much feels certain. Moving forward into the dark, I will need someone hardy, someone who is capable and familiar with the tools. A person who understands this work — its ongoing nature, the vigilance demanded, the importance of movement. I will need someone to hold the lamp. *