WHERE THE EGG IS by Elizabeth Harris Behling
For a time I lived up north and worked the night shift at a children’s shelter just past an enormous cemetery. Daniel was my downstairs neighbor. He was one of the most contented souls I ever met, with his bulging belly and his Norwegian-blond, mutton-chop sideburns bleeding into reddish stubble. He had a way of looking at you like you mattered.
I don’t know how Daniel made his money. Like most of us, he lived close to the bone. He’d been in at least one low-budget movie, a gay movie, so maybe he was an actor – we never talked about that – and he wasn’t gay either: too many women. During the day, women’s laughter fluttered up the walls while I tried to sleep.
When I think of Daniel, I think of this. A night, not long before I left for a warmer climate, when I stopped at his half-open door. My boots scratched on his floorboards. His kitchen table (a present from some woman, though she’d neglected to bring him chairs) jutted into the hallway. He was there, all right, by the window, lights off, sitting in the wheelchair he’d found out back in the dumpster. He wore his bathrobe over blue jeans and in one hand swirled a glass of vodka. I felt the cold – he’d propped the window open with a brick. The floodlight outside shone orange through the blinds. Swinging a little in his chair, Daniel shot me that disingenuous smile. His naked chest reflected slatted gold; the bare walls were sliced with it. He gestured for me to squeeze past the table, to take a seat on the stack of phone books beside him. “Brother, come on in,” he said. “Come on in and watch the show.”
Looking directly down, you saw them. Six huddled figures in orange light, between the backdoor and the dumpster. Black kids in parkas and wave caps, their legs amputated by the window ledge. You saw their backs swaying, almost dancing, each boy with a hand held high, waving a gloved fist of bills. Throwing dice on the frozen ground. In the alley, trapped by walls of snow, another boy hopped from foot to foot, his hands bulging in his jacket, his elbows quietly flapping. As much as he was moving, beside him a dark dog – just a pup – sat still and silent, leaning in, large feet splayed, head cocked, listening. Only after a moment did I realize the dog’s head was pulled this way by a too-tight lead, that the poor creature was simply trying to breathe.
Daniel said something I didn’t catch. “Must be playing for Franklins,” he said, “shooting craps in weather like this.” He smiled and sipped his vodka. “Probably their nest egg, all their baby-sitting money.” He looked at me. “What’s wrong? You want me to send them away? – I will.” I shook my head – they were just children, after all – and I asked him who was winning. “Hard to tell, hard to tell,” he said. “I’m not much on the rules. Not much of a gambler.” Then he told me these children would be headed my way soon. Or someplace worse. “Anyone look familiar?” No one did, but who could tell, really, in this light? “So, you on duty tonight?” – his voice lazy, indulgent – “Going to protect the pretty ones?” I nodded and he asked me if I had my weapon. I unsheathed my flashlight. “You know where to go,” he said. The bulb in the refrigerator was burnt out: I used the flashlight to find my beer. The refrigerator was nearly empty, a few bottles of beer, a Styrofoam package of smoked carp, the plastic wrap like torn flower petals, a dark oily smell.
If a night can sound cold, then this one did. The alley was mute. These backs of houses, these former mansions now turned tenements, were shadowed backdrop to an orange-fisted sky. From my phone-book perch, I looked down at the great walls of snow that blocked the alley from either side, crags opening here and there, worn down by steady boots.
And who would be traveling his way tonight? Abby somebody. I hadn’t met this one, apparently: she rented across the alley, see there, that was her window, lived there with her three-year-old boy and her new husband, “a June bride,” Daniel said, no comment in his voice. That window he pointed to had metal bars.
We’d barely spoken of Daniel’s women. (I am no judge of others – perhaps that’s why the shelter job suited me. TV haze for company, the occasional walk around the floor to keep the children from mating, a quick flash of my spotlight – the ones who aren’t asleep pull back from the light as if it burns.) I did know they were often married or otherwise settled, these women who wrapped themselves around him like a cure. Someday, I told him, these relationships would end badly. Daniel just shrugged. Could he help it they were drawn to him? (Like jumping off a cliff, I said.) And then he was always too willing – reveled in it – when the fight came. Once, in a Lake Street bar, I’d watched him fight, watched while they stood at the top of the stairs, Daniel and the boyfriend, a man with creamy skin and medusa braids, and they might have been just talking, if the boyfriend hadn’t bared his teeth. Then Daniel lunged for the boyfriend, sent them both tumbling down those stairs, holding each other, and I saw those braids whir and snap and Daniel smile with perfect teeth. Then he head-butted the boyfriend. It might have been funny. At the bottom, the boyfriend lay curled up, dreaming. He twitched, chin awash in crimson. Daniel, unhurt, like a suitor, got to one knee, leaned over the other and watched the eyelids’ dancing flight, brushed a braid from the creamy damaged face. “He’ll be all right,” Daniel said to no one in particular before the policeman led him up the stairs.
There came a whistle from below and the dice throwers scattered. “Hold on,” Daniel muttered. “Now we’re cooking.” He leaned forward so his chair groaned; his wheels smeared the wall. He set the vodka on the sill. The lookout boy started up the alley, the pup a marionette beside him, and in that moment, we saw the boy was lame.
We saw the lights, a flashing haze, the squad car, a spotlight now on our boy, who looked back, a peep of the siren, a few more zig-zagging, dragging steps in the light before he stopped. “Maybe some rock down there,” Daniel said, and maybe that was true. Or maybe it was just boys leaving before the police got a chance to do what they do best: breaking up the brothers. Daniel, still staring out the window, said, “Five dollars, they take our boy away.”
A sucker’s bet, I thought. But I was wrong. The officers stayed in their cruiser (maybe for the dog?) and they overtook our limping boy, pulled up beside him, while the radio cawed and cackled, while the dog sat down and retched a little and looked at the boy with something akin to love. After a few words, a dip of a billed cap, they slowly drove away in crunching snow, leaving boy and dog alone, and when the snow walls stopped flashing color, our boy cupped gloved hands to his mouth and let fly his final words on the subject:
“Monkey motherfucker!”
We laughed and toasted him. Daniel said amen as the boy turned and headed up the alley, pup gasping at his side.
Then Daniel pointed: “Lookee there.” Sure enough, the boy trotted beside his dog – the limp was gone. He perched on top of the snow wall, the dog scrambled for a footing, and he surveyed his world and, dog in tow, dropped to the other side.
Daniel chuckled. “He’s like that kind of bird. What’s that bird again? Drags its wing and limps around and hopes the dumbfuck animal’ll leave its eggs alone.” Killdeer, I told him, one of the plovers. “Caw, caw, caw!” Daniel shouted, but there was no one down there to listen. I told him it was “kildee.” Such a mournful, lonely call, the end of summer.
The alley was an empty stage. We could hear our own breathing. I got up for another beer and as I retook my seat, Daniel asked me where home might be for a bird that migrates: down south or up here? I had no idea. I swigged my beer; this one tasted warmer. Maybe home was where they laid their eggs. Home was here then. Or nowhere maybe. “No, I like that.” Daniel rattled his glass so the ice tinkled. “Home is where the egg is.” He pushed off the wall with his feet and rolled backwards for the refrigerator. He had to stand though to get his vodka from the freezer.
I started in then, for Daniel’s entertainment: did he know the killdeer just laid their clutch of eggs on gravel? “That’s something,” Daniel said. I’d seen nesting pairs in parking lots, trying to draw off cars with a dragging wing, the poor little things. Daniel held up the smoked carp, and I nodded. Some home to come back to. And that got me going in a different direction. About the kids I’d seen at the shelter, how most of them were dying to come home again, even with some wasted parent there, dying to beat them to a pulp.
“It’s hard,” Daniel said, “to beat the love out of someone.” He wheeled back to me, Styrofoam fish pack in his lap, vodka bottle in his armpit; he set the vodka on the sill. Humming to himself, he began plucking bits of carp from the bone.
I had more to say on this subject, this love. I took a swig from his bottle and set off again: about this one kid I had, a runaway, who always slept under his bed, a funky kid, always dirty – but that’s when we heard footsteps on the stairs, a light knock on the open door, a woman’s voice. “Here we go.” His voice was edged. “Sorry, brother,” he said, “duty calls.” I told him I had to be leaving soon, anyway, though I was sad to say it, and that’s when Abby poked her head inside. A long face framed by wispy, feathered hair. Her eyes dropped as she saw me watching her, then she recovered with an unnatural smile. No, she wasn’t someone I knew – I recognized her though. She was one of those women you see hunkered on a bus-stop bench, chin propped on a fisted mitten, wondering where her life has gone.
Daniel introduced us and told her where I worked, that I was a protector of children. “I know the place,” she said. Her voice, its southern lilt, sounded like home. She said something I didn’t catch. “Jail’s more like it,” she said. “It was just awful. Is it still?” That depends, I told her, but I don’t believe she heard. “What’s this?” She sailed that hopeless smile at the two of us and gestured to the table. “You trying to keep me out?”
“No, Sugar,” Daniel said, “that’s to keep us in. You come out of the cold now. Come and have a drink.”
Abby, slipping into the room, said that she shouldn’t – she looked at me – she could only stay a short while, the boy was sleeping, and “Joe’s bus comes at midnight” – another look – and with that, she unzipped her coat, her breasts pushed up, wretched, under a too-tight, low-neck sweater, and she reached for the bottle and scrinched her eyes and gasped and held her nose like she was about to dive under dirty lake water. She took two great swallows of vodka, then, eyes still closed, she handed the bottle off to Daniel, her arm across her mouth. She sputtered “Jesus!” and opened her eyes and looked around. “It’s freezing in here,” she said, “and it smells like fish guts.” She laughed in explosive little barks. Her hand went up to her mouth. Pretty. I’d say she was pretty. But with that sharp nose she was covering, she probably didn’t believe it herself. She had to be in her early thirties: regret etched her forehead. Her coat hung on her, far too large, her legs black stalks inside Sorels, her tiny chest rising. She hovered, in the middle of the kitchen, eyes on Daniel. About to take flight. Then again, without me there, she’d be in his lap already.
She plunged her hands in her pockets, gave a sharp sound of recognition – splash of red – a red-wool scarf, lopsided, wider at one end. Of course she’d knitted it, the way she held it out to Daniel, and he spread wide his arms, tilted back his head, and offered her his throat.
“Not too tight,” he said.
The wheel chair creaked slightly. When she’d finished, she stepped back to see, and laughed – up went the hand – and then we all three were laughing, at Daniel in his wheelchair, half-naked in his robe and sideburns, at that awkward red scarf bunched around his neck. He told her it was very nice then turned to the window. “Bet they’ll be back,” he said. “Night’s young.”
She loved him. I could feel her craning toward him, as Daniel and I talked and drank our vodka; I could feel her adoring eyes on him, and I could feel her willing me to go, and I would go, soon, and she would have her Daniel, if only for a time. Oh, the pity of that love! – to reach for something that was never there. I felt it pull at my own chest and throat, and I offered her my place on the stack of phone books, though she declined. Daniel loosened the scarf a little.
“Don’t wash it,” Abby said. “It’ll shrink to nothing.” She looked at me. “I done that one time with a sweater I knitted for my boy.” She stopped, caught her lip between sharp teeth. I asked the boy’s age, and she smiled and told me three.
“You were saying something before.” Daniel looked at me. “Something about one of the kids you shelter.” Abby giggled, then stopped. I sat, silent, had to think. He poured more vodka into his glass, offered the bottle to Abby, but she shook her head, and he passed it on to me. Then I remembered: it was nothing, really, just a funny, sad boy who always slept under his bed at the shelter. I’d see the dirty orange soles of his feet sticking out from under there when I shone my flashlight. The torn box-spring lining draped over him like a veil, and his eyelids fluttered, and his hands clutched dreams to his chest. I was sad to do it, but I had to. There are rules we must follow. I’d poke him, hard, with the flashlight to wake him, to get him back to bed, and then on my next rounds, there he was, under the bed again, and this went on all night, until I left the shelter in the secret light of dawn. I found out later that at home, the boy’s mother used to tie him to the bed and burn him with an iron. I don’t know why I’d thought to tell this, something about home, I suppose, and I was about to start, when there came a screaming from below.
I dropped to my knees at the open window with my flashlight – my hopeless circle sailed back and forth, to snow and screaming. A woman, maybe. No, the sound was too desperate to be human.
“Dog fight,” Daniel said. “Some kids.” He settled in his chair and sipped his drink. “Bet that black pup’s bait.”
I cringed when he said it. I pulled out the brick, slid the window shut. The sound, muffled now, was still a trembling presence in the room. Behind us, Abby whimpered and wrestled in her coat, pulling it round her like a blanket. Daniel looked at her, surprised. Then: “All right,” he said. “Stay here.” He jumped up from his chair – Abby’s startled eyes jerking – “Where are you going?” she called after him – as he skittered over the tabletop, with all the vodka, still so nimble, a creaking, echoing rush down stairs and he was out back and Abby and I both pressed to the cold glass to see him hurry past the dumpster, up over the snow wall, bathrobe, red scarf flying, a hockey stick in his hand, gripping it like a sword. Racing down the alley, so free, so unencumbered, he took my breath away.
Abby gave a nervous, flittering laugh – “Jesus, where’s he going?” – and all the while, thin screaming rippled in my ears. I longed to cover them, and couldn’t bear to.
And then it stopped. Silence slipped over our heads like clear water. Abby sighed and settled into Daniel’s chair. And we waited.
It was almost midnight, and we waited in that quiet. Abby shifted in the wheelchair, shivered, leaned toward the window, crossed her thin legs, uncrossed them – I could feel the panic in her every move. I stood to go and had to steady myself on the wall.
“What you must think of me.” Her voice was a whispering of reeds, so I barely realized that she’d spoken. She was staring out the window. I didn’t answer. For who was I to judge where people sought their solace? Then, as gently as I could, I told her that her husband would be coming, she should think of getting home.
She snorted – “Home!” Then, softer, “What do I care if he comes? Let him come.”
When I left, she was still staring, waiting, orange slashed across her face. And in the ash of morning, Daniel was there instead, at that window, as if he’d never left. Sitting in his wheelchair, hockey stick across his lap. Something red was bunched between the spokes. He cradled his beer, his knuckles smooth and white. He blinked at me and smiled. Blond glinting stubble mixed with flecks of red upon his cheek. “A good night?” he asked, and I told him good enough. Did Abby make it home? She just left: “Come and see.” I stood behind his wheelchair. She was past our dumpster, in the alley. Her back was to us. In the startling light, she looked so spindly in her large black coat, with her thin dark legs. Across the way, a large man in just pajamas stood outside a faded yellow house. Paint curled off the siding. The man’s arms were crossed upon his chest. His lips were moving. “She’s going home with her tail between her legs,” Daniel said. “She knows the house rules.”
“He’ll kill her,” I said, “kill her.”
And Daniel shook his head. “She doesn’t even see him.” He pointed: “Look – there.” A small boy’s face showed at the window, through the bars. The boy stared at his mother with dark, shining eyes. Abby raised her hand, seemed to draw it across her mouth. The boy’s expression didn’t change. She started walking, and I had never seen a thing like this. It was as though she were tugged forward, then left, then right, then forward again, writhing in his light – her hands jerked, and she staggered from side to side, and the boy kept watching; he didn’t move. She was drowning in those eyes. “Look at her,” Daniel said, his voice full of wonder, full of pity. Abby was clambering up the snow wall now. She stood there at the top, facing the boy, her body twisted, one arm dangling. “She’ll be all right,” Daniel said. “Poor little thing.” And at that moment, she threw her arms wide to steady herself and she crouched to jump.
Elizabeth Harris Behling’s stories have appeared in Other Voices, Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, Many Mountains Moving, and Northwest Review.