But Bob stayed where he was.
“Something?” said Rooble.
“Hey, I just remembered, Hani was pregnant that time too. You went home early and left your grill at my place. I put it in the basement.”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot. Want me to come and pick it up?”
“No, no, I’ll bring it over. Tomorrow.”
Bob noticed Rooble’s look of surprise. “Thanks, Bob, but that isn’t necessary.”
“I insist.”
Rooble frowned. “It was just one of those cheap ones—we’ve got a gas grill now.”
“You never know when you might need two,” said Bob with a broad smile. He waved and hurried off down the corridor.
9
Cry, October 2016
I was on high, I had perspective. But no gun this time, this time I was just an observer.
I was lying in bed and watching TV. Switched between news broadcasts on KSTP, WCCO and KARE and the internet on my phone. I didn’t get it. I could see why the murder of a gun dealer in Jordan would get less coverage than the killing of some rich white guy out in Dellwood; what I didn’t get is why it didn’t even rate a mention. After all, Minneapolis isn’t Chicago, where they have two or three murders every day. I closed my eyes. They hurt from staring at the screen. My ears were exhausted from all the cackling and the brutal sound effects used by advertisers to attract attention. What I wanted was peace. Rest. I heard a child crying somewhere. I knew there were no children here. I know it was just her.
Then it came. A short item on KARE. And I realized why ithadn’t made the headlines. The anchor reported a shooting incident in Jordan that morning, in which the victim had been shot in the stomach outside his home. Badly injured. Not killed. A person injured in a shooting is everyday stuff in Minneapolis—it hardly rates a mention on the news. The images used to illustrate the ten seconds of the report weren’t even from the towers but from somewhere else in Jordan, on a gray day, and the only connection with the place were the pictures of the police crime scene tape, stock footage from some previous report.
Badly injured.
Not dead.
Not yet.
—
Bob parked some distance away from the house on the quiet street in Cooper. Retraced familiar steps he’d walked so many times before. Past that row of small houses on a slope, with steps up to the porches and the front doors. Small but charming middle-class houses. Cooper was regarded as inexpensive, but it still felt like a bold investment back when he and Alice had bought the detached house with its three rooms and kitchen, him with his modest policeman’s income and her a young psychologist just starting out in her own practice. But they really did need more space. And they wanted to live somewhere central, not end up in those anemic suburbs. Maybe Cooper wasn’t all that fancy, but it was safe, and it had character. And had its characters too, like Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler turned governor who’d grown up around here. Fewer knew that the area was named after James Fenimore Cooper, writer of a boatload of thrilling stories about Indians. Bob had come across these in his grandparents’ bookshelves, and even though the depictions were sympathetic they still reflected contemporary attitudes toward Native Americans. Maybe that was why Cooper’s community of liberals preferrednot to dwell on the origins of the name. Whatever, Cooper was a place where you could live, there was room to breathe, and you could raise a family there. And since their purchase, house prices in the area had doubled, at least.
Bob stopped in front of the house.
Saw the lights in the windows. Listened for the sound of laughter. Saw all three of them running around in the yard; it was summer and the shower from the garden hose made their own little rainbow for them. Or on some weekday, after a night shift, with the house all to himself, sitting on the front porch and hearing the playground sounds from the Christian Minnehaha Academy, where nothing bad ever happened, nodding to the FedEx driver as he placed a package outside a neighbor’s door on the other side of the street, a package that would not be stolen, not the way it would if you lived just two minutes’ drive farther west, in Phillips. Sometimes it seemed that their biggest concern was the squirrels that chewed the electricity cables around the house. Once, when the lights went out during the Super Bowl, he’d threatened to get his pistol from the bedroom and shoot them down. But Alice didn’t laugh at his joke, just stared at him wide-eyed, as though she didn’t know what to believe.
Instead of heading for the front door Bob took the steps up to the porch. Alice had told him not to visit, but when a grill has to be returned then it has to be returned. No, he wasn’t there to argue, he’d come to make sure things were returned to their rightful owner. Who could have an issue with that?
He walked silently to the door but didn’t knock. Took a deep breath and peered through the window into the living room. The light was on, so was the TV, but the room was empty. He held his breath. In the silence he heard something, something rhythmical. He looked up. The bedroom window was open. Bob and Alice’s bedroom. At first he wasn’t sure whether what he was hearing was an echo from back then, or whether it was real, andnow. Not until he heard Alice’s hoarse voice sighing a name that wasn’t his name. A rushing sound filled his head. He should leave but he couldn’t. There was that grill that had to be returned. He raised his fist to bang on the door. The rushing sound turned into a howl. Knock hard and call her name out loud, that’s what he ought to do.
Think before you speak, think before you act.
Bob bunched his fist so hard it felt as though the skin over the knuckles might split. Silence up there now, as if they were listening for sounds. He exhaled with a shudder and pressed his forehead against the cool glass. Stayed like that awhile. Counted. Heard footsteps on the stairs. Bob pushed away from the glass and silently crept down the stairs. Back at street level he turned up the collar of his coat and hurried off in the same direction he’d come.
Back in his car he sat and stared through the windshield.
Pulled out his phone and went through his list of contacts.
Anne. Aurora. Beatrice.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Beatrice, it’s Bob. It’s been a while.”
