The Invisibles Read online

  THE INVISIBLES

  THE INVISIBLES

  stories by

  HUGH SHEEHY

  Published by the University of Georgia Press

  Athens, Georgia 30602

  www.ugapress.org

  © 2012 by Hugh Sheehy

  All rights reserved

  Designed by Walton Harris

  Set in 10.5 / 15 Adobe Caslon Pro

  Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines

  for permanence and durability of the Committee

  on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity

  of the Council on Library Resources.

  Printed in the United States of America

  12 13 14 15 16 C 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sheehy, Hugh, 1979–

  The invisibles : stories / by Hugh Sheehy.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8203-4329-7 (cloth : alk. paper) —

  ISBN 0-8203-4329-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3619.H444I58 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2011050391

  British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-4330-3

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Meat and Mouth

  The Invisibles

  The Tea Party

  Whiteout

  Henrik the Viking

  Smiling Down at Ellie Pardo

  Translation

  A Difficult Age

  After the Flood

  Ghost Stories

  Variations on a Theme

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I gratefully acknowledge the publications in which the following stories appeared previously: “A Difficult Age,” Saint Ann’s Review 8, no. 1 (Summer/Fall 2008); “After the Flood,” Glimmer Train; “The Invisibles,” Kenyon Review and The Best American Mystery Stories 2008; “Meat and Mouth,” Kenyon Review; “Smiling Down at Ellie Pardo,” Cream City Review; “Translation,” Redivider; “Variations on a Theme,” Crazyhorse; “Whiteout,” Glimmer Train.

  I wish to thank people, family, and friends, for what surroundings and love they have supplied through the years; Nancy Zafris, for her eye and faith in these stories; the kind folks at the University of Georgia Press for their imagination and diligence in making this book a better thing; the magazine editors who saw fit to publish some of these stories; my best teachers, especially Steven, Keith, and Jim for such timely care; my parents and sisters and brother for the beauty and grace of your ongoing growth; Mike, Morgan, Neil, Nick, and Tom for the days behind us and the ones ahead; Anna, who will be able to read this before long; Katie, for all the ways you give the world back, for our dreams, and for things for which there are no words.

  THE INVISIBLES

  MEAT AND MOUTH

  Maddy left Luke Dixon sitting in the bully’s chair and went to the Christmas-lighted window, willing the boy’s loser dad to drive that blue Ford truck out of the woods. His lateness was eating into her weekend. Snow covered her solitary car in the lot, and she would have to dig and scrape before following the buried road from Grace Evangelical Church and School through the pale brown trees and bald fields to town. She thought of her apartment’s stale heat, of marijuana buds in a medicine bottle in the freezer, of the cheap red wine on the counter. She was thinking of her records, of the jukebox at her favorite bar, of that bass player from Saturday night.

  At a table by the board, beneath crookedly arranged alphabet magnets, Luke sopped dregs of Campbell’s Tomato with a cheese sandwich. His excitement over a dollar’s worth of food was as troubling as his choice to sit in the chair of Davey Schwartz, a larger boy who just this morning pinched and poked him during art until Luke clipped off his own paper Santa’s head. Maddy had tried intervening, had tried doing good, telling Davey he would stay inside for recess. But Davey sniffed out her insecurity, like always. It was probably her imagination, but he had seemed to almost smile just before he went and told her coteacher, Hank Osmond. And Hank Osmond, predictably, had undermined her with the familiar head tilt that enlarged his jowl, saying, “Come on, Maddy, it’s snowing,” as if she habitually tormented the boy. Yet Hank had been all too happy to leave her alone with Luke, so he could get back to his surround-sound home theater, despite having recently told their director he had concerns about her temper. It had been a long week, and she was tired of male conspiracies. If Luke wanted to sit in Davey’s seat, let him. You couldn’t save them all.

  Luke wiped his wet sleeve across his mouth and eyed his empty plate and bowl as if waiting for Maddy to notice and offer more, which would mean leaving the bright warmth of the classroom for the cold darkness of hall and kitchen, constantly bracing for the instant when the furnace clamored on downstairs.

  “When do you think your dad will be here?” she said.

  Andy Dixon was unemployed, and for some reason the kids all knew. Luke sighed, looking more sullen than usual.

  Maddy put aside her exhaustion and stretched yet another smile. “It’s okay, honey. I can stay here as long as I need to. Do you know if he had any errands to run?”

  His lower lip began to tremble. She glanced at the window, pretended she had not noticed. “It’s really coming down. You should eat some more before you go out there.” She waited for him to finish sniffling and said, “Does that sound good, Luke?”

  He nodded, then narrowed his eyes. His brow worked as if he were performing difficult calculations as he said, “Ms. Maddy, could we play a game?”

  “Sure. What do you want to play?”

  “I want to play pretend.”

  “Pretend what?”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Can we pretend I’m Davey?”

  “Oh.” She reached out, saw the greasy blue shirt had not been washed in several wears, then gave Luke’s shoulder a light tap. Now was probably the time to give a speech, the one about the importance of being yourself or whatever. As if she never needed a break from Maddy, the twenty-four-hour mess who pilfered from her father’s cabinets because the drunk tolerated it. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think Davey would like that?”

  Luke’s mouth dropped open. “It’ll be a secret, Ms. Maddy. Don’t tell!”

  “Okay, Davey,” she said, winking as she stacked his bowl on his paper plate, straining to grin. “If you don’t tell, I won’t tell. Come on down to the kitchen with me while I warm you up some more soup.”

  Luke shot to his feet and announced, “Davey wants chicken noodle.”

  “Well, then that’s what Davey will get.” She remembered something Hank Osmond said, that being a good teacher usually felt like it could get you fired. Watching Luke Dixon skip down the dark hallway to the kitchen, she hoped and doubted this qualified.

  The building was shadowy and old, and the kitchen’s steel surfaces and heavy-duty cooking instruments gave the room a torture chamber feel. While the microwave hummed and Luke cranked the steel lever of an industrial can opener, Maddy leaned in the window’s light, pouring vodka into her coffee, planning to wash the mug at home. After a few sips she took out her phone and called Andy Dixon. When she reached his voicemail, she left a second polite message, letting the flatness of her voice speak for her anger.

  “I bet he’s in jail.” Luke laughed like he’d broken a rule and gotten away with it.

  “Why’s that?” Maddy said, feeling thoughtful from her first few sips. “What would Andy Dixon do to get himself put in jail?”

  “I don’t know what he’d do!” Luke said, slamming the lever down. “Andy Dixon’s a idiot!” With a burst of inspiration he added, “Andy Dixon’s a fuckhead!”

  “Luke!” she
said.

  The boy shook his head, his eyes bulging with excitement. “I’m Davey,” he proclaimed with a shrug, and he began to cackle in a dry-sounding, high-pitched voice.

  It was then, watching the child convulse and wondering if she had muttered fuckhead when thinking of his father, that she saw the man peering in the window at her. He was young with an unshaven, crazed look and pale blue eyes that made her joints stiffen. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then darted from the window frame. She hurried to the glass but saw no one, only the snow blanketing the playground and the slides and the woods beyond. Two sets of footprints crossed the field of white, one veering off toward the parking lot while the other proceeded to the window.

  Luke was silent now. He looked at her, gaping as if he’d done something wrong.

  The words to explain were out of reach. “Hold on,” she said. Putting down the mug, she spilled coffee and vodka on the stainless counter. Cleaning it up appeared on her vague mental to-do list, just after calling 911, though before chewing some gum to cover the smell for the cops. At any rate, first thing was locking the school doors.

  A second young man was standing in the corridor, his hat and face steaming. Maddy put out her hands and stopped, and Luke collided with her right butt cheek and hugged her leg. She hobbled upright and raised her arms defensively.

  The strange man made no move to approach. Melted snow dripped from his long curly hair and wool coat. He was short and thin, with pale bluish skin and a pinched and hungry face. “Hey, we’re lost,” he said, enunciating with unusual slowness. “My friend and I, we’re needing someplace out of the weather. Do you mind?”

  The other one, the one from the window, was coming up the corridor behind him, large and lanky in a black motorcycle jacket with clinking chains, one hand pocketed and the other a loose fist swinging back and forth. He was grinning in the same strange way, like he was on some drug. Meth, it’s just some meth heads, Maddy thought with halting relief. They were meth heads on meth or something, probably harmless. She would make them all soup. She straightened her Luke-weighted leg and folded her arms, trying to not cry, to look like someone in charge of things.

  “Did you tell her, Mouth?” The big guy elbowed the small one’s arm. “Did you tell her we need out of the cold?”

  “Sure did, Meat.” He stared at Maddy in a semi-insulted way, as if they knew each other. “She understands our needs completely.”

  “Excuse me,” Maddy said, the conviction dropping out of each word. “Do you know this is a school?”

  “Fuck yeah,” Mouth said. “I like totally did preschool here back in the day. Where’s Mr. Osmond?”

  “He went home,” she said. “He’s gone home for the weekend, and I’m afraid I have to leave soon, too.”

  “It’s cool,” Mouth said. “We can, like, lock up.”

  Meat pulled out his pocketed hand, and the cuff and hand holding a black object were smeared with red. The object was a knife handle with no blade. Maddy thought with cold clarity that this was a switchblade knife. The intruder was holding a switchblade knife. “This is dirty,” the intruder named Meat was saying. “Where’s a sink?”

  “Whoa,” said Mouth. “She’s freaking out! Hey, don’t freak out!”

  Maddy backed into the kitchen, dragging Luke, and tried to unstop the door with the boy sitting on her foot. He was unbelievably heavy and resisted the hand prying him loose. He pressed his face behind her knee, crying through the denim. She let go of his short wiry arm and tugged at the lock-ring on the prop above her head. Meat with his bloody knife-hand was coming, his face growing flushed as he drew nearer. She slid the ring down the prop and the door began closing very slowly, and she pushed on the back of it to make it close faster. She shut it with his grimacing face behind the thinly latticed window and reached for the dead bolt as he kicked it from the other side. The bolt knob slammed back, jamming her fingers, and the door swung in on her forehead. Her head snapped back and she fell fast. She banged an elbow on the floor. The tiles were cold, hard, shell-green. Luke had let go of her leg. He lay on his side, stunned eyes blinking.

  Meat stood over her, pointing the knife down, the blade unsprung. “Don’t fucking freak out,” he said. Noticing the sink, he stepped over her and made his way across the kitchen, calling back, “I fucking hate that.”

  “I know, man, but chill.” Mouth came in, looking down at Maddy with a mixture of pity and reproof. “You shouldn’t have run. We’re not here to hurt you. You’re really very low on our list of priorities. We have ourselves to think of.”

  “He has a knife,” Maddy said by way of explanation. She reached out toward Luke, and he crawled over and lay on her shoulder, sobbing through her blouse, pinning her, though she no longer thought escape was an option.

  “All we need is a place out of the weather,” Mouth said, impatiently, as if she’d let him down. “You don’t need to freak out. You’re going to be fine. I’m pretty sure you’ll be just fine.”

  Meat was running the tap, talking in a loud voice as he rinsed sleeve, hand, and knife handle. He sprung the long, straight blade and turned it under the stream, holding it until the dark stain ran along its edge red and vanished. “Clean, look. Like the day it was made, like the day it was born. Clean and new.”

  “That’s great,” said Mouth. “That’s awesome news. I told you it would work out. See?” he said to Maddy. “Don’t you see how it all works out?”

  A techno song began to play, surprising them all. After a few seconds, Maddy recognized her phone’s ring.

  Meat stomped over and glared down. “What is it?”

  “It’s his dad calling,” she said, her hand finding Luke’s shivering ankle. “He’s late picking him up.”

  “Don’t answer,” said Mouth.

  “But he’s coming here anyway.”

  “Then say everything’s okay. But if you say something’s wrong,” he said in a slow teacherly tone Maddy had used many times herself and pointed his thumb at his angry friend. “Got it, teacher lady?”

  “I got it,” said Maddy.

  “Go ahead. Answer it.”

  Maddy reached into her pocket as the phone stopped ringing. The two men looked at each other, and Luke let out a wail against her shoulder. “Shh, he’ll call back,” she said, then added, though she knew it was cruel, “Come on, Davey. Be tough.”

  The boy moaned and a second later the techno song resumed playing. She answered, feeling sober, fully in control of her voice. She glanced up at the intruders, saying, “Mr. Dixon, there you are.”

  “Hey, Miss Maddy,” Andy Dixon said in an I’m-busy-driving voice. “Hey, sorry I’m so late coming to get him. I had a chance to get some work out on this house this morning and couldn’t pass it up. Afterward, the foreman started cracking beers, and I didn’t want to be rude.”

  She ignored his preposterous logic, saying, “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. We’re waiting.”

  If he heard any fear breaking through her voice, he gave no sign of it. “Okay. See you in fifteen.”

  “Okay, bye,” she said, though the call had ended.

  “What’s going on? What did he say?” Mouth said. “Is he coming?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” said Maddy. Feeling her forehead wet, she reached up and took away blood on her fingertip. “He drives a blue truck. No surprises. I’ll tell you everything in advance.”

  Mouth turned and looked at Meat, staring until the bigger man lowered his eyes.

  “You got yourself to blame for that cut,” Mouth told Maddy. “Better hurry up and get clean before Daddy gets here. And get him calm.” He held out his hand and shook his head when Maddy reached to take it. “Give me the phone, dummy.”

  They went back to the classroom, and Maddy went into the bathroom and bent at the miniature sink to examine her forehead in the mirror. The break in the skin was tiny, with a faint round bruise behind it. As she rinsed it and pressed a damp, brown-paper towel to it to stanch the bleeding, it occurred to her t
hat the bathroom key was in her pocket. The door was reinforced with steel, and she doubted the intruders would be able to break it in if she locked it. She tried to imagine the various outcomes. The meth heads or killers or whatever they were tortured Luke until she came out or they killed him or they let him live and fled. They gave him to his father and tried to break in or took off. They killed Andy Dixon and Luke but not her. They killed her and nobody else. She fixed her hair and went out. They were all standing by the toy chest in the corner. Luke was holding a large plastic dragon. He was staring at her, terrified.

  “Come on,” said Mouth. “Isn’t that like your favorite toy? It’s the best one for sure.”

  “Go on,” Meat urged the boy. “Do your thing.”

  Both men were frowning.

  “He’s scared of us,” Mouth observed. “We’ve really got him rattled over here. This one’s got weak boundaries, for sure. Not a good sign, not a good sign at all.”

  “This kid sucks,” said Meat. “Fucking waste.”

  “You’d probably be scared, too, man. Imagine if two big dudes came in and scared your schoolteacher. He doesn’t know he’s going to be just like us some day. You don’t know that yet, kid, do you?”

  “If we were kids, I’d hate him,” Meat said. “Kick his ass and shit.”

  “We should come up with a story, guys,” Maddy interrupted, smiling to show that, whatever they were on, she was willing to help, so long as they didn’t hurt her. It reminded her of high school, driving friends on acid around the woods. She studied Luke. “I know we can trust Davey to keep a secret. Isn’t that right, Davey?”

  His eyes fixed with vague understanding, he nodded slowly and carefully.

  “Why’d you say his name?” Meat wanted to know.

  “It’s a teaching tactic or something,” said Mouth. “There’s like a whole psychology.”

  “Is there like a psychology, Mouth?”

  “Fuck you, Meat, you fucking lunk. You slab.”

  “Kick your ass, dude.”