Beyond Recognition

15

Terrified, exhilarated, Ben climbed out of the storage bench, his one good eye trained on the camper’s back door, no plan in his head on how to deal with what the next few minutes might bring. He behaved more like a caged bird discovering the cage left open. He carefully approached the camper’s only door, distrustful and cautious, bravely venturing a look out the window into the parking garage. He ducked just as quickly, glad he had not charged out the back of the camper as he had been tempted to do: Nick stood waiting for the elevator with the large green duffel bag at his side. It was stenciled in bold capital letters USAF. Ben impatiently waited him out.

It was strange how with just the one eye Ben could see so much, or perhaps it was his lack of peripheral vision that sharpened the importance of those objects he could see. So many times he had been struck by a football or a stick or even another kid’s fist, because it moved too fast into his range of vision and caught him by surprise. Little by little his brain had adjusted, sending early warning signals far ahead of the warning signals received by people with stereoscopic vision. Ben lacked depth of field-the world played out on a two-dimensional television screen. He was a terrible judge of distance, and his hand-eye motor coordination suffered measurably from his impairment. But if something entered his visual field it registered fully, taking on an immediate importance.

It was just a shape. Dark. About as tall as his stepfather. Standing between two parked cars. Watching. Perhaps he-she? — was standing there waiting for someone with the car keys to arrive from baggage claim, but it felt far more sinister than that, as if Ben himself were being watched, or even the man over at the elevator. Worse, the presence of this man caused Ben to fear leaving the back of the truck; he would be seen, and something warned him to avoid this at all costs. (Although he didn’t see it as such, this was his first real glimpse of Emily’s true powers. He experienced the ability to tune in to the subtle signals inside him that, if trusted, offered a vision of the future: If he stepped outside this camper, there was trouble waiting.)

The figure in the dark possessed him; he couldn’t take his eye off him. When the man-he suddenly saw clearly that it was a man-turned his attention away from the elevator and toward the truck, Ben knew that he was headed for him.

The elevator arrived.

He twisted the handle, tempted to flee, regardless of that dark shape. He wanted out so badly he could taste it. At that same instant, however, the figure moved, walking out from between the parked cars, and headed straight for the truck. A voice inside Ben’s head warned, “Don’t!” and he found himself releasing the doorknob.

Nick stepped into the elevator, hauling the duffel bag with him. The doors slid shut.

The other man suddenly approached quickly, taking long strides, nearly at an all-out run. Patches of light flashed across his face, but even so, Ben had trouble actually seeing that face. It was as if the man were wearing a mask.

Ben lifted the bench and dove inside, driven back into hiding amid the tools and oily rags, feeling ever more involved with something he wanted no part of. How many times had Emily warned him not to so much as touch a customer’s car? It felt as if his situation was designed as some kind of lesson; he half expected the approaching figure would turn out to be Emily, having created and acted all this out with Ben in mind. He promised himself that if he got out of this, he would never, ever in a million years, lay a finger on another person’s property. He hoped this promise might in some way protect him from the man who now approached, for his stomach churned with fear and trepidation.

The camper door made a noise as it opened. Ben felt his insides go watery. He could barely breathe, his throat was so dry. Where the driver had seemed a threat, this dark figure was the one to fear.

As quickly as the door opened, it shut. Ben never felt any movement of the truck’s springs, any indication that the man had come inside. He waited and listened, blood pounding in his ears and chest. The tips of his fingers felt cold, and all at once a shiver passed through him. He felt on the verge of crying. He swallowed his fear and ventured to lift the bench a crack and peer out.

Empty. He wanted to shout a thanks to God. Instead, he hoisted the bench, climbed out, and hurried to the smudged glass of the back door.

The parking garage appeared empty. He didn’t trust this and looked back and forth, intent on spotting the other man lingering in the shadows or wedged between two parked cars, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ben twisted the doorknob and pushed, thinking that with his luck the door would prove to be …

… locked!

The second man had re-padlocked the door. A wave of nausea coursed through him. He banged the door against the clasp several times, paying no attention to the possibility of being heard or noticed. Where was good luck when he needed it?

He dropped to his knees in an effort to study the clasp and lock, in order to see if there was any chance it had been hooked but not locked. As his knee touched the filthy carpeting, he felt an unexpected bulge below his kneecap and glanced down to see the corner of a plain white envelope protruding. He slipped the envelope out. It was thick and bulging, but lightweight. He couldn’t resist looking inside. He lifted the flap to see the squiggled edges of money. Dozens of bills. Fifties and twenties and some tens. Old bills. Worn money. Lots of it.

To him, it seemed like a million dollars. Cash, right there in his hand. He would need money to get home. He had none on him. He reached in and fished out a twenty. And then another. With each bill the temptation grew. Who would know if he took the whole thing? So many times, as Emily slipped her ten-dollar payment into the cigar box she kept in the freezer, she had spoken the words to Ben: “Money is freedom.” They lived in him as a kind of mantra. Money meant independence. Money offered people the chance to be themselves. And here was this envelope of cash in his hand and no one around to see him. He could give the money to Emily; he could pay for his food; he could live with her.

The presence of the money was overwhelming. There was no drug deal. He was not trapped in the back of a truck. He was free. He didn’t return the envelope to where he had found it. Never even considered it. He folded the envelope and shoved it into his front pants pocket. He had a chance at a new life. He felt giddy. Then, all at once, the confines of the camper shell got to him. The envelope seemed to be burning his leg. It suddenly felt heavy to him, as if anyone looking at him would see it. But not for a second did he think about putting it back. He moved quickly, as if he had done all this before. He checked the tiny closet. He didn’t find a broom or a mop, but instead an aluminum baseball bat. Hurriedly, he climbed atop the camper’s tabletop and probed skyward with the bat, pushing open the skylight. It took three tries to get the hook to catch, and even then it was not through an eyelet but only resting on top of one. Nonetheless, the skylight remained open, and Ben returned the bat to the closet. Once again he felt the pressure of time bearing down on him. He sensed that the trouble was not over but only in a lull. Despite this pressure he moved fluidly, accustomed to the anxiety of searching a car while the customer remained with Emily inside the purple house. His senses remained on full alert. His hands were sweaty, his skin hot.

He climbed back on the table, trained his eye on the edge of the skylight, and knew he had to make it in one jump. There were no second tries. To miss would be to fall backward on the table; he would break something or knock himself out. He had one try in him.

A voice inside reminded him that this required hand-eye coordination, this was something everyone agreed he had no talent for; the voice grew louder, warning him not to even try. But the drive for survival spoke louder, and he overcame this nagging voice and blatantly disregarded it. There was no choice. He simply had to make the jump. And he had to be successful.

He squatted down, feeling the strength in his tree-climbing legs, aimed his single eye above him, having little judgment of the exact distance he had to travel, and jumped, fingers outstretched.

The wood edge slapped his palms and he gripped down and hooked the lip and held himself dangling, suspended in midair. But he had rocked the truck, causing the hook to slip off the eyelet, and the skylight came down like a Chinese poultry knife onto his knuckles. Ben cried out, but he did not let go. Could not let go.

He pulled, as he had so many times in a bad situation in a tree, as if lifting himself to the next branch. He did this twice but sank back down to his dangling position, his fingers aching under his weight. The third time he coordinated all his efforts simultaneously: He pulled himself up, banged the skylight partially open with his head, hooked one elbow, then the other, and pulled even higher, worming his torso up and through the skylight. Kicking his legs, as if swimming for the side of the pool, he wiggled up and out of the hole in the camper’s roof. He clambered over a rusted rack, where a tire and wheel were chained and locked, and slipped over the back to a narrow ladder fixed to the side of the shell. His feet touching pavement, he was off at a run, as if hearing footsteps immediately behind him.

He wasn’t going on that elevator, no matter what. Instead, he entered the stairs and descended two at a time, his fingers skating down the banister, his legs feeling rubbery from the excitement. He leaped onto the landing, grabbed hold of the railing, and pulled himself up short, stopping like a car caught by a red light.

Nick, the buzz-cut driver of the truck, the drug dealer, was standing on the stairs, wearing an expressionless face, his full attention riveted on Ben.

Ben stood there, chest heaving, recalling that the slight bulge on the man’s right side was a handgun, and that he was in the military, which meant he was a crack shot, and that Ben had been inside his truck, and that he no doubt knew this and had been thinking, planning, what to do about it, and now his hand was forced and the time had come, and Ben had served himself up on a silver platter.

He thought about the fold of money in his pocket, suddenly so heavy that he couldn’t move that leg. Surely the man saw the outline of the envelope there. Surely he knew. Caught!

The man Ben feared so much smiled and said, “Slow down there, buddy. Good way to knock some teeth out.”

Ben heard very little except something about getting his teeth knocked out. Nick climbed the stairs. Ben was directly in his path and so terrified that the man looked blurry, and his already untrustworthy legs felt on the verge of total failure. Their eyes met, and Ben felt a sick, hollow spot where his stomach should have been, and he felt a trickle of warm urine run down his left leg.

“Excuse me,” the smiling man said, and Ben stepped aside for him. Nick walked past, turned on the landing, and headed on up the stairs.

Ben sneaked onto a downtown hotel courtesy van, pretending to be with a pair of parents who didn’t notice what he was up to. The driver, who didn’t even count heads, seemed to care little about anything but getting the luggage in the back and moving on to the next curbside pickup. Any other day of his life, Ben might have considered this a major accomplishment. But not on that day. Instead, he spent the twenty-minute drive into the city debating exactly what he had seen take place: Nick had left with a duffel bag; he had returned without it. The dark, short, faceless man who had come out of the shadows had left an envelope of money and then locked the camper. An exchange. A drop. A drug deal.

From downtown he rode a city bus over First Hill toward home, walking the last mile and a half. Exhausted, he headed directly to his room and locked the door, well ahead of his stepfather, but not taking any chances. A few minutes later he went downstairs to the kitchen phone. He felt more like a robot than himself. It was something that had to be done; that was all there was to it. He knew this in his heart, even if his mind was engaged in a continuous dialogue to the contrary. He dialed 911. A woman’s voice answered.

Ben said calmly, “I want to report a drug deal. I saw a drug deal-” He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass of the cabinet on the wall. He could just picture himself explaining this to his stepfather. His butt hurt enough already. He slammed down the phone and sprinted back upstairs to his room.

Down a drab and unremarkable hallway in the Public Safety Building, the Seattle Communications Center, equipped with Enhanced 911 communications software, identified and recorded not only Ben’s telephone number but the physical address of that phone number as well, all before the operator ever answered. Every moment of the call was recorded, every nuance of his slightly hysterical voice. The call would be logged both by computer and by hand, Ben’s voice reduced to a data stream, compressed, and stored temporarily on a hard disk that was backed up on magnetic tape every twelve hours, the tapes stored in a former cannery repossessed by the city for back taxes a decade earlier. The operator mistakenly classified Ben’s call as a juvenile prank, which meant that if another two offenses were attributed to the same phone number, an officer of the juvenile court would pay that home a visit.

However, all so-called “dead” calls-calls not acted upon by dispatchers-were reviewed for free by a volunteer hot-line association whose main goal was to locate possible sexual and physical abuse victims where the caller lost his or her nerve to report.

As Ben drifted off to a much-needed sleep that night, downtown the Seattle Communications Center was processing his call along with several dozen others received in the 6 P.M. to midnight shift. The billing name on the phone number-his stepfather’s-the physical address, and the phone number were all part of the system. The gears of a slow-moving but determined bureaucracy continued to grind.

Ben hung up the phone and headed straight upstairs to his room, his heart still pounding as hard as if he had only then stopped running. He felt a little dizzy, a little sick to his stomach. It was at moments such as this that he missed his mother most of all. She would have helped him; he believed this with all his heart. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, to tell Emily; she was all he had. He shut his door and sat down heavily on the bed. At first he didn’t believe the empty feeling under his butt. An even deeper fear than what he’d been living with for the past few minutes wormed into his stomach. It didn’t seem possible. He reached back to the seat of his pants tentatively, afraid of the implication of what this emptiness meant to him.

His wallet was gone.