Spark

17

Carver parked the olds on Skyview Lane, three lots up from Lou Brethwaite’s rundown blue trailer. Skyview was aptly named, Carver decided, as the only view worth looking at in the trailer park just outside Orlando was the sky. Rows of single and double-wide trailers were connected by streets where grass and weeds had burst through the cracks into sunlight. Some of the trailers had decrepit wooden latticework around their bases so they resembled actual houses, but the wood had rotted away on Brethwaite’s trailer and the wheels showed like guilty secrets in the shadows beneath faded blue fiberglass and rust-stained steel.

Except for a skinny young woman in a green T-shirt and baggy gray shorts, no one seemed to live on Skyview Lane. She let the screen door slam behind her on the trailer across the street from Brethwaite’s, sauntered out to get her mail from a metal box that looked like a lunchbucket on top of a crooked post, then scratched her left buttock and ambled back inside. She’d only glanced at Carver, revealing she had a black eye. The homes might have wheels, but life on Skyview Lane could be an inescapable trap.

He climbed out of the Olds and limped toward Brethwaite’s trailer. There were no sidewalks, and he had to be careful negotiating the slanted concrete street. After crossing the patch of weeds that passed for a front yard, he climbed three dangerous wooden steps, stood in the hot shade beneath a rusty blue and white metal awning, and knocked on the trailer door. It shook crookedly on its hinges, and the cloudy plastic that served as a window rattled noisily in its frame. Carver was afraid the opaque phony glass was going to fall out, but somehow it held. Maybe the way people here held onto life.

“Who’s it?” called a voice from inside.

“Police, F.B.I., D.E.A., and Publishers Clearing House,” Carver said. He knocked again, harder. The warped aluminum door shook like six kinds of Jell-O, all noisy.

A moment passed, then the door slowly opened.

Lou Brethwaite squinted out at Carver. He seemed shorter, thinner, with eyes that held nothing but pain. Carver had known him as an informer for the Orlando police. That was how Brethwaite managed to indulge his habit and stay out of prison. But the drugs were his personal prison, and he was dying there, faster now. “Fred Carver,” he said, as if christening Carver. “Thought I recognized your voice, even before I peeked out the window and seen it was you.”

“You don’t look good, Lou,” Carver said. He didn’t mention that Brethwaite didn’t smell good, either. The air moving from inside the trailer felt hotter than outside, and it carried the stench of sweat and urine and spicy fried food. A radio or television was on inside the trailer, tuned to a Braves game.

“I been sleeping,” Brethwaite said. “You should catch me when I’m dressed to go out and I got a fresh haircut.” He ran dirty fingernails through his thinning black hair. He was wearing a blue denim work shirt and incredibly wrinkled gray slacks, no shoes. A man in his twenties who could pass for forty. “Guess you’re waiting for me to invite you in, huh?”

“Why don’t you step out?” Carver said. “Cooler out here.”

“Guess it is. Air conditioner’s been busted the past month.” Inside the trailer, somebody hit a double. The crowd was roaring as Brethwaite let the door slam shut.

Carver stepped down into the yard to give Brethwaite room to plod down the sagging stairs. Brethwaite stepped on a fat palmetto bug with his bare foot, but he didn’t seem to notice nearly as much as the insect. Carver looked away.

“It ain’t so bad seeing you now you’re not a cop,” Brethwaite said. “Been what, about three, four years?”

“About,” Carver said. “I need some information, Lou.”

Brethwaite smiled. There were more gaps in his yellowed teeth than when Carver had last seen him, not three or four years ago but last year, stoned in a bar in downtown Orlando. Still, cleaned up, after a trip to the dentist, he would have been a good-looking guy, one you’d be happy to see hanging around your sister. If you didn’t know what he carried in his pockets. “I figured you didn’t drop by to talk baseball, Mickey, and the Duke,” he told Carver.

Carver said, “Some things never change.”

Brethwaite sniffed with obvious pain, brushed at his nose with a knuckle, then examined his hand as if looking for blood. All he might see there was part of his disappearing future. Still doing coke. “That being the case, I expect you wanna pay for this information.”

“A hundred in it for you, if it’s good,” Carver said. The sun, the smell, were beginning to get to him. He wanted to get this over with and go where it was fresh and cool. “I’m looking for a man named Adam Beed.”

“No, don’t do that,” Brethwaite said. He frowned and spat off to the side. There was blood in his spittle. Some of it dribbled down onto his chin. “He’s a fella best not found.”

“Nevertheless,” Carver said.

“Yeah. Well, I won’t pretend I ain’t scared to tell you, but it don’t matter how I feel, ’cause I don’t know where you might latch onto Beed.”

Carver drew two fifty-dollar bills from his pocket and held them creased over his forefinger.

Brethwaite glanced at the bills and gave his yellow smile. “Keep your hundred, stay alive, I’ll stay alive, that’s the best way this conversation can go. Beed’s a genuine through-an’-through bad-ass, Carver, Last I heard he was outa prison and on booze so as to stay legal and not violate parole.”

“He’s broken parole. Otherwise I’d be able to find him.”

“Well, running out on your parole officer’s not the best play, but that’s not the same as chancing going back behind the walls on a drug charge. Beed got clean enough in prison that he’s an alky now.” Again the ruined smile. “It’s a more socially acceptable substance, not to mention legal, but despite the fact he’s a physical fitness freak, he’s just as addicted as ever and eventually it’ll take him down. An addict’s an addict, legal drug or not. I don’t shit myself or anybody else about that. Thing is, Beed don’t run in any of his old circles these days. That’s why I can’t tell you where you might find him, or even who else might know.”

Carver slipped the hundred into his pocket, watching Brethwaite stare at it until it disappeared. He was wasted and dying and needed the money; he was telling the truth.

“You ever consider going into a rehab program, Lou?” Carver asked. Had Oprah Winfrey ever considered a diet?

“I’m on a waiting list. Been on it for eight months.” Staring down at his dirty bare feet, Brethwaite sniffled again and said, “I do have something for you might be worth one of them fifties.”

Carver pulled out one of the bills and held it between thumb and forefinger. He knew Brethwaite, knew he was about to part with fifty dollars’ worth of truth. In a perverted way, his honesty kept him alive day to day, the currency he exchanged for dollars.

“I heard a guy crossed Beed a few months back down in Miami-don’t ask me how or why, ’cause I don’t know. I only tell you what I do know. Anyway, you ever see that movie where the dude who crossed the Mafia wakes up one fine morning and finds a horse’s head next to him in bed?”

Carver nodded.

“Well, this guy in Miami found his wife’s head resting on her pillow like usual, but nothing else under the covers. Still ain’t found the rest of her.” Brethwaite’s lips danced as he stared hard at Carver. “That give you an idea what kinda geek you’re looking for?”

Carver handed him the fifty, then turned around and limped back to the car. His stomach didn’t feel so good, and he hated the fear that hindered his limbs like arthritis.

“Helluva movie, anyway,” Brethwaite said behind him, an instant before the trailer’s flimsy door slammed shut and rattled.

Carver was in more of a mood for a musical.