Damned If I Do Part 2

"That's it," Douglas said more than asked.

Sherman nodded.

"Doesn't it make you happy to do it?"

Sherman looked at Douglas, questioning.

"I ask because you never smile."

"Oh," Sherman said and took another bite of doughnut.

The next day Sherman fixed a chain saw and a laptop computer and thirty-two parking tickets. Sherman, who had always been quiet, became increasingly more so. He would listen, nod, and fix the problem. That evening, a few minutes before closing, just after Sherman had solved the Morado woman's s.e.xual-ident.i.ty problem, two paramedics came in with a patient on a stretcher.

"This is my wife," the more distressed of the ambulance men said of the supine woman. "She's been hit by a car and she died in our rig on the way to the hospital," he cried.

Sherman looked at the woman, pulling back the blanket.

"She had ma.s.sive internal-"

Sherman stopped the man with a raised hand, pulled the blanket off and then threw it over himself and the dead woman. Douglas stepped over to stand with the paramedics.

Sherman worked under the blanket, moving this way and that way, and then he and the woman emerged, alive and well. The paramedic hugged her.

"You're alive," the man said to his wife.

The other paramedic shook Sherman's hand. Douglas just stared at his handyman.

"Thank you, thank you," the husband said, crying.

The woman was confused, but she, too, offered Sherman thanks.

Sherman nodded and walked quietly away, disappearing into the kitchen.

The paramedics and the restored woman left. Douglas locked the shop and walked into the kitchen where he found Sherman sitting on the floor with his back against the refrigerator.

"I don't know what to say," Douglas said. His head was swimming. "You just brought that woman back to life."

Sherman's face looked lifeless. He seemed drained of all energy. He lifted his sad face up to look at Douglas.

"How did you do that?" Douglas asked.

Sherman shrugged.

"You just brought a woman back to life and you give me a shrug?" Douglas could hear the fear in his voice. "Who are you? What are you? Are you from outer s.p.a.ce or something?"

"No," Sherman said.

"Then what's going on?"

"I can fix things."

"That wasn't a thing," Douglas pointed out. "That was a human being."

"Yeah, I know."

Douglas ran a hand over his face and just stared down at Sherman. "I wonder what Sheila will say."

"Please don't tell anyone about this," Sherman said.

Douglas snorted out a laugh. "Don't tell anyone. I don't have to tell anyone. Everyone probably knows by now. What do you think those paramedics are out doing right now? They're telling anybody and everybody that there's some freak in Langley's Sandwich Shop who can revive the dead."

Sherman held his face in his hands.

"Who are you?"

News spread. Television-news trucks and teams camped outside the front door of the sandwich shop. They were waiting with cameras ready when Douglas showed up to open for business the day following the resurrection.

"Yes, this is my shop," he said. "No, I don't know how it was done," he said. "No, you can't come in just yet," he said.

Sherman was sitting at the counter waiting, his face long, his eyes red as if from crying.

"This is crazy," Douglas said.

Sherman nodded.

"They want to talk to you." Douglas looked closely at Sherman. "Are you all right?"

But Sherman was looking past Douglas and through the front window where the crowd was growing ever larger.

"Are you going to talk to them?" Douglas asked.

Sherman shook his sad face. "I have to run away," he said. "Everyone knows where I am now."

Douglas at first thought Sherman was making cryptic reference to the men who had been beating him that night long ago, but then realized that Sherman meant simply everyone.

Sherman stood and walked into the back of the shop. Douglas followed him, not knowing why, unable to stop himself. He followed the man out of the store and down the alley, away from the shop and the horde of people.

Sherman watched the change come over Douglas and said, "Of course not."

"But you-" The rest of Douglas's sentence didn't have a chance to find air as he was once again repeating Sherman's steps.

They ran up this street and across that avenue, crossed bridges and scurried through tunnels and no matter how far away from the shop they seemed to get, the chanting remained, however faint. Douglas finally asked where there were going and confessed that he was afraid. They were sitting on a bench in the park and it was by now just after sundown.

"You don't have to come with me," Sherman said. "I only need to get away from all of them." He shook his head and said, more to himself, "I knew this would happen."

"If you knew this would happen, why did you fix all of those things?"

"Because I can. Because I was asked."

Douglas gave nervous glances this way and that across the park. "This has something to do with why the men were beating you that night, doesn't it?"

"They were from the government or some businesses, I'm not completely sure," Sherman said. "They wanted me to fix a bunch of things and I said no."

"But they asked you," Douglas said. "You just told me-"

"You have to be careful about what you fix. If you fix the valves in an engine, but the bearings are shot, you'll get more compression, but the engine will still burn up." Sherman looked at Douglas's puzzled face. "If you irrigate a desert, you might empty a sea. It's a complicated business, fixing things."

Douglas said, "So, what do we do now?"

Sherman was now weeping, tears streaming down his face and curving just under his chin before falling to the open collar of his light blue shirt. Douglas watched him, not believing that he was seeing the same man who had fixed so many machines and so many relationships and so many businesses and concerns and even fixed a dead woman.

Sherman raised his tear-filled eyes to Douglas. "I am the empty sea," he said.

The chanting became louder and Douglas turned to see the night dotted with yellow-orange torches. The quality of the chanting had become strained and there was an urgency in the intonation that did not sound affable.

The two men ran, Douglas pushing Sherman, as he was now so engaged in sobbing that he had trouble keeping on his feet. They made it to the big bridge that crossed the bay and stopped in the middle, discovering that at either end thousands of people waited. They sang their dirge into the dark sky, their flames winking.

"Fix us!" they shouted. "Fix us! Fix us!"

Sherman looked down at the peaceful water below. It was a long drop that no one could hope to survive. He looked at Douglas.

Douglas nodded.

The ma.s.ses of people pressed in from either side.

Sherman stepped over the railing and stood on the brink, the toes of his shoes pushed well over the edge.

"Don't!" they all screamed. "Fix us! Fix us!"

House.

The doctor leaned back, the brown leather upholstery of his chair visible above his head, smiled, and said, "And what are you thinking as you look at me now?"

"I'm not thinking anything" Harry House said, which was not completely true, as he was thinking that the laundry room must have changed detergents because his clothes weren't making him itch today. The light blue pajama pants and pullover shirt usually tortured him, but not today, and he looked at the doctor and said, "I'm not itching."

The skinny man brought his body forward and put his elbows on his desk. "This is good, itching? Itching to what? You're not itching to what?"

Harry knew the man wanted to hear him say that he was not itching to bash in his face or not itching to scale the wall and disappear into the poor black neighborhood on the other side. "My body isn't itching. I think they changed soaps in the laundry. Do you ever get that? You know, when your skin is so sensitive to stuff?"

The doctor's face fell, the disappointment couldn't have been more obvious, though he tried to mask it and move on. "Are you still keeping a journal?"

"Of sorts." Harry interlaced his fingers and offered his nails a brief examination, noticing that they were in need of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. "It's more a recounting of some memories than it is about my feelings. I know that's not exactly what you wanted."

"That's fine. I'm sure that will be helpful for you as well." He looked at his pad, then made a note with a short, chewed pencil. "The last time we talked you mentioned the death of your brother as being a really bad time growing up."

"Wouldn't it have to be?"

The doctor nodded. "But you said you resented him for dying. I think your words were, 'He found a way to get everyone to look his way.' Just what did you mean by that?"

Harry shrugged. "If I did say that, I didn't feel it. I wouldn't have resented him. Especially since I never wanted anyone paying attention to me anyway. I would have welcomed the diversion."

"Why didn't you want attention?"

"Just didn't." Harry watched the man's eyes, knowing that long ago he had diagnosed him as having schizophrenia. That was how he had overheard the man put it. The patient has schizophrenia. For the doctor it was a disease, but for the orderlies and nurses who dealt with him daily, he was schizophrenic. For those working on the ward at night when patients peed on the floor and screamed b.l.o.o.d.y murder, it was a matter of interpersonal etiology.

"Did you love your brother? No, wait, let me put it this way: Did you like your brother?"

"Yes." The answer was automatic and a lie only in the sense that Harry could not actually recall a brother.

"Were the two of you close?"

"He was five years older." This was indeed a lie.

"Yes, I know, but my question is, were you close?"

"Not terribly."

"So, you weren't greatly saddened by his death?"

"I guess I don't know what actually const.i.tutes greatly saddened in your thinking. My normal sadness might put your great sadness to shame."

"I see." The doctor tapped his pad with the eraser of his pencil, a rhythmic tapping and Harry began to count them. "You're a bright person, Harry."

"So you tell me."

The doctor poured himself a gla.s.s of water from the clear plastic pitcher on his table. "Would you like a drink?" When Harry shook his head no, the man took a sip and asked, "Any dreams lately?"

"No."

"No dreams?"

"I don't dream."

"Everybody dreams," he said.

"I don't."

"Is this a decision you've made? Not to dream?" The doctor leaned back again. Harry could see that the man believed he had lured his prey into some open meadow.

"No more that you've decided to dream."

"Well, I think that's enough for today." He looked at his appointment book, which was open on his desk. "I'm on vacation next week, so I won't see you until a week from next Tueday."

Harry nodded.