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Plight of Troth

Christopher Reinhardt Krueger

    When he stopped showing up, Colin’s boss called his phone but it was off. His friends called too and, unable to reach him, assumed he had finally cut loose and they were happy for him. The neighbors had hardly known him. He hardly spoke to his mother and his father was dead. Colin Myers had disappeared and for a long time very few people noticed and hardly anyone seemed to care.
    It had just begun to be cold when, almost a year earlier, Colin and his girlfriend Sierra moved to a ground floor apartment in West Philadelphia. Colin’s mother, Diane, had hated the idea of the move from the moment she heard of it but knew it was out of her hands. Since her husband’s death of a heart attack while Colin was in college, Colin had hardly spoken to her except to blame her, often in public and to her embarrassment, for the death. He said she pushed him too hard so she could have her big fucking house and her Lexus and get her goddamned nails done every week and so on. It wasn’t an innovative thought, nor was it ever well delivered, but it hung in her mind like a foul stench in the kitchen and made conversation between her and her son quite unbearable.
    When he moved out, Colin left unlabeled boxes in the corner of the basement. He didn’t leave a note and he didn’t say goodbye.

***

    Neither Colin nor Sierra moved with much and their apartment was sparsely furnished. In the bedroom: just a full size mattress on the floor and some collapsible fabric cabinets in which clothes were sorted but left unfolded. The living room: a big maroon couch, an old gray tube TV with a bunny ear antenna, and a wood and cinder block bookshelf on which a boombox sat. There was hardly anything in the basement: a washer and dryer, some spray painted pictures on the exposed brick walls, and an old chest freezer set in the shadow beneath the stairs. The space was illuminated by a single dangling bulb which could be turned on only by a frayed, dangling cord.
    Shortly after the move, Colin found a job working at a liquor store near the house and Sierra started working in Center City selling designer clothes. Before their routines became tiresome, they would laugh together about the differences between the desperate sides of men they each saw throughout the day. Colin saw the drunks through the bulletproof glass and usually called the police two or three times a shift while Sierra was hit on by businessmen who unabashedly displayed their wedding bands. It made her think of Colin and, though she had never even caught him checking out another girl, she sometimes wondered how he acted when she wasn’t around.
    Sierra was crazy about Colin and he knew it. When he was able to sleep in, he’d often wake to find small flowers in his shoes - usually from the weeds in the sidewalk out front, and a lunch already prepared for him in the refrigerator. When he’d return home from an evening shift, there would often be a cup of tea steeping on the table and Sierra would be in bed, naked and pretending to be asleep. When they made love she deferred to his pleasure and tried to learn the little things he liked by noticing what made him shudder and afterward she often whispered in his ear that she wished she could feel what he felt.
    It made Colin uncomfortable to hear this sort of thing from her and he felt that he was losing sight of her behind all the attention she gave. It didn’t exactly surprise him when Sierra started making hints about rings but he pretended not to notice and thought it might be time to move on.

***

    After having heard nothing from her son for nearly a year, Diane began to worry. She tried calling him many times but the phone was never on. She left voicemails until the box was full but the calls were never returned. She called what friends’ phone numbers she had, but either the numbers had been changed or they too hadn’t heard from him. She called the family members to whom she thought he might have reached out. Not the slightest whisper anywhere.
    Through her salon, Diane found out where Sierra’s family lived and went to the house. It sat on an isolated hill surrounded by barren trees and when she parked at the top of the driveway she closed the car door softly and with apprehension. Walking across the driveway toward the paint-chipped porch, her footsteps on the gravel sounded like grinding bone. She went to the door, rang the bell, and waited.
    A man about Diane’s age swung the door open. He wore a pressed buttoned shirt and tie with a dark red sweater over top. He seemed either to be expecting visitors or wholly unaccustomed to them.
    When the man heard who Diane was and what she was there for, he became very rigid. He told Diane that he also hardly heard from his daughter but that he knew the address to the place and would give it to her. Leaving the front door open, he walked into the house but he did not invite Diane in.
    The man went to a table in the hall and picked up a pad of paper from amongst picture frames turned face down. The rug on which he stood was thick with cat hair. The hall was dark and the cool air rushing out the door was stale.

    The man handed Diane the slip of paper with an address on it. He said he would prefer if she didn’t say where she got it. He closed the door without saying goodbye.

***

    A few hours later Sierra opened her front door until the chain caught and peered through the gap. “Mrs. Myers,” she said, her head shaking once with surprise, “what are you doing here?”
    “Hi, Sierra. Sorry to show up unannounced. I’m looking for Colin. Is he home? Do you know where he is?” Diane tried to peer around the girl and into the apartment.
    Sierra looked at Diane with calm but unwavering eyes. Her gaze had been fixed long enough to make Diane uncomfortable when she finally kicked something out of the way and opened the door so Diane could pass through. “Don’t know where he is. He’s not really been living here for a while.” Sierra said.
    The women stood in the hallway between the door and the main living area. The apartment was nearly empty but was warmed by the smells from the kitchen.
    “He just left? And didn’t even tell you where he was going?”
    “No, nothing. I mean, he left a bunch of stuff here, but he didn’t mention his plans or what the hell he was up to.” Sierra waved her hands as if inviting Diane to look around. “I packed up what he left and put it in the basement. You can look through it if you want.” Sierra closed her eyes and swallowed. “Things were so good, and I don’t know why he wanted anything to change.”
    They stood silently in the hallway for a moment before Diane said she’d go down and check out what he left behind.

***

    At the top of the stairs Diane tried the switch but nothing happened. The light from the living room illuminated the walls halfway down into the basement and Diane held the banister as she walked down the creaking stairs. At the bottom she slid her feet across the cement floor to make sure there were no more steps.
    She found and pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling and the light buzzed on. Much of the basement remained in shadow. There were boxes pushed up against the corner opposite the stairs and she opened one of them. CDs. Random pieces of paper. Fliers for concerts. More of the same was in another box and a bunch of clothes were in the third.
    Squatting beside the boxes with one hand on the rough and dusty cardboard, an electric motor clicked on in the dark and the dangling light dimmed. The noise startled Diane and caused her to lose her balance and topple backward. The light returned to normal and Diane scanned the room and saw faces spray painted on the walls. She heard footsteps upstairs and struggled to right herself.
    Leaning and looking down the stairs, Sierra blocked much of the light and cast a shadow on the wall. She called down to Diane, saying, “Chili’s ready. Want some?”
    Diane dusted off her pants with her palm and said with a waver in her voice that, she was quite hungry and would be up in just a minute.
    She closed the boxes. The motor stopped and Diane looked into the returning silence and saw a shape in the shadow beneath the stairs. She walked over to the side of the stairs and saw the large chest freezer nestled underneath. In front of the freezer there was a drain and the cement around the drain was discolored and cracking. A small tube ran from the behind the freezer to the drain and when Diane turned and to walk back to the front of the stairs, her foot was caught underneath the tube. She stumbled and dislodged the drain cap.
    She bent to pick up the grimy cap and leaned over the top of the drain. She gagged from the smell, dropped the cap and straightened her back. Rising suddenly, she banged her head on the bottom corner of a stair and she reached her hand behind her head and rubbed it. She cursed quietly and said her own name and then held her breath and bent over again. She reset the drain cap and slid the tube back into it.
    Entering the light on the stairs again she looked at her fingers and saw rough and rusty smears of brown and red. Between the open backs of the stairs she saw the top of the freezer and a long shape which seemed to be a jacket dangling in the corner from a chain coming off the stairs.
    She went upstairs and saw the bathroom door was open and went in. She washed her hands and turned in the mirror, trying to see where she had hit her head. She felt the bump and when she pulled away her hands they were clean.

***

    Diane went into the kitchen and Sierra invited her to sit. Sierra stood at the sink washing dishes with her back to the room. On the counter there was a long strip of used plastic wrap and on the table there was a plastic bowl and a spotted silver spoon. Diane thanked Sierra for the food and sat down.
    Adjusting herself in the chair, Diane said, “You know, something’s backing up that drain down there. You might want to call the city or the landlord to make sure the main’s not blocked.” Sierra acknowledged the thought with a noise and Diane took a spoonful of Chili. “You’re right though. There sure doesn’t seem to be anything significant in those boxes. ...He really didn’t say anything before he left? Did you call the police? What if something happened to him?”
    “Mrs. Myers, police around here aren’t the sharpest bunch. Besides, they’re not going to respond to a call for a missing mid-twenty year old man anyway. Not around here.”
    “But aren’t you surprised that he didn’t tell you anything about where he was going?”
    Sierra turned from the dishes, threw the towel down onto the counter, and faced Diane.
    “Look, you think I like the fact that he pulled away from me? I know you never liked me, but I thought your son did. I thought we were going to get married, Diane. Do you have any idea what it feels like? To think you’ll be a part of someone forever and they have them start to slip away? What was I supposed to do?” The two women stared at each other in the cold kitchen. The pot steamed and the chili bubbled on the stove behind Sierra. “I think it’s best that you leave. You can take the boxes if you want them.”
    Diane stared at Sierra. The girl seemed fierce and frightened. Diane rose from the table and said she was going to take the boxes of random things but leave his clothes just in case he came back.

***

    At the bottom of the stairs, Diane picked up the two boxes with papers and CDs and when she started up the stairs she saw again the shape in the corner. She set the boxes on a stair and walked around to the front of the freezer.
    She stepped carefully over the tube and the drain pipe and set one hand on top of the freezer. She smelled the odor from the drain and she held her breath as she leaned and reached her free hand toward the chain that dangled from the stair. She saw that what she thought was a jacket on a hanger attached to the chain was actually an old button flannel shirt that had once belonged to Colin’s dad.
    She tried to pull the shirt toward her. The chain was on a track on the crossbeam coming out from beneath the top stair and it slid out from the corner a few inches before getting stuck.
    Diane stopped pulling the shirt and chain toward her when she heard the sound of wood falling and rolling on the concrete floor in the corner. Releasing the shirt, she heard the thin clink of metal tapping lightly on the chain. She bent over and reached her hand into the dark space between the wall and the freezer. A bat. Pulling it out, she rattled the chain and something metal fell to the floor. She set the bat down and reached her hand into the dark again but pulled it back abruptly when she touched something sharp. The freezer clicked on again and she toppled backward in surprise. As she fell back, one of her hands fell onto the drain cap and jostled it. She smelled the stale odor of the drain and noticed that her hand was sticky.
    Diane stood up and reached her hand back into the corner carefully and grasped the handle of a long hacksaw. The blade of the saw was caught on something in the corner and as she pulled harder the saw came free and something hollow rattled in the corner and Diane heard it tap against the backside of the freezer.
    She stood and rested her waist on the edge of the freezer, leaning over and trying to see what had fallen in the dark. She was finely balanced, her feet off the ground. She could only make out a a circular shape in the dark corner. She thought it might have been a funnel, but she couldn’t reach far enough down to feel it.
    When Diane rotated her weight off of the edge of the freezer, the lid of the machine shifted and as she lowered her feet back to the floor, the lid rose slightly and the light inside escaped through the narrow crack. Diane raised the lid and in the light she saw that her hands were stained a brownish red again. In the freezer there were stacked bags of indecipherable marbled meat. She reached in and pulled a bag out.
    Deep in the bottom of the freezer she saw the opaque white curve of a bone. She reached down into the cold and tried to pull it out, but it was long and stuck under the weight of the bags. She pulled bag upon bag of meat out of the freezer. At the bottom of the cold machine, in the last bag atop the bone: a scarred hand unmistakably her son’s, a silver wedding band glimmering through the freezer burn.

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