The Perfect Crime

Henry can’t see the importance of having ever existed. He leans his back up against a large tree in the ninth-hole rough of Albuquerque’s Tanoan golf course, and with great pain in a swelling ankle, awaits to be executed. He doesn’t really know if he will be killed, but something serious is certain to happen and all he can do…is doing…is waiting for it. He smiled sardonically, thinking it is the end of his golf game…and probably his life. His mind runs like diarrhea. He is so fucking stupid that he can’t believe it. He could have taken the golf cart, but he panicked. He could have left the country. In this predicament, how could he doze off or, for that matter, sweat from a nightmare? Then again, it doesn’t matter any more. Nine months ago he had committed the perfect crime. It makes him ill just to think about it. It makes him want to puke. It also keeps him bracing up this tree full of shitting birds, grinning like a fucking idiot.

In Boston Henry had been eking out a living cleaning toilets daytime and working as a night watchman for a security company.

“Hey, Henry, you want to guard a bank?” The SercuiTrust dispatcher had called him Saturday morning before the job. “It’ll be an all-nighter for about a week probably…maybe longer.”
Henry had been puzzled and thought maybe he was just tired. “What do they need to guard a bank at night for?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly,” the dispatcher had said, “but they’re digging some kind of hole in the street and you gotta stand in it.”

“What the fuck?”

“Hey, you want it or not? I got plenty of people, but you’re up. So you want it?”

He had taken it, and the first night his mind had started working. It turned out some kind of foundation damage had been done to one of the Fleet bank buildings during street repair. The foundation had to be replaced and was now wide open to the street with all the safety deposit boxes exposed. He was told to keep it quiet since attracting attention to the situation could attract the “wrong element.”

His response had been, “I guess we know who they think my friends are.”

The first night was Monday on a not-so-busy-at-night street in the financial district. Since he had a day job, having to stay awake all night was going to be impossible. So Henry had figured that, if he climbed in through the hole, he could nap. If anybody else tried to sneak in, he would wake up and scare them from his dark vantage point. As it was, there wasn’t any good place to sleep except the floor, which was coated with dirt and rocks from the digging. So he hadn’t slept very well. On the other hand, he did have time to think…while, with his flashlight, he studied the walls of safe deposit boxes.

“How can I have a son who cleans bathrooms?” Professor Smith huffed on the phone. It was one of many times.

“Nothing that sophisticated, Pop. I don’t clean bathrooms. I just clean toilets.” Henry waited until his dad was about to hang up and then said, “Tell them I’m a night watchman.”

“Why can’t you just get a real job?”

“Or tell them I’m a headmaster. Remember, Pop, the wise old saying ‘Life is like a toilet. You only get out of it what you put into it.’”

After a few similar phone conversations, his father had died of a heart attack.

Born in Lawrence, Kansas, on a Monday in 1945, Henry grew up in several college towns as his father advanced his career in academia by switching schools. Settling in Worcester, Massachusetts, to become professor and dean at Worcester Polytech, Henry’s father, Dr. Robert Henry Smith, Senior, expected Henry to be something similar. So Henry probably contributed to his father’s death by annoyance. His mother had died when he was so young that all he remembered was that she had taught him how to pee without splashing. So Henry figured that by professionally cleaning toilets he must be pleasing his dead mother and killing his father.

It is fourteen hundred hours on a summer Monday afternoon on this New Mexican golf course and Henry is starting to wonder if he should or could crawl to safety. Although he has done some serious damage to his leg, he should be able to limp his way out. But he isn’t sure just where that safety is. So he waits.

Arid Albuquerque is relatively elevated and, therefore, cool. This afternoon is warm, and the grackles, in oscillating swarms, are socializing, so loudly that Henry cannot hear if the golf course maintenance machines are around. He knows they have to be out on the course, and one of the workers must come rolling by on a mowing machine or something, any time now.

At the end of his year’s stint in Vietnam, Henry was discharged with a plane ticket to Boston. Having moved so many times in his life, he had no great feelings for Boston or anywhere else, but he had no better place to go. Staying with one of his Cavalry and golf buddies until he could find a place to live, he had been introduced to the guy’s sister, Rita Adobe. “The sunbaked brick,” Henry called her. “Built like an adobe shit house.” She was slight and very Mexican…dark skin, dark eyes, and perfectly beautiful to Henry. So slender, smooth skinned, sexy and full of sex, it just had to be “that Mexican blood.” And she had said his hard body turned her on. And that his blue eyes turned her on. And his thick brown hair combed back was “the best.” She would sit for hours to pluck his eyebrows and check his face for unshaven hair.

And one winter evening, nestled in the sofa at his house in Malden, Massachusetts, he told her his story. “You know I used to could speak Spanish, Rita.”

“Oh, yeah?” She cuddled tighter against him, smiling doubtfully.

“Yeah, Spanish was one of my favorite subjects in college.”

“You never went to college.”

“No, I did. But I got a real asshole, jerkface teacher my sophomore year at Boston College and he tried to flunk me ‘cause my dad was a professor.”

“You’re foolin’ with me.”

“No, really, the asshole even said it out loud, just when he handed me my second flunking exam. ‘Just because your father’s a professor doesn’t mean you are.’”

“Did he really?” She was always animated and now a very serious look came over her face.

“Yeah, he did.” Henry paused. “And so instead of reporting the bastard, I ran over to the ROTC office and joined the army to go to Vietnam.”

“So that’s why you became a soldier, ‘cause you flunked a test?”

“No, actually I think the pukehead was right. I didn’t want to become a professor…probably just ‘cause my dad wanted me to. And I’m glad.”

Big question-mark face. “Glad about what?”

“I never felt so happy, like I belonged, as when I was in the army.”

Now she had her concerned look and gave an extra push up against his body. “But you belong with me. Aren’t you happy with that?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course, you make me happy as hell.” In fact, he wondered if he didn’t love her...from the very first minute. She was his first serious lover. All he knew before was Army talk, guy bravado, and chasing whores, which he hated. “But I’m talking about another kind of belonging. Having friends who mean something. Who work with you. Whose life depends on you and the other way around.”

“Like how?”

“They put me in the Cavalry. Just like in the movies, we were supposed to ride in and save the day. Instead of horses, we were a helicopter team, so highly trained that we seldom lost a man or a battle. We minimized exposure to ground fire by flying at high speed, perpendicular to the terrain features. You know what I mean?”

She frowned, but nodded.

“We intimidated enemy fire with a wagon-wheel retaliatory formation of helicopters…two lead ‘Loach’ scouts and, overhead, two orbiting ‘Cobra’ gunships or ‘snakes,’ as we called them, leaving the Viet Cong no choice but to lay low, hoping not to be seen…or to suffer the consequences.”

Wrinkles in her young face. “Like how?”

“Well, if a neophyte VC were stupid enough to think he could shoot down the low-flying lead scout, that little yellow bastard found hell on earth as the ten-pound rockets, forty millimeter cannons, and 3,000 rounds-per-minute gunfire from two higher-flying ‘snakes’ would stream in like a chain of light and destroy the earth around him. If he (or any of his companions) lived to tell the tale, the tale was to lay low.”

“That’s scary stuff,” she said, sitting up straight in the sofa. A frightened look.

He said, “The exact Vietnamese word was ‘Dontfuckwiththem.’”

She laughed her nervous, cute laugh, which to Henry meant she really didn’t understand.
She said, “Didn’t you get scared or anything?”

“Only once. And after that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I wanted to get out of there.” He got quiet. And serious. She leaned back over to him to encourage him, her big brown eyes staring close into his blue ones. She wove her fingers into the hair on the back of his head.

He said, “I had become a Cavalry ‘Slick’ pilot whose job was to follow the gunships as a rescue ship for extracting soldiers from danger. We all worked, ate, and slept together, so we would feel responsible for each other. That was part of the deal to make sure everybody cared. I didn’t know what I felt about that until after my last mission. Until then, I didn’t know enough to be scared.”

She got impatient. “Yeah, well, tell me. What happened?”

“An emergency call came in from some ground troops, who, having misjudged the situation completely, mistakenly landed in a nest of VC. They were now fighting off Charlie on all sides. It was ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ and the Cavalry needed to ride in. I volunteered to help get them out.”

“You volunteered? You didn’t have to go?”

“Well, somebody had to, and so I volunteered. Anyway, as our team approached the hill, the flanking Cobras lay heavy ground fire on all sides of the trapped Americans. Another ‘Slick’ and I went in for the rescue. For the first time ever, the “wopping” of the helicopter rotors was drown out by the roar of machine guns and exploding rockets within feet…oh, I don’t know, everywhere. In the thirty seconds I was on the ground…and that’s all the longer I was there, I saw the scrambling Americans, who were leaping into my ship, throwing grenades over an immediate ridge just to keep ‘Charlie’ away. The enemy had never been so close. It was even hard to breathe from all the smoke. And, as we took off, the companion ‘Slick’ went up in flames and my co-pilot was shot through the legs. I had never been so close to death. I knew what it was like to be afraid. I was very glad to be alive. Fear made me not re-enlist, but I knew I cared about my buddies. I loved them. I belonged…for once.”

Henry would have told his father…wanted to tell him. But his father was busy protesting the war.

As the grackles flood over to more distant trees, Henry can hear some mowing machines in the area. He tries yelling, “Help,” but he feels silly as his voice carries nowhere among the trees and grass, the birds and vegetation acting as an effective sound deadener. And the yelling makes him all the more aware of his throbbing pain. And of his inability to act. Then the returning bird hoard drowns out everything again.

After his honorable discharge from the Army, Henry needed work. One Monday afternoon, as he stopped for a pee break at a gas station, while he was out looking for employment in Boston, he met a huge, handsome black man dressed in an all-white overall coming out of the rest room. Henry quickly discovered that the man had been given a car and $300 a week to clean toilets in gas stations, restaurants, and schools. The cleaning company sold a service nobody wanted to do…clean toilets…and the black man cleaned. Henry went to a job interview wondering if they, like in the Army, only wanted black men to clean.

Smitty, the proud owner of Santi-Do, asked Henry, “So wha’d you wanna do this for?”

Henry couldn’t help but smell that sweaty Smitty could use a little sanitizing himself. “For the money,” Henry said. “What are you doing it for?”

“Don’t give me no lip and we’ll do just fine.”

Henry could see the manager wanting Henry to say, “Yes, massa.” Instead, Henry said, “Give me the job and I’ll never give you lip.”

“Sez here that your name’s Robert. Why you call yourself Henry?”

Thinking it was none of Smitty’s business and, not wanting to explain his relationship with his father, Henry almost said, “Why don’t you take a swim in a toilet to improve your hygiene?” But he kept his clapper shut for once. He needed the job. He said, “My dad’s name is Robert, so we use ‘Henry’ to tell the difference. It’s hard to tell the difference between us otherwise. It’s only people who don’t know me that call me Bob or Robert. You can call me ‘dorkhead’, if you want, but not Bob.”

As an aptitude test, Smitty had Henry copy a paragraph from the front page of the Boston Globe. This was sent to a handwriting specialist, who, Henry figured, must have made…after deep analysis…an extensive, seven-word report saying, “Robert Henry Smith, Jr. can clean toilets.” After a rigorous ten-minute training course (that Henry loudly titled “Toilet Cleaning Technique in the Twentieth Century”) by the daily crew manager Schmoo (or something that sounded like that), Henry was given his first job as a certified “toilet engineer.” As the day wore on, Henry was sent place to place where, sometimes, out of nowhere, Schmoo, an ex-marine sergeant, would show up and yell at him.

“You’re too fucking slow. Use toilet paper to dry it off after you clean. You’re leaving spots.” Or “You’re leaving pieces of toilet paper stuck to the toilet. Hurry your ass up.”

Henry wryly smiled at the thought that Schmoo was always seeing Henry’s “ass up,” as Schmoo always sneaked up behind. So Henry asked, “What are you gonna do to it, if I hurry it up?”

The sergeant didn’t get it and just went on yelling like a cartoon character. So, as the days and weeks passed, Henry realized that yelling was the fulfillment of the “sergeant’s” life purpose. In Henry’s mind Schmoo was a target for ridicule, if for nothing else than just because Schmoo always wore a flap-eared hunting cap with duct tape edging the bill. But mostly he was a target because Henry’s previous commanders, in order to protect their men, had a reason to yell. The memory of his “cav” buddies contrasted in his mind. Here, bent over toilets, there was no pride, no affinity. Just a lot of yelling.

By Friday, after four nights in the street ditch, Henry had figured out how to break into as many of the Fleet bank boxes as he could and how to get away without leaving a trail. He was, however, especially surprised by the amount of cash he had found in one box. When he counted it later, he gave up after a million dollars.

“One fucking million in your secret box. You must be somebody special.”

He didn’t touch any other valuables or jewelry that he would have the trouble to fence, and, besides, since these valuables might be legal, he could be charged with robbery. But the illegal cash stashed in these bank boxes, he figured, no one would or could claim. If he got caught later, he felt his only official crime could be property damage to the bank, and he could get a dock in salary for not staying all night on Friday. He knew that he couldn’t tell anybody about his plan, including Rita. Everyone would try to stop him.

But he did leave a “do not want you involved” note for her and, right now for these moments, under the tree, his heart aches more than his ankle, just thinking about her. He is realizing just how strong his feelings are for her. The sun’s heat has dissipated in the thin, high-altitude air causing the grackles to slow down and then dissolve into thin air. Now the whole golf course is silent, with the maintenance crew having left for the day, leaving Henry undiscovered. And missing Rita.

“You are so handsome, I am jealous to share you with the world,” Rita had said. “You do not touch another woman or I will slam your penis in the window.”

“Ow! Ow! Ow! You mean bitch. You wouldn’t.” Even though he could laugh at her possessiveness, having never before experienced anything close to such adoration, he was overwhelmed by her intense feelings. Thus mentally he had held her at an arm’s length. So when Henry had found a house to rent in Malden, north of Boston, and, although Rita practically moved in with him and often stayed over in his bedroom upstairs during the weekend, Henry had never let her move in completely…mentally or physically.

Now he wonders why he has been such a shit. He has thought of her a hundred times since, and, as the day is turning into night, just now…under the tree, it is the most painful. He needs her to tend him…his ankle and…Christ…his heart. When has he ever thought of that? Why hasn’t he?

He says out loud, “Your mind is turning into mush out here, needle brain. But you could have treated her better. You weren’t brave enough to accept her feelings. You are a mental defect.” Referring to all the bird droppings, he says, “You got what you deserved today, a fucking rain of shit.”

Not wanting the welling feelings of regret to take his mind where it has never been, he fights to change the subject. As the day darkens, as his leg gnaws at him, as the silence surrounds him, the solitude creeps up to him. He even starts fearing some wild animal might start lurking in the shadows. Maybe he had better not talk out loud as the darkness increases.

And then he says aloud, “Hey, buddy, you’re in the city. Get your mind straight. Let’s get going.” But he doesn’t. A warm, light breeze strokes the grass around him. The throb of pain in his lower leg tries to capture his mind. Looking out over the course in the dimming light, he strives to replay one of his golf games. Golf, the perfect sport, has always brought him peace-of-mind. But instead his mind puts him right in front of Olga, the pro shop clerk.

Olga. Weird old Olga. Olga claimed to be eighty, but she looked fifty. He always figured she could use a good foot massage to get the pained look off her face. Repeatedly, as if they had not had this conversation eighty-seven times before, she would ask, “You know how old I am?”

“Why are you still working, Olga?” he would ask her every time.

“Oh, I am poor woman. Back in Russia, I lose husband, my children, and all money. I escape.”

“So you were some kind of royalty or czar or something?” he asked.

“My mother teach me how to play piano. I know all good music…Brahms, Beethoven, Verdi…whoever. And ballet…she take me to all ballet. You have no ballet here. In Russia we learn good things.”

“So go back.”

She got louder. “Oh, I can never go back…no, no. You get me green card here? You know somebody who can help?”

As he shopped, the conversation was always the same. As he tried on a shirt or paid for pants, it didn’t matter if he wanted to listen or not, it was always Russia here, Russia there. Russia always the best. But he could never discover why she left, or, for that matter, why she was here. Nor could he figure out his fascination with her loyalty and patriotism to a country that had rejected her. But somehow she had that feeling she belonged…or should belong to her country. A feeling foreign to Henry.

The long afternoon shadows are faded; it is nineteen hundred hours. The only sounds are the warm breeze rustling the leaves and a few indistinguishable animal sounds. Henry is sweating from the pain. The diarrhea of his mind has turned to sludge as his head is sympathizing with an ache of its own. And the sludge is in every joint of his body not letting him move enough to scratch his nose. The only thing that is moving in his mind is Rita.

Since the robbery, alone in his condo all he had done was make up imaginary risky sex scenarios with her. Over and over he had pictured her naked as a taco walking down the stairs of his Malden house entering a party, letting everyone fawn over her body. He had imagined how each individual he knew would react to her nudity. But what could they do? She would be smiling, chatting, naked among them, calmly holding a glass of champagne. It was his only sex now, imagining her. It was how he had ever treated her and used her. He never gave back to her…not even in his made-up stories. Then alone in his apartment, his climaxes started depressing him. The last time only emptied him and made him hollow…and ashamed. That was when he made up his mind to rent a car.

But the real reason he had to get out of his apartment was that, in all the time he had been here in Albuquerque, under a fictitious name, he had increasingly felt caged in this apartment he rented, across from the Tanoan golf course. Either he was in the apartment, or he had golfed alone, eaten alone at the greasy spoon close by, or sat alone at the library checking the newspapers. How long had it been since he pulled off the “heist?” Six months? He wasn’t sure. The police surely must still be looking for him. He just needed to keep a low profile until the police forgot him or closed the case. But how much longer? He had not seen the case mentioned in the Boston Globe microfiche at the library for a long while. He had found that he needed to do something else…break out of this confinement…or he’d go nuts. So the idea of renting a car had actually been creeping up on him.

He had never rented a car before, and, not knowing which car company to choose, he picked Avis because they came first in the phone book. It took him an hour by bus just to get to the rental office and then they started asking him questions.

“What kind of car? I don’t know. Something normal.”

“How about a Chevy Nova?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You want extra liability insurance?” asked the man behind the counter, who seemed to think Henry was as dumb as they come. “You probably should.”

“Okay.”

“Let me see your license.”

When Henry “escaped” Boston, he had felt he had been clever buying a train ticket to Chicago in his real name, but using a false one for the real train ride to Kansas City, Missouri. And then buses to New Mexico, and always buses in the city, so as not to be remembered by any taxi driver. But he had kept his driver’s license. Now he felt smart and relieved because, otherwise, he could not have rented a car.

As he drove through the northeast side of the city, the uncontrolled sprawl of Albuquerque, which spread wide and low, made him think of chunky peanut butter, smeared out on a huge cracker. The city never seemed to end. It made him nervous, as he was sure he was going to run a stop sign or foul up enough to attract the attention of some ever-present patrolman. No, sir, Mr. Policeman, sir, I am not the guy who robbed the bank in Boston. Then, as he followed Interstate 25 north toward Santa Fe, the open spaces tried to pull the tension out of him. He drove past Santa Fe on the bypass figuring he could stop there on the way back.

He knew he was just being paranoid, but over and over as he drove, he had a feeling of terror that someone had a gun sight on him. And, if they did…if someone did shoot him right now, “Who cares?” he said aloud. He turned up the radio and tried to sing with music that he had never heard before. It didn’t help. He felt someone watching him. It was his first day of feeling freedom since the “extraction” of money from the bank boxes.

“No wonder I’m paranoid.” He started wondering if he should worry about all the cash in the duffel bag at the apartment. Was that being paranoid? And now, although it was priority one not to draw the attention of any law enforcement, he kept catching himself speeding. Then, as he drove past the steep, red sandstone cliffs halfway between Santa Fe and Taos, he saw his father. A stone profile stuck out from the cliff as clear as day; it was his father’s face. It sent chills from the bridge of his nose to the end of his spine.

The most terrifying day in his youth had been with his father at the kitchen table. His father held Henry's piggy bank, a transparent plastic jar half filled with small change and one huge five-dollar bill.

"Where did you get this?" his father had asked, holding the jar in both hands at Henry's eye level. "I have never given you five dollars."

Henry sat petrified, hoping his father would keep talking to give Henry more time to think, but his dad had shut up and just stared at Henry. There was not a sound in the house. Henry could hear himself breathe; he could hear his father breathe. Henry was in a situation he, as a nine-year-old, had never experienced. He could lie and get into trouble or tell the truth and get into trouble. He did not cry; he shook. He felt the sharp edges of the Formica table as he clung to it to steady his hands. One did not cry in the Smith family. No soothing strokes from a father’s hand. In this family there were no hugs, just handshakes. And his father’s punishing silence. Henry needed more time to think. But he couldn’t think with his father giving him no mercy by just waiting for an answer. Finding no way out, Henry finally said, "I got it…from the Thompsons next door."

"Got it?" his father said.

"Yes."

"You mean they gave it to you?"

Henry’s hands shook. "I took it."

"Where did you find it?"

"In their kitchen pantry." Henry’s whole body shook. "They have a jar in there...." He couldn’t speak any more. He couldn’t control his voice. He tasted the tears he did not want.

His father then had looked at him for what seemed like hours, and finally said, "As a punishment, I will escort you to the neighbor's house and you will knock on their door, apologize, and return their money."

Which is what they did immediately that same Monday evening. The walk next door was a walk to an execution as far as Henry was concerned. The bugs in the porch light punished him even more, hitting him in the face and buzzing his ears. When Mr. Thompson came to the door, Henry held out the five-dollar bill and closed his eyes. Quietly he said, “I took this from your kitchen.”

Mr. Thompson said, “Yes, we knew you had. Thank you for bringing it back.”

When it was over and the door was shut, it had caused an adrenaline drain so strong and fast that Henry had fainted on their doorstep.

And now, as an adult, far out in nowhere, Henry's father was looking at him again...from the edge of a cliff. Henry could smell his father’s aftershave. He felt each trembling of his body that he had felt sixteen years ago when his cold father caught him stealing from the neighbors. Which was worse? The silence of his father…or the deafening roar of war? When Henry suddenly realized that it was the little Nova that was shaking at 110 miles per hour, and that he was fast approaching Taos, it was enough to calm him down. But he needed to stop.
He drove slowly through Taos almost without seeing…still stunned by the profile on the cliff side. Almost automatically, he drove into the Taos Pueblo. He had never been on an Indian reservation, and had seen only a few cartoons with Indians. The parking lot, the path in, and the whole reservation was dirt…lots of dirt…with no grass, weeds, or other plant life anywhere in this village…made of dirt. It even smelled like dirt.

“Fucking depressing,” Henry thought.

The barrenness of the place made it seem hot, even though Henry had not noticed the temperature before. The village was comprised of one large adobe structure with some dreary, dilapidated storefronts with wrinkled Indian women selling mouth-sticking, pasty bread; a church; and a graveyard with the remains of another church. Feeling there must be something more to this place, Henry hired a guide.

The young Tiwa Indian man explained, “The large adobe structure has held off the raids and sieges of a two-thousand-year past. The structure is essentially invincible. Once the ladders were pulled up onto the roof and the people had climbed into the roof entrance, no one was ever able to enter or to burn down the fortress.”

Henry said, referring to the ruined church remains, “But the church seems to have taken the brunt.”

The guide pointed at the whole, newer adobe church, and said, “The Christianity part, shown by the adobe church, arose from the Spanish Conquistadors who would not leave the Tiwa alone. Finally we found it more practical to adopt the religion than suffer the sword of the Spanish.”

“Mighty Christian of them Spanish,” Henry said, thinking the guide would agree with his sarcasm.

Stonily, the guide said, “The Tiwa are still highly religious with their own version of Catholicism.”

Henry fell silent. What the fuck? The dissonance of the situation flew at him. Why would anybody take on the beliefs of some brutal hoard who were showing behavior contradictory to their intended beliefs? It was a case of my make-believe character is more important than your make-believe character.

The remnants of the other, destroyed church (obviously destroyed by some other “true believers”) were now just a tourist attraction and a reminder of a previous siege. However, the enclosed graveyard surrounding the destroyed church was still used, and, although the guide never explained, Henry understood that the plots were rotated, with newer burials being put where old ones had been. The older bodies now had become just part of the dirt. And Henry thought, “Our human destiny…all in one beat-up tiny little grave yard.”

The self-assured nature of the guide made Henry begin asking the guide about himself.

"Why are you doing this guide thing?" Henry asked.

"To help the Tiwa, my people."

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like you’d be earning much…or enough from it."

"The tribe doesn't pay me, if that’s what you mean, but, if you tip me, I will earn something. It will help my education."

“What are you studying?" Henry asked.

"Law."

“And what will you do with it?"

“Come back and help my people."

“But there is almost nothing here," Henry said, pointing at the structure.

Henry felt the indignation from the cold answer. "You have seen nothing. Nor will you, or any tourist. Our home continues deep underground and our land continues far over the mountain. We are at peace with the earth and with the universe above us…to which we belong. I belong here with the Tiwa, as do all our people."

With a jerk of his head, Henry suddenly becomes aware that he had dozed off, but it takes him a while to figure out that he is sitting in the rough of a New Mexican golf course. He has again dreamed the nightmare that had awakened him this morning. He dreamed that he was in a cafeteria line, waiting to pay for his food. One person was ahead of him and one behind. When he saw that the person behind was just holding a chicken wing, Henry’s grocery-store instincts kicked in, saying, “If that’s all you’ve got, why don’t you go ahead of me?” When the person had accepted, the next thing Henry knew, everyone had walked away, leaving Henry alone in a vast, empty room holding his tray. The loneliness woke him…in a sweat.

Henry's headache is gone, but his whole leg has gone numb. Bitterly, he says aloud, “Come on, rats or squirrels or somebody. Chew it off and then I won’t have to amputate the sucker.” Unlike the Tiwa or Olga, he doesn’t belong any fucking place. He sneers. Maybe he belongs in the rough of a golf course…like a weed. Where can he crawl except down a hole? He feels an envy for the Indians with a dirt mansion. Henry can’t go back…to Boston, to his friends, to Rita. Unlike Olga, he doesn’t know where he is supposed to belong. And he can’t even get up to leave the spot he is in. Where’s the fucking cavalry when you need them?

The darkness is only held at bay by Albuquerque’s city glow. It begins to strike Henry as a bit eerie that no one has come looking for him, but, then again, who would? He knows no one. There is no one at home in his apartment. Or there better not be. Could a burglar find the fortune up in the ceiling by the heating unit? Henry's mind sneers. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Somebody steals the stolen money Henry stole. At least, he isn’t cold. He is hungry, but he can last until morning. Some Tuesday golfer will be along. He doesn’t have to worry. He will be just fine. He will be just ducky!

Now he begins to wonder if all his worrying is his imagination. Did he run away for nothing? It had started just as Monday golf…. Actually, now that he thinks about it more, it started with that stupid dream which woke him up at five this morning. A nightmare about a grocery store? That makes you sweat, Henry?

Even as he “lay low,” he had tried to keep a routine of getting up at seven every morning. But, as the weeks dribbled past, the purpose of any routine began to fade and he slept later each day, getting up at ten and ten-thirty. He had stopped shaving, too, rationalizing that the beard would disguise him.

But this morning he was out of bed like a shot at 5:05, scared and sweating. He remembered that he still had his regular Monday tee time across the street at 11:00. After showering and dressing in his green “Dockers” and green and white vertically striped polo shirt, all bought from Olga, he still had five hours to kill. He fiddled with his face in the mirror looking for ingrown beard hairs and, after digging at several with a pin, said, “Fuck it” aloud, and shaved off his beard. Inspecting his face, he wondered why he ever grew the damn thing.

All through breakfast at the greasy spoon he tasted nothing. He kept wondering why he had never “succeeded” in life like his father, and why he couldn’t just restart his life here or somewhere else. It was all connected in some way, but there was an invisible, blank crevasse that kept him from leaping to the solution. It was as if a section of his brain were missing.

“I think you have graduated to the pinnacle of stupid,” he said out loud. “Just the opposite of your fucking father who had ‘intellectual’ solutions and opinions about everything.”

Some people at the tables around him stared and others tried to ignore him. Although, or because, he had nothing else to do but think recently, he was aware now that he had never thought about much before; not like this. He just got things done. Or maybe just done things. In the military he had followed orders...done things. But he never seemed to “think things through” or develop an opinion.

“You’ve got no brains, peckerhead. You’ve got a black hole…a fucking black hole.”

The waitress said, “Hey, Honey, you’re sort of scaring the other people around here.”

And then there were Mondays. He felt now that he only lived one-seventh of a life. His life seemed to only “occur” on that day. Always Mondays. What was it with Mondays? Who knows what he did the rest of the week.

Henry looked right at the waitress and said, “Man, oh, man. I’m alive one day a week. Now that’s a great existence.”

Henry had liked Mondays. Mondays were big days for golf course maintenance and slow days for golf (or fast, depending on how you looked at it). Henry had always played alone on Mondays and that made for a fast eighteen holes, or even twenty-seven. But he started to realize that he had never felt anger at a bad shot or disappointment at a bad game, because he had no one to whom he could express those emotions. No one to care if he made a bad shot. And, just as bad, no one to whom he could brag about a good game. In fact, no one who would care if he thought anything.

The diner owner came over to his table and, probably afraid Henry was about to pull a gun and massacre everyone, gingerly asked him to leave. Henry obliged and, instead, killed time, up to tee-time, walking…and thinking…berating himself.

At 11:00, on the first tee, a married couple asked, “Hey, you want to play on your own, or join us?”

He shrugged and nodded. Why not? It had been a long time. He could risk it. He needed human companionship. Then seemingly out of nowhere, another man introduced himself as Ed and asked if he could make a foursome out of it. He would even share a cart with Henry. Henry thought Ed smelled a little oily…not hair oil, machine oil.

Trying to be friendly to Ed, Henry asked, “So where are you from?”

Henry’s uneasiness began to climb immediately when, in a raspy voice, Ed answered, “Oh, up north. New England.” But Ed didn’t return the question, nor did he speak much at all. Henry noticed that Ed’s golf clothes didn’t seem to fit and still had tags on them from Olga’s pro shop. And at the tee on the third hole, when Ed casually said, “You’re up, Bob,” Henry panicked.
Bob! Henry knew he had definitely introduced himself as “Henry.” Henry took off walking, mumbling, “I’ll be right back. I forgot my putter.”

And, when he was out of sight, he started running. That is when it happened. Henry stepped in a hole…a large gopher hole...or something. A fucking stupid hole. He had broken something. He felt something snap. He couldn’t walk, so he crawled and pulled himself up to a tree to wait.

Did he also snap something in the ol’ coconut? Has he been imagining something that isn’t there? Shouldn’t they have come looking for him, otherwise? And still he is waiting. For what?
“What did you expect, you fucking idiot? Sirens? Helicopter evacuation? Toilet cleaners’ fire brigade? Hey, it’s still Monday. They’re probably just around the corner.” With increasing volume, Henry says, “But why should anybody come looking for a pile of shit? I really think you thought you were going to make your father proud. And have money. But, instead, you’ve just blown every little piece of your life, shit-for-brains. Anything that means anything… anything!” As much as he repeates his words, his voice carries nowhere outside the rough.

The night is perfectly clear so that, through the branches, Henry can see the universe with its fifty billion galaxies, or was it one hundred and fifty billion? And what had he read? It stretches out fifteen billion light years? Each galaxy has billions of stars. Tears began streaming off his nose and chin. Saline.

And dirt. The smell of helicopters. The roar of death. Ballet. The Tiwa. Olga. Lost buddies. His father. Lost Rita. His insignificance. The isolation…as a child. And now the separation from humanity. And the whining. A whining interruption. Not suddenly. He just becomes aware of it…or has he fallen asleep and is dreaming?

No, he heard the hum of an approaching electric golf cart and sees a flashlight beam about to find him. A pinch of joy leaps through him. When it shines in his face, the cart stops whining, and he hears footsteps sliding through the tall grass. When the golfer’s raspy voice says, “We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Bobby,” a cold chill runs down Henry’s spine. He hears what he thinks is the click of a gun and the glimpse of a gun barrel. And he smells the oil.

In a voice so apathetic and detached that he isn't sure it is his own, “How did you find me?”

“You rented a car.”

“Are you the police?”

The golfer’s voice creeps out from behind the light. “No, Bobby, I am a messenger from a very angry bank box owner. However, he will be pleased, since we did find this in your ceiling today.”
And, as his green duffle bag comes into view, Henry says, “Perfect. Just perfect.” Henry feels a peacefulness. He senses no loneliness. He stops feeling fear. Just dirt.

And then, he suffers nothing at all. Not even the birds picking at him before he is found.