The Search for Hosea
As Daniel pulled the door shut with a thud, the first raindrops began to fall, and he peered into the graying day.
“Was planning on cleaning the basement today.” Daniel’s mother sighed in disappointment. She muttered something to herself that Daniel could not understand. “I guess you always end up with rain,” she said.
Daniel did not answer his mother. She did not need an answer. He knew she would not have cared if she did. She would keep on talking whether he answered or not. She had turned her face to the window and was staring out. She was not talking to him. She was just talking.
“And those rabbits getting in the garden and eating everything. Your father won’t be pleased, but he knows that I asked him to fix the gap in the wire months ago. If he liked his beets as much as he says he does, he would have done it.” His mother sighed again. He was unsure what it meant. Was she distressed? Was she annoyed? Tired? He had no idea, but he knew one thing: she would go on talking. “Although, he doesn’t often get done what I ask him to do. But that’s just a man, I suppose. He always has something he’s working on, but he’ll never work on what I ask him to.” She grew silent. Daniel glanced over. Because she still looked out the window, he could not read what was on her face.
“Not that it would matter,” Daniel thought. Whatever was on the woman’s face was most likely a façade. She had lived a hard life. She never spoke of that hard life, but Daniel had been able to piece a story together from the bits and pieces. And that story showed pain. If that story showed anything, it showed suffering. He was sure of that. And since both his parents had survived pain, he knew that the emotions that played on their faces were not true emotions.
Would the woman even cry if the old man died?
Daniel was not sure. One thing was for sure: she would talk. She always talked.
“Will I cry?” he asked himself. If he had asked himself only eight days ago, he would have answered yes, but things had changed. That seemed to be the amazing thing about life. It could always change. He had grown comfortable, but life was frail. He had forgotten that life was frail. A film of sanity was over reality, and that sanity could be punctured in a moment. He saw that now. He felt it.
“Rain,” his mother harrumphed. She sighed again. “And aren’t there a thousand things to do? A thousand things to do. Oh, and wouldn’t I love a bite of liver right now.”
“Mom,” Daniel glanced at his mother. She did not move at all, not even a flinch, as if she did not hear him at all.
“Liver or corned beef?” his mother continued.
“Mom,” Daniel’s voice was harsher, raised.
Daniel waited for his mother to answer, but besides a twitch, she did not respond at all.
“Do you know he is probably going to die?” Daniel asked. His voice was cold.
His mother moved this time. Her head rotated from the window, and she looked at him. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“How long have you two been married? Have you considered what you are going to do if he does die?” Daniel asked.
“You look thin,” his mother answered. “Do you get enough food to eat on those long days of working? I’ll make you some dinner after you pick me up. Lasagna? Do you want lasagna? I know that’s your favorite. And it will make you feel better.”
Daniel did not answer. His teeth gritted. He felt anger rise from deep in his stomach. She did not care. She did not care at all.
“Oh, and here is the stop,” his mother continued as if it were a bright Sunday morning and she was going out to have tea with her friends.
“I guess nobody cares but me,” Daniel muttered as he stepped on the brake. “You sure as hell don’t care, do you?” His voice was sharp like an insult as the car squeaked to a stop.
His mother opened the door. She grabbed her purse. She stepped out, but the door did not shut. He waited for the door to shut, but it still did not. He saw her from the neck down. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder.
“Over thirty years, Daniel,” she said without stooping to look at him. “How do you think I feel?” she asked. Her voice was low and cold and biting. She said something else, and then the door slammed shut. He watched his mother hobble up to the hospital door. She pulled it open and disappeared inside.
“Hell,” Daniel muttered to himself. He shook his head and laughed. He shifted the vehicle out of neutral and let his foot move off the brake. “Alone, Daniel.” He grunted. He looked at the thin strip of his eyes and bridge of his nose in the mirror. He raised his eyebrows. “Mice and men,” he said. He focused not on his own cold eyes but looked behind the car. He could see another car stop at the door to the hospital. The car’s door opened, and a boy jumped out. He was around fourteen years old, a little younger than Daniel when he had left home.
Daniel remembered how those first few years away had felt. He felt that pang of being alone. He felt empty. He was young. He had energy, but he had little more than that. He needed to eat, and when eating meant depending on himself, life was only a vice ready to squeeze the life out of him. But now was different than then. He had seen the basics of running a business back then. When he had first gone out on his own, he had a basic structure to follow. He had been alone, but he was not lost. Now, he was both alone and lost with no hope of finding his way forward. He was not a hitman. He was not a fighter. He was a businessman and did not know the first thing about hunting men. He did not know the first thing about killing.
“Where do you even start?” he muttered to himself. “Not something you can look up in a library, is it?” He chuckled a dry, humorless chuckle, and shook his head.
Maybe if he and his brothers were working together, they stood some chance at finding justice in this stupid world. But alone he was becoming aware of his own impotence.
“Well, you’re a problem solver, Dan,” he said to himself, “and it’s a new problem. It might take a little more time, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Puzzles are meant to be solved.” He turned onto a side street and pulled the car to the side of the road.
“Puzzles are meant to be solved,” he said to himself, and he directed his eyes to the rearview mirror and the vehicles that were passing behind him.
“How do you kill a man?” he began. Three cars passed. “No, no, that’s not where I should start. The end of things is killing the man. But the beginning, what is the beginning?” He threw up a hand. “Who the hell knows, right? Right? The only thing I know is that there is no room for errors this time. No room.”
Daniel sighed.
“Damnit, I’m going to die.” He shook his head and then chuckled. “And then those bastard brothers will have to bury me too, won’t they?”
Daniel watched the cars go by again. He imagined himself being lowered into the ground. His hands were folded on his chest. His face was perfect peace. His skin just slightly waxy, just slightly unliving, just enough to be disconcerting.
The first step was not to find a weapon or some other way to kill the man. The first step was not even finding the man. The first step was ensuring he moved forward in a manner that would not result in his death at any point in the process. “I need someone who has killed before.”
Daniel shifted his vehicle into first. He glanced to the side, and he pulled into the street. “Do you know someone familiar with killing?” he asked himself. “Yes, I know a killer,” he answered his own question. “Hosea.”
Hosea, the eldest son of Ebenezer Fleet. His older brother. The perfect son gone off to war. The practically promised one, and he had not come home in a body bag. Hosea had come home with all the appearance of health, and with a taste for morphine. Daniel had tried to stay connected, but all that seemed left of the sober man was longing eyes and hands quick to get one more fix. And that junkie, because that is all he was now, had screamed at him and attempted to stab him with a chef’s knife. That was the last time Daniel had called Hosea his brother. Under the influence of the drug, he was not even as good as a photograph. At least a photograph came with good memories. The present Hosea was only pain.
He now knew what he needed to do. Step one was find Hosea. If he could find Hosea, Hosea could help him figure out what step two was.
“Now,” he tapped the top of the steering wheel with two fingers, “if I were a junkie, where would I be?” Cows look for grass. Wolves for prey. Hosea needed to ‘eat,’ so he would not go far from his supply. The problem was, Daniel did not know where people got drugs. He had no interest in them at all. He had not the faintest idea.
Daniel turned off the main road. He went north, north and east until boards began to cover windows, concrete rippled, and those he passed had stooped shoulders and downcast eyes. If he would find drugs in any place, this was the one.
Daniel pulled the car over when he had gone half a mile into the neighborhood. He stepped out of his vehicle. He looked around the rippling road. Dirty faces stared back at him. Skeptical eyes. An old woman continued to rock on a chair. She had a fan in her hand, an attempt to fight against the overpowering humidity. A few children who had been running around in the dead grass of a small yard were now hidden behind the spindles of the porch. It was a poor neighborhood, but he was not certain he would call it a ghetto.
“Good afternoon ma’am,” Daniel called to the woman on the porch.
The woman glared at him but did not respond. Her eyes were dark under the shadow of the porch. Her eyebrows knit. Her eyes were sharp, shrewd. Daniel knew it would not be easy getting any information out of her, but he did not know where else to begin.
“I’m, uh,” Daniel continued. “Ma’am, I’ve got a question for you. Um, a question, that I…I don’t mean to be presumptuous.”
“What do you want?” The voice of the woman was dark. She did not care about his niceties. She was annoyed.
Daniel felt a spark of anxiety in his chest, but he forced himself to speak. “I’m looking for a drug dealer,” he continued. “I’m wondering where I could find one.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her mouth twisted into a scowl, and she began to push herself off her chair without a word.
“Ma’am, ma’am, wait, please,” Daniel answered. He took two more steps toward the porch.
The woman called to the little children to come inside, and the three began to scamper toward the door.
“I’m looking for my brother,” Daniel continued as the woman hobbled toward the door. “I’m…” He felt his stomach twist in him as if he were on a rollercoaster. “I’m looking for my brother. He’s an addict.” The words seemed to work. The woman paused for a split second. She seemed to turn toward him, but midway through her movement, she changed her mind and looked back toward the door.
“I haven’t seen him in more than four years,” Daniel added. “Not since after the war.”
The woman stopped again, but she still did not turn toward him. Her eyes stared into the darkness of the broken-down house, and her shoulder sagged as she stared into the darkness.
“Please,” Daniel said. He made his voice lilt up in pain.
The woman stared into the darkness one more moment. She nodded. She still did not look over to him. She nodded again. “If you go down to Arin Street, about five blocks down, you’ll find a house on the corner,” her voice croaked. “On the far right corner is a house.”
Daniel turned from that house. He looked around. The sprinkle of water falling from the sky turned to consistent, light rain. The others who were on their porches began to pick themselves up and move toward their doorways. Daniel nodded to the broken-down houses and then returned to his car. After he had counted five blocks, he looked to the corner the woman had directed him. If it had been anywhere else, it would have been obvious, but in this decaying neighborhood, it looked like everything else around it.
As Daniel approached the house, he felt a grimace wrinkle his face. He swore. He swore again. An odor wafted from the house, a sour smell, like vomit. Daniel swore under his breath a third time. The closer he came to the door, the worse the smell became. “Alright, here we go,” he muttered to himself as he stood before the door, and he knocked.
But nothing happened. The sound of the knock was gone. He heard no shuffling. He heard no voice from inside the house.
Daniel chuckled. He moved to the side of the porch and peered through the window. He saw only darkness and the reflection of his face. He shook his head at himself and then returned to the door and pounded until his hand hurt. When he stopped, he heard a loud thud from inside the house. This thud was followed by another thud and finally footsteps. Daniel expected the door to open in only a few seconds, but he waited several minutes before it did.
The door swung open with a whine. Daniel peered into the darkness. A girl stepped out. Though she was as thin as a twelve-year-old girl, her face as full of age. The crow’s feet had not formed at the edges of her eyes, but the elasticity had gone from her skin. Her eyes drifted from the ground up to Daniel in the door. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her mouth turned down in a slack frown. “Hello,” she said. Her voice was small, like a child’s.
“Hello,” he nodded back to her. His mouth still curled up at the smell.
She tried to smile back at him.
“I’m looking for heroin,” he responded to her smile.
Her attempted smile grew larger. “You’re looking for angel dust.” She spoke again in that oddly childish voice.
He nodded back at her. The smile dropped from her face, but her face also softened more toward him. “Angel dust,” he said slowly. “I…” He breathed out. “Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for.”
She nodded back to him and disappeared back into the dark house.
Daniel wondered whether he should leave. What if finding Hosea was not a good idea? Would Hosea be able to help him? Daniel sighed again, but before he was able to decide to leave, he heard footsteps from the darkness.
Instead of the woman, a man appeared in the door. The woman stood in the darkness several paces behind him. She seemed even more diminutive than before. She stood still for a moment looking at him and then she looked down at her feet and began to sway back and forth. Her arms went behind her back, and she glanced up for a moment, only to look back down at the floor. The man who was at the door was thin as well, but it was a different type of thinness than the woman. The woman looked frail. This man was sinewy. He looked like skin stretched over steel cables, and Daniel took a step back as he looked in the man’s eyes. The man’s eyes looked dead, and Daniel worried if he angered this man, the man would not hesitate to spring out and strangle him.
“Hey,” the man said. The word had no energy or effort behind it.
Daniel nodded. He wished he could talk to the small woman again. At least she attempted to smile. “I’m looking for someone,” Daniel continued.
The man did not answer. He only stared out at Daniel with those dead eyes.
“Fleet, the person’s name is Hosea Fleet,” Daniel answered.
The man grunted. He glanced at the woman and then looked back at Daniel. “You’re not buying anything?” The man looked at him and then past him. Annoyance spread on his face like sickness.
“Have you heard of him?” Daniel asked.
The man sighed. He did not look at Daniel. He continued to stare toward the street.
“I’ll buy something if that is what it takes to get information,” Daniel looked directly at the man.
Finally, the man looked at him. “How much have you got?” the man asked and nodded.
Daniel nodded back and plunged his hand into his pocket. He dug through his wallet, fished out the first bill he could find, and he held it out to the man. “How about a hundred?” Daniel asked.
The man looked down more slowly than Daniel knew a person could look. A quivering hand reached out. He took the bill out of Daniel’s hand. He brought it up to his face and rotated it in inspection. The hand that held the bill brought it to his pocket. He turned from Daniel without a word and went back into the dark room. The man’s feet stomped on the floor, a door slammed, and he heard nothing else.
“Okay,” Daniel thought. He nodded to himself. “Okay.” He was getting somewhere. It had cost him a hundred dollars, but he would get his drugs and find Hosea. One more step to his goal. Would Hosea be conscious when Daniel found him? Would his older brother be useful at all? He had no idea what would happen, and if Hosea was a dead-end, he had no idea where he would go next.
Daniel looked at the small woman. The woman stared back. The smile-like emotion spread across her face again. “You’ve got nice clothes,” she said with that smile-like thing on her face.
Daniel looked down at his suit. He looked up at the frail woman and gave her a weak smile. “Thanks,” he answered. “I haven’t always worn clothes like this.”
The woman nodded. She glanced in the direction the man had gone. She looked back at Daniel. The smile was now gone from her face, so quickly, as if the little happiness that had been inside of her was stolen away. “I haven’t always lived here.” She looked down at herself. “I haven’t always dressed like this.” And her wide eyes looked up at him.
Daniel nodded to her to tell her he understood, even though he did not. He felt a pang of empathy for the woman, but he did not understand her. She had given up. She had let herself be weak. She had let herself fall and be comforted by whatever she could find, these drugs, this sinewy little man, maybe more men, and the thousand other little things she might have done to find comfort and avoid pain. Pain. It was all about pain. Every excuse came back to pain. People did not break because they could not handle any more pain. People chose to break. It was a choice, their choice, the weak choice.
He felt a pang of empathy for the woman, but that empathy was blown away in only a few moments. She had chosen weakness. She was not someone to be pitied. Therefore, he pushed the thoughts of pity from his mind. She did not deserve pity.
“Well,” Daniel continued. “Maybe you’ll dress more like this someday.”
A small, surprised smirk formed on her face, but before she could respond, Daniel heard the door slam again and the skinny man tramping toward the door.
“I’ve got your dust,” the man said as he appeared around the door. He tossed a little jar toward Daniel. Just before it hit his chest, Daniel brought his hands up and caught the jar. He looked down and saw less than a spoonful at the bottom.
“Okay,” Daniel said as he looked back up at the man. “Hosea Fleet. You said you knew him.”
The man looked at Daniel as if he had not even heard him, and then the man shrugged.
“What?” Daniel asked.
The man shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sounds familiar, but I don’t know.”
Daniel muttered a curse under his breath. He looked down at the little jar in his hand. “Why the hell did I give you a hundred bucks?”
The man just pointed at the jar in Daniel’s hand.
Daniel cursed again. He wanted to fling the jar at the side of the house, but he knew it was not the best choice. He needed to maintain his composure. He still needed this man. Goddamnit, he still needed this junkie to do what he wanted, what he needed him to do. And, ironically, he would need more than just this junkie to get what he needed. There would be at least one more druggie on his path to finding justice. Daniel shook his head. It was almost humorous. He, a business owner, had to rely on this man. He, a man who had dragged himself from powerless to power, was at the whim of this heroin slave in this rotting house. A king had to stoop and bow before a slave before he could get what he wanted.
“Well,” Daniel started again. His voice was softer than it had been before. He hoped a change in tone would appease the drug-addled man before him. “Is there any help you can give me?” he asked. “Do you know anyone who would know where I can find him?”
The man continued to stare toward Daniel mindlessly, and Daniel had to hold himself back from punching this man in the face.
“Anything would help,” Daniel continued in the same soft voice.
The man shrugged again. “You could ask Lyle Ansel.”
“Lyle Ansel?” Daniel asked. But the man did not respond. He had already turned. He had already started to move back into the dark room. And anger flared up in Daniel. His arm went up, and he flung the little jar of drugs at the man. The jar hit the man’s temple, bounced off, and shattered on the floor.
The man swore. Fear spread over the woman’s face. Daniel swore back at the man. The man roared and turned toward the door. “You’re gonna wish…” The man felt the spot where he had been hit in the face by the jar. “You’re gonna wish you never did that.” The man roared again. He brought a foot back, and he charged toward the door with his arms flailing at his sides. Daniel let out a small laugh. As the man met the doorframe, Daniel shut the glass storm door. Daniel saw the man slam against the door. He heard a crash. He saw the man’s mouth open, and he heard a cry of pain. He heard a whimper, and Daniel smiled.
“Asshole,” Daniel said as he turned away from the door.
***
“Lyle Ansel,” Daniel muttered to himself. “Lyle Ansel.” He had a name, nothing else. It had cost him a hundred bucks, and it had not been worth the money. And even though Daniel did not care about the money, he was not certain if he would step on the brake if the man stepped in front of his car. Maybe he would push the gas pedal down a little bit. Maybe he would not. He was not certain.
Lyle Ansel. It was a name. It was better than nothing. He had only wanted to deal with one junkie today. That junkie was Hosea. He had not expected to deal with any more. He just hoped that once he found his brother, Hosea would be more useful than the man from this house.
Daniel slammed the car door. He was angry. He felt rage rising in him. He knew he needed to calm down. He knew his anger would be no good, counterproductive, in fact. He needed to stay cool. He needed to stay logical. Logic would get him where he needed to go. Emotions were not reasonable, and the only true way to solve a problem was to think through it in a logical manner.
Daniel turned the car on. He sat. He could go back to the woman on the porch for information, but she had little to tell him in the first place. He could go knock on this drug house’s door, but he doubted the man would want to help him anymore. Why would he cooperate with a person who broke his nose?
But what were his options? What were his options if he did not rely on one of these people?
Daniel wished that Joseph was sitting in the passenger seat. If Joseph was there, at least Daniel would be able to get more input.
“And you know what he would say,” Daniel answered his thoughts. “He’d tell you to stop thinking like an idiot and get your head on right.” Daniel shook his head. He knew that Joseph would not be in favor of this odd obsession of revenge that had taken him over. And Daniel knew the man did not know the first thing about violence.
“No, he doesn’t know the first thing about it, does he?” Daniel muttered under his breath.
Joseph Walker was the last person who would resort to violence. First, he was so frail. Second, he was not of the rough and tumble Irish culture from which Daniel rose. No. Joseph was of the upper class, and being of the upper class meant refinement. It meant ridding oneself of basic, brutish impulses. It meant ascending above what it meant to be human, and it meant becoming something beyond humanity. It was more than manners. It was more than parties or connections or clothes. It was at the core of being. It was a metamorphosis. Sans the caterpillar. Arise the butterfly.
Unfortunately, killing was not among the skillset of the betters. Unfortunately, they did not excel in violence as those of his basic heritage did.
A knock on the window broke Daniel from his thoughts. His heart fluttered in surprise, and he noticed the sweat trickling down his face and neck. The car was hot and stuffy; he had been too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice.
Daniel heard several more knocks on the window. Daniel looked up. He saw the small woman. Her pale skin was even whiter in the sunlight. Daniel could see every bag pulling underneath her bloodshot eyes. Before she had looked small, frail, sickly. Now she was chalk-white char ready to be blown away by the first breeze.
Daniel rolled the window down. “I know where you can find Lyle Ansel,” she said as soon as she saw a crack open.
Daniel nodded to her. “What do you want for the information?” he asked.
The woman answered back. “Well, I don’t want nothing,” she said in her small voice. “Except,” she bit her lip before continuing, “Could I get a ride to the store? It’s just a few blocks up that way.” She pointed to the left of the vehicle and up a side street.
“And you know where Ansel is?” Daniel asked.
“I do. I do,” she answered.
Daniel nodded. He unlocked the door, and she climbed in. As she entered the enclosed space of the car, the smell of her unwashed body crawled over him and he had to keep himself from gagging.