When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man by Nick Dybek

Author:Nick Dybek
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472102737
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

I WOULD HAVE SKIPPED school the next day, had planned to, except I realized at some point in the night that I’d never run into Don before because he came when I was at school. Ritual and repetition, to Don, to my father, were gods. Don drank a cup of coffee every morning at 6:35 from the same yellow mug. According to my father, even if Don was in bed, coming off forty straight hours, he’d get up specially to drink that cup of coffee before going back to sleep. If he was coming to feed Richard each day, he’d do it squarely.

By the time school let out, the snow had melted except for a few muddy white patches on the lawns. The cloud-scattered sky mirrored the ground. I rounded the block three times before letting myself in the back door.

The kitchen was warm and reminded me of an old dream I’d had where the neighborhood, the town, the world, had been taken over by witches. In the dream, I’d gone to my friend Paul’s house to find an ally, but two skeletal women with black teeth answered his door. I sprinted home, diving into a kitchen filled with menacing tropical steam.

As I descended the stairs, the cooler air of the basement splashed me awake. I tapped the mint-colored wood with my knuckles.

“Richard,” I said.

“It snowed,” Richard said.

“What?”

“Yesterday. It snowed, didn’t it? Did you bring the police?”

The sunlight had melted with the snow. The basement windows looked sooty-gray. My head felt dirty and hot. I hadn’t considered the police.

“I’m locked in here against my will by men who may kill me.” His voice sounded tired, as if he were obliged to say this but knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Call the police, all right?”

“What men?” I asked.

“Let me out and I’ll tell you about it.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can,” he said. “Really, you can.”

“The lock, I mean.”

“Don keeps the key down here. Inside something metal, with a door. Is it in the dryer?”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I’d heard him drop it into something metal too. It only took a second to find. I walked to the other end of the basement and opened the dryer. It contained a black sock and a silver key the length of a pinkie.

“It’s there, isn’t it?” Richard called.

I walked back to the door with the key in my pocket. “I don’t see it,” I said.

“Has it been snowing?” Richard asked.

The weather. These last weeks while I’d trudged to school or ridden my bike along the boardwalk smelling pine, salt, and exhaust, what had Richard smelled? Only white-bread sandwiches and his own waste. What had he touched? Only the mohair on the bench and the shag of the rug. What had he heard? Only the ceiling creaking above him. And the records.

“I’ve been thinking about you, Cal,” he said. “I wondered if you’d come back. I thought you would, because that’s what I would have done. And you probably want to do the right thing, but what is that? Right? You don’t know.

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