by J. D. Barker
“You can read here. Why not read aloud to your mother and me. I’m sure she’d like that.”
“I don’t think she’d give two shits about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
She smacked the side of my head. “Language! Don’t think you’re getting so big I won’t put you over my knee.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”
Auntie Jo grunted and puffed at the new cigarette. She dropped the butt of the old one in the vase attached to Daddy’s gravestone. I made a mental note to fish it out later.
Two shits was my favorite new word—well, two new words. A kid transferred to Lincoln about a month before the school year let out, Duncan Bellino. His dad was a plant manager, and they moved here from Chicago. We called him Dunk. He smoked and said things like two shits. Dunk had the largest comic collection I had ever seen outside of a store, boxes of them. I had spent most of the summer digging through those boxes.
When word got around school about what happened at the grocery store, my popularity factor went through the roof and held steady for about two weeks before kids realized I was still the same kid they ignored before. After that, things returned pretty much to normal. Dunk stuck around, though. When he heard what happened, he shrugged it off, said stores in Chicago got robbed two, sometimes three times a day. You’d be lucky to get in and out without tripping over a robber, no big deal.
His dad had a gun on account of him being a former Army ranger. He kept it hidden in a shoe box on the top shelf of their closet. We had to drag a chair in from the kitchen just to get to it. The ammo was there, too. Dunk let me keep one of the bullets. He said if the robber ever came back for me, he’d let me borrow the gun so I could blast him in the face. With the gun in a shoe box at the top of his dad’s closet, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to reach it in time. We had yet to work out the logistics. Logistics was my second favorite word.
“Have you seen my Walkman?”
Auntie Jo fished it out of her bag and handed it to me. I had used a good part of my savings buying the Walkman, but it was worth it. The device not only had a built-in radio, it also played cassettes. No antenna, either. It was much better than our old transistor radio.
I started up the hill.
“One hour!” she called out from behind me. “I start at four today, and Krendal said you can bus until eight when Carter gets in—we need the money!”
I waved over my shoulder.
She started coughing then, and I could still hear her as I reached the mausoleums. She had been coughing a lot lately.
The bench was empty. I figured it would be. I was a little early. Last time she didn’t get here until after four. I sat, put on my headphones, and turned on the Walkman.
Static.
I expected that, too. I lowered the volume.
Last year, I let Stella keep my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles number one. This year, not only did I bring her volume two but three Wonder Woman comics I borrowed from Dunk’s personal stash. At first, I thought it was weird that he owned every Wonder Woman, but he was quick to point out they were filled with half-naked women. I had since become a fan.
If Dunk knew I was about to share part of his prized comic collection with a girl, he’d kill me.
Twenty minutes passed.
Thirty.
I began to worry she wasn’t going to show, and then I spotted the white SUV coming up the access road followed closely by a second vehicle, also a white SUV of the same make and model. Both stopped about thirty feet from the bench.
I wiped the sweat off my palms on my jeans. The driver-side door opened and the older woman stepped out, smoothing her long, white coat. The sun was out today, and the temperature was hovering somewhere in the low eighties, hardly coat weather. I couldn’t help but think about the gun, not like the one Dunk’s dad had but something longer, like a rifle or a shotgun, hidden under that coat.
The backdoor of the SUV opened, and I expected Stella to get out, but instead a man with dark brown hair and sunglasses stepped out, also wearing a long white coat. Another man and a woman stepped out on the passenger side. Four more people got out of the second SUV, all adults, no sign of Stella. All of them in long, white coats. The driver of the first SUV, the woman I recognized from my other visits with Stella, approached and took Stella’s seat on the bench.
The static from my Walkman crackled at my ears, and I switched it off, pulling off the headphones. “Where’s Stella?”
The woman smiled. It was cold, the smile of a Cheshire Cat greeting a mouse moments before devouring the little creature, tail and all. She wore a smile of convenience, a mask. I didn’t want to peek behind her mask.
“Stella will not be joining us today.”
“Where is she?”
The woman crossed her legs. She didn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead, her eyes on the SUVs, on the others standing around them. “Ms. Nettleton is somewhere other than here. Where that might be is none of your concern.”
“Is she okay?”
I couldn’t help but think Stella had gotten hurt, been in some kind of terrible accident. Why else wouldn’t she come?
The woman’s long, white hair was pulled back in a ponytail, hanging down over the collar of her coat. Her fingernails were long and manicured, painted a white not unlike her coat. She folded her hands on her lap. “My name is Latrese Oliver. You may call me Ms. Oliver or even Mrs. Oliver. You are never to call me Latrese, and you never will. I am, and always will be, above your station in life. Regardless of whatever minor success you may one day achieve, even if you stumble into a major success at some point in your feeble little life, even if you find riches and stature, you will always be beneath me, inferior to me. Do you understand? Am I making myself clear to you? Nod if you understand.”
I nodded before I even realized I was doing it. I forced the motion to come to a stop, willed my head still.
“Good,” she muttered. “Not that I expect much of you. I think you may have found your peak as a busboy, picking up the filth and waste of others. Wiping the urine stains from the grimy porcelain tiles of the bathroom floor, scraping away the dried shit of strangers from a communal bowl, that is where you truly belong.”
“Where…where is Stella?” I wanted the words to sound forceful, tough even. They didn’t, though. They squeaked from my lips as if from a boy half my age, as if from the boy in the grocery nine months earlier as he wet his pants.
“Do you find her to be pretty? Our little Stella?”
I didn’t say anything. My eyes fell to the stack of comics on the bench.
The woman went on. “You will never have her, you know. As much as you may one day desire her, she will never be yours. Does that bother you?”
“I…I don’t like girls. Not like that.”
“No? Ah, but you will. Someday, I believe, you will. Someday you will want her so desperately you would step in front of a racing car just for the chance to touch her, to feel her warmth near your body, to know her kiss. Our Stella.”
“I just want to talk to her, that’s all.”
Ms. Oliver snorted, lost in her own words. “I bet you go home after these visits and pull your pecker out of your pants and touch yourself in the most obscene of ways just thinking about her—the smell of her hair, that smooth skin of hers. Have you ever even seen a naked girl before? I imagine not. Not at your age. You probably think about it, though, the filthiest of thoughts floating through that head of yours. You’re no better than other boys, all of you are the same. None of you are good enough for our Stella, and it sickens me to think she would even speak to you, let alone…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head. She turned and stared at me, those dark gray eyes boring into me, burning with a hatred so fierce I could taste it on the air. “She will be your everything. Every breath of air you tug from the world will belong to her, everything you do will be for her, and you will mean absolutely nothing to her in return. You will be something she scrapes off her shoe and leaves on the
side of the road for the vultures to tear and eat and shit back out. You are, and always shall be, discarded waste—building blocks the universe should have used to make something better, an afterthought.”
She stood then, again smoothing out the long, white coat, and without another word, she climbed back into the SUV followed by the others. I watched as they drove away, the stillness and quiet of the cemetery suffocating.
2
Preacher stepped into the apartment and pressed both hands to the door, closing it with a gentle click. He knew nobody was home, he was certain of that, but he didn’t want to alert the neighbors of his presence any more than he would have wanted to startle the homeowner had they been drowsing in bed or watching television rather than visiting the rotting corpses of two long-lost relatives in the cemetery behind the apartment building.
Neighbors in buildings like this tended to stick together. They got themselves caught up in the business of those living around them just a little too often for Preacher’s taste. He could never live in a place like this, and he didn’t understand why anyone else would make the conscious choice to do so.
The place was a box.
The place was a box stacked on top of other boxes, next to more boxes, and under even more. This wasn’t a home, this was a cell. This was the kind of place society put you.
Josephine Gargery didn’t make a lot of money. He had reviewed her last three tax returns before coming here. As a waitress, she earned $2.01 per hour plus tips, the average tip being 10 to 15 percent. Preacher, of course, tipped 20 percent whether service was good or not and always treated his waitstaff with the utmost respect. Not because he felt they had a hard job or deserved more than the norm from him because he could sometimes be difficult, but because they handled his food and often did so outside his viewing area. He would never consider treating someone poorly, then sending them back to the kitchen to fetch his meal. They might spit in it, or worse. He once heard of a cook running a chicken sandwich through the dishwater when he heard the recipient was a former high school teacher who gave him a C minus in history class three years earlier. Imagine what that same person might do if he or she had a sudden dislike for a regular patron simply because that patron was rude or tipped poorly on a previous visit?
Preacher always tipped 20 percent, and he had done so when he ate breakfast at Krendal’s Diner this morning. Based on the income stated on Josephine Gargery’s tax returns, her regular patrons did not. She earned $7,840 last year. That amounted to $150.77 per week—only a few dollars above the national poverty level of $7,240 per year. Considering she had the boy, a dependent, Ms. Gargery wasn’t doing well. This became abundantly clear as Preacher turned and surveyed the apartment.
The small space reeked of cigarette smoke, even with the two living room windows open and a light breeze lofting in. Smoky grime stained the walls. He could only imagine how the filth of it infiltrated the furniture, the bedsheets, the clothing. He wore thick leather gloves. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, touch anything with bare hands.
Preacher did not smoke, nor did he tolerate anyone in his presence to do so. Such a filthy, wasteful habit.
Standing with his back to the door of the apartment, the small kitchen was on his left. The appliances appeared to be about a decade old, the corners and crevices lined with rust. The refrigerator contained nothing but condiments, some prepackaged sliced American cheese, and a quarter gallon of milk that smelled just this side of funky.
A narrow hallway led to the living room in front of him, and two doors lined the wall on his right, most likely the bedrooms. He saw nothing of interest in the kitchen, not even a single note affixed to the refrigerator door—the room looked rarely used, so he went on to the living room. A dining table sat tucked into the corner on the left, littered with stacks of both opened and unopened mail. Preacher took up the nearest pile and studied the labels: bills and Publisher’s Clearing House. The bills were unopened, the Publisher’s Clearing House envelope was not only open but the application had been completed and stuffed into the return envelope, ready to be mailed. Although completed in the name of Josephine Gargery, the handwriting was that of a child, no doubt belonging to the boy.
Preacher returned the mail to the table, careful to place everything back exactly as he found it, and studied the living room. A recliner and couch both faced a small twelve-inch television. A coffee table stood at the center of this little triangle. He expected it to be thick with dust, but he found the table to be clean, same with the top of the television. The grime of the space seemed to start and end with the cigarette smoke. Someone took the time to clean the apartment on a regular basis, and he found this surprising. Most likely, this was the boy again. He knew the aunt worked long hours and was rarely here, probably just long enough to sleep, shower, and return to work. The boy fended for himself. How that woman managed to smoke enough to create this cleanliness problem was perplexing. Preacher imagined her chain-smoking just to keep up with it. He knew the boy didn’t smoke, not yet anyway. They had been watching him closely, and someone would have made note of such appalling activity. A sniff of both the couch and the recliner confirmed she sat in the recliner as she smoked. Oddly, he found no ashtrays. The window nearest the chair had no screen. He supposed she could dispose of her ashes through that opening, but that seemed unlikely.
The door to the first of two small bedrooms stood adjacent to the living room, clearly the boy’s room—posters of superheroes and pages torn from comic books covered the walls. On the dresser he found stacks of books, classics such as Treasure Island and Lord of the Flies as well as nearly a dozen volumes of Hardy Boy mysteries. Comic books sat beside those, all stacked in neat piles. Within the drawers he found nothing but clothing, all folded and organized by type. The socks were paired off and rolled together in careful balls. He expected to find something hidden within the clothing, contraband of some sort, but there was none. Nothing under the bed, either, not even a dust bunny.
In the closet, he found clothing hung in perfect symmetry on hangers arranged from light to dark. On the floor of the closet sat a single cardboard box. Inside that box, he found twelve ashtrays hidden beneath a dozen paperbacks—most likely, the missing ashtrays from the apartment. Apparently, the boy thought he could convince his aunt to quit smoking by hiding them. Clever. Childish, but clever.
Preacher returned everything as he found it and closed the closet door.
His eyes drifted over the room, the neatness of it. Everything in its place.
He had been a boy once.
Boys hid things.
He turned back to the bed and lifted the mattress, his eyes lighting up at what he found.
Pressed between the mattress and boxspring was a notebook of some sort. He retrieved it and flipped through the pages. Not a notebook, a sketchbook, containing dozens of drawings, drawings of Stella.
He lowered the mattress back in place.
The drawings were crude, but better than most. Far better than Preacher could ever draw. Exceptionally better than expected from most children. The last sketch in particular, Stella smiling with the glint of the sun in her eyes, that one was good. That one was real good. The boy had drawn it with a black ballpoint pen, a medium that didn’t allow for mistakes.
This had to stop. Things were getting out of control.
Preacher sat on the edge of the bed, dropping the sketchbook beside him.
What did the girl see in this boy?
Why him?
He was a nobody, a future rat to run the maze. His life would come and go in a blip. Most likely he would not attend college, would not obtain even mediocre success. He was destined to a life of labor and an early grave, so why him?
Preacher took his Walther PPK/S .380 from the holster slung over his left shoulder and held the weapon in his hand, absentmindedly unscrewing the silencer, then tightening it back up. The weight of the gun, the heft of it in his hand, the smell of the oil, these things all helped him focus, helped him concentr
ate.
He could kill the boy. He might have to at some point, he was sure of that. Why not now?
He could wait right here and put a bullet into the kid’s brain when he returned from the cemetery, the aunt, too. Preacher had no qualms about killing kids. He had killed his share in the past. The only difference between a child and an adult was time. They would be done with this, then. The whole sordid mess would be behind them, and they could move on.
There would be repercussions.
Preacher scratched at his chin with the barrel of the gun.
3
We were late for our shift.
It was my fault.
After the woman left, I sat on the bench, completely dumbstruck. My mind buzzed and I couldn’t stop shaking. Each breath seemed to catch in my throat and hold to the sides, unwilling to be expelled.
Even now, as I kept pace behind Auntie Jo, my heart beat with such a ferocity I thought it might crack out from behind my ribs and land with a thud somewhere ahead of us on the broken sidewalk.
“Are you coming down with something? You don’t look too good.”
I nearly told Auntie Jo she didn’t sound too good, and it was true—she made a strange wheezing sound as she walked, like air passing over wax paper. Every few steps, she punctuated this with a moist cough. This didn’t stop her from smoking, though. “Maybe I should drop these things off in our apartment. I could take a vitamin C.”
“I have some in my locker at the diner,” she said. “Can’t afford to get sick right now, neither of us.”
Although she didn’t say anything, I knew she hadn’t paid rent for August yet. Eight days late. Anything past the fifth would also include a late fee. I wasn’t sure how much that would amount to. All I knew was that it was more than we had. I could return the Walkman. I could try to give her my savings again, but she never took it.
We pushed through the door of Krendal’s, twenty minutes late. The diner was packed. Mr. Krendal stood at the griddle in the kitchen, his eyes locked on us through the pass-through at the back of the counter. “Josie! Get your apron on, we’re getting slammed!”