The Stonefly Series, Book 1

by Scott J. Holliday

  The bartender, a mutt as grizzled as the dog beneath the dartboard, was at the end of the walnut bar-top working on a crossword puzzle. He strolled over. "What'll you have?"

  "Jack Daniel's," Jake said. "Neat."

  The bartender made a face of approval, likely expecting that a tenderfoot like Jake would have ordered a spritzer. He snatched up a tumbler, poured two fingers of JD, set the drink in front of Jake.

  Jake nodded his thanks.

  The man nodded in reply, went back down the bar to his crossword.

  Jake picked up his whiskey and rotated on his stool. He noted a rickety old pool table guarded by a few straight cues and a mess of bowed ones. Some were broken in half, presumably over someone's back. There were bikini posters from a bygone era, do-it-yourself popcorn, and a sign that read 'Free Beer Tomorrow.' Ha ha. The jukebox was unplugged and the drop-claw machine was sprinkled with plush toys and soft packs of Merit 100s.

  Jake pulled out his phone and sent a text to his mother:

  I need your help.

  As he put the phone away his gaze fell again to the dog beneath the dartboard. Its black muzzle had long ago lost the battle to gray. Jake watched the old fella breathe in and out, its ribs rising and falling, before he threw back his whiskey in one go. The alcohol tingled as it went down. It warmed his insides and began sanding down the edges of the day. He settled into his stool and rubbed his hands over his head, spun back toward the bar to find the bartender looking at him strangely. The man was still at the far end, hovering over his crossword. No doubt he had said something.

  "I'm sorry," Jake said. "I didn't hear you."

  "You freakin' deaf?"

  "Yes."

  The bartender's face screwed up in disbelief. "Nah, you're bullshittin'."

  Jake shook his head.

  "But you can hear me now."

  "Reading your lips."

  The bartender did a slow shift from surprise to recognition. "I'll be damned. You're that kid from Dover, ain't you?"

  That was a new one.

  "The kid that stabbed out his ears a few years back."

  Now it was Jake's face that screwed up.

  The bartender smiled. He came down the bar. "My sister used to work there. She told me about you. I mean, before you..." He indicated his ears. " ...that story was big news around here."

  Jake raised his eyebrows.

  "I guess I don't blame you," the bartender said, "with all that racket."

  "Racket?"

  "In that place," he said, pouring Jake another drink. "What with all the crazies with their whooping and wowing and singing. My sis said the constant noise was the real horror. Said if you weren't crazy when you showed up, you would be if you stuck around long enough. Eddie Crane's the name." He set down the bottle and stuck out his hand to shake.

  Jake shook his hand. "Jacob Duke."

  Eddie nodded in recognition of Jake's name. "That place eventually killed her. Ten years she's been gone now. Dropped dead of a kingdom-come heart attack right there in the parking lot."

  "Sorry to hear that."

  "You must have been there at the time."

  "I believe I was," Jake said. "Still a new arrival, though."

  Eddie Crane rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He looked like he might say more, but instead rapped his knuckles on the bar-top and then pointed to the tumbler of whiskey. "That one's on the house. Anyone who could survive that joint and walk away deserves at least one free drink in this bar."

  Jake thanked the man and toasted him.

  A nice guy, but he had it wrong. As a patient at Dover you got used to the noise. If you were in there for a stretch and you knew it, the noise became part of the background, like a humming fan. However, as a nurse going home after each shift to a quiet, relaxing home, only to have to come back to that noise again and again? Now that would drive you shithouse nuts.

  Eddie Crane had another thing wrong, too. It wasn't a heart attack that killed his sister. It was Jake.

  * * *

  Nurse Crane was one of the older ones. Young Jake had heard one of the others call her a battle-axe. Somehow that seemed to fit. She was broad-shouldered and sturdy, but the torment of looking after the patients at Dover was on her like a second layer of skin. She had the broken capillaries of a drunk, deep crow's feet, and chronically tired eyes. Her main tormenter was Bozo, the man so fond of saying, "Wow, wow, wow."

  While there were two separate wings at Dover—the pediatric side and the adult side—the day room that connected the wings was always under supervision, and therefore open to all patients until lights out. Motown dubbed the room mixed nuts. It was where they ate, where they watched television, played board games, put together puzzles, and did group therapy.

  It was also where Bozo pissed himself several times a day.

  The nurses had Bozo in diapers around the clock, of course, but he filled the diapers up and overflowed them as often as not. During Jake's first few days the man overflowed his diapers seven times. Whenever he did, Motown—who commanded the day room like he was R.P. McMurphy himself—called out, "Bozo pissed himself again, ha ha ha!" and Nurse Crane came in to clean the poor guy up.

  If Bozo had a real name, Jake never knew it. Motown was one of those people that handed out nicknames, apparently even to himself. Most of the time he had one for you before you said a word, and if Motown gave you a nickname, boy, it stuck. Bozo, Teapot, Shakes, Eye-bags, Hacksaw, Burnt-ends, Curly-Q, and more, including Jake's own moniker, Rage. It took Jake weeks for Jake to figure out that Motown had recently seen Raging Bull and had associated his name with the middleweight fighter, Jake LaMotta.

  As a pre-teen boy, Jake couldn't say he minded the comparison.

  During Jake's fourth morning at Dover, Bozo pissed himself straight through breakfast. Motown called out Bozo's crime and Nurse Crane, who had only just arrived for her morning shift, came in and cleaned the man up. Caught unprepared, she had to leave the room to fetch a new diaper. When she came back she found Bozo had pissed himself again, all down his legs and through his coveralls.

  Nurse Crane put two fingers to each temple and breathed in and out.

  "Wow, wow, wow," Bozo kept saying, staring at some unknown thing while the others plowed through their pancakes. "Wow, wow, wow."

  Having already finished eating, Jake watched the scene from the back of the couch he'd taken to perching on. Nurse Crane saw him there. They had spoken once before and she'd been sweet. As Bozo wowed and pissed, she offered Jake a conspiratorial wink, leaned in his direction and whispered, "I sure wish someone would shut him up."

  Jake felt the quickening in his chest.

  He woke up the next morning with trembling hands. His body heat had risen. He sat up breathing raggedly and unable to stop imagining ways to shut Bozo up. It'd been two years since he'd killed Brody Williams, but in that moment it felt like only seconds ago. He recalled Brody standing above him, a hand on Jake's shoulder, apologizing for throwing hot chocolate in Jake's face. A moment later Brody was holding his bloody neck with the red handle of a Swiss Army knife poking out from between his fingers.

  Jake got out of bed and stalked into the day room like an animal, his hands clenching, opening, and clenching again. Bozo and a few of the others, including Teapot and Motown, were already eating. Jake envisioned himself tying Bozo's lips into a cartoon knot, he saw himself stapling the man's mouth shut, saw himself smothering his face with a pillow. His body shook with incredible force. His chest felt like a blast furnace.

  Somehow Jake was able to resist taking action. He found his couch-back perch, tucked his trembling hands into his armpits, and watched Bozo's glistening lips alternately chomp pancake and spit out his mantra. "Wow, wow, wow."

  Flecks of cake flew.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  Teapot was silent. At least she could manage to eat and shut up at the same time. Motown looked exhausted in his helmet. He wasn't allowed a fork or knife, and his wrists were manacled so he wouldn't snatch the p
lasticware from anyone else. He was left to eat pancakes and syrup and grapefruit slices with his hands. He made tacos.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  More pancake flecks flew.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  Jake ran from the day room and lay down in his bed. He stared at the ceiling, his mind searching for any vision other than Bozo's syrupy lips, his ears desperate to hear anything other than, "Wow, wow, wow."

  Nurse Kerry came in to check on him. "What are you doing in here?"

  Jake shrugged. He smiled nervously.

  "So young," she said, shaking her head. She came into the room, leaned over, pushed back his hair, and kissed his forehead. The kiss sent a sensation down to Jake's toes.

  The next morning, after Nurse Kerry sent him to the day room while she cleaned the wet dream ejaculate from his sheets, Jake snuck back into his bedroom and hid. For four more days he stayed in his room and stayed on tilt. He came out only to eat, sneaking in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner while avoiding eye contact. Otherwise he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, alternating between cataloging ways of shutting Bozo up and recalling Nurse Kerry's touch, her lips, her hands, her legs in their white stockings, the curve of her hips, the shape of her chest. His body was on fire. He shivered from constant adrenaline rush and raging hormones.

  On the sixth morning Jake was a marionette bent to the will of a force he couldn't understand. He sprinted into the day room. Teapot and Motown and Bozo were working their way through their pancake piles. Jake ran up Bozo like a tree and clamped his arms around the man's head, squeezing his forearms around his mouth.

  But Bozo didn't stop. He spat out muffled, hot-breathed 'wows' against Jake's arms.

  Jake clutched harder. His nose was smashed in the greasy nest of Bozo's ring of hair, presumably the clown-like style that'd inspired his Motown-given nickname.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  Nurse Crane had worked the midnight shift. She had been preparing to leave. Her winter jacket was puffy and green, her purse gray with wooden handles. She had been sliding on a leather glove when Jake wrapped himself around Bozo's head like a monkey.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  The orderlies busted through the day room doors. It took three of them to separate Jake from Bozo's head. They dragged him kicking and fighting to the corner and pinned him against the wall.

  Bozo went on eating pancakes, his face now red and splotchy where he'd been squeezed, blood on his lips, his eyes still seeing fascinating things.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  Nurse Crane had come in behind the orderlies. She looked at Jake, looked at Bozo, looked back at Jake.

  She smiled. Thanks for trying.

  Still pinned to the wall, Jake watched her leave. Through the shatterproof window he saw her emerge from the front doors. His body started convulsing, his vision grew hazy and dark at the edges, a closing aperture. A blurry Nurse Crane moved down the sidewalk and through the electric gates into the parking lot. She removed her keys from her purse and then stopped.

  Her keys fell.

  Her purse fell.

  She put a hand to her chest.

  Her body fell.

  Jake stopped convulsing. The orderlies looked at him strangely. They cautiously released him. He blinked and his vision was once again clear. His body heat faded. He thought of Nurse Crane's wish from precisely six days before, and then thought of fifth-grade classmate Sally Brewster's beet-red face when she screamed at Brody Williams, "I wish you were dead!"

  "You okay, kid?" an orderly said.

  He looked between the bodies of the orderlies to find Bozo at the breakfast table, still eating.

  "Wow, wow, wow."

  Teapot was there, too, still eating along with the others, all of them concentrating on their meals.

  But Motown was watching.

  6

  The parking lot outside of Eddie's bar seemed more desolate coming out than when Jake had crossed it going in. Moonlight gave the graveled ground the feel of a Mars landscape devoid of life, wind, and of course sound. A text came in as he sat down in the driver's seat of his truck and pulled the door shut. It was from his mother.

  I'm at home.

  The short response indicated she wasn't pleased about Jake's request for help. He'd likely get her 'this is the last time' speech, just like last time and the time before that.

  Elizabeth Duke had connections. As the CIO of Michigan Mercantile Bank she'd earned the favor of politicians, committee members, and the like. Her ability to influence people in power, particularly men, was legendary. She'd say she doesn't like to flaunt such power, but Jake knew that in secret she did. And why not flaunt it? She'd worked like a dog in order to attain it. In the years since Jake's sentencing she'd skyrocketed from administrative assistant to the top of the food chain at MMB where she was now both feared and respected, if not loved.

  'Stoic' was the word that came to mind when Jake thought of his mother. Others might say 'coldblooded.' "Beautiful as a diamond," he'd once read from the secretive lips of one of her subordinates, "and just as hard."

  Fortunately for Jake, Sergeant Dan MacDonald of the Detroit police department didn't harbor that subordinate's opinion. A crooked-nosed brawler from a black-and-white generation, Sergeant Dan had a different kind of hardness to him. The kind that comes from being born and bred in Canmoor—a Detroit neighborhood where half the homes are burned out craters, fields hide dead bodies in overgrown weeds, and a night without gunfire is the exception, not the rule.

  To be a Detroit cop required Sergeant Dan's hardness, but for Elizabeth Duke the man was a puppy. The two met many years ago when Dan was still a patrolman and Elizabeth had just started at the bank. Both were single and married to their jobs. Elizabeth was also saddled with raising Jake while Dan was—and still is—childless. He had responded to an emergency call at bank headquarters. A recently terminated project manager had called in a bomb threat, forcing all employees out of the building and onto the street.

  As Dan tells the story, Jake's mother was left shivering and helpless in the winter breeze, wearing only a knee-high skirt and a flimsy suit jacket. He gave her his police coat and she flirted with him throughout the ordeal.

  Elizabeth tells a different version. "The bomb threat was a hoax," she says, "and I don't flirt."

  Sergeant Dan, recently promoted from detective, was one of Jake's most valued resources. No point in getting a license plate unless it can be run. No problem for Dan. It just required Elizabeth to flirt.

  Jake pulled away from Eddie's bar and drove to Birmingham. He pulled up the winding driveway to his mother's stately home. The exterior was all stone and wrought iron, tall and imposing. One could imagine executed prisoners hanging from the walls. He came to the garage and closed his eyes in time to avoid being blinded by a motion-detecting spotlight. He stayed still and counted thirty seconds before the light snapped off. He turned off the truck and checked his watch. 11:58 p.m. The watch's steel band rattled against his trembling wrist—an indicator of the quickening's intensity and it was only the first day.

  He gripped the watchband and held on until his wrist went still.

  Yellow light splashed across the truck's hood. Jake looked up to find the interior house lights had come on. He opened the driver's side door and the motion-detecting light snapped on again. He walked through the unlocked front door to the scent of brewing coffee. The grandfather clock in the foyer was set to strike midnight.

  Jake laid a hand on the clock. He felt the sounds of the gears and instruments resonating through the wood like insects under the skin. He felt a click before the toll began, all silent to Jake's ears and undetectable but for the clock's vibration running like a current up his arm and across his body.

  7

  Day Two

  Jake let all twelve chimes flow through him before removing his hand from the clock. Seconds had passed, but it felt like he'd been standing in place for an hour. His eyes burned from the day's exhaustion, from the whiskey at
Eddie's bar. He walked down the hall and entered the kitchen to find his mother in silk pajamas, affecting her power stance—palms flat on the counter, arms locked straight, forward posture. Steam rose from the coffee pot behind her, a stainless steel model that also did espresso. The memento sounds of gurgling water and steamed-milk blasts invaded Jake's head.

  He pulled back a stool from the island counter and sat down. He nearly placed his forearms on the cold granite countertop, but recalled his trembling hands, and instead crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits.

  Elizabeth's eyes flicked to Jake's crossed arms. She opened her mouth to speak, but a blue light blinked on the coffee maker. She turned to what Jake imagined was a soothing sound to indicate the coffee was ready. She removed the carafe and poured two cups, brought them over to the island, and set a cup in front of her son.

  It was a calculated play. A lose-lose scenario for Jake. He couldn't pick up the cup without revealing his trembling hands but refusing to drink was the same admission.

  He drank.

  The coffee was exquisite. Chicory delivered directly from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans's French Quarter. His mother often spoke of the time she'd visited the legendary city as a teenager, of experiencing Mardi Gras, the colors and sights, the sounds, the smells. She would close her eyes when she mimicked twisting apart a crawfish, pinching the tail, and sucking the head. She claimed one day she would go back to New Orleans, but for work. Always work.

  "First day?" Elizabeth said.

  Jake nodded.

  "That's why you need my help?"

  He nodded again.

  "And what is the state of your horizon?"

  Jake imagined for other mothers and sons it might be 'have you found a wife yet?' Or 'when are you going to give me some grandkids?' Wasn’t it Tolstoy who said every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way?

  "It's fine," Jake said.

  His mother raised an eyebrow. "Work on your S sound."

  It hadn't devastated Elizabeth Duke to learn that one afternoon while institutionalized her seventeen-year-old son had nipped a #2 Ticonderoga pencil from the nurse's station, found a quiet corner, and shoved the sharp end first into his right ear, and then into his left. She didn't get upset when she came to Dover and saw white gauze wrapped around his head, padded lumps over his ears, and the distance some of the other patients now kept. She simply found a notepad and wrote: