I did nothing. Not then. Freddy watched television and I sat outside idly leafing through two-year-old magazines. I read somewhere once that concussion victims aren’t supposed to sleep so I glanced in on him from time to time to be sure he was still awake. Freddy was always awake. He glanced over at me once, his eyes dull and his lower lip slack against his chin, glistening with drool. He blinked and the fire returned. A sneer split his face and he wiped a hand across his chin. I left him in a hurry and returned to my vinyl-padded vigil in the hallway.
In the end it was I who dozed. One minute I was reading an article about Ronald Reagan and the next I woke myself up with a hiccupping snore. I had slept the day away. Old, dried spit caked my lips and my chin. My neck was nearly locked in the position it had lolled to as I slept and it bothered me for weeks afterward. My left leg was completely numb with sleep – well beyond pins and needles into the realm of chilled, lifeless flesh hanging from my hip.
I rubbed life of a sort back into my leg, bracing myself against the unremitting agony of new blood pulsing through long-closed arteries and the nervous assault it brought. Around me the hospital had taken on a veil of silence such places only don during the night. Even with the hum of electronics, the hiss of air through the catacombs of ductwork and the ever-present buzz of the fluorescent lights above me lighting the hallway a brilliant, stark and sterile white I felt as though I had awoken underground. Despite the encompassing silence everywhere around me I could have very well imagined myself in a tomb.
On a hobbled limb I rose, grimacing as my leg attempted to convince me it wasn’t there. Hopping along on a meat-filled peg-leg, I slipped into Freddy’s room. The television was still on, the volume lowered to a bare minimum. Another nurse was with him, older and greyer, reminding me of Betty White in a rather disturbing way.
“They’re going t’ let you out in the morning, I’m sure,” Nurse White was telling Freddy. “You seem to be on the mend.”
Freddy offered the nurse his warmest smile. “I feel fine,” he assured her.
“Well, I’m going t’say you can sleep now if you feel tired.”
Freddy’s smile widened into a boyish grin. “I haven’t felt tired at all – not even now.”
“Well then,” she patted his hand, “you can keep the TV on – just keep the sound low. What would you say to a piece of chocolate cake?”
“Does it taste like the chocolate pudding?”
She tittered, clutching her bolstered bosom. “Not in the slightest – I swear t’ya.”
Freddy nodded. “I’d love some then.”
She winked at him and bustled her way out, one wheel of her service cart squeaking erratically.
Freddy waited until she was gone. “I’ve figured out what I’m gonna do,” he told me happily.
I gave him an incredulous look. This was the same Freddy who only hours before would not have been satisfied with anything less than rivers of blood spearing through the streets.
“I’m not gonna tell,” he smirked, “the surprise is better – especially for Johnny-boy!” Freddy fell silent, his features losing their sadistic flair as the nurse returned with a fist-sized piece of what looked to be McCain’s Deep ‘n’ Delicious chocolate cake. She was right. It looked a hell of a lot more appetizing than the congealed, black wax the day nurse had passed off as chocolate pudding.
“I’ll be back later t’ check on you,” the nurse told him, “but I’m just down the hall if you need me. Sleep tight!”
Freddy’s smile faded with the steady decline of Nurse White’s footfalls. “Fuck, I hate this place,” he declared mildly. He gave me the plate. “The best way to get sick is to go to the hospital.”
I ate the cake greedily, only then realizing I had eaten nothing all day. It did nothing to satisfy my hunger and left a lump in my gut and made me thirsty. Freddy would not share his ginger ale and the only water fountain on the floor was down by the nurse’s station. If I went out there, I was sure to get bounced. It was long after visiting hours had ended and I’m not sure how the staff had ignored me for so long. Instead I suffered while Freddy spoke.
-
Freddy changed when he came out of the hospital. He was the same to me, treating me with the typical disdain I had grown accustomed to. He was the same old Freddy to his friends but him and I knew that was mostly an act now anyway, a cover for what he truly was – a killer in waiting.
It was to his parents he changed. Maggie, already on eggshells when John was around, began to tread lightly around her son as well as if she somehow sensed the monster lurking within his docile exterior. I think she was afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. Freddy did nothing to encourage this. He paid more attention to his mother, talking to her more often, helping her with dinner or with the dishes afterward. His bedroom was always meticulously tidy but he began to extend his tidiness outward into other areas of the house.
Toward his father Freddy became the model son. He helped with yard work without being asked, picking up after himself outside. He even put his bike away. John was quite pleased with his development and I am certain he equated it to his most recent chastisement. He would have been right except for Freddy’s true motives.
John even took Freddy out driving in Maggie’s sun-faded Caprice station wagon. “The only time you’re gonna drive Maybelline is if the garage is on fire and you’re movin’ her t’safety!” He told Freddy as they cruised around town on a Saturday afternoon. Freddy was behind the wheel, hands at ten and two. John lounged beside him, one arm slung across the seat back, imparting his years of accumulated wisdom behind the wheel while sipping at a beer hidden in his lap.
“I want a car like that,” Freddy said in his most admiring tone.
John clucked his tongue. “Good luck, son. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” He tipped the last of his beer back, tossed the empty out the window and tugged another from the six-pack between his feet.
Freddy glanced at a power pole as they cruised by at a sedate forty kilometers an hour. He imagined flooring the big wagon, spinning the wheel and taking the pole head-on. He was belted in. John was not. He welcomed the image of his father being catapulted from the car, his forehead collapsing against safety glass before ripping through. His jugular would be severed. The flesh on his shoulders, chest, thighs and buttocks would be heavily lacerated by his passage through the spalling fragments of glass. Unconscious, his skull stoved in like a beer can, John would be half bled-out before he cleared the crumpled hood. He would be dead before hitting the ground, his rag doll body cart-wheeling, flopping, rolling and finally sliding to halt well over a hundred feet away.
Freddy smiled at the thought, even chuckling a little to himself.
John glanced over at him and snorted. “Exactly. All we got today is shit: Jap-crap, goose-stepping econoboxes and-” he stopped, his face twisting into a grimace. “Where do Volvos come from?”
“Sweden, dad” Freddy supplied
John nodded. “Yeah. ‘Nuff said.” He tilted his beer back and drank deeply, his throat working like a ratchet handle. With a belch he hurled the empty out the window. “I gotta pee.”
-
The sun had just dipped below the ridge-backed western horizon and the sky was painted a deepening indigo. Freddy slipped from the house. Maggie was in her sewing room. John was downstairs in his La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, swaying slowly. He would be snoring soon, probably spending the entire night in the basement sleeping off the fifteen or so beer he drank since two that afternoon. In the morning he would wake up with a sore neck and shooting sciatic pain in his left thigh. He would curse Maggie for letting him ‘fall asleep’ down there. Mind you, he would have cursed her for waking him up too.
Freddy moved across the back lawn and used his father’s key ring to let himself into the garage. Sleek and sexy, Maybelline shone like a cluster of crescent moons as the faint light reflected off her muscular curves. He stood admiring the beast for long minutes, his ears tuned to any sound from
the house. Freddy sighed and lifted a slot-head screwdriver from the pegboard. “This is gonna hurt,” he cautioned her.
Slowly he strolled around the car, shimmying sideways a little to slip between the rear bumper and the big door. He stood over the rear quarter panel on the passenger side and lowered the screwdriver to Maybelline’s unblemished red skin, glistening as though it were still wet, and gritted his teeth.
-
Freddy locked the garage and returned to the house. John’s key ring went back in the bowl by the back door. The screwdriver hung on the peg board again. He had first rubbed it clean with a rag and then washed it with acetone to eliminate even the faintest traces of red paint. Freddy went up to his room, absently rubbing at his left eye. He did not leave until morning.
-
He met Çin again Sunday afternoon. Freddy had no qualms about stepping up their first encounter. They got right down to business and afterward Freddy sipped his still-cold drink while Çin talked.
Çin’s father had bought a house in Houston. He was working with an oil and gas exploration company as a consultant. The oil market was booming in Texas but the housing market was still soft – for the moment. The house was a wise investment. Çin’s mother was having the place renovated. As a result of all this Çin was more or less on her own for a while.
“Why are we meeting out here in the woods then?” Freddy asked her. “I bet it’s a lot more comfortable laid out in your bed than standing out here, scared half to death someone is gonna catch us.”
Çin shrugged. “It’s just me alone in the house. I don’t know.” She grinned suddenly. “Why, you wanna go again?”
Freddy knew he could never get tired of the sensations of receiving fellatio and of everything else she promised even if it was Çin giving it to him. Nor was he put out with fulfilling his side of the bargain. He definitely felt less willing to do it after his own orgasm but then again, he was already feeling aroused again at the prospect something more so soon.
He shrugged and chucked his empty can into the bushes. “You want to?”
-
The following Tuesday evening Freddy was in his room. He was at his desk reading through a stack of old car magazines. On the corner of his desk, a slim hardcover book sat untouched. The town library logo was plastered on the cover just above the title – Rochester Carburetors: A Complete Guide to Maintenance and Repair.
He was upset. Unbeknownst to him (discovered after spending three days researching the subject) John had swapped the factory carburetor off his Impala for a newer, high performance model. And the original hadn’t even been a Rochester. All Freddy needed to do was glance under the hood to know but he was only just beginning to know what a carburetor was, let alone figure out how to dismantle the broad, disc-shaped air cleaner on top of it in order to see who made it.
For once I ignored him – or tried to. Freddy cursed. He flipped a magazine off the stack and opened the next. “There’s nothing in here about Holley carbs,” he spat. “The library better have something. I didn’t know this shit was so complicated!”
In my chair in the corner I shrugged. I didn’t even know what an air cleaner was – I’m still not sure if there is a difference between an air cleaner and an air filter. I’m sure they both do the same thing but as to which was which I couldn’t tell to save my life.
I was beginning to get a sense of his plans. Maybelline was John’s Achilles heel. He would go mad trying to fix these little problems as they cropped up. This was Freddy’s revenge – as heinous as it was. I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps Freddy was not planning a murder after all. Briefly I considered interfering, warning John or something. I knew any attempt to sway Freddy from his plan would be beaten aside as easily as a tin shed in a hurricane. But in the end, I chose – consciously chose – to do nothing. I would not exactly call what Freddy was planning excessive. He had carefully thought out his revenge, studying his enemy for signs of the best weakness to exploit.
John deserved it or worse. I knew that as clearly as Freddy did. It was like erasing a child’s saved games on their PlayStation instead of grounding them. It was a decisive blow that would cripple the punished more completely than a time-out in the corner ever would. But then I suppose the biggest difference is also the most important – a child knows why he has been punished. John had no idea whatsoever that something was happening. It’s a shame really. Maybelline was such a cool car.
-
It was Wednesday before John found the scratch on Maybelline. He was in the showers after his shift ended when Dale Thorlakson happened to mention it on his way in. Maybelline was the talk of quite a number of envious co-workers. Dale had his ‘Cuda but it was only fast. He was the first to admit it looked like shit. Making matters worse for John, because of his seniority he had his own parking spot – dead center in the parking lot and one row back from the main entrance. On one side was the walkway, cutting through an island of grass. On the other, the stall was cut off by a light pole. Effectively no one could park beside him. For a guy with a car like Maybelline it was the perfect spot. It was not exactly an assigned spot but everyone knew it was John’s. No one but visitors and newbies ever parked there. John couldn’t do anything about the visitors but the newbies only ever parked there once.
Half the plant staff walked past his car at least once every day. When it was shining, fresh from the wash or when it rained and the raindrops beaded on the wax to give the paint that glistening almost molten look, more than a few people slowed their pace as they walked by.
“What happened to your car, John?” Dale asked. He was only short months off his own newbie status. He had once made the mistake of taking John’s spot. He never did it again. John led a small troop of his coworkers out to the parking lot after punching out. He hid his temper quite well at work and only once was he ever reprimanded for it – that afternoon in fact. It was the talk of the town for weeks. I must have heard a dozen versions of it – including John’s own around swills of beer and muttered curses in the garage.
John reached his car, a dozen of his followers fanning out around him to look, lunch pails, back packs and happy hours momentarily forgotten as they craned to see.
“Mother-Fucker!” John’s face had gone a dangerous shade of red. He knew exactly what had caused the damage. He knew it had happened at some point since leaving the carwash on Friday afternoon. He knew there was no way in hell he could have missed a three-foot furrow in the paint, the width of a slot-head screwdriver and down to bare metal. The car had been in the garage all weekend and had only left there to come here before returning to its berth.
John’s immediate conclusion was this was the work of someone at the plant. Somehow, he never even thought about Freddy. “If I find out which one of you fuckers did this, I’m gonna shiv you with that fucking screwdriver!” His bellow rolled clear across the parking lot. A whole shift was leaving and the stragglers of the next were still trickling in. Two hundred pairs of eyes turned his way. His rant began and the crowd gathered.
Nathan Hart was the plant coordinator – whatever that meant. He was one of dozens of middle management types with no understood role in the hierarchy but one of his duties was to liaise with the union on matters of employee discipline. Because of this he was not exactly the most popular person at Clausson’s. He also had an assigned stall directly in front of John’s in the first row. In that stall sat his brand-new BMW, a 1991 model with less than a thousand klicks on the odometer.
Nathan was just leaving when he came across the spectacle of John describing what he would do to the ‘little fuck-wad’ when he caught up with him. Nathan chose to intervene.
John told him to fuck off – unless he knew who scratched his car.
Nathan bristled. That was a strike.
John reminded him that he was punched out and told Nathan to kiss his ass and go see the shop steward. The stew would tell him the same thing.
“It’s just a car, John,” Nathan told him, standing paces
away from his own costly machine.
It took four men to restrain John, his fists cocked and ready to strike. He later claimed he was going for Nathan’s car and not Nathan but the damage was done. Nathan retreated inside as John cursed him out for everyone to hear.
When he was done, John climbed in the Impala and left twin strips of smoldering rubber the length of the parking lot and two more erratic banana loops as he exited onto the highway, an inbound cattle-liner blaring its air horn as he fishtailed by.
That night John must have thought long and hard about what he had done. He went to bed dead-sober, the first time in a long while. The next day he went into Nathan’s office unprompted and apologized. Nathan saw this gesture as just about the most courageous thing a man in John’s position could do. Instead of a written reprimand, which would have affected John’s bonus pay that year, Nathan chose to give him a suspension. John was given Thursday and Friday off, with pay. Because John was among the original employees of the plant Nathan made it so the suspension did not affect his seniority either. Had it, he would be reduced to the middle of the pack from the number one or two.
Truthfully, once he had cooled down a little, John realized just how close he had come to losing that bonus. More than that he would have been put on the Blacklist, the unofficial shit-list held by management. Anyone who got on the Blacklist ended up quitting within a year. There was no way off the Blacklist either. The union could only protect him so far and if his temper had escaped him completely the union could not have saved him from another assault charge.
John left Nathan’s office, shaking his hand on the way out. Later he would be heard to remark: “Nate’s not a bad guy – especially for management!” It was the highest praise Nathan could ever expect to receive from one of the plant workers. And it was probably the only praise he ever received from any of them.
After The Flesh Page 12