The Jerk

by V. K. Ludwig

  Wooden stools waited pushed underneath a high counter, the wall of mirrors behind it all sporting an arsenal of differently sized drinking glasses, mugs, and a colorful assortment of bottles.

  “Same as always, Bird?” the guy on the other side of the counter asked, placing a short glass upside down on the smooth-polished surface along with a dark brown bottle.

  Bird pulled the rubber band of my mask and let it snap against my earlobe. “Mask off.”

  The moment I pulled it off, the moist layer on my beard dissipated into the room, letting the scent of alcohol and something flowery fill my nose.

  “What’s it gonna be for the puppy?” the guy behind the counter asked and pointed at me with the bottom of an empty glass. “Did Knox issue him a punch card yet?”

  “He ain’t one of ours,” Bird said and let his eyes trail up the stairs, where a woman waited leaning over the rail and stared down at us. “Give him whatever he wants and put it on mine. Do me a favor and watch him for a couple of minutes.”

  I put my mask onto the counter. “What about the pastor’s bones?”

  “All in good time, son,” he said and walked off, “all in good time.”

  He walked around tables stacked with upside-down chairs, his eyes locked on the dark-skinned woman who carried a lopsided smile on her face. They disappeared behind a purple door, their hands slung around each other before it fell in its lock.

  “You’re not a prospect then,” the guy said, placed down the glass and filled it to the rim with a clear liquid. “My name is Ed, and I run this place. Or… the bar at least. And you are?”

  “Adair.”

  I grabbed the glass and took a sip. The burn of the alcohol flared down my throat and exploded somewhere near my stomach, sending a cough through the corners of my mouth.

  “If it can’t run your bike, it’s probably not worth drinking,” he laughed. “At least that’s what the members say. I take it you’re not from around here.”

  I swallowed twice, but my voice still came out hoarse when I responded. “I’m from the Clan of the Woodlands.”

  Ed let out a whistle. “You’re a long way from home. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a clansman before.”

  “Who was that woman that left with Bird? His wife?”

  “Wife?” he let out a chuckle, pulled the cork from the bottle and filled my glass to the rim once more. “Now you’re making it sound as if you guys are a lifetime away from us. You’ve got a lot of wives where you’re from?”

  The sting of his question went deeper than the alcohol. “No, not really.”

  “Neither do we,” he said, then he leaned over the counter and whispered. “The lady you saw was Lily. But rumors have it they got a child together.”

  “That would be a death sentence where I come from. You can’t touch a woman that isn’t your wife.”

  “Same for the wives we have here, which aren’t that many. But this lady is Lily, and that rule doesn’t apply to her. Or the others.”

  “Others?”

  A young woman walked up from a dingy hallway and joined Ed behind the bar, her mask still on her face and her black hair tangled between the rubber bands.

  She opened a drawer underneath the counter and rummaged through the contents, making metal clink against metal. “Six fucking days with this damn mask on. Has anyone considered that the light might be broken? Did anyone actually go outside and measure?”

  The drawer shut with a bam and she dangled a set of keys from her hand, her dark brown eyes suddenly locking with mine.

  I gave a nod. “Hi, I’m Adair.”

  “He’s a clansman,” Ed added.

  She dropped the keys onto the counter and pulled her mask off, revealing a red, lipsticked mouth and a fine bead of sweat glistening on her flawless skin. “You’re from a Clan?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re here because…”

  “I’m here to get the remains of pastor William, so I can bring them back to my Clan. His son would like to give him a proper burial.”

  “Huh.” Her lips parted slightly, then she held out her hand. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Adair.”

  My eyes darted between Ed and her small hand.

  “You can touch me, it’s not a big deal,” she said and stretched an inch further my way. “My name is Lily.”

  “Lily?” Confusion washed over me, along with a significant amount of fear. But before it could manifest itself inside my muscles, Lily took my hand and gave it a gentle shake.

  “You’re supposed to say pleased to meet you, Lily.” She giggled and let go of my hand, then grabbed for the keys once more. “Anyway, I’m taking the truck out to spring number three and fill the tanks before we run out of water for the showers. Jack was supposed to do it, but apparently, Knox sent him on a run. I should be back in around two hours or so.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you telling me you’re going out there on your own?”

  Lily and Ed exchanged a baffled look.

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Ed asked.

  “What if she gets assaulted?”

  Both lifted one brow each.

  “Raped?”

  “Why would anyone rape me?” Lily scrunched up her face and scoffed. “Is that what happens to women where you come from? And I thought this place sucked…”

  She put on her mask and waved me a quick goodbye, then she left again through the dingy hallway, giving me a final glance over the shoulder before she disappeared.

  I pulled a chair out from underneath the bar, planted my ass on it, and pulled myself closer toward Ed. “Um… is Lily a popular name here?”

  The way he smiled at me had something empty to it. “I don’t know a single woman in this town named Lily.”

  “But…” I let my thump point toward the dark hallway. “She just said —”

  “Get your ass up and put your mask back on,” Bird said and walked up behind me, his shirt wrinkled and his fingers struggling with the zipper on his pants.

  I got up, took another burning sip of the engine cleaner, and grabbed for my mask. “We don’t have to dig them up, do we?”

  “Dig what up?”

  “The pastor’s remains.”

  “Right… right… the pastor.” He grabbed my glass, poured the leftovers down his hutch, and slammed the glass upside down on the counter. “No, as far as I know, they cremated him and kept his ashes. We’ll ask Knox. But first, we’ll have to stop at my place so I can check on my mum.”

  Bird grabbed the mask not made for a guy his size, squeezed it onto his face and shoved some of his white beard inside for a better seal. I did the same with mine and gave a knock on the counter, then we left the bar as quickly as we could because… whoever the fuck Lily was, we didn’t wanna piss her off.

  I followed Bird toward a jagged horizon. We passed massive metal containers arranged in neat rows, each one of them labeled in bright orange at the top right corner. When we stopped at delta-fifty-one, he turned around and looked down at me. “The carbon dioxide is hard on her lungs, so make sure you close the door behind you right away.”

  I gazed about the tan container, a single strip of a narrow window attached at the far top. “This is where you live?”

  He didn’t answer but banged against the door three times, then we hurried inside, and I closed the door shut behind me as fast as I could.

  “Phoenix!” came from a bed in the back right corner, the voice filled with way more excitement than life.

  “Yeah, it’s me, mum.”

  He crossed the full length of his metal home and pulled himself a chair next to his mother’s bed, his shoulders rounding more and more with each stroke he gave across the back of her pale hand.

  “Did Eden take good care of you?” he asked, resting his elbows down onto his thighs. “How’s the pain?”

  Her age-mottled arm shook like young twigs in the storm, and a wheeze accompanied each of her breaths. “Your dad would be so proud of you. His son. A chieftain. You�
��re the bridge between two worlds.”

  “But mum, I’m not a chieftain, remember?” He gently lifted her head and fluffed the pillow underneath her. “Do you know how much morphine she gave you? Did she up your dose?”

  “Tell me about your wife again.”

  “She’s not my wife…”

  His voice had long broken off, but the heaviness of his words still clung to the surrounding air. Rounding his shoulders some more. Pulling them deeper to the ground.

  “Did I come to your wedding?” she asked, then she let out a deep, guttural moan. “Make it stop. It hurts so bad, please make it stop.”

  Without looking up, Bird snapped his fingers and pointed at a console table next to me. “Get me that satellite phone from the right drawer. The green one.”

  I pulled the creaky teardrop handle and shoved through cell phones, old two-way radios, and satellite phones until I found the one with the green rubber trim. With each step I came closer, the chest-rattling turned louder. Deeper. But it wasn’t until I stood less than a foot away from the bed that my guts twisted and convulsed.

  “I know her,” I said and handed Bird the phone.

  He took it without a word and punched in some numbers, leaving me to stare at his dying mother.

  The councilwoman’s face had sunken in below her cheeks, turning wrinkles of age into craters of sickness and disease. She held her eyes pressed shut, and a tremble parted her lips, releasing howls of pain strangled and gagged by her lack of strength.

  Kenya.

  Yes, I was confident that must have been her name. Still was — at least for a little while.

  “Fucking shit,” Bird shouted and tossed the phone behind him, where it clanked against the metal wall. “Sorry, mum, but I’ll have to wait for Eden to tell me how much she gave you. Can you hold on a little longer?”

  “Phoenix…” she moaned, then her eyes rolled back into her skull. “Save the girl. Find her brother.”

  One, struggled breath later, her face softened as she dozed off.

  “You want me to go get someone?” I asked.

  “It’s always like that when the pain becomes intolerable. No matter how many times we upped her dose, it’s just not cutting it anymore. Lots of stuff she mumbles is nonsense.”

  He took her hand once more and pressed it against his forehead. It rested there for a moment as if he whispered a prayer into her body. Then he went on. “It’s, uh, pancreatic cancer. One of the most painful ones from what I heard.”

  “Is that what makes her delirious?”

  He placed her hand onto her chest and turned around to look at me, his brows furrowed. “Eden and I had a little ceremony a few years back, but… it wasn’t like an official marriage or anything like that. She’s the woman you saw me with earlier.”

  “But I thought her name was Lily.”

  He gave a laugh. Not the funny kind. It was the kind that had pain clung to its tone and desperation clutch to its pitch. “Yeah, exactly. See, that’s my problem and has been for the last eight years. I just keep on forgetting that her name is Lily. And my name out here is Bird. Sometimes I seem to forget that, too. Mum’s the only one who calls me by my real name.” He rose, pushed the chair back against the wall and rummaged through a bunch of shirts squeezed into a shelf above. “And what are you running away from?”

  His question made heat rise to my cheeks and numbness spread through my toes. “I’m not running from anything.” Or anyone.

  “Nobody ends up here unless he was born into it or chased here by something.”

  I took a deep breath and compressed as much conviction as I could muster into my voice. “All I need is the remains, and I’ll head home.”

  Bird grabbed a shirt, shook the wrinkled fabric by its shoulders, and held it against me. “You can borrow this one for now. The Ash Zones don’t do winter, so you better find yourself some shirts. If you’re in a rush to leave, you’ll have to find another brother to take you. I intend to stay until…”

  His eyes drifted off to his mother, a councilwoman we all thought dead. This place was supposed to give answers, but I had a feeling I might return home with even more questions.

  “I’ll find someone else,” I said, took off my sweater and grabbed the shirt from him

  “Sure you will,” he chuckled. “No brother would ever turn down a run. But then there’s Knox…”

  Chapter 19

  Adair

  “They said they put his ashes in the red container with the Christmas print on it,” Bird said and pointed at the massive wire shelf by the wall, a lamp flickering above. “Might even have a handwritten label on it like pastor, or… William… something like that.”

  The warehouse smelled of old dust, motor oil, and rusted metal, but I would have taken that over the biting air outside any day. Each time I shifted my weight while browsing the shelf in front of me, something crunched underfoot. I hoped it was sand.

  “Alright, I think I found what we’re searching. It’s right behind this stack here.” I lifted two plastic boxes to the side and let my hand dart for what must have been pastor William’s remains. “You always keep ashes in cookie boxes?”

  “Can people be fancy about that kind of shit where you’re from?” He tapped the lid of the container. “At least they gave him a box with some Christian sentiment to it.”

  I stared at the faded print. “There’s just a snowman on it with a rabbit taking off with his carrot nose.”

  “Must relate to a story in the bible.” He scratched the back of his neck and leaned against the shelf, which shifted underneath his weight. “You better put some tape around that before you take it with you.”

  I let my fingers run along the rim and gently pressed the lid’s edges down onto the container. Holding what I came for between my hands made tension settle on my shoulders. It had been five days since I told Ruth I loved her. Five days since she turned me down.

  If I left tomorrow, all that would lay a week in the past once I arrived back home. Not sure if that was enough time for the pain to ease, but it sure as hell wasn’t enough time to make me love her any less — or miss her any less.

  Does she miss me?

  Is she thinking of me?

  Fuck. I had to stop with all those questions in my head. She had given me the only answer that mattered. Every question beyond that was bred by hope and doomed to rip me open once more. Fact was she neither loved me nor wanted me, and I had to find a way to live with it. At this point, I figured leaving was a good thing. Distance was a good thing. At least for a while. At least until I knew, I could manage to go on without her.

  I pressed my eyes shut for a moment.

  When I opened them back up, something brushed the corner of my eyes. Not something. A box. Two shelves down.

  Red.

  I picked it up with my other hand and held it out to Bird. “This one has a needle tree on it with a layer of snow on top. And it’s red. Which one of these two is it?”

  “Huh…” He grabbed the container from me and turned it around in his hands, the ash inside plopping against the brittle plastic. “I’ll be damned. Did you find a label on the other one? Because there’s no label on this one.”

  “No, I checked when I took it out, and there’s no label.”

  “I’m sure it’s the one with the snowman.”

  “Why?” I took the box from him and held both prints next to each other. “Didn’t people used to get Christmas trees and hang ornaments on it?”

  He pointed at the tip of the pine. “I don’t see no ornaments, just a cap of snow and that only indicates winter to me.”

  “So does a snowman.”

  Bird scratched his chin underneath his beard, then stroked the fluffed hairs back down. “Damn, you’re right. Just pour them together and call it a day.”

  “That doesn’t seem right…”

  “Right or not, I’m getting hungry, and Knox wants to speak to you before we turn in.” He took one container, popped the lid open, and ges
tured me to do the same with the other. “They never clean out the chamber anyway unless there are some larger bones left. So that shit kinda mixes with everything, anyway. You might have a dozen people in that container.”

  “Or two dozen if we mix them…” I couldn’t help but cock my head at him. “I was only supposed to bring one.”

  “Here… I’ll do it.”

  He ripped the other one from me with a heavy sigh, popped the lid open with his teeth, and poured it into the other. Ash puffed into the air in little mushroom shapes, floating below the flickering light and brushing against my skin. I would have liked to think this was an exception — then I remembered the crunch underneath my soles in front of this very shelf.

  Bird sealed the lid back on and handed me the container, packed to the rim with ashes. “Just tell yourself you’re doing all these people a big favor. His son wants a Christian burial, right? Thanks to you, they’ll all go to heaven now.”

  I had no idea how many souls I carried in my backpack, but I could tell they added a few pounds to my shoulder straps. We left the warehouse behind, and I followed Bird toward three stacked containers, a couple of bouncers hanging out in front of the door.

  One of them gave a nod and mumbled a quick “Bird” through the vent of his mask, while the others eyed me warily. They moved aside, and we stepped into the building, closing the door behind us quickly, just like everyone did around here.

  Bird ripped his mask off and threw it onto the brown leather couch in the center of the room, the seats roughed down to a cream color. Beside it flickered a fire surrounded by a wooden mantle, and the air reeked of disinfectant.

  “Just leave the talking to me,” Bird mumbled, then his voice turned louder. Deeper. “Don’t tell me you’re getting yourself more ink, Knox.”

  I followed behind Bird and walked over a brown and white hide rug, a buzzing sound growing more noticeable with each step we took.

  A guy rested naked on a large, rectangular table, one hand behind his head and the other wrapped around his cock. His nuts rested against his thighs, while yet another guy stretched the skin and needled his ballsack with the machine.