Survivor's Guilt and Other Stories

by Greg Herren

  I closed the door and leaned against it. I exhaled.

  They don’t suspect a thing.

  * * *

  Bill had come over, around nine thirty. I invited him in, and he took a seat on the love seat. He was carrying a plastic go-cup.

  “Hi, Bill. How is she?”

  “She was almost hysterical. When she gets like that, man, she really drives me to drink. I told her to take one of her goddamned pills and lie down, she was giving me a headache.”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Whiskey. Tonight’s a whiskey night. Man, that was a tough one. After she went to sleep I called her daughter. That one’s a real bitch. Didn’t want to hear a word I was saying. Wants to fly out here and see for herself. I told her I don’t need her permission to put Maureen in a facility, thank you very much, and to try to keep a civil tongue in her goddamned head. Just like her mother, doesn’t know her place. No wonder that one couldn’t keep a man.”

  “I’m real sorry about all of this, Bill.”

  “Well, you know, Joe, that’s mighty kind of you to say. I know you had some trouble dealing with the woman, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your going out of your way to keep her happy. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Well, I couldn’t have you quit the job before the house is finished.”

  “Oh, I would have never done that. I might have sent her back up to Monroe, but I believe a man always finishes what he started. Once I give my word I don’t go back on it.”

  I stared at him. “Well, you sure had me fooled, Bill!” I somehow managed to keep my voice friendly and light.

  All these weeks—all of this frustration and irritation, that I’ve put up with—for nothing?

  He laughed. “Just trying to keep the peace and make the best of a bad situation. I do appreciate everything you’ve done though in the last few days. She really went downhill fast.”

  “Went?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Here, let me refill your drink.”

  “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “I always keep good liquor around—just because I don’t have a drink doesn’t mean everyone else has to be on the wagon.”

  “Say, that’s some good stuff!”

  “I always believe if you’re going to get something, get the best.” I put his cup down on the counter and reached up for the Wild Turkey bottle.

  And right there, sitting on a lower shelf, were the sleeping pills.

  They’d been prescribed for me after the storm.

  I shook out two of the capsules and opened them, pouring them into the bottom of his cup. I smiled.

  It was all falling into place.

  I put some ice in his cup and poured the Wild Turkey over it, watching as the granules dissolved into the alcohol. I smiled and carried the cup back over to him. “There you go, Bill.”

  “Thank you.” He took a long drink. “Ah, that’s some good stuff. I never get much chance to drink the good stuff.”

  “So, you think she’s going to have to go into a facility?”

  “Like you said, I can’t watch her all day.” He sighed. “I can’t be without a wife, Joe.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll have to divorce her. Damn. I never thought I’d see the day come when I’d be getting a divorce.”

  “All your other wives have died?”

  He yawned. “Yes, I’ve put them all in the ground. I figured I’d be burying Maureen, too—but this? Sorry,” he yawned again, “I don’t know why I’m so sleepy all of a sudden.”

  “You’ve had a draining day—all that work on the house and Maureen…”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, Joe, I guess I’d best be getting to bed.” He fell back against the back of the love seat. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Let me help you up.” I helped him to his feet and put his arm over my shoulders. He reeked of whiskey and sour sweat. “Just lean on me, Bill, and we’ll just get you to bed.”

  “I…don’t…understand…why…that…whiskey…hit…me…so…hard…”

  “Don’t worry about it. It happens to everyone.”

  “I can…barely…keep…my…eyes…open…”

  He was practically dead weight by the time I got him back inside the main house. I eased him down onto the sofa. His mouth fell open and he started snoring.

  I stared down at him contemptuously.

  “Idiot.”

  All I’d wanted was for her to be put away. I wanted her and her insane laundry fetish gone, out of my life for good.

  It would be so easy, I thought, looking down at his open mouth, to just put a pillow over his face—

  In the other room, Maureen gurgled in her sleep.

  I turned away from him and walked over to the bedroom door.

  She was on top of the covers, sleeping on her back in a floral nightgown. Her glasses were on the nightstand next to the bed.

  I looked back at Bill on the couch.

  I never go back on my word, I heard him saying in my head again.

  I smiled.

  I walked over to the bed and looked down at her.

  “Maureen? Maureen? Can you wake up for a minute?” I said softly, reaching down to shake her shoulder. “Maureen? Can you open your eyes?”

  She shifted on the bed. “Go ’way, leave me alone.” Her voice was drowsy.

  “Can you open your eyes for me?”

  They fluttered open, and she blinked at me, squinting. “Joe? What?”

  “Bill had a little too much to drink and I had to help him home.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Goodbye, Maureen.”

  I reached down and my hands closed around her throat.

  She thrashed against me, but I put my weight behind my hands.

  And finally, she stopped.

  I let go of her throat and smiled down at her. “You look so peaceful, Maureen.”

  I went back to my own apartment.

  * * *

  From my living room window, I watched them lead Joe away in handcuffs.

  He looked upset, confused.

  They always say that criminals are stupid. I like to believe only stupid criminals get caught.

  I hadn’t planned on killing her. No, all I wanted to do was get rid of her, have her locked up in a home someplace where she’d never bother me again.

  But it all just fell into my lap, and who am I to say no to opportunity?

  And he was just as bad as she was, wasn’t he?

  All that time, he knew she was making my life hell and didn’t do a fucking thing about it—actually, he helped her.

  But to give him credit, he’d been bluffing and I’d been afraid to call him on it.

  But I won the hand, didn’t I?

  A strangled wife, a hungover husband reeking of whiskey? And the sad neighbor, telling the terrible story of how they fought almost every night, yelling and screaming at each other? “No, Officer, he was never here.” His word against mine—and really, what motive did I have for killing his stupid old wife? Like I told Detective Casanova, no one would kill someone over a washing machine.

  Stupid annoying old bitch.

  And that’s that. They have him dead to rights, anything he tries to say will just be seen as a lie calculated to get him out of a murder rap.

  Stupid, stupid people.

  Note to self: Never, ever let someone use your washing machine again. Ever.

  Cold Beer No Flies

  Dane Brewer stepped out of his air-conditioned trailer, wiped sweat off his forehead, and locked the door. It was early June and already unbearably hot, the humidity so thick it was hard to breathe. He was too far inland from the bay to get much of the cooling sea breeze but not so far away he couldn’t smell it. The fishy wet sea smell he was sick to death of hung in the salty air. It was omnipresent, inescapable. He trudged along the reddish-orange dirt path through towering pine trees wreathed in Spanish m
oss. The path was strewn with pine cones the size of his head and enormous dead pine needles the color of rust that crunched beneath his shoes. His face was dripping with sweat. He came into the clearing along the state road where a glorified Quonset hut with a tin roof stood. It used to be a bait and tackle until its resurrection as a cheap bar. It was called My Place. It sounded cozy—the kind of place people would stop by every afternoon for a cold one after clocking out from work, before heading home.

  The portable reader board parked where the parking lot met the state road read Cold Beer No Flies.

  Simple, matter-of-fact, no pretense. No Hurricanes in fancy glasses like the touristy places littering the towns along the Gulf Coast. Just simple drinks served in plain glasses, ice-cold beer in bottles or cans stocked in refrigerated cases at simple prices hardworking people could afford. Tuscadega’s business was fish, and its canning plant stank of dead fish and guts and cold blood for miles. Tuscadega sat on the inside coast of a large shallow bay. The bay’s narrow mouth was crowned by a bridge barely visible from town. A long two-lane bridge across the bay led to the gold mine of the white sand beaches and green water along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Tourists didn’t flock to Tuscadega, but Tuscadega didn’t want them, either. Dreamers kept saying when land along the gulf got too expensive the bay shores would be developed, but it hadn’t and Dane doubted it ever would.

  Tuscadega was just a tired old town and always would be, best he could figure it. A dead end the best and the brightest fled as soon as they were able.

  He was going to follow them one day, once he could afford it.

  Towns like Tuscadega weren’t kind to people like Dane.

  Dane unlocked the back door of the bar, turned off the alarm, and flicked on the lights. He clipped his keys to a belt loop of his khaki shorts. He put in his ear buds and selected his Johnny Cash playlist, and mariachi horns rang in his ears.

  He got to work. My Place opened at five.

  He moved from table to table, taking stools down. Some tables weren’t level and wobbled a bit. The overwhelming scent of pine cleaner didn’t quite mask the stench of stale beer and week-old cigarette smoke. Once all the stools were down, he made sure every table had a clean black plastic ashtray in the center. He sang along with Johnny Cash. He’d learned how to play guitar listening to Johnny Cash music when he was a kid, picking out the chords to “Sunday Morning Coming Down” over and over until he had them right, singing in his high-pitched kid’s voice. He’d loved that guitar until his father had smashed it to pieces in a drunken rage.

  He’d never touched another guitar.

  He sprayed cleaner along the bar counter and ran a towel over its length. There was always dust, no matter how many times he wiped down the damned bar. It was everywhere, an endless battle that aged his mother before her time. Sometimes he wondered if it was his father’s drinking that got her to leave, or the dust. She complained about both. One day when he came home from school she was gone, no note, no goodbye, no nothing. Some of her clothes were gone, a couple of things precious to her, and her car. Gone like she’d never existed in the first place, never to come back, never to call, never a Christmas or birthday card. She’d just walked away and never looked back.

  One day he’d do the same.

  There was a rumble of thunder as he started stocking the glass-front refrigerator cases with cans and bottles of beer from the stockroom. “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” started playing as rain started drumming on the tin roof. It took about three songs before he was done, and moved on to filling the ice. The muscles in his shoulders and back strained as he lugged buckets of ice from the storeroom behind the bar and dumped them into the bins. He checked the kegs. Both were at least half full. He glanced at his watch. He had fifteen minutes till My Place opened for business.

  Dane turned on the sound system and hit this week’s designated playlist. The boss paid a deejay from one of those bars in Fort Walton Beach popular with the spring break crowd to come up with a playlist for the bar every week, and Dane hated every last one of them. He went behind the bar and lit a cigarette.

  The bar didn’t get busy until about nine thirty or ten. There was a small rush from guys stopping in for a beer on their way home after work, but the real busy time was those last two and a half hours before closing. It wasn’t a bad job. Sam McCarthy was a good boss, and Sam trusted him to open the place five nights a week. It wasn’t a bad gig for a twenty-year-old. He made minimum wage plus tips—and the tips more than made up for the low hourly wage. Working at My Place beat working at McDonald’s, where he worked before he turned eighteen and Sam gave him this job. It was better than working at Walmart, like so many of the jerks he’d gone to high school with did, and he’d be damned if he was going to work at the cannery, come home smelling like fish every damned day and never getting that smell out of his clothes or the house, like his father.

  Fuck his father.

  He’d be twenty-one soon. If everything worked out the way it should, he’d be able to get out. He’d started looking at apartment listings in Pensacola online. Once he’d moved over there, he’d get his GED, maybe take some classes at Pensacola State, get his degree. Sam said accountants never had to worry about getting work, and he’d always been good with numbers. He could get a job at a club in Pensacola—it was never a bad idea to have some extra cash, just in case things went bad.

  Wasn’t that how his mother managed it? Scrimping and saving and taking in people’s laundry and sewing and putting aside every cent until she had enough to go?

  That might be the best lesson he’d ever learned from her.

  Maybe he could even work at one of the gay bars in Pensacola.

  He’d never been inside one—the gay bars were strict with ID, and he’d never bothered to get a fake one. His experiences with other guys were limited to meeting guys on apps or online—local men with wives and kids, guys who weren’t gay and would kick the shit out of you for even saying the word.

  Like in high school.

  The biggest bullies were the ones who had the most to hide.

  Like Billy Werner.

  Nah, that wasn’t fair, was it? Billy had never been a bully. Billy had been his friend…at least until—

  He put the cigarette down in a black plastic ashtray and wiped sweat from his face with a bar rag. No matter how many times he explained to Sam it was cheaper to keep the air going overnight, Sam just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Considering how Sam pinched every penny he touched, Dane thought it weird Sam never figured out how to lower the power bill at the bar—or that someone in his business office didn’t figure it out. The clock behind the counter turned to five o’clock, so he unlocked the front door, turned on the OPEN light.

  A couple of leathery-faced older guys came in after about ten minutes, ordered bottles of Budweiser, took them to a table back in the far corner, back near the open patch of concrete drunk couples sometimes used as a dance floor on weekends. None of his regulars came in, probably because of the rain. Rainy nights were always slow. He made himself a cup of coffee with the Keurig machine he’d talked Sam into buying.

  Closing time seemed hours away.

  He was making a couple of screwdrivers for a pair of women still wearing their Walmart smocks and name tags around seven when Finn Bailey walked through the front door. He was wearing his police uniform and looked tired. Finn was in his late thirties, kept his body fit and trim with regular workouts. His wife was the teller at the bank where Dane had his checking account, always was friendly and nice to him. He was the cop who’d come to the high school the day his bullies had kicked the crap out of him in the locker room, busted his lip and cracked a tooth and a couple of ribs.

  His last day at Bayside High School. He hadn’t gone back.

  Finn had the decency to come to his house and apologize to him about there being no charges filed. He also had the decency to look like he felt guilty about it. Finn checked in on him from time to time, made sure he was doing okay, tr
ied to talk him into going back to school.

  Guilt was a wasted emotion, Dane realized, unless you could use it.

  “Get you a beer, Finn?” he asked as Finn put his cap down on the bar, climbed up on one of the barstools. He was going gray, Dane noticed, cobwebs of lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and mouth.

  Finn wiped sweat from his forehead with a cocktail napkin, leaving little paper crumbs across his forehead. “On duty, can I get a Coke instead?” His voice sounded as tired as he looked.

  Dane dunked a plastic cup in the ice bin and filled it with the hose, put it on a cocktail napkin, waved his hand when Finn pulled out his wallet. House rule: Never charge a cop in uniform. Dane felt a trickle of sweat under his arms. Calm down, he reminded himself. He can’t know. He’s just a dumb hick cop in a dumb hick town. Besides, he feels guilty about you. Always has.

  “Did you hear Kaylee Werner went and got herself killed this morning?” Finn slurped down the Coke, gasping for air when he finished, muffling a burp.

  “Did she?” He kept his voice even, flat.

  “She was in your class, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I didn’t much mix with the cheerleaders and them. So, what happened to her? Finally pep herself to death?”

  Finn put the cup down, popped a piece of ice in his mouth. “Left the gas on, I guess. When she woke up this morning and lit her cigarette, kaBLAM.” Finn crunched the ice with his teeth. It sounded like bones cracking. “Smoking is hazardous to your health, I guess.”

  Dane shook a cigarette out of his pack. “That’s what they say.”

  “The weird thing is Billy didn’t come home last night.” Finn tilted his head to one side, a knowing smirk on his lips. “You know anything about that?”

  Dane inhaled. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I stopped by the Firestone and talked to him. He said—” He paused, looked from side to side, and took a deep breath. “He said you knew where he was. He come in last night?”

  “He was here. Until closing.”