by Patti Abbott
"You look joyous this afternoon," said Mrs. Myra. Another elderly disabled woman, she smiled as I started moving the chairs in the day room.
"Oh, I've got this whole weekend to look forward to." I stopped for a moment and smiled at her. "Just got to get your seats ready for Wheel of Fortune tonight."
"Oh, you people are so good to us." She smiled again. "Today I got an email from my grandson, and Jack helped me find my glasses so that I could read it. I bet you'll never guess where he found my glasses," she dared me. I knew the answer was probably something stupid—like, around her neck. "They were on my head and I had put my cap on to go outside. Can you believe that? Under my cap on my head and I would have looked for those things for no telling how long."
She continued talking as I started wiping down the tables, but I wasn't listening to her. I listened to Jack and Meka as they walked through the commons area to do a med pass in some wing of the home.
"He came over just the other day." Meka saw me and her voice dropped to a whisper. I tried to act like I hadn't heard anything and mumbled something to Mrs. Myra. "Well, I'll tell you in a second," Meka's voice was just barely audible.
I waited for the whining med-cart wheels to make it down the hallway and then I exited the television room. When I was out of sight from the old woman, I put my back to the wall and slid down toward the voices at the end of the hallway. Sneaking through Long Hollow was one of my favorite ways to avoid work, and finally all my practice was useful. I'd learned to step lightly to keep my dress boots from dragging the linoleum floor with a squeak, keeping the footfall volume to a minimum. Still, I was nervous. I was attempting to be stealthy around whisperers and keepers of secrets now and not just old deaf folks.
"…sit outside and talk to my dad for an hour but I try and have a conversation with him and he shuts off."
"Maybe he's gay for your dad," Jack laughed. The chuckle was meant as an implication that he was joking, should Meka not respond well to the comment.
"I mean, I understand a girl having children being kind of intimidating," she said ignoring his response, "but at the same time, I feel like he should at least make an effort to get to know them if he's going to be sleeping with me."
And it was out. Sleeping with the nurse was a big 10-50. The fact that Jack would probably castrate himself with an icepick for a shot at her wouldn't stop him from mentioning it—completely by mistake of course—to a supervisor. Why not, though? Meka wouldn't get in trouble. It's a lot harder to find someone with a degree who can pass medicine than it is to find someone willing to cut up roast beef for people who forgot to bring their teeth to dinner. I was finished.
"Well, some guys aren't man enough to deal with that sort of baggage." Jack managed to say all the right things the wrong way. "What does he talk to your dad about anyway?"
"McFerrin," she sounded confused and frustrated. There was a pause and Jack gave her a look that asked for more information. "That old story about him having a fortune tucked away somewhere in his home from days gone by."
"Say what?" Jack laughed like the idea was preposterous, but I've heard the laugh people make when they're trying to quietly stab someone in the back, and that high-pitched whine was definitely it.
I'd heard enough. A go-getter like Jack would be drawing up maps in his head for the rest of his shift. No way would he let an opportunity like McFerrin's stash slip through his hands. I'd never really liked the guy but now he was my enemy. All of his little quirks and asshole qualities were weapons I found myself trying to plan for. I stalked off back toward the day room and faked a smile at Myra. "Would you hold it against me if I took an early night, Mrs. Myra?"
"No dear, of course not," she scoffed. "You folks all work so hard for us around here. You deserve a long weekend, honey."
"Thank you, ma'am." I started toward the front lobby but stopped myself. "Can I ask you something before I go?"
"Of course, dear." Her eyes lit up at the thought of being useful to someone again.
"You know anything about Mr. McFerrin?" I could tell by the confused tilt in her head she wanted to know what had me wondering about an eighty year old man.
"Well," she wet her lips with her tongue in preparation for a long answer, "when I was a young girl, I remember he was almost arrested. It was a big deal back in those days. My parents told me to stay away from him and his house. On a few occasions the police were called out to get people off his yard."
"But you don't know why?"
"No, not exactly," she smiled to excuse her ignorance. "It was all political, you see, with his brother being the sheriff. What has a young man wondering about an old criminal in a retirement home?"
"Just looking for something to occupy my thoughts," I lied.
"Well, you ought to be thinking about how you'll never be young and beautiful again. Go do what you need to do and make yourself happy for once." She laughed like she'd just heard a sick joke. "Get out of here."
I gave her a nod and ran to my car like age was contagious.
I parked about a block from McFerrin's house. The sun was starting to set when I crawled into the home through a broken window. Kids were out and riding their bikes, but their parents wouldn't be home from work for another hour. I took notice of the old pictures still hanging on his wall. The images were lost to a thick layer of dust and worn from the sunlight fighting its way in through the broken walls and uncovered windows. The whole place had an odor like ammonia in a moldy kitchen. Some hardwood tiles had been pulled from the floor. The pits made the short walk through the living room seem like a daunting hike through a minefield. I kept my eyes on my feet and made for a small door leading down a set of stairs.
I let my feet test every step of the termite-infested descent. I bit down on my lip and hissed in anger when my foot sank through a soft lump of wood. I could feel the tiny little winged things crawling up my leg. I cursed God and Jesus and whatever else might be up in the sky testing my resolve as I ran my hands up and down my legs to get the little fuckers off. I tried to remember everything McFerrin had told me. I thought about the money and never having to work again. I pictured the old timer in a white undershirt and a fedora digging a hole in his basement to hide a briefcase full of cash. I thought about my trophy wife and my new home. I thought about a black car with red seats and an engine that roared like the mouth of hell when I tore down the highway. I was determined from that moment on to see the good in everything that would ever happen to me.
I was choking on dust and termites and wood by the time I got to the basement floor. If I'd been thinking about anything other than my new future I might have remembered to bring a flashlight with me for my expedition. I couldn't see anything, but I was too excited to just sit there and let my eyes adjust to the dark. I grabbed my cigarette lighter with my left hand and my cell phone with my right. I dug around in the phone settings until I found a way to keep the camera's light on. I stuck it up high into the corner of the walls and used my lighter inspect the details of the place. The floor hadn't been finished but there was a patch of red brick and some tools in a corner. I thought about the old man running his hand along the wall and I smiled. Then I heard a voice.
"I know you're down here, Malcolm," Jack called out. I ran back and got my phone from the wall and crouched down in the corner. I hit the buttons on my phone until the light went out. "No reason two men can't find whatever it was the old man hid down here." He was trying to sound subdued, but the deceit ran off of his words like venom. I choked back a response and tried to keep my labored breathing quiet. I heard his feet testing the floor upstairs and then the steps. I waited for him to hit the mulch from the hollowed-out step—and when I heard him mutter a curse, I slunk forward to the bricked floor. I felt around the tools and my fingers wrapped around the wooden handle of a pickax. I gripped it so tightly, I could feel splinters stabbing into my soft hands. That was the first time I'd ever been intent on killing someone.
"Malcolm," he called out at the bottom of
the stairs.
My jaw tightened and my eyes narrowed as I rushed him. I caught him off-guard, but he managed to get his hands around the pickax and we spun around. I kicked him hard in the sternum and he went down on the bricks. I swung the weapon over my head, but it was heavier than I'd anticipated. By the time I'd brought it down, he'd rolled out of the way. My eyes focused on the hole in the patch of bricks I'd just made. There was a little crawl space underneath that layer of concrete and stone. Part of me wanted to forget about Jack and just keep swinging, but I knew I had to get rid of him. Before I could react he grabbed hold of the handle and wrestled it from me. When the point was pulled out of the floor it took up another patch of brick. I tried to keep my eyes on the guy with the weapon, but I found my gaze back at the hole beside me. I could almost hear all those dead presidents yelling for me to find them.
"You made a mistake, Mal." His wheezing voice brought me back to where I needed to be. Wasn't much good to be found in this situation. All I had in my favor was knowing how heavy that old pickax was. I waited for him to swing it and I took a step forward. The handle smashed into my left arm and the heavy end went clanging against a concrete wall. I swung my right hand as hard as I could and my fist smashed into the side of his surprised face. As many times as I'd hit people working at the jail it was still always a shock just how much punching another person hurts your hand and wrist. There was a loud pop and he went down on the unfinished broken patch on the basement floor. I lifted my right leg until I felt my knee touch my chest, then stepped down on his face with all the force I could rally. The floor gave out from under us with a snap.
I knew Jack was dead as soon as I opened my eyes. I'd lost my breath in the short fall and my ankle had rolled under me so it was hard to get up. All the excitement was gone and I was exhausted and in pain. I wasn't thinking about treasure or my future. I was just happy to be in the present. I stumbled when I tried to stand and fell onto Jack's corpse. Touching his body shook me. I crawled away with a start and then I felt another body. Smaller. Just bones. My hands reached out as far in the other direction as I could. I felt another small skeletal hand reach back at me.
I was stumbling around in a graveyard full of kids.
When I finally managed to stop and collect myself, I saw them all—three of them laid out like angels. Remnants of their Sunday clothes still clinging to the little bones. I threw up and lost my senses. I thought I was in hell.
I finally came to inside my car down the block. I had cigarette lit in my right hand, one burning in the ashtray and another one unlit between my lips. I was running on habit. I was accustomed to having my window down while I smoked, so when I got sick and felt my stomach heave again I assumed my window would be down. I got a broken nose and a lap full of vomit for my assumption. That woke me up, but from then on I was a different person. I never stopped thinking about that night and those kids. I couldn't see innocence in anything anymore. Not even smiling little faces on the cover of board games.
I didn't know what to do with myself. I stayed drunk for months. My days and nights all ran together and time sped past me or stopped altogether. When I lost my job at Long Hollow I told people it was because of my inappropriate relationship with the nurse. I took my old job a little while after that with the Sheriff's department. I was out on the road after a year. I'd drive by that house during my patrols and pretend like it didn't exist. I'd look down the other side of the street or light a cigarette and push down on the gas just a little harder. The accelerator would give under my foot and a chill would run up my spine. I spent my whole life pretending not to know why Jack Langley had gone missing. People knew we'd worked together so they'd ask me about him ever so often and I'd just shrug. The department had enough secrets buried in that old house. Didn't seem like one more would make too much of a difference.
I heard once when you get old and die you become your stories. I never told anybody this because I didn't want to be this story, but just because it isn't out there waiting to be read or recited doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just like nobody ever finding Jack's body doesn't mean he didn't die. Jack was a real piece of shit but even he deserves to be a story. I'm old now and I could be a million different stories, but when I die I'll just be a ghost inside this one. That's the price I have to pay for what I did all those years ago…
The Rightful King of Wrestling
by Chad Dundas
After a week, I went to see a doctor about my finger. I got the name of an MD who would play ball, a guy known to be loose with the Placidyl. The doc was one of those little guys who really looked after his beard. He sat me up on an examination table in my underpants, sanitary paper sticking to my thighs and looked at my finger with magnifiers clipped over his glasses. The ring finger on my left hand was swollen up twice its normal size. It throbbed like a mother and was starting to turn black around the knuckle. The doc made a clicking sound in his throat, pushed away from the table on his little rolling stool and marked something on a metal clipboard. He said: "There's definitely a tooth in there."
I told him no shit there was a tooth in there. For a doctor, he didn't seem too bright. I told him the issue was not the existence of the tooth, but what we were going to do about it.
"I thought this stuff was supposed to be fake," the doc said. "Aren't there supposed to be schools? Teach you the right way to cut yourself? How to fall down so you don't get hurt?"
I ignored that. I said: "About the tooth."
"I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "It does not look good."
This was spring, 1984 or '85: I'd just finished up a run for Fritz Von Erich in World Class Championship Wrestling. One of the first nights of the tour I'd worked a big match with Eddie Tortuga on the undercard of Flair versus Kerry Von Erich at Cowboy Stadium, a tribute show for Kerry's brother David, who'd just died of an overdose in Japan. Me and Eddie were the curtain-jerker and I'm proud to say we burned it down. Place was packed to the gills with real Texas wrestling fans, mostly girls who threw yellow roses at Kerry's feet and tried to cop a feel as he came down the aisle. A lot of Latinos too, so of course Eddie was a big baby face. I played the heel.
In those days I was booking myself as "The Rightful King of Wrestling" because most people remembered my dad from his days as NWA champion, before he went to work for Vince Sr. in New York. I came out to the ring with a tux on over my wrestling gear, acting like the world owed me something. Took the mic from the PA announcer and cut a quick promo about how many cars I had, all the women I got just because my daddy had been some big, famous wrestler. The fans ate it up. They wanted to kill me.
Halfway through our match, I shot off the ropes for my patented flying fist and caught Eddie, the fat little son of a bitch, with his mouth hanging wide open. I'd been walking around ever since with his tooth stuck in my hand.
"Just pop it out," I said to the doc. "Write me one for Placidyl and I'll get out of your hair."
"I don't think so," he said. "You're going to have to see a specialist."
The EMTs at the arena had said the same thing, refusing to do much besides dress the wound. I told the doc what I'd told them: I'd worked through a lot worse than having some Mexican's tooth lodged in my finger.
The doc said, "We're not even going to talk about the risk of infection, which is high, but you might have a severed tendon. You might need surgery."
"Can't do that," I said. "Insurance run out."
"Didn't you say you just had the biggest match of your life?"
"That?" I said. "Hell, that money's spent."
The doc shook his head, magnifiers making him look extra solemn. "This is over my head," he said. "Really."
I put a tone in my voice. I said: "Look. You're just going to have to improvise."
The doc took a long look at me in my underwear. I was pretty solid in those days and I had this smile I could put on that said: Try Me. I made a lot of money with that smile. I was a main event bad guy in most of the territories.
The
doc went at it with a big pair of tweezers. There was a lot of blood and pus and I could feel the metal scratching at the bones in my knuckle. Brother, it hurt. When the tooth popped out, it was bigger than I expected. Almost the size of my thumbnail. The doc said it looked like a cuspid number six. I asked what that meant and he said, "What am I? A dentist?"
The thing about the tooth was, half of it was gold. The doc held it under a lamp and it glittered in the light. He said, "Lookee here."
I drove home to San Antonio with a big bottle of Placidyl and the tooth in a plastic jar like the kind you piss in for your piss test. First things first, I had to sit down on the sofa and explain to Gena what happened to my wedding ring. The EMTs snipped it off in the locker room when I started to swell up. After that, I'd lost track of it. She looked at my finger, wrapped in gauze, and squinted at me like she was trying to decide how mad to get. Her daddy had worked as a booking agent for Bill Watts in Mid-South, so she pretty much grew up around the best bullshitters in the world. She could see I was telling the truth, but that didn't mean she was going to cut me any slack.
"I heard Eddie Tortuga gave his wife the clap last year," she said, her tone suggesting that just by wrestling the guy I was no better. "And how many times have I told you to take your ring off before you go out there?"
I was in no mood for this. The stuff the doc had said about surgery had been kicking around in my head since I left Dallas. I'll be honest, I liked being able to use all my fingers. Surgery was expensive and our big house in Alamo Heights already had us dug in pretty deep. I wasn't going to let her play nagging wife on this one.