The Art of Disposal

by John Prindle

  “'Course they're doing it. Or they used to be.”

  “But Eddie's married,” I said. “He loves Irene.”

  I pictured Marcia and Kevin and their wonderful kids having a picnic with the Rutherfords at Friends Lake. Kevin was wearing an apron, manning the barbecue, his arm wrapped tenderly around Marcia, who was decked out in a tight dress and a string of pearls like June Cleaver.

  Carlino turned and looked at me. “What are you, the world's biggest chump?”

  I watched the dark rows of trees run by like twiggy monsters.

  “So he loves his wife, so what?” Carlino said. “Maybe she don't give it up no more.”

  “My wife, my ex-wife—Emily—I never cheated on her.”

  “You want a gold medal?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe he ain't banging her,” Carlino said. “Maybe he just likes to remember how it felt back when he was.”

  That was pretty elegantly stated, I thought. Some guys have street smarts more valuable than three college degrees.

  “I'm glad Frank sent me down here,” Carlino said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “No, I mean it. Eddie's all right.”

  He touched his face here and there, and squinted his eyes. He looked out the window. He looked like he was weighing some pretty heavy things.

  “This ain't fair. I called shotgun,” Bullfrog said.

  “Italians ride up front.”

  “Ronnie ain't Italian,” Bullfrog said.

  “He's driving,” Carlino said. “And anyways, I got longer legs.”

  We rode in silence for a minute. Then Bullfrog said, in a soft voice like a Dad might use for a son who'd just hit a triple to win the big game: “Hey, D-T… thanks, man.”

  “What did I do?” Carlino said. “You're a better worker than Max, that's all.”

  “Yeah, well. Thanks anyway.”

  “Don't get all mushy on me, Sam.”

  We pulled off on a little country road, and we followed it for quite a while until we saw an even smaller gravel road leading off into nowhere. My car struggled and crunched over some of the trickier stretches. Lots of stones and dips and holes.

  “Right here,” Carlino said.

  We got out and left the car running and the headlights on.

  “You think they's owls out here?” Bullfrog said, looking up into the purple darkness.

  “Sure there are,” I said.

  “You see an owl fly by, it means you're gonna die.”

  “So don't look for 'em,” Carlino said.

  We lifted the body out of the trunk. My arms were sore, and I felt like I was back in one of my teenage summers bailing hay for Mr. Hughes who lived three miles up the road from Uncle Carl's farm. I secretly wished I was Hughes's kid.

  I grabbed the flashlight and folding camp shovel that lived in the back of my car, and the three of us walked a little ways into the damp woods.

  I dug. Carlino and Bullfrog sat on a log and smoked cigarettes, and Bullfrog held the light and aimed it where I was digging. Some guys might complain, but there was only one shovel, and the hole was shallow, and physical labor is good for the soul.

  “That should do,” Carlino said when I'd gone about two feet down. I'd made a rectangle, six feet long and three feet wide.

  “That's it?” Bullfrog said.

  “This ain't a military service,” Carlino said. “You cut corners.”

  “I seen a t.v. show one time,” Bullfrog said. “The cops found the body 'cause the grave was so shallow that wolves dug it up.”

  “Wolves,” Carlino said and laughed. “Can you believe this guy?”

  We rolled the body into the hole, and I thought about Dan the Man, withering away on his sofa. I was scared to see him. I'd already imagined a million different versions of the way he might look now: a sick shell of a man in a drawn-out handshake with the Devil.

  Bullfrog aimed the flashlight as Carlino shoveled the dirt back into the hole. When Max Finn had vanished into the earth, we all gathered pine needles and pine cones, and sticks and stones, and we finished the grave so it blended right in with the woods. Carlino wiped his hands on his pants, and studied the grave with pride.

  Then he made the sign of the cross, said a quick prayer, and pulled a cheap Rosary out of his pocket, which he dropped on the grave.

  “Why'd you do that?” Bullfrog said.

  “Max Finn's immortal soul.”

  “But you killed him.”

  “I didn't kill his soul, did I?” Carlino said. He stepped on the Rosary, ground it down into the loose earth, and kicked some pine needles on top of it.

  There came a startling sound, like the blades of an industrial fan. Small twigs rained down on us. Bullfrog covered his face with his hands. Carlino flinched. So did I.

  Then came a gentle cooing, like a happy baby. Then a hooting. Hoot, Hoooot, Hooot. A great dark shape dropped out of the sky, and a branch cracked and fell, and the wind came in cold blasts as the wings of the beast flapped and fluttered and soared right through us.

  “Ahhhhhhh!” Carlino screamed.

  I slipped and fell, and landed with my head sideways in a puddle.

  “An owl,” Bullfrog said. “An owl.”

  He may as well have just seen The Flying Dutchman, or a Yeti, or The Loch Ness Monster. He shook his head and said, how could it be, and why did it happen to us?

  * * * *

  Over the next two weeks, Bullfrog unloaded his share of the cameras. He made one hundred and ninety thousand dollars in cash. That guy could hustle.

  He stopped by the office and dropped off Eddie's share. Eddie split it up between the crew and told Bullfrog that he done good, real good. Bullfrog and Carlino did a shot, and Eddie smoked one of the Davidoffs from Frank Conese. But Bullfrog looked like a guy whose wife just left him. Carlino said we should all go to the Totsy and do some real drinking. That would cheer him up.

  “We can get some weed,” Carlino said. “Brothers love weed.”

  But nothing Carlino said could rile him up.

  “It ain't that owl, is it?” Carlino said.

  Bullfrog nodded.

  “A goddamn owl? Are you kiddin' me?”

  “That owl was telling us something,” Bullfrog said.

  “Oh yeah? And what did it say?”

  “My Auntie, she's a Root Doctor. Practices the Hoodoo down in Georgia. Knew a guy named Moses Strummer. Extra finger on his left hand. Played blues guitar.”

  “That's the blackest thing I ever heard,” Carlino said.

  Eddie laughed.

  “Moses is driving home one night. Owl flies right toward his car, yellow eyes staring him down like it's playing chicken. Zips right over the car like a ghost. Moses goes to my Auntie for some kind of cure. But there ain't nothing can be done about a owl.”

  “Did he die?” Eddie said. He perked up a little and puffed his cigar.

  “Three days after he seen the owl, he's walking through the woods to one of his fishing holes, and a tree falls over. Right on top of him. One second earlier, one second later… tree would've missed him.”

  “And that was the owl's fault?” Carlino said.

  “That's what my Auntie said.”

  “Your Auntie's a nut,” Carlino said.

  We headed off to the Totsy, Bullfrog looking as glum as a teenager. But we finally managed to cheer him up. We talked a lot about the money, and we drank a few shots and beers; and Carlino even gave Becca a fifty on the sly just to sit down next to Bullfrog and give him a few kisses on the cheek and rub his back a little.

  But I knew what was up with Bullfrog. He's a drug dealer. He's not a killer. I bet if I could've looked inside of his mind, I would have seen a terrible loop where an innocent truck-driver gets shot in the back of the head, over and over. I would've seen a Rosary, half-buried under some brush on an unmarked grave. I would've seen an owl, dropping out of the heavens like the dark cape of some murdered hero.

  EVIL, WICKED, MEAN, AND NASTY
/>
  Eddie says there's no better smell in the world than a walk-in humidor. Shelves of unsmoked cigars smell like bricks of chocolate and coffee and earthy cedar boxes. Eddie's heaven is a walk-in humidor that goes on and on forever.

  My heaven? A rural cabin with a pond and a damp meadow, and the nightly croaking of leopard frogs, and Emily rocking on the front porch swing.

  Marcia's heaven? A dungeon full of helpless chumps, each of them fixated on her and willing to do whatever she says.

  My rash had been acting up, and one of my ears was off balance. I went to see Doc Brillman, and when I walked through the doors and saw Marcia sitting there, I wondered what was so great about her. In the right light, when I thought of all the things we'd done behind her husband's back, she looked like a well-dressed pig.

  “Hello Mister Lynch,” she said with extra formality.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and scrawled my name on the paper.

  She lowered her voice. “What's wrong?”

  “I'm tired. Real tired. And my right ear is funny.”

  “Tonight? Nine o'clock? I told Kevin I'm going out with Elise.”

  “So go out with Elise.”

  “Did I do something?”

  “Ask Kevin,” I said.

  Her face—the one she put on for the world—cracked. I took a seat near the aquarium that I knew so well, and watched the blue and gold cichlids. The water was clear and fast. The nurse called me back and put me on the scale. One hundred and seventy five pounds.

  I sat on the metal examination table and looked at the “human body” diagram with its too-red heart; the “what smoking does to your lungs,” with the tar-coated weeping cilia; and the sheets of typing paper that change every time Doc Brillman's kid draws something new. There was a new one today, of a lake full of whimsically lopsided fish.

  The door opened. “Hello,” Doc Brillman said.

  “Those fish are good. Picassoesque. Your kid's got talent.”

  “Thanks,” he said, beaming. I bet he'd thought it a hundred thousand times, and it felt good to hear someone else give the stamp of approval.

  We started in on the usual Q and A, and Doc Brillman took my blood pressure and had me breathe in and out a few times while he listened through a stethoscope with closed eyes, like God was giving him the answers to life's greatest mysteries. Then he put the otoscope into my ear, and peered into my brain through a blinding white light.

  I had an ear infection. Doc Brillman said it could happen from getting stagnant water in your ear, and had I slipped and fallen into any mud recently?

  “My whole life is one big mud-hole,” I said.

  Doc Brillman laughed.

  He wrote me a prescription for some antibiotics, and I buttoned up my shirt.

  “A one hundred percent legitimate illness,” he said.

  “I always knew I'd get something, Doc. What about this rash?” I said, turning my arms this way and that.

  “Change your sheets,” he said.

  He walked me back to the waiting room, and talked about his daughter's upcoming art show at the middle school, and I was glad he tagged along. When Marcia saw Doc Brillman by my side, she painted on her professional face in a matter of seconds.

  “Ear infection,” Doc Brillman said to her with a smile. “And it's a real one!”

  Marcia clapped her hands and tilted her head, but her eyes told a darker story than the jovial fun-poking one that Doc Brillman was writing at my expense. I played along and took a bow.

  “The world is full of germs, and they're all out to get me,” I said.

  I drove home feeling mighty good, and then my phone started rattling on the passenger seat. I didn't answer it. I don't talk on the phone while I'm driving. Any time I see a nitwit driving with a phone cradled to his ear, or looking into his lap and writing a text message, I consider unloading a few rounds into the back of his head, to do the world a favor.

  It started raining, and my wipers could barely keep up with the downpour as I drove along. So I pulled off when I got to the Totsy instead of heading all the way home. Then I looked at the missed call. Marcia. I listened to her voicemail, the basic gist of which was that I'm an insensitive prick, and there are a dozen other guys who'd kill to “get with” a “hottie” such as herself. I started laughing, she sounded so ridiculous. And I didn't call her back. I didn't call her back because she told me I had better call her back, or she was ending it with me. What a nut.

  Now, you want to talk synchronicity? Here's one for you.

  I held an old Scientific American magazine over my head and ran through the pouring rain, into the eerie red dark of the Totsy. The regular losers were slumped at the bar, running an experiment to see if the eighteen-thousandth drink of their life would actually make them feel any better. Lucky, in particular, looked about due for a mercy killing. Some drunks get so haggard and red-faced and crater-nosed that even a brand new Brooks Brothers suit wouldn't make them presentable.

  I sat down in my favorite booth, under the Jean Harlow drawing, and Becca came by and brought me an iced tea.

  “Sorry to hear about Dan,” she said. “Sorry I was mean to him.”

  “Guy his age shouldn't be hitting on you.”

  “Yeah… but you men have it tough in some ways. You don't have a whole lot to offer us—except back-hair and pee-stained underwear.”

  “I've only got one of those.”

  “Yeah? Which one?”

  “Wouldn't you like to know.”

  “Gross,” Becca said. She laughed and walked away.

  I grabbed one of the Weekly Traders (a free magazine with ads for private sales. Cars and boats, pure-bred dogs and such), and thumbed through it. I was reading an ad for a 1981 DeLorean—only 79,000 miles! Minor body damage.

  The guy was asking twenty grand for it. Fat chance. I imagined myself behind the wheel of a DeLorean, and wondered if I could pay someone to install a realistic looking flux-capacitor, when someone slid into the booth opposite me and snapped me out of my fantasy.

  It was Kevin. Yeah, that Kevin.

  “Ronnie. Remember me?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “How's Martha?”

  “Marcia,” he said. “And don't play like you can't even remember her name.”

  I folded up the Weekly Trader and took a sip of iced tea.

  “You here for revenge? To throw a few punches?” I said.

  Becca, bless her soul, showed up right then and asked Kevin if he was having a drink; and I told her to put whatever he wanted on my tab. He ordered a tall beer.

  “Can't say it came as much of a shock,” he said when Becca walked away.

  I didn't say a word. I wondered if he'd brought along a gun. Maybe he was thinking of going out with a bang on the nightly news.

  “There's a tendency to blame the other guy,” I said, “when in reality he didn't do shit except get a piece of what she was serving up. It's her you should be mad at. If you want revenge, I'd turn around and go knock on your own front door, buddy.”

  Kevin's eyes were a hazy red like Mister Z's: Bullfrog's meth-head connection. That got me to thinking about Mister Z, and I wondered what it was like to really believe you were an alien from another world. Then I got to thinking how weird it would be if it turned out that Mister Z really was an alien, and how that would make for a good movie. Maybe that's how he ended up on drugs. Scared and lonely, and no way back home.

  “That bitch loves to run me over. Then she backs the car right up, lines it up real good, and runs me over again. I'm done with her.”

  “Smart move,” I said.

  “I know who Eddie Sesto is,” Kevin said.

  Becca showed up and gave Kevin his tall beer. It was shaped like an hour-glass, and it was sweating. Kevin picked it up, nodded at me, and drank about half of it in a disgusting series of frog-like gulps. Some of it ran down his chin, and he mopped it up with his sleeve. He puffed his cheeks and exhaled.

  “I needed that,” he said.

 
“I guess.”

  “I know about Eddie Sesto,” he said again.

  “Yeah, well I don't. Who the hell is Eddie Sesto?”

  “Your boss,” he said.

  Jesus, just what had Marcia been telling this guy? I never told her exactly what I did for a living, but she knew I wasn't running a non-profit.

  “I'm not here to make trouble,” he said.

  “Well—you're doing a pretty good job of it.”

  We stared at each other.

  “After you finish that beer, I think you should be on your way,” I said.

  Kevin took another few gulps, ended the life of the tall beer, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve again. Then he leaned a little bit across the table.

  “I want you to kill her,” he said.

  * * * *

  The rash on my arms was itching like it was getting paid overtime. That chump husband of Marcia's: I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said. I watched the end of an old Columbo episode on channel 6, and I drank a few cups of coffee and paced around my crummy apartment. I fed my fish, and checked the temperatures on all of the aquariums. I asked Vern what he would do in this situation, and he opened and closed his mouth like he was saying, “I'd eat that nitwit for breakfast.”

  The fat noisy broad was still glued to her lawnchair, smoking cigarettes that she'd bought, no doubt, on the taxpayer's dime. I wondered if unfortunate Brandi was still struggling with her homework at night, living above that nest of hillbillies.

  Yap, yap, yap-yap-yap. I peeked out the window, and there she was with a cell phone glued to her ear, yapping to that waste-of-space husband of hers. I imagined aiming a crossbow right at that ugly melon she called a head. Zmmmmmph! A silent bolt, right between the eyes. And who would be the worse for it, really? Her kids? Not the way she talked to them. No way, buddy. They'd probably thank me for it some day.

  I drove over to Walgreen's and picked up a bottle of Calamine lotion and some Advils, too. I didn't even have a headache. But I was figuring on getting one sometime soon.

  I knew the only thing that would really stop my arms from itching was to come clean and tell Eddie about Marcia's husband, so I stopped by the office. It was just Eddie, sitting at his desk with some paperwork in front of him. I sat down and gave Eddie the details, and asked him what we should do about it.