by Aaron Mach
“The world has a way of finding you. I know it did and I know it does. I’m a coward, miss. Ran from my problems years ago and though I ain’t moved much in the last forty years, I’ve been runnin’ the whole time. I’m not sayin’ somehow I become a better man through the years or nothin’, simply sayin’ I’m too old and too tired. Sometimes you ain’t through runnin’, sometimes the runnin’ through with you.”
“Well, just thought I would warn you, it’s my job.”
“Appreciate it ma’am, mighty kind a you.”
“Anything I can do before I leave?” as she was finishing her lemonade.
Jack emerged from behind the cabin and gave Marie a start. She was shocked at his appearance. Dirty, wearing clean flannel shirt and jeans with brand new looking moccasins. He was in his mid forties from what she could tell but with all of the facial hair it was hard to determine. He held his hand out to her and smiled. She returned the favor but paused for a moment on his eyes, she was unable to look away until she realized he had noticed this.
Eli said, “Who the hell is this guy you’re investigating?”
“He’s, well, from what I gathered, very well connected in the state. There isn’t a great deal of information on him or about him. His co-workers won’t discuss a single detail. His family was even hesitant to say anything. What they will say is that he is not a good person. I’m not exactly sure how that translates into criminal charges, but I’m still working on it. There have been a series of accidental deaths throughout this area and other areas he has been in. There are so many connections, but none concrete enough to do anything.”
“What kind of man is he?” Jack insisted.
“You mean what do I think of him?”
Jack nodded.
“He is despicable. The lowest form of humanity this world has seen, only my opinion,” as she made a slight nervous smile. “End of the day it doesn’t matter what I think, only what I can prove.”
“Don’t discount your mind and what it has to offer miss, some things in life can only be found in the mind, and in the…” as he pointed to his chest. This very intense man caught Marie off guard. Not only the intensity but with the calm that accompanied it.
“Thank you gentlemen for your time,” as she handed the empty glass to Eli. She walked away from the porch and got back into her Jeep Cherokee and turned around. As she shifted the Jeep into drive she looked at Jack with curiosity, a brief moment in time. Eli glanced over at him as he was watching the Jeep drive off. Jack walked over to the deer that was strung up and began to slice. Eli put some chewing tobacco in his mouth as he was prone to do after a meal and began to help.
Sitting in the homemade chairs Eli built, Jack and Eli shared a bottle of whiskey while sitting in front of the big fire. In the night sky thousands of stars were visible out there in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere isn’t only a place but also an idea. The path to nowhere is not found by many, and travelled by even less. Those that find it are the most desperate, clinging to what ounce of humanity they could escape life with and holding on to it in a place where none could touch it.
“What kind of man are you Jack?”
Jack continued to look into the fire.
“Are you a good man, or do you fall into that other category? That gray area most of us end up in at some point.”
Jack continued to look into the fire, unsure of how to even answer the question. There were times in his life he was convinced of his righteousness. His many years in prison brought a great dark cloud over those convictions.
Jack began as the whiskey took affect, “I was working some odd jobs out there in Flathead County near Essex. Bussing tables, bartending when they were short, taking trash out. Doing odd jobs at people’s homes. Anything for cash. There was a woman who would come into the bar I was working a couple times a week. Real sweet lady, you know? She was a single mom and she would only come in for one drink at the end of her shift at the supermarket. We wouldn’t speak much but she always smiled at me and I wasn’t used to it. I had grown to like her a great deal. You see, I had come from a horrible place for the last couple years before that and I wasn’t used to being around other people yet, and she was the first to really notice me. One night there was a rowdy group of regulars who came into the bar. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, as we had a lot of seasonal workers come through and they spend most of their paychecks there. The woman had her usual one drink and left the bar out the back exit. The group of guys, after pounding a few drinks, left the same way right after her. I grabbed the trash to take it out to make sure she left without any trouble. It was pretty dark in the back dirt lot, as there was only one streetlight. The group of guys made catcalls at her but I was hoping they were too drunk to realize what they were doing, and would be gone. One of them, there were three, came over to her and asked if she wanted to come with them. She was polite, as I could see from where the garbage cans were, but the man insisted. He began to grab her and touch her. Once he grabbed her by the arm and began to pull her to their truck, I yelled for them to stop. The other two men came out of their running truck and asked what I thought I was doing. Mind my own business, they said. I could not do this. The man holding the woman, Julia was her name, threw her down on the ground. I could see the pain in her face, and the fear. The three men walked over, I didn’t want any trouble, I told them.” Jack took a swig of the whiskey bottle that he had in his lap. “They said that I had already found it and repeated that I should mind my own business. I could not do this. They approached me and began to shove and poke. They were extremely drunk and I didn’t want to hurt anyone, not anymore. Finally one of them took an empty beer bottle out of the trash that I had just emptied and broke it on the brick wall next to me. I pleaded with them to stop. The man with the broken bottle thrust it into my face a couple of times. He was slow and clumsy, but mostly just drunk. One of the thrusts cut my cheek almost clean through.”
He pointed to a part of the scar only partly visible as it ran up the left side of his cheek almost to his eye past where his beard was.
“I grabbed that man’s arm and broke it. He didn’t give me a choice. The other two seemed shocked at what happened. I grabbed another one of them and threw him on the ground. The one that remained standing, I put him into a chokehold and I could hear and feel his neck break. As he went to the ground I urged them to stop, I didn’t want to hurt anyone. The man on the ground continued to get up as I pleaded with him to stay down. There was cursing and crying from them both, mainly the one with the broken arm. The uninjured man came at me and I moved out of the way and he ran himself into the metal door that was behind me. He knocked himself out cold. The man with the broken arm kept trying to punch me with his good arm and I threw him onto the ground and punched him three or four times until he stopped moving. I went over to Julia and brought her home. Next day the sheriff was at my house and arrested me. Said the guys I beat up were good friends of a congressman and that I was going to prison. Trial lasted a few days. Put me away for eight years. You ask me if I’m a good man. I think I was, not so sure now. One of the men is paralyzed, the other has nerve damage in his arm and won’t ever use it again. Then there is Julia, she is safe now, but while I was away she was beaten within an inch of her life and child protective services came and took her children away. Is there anything that I did that caused good in the end?”
“My wife and children were murdered in our home, this is many years ago now, you see, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Just came home one day and there they were. Held my little girl in my arms and that, as they say, was that. Packed up never looked back. There was no good that I did there, just left. Didn’t even hang around to see if they found the guy, too weak back then, probably the same now. Didn’t have the nerve to return and even see. You, Jack, at least did something. You tried, and sometimes that’s all a man can do.”
Jack nodded, surprised at the man’s honesty, and took another pull from the whiskey. They sat for a while just s
taring at the fire and enjoying the cool summer air.
“What happened with the woman?” Eli asked.
“Couldn’t say, the next morning they came for me and that was the last I heard from the outside world for several years. Overheard some guards talking outside my cell one night, pretty late, but couldn’t really tell. One of them said something about a bitch getting what she deserved, when the guard mentioned the name Julia it sent a shock right through me. You see, I never heard about what happened to her, been in solitary almost three years by that point. The other guard asked who he was talking about, Julia Anderson he says. Didn’t know the last name but heard the name Julia and began to listen closer. Guard said she was an ex-wife to one of the congressman’s sons. He didn’t say which congressman but can’t be too many of ‘em in this state. Said he got custody of the kids for his boy, was just waiting for the opportunity. Don’t know how this guard knew or what his connections were, but that was all I needed to hear. Found out some years later Julia is in a wheelchair down at Warm Springs Institution. Don’t know how they could keep her though.”
Eli nodded and gestured for the bottle, “You gonna drink the whole thing, you drunk bastard?”
Jack grinned and passed the bottle, thankful for the brevity. It had been awhile since he drank this much and he liked the old familiar feeling. It was never something he did to excess but he needed it tonight, too many old wounds being opened.
“Off to bed, Jack.” Jack waved a hand in the air to say goodnight. “You know we all got stories to tell.” Jack remained quiet with his back to Eli now. “Don’t mean we gotta be done with makin’ new ones.” Eli turned and headed back to the cabin.
…
That morning the generator died as the two were sitting on the porch chatting about what they needed to get done for the day.
“Guess I know what we’ll be doing today,” Eli said with a sigh. “You know anything about small engines?”
“A bit, just what I learned from odd jobs.”
“This here generator is the only source a power I got, she goes down we are gonna have to work much harder to get things done around here.”
Jack walked over to check the fuel. When he opened the cap, gasoline spewed all over his shirt. He jumped back but didn’t say anything, only held his arms up with an expression of frustration. Eli laughed so hard he couldn’t help but slap his knee like one of those hillbilliess you always see on TV. With his frontier hat and animal skins he was certainly playing the part.
“Hey, uh, Jack? You know you gotta wait for it to cool down?” Eli said, still laughing but trying to hold it in. He could see Jack didn’t think it was that funny. “These old generators aren’t like them newfangled ones they got now, this here one’s from thirty years ago.”
“My only damn shirt,” Jack said, exasperated.
“Just go wash it in the creek and hang it up, sun’s up just fine, be dry in no time.”
Jack walked over to the creek and unbuttoned his shirt. When he took it off he revealed his mangled back. Eli saw it and was embarrassed to have witnessed it and turned to look busy working on the generator.
Without turning while scrubbing the shirt in the creek Jack said, “It’s from the war.”
“Don’t need to know, you ain’t want to say nothin about it.”
“No, it’s okay Eli, you’ve been a good friend to me.”
Eli leaned against the outer post of the porch and puffed on his pipe.
“Back in the war my friend and I were surrounded. A rocket destroyed the chopper sent to evacuate us. The last thing I remembered was seeing the burning wreckage and feeling the impact of the butt of a rifle on the back of my head.” Jack turned from the creek and rung out the wet shirt. Walking over to Eli he continued, “I awoke in a bamboo cage that was outside and exposed to the elements. I had no idea how long I had been there and my friend was no longer with me. I had to assume he was dead. The cage was only three feet high and I was forced to lay flat for weeks on end. The only food they gave us were the scraps from the guards of the camp. Often it was nothing but bones. Every other day or so they would take me out and sit me in a chair in a small hut and ask me questions. Usually the same things, where was your unit, what were you doing, about future troop movements, stuff like that. I kept quiet, didn’t say a thing the eight months I was there. When things got real interesting they would whip me a couple dozen times then just put me back in the cage. Eventually the camp was deserted and they just left me there. Figured I would just die, wasn’t worth their time, you know. With what strength I had left I sawed one of the bamboo stalks with a small rock I found on the ground in the cage. I could barely walk and made my way through the jungle. A week later a platoon on routine patrol found me. Spent the next year in a hospital in Saigon until everyone was evacuated.”
“God, I’m sorry Jack,” said Eli, taking heavy puffs from his pipe. He put his hat high up on his head and wiped his brow. “I can see why you ain’t much of a talker.”
“Just used to it, be amazed what you can get used to.”
Eli walked over to Jack and put his hand on his shoulder.
“You know its gonna be alright now, son. It’s over now, you know?”
Jack looked at Eli and nodded. Each hid their face, as they both understood the casualties of war were not only the dead, but also the living.
XV
Arch walked into a diner near Big Fork. The diner was your classic fifties style that are often gimmicks now, but this was one of the few genuine diners that has remained over the decades. Everything from the fake leather seating, to the uniforms the waitresses wore was exactly the same as the grand opening. Arch walked over to the man in a well-tailored blue suit and blue vest. Instead of a traditional tie, he had one of those rope ties with the big medallion to tighten the rope around the collar. His particular medallion was of a buffalo, and only if you were really close could you see a small skeleton underneath its feet. Few got that close.
“Can I get you boys something, some pie maybe, we have a great-” said Cheryl as she was taking the order. Her hair was big with large curls that seemed to remain in place by some magical powers. She was pretty, once, but considering she was in this dump since the place opened, the years had certainly taken their toll.
“Coffee, black,” the man in the suit interrupted.
“Same, some great what?”
“Pie, I was going to say pie,” Cheryl said unfazed by the short responses.
“Yeah, what the fuck kind of pie? Don’t fucking say blueberry,” Arch said in a low tone with a big smile so as not to scare the lady away. She was the harbinger of pie after all.
“Blue-” Arched turned his head with one mildly crazy eye sort of jokingly, Cheryl thought. He wasn’t joking.
“Strawberry-rhubarb,” she finally got out with a nervous smile. Arch pointed one finger in the air and Cheryl, for her sake, understood what he meant.
“So, I hear you can’t even run some old squatters off nowadays,” the man in the suit said with a grin.
“Oh, I’m sorry your royal highness,” gesturing like a commoner in royal court with arms out wide and head bowed.
“That’s congressman to you, asshole, and you’re costing me a lot of money,” said the suit man in a low tone.
“Frank, it’s under control, I’ve got my guy on it,” Arch said in a more solemn tone, understanding better than most the pecking order. Without Frank, Arch’s business would have gone under years ago, but with the congressman’s support, Arch had become very successful. Unfortunately he snorted, drank, and screwed most of the profits. The rest he gambled. This is why Frank loved him; he was effective and would always need him.
“Oh, your guy, well then, let me just kick my heals together while crossing the parking lot. Handle it, it’s one guy, the rest have folded no problem, why should he be any different?”
“We got a couple weeks before we’ll even get close to his house, plenty a time, and they always sign, everyone a
lways signs,” Arch said with a grin.
“Alright, two cups black coffee and one strawberry-rhubarb pie,” Cheryl said with a smile. She set them down and walked away. Frank took a sip of the coffee. Arch went straight for the pie.
“Gotta go, let me know when it’s done.” Frank walked out of the diner and into the backseat of his Lincoln Towncar. The driver got in the driver’s seat and he was gone.
“Asshole,” Arch said with a sigh, like he was holding it in the entire time.
XVI
“Where you at boy!?”
Little Jack ran up to his room and hid under the bed. “Stop! Please don’t, please stop, he didn’t do nothing wrong,” his mother pleaded while grabbing the arm of her husband. The man was not deterred and he threw her down with his free hand. The other hand was white with the force of the grip fueled by his rage. In his back pocket was a near empty fifth of bourbon and that night was a lot like most nights. He walked up the stairs in his coveralls and white undershirt stained in the pits by sweat, grease all over the front from when he was working on the tractor. Jack’s mother lay on the ground crying with a fresh bruise, but it wasn’t from that day but the day prior; as this was a common occasion. Mom cried, Dad hit, Jack ran. Under the bed Jack was in tears but had to remain so still. The footsteps pounded up the stairs with the sound of the bourbon in the bottle sloshing.
“I said where you at, don’t make me come looking!” Jack tried to make himself into a tiny ball so that no one could see him. He simply wanted to disappear into nothingness and imagine himself a monster. A monster that could be so big and strong that he would be able to finally fight his father and protect his mother. The bed was ripped up with a great force and lying there was little Jack in the tiniest ball with his eyes clenched and arms wrapped around his knees. He could hear the belt leather grind as it was tightened around his father’s hand and then the whack of the belt striking him on the sides and back. Over and over again little Jack felt the sting of the leather on his fragile little boy skin. The belt opened old wounds and started new ones. But little Jack did not utter a sound. He had learned over the years, and even just in his seven years, that pain was external and could be controlled. Wielded into something that he could use later. Every strike was a chance for him to gain that power and store it until a time that he deemed necessary. And with the last whack Jack awoke into the empty cabin. He opened his eyes and remembered where he was. The sun shined in through the window at the rear of the cabin and some of the light landed onto his feet. The light came in beams, with the dust from the cabin moving in it like live organisms. Jack sat up and the sun was on his chest. He put his arm out to watch the light hit his skin and make it an extraordinary white. Eli came bursting in with a huge smile on his face, revealing the several missing teeth.