Tales from Stool 17; Dark Days of Judgment: The Nigel Logan Stories (3)

by Kirk Jockell

  Candice said, “What are you doing? Why is this taking so long?”

  “Shush, dammit. I’m working here. Just keep still and your eyes closed.”

  Nigel was slow and careful as he took hold of the rattler. Once he was sure he had a good grip, he used his free hand to scratch underneath Tom’s neck to coax him to let it go. “Thank you, buddy. Good job. Now, let me have it.” Nigel gave a slight pull and Tom opened his mouth.

  The second Nigel had the snake, he stood back and said, “Okay. I got it.”

  Candice opened her eyes and wiggled. Tom jumped off, and she rolled to the other side of the bed jumping to the floor. She danced and pranced around. She shook her fingers while she made a slight growling sound. Then she took her hands and attempted to smooth her crawling skin as she turned around and around. Body, face, head, arms, legs, her palms worked fast to rub away the creepiness that seemed to encase her entire body.

  Nigel couldn’t help but chuckle, but made a point of not letting her catch him. That wouldn’t earn him any points. He ducked away into the utility room so she couldn’t see him and asked, “Are you going to be alright?”

  “Hell no, I’m not going to be alright. That son of a bitch’n cat!”

  Nigel smiled as he found a spare pillow case and deposited the snake into the bottom and closed the top with a twist and a knot. The snake went quiet. He walked back out into the room and said, “Don’t be sore at Tom. He loves you. It was a gift. He didn’t mean no harm.”

  Candice studied Nigel’s face and her emotions shifted. “You bastard,” she said. “You’ve been laughing. You think this shit is funny.”

  “No, baby,” He said with a thin smile. “It was a serious situation at the time, but we’re past it now. You know what they say, ‘we will laugh about this later.’”

  “Well, it’s not later enough, goddammit.”

  Nigel put the pillowcase on the floor and approached her naked body. He was grinning. She wasn’t. She gave him a half-hearted punch in the chest and said, “Stop that, now. Just stop.”

  Tom sat on the corner of the bed and divided his attention between his humans and the squirming pillowcase on the floor. Nigel took her in his arms and hugged her, rocked her back and forth to comfort her. It took a while, but she stopped shaking. He backed off to look at her pretty face. He kissed her on the lips, then said, “You’re okay. Everything is fine.”

  “You’re still an asshole,” she said with a smile and hit him in the chest again.

  He smiled back and said, “It’s one of my finer qualities.” And they both began to laugh.

  She shook one last time and said, “I can’t believe this shit. A damn snake.”

  He kissed her again on the forehead, then her cheek and neck. He kissed her on the mouth and she welcomed him in. They broke away and she whispered in his ear, “Come on. Get back in bed.”

  “Hell. I’m wide awake now,” said Nigel. “I couldn’t go back to sleep if I wanted too.”

  She backed away with a raised eyebrow and bit her bottom lip. Then she moved in closer and said, “My sweet hero. Who said anything about sleep?” She kissed him and he responded. They stood there consumed with one another. Their body temperatures and passion were rising fast. In an abrupt motion, Candice pushed away and said, “Not so fast, lover.”

  Nigel was on the verge of a pant. “What? What is it?”

  She moved in close to his right ear and through her clenched teeth, growled, “Get the freak’n snake out of the house.”

  Sleep did find its way into the bedroom, but only for Candice. After dealing with the snake and the unexpected desires of his partner, Nigel was wide awake. It was a little before five in the morning. He was on his side, head propped up with a hand so he could watch her sleep. He found her gorgeous, even in slumber. He couldn’t help but notice how peaceful she looked and how her hair was framing her face. A thin smile told him she was happy. So was he.

  Nigel doesn’t like taking pictures of people. As subjects, they can be a pain in the ass. Before him, though, was a shot he wanted. One of her in her most peaceful state. He wanted to capture the moment for all time, which is what photography does. It freezes time on a two-dimensional plane called a snapshot.

  He slipped out of bed and went into his office for a camera. He came back into the bedroom. She hadn’t moved, but her right breast was exposed. He took the bed sheet and draped it over her to conceal her nipple. He stepped back to admire her again. Then he began to shoot.

  At his computer, he was admiring the new images. Of the several taken, he chose five as his favorites and deleted the others. He began to edit his work. When he heard the final gurgles of the coffee pot coming from the kitchen, he got up to grab a cup. As he was pouring, he saw the notification light on his phone blinking. He took a sip of coffee and walked over to take a look. It was a text from Sherry Stone, the reporter from Tidewater, Virginia. The date stamp said it came in at 0237, over three hours ago. A text that late at night couldn’t be good. He opened and read the message: Call me ASAP. We may have a situation here.

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? He took another sip of coffee and decided he would call her back during normal working hours. He went back to his office to finish editing the pictures of Candice. He liked each of the five shots he kept, but there was one he loved best. He converted it to black and white and worked the brightness, highlights, and contrast. When it reached his satisfaction, he raised his hands off the mouse and keyboard and spoke to the monitor. “Stop. No more.”

  He sat back with his coffee and studied her beautiful face on the screen. It made him happy. He was sure she would love the picture, too. But as happy as the shot made him, there was one distraction that was consuming his brain and ruining the moment. That damn text message.

  He did his best to ignore it, at least for now, but he couldn’t. The hidden meaning between the lines were too powerful and worrisome. He picked up the phone to read it again. Call me ASAP. When someone sends a text after midnight and wants a call back as soon as possible, chances are it isn’t good news. We may have a situation here. Those words, coupled with the others, are a tidy way of spelling trouble.

  He got up to refresh his cup of coffee and walked out on the front porch. He went through the screen door and sat on the front steps. He looked at his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found her. He looked at his phone, staring at the name and number thinking Dammit! I don’t want to do this. But, he did.

  She answered in two rings and sounded alert, but groggy, like she had been sleeping with one eye open. Her first words were spoken through a dry mouth and a throat that hadn’t been cleared yet. “What took you so long to call me?”

  “What’s going on?”

  She sat up in bed and began to tell him what she knew. She didn’t have all the details yet, but the source was too credible. Nigel was speechless. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “Son of a bitch,” as he listened and looked to the heavens. Then he interrupted her. “When? When did this happen?”

  “Two days ago. Unexpected and out of the blue. Totally blindsided.”

  He said nothing and there was silence on the phone.

  “Nigel? Are you still...”

  “Yeah. I’m here. I’m thinking.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We?” Nigel asked. “What do you mean, we?”

  There was an awkward silence on the phone before Stone said, “Don’t be an ass. You’re going to need help. Help that is on your side.”

  Nigel said nothing.

  “It’s part of the reason I called to begin with. Now … what are we going to do?”

  “Do me a favor,” he said. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything.”

  She did.

  He stood in the doorway and watched her sleep. She looked so peaceful and totally relaxed. She held a slight smile. Her hands were open, no sleeping fists of tension. He tried to count her easy steady breathing, but she was so relaxed i
t was impossible to catch the rising and lowering of her chest. He didn’t want to disturb her, not now, so he leaned up against the door jam and waited.

  When her eyes began to flutter, it got Nigel’s attention. He stood straighter at the door. When her eyes opened, she was looking at the wall. Then she turned her head and found Nigel watching her. She offered a good-morning smile.

  He walked over to her side of the bed and she scooted over to make room. He sat on the edge. He offered a feigned smile, but it only fooled her for a few seconds. She began to catch the worry in his eyes. She reached up and touched the side of his face and returned her own look of worry. She said nothing.

  Nigel leaned in and kissed her on the lips. He sat back up and said, “I have to go to Virginia.”

  She sat up in bed. His fake smile was gone and his expression matched his eyes. She could tell there was a problem, and, in that moment, she wasn’t looking for details. She only wanted to cry, and she did after she grabbed him around the neck. He held her tight and close and rocked her back and forth. After a while, he said, “Everything is going to be alright.” She took this as a lie, to protect her from the truth, and tightened her grip around his neck.

  Sissy Marks

  He packed light, except for the cash. He crammed a couple changes of clothes and some toiletries into a large backpack. Then he went into the living room and moved his TV stand away from the wall. He removed the section of the tongue-and-groove wall that covered the old fireplace. He got down on his knees and pulled his safe out of the hearth. He opened it and grabbed two stacks of hundred-dollar bills, each strapped with a mustard-colored band. Then he took out the cell phone he obtained during his night in Tate’s Hell and a charger he had bought for it. Everything went into the bag.

  He wasn’t sure what he would encounter once he got back to Virginia, but figured if he needed anything, he would just buy it. If he couldn’t do what he needed to do with two straps, he was in trouble. He put the safe, the wall, and the TV stand back in place. He grabbed the bag, which now contained a dangerous amount of cash. Before zipping up the backpack, Nigel thought Only a fool would walk around with this much money. Then he chuckled and said aloud to himself, “Only a bigger fool would try and take it.”

  He said his goodbyes to Candice the night before. She was strong while they were together. On her front porch, she smiled when he kissed her and said, “I’ll be back in a few days.” She didn’t believe him. She knew better and fell apart the second she went back into her house.

  Nigel did believe it. He knew in the back of his mind that things could go to shit and his stay extended, but he refused to let that seep into his mind and control his expectations. He was coming back, dammit, if it was the last thing he ever did. Remaining in Virginia wasn’t an option, or so he thought.

  Nigel got to the airport in Tallahassee with plenty of time to spare. It was a busy travel weekend, and he wasn’t about to fall victim to the inadequacies and inefficiencies of the TSA. The Transportation Security Administration had saturated the news lately because of problems all across the nation. Over the past several weeks, airport security had not made any new friends. In a recent U.S. congressional subcommittee hearing, American Airlines alone reported that 70,000 of their own customers had missed flights and 40,000 bags had been lost, delayed, or misrouted due to security checkpoint bottlenecks. Damn!

  Even as a member of TSA’s PreCheck program, which moves travelers through an express lane, Nigel wasn’t going to take any chances. But he zipped through security, and, with two hours to spare before his flight, he decided to spend his idle time at the bar to help keep his mind off Virginia. He knew of a number 17 stool that awaited his arrival, and a Jamaican bartender named Rendall that whips up a mean Bloody Mary.

  Nigel walked in and smiled. Rendall greeted him with a laugh and said, “Ha! It’s Nigel, right, mon?”

  “That’s right. You remembered. Good man.”

  “Fifth time da charm, mon. The usual?”

  “No. No. Too early for bourbon, but you can make me an extra special B.M.”

  “No problem, mon.”

  Rendall spun around and went to work. He grabbed an extra tall glass that looked two stories tall and placed it on the bar. He ignored the bottle of vodka in the well and grabbed the Grey Goose. When he was done, he set the drink in front of Nigel with a big down-island smile. With all the veggies added in, it was as much a meal as it was a cocktail. If you used it to wash down a Fred Flintstone vitamin, all your daily nutritional requirements could be met.

  “Now dat’s a Bloody Mary, mon. We off to a regatta today?”

  “Not today, Rendall. Heading to Virginia for some personal business.”

  “Ah. Very good.”

  Rendall went back to work.

  Nigel looked at the piece of beverage art and almost didn’t want to disturb it. He grabbed his cell phone and took a picture. Rendall caught him and laughed. “Ah! Dat’s very Facebook of you, Mistah Nigel.”

  “Ah, shut up, Rendall.” Nigel put his finger in the drink then sucked on his knuckles. Damn that’s good. Then he pulled out one of the long green beans, popped it in his mouth, and washed it down with a generous sip. Yummy!

  Nigel spotted a newspaper on the back counter. He got Rendall’s attention. “Is that today’s Democrat?”

  “Ya, mon. You want to take a look?”

  “Please.”

  Nigel flipped through the sections and stopped when he came across a familiar face, one he’d seen hundreds of times. He didn’t know the person, but the face was framed in a shot like all the rest, including his own. It was of a young sailor. She looked smart and squared-away in her service dress blues. Her single National Defense ribbon was positioned perfectly. Her eyes were full of the pride she was feeling at the time. Above everything else, she was a beautiful young woman.

  No doubt, it was the traditional mugshot captured while attending Navy boot camp. Everybody got one. Nigel thought of his own and cringed. It was awful, and, to his satisfaction, nobody has ever seen it. But it’s still around, rolled up with his navigational charts aboard his sailboat, MisChief. He thought of tearing it up and throwing it away a few times, but something always stopped him.

  Nigel realized the picture wasn’t part of a newspaper article, but a Letter to the Editor. The title of the letter was Welcoming our Sissy Home. Nigel stopped, returned to the picture, and studied it. He pulled a long drink of his B.M. before continuing.

  It was a letter written for Lisa “Sissy” Marks. It started: Our Sissy is coming home for the last time. It will be good to have her home. More so, it hurts knowing she has left her life in the Middle East. Her life and return will forever give us special cause to stop and reflect on those holidays which honor all veterans, both living and deceased.

  Under his breath, Nigel said, “Fuck,” and took another deep drink and continued to read. The letter was actually from the sailor’s mother. Sissy, otherwise known as Petty Officer Marks to her chiefs and shipmates, had been assigned as an Individual Augmentee with the United States Army in Afghanistan. She was killed in action when the Humvee she was riding in ran over an IED.

  Nigel continued to read with the slow and methodical purpose the letter warranted. This mother, who had just recently lost her daughter to the savages of Islamic extremism and a war on terror, had decided to turn her mourning into a delicate love letter. There was no anger in her words, just sorrow, pain, and immense pride. The mother of Petty Officer Marks did an incredible job of harnessing her energy to write a piece that steered away from the easy path of blame and concentrated on lifting up her daughter’s heroic life. In her closing remarks, she warned others not to feel pity or to view her daughter’s death as being in vain. In a single line that packed a punch she said the following: Join us in mourning our loss, join us in celebrating her life, join us in honoring her courage, but show no pity; few of us will ever perish with more meaning and purpose.

  Nigel folded the paper and set it dow
n on the bar so the face of Petty Officer Marks was facing up. He worked on his Bloody Mary with a little more meaning now. He gazed into the eyes of Petty Officer Marks and found a glimmer of her strength he didn’t see before. He would have liked her; he could tell.

  He looked up and found Rendall, “Another one, please.”

  “Yeah, mon. Com’n up.”

  Nigel picked up the paper and asked, “Are you done with this? Can I take it?”

  “Yeah, mon. Everything but da sports section. Leave dat behind.”

  A few minutes later, Rendall delivered the fresh drink. In exchange, Nigel gave him the sports section and a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Thanks for everything. That will be all for now.”

  Nigel got to his designated gate ten minutes before the scheduled boarding announcement. He had a Bloody Mary glow about him but not enough to thicken his tongue. He was still able to speak without too much difficulty. He practiced a few times as he walked from the bar.

  The nametag said Barbara. She was working the check-in counter at the gate and handling inquiries from waiting passengers. She was pleasant and helpful, but all business with her reading glasses down on her nose. She had a supervisor’s air about her that Nigel liked, and there was no question, her word would be the last one. When it was Nigel’s turn, he showed her his ticket.

  With a big smile, Babara said, “Good morning, Mr. Logan. We start boarding in just a few minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Nigel started to feel his words slip. “I’ll be sitting right over there. Don’t leave without me. I like to be the last one on the plane.”

  “But you are in first class, Mr. Logan. We’ll be boarding your group first.”

  Nigel winked and said, “They’re not my group. I’ll be right over there. Please, don’t leave without me.” Nigel always flies first class--at least when he can--not because he is a big shot, or because he doesn’t mind spending too much for the extra peanuts and free booze. No … Nigel grits his teeth and pays the extra required ransom for the leg room. At six foot three inches and two hundred thirty pounds, there’s no airline in the world that gives him enough space in coach.