by Keith Nixon
He killed the engine and I thought I was too late. He’d be pouring petrol though Maggie’s letter box before I could even think of stopping him. It only takes a second to strike a match. But for some reason he didn’t get out of the car. I could see him in there, in the driver’s seat, fumbling for something in the glove compartment. Two of his boys hunkered in the back. I didn’t wait. Round the corner, across the pavement, tap–tap–tap on the glass. He buzzed the electric window down.
“You again? What the fuck d’you want now?” The snarl and the transformation from his urbane Sunday self were staggering.
“Payback for Naz, and for Maggie’s kids,” I said.
His eyebrows climbed into what was left of his hair. “Don’t be fucking silly. What are you going to do? Pray me to death?”
“It’s a bit less spiritual, but no less effective than that.” I stepped back, lifted the automatic rifle out of my robe – it’s amazing what you can hide under there – aimed, and fired. The racket was staggering. Bullets tore out like water from a hose, a continuous lethal rain. Metal and glass disintegrated like fine tissue, giving the car a brand new sun–roof and the Monk an interesting tonsure to match his name. I never thought raw brains suited a man until I saw them on him. His companions were in no better shape.
The burst of gunfire was brief, but accomplished everything it needed to. My work here was done. I tucked the rifle back inside my robe, picked up my bicycle and wheeled it slowly home. The euphoria faded on the way, to be replaced by doubt. Yes, Eddie Monack had paid the final price, and would be judged by a better authority than me. But others would quickly take his place. Would I do the same to them? The answer, sadly, was yes. So what makes me so different from the Monk? Not much, if truth be told. We’re all singing the same tune really. Some of us just use different words.
***
I opened the door to the confession box, crossed myself and slithered to my knees. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“There, there, my son,” said the bishop. “I knew I could count on you.”
DON’T TELL
Gabriel Valjan
Some lives run the river’s course. Some lives are all diamonds and lace. Some lives play out like a long death scene. Then there’s Charlie; his life went down a blind alley. Twice. The first time was when he creased his wife in half the night he pulled into the garage and mistook the gas for the brake. Then there was that second detour of a decision.
Charlie taught math at the local school, but it was the DUIs that made him see that the common denominator to his misery was his affair with the juice. He had the teaching job – tenure, too, and the nice paycheck, and the house, the wife and kid. Part of the wife’s life–insurance policy paid off the mortgage and a good lump of the rest of it went into a trust fund for their daughter, Jessie.
The first DUI got him a joke of a fine, mandatory counseling, and community service. Some say that the judge, who had also lost a wife months earlier, had gone soft on Charlie. A lawyer helped him skirt the harsh penalties of a second DUI. A third strike, he was told, would make his license go bye–bye, and there would be serious jail time, and that was just half of the sandwich he would be making for himself. That was when Charlie found Jesus and the Good Book became his constant companion. That is, until the night he dipped into the bar and downed shots like a soldier on a suicide mission.
Charlie did the blind–man’s stumble in the dark and dropped his keys three times in front of his car door. He had forgotten to release the emergency brake, which is why his Civic was moving like a turtle with indigestion. He managed to spurt the red Honda across the gravel and point it homeward on the road. He had been proud of himself then: his car had been headed in the right direction; his speed had been within the limit and his driving straighter than a run to his grandmother’s outhouse. All had been going well, except he had been traveling in the wrong lane. Good for him that there had been no oncoming traffic, bad for him that Sheriff Bigelow had been behind him.
Charlie was hugging the wheel, his face inches away from the windshield when the cherry–and–berry lights went on and turned his leather interior into a disco scene. An amplified voice told him to pull over. Charlie crawled the car into the shoulder lane. He bounced his forehead on the wheel while he waited for the familiar rap on his window. He rolled the window down.
“Evening, officer.”
“Geez, Charlie. Are you trying to get sized up for a third DUI?”
“I’m fine.” Charlie said; his head used the steering wheel as a pillow.
“Like hell you are,” the sheriff said. He did the usual sweep with his flashlight. The glare singed Charlie’s eyes. The opened window and the cold air braced Charlie; it inspired him to think that he could fake sober.
“Would you like me to step out?”
“I doubt that you can stand up, no less walk a line.”
“Want me to count backwards?
“Keep your feathers on, Charlie.”
“Was I speeding?”
“No.”
“Would you like to see my license and registration?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what I did wrong.”
Sheriff Bigelow leaned down. He pointed to the highway through the windshield. “See that car in the distance?”
“Yep.”
“Now before you say ’yep’ again, I want you to ask yourself what lane that car is in and then tell me what lane your car is in. Take your time and tell me your answer.”
The glow of the headlights came close and closer until it whitened Charlie’s face. He was so in the wrong that any answer he gave was no better than any of those excuses his students had given him for a missed assignment.
“Tell you what, Charlie,” the sheriff said. “You give me the keys and I’ll have one of my deputies come out and drive your car home.” Bigelow’s big hand waved its fat fingers. Charlie surrendered the keys.
He opened the door with his wrists held out. The “Get in on the passenger side” made Charlie stop his slow walk to the police car. Charlie hadn’t expected charity on the blacktop.
Hat off, Bigelow had a buzzed cut that was as flat as an airport’s runway. Hat on, he could pass for a drill instructor. He had the voice and gravitas to silence a rattlesnake. The rest of him was solid tree trunk with limbs knotted with muscles.
“I’ll drive you home. Is Jessie in?”
“She is. What about…” Charlie said as he lifted the door’s handle. Bigelow took off his cover and ducked into the driver’s seat without a word. Time to shut up and accept the ride and not question the fare.
“You’ve got to fly right, Charlie,” the sheriff said.
“I know,” Charlie said, hand to his forehead. He had lost count of his regrets.
“People might get the wrong idea,” Bigelow said. “Some people think your wife’s death was no accident, and others think you’re a drunk.”
“I know,” Charlie said. He could see both sides to the equation.
Home was a cul–de–sac after a dull spree through suburbia; its entry and exit was a U dotted with sturdy pines, manicured shrubs and green grass not visible at night but tended to by automatic sprinklers. There was the obligatory shed out back. There was the infamous garage. A light flashed on when it detected motion in the driveway. Another light turned on, this one inside the house.
“Here are your keys, Charlie. Go on inside.”
“But, what about…”
The sheriff dangled the keys. The matinée looks, those blue eyes, perfect nose, the square jaw and the boyish smirk conspired to say the unspoken, “Take them, Charlie. Go on inside.”
Charlie did. He closed the car door and was walking around the front when he heard, “Oh, Charlie.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Bigelow kept his eyes on Charlie as he went into reverse without looking and cut his wheel to do a k–turn. He did it all with the finesse
of a seasoned getaway driver. He did it with a frozen look and ended the vehicular demonstration with an unnerving blink of an eye.
Jessie had waited up for him. She never asked questions, never judged her father, and had helped him through his frequent stupors and fog–gray hazes. Sixteen and fast–tracked for sainthood, she had all the colors in the stained glass covered: as homemaker, she tended house after school, did all the cooking at night, the cleaning, the laundry and the shopping on weekends. She’d take the bus or a cab from the stores. The choice varied with her tolerance for the whispers she heard from the gossips. When drink iced her father’s brain, she did all his grading, too. Instead of a girl’s life she skippered her father through one storm to the next. No boys called on her because her father the teacher scared them off, whether he was steamed drunk or mathematically sober.
Charlie was in bed reading about Christ washing feet with bloodshot eyes when he asked his daughter if she could hang his such–and–such shirt and tie for him, for work in the morning.
***
Charlie walked back into his house two days later on a sunny afternoon to find Sheriff Bigelow on the sofa, a broad smile advertised on his face, tall glass of lemonade in his hand, and a leg crossed over in conversation with Jessie, who knitted the top of her sock with nervous fingers.
“Sheriff Bigelow stopped by to make sure that your car was in order.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“The sheriff said that you had car trouble the other night.”
“I did, didn’t I,” Charlie said, as he set his weathered valise down.
Bigelow rose. “I should go,” he said and then added for Charlie’s curiosity, “Jessie and I were having an interesting talk.”
“Were you? What do a grown man and a high–school girl discuss?”
Bigelow smiled with good teeth. “I didn’t know that you owned a revolver, Charlie. I do hope that you have the proper paperwork for it.”
Charlie countered with the slickest smile he owned. “License and carrying permit.”
“Glad to hear it.” Bigelow held his sheriff’s hat by its brim. “I’ll stop by at eight, Jessie.”
“Yes, sheriff,” she said in a low voice.
Charlie gave the sheriff a hard stare as he unbuttoned the front of his jacket. He glanced at Jessie and then at the lawman. “Did I miss something before I arrived?”
Jessie lowered her eyes and her voice spoke to the floor. “The sheriff asked me out this evening. He said that you had approved, so I said yes.”
Bigelow leaned forward with his hat extended to Jessie. Charlie calculated it at forty–five degrees. “Please, it’s Dan. I won’t be sheriff tonight, and yes your father gave me his blessing to ask you out. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
Charlie strained to smile. “I did, didn’t I” was all he could say.
Father and daughter watched Sheriff Bigelow thank them for the lemonade and watched him do his cowboy–out–of–the–homestead stroll. They didn’t say a word when they heard the front door click closed, or the car with the shield on the door shut and its engine kick over, or the soft sound of the official vehicle do reverse out of their driveway.
“I can’t believe that you said yes,” Charlie said.
“What was I supposed to say? My own father sold me out.”
“I did not sell you. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Car trouble was it? How about you were so blinkered that you couldn’t drive, and he offered you a deal. Another conviction and it’s your job, this house and –”
“And you in foster care, if you want go for the whole string of pearls.”
Jessie had picked up the lemonade and he caught her arm as she walked past him.
“I was not that drunk,” he said.
“Oh, please. Had a mosquito bitten you, it would’ve exploded.” She glanced down at the hand. “Get your hand off me.”
He released her.
She quick–stepped to the kitchen with the impotent sound of his “I’m still your father” behind her. In the kitchen he heard the avalanche sound of ice cubes as they hit the steel kitchen sink.
***
Jessie wore her best dress because it was expected. She didn’t wear makeup because she had never learned how to apply it, although she did put on a natural shade of pink lipstick. She judged herself feminine and ladylike, a plain Jane without frills.
Bigelow showed up in a civilian car, in civilian clothes, just as tall, just as imposing as some fullback out of the backfield or the cornfields of Iowa. He opened the door for her. He complimented her on her appearance. He asked how she was doing in her studies. High–Honors student was something to be proud of, he had said, and some college would snap her up. He let her select the radio station.
She smiled a lot. She kept the currency of their conversation clipped, but not too abrupt. They discussed the weather. She tried not to show her concern when he drove out of town. She glanced over her shoulder at the sign for the city limit.
“I know this lovely little restaurant,” he said.
The restaurant was posh, with its bright–white linen tablecloths, linen napkins, and waiters and waitresses who walked and talked as if they had been born in a charm school. The hostess was so beautiful and glamorous. The menu had one page for cocktails, two pages for appetizers, another two pages of entrées, and a page that instructed the reader to ask for separate menus for desserts, wines, and after–dinner drinks.
Bigelow charmed the waiter with a story that got her served red wine. She got inquisitive looks that he silenced with a disdainful stare. They coasted through the courses with small talk and she measured the night by the number of glasses of wine he had had and how long it took for the candles to shrink down to a nub in the holder. It was Friday going into the wee hours, not that she had a curfew.
The drive back was through unfamiliar back roads that frightened her. She could make out the moon, most of the stars, including the North Star, but none of that was of any help. She asked him where there were going and he said nothing. She asked again and he continued driving, hands on the wheel, like a man on a long haul, with a fixed schedule and time for delivery. She reached for the radio and he shut it off.
“So that’s how it’s going to be,” she said.
He stared straight ahead; a sick, twisted smile was part of the profile now.
He pulled the car into a lot. She saw a desiccated hotel, made half of wood and half of stone in the middle of the woods where a scream would never be heard by human ears. The only mark of civilization was a dim light in the window and a gasping neon sign of a crane.
“Get out,” he said and reached over and pulled the handle and pushed the door open. She did get out and his fingers curled around her arm and directed her to a set of stairs.
“There is nobody else here except the clerk at the desk and he is near ninety, just about deaf in both ears, and can’t see two inches beyond his nose.”
“You’re pathetic,” she said.
They got to the foot of the stairs, which led up to the rear door of a room. His room. She held the railing determined that she fight each step up the gallows. He looked down his nose and angled his head in for a kiss. She had never been kissed but she imitated the movies by opening her mouth slightly, which he interpreted as acceptance, and she bit him hard. That earned her a wallop of a backhand that burned across her face and made her head reel and ring. She stepped backward and he stepped forward and all she remembered after that was the shoulder jabbing her with each step up the stairs and the hand under her skirt, between her legs.
***
When she walked through the door of her own home the next morning, she didn’t find her father. The car was there, but he wasn’t. What she did find was the shopping list, dishes in the sink, and a laundry bag near the basement door. She saw some wine left in the bottle and she took it with her upstairs to her bathroom. She felt sore and soiled, angry and disgusted. A swig of the wine did
n’t change the taste of Bigelow in her mouth, nor did the wine taste any good, but it was something.
She ran the water and before the steam crowded the room she took off all her clothes. She counted the bruises. The split lip hurt the most. There wasn’t much use in calling the police, she thought, hands to each shoulder as a shield of modesty in front of the mirror. Nobody would believe her, and if they did she’d become just another small–town secret, another wisp of conversation between the aisle and the checkout counter at the local A&P.
The steam was rising: the hot water would wash it all away. The steam would lift it all up off her. She wanted Bigelow off her skin, out of her pores. Men made her sick. First, her father, with his box of chalk and now his Bible, annotated in pencil and pickled with little bits of paper as bookmarkers, as if he could find when and where he had lost his soul. She knew both how and where: drink. Then there was brutish Sheriff Dan Bigelow: protector and guardian of law and order. Some joke he was. Her teeth chattered in the steam as she recounted her screams and kicks, how small her hands appeared against his shoulders, how hopeless they pushed against that wall, the tearing sound of her clothes and his own sadistic push. The water warmed her. Her blood roared for revenge.
She riffled through her mother’s vanity. She did what other girls did —well, usually little girls imitate the application of makeup. It did not take long for her to get used to the pencil’s prickliness against her skin. She soon created the illusion of large, round eyes. She opted for a darker shade of lipstick this time. She had to doctor that wound. The color she chose would make men imagine the naughty things her lips could do in the dark. She teased and vamped the hair to frame her face and hide an eye and another bruise. She slid into a pair of jeans that hugged every landmark. She was an obscenity nicely packaged. Jessie tossed mom’s cell phone into a purse, both items hers now thanks to mom. She didn’t forget the most important item: the car keys and the revolver, thanks to dad.