by Matthew Crow
It was odd, I can tell you, reading back over my life as I awaited my fate. Odd when they’d got things just wrong - my age, say, when my mother was killed, or the year I finally left school for good. Odder still when they got things right that only I could have known.
As someone who’d never even seen his own birth certificate, let alone a payslip or a bank statement, it was as if for the first time in my life I had proof of myself; like I had been written into existence by excitable strangers. I can’t say that a part of me didn’t enjoy the attention. Either way I felt like suddenly I had been invented by the whole country that seemed to have a better idea of me than I did. The inevitable upshot being that by the time our stories had been stretched and woven on the media’s loom our sentences were lowered to just twenty years apiece.
Herman was nineteen when he died. Pete twenty-two. Mr Mayhill a grown man of forty-five; nothing if not halfway what he deserved. I can’t say I’m proud of what I did, but then again I can’t say I don’t feel as though I’ve more than paid my dues.
On Friday morning, unable to sleep, I took coffee alone in the cafe amidst the nightshift workers who chewed the fat before returning, soiled and exhausted, to their daylight beds. Halfway through my second cup Mary was readying herself for the start of her shift as the lights inside became nullified by the rising sun. A man in overalls went to pay his bill and left a five-dollar note on the counter.
“I’ll double it for your phone number, precious,” he said, the ‘s’ of precious catching on his chipped front teeth.
“You could triple it and add six zeroes and you’d still be no closer to my specifics. Now if that’s all I can do for you... ” she scowled, placing the money into a communal tip jar as her paramour left, face red and ego bruised.
Mary’s indignation towards the male gaze was now silently respected by almost all who frequented the diner. The lonely truckers who politely requested a private dining experience were met with a steely dismissal, and one morning not long after I’d moved here I was served coffee in a cup dotted with blackened fingerprints. I stared at Mary quizzically - like recognising like, though she was not to realise this - and she shrugged as if to say ‘it was all I could do’. Eventually when we were alone she began talking. Turned out a gentleman on her bus ride home had allowed his hands to wander suggestively against the nylon of her overalls. After her polite request for him to desist went unnoticed, she had taken a fork from her handbag with which she ate the same lunch every day (cottage cheese and pineapple, with a single wheat cracker) and tore four skid-marks of skin from his forehead to his chin. Thankfully the gentleman turned out to be a prolific and still-at-large sexual predator, and so the charges of attempted murder were dropped. But, as Mary told me proudly:
“My Daddy was a hunter and his Daddy before him. I could pick a bird clean off a power line with nothing but a fork and my steady aim. If I’d attempted to kill him he’d be dead.”
“You sure got a fine line in letting a guy down,” I said as she poured herself a small cup of coffee, which she took black and gulped hungrily.
“You could drop most of these log-heads from a high-rise and they’d still climb up and try again, dumb sonsofbitches. Say, you’re an early riser today, honey,” she said, topping up my cup. “Though we don’t see all that much of you these days. Got yourself a little lady?”
“No ma’am, grafting like an honest man. Got myself not one but two sources of income.”
“Well you don’t do things by half, huh? We miss you around here. Don’t give us no hassle. Not like some.”
“I’ll try to make the effort,” I said, before remembering my promise to Harlow.
“Levi?” she said, surprised that I had asked, “Oh he’s a card alright. Hasn’t been in as much these days. I guess it’s getting too much for him, what with his age and all. Last week he forgot his little notebook. I made sure it was returned. Boy, I tell you, it was something to stop myself from reading it. I think more than anything I just didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“So he’s harmless enough?”
“As the next man who needs a stick make it to the restroom. Though you’d be wrong in thinking he’s as dumb as he acts. The man’s a copper bottom genius, has the money to prove it too. They say he has over three million dollars in paintings alone. ‘The bard of small town America’ that lady from the magazine called him when she came round sniffing. Funny that a place where nothing happens can get people so damn excited. Suppose there’s a lot to be said for recognising your own. He writes the little people so well you see, that way everyone understands.”
“I heard he was a writer.”
“You heard? You mean you haven’t read it?”
“Read what?”
“Oh you must! He wrote us all so beautifully. We’re all in there. The coffee shop, Main Street, the town fair. Of course he changed it all just so, you know, I daresay he wasn’t so keen on the town taking him to court... or running him out with pitchforks for that matter. Some of the stories he made up... ” she laughed. “Phewey, he’s got him an imagination. Had the sheriff shoot a man and bury the body. Have you ever!”
“Can’t say I’ve come across his work.”
“Oh he doesn’t write as himself. Uses a... what’s the word?”
“Pseudonym?”
“Penname. That’s it. Here, I’ll write it down, you can check him out next time you make it to the library. That is if you still do, now you’re a corporate big shot and all.” She scribbled a name on a napkin and handed it to me. “You really should read the books. He wrote us all so beautifully. Especially you.”
“He wrote me?”
“Well, here and there. There’s always a stranger, always handsome, always full up with secrets... always gets the girl in the end too, even when he don’t deserve her, which he usually doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t sound like my sort of thing.”
“Oh but it would be. How can you not? Don’t you at least want to know how it ends?”
“I’ve survived this long without his clairvoyance. Can’t say I’ve suffered as a result.”
“You know you are like him. The character I mean. Boy has he got you good.”
“What’s he like though, character wise?”
“You?”
“Levi.”
“Oh, an old fool. Hasn’t spent a penny he doesn’t need to. Wouldn’t tell by looking at him the man was worth more than the rest of this town put together. Has an eye for the ladies too... I say ladies, some of them are barely much more than girls. And don’t they just eat up his promises! Sweet really. Why do you ask darling?”
“No reason,” I said, and paid my bill.
I arrived half an hour early to meet Michael, partly through nerves, and partly due to an eagerness to claim the shadiest booth available in the entire bar. As is turned out the latter was overkill, the bar was empty save for the serving staff, yet still I felt the need to locate the darkest table in the room.
One hour and three beers later Michael entered, his shadowy associate trailing behind.
“Well aint this quaint,” he said, taking a seat.
I nodded.
“So Jonah, now that the shock’s worn off, how’s life?”
“Quiet. I keep myself to myself.”
“Not much changed there then. This boy... ” he said to Ed, “... this boy quieter than a praying monk. You never seen cash handed over as quick. Never so much as raised his gun. Silent but deadly, huh pal?”
A waitress in tight blue jeans passed the table and Michael extended his arm to block her path.
“Two more beers when you’re ready, darling.”
“Sure thing,” she said, making her way back to the bar.
“So Jonah, what’s your line of work?”
I told Michael first about the sideline with Caleb, and then moved onto the details of my main source of income, carefully omitting the names of any allegiances I had managed to make over the previous months.
Michael slapped Ed on the back to little avail.
“Don’t ask don’t tell. I do an honest day’s work and to my mind I get paid an honest day’s wage. Whatever goes on behind the scenes don’t matter to me. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.”
“Well that is one mighty philosophy you got there my friend. So, how much you earn?”
“Enough to get by.”
“Putting some money away?”
“A little.”
This is a lie. Having survived for so long on next to nothing I am now perturbed as to what exactly I am supposed to do with excess income, and as such the majority of my salary now goes into a savings jar which I store beneath the loosest floorboard in my bedroom.
“So you’re no good for a loan, huh?”
“Not unless it’s for a down payment on a coffee. Even then I’d be needing interest.”
At this Ed made a brief exhalation, which I took to be an embryonic laugh.
“How many people working on that site there Jonah?”
“Nearing sixty.”
“And they pay you cash?”
“So far.”
“Well that’s a lot of dirty money passing hands,” said Michael. “A lot of dirty money.”
“You working?”
“Not as yet. We have ourselves one or two avenues we’re looking to explore though.”
“Where you based?”
“Wherever I lay my hat as the saying goes. This is a nice town Jonah, plenty of opportunities it would appear.”
“Don’t be fooled. Took me best part of a year to find a job and even then I’m being paid to move dirt onto more dirt. And believe me when I say I use the term ‘paid’ loosely.”
“Now now, you’re too modest. Besides, I’m sure that between us we’d be able to enterprise, as the saying goes. What do you think?”
“Too busy with what I got, but thanks all the same.”
I left little more than half an hour later. Michael’s voice rose higher and higher with each passing inch of his glass. He tipped that beer down like it was water until his roving eye became a glass marble in a pop bottle, spinning and twirling in the scorched socket of his face.
“... and then this one time Jonah and I, phewey I don’t even like to say it as much what with ladies in earshot and all, we found us some women - well, I say women... ”
As he continued with his stories I made an elaborate show of securing my wallet in the vain hope it would indicate my imminent departure, though experience had told me that such subtleties were wasted on Michael.
“Oh now don’t be getting all coy Jonah,” said Michael, feigning concern. “Ed here’s in no position to judge. I’m just messing with you. It’s sure nice to have someone to waltz through the past with; especially given every other face must be near enough dust by this point. Say did you ever find out where they buried the boys?”
“Can’t say it was a subject I researched. Best leave them in peace. We were different people back then.”
“You can say that again.”
I made to leave but Michael’s hand shot forward and grabbed hold of my arm. Ed inched forward gently and I felt the echoing barrel of a handgun press into the base of my kneecap.
“Just hold your horses there friend,” Michael hissed. “You took half my face and all my best years, now you’ll show us some civility or things are going to get real ugly in here, you understand? I decide what goes and what doesn’t. Way I see it I got a royal flush and you’re not even in the game. I’m playing win-win, if you catch my drift, so sit the fuck down.”
I did as instructed and Michael removed his arm from mine. The gun remained in place.
“Now why you got to go and upset everyone like that Jonah? We were having us a nice evening. Good company, good conversation. All we wanted to do was chat.”
“And we did.”
“Nah, we didn’t chat. We skimmed the surface. We touched base, if you will. I was hoping we could talk the way we used to.”
“Those times are gone.”
“Not entirely. God damn Jonah this isn’t you. Digging for a living. You got class boy, you got brains. And I... I got balls. Together we could have anything we wanted.”
“Didn’t work out so well the last time.”
“We were boys. The benefit of maturity and so on and so forth. We made mistakes and boy did we learn from them. I bet there isn’t one night you don’t wake up in cold sweats remembering what you done? Remembering that feeling in your stomach when you got up to see just what a little finger action can do to a room... to a face.”
I didn’t respond.
“A town like this is just crying out for villains Jonah, and we’re the best of the bunch, don’t you forget it. No leopard ever changed its spots the way I see you making out like you’re some God damn reformed character. We watched you, all sad eyed and slumped shoulders like the wronged gentle giant of the lowlands. It as good as doubled me over laughing Jonah, really it did.”
“People change.”
“Not for long. The past stays with you whether you like it or not,” he pushed himself further across the table, his face protruding like a Bloody Mary emerging from a mirror. “I could remind you the way you did me, if you think it’d make any difference?” At this, with a rested elbow on the table, he lowered his hand towards my face, pointing the tip of a switchblade towards the corner of my eye.
I shook my head and stood up. Ed returned to a more upright position within his seat and looked at Michael as though awaiting instruction. Michael appeared strangely calm, though I could tell that his skin was only just containing the rage that rolled like lava beneath his strange, unreadable surface.
“I’m real sorry for the way things turned out Michael. But you’re part of me that doesn’t exist anymore, like it or not. I wish you all the best, and I wish things could have been different. But they’re not. You see I’ve nothing of interest to you. Least you can do is leave on good terms.”
“Well,” he said as I walked towards the bar, my back to him the whole time. “I can’t say I’m not let down Jonah. I saw big plans for you and me. Big plans. Still, I might remain within earshot for the time being, in the hope you do change your mind about reinstating our alliance. Opportunities are abundant for two boys like us out there. And if there’s one thing I had plenty of practice of it’s waiting. It’s an art you and I are both black belts in, huh buddy?”
“Goodbye Michael.”
“Until next time, friend,” he said as I mounted the stairs and left.
I walked home in the dark along with a bottle of scotch that I had purchased at the 24/7 liquor store whose main custom came from swatted barflies still thirsty after closing time. I no longer feared the worst. I knew it was to come. Michael’s warning was characteristic and prophetic. I never saw a boy so concentrated on revenge as Michael when he set his mind to it. Soon after we became acquainted he was short-changed in the sort of bar where customer service was not considered paramount. After a brief exchange of short words and minor blows we were expelled from the premises on the end of the owner’s foot. Three weeks later Michael noticed said barman queuing at the bank. When they found him his jaw had been ripped so far down he is still, to my knowledge, being fed through a tube. And though never so much as encroached as a subject, the fact remains too that the twin daughters of Michael’s second foster family went missing shortly after his seventeenth birthday. Had they ever been found they would be celebrating their thirtieth birthday this year.
I sat and sipped whisky by the side of the road. Main Street was a glowing hum to my left; the suburbs closed and dark behind me. As I drained the life from the bottle two police cars trailed indigo sm
udges straight past me into the heart of the town centre.
I stood up and made my way home.
With all the love of a heavy heart,
Jonah
Dear Jonah,
Sometimes I forget to wake up at all these days. I always was a heavy sleeper, whereas Eve slept the way stupid people read; skimming the surface, barely touching the bare essentials before declaring herself done and moving onto another, more worthy task. As if by being observed going through the motions she might somehow absorb at least a fraction of its intended purpose. “But, Verity don’t you get bored?” she’d say to me, fussing and clanking about the trailer as I pressed my face back into the pillows.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” I’d usually try, in an attempt to initiate one of her monologues during which I hoped to nod back off.
“Hell no! Life’s too short for rest. There’s a whole world out there needs discovering. Besides, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Princess and the pea, that’s me. The slightest thing just knocks me for six.”
In truth until I had Eve in my life the majority of the time I slept because it seemed to be the only time anything happened of any interest. My imagination would take hold as I sunk into oblivion, and away I’d go. It was my waking hours that appeared lacklustre. I’d attend work, I’d pay my bills, and then nine times out of ten I’d cocoon myself deep within the down and cotton, the springs worrying beneath me as I drifted into the unknown. For the seasoned napper - or the outright narcoleptic, which I sometimes feared I was becoming - to sleep during daylight hours was the greatest luxury of all. Nothing thrilled me more than the artificial chill of a darkened room, and the way that sunlight would peer slyly beneath the black square of closed curtains as if spying on some godless act.
This morning I was woken from such a slumber by a gentle knock at the door to my room. I went to answer and was faced with Rosalita - one of the child maids - holding out a package. “Someone leave this reception, miss. For you.” She walked away without further elaboration. I watched her disappear along the corridor and down the old wooden staircase leading to the vending machines and the reception area. I went to open the box that had clearly been tampered with. I suspect many packages don’t reach their intended recipients at this particular hotel, so for all I know you could have joined the FBI by now Jonah and I’d be non the wiser. Either way this little gift seemed to have survived the hazing process intact, so I carried it inside.