by Beau Johnson
“He always said he didn’t want children. The love he had, he said it was only enough for me. Both of us know better than that though, don’t we?” I can’t even say she is talking to me. Oh she is, don’t get me wrong, but the woman’s demeanor is distracted, her appearance disheveled and, boy howdy, was she willing to pace. Back and forth, cigarette after cigarette, she is on about my body, my tits, and the tightness of my ass. Yoga pants. Sport bras. The things I probably let Michael do in the soft dark hole of my mouth. Yeah, feels like she’d been saving that last one.
“What is a woman to do,” she says. “How is one expected to compete?” I understand all this, every part. But I also don’t care, not as I should. Reasonable? Depends on how you look at things. I am in life for me and only me and I can say this no other way. Sure I could play the part of a human being as well as anyone, but only if it allowed me to acquire the things that make life worth living. Sound familiar? That’s okay. I lied to myself for a long time too.
I’ve lied about other things as well. Many things. What I cannot run from is this defense mechanism going on inside my head right now. I mean, that has to be what’s going on, right? If not, just who is it I’m talking to then?
“I guess the question I really want answered is this. Did you even consider what you could be destroying?” Would I give her the answer she wanted if I were able? Hell, if I wasn’t hanging from this tree? I can’t say, not with any kind of certainty. I could tell her it wasn’t me who initiated. Me who said they’d be leaving their wife whether he’d met me or not. Probably not the type of disclosure a woman in Linda’s condition needed to hear, but then again my options had fallen somewhere between fucked and Sunday so perhaps I should cut myself some slack.
This brings tears. Blubbering, really. The woman I had become reduced to the teenager she loathed. Not a declaration I am overly proud of, no, as I consider myself as strong as I am selfish, but things are coming to an end remember, my time left upon this world now minutes at best.
And yes, I do want to live. More than anything, yes. But the realist in me, she has always been strong.
Understanding as much as I think I do, I do what I believe she wants me to. I apologize. Doing so with the only tools left in my box: eyes which plead and beg to a mouth which grunts and groans as my body twists as best it can while balancing upon the birdbath beneath me. I am given a crash course in simmering rage for my troubles; Linda’s lined face a mixture of pain and despair and hate as she comes forward and slowly removes said birdbath. She does it this way so my neck will feel everything she needs it to. I am making up this last part, unable to surmise what the woman was truly thinking, but I’m pretty sure I’m not far from the mark, not from the look in her eyes.
Woman had a plan is what I see. Woman was following through.
And oh, would you look at that. Rain.
Back to TOC
Heavy Lego
Okay. So here’s the deal.
Most messed up thing I ever done was cut a dude in two. This takes talent. And very steady hands. Doesn’t hurt I’d hit the gym most of my life either, but that’s neither here nor there. What I really need to get back to is how true my hands had to be in order to pull something like this off—that it allowed me to split the damn bastard right across the equator.
I am by no means a “good” guy, not in the clearest sense of the word, and I would never want such a thing misconstrued. I am not “bad” either, but the line I ride is fine. Drugs and addiction are the reasons for this. I will not wrap it, what I am, so take it or leave it; I couldn’t really give a fuck.
“How much it is you lookin’ for?” Except for his voice, Virgil was a cross between Eric La Salle and a young Ving Rhames. Dressed in grey slacks, a beater T, and enough gold so his neck would never need a gym, he was the undisputed King of Fifth and Dime.
“Twenty, yo,” I say through the bars and screen. Usually I just wait there on his porch, my dick in my hand, until Virgil decides to saunter back with what I ordered. Why today played out differently, I will never know.
“Have a seat, m’man. Take a load off. All Big Daddy wants to do is talk a little.” I have never trusted people who refer to themselves in the third person. This was how the big man talked though, right down to the hand gestures to his chest and the fondling of his junk.
It was dark too, and gloomy, the only real light coming in through slats in the blinds. I asked: “Where’s T-J and Bench?”
“The crew’s done gone, dawg. Down to Haldone’s to get the place some drink. Don’t mean no never mind, though—gives us the time to talk.” I know. Fuck me, right? I had no choice, though, not since a particular letter of the alphabet had gotten her hooks into me.
In front of me sat a glass coffee table. Atop this table, all the things I’d come to cherish; balloons and needles, papers and spoons. Scales too, a pair of them, where I assumed Virgil weighed every ounce he’d ever thrown my way. Above us, a ceiling fan droned on, me in the high-back chair I’d been led to and Virgil on a leather couch. The axe I would come to use stared up at me from where it rested at the bottom of the table. I did not need my spider sense to tell me the reason it’d been left there. Shit like that was bread and butter to men like Virgil, where word of mouth could work like bullets. Sometimes better.
Now I think about it, I suppose it’s pretty much the reason I went and arranged him the way I did.
“You like what you been gettin’, Clement? You think—” He didn’t get to finish. The door behind me—the one which led to the cages I would soon find out about—blew open.
A child no older than eight stood there. He was white, this boy, pale, and in nothing but his Fruit of the Looms. Wild-eyed, screaming, he moved toward the front door with a purpose I could relate to. He did not stop once he reached the bars; no, picked himself up and ran into them again. And then one more time for good measure. I wanted to tell the kid to stop, that it was locked and to just give us a minute, but my mind doesn’t work that way. Might be because my father beat me that my mind does this, might be because my mother did not. Only thing I know for certain is that you don’t fuck with kids.
“What the fuck,” Virgil was standing now, as was I, the both of us truly astonished by the sight of the boy and his continued attempts to flee. As they say, it is here that the shit got real.
I look at Virgil, my grill set, and you know what this mutherfucker does in turn? It ain’t bake cookies, that’s for sure. We fight. One black man. One brown. Drugs go flying. Needles too. And suddenly my back is through the glass coffee table. I’m cut, sure, but I’m more worried about the hands around my neck. Struggling, kicking, watching darkness seep toward me from all sides, I reach out, grasp for anything, a piece of table, syringe, carpet, anything, and then the handle of the axe is in my hand and I swing it sideways and up and the blunt end takes Virgil in the ear. It is enough to daze him. The next whack knocks him flat out.
I jump up, sucking air harder than I ever have. In the corner by the door the kid huddles, chicken-bone arms around chicken-bone knees. I tell him to stay where he is, that he’s safe for the moment, and that I just have to see. Down I go, hoping that what I’m about to find is not as evil as I feared. One look at the cameras and the cages and I know I have never been more wrong.
It is here that something shifts in my head and I realize why the axe had yet to leave my hand. It surprised me, sure, but not as much as you’d think.
What shocks me more is when the kid gets in on the action and starts to help; when he grabs the top portion of Virgil by the arms and tugs forward, big chunks of the man’s busted vertebrae falling out like heavy Lego. Me, I take the legs, put about twelve feet of thick ribbon between us.
“That’s good, little man. It’ll do.” And it did. T-J and Bench listening to every word I said with eyes wide and mouths agape, taking it all in as they looked from one piece of Virgil to the other. “No more kids,” I tell them; there was a new king in town.
I am by no m
eans a good man, I tell them, nor am I bad, but I have no problem riding the line to get me what I need.
They’d be wise to remember as much.
Back to TOC
Alma
The piece of shit sitting in front of Alma and me was not the man who’d wronged us. Close, but not He Who Made Mommy Go Away. This one was thin, for one, and had close-kept eyes for another. Little patches of hair sprouted from his face as well, stuff which reminded me of the squiggly things my grandmother eventually grew—not really a beard at all. Struggling against the duct tape, he looks from me to Alma and back again; had actually been doing it since I took the burlap sack from his head. Led me to believe I had the right man. That he’d been released this very morning, well, that was just in case there is in fact a God.
“You gonna behave yourself, Joel? You promise me that, I remove the gag. Sound good?” Joel nods yes, slowly, like he might think his life depended on it. Each of us were where we needed to be, my basement, around a card table I knew I would never again use for cards. Quiet, patient, Alma is to my left, her hair uneven but in the best possible braid I could manage. Behind us the refrigerator kicks on and off and then goes through the entire cycle again. Mental note: must get that fixed. Above us, a lone forty-watt bulb gives us the shadow I believe we require—what a man like Joel and all his kind deserve.
You still sure about this? my wife says from somewhere in the back of my mind. It’s sudden, this voice, and loud, and the only place the woman I’d married now lived. That’s not true of course, not really. Not once I look into the eyes of the daughter we created. Big and brown, they pool just like Arlene’s. In them I see everything I’ve ever needed and all the things she will ever become. It is a curse, the type of parent I am now, but it is also the reason things like this needed to be done.
“Daddy?” I grasp that I’ve been standing there, my hands out, the gag still within the piece of shit’s mouth. It is happening more often this way, me zoning out with my thoughts like this. I make another mental note: rectify this. Alma has already been through too much.
“Sorry, baby, just thinking about your mom.” At this my little girl smiles, and for a moment all is again right with the world, not a hair out of place. It’s as I look back to the garbage in front me that my stomach turns and I once more become something I never thought I could be.
Truth be told, there are not enough flames in hell.
Gag removed, I give him my speech, the words I have practiced. I want to know, I tell him. I must know. Just give me a reason and I will let you go. It doesn’t come, what I want. But it’s not really a want, not if I’m honest. It’s more of a need. To know and somehow understand how another human being could do the things he’d done. “I mean, really, what is it? What excites you enough to do that to boys? I mean, seriously?” He babbles, cries, weeps and pleads. Nothing of this was new. Not one part original. Made me angry is what this did, there with Alma looking on. It’s now, in this exact moment, that I realize I have given too much up, too much time, but it’s then that the true monster comes out, the one who understands he has nothing left to lose.
“And you think I’m fucked up? Dude, what about you? What is this kid? Seven? Eight? You think something like this ain’t gonna scar her for life? I got news for you, fuckwad. Time to get a clue!” His voice has become hard, a snarl, thick lines of vein now out upon his neck. “But if it was me who’d done your wife, I’d have took my time. You got that! Made sure she felt every bit of pain I could give her. I would fuck her hard and I would rip her wide! And you want to know why, right? That’s your fucking question?” Feral. Vile. Little goops of spittle in the corners of his mouth. In the blink of an eye different but yet the very same. Again I paused to think of God.
“I’ll tell you the fucking reason…” he barks, but the moment passes. It’s not me who shuts him down though, my gun still in the back of my pants, my eyes still holding the evil in his. It’s only when the eyes holding mine are gone that I look over to Alma, her .32 drawn, her hand steady.
I ask, “How did it feel this time?”
“Better,” she says, and my heart fills up with something I can’t yet describe. Righteousness perhaps, but even then I’m still not quite sure.
“Come on, then, let’s get you to bed. I’ll clean up once I’ve tucked you in.”
“Carry me?” And it’s here, as Alma holds her arms up, that I lose myself in the eyes I helped create; that I see everything I want to see and everything I need to see. I see her mother. Her father. And everything that men like the one now missing half his face will never again take away. Not if I could help it.
“Sure, baby,” I say. “Sure.”
Back to TOC
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
I have done questionable things. Some I am proud of. Some I have chosen to never bring up again. What grinds my gears like no other is when someone takes the time to pick on a person weaker than them. A close second has become not being able to hold my water on the regular. That’s something I have no control over though, so we can go and stop feeling any type of sorry you might have been starting to feel.
It’s the person not treating the other the way they should this thing is about. It’s just ungentlemanly in a world in need of the opposite. Don’t get me wrong; if a person is any type of dick, by all means, he or she is owed what’s coming to them. But if the other side of the coin is just doing it because, well, this is what I take issue with.
Brings us to Vera and her personality of late.
Younger than me by two years, Vera is the typical frail you’d find here at the Resty Acres Retirement Home. Matching her eyes is her hair, blue, and from Vera Father Time has collected the toll he takes from us all. The wrinkles are many, sure, but for Vera they come from a life lived rather than one survived.
It was her heart that stole me though, and how dear at times that woman can be. There’s more, sure, but as I’ve said, this world is already as ungentlemanly as it needs to be. Means you don’t get to know her throat game’s still good. You know, even eight decades in.
“He holds me too tight, Mick. Even after I tell him to let go. Even after he makes me cry.” This is what she says to me after I finally pry it loose. Of late she’d been withdrawn, somber, and nowhere near herself come popsicle time. What? It’s had worse names.
She’d been referring to the new guy assigned to her floor, Marwood, he of the stained scrubs and mullet-brown hair. Pock-marked and fat, he resembled that kid from Leave It To Beaver, the Beav, but you know, after he’d gotten pock-marked and fat. Admitting so, Vera nods and then sends her face down toward the floor. I stop her by taking her chin in my hand and forcing her eyes back up to mine. “Nobody hurts my best girl,” I say, and then we both sit down on the edge of her bed, each of us just kind of staring out the window into the common area. I want to say something profound here, that something profound was taking place, but I have never been that kind of man. I only continued to stroke her hand, her arm, realizing for perhaps the first time that I cared for this woman more than I ever thought I would. This, of course, brought rage, waking in me skills I’d long since put to bed.
It could only happen once then, this being what I told myself, as I was not as protected as I’d been in the past; the guys I used to run either retired themselves, dead, or working for whatever schmuck now sat on top. Meant calls were to be made. Scenarios put in place. But mainly it meant Marwood was about to have his eyes opened to the consequences a man can face when behaving in ways he should not. I’m not so sure those exact words would be spoken, but I am that he’d end up seeing my point.
“You’re sayin’ this guy’s forcing himself onto your friend?” Donnie. One of my old crew. A man who is known to get things done. Not the smartest. Not the dumbest. But loyal. All told, it’s the best any of us can ask for.
“No sex. Not like that. But the fuck gets off on hurting people in other ways. Likes to hold onto them for too long. Or too hard. You see what it is
I’m sayin’?”
“A pressure-man is what it sounds like. Likes to leave his mark without leavin’ a mark, you know?” About summed things up, but still, I had my doubts. Nothing concrete mind you, just my gut. “Makes me think this call is going to involve more people than just you and I.”
“I’m thinkin’ Old Yeller. That seem doable?”
“Man’s retired too, but I can’t see that stopping His Rabidness. Not once he finds out it’s you who’s done the asking.”
And all of a sudden I can hear the smile slide into Donnie’s voice. “Sounds like you have something special in mind, Mick. A reduction, maybe?”
“Nothing special, no, just what’s owed.”
“Yeah, special it is then.”
Next time I see Marwood he’s as I asked for him to be; nowhere near as tall as he’d been the month before. I sat on the edge of the bed, me and Vera both, each of us listening intently to this man dressed in a blue work shirt, blue work pants—now tapered quite nicely at the knee thank you very much—and a ratty old cap which proclaimed Truckers Did It By The Mile. The Beav, aka Mullet, aka Ricky Marwood, was here to offer his apologies, he said. Wanted to look us in the eyes as he was saying them, he said. “I’m sorry,” he says. I nod. Vera accepts. And as the man wheels himself from the room I can’t help but follow him out. I offer him my hand, both hands; to show him how much I respect what he’s become. He is less now, sure, but by accepting the outcome he has opened himself up to what I have already said the world needs more of.