“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? I have been right from the start.”
“Stop it, you’re no such thing.” Willie wraps her arms around herself, causing the towel to ride up her legs a bit. “You’ve got too much time on your hands to sit around and think about these morbid things. It’s not healthy, Dig. Maybe you should go back to work and—”
“I’m never going back there.”
“Then you need to start thinking about what to do with the rest of your life. Things can’t stay like this forever.”
He nods grimly. “I know.”
Wilma comes close enough to wipe the remnants of tear from his cheek with her thumb. “It’s going to be OK,” she says through a gentle smile. “You’ll see.”
Dignon gives his brother a kiss on the cheek and quietly slips out the door.
TWO
Plumes of gray smoke cough from the factory stacks on the edge of town, deluging the dark sky as they tumble and turn in great giant spirals along the horizon. It’s getting colder, and a steady breeze blows in off the choppy winter ocean, up over the coastline, slashing through town like a razor. It will snow soon. Dignon can feel it in the air. People always complain about the snow and ice, the cold, the winter, but then this is the northeast after all. He finds those complaints peculiar, if not wholly dishonest. How can people that have lived in these parts their entire lives complain about something so inherent to their location? It leaves him curious as to why they would live here at all. Unlike most, Dignon openly professes his love of snow, and has since he was a child. There’s something magical about it, especially in the early morning or evening hours when it’s dark and still and so quiet, and then suddenly, there it is, appearing from nowhere like an illusion. Otherworldly somehow, it’s a transformation that takes place right before one’s eyes, the mundane to the exquisite in an instant.
Though it’s still a few weeks from Christmas, everything is draped in holiday decorations, lights and bows and synthetic cheer. Christmas carols, distorted and tinny through cheap speakers mounted on the telephone poles in the retail district play on an endless loop, and mammoth lengths of garland have been strung from one to the next, in silver and green and red. People move about, hurrying here or there, hustling and bustling, juggling packages, talking on cell phones, making plans, living their lives in frenzied bursts of rudimentary fear, ants scurrying through tunnels of sand, unable to stop, always on the clock, never looking back. And not one of them notices him. Not one returns his attempt at eye contact, not one offers a smile or even a sneer. More than disregarded, he is overlooked, and somehow that’s worse. Yet there remains something oddly cathartic about being among other human beings.
Holding his paper bag close, Dignon pulls his coat in tight around him and continues on toward home.
There isn’t a star in the sky. Later, when he remembers this, there will be.
Mrs. Rogo has decorated the front door of the building with a fake wreath, replete with red plastic holly and adorned with an imitation satin ribbon from which hang two small, slightly rusted jingle bells. She’s also put up her imitation Christmas tree, which now blinks garish multicolor magnificence through the first floor window facing the street. On the steps the same ceramic three-foot-tall Santa Claus she’s used for years stands beaming, one hand clutching a bell and the other a sack of gifts slung over his shoulder. Several spots on his coat are chipped, which results in white blotches across his otherwise red suit. It looks like he’s been spattered with bird shit. The expression on his face reminds Dignon of the look his father often had when he and Willie were children, when he was so drunk he could no longer walk or talk, only sit collapsed with an imbecilic grin and those soulless eyes.
It’s nearly seven.
Dignon lingers on the front steps long enough to better take in the neighborhood, the sights and subtle sounds, the feel of it all.
In the foyer, Bing Crosby holiday tunes seep from Mrs. Rogo’s apartment, accompanied by the smell of roasting chicken. Dignon quietly takes the stairs to his second-floor digs, key at the ready so he can get inside before his landlord hears him. Much as he likes her, he can’t deal with her tonight.
Once inside, he flicks the light switch. An overhead fixture comes to life, filling the area with a yellow tinted hue. His living quarters consist of one main room, an adjacent kitchenette and a small bath and bedroom in back. Modestly furnished and not particularly well kept, it has low ceilings, drab walls and ancient hardwood floors that have become scarred and worn over the years.
This is what I was hurrying back to? Looked more appealing in the dark, he thinks.
He tosses his keys on the kitchen table, grabs a beer from the fridge then flops down into a threadbare easy chair and fishes a used paperback from the bag he’s been carrying. On his way home from Willie’s he stopped at a local used bookstore he often patronizes, and after several minutes perusing the shelves, settled on Mythical Beings in a Mortal World. Though he normally sticks to novels, this bit of nonfiction looks interesting. Written by a professor, it is essentially a listing and breakdown of numerous mythical beings throughout human history, and their origins and influences on various cultures. It reminds him of the documentary television programs he watched as a child, like In Search Of, that covered such topics as Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Loch Ness Monster. He’s always found these kinds of things interesting and somewhat entertaining, so he suspects the book will serve as a pleasant distraction.
He glances around, realizes he’s alone in the room. “Tibbs?”
A sleek black cat saunters from the bedroom, yellow eyes sleepy and squinting in the light.
“Got a new book, dude.” Dignon holds it up. “Cool, huh?”
Not terribly impressed, Mr. Tibbs yawns, has a lengthy stretch then hops up on Dignon’s lap and stares at him dully.
He pets Mr. Tibbs on the head then opens the front cover of the book and flips through the first few pages. He immediately feels an unsettling sense of foreboding and odd familiarity, but it weakens and leaves him almost as rapidly as it arrives. Published in 1980, there are numerous creases to the cover and some pages are faded and dog-eared, but otherwise it’s still in fairly good shape. A deal at fifty cents, he thinks. In the upper left hand corner of the title page a previous owner has written in ballpoint pen: This Book Belongs to Bree Harper. A series of numbers follow. A phone number, he thinks, has to be. And oddly enough, a local exchange. Dignon has been a voracious reader his entire life, and most of his book purchases are of the used variety. Over the years he’s come across numerous notes, names, addresses and phone numbers scribbled in books, there is certainly nothing unusual about that. But for some reason, this instance holds his attention. Bree. Strange name, he thinks, but pretty and lighthearted. It must be short for something. His mind conjures a vision of her, though he can’t make out any specific features. Hi, I’m Bree. He pictures walking hand-in-hand with her down near the ocean on a starry night. This night even, once it begins to snow, the flakes fat and fluffy and turning in the sea breeze, mixing with the clouds made by their breath.
Wouldn’t that be something?
Dignon tosses the book on a small table next to the chair. Mr. Tibbs kneads his lap a moment then carefully lies down. He begins to purr. Petting him with one hand, Dignon takes up the bottle of beer with the other and finishes it in a single, determined pull. The alcohol courses through him, but still, he can feel.
After some quiet time with Mr. Tibbs, just sitting and thinking, running his hands through the cat’s soft fur and listening to the wonderful rhythm of his purr, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest with each breath drawn then expelled, and feeling the warmth pass from his underside into Dignon’s lap, everything slows down. The world becomes hushed, like winter nights ought to be, as if in anticipation of something vaster that might otherwise be missed in the clamor of everyday life. In that softness, the stillness, he glimpses peace.
But by the tim
e he realizes what it is, it’s gone.
Some time later the beer runs out and Dignon switches to pot. It’s not a problem. He’s come to like marijuana, and sometimes it better suits his purpose.
It fails to stop the memories from returning however, and soon he is wandering about the small apartment like an errant pinball, bouncing from one corner to the next, a joint in one hand and the other motioning subconsciously, talking for him as monologues rage in his mind.
There is the job he held for so many years, the delivery position at Tech Metropolis, the largest electronics retailer in the area. There is the warehouse where he’d report each morning, meet up with the other two sets of drivers and delivery people to get their assignments for the day. There is Clarence, a six-foot-seven former high school basketball star who runs the delivery department, a sullen and gangly man who wears nylon sweat suits and high-top Converse sneakers regardless of the weather, as if he might otherwise forget what an athletic prodigy he once was, and as if to alert the world that he is ready at any moment should the call come that will rescue him from the bench and return him to the limelight. But everyone, including Clarence—perhaps Clarence most of all—knows this will never happen. Knee and ankle injuries snuffed dreams of college and the NBA out long ago. Now he sits cramped in a small booth most of the day, a booth constructed almost entirely of Plexiglas, where he shuffles papers and fills out forms and barks orders at drivers and delivery people through his dispatch equipment. There are the other delivery teams: Outlaw and Boo, and Adam and Blondie. Outlaw is a biker type, a wannabe who rides on weekends and keeps his body rotund, his hair long, his beard unruly and his tattoos antisocial. He refuses to wear anything that doesn’t have a Harley-Davidson logo on it. His partner Boo is a small Hispanic man with a shaved head and tiny, deep-set eyes. He is just over five feet in height, with a slight but sinewy build. He rarely speaks, but when he does it’s in a muffled muttering style few can fully decipher other than Outlaw. Adam is a thirty-something African-American with a trim build. He is meticulously clean and tidy, and has the cleanest van in their small fleet. He keeps his hair closely cropped, wears freshly pressed shirts and sweaters and is often mistaken for a salesperson or perhaps a member of management rather than a deliveryman. Everyone knows he does this purposely because he plans to one day be one of the two. No one objects. The others hope he’s right. His partner, Blondie, is the only female delivery person. A short and muscular woman with bad skin and a penchant for unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes, her nickname comes from the short shock of peroxide blonde hair that looks as if it is exploding from her large, round head. In her twenties she was a professional wrestler on the independent circuit. Now nearing forty, she sticks to grappling boxes of electronics.
And then there is Dignon’s partner. Jackie Shine looks like a poor man’s James Dean, only about thirty years older than the original when he died. He wears barracuda jackets with the collars up, tight-fitting jeans and lots of hair gel, which he uses to keep his thick mop in place. There is almost always a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and his eyes—squinty but expressive—are slightly askew, very sad but also somewhat primal, like a tiger that could turn on you at any second and tear you to shreds. Jackie Shine walks with an obvious limp, an uneven gate that nearly comes off as a short hop because his right leg is a prosthetic limb. He has had this since he was nineteen, when, in the jungles of Vietnam, he stepped on a landmine and his real leg was taken from him, blown away just below the groin. Jackie Shine is a drug addict and an alcoholic. He eats prescription painkillers like some pop breath mints, and drinks whiskey continuously, either from a flask he keeps tucked in his coat pocket, or after work at bars, restaurants, his apartment, anywhere he can.
None of them started out to work there. None fantasized of one day delivering TVs and stereos, computers and office furniture. They have all arrived by accident, refugees from other places, other dreams. And though it is honest work, it is hard and not terribly rewarding work, the hours long, the pay average, the shifts tedious.
While Dignon has worked there for years, Jackie Shine is really the only person he works with he truly counts as a friend. The others are acquaintances, people he sometimes goes and has a drink with after work, or exchanges small talk with first thing in the morning. They are people he does not know in any meaningful context, and yet for so long, other than for Willie and Mr. Tibbs, they are all Dignon has.
On what becomes the last day he will ever work there, Dignon arrives as usual, meets up with the others in the warehouse and waits for their assignments. The driver is the one that goes to Clarence’s little glass booth for the itinerary, and since Jackie Shine always drives, Dignon waits over by the enormous mountain of items ready for delivery, brought forward by a forklift from the stock areas to the loading dock on big wooden pallets. Once they have their shipping list and destination addresses, the teams will load the items into their vans and be on their way. He holds a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand, one for himself, one for Jackie Shine, feels the warmth bleed through to his palms and fingers as he watches his partner, Outlaw and Adam standing in single file before Clarence’s booth like unruly children summoned to the principal’s office.
None of them have any idea what will happen in just a few short hours.
Dignon has seen many things over the years as a delivery person. Rarely like bad porno movies suggest, scantily clad women answering the door and such, but rather things far more disturbing. He once set up a large screen television and a surround-sound system in a rundown tenement while in the next room a handful of heavily armed drug dealers readied their goods for distribution. The leader, an enormous man with a gun on each hip and bands of bullets draped across his chest like a villain in an old western, had handed him a five hundred dollar cash tip, motioned to the table where numerous drugs and guns were scattered and said, “Forget it all.” Dignon nodded and took the money while Jackie Shine waited outside in the van, smoking cigarettes and taking sips of whiskey from his flask. Why the men had spent the money on such expensive equipment in a building they were so obviously only using for a day or two, Dignon never knew. In his business, you learned not to question. You did your job and left. And he always “forgot it all.” Except for one delivery, when he and Jackie Shine had brought video equipment to an address in one of the worst sections of town, only to find an older man, perhaps sixty, well groomed and dressed in an expensive suit and tie there to greet them. After he had shown them where to drop the equipment he had thrown tips at both men and quickly ushered them out. But he and Jackie Shine had seen the room with only a mattress and tripods set up, the room with plastic bags of children’s clothing and toys thrown about. They had seen the children seated at a long table in another room, having a lavish dinner and laughing, another well-dressed man at the head of that table. These were clearly poor children, neglected children few wanted or would miss. The oldest was perhaps twelve.
Once outside, Jackie Shine stopped and looked back.
“There’s nothing good happening in there,” Dignon had said.
“Yeah,” Jackie Shine agreed. “No shit.”
“We better tell the cops.”
“I don’t like cops.”
“We have to tell somebody.”
Jackie Shine had two children somewhere on the west coast, both grown by then. He might’ve been a grandfather. He took a pull from his flask, watched the building a while longer then stuffed the booze back into his coat. “It won’t do any good. You see the suits on those two cats? Money, that’s what that was. What the hell you think men like that are doing in that dump? Didn’t you see the look on the face of the one that answered the door? He look worried to you about a couple delivery guys? They got enough money to do whatever they want. Probably already got everybody paid off to leave them alone anyway. They blow into town, do their thing and are gone within a few days, on to the next place before anybody even notices.”
“But that’s the whole point. We did n
otice.”
“You call the cops if you want. I’m blind as a bat, brother man. Last drop of the day, I’m going home.”
Dignon held his ground. “They’re little kids, we have to do something.”
“Then make the call, hero.” He headed for the van. “Just leave me out of it. They want statements and all that, tell them I waited in the truck the whole time.”
“Why? What do you care about protecting scum like that?”
“I don’t protect nobody,” he said. “I keep my head down and I drive my van.”
Dignon felt rage rising in him, not so much at his partner but at the men in the building. Destroyers, he’d thought, that’s what they are. “Then I’ll do it.”
Once a few blocks away, Dignon had him pull over. He ran to a payphone and anonymously dropped a dime.
Neither heard another thing about it. Maybe the cops did something, maybe not. They’d never know, though Dignon had checked the newspaper and television news reports for weeks afterward, hoping to see a story regarding a child pornography ring that had been uncovered and broken up.
No such story ever surfaced.
“What’d I tell you?” Jackie Shine said several weeks later. “Long as the right hands get the right amount of cash, nobody gives a shit about anything.”
“Somebody should do something, for Christ’s sake.”
“We could go back to my place, get some firepower and go pay them a visit. Up for a little frontier justice? Want to go Taxi Driver on their asses?” Jackie Shine nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Just like war, long as somebody else gets to do the dirty work, it’s all about freedom and what’s ‘necessary.’ Long as it ain’t their asses on the ground doing the killing and dying.”
Blood In Electric Blue Page 2