THUGLIT Issue Thirteen

by Kevin Egan

  I didn't barely shake my head and he slapped me so hard I fell out of the chair. Then he stood up and smacked me again, reached in the pocket with the tub, and pulled it out. He put it in the empty spot where it belonged and walked over to look in the fridge like nothing had happened.

  I deserved it, but I wanted to cry anyway from smarting. I just couldn't begin to breathe enough to even make a tear. My throat had closed up tight, so I lay there curled, not doing anything. Beau Jean pulled two deer steaks from the freezer and turned the stove on. He dropped the steaks—still frozen, white freezer air coming off them—into a pan. Tink, tink.

  I didn't think much about Beau Jean slapping me. He went right on like we'd been going so I did the same. I kept making deliveries. One night when I climbed out my window, I found Pops passed out in the yard. I almost landed right on top of him. I thought for sure he'd dream seeing me and wake up just to bury me in the yard someplace, but he kept breathing beer breath, peaceful as if he was dead. I could smell his stink from a mile away. The next morning he had red bumps all over his face from all the bug bites. I thought maybe God or whoever Beau Jean communed with really was on our side, or at least somebody big was playing a fat joke on Pops and we got all the benefits.

  I guess maybe that's where I went wrong, because I thought nobody could find out. Beau Jean and I had a special pass. So I told this kid, Todd Meineker, half by accident one day when he pissed me off enough to be stupid.

  Mom sent me to get ice from the store, so I was coming out with the bags already dripping when Todd showed up. He hung around that parking lot to skateboard all the time. Pops and his dad used to work together, and when Pops quit, Todd had been the first kid to say 'dirty cop' to me. He had red hair and freckles and his skin always looked ready to burn off in the sun.

  He rolled up to me like he wasn't going to stop, but kicked the skateboard up just before it hit my shins. "Where have you been all summer?"

  "At camp. I go every day," I told him. I can tell lies when I feel like it.

  "Bullshit. Why aren't you there now?"

  "Because they cancelled it today."

  "No one cancels camp, dumbass. You just can't afford it."

  "Yes I can."

  "No you can't—your daddy is broke."

  "How do you know?"

  "How do you not?"

  I thought about pulling the freckles out of his skin one by one so he'd have little pocks of blood there instead. He'd be so gross no one would talk to him, and then he couldn't give me shit about Pops or tell me what everyone talked about but no one was supposed to hear. "You don't know anything."

  Todd busted up like I'd just told the funniest joke he ever heard.

  "Shut up," I yelled. "Pops isn't broke, he isn't. I'm making his money."

  "My ass. You can't make any money."

  "I can."

  "Yeah? Prove it."

  Todd showed up at the meeting spot even more on time than I did. I guess he probably could have been alright if he was different, like if he had Pops for a dad, or if he turned invisible, or if Beau Jean found him instead of me.

  He only asked once to open up the box, but he didn't try to touch anything. I told him we couldn't mess around with it and he nodded his head, silent, with bug eyes on all the little tubs.

  "Can we smell it?" he asked, but not like a dare. He just wanted to know what it smelled like. I sort of did too, even though my face still hurt just thinking about that slap. I figured as long as we didn't touch anything no one would know, so I unscrewed one of the tops and we both leaned our noses over. I took a big whiff. It was one of those nights when even the air is sweaty and you can feel it touching you, making everything hotter than it should be, but when I breathed that stuff, cold shot up my nose. It smelled white hot the way winter does when there's an ice storm, and cleared everything out like a mint, but it went all the way up between my eyes and into my brain and made my cheeks feel fuzzy.

  "Whoa," Todd said.

  He stayed quiet the whole walk there, just kept bringing his shirt up to wipe his face. My hair was all matted down and my eyes stung a little from sweat, but I would have had to put the box down to do anything and I didn't want him to see me stop. When we finally got to the train yard, I showed him the way in and we snuck along the fence. I hid him in a dark spot beneath a train car—we both crawled under on our bellies and I stopped him when my guy came into view. It was just one tonight. I scooted out backwards once Todd nodded he could see.

  I shook that guy's hand an extra long time after he handed me the bag of money, a paper bag, and made sure to look up in his face. The guy shook my hand back and I think laughed a little, but it just looked like cigarette smoke coming out his nose. Then he dropped the red butt on the ground and snubbed it out and walked off. I thought Todd must be pissing his jeans.

  But when I ducked down to see the look on his face, he wasn't there. He'd just up and run, sprinted chicken, and all I saw down the fence line was the little last bit of him disappearing over the chain link, booking it home through the dark.

  Pops went to beat the living shit out of Beau Jean a couple days later. At first I thought maybe he hadn't found out, maybe everyone kept their mouths shut, but Eureka is no Grand Canyon—the profound never saved anybody. People in Eureka see everything they shouldn't see and shut their eyes on the rest. It's all broken trucks and heat waves off the pavement and barf in the road because we can't even keep thirty dollars inside us. Beau Jean says the Grand Canyon is so deep you can't see the bottom, and even dirt looks clean from far away. It's not like that here—everything is close up and all of it dirty.

  Somebody told somebody who told somebody who told Pops that Meineke's kid saw a crazy thing Thursday night. Pops busted in the front door, probably fresh from the bar, shouting, "Like father like daughter my ass!" He grabbed me out of my chair in the kitchen by the front of my shirt. Mom had gone to the beauty shop to demonstrate techniques to curl flat hair, so it was just me home. Pops put his face right in mine.

  "Is it true you've been running errands for that nut job?" His breath smelled hot and sour and his eyes were already bloodshot, his face already starting to turn. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head no.

  "Don't lie to me, Delilah," he said shaking me. He said it through his teeth like he was really just mad someone had wired his jaw shut. He said it again—don't lie to me—with a shake when he said 'lie'. I started to cry and nodded. He let me go with a push, so I backed into the table and knocked my bowl of cereal over.

  "God damn, I'll kill him."

  I thought about Beau Jean dead and panicked. He never did me any wrong—he'd been nicer than anyone I could remember. I wanted him to keep teaching me what he knew, and I wanted that bridge to stay ours, not just mine. I never had anything to share with anyone ever before.

  Pops went in his bedroom and came out with a baseball bat. I screamed I don't know what at him, but it didn't do any good. I had too much snot and tears coming out to make him listen. I grabbed his shirt as he went out the door, but he shoved me off. I hit the floor so hard I thought my stomach might come up. Pops pointed the bat at me, his face red with fat tears coming down. I didn't care if he'd hit me for saying it, that was crying and I saw it.

  "He's got no right," Pops said. "No right to you, hear? You're my little girl."

  Then he got in the truck and gunned it for the trailer park.

  I ran as fast as I could, but Pops already had Beau Jean's door dented by the time I got there. No one came out to help, but I could see them all peeking through their windows waiting to see if Beau Jean could slide his way out. The fat lady next door saw me run up and dropped her blinds down. Dogs all over the place barked.

  From inside, Beau Jean yelled about how he did me a kindness and how Pops never gave me anything to be proud of, how I knew a helping hand away from my no-good daddy when I saw one. You could hear him through the thin walls clear as day.

  Pops yelled back that I wasn't nobody's daughter
except his, least of all Beau Jean's. Then he wound up with the bat one more time. His arms had always been big, but they'd gone softer and softer since he quit working, until his biceps looked more like bumps of fat that could move. Now they had work to do and they were muscles again, and I knew Beau Jean didn't stand a chance. Pops swung full-on and the door busted open, the knob and pieces of fake wood flying everywhere. Then he stopped.

  Beau Jean stood back against the far wall, against his shelves of glass and remedies and poisons, with a gun so tiny it could probably fit in my hand, but big enough to blast a hole in Pop's head. Beau Jean had it aimed with both hands. His head shook a little, but not because he was scared, just because he was old and that's what his head did. Pops didn't scare him, I knew. He had the gun steady.

  Pops didn't drop the bat, but he backed down off the steps and walked backwards to the truck. I ducked down behind a rusted out car, but he wouldn't have seen me anyway. He had his eyes on Beau Jean. Even as he drove away, he kept his eyes on Beau Jean.

  After Pops stayed gone long enough, I knew he wouldn't come back. I walked up to Beau Jean trying to prop his door back shut with the gun in one hand.

  "Are you mad at me?" I asked.

  Without looking he said, "No, girl, but come here." He left the door alone and turned around to sit on the stairs, look at me eye level. I stepped up.

  "I'm not mad, but you got to understand what's going to happen next. Your daddy was a cop, right?"

  I nodded.

  "And your daddy is a bitter man, is he not?"

  I thought for a second, then nodded slowly. I wasn't sure what it meant to be bitter, but I knew Pops was angry and I figured that was close enough.

  "He is," said Beau Jean. "I'll tell you this. What we can't have is him going to the law just to get in the law's good graces again. Understand?"

  I nodded.

  I waited up awake all night. Sometimes now I tell myself I didn't really know what would happen—that if I had, I would've warned Pops. It's just not true though. Beau Jean never lied about the big stuff, and he told me everything so I'd be ready. I could have saved Pops, I just didn't want to. I don't tell anyone that. I only know it down deep, because thinking about it makes me a little sick.

  I didn't hear them break in, but I knew they'd come when Mom started screaming. One to hold her back and the other to take care of Pops. I plugged my ears and shoved my head under the pillow. It didn't take long. When Mom stopped screaming and started yelling oh my God over and over, I came out of my room. The front door stood open and I saw two guys, one with a crowbar, get in a car and peel away without any headlights on. I went to Mom and Pop's bedroom.

  When Mom saw me there, she rushed over to cover my eyes, like I hadn't already seen. Pops lay half in, half out of the bed with his head smashed up. They'd knocked his dresser over. Even in the dark you could tell blood got all over the bed. Pops didn't move, just stayed sprawled there, shirtless in his boxers, hairy armpits, bruises already getting purple, and his mashed-up face bleeding sticky blood into the carpet.

  They broke six of his ribs, his collarbone, fractured his skull, and cracked his jawbone. He stayed in a coma at the hospital for two days, plenty of time for Beau Jean to disappear. I waited for him under the bridge the morning after, but he never showed up. I didn't want to go to his trailer because I knew what I'd find. I don't know why I thought he'd stay.

  Before I left the trailer park that last day, Beau Jean told me I needed to learn to unstick myself if I didn't want to get stuck. I guess he meant I could get away if I tried, but I don't know where I would go. He talked about the Grand Canyon and San Francisco and the aurora borealis, but I don't think he'd ever seen any of them. I guess I know a lie from what's true. I know Pops drinking protein powder through a straw is no lie. I know Eureka isn't either. And the Grand Canyon—I doubt I'll ever get there to find out.

  Joe the Terrorist

  by Kevin Egan

  The front steps of the New York County Courthouse led up to a colonnade that often appeared in movies, television police shows, and high-end fashion ads. People climbed and descended these steps at oblique angles, eschewing the two brass rails that ran directly down the center except for those winter days when rain turned to ice on the frigid limestone. At the bottom of the steps, on the wide, inlaid sidewalk, Joe the Coffee Guy plied his trade.

  Joe gained this prime spot after a runaway SUV slammed into his predecessor's cart. The SUV lifted the cart onto its hood and carried it halfway up the courthouse steps before depositing it between the two brass rails. While the SUV spewed antifreeze and the cart leaked coffee, the driver fled into Chinatown, where a court officer tackled him amidst a dozen Chinese practicing tai chi on a basketball court. The driver, an illegal alien, was initially charged with leaving the scene of an accident. Later, when the coffee guy died and the top charge became vehicular manslaughter, he hanged himself in the holding pen.

  Joe the Replacement Coffee Guy, as his courthouse patrons initially called him, worked hard. He awoke at 1:15 A.M. each day to begin the long task of preparing for business: picking up the bagels and bialys, making sure he had enough propane and milk, hitching the cart to his Chevy and hauling it out of Queens and into Manhattan. He loved his Chevy, even though it was old and its fenders rusted and it shimmied if he pushed it past 30 mph. It was an American car, and therefore exotic to him.

  Within weeks, Joe eclipsed his predecessor in popularity. He made good small talk and called people by their names, which he stole from the I.D. cards they wore around their necks. He had an amazing memory, associating customers with their "usual" within a visit or two. In July, he decked his cart with red, white, and blue bunting. In December, he hung Christmas wreaths and Hannukah ribbons and slipped pocket calendars into the bags of his best customers. Yes, Joe was a vast improvement over his dour predecessor.

  Then came summer again, and Joe taped up a sign announcing that he would be on vacation for three weeks and that he hoped his loyal customers would patronize his cart in his absence. The sign did not state where Joe would be vacationing, but he candidly told anyone who asked.

  "Afghanistan."

  Beside the courthouse steps was a small park, and on a bench in that park a group of court employees gathered daily to eat lunch. These bench denizens were a collection of senior clerks and seasoned court officers who had seen judges, as well as coffee carts, come and go. They took the bench in all but the foulest weather, their chatter devoted to sports or pensions, their eyes turned toward the new brides exiting the City Clerk's Office across the street. Nothing they heard ever surprised them, and they prided themselves on their ironic, self-deprecating humor. But they found nothing ironic or funny about Joe's vacation plans.

  "You got to be kidding me," said Ned.

  "I asked him where he was going," said Eric. "And he said Afghanistan with this big grin like he said Jersey Shore."

  "Are you saying he's a terrorist?" said Russ. He and Ned were office mates. They got along well despite being polar opposites in size, shape, demeanor, and politics. Ned was big and bulky, an ex-football player who still had the nastiness of a linebacker. Russ was whippet-thin, a distance runner with a distance runner's patience.

  Russ continued, "Would he be so honest if he was going there for anything sinister?"

  "That's the beauty of it," said Ned. "He tells the truth and nobody believes him. He's the perfect sleeper agent."

  "I thought he hardly slept at all," said Russ, trying to divert the discussion with humor. "And if he is a terrorist, what's he doing here?"

  "Observing," said Ned. "How many times did you buy from him before he remembered your name and what you usually ordered?"

  Everyone except Russ muttered in agreement.

  "And if he remembers that kind of stuff," said Ned, "what else might he remember?"

  At the end of the bench, Foxx shook his head. He rarely joined this crew, preferring to spend his lunch hour taking long, contemplative walks, somet
imes with a joint. He was the officer who had chased down the SUV driver who killed the old coffee guy.

  "You guys need to get out more," he said.

  Everyone except Russ shouted him down.

  Rumors about Joe and his "terrorist coffee" quickly spread through the courthouse. During the first week of Joe's vacation, the line at the cart, operated now by a "cousin" who was twice as swarthy and half as friendly, was appreciably shorter. By the second week, the line was non-existent. Russ continued to buy, though for ten straight mornings he needed to voice his usual "coffee regular and a sesame bagel." The cousin, with one sleepy eye, did not seem to get much. Ned, though, got everything.

  "You still supporting Al Qaeda?" he would say when Russ walked into the office and set the paper bag down on his desk.

  "That's ridiculous," Russ would say.

  "See how ridiculous it is when the bombs start exploding."

  Russ would eat his breakfast in silence, then crumple the cup and wax paper into the bag and toss it into the trash. He and Ned had been friends for over twenty years, and it pained him to have that friendship threatened by paranoia. Their office had become the nation in miniature, with he and Ned standing on opposite sides of the same well-defined line that divided Republicans from Democrats, patriots from pinkos. There was no crossing that line in the current atmosphere, not in politics, not on cable TV, not even on the bench. And when the lunchtime discussion moved off Joe and onto the Mets' pitiful season or the possibility of a pension buy-out, an unseasonable coolness remained between Russ and Ned.