THUGLIT Issue Thirteen

by Kevin Egan

  I drove into the soup kitchen and donned my apron, still shaking off the cold from my night sleeping out of doors—but then, the fucks I served food to slept there every night. We picked up old donuts and bagels from the Dunkin' Donuts in town, popped them in the microwave to soften them up, and pre-sliced the bagels so the bums wouldn't get knives in their hands. Almost always a bad outcome when that happens. I heated water and made oatmeal. We ran on pennies and goodwill and occasional funds from the Methodist church down the street.

  I was a short-order cook working for free to pay off my debt to society. Two DUI's, one dead girl that I was driving home from the bar—she loved to laugh and smile and give blowjobs. Six years for manslaughter. Mom died before I was out and left me her savings and the house and her Oldsmobile Cutlass that collected dust under a tarp in the garage. She didn't laugh anymore towards the end; how could she with a son like me? Weed helped the guilt. I couldn't stomach the liquor anymore.

  My regulars trundled in out of the heavy, polar vortex air. They always smelled the same; wet earth and cigarette smoke. They trundled and shuffled and their underwear was soiled. We ran laundry for them with donated washer/dryer sets and cheap Costco brand laundry detergent. We scraped by, they scraped by. They hacked and coughed black lung and spit out teeth from gums weakened from meth and crack. I make no lies, these were not your bleeding heart homeless poster children who loved to laugh and smile and were just a bit down on their luck because a Republican had been elected Governor. But they were my people just the same and I was probably two months shy of joining them in line for the handouts.

  James Bennet was crack-addled, always talked about being depressed and hopeless since his wife died four fucking years ago. He always claimed voices and thoughts of suicide and then sparked up the pipe and downed some beers and it was off to the homeless races.

  Stella was a solid three hundred pounds, most of which sat on her hips, so she lilted like a barge whenever she walked. Her face was pock-marked and usually bruised, and to this day can't figure out how she got cellulitis from a dumpster. She would prostitute herself and cry rape every other day to the point that she had cried horny wolf so many times that the cops didn't respond and no one else paid attention. At this point, she could be on fire and people wouldn't believe she needed help.

  Zoe takes it up the ass when she's strung out.

  Joe B. talks loud and walks like he's a body builder but he's actually close to retarded, grossly overweight, and a product of fetal alcohol syndrome. He once threatened to shoot up an elementary school.

  Uncle Al was a Vietnam vet, three tours, three teeth left and loved liverwurst sandwiches and yelling gibberish at passerby (which I think he did for kicks).

  J.C. Watts preached the Word and beat up cops. His afro and fu-manchu mustache straight out of a 70's blacksploitation reel. He talked with the jive, too. He was crazy and kind and fought like a pitbull whenever the cops tried to bring him in. Last time, it took six of them and they all had to take disability leave afterwards. He was just out of prison for that one. He was just coming off a good Popov run last night and had been preaching the Word. The cops showed up and rousted him from his table. They braced him in the corner and everyone watched the mini-interrogation. More officers showed up with hands on their collapsible batons until the whole kitchen was nothing but a sea of navy blue, badges and corny sunglasses.

  They were pushing him on Tommy's murder. "I don't know, J.C.," one of them said. "We know you were out last night tying one on and you know how you get… So you didn't see this kid at all last night?" he said, holding a picture of Tommy—who loved to laugh and smile—up for J.C. to stare schizophrenic holes into. "You got a gun, J.C.?"

  "Never need one, Officer Gil," he said. Nearly everyone laughed and Gil softened up a bit.

  "You heard anything about this boy getting shot?" Gil pushed him again.

  "No sir."

  "He was found down the alley next to Krogers and Valley Liquors. Valley Liquors said they sold you a pint of vodka last night just before closing. Where did you go to drink that vodka?"

  "I don't know," J.C. said. "Around, I guess."

  "You have anyone that was around with you?"

  "I don't know, sir."

  "You're fresh out of the pen, J.C. You want to have to go back?"

  "No sir." A timid puppy when he wasn't preaching.

  Officer Gil eased up and turned to the rest of the kitchen holding up the front page of the paper with Tommy Who Loved to Laugh's face on the cover. "Does anybody have any information about what happened to this young man?" he said.

  Everyone looked up with dead eyes and then back down at their food.

  "Was anybody in the vicinity of Valley Liquors last night about 10pm?"

  More dead eyes and oatmeal dripping from mouths.

  "If any of you have any information, please let us know. There is a $10,000 reward being posted for information that leads to the capture of the killer that is being put up by his parents. I'm telling you this because we are fairly certain that it was someone within the homeless community that committed this crime, and the family would like that person brought to justice as soon as possible. These people are respected pillars of the community and would like to see justice done for their young son." He waited for a response, but all eyes were down.

  No one would say anything in front of the others, but I figured that reward would be collected about fifteen minutes after the cops cleared out. These people have a knack for unsavory information and self-survival.

  Officer Gil lowered the picture of Tommy and said, "Alright…have it your way. But if I have to brace you for the information I will. I wouldn't mind collecting that reward myself." He patted J.C. on his massive shoulder and told the rest of the boys, "Let's get out of here," and the blue brigade shuffled out the door. Wouldn't be much longer now, I figured.

  I washed up and talked to J.C. myself, asking him if he was okay and testing his temperament in the hopes that the kitchen wouldn't catch the brunt of his schizo rage.

  "Naw, I okay," he said. Eyes faaaaaarrrr off in the distance. I brought him out around back and let him toke a little off my pipe to keep him calm. His eyes glazed nicely and lost that thousand-yard stare.

  "Good medicine, Reverend?"

  "Good indeed."

  "Why they hitting you up about that kid?"

  "Fuck that kid," he said. I saw his muscle ripple; he was a genetic freakshow of power.

  "Yeah, fuck him," I said.

  "Done got what was coming to him!" he said.

  "Wait, what?"

  But then J.C. was gone. His stare was off in the world somewhere and his ears shut down and he was no longer responding. I called his name two inches from his ear, but he was gone. He started in with a gospel hymn and I left him in the back and made my way inside to relative safety.

  All eyes were still down. Not even Joe B. running his fat mouth. 8am was creeping on the clock and that meant everyone get out until lunch. I started gathering up the trays and the congregation started shuffling for the door into the bright light of day. My high kicked in and it all made perfect sense.

  I locked up and went sightseeing, riding the liquid high down the street. My people dispersed. Zoe approached me and said her SSI had run out for the month and the shelter had kicked her out. I told her she could stay at my place tonight and we could go after the dinner crowd. She held my hand for a few minutes and made eyes and then walked off down South Main.

  She was in her twenties with scars racing up and down her forearms, but she had jet-black hair and big brown eyes that could get you if you weren't ready. She was smart and dumb at the same time. She would probably be so fucking wasted by dinner that I would have to carry all two hundred pounds of her to my house. But then, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement and got me through some nights when I hated myself enough to end it.

  The girl I killed: the next morning in court the judge looked at me and said, "Well, Mr. Florence, it w
ould appear that you are an alcoholic, a drug addict, and now some would consider you a murderer."

  She was a party-girl herself, the both of us tying one on at the bar. She was a regular and I was a regular and she had this funny idea about starting an escort business and a dad that was really rich and worried about the trajectory of his only daughter.

  We had never bonded before like we had that night; never been intimate—not physically or any other form—we merely knew each other as fellow barflies and acknowledged each other as such. But that night, something changed. There was an electricity in the air and this sparkle in her eye and I suddenly found her so beautiful whereas before I regarded her as plain; I suddenly saw us together decades in the future, a swinging F. Scott and Zelda, partying late into the night, burning out our shooting stars as fast as gravity could pull us.

  We kissed. We dropped some acid and pounded beers and smoked cigarettes on the back patio. She draped her arms around me, her eyes drooping and somewhat lopsided in a funny, cartoonish way, and then we were off. I can't remember where we were going. The police asked me that a hundred times and I asked myself a thousand.

  Where were we going?

  We were driving West. Heading out of town? Heading to the great frontier? Maybe Vegas to get married on a whim or Colorado to smoke out our days or California to live on the beach. To this day, the last thing I remember is her going down on me in the front seat of my car, then me starting it up and heading due west on the interstate.

  Skids and trees come out of nowhere when rolling that heavy and laughing and dreaming. My memory is still mostly gone. Her light was gone. I extinguished it. Six years was not enough.

  Zoe once said, "No one hates you more than yourself."

  I asked her if that was the reason for the scars on her arms.

  She asked me if that was the reason that I never laughed or smiled.

  My walk was a ghost tour through Akron. The old ghosts of what I had known and remembered in my previous life. Just outside the FUBAR club I beat a kid into plastic surgery with my car keys in my knuckles. The parking lot across from the barber shop was where I saw two homeless men humping like dogs when I was fifteen years old. Chuckie Love, all five hundred pounds of him, used to sit in a reinforced chair on the sidewalk listening to his CD walkman until he died of AIDS. The drainage river that flowed through town was where Andy, who worked at the pharmacy photo shop, and would never stop talking, tried to jump to his death. It was only ten feet. He broke his arm on the rocks and got soaking wet and we all had a laugh at him. We found an illegal immigrant worker huddled under the awning of Mambo's one late night about 1am, covered in snow. We said, "A little colder than Mexico, huh?" But he vehemently said he was from Guatemala and was pissed we called him Mexican and then went right back to his cold slumber.

  All ghosts. Many more. I couldn't name them all but for all I was guilty. God judged harshly.

  The alleyway between Kroger's and Valley Liquors was cordoned off with yellow police tape. It was the same alley I had seen a thousand times before coming or going from either the grocery store or the liquor store, but now with a few extra stains and bright yellow party streamers.

  I gazed into that ordinary abyss.

  "Don't tell me you know anything about this."

  It was officer Badgley.

  "Just interested," I said. "Is that your real name?"

  "Why you interested? Have you graduated to actual murder?" Badgley had arrested me for both my DUI's, including the one that took Samantha's life. I never blamed him. He might have hated me, but the feeling wasn't mutual. I somewhat admired him; wished I could be him.

  "Your fellow officer came into the kitchen this morning and talked up my people," I said. "I wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

  "Sixteen year old kid and you call it a fuss? You're a cold fuck. You smell funny, Florence, and your eyes look a little glazed."

  I smiled. "You smell funny too, officer, and I believe you are slurring your words."

  We had gone to high school together. Now he was somebody and I was working on nobody.

  "I'm just popping into Valley's here," I said.

  "Drinking again? I'll let my officers know to set up checkpoints."

  "No car. I walk these days."

  "Hell of a walk to your mother's pad."

  "Why were they bracing J.C. this morning?" I said.

  "Why wouldn't they? Just got out of jail. He was drinking last night and in the area. It doesn't take much to put two and two together."

  "J.C. never carried a gun. He doesn't need one."

  "People change, Florence. One doesn't rule out the other. Could have been you for all we know."

  "I was listening to your police band when it happened."

  "Beat it out of here before I frisk you. Arresting the same people gets boring."

  He watched as I walked into Valley Liquors. Maury was behind the counter, the five-dollar pints of Dubra and Popov just over his shoulder. He pointed for me to leave. "No trouble Maury." I said.

  "No more for you. You don't get served here," he said.

  "But you have no problem serving J.C. late at night, who then ends up killing a kid?"

  Maury waxed incredulous bullshit. "J.C. didn't kill nobody, c'mon! I told that to those dumbass cops not too long ago. He was off three blocks away when that happened."

  "Yeah? How you know that?"

  "He left! He was gone. He went off to get some whores over at South Main. That kid was looking for trouble, and boy he found it."

  "Who did it then?"

  "Fuck if I know. Maybe he did it to himself. What the hell do you care anyway?"

  "The cops are rousting my people at the kitchen and I'm sick of it."

  "Well it wasn't J.C. You know him. He don't deal with guns and he's a gentle giant when he's sober. Now get the fuck out of here."

  I stepped to the counter. "I'll take a bottle of the Wild Turkey."

  "You don't get served here," he said.

  "I served my time. Now sell me that bottle or I'll take it off the shelf myself and beat you with it!" I slammed my hand down on the counter and Maury bucked up and paid attention.

  He took the 750 off the shelf, mumbling to himself that it was his place and he'd be damned if he would be bossed around by a fucking murderer.

  I caught his lip; "If you think I'm a murderer, Maury, then you best hurry up with this purchase before I lose my temper." I slapped a twenty on the counter and pounced out the door, unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. Badgley called after me, "I'll be looking for you tonight, Florence."

  "Yeah, I'll see you soon," I said.

  I found a spot on the green behind a sculpture of Nathan Hale and lit up a bowl and sipped the whiskey from a paper bag and let myself be taken. Relief set in. Samantha was clouded from my mind and all I felt now was warmth and pleasure and an exhilarating numbness to guilt.

  How far we fall and how high we can soar.

  I got poetic and 'capital R' Romantic and thought about Tommy Who Loved to Laugh. That was what I called him because I couldn't remember his last name. Another swig and it was beautiful. I wasn't the only fuckup in the world, you know. Hell, I fed and clothed bigger fuckups than myself every day. But still, it was there. It wasn't a shared universe; it wasn't a shared world. It was only my world and I was the biggest fuckup in it. That's why a life lost is so terrible a tragedy; it isn't just A life, its ALL life that is lost. Samantha and Tommy Who Loved to Laugh are dead to us because we are dead to them. Their death is our own…or some such shit. I drank till I couldn't keep those thoughts in my head.

  One of my people, James, sidled up to me in the grass and held his hand out. I put the whiskey in his hand and he took a long pull. His lips covered in cold sores, I decided to go there, too, and took a pull right after him.

  "Ain't you working the kitchen tonight?" he said.

  "Nah. I quit," I said.

  "Just chillin' on the green then?" he said and took another
pull.

  "Yeah, that's me. Just chillin' on the green."

  "You hear about that kid that got shot?" he said.

  My mind was gone elsewhere. "Yup."

  "Boy howdy…that fuck had it comin'."

  I was sitting outside the kitchen, drunk and high as a kite, and Ms. Reyes took that as my sick-call for the night. She told me to come back when I had my shit back together, but that was probably never going to happen. I was not just among my people, I was my people. So I stayed there and staved off hunger with booze until she brought me out a grilled cheese sandwich and told me to be careful getting home.

  I asked her what day it was and she said, "You know what day it is—the same day you do this every year since you got out."

  And I said, "Oh, yeah," and she was gone back inside. I saw J.C. going into the kitchen and I called out to him. He walked over with Shaft swagger and I said, "You gotta cut that afro, J.C. You look like you just crawled out of the seventies."

  "That so?" he said.

  "Yeah. And how'd you get so tough, anyhow? I heard you did nothing but take it up the ass in the slammer."

  He thousand-yard stared me.

  "You always been good to me," he said.

  "Yeah, well consider that a down payment. Now be good to me you retarded nigger fuck."

  He slammed me with a right across the cheek—too high off the chin to break my jaw and too far away from the temple to kill me. Then he stared at me while I was on the ground, shook his afro-ed head, and walked in for dinner.

  I was dizzy-stunned and face-deep in dirt and garbage. I could barely find my legs. I started making for home. It would be a long walk and my legs weren't working too good. Zoe found me. She didn't seem that fucked up but who knew at that point. "Take me home with you," she cooed in my ear and I felt excitement and a hard-on and total forgetfulness.