by Arlene Hunt
‘You do that, because if you don’t you better start to get real acquainted with the local housewives ’round these parts, ’cause I’ll have you covering bake sales and sob stories about goddamn missing poodles until one of us rots.’
8
Caleb rose at dawn and worked out for half an hour. He showered and then stood in the living room, eating a bowl of cereal, watching the news. Again, the Rockville shooting dominated the headlines. More photos of Jessie Conway appeared, including one of her on her wedding day. She was more than just pretty, Caleb thought. He didn’t normally think much of redheads, but this one was pleasing to the eye. He listened to an eyewitness account of the struggle she had embarked upon to save ‘her beloved pupils’. Caleb thought the story hyperbolic and overtly mawkish. He wondered why Jessie herself had not yet been interviewed.
He washed his bowl and dressed. As he left the apartment building, he stole a newspaper from the doormat of one of his neighbours. Jessie Conway’s face smiled at him from the front page.
He collected Maryanne’s twelve-year-old gold Taurus from the garage and drove to his part-time job at the Happy Home Depot. Caleb worked in the stockroom and on the floor. He liked the job: it was easy and informal, and he was allowed to buy hardware at cost. He had fixed up most of the cabin using materials he had bought cheap or helped himself to over the months he had been there. It was a very satisfactory arrangement.
The morning went by quickly. Lunchtime found a number of the female workers discussing the shooting in the break room. Gloria, an obese loudmouth and the queen bee of the service tills, was holding court. Gloria always held court; she was the type of person who equated being loud with being interesting.
‘Two’ve been released so far, but mark me y’all, there will be more to die.’
‘How do you know, Gloria?’ asked Mandy, Gloria’s sidekick. Caleb despised her in equal measure. She was ugly and vapid and blew kisses at the kid who watered the plants in the gardening section. She thought she was being cute. She was too stupid to see she was a fool and the kid was embarrassed and made uncomfortable by her antics.
‘I have a cousin married to a guy whose sister works at the hospital. Least another one for sure is going to go. He says only a machine is keeping that poor girl alive now.’
‘It’s so hard to believe these things keep happening. I mean what is going on?’
‘Why, ain’t it obvious?’ Gloria lowered her turkey, cheese and mayo sub. ‘The evidence is right there for y’all to see. This society is what’s wrong: it’s sick at heart and getting sicker every day. I can’t scarcely watch the television no more it is so filled with evil. It just about breaks my heart.’
A number of heads nodded in agreement.
‘You know who’s to blame – it’s the government.’ Gloria said in that imperious way she had of talking that made Caleb want to grab her throat and squeeze until he crushed her windpipe into dust.
‘Why’s that, Gloria?’
‘Well think about it for a minute,’ Gloria said, adding Sweet’N Low to her coffee. ‘This country is suffering from drought, a spiritual drought. They demand God is removed from our schools, so why should we be surprised when tragedies like this happen? They are forcing the Lord to turn away from His people.’
‘That’s right,’ another woman said, tapping her hand to her chest three times in quick succession.
‘How can we expect to be in His grace when we reject Him at every turn?’
Caleb filled a cup with black coffee. He turned and leaned against the counter, unsurprised to see a general bobbing of heads now. Oh that Gloria!
‘When you reject Him you leave the door open for the other. Everyone knows that, but we have let our schools be overrun by the godless and people,’ – she sneered – ‘people with unhealthy agendas.’
‘Did you see the teacher who stopped them, Gloria? She’s only a slip of a thing.’
‘I did and I tell you what, I believe the Lord was guiding that woman’s hand.’
‘I saw the video of her being led out from the school. Did you see her? My Lord, she had blood all over her.’ Mandy shuddered violently, but Caleb guessed from the look in her eye that her horror was just for effect. ‘I think you’re right Gloria, that woman had a guardian angel with her that day and that’s for sure.’
‘The Lord will watch over his flock.’
First a hero, now serving the community as a personal lackey from God, complete with guardian angel no less. Caleb stirred his coffee slowly and made a big production out of putting sugar in it, but as usual the women did not appear to take any notice of his presence. This amused him. These women with their talk of capricious personal gods, devils and spirits, yet here he was, the greatest devil any of them could imagine, flying easily under their radar.
It wasn’t that they liked him: it was insultingly easy for a man of his talents to be accepted by any demographic readily. He understood people; he knew what made them tick. On his first day he had identified and assessed the herd. He made it his business to be pleasant to every fat-assed cat-lover in the place. Not overtly nice, nor obsequious, but certainly pleasant. He was still male after all and did not want to give them ideas. But he remained pleasant enough so that they dropped their guard around him. They bought his story, swallowed his history. He was their quiet, helpful colleague. He was Arthur S Weils: helpful, pleasant, safe. They thought him … toothless.
While the women talked, he sipped his coffee and fantasised about running Gloria through with his knife. It would be a gut wound, he decided, glancing at her vast stomach. It would be really something, to see her try to push that mess back inside.
9
‘Yo, I don’t know about this,’ Chippy said, from somewhere deep in the back of the cupboard.
‘Shut up, for God’s sake. Are you trying to get us caught?’ Darla whispered fiercely. She opened the door a crack and peeked out into the corridor. A number of nurses and patients milled about, which was cool, but Dr Saul Fraas, the snotty asshole treating Jessie Conway, who had been so rude to Darla the night before was also floating about, which was not cool, not cool at all.
‘Man, I don’t like being in confined places. I got a phobia.’
‘Will you shut up?’
‘I’m gonna pass out or some shit, man; seriously, I have issues.’
Darla closed the door, reached into the dark, grabbed Chippy Gomez by his hair and viciously yanked him towards her.
‘Issues? I paid five hundred dollars to get us onto this floor. If you don’t shut up I am going to make you and your issues permanent residents here.’
‘Okay, okay, Dios.’
Darla released him and returned to the door. The whole hospital was on some kind of media alert. Fortunately, Darla had a friend who worked in the laundry department, and by friend she meant junkie stooge who always needed ready cash. Five hundred smackers and a promise never to disclose a confidence later. She and Chippy disentangled their legs and climbed from a laundry cart mere feet away from Jessie Conway’s room.
‘Is that camera ready?’
‘Yeah it’s—’
It flashed, blinding Darla momentarily.
‘Motherfu—’
‘Yo, don’t get mad. I’m sorry. I told you, I can’t see shit in here.’
Darla gritted her teeth and waited for the rainbows in her eyes to fade. When she got this story, she decided, she would devote at least half an hour of every day to finding new and creative ways to make Chippy Gomez’s life a living hell.
‘Okay, here’s the plan again. We walk in, I’ll pull the curtains and you snap off a few rounds, then as soon as you have the pictures you walk, okay? Don’t you wait around for some idiot to take that camera from you, got it? Photo and walk.’
‘’Kay.’
‘Say it.’
‘Photo and walk. I got it.’
‘No waiting around.’
‘I got it, I got it.’
‘Doesn’t matter who trie
s to stop you, you keep moving.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Darla tried to relax her shoulders. She opened the door again and put her eye to the crack. Fraas was nowhere to be seen and – happily – neither was the big blonde nurse he had been talking to. It was now or never.
‘Ready?’
Chippy belched in reply. Darla smelled onions and hot sauce. God, this had better be worth it.
‘We’re on.’
She opened the door and slipped out into the hallway as smoothly as possible. Both she and Chippy wore white coats to help them blend in with their surroundings. It wouldn’t convince anyone for long, but they didn’t really need a lot of time.
‘Shit,’ Darla said, waving her hand behind her to catch Chippy’s attention as the blonde nurse, the one who had been with Fraas when he had ejected her the day before, appeared at the end of the hall and began to walk towards them. Darla snatched up a clipboard as she passed a trolley and held it before her, flipping through the pages as though she had an idea what the words before her meant. She sneaked a look over her shoulder. Chippy was coming right behind her, trotting to heel like some kind of ill-bred mutt.
‘Stop making that face.’
‘Huh?’
Darla slowed right down. Chippy collided with her.
‘Sorry.’
‘Idiot.’
They were almost at Jessie Conway’s room. Darla dropped her head and pretended to study the chart in detail. Up ahead, an old man in pyjamas leading a drip on wheels stopped the blonde to speak with her.
‘Move!’ Darla grabbed Chippy by his lab coat, then she hauled him with her through the door, closing it behind them.
The room was semi-private. Darla looked around. Four beds: two containing ancient, still-breathing corpses, and another a sleeping woman who had a tube in her nose. Jessie Conway was by the window. She lay, looking wan and small, on the white sheets with her eyes closed. Her head was covered in bandages.
Darla crossed the floor quickly and drew the curtain around the bed. Chippy lifted his camera from beneath his coat and began to snap pictures from as many angles as the tiny space would allow. The commotion woke Jessie. As she opened her eyes, Darla elbowed Chippy behind her. Jessie squinted at the two people hovering over her.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Hi, Jessie, how are you? You’re looking fantastic. How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay … I’m sorry, who are you?’
Darla held up the chart she had been carrying. ‘I’ve a few questions to run by you if that’s okay.’
‘I—’
‘Surgery went well?’
Jessie lifted her hand to her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Doctor Fraas is very pleased. Did he give any indication when you might be released?’
‘I don’t know … maybe later this week. Look, I’m sorry I don’t remember you. Either of you.’
‘Memory’s strange after a head injury.’ Darla smiled reassuringly. ‘What’s the last memory you have before the shooting?’
‘What?’
‘It’s a very simple exercise. What’s the last thing you remember about the day of the shooting?’
Jessie’s hands balled into fists on top of the sheets. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘I understand, I do. But it’s very important that you try.’
‘The alarms…’ Jessie’s pupils dilated and her right hand began to tremble. ‘I remember Alan falling.’
‘Alan Edwards?’
‘Yes, and his fingers … they were … he was trying to get up. I knew he was dying. I could see he was dying.’
Darla leaned in a little closer. ‘He was shot right in front of you, yes? By Kyle Sanders?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember if he said anything before he shot Edwards?’
‘I don’t know … maybe. There was another boy … the alarms were so loud. I remember I couldn’t move.’ Jessie closed her eyes and fell silent. Then she whispered, ‘I heard laughing.’
‘Laughing?’
‘Kyle … he was laughing. Alan was dying and he was laughing.’
‘Kyle Saunders was laughing.’ Darla could barely contain her excitement. ‘What can you tell me about him?’
When Jessie opened her eyes they were clouded with misery. ‘I should have said her dress was pretty.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I should have told her.’
‘What about Hector Diaz? Did you remember him?’
‘No … I …’ tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks, ‘I didn’t know him.’
‘Okay, can you run through the sequence for me? The alarms were ringing, Edwards was shot, and—’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The blonde nurse dragged the curtains back with such ferocity two of the rungs pinged loose.
‘Excuse me, lady,’ Chippy said. He made his way to the door, not exactly running but moving fast. In the hallway he turned right and disappeared from view.
‘Security!’ The blonde hurried out into the hallway after him, bellowing. ‘Call security!’
Jessie wiped her tears with her hand and looked at Darla in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Darla. Then she walked out of the room and turned left.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jessie repeated, as the blonde nurse returned, her face like thunder.
10
Caleb sat on a stool, sipping a beer. Peripherally, he watched the raven-haired barmaid make small talk with a customer at the opposite end of the bar. She was leaning in towards the man as she spoke, flipping her hair and licking her lips; a leather-clad coquette with fake tits and a high-pitched fake laugh. She was working hard for her tips tonight, Caleb thought, watching the man’s gaze travel down her cleavage and stay there.
The bar was a low-rent kind of dive; all scarred wood and split vinyl seats. It was loud too; the jukebox on the back wall was currently blaring ‘The Ace of Spades’ at a level so high the bass made Caleb’s chest vibrate.
If the sound bothered the rest of the patrons, Caleb could not tell. The clientele was rough and ready; bikers mostly, with a few labourers and freeloaders scattered though the mix to keep it interesting. Mostly, they were loud when sober; quick to snarl and square up to each other when drunk. They played pool and swilled beer from longneck bottles, they chased shots, slamming the glasses down on hard surfaces, hooting with aggressive edges to their voices. Weed was freely smoked, other drugs taken too without fear of reprisal.
Women skirted the groups; brassy, tattooed females with painted lips and little clothing. They reminded Caleb of hyenas: cackling and shrieking, acting submissive when alone, brazen and confident when in numbers. Over the months, Caleb had got to know many of their faces and they his. At first he was a thing of curiosity, sometimes he endured the odd shoulder slam coming back from the john, the occasional insult tossed his way. But for the most part they ignored him, treating him as part of the furniture. To them he was just another dead-end loser drowning his sorrows in a bottle.
Tick tock, Caleb thought, rotating his arm a fraction to look at his watch.
At a quarter to nine the main door opened and a blonde came in carrying a motorcycle helmet in her left hand. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with pale skin and kohl-rimmed eyes. Her name was Sonja. She was married to Bear, the leader of the Flaming Wheels motorcycle club and co-owner of the dump in which Caleb was seated.
Sonja strode through the bar confidently. She returned hellos and performed elaborate handshakes before she swung under the service hatch. She spoke briefly with the raven-haired barmaid, releasing her for a break, which Caleb knew she would spend with one of the hyenas, hoovering up lines of coke off the dumpster out back. Caleb also knew that despite her flirtations and suggestive moves, the raven-haired barmaid had no interest in men, and lived to grind hips with the bull dyke in the red shirt playing pool in the corner.
&
nbsp; ‘Hey Art, what’s shakin’ baby?’ Sonja removed her leather jacket, rolled it and tucked it under the bar with her helmet. She wore a tank top tied in a knot at her waist, and her breasts were jacked halfway to her chin. A long leather necklace with a boar’s tusk dangled outside her vest and a rose tattoo with the name Alex beneath it in Gothic script covered her left bicep. Alex was her son’s name. He had been killed in a car accident two years before, aged sixteen.
Caleb knew everything about Sonja: she had been pouring out her grief on the Voice of Hope helpline for some time.
‘Hello Sonja,’ Caleb replied, tipping his bottle in salute.
‘What’s the haps?’
‘Nothing really. You?’
‘Same old, same old, my friend. Can I freshen that for you?’
Caleb nodded. Sonja opened a beer and set it before him. She smiled as she did so, but it was a distracted effort. He knew she had other things on her mind, chief among them, her husband’s infidelity.
Bear had lately taken up with a busty, gum-popping tattoo artist named Suzi. He spent two afternoons a week holed up with her in a motel behind Safe-Cos. Caleb had been listening to Sonja raging about it over the helpline for almost three weeks. Bear had promised he’d give Suzi up. Sonja had not bought a single thing he said.
Acting on a call from a disgruntled source, Sonja staked out the motel. She watched Bear and Suzi pull up and stayed still as her husband pawed Suzi’s flat ugly ass like a rutting ape. She gave them enough time to get down and dirty in their room, crossed the parking lot and used Bear’s own gun to blow the lock off the door before kicking it open.
The rest of the story was the stuff of legend. Sonja pistol-whipped the naked, screaming Suzi into the parking lot and shot Bear’s beloved Harley full of holes. Everyone at the bar knew what had gone down. The patrons respected her decision, and those who didn’t, wisely kept their yaps shut.
Certainly, Sonja had caught Caleb’s attention.
He watched her pull a draught beer, her muscled arm smoothly drawing down the pump. It was hard to sit still when he felt like this; he wanted so badly to reach out and touch her.