A Long Crazy Burn

by Jeff Johnson

  “I don’t know what the fuck happened. Met up with his old cellie, white junkie piece o’ shit name Ralston. Him the one blew your shit up. Ralston knew some big motherfuckas, don’t know how, but they’s the ones hired him.” He sucked down a last drag. I tapped the gun on my knee.

  “Ralston got scared while he was makin’ that bomb. Things lookin’ shitty. He come to Cheeks an’ they talk an’ Cheeks do the pimp thing, become his representative. Start talkin’ to the big boys. An’ then yo’ ass shows up.”

  I clicked my teeth together and a spasm ran down Clarence’s leg.

  “Yeah, see, Cheeks did that carve. Swear on my soul.”

  I got up and plucked out a menthol, keeping the gun on Clarence’s crotch. I stuck it behind my ear and then spun the lid on the bottle with my free hand and dumped some into my mouth.

  “That X thing, Clarence, don’t talk about that.” I took another sip. It was hard holding the gun on him. “Makes me feel homicidal. Just so you know.”

  “OK.”

  “So, Monique.”

  “Cheeks got Ralston up in this motel on 82nd. The Bismarck. He sent Monique to stay with him and do some trollin’, get some new streets down. Fuckin’ all I know, I swear. I got no idea who hired his ass.” He raised his hands.

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “OK, Clarence, here’s what happens now. Cheeks there”—I gestured with the gun—“well, he’s gonna pass into the next world soon. I got a little carried away. I’m taking his car and that bag of cash. You, I guess you live. But if this Ralston knows I’m on my way, I’ll do some really bad shit to you. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “That dumpster? Might be a good place for big boy here. But I noticed two closer ones on the side of the building.”

  Clarence nodded again. He still had his hands up. I got up to leave.

  “You just sit there for a little bit. I’m gonna go now, but I might just hide outside the door and listen to hear if your fat ass starts moving around. Then you get every bullet in this gun. I might just go. But you won’t fucking know.”

  “I gotta take a shit,” Clarence said. “Like to get the toilet water off my broke-ass face, too.”

  “Cool. You do that. I’ll just sit right here. You come out with anything bigger than a toothbrush …”

  “Believe me man, ain’t no way.”

  “Get on, then.” I waved the gun at the bathroom door.

  Clarence rose unsteadily to his feet and walked slowly. He could feel his knee now.

  “Close the door,” I said. “I don’t want to hear whatever falls out of you hit the water.”

  He closed the door behind him. I snatched the cigarettes and the bag of money, tucked the bloody golf club up my sleeve, slipped out and clicked the door shut behind me, then made my way quickly across the landing and down the blurry stairs. I stuffed the gun into my pocket on the way down.

  Cheeks’s Continental started on the first try. I rolled it out of the parking lot on purr and gunned it once I was on the interstate, squinting, just able to see enough to drive. The snow had stopped and it was turning to slush. My hands were shaking and my right eye was still closed. As I drove I dug the smokes out of my pocket, ripped the top off the pack with my teeth, and dumped them on the seat next to me. At the first stoplight, I managed to get one into my mouth and hit it with Cheeks’s engraved Zippo.

  I had a pimp’s car, his gun, and his entire cash wad. Two weeks of planning, and right then it looked like Delia was right about me. I was stupid. Because I didn’t know what to do next. That was my entire plan.

  I pulled into an all night drive-thru burrito stand and got four al pastor, wet with red sauce, with two sides of beans and rice. The burritos were crappy, but I made it through two of them sitting in the Continental with the heater running. Then I drained a bottle of lime soda and tossed all the wreckage on the passenger floor. I wouldn’t be in the car for long, so there was no point in worrying about the trash.

  It was four a.m. and I was sickly tired. The black sky was misting something that almost qualified as sleet again. I needed drugs, booze, and sleep, but I was shit out of luck on all three counts. I couldn’t go into an all-night pharmacy for aspirin looking like Frankenstein, the bars were closed, and Jane’s was out. I just couldn’t bear the thought of going back there. The trench coat I was wearing was flecked with blood. My clown shoes were red. I’d noticed all the blood at the burrito drive-thru. None of it was mine, but it was too much. I owed Jane money, not another night on her ruined couch, this time fresh from a murder.

  I wheeled around northeast Portland, keeping to the side streets. Cheeks’s car smelled like cigars, potent cologne, and now burritos and onion. Not a great mix. The night was wet and quiet. I fired up a chain of menthols and just rumbled around, half-blind and plan-free.

  I knew where Monique was. She was chilling with the guy who’d blown up my life. If I tried to drive out there in this ridiculous pimpmobile, I’d be in handcuffs in less than ten minutes. Driving around in a tricked-out pimp ride, dressed in blood-spattered clown clothes with a poorly stitched together head, a big gold-plated gun, and a bent and bloody golf club next to a paper bag full of cash and two crappy burritos was a sign that the crazy I’d felt come over me at the Sands was still too close to the surface.

  I wanted to go home, but Dessel and Pressman would have someone on my place. It occurred to me that I didn’t fit my profile picture anymore. And I was driving a different car. I had my keys again, so I might be able to sneak over the back fence and slip through the back door. Delia might be there. I wanted to see her. My nose tingled and my good eye watered up. My cats. I missed the little shitheads. I wanted to smell their fur, that mix of dust and sweet. I took the big car on the scenic route, hitting every side street. It took about five cigarettes to get to 29th. When I passed by on the corner, I saw Delia’s restored old red Falcon in the driveway. There was an unmarked Chevy on the corner; two guys were lounging inside, like they’d been there for hours.

  I pulled around the corner and found a pool of darkness between the streetlights, up a few blocks. I cut the engine and pocketed the gun, stuffed the money bag in the other coat pocket, got out with the golf club, and locked the door. The street was only randomly dotted with parked cars, and a few feet behind the Continental was a sewer grate, one of the big, wide ones made for the yearly slurry of fall leaves. I looked around as best I could until I was sure that the night was free of witnesses, took the gun out, and tossed it. It skittered into the sewer mouth and I heard a satisfying plunk as it hit the water below the street. I tossed the golf club in behind it and was forced to kick it around a few times to make it go down, but it finally did.

  Then I walked quickly for a few blocks, away from the car, my head down, just another guy on a shitty night, face down. When I was far enough away to relax, I stopped and took a deep breath, then lifted my face to the black sky. The cold felt good on my pulsing face. I blinked and let the icy water run into my itchy eyes. All the stitching itched ferociously, but the freezing rain on my face was so sweet that for a minute I forgot about everything and stood there like a meaty flower in a storm. Little by little, drop by drop, the crazy started washing away.

  When my face and hands were finally numb, I hobbled like an old man down the sidewalk on the next street over. When I got to the house behind mine, I silently limped down the side and into the backyard. I could see through the chain-link fence that my bedroom light was on.

  Getting over the fence took everything I had left, and I tore the crotch of my clown pants. I had to lie panting in the mud and dead grass for a few minutes when I was finally over it. If there was a cop inside with Delia, I was fucked. I might have been able to run about as fast as I’d normally be able to crawl.

  The back door led to the laundry room I shared with my upstairs neighbors. In an inspired moment a few months back, I’d snapped my house key off in the ignition of some guy’s car, so my hippie neighbors
had left their key in a strawberry pot on the back porch and we’d all been too lazy to make a copy yet. I fished around for it and my fingers closed around metal.

  From there it was easy. I unlocked the back door, dropped the key back in the pot, and locked it behind me. The dirty wooden stairwell to one side past the washer and dryer led up to the neighbor’s landing and their back door. My back door was directly across from me. My left pupil was still a pinhole and I couldn’t see anything.

  I fumbled around for my keys. Since I couldn’t see well enough to make them out, I tried them all and one of them finally turned the dead bolt. I opened the door as silently as I could. The kitchen lights were on. Delia was standing in the center of the room, stunned, wearing a Cramps T-shirt, big wool socks, and holding a huge knife. The knife dropped out of her hand and we stared at each other for a few heartbeats.

  She crashed into me and squeezed my ribs. I gasped and she let up and looked at my face.

  “I fucking thought you were dead!” she screamed. “Again!”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered back. “I’m really, really fucking sorry.”

  Her eyes were puffy with sleep. She’d scrubbed all of her makeup off and her skin looked like living paper. When she started crying, staring at my face, something in my chest snapped like a bowstring.

  “I had so much shit I wanted to say if I ever saw you again.” She leaned into me and slipped her hands into my wet jacket. “I can’t remember any of it.” She sobbed a few times and then turned her watery eyes back up into my face. “You look incredibly awful, Darby. Who sewed up the side of your face? A monkey? The cops are out there! What the hell are you even doing here?”

  “Nice old lady sewed me up,” I rasped. My ribs really hurt after the fence and Delia’s squeezing. “Might have had shaky hands. I came over the back fence. Tore my new pants.”

  “Jesus.” She pushed me back and studied me closely, frowning. “Your right eye. You’re lucky it’s still in there. What the hell did you do?”

  “We got any booze?”

  Delia looked my face over again and sighed heavily.

  “Vodka. I killed all the brown stuff. You want rocks?”

  “Too cold.”

  She poured us a few shots and lit a couple of cigarettes on the stove. I took the shot in one hand and the cigarette in the other. When she saw my right hand her eyes widened and she quickly looked away, her face twisting. I tossed the shot back and took a drag.

  “Darby.” She downed her shot. “You’re sort of covered in blood.”

  “Not mine. At least most of it. I think.”

  She stared at me, waiting, tapping one foot. I squirmed a little.

  “See,” I said. “I just had to kill this dude …”

  Delia crossed her arms, cigarette dangling from her lips.

  “Went looking for Monique. Her pimp and some fat guy beat the shit out of me and left me for dead in a dumpster. Carved an X in my ass cheek, too. So when I went back to talk to them …” I shrugged and winced. “I feel like I might pass out, sweetie.”

  I tried to blink a few times and a wave of vertigo washed over me. I staggered and dropped my smoke.

  “Bed,” I croaked.

  Delia guided me into the bathroom and I fell into the tub. I woke up after she’d stripped me bare. Warm water washed over me and I started shivering. She put some burning thing on the stitches on my face and I came fully to, grabbed her hands.

  “Easy,” she cooed softly. “Easy.”

  I gasped when she ran something searing over my ribs. Climbing over the fence had been a bad idea. But I was getting really good at bad ideas. My right eye had closed entirely and I couldn’t see her very well.

  Delia lathered my hair while the hot shower water pounded on me, then rinsed it with a small basin from the kitchen. I watched rivers of pink swirl down the drain before the water was finally clear. Then she put in the stopper and the tub began to fill. She dumped in some bubble bath and a yellow plastic ducky I’d never seen before.

  “Soak,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Darby, I’m getting the stitches out of you. Tonight. These fucking things are sewing thread. As in infected.”

  “Aw.”

  “Yep. Soak. I’ll be right back.”

  When she returned, I was drifting in and out. She stuffed a few pills into my mouth and made me drink a pint of water.

  “There’s pimp money in my clown coat,” I began.

  “I found it,” she said. “Along with some car keys. Where’s the car?”

  “I dunno. Around out there somewhere. I think I should go to bed now. After one cigarette. Give pills time to work.”

  I blinked again to get some focus. She was poised over me with toenail clippers in one hand and tweezers in the other.

  “I hate looking at you right now,” I said.

  Delia made a spinning motion with the clippers, I turned onto my side and almost went under. The arc of my hip stuck neatly out of the bubble bath.

  “Darby,” she breathed out, inspecting my butt cheek, “you killed the guy who did this, right?”

  “Golf club. Just now.”

  “Good.”

  I heard a clip and felt a little pain, then pulling.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. “My first really good look at your ass.”

  “I’m told it’s bony.”

  “It is.”

  “Like yours is any better.”

  More yanking. Delia tsked.

  “You’re a fucking idiot, Darby. Cops outside, you’re all fucked up, you just killed a guy with a golf club, and now I’m removing stitches from your ass and you have the presence of mind to criticize mine.”

  Yank.

  “I stole his car, too.”

  “Splendid.”

  Yank.

  “And all his money.”

  “That’s a good boy,” she said.

  Yank.

  When she was done, I settled back and held up two fingers for a smoke. I itched all over, but the oils and the warm water were sinking in. Delia wiped her hands and lit up two smokes, then placed one between my lips.

  “You know,” I started.

  “Yes, yes. Women can be so cruel. Here’s a really good example. I’m gonna take your blood-spattered clown outfit and bag it. It’s going into the basement for later incineration or burial. So your attempt at a lame-ass new fashion trend is over. Try that on for mean.”

  “Cunt.”

  She rubbed some burning stuff on my face.

  “Then you’re going to eat whatever I make. It won’t be good, but you look like a dog from some shit hole in India. I can see your ribs.”

  “I’ve been on a diet.”

  “Get your ridiculous ass up while I burn some food for you to stuff into that thing you wear as a face. You’re lucky my dinner was almost ready. But first—” She held up the clippers. “Your face.”

  “Oh no.”

  I closed my eyes. With each clip she made a soft little noise, like she could feel it, too. When she was done she lathered up her hands and gently washed my face, massaging it until the crust was gone, and it felt so good that I never wanted to open my eyes again.

  When she was done, she went into the kitchen without a word and started cracking eggs and banging around pans. Some men have a little trouble with nudity. I mean their own. I was never one of them. Being naked generally meant something good was going to happen. But being naked in front of Delia gave me pause. Then again, she had just pried some rotting stitches out of my ass and described me as a starving Indian dog. So there was that. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling until I felt brave again. Then I got out and quickly padded through the kitchen naked, into the bedroom.

  “Pants, jackass,” she called over her shoulder. I closed the door and sat down on the edge of my bed. My bed, with its familiar comforter, the newly dusted antique headboard I’d gotten at a garage sale and partially restored myself. My old, flat pillow. My brain felt lik
e it had been turned off, utterly numb, like a foot that had fallen asleep. After a few minutes the smell of sizzling pork and enchiladas wafted in, mingling with the comforting smell of furniture polish. I got a pair of soft, worn jeans out of the dresser and slowly pulled them up over my butt. They didn’t fit that well anymore, so I let them sag around my waist like a rap kid.

  When I went out into the kitchen, she had a small restaurant operation going on. I paused to sniff and Delia elbowed me out of the way.

  “Dining room table, droopy drawers. You have time for one more smoke.”

  I drifted out and sat down. The bottle of vodka was there, but I’d left my glass by the bathtub and I didn’t have the energy to go back and get it. I took a pull off the bottle and then lit a smoke from the pack on the table. I looked around.

  “Ever notice,” I said, gesturing with my cigarette, “how a place always looks different when you get home? This table looks bigger.” The pills were talking.

  “Yeah, well, that eye helps. Here we go.”

  She came out of the kitchen and set a plate down in front of me. Steam curled off a small mountain of scrambled eggs, two leftover green enchiladas that were crispy at the edges, and some sliced tomato. She plunked a bottle of hot sauce down with a fork and napkin and I smiled at her. I dumped some on the eggs and laid into them. They were perfectly light and buttery. After a few bites I carved off a big chunk of enchilada and stuffed the entire thing into my mouth. Delia smiled, watching me eat.

  “Roasted squash and goat cheese. I made them the other night and I still have half the pan. Chew, Darby.”

  “Mmm.” It was all I could say.

  As soon as I was halfway through with the plate, she padded back into the kitchen and came back with a pan full of breakfast sausages that had been cooking. She shoveled six of them out and then went back into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of orange juice. She picked up one of the little sausages and nibbled it, thoughtful.

  “I love these little things,” she murmured. I glanced up at her and then back down, quickly. Delia was crying, with the sound turned off.