by Paul Flower
Jesse glanced from the rifle back to Elvis’ face. Elvis bit his lower lip with the corner of one tooth. A tiny trickle of blood seeped around the edge of the tooth.
Jesse felt a sob in his throat. Anger rose like a fist to kill it. Control, he reminded himself. Control yourself. Control him. Mom strolled by the car without seeing a thing, still humming. She went inside the house.
“Hey Elv-man,” Jesse said, the quiver in his voice steadying. “Listen, bud, um, listen bud.” Jesse cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing in here, but you best get your butt in the house for supper.”
Elvis didn’t move.
Jesse slid over the front seat headfirst and his brother lifted the gun out of his way, holding it to his chest, protecting it. Jesse settled awkwardly into a sitting position. He turned and faced his twin, who looked like a stupid statue holding the gun. In the suffocating heat, sweat dripped from Elvis’ nose and his face was the color of raw beef. He stared out the windshield, looking proud and stupid.
Jesse’s right palm slapped his brother’s cheek. Elvis stiffened, but his eyes stayed forward; his mouth remained clenched in a tight, pink line. Jesse punched Elvis’ head, bouncing it off the window. Elvis released the ancient gun and doubled up, his hands gripping his head, groaning.
“Trouble with you is, you don’t get it,” Jesse said. He bent and grabbed the gun by the broken stock. “There’s something happened here you’re too simple and stupid and addle-brained to ever understand. If you try to understand, you’re going to just muck it up. So don’t try, you hear me?”
Elvis was still doubled over, his head beating softly against the steering wheel. He started to cry. Jesse got to his knees, back against the passenger’s door, and pointed the muzzle of the gun at his brother’s head. “Look at me.”
Elvis didn’t move.
“Look at me,” Jesse repeated, his heart thudding against his ribs, the anger spreading through his chest. Elvis faced him, tears mixing with the sweat and dirt on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Jesse pressed the muzzle of the gun into his brother’s forehead and Elvis recoiled. Jesse chased the retreating head with the muzzle, pinning it against the window. Elvis, eyes clenched, squirmed to get away but he had nowhere to go.
“You got to forget all this—all of it. Go on and live your stupid little life and forget it. You hear me? You hear me?” Elvis stopped squirming. He kept his mouth clenched.
“You’re digging at something here that’s way, way, way too big for you to handle, you understand? I can tell you’re digging at it. I can see what you’re thinking, you addle-brained idiot, you stupid, jerk-headed moron. You’re thinking there’s something going on here that you can do something about. Well, you can’t. Your daddy’s gone and we’re all going to miss him. There’s nothing you can do about it. You got it?”
Elvis had gone limp, almost lifeless.
“You got it,” Jesse repeated quietly, a command more than a question.
Finally, Elvis, still sobbing softly, whispered a small, crooked “yeah.”
Jesse waited a full minute, counting the seconds, with Elvis skewered on the barrel of the gun. At last, he spoke, “Look up. Look at me.”
For a second, his brother’s face reminded Jesse so much of his father’s, he couldn’t think. A buzzing filled his ears. He held Elvis’ stare for twenty agonizing seconds. Finally, he spoke with a hiss.
“BWAAM.”
****
He jolted awake and sat up in bed. Alone, Dr. Jesse Tieter suddenly felt small and lonely. He got up and walked through the house, turning on lights. In the bathroom, he urinated, then washed his hands for several minutes and dried them carefully, tenderly. In the kitchen, he made another drink and drank it, washed the glass and put it away. He rambled back through the house, turning off the lights. He lay down in bed and stared at the ceiling. Soon, the smell of pork and beans filled his head. He could see himself, young, so young, sitting at the table, poking at his pork and beans and hamburger. That’s what they’d had for supper that night. They’d just sat there, the three of them not speaking, poking at their food, acting like the new seating arrangement at the table—the fourth chair empty, the yellow plastic napkin holder sitting where the man’s plate and silverware should have been—was perfectly normal.
Finally, Mom gave up on the meal.
“Guess we’re all just too hot to eat,” she said, then ordered Elvis to the bathtub. He shuffled from the room without a word.
When he’d gone, Jesse expected Mom to say something about the murder; he hoped she’d maybe talk over the story they were going to tell the neighbors and everybody else. They needed an alibi. Instead, she fixed him a glass of iced tea and sent him to the front porch, acting like that was normal, too. It wasn’t. Until that night, Dad would’ve gotten himself a cold beer and gone out to sit on the porch; Mom would’ve stayed inside to smoke and yell at the boys while they cleared the table and washed the dishes. Just last night, they’d have done that.
Jesse sat outside for a good half hour, taking in the last of the daylight, listening to Mom cleaning up and the screeching of the red-wing black birds and tree frogs. He watched the hot wind play with the tops of the trees and tried not to think about how funny he felt. Something about the way things were going—the quiet meal, the iced tea—bothered him. Things were normal, but way too normal.
Sitting there, he didn’t feel at all the way he thought Sheriff Matt Dillon felt at the end of a day. He was beginning to think that killing someone wasn’t as simple as it looked. It was pretty complicated when you thought about it. Pretty complicated? Heck, it was like nothing you could imagine. Shooting someone’s only the start, he told himself, then you have to handle your mom and the body and your ding-dong brother and those eyes, those stupid eyes that are in your head now. How’s a kid supposed to handle all that? How? About the time he’d decided to stop trying, Mom called him in to take his bath.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Elvis could close his eyes and still see the hand-written directions to Donnel’s and Lavern’s love nest.
As he sat at the kitchen table, her hand brushing his face felt like a lie. He realized that lately, everything had begun to feel this way: the grin on Donnel’s face, the taste of beer on his tongue, the hum of the machines at work. Nothing seemed true. Nothing was real anymore. He felt out of balance too. The bacon frying on the stove, the cat prowling the dirty dishes on the counter, everything was tipping away from him. It was like he had screwed his head on carelessly, like he’d been too impatient to thread it good and tight. This morning, he’d gotten up early and had stood right here in the kitchen, one of the gas burners turned up on the stove, his tongue held to the flame. He’d done it just for a second or two, crouched over the blue fire like an idiot, one part of his tired brain screaming ow! and the other part not reacting at all. Had that been real?
“Hey baby, baby?”
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong with you today, baby? You okay?”
Now, as she moved away from him, he had to look at Lavern to convince himself she was there, attached to the hand, flesh and bone. Real. At the sink now, staring out the window, she seemed sad. Despite himself, he felt a cramp in his chest, the cramp he’d felt when he’d first loved her as a kid. Always a little chubby—more to love, he always told her—she was cute, even drop-dead pretty when she put on the right clothes and makeup to go out or to work.
This morning, turned half-away from him, the sun sparkled in her eyes, brought out the red in her cheeks, kissed the tip of her tiny nose. She did that thing with her dyed-red hair, the flip over an ear that never completely worked because a few strands of hair always fell forward, and he had to blink. Tears swam. His throat thickened. The earth tilted and acted like it was going to send him skittering over its edge. She was so real it hurt. She
couldn’t be a lie.
He’d never been what people called “the confrontational type,” and the thought of being one made him a little sick to his stomach. So Elvis finished his coffee and brushed a dry kiss across her forehead on the way out the door.
He should’ve called in sick. There was something about the day that wasn’t good, that tasted like stale Cheeze Whiz and skunky beer. But staying home would have meant thinking about her and Donnel and every other thing that popped into his mind lately when he had time on his hands. Besides, he hated lying. And not going to work when you weren’t sick, well, what else was that but lying?
So he went. And just the act of driving was almost beyond his ability; his car, an ancient Chrysler Cordoba he’d bought for a box of Craftsman wrenches, felt too big for him. Behind the wheel, he was like a fifteen-year-old taking driver’s ed. Driving, he hugged the curbs on every turn and merged only when the car behind him flashed his headlights to move over.
Somehow he ended up in the Bonner Wire parking lot, engine off, staring out the cracked windshield at the long, ugly brick building that had been his daytime home since high school. For a moment, his thoughts drifted from the idea that Lavern was cheating on him with his best friend, to the problems here. Bonner Wire had always been a nice little mom-and-pop operation, but the third generation of the Bonner family, headed up by Randy Bonner, had been ambitious. They’d gone out and spent a lot of money on new equipment and hired a bunch of new sales guys. The upshot of it all was that over the past three years, the plant had been running full-tilt over three shifts, and the Bonner family had gotten fat and sassy and recently up and sold out to some big-ass corporation from Switzerland. The sale had caused quite a lot of talk in town; rumors were flying around about the foreign owners laying off a bunch of the old workers and bringing in people from other plants.
Still behind the wheel, Elvis leaned against the door of the Cordoba and pushed hard to open it, reminding himself that he was way too valuable to be laid off.
Soon, he was at his machine and losing himself in his work.
About eleven o’clock, the new plant manager waddled into Elvis’ area. He was a short, fat, bald guy everyone called Mr. Faceless because they couldn’t remember where he’d come from or his real name.
About five minutes went by, Mr. Faceless just standing there with his hands on his fat hips before he finally moseyed down the line to where Jerry Plannenberg inspected the finished coils and okayed them for shipping. Jerry was a real jerk who also happened to be Elvis’ supervisor. He’d started at the plant six months before Elvis, working on a co-op plan during their senior year in high school. Elvis got nervous seeing Mr. Faceless and Jerry talking; it could only mean bad news. Sure enough, after a few minutes of talk, the plant manager walked over to Elvis and said five awful words.
“Talk to you a minute?”
They went into the employee lunchroom and stood next to the hot drink machine, right where Elvis had gotten his cup of coffee—light sugar, no cream—every morning since forever. Mr. Faceless said something about needing to streamline operations and the damn Japanese being so competitive. That was that.
Jerry Plannenberg walked in right after the worst part, so Elvis tried to act like it didn’t hurt. He acted like the conversation was about the coffee machine or a new order of heavy duty wire. Jerry sauntered over to the cold drink machine, his ponytail swaying behind the red baseball cap he always wore, and got himself a Dr Pepper with extra ice, which was the only thing the cold drink machine served; it had broken the year before.
Jerry watched the cup fall, the ice plop and the pop start to drizzle. It seemed like he wasn’t listening to what was going on between Elvis and Mr. Faceless, but Elvis knew he was. Jerry waited all the way to the last drizzle, then he scratched his butt, took the cup, turned and glanced at the two of them one last time, and walked out.
“You got to give me a chance,” Elvis said to the faceless man, all the fatigue and frustration rising in his voice. “I done this job for years. Nobody here can do what I can, the way I can.” His voice rose to a shout and he realized it was wrong as he started doing it, but couldn’t help thumping the guy on the chest with his index finger. “I’m the best you got. Swear to Moses I am. You fire me and you might as well close the place down. I’m the best you got. Darn straight I am. You can ask anybody.”
“Hey! What you doing, man? Ease off, Elvis.” Jerry Plannenberg was standing in the doorway again. He walked toward them, looking concerned. “You okay, Mr. Baylor? You don’t look so good.” He held out the cup in his hand to the faceless guy. “Want a drink of my pop?”
Elvis was surprised that the guy’s name was Baylor. Elvis gave him a look, measuring him for the name, and realized the man’s nothing face had gone pasty and gray. Mr. Baylor was breathing hard, and he took the cup with a trembling hand, his eyes buggy and red-rimmed.
“Go ahead, take all you want; I ain’t drunk out of it,” Jerry said.
Mr. Baylor took a drink, nodded at Jerry and smiled, still panting. Elvis thought about how much he hated Jerry Plannenberg. He was such a suck-up. He’d be all sweet and nice to your face, but he’d poison his grandma if it would get him somewhere. Rumor had it he was a white supremacist, too. The idea of it made Elvis’ stomach churn.
“You got to watch these guys,” Jerry said to Mr. Baylor with a nod toward Elvis. “This one’s a real hothead.” He scowled at Elvis.
Mr. Baylor shotgunned the rest of the Dr Pepper, made a face, then wadded the cup and threw it wildly at the wastebasket.
“Thing is, Mr. B.,” Jerry continued, slipping an arm around the chubby man’s shoulder. “If you ain’t careful when you lay off a guy like the E-man here, he’s liable to start pulling that ‘disgruntled employee’ crap on you. He’s got the mind of a postal worker, if you know what I’m saying.” Jerry glanced at Elvis and smirked, then punched Mr. Baylor in the chest. Mr. Baylor let out a ragged gag and recoiled.
“He’s liable to make that old ticker of yours act up, Mr. B. Sure, he is.” Jerry hit the guy harder, right above the breastbone. Mr. Baylor twisted half away, his mouth wide, his non-face now very red.
“Wa... wa... wait. What you doing, Jerry?” Elvis said, his voice going high.
“I ain’t doing nothing,” Jerry said, slugging the guy again. “I’m just talking to Mr. Baylor.”
Jerry let him go and Mr. Baylor went down on one knee, gasping and clawing and trying to speak. Jerry punched him hard, again, in the back.
“What have you done? Oh my lord—what have you DONE?” Elvis reached for Jerry. “What have you done?”
“What have you done?” Jerry screamed back, mocking him. “Oh my lord, what have you done?”
For Elvis, the room was turning slowly. Mr. Baylor grabbed his left arm and rolled onto his back on the cement floor, one leg hitting a plastic chair that was tucked under a table. The chair skidded a couple feet and teetered over with an ugly sound.
“Sir, sir—you okay?” Elvis’ voice was getting louder, but he could barely hear it above the roar in his ears. He knelt by the faceless man. The guy’s eyes rolled up into his head and he stopped moving. A trickle of foamy drool oozed from one corner of his mouth. “Sir, oh sir, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Elvis swallowed hard, trying to hear. He could feel his own heartbeat, but he had a feeling there was no use to check Mr. Baylor’s. He put his hand down on the cold cement to keep from tumbling over. “I’m so sorry,” Elvis said again. His voice sounded like a little boy’s, all weak and warbly.
****
“Oh my lord, what have you done?” Sally Dunleavy and a couple other people from the office came running into the lunchroom. Jerry had disappeared.
“I... he...”
“Somebody call an ambulance,” Sally yelled. The two people turned and scrambled for the door.
The ambulance came. Elvis wasn’t sure if it took second
s or hours. The paramedics spent little time in deciding the man was dead and covering the body with a sheet. Then, before Elvis could digest it all, the cops were talking to him. One of the cops was a fat guy with powdered sugar on the front of his shirt. The other was short, neat and quiet, a note taker. The short one kept his nose pointed at a little notebook, scribbling frantically as the whole thing turned into a big, loud mess, people gabbing and pointing and carrying on.
Someone from the front office mentioned the faceless man had had heart trouble and a bunch of others nodded in agreement. The whole management team had known about the heart, Sally said. “It had been the downside to bringing him onboard,” she said. The note-taker cop made a note of it.
Sally also told the cops Elvis was “let go today as part of the downsizing” and Jerry, who’d reappeared, muttered something about “pushing and shoving” and Elvis “being really pissed.”
The cops led Elvis away into the management conference room. They sat him down in a big leather chair and, for nearly an hour, they pounded away at “his story.” Elvis told the truth, glossing over the part about getting really mad at the faceless man. Every time he started to describe Jerry punching the guy in the chest, the fat cop gave Elvis a quick, ugly stare, threw his arms in the air and began to pace. Elvis couldn’t blame him, really. How could a guy, even a tense guy with a bad heart, die from chest punching? Why would Jerry do that, anyway? It made more sense that Elvis had killed the man or at least hurt him enough to make his heart blow out. Even Elvis could see that. Part of Elvis wondered if that was what had happened. Maybe he’d gotten so mad he’d killed the guy and just couldn’t remember.
The little cop turned out to be pretty calm. He just kept writing down what Elvis said. When he’d decided they weren’t getting any more out of him, he gave Elvis a smile and said, “You ain’t planning on going anywhere the next couple of days, are you, Elvis?”
The cop using his first name comforted him a little.
“No,” Elvis managed to squeak out.