O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.
Not that they’d really carry through on those threats anyway. It was all a bluff. This whole deal was just two smartass kids thinking they’d found themselves a pot of gold, except they weren’t professionals and they didn’t know what they were in for. When Mitch stood up to them, the wind would be at his back.
Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the LORD chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the LORD persecute them.
He heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. A moment later, Shaw and Tara came in, loudly. They were drunk. Shaw declaring, “We took a taxi. Nobody in no condition to drive. God. Mitch, your mother fleeced us. Didn’t she, Tara?”
“She fleeced you,” said Tara — and Mitch thought he detected coquettishness in her tone. Ah, God. My daughter is flirting with him? Son of a bitch.
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.
Tara went into the kitchen to find her mother. While Shaw came over to the desk. “What you up to there, Mitch?”
“Nothing.”
“Reading Scripture? I’m impressed. Hey, did the lottery folks call? Have they scheduled the press conference yet?”
“Tomorrow. Eleven o’clock.”
“God. Great. That should be a blast.”
The bastard kept standing there, while Mitch read:
Consume them in wrath! Consume them, that they may not be! And let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth!
Tara came back from the kitchen. “Mom wants to know, you want red or white wine with your supper?”
Shaw laughed. “Tell your mother she’s not getting me drunk. That’s the classic mistake of two-bit crooks.”
“Seems like one you’ve already made.”
“Oh, well then, if the horse is out of the barn, I’ll take red.” He grinned. And asked Mitch, “Hey, did I tell you your mother took us to the cleaners?”
Mitch nodded.
“That’s the King James, right? You prefer the King James?”
Mitch shrugged. “I guess.”
“How come?”
“Just the one I’ve always used.”
“I know what you mean,” said Shaw. “Same with me, I like the old ways best. All the beauty is in the old ways.”
Be not thou far from me, O LORD. O my strength! Haste thee to help me!
Romeo only had time to kick some oyster shells and mud over the carcass before it started to rain. Fat teary drops that chased him back to the Tercel. He got behind the driver’s seat just as a storm began to unpack itself all around him. Lightning on all sides. He turned up Worms of Wisdom, which boomed around in the car while the thunder clattered outside. The wipers worked like oars, and he seemed to be floating. He took the Rt. 25 spur to Cap’n D’s. He pulled into the parking lot, and there he stopped and changed his shirt. Then rolled down the window, made a cup of his hand, and caught rainwater, which he slapped all over his face. He got his razor from his duffel and shaved. There was no soap, and the only light was the grisly light of the thunderstorm, but when he checked his work in the rear-view mirror, he thought he’d done OK.
As soon as the storm abated a little, he made a dash for the restaurant door. He had a dinner of stuffed flounder and fried oysters, which was delicious. As he ate he thought, if Shaw says the scheme is in good shape, maybe it is. He is a visionary. He seems to have these folks all figured out. It’s true that sheer audacity often wins the day. Maybe I won’t have to murder anyone.
After his meal, he drove over to the mall and bought a T-shirt for his mother. She had wanted a Florida T-shirt, but now it seemed unlikely he’d ever get to Florida, so he bought one that said The Golden Isles of Georgia. It had a palm tree, a sand dollar, and a pirate. Next he went to Hermann’s Candle Shoppe and bought a gift for Claude. Then he went to Camelot Music and got an album by the band Drive Fast & Shut Your Eyes — just to find out what kind of music Clio liked. It turned out to be all sparkly harmonic syrup. He played it as he made another circuit of the city. He couldn’t stand it, but he played it through dutifully, while he visited, one by one, the stations of his patrol.
I should try to appreciate this gooey shit.
Shaw would love it.
After the rain, the air was full of earth-smells. The light came down a thin, unstable gold, and somebody’s straw hat was lying in the road. He decided to go by Blackbeard’s Motel and see if the missionary girls wanted to come out. He could take them drinking on St. Simon’s Island. Maybe I can even spring for dinner, he thought. Since now I’m such a wealthy tycoon.
Just then, by an odd stroke of fortune, he passed Clio’s little Miata coming the other way. He saw her sitting behind the wheel, with that last bit of sunlight in her hair: the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.
Clio went up Norwich Street to Shambol’s Tattoo, but Shambol had another customer so Clio had to wait in the front room. She sat there staring at the bongs and hookahs and CleanTest Powdered-Urine Kits, and she thought about Tara’s betrayal. Clio had left Tara three voice messages and two text messages and a couple of emails, but only silence had come in return. Tara had made her choice. Tara’s choice was goodbye. Her choice was to forsake her former best friend who could disappear for all Tara cared. Go off and die, just crawl to any corner of the frikkin Wick and die.
But would she really just drop me? Tara? She can’t. She’s not ignoring me. She’s just busy, for God’s sake. She loves me and I just have to be patient, not be so frikkin paranoid and crazy…
Then a strange guy came into the shop.
Shambol came out and told him he’d have to wait, and the guy said that’d be fine. He sat. He had large eyes like some kind of nocturnal animal. He sat there checking everything out, everything but Clio — he avoided looking at her. Finally though, she heard him suck in some air and then:
“Hi.”
Oh God. Please don’t frikkin try to talk to me.
Again, “Hi.”
All nervous and enthused. Don’t give him the least flicker of attention.
“You getting a tattoo?” he asked her.
What a stupid-ass question.
He said, “I’m getting one too. What tattoo you gonna get?”
“You know what, I’m really not in the mood for conversation.”
“Oh. OK.”
But ten seconds later he started in again: “Mine’s going right here. Right above my ankle. It’s gonna say, What’s the damage?”
It took a moment for that to hit home.
She turned. “Did you say, What’s the damage?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You mean from the song?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You know it?”
“The Drive Fast & Shut Your Eyes song?”
He grinned, and recited: “What’s the damage? What’s the cost?”
She said back, “Is there anything I haven’t lost?”
He laughed. “You know our music!”
“Our music?”
“I’m their road manager.”
“You’re the road manager for Drive Fast & Shut Your Eyes?”
“Uh-huh. Though Truck’s been such an asshole lately I probably can’t do it much longer.”
“You know Truck?”
He shrugged. “Well, I mean, we’re not that big.”
“You’re huge. I went to your concert in Savannah!”
“Really?”
“Dude! It was so fucking awesome!”
“Cool,” he said.
But then he got up and went to the counter and started leafing through Prick magazine, looking at the tattoos. Like he was completely done with her. She worried she’d come on too strong about her love for the band. Had she scared him away? When he’d said “Co
ol,” was he mocking her somehow? This guy was friends with Truck Martin, and she’d weirded him out! What a loser she was!
But then he came back. “Hey, you know where that line comes from? ‘What’s the damage?’ ”
She shook her head.
“From when we were in Tallahassee and we were in this, like, diner or something, and we started throwing glasses and plates and breaking shit, oh my god, and the waitress comes in, and she’s like, oh shit! Like, it looked like a bomb had gone off in there. And Truck was like: ‘So what’s the damage?’ ”
Clio beamed. “You were there?”
“Like if you’re alive at all, there’s gonna be damages.”
“True that,” she said.
They sat quietly.
Then she asked him, “What’s your name?”
“Romeo.”
She smiled.
He said, “Mama knew what a lover I’d be.” But rolled his eyes to show he knew what a cheesy line that was. She thought, no guy in Brunswick would ever be named Romeo.
He said, “So will you tell me now?”
“Tell you what?”
“What tattoo you’re getting?”
“Oh,” she said. “The number thirty.”
“Why thirty?”
“ ’Cause my best friend is selling me out for like thirty pieces of silver.”
He was staring at her again. But now she didn’t mind. Now she allowed herself to look back at him, and saw that his eyes were compassionate and forgiving. And so what if he does see me crying? And so what if I pour out my shame and my secrets to a total stranger, why not? Got to talk to somebody.
Romeo listened passionately and Clio told him the whole story: how Tara had abandoned her now that she was so rich, how she wouldn’t even return Clio’s phone calls, how the bottom had fallen out of Clio’s life. It tore him up. He wanted to say something reassuring. But since he and Shaw were the root cause of her torment, reassuring her would be kind of sick, wouldn’t it? He wound up saying nothing, just listening.
Then some big ox came in, biker dude with braided beard and no shirt, and across his chest a mural of tattoos depicting the Saga of Lynyrd Skynyrd. On his left shoulder, the badass eponymous gym teacher; all around his right nipple, the fiery plane crash. It turned out this dude knew Clio, from when she’d been a waitress at Southern Soul Barbeque on the island. He started telling her about something called Bike Week — going on and on about his misadventures, and Romeo thinking why don’t you shut up, can’t you see what she’s going through? Why don’t you shut up and go put a fucking shirt on? But he kept rumbling on till finally she arose and pleaded, “I gotta go. I guess I don’t want that tattoo after all.” Struggling not to cry. She said to Romeo, “Hey call me, OK?” and wrote down her number for him, and went out to her car.
The Lynyrd Skynyrd dude watched her go, and whistled softly and said, “Mm-mm. Look at the shitter on that critter.”
Then he asked Romeo, “Yaw gettin a tattoo?”
What a lame-ass question, thought Romeo. Abruptly he got up and went out after Clio, but she’d already driven off.
He had her number though, and he might have called her right then. But he thought, no, too soon. Might look creepy. Would be creepy. My calling her. Ever. While I’m doing this to her best friend’s family? No.
He got back in the Tercel, but didn’t know where to go. The notion of patrolling seemed too crushing right now. So he went by Blackbeard’s Motel, looking for the missionary girls. But the beady-eyed old buzzard at the desk said they’d checked out. So then he just drove around till he found a bar: the Oleander Inn near the mall. Bland as death. The décor of an airport lounge. Three big flatscreen TVs, with the sound killed on all of them. The customers looked like stranded travelers but were, in fact, locals. When one of them got up to stagger out, the others said, “See ya, Lloyd,” and, “Take care, Lloyd,” and “Next time, Lloyd.” Then they all reclaimed their comas.
Romeo moved on. He went to Balm-of-Gilead Road, to visit Wynetta and old Claude. Wynetta’s truck wasn’t there though. Had she taken her father back to the hospital?
Was he dead already? Shit, thought Romeo, don’t let him be dead.
Then he saw that the TV was on.
He went up to the door and knocked, and heard, “Come in.”
He opened the door. Claude was lying there naked as a soup-bone. “My daughter. Is not. Here.”
“Oh. OK. Where is she?”
Ghost of a shrug.
“You all right here, Claude?”
“Never been. Better.”
Claude’s eyes were not rigorously beholden to each other. Where one went the other would follow, but at its own stately pace.
“Come in,” he said. “What’s? Your name again?”
“Romeo.”
“Oh. How could I. Forget? I’m watching TV. Get yourself. A beer.”
Romeo got a PBR from the fridge and sat in the motel-style chair beside the bed. Claude was watching an episode of The Honeymooners, and Romeo watched it with him. Took him a while to focus, but once he did he thought it one of the best programs he’d ever seen. The story concerned the purchase of a vacuum cleaner. Ralph Kramden had bought an old secondhand vacuum cleaner for his wife Alice, and of course right away it broke down. His friend Norton offered to fix it. Did fixit —but it sprang to life so suddenly that it nearly pulled Ralph’s tongue out. Romeo couldn’t remember when he had laughed so hard. The tongue part was hilarious — but the funniest thing, and the saddest, was the shame that Ralph felt for buying his wife a secondhand vacuum cleaner.
Claude liked the show too — his laughter emerging in a slow pant. But during commercials he would lift his eyes to the pictures of his wife on the wall.
Romeo asked, “Does that bag need changing?”
“Oh. Don’t. Trouble yourself.”
It was no trouble. Romeo had tended his father’s IV when the old man was dying from testicular cancer. To attach the new bag of morphine took only a minute. Then together they watched the end of the show. An election at the Raccoon Lodge: Ralph was in the running, but lost by one vote. He was certain it was Norton’s disloyalty that had sunk his candidacy, but he was wrong: Norton had been faithful all along. When this faithfulness was revealed to Ralph, there was no laughter from Romeo and Claude. They were both on the verge of tears. Loyalty, loyalty to a friend in the face of adversity: this was the great thing.
The credits rolled. Claude said he’d seen enough TV, and Romeo shut it off.
Sitting in silence, listening to the old man’s breathing.
Then Romeo asked, “You really dying?”
“So they. Tell me.”
“You in pain?”
His rubbery grin. “Well. Keep that bag. Full.”
“You want a beer?”
“I can’t. Swallow so well. But you. Have another.”
“Water?”
“Well. Just to. Wet. My whistle.”
Romeo filled a cup at the sink, and held it before the old man’s lips. A tongue appeared, shyly. The dragon lady bathes alone. Romeo looked away till Claude was finished, then rinsed the cup and took his seat again.
Claude said, “You’re not. From Brunswick. Are you, son?”
“Ohio.”
“May I ask. Why you’re here?”
“Oh, just a business deal. Me and my buddy.”
“Oh.”
“Well actually, it’s his deal. I’m just like, here if needed.”
“I see.”
They sat a while. Then Romeo said, “Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure.”
“One time there was this dude, this grad student from OSU? And he got on my buddy’s nerves. We were working at this tech place, my buddy and me, and one night we met this guy, and he was such an arrogant asshole, but our friend Amber really liked him. And Shaw got pissed off at the guy, and they had a quarrel. And later Shaw asked me would I help with what he wanted to do. And, you know, he’s my buddy, you kn
ow?”
“Yes,” said Claude.
“What he wanted to do was break into the shitstain’s apartment and put a little nest of vipers into his computer, you know? So I did it. So then Shaw could read all his emails, and know everywhere he surfed, and fuck him in every which way possible. You know? I mean we owned this poor guy.”
Claude nodded. He looked uncomfortable.
“I mean, I can’t tell you I didn’t have fun, because it was OK, because I was doing this with Shaw. We intercepted the emails the guy sent out and changed them just a little to make them sort of insulting. We got him fired from his job, and we made the dean of his college think he was like a psycho child molester, and we made Amber come to hate the sucker. And I said to Shaw, ‘This is enough, right?’ But Shaw said, ‘Are you with me or not? We’re going all the way.’ So we did. We went all the way with that shitstain.”
The old man said, “How far. Was that?”
“Oh God,” said Romeo. “I mean all the fuckin way. And now Shaw’s got me on a similar ride. And I’m scared. I don’t want to do this shit.”
But Claude’s distress was evident, which made Romeo feel awful. He wished he’d never started this story.
The silence grew oppressive.
Romeo said, “Tell me again what your grandfather said. OK? About the old rooster?”
But Claude had fallen asleep.
Romeo settled the blanket around the old man’s shoulders, and patted his head like an infant, and went outside. He leaned against the hood of the Tercel. He thought he could still hear the rhythm of Claude’s breathing, and he listened to that for a while, comforted — until he realized that all he was hearing was the heave of the a.c. condenser.
Then his alarm buzzed: it was time to make his check-in call.
Shaw took the call outside, on the deck. He murmured, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good,” said Romeo.
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