Measure Twice

by J. J. Hensley

  From his boat, Mayton had surveyed the bottom of the bridge. He did not want to draw any attention by sitting below the bridge taking photographs, so he had simply passed under the bright yellow structure several times in the previous weeks and then sketched the underside by memory. Once he had the details of the bridge drawn out, he calculated exactly where ropes would have to be tied in order for him to: first, get the rope in place that would hold Culligan’s body; and second, allow Mayton to quickly reach under the walkway, retrieve the rope, and then tie the body onto it and drop Culligan over the side of the bridge.

  Mayton had gone to the library to purchase all the necessary equipment online. He had everything shipped to his church, telling the lady in the church’s main office that he was rarely home to sign for packages. The woman, understanding the recent widower was still adjusting to living alone, never questioned him about the boxes that were delivered.

  The hardhat, vest, cones, and pulley had been easy enough to find. Within a few days, he was ready to go to work. The entire setup had gone off without a hitch. The only oversight he made was not buying gloves good enough to protect his hands from abrasive ropes, of which he had an abundant supply. Using his newly acquired upper-body strength, he was able to set up his simple system of ropes in about twenty minutes.

  There had been a brief scare when Mayton picked up his cones to walk back to his van, which waited near the baseball stadium. A police officer slowed down on the bridge, unrolled his window, and asked Mayton if he was getting hazardous duty pay for “doing that shit”. Mayton, doing his best to mask his social awkwardness, managed to force himself to give a general working man’s reply and even forced himself to toss in a profanity for good measure. He figured he must have done it right, because the cop gave a chuckle and drove on.

  It would be another twenty-four hours or so before he would act again. Surely, Abdella’s wife would have reported him missing by now. As far as Culligan was concerned, the police would be focusing on his endless supply of enemies or trying to identify anyone who would gain from his death. While the police could possibly get around to talking to Mayton eventually, he still had plenty of time. It was almost funny now. When he first started to think about doing all of this, he was not sure he had it in him. Now, his doubts were few and his will was stronger than ever. Culligan was just the opening line of his message—a nice little attention getter. Tomorrow, he would start to compose the main body.

  Step 5

  We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

  O f all the things to get to him, it was a damn song. Not long after midnight, Channing was driving home from the station, all of his mental faculties fully engaged with the murder of Councilman Culligan, when he turned on the car stereo. He did not know why, but sometimes music helped him think. He supposed it stimulated some creative part of his mind and allowed him to think outside the box. Or, maybe the melodies occupied a part of his mind that tended to focus too hard on a case, causing him to over-analyze rather than simplify. Whatever the reasoning, clicking on the stereo usually helped.

  He was a few blocks from his modest home on Pittsburgh’s South Side when the song playing on the radio caught his attention. That song, Wicked Game, had been playing when he first danced with Mary. They had just met a few days earlier when Channing was standing in line at a park, waiting to register for a local 5K race. Mary was sitting at a table writing names down and handing runners their assigned racing bibs and T-shirts labeled with the name of the race. She was beautiful, but not in the superficial Cosmo magazine sense of the word. She simply glowed and he was immediately attracted to her.

  When he got to the front of the line, she asked for his name, date of birth—so he could be put in the proper age grouping—and his phone number.

  He replied, “Jackson Channing. And today must be my birthday because you just asked for my phone number.”

  She looked up from her clipboard, smiled at him, really seeing him for the first time, and said, “I’ll just mark you down for the Under 10 age group, and you should probably give me your mommy’s phone number in case you fall down and get a boo-boo.”

  Taking the not-so-subtle hint, he grabbed his race packet and headed off toward the starting area. It was not until the next day, when he checked the race website to see the results, that he realized his name was not listed in his proper age group. Rolling his eyes, he checked the Under 10 division and still could not find his name. He scrolled through the results for another two minutes before he saw that one group stood alone at the bottom of the page. It was listed as the Socially Impaired, but Cute division and had one name under it. The smile that spanned across his face was broader than any bridge in the city. It took only one phone call to the race organizer to get Mary’s email address. By that same evening, they had a date planned for the weekend.

  The restaurant was in the North Shore neighborhood of the city, known for its abundance of great Italian food and shortage of adequate parking. The pair met there at eight o’clock, and by ten had retreated to the bar in the rear. By eleven, it was obvious to both of them that they were a great match. She took his hand and led him to the dance floor the minute the first slow song played. It was that song. That damn song. They danced incredibly slow and kissed incredibly long.

  That song.

  He didn’t even bother taking his coat off. Once he hit the front door, he went straight to the kitchen where he had half a bottle of Jack Daniels above the sink. At first, he mixed it with Coke. Then he ran out of Coke. Then he ran out of Jack. He rummaged around the house and found a six-pack of beer in his pantry. It was not cold, but he did not care. He sat on his couch in his—their—darkened living room, sipping warm beer and thinking of her.

  He blamed her at first. In the weeks and months after he was found in that damp, begrimed basement, he blamed her for his shortcomings. She did not understand him. She was not supportive enough. She was pushing him to get back to work too quickly. She, she, she. He continued to disconnect from her, and she reciprocated. Rather than acknowledge the damage he was inflicting, he created a hazy version of reality, clouded by alcohol and painkillers. When the doctors stopped giving him enough pills, he drank more alcohol. Then one evening, they were arguing about something he could barely remember. Maybe it was his drinking, or the fact that he had not left the house in weeks. Regardless, he snapped. He did not physically hurt her, but he said something terrible, then grabbed and shook her. It was then that she looked in his eyes and did not recognize the man she had loved. This stranger was full and empty all at the same time. Full of rage, hatred, regret, and bitterness. Empty of a soul. She left when he passed out. Gone.

  Channing knew the drinking was not helping. But when he heard that song, the thirst he experienced was something he had no defense against. On more than one occasion, he had halfheartedly tried to build a dam of sobriety, and each time it was washed over by the flood of quenching fluid he now poured down his throat. How could it dominate his mind and body like this? How could it develop into such a compulsion that logic and reason—his cornerstones—no longer mattered? He leaned back on the couch and became drowsy. The bottle of beer he was holding slid out of his hand and dropped to the floor, spilling a portion of its contents onto the carpet.

  Channing couldn’t remember the last time he prayed. Maybe it was in that basement. He did not know if he believed in God, but he wanted to. Did he have to say the words aloud? He did not think so. He looked up at the ceiling. God, he thought. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine.

  Waking up enough to find the cell phone in his pocket, he hit the speed dial option for her cell phone—like he had done countless times in the past few weeks—and like before, the phone rang four times and then went to voice mail. Always four times.

  After supplying the voice mail with a few seconds of dead air, he managed to slur, “It was me. I’m sorry.”

  He searched for and found the end call button on h
is phone and pushed it. He put the phone on the end table beside him, and searched for the bottle that lay somewhere around his feet.

  – – –

  The new tarp in the back of the van had a strong plastic odor to it, but it was not nearly enough to cover up the stench beginning to emanate from Abdella’s body. Mayton kept telling himself that suffering was part of the deal. He did not dare open any of the windows as he drove through the city, as a passerby—if there were any this time of night—might notice the foulness coming from the vehicle. Just a few more minutes, he kept telling himself.

  Driving up the winding roads to Mt. Washington, he found himself thinking of Moses ascending Mt. Sinai, only to later climb down bearing the Ten Commandments: those uncomplicated laws created by a God who had tried to simplify things as much as possible for a pathetic race of creatures who think they can make up their own rules.

  A smirk came across Mayton’s face and he thought, Stone tablets won’t do the job in this day and age. Mayton knew he would have to break some of the sacred rules to chisel his actions into the stone psyches of others.

  He pressed down harder on the accelerator as the van struggled up the side of the hill overlooking the city. Mt. Washington was primarily known for its restaurants with scenic views of the Pittsburgh skyline and for the Duquesne Incline, which was essentially a trolley car that ran up and down the hill on rails and cables. Serving as more of a tourist attraction than a real form of transit, it transported passengers between the base of the hill near downtown and the top. Mayton always considered it to be an overrated tourist trap, but regardless of his dislike for the Incline, it was visible to much of the city, so it had become a symbol unique to Pittsburgh.

  The thoughts of Moses and all he endured led Mayton’s mind into the theological realm he tried to avoid. What did it take to make people listen? When does an outcast become a respected leader, and when will corrupt leaders be recognized as the oppressors? Mayton had tried to lead the way. He had tried to steer others toward God. He had tried to lead Cindy along the path of righteousness. Not only did he lead her by example, but also by his words.

  She had been much younger than he, but that had not mattered. Her beauty was breathtaking, but that had not been what had drawn him to her. It was her voice. She sang like an angel and he could pick her voice out of the entire church choir. He had never been able to do that before—isolate a voice in the group. As was his custom, he had been sitting in the front pew and when the choir started singing, he instantly detected something different. Something he had never heard in all the years he had been in the congregation. When he scanned the choir in an attempt to find the aberration, he focused in on her. After the service, he approached the choir director to ask who the owner of the talented voice was.

  Her name was Cindy Eaton and she had just moved to the area so she could finish her graduate work at Chatham University. She was in her early twenties and was classmates with another member of the choir, Leslie Stewart. Leslie had talked Cindy, who was a bit shy, into coming to church with her and eventually convinced her to join the choir. Mayton, who always arrived early, had never noticed the shy newcomer hiding in the back pew. He certainly noticed her now.

  When she said yes to having dinner with him that first time, he got the impression that she did so more out of politeness than an actual desire to get to know him better. But before long, he had won her over with his kind disposition and subdued demeanor. He loved her bashfulness and she loved listening to him go on and on about history, philosophy, and theology. Back then, Mayton did not shy away from discussing the works of pre-Christian scholars and the heathens who had yet to be saved. It was not until later that he decided such intellectual pursuits were a waste of time not worthy of conversation.

  Their wedding had been a simple affair held in their church. Cindy wore a classic dress and Mayton a plain black suit. If one compared the wedding photos of the two to those of newly married couples taken a hundred years prior, there would be few differences. This was the way Mayton wanted things. Traditions became traditional because they worked in society and led to balance in the home.

  Something changed in Cindy after the first few years of marriage. Wanting to have a job, when he could provide adequately for both of them, was just one of the things that he struggled to comprehend. That book club she joined did not help matters one bit. The so-called literary works they read and openly discussed sickened him. The vivid descriptions of gratuitous sex and violence were symptoms of the disease infecting society, and here she was not only reading that smut, but openly talking about it as if further analysis was even warranted.

  The van reached the top of the hill and he stopped at the traffic signal. He flipped on the turn signal and waited. A low rattle reverberated through the van as the engine idled. He could have made the right on red, but he just sat there on the abandoned street, deep in thought while the turn signal made a low clicking noise.

  The clock in the marriage counselor’s office clicked like that: rhythmic and judgmental; precise and surgical. She insisted they try counseling as a way to communicate better. She said she did not feel as if he was listening to her. Cindy claimed that whenever they argued, he would simply quote pieces of scripture or put a religious spin on the topic and then make a final proclamation that the subject was closed. She was right. Mayton’s father had been like that, but his mother had known her place. She was a quiet woman like Cindy was when Mayton first met her. Throughout Mayton’s life, his mother had always deferred to his father on any major decision making.

  That’s the way it’s supposed to be, thought Mayton. That was her role and she played it well. Even Plato—a pagan—defined true justice as occurring when people fulfilled the role that was intended for them.

  The marriage counselor immediately took Cindy’s side. Every time Mayton mentioned the Bible, the smarmy little man dismissed his comments—dismissed them! When Mayton warned the man that he was in danger of going to Hell, the man cockily leaned back in his fancy leather chair and seemed to pronounce a silent judgment on Mayton. All the time that man sat there surgically dissecting Mayton’s performance as a husband and provider, that clock’s ticking grew louder and louder. How dare he judge!

  Mayton tried to imagine what his father would have done if his mother tried to drag him to some godless shrink. To his knowledge, Mayton’s mother never attempted any such lunacy. She kept a good home and took care of her family.

  Mayton stared at the his hands on the hard steering wheel and envisioned his mother waving to him as the school bus pulled away.

  She was satisfied with her station in life, wasn’t she?

  At the end of her life, long after his father had gone to the Lord, she did seem to talk more and more about what she called her unbroken piggy bank of dreams. Mayton never asked her what that meant. Maybe he did not want to know. In the final days, his mother—whose ramblings had become borderline unintelligible—cried a lot. She said the tears were not for the approaching end of her life, but the life she never knew. She mumbled random words like dancing, travel, and most curiously, dry martinis. In all his life, Mayton had never seen his mother partake in alcohol, so he assumed her words were simply the final warning signs before her passing. Now he wondered. Had his mother really been happy? Did she have dreams left untouched? On her journey to the afterlife, was the one thing she held on to not a lifetime of wonderful memories, but a collection of regrets?

  Cindy often talked about not wanting to miss out on anything. She said they were still young, and since they did not seem capable of having children, they should devote some of their time and money to seeing the world and experiencing new things.

  Did Cindy have an unbroken piggy bank, too?

  Was she right?

  Did he listen to her enough?

  Did he listen at all?

  Mayton felt his eyes tear up. Is that how she came to see him, as…an obstacle? Had he become an obstruction to her happiness instead of her loving
partner? As she wasted away in that bed, her fair skin shrinking away, revealing her frail bones, what was she really thinking? He thought her stoicism was due to the fear of death, but now he had doubts. Was it actually…regret?

  My God, he thought, I was a regret to her.

  With that, something broke inside of him and the tears flowed freely. His heart raced and his breathing became rapid. At first, he thought he might be having a heart attack, but he forced himself to take a few deep breaths and everything started to slow down. He counted backwards from ten and tried to calm himself. He heard no sound, except for the clicking of the turn signal, then a loud horn blast made him jump. There was a car behind him waiting to turn. Mayton did not know how long he had been at the light, but he was certain he had sat through several cycles.

  Making the right turn onto Grandview Avenue, he pulled the van over to the side of the road, wiped his eyes, and looked out over the city. He had work to do and the timing was critical, but his new revelations concerning his faults were too much. He dug around in the glove box and found his gold crucifix, then he prayed for several minutes. He could not keep the guilt of what he had become to Cindy to himself. He had to talk to someone. From the van’s unused ashtray, he pulled out a cell phone. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning, but this could not wait. He punched in the number and breathed a sigh of relief when the groggy-sounding man answered.

  – – –

  Channing opened his eyes and could make out the stomp texture on the ceiling. His head was leaning on the back of the couch, while his body was still mostly in a sitting position. He did not know how long he had been out, but from the dryness of his mouth—which must have been wide open—it had been a while. Slowly, he straightened his neck, feeling the tiny muscles struggle to function as he blinked and tried to figure out what had disturbed his sleep.