by R. P. Lester
Considering all that wound up happening with that wife, it was totally possible she was fucking the mailman.
***
Don’t get me wrong, good people, my father’s a decent man. He’s just a hard man. What exemplifies this quality the most are the quirks of his generosity:
If you’re shirtless, he won’t give you the one off his back, but he’ll buy you one and tell you to fuck off, his well of charity having been thoroughly sucked dry.
As a small child riding with him in the car, I’d sometimes look up from the passenger seat and wonder about the scars on his face—the one over his right eye, the one on his left cheek, and a few others that have now melded into the wrinkles of a man approaching his 70s. One morning on the way to school I asked him about them. He said they were from a few fists, some beer bottles in raggedy bars, and the occasional knife. (It’s funny—as I sit here with patches of grey in the beard hiding various facial scars of my own, I’ll be damned if they aren’t from similar run-ins with the crème de la crème of my generation.)
***
My father’s capacity for righting a wrong is notable in the sense that it tends to scare the living shit out of everyone within spitting distance. One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is when he exhibited this trait in a monolith department store. For the sake of avoiding a lawsuit, we’ll call the place Balfart.
He’d gotten me a toy for Christmas. I believe it was a fire truck or Tonka truck, something about eight inches long and metal with wheels. It proved to be unsound, though I don’t remember exactly how. He went to right this corporate injustice by returning the item and brought me along. I remember the conversation like it happened yesterday:
“Yes, sir, I got this for my son for Christmas and it’s broken. It came out the box that way. I’d like to return it, please. I have the receipt right here.”
“I’m sorry, sir. This was a sale item and we can’t take returns on sales.”
“Okay. Well, can I exchange it for another one, please? I see you have a stack of ‘em on display over there.” There was a pile of them on a table near the front door. Marked at the regular price, of course.
“I’m sorry, sir. We can’t do an exchange or return on a sale item.”
“So there’s nothing you can do? I can’t even exchange this item for one that’s not a broken piece of shit? I’ll pay you the difference.”
“No, sir. I’m sorry. There’s absolutely nothing I can do.” This was the store manager by the way, so it’s not as if there was a Higher Power to consult.
I saw the blood rush to my father’s face, an early indicator that someone was about to leave through the front door. Whether it was us walking out or the manager sailing through the glass was still up for debate.
My father then placed both hands on either side of this metal hunk of defection and snapped it in two right in front of the manager. Wheels, springs, bits of plastic, and—I reiterate, metal—flew in all directions, hitting the manager in the face and falling on the counter that separated him from certain extinction. My father brushed his hands on his slacks, never breaking eye contact.
“There. Now it’s your problem. Have a good day.” We walked out, got in his truck and left. He never darkened that store’s doorway again.
This was well before the blanket popularity of in-store and outside security cameras. Anybody who wanted to identify him would be forced to limit their eyewitness accounts to “the tall guy wearing a white t-shirt speed-walking to the parking lot with a fat kid running to catch up.” As we were on the main drag in front of the store, we passed a couple of cops pulling into the lot with their lights on. Pops smirked and lit a Winston, then turned up Johnny Cash to provide the soundtrack to his satisfaction.
***
Success for my pops came hard, rough as Russian toilet paper. He literally and figuratively fought for everything he attained, growing up poor in the woods, taking shits in an outhouse, with countless nights of eating nothing but boiled potatoes split between five other siblings. When the war in Vietnam hit home, he was drafted to serve. The singular ability that kept him from being shipped overseas was the fact that he knew how to run a printing press. He was sent to Oklahoma where his skills were put to use, thereby avoiding obliteration by a fifteen-year old Vietnamese kid who’d been fighting since the day he was born.
Think of that: if it hadn’t been for his mechanical abilities, H. F. Coxman would’ve been sent to a foreign country with a farewell and a middle finger to fight in one of the most unpopular wars in modern history. He could’ve died in a jungle, labeled an MIA or a POW, never coming home to an honorable discharge to meet and marry my mother.
And the world would’ve been deprived of the genius you hold in your hands.
I have much respect for my pops, if for no other reason than sludging through and doing it his way. With the help of the G. I. Bill, working at side jobs, my mother’s support, and meeting the right people, he became a college graduate who went on to form his own law practice architectural firm emu farm fuck that. I'm not telling you what he does. Just know that after years of taking orders from others, Pops eventually became the one who could bring the hammer down.
***
Sure, I recall mistakes that were made while I was growing up, but whatever, man. How many mistakes have I made with my kid? (Plenty. That’s the answer.) None of it matters now. It’s all dead snips of a faded past. H. F. Coxman always took care of me, made sure I had what I needed, and was able to provide luxuries like running water and food. But he’s always been just a little batshit left of center, and I couldn’t begin to explain how some of his actions have forced me to reexamine whether or not the man should undergo some sort of forced psychoanalysis.
Well, yes I can explain, actually. I was under the impression that’s what we were doing here.
It’s a rhetorical statement, smartass. Read on.
Gunslinger
I was twelve years old when I saw my father shoot a man. Three times, no less. Sadly, I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it and had to watch from the confines of his Lincoln. He ensured that I was immune from the bedlam, protecting me from the comical 80s fight scene due to unfold by ordering me back to his car so I couldn’t assist with my slingshot.
I’ve never forgiven him for that shit.
***
My parents' relationship had gone the route of so many marital unions (re: fucked like a drunk sorority girl), complete with the money-sucking marriage counselors and attempted vehicular homicide. When they’d finally agreed on a divorce, theirs was no different than any other swan song between two rational adults. It was complete with finger-pointing, empty threats, and both accusing the other of being a big crybaby meanie-mouth poopie pants (I learned early that monetary disagreements can have a profound effect on one’s maturity).
Things took a nosedive when my pops did the most logical thing a businessman with a functional cock can do: he started dicking his secretary. Not that it was a big deal, mind you. He was in the middle of a separation and it’s a natural progression for any man, particularly one of means.
But this lady had a skeleton in her closet. A secret my pops didn’t know about until it was right on top of him and almost too late. Strangely, she held it closer to the vest than that picture of her gargling a nutsack at the office Christmas party (the photo was used as the cover for the company’s captivating pamphlet Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Ain’t it a Mouthful?). She had an abusive ex-husband named John Sweetbuck who lurked in the shadows, making a mockery of the authority vested in him, and aching for the day he could get his hands around her throat for some all-important reconciliation.
***
Sweetbuck had been a cop since his mid-20s, graduating first in his class, and being the first rookie in his department to earn accommodations. After some time on patrol, his was also the first questionable shooting in over ten years.
It happened behind an Awffle Spouse restaurant as he was re
ceiving payment from a heroin mover. John had planned on killing the guy afterward, a Puerto Rican named Esteban whom he’d arrested for possession a few weeks earlier. He knew you couldn’t stamp out all crime all the time, but he couldn’t abide smack, not after watching his little brother get hooked. It was part of the reason he’d spent five years as a cop. He tolerated the weed and coke dealers, but he attacked heroin suppliers with a vengeance.
He’d demanded a large payoff to insure “misplaced evidence” in Esteban’s case. John knew it was the only money he was ever going to see from him. The envelope no sooner hit the vinyl of his ‘76 Hornet than he produced a semi-auto from his waistband, firing two jacketed .380s into the Puerto Rican’s chest.
The detectives assigned to the shooting didn’t believe Sweetbuck’s version of events. He said the dealer had tailed him, getting out of his car when he arrived and threatening to kill the officer for the arrest. Said he’d been forced to pull his off-duty Walther in self-defense. There were too many holes in his statement, however, the biggest of which was why John had parked behind the restaurant to begin with. Whenever the detectives revisited the point, John maintained that it’d been too crowded in the front lot and he didn’t want his Hornet getting scratched. Restaurant staff said yes, they were always full at dusk. That evening had been no different.
The detectives called bullshit. John’s car was seven years old, its Bayshore Blue paint job already marred from shopping carts and weather. A normal person wouldn’t even care about parking it in a hailstorm, much less the cracked blacktop of an Awffle Spouse. They suspected a ripoff, but they couldn’t find any evidence to contradict John’s story. Besides, the .32 revolver found in Esteban’s hand was hard to refute. (Sweetbuck had grabbed that piece from a multiple-murder scene where he was the first responding officer. It’d been in a victim’s hand unfired. He knew it would come in handy as a throwdown.) The investigation was closed. John was allowed to return to work, though a cloud of suspicion hung over his head like a cabbage fart.
***
Sweetbuck operated more discreetly after that, collecting cash from drug pushers in exchange for the privilege to operate, so long as they never dabbled in H. As part of the arrangement, they’d funnel information about other dealers vying for control. John would pop them to minimize competition and keep the money flowing his way. After a jacket filled with a history of good busts, he became the youngest officer in his city to make detective.
The bump in rank meant he could ditch the alley meetings with low-level runners and demand audiences from the higher-ups. He began shaking hands that brought a change in his financial situation—the frequency of payoffs tapered, but the envelopes got thicker. Complicity in the rackets became so profitable, in fact, that he could afford to hire a live-in maid.
***
Labianna St. Jaxum was originally from Minneapolis, the only daughter of a prominent tax attorney whose specialty was teaching big corporations how to fleece the federal government. He’d funded her first year in the South on the contingency that she get a job or an education once the free ride was over, giving the twenty-year old ample time to weigh her options for the future. She’d been a fuck-up since high school graduation and her father thought maybe this was what she needed—a new life in a new town without old temptations to steal her promise. Instead of seeking employment or a trade school, however, she spent the year barreling through her monthly stipends, purchasing expensive jewelry, full-body massages, clothing from high-end department stores, and trips with pretty boys charged to Daddy’s name.
Labi, as she’d been known her whole life, was a rich man’s daughter, accustomed to nice cars and no-limit credit cards; annual vacations to Europe, Aruba, and tropical isles most people only get to see in books; cashmere sweaters with her initials embroidered in the collar; a walk-in closet full of shoes that hit the ground twice before being discarded; and a chinchilla cardigan given to the Salvation Army after three trips to the dry cleaners.
Four seasons came and went. Labi was shocked when her father actually cut her off.
The easy life became a memory. No more twenty-two karat bangles and necklaces encrusted with baguettes; they went to the pawn shops. No more dinners in French restaurants with unpronounceable names; if she closed her eyes tight enough, the canned chicken and Ramen became an expensive Chinese dish. No more Cristal in bars with plush velour furniture and expectant businessmen hoping to get inside her silk panties; Miller High Life on a Lay-z-Boy with the guitarist from downstairs would have to do. And no more red Mercedes to scoot around in; her father had taken it back, arranging for its delivery to Minneapolis. He wired her enough money to buy an old Toyota, sniffed a line, and called it a day.
***
Having been cut off from the family tit, Labianna realized she needed a job. No skills meant bleak prospects, and the only employment she could secure was at a maid’s service that offered daily, weekly, and live-in contracts to clients.
With the pecking order reversed, Labi got beaked for the first time in her life. Even after several years of mopping marble floors like the ones she’d taken for granted back home, the ‘83 Cavalier was falling apart and her checking account was in the red—overdrafted by two-hundred-and-fifty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents, to be exact. When the maid service offered her a new position working in the home of a city detective, she willingly accepted, having been served eviction papers on her efficiency apartment the day before. Labi packed what items she couldn’t sell and drove out to an address in an affluent suburb.
***
John’s place was exceptionally nice for a policeman, reminding her of the upbringing in Minnesota. She wouldn’t ask about a client’s financial business in a million years, but she had sense enough to know that your average cop, even a first grade detective, didn’t live in a genuine stacked-stone, three-bedroom home with glazed terracotta floors; a foyer containing two country arm chairs flanking a marble table with hand-carved scrolling on the legs; a living room furnished with couches cloaked in fine Italian leather; paintings with platinum frames hung on red stucco walls, all originals by well-known contemporary artists; a striking white chenille chaise lounge sitting next to a Paris ottoman covered in soft linen; a spotless china set in an antique mahogany cabinet, meticulously displayed on the glass shelves; or a satinwood bedroom suite that couldn’t possibly be more than a year old.
She turned a blind eye: I don’t care if he’s dirty or moonlights in gay porn. A renovated pool house beats the shit out of a cramped Cavalier.
Labi saw that his social life was virtually nil, with John never entertaining friends or coworkers. In the morning, he’d dress in tailored suits and glistening dress shoes, get behind the wheel of his late-model Stingray, and go to work. In the evenings when John came home, his dinner was usually in a brown paper bag that leaked more oil than Labi’s car. Either that, or waiting to be retrieved from the freezer. John would then sit by himself in the living room and watch ESPN for hours on the obnoxiously huge big-screen. He even picked up and washed the dishes before going to bed, leaving little for her to do the next day except some laundry and a bit of dusting.
She noticed something else about his life that got her wheels turning: the fact that he never brought home a woman.
***
Seven months had passed since Labi began working for John and she’d seen him eat nothing but takeout and TV dinners. It was 6:30 on a Friday evening when she made him one of the few dishes she knew how to prepare: Swedish meatballs over egg noodles. Her mother had cooked the same recipe to ensnare her father many years before, and if a bit of native Midwestern cuisine could save her from a life of serfdom, it was the ploy she was going to use.
“Mr. Sweetbuck, I don’t mean to get personal, but why don’t you date? I’ve been working here for the better part of a year and I haven’t seen pictures of anyone special, much less heard you talk of a relationship.”
The question came from the large single-basin in the kitc
hen, Labi’s arms elbow-deep in brown dish water. The frozen stare from the man at the table said she’d crossed the line. She suddenly envisioned herself jobless for prying into a client’s life, homeless and living in the backseat of her shitbox with weeks of unwashed clothing and photo albums. She’d known the risk in her plan, but decided it was worth it if it restored her to the life she once knew.
After a few tense seconds, John burst into laughter and wiped his mouth with a designer napkin embroidered with roses. He set it to the side of his empty plate and reclined with a full belly, throwing his arm over the back of the chair with a smile. A life below the Mason-Dixon had given him an effectual Southern drawl.
“Well, work takes up most of my time, Miss St. Jaxum. At the end of the day, I just don’t have the energy to spend romancin’ a woman.”
She dropped the grin before looking up. “Well, I was wondering because—and I hope you don’t mind me saying so—it just seems like an awful waste for this beautiful home to have one person living here.” She kept pushing the envelope, hoping that every comment wasn’t the one that turned her to giving handjobs in the park.
Sweetbuck knew what she was doing and didn’t care. He’d been smitten with Labi since the day she arrived. Like many men, soft, blonde curls turned his mind into mush. Labi’s fell gracefully down the sides of her porcelain complexion as she scoured the pots and pans.
“I know what ya mean. I’ve often thought the same thang, but most of the women I meet are put off by my work. The thought of datin’ someone who may or may not come home shies ‘em away. They don’t wanna get attached. I gave up lookin’ for someone a long time ago.”