Evan closed his eyes, sighed, then let his grip relax.
"Your turn,” Dexter said, and Evan opened his eyes, surprised to see that Dexter had taken the gun from him. He'd been lost in thought. Dexter motioned toward the ground with his free hand.
"What do you mean?” Evan said. “This isn't a game, you said that yourself."
"You said it yourself,” said Dexter. “Where's it going to end? If I sabotaged your car and your computer, then where would I stop?” There was a glint of evil in his eyes as he raised the gun. “You want me to leave your family alone, then you better do what I say."
* * * *
The ground smelled sour, a dank, deep smell, as if the earth here had been shadowed so long by the squash courts and the tall oaks on either side that sunlight had never touched it. Evan felt his breath being almost pulled from him, as if all the oxygen had been cut off by the rank, earthy odor. The blades of grass brushed roughly against his face, and he thought about his daughter, spinning in the tire swing. I'm doing this for her.
"I didn't mean for you to lay down,” Dexter said from behind him, out of sight. “In fact, you better not let your chest touch the dirt.” Evan raised himself up on his hands. “You know what to do—same as you were gonna make me. And I want to hear you count them."
Lifting himself into position, Evan forgot about the dream that Dexter had told him and about the flat tire and the vulgar images that his daughter had been exposed to. Instead, he found himself remembering the bowl of peaches from twenty years before and the grinning face of Crispin Smith tilting it toward him. “Rats like sweet stuff, don't they?” he'd asked with a smirk, and Evan had eaten them all.
Slowly, bitterly, he began to count out the push-ups: “One ... two ... three...” Despite working out three times a week in the exercise room that he and his wife had set up—the room that would eventually be their second child's—Evan could feel an abnormal strain in his arms, a weakness in his joints. As he counted, he could hear himself wheezing slightly, out of breath. Listening to the pacing behind him, he tried to picture the look on Dexter's face, but all he could see was the boy from the yearbook and the grinning face of Crispin Smith, the two overlaid one across the other.
At twenty-five, he stopped counting, steadied himself at the top of the push-up's arc. “Are you satisfied now?” he asked, tilting his head. Sweat stung his eyes, but he caught Dexter's outline in his peripheral view, stilled for a moment, high up above and behind him.
"You know they killed the Rat System the year after you graduated?” Dexter said simply. “I never got the chance to pass along the fine treatment that you fellas gave me."
"So you've been after revenge all along?"
"I don't hear any counting,” Dexter said simply, and he kicked the sole of Evan's shoe lightly.
Evan's muscles tightened—the stress of the push-ups, a jolt of anger pulsing through his arms. Suddenly, his body seemed to replay the sense of dread and revulsion he'd felt eating the peaches all those years ago, a sickness in the stomach.
"Twenty-six,” he said through gritted teeth, lowering himself toward the ground, pushing up once more. Behind him, the pacing resumed.
At forty, Dexter spoke again.
"You know what's funny? All I wanted was to sell you a security system. That was all. We move out here and my wife says, ‘Wouldn't some of your old friends be good customers?’ and she nags me until I call the alumni office and get the list. And when I saw your name ... ‘Why haven't you called yet?’ Pam kept asking, ‘Foot in the door, bills to pay,’ and I couldn't tell her the truth. And then I started having these ... nightmares about it. Middle of the night. Cold sweat. The dream was real. I don't know where the hell it came from, but there it was. And then I thought that I shouldn't run from it again, thought maybe I could use it to my advantage, make a joke out of it, something like, ‘Well, after what you guys put me through, the least you could do is send a little business my way.’ Because you did owe me, I thought. But I was nervous even asking that. And every time I worked up the nerve to come around to it, you cut me off."
Evan had stopped his push-ups again and was propped up awkwardly in the air. He could feel the sweat coursing down his chest and the center of his back, the nausea persistent.
"I'll buy a security system,” he said. “If that's it, if that's all you wanted. I'll even pay full price. And give me some business cards. I'll—"
"You think we can just go back and have a business relationship now? Work out a deal? And maybe my wife could come over next time and meet your family, too, huh?” His laugh had a hollow, bitter edge to it.
"It was a mistake, Dex,” said Evan, feeling another surge of anger—at Dexter? at himself? But he struggled to keep his tone even. He thought again about his daughter, reading a story to her teddy bears, and about his wife, leaning against the doorway. Whatever it took to get him back to them, away from this. He wouldn't press charges, couldn't tell anyone the story of what had happened. “I see that now. A misunderstanding, and—"
Dexter shoved the muzzle of the gun behind Evan's ear, roughly enough that he could hear the cartilage crinkling inside his head.
"Maybe you didn't hear me earlier,” he growled. “I want to hear counting. Rat."
When the metal touched his skin, the nausea surged once more, sickening shudders of it that he'd felt only once before, sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom floor of his freshman dorm, vomiting every few minutes into the toilet and then resting his cheek against the frigid tile. “I hope Crispin Smith drops dead,” he'd said to his roommate, sitting beside him. He whispered the words for fear that one of the monitors on his own hall might hear them, that it would mean other consequences. His roommate was empathetic but amused too—something they'd laugh about one day. But Evan had meant it. “I hope he drops dead,” concentrating with all his might in hopes that the wish might come true.
The last memory flashed across his mind and through his gut in the second that the gun rested against the back of his ear. Evan turned then, twisted himself over and lunged upward toward the gun. Dexter looked startled, stepped back, stumbled on the same roots that Evan had tripped over before. As he did, the gun went off. A scattered, wild shot, but it found its mark nonetheless, cutting through Evan's neck and clipping an artery.
He died with the taste of peaches, like some bittersweet bile, still lingering on his lips.
"And you're sticking with that story?” the policeman asked, the hint of a sneer at one corner of his lips. Detective Walters, he'd introduced himself—his third time now with some version of the same question.
"Everything I've told you is the truth,” Dexter said, hoping the evidence would prove it. He still had the voicemail with Evan inviting him for drinks. The car out there was Evan's, and the gun they'd just bagged.
"And you say he pulled the gun on you because...?"
"Crazy talk. He thought I was trying to hurt his family. He thought I'd killed the battery on his car, can you believe that?"
"Did you?"
"Of course not.” He made sure to meet the detective's accusatory gaze, as if the two of them were in a playground staring contest and not in the midst of a crime scene, with various officers and officials bagging evidence, taking photographs, or holding the growing crowd just beyond the yards and yards of yellow tape. Finally Walters turned away.
"Don't go anywhere,” he said, pointing a finger back at Dexter. An accusatory gesture there too, Dexter knew, but he'd already fought the impulse to flee when he saw Evan fall to the ground and the blood begin to seep. He'd fled this place before, and he wasn't going to make that mistake again.
"Run!” he'd heard the monitors yelling at him that night in the snow. “Run like the Rat that you are!” And he had, the stench of the bourbon and urine still filling his nose, the snow falling harder, mixing with the tears he'd held inside as long as he could, blurring his vision. I won't look back, he'd sworn, no matter what, trying to block out the cheers and jeers and the
n block the sensation of the snowballs pelting against his back and then the roar of laughter. But all of it kept echoing in his mind even after he'd made it back to the dorm, and for days later—the taunts and sniggering, the hatred he felt for them and for himself, and the little voice that woke him in the dark of the night, urging him, “Just get them back somehow. Just make them pay. You'll feel better. You will. Just be a man."
But there were consequences to choices like that, of course.
More people pushed against the police tape—people crowding up from the neighborhood where Evan had parked and others emerging from within the campus, faculty members from the school most likely. On both sides people held their hands to their mouths in shock or talked frantically on their cell phones or pointed those phones toward the scene of the crime or the body at the center of it.
Detective Walters stood with a tall, imposing man in a blue sport coat—the headmaster, Dexter thought, seeming to recognize him from pictures in the alumni magazine. Walters pointed his way, and as the man stared toward him, Dexter felt humbled, like a student once more, waiting to be punished.
As much as he'd tried to grow past the high school, he'd never gotten far from it—that fear of stepping out of line, that desire to make a good impression, always trying to establish himself, always dreaming that this time it would be different, or else trying to make a fresh start somewhere else, hearing the desperation in his own voice as he struggled to impress some stranger and bringing that other voice back into his ears once more, nagging him for his insufficiencies, his weakness, his impotence. Recently, it had returned even more frequently, as business troubles mounted and then as he and his wife struggled with their inability to have a child—his inability, his, yes, that voice from the past melding with his wife's nagging, pleading. Not just choice and consequence, but something even crueler to torment him now.
And moving back to Raleigh—fighting the voice of his insignificance by confronting his fears and the past—twenty years past—wouldn't it be easier now? Choice, consequence, and coincidence—all of it cruel this time.
Still, everything he'd told Detective Walters was true—even back to the dream that had started it all, or parts of it. No reason, after all, to tell the whole truth.
No reason to talk about having made Evan do those push-ups—or about those other push-ups from twenty years back. He wouldn't admit that he was just using Evan to get a business deal, either, and he certainly wouldn't arouse suspicion by telling how he'd broken into Evan's computer. Stopping outside the house to sketch out ideas for a security system, the proposal he was going to pitch Evan. Pulling out the laptop to make notes, seeing the wireless network “Spruill” pop-up, remembering his own dream. A quick breach to underscore the need for security. No real harm done, at least if the daughter hadn't been there. He regretted that part.
And no reason to tell about the voice and how it had come roaring into his ears again when Evan pointed the gun and called him a Rat. A deafening sound, that voice from the past, louder still as he felt the gun in his own hands and then as he forced Evan down on the ground. He would never have answered it, though, would never have pulled the trigger, never actively taken that final, fatal step. But now that revenge had arrived on its own—unbidden, unexpected...
The voice was gone at last, he knew, vanished back into the walls of that squash court and the woods back there and deep down into the soil where Evan lay, facedown in the same spot where Dexter had done his own push-ups all those years before, but Evan looking as if his elbows had simply buckled.
I did them all, Dexter thought then, shame mixed with pride this time. Seventy-five of them. And over a puddle of liquor and piss.
Detective Walters came back up. “We need you to make an official statement downtown,” he said, a grim look on his face. “And if I find out you're lying, I swear I'm gonna throw the book at you."
Book? Throwing a book? Something about the phrase sent a sudden shiver through Dexter, but he couldn't say why.
"Everything I've told you is the truth,” he said again, because what could it hurt, the things he had left out: the fear and trembling that his old Head Monitor still inspired in him; the joy he took in seeing him do those push-ups; the fact that, after all these years, Evan Spruill's death was in some ways like a dream come true.
Copyright © 2009 by Art Taylor
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Fiction: THE SHANTY DRUMMER by Robert Lopresti
Robert Lopresti is an academic librarian by day, but he has managed to devote himself very productively to crime fiction in his spare time. With over thirty published stories to his credit, including thirteen in our sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock'sMystery Magazine, he has made a name for himself in mystery circles. He's a Derringer Award winner and a short-story Anthony Award nominee. He's making his EQMM debut this this month with a tale that will ring true to many an office worker.
* * * *
Art by Mark Evans
* * * *
The first time Jim Waley saw the kid he thought of him as the shanty drummer.
As he drove home from work he had been thinking about a course he had taken in college ten years before, “The Sociology of Urban Decay.” The professor had told the class that tenement or shack could mean almost anything, but the word shanty properly meant a house built from materials designed for other purposes, such as cardboard boxes or plastic signs.
Jim had no idea why the professor had been so determined to get that idea into their heads, but she had succeeded. Now as he looked across this barren city street and saw the black kid, maybe twelve years old, the word flew back to him.
The boy was sitting on a wooden crate in front of one of the many burned-out, boarded-up stores on the outskirts of Newark. A garbage can stood in front of him, upside down. A length of drainpipe leaned against the can. Cardboard boxes, plastic jugs, and things Jim couldn't recognize were scattered around.
The kid was pounding out rhythms on them with a long wooden spoon and what looked like a barbecue spear. It sounded amazing. Jim didn't know a lot about music but he recognized polyrhythms—something else he had learned in college.
In the minute Jim stopped at a red light he heard the kid slam out a blasting march beat, an intricate, complex jazz thing, and something else that sounded primitive, tribal.
Honking horns brought him back to reality. Reluctantly, Jim put the car in gear and headed down Broad Street.
He tried to tell Meg about the shanty drummer at dinner that night.
"The poor child,” she said, as she put salad on his plate. “I wish the company would move out of Newark. You shouldn't have to drive through those neighborhoods."
"Yeah, but that kid has to live there."
"A shame,” said Meg. “But let's talk about a problem we can do something about. Is there any news on the job?"
A department-head opening was coming up at work, and Meg was excited by the possibility. This had always been the plan: Jim would climb the corporate ladder while Meg worked on her art. “By the time you're ready to retire from the jungle,” she had told him when they became engaged, “we'll be able to live on the sales of my work."
But ten years later her paintings still weren't selling and sometimes she seemed more interested in his career than he was.
"The new position will definitely open up by the end of the year,” he told her, over steak. “And Purle wants to fill it internally, so I stand a good chance."
"Great. Who are the others?"
"The others?"
"The competition. You must know who else is being considered."
"Oh.” He frowned. “Let's see. Charlie Butterworth, for one. He's been there longer than anyone else in the department."
"Uh-huh.” Meg's eyes were sparkling. “And what are his strengths?"
"Strengths? He's a people person. He gets the best out of everyone."
"Got it. And his weaknesses?"
Jim considered. He wasn't used to think
ing about his coworkers this way. “Easy. He's in his fifties. That's a decade older than any of the other candidates. Purle thinks people have passed their peak by then."
"Good. Who's the next candidate?"
"Tina Rivoli. Her strength is numbers. Last week we made a presentation that we'd been preparing for months. We walked in and the clients told us they were moving all their manufacturing to China. That changed about five assumptions we'd based our proposal on. I was stunned. No idea what to do next. Tina ran the major changes in her head and fixed our offer on the spot. We won the contract."
"Impressive. Does she have a weakness?"
"Oh yes.” Jim laughed. “She has the personality of a chainsaw. Three people in the department have sworn they'd quit rather than work under her."
Meg nodded. “That's good. Who's the next candidate?"
Jim made a face. “Steve Bright."
"Oh, yuck. I was hoping he'd gone off to some other company by now."
"No such luck.” Jim carved off a big bite of steak. “Steve's strength is that he's a brown-nose and a credit hog. The bosses think he's brilliant because he always agrees with them, and he claims credit for everything he can get his hands on."
"And his weakness?"
"Everyone else despises him. Eventually bosses catch on to people like that, too."
"Let's hope they do soon. Now, what about the last candidate?"
"We've covered them all."
"Nope. What about Jim Waley? What are your strengths?"
"Oh.” He blinked. “I'm sort of in the middle. Better at numbers than Charlie. Better with people than Tina. Easier to get along with than slimy Steve Bright."
"You underestimate yourself, darling. But what are your weaknesses?"
"Purle says I don't have the killer instinct."
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged. “I don't squeeze the suppliers for every last nickel. I look for win-win situations. I think it's best if people want to deal with us again, not that they have to because we've driven off all of their other customers."
EQMM, August 2009 Page 10