by Peter Plate
“Slatts? No, sugar, he’s the reason she might leave me.”
The girl mulled over the facts. Her father had another wife, a convict in San Quentin. They’d slept together in a cell no bigger than a soup can. Harriet would go to pieces if she ever found out about it. Most importantly, Diana was now a grown-up. Before she could digest the news, a possum sashayed out of a hollowed-out log and into a clearing.
Robert let him have it with the Winchester. The first shot whooshed by the possum’s front paws. The second shot zipped over the animal’s back. The third shot sped past its snout. The possum twitched its tail when the fourth shot went astray. It waggled its fat butt and vanished into a copse of sumac.
Lowering the rifle, Robert pulled the bolt, ejecting a cartridge. “I can’t shoot.” He racked the bolt twice, listening for any telltale defects. His lumpy white face was curdled with frustration. He rarely missed a shot, much less four in a row. “Hell,” he jeered. “I’ve lost my touch. I’m a fucking loser.”
In prison, as a rule, convicts weren’t emotionally demanding. Except for Slatts. Robert wanted to tell Harriet about him. Just to get it over with and have it done. But he didn’t do it, knowing it was suicidal, and to make matters worse, now he’d taken his daughter into his confidence.
The relationship with Slatts was deeper than anything Robert had ever had with Harriet. Slatts was willing to die for Robert. His love was unconditional. Harriet wasn’t capable of that kind of loyalty. She couldn’t even imagine it. This pained Robert. He got on with most women. Brought out their motherly side. Ladies wanted to take care of him, do things for him. But he was not good husband material.
All his life it had been this way. You lied to survive. You couldn’t tell anyone the truth in prison. Only dumb fucks did that—and they ended up dead. It wouldn’t be long before Harriet found out about Slatts. The secret Robert had kept under wraps for three years was coming like a hurricane up the coast of Texas.
Robert Grogan was twisting on the devil’s fork.
EIGHT
The telephone jingle-jangled in the apartment. Waltzing into the kitchen in her bathrobe, Harriet nabbed the horn, praying it was one of her girlfriends. She needed to talk to someone. Robert had been acting so peculiar. He was getting on her nerves and that made her skin break out. Her hopes evaporated when the automated voice came on. Then the operator’s drawl boomeranged in her ear. “We have a collect call from an inmate housed in a Department of Corrections facility. Will you accept it?”
Common sense told her not to take it. “Yes, of course.”
An irate, high-pitched voice shaved through the static. “This is Slatts. Is Robert there? I have to speak with him. It’s urgent.”
“Slatts?”
He replied with insincere friendliness. “How you doing, babe. Merry Christmas.”
His name was unfamiliar. Harriet riffed through her mind and came up short. She’d never heard of him. That was odd. She was acquainted with all of Robert’s friends. It made her realize something. Her mate was a distant country. There were dark passages in him. Places with no light. Places with no signature. It was evidence she could sleep with him, and it didn’t mean a thing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know you.”
“Come on.” He refuted her. “You have to.”
“No, really, I don’t.”
“Robert hasn’t said anything about me?”
“Why would he?”
“I’m your husband’s other wife.”
Harriet was boggled. “You’re his what?”
“Never mind, darling.”
She stammered, “Well, uh, he ain’t here.”
“Oh.” Slatts was deflated. “Where the fuck is he?”
When Robert was arrested for stealing guns, he phoned Harriet from 850 Bryant. Said he was in a bit of bother. All she could think about was how to feed the kid. There was no food in the refrigerator. No money in the bank. The laundry was dirty. The gas bill was overdue. Her mom had to step in and help her.
Then while he was in San Quentin she had panic attacks. They came in packs, each one worse than its predecessor. There were minutes, sometimes hours, often days, even weeks, when she was too afraid to do anything. She didn’t clean house or go to work. It was pointless. Her doctor prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant with tranquilizing side effects. It didn’t help. Nothing did.
“He’s hunting,” she said. “Can I take a message?”
“Yeah . . . tell that motherfucker I’m counting on him.”
“Counting on him for what?”
“That’s between him and me.” The hardness in Slatts’s voice had enough heat to set fire to a house. “You keep your big nose out of it.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“I already told you, sister. I guess you weren’t listening. I’m his significant other.”
“His who?”
“You heard me, baby.”
Slatts hung up the phone, leaving Harriet with the dial tone buzzing in her head.
Somewhere between a convict’s cell at San Quentin Prison and a kitchen in the Trinity Plaza Apartments, battle lines had been drawn. A full-scale war was erupting at Christmas time. The prize was Robert Grogan.
Outside, the afternoon was roasting. The cadmium yellow sun simmered with malice. The fog was cinder gray and spreading over the roofs. The sky was eggshell brown. The abandoned buildings on Market Street turned their barren windows to the wintry light.
NINE
Sixth Street in the 1950s was an archipelago of bars, flop-houses, and eateries catering to retired sailors, longshoremen, and factory workers. Most of the neighborhood had been razed to the ground in the succeeding decades to make room for the Moscone Convention Center. Skid row became the most expensive property in town. What was left of the blue-collar community was a two-block strip south of Market.
A drab cinder-block warehouse hugged the corner of Natoma and Sixth. The structure’s walls were riddled with bullet holes and graffiti. The corrugated tin roof was populated with broken satellite dishes. Scrofulous pigeons massed under the eaves. A wino in a Santa Claus hat was crashed out on the stoop.
Harriet Grogan was in a retro denim pants suit, feathery purple boa, and high-heeled patent leather boots. She tweaked the warehouse’s doorbell and said in a whisper to her daughter, “My friend Simone lives here, and her pad smells fucking ugly.”
Diana had on a long-sleeved Misfits T-shirt and shorts. “Why’s that?”
“She’s got forty cats in there. But she likes children. So be cool with her.”
A tall, gangly woman wearing paint-splattered overalls came to the door, unlatched the security gate. She gave Harriet a quick hug before ushering her guests inside. Simone was blonde and blue-eyed, a couple of years older than Harriet. A dozen felines stinking of piss and vomit churned around her legs.
Jostling the cats to one side, Simone herded everyone into the living room. Unframed monochromatic abstract expressionist canvases were on every wall. An ersatz Persian carpet covered the parquet floor. A Wes Montgomery instrumental track was spinning on an antique turntable.
Simone and Harriet and the kid sat down at a butcher table. The kitties lounged at their feet. Though the windows were open, the stench in the warehouse was hellacious. Motioning to a cardboard produce box on the tabletop, Simone said to Diana, “That’s for you. Merry Christmas.”
The box was filled with paperback books, a gang of science fiction novels by John Brunner, Harlan Ellison, Andre Norton, Kate Wilhelm, and others. The covers had illustrations of astronauts and robots and monsters fighting on unknown stars. The books were tattered, the bindings frayed, the pages yellowed with age.
While the girl leafed through the paperbacks, Harriet confided in Simone, speaking in whispers so as not to be heard by Diana. Decked out in feathered earrings, nose stud, and a ten-carat gold chain necklace, her face was caked with makeup and pinched white. “I think Robert is stepping out on me. The bastard.”
�
��He’s seeing another woman?” Simone lit a cigarette. “That’s fucked up.”
“Can you believe the creep? He ain’t been out of prison even two days, and he’s already fooling around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, he’s all secretive and shit. Won’t talk or make love with me or nothing.”
“That doesn’t mean jack. You’re paranoid. Robert’s not screwing anyone else.”
“How do you know?”
“No other woman would put up with his crap, except you.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, and he knows it.”
“There’s got to be another broad.”
Harriet’s skin was breaking out all over her chin. Last night her mother had called in a huff. A man had phoned the old woman to say Robert was dead. Had been killed in a motorcycle accident. It was the second time in four years that someone had reported his death. Before he was sent to prison there was a rumor he’d expired from AIDS.
Simone batted a pussycat off her lap. “Have the cops picked him up since he’s been back?”
“Just once. They caught him hunting.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Has he seen his parole officer yet?”
“No.”
“Is he looking for work?”
“I, uh, you know, I don’t have the faintest idea.”
“Does he have money?”
“Him? Never.”
“Then why are you with him?”
Harriet was swift to answer. “I don’t know.”
“Do you love him?”
It was a good question. Harriet wasn’t sure how to answer it. Sometimes she loved Robert. Other times she didn’t. Lately, there were more and more times when she wanted him six feet underneath the ground in a pine coffin. “Maybe.”
A calico cat licked Simone’s ankles with a waxy tongue. More tabbies were under the chairs. Other mousers got into the box of books and pawed the tatty paperbacks. “If you don’t, you have to leave him.”
Diana ignored the sounds of their conversation and read the first pages of a Damon Knight novel. The tale was about American astronauts traveling to a distant universe in a rocket ship. They’d gotten stranded on a giant star. They had no water or food, and their radio was dead. Some of the crew went renegade and became cannibals. She wanted to be with them. She could be their mascot. Every space voyage needed one. Besides, her parents were making her crazy. Any other planet was better than the one Harriet and Robert were on.
TEN
On the second day after Robert’s release from San Quentin, the late-afternoon skies above the city were pregnant with orange clouds. A lackluster sun palsied over San Bruno Mountain. The television transmission tower on Twin Peaks was shrouded in a wreath of pearl-gray fog. White houses in neat little rows dotted the Alemany Gap. Below them was the Cow Palace, the hall where the Republican National Convention was held in 1964.
The melancholic strains of Clifford Brown on “Delilah” eddied from the AM radio as Robert maneuvered the Hillman into the weeds behind the Geneva Avenue housing projects. A mockingbird screeched at him from a rusty chain-link fence. Starlings zipped through waist-high ferns. Two ravens squatted in a swathe of cattails and cawed at the top of their lungs. A thirsty, heat-addled deer hobbled out of a thicket into a clearing. Berries, brambles, bits of wastepaper, and strands of moss dangled from its antlers.
This was the moment Robert had been waiting for. Poking the Winchester through the driver’s window, he steadied the rifle against the side view mirror. He worked the bolt-action, held his breath, and fired once. A coin of gray smoke puffed from the gun’s barrel. A bevy of sea gulls shrieked in protest. The deer took the bullet right between the eyes and fell dead into a trash heap.
Twilight shadowed Market Street with ruby and violet rays. The Fox Plaza tower and the Bank of America building were smothered in a copper red haze. The windows of the abandoned marijuana emporium at 1440 Market were black and dull. The McDonald’s at Eleventh and Market overflowed with customers. Cars, tourist busses, and delivery trucks snaked up the boulevard to Van Ness Avenue.
Robert stopped the Hillman in front of the Trinity Plaza Apartments and got out. He did a couple of deep-knee bends to get the crick out of his back. The deer was tied with bungee cords to the car’s roof. Untying them, he yanked the buck toward him. The beast’s antlers harpooned the antenna and snapped it in half. The carcass slid over the windshield to the hood, leaving blood on the paint.
With the deliberation of a scientist, Robert wrestled the deer to the ground. Then he pulled a knife from his belt, slit the creature’s belly, and reached in for its liver. Slicing off a chunk of it, he cut the gall bladder and dabbed a piece of the organ meat with the bladder’s juice. Thrusting the confection in his mouth, he chewed vigorously. The flesh was tart. The gall was tastier than mayonnaise. What a condiment.
Done with his snack, he sawed the deer open from ass to mouth. Robert put a hand in the incision, tore out the heart, intestines, kidneys, and gall bladder, and threw the guts on the gravel. Removing the hide, he laid it on the sedan’s front bumper. The brown and white deerskin was flecked with weeds, shoots of grass, and the petals of wild flowers.
His wife and daughter bustled downstairs to gawk at the deer. Proud of himself, Robert hailed his womenfolk. “Pretty nifty, huh? The meat ought to last us a while once I get the shit in the fridge. We’ll have venison steaks for weeks.”
Harriet wanted no part of it. “Robert?”
Wiping the gory knife on his jeans, he grinned. “Yeah, babe?”
“Are you nuts?”
“I don’t know.” He was neutral. “Why?”
“You can’t kill a deer like that.”
Robert’s shaved scalp was aglow under the fading sun. “Well, golly, I just did.”
“The cops are gonna get you.”
“Not this time.”
“Because you’re lucky.”
“Gimme a break, will you? Daddy knows what he’s doing.”
Robert’s eyes were as resolute as copper pennies. He didn’t appreciate Harriet’s lip. She’d matured while he was in the joint. She used to be timid and shit—too busy with the kid to give him any guff. Now she was self-assertive. It was hellish.
“You’re not even supposed to have any guns,” she said.
“Yeah, me and half this fucking country.”
Severing the legs and the haunches, Robert filleted the meat, dirtying his shirt. “I’ve got to get this stuff indoors before the bugs devour it. When I’m done with that, I’m going to stretch the hide and tan it. It’ll make a real fine rug for Christmas.”
The deer’s ghost rose from its body. It was a white light no more substantial than a stain of Crisco oil. It spiraled over Market Street, the Trinity Plaza Apartments, and the tenements in the Tenderloin, ascending into the indigo blue sky. Diana watched the light, how it flickered milky and then frost white, until it was nothing.
ELEVEN
When Robert finished skinning the deer hide, it was nightfall. It was too unpleasant to stay at home. Even with the air conditioner on, the apartment was an oven. After taking a long shower, he slipped into a fresh pair of jeans and a clean white T-shirt. He cornered Harriet in the kitchen. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.
She was beginning to relish his ideas less and less. “What’s that?”
“Let’s go for a ride. I hear there’s a fireworks show we can catch at the Embarcadero. Could be fun.”
Preparations for the trip were minimal. Unloading the guns from the Hillman was the primary chore. The kid was in corduroy cut-offs and a blue hooded sweatshirt with a yellow bandanna. She was put in the backseat with a six-pack of Coors. Harriet was in suede sandals, a denim miniskirt, and a spaghetti strap blouse. She propped her feet on the dashboard. Robert jumped in the sedan and started the engine.
“Ready?” he asked.
Harriet licked her lips. “Yes.”
“What?”
“Like, earlier?” Robert was contrite and hesitant. “I didn’t mean to bring you down with the deer or nothing. You know what I’m saying?”
“Robert?”
“Yeah?”
“All you ever do is think about yourself.”
Hearing this from Harriet was hurtful. Robert coaxed the sedan out of the parking lot and onto Market Street. The radio had on Gene Chandler’s soul hit “Rainbow.” The song quieted Robert’s temper and wove the magic of nostalgia around his wounded ego.
Junkies clustered at Carl’s Jr. and in the UN Plaza. The sidewalks were rife with tourists in shorts and polo shirts, guys in wheelchairs, working girls in leotards and trench coats. Office workers assembled at the bus stops. Filipino ladies in khakis and baseball hats lugged shopping bags of food. Homeless women and men on overturned milk crates drank and gambled at the mouth of McAllister and Market near the emptied Hibernia Bank and the Boyd Hotel. Nickel bag dealers loafed outside the Market Express Barber Shop.
Christmas lights sparked in the Nordstrom department store, the Social Security Administration office, and the Crazy Horse Gentlemen’s Club. Winos manned the doorways to the House of Blue Jeans, Kaplan’s Surplus & Sport Goods, and Hollywood Billiards. Suffering from heat-stroke, pigeons were falling off the phone lines. The pavement was peppered with their inert bodies.
A lone police officer directed traffic at the intersection of Fifth and Market. The cop strutted on the yellow dividing line in the road, waving a white-gloved hand at passing cars. Crisp and natty in a blue dress uniform, his tanned face was under a Santa Claus hat. Recognizing him, Robert grumbled. “I know that dirtbag.”
Harriet was tense. Her radar was up. “Who is he?”
“One of the dorks that messed with us on San Bruno Mountain the other night.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure. I’d know that fucker anywhere. What a twerp. Who does he think he is?”