by Adam Vine
I draw the pistol from my waistcoat and shoot him in the top of his belly, my shot missing his heart by less than an inch. He stumbles and slashes the broken bottle with the last electricity of his life, aiming for my windpipe. Good Lord Jesus, but the wily whoreson is fast. I try to duck sideways and the glass bites my jugular instead. I feel the edge go in like cold teeth.
We both die, bleeding our lives down through the unfinished redwood planks of the floor.
***
She was what the tabloid newspapers called “Beauty Incarnate,” the dancer whose twirls and shakes had enraptured Hollywood and Washington alike. When she was young, men from every corner of America, Europe, Russia, and beyond would watch her with flashbulbs in their eyes.
Beauty Incarnate. The words hung like holes through the old glass picture frame, the ink twenty years gone, the newspaper faded to a dry sepia. She could no longer read the headline from the bed, much less the print. She knew what it said from reading it every morning for the past two decades while she dressed, stretched, and washed.
I was the best that ever was, she thought through the haze of her fever. The best. The very best. How little that meant now.
She rolled onto her other side through a forest of sheets overgrown and dank with sweat, the pain of old memory too heavy to bear. She hadn’t danced in years. The knowledge she never would again was as familiar to her as crow’s feet or the sagging of certain body parts. What she couldn’t stand was the knowledge that, like the stage, the lights would soon fade on the rest of it, too.
I was the best that ever was. The President said so, my Teddy. So did my Joey. He hit plenty of home runs with me. So did my Frankie. Least he was honest. Never even tried to tell me he wasn’t singing no other girls to sleep. Even my Jakie said it. But I didn’t like him much after the first time. Always thought he was ought to hit me. And he was always sayin’ he couldn’t do it, on account of some fight he had comin’ up.
Her fever flashed like flame in a pan too hot and thickly coated with oil. The discomfort caused her to gasp and roll onto her back, sinking into a deep wet pool in the middle of the bed. Under the sheets, she was naked. She wondered what that damned nurse had done with her swan costume.
Agatha moaned. The nurse, Esmeralda, came running. A curly black mop of hair peered through the door. Esmeralda’s face went pale. “Ma’am!” No response. “Ms. Hawthorne! It’s your mother!” The nurse rushed in to take Agatha’s temperature, her face growing pale as she watched the mercury in the thermometer rise.
A woman’s shout echoed from downstairs. Agatha recognized the voice. “Well, what the Hell is it this time?” Was it Winny? No, Winny was dead. Her kid sister had drowned in the pond when they were children.
Esmeralda stammered. “Sh-she needs a doctor!”
“What for? He was just here yesterday.”
“He said to call him if her fever came back.”
Winny sounded annoyed. “Well, did it?”
“It’s a hundred and five!”
A few minutes later, Winny entered the room, scowling. No, not Winny. Someone else. A grown-up but still young woman, with red hair and glasses. She only sounded like Winny. Looked a bit like her, too, if Winny had lived past the age of twelve.
“Winny,” Agatha said, reaching.
“Oh, Good Lord. She’s confused again,” Winny said, casting Esmeralda a look of disgust from the corner of her eye. “Last time, she thought my boyfriend was her husband.”
“Winnybear, I’m sick.”
“I’m surprised she’s still talking, with her condition,” Esmeralda said. “I’m going to run the bath and get the ice bucket. We need to bring her fever down. You need to call Doctor Smith.”
Winny crossed her arms. “Excuse me? I will do no such thing. And it’s unacceptable for you to speak to me or anyone else in this family in such a manner. If you use that tone with me one more time, you'll be on the street. Unless you've forgotten who keeps food on your table.”
“She’s going to die,” Esmeralda said.
The fury in Winny’s voice was sharp. She enunciated every syllable. Winny had never done that when she was alive. “Doctor Smith’s fees are outrageous. My mother squandered the family fortune. We’re almost out of money. Heavens, I don’t even know how we’re going to afford to pay you. Besides, he’s a fool. My mother’s disease is not,” Winny hesitated, “sexual in nature. She has scarlet fever. It will pass.”
The nurse shook her head. “You been hiring me for a year, Ms. Hawthorne. It ain’t gonna pass.”
“Get out!” Winny screamed.
There it was. Agatha felt the fire move from her forehead to her belly. I’m going to die. But I already knew that.
They all were, that was the whole thing. Everyone on Earth was going to die. The last curtain call always ends the show. But for her, it was so close she could no longer pretend. It would happen tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day. Everyone else could still do everything they wanted. She could only suffer, and roll from one sweat-drenched side of the bed to the other. Even that was exhausting. It was so unfair.
I shoulda just picked one of those boys, she thought. They were all good boys. The President. Oh, what a man. I know he loved me. They all loved me. But he was somethin’ special. I coulda been First Lady...
A voice inside her head reminded her that the President already had a First Lady, and she was only his girl-on-the-side, but in her present state of mind, it was easy to tune out the ugly voices, and listen to the ones she wanted.
First Lady. What fun! All the secret passageway tours and cocktail parties a girl could want. Swimming at night in the White House pool, eating shrimp on little skewers with royalty when they came to visit. Royalty! Maybe I’d even meet a prince of some far-away kingdom, to take me away from it all and make me his princess. How romantic! Would sure beat sittin' at the side of some baseball diamond cheerin' someone on… Or sittin' side stage at some concert while little teenage girls cried into their blouses… Or burning up from the inside out…
Agatha moaned again and tried to roll onto her back, but Winny held her fast.
“Mother,” Winny said in a low voice. “Can you hear me?”
“I ain’t your mother, Winny,” she said.
“What?”
“I said I ain’t your mother. Where’s mama?”
“I can’t understand you.”
She felt Winny’s hand on her forehead. “Oh God, it’s as bad as she says.”
“Winny? I’m sick. I tried to be the First Lady. Pray to God, I tried.”
Winny shouted into the washroom. “Esmeralda! Come here. She’s spiking.”
She tried sitting up, but had no strength. Instead she blinked, trying to communicate to her long-lost sister in Morse code, like they had as girls.
Winny sat patiently at her bedside, folding and unfolding her hands in her lap. A few minutes later, Esmeralda entered the room carrying a bucket full of ice. It was for her bath. I need a cold bath, she thought. Heavens, would that feel swell.
The nurse set the ice down on the floor and knelt at her bedside. She felt both of the nurse’s soft hands envelop hers.
“Mrs. Hawthorne? Agatha?”
That’s my name. “What?” Agatha said.
“Aggy? Aggy? Mrs. Hawthorne, can you hear me?” the Nurse said again.
“What?”
“Mom,” Winny said. “Come back to us. Just for a minute.”
Esmeralda sighed. “Not gonna work, Ms. Lindy. Sorry, Ms. Hawthorne. I forget sometimes you head of the house now. Her fever’s too high. We need to get her in cold water before it gets any higher.”
“Wait.” Winny put a hand on the nurse’s shoulder, holding her in place. “I want to hear what my mother has to say.”
Esmeralda shook her head. “But if we don’t…”
“I may not have gotten along with my mother, but if these are her last words, I wish to hear them,” Winny said.
Esmeralda threw her hands up in the ai
r and sighed. She stood, hoisted the ice bucket and wrestled it to the washroom. A few seconds later, the crash of the ice falling into water echoed down the hall.
Winny touched Agatha’s cheek. The touch was cold, and distant. “Mother, it’s your daughter, Lindy. Remember me? Lindy? You have three children. I’m the oldest. What are you trying to say? Speak slowly.”
Agatha tried to remember. She was so hot. Her lips felt swollen, her tongue was unwieldy and seemed to take up her entire mouth. She tried to run a hand across her face, but her arms and legs felt like they were wearing leaden weights.
No, that’s all wrong. The weights should be on my ankles. I always found them such a terrible bore. The Best That Ever Was doesn’t need ankle weights; those are for the bad dancers.
Focus. This girl wanted her to do something, wanted her to perform. “I was the best that ever was,” Agatha said.
“What?”
“I was the best that ever was.”
Winny’s eyes got a little wet. She blinked back the tears, removing her cupped hand from Agatha’s face.
“Mother, please. You never did much for me, or any of us. But you can’t leave me with this, alone. All that’s left is this old house, which can’t even keep a coat of paint because of the damn salt in the air, and the doctors’ and lawyers’ fees. And a name you spent my whole life ruining. Can you hear me?”
Agatha’s eyes drifted. No, this woman wasn’t Winny at all, but someone else. Agatha decided she didn’t like her much.
“Mother, can’t you say it? Can’t you tell me you’re proud of me, for once?”
The girl who wasn’t Winny was crying. Maybe she knew about her affair with the President. Or Joey. Or Frankie. Or Jakie. Not Jakie. Everyone knows about that. It was in the papers.
The girl was crying because for the first time in her life, she, Agatha Hawthorne had failed to perform.
Agatha summoned every last drop of her beauty, her grace, her will, and said, “I’m the best that ever was.”
The woman stared at her with disgust. A moment later, she got up and left the room. What a sour look, Agatha thought. I mustn’t let it upset me. Every dancer has bad nights. You can’t let it get to you. Even the best can’t win every crowd.
That night, at four minutes past eleven o’clock, Agatha Hawthorne died with her nurse by her side, her hair still wet from the third ice bath, her eyes fixated on a picture, framed and hung on the bedroom wall. Her daughter waited in the other room. Lindy never called Doctor Smith.
***
I killed that little slut, Annabelle Leigh. Never knew her name 'til now. She never told me. Funny, you learn so much down here. Always tries her best to hide, when she sees me comin'.
Before you came around, you disgusting, fat sack of shit, “Annabelle Leigh” was just “Girl #31.” Crushed her head in with a rock, like I knocked off the other three-zero before her. She fought the best, maybe that’s why I remember her. But little whores can’t break me. No one can break me. She wasn’t the first, or the last. But she’s the only one I regret not fucking before I punched her card.
They caught me outside of Monterrey. I was going there to gamble, make some money so I could hop a freighter to Japan. Hear the girls out there are real pleasant, do any damn thing you ask.
Denial is a fool’s game. You’re stronger, harder to kill, when you know exactly who and what you are. And they tried. They all tried. But they didn’t break me. Those motherfuckers never will. They say, “It’s your last ride, Dutch,” and I say, “No the fuck it ain’t.”
I killed men in South Africa. Shot Germans to death who came at me with their bayonets bloody through the smoke in the trenches, my lungs almost burned out by their toxic gas, and over what? Some piece a shit Hungarian prince who got a bomb thrown at him by an even bigger piece of shit Serbian assassin. At least the Serbian had the right idea. There’s money to be made in killing people – for the state, for the army, for rich men with too many enemies, or just filthy little whores for your own fun.
I got me a dollar 'n' fifty cents off old Annabelle Leigh.
The Sheriff of this place don’t care for foreigners much. He beat me pretty bad when I first come in, then had his boys beat me even worse, but I didn’t break. He wanted to know where the other “fifteen” were buried. Like I’d ever tell his skinny ass. Like I ain’t gonna tell you.
Sheriff kept me in a cell without light or bread for four days. The water he slipped under the door tasted like it had been filtered through week-old trash. Guessin' from the runs I got he didn’t boil it. He wants me to suffer before the end. But that skinny sack of sludge would break if the wind blew on him wrong. I don’t break for anyone.
It’s strange. I can see the platform and the noose. They’re marchin' me up there now. It’s a big fucking knot, prolly weighs twenty pounds, but it don’t faze me none. Truth is, I feel nothin' but scorn – for all the people who done me wrong, for all the women didn’t take my offer, for that German son of a bitch who gave me this damned scar, for this whole sick, sad world. I’m glad to be finally takin' a load off from it.
The rope touches my neck and I wince. He ain’t gonna break me. Not now, not ever.
I think of those thirty-one faces; sweet, angelic, black and Russian and Polish and Dutch and Mexican faces, even an American or two, bashed in or blown out by a bullet or purple from drowning or choking or any combination of the above, and it makes me feel happy, like my life had meaning. The men I killed in war, I never think about. Any rational being will kill in self-defense. But the whores, that’s a different story. That was a war I chose to fight, The War on Whores.
I feel the trap door click under my feet, and the floor drops out from under me. The weight of the noose suddenly becomes light. I slip, my feet go out, and this wasted life a mine begins to end. I laugh, and I fall. But I don’t break.
***
A hundred more memories shifted past, a thousand, all bleeding together as I fell deeper and deeper into the Hole. I saw the Union, and They saw me. I lost all sense of time. I fell towards a tiny point of light, growing slowly but steadily closer, and the distant echo of accordion music.
***
One! More! Show!
Ha ha ha. How the fuck did I get here? Fell off my chair and landed with my butt in a dirt hole in the floor. One more show, kiddos. Step right up and open the box! It’s made of mud and it’s got my ass in it, but that’s how old Doc Midnight the Magic Mirror Man does her these days: a little low-budget.
Don’t much remember how I got here, ‘cept there’s a shovel next to the hole and I’m piss drunk. My fists ache like I just fought a tree. They’re as blue and purple as rotten fruit. I know what it feels like to hit a tree, because I’ve done it, and lemme tell ya, it hurts like a bitch. Scudds fights a tree! He's drunk as the rat bastard who fathered him, but that’s the fun! One! More! Show! Just one more, I promise.
Tee-hee, look, I was right. I opened a hole. This hole’s about a foot deep by a foot wide. Barely enough to set my ass in, but I’m settin’ here just the same. At some point I wrote the words “Bury Me Here” on the planks of this shit hole with a charcoal pencil. Did I write that? Or did They? I can never remember, sometimes. Sometimes I can never remember.
Shaddap, you drunk fuck. Shaddap and end it. No, no, it’s not time to go! There’s still time before I jump into that Hole! Scudds the Magic Man has one! More! Show!
I tried to stop it with the booze. The fuckin’ booze only made it worse. Made me hear ‘em. Made me see ‘em. Patty didn’t understand. She thought I was losin’ my mind. Maybe I was. My colleagues in the physics department always said I was two clownfish short of a full fish tank.
It’s so quiet up here. That’s what allows Them to seep in. It’s the quiet. The mountains. The trees. There’s something wrong up here, on the edge of these great Santa Cruz Mountains where the Earth cuts the sea like my dear sweet wife Patricia used to cut farts in her sleep. The silence of the night has its own voice, impenet
rable and vast, an ocean within oceans. And in that silence is Them. They are carried by it. Reflected by it. Like dead light falling on dead mirrors.
Step right up, kiddies, let Doctor Midnight the Magic Mirror Man show you how to travel through time. Let’s hear it for Scudds! Old Scudds Gurney found a way to time-travel! To Travel! Through! Time! The only rule is that everyone pays, even you little chiddlers barely tall enough to ride. The cost for one ride is your life. This ride draws from you like water from a bucket, slowly suckin’ you up until every last drop is gone.
Ho-he-he-he. You hear that, you dead bastards down there? You ain’t been doin’ nothin’ but suckin’ me off.
I should write somethin’ nice for Patty before I go. Last words, a sweet poem, or at least an apology for what I did to her face. That woman stuck by me through a helluva lot. Right up through the time everyone started sayin’ I was butt-buddies with Hitler. I never was. I was just drunk and mouthin’ off. But I didn’t kick her ass because she was being a bitch, or because her dad’s a Jew. They wanted me to. That’s the long and short of it, the whole chilidog, kiddos. When They want you to do something, you do it.
If I had put her in the ground, we could’ve both stayed here. Found some peace at last, together. But she ran. Patty always was faster’n me. Now, I’ll die alone here, the big bad Nazi everyone in this pisspot little beach town loves to hate, former inventor of time travel and the Beach Boardwalk magic show, inventions for which I, Scudds Gurney, never saw a penny.
They’re gonna find me tomorrow and they’ll be sad they missed the show. Every Gott-damned highfalutin’ Santa Cruzian wants to see old Scudds kick the bucket. There’s nothing human beings detest more than a man who fails.
One more show, it’s time to go. I opened a Hole that wants to swallow me whole. Step right up and see the Magic Mirror Show! But how am I going to do it, you ask? Don’t They want my memories? Won’t doing it quick and painless erase the whole point? Isn’t that why I beat Patty’s ass so bad, right-hooked her in the liver ‘til I felt it almost pop, smashed and bashed her face like it was an Army field ration I couldn’t get open?