Dimly, Through Glass

by Knight, Dirk

  He takes the band off his finger, picks up the bottle, and places the band within the condensation ring left behind on the round coaster, creating small concentric circles. He thinks idly, three strikes and you’re out! but really his latest wife was his fourth strike.

  There was always Jenny, who never even made it to the plate (or would it be the mound?), but was ever-present in his life.

  He kills the beer and tosses it into a small wastebasket just beneath the arm of the couch. He begins to massage his hand, the damaged one. It still hurts him every day. His pinky and half of his middle finger were shorn off by gunfire in Iraq. He was offered a procedure to eliminate the phantom pains, but at the risk of losing sensation in his remaining fingers; he turned the offer down. The ring, the sore nubs, the fucking cat, they were all just scars left to remind him that the past was real. One is unavoidable—his hand. The ring is a disposable object. The cat seems to be an obligation. He doesn’t want to get rid of any of them though; he wants the reminders.

  So his third wife, whom he can barely remember, is out the door. His first wife was a worthless Saturday tart at a biker bar, good riddance. Jenny Massey is dead and he knows he owes her his life, which he’s attempted to give her on more than one occasion. But it’s Abigail he still thinks of. The one who got him.

  It’s she who haunts him.

  Bill Carrington had been there to comfort him when she filed the papers. He knew from experience that the job would do this to a marriage, hell any relationship, really.

  Son-of-a-bitch, Bill was right.

  She asked for nothing in the divorce. She cited irreconcilable differences, which is fancy lawyer talk for “I give up.” She could deal with his night terrors, from the war. She coped with his unrelenting cop mentality, always boasting about the right thing to do, always condemning those who didn’t obey.

  Abigail had dealt with all of the stupid things he thought would drive a woman away, but she couldn’t handle being alone all the time. She’d decided to ride a desk after the Lutz case, something Carron just couldn’t do. Sometimes he thought she was mad that he still worked cases. But even when he did manage to make it home while dinner was still on the table, he wasn’t actually there; he was just a husk of her husband forcing food into his face and spinning his thoughts around the day’s events.

  Abigail had decided that she wanted children, and a future, but not with Carron. That was their irreconcilable difference; she decided she had chosen poorly in him, so she got out as unscathed as possible, leaving money and things behind—hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a fucking orange cat.

  He tosses one of the smelly, artificially fish flavored nuggets into the carpet and watches as she regards the treat with feigned disdain before getting up to grab it. He lets his fingers trail in her fur as she passes by. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  Carron has more money than most of the attorneys he loathes, certainly more than the dealers and pimps he popped when he was working a beat. He does the job because he has to. The Webb family gave him their son’s inheritance, to honor his legacy. To live vicariously as parents through Carron, who felt he had some pretty big shoes to fill in order to be their surrogate. He wishes Karl were still here. Carron wishes he could be living check to check in a beat-down part of town with a car that never starts on the first go, instead of hoarding all this money.

  Or better yet, that he’d just died instead.

  The wealth is another reminder of his lifetime of failure. He despises the money more than he does that orange cat, but knows it would have been an insult to Elaina Webb, and to the memory of his friend, if he’d turned it down.

  This is what keeps him going, the gratitude of Elaina . . . and, of course, Jenny.

  The day before the firefight that ended his life, Karl had finally asked him why he’d joined the military.

  “You know my story,” Karl said. “I told you why I signed up. But you still haven’t said it.”

  “I already told you: I was headed down a bad path, I was mixed up with the wrong guys, and I needed to make a change—”

  “Man, that’s bullshit and you know it. I didn’t ask you what you were doing before you got here; I asked you why you came here. There’s a helluva lotta ways to change your direction in life without flying to Iraq and shooting at towelheads, so be real, man. What is it?”

  The words started rolling out of Carron’s mouth before he knew what he was saying. “I was in a gas station,” he said, “I was in a gas station bathroom, to be specific. I had been up for days, high on meth, and coke, and a bunch of pills too. I was blasted; the whole week was a binge. I was in there cutting up a line to keep me going, when I heard shouting, or yelling, or whatever. I took my bump—”

  “What’s a bump?”

  “It’s a little bit of . . . uhh . . . it’s a hit of dope, okay? So, I took my hit, and peeked out the bathroom door, and I seen this guy standing there holding a gun on the girl at the register. Now, I been in this store a million times, and I was kind of in love with the girl who worked there. Only, she don’t give me the time of day, because she knew my crew, and we’d come in there all the time and get booze, or make deals in the parking lot. But, I always came in when she was working. I kept trying to wear her down; she was just so beautiful and pure. Part of the reason was because I knew she was too good for me, and that I would never have her, but if I hung around her some, maybe I wouldn’t feel so fucking worthless, if you can dig that.”

  “I dig it, baby,” said Karl.

  “So, now, there’s this guy with a gun held on her, and he’s screaming, ‘bitch don’t fucking lie to me! Open the fucking safe!’ So I reach under my shirt, and grab the piece I been carrying, and I cock it back.” Carron started to hesitate. A tear formed in the corner of his eye and his words hitched in his throat. “And then. . . . Then, fucking nothing; I froze. I can’t move past the bathroom, and I just keep saying to myself that it’s just a robbery, the guy ain’t gonna shoot nobody; he’s just a junkie looking for a few bucks so’s he can score somethin’. I’m crouched down in the stall, under the little hand blower deal, when I hear the crack of the gun going off. I try to muster the courage to stand, but I don’t got the gumption. I tell myself that he’s already shot her; it’s too late for me to save her. Then I hear her yelling, screaming in pain, and I peek my head around the corner again. The guy’s standing over her, behind the counter now, and I got the drop on him. . . . I pulled up the gun; I have a clear shot, and leveled my piece on him.

  “Then, nothing, again. I can’t pull the fucking trigger and my hands are shaking like a cartoon character, it’s fucking ridiculous. And then he pumps two more into her while she’s lying on the floor, helpless.”

  Carron was weeping unabashedly as he told the story and though a few men in his squad had been intently trying not to listen, they were fully vested in his story.

  “I had the drop on the guy; I had the gun ready before he shot her and I didn’t do nothin’ to stop him. I could’ve shot ‘im, or at least scared him off before he went around the counter to finish her off, but I didn’t. I thought I was in love with her, went out of my way to see her every fucking day . . . and I let her die, twice. After the guy finishes her he turns to leave, and I get a real good look at the bastard. He’s a guy I had a beef with from a rival gang. Chances are he was at the store looking for me in the first place, and when he don’t see me, he decides to take down my girl and score a little cash. Why wouldn’t he?

  “The cops arrested me, and questioned me. I flushed the dope before they got there, hid the pistol in the tank of the toilet. They found it and tried to pin it on me, so I came clean about the whole thing, even gave them the name of the guy who done it, even though snitching might-a gotten my mom and sister killed, I just kept seeing her face, in fear as he held the gun on her. I knew she seen me peeking around the bathroom door, she saw the gun in my hand. She thought I was going to save her, and I just sat there and let it happen.

 
“They arrested the guy, and then let me go, but not without the officers first telling me what a piece of shit I was, and that they were going to the D.A. to try and charge me as an accomplice and all kinds of other shit. That’s why I’m here, Karl. You happy now?”

  “I’m happy you finally told me, but not that you lost your girl . . . what was her name?”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you need to remember her name. You should always hold the names of those you love and lose close to you. It means their death wasn’t meaningless. It means they can live on through you; and if you’re here because you lost . . .”

  “Jennifer, Jenny Massey. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well you are here because you lost Jenny, and it would be a crime not to keep her name with you while you fulfill the destiny her death has given you. She, in some way or another, put you on this path. You fight for Jenny Massey now.”

  And fight for Jenny he did, alongside Karl, for a few brief moments before they were shot down.

  Their convoy took a wrong turn down the main road into Nasiriya. Sparsely paved roads surrounded by dust and rinky-dink one-and two-level stucco homes surrounded them, and so did hostiles. Carron didn’t know he was about to be involved in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. No one did.

  Karl must have had some kind of omen, or seen something that the rest of his men didn’t, because he ducked before the slugs riddled the doors of the Hummer. He was already hunkered down with his rifle cocked when the IED blast took out the lead vehicle in the convoy. It all happened so fast that Carron’s memories of the chain of events are muddled together and fuzzy. Before he could think, he was out of the Humvee, weapons hot, engaging targets on the rooftops and peeking out of windows.

  A frag hit the dirt just in front of their cover, and Carron dove back, followed by Karl. Looking over his shoulder Carron saw the slugs tear through Karl’s body, melt through his neck, and dig into the sand beneath. His frame crumbled and his knees weakened. He fell, face-first into the sandy-crumbly roadway. His lieutenant, Hutchins, was calling for a retreat. His men were falling back. Staley refused to go; he wrestled free of Hutchins’s grasp and lunged back into ambush alley.

  Assault rifles chattered and peppered the road with slugs, riddling Karl’s face and limbs with fresh holes. Carron dove headlong into the flurry of bullets. He was hit in the arms and shoulder. His body armor and helmet stopped the fatal projectiles, while his exposed hands were torn apart by the leaden barrage. He landed on Karl, grabbing his legs and ankles with his remaining fingers and one intact hand. Lieutenant Hutchins was forced to gather his men and provide cover fire, risk his own neck, to pop back into the barrage and drag Carron by his boots back behind cover. Carron couldn’t maintain his grip on Karl’s legs with his hand wounded so he fought, kicking and swinging against Hutchins, needing to save Karl. He already had someone to fight for in Jenny, he didn’t need to fight for Karl too, Goddamnit!

  He melted down on his commanding officer again, after the friendlies arrived. He lost it. Deep down he knew that the Lieutenant was doing what was right, that he would have died for no reason, and that Karl wouldn’t have wanted that, but he had to have someone to blame, so he rebuked Hutchins.

  Carron was cast out as a liability, a subordinate, and with acute post-traumatic stress disorder; he was summarily discharged from active duty, sent home with a purple heart and a little stipend. He drifted through the military hospital at Fort Huachuca, in a haze of rage and disappointment. He felt defeated and useless—ready to go back to his life of meaningless decay and fetidity—until she walked into his room.

  Karl’s mother, Elaina Webb, was an elegant and timeless woman. Her hair was rich and flowing, crisp like a winter day. Her mouth was supple and pink, like that of a much younger woman; no smoker’s lines, no overdramatic lipstick or eye shadow.

  He sat upright in bed immediately, ignoring the shrieks of pain from his broken body, snapped his hand promptly to his brow, and said “Ma’am.”

  “At ease,” she replied with a faint and forced smile peeking through the clouds of her melancholy.

  Of course, she was here to claim her son. The son he had dragged from the dusty street, where they both had become target practice for the Iraqis. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry. He strained to muster the humility to ask for her forgiveness. Instead, he started to weep, and the words “I tried,” escaped his throat.

  As a few solemn tears streamed down Elaina’s face, she pulled a letter from her handbag. The letter had been mailed just days before the assault that claimed his life, and in it, Karl wrote: “Mom,

  “I hope you and dad are well and I miss you. I feel as though God has brought me here to Iraq with a bigger purpose than simply fighting for our country. I feel He has brought me here, also, to minister to some of the other soldiers. One in particular, named Staley. I feel like he has a good heart and that he would die to protect me. I am not sure why he has taken to me so, but I know God has something in mind. Even though I am pretty sure he doesn’t know The Lord, I feel his heart is softening. He is lost and adrift out here, filled with shame. The shame is what brought him here, and the shame is good, because through the pain I feel he may be willing to accept God, one day.

  “We’re going to be entering a hostile area tomorrow, and I know the shield of God’s armor will protect me long enough to serve my purpose. Tell Dad I wish I had gotten to see his acceptance speech, and don’t worry about me, Mom. The Lord has me and will keep me.”

  Karl’s mother and father helped Carron get accepted to the FBI, so that he could continue the work that he told them Karl had inspired him to do.

  The vibrating of Carron’s phone, which Molly has been sitting on, scares her enough to skitter across the table, knocking the bag of pistachios to the carpet and leaving a flurry of shed orange hair drifting down onto the glass surface.

  “Staley,” he belches into the phone. “Copy. Uh huh. . . . 87 St. Charles; got it. Thanks, dispatch. En route.”

  He sets the phone back on the table and looks to his incomplete beers and bag of nuts on the floor, longingly.

  “The job never ends,” he says to Molly, who is already over her embarrassment from being scared of the phone, and is now batting around a few of the orphaned pistachios. She replies with a tiny meow.

  Denny, Darkly

  Dennis arrives at his mother’s house to find the home is silent; he does not want to disturb the rhythmic and peaceful atmosphere of the home. He doesn’t want to wake her yet, as she sleeps away the afternoon. His clothes, disheveled from a handful of violent struggles, would draw her needlessly from her cocoon into discussion and investigation, and he hasn’t the time or energy to spin a web for the old woman. With his unwilling passenger secured, and still unconscious from the pistol-whipping she’d taken, he uses the peaceful moment to get cleaned up.

  He takes a brisk shower, effortlessly shaving away his stubble, finally using the straight razor he’s been carrying all day, thinking of his father again, and now standing in the very home he had built to grow old in.

  The inside of which he had barely gotten to see.

  Wiping away steam from the mirror, Dennis sees his reflection and it is unrecognizable. He is a man changed forever by the events of a few short days. He sees also Hector’s semblance, a specter’s reflection, who is sitting on the commode, idly reading a magazine.

  Dennis knows he isn’t really there, that he is just a schizophrenic program running in the background of his mind. As if seeing him in the mirror is just a reminder that he isn’t really there.

  The men meet eyes in the pane of glass, and Jiménez compliments the home his father had built.

  “This is some nice place you got here,” he says with an underscore of irony.

  The mirror is speckled and spotted along the edges and especially in the corners, where the aluminum coating has chipped and peeled away, betraying the decades that have passed since the mirror was fa
bricated. The entire home is decadent, lavishly furnished, and spectacularly maintained, except this mirror, which has long needed to be replaced, but Dennis likes its contrast to the exorbitant home. It stands unrepentant, as a reminder of the betrayal and filth this home represents to Dennis. He enjoys the dirty, gritty feel of the tarnished mirror reflecting back the pristine custom bathroom. It offers a blurred and dingy reflection instead of the pure and clean image he’s come to expect. He thinks it fitting, as he’s felt dingy and impure his whole life, and now he should feel more alive, more vivid.

  Though the shadows of the trees have grown long, and a thick bolt of sunlight is on the cusp of piercing through the western window in the kitchen, Dennis decides upon a pot of coffee. He makes it full, enough for his mother . . . even an extra cup for Hector, should he decide to evolve from construct to biological being.

  Dennis has a feeling that Jiménez might take over his body in a Fight-Clubian moment and unleash terror that Project Mayhem only dreamt of, but he also knows that he isn’t supposed to talk about that.

  Just as the percolating has reached its sputtering, stammering end, Carla descends the stairs and rounds the corner into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing here, Denny?”

  “Hi, Mom, I just thought we could spend a little time together. I got some time off work—”

  “You got fired, again?”

  “No, mother, I am taking some vacation time. You know Christmas is just around the corner . . .”

  Silence from Carla.

  “So, anyway, I was hoping, maybe you and I could—”

  “I’ve got plans, Denny. You really should have called, saved yourself the trip.”

  “Mom, don’t call me Denny anymore, I’m a grown man.”

  “If you say so, Is that fresh coffee I smell?”

  “Yeah, I’ll make you a cup.”

  “I can manage, thank you,”

  “No, really I don’t mind . . .” but she is already shuffling over to the steaming carafe and reaching overhead for her cup. The same cup she has always used, as far as Dennis can remember.