by Rick R. Reed
“Jimmy? Jimmy, wait!”
His mother’s voice made him stop. She was probably going to tell him she needed the money back.
He went back to the apartment door. She held an envelope out.
“You got mail,” she said.
“What?” Jimmy took the envelope from her hand.
“I don’t know what it is. It came yesterday. I didn’t open it.”
Jimmy looked down at the envelope, at the scribbled blue ink: his name and Carla’s address. Who would write him a letter? He turned it over, thinking there might be a return address, some sort of clue on the back, but there was nothing.
“You wanna come back in and open it?” Carla looked hopeful.
“Nah, not right now.” For some reason, the letter had caused a sick feeling to start in his stomach. Jimmy didn’t know if he wanted to open the letter. At least, not here, with his mother.
He wanted to be by himself when he opened it. “I think I’ll read it later.” He folded the letter in two and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.
“See you later,” he said.
“You make sure, you hear?”
“Okay.”
Jimmy started back down the hall.
*
When he got back to the Chicken Arms, Jimmy found the apartment deserted. It made him nervous: Randy had been gone since the night before last. He’d never come back. Jimmy had thought going to see his mother might take his mind off Randy. He had lain awake the entire night, listening for the creak of the door that would signal Randy’s return. He had played over and over the scene that would happen when Randy returned and told him he had killed the guy and that now everything would be okay for all of them.
But the night had passed, and still no Randy.
Jimmy told himself that Randy had just run out of time and had to get to an appointment or something before he could make it home.
So he went to see Carla, hoping that the time spent away would allow Randy to steal back in. Before he entered the Chicken Arms, Jimmy imagined Randy sitting on the floor, a blanket pulled around him, grinning.
But the room was empty, cold enough for Jimmy to see his breath.
Jimmy remembered a time when there was always someone in the little apartment. Now with War Zone, Little T, and maybe Randy all missing, it didn’t leave much possibility for anyone being there.
Where was Miranda?
God knew. Jimmy looked out the window at the pale, sunless sky. God knew.
Jimmy sat down on a pillow and leaned back against the wall, drawing his legs up close to his body. He listened for a while to the sounds around him, not thinking: the traffic outside, the horns and intermittent sirens, the scurrying of the mice in the wall, and the creak of the floorboards in the building as it shifted and settled in the wind. He thought about the last time he’d seen Randy and tried to remember the name of the guy Randy was going to see.
He’d been trying to remember all morning. If he had the name, he could go to the police or something.
But there was no memory at all. Something with a D, maybe. He had gone over their conversation a hundred times, watching it like a movie, hoping the particular snatch of dialogue he needed would come to him.
But it never did. All Jimmy could do was hope it would come back to him.
He reached in his pocket and felt the folded envelope, still there. For some reason that he couldn’t understand, he felt reluctant to open it. In my whole life I never got mail. Who would write to me now?
He took the letter out and looked at the envelope once more. The handwriting (in blue ink) was slanted backward with high pitches and deep valleys.
Jimmy shrugged and ripped the envelope open.
A lock of curly red hair fell out, followed by a lock of nappy black hair, followed by a lock of straight black hair. Finally, there was another wavy lock of black hair.
Jimmy’s heart began to pound. The locks of hair could belong to Little T, War Zone, and Randy, with one left over. Jimmy swallowed hard, wishing his mouth weren’t so dry, wishing there were some running water in this fucked-up hole he called home.
“I don’t want to read this letter.” He said the words out loud, so they echoed in the room.
He imagined himself ripping the letter apart and casting its fluttering remains out the window, like snow.
But he looked down anyway, at the blue scrawl across the yellow legal paper.
“Dear Boy Slut:” the letter began. Jimmy closed his eyes. He knew who this was from. He wished he could go back to that night when he’d needed money so bad, go back and turn away from the car when it approached him. Fuck it, Jimmy thought. What’s done is done. He groped in his pockets for a cigarette, pulled out a butt he had saved, and lit it. He closed his eyes, filling up his lungs with smoke, and held it in.
“I knew there was something wrong. I knew it,” Jimmy said. He held the letter out before him, looking at it like some alien thing. Then he realized that this guy knew where to find him. It didn’t matter what the letter said.
This guy could come and get him.
Or if not him, his mother.
He had to read it. Had to find out what the guy wanted, what he planned. Maybe he’d be stupid enough to sign his name.
Dear Boy Slut:
It was easy to find you. You’ve sucked about every dick in Chicago, haven’t you, you little tramp? People know you, Jimmy, even know your last name and where that little whore of a mother lives. All I had to do was ask a few questions to get your address.
I’ve got them all now: the little red-haired cocksucker calls himself Little T, the nigger with no personality, the disease-ridden tramp with the hillbilly accent. I just need to add a few more to my collection and we’ll be all set. You see, son, the Good Book tells us: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I take that as meaning that if I take care of you and your little friends the way you take care of the rest of the world, I can be your salvation. You understand, then, that “this I do for you.”
Let’s call your little friends my pets, Jimmy. And pets need to be held in captivity, right? I mean, we don’t want our dear little pets running off, now do we? So I keep them in boxes in my basement. In the dark, Jimmy, with the rats and the roaches. The spiders. The mildew.
Even though your friends are in boxes, they’re tied up. I take every precaution. Remember how it feels to be tied up, Jimmy? Remember how helpless that feels? Your little nigger friend has totally flipped out already…and he hasn’t even had a taste of what’s coming to him. He’s a lot weaker than I would have imagined, even for garbage like you kids.
Jimmy bowed his head. He remembered War Zone telling him about how his father used to torture him by locking him in a closet and terrifying him with stories of rats coming to get him. Nothing could be more horrible for War Zone than to be locked in a box like that, locked in the darkness with no way of moving.
Oh, God, I’ve got to help them. Got to. Some way.
Jimmy read on:
But enough of this. I’m writing to let you know what’s in store. Because if I don’t get you (and I will, little slut boy. There’s nowhere to hide), you’ll have the pleasure of knowing you were responsible for the deaths of all your friends. Each of them will get a taste of the fun we had on our night together. Remember? Each of them will get to see how it feels to have their initials carved into their chests with a nice, sharp razor. Each of them will get to see how their own shit tastes…on a silver platter! Each of them will know what a lit cigarette does to an eyeball. Oh, they’ll all know such exquisite pain! The taste of Drano will become familiar, as will the feeling of various objects carefully, lovingly inserted in various accommodating and not-so-accommodating orifices.
They’ll each get to watch the horror of seeing their own hands cut off. Because you see, Jimmy, the only way we can find salvation is through doing penance.
And sometimes, someone has to make us do our p
enance.
When, at last, I pour gasoline over their ruined carcasses and set them aflame, they’ll be grateful for the cleansing the fire will give them. Grateful for death.
Cleansing. That’s an important concept in all this, my little lamb. Remember it. I do. It’s what justifies this whole mess you set in motion.
And I hope you won’t want to miss it, slut boy. I’ll be seeing you soon.
Remember: there’s nowhere you can hide. Remember: going to the police with this will only quicken the deaths and tortures of those you love.
An Admirer
Jimmy put the letter down and closed his eyes. Christ, what the fuck am I gonna do? What can I possibly do to help them? He looked down at his fingers, where the cigarette had burned itself down to the filter. He felt like puking.
PART TWO
Chapter 17
Father Richard Grebb stared down at the Bible verse before him. He had written the verse out in longhand over and over, hoping it would help him find the words for his homily in the morning. Thinking that maybe inspiration would come from the words, as it once had when he was new and committed, fresh out of the seminary. The verse he had written was from I Corinthians, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 5:
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Richard took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They burned. He wondered how he’d look to his congregation at the first Mass of the morning, wondered then why that should matter to him.
He crumpled the paper the verses were written on and flung it across the room, where it landed just shy of the fire he had blazing in his fireplace. “I can’t even do that much.”
He got up and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos he’d brought into his study. He dumped three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into the dark liquid. Blew on the coffee, watching the steam disperse, sipped.
He sat down and drank his coffee, not thinking, but knowing that soon, he would make his way over to the hearth and would pick up the paper upon which he’d written Paul’s words. Knew that he would smooth the paper out and keep it with him, even if he didn’t use it in tomorrow’s homily.
*
Jimmy Fels stood outside the priest’s house, waiting for the light in the study to wink out. It seemed his legs, which had brought him all the way to the front of the priest’s house, no longer functioned enough to bring him up to his door. Seeing the light go out in the study would absolve him from having to confront the priest.
The wind was cold and Jimmy already felt needle-sharp pain in the exposed skin of his ears and his face. “You gotta go on up,” he told himself, “and knock on that door. Who else you gonna get to help you, man? Carla?” Jimmy smiled when he thought of his mother.
Just south of where he stood was Lawrence Avenue. Lawrence Avenue on Saturday night, man. You could make some money. Forget all this shit and get your sweet little ass down there. Inside of fifteen minutes, you’ll have an offer. Jimmy looked at the cars going by, wondering how many of them were occupied by single drivers: middle-aged men mostly, looking for sex with a kid.
He remembered how easy it had been at first and actually took a few steps south.
“You’re nuts,” he said out loud. “Really nuts.” A mind’s eye view of a black Toyota pickup cruising along Lawrence was enough to make him turn and walk, without stopping, to the priest’s front door.
* * *
The homily, about holding in resentment in one’s daily life, was just about complete when Richard heard the knock at his front door.
Getting up, he wondered who could be calling at this time. Maybe someone from SAA, maybe Esther Garcia, maybe a lonely boy needing money…
Richard shoved all thought out of his mind as he hurried to answer the door.
He couldn’t help but suck in his breath in surprise when he opened the door. Jimmy Fels. Jimmy was the last person he expected to see. The boy’s hair was damp with snow and his cheeks were flushed with December chill. The jean jacket and ripped jeans he wore looked like inadequate protection against the weather.
“Jimmy? Well, hello. Come on in. Come on in.”
Jimmy walked by him into the foyer.
“You look cold. Let’s get that damp jacket off you and you can come in here and sit down by the fire, warm up.”
Jimmy took off his jacket and handed it to the priest. Wordlessly, he followed Richard into the study.
“Sit down, sit down,” Richard said, motioning toward the couch. Jimmy grabbed a chair near the fireplace and sat. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, running his fingers, which were shaking, through his damp hair. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, then looked up at the priest through the smoke.
“I didn’t come here because I wanna make up or any shit like that. Understand?”
Richard scratched the back of his neck and took a place on the couch, across from Jimmy. “Okay, son. I can understand that. Forgiveness needs to be earned.”
“And you don’t need to talk that preacher shit at me.”
The boy took a drag on his cigarette, trying to look surly. But Jimmy’s eyes never quite made contact with Richard’s, looking somewhere beyond him.
“I’ll just be straight with you ‘bout why I’m here.” He put the cigarette in his mouth and groped around in his pants pocket. “I got a letter today, at my ma’s.” He held the crumpled yellow paper out for Richard to take. “I think you should read it.”
Richard took the paper from Jimmy. As he read, the room seemed to grow colder. It was almost as if something dark were in the room, standing over Richard’s shoulder and whispering the words into his ear. Richard remembered the nightmare he’d had recently, the sense of that awful presence in the dark.
When the words finally stopped, the paper he held seemed like some foreign thing, beyond comprehension. How could the letter formed on this paper be from someone human?
Richard had always wanted to believe, in spite of what he knew of the devil and hell, that people were not essentially evil. He wanted to place his belief in the fact that many of us were the walking wounded, filled with psychic pain, guilt, and anguish, but that essentially we were good and it was our reactions to the outside that caused us to do things that might seem evil to others (like your own encounters with boys young enough to get you thrown in prison for a long, long time).
But in the letter, the priest felt he was coming face-to-face with real evil. Dark. Pure. And totally without redemption.
After a while, he looked up at Jimmy, who was staring at him, expectant.
“Who would write you a letter like this, Jimmy? Why?”
Jimmy pulled out another cigarette and lit it off the butt of the last. He stared into the fire, looking away from the priest, as he began to speak. “Not that long ago, I got picked up by this trick over on Lawrence…”
Richard Grebb settled back into the couch, not wanting to interrupt, wanting to hear the story the boy was about to tell.
“Anyway, we took off first for Foster Beach? You know? And, uh, once we got there, I probably tried to do something that wasn’t too cool. You see, what happened was this.”
* * *
After Jimmy finished telling the story, he was afraid to look up at the priest, even after what the priest had tried with him. He felt like he might cry, but bit his lip, holding in the pain until it passed.
“So, that’s what happened to me,” Jimmy said, “and now I’m scared it might be happenin’ to my friends.” Jimmy
finally looked at the priest. “And I’m scared he’s gonna come get me, too. Just like he wrote in that letter.”
Jimmy stared at Richard, waiting for him to do something, say something that would make everything all right. But why should he? When did an adult ever do what he was supposed to?
*
Every impulse, priestly and otherwise, told Richard to go to the boy, put his arms around him, and comfort him. But he knew how such an action might be taken by Jimmy. Knew that putting his arms around this boy would be the thing that would push him furthest away.
He also knew that these reasons weren’t the only ones for keeping away from Jimmy Fels.
So he told him: “Jimmy, I’ll do whatever I can to keep you safe. Have you thought about taking this letter to the police? Maybe they could…”
Richard stopped in midsentence as Jimmy got up and started to back toward the door. “I shoulda known that’d be your answer. I gotta get out of here.”
“Wait a minute! Sit down, Jimmy. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do. I just thought the police might be able to help find out who this man is; maybe he’s a known offender, maybe he’s done something like this before.”
“And maybe the fuckin’ cops will bend over backward for a kid who sells his dick to get by. Sure. Right. How long you say you lived in this neighborhood? Man, you haven’t even been here.”
Richard wondered where the animosity was coming from. Surely not just from his suggestion, which, he had to admit to himself, might have been shortsighted and unrealistic. On the other hand, they would eventually have to get the police involved. He wasn’t about to advocate some kind of vigilante activity.
Jimmy paced the room, smoking, stopping to stare out the window. What does he see? Richard wondered.
“Look, no cops, all right?” Jimmy said. “What happened to me happened because I was hustling. Cops got no use for a kid like me. Believe me, I know. If this guy wants to shove his fist up my ass, that’s okay by the cops as long as I don’t die. If I die from it or somethin’, then they gotta get involved. And even then, they couldn’t give a shit. Figure a scum like me got what I deserved.”