The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Tat turns to me and wraps her arms over my shoulders and buries her face. I expect the sob or quiver, but she’s silent like an acre buried in two feet of snow, deep in the draw where the wind don’t blow. I feel her head agin the pocket of my shoulder. She ain’t cryin’ or shakin’. It’s just the steady cold rage pushin’ gentle agin me, maybe probe and see if the same rage push back.

  We stand leanin’ on each other, both lost, both found.

  “Tat,” says I.

  Cinder puts Tat’s cuffs on Dugan and close the bathroom door.

  “You best leave my cuffs on, as folks out there saw you march me in,” says I.

  “Agreed. And Tat, you’d best keep your hands behind your back too. No one’ll even notice.”

  Cinder unlocks the chain lockin’ my wrist to Officer Dugan’s empty chair, then nods at the door.

  “Shall we?”

  Chicago Mags

  Chicago Mags say, “That’s worse than bad sex.”

  “If you’re capable of bad sex, that's on you.”

  She looks wistful like when she was twenty some boy stomp danced on her heart.

  “You know,” she say, “with the right psychology — or meditation — a person can go to bed and make love all night long, be conscious for every moment of it and wake up fully refreshed in the morning.”

  “I read in a magazine I found on a park bench”, says I, “that nobody thinks about the person they’re sleeping with while they’re, you know, in-fornicus.”

  “Making love,” Mags says.

  “Yep. Well, that… but you know. A little more raw.”

  She nods. “I have heard that most of the time people have mediocre sex, so they think about the best they ever had.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You got some fella you think about?”

  She slash her eyes at me like the conversation is preposterous — and true.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “What? Why? I can’t — ”

  “Shit, never mind. I don’t want his name.”

  “Why did you want his name?”

  “I took that back.”

  “You can’t take something back. You’re not five.”

  “Uh.”

  “Were you going to hurt him?”

  Snort. “Yeah. His feelings. Next time he gets with you and asks who you was thinkin’ about.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tat halts one step from the elevator. Her eyes got a mournful haunt. “I have to see my sister.”

  “Back the way we come. She’s on this floor,” says I. “Couple rooms past yours.”

  Cinder shake his head. “No time. Nurse Bond’s no dummy. She’ll find Dugan in minutes, if she already hasn’t.”

  “Tat’s right,” says I. “She maybe won’t get another opportunity.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Cinder says. He steps around Tat into the elevator and hits a button. “But, no. We’re not diverting to Corazon’s room. Everybody in.”

  Tat turns around and marches.

  “Better stick with her,” says I. “The Almighty favors the bold.”

  “Better hope.”

  Nat runs twenty feet to get ahead of Tat and I shuffle quick behind.

  Nat speaks low, “Okay. Stop. Play the part. All right?”

  She nods.

  Nat put a hand on Tat’s elbow while she locks fingers behint her back. He’s got the briefcase in the other hand, and to make things look official he take the chain from my wrist in his hand.

  “We are about to make an avoidable error,” says he.

  “She’s in the fourth room,” says I.

  Nat strides like a lawman for sure. Only thing stops the illusion is the memory of an F-150 lease. We follow ’round the corner. Pass Tat’s room with the copper in the bathroom. Door’s closed.

  Second room, door’s open but the lights is off.

  Third room is open and the lights is off.

  Fourth room is open and the lights is off.

  Cinder step inside with Tat right next him. I come up on the other side.

  Cinder turn on the switch.

  The bed is empty and fresh made.

  “Are you sure this is her room?” Tat says.

  “It was.”

  “They moved her,” Tat says, and I never heard a woman less sure of her syllables.

  We breathe still and quiet.

  “I’ll check with the nurses at the desk,” Cinder say. He backs out the room and I take my chain out his hand. He stops and with a tiny head shake turns back to the nurse station.

  Tat stands lookin’ at the bed and her shoulders got the shudder.

  “She’s gone, baby,” says I, “but I got to tell you something.”

  Chicago Mags

  Mags says, “I was doing yard work last week and I thought of an analogy for another person, but it applies. Imagine you have a chainsaw and when you first — ”

  “You got a chainsaw? You run it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm.”

  “When you get the chainsaw, you're not accustomed to how it works. You can’t get used to the throttle. The engine races. Imagine you know very little about how engines run, but you know the fuel is what makes it happen.”

  “Fuel and spark.”

  “You decide the best way to regulate the engine is to regulate the fuel. Instead of learning the throttle, you make the fuel less efficient. The chainsaw engine takes two-stroke oil. You don't have any of that, but you have some linseed oil handy and you pour some into the tank. What happens?”

  "Won't start."

  "Let's say it does start. How well does it run?"

  "Shitty."

  She look at me.

  "What?"

  She look more.

  "Well, shit.”

  "Don't you see?"

  "You bein’ clever?"

  “You are the chainsaw. It's an analogy. You are the engine.”

  " I know where you're going. I quit the liquor."

  "Alcohol is just one of the things we all do to change the way our engines run when we don't know how to properly operate them. No one is born a mechanic. Human beings have figured out chainsaws a lot better than they have figured out human beings."

  "What else is there?"

  "All kinds of things. Music. I use music because most of the time it does less harm. Other people use drugs. Some people drive fast. Some people escape with sex.”

  Perk up.

  “Other people. You know…Some people… kill people.”

  Perk down.

  “The problem is none of this is actually making the adjustment that the engine needs. A good mechanic would have looked at that chainsaw at the beginning and would have discovered something wrong with the doohickey. A good mechanic would've stuck a little screwdriver in some slot you didn't even know was there and five seconds later the chainsaw would have been making sawdust.”

  “Good mechanic’s the shit.”

  “Right. But you didn’t have a mechanic, Baer. Did you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You as a boy with the chainsaw.”

  “Right, uh.”

  “Hypothetically. Stay with the analogy.”

  “Accourse. The chainsaw.”

  “In the analogy, you’re both the chainsaw engine and the operator — ”

  “I saw that.”

  “ — and nobody ever gave you a manual. That is what is so sad about the human situation. Unless somebody reaches out to you, unless you accidentally learn the lesson that there are better ways to heal and fix problems and adjust engines, no one ever knows. So that’s the point of the whole metaphor. Since we don’t know where to apply the screwdriver and we do know that when we drink from the bottle or take the pill…”

  I close my eyes.

  “And the more we self-medicate the more we believe we’re doing what we need to do to hold ourselves together, while in reality the pills and booze and whatever are more akin to a
hammer than a screwdriver.”

  “Like how you talk about tools.”

  She smiles. Furrows.

  “What it all becomes, Baer, is hatred. No one wants to take a potion every day to salve over the fact he’s broken. He resents the brokenness. Then he resents himself.”

  “You hit the hammer on the head.”

  “You ever notice that the people who hate themselves the most hate everybody else more?"

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Are you following us back to Flag?”

  “I got a couple pieces of business right here in Glenwood. Then people I got to find in Chicago.”

  “You know… if you go down that road, there will always be people to find.”

  “I know.”

  “You want that life?”

  “No, I don’t. I been hatin’ that life since it was give to me six months back. But it’s the one I was built for and it’s the one I’m gonna live.”

  Cinder nods slow and seein’ him seein’ the truth of it make me sure I do too.

  “Are you coming back for Tathiana?”

  “I don’t know. I’m comin’ back. Soon as I cut off a head or two I’m comin’ back. The for Tat part is for Tat to decide. And the part I get the say so, I dunno.”

  “Are you going to talk to her before we leave?”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Take a minute. I mean don’t hurry.”

  “Don’t you got to get down the road afore they block the interstate?”’

  Head shake. “We have a bird to catch about four clicks from here….” — he rotates and looks at the stars, then points at a hilltop — “there.”

  “A helicopter?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to drive the whole way? Besides, if they barricade the — wait. What was Tat arrested for?”

  “I wondered that too. She wasn’t with Corazon when she visit with the pedo from the website. If they didn’t have enough to arrest Corazon, they couldn’ta had enough for Tat.”

  “So?”

  “Grand theft classic Mustang.”

  “Yeah, well that’s the sort of crime that merits shutting the highways down.”

  We shake.

  I spot him comin’ for a hug and can’t git clear.

  Cinder grab me. Back’s stiff and my neck kinda jam back so I can git my face out the way. He slap my back and I hit his arm one time. He slap my back agin and pull. Leans away and fuck if my feet don’t float ’til he sit me back down.

  But he don’t let go. I look right but that puts my face in his. I look left and spot Tat standin’ by the Colorado River’s edge on a boulder, that water spinnin’ and churnin’. I cough and swallow and wriggle and Cinder says, “Stop.”

  And I stop.

  I don’t feel nothin’.

  It’s the first time since I grabbed that bare copper wire, the first time since I was a man of my own mind, that I didn’t have the tightness in the chest of knowin’ I was built for another sort of society. The first I see it’s a good thing ’cause it makes me the outcast in mine.

  He set me on the ground agin and now I ain’t the boss of my arms. As Cinder loose me I cinch that fucker close and let my head rest as much as a straight man’s head can rest on another’s. And I been so fuckin’ mad so fuckin’ long I don’t know what to make of a moment without it. And like that a cloud pass and the day’s prettiest sunbeam fall on my eyelids and I see Mags just beamin’ at me through all the light, and she don’t even got to say any words but I know her mind. She’s here to make sure I understand when I get to the other side, it ain’t a ass chewin’, it ain’t a secret courtroom, it ain’t a frogmarch downstairs to the furnace room.

  It’s a hug.

  I squeeze and slap and so do Cinder. I smell his cologne and shampoo. Back bones pop and feel better.

  I count ten and next fifteen and Cinder loose me.

  I loose him.

  All the old women went to church and I heard ’em talk about it. They’d say a thousand times you’ll be talkin’ right there to Jesus and you won’t even know it. Everyone meets him a thousand times. One day he’s a baby and shit on your wrist. One day he’s the boss who asked you for the overtime. One day he’s your wife, when you look at the credit card bill. Every one of us spends a moment in turmoil with the Maker, and if we’re lucky we’ll feel peace and see a flicker like just now lit Cinder’s eye as he back away from the hug and say, “I believe you’re right about that. It’s the life you were built for. Go talk to your girl.”

  Chicago Mags

  Mags says, “A friend of mine — not really a friend. But I know him because he’s a searcher and we cross paths. He hosted a party and he had all these people in his loft. And picture this, you know, brick walls, tall windows, wood floor with burn marks from when it was some kind of factory a hundred years ago. In the middle of the room there’s this rusty iron sculpture. It’s a stick figure of a man, and he’s dragging a cross.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Right. I asked him — the host — what the story was. He said, ‘ain’t it awesome?’ I said, ‘what’s awesome?’ He said, ‘Dude, ain’t it perfect? I fucking stole it.’”

  Maggie’s eyes twinkle.

  “Come agin?”

  “The image is the Christian savior, who saves from sin.”

  “They’s a nugget comin’. I can feel it.”

  “He forgives — mind you, this isn’t my religion. But the point is this man stole the image of the Savior, and what was awesome and perfect was that he was forgiven for it. Instead of a vicious cycle, it’s a virtuous circle. You can’t corrupt God. You can’t outfox or trick him. You can’t be more than you are and he can’t be less than he is, and no matter how puerile or silly you are, his love is unfailing. That’s the higher plane. That’s the nonlocal. See, it has to be that way because God’s love and his responsibility are different facets of the same entity. He’s powerless to be one and not the other. We are all incapable of being what we are not.”

  “All the men I sent forward…”

  “They don’t jeopardize God’s love for you. And here’s something neat… They’re in a better place. Here they were corrupt and broken — which is why you did what you did. Now they are reunited with the holy oneness of love: God. Whatever name you give. They are happy now. Happy isn’t the word. They are complete now.”

  “Maggie, at what point am I responsible? If I never learn to be better, I never do better. I can't just keep on being forgiven forever.”

  “The animal in you will always be an animal, Baer. You can never unlearn it. That’s why forgiveness is unearned and eternal. You are loved. That's all. When you arrive He’s going to hug you. I swear to you, I know this.”

  “That don’t sound like the God I heard about growing up.”

  “They didn’t introduce you to God. They introduced you to religion.”

  “Same difference.”

  Maggie’s brows pop back like her eyeballs is cannons and she fires a salvo.

  “Men who do not know God and do not understand him at all claim him and reduce him to rules they can enforce. They put their little-G god in a box, package it as religion and it becomes another box to do battle with all of the other boxes that other little men have created. But people who experience God's ineffable qualities know their consciousness is but a drop of the infinite. They look in horror at the so-called religious people. There is no God in them. Only man, only man's rules. And it works for the godless because men on the whole are lawless, and they would rather subscribe to a hundred million man-made laws instead of the one law given by the God they confess: Love one other.”

  I let the air soak it in. Wait. She lift her coffee and set it back down.

  "I close that subscription. All man's laws."

  "Cancel all you want, the junk still comes to your mailbox. Like I said earlier, we’re wired that way. You won’t escape the animal until you die. But when you do, you’ll discover your existence never was solitary. You’v
e always had a bigger, better informed and smarter you out there. One that’s been through eternity so far and will resume eternity with you aboard when you depart earth. The more you learn about that other you, the richer your life on this side will be.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sit in the Eldorado on the street a quarter mile from the Lodge not exactly waitin’ on the woman who found me in the laundry room to go home. Parked so I can watch the vista through the windshield and don’t gotta slink low. I got a spooky feelin’ like afore, with Fred when the whole shitshow start and the two men I thought was like witnesses out the Bible, the Archangels. They turn out lawmen but in the minute they was revealed as archangels, that’s what they was. Possessed by good and immobilized by it.

  I got the same feelin’ now, like all these people drivin’ by don’t even know they’s a gold Cadillac sittin’ here with a smart mouth dog ridin’ shotgun and a destroyer behind the wheel.

  Mind won’t stay put.

  Mags.

  Corazon.

  I wonder if religion is like politics. People get the God they deserve.

  I know a bit of peace for the first time, it seem, but sittin’ here lookin’ at the mountain I got to climb, the sum total of the people I got to send forward…

  Glance about side to side and see the liquor store not forty feet off. Anything so close is bound to be deliberate and since the fates decided, I’ll spare myself the drama. I want a bottle and I’m a man.

  That’s it.

  “I’ll be back in a minute. You see that white Camry go, let out a holler.”

  Stinky Joe yawns.

  Hey what? Where are you going?

  Close the door and feel the dog’s eyeballs on my back all across the lot. Inside, I spot the Turkey right off and grab a jug. Adjacent the checkout machine they got the cigarette lighters and shot glasses. But they got the flask too, and I think ’bout the old Baer Creighton and I recall he carry a flask damn near everywhere.