Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  The window at the top of the door was embedded with wire mesh.

  I tried to ask, Jail or psychiatric ward?

  The words that came out of my mouth were Fuck you, motherfuckers.

  Either way – jail or nut house – I was a recidivist.

  Dr Patel visited. A nurse told him about me, as if I’d already left the room for whatever heaven or hell a man like me ultimately chooses.

  ‘Flesh wounds,’ the nurse told him. ‘Only a pint or so. You could do as much damage at a Bloodmobile. In a week, you won’t see the scars.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’ Dr Patel asked.

  The nurse laughed. ‘This one has a mouth.’

  ‘Has he explained?’

  She handed him a chart, covered with checked boxes and doctors’ notes. ‘Can you make sense of it?’

  ‘Oh, Franky,’ Dr Patel said, as he read. ‘Franky, Franky, Franky.’

  I opened my mouth, and more sounds that sounded like words came out.

  The punch line? The police knew within twenty-four hours that someone else had killed Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit. The medical examiner put the time of death at six to eight hours before discovery. I had alibi witnesses. Higby’s wife. Thelma. Deborah Holt and a couple of street cops.

  Of course, if I’d skipped Walgreens and my thousand self-lacerations, the cops who raced to the Cardinal Motel from the Sun Reach Apartments might’ve opened my body with a thousand rounds instead of recoiling at the sight of me. In that sense, I did them and myself a favor with the box cutter. Less paperwork for them. A hospital bed and another lap on earth for me.

  After four days, the nurses stopped bandaging me, and the doctors dosed down the sedatives.

  After six days, my thousand cuts had closed, and except for little pink spots here and little brown scabs there, you could’ve believed that I’d steered clear of disease-ridden lands for all of my adult life.

  On the seventh day, Dr Patel returned and said, ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Can I see Cynthia?’ I said.

  He gave that some thought. He said, ‘Before you lean on others, you should stand on your own.’

  I gave that some thought too. I said, ‘Fuck you, motherfucker.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I stood on my own for eight years,’ I said. ‘Almost everyone tried to knock me down, but I stood. When the JNI took up with me, the news told stories about the crusading lawyers – on their feet – and they showed my mug shot as if I was already on the slab. And now that I’m out, everyone says I need to stand on my own, but then they tell me to sit down and be patient – wait for my check from the state, get my meds right, let others do the standing for me. But I’ve been standing on my own for a long time. So, fuck them and fuck you.’

  ‘It’s good to let the anger out,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Fuck you again.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

  The next morning, Cynthia came. She stared at my little pink spots and little brown scabs and then sat on the side of my bed. ‘And I always thought I was the problem child,’ she said.

  We stayed quiet like that for a while, but we both knew where the quiet needed to take us if we wanted to get out of this alive. So I asked, ‘Why would you want to be with me? I mean, you have choices …’

  ‘Do I?’ she said.

  ‘Sure. The first time I saw you, I knew. And you told me that every time you work at the movie theater, guys hit on you. You could take your pick.’

  ‘I pick you,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  She touched one of the pink spots on my face, as if prodding for sensitivity. She said, ‘Even the first time you saw my legs, you never asked about me beyond the basics. You seemed to know that fires happen. You accepted it – and me.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ I said.

  ‘My dad lit the fire,’ she said. ‘An accident, he said. A cigarette. It could happen and it did. Now, I live in the same house with him, but he can’t look me in the eyes and he can hardly talk to me. He pretends. He pretends all the time. But you know how that goes. Once, he saw me wearing shorts, and I thought he would kick me out. He’ll never forgive me for getting burned. By sleeping in my own bed in my own bedroom, I wrecked his life. And then you came along. You feel like the home that my home is supposed to be.’

  I shook my head. ‘With me, you’re jumping out of one fire and into another.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re all ice.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘It means you make me feel good.’

  I reached for her hand. It was sweaty. ‘I like being with you,’ I said.

  She leaned and kissed me on the mouth. ‘I know.’

  Jane and Hank never visited, though on the tenth morning Thelma came with a bouquet and a Get Well balloon. The marks on my face, neck, and arms were fading, but her eyes lingered on them, with more anger than pity. She clutched the flowers and the balloon ribbon and stayed a few feet from my bed.

  ‘Jane and Hank send their wishes,’ she said.

  ‘That’s something,’ I said.

  ‘If you’re looking for someone to feel sorry for you, you’ve come to the wrong people,’ she said. ‘But you know that already. They’ll fight alongside you, but if you’re done, they’re done with you.’

  ‘So this is the come-to-your-senses visit?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re long past that.’

  ‘So, what then? Kick Franky in the butt? Get him to buck up?’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘You’re betraying Jane and Hank and all they’ve done for you – and, worse, all they’re doing for others.’

  ‘With my meds, I’m a little slow. But I get it now. This is the guilt trip.’

  She threw the flowers on my bed and let the balloon float to the ceiling. ‘I try to be civil,’ she said. ‘I try to hold myself to a standard. But fuck you. That’s what this is. It’s the fuck-you visit.’

  For the first time since I shredded my skin, I laughed.

  ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Fuck you. If you want to play the who’s-had-it-hardest game, you win. No contest. You can stand on the podium all alone, and we’ll clap and cheer. Hooray for Franky Dast! He’s had it hardest! But then, you know what we’ll do? We’ll go home. And you can stay there all alone, knowing you’ve had it hardest. So you can come down off your goddamned podium and join the rest of us, or you can stay there.’

  ‘I wish I could come down,’ I said. ‘I wish I could.’

  She shook her head, but her anger was melting. ‘I should kick you in the butt. I swear, the men I’ve known. The world throws a hammer at you, and you smack yourself on the head with it.’

  I picked up the bouquet and set it on the bedside table. ‘You’re a good person,’ I said. ‘Even better than Jane and Hank.’

  Two days later, she visited again. I had the flowers she’d brought last time in a vase. Next to the vase was a single greeting card, which Coach Kagen had sent. In big print, it said, When the world rubs hard against you … Shine. The last of my brown scabs were flaking off my skin, and the pink spots were paling.

  ‘You’re looking good as new,’ one of the nurses had said when she brought breakfast.

  ‘New didn’t look so good on me either,’ I’d said.

  But when the nurse left, I did my sit-ups and pushups and running in place.

  Now my healing seemed to ease Thelma’s mind. She sat in a chair by my bed and said,

  ‘A young man like you. All that life to live. I don’t know why you’re lying around here day and night.’

  As I’d felt better, I’d started to wonder the same thing.

  ‘I’ve needed time to think,’ I said. ‘Everything moved so fast when I got out.’

  ‘The world keeps turning, with you on it or without,’ she said.

  So I asked, ‘Who killed Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit? What are the
cops saying?’

  ‘Mostly they’re keeping their mouths shut,’ she said. ‘But they’re hinting at a bad drug deal.’

  That kind of thinking could make a man give himself a thousand cuts. ‘They died the same way Duane and Steven Bronson did,’ I said. ‘They had bite marks—’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said, ‘but the police are playing it funny. In one of the pictures that ran in the paper a few days ago, Bill Higby was at the Sun Reach Apartments with the homicide unit.’

  ‘Higby is out of jail?’

  ‘For the past week,’ she said. ‘Wearing an ankle monitor and mortgaging his house, but out.’

  ‘And he’s back working?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard of. But they had him at the apartment just the same.’

  ‘I need to get out of here,’ I said.

  ‘Unless you like lock and key now, you do,’ she said. ‘The world keeps turning. You know, the governor signed Thomas LaFlora’s death warrant. He’s scheduled for next week.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Shit for him. And for the rest of us too.’

  On the fourteenth morning, Dr Patel came back, carrying my discharge papers. He stood by my bed and gripped them as if he might decide against giving them to me. He said, ‘Why did you cut yourself, Franky?’

  ‘When I was on death row, I knew men who’d done things that more than earned them their death sentences,’ I said. ‘After a while, it seemed like I’d earned death too. It was like I was in a machine that carried me toward the needle. The only question was how fast. When I saw Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit in their apartment, the machine seemed to switch on again.’

  ‘We all die,’ he said. ‘But nobody deserves to.’

  ‘Some of the men I knew did.’

  ‘You deserve to live.’ He handed me the papers. ‘I expect you in my office tomorrow afternoon and every afternoon after that until we straighten out your thinking.’

  I rode the bus back to the Cardinal Motel, and as we drove down Philips Highway, the car and truck fumes smelled like home. But when I opened the door to my room, the mattress was gone from the bed frame. The cops, or maybe Bill Hopper, had dragged it away. Too bloody from my thousand cuts. Sweet for flies and roaches.

  So I went in, closed the door, lay down on the carpet, and did sit-ups. A hundred. Two hundred. Four hundred. I did sit-ups until my stomach muscles burned and cramped and I thought that even one more would rip ligaments and tendons.

  Then I flipped on to my stomach and did pushups.

  Afterward I showered and then stood naked, facing the bathroom mirror. Only eyes that knew to look for the evidence would see the blemishes from my night with the box cutter. Otherwise, as the nurse said, I looked good as new. But my eyes knew better, and so did my memory. I remembered the release and relief I felt with each of the thousand incisions. And I remembered the words of the Walgreen’s clerk who’d bagged the second box cutter from the two-pack. For next time.

  Early in the afternoon, I drove back downtown and parked in the garage by the Justice Now Initiative office. When I climbed the stairs, Jane and Hank stared at me as if shocked that I lived. Thelma let her eyes close, as if she knew it would come to this.

  I went to my computer cart, flipped on the laptop, and sat.

  As the laptop booted up, Jane left her desk and came to me. Her eyes looked moist.

  I offered a smile. ‘Hi.’

  She said, ‘You’ve ignored every rule. Common sense as well as legal.’ There was no accusation, just sadness.

  ‘Doctor’s orders,’ I said. ‘My reintegration counselor says that freedom is—’

  ‘You’ve broken into people’s houses,’ she said.

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘Whose?’

  ‘Bill Higby’s. Twice. Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit’s apartment.’

  ‘No. I walked in uninvited. That’s all. That’s different from breaking in.’

  ‘According to what law?’

  I said, ‘Higby withheld evidence from my public defender. He should—’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, he should have done a lot,’ she said. ‘And you should have stayed away from his house and wife.’

  ‘The hell I should have,’ I said.

  Hank left his desk then and stood by Jane’s side. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you can’t work here anymore.’

  I stared. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Jane said, ‘I’m sorry. But there’s too much at stake. Other people’s lives.’

  I stared at her now. ‘Thelma said the governor signed Thomas LaFlora’s death warrant – for next week. You need my help now.’

  ‘Not next week,’ Jane said. ‘Four days from now. It’s too late.’

  ‘You’ve got to talk to Kim Jenkins’s husband,’ I said. ‘He—’

  ‘Even if it weren’t too late, you would just get in the way,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She went to her desk, got an envelope, and gave it to me. It held a couple of hundred dollars in cash. ‘This covers your unpaid hours. I wish we could do more.’

  ‘Who killed Kim Jenkins?’ I said. ‘That’s LaFlora’s last chance. Talk to Randall Haussen.’

  ‘Kim Jenkins killed herself,’ Hank said.

  ‘She was scared of Haussen,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said.

  I stared at her. I stared at Hank.

  ‘That’s fucking great,’ I said. ‘Just fucking great.’ I went to the stairs, went halfway down to the street door, and yelled back up, ‘Fucking great.’ Then I charged back up the stairs. Jane and Hank stood by their desks. Thelma sat at hers, tears tracking her cheeks. I grabbed the laptop. ‘I’m taking this,’ I said. Then I went back down the stairs.

  Hank yelled after me, ‘We need the office key.’

  I kept going.

  Outside, the sun blasted the roofs of the cars parked at the curb. It glinted off the building windows. A squad car passed, its emergency lights flashing, its siren piercing the air. It rounded the corner and disappeared into silence.

  I climbed the stairs to the third level of the parking garage and got into my car. I was sweating and my skin was crawling, but I had no desire to cut it away. I knew I was wrong to blame Jane and Hank. They’d done their best with what I’d given them. But they expected me to act free, and at heart I remained a prisoner.

  But prisoners, the ones who survive, make use of the tools that we’re given, and we fashion the tools that we need but are denied. We fight to keep these tools as if our lives depend on them because our lives do depend on them.

  I would fight to keep the laptop.

  And I would use the phone Jane and Hank gave me until they cut off the service.

  I fished it out and called Aardo Auto Parts. When a man answered, I said, ‘I need to talk to Randy Haussen.’

  ‘Not here,’ he said.

  ‘Is he still in Atlanta?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I need his phone and address,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Let me talk to whoever’s in charge there right now.’

  ‘I guess that’s me. I’ve got the shop to myself right now.’

  Fool, I thought. Answering the phone when he doesn’t know who’s calling. I hung up on him.

  A half hour later, I drove into Callahan, pulled on to the auto parts parking lot, and took the spot in front of the door. Only one other car was on the lot, parked at the far end – the car of an employee leaving the good spaces for customers.

  When I went into the store, the clerk grinned and welcomed me to Aardo. He’d been working when Thelma and I came a little over two weeks earlier, and he said, ‘Hey, you were—’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I was here, and then I called a little while ago.’

  His grin slipped. ‘You wanted Randy’s—’

  ‘I need an address. Or at least a phone number.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but Randy told us no one—’

&nbs
p; ‘You seem like a nice guy,’ I said. ‘And I’m nice too. I swear I am. But I really need to see him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I looked around for a tool.

  He moved toward the checkout counter.

  ‘You see, this isn’t who I really am or what I do,’ I said. On the counter, a plastic carousel displayed tire pressure gauges, and another displayed sunglasses. A third displayed screwdrivers. Anything with a sharp or narrow end would gouge. So I grabbed a screwdriver and lunged at the man.

  He made a high-pitched sound when I held the tool end against his cheek. I said, ‘I’m sorry. But I’ll hurt you unless you give me an address. And if you call Haussen and tell him you gave me the address, I’ll come back for you, and I swear—’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, OK.’

  I loosened my grip.

  He had the look of an animal in the clutches of another’s teeth. ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘Believe it or not, I’m trying to save someone’s life.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. He picked up a pen, seemed to look for a pad of paper, and opened a counter drawer. Instead of paper, he pulled out a black pistol. He aimed it at me and tugged the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He thumbed at the safety lever.

  ‘Goddamn it,’ I said, and I slashed the screwdriver at him.

  The gun clattered to the floor.

  I moved in hard against him and held the tool to his face. ‘I told you, I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Don’t—’

  I let him go. ‘Don’t make me.’

  Panting, he reached into the drawer again and pulled out a pad of yellow paper with numbers and names scribbled on the front. He flipped through three pages until he found an Atlanta address. ‘It’s his sister’s house,’ he said.

  I took the pad from him and ripped out the sheet. ‘I won’t tell him you told me,’ I said. ‘But if you tell him I’m coming—’