by Mark Stone
“Welcome to the Seafoam Inn, where we leave the light on for you,” the kid said, not bothering to look up from the video.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not your slogan,” I answered, remembering I’d heard that from a television commercial and walking closer to the kid. “And just as a matter of courtesy, if you’re going to watch stuff like that in public, the least you can do is throw on some headphones.”
“Then how would I hear the bell go off letting me know that someone had come in?” he asked, still not looking up from his phone.
“Well, you’ve got me there, but there’s also the notion of not watching porn while you’re at your job,” I said. “Although, I’m sure that’s an ‘out there’ idea.”
“Look, dude,” the kid said, sighing as he quieted the phone and finally looked up at me. ‘I’m not sure if you can tell, given that this is the lap of luxury and all, but the owner here doesn’t really pay me enough to care too much about—whoa!”
The kid’s eyes went wide and his jaw dropped.
“What?” I asked, looking down at my shirt instinctively. “What am I missing?”
“From what I can tell, you’re not missing anything,” the kid said, his voice growing shaky as he stood up to meet me. “Least of all, a buttload of money and a kickass reputation.”
“Oh, Lord,” I groaned, realizing what had happened.
“You’re him! You’re the dude!” the kid exclaimed.
“There are a lot of dudes, kid,” I said. “I’m really no reason to get all that excited.”
“Tell that to Claire Winchester!” he said, rounding the front desk and meeting me. As he stood in front of me, I realized he was shorter and probably a little younger than I’d gauged him at first. He had a metal stud in his eyebrow and a stripe of blue running down a few of his bangs.
“If I had any idea who that was, I just might,” I answered. “Listen, kid, I’m gonna need—”
“Troy,” the kid said. “My name is Troy. You can call me Troy.” The kid was getting more and more excited, more and more jumpy with each passing second.
“Okay, Troy,” I said. “What I’m going to need from you—”
“See, Claire Winchester is a girl in my biology class,” Troy said, cutting me off. “She’s the best, the absolute best. I guess your generation would have called her groovy.”
“How old do you think I am?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“The thing is, and I really want to be discreet about this, so please don’t tell anyone, but I have a little bit of a crush on her,” Troy said.
“I’ll try to keep it off Twitter,” I muttered.
“And she has a crush on you,” Troy said. “Probably not an actual crush on you because you’re way old and stuff.”
“I’m barely thirty,” I answered, shaking my head.
“Right,” he said, nodding as though I’d just agreed with him. “The thing is, she talks about you all the time, talks about how hot you are, about how brave you are and stuff.” he looked down at the checkered, worn floor. “She always says how she could never find a guy like you in high school, and if she ever could, she’d snap him up in an instant.”
“High school?” I asked. This kid was even younger than I thought.
“Yeah,” he said. “I really want to ask her to Homecoming, but I’m not sure I have a shot.”
An idea formed in my head, one that might help the both of us. But I needed to make sure this kid actually deserved what I was about to propose and that he wasn’t just some knucklehead who still didn’t know how the world worked.
“Lucky John,” Troy muttered, shaking his head. “Claire won’t believe it.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, God, she won’t! You have to take a picture with me! Please!”
“Calm down,” I said, giving the kid a pat on the shoulder. “I need something from you, a little bit of information from you. In exchange for that, I might be able to put in a good word for you with Claire in terms of Homecoming.”
“No way!” Troy said, practically jumping out of his skin. “No way! Would you really?” He stopped jumping quickly, his wide eyes growing serious. “Wait. What kind of information?”
“I just need to know what room the guy in that car out there checked into,” I said, pointing to Mangrove’s rust bucket.
“Why?” Troy asked. “You gonna kick his ass?”
I sighed. “Look, I just—”
“Oh, my God! You are! You’re gonna kick that guy’s ass!” Troy went back to the jumping as he spoke.
“Listen to me!” I said, grabbing his shoulders and holding him still. “Yes. I am going to kick that guy’s ass. I’m gonna do worse than that if he forces me to, but that’s because he deserves it. He did something awful, something horrendous, and I’m guessing it’s the latest in a long line of horrendous things he’s done. And if you happen to do similarly horrendous things, I’d do the same to you. Are you following me, Troy?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” Troy answered, swallowing hard.
“Okay. I’ll be clearer,” I said. “That girl you like, the one I’m about to help convince to go to the prom with you—”
“Homecoming,” Troy interjected.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “The point is that she’s a person. She deserves to be treated with respect. And those videos you watch, they’re not real. You shouldn’t expect real life to be like that because it’s not. Real life is actually much better because it’s real. That means you don’t treat her like the guys treat the girls in those videos. It means you come at her with respect, and you let her make the calls about what she wants and what she doesn’t. It also means that if you so much as make her feel uncomfortable, I’m gonna have to teach you better.” I raised my eyebrows at the kid like a challenge. “Now do you understand?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding firmly. “Loud and clear.”
“Good,” I said. “Now give me the room number.”
“314,” Troy said, leaning back and looking at his computer screen. “He was a real dick to me while he was checking in, too. So, if you’ve gotta punch him a couple of times, make sure one of them is for me.”
“I can do that,” I promised.
“Now, get ready for your closeup,” Troy said, moving closer to me and holding his phone out, which was now displaying our faces. “This is called FaceTime. You see, these days, phones can video chat as well as—”
“Shut up, Troy. I’m not ancient. I know what FaceTime is,” I answered, swiping the phone from him. As the girl, Claire, answered and her eyes lit up, it occurred to me that, in fact, there was more than one way to charm a front desk clerk.
3
Having convinced a sweet-sounding girl to go to Homecoming with a necessarily terrified boy, I left the office and started up the stairs toward what I had been assured was Mangrove’s room. The rusted stairway creaked and groaned as I trudged my way up to the third floor. As I mentioned, I was no stranger to this kind of place. I’d cut my trucker teeth, so to speak, on this kind of dives and interstate huggers. Still, there was something about today that felt different. Though I had never met Mangrove face to face, the idea of giving him just a little piece of what he deserved sent a chorus of driven excitement singing through my veins.
I tried not to think about what Davey said to me as I neared the room, my heart picking up steam as I settled in front of the faded metal door with the numbers 314 stamped on the front to identify it. Steeling myself, I leveled a knock on the door. Now, there was a time when I would have opted to kick the door down or go barreling into it shoulder-first. These kinds of doors were flimsy and the locks were a joke. If I ran into it with enough force, I’d be inside in a matter of seconds. Life had taught me some lessons, though. First among them was the fact that any way to solve a problem that didn’t result in some part of me being sore or broken was probably the best way. Besides, if the sonofabitch recognized me as he looked out the peephole and refused to open up, I’d use my body as a battering ram then. I
had already scoped the place out. with no sign of a fire escape, there was really nowhere for Mangrove to go. And that was exactly the way I wanted it.
The door swung open quickly, surprising me a little with the timeliness of his response. Mangrove stood in the doorway, beady eyes staring at me and an expectant look on his face. Stupidity would have been the prevailing aspect of his features if the guy weren’t so damn annoying to look at. Mangrove had what my uncle had always described as an ‘extraordinarily punchable face’. Luckily for me, the grace of God was about to give me the opportunity to give that face exactly what it deserved.
“Well?” Mangrove asked, nodding at me like I was supposed to know what the hell he was talking about. “You got them?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, of course. My first thought was that the waste of space was either looking for a buyer for one of many items he stole from that poor old man or that I had dropped myself into the middle of a drug deal. Mangrove read the confused look on my face, though, and quickly told me I was wrong about both things.
“Why’re you staring at me like that, you goober?” The man sneered. “You got the bath towels or not?” Mangrove looked down at my decidedly empty hands and then past me, as though maybe there was someone back there, a savior holding a stack of absorbent cotton goodness. There was not. “Of course, you don’t!” he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air in defeat. “You know, I’ve called that little snot at the front desk six times about bath towels, and the bastard still hasn’t done anything. No wonder that stupid looking loser is stuck working the front desk at a hole like this.”
Ignoring the obvious hypocrisy in Mangrove’s statement, seeing as how he was staying at the same hole where Troy worked, I decided to take a different approach.
“Maybe if he works hard and really applies himself, me might grow up to be a crooked home health care worker one day,” I muttered.
“What did you just say?” Mangrove asked, his brows knitting together as he spoke.
“I don’t have any towels,” I answered. “I’m here because there’s something broken in your room.”
“What?” Mangrove asked. “What the hell is broken in here?”
“Your nose,” I answered simply. Throwing my head back just a little, I drove it hard into the man’s face. I smiled a bit as I heard the satisfying snap of his nose.
Mangrove pulled back, yelping like a baby who had just had his bottle taken away as he clutched at his nose with one hand and tried to close the door with the other.
I wasn’t having any of that, though. I threw my forearm out, blocking the door from closing, and then put my foot at the base because everyone knows that there is nothing on earth that can move a determined person’s foot at the base of a door.
My jaw tightening as I saw the stream of blood pouring from his nose, I put all of my strength into pushing the door open the rest of the way. Not only did I succeed, but the door actually flew back and smacked Mangrove’s nose again.
I could already tell this was going to be a good day.
Moving forward, I leveled a kick into the guy’s chest. Though it probably shouldn’t have, it took him by surprise. He fell backward, flipping over the bed and landing hard on the floor. Closing the door, I walked slowly, taking my time as I moved across the room. Mangrove lay on the floor, still clutching at his freshly broken nose with his right hand. His left rested over the spot on his abdomen where my boot print likely sat.
“Mangrove,” I said calmly, “you don’t recognize me, do you?”
The look on his face, a mixture of confusion, contempt, and an anger that wouldn’t do him any favors moving forward, told me that, unlike Troy out there, this guy had absolutely no idea who stood in front of him. That was better. I didn’t need the overture right now. The last thing I wanted was this soulless moron asking me about the lottery or something.
“Sure I do,” Mangrove hissed. “You’re the guy who’s about to pay for what he did to me.”
“Me?” I chuckled, throwing my head backward and laughing loudly. “I’m going to pay? That’s kind of rich, considering all the crap you’ve pulled.” I took a step forward, letting my gaze linger on the guy like an accusation. No. It was more than an accusation. It was a verdict. I had tried this guy and found him guilty. Now I was going to sentence him to the ass kicking of a lifetime. “Remember Allan Edwards?” I asked, shaking my head at the man “He’s the man you stole from, the gentleman whose wife’s wedding ring you probably have stashed in one of these trashy looking suitcases. Don’t worry. I’m going to find it and bring it back to him, but not before I make sure you’ve got a memory that’ll stop you from ever pulling any crap like this again.”
Looking down at Mangrove, I heard the unmistakable cocking of a gun. My head snapped up and I saw a second man. He was taller than Mangrove and had a hunting rifle pointed right at me.
“Remember how I said you were going to pay for what you did to me?” Mangrove asked. “It’s about that time.”
4
“Put your hands on your head and get on your knees,” the man with the hunting rifle said to me, his hands in a position on the weapon that let me know this was far from the first time that he’d held it. As I moved my hands upward, knitting my fingers together behind my head, I looked the man over. He had a gun pointed at me, which meant that I wasn’t going to punch my way out of this situation, at least not yet. In cases like that, I really only had one option as to how to move forward. If you couldn’t use force, you needed to use knowledge, but for that, I needed to glean something about the man.
Mud on his boots, a scar under his left eye, and a chain around his neck that disappeared under his shirt. He was a rough and tumble sort, a hunter. I’d have bet my life on it, but there was something else about him that struck me as more curious than the obvious. The chain around his neck, it sure as hell wasn’t a locket. I had seen enough men like him to know what was hanging from that chain. I had been that kind of man.
“Private John Lucky,” I said, slowly getting on my knees as Mangrove stood up.
“What?” the rifleman asked, his eyes narrowing at me.
“That’s my name,” I answered. “Private John Lucky. I served two tours in Iraq. Got out a couple of years ago and was fortunate to do it in one piece. I’m guessing, judging by your age, that you did something similar.” I shook my head, but just slightly. “Hell of a world, isn’t it, brother?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” the rifleman asked.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” I said. “You’ve got dog tags on, and you’ve got a nasty scar under your eye, a reminder of days you’d probably rather forget. You can still hold the gun, though. You can still shoot it with a steady hand. So, the whole ordeal mustn’t have messed you up too badly. Still, it’s not exactly a place you want your mind to rest, is it?”
“No,” the man said softly, his eyes traveling somewhere else, somewhere mine had been on more occasions than I cared to admit.
“Doug, don’t talk to him,” Mangrove snapped, getting up on his feet and wiping blood from his chin. “Sonofabitch broke my nose.”
“It’s hard coming back,” I said. “Opportunities are scarce and things are hard. I get that. People don’t understand what happened to us. They don’t understand that we’re not the people we used to be. They want us to fight for them. They want us to stand guard and keep the wolves at bay, but they don’t really comprehend how much of you it takes to do that, but I do. I was right there with you, my man. I stayed up those nights. I heard those bombs dropping, and I watched good men and women who didn’t deserve it die so that the people back home didn’t have to know how bad it really was.” I swallowed hard. “I bet we weren’t that far away, all things considered. I bet, two years ago, if you’d have come upon my foxhole, you’d have fought tooth and nail with me. You’d have probably died for me if you thought you needed to, if you thought that’s what the mission called for. Now, you’ve got a gun pointed at my f
ace, and my guess is that you don’t even really know why. So yeah, hell of a world.”
Doug blinked hard, and I could tell from the way his color changed that I had gotten to him, that I had hit at some truth that we both shared. Mangrove knew that too because he marched right up to me and kicked me hard in the face. I fell back a little, tasting metal and dirt and seeing stars. Grabbing the back wall to brace myself, I looked past the crooked home healthcare worker to the former soldier behind him.
“What did he promise you, Doug?” I sneered. “A couple of hundred bucks, maybe a few thousand? Just enough to keep the pressure off for a few months. I’m sure he even told you what he did to get it. Or, at least, some of it.”
“You shut your mouth, you waste of space!” Mangrove said. He came at me again, pulling his foot back to give me another kick.
“Stop!” Doug said in a gravelly voice, moving the gun from me to Mangrove.
“Doug,” Mangrove said, pulling to a stop immediately and looking back at the man. “We had a deal. We made an arrangement.”
“What kind of arrangement was it?” I asked, bracing against the wall as I pushed myself back up to my feet. “What have you done for him, Doug?”
“Nothing yet,” Doug said. “He asked me to meet him here. He asked me to open up a bank account. He said he was leaving town, and if I went as far north as Savannah with him, he’d give me three grand.” Doug’s face got hard. “I knew he stole the jewelry. I’m not going to lie about that, but you were right, Private. Things are tough, and I figured that if I could just forget about what’s right and wrong for just one second, then maybe I could get ahead too. Maybe I could use that to pull myself out of the hole I’m in.”
I looked over at Mangrove. “Oh, you are an unimaginable bastard, aren’t you?” I chuckled bitterly. “You got into his bank account too, didn’t you? You were going to bleed him of everything he’s worth. You were gonna take his entire life savings, and you were going to funnel just enough of it into Doug’s bank account to make it look like he’d done it. Then you were gonna ditch him in Savannah and then call the cops. You were gonna make him your fall guy, weren’t you?”