He had graduated a year early from high school in a shit-splat little town in Iowa. He never fit in. They had a lame theatre program, and he was never cast in the productions. He chose to spend his time studying. He saved money and bought theatrical weapons. He watched fight scenes in movies over and over and watched any video of fights he could get his hands on. At seventeen, he left for Chicago. He was the only child in his family. He’d had a sister who had died when hit by the town’s toss-pot in a drunk-driving accident. After that, he’d become invisible to his parents. His father just faded away. He stopped working the land they had owned. It was good corn land, but there was enough corn in the world, and his father just didn’t have the energy to deal with it. The land lay fallow, acres and acres used for nothing but stopping the progress of the large farms that were trying to squeeze out all the little farms. When he left for Chicago, all his father had said was, “Bye.”
His mother never heard a kind word from anyone. She worked at a dry cleaner and did alterations to keep the family afloat. She had taught him to sew, and he was a natural. He could make anything if he had material, thread, and needles. He didn’t need a pattern. He didn’t even need a machine, though he could use a regular stitching machine and a surger. When he was leaving for Chicago, he had all the money he’d saved for the last four years, a suitcase, and a pocketful of dreams. His mother ran after him when he left to catch the big grey dog to the big city. She stuffed a huge wad of cash in his pants pocket.
“Take this. You’ll need it.”
“You need it, Ma.” He said this but knew if he didn’t have a little more money, he’d be sleeping on a park bench in a couple of weeks.
“No. Your father and I fucked up. We stopped living when Suzy died. We’ve been waiting for you to take off so we can be alone with our ghosts. We love you, but it hurts too much to see you alive and her dead, because…” she trailed off giving him a look of pain and shame.
“Because it should have been me. If she hadn’t pushed me, Old Man Carson would have killed me instead. I know, Ma. You never had to say it out loud. I always knew, I reckon.” He turned and continued walking to the bus terminal. She called after him, but he kept walking.
When he got to Chicago, he got a filthy hotel room for seven days. It cost seventy dollars up front. No refunds. The place smelled like cheap wine, lies, hostility, and old paint. There were roaches. He saw them. He only heard the rats, but he saw the roaches. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d wait in the dark and suddenly flick on the light switch that fired up the one bare bulb and watch legions of the little fuckers scramble into the cracks.
He spent his first few days looking for a job and checking poster boards around the colleges for people seeking a lone person to rent a room. He scored on both points. He got a job as a night janitor and found a small room in a boarding house for $150 a month if he would give the floors of the house a good cleaning once a week. He used his work supplies and no one was the wiser. He set a postcard to his parents’ letting them know his mailing address.
He cleaned by himself. One of the places he cleaned was a small professional theatre. He would finish work then practice monologues or do some fight choreography. He auditioned, but was turned down constantly. He hadn’t any intension of slowing down in that area. There were tons of start-up theatres in town, and one would surely cast him soon. He saw advertisements for a stage combat society that offered workshops. They were pricey, too pricey for him. He got a second part-time job washing dishes. He banked all the cash. There was a seven-day workshop coming up in two months, and he really wanted to go. He could meet people. He could network.
When the time was upon him, he walked in the front doors of the local college that hosted the workshop, gave his name, and got a sticky name-tag with his name misspelled on it. He didn’t care. He had arrived.
The first day reminded him of the first hopeful days of high school. Some people already knew each other, and others were looking for groups to hang out with. The only difference was that these people split into cliques more quickly than in high school. Many of them knew each other from the theatre scene or had similar interests in music or other such pursuits. He had been a loner, a shitty conversationalist, and all he could do was sew and sling steel…at least he thought he could sling steel.
His fist class was in broadsword. He was in his element. The first thing he did was grab a sword by the blade without a glove on his hand. He was made an example of. The instructor said, “Everybody freeze!” They all did. “Now look at what this guy is doing.” They all looked. “If I see any of you handling any of my weapons without gloves, I’ll throw you out that window.” The instructor was a huge man with a bad complexion and an even worse disposition. They were three stories up. He withdrew his hand and skulked over to where his backpack was. He looked through it and realized he had forgotten his gloves. The flyer had stated that all students must have gloves with them at all times if they want to participate.
He went back to the giant instructor and said, “I seem to have forgotten my gloves. Might I borrow some?”
“Freeze!” He pointed to some fellow with a cleft in his chin and an ego the size of Nebraska standing across the room. “What’s your name, son?”
“Dirk.”
“Of course it is. What were you required to bring and have with you at all times?”
“Um…gloves?”
“Very good, Dirk, now go back to looking at yourself in the mirror.” The instructor turned back to him, “Look, kid, you have two strikes against you and we haven’t even started day one yet. You sure you don’t want to just bug out? We can give you a 75% refund.”
“No. I paid my money working two shitty jobs to come here. I’ll sit and watch if I have to, but I’m not leaving. I paid my way. I bought my spot.”
The instructor grabbed a smelly old pair of gloves out of his bag and threw them at the kid. “You may have bought your spot, but you haven’t earned your place. Watch your ass, two strikes.”
As fate would have it, Dirk and a couple of his friends heard this exchange and started calling him “Lucky Strike.” Theatre nicknames are a bitch. Once one gets hung on you, you’re stuck with it until another, more apt one comes along.
He didn’t find a group to hang out with. He kept trying to talk with people, but kept getting walked away from, ignored, and shut down. The worst part was, he sucked. He was shitty. All of his lone practice had reinforced bad habits. He had drilled so many things that were wrong they inhibited his progress in doing things right. By day three, no one wanted to partner with him. He was, once again, invisible unless necessity forced someone to acknowledge his existence, but those moments were few and far between. On day four, he developed a large pimple in the exact center of his forehead. His nick name changed to “Cyclopes.” It went from bad to worse.
There was one particularly aloof group of fourteen fuckers. They had all gone to high school together and were performing small roles in theatres here in town or doing tech work. They were all in local colleges getting their bachelor’s degrees; then they would move off to get their coveted MFA degrees. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to go to college. No money and a bad high school GPA, to boot.
Finally, the last day had come. There were only two sessions, a break for lunch, then a final meeting with some fake awards and more comradery that he would be just on the outside of. They were about to give the final awards “Best overall man and woman” when Dirk came up and whispered into the emcee’s ear. The emcee relinquished the mic.
“We have a special award to present. It is for the person most likely to impale themselves on their own broadsword. The award goes to our friend…CYCLOPES!” There were gales of laughter and only a smattering of applause. He knew what to do in cases like this. Act like he didn’t mind the joke, the stupidity, the humiliation, and accept the award.
Someone had found a toy Cyclopes and a toy broadsword and superglued the Cyclopes at a 45-degree angle impale
d on the toy broadsword on a piece of unfinished pine board. He wanted to fall down a hole and disappear.
As he was packing up to leave, a young lady from Dirk’s group came over to him.
“Hey, man. We were talking and we’ve been kinda rough on you this week. Do you want to come to a party? The group of us are going to Dirk’s and we’re gonna party. You party, right?”
“Sure. I love to party.” He’d never had anything harder to drink than a sip of a beer once at a party in high school. He thought it tasted like something had rotted and been liquefied for consumption.
“Great. I’ll draw you a little map. I’m Mary. You have a car?”
He had the van and was supposed to go clean at five in the morning the next day. He figured even if he got a little buzzed at the party, he’d be OK by then. It was only 1:30 in the afternoon. “Yup. I have my work truck. Have to work tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll just ride with you. Let me tell Dirk.”
It was Dirk’s plan, but they had all gone for it in the end. They started playing a drinking game. It had a lot of rules that kept changing. He couldn’t keep up with them. He was getting pretty drunk because they were drinking fast. They were doing shots of something called Yukon Jack and chasing it with Coke.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Dirk’s smiling face. “What’s your name anyway, Cyclopes?
“Eric Bannerman.” He said this to the two or three Dirks that were bobbing and weaving in front of him. He was supremely fucked up.
“Well, Eric Bannerman, we need another twelve pack of Coke, and you’re elected to go to the store and get it. You’re the only one with the car, and I can draw you a quick map.” This was the last part of the plan. They were going to send Eric off drunk, then move to a different house. Then he would be sitting on the stoop drunk, wondering where everyone went. He’d be arrested for drunk in public because the booze wouldn’t hit him really hard until he was back here and sitting on the steps. They had been drinking hard and fast.
He took the map and grabbed his keys. The floor was beginning to list from left to right. As he was leaving, another of the young men came up to him. He was carrying a bottle of something called Goldschläger. There were little flakes of gold floating around in it. It was cool-looking.
“Before you go, chug some of this for luck. It’ll also hide the alcohol smell from your breath.” His name was Gill. Eric had written down all of their names surreptitiously so he could remember them.
Eric grabbed the bottle and, much to the surprise of everyone there, he did chug about a quarter of the bottle, his little Adam’s apple going up and down. Gill finally took the bottle from him and told him to hurry back.
He went down the stairs, letting his shoulder slide against the wall as he walked his way listlessly down the stairs. He got in the van and fired it up. It was an automatic so it was easy to get rolling. The directions were hard for him to read. He had to close one eye. He made it to the market, which was about three miles away. Dirk sent him to that one so they’d have a chance to boogie. Eric learned later that there was a store just around the corner.
He walked into the store, a gangly young man who looked barely old enough to drive. He bought the twelve pack of soda from the clerk. She would later tell the police that she thought he had a neurological condition. He smelled like cinnamon, not booze, and he seemed to be having a hard time communicating.
Eric got back to the van. Everything else he knew about the day was from police reports and from the trial. He had gotten on one of the main thoroughfares in the city. Schools were just letting out. He scraped his van against several parked cars while trying to make it down the street. He took a random right turn and began to accelerate. When he hit the pregnant Hispanic woman and her two-year-old son, he was going better than fifty-five miles an hour in a school zone. He dragged her body under his van for a half a block. All were dead on impact. Eric passed out.
He woke up in a hospital. He was handcuffed to a bed and nothing made any sense. He was asked repeatedly if he’d done any drugs. He was told he was being treated for alcohol poisoning. He was asked who he’d been drinking with. He found the list of names in his pocket. The police ascertained that he had not spent time with any of the people on the list. They weren’t even in the house he had said they were in. He was in and out of consciousness for two days. When he was well enough to travel, he was thrown in jail. He was ultimately sentenced to twenty years for a laundry-list of offenses ranging from drunk driving to vehicular manslaughter. The judge threw the book at him.
He did his time. He was in for fifteen years. During his time in jail, he had grown five inches, could do sixty pull-ups without rest. He could do pushups until you told him to stop. All the while he was in, he studied. He got a degree in library science and ran the prison library. He took several correspondence courses, distance learning it was called now, on subjects like theatrical makeup and design. He also watched videos on all forms of personal combat. He had fifteen years to burn. When he earned his freedom, he would take out the fourteen people who had whipped him like a feeder calf to the slaughtering pen. They were the people who had really killed the woman and her children.
Halfway through his time in the joint, he was called into a room to talk to a lawyer. The lawyer explained that his mother had finally passed (his father had preceded her by two years), and they had left him the farm and all of its contents.
“How much is it all worth? If you were to sell it, how much would it be worth?”
The lawyer shuffled some papers and said, “There’s a big farm conglomerate that has wanted that land for a while. Their last offer was nine hundred thousand dollars. Your mom held out because she wanted you to have money when you got out.”
“Sell it all. Sell everything in that house, estate sale. Then sell the land. Then I want you to invest it prudently, and I’ll watch it grow till I get out. You can have a percentage of the growth, but none of the principal. If you don’t like that, I’ll find someone who does.”
The lawyer liked the idea fine. He invested wisely but prudently. They met four times a year to review his portfolio, and his wealth grew at a slow but steady pace. He’d use the money when he got out to even the score with those assholes…
He emerged from his reverie and found he was still staring in the mirror. Time seemed to have slipped forward. It was dark in his apartment. Not all the way, but pretty dark. He looked at the little alarm clock next to his bed. It read 5:45. He’d lost time. It was happening more and more. It scared him, but not because he might be losing his mind. He knew he’d passed that milestone a long time ago. He was worried he would not be able to compete his work. It was important work. Someone had to balance the ledger. He was more than half way through with the list and wanted to be done soon. He was tired, so very tired.
9
Rehearsal ended at 4:45. They’d done enough for the day, and everyone was tired. The work-through for blocking went smoothly, and the review of the basics of the fight choreography was efficient. All in all, it was a good rehearsal, though Al thought he’d have to clean up some of the fight choreography. Some was for the purposes of timing and staging; some of the work was for safety’s sake. Al could tell Dirk liked to play things fast and loose, but Al was obsessed with safety. He’d never had an actor hurt on his watch and wasn’t planning on it happening, especially after he had officially retired.
He said goodbye to everyone in the rehearsal space, declined some invitations to go out and get a drink, and went up to see Frieda. He had told the folks who invited him out that he had some work to do. That was true. He didn’t mention that some of that work entailed visiting a certain Chicago detective and having a late dinner with Ms. Callow.
He knocked lightly on the door to the front office. Frieda was on the phone but waved him in. She was making jaw-flapping gestures with her free hand as she pointed to a chair for him to sit in.
Hanging up, she said, “Newspaper people are so f
ull of shit. Never ceases to amaze me. Never. I’m going to be tied up with stuff here until around 8:30 tonight. I thought, if you weren’t too tired, we could go get a bite to eat after that?” It was a question, but she seemed sure of the answer.
“Sounds good. I have a little work to do before we talk. And I have two questions for you before I scoot. First, what was the name of the detective who looked in on the Dirk thing?”
“Marlon Smythe. Goes by the name Bud. I scanned his card into my computer with my little scanner doo-hickey.” She started to rapidly move her mouse around and click on things. She was standing at her desk and leaning over. A lesser man would have been staring down her blouse. Al was merely sneaking glances. “What’s the other thing?” The printer was now whirring.
“The woman who hanged herself. Her name was…what…Mary St. Claire?”
“You got it.” She took the paper out if the machine that had a blown-up image of the detective’s card and scribbled a couple of things on it. She jotted down “Dirk Vanderbeek-- AKA Ralph Snider” and “Mary St. Claire.” “You planning on asking some questions about Mary, as well?”
“Thought I might. Did you know her?”
“Yeah.” She sighed and blew a little puff of air up that moved her bangs out of her eyes. “She’s been in Chicago forever. One of the original company members, but had been estranged from Wildhorse for twelve or fifteen years. She and Marty didn’t see eye-to-eye. She wanted to change the world. He wanted to make a buck.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive,” added Al with a cocked eyebrow.
“To Marty, they were. She wanted to throw red paint on the capitol steps and other shit like that. Marty just wanted butts in the seats. A little scandal will do that for you. Big scandal, damage to public property, sit ins, passive protest arrests…not really Marty’s style.”
Hog Butcher: 2nd Edition Page 6