by John A. Daly
Jessica was still in the backroom. A shade was pulled across the window, but he knew she was there.
When he was all set, he stood up with the ticket he had been given to cash in back at the front desk, but he wasn’t ready to leave quite yet. He waited until the handful of remaining attendants was ministering to others before he cautiously walked over to the backroom. When he was certain no one else was watching, he twisted the knob on the door that led in and quickly entered.
The bright light from the larger outer room flooded into the small, darkened office and Jessica’s body jolted forward. In a clear panic, she feverishly clicked buttons on the computer mouse as she nervously glared at the monitor in front of her.
On the monitor, Sean noticed the words The Denver Post written in a large, bold black font. Underneath the text was a close-up photo of a man in his forties or fifties with thick sandy-blond hair. His arm was wrapped around a young, attractive woman in her early twenties with long brown hair. Sean recognized neither of them but was familiar with the longstanding Denver Post. Jessica had been reading an online version of the statewide newspaper.
The web browser window hosting it disappeared and Jessica spun around in her chair to face whoever it was that had just stepped into the room. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and her eyes were red. She had been crying, but her expression was a mix between despair and alarm, which suddenly changed to fury when she realized it was Sean.
“What in the hell are you doing back here?” she snarled loudly, leaping to her feet. “You can’t be back here! This room is for employees only!” Her chest heaved in fury with each deep breath. Her lower lip quivered as she stared at him, her eyes demanding an explanation.
“Why are you cry—?” he asked calmly.
“Don’t worry about it!” she snapped. “Why are you in here?”
“I needed to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know that man was a reverend, or a pastor . . . or whatever he is.”
Her thin eyebrows narrowed and her head shook erratically. “Mr. Coleman, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just know that you need to leave. Now!”
“The man lying in the bed across from me. The one I thought was a casino dealer. I wasn’t trying to make some joke. I just couldn’t see his collar. His book was in the way.”
Her face went blank for a few seconds before her eyes began blinking with recollection. “That’s why you came in here?” She placed her hands on her hips and suddenly looked a bit more composed, though still angered. Her breath steadied. “Mr. Coleman, if I had a dollar for every time a donor made some nonsensical remark to me, I could have retired by now. Don’t worry about it.”
She wiped one of the long, flowing tears from her face and shook her head as her gaze dropped to the floor. When her attention returned to him, she reiterated that it was time for him to leave.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re crying?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, because it’s none of your business.”
He let a grunt escape, nodding ever so slightly. He turned around and opened the door.
He closed it softly behind him and made a beeline to the hallway that he had entered through earlier. After sliding a brown farmer-style jacket on, he stood impatiently at the front desk as the receptionist counted out the money he was due in ten-dollar bills.
Seconds after he nestled the money away in his front pocket, he was out in the parking lot where light snow fell from the sky. He saw his breath in the chilling temperature. Few cars were left in the lot. Most had a small American flag dangling from their antennas in a show of national solidarity in the 9/11 aftermath that still hung over the country.
A light dusting of white covered his ’78 Chevy Nova, concealing its ancient pale-blue paint job. He walked over to it and cleared the windshield with a broad sweep of his arm. The glass hadn’t yet begun to ice up, so he was spared scraping.
The car’s spent shocks groaned under his weight as he plopped down in the driver’s seat. When he slammed his door shut, the snow that had been covering his side window fell to the ground. He twisted his key in the ignition. The engine reluctantly fired up and the screeching of worn wiper blades drowned out whatever dull noise was coming from the radio.
Sean glared up at the wide, bland GSL Plasma sign that hung above the building’s entrance. His headlights illuminated it like a small billboard. After delivering a sharp scowl at the sign, he popped the Nova into gear and sped off onto a side street, skidding on the wet snow.
The clamor of the car’s shot muffler echoed off of neighboring dim buildings as he fled into the night.
Chapter 3
By the time Sean reached the Winston town limits, the snow had gotten much heavier. Between each swipe of a wiper blade, clumps of powder packed onto his windshield.
He felt his rear tires lose some traction as he crested a steep hill at the edge of the town square. A few pumps of the gas pedal kept him aligned on the road.
The whitened limbs of the large pine trees prevalent throughout the area bowed from the added weight of the elements. The tops of small buildings, closely clumped together, displayed a good four inches of buildup along their triangular arches.
The small business district of downtown Winston wasn’t on Sean’s way home, but a nagging question he’d held in his mind from the moment he’d left GSL urged him to take a detour.
There wasn’t much going on in town that late on a weeknight. Bernard’s Pawn had been closed for over an hour. So had French’s Pharmacy and Benson’s Hardware. The flickering neon “Open” sign hanging outside of the Winston Café hadn’t yet been turned off, but as Sean drove by the restaurant’s wide windows that faced the street, he saw chairs placed on top of half the tables. No patrons were inside.
Down the street, he noticed a couple of lights on inside the Winston Police Station. A Jeep was parked out in front. Police Chief Gary Lumbergh appeared to be burning the midnight oil on something. Apparently, not even shoulder surgery could keep him out of the office for a few days.
Sean milked the brakes as he approached the center of the square—a small patch of snow-covered grass that could have been considered a little park if it were only a bit larger. Instead, it served as a lasting tribute to one of the town’s most respected former citizens: Zed Hansen.
A life-sized, bronze statue of Hansen had been unveiled at the site just a few months earlier. It was a good likeness: his uncle’s trademark straw cowboy hat sat proudly on his head; his long sideburns and goatee; a toothpick wedged between his teeth. Having been sculpted using a pile of pictures provided by Diana, it managed to capture Hansen’s always dignified demeanor.
When passing through town, Sean would often steal a glance at the statue and chuckle at the sight of a random bird perched upon its toothpick. Birds were obsessed with the statue. It was often covered with white, runny excrement. One persistent swallow even tried to build its nest on top of Uncle Zed’s squared chin. It drove Diana nuts, but Sean knew his good-natured, modest uncle would find the same humor in it that he did.
Three small spotlights lit up the effigy from the ground, and though most of the
figure was covered with snow, its wide hat-rim kept the face fairly dry.
Just a few yards away, on the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the statue, were two metal newspaper vending machines. They were barely visible from the indirect light around the statue. The navy-blue machine dispensed copies of the Denver Post. The bright-yellow one belonged to the Winston Beacon. Both were coated with powdery snow.
The Winston Beacon was a local paper sold only in town. Its owner, Roy Hughes, had become somewhat of a nemesis of Sean in recent years. When Hughes, at the age of twenty, inherited the fledgling publication from his father, he decided that the only way to keep a sustainable level of readership was to turn a section of it into what was essentially a tabloid column. The regular piece entitled “The Winston Buzz” featured town gossip, often with an invasive, investigative reporting twist to maximize the shame of those Hughes chose to target.
Sean Coleman was by far Hughes’ favorite victim.
Sean had a long history of being a drunk, a bully, and a man who had a knack for always making the wrong decisions at the worst possible times. Much of the town’s citizenry didn’t like him. Thus, Hughes felt legitimized in exploiting him for the purpose of lowbrow entertainment. It worked well with a readership that had an appetite for learning of Sean’s failures. Hughes had backed off for a while following Zed’s murder, but in recent weeks—possibly due to a decline in sales—he’d begun to ratchet things up again. Sean figured it was probably tough for a guy like Hughes to compete against the national news cycle with a war going on in the Middle East. Crucifying Sean was apparently his answer to that problem.
Sean pulled up to the curb and stepped out of his car, nearly taking a tumble after his foot slid on a patch of ice along the sidewalk. He fed a quarter into the blue machine and yanked open the door at its face.
“Fuck!” he snarled at the sight of an empty shelf inside.
Had the front of the machine not been covered with snow, he would have noticed that all copies of that day’s Denver Post had been bought. Or had they?
He had long speculated that Roy Hughes occasionally emptied the competing paper’s machine out with a single coin in hopes of compelling disappointed readers to purchase a copy of the Beacon instead. He had never caught Hughes in the act, but he hoped to one day.
Regardless, the empty machine riled him. He let its door slam shut and in frustration sent the Beacon machine to its side with a stiff kick. It crashed to the sidewalk with a metallic thud that echoed loudly through the cold night air. He nearly climbed back into his car and sped off for home when he found his eyes lifting to meet those of his uncle glaring down at him from above with a kind, permanently etched grin.
His chest inflating and contracting, Sean narrowed his eyes. He brought his visible breath under control and nodded slowly. He leaned forward, wrapped his ample hands underneath the yellow apparatus, and pulled it back up to its short, stilt-like legs. Uncle Zed would have never condoned vandalism.
With the snow now knocked from the front of the Beacon machine, he could see the front of the day’s edition pinned behind the glass. His heart stopped. His own face was pictured just above the fold. The photograph had been taken at an odd angle, somewhere in an outside setting without Sean’s knowledge. He quickly spun the machine to face the light so he could better read the unusually long headline featured above it.
“Guess Who’s Selling His Sperm for Cash? A Case for Forced Sterilization?”
Sean’s eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. His fists and teeth clenched and his body began to shake in rage. “Son of a bitch!”
It came out like a vicious howl. He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around the machine, and hoisted it up over his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a large stuffed animal. He lumbered out into the middle of the street, roaring obscenities, before arching his back and body slamming the machine to the pavement with every ounce of strength he could muster. The implosion sounded like a bomb had gone off. Glass shattering. Metal shrieking. Asphalt cracking.
Sean didn’t remember getting back into his car, but he soon found himself in his Nova’s driver’s seat. He tore down Main Street, heading for the outskirts of town where Roy Hughes lived. He couldn’t hear the cry of the car’s muffler over the sound of blood boiling through his veins.
Hughes had somehow discovered that he was selling his plasma to make ends meet—maybe followed him to the bank one night. It was the only explanation; Sean had told no one of the practice that he found degrading.
The sperm angle was pure media sensationalism. He knew Hughes didn’t simply get the story wrong. Hughes knew the truth. He just wanted to spice things up and magnify the potential for humiliation at Sean’s expense. Hughes knew what Beacon readers wanted. They needed massive failure from Sean Coleman—big time embarrassment. And in the latest edition of the Winston Beacon, it was being served to them on a silver platter. A lawsuit would have been the logical recourse for such an act of defamation, but Sean wasn’t the suing type. He settled scores with his fists.
All he had wanted to do was pacify a nagging curiosity. All he’d wanted to do was find out which news story had so upset Jessica, a woman he barely knew from the plasma bank. Instead, he was now roaring toward Roy Hughes’ doorstep. He pictured himself dragging the pencil-necked reporter out into the snow and slamming both of the man’s small hands in the metal door of his Nova. Hughes wouldn’t be able to type anything more about Sean if his fingers were all broken.
“First Amendment, my ass!” Sean barked as he took a corner far too quickly for the road conditions. His rear tires swung forward, and he gasped as he felt the automobile slide out of control.
“Shit!”
He clenched his steering wheel and turned it sharply to try to regain some traction, but the move did no good. The car spun wildly, sending every stray item that littered the dashboard and console onto his lap. Headlights swept quickly across a thick grouping of snow-capped trees, setting them ablaze in white light as they drew rapidly near.
Sean straightened his arms and pressed his back deeply into his seat to brace for impact as his heart punished his chest. A wicked jolt brought all momentum to an abrupt halt, peeling him from the vinyl beneath him for a moment before he collapsed back down into a seated position.
Deep breaths spewed from his lungs as his large eyes surveyed the white, heavy branches that now draped over the hood of his car. Snow continued to fall in dense particles. He watched in silence as they landed on his windshield.
Once the glaze that coated his eyes began to evaporate, he formed a fist and angrily hammered it across the top of his dashboard. From under his seat, he retrieved a twelve-inch-long black Mag flashlight. He flipped it on, surprised the beam was strong as it was considering he couldn’t remember the last time he had replaced its batteries.
He tugged on the inside door handle and was relieved that he could swing the door open without any problems. It was a good sign that the frame of his car was spared significant damage. He carefully pulled himself out into the cold and kept a hand on the hood for balance as he shuffled his way on uncertain footing to the front of the car.
His eyes winced to keep the snow and chilly breeze from bringing them to tears as he stood at the edge of a small ditch. Ducking under the thick limbs full of snow, he l
eaned around to the grill of the car and spotted no damage. He’d assumed he had struck the trunk of a tree head-on, but he hadn’t. He’d stopped a couple of feet short of it.
He made his way to the other side of the car, where he discovered the real obstruction—a large, rounded rock just outside of the ditch at the shoulder of the road. His tire had nailed it squarely and was now completely flat.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
The truth was that it could have been far worse. A new tire was at least a manageable expense; a new car was not. Even luckier was Roy Hughes.
Hughes had probably already turned in for the evening, being on an early-morning delivery schedule. He was probably fast asleep under warm, comfortable covers, smack dab in the middle of some dream about the next hit-piece he would run on Sean. He was safe, at least for now.
Sean popped his trunk and pushed aside piles of wadded up clothes, gear, and trash until he’d freed up enough room to pull out his spare tire and the metal jack underneath it. He recalled the day he had first learned to change a tire. His uncle had taught him the skill when he was around ten years old—the kind of training that normally would have been carried out by one’s father. By then, Sean’s father had already left.
“Patience. . .” Zed would tell Sean when he’d have trouble lining up the jack or threading the lug nuts back on correctly. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
Zed claimed to have come up with the quote, but Sean always suspected he was fibbing. Still, it begrudgingly seemed to be the right advice as Sean had worked on removing the flat back then. The irony of the scene wasn’t lost on him. He half suspected that from high above, his uncle had had something to do with blowing out the tire.