by Neal Goldy
“Mr. Davidson, please.” Officer Lincoln began sweating, pushing back from where he stood. He went for his belt, where his gun was held.
“You dare use that!” Officer Lincoln didn’t look too easy in Davidson’s opinion, which must mean he was turning purple again. “You’re gonna use that on me? Thinkin’ about using it right now?”
“Please, sir, calm down. I can’t let you go running wild like this.”
“Not to me. I think you’re toying with me!”
“There’s evidence on this, Davidson! If you can just settle down, we can talk about it.”
“How do you know my name is Davidson? I never said my name, if you happen to remember.”
“I have information about you in the case, if you happen to remember.” Officer Lincoln’s reply dripped with sarcasm.
Davidson’s anger raged inside the metal cage of his body. The locks were breaking, no matter how sturdy he had made them. Sooner or later they’d break, and then whoever stood in the same room wouldn’t be in good health. It was of no use, and Davidson let the cage break open. His anger deteriorated the prison and he tackled the police officer, the same anger whistling so loud that Davidson hadn’t heard two gunshots going wild, barely missing both his ears, making them ooze blood and what was left of his poor eardrums pounding to their little squeamish deaths. Davidson’s wife came much, much later. She made the mistake of fixing up her garden an hour earlier. The Davidson garden went as far as a mile from the house, but that wasn’t an excuse to go looking for her husband when something like noises and sounds of breaking of furniture happened. That it occurred out of earshot would be a silly reason. She pulled the two men apart, ending the fight, and Officer Lincoln put his gun back into his belt. Wordlessly, he raced for the door with his notepad and pen as well as other things he must have planned on using before this nonsense happened.
The wife, her heart too sweet to deal with these things, broke into crying wails. Her hands masked her tear-stricken-like-the-rain face, and Davidson went over to the kitchen to think. He knew he could help his wife later, but something else was on his mind. Davidson’s thoughts wandered to what Officer Lincoln had mentioned about the identical cases the police held. The police, he supposed, would have found this out long before and not now, but maybe time had a reason for this. Interestingly enough, Davidson had the impression of looking into a mirror of the same destroyed past, like a parallel universe.
*****
Martin’s hair was all over his eyes so people thought he was older than he usually looked. Right now, though, his eyes – if the possibility of seeing yourself became a reality – popped through the giant mat of long, curly hair like a 3-D movie. The real kind, not the cheap converted knock-offs.
Under his breath, he muttered many things. The one that rang up the counter had to be the phrase, “I’m going to jail.” Second place would be awarded to, “I’m so going to jail” and “My parents are gonna give me hell!” finalized the third. While doing so, he shook the wheel so hard he was afraid it might pop off just like his eyes were about to do if he didn’t stop.
Sitting in shotgun was his half-drunk friend, Ray. No matter where, Martin never saw Ray without a beer, scotch, or jack. One time his parents said that he was gonna drown himself in his own alcohol. In return Ray said that those were the most powerful pieces of poetry he ever heard.
He was wild, that Ray, but now he slurped his drink with lazy eyes. “Maybe he isn’t dead,” he slurred.
Martin let his hands go. Just as he sort of predicted, the parts where his hands were on the wheel crunched. When given the right pressure, Martin could transform into a human Hulk if he wanted to. Maybe not precisely when he wanted to because it only happened at the time the power seized him and not the other way around, but you get the idea.
Ray nudged his shoulder. “Martin. Martin, you still there?” he asked.
“Yeah, still here.”
“We should get out of the car. See if the man’s alive or not.”
Automatically Martin’s hands went back to chewing the rubber off the wheel. “No way, man, no way. What if he wakes?”
“If he does, we’ll tell him we saved his life. He was going to fall off that safety guard right over there.” He pointed out the safety guard shining in the night. It looked ghostly, Martin remarked, just hovering there like nothing else existed. And nor will exist.
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” demanded Ray. “It’s not like he has a gun or anything.”
“Ray, you’re in this car with me, correct?”
It took a second for Ray to digest that. “Okay. So?”
“How are you – and I repeat you – supposed to know if that man we just hit has a gun on him or not?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it! Since when was it the both of us that jacked up that old man down the road?”
“Sorry, I meant me. But who was the one who thought it a good idea to bring a nice big bottle of jack with us?”
“Dodge suggested it, shithead. I just complied.” He altered his voice into Sweet Ray, a voice Martin never agreed with. When you heard his voice, it sounded too nice; he might’ve puffed sugar into his words. “Now, why won’t you be a dear and get out of this car, walk itty-bitty all the way to where the nice old man had been knocked from not your car, but from your stupidity, and see if he’s well or not?”
Martin fumed. Steam came out of his ears like in the cartoons Ray used to watch. “For God’s sake, Ray, aren’t you be the least bit scared that you just ran over someone?”
A soft pause came between the two. It could have been part of a trailer for a comedy where, after the title credit, there would be a pause when the joke would come into being to take the viewers into watching a poorly-made film.
“Not really.”
“You’re insane.”
“That’s fear talking,” Ray said. “You know I’m not insane when I’m not high.”
“Ha-ha, now let’s get out of here before someone –”
Martin’s faced flashed a bright red. Sirens were flaring but they weren’t coming from an ambulance or firefighter truck. None of them from this part of the city had red-and-blue coming out of their sirens.
Ray didn’t want to look at Martin before, much less now. The man was practically crying.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit,” he babbled. He rested his head on the wheel, sobbing like a goddam two-year-old.
“Take it easy, they won’t suspect us. Come to think of it, how did the police find us? Out of all the places . . .”
“Who gives a damn?” Martin’s furious tears continued and they showed no sign of stopping. “We need to hide, to get out of the car before they –”
Somebody’s finger tapped on Martin’s window glass.
Martin’s face twisted into a frightful look mixed with pain. He mouthed, “I don’t wanna go to jail.”
“If you don’t want to, then open the window,” Ray said.
Martin obeyed. He rolled the window open, his arm cramping the lever as if he had suffered through five years of child labor. “Good evening, officers.” He would have sounded all right if he hadn’t repeated it until it wore off. The officer had to tell Martin to quit it before he did. If only Ray could get in and do the talking . . .
“Names?” asked the officer.
“Uh, well, okay . . . I’m Martin Shaw and this is . . . this . . . this is uh . . . my friend . . . yeah, my friend Ram . . . I meant Ray – yes, Ray – and we were just . . .”
“Just what were you two doing so early this morning?”
“Driving,” Ray said. “Well, he was not me.”
“He was not you?”
“I mean, he was driving, not me. Well, if that’s all right with you, officer, of course.” Ray smiled to sell the idea.
“And do you happen to know where you two were going so late – or should I say early?”
Martin was at a loss. “I don’t know, officer, but it
could have been a nice place if you hadn’t stopped us.”
Ray could have sucker punched Martin if the officer weren’t standing there watching them both with those eyes of an eagle. At times like these, the officer would have brought Ray out of the car and pinned him to the ground, gun clicked to his head. Bastard would be yearning for more than a happy-go-lucky college girl receiving her paycheck to bring out them handcuffs and slack ‘em on Ray’s wrists. Send the delinquent to the state prison, he’d say. But, and he wasn’t sure if he was unfortunate about this, he was stuck with this poor, poor son-of-a-bitch. Ray couldn’t keep himself from thinking about Martin’s stupid act that, if successful, would cost them their lives.
Ah, Martin, you son-of-a-bitch, and I mean it.
The officer eyed Ray. “You said something, Ray?”
Ray stumbled on his words. “No, no I didn’t officer.”
The officer paced a few feet. Hopefully he wanted this to be over soon, too. “May I see your driver’s license?”
“Whose?” They said this simultaneously.
“I prefer the driver’s,” the officer said.
Martin chucked his license in the officer’s face – another misfire. They needed the police officer on their side and every single thing Martin did burned their chances into rubble and ash! If Martin couldn’t shut himself up, then Ray had to do it.
The officer checked Martin’s license, every goddam detail; he might as well analyze it for next week’s book club. Hell, his eyes were thinner than pennies! “Uh, what seems to be the problem, officer?” Ray asked.
Clearing his throat, the officer glanced off into the night. “It appears you ran over that poor man over there down the road.”
That was it for Martin. He started sobbing his head off. Ray felt a little bit like crying as well, but he wouldn’t show that to the officer.
“Get out of the car,” the officer said. He jiggled the car door.
Ray kept his tone venomous. “No.”
“Get out of this car, both of you.”
“Who gives a damn what you say?” Ray cried.
“I do, and so should you.” He, the policeman, leaped inside the window, doing an arm lock on Martin with a revolver in the same hand. A wild shot and the windshield cracked like a spider web. Amidst crying, Martin also choked for help, trembling and pulling the insane man off him to save his life.
Ray pried the gun off the officer’s fingers. The size of those meaty, hairy fingers outmatched any wrestler he’d seen during matches, much less an officer on the night job. He almost pushed away, but then he remembered that Martin had his airway clogged. Another shot broke off from the barrel, sending a bullet through Ray’s side of the car and into his window. He didn’t turn back to admire it since no one ever did that, but he needed the gun. While he had the gun in his hands, the officer’s fingernail bit deep into his flesh. Ray refused to cry out and shot – he didn’t know where for his eyes blinded him. Blood showered them, the after feeling a warm bath. He didn’t dare open them when he spoke to Martin, fearing for his life. His lungs ached when he tried to breathe, so he kept his breath in slow paces. It would come back to normal, he promised himself. It would heal.
“Ray . . .?” Martin’s voice wobbled like the poorly-made chair Ray had in his apartment.
“Yeah?” he said, not sure what Martin wanted. “What is it, Martin, say it.”
“Thanks.”
Ray opened his eyes. He had to. Martin, still in the driver’s seat, erupted in sputtering coughs, getting all of it out. He then rubbed his throat and then his Adam’s apple. Remainders of the police officer’s blood trailed from Martin’s door. “Martin – don’t thank me,” he told his friend. “Look at what the hell I just did!”
“What was it? You saved my life. I don’t see anything wrong about that.”
Ray glared. “Do you realize I probably killed a police officer? Can you imagine how many years I could spend in prison?”
Martin didn’t say “oh” like he did many times before. Ray thought he was smart enough nowadays to know that whatever idiotic thing came out of his mouth was told incorrectly. Slowly he leaned toward the outside of his window, Ray peeking over him.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so.” Martin opened the car door and jumped outside. Looking over the policeman, Martin examined him. He checked the man’s pulse, finally going back to Ray who was still in the car.
“He’s fine, might be unconscious, though, so we might need to take him to the hospital. Although he does have a wound near his arm . . .”
Ray sputtered in disbelief. “What do you mean? How will we explain ourselves? ‘Excuse me, but we’re bringing in a dead man because one of us accidently shot him but didn’t cause him that much harm. Did we mention it was an accident?’ You’re mental, Martin.” He then looked ahead of them, even more worried. “What about the old man over there? Do you think we can come up with an explanation they’d buy for two dead people?”
“We’ll just have to deal with it,” Martin said in a simple manner.
“Deal with going to jail? Nice one, Martin.”
“Better than leaving them here – the cops would be all over it and then we’d be in trouble. Once they know this officer’s gone missing, they’ll track it down to us. He has a radio and everything connected to the police department. I’m afraid we’re in a tight corner right now, but like I said, let’s just make do.”
Negotiations, thought Ray, it was all in the negotiations when it came to the two of them. If you saw their car, you might have thought it came out of the depths of hell. And they both knew it, so they drove the police cruiser to the hospital. Martin worried about his driver’s license and its fate, but Ray told him that he’d get him a new one at the DMV later. What mattered most now was the old man, who tumbled in front of their car, and the policeman Ray had nearly killed. Like they planned, both men were in the back row of the cruiser. Old detective D. slept – they supposed he slept – soundlessly which softened their worst fears. None of them spoke during the drive to the city hospital. What they had spoken to the old man they never mentioned once, and it would be forgotten for the remainder of their lives. The world needn’t hear about the strange old man Martin almost killed, so they didn’t need to go over it multiple times until they wished to kill themselves rather than hear it again.
While they made their way to the hospital, Ray had horrible past memories of eighth grade English. Everyone who had survived (or at least those who tried to make their day-by-day living through that exhausting course) would know he meant the plays teachers made them do. Horrible, pretentious plays written from men who favored dead language and the words belonging to such disasters. No wonder they got rid of such nonsense and replaced it with the new English! Ray thought this a good thing, but it was not the tragedies he had gone through that reminded him of the class. It was Martin, actually, who told their story to the doctors again and again until Ray’s head began deforming from its original shape. Martin, like the old playwrights before him and like ancestors giving dead knowledge to younger generations, forced Ray to recount lines and to say them like cues.
The story went like this: a police officer stopped both of them for speeding (they still weren’t sure what the officer wanted from them, but they decided to keep it at that) and required a driver’s license. They complied, but suddenly a gang of men began shooting wildly; they thought them delinquents and, at their worst, delirious mad people. Ray had to thank Martin for coming up with that one after his friend explained about the men hiding out in the woods. As the story went on, one of those men might’ve hit the police officer while as he was checking the license. They heard the gun and went to see what happened. You know, like regular people? And then they saw the officer bleeding. In the back of his car there was some old man in a long trench coat. Neither Ray nor Martin knew the man but took him to the hospital anyway just to make sure he was all right.
They thought the story sounded pretty
real, and they’d tell the authorities, too, to make themselves even less suspicious for the events that had happened. Ray thought this was swell. If only this would work and everyone would believe them . . . as you know, it didn’t matter how immature and irresponsible they acted while on their own (especially Ray, in this case, but he didn’t like to admit it). They weren’t children to be trusted with such honesty. Haven’t you heard, Ray told himself, of not trusting anyone? Some people applied it to themselves, and then put Martin and Ray in the picture. He hoped the consequences weren’t as harsh as he expected. At least the two of them looked like heroes – no, saviors – when you put the story like that. Everyone trusted heroes no matter how unexpected they may seem.
Chapter 4
Two (or was it three?) weeks were set back for old detective D. because of the accident. Much, much later in the recovery stage, D. learned what happened to him and about the two bozos that knocked him over while men with arms were ready to kill in cold blood when the time came. The last few moments D. could remember were blurred and too subtle – like being stoned and trying to understand two young men’s weepy confessions. Most of the words were also blurred, unintentionally, to be heard in a smeared-up version that would make anyone want a dictionary or some kind of deciphering for assistance. One of them was crying, and that was it. Bright lights of red and other colors melted in his closed-eye vision, a portal that he would never enter.
Lucky to be alive was one thing, but that had its own consequences. It reminded him of the white man’s backlash and betrayal when you, the black, trusted him. Every day questions arrived at his door, and, no he was not being metaphoric in his language. The press came in for interviews, and although they were nothing big, they sure made a racket; and in D.’s already depressed state, he wanted to yell them out of the room. Nurses calmed him down with medicine and needles – of course they would. That was all they could do to him since treatments beyond that were ahead of their time. Either it was that or they banned such treatments. Hospitals, like asylums and public school buildings, were dangerous places. Also add to the mix the pain that he lived with thereafter. Both legs were working, but his bones were broken in one arm; he assumed that was because of the safety guard he tried to hold onto. His shoulder ached when he moved, but the doctors told him it would be better soon. What wasn’t better, of course, was the money he needed to pay when he was released from the hospital. He expected this so there was no surprise, but his heart sank even so. They might save your life, but you needed to pay for it. Who knew you had to pay in order to have your life saved?