Slice

by Rex Miller

  The first stop was at a medium-sized grocery store in a small would-be shopping center that had a laundromat, a Radio Shack, a video store that was apparently out of business, and a Western Auto. Chaingang went in to get them their lunch. He came out with a can of V-8 juice that he'd paid for, and pockets full of apples, a package of cold meat, and a tomato, which he plucked out of a sealed package. Nobody could shoplift like Daniel. While the clerk was ringing up the V-8 he dropped some mints into a voluminous pocket. He had plenty of money, but he always stole on principle.

  He got in the car and handed Sissy her apple. “Here's your lunch."

  “Thanks,” she said. “Is this all we're gonna eat?” She wasn't complaining. Just asking.

  “Yeah. You need to lose weight for your modeling. Tonight you'll fix the meat, some greens, and tomato.” He had their menu all planned out.

  “You know,” she said, telling him for the tenth time, “you're the only guy I've ever known who didn't think I was too thin."

  “Ummm,” he grunted as he drove across the expanse of parking lot toward the Western Auto store.

  “I went to this one doctor, ya know, and I was getting a physical and he was you know going on about how I was too skinny and all and...” She was so pleased that this man who had actually had professional experience producing model layouts would be truthful with her. She had always suspected she was too heavy for high fashion work, and even though she hardly ate anything she just couldn't lose weight. Chaingang, the ultimate mind-manipulator, had instinctively played to her most secret fear. That she was FAT! A borderline anorexia victim, Sissy could sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look right at those protruding, skeletonlike pelvic bones and see only disgusting bulk. He heard her singsong little-girl voice say with great earnestness, “And I sure do like for ya to be honest like that with me,” and she touched him.

  He was turning off the ignition when he felt the little bony hand reach over and rest on his leg, and she almost bought it right then and there. Some miracle stopped that steel shotput from crashing out and stilling her simple brain. He loathed being touched by anyone when he wasn't expecting it and he almost took her down as an involuntary reflex, but somehow he caught his reaction in time. All she saw was a little tremor like a flinch as he slid out of the vehicle, the springs creaking in relief as he removed his bulk from the car. She thought to herself, Interesting, and knew then that they would have something between them.

  He went inside and a jovial, redneck clerk boomed out, “Hot enough for ya?” which Chaingang ignored as he searched the row of merchandise.

  “Whatcha looking for there, Tiny? Can I help you?” The man had no earthly idea how close he was right at that second to shuffling off his mortal coil. For some reason Bunkowski's huge bulk evoked that sort of a response in a certain-type person. People who worked in hardware stores, gas stations, tire retailers—they weren't used to seeing a 6-foot-7-inch 460-pound man waddling though their aisles. It upset them, put them off their feed a little, these certain jolly types, and they “kidded” him sometimes to help smooth over their surprise. Some he didn't even hear. Others he ignored. Once in a while he would go over and hurt them in some way. Something would fall on the person. An accident. A can of paint would drop on their foot. Or he would shoplift an unusually large amount right in front of them in silent revenge.

  “Where's the whipsickles?"

  “Where's the Popsicles? Haven't you et lunch yet?"

  “Whipsickles? Weed slingers?” Chaingang beamed. It was his most dangerous smile.

  “Right over here,” the man said, sensing something and backing off a notch. But it was too late. As Bunkowski walked past him, filling the aisle with his massive body he “brushed up against the man and lost his balance,” as he said later, and 460 pounds came down viciously on the clerk's arch and the man let out a bloodcurdling scream, “AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR."

  “OHHHHH” Daniel echoed as if he too were hurt and out of control, pushing against the man as he threw his poundage into the witty clerk, who slammed backward into a cascade of about four hundred cans of aerosol paint spray, and then Daniel let himself fall, just so, slapping the hard floor just as he timed the fall, and screaming, “Oh, my back,” surreptitiously pocketing something, then getting up limping.

  There were apologies all around. Daniel wished he could help the clerk pick up all the paint cans. If he only had more time. Outside, Sissy had heard the screaming and racket and was peering intently trying to see what was going on inside the store. Chaingang said he wanted to leave a tip for the accident, and he left a ten-dollar bill on the counter. The weed slinger was $8.49. SPECIAL! He couldn't wait for the man to ring it up.

  He tossed the tool into the back seat and drove out of the shopping center. He drove a couple of blocks and pulled over to a garbage can behind a café, where he took the money from the clerk's wallet. It was only twenty-six dollars but it pleased Chaingang greatly. He found nothing else of interest and threw the wallet and cards away. It would be hours before the clerk realized he'd lost his billfold, and he would never connect the two events.

  “Ask that man where a welder is,” he told Sissy, interrupting her accounting of how she'd thought he'd “got into a big fight with that guy inside the store."

  “Where's a welder?” she shouted out the window in a high, birdlike voice.

  “Heh?” a moron said, walking over and looking in the window to hear better.

  “Where can we find a welder?"

  “A welder?” he repeated, looking at Bunkowski. Daniel had noticed that everyone around these parts had the habit of treating ordinary English words as if they were astonishing surprises. He was pleased by his choice of locations for a “fat farm,” as surely this part of the country could lay claim to some of the most obtuse, moronic, and vapid imbeciles he'd ever encountered. And the stupider the human, the less the possible threat to him.

  “Somebody who can weld? A welder? Do you know of a welder around here? Somebody who does welding?” To weld. Transitive verb. To allow metallic parts to flow together; to unite by heating, or by hammering, or by compression without heating, or compression with heating; to anneal, strengthen, toughen; TO WELD, yes. Do you speak English? Even as a third language?

  “Oh, yeah. You want a BLACKSMITH. Oh, well—yeah.” The moron ruminated, his face lighting up like a neon sign as he chewed over this dramatic, earth-shaking turn of events. “Uh. Hemphill's done retired. He was the blacksmith hereabouts."

  “Do you know of anyone else around here who can w—can do blacksmith work?” Chaingang smiled his most dangerous killer-gargantuan grin.

  “Um. Herb Cannell might can. He's over acrost from the bank catty-corner."

  “Thanks."

  “Go ta the second stop sign an’ hang ya a left and go—"

  “Thanks,” he muttered in a foul-tempered rumble. He didn't hear the last of the directions, as he was halfway there by the time the man finished.

  He pulled up in front of Cannell's Repair and went in. A man was talking to someone on the phone and he hung up in what appeared to be a rage and snarled at Chaingang, “Yeah?"

  “People say you're the best welder in four states. They say you charge the fairest prices and that you're the most expert welder in this part of the country.” He looked at the man with his most trustworthy and genuine smile.

  “Um. Well, I reckon that there is true. Leastways about the fair prices. ‘Course NOT EVERY GOD-DAMMNED BODY THINKS SO."

  “Well, personally, I'd be PROUD to have ya do a piece of welding for me—if ya was of a mind to.” Chain beamed.

  “Yeah. Well.” He, took his glasses out of his pocket, calming visibly, and walked over to the huge man. “Whatcha need welded?"

  “I want this reinforced.” He held the cheap whipsickle up in front of the man's face. “Here,” he said, touching it, “and all along in here. Could that be done?"

  “I suppose it could, but why in the hell would ya WANT to?” The ve
ry idea offended him.

  “Good point. Because they don't make things worth a damn anymore. Sloppy workmanship. Lack of care. Inattention to detail. A craftsman—somebody like YOU—is a genuine rarity today.” He pronounced it gin-u-wine, which he thought gave it a nice touch.

  “That's for goddamn sure."

  “I'm TIRED of goin’ out in the fields and workin’ and the least li'l bit of heavy-duty usage and the daggone whipsickle blade busts, or the shaft snaps ... I'm tired of it."

  “You can't BUY a damn tool anymore."

  “It's the damnedest thing,” Chaingang agreed, speaking the words in the man's exact speech cadence as he shook his head. The two of them stood there, shaking their heads at the sorry state of affairs.

  “Feller could run a brass strip along here. Not just an ordinary piece of shim.” He took the whipsickle out of Daniel's hands and walked away, talking to himself. “I gotta brass strap here someplace that might work...” Ten minutes later Chaingang was standing outside the shop watching the white-hot blade cooling blue and then red as the new brass-reinforced weed slinger cooled in the water.

  “How much?"

  “Two dollars be about right?"

  “Right as rain.” He smiled, handing over some sweaty ones.

  The man pulled it out of the cooling trough and gingerly touched the blade to see if it could be handled. He gave it to Chaingang.

  “NOW bust ‘er."

  BUCKHEAD SPRINGS

  “I like that. I do.” He wasn't doing anything. Just holding her very close with his face pressed into the hollow of her throat. “I like it a lot. Don't stop for a thousand years."

  “Ain't doin’ nothin',” he said into her neck.

  “Don't care. I like it,” she told him. “I know what I like and I like it."

  “Mmmmrfk it too."

  “Yeah?"

  “Mmmrf mmm."

  “I know just what you mean. I feel the same way. Roof-moot."

  “What I said was we fit good."

  “I know that. I heard you loud and clear.” They kissed. Again. Again.

  “You know something?"

  “Eh?"

  “I love you so much."

  “I'm glad,” he said. “You know something? Aw, never mind."

  “Tell me."

  “I will—but not now.” And his tongue touched hers. They made love and he tried for the longest time to be as gentle as he could. That was the idea. To show her how much she meant to him. That she was porcelain dolls fine china breakable heirloom vases treasured satsuma capo di monte royal doulton steuben all the stuff that goes crunch the fine stemmed goblets and the fluted this and the delicate that and the nouveau lamps with shades like wafer-thin eisenglass and the thing is though she wouldn't break and she'd told him a couple dozen times she wasn't fragile and as gentle as he started out to be the heat of her warmed him inflamed him made the old volcano rumble and molten stuff in there start to flow and then it got a little wild and then he made up for it by kissing all the places where he'd made her body hot, kissing those sweet spots maybe ten thousand times just to show her ... just to let her know. Gentle kisses from head to toe, covering her in as much love as he could bestow, but she didn't want him down there smooching on the sides of her knees and she told him so, to which he replied, “But don't you see, woman, I adore your knees."

  “And they adore you, sweetheart, but I want you up here where I can look at you. “She sort of pulled him up, body weight notwithstanding, kissing the parts of him she could reach, first a hand and then the top of his head and then his face. “I wish I could have your child,” she said out of nowhere.

  “I'm glad you feel that way.” It was enough for both of them and more and they went to sleep like that. Holding each other, not in the fitted curves of tummy and hand and stomach against back and groin to butt, which is the way they so often fell asleep, but in each other's arms, with their faces almost touching, pillows pressed together, as close as they could get.

  He'd known since Dallas that Donna couldn't have kids. It meant next to nothing to him when they'd first married. It was only after she'd told him a few times that she wished she could bear his child that he even allowed himself to think about it. He had never fathered a child nor had he felt the usual, normal fatherly urge to propagate. In fact, with the abrogation of his first marriage he'd assumed that his age and profession and life-style would preclude children. It was only later, growing close to a child—Lee Anne Lynch—and letting his heart fill with the joy a child could bring a man, that he allowed himself even the luxury of an occasional thought, wondering, as a man will, what it might be like—fatherhood.

  It was clearly something Donna wanted but neither of them had talked about the possibility of adoption. To Eichord it was as remote as a faraway planet.

  But when she said it this time, told him how she wished she could have his child, told him with such intensity of feeling and longing and regret, it stayed with him. And he supposed it was kicking around up in the old brain wrinkles when the thing happened at work, and maybe it was one of those surrogate things. Whatever. In any event, a couple of nights later he was in the garage talking to himself.

  “I'll never leave you again,” he was saying. “No. I promise. Never. You'll never be alone again.” Nobody else was with him. He was talking into a box.

  He went in and found her, and he took her hand and led Donna back into the bedroom the way she'd taken his hand and led him through his birthday treats, and she looked at him with a quizzical smile as he positioned her on the bed.

  “What?” she said, sensing something.

  “Well,” he said as he handed her his homemade card, “just a little something.” She stretched out on the bed in her slightly décolleté top, French jeans, and heels, looking good enough to jump right there, he thought, and she read the card aloud as he had hers, “Dearest wife,” penned in a carefully drawn heart, “when I look at you I never fully believe my luck. I love you so much it makes me laugh out loud when I think I'll be able to come home and find you here waiting for me. You give more than you could ever take. You're the best woman I've ever known.” She looked up at him with eyes that looked moist and beautiful and he had her close them.

  “Keep them closed for sixty seconds. Just lie there please,” he whispered. She didn't hear him leave the carpeted bedroom until she heard the steps going down the hall, but she stayed where he'd put her and kept her eyes closed wondering what was cooking. She heard him open the door to the garage and then close it and he heard her voice down the hall. “I'm getting awfully curious back here all alone in this big bedroom.” And she could hear him say almost like he was talking to a baby.

  “Well, we won't be alone in that ole bedroom anymore, eh? No. Not anymore. Nosiree. No way.” And saying to her from the hallway, “Are those eyes firmly closed?"

  “Yes, Officer."

  “Just keep ‘em that way, lady, I'll instruct you when to open them.” And she heard something, a kind of skittering noise against cardboard or paper, and felt something moving, touching her.

  “OH!” she opened her eyes and saw what was standing on her. A little gray kitten. Very young. A baby one. Standing, or doing its best to stand there, head cocked at her. It weighed nothing. A ball of gray fluff.

  “His name is Tuffy,” Eichord told her.

  “Tuffy,” she whispered softly, and the cat liked it so well he spun in a circle and fell off her stomach in a tumbling kind of somersault and then did a few acrobatics on the bed. “Guess what?” she said to the kitten. “I LOVE YOU!” It was a whispered rush of adoration, to which she added, “BOTH of you,” and Eichord smiled.

  “We feel the same way, my sweet."

  “Oh, thank you,” she said in her softest tones, smiling at this fluffball attacking her leg. “Oh!” She laughed. “I don't know what to say. I just adore you, Tuffy. I think you're great."

  To which the little gray cat responded by opening his mouth wider than she'd have thought possib
le and yawning a great yawn, and showing a mouth that was shocking pink like the inside of a seashell, and Donna laughed with glee.

  “What a guy,” she said.

  And Eichord smiled like he'd knocked one out of the park.

  VARNEY

  Daniel would never have expected the girl to accept this weird turn of events in her life so easily. She was perfect. He sensed that he couldn't have done better if he'd had a hundred shots at picking up somebody who would suit his needs to the nth degree. Sissy was one of those people who, once dedicated to a person or a cause or a goal, hoped only to please. She required some direction or she would be aimless and rootless. She was not a self-starter. She needed positioning, guidance, but once she had that she could function with surprising smoothness.

  Sissy was of a gentle and placid nature. A girl who had never known a father, or even a particularly strong maternal influence, she took to Daniel as would a duck to the wet stuff. He would tell her precisely what would be expected of her within the framework of each given day or event. Never really bossing her or being domineering, she felt, just telling her the way it was to be. He expected NOTHING from her in return. No sexual favors. Nothing. It was so new to her, this sort of a benevolent, guiding hand, and she took each word from the huge man as if it were handed to her engraved on stone.

  She was used to BOYS not men. A boy who would want her only for sex or for companionship on a date, and who would say, “Hey, wanna go to the Steakhouse tonight?” and she'd say, “Sure, sounds great.” And then she'd think for a minute, thinking for both of them and say, “But, uh, Toby,” or Kevin, or whoever, “do you have any MONEY?"

  “Um—uh, no,” he'd say. “Uh, can you let me borrow fifteen dollars?” And now here was a guy, a man, who would hand her thousands of dollars and trust her to do the right thing.

  She fully expected he'd been conning her when he pulled her off Randolph Street but, God, wasn't it worth a shot to find out? He was so interesting and so convincing and obviously experienced.