A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Little more,” he choked as he continued to try to keep himself airborne.

  Joel lowered him further as the need to burst into tears laughing crept up on him. He was nearly dizzy from it. He tried not to think about the chance of getting a stroke from laughing. It would have been outrageously ironic if he died during the act of escaping to plan his death. That would make a nice finale to The Unfortunate End of Joel Monroe, but a crappy ending to his life.

  Suddenly the weight was gone from his hands, and for a terrifying moment, he thought he might have dropped his friend, but Frank had landed safely, and stood on the coal bunker scowling back up the wall at Joel.

  “I’ve a good mind to leave you up there,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?” Joel asked, composing himself.

  “Because if there’s someone in that house we’re getting arrested, you jackass.”

  That put a stop to Joel’s gallop. What if they got arrested? It was, he noted to himself, a ludicrous thought. He was on his way to plan his own suicide. So what if he got arrested? Yet the nervousness never left him.

  “How do I get down?” he asked eventually.

  “I don’t know. Give me a minute.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? They’ll be looking for us right now.”

  “Yeah, but they’ll be looking by the fire exits or the front gate. That was the whole point of Phase Two.”

  “Well, they’ll move on quick enough. I need to get down.”

  Frank turned and searched about the neighbour’s back garden, checking windows to make sure no one was staring out at them. It seemed all quiet. After a few minutes, he reappeared with a stepladder.

  “Found it in the shed,” Frank told him, as he threw the ladder up next to the bunker.

  “I have to assume that what we’re doing breaks several laws?” Joel asked, as he delicately stretched his feet out looking for purchase. He was careful, so careful. Falling from a ladder would be a worse death than stroke. He didn’t know why that was true, but it was.

  “Not any big ones,” Frank assured him, grasping the steps to hold them in place.

  When Joel got his feet back on the ground the two of them looked at one another for a moment, and laughed. Without thinking about it, Joel reached out and pulled his friend into a hug.

  “Let’s get moving,” Frank told him after they’d stopped laughing.

  They stowed the ladder back where it belonged and casually, as if they had every right in the world to be there, headed for the front gate of their neighbour’s garden. Joel waited for some kind of a shout. Someone calling at them; “where do you think you’re going,” or something similar, but it never came, and so the two of them simply walked out.

  Joel paused to observe the conservatory, stuffed with children’s toys of every shape and size. Teddy bears strewn lazily by the bodies of dolls and trains and trucks here and there. Stuck to the wall beside the door that led into the main house was a collection of pictures and drawings. The artist had signed every image, and Joel found himself picturing two loving parents looking fondly on their little prodigies as they hung their handiwork on the walls.

  So many of the toys were creative things, building toys, making toys, fixing toys, that Joel saw in his mind’s eye the kind of dedication and love that he had never given to Eva. Her mother had been her playmate, her father a stern thing, a quiet thing. She had spent hours in his company, but only where he wanted to be, in front of the television watching games, or in his garage while he worked. He had dedicated no time that he could recall where she had decided what they did or where they went. He struggled to remember a single toy that had belonged to her, and the realisation of his distance from his child caused a lump in his throat.

  “Problem?” Frank asked, peering through the window at the mountain of toys.

  “No,” Joel told him.

  “Lucky kid,” Frank observed.

  “Lucky parents,” Joel replied, and moved away.

  They made their way through the estate, a small collection of suburban bungalows with flower boxes and big gardens and driveways big enough for two cars, before emerging on to the long road that led to the gates of Hilltop. It looked far away, but not so far that someone out searching for them wouldn’t be able to spot the two old men.

  The bus stop where they waited was painfully exposed, up against the wall of the local school and in plain sight of the front gate of Hilltop, though still some distance away. Joel carefully watched the gate of the nursing home for signs of someone coming to get them. No one stirred; the gate didn’t move. Nonetheless, he felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief as the bus pulled in to whisk them into town.

  “I hope you brought money this time,” Frank told him, as they took their seats next to one another, midway down the bus.

  “Did you?” Joel fired back.

  “I don’t need to. I’m the brains of the operation. You’re the muscle and the money.”

  Joel patted himself down, finding his wallet inside his jacket’s inside pocket.

  “Brought it.”

  Frank smiled at him as Hilltop vanished behind them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bus rolled toward the city centre in no apparent hurry, and Joel enjoyed the lack of urgency as he sat with Frank in a comfortable silence. He wondered what the other passengers might be thinking of them. Two elderly gents out for a jaunt. Did his guilt and nervous apprehension show itself? Could they see his fear of getting caught? Or did the other passengers think anything of them at all? Were they invisible in their own way? Just another two old men going from here to there.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Where do you fancy? World’s our oyster.”

  “Do you know, I’ve never had an oyster.”

  “You want to go for oysters?”

  “No, just that I’ve heard that expression a million times and I’ve never understood it.”

  “That’s almost philosophical of you, Joel. If you’re not careful we’ll uncover an artist in you.”

  “Pfft.” Joel scoffed at the idea outwardly, but had to admit he had enjoyed his little acting roles under Frank’s watchful eye. He thought the show they had given The Rhino the day before had been particularly masterful.

  “Oh, you can pretend you’re indignant all you want. I bet you’ve been quietly begging for a leading role all your life.”

  “I worked all my life. That’s what I did.”

  “You regret it?”

  “Yes and no,” Joel admitted. “I think I neglected Eva because of it. Makes me a little sad to think of it.”

  “I’m sure she understands.”

  “I’m not. I don’t think I’d have to sneak out of a nursing home if we were closer. I think we’d be closer if I’d been a nicer dad.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “I suppose at the end it makes sense to look back on all the mistakes.”

  Frank didn’t reply to that. Joel would admit that talking about your suicide is typically a conversation killer. Instead he allowed his mind to wander back to his garage. It was most of his adult life and a portion of his childhood, too. He’d been apprenticed at fifteen. At the time that was considered old enough, but now he wondered. What had he missed out on in those intervening years?

  “Let’s go to my old garage,” he suggested.

  “You think there’s inspiration waiting there for you?”

  “Maybe, but mostly I just want to look at it.”

  “Excellent. We break out of a maximum security nursing home so we can go stare at a garage. Have I admonished you on your frightening lack of imagination before?”

  “At least once. Maybe more. I don’t often pay attention to you.”

  “Well, try to recall the last lecture and come up with something better than your garage.”

  Joel let words wash off him. He had been lying, of course. He hung on almost every word Frank said. It was hard not to, the
y were performed so well. This time, though, he really wanted to see that garage. He wanted to look at the building that had taken so much of him, and not just his time and energy. His money, his emotional well-being, his status in society had all rested on that building and the people who went in and out of the place, and after all that, here he was, sneaking out of a nursing home because he wasn’t allowed to walk around without supervision in case a stroke killed him.

  “No. I want to see it.”

  “Interesting,” Frank mused. “You seem quite certain of yourself here. What’s going on in that block of cement you call a head, Joel?”

  “I gave a lot to that place. I feel like…” He paused, trying to find the words, trying to sum up the tangle of feelings in his head. “I feel like it owes me something.”

  Frank said nothing, but when the bus stopped just a couple of blocks from the old garage and Joel made a move to go, his friend slipped out of his seat behind him and nodded encouragingly at him.

  The two of them made their way calmly along the quieter streets just outside the city centre, passing people rushing here and there as they took their time. It was all so familiar to Joel. So much of his life had been lived in this neighbourhood. Sometimes he’d go for lunch in one of the local diners, or have the occasional after-work drink when one of his employees had talked him into it. He’d driven to this garage. These streets had been his streets, and his feet remembered them as he walked. Frank strolled with him, offering nothing, but Joel caught him glancing every now and then, as if trying to measure his reaction.

  Around the corner it revealed itself, standing at the end of the street, dead ahead. It was his, but it was not. Someone had painted it for a start, and added slick signage that gave it a modern look. It looked well, but somehow alien to him. It was jarring.

  As they approached it, Joel didn’t bother to slow his pace; his feet moved him independent of thought, and he simply walked into the building without hesitating as he had done for decades.

  It wasn’t his. The alien effect was tenfold inside. Cars being worked on had laptops attached to them, the mechanics poring over the diagnostics. They wore their overalls but looked clean somehow, or at very least, cleaner than he would have expected. Loud music played, and the men shouted over it at one another.

  He scanned the room for anything familiar. A face, a piece of equipment, an old decoration, and found nothing. It was all new. All so different. He tried to remember how he had laid the place out, and found the memory hard to reach. Like a dream after waking, it was intangible, just out of his reach. He could recall little touches, some of the decorations and affectations that Lucey had added to the place over the years to try to make it more comfortable for him and his customers, but he had scoffed at them. He wished now he could recall them. He wished he had appreciated them at the time.

  It wasn’t his. He’d dedicated decades to this place. Its permanence, its endurance had been his. His home, his marriage, his livelihood had been this building, and now it was something different: a stranger in place of a friendly face.

  “Help you?” a voice asked him, bringing him out of his reverie.

  “No, thank you,” he told the man absently.

  “Well, is one of the cars yours?”

  “No. I just wanted to look.”

  He tried to think of a way of explaining that he had practically built this place and that the young man addressing him was standing in a spot that he had worked on countless engines and drive shafts and wishbone bushes, but the words eluded him.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” the man told him in condescending tones, “but you can’t just stand around here, pal.”

  Another one. Another person who thought they could talk to Joel Monroe like he was a child.

  “Can do whatever I want,” he told the young man, sizing him up. Joel was delighted to find himself looking down on the man.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so, buddy. This is a garage, not your living room.”

  He made a move to usher Joel out.

  “Don’t even think about putting your hands on me,” Joel told him ominously. He drew his shoulders back and puffed his chest out.

  Work all around the garage seemed to stop as the mechanics all looked at him. The atmosphere in the room had become charged. The temperature seemed to drop. He was, he decided in that moment, making quite a fool of himself. He wouldn’t have tolerated a complete stranger standing in the middle of his garage when it was his. He might have handled it with more tact, but he certainly wouldn’t have brooked the implied threat. He was about to back down when Frank saved him. Again.

  “Gentlemen,” he intoned to the room. “I humbly beg pardon, but my pugnacious friend here is the former proprietor of this establishment, and unfortunately he’s dying of cancer, likely to pop his clogs any minute now. He wanted one last look at the old dear before he goes.”

  The mood changed in an instant, and the young man who had been confronting him looked suddenly mollified.

  “Sorry to hear that,” he mumbled.

  “Not your fault,” Joel told him, in what he hoped passed for a magnanimous tone. “Just wanted to nose around.”

  He shot Frank a grateful look before he scanned the room again.

  It wasn’t his. It was someone else’s now, and he was an invader in their space. In a way it was a sort of liberating feeling. One less tie to the old life that was holding him back. This look around would suffice as a goodbye. A farewell to the building that he had given so much to. Where his daughter had played, and his grandkids. He thought there was something poetic in saying goodbye to it.

  He patted the young man on the shoulder and turned to make his way out into the sunshine.

  And there it was. Hanging up just by the door. His scan hadn’t taken in the full 360 degrees, so he’d missed it. A little sign. “My Tools, My Rules,” it said, printed on an old license plate. Lucey had bought that for him. Told him it fit him. She had hung it up, too. Not where it was hanging now of course; he seemed to recall it hanging in his office. It had been her gift to him. Now it hung on someone else’s wall.

  “Can I take this?” he asked no one in particular as he began to unhook it from the screw that loosely held it in place.

  He wasn’t doing it particularly deftly, and the plate scraped uncomfortably against the wall, scarring the paint.

  Frank stopped alongside him.

  “Right, there, pal?” he asked, doing that trick where he talked out of the corner of his mouth. “Can we speed this up a little? This isn’t my favourite kind of audience.”

  Joel shot a glance back over his shoulder to see all of the mechanics and floor staff staring at him.

  “Used to be mine,” he called out to them.

  They continued staring.

  “I have a strong feeling they’re considering returning it to you,” Frank told him, still smiling, his lips barely moving, “but I don’t think you’ll enjoy the reunion the way they’ll do it.”

  Joel twisted at it a little more, and it came away from the wall.

  “Thank you,” he told the room as he made his way out the door.

  His tools, his rules. He had forgotten that somewhere along the way. He wouldn’t again.

  “I’m going to put up one of those signs back at Hilltop,” Frank told him outside. “‘Days Since Joel Offered to Do Violence to Someone’. Gonna start a little pool. I bet you can’t make it to three.”

  “Sorry,” Joel told him, subdued by the ordeal but glad to be leaving with this hidden and almost forgotten little piece of Lucey.

  “I didn’t know the place meant so much to you,” Frank told him, dropping the amusement from his voice.

  “I guess I didn’t either. Just so many years went into it, you know. And for what?”

  “Joel, I know this is going to hurt, but literally everyone has the exact same thought. When it’s all said and done we’ve given decades to doing the same thing every day, and very few people are lucky enough to have something
to show for it besides a few scars and, if they’re lucky, some savings.”

  “I guess I thought it would be nice. I don’t know. Pleasant to see the old place. But it wasn’t. It was awful. Like I’d never been there before.”

  “I’m sorry, pal.”

  “Me, too. I wish…” he trailed off wistfully. He didn’t know what he wished, but he was certain that it wasn’t what he’d just experienced. At the very least it was a goodbye. He stared down at the little sign. His rules. His way. Master of his own fate. The garage was no longer his. That life was no longer his. All ancient history. But at least he was still in charge of something. At least he could still end it any way he wanted.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What about if I hung myself from the clock tower?” Joel asked as they sipped pints of stout at the bar.

  “Hanged,” Frank told him, brushing the head from his lips.

  “What?”

  “Hanged. The past tense of hang is hanged.”

  “No, it’s not. I hung loads of things in my day. It was always hung.”

  “No, you hung loads of things, but anyone who got hanged wasn’t hung.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The past tense of the verb to hang someone is hanged. The past tense of the verb to hang something is hung.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Fine. What if I hanged myself from the clock tower?”

  “Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

  “Well, you were the one who insisted it was correct.”

  “I meant it doesn’t sound like a good suicide.”

  “What exactly does sound like a good suicide?”

  “I told you this was your baby, not mine. You’re not cadging me for ideas. Why the clock tower?”

  “I don’t know, something about being out of time?”

  “Jesus,” Frank groaned disappointedly.

  “Maybe in the clown costume? Or something else—what if I was dressed as a priest?”

  “Good lord,” Frank groaned again.

  They had wandered and meandered their way through town until they had arrived at a bar, Frank leading the way again, leading as if he knew where he was going, though Joel suspected he was as clueless this time as he had been less than a week before. He didn’t mind; there was something pleasingly familiar about the streets they walked. It had been a while since Joel had taken time out to just stroll, and he found himself feeling right at home as he ambled.