Cruel Devices

by George Wright Padgett

  He emptied the ashes from the Folgers can onto the ground and scooped up the pieces of the device. From his sports jacket, he produced a hundred-dollar bill and shoved it into the dirty can.

  Carrying large amounts of cash while on book tours was a habit he’d started years ago. It was originally a way for him to avoid explaining his expenses to Josephine. If there was no credit card receipt for a high bar tab or a visit to a gentlemen’s club, then everyone was the happier. Even though they no longer shared bank accounts, he continued the practice. Old habits die hard and all that.

  Plus, cash was a great persuader, which allowed Gavin a certain amount of control. After all, no one’s face ever lit up when he flashed a credit card, but smiling Ben Franklin knew how to party.

  Gavin approached the door, and Madame Kovács shrieked.

  “Look, all I wanted was a smoke.”

  Before Gavin could present the money as restitution, the woman cracked the screen door and the little dog charged out. The rat of a dog nipped at his legs as Gavin carefully moved backward. Then it ran in a frenzied circle around him, apparently interpreting Gavin’s attempts to avoid crushing it as a retreat.

  With a slow, steady, wide sweep of his foot, Gavin managed to gently push the dog off the deck. The dog landed on its back and yelped as it bounced. Back on its legs, it ducked under the safety of the deck, barking at him from beneath cover.

  Gavin was relieved to hear that the dog still had fight in it. He didn’t want to injure the little monster, just get it out from under his feet. He could offer money for a radio, but replace a broken Chihuahua? Even he understood people’s attachments to their pets.

  With the dog out of the way, Gavin returned to the screen door. Madame Kovács retreated in a panic further into the house. He slung his jacket over his shoulder, traded the can to the other hand, and grabbed the aluminum knob of the door. Then he hesitated for a moment, remembering Ms. Hodges’s creepy warning to him.

  Whoa, wait a minute! What are you doing, Gav? He released his grip on the knob and peered through the mesh of the screen. For all he knew, she was calling 911… or worse, getting a gun or something. Bursting in uninvited could be considered trespassing. She’d be within her rights to defend herself from an intruder.

  He immediately envisioned half a dozen headlines in whatever Droverton had for a local paper. No, it would be bigger than that. It would probably end up in the Enquirer or Publisher’s Weekly. “Famous horror author shot dead by local psychic.”

  He stepped back from the door while warily scanning the entryway for signs of movement. He wondered why he’d attempted to be nice to the old hag in the first place. He could simply leave. But then he imagined retelling the story to Josephine. She’d find out—she always did eventually. She’d find out and then browbeat him for traumatizing an old woman. He didn’t need that grief.

  Then he remembered the “Small Equipement Repair” next door. “Miss Kovács, I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?” As he negotiated the plywood deck, he mumbled, “So don’t turn me into a bat or anything.”

  A tin bell above the door announced Gavin’s entrance into the dilapidated shop. The sharp smell of wicker, old wood, and mothballs filled the cluttered area. An assortment of stacked, mildewed trunks, suitcases, and ramshackle barstools inadvertently formed a makeshift corridor leading to the right half of the room.

  Coffee can in hand and his jacket still slung over his arm, Gavin cautiously navigated the path. He took extra care so as not to bump anything that might bring the entire place down on him. His destination was a modern-looking cash register atop a dusty glass counter across the room. Above the register dangled a naked light bulb plugged into a socket. He glanced upward at an orange extension cord from the light that disappeared into the rafters.

  “Hello? Is anyone in here?” Gavin asked, approaching the counter. To the right of the register, a figure slightly lowered a fully opened newspaper, exposing his eyes and the top of his nose.

  “Oh, sorry,” Gavin said with a nervous laugh. “I didn’t see you there.”

  The man grunted a disinterested acknowledgement as the newspaper returned to its original height. Except for his fists holding either side of the paper, the man was completely concealed.

  Gavin moved closer, resting the coffee can and his jacket next to each other on the counter. He waited a few seconds for the man to finish whatever article he was reading. When nothing happened, Gavin tapped on the newspaper as if it were a door and he was politely knocking. “Uh… excuse me, customer here wanting to make a purchase… purchase services.”

  The paper lowered, revealing an olive-skinned man who Gavin guessed was in his early thirties. The man’s facial features were sharp and angular. Gavin caught himself admiring his appearance, the two- or three-day-old razor stubble, the perfectly shaped eyebrows. But Gavin’s gaze stopped at the half-opened blue and grey Puma windbreaker, where copious amounts of dark chest hair swirled this way and that on the man’s half-exposed abdomen. It was like viewing the overlapping patterns of trees from above a forest. Gavin smirked.

  “You really should get yourself some gold chains to finish off the look there,” Gavin said.

  The man blinked slowly a few times before Gavin added, “You know, numba one gangsta and all that.” Gavin mimicked throwing gang signs and squinted his eyes to indicate his street cred.

  No response.

  “All right,” Gavin said, reaching for the coffee can. “Your sign says that you fix things. Can you repair this transistor radio?”

  Without acknowledging the can, the man shouted, “Béla!”

  Gavin jerked at the volume of the man’s voice. “What do you—”

  “Béla!” the man hollered again, timed to cut Gavin off. He stared into Gavin’s eyes. This time, he stretched the syllables out, adding an inflection at the end. “B-ééééé-l-aaaaa.”

  The shout made Gavin realize that he had a headache. He closed his eyes for a moment while rubbing his temples. When he reopened them, another man, presumably Béla, was emerging from an opening behind a green flannel blanket tacked to the wall. The man looked at Gavin and then at the Puma jacket man. Béla clutched a clear, half-empty Starbucks cup that contained the darkest coffee Gavin had ever seen. The green straw of the cup found its way to the man’s mouth, and Gavin heard a faint clicking sound.

  There was a family resemblance between Béla and the Puma jacket man, but there were also significant differences. It was as if all of the leftover raw materials to make the Puma jacket man had been heaped together and left out in the afternoon sun: the ingredients were all there, but the baking directions hadn’t been followed. Gavin also recognized a familiar weariness in the man, the kind of tired look that creeps in after turning forty.

  Without any prompting, Béla took the coffee can. He produced a pair of spectacles from the breast pocket of his white dress shirt and jiggled the can around, tilting it toward him. A second or so later, he put it down. “Radio. It’s parts for radio.”

  Gavin instantly took note of the Hungarian accent, though the man’s English was far better than that of Madame Kovács next door.

  “Yes,” Gavin said, having a difficult time masking his frustration. “I know that.”

  The newspaper rose again, concealing the Puma jacket man’s face.

  “What is all this ash?” Béla asked as he eyed him suspiciously. “Where did you get this radio? I’ve seen it before, it’s familiar.”

  “It’s a long story,” Gavin said with evenly measured words. “Can you fix it?”

  Béla chuckled as he reached for the plastic Starbucks cup. “Fix? Sure, I can fix.” There was the odd clicking sound again as the straw hit the man’s lips. That’s when Gavin realized that the almost-black liquid sloshing in the bottom half of the cup wasn’t coffee at all. Béla spit into the opening of the straw and wiped a strand of tobacco juice from his chin with the back of his hand. “I can fix anything.”

  Gavin nearly retched, but he c
ouldn’t look away from the tiny bubbles of saliva that lined the inside circumference of the cup like a micro-string of spit pearls.

  “I should not fix this, though believe me that I can,” Béla said, looking over the rim of his glasses at Gavin. “You should buy something better for yourself.” He punctuated the sales pitch with another spit.

  “Here,” he said as he bent to reach for something in the grimy glass case. Béla returned to Gavin’s line of sight with a cardboard box the size of a lunch pail. Japanese or Chinese letters covered the package. It had graphics of radio towers and what looked like busy lightning bolts happily shooting from the structures. Béla eagerly removed the lid of the box and pushed it toward Gavin. “See? This is radio and clock. It’s much better for you.”

  Gavin shook his head and carefully maneuvered the Folgers can away from the plastic cup of blackened saliva. “No, I want you to fix this one.”

  A dejected-looking Béla took the can, and, with raised eyebrows, asked, “Why? Why for this and not a new radio? It has clock, you know… tick tock, tick tock.” He spat again. “I show you.” Before Gavin could stop him, Béla plugged the radio into a power strip slung over the edge of the counter.

  A cheery voice from the radio announced that they were listening to WHCN The River 105.9. “This is Tommy T, and I want to remind you to keep listening for when we play two bridge- or river-related songs in a row. You could win $1059 if you’re the 105th caller when we play ‘em.”

  Gavin found himself in something of a staring match with Béla as the overenthusiastic Tommy T rattled on. “We’ll be doing this promotion right up until the 5k Fun Walk next weekend when the Thanatos Bridge restoration project will be complete.”

  Béla twisted the volume knob to make the DJ’s voice louder while offering an obviously forced smile. With upturned palms, Béla nodded eagerly to Gavin as if there was no way he could refuse the radio now. Gavin stared at the device for a few seconds as it proclaimed, “Cindy Nakahara won yesterday by identifying ‘Take Me to the River’ by the Talking Heads and ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen…”

  Gavin slyly reached across as if to examine the radio but turned the volume down at the last second, fading out the peppy sound of Tommy T’s voice. That explained why he’d heard the Bobbie Gentry song. He noticed the wounded frown on Béla’s face, but he pressed on. “How much to fix the blue one?” Gavin asked. “The one you have is very nice, but I need this one. It’s portable.”

  Béla spit into his straw and then dumped the contents of the Folgers can out for closer inspection. He made an exaggerated grimace, showing his reluctance. For a few seconds, he used a stubby pencil to probe the ash-covered components with the visible distaste of a pathologist examining a multiple-gunshot-wound victim.

  The silence made Gavin feel awkward, so he broke it. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this one is sentimental to me.”

  “Sen-ti-mental, eh, but it belongs to someone else, no?” Béla asked as he arranged the radio fragments.

  “Huh? Yeah, sentimental. How much?”

  “Twenty-five dollars?” He looked over his glasses again with raised eyebrows. When Gavin didn’t flinch, Béla repeated himself, this time more confidently. “Yes, fifteen minutes, twenty-five dollars.”

  Gavin grabbed his sports coat from the counter, saying, “Highway robbery. It probably didn’t cost that much to begin with. Get it done in five minutes and I’ll give you fifty.”

  Puma Jacket lowered his newspaper and eyed Gavin suspiciously.

  Béla nodded in agreement. “You pay sixty and I do batteries for you, new ones.”

  “No, just the radio,” Gavin said, removing the cigarette pack from his jacket pocket. “The batteries should be fine.”

  “But the sen-ti-mental,” Béla protested.

  Gavin ignored him and instead asked, “Hey, do either of the two of you have a light?”

  Puma Jacket rested the paper on the counter and pointed to a small sign on the wall behind him.

  No Smoking

  Gavin did a double-take. Beneath the framed sign hung a picture of the two men with their arms around the harelip herself, Madame Kovács.

  “It figures,” Gavin said to himself. His headache was pounding.

  The newspaper returned to its original position, blocking Puma Jacket’s face. A voice from behind the paper muttered, “Nasty habit.”

  Gavin shook his head, deciding that he wasn’t about to stand there and watch Béla fill his cup anymore. As he turned to wander about in the shop, Gavin waved his finger in the air, saying, “Five minutes.”

  Béla acknowledged the command with the wet sound of spit splashing in his plastic cup.

  Three

  GAVIN WANDERED DOWN THE CLUTTERED AISLES feeling like he was strolling through Salvador Dali’s flea market. With rows of junk stacked high on shelves, the area was set up more like a cluttered library than a pawn shop. It was a claustrophobic space, dense with knickknacks, furniture, and moldy clothing that had been out of style for many decades. He smirked, imagining himself transported into one of those TV hoarding shows, or better yet, the Island of Misfit Toys.

  He moved slowly. The light was as dim as a carnival freak-show tent, and he certainly didn’t need to bump something and bring all of this junk toppling down on him. Worse was how the uneven shelves of junk barricaded any airflow. The air was dank, and in this corner of the metal box of a building, Gavin felt the July sun roasting the top of the roof far above his head.

  He turned the corner of the labyrinth of junk to see a white ceramic cat perched on a shelf at the end of the aisle. Amused, Gavin said to himself, “This must be what the sign meant by ‘Antiques and Things.’ This must be the ‘and Things’ part of the exhibit.”

  The cat was a typical mold-made piece like those found in any pay-to-paint shop in a mall. What made this one so bizarre was that someone had bored a dozen or so holes in it. Translucent marbles of every color plugged the holes. Examining the ceramic’s underside revealed a fist-sized hole and a mounted forty-watt bulb with a cord. “Oh, man, it just keeps getting better and better,” Gavin said with a snort. “Maybe today wasn’t a total waste after all.”

  He looked around like a man on a mission. “I’ve got to plug this in. This is the perfect weird, tacky gift for Billy.” He imagined the older man opening the gift box and, after the shock, politely smiling and thanking him for such a thoughtful present. The real fun would come later when Beverly would undoubtedly forbid Billy to display the monstrosity anywhere in their home and Gavin would act wounded. Gavin would be able to use the item as proof that the man was totally “whipped.” He knew that Josephine would get a real gift on behalf of them both, but he’d rack up a lot of mileage with this little stunt.

  “I’ve gotta see light shining through these marbles.” He looked for an outlet to plug it into until he remembered the penlight on the rental car keys. The crescent-moon flashlight was a marketing item from Crescent Car Rentals. Gavin had taunted the rep at the counter until she had admitted that it looked more like a banana than a moon crest.

  He wedged the ceramic cat under the arm holding his jacket and took the gaggle of keys from his pants pocket. He did his best to shake his own keys from the rental ones, but the curved “moon” had hooked through the ring. The keys jingled violently until his heavier set dislodged and, with brittle chimes, bounced across the cement floor. Gavin let out an exasperated sigh as he placed the rental keys with the penlight on the shelf next to a shoebox labeled “Classey Neckties.”

  As he bent to pick up his house keys, there was a rustling on the shelf behind him. He turned as the box of ties hit the floor. The keys were gone.

  What the…

  Gavin tried to peer through the opening left by the dislodged box of ties. He determined that whoever swiped his keys from the other side had been quick enough to block his view by placing a hot-air popcorn popper in the way. A sudden chill ran through him, manifesting in goose bumps. He stole a quick glance up
ward, but there wasn’t any A/C ductwork in the rafters.

  He called out to his unseen culprit. “Hey, whoever’s there, the joke’s on you. I walked here. The car is miles away.” He scurried down to the end of the aisle, shouting, “So you’ll never find it if that’s your plan!”

  As he lumbered around the corner of the labyrinth of junk, he was astounded that the pathway was empty.

  No one could have run away that quickly, so they had to be hiding in one of the shelf nooks.

  He hunched over, spying for crawlspaces in which the thief, or what he hoped was just a prankster, could have made their escape. A brief wave of nausea swept over him, causing him to shudder and break into a cold sweat.

  “What was in those breakfast burritos I had this morning? Ugh… or what if it’s the flu?”

  He shifted the cat lamp to his other arm as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. If he were sick, Jo would have to cancel the tour for a couple of days. That actually wouldn’t be too bad. He could use the rest.

  He returned to his pursuit, though it was more of a brisk walk than a trot now. “Hey, whoever’s out there, I’m not feeling so good here. Say I give you twenty bucks and you come out.” He slowed down even more as another shiver crept up the back of his neck, making his neck hairs bristle. He swallowed hard to keep from vomiting. He was short of breath. He was definitely getting a day off from the tour. Jo wouldn’t dare risk him contaminating the “Damien Marksman Faithful” with influenza.

  He sensed someone watching him from the shadows, though the person was wise enough to stay safely out of sight. “Look, no harm done,” he shouted. “I’m not mad or anything. I’ve just got to get out of here, okay? You’ve had your fun. Come out where I can see you.”

  He stopped to listen for any trace of footsteps, breathing, giggling—anything. There was only the sound of his own panting. His stomach felt like it was somewhere far away. He tightened his grip on the ceramic cat in frustration.