Murders Among Dead Trees

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “That was my parting gift.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, lay back into the pillow and raised her arms over her head. “Now, this? This is my moment.”

  He watched her. Without the stupid glasses, she was a ten. She looked good enough to eat, a porn star with a hot fudge pussy.

  “Take a good look. You don’t think you’re old? Men never think they’re old until they’re shopping for coffins. I’ll fix that for you. I’m the last, and hottest, 21-year-old you’ll ever have. You pissed me off walking into that bar like you owned the place, like you were some young stud model who could say any shit to anybody and get any girl. I gave you your shot, but your dick’s too short for this ride. Time to grow up and act your age, old man.”

  He stared at her, said nothing and smoked. He memorized her breasts because she was right. He should have brought a camera, but there would be time for that later, under different circumstances. He would have to wait for some time, until whatever DNA and fingerprints he had left behind had been wiped away with time.

  The bartender had seen them leave together. He might even kill the bartender first, as a warm-up. The ache was still in his belly and head but, with every word, Red put another burden on his shoulders and he knew there was only one way to lift that weight. Sublimating his rage by drilling women in one night stand after one night stand was not going to assuage that gnawing, grinding ache anymore. Sex instead of violence couldn’t hold back the tide any longer. He knew that now.

  “Grab your pants and get out,” she said. “I’m done. I’m content to know I’ll be starring in your empty masturbatory fantasies until the Viagra fails. That makes me very happy. Maybe you’ll be nicer to women — much older women — from here on, but assholes can never fake nice for long. Older women won’t put up with your shit, anyway. They know their value. Guys like you end up lonely and wondering what happened. Now you know the truth about yourself. You are fucking cursed, man.”

  He stepped into the bathroom to change. He didn’t want her to see his flaccid penis. On his way out, he stopped by the door and looked back. “If you’re going to be this mean, I’d like to buy some hash,” he said.

  She let out a long stream of smoke. “How about an eight ball?”

  “I’ve just got cash left for the cab. I’ll come another time for the hash, Red.”

  “Come with your little tail tucked between your legs,” she said.

  “You’re right, Red. You sure are a bitch before and after.”

  “I faked it during,” she said.

  He was done with this part of his life and it was time to go back to the beginning. Despite her curse, he left smiling. He felt…what? Free? Yes, that was it. He hadn’t felt this way for a long time. He hadn’t felt this way since his last hot, jobless high school summer.

  In the beginning, the sky stood gray, fading to black with rain on its way. He debated about whether to boot it back to town or find shelter under a tree. Farmland stretched out in all directions, but there was nowhere to hide if the clouds opened up on him. He could pedal to town, of course, but wasn’t the bike a lightning rod? He stopped his ten-speed at the side of the road, refusing to scurry.

  A vast chestnut tree stood just outside the wooden fence. If the tree hadn’t been struck apart by a hundred years of storms by now, he reasoned the lightning wouldn’t find him. If he were killed, it was just God being capricious and no one can stop that anyhow.

  He crossed the ditch, carrying the bike in an awkward grip. He carefully stood the white ten-speed against the fence a number of posts away, perhaps one-hundred feet. If the bicycle did act as a lightning rod, it would be far enough away that he’d probably only catch a little jolt through the ground and he’d have something to brag about to Cherry when she got back from her family’s cottage. He sat beneath the tree and waited for the storm. No one could see him from the road. He braced his feet against the fence and thought how private this little hollow felt. Yes, he’d definitely have to bring Cherry here.

  Her real name was Cheryl. The nickname annoyed her father and he thought he knew why. It made her father think about what boys do with girls. It made her father suspect he and Cherry had already done it. Her dad was right about that, though he probably didn’t think they’d done it in her parents’ bed. That made him smile. Everything about Cherry made him smile — except when she wanted to talk instead of do it.

  He suspected Cherry’s Dad took her to the cottage to get her away from him. He’d wait. All the other girls in town were ugly or thought he was creepy or went out with other guys.

  A stab of lightning flashed across the sky. Thunder rumbled again but then took on a thinner, higher-pitched chug. The sound of a large engine melded with the distant thunder. The engine headed his way across the field of tall hay. Minutes passed and the whine of the engine hit a higher register and the rumble grew taller and wider until it seemed someone must have somehow spotted him from far away and was now coming right for him.

  A tall glass booth rose above the hay. A thin figure drove toward him. He recognized the odd mushroom cap of the outsized roof of the thresher. Disembodied above the reaching hay, the machine looked like a telephone booth hovering over the field. He watched it grow and grow until he saw the boy at its helm. Joey Pasternak steered the machine, focused on his work.

  In hungry fascination, he watched the machine’s whirling blades gather hay like a vast maw filled with knives instead of teeth.

  Though drawn to the big machine, he had no interest in speaking to Joey. He made himself smaller against the trunk and used a trick he practiced every day at home. “I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here,” he said in a low voice. For a perverse moment he thought the thresher might come straight at him, break through the fence and sweep him up with the hay. Just before it reached the edge of the field, Joey wheeled left in a neat turn. Bales of hay stood in perfectly spaced intervals in the thresher’s swath. He had no use for farming, but enjoyed its neatness. He knew real farming had lots to do with dirt and stinking fertilizer and shit, but he could respect the baling machine. He relaxed and watched the thresher retreat, watching with interest as another bale emerged from a spout in the rear and slipped down to the newly shorn field.

  He liked order. He made his bed every morning and folded his clothes “like a girl would,” his father often said. His dad was a slob who came home from the factory each night filthy with grease that a perfunctory shower never quite washed away. His father oiled gears in the works below the line all day, keeping the cars inching forward as an army of union men swarmed with power tools.

  His father might like the thresher. He liked cars that made a lot of noise and the big diesel on the thresher was the loudest thing he’d ever heard. His father would respect Joey. The boy was bewildered at school, but he looked like he knew what he was doing up in his high perch harvesting hay.

  The thunder rumbled on but the rain held off and he was glad of it. Once in a long while a car would blast by behind him with a doppler’s blare of country music. No cops patrolled these remote roads splitting farmland, so everyone barrelled along, free to speed, free to do anything.

  Around noon, Joey surprised him by stopping the thresher nearby. The gangly boy jumped from the ticking machine and walked to where he sat. “What do you want?” Joey stood in denim coveralls, hand on hips. The rest of their class still looked like long versions of children, but Joey looked tall and filled out like a man even though they were the same age.

  When he didn’t answer, Joey swung a leg over the fence in a smooth maneuver. Until now, he had only known Joey from a few shared classes. In school, Joey was as useful as a goat underwater. Here, amid the clods of earth and the tall hay cut low and long fences stretching out on each side, Joey was home.

  “I said, ‘What do you want?’”

  “Nothin’.”

  “If you’re here for a quiet place to jerk off, go the fuck home.”

  He looked up at Joey and
arranged his face into what he thought might look puzzled. “Relax, man. I’m just watching you work. You ever write your name in the hay with that thing? I betcha you could write out ‘fuck you’ in the field and somebody’s grandmother could have a heart attack reading it from a jet flying over.”

  Joey’s shoulders relaxed and he allowed a laugh. “No, I never tried writing my name or nothin’. I’ll wait till I own the farm or it’d be my dad having the heart attack.” His hands were still on his hips, like Joey thought he was an adult catching a naughty child.

  “You could always say it was aliens. Aliens are always taking shit kickers like you up in their spaceships and raping them with anal probes, right? Then they leave crop circles to let the other aliens know there’s some good farm boy ass around here.”

  Joey looked like he would get mad for a moment and then burst into another forced cackle, as a crow might laugh. “Shit, city boy. You got way too much time on your hands. You been thinking that up all this time?”

  “Nope, it just springs to my lips naturally, which is what the alien crop circles say about you, by the way.”

  “You’re a funny little faggot, city boy.”

  “We go to the same little high school in a tiny town that’s really just a village of 1,200 people and you call me a city boy? Pasternak, it’s a good thing you can drive that thing.”

  “Thresher.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Yeah, you know everything.”

  “You’re one of those guys that make knowing things sound bad.”

  “You know what happened to Bug Freily?”

  “Everybody knows what happened to Friely.”

  “I’m asking if you know, city boy.”

  “Do you know something everybody else doesn’t?”

  “My dad’s cousin is a cop. I heard that he was hanging by a tree.”

  “He hung himself in the woods out back of his place. A tree was prob’ly the most convenient thing around.”

  “I heard his pants were down around his ankles.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So I thought of you, city boy.”

  “You think about me a lot that way, Pasternak? Next time you’re giving yourself an enema in the shower, make sure you don’t turn the water on too hot, alright?”

  Joey didn’t smile. “Bug was a friend of mine.”

  “So, are you confessing something?”

  Joey looked at him a long time before he answered. “He said you were going to come over that afternoon to look at his bike. The day he died.”

  “The day he hung himself. You tell that to your dad’s cousin?”

  His answer changed Joey’s face. His cheeks flushed a brighter red. Pasternak choked and seemed to struggle to find his voice. “Bug had a little dirt bike. He said you were thinkin’ ’bout buying it. He said you were going to meet him by the quarry and try it out that day.”

  “I changed my mind about Bug’s bike.” He nodded toward the ten-speed leaning against the fence. “I’ve already got a bike.”

  Pasternak took another step toward the thresher, walking backward.

  “I wasn’t gay for Bug. Nobody could ever want Bug’s pants down. My dad’s cousin says it looks like somebody was trying to make it look like an masturbation accident, chokin’ and stuff.”

  “It’s called autoerotic asphyxiation and it’s very common. Parents like teens to be troubled and suicidal at the funeral, not freaks like Bug.”

  Pasternak balled his fists. “Shut up! He was a friend of mine!”

  “Every loser has another loser friend. It’s not special.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You jealous, Joey? Is that what this is about? You think I did your boyfriend? Maybe the cops should be talking to you.”

  “They found footprints! They took molds. They just don’t have anybody to match up the shoes with!”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “You did it, didn’t you? I didn’t want to think you could do that. We’ve known each other since kindergarten but — ”

  He leaped the fence easily.

  Pasternak saw him coming and broke into a run for the thresher.

  He wasn’t in track, but he was fast. Despite the other boy’s lead, he closed fast, his long stride stretching out farther, predatory. His heart rose in his chest and he felt that rush again, like if he wanted to, he might fly.

  Pasternak beat him to the thresher and climbed into the seat. The engine roared immediately and he wheeled the machine around to head for the farm. The Pasternak boy had thought he could escape in a big slow piece of farm machinery simply because it seemed safe and familiar. It really wasn’t either of those things. The cab’s door did not lock. Joey Pasternak was a big, strong farm boy, but the young man who pulled him out of the thresher’s seat and fed him to the machine’s teeth was stronger.

  A cardinal, bright red, darted by. Red is his favorite color. It reminds him of summer, the sweet smell of hay and warm breezes ferrying the scent of copper. Red tells him of how neatly a body can be baled.

  The wind sighed through the fields, bringing the yearning sobs and whispering voices. The ghosts say it is wrong to allow such potency and power to wane. Power must be used or it is lost. Age and time is no excuse. In blood, he comes home to his true nature. He was wrong to resist so long. The womanizing bond trader is the mask. Markets collapse and bellies sag, but murder is forever. He will make up for lost time.

  He is the Scarecrow. This is his gift. This is his stand.

  NEW THERAPEUTIC APPROACHES

  Over & Out was a character study. This follow-up to that short story gets into some action and we see how giving up was a temporary solution.

  It’s a strange thing reading this story after a long absence because I see echoes of the chapter called Fight Club in my crime novel, Higher Than Jesus. There’s even a character named Crystal in that chapter, too. Our brains work in tracks. The challenge is to make sure the brain doesn’t fall into ruts. ~ Chazz

  We are arranged in a circle in a high school’s multipurpose room, after hours. The chairs point into a claustrophobic hole of desperation. I don’t have a lot of choices about where I look. When I look up, I see gray ceiling tiles stained with brown, rusty water leaks. Down is old green lino, the color so bright under the fluorescence that I’m reminded of baby shit. People drone and mutter but all I really hear is the incessant thumping in my left ear. It’s so hard to concentrate on what anyone is saying, but I try. I try really hard to pay attention but all I can think about is myself and the drum pounding in my ear.

  Crystal, the woman immediately to my left, would be pretty except her next dye job is three weeks overdue. Her bright blonde roots under brown hair make her look like a doll dipped in a mud puddle. With bright red lipstick she could look really great, but her mouth twists into a sour face, like she’s eaten a lemon. She’s telling us she finds it hard to concentrate. Since the God of Irony is nasty, we all try to listen but she’s hard to follow above the cacophony of tinnitus.

  At first, her eardrum wouldn’t let her read, she says. Now she can’t follow anything on TV so she spends her days listening to the beat, bored and terrified she’s always going to be stuck this way, and trapped in this room with the rest of the condemned. “And it’s only in one ear. What if I wake up tomorrow and it’s shrieking at me in both ears?”

  We’re all scared about that and a hush falls over the circle. With no ambient sound, my tinnitus is worse, so I’m grateful when anybody’s talking just to have something else to hear. The kids complain the radio is always blaring too loud, but I can’t handle silence.

  The therapist, Dr. Percy, breaks the quiet and kicks in a few reassuring words. However, he’s a gray man who doesn’t sound like he possesses any conviction that he can help us. When he talks, our eyes search out others in the circle. We’re an irritable bunch. A few have their eyes trained on Percy like he’s got all the answers but most of us discreetly r
oll our eyes and stare at the baby shit floor.

  There are two people I really don’t want to look at: Jack and Jerry.

  The first is the big black guy in the camouflage pants straight ahead of me. He doesn’t conceal his boredom like the others and his size makes me think the camouflage isn’t just a fashion faux pas. Everyone else gave us a little biography of the people they used to be before tinnitus hit us in the ears. When his turn came, he told us his name was Jack and shut down. The rest must be too ugly to say aloud.

  Jack shifts in his seat more than most and sighs loudly. It’s clear he’d rather be anywhere but here. His open rudeness to Dr. Percy makes me shift in my seat, too.

  Jack is at 12 o’clock, so I have to concentrate on the baby shit or my eyes naturally drift up to meet Jack’s gaze. He’s looking at Crystal. She has a great body and I’d like his seat so I could stare at her, too. I’m too shy to steal glances unless she’s speaking.

  Dr. Percy, lounging at three o’clock, has the circle’s only reclining chair and his upper body is almost horizontal, like he’s riding first class and the rest of us have the hard, cheap seats in couch. He explains at the beginning of each meeting why he rates the big chair, a little guilty I think, that his back bothers him so he needs the recliner. We glance at each other when he says this, more disturbed. If he can’t deal with a little back pain, what hope do we have that this wet sack of stinking therapist can help us with our problems?

  At nine o’clock is Jerry, the guy with the hairless scrotum on his nose. It’s one of those facial deformities that makes you think, why don’t you just get that cut off? Can’t medical science fix that hanging, swinging thing?

  Bad things happen to people and sometimes a lot of bad things happen to one person. That’s Jerry. He doesn’t say much but he ends each sentence with “…hey, what?” It sounds like something somebody old and British would say, but he has no trace of an English accent otherwise and he can’t be any older than I am. I assumed he was horribly retarded, though at the breaks he whips out a romance novel and reads until the group settles back into the circle again.