Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  “Oh no? You want someone to come by and cry by your grave every week?”

  “Well no, not like that, but I'd like to think that someone would wanna do it, you know? That's the idea of family... that no one's left behind.”

  “Well that's bullshit.”

  “Frank, what the hell's the matter with--”

  “It's only the son who's become a priest that isn't left behind, the son who's becoming a doctor, engineer... lawyer. Those are the sons that aren't left behind, but the minute you just turn your head, just the slightest fucking bit, then there's no one left standing by you.”

  The two young men were silent for a while, and Frank realized the sincerity of what he'd just said. They continued past the church and were now walking towards the city hall square.

  “Don't it scare you to die?” asked Noah.

  Frank didn't look like he'd even heard the question, and just as Noah was about to repeat himself, an expression of clarity radiated out of Frank's eyes. “Don't you know why we go to sleep every night?”

  Noah shook his head.

  “It's to get used to dying. We go to sleep every night to get used to dying.”

  “That's only because we know we'll wake up,” said Noah. “We aren't afraid of the night, because we know we'll survive it.”

  “No,” said Frank. “Because one night you'll go to sleep, and you'll never wake up again. It doesn't even have to be at night. At some point, whether you're ready or not, you'll fall asleep for the last time, but then you'll be used to it... and it'll be OK.”

  “I don't understand you, Frank. One minute you're on about sleeping and the next about death. Do you even know what a war is?”

  Frank swallowed.

  “A war,” continued Noah, “is when two or more factions meet and fight, Frank. They fight for whatever the hell they think is right, and when they're done fighting, well guess who's left standing then. The dead are dead, Frank, and they're dead not because they went to sleep or something like that, but because they got shot in the heart... got their throat slit. There's no sleeping in getting your heart pierced by some bullet. No time for sleeping, only dying.”

  They walked past the city hall square. Frank looked down the street. A line of men were waiting along the sidewalk.

  “That's what you want us to do,” whispered Noah. “War, Frank. Not life, not death, but war. I don't know who you wanna save, but here's to saying that we start by saving ourselves.”

  “Do you want out or what?”

  Noah nodded.

  Frank looked at Noah, his mouth open, feeling like a fool. He took a glance at the queue behind Noah, and for a moment he imagined himself with a gun in his hand, defending his country; and not even that, but doing it with a courage he’d dreamed of his entire life, and now, when he looked at Noah, that lack of courage throbbed within him like a cavity of a million echoes that all cried out for a cowardice so deep that he couldn't deny it. He closed his mouth.

  “We'd die,” he said. “Wouldn't we?”

  “Yes, along with many of the others. We'd be dodgers, but I'd rather be called slacker the rest of my life than not get to live the rest of it.”

  “Ok,” said Frank.

  “Ok,” said Noah. “Now come on, before anyone sees us here.”

  They rushed back down the street, and when they were back at the church, Frank stopped. Noah turned.

  “What's wrong?”

  Frank was looking at the two spires of the church. He looked back and forth between the two towers as if there was something in between them that he knew was there, but couldn't see. Two ravens spread their wings by one of the graves and flew off towards the other side of the street, past Frank's head. They flew up and high, then back over the street and in between the two church spires, past the cemetery wall and over the forest. Frank rubbed his right thigh and, without looking at Stone, he said, “If we're gonna do this, then I don't wanna be here anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here,” said Frank. “I don't wanna be here anymore. I don't wanna be in Plissbury anymore.”

  “You afraid they gonna catch us? Sling one of those raids after us?”

  “No, it's not that. I just wanna go away someplace else and not be reminded of anything for a while.”

  Noah was still for a moment, but then he started nodding. “Ok, yeah,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I mean it, yeah. I don't think you'll find what you need in Europe, Frank. But I don't think you'll find it in Plissbury, either. A cursed town, Plissbury. My dad always said it was, and I say the later we return the better.”

  Frank walked up to Noah and together they continued up the street, the deep grey clouds now rolling towards them.

  CHAPTER 33

  Vodeni held his hand in between the flaps of his collar, nudging his necklace. De Gracy had never seen the actual ornament, but he had seen it shining from behind Vodeni's collar countless times like a moon caught within the reflection of a dark lake.

  They were both in the office, sitting on each side of the desk, the windows open to slowly let in gasps of cold air.

  “Why'd you all do it, anyway?” asked Vodeni. The question took De Gracy by surprise; he had expected an evening without having to talk.

  “Do what?” he growled.

  “Don't be an idiot, Frank. Why'd you kill Bishop? Why would five lowlifes take the chance to kill someone like that?”

  “Because... What if it worked? We'd be free, doing whatever we wanted.”

  “Didn't you think that the rest of us would come find you? You killed our boss, you know.”

  “And yet you don't seem sad at all.”

  “It's not our business to seem sad, Frank. You roll with the punches the way they're dealt, and the way I see it, the further you roll, the better you can see your opponent's next move. Bishop died exactly when he had to, and, admittingly, I wasn't sad to see him go, but retribution is retribution. His death did mean your life after all, and I couldn't have you walking around Plissbury thinking you owned the place.” Vodeni leaned in against De Gracy. “You see, we're all takers here, but we're not takers just for any sake. See this,” he said, grabbing the necklace once more, but failing to pull it out. “I saw this and God told me that it was all right to take it.”

  “Oh, God told you that? Did he tell you anything else while he was at it.”

  Vodeni chuckled. “You might not believe it, but I'm a deeply religious man, Frank. I do what I think I'm set on this world to do, and I damn well do it. I take what God asks me to take.”

  “So you came down to the docks, found me, and almost drowned me? Was that your godly retribution?”

  “No, the retribution came after all that, after we killed two innocents because you lied to us.”

  De Gracy smirked. He banged his fist into the table and burst out laughing. “It was Bishop who lied to you, you stupid bastard!” laughed De Gracy. “I didn't lie, he did.”

  “You said that thing about the nephew; there was never any nephew, never any Kenny.”

  “Oh, there was a Kenny all right. No nephew, true, but a Kenny. But it's all down to two separate lies. He never told anyone about Kenny but us... we saw him, but he wasn't his nephew like he told us he was.”

  “Stop pulling my leg, Frank, and tell me what you wanna tell me.”

  A wide smirk was still spread across De Gracy's face. There was an odd satisfaction in what he was about to tell Vodeni, because he'd never dreamed that he would have this particular secret to spill about another person. “Kenny was Bishop's lover,” whispered De Gracy. “They tugged each other’s pricks, rubbed each other asses, and,” said De Gracy, slamming his fists into the table, standing up, screaming, “fucked each other all night long!”

  Vodeni rushed up and flung himself at De Gracy. He pushed him up against the bookshelves and several books came crashing down. De Gracy was caught in Vodeni's grasp, laughing like a madman, his eyes closed shut with the tears of boiling
insanity.

  “Lawrence Bishop was a great man, and I want you to take back the things you said right now!”

  “Why, because he's a gay man? Because he takes it in the ass? A gay man can't be great?”

  “You asshole. You stupid, stupid asshole.”

  Vodeni shook up De Gracy, but it only made him laugh more.

  “I followed him, Vodeni... I followed both of them once, so don't you think, even once, that I'm not telling you the truth.”

  Vodeni loosened his grip, but his cold eyes were still fixed upon De Gracy.

  “It's the truth, Vodeni. You never knew it, Stone never knew it... Except for me, no one knew it. Turns out Kenny had a weak heart for boxing, and Bishop enrolled him into our list of boxers with the pretense that Kenny was his nephew, but we had to keep it a secret, you know. Many boxers in town might wanna hurt Bishop's nephew, if the word got out. I saw how the two acted around one another, suspected a rather different relationship, and so I followed them one night.”

  “Why on earth would you follow them?”

  “Because, like you said, we had the chance to kill off the biggest crimelords in Plissbury. To kill, you have to know... and to know, you've gotta follow.”

  Vodeni let go completely of De Gracy and stepped back.

  De Gracy caught his breath, his hand wrapped around his neck. “When Kenny's face was rearranged by a razor at the hands of the Crab, Clayborne got the whiff that he was Bishop's nephew and panicked. He wanted us to kill Bishop. We declined at first, but then went ahead and did it anyway.”

  “And why did you decline at first?”

  “Didn't seem like the time.”

  “So what changed?”

  “Time did.”

  De Gracy walked to his chair and picked up his coat. He put it on and headed for the door, and just as he was about to leave the office, Vodeni said, “I talked to Bishop two nights before he died, Frank. He said you'd been there to see him earlier that day, but didn't say what it was about. Why were you there?”

  Frank De Gracy swallowed hard. His hand suddenly felt glued to the door handle. “I was there to see if we could get our own area of Plissbury to deal in. He said no. A proposition. A means of peace.”

  “I see,” said Vodeni. “I see.”

  De Gracy opened the door and walked out. With clenched fists he rushed down the hallway and into the main hall. He walked past the hatch, the boxing ring, and out through the main entrance and, as soon as he had closed the door behind him, he collapsed down onto the ground and started to cry. He wanted to scream, but he didn't want anyone to hear him, so he kept as quiet as he could instead. He rocked back and forth, his mouth open with no sound coming out, softly beating his back against the door.

  De Gracy closed the door to his apartment. He took off his coat and threw it on the ground. He undid the buttons on his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and started breathing. He turned on the light, and it immediately started to flicker.

  De Gracy sat down and chose one of the letters as if he had been thinking of it all day.

  'December 24th - 1914'

  'Paris, France'

  De Gracy's eyes scanned the letter for a few lines that he knew were somewhere in the middle of the letter.

  'There is no reason for any of us not to live like we do. You yourself told me what had happened, and I saw, even though I only lived there briefly, the way you lived your life. So when you told me that you were a coward, there was no doubt in my mind that you were influences by someone else. Cowards are people who choose to die when it seems impossible to live, and whilst I was there, living in America with you, I saw you live every day.

  That's why I know you're the one who understands the best why I have to defend my country.

  Jacques'

  De Gracy folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He put a finger where the date had been, and he could feel the indent of it against his fingers. It was Christmas eve that day too; the day before De Gracy died for the first time. But the year, he remembered, and he remembered vividly, was 1907, not 1914.

  He remembered some early new year decorations that she had made to show his father. She had come into the living room, a cardboard display of '1907-1908' on a string in her hands. She folded it out in front of the fireplace and the fire nearly ignited the whole thing, but then his father told her to watch out, but with a funny tone, and then he kissed her and congratulated her on the decoration that she had made. Together, they walked out the room. Little Frank could hear them talking from where he sat. She had a French accent, and he just talked.

  “Well, I think it would do him good,” she said. “It is the most royal of the languages.”

  “What's wrong with English?”

  “Nothing, but I just feel that he could learn so much more, expand his horizon with another language.”

  “Well... are you gonna teach him?”

  “Oh heavens no! I have the perfect young man in mind. I hear that Jacques Lautrec has been teaching French to young boys ever since he was twelve.”

  It was the day after, on Christmas day, that little Frank accidentally burned his stepmother's new year’s decoration. He had walked across the carpet where the decoration had still been. The string got stuck to his woolen sock, and when he turned to investigate the sudden shushing sound behind him, he jerked his foot so fast that one end of the decoration landed inside the fire. The fire quickly spread down the rest of the string, eating at the cardboard. Frank shoved the rest of the decoration into the hearth to avoid the fire spreading, and just as he was making the last push, his father entered the room.

  His father slapped him. “You're nothing but an arsonist!” he roared, slapping him again. “Julie spent precious time making that decoration for us, and you go on and set fire to it?”

  Frank caught a glimpse of his stepmother standing in the corner. She looked horrified at the sight of the burning cardboard, as if her only achievement in life was disappearing into thin air along the dark smoke of the fire.

  “You're nothing but a saboteur... a saboteur and a murderer!”

  “Jack, please,” said the stepmother. “Perhaps that is a bit much, no?”

  “It is not!” roared the father. “He killed my Alice... and he killed my son! And now he wants me to know misery all over again... I will not stand it!”

  Frank cowered in fear as he tried to crawl away from his father's incessant slaps and punches.

  “Oh,” said the stepmother, confusion painted across her face along with her make-up.

  The fire cast a sickly yellow hue upon Frank's skin, making him flicker in the living room like an apparition. His father looked at him with a look of disgust and betrayal.

  “Look what he left me with, Julie... look! He's like a ghoul... a dead ghoul. He killed my Alice... and my little Jack. I held him so shortly... it all passed so quickly, and then he came! From the bowels of an already dead woman, he came out, and as soon as he did... Jack died in my arms.”

  Frank watched his father break down and cry right in front of him, and in his stepmother’s eyes, he saw the deep expression of contempt that would follow him from what day forward, making him wonder how his father's words could have put such strong hate in another person so quickly.

  De Gracy had never known what curse had been put upon him that day. He thought about his dead twin and what kind of man he would have turned out to be. In the same room as him, I wouldn't be the only De Gracy, and anyone screaming my name wouldn't necessarily hate me.

  The lights flickered, and De Gracy opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took out a razor, put it on the table among the letters, and unbuttoned his pants. He took off his pants and stared at the lines of scars that had been sowed all the way up his right leg. He counted them, and he remembered each and every one; every time a protrusion of his skin struck the tip of his finger, it triggered a vivid scenario in his head, and he felt the heat from the razor once more. He went up to where the scars stopped and felt at a pie
ce of bare skin just before his scrotum. He aligned the razor parallel to the rest of the scars, and, looking away while he did it, the lights flickering, he led the razor's fury across his leg. He winced in pain. He screamed inside of himself. He looked at the letters, and while the blood was still dripping from his leg, he overturned the entire table. The letters made no sound as they fell to the ground, and when the table had stopped banging against the floor, De Gracy was left in his soundless, flickering room.

  But then he began remembering again, recalling much more recent memories, and soon he felt overwhelmed by another pain inside him. He remembered Stone; he remembered the day Stone had talked him out of joining the army, the weapon cache that they had found, the last letter, the fedora that Stone had thrown away. He remembered Stone, and with him he remembered everything else.

  De Gracy leaned back and the pain stopped. He started breathing again, now convinced of what he had to do to avoid feeling that pain ever again.

  CHAPTER 34

  Julia was already sitting in the room when Stone walked inside. She looked up at him, surprised that she hadn’t heard him come in and up the stairs.

  ”Noah,” she said. ”I didn’t hear you come up.”

  Stone was silent. He looked down, not entirely at Julia, but right beside her eyes. His lips were hanging a bit apart, and they moved as he breathed.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he said. “I didn’t wanna wake you.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was worried.”

  Stone looked at the newspaper, then back at Julia. She looked at him like there was something she tried to understand, as if she wanted to pry out his secrets with her eyes only. Stone sat down beside her without taking off his coat and fedora. He could feel the bulk of the gun near his chest and when he breathed, the cold steel through the shirt and against his chest where the leather strap didn’t cover it. He was doing his best to hide the wound on his stomach, but the blood had drenched his shirt.