Grayson's Knife

by Russell H Aborn

  He shaves, brushes his teeth, takes another long, hot shower. He has something to eat at The Joy King, then goes back home to resume sitting around agonizing about what they have done. Or, what that bastard Bird had done, and what he had done to Bird. A line has been crossed, and Grayson has crossed it. While Bird might have pulled Grayson over that line, how it happened doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that his life is way more screwed up than he’d ever thought possible, and now he wishes he’d fixed it while it was fixable. He sits in front of the TV until the national anthem plays and the test pattern comes on.

  He gets changed into his work clothes and drives to the 24-hour Mister Donut at the Neponset Bridge. He buys a honey dipped donut and a small carton of milk. He sits in his car and eats part of a donut and drinks some milk, but it tastes like ashes in his mouth. He watches the seagulls stalk around the parking lot like a juvie gang. The birds make threatening feints at each other, while keeping an eye on him, ready to scramble, should he, the shaky fucker in the car with the doughnut, roll down the window. He tears the doughnut to pieces, cranks down the window partway and tosses the pieces out. He watches them fight over one piece and ignore all the others. The birds seem most interested in contesting each morsel rather than eating. As one piece disappears down a gullet, another is selected at random, and all the other birds scurry over to join in.

  When the doughnut is gone, the birds are still there, together, but anyone would conclude, on the basis of body language, they don’t much like each other.

  Grayson goes into Mr. Donut again to call work and book back on. He gets a cup of coffee to go, brings it back to the car so he can drink it in peace.

  He drives to work, parks in the lot, shuts the car off and discovers that he is exhausted and wants to go home. He wants to go home, crawl underneath his bed and sleep with the dust clumps.

  Just a few miles away, there is a young man who was shot and might be dying or already dead. Why? Because they wanted kicks and cash and are willing to consort with an obviously depraved entity like Bird to get what they thought they wanted. Not to mention Bird was dead, too.

  “Fucking Bird,” he says. “Sorry, man. But why’d you shoot that guy?” He closes his eyes and lays his head on the steering wheel for a minute.

  He gets out and makes his way to the driver’s room, where Normand is sitting at one of the picnic tables reading the newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee from the machine. The machine coffee cost a dime and the cardboard cup the coffee came in had the picture of five different playing cards around the exterior of the cup. The five cards were random from cup to cup, and were intended to be read as a hand of poker. The marketing theory seemed to be that adult males would get excited by playing coffee cup poker and buy lots and lots of machine coffee. Grayson had never seen anyone look at or even mention the cards on the cup. When a guy bought the coffee, it was because the machine was there, he was, too and he had a dime and nothing better to do with it.

  Normand looks up at Grayson coming in to the driver’s room and rears his head in mock surprise. He closes the tabloid newspaper, and folds it while he clicks and clacks.

  “You’re here early. It’s only quarter ‘til!” Normand says, at last.

  “Hey, Normand?” Rosie calls out from his perch on a high stool in the open office window. “He musta missed you something fierce over the weekend.”

  Grayson points to the newspaper. “Normand, can I look at that?”

  Normand nods and slides it over.

  Grayson unfolded it to show the front page, which was a picture of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in South Boston. He released a long breath, then nonchalantly thumbed through the rest of the paper. With each turn of the page he felt slightly better. Maybe what had happened Saturday night had not happened, not really, and it was all a gruesome dream. There was nothing in the paper about a shooting in the Fenway. Or a guy falling out a window. Maybe the guy who got shot had gotten up off the floor, and been helped down the stairs by his pals. Maybe the shot kid had only a flesh wound, and maybe Bird, who had only fallen five floors to an asphalt surface merely dinged his head and got knocked out and now he was walking around in one of those comical neck braces, with his head in a hilarious turban bandage. Maybe the kids were even now vowing to go straight and thanking the guys who’d robbed them for making them see the error of their ways. Yes, maybe that was it, and maybe JFK was alive and well and living as a painter in a Parisian garret.

  On the back page of the paper he looked at a picture of some dejected Boston Bruin hockey players, skating head down toward the bench, as in the background, players from the other team exulted.

  The headline read: St. Patrick’s Day Massacre.

  He slides the newspaper over to Normand, and he put the paper in the gym bag he toted around and periodically rooted in. He carried that frigging bag everywhere. What the hell was in that bag? He never took anything out of it, he would just put stuff in it. Occasionally, he’d unzip it and look down into it, then stick his arm in up to the elbow and Grayson would hear things rattling and scuffing about. But once something went in, it was gone for good.

  Grayson had not slept last night, and while he is now exhausted, and traumatized, what made it all worse was that he’d stayed awake all night, maybe jiggy from lack of alcohol and sleep. He is a ghastly combination of physically ill and sick to his soul. He has to shut his head down in order to remain composed. For one brief moment, he wondered why he was even thinking about Normand and his fucking gym bag, but then he saw goddamned Normand digging through the gym bag and Grayson snorted and was staring at the wall when Rosie came out of the office and gave them their assignments.

  “Are we all ready, boys?” Rosie says. “Let’s go out and greet our beloved customers. The shop has your horse ready, Grayson.”

  Grayson took the papers for his assignment without looking at them, or speaking.

  In the yard, he looked at his assigned job: P&G plant in Quincy. He had a 9AM appointment to pick up 45,000 lbs. of soap. He knew if he paid close attention to what he was doing in each moment, that he could distract himself from his scalding thoughts. Focus was one of the keys to ducking reality. The exercise would be good, he’d sweat like hell and clean out the booze.

  He climbed up into his tractor, a red U Model Mack which he kept spotless. This was his assigned tractor, as opposed to the straight jobs, which were assigned to the routes they ran, rather than the man. He turned the key to the on position, and pushed in the black rubber nipple on the dash and kicked the diesel to life. At the top of the long side view mirror he saw dull gray smoke roll out of the stack.

  At the P&G plant, two hours went by in a blur of second to second mindlessness, and physical exertion. Grayson was fast, and the conveyor was always loaded and pushing 50lb boxes of soap at you. The shipping manager liked Grayson, because Grayson got his load on and got out of the dock door so the next truck could come in. The P&G shipping manager called Grayson “John Henry” as a mark of respect for his work ethic. There was another Triple T load shown on the schedule board at 10AM. When the driver came inside, Grayson asks if he wanted to swap.

  “Gordon, you take my load back, and I’ll stay and load your ten o’clock, okay?”

  “That sounds good to me, but what will shit-for-brains say?” Gordon asks.

  “Rosie won’t care. I fit over here, he knows that.”

  Grayson’s blank mind was punctured from time to time by sharp images of the young guy bleeding on the floor, or of Bird pointing his gun at the kid on the floor, or of Bird going out the window so fast he didn’t have time to yell. A visual of Catherine pegging the can of starch at him, and telling him to get lost was, in its way, the worst of the flashbacks. At 1PM Gordon was back with another empty and they swapped again and Grayson loaded the last Triple T trailer of the day.

  When he was finished, Mr. Dromey, the shipping manager, came over.

  “Are you tired yet, John Henry? Or are you just getting loos
e, getting the blood flowing? You handled one hundred thirty-five thousand pounds of soap today, you’ll sleep tonight.”

  “I hope so,” Grayson says.

  Back at the terminal the work day was all over. He was straightening out his paperwork, when Rosie came over to the open window. He pulled down Grayson’s time card and initialed it.

  “Hey, good work today.”

  “Can you get my brother on the radio?”

  “No,” Rosie says. “He’s done. He signed off already. He had a meeting this morning, bright and early, in Hartford. New account. Can’t say any more about it. You’ll find out later with everyone else. Let’s just say your brother’s going to be a big shot now.”

  Rosie turns and saunters through the big office, his back to Grayson. Rosie stops to speak with one of the younger women, Jill Clifford. She didn’t look up, but she shook her head as if in disbelief. He laughs and strolls to the exit door. He put his hand on the doorknob, and turns back to the office, and casually leans against the door.

  “Good night, all you ladies of the evening,” Rosie says. He is anticipating a big laugh, and a grand exit but he got no response from the women, and then Rosie spots his nemesis, the night boss, coming into the office from the loading dock. At that point, Rosie executes a swift departure. Jill looks up at Grayson and summarizes the Rosie experience by mouthing the words, ‘Nitwit.’

  Grayson smiles and nods.

  He turns in his paperwork, found his time card in front of him, and punches out and goes to the pay phone, drops a dime, calls the house, and his father answers.

  “What’s up?” Grayson asks.

  “Emma and the kids are coming over. Stop by. Your brother, too.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Grayson says.

  “I’m going out to a meeting. Your mother was asking for you,” Daniel Grayson says.

  After he hung up, Grayson went over to the dispatch window and slid it open.

  “Hey, Jill.”

  In the office, the young woman is putting her coat on. She froze with her arms in the air, and groans dramatically, trapped, before she could leave after a long day working in an environment that could be rough on young women. Having dealt with complaining customers and ornery drivers for a long ten hours, she is ready to flee.

  “Book me off,” he says. “I gotta book off again.”

  She reaches over in the corner for a green accounting journal, which is known as the Book-Off-Book-On-Book. She flips through to tomorrow’s date and then made a note.

  “Grayson, 7AM, off,” she says, as she writes. “Done. Make sure you call in and book on when you want to come back. Don’t just show up. Call first.”

  “You think I don’t know what I’m supposed to do?”

  “Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do, but very few do it,” she says.

  “If Rosie asks why I’m not in, tell him--”

  She put her hand up in a stop signal.

  “Nobody cares. The only thing that matters is you’re in the book. You don’t exist to the company until you call to book back on.”

  She slaps the book closed and tosses it back in the corner.

  “Yeah, well, the reason is family matters,” he says.

  “That’s what they all say,” she says, and slides the window closed.

  He’d missed work the day after Paul Grayson was officially declared dead by the United States, which was on Monday, January 22nd, the same day Nixon announced the war’s end. Grayson’s mother, already battling cancer, opened the front door that morning, early, to find two soldiers standing there. Everyone but Mary Grayson had accepted the fact that Paul, listed as MIA in 1970, was dead. But Mary Grayson would not, could not, accept that, and so as the war in Vietnam stumbled to a close, she became more convinced each day that they’d all soon be hearing good news. That day she learned he was confirmed dead, but his body, along with some other Americans had been thrown into a pit and incinerated by the VC.

  That Monday was the same day she had her “shock,” on the same day LBJ died, and the same day Foreman beat Frazier, and Howard Cosell shouted over the roaring crowd, “Down goes Frazier, down goes Frasier, down goes Frazier!”

  There was also a big Supreme Court case that day, legalizing abortion, which a lot of people thought was good. He’d repeatedly heard he wasn’t entitled to an opinion on it. He was male, he couldn’t have a baby, so MYOFB. But now, now he had an opinion and his opinion is that it is wrong. That is his baby, too.

  That Monday night, January 22, even though Grayson got back from the hospital late, Catherine had been waiting for him at the Newbury Ave apartment. She had come to comfort him, and when she hugged him, he broke down, crying for the first time since he’d met her, all those years ago. She tenderly kissed his face, and took him by the hand into his bedroom, closed the door quietly, and after a time, they made love, in total silence.

  Now, as he rolled the GTO by her house, he knew she’d gotten pregnant on that date, the same day his mother had nearly died, the same day Paul was officially dead, the day the war ended. One done, another begun, was a saying that his father used, all too often, about many different things.

  Now Grayson wanted to go in Catherine’s home, take her hand, and say, “Everything will be all right because we belong together.” How could he? How could he say anything will be all right? He could be arrested any time now, and for something very serious. If he doesn’t get killed, he’ll end up in prison, likely, for a long time.

  He stops to pick up an afternoon newspaper. He pages through it, to find a story on page three about a Boston drug dealer who had been shot by an armed invader. Another man had been pushed, jumped or had fallen out of a fifth-floor window to his death from the same apartment where the man had been shot. Both men remained unnamed at this time, and the man who was shot was in critical condition at an undisclosed hospital. The identity of the suspected shooter was still unknown. No further details were available. Police say the investigation is ongoing. Grayson didn’t trust the media to have the facts right. Every time he had firsthand knowledge of something that was reported on the news, the story was what his father called FUBAR-Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

  He drives to Hugh’s building, and in the parking lot, he boxed the compass, but didn’t see Hugh’s car, but went in to the lobby anyway and pressed the buzzer a few times, then sped off to see if he could sit still for ten minutes at the beach. The answer was no. He made it to five, though. He sat at the bottom of Vassal St. looking out across Quincy Bay. It was almost right here, maybe a hundred yards away, across from the bowling alley, at the sea wall between the yacht clubs, that he knew that he wanted to live his life with Catherine. They were twelve years old when she stood there and said, “I love the ocean. I don’t own any of it, and it’s all mine.”

  He’d always felt that same way, but he didn’t know it, and couldn’t articulate it, if he had known it, not then, but she did. He wanted to spend his whole life learning things like that from her. She told him what she was thinking, and that was all, but that was everything.

  Now look.

  Grayson parks at the curb outside his mother’s house. Hugh is not here, either. The Old Man’s car is gone and Emma’s two tone 1964 Ford Ranch station wagon is parked at the curb in front of the house.

  Grayson wonders why he is way more upset about the drug kid being in critical condition than Bird’s being in a dead condition. Grayson hadn’t done that on purpose, plus Bird was going to execute the guy he’d already shot once, and then, most likely the other three kids as well. So, fuck Bird, and the horse he rode in on. Right?

  Before he has a chance to cool out, two of his nephews appeared in the open driver’s side window.

  “Boo!” the five-year-old yells and his eight-year-old cousin laughs.

  “Howdy, boys,” Grayson says. He shuts down the engine and removes the key. “What’s shaking?”

  “I’m visiting,” Alex says. He is the elder of the two.


  “Me, too!” Matthew says.

  “What have you guys been up to?” Their faces were dirt-smeared and they smelled like freshly dug potatoes.

  “We were building roads behind the garage for our Hot Wheels,” Alex says.

  “How are the Sox doing in spring training, Alex?” Grayson asks.

  “They didn’t play this afternoon,” Alex says. “Tomorrow they play the Twins.”

  Alex knew more about the Boston Red Sox than the baseball beat man for the Quincy Patriot Ledger.

  “Hey, did you see the manager’s picture in the paper the other day, holding the snake?” Alex asks. He turns to his younger cousin. “In Florida there are about a million snakes. Eddie Kasko found a huge dead snake in left field. It was twelve feet long. I saw the picture.”

  “I hope he brings it to Fenway,” Matthew says.

  Their high spirits were usually contagious but Grayson is immune today, and the older boy may have picked up on the mood his uncle was in.

  “Are you worried about this new designated hitter rule?” Alex asks. Grayson looks at the serious little faces.

  “I have to say I don’t like it,” Grayson says.

  “My teacher, Mrs. Dodd, says it won’t last,” Alex says.

  “Uncle Mike, will you come to my games?” Matthew says. “I’m gonna be a pitcher. My Dad and also Pop are going. They’ll be at Cavanaugh Field.”

  “Sure. When is it? Has the season started?”

  “I don’t think so,” Alex says.

  “I don’t know,” Matthew says. These were uninteresting details. He shrugs. “Ask my father or Pop. Maybe they know.”

  “Count on me, young man,” Grayson says.

  The boys hear something at the same time and turn their heads, look up the street and take off running. Grayson gets out of the GTO and looks up the street to see his nephews closing in on two other boys playing catch. Grayson walks up the front steps and into the house.

  The TV is on in the living room, but there is no sign of anyone. He went up the stairs.