Season of Waiting

by Jim Christopher

  Morphine.

  No, no morphine. I’m an addict. Had Wes said it or thought it?

  The round face turned away.

  Are you listening to me? I can’t have morphine.

  The round face turned back. Wes felt a pressure on his arm.

  Don’t …

  The needle pricked his skin.

  I said no …

  The pressure on his arm released. Then, the pressure on his body released.

  That familiar warm bloom lifted Wes above his misery. His suffering was there, but distant. His wounds were still a part of him, still identifiable, the pain stitched into his sensory fabric. Wes acknowledged them, but they did not concern him anymore.

  Wes recognized the space around him. He had spent so much time in this deceptively safe and gentle place.

  He found the eyes of the EMT. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Round Face bounced as he spoke. “Please, lay still.”

  “Yeah, but you shouldn’t have done that.” This was important. Round Face needed to listen. Air passed over his exposed legs. His jeans were off now. A nugget of modesty joined the pain of his wounds.

  “Stop moving. You’ve lost some blood, but you’ll be okay,” said the jiggling face. Liar, liar, pants something something.

  “On fire.” Wes found the words. They were there the whole time, in his salty and sticky mouth.

  “How’s that?” Round Face asked. “You should feel pretty great about now.”

  Wes pointed at Round Face with his missing finger. “You shouldn’t have done that, though.” Gross. His hand was a mess. It needed a bandage or something.

  Round Face frowned as he reached around the small space. Wes knew they were moving. His body shifted on the gurney. Round Face wobbled over him.

  “How’s that?” Round Face asked again. He poked at parts of Wes’s body.

  “I’m an addict,” Wes said. I won’t test clean. They won’t let me back. I’ll have to start again. From the beginning. Had he said that last part?

  “Buddy, let’s focus on getting you through right now, ’kay?”

  Yeah, okay.

  Fresh pain joined the old, a whisper on a wail. Wes peered over his bloodied body. A clean bandage wrapped around his thigh. His dick lay out in the open for everyone to see. Well, for Round Face, at least.

  Wes was what? Fourteen maybe? He made up that song about it. How did it go? “Hung like a baby, hard like wood, gonna rub it raw cuz it feels real good!”

  Wes chuckled. That song was dumb. They couldn’t all be winners, though.

  Chapter 61

  Jaime

  Strobing lights penetrated the thin curtains, tinting the inside of the temporary building with purple tones. Jaime pulled back the curtain again. Something was happening at the Silverleaf. Police poured into the street from their vehicles. Whatever it was, the restaurant sat between Jaime’s window and the action.

  He felt his stoic mask crack as his face grimaced. Those cops could be coming for him. Had someone already found that dumb-ass kid from Emerson’s school? Jaime shook off the thought, like dust off his confidence. Jaime had stuffed the kid’s body in the abandoned well because it was so remote. Away from town, miles from anyone. And it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Besides, no one gave a shit about Henry. No way the town would pull together this level of response for that brat. Hell, his parents were too stoned to realize their kid was even missing. But what about the school? Henry would have been absent today. Jaime snorted. Henry’s teacher was most likely grateful that the little fucker didn’t show. She wouldn’t have looked any further into it.

  Jaime dropped the curtain and checked his watch. The afternoon was getting away from him. He had expected the sick man—Carl?—almost an hour ago. Maybe he bit the dust already. If so, that was disappointing. This would have been an easy five grand. And even though he never let it show, Jaime enjoyed watching Emerson work. The faces of people as Em shrugged off the yoke holding them down. It was magic.

  He sighed through his growing disappointment. While he debated how much longer to wait, two hollow raps sounded from the door. Surprise crawled into his ass, an image of the police surrounding his office running through his head. He swallowed the worry. Cops didn’t knock, he figured. And if they did, it sure wouldn’t sound so meek. Jaime peeked through the door’s peephole.

  Warm satisfaction filled him. There he was! That shrinking sick man. Carl, or whatever. Jaime smiled. He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted Blair, “He’s here. Better late than never. Get M ready.”

  When Jaime first caught wind of the angle Blair was working, she had been operating out of the goddamned Silverleaf. Where she worked. Where anyone could have witnessed the miracle firsthand. Once he realized what they could do together, he offered to manage the business and build a smarter workflow. One that was safer for Blair and Em. Blair had jumped on his offer. She confided that their clients were sometimes less than satisfied with the value they received from the transaction, reactions ranging from nonpayment to violence. Once, a man put his hands on the miracle boy. And that was fucking unacceptable.

  Jaime mapped out a better exchange. The precautions were of his own design, although he borrowed from what he’d learned selling dope in Del Rio. It was a staged process now, isolating the money and the product from each other. Money came first, before anyone lifted a finger. Jaime met the client in a controlled location. He accepted the cash and notified Blair when everything was ready. She brought Em over, he did his hands-on stuff, and then they left. Regardless of the outcome, Jaime made sure the client stayed put until Blair texted that the boy was safe. They’d practiced it a ton. And this dying man would be their first live customer experience.

  Jaime hardened his face and opened the door. Carl stood on the bottom step, swallowed in a duster that consumed him to his bones. The sick man stammered, and rather than wait for him to find words, Jaime waved him into the office. As the man passed through the doorway, Jaime pointed him toward the molded plastic chair set against the narrow wall of the room.

  “Sit down,” he commanded.

  Carl eased into the chair with an unsteady wobble. A vapor had followed him into the annex. A cloying mixture of sweet body sweat, metallic mold, and earthy dust unseated the smell of the recent construction. Jaime felt the odor crawl into his sinuses. He swallowed through his gag reflex. This man needed a shower more than a healing.

  Jaime stared at him for a moment. The man was a mess. The stale coat covered the man’s mud-splattered clothing. His short hair was dusty and matted in cowlicks. Bruises and dirt splotched his scraped-up cheeks. His eyes had yellowed like piss, and they stayed fixed on the floor in a picture of shame. In the silent space, Carl pulled the coat close around his rattling bones.

  “You look like hell,” Jaime offered. “You really do need a miracle, don’t ya?”

  Carl swallowed. He nodded as he asked, “The boy?”

  Jaime sighed and shook his head. “The money,” he retorted, adding a condescending drawl to his voice.

  The waif of a man eased up in the chair. It seemed to take a massive effort for him to reach under the coat. He shifted his body, and there was a clacking sound. From under the coat, Carl produced a black leather fanny pack. He held it up to Jaime like a child holding a fish they just pulled out of the water—enamored with the thing but disgusted by it at the same time. Jaime took the bulk of the pack in his fist, setting it on the desk as he sat in his chair.

  Jaime opened the main pouch and reached in. He found wads of bills, packed tight into the pouch, as if Carl had found all this money stuffed in his damned couch. Jaime shot a glance at him, an eyebrow raised in irritation. Carl continued to stare at the floor.

  It took several minutes for Jaime to flatten each crumple back into a recognizable bill. Twenties and hundreds. A few odd denominations crumpled together into a heavy ball. As Jamie teased them apart, he hid his confusion
at finding a toy car at their core. Carl was full of fucking surprises. He rolled it over in his palm. The miniature metal vehicle was something that Emerson might play with. Hell, the kid was probably playing with his Hot Wheels right now.

  “I’d like to keep that.” Carl stared at the toy. Jaime nodded and handed over the little metal car with a shrug.

  With the bills organized, Jaime pulled his ledger from its drawer and opened it to the bookmarked page. His eyes followed his finger down the first column until they landed on the last entry: Caleb Allard. Caleb, not Carl. Shit! Had he used the wrong name out loud? Whatever, the man was morose. He wouldn’t have noticed.

  His finger moved across the columns until Jaime found accounts receivable: $5,000.00. He tallied up the money. As he double-checked his math, Jaime worked to keep a smile off his face. Taking the pen from his shirt pocket, he jotted the total into the next column of the ledger: $6,330.00. The chump had overpaid.

  Without a word, Jaime closed the ledger and locked it back into its drawer. He collected the bills into an envelope. As he stood from his desk, he crammed the thick bundle deep into his pocket.

  Payment received. The rest was gravy and intimidation. Jaime enjoyed this part too. He moved his bulk around the desk to face Caleb. Caleb, not Carl. Staring down at him, Jaime waited for the man’s eyes to rise from the floor. They didn’t.

  “Hey, Caleb,” Jaime said, snapping his fingers. The sick man’s gaze broke away from his shoes. His eyelids fluttered as his rheumy stare locked on Jaime. Caleb’s face hung, despondent despite the wonder he was about to experience. Jaime fidgeted his fingers. He wasn’t expecting that. Customers should champ at the bit for what Em offered.

  “Before we start, let’s go over what’ll happen,” Jaime said. He queued up the prepared script in his head as he pointed an index finger into the other man’s caving chest. “You will sit right there. You will not move. Your hands will stay at your sides, at all times.”

  Caleb’s mouth opened, and Jaime raised his other index finger to his own lips. “You won’t talk. The boy and his mother will come here shortly, and you will not speak to either of them. You will not touch either of them.”

  The sick man nodded and swallowed. The sadness drawn on Caleb’s face deepened. For a moment, Jaime lost his place in his script. He covered by lowering his hand to his side at a deliberate pace.

  “You are not to touch either of them. They won’t touch you, but the boy will come close. Stay still. If you move toward the boy, if you touch him or Blair …”

  Jaime’s lips tightened. He used her name. He needed to practice the script more. Run scenarios. Blair could help with that. He blinked away the stress of the minor mistake and continued. “If you touch the boy, or his mother, this ends, and I’ll escort you far, far away from here. Do you understand?”

  Caleb nodded once, his eyes falling back to the floor.

  Jaime folded his arms across his barrel chest, making his girth as intimidating as possible. “Once it’s done, the boy and his mother will leave. You’ll continue to sit there until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?”

  Caleb wiped his eyes against the dirty sleeve of the coat. Jaime turned and opened the door. “Wait here, Caleb. Just a minute.” He stepped out of the door and down the steps to the churchyard.

  Jaime walked to the corner of the annex building and pulled his phone from his pocket. He texted Blair, “Ready when you are. Meet me outside.”

  Jaime pocketed the phone. He poked his head around the corner of the annex, wanting a look at the activity near the Silverleaf. Red and blue emergency lights bounced against the flat walls of the diner and the metal-walled garage across Jackson Street. Voices and tension carried from the intersection. Jaime furrowed his lips as he sucked in a deep breath.

  What the hell was going on over there?

  Chapter 62

  Emerson

  The van slammed into the Batmobile with a breathy explosion. Flames licked the sides of the boxy vehicle. It rocked on its wheels, easing past the tipping point until it landed on its side with a crunch. Imaginary sparks flew from the metal frame as it slid toward the edge of the kitchen table.

  “Make sure you finish eating while you play, Em,” Mom called. Emerson paused the demolition derby and looked up. Mom was still scrubbing the mac and cheese burns from the bottom of their cooking pot. She made dinner super-early today. He didn’t enjoy having dinner for snack time, but sometimes that’s what they did. Mostly when Mom wasn’t that hungry, and she ate whatever Emerson wouldn’t finish.

  He picked a carrot from the plate and nibbled. It was bitter, like dirt. But he ate it. The bowl of mac and cheese was almost empty. After making sure Mom was still staring out the window over the sink, he scooped the last of the yellow tubes into his fingers and dropped them on the floor. Barfly leaned out from beneath the table, and her scouring tongue lapped up the cheesy treat.

  Emerson turned back to the battle royale on the tabletop. The van was destroyed, the Batmobile unscathed, but another threat loomed. A sleek, futuristic police car bounded onto the arena, looking to put an end to Emerson’s derby. It was one of the coolest cars he had. It had laser guns! The Batmobile didn’t have lasers, so it ran.

  As the police cruiser charged up its side blaster, a series of quick buzzes filled the trailer. Emerson looked up as Mom dropped the pot and brush into the small sink with a tinny clatter. The noise was loud enough to spook Barfly out from beneath the table. The dog skulked back to the bedroom. Mom wiped her hands on her jeans and grabbed her phone from the charger cubby by the door. As the Batmobile screeched into a drift to avoid colliding with the burning van, Mom approached the table.

  “Time to put your toys away, Em,” she sang. She pocketed her phone and smiled at him, the bold Scarlet halo matching her hair. She was excited about something. Emerson hoped she was going to tell him what it was.

  He picked up the police car and slid it into its slot in the storage container beside him. Each car Emerson found on the playground at school had its own specific place in the container. The van lived on the bottom level, with the rest of the regular things. The top level was where Emerson kept the special cars, like the Batmobile and the laser-blasting police car.

  He plucked up the Batmobile with a fist as Mom continued, “Before you start homework, there’s a chore we need to take care of, okay?”

  Emerson flicked at a wheel of the car in his hand, nodding. “Are we helping someone?” He wasn’t ready to end the pretend, but he enjoyed helping people more.

  Mom tossed his hair. “Yep. Like we do, Em.”

  Emerson smiled, patting his mussed-up hair. “Okay!” he chirped. He tucked the car caddy back into its home on the shelf, keeping the Batmobile stuffed in his fist.

  Mom opened the door, and she nodded sideways toward the sunshine as she held out an open hand. Emerson grabbed it and asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Just down the street, to church,” Mom replied. Outside was warm and sticky and it reached through the open door.

  “Can Barfly come?” he asked. At the sound of her name, the dog reappeared, shoving past them and out of the door. Mom let Emerson lead, and he heard the door smack shut as they walked into their yard. Barfly pranced along Oak Street, bouncing between shadows created by the stretching trees along the road.

  Straight ahead, Emerson could see Jaime standing outside his office. He turned and waved to them, and Emerson waved back with his Batmobile-filled fist. Jaime’s colors were off. They shifted, like in a kaleidoscope. As if he couldn’t decide what color to be, so he was trying them all. Seeing Jaime, Barfly broke into a goofy run. She veered past him at the last second, like the Batmobile did with the van.

  Mom squeezed his hand as they crossed Jackson Street. Emerson looked up to find her staring off. His eyes followed hers to real police cars. Their lights were on and everything, and they had stopped in the road around the Silverleaf. Emerson smiled. That must be wh
ere they were going!

  They reached the yard. The brick church peeked over Jaime’s new office trailer. Mom tapped Emerson’s hand with her fingers as she let go of him. “Wait here, sweetness,” she said.

  Mom walked up to Jaime. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. They pointed toward the police cars and lights and shrugged with their shoulders and halos. Maybe they were discussing how to help. Jaime thumbed back toward his office. Then he started moving toward the Silverleaf. Emerson wondered if it was a car accident on Main Street.

  Mom returned, the dog following her. Her halo was shy, folding in on her the way the sunset drains into the horizon. She took his hand again, and they walked toward the office, stopping a few paces from the steps.

  Emerson glanced at his mother’s face. She stared past the building, in the direction Jaime had gone. “Mommy?” he asked.

  “We’re just waiting for Jaime,” she answered.

  “Wait for him to do what?”

  “He’s checking out what happened over at the diner. You saw the police lights?” she replied.

  “Yes. Is that where we’re going?”

  Her light flickered Yellow and Purple. “No, Em. The person we need to help is in here.” She nodded her head toward the office. Her face smiled; her halo showed Emerson her fear.

  Barfly found a spot of sun in the grassy yard a few feet away. She collapsed into a ball to lick herself. Mom let go of his hand and pulled her cigarettes out of her shirt pocket. She put one between her lips and lit it, the orange tip glowing in a pulse with her relaxing halo. Emerson hated the odor. They smelled dirty and stale. And it dimmed her light. He made a small groan, a sound his mother recognized.

  “I know, Em. I’m just nervous,” she said. Her eyes stayed fixed, waiting for something to appear around the corner of the building. “We’ll go help the man once I’m done, once Jaime is back, okay?”

  Emerson flicked the wheel of the Batmobile in his hand. Mom left the stinking cigarette between her lips. The smoke lifted around her eyes as they watched Jackson Street. Her halo shook, fading to the color of a deep bruise with small rays of Orange. Mom was panicking.