Shelly hesitated as if she knew a dirty secret she didn’t want to tell him, but then leaned close. “The young guy you were drinking with just left, Eb.” There was a hint of barely concealed anger riding back in her throat, confusion as to why the boy had just up and walked out on the old man. Ebenezer quieted it with a soft, patting at the bar with his crooked forefinger.
“No harm done, Shelly. The boy’s gotta lot on his mind…as we all do.”
“Yeah, sure, but…” She stopped. “He just looked so strange, barging out like that. You didn’t say something, did---” and she cut herself off when Ebenezer jerked his eyes away and set his jaw, trying to ignore the question. “Will he be back?” she ventured after a full minute.
“I really don’t know,” the old man replied earnestly, staring toward the closed door.
Chapter 21
At near 3:15 that morning Ebenezer pushed wearily away from his stool at the bar and dragged a hand across his running nose. The cold was seated and angry in his chest, cranky after being draped across a bar stool for all hours of the night. The back of his throat was wretched. He coughed once, weakly, and checked his watch again to make certain he’d not been mistaken moments before. From the resigned look on Shelly’s pale face he felt he had not. The ‘one beer for the road’ had turned into numerous others and his already weakened condition demanded immediate payment. He snorted into a napkin, crumpled it, then threw it over the bar to the wastebasket near the ice machine. It nicked the edge and skittered underneath the bin, now and forever invisible as it began to soak up the funk there.
Shelly eyed him sadly as he stood up, but knew better than to propose a ride home. She’d already had that lecture. Several times. He’d made it very plain in a very drunken way that ‘one’s age did not necessitate a handicap.’ She’d have to put him in God’s hands and hope like hell the Man Upstairs hadn’t gotten tired of escorting the poor sonofabitch home.
At least he didn’t live far, less than three blocks if he’d been truthful one drunken night. He sneezed once more as he lifted his coat from the hook and pulled the door open, waving above his head as he tossed a ‘goodbye’ over his shoulder. Well, Shelly thought as she wiped the spot where his cluster of beers had set, Sleep well tonight, Eb. Then she checked her own watch again, disgusted to find she still had better than a hour and a half left. The damn city never slept; it slumbered sometimes, albeit very nervously and always on the edge of wakefulness. But goddammit, it never fully slept!
Chapter 22
The three black thugs came upon him scarcely a block from the Ripcord. They poured out of the darkness like slow contagion, spreading out in a fan to reel in their victim. Perhaps if Ebenezer’s ears had not been so clogged from his cold, or if he’d only had the one beer instead of six, the attackers would have had less chance or would have missed him completely. But they knew (even if he did not) how to pick their targets well. Even though Ebenezer had a dose of Mace attached to his key ring, it rested deeply in the bottom of one pocket, jostled about by quarters, dimes, and pennies, and might as well have been high atop a mountain atoll in Tibet.
From the depths of his dark, congested thoughts he was suddenly wrenched across the muddied pavement and slammed into a sweating brick wall. He’d been mugged once before, years ago, but that memory did not touch him now. His first fleeting thought was that he’d been struck by a vehicle and the worst was probably over, but he soon realized the error in that.
The hand on his shoulder forced him around while another persistent force crammed him deeper into the darkness. "Hey ya ole muthafucka! Be cool or I’ll cut ya fuckin face off!” a voice full of gnashing teeth and cheap wine commanded. A sharp blade pressed dangerously at Ebenezer’s belly; a multitude of flashing hands ransacked his clothing in search of money.
“Please,” he muttered faintly, gasping for breath amidst the jostling. Adrenaline attempted to surge, but he fought to keep it in check. He knew he was no match for his assailants; hopefully acquiescence would be the ticket allowing him to see his bed again. His head was snapped back by the one holding the knife to his belly. Ebenezer considered letting his legs go but a louder warning in his brain advised staying upright. At least for the time being.
The answer that came to his coughed plea for mercy was not what he’d hoped for. “Muthafucka, don’t you beg to me. I got no fuckin mercy.” A fist slammed into his jaw, cracking a twenty-year-old crown and rupturing his nose from the force. His ears screamed. A bolt of light blinded his vision and this time he did go down.
A boot forced him over on his back and he glared skyward, pouring hatred and the promise of revenge in metaphysical gouts. However, there was little effect. A kind of bubbling laughter spilled out of the one who’d denied him mercy, even though seconds later he did motion for his cohorts to curb further abuse. Then he stepped closer, locking eyes with his captive as he went up high with a knee before bringing the heel of his boot down on Ebenezer’s left shoulder, breaking the clavicle with such impact one of the ragged bone edges tore through Ebenezer’s ripped flesh. “Oh…Jesus…” Ebenezer implored to the darkness.
Then the same voice was close at his ear. “Go on and pray, you old muthafucka. Ain’t nobody goan hear shit. I make the muthafuckin rules! I say what goes!” and the alien voice lifted away amid a laugh of poison and unfathomable cruelty. Ebenezer attempted to crawl away from the once-again-approaching boots of the others.
“God damn you,” he managed, louder than before.
The boots stopped when the specter leaped back to Ebenezer. “We see ‘bout that, muthafucka.” The attacker slid cold steel into the old man’s chest, just below the broken collar bone. It ripped away clean, leaving behind a growing, agonizing hole filled with pain. Ebenezer moaned and dragged himself into a fetal position because he could do nothing else. Soon, in the dim recesses of a tunnel he suddenly felt the urge to explore, distantly listening to the slap of running footsteps. Ebenezer wanted to run too, but something held him back and there was a deep sadness upon him, reducing his dream-double to forlorn crying.
Chapter 23
Elizabeth was alone again in her room, lights off, the television cooling in sporadic ticks from the corner. Only a few stray chords of light breached the solitude of her sanctuary, though even these had to squeeze between the barest rent in the louver blinds to make such passage. Thoughts bombarded her every hour of the day now. There seemed to be so much to do, or at least, to contemplate; her mind knew what was approaching and seemed to be pushing years of ordinary impulses into the short time left. More and more she found herself forced to the darkness to lie quietly pondering such stillness. As if in preparation.
She rolled over and the pain was not so bad. Today the armpits, yesterday in the spaces behind her eyes; deep little pockets of pain that bred and festered the growing poison. Just a little reminder, a voice much like her own piped in and the paradox of familiarity did not go unnoticed.
She’d not seen Billy in almost two weeks. Her rapidly-filling journal proved this testimony, and many times when she looked back over what she’d written, it seemed a large portion of these expositions were, if not to Billy, then because of him.
Brooding, she thought and shook her head. On this fine day I’ve closed myself off to consider, and dread, things I have no power over. Yes, that was probably true, but the power to do this seemed to lend her a little strength. Strange. Why all this feeling sorry for myself? she asked. An idea inspired by Steinbeck’s novel, East of Eden, occurred to her.
She’d been forced to read the massive tome her senior year in high school. But actually that wasn’t right. She’d been assigned it by one of the newer teachers, putting him off as an immediate candidate for the dog-house by nearly every one not familiar with Cliff’s Notes. Feeling that such shortcuts were somehow intellectually damning, Elizabeth had resigned herself to the scaling of the monstrous novel out of nothing more than base pride. But after the first few chapters found her tearing ahead at a pace f
ew books (regardless of size) could sustain, she’d relished its length. An acute and irritating kernel of truth still mystified her to this day. She recalled Steinbeck’s statement that ecstasy’s closest kin was grief. How odd and disturbing that had seemed at the first reading. But with the experience of several years she’d begun prying at the heavy lid of this thesis again. Some men died at the onslaught of orgasm, and some, peculiarly psychotic mothers brought their children time and again to the point of death for only a chance to foster sympathy and pity for themselves. Was our fascination with the horrible only a counteracting device for the good and pleasurable we feasted upon?
Is that what I’m doing? she asked herself. Am I reveling in this sickness in an attempt to balance myself somehow? Am I by enclosing myself within the safety net of my mind, somehow attempting to protect myself? She wondered if Steinbeck had felt the same, if he’d been aware of the same tendril his work touched for her? This indefinable truth of humanity. He had tried to find logic in the duality of soul and flesh, those two lovers and enemies constantly torturing and pleasing the other in uncomfortable alliance. She shook her head and wondered.
Endless circles.
Her first car had been a heap from the start, always complaining in a throaty, coughing grind of metal, every mile coming only after prodigious protest and rebellious threat. Billy must have worked on the old junker at least fifteen times, and every one of those times Elizabeth had dutifully stood outside with him to hand tools or whatever else was required; ice water, words of encouragement, sometimes a particularly tasteless secret.
He’d never complained but she’d seen exasperation enough to know it. Billy had known the car for what it was but he’d also had the courtesy to hold his tongue. Money had never been an easy commodity for their family.
The hood had stayed up on the late model Impala like a hungry mouth that could never be satiated. An alternator here, always a number of blackened spark plugs and shredded belts, a blown radiator. Elizabeth had become peculiarly familiar (for a girl anyway, she thought) with the workings of engines, and it proved to set her mind on the course of circles and life.
In the physical world everything from the micro to the macro worked on the principles of circular motion, one system leading and causing and being caused by a similar working of infinite variety, but always these systems revolving endlessly around all others. In fact, beginnings and endings were intangibles, man-made descriptions, wholly inadequate. No matter how complex a manual seemed, the mechanisms within the engine revolved upon themselves.
Wheels within wheels.
As she lay in bed she pondered other workings of the same fashion, if for no more reason than to give her wild pursuit some sort of feeble guidance. Good revolved around or within evil, inspiring reverse offspring as endless products. Case in point: the dutiful father of three kissing his children goodbye one morning before killing a score of other children at a McDonald’s hours later. Explanations? Excuses? Please. And any and all philosophies which attempted getting to the bedrock of human experience only expounded deeper and deeper until the wheels they’d set in motion eventually spun out of control. Why? Like the circular complexities of an engine, the more a person delved into himself to find some sort of comprehensible truth, the more avalanches occurred to dust the vision. Until the dust cleared, and you found yourself standing in previous footsteps that were now were only bigger and harder to define. Or in Billy’s case (on those long, hot afternoons spent deep in the belly of her car), you were left staring angrily into the same pile of shit you knew you’d be looking at again, very soon. And why? Because it just was.
And, fearfully, Billy had been an easier person then—on those afternoons with the pieces of the car in order before him. Meticulous, less moody. When she saw him now she felt a dangerous chaos surrounding him. He was a quiet person who longed for a comfort it appeared no one could give. Elizabeth saw this because his blood ran in her veins also, and she could feel the particular tugs and nudges from within where her own soul lived. Although she was kin in genetics, she differed, she felt, in dynamics; she tried to seek out the dangerous root of discontent to separate it into its’ constituent parts, and even after much searching she still had control enough to shelve the many primitive, dark broodings and turn to brighter subjects. Until just lately that is, when bright thoughts had become progressively harder to secure and breed. Feeling this way only made her more aware and sensitive to the dilemma she perceived in her brother. But at least she could put distance between herself and the darkness, even if it was more taxing these days.
She didn’t believe Billy could. His waters ran as deeply as hers, but Billy seemed powerless against the steady pull of the current. He could find no dry bank to rest upon while gathering needed strength. The preceding two, empty, lost weeks surfaced again and again in her mind as she thought. He simply couldn’t bear her now, she knew, and while his purposeful aloofness challenged her on that exiled afternoon her cancer slowly burned away beneath the skin.
Chapter 24
Billy fumed and bit his lip to keep from cursing. He’d just heard the news: the pretty receptionist at the octagon-shaped information booth in the lobby had quit. And goddammit! it had to be Gerda Miles to tell the tale, not even trying to hide her sarcastic tone as she made sure to break the story like a glass vase over his head. Billy didn’t hate the obnoxious woman; in fact he had always admired Gerda in a way (so smug and assertive in her understanding of her heritage), but she did thrive on putting the point of the spike to the nerve when the circumstance afforded itself.
He was indeed highly pissed off. One goddamn comment and she’d hooked into it ever since. No way she’d ever let him forget or revoke the fact that he’d been intensely interested in the beautiful, chocolate-skinned receptionist who it now looked like he’d never see again. And to compound matters, he’d never even worked up the balls to say anything meaningful. Nothing more than a seldom and furtive ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ as he’d passed the desk either coming or going. Because some damnable reason (he’d tried to convince himself, he saw now in sudden retrospect) presumed he had no business with her. Though that was surely a security net he’d utilized to cloak his own insecurity. Because inside, where the truth always waited for a bloody acknowledgement, he found she’d really intimidated him. That was part of the reason he was so pissed at Gerda; she could see through his bullshit; she could pin him to his thoughts like a long-dead butterfly in a dusty science case. Jesus, what would his friends think?
What friends?
Yeah, right. He finished urinating and tucked himself away, careful not to catch it as he zipped up. “Shit,” he said, pushing the handle down and listening to the mad rush of suction. He turned, pausing to study his reflection in the lavatory mirror. A normal guy. The kind of guy who should have everything going for him, but who chose instead to hobble himself at every opportunity. What is it about you? he wondered.
Many nights he recalled lying in bed, whipping his dick furiously as he imagined and developed the many erotic scenarios the beautiful black girl and he could perform. And then, afterward, lying in that same bed tense and quivering in the full knowledge that it would never go any further. Not if left up to him.
“You’re a hopeless fuck-up,” he said conversationally to his mocking, silent image. Another potentially good thing had slipped beyond his grasp. Easy come, easy go, and he’d never even asked her name. Of course he wouldn’t ask Gerda. Better to let hell freeze first. He found it disconcerting that he’d let Gerda get this far underneath his skin anyway, but the fact remained. Hopefully not as apparently obvious as it felt right now.
Then, from somewhere in the blown wastes, he remembered the message his mother had relayed to him the previous evening in a muttered, brief telephone exchange. Elizabeth wanted to see him tonight. She wanted to go out, and Billy bit his lip thinking back on his mother’s tone and implication. Always looking for a handhold to lord over.
Without thinking he bega
n to hum the opening bass riff from Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and immediately stopped when he realized what was coming out. He left the restroom very quickly.
Chapter 25
Billy and Elizabeth sat at one of the rough, wooden picnic tables at Cooter Brown’s, a magnificent oasis of imported beer and delicious seafood po-boys by the levee. While Billy chewed ravenously at his shrimp sandwich Elizabeth took sips from her Dixie and studied his face. Always the concentration, even over something as harmless and unassuming as eating. He continued munching away, his own cold draft motionless beside the plate.
There was no sandwich in front of Elizabeth; the order of fries on the table was scarcely picked at. “So how are things going, Billy?” she asked innocently. They hadn’t been there long, and she’d waited until the first beers were gone.
He looked up, a piece of lettuce hanging out the corner of his mouth. He snapped it back and chewed, signaling with his eyes that he’d be right with her. She smiled back. “Don’t choke,” she warned.
Billy nodded and continued chewing.
“They’re good,” he finally replied.
She leaned forward. “What? The food? Beer? Life in general?” Her smile turned coy, and this brought its own reflection to Billy’s face.
“All the above,” he answered as if filling in a quiz.
“Good. I’ve been wondering. Haven’t seen you in almost three weeks.” She clicked her tongue behind her teeth. “You must never answer your phone.”
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