Ambulance Masters

by Raymund Hensley

THE ride back was uncomfortable. I was too afraid to even roll down the window. Was he scared of me? Afraid that I was mad at him for killing me? Or was he angry, because I cheated on him? This was stupid talk! Let the past stay in the past.

  A truck cut us off and Cakers pounded on the car horn five furious times.

  “You cheated on me, you bastard!”

  “Cool it!”

  “Ohhhhhh, it hurts. How can you be so callous? It’s shocking.”

  “What does it matter? That was in our past lives. We don’t even know what year it was in. What does it matter?”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “Ditto.”

  “It’s still You. This can’t be denied.”

  “I deny it. And yet embrace it. It was me, yes, but with so many alterations, in regards to horoscope sign—Eastern and Western—psychological and physical parental traits, and the influences of my surroundings. So let bygones be bygones, eh? Excellent.”

  “You owe me.”

  “God damn it. I don’t have minutes for this. I have to fold clothes tonight. It consumes me.”

  “You know what they say.”

  There was a pause. Then he said more.

  “All I ask is a minute of your time. You see…these hands of mine…the problem is I only have two.”

  “F you and your normal-quantity hands. I have things to see and people to do. Take me away. Nothing you can say will make me listen.”

  “Money.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You could make a lot of money by helping me. All you have to do is accompany me while I work my second job.”

  “What is your second work?”

  “I’m a paramedic.”

  “Will I be operating the vehicle? Because I never learnt how to drive…due to mental reasons.”

  “You know what they say.” He paused, then said, “Don’t worry about the driving. I have someone for that. You’ll be in the back, with me—be an extra set of hands.”

  “Is this legal? I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t have the face for it. Hrmm…on 3rd thought…I don’t want to do this. What if I get in trouble? What? Jail? I’m so scared right now! I’VE CHANGED MY MIND’S EYE! SO TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS DREADFUL PREDICAMENT RIGHT THIS INSTANT, KIND SIR!”

  “Money.”

  “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “You are cool and relaxed now. This is good. It pleases me. Damn these hands. I wish I was born with four. And I wish they came out from my mighty, God-fearing chest—ready to fix, ready to collect.”

  “What time will I be working with you? I do hope it’s not too early. I hate waking up at the crack of ass.”

  “You will do as I say and like it.”

  Driving toward the state capital, down Beretania, an ambulance screamed behind us, swerving left and right. Cars began moving out of the way, but traffic was too thick for it to get by. There was some kind of scene up ahead…an accident of some kind, involving what appeared to be a forklift carrying a coffin. The ambulance sat there, lights blinking, siren squealing. Waiting. The driver popped his bald head out and shook his fat fist and shouted words I couldn’t hear, but knew them to be foul. Five women walking in a single line, pushing strollers, stopped to look while their babies pointed. The ambulance driver climbed the roof of his medical vehicle and jumped up and down like an angry gorilla that seemed so familiar. The other drivers threw things at him: Sharpened pencils, shoes, rat traps, and bananas. The driver waved his hands and said “Sorry,” climbing back down into his ambulance. Was he weeping? It was sad. Some people were still throwing things. Dirty things. Like diapers that exploded on impact. I shuddered and covered my mouth and eyes. Disgusting. I opened my eyes and saw day birds fighting over the diapers, tearing them apart and screeching. Drivers were cheering them on, some placing peculiar bets.

  The ambulance was swaying from side to side, for some reason.

  Cakers hung a heavy head and sighed.

  “That person isn’t going to make it. And I ain’t talking about the patient.”

  Sure, I agreed to do it for the money. But a little part of me did feel guilty. A little part of me from long ago.

  CAKERS lived in a fancy mansion on diamond head, overlooking the city. As we drove up and through a tired neighborhood, I thought back to what I had said, about not being able to drive. I was ashamed. I was an adult that didn’t know how to drive. Society looked down on me. Kids know how to drive—they yearn for it. Women looked down at me. Was it right? Was it right to judge someone simply because they didn’t have a car? I never had an interest in driving. The bus was always fine by me. I’m afraid of driving. I always had a mild problem giving my attention to something. A shiny dime could roll onto the street and distract me, resulting in a great crash that would certainly leave me paralyzed from the hips down—the most important part of the body. Oh, the horror. And I’ve heard so many terror stories of traffic, the DMV, and soaring gas prices. Driving in Honolulu is a nightmare—a place so cramped can not be fun to drive around in…and if it’s not fun, why do it? Because you have to? There are other ways to get around. Less stressful ways. One just has to think, creatively.

  We drove through an automatic gate that cried rust. Something was wrong with the place. Everything was black: From the walls to the furniture to the people in picture frames to the sink to the giraffe’s head on the wall—the ebony animal trophy was the first thing I noticed when I walked in—and it came complete with the neck, as well. How cute. The second thing I noticed: The surroundings smelt like freshly cut lemons over wet clumps of hair. That was a sight for these old nostrils, let me tell you! But if my eyes were to smell the scene, that would be a different story, believe you me. It angers me just to think about it. Thank you for that.

  Cakers instructed me to sit and make myself at home as he threw his keys onto the middle of the floor and kicked off his shoes. He looked about the place.

  “Tranzam!”

  His roar echoed throughout the home. He inhaled and made fists and looked like he was lifting heavy weights as he tilted his head back…slowly. “Tranzammmm!” Cakers walked away into a room, talking. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take, by gum!” When he came back into the living room, he was carrying so much marijuana that my heart was lifted higher than the ceiling.

  I don’t remember much of that evening—except that when I woke up, all of my clothes were thankfully still on, and I noticed that he had every video game system in the world, even a GameCube. I slid Dead Rising into the Xbox 360 and thought about how nice it would be to not have to work for a living, and to just sleep all day with a big smile on your face.

  A drunk woman walked into the house and I stood up, ready to bolt. She threw an empty bottle of something at me and cried.

  “I know you! Troublemaker!”

  I backed away, hands out, ready to soothe.

  “I’m just a friend of Cakers. All is right in the world. Be calm.”

  “I’ll calm you!” she said, stumbling forward. “I knew you’d come. Troublemaker! Be gone! Be gone from this place!” She tripped on her high heels and landed on her knees and began sobbing as immediately as it sounds. I tried to ease her, but the moment I got close enough she jumped at me, clawing the air, hissing and then spitting green. She stood, wanting me to put up my dukes. I didn’t want to hit a lady…not in the face.

  There was the din of running feet and Cakers began striking this woman over and over again with an angry whip, yelling at her in a depressed, yet loud way as lightning filled the house.

  “Tranzam! Tranzam! Tranzam! Tranzam! Stop making me do this! This is why we can’t have kids! You are not a good mother!”

  She was on her back, moving about like a headless snake not wanting to be picked up.

  “I have the love! I have the power! Get away from me, you plague! It’s over! I loathe you! It’s over! Is this love? NO! You can’t adore! You don’t have the wherewithal!”

  I was in a corner wit
h my fingers in my ears.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  This wasn’t love.

  Or was it?

  CAKERS said I could help myself to anything in the house…so I raided the liquor cabinet as he argued with Tranzam in a nearby room. Things were being thrown against walls—things that shattered, things that exploded, things that rattled. I’m pretty sure they were keys. And I’m also pretty sure someone ducked, followed by a lamp exploding in anger.

  I was tired of having my fingers in my ears, due to too many bad memories, so I drank like a beast to dull the noise inside and outside my head. The Universe was kind to me. Cakers had only bottles of Jack Daniel’s—twenty bottles in the open cabinet above my head alone. In another cabinet? Ten more. Under the sink? Eleven more. The refrigerator was odd. Its insides only offered a full head of cabbage and half a bottle of Coke, as in the drink. There was also a Darkwing Duck baby’s bottle.

  I took off the rubber nipple and made the obvious combination—sans cabbage—in the bottle and took three, quick, vomit inducing shots.

  I slammed the bottle down and leaned against the kitchen counter, my brain swimming and jumping immediately toward some distant Pleasure Land.

  Muffled voices from behind bruised walls.

  They were talking about me, loudly.

  Tranzam was tired of Cakers always complaining about me deflowering his dreams. She wanted him to see a therapist—anything to get him to shut up about me. There was a pause whenever she fed him a line. Was Cakers speaking silently? Easing the mood to a moderate pitch? I hoped so. Fights shatter my calm exterior to reveal the lamb inside. How annoying. It’s not respectable. Not manly. The lamb must always be hidden, unless ye be alone in a dim bathroom lit by tiny candles, contemplating the answers of Life.

  Sounds against the sliding glass door. I fished up my head and looked, although the sight was processed seconds later.

  Crows were banging against the glass.

  It was amusing. Was I already so far gone in the drink? Crows in Hawaii?? How very daft. I remembered reading that if a crow somehow got into your house and started flying around, someone was going to die. It was an omen. Bereavement Crows. What’s next? Condemnatory Snakes? Just then—a vision of me being forced to hold an insane rattle snake for an hour shot into my brain and I was instantly thrilled in a scary way.

  I fanned my hands like a little girl.

  “Shake them off, boy. Shake them off ova thea.”

  I opened my eyeballs again…and the birds were no more. I exhaled a shaky one, smiling at my idiocy.

  Works every time.

  Like clockwork.

  CRASH!

  Something huge knocked down the door to the room Cakers and Tranzam were in. Bodies. Two bodies. Their bodies—rolling around and around like such a load of meat thunder and twisting heat. This was not fight making. This was love making—their arms locked around one another—legs pretzelized. Suffice to say, I was embarrassed, and not at all aroused as I hid behind the counter, due to the whisky. It was the good kind of love making, with wet sounds and wet aromas and fluttering eyes of erect pupils. I smiled.

  This…was love.

  In the making.

  They got up and hugged and kissed for another ten minutes. They fancied a drink and came into the kitchen to join me. There was no running away now. I was in deep.

  Cakers opened the microwave and took out a bottle of Jack and sipped from it while making Mmmmm sounds.

  “You want some, boy?”

  “No thank you. I’ve drank enough. I don’t want to get glaucoma.”

  Cakers shrugged.

  “Suit yourself. Mmmmm….”

  I felt physically dirty. There was grease between my legs—down South where the gears of life be. It was time.

  “May I take a shower? I need to do some dirty business.”

  “Ironic,” said Cakers, eyes swirling in every sense of the word.

  Tranzam opened the refrigerator.

  “How ingenious!”

  She reached in and yanked out the baby bottle. I was shocked! In my drunken state, I had refilled the bottle with the Devil’s piss, slipped over the rubber nipple, and put it back in the refrigerator. What else had I done that I didn’t remember? I patted my body, relieved to have discovered no peculiar, wet spots.

  Cakers also rejoiced and took the bottle, dangling it over Tranzam’s head as she sucked from it like a desperate bird-child—her eyes rolling back white.

  Cakers gave out a hearty laugh. There was a thought brewing in his brain, I saw.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was amiss.

  He kissed Tranzam on the cheek.

  “Oh, my darling. Are you feeling so relaxed? As the hotness inspires your being? Excellent. You like my words, don’t you, lover? Well…I have more.”

  Tranzam still had her eyes closed, smiling. Cakers kissed her on the cheek again…this time, his eyes were open so very wide. The thought I saw brewing earlier was a burning baby behind those eyes.

  “Tell me…lover…where do you go at night when I am not home?”

  Tranzam’s eyes shot open and she slapped the bottle away and screamed a knot of words. I jumped back, my mouth ajar. She jabbed Cakers in the chest with her fingers, like a claw.

  “No more askings!”

  “There’s blood!”

  “Not mine! Not mine!”

  “Then whose?”

  She was silent…and thinking.

  “Japanese hotel guests.”

  “Bullshite.”

  “Oh—you—are—so—sure!”

  “I don’t even know anymore.”

  “Where be the trust? Huh? Where it be? A relationship is based on trust. Where does our relationship stand when there is such a fat hole?”

  “But….”

  “There are things about me I can not say. Things you will never know. Like how one time I tripped a mean lady in a wheelchair and stole the wheelchair and went down to the beach and tried to drown myself while in the wheelchair. I’m sure you have secrets, too, child. What! Don’t you lie to me!”

  “But the blood….”

  “Our only savior now is the washing machine.”

  Cakers’ pants began to talk. He reached behind his pants and pulled out a walky-talky. A blackman’s voice was on the other end, giving instructions.

  It was time for us to jump into the ambulance. An old Russian woman was dying.

  All this zaniness was pumping me round and round.

  I WAS in the back of the ambulance, sitting down Indian style, as they ran back and forth from the house, now dressed in their white uniforms, throwing supplies into the ambulance, not saying a word to one another.

  During the bumpy drive, Tranzam stuffed earplugs into her head and began singing I’ll be Home for Christmas by Michael Buble, noisily. Cakers was so infuriated that he climbed over his seat and joined me in the back…his hands over his face.

  For the first time, I noticed a tiny video camera mounted above the windshield, looking out.

  FIVE