Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  She leaned hard on the door and got nowhere.

  “You leave him alone,” she said, giving the door everything she had. It was the noises that got me, as a series of pitiful squeals filled the air. She made it sound like she was rowing for the Pharaoh and I was the bald guy with the drum.

  I jerked my foot out, and the door banged shut. I stood on the porch for a minute and then knocked on Unit C. I heard the scrape of a chair. No chain locks on this door. It popped so fast, it created a momentary vacuum in the surrounding air, pulling my hair forward.

  He was a big one. Wearing a cutoff black T-shirt under a black leather vest, a pair of brand-new jeans, and some engineer boots. His long, greasy hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He pointed a finger at my face, stopping about an inch short of my nose.

  “Don’t be tellin’ me you got me up from my dinner so’s you could sell me somethin’. Tell me something but don’t tell me that.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  It seemed he wasn’t prepared for that response.

  “So wadda you want?”

  “You know anything about the kid next door?”

  Wrong question.

  He pulled the door closed behind him and stepped out onto the tiny porch. I was supposed to back down the stairs, but instead held my ground. No more than a foot separated us on the narrow porch. He put his hands on his hips and looked me over from head to toe.

  “Walk over there,” he said, pointing to the far end of the porch.

  What the hell. I walked down to the rail and back.

  “You ain’t one, are you?”

  “One what?”

  “One of the sissy boys.”

  “You mean, like…?”

  “The kid’s a fruitcake,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what to say next. Pointing out to him that such terms as “sissy boys” and “fruitcakes” were no longer acceptable in the sensitive nineties didn’t seem like such a good idea, so I settled for, “No. I’m not.”

  “Not that I give a shit, you know,” he added. “Each to his own, is what I say. Hell, I know a long-haul trucker trained a miniature schnauzer to lick his balls while he was driving. Nicest guy in the world. Wife, three kids.”

  I figured I’d just take his word for it.

  “Rod’s a nice enough kid, but I can always tell. Just somethin’ about ’em. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Mom didn’t seem to want to be much help,” I said.

  “Ya gotta figure Mom’s how he got that way.”

  Ah, the Freudian Model.

  “Any idea where I might find him?”

  “What for?”

  “I just need to ask him something. No trouble.”

  He mulled it over. “ ’Cause I wouldn’t want no trouble for the kid. He may be a little light in the loafers, but like I said, he’s a nice kid.”

  “No trouble.”

  His name was Joe Mamula, but everyone called him Joe Mama. But everyone knew her as Nancy. He worked for a vending machine company and serviced most of the bars on the hill, up in what he liked to call the “swish Alps.”

  “I been in that pool hall up on Twenty-third a bunch of times on service calls. Every time I been in there, he been in there. That’s all I know, man.” He reached for the door.

  “My dinner’s gettin’ cold.”

  Before the door completely closed. I shot a question at him, “By the way, Joe, where’s Unit B?”

  “Fucked if I know,” he said and closed the door.

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m not fond of going into gay bars. It has nothing to do with them. It has to do with me. I always feel like a voyeur. I feel as if I’m looking through somebody else’s front window from the shrubbery. And it’s not like I’ve ever been made to feel unwelcome. The times I’ve found myself in that position have, for the most part, been quite pleasant. Maybe I’m a repressed fascist, or maybe it’s the only time a heterosexual, middle-aged white man feels like a minority. Who knows?

  I saw him the moment I opened the door. Rodrigo was all the way in the back right corner playing pool with three other guys. As I strolled the length of the room, I tried to ignore the feeling that I was in Atlantic City, New Jersey, walking down the Miss America runway without my swimsuit. I told myself to lighten up. These guys had no interest in me. They were gay, not blind.

  I stood at the end of the pool table and waited for him to notice me. He was deep in conversation with a muscular guy of about thirty in a blue tank top and white shorts. The hair was a little shorter, maybe, and perhaps the banter just a bit more animated, but otherwise it was a standard pool hall, Anywhere, USA.

  Rodrigo threw his head back to laugh, caught sight of me, and bit it off. He leaned his cue against the wall and walked my way.

  “What are you doing here?” He gave me a small smile.

  “Or did I seriously misjudge you?”

  Interesting. Joe Mamula was positive he could recognize one of them, and now Rod was sure he could recognize one of us. Dude.

  “I’m looking for you.”

  “Why would you be looking for me?”

  “I need to ask you a question.”

  His face clouded. “Did you hassle my mother?”

  I gave him the scout’s salute. “I asked her once. She refused. I went away. That was it.”

  He stayed on the offensive. “What’s so important you have to knock on my mother’s door?”

  “What’s with you that a simple inquiry makes her so nervous?”

  “What are you, a liberal or something?”

  “This is Seattle, man. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody much gives a shit about your sexual orientation.”

  “Old habits die hard. Not every place is like this.” Rodrigo looked over his shoulder at his buddies and then looked me in the eye. “Billings, Montana. That’s where I grew up.”

  “Quaint little town, as I remember.”

  “Not for a fag wetback it’s not. I could tell you stories.”

  International diplomacy will probably not be in my future. Unable to come up with any kind of decent segue, I simply changed the channel.

  “You remember that day you came by with the cart? When I was standing outside eight-fourteen?”

  “I remember. What about it?”

  From over at the table, someone called, “Rod—it’s your turn.”

  He answered without turning. “Shoot for me, Freddy.”

  “Who was in the room where you delivered the order?”

  He wrapped his arms around himself. “Oooweee,” he said. “Don’t get me mixed up in that, man. Get my ass fired.”

  “This is just between us.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “like I can trust you.”

  “You trusted me enough to let me take that bone from your hand the other night.” I’ll admit it. It was cheap.

  He thought it over.

  “What a gomer,” he finally said. “I couldn’t believe that guy.”

  “One of a kind.”

  “I guess I do owe you, don’t I?”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, “but you got to keep me out of it.”

  “No problem,” I lied. If this worked out like I thought it might, Rodrigo was going to be real popular with the SPD. No sense in worrying him about it now, though.

  “It’s like Romeo and Juliet, man. We read that in my community college lit class last semester. It was really cool. The Montagues and the Capulets. Star-crossed lovers from warring families.”

  I don’t remember driving home. I must have done it, because I found myself standing on the porch trying to figure out how to open the front door. After trying the key one way six or seven times, I made the adjustment and turned the key over. The house was dark. Rebecca called my name from upstairs.

  “It’s me,” I called back.

  I stood in the bedroom, dropping my clothes into the darkness at my feet, then crawled under the covers and pulled the down comforter up
to my chin. The sheets were new and stiff. Rebecca’s head turned my way. She reached out a hand and patted my face three times. Good doggie doggie. And then made a lazy roll away from me and began, ever so slightly, to snore.

  Duvall brandished a muffin. “Don’t say that again. I do not snore.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You do it in a most demure and ladylike manner. There wasn’t much snorting and that kind of stuff.”

  I ducked my head to the left and let the poppyseed muffin sail by.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Well, there was the drooling…”

  She picked up a knife. I held up my hands.

  “Just kidding.”

  “Is that all you did? Lie there and watch me sleep all night?”

  “I had a lot on my mind. It took me a while to get to sleep.”

  “Like how it’s possible people could have the unmitigated gall not to like the same movies we do?”

  “And the look on the Meyerson girl’s face when Candace jumped in and admitted she’d gone to the movies with her and Rickey Ray. I could have sworn she didn’t know what the hell Candace was talking about.”

  “How could that be? If it wasn’t true, how could Candace be sure the Meyerson girl would go along with the lie?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  “No. That was Quiz Show. You’ve got your movies mixed up.”

  “This whole damn thing is mixed. Pass the butter.”

  Adrift in a sea of boxes and newspaper, we buttered our muffins and drank our coffee at opposite ends of what used to be my dining room table, which, in this new configuration, was now our kitchen table.

  “I’ve got a ten-thirty meeting,” she said, rising. “But I could be available for lunch, should anyone perhaps feel indebted.”

  “It’s Friday. Barbecue day. Remember?”

  On Jack’s side of the street, the entire block was behind a protective barrier of yellow SPD sawhorses. The area between the sawhorses and the sidewalk was being patrolled by SPD officers on real horses. Modern technology has done little to provide a more effective crowd-control device than a well-trained horse-and-rider team. The SPD approach is simple. Horsie wanna go over here. Either move or try not to get hoofprints on your forehead. Thank you very much.

  Abby and Lola had called out the taxi squad for this one. To the south, Stewart Street was filled with several hundred 4-H members and a collection of earnest parents waving a sedate array of SAVE BUNKY and 4-H 4-EVER signs. To their left, right at the elbow of Stewart Street and Third Avenue, were Steve Drew and his merry vegans. Maybe a hundred of them, wedged in between the 4-H’ers and the animal rightists from PAWS, waving MEAT IS MURDER signs and talking quietly among themselves.

  The area directly in front of the restaurant was an odd mix of Clarissa Hedgpeth’s NUTSS people and Konrad Kramer’s Animal Liberation Front. Clarissa held an ALL GOD’S CHILDREN sign in one hand and Bruce’s leash in the other. The Kramer corps were wearing their terrorist scarves around their necks and holding a single large sign which read, ANIMAL FREEDOM—AT ANY PRICE. Konrad himself was presently engaged in a shoving match with an elderly man from Clarissa’s entourage. The old man’s face was beet-red as he shouted at Kramer.

  At the far end of the block, another surging mass of placard-waving humanity pushed hard against the barriers, chanting something I couldn’t make out. As I walked down the sidewalk, someone shouted, “Killer.”

  All three local TV stations had mobile units on the scene. The cops had allowed them to set up in the corners, inside the barriers. KING-TV’s white van was being commandeered by Melissa Wright, the weekend news anchor. Surprisingly, L-O-L-A Lola King was nowhere to be seen. I figured the story had gotten so big, the station had made a change.

  Rickey Ray perched on his stool inside the front door.

  “I knew you wouldn’t miss it, podna,” he said with a smirk.

  The restaurant was dark and empty.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Outside. The big doin’s outside.”

  “Nice crowd out there in the street.”

  “Man, I didn’t know there was this many tree-huggin’, granola-suckin’ mofos on the whole planet. This a weird town, my man.”

  “Isn’t Jack worried about the ambience?”

  Rickey shook his head. “Seven o’clock, the cops are gonna move ’em back two blocks in every direction. Time the VIPs arrive, you won’t even know they was around.”

  “Must be his charm.”

  “Must be,” he agreed.

  I could feel the heat on my left arm the second I stepped out the door, although the barbecue pit was a good thirty feet to my left. Bunky wasn’t going to like this at all. Vertical heat waves shimmied upward, distorting my view of the bricks in the building across the alley.

  A hunter-green tarp had been hung all along the inside of the fence, effectively hiding the festivities from those in the street. The lot was alive with activity. Enough wind swirled in the area to wind the pennants around their stanchions and keep a thin stream of glowing sparks steadily moving upward from the metal fire pit.

  Beneath the green-and-white tents, what I estimated to be about forty tables were being prepared for this evening’s gala. An army of service people were tacking down white linen tablecloths and arranging place settings. On my right, behind a solid line of waiters, I could hear Dixie’s voice going over table assignments.

  Out in the center of the space, in an area I supposed would be used later for dancing, stood the old Jackalope. Candace was locked to his elbow like a terrier as he made expansive gestures with his free hand. The guy in the yellow hard hat nodded, and waved a handheld radio toward the sky. I checked my watch. Quarter to twelve. If everything had gone reasonably well down at the Brenner Brothers, it shouldn’t be long now. A voice startled me.

  “Do you believe this?”

  Bart Yonquist looked as if he’d stepped out of the Monkey Ward catalog. The perfect preppie right down to the penny loafers. That is, if you didn’t count the large square purse he carried in his hand.

  I put my hands on my hips and said, “I’m sorry. A straw bag? Before Easter? Excuse me, but I don’t think so.”

  “I’m a fashion innovator,” he told me.

  “And no, I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m out of here. I feel like I’m in a bad foreign film. Whenever the cops stop harassing us, I’m on the next plane back to Cleveland. I’ve got most of the money I need. I’ll borrow the rest.”

  “Good move. I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought this whole mess was completely off the wall.”

  “You know, Mr. Waterman, I’ve got a feeling that when I’m older and have a family…I think maybe these last six months are going to comprise the best story I tell for the rest of my life.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  “I gotta go,” he said. “Dixie needs some Rolaids.”

  Still grimly clutching the purse, he disappeared inside the building. Jack was still engaged in an animated conversation with Hard Hat, so I walked along the row of tents on the Third Avenue side and watched the preparations. Halfway down the row, Dixie appeared at my left shoulder.

  “How you doing?” I asked.

  “Evathing I can, honey.”

  “Somebody better.”

  “Ain’t it the truth.” She shielded her eyes and checked the sky. “You seen Bart?”

  I told her where he’d gone. Dixie raised a hand and massaged her middle. “Wish to goodness he’d hurry. I’m about to eat a hole in myself and fall out the bottom.”

  “What’s the L stand for?”

  “What L?”

  “The L in Donnareen L. Pye.”

  “Loretta.” She said it with the accent on the first syllable.

  “Mama named me after Loretta Lynn.”

  She pulled her head back and took me in. “You been snoopin’ after me?”

  I showed he
r both palms. “I’m with you on this one, Dixie. As far as I’m concerned, he’s as crazy as a shit-house rat.”

  She wasn’t satisfied. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think I like—”

  She never got a chance to finish. The stories I’d heard from ’Nam vets about how you could hear the choppers long before you could see them must have been true only in the jungle.

  Mike Bales brought the chopper in fast and low, cutting his way among the buildings as if he expected rocket fire. You only had to watch him fly for a moment to recognize an artist at work. Without so much as an extra turn, he came zooming over the parking garage, spun the copter to the left over the Drop Zone, and began to hover some hundred and fifty feet above the ground.

  Outside the fence, a roar began to rise from the crowd as the quick explained to the dead what was happening. In the stone confines of the urban canyon, the rotors slapped the air like many hands driven flat upon the water; the new slaps mixed with the reverberations to form a single pulsating beat.

  I looked around. All three news teams were standing atop their vans feverishly shooting film and mouthing copy. The staff had come out from beneath the tents to watch. Jack, Candace, and Hard Hat were backing away from the DZ, moving slowly south toward the mayor’s table and the 4-H’ers beyond the fence. Hard Hat was talking into the radio. The line of airborne sparks was swollen to a stream as the moving air pulled an orange plume of fire skyward.

  Bales knew what he was doing. He was as low as he planned to get. The helicopter had barely begun to hover when the load started steadily toward the ground. The whine of the winch could be heard above the percussive slapping of the rotors. Bunky was coming down in a hurry and right on target.

  Dixie was still holding her midriff, but her eyes were bright as she scanned the area. “It’s CNN tonight, darlin’,” she enthused.

  The pallet was no more than forty feet from the ground and closing fast when things started to go haywire. Accounts of what happened next are far more numerous than there were people on the scene. In the coming weeks, nearly everyone in the Central Sound area would claim to have been standing in the street when it happened.

  The people in the street saw it first. I was so focused on the descending ton of beef that it took the collective gasp of several thousand of my fellow creatures to get my attention. Holy guacamole.