“A cleanup.”
“I’m on a secure line, are you?”
“A payphone.”
“What’s the cleanup, and where?”
“A woman.”
“A woman? You? Seriously?”
“She gave me no options. No other way out.”
“She a hooker?”
I thought about that.
“I’m not really sure anymore,” I said.
“What the fuck is that s’posed to mean? Get clear, man.”
“Okay, she’s not a hooker. She’s just some woman. Things went bad.”
“Sounds like it, shit.”
“I’m in Christmas.”
“You shittin’ me?”
“No,” I said. “I’m in room 13 at this hole called The Palm Tree Inn.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the place.”
I paused, shock settlin’ in.
“Really? It’s a shit shack in the middle of nowhere.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s a hot spot, man, shit. I’ve been there myself and I’m tellin’ you, brother, you’re in abadplace alone. You need to get out of therenowand make sure no one sees you. Lock the motel door. Leave the woman. It won’t take us too long to get there.”
His strong voice was reassurin’. I found it hard to believe that it wasIwho had savedhim from gettin’ that shank in the yard all those years ago. Duane was so much tougher than me. Maybe that’s why he stayed in crime when he got out and I went into the butcher shop. Only now I’d butchered some crazed housewife from Holopaw, and my hands were shakin’ for the first time since I was a child.
I went back to the room and grabbed the whiskey bottle. I washed and wiped down the Glock and the dagger too. I was tempted to take them, but I knew Duane would be more professional with disposin’ of the murder weapon than I would. Plus, it was her gun anyway. I doused her in whisky a bit — where I’d been inside of her. I then splashed where we’d been on the bed too. I went to her bag and took all of her cash, hopin’ it might look like a robbery or somethin’ in case someone came in before Duane’s boys could. I saw her cellphone and grabbed it too, thinkin’ of the texts. I was relieved to see it was one of those disposable, untraceable ones. A burner, as the dealers call ’em. I took it anyways and threw it in the river on the drive back to Melbourne.
* * * * *
I slept in a chair in the hospital but didn’t ask them to treat me or even hint that I’d been cut up. I’d stopped at an all-night drugstore and then bandaged myself on up by my own self. I reckon I was doing all right, and I’d already had painkillers on me anyway. No need for no doctor to be snoopin’ into my business.
I was waitin’ to hear that Mom was awake. I wanted to see her ’n’ hold her again whiles I still could. I knew she wasn’t long for this here world. That’s what I was down there for in the first place, and I do believe that’s why God punished me for leavin’ her side even for a little while. I truly do.
It was around 7 in the mornin’ when my phone rang and woke me. It was an unlisted number. A man I did not know told me the cleanup was done, and then he hung up right away, leavin’ my paranoid questions in the hands of my faith in Duane.
I walked over to the nurse’s counter.
It was fat-ass Nurse Cooper behind the desk.
I showed her no kindness, and stared at her like a mean cat, puttin’ those murderous eyes o’ mine to use.
“She up yet?” I asked.
“No, but she will be soon, for breakfast. And before you ask, she has had plenty of water, and some Chapstick too.”
“Good.”
I stood there for a moment, my thought patterns derailed.
“Is there anythin’ I can get her?” I asked.
“Sir, all she’s been asking for is you.”
I bit my lip to hold back the tears just as my phone began to ring again. I didn’t excuse myself but instead turned away rudely and walked outside, out into the all-too-warm day.
It was Helen, and this time I picked up.
“My God, Bill, are you all right?” she asked when I answered.
She was in one of her better moods, I could tell. But after what’d happened, she didn’t seem so crazy after all.
“I’m fine, honey bee.”
She laughed warmly.
“You haven’t called me that in a while,” she said, and it was true. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Listen, I can’t talk long, Mom’s going to be awake soon. What’s up?”
She sighed.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she said. “Like you always do.”
“Not this time.”
There was a long silence where she just breathed sweetly into the receiver. I could almost smell the sweet mist of the perfume she wore and sold at the beauty counter in that department store across from the butcher shop.
She confessed, “I dreamt that you died last night.”
My heart sank, and a chill went across my flesh at the same time.
“How’d I go?”
She began to get choked up, and sniffed back a tear.
“I don’t know, you know how dreams are. We were in the woods and it was snowing, like that last time we were out hiking in Vermont. The leaves were all gone from the trees, and the branches seemed to reach down for you like they were alive and furious. They became like knives or claws, trying to rip you apart. But you fought them off and then ran away. That’s when I started chasing you. I was calling out your name in the dark but couldn’t find you.”
She got choked up again and had to stop for a second.
“Then I heard this clanking sound. I turned and saw you hacking away at all the dead trees with an axe, killing them, protecting yourself but also protecting me. It made me feel so afraid for you, and yet I felt so safe.”
I stood there, starin’ blind at the fountain. I listened to her breathe into the phone like a ghost, the same breath that had whispered so many small nothin’s into my ear when she was tangled in my embrace.
“So, then,” I said, “how’d I up and go?”
She took a while to answer.
“You killed all of the trees and then collapsed. I fell down beside you and you were clutching your chest like you were having a heart attack. I tried to pound on you, to resuscitate you, but your chest began to pool with blood. But when I tried to give you mouth-to-mouth you just kissed me, sweetly, like you do when we make love. I pulled away and looked at you. You were smiling. You told me to calm down and that everything would be all right.”
She paused again, and a black bird flew down and perched before me on the fountain, pickin’ at the bread some old biddy’d been throwin’ down there.
“Well then,” I asked her, “was everythin’ all right?”
“No, Bill,” she said. “You died right there in front of me, surrounded by all of those dead branches.”
There was a long silence between us that was heavier than an anvil. I just stood there lookin’ at the fountain, through it, absorbin’ ’t’all.
“Helen,” I told her, “I’m okay. I’m safe. Plus, it’s springtime now in New England. Soon there’ll be leaves.”
“Are you saying there’s hope?”
“Always, just in different ways.”
“I miss you so much, Bill.”
“I know you do, honey bee.”
“Will you come back to me?”
“Look, I want you to get some help, Helen. Pills, a therapist, or perhaps even God — I don’t rightly know, but you need somethin’ to help you find balance. I know that’s a lot of judgment comin’ from a beaten-down redneck like me, but you need to hear it.”
“I know. But you’re not a redneck,” she said. “You’re so different from all the other men I’ve been with, all Northerners like me. I guess that’s why we argue sometimes. A cultural thing. But I don’t think I could go back after being with a Southern gentlemen like you, Bill. You’re no redneck, you’re an honest-to-goodness cowboy.”
“Well, let’s not argue that,” I said. “What’s important is that you need some sort of help.”
“I can accept that. But who’s going to helpyou, Bill?” she asked. “You’ve been through so much, and the God you turn to just keeps dumping more upon you! Is it God who is finally going to help you?”
“He already has.”
She sighed, and there was a quiver in her voice.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
“I have been blessed.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, you’re the one who’s talking crazy now. Listen, when you come back,” she said, “I want you to come to me, not God or booze or anything else. Come to me. My arms are open and so is my heart. They always were, Bill. I knew I loved you the moment you touched my hand.”
I took a deep breath. She could always talk real pretty when she wanted to.
“I’m sorry, honey. But this is the final scene.”
She paused before speakin’ again.
“What are you telling me?” she asked.
“I’m tellin’ you that the cowboy has to ride into the sunset.”
She began to sob, and I walked over to the fountain. She started sayin’ somethin’ else but I dropped the cellphone into the water, destroyin’ it forever. The splash frightened the black bird and it took flight, screechin’ away, leavin’ me alone out there with all that goddamned sun.
Behind me, Nurse Cooper had come outside.
“Your mother is ready to see you now, sir.”
* * * * *
I walked into the dimly lit room. It was filled with stale air that smelled of medicine and blood. My mother was a shrunken skeleton of herself, whacked out on morphine to the point of delirium, and there were hoses runnin’ all in and out of her like she was some morbid puppet. Her hair, which had once been so long, blond, and beautiful, was now reduced to grey tufts from the treatment.
I knelt beside her and noticed she had the brown scapular around her neck along with her usual St. Jude. I looked at the image upon it, of the blessed Mother cradlin’ the infant Savior, and of the image of two hearts pierced by one dagger.
I love thee o most precious, sacred and immaculate hearts. Please, guide me.
I reached down and touched my mother’s hand. I wrapped mine ’round hers, just as I must’ve done with her finger as a wee baby. She awoke, and she smiled at me, her lips lookin’ better but her face sunken and sallow with the disease. Her fake teeth were still in her jar, soakin’, so her smile was the horrible grimace of the dyin’. A trickle of bloody water ran out of one nostril like a pink tear, and her eyes watered at the very sight of me.
“Sonny boy,” she said, “my lil’ Billy Joe.”
She was the most beautiful woman in the whole world.
Video Express
The town itself seemed right out of a super-8 horror film, and that excited Steve all the more. The unkempt state road had brought him through the center of Wickham, and its remains were like that of so many small towns since the recession. Hollowed-out shopping plazas and abandoned homes sat rotting where the heart of the suburb used to be, sulking like a cemetery of the American dream. But Steve was a hardcore horror nerd, and he couldn’t help but associate the desolation with zombie apocalypse scenarios and memories of a million cookie-cutter backwoods slasher flicks, the very sort of movies that had him driving out to Wickham in the first place.
The ad had popped up onHorrorzone, one of the blogs he frequented the most. It covered all aspects of horror entertainment, from rare film scores to collectible action figures. He’d found a lot of genre gems through links the blog had posted, and so he had high hopes for this one — high enough to make him drive across state lines to find the place. The ad had been a single banner, nothing fancy. It readVideo Express and had a drawing of a locomotive with a VHS tape reel as wheels. When he’d clicked on it, he was brought to a bare-bones website that promoted an old, family-owned video store. The photos of the place, while few, revealed rows upon rows of video boxes, many still in the giant clamshells from the ’80s. Posters and cardboard cutouts were displayed like a shrine to a lost age of home entertainment, easily sparking Steve’s
strong sense of nostalgia. The information on the page was incredibly brief. It just advertised the address and boastedClassic videos, hard-to-find collectibles, VHS and Beta! It puzzled him, knowing that even big chain video stores were dying in this computer age of direct downloads and DVDs by mail. He thought that perhaps it was going out of business and cleaning out the inventory, or that it was a novelty place for self-proclaimed movie geeks like himself, but the website gave no indication of that. It seemed to just be a video store, but perhaps that was the gag. With only an address to go off of, there was only one way to find out, and it seemed like a fun way to waste a Saturday.
He slowed down as he hit the next intersection, hoping the GPS would regain a signal, but the blue triangle just floated aimlessly on the screen.Piece of crap, he thought, reaching for the directions he’d printed out as backup. He read them over and eased the Hyundai forward, paying closer attention as he exited the state road and wound through the neighborhood. As he crept farther into Wickham, the potholes grew deeper and more frequent, and the cracks in the gravel sprouted taller weeds. The houses passed by his windows in moldy, broken blurs. He realized he hadn’t seen another car in a while.
“What a ghost town,” he muttered, straining to read the street signs through their rust and grime. “It’s likeChildren of the Corn out here.”
He made a few wrong turns before ending up where he needed to be, which was Aurora Road. He followed it to the New Haven Plaza, a dilapidated strip mall with a huge marquee for long-gone shops, laundromats and diners.
Steve wondered if any of these places were in business at all, but upon turning into the parking lot, he could see the bright-red neon of the letters readingVideo Express, drilled into the concrete above the little store. TheOpensign glowed pinkly in the window near a poster for the old Stallone movieCobra, which was framed in white bulbs that flickered in a circular pattern, as if to shout, “Now playing!”
Steve felt his inner fanboy starting to somersault. He rapped his fingers on the steering wheel as the excitement boiled. He parked and stood in front of the place, marveling at the acute detail. He felt like he had traveled there in a time machine. The place had the same feel as the little video stores he’d frequented as a kid. He fondly remembered going with his dad and brother on weekends to such shops, back when the novelty of watching movies in your home hadn’t yet worn off. He’d wandered the shelves, hypnotized by the hand-drawn cover art of the rental boxes, enticed by their promises of explosive action, big breasts, and fantastic monsters from beyond. His dad would always get something with a muscle-bound man out for revenge, his brother would pick out some sword-and-sorcery tripe, and he would select a ghastly terror that they would roll their eyes at him for. Killer dolls, masked maniacs, midget monsters, bloody power tools, and psychics in homes that dripped protoplasm. Even as a child he had reveled in the genre. Now, as an adult, he not only loved it, but also felt a strange sense of sentimentality about it. Collecting the very movies he had rented as a kid, and better yet, the ones he had always wanted to rent but never got to, gave him the
same feeling of warm joy that most people get from going home to Nana’s for Christmas. But if collecting the videos was nostalgic fun, standing there in front of Video Express was truly a nostalgia orgasm.
Next to theCobra poster were some handmade signs that were taped to the glass.
Membership deposit of only $30!
We also rent VCRs!
Weekday Special: Rent two videos, get one free!
Make every night a ride on the Video Express!
Steve opened the door, smiling wider when he heard the brass bell ringing above him. It was tied to the door on a shoestring: completely old-school. He was greeted b
y a life-size cutout of Freddy Krueger grinning, with his arms crossed, next to a giant bin filled with former rentals that were now for sale.
“The budget bin!” he said to himself, delighting at the memories as they came flooding back in an awesome tsunami.
The store was small but filled with rows upon rows of wooden shelves that housed pyramids of video boxes. They were all video cassettes. No DVDs or Blu-rays. He noticed that they all had numbered clothespins on them, and he had a flashback to how that used to work: The videos themselves were always in the storage room. If the display box had a pin on it, that meant the video was in. The customer would take the pin to the counter, and the owner would go and get it, finding it based on the number system. He’d forgotten all about that until he saw it here. From the look of things, this place really was renting the videos. He
couldn’t understand how they stayed in business, but he loved it. It had more horror-nerd appeal than a hundred conventions.
There was a counter at the other end of the store. Behind it were a few VCRs stacked side by side. They were all the old-fashioned metal kind, heavy as lawnmowers and almost as big. One of them hummed so loudly that he could hear it across the store, and it had an eerie blue light emanating from its video slot. As he walked toward it, he passed a few televisions that were suspended from the ceiling. They were all playing trailers for decades-old movies. A small line of static tracking danced along the bottom edge of each screen. Next to one of the sets was an inflatable toilet with a goblin coming out of it, a promotional piece for the filmGhoulies II.
“Dude!” Steve said aloud, pumping a fist with happiness. “This place is the soapy tits!”
“Can I help you find anything?” a voice asked from behind the counter.
Steve looked back and saw a man standing there now. He was in his 40s, with a mound of blow-dried hair. He looked oddly familiar, too.
“I was just admiring the inflatable ghoulie,” Steve said.
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