The chain of command at O’Malley’s Bar and Grill went as follows: owner, general manager, bar manager, kitchen manager, bartenders, wait staff, cooks, dishwashers, and at the very bottom of the heap was the bar cleaning crew, which consisted of Big Mike and his partner Von. Bike Mike was just like his name described, weighing in at over two hundred and fifty pounds, but that was the least of his problems. His looks could best be described as ugly-and that was being kind; one was tempted to call him hideous-his skin complexion mottled, greasy, and pocked with old acne scars. His front teeth were missing from years of free-basing cocaine and the remaining teeth looked like decaying, crumbling tombstones in a long forgotten cemetery. His demeanor was rough and crude, his intelligence dim at best, which made for an interesting cleaning duo because he was the brains of the operation.
Von looked small compared to Big Mike-he was the Laurel to the other’s Ollie-but anyone looked small next to the big man. Von’s limbs were skinny but he had a sizable paunch from all the beer he drank. He was a black man straight from the hood-Cabrini Green to be exact-but he had assimilated himself well into the white man’s world if only to be their underpaid lackey, which suited him just fine. The neighborhood he came from, you were a success if you managed to get a job, any job, no matter what it paid. The fact that he didn’t have to sell drugs or run with a gang made his mother happy. He was the better looking of the two, but that wasn’t saying much and, like Big Mike, he loved his cocaine, however he could get it.
The tier of drug dealer’s in O’Malley’s went as follows: Johnny Johnson, one of the cooks, controlled the market in powder. His brother Shaka, a dishwasher, handled the crack and dime bags of shitty often-laced weed. Scooter, the doorman, handled quarters and half ounces of weed but he loaded up the bags with seeds and stems to make them appear to weigh more then they really did. Mark, another one of the cooks, sold mushrooms, ecstasy, mescaline and LSD, and of all the dealers he was the least financially motivated. And then there was Patrick, one of the bartenders, who handled large quantities of weed, in fact, was the main supplier to Scooter and Shaka. Anyone who knew what was going on talked to him personally instead of going through his rinky-dink middlemen.
Big Mike had no interest in marijuana or psychedelics, he was solely enchanted with cocaine, whether snorted, smoked or-occasionally-shot-up. His addiction had been purely incidental; he enjoyed the drug so much that he tried to make a habit out of using it every day until, alas, it became a habit and he had no choice. Von, on the other hand, had joined the erstwhile team at O’Malley’s with a cocaine addiction already onboard. The only reason he worked was so that he could keep himself in rocks or powder.
Which leads us to Big Mike’s decrepit room over the bar where beer and booze bottles are strewn around the room randomly, some of them half filled with piss. Big Mike obtained some ether through a friend of his that cleans at a sports bar down the street and is preparing some cocaine for he and Von to freebase. Von is leaning over the board on cinder blocks that Big Mike calls a table, fairly drooling while the other gets everything ready.
“Back off ya fucker, let me work!” Big Mike growls and Von smiles humbly but doesn’t move an inch.
“Well if you could make those fat fingers work faster I wouldn’t be starin’ I’d be smokin’ right now.” Von says in his light, girlish voice.
“As soon as this is ready I’m taking the first hit.”
“But I paid for most of it!”
“He man, we’re a team. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine, ya dig?”
“You fat fuckin’ piece of white trash!” Von says harshly.
“You nigger fuckin’ piece of nigger trash!” Big Mike volleys back with a slight smile and the two of them stare at each for a second.
“You always gotta be playin’ the race card with me, don’t you?”
“You called me a piece of white trash first.” Big Mike says, letting the mixture cool, reaching for the glass pipe and the Bunsen burner.
“I just calls it as I sees it.” Von retorts and Big Mike snorts derisive laughter.
“Yeah? Well I’ll show you who’s a piece of white trash…” Big Mike loads some cocaine into the glass pipe and hands it to Von who takes it but not without a bit of disbelieve in his eyes.
“Are you sure?” Von asks and Big Mike smiles.
“Go ahead. You’ve earned it.”
Von puts the pipe to his lips and Big Mike sparks up the Bunsen burner. Soon he is puffing up large clouds of smoke, his cheeks bulging as he tries to hold it all in. When his lungs can’t take it any more he finally exhales and the look on his face is one of pure contentment.
“Ahhh,” he sighs. “You ain’t such a bad guy after all Big Mike.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now hold this so I can take a hit…”
It goes on like this for several hours until they are staring at the ever-brightening sky and the last of the cocaine on a plate before them. This is usually when depression sets in, when the coke is almost gone and a new day is dawning. Sleep is almost never an option, only the idea of where they can get more coke, which takes more money, which these fools consistently never have. This is where the scheming starts.
“Can you get Johnny to front us some more?” Von invariably asks.
“He fronted half of this.” Big Mike says, scratching his pimply back with a grimy, black fingernail. “Didn’t you tell him we would pay him the rest today?”
“Yeah.” Von admits, sighing, looking at the remainder of the coke on the plate. “I need to think some more.”
So they do up the last of it, but not without the usual remorse, taking every hit while thinking of the next one. That’s how the addiction works: pretty soon you are beyond seeing what is in front of you and can only think of the next one, knowing that you are that much closer to being out.
When it’s gone they eventually start arguing because there is nothing left to do but feel bad. They call each other every name they can think of until they run out of ways to use the words ‘fuck’, ‘nigger’ and ‘white trash’, on account of their poor education and limited vocabulary. At last they are silent, feeling sorry for themselves.
“We have to go to work in an hour.” Big Mike comments and Von nods demurely. The big W. The mere mention of the word makes both of their heads ache.
But this is a new day, a new era as it may be, and Von suddenly has an idea like none other than he has had before.
“I know where we can get more money.” He says.
“Yeah? Is your sister out of jail?”
“No, she’ll be in county for another month, but I’m talkin’ some real money.”
“You gonna hold up a gas station?”
“No, but your getting’ close…”
* * *
And this is how the two found themselves in the basement of O’Malley’s with a crow bar, claw hammer and a long handled screwdriver.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Big Mike says, looking around them as Von places one end of the crow bar into an opening in the safe and pries with all of his might.
“They ain’t gonna know it was us. As soon as we get the money we’ll get some more coke and then we’ll call the cops ourselves, like we found it when we came in to clean this morning.”
“And who do you think they’re gonna blame? One of the bartenders?”
“Doesn’t matter, as long as it ain’t us.” Von is sweating with exertion and cocaine withdrawal combined.
“Yeah, but we got keys to the place.”
“So we’ll jimmy the door to make it look like an outside job. Now shut-up and help me with this!”
* * *
Johnny opens his door slowly, the smell of crack smoke drifting out around him.
“What are you fools doing here?” He croaks, his throat dry and scratchy from drug use and lack of sleep.
“We came to pay you for the blow and see if we could get some more.” Von says as Big Mike stands behind him, looking sketchy.
“I’m not fronting you any more today, so you can forget it.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said we came to pay you, which means that we have money to buy some more!” Von says, his voice rising.
“Shhh! Keep yer fuckin’ voice down!” Johnny says but the door opens wide enough to let the two in. “Now sit down and shut-up!”
The two take a seat on the couch as Johnny triple bolts the door behind them. There is a girl laying on the floor naked, her legs splayed wide open and her vagina shiny with lubricant.
“That’s my girlfriend Darlene. She passed out a few hours ago.” Johnny says, picking up a small, slender crack pipe and heating a piece of rock cocaine inside. When it melts enough to suit him he takes a long pull, holds it, then exhales the smoke through his nose. He offers the pipe to Von, who takes it greedily. After Von gets a hit he passes it to Mike who follows suit, except that it is almost gone and barely gets anything.
“I’ll reload it when it cools down.” Johnny says, his eyes slightly crossed as the coke fires up his fried brain, if only for a few minutes before it becomes numb and stupid again.
“What do you guys want?” He asks.
Now, before the two got here they discussed this at length. They knew that it would look suspicious if they bought a large amount; surely everybody at the bar would have known if one of them collected an insurance policy from a dead relative or won the lottery, so it was in their best interest not to go waving around large amounts of cash in front of anyone who was soon to find out that the safe had been broken into. They had agreed that they should just purchase a couple of grams, saying they had gotten the money from Von’s brother, who had recently taken work as a city bus driver.
But now that they here in the lion’s den, so to speak, and they knew that Johnny often had considerable amounts of coke on hand, the urge to splurge was upon them.
“I was thinking maybe an eight ball…” Von starts and Johnny lifts an eyebrow.
“You ain’t got the money for an eight ball.” Johnny says, then looks at the two of them closely, well, as closely as he can for someone who has been up all night doing cocaine.
“Where’d you get the money?”
“We found it-” Big Mike starts.
“My brother lent it to me-” Von says, their words colliding into one another’s.
Johnny looks at them suspiciously.
“So which is it?”
“His brother lent it to him-” Big Mike starts.
“We found it-” Von says.
Johnny feels the pipe to see if it has cooled down, and then loads another rock in it. He melts it, takes a hit, and then passes it to Big Mike who sucks on it gratefully.
“You guys are actin’ pretty shady.” He says, reaching into a drawer in the table in front of him and pulling out a large baggy full of white powder. Von’s eyes go wide. There must be at least an ounce in there. “But show me the money and I’ll see what I can do.”
Big Mike fishes bills out of his pockets as Von continues to stare, throwing a wad on the table.
“Ah, Mr. big spender. Am I going to be seeing something about this on the news?”
“Naw, nothing like that…” Big Mike says but his face turns slightly red.
Von gets up quickly.
“I gotta use the bathroom.” He says. “You mind?”
“Not as long as you make it in the toilet.” Johnny says, scooping out a pile of coke and laying it on a triple beam scale he produced from under the table.
“Thanks.” Von disappears while Big Mike looks at the pile growing before him. He doesn’t know how Johnny can do it, have all this coke around him and not go totally crazy. If that were Big Mike’s stash he probably wouldn’t leave the room until it was gone.
“So where did you guys really get the money?” Johnny asks as he works, adding small increments to the pile until it is at the desired weight.
“Like we said, uh, we got it from my, I mean, Von’s brother…”
Johnny stops what he is doing and looks Big Mike in the eyes.
“Look man, I don’t really care, just don’t tell me you stole it from O’Malley because that would be the lowest of low, if you can dig what I’m sayin’.”
Big Mike swallows thickly, dropping his eyes to he floor.
“Uh, yeah man, I don’t want to tell you that…”
“You stole the money from O’Malley?” Johnny says incredulously, standing up quickly. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Um, I didn’t say that.” Big Mike says, looking up at him with what can only be described as a stupid look on his face.
“You didn’t have to, I can read you like a fuckin’ TV!” Johnny says, reaching for his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Big Mike asks nervously, getting to his feet.
“I’m callin’ the big man himself, what do you think I’m doin’? You don’t fuck around with that guy!” Johnny opens up the phone, begins punching numbers in.
And suddenly Von emerges from the bathroom, clutching the crow bar that did the job so nicely on the safe.
“You ain’t callin’ nobody!” He says, his high-pitched voice even higher due to his excitement.
“What, you gonna fuckin’ hit me now? Is that what you think you gonna do?”
“I know I’m gonna hit you, now put the phone down!”
“I’d do what he says…” Big Mike ventures when suddenly Von flies forward, swinging the crowbar like he’s Mickey Mantle or his modern day equivalent and before Johnny can raise an arm to defend himself his mouth is gushing blood and teeth. He falls backwards into his chair, the phone falling from his hand, but not before he hit the ‘send’ button.
This is what Brian O’Malley hears on the other end when he finally extracts himself from between the two women he was sleeping with and puts the phone to his ear:
“The fuck did you do that for? I think you killed him!”
From the timbre of the voice, O’Malley thinks, it sounds like his bar cleaner Big Mike.
“He was gonna call the boss! I couldn’t let him do that!”
Judging by the high-pitched squeal of the other voice, it’s his numb nuts partner, Von.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to hit him! And what the fuck are you doing still carryin’ that fuckin’ crowbar?”
“I brought it along just in case something like this happened!”
“What, so we could get arrested for robbery and murder?”
“Just grab the fuckin’ cocaine and let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Wait!” Big Mike yells and for a moment there is silence. Then: “Let’s toss this place. I’m sure he’s got a lot of money stashed around here somewhere.”
O’Malley listens to this in stony silence. He gets out of bed and walks over to his dresser where his cell phone is. Still listening on his landline, he dials a number on the cell.
“Hello?” A voice groggy from lack of sleep answers.
“Patrick, something has come up and we are going to have to resort to plan B.”
Suddenly the voice becomes crystal clear.
“Yes sir.” A pause and then: “Where is the rendezvous point?”
“JJ’s place.” O’Malley lights a cigar, blows billows of smoke toward the ceiling. “Call the others and tell them to get their asses there quick, before my money gets out the door.”
“Yes sir!”
“And Patrick…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let the cops get involved.”
“No sir!” O’Malley hangs up the phone and looks out the window at the new day. One of the girls stirs on the bed behind him, scratching herself before turning over and going back to sleep. He turns and looks at the two of them for a second, notes that one of them doesn’t look as pretty as she did last night, sighs, and decides he needs a drink.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Shift of Power
The man stood at the entrance of a dirt cave, a cold dread filling him as he watched black smoke rise on the horizon, smudging the already perpetually gray sky. His tattered clothing hung on his skinny frame loosely, the designer labels long worn or tore away. His face was streaked with dirt, his body long past needing a much-required bathing, but his eyes twinkled brightly, behind their pale blue hue was the knowledge of who he was, what he had possessed. A woman poked her head out of the cave behind him, looked in the direction he was staring, and uttered a short, choppy shriek.
“It’s them isn’t it?” She said in a shaky, panicky voice. “As if they haven’t taken enough already-”
“Shhh.” The man said quietly, eyes intently watching for any sign of life to emerge from the smoke. “You go back inside and prepare breakfast.”
“Yeah right, breakfast.” She snorted then uttered a bark that was supposed to pass as a laugh. “If you can call meal worms a breakfast.”
“Any food that keeps us alive is called breakfast.” The man said quietly, turning to look at her briefly before returning to his vigil. “We should at least be thankful that we’re still here.”
“You go ahead and be thankful if you want.” The woman answered scornfully, a sneer playing on her once pretty, collagen inflated lips. “I’d rather be dead than to have to live the rest of my life like this.”
At once his head jerked roughly towards her, his eyes flashing with wounded vehemence.
“Don’t talk like that Helen, you know I don’t like it when you say things like that.”
Her features softened as his eyes sought out hers, and her tough exterior melted as she leaned against the dirt they called a home. She emitted a small sob and clenched a fist to her mouth.
“I don’t know how you can be so calm through all this. We’ve lost everything! Everything!”
“Don’t think I don’t know that.” He said, rubbing his once smooth and manicured hands together, now grown callused and chafed by the hard labor they had to endure. “Now get back inside and get our meal ready. I may have to take a journey to the hills to get a better look at what is going on, just in case we need to move on from here.”
“I’m tired of running John, I’m just so tired of…all of this.”
“I know you are baby, me too. We just have to stay strong. It can’t be like this everywhere. We’ll find others like us soon enough.”
“Hah! The pipe dream you’ve been feeding me since day one. ‘There’s others just like us in the same boat Helen’,” She said, mimicking his voice. “Don’t worry we’ll be among our own kind soon enough Helen’, ‘Just a few more days and we’ll find our way out of this Helen…I’m getting sick of listening to your crap!”
This finally shattered his calm demeanor and he turned toward her, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing.
“Yeah? Well if you want I’ll leave you to your own devices and you can find your way through this all by yourself! Is that what you want? Huh?” His voice was louder than he intended, his temper taking even him by surprise.
At once she started crying, large, chest wracking sobs as fat tears rolled down her once beautifully rounded cheeks. She fell to her butt in the dirt and put her face in her cracked, dirty hands.
“I wasn’t meant to live like this!” She sputtered through her sobs. “I’m better than this! They should have protected us better, should have made sure that this wouldn’t happen to, to…us!”
At once John felt bad and he went to her, getting down on his knees and putting his arms around her, drawing her to his breast. She did deserve better then this; his whole life he had made sure she had everything she wanted, allowed her to live a life beyond her wildest dreams. This was surely a cruel and twisted joke.
“I’m sure they tried to do everything they could to help us dear, they wouldn’t have deliberately let it come to this-”
His voice was suddenly rendered silent by the sound of stomping hooves, and when he looked toward the horizon he saw them coming.
“Get inside quick and cover yourself in the dirt! I’ll keep them from getting inside!”
“But they’ll kill you! Come inside and we’ll help bury each other!”
“They’ll see the entrance to the cave and know that someone lives here and they’ll destroy it! I’ll have to take my chances. Better that one of us survives!”
“I won’t live for long without you John, I, I can’t!” And she broke into fresh tears.
“Please Helen, just do as I say! It will be alright!”
“I can’t!”
The sound of the approaching men was getting closer; they could hear their coarse laughter and the whinnying of the horses.
“Please Helen, get inside!”
Fear finally overtook her and she got hastily to her feet and scrambled inside.
“I love you John!” She said as she tore at the loose dirt, flinging it over her body.
“I love you too! Now cover yourself quickly!” He said, hoping that these weren’t to be the last words he ever spoke to her. She couldn’t help the way she felt. She had been accustomed to having everything; having nothing made her feel worthless, like less then a human being…
“There’s one!” A voice rough with tobacco and the harsh extremities cried and at once the men on the horses surrounded John, pointing their hand-tooled weapons at him.
“On yer knees slave and bow before us!” A gnarly man with a wild plume of feathers on his head commanded and as John dropped to the ground the others laughed.
“Nice use of the lingo!” A man with a shaved head and missing front teeth complimented. “Gives us the feel of marauding pirates!”
“Marauding?” The first one said. “Where the hell did you learn a word like that?”
“The prison library! I can read you know. I even got my GED.”
“Oh! Aren’t we a brainiac?” Another said, jumping off of his horse and putting a knife to John’s throat.
“Okay Richey Rich what have you got in the cave? If you have any money now’s the time to relinquish it or pay the consequences!” The man with the feathers said and again the others laughed.
“I feel like this is, like, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or something.” The man with the knife to John’s throat commented and the man in the feathers grinned.
“I’m just trying to make us seem more authentic I guess. Gives us a sense of dignity.” He turned his attention back to John. “But seriously now. What have you got in the cave?”
“I have nothing, I swear! I lost everything I had when the banks collapsed during the war!”
The men guffawed as they got off of their horses, looking for a place to tie them to and finally settling on a lone oak tree a few meters away.
“Aw boo-hoo! Ain’t it sad boys? The poor guy lost everything he had! That’s what you get for trusting the freakin’ government!”
John wished he could argue with them but they had him there. They were right. All his life he had trusted the government and their institutions but in the end they had shown what a bunch of cowardly, self-serving bastards they were when they turned on the people who had paid for their campaigns, elected them to power and offered them the bribes that they had grown fat on. Instead of helping the wealthy elite they had emptied their bank accounts and fled the country, leaving the once rich and powerful to fend for themselves against a problem the politicians had created.
“The one thing I can say for the government is that they knew who to count on when they wanted the Chinese killed!” One of the men said, a fellow with long, unruly hair and a gold hoop in each of his ears and the rest of the men cheered.
“Here here!” Another cried. “Convict’s make the best soldiers of them all!”
“Depends on how you look at it…” John muttered, but they didn’t hear him over their own gloating. When the government sensed that the country had become too overrun by the invading Chinese, they opened the prison doors and recruited the convicts, offering them a full pardon on their sentences if they helped the war effort, to which the majority agreed. The thing was, the convicts had an agenda of their own and no one could foresee their ability to organize. Before the government knew it the Chinese were no longer the problem. That was when the banks went belly up, when the government sponsored institutions no longer catered to the citizens who had helped them grow strong.
“I don’t think I believe this guy.” The man with the knife to John’s throat said. “I think he’s hiding something.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” The ex-con with the plume of feathers said. “Get in there and see what he’s got!”
Four of the men entered the cave and minutes later he heard Helen’s cries.
“Stop it! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” She pleaded but was soon dragged out and dumped onto the ground before them.
“Ah, he’s got a woman!” The guy with the shaved head said, licking his cracked, brittle lips. “She ain’t much of a looker but she’ll do!”
At this John’s heart and spirit broke. Helen had once been the prettiest woman he had ever laid eyes on, had been courted by men far better looking than he, but in the end had chosen him because he had more to offer, he was the one who could give her everything she could ever imagine… “Line up boys, let’s keep some order to this, we ain’t savages…at least not yet anyway!” The ex-con in the feathers chuckled as he sheathed his knife, reaching for the buckle on his pants. “There’s enough to go around, everybody will get a turn…”
“It’s them isn’t it?” She said in a shaky, panicky voice. “As if they haven’t taken enough already-”
“Shhh.” The man said quietly, eyes intently watching for any sign of life to emerge from the smoke. “You go back inside and prepare breakfast.”
“Yeah right, breakfast.” She snorted then uttered a bark that was supposed to pass as a laugh. “If you can call meal worms a breakfast.”
“Any food that keeps us alive is called breakfast.” The man said quietly, turning to look at her briefly before returning to his vigil. “We should at least be thankful that we’re still here.”
“You go ahead and be thankful if you want.” The woman answered scornfully, a sneer playing on her once pretty, collagen inflated lips. “I’d rather be dead than to have to live the rest of my life like this.”
At once his head jerked roughly towards her, his eyes flashing with wounded vehemence.
“Don’t talk like that Helen, you know I don’t like it when you say things like that.”
Her features softened as his eyes sought out hers, and her tough exterior melted as she leaned against the dirt they called a home. She emitted a small sob and clenched a fist to her mouth.
“I don’t know how you can be so calm through all this. We’ve lost everything! Everything!”
“Don’t think I don’t know that.” He said, rubbing his once smooth and manicured hands together, now grown callused and chafed by the hard labor they had to endure. “Now get back inside and get our meal ready. I may have to take a journey to the hills to get a better look at what is going on, just in case we need to move on from here.”
“I’m tired of running John, I’m just so tired of…all of this.”
“I know you are baby, me too. We just have to stay strong. It can’t be like this everywhere. We’ll find others like us soon enough.”
“Hah! The pipe dream you’ve been feeding me since day one. ‘There’s others just like us in the same boat Helen’,” She said, mimicking his voice. “Don’t worry we’ll be among our own kind soon enough Helen’, ‘Just a few more days and we’ll find our way out of this Helen…I’m getting sick of listening to your crap!”
This finally shattered his calm demeanor and he turned toward her, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing.
“Yeah? Well if you want I’ll leave you to your own devices and you can find your way through this all by yourself! Is that what you want? Huh?” His voice was louder than he intended, his temper taking even him by surprise.
At once she started crying, large, chest wracking sobs as fat tears rolled down her once beautifully rounded cheeks. She fell to her butt in the dirt and put her face in her cracked, dirty hands.
“I wasn’t meant to live like this!” She sputtered through her sobs. “I’m better than this! They should have protected us better, should have made sure that this wouldn’t happen to, to…us!”
At once John felt bad and he went to her, getting down on his knees and putting his arms around her, drawing her to his breast. She did deserve better then this; his whole life he had made sure she had everything she wanted, allowed her to live a life beyond her wildest dreams. This was surely a cruel and twisted joke.
“I’m sure they tried to do everything they could to help us dear, they wouldn’t have deliberately let it come to this-”
His voice was suddenly rendered silent by the sound of stomping hooves, and when he looked toward the horizon he saw them coming.
“Get inside quick and cover yourself in the dirt! I’ll keep them from getting inside!”
“But they’ll kill you! Come inside and we’ll help bury each other!”
“They’ll see the entrance to the cave and know that someone lives here and they’ll destroy it! I’ll have to take my chances. Better that one of us survives!”
“I won’t live for long without you John, I, I can’t!” And she broke into fresh tears.
“Please Helen, just do as I say! It will be alright!”
“I can’t!”
The sound of the approaching men was getting closer; they could hear their coarse laughter and the whinnying of the horses.
“Please Helen, get inside!”
Fear finally overtook her and she got hastily to her feet and scrambled inside.
“I love you John!” She said as she tore at the loose dirt, flinging it over her body.
“I love you too! Now cover yourself quickly!” He said, hoping that these weren’t to be the last words he ever spoke to her. She couldn’t help the way she felt. She had been accustomed to having everything; having nothing made her feel worthless, like less then a human being…
“There’s one!” A voice rough with tobacco and the harsh extremities cried and at once the men on the horses surrounded John, pointing their hand-tooled weapons at him.
“On yer knees slave and bow before us!” A gnarly man with a wild plume of feathers on his head commanded and as John dropped to the ground the others laughed.
“Nice use of the lingo!” A man with a shaved head and missing front teeth complimented. “Gives us the feel of marauding pirates!”
“Marauding?” The first one said. “Where the hell did you learn a word like that?”
“The prison library! I can read you know. I even got my GED.”
“Oh! Aren’t we a brainiac?” Another said, jumping off of his horse and putting a knife to John’s throat.
“Okay Richey Rich what have you got in the cave? If you have any money now’s the time to relinquish it or pay the consequences!” The man with the feathers said and again the others laughed.
“I feel like this is, like, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or something.” The man with the knife to John’s throat commented and the man in the feathers grinned.
“I’m just trying to make us seem more authentic I guess. Gives us a sense of dignity.” He turned his attention back to John. “But seriously now. What have you got in the cave?”
“I have nothing, I swear! I lost everything I had when the banks collapsed during the war!”
The men guffawed as they got off of their horses, looking for a place to tie them to and finally settling on a lone oak tree a few meters away.
“Aw boo-hoo! Ain’t it sad boys? The poor guy lost everything he had! That’s what you get for trusting the freakin’ government!”
John wished he could argue with them but they had him there. They were right. All his life he had trusted the government and their institutions but in the end they had shown what a bunch of cowardly, self-serving bastards they were when they turned on the people who had paid for their campaigns, elected them to power and offered them the bribes that they had grown fat on. Instead of helping the wealthy elite they had emptied their bank accounts and fled the country, leaving the once rich and powerful to fend for themselves against a problem the politicians had created.
“The one thing I can say for the government is that they knew who to count on when they wanted the Chinese killed!” One of the men said, a fellow with long, unruly hair and a gold hoop in each of his ears and the rest of the men cheered.
“Here here!” Another cried. “Convict’s make the best soldiers of them all!”
“Depends on how you look at it…” John muttered, but they didn’t hear him over their own gloating. When the government sensed that the country had become too overrun by the invading Chinese, they opened the prison doors and recruited the convicts, offering them a full pardon on their sentences if they helped the war effort, to which the majority agreed. The thing was, the convicts had an agenda of their own and no one could foresee their ability to organize. Before the government knew it the Chinese were no longer the problem. That was when the banks went belly up, when the government sponsored institutions no longer catered to the citizens who had helped them grow strong.
“I don’t think I believe this guy.” The man with the knife to John’s throat said. “I think he’s hiding something.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” The ex-con with the plume of feathers said. “Get in there and see what he’s got!”
Four of the men entered the cave and minutes later he heard Helen’s cries.
“Stop it! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” She pleaded but was soon dragged out and dumped onto the ground before them.
“Ah, he’s got a woman!” The guy with the shaved head said, licking his cracked, brittle lips. “She ain’t much of a looker but she’ll do!”
At this John’s heart and spirit broke. Helen had once been the prettiest woman he had ever laid eyes on, had been courted by men far better looking than he, but in the end had chosen him because he had more to offer, he was the one who could give her everything she could ever imagine… “Line up boys, let’s keep some order to this, we ain’t savages…at least not yet anyway!” The ex-con in the feathers chuckled as he sheathed his knife, reaching for the buckle on his pants. “There’s enough to go around, everybody will get a turn…”
Fur what it's worth
In the still gray light of the early morning the low hanging clouds seemed impervious to the sunlight’s attempts at penetration, delivering a brooding, ominous feel to the new day, causing a chill to run down my spine. Of course, that alone wasn’t what made me feel ill at ease, it was coupled with the fact that a mismatched pack of dogs stood in between us and the house, snarling at Ollie and I as he strained against his leash, whimpering, his ears flat against his head. Standing closest was a tan husky mix, obviously the leader, his lips curled back, teeth bared, a long rope of foamy drool dripping off his jowls. Behind him stood a ragged animal that looked to be more coyote then domestic dog, its tail missing along with several patches of fur. The fur it did have along it’s back was raised and it too was baring teeth and growling. Within my adrenaline laced fear the clarity was astounding, as if the gloomy sky somehow magnified everything, bringing out the minutest detail. The cracked and broken nails on the black lab at the rear of the pack, the large, raw looking sore on the cheek of the standard poodle, the dark red color of the gums and the singed fur on the golden retriever. I had seen all of these dogs individually over the course of the week that I had been taking care of Ollie, an eight month Airedale, all of them running through the neighborhood unattended, all of them displaying aggression, but now here they were, together, and it looked as if they meant business this time.
I looked about me but there was no one else present on the street at seven O’clock on a Sunday morning. The only reason I was up so early was because Ollie was a restless puppy; exercise was the only thing that calmed him down. We had been taking long walks all week in an attempt to keep him happy while his owners were away but they did little to curb his boundless energy.
Ollie struggled and whined as I held the leash with both hands.
“No boy, stay!” I said in a voice that betrayed my fear and panic, which was the last thing you wanted to do around canines, but I was powerless to stop myself. I was seeing my pet sitting career flash before my eyes.
“Shoo!” I yelled loudly at the dogs, employing a rich baritone voice reserved for such occasions. If anything, maybe a neighbor would hear me and would come outside to investigate. “Git! Scat!”
But the pack held their ground, in fact they began advancing, and that was when Ollie gave a determined lunge and slipped out of his collar, suddenly free, the leash at once slack in my hands as my heart jumped into my throat, building up behind it the urge to scream…
* * *
I saw the first stray dog on my second day of the job while walking Ollie in the early afternoon. We were rounding a hedge lined corner when it appeared suddenly, standing just off of the sidewalk, looking dazed and out of place. It was the sickly dog that resembled a coyote and his gait was awkward, as if it was unsure whether or not it’s legs could carry him much farther.
“Hey boy.” I said amiably, thinking he must belong to the owners of the corner house and I put my hand out to him as a friendly gesture while Ollie tried to bound over, his tail wagging good naturedly.
The dog growled, a low, raspy sound, and his lip curled upward. I quickly pulled my hand away and tightened my grip on the leash, pulling Ollie toward me.
“Okay.” I said, trying to tug Ollie along. “Just passing through.”
I looked at the yard to see if anyone was present but there was no one there, just the usual debris left behind from children: a Big Wheel laying on its side, plastic trucks and cars scattered around, a kite that had seen better days, stuffed toys with various body parts missing. I had met several people in the neighborhood but I had yet to meet these folks. By the looks of it they were probably young with a family of kids between ages two and ten.
Ollie struggled against the leash to get at the dog but I pulled him away as he leapt around in the air, wanting to play. The other dog stood it’s ground, a perpetual snarl in place, and we watched it as we made our way down the block to the house.
In the driveway next to the house where I was staying a woman was outside with her infant, holding him in one arm and a garden hose in the other, lackadaisically watering some rose bushes.
“Hello.” She said pleasantly and I smiled.
“How’s it going?” I replied.
“Not too bad. Hi Ollie!”
Ollie wagged his tail and pulled me forward until his nose was at her feet. She reached down to pat his head.
“Hey, do you know anyone with a small tan dog, kinda skinny?” I asked her.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”
“We just ran into him on the corner and he doesn’t look like he’s feeling so hot. In fact he growled at Ollie and I.”
“Where?”
“Right on the corner,” I said, pointing down the street. The dog was still there, standing next to the hedge, eyeing me with a steady, penetrating gaze.
The woman turned to look and at once the dog jumped behind the hedge, out of sight.
“I don’t see anything.”
“He just went behind the bush.”
She turned back to talk to me and at once the dog appeared again, licking at his side. Ollie’s ears perked up.
“There he is.” I said and again she turned to look. As she did the dog walked slowly behind the hedge again.
“Where?” She said.
“He keeps going behind the bush every time you look.” I said and laughed. “He’s messing with me.”
“I guess so.” She said, grinning.
“If you see him let me know. He wasn’t wearing a collar. I have the number for animal control programmed into my phone.”
“What, on speed dial?” She said jokingly and I laughed again.
“I’m a professional pet sitter,” I explained. “I have to be ready for anything.”
“I guess so.”
On the third day Ollie and I ran into the tan husky, about a block away from the house in the early evening, just about twilight. It appeared from behind a stand of trees and took a place on the sidewalk before us, lips instantly curling.
“Shit.” I muttered, grasping the leash firmly as Ollie began to leap and cavort wildly.
“Calm down boy, calm down!” I cried as I looked both ways down the street, preparing to cross, when suddenly the husky let out a howl and ran at us. In a split second he was inches away, his bared teeth making loud clicking noises as he worked his jaws feverishly, snapping at Ollie.
In a moment of extreme panic I reached down and swooped Ollie up in to my arms, holding him aloft as he kicked and struggled.
“Relax boy, relax!” I panted as I dashed across the street, wondering if the husky was going to follow us all the way back to the house as well as counting the seconds until I felt the teeth on the seat of my pants. Behind me I could hear him snarling and slobbering vociferously, could feel the heat of his breath on the nape of my neck. I ran with Ollie in my arms like that for about a half a block before I turned my head to see where the dog was, expecting to see him right behind me, but to my surprise he was gone.
“What the hell?” I muttered aloud. I was really beginning to dislike this neighborhood, what with all the negligent people letting their aggressive pets run around. I put Ollie in the house, grabbed a flashlight and decided to go take a look for the husky, intending to try and get a phone number off of his collar and call his errant owners. Even though I had made the remark about animal control to the woman I spoke with yesterday, I wasn’t such a dick that I wouldn’t try and speak with the owners first, to give them the benefit of the doubt.
A thirty-minute search of the neighborhood turned up nothing. The dog was either gone or back inside the house it lived. Either way I was still pretty pissed off. It was rare that I came upon loose dogs, owing in part to the fact that I worked in some pretty upscale neighborhoods; confronting two over the course of twenty-four hours was amazing. I made up my mind to be more careful and to bring treats with me on the walks, just in case it happened again and I needed to make friends fast with a strange canine.
And so the week went, everyday coming upon another stray dog as I walked Ollie. Not all of them attacked; in fact those incidents were kept to only three, the third occurring on the last night, involving the black lab with the cracked and missing nails.
This time it was after dark, about nine O’clock at night when we crossed paths with the black lab. Ollie was busy urinating on someone’s flowers when I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned, startled, and saw the dog standing a few feet away from us in the street, head lowered, ears back, tail wagging nervously back and forth. By this time I was no longer surprised, being of the opinion that everyone in the neighborhood were reckless pet owners who didn’t give a damn if they left gates, front doors or garages open so that their pets could roam freely with ill regard as to whether they were struck by cars, stung by bees or attacked by the numerous coyotes that lived in the rapidly disappearing woods that surrounded the area. I merely sighed.
“Hey boy,” I said. “Good dog.”
In the space of seconds between my salutation and the ensuing silence the dog leaped at me, his jaws locking around my forearm.
“Ahhh!” I screamed, trying to pull my arm away, hearing the tearing of fabric as my shirt ripped, feeling the smooth veneers of the teeth puncture my skin and an immediate warmth that could only be my blood, trickling down my arm. Ollie began barking loudly, and when he pulled I almost dropped the leash, the loop at the end catching on the heel of my hand, jerking me along with it. I kicked out blindly, hoping to loosen the dogs grip, feeling the fiery burn of pain surge through my arm, up to my shoulder. I could swear that the dog was right in front of me when I brought my foot forward but it connected with nothing but air and I lost my balance, falling on my back onto the hard sidewalk. My head hit the ground but fortunately it met the grass instead of the concrete, and I lay there for a moment with the wind knocked out of me, Ollie standing over me, licking my face.
“Hey, are you alright?” Someone asked and at once I saw a hand extended toward me and I reached up and took it, getting back to my feet.
“A dog attacked me,” I said, my voice numb with shock, head foggy from my fall. “A black lab. Did you see it?”
The old man shook his head, his clear blue eyes watching me carefully, as if he thought I might be in need of a psychiatric evaluation.
“No I didn’t, and I’ve been standing here since you two walked up. These are my flowers you let your dog piss on.” His voice was calm, his gaze steady, but there was something behind his eyes that unnerved me, that made me feel as if I’d just stepped into an elaborate, surrealistic dream.
“Look at my arm.” I said, holding it up, and he swung a flashlight on it and kept it there while we both looked, myself with more fascination than he.
My shirt wasn’t torn and there was no blood, only a dull, receding memory of pain.
I couldn’t find any words to describe what I was feeling, well, any intelligent words anyway.
“That…uh…can’t be…he was right here and he bit me!”
“Have you been drinking tonight?” He asked and at once my cheeks felt inflamed as embarrassment came over me. I knew what I saw and felt was real, had to be, knew that I wasn’t imagining things.
“A couple of beers but I’m not drunk…”
“I know the Wallace family, they’ve been through quite a few pet sitters.” The old man said, his tone solemn. “I don’t want to have to tell them that I saw you wandering around at night yelling at invisible dogs.”
“No sir.” I said quietly, not knowing what else to say.
“Why don’t you go back to the house and make yourself some coffee and reconsider having anything to drink while you are on the job, huh? Might be best for everybody involved.”
“Yeah, um, right…” I said, turning away, feeling as if everything around me was spinning, the world I once knew falling slowly away from me. As I walked Ollie back to the house I looked at my untouched shirtsleeve, could still feel the iron grip of the jaws clamped on my arm. What had happened back there? Was I just tired? I had a lot to think about and all I wanted now was another drink. Against the old man’s advice I shied away from coffee and drank six more beers until I was tired enough to slip into a dreamless slumber.
* * *
And now here we were, the next morning, the last day of the job, my head fuzzy, my mouth tasting like something took a shit and then died in it, surrounded by all of the dogs that had plagued Ollie and I all week. The street was empty save for them and us. One thing was for sure; I wasn’t the only one that could see them. Ollie could as well.
And then he slipped out of his collar and the leash hung slack in my hands. “No!” I bawled as he ran for the pack and they surrounded him, their teeth and tails working feverishly, the sounds of their panting, growling and biting echoing sickly in my booze addled brain. At once Ollie’s friendly whimpering turned to terror, then pain, and against every rational thought in my head I dove into the pack, reaching out blindly, trying to separate them, trying to extract Ollie from their numbers. My hands clutched uselessly at fur and limbs, yielding nothing each time. It was as if they were made of smoke or mist vapors, and my hands simply passed through their seemingly solid bodies. As the sun slowly began to poke its head out from between the clouds the dogs began to vanish, one by one, and by the time I felt the first rays warm my tear dampened cheeks I saw that I was alone in the street, the only remnant of Ollie the leash that I clutched in my closed fist…
I looked about me but there was no one else present on the street at seven O’clock on a Sunday morning. The only reason I was up so early was because Ollie was a restless puppy; exercise was the only thing that calmed him down. We had been taking long walks all week in an attempt to keep him happy while his owners were away but they did little to curb his boundless energy.
Ollie struggled and whined as I held the leash with both hands.
“No boy, stay!” I said in a voice that betrayed my fear and panic, which was the last thing you wanted to do around canines, but I was powerless to stop myself. I was seeing my pet sitting career flash before my eyes.
“Shoo!” I yelled loudly at the dogs, employing a rich baritone voice reserved for such occasions. If anything, maybe a neighbor would hear me and would come outside to investigate. “Git! Scat!”
But the pack held their ground, in fact they began advancing, and that was when Ollie gave a determined lunge and slipped out of his collar, suddenly free, the leash at once slack in my hands as my heart jumped into my throat, building up behind it the urge to scream…
* * *
I saw the first stray dog on my second day of the job while walking Ollie in the early afternoon. We were rounding a hedge lined corner when it appeared suddenly, standing just off of the sidewalk, looking dazed and out of place. It was the sickly dog that resembled a coyote and his gait was awkward, as if it was unsure whether or not it’s legs could carry him much farther.
“Hey boy.” I said amiably, thinking he must belong to the owners of the corner house and I put my hand out to him as a friendly gesture while Ollie tried to bound over, his tail wagging good naturedly.
The dog growled, a low, raspy sound, and his lip curled upward. I quickly pulled my hand away and tightened my grip on the leash, pulling Ollie toward me.
“Okay.” I said, trying to tug Ollie along. “Just passing through.”
I looked at the yard to see if anyone was present but there was no one there, just the usual debris left behind from children: a Big Wheel laying on its side, plastic trucks and cars scattered around, a kite that had seen better days, stuffed toys with various body parts missing. I had met several people in the neighborhood but I had yet to meet these folks. By the looks of it they were probably young with a family of kids between ages two and ten.
Ollie struggled against the leash to get at the dog but I pulled him away as he leapt around in the air, wanting to play. The other dog stood it’s ground, a perpetual snarl in place, and we watched it as we made our way down the block to the house.
In the driveway next to the house where I was staying a woman was outside with her infant, holding him in one arm and a garden hose in the other, lackadaisically watering some rose bushes.
“Hello.” She said pleasantly and I smiled.
“How’s it going?” I replied.
“Not too bad. Hi Ollie!”
Ollie wagged his tail and pulled me forward until his nose was at her feet. She reached down to pat his head.
“Hey, do you know anyone with a small tan dog, kinda skinny?” I asked her.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”
“We just ran into him on the corner and he doesn’t look like he’s feeling so hot. In fact he growled at Ollie and I.”
“Where?”
“Right on the corner,” I said, pointing down the street. The dog was still there, standing next to the hedge, eyeing me with a steady, penetrating gaze.
The woman turned to look and at once the dog jumped behind the hedge, out of sight.
“I don’t see anything.”
“He just went behind the bush.”
She turned back to talk to me and at once the dog appeared again, licking at his side. Ollie’s ears perked up.
“There he is.” I said and again she turned to look. As she did the dog walked slowly behind the hedge again.
“Where?” She said.
“He keeps going behind the bush every time you look.” I said and laughed. “He’s messing with me.”
“I guess so.” She said, grinning.
“If you see him let me know. He wasn’t wearing a collar. I have the number for animal control programmed into my phone.”
“What, on speed dial?” She said jokingly and I laughed again.
“I’m a professional pet sitter,” I explained. “I have to be ready for anything.”
“I guess so.”
On the third day Ollie and I ran into the tan husky, about a block away from the house in the early evening, just about twilight. It appeared from behind a stand of trees and took a place on the sidewalk before us, lips instantly curling.
“Shit.” I muttered, grasping the leash firmly as Ollie began to leap and cavort wildly.
“Calm down boy, calm down!” I cried as I looked both ways down the street, preparing to cross, when suddenly the husky let out a howl and ran at us. In a split second he was inches away, his bared teeth making loud clicking noises as he worked his jaws feverishly, snapping at Ollie.
In a moment of extreme panic I reached down and swooped Ollie up in to my arms, holding him aloft as he kicked and struggled.
“Relax boy, relax!” I panted as I dashed across the street, wondering if the husky was going to follow us all the way back to the house as well as counting the seconds until I felt the teeth on the seat of my pants. Behind me I could hear him snarling and slobbering vociferously, could feel the heat of his breath on the nape of my neck. I ran with Ollie in my arms like that for about a half a block before I turned my head to see where the dog was, expecting to see him right behind me, but to my surprise he was gone.
“What the hell?” I muttered aloud. I was really beginning to dislike this neighborhood, what with all the negligent people letting their aggressive pets run around. I put Ollie in the house, grabbed a flashlight and decided to go take a look for the husky, intending to try and get a phone number off of his collar and call his errant owners. Even though I had made the remark about animal control to the woman I spoke with yesterday, I wasn’t such a dick that I wouldn’t try and speak with the owners first, to give them the benefit of the doubt.
A thirty-minute search of the neighborhood turned up nothing. The dog was either gone or back inside the house it lived. Either way I was still pretty pissed off. It was rare that I came upon loose dogs, owing in part to the fact that I worked in some pretty upscale neighborhoods; confronting two over the course of twenty-four hours was amazing. I made up my mind to be more careful and to bring treats with me on the walks, just in case it happened again and I needed to make friends fast with a strange canine.
And so the week went, everyday coming upon another stray dog as I walked Ollie. Not all of them attacked; in fact those incidents were kept to only three, the third occurring on the last night, involving the black lab with the cracked and missing nails.
This time it was after dark, about nine O’clock at night when we crossed paths with the black lab. Ollie was busy urinating on someone’s flowers when I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned, startled, and saw the dog standing a few feet away from us in the street, head lowered, ears back, tail wagging nervously back and forth. By this time I was no longer surprised, being of the opinion that everyone in the neighborhood were reckless pet owners who didn’t give a damn if they left gates, front doors or garages open so that their pets could roam freely with ill regard as to whether they were struck by cars, stung by bees or attacked by the numerous coyotes that lived in the rapidly disappearing woods that surrounded the area. I merely sighed.
“Hey boy,” I said. “Good dog.”
In the space of seconds between my salutation and the ensuing silence the dog leaped at me, his jaws locking around my forearm.
“Ahhh!” I screamed, trying to pull my arm away, hearing the tearing of fabric as my shirt ripped, feeling the smooth veneers of the teeth puncture my skin and an immediate warmth that could only be my blood, trickling down my arm. Ollie began barking loudly, and when he pulled I almost dropped the leash, the loop at the end catching on the heel of my hand, jerking me along with it. I kicked out blindly, hoping to loosen the dogs grip, feeling the fiery burn of pain surge through my arm, up to my shoulder. I could swear that the dog was right in front of me when I brought my foot forward but it connected with nothing but air and I lost my balance, falling on my back onto the hard sidewalk. My head hit the ground but fortunately it met the grass instead of the concrete, and I lay there for a moment with the wind knocked out of me, Ollie standing over me, licking my face.
“Hey, are you alright?” Someone asked and at once I saw a hand extended toward me and I reached up and took it, getting back to my feet.
“A dog attacked me,” I said, my voice numb with shock, head foggy from my fall. “A black lab. Did you see it?”
The old man shook his head, his clear blue eyes watching me carefully, as if he thought I might be in need of a psychiatric evaluation.
“No I didn’t, and I’ve been standing here since you two walked up. These are my flowers you let your dog piss on.” His voice was calm, his gaze steady, but there was something behind his eyes that unnerved me, that made me feel as if I’d just stepped into an elaborate, surrealistic dream.
“Look at my arm.” I said, holding it up, and he swung a flashlight on it and kept it there while we both looked, myself with more fascination than he.
My shirt wasn’t torn and there was no blood, only a dull, receding memory of pain.
I couldn’t find any words to describe what I was feeling, well, any intelligent words anyway.
“That…uh…can’t be…he was right here and he bit me!”
“Have you been drinking tonight?” He asked and at once my cheeks felt inflamed as embarrassment came over me. I knew what I saw and felt was real, had to be, knew that I wasn’t imagining things.
“A couple of beers but I’m not drunk…”
“I know the Wallace family, they’ve been through quite a few pet sitters.” The old man said, his tone solemn. “I don’t want to have to tell them that I saw you wandering around at night yelling at invisible dogs.”
“No sir.” I said quietly, not knowing what else to say.
“Why don’t you go back to the house and make yourself some coffee and reconsider having anything to drink while you are on the job, huh? Might be best for everybody involved.”
“Yeah, um, right…” I said, turning away, feeling as if everything around me was spinning, the world I once knew falling slowly away from me. As I walked Ollie back to the house I looked at my untouched shirtsleeve, could still feel the iron grip of the jaws clamped on my arm. What had happened back there? Was I just tired? I had a lot to think about and all I wanted now was another drink. Against the old man’s advice I shied away from coffee and drank six more beers until I was tired enough to slip into a dreamless slumber.
* * *
And now here we were, the next morning, the last day of the job, my head fuzzy, my mouth tasting like something took a shit and then died in it, surrounded by all of the dogs that had plagued Ollie and I all week. The street was empty save for them and us. One thing was for sure; I wasn’t the only one that could see them. Ollie could as well.
And then he slipped out of his collar and the leash hung slack in my hands. “No!” I bawled as he ran for the pack and they surrounded him, their teeth and tails working feverishly, the sounds of their panting, growling and biting echoing sickly in my booze addled brain. At once Ollie’s friendly whimpering turned to terror, then pain, and against every rational thought in my head I dove into the pack, reaching out blindly, trying to separate them, trying to extract Ollie from their numbers. My hands clutched uselessly at fur and limbs, yielding nothing each time. It was as if they were made of smoke or mist vapors, and my hands simply passed through their seemingly solid bodies. As the sun slowly began to poke its head out from between the clouds the dogs began to vanish, one by one, and by the time I felt the first rays warm my tear dampened cheeks I saw that I was alone in the street, the only remnant of Ollie the leash that I clutched in my closed fist…
You can run but you can't hide
The leaf blower was on the fritz again. Somehow this always happened when Eddie was behind schedule. He had to be at the Goddard’s by ten or he would be late for the Jablonski’s. He had promised the latter that he’d have their lawn mowed and their weeds trimmed before two, in time for their barbecue. He shook the cord again, flipping the on/off toggle switch up and down.
“Son of a bitch.” He hissed, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a back up.
These were the hassles of his trade. Equipment that didn’t work, rainy weather causing him delays-sometimes loss of work-irritated clients who refused to pay or paid him with bad checks, heavy traffic making him late from one job to the next…the list went on and on but still it was better than working a ‘real’ job, one in which he had to punch a time clock and endure harassment by an overzealous manager with a hard-on for company policy. He didn’t miss his days at the foundry where that uptight bastard Aaron Olsen used to hover over him, his breath smelling of rotgut whisky, his skin greasy, eyes glassy, but the name tag on his shirt had ‘Manager’ written above it so he had the right to pester Eddie about every little thing he did, right or wrong.
“You’re two minutes late Eddie! I’m docking you an hour for that!” The fucker would bellow so everyone on the floor could hear it. The Johnson twins would always look up from the steel they were pouring and snicker, maybe make lewd gestures at him with their hands-everyone knew that they were incestuous homo’s-and the other guys would laugh as the sweat poured down their faces in the intense heat, toxins seeping out of their pores from the booze and the methamphetamine they consumed nightly just to tolerate this hell they called a job. Nope, Eddie didn’t miss that at all.
He’d started his lawn service company with the best of intentions, being his own boss, choosing his own hours, working in the great outdoors, and all those things combined were what kept him afloat when he was having a bad day, but sometimes the technical difficulties bothered him to no end. Being the owner and operator of this business meant that he had to service all of his gear himself and pay for his own health insurance, which he currently didn’t have. He’d developed a pain in his groin about three weeks ago that so far hadn’t gone away and he was damned if he knew what it was but was still waiting for it to magically disappear before he was going to pony up the bread to see a doctor. After being misdiagnosed several times by insensitive, uncaring doctors he didn’t hold much faith in them.
The best part of his business was his location in Carlsbad, California. The demand for landscaping was year round so he only had a couple of slow months to contend with. Business had started out rather tepid in January but my March he had more work then he knew what to do with. He often thought about hiring an employee but then he would have to share what he made, and what with the alimony and the child support payments-not to mention the debts he had incurred during his brief but costly crack cocaine habit-he needed every dime for himself. Hiring someone would have to wait until he was really raking it in, no pun intended.
He jiggled the switch again and when nothing happened he looked down the length of the cord, following it with his eyes to the outlet on the back of the house to make sure it was still plugged in…
“Well I’ll be damned.” He said, louder than he should have because there might be little kids around. The cord was unplugged. He set the blower down carefully-now that he assumed it was probably working-and walked over to the house. On his way there he noticed with some surprise that it was wrapped around the base of a large tree, but how it had come to be like that he had no recollection. He had plugged it in and walked over to where he was going to commence cleaning off the back patio; he hadn’t then walked around that tree on the way over here.
Approaching the outlet, he removed the plug and walked back over to the tree with the intention of straightening it out when something caught his eye, something improbable in the midst of the normal, suburban yard. He almost laughed out loud.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said mirthfully, shaking his head. He had never imagined that the Swenson’s were so whimsical about their taste in lawn ornamentation.
What he was looking at appeared to be a tiny door in the base of the tree, an ornate, stately looking door for the comings and goings of people that would have to stand no higher then three inches tall. It was funny though, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it there before, and he had been working for the Swenson’s for over seven months. Maybe it was a project that one of their kids was working on, something to make their yard more baroque.
He knelt down on one knee and looked at it closer. He marveled at the design of the hinges and the quality of its texture. It didn’t look like plastic, it looked like real wood, he thought, noting the grain running through it. Without thinking about what he was doing he reached down and rapped his knuckles against it, knocking several times just for kicks, but was surprised when the sound it made suggested that there was an opening behind it, that it wasn’t something that was nailed or glued to the tree. It made a dull, hollow sound. At once Eddie felt somewhat uneasy, but he wasn’t quite sure why. He shook his head. Maybe they put it there to cover up an existing hole in the tree, possibly made by small animals-squirrels or something-and that there was an opening behind it was no big surprise, but it wasn’t like something lived there…
A breeze suddenly whipped up-at least that was what Eddie thought because the leaves on the tree began to rustle. Almost imperceptible to the human eye, the tree seemed to vibrate.
“No way.” He whispered. That was a hell of a coincidence, but hey, what did he expect? Some three-inch dude to throw open the door and ask him what it was he wanted? Maybe point out the ‘no solicitors’ sign? He quickly stood up and brushed the knees of his pants off. Shit, he had work to do. He didn’t have time to sit here and fool around with some bit of arts and crafts that the Swenson’s had dreamed up to make their yard a little more snazzy when they had their Dungeons and Dragons friends over for a day of medieval fun…
At once the door opened a crack, maybe a few millimeters, the hinges squeaking ever so lightly. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, followed by several others. He’d been sober since he’d quit working at the foundry, not a drop of alcohol or a single rock since the day he walked out of that place for good. Surely he couldn’t be seeing things. He blinked his eyes rapidly several times, and then squinted hard at the door. It was standing open a little bit, swinging inward.
“What the hell?” Eddie got back down on his knees again, crouched over low, reaching out with his right hand tentatively. With a single finger he pushed the door the rest of the way open, not even realizing that he was holding his breath.
And then she appeared, wearing a plain cotton dress, her red hair swept back in a messy ponytail, one hand clutching a tiny cell phone.
“I tried to call you three times but all I got was your voice mail. Where the hell have you been?” It was his wife-well, ex-wife-and her pale green eyes were red from crying but sparkling lividly with anger. “Have you been out with your crack head buddies?”
“Janet?” He said, his voice quivering, the blood suddenly pounding in his head. This wasn’t right, this was…impossible…she was in Phoenix living with their two kids at her mother’s place…
“Who the fuck did you think it was going to be? That whore from Sully’s that I know you’ve been screwing around with? It’s about time you came home!”
And at once he was looking at her face to face and he realized that she was as big as he was or, no…it couldn’t be…he was as small as she was and he was standing in the open door, the smell of something burning coming from behind her, from the kitchen…the kitchen? In a tree? He turned around to look at the Swenson’s lawn but it was gone and it was the neighborhood that they had lived in in Oceanside, west of the 5. Across the street Benny Melendez was washing his El Camino, listening to the Spanish radio station at full volume as he sang along. He turned back to Janet and there was the crappy foyer leading into the even crappier living room where Judge Judy was blaring on the TV. His son Kyle was sitting on the dirty carpet in a soiled diaper, thumb stuck in his mouth as he stared at the television, hypnotized. God, he’d hated that house but it was all he could afford. One block over was Crips territory and at any given time of the day you could score crack, meth, powder cocaine, weed, whatever you wanted. It had been the ruin of him. Of course he hated that his family had to be in that environment but what could he do, where could they go? Back to his parents in Chicago and live in the ghetto they called home? He couldn’t afford to get them out of such abject poverty and Janet hated him for it. When they had gotten engaged he’d promised her a better life then this.
“You lousy son of a bitch you smell like ass and crack smoke! What, you think I’m stupid?”
“But honey, this, uh, this isn’t happening, this isn’t real…”
“Isn’t real? Isn’t real?” Her voice rose sharply and then she turned and threw the phone at the wall, the device shattering in a spray of plastic fragments. “What isn’t real? Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing?”
Dizziness crept over Eddie and he felt himself swooning. He had to reach out and grab the doorframe to steady himself. This had been the worst period of his life, the most horrific time he had had to endure because he knew what he was doing to himself and his family but he just couldn’t stop it. He hated himself, simply hated the fact that he was so weak that he had to hide behind a haze of drugs because his reality was a waking nightmare. Everyday he and Janet fought, over money, his drug problem, their kids future-or lack thereof-their own future together, and nothing ever got resolved, nothing could possibly be said to make anything right.
“I wish you would die.” Janet whispered harshly, her voice cold, devoid of any emotion save resignation. “I wish you would just die and leave us alone.”
“What…” He said, his voice cracking, fat tears rolling down his face. “What do you want me to do?”
“This.” She said, holding out her hands. In them was an industrial size orange extension cord. “Use this and finish it. Finish it now.”
Eddie fell to his knees, sobbing, his chest heaving, his breathing jagged.
“I swear I loved you, I did! I just, just…couldn’t make anything better for us…”
“Well here is your chance to make things right.” She said, her voice calm now, her demeanor poised, the cadence of her speech almost soothing his frayed nerves. “Do this for me.” She said, her face grim. “Do this for your children.”
“Mommy, why is daddy crying?” April asked, walking into the room in her Barney the Dinosaur PJ’s, a cup of apple juice clutched in one of her chubby little hands. Her blondish brown hair was unwashed and uncombed and there was a purple bruise on the right side of her face. When she spoke he saw that she was missing several of her front teeth and, if memory served him right, it wasn’t because she had lost them to the tooth fairy.
“Daddy is crying because he’s sorry for what he did to you, for what he did to all of us.”
“Can I make it all better?” She asked, her voice so sweet, so perfectly uncomprehending that Eddie’s heart broke.
“No honey, only daddy can do that.”
Through his haze of tears Eddie reached out for the cord, took it in his hands.
“I want you to know that I really am very, very sorry.” He said but his voice seemed lost to him, he couldn’t really hear it anymore, and at once he found that he couldn’t breathe, something was blocking the passage of air to his lungs. As his sight began to fade all he could make out were Janet and the kids standing over him, looking down at him with icy, detached eyes…unblinking…none of them reaching out a hand to help him…
* * *
“Shit, looks like it’s going to be one of those days.” Sgt. Cory Dunn told his partner as they got out of the squad car and walked the length of the yard to the tree in the back of 2345 Calle Barcelona. The woman who lived there was sitting on the lawn, knees drawn up to her chin, her eyes vacant, spooked.
“Mrs. Swenson?” Sgt Dunn said, approaching her slowly. “Are you the one that called us?”
She turned her head slightly, unable to tear her gaze away from the tree.
“Yes.” She said softly, and by the tone of her voice Dunn could tell that she was in shock.
“What happened?”
“I came home and, and…I found him like this.”
“Who is he ma’am?” Dunn’s partner, Roy Carlton asked.
“He is, um, was our gardener.”
“Any idea why he would do this?”
“None.” She said simply, her eyes moving back and forth as a light breeze played through the leaves of the tree. “He seemed like a very happy, well adjusted person.” She looked up at them finally, catching Sgt. Dunn’s eyes. “I guess that just goes to show you how much you know about anybody. Really know about them I mean.” “Could be.” Sgt. Dunn said, looking up at the body dangling from the tree, an orange extension cord wrapped around his neck, swaying gently back and forth in the mild spring air.
“Son of a bitch.” He hissed, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a back up.
These were the hassles of his trade. Equipment that didn’t work, rainy weather causing him delays-sometimes loss of work-irritated clients who refused to pay or paid him with bad checks, heavy traffic making him late from one job to the next…the list went on and on but still it was better than working a ‘real’ job, one in which he had to punch a time clock and endure harassment by an overzealous manager with a hard-on for company policy. He didn’t miss his days at the foundry where that uptight bastard Aaron Olsen used to hover over him, his breath smelling of rotgut whisky, his skin greasy, eyes glassy, but the name tag on his shirt had ‘Manager’ written above it so he had the right to pester Eddie about every little thing he did, right or wrong.
“You’re two minutes late Eddie! I’m docking you an hour for that!” The fucker would bellow so everyone on the floor could hear it. The Johnson twins would always look up from the steel they were pouring and snicker, maybe make lewd gestures at him with their hands-everyone knew that they were incestuous homo’s-and the other guys would laugh as the sweat poured down their faces in the intense heat, toxins seeping out of their pores from the booze and the methamphetamine they consumed nightly just to tolerate this hell they called a job. Nope, Eddie didn’t miss that at all.
He’d started his lawn service company with the best of intentions, being his own boss, choosing his own hours, working in the great outdoors, and all those things combined were what kept him afloat when he was having a bad day, but sometimes the technical difficulties bothered him to no end. Being the owner and operator of this business meant that he had to service all of his gear himself and pay for his own health insurance, which he currently didn’t have. He’d developed a pain in his groin about three weeks ago that so far hadn’t gone away and he was damned if he knew what it was but was still waiting for it to magically disappear before he was going to pony up the bread to see a doctor. After being misdiagnosed several times by insensitive, uncaring doctors he didn’t hold much faith in them.
The best part of his business was his location in Carlsbad, California. The demand for landscaping was year round so he only had a couple of slow months to contend with. Business had started out rather tepid in January but my March he had more work then he knew what to do with. He often thought about hiring an employee but then he would have to share what he made, and what with the alimony and the child support payments-not to mention the debts he had incurred during his brief but costly crack cocaine habit-he needed every dime for himself. Hiring someone would have to wait until he was really raking it in, no pun intended.
He jiggled the switch again and when nothing happened he looked down the length of the cord, following it with his eyes to the outlet on the back of the house to make sure it was still plugged in…
“Well I’ll be damned.” He said, louder than he should have because there might be little kids around. The cord was unplugged. He set the blower down carefully-now that he assumed it was probably working-and walked over to the house. On his way there he noticed with some surprise that it was wrapped around the base of a large tree, but how it had come to be like that he had no recollection. He had plugged it in and walked over to where he was going to commence cleaning off the back patio; he hadn’t then walked around that tree on the way over here.
Approaching the outlet, he removed the plug and walked back over to the tree with the intention of straightening it out when something caught his eye, something improbable in the midst of the normal, suburban yard. He almost laughed out loud.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said mirthfully, shaking his head. He had never imagined that the Swenson’s were so whimsical about their taste in lawn ornamentation.
What he was looking at appeared to be a tiny door in the base of the tree, an ornate, stately looking door for the comings and goings of people that would have to stand no higher then three inches tall. It was funny though, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it there before, and he had been working for the Swenson’s for over seven months. Maybe it was a project that one of their kids was working on, something to make their yard more baroque.
He knelt down on one knee and looked at it closer. He marveled at the design of the hinges and the quality of its texture. It didn’t look like plastic, it looked like real wood, he thought, noting the grain running through it. Without thinking about what he was doing he reached down and rapped his knuckles against it, knocking several times just for kicks, but was surprised when the sound it made suggested that there was an opening behind it, that it wasn’t something that was nailed or glued to the tree. It made a dull, hollow sound. At once Eddie felt somewhat uneasy, but he wasn’t quite sure why. He shook his head. Maybe they put it there to cover up an existing hole in the tree, possibly made by small animals-squirrels or something-and that there was an opening behind it was no big surprise, but it wasn’t like something lived there…
A breeze suddenly whipped up-at least that was what Eddie thought because the leaves on the tree began to rustle. Almost imperceptible to the human eye, the tree seemed to vibrate.
“No way.” He whispered. That was a hell of a coincidence, but hey, what did he expect? Some three-inch dude to throw open the door and ask him what it was he wanted? Maybe point out the ‘no solicitors’ sign? He quickly stood up and brushed the knees of his pants off. Shit, he had work to do. He didn’t have time to sit here and fool around with some bit of arts and crafts that the Swenson’s had dreamed up to make their yard a little more snazzy when they had their Dungeons and Dragons friends over for a day of medieval fun…
At once the door opened a crack, maybe a few millimeters, the hinges squeaking ever so lightly. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, followed by several others. He’d been sober since he’d quit working at the foundry, not a drop of alcohol or a single rock since the day he walked out of that place for good. Surely he couldn’t be seeing things. He blinked his eyes rapidly several times, and then squinted hard at the door. It was standing open a little bit, swinging inward.
“What the hell?” Eddie got back down on his knees again, crouched over low, reaching out with his right hand tentatively. With a single finger he pushed the door the rest of the way open, not even realizing that he was holding his breath.
And then she appeared, wearing a plain cotton dress, her red hair swept back in a messy ponytail, one hand clutching a tiny cell phone.
“I tried to call you three times but all I got was your voice mail. Where the hell have you been?” It was his wife-well, ex-wife-and her pale green eyes were red from crying but sparkling lividly with anger. “Have you been out with your crack head buddies?”
“Janet?” He said, his voice quivering, the blood suddenly pounding in his head. This wasn’t right, this was…impossible…she was in Phoenix living with their two kids at her mother’s place…
“Who the fuck did you think it was going to be? That whore from Sully’s that I know you’ve been screwing around with? It’s about time you came home!”
And at once he was looking at her face to face and he realized that she was as big as he was or, no…it couldn’t be…he was as small as she was and he was standing in the open door, the smell of something burning coming from behind her, from the kitchen…the kitchen? In a tree? He turned around to look at the Swenson’s lawn but it was gone and it was the neighborhood that they had lived in in Oceanside, west of the 5. Across the street Benny Melendez was washing his El Camino, listening to the Spanish radio station at full volume as he sang along. He turned back to Janet and there was the crappy foyer leading into the even crappier living room where Judge Judy was blaring on the TV. His son Kyle was sitting on the dirty carpet in a soiled diaper, thumb stuck in his mouth as he stared at the television, hypnotized. God, he’d hated that house but it was all he could afford. One block over was Crips territory and at any given time of the day you could score crack, meth, powder cocaine, weed, whatever you wanted. It had been the ruin of him. Of course he hated that his family had to be in that environment but what could he do, where could they go? Back to his parents in Chicago and live in the ghetto they called home? He couldn’t afford to get them out of such abject poverty and Janet hated him for it. When they had gotten engaged he’d promised her a better life then this.
“You lousy son of a bitch you smell like ass and crack smoke! What, you think I’m stupid?”
“But honey, this, uh, this isn’t happening, this isn’t real…”
“Isn’t real? Isn’t real?” Her voice rose sharply and then she turned and threw the phone at the wall, the device shattering in a spray of plastic fragments. “What isn’t real? Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing?”
Dizziness crept over Eddie and he felt himself swooning. He had to reach out and grab the doorframe to steady himself. This had been the worst period of his life, the most horrific time he had had to endure because he knew what he was doing to himself and his family but he just couldn’t stop it. He hated himself, simply hated the fact that he was so weak that he had to hide behind a haze of drugs because his reality was a waking nightmare. Everyday he and Janet fought, over money, his drug problem, their kids future-or lack thereof-their own future together, and nothing ever got resolved, nothing could possibly be said to make anything right.
“I wish you would die.” Janet whispered harshly, her voice cold, devoid of any emotion save resignation. “I wish you would just die and leave us alone.”
“What…” He said, his voice cracking, fat tears rolling down his face. “What do you want me to do?”
“This.” She said, holding out her hands. In them was an industrial size orange extension cord. “Use this and finish it. Finish it now.”
Eddie fell to his knees, sobbing, his chest heaving, his breathing jagged.
“I swear I loved you, I did! I just, just…couldn’t make anything better for us…”
“Well here is your chance to make things right.” She said, her voice calm now, her demeanor poised, the cadence of her speech almost soothing his frayed nerves. “Do this for me.” She said, her face grim. “Do this for your children.”
“Mommy, why is daddy crying?” April asked, walking into the room in her Barney the Dinosaur PJ’s, a cup of apple juice clutched in one of her chubby little hands. Her blondish brown hair was unwashed and uncombed and there was a purple bruise on the right side of her face. When she spoke he saw that she was missing several of her front teeth and, if memory served him right, it wasn’t because she had lost them to the tooth fairy.
“Daddy is crying because he’s sorry for what he did to you, for what he did to all of us.”
“Can I make it all better?” She asked, her voice so sweet, so perfectly uncomprehending that Eddie’s heart broke.
“No honey, only daddy can do that.”
Through his haze of tears Eddie reached out for the cord, took it in his hands.
“I want you to know that I really am very, very sorry.” He said but his voice seemed lost to him, he couldn’t really hear it anymore, and at once he found that he couldn’t breathe, something was blocking the passage of air to his lungs. As his sight began to fade all he could make out were Janet and the kids standing over him, looking down at him with icy, detached eyes…unblinking…none of them reaching out a hand to help him…
* * *
“Shit, looks like it’s going to be one of those days.” Sgt. Cory Dunn told his partner as they got out of the squad car and walked the length of the yard to the tree in the back of 2345 Calle Barcelona. The woman who lived there was sitting on the lawn, knees drawn up to her chin, her eyes vacant, spooked.
“Mrs. Swenson?” Sgt Dunn said, approaching her slowly. “Are you the one that called us?”
She turned her head slightly, unable to tear her gaze away from the tree.
“Yes.” She said softly, and by the tone of her voice Dunn could tell that she was in shock.
“What happened?”
“I came home and, and…I found him like this.”
“Who is he ma’am?” Dunn’s partner, Roy Carlton asked.
“He is, um, was our gardener.”
“Any idea why he would do this?”
“None.” She said simply, her eyes moving back and forth as a light breeze played through the leaves of the tree. “He seemed like a very happy, well adjusted person.” She looked up at them finally, catching Sgt. Dunn’s eyes. “I guess that just goes to show you how much you know about anybody. Really know about them I mean.” “Could be.” Sgt. Dunn said, looking up at the body dangling from the tree, an orange extension cord wrapped around his neck, swaying gently back and forth in the mild spring air.
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