His words wounded me deep. So ungrateful. He wouldn’t accept it, even as a gift. Of course, paying off my debt was never mentioned at all.
I used to look up to him. “He taught me everything I know,” I used to say.
Him turning his back on me like that changed me somehow. Nothing mattered no more. Not my life. Nothing.
So that very night I buried it deep on the side of his goddamned house. Chances are nobody’d find it, but if they did it’d be on him.
But I marked it, in case he changed his mind.
In my experience you won’t ever find nothin’ more useful than a bog. It hides many a sin, as they say. Oh yes.
Wait here long enough, they start coming back up. Might be only an arm that looks like a tree branch, of maybe an old femur with a bit of chain still on it. See, all of them in the city know about this place, know its usefulness.
And usually when they start to come up, it’s the work of city folks. They ain’t careful like we are out here.
They don’t know this place like we do.
The old man said he’ll pay for it. I’m glad to take him.
He’s an old fool.
Who’s the Ernie he keeps talking about visiting?
You know. His best friend in the war. He was killed at St. Lo in 1944. You must have heard the story a hundred times.
The one where his buddy got shot while going over a wall? The one that makes the old man cry?
That’s the one.
Well, if he needs to see it one last time, I don’t mind going. Never been to France.
Did you know he was only sixteen when he enlisted?
We called them doorman buildings. We dreamed of them, but they was always out of reach. No way you get past the lobby, let alone onto them high floors where the really rich people live.
The blackout changed all that. Them doormen scattered like cockroaches, left their lobbies wide open. We just strolled right in like we owned the place. I pushed the highest number in the elevator. Start at the top, work my way down.
You’d think them rich folks have things worth stealing, but you’d be wrong. What fence in his right mind takes antiques or oil paintings?
“Gimme that horn, yo.”
She was hogging bad. It was my fucking money, even if she was the one who scored.
“Wait your turn.”
The lighter was almost spent, the flame so tiny it was lost in the daylight.
“You better not snuff all that up,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t. For an addict, she was pretty thoughtful. She just hated going second is all.
“Here,” she said, handing me the pipe. I’d made this one from a Bic pen, the clear plastic that don’t melt.
Smoke rolling, everything better, nothing ugly no more.
Just what I was looking for.
“You’re calling this a setback?”
“Temporary. Look, you know how these guys can be.”
“Who, Neil? The IRS? Or the fucking DEA? And no, I don’t know how they can be.”
“Like you never chiseled anything in your life.”
“Jesus. That’s your approach? Blaming me for this fucking train wreck?”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s my fault.”
“Obviously. You’re the one with the subpoena.”
“I really need your help, Jules.”
“My help. Jesus. You’re really something, you know? It’s galling.”
“My back’s to the wall. I’ve nowhere else to turn.”
“You need to work on your persuasion skills.”
“So, yes?”
The owner is a moron. Hello, it’s SUNDAY. One barista isn’t going to cut it, especially when Josh half-assed his close last night because he was in an all-fired hurry to meet up with his loser friends to get high and see the same lame laser show the planetarium’s been showing since my dad was in high school. Fucking Pink Floyd.
And of course I’m totally slammed. Haven’t even unwrapped the first bakery tray when the line forms outside. Plus, it’s raining, so I have to unlock the door. The first guy did carry in the stack of Sunday Times.
She remembered when they had named the road in honor of the family. It was the same day they gave her father one of those Century Farm plaques.
New name or not, not many people came up this road. Farm trucks, mostly. Lots of tractors.
She could see the official car coming a long way off. She knew what it meant, same as it had meant to her grandmother in 1945 when a black War Department car carrying a priest and a maimed Marine Corps captain brought the telegram up onto the porch and her son out of their lives forever.
Shit, man. I’ll rob anyone. Don’t care if the got a nickel to their name, I’m taking it. It ain’t about the money. It’s about them, their place in the world. What they think is their place.
Take Saturday as an example. I was walking down LaSalle and this motherfucker in a chicken suit tries to hand me a coupon. A fucking chicken suit. Well, that got me all right. I took my sticker out, knocked his ass flat on the sidewalk, pushed the point against his throat.
I ain’t got nothing! he said.
Nothing’s a big word, I said.
In high school we read this book, Black Like Me. This guy puts makeup on his face and hands and walks around a southern city as a black man for a week or so. After a while he can’t take it. He said people looked through him like he wasn’t even there. He called it “the stare.”
Brother, I know all about it. Been homeless since I was discharged from Walter Reed. I’m not really interested in anything Uncle has to offer no more. Lots of guys feel this way after what we saw. Uninterested.
Can’t sleep for shit, either.