The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  She placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar. Toying with her, the bartender poached a beer glass from a sink of soapy water, rinsed it, and wiped its inside with the ten spot, then tossed the soggy wad of green back at her. “Ask them boots in the corner.”

  Maddie’s heartbeats played tag with each other as she walked over to the booth. Her heart had not fibrillated like this since the one and only time she had appeared before the United States Supreme Court to argue a search and seizure case. The Justices had done nothing to put her at ease, flame-throwing questions at her before she had finished introducing herself, silencing her in mid-sentence when her allotted time was up. She had maintained her composure then, she would maintain it now. “I’m looking for Mabi. I’m with Suffolk County Legal Services, the public defender.”

  “He don’t need no defendin’,” one said. His voice crackled like the radio during a summer thunderstorm.

  The other sipped coffee, holding the mug with both hands. “Stilts don’t brew it as good as my momma. Her coffee grinder broke down yesterday, but I was able to get it grinding again this morning.”

  “I starvin’ for some sweet jelly roll,” the first one said. “I been living on stale dry cornbread all week.”

  “Like sucking cardboard,” the other said. He turned to Maddie. “If you looking for Mabi, this the place. He holds calling hours downstairs.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Maddie said.

  “He don’t take meetings in public.”

  “I’s Scorpion,” the first one rasped. “He’s Spider. You Devlin? The Jew’s attorney? I seen you on the tube. You real fly in the flesh.” Maddie intuited the unspoken “for a white cunt.”

  Spider unlocked a door along the back wall. Scorpion grabbed her wrist, dragging her through it before she had a chance to resist. The lock clicked. They descended, one behind her, one in front. The stairwell was warm, like a furnace room, and narrow, built at a time when people were shorter and thinner. Her right arm brushed one wall, her left shoulder the other. Their footsteps echoed, the three of them sounding like six.

  In her mind, Maddie ran through the various judo techniques she had learned in the women’s self-defense class her da had insisted she take. They were always taught and practiced on flat surfaces, floors with mats. Never on stairs. Nagi-Wazi or throwing techniques, Te-Waza or hand techniques, Ashi-Waza or foot techniques, with any of these the three of them were likely to tumble into a pile-up at the bottom of the stairs. If there were Tachi-Waza or standing techniques that could be used on stairs, she had not learned them. Her da was right when he scolded her for not enrolling in the advanced class.

  A landing at the bottom of the stairs, too small, too cramped, to extend her arms or legs. It would be like trying judo moves in an over-crowded elevator. Another door opened with the squeal of metal rubbing against metal. Behind her, a door closed with the slam of wood against wood. Again, metal screeched on metal and a light revealed a small room, sparsely furnished, but crowded by a double bed against the wall opposite the door covered with a ratty olive-green blanket, a chest of drawers, and a rocking chair. Scuff marks wore a path in the linoleum from the door to the bed.

  “This the place where Stilts blows the blues when his old lady’s locked him out,” Spider said.

  Before she could attack, Spider kicked her legs out from under her and slammed her on to the bed. His knee nose-dived to her chest between her breasts, pinning her to the mattress. Panting, she struggled to suck air into her lungs. When her breathing returned to normal, she scissor-kicked, then swung her legs, first to the right, then to the left, but lacked the leverage needed to free herself. She went limp to give herself time to regain her strength and think through the situation. Let them think they’ve won was one of the lessons she learned in her self-defense class. They’ll relax, get careless, give you an opening. Unlike judo moves, this strategy could not be practiced in the gym.

  “Sing the lady some verses,” Scorpion said. A lifetime of cigarettes had turned Scorpion’s larynx into a chip of hickory charcoal. He ran a few scales up and down a harmonica, then blew the plaintive wail familiar to whites who went to college when Maddie did and prided themselves on being able to identify the bluesmen who influenced the Rolling Stones.

  Spider started singing:

  I got a sweet woman;

  She lives right back the jail.

  She’s got a sign on her window,

  Good cabbage for sale.

  “That the ‘Low Down Blues’,” Scorpion said. “Jelly Roll Morton. Bessie Smith she’s my favorite.”

  Again, Spider sang:

  He boiled my first cabbage,

  And he made it awful hot.

  When he put in the bacon

  It overflowed the pot.

  “‘Empty Bed Blues,’” Spider said, “but we got no call singing them now.”

  The heating pipes lining the ceiling clanged. The air, heated and dried by those pipes, smelled musty from the evaporated sweat of a multitude of people baked into the mattress, the blanket, the chair’s upholstery.

  Moving like a flash of summer lightening, Spider wadded his handkerchief into a ball and stuffed it in Maddie’s mouth, gagging her with a piece of rope before she could spit it out. She tried to counter with an obi tori gaeshi or belt grab reversal, but her fingers slipped before she could close them around his belt. She reached out to attempt a kata guruma or shoulder wheel, but he twisted her arm and pinned her in a full-nelson before she could complete the move.

  Spider whistled while Scorpion stripped her blouse off. As he fumbled with the hook of her bra, his long fingernails scratched the small of her back. With his belt, he bound her wrists behind her. Maddie had studied Ma-Sutemi-Waza or back sacrifice techniques and Yoko-Sutemi-Waza or side sacrifice techniques in her self-defense class, but none with her hands bound behind her at the wrists. Still pinned to the mattress, she lacked the leverage to use her legs for Kansetsu-Waza or joint locking techniques.

  Judo had never failed Maddie. Never. Not even the time she was attacked by the brothers and cousin of a prostitute sentenced to hard time for murdering her john. Her best efforts could not negate the DNA evidence found on the prostitute and the victim. They weren’t seeking revenge, these men, because they loved and cared for their sister and cousin; but, rather, because they had lost their meal ticket. Years later, whether released after serving her sentence or due to the leniency of the parole board, she’d be so old, so haggard, she wouldn’t turn enough tricks to pay for a light snack for one of them, much less three. Judo had not failed her then even though she was out-numbered three-to-one.

  She searched her catalog of wazas, desperate to find one that might work, but her mind had gone blank as if her subconscious had accidentally hit the delete key, erasing all she had learned in her self-defense class. Out of breath, Maddie attempted to roll over to cover herself, but Scorpion grabbed her shoulder and flipped her on her back. The stink of his sweat gagged her. She blamed herself, not because of the single-mindedness that brought her to Blackbird’s; but because she failed to translate their language into her language. For years she had defended street blacks, listened to their talk without trying to understand what they said, assumed they were saying nothing worth hearing. Now her ignorance, her racism, as quiet and concealed as it was, condemned her.

  Spider rolled two blunts, lit them with a wooden kitchen match, and handed one to Scorpion. Maddie hated dope heads, especially the rapists she defended who claimed they were too high to know what they were doing. When Spider turned to face her, his crotch bulged. She struggled to pull her hands apart.

  Scorpion took a penny from his pocket and flipped it. “Call it, man.” His voice grated like a dull hand saw scraping against a piece of green hardwood.

  “Heads.”

  The coin hung in the air, then landed in Scorpion’s palm. He slapped it on the back of his other hand and showed it to Spider. Maddie studied their faces for a clue as to heads or tails. When Scorpion asked Sp
ider to roll him another, she knew.

  She wished she could dull her nerve endings until her whole body felt like it was shot through with Novocain, but there was nothing to distort her senses except fear and fear was an ineffective anesthetic. Her arms ached from the weight of her body. The acrid smoke irritated her eyes and nose.

  Scorpion unbuckled her slacks. His knuckles scraped her abdomen as he unzipped her pants. He curled his fingers around the elastic band of her underpants and lifted her off the bed. “Never seen pussy that color before.”

  “’Member when Edwina dyed her hair that color?” Spider asked. “She dyed her pussy to match.”

  “Ugly cunt that woman had.”

  Spider laughed. “Fucking ugly.”

  “But not too ugly to fuck.”

  Scorpion rolled Maddie onto her stomach and spread her legs. A spring sticking out of the mattress scratched her. He took off his pants. The zipper sounded like one of Boston’s trolleys scraping the side of the tunnel. She thought she heard another sound, footsteps on the stairs or someone walking around in the bar upstairs. The heating pipes clanged. Scorpion grabbed the inside of her thighs and forced her legs apart until she felt she was being split open like a lobster claw by a man ravenous with hunger. Did she hear the sound again? She no longer trusted her senses. Too many sensations assaulted her, the feel of hands on her thighs, the smell of sweat, the sight of stains on the mattress, the smell of the dope, the taste of the handkerchief in her mouth, and a sound her mind might have created, or if it were real, the sound of a rat scurrying through the cellar, knocking something over.

  The mattress shook. Scorpion knelt between her legs. He yanked her ass upwards by her hip bones. Spider slipped a pillow under her stomach.

  “Get it on, man,” Spider said. “I expected home for supper.”

  “Tell her you already ate.”

  “Shit to pay if I don’t feed her right.”

  The noise again. Closer. More distinct. Am I hallucinating? Maddie wondered. Is this how women react while being raped? She wanted to scream, but the handkerchief gagged her. Panic triggered new urges, strange urges, urges she had never had before, the urge to take a knife and castrate Spider and Scorpion and dump their balls into a toilet and flush them into the sewers to be eaten by rats. If she had a gun, she’d blow their heads off without hesitation. Her impacted rage ran wild. The benefits of years of therapy, of cognitive restructuring, of practicing impulse control, vanished as if she had never been to Dr. Przystas. For her mind to survive, provided her body did, she would have to begin again at the beginning, a new twelve session protocol, group and individual. This angered her as much as the horror of being raped by Spider and Scorpion.

  This new urge, this urge to hurt, to maim, to kill, overwhelmed her. This sudden blood lust to kill lifted her mind out of her body to places she had not anticipated.

  A recidivist once told her only the first killing was hard. All the others were fun. His words echoed through her mind like a refrain. She willed her mind away from thinking about the pillow under her stomach or the hands on her buttocks or the mattress spring grinding into her skin or the sweaty smell clinging to her like a wet film. All the others were fun.

  Instead, she visualized cutting off their manhood, Spider’s and Scorpion’s. She visualized the blood flowing down their legs, a scalpel peeling the skin off their faces. She heard their screams. She reveled in the writhing of their death dances, the grinding gears of their death rattles. Yet, she felt neither guilt, nor remorse. No one would condemn her act of vengeance.

  If she killed tonight, she knew she would kill again tomorrow. All blacks, young and old, male and female, would, for her, now be Spider or Scorpion. Now she understood how the blood lust of hatred began. From her deepest fears floated a thought, a solitary frightening thought, the thought that, yes, all the others would be fun. She doubted she would be the same person again. She would not want to be.

  A new sound. Familiar. A spring, rusty, being stretched. Metal against metal. Louder. More persistent. How much time since the footsteps. Two seconds? Five? Ten? Time had stopped. Metal against metal again. Over her shoulder. A man as large as he was black. His body filled the door frame. His head extended to the lintel.

  “She ready for riding,” Spider said. “You want firsts?”

  “Cut her loose.”

  “Fucking A I will.”

  “Do it.”

  Spider unknotted the belt, untied the gag, pulled the handkerchief from her mouth. Maddie wiggled her jaw back and forth and wrapped herself in the blanket. She itched as the coarse cloth scratched her. The inside of her mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Mabi rummaged through her purse and tossed her car keys to Spider. “Move her ride to the Government Center garage.”

  “Ain’t no Cadillac,” Scorpion said.

  “All you riding today.”

  “Shit, man,” Spider said. “Pussy for one, pussy for all.”

  “She’s Badger’s ticket.”

  “No reason we can’t punch it first,” Spider said.

  “Give damaged goods, get damaged goods. Now move your asses.”

  “Little fucking never damaged nobody.”

  Mabi stood before her. An ebony statue. She hated racist metaphors, but once again she was a prisoner of language. She didn’t know any other way to phrase her thoughts. He was blacker than any black she had ever seen. Coal on ice. She felt so illiterate. A drop of saliva, the first, moistened her mouth. Her tongue felt lumpy against her teeth. The blanket irritated her skin. She wanted to scratch–her sides, her thighs, her back, her breasts; but she refused to open the blanket, refused to expose herself. Her calves were falling asleep under the weight of her body, but stretching her legs would uncover her vaginal area. She craved a damp cloth to wipe between her breasts, along her thighs, her crotch. She yearned to stand, to extend her arms and legs so no part of her skin touched any other. She drew her cocoon closer. Mabi victimized her with his silence as she had hundreds of witnesses during her legal career. “Why’d you stop them?” she asked at last.

  She felt like a trial attorney facing a surprise witness. Strategies scrolled through her mind. She searched for one that would allow her to regain control. She had to out-think him, she realized. She was too drained, physically, emotionally, to try and out-muscle him. She saw no percentage in being trade bait. Ugolino might refuse the trade; Mabi might double-cross him. She understood, now, how her da survived Guadalcanal, how her namesakes endured Kilmainham, how her grand da had the courage to stand before the firing squad. If the Trojans were going to gangbang her to death, fuck ’em. If she had any control, it derived from knowing Mabi or some other Trojan had killed Bumper and used his blood to desecrate the Torah. How else would Bumper’s blood get from his body to the stencil to the swastikas? What other Trojan? It was Mabi who played chess with Bumper that night. Coincidence? Unlikely. Circumstantial? Probably, but circumstantial evidence was a weak foundation to build a defense on. If she could convince Mabi that she shared this knowledge with others, that her disappearance would finger him, maybe he’d free her. Bullshit, she thought; but what choice did she have? None but to go for the jugular. And, if it were hers, well, bleeding to death was an honorable way to die as long as the wound was not self-inflicted.

  “Why’d you kill Bumper Sullivan?”

  His hand surrounded the base of her throat. His fingers encircled her neck. He squeezed and she realized he could break her neck as easily as a child could snap a twig. She had lost at Russian roulette. She now faced the same choice Ann Devlin had faced in Kilmainham when she suffered years of torture without betraying Robert Emmet. It was her turn to answer Yeats’s question–“What is this sacrifice?”–and the answer would have to be the same in the basement of Blackbird’s as it was on a dead street in Chelsea or in the street in front of the Dublin post office in 1916 or when her grand da faced the IRB firing squad. No wonder skulls on old grave stones always laughed.

  -3-

  As
the white hot sun melded into early evening red, Silvy, Cealy, Mabi, and Dr. John Obeah waited in the Thomas’s kitchen for Beaujolais Wine to deliver Badger. Obeah’s presence quieted the bickering between Mabi and Silvy. Every few minutes as if set off by some internal alarm, Cealy shook her hands at the ceiling and begged the good Lord to hurry home her Badger.

  “You giving us fits, Cealy Thomas,” Silvy said.

  “The Lord don’t listen to them who don’t talk.”

  Twilight deepened to the moment between day and night when there were no shadows. At last, Beaujolais arrived with Badger. Dr. Obeah administered a thorough physical, poking Badger’s abdomen, chest, and the fleshy parts of the neck with his fingers, listening to his heart and lungs, examining his teeth, eyes, ears and throat, inspecting his groin and scrotum, taking his pulse, blood pressure, and temperature and checking his skin for bruises, welts, or other abrasions.

  “How you feeling, son?”

  “I ain’t your son.”

  “Answer the man,” Mabi said.

  “Like when I popped my first cherry.”

  “You ain’t popped no cherries,” Mabi said.

  “He’s prime,” Dr. Obeah said.

  Mabi telephoned Stilts at Blackbird’s. “Tell Spider to scare shit into Devlin’s pants, but no hurts. Not even a bruise.” He turned to Silvy. “I kept my promise, so let’s go where we won’t be intruding on this mother and child reunion.”