Waste

by Andrew F Sullivan

  “You going to meet us down there or what?” Jamie said.

  Moses watched his mother move from one foot to the next, pointing with her finger.

  “You’re just going to slow us down anyway, Jamie,” Moses said. “Look at your foot. So you go first, and I’ll stay here with her until I can figure out how to get her to move.”

  “Just grab her and then we can go,” Jamie said.

  “You wanna try moving her by yourself? With your foot, J?”

  Jamie pulled out the keys and dropped them into B. Rex’s hand.

  “Moses, we can get her to come,” Jamie said. “I don’t want you staying here and then doing whatever. Don’t take it out on that bearded guy, if that’s what you’re thinking. You don’t need that on your back any more than you need these other two fuckers.”

  “Just go, J,” Moses said.

  Elvira lay back on the bed and began to roll around in the satin sheets. Jamie thrust out an arm and B. Rex ducked under it. He could barely carry Jamie’s weight. Moses watched them shuffle down the hall toward the elevator doors. Every other step, B. Rex had to reach out and grab the wall.

  The elevator opened. Both figures stumbled inside. Moses closed the door to the honeymoon suite.

  30

  Moses Moon didn’t touch his mother. He sat in the purple loveseat and poked at Astor Crane’s body with the rifle. The television was still muted. Everyone on that screen was probably dead by now. They all fit in with the rest of the suite. Even the chandelier was made of tiny fake crystal hearts that lit up and spun around above the bed. Moses traced the trail of fluid leaking from Astor’s brain with the end of the barrel. It worked its way around the ashtray islands overflowing on the floor. The carpet absorbed it all.

  Elvira had wrapped herself up in the red sheets on the bed and was snoring. Her large chest rose and fell in time with the noise. Moses hoped she didn’t dream of anything—he didn’t know what they had done to her. Elvira Moon would eventually forget these men, like everything else before them. Everything except Ted Moon and Arizona.

  The honeymoon suite was windowless on three sides. The Venetian blinds were tilted to let in the light. The city stretched out beneath each window in long gray lines like an old strip mine filled with rainwater. Little figures blundered into each other down below and asked for change. Twenty floors up, not much sound made it through the thick double-paned glass. There were no balconies at the Pillaros Hotel, no pigeons to wake you up when the sun rose and you realized you were alone again. It must have been the pigeons at the Dynasty that drove them to it. The soft cooing reminding you the rest of the world had somewhere else to be, but you were there alone for twenty dollars a night with five television stations and a watercolor print of Irish setters staring at you from the wall. There was no continental breakfast, and the free soap made your scalp itch. The Dynasty had locked all the balcony doors, but people still got through. The windows in this hotel did not open wide enough for anyone to jump.

  Moses was tired of rented rooms. He didn’t want to deal with headboards rattling against the thin, non-insulated walls. He ran his hand over the medication lined up under a window. Astor Crane’s handwriting sketched out a schedule on a piece of the Pillar’s breakfast menu. According to his drug regimen, he would only sleep in two-hour sessions. There were five different pills to take in a constant rotation. A note reminding him to see Dr. Kostich for another round of radiation therapy was taped up on the glass. Moses tapped it with the rifle and then tossed the gun behind the bar. It crashed into some heart-shaped glasses and a few bottles tipped and spilled onto the floor. The carpet swallowed that too.

  Moses planted his head against the glass window. He liked the cold. It made it easier to think. Mrs. Singh hadn’t looked right at him when he stepped on her face. Her eyes were closed. Moses knew he hadn’t stepped, he had stomped, but still, her eyes were closed. There were pieces of him, tiny skin cells left behind all over that house. There were footprints affixed to Mrs. Singh’s face. Everyone had seen them at Yuri’s bowling alley—watched Logan shout at Big Tina and B. Rex cry over what was left of Mrs. Singh. B. Rex was gone, but he couldn’t wipe the numbers off his neck. There was so much pus around the edges. Moses had seen it dripping down his friend’s neck. A scarf wouldn’t be able to hide the smell if those numbers got infected. They were going to slowly eat his flesh the longer B. Rex hid them from his father.

  Al and Tommy Vine were still piled in the corner by the wall. Tommy was breathing, but he hadn’t moved since Astor crumpled to the floor. The bearded man had grown tired of whacking his head against the wall. His sunglasses were broken and drool slipped out the corner of his mouth. Bits of his brother still stuck to his face and poked out of his beard.

  The Judge wouldn’t look at anyone. The ball sat in the corner and stared at the wall. Moses Moon picked up the piece of glass Jamie had found on the floor. He ran it over his palm but didn’t press down against the soft white skin. There were still purple bruises on his wrists. Elvira groaned in her sleep, and Moses sat down on the bed beside her. He ran a hand through her tangled blond hair and tried to undo a knot above her left ear.

  The world outside looked wet. Stuttering lines of cherry light covered each body on the floor like spoiled film. Dorothy was awake now, and she remembered everyone who was in her dream. You were there, and so were you. Moses rolled the jagged glass up and down his palm. Bill Murray wasn’t saving anyone. He was standing on the sidelines. He was cracking jokes and smirking for the cameras while Logan shuddered inside a television. “We are the wretched refuse,” Bill Murray had said. He was lying—every time he spoke, it was someone else’s words.

  Moses wanted to see Logan again, but all he could find were Logan’s fists and bleeding nose staring up from the ground. All he could find was Mr. Chatterton in that bone can, gasping for some air. His face was purple and Logan was trying to tell him he was sorry. He was so sorry. Everything was wet. Everything slipped through his hands. There was nothing to hold onto.

  In the afterbirth of morning, Moses sat on the hotel bed and stroked his mother’s hair. He tossed the jagged bit of glass onto the plush carpet. Dorothy was talking on the screen. Moses listened to the faint noises echoing up from the streets below. He could hear sirens in the distance and someone was yelling hurry up, the bus would be here any minute, any minute now. A car failed to start and a dump truck was reversing down the alley next to the hotel. Moses focused on the yawning whine of the sirens. He stood up against the window and pressed his ear against the cold, pink glass. Elvira yawned and stretched out her arms to hug the air. She clutched what she could grab and pulled it tight against her chest. Moses Moon listened to the wailing. The moisture gathered on the glass and then began to fade. He agreed with that voice yelling in the street.

  Any minute now.

  Larkhill, Ontario

  1990

  31

  Half the kids on the frozen playground had bright yellow grocery bags tucked into their boots. Jamie Garrison sat on a bench and tried to ignore the ice melting beneath him. A breeze kept snatching bits of his newspaper and tossing them into the brittle branches above him. He had to use two hands to hold down a single page. Kansas was somewhere in the mess of kids trying to climb up the slide instead of traveling down it. She was wearing an orange snowsuit and a blue scarf around her face. By Jamie’s estimate, she had fallen down the slide five or six times.

  There was no snow falling, but it covered the ground in one large pockmarked sheet, disguising the dead leaves and pop bottles until April arrived and the sewer flooded with the runoff like last year. Scott’s basement would probably flood once the snow melted, but Jamie had his own place now. He was nestled on the seventh floor in the Gillman Arms with an inclusive lease. Jamie liked to run the shower even when he wasn’t home sometimes, but there was mold growing in between the tiles on his bathroom floor.

  Moses Moon was still on the front page every day. The high school photo they used did
n’t show the shaven head or the purple wrists Jamie remembered from the honeymoon suite. Moses Moon was smiling in this picture, his lips stretched too far. He was even wearing a shirt with a collar. The buttons were mismatched and one side hung lower than the other. The sun watched over the kids with Jamie and began to melt some of the ice on the higher branches. Droplets split phrases like aggravated assault and first-degree manslaughter into inky blots that ran down the page and darkened Jamie’s fingertips. Kansas fell down the slide again.

  The cops had come by a number of times since they found Moses on the top floor of the Pillaros Hotel with two and a half dead bodies in the room. The half is what bothered the prosecution. Tommy Vine couldn’t talk; he only dribbled and wrote the name Al over and over on napkins. His diet consisted mainly of pureed foods and well mashed potatoes administered every six hours in the extended care ward at St. Joe’s. One of the prosecutors described him as a “husk” to the jury and prodded Tommy with a finger to prove his point. Objections were overruled. Without the beard, Tommy Vine looked like any another fat old frog with drooping lips. Most of his tattoos were hidden under the wrinkled brown suit two nurses forced him into after they changed his bedpan and wiped him down.

  When investigators found Jamie elbow deep in pork picnic shoulders at Henley Meats, the questions weren’t about his car outside the Pillaros on the night in question. Neither of the men asked about the Lorax burning alive with duct tape encircling his gut or how Jamie’s father’s rifle ended up behind a honeymoon suite bar. Francis Paul Garrison had never registered the gun.

  The detectives were interested in the character of Moses Moon— his work habits, personal hygiene, his sociability. Had he seemed evasive or suspicious in the days preceding the night in question? Was Jamie Garrison aware of any accomplices or acquaintances that may have frequented the workplace? What was his home life like? Were there any early signs he might have been capable of these attacks?

  In the first weeks after his arrest, Moses had been accused of a variety of crimes. Everything from stolen hubcaps to forced abortions were tossed in his general direction, but few of the allegations stuck. One of the most damning pieces of evidence came from a size-eleven boot print lifted from a fifty-year-old woman’s face. This was Exhibit A in what prosecutors called a drug-fueled killing spree that stretched across Larkhill over one devastating weekend in December 1989. The manager at Yuri’s Bowling Emporium was able to identify what remained of Logan Chatterton, who was found with his father in the Dynasty Hotel. The elder Chatterton had been reported missing by his dentist when he did not appear for a follow-up appointment to replace a faulty crown. Moses Moon was suspected in both cases, but there was not enough evidence to pursue either investigation to the trial stage. They remained open homicides.

  Jamie answered no to every question. He was in fact very unaware of Moses Moon as a fellow employee, and even more so outside the workplace. The boy had seemed quiet and well-mannered while on the job. His attitudes toward minority groups and alleged racial intolerance were rarely if ever observed while he was employed at Henley Meats.

  Jamie did not mention B. Rex, the piss-soaked boy he had driven across town after they left the hotel. The kid had cried the entire time, tried to explain something about an old lady. When they found his car, the driver-side window was smashed and the seats were soaked with melted snow. The kid had honked when he drove away, and Jamie knew that boy could not have clamped a foot down on anybody’s throat. When the officers asked again about accomplices, Jamie just shook his head.

  Teachers talked about a Brett, um, a Brett something, one detective said. The connection, we understand, is tenuous at best after speaking to the boy’s parents. It seems they spent a few days together after school, but we don’t have any real evidence against him at this point.

  Jamie couldn’t remember anyone named Brett. He watched the investigators from the window of the butcher shop when they left, waiting for one to write down his license plate or check his tire treads. Neither of them stopped to take a look and so he went back to separating the picnic shoulders. Texaco Joe was on vacation. He told everyone he wanted to see Houston for himself. Don still had Jamie working Sunday mornings and never spoke about that 2 a.m. conversation in the dark. He was watching Rocky II that night. That was all he could remember.

  Another page fluttered away from Jamie into the branches overhead. Kansas teetered halfway up the slide. Alisha gave him weekends now. She was working at the arena teaching skating to the five-and-under set, dealing with diva mothers and anxious fathers worried about sons who couldn’t skate after five minutes outside the womb.

  Kansas slipped and tumbled down the slide again. Jamie watched her rattle off of two other kids before she hit the bottom in a pile. He waited. His daughter shook her head and began to climb again. She could do this for hours on end if he let her.

  One of the photos in the paper showed Elvira Moon before her bowling ball accident. She stood before a banner at Paulie’s Pins with three other women. Her hair was curled and she clutched a bowling ball below her breasts. The winners of the fifth annual Woman’s League Half-Price Wings Tournament were all smiling, but Elvira was the only one looking into the camera. Her teeth looked much whiter in grayscale. Jamie had trouble recognizing the face without the blue and yellow bruises or the roving eyes that had rarely made contact with his face. Although the ongoing trial made allusions to her involvement, an early plea deal with her own public defense team severed any ties between her case and any new developments surrounding her teenage son.

  A bunch of small, bundled children were gathering near the swing sets. Kansas gave up on the slide, and Jamie watched her orange snowsuit plod toward the circle. Alisha was dating someone from her building named Carl now, and Brock liked to call him Hot Carl when Jamie wasn’t around. Brock had dentures these days and enjoyed scaring children with them at the grocery store or standing in line at the movies. He had refused to cooperate with police, but now went to the dentist once a month for follow-up examinations. Karina’s parents had let him move upstairs, but the two could not share a bed. Her parents would be able to smell the formaldehyde clinging to his skin whenever they touched. Jamie only lent out his apartment once before realizing it was impossible to get that smell out of the sheets. Brock took to renting out motel rooms down by the highway for special occasions.

  Alisha didn’t talk about Hot Carl much when she dropped off Kansas on Friday nights. Neither of them talked about her mother, or Jamie’s parents, or the night Renee fell down the stairs for the third time while Scott was out at work. It was art projects and Triceratops and the best way to introduce Kansas to the wonderful world of the Hardy Boys. She had already finished most of the Nancy Drew at the library, but wasn’t ready for Judy Blume yet.

  Kansas spent every Saturday with her dad, but his apartment was small and it always smelled like leftovers. Grandma had taken her to the bingo hall once to change up the scenery, but Alisha could smell the smoke in her daughter’s hair for three days afterward. Green dabber ink didn’t come out of Kansas’s skin very quickly either, and so that was the end of bingo night.

  It was Saturday, and the sun dangled above the park. Jamie kept his orange girl in sight while he read about Moses’s refusal to take the stand and a lack of fingerprints on the trigger of the gun. Astor Crane was a footnote near the bottom of the page, his name referenced in regards to three disappearances and one kidnapping charge involving baseball bats and a toolbox. No family had stepped forward in his case.

  Photographs of Moses Moon’s tattoos appeared in the nation’s tabloids, blurry and subtitled for the farsighted. Apparitions of the White Eagle Army manifested in Halifax and Nelson, according to various letters to the editor. Most were the ghosts of mohawked kids and angry neighbors spraying GOOK onto corner stores.

  Jamie tried to hold the paper still, but the wind snatched it from his hands. He watched the pages flutter away into the branches, joining plastic bags and lost birthda
y balloons. Half buried at the base of a strangled maple, a sign for Connor Condon leaked purple ink into the wet snow. The words were faded and hand-drawn; they barely fit across the cardboard placard.

  It had been months since the discovery of the body, but there were no leads to follow. Connor’s mother still wandered the halls of the courthouse, but she had run out of things to say. Usually she just lay her temple against a fake marble pillar before guards asked her to leave.

  Petitions wilted on the walls of churches and community centers. The names that remained on those petitions were never called upon to testify in the park again. The weather had grown too cold, the wind too strong. Only the lost man in his motorized wheelchair returned with a sign. He was picketing the lack of ramps in local libraries and his own petition had swelled to five thousand signatures since the first protest back in December. Jamie had signed it the week before while Kansas chucked snowballs at chickadees. Each little ball fell apart in the air before it hit the ground. The birds didn’t notice.

  A red coat fluttered up from the middle of the circle. Jamie abandoned Moses on the bench and walked across the frozen gravel. His right ankle clicked with each step. Three pins and a number of surgical staples still held the foot together. The nurse in the emergency room hadn’t questioned Jamie when he blamed it on a tractor. Out in the snow, the children were quiet and no one was laughing. Jamie could see a boy attempting to take off his jacket, stumbling around in a tiny circle. He had the heavy coat halfway over his head but couldn’t get it around the tip of his chin. Kansas joined the circle, watching the boy try to remove his coat.

  Jamie Garrison glanced back toward his bench and the fluttering pages condemning Moses Moon to twenty-five to life without parole. He was being tried as an adult for three murders, one of which was considered a premeditated act for which he exhibited no palpable remorse. The prosecution remained firm in these assertions after the verdict was read aloud to cheers and the sobbing of Mrs. Singh’s son in the front row of the balcony.