by Mark McGhee
And those were the last of my days I chose to live. Not grand or glorious by any means. I lived those days on the shores the way I chose to. I didn’t enjoy all the times. I was ashamed sometimes. I helped many people. I was treated horribly at times by people who knew nothing of me. People I could have killed in a heartbeat. I thought about it but realized that was wrong. If I had carried nothing down to my last days, I had carried the knowledge that I didn’t kill anyone that really didn’t deserve it. Well, in my mind, I hadn’t. I simply hadn’t killed anyone that I felt hadn’t deserved it. If I was wrong, I would have to accept it. But I wasn’t going to kill people who humiliated me for being a bum. I couldn’t kill people for being ignorant and unkind to a bum, but sometimes I thought about it.
The bitch on the pier that held her nose when I walked by and said to her boyfriend, “Oh my God! Why don’t they keep these vagrants away!” I thought for a second of just pulling my .45 out and ending that insipid piece if shit’s life in that second. Like I had waited for the moment. Like I had waited a hundred years just to hear the stupidity worthy enough to splat someone’s brains across the pier….
But I let her walk.
Chapter 15
“I’ve been seeing a lot of what brought me here, Sam.”
“Good. Thanks for taking care of the customers when I’m gone. When I come in sometimes they were lined up 50 deep. They never steal but they always wait.”
“Yeah, no worries. I try and see where they need to go, give them a heads up, like you, but some don’t want it anyway.”
“True. So what are you seeing?”
I look hard at Sam. He’s the only friend I have left.
“Thank you, Sam. I am scared to walk out there again. I was slipping every day. Here I don’t. I can see when someone’s memories are pulling, even when I am tired and being pulled into the sleep, I can pull back here.”
“No problem, kid.”
“I’m probably your age, Sam.”
“Yeah, I know, kid.”
“It’s a good place. I see a lot of what happened, not all, not everything. Still cloudy. But I retraced a lot of my path before I got here. Maybe a few months before.”
“Good. That’s for you to decide.”
“What?”
“What you want to see. I told you too much already, but I had to ‘cause you were wandering. Once for several years. Thought you were gone.”
“Years?”
“Yeah, last time you left you were gone for about twenty years. Thought maybe you crossed over but somehow, I knew you didn’t.”
“Huh…seemed like a few minutes, but sometimes I noticed changes in things after walking the sleep. Things were getting darker. Harder not to be pulled into someone else’s hell.”
“Don’t take off. I worry sometimes you’re going to be gone when I come back. Maybe wander down to the beach again. Get sucked up into it again. I think you belong here for now. Besides, you help me with the wanderers and sleepers.”
I remember the first time I was told to kill someone. I had maintained my life so easily. Two lives. I taught freshman English 101 at the university. It was easy but taxing. The frustration that these were the kids that made it to college, these who could not write a paper devoid of so many grammatical errors and misuse of every element of style in the English language. But, always rewarding to see growth.
I had been riding a Harley for five years before I fell into the club. Innocent at first. I just stopped on one of my many rides. Stopped at a biker bar and formed friendships. Had a few beers and continued. And then more frequently my rides stopped there and ended there. I formed deeper and deeper friendships. A fight, I remember clearly a fight that erupted. My friendly club friends outnumbered three to one. And in a frenzy something exploded in my brain. The years of training muayThai but never actually fighting. In a blur I was punching, throwing kicks that sent a knife wielder through the window. An elbow to the face of a man two times my size. And he crumbled, slumped to the floor, I was an animal on fire. In the end they were gone and I was getting slaps on the back. Beers and shots were thrown at me. I was the Taz. Much laughter at the teacher, as they knew me, that became the Tasmanian devil in a blur of punches and kicks. That was the defining day for me. The line between that world and this world. There is a world few see and upon which I was thrust. In part by circumstance, in another part fate, but I was thrust there. And in the coming months that bled slowly into years, I was a prospect, beat and forced to beat down, and I couldn’t be broken. And I went to the university every day, some days with no sleep for as many days, and I taught. And I rode away on my black 2004 Superglide Harley. Jokingly the Biker-Professor, but none had any clue. And the day I got the paper, I had finished grading final exams for the quarter. A paper is a packet. There’s the name, the place, the person, the pic, their work, their home, their family, their friends, the police department, the low patrol times, the neighbors, and most especially, any law enforcement connections the family has.
It isn’t a slip of paper with a name, it’s an investigated portfolio done by the clubs private investigator. Months and months of work that include everything one can associate with the person.
The private investigators for the club sign their souls away because one word, one slip, and they and their families will be in a smoldering heap. They know it and they are paid well for what they do. I never got into the drug side of the club, never asked, never wondered why.
I was giving the paper and I knew what I had to do.
What was the hardest for me was that he wasn’t a scumbag. He was a welder. A biker from our rival club that had stabbed a club member in a brawl some three years before. Had been well protected and guarded. But, in this world, nothing is forgiven, and nothing is forgotten. The club was the biggest because they were the smartest. They didn’t exact vengeance in direct response, nor with anger, nor with any type of expediency, they waited and wrote a book. There was always a price to pay on a bill long after anyone thought about it. And I saw his family, knew his brother-in-law was a Sheriff’s deputy, knew where his kids went to school, where his parents lived, and when his wife did the errands. Most of all, I knew his schedule and where he went after work. I knew his bike, his riding habits, his club and meeting times. Knew when he was alone and knew when he rode with others. I had his life in my hands. He wasn’t any different than me in many ways except he wasn’t careful. When I killed him he was simply walking out to his car with his morning sausage biscuit and coffee from Carl’s Jr. Bad choice. He always skipped breakfast at his house and had breakfast at Carl’s Jr.
Routine is the prescription of the stupid and dead. I walked up to his work truck and pumped three rounds from my .45 auto into his head. He looked at me for a split second. I saw him fumbling with something, lift the coffee cup to his lips, and snap his head. He looked into my eyes. I touched the trigger softly three times. His head exploded. And he was dead. I walked over to a rental car devoid of plates and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. I parked the car in my garage. I got on my Harley and rode to the university where I taught poetry, simile, and metaphor from T.S. Elliot’s Paradise Lost. I never really liked that book. I don’t remember feeling anything that day. A lot of things ran through my head, but none were associated with fear or remorse. I am ashamed now to think about it. I did later feel remorse and sadness. Deep sadness. But, as war is to death, and duty is to order, I slowly accepted what I had done. When a soldier is sent to war, he must distinguish between murder and killing or he loses his mind. Killing is not murder when killing is what you must do.
As a soldier, he must kill because it is war. He is not a murderer. I was a murderer, but slowly, and this is a sick thing that I became, and now I am ashamed, now I suffer, I thought of myself as a soldier doing what had to be done in this war. I did not like what I had done. I didn’t know what I had become. But I slept, and I taught, and I went to the same Carl’s Jr. for a biscuit and coffee. And I learned, in a frightening
way, that I could keep his face in my thoughts while reading Hemmingway to the students, and letting a tear drop, daring emotion to the most sarcastic and insipid of classes. And so, maybe in my way, I mourned this lost soldier of war, albeit, the enemy. That’s the way I related my atrocities, to literature, to war, to life, to history, and to poetry. There isn’t a way to explain a person’s head exploding when you shoot them.
I guess you don’t see it. I saw his eyes and I waited for the second I could see his eyes, for I am not, nor have ever been a coward. And to take a life without first allowing that person to look in your eyes, to me that is cowardice unless it simply cannot be avoided under circumstance.
There is the soft touch of the first round and the kick of a .45 auto easily facilitates the next two rounds without a hair touch at all. Automatic and fluid. The first round kicks and the next two are fluid silk. There is the explosion and smell, the glass, the splatter of brains and matter. But there is no time to gaze. A simple turn, a walk away, and slipping behind a semi-trailer into my car. Watching people run as I give a surprised look to a woman waving her hands at me and pointing. Huh? What are you talking about crazy lady? A shrug of my shoulders and I pull out onto the street and head home. I change ties for some reason. I don’t know why. I just did.
And when I turned my back on the club. I never turned in disgrace. I never ratted anyone out. I just walked into the clubhouse and threw my cut on the floor. They looked at me in shock. No one said a fucking word. No one lifted a finger. I think I saw a sad look from a few that loved me. That I loved. I was throwing my life. My family onto the floor again. But I walked out of that door with too much. I had done things, I had seen things, I knew too many things. And I wasn’t in my right mind. They knew it. I didn’t. And now it made sense.
And I know it was business.
Chapter 16
Sitting in that back room sipping whiskey bottle after whiskey bottle. Smoking one cigarette after another. It was epiphany, and clarity, and everything that I needed to know. As DAY became NIGHT I saw and felt. I knew why Sam took me in and he knew why he had, though I do not understand why he woke me, why he provided this place of solace and clarity. He knew to leave me alone, and he knew I would tend to the lost when he was gone. And I did. I sat next to his employees yawning and texting. Rudely ringing purchases up. They never felt me there outside of a chill. Hairs raised on the back of the neck. I tended to the dead and lost. I let them know they were dead and increasingly I was seen and recognized by every dead person that walked in. I knew where they had died and why. I tended the sleepers, the wanderers, and those who were confused. I preferred to help the newly dead because I could give them simple directions. “You’re dead. Here’s where you died. Go there. Don’t wander, don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t talk to anyone. Beware the ravens. Go now. Find the people waiting for you. Don’t stay here. Go now.” They listened mostly. The real Sleepers and the real Wanderers I spent little energy on. Some of them belonged here and I wanted nothing but the hell and memories they were carrying around, walking into and out of. DAY. NIGHT. Walk on you motherfuckers. Go talk to the ravens and find your hell. Let them rip your soul to shreds and gulp your being into their black gullets. Some deserved it. Maybe I did too but I became increasingly less tolerant of Sleepers and Wanderers when I saw what they carried with them.
I was glad to be here. Not wandering. Not walking the sleep for years, according to Sam, now. I didn’t feel any years pass. Days maybe.
DAY. I just stayed here and maybe that’s what I was now. A stayer. I stayed in the back room when Sam was there most of the TIME. I came out and served the lost when he went home. When I came out, Sam always nodded and smiled. Sometimes I simply took a pack of cigarettes and another bottle of whiskey from the shelf. Sometimes I sat and talked to him. But it was about seeing and Sam knew this. Knew I needed this TIME.
And ALIVE I got tired of it. I saw my life in the DAYS before I died. Walking and stinking. I loved walking the shores but I was tired. I began counting my money more. Maybe $5,000 left and no place or time that felt right to shoot myself in the head. I wasn’t scared in any way to do it. I had done it many times to many others. I wasn’t afraid, but I never felt the right time was there. I fingered the gun every day. I thought about shooting a few people here and there that I thought deserved it, but I never turned the gun on myself. One day at the beach I saw a man touch his daughter in a way that made me uncomfortable. I decided he was going to have to die. But, as I watched throughout the day, I realized I was wrong. I had perceived something that was wrong. I was wrong. I sat as close as I could and listened. I watched her hug her father again and again. I watched his eyes. He saw me once and gave me a hostile glare. I watched him, them, for over five hours, and he never knew how close he came to getting a .45 slug in his head. In the end, I knew I had projected all of my own hurt as a child onto him. It was a harmless touch. Dad was not a bad man. But he had so closely become a dead man.
I had killed several child molesters and done so with satisfaction. It’s not the same thing as killing a soldier from the other side. I had done that at least five times before I disappeared from the club. I had been considered a good assassin by the time I left. The club never, ever, put a man down by their hand, my hand, and one other, that wasn’t deserving of it. Ticket bought.
I was the least person to be thought of as a killer. I never spoke of it. I never acknowledged I had done anything, even when the Prez of the club gave me a pat on the shoulder, and a “Thanks Prof!” I was indifferent and non-accepting of thanks. It never happened. A coldness had crept over me that I cannot explain completely. I accepted folders. I looked at them carefully and studied them with care. I checked out everything in the folder. I looked at the faces of their families. Most especially, I looked at the paper’s kids. I made the decision, though I was never forced to. I could turn it back if I didn’t want to, but for me, the occasions were never unacceptable. The folders I was given were egregious acts, and a look into the person usually left me feeling, and knowing, that they were done.
And for other club members that got the paper.
They knew what they were doing when they put that cut, that vest, on. They knew what they were getting into when they accepted that patch. And they most certainly knew what they had done. No one gets killed for nothing usually, not from me anyway, not ever. Maybe they knew that about me. Lots of others were killed in the years I rode with the club, but never, any from me, that didn’t cross every line that each of us, and all from any outlaw motorcycle club, knew was a death sentence. I did it with precision, well thought out days, circumspect, and studious investigation. I did it with a look in their eye. And I never fled a scene. Ever. I always walked away, and drove away quietly and slowly. In that I began killing others outside of the club’s orders. Well, that may have been the end for me with the club. Regarded with quiet respect. Nothing said. No accolades. No rewards. I never accepted anything after my first paper. I was handed a fat stack of hundred dollar bills after the first time. I handed it back and walked out of the room.
That gave me an air of guarded respect. It made it harder and harder for me to connect all the time in the club. I had the brotherhood and love. Always. But I felt a guarded suspicion sometimes, like they weren’t sure about me always. They knew I was a killer but no one, not one could wrap their head around my other life. They called me “Prof’” “Teach” and “Taz” but no one understood that life I had. I went to a university every day and taught college students. Two members in the club had kids in college and they kept a distance from me. More and more I was sitting in the corner quietly sipping whiskey and watching things. Slowly almost imperceptibly I became an outsider. It happened very slowly. I’m not sure I was ever trusted by everyone in the club. I was different from the beginning. Most of the guys in the club were working class. There were a few guys with college degrees but they had left those lives behind pretty much. And I led two lives. I guess all outlaw bike
rs live two lives, because no one can know what is truly in the club if they are outside of that club. And no one outside the club can really know what it’s like to be inside the club. In truth, I’d never planned to be a part of any club. It sort of happened naturally and I never betrayed them. And they never betrayed me. Until the end. And I accepted it. I accept it. I bought the ticket.
And maybe they didn’t separate from me, but I separated from them. Maybe it was all in my head.
He wasn’t doing anything when I sat down in a booth next to him at a Denny’s in West Covina. He ordered a Super Bird turkey sandwich and chatted on his cell phone. I had meticulously done my homework. He was a third time offender with no conviction. Lewd and lascivious acts, awaiting sentencing on forced oral copulation of a minor. He seemed very unconcerned. He flirted with the waitress and laughed on the phone.
He was facing a twenty year sentence for child abuse but was unconcerned. Seemed a normal and happy guy. Child molesters are rarely what people envision. Some are the disheveled drunken, unshaven, fat pervs you see in the mug shots – others are people that you might shake hands with at a PTA meeting. He was somewhere in between, but never what most would imagine or suspect. I watch him leave a tip. Grab his bill and walk to the counter. He laid the bill down with a $20 bill and walks out without change. Good tipper. He stops to smoke a cigarette in front of the Denny’s, nodding to a family walking in. I walk out and ahead of him. I stop and nod.
“Hey, sorry to bother you but I forgot my smokes…”
He nods.
“No problem.”
He reaches inside his jacket for the packet of cigarettes. I look directly into his eyes. He sees it. There’s a knowing that cannot be explained. I shove the screw driver I have sharpened to a razor point into his chest. He does not deserve to die by a knife. A shot to the head. He needs the puncture of a crude weapon I have fashioned. The puncture through the heart is a thud and I know in that second, there is no need for anything else. I pull it out and watch his eyes glaze over go blank. A perfect geyser of blood spurts to my right in rhythm to his pulsing, slowing hurt. He opens his mouth. He sputters. He gurgles a “Why?....why..whh…www.”
