by Rick Jones
The knife’s point pricked the flesh, drawing a red bead.
“Maybe I’ll just take your money and leave you here to bleed out. Is that what you want, Dennis? You want my buddy to bleed you out?”
Dennis held a hand out imploringly to Jesse. “Please, Jesse, I’m sick. Real sick. So is Becki. We need the stuff.”
“So make your choice. Deal or no deal. I don’t have all night.”
Dennis started to cry. “The junk, man. Give me the junk.”
Jesse nodded to the knife wielder, who backed off Dennis and went to a Dumpster to retrieve three small baggies of high-quality heroin. As Dennis was rubbing his neck, the knife wielder returned with the baggies pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and held them before Dennis, who tried to snatch them away. But the knife wielder was much quicker and pulled them away.
“Uh-uh-uh,” said Jesse. “Not until I get a confirmation from you. You know how this works, Dennis. How much will you owe me?”
“Five hundred.”
“When?”
“Two nights.”
“Two nights,” Jesse validated. “Not one day later. Not two days later. In two nights. Or my friend here will take that knife he likes so much and show you what he can do with it up close and personal. You understand?”
Dennis nodded.”
“Do you understand?” said Jesse.
“Yes. I understand.”
Jesse nodded to the knife wielder, who gave Dennis the baggies.
“Two nights,” Jesse emphasized. “Or we come hunting.”
Once Dennis left the area the cramps in his stomach caused him to double over. The nausea was so overwhelming he retched. But since his stomach was empty nothing but bile came up. After wiping his lips off with the sleeve of his soiled shirt, Dennis knew he had damned himself and Becki. How am I gonna come up with five hundred dollars in two days?
There was no good answer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That Evening.
Kimball Hayden’s mother was not overly pretty by any measure, but mainly nondescript with the exception of her bottle-green eyes that shined like emeralds. Her hair was dark and her skin was without the benefits of makeup enhancements, which showed scores of acne scars from her battle with the condition as a teenager. She was pleasant, kind and endearing---the type of person everyone often gravitated to because she had the ability to comfort and warm, and to make people laugh when they wanted to cry, or right a world when everything in it appeared wrong. To many she was the voice of reason, a counselor, and a friend. But in life she was a general laborer who worked in factories for wages that were barely above minimum.
Kimball was sitting across the kitchen table from her. His shoulders were slumped with the crookedness of an Indian’s bow as if his dejection weighed heavily on him.
“Your father told me what happened,” she said, reaching across the table and taking one of his massive hands into her two. “You have to understand, Kimball, he sees the way of talking to you as a way to motivate you, not demean you. He tries to shame people to respond to something rather than to discuss matters in a politically correct way. He’s abrasive. We all know that. But he loves you all the same. You just have to realize that he means well, even though he goes about it in the wrong way. He’s never going to change, Kimball. So don’t take it personally.” She patted his hand. “OK?”
Kimball sighed. “Why does he always have to cut to the bone? It still hurts.”
She gave him a light smile. “You may not believe this, but your father is very proud of you,” she told him. “He was never a big man, never really fit in with any group or had any real friends to speak of. And not because he was slight or small or anything like that. I think it’s because he tried too hard to connect with others by being someone he wasn’t. He tried to act tougher than he was, more rugged, thinking he’d be accepted. But he only manages to offend people rather than to pull them close.”
“Doesn’t he see this?” Kimball asked.
“He’s been wired like that for a long time now. And people don’t change when they’ve been wired a certain way for so long. Your father has always been Napoleonic---a man who feels himself to be inadequate, but tries to measure up by using muscles he doesn’t really have.”
“Can I ask what it was you saw in him, then?”
She maintained her smile. “I saw in him the man he truly was underneath,” she answered. “I saw the sadness of a person, and his need and want to belong and be accepted. I saw in him a man who was like a little boy trying to put on a hard edge. And once you wade through all that, then you see him for what he really is: a man who is capable of loving unconditionally.”
Kimball gave her a quirky look. “Are we talking about the same guy here?”
Her smile broadened, showing even rows of teeth. “Yes, Kimball. We’re talking about your father.”
He wasn’t so sure. “He just seems so . . . angry all the time.”
“He’s gruff,” she corrected. “He said what he said today because he sees in you the potential and the advantages he never had. And he thinks you’re wasting them. He doesn’t want you to end up like him when you have the gifts to be so much more.”
“Gifts? I don’t have any gifts.”
“But you do, son. You’re big and strong and athletic. You have the gifted tools to go out there and earn a scholarship. I see it in the way you move. Your ability is natural. God knows where you got it from, but it’s there. That’s His gift to you. Now you just have to use it as He intended.”
“By playing football like pop wants? That’s God’s will for me?”
“There are reasons, Kimball. We may not see it, but He certainly does.” Then: “Let me ask you this: What are your plans when you graduate?”
He hesitated for a moment before answering. Then: “I don’t know. I was kind of tossing around the ideas of joining the military. Or maybe work a few years before going back to school. You know---to save a little money.”
“So you’re standing at the crossroads not really sure where life is taking you?”
He nodded. “I guess you could say that, yeah.”
“With no thoughts of your future or ambitions to guide you.”
“Is that a question?”
“It was a statement.”
They sat there silently for a long moment, a mother holding her son’s hand. “Look, son, your father isn’t the most tactful man, but he means well.”
“By calling me Kimmie? I can’t remember the last time he called me by name. It’s always been ‘Boy.’”
“Kimball, your father lives through you. He sees in you what he never saw in himself. Like I said, he uses shame as a tool, not understanding. I believe God has His purpose for you. I really do. What that purpose could possibly be I don’t know. But in time you’ll find out---you’ll find your way. All I ask is that you try to understand why your father comes at you the way he does. It’s his way of getting you on the right track, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, nice way of showing it.”
“Patience.”
“It’s not one of my virtues.”
“I know. You get that from your father, unfortunately.”
Kimball got to his feet. “I think I’m going to bed,” he told her softly. “Got a test tomorrow.”
“All right,” she whispered. Then: “This Sunday, how about if you come to church with me? It might do you good.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Church isn’t for me.”
“You never know, Kimball. It might suit you.”
“I don’t think so,” he repeated. “I know enough to see that I don’t belong.”
Then he was gone.
#
But Kimball didn’t go to bed. Instead, he lay on the mattress tossing a tennis ball in the air with one hand and catching it in the other. But the action of tossing and catching was involuntary since his mind concentrated on the points of conversation with his mother.
His parent
s were polar opposites of each other almost to the extreme: one was caring and loving, the other caustic and brash. Yet their marriage endured over the years, which Kimball considered his mother the tie that bound them. And though he was close to her, he was distant from his father no matter the defenses his mother provided and the excuses to give such a man license to carry on the way he did. His words had been scathing and were meant to hurt, not to help promote someone along in life as his mother had suggested. The only identity his father ever applied to Kimball was the name of ‘Boy.’ And as long as Kimball could remember, his father had never told him that he loved him because such a statement would be vulgar.
After tossing the ball aside, Kimball stared at the posters of Bruce Lee in various action poses. When he lifted himself from the bed and took a stance in the middle of his room, Kimball started to emulate Lee’s postures. He ground his feet to the floor, held his fists tight, positioned his body at the proper angle, then he thrust his fists forward, punch after punch, left-right-left-right, all powerful drives capable of smashing through drywall and perhaps the wall studs that supported them. Then in fluid motion that seemed to have been a practiced move conducted throughout his life, Kimball came around with an extended leg and accidently drove his foot into the wall.
The impact was loud, the wall shook, and Kimball knew they would be the catalyst for what was to come next.
“Booooooooooy!”
He had awakened his father.
Damn!
CHAPTER EIGHT
That Evening
Paula Howard never felt so dirty in her entire life.
She was in love with Travys D’Orazio and had made up her mind to be a little more liberal with her sexual standards, perhaps allowing a cop and a feel. But when Travys became rough and demanding, and then told her to succumb to his needs, she refused. This was not the Travys D’Orazio she fantasized about. This man-child had furious lust in his eyes, those crisscrossing roads of red stitching that made his eyes appear more red than white. He was uncultivated in his actions with a forceful union of two bodies.
He ripped her clothes away. First the blouse, and then the straps of her bra.
She screamed. She cried. She kicked. Only to have her efforts numbed by repeated blows to her face and lips that rendered her nearly unconscious. Then her world was suddenly spinning and surreal as nausea consumed her.
She saw the face above her---not the handsome man she once knew or the hero in her dreams. This creature was vicious and cruel, thrusting himself upon her and taking her savagely. The pain was white-hot and blossoming---a pain that had never been visited upon her before.
She cried.
He lusted.
And when the ordeal was through he removed himself and fell to her side, exhausted.
She curled into a fetal position and faced away from him, crying in shame.
Then came the threats: Don’t say a word. You know what’ll happen if you do. You’ll be labeled the whore that you are. People will find you. Beat you. Kill you. Do you understand?
She nodded.
Then he left, the cold of the room and the chill in the air leaving with him.
And for a long moment she lay there beaten and bruised, her clothes partially torn away. Her parents were gone, out of town, a godsend. But she knew she would never be the same again. Travys D’Orazio had not only taken her physically, but mentally as well. In fact, she was so brutalized she wished she was dead.
So she laid there curled up into herself for hours and sobbed, feeling Travys’ filth all over her. There would never be enough showers to wash away the shame she was feeling at the moment.
Not in a million years.
She was so consumed by the obscenity that she and asked God to take her away.
He didn’t.
CHAPTER NINE
The Following Morning
It was a day that Johnnie Deveraux dreaded but knew was coming. Vinny ‘Cooch’ Cuchinata was so brazen that he often visited people at their place of employment to inquire about funds owed him. When Johnnie was called to conference by Cooch at the loading dock, he had no choice but to oblige himself to something he knew was coming, and probably less than favorable to his welfare.
“Word is, Johnnie, that you may fall short on your payment again this month,” said Cooch. “Is that true?” Cooch was standing on the platform with two of his beef-necks. They were all wearing expensively tailored suits, sunglasses, and long-coats to hide certain pieces of hardware.
Johnnie suddenly felt his scrotum crawl. Was this how it started with Carmen before he disappeared? Is this how it begins?
“Cooch, I’m trying.”
“Trying?” He gave Johnnie a sidelong glance. “You’re five Gs in the hole, Johnnie, which means you owe me at least fifteen hundred by the middle of next week. Are you going to make it or not?”
“Look, Cooch.” As much as Johnnie tried to mask the anxiety in his voice he couldn’t, the slight change in his tone indicative as to how frightened he truly was at the moment. “With the rent and all, it’s hard. I mean, no matter what I pay you every month the interest kills me.”
“Would you rather I kill you instead?”
“Cooch, I’ve paid you more than five grand over the long run. But the interest makes it impossible to get caught up. Can you at least lower your rates to something manageable?”
Cooch laughed at this, as did his acolytes.
Then from Cooch---who pointed an admonishing finger inches from Johnnie’s face---said: “You agreed to the terms. Swore by them, saying they were acceptable. Now that you find yourself in a pinch, you now want to change the rules of the game? Seriously?”
“Cooch, please---”
Johnnie suddenly saw the bright lights of internal stars circling his mind’s eye. When his focus readjusted, he found himself lying on the cold floor of the bay staring at Cooch and his people, who were looking down at him. The punch of Cooch’s fist was so fast he never saw it coming.
“Get up,” Cooch told him evenly.
Johnnie did, feeling pain in his jaw.
Cooch swept an arm around Johnnie’s shoulders like a friend and pulled him close. “I don’t change the rules to suit those who can’t follow them,” he told him smoothly. “Is that clear?”
Johnnie nodded.
“I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care where the money comes from, as long as it hits my hands by next week. Do you have a problem with that?”
Johnnie nodded. No.
Cooch reached up and gave him a couple of gingerly pats to the side of Johnnie’s face. “I didn’t think you would.” Then he feigned a smile. “Next week,” he added. “Fifteen hundred and not one penny less.”
Johnnie nodded, even though fifteen hundred was a fortune to people like him.
When Cooch was gone he noticed that a crowd had gathered. Workers had seen and heard everything that would lead to gossip. Just as he was about to return to his post, the dock foreman called out to him and pointed skyward, indicating that he was wanted by the powers that be on the top level.
After taking the climb to the fifth level, he knocked on the executive’s door and entered the room, which was more of a glassed-in partition that overlooked the lines of the factory.
“Please, Johnnie, have a seat,” the executive said, indicating an empty chair in front of his desk with his hand.
Johnnie did as he felt the painful comings of a bruise starting to crop up along his jawline. “Yes, sir,” he managed.
“You mind telling me what that was all about?” the executive asked. The man was dressed in a white shirt, tie, and well-pressed jeans. What got Johnnie was that he was a kid at least a generation younger than he, who pulled a salary that allowed him to buy a house in the exclusive area of Lynnfield, where neighborhoods were 24-carat.
“What ‘what’ was all about?”
“Your little problem with Vinny Cuchinata.”
Johnnie suddenly felt his heart leap into his throat.
“Just a misunderstanding,” he answered.
“That little misunderstanding seemed to have put you on your ass for the count.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Look, Johnnie, you’re a nice guy. You work hard, you’re always on time, you don’t give me grief about the need for unions---you just do your work and go home. I like that. But Cuchinata is a bad element and he’s been here to see you for the past three months in a row. Are you in trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said.
“After what I saw what happened today, something tells me otherwise.”
“You saw?”
The executive pointed to a wall that had a bank of TV monitors showing all parts of the facility. “I see everything.”
“Like I said, Roger, it won’t happen again.”
“I know it won’t,” said the executive. There was a hint of sadness in his measure. “I turned a blind eye to the other visits. But we can’t have people like Vinny Cuchinata come here at will and do as he pleases, even though he believes he has the right to do so.”
Johnnie appeared stunned. “You’re letting me go?”
“I have no choice, Johnnie. I can’t have people like Cuchinata appearing here every month because you have an obvious problem with him. It’s not good for business.”
“But I need this job. I need the money.”
“I wish I could help you, Johnnie. I really do. But you left me with no choice after what I witnessed a few moments ago.”
“Roger, please. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The executive leaned back into his chair. “Johnnie, how much trouble are you in with this guy?”
Lots! Like Carmen lots! If I don’t have a means to make payments then I’ll disappear too, perhaps sharing the same hole they pitched Carmen into.
“Johnnie?”
