The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

by Charlie Huston

  Chev doesn't see it that way. Which makes sense. You take someone who doesn't have something themselves, they're always gonna put more value on it than the person who does have it. So, sure, I love my mom. But Chev may love her a little more than me. Which is maybe not as fucked up as it sounds like at first.

  —Hey Mom.

  —Who is it?

  —It's me, Mom.

  —Web? Is that you?

  —It's me, Mom.

  —Cool. That's cool.

  There was a pause. A long one. This might mean she was:

  A) Waiting for me to tell her why I was calling.

  or

  B) So stoned she had forgotten I was on the line.

  —So, Mom.

  —Who is this?

  Which was pretty much a dead giveaway that the answer was B.

  —It's Web, Mom.

  —Heeey Web. How you doing, baby?

  —I'm cool, Mom, how about you?

  —Alright, alright. The blackberries are ripening nicely.

  —That's cool.

  —Yeah. I could send you a couple quarts. Or some pies. Should I send you some pies?

  Every time I talk to Theodora Goodhue of Wild Blackberry Pie Farms, she offers to send me some of her world-famous, all organic, bush-ripened blackberries. Or some of her equally famous pies. Then she hangs up the phone and, her short-term memory impeded as it is by the intake of her far more famous Wild Blackberry Cannabis Sativa, she promptly forgets.

  —No, that's cool. I still have some of the last batch you sent.

  —The crop's gonna be something special this year.

  I never have any illusions about which crop she's talking about. Mom may have dropped out and headed to Oregon to pursue her dream, one in a long line of dreams, to start an organic berry farm, but it was only when she started cultivating some of her land with seedlings supplied by a friend from upper Humboldt County that her operation showed a profit and became self-sufficient. Not that she cares about the profit part of the equation.

  —I'm sure it is. Hey you know, I got to roll here soon, but I wanted to ask you something.

  —You go on. We can talk later.

  —Sure, but I wanted to ask something first.

  —Sure, baby, sure.

  —Chev got in a little fender bender and he's, you know, embarrassed to ask, but I knew you'd want to help if you could, so I wanted to ask if you could help him out with the repairs. And stuff.

  I sat at the kitchen table, playing with the phone cord, looking at the bills stuck to the fridge with magnets, my share of each bill circled heavily in red. A thick sheaf of IOUs clipped to a magnet all their own. My signature at the bottom of each.

  Mom inhaled deeply, exhaled long and slow. A cloud of smoke no doubt drifting to the ceiling.

  —What about Chev, baby, is he OK?

  —Yeah, he's fine. But his truck, you know.

  —Yes. I know. I know, Webster.

  Webster. The name my dad picked. As opposed to the name she wanted. Fillmore. Not for the president, mind you, for the rock venue where they met. Webster, the name she hates to use now. Because it's a reminder that they ever met anyplace at all.

  Crap.

  —If you could help it would really … help.

  —Webster.

  —Yeah, Mom.

  —Do you need money?

  —Well, yeah, I can always use. But that's not why, I mean, Chev is the one. I mean.

  —Webster Fillmore Goodhue.

  Oh, double crap.

  —Yes?

  —Do you need money?

  Stoned as a sixty-year-old Deadhead, berry growing, commune founding, transcendentalist yogi pot cultivator can get, Mom still sees right through me. Part of the science of being a mom.

  Again, crap.

  —Yeah. I do.

  —Well. I wish you would just ask.

  —Yeah.

  —Well?

  More crap.

  —Mom. Can you send me some money?

  —Of course I can.

  —Thanks, Mom.

  —Web, Web, I wish you'd call me Thea.

  —It's weird. I don't like it.

  —Chev does.

  —Chev's not your son.

  —Not biologically.

  I looked at the photographs stuck on the fridge next to the bills. Looked at the one of me and Chev up in Oregon with Mom three years ago. Me on one side, Chev on the other, Mom, almost as big as Po Sin, between us. A joint between her lips. Three years ago. The last time I'd seen her.

  —I just don't like calling you Thea, Mom. That's not gonna change. I'm almost thirty and it's not gonna change. OK?

  —Of course it's OK. I just wish you would.

  —I know. So. OK. I'm gonna go. I gotta go … do something.

  —Web.

  My turn to pause.

  —Yeah.

  —I could send you a ticket. A plane ticket, I mean. You could come up. For the harvest. Spend some time. Get a break from that place. Breathe some different air. Be away from all the unbalanced energy still floating around you.

  —I don't need a break.

  —But if you're not working anyway, you should think about shifting your position over the center point. You know, the earth, she knows where you are, and you can change her attitude toward you just by changing your physical location on her skin.

  —Yeah. Sure, Mom, I know that, but the thing is, I am working. I'm working for a guy me and Chev know. Just that the job's just starting so I need some extra cash.

  —You can have whatever you want, baby. You know that.

  Sometimes it's hard to know if she means that literally. Like as a philosophy or something. The kind of thing she would tell me when she tucked me in at night when we lived in the house in Laurel Canyon, before she took off. You can have anything, Web, anything you want. You just have to want it, wish for it, dream it, and it will happen. That's how I got you. I wished for you and there you were. A story that ignored the fact that she got pregnant with me one night when she was so fucked up she forgot to put in her diaphragm. At least that's what my dad told me.

  —I know.

  —I'll put some money in the mail. And those berries. And a couple pies.

  —Great, Mom. That's great.

  —I love you, Web.

  —Love you, Mom.

  Another long pause.

  —Love you, Mom.

  And the sound of the phone hanging up.

  She never forgets the money. Not sure why that is. Some part of the mothering instinct that won't let her fully relax until the cub is cared for. Or something. I mean, it may be a month before it shows up, and there's no telling what she'll send (could be whatever is in her purse when she drives past the post office on a trip into town, or it could be a rubber-banded roll of twenties in a FedEx envelope, no note, just the cash), but she'll send it.

  But no berries or pie. Which will bum Chev out more than it will me. That's him missing things he didn't have.

  I put the phone back in the cradle. It's a big yellow Bakelite phone with big old push buttons. I'd found it in a pile of garbage someone left at the curb when they moved out of the building, and took it inside and tinkered with it till it worked. The timing had been excellent because the night before Chev had come home with a girl he'd been seeing and after they screwed he had broken up with her and she'd thrown our cordless at him and it'd broke. She wasn't so much pissed at being dumped as that he'd waited till he got off, but before she did, to do it. Anyway, the way we go through phones, a heavy-duty model is the best bet. As long as it doesn't get thrown at anyone.

  I looked in the fridge and the cupboards, but there wasn't really anything to eat. Just half a box of oatmeal, some brown iceberg, a big can of coffee beans, a bunch of takeout condiment packets of catsup and mayo and soy sauce and duck sauce, a frosted bag of Green Giant peas, and some crusty brown rice left over from a Genghis Cohen doggy bag.

  I thought about putting the rice in the mi
crowave and mixing it with the duck sauce, but did the dishes instead. Then I emptied the wet grounds from the coffeemaker, ground some fresh beans and put them in the hopper and filled the reservoir with water. The linoleum in the kitchen was gritty so I sprayed window cleaner on it and gave it a mop. Then I got the vacuum from the hall closet and ran it over the brown wall-to-wall semi-shag.

  I really do take care of the cleaning and the cooking.

  Then I sat in the canvas director's chair in the living room and cycled through the 157 TV channels a few dozen times without watching anything for more than two or three minutes at a time. Then it was close to six. The sky was still bright and the air hadn't started to cool yet and I'd gotten a little sweaty cleaning, so I unbuttoned my shirt and walked around the apartment. I rearranged some books on the shelves that covered two of the livingroom walls. Chev had borrowed a couple of my biographies, Houdini and Groucho, and put them on his shelf, and put some of his volumes of ReSearch on mine. I put them where they belonged. Then I stood there and flipped a few pages of one of his back issues of Gearhead and looked at the clock, but it was just a few minutes after six now. I put the magazine back and went in the bathroom and stared at the tub and thought about cleaning it. It was gonna be a biiig job and I didn't feel like it. But I thought about it for awhile.

  I looked at the clock again. Just a few more minutes had passed.

  It would be getting busy at the shop soon. I could walk over and give Chev a hand shooing out the kids and keeping the drunks in line. I could go down to my parking space in the driveway and uncover the 510 I bought last summer and take the boxes of parts out of the backseat and the trunk and start working on it. I could turn on my computer and play a game.

  I looked at the clock and it was just about six thirty.

  So I brushed my teeth and got undressed and lay down on the futon mattress on the floor of my room and read the rest of my Fangoria and then it was seven and I turned out the light. The homeless couple living in the alley behind our building were drunk and screaming at each other, so I listened to them for a little, and then I fell asleep and I slept for eleven hours straight.

  Which was several hours less than I'd slept in months.

  CODE ENFORCEMENT

  I forgot to set my alarm clock. Which was OK because Chev didn't forget to set his and snuck into my room and put it on my pillow when he came home from the shop.

  After I spent a minute banging it against the floor to get it to stop buzzing, I swore revenge and crawled back under my covers. Then the phone started ringing. Very loud and just outside my bedroom door. It rang. And it kept ringing. And it kept ringing. And I got up and opened the door and picked it up.

  —What? What the fuck?

  —Is this Web?

  —Yeah, what the fuck?

  —Yeah, my name is Curtis.

  —What do you want, Curtis?

  —Nothing. I was in White Lightning last night and I got this boss Tasmanian devil on my shoulder and the guy, Chev, he said he'd knock twenty bucks off the price if I got up at six and called you and made sure you were up. So?

  —What?

  —You up?

  I hung up the phone and threw it across the hall and it put a dent in Chev's door and I heard laughing behind it.

  —Fuck you, Chev. Fuck you!

  But I was up so I turned on the coffeemaker and got in the shower.

  The Cutlass Cruiser station wagon idled at the curb, all gloss black paint, buffed chrome and dark tinted windows. One of the windows slid down and a driver just a shade lighter than his car looked out from behind mirrored sunglasses.

  —Web?

  I pulled my hoodie tighter around my body, the morning air still carrying a chill.

  —Yeah.

  The driver tilted his head at the passenger seat.

  —Let's get rollin'.

  His window zipped up and I walked around the car. He pushed the door open and took a black suit coat from the passenger seat so I could sit. I climbed in, glancing at the rear of the cruiser where the back seats had been removed to make room for a gurney. And stashed just behind the front seats, a tightly packed bedroll and three milk crates filled with various pieces of camp gear tucked neatly on the floorboards. Coleman stove and lantern, hand generator emergency band radio, tent bag, ground tarp, a coffee can of rattling iron stakes, four small red fuel bottles, shrink-wrapped bundle of flares, boxes of waterproof matches, a hatchet with a well-worn leather handle, binoculars, a large plastic canteen, an Army surplus mess kit in a nylon pouch, a black cast-iron skillet with a heat-warped bottom. And more.

  I pulled the door closed.

  —Going on a trip this weekend?

  He dug a finger behind one lens of his glasses and rubbed an eye.

  —Do me a favor and buckle up, OK?

  I pulled the seatbelt over my shoulder and lap and clipped the silver tongue into the buckle.

  He stuck out his hand.

  —Gabe.

  I took his hand, calluses on his palm scratching my skin.

  —Web.

  He loosened his black tie and undid the top button of his white short sleeve shirt.

  —Some coffee there if you want it.

  I took the large white cardboard cup from the holder clipped to the dash.

  —Thanks.

  He put the car in drive and pulled from the curb.

  —No problem. Didn't know how you liked it. Some creamers in the glove box.

  I opened the glove box and found a couple creamers bouncing around on top of registration papers weighted down by a huge ring of at least a hundred keys, and a thick flipper of leather with a little plastic handle jutting from it. I closed the box and peeled back the top of my creamer and poured it in my cup.

  Gabe pointed at the paper bag in the middle of the front seat.

  —Garbage in there.

  I dropped the empty creamer in the bag.

  He drove us a couple blocks up Mansfield, past several two-story apartment buildings stacked like stucco cakeboxes in pink, aqua, terracotta, yellow and mint. Across Fountain the street gentrified slightly into a sprinkle of trendified craftsmans and renovated 1930s Spanish revival apartment blocks that were going to be squeezing out the drifters at the BHS Hollywood Recovery Center in due course. He stopped at the corner next to the Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse, and I watched some skater kids across the street working the steps of the Liberal & Household Arts Building at Hollywood High. He found a hole in the commute traffic and turned right, the Hollywood Hills rising just north of us, early summer smog settled on their tops. We started and stopped our way down past a few motels and strip clubs and stopped for the light at Highland.

  A school bus crossed the intersection.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, when I opened them it was gone. I looked down the street, knowing it must have just turned the corner, but unable to keep myself from thinking other thoughts. Thinking about the Flying Dutchman. Ghost ships. Haunted freighters, lost souls that manifest and dissolve, unbidden. Just the usual.

  The light changed and I sipped my coffee.

  —So where we headed?

  Gabe glanced at his right blind spot and changed lanes.

  —Koreatown. Code enforcement. Second day. Guy had stuff piled floor to ceiling. No egress. Blocked himself out of his own bathroom. Been filling gallon milk jugs with piss. Shitting in little individual ziplock bags.

  —Ah, man, Po Sin said it wasn't a real shit job!

  He looked at me, my face reflected in the mirrored lenses below the deep, horizontally scored forehead and cropped graying hair.

  He looked back at Sunset.

  —He lied.

  Po Sin was waiting when we got there, studying several large red splotches of paint on the back and sides of his Clean Team van.

  He watched us get out of Gabe's wheels and pointed at the van.

  —Motherfucker.

  Gabe walked over, pulling the tie from his neck and folding it into a neat roll that
he tucked in his pocket. He touched the paint with the tip of his finger, leaving a slight imprint.

  —Couple hours after midnight. Maybe three or four AM.

  Po Sin kicked one of the van's tires.

  —Motherfucker.

  I took a look. The paint covered the name of the company on both sides of the van and dripped down over the phone number and web address.

  —That sucks.

  Po Sin turned his face to the sky.

  —Motherfucker!

  Gabe picked a scrap of yellow rubber that was stuck in the paint.

  —Water balloon.

  —Motherfucking water balloon!

  —Where was it parked?

  Po Sin pointed north.

  —At the shop. Around back. They didn't just drive by and heave one out the window, they parked, got out, walked around, and pelted it. Only reason they didn't get the windshield was because I had it nosed in against the fence back there.

  —No one at the shop?

  Po Sin walked to the back of the van, taking a set of keys from his pocket.

  —Someone was supposed to be at the shop. Someone was sure as hell supposed to be at the motherfucking shop!

  He pointed a finger at the sky.

  —They're asking for it. There is no denying they are asking for it! And they are going to fucking get it!

  Gabe hooked a thumb in a belt loop of his black slacks.

  —How you want to go about it?

  Po Sin looked down from the sky.

  —Eye for an eye.

  Gabe took the sunglasses from his face. Crease-cornered eyes, the faded black outline of a tear tattooed beneath the left. He nodded.

  —OK, I'll make some calls.

  Po Sin looked again at the van.

  —Motherfucker.

  He unlocked the van and opened the rear doors.

  —Let's get to work.

  He pulled out three white packets and handed one to me and one to Gabe. I watched them shake theirs out until they unfolded into paper jumpsuits. Po Sin's the size of a mainsail, Gabe's meant for a normal human. I did the same and stepped into mine and watched how they tied the flaps on theirs. I was tying mine closed when I heard a long loud rip and watched Po Sin pull a huge roll of duct tape around and around his ankle, sealing the leg of the Tyvek suit to the top of the plastic shoe cover he'd slipped over his boot. He did the same with his other ankle. And then both wrists. And then the neck. He passed the tape to Gabe who did likewise.