The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

by Charlie Huston

  He put the phone to his ear.

  —Fuck, going straight to voice mail. Bet he's calling me back now.

  He looked at the cowboy.

  —Should I hang up and let him call or keep dialing?

  The cowboy rose from the couch.

  —Put the phone away.

  Talbot put the phone away.

  The cowboy scratched the whiskers on his neck and walked over until his boot heels were inches from my face.

  —She tell you what we want?

  I looked up the length of his denim legs, past the scratched longhorn belt buckle to his leathered face.

  —The can?

  He tucked the gun into the belt at the small of his back.

  —Yeah, that's it.

  He squatted, held up a finger.

  —She tell you what we'd do?

  —Something bad?

  —Yeah. Something pretty bad.

  He looked at Talbot.

  —Go take a look out that window and see what's to be seen.

  Talbot limped to the kitchen window and looked out.

  —Nothing. Just the stairs and part of the parking lot and the street.

  —Keep looking. Been here awful long without no one else coming home.

  He rested a hand on the phone I clobbered Talbot with, and with which Talbot returned the favor.

  —Old phone.

  —Yeah.

  —Must have hurt.

  —A lot.

  —Uh-huh.

  He hefted the phone.

  —Talbot's been spoiling a bit to put a hurt on someone. Since he got himself cut.

  Talbot turned from the window.

  —That wasn't my fault.

  —Just keep your eyes out there.

  Talbot looked back out.

  —Not my fault.

  The cowboy rested the phone on his knee.

  —Was his fault. Fella like your girl's brother, he shouldn't be no trouble for no one. Talbot, he just isn't the kind who can admit he screwed up and let someone get the better of him.

  He stood, took three steps, heels loud on the linoleum, and pounded the phone into Talbot's face as he turned. And pounded it again as he went down. And again when he was on the floor. And again.

  He hunkered next to the bloody rag-dolled man and stuck a gloved finger deep under his jaw alongside his throat. Apparently not liking what he detected, he raised the phone and brought it down once more.

  For luck, I suppose.

  This time, when he checked under Talbot's jaw, he felt the stillness in the man's pulse that he was looking for, and he dropped the phone on Talbot's dead body.

  He stood and looked at me.

  —You took that pretty well. Figured you for the screaming and crying type.

  I shook my head.

  —No, not me, I've seen that kind of thing before.

  He nodded his head, went to the sink, looked in the cupboard underneath, and came out with a plastic garbage bag.

  —Yeah, guess you would have, with your job and all.

  I rested my head on the carpet and watched as he shook out the bag and fitted it over Talbot's crushed head.

  He came over to me.

  —And it looks like that training's going to come in handy for you.

  He grabbed one end of the knot that tied my hands and gave it a tug and it came apart.

  —You best get cleaning.

  He took the rope to the corpse and used it to tie the bag around its neck.

  —And then go get our can, and call.

  He tossed Talbot's cellphone onto the carpet.

  —Just call the last number he called on there.

  He took the corpse under its arms, pushed up with his legs, let it flop over his shoulder and stood.

  —I'll take care of this bit here.

  He walked to the door, easy under the weight of the dead.

  He opened the door.

  —Go get my can. I want them damn almonds. Alright?

  I stared at Talbot's blood in my kitchen.

  The cowboy tapped a heel on the floor.

  —Said alright?

  I looked away from the mess.

  —Yeah. Alright.

  He touched the brim of his hat.

  —Good then. And, oh yeah, I got your boss's van. You can have that back too, when you bring the can. Case you need any other motivation.

  And he went out the door, corpse on his shoulder, apparently prepared for any questions such a thing might raise.

  That or just quick on the draw.

  Almonds.

  As I cleaned yet another crime scene, I thought about almonds.

  Stripped to my underwear, a pair of sneakers, and rubber gloves I took down the white pillowcases I had hung over the kitchen windows to keep the morning sunlight from pouring in when I used to get up early and have my coffee before going off to teach kids how to read and write and add and subtract. And I thought about fucking nuts.

  In all their guises.

  Starting with myself.

  Dropping the pillowcases into the bathtub after rinsing them out and dousing them in about a half gallon of bleach, I considered just how crazy I actually was. Not a question I'd been apt to embrace for the last year, but one that seemed appropriate to the moment.

  I brought my desk lamp and a clip light from Chev's bedroom into the kitchen and plugged them in. The improved lighting gave me a better idea of what I was dealing with. Studying the remains of a man's face spattered about the area where I prepared my meals, or opened my to-go containers anyway, and finding that I didn't really have any emotional reaction to speak of, gave me a better idea of just how out of normal mental alignment I'd gotten.

  I looked down at my nearly naked, blood-scrubbing self.

  —Skewed.

  I pulled a strip of paper towels off the roll I'd gotten from under the sink and started wiping the little card table under the window.

  —Your mentality, Webster Fillmore Goodhue, has become seriously fucking skewed.

  I cleaned, wondering if the fact that it had taken witnessing a man deliberately murdered in front of me to shake this realization loose was a bad thing, or a really really really bad thing. There seeming to be no other options available.

  The table clean, I carried it to the edge of the linoleum kitchen and set it safely across the carpet border of the livingroom. Along that edge, I spotted a rim of dark wet spots on the dirty carpet. I soaked a hand towel in cold water and blotted the spots before they could set. I worked some dish soap into the carpet fibers and left it to be finished later.

  The worst of the mess was puddled below the window. Talbot had, quite fortunately it seemed, looked down after the first blow, sending most of the blood that had poured from his ruptured nose to the floor, rather than hosing the walls with it. Of course the cowboy had swung the phone in an uppercut on the second blow. Not so good. That meant the ceiling had a nice spray pattern on it. But the last three blows were all placed squarely once Talbot was on the floor on his back.

  I looked up.

  —Ceiling first.

  I got the stepladder from the hall closet and started spraying and wiping, moving from side to side as my body crossed the beams of the lights and cast shadows over the blood, trying to see clearly.

  When the worst was done, when I'd scooped the partially congealed blood from the floor and scrubbed the walls and mopped and wiped and wiped some more, and taken four ruined sponges and the shredded remains of two paper towel rolls and three old Ts I'd had to use as rags, and the mop head, and stuffed it all in the cleaning bucket and carried it downstairs and locked it in the trunk of my crapped-out 510 in the driveway, I poured the remains of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide into the empty window-cleaner spray bottle and misted the carpet and floor and walls. The carpet foamed in a couple spots, but it wasn't anything visible to the naked eye, so I let it go. Back up on the ladder, I sprayed the ceiling, searching for any last remains, and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the
dark window.

  All but naked, on a stepladder, cleaning dead man's blood from my kitchen ceiling, I stopped and addressed the young man I saw there.

  —Is it possible, my friend, that your coping mechanisms have been over-compensating for the shit that happened on that bus?

  The young man in the window responded.

  —What shit are you speaking of?

  I continued the dialogue.

  —That shit where a little girl from your class was hit by a stray bullet and died in your arms and you were covered in her blood.

  He shrugged.

  —Oh. That.

  I put my hands on my hips.

  —See, that's what I'm talking about, that nonchalance about the whole thing, and also just kind of being a dick to everyone, that's not the way people react to traumatic situations.

  He was unimpressed.

  —It's not? You know of another reaction? You've experienced another reaction? Man, as far as you know, this is totally normal. This may be the most normal thing you've ever done in your life.

  I jabbed my finger at him.

  —Fuck you! That's fucked up. I'm trying to really talk about this for a change and you're being all.

  —What? I'm being all what?

  I froze, looked at my reflection for a long and deeply disturbing minute.

  I shook my head.

  —Man, I am not even having this conversation with you right now.

  And I climbed off the ladder and laid myself spread eagle on the floor and stared at the flawlessly clean ceiling, and I think I may have cried for the first time in a year, but I'm not entirely sure because a huge mass of sleep loomed and got its arms round my middle and dragged down and I was gone.

  Mumbling as my eye slammed shut.

  —Fucking almonds.

  —I appreciate you cleaning up, you know.

  I opened my eyes and found the daylight the pillowcases were meant to keep at bay was shooting me in the face.

  —But it's not really going to change anything.

  I looked at Chev, sitting on the edge of his lounger, rubbing his eyes.

  I pushed myself up on my elbows.

  —I'm sorry about the money, man.

  He flopped back in the chair and let out all the air in his lungs.

  —See, that's the point right there.

  I shaded my eyes from the sun.

  —I didn't even know he gave it to me, Chev.

  He shook his head.

  —Fuck the money. That is not the point. You missing the point is the point. I get the money thing, I get you going to see him. He's your dad. I understand that more than you do. Jesus, man, I saw him like six months ago.

  I sat up.

  —What?

  —When you didn't stop acting all fucked up after a few months, I went and saw L.L.

  —Chev.

  —I didn't know what to do, you know? Thea was like, He'll heal in time. People I talked to, the grief counselor at the hospital, they all said you needed to confront what had happened, talk about it in a supportive environment. Well, I knew sure as fuck that wasn't gonna happen. I read these books on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they described you pretty smack-on. I mean.

  He laughed.

  —Dude, you could be the poster boy for PTSD.

  He untwisted the sleeve of his black T, where he'd tucked his pack of smokes.

  —But knowing what the situation was, that didn't help me to figure out how to help.

  I was still wearing the cleaning gloves. I pulled them off.

  —I didn't know you were doing all that.

  —I know you didn't. You didn't have a clue.

  He lit his cigarette and blew smoke.

  —Web, it wasn't just me, it was everyone you know. At first, anyway. We were all running around trying to figure out how to get your shit together. The guys from the tattoo shop, teachers from the school, Po Sin, some other parents from over there. But you were so, man, acting like such a dick. People just got tired. They didn't know how to deal and got frustrated. It was tiring, man. Jesus, it is tiring.

  He looked around for an ashtray, couldn't find one, flicked on the carpet.

  —So. I went and saw L.L.

  —Man. I.

  He held up a hand.

  —No. Don't. Now is not the time. I mean. I went over to Chez Jay, took a look at him, man, I started to cry. And. You know, not because I was pissed. It was, man, it was so fucking good to see him, you know.

  He clenched his teeth.

  —And that hurt like a son of a bitch. Let me tell you it did. Talk about feeling guilty. Anyway. He turned around, saw me. Know what he said?

  I nodded.

  —The wrong thing.

  He took a long drag.

  —You got that right. Said, Ah, Chev, come to see me after all these years. What's gone amiss, son, lost the strength of your convictions?

  I closed my eyes, tried to imagine he was mistaken about what my father had said, knew he was not.

  I opened my eyes.

  —Did you hit him?

  Smoke drifted from his nostrils.

  —No. I walked out. Because right there, man, in that moment, I ceased to care anymore.

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees.

  —The man had finally, after the, after the accident, after the shit he told us, he had finally, in that moment when something could have been done, he had finally gone too far. Man, I didn't even know there was road left to travel on that route, but he found it and drove it and that was the end of the line for me. I didn't hit him. I did not want to hit him. I just wanted gone. I walked out.

  —Good.

  He nodded.

  —Yeah. Good. But here's the thing, man, the point.

  He looked at the floor, shook his head, looked back up at me.

  —Like fucking father, Web, like fucking son.

  I opened my mouth.

  He closed it.

  —No. Wait. Listen.

  I listened.

  —He wasn't always like that. He was always a son of a bitch, always talked shit, but he wasn't always mean. That didn't really start till after the accident. He didn't really start forcing everyone out of his life until after the accident.

  He scratched his shoulder.

  —If that rings any bells.

  He got up.

  —So it's not about the money. Or about you seeing L.L. If my dad were still around, no matter if he'd turned out to be the biggest bastard ever, I'd want to check on him every now and then. It's not even about you hurting my new girl's feelings so bad that she doesn't want to come here and I had to go to her place and sneak in and out of her bedroom because her folks would freak out if they knew her new boyfriend was a twenty-nine-year-old rocker with a tattoo parlor.

  He walked to the hallway, stopped.

  —It's about you not trying to get better. It's about everyone else trying so hard that they wear themselves out and can't try anymore, and you just letting them beat themselves against you while you act like nothing fucking happened. Acting like you're no different. Like you haven't changed at all.

  He turned from me.

  —Web, it's about me getting tired, man. It's about, I, man, it's about I feel like I'm on that same road I was on with L.L., about thinking we're almost out of blacktop. And you just keeping the pedal to the metal, and not even trying to put on the brakes.

  He put a hand on top of his head.

  —And I hate that feeling, man.

  He walked into his bedroom.

  —I hate it.

  And he closed the door.

  Me, I sat on the kitchen floor and thought about how it was a good thing I'd cleaned up as well as I did. Because if Chev had known a man was killed in his apartment last night, the shit would really have hit the fan.

  Then I got up, cleaned myself up a little, put on some clothes, got the keys to the Apache from Chev's jacket, and went out to go talk to a man about why the girl I'd fallen for, and, you know,
already thoroughly alienated, had been kidnapped.

  THE WORLD WITHOUT ME

  —Cut you bad, cut you like Rambo cuts a redneck.

  —Yeah, sure, I know. To avoid that, I'll stay over here.

  —Cut you like I cut that other motherfucker.

  I sat on the stripped mattress.

  —Yeah, about him, you may find that it's in your best interest not to brag overmuch about how you cut him.

  Jaime emptied his nip bottle of Malibu and added the empty to the vast array of them heaped at his feet. To judge by the population density around his chair, and by the paths worn through them between the chair and the door and the bathroom, he'd apparently done little since I last saw him other than drink Malibu, void his bladder to make room for more, and stumble to the liquor store on the corner for fresh supplies. He'd most certainly not had the maid in during any of his sojourns out.

  He felt in the plastic bag in his lap, found it lacking, turned it inside out, found it still lacking, and dropped it on the floor.

  —Well how the fuck ’bout that. Ain't that a bitch?

  He pawed in his pockets and found the twenty I'd just given him in order to persuade him to let me into the room.

  —Need to go hit the store. Back in a sec.

  He stood with the great care and instability of the tragically inebriated. I watched him take a step and place his foot squarely on a couple empty bottles that rolled from beneath him, and let gravity take it from there.

  —Ow! Fuck! That hurts.

  I got off the bed and walked over and held out a hand.

  —C'mon.

  He took my hand and I pulled him halfway up and let go and watched Newtonian physics at work again.

  —Ow! Fuck!

  —Sorry. My bad.

  I stuck out my hand. He took it. I pulled and let go.

  With anticipated results.

  —Ow!

  —Whoops.

  I stuck out my hand. He eyed it. And decided, I imagine, that based on a model of the universe drawn from the Hollywood catalogue, no one could be so cruel as to intentionally abuse a poor drunk in such a manner.

  I proved him wrong.

  —Ow!

  I held out my hand.

  He slapped at it. Missed.

  —Fuck you. Fuckin'.

  He got to all fours, crawled to his chair and climbed back aboard, where he knew he'd be safe.