Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Beneath their shirts they wore protective Kevlar vests. It struck me that neither of them wore head or eye protection, or anything to cover their limbs. This was madness and I was sick with the need to know what was going on. I pushed my way between Jim and the fat boy, no one seeming to mind.

  “Hey, Professor Weiler!” Jim slapped my back. He winced in pain. “Glad you could make it. The professor doesn’t have a beer. Somebody get Professor Weiler a beer!” Then he took my right hand and curled my fingers around the butt of the Luger. “You ever hold one of these before?”

  “As a matter of fact, Jim, I have.”

  He smiled that smile again and for an instant it felt like we were the only ones in the room. Then the St. Pauli Girl handed me a Bud.

  “Would you like to try it sometime?” Jim asked, letting the question dangle.

  “How about someone explaining to me what’s going on?” I tried to sound aloof, but it came out flat and unconvincing.

  “Sure, Professor Weiler. You saved my life. Anything for you. Come on.”

  We walked back out through the seam in the mattresses, through the door. I followed Jim through the hangar and up some stairs into a dimly lit locker room. I sat down on a narrow wooden bench that ran between two rows of facing lockers. I noticed the Luger was still in my hand and that I didn’t seem to want to put it down.

  Jim removed his vest and not without difficulty. Even in the low light, I could see the angry bruise on his chest where the bullet must have hit his vest. It wasn’t so much the fresh bruise that caught my eye. No, Jim’s well-muscled body was a testament to old wounds, a map drawn in discolored blotches and scar tissue. All that was missing was a legend to help me understand the scale of the hurt. Some of the scars on his body were pink and waxy. Some were jagged, others symmetrical. Lines of cross-hatched stitches were scattered on his chest and abs, their color fading like half-buried railroad spurs.

  “You’re staring, Professor.”

  I said, “It would be hard not to stare.”

  “The scars on my back are mostly from my daddy. He used to take the belt to me a lot when I was a kid. It was tough being his son, but when I found your books I had a place to go to be safe, a world far away from Brixton.” Jim shrugged. “This one here’s from a bullet,” he said, pointing at a particularly ragged scar halfway between his right hip and navel. “I stitched it up myself. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  “What’s all this about, Jim?”

  “This?” He seemed not to understand.

  “This! Tonight.”

  “It’s what matters,” he said as if that explained it.

  “What matters?”

  “What matters to us,” he said, wincing in pain as he tried to pull a hooded BCCC sweatshirt over his head.

  I put the beer and the Luger down and helped him get the sweatshirt on.

  “C’mon,” he said, grabbing the Luger and tucking it in his pants. “Let’s get back out to the party. We’ll need to talk about this another time. We can meet at Stan’s Diner or something.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Stan’s for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Make it a few days. I’m gonna be pretty sore.” He turned to go and then stopped to face me. “One thing, Professor Weiler … ”

  “What’s that?”

  “We don’t talk about what goes on here, not with anyone, not even with each other, okay?”

  “Like in Fight Club,” I said. “The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.”

  Jim’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, like that. And we don’t use names, at least not while we’re here. ’Course they all know who you are.”

  As we walked back to the bunker, my mind was zooming in another direction. I was still off balance, contemplating Jim’s wounds, remembering my own wounds-self-inflicted or otherwise. Words began forming in my head. I could see my list of seven first lines, could hear them in my own voice, repeating and repeating. There might be a second line in there somewhere, I thought, maybe even a third, maybe a paragraph. The rush of it was even more intense than it had been with the St. Pauli Girl. I swear I was hard. I felt like a writer again. I was Kipster come from the dead. Jim’s wasn’t the only resurrection of the evening.

  Six

  Looking Glass

  My bedroom was heavy with the St. Pauli Girl’s scent and it wasn’t lost on me that my entire universe once smelled this way, of blonds and possibility. Peeking over the edge of my laptop, I studied the St. Pauli Girl’s curves. Her shape, like her scent, was still raw: curing, not cured. She was a demon in bed and it seemed to me she slept as fiercely as she fucked. Her orgasms may not have moved the earth, but they sure as shit moved me. Now fast asleep, Renee was squeezing the feathers out of my pillows and plowing over quilted mountain ranges with a sweep of her bare leg. There was nothing brittle about the blond in my bed tonight. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder about where such ferocity had come from in such a young woman.

  Funny thing about her was that she wasn’t quite so spectacular to look at without her clothes on. Don’t misunderstand, she was by far the hottest woman I’d been with since Amy. Amy was lush and moody and seductive. She had those gold-flecked green eyes that were just unfair, but Amy wasn’t head-turning. I think that’s what turned my head. When I was at the height of my fame and this week’s batch of blonds was taking numbers like at the supermarket deli counter, Amy couldn’t be bothered. The first time we met at Puffy’s in Tribeca, her clothes and hands were speckled and splattered with paint, and she was about as impressed by me as by a moth. Maybe less so. When Amy’s clothes came off, her imperfections blended into a kind of fleshy magic. Renee’s looks were nearly perfect and therefore less interesting. It was a puzzlement, a paradox. The exploration of paradox was why I thought I’d become a writer.

  Once I lost my gift, I realized writing wasn’t about paradox at all, but about words. I had been in love with words my whole life and I didn’t think I could love anything more. When I got famous, I didn’t think there was anything I could love more than fame. Then I met Amy and I didn’t think I could love anything more than Amy. Cocaine proved me wrong and proved easier to love than words or fame or Amy.

  When I was certain the St. Pauli Girl had settled down into a still sleep, I started typing:

  From the moment McGuinn stepped off the bus and into the belly of a depot that was straight out of the B movies his aul wan favored, he knew he was well through the looking glass. Not even a man as accomplished at murder as himself could foresee the dangers awaiting him in this faceless, generic town on the fringes of the map of the States. He’d been to America before, many times, when he’d have to disappear for a while to let things settle down back home. But those other trips had been spent in Boston or New York, and in the bosom of the Republican underground. Here in this nowhere, he was wholly on his own, exposed without a coat against the chill, and felt as if everyone he passed walking from the bus depot was staring at him with accusation in their eyes.

  While peace in the North was not quite at hand, it was on the horizon and McGuinn knew it. Someday soon, there would be handshakes and smiles between ancient enemies, promises of disarmament, and amnesty. Good news for everyone but the likes of himself, for there were sins not destined for forgiving and secrets never intended for telling. That was why he was in this godforsaken shite hole, because his own people would be as anxious to kill him as the Brits, maybe more so. Still, he hadn’t fully come to terms with it until he’d had a sit-down with Old Jack Byrnes.

  “So, you’ll be bobbling off then, Terry McGuinn.”

  “Can I not now enjoy the fruits of me labors, Old Jack?”

  “If history’s taught us any lesson, boyo, it’s that the need for revolutionaries ends with the revolution.”

  “Revolutionary! Is that what I am?”

  “Were, lad, were. Yer tense is thoroughly past.”

  “Haven’t I a say in me own life?”

  “It hasn’t been yer own li
fe from the moment ya took another man’s in the name of the cause.”

  “Where did I sign on fer that, Jack?”

  “Terry, after all these years, have ya no more sense than a can a piss? The peace will come and the hoors will sing songs of brotherhood and understanding, but the Brits and Prods would sooner sip shite-flavored tea than forgive ya fer what ya’ve done.”

  “It’s not the Brits and Prods that worry me.”

  “Ya speak the truth, lad. ‘Tis our own boyos you’ve most to fear.” Old Jack pointed from his own eyes to Terry’s and back again. “Ya’ve seen too much. Ya know too many things about the men behind the men who’ll share power in this land. Yer a potential embarrassment that can’t be afforded.”

  “Surely, Jack, I’m owed.”

  “Owed! Owed what and by whom? Yer a killer, son, one who’s outlived his brief, if ya take my meaning. Listen to me, Terrence; many are the casualties of war that will come after the peace. So be gone. When I go, look under the table.”

  “What’s there to see?”

  “A short reprieve from your date at the knacker’s yard. Now, give us a kiss, lad. We won’t be seeing each other again in this world.”

  McGuinn held tightly to the man who had been a father and mentor to him, but who had also brought the curse down on him. With the embrace finally broken, he watched Old Jack limp off, disappearing into a veil of bodies and smoke. McGuinn looked under the table and found an envelope thick with American money. He tucked the envelope away and headed out the back of the boozer into the alley. He didn’t return to his flat that night and hadn’t looked back until now …

  According to the man I met at St. Nicholas’ churchyard in the Deptford section of London that night all those years ago, he had good reason to see accusation in the eyes of passersby. He told me that he had started killing before the age of fourteen and that he had been killing ever since.

  “That first one was easy,” he said, in his peculiar monotone, “a man twice me age with a fierce reputation for mayhem of his own. A few of the lads diverted his attention with a brawl and I stepped right close beside him and put two through his liver.”

  I said, “You don’t look like much of a killer.”

  “Really? What the fook do ya suppose a killer looks like?”

  “Not like you.”

  “Well, then, Weiler, have a good look in the mirror and behold.” He laughed a cool, distant laugh. “Come now; stroll with me.”

  McGuinn did very little talking about himself as we walked. He seemed far more interested in me and, narcissist that I was, I was only too happy to oblige him.

  “Ya are a bit of a bastard, Weiler, aren’t ya?” It was a rhetorical question.

  “More than a bit, but what’s that got to do with the story you’ve got to tell?”

  “Everything.”

  He reached his right arm around his back under his jacket and I froze. If he had taken any longer, I would have pissed myself.

  “Take this,” he said, handing me a tattered spiral notebook. “Make something more of it than what’s there.”

  “And what is there?”

  “Me life, Weiler. Don’t cock it up.”

  In the music business there’s an affectionate little niche for one-hit wonders; but, paradoxically, have two or three hits and you’re forgotten. It’s akin to being the second person to swim the English Channel or fly across the Atlantic. You are trivia. Maybe less. Kip had a gift none of us could touch, but he pissed it away. I cannot sometimes help but think he might have achieved literary immortality had he pulled a Harper Lee.

  — BART STANTON MEYERS, GQ

  Seven

  Guns, Metaphysics, and the Art of Golf

  Logging and mining towns are rough and tumble places. Brixton was no exception. It was the kind of place where even the emo kids had grown up hunting and field dressing deer. None of the locals wasted time mourning Frank Vuchovich. They crossed themselves and moved on. Brixtonians were stoic and not given to hand wringing or calling Child Protective Services. The parish priest was their first responder of choice. So, yeah, I fit right in here, like a foot in a glove.

  I didn’t exactly have my choice of jobs when I moved to Brixton. The only reason I got this dream job was because I once charity-fucked Ellen Gershowitz, a new girl in the publicity department at Ferris, Ledoux. The head of PR had arranged for five journalists to have lunch with me at The Quilted Giraffe-an aptly pretentious venue for the decade of wretched pretension. The luncheon was a big deal at the time because I had stopped giving interviews. The moratorium was a total bullshit publicity stunt in order to create some hype for Flashing Pandora. Unfortunately, no one had cued in Ellen G, who had arranged for me to give an interview to her alma mater’s newspaper that morning.

  Needless to say, Miss Gershowitz received the reaming of her life and was forced to apologize to me in person prior to the luncheon. That she had to throw herself on my mercy was indicative of just how low on the totem pole poor Miss Gershowitz was. Readers have some peculiar notions about the status of writers, the most foolish of which is that writers are treated like royalty by their publishers. Yeah, right! By the time Clown Car Bounce was published, I couldn’t get the PR department to return my calls. When I complained to the head of publicity that they misspelled my last name in the press release for Curley Takes Five, the editor in chief at Ferris called me up and told me to concern myself less with other people’s spelling and to concentrate more vigorously on my own vanquished skills. I was royalty, all right: King Shit.

  Ellen Gershowitz was pleasant enough on the eyes when she wasn’t crying and apologizing. God, she was so miserable that day I think I would have slept with her even if she’d been a beast. Women aren’t the only suckers for wounded lovers and I was particularly vulnerable to tits and tears. I was never quite sure if she was more grateful for the mercy fuck or for the interview I gave her college newspaper the following day. I was too vain to ask. Regardless, a few more months of abuse at Ferris, Ledoux cured Ellen Gershowitz of publishing and drove her straight back to graduate school and a life in academia.

  It’s not like my academic travails were closely guarded secrets. On the contrary, my deconstruction had been quite a public affair. The issue was that the newsworthiness of my plummet from grace had diminished in direct proportion to my sales. No one cared. I wasn’t old news. I was no news. I was forgotten. Better to be dead than forgotten. Just ask my father. That I’d suffered through seven years in Brixton without throwing myself into an industrial meat grinder was testament to my narcissism. People often mistook my egregious lack of pride for poor self-esteem. That wasn’t it at all. At the bitter end of our marriage, Amy used to say I was born with an ego in place of a heart. I didn’t disagree. Generally, writers are the most appalling narcissists.

  When Ellen Gershowitz contacted me after hearing about my being run out of yet another job, I was amazed anyone had taken notice. I doubted colleges could get any more obscure than the schools I’d been thrown out of. My mistake was projecting my utter lack of pride onto those schools. When you’re fourth-rung material, even third-rung schools look down their noses at you. Ellen, who had passed through Brixton as an adjunct and was a friend of the chairman of the English department, got me the job. Only very recently have I stopped regretting that long-ago mercy fuck and forgiven her.

  While Brixton was not a college town, per se, the area in the immediate proximity of the campus was a bit softer at the edges than the rest of the place. Although I thought BCCC a beshitten little pimple, kids came to school here from all around the state. I still wasn’t quite sure why, but I knew it wasn’t for the English department. After the Nadirs left and since our current chairman was a Cajun, I was the only member of the English department faculty on cordial terms with the mother tongue. Stan’s Diner was kind of the crossroads-the one place where the two area populations met.

  When I walked in, Jim Trimble was seated in a booth at the back of the diner reading a
yellowed, dog-eared copy of Beatnik Souffle.

  “That stuff’ll rot your brain,” I said, sliding in across from him. “A lot more dangerous than guns.”

  “Hey, Professor Weiler.” He put the book down and shook my hand. “I’ve read it so many times I can recite whole passages. Listen … ”

  With that, Jim handed me the book, pointed to his place so I could follow, and recited, verbatim, an entire page. I don’t mean just any page. It was a page where the protagonist, Moses Gold, recites a long, complex poem. Man, I’d forgotten most of it and here was this kid reciting it from memory. Very scary stuff. It reminded me of the crazy kid in the movie Diner who only spoke in dialogue from the movie Sweet Smell of Success. I couldn’t help but wonder how deep his obsession with the Kipster went.

  I bowed with false humility. Was there any other kind? At least now I understood the faint echoes of my old style in Jim’s assignments. Imitating voice is what nascent writers do. Imitating mine was a death wish.

  “I’ve read everything you’ve ever written.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’ve read everything I’ve published, not written. If you’d read everything I’d ever written, you’d still be throwing up.”

  He smiled that disconcerting smile of his. “I don’t care what you say. You’re a great writer.” There was a level of admiration in Jim’s voice that bordered on fanboy gushing. I’d once been quite used to the sound of it, once liked it, once expected it. Now it made me feel like a fraud.

  “I was pretty good thirty years ago.”

  “And just so you understand, Professor, it’s not the guns that are dangerous, it’s not the bullets. It’s the man holding the gun.” There was a subtle, but immodest bend at the corners of his mouth.