Five Suns Saga I

by Jim Heskett

  “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  “What does it matter?”

  Coyle took a long pull from the bottle then waved a hand to invite Brenner to continue.

  “When she came home, she had blood coming down her legs. Just dribbling all over the carpet. That’s when she told me she was going to jump. At first, I tried to convince her it was crazy, you know, but after a minute, I stopped and… let her go. What’s worth sticking around for, you know what I mean?”

  “If it doesn’t matter, why didn’t you follow her down?”

  Brenner stared at the television for a few seconds before answering. “I have no idea. Maybe I want to see it, you know? See that thing coming toward us; see the sky go black and feel the heat and let it wash over me.”

  “Whatever gets you through,” Coyle said.

  The television changed to a split-screen, with the lady reporter on the left talking to a “man on the street” on the right. The man was standing in front of a group of rioters. The scrawl along the bottom read:

  National Guard clashes with protestors in Cupertino.

  As the two of them spoke, a kid wielding a baseball bat crept up behind the street reporter. He wound up like a major-leaguer and swung at the poor bastard’s head, which sent a splat of blood at the camera lens. The kid swung the bat again at the camera, and the feed turned blue. The split screen changed back to a singular view and the lady kept on blabbing as if nothing had happened.

  “What are you still doing here?” said Brenner.

  “I’m not here. I had one last claim to this place, and that ended this morning when I wasn’t able to stop the men who killed my son. I’m going to finish getting drunk, and if I don’t get stabbed to death on the way home, I’m going to say a prayer, take my shotgun, stick it in my mouth, and pull the trigger.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “What’s that?” Coyle said.

  “Your shotgun. When you’re done with it, I mean.”

  Coyle thought about it. “Sure, I don’t see why not. I’ll leave my front door unlocked.”

  “At least you were there with your son, you know? Our daughter ran off last year.”

  Coyle pictured his son’s face, his eyes lolling back in his head as the death rattle escaped his lips. Drained the rest of the whiskey. He toyed with the idea of telling Brenner that his daughter was probably fine somewhere, but that would be a lie. He said nothing.

  Brenner squinted at the television, then laid a filthy hand on top of Coyle’s hand and squeezed. Coyle nearly jumped in his seat, since he never thought he’d touch another human being again. Brenner’s eyes became transfixed on the television.

  The words BREAKING NEWS flashed across the screen, lighting up the dim room. A few of the patrons stood up from the back tables and walked toward the TV set. The scrawl across the bottom read:

  Meteor hoax exposed. Swiss scientists to hold a press conference 10 PM PST.

  Brenner’s mouth dropped open. Coyle sat in silence for a moment, then looked around for the remote control. Unable to find it, he opted to shut off the TV with a heave of his bottle.

  “Oh my God, do you know what this means?” Brenner said.

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Coyle said. “I’m leaving. Do you want that shotgun, or not?”

  PART II

  SEDITION

  Take St. Jude

  (AFTER THE FALL)

  Between sips of beer, Cassie leaned and blew across her toes to dry them faster. The foam toenail separators spread her digits into space, alone and isolated, so no single toe would interfere with the ventilation process of the other nine. Maybe five more minutes until dry.

  The Virgin Mary candles burned brightly atop the non-functioning television. The building’s generator had finally died last week, and she missed electricity a little less each day. Waking with the sunrise and retiring at sunset had become a new kind of normal.

  With no power and therefore no air conditioning, she thanked God for the mild spring day. The air swooshing in the living room window then out the kitchen window created sporadic hints of sound and motion in the room. The battery in the radio had fizzled an hour before.

  She walked to the kitchen–on her heels to protect the toes–and fished in the lukewarm water in the cooler for a fresh beer. The thin rays of sunlight coming through the window illuminated the Last Supper dinner plate in the windowsill. She lifted it from its cradle and strode into the living room to roll a joint, but tripped on a misplaced shoe, losing both her beer and plate.

  A broad red streak of Bahama Mama trailed her foot on the carpet.

  She pulled her knees to her chest and gazed up at Mary dancing atop the dead television. Mary did not approve. Collecting herself, Cassie pushed the black glasses up her nose into position, regained the plate and the remainder of her beer. Plate on knees, beer on armrest of the couch. She opened her meager baggie of weed and dumped the contents on Jesus' head in the middle of the plate. Thoughts about her parents came to her as she sifted through the weed, wondering if they were still in Atlanta, or if they’d moved on to the camp in Virginia. No way to know.

  Today was Easter Sunday. In the old life, she would have flown to Atlanta to spend it with them. Getting all dolled up, hiding Easter eggs for the little ones, having drinks on the porch after church.

  So many elegant dresses in the closet, whose only purpose now was to fill boxes each time she moved from one squatter apartment to the next. Why did she even bother? Dresses no longer mattered. No one wanted to barter for formal wear, and since she lost her shopping cart after moving into this place, didn’t seem likely she’d be able to take them with her when she left.

  Cassie licked the joint closed and slid it between her lips, but a tear along one side made the thing unsmokeable. The ruined joint slipped from her lips to the plate, and she set it aside.

  In her cigarette pack, a lone smoke waited for her. She weighed the ramifications of having one cigarette against the trek to the market for more, and lit it up anyway.

  Janis Joplin smiled at her from the poster print on the wall. The previous owners had good taste, apparently. As Cassie smiled back, for one brief moment as she exhaled smoke into the tranquility of her cramped apartment, she was at peace.

  But it wouldn’t last. She needed more cigarettes, and started to rummage around for things to trade. The joint was the most valuable item in her possession, but she also would have no more weed after it was gone. Maybe tear it in half, and she could trade it for ten cigarettes? Enough to get her through to the end of the week.

  A trip to market was not a thing to be taken lightly. Bad things happened on the streets at night, in the alleys and dark corners. Sometimes, even during the day.

  She finished her beer, slipped on shoes and socks, then exchanged her tight t-shirt for a baggy one and tucked her hair underneath a Yankees cap. Pausing in front of the mirror, she considered taking the St. Jude candle with her. It was five inches tall, a few inches around, and heavy. Could be used for bartering, or as a weapon. Neither option seemed palatable.

  As she approached her front door, a thin line of burgundy liquid oozed under the bottom and into her carpet. What the carpet didn’t drink slowly expanded into a semicircle toward her. She bent and sniffed, and it smelled like iron.

  Blood. Had to be blood.

  She hesitated for a second with her hand on the doorknob. Then she pulled, discovering a sprawled heap of flesh in the corridor. A man on his back, eyes shut and arms at his sides. A pool of blood circled the dead man, blooming out from slits in each wrist.

  The man was Thomas, her next door neighbor these last few weeks. She’d known him. They’d shared meals together, once even had awkward and vacant sex after sharing a bottle of wine he’d had to barter his old medical school textbooks to acquire.

  A piece of paper stuck out from his shirt, held there with a safety pin. Written on it was a single, capital C. Given that he was dead outside her front door, she assumed it was
for her. She closed her eyes and fumbled with the safety pin to pull it away from the body, and she now smelled the blood and meat and shit-stink. Not the first dead body she’d seen, not even the first this year. But it had been a long time since she’d seen the body of someone she could put a name to.

  After unfolding the paper, she read:

  I couldn’t take the chance of doing this in my apartment, and no one finding me. Please go inside, and on my bed is a book. Please take it to my mother. She usually stays at the park, but you can find her most days at market. She knits, so you’ll find her with the other fabric sellers. Please do this for me.

  No apologies, no goodbyes, no explanation of why he had done this. Although it wasn’t too hard to imagine why, since she also had considered it many nights. Life had become as meaningless as the locks on the doors in a world where more people owned crowbars than dish towels.

  She stepped over his body, careful to avoid the creeping pond of blood. His door was unlocked and so she pushed inside. Bedsheets covered the windows, tacked to the corners, blotting out the light. She walked into the living room, stepping over empty cans of food and jars of yellow liquid that was probably pee. A safe guess.

  In the bedroom, as he’d said, a book rested on the bed, which was made neatly, sheets tucked and pillows arranged under the headboard. The only thing in the apartment not dirty or disheveled. He probably hadn’t been sleeping in it.

  She picked up the book, but it wasn’t a book. It was a photo album, the size of a small notebook, bound in leather. Why had he called it a book? Flipping through the pages, her former-med-student neighbor appeared at various ages, with various people who were likely family. As a pimply-faced teen, playing cards with some kids his own age. High School graduation. In front of a Christmas tree, wearing a bulky red sweater. Standing underneath a green awning outside a store, his arm around a pretty blonde girl. And the last picture, in a white lab coat, wearing safety glasses, hunched over a microscope.

  In the forty-plus pictures throughout the book, none of the images contained anything like a woman who could be his mother. Father, maybe, but no mother.

  How was she supposed to find this woman? There could be twenty or thirty knitters in the fabric area of market on any given day. She didn’t even know Thomas’ last name. The leather might be worth something, though. She checked around and found no cigarettes or much else worth taking.

  Clutching the book to her chest, she crossed back to her apartment. She kept her head high to avoid looking at the body in the hall. In her apartment, she took the last beer from the cooler and walked it to the couch. She set the photo album on the coffee table and opened the beer.

  The last time she had gone to market alone, she hadn’t left unscathed. She swore she’d never do it again, but the friend she usually went with hadn’t been around for days, maybe even weeks. And how well had she known this Thomas guy, anyway?

  She sipped the beer but couldn’t take her eyes off the book. Her neighbor had been a good guy. The first person she’d been interested in since the stock broker Julian.

  Thinking of that name made the corners of her eyes sting with tears, because of what had happened on Wall Street. That was the first time she’d ever seen a dead body. At the time, she had no idea how many more would follow. She used to think of herself as being tough. Not so much lately.

  “Screw it.”

  Drained the beer, tucked the book under her arm, then went out the door. A second later, she came back inside and grabbed St. Jude, then shoved him into her back pocket.

  ***

  Sunlight pinched Cassie’s skin. She hadn’t been out in two days, maybe three, and would have preferred not to be out here now. The apartment building sat next to the street, and she regretted not exiting by the back stairs. No visible eyes followed her, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there.

  Market was four blocks down and two over, at the corner of Edgewood and Kimball. Should only take fifteen minutes, unless she had to detour.

  She plucked a plastic bag from the garbage and slipped the photo album and St. Jude inside it. Her last purse had been a ratty old thing that had smelled like mold, and she’d switched to carrying necessities in whatever was handy a year ago. Purses weren’t worth whatever you’d have to trade to get them.

  A chill on the empty street rattled her bones, despite the sun. Before everything happened, she had lived a short train ride from here, in what used to be called a “nice neighborhood.” Gated communities were still gated, but the gates were now fortified with plywood and barbed wire. Slums were still slums, and squatter apartments were plentiful in the shitty areas of town. Since moving to Yonkers two years ago, not much had changed.

  She walked into the center of the road to get a better look in both directions. Couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a car on the streets, so no danger of someone running her over. But it was still better to hug the buildings, possibly stay out of sight. Sometimes they squatted on the higher floors for a better vantage, but the younger thieves could descend stairs so quickly, you’d never see them coming.

  Up toward the movie theater, a couple people had gathered, just standing. A shopping cart next to them, a man and a woman. He looked dirty, dressed in black slacks and a blotchy t-shirt. She wore a short skirt, push-up top squeezing boobs to defy gravity, and mountains of glitter. She was touching his arm, laughing at something he was saying. Lots of women still made a living that way.

  They seemed harmless, two people completing a transaction, but Cassie didn’t want to risk it. She walked across the street to the breakfast joint, the one her cousin the bartender had said was excellent. He moved to New Zealand before the meteor hoax infected the world. Had New Zealand died too, or were the other countries fine, rolling along while America sank further and further into the grave?

  For daytime, the lack of people unnerved her. Usually, empty at night, but you could count on at least a few dozen people out milling about, carrying trash bags, rummaging through garbage bins for discarded items.

  She eyed the tall apartment building next to the breakfast joint as she approached. A woman swathed in rags sat under the awning, avoiding the sun. A black lab panted at her feet, his mouth open and tongue lolling at an angle. What could the dog be eating these days? Hardly ever saw mutts anymore.

  As Cassie approached, the old woman pulled a pile of clothes close. “I don’t got nothing worth taking.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Cassie said. “I’m not here to give you any trouble. Just passing through.”

  “I seen you before. I saw you move in at the building down there, with your fancy dresses.”

  Cassie took a step back. “How did you know about the dresses?”

  “Don’t look all shocked. They was hanging off your shopping cart.”

  Cassie relaxed. She nodded at the breakfast joint. “You stay here?”

  “Most nights. Sometimes those bikers come up from the Bronx, and I clear out then. But I hide my stash so deep, they don’t ever find it.”

  The old woman had called them bikers, but the only ones who ever rode bikes were those weirdos with the burn marks and funny cross symbol tattooed on their bodies, the ones who left graffiti all over town about their “mistress,” whoever that was. And they hadn’t been around here in months.

  The old woman opened a package of chewing tobacco and slid a chunk into her mouth, then spat on the ground. “I miss biscuits and gravy. Don’t you miss biscuits and gravy?”

  “Sure I do. I guess they don’t have anything like that inside, back in the dry storage?”

  “No, anything like that is long gone. Used up. But I can near-as-well smell it, like it’s stuck in the walls.”

  Cassie checked the sun and wondered what time it was. “You can probably get all you need at market to make biscuits and gravy.”

  “Not the sausage, dearie. That’s the part I don’t got the stuff to trade for.”

  Pig could be quite expensive. Even beer
and cigarettes were cheaper than pig. Or any kind of meat that you couldn’t catch on your own.

  “You’re not going to market now, are you?” the old woman said. The dog lifted its head, then dropped it back down, eyes barely opening.

  “Yeah, actually I am.”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t go today, if I was you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Heard a lot of bad stuff been going on at market lately. I ain’t seen it myself; ain’t had the pleasure of going down that godforsaken place for going on a week now. But I hear there’s a new element down there. Some of them call it unsavory.”

  Cassie almost laughed. Unsavory. As if market had fallen from its once-great reputation into something less than that. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “If you don’t come back,” the old woman said, spitting a jet of brown juice at her own feet, “you wanna tell me what your apartment number is? No sense in your stuff going to waste if you’re not around to come back for it.”

  “I don’t have anything worth stealing, either.”

  The old woman cackled. “Ain’t that the way of the world. You take care, now.”

  Cassie smiled and left the woman at her spot, swimming in tobacco juice and dog-stink.

  Around the corner, kids were playing some brand of baseball with a tennis ball and a wooden stick, probably a broken broom handle. They didn’t seem interested in Cassie at all. She veered around them and they didn’t even look at her. No harm done.

  She heard one of them calling out, “LaVey’s going to get you!” as he chased another kid around the alley. She knew that name from somewhere but couldn’t pin it down.

  Past the kids stood a bank with all the windows blown out, and the glass still littered the sidewalk and street. The baseball playing children were far enough away that she didn’t feel the need to warn them. Or, that they would listen to her if she did.